A Search For A Secret: A Novel. Volume 1

I have not mentioned that after I had told mamma about Percy, I suppose she must have hinted something to papa; at any rate he wrote to Percy, saying that hearing from his daughter that he proposed accompanying his sister Ada on a visit to Lady Dashwood's, he should be very glad if, like her, Percy would take Canterbury on his way, and stay for a week with us. Percy answered the letter in the affirmative. Papa's eyes rather twinkled with amusement as he one day at breakfast told me in a casual sort of way that he had written to Mr. Desborough, asking him to stay with us while his sister did, and that he had heard that morning that his invitation was accepted.

I know I tried to look unconscious, but finally had to go round the table and rumple papa's hair all over, and tell him that he was a dear old goose.

It was about two months after my return from London that I received a letter from Ada, saying that her brother had obtained leave of absence again, and that the season was now quite over, and London dreadfully hot; that she longed to be out of it and in the country again, and that if convenient she would come on that day week, and that Percy would accompany her. I had been expecting this news for some time, still, now that it had come – now that I knew for certain that in another week Percy would be with me – it was very difficult to realize, and very hard, indeed, to go about looking tranquil and unconcerned under sister Polly's watchful eye and sly remarks. Polly was now at home for the holidays, and during the week I many times wished her back at school again, for she was really a serious plague to me. She had somehow guessed, or fancied she guessed, the state of things between Percy and me, and she was constantly making remarks about their coming visit, and then slyly watching me to see the colour which would, on the mention of his name, mount up into my cheeks. I had, as a girl, a dreadful habit of blushing, which, do what I would, I could not break myself of. It was very tiresome, and I would have given anything to have cured myself of the trick.

So now, what with Polly's mischievous hints and my ridiculous habit of blushing, I was made quite uncomfortable for that week. At last I had to tell her she was annoying me very much, and that if she did it when they came down I should be seriously angry with her. When she saw I was quite in earnest, she pretended to be very penitent, although I am sure she was only amused; however, she gave it up as much as she could for the time.

At last the day came for them to arrive, and I went down to the train to meet them with papa and Polly. I proposed this myself, as it was much less embarrassing to meet in all that bustle and confusion than in the quiet of our hall.

Presently the train came up, and I saw Ada's face at the window. We were soon at the door and helped her out. When I had kissed her I shook hands with Percy and introduced him to papa, and they went off together to look after the luggage, leaving us three girls talking on the platform. Altogether it had been much less embarrassing than I had feared. Papa ordered a man to take the boxes round to our house, and we started to walk, retaining the same order; we girls together in front, and papa and Percy behind. So down Westgate, across the bridge over the Stour, and under the noble old gate, which, so many centuries back, frowned down upon the haughty priest à Becket, as he passed under it upon that last journey to Canterbury from which he returned alive no more. It was an old gateway then, but still capable of a sturdy defence against the weapons of the time; for on either side the city walls stretched away, lofty and strong. Now, at this point they are gone, and the old gateway stands isolated and alone; but it is still strong and well preserved, and looks as if, unless disturbed by the hand of man, it could bid defiance to the action of time for many a century yet to come. Under this we walked, and then down the High Street, with its quaint, high-gabled, overhanging houses, and up the narrow lane which led to our house. After we had lunched, we went up into the drawing-room, to mamma, who was very pleased to see Ada again, with her bright face and happy laugh, – for I did not mention in its proper place that Ada had spent one of her Christmas holidays with us. Mamma looked very earnestly at Percy, as if she could read his character at a glance, and listened very attentively to all he said. As we went out of the room – which we did in about a quarter of an hour, for mamma could not bear so many in the room for long together – she kissed me, as I lingered behind the others, and pressed my hand lovingly, and I could see she was quite satisfied.

I did not see much of Percy for the next two days, at which I was very glad, for I could not help feeling a little awkward; and although I endeavoured to soothe my conscience by telling myself that had I not put him off he would have proposed to me when I was staying in London, yet I could not help feeling that somehow I had invited him down here on purpose for him to ask me to be his wife. For these two days he was as much as he could be with papa, accompanying him in his drives and rides, and I could see by papa's manner that he really liked him very much. To me he was very nice, not at all showing me any marked attention so as to be perceptible to any one else; and yet I could feel there was something different in his tone of voice and manner when he addressed me to what he used when he spoke to others. Ada and I found lots to talk about when we were alone; for although she had written very often, and given me very full accounts, still there was an immense deal to tell me about all the different balls she had been to since, and what engagements had been made during the season; I found, too, although this was a subject Ada was very chary of speaking of, that she herself had refused one very good offer, and that she was rather under the ban of her lady-mother's displeasure in consequence. "She consoles herself, however," Ada said, "with the conclusion, that there are even better matches to be made than the one I refused, and that I must have set my mind on being a duchess; for that any idea of love is necessary for a marriage, is a matter which never entered her mind." Ada was a little bitter upon the subject, and I was sorry to see she was likely to have disputes with her mother upon the point; for there was no doubt that Lady Desborough was a very worldly woman, and I was quite sure that Ada, although at times thoughtless and fond of admiration, would never marry any one, however high his rank, to whom she had not given her heart.

The third morning of their visit I was up early, and went for my usual little stroll in the garden before breakfast. I had not been there many minutes before Percy joined me, and when we went in together we were engaged. I do not tell how it came about, what he said, or how I answered him. There is very little in the words thus spoken to interest others, although so unutterably sweet to listen to. To me there is something almost sacred in the thought of that time; far too sacred to be told to any one; and even now, eight years after, my cheeks flush, my eyes fill with tears, and my fingers quiver at the thought of those few words, and of the kiss by which our engagement was sealed. Oh Percy, Percy, could we but have seen the future then! But, perhaps, better not – better, certainly, for I have at least the pleasure left me of looking back upon that short space of intense happiness – a memory which is all my own, and which nothing can take away from me. I do not know how I made breakfast that morning – I am sure I must have made all sorts of blunders; but Ada, who at once saw what had happened, and Polly, who I think guessed, chattered away so incessantly, that I was not obliged to take any part in the conversation. Ada afterwards told me that in the first cup of tea I gave her no milk, and that she saw me put no less than eight pieces of sugar into the second. I only hope the others were better, but I have serious doubts on the subject. After breakfast was over, papa went into the study, and Percy at once followed him in there. As soon as the door closed upon them, Ada came round, and kissed me very warmly and lovingly; and Polly, as soon as she saw by our manner that her suspicions were correct, and that Percy and I were engaged, first nearly suffocated me with the violence of her embraces, and then performed a wild and triumphant pas seul round the breakfast-table, in a manner directly opposed to the injunction and teaching of the Misses Pilgrim and "Grendon House." Altogether she was quite wild, and I had the greatest difficulty in sobering her down, especially as Ada was rather inclined to abet her in her folly.

I shall pass very briefly over the remaining ten days that Percy and Ada stayed with us, for indeed that happy time is more than even now I can write about calmly. Papa's and mamma's consent was warmly given, and they were very much pleased with Percy. The only drawback to papa's satisfaction at the match, was the fact of Percy being in the army, and the thought of my going abroad. Percy, indeed, offered to leave the service, but this I would not hear of. I knew how much he was attached to his profession, and I had no objection to the thought of going abroad; and my money, with his pay and allowance from his mother, would enable us to live in luxury in any part of the world.

Two days after our engagement took place I received a very nice letter from Lady Desborough, saying how pleased she was to hear of Percy's choice, and its success. She said a good many kind and complimentary things, to which I did not, even at the time, attach much importance, for I knew well that it was only the fact of her son choosing, greatly against her wishes, an active military life, which made her regard with approval his engagement with myself. However, I did not fret seriously about that; she gave her consent, and that was all that was required, while I had the hearty approval of my own dear parents in my choice. I believed Percy loved me with all his heart, and I certainly did him with all mine. So the time they stopped with us went over very happily and quickly. Nothing was said before they went away about our marriage; indeed, mamma was so very ill, that it was a question which could not be discussed, as of course I could not have left her in the state she was in, and how long she might remain as she was no one could tell.

However, it was willed that her stay with us should be even more brief than our worst fears had whispered. Percy and Ada had not left us much more than a month, when papa said at breakfast one morning: "Agnes, I wrote yesterday to Harry to come home; write to-day to Miss Pilgrim, asking her to send Polly home to-morrow." It did not need for me to look in his face; the quiver of his voice told me his meaning: they were to come home to see mamma before she died. What a dreadful shock it was. I had long known mamma must leave us soon, but she had so long been ill, and she changed so gradually, that, until papa spoke that morning, I had never realized that her time was so near at hand. Yet, when I recovered from that terrible fit of crying, I remembered how I could count back from week to week, and see how the change, gradual as it seemed, had yet been strongly marked, and that the last two months had wrought terrible havoc with her little remaining strength.

At the beginning of that time she had been up nearly all day, lying on the sofa. As time went on, she got up later and went to bed earlier; at the end of the month, papa had taken to carrying her in, and now, for the last ten days, her visits to the drawing-room had ceased altogether. She was wonderfully calm and patient, and through all those long months of illness, I never heard a murmur or word of complaint pass her lips.

Polly arrived the day after I wrote, and was, poor child, in a dreadful state of grief. Harry came the day after: to him the shock was greater than to any of us. He had not seen her fading gradually away as we had, and although from our letters, he knew how ill she was, he had never until he came back completely realized it.

I pass over the week which mamma lived after Harry's return, as also the week after her death. These solemn griefs are too sacred to be described. Do we not all know them? For are not these great scenes common to every one? Have we not all of us lost our darlings, our loves? Is there not an empty chair in every household; a place in every heart where one lives who is no longer seen on earth; a secret shrine whence, in the dead of the night, the well-known figure steps gently out, and communes with us over happy times that are gone, and bids us hope and wait for that happier meeting to come, after which there will be no more parting and tears?

CHAPTER XI

LAYING A TRAIN

It was not for three weeks after mamma's death that I again saw Mr. Harmer, and then he came over in his carriage to say good-bye to me, as he would not see me again for some little time, for I was going away for a month with papa to Ramsgate for a change.

In truth we both needed it. I was pale and nervous; all the scenes and emotions of the last three months had shaken me very much, and I think that had I not gone to the sea-side I should have had a serious illness of some sort. Papa, too, looked ill and worn. He had felt mamma's loss very much; and, indeed, the long watching and the constant noting the signs of her rapid decay, all so clear to his medical eye, must have been a terrible trial.

The house, too, was now so dreadfully lonely and dull that I became quite affected by it, and began to feel my old childish terrors of the dark passages, and the midnight sounds of the old house grew upon me again: in fact, I became sadly nervous and out of sorts, and a change was absolutely necessary.

Harry had gone back to his work in the North, and Polly to Grendon House, so papa and I had only ourselves and each other to think of.

When Mr. Harmer called, I found him very much better than when I had seen him last. His difficulty of utterance had quite passed off, and he was able to walk again nearly as firmly and freely as he had before. He was very kind to me, as, indeed, he always was; and sympathized with me so gently and feelingly upon the great loss I had sustained, that he soothed rather than opened the recent wounds. Altogether, his visit did me good; and I was very glad to find him so much better than I had expected, for, although papa had told me that he was getting round wonderfully, and was likely, unless he had another seizure, to live for many years, I had not hoped to see him as well as he was. He did not at all mind papa's going away, for he had promised to come up twice a week from Ramsgate to see him, and he could be telegraphed for at any moment should anything occur to render such a step necessary.

So papa and I went down to Ramsgate for a month, and a very great deal of good it did us. The fresh air and sea-bathing soon cured my nervousness, and the change of scene and the variety and life of the place – so different from the quiet sleepiness of Canterbury – gradually softened the bitterness of my grief; while nearly every day I had letters from Percy – long, loving letters, very cheering and dear to me – painting our future life together, and making me feel very happy; so happy, that I sometimes blamed myself for feeling so, so soon after my dear mother's death. It was a tranquil, quiet life, and I rapidly recovered my health and strength again. I had no acquaintances down there, for Ramsgate is too near to Canterbury for the people from there to visit it. Besides, Canterbury is a great deal too genteel to patronize so exceedingly vulgar a place as Ramsgate. I had a chatting acquaintance with several of the boatmen, and papa was very fond of sitting of an evening at the end of the pier, on the great stone posts to which the steamers are fastened, and talking to the fishermen of the wrecks they had known on those terrible Goodwins, and of the vessels which had been lost in trying to make the entrance to the Harbour. I also struck up a great acquaintance with the old bathing-woman – not, certainly, from any use that she was to me, for I would never let her take me by the hands and plunge me under water as I saw some girls do, but I used to talk to her of an evening when her work was done, and she was hanging up the towels to dry. She was a very worthy old body, and not so frightfully ugly as she looked in her bathing-costume, with her draggled clothes and weather-beaten bonnet, but was a quiet respectable-looking old woman. She had been a bathing-woman there for years and years; and had, I have no doubt, saved up a snug little sum of money. She told me that she had a married daughter who lived near London, and who had a very nice cottage down at Putney, and who let part of it to lodgers; and she hoped that if I were ever going near London, I would patronize her. I told her that there was not the remotest probability of such a thing; but she suggested that I might know some one who might one day go, and, accordingly, to please her, I took the address down in my pocket-book, but certainly without the remotest idea that it would ever turn out of the slightest use to me.

Papa, on his return from his visits to Canterbury twice a week, always brought back some fresh topics for conversation. He was at all times fond of talking over his day's visits, and told me so much about his patients that I grew quite interested in his accounts of the improvement or otherwise of those who were seriously ill, and was pleased or sorry as his report of their state was good or the reverse. This had always been papa's habit, partly because he felt so much interested in his work that his patients were constantly in his thoughts, and partly because when we were at home he always had soups, jellies, and other strengthening food made for those among his poorer patients as required such treatment.

One evening when papa came back, he looked vexed and thoughtful; however, I asked no questions for I knew that if he thought right he would tell me presently what it was. When we had finished our dinner we strolled out on to the esplanade in front of our house. He lit his cigar, and we leant on the rail and looked down upon the shipping in the harbour, in the gathering twilight, and at the light on the Goodwin which was as yet but just visible. For some time papa did not speak; at last he took his cigar out of his mouth, and said, "I am vexed, Agnes; or rather troubled. I will tell you why: you are a discreet little woman now, and so I can trust you with what I have seen."

He again paused, and took two or three quick puffs at his cigar, as if in angry thought of how he should begin, and then went on.

"There lives near Canterbury, Agnes, a lazy, bad, dissolute man, named Robert Gregory. I do not suppose you have noticed him, although you may have possibly met him casually. He is, as I have said, a bad man, and bears a character of the worst description. Some eight or ten years since, when he was a very young man, he went up to London, and by his extravagance and bad habits there, he ruined the old man, his father, and brought him prenaturely to the grave.

"This man, Agnes, is good-looking, and yet with a bad face. It is rather coarse perhaps, more so than it was ten years since when I first saw him, for that sort of face, when it once begins to go off, loses its beauty rapidly; still, I allow, much as I object to the man, that he is handsome. It is just the sort of face likely to attract a young girl who is new to the world. A face apparently frank and good-natured, and yet with something – imperious and even defiant about it; very taking to the young, who cannot help feeling flattered by seeing that the man, who looks as if he neither cared for nor feared any other living thing, should yet bow to them; that the fierce eye should soften, and the loud voice become gentle when he addresses them. Altogether a dangerous man for a young girl to know, a very dangerous one for her to love. To a man like myself, accustomed from habit and profession to study character, he is peculiarly repulsive. His face to me is all bad. The man is not only a blackguard, and a handsome blackguard, but he is a clever and determined one; his face is marked with lines of profligacy and drunkenness, and there is a passionate, dangerous flash about his eye. He has, too, seen the world, although only a bad side of it; but he can, when he chooses, lay aside his roughness and rampant blackguardism, and assume a tolerably gentlemanly, quiet demeanour, which would very well pass muster with an inexperienced girl. In short, my dear, if I were asked to select the man of all others, of those with whom I am acquainted, whom I would least rather meet in any society where my daughter, or any young girl might see him, I should unhesitatingly say – Robert Gregory. Fortunately for society here, the man, by his well-known drunken and bad character, has placed himself beyond its pale, and so he can do it no great harm. It was only the last time that I was in Canterbury that I heard, and I acknowledge that I heard with great pleasure, that Robert Gregory was so deeply in debt that writs were out against him; and that unless he went away he would in a short time be consigned to a debtor's prison, so that Canterbury, at any rate for some time, might hope to be free of him. Well, my dear, I daresay you are wondering what all this long story about a person of whom you know nothing can be going to end in, but you will see that it is all very much to the point. To-day I was rather earlier than usual in my visit to Mr. Harmer. I was driving fast, and as I turned the corner of the road where the plantation in Mr. Harmer's ground begins, I saw a man getting over the hedge into the road. Probably the noise he was making breaking through the twigs, together with the turn of the road, prevented his seeing or hearing the gig until he was fairly over; for as he jumped into the road and looked round I was not twenty yards off, and could hear him swear a deep oath, as he pulled his hat down over his eyes, and turned his back to me as I drove past to prevent my seeing his face; but it was too late, for I had recognized Robert Gregory. Of course I said nothing; but as I drove up to the house, looking over the grounds, I saw Sophy Needham coming up through the trees from the very direction from which I had seen him come out. She was at some distance off, and I was almost at the door, so I could not have stopped to speak to her without being noticed, even had I wished it. She did not come into the room while I was there, so that I had no opportunity of questioning her about it, even had I made up my mind to do so; indeed it was so delicate a matter that I could not have spoken to her without previous reflection.

"Altogether the affair has a very curious and ugly look. It could hardly be a mere coincidence, that he should be getting over the hedge from the plantation – where he could have no possible reason for going except to see her – at the very time of her coming away from that part of the grounds. It looks very like a secret meeting, but how such a thing could have been brought about is more than I can imagine. But if it is so, it is a dreadful business."

We were both silent for some time, and then I said, —

"Do you know, papa, I remember meeting the man you speak of at the fête at Mr. Harmer's last year."

"Now you mention it, Agnes, I recollect that he was there. I wondered at the time at his being invited, but I supposed Mr. Harmer had known his father as a respectable man, and had asked the son, knowing nothing of his character, or the disrepute in which he was held. I did not notice him much, nor did I see him dance with Sophy; had I done so I should have warned Mr. Harmer of his real character."

"He did not dance with her, papa," I said, rather timidly, for I was frightened at the thought of what dreadful mischief had resulted, which might have been averted had I spoken of the matter at the time. "He did not dance with her, but he had some sort of secret understanding with her; at least I thought so;" and I then told him all I had observed that evening at the fête. "I should have mentioned it at the time, papa, for it perplexed me a good deal, but I went back to school next day, and never thought of it from that day to this."

"Do you know, Agnes," papa said, throwing away his cigar, and taking three or four turns up and down in extreme perplexity, "this is very serious; I am quite frightened to think of it. What on earth is to be done?" and papa took off his hat and rubbed his hair back from his forehead. "How very unfortunate that you did not speak of what you noticed at the time. I am not blaming you; going off to school, as you say, of course put it out of your head; besides, you did not know the man as I do, and could not guess what terrible results might be growing out of what you saw; you could not, as a mere girl, tell how bad it is for a young woman to have a secret understanding of that sort with any man – how fatal, when with such a man as Robert Gregory.