A Search For A Secret: A Novel. Volume 2

"Your most affectionate

"Ada."

At twelve o'clock that day there was a knock at the door, and Percy Desborough was ushered in. I was prepared for his coming, and therefore received him with tolerable composure; and although I dreaded the painful scene I knew I should have to go through, I was yet glad that he had come, for I felt that it was better that all this should come to an end. Percy was looking very pale and worn, and as he came up to me, much as I had schooled myself, I could hardly keep my tears down. He came up, took me in his arms, and kissed me. I suffered him to do so. I knew that it was nearly the last kiss that I should ever have from him. Polly, after the first salutation, would have left the room, but I said, —

"Stop here, please, Polly. She knows all about it, Percy; and it is better for us both that she should be here. I have heard this morning from Lady Desborough, and also from Ada, so I know what you have come down for."

"I have come down, Agnes," Percy said, solemnly, "to renew and confirm my engagement to you. I have come down, that you may hear me swear before God that I will never marry any other woman but you."

"And I, Percy, will marry no other man; but you, even you, I will never marry without your mother's consent. I will never divide mother and son. Besides which, without her consent, it would be impossible."

"Impossible just at present, Agnes, I admit. My mother has refused to allow me one farthing if I marry you, and I know I cannot ask you to go out to India as a lieutenant's wife, on a lieutenant's pay; but in a short time I am sure to get a staff appointment; and although it will not be such a home as I had hoped to offer you, it will be at least a home in which we could have every necessary comfort; and I know you too well, not to feel sure that you would be content with it."

"Percy," I said, "why do you tempt me? You know well how gladly I would go with you anywhere, that comfort or discomfort would make little difference to me if they were shared by you. But you know Lady Desborough, and you know well that she will not only refuse to assist you now, but that she will utterly disown and cast you off if you act in defiance of her will. You are choosing between wife and mother; if you take the one, you lose the other. Has she not told you, Percy, that if you marry me, you are no longer son of hers?"

Percy hesitated. "She has," he said, "she has; but, Agnes, although in any just exercise of her authority, I, as a son, would yield to her; yet at my age, I have a perfect right, in a matter of this sort, to choose for myself; besides, she has already given her entire approval, and it is not because circumstances have changed that she has any right to withdraw that consent. It was you she approved of, and you are unaltered."

"She is acting, as she believes, for your good, Percy. You think her mistaken and cruel, but she will never change, and I will never marry you without her consent. See, Percy, I have no false pride. I would have come to you, had there been nothing to prevent it, as a penniless wife, although I had hoped it would have been otherwise; but no true woman will drag her husband down; no true woman will marry a man when, instead of bringing him a fortune, she brings him ruin. You are now comparatively well off; some day you will be much better; and I will not be the means of your losing this – losing not only this, but your mother."

"But my happiness, Agnes! – what is money to happiness?" Percy exclaimed, impetuously.

"Nothing, Percy, – I know and feel that; but I also feel that my decision is right, and not wrong. I know that I could not decide otherwise, and that whatever unhappiness it may cause us both, yet that, without your mother's consent, I can never be yours."

"You will make me wish my mother dead, Agnes," Percy said, passionately.

"No, no, Percy, do not say that; I know I am doing right. Do not make it harder for me than I can bear."

Percy strode up and down the room. Once or twice he stopped before me, as if he would speak, but he did not. I was crying freely now, and I could not look up at him.

"Can you not say something for me?" he said to Polly, at last.

Polly got up when he spoke to her – before that she had been sitting on the sofa by me, holding one of my hands in hers – now she went up to him. She put one of her hands on his shoulder, took one of his hands in her other, and looked up into his face.

"Percy, she is right – you know in your own heart she is so. Have pity upon her; she will not do it – she cannot. I love her better than myself, but I could not advise her to do, even for her happiness, what she believes is not right; – she cannot come between you and your mother. Wait, Percy, and be patient – time works wonders. You may be sure she will be yours in heart to the end of her life. Have pity on her, Percy, and go."

"Oh, Polly, have pity on me, too," Percy said, and his lips quivered now; and although he kept the features of his face still rigid and under control, the tears were starting from his eyes. "What shall I do!"

"Go, Percy," I said, getting up. "Go. Let us help each other;" and I took his hands now, and looked up into his face. "Go. I do not say, forget me; I do not say, goodbye for ever; I only say, go, now. I cannot do what you ask me; let us wait – let us wait and hope."

"Agnes," Percy said, solemnly, "I go now; I leave you for a time, but our engagement is not over, and again hear me swear never to marry any woman but you."

"And I no other man, Percy; and now kiss me and go."

For a little while Percy held me strained to his heart, his tears rained down upon my face, his lips pressed mine again and again, then one long, long kiss – I felt it was the last; then he gave me to Polly, who was standing near. I heard the door close behind him, and for a long time I heard no other sound. I had fainted.

CHAPTER VIII

STRUGGLES FOR A LIVING

When at Christmas time Robert Gregory heard that one of the springs which were supposed to open the secret door was found, he gave up for a time even the pretence of looking for anything to do; but not very long afterwards he met an old friend, and most unexpectedly went into a business with him, and that perhaps the only one which could have been named for which he was really fitted.

He had one day, as was his usual custom, entered a public-house where he was well known, and had gone into the bar parlour, where he was sitting reading the paper, smoking his pipe, and drinking a glass of spirits and water, when another man entered the room, looked carelessly at Gregory, then more attentively, and finally burst out, —

"Hallo, Robert? is that you? How fares the world with you all this time?"

"By Jove, Fielding! is that you? How are you, my boy?"

They greeted each other warmly, for they had been a great deal together in the time when Gregory was in London, and their satisfaction at meeting was mutual. After a while, they sat down before the fire, ordered fresh glasses of spirits and water, and prepared for a long talk over all that had happened since they had parted some four years ago – Robert to return to his father at Canterbury, Fielding to continue for a short time longer the reckless life they were living about town.

"Now, Gregory," Fielding said, "let me hear what you have been doing first."

Robert, in reply, related pretty accurately the whole of his life since he had left London.

"Well, that is a rum start," his companion said when he had finished his story. "And you really think that you will some day come in for all this money?"

"I do," Robert answered. "As I have told you they are trying down there now, and have a good chance; but if that fails, I mean to try for it myself. And now what have you been doing?"

"The easiest way to answer would be to tell you what I have not been doing. You left us in the winter, and I held on, as I had been doing before, till the next Derby Day; but I dropped so much upon that, that I had to make myself scarce for a bit. Then I came back again, and set to work to earn my living, and very hard work I found it."

"I should think so," Robert Gregory put in. "I have been trying to get something to do for the last three months, and I am no nearer, as far as I can see, than when I began. How did you set about it?"

"To tell you the truth, Robert, I found it rather up-hill work at first. I worked for the papers for a bit, – went to all the fires, and the inquests, and the hospitals, and sent accounts to all the dailies. Of course at first they did not often put them in, still they did sometimes, and after a month or two they came to take them pretty regularly. At last I did what I really very seldom did do; but I was very hard-up, and I sent an account of a fire which only existed in my imagination. Well, it turned out that there was a row about it, and of course that put an end to that line. It was winter then, and I was very hard-up, and was glad to earn a few shillings a week as super at one of the pantomimes. Then I happened to meet with a man with a few pounds, and together we set up a very profitable business – advertising to find situations for clerks and servants. They paid us five shillings to enter their names in our books; then we answered every advertisement that appeared in any of the papers for that sort of thing, and sent them to look after the situations. If they got them, they paid us thirty per cent, on the first year's earnings, down on the nail. There were three or four of us in that game. I kept the head office, and they took places in other parts, and each of them wanted clerks at £150 a year. It was a capital dodge, and we made a lot of money; but at last it got blown upon, and we had to give it up.

"Then I did the ladies employment business. Lessons given for a guinea, and constant employment guaranteed when the art was learnt. We used to send them a book on illuminating, which by the gross cost us twopence each. None of the ladies, as it turned out, ever became perfect enough for us to give them employment; but that was their fault you know, not ours. Well, that paid uncommonly well for a bit. After that, I tried no end of moves, and did sometimes well, sometimes badly; still I was not often without a sovereign in my pocket. At last I took up my present line; I have been at it now a year and a half, and I mean to stick to it."

"What is it?" Robert Gregory asked rather curiously, for his companion had the look of a well-to-do man, although perhaps rather of a sporting cut. He wore a good substantial great-coat with a velvet collar, a very good hat, put rather on one side of his head, and a quiet scarf, with a gold pin representing a jockey's cap and whip.

"I am a betting man," Fielding said. "I make a book on all the races. I have certain places – public-houses, quiet streets, and so on – where I am always to be found at regular hours of the day, and I do a very fair business."

"And do you always win, Fielding?"

"Not always; occasionally one gets hit hard, but nineteen times out of twenty, if one is careful, one wins. The great thing is always to have enough in hand to pay your losses the day after the race; and as one receives all the money when the bets are made, two or three months before a race, it is hard if one cannot do that. In this way I have got a good name, am looked upon as a safe man, and so am getting a good business together.

"What do you make on an average a week?"

"Well, on an average, five or six pounds – more than that a good deal in the season, but very little just at this time of year; in a month or so I shall be beginning again."

"I should like to join you, Fielding," Robert said, eagerly.

"Aye, but what capital could you put in? I acknowledge I could do very well with a partner who would take one end of the town while I took the other. I could easily double the business. But I should want a good sum of money with one. I have been, as I told you, a year and a half at it, and have got a good connection together."

"How much do you call a good sum?"

"That would depend upon the man," Fielding answered. "I have known you well, and I am sure we should pull well together. I would take a hundred pounds with you; not for my own use, mind, but to lay in a bank in our joint names. You see it makes the beginning of an account, and we could pay in there all we took, and settle our losses by cheques, which looks much better, and would give us a much better name altogether."

"I should have difficulty in getting a hundred pounds," Robert said; and indeed the sixty pounds the pony carriage had fetched had melted away very fast; for Robert had spent a large amount in this daily search for employment, and Sophy often wondered to herself, with a little sigh, how Robert could possibly spend as much money as he did. "No, Fielding, I am sure I could not manage a hundred, but I think I could go as far as sixty."

"Suppose you think it over, Gregory, and see what you can do. Let us meet here again to-morrow at the same time, and then we will enter into it again; and I will bring you some of my old books to show you that what I say is correct."

"Very well," Robert said, and they parted to meet again next day.

That evening Robert told Sophy what had occurred, and said that it seemed to him an opportunity for getting on which might not occur to him again, but that he would be guided entirely by her.

Sophy was a little alarmed at the thought of their whole available capital being embarked; but she assented cheerfully to the proposal, as she was delighted at anything which seemed likely to occupy Robert's time and thoughts, and prevent him being driven, from sheer want of something to do, to spend his time in drinking. So the next day the grand pianoforte was sent to an auction-room to be sold; it fetched fifty-five pounds, and with this and twenty-five of their former stock Robert joined Fielding as a partner, leaving a solitary ten pounds only in Sophy's charge. But as she was now regularly giving lessons six hours a day, she had very little occasion to break in upon this, as the thirty-six shillings she earned quite covered her household expenses; and she was now able to go to her work with a light heart, knowing that her absence from home no longer drove her husband to spend his time in public-houses.

The firm of Gregory and Fielding flourished; in a short time they had plenty to do; and as the spring came on and the racing season began, they had their hands quite full. At first they went about together; and then, when Robert became known to Fielding's connection, the one took the east end of the town, the other the west, meeting twice a day at some middle point to compare their books and see how they stood. They now, too, started as racing prophets and commission agents, and advertised in the sporting papers, and by the end of April they were making a large income. How large a portion of the money they received would be clear profit, they could not tell until the races were over, so they agreed to draw five pounds a week each, and to pay the rest into the bank to draw from as required. Sophy knew Robert was doing well; for he again begged her to give up teaching, and generally gave her four pounds out of the five he drew every week for the expenses. This was, as she told him double what they spent; but he said that he was making that, and therefore gave it to her; that he did not want to know how it went, but any she could save she might put by with her own earnings, in case of a rainy day.

For the first two months after Robert Gregory had commenced his work, his wife did not see much of him, for his business now often kept him out the whole evening; and when he came back late he was seldom quite sober, and he was frequently not up when she started to her work at nine o'clock. This went on until, in the middle of March, the news came that the secret of the door was found, and Robert was in such a state of excitement at what he considered the certainty of the missing will being found, that he was quite unable to attend to his business, so Fielding agreed to give him a holiday at any rate until he heard of the result. These three days Robert spent in going about from public-house to public-house treating every one he knew; telling them all it was probable that this was the last time he should see them, as he was about to come into an immense fortune. Proportionate therefore to his exultation, was the disappointment when the news came that the secret chamber had been entered, and that the will was not there. Sophy had never seen him in a rage before, indeed she had never seen any one really in a passion, and she was thoroughly frightened and horror-struck by it. She listened in silence to the terrible imprecations and oaths which he poured out, and which shocked and terrified her indeed, but of the meaning of which she had, of course, not the slightest idea.

At last he calmed down, but from that time he was a changed man. Among his associates he had no longer a loud laugh and ready joke; he was become a moody, surly man, doing all that he had to do in a dogged, resolute way, as if it was only by sheer force of will that he could keep his attention to the work upon which he was engaged. He came to be known among them as a dangerous customer; for one or two of them who had ventured to joke him about the fortune he had told them of, had been warned fiercely and savagely to leave that subject alone; while one who, more adventurous than the others, had disregarded the warning and continued his jokes, had been attacked with such fury, that had not Robert been pulled off him by the bystanders, the consequences would have been most serious. So it came to be understood amongst them that he was a man who was safer to be left alone.

Still the business did not suffer by the change, but, as I have said, throve and increased wonderfully through the months of April and May. People seemed to fancy that their money was safer with "Surly Bob," as he generally came to be known among them, than with some of the other offhand, careless, joking speculators. At any rate, the firm throve. They were lucky on the "Two Thousand," and won heavily upon the "Derby;" so the money in the bank accumulated, and Fielding and Gregory came to be looked well upon among their associates.

Robert now arranged for his partner to take as much as possible of the evening work off his hands. He gave up all his former companions, and returned back to Sophy at half-past six, after which, except on the week preceding very important races, when he was obliged to be at work, he did not go out again.

But he did not give up drinking. He told Sophy that he would stop at home of an evening if she would not interfere with him, but that he could not give up drink till the will was found or they started for Australia: in either of which cases, he swore a great oath that he would never touch spirits again.

Sophy tried in vain to point out to him that the will now seemed altogether lost, and that it would be better to start for abroad at once. But Robert said that he did not give it up yet, and that, as he was doing very well, he was in no hurry to start; but that if by the end of the next racing season – that was to say, in about eighteen months – it was not found, he would give up his present work and go abroad, for by that time he should have made enough money to take them out comfortably, and to start them fairly in the new country.

Indeed, in his heart Robert Gregory would rather have gone on as he was, for he knew that he should find no work out in the colony so easy and suitable for him as his present; but yet he was determined that he would go, for Sophy's sake. He thought that there, with hard work as a settler, he could keep from drink, and he was sincere in his determination never again to touch it. There he might be a respectable man yet, and, cost him what it would, he was resolved to try.

Sophy was satisfied with the new arrangement. She was glad to know that, at any rate, he was now safe at home of an evening. It relieved her from the anxiety with which she had sat, sometimes for hours, listening for his heavy, and usually unsteady, footfall. So after that Robert, whenever he could, stayed at home, drank large quantities of spirits, and smoked moodily; arousing himself sometimes to talk with Sophy, who would sit by working, and always ready to answer with a cheerful smile. Occasionally he brought home some book or paper about Australia, and Sophy looked through it and read out to him such parts as she thought would interest him; and then he would leave his spirits untasted for a while, and listen to the accounts of the struggles of the back-wood settler, of the clearings in the dark forests, and of the abundant return nature gave for the labour; and his eye would brighten, and his finger tighten as if on the handle of an axe, and he longed for the time to come when he too would be there, away from all debasing associations, and out of reach of the spirit-bottle. And sometimes he told Sophy that perhaps, after all, he should not wait as long as he had said, but might start in the early spring. The spirits he drank of an evening had little effect upon his hardened frame, and he generally went to bed, if not quite sober, at any rate not very drunk.

He now succeeded in persuading Sophy to give up teaching; telling her that she might be of the greatest use answering the correspondence of the firm, for that this was now growing too large for them to manage. He urged that they would otherwise have to pay some one else to do it, and that it would be a great annoyance to have to let a stranger into all their secrets. He added that of course they should be glad to pay her for her work instead of a clerk, and that they would give her thirty-five shillings per week, which she should have for her own private use.

Sophy, seeing that she really could be of service, at once agreed; and telling her pupils that for a time she must give up teaching, she settled to her new employment. Accordingly, the first thing after breakfast of a morning, she now sat down to her writing-desk, with the list, on one side of her, of the horses selected by the firm as the probable winners of the various races; on the other, of the entries for the different races, and the current odds against each horse. She then opened the letters received that morning, and made a list of the various commissions sent to back different horses, to be given to Robert when he came in for them at one o'clock; then she answered those which required reply, and sent out circulars and lists to their numerous town and country subscribers. Generally she had done her work about twelve o'clock, but on the few days preceding great races she was frequently engaged until quite late in the evening.

However, she liked it much better than the teaching, for there was a certain excitement in seeing whether the prophecies of the firm were correct; and as she now knew pretty nearly what horses they stood to win or lose upon in each race, she quite shared in their interest in the result of the different events. Every Saturday she received her pay, which she put by as regularly. She had now two funds. The one she considered the common fund; this consisted of the ten pounds which remained in hand after paying the partnership money to Fielding, and which had been increasing at the rate of nearly two pounds a week – her savings out of the housekeeping money – ever since that time; the other was her private fund, her own earnings since Robert had been able to pay their expenses. Of the existence of either of these hoards Robert was quite ignorant. He was himself so careless in money matters, and had always parted with his money so freely, that he never thought what Sophy was saving. He knew that she always had everything very comfortable for him, and he asked nothing more. If he had been asked, he would have said, perhaps, that Sophy might have laid by a few pounds; but if he had been told what the total amount came to at the end of the six months, he would have been perfectly astounded. But Sophy said nothing about it. She was laying it by till the time should come for starting abroad.

She was more comfortable now than she had been at all. Her husband, although he was gloomy, and talked little, still was not unkind, and very, very seldom spoke harshly to her.

Mrs. Billow had turned out a really kind-hearted, motherly old woman, and had conceived quite an affection for her quiet, pale young lodger.