A Search For A Secret: A Novel. Vol. 2

by G. A. Henty

When the news of Mr. Harmer's death came to us at Ramsgate, I had written to Lady Desborough, and had received in reply from her a letter of condolence, which indeed, from the tone it was written in, resembled rather one of congratulation. It was evident that Lady Desborough considered that £25,000 at once was a very much more comfortable thing than £10,000 on my marriage, and the remaining £15,000 at some uncertain, and perhaps distant, period. Ada and Percy both wrote, really sympathizing with me in the loss of so very dear and kind a friend.

When, however, I had to write, ten days after, and say that the will was missing, I confess that I did so almost with the feelings of a man signing his own death-warrant. I wrote to Ada this time, and related the whole history to her. I told her—what I tried to believe myself—that we might find it yet; indeed, that we did not by any means give up all hope. I said that we felt quite sure that it was concealed in a secret chamber, and that until we found that chamber we should never give up the search. In truth, I was a coward—I dreaded what might happen if I said that all hope was gone, and that I had no idea of ever finding it; for that I knew would bring on a crisis from which, although I felt sure it must some day come, I shrank with a terrible fear. I believe now that if I had allowed to myself that it was hopeless, I should, whatever came of it, have written and said so; but I was playing at ships, and I really persuaded myself that I believed as I wrote.

Ada's answer came in a day or two; it was, as I knew it would be, everything which was kind and affectionate. She "was sorry, so, so sorry for us all," and she was indignant and furious against "those dreadful old hags," as she irreverently termed the Misses Harmer, "and she should only like—" and Ada's wishes and intentions towards them were terrible. Nothing indeed could be kinder or more satisfactory than the first part of Ada's letter; but when she came to write about her mamma, her pen evidently went slower, and her words were cautiously chosen. Mamma, she said, was very sorry indeed to hear of the will being missing, and indeed was made quite ill by the news. She begged her to say how much she condoled with me upon it, and what a dreadful affair it was. "In short," Ada finally scribbled, evidently puzzled how to put it—"in short, you know exactly what mamma would say under the circumstances."

Ada and I continued to correspond regularly, and I kept her posted up in the proceedings of our plot to discover the chamber. In answer to the joyous letter I wrote to Ada after Christmas—saying that we had discovered one of the secret openings which opened the door, and had now every hope of finding the other—Lady Desborough herself wrote, for the first time since the will had been lost. She said how glad she was that, after all, it seemed by what Ada said, we were likely to find the missing will, and regain our fortunes. She stated that she had always expressed herself as certain that the infamous conspiracy against us would be defeated, and she wound up by saying that she sincerely trusted that the document would be discovered before long, both for my sake and Percy's, who, she believed, would sail for India in the following autumn.

As I read this letter, it appeared to me that the pith of the whole contents was contained in that last line. To me it said as plainly as if she had so written it—"He goes to India in the autumn, but, of course, unless you find the will before that, he will have to go without you." I was neither hurt nor surprised at this. I knew Lady Desborough well enough to be perfectly assured that with her consent I should never marry Percy unless I regained the lost fortune.

Percy's letters to me were always alike; he told me that he did not care whether I had the fortune or not. That for my own sake he should of course have preferred that I should have had money, in order that in our Indian home we might be surrounded by more comforts and luxuries, but that for no other reason did he in the least care. That, of course, his pay as a cornet was next to nothing, but he expected that before many months he should get a step. He calculated that his lieutenant's pay in India, with the staff appointment—which he made sure, from his proficiency in the native languages, he should speedily obtain—together with the £300 a year his mother allowed him, would enable us to live in tolerable comfort.

He spoke always of the £300 a year as if it were a certainty, but I was sure that in case of his marrying me his mother would at once stop it.

Lady Desborough, although she lived in so fashionable a style, was by no means a very rich woman. Her income, with the trifling exception of her pension as a General's widow, was derived entirely from property she possessed previous to her marriage, and which had been settled upon her at that time. Of this she had the entire income during her lifetime, and could leave it as she chose between her children.

Percy's letters to me were very loving and tender, and he was never tired of drawing happy pictures of our future. My answers to him, since the loss of the will, were not less loving, perhaps, than before; but they were far less confident and hopeful, and I could not trust myself to speak much of a future which I so feared in my heart could never come for me.

Altogether, I was very nervous and anxious all this time, and I looked forward to Sarah's communications with feverish eagerness. I felt that to me far more depended on the discovery of this will than the mere matter of money. It was not the question of wealth or the reverse, it was—a life of happiness with Percy, or one of solitary unhappiness. Had it not been for the search Sarah was making, which kept hope alive, I should have felt it even more than I did. But when the secret spring was found, I did begin to think that all would come right again.