Confessions of a Young Lady: Her Doings and MisdoingsMarsh, Richard
General
Confessions of a Young Lady: Her Doings and Misdoings
Marsh, Richard
England -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Girls -- Fiction; Women -- Fiction
I think if I ever do, I should like to have it with me in my
grave. If I had known of its existence mother should have had hers.
All except one thing which was in it. And it is that to which I have
been coming all this time. It was a sheet of foolscap paper, folded in
three. On one side was written, in mother's writing: "Contents of
Brown Despatch-Box." When I opened it I perceived that it was a sort
of inventory. It began,--
"In the brown despatch-box are--
"My husband's will,
My own will,
My husband's jewels,"
--and then it went on to give quite a long list. Now I knew the brown
despatch-box. We all did. It had been father's. There were his
initials--R. B.--in gold letters on the lid. It was unlocked by a tiny
little key. I had always understood from mother that she had kept all
sorts of wonderful things inside of it. Yet, after she had been
buried, and we had got rid of the Ogre, and had found her keys, it was
empty. It contained not a vestige of anything. I thought it curious at
the time. We all had done. But I thought it still more curious by the
time I had reached the bottom of that list.
Next time Mr Sanford came to see us--which was a day or two
afterwards--I handed it to him. He made inquiries at Somerset House,
where, it appears, they keep such things, and there, sure enough, was
a copy of father's will. It was simplicity itself, just two lines--
"I give and bequeath everything of which I die possessed to my dear
wife, for her sole and absolute use."
So that, so far as we were concerned, everything depended upon what
was in mother's will. Mr Sanford explained to us that at Somerset
House they only keep a copy when the original will has been what they
call "proved." And the whereabouts of the original will was just the
question. Was it in existence? and, if so, where?
Dick expressed all our sentiments in language of his own.
"The Ogre collared it; that's what's come to the thing. What asses we
were, not to have suspected him of it at the time!"
"If," observed Mr Sanford, "he collared that, then the probability is
that he collared a good deal else besides. For instance, your father's
jewels. Do any of you know anything about them?"
"It's a most extraordinary thing," I explained, "that I should ever
have forgotten them. Mother's death was so sudden, and everything was
in such confusion, that, except the one fact that she was dead, all
the rest passed clean out of my mind. But I remember them perfectly.
Why, it was only during the last holidays before she died that she
showed some of them to me. I went into the morning-room one day, and
she had the brown despatch-box on the table, and it was full of
things. She had a leather case open in her hand. In it were a number
of rings. 'See, Molly,' she said, 'there are some of your father's
rings. Your father had some beautiful jewels. I am keeping it for Dick
and the boys!"
"You are sure she said that she was keeping it?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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