The Dead Secret, Wilkie Collins [best historical biographies .TXT] 📗

“If you were to die!” He started as he repeated the words after her, and, leaning forward, anxiously laid his hand upon her forehead. “You are thinking and talking very strangely this morning, Rosamond! Are you not well?”

She rose on her knees and looked closer at him, her face brightening a little, and a faint smile just playing round her lips. “I wonder if you will always be as anxious about me, and as fond of me, as you are now?” she whispered, kissing his hand as she removed it from her forehead. He leaned back again in the chair, and told her jestingly not to look too far into the future. The words, lightly as they were spoken, struck deep into her heart. “There are times, Lenny,” she said, “when all one’s happiness in the present depends upon one’s certainty of the future.” She looked at the letter, which her husband had left open on a table near him, as she spoke; and, after a momentary struggle with herself, took it in her hand to read it. At the first word her voice failed her; the deadly paleness overspread her face again; she threw the letter back on the table, and walked away to the other end of the room.

“The future?” asked Leonard. “What future, Rosamond, can you possibly mean?”

“Suppose I meant our future at Porthgenna?” she said, moistening her dry lips with a few drops of water. “Shall we stay here as long as we thought we should, and be as happy as we have been everywhere else? You told me on the journey that I should find it dull, and that I should be driven to try all sorts of extraordinary occupations to amuse myself. You said you expected that I should begin with gardening and end by writing a novel. A novel!” She approached her husband again, and watched his face eagerly while she went on. “Why not? More women write novels now than men. What is to prevent me from trying? The first great requisite, I suppose, is to have an idea of a story; and that I have got.” She advanced a few steps farther, reached the table on which the letter lay, and placed her hand on it, keeping her eyes still fixed intently on Leonard’s face.

“And what is your idea, Rosamond?” he asked.

“This,” she replied. “I mean to make the main interest of the story centre in two young married people. They shall be very fond of each other⁠—as fond as we are, Lenny⁠—and they shall be in our rank of life. After they have been happily married some time, and when they have got one child to make them love each other more dearly than ever, a terrible discovery shall fall upon them like a thunderbolt. The husband shall have chosen for his wife a young lady bearing as ancient a family name as⁠—”

“As your name?” suggested Leonard.

“As the name of the Treverton family,” she continued, after a pause, during which her hand had been restlessly moving the letter to and fro on the table. “The husband shall be wellborn⁠—as wellborn as you, Lenny⁠—and the terrible discovery shall be, that his wife has no right to the ancient name that she bore when he married her.”

“I can’t say, my love, that I approve of your idea. Your story will decoy the reader into feeling an interest in a woman who turns out to be an impostor.”

“No!” cried Rosamond, warmly. “A true woman⁠—a woman who never stooped to a deception⁠—a woman full of faults and failings, but a teller of the truth at all hazards and all sacrifices. Hear me out, Lenny, before you judge.” Hot tears rushed into her eyes; but she dashed them away passionately, and went on. “The wife shall grow up to womanhood, and shall marry, in total ignorance⁠—mind that!⁠—in total ignorance of her real history. The sudden disclosure of the truth shall overwhelm her⁠—she shall find herself struck by a calamity which she had no hand in bringing about. She shall be staggered in her very reason by the discovery; it shall burst upon her when she has no one but herself to depend on; she shall have the power of keeping it a secret from her husband with perfect impunity; she shall be tried, she shall be shaken in her mortal frailness, by one moment of fearful temptation; she shall conquer it, and, of her own free will, she shall tell her husband all that she knows herself. Now, Lenny, what do you call that woman? an impostor?”

“No: a victim.”

“Who goes of her own accord to the sacrifice? and who is to be sacrificed?”

“I never said that.”

“What would you do with her, Lenny, if you were writing the story? I mean, how would you make her husband behave to her? It is a question in which a man’s nature is concerned, and a woman is not competent to decide it. I am perplexed about how to end the story. How would you end it, love?” As she ceased, her voice sank sadly to its gentlest pleading tones. She came close to him, and twined her fingers in his hair fondly. “How would you end it, love?” she repeated, stooping down till her trembling lips just touched his forehead.

He moved uneasily in his chair, and replied⁠—“I am not a writer of novels, Rosamond.”

“But how would you act, Lenny, if you were that husband?”

“It is hard for me to say,” he answered. “I have not your vivid imagination, my dear. I have no power of putting myself, at a moment’s notice, into a position that is not my own, and of knowing how I should act in it.”

“But suppose your wife was close to you⁠—as close as I am now? Suppose she had just told you the dreadful secret, and was standing before you⁠—as I am standing now⁠—with the happiness of her whole life to come depending