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

come nearer, and sit down,” said Rosamond. “And don’t imagine for one moment that any opinion of the steward’s has the least influence on us, or that we feel it at all necessary for you to apologize for what took place the last time you came to this house. We have an interest⁠—a very great interest,” she added, with her usual hearty frankness, “in hearing anything that you have to tell us. You are the person of all others whom we are, just at this time⁠—” She stopped, feeling her foot touched by her husband’s, and rightly interpreting the action as a warning not to speak too unrestrainedly to the visitor before he had explained his object in coming to the house.

Looking very much pleased, and a little surprised also, when he heard Rosamond’s last words, Uncle Joseph drew a chair near to the table by which Mr. and Mrs. Frankland were sitting, crumpled his felt hat up smaller than ever, and put it in one of his side pockets, drew from the other a little packet of letters, placed them on his knees as he sat down, patted them gently with both hands, and entered on his explanation in these terms:

“Madam and good Sir,” he began, “before I can say comfortably my little word, I must, with your leave, travel backward to the last time when I came to this house in company with my niece.”

“Your niece!” exclaimed Rosamond and Leonard, both speaking together.

“My niece, Sarah,” said Uncle Joseph, “the only child of my sister Agatha. It is for the love of Sarah, if you please, that I am here now. She is the one last morsel of my flesh and blood that is left to me in the world. The rest, they are all gone! My wife, my little Joseph, my brother Max, my sister Agatha and the husband she married, the good and noble Englishman, Leeson⁠—they are all, all gone!”

“Leeson,” said Rosamond, pressing her husband’s hand significantly under the table. “Your niece’s name is Sarah Leeson?”

Uncle Joseph sighed and shook his head. “One day,” he said, “of all the days in the year the evilmost for Sarah, she changed that name. Of the man she married⁠—who is dead now, Madam⁠—it is little or nothing that I know but this: His name was Jazeph, and he used her ill, for which I think him the First Scoundrel! Yes,” exclaimed Uncle Joseph, with the nearest approach to anger and bitterness which his nature was capable of making, and with an idea that he was using one of the strongest superlatives in the language⁠—“Yes! if he was to come to life again at this very moment of time, I would say it of him to his face⁠—Englishman Jazeph, you are the First Scoundrel!”

Rosamond pressed her husband’s hand for the second time. If their own convictions had not already identified Mrs. Jazeph with Sarah Leeson, the old man’s last words must have amply sufficed to assure them that both names had been borne by the same person.

“Well, then, I shall now travel backward to the time when I was here with Sarah, my niece,” resumed Uncle Joseph. “I must, if you please, speak the truth in this business, or, now that I am already backward where I want to be, I shall stick fast in my place, and get on no more for the rest of my life. Sir and good Madam, will you have the great kindness to forgive me and Sarah, my niece, if I confess that it was not to see the house that we came here and rang at the bell, and gave deal of trouble, and wasted much breath of the big majordomo’s with the scolding that we got. It was only to do one curious little thing that we came together to this place⁠—or, no, it was all about a secret of Sarah’s, which is still as black and dark to me as the middle of the blackest and darkest night that ever was in the world⁠—and as I nothing knew about it, except that there was no harm in it to anybody or anything, and that Sarah was determined to go, and that I could not let her go by herself; as also for the good reason that she told me she had the best right of anybody to take the letter and to hide it again, seeing that she was afraid of its being found if longer in that room she left it, which was the room where she had hidden it before⁠—why, so it happened that I⁠—no, that she⁠—no, no, that I⁠—Ach Gott!” cried Uncle Joseph, striking his forehead in despair, and relieving himself by an invocation in his own language. “I am lost in my own muddlement; and whereabouts the right place is, and how I am to get myself back into it, as I am a living sinner, is more than I know!”

“There is not the least need to go back on our account,” said Rosamond, forgetting all caution and self-restraint in her anxiety to restore the old man’s confidence and composure. “Pray don’t try to repeat your explanations. We know already⁠—”

“We will suppose,” said Leonard, interposing abruptly before his wife could add another word, “that we know already everything you can desire to tell us in relation to your niece’s secret, and to your motives for desiring to see the house.”

“You will suppose that!” exclaimed Uncle Joseph, looking greatly relieved. “Ah! thank you, Sir, and you, good Madam, a thousand times for helping me out of my own muddlement with a ‘Suppose.’ I am all over confusion from my tops to my toes; but I can go on now, I think, and lose myself no more. So! Let us say it in this way: I and Sarah, my niece, are in the house⁠—that is the first ‘Suppose.’ I and Sarah, my niece, are out of the house⁠—that is the second ‘Suppose.’ Good! now we go on once more. On my