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

way back to my own home at Truro, I am frightened for Sarah, because of the faint she fell into on your stairs here, and because of a look in her face that it makes me heavy at my heart to see. Also, I am sorry for her sake, because she has not done that one curious little thing which she came into the house to do. I fret about these same matters, but I console myself too; and my comfort is that Sarah will stop with me in my house at Truro, and that I shall make her happy and well again, as soon as we are settled in our life together. Judge, then, Sir, what a blow falls on me when I hear that she will not make her home where I make mine. Judge you, also, good Madam, what my surprise must be, when I ask for her reason, and she tells me she must leave Uncle Joseph, because she is afraid of being found out by you.” He stopped, and looking anxiously at Rosamond’s face, saw it sadden and turn away from him after he had spoken his last words. “Are you sorry, Madam, for Sarah, my niece? do you pity her?” he asked, with a little hesitation and trembling in his voice.

“I pity her with my whole heart,” said Rosamond, warmly.

“And with my whole heart, for that pity I thank you!” rejoined Uncle Joseph. “Ah, Madam, your kindness gives me the courage to go on, and to tell you that we parted from each other on the day of our getting back to Truro! When she came to see me this time, it was years and years, long and lonely and very many, since we two had met. I was afraid that many more would pass again, and I tried to make her stop with me to the very last. But she had still the same fear to drive her away⁠—the fear of being found and put to the question by you. So, with the tears in her eyes (and in mine), and the grief at her heart (and at mine), she went away to hide herself in the empty bigness of the great city, London, which swallows up all people and all things that pour into it, and which has now swallowed up Sarah, my niece, with the rest. ‘My child, you will write sometimes to Uncle Joseph,’ I said, and she answered me, ‘I will write often.’ It is three weeks now since that time, and here, on my knee, are four letters she has written to me. I shall ask your leave to put them down open before you, because they will help me to get on further yet with what I must say, and because I see in your face, Madam, that you are indeed sorry for Sarah, my niece, from your heart.”

He untied the packet of letters, opened them, kissed them one by one, and put them down in a row on the table, smoothing them out carefully with his hand, and taking great pains to arrange them all in a perfectly straight line. A glance at the first of the little series showed Rosamond that the handwriting in it was the same as the handwriting in the body of the letter which had been found in the Myrtle Room.

“There is not much to read,” said Uncle Joseph. “But if you will look through them first, Madam, I can tell you after all the reason for showing them that I have.”

The old man was right. There was very little to read in the letters, and they grew progressively shorter as they became more recent in date. All four were written in the formal, conventionally correct style of a person taking up the pen with a fear of making mistakes in spelling and grammar, and were equally destitute of any personal particulars relative to the writer; all four anxiously entreated that Uncle Joseph would not be uneasy, inquired after his health, and expressed gratitude and love for him as warmly as their timid restraints of style would permit; all four contained these two questions relating to Rosamond⁠—First, had Mrs. Frankland arrived yet at Porthgenna Tower? Second, if she had arrived, what had Uncle Joseph heard about her? And, finally, all four gave the same instructions for addressing an answer⁠—“Please direct to me, ‘S. J., Post-office, Smith Street, London’ ”⁠—followed by the same apology, “Excuse my not giving my address, in case of accidents; for even in London I am still afraid of being followed and found out. I send every morning for letters; so I am sure to get your answer.”

“I told you, Madam,” said the old man, when Rosamond raised her head from the letters, “that I was frightened and sorry for Sarah when she left me. Now see, if you please, why I got more frightened and more sorry yet, when I have all the four letters that she writes to me. They begin here, with the first, at my left hand; and they grow shorter, and shorter, and shorter, as they get nearer to my right, till the last is but eight little lines. Again, see, if you please. The writing of the first letter, here, at my left hand, is very fine⁠—I mean it is very fine to me, because I love Sarah, and because I write very badly myself; but it is not so good in the second letter⁠—it shakes a little, it blots a little, it crooks itself a little in the last lines. In the third it is worse⁠—more shake, more blot, more crook. In the fourth, where there is least to do, there is still more shake, still more blot, still more crook, than in all the other three put together. I see this; I remember that she was weak and worn and weary when she left me, and I say to myself, ‘She is ill, though she will not tell it, for the