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

before she spoke to him. “Have you told her all?” she asked, after a moment’s delay, putting the question in low, whispering tones, and not heeding the paper.

“This answers that I have,” he said, still pointing to the declaration. “See! here is the name, signed in the place that was left for it⁠—signed by her own hand.”

Rosamond glanced at the paper. There indeed was the signature, “S. Jazeph”; and underneath it were added, in faintly traced lines of parenthesis, these explanatory words⁠—“Formerly, Sarah Leeson.”

“Why don’t you speak?” exclaimed Rosamond, looking at him in growing alarm. “Why don’t you tell us how she bore it?”

“Ah! don’t ask me, don’t ask me!” he answered, shrinking back from her hand, as she tried in her eagerness to lay it on his arm. “I forgot nothing. I said the words as you taught me to say them⁠—I went the roundabout way to the truth with my tongue; but my face took the shortcut, and got to the end first. Pray, of your goodness to me, ask nothing about it! Be satisfied, if you please, with knowing that she is better and quieter and happier now. The bad is over and past, and the good is all to come. If I tell you how she looked, if I tell you what she said, if I tell you all that happened when first she knew the truth, the fright will catch me round the heart again, and all the sobbing and crying that I have swallowed down will rise once more and choke me. I must keep my head clear and my eyes dry⁠—or how shall I say to you all the things that I have promised Sarah, as I love my own soul and hers, to tell, before I lay myself down to rest tonight?” He stopped, took out a coarse little cotton pocket-handkerchief, with a flaring white pattern on a dull blue ground, and dried a few tears that had risen in his eyes while he was speaking. “My life has had so much happiness in it,” he said, self-reproachfully, looking at Rosamond, “that my courage, when it is wanted for the time of trouble, is not easy to find. And yet, I am German! all my nation are philosophers!⁠—why is it that I alone am as soft in my brains, and as weak in my heart, as the pretty little baby there, that is lying asleep in your lap?”

“Don’t speak again; don’t tell us anything till you feel more composed,” said Rosamond. “We are relieved from our worst suspense now that we know you have left her quieter and better. I will ask no more questions; at least,” she added, after a pause, “I will only ask one.” She stopped; and her eyes wandered inquiringly toward Leonard. He had hitherto been listening with silent interest to all that had passed; but he now interposed gently, and advised his wife to wait a little before she ventured on saying anything more.

“It is such an easy question to answer,” pleaded Rosamond. “I only wanted to hear whether she has got my message⁠—whether she knows that I am waiting and longing to see her, if she will but let me come?”

“Yes, yes,” said the old man, nodding to Rosamond with an air of relief. “That question is easy; easier even than you think, for it brings me straight to the beginning of all that I have got to say.”

He had been hitherto walking restlessly about the room; sitting down one moment, and getting up the next. He now placed a chair for himself midway between Rosamond⁠—who was sitting, with the child, near the window⁠—and her husband, who occupied the sofa at the lower end of the room. In this position, which enabled him to address himself alternately to Mr. and Mrs. Frankland without difficulty, he soon recovered composure enough to open his heart unreservedly to the interest of his subject.

“When the worst was over and past,” he said, addressing Rosamond⁠—“when she could listen and when I could speak, the first words of comfort that I said to her were the words of your message. Straight she looked at me, with doubting, fearing eyes. ‘Was her husband there to hear her?’ she says. ‘Did he look angry? did he look sorry? did he change ever so little, when you got that message from her?’ And I said, ‘No; no change, no anger, no sorrow⁠—nothing like it.’ And she said again: ‘Has it made between them no misery? has it nothing wrenched away of all the love and all the happiness that binds them the one to the other?’ And once more I answer to that, ‘No! no misery, no wrench. See now! I shall go my ways at once to the good wife, and fetch her here to answer for the good husband with her own tongue.’ While I speak those words there flies out over all her face a look⁠—no, not a look⁠—a light, like a sun-flash. While I can count one, it lasts; before I can count two, it is gone; the face is all dark again; it is turned away from me on the pillow, and I see the hand that is outside the bed begin to crumple up the sheet. ‘I shall go my ways, then, and fetch the good wife,’ I say again. And she says, ‘No, not yet. I must not see her, I dare not see her till she knows⁠—’; and there she stops, and the hand crumples up the sheet again, and softly, softly, I say to her, ‘Knows what?’ and she answers me, ‘What I, her mother, can not tell her to her face, for shame.’ And I say, ‘So, so, my child! tell it not, then⁠—tell it not at all.’ She shakes her head at me, and wrings her two hands together, like this, on the bedcover. ‘I must tell it,’ she says. ‘I must rid my heart of all that has been gnawing, gnawing, gnawing at it,