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

said, “Sarah sees in the mistress a change. The good sea-captain is a man who loves children, and is fond of getting to the house all the little boys and girls of his friends round about. He plays with them, he kisses them, he makes them presents⁠—he is the best friend the little boys and girls have ever had. The mistress, who should be their best friend too, looks on and says nothing⁠—looks on, red sometimes, and sometimes pale; goes away into her room where Sarah is at work for her, and walks about and finds fault; and one day lets the evil temper fly out of her at her tongue, and says, ‘Why have I got no child for my husband to be fond of? Why must he kiss and play always with the children of other women? They take his love away for something that is not mine. I hate those children and their mothers too!’ It is her passion that speaks then, but it speaks what is near the truth for all that. She will not make friends with any of those mothers; the ladies she is familiar-fond with are the ladies who have no children, or the ladies whose families are all upgrown. You think that was wrong of the mistress?”

He put the question to Rosamond, who was toying thoughtfully with one of the baby’s hands which was resting in hers. “I think Mrs. Treverton was very much to be pitied,” she answered, gently lifting the child’s hand to her lips.

“Then I, for my part, think so too,” said Uncle Joseph. “To be pitied?⁠—yes! To be more pitied some months after, when there is still no child and no hope of a child, and the good sea-captain says, one day, ‘I rust here, I get old with much idleness; I want to be on the sea again. I shall ask for a ship.’ And he asks for a ship, and they give it him; and he goes away on his cruises⁠—with much kissing and fondness at parting from his wife⁠—but still he goes away. And when he is gone, the mistress comes in again where Sarah is at work for her on a fine new gown, and snatches it away, and casts it down on the floor, and throws after it all the fine jewels she has got on her table, and stamps and cries with the misery and the passion that is in her. ‘I would give all those fine things, and go in rags for the rest of my life, to have a child!’ she says. ‘I am losing my husband’s love: he would never have gone away from me if I had brought him a child!’ Then she looks in the glass, and says between her teeth, ‘Yes! yes! I am a fine woman, with a fine figure, and I would change places with the ugliest, crookedest wretch in all creation, if I could only have a child!’ And then she tells Sarah that the Captain’s brother spoke the vilest of all vile words of her, when she was married, because she was an artist on the stage; and she says, ‘If I have no child, who but he⁠—the rascal-monster that I wish I could kill!⁠—who but he will come to possess all that the Captain has got?’ And then she cries again, and says, ‘I am losing his love⁠—ah, I know it, I know it!⁠—I am losing his love!’ Nothing that Sarah can say will alter her thoughts about that. And the months go on, and the sea-captain comes back, and still there is always the same secret grief growing and growing in the mistress’s heart⁠—growing and growing till it is now the third year since the marriage, and there is no hope yet of a child; and once more the sea-captain gets tired on the land, and goes off again for his cruises⁠—long cruises, this time; away, away, away, at the other end of the world.”

Here Uncle Joseph paused once more, apparently hesitating a little about how he should go on with the narrative. His mind seemed to be soon relieved of its doubts, but his face saddened, and his tones sank lower, when he addressed Rosamond again.

“I must, if you please, go away from the mistress now,” he said, “and get back to Sarah, my niece, and say one word also of a mining man, with the Cornish name of Polwheal. This was a young man that worked well and got good wage, and kept a good character. He lived with his mother in the little village that is near the ancient house; and, seeing Sarah from time to time, took much fancy to her, and she to him. So the end came that the marriage-promise was between them given and taken; as it happened, about the time when the sea-captain was back after his first cruises, and just when he was thinking of going away in a ship again. Against the marriage-promise nor he nor the lady his wife had a word to object, for the miner, Polwheal, had good wage and kept a good character. Only the mistress said that the loss of Sarah would be sad to her⁠—very sad; and Sarah answered that there was yet no hurry to part. So the weeks go on, and the sea-captain sails away again for his long cruises; and about the same time also the mistress finds out that Sarah frets, and looks not like herself, and that the miner, Polwheal, he lurks here and lurks there, round about the house; and she says to herself, ‘So! so! Am I standing too much in the way of this marriage? For Sarah’s sake, that shall not be!’ And she calls for them both one evening, and talks to them kindly, and sends away to put up the banns next morning the young man Polwheal. That night, it is his turn to go down into the Porthgenna mine, and work after the hours