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

which he wished to state correctly in introducing the series of events that were next to be described.

“Ah, well! well!” he said, shaking his head, after vainly endeavoring to pursue the lost recollection. “For once, I must acknowledge that I forget. Whether it was two months, or whether it was three, after the mistress said those last words to Sarah, I know not⁠—but at the end of the one time or of the other she one morning orders her carriage and goes away alone to Truro. In the evening she comes back with two large flat baskets. On the cover of the one there is a card, and written on it are the letters ‘S. L.’ On the cover of the other there is a card, and written on it are the letters ‘R. T.’ The baskets are taken into the mistress’s room, and Sarah is called, and the mistress says to her, ‘Open the basket with S. L. on it; for those are the letters of your name, and the things in it are yours.’ Inside there is first a box, which holds a grand bonnet of black lace; then a fine dark shawl; then black silk of the best kind, enough to make a gown; then linen and stuff for the under garments, all of the finest sort. ‘Make up those things to fit yourself,’ says the mistress. ‘You are so much littler than I, that to make the things up new is less trouble than, from my fit to yours, to alter old gowns.’ Sarah, to all this, says in astonishment, ‘Why?’ And the mistress answers, ‘I will have no questions. Remember what I said⁠—Keep your own counsel, and leave the rest to me!’ So she goes out; and the next thing she does is to send for the doctor to see her. He asks what is the matter; gets for answer that Mistress Treverton feels strangely, and not like herself; also that she thinks the soft air of Cornwall makes her weak. The days pass, and the doctor comes and goes, and, say what he may, those two answers are always the only two that he can get. All this time Sarah is at work; and when she has done, the mistress says, ‘Now for the other basket, with R. T. on it; for those are the letters of my name, and the things in it are mine.’ Inside this, there is first a box which holds a common bonnet of black straw; then a coarse dark shawl; then a gown of good common black stuff; then linen, and other things for the under garments, that are only of the sort called second best. ‘Make up all that rubbish,’ says the mistress, ‘to fit me. No questions! You have always done as I told you; do as I tell you now, or you are a lost woman.’ When the rubbish is made up, she tries it on, and looks in the glass, and laughs in a way that is wild and desperate to hear. ‘Do I make a fine, buxom, comely servant-woman?’ she says. ‘Ha! but I have acted that part times enough in my past days on the theatre-scene.’ And then she takes off the clothes again, and bids Sarah pack them up at once in one trunk, and pack the things she has made for herself in another. ‘The doctor orders me to go away out of this damp, soft Cornwall climate, to where the air is fresh and dry and cheerful-keen,’ she says, and laughs again, till the room rings with it. At the same time Sarah begins to pack, and takes some knickknack things off the table, and among them a brooch which has on it a likeness of the sea-captain’s face. The mistress sees her, turns white in the cheeks, trembles all over, snatches the brooch away, and locks it up in the cabinet in a great hurry, as if the look of it frightened her. ‘I shall leave that behind me,’ she says, and turns round on her heel, and goes quickly out of the room. You guess now what the thing was that Mistress Treverton had it in her mind to do?”

He addressed the question to Rosamond first, and then repeated it to Leonard. They both answered in the affirmative, and entreated him to go on.

“You guess?” he said. “It is more than Sarah, at that time, could do. What with the misery in her own mind, and the strange ways and strange words of her mistress, the wits that were in her were all confused. Nevertheless, what her mistress has said to her, that she has always done; and together alone those two from the house of Porthgenna drive away. Not a word says the mistress till they have got to the journey’s end for the first day, and are stopping at their inn among strangers for the night. Then at last she speaks out. ‘Put you on, Sarah, the good linen and the good gown tomorrow,’ she says, ‘but keep the common bonnet and the common shawl till we get into the carriage again. I shall put on the coarse linen and the coarse gown, and keep the good bonnet and shawl. We shall pass so the people at the inn, on our way to the carriage, without very much risk of surprising them by our change of gowns. When we are out on the road again, we can change bonnets and shawls in the carriage⁠—and then, it is all done. You are the married lady, Mrs. Treverton, and I am your maid who waits on you, Sarah Leeson.’ At that, the glimmering on Sarah’s mind breaks in at last: she shakes with the fright it gives her, and all she can say is, ‘Oh, mistress! for the love of Heaven, what is it you mean to do?’ ‘I mean,’ the mistress answers, ‘to save you, my faithful servant, from disgrace and ruin; to