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

without the risk of awakening his niece, seemed to be beginning to fatigue him. Rosamond removed her bonnet and shawl, and made a sign to him to rise and let her take his place.

“Yes, yes!” she whispered, seeing him reply by a shake of the head. “Let me take my turn, while you go out a little and enjoy the cool evening air. There is no fear of waking her; her hand is not clasping yours, but only resting in it⁠—let me steal mine into its place gently, and we shall not disturb her.”

She slipped her hand under her mother’s while she spoke. Uncle Joseph smiled as he rose from his chair, and resigned his place to her. “You will have your way,” he said; “you are too quick and sharp for an old man like me.”

“Has she been long asleep?” asked Rosamond.

“Nearly two hours,” answered Uncle Joseph. “But it has not been the good sleep I wanted for her⁠—a dreaming, talking, restless sleep. It is only ten little minutes since she has been so quiet as you see her now.”

“Surely you let in too much light?” whispered Rosamond, looking round at the window, through which the glow of the evening sky poured warmly into the room.

“No, no!” he hastily rejoined. “Asleep or awake, she always wants the light. If I go away for a little while, as you tell me, and if it gets on to be dusk before I come back, light both those candles on the chimneypiece. I shall try to be here again before that; but if the time slips by too fast for me, and if it so happens that she wakes and talks strangely, and looks much away from you into that far corner of the room there, remember that the matches and the candles are together on the chimneypiece, and that the sooner you light them after the dim twilight-time, the better it will be.” With those words he stole on tiptoe to the door and went out.

His parting directions recalled Rosamond to a remembrance of what had passed between the doctor and herself that morning. She looked round again anxiously to the window.

The sun was just sinking beyond the distant housetops; the close of day was not far off.

As she turned her head once more toward the bed, a momentary chill crept over her. She trembled a little, partly at the sensation itself, partly at the recollection it aroused of that other chill which had struck her in the solitude of the Myrtle Room.

Stirred by the mysterious sympathies of touch, her mother’s hand at the same instant moved in hers, and over the sad peacefulness of the weary face there fluttered a momentary trouble⁠—the flying shadow of a dream. The pale, parted lips opened, closed, quivered, opened again; the toiling breath came and went quickly and more quickly; the head moved uneasily on the pillow; the eyelids half unclosed themselves; low, faint, moaning sounds poured rapidly from the lips⁠—changed ere long to half-articulated sentences⁠—then merged softly into intelligible speech, and uttered these words:

“Swear that you will not destroy this paper! Swear that you will not take this paper away with you if you leave the house!”

The words that followed these were whispered so rapidly and so low that Rosamond’s ear failed to catch them. They were followed by a short silence. Then the dreaming voice spoke again suddenly, and spoke louder.

“Where? where? where?” it said. “In the bookcase? In the table-drawer?⁠—Stop! stop! In the picture of the ghost⁠—”

The last words struck cold on Rosamond’s heart. She drew back suddenly with a movement of alarm⁠—checked herself the instant after, and bent down over the pillow again. But it was too late. Her hand had moved abruptly when she drew back, and her mother awoke with a start and a faint cry⁠—with vacant, terror-stricken eyes, and with the perspiration standing thick on her forehead.

“Mother!” cried Rosamond, raising her on the pillow. “I have come back. Don’t you know me?”

“Mother?” she repeated, in mournful, questioning tones⁠—“Mother?” At the second repetition of the word a bright flush of delight and surprise broke out on her face, and she clasped both arms suddenly round her daughter’s neck. “Oh, my own Rosamond!” she said. “If I had ever been used to waking up and seeing your dear face look at me, I should have known you sooner, in spite of my dream! Did you wake me, my love? or did I wake myself?”

“I am afraid I awoke you, mother.”

“Don’t say ‘afraid.’ I would wake from the sweetest sleep that ever woman had to see your face and to hear you say ‘mother’ to me. You have delivered me, my love, from the terror of one of my dreadful dreams. Oh, Rosamond! I think I should live to be happy in your love, if I could only get Porthgenna Tower out of my mind⁠—if I could only never remember again the bedchamber where my mistress died, and the room where I hid the letter⁠—”

“We will try and forget Porthgenna Tower now,” said Rosamond. “Shall we talk about other places where I have lived, which you have never seen? Or shall I read to you, mother? Have you got any book here that you are fond of?”

She looked across the bed at the table on the other side. There was nothing on it but some bottles of medicine, a few of Uncle Joseph’s flowers in a glass of water, and a little oblong work-box. She looked round at the chest of drawers behind her⁠—there were no books placed on the top of it. Before she turned toward the bed again, her eyes wandered aside to the window. The sun was lost beyond the distant housetops; the close of day was near at hand.

“If I could forget! Oh, me, if I could only forget!” said her mother, sighing wearily, and beating her hand on the coverlid of the bed.

“Are you well enough, dear, to amuse yourself with work?” asked Rosamond, pointing