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

with him to open them. His course through the world was a steady march along the high and dry middle of a safe turnpike-road. The serpentine side-paths of controversy might open as alluringly as they pleased on his right hand and on his left, but he kept on his way sturdily, and never regarded them. Innovating young recruits in the Church army might entrappingly open the Thirty-nine Articles under his very nose, but the veteran’s wary eye never looked a hair’s-breadth further than his own signature at the bottom of them. He knew as little as possible of theology, he had never given the Privy Council a minute’s trouble in the whole course of his life, he was innocent of all meddling with the reading or writing of pamphlets, and he was quite incapable of finding his way to the platform of Exeter Hall. In short, he was the most unclerical of clergymen⁠—but, for all that, he had such a figure for a surplice as is seldom seen. Fifteen stone weight of upright muscular flesh, without an angry spot or sore place in any part of it, has the merit of suggesting stability, at any rate⁠—an excellent virtue in pillars of all kinds, but an especially precious quality, at the present time, in a pillar of the Church.

As soon as the vicar entered the breakfast-parlor, the children assailed him with a chorus of shouts. He was a severe disciplinarian in the observance of punctuality at mealtimes; and he now stood convicted by the clock of being too late for breakfast by a quarter of an hour.

“Sorry to have kept you waiting, Miss Sturch,” said the vicar; “but I have a good excuse for being late this morning.”

“Pray don’t mention it, Sir,” said Miss Sturch, blandly rubbing her plump little hands one over the other. “A beautiful morning. I fear we shall have another warm day.⁠—Robert, my love, your elbow is on the table.⁠—A beautiful morning, indeed!”

“Stomach still out of order⁠—eh, Phippen?” asked the vicar, beginning to carve the ham.

Mr. Phippen shook his large head dolefully, placed his yellow forefinger, ornamented with a large turquoise ring, on the centre check of his light-green summer waistcoat⁠—looked piteously at Doctor Chennery, and sighed⁠—removed the finger, and produced from the breast pocket of his wrapper a little mahogany case⁠—took out of it a neat pair of apothecary’s scales, with the accompanying weights, a morsel of ginger, and a highly polished silver nutmeg-grater. “Dear Miss Sturch will pardon an invalid?” said Mr. Phippen, beginning to grate the ginger feebly into the nearest teacup.

“Guess what has made me a quarter of an hour late this morning,” said the vicar, looking mysteriously all round the table.

“Lying in bed, papa,” cried the three children, clapping their hands in triumph.

“What do you say, Miss Sturch?” asked Doctor Chennery.

Miss Sturch smiled as usual, rubbed her hands as usual, cleared her throat softly as usual, looked at the tea-urn, and begged, with the most graceful politeness, to be excused if she said nothing.

“Your turn now, Phippen,” said the vicar. “Come, guess what has kept me late this morning.”

“My dear friend,” said Mr. Phippen, giving the Doctor a brotherly squeeze of the hand, “don’t ask me to guess⁠—I know! I saw what you eat at dinner yesterday⁠—I saw what you drank after dinner. No digestion could stand it⁠—not even yours. Guess what has made you late this morning? Pooh! pooh! I know. You dear, good soul, you have been taking physic!”

“Haven’t touched a drop, thank God, for the last ten years!” said Doctor Chennery, with a look of devout gratitude. “No, no; you’re all wrong. The fact is, I have been to church; and what do you think I have been doing there? Listen, Miss Sturch⁠—listen, girls, with all your ears. Poor blind young Frankland is a happy man at last⁠—I have married him to our dear Rosamond Treverton this very morning!”

“Without telling us, papa!” cried the two girls together in their shrillest tones of vexation and surprise. “Without telling us, when you know how we should have liked to see it!”

“That was the very reason why I did not tell you, my dears,” answered the vicar. “Young Frankland has not got so used to his affliction yet, poor fellow, as to bear being publicly pitied and stared at in the character of a blind bridegroom. He had such a nervous horror of being an object of curiosity on his wedding-day, and Rosamond, like a kindhearted girl as she is, was so anxious that his slightest caprices should be humored, that we settled to have the wedding at an hour in the morning when no idlers were likely to be lounging about the neighborhood of the church. I was bound over to the strictest secrecy about the day, and so was my clerk Thomas. Excepting us two, and the bride and bridegroom, and the bride’s father, Captain Treverton, nobody knew⁠—”

“Treverton!” exclaimed Mr. Phippen, holding his teacup, with the grated ginger in the bottom of it, to be filled by Miss Sturch. “Treverton! (No more tea, dear Miss Sturch.) How very remarkable! I know the name. (Fill up with water, if you please.) Tell me, my dear doctor (many, many thanks; no sugar⁠—it turns acid on the stomach), is this Miss Treverton whom you have been marrying (many thanks again; no milk, either) one of the Cornish Trevertons?”

“To be sure she is!” rejoined the vicar. “Her father, Captain Treverton, is the head of the family. Not that there’s much family to speak of now. The Captain, and Rosamond, and that whimsical old brute of an uncle of hers, Andrew Treverton, are the last left now of the old stock⁠—a rich family, and a fine family, in former times⁠—good friends to Church and State, you know, and all that⁠—”

“Do you approve, Sir, of Amelia having a second helping of bread and marmalade?” asked Miss Sturch, appealing to Doctor Chennery, with the most perfect unconsciousness of interrupting him. Having no spare room in her mind for putting things away