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

sometimes you measure with a foot-rule, sometimes you sit down all of a sudden, and think profoundly⁠—and the end of it is that you say the house will do very well indeed, if the tenant will pull out his purse, and put it in proper repair.”

“Well done, Rosamond! You have one more accomplishment than I knew of; and I suppose I have no choice now but to give you an opportunity of displaying it. If you don’t object, my dear, to being associated with a professional assistant in the important business of checking Mr. Horlock’s estimate, I don’t object to paying a short visit to Porthgenna whenever you please⁠—especially now I know that the west rooms are still habitable.”

“Oh, how kind of you! how pleased I shall be! how I shall enjoy seeing the old place again before it is altered! I was only five years old, Lenny, when we left Porthgenna, and I am so anxious to see what I can remember of it, after such a long, long absence as mine. Do you know, I never saw anything of that ruinous north side of the house?⁠—and I do so dote on old rooms! We will go all through them, Lenny. You shall have hold of my hand, and look with my eyes, and make as many discoveries as I do. I prophesy that we shall see ghosts, and find treasures, and hear mysterious noises⁠—and, oh heavens! what clouds of dust we shall have to go through. Pouf! the very anticipation of them chokes me already.”

“Now we are on the subject of Porthgenna, Rosamond, let us be serious for one moment. It is clear to me that these repairs of the north rooms will cost a large sum of money. Now, my love, I consider no sum of money misspent, however large it may be, if it procures you pleasure. I am with you heart and soul⁠—”

He paused. His wife’s caressing arms were twining round his neck again, and her cheek was laid gently against his. “Go on, Lenny,” she said, with such an accent of tenderness in the utterance of those three simple words that his speech failed him for the moment, and all his sensations seemed absorbed in the one luxury of listening. “Rosamond,” he whispered, “there is no music in the world that touches me as your voice touches me now! I feel it all through me, as I used sometimes to feel the sky at night, in the time when I could see.” As he spoke, the caressing arms tightened round his neck, and the fervent lips softly took the place which the cheek had occupied. “Go on, Lenny,” they repeated, happily as well as tenderly now, “you said you were with me, heart and soul. With me in what?”

“In your project, love, for inducing your father to retire from his profession after this last cruise, and in your hope of prevailing on him to pass the evening of his days happily with us at Porthgenna. If the money spent in restoring the north rooms, so that we may all live in them for the future, does indeed so alter the look of the place to his eyes as to dissipate his old sorrowful associations with it, and to make his living there again a pleasure instead of a pain to him, I shall regard it as money well laid out. But, Rosamond, are you sure of the success of your plan before we undertake it? Have you dropped any hint of the Porthgenna project to your father?”

“I told him, Lenny, that I should never be quite comfortable unless he left the sea and came to live with us⁠—and he said that he would. I did not mention a word about Porthgenna⁠—nor did he⁠—but he knows that we shall live there when we are settled, and he made no conditions when he promised that our home should be his home.”

“Is the loss of your mother the only sad association he has with the place?”

“Not quite. There is another association, which has never been mentioned, but which I may tell you, because there are no secrets between us. My mother had a favorite maid who lived with her from the time of her marriage, and who was, accidentally, the only person present in her room when she died. I remember hearing of this woman as being odd in her look and manner, and no great favorite with anybody but her mistress. Well, on the morning of my mother’s death, she disappeared from the house in the strangest way, leaving behind her a most singular and mysterious letter to my father, asserting that in my mother’s dying moments a Secret had been confided to her which she was charged to divulge to her master when her mistress was no more; and adding that she was afraid to mention this secret, and that, to avoid being questioned about it, she had resolved on leaving the house forever. She had been gone some hours when the letter was opened⁠—and she has never been seen or heard of since that time. This circumstance seemed to make almost as strong an impression on my father’s mind as the shock of my mother’s death. Our neighbors and servants all thought (as I think) that the woman was mad; but he never agreed with them, and I know that he has neither destroyed nor forgotten the letter from that time to this.”

“A strange event, Rosamond⁠—a very strange event. I don’t wonder that it has made a lasting impression on him.”

“Depend upon it, Lenny, the servants and the neighbors were right⁠—the woman was mad. Anyway, however, it was certainly a singular event in our family. All old houses have their romance⁠—and that is the romance of our house. But years and years have passed since then; and, what with time, and what with the changes we are going to make, I have no fear that my dear, good father will spoil our plans. Give him