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

a new north garden at Porthgenna, where he can walk the decks, as I call it⁠—give him new north rooms to live in⁠—and I will answer for the result. But all this is in the future; let us get back to the present time. When shall we pay our flying visit to Porthgenna, Lenny, and plunge into the important business of checking Mr. Horlock’s estimate for the repairs?”

“We have three weeks more to stay here, Rosamond.”

“Yes; and then we must go back to Long Beckley. I promised that best and biggest of men, the vicar, that we would pay our first visit to him. He is sure not to let us off under three weeks or a month.”

“In that case, then, we had better say two months hence for the visit to Porthgenna. Is your writing-case in the room, Rosamond?”

“Yes; close by us, on the table.”

“Write to Mr. Horlock then, love⁠—and appoint a meeting in two months’ time at the old house. Tell him also, as we must not trust ourselves on unsafe stairs⁠—especially considering how dependent I am on banisters⁠—to have the west staircase repaired immediately. And, while you have the pen in your hand, perhaps it may save trouble if you write a second note to the housekeeper at Porthgenna, to tell her when she may expect us.”

Rosamond sat down gayly at the table, and dipped her pen in the ink with a little flourish of triumph.

“In two months,” she exclaimed joyfully, “I shall see the dear old place again! In two months, Lenny, our profane feet will be raising the dust in the solitudes of the North Rooms.”

Book III I Timon of London

Timon of Athens retreated from an ungrateful world to a cavern by the seashore, vented his misanthropy in magnificent poetry, and enjoyed the honor of being called “My Lord.” Timon of London took refuge from his species in a detached house at Bayswater⁠—expressed his sentiments in shabby prose⁠—and was only addressed as “Mr. Treverton.” The one point of resemblance which it is possible to set against these points of contrast between the two Timons consisted in this: that their misanthropy was, at least, genuine. Both were incorrigible haters of mankind.

There is probably no better proof of the accuracy of that definition of man which describes him as an imitative animal, than is to be found in the fact that the verdict of humanity is always against any individual member of the species who presumes to differ from the rest. A man is one of a flock, and his wool must be of the general color. He must drink when the rest drink, and graze where the rest graze. Let him walk at noonday with perfect composure of countenance and decency of gait, with not the slightest appearance of vacancy in his eyes or wildness in his manner, from one end of Oxford Street to the other without his hat, and let every one of the thousands of hat-wearing people whom he passes be asked separately what they think of him, how many will abstain from deciding instantly that he is mad, on no other evidence than the evidence of his bare head? Nay, more; let him politely stop each one of those passengers, and let him explain in the plainest form of words, and in the most intelligible manner, that his head feels more easy and comfortable without a hat than with one, how many of his fellow mortals who decided that he was mad on first meeting him, will change their opinion when they part from him after hearing his explanation? In the vast majority of cases, the very explanation itself would be accepted as an excellent additional proof that the intellect of the hatless man was indisputably deranged.

Starting at the beginning of the march of life out of step with the rest of the mortal regiment, Andrew Treverton paid the penalty of his irregularity from his earliest days. He was a phenomenon in the nursery, a butt at school, and a victim at college. The ignorant nursemaid reported him as a queer child; the learned schoolmaster genteelly varied the phrase, and described him as an eccentric boy; the college tutor, harping on the same string, facetiously likened his head to a roof, and said there was a slate loose in it. When a slate is loose, if nobody fixes it in time, it ends by falling off. In the roof of a house we view that consequence as a necessary result of neglect; in the roof of a man’s head we are generally very much shocked and surprised by it.

Overlooked in some directions and misdirected in others, Andrew’s uncouth capacities for good tried helplessly to shape themselves. The better side of his eccentricity took the form of friendship. He became violently and unintelligibly fond of one among his schoolfellows⁠—a boy who treated him with no especial consideration in the playground, and who gave him no particular help in the class. Nobody could discover the smallest reason for it, but it was nevertheless a notorious fact that Andrew’s pocket-money was always at this boy’s service, that Andrew ran about after him like a dog, and that Andrew over and over again took the blame and punishment on his own shoulders which ought to have fallen on the shoulders of his friend. When, a few years afterward, that friend went to college, the lad petitioned to be sent to college too, and attached himself there more closely than ever to the strangely chosen comrade of his schoolboy days. Such devotion as this must have touched any man possessed of ordinary generosity of disposition. It made no impression whatever on the inherently base nature of Andrew’s friend. After three years of intercourse at college⁠—intercourse which was all selfishness on one side and all self-sacrifice on the other⁠—the end came, and the light was let in cruelly on Andrew’s eyes. When his purse grew light in his friend’s hand, and when