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

as if they wanted to find out something. What have we been stopping for? I had so much to say; and we seem to have been stopping just when we ought to have been going on. I am in grief and terror, Uncle Joseph; in grief and terror again about the Secret⁠—”

“No more of that!” pleaded the old man. “No more tonight at least!”

“Why not?”

“Because you will be ill again with talking about it. You will be looking into that corner, and dreaming with your eyes open. You are too ill⁠—yes, yes, Sarah; you are too ill.”

“I’m not ill! Oh, why does everybody keep telling me that I am ill? Let me talk about it, uncle. I have come to talk about it; I can’t rest till I have told you.”

She spoke with a changing color and an embarrassed manner, now apparently conscious for the first time that she had allowed words and actions to escape her which it would have been more prudent to have restrained.

“Don’t notice me again,” she said, with her soft voice, and her gentle, pleading manner. “Don’t notice me if I talk or look as I ought not. I lose myself sometimes, without knowing it; and I suppose I lost myself just now. It means nothing, Uncle Joseph⁠—nothing, indeed.”

Endeavoring thus to reassure the old man, she again altered the position of her chair, so as to place her back toward the part of the room to which her face had been hitherto turned.

“Well, well, it is good to hear that,” said Uncle Joseph; “but speak no more about the past time, for fear you should lose yourself again. Let us hear about what is now. Yes, yes, give me my way. Leave the Long Ago to me, and take you the present time. I can go back through the sixteen years as well as you. Ah! you doubt it? Hear me tell you what happened when we last met⁠—hear me prove myself in three words: You leave your place at the old house⁠—you run away here⁠—you stop in hiding with me, while your master and his servants are hunting after you⁠—you start off, when your road is clear, to work for your living, as far away from Cornwall as you can get⁠—I beg and pray you to stop with me, but you are afraid of your master, and away you go. There! that is the whole story of your trouble the last time you came to this house. Leave it so; and tell me what is the cause of your trouble now.”

“The past cause of my trouble, Uncle Joseph, and the present cause of my trouble are the same. The Secret⁠—”

“What! you will go back to that!”

“I must go back to it.”

“And why?”

“Because the Secret is written in a letter⁠—”

“Yes; and what of that?”

“And the letter is in danger of being discovered. It is, uncle⁠—it is! Sixteen years it has lain hidden⁠—and now, after all that long time, the dreadful chance of its being dragged to light has come like a judgment. The one person in all the world who ought never to set eyes on that letter is the very person who is most likely to find it!”

“So! so! Are you very certain, Sarah? How do you know it?”

“I know it from her own lips. Chance brought us together⁠—”

“Us? us? What do you mean by us?”

“I mean⁠—uncle, you remember that Captain Treverton was my master when I lived at Porthgenna Tower?”

“I had forgotten his name. But no matter⁠—go on.”

“When I left my place, Miss Treverton was a little girl of five years old. She is a married woman now⁠—so beautiful, so clever, such a sweet, youthful, happy face! And she has a child as lovely as herself. Oh, uncle, if you could see her! I would give so much if you could only see her!”

Uncle Joseph kissed his hand and shrugged his shoulders; expressing by the first action homage to the lady’s beauty, and by the second resignation under the misfortune of not being able to see her. “Well, well,” he said, philosophically, “put this shining woman by, and let us go on.”

“Her name is Frankland now,” said Sarah. “A prettier name than Treverton⁠—a much prettier name, I think. Her husband is fond of her⁠—I am sure he is. How can he have any heart at all, and not be fond of her?”

“So! so!” exclaimed Uncle Joseph, looking very much perplexed. “Good, if he is fond of her⁠—very good. But what labyrinth are we getting into now? Wherefore all this about a husband and a wife? My word of honor, Sarah, but your explanation explains nothing⁠—it only softens my brains.”

“I must speak of her and of Mr. Frankland, uncle. Porthgenna Tower belongs to her husband now, and they are both going to live there.”

“Ah! we are getting back into the straight road at last.”

“They are going to live in the very house that holds the Secret; they are going to repair that very part of it where the letter is hidden. She will go into the old rooms⁠—I heard her say so; she will search about in them to amuse her curiosity; workmen will clear them out, and she will stand by in her idle hours, looking on.”

“But she suspects nothing of the Secret?”

“God forbid she ever should!”

“And there are many rooms in the house? And the letter in which the Secret is written is hidden in one of the many? Why should she hit on that one?”

“Because I always say the wrong thing! because I always get frightened and lose myself at the wrong time! The letter is hidden in a room called the Myrtle Room, and I was foolish enough, weak enough, crazed enough, to warn her against going into it.”

“Ah, Sarah! Sarah! that was a mistake, indeed.”

“I can’t tell what possessed me⁠—I seemed to lose my senses when I heard her talking so innocently of amusing herself by searching through the old rooms, and when I thought of what she might find