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

wits, and reflected a little, apparently with perfect satisfaction to himself; for when he entered the housekeeper’s room he had quite recovered his usual complacent solemnity of look and manner. Like the vast majority of densely stupid men, he felt intense pleasure in hearing himself talk, and he now discerned such an opportunity of indulging in that luxury, after the events that had just happened in the house, as he seldom enjoyed. There is only one kind of speaker who is quite certain never to break down under any stress of circumstances⁠—the man whose capability of talking does not include any dangerous underlying capacity for knowing what he means. Among this favored order of natural orators, Mr. Munder occupied a prominent rank⁠—and he was now vindictively resolved to exercise his abilities on the two strangers, under pretense of asking for an explanation of their conduct, before he could suffer them to quit the house.

On entering the room, he found Uncle Joseph seated with his niece at the lower end of it, engaged in dropping some sal volatile into a glass of water. At the upper end stood the housekeeper with an open medicine-chest on the table before her. To this part of the room Mr. Munder slowly advanced, with a portentous countenance; drew an armchair up to the table; sat himself down in it, with extreme deliberation and care in the matter of settling his coattails; and immediately became, to all outward appearance, the model of a Lord Chief Justice in plain clothes.

Mrs. Pentreath, conscious from these preparations that something extraordinary was about to happen, seated herself a little behind the steward. Betsey restored the keys to their place on the nail in the wall, and was about to retire modestly to her proper kitchen sphere, when she was stopped by Mr. Munder.

“Wait, if you please,” said the steward; “I shall have occasion to call on you presently, young woman, to make a plain statement.”

Obedient Betsey waited near the door, terrified by the idea that she must have done something wrong, and that the steward was armed with inscrutable legal power to try, sentence, and punish her for the offense on the spot.

“Now, Sir,” said Mr. Munder, addressing Uncle Joseph as if he was the Speaker of the House of Commons, “if you have done with that sal volatile, and if the person by your side has sufficiently recovered her senses to listen, I should wish to say a word or two to both of you.”

At this exordium, Sarah tried affrightedly to rise from her chair; but her uncle caught her by the hand, and pressed her back in it.

“Wait and rest,” he whispered. “I shall take all the scolding on my own shoulder, and do all the talking with my own tongue. As soon as you are fit to walk again, I promise you this: whether the big man has said his word or two, or has not said it, we will quietly get up and go our ways out of the house.”

“Up to the present moment,” said Mr. Munder, “I have refrained from expressing an opinion. The time has now come when, holding a position of trust as I do in this establishment, and being accountable, and indeed responsible, as I am, for what takes place in it, and feeling, as I must, that things can not be allowed or even permitted to rest as they are⁠—it is my duty to say that I think your conduct is very extraordinary.” Directing this forcible conclusion to his sentence straight at Sarah, Mr. Munder leaned back in his chair, quite full of words, and quite empty of meaning, to collect himself comfortably for his next effort.

“My only desire,” he resumed, with a plaintive impartiality, “is to act fairly by all parties. I don’t wish to frighten anybody, or to startle anybody, or even to terrify anybody. I wish to unravel, or, if you please, to make out, what I may term, with perfect propriety⁠—events. And when I have done that, I should wish to put it to you, ma’am, and to you, Sir, whether⁠—I say, I should wish to put it to you both, calmly, and impartially, and politely, and plainly, and smoothly⁠—and when I say smoothly, I mean quietly⁠—whether you are not both of you bound to explain yourselves.”

Mr. Munder paused, to let that last irresistible appeal work its way to the consciences of the persons whom he addressed. The housekeeper took advantage of the silence to cough, as congregations cough just before the sermon, apparently on the principle of getting rid of bodily infirmities beforehand, in order to give the mind free play for undisturbed intellectual enjoyment. Betsey, following Mrs. Pentreath’s lead, indulged in a cough on her own account⁠—of the faint, distrustful sort. Uncle Joseph sat perfectly easy and undismayed, still holding his niece’s hand in his, and giving it a little squeeze, from time to time, when the steward’s oratory became particularly involved and impressive. Sarah never moved, never looked up, never lost the expression of terrified restraint which had taken possession of her face from the first moment when she entered the housekeeper’s room.

“Now what are the facts, and circumstances, and events?” proceeded Mr. Munder, leaning back in his chair, in calm enjoyment of the sound of his own voice. “You, ma’am, and you, Sir, ring at the bell of the door of this mansion” (here he looked hard at Uncle Joseph, as much as to say, “I don’t give up that point about the house being a mansion, you see, even on the judgment-seat”)⁠—“you are let in, or, rather, admitted. You, Sir, assert that you wish to inspect the mansion (you say ‘see the house,’ but, being a foreigner, we are not surprised at your making a little mistake of that sort); you, ma’am, coincide, and even agree, in that request. What follows? You are shown over the mansion. It is not usual to show strangers over it, but we happen to have certain reasons⁠—”

Sarah started. “What reasons?” she asked, looking up quickly.

Uncle Joseph