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

when she comes into Cornwall is the day when I must go out of it⁠—the day when we two must say farewell. Don’t, don’t add to my wretchedness by asking me if I have the heart to leave you! For my dead mother’s sake, Uncle Joseph, believe that I am grateful, believe that it is not my own will that takes me away when I leave you again.” She sank down on a sofa near her, laid her head, with one long, deep sigh, wearily on the pillow, and spoke no more.

The tears gathered thick in Uncle Joseph’s eyes as he sat down by her side. He took one of her hands, and patted and stroked it as though he were soothing a little child. “I will bear it as well as I can, Sarah,” he whispered, faintly, “and I will say no more. You will write to me sometimes, when I am left all alone? You will give a little time to Uncle Joseph, for the poor dead mother’s sake?”

She turned toward him suddenly, and threw both her arms round his neck with a passionate energy that was strangely at variance with her naturally quiet self-repressed character. “I will write often, dear; I will write always,” she whispered, with her head on his bosom. “If I am ever in any trouble or danger, you shall know it.” She stopped confusedly, as if the freedom of her own words and actions terrified her, unclasped her arms, and, turning away abruptly from the old man, hid her face in her hands. The tyranny of the restraint that governed her whole life was all expressed⁠—how sadly, how eloquently!⁠—in that one little action.

Uncle Joseph rose from the sofa, and walked gently backward and forward in the room, looking anxiously at his niece, but not speaking to her. After a while the servant came in to prepare the table for supper. It was a welcome interruption, for it obliged Sarah to make an effort to recover her self-possession. After the meal was over, the uncle and niece separated at once for the night, without venturing to exchange another word on the subject of their approaching separation.

When they met the next morning, the old man had not recovered his spirits. Although he tried to speak as cheerfully as usual, there was something strangely subdued and quiet about him in voice, look, and manner. Sarah’s heart smote her as she saw how sadly he was altered by the prospect of their parting. She said a few words of consolation and hope; but he only waved his hand negatively, in his quaint foreign manner, and hastened out of the room to find the landlord and ask for the bill.

Soon after breakfast, to the surprise of the people at the inn, they set forth to continue their journey on foot, Uncle Joseph carrying his knapsack on his back, and his niece’s carpetbag in his hand. When they arrived at the turning that led into the crossroad, they both stopped and looked back. This time they saw nothing to alarm them. There was no living creature visible on the broad highway over which they had been walking for the last quarter of an hour after leaving the inn.

“The way is clear,” said Uncle Joseph, as they turned into the crossroad. “Whatever might have happened yesterday, there is nobody following us now.”

“Nobody that we can see,” answered Sarah. “But I distrust the very stones by the roadside. Let us look back often, uncle, before we allow ourselves to feel secure. The more I think of it, the more I dread the snare that is laid for us by those people at Porthgenna Tower.”

“You say us, Sarah. Why should they lay a snare for me?”

“Because they have seen you in my company. You will be safer from them when we are parted; and that is another reason, Uncle Joseph, why we should bear the misfortune of our separation as patiently as we can.”

“Are you going far, very far away, Sarah, when you leave me?”

“I dare not stop on my journey till I can feel that I am lost in the great world of London. Don’t look at me so sadly! I shall never forget my promise; I shall never forget to write. I have friends⁠—not friends like you, but still friends⁠—to whom I can go. I can feel safe from discovery nowhere but in London. My danger is great⁠—it is, it is, indeed! I know, from what I have seen at Porthgenna, that Mrs. Frankland has an interest already in finding me out; and I am certain that this interest will be increased tenfold when she hears (as she is sure to hear) of what happened yesterday in the house. If they should trace you to Truro, oh, be careful, uncle! be careful how you deal with them; be careful how you answer their questions!”

“I will answer nothing, my child. But tell me⁠—for I want to know all the little chances that there are of your coming back⁠—tell me, if Mrs. Frankland finds the letter, what shall you do then?”

At that question, Sarah’s hand, which had been resting languidly on her uncle’s arm while they walked together, closed on it suddenly. “Even if Mrs. Frankland gets into the Myrtle Room,” she said, stopping and looking affrightedly about her while she replied, “she may not find the letter. It is folded up so small; it is hidden in such an unlikely place.”

“But if she does find it?”

“If she does, there will be more reason than ever for my being miles and miles away.”

As she gave that answer, she raised both her hands to her heart, and pressed them firmly over it. A slight distortion passed rapidly across her features; her eyes closed; her face flushed all over⁠—then turned paler again than ever. She drew out her pocket-handkerchief, and passed it several times over her face, on which the perspiration had gathered thickly. The old man, who had looked behind him when his niece stopped, under