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

of the house, which might prove to be of the greatest service, in the event of Mr. Treverton’s memory not having preserved all particulars in connection with the names and positions of the north rooms. In conclusion, he took the liberty of mentioning that the loan of any document of the kind to which he had alluded, or the permission to have extracts made from it, would be thankfully acknowledged as a great favor conferred; and he added, in a postscript, that, in order to save Mr. Treverton all trouble, a messenger would call for any answer he might be disposed to give the day after the delivery of the letter. Having completed the application in these terms, the vicar enclosed it under cover to his man of business in London, with directions that it was to be delivered by a trustworthy person, and that the messenger was to call again the next morning to know if there was any answer.

Three days after this letter had been dispatched to its destination⁠—at which time no tidings of any sort had been received from Doctor Chennery⁠—Rosamond at last obtained her medical attendant’s permission to travel. Taking leave of Mr. Orridge, with many promises to let him know what progress they made toward discovering the Myrtle Room, Mr. and Mrs. Frankland turned their backs on West Winston, and for the third time started on the journey to Porthgenna Tower.

II The Beginning of the End

It was baking-day in the establishment of Mr. Andrew Treverton when the messenger entrusted with Doctor Chennery’s letter found his way to the garden door of the cottage at Bayswater. After he had rung three times, he heard a gruff voice, on the other side of the wall, roaring at him to let the bell alone, and asking who he was, and what the devil he wanted.

“A letter for Mr. Treverton,” said the messenger, nervously backing away from the door while he spoke.

“Chuck it over the wall, then, and be off with you!” answered the gruff voice.

The messenger obeyed both injunctions. He was a meek, modest, elderly man; and when Nature mixed up the ingredients of his disposition, the capability of resenting injuries was not among them.

The man with the gruff voice⁠—or, to put it in plainer terms, the man Shrowl⁠—picked up the letter, weighed it in his hand, looked at the address on it with an expression of contemptuous curiosity in his bull-terrier eyes, put it in his waistcoat pocket, and walked around lazily to the kitchen entrance of the cottage.

In the apartment which would probably have been called the pantry, if the house had belonged to civilized tenants, a hand-mill had been set up; and, at the moment when Shrowl made his way to this room, Mr. Treverton was engaged in asserting his independence of all the millers in England by grinding his own corn. He paused irritably in turning the handle of the mill when his servant appeared at the door.

“What do you come here for?” he asked. “When the flour’s ready, I’ll call for you. Don’t let’s look at each other oftener than we can help! I never set eyes on you, Shrowl, but I ask myself whether, in the whole range of creation, there is any animal as ugly as man? I saw a cat this morning on the garden wall, and there wasn’t a single point in which you would bear comparison with him. The cat’s eyes were clear⁠—yours are muddy. The cat’s nose was straight⁠—yours is crooked. The cat’s whiskers were clean⁠—yours are dirty. The cat’s coat fitted him⁠—yours hangs about you like a sack. I tell you again, Shrowl, the species to which you (and I) belong is the ugliest on the whole face of creation. Don’t let us revolt each other by keeping in company any longer. Go away, you last, worst, infirmest freak of Nature⁠—go away!”

Shrowl listened to this complimentary address with an aspect of surly serenity. When it had come to an end, he took the letter from his waistcoat pocket, without condescending to make any reply. He was, by this time, too thoroughly conscious of his own power over his master to attach the smallest importance to anything Mr. Treverton might say to him.

“Now you’ve done your talking, suppose you take a look at that,” said Shrowl, dropping the letter carelessly on a deal table by his master’s side. “It isn’t often that people trouble themselves to send letters to you⁠—is it? I wonder whether your niece has took a fancy to write to you? It was put in the papers the other day that she’d got a son and heir. Open the letter, and see if it’s an invitation to the christening. The company would be sure to want your smiling face at the table to make ’em jolly. Just let me take a grind at the mill, while you go out and get a silver mug. The son and heir expects a mug you know, and his nurse expects half a guinea, and his mamma expects all your fortune. What a pleasure to make the three innocent creeturs happy! It’s shocking to see you pulling wry faces, like that, over the letter. Lord! lord! where can all your natural affection have gone to?⁠—”

“If I only knew where to lay my hand on a gag, I’d cram it into your infernal mouth!” cried Mr. Treverton. “How dare you talk to me about my niece? You wretch! you know I hate her for her mother’s sake. What do you mean by harping perpetually on my fortune? Sooner than leave it to the play-actress’s child, I’d even leave it to you; and sooner than leave it to you, I would take every farthing of it out in a boat, and bury it forever at the bottom of the sea!” Venting his dissatisfaction in these strong terms, Mr. Treverton snatched up Doctor Chennery’s letter, and tore it open in a humor which by no means promised favorably for the success of the vicar’s application.

He read the letter