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

certain distrust of the room still clings to me. Do you feel it?”

“I feel something like it,” he replied, uneasily. “I feel as if the night that is always before my eyes was darker to me in this place than in any other. Where are we standing now?”

“Just inside the door.”

“Does the floor look safe to walk on?” He tried it suspiciously with his foot as he put the question.

“Quite safe,” replied Rosamond. “It would never support the furniture that is on it if it was so rotten as to be dangerous. Come across the room with me, and try it.” With these words she led him slowly to the window.

“The air seems as if it was nearer to me,” he said, bending his face forward toward the lowest of the broken panes. “What is before us now?”

She told him, describing minutely the size and appearance of the window. He turned from it carelessly, as if that part of the room had no interest for him. Rosamond still lingered near the window, to try if she could feel a breath of the outer atmosphere. There was a momentary silence, which was broken by her husband.

“What are you doing now?” he asked anxiously.

“I am looking out at one of the broken panes of glass, and trying to get some air,” answered Rosamond. “The shadow of the house is below me, resting on the lonely garden; but there is no coolness breathing up from it. I see the tall weeds rising straight and still, and the tangled wildflowers interlacing themselves heavily. There is a tree near me, and the leaves look as if they were all struck motionless. Away to the left, there is a peep of white sea and tawny sand quivering in the yellow heat. There are no clouds; there is no blue sky. The mist quenches the brightness of the sunlight, and lets nothing but the fire of it through. There is something threatening in the sky, and the earth seems to know it!”

“But the room! the room!” said Leonard, drawing her aside from the window. “Never mind the view; tell me what the room is like⁠—exactly what it is like. I shall not feel easy about you, Rosamond, if you don’t describe everything to me just as it is.”

“My darling! You know you can depend on my describing everything. I am only doubting where to begin, and how to make sure of seeing for you what you are likely to think most worth looking at. Here is an old ottoman against the wall⁠—the wall where the window is. I will take off my apron and dust the seat for you; and then you can sit down and listen comfortably while I tell you, before we think of anything else, what the room is like, to begin with. First of all, I suppose, I must make you understand how large it is?”

“Yes, that is the first thing. Try if you can compare it with any room that I was familiar with before I lost my sight.”

Rosamond looked backward and forward, from wall to wall⁠—then went to the fireplace, and walked slowly down the length of the room, counting her steps. Pacing over the dusty floor with a dainty regularity and a childish satisfaction in looking down at the gay pink rosettes on her morning shoes; holding up her crisp, bright muslin dress out of the dirt, and showing the fanciful embroidery of her petticoat, and the glossy stockings that fitted her little feet and ankles like a second skin, she moved through the dreariness, the desolation, the dingy ruin of the scene around her, the most charming living contrast to its dead gloom that youth, health, and beauty could present.

Arrived at the bottom of the room, she reflected a little, and said to her husband⁠—

“Do you remember the blue drawing-room, Lenny, in your father’s house at Long Beckley? I think this room is quite as large, if not larger.”

“What are the walls like?” asked Leonard, placing his hand on the wall behind him while he spoke. “They are covered with paper, are they not?”

“Yes; with faded red paper, except on one side, where strips have been torn off and thrown on the floor. There is wainscoting round the walls. It is cracked in many places, and has ragged holes in it, which seem to have been made by the rats and mice.”

“Are there any pictures on the walls?”

“No. There is an empty frame over the fireplace. And opposite⁠—I mean just above where I am standing now⁠—there is a small mirror, cracked in the centre, with broken branches for candlesticks projecting on either side of it. Above that, again, there is a stag’s head and antlers; some of the face has dropped away, and a perfect maze of cobwebs is stretched between the horns. On the other walls there are large nails, with more cobwebs hanging down from them heavy with dirt⁠—but no pictures anywhere. Now you know everything about the walls. What is the next thing? The floor?”

“I think, Rosamond, my feet have told me already what the floor is like?”

“They may have told you that it is bare, dear; but I can tell you more than that. It slopes down from every side toward the middle of the room. It is covered thick with dust, which is swept about⁠—I suppose by the wind blowing through the broken panes⁠—into strange, wavy, feathery shapes that quite hide the floor beneath. Lenny! suppose these boards should be made to take up anywhere! If we discover nothing today, we will have them swept tomorrow. In the meantime, I must go on telling you about the room, must I not? You know already what the size of it is, what the window is like, what the walls are like, what the floor is like. Is there anything else before we come to the furniture? Oh, yes! the ceiling⁠—for that completes the shell of the room. I can’t see much of it, it is