Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (239 page)

The simple words drew the picture of the miners death and of all that followed it, with a startling distinctness — with a fearful reality. Rosamond shuddered, and looked at her husband. “Oh, Lenny!” she murmured, “the first news of your blindness was a sore trial to me — but what was it to this!”

“Pity her!” said the old man. “Pity her for what she suffered then! Pity her for what came after, that was worse! Yet five, six, seven weeks pass, after the death of the mining man, and Sarah in the body suffers less, but in the mind suffers more. The mistress, who is kind and good to her as any sister could be, finds out, little by little, something in her face which is not the pain-look, nor the fright-look, nor the grief-look; something which the eyes can see, but which the tongue cannot put into words. She looks and thinks, looks and thinks, till there steals into her mind a doubt which makes her tremble at herself, which drives her straight forward into Sarah’s room, which sets her eyes searching through and through Sarah to her inmost heart. ‘There is something on your mind besides your grief for the dead and gone,’ she says, and catches Sarah by both the arms before she can turn way, and looks her in the face, front to front, with curious eyes that search and suspect steadily. ‘This miner man, Polwheal,’ she says; ‘my mind misgives me about the miner man, Polwheal. Sarah! I have been more friend to you than mistress. As your friend I ask you now — tell me all the truth?’ The question waits; but no word of answer! only Sarah struggles to get away, and the mistress holds her tighter yet, and goes on and says, ‘I know that the marriage-promise passed between you and miner Polwheal; I know that if ever there was truth in man, there was truth in him; I know that he went out from this place to put the banns up, for you and for him, in the church. Have secrets from all the world besides, Sarah, but have none from me. Tell me, this minute — tell me the truth! Of all the lost creatures in this big, wide world, are you — ?’ Before she can say the words that are next to come, Sarah falls on her knees, and cries out suddenly to be let go away to hide and die, and be heard of no more. That was all the answer she gave. It was enough for the truth then; it is enough for the truth now.”

He sighed bitterly, and ceased speaking for a little while. No voice broke the reverent silence that followed his last words. The one living sound that stirred in the stillness of the room was the light breathing of the child as he lay asleep in his mother’s arms.

“That was all the answer,” repeated the old man, “and the mistress who heard it says nothing for some time after, but still looks straight forward into Sarah’s face, and grows paler and paler the longer she looks — paler and paler, till on a sudden she starts, and at one flash the red flies back into her face. ‘No,’ she says, whispering and looking at the door, ‘once your friend, Sarah, always your friend. Stay in this house, keep your own counsel, do as I bid you, and leave the rest to me.’ And with that she turns round quick on her heel, and falls to walking up and down the room faster, faster, faster, till she is out of breath. Then she pulls the bell with an angry jerk, and calls out loud at the door. ‘The horses! I want to ride;’ then turns upon Sarah — ’My gown for riding in! Pluck up your heart, poor creature! On my life and honour, I will save you. My gown, my gown, then; I am mad for a gallop in the open air!” And she goes out, in a fever of the blood, and gallops, gallops, till the horse reeks again, and the groom-man who rides after her wonders if she is mad. When she comes back, for all that ride in the air, she is not tired. The whole evening after, she is now walking about the room, and now striking loud tunes all mixed up together on the piano. At the bed-time, she cannot rest. Twice, three times in the night she frightens Sarah by coming in to see how she does, and by saying always those same words over again: ‘Keep your own counsel, do as I bid you, and leave the rest to me.’ In the morning she lies late, sleeps, gets up very pale and quiet, and says to Sarah, ‘No word more between us two of what happened yesterday — no word till the time comes when you fear the eyes of every stranger who looks at you. Then I shall speak again. Till that time let us be as we were before I put the question yesterday, and before you told the truth!’ “

At this point he broke the thread of the narrative again, explaining as he did so that his memory was growing confused about a question of time, which he wished to state correctly in introducing the series of events that were next to be described.

“Ah, well! well!” he said, shaking his head, after vainly endeavoring to pursue the lost recollection. “For once, I must acknowledge that I forget. Whether it was two months, or whether it was three, after the mistress said those last words to Sarah, I know not — but at the end of the one time or of the other she one morning orders her carriage and goes away alone to Truro. In the evening she comes back with two large flat baskets. On the cover of the one there is a card, and written on it are the letters ‘S. L.’ On the cover of the other there is a card, and written on it are the letters ‘R. T.’ The baskets are taken into the mistress’s room, and Sarah is called, and the mistress says to her, ‘Open the basket with S. L. on it; for those are the letters of your name, and the things in it are yours.’ Inside there is first a box, which holds a grand bonnet of black lace; then a fine dark shawl; then black silk of the best kind, enough to make a gown; then linen and stuff for the under garments, all of the finest sort. ‘Make up those things to fit yourself,’ says the mistress. ‘You are so much littler than I, that to make the things up new is less trouble than, from my fit to yours, to alter old gowns.’ Sarah, to all this, says in astonishment, ‘Why?’ And the mistress answers, ‘I will have no questions. Remember what I said — keep your own counsel, and leave the rest to me!’ So she goes out; and the next thing she does is to send for the doctor to see her. He asks what is the matter; gets for answer that Mistress Treverton feels strangely, and not like herself; also that she thinks the soft air of Cornwall makes her weak. The days pass, and the doctor comes and goes, and, say what he may, those two answers are always the only two that he can get. All this time Sarah is at work; and when she has done, the mistress says, ‘Now for the other basket, with R. T. on it; for those are the letters of my name, and the things in it are mine.’ Inside this, there is first a box which holds a common bonnet of black straw; then a coarse dark shawl; then a gown of good common black stuff; then linen, and other things for the under garments, that are only of the sort called second best. ‘Make up all that rubbish,’ says the mistress, ‘to fit me. No questions! You have always done as I told you; do as I tell you now, or you are a lost woman.’ When the rubbish is made up, she tries it on, and looks in the glass, and laughs in a way that is wild and desperate to hear. ‘Do I make a fine, buxom, comely servant-woman?’ she says. ‘Ha! but I have acted that part times enough in my past days on the theatre-scene.’ And then she takes off the clothes again, and bids Sarah pack them up at once in one trunk, and pack the things she has made for herself in another. ‘The doctor orders me to go away out of this damp, soft Cornwall climate, to where the air is fresh and dry and cheerful-keen,’ she says, and laughs again, till the room rings with it. At the same time Sarah begins to pack, and takes some knick-knack things off the table, and among them a brooch which has on it a likeness of the sea-captain’s face. The mistress sees her, turns white in the cheeks, trembles all over, snatches the brooch away, and locks it up in the cabinet in a great hurry, as if the look of it frightened her. ‘I shall leave that behind me,’ she says, and turns round on her heel, and goes quickly out of the room. You guess now what the thing was that Mistress Treverton had it in her mind to do?”

He addressed the question to Rosamond first, and then repeated it to Leonard. They both answered in the affirmative, and entreated him to go on.

“You guess?” he said. “It is more than Sarah, at that time, could do. What with the misery in her own mind, and the strange ways and strange words of her mistress, the wits that were in her were all confused. Nevertheless, what her mistress has said to her, that she has always done; and together alone those two from the house of Porthgenna drive away. Not a word says the mistress till they have got to the journey’s end for the first day, and are stopping at their inn among strangers for the night. Then at last she speaks out. ‘Put you on, Sarah, the good linen and the good gown to-morrow,’ she says, ‘but keep the common bonnet and the common shawl till we get into the carriage again. I shall put on the coarse linen and the coarse gown, and keep the good bonnet and shawl. We shall pass so the people at the inn, on our way to the carriage, without very much risk of surprising them by our change of gowns. When we are out on the road again, we can change bonnets and shawls in the carriage — and then, it is all done. You are the married lady, Mrs. Treverton, and I am your maid who waits on you, Sarah Leeson.’ At that, the glimmering on Sarah’s mind breaks in at last: she shakes with the fright it gives her, and all she can say is, ‘Oh, mistress! for the love of Heaven, what is it you mean to do?’ ‘I mean,’ the mistress answers, ‘to save you, my faithful servant, from disgrace and ruin; to prevent every penny that the captain has got from going to that rascal-monster, his brother, who slandered me; and, last and most, I mean to keep my husband from going away to sea again, by making him love me as he has never loved me yet. Must I say more, you poor, afflicted, frightened creature — Or is it enough so?’ And all that Sarah can answer, is to cry bitter tears, and to say faintly, ‘No.’ ‘Do you doubt,’ says the mistress, and grips her by the arm, and looks her close in the face with fierce eyes — ’Do you doubt which is best, to cast yourself into the world forsaken and disgraced and ruined, or to save yourself from shame, and make a friend of me for the rest of your life? You weak, wavering, baby-woman, if you cannot decide for yourself, I shall for you. As I will, so it shall be! To-morrow, and the day after that, we go on and on, up to the north, where my good fool of a doctor says the air is cheerful-keen — up to the north, where nobody knows me or has heard my name. I, the maid, shall spread the report that you, the lady, are weak in your health. No strangers shall you see, but the doctor and the nurse, when the time to call them comes. Who they may be, I know not; but this I do know, that the one and the other will serve our purpose without the least suspicion of what it is; and that when we get back to Cornwall again, the secret between us two will to no third person have been trusted, and will remain a Dead Secret to the end of the world!’ With all the strength of the strong will that is in her, at the hush of night and in a house of strangers, she speaks those words to the woman of all women the most frightened, the most afflicted, the most helpless, the most ashamed. What need to say the end? On that night Sarah first stooped her shoulders to the burden that has weighed heavier and heavier on them with every year, for all her after-life.”

“How many days did they travel toward the north?” asked Rosamond, eagerly. “Where did the journey end? In England or in Scotland?”

“In England,” answered Uncle Joseph. “But the name of the place escapes my foreign tongue. It was a little town by the side of the sea — the great sea that washes between my country and yours. There they stopped, and there they waited till the time came to send for the doctor and the nurse. And as Mistress Treverton had said it should be, so, from the first to the last, it was. The doctor and the nurse, and the people of the house were all strangers; and to this day, if they still live, they believe that Sarah was the sea-captain’s wife, and that Mistress Treverton was the maid who waited on her. Not till they were far back on their way home with the child did the two change gowns again, and return each to her proper place. The first friend at Porthgenna that the mistress sends for to show the child to, when she gets back, is the doctor who lives there. ‘Did you think what was the matter with me, when you sent me away to change the air?’ she says, and laughs. And the doctor, he laughs too, and says, ‘Yes, surely! but I was too cunning to say what I thought in those early days, because, at such times, there is always fear of a mistake. And you found the fine dry air so good for you that you stopped?’ he says. ‘Well, that was right! right for yourself and right also for the child.’ And the doctor laughs again and the mistress with him, and Sarah, who stands by and hears them, feels as if her heart would burst within her, with the horror, and the misery, and the shame of that deceit. When the doctor’s back is turned, she goes down on her knees, and begs and prays with all her soul that the mistress will repent, and send her away with her child, to be heard of at Porthgenna no more. The mistress, with that tyrant-will of hers, has but four words of answer to give — ’It is too late!’ Five weeks after, the sea-captain comes back, and the ‘Too late’ is a truth that no repentance can ever alter more. The mistress’s cunning hand that has guided the deceit from the first, guides it always to the last — guides it so that the captain, for the love of her and of the child, goes back to the sea no more — guides it till the time when she lays her down on the bed to die, and leaves all the burden of the secret, and all the guilt of the confession, to Sarah — to Sarah, who, under the tyranny of that tyrant-will, has lived in the house, for five long years, a stranger to her own child!”

“Five years!” murmured Rosamond, raising the baby gently in her arms, till his face touched hers. “Oh me! five long years a stranger to the blood of her blood, to the heart of her heart!”

“And all the years after!” said the old man. “The lonesome years and years among strangers, with no sight of the child that was growing up, with no heart to pour the story of her sorrow into the ear of any living creature, not even into mine! ‘Better,’ I said to her, when she could speak to me no more, and when her face was turned away again on the pillow — ’a thousand times better, my child, if you had told the Secret!’ ‘Could I tell it,’ she said, ‘to the master who trusted me? Could I tell it afterward to the child, whose birth was a reproach to me? Could she listen to the story of her mother’s shame, told by her mother’s lips? How will she listen to it now, Uncle Joseph, when she hears it from you? Remember the life she has led, and the high place she has held in the world. How can she forgive me? How can she ever look at me in kindness again?’“