The Dead Secret / Тайна

As soon as the vicar entered the breakfast-parlor, the children assailed him with a chorus of shouts. He was a severe disciplinarian in the observance of punctuality at meal-times; and he now stood convicted by the clock of being too late for breakfast by a quarter of an hour.

“Sorry to have kept you waiting, Miss Sturch,” said the vicar; “but I have a good excuse for being late this morning.”

“Pray don't mention it, Sir,” said Miss Sturch, blandly rubbing her plump little hands one over the other. “A beautiful morning. I fear we shall have another warm day. – Robert, my love, your elbow is on the table. – A beautiful morning, indeed!”

“Stomach still out of order – eh, Phippen?” asked the vicar, beginning to carve the ham.

Mr. Phippen shook his large head dolefully, placed his yellow forefinger, ornamented with a large turquoise ring, on the centre check of his light-green summer waistcoat – looked piteously at Doctor Chennery, and sighed – removed the finger, and produced from the breast pocket of his wrapper a little mahogany case – took out of it a neat pair of apothecary's scales, with the accompanying weights, a morsel of ginger, and a highly polished silver nutmeg-grater. “Dear Miss Sturch will pardon an invalid?” said Mr. Phippen, beginning to grate the ginger feebly into the nearest tea-cup.

“Guess what has made me a quarter of an hour late this morning,” said the vicar, looking mysteriously all round the table.

“Lying in bed, papa,” cried the three children, clapping their hands in triumph.

“What do you say, Miss Sturch?” asked Doctor Chennery.

Miss Sturch smiled as usual, rubbed her hands as usual, cleared her throat softly as usual, looked at the tea-urn, and begged, with the most graceful politeness, to be excused if she said nothing.

“Your turn now, Phippen,” said the vicar. “Come, guess what has kept me late this morning.”

“My dear friend,” said Mr. Phippen, giving the Doctor a brotherly squeeze of the hand, “don't ask me to guess – I know! I saw what you eat at dinner yesterday – I saw what you drank after dinner. No digestion could stand it – not even yours. Guess what has made you late this morning? Pooh! pooh! I know. You dear, good soul, you have been taking physic!”

“Hav'n't touched a drop, thank God, for the last ten years!” said Doctor Chennery, with a look of devout gratitude. “No, no; you're all wrong. The fact is, I have been to church; and what do you think I have been doing there? Listen, Miss Sturch – listen, girls, with all your ears. Poor blind young Frankland is a happy man at last – I have married him to our dear Rosamond Treverton this very morning!”

“Without telling us, papa!” cried the two girls together in their shrillest tones of vexation and surprise. “Without telling us, when you know how we should have liked to see it!”

“That was the very reason why I did not tell you, my dears,” answered the vicar. “Young Frankland has not got so used to his affliction yet, poor fellow, as to bear being publicly pitied and stared at in the character of a blind bridegroom. He had such a nervous horror of being an object of curiosity on his wedding-day, and Rosamond, like a kind-hearted girl as she is, was so anxious that his slightest caprices should be humored, that we settled to have the wedding at an hour in the morning when no idlers were likely to be lounging about the neighborhood of the church. I was bound over to the strictest secrecy about the day, and so was my clerk Thomas. Excepting us two, and the bride and bridegroom, and the bride's father, Captain Treverton, nobody knew —”

“Treverton!” exclaimed Mr. Phippen, holding his tea-cup, with the grated ginger in the bottom of it, to be filled by Miss Sturch. “Treverton! (No more tea, dear Miss Sturch.) How very remarkable! I know the name. (Fill up with water, if you please.) Tell me, my dear doctor (many, many thanks; no sugar – it turns acid on the stomach), is this Miss Treverton whom you have been marrying (many thanks again; no milk, either) one of the Cornish Trevertons?”

“To be sure she is!” rejoined the vicar. “Her father, Captain Treverton, is the head of the family. Not that there's much family to speak of now. The Captain, and Rosamond, and that whimsical old brute of an uncle of hers, Andrew Treverton, are the last left now of the old stock – a rich family, and a fine family, in former times – good friends to Church and State, you know, and all that —”

“Do you approve, Sir, of Amelia having a second helping of bread and marmalade?” asked Miss Sturch, appealing to Doctor Chennery, with the most perfect unconsciousness of interrupting him. Having no spare room in her mind for putting things away in until the appropriate time came for bringing them out, Miss Sturch always asked questions and made remarks the moment they occurred to her, without waiting for the beginning, middle, or end of any conversations that might be proceeding in her presence. She invariably looked the part of a listener to perfection, but she never acted it except in the case of talk that was aimed point-blank at her own ears.

“Oh, give her a second helping, by all means!” said the vicar, carelessly; “if she must over-eat herself, she may as well do it on bread and marmalade as on any thing else.”

“My dear, good soul,” exclaimed Mr. Phippen, “look what a wreck I am, and don't talk in that shockingly thoughtless way of letting our sweet Amelia over-eat herself. Load the stomach in youth, and what becomes of the digestion in age? The thing which vulgar people call the inside – I appeal to Miss Sturch's interest in her charming pupil as an excuse for going into physiological particulars – is, in point of fact, an Apparatus. Digestively considered, Miss Sturch, even the fairest and youngest of us is an Apparatus. Oil our wheels, if you like; but clog them at your peril. Farinaceous puddings and mutton-chops; mutton-chops and farinaceous puddings – those should be the parents' watch-words, if I had my way, from one end of England to the other. Look here, my sweet child – look at me. There is no fun, dear, about these little scales, but dreadful earnest. See! I put in the balance on one side dry bread (stale, dry bread, Amelia!), and on the other some ounce weights. 'Mr. Phippen, eat by weight. Mr. Phippen! eat the same quantity, day by day, to a hair's-breadth. Mr. Phippen! exceed your allowance (though it is only stale, dry bread) if you dare!' Amelia, love, this is not fun – this is what the doctors tell me – the doctors, my child, who have been searching my Apparatus through and through for thirty years past with little pills, and have not found out where my wheels are clogged yet. Think of that, Amelia – think of Mr. Phippen's clogged Apparatus – and say 'No, thank you,' next time. Miss Sturch, I beg a thousand pardons for intruding on your province; but my interest in that sweet child – Chennery, you dear, good soul, what were we talking about? Ah! the bride – the interesting bride! And so she is one of the Cornish Trevertons? I knew something of Andrew years ago. He was a bachelor, like myself, Miss Sturch. His Apparatus was out of order, like mine, dear Amelia. Not at all like his brother, the Captain, I should suppose? And so she is married? A charming girl, I have no doubt. A charming girl!”

“No better, truer, prettier girl in the world,” said the vicar.

“A very lively, energetic person,” remarked Miss Sturch.

“How I shall miss her!” cried Miss Louisa. “Nobody else amused me as Rosamond did, when I was laid up with that last bad cold of mine.”

“She used to give us such nice little early supper-parties,” said Miss Amelia.

“She was the only girl I ever saw who was fit to play with boys,” said Master Robert. “She could catch a ball, Mr. Phippen, Sir, with one hand, and go down a slide with both her legs together.”

“Bless me!” said Mr. Phippen. “What an extraordinary wife for a blind man! You said he was blind from his birth, my dear doctor, did you not? Let me see, what was his name? You will not bear too hardly on my loss of memory, Miss Sturch? When indigestion has done with the body, it begins to prey on the mind. Mr. Frank Something, was it not?”

“No, no – Frankland,” answered the vicar, “Leonard Frankland. And not blind from his birth by any means. It is not much more than a year ago since he could see almost as well as any of us.”

“An accident, I suppose!” said Mr. Phippen. “You will excuse me if I take the arm-chair? – a partially reclining posture is of great assistance to me after meals. So an accident happened to his eyes? Ah, what a delightfully easy chair to sit in!”

“Scarcely an accident,” said Doctor Chennery. “Leonard Frankland was a difficult child to bring up: great constitutional weakness, you know, at first. He seemed to get over that with time, and grew into a quiet, sedate, orderly sort of boy – as unlike my son there as possible – very amiable, and what you call easy to deal with. Well, he had a turn for mechanics (I am telling you all this to make you understand about his blindness), and, after veering from one occupation of that sort to another, he took at last to watch-making. Curious amusement for a boy; but any thing that required delicacy of touch, and plenty of patience and perseverance, was just the thing to amuse and occupy Leonard. I always said to his father and mother, 'Get him off that stool, break his magnifying-glasses, send him to me, and I'll give him a back at leap-frog, and teach him the use of a bat.' But it was no use. His parents knew best, I suppose, and they said he must be humored. Well, things went on smoothly enough for some time, till he got another long illness – as I believe, from not taking exercise enough. As soon as he began to get round, back he went to his old watch-making occupations again. But the bad end of it all was coming. About the last work he did, poor fellow, was the repairing of my watch – here it is; goes as regular as a steam-engine. I hadn't got it back into my fob very long before I heard that he was getting a bad pain at the back of his head, and that he saw all sorts of moving spots before his eyes. 'String him up with lots of port wine, and give him three hours a day on the back of a quiet pony'– that was my advice. Instead of taking it, they sent for doctors from London, and blistered him behind the ears and between the shoulders, and drenched the lad with mercury, and moped him up in a dark room. No use. The sight got worse and worse, flickered and flickered, and went out at last like the flame of a candle. His mother died – luckily for her, poor soul – before that happened. His father was half out of his mind: took him to oculists in London and oculists in Paris. All they did was to call the blindness by a long Latin name, and to say that it was hopeless and useless to try an operation. Some of them said it was the result of the long weaknesses from which he had twice suffered after illness. Some said it was an apoplectic effusion in his brain. All of them shook their heads when they heard of the watch-making. So they brought him back home, blind; blind he is now; and blind he will remain, poor dear fellow, for the rest of his life.”

“You shock me; my dear Chennery, you shock me dreadfully,” said Mr. Phippen. “Especially when you state that theory about long weakness after illness. Good Heavens! Why, I have had long weaknesses – I have got them now. Spots did he see before his eyes? I see spots, black spots, dancing black spots, dancing black bilious spots. Upon my word of honor, Chennery, this comes home to me – my sympathies are painfully acute – I feel this blind story in every nerve of my body; I do, indeed!”

“You would hardly know that Leonard was blind, to look at him,” said Miss Louisa, striking into the conversation with a view to restoring Mr. Phippen's equanimity. “Except that his eyes look quieter than other people's, there seems no difference in them now. Who was that famous character you told us about, Miss Sturch, who was blind, and didn't show it any more than Leonard Frankland?”

“Milton, my love. I begged you to remember that he was the most famous of British epic poets,” answered Miss Sturch with suavity. “He poetically describes his blindness as being caused by 'so thick a drop serene.' You shall read about it, Louisa. After we have had a little French, we will have a little Milton, this morning. Hush, love, your papa is speaking.”

“Poor young Frankland!” said the vicar, warmly. “That good, tender, noble creature I married him to this morning seems sent as a consolation to him in his affliction. If any human being can make him happy for the rest of his life, Rosamond Treverton is the girl to do it.”

“She has made a sacrifice,” said Mr. Phippen; “but I like her for that, having made a sacrifice myself in remaining single. It seems indispensable, indeed, on the score of humanity, that I should do so. How could I conscientiously inflict such a digestion as mine on a member of the fairer portion of creation? No; I am a sacrifice in my own proper person, and I have a fellow-feeling for others who are like me. Did she cry much, Chennery, when you were marrying her?”

“Cry!” exclaimed the vicar, contemptuously. “Rosamond Treverton is not one of the puling, sentimental sort, I can tell you. A fine, buxom, warm-hearted, quick-tempered girl, who looks what she means when she tells a man she is going to marry him. And, mind you, she has been tried. If she hadn't loved him with all her heart and soul, she might have been free months ago to marry any body she pleased. They were engaged long before this cruel affliction befell young Frankland – the fathers, on both sides, having lived as near neighbors in these parts for years. Well, when the blindness came, Leonard at once offered to release Rosamond from her engagement. You should have read the letter she wrote to him, Phippen, upon that. I don't mind confessing that I blubbered like a baby over it when they showed it to me. I should have married them at once the instant I read it, but old Frankland was a fidgety, punctilious kind of man, and he insisted on a six months' probation, so that she might be certain of knowing her own mind. He died before the term was out, and that caused the marriage to be put off again. But no delays could alter Rosamond – six years, instead of six months, would not have changed her. There she was this morning as fond of that poor, patient blind fellow as she was the first day they were engaged. 'You shall never know a sad moment, Lenny, if I can help it, as long as you live'– these were the first words she said to him when we all came out of church. 'I hear you, Rosamond,' said I. 'And you shall judge me, too, Doctor,' says she, quick as lightning. 'We will come back to Long Beckley, and you shall ask Lenny if I have not kept my word.' With that she gave me a kiss that you might have heard down here at the vicarage, bless her heart! We'll drink her health after dinner, Miss Sturch – we'll drink both their healths, Phippen, in a bottle of the best wine I have in my cellar.”

“In a glass of toast-and-water, so far as I am concerned, if you will allow me,” said Mr. Phippen, mournfully. “But, my dear Chennery, when you were talking of the fathers of these two interesting young people, you spoke of their living as near neighbors here, at Long Beckley. My memory is impaired, as I am painfully aware; but I thought Captain Treverton was the eldest of the two brothers, and that he always lived, when he was on shore, at the family place in Cornwall?”

“So he did,” returned the vicar, “in his wife's lifetime. But since her death, which happened as long ago as the year 'twenty-nine – let me see, we are now in the year 'forty-four – and that makes —”

The vicar stopped for an instant to calculate, and looked at Miss Sturch.

“Fifteen years ago, Sir,” said Miss Sturch, offering the accommodation of a little simple subtraction to the vicar, with her blandest smile.

“Of course,” continued Doctor Chennery. “Well, since Mrs. Treverton died, fifteen years ago, Captain Treverton has never been near Porthgenna Tower. And, what is more, Phippen, at the first opportunity he could get, he sold the place – sold it, out and out, mine, fisheries, and all – for forty thousand pounds.”

“You don't say so!” exclaimed Mr. Phippen. “Did he find the air unhealthy? I should think the local produce, in the way of food, must be coarse now, in those barbarous regions? Who bought the place?”

“Leonard Frankland's father,” said the vicar. “It is rather a long story, that sale of Porthgenna Tower, with some curious circumstances involved in it. Suppose we take a turn in the garden, Phippen? I'll tell you all about it over my morning cigar. Miss Sturch, if you want me, I shall be on the lawn somewhere. Girls! mind you know your lessons. Bob! remember that I've got a cane in the hall, and a birch-rod in my dressing-room. Come, Phippen, rouse up out of that arm-chair. You won't say No to a turn in the garden?”

“My dear fellow, I will say Yes – if you will kindly lend me an umbrella, and allow me to carry my camp-stool in my hand,” said Mr. Phippen. “I am too weak to encounter the sun, and I can't go far without sitting down. – The moment I feel fatigued, Miss Sturch, I open my camp-stool, and sit down any where, without the slightest regard for appearances. – I am ready, Chennery, whenever you are – equally ready, my good friend, for the garden and the story about the sale of Porthgenna Tower. You said it was a curious story, did you not?”

“I said there was some curious circumstances connected with it,” replied the vicar. “And when you hear about them, I think you will say so too. Come along! you will find your camp-stool, and a choice of all the umbrellas in the house, in the hall.”

With those words, Doctor Chennery opened his cigar-case, and led the way out of the breakfast-parlor.

Chapter II

The Sale of Porthgenna Tower

“How charming! how pastoral! how exquisitely soothing!” said Mr. Phippen, sentimentally surveying the lawn at the back of the vicarage-house, under the shadow of the lightest umbrella he could pick out of the hall. “Three years have passed, Chennery, since I last stood on this lawn. There is the window of your old study, where I had my attack of heart-burn last time – in the strawberry season; don't you remember? Ah! and there is the school-room! Shall I ever forget dear Miss Sturch coming to me out of that room – a ministering angel with soda and ginger – so comforting, so sweetly anxious about stirring it up, so unaffectedly grieved that there was no sal-volatile in the house! I do so enjoy these pleasant recollections, Chennery; they are as great a luxury to me as your cigar is to you. Could you walk on the other side, my dear fellow? I like the smell, but the smoke is a little too much for me. Thank you. And now about the story? What was the name of the old place – I am so interested in it – it began with a P, surely?”

“Porthgenna Tower,” said the vicar.

“Exactly,” rejoined Mr. Phippen, shifting the umbrella tenderly from one shoulder to the other. “And what in the world made Captain Treverton sell Porthgenna Tower?”

“I believe the reason was that he could not endure the place after the death of his wife,” answered Doctor Chennery. “The estate, you know, has never been entailed; so the Captain had no difficulty in parting with it, except, of course, the difficulty of finding a purchaser.”

“Why not his brother?” asked Mr. Phippen. “Why not our eccentric friend, Andrew Treverton?”

“Don't call him my friend,” said the vicar. “A mean, groveling, cynical, selfish old wretch! It's no use shaking your head, Phippen, and trying to look shocked. I know Andrew Treverton's early history as well as you do. I know that he was treated with the basest ingratitude by a college friend, who took all he had to give, and swindled him at last in the grossest manner. I know all about that. But one instance of ingratitude does not justify a man in shutting himself up from society, and railing against all mankind as a disgrace to the earth they walk on. I myself have heard the old brute say that the greatest benefactor to our generation would be a second Herod, who could prevent another generation from succeeding it. Ought a man who can talk in that way to be the friend of any human being with the slightest respect for his species or himself?”

“My friend!” said Mr. Phippen, catching the vicar by the arm, and mysteriously lowering his voice —”My dear and reverend friend! I admire your honest indignation against the utterer of that exceedingly misanthropical sentiment; but – I confide this to you, Chennery, in the strictest secrecy – there are moments – morning moments generally – when my digestion is in such a state that I have actually agreed with that annihilating person, Andrew Treverton! I have woke up with my tongue like a cinder – I have crawled to the glass and looked at it – and I have said to myself, 'Let there be an end of the human race rather than a continuance of this!'”

“Pooh! pooh!” cried the vicar, receiving Mr. Phippen's confession with a burst of irreverent laughter. “Take a glass of cool small beer next time your tongue is in that state, and you will pray for a continuance of the brewing part of the human race, at any rate. But let us go back to Porthgenna Tower, or I shall never get on with my story. When Captain Treverton had once made up his mind to sell the place, I have no doubt that, under ordinary circumstances, he would have thought of offering it to his brother, with a view, of course, to keeping the estate in the family. Andrew was rich enough to have bought it; for, though he got nothing at his father's death but the old gentleman's rare collection of books, he inherited his mother's fortune, as the second son. However, as things were at that time (and are still, I am sorry to say), the Captain could make no personal offers of any kind to Andrew; for the two were not then, and are not now, on speaking, or even on writing terms. It is a shocking thing to say, but the worst quarrel of the kind I ever heard of is the quarrel between those two brothers.”

“Pardon me, my dear friend,” said Mr. Phippen, opening his camp-stool, which had hitherto dangled by its silken tassel from the hooked handle of the umbrella. “May I sit down before you go any further? I am getting a little excited about this part of the story, and I dare not fatigue myself. Pray go on. I don't think the legs of my camp-stool will make holes in the lawn. I am so light – a mere skeleton, in fact. Do go on!”

“You must have heard,” pursued the vicar, “that Captain Treverton, when he was advanced in life, married an actress – rather a violent temper, I believe; but a person of spotless character, and as fond of her husband as a woman could be; therefore, according to my view of it, a very good wife for him to marry. However, the Captain's friends, of course, made the usual senseless outcry, and the Captain's brother, as the only near relation, took it on himself to attempt breaking off the marriage in the most offensively indelicate way. Failing in that, and hating the poor woman like poison, he left his brother's house, saying, among many other savage speeches, one infamous thing about the bride, which – which, upon my honor, Phippen, I am ashamed to repeat. Whatever the words were, they were unluckily carried to Mrs. Treverton's ears, and they were of the kind that no woman – let alone a quick-tempered woman like the Captain's wife – ever forgives. An interview followed between the two brothers – and it led, as you may easily imagine, to very unhappy results. They parted in the most deplorable manner. The Captain declared, in the heat of his passion, that Andrew had never had one generous impulse in his heart since he was born, and that he would die without one kind feeling toward any living soul in the world. Andrew replied that, if he had no heart, he had a memory, and that he should remember those farewell words as long as he lived. So they separated. Twice afterward the Captain made overtures of reconciliation. The first time when his daughter Rosamond was born; the second time when Mrs. Treverton died. On each occasion the elder brother wrote to say that, if the younger would retract the atrocious words he had spoken against his sister-in-law, every atonement should be offered to him for the harsh language which the Captain had used, in the hastiness of anger, when they last met. No answer was received from Andrew to either letter; and the estrangement between the two brothers has continued to the present time. You understand now why Captain Treverton could not privately consult Andrew's inclinations before he publicly announced his intention of parting with Porthgenna Tower.”