The Dead Secret

Wilkie Collins

• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781443441049
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

Living happily with her husband on her ancestral estate, Porthgenna Tower, Rosamund Treverton is completely unaware of the family secret that tells of her past. But when a servant who holds the key to this mystery returns to Porthgenna, the truth is revealed.

The Dead Secret is one of several mystery novels written by Wilkie Collins. Like his earlier novel Hide and Seek, The Dead Secret reveals the mystery to the reader while leaving the characters in the dark for the majority of the story.

HarperPerennial Classics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperPerennial Classics collection to build your digital library.

Book IV

Chapter I

A Plot against the Secret

Toward the close of the evening, on the day after Mr. Orridge’s interview with Mrs. Norbury, the Druid fast coach, running through Cornwall as far as Truro, set down three inside passengers at the door of the booking office on arriving at its destination. Two of these passengers were an old gentleman and his daughter; the third was Mrs. Jazeph.

The father and daughter collected their luggage and entered the hotel; the outside passengers branched off in different directions with as little delay as possible; Mrs. Jazeph alone stood irresolute on the pavement, and seemed uncertain what she should do next. When the coachman good naturedly endeavored to assist her in arriving at a decision of some kind, by asking whether he could do anything to help her, she started, and looked at him suspiciously; then, appearing to recollect herself, thanked him for his kindness, and inquired, with a confusion of words and a hesitation of manner which appeared very extraordinary in the coachman’s eyes, whether she might be allowed to leave her trunk at the booking office for a little while, until she could return and call for it again.

Receiving permission to leave her trunk as long as she pleased, she crossed over the principal street of the town, ascended the pavement on the opposite side, and walked down the first turning she came to. On entering the bystreet to which the turning led, she glanced back, satisfied herself that nobody was following or watching her, hastened on a few yards, and stopped again at a small shop devoted to the sale of bookcases, cabinets, workboxes, and writing desks. After first looking up at the letters painted over the door—BUSCHMANN, CABINETMAKER, ETC.—she peered in at the shop window. A middle-aged man, with a cheerful face, sat behind the counter, polishing a rosewood bracket, and nodding briskly at regular intervals, as if he were humming a tune and keeping time to it with his head. Seeing no customers in the shop, Mrs. Jazeph opened the door and walked in.

As soon as she was inside, she became aware that the cheerful man behind the counter was keeping time, not to a tune of his own humming, but to a tune played by a musical box. The clear ringing notes came from a parlour behind the shop, and the air the box was playing was the lovely “Batti, Batti,” of Mozart.

“Is Mr. Buschmann at home?” asked Mrs. Jazeph.

“Yes, ma’am,” said the cheerful man, pointing with a smile toward the door that led into the parlour. “The music answers for him. Whenever Mr. Buschmann’s box is playing, Mr. Buschmann himself is not far off from it. Did you wish to see him, ma’am?”

“If there is nobody with him.”

“Oh, no, he is quite alone. Shall I give any name?”

Mrs. Jazeph opened her lips to answer, hesitated, and said nothing. The shopman, with a quicker delicacy of perception than might have been expected from him, judging by outward appearances, did not repeat the question, but opened the door at once, and admitted the visitor to the presence of Mr. Buschmann.

The shop parlour was a very small room, with an old three-cornered look about it, with a bright green paper on the walls, with a large dried fish in a glass case over the fireplace, with two meerschaum pipes hanging together on the wall opposite, and a neat round table placed as accurately as possible in the middle of the floor. On the table were tea things, bread, butter, a pot of jam, and a musical box in a quaint, old-fashioned case; and by the side of the table sat a little, rosy-faced, white-haired, simple-looking old man, who started up, when the door was opened, with an appearance of extreme confusion, and touched the top of the musical box so that it might cease playing when it came to the end of the air.

“A lady to speak with you, sir,” said the cheerful shopman. “That is Mr. Buschmann, ma’am,” he added in a lower tone, seeing Mrs. Jazeph stop in apparent uncertainty on entering the parlour.

“Will you please to take a seat, ma’am?” said Mr. Buschmann, when the shopman had closed the door and gone back to his counter. “Excuse the music; it will stop directly.” He spoke these words in a foreign accent, but with perfect fluency.

Mrs. Jazeph looked at him earnestly while he was addressing her, and advanced a step or two before she said anything. “Am I so changed?” she asked softly. “So sadly, sadly changed, Uncle Joseph?”

“Gott im Himmel! it’s her voice—it’s Sarah Leeson!” cried the old man, running up to his visitor as nimbly as if he was a boy again, taking both her hands, and kissing her with an odd, brisk tenderness on the cheek. Although his niece was not at all above the average height of women, Uncle Joseph was so short that he had to raise himself on tiptoe to perform the ceremony of embracing her.

“To think of Sarah coming at last!” he said, pressing her into a chair. “After all these years and years, to think of Sarah Leeson coming to see Uncle Joseph again!”

“Sarah still, but not Sarah Leeson,” said Mrs. Jazeph, pressing her thin, trembling hands firmly together, and looking down on the floor while she spoke.

“Ah! married?” said Mr. Buschmann, gaily. “Married, of course. Tell me all about your husband, Sarah.”

“He is dead. Dead and forgiven.” She murmured the last three words in a whisper to herself.

“Ah! I am so sorry for you! I spoke too suddenly, did I not, my child?” said the old man. “Never mind! No, no; I don’t mean that—I mean let us talk of something else. You will have a bit of bread and jam, won’t you, Sarah?—ravishing raspberry jam that melts in your mouth. Some tea, then? So, so, she will have some tea, to be sure. And we won’t talk of our troubles—at least, not just yet. You look very pale, Sarah—very much older than you ought to look—no, I don’t mean that either; I don’t mean to be rude. It was your voice I knew you by, my child—your voice that your poor Uncle Max always said would have made your fortune if you would only have learned to sing. Here’s his pretty music box going still. Don’t look so downhearted—don’t, pray. Do listen a little to the music: you remember the box?—my brother Max’s box? Why, how you look! Have you forgotten the box that the divine Mozart gave to my brother with his own hand, when Max was a boy in the music school at Vienna? Listen! I have set it going again. It’s a song they call ‘Batti, Batti;’ it’s a song in an opera of Mozart’s. Ah! beautiful! beautiful! Your Uncle Max said that all music was comprehended in that one song. I know nothing about music, but I have my heart and my ears, and they tell me that Max was right.”

Speaking these words with abundant gesticulation and amazing volubility, Mr. Buschmann poured out a cup of tea for his niece, stirred it carefully, and, patting her on the shoulder, begged that she would make him happy by drinking it all up directly. As he came close to her to press this request, he discovered that the tears were in her eyes, and that she was trying to take her handkerchief from her pocket without being observed.

“Don’t mind me,” she said, seeing the old man’s face sadden as he looked at her; “and don’t think me forgetful or ungrateful, Uncle Joseph. I remember the box—I remember everything that you used to take an interest in, when I was younger and happier than I am now. When I last saw you, I came to you in trouble; and I come to you in trouble once more. It seems neglectful in me never to have written to you for so many years past; but my life has been a very sad one, and I thought I had no right to lay the burden of my sorrow on other shoulders than my own.”

Uncle Joseph shook his head at these last words, and touched the stop of the musical box. “Mozart shall wait a little,” he said, gravely, “till I have told you something. Sarah, hear what I say, and drink your tea, and own to me whether I speak the truth or not. What did I, Joseph Buschmann, tell you, when you first came to me in trouble, fourteen, fifteen, ah more! sixteen years ago, in this town, and in this same house? I said then, what I say again now: ‘Sarah’s sorrow is my sorrow, and Sarah’s joy is my joy;’ and if any man asks me reasons for that, I have three to give him.”

He stopped to stir up his niece’s tea for the second time, and to draw her attention to it by tapping with the spoon on the edge of the cup.

“Three reasons,” he resumed. “First, you are my sister’s child—some of her flesh and blood, and some of mine, therefore, also. Second, my sister, my brother, and lastly me myself, we owe to your good English father—all. A little word that means much, and may be said again and again—all. Your father’s friends cry, Fie! Agatha Buschmann is poor! Agatha Buschmann is foreign! But your father loves the poor German girl, and he marries her in spite of their Fie, Fie. Your father’s friends cry Fie! again; Agatha Buschmann has a musician brother, who gabbles to us about Mozart, and who cannot make to his porridge salt. Your father says, Good! I like his gabble; I like his playing; I shall get him people to teach; and while I have pinches of salt in my kitchen, he to his porridge shall have pinches of salt too. Your father’s friends cry Fie! for the third time. Agatha Buschmann has another brother, a little Stupid-Head, who to the other’s gabble can only listen and say Amen. Send him trotting; for the love of heaven, shut up all the doors and send Stupid-Head trotting, at least. Your father says, No! Stupid-Head has his wits in his hands; he can cut and carve and polish; help him a little at the starting, and after he shall help himself. They are all gone now but me! Your father, your mother, and Uncle Max—they are all gone. Stupid-Head alone remains to remember and to be grateful—to take Sarah’s sorrow for his sorrow, and Sarah’s joy for his joy.”

He stopped again to blow a speck of dust off the musical box. His niece endeavored to speak, but he held up his hand, and shook his forefinger at her warningly.

“No,” he said. “It is yet my business to talk, and your business to drink tea. Have I not my third reason still? Ah! you look away from me; you know my third reason before I say a word. When I, in my turn, marry, and my wife dies, and leaves me alone with little Joseph, and when the boy falls sick, who comes then, so quiet, so pretty, so neat, with the bright young eyes, and the hands so tender and light? Who helps me with little Joseph by night and by day? Who makes a pillow for him on her arm when his head is weary? Who holds this box patiently at his ear?—yes! this box, that the hand of Mozart has touched—who holds it closer, closer always, when little Joseph’s sense grows dull, and he moans for the friendly music that he has known from a baby, the friendly music that he can now so hardly, hardly hear? Who kneels down by Uncle Joseph when his heart is breaking, and says, ‘Oh, hush! hush! The boy is gone where the better music plays, where the sickness shall never waste or the sorrow touch him more?’ Who? Ah, Sarah! you cannot forget those days; you cannot forget the Long Ago! When the trouble is bitter, and the burden is heavy, it is cruelty to Uncle Joseph to keep away; it is kindness to him to come here.”

The recollections that the old man had called up found their way tenderly to Sarah’s heart. She could not answer him; she could only hold out her hand. Uncle Joseph bent down, with a quaint, affectionate gallantry, and kissed it; then stepped back again to his place by the musical box. “Come!” he said, patting it cheerfully, “we will say no more for a while. Mozart’s box, Max’s box, little Joseph’s box, you shall talk to us again!”

Having put the tiny machinery in motion, he sat down by the table, and remained silent until the air had been played over twice. Then observing that his niece seemed calmer, he spoke to her once more.

“You are in trouble, Sarah,” he said, quietly. “You tell me that, and I see it is true in your face. Are you grieving for your husband?”

“I grieve that I ever met him,” she answered. “I grieve that I ever married him. Now that he is dead, I cannot grieve—I can only forgive him.”

“Forgive him? How you look, Sarah, when you say that! Tell me—”

“Uncle Joseph! I have told you that my husband is dead, and that I have forgiven him.”

“You have forgiven him? He was hard and cruel with you, then? I see; I see. That is the end, Sarah—but the beginning? Is the beginning that you loved him?”

Her pale cheeks flushed; and she turned her head aside. “It is hard and humbling to confess it,” she murmured, without raising her eyes; “but you force the truth from me, uncle. I had no love to give to my husband—no love to give to any man.”

“And yet you married him! Wait! it is not for me to blame. It is for me to find out, not the bad, but the good. Yes, yes; I shall say to myself, she married him when she was poor and helpless; she married him when she should have come to Uncle Joseph instead. I shall say that to myself, and I shall pity, but I shall ask no more.”

Sarah half reached her hand out to the old man again—then suddenly pushed her chair back, and changed the position in which she was sitting. “It is true that I was poor,” she said, looking about her in confusion, and speaking with difficulty. “But you are so kind and so good, I cannot accept the excuse that your forbearance makes for me. I did not marry him because I was poor, but—” She stopped, clasped her hands together, and pushed her chair back still farther from the table.

“So! so!” said the old man, noticing her confusion. “We will talk about it no more.”

“I had no excuse of love; I had no excuse of poverty,” she said, with a sudden burst of bitterness and despair. “Uncle Joseph, I married him because I was too weak to persist in saying No! The curse of weakness and fear has followed me all the days of my life! I said No to him once. I said No to him twice. Oh, uncle, if I could only have said it for the third time! But he followed me, he frightened me, he took away from me all the little will of my own that I had. He made me speak as he wished me to speak, and go where he wished me to go. No, no, no—don’t come to me, uncle; don’t say anything. He is gone; he is dead—I have got my release; I have given my pardon! Oh, if I could only go away and hide somewhere! All people’s eyes seem to look through me; all people’s words seem to threaten me. My heart has been weary ever since I was a young woman; and all these long, long years it has never got any rest. Hush! the man in the shop—I forgot the man in the shop. He will hear us; let us talk in a whisper. What made me break out so? I’m always wrong. Oh me! I’m wrong when I speak; I’m wrong when I say nothing; wherever I go and whatever I do, I’m not like other people. I seem never to have grown up in my mind since I was a little child. Hark! the man in the shop is moving—has he heard me? Oh, Uncle Joseph! do you think he has heard me?”

Looking hardly less startled than his niece, Uncle Joseph assured her that the door was solid, that the man’s place in the shop was at some distance from it, and that it was impossible, even if he heard voices in the parlour, that he could also distinguish any words that were spoken in it.

“You are sure of that?” she whispered, hurriedly. “Yes, yes, you are sure of that, or you would not have told me so, would you? We may go on talking now. Not about my married life: that is buried and past. Say that I had some years of sorrow and suffering, which I deserved—say that I had other years of quiet, when I was living in service with masters and mistresses who were often kind to me when my fellow-servants were not—say just that much about my life, and it is saying enough. The trouble that I am in now, the trouble that brings me to you, goes back further than the years we have been talking about—goes back, back, back, Uncle Joseph, to the distant day when we last met.”

“Goes back all through the sixteen years!” exclaimed the old man, incredulously. “Goes back, Sarah, even to the Long Ago!”

“Even to that time. Uncle, you remember where I was living, and what had happened to me, when—”

“When you came here in secret? When you asked me to hide you? That was the same week, Sarah, when your mistress died; your mistress who lived away west in the old house. You were frightened, then—pale and frightened as I see you now.”

“As everyone sees me! People are always staring at me; always thinking that I am nervous, always pitying me for being ill.”

Saying these words with a sudden fretfulness, she lifted the teacup by her side to her lips, drained it of its contents at a draught, and pushed it across the table to be filled again. “I have come all over thirsty and hot,” she whispered. “More tea, Uncle Joseph—more tea.”

“It is cold,” said the old man. “Wait till I ask for hot water.”

“No!” she exclaimed, stopping him as he was about to rise. “Give it me cold; I like it cold. Let nobody else come in—I can’t speak if anybody else comes in.” She drew her chair close to her uncle’s, and went on: “You have not forgotten how frightened I was in that bygone time—do you remember why I was ...

Table of contents

• CONTENTS
• Book I
• Book II
• Book III
• Book IV
• Book V
• Book VI
• About the Author
• About the Series
• Copyright
• About the Publisher