The Dead Secret by Wilkie Collins (manga ereader TXT) 📕

looked at Betsey, Betsey looked at the ground. All three stood stock-still; all three seemed equally incapable of walking across the hall. If the science of physiognomy be not an entire delusion, the cause of this amazing unanimity was legibly written in their faces; in other words, they all three looked equally afraid of the ghost.

“Water, I say! Water!” reiterated Uncle Joseph, shaking his fist at them. “She is in a faint! Are you three at the door there, and not one heart of mercy among you? Water! water! water! Must I scream myself into fits before I can make you hear?”

“I’ll get the water, ma’am,” said Betsey, “if you or Mr. Munder will please to take it from here to the top of the stairs.”

She ran to the kitchen, and came back with a glass of water, which she offered, with a respectful courtesy, first to the housekeeper, and then to the steward.

“How dare you ask us to carry things for you?” said Mrs. Pentreath, backing out of the doorway.

“Yes! how dare you ask us?” added Mr. Munder, backing after Mrs. Pentreath.

“Water!” shouted the old man for the third time. He drew his niece backward a little, so that she could be supported against the wall behind her. “Water! or I trample down this dungeon of a place about your ears!” he shouted, stamping with impatience and rage.

“If you please, Sir, are you sure it’s really the lady who is up there?” asked Betsey, advancing a few paces tremulously with the glass of water.

“Am I sure?” exclaimed Uncle Joseph, descending the stairs to meet her. “What fool’s question is this? Who should it be?”

“The ghost, Sir,” said Betsey, advancing more and more slowly. “The ghost of the north rooms.”

Uncle Joseph met her a few yards in advance of the foot of the stairs, took the glass of water from her with a gesture of contempt, and hastened back to his niece. As Betsey turned to effect her retreat, the bunch of keys lying on the pavement below the landing caught her eye. After a little hesitation she mustered courage enough to pick them up, and then ran with them out of the hall as fast as her feet could carry her.

Meanwhile Uncle Joseph was moistening his niece’s lips with the water, and sprinkling it over her forehead. After a while her breath began to come and go slowly, in faint sighs, the muscles of her face moved a little, and she feebly opened her eyes. They fixed affrightedly on the old man, without any expression of recognition. He made her drink a little water, and spoke to her gently, and so brought her back at last to herself. Her first words were, “Don’t leave me.” Her first action, when she was able to move, was the action of crouching closer to him.

“No fear, my child,” he said, soothingly; “I will keep by you. Tell me, Sarah, what has made you faint? What has frightened you so?”

“Oh, don’t ask me! For God’s sake, don’t ask me!”

“There, there! I shall say nothing, then. Another mouthful of water? A little mouthful more?”

“Help me up, uncle; help me to try if I can stand.”

“Not yet⁠—not quite yet; patience for a little longer.”

“Oh, help me! help me! I want to get away from the sight of those doors. If I can only go as far as the bottom of the stairs I shall be better.”

“So, so,” said Uncle Joseph, assisting her to rise. “Wait now, and feel your feet on the ground. Lean on me, lean hard, lean heavy. Though I am only a light and a little man, I am solid as a rock. Have you been into the room?” he added, in a whisper. “Have you got the letter?”

She sighed bitterly, and laid her head on his shoulder with a weary despair.

“Why, Sarah! Sarah!” he exclaimed. “Have you been all this time away, and not got into the room yet?”

She raised her head as suddenly as she had laid it down, shuddered, and tried feebly to draw him toward the stairs. “I shall never see the Myrtle Room again⁠—never, never, never more!” she said. “Let us go; I can walk; I am strong now. Uncle Joseph, if you love me, take me away from this house; away anywhere, so long as we are in the free air and the daylight again; anywhere, so long as we are out of sight of Porthgenna Tower.”

Elevating his eyebrows in astonishment, but considerately refraining from asking any more questions, Uncle Joseph assisted his niece to descend the stairs. She was still so weak that she was obliged to pause on gaining the bottom of them to recover her strength. Seeing this, and feeling, as he led her afterward across the hall, that she leaned more and more heavily on his arm at every fresh step, the old man, on arriving within speaking distance of Mr. Munder and Mrs. Pentreath, asked the housekeeper if she possessed any restorative drops which she would allow him to administer to his niece.

Mrs. Pentreath’s reply in the affirmative, though not very graciously spoken, was accompanied by an alacrity of action which showed that she was heartily rejoiced to take the first fair excuse for returning to the inhabited quarter of the house. Muttering something about showing the way to the place where the medicine-chest was kept, she immediately retraced her steps along the passage to her own room; while Uncle Joseph, disregarding all Sarah’s whispered assurances that she was well enough to depart without another moment of delay, followed her silently, leading his niece.

Mr. Munder, shaking his head, and looking woefully disconcerted, waited behind to lock the door of communication. When he had done this, and had given the keys to Betsey to carry back to their appointed place, he, in his turn, retired from the scene at a pace indecorously approaching to something like a run. On getting well away from the north hall, however, he regained his self-possession wonderfully. He abruptly slackened his pace, collected his scattered