The Dead Secret. Wilkie Collins Collins

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,