Читать книгу Мертвая комната. Уровень 2 / The Dead Secret - Уилки Коллинз, Elizabeth Cleghorn - Страница 3

Sarah Leeson turned the key of her bedroom door, and took the sheet of the paper from its place of concealment in her bosom. She placed it on her little dressing-table, and fixed her eyes eagerly on the lines. The characters were clear. There was the address: “To my Husband;” there the first line beneath, in her dead mistress's handwriting; there the lines that followed, with the signature at the end – Mrs. Treverton's first, and then her own. Sarah Leeson read the few lines as a condemned prisoner.

The oath! Sarah pushed away the paper and rose to her feet. Then she began to talk to herself. She repeated incessantly the phrases:

“How can I give him the letter? Such a good master; so kind to us all. Why did she die, and leave it all to me? I can't bear it alone; it's too much for me!”

Then she read aloud the address again,

“To my Husband… Why give it to him at all? Why not let the secret die with her and die with me? Why must he know it? He won't know it!”

She opened the door and glided into the passage. She stopped there for a moment and hesitated a little, then whispered, “I must! I must!”

She descended very slowly. The door of Mrs. Treverton's bedroom was opened, when she knocked at it.

“I want to speak to my master.”

“Look for him somewhere else. He was here half an hour ago,” said the nurse.

“Do you know where he is?”

“No. I mind my own business[6].”

With that discourteous answer, the nurse closed the door. Sarah looked toward the inner end of the passage. The door of the nursery was situated there. It was ajar. She went in immediately, and saw that the candle-light came from an inner room. It was usually occupied by the nursery-maid and by the only child of the house of Treverton – a little girl named Rosamond, aged, at that time, nearly five years.

“Can he be there? In that room!”

Sarah raised the letter to the bosom of her dress, and hid it for the second time. Then she came toward the inner room. The first object that attracted her attention in the child's bedroom was the figure of the nurse-maid. The nurse-maid was asleep, in an easy-chair by the window.

Then Sarah saw her master, by the side of the child's crib. Little Rosamond was awake, and was standing up in bed with her arms round her father's neck. One of her hands held over his shoulder the doll, the other was twined gently in his hair.

The tears stood thick in Sarah's eyes. She lingered by the raised curtain. Then Captain Treverton said soothingly to the child:

“Hush, Rosie, dear! Hush, my love! Don't cry anymore for poor mamma. Think of poor papa, and try to comfort him.”

Sarah Leeson turned and ran into the passage. She descended to the kitchen. There one of the servants, with a face of astonishment and alarm, asked:

“What is the matter?”

“I'm ill – I'm faint – I want air,” she answered. “Open the garden door, and let me out[7].”

The man obeyed doubtfully.

“She is very strange,” he said, when he rejoined his fellow-servant. “Now our mistress is dead, she will have to find another place, I suppose.”