Мертвая комната. Уровень 2 / The Dead Secret. Уилки Коллинз

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      “Write!” Mrs. Treverton cried, with an awful mimicry of her old stage voice. “Write!”

      Sarah waited for the next command. Some minutes elapsed before Mrs. Treverton spoke again. She began to dictate in quiet, deliberate, determined tones. Sarah's tears fell fast; her lips murmured fragments of sentences, expressions of penitence, and exclamations of fear. She nearly filled the first two sides of the paper. Then Mrs. Treverton paused, and signed her name at the end of it

      “Sign!” she cried. “Sign 'Sarah Leeson, witness.' No! Write 'Accomplice.' Sign, I insist on it! Sign as I tell you.”

      Sarah obeyed. Mrs. Treverton took the paper from her and pointed to it solemnly.

      “You will give this to your master,” she said, “when I am dead. You will answer any questions he puts to you. Promise me that you will give the paper to your master. Oh no! I won't trust your promise. I'll have your oath. Get the Bible. Get it, or I shall not rest in my grave. Get it, or I will come to you from the other world. Yes, yes – the Bible the clergyman used. The clergyman – a poor weak man. I frightened him, Sarah. He said, 'Are you at peace with all the world?' and I said, 'All but one[5].' You know who.”

      “The Captain's brother? Oh, don't die at enmity with anybody. Don't die at enmity even with him,” pleaded Sarah.

      “The clergyman said so too,” murmured Mrs. Treverton. “'You must forgive him,' the clergyman said. And I said, 'No, I forgive all the world, but not my husband's brother.' The clergyman will pray for me and come back. Will he come back?”

      “Yes, yes,” answered Sarah. “He is a good man – he will come back – and oh! tell him that you forgive the Captain's brother! Those vile words he spoke of you when you were married will come home to him some day. Forgive him-forgive him before you die!”

      Sarah attempted to remove the Bible softly out of her mistress's sight. The action attracted Mrs. Treverton's attention.

      “Stop!” she cried.

      She caught at Sarah's hand with a great effort, placed it on the Bible, and held it there.

      “Ah!” she said, “Sarah; you can't deceive me even yet.”

      She stopped again, smiled a little, whispered to herself rapidly,

      “Wait, wait, wait!” then added aloud, with the old stage voice and the old stage gesture:

      “No! I won't trust you on your promise. I'll have your oath. Kneel down. These are my last words in this world – disobey them if you dare!”

      Sarah dropped on her knees by the bed.

      “Swear!” said Mrs. Treverton. “Swear that you will not destroy this paper after I am dead.”

      Sarah answered faintly,

      “I swear it.”

      “Swear that you will not take this paper away with you, if you leave the house, after I am dead.”

      Again Sarah said,

      “I swear it.”

      “Swear!” Mrs. Treverton began for the third time.

      Her voice failed.

      “I haven't done – you must swear – close, close, come close – your master – swear to give it – ”

      The last words died away very softly. The lips closed. Sarah sprang to the door, opened it, and called for help. Then she ran back to the bedside, caught up the sheet of the paper, and hid it in her bosom.

      The doctor entered the room. He spoke first to the servant who followed him.

      “Go to your master,” he said, “and beg him to wait in his own room until I can come and speak to him.”

      Then he said to Sarah,

      “Let me recommend you to leave us for a little while.”

      He touched Sarah on the arm. She went out.

      Chapter II

      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 СКАЧАТЬ