The Dead Secret quotes

so startling as to make it no paradox to say that she would have looked most natural, most like herself, if her hair had been dyed.

In her case, Art would have seemed to be the truth, because Nature looked like falsehood.

What shock had stricken her hair, in the very maturity of its luxuriance, with the hue of an unnatural old age? Was it a serious illness, or a dreadful grief, that had turned her gray in the prime of her womanhood?

Mrs. Treverton’s bedchamber was a large, lofty room, situated in the western front of the house, and consequently overlooking the sea-view.

The night-light burning by the bedside displayed rather than dispelled the darkness in the corners of the room.

The bed was of the old-fashioned pattern, with heavy hangings and thick curtains drawn all round it. Of the other objects in the chamber, only those of the largest and most solid kind were prominent enough to be tolerably visible in the dim light.

Mr. Phippen was a man of some little character, and he lived with great distinction in the estimation of his friends on the reputation of being A Martyr to Dyspepsia.

Wherever Mr. Phippen went, the woes of Mr. Phippen’s stomach went with him.

He dieted himself publicly, and physicked himself publicly. He was so intensely occupied with himself and his maladies, that he would let a chance acquaintance into the secret of the condition of his tongue at five minutes’ notice;

and possessed of an inexhaustible vocabulary of commonplace talk, which dribbled placidly out of her lips whenever it was called for, always in the same quantity, and always of the same quality, at every hour in the day, and through every change in the seasons.

Miss Sturch never laughed, and never cried, but took the safe middle course of smiling perpetually.

She smiled when she came down on a morning in January, and said it was very cold. She smiled when she came down on a morning in July, and said it was very hot.

he never started disagreeable theories about people’s future destinies in the pulpit, never quarreled with anybody out of the pulpit, never buttoned up his pockets when the necessities of his poor brethren (Dissenters included) pleaded with him to open them.

His course through the world was a steady march along the high and dry middle of a safe turnpike-road.

The serpentine side-paths of controversy might open as alluringly as they pleased on his right hand and on his left, but he kept on his way sturdily, and never regarded them.

Here is a case of the most romantic love-match, which is also the marriage, of all others, that the parents on both sides had the strongest worldly interest in promoting.

Shakespeare may say what he pleases, the course of true love does run smooth sometimes.

Never was the marriage service performed to better purpose than when I read it this morning. The estate being entailed on Leonard, Captain Treverton’s daughter now goes back, in the capacity of mistress, to the house and lands which her father sold.

“I was going to say, Rosamond, that I have observed one curious thing about myself since I lost my sight.

I dream a great deal, but I never dream of myself as a blind man.

I often visit in my dreams places that I saw and people whom I knew when I had my sight, and though I feel as much myself, at those visionary times, as I am now when I am wide-awake, I never by any chance feel …

“Do I remember, Rosamond!

My last look at your face has painted your portrait in my memory in colors that can never change.

I have many pictures in my mind, but your picture is the clearest and brightest of all.”

When years have passed over us both, Lenny, and when time begins to set his mark on me, you will not say to yourself, ‘My Rosamond is beginning to fade; she grows less and less like what she was when I married her.’

I shall never grow old, love, for you! The bright young picture in your mind will still be my picture when my cheeks are wrinkled and my hair is gray.

”

… proof of the accuracy of that definition of man which describes him as an imitative animal, than is to be found in the fact that the verdict of humanity is always against any individual member of the species who presumes to differ from the rest.

A man is one of a flock, and his wool must be of the general color.

He must drink when the rest drink, and graze where the rest graze.

the learned schoolmaster genteelly varied the phrase, and described him as an eccentric boy; the college tutor, harping on the same string, facetiously likened his head to a roof, and said there was a slate loose in it.

When a slate is loose, if nobody fixes it in time, it ends by falling off. In the roof of a house we view that consequence as a necessary result of neglect; in the roof of a man’s head we are generally very much shocked and surprised by it.

Overlooked in some directions and misdirected in others, Andrew’s uncouth capacities for good tried helplessly to shape themselves. The better side of his eccentricity took the form of friendship.

“My only brother has quarreled with me for the sake of a play-actress. What am I to expect of the rest of mankind after that? I have suffered twice for my belief in others—I will never suffer a third time.

The wise man is the man who does not disturb his heart at its natural occupation of pumping blood through his body.

I have gathered my experience abroad and at home, and have learned enough to see through the delusions of life which look like realities to other men’s eyes. My business in this world is to eat, drink, sleep, and die.

Treverton in every direction on his own ground. Shrowl’s was the harshest voice; Shrowl’s were the bitterest sayings; and Shrowl’s was the longest beard.

The surest of all retributions is the retribution that lies in wait for a man who boasts.

Mr. Treverton was rashly given to boasting of his independence, and when retribution overtook him it assumed a personal form, and bore the name of Shrowl.

“On principle,” repeated Mr. Treverton. “Rich men who leave money behind them are the farmers who raise the crop of human wickedness.

When a man has any spark of generosity in his nature, if you want to put it out, leave him a legacy.

When a man is bad, if you want to make him worse, leave him a legacy.

It struck Mr. Orridge that he ought to have been consulted before a nurse of his recommending was dismissed from her situation at a moment’s notice. Was Mr. Frankland presuming upon his position as a gentleman of fortune?

The power of wealth may do much with impunity, but it is not privileged to offer any practical contradictions to a man’s good opinion of himself.

Never had the doctor thought more disrespectfully of rank and riches; never had he been conscious of reflecting on republican principles with such absolute impartiality, as when he now followed the waiter in sullen silence to Mr. Frankland’s room.

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?”

“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!

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;

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;

“In that corner. Let us have candles.

I don’t like the darkness when it gathers in corners and creeps along walls.

”

Tell me, uncle, have you ever felt the cold steal round and round the roots of your hair, and crawl bit by bit down your back? I have felt that even in the summer.

I have been out of doors, alone on a wide heath, in the heat and brightness of noon, and have felt as if chilly fingers were touching me⁠—chilly, damp, softly creeping fingers.

It says in the New Testament that the dead came once out of their graves, and went into the holy city. The dead! Have they rested, rested always, rested forever, since that time?”

And when I did light them it was worse. Oh, I don’t know how I did it! I don’t know why I did it! I could have torn my tongue out for saying the words, and still I said them.

Other people can think for the best; other people can act for the best; other people have had a heavy weight laid on their minds, and have not dropped under it as I have.

Help me, uncle, for the sake of old times when we were happy—help me with a word of advice.”

to help me to grow old quietly and resignedly, if it is God’s will that I should live out my years.

Oh, how happy people must be who have all the courage they want; who are quick and clever, and have their wits about them!

You are readier than I am, uncle; you said last night that you would think about how to advise me for the best—what did your thoughts end in? You will make me so much easier if you will only tell me that.”

… of sorrow, such years of suffering, such years of change, counted by the pulses of the living heart!—had passed over the dead tranquillity of Porthgenna, and had altered it as little as if they had all been contained within the lapse of a single day!

The moments when the spirit within us is most deeply stirred are almost invariably the moments also when its outward manifestations are hardest to detect.

Our own thoughts rise above us; our own feelings lie deeper than we can reach. How seldom words can help us, when their help is most wanted! How often our tears are dried up when we most long for them to relieve us!

The moments when the spirit within us is most deeply stirred are almost invariably the moments also when its outward manifestations are hardest to detect.

Our own thoughts rise above us; our own feelings lie deeper than we can reach.

How seldom words can help us, when their help is most wanted! How often our tears are dried up when we most long for them to relieve us! Was there ever a strong emotion in this world that could adequately express its own strength?

The moments when the spirit within us is most deeply stirred are almost invariably the moments also when its outward manifestations are hardest to detect. Our own thoughts rise above us; our own feelings lie deeper than we can reach.

How seldom words can help us, when their help is most wanted!

How often our tears are dried up when we most long for them to relieve us! Was there ever a strong emotion in this world that could adequately express its own strength?

… the old family pictures, which she had seen bulging out of their frames in the past time when she hid the letter, had, for the most part, rotted away from them now, and lay in great black ragged strips on the floor of the hall.

Islands and continents of damp spread like the map of some strange region over the lofty vaulted ceiling.

Cobwebs, heavy with dust, hung down in festoons from broken cornices. Dirt stains lay on the stone pavement, like gross reflections of the damp stains on the ceiling.

The broad flight of stairs leading up to the open landing before the rooms of the first floor had sunk down bodily toward one side. The banisters which protected the outer edge of the landing were broken away into ragged gaps.

The light of day was stained, the air of heaven was stilled, the sounds of earth were silenced in the north hall.

Silenced? Were all sounds silenced? Or was there something stirring that just touched the sense of hearing, that just deepened the dismal stillness, and no more?

Like the vast majority of densely stupid men, he felt intense pleasure in hearing himself talk, and he now discerned such an opportunity of indulging in that luxury, after the events that had just happened in the house, as he seldom enjoyed.

There is only one kind of speaker who is quite certain never to break down under any stress of circumstances⁠—the man whose capability of talking does not include any dangerous underlying capacity for knowing what he means.

Among this favored order of natural orators, Mr. Munder occupied a prominent rank—and he was now vindictively resolved to exercise his abilities on the two strangers, under pretense of asking for an explanation of their conduct, before he could suffer them to quit the house.

“I say again,” repeated the old man, “shut it against us, if you dare. The laws and customs of your country, Sir, have made me an Englishman.

If you can talk into one ear of a magistrate, I can talk into the other.

If he must listen to you, a citizen of this country, he must listen to me, a citizen of this country also. Say the word, if you please. Do you accuse? or do you threaten? or do you shut the door?”

“Don’t be sorry for me, uncle,” she said, stopping, and gently brushing away with her hand some specks of dust that lay on the collar of his coat. “

I have suffered so much and suffered so long, that the heaviest disappointments pass lightly over me now.

”

“The day when I shall have no more disappointments, uncle, is not far off now. Let me wait a little longer, and endure a little longer: I have learned to be patient, and to hope for nothing.

Fearing and failing, fearing and failing⁠—that has been my life ever since I was a young woman⁠—the life I have become used to by this time.

If you are surprised, as I know you must be, at my not possessing myself of the letter, when I had the keys of the Myrtle Room in my hand, and when no one was near to stop me, remember the history of my life, …

“Nobody that we can see,” answered Sarah. “

But I distrust the very stones by the roadside.

Let us look back often, uncle, before we allow ourselves to feel secure. The more I think of it, the more I dread the snare that is laid for us by those people at Porthgenna Tower.”

“I shall never be stronger than I am now.

Don’t set my own heart against me! It is hard enough to go without that.

”

The chain that governed the action of the machinery had all run out;

Mozart’s farewell song was silenced on a sudden, like a voice that had broken down.

The old man started, looked earnestly at his niece, and threw the leather case over the box as if he desired to shut out the sight of it. “The music stopped so,” he whispered to himself, in his own language, “when little Joseph died!

The messenger obeyed both injunctions.

He was a meek, modest, elderly man; and when Nature mixed up the ingredients of his disposition, the capability of resenting injuries was not among them.

The man with the gruff voice—or, to put it in plainer terms, the man Shrowl—picked up the letter, weighed it in his hand, looked at the address on it with an expression of contemptuous curiosity in his bull-terrier eyes, put it in his waistcoat pocket, …

The cat’s eyes were clear—yours are muddy. The cat’s nose was straight—yours is crooked. The cat’s whiskers were clean—yours are dirty. The cat’s coat fitted him—yours hangs about you like a sack.

I tell you again, Shrowl, the species to which you (and I) belong is the ugliest on the whole face of creation.

Don’t let us revolt each other by keeping in company any longer. Go away, you last, worst, infirmest freak of Nature—go away!”

Covered with dust, and scattered in all directions and positions over the floor, lay hundreds and hundreds of volumes, cast out of their packing-cases as coals are cast out of their sacks into a cellar.

Ancient books, which students would have treasured as priceless, lay in chaotic equality of neglect side by side with modern publications whose chief merit was the beauty of the binding by which they were enclosed.

Into this wilderness of scattered volumes Shrowl now wandered, fortified by the supreme self-possession of ignorance, to search resolutely for one particular book, with no other light to direct him than the faint glimmer of the two guiding words—Porthgenna Tower.

I know you think me the most provokingly obstinate man in the world, but there is reason in my obstinacy, and you will acknowledge as much when you awake tomorrow morning refreshed by a good night’s rest.

Come, let us give our anxieties a holiday.

Take me into one of the other rooms, and let me try if I can guess what it is like by touching the furniture.”

They shall always serve you—oh, always! always!—as faithfully as if they were your own. The veriest trifle of a visible thing that I look at with any interest, you shall as good as look at too.

I might have had my own little harmless secrets, dear, with another husband; but with you to have even so much as a thought in secret seems like taking the basest, the cruelest advantage of your blindness.

I do love you so, Lenny! I am so much fonder of you now than I was when we were first married—I never thought I should be, but I am.

A minute or more she breathlessly waited; and nothing appeared, nothing sounded, nothing touched her.

The silence and the solitude had their secret to keep, and kept it.

She looked round at her husband. His face, so quiet and composed at other times, expressed doubt and uneasiness now.

“I feel something like it,” he replied, uneasily. “

I feel as if the night that is always before my eyes was darker to me in this place than in any other.

Where are we standing now?”

There is a tree near me, and the leaves look as if they were all struck motionless. Away to the left, there is a peep of white sea and tawny sand quivering in the yellow heat. There are no clouds; there is no blue sky.

The mist quenches the brightness of the sunlight, and lets nothing but the fire of it through.

There is something threatening in the sky, and the earth seems to know it!”

Away to the left, there is a peep of white sea and tawny sand quivering in the yellow heat. There are no clouds; there is no blue sky. The mist quenches the brightness of the sunlight, and lets nothing but the fire of it through.

There is something threatening in the sky, and the earth seems to know it!

”

A momentary shade of vexation passed across his face; but it vanished the instant she took his hand again to lead him back to his seat. He drew her to him gently, and kissed her cheek. “You are right, Rosamond,” he said. “

The one faithful friend to me in my blindness, who never fails, is my wife.

”

“Ah, say no more! say no more!” cried Uncle Joseph, tying up his little packet of letters, with his eyes sparkling and his ruddy face all in a glow. “Enough said to bring Sarah back! enough said to make me grateful for all my life!

Oh, I am so happy, so happy, so happy⁠—my skin is too small to hold me!

” He tossed up the packet of letters into the air, caught it, kissed it, and put it back again in his pocket, all in an instant.

How nimbly the light little figure sped away out of sight! How gayly the unclouded sunlight poured down on the cheerful bustle in the street!

The whole being of the great city basked in the summer glory of the day; all its mighty pulses beat high, and all its myriad voices whispered of hope!

“True beyond a doubt,” said Leonard. “

Most strong attachments are formed between people who are unlike each other.

”

I know that if ever there was truth in man, there was truth in him; I know that he went out from this place to put the banns up, for you and for him, in the church.

Have secrets from all the world besides, Sarah, but have none from me.

Tell me, this minute—tell me the truth! Of all the lost creatures in this big, wide world, are you—?’

words are too cold for it!—Come here, come close, Uncle Joseph (I shall always call you so now); come close to me and kiss my child—her grandchild!—

Kiss him on this cheek, because it has lain nearest to my heart.

And now, go back, kind and dear old man—go back to her bedside, and say nothing but that I sent that kiss to her!”

See the fine flowers and the fruit I have bought that is nice to your eyes, and nice to your nose, and nicest of all to put into your mouth!

It is festival-time with us today, and we must make the room bright, bright, bright, all over.

And then, there is your dinner to come soon; I have seen it on the dish—a cherub among chicken-fowls!

“While I am happy with my child,” she said, “I am keeping you from yours. I, of all persons, ought to be the last to part you from each other too long.

Go back now, my love, to your husband and your child; and leave me to my grateful thoughts and my dreams of better times.

”

“My own Rosamond! I have no words to bless you that are good enough; no words to thank you that will speak as gratefully for me as they ought!

Happiness has been long in reaching me⁠—but, oh, how mercifully it has come at last!

”

“Don’t say ‘afraid.’

I would wake from the sweetest sleep that ever woman had to see your face and to hear you say ‘mother’ to me.

You have delivered me, my love, from the terror of one of my dreadful dreams. Oh, Rosamond!