The Wilkie Collins Megapack by Wilkie ` Collins

Author:Wilkie ` Collins [Collins, Wilkie `]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: mystery, detective, ghost stories, suspense, short stories
ISBN: 9781434447029
Published: 2013-02-27T16:00:00+00:00

THE FAMILY SECRET (1857)

Originally published in The National Magazine

*

Was it an Englishman or a Frenchman who first remarked that every family had a skeleton in its cupboard? I am not learned enough to know; but I reverence the observation, whoever made it. it speaks a startling truth through an appropriately grim metaphor—a truth which I have discovered by practical experience. Our family had a skeleton in the cupboard, and its name was Uncle George.

I arrived at the knowledge that this skeleton existed, and I traced it to the particular cupboard in which it was hidden, by slow degrees. I was a child when I first began to suspect that there was such a thing, and a grown man when I at last discovered that my suspicions were true.

My father was a doctor, having an excellent practice in a large country town. I have heard that he married against the wishes of his family. They could not object to my mother on the score of birth, breeding, or character—they only disliked her heartily. My grandfather, grandmother, uncles and aunts, all declared that she was a heartless, deceitful woman; all disliked her manners, her opinions, and even the expression of her face—all, with the one exception of my father’s youngest brother George.

George was the unlucky member of our family. The rest were all clever; he was slow in capacity. The rest were all remarkably handsome; he was the sort of man that no woman ever looks at twice. The rest succeeded in life; he failed. His profession was the same as my father’s; but he never got on when he started in practice for himself.

The sick poor, who could not choose, employed him, and liked him. The sick rich, who could—especially the ladies—declined to call him in, when they could get anybody else. In experience he gained greatly by his profession; in money and reputation he gained nothing.

There are very few of us, however dull and unattractive we may be to outward appearance, who have not some strong passion, some germ of what is called romance, hidden more or less deeply in our natures. All the passion and romance in the nature of my Uncle George lay in his love and admiration for my father.

He sincerely worshipped his eldest brother, as one of the noblest of human beings. When my father was engaged to be married, and when the rest of the family, as I have already mentioned, did not hesitate to express their unfavourable opinion of the disposition of his chosen wife, Uncle George, who had never ventured on differing with anyone before, to the amazement of everybody, undertook the defence of his future sister-in-law, in the most vehement and positive manner.

In his estimation, his brother’s choice was something sacred and indisputable. The lady might, and did, treat him with unconcealed contempt, laugh at his awkwardness, grow impatient at his stammering—it made no difference to Uncle George. It was enough for him that she was to be his brother’s wife.

When my

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