A FORTNIGHT after Father Benwell’s discovery, Stella followed her husband one morning into his study. “Have you heard from Mr. Penrose?” she inquired.
“Yes. He will be here to-morrow.”
“To make a long visit?”
“I hope so. The longer the better.”
She looked at him with a mingled expression of surprise and reproach. “Why do you say that?” she asked. “Why do you want him so much—when you have got Me?”
Thus far, he had been sitting at his desk, resting his head on his hand, with his downcast eyes fixed on an open book. When she put her last question to him he suddenly looked up. Through the large window at his side the morning light fell on his face. The haggard look of suffering, which Stella remembered on the day when they met on the deck of the steamboat, was again visible—not softened and chastened now by the touching resignation of the bygone time, but intensified by the dogged and despairing endurance of a man weary of himself and his life. Her heart ached for him. She said, softly: “I don’t mean to reproach you.”
“Are you jealous of Penrose?” he asked, with a bitter smile.
She desperately told him the truth. “I am afraid of Penrose,” she answered.
He eyed her with a strange expression of suspicious surprise. “Why are you afraid of Penrose?”
It was no time to run the risk of irritating him. The torment of the Voice had returned in the past night. The old gnawing remorse of the fatal day of the duel had betrayed itself in the wild words that had escaped him, when he sank into a broken slumber as the morning dawned. Feeling the truest pity for him, she was still resolute to assert herself against the coming interference of Penrose. She tried her ground by a dangerous means—the means of an indirect reply.
“I think you might have told me,” she said, “that Mr. Penrose was a Catholic priest.”
He looked down again at his book. “How did you know Penrose was a Catholic priest?”
“I had only to look at the direction on your letters to him.”
“Well, and what is there to frighten you in his being a priest? You told me at the Loring’s ball that you took an interest in Penrose because I liked him.”
“I didn’t know then, Lewis, that he had concealed his profession from us. I can’t help distrusting a man who does that.”
He laughed—not very kindly. “You might as well say you distrust a man who conceals that he is an author, by writing an anonymous book. What Penrose did, he did under orders from his superior—and, moreover, he frankly owned to me that he was a priest. If you blame anybody, you had better blame me for respecting his confidence.”
She drew back from him, hurt by the tone in which he spoke to her. “I remember the time, Lewis,” she said, “when you would have been more indulgent toward my errors—even if I am wrong.”
That simple appeal touched his better nature. “I don’t mean to be hard on you, Stella,” he answered. “It is a little irritating to hear you say that you distrust the most devoted and most affectionate friend that man ever had. Why can’t I love my wife, and love my friend, too? You don’t know, when I am trying to get on with my book, how I miss the help and sympathy of Penrose. The very sound of his voice used to encourage me. Come, Stella, give me a kiss—and let us, as the children say, make it up!”
He rose from his writing-table. She met him more than half way, and pressed all her love—and perhaps a little of her fear—on his lips. He returned the kiss as warmly as it was given; and then, unhappily for both of them, he went back to the subject.
“My own love,” he said, “try to like my friend for my sake; and be tolerant of other forms of Christianity besides the form which happens to be yours.”
Her smiling lips closed; she turned from him. With the sensitive selfishness of a woman’s love, she looked on Penrose as a robber who had stolen the sympathies which should have been wholly hers. As she moved away, her quick observation noticed the open book on the desk, with notes and lines in pencil on the margin of the page. What had Romayne been reading which interested him inthatway? If he had remained silent, she would have addressed the inquiry to him openly. But he was hurt on his side by the sudden manner of her withdrawal from him. He spoke—and his tone was colder than ever.
“I won’t attempt to combat your prejudices,” he said. “But one thing I must seriously ask of you. When my friend Penrose comes here to-morrow, don’t treat him as you treated Mr. Winterfield.”
There was a momentary paleness in her face which looked like fear, but it passed away again. She confronted him firmly with steady eyes.
“Why do you refer again to that?” she asked. “Is—” (she hesitated and recovered herself)—“Is Mr. Winterfield another devoted friend of yours?”
He walked to the door, as if he could hardly trust his temper if he answered her—stopped—and, thinking better of it, turned toward her again.
“We won’t quarrel, Stella,” he rejoined; “I will only say I am sorry you don’t appreciate my forbearance. Your reception of Mr. Winterfield has lost me the friendship of a man whom I sincerely liked, and who might have assisted my literary labors. You were ill at the time, and anxious about Mrs. Eyrecourt. I respected your devotion to your mother. I remembered your telling me, when you first went away to nurse her, that your conscience accused you of having sometimes thoughtlessly neglected your mother in her days of health and good spirits, and I admired the motive of atonement which took you to her bedside. For those reasons I shrank from saying a word that might wound you. But, because I was silent, it is not the less true that you surprised and disappointed me. Don’t do it again! Whatever you may privately think of Catholic priests, I once more seriously request you not to let Penrose see it.”
He left the room.
She stood, looking after him as he closed the door, like a woman thunderstruck. Never yet had he looked at her as he looked when he spoke his last warning words. With a heavy sigh she roused herself. The vague dread with which his tone rather than his words had inspired her, strangely associated itself with the momentary curiosity which she had felt on noticing the annotated book that lay on his desk.
She snatched up the volume and looked at the open page. It contained the closing paragraphs of an eloquent attack on Protestantism, from the Roman Catholic point of view. With trembling hands she turned back to the title-page. It presented this written inscription: “To Lewis Romayne from his attached friend and servant, Arthur Penrose.”
“God help me!” she said to herself; “the priest has got between us already!”
ON the next day Penrose arrived on his visit to Romayne.
The affectionate meeting between the two men tested Stella’s self-control as it had never been tried yet. She submitted to the ordeal with the courage of a woman whose happiness depended on her outward graciousness of manner toward her husband’s friend. Her reception of Penrose, viewed as an act of refined courtesy, was beyond reproach. When she found her opportunity of leaving the room, Romayne gratefully opened the door for her. “Thank you!” he whispered, with a look which was intended to reward her.
She only bowed to him, and took refuge in her own room.
Even in trifles, a woman’s nature is degraded by the falsities of language and manner which the artificial condition of modern society exacts from her. When she yields herself to more serious deceptions, intended to protect her dearest domestic interests, the mischief is increased in proportion. Deceit, which is the natural weapon of defense used by the weak creature against the strong, then ceases to be confined within the limits assigned by the sense of self-respect and by the restraints of education. A woman in this position will descend, self-blinded, to acts of meanness which would be revolting to her if they were related of another person.
Stella had already begun the process of self-degradation by writing secretly to Winterfield. It was only to warn him of the danger of trusting Father Benwell—but it was a letter, claiming him as her accomplice in an act of deception. That morning she had received Penrose with the outward cordialities of welcome which are offered to an old and dear friend. And now, in the safe solitude of her room, she had fallen to a lower depth still. She was deliberately considering the safest means of acquainting herself with the confidential conversation which Romayne and Penrose would certainly hold when she left them together. “He will try to set my husband against me; and I have a right to know what means he uses, in my own defense.” With that thought she reconciled herself to an action which she would have despised if she had heard of it as the action of another woman.
It was a beautiful autumn day, brightened by clear sunshine, enlivened by crisp air. Stella put on her hat and went out for a stroll in the grounds.
While she was within view from the windows of the servants’ offices she walked away from the house. Turning the corner of a shrubbery, she entered a winding path, on the other side, which led back to the lawn under Romayne’s study window. Garden chairs were placed here and there. She took one of them, and seated herself—after a last moment of honorable hesitation—where she could hear the men’s voices through the open window above her.
Penrose was speaking at the time.
“Yes. Father Benwell has granted me a holiday,” he said; “but I don’t come here to be an idle man. You must allow me to employ my term of leave in the pleasantest of all ways. I mean to be your secretary again.”
Romayne sighed. “Ah, if you knew how I have missed you!”
(Stella waited, in breathless expectation, for what Penrose would say to this. Would he speak ofher?No. There was a natural tact and delicacy in him which waited for the husband to introduce the subject.)
Penrose only said, “How is the great work getting on?”
The answer was sternly spoken in one word—“Badly!”
“I am surprised to hear that, Romayne.”
“Why? Were you as innocently hopeful as I was? Did you expect my experience of married life to help me in writing my book?”
Penrose replied after a pause, speaking a little sadly. “I expected your married life to encourage you in all your highest aspirations,” he said.
(Stella turned pale with suppressed anger. He had spoken with perfect sincerity. The unhappy woman believed that he lied, for the express purpose of rousing irritation against her, in her husband’s irritable mind. She listened anxiously for Romayne’s answer.)
He made no answer. Penrose changed the subject. “You are not looking very well,” he gently resumed. “I am afraid your health has interfered with your work. Have you had any return—?”
It was still one of the characteristics of Romayne’s nervous irritability that he disliked to hear the terrible delusion of the Voice referred to in words. “Yes,” he interposed bitterly, “I have heard it again and again. My right hand is as red as ever, Penrose, with the blood of a fellow-creature. Another destruction of my illusions when I married!”
“Romayne! I don’t like to hear you speak of your marriage in that way.”
“Oh, very well. Let us go back to my book. Perhaps I shall get on better with it now you are here to help me. My ambition to make a name in the world has never taken so strong a hold on me (I don’t know why, unless other disappointments have had something to do with it) as at this time, when I find I can’t give my mind to my work. We will make a last effort together, my friend! If it fails, we will put my manuscripts into the fire, and I will try some other career. Politics are open to me. Through politics, I might make my mark in diplomacy. There is something in directing the destinies of nations wonderfully attractive to me in my present state of feeling. I hate the idea of being indebted for my position in the world, like the veriest fool living, to the accidents of birth and fortune. Areyoucontent with the obscure life that you lead? Did you not envy that priest (he is no older than I am) who was sent the other day as the Pope’s ambassador to Portugal?”
Penrose spoke out at last without hesitation. “You are in a thoroughly unwholesome state of mind,” he said.
Romayne laughed recklessly. “When was I ever in a healthy state of mind?” he asked.
Penrose passed the interruption over without notice. “If I am to do you any good,” he resumed, “I must know what is really the matter with you. The very last question that I ought to put, and that I wish to put, is the question which you force me to ask.”
“What is it?”
“When you speak of your married life,” said Penrose, “your tone is the tone of a disappointed man. Have you any serious reason to complain of Mrs. Romayne?”
(Stella rose to her feet, in her eagerness to hear what her husband’s answer would be.)
“Serious reason?” Romayne repeated. “How can such an idea have entered your head? I only complain of irritating trifles now and then. Even the best of women is not perfect. It’s hard to expect it from any of them.”
(The interpretation of this reply depended entirely on the tone in which it was spoken. What was the animating spirit in this case? Irony or Indulgence? Stella was ignorant of the indirect methods of irritation, by means of which Father Benwell had encouraged Romayne’s doubts of his wife’s motive for the reception of Winterfield. Her husband’s tone, expressing this state of mind, was new to her. She sat down again, divided between hope and fear, waiting to hear more. The next words, spoken by Penrose, astounded her. The priest, the Jesuit, the wily spiritual intruder between man and wife, actually took the wife’s side!)
“Romayne,” he proceeded quietly, “I want you to be happy.”
“How am I to be happy?”
“I will try and tell you. I believe your wife to be a good woman. I believe she loves you. There is something in her face that speaks for her—even to an inexperienced person like myself. Don’t be impatient with her! Put away from you that besetting temptation to speak in irony—it is so easy to take that tone, and sometimes so cruel. I am only a looker-on, I know. Domestic happiness can never be the happiness ofmylife. But I have observed my fellow-creatures of all degrees—and this, I tell you, is the result. The largest number of happy men are the husbands and fathers. Yes; I admit that they have terrible anxieties—but they are fortified by unfailing compensations and encouragements. Only the other day I met with a man who had suffered the loss of fortune and, worse still, the loss of health. He endured those afflictions so calmly that he surprised me. ‘What is the secret of your philosophy?’ I asked. He answered, ‘I can bear anything while I have my wife and my children.’ Think of that, and judge for yourself how much happiness you may have left yet ungathered in your married life.”
(Those words touched Stella’s higher nature, as the dew touches the thirsty ground. Surely they were nobly spoken! How would her husband receive them?)
“I must think with your mind, Penrose, before I can do what you ask of me. Is there any method of transformation by which I can change natures with you?” That was all he said—and he said it despondingly.
Penrose understood, and felt for him.
“If there is anything in my nature, worthy to be set as an example to you,” he replied, “you know to what blessed influence I owe self-discipline and serenity of mind. Remember what I said when I left you in London, to go back to my friendless life. I told you that I found, in the Faith I held, the one sufficient consolation which helped me to bear my lot. And—if there came a time of sorrow in the future—I entreated you to remember what I had said. Have you remembered it?”
“Look at the book here on my desk—look at the other books, within easy reach, on that table—are you satisfied?”
“More than satisfied. Tell me—do you feel nearer to an understanding of the Faith to which I have tried to convert you?”
There was a pause. “Say that I do feel nearer,” Romayne resumed—“say that some of my objections are removed—are you really as eager as ever to make a Catholic of me, now that I am a married man?”
“I am even more eager,” Penrose answered. “I have always believed that your one sure way to happiness lay through your conversion. Now, when I know, from what I have seen and heard in this room, that you are not reconciled, as you should be, to your new life, I am doubly confined in my belief. As God is my witness, I speak sincerely. Hesitate no longer! Be converted, and be happy.”
“Have you not forgotten something, Penrose?”
“What have I forgotten?”
“A serious consideration, perhaps. I have a Protestant wife.”
“I have borne that in mind, Romayne, throughout our conversation.”
“And you still say—what you have just said?”
“With my whole heart, I say it! Be converted, and be happy. Be happy, and you will be a good husband. I speak in your wife ‘s interest as well as in yours. People who are happy in each other’s society, will yield a little on either side, even on questions of religious belief. And perhaps there may follow a more profitable result still. So far as I have observed, a good husband’s example is gladly followed by his wife. Don’t think that I am trying to persuade you against your will! I am only telling you, in my own justification, from what motives of love for yourself, and of true interest in your welfare, I speak. You implied just now that you had still some objections left. If I can remove them—well and good. If I fail—if you cannot act on purely conscientious conviction—I not only advise, I entreat you, to remain as you are. I shall be the first to acknowledge that you have done right.”
(This moderation of tone would appeal irresistibly, as Stella well knew, to her husband’s ready appreciation of those good qualities in others which he did not himself possess. Once more her suspicion wronged Penrose. Had he his own interested motives for pleading her cause? At the bare thought of it, she left her chair and, standing under the window, boldly interrupted the conversation by calling to Romayne.)
“Lewis!” she cried, “why do you stay indoors on this beautiful day? I am sure Mr. Penrose would like a walk in the grounds.”
Penrose appeared alone at the window. “You are quite right, Mrs. Romayne,” he said; “we will join you directly.”
In a few minutes he turned the corner of the house, and met Stella on the lawn. Romayne was not with him. “Is my husband not coming with us?” she asked. “He will follow us,” Penrose answered. “I believe he has some letters to write.”
Stella looked at him, suspecting some underhand exercise of influence on her husband.
If she had been able to estimate the noble qualities in the nature of Penrose, she might have done him the justice to arrive at a truer conclusion. It was he who had asked leave (when Stella had interrupted them) to take the opportunity of speaking alone with Mrs. Romayne. He had said to his friend, “If I am wrong in my anticipation of the effect of your change of religion on your wife, let me find it out from herself. My one object is to act justly toward you and toward her. I should never forgive myself if I made mischief between you, no matter how innocent of any evil intention I might be.” Romayne had understood him. It was Stella’s misfortune ignorantly to misinterpret everything that Penrose said or did, for the all-sufficient reason that he was a Catholic priest. She had drawn the conclusion that her husband had deliberately left her alone with Penrose, to be persuaded or deluded into giving her sanction to aid the influence of the priest. “They shall find they are mistaken,” she thought to herself.
“Have I interrupted an interesting conversation?” she inquired abruptly. “When I asked you to come out, were you talking to my husband about his historical work?”
“No, Mrs. Romayne; we were not speaking at that time of the book.”
“May I ask an odd question, Mr. Penrose?”
“Certainly!”
“Are you a very zealous Catholic?”
“Pardon me. I am a priest. Surely my profession speaks for me?”
“I hope you are not trying to convert my husband?”
Penrose stopped and looked at her attentively.
“Are you strongly opposed to your husband’s conversion?” he asked.
“As strongly,” she answered, “as a woman can be.”
“By religious conviction, Mrs. Romayne?”
“No. By experience.”
Penrose started. “Is it indiscreet,” he said gently, “to inquire what your experience may have been?”
“I will tell you what my experience has been,” Stella replied. “I am ignorant of theological subtleties, and questions of doctrine are quite beyond me. But this I do know. A well-meaning and zealous Catholic shortened my father’s life, and separated me from an only sister whom I dearly loved. I see I shock you—and I daresay you think I am exaggerating?”
“I hear what you say, Mrs. Romayne, with very great pain—I don’t presume to form any opinion thus far.”
“My sad story can be told in a few words,” Stella proceeded. “When my elder sister was still a young girl, an aunt of ours (my mother’s sister) came to stay with us. She had married abroad, and she was, as I have said, a zealous Catholic. Unknown to the rest of us, she held conversations on religion with my sister—worked on the enthusiasm which was part of the girl’s nature—and accomplished her conversion. Other influences, of which I know nothing, were afterward brought to bear on my sister. She declared her intention of entering a convent. As she was under age, my father had only to interpose his authority to prevent this. She was his favorite child. He had no heart to restrain her by force—he could only try all that the kindest and best of fathers could do to persuade her to remain at home. Even after the years that have passed, I cannot trust myself to speak of it composedly. She persisted; she was as hard as stone. My aunt, when she was entreated to interfere, called her heartless obstinacy ‘a vocation.’ My poor father’s loving resistance was worn out; he slowly drew nearer and nearer to death, from the day when she left us. Let me do her justice, if I can. She has not only never regretted entering the convent—she is so happily absorbed in her religious duties that she has not the slightest wish to see her mother or me. My mother’s patience was soon worn out. The last time I went to the convent, I went by myself. I shall never go there again. She could not conceal her sense of relief when I took my leave of her. I need say no more. Arguments are thrown away on me, Mr. Penrose, after what I have seen and felt. I have no right to expect that the consideration of my happiness will influence you—but I may perhaps ask you, as a gentleman, to tell me the truth. Do you come here with the purpose of converting my husband?”
Penrose owned the truth, without an instant’s hesitation.
“I cannot take your view of your sister’s pious devotion of herself to a religious life,” he said. “But I can, and will, answer you truly. From the time when I first knew him, my dearest object has been to convert your husband to the Catholic Faith.”
Stella drew back from him, as if he had stung her, and clasped her hands in silent despair.
“But I am bound as a Christian,” he went on, “to do to others as I would they should do to me.”
She turned on him suddenly, her beautiful face radiant with hope, her hand trembling as it caught him by the arm.
“Speak plainly!” she cried.
He obeyed her to the letter.
“The happiness of my friend’s wife, Mrs. Romayne, is sacred to me for his sake. Be the good angel of your husband’s life. I abandon the purpose of converting him.”
He lifted her hand from his arm and raised it respectfully to his lips. Then, when he had bound himself by a promise that was sacred to him, the terrible influence of the priesthood shook even that brave and lofty soul. He said to himself, as he left her, “God forgive me if I have done wrong!”
TWICE Father Benwell called at Derwent’s Hotel, and twice he was informed that no news had been received there of Mr. Winterfield. At the third attempt, his constancy was rewarded. Mr. Winterfield had written, and was expected to arrive at the hotel by five o’clock.
It was then half-past four. Father Benwell decided to await the return of his friend.
He was as anxious to deliver the papers which the proprietor of the asylum had confided to him, as if he had never broken a seal or used a counterfeit to hide the betrayal of a trust. The re-sealed packet was safe in the pocket of his long black frockcoat. His own future proceedings depended, in some degree, on the course which Winterfield might take, when he had read the confession of the unhappy woman who had once been his wife.
Would he show the letter to Stella, at a private interview, as an unanswerable proof that she had cruelly wronged him? And would it in this case be desirable—if the thing could be done—so to handle circumstances as that Romayne might be present, unseen, and might discover the truth for himself? In the other event—that is to say, if Winterfield abstained from communicating the confession to Stella—the responsibility of making the necessary disclosure must remain with the priest.
Father Benwell walked softly up and down the room, looking about him with quietly-observant eye. A side table in a corner was covered with letters, waiting Winterfield’s return. Always ready for information of any sort, he even looked at the addresses on the letters.
The handwritings presented the customary variety of character. All but three of the envelopes showed the London district postmarks. Two of the other letters (addressed to Winterfield at his club) bore foreign postmarks; and one, as the altered direction showed, had been forward from Beaupark House to the hotel.
This last letter especially attracted the priest’s attention.
The address was apparently in a woman’s handwriting. And it was worthy of remark that she appeared to be the only person among Winterfield’s correspondents who was not acquainted with the address of his hotel or of his club. Who could the person be? The subtly inquiring intellect of Father Benwell amused itself by speculating even on such a trifling problem as this. He little thought that he had a personal interest in the letter. The envelope contained Stella’s warning to Winterfield to distrust no less a person than Father Benwell himself!
It was nearly half-past five before quick footsteps were audible outside. Winterfield entered the room.
“This is friendly indeed!” he said. “I expected to return to the worst of all solitudes—solitude in a hotel. You will stay and dine with me? That’s right. You must have thought I was going to settle in Paris. Do you know what has kept me so long? The most delightful theater in the world—the Opera Comique. I am so fond of the bygone school of music, Father Benwell—the flowing graceful delicious melodies of the composers who followed Mozart. One can only enjoy that music in Paris. Would you believe that I waited a week to hear Nicolo’s delightful Joconde for the second time. I was almost the only young man in the stalls. All round me were the old men who remembered the first performances of the opera, beating time with their wrinkled hands to the tunes which were associated with the happiest days of their lives. What’s that I hear? My dog! I was obliged to leave him here, and he knows I have come back!”
He flew to the door and called down the stairs to have the dog set free. The spaniel rushed into the room and leaped into his master’s outstretched arms. Winterfield returned his caresses, and kisses him as tenderly as a woman might have kissed her pet.
“Dear old fellow! it’s a shame to have left you—I won’t do it again. Father Benwell, have you many friends who would be as glad to see you asthisfriend? I haven’t one. And there are fools who talk of a dog as an inferior being to ourselves!Thiscreature’s faithful love is mine, do what I may. I might be disgraced in the estimation of every human creature I know, and he would be as true to me as ever. And look at his physical qualities. What an ugly thing, for instance—I won’t say your ear—I will say, my ear is; crumpled and wrinkled and naked. Look at the beautiful silky covering ofhisear! What are our senses of smelling and hearing compared to his? We are proud of our reason. Could we find our way back, if they shut us up in a basket, and took us to a strange place away from home? If we both want to run downstairs in a hurry, which of us is securest against breaking his neck—I on my poor two legs, or he on his four? Who is the happy mortal who goes to bed without unbuttoning, and gets up again without buttoning? Here he is, on my lap, knowing I am talking about him, and too fond of me to say to himself, ‘What a fool my master is!’”
Father Benwell listened to this rhapsody—so characteristic of the childish simplicity of the man—with an inward sense of impatience, which never once showed itself on the smiling surface of his face.
He had decided not to mention the papers in his pocket until some circumstance occurred which might appear to remind him naturally that he had such things about him. If he showed any anxiety to produce the envelope, he might expose himself to the suspicion of having some knowledge of the contents. When would Winterfield notice the side table, and open his letters?
The tick-tick of the clock on the mantel-piece steadily registered the progress of time, and Winterfield’s fantastic attentions were still lavished on his dog.
Even Father Benwell’s patience was sorely tried when the good country gentleman proceeded to mention not only the spaniel’s name, but the occasion which had suggested it. “We call him Traveler, and I will tell you why. When he was only a puppy he strayed into the garden at Beaupark, so weary and footsore that we concluded he had come to us from a great distance. We advertised him, but he was never claimed—and here he is! If you don’t object, we will give Traveler a treat to-day. He shall have dinner with us.”
Perfectly understanding those last words, the dog jumped off his master’s lap, and actually forwarded the views of Father Benwell in less than a minute more. Scampering round and round the room, as an appropriate expression of happiness, he came into collision with the side table and directed Winterfield’s attention to the letters by scattering them on the floor.
Father Benwell rose politely, to assist in picking up the prostrate correspondence. But Traveler was beforehand with him. Warning the priest, with a low growl, not to interfere with another person’s business, the dog picked up the letters in his mouth, and carried them by installments to his master’s feet. Even then, the exasperating Winterfield went no further than patting Traveler. Father Benwell’s endurance reached its limits. “Pray don’t stand on ceremony with me,” he said. “I will look at the newspaper while you read your letters.”
Winterfield carelessly gathered the letters together, tossed them on the dining table at his side, and took the uppermost one of the little heap.
Fate was certainly against the priest on that evening. The first letter that Winterfield opened led him off to another subject of conversation before he had read it to the end. Father Benwell’s hand, already in his coat pocket, appeared again—empty.
“Here’s a proposal to me to go into Parliament,” said the Squire. “What do you think of representative institutions, Father Benwell? To my mind, representative institutions are on their last legs. Honorable Members vote away more of our money every year. They have no alternative between suspending liberty of speech, or sitting helpless while half a dozen impudent idiots stop the progress of legislation from motives of the meanest kind. And they are not even sensitive enough to the national honor to pass a social law among themselves which makes it as disgraceful in a gentleman to buy a seat by bribery as to cheat at cards. I declare I think the card-sharper the least degraded person of the two.Hedoesn’t encourage his inferiors to be false to a public trust. In short, my dear sir, everything wears out in this world—and why should the House of Commons be an exception to the rule?”
He picked up the next letter from the heap. As he looked at the address, his face changed. The smile left his lips, the gayety died out of his eyes. Traveler, entreating for more notice with impatient forepaws applied to his master’s knees, saw the alteration, and dropped into a respectfully recumbent position. Father Benwell glanced sidelong off the columns of the newspaper, and waited for events with all the discretion, and none of the good faith, of the dog.
“Forwarded from Beaupark,” Winterfield said to himself. He opened the letter—read it carefully to the end—thought over it—and read it again.
“Father Benwell!” he said suddenly.
The priest put down the newspaper. For a few moments more nothing was audible but the steady tick-tick of the clock.
“We have not been very long acquainted,” Winterfield resumed. “But our association has been a pleasant one, and I think I owe to you the duty of a friend. I don’t belong to your Church; but I hope you will believe me when I say that ignorant prejudice against the Catholic priesthood is not one ofmyprejudices.”
Father Benwell bowed, in silence.
“You are mentioned,” Winterfield proceeded, “in the letter which I have just read.”
“Are you at liberty to tell me the name of your correspondent?” Father Benwell asked.
“I am not at liberty to do that. But I think it due to you, and to myself, to tell you what the substance of the letter is. The writer warns me to be careful in my intercourse with you. Your object (I am told) is to make yourself acquainted with events in my past life, and you have some motive which my correspondent has thus far failed to discover. I speak plainly, but I beg you to understand that I also speak impartially. I condemn no man unheard—least of all, a man whom I have had the honor of receiving under my own roof.”
He spoke with a certain simple dignity. With equal dignity, Father Benwell answered. It is needless to say that he now knew Winterfield’s correspondent to be Romayne’s wife.
“Let me sincerely thank you, Mr. Winterfield, for a candor which does honor to us both,” he said. “You will hardly expect me—if I may use such an expression—to condescend to justify myself against an accusation which is an anonymous accusation so far as I am concerned. I prefer to meet that letter by a plain proof; and I leave you to judge whether I am still worthy of the friendship to which you have so kindly alluded.”
With this preface he briefly related the circumstances under which he had become possessed of the packet, and then handed it to Winterfield—with the seal uppermost.
“Decide for yourself,” he concluded, “whether a man bent on prying into your private affairs, with that letter entirely at his mercy, would have been true to the trust reposed in him.”
He rose and took his hat, ready to leave the room, if his honor was profaned by the slightest expression of distrust. Winterfield’s genial and unsuspicious nature instantly accepted the offered proof as conclusive. “Before I break the seal,” he said, “let me do you justice. Sit down again, Father Benwell, and forgive me if my sense of duty has hurried me into hurting your feelings. No man ought to know better than I do how often people misjudge and wrong each other.”
They shook hands cordially. No moral relief is more eagerly sought than relief from the pressure of a serious explanation. By common consent, they now spoke as lightly as if nothing had happened. Father Benwell set the example.
“You actually believe in a priest!” he said gayly. “We shall make a good Catholic of you yet.”
“Don’t be too sure of that,” Winterfield replied, with a touch of his quaint humor. “I respect the men who have given to humanity the inestimable blessing of quinine—to say nothing of preserving learning and civilization—but I respect still more my own liberty as a free Christian.”
“Perhaps a free thinker, Mr. Winterfield?”
“Anything you like to call it, Father Benwell, so long as itisfree.”
They both laughed. Father Benwell went back to his newspaper. Winterfield broke the seal of the envelope and took out the inclosures.
The confession was the first of the papers at which he happened to look. At the opening lines he turned pale. He read more, and his eyes filled with tears. In low broken tones he said to the priest, “You have innocently brought me most distressing news. I entreat your pardon if I ask to be left alone.”
Father Benwell said a few well-chosen words of sympathy, and immediately withdrew. The dog licked his master’s hand, hanging listlessly over the arm of the chair.
Later in the evening, a note from Winterfield was left by messenger at the priest’s lodgings. The writer announced, with renewed expressions of regret, that he would be again absent from London on the next day, but that he hoped to return to the hotel and receive his guest on the evening of the day after.
Father Benwell rightly conjectured that Winterfield’s destination was the town in which his wife had died.
His object in taking the journey was not, as the priest supposed, to address inquiries to the rector and the landlady, who had been present at the fatal illness and the death—but to justify his wife’s last expression of belief in the mercy and compassion of the man whom she had injured. On that “nameless grave,” so sadly and so humbly referred to in the confession, he had resolved to place a simple stone cross, giving to her memory the name which she had shrunk from profaning in her lifetime. When he had written the brief inscription which recorded the death of “Emma, wife of Bernard Winterfield,” and when he had knelt for a while by the low turf mound, his errand had come to its end. He thanked the good rector; he left gifts with the landlady and her children, by which he was gratefully remembered for many a year afterward; and then, with a heart relieved, he went back to London.
Other men might have made their sad little pilgrimage alone. Winterfield took his dog with him. “I must have something to love,” he said to the rector, “at such a time as this.”