It was far from easy to a man like myself, unaccustomed to state circumstances in their proper order—but I had no other choice than to reply, by telling the long story of the theft and discovery of the Rector’s papers. So far as Father Benwell was concerned, the narrative only confirmed her suspicions. For the rest, the circumstances which most interested her were the circumstances associated with the French boy.
“Anything connected with that poor creature,” she said, “has a dreadful interest for me now.”
“Did you know him?” I asked, with some surprise.
“I knew him and his mother—you shall hear how, at another time.
I suppose I felt a presentiment that the boy would have some evil influence over me.
At any rate, when I accidentally touched him, I trembled as if I had touched a serpent.
You will think me superstitious—but, after what you have said, it is certainly true that he has been the indirect cause of the misfortune that has fallen on me.
How came he to steal the papers?
Did you ask the Rector, when you went to Belhaven?”
“I asked the Rector nothing.
But he thought it his duty to tell me all that he knew of the theft.”
She drew her chair nearer to me.
“Let me hear every word of it!” she pleaded eagerly.
I felt some reluctance to comply with the request.
“Is it not fit for me to hear?” she asked.
This forced me to be plain with her.
“If I repeat what the Rector told me,” I said, “I must speak of my wife.”
She took my hand.
“You have pitied and forgiven her,” she answered.
“Speak of her, Bernard—and don’t, for God’s sake, think that my heart is harder than yours.”
I kissed the hand that she had given to me—even her “brother” might do that!
“It began,” I said, “in the grateful attachment which the boy felt for my wife.
He refused to leave her bedside on the day when she dictated her confession to the Rector.
As he was entirely ignorant of the English language, there seemed to be no objection to letting him have his own way.
He became inquisitive as the writing went on. His questions annoyed the Rector—and as the easiest way of satisfying his curiosity, my wife told him that she was making her will.
He knew just enough, from what he had heard at various times, to associate making a will with gifts of money—and the pretended explanation silenced and satisfied him.”
“Did the Rector understand it?” Stella asked.
“Yes.
Like many other Englishmen in his position, although he was not ready at speaking French, he could read the language, and could fairly well understand it, when it was spoken.
After my wife’s death, he kindly placed the boy, for a few days, under the care of his housekeeper.
Her early life had been passed in the island of Martinique, and she was able to communicate with the friendless foreigner in his own language.
When he disappeared, she was the only person who could throw any light on his motive for stealing the papers.
On the day when he entered the house, she caught him peeping through the keyhole of the study door.
He must have seen where the confession was placed, and the color of the old-fashioned blue paper, on which it was written, would help him to identify it.
The next morning, during the Rector’s absence, he brought the manuscript to the housekeeper, and asked her to translate it into French, so that he might know how much money was left to him in ‘the will.’
She severely reproved him, made him replace the paper in the desk from which he had taken it, and threatened to tell the Rector if his misconduct was repeated.
He promised amendment, and the good-natured woman believed him.
On that evening the papers were sealed, and locked up. In the morning the lock was found broken, and the papers and the boy were both missing together.”
“Do you think he showed the confession to any other person?” Stella asked.
“I happen to know that he concealed it from his mother.”
“After the housekeeper’s reproof,” I replied, “he would be cunning enough, in my opinion, not to run the risk of showing it to strangers.
It is far more likely that he thought he might learn English enough to read it himself.”
There the subject dropped.
We were silent for a while.
She was thinking, and I was looking at her.
On a sudden, she raised her head. Her eyes rested on me gravely.
“It is very strange!” she said
“What is strange?”
“I have been thinking of the Lorings.
They encouraged me to doubt you. They advised me to be silent about what happened at Brussels.