“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 it is free.”
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.”
CHAPTER IV. FATHER BENWELL’S CORRESPONDENCE. To the Secretary, S. J., Rome.
WHEN I wrote last, I hardly thought I should trouble you again so soon.
The necessity has, however, arisen.
I must ask for instructions, from our Most Reverend General, on the subject of Arthur Penrose.
I believe that I informed you that I decided to defer my next visit to Ten Acres Lodge for two or three days, in order that Winterfield (if he intended to do so) might have time to communicate with Mrs. Romayne, after his return from the country.
Naturally enough, perhaps, considering the delicacy of the subject, he has not taken me into his confidence.
I can only guess that he has maintained the same reserve with Mrs. Romayne.
My visit to the Lodge was duly paid this afternoon.
I asked first, of course, for the lady of the house, and hearing she was in the grounds, joined her there.
She looked ill and anxious, and she received me with rigid politeness.
Fortunately, Mrs. Eyrecourt (now convalescent) was staying at Ten Acres, and was then taking the air in her chair on wheels.
The good lady’s nimble and discursive tongue offered me an opportunity of referring, in the most innocent manner possible, to Winterfield’s favorable opinion of Romayne’s pictures.
I need hardly say that I looked at Romayne’s wife when I mentioned the name.
She turned pale—probably fearing that I had some knowledge of her letter warning Winterfield not to trust me.
If she had already been informed that he was not to be blamed, but to be pitied, in the matter of the marriage at Brussels, she would have turned red.
Such, at least, is my experience, drawn from recollections of other days. *
The ladies having served my purpose, I ventured into the house, to pay my respects to Romayne.
He was in the study, and his excellent friend and secretary was with him.
After the first greetings Penrose left us.
His manner told me plainly that there was something wrong.
I asked no questions—waiting on the chance that Romayne might enlighten me.
“I hope you are in better spirits, now that you have your old companion with you,” I said.
“I am very glad to have Penrose with me,” he answered. And then he frowned and looked out of the window at the two ladies in the grounds.
It occurred to me that Mrs. Eyrecourt might be occupying the customary false position of a mother-in-law.