Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1146 page)

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. Honourable 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 honour 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.
He
doesn’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; bu t I hope you will believe me when I say that ignorant prejudice against the Catholic priesthood is not one of
my
prejudices.”

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 honour 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 honour 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 honour 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 civilisation — 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. I was mistaken. He was not thinking of his wife’s mother — he was thinking of his wife.

“I suppose you know that Penrose had an idea of converting me?” he said, suddenly.

I was perfectly candid with him — I said I knew it, and approved of it. “May I hope that Arthur has succeeded in convincing you?” I ventured to add.

“He might have succeeded, Father Benwell, if he had chosen to go on.”

This reply, as you may easily imagine, took me by surprise.

“Are you really so obdurate that Arthur despairs of your conversion?” I asked.

“Nothing of the sort! I have thought and thought of it — and I can tell you I was more than ready to meet him half way.”