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. 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 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 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.