After a time--how much longer it seemed to be than it really was!--I heard her move. As I turned from the window, she ran to me, and fell on her knees at my feet. I tried to raise her; I entreated her to believe that she was forgiven. She seized my hands, and held them over her face--they were wet with her tears. "I am ashamed to look at you," she said. "Oh, Bernard, what a wretch I have been!"
I never was so distressed in my life. I don't know what I should have said, what I should have done, if my dear old dog had not helped me out of it. He, too, ran up to me, with the loving jealousy of his race, and tried to lick my hands, still fast in Stella's hold. His paws were on her shoulder; he attempted to push himself between us. I think I successfully assumed a tranquillity which I was far from really feeling. "Come, come!" I said, "you mustn't make Traveler jealous." She let me raise her. Ah, if she could have kissed me--but that was not to be done; she kissed the dog's head, and then she spoke to me. I shall not set down what she said in these pages. While I live, there is no fear of my forgetting those words.
I led her back to her chair. The letter addressed to me by the Rector of Belhaven still lay on the table, unread. It was of some importance to Stella's complete enlightenment, as containing evidence that the confession was genuine. But I hesitated, for her sake, to speak of it just yet.
"Now you know that you have a friend to help and advise you--" I began.
"No," she interposed; "more than a friend; say a brother."
I said it. "You had something to ask of me," I resumed, "and you never put the question."
She understood me.
"I meant to tell you," she said, "that I had written a letter of refusal to Mr. Romayne's lawyers. I have left Ten Acres, never to return; and I refuse to accept a farthing of Mr. Romayne's money. My mother--though she knows that we have enough to live on--tells me I have acted with inexcusable pride and folly. I wanted to ask if you blame me, Bernard, as she does?"
I daresay I was inexcusably proud and foolish too. It was the second time she had called me by my Christian name since the happy bygone time, never to come again. Under whatever influence I acted, I respected and admired her for that refusal, and I owned it in so many words. This little encouragement seemed to relieve her. She was so much calmer that I ventured to speak of the Rector's letter.
She wouldn't hear of it. "Oh, Bernard, have I not learned to trust you yet? Put away those papers. There is only one thing I want to know. Who gave them to you? The Rector?"
"No."
"How did they reach you, then?"
"Through Father Benwell."
She started at that name like a woman electrified.
"I knew it!" she cried. "It is the priest who has wrecked my married life--and he got his information from those letters, before he put them into your hands." She waited a while, and recovered herself. "That was the first of the questions I wanted to put to you," she said. "I am answered. I ask no more."
She was surely wrong about Father Benwell? I tried to show her why.
I told her that my reverend friend had put the letters into my hand, with the seal which protected them unbroken. She laughed disdainfully. Did I know him so little as to doubt for a moment that he could break a seal and replace it again? This view was entirely new to me; I was startled, but not convinced. I never desert my friends--even when they are friends of no very long standing--and I still tried to defend Father Benwell. The only result was to make her alter her intention of asking me no more questions. I innocently roused in her a ne w curiosity. She was eager to know how I had first become acquainted with the priest, and how he had contrived to possess himself of papers which were intended for my reading only.
There was but one way of answering her.
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.