"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 Imay 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.Ientreat 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."