There the page was turned down, and the explanation was concealed from me.
A faint color stole over her face as I handed the letter back to her.
"It is needless for you to read the end," she said. "You know, under his own hand, that he has left me; and (if such a thing pleads with you in his favor) you also know that he is liberal in providing for his deserted wife."
I attempted to speak. She saw in my face how I despised him, and stopped me.
"Whatever you may think of his conduct," she continued, "I beg that you will not speak of it to me. May I ask your opinion (now you have read his letter) on another matter, in which my own conduct is concerned? In former days--"
She paused, poor soul, in evident confusion and distress.
"Why speak of those days?" I ventured to say.
"I must speak of them. In former days, I think you were told that my father"s will provided for my mother and for me. You know that we have enough to live on?"
I had heard of it, at the time of our betrothal--when the marriage settlement was in preparation. The mother and daughter had each a little income of a few hundreds a year. The exact amount had escaped my memory.
After answering her to this effect, I waited to hear more.
She suddenly became silent; the most painful embarra.s.sment showed itself in her face and manner. "Never mind the rest," she said, mastering her confusion after an interval. "I have had some hard trials to bear; I forget things--" she made an effort to finish the sentence, and gave it up, and called to the dog to come to her. The tears were in her eyes, and that was the way she took to hide them from me.
In general, I am not quick at reading the minds of others--but I thought I understood Stella. Now that we were face to face, the impulse to trust me had, for the moment, got the better of her caution and her pride; she was half ashamed of it, half inclined to follow it. I hesitated no longer. The time for which I had waited--the time to prove, without any indelicacy on my side, that I had never been unworthy of her--had surely come at last.
"Do you remember my reply to your letter about Father Benwell?" I asked.
"Yes--every word of it."
"I promised, if you ever had need of me, to prove that I had never been unworthy of your confidence. In your present situation, I can honorably keep my promise. Shall I wait till you are calmer? or shall I go on at once?"
"At once!"
"When your mother and your friends took you from me," I resumed, "if you had shown any hesitation--"
She shuddered. The image of my unhappy wife, vindictively confronting us on the church steps, seemed to be recalled to her memory. "Don"t go back to it!" she cried. "Spare me, I entreat you."
I opened the writing-case in which I keep the papers sent to me by the Rector of Belhaven, and placed them on the table by which she was sitting. The more plainly and briefly I spoke now, the better I thought it might be for both of us.
"Since we parted at Brussels," I said, "my wife has died. Here is a copy of the medical certificate of her death."
Stella refused to look at it. "I don"t understand such things," she answered faintly. "What is this?"
She took up my wife"s death-bed confession.
"Read it," I said.
She looked frightened. "What will it tell me?" she asked.
"It will tell you, Stella, that false appearances once led you into wronging an innocent man."
Having said this, I walked away to a window behind her, at the further end of the room, so that she might not see me while she read.
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 a.s.sumed 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 new 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 circ.u.mstances 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 circ.u.mstances which most interested her were the circ.u.mstances a.s.sociated 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 superst.i.tious--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?"