He had known so little of Frederick Walcheren before Jenny’s death, and
he had so purposely avoided thrusting himself in his way afterwards,
that he had not had the slightest intimation that he had entered the
Catholic Church as a priest. The discovery was as great a shock to him
as his revelation had been to his auditor. How he ever got back to
Hampstead on that eventful afternoon, he never knew. His head and heart
were in as rapid a whirl as they had been when he committed the murder;
the murder which, he now made sure, would, sooner or later, land him on
the gallows. There was but one chance for him--the alleged secrecy of
the confessional. Could he trust to it? Would Frederick Walcheren’s
vows prove adamant against the awful news he had been called upon to
hear--the strong desire to avenge his wife’s death which must be raging
in his breast at the present moment, unless, on assuming his priestly
robes, he had parted with his manhood. Henry Hindes pondered over this
question, night and day, for a wonder, morphia-free.
The shock of discovering _who_ was his confessor had acted on him as it
might have done on a drunkard. It had sobered him, and, for a while,
he conceived a horror of the drug without which he had considered it
impossible he could live. Instinct came to his assistance, and made
him feel he must keep his wits about him, in readiness for what might
happen. After all, no one had, or could ever have, any proof against
him. And who would believe the word of a priest from evidence taken
in the confessional? What witness was there to what he had confessed?
Besides, had he not cancelled it all at the last, by saying it had been
the outcome of a bet between himself and a friend, and why should he
not stick to that story?
Still, the knowledge that he had shared his secret with any living
being rankled in his mind, and, after some days’ cogitation with
himself, he made up his mind to seek out Walcheren and ascertain
what he intended to do in the matter. If his position as confessor
prohibited him from taking any steps to disclose what had been confided
to him, things would remain as they were before; if, on the contrary,
he should betray the least disposition to bring him to justice, he
would fly the country at once and leave no trace behind him.
Meanwhile, he had left Frederick in a state of mind hardly more
enviable. He was unable to quit the confessional directly the murderer
of his wife disappeared. Several people were waiting to push their way
into his presence, directly he was at liberty. So he was compelled
to sit there, whilst they poured their plaints into his deaf ears,
and he pronounced the absolution over sins of which he had taken no
heed. Who can blame him? He was a priest, it is true, but he was a
man still, a lover, and a widower. Hindes’ hateful confession had
revived all the holiest, the tenderest, the most passionately-mourned
portion of his existence. He was no longer in the confessional. He
was with his beloved and murdered Jenny, in the Castle Warden at
Dover--in the ballrooms of Hampstead--out on the breezy heath, or in
her pretty phaeton. She was with her lover and her husband once more,
not as an angel from Heaven, or a pale corpse lying in her cambric
shroud, but as Jenny--his laughing, saucy, living, lovely Jenny, in
whom he had taken such rapturous delight, and of whom this man--this
fiend--this devil--had robbed him in the basest and most cruel
manner. He could think of nothing else. His heart throbbed as though
he should suffocate. He longed to rush out into the open air, but he
was condemned to keep his place until Benediction was concluded and
the confessions were over. Then he went straight to the sacristy and
disrobed. He could not go through the mockery of a prayer. Rage was
causing his whole frame to tremble. Curses, not blessings, were on his
lips. He would not insult his Maker by addressing Him whilst in so
earthly a mood. Father Grogan, who usually remained on his knees for
about an hour after service, heaved a sigh as he saw the newly-ordained
priest tear out of the church as if he had had more than enough of
it, and put up an extra petition, good soul, for his impatient and
undisciplined companion.
But Frederick Walcheren knew nothing of it. He was hastening with
all dispatch, and in a state of the greatest excitement, to seek an
interview with his superior. But Father Henniker was unable to see him.
The heart spasms, which he occasionally suffered from, had been more
violent than usual, and the doctor had ordered him to see no one that
evening. So Father Walcheren sent up an entreaty for leave of absence
on business of an important nature, which was immediately granted him.
He was bursting with the intelligence which had been communicated
to him. He felt that he must consult some friend as to the action he
should take concerning it. He could not wait until the morning. It was
coming between him and all his duties. Since he could not see Father
Henniker, he would ask for an interview with his old friend, Father
Tasker. So it was at his residence that he presented himself, late in
the evening.
‘What is the matter, my dear brother?’ demanded Father Tasker. ‘You
look agitated.’
‘Agitated!’ echoed Frederick, ‘I am bewildered--mad!’
‘Why, whatever can be the reason? You alarm me by such violent
expressions.’
‘Father Tasker, you have known my story from the beginning--all my
fears, hopes, misery and despair. You know how my beloved wife was
snatched from me; how I mourned her loss, and wondered over the mystery
of it.’
‘Yes, yes; but forgive me, my dear friend, I hoped these sad thoughts
had all been swallowed up in the love of God and the blessings of His
holy Church.’
‘They will never be swallowed up by anything so long as my life lasts,’
cried Frederick, in his old impetuous way, ‘but while I believed God
had taken her from me, I could be, in a measure, resigned to His will.
But to-day I have found out that it was _not_ by His will that we were
so cruelly separated. She was murdered! Killed by a man! Pushed over
those cruel cliffs!--oh! my poor darling, why did I let you leave my
sight for one moment? Why was I not there to protect you from his
villainy?--and dashed to pieces on the beach beneath, out of a spirit
of wicked jealousy and revenge! And I have come to ask you to tell me,
as a man, _what shall I do_? Think of the days when you were free, when
you, too, perhaps, loved and lost, and advise me how to act, to bring
this murderer to justice?’
Father Tasker was visibly affected by this recital. He had not yet
forgotten what it was to feel like a man, and the distress of poor
Frederick Walcheren touched him to the quick.
‘My poor lad,’ he replied, forgetting for the moment the sacred office
which his young friend had taken upon himself, ‘I am deeply grieved to
hear this story. I had so hoped that your new and blessed duties would
completely drive all such memories from your mind. To have them renewed
in this painful manner is most distressing. But where did you hear this
intelligence, Frederick? Are you sure that it is correct, or only a
base rumour set up to annoy you?’
‘I heard it in the confessional,’ replied the young priest.
‘In the confessional?’
‘Yes; Father Henniker was taken suddenly ill this afternoon, with one
of his heart attacks, and I was called upon to take his place. After a
while a man entered, whom I recognised at the first glance. It was--’
‘Hush! hush! stop my dear brother; what are you thinking of?’
exclaimed the elder priest, warningly. ‘You must not repeat any names.
Remember, the confessional is sacred.’
‘All right, father, I won’t; but it will have to come out some day.
Well, this man entered, and after telling me he was not a Catholic,
said he had a great burden on his mind and wished to try if confession
would ease it. He then went on to give me the whole details of my
darling’s murder--how he had gone down to Dover and met her on the
cliffs, and she had repulsed and taunted him--I can see her doing it,
my poor, brave girl!--and how he had pushed her deliberately over the
rocks to the shingles below. He said he had been miserable ever since,
as well he may have been, the brute! and had the audacity to ask me for
absolution for his crime.’
‘Did you give it him?’
‘Not I! I felt much more like giving him his quietus for evermore! I
told him, if he were penitent, to go and make his peace with the law
first, and then ask for the forgiveness of Heaven. It was all I could
do to speak to him with any degree of decency.’
‘Do you think he did not recognise you, brother?’
‘Not till the last, when I opened the half door and looked at him.
He knew me then and ran away, horrified, no doubt, at his own
indiscretion. And now, father, tell me what steps can I take? To whom
should I go? I feel as if I could not pass through the Sunday services
with this black secret in my keeping. Tell me downright, what shall I
do?’
Father Tasker looked at him sadly.
‘You should know better than to ask me. You can do nothing!’
‘_Nothing?_ Are you laughing at my agony?’
‘God forbid! I am grieving for this fresh pain you are called upon to
endure, more than I can say. But I repeat, you can do nothing. Have you
forgotten the solemn vows you have taken not to reveal anything you
may hear in the confessional? You would not have dreamt of coming to me
with a story you might have heard concerning a stranger. Your hands are
just as much tied when the revelation affects yourself!’
‘You mean that I can do nothing to set this matter right--that I am
bound to let the murderer of my wife go free?’
‘Certainly, since he has confessed the deed to you in your sacred
office as confessor! You are bound by your own oath to maintain an
utter silence on the subject.’
‘And he, this brute, is to walk about the world, prosperous and
esteemed--triumphing, perhaps, in his secret crimes--whilst my innocent
darling lies unavenged in her grave? Oh! it is too, _too_ cruel! I
cannot believe it would be a duty!’
‘It is a duty, a duty which you could only overcome by breaking your
most solemn word, by violating your sanctity as a priest, by disgracing
your holy office and bringing discredit on the sacrament of confession.
What are you thinking of Frederick? What would you have thought in the
olden days if _I_, for example, had revealed to the world what you have
told me in the confessional?’
‘Oh, that was different,’ exclaimed the young priest passionately.
‘My confessions--most people’s confessions--are of trivial, everyday
faults. But this--this heinous murder, which cries aloud to God’s
Throne for vengeance--is not the same thing. If murderers and such
like criminals are to believe that, by coming to us and depositing
their vile secrets in the confessional, they may obtain relief and
absolution, the Church will be turned into a depository for crime--a
sink hole of wickedness without any judgment to follow.’
‘Whatever you may think, Frederick, the fact remains that, as a priest,
you cannot reveal this terrible secret, nor even breathe a hint that
you have heard it. With me you are safe, but to no one else must you
mention the subject. Go home, my dear brother, and pray to forget it,
even to forgive it.’
‘_Never!_’ cried the young man, emphatically. ‘I should lie if I said
I should ever do either one or the other. Father Tasker, I have had
many doubts, as you know, since entering the Church, whether I have
not made a grave mistake, but I have none at the present moment. I see
that I have put myself in a wrong position. Had I had the least idea
of what I have heard to-day--had I imagined, however vaguely, that my
precious wife had come unfairly by the death which I always believed
to be due to an accident, nothing would have induced me to bind myself
by any vows but those which should bring her murderer to justice. And
now that the bitter truth has been accidentally revealed to me--that I
have met the villain face to face--you tell me I must be silent, that
I must brood over my deep wrongs for a lifetime, praying the while,
perhaps, for the welfare of the brute who goes scot-free. But I cannot
do it--I cannot! I wear the vestments of a priest, but I am a man
all the same, a man who loves and has lost, who knows his enemy and
thirsts for revenge! And you bid me have patience and keep silence.
It is impossible! unnatural! You lay a task on me that I am unable to
fulfil.’
‘You shock me,’ said the old priest. ‘You are indeed right, with such
feelings, to say you should never have accepted the office you fill.
What are you saying? You cannot, and you will not, and it is unnatural
that you should. You forget you are no longer a free agent, but must do
as the Church commands you--not as you think, or feel.’
‘The Church may unfrock me, but she cannot unmake me a man, with all
a man’s feelings and desires. My love I buried in the grave with my
darling, cheerfully, for the Church’s sake. All my earthly amusements
and luxuries I have been willing to give up in the same way. Life has
nothing much left in it for me now, and I am desirous to dedicate
the rest of it, if needful, to the good of my brethren. But this is
something quite different. This is a duty, in my own estimation--the
blood of my dearest possession crying out to me for vengeance from the
ground. I say, her murderer shall not live to murder other victims,
perhaps in the same cold-blooded, heartless manner! God’s justice and
the world’s laws demand it. It would be a sacrilege to let him go free!’
‘And I repeat, Frederick, that if the man had confessed to slaying the
Christ Himself, in the confessional, you could not, as a priest, have
betrayed him. If he comes to you again, you can counsel him to make the
only reparation in his power, by confessing his sin to the world, and
bearing the penalty, but you can go no further.’
‘As if a mean-spirited cur like that, who would stoop to wage war
against a helpless girl, would be brave enough to swing for it!’ cried
Frederick, contemptuously. ‘Not he! When I told him I knew his name, he
tried to get out of what he had said, by pretending he had confessed
a made-up story for a bet, but, when he saw my face, his told a
different tale. What man, born of woman, could remain dumb under such
circumstances? It shames his manhood to think of it. There is not a
creature in this vast city that, knowing what I know, would not deliver
the criminal up to justice.’
‘Perhaps so. To conceal a crime under ordinary circumstances is to
be a partner in its guilt. Had this wretched man told you of his sin
anywhere else than where he did--had you been with him in the open
street, or in your private rooms, you would be justified in refusing
to keep his secret for him, even though you are a priest. But he came
to you, believing that he was safe in speaking openly to a confessor;
therefore, to betray his confidence would be to perjure yourself,
and without effecting your object. You could not take the secrets
of the confessional into an open court of law as witness of a man’s
guilt. Who would accept your testimony? How easy it would be for the
murderer to turn round, as you say he attempted to do, and deny that
it was anything but a jest. Where would you be then? Disgraced, but
unavenged.’
‘You are right, father,’ said Frederick, with a deep sigh, as he
rose to leave, ‘and I have been an impetuous idiot. Thanks for all
your kindness and patience with me. I fear I try it sorely at times.
Good-night!’
He went back to his residence, but the father’s last words rung in
his ears meanwhile. ‘Had this man told you of his guilt anywhere
else.’ Would it be possible to induce Hindes to repeat what he had
said in the confessional elsewhere? Would he be too astute, too
cunning, too incredulous of the safety of such a thing, to repeat his
story? Or might he, if Frederick could only conceal his hatred of him
sufficiently well, be cajoled into believing that ‘once a priest was
always a priest,’ and that the oath of silence was as obligatory out
of the confessional as in? The young man shuddered as he thought of
encountering Hindes again, yet, for Jenny’s sake--Jenny, who had said,
poor child, almost prophetically, how she hated and mistrusted this
man--he could manage, he thought, to hide his aversion and loathing,
if it would serve the purpose of causing him to betray himself, with
confidence, under conditions when he could take advantage of it to
deliver him over to justice.
‘Oh, what feelings are these?’ cried Frederick, in his inmost soul.
‘Why did I ever become a priest? I had much better have enlisted in
the army. I am not fitted for my position. I told them all so, but
they would drive me into it. How can I go on offering the Mass, and
attending all the services of the Church, with these burning desires
for revenge in my heart? In another fashion I am as bad as this brute
Hindes. He goes about the world as a whited sepulchre, and so do I. I
wonder if I shall ever have the courage to break off my fetters. It
would be one bold stroke and I should be free again. People would say,
“How shocking. Fancy, he was a Catholic priest!” and poor dear Father
Tasker and my cousin Philip would declare I was lost for evermore;
but would their saying so, or thinking so, make it a fact? Which is
better, that I should give up an office for which I am not only unfit,
but in which I am a living lie, or go on with it, dissatisfied with
myself and all my surroundings? After all, God, who knows my thoughts
and my intentions, is the only Person Whose opinion I should fear, and
I know that He hates hypocrisy. One thing I am sure of, that I cannot
live a life of inactivity whilst my angel’s death is unavenged, and
her murderer goes at large. The prayers would blister my tongue. I am
unfit for any of my sacred duties whilst such thoughts fill my mind. I
wish--I wish, from my inmost soul, that I was a better man, but I am
very earthly yet. Every thought proves it. And yet, oh, my God! I shall
not serve Thee worse in the world than here. Thou knowest, Who knowest
all things, that I shall not return to the world I left. That has fled
with all its pleasures, but this life cramps me. I am not myself. I
have made a mistake. Show me how to remedy it.’
These were the thoughts that occupied the mind of Frederick Walcheren,
and he was not a hypocrite in giving vent to them. He had been a very
wild and self-seeking man before he knew Jenny Crampton, thinking
only of the gratification of his senses, and caring nothing for the
things of the other world. But the Catholic Church makes religion so
much more realistic than any other. She depicts the saints and angels
as being so much nearer to us in an earthly sense--walking by our
sides as we journey through life, and taking an interest in all our
troubles and pleasures (as, indeed, all the souls departed do), that
her votaries, especially those who have been reared in her faith,
find it most difficult to shake off her influence, or to forget her
precepts. It is said that a Protestant may be converted to Catholicism,
or Mahommedanism, or Spiritualism, or any other ‘ism’; but a Catholic,
if he once rejects the faith of his fathers, becomes nothing but a
total disbeliever. He either believes all or nothing. This may or may
not be true, but the exception proves the rule. At all events, though
his wife’s death had not fitted Frederick Walcheren to be a priest, it
had made him think very deeply, and the lessons he had learned in his
youth had returned with twofold force upon his mind, and made him view
his past life in a light which would prevent his ever returning to it.
He viewed his past career now as it really had been--the outcome of his
selfish desires--and he mourned over its effects sincerely.
Amongst his other sins, the one he had committed against Rhoda Berry
haunted him. The other women he had trifled with had either been very
well able to take care of themselves, or they had been more sinning
than sinned against. Rhoda Berry, of them all, had used only the weapon
of her own love against him, had suffered the most in consequence, and
had complained the least. It was strange that he--a priest--should
find his thoughts turning most to her--a simple, uneducated girl--in
this dilemma. But he saw plainly that he must expect no help from
his fellow-clergy. They had relinquished the world, with all things
pertaining thereto, and would only advise him to pray and be patient,
and regard his present state of miserable uncertainty as a trial
sent from Heaven out of loving-kindness, and his thirsting to avenge
the cruel murder of his wife as a sore temptation from the Enemy of
Mankind, which it was his solemn duty to trample under foot. And then
this inability to disclose anything heard under the seal of confession!
If that were true, Frederick felt he could not lend himself to be the
depositary of state secrets, the keeping of which might be, perhaps, a
wrong to his sovereign, his country and the people at large.
So he sat down and wrote a note to Rhoda Berry, in which he called
her his dear friend, and said that, if she were likely to be visiting
London again, he would much like to see her for a few minutes and
receive her in the common parlour of the priests’ house, or call upon
her at any place she might prefer. Rhoda showed this letter to her
mother, and her mother, as usual, went to the cards for advice. The
oracle said, decidedly, ‘Yes.’ Rhoda was to visit town for the express
purpose of seeing her late lover, and the journey would be productive
of good for both of them.
‘I can’t say I see what luck can come of it,’ said Rhoda. ‘If Fred were
not yet ordained, I might dissuade him from it, but I said all I could
last time we met, and I might as well have talked to the table. I can’t
fancy him a priest, mother! It seems too ridiculous. I often think what
baby will look like some day, when he is grown up and bothers to know
who his father is, and I tell him a Catholic priest. He’ll think I’m
out of my mind.’
‘Don’t worry over that now, my girl,’ replied Mrs Berry, ‘there’s
plenty of time before you. Little Fred won’t trouble himself about
his father for many years to come. And there’s no saying what may
happen before that comes to pass! I often fancy things will turn out
different from what you imagine. You’ll have a happy life after all.
I’m sure of that, whoever you may pass it with.’
‘It’ll never be happy passed away from Fred, mother. You may take your
oath of that,’ said Rhoda, shaking her head; ‘but I’ll go up and see
him, poor fellow, all the same. I never refused him anything yet, worse
luck! and I can’t begin now.’