The cloth has been removed, the Major’s favourite after-dinner beverage brought upon the table, and, with punches “brewed” and cigars set alight, they have commenced conversation upon the incidents of the day—those especially relating to Ryecroft’s business in Boulogne.
The Major has had another interview with his sister—a short one, snatched while she was out with her school companions for afternoon promenade. It has added some further particulars to those they had already learnt, both about the English girl confined within the nunnery and the priest who conveyed her thither. That the latter was Father Rogier is placed beyond a doubt by a minute description of his person given to Miss Mahon, well known to the individual who gave it. To the nuns within that convent the man’s name is familiar—even to his baptismal appellation, Gregoire; for although the Major has pronounced all the sacerdotal fraternity alike, in being black, this particular member of it is of a shade deeper than common—a circumstance of itself going a good way towards his identification. Even within that sacred precinct where he is admitted, a taint attaches to him; though what its nature the young lady has not yet been able to ascertain.
The information thus obtained tallies with the estimate of the priest’s character, already formed; in correspondence, too, with the theory that he is capable of the crime Captain Ryecroft believes him to have abetted, if not actually committed. Nor is it contradicted by the fact of his being a frequent visitor to the nunnery, and a favourite with the administration thereof; indeed an intimate friend of the Abbess herself. Something more, in a way accounting for all: that the new novice is not the first agneau d’Angleterre he has brought over to Boulogne, and guided into that same fold, more than one of them having ample means, not only to provision themselves, but a surplus for the support of the general sisterhood.
There is no word about any of these English lambs having been other than voluntary additions to the French flock; but a whisper circulates within the convent walls, that Father Rogier’s latest contribution is a recusant, and if she ever become a nun it will be a forced one; that the thing is contre coeur—in short, she protests against it.
Jack Wingate can well believe that; still under full conviction that “Soeur Marie” is Mary Morgan; and, despite all its grotesque strangeness and wild improbability, Captain Ryecroft has pretty nearly come to the same conclusion; while the Major, with less knowledge of antecedent circumstances, but more of nunneries, never much doubted it.
“About the best way to get the girl out. What’s your idea, Mahon?”
Ryecroft asks the question in no careless or indifferent way; on the contrary, with a feeling earnestness. For, although the daughter of the Wyeside farmer is nought to him, the Wye waterman is; and he has determined on seeing the latter through—to the end of the mysterious affair. In difficulties Jack Wingate has stood by him, and he will stand by Jack, coute-qui-coute. Besides, figuratively speaking, they are still in the same boat. For if Wingate’s dead sweetheart, so strangely returned to life, can be also restored to liberty, the chances are she may be the very one wanted to throw light on the other and alas! surer death. Therefore, Captain Ryecroft is not all unselfish in backing up his boatman; nor, as he puts the question, being anxious about the answer.
“We’ll have to use strategy,” returns the Major; not immediately, but after taking a grand gulp out of his tumbler, and a vigorous draw at his regalia.
“But why should we?” impatiently demands the Captain. “If the girl have been forced in there, and’s kept against her will—which by all the probabilities she is—surely she can be got out, on demand being made by her friends?”
“That’s just what isn’t sure—though the demand were made by her own mother, with the father to back it. You forget, old fellow, that you’re in France, not England.”