“With pleasure, dear friends,” said Mr Maltby, and he held out his hand for the dingy-looking letter.—Little did the writer imagine, when he penned that wretched scrawl, what a value it would have in the eyes of so many interested and anxious hearers. It was as follows:—
“Dear Jane Bradly,
“I hardly know how to have the face to be a-writing to you, but I hope you’ll forgive me for all I’ve done, for I’ve behaved shameful to you, and I don’t mean to deny it. But I had better begin at the beginning. It were all of that lady’s-maid. I wish I’d never set eyes on her, that I do.
“Well, you know as we couldn’t either of us a-bear you, because you knew of our evil ways, and you was so bold as to tell us we was doing wrong. I knowed that you was right, and I wasn’t at all easy; but Georgina wouldn’t let me rest till we had got you out of the house. And so she took one of her ladyship’s bracelets and hid it away, and made her pretence to her ladyship as she couldn’t find it; and then we got you to look at it that morning as her ladyship found you with it.
“We was both very glad to get you away, and we had things all our own way for a little while, till her ladyship caught out Georgina in telling her some lies, and running her up a big bill at the mercer’s for things she’d never had. So, when Georgina got herself into trouble, she wanted to lay the blame on me; but I wasn’t going to stand that, so I complained to Sir Lionel, and Miss Georgina had to take herself off. That was about two years after you had left Monksworthy.
“When she were gone I began to get very uneasy. I didn’t feel at all comfortable about the hand I’d had in your going, and I couldn’t get what you had said to me about my bad ways out of my head day nor night. And there was another thing. Just to spite you, I got Georgina to get hold of your Bible a day or two before the bracelet was supposed to be lost. She gave it to me, and I put it in a drawer in my pantry where I kept some corks; it were a drawer I didn’t often go to, and there it were left, and I never seed it till a few weeks since, and then I was looking for something I couldn’t find, and poked your little Bible out from the back of the drawer. ‘What’s this?’ I thought; and I took it up and noticed the red-ink lines under so many of the verses. Oh, I was struck all of a heap when I read some of them. They showed me what a wicked man I had been, for they just told me what I ought to be, and what I could plainly see you was trying to be when you was living at the Hall. And they told me about the love of Jesus Christ, and that seemed to cut me to the heart most of all.
“I didn’t know what to do, I were quite miserable; and the other servants began to chaff me, so I tried to forget all about better things, and put the Bible back in the drawer. But I couldn’t let it rest there, so I kept reading it; but it didn’t give me no peace. So I ventured to kneel me down in my pantry one day and ask God to guide me, and I felt a little happier after that. But I soon saw as it wouldn’t do for me to remain any longer at the Hall, if I meant to mend my ways. I were mixed with so many of the others, I couldn’t see my way out of the bad road at all if I stayed. I know I ought to have gone straight to Sir Lionel, and told him how I had been a-cheating him; but then I should have brought my fellow-servants, and some of the tradesmen too, into the scrape, and I couldn’t see the end of it. So I made up my mind to cut and run. I know it’s wrong, but I haven’t got the courage just to confess all and face it out.
“And now, what I want to do before I leave the country, for I can’t stay in England, is to see and make amends to you, Jane, as far as I can. I have found out from one of your old friends here where you are living, and I mean to let you have this letter on my way. Sir Lionel has let me have a holiday to see my friends, and I haven’t said anything about not coming back again. But he’ll be glad enough that he’s got shut of me when he comes to find out what I’ve been—more’s the pity. I know better, and ought to be ashamed of myself; but, if I gets clear off into another country, I’ll try and make amends to them as I’ve wronged in Monksworthy. You’ll find the bracelet and the Bible along with this letter. Georgina took both bracelets, and left the one as didn’t turn up with me; for, she said, if there was any searching for it they’d never suspect me of taking it, but they might search her things.
“So now I think I have explained all; and when you get the Bible, and the bracelet, and this letter, the only favour I ask is that you will wait a month before you let her ladyship know anything about it, and that will give me time to get well out of the country.
“So you must forgive me for all the wicked things I have done—and do ask the Lord to forgive me too. I hope I shall be able to turn over a new leaf. I shan’t forget you, nor your good advice, nor what I did at you, nor the verses marked under with red-ink. So no more from your humble and penitent fellow-servant,
“JH.”
Such was the letter, which was listened to by all with breathless interest.
“And now what’s ‘the next step’?” said Thomas Bradly.
“I think your next step,” said the vicar, “will be to go yourself to Lady Morville, and lay before her this conclusive evidence of your sister’s innocence.”
“Yes; I suppose that will be right,” said Bradly. “I can explain it better than Jane could—indeed, I can see as Jane thinks so herself; and it would be too much for her, any way, to go about it herself and, besides, it’ll have a better look for me to go.”