Changeling

“If you do not,” he went on, “I feel that we have not really found this new friendship which means so much to me.”

“I don’t think you would have approved perhaps. You wanted a grand marriage for me … because I was your stepdaughter.”

“I…”

“There was that costly London season.”

“It was then, was it? Some perfidious man?”

“Oh no. I always thought you would try to prevent our marriage, for after the cost of that season you would have wanted me to marry a duke or something like that.”

“All I wanted was your happiness because that was what your mother would have wished.”

“We were going to be married.”

“You and …?”

“Pedrek … Pedrek Cartwright.”

“Oh. A nice young man. I was always interested in him because he was born in my house. I remember it well. What happened?”

I was silent for a few moments, not wishing to speak of it.

“Tell me,” he insisted. “I find it hard to believe that he would behave badly. What was it, Rebecca?”

“It’s … it’s hard to talk of.”

“Tell me.”

I found myself telling. I described that terrible scene when Belinda had come running in to us with that horrific story. Benedict listened in blank amazement.

He said: “I don’t believe it.”

“We none of us could.”

“And that child … Belinda … she told you this?”

“She was so distressed. If you had been there, you would have seen …”

“And you confronted Pedrek with this?”

“He came the next morning … just as though nothing had happened …”

“And what did he say?”

“He denied it.”

“And you believed the child and not him?”

“If you had seen her crying and distressed … her clothes torn.”

“And she said it happened at St. Branok’s Pool. That’s significant.”

“It happens to be a lonely spot.”

He seemed to be looking far away. “I remember it well,” he said.

He seemed very thoughtful. Then he said: “Did it occur to you to doubt the child?”

“I told you how she looked. She was distraught. She had obviously been molested.”

“There is something odd about this because something happened years before you were born when your mother was a child. I was not much more. It was at the pool of St. Branok. This is what I find so odd about it. A murderer had escaped from jail. He was under sentence of death for having raped and murdered a little girl. This is something I never told anyone but I am telling you, Rebecca, because I think it could have a bearing on this matter. When your mother was a little girl she came face to face with this murderer at St. Branok’s Pool.”

I caught my breath in horror.

He went on: “I came in time. I went for him and he fell and struck his head on a boulder. It killed him. We were young and frightened and we did not know what to do. You are shocked. You are stunned. These things come suddenly upon you. We dragged his body to the pool and pushed him into the water. I know it is dramatic … sensational, the sort of thing one sometimes reads of in the papers, things that may happen to other people but should not to us. We kept our secret … your mother and I. It is a long story. Perhaps it was all part of the bond which held us together. It certainly influenced our lives. It was the reason for our parting. You see while it drove us apart it forged the unbreakable bond. You would have to live through it to understand it. But let us think of your problem. Does it not seem odd to you that a similar thing should have happened to Belinda?”

“Yes,” I said. “But it is a lonely spot. There is only one small cottage nearby. It is a place where that sort of thing could happen.”

“Might it not be that an imaginative child who had heard the story might have conjured it up?”

“But the look in her face … her clothes … Besides, nobody would have told her the story and if she had heard it she would not have understood what it really meant.”

He was silent for a while. He seemed to be considering. Then he said: “Would you take a piece of advice from me?”

“I would certainly listen to it.”

“Pedrek is in Australia now, is he? He was so hurt and disgusted by your suspicions that your engagement was broken off and he went away. Is that the story?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“Go to your room now and write to him. Tell him that he must come back. That you are wretched without him. That’s true, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but …”

“Do you want to live your life regretting … ? You love him, do you not? I know you have been together a good deal. It was not a sudden attraction. It has grown gradually. It has deep roots and you really love him. I know that. Yours could be a wonderful marriage. When you have the chance of happiness, you must not turn from it. You must hold on to it. Never let it be your fault that it ended.”

“I know I shall always be miserable … but always, too, I shall think of Belinda coming in from the pool … that terror in her … the horror of it.”

“Write to him. Tell him you made a mistake. Don’t be afraid to admit it, for I know you have made a mistake. Tell him that you want him back, that you believe him. Tell him that it could not be otherwise. Write to him … write today.”

“Perhaps I should think about it.”