Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1148 page)

“I don’t say it seems strange that you should be a priest,” Romayne explained. “I am only surprised that a man of your simple way of thinking should have attached himself to the Order of the Jesuits.”

“I can quite understand that,” said Penrose. “But you should remember that circumstances often influence a man in his choice of a vocation. It has been so with me. I am a member of a Roman Catholic family. A Jesuit College was near our place of abode, and a near relative of mine — since dead — was one of the resident priests.” He paused, and added in a lower tone: “When I was little more than a lad I suffered a disappointment, which altered my character for life. I took refuge in the College, and I have found patience and peace of mind since that time. Oh, my friend, you might have been a more contented man — ” He stopped again. His interest in the husband had all but deceived him into forgetting his promise to the wife.

Romayne held out his hand. “I hope I have not thoughtlessly hurt you?” he said.

Penrose took the offered hand, and pressed it fervently. He tried to speak — and suddenly shuddered, like a man in pain. “I am not very well this morning,” he stammered; “a turn in the garden will do me good.”

Romayne’s doubts were confirmed by the manner in which Penrose left him. Something had unquestionably happened, which his friend shrank from communicating to him. He sat down again at his desk and tried to read. The time passed — and he was still left alone. When the door was at last opened it was only Stella who entered the room.

“Have you seen Penrose?” he asked.

The estrangement between them had been steadily widening of late. Romayne had expressed his resentment at his wife’s interference between Penrose and himself by that air of contemptuous endurance which is the hardest penalty that a man can inflict on the woman who loves him. Stella had submitted with a proud and silent resignation — the most unfortunate form of protest that she could have adopted toward a man of Romayne’s temper. When she now appeared, however, in her husband’s study, there was a change in her expression which he instantly noticed. She looked at him with eyes softened by sorrow. Before she could answer his first question, he hurriedly added another. “Is Penrose really ill?”

“No, Lewis. He is distressed.”

“About what?”

“About you, and about himself.”

“Is he going to leave us?”

“Yes.”

“But he will come back again?”

Stella took a chair by her husband’s side. “I am truly sorry for you, Lewis,” she said. “It is even a sad parting for Me. If you will let me say it, I have a sincere regard for dear Mr. Penrose.”

Under other circumstances, this confession of feeling for the man who had sacrificed his dearest aspiration to the one consideration of her happiness, might have provoked a sharp reply. But by this time Romayne had really become alarmed. “You speak as if Arthur was going to leave England,” he said.

“He leaves England this afternoon,” she answered, “for Rome.”

“Why does he tell this to you, and not to me?” Romayne asked.

“He cannot trust himself to speak of it to you. He begged me to prepare you — ”

Her courage failed her. She paused. Romayne beat his hand impatiently on the desk before him. “Speak out!” he cried. “If Rome is not the end of the journey — what is?”

Stella hesitated no longer.

“He goes to Rome,” she said “to receive his instructions, and to become personally acquainted with the missionaries who are associated with him. They will leave Leghorn in the next vessel which sets sail for a port in Central America. And the dangerous duty intrusted to them is to re-establish one of the Jesuit Missions destroyed by the savages years since. They will find their church a ruin, and not a vestige left of the house once inhabited by the murdered priests. It is not concealed from them that they may be martyred, too. They are soldiers of the Cross; and they go — willingly go — to save the souls of the Indians, at the peril of their lives.”

Romayne rose, and advanced to the door. There, he turned, and spoke to Stella. “Where is Arthur?” he said.

Stella gently detained him.

“There was one word more he entreated me to say — pray wait and hear it,” she pleaded. “His one grief is at leaving You. Apart from that, he devotes himself gladly to the dreadful service which claims him. He has long looked forward to it, and has long prepared himself for it. Those, Lewis, are his own words.”

There was a knock at the door. The servant appeared, to announce that the carriage was waiting.

Penrose entered the room as the man left it.

“Have you spoken for me?” he said to Stella. She could only answer him by a gesture. He turned to Romayne with a faint smile.

“The saddest of all words must be spoken,” he said. “Farewell!”

Pale and trembling, Romayne took his hand. “Is this Father Benwell’s doing?” he asked.

“No!” Penrose answered firmly. “In Father Benwell’s position it might have been his doing, but for his goodness to me. For the first time since I have known him he has shrunk from a responsibility. For my sake he has left it to Rome. And Rome has spoken. Oh, my more than friend — my brother in love — !”

His voice failed him. With a resolution which was nothing less than heroic in a man of his affectionate nature, he recovered his composure.

“Let us make it as little miserable as it
can
be,” he said. “At every opportunity we will write to each other. And, who knows — I may yet come back to you? God has preserved his servants in dangers as great as any that I shall encounter. May that merciful God bless and protect you! Oh, Romayne, what happy days we have had together!” His last powers of resistance were worn out. Tears of noble sorrow dimmed the friendly eyes which had never once looked unkindly on the brother of his love. He kissed Romayne. “Help me out!” he said, turning blindly toward the hall, in which the servant was waiting. That last act of mercy was not left to a servant. With sisterly tenderness, Stella took his hand and led him away. “I shall remember you gratefully as long as I live,” she said to him when the carriage door was closed. He waved his hand at the window, and she saw him no more.

She returned to the study.

The relief of tears had not come to Romayne. He had dropped into a chair when Penrose left him. In stony silence he sat there, his head down, his eyes dry and staring. The miserable days of their estrangement were forgotten by his wife in the moment when she looked at him. She knelt by his side and lifted his head a little and laid it on her bosom. Her heart was full — she let the caress plead for her silently. He felt it; his cold fingers pressed her hand thankfully; but he said nothing. After a long interval, the first outward expression of sorrow that fell from his lips showed that he was still thinking of Penrose.

“Every blessing falls away from me,” he said. “I have lost my best friend.”

Years afterward Stella remembered those words, and the tone in which he had spoken them.

CHAPTER VII.

THE IMPULSIVE SEX.

AFTER a lapse of a few days, Father Benwell was again a visitor at Ten Acres Lodge — by Romayne’s invitation. The priest occupied the very chair, by the study fireside, in which Penrose had been accustomed to sit.

“It is really kind of you to come to me,” said Romayne, “so soon after receiving my acknowledgment of your letter. I can’t tell you how I was touched by the manner in which you wrote of Penrose. To my shame I confess it, I had no idea that you were so warmly attached to him.”

“I hardly knew it myself, Mr. Romayne, until our dear Arthur was taken away from us.”

“If you used your influence, Father Benwell, is there no hope that you might yet persuade him — ?”

“To withdraw from the Mission? Oh, Mr. Romayne, don’t you know Arthur’s character better than that? Even his gentle temper has its resolute side. The zeal of the first martyrs to Christianity is the zeal that burns in that noble nature. The Mission has been the dream of his life — it is endeared to him by the very dangers which we dread. Persuade Arthur to desert the dear and devoted colleagues who have opened their arms to him? I might as soon persuade that statue in the garden to desert its pedestal, and join us in this room. Shall we change the sad subject? Have you received the book which I sent you with my letter?”

Romayne took up the book from his desk. Before he could speak of it some one called out briskly, on the other side of the door: “May I come in?” — and came in, without waiting to be asked. Mrs. Eyrecourt, painted and robed for the morning — wafting perfumes as she moved — appeared in the study. She looked at the priest, and lifted her many-ringed hands with a gesture of coquettish terror.

“Oh, dear me! I had no idea you were here, Father Benwell. I ask ten thousand pardons. Dear and admirable Romayne, you don’t look as if you were pleased to see me. Good gracious! I am not interrupting a confession, am I?”

Father Benwell (with his paternal smile in perfect order) resigned his chair to Mrs. Eyrecourt. The traces of her illness still showed themselves in an intermittent trembling of her head and her hands. She had entered the room, strongly suspecting that the process of conversion might be proceeding in the absence of Penrose, and determined to interrupt it. Guided by his subtle intelligence, Father Benwell penetrated her motive as soon as she opened the door. Mrs. Eyrecourt bowed graciously, and took the offered chair. Father Benwell sweetened his paternal smile and offered to get a footstool.

“How glad I am,” he said, “to see you in your customary good spirits! But wasn’t it just a little malicious to talk of interrupting a confession? As if Mr. Romayne was one of Us! Queen Elizabeth herself could hardly have said a sharper thing to a poor Catholic priest.”

“You clever creature!” said Mrs. Eyrecourt. “How easily you see through a simple woman like me! There — I give you my hand to kiss and I will never try to deceive you again. Do you know, Father Benwell, a most extraordinary wish has suddenly come to me. Please don’t be offended. I wish you were a Jew.”

“May I ask why?” Father Benwell inquired, with an apostolic suavity worthy of the best days of Rome.

Mrs. Eyrecourt explained herself with the modest self-distrust of a maiden of fifteen. “I am really so ignorant, I hardly know how to put it. But learned persons have told me that it is the peculiarity of the Jews — may I say, the amiable peculiarity? — never to make converts. It would be so nice if you would take a leaf out of their book, when we have the happiness of receiving you here. My lively imagination pictures you in a double character. Father Benwell everywhere else; and — say, the patriarch Abraham at Ten Acres Lodge.”

Father Benwell lifted his persuasive hands in courteous protest. “My dear lady! pray make your mind easy. Not one word on the subject of religion has passed between Mr. Romayne and myself — ”

“I beg your pardon,” Mrs. Eyrecourt interposed, “I am afraid I fail to follow you. My silent son-in-law looks as if he longed to smother me, and my attention is naturally distracted. You were about to say — ?”

“I was about to say, dear Mrs. Eyrecourt, that you are alarming yourself without any reason. Not one word, on any controversial subject, has passed — ”

Mrs. Eyrecourt cocked her head, with the artless vivacity of a bird. “Ah, but it might, though!” she suggested, slyly.

Father Benwell once more remonstrated in dumb show, and Romayne lost his temper.

“Mrs. Eyrecourt!” he cried, sternly.

Mrs. Eyrecourt screamed, and lifted her hands to her ears. “I am not deaf, dear Romayne, and I am not to be put down by any ill-timed exhibition of, what I may call, domestic ferocity. Father Benwell sets you an example of Christian moderation. Do, please, follow it.”

Romayne refused to follow it.

“Talk on any other topic that you like, Mrs. Eyrecourt. I request you — don’t oblige me to use a harder word — I request you to spare Father Benwell and myself any further expression of your opinion on controversial subjects.”