Wilkie Collins

“ Lord Loring appeared to feel the necessity of touching a delicate subject with a light hand. He said, in his pleasant way: “Stella isn’t the other evil, I suppose?”
“Most assuredly not.”
“Then what is it?”
Romayne answered, almost passionately: “My own weakness and selfishness! Faults which I must resist, or become a mean and heartless man. For me, the worst of the two evils is there. I respect and admire Miss Eyrecourt—I believe her to be a woman in a thousand—don’t ask me to see her again! Where is Penrose? Let us talk of something else.” ”

“ Romayne sat down at his writing-table, and hid his face in his hands. He had entered the room with the bright image of Stella in his mind. The image had faded from it now—the grief that was in him not even the beloved woman could share. His thoughts were wholly with the brave and patient Christian who had left him—the true man, whose spotless integrity no evil influence could corrupt. By what inscrutable fatality do some men find their way into spheres that are unworthy of them? Oh, Penrose, if the priests of your Order were all like you, how easily I should be converted! ”

“ But the career which has carried him into the sacred ranks of the priesthood is open to every man who feels the sense of divine vocation, which has made Penrose one of Us.”
“No, Father Benwell! Not open to every man.”
“I say, Yes!”
“It is not open to Me!”
“I say it is open to You. And more—I enjoin, I command, you to dismiss from your mind all merely human obstacles and discouragements. They are beneath the notice of a man who feels himself called to the priesthood. Give me your hand, Romayne! Does your conscience tell you that you are that man?” ”

“ With those prefatory words, he told the story of Winterfield’s first marriage; altering nothing; concealing nothing; doing the fullest justice to Winterfield’s innocence of all evil motive, from first to last. When the plain truth served his purpose, as it most assuredly did in this case, the man has never yet been found who could match Father Benwell at stripping himself of every vestige of reserve, and exhibiting his naked heart to the moral admiration of mankind. ”

“ She drew back from him, hurt by the tone in which he spoke to her. “I remember the time, Lewis,” she said, “when you would have been more indulgent toward my errors—even if I am wrong.”
That simple appeal touched his better nature. “I don’t mean to be hard on you, Stella,” he answered. “It is a little irritating to hear you say that you distrust the most devoted and most affectionate friend that man ever had. Why can’t I love my wife, and love my friend, too? You don’t know, when I am trying to get on with my book, how I miss the help and sympathy of Penrose. ”

“ CHAPTER IV. ON THE ROAD TO ROME.
THERE was not a sound in the room. Romayne stood, looking at the priest
“Did you hear what I said?” Father Benwell asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you understand that I really mean what I said?”
He made no reply—he waited, like a man expecting to hear more.
Father Benwell was alive to the vast importance, at such a moment, of not shrinking from the responsibility which he had assumed. “I see how I distress you,” he said; “but, for your sake, I am bound to speak out. Romayne! the woman whom you have married is the wife of another man. ”

“ I spoke to Stella, in words which I would now give everything I possess to recall. A detestable jealousy took possession of me. I meanly hinted that Penrose could claim no great merit (in the matter of Romayne’s conversion) for yielding to the entreaties of a beautiful woman who had fascinated him, though he might be afraid to own it. She protested against my unworthy insinuation—but she failed to make me ashamed of myself. Is a woman ever ignorant of the influence which her beauty exercises over a man? I went on, like the miserable creature that I was, from bad to worse. ”

“ Her husband had described to her his interview with Major Hynd, and had mentioned his project for bringing Romayne and Stella together, after first exacting a promise of the strictest secrecy from his wife. She felt herself bound—doubly bound, after what she had now discovered—to respect the confidence placed in her; and this at the time when she had betrayed herself to Stella! With a woman’s feline fineness of perception, in all cases of subterfuge and concealment, she picked a part of the truth out of the whole, and answered harmlessly without a moment’s hesitation. ”

“ Make your mind easy, reverend sir! Romayne’s answer set everything right.
He said: “I have thought of it till I could think no longer. I still believe that sweet woman might control the torment of the voice. But could she deliver me from the remorse perpetually gnawing at my heart? I feel as murderers feel. In taking another man’s life—a man who had not even injured me!—I have committed the one unatonable and unpardonable sin. Can any human creature’s influence make me forget that? ”

“ Your unanswered allusion to my relations with “Lewis Romayne and his wife,” coming from a member of the family, will be received as truth. Rather than let this be, I reveal to you, without reserve, some of the saddest passages of my life. I have nothing to be ashamed of—and, if I have hitherto kept certain events in the dark, it has been for the sake of others, not for my own sake. I know better now. A woman’s reputation—if she is a good woman—is not easily compromised by telling the truth. ”

“ Stella had stopped the first cab that passed her, and had directed the driver to Camp’s Hill, Islington.
The aspect of the miserable little street, closed at one end, and swarming with dirty children quarreling over their play, daunted her for the moment. Even the cabman, drawing up at the entrance to the street, expressed his opinion that it was a queer sort of place for a young lady to venture into alone. Stella thought of Romayne. Her firm persuasion that she was helping him to perform an act of mercy, which was (to his mind) an act of atonement as well, roused her courage. ”

“ Now, as I understand his scruples, he felt that he might honorably speak out. His zeal more than balanced his weakness, as you will presently see.
He was loud, he was positive, when I heard him next. “No!” he burst out, “your refuge is not in books, and not in the barren religious forms which call themselves Protestant. Dear master, the peace of mind, which you believe you have lost forever, you will find again in the divine wisdom and compassion of the holy Catholic Church. There is the remedy for all that you suffer! There is the new life that will yet make you a happy man!” ”

“ And this man was Romayne! I had last met with him among his delightful works of art; an enthusiast in literature; the hospitable master of a house filled with comforts and luxuries to its remotest corner. And now I had seen what Rome had made of him.
“Yes,” said my companion, “the Ancient Church not only finds out the men who can best serve it, but develops qualities in those men of which they have been themselves unconscious. The advance which Roman Catholic Christianity has been, and is still, making has its intelligible reason. ”

“ Winterfield returned his caresses, and kisses him as tenderly as a woman might have kissed her pet.
“Dear old fellow! it’s a shame to have left you—I won’t do it again. Father Benwell, have you many friends who would be as glad to see you as this friend? I haven’t one. And there are fools who talk of a dog as an inferior being to ourselves! This creature’s faithful love is mine, do what I may. I might be disgraced in the estimation of every human creature I know, and he would be as true to me as ever. ”

“ Even with the help of Penrose to encourage him, he does not get on to his satisfaction—and yet, as I could plainly perceive, the ambition to make a name in the world exercises a stronger influence over him than ever. All in our favor, my reverend friend—all in our favor!
I took the liberty of asking to see Penrose alone for a moment; and, this request granted, Romayne and I parted cordially. I can make most people like me, when I choose to try. The master of Vange Abbey is no exception to the rule. ”

“ Eyrecourt’s faded eyes opened wide in astonishment.
“Do you really mean it?” she asked.
“I do, indeed.”
“Are you actually simple enough, Stella, to think that a man of Romayne’s temper would have made you his wife if you had told him of the Brussels marriage?”
“Why not?”
“Why not! Would Romayne—would any man—believe that you really did part from Winterfield at the church door? Considering that you are a married woman, your innocence, my sweet child, is a perfect phenomenon! It’s well there were wiser people than you to keep your secret.” ”

“ What extraordinary caprice had made her insensible to the social attractions of a man so unaffectedly agreeable? It was not wonderful that Winterfield’s cordiality should have been chilled by the cold welcome that he had received from the mistress of the house. At the same time, some allowance was to be made for the influence of Stella’s domestic anxieties, and some sympathy was claimed by the state of her health. Although her husband shrank from distressing her by any immediate reference to her reception of his friend, he could not disguise from himself that she had disappointed him. ”

“ Years had passed since I had last been Romayne’s guest. Nothing, out of the house or in the house, seemed to have undergone any change in the interval. Neither the good North-country butler, nor his buxom Scotch wife, skilled in cookery, looked any older: they received me as if I had left them a day or two since, and had come back again to live in Yorkshire. My well-remembered bedroom was waiting for me; and the matchless old Madeira welcomed us when my host and I met in the inner-hall, which was the ordinary dining-room of the Abbey. ”

“ Lord Loring listened with the closest attention while the subject under discussion was communicated to him. When the time came to give his opinion, he sided unhesitatingly with his wife.
“If the fault was yours, even in the slightest degree,” he said to Stella, “Romayne would have a right to be taken into your confidence. But, my dear child, we, who know the truth, know you to be a pure and innocent woman. You go to Romayne in every way worthy of him, and you know that he loves you. If you did tell him that miserable story, he could only pity you. Do you want to be pitied?” ”

“ His eyes sadly followed the retiring figures of Stella and Romayne. The color rose on his haggard cheeks. Like most men who are accustomed to live alone, he had the habit, when he was strongly excited, of speaking to himself. “No,” he said, as the unacknowledged lovers disappeared through the door, “it is an insult to ask me to do it!” He turned the other way, escaped Lady Loring’s notice in the reception-room, and left the house.
Romayne and Stella passed through the card-room and the chess-room, turned into a corridor, and entered the conservatory. ”

“ Stella understood what he meant—and more. In an instant she remembered that Father Benwell had been at Beaupark House. Had he heard of the visit? She clasped her hands in speechless terror.
Winterfield gently reassured her. “You must not be frightened,” he said. “It is in the last degree unlikely that Mr. Romayne will ever find out that you were at my house. If he does—and if you deny it—I will do for you what I would do for no other human creature; I will deny it too. You are safe from discovery. ”