My right hand is as red as ever, Penrose, with the blood of a fellow-creature.
Another destruction of my illusions when I married!”
“Romayne!
I don’t like to hear you speak of your marriage in that way.”
“Oh, very well.
Let us go back to my book.
Perhaps I shall get on better with it now you are here to help me.
My ambition to make a name in the world has never taken so strong a hold on me (I don’t know why, unless other disappointments have had something to do with it) as at this time, when I find I can’t give my mind to my work.
We will make a last effort together, my friend!
If it fails, we will put my manuscripts into the fire, and I will try some other career.
Politics are open to me.
Through politics, I might make my mark in diplomacy.
There is something in directing the destinies of nations wonderfully attractive to me in my present state of feeling.
I hate the idea of being indebted for my position in the world, like the veriest fool living, to the accidents of birth and fortune.
Are you content with the obscure life that you lead?
Did you not envy that priest (he is no older than I am) who was sent the other day as the Pope’s ambassador to Portugal?”
Penrose spoke out at last without hesitation.
“You are in a thoroughly unwholesome state of mind,” he said.
Romayne laughed recklessly.
“When was I ever in a healthy state of mind?” he asked.
Penrose passed the interruption over without notice.
“If I am to do you any good,” he resumed, “I must know what is really the matter with you.
The very last question that I ought to put, and that I wish to put, is the question which you force me to ask.”
“What is it?”
“When you speak of your married life,” said Penrose, “your tone is the tone of a disappointed man. Have you any serious reason to complain of Mrs. Romayne?”
(Stella rose to her feet, in her eagerness to hear what her husband’s answer would be.)
“Serious reason?” Romayne repeated.
“How can such an idea have entered your head?
I only complain of irritating trifles now and then.
Even the best of women is not perfect.
It’s hard to expect it from any of them.”
(The interpretation of this reply depended entirely on the tone in which it was spoken.
What was the animating spirit in this case?
Irony or Indulgence?
Stella was ignorant of the indirect methods of irritation, by means of which Father Benwell had encouraged Romayne’s doubts of his wife’s motive for the reception of Winterfield.
Her husband’s tone, expressing this state of mind, was new to her.
She sat down again, divided between hope and fear, waiting to hear more. The next words, spoken by Penrose, astounded her.
The priest, the Jesuit, the wily spiritual intruder between man and wife, actually took the wife’s side!)
“Romayne,” he proceeded quietly, “I want you to be happy.”
“How am I to be happy?”
“I will try and tell you.
I believe your wife to be a good woman. I believe she loves you.
There is something in her face that speaks for her—even to an inexperienced person like myself.
Don’t be impatient with her!
Put away from you that besetting temptation to speak in irony—it is so easy to take that tone, and sometimes so cruel.
I am only a looker-on, I know.
Domestic happiness can never be the happiness of my life.
But I have observed my fellow-creatures of all degrees—and this, I tell you, is the result.
The largest number of happy men are the husbands and fathers.
Yes; I admit that they have terrible anxieties—but they are fortified by unfailing compensations and encouragements.