The Black Robe. Wilkie Collins
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don’t mean that you will tell Lord Loring?” she said.
“My dear child! how can you be so foolish? Can’t I show him the drawing without mentioning who it was done by? His memory is a much better one than mine. If I say to him, ‘Where did we meet that man?’—he may tell me at once—he may even remember the name. Of course, if you like to be kept in suspense, you have only to say so. It rests with you to decide.”
Poor Stella gave way directly. She returned the drawing, and affectionately kissed her artful friend. Having now secured the means of consulting her husband without exciting suspicion, Lady Loring left the room.
At that time in the morning, Lord Loring was generally to be found either in the library or the picture gallery. His wife tried the library first. On entering the room, she found but one person in it—not the person of whom she was in search. There, buttoned up in his long frock coat, and surrounded by books of all sorts and sizes, sat the plump elderly priest who had been the especial object of Major Hynd’s aversion.
“I beg your pardon, Father Benwell,” said Lady Loring; “I hope I don’t interrupt your studies?”
Father Benwell rose and bowed with a pleasant paternal smile. “I am only trying to organize an improved arrangement of the library,” he said, simply. “Books are companionable creatures—members, as it were, of his family, to a lonely old priest like myself. Can I be of any service to your ladyship?”
“Thank you, Father. If you can kindly tell me where Lord Loring is—”
“To be sure! His lordship was here five minutes since—he is now in the picture gallery. Pray permit me!”
With a remarkably light and easy step for a man of his age and size, he advanced to the further end of the library, and opened a door which led into the gallery.
“Lord Loring is among the pictures,” he announced. “And alone.” He laid a certain emphasis on the last word, which might or might not (in the case of a spiritual director of the household) invite a word of explanation.
Lady Loring merely said, “Just what I wanted; thank you once more, Father Benwell”—and passed into the picture gallery.
Left by himself again in the library, the priest walked slowly to and fro, thinking. His latent power and resolution began to show themselves darkly in his face. A skilled observer would now have seen plainly revealed in him the habit of command, and the capacity for insisting on his right to be obeyed. From head to foot, Father Benwell was one of those valuable soldiers of the Church who acknowledge no defeat, and who improve every victory.
After a while, he returned to the table at which he had been writing when Lady Loring entered the room. An unfinished letter lay open on the desk. He took up his pen and completed it in these words: “I have therefore decided on trusting this serious matter in the hands of Arthur Penrose. I know he is young—but we have to set against the drawback of his youth, the counter-merits of his incorruptible honesty and his true religious zeal. No better man is just now within my reach—and there is no time to lose. Romayne has recently inherited a large increase of fortune. He will be the object of the basest conspiracies—conspiracies of men to win his money, and (worse still) of women to marry him. Even these contemptible efforts may be obstacles in the way of our righteous purpose, unless we are first in the field. Penrose left Oxford last week. I expect him here this morning, by my invitation. When I have given him the necessary instructions, and have found the means of favorably introducing him to Romayne, I shall have the honor of forwarding a statement of our prospects so far.”
Having signed these lines, he addressed the letter to “The Reverend the Secretary, Society of Jesus, Rome.” As he closed and sealed the envelope, a servant opened the door communicating with the hall, and announced:
“Mr. Arthur Penrose.”
CHAPTER II. THE JESUITS.
FATHER BENWELL rose, and welcomed the visitor with his paternal smile. “I am heartily glad to see you,” he said—and held out his hand with a becoming mixture of dignity and cordiality. Penrose lifted the offered hand respectfully to his lips. As one of the “Provincials” of the Order, Father Benwell occupied a high place among the English Jesuits. He was accustomed to acts of homage offered by his younger brethren to their spiritual chief. “I fear you are not well,” he proceeded gently. “Your hand is feverish, Arthur.”
“Thank you, Father—I am as well as usual.”
“Depression of spirits, perhaps?” Father Benwell persisted.
Penrose admitted it with a passing smile. “My spirits are never very lively,” he said.
Father Benwell shook his head in gentle disapproval of a depressed state of spirits in a young man. “This must be corrected,” he remarked. “Cultivate cheerfulness, Arthur. I am myself, thank God, a naturally cheerful man. My mind reflects, in some degree (and reflects gratefully), the brightness and beauty which are part of the great scheme of creation. A similar disposition is to be cultivated—I know instances of it in my own experience. Add one more instance, and you will really gratify me. In its seasons of rejoicing, our Church is eminently cheerful. Shall I add another encouragement? A great trust is about to be placed in you. Be socially agreeable, or you will fail to justify the trust. This is Father Benwell’s little sermon. I think it has a merit, Arthur—it is a sermon soon over.”
Penrose looked up at his superior, eager to hear more.
He was a very young man. His large, thoughtful, well-opened gray eyes, and his habitual refinement and modesty of manner, gave a certain attraction to his personal appearance, of which it stood in some need. In stature he was little and lean; his hair had become prematurely thin over his broad forehead; there were hollows already in his cheeks, and marks on either side of his thin, delicate lips. He looked like a person who had passed many miserable hours in needlessly despairing of himself and his prospects. With all this, there was something in him so irresistibly truthful and sincere—so suggestive, even where he might be wrong, of a purely conscientious belief in his own errors—that he attached people to him without an effort, and often without being aware of it himself. What would his friends have said if they had been told that the religious enthusiasm of this gentle, self-distrustful, melancholy man, might, in its very innocence of suspicion and self-seeking, be perverted to dangerous uses in unscrupulous hands? His friends would, one and all, have received the scandalous assertion with contempt; and Penrose himself, if he had heard of it, might have failed to control his temper for the first time in his life.
“May I ask a question, without giving offense?” he said, timidly.
Father Benwell took his hand. “My dear Arthur, let us open our minds to each other without reserve. What is your question?”
“You have spoken, Father, of a great trust that is about to be placed in me.”
“Yes. You are anxious, no doubt, to hear what it is?”
“I am anxious to know, in the first place, if it requires me to go back to Oxford.”
Father Benwell dropped his young friend’s hand. “Do you dislike Oxford?” he asked, observing Penrose attentively.
“Bear with me, Father, if I speak too confidently. I dislike the deception which has obliged me to conceal that I am a Catholic and a priest.”
Father Benwell set this little difficulty right, with the air of a man who could make benevolent allowance for unreasonable scruples. “I think, Arthur, you forget two important considerations,” he said. “In the first place, you have a dispensation from your superiors, which absolves you of all responsibility in respect of the concealment that you have practiced. In the second place, we could only obtain information of the progress which our Church is silently making at the University by employing you in the capacity of—let me say, an independent observer. However, if it will contribute to your ease of mind, I see no objection to informing you that you will not