“Oh, damn my marriage!” exclaimed Roderick, irritably. “I tell you the idiot world is gyrating indecently on its occiput; my engagement with the rest of things.”
“Is it broken off?” inquired Sylvester, hopefully.
“The same thing. Postponed to the Millennium.”
“The Colonial Millennium—?”
“Yes. You are quite right, fratello mio, to keep clear of women and their works. No man can ever fathom their infinite incomprehensibility. Look here—” He rose and marched about the studio, burning with a sense of his wrongs and led by the instinct of his temperament to give vent to his grievances. “I love that girl with an imbecile passion. Art is great, but love is greater. I would make a holocaust of all that is dear to me in the world in the sacred name of Art. Am I not ready to expatriate myself? Have I not been working like Sisyphus for months? But I can't throw my elemental sex into the blaze. Six months' waiting is enough for all but anchorites. Do I look like an anchorite? I urge her to fix the marriage at Christmas. She's as hard as your Philistine's head. We must wait until the Colony is a fait accompli. How is it going to be accomplished without money?”
“I thought the scheme was getting along famously,” interposed Sylvester.
“So did I, but it isn't. It hasn't appealed to the imagination of this haggis-brained public, and so funds remain stationary. As if this worry and disappointment isn't enough for a man! Point d'argent, point de Suisse. No money, no colony. No colony, no marriage. The two things could never be connected save in the ineffable convolutions of the feminine brain.”
“I see,” said Sylvester. “It is hard lines on you.”
He was intensely relieved by Roderick's confidences; could afford even to be magnanimous. Since his avowal to Ella of hostile intentions, he had felt it his duty to inform Roderick of his attitude. He had come this morning prepared to make a declaration of war. There were several little things he had learned incidentally of Roderick's past career, with which he had intended to confront him. The memory of Mr. Snodgrass informing the small boy that he was going to begin came into his mind as he mounted the stairs, and he smiled grimly. But, after all, no one had ever questioned the chivalry of Mr. Snodgrass's motives. His first words on entering were an announcement of the object of his visit. Roderick had implicitly declared that object to be futile. To proceed further would be to attack a fallen man. To express satisfaction would be to triumph over a foe's discomfiture. He therefore expressed conventional sympathy. It was hard lines.
Roderick caught up the phrase and wove it into a fugue of indignant lamentation. Luck never came his way. The stars in their courses had fought against him since his cradle.