Roderick Hudson

“I have neither the learning nor the talent.”

She made no attempt to contradict him; she simply said she had supposed otherwise. “You ought, at any rate,” she continued in a moment, “to do something for yourself.”

“For myself? I should have supposed that if ever a man seemed to live for himself”—

“I don’t know how it seems,” she interrupted, “to careless observers. But we know—we know that you have lived—a great deal—for us.”

Her voice trembled slightly, and she brought out the last words with a little jerk.

“She has had that speech on her conscience,” thought Rowland; “she has been thinking she owed it to me, and it seemed to her that now was her time to make it and have done with it.”

She went on in a way which confirmed these reflections, speaking with due solemnity. “You ought to be made to know very well what we all feel. Mrs. Hudson tells me that she has told you what she feels. Of course Roderick has expressed himself. I have been wanting to thank you too; I do, from my heart.”

Rowland made no answer; his face at this moment resembled the tragic mask much more than the comic. But Miss Garland was not looking at him; she had taken up her Murray again.

In the afternoon she usually drove with Mrs. Hudson, but Rowland frequently saw her again in the evening. He was apt to spend half an hour in the little sitting-room at the hotel-pension on the slope of the Pincian, and Roderick, who dined regularly with his mother, was present on these occasions. Rowland saw him little at other times, and for three weeks no observations passed between them on the subject of Mrs. Hudson’s advent. To Rowland’s vision, as the weeks elapsed, the benefits to proceed from the presence of the two ladies remained shrouded in mystery. Roderick was peculiarly inscrutable. He was preoccupied with his work on his mother’s portrait, which was taking a very happy turn; and often, when he sat silent, with his hands in his pockets, his legs outstretched, his head thrown back, and his eyes on vacancy, it was to be supposed that his fancy was hovering about the half-shaped image in his studio, exquisite even in its immaturity. He said little, but his silence did not of necessity imply disaffection, for he evidently found it a deep personal luxury to lounge away the hours in an atmosphere so charged with feminine tenderness. He was not alert, he suggested nothing in the way of excursions (Rowland was the prime mover in such as were attempted), but he conformed passively at least to the tranquil temper of the two women, and made no harsh comments nor sombre allusions. Rowland wondered whether he had, after all, done his friend injustice in denying him the sentiment of duty. He refused invitations, to Rowland’s knowledge, in order to dine at the jejune little table-d’hote; wherever his spirit might be, he was present in the flesh with religious constancy. Mrs. Hudson’s felicity betrayed itself in a remarkable tendency to finish her sentences and wear her best black silk gown. Her tremors had trembled away; she was like a child who discovers that the shaggy monster it has so long been afraid to touch is an inanimate terror, compounded of straw and saw-dust, and that it is even a safe audacity to tickle its nose. As to whether the love-knot of which Mary Garland had the keeping still held firm, who should pronounce? The young girl, as we know, did not wear it on her sleeve. She always sat at the table, near the candles, with a piece of needle-work. This was the attitude in which Rowland had first seen her, and he thought, now that he had seen her in several others, it was not the least becoming.

CHAPTER X. The Cavaliere

There befell at last a couple of days during which Rowland was unable to go to the hotel. Late in the evening of the second one Roderick came into his room. In a few moments he announced that he had finished the bust of his mother.

“And it ‘s magnificent!” he declared. “It ‘s one of the best things I have done.”

“I believe it,” said Rowland. “Never again talk to me about your inspiration being dead.”

“Why not? This may be its last kick! I feel very tired. But it ‘s a masterpiece, though I do say it. They tell us we owe so much to our parents. Well, I ‘ve paid the filial debt handsomely!” He walked up and down the room a few moments, with the purpose of his visit evidently still undischarged. “There ‘s one thing more I want to say,” he presently resumed. “I feel as if I ought to tell you!” He stopped before Rowland with his head high and his brilliant glance unclouded. “Your invention is a failure!”

“My invention?” Rowland repeated.

“Bringing out my mother and Mary.”

“A failure?”

“It ‘s no use! They don’t help me.”

Rowland had fancied that Roderick had no more surprises for him; but he was now staring at him, wide-eyed.

“They bore me!” Roderick went on.

“Oh, oh!” cried Rowland.

“Listen, listen!” said Roderick with perfect gentleness. “I am not complaining of them; I am simply stating a fact. I am very sorry for them; I am greatly disappointed.”

“Have you given them a fair trial?”

“Should n’t you say so? It seems to me I have behaved beautifully.”

“You have done very well; I have been building great hopes on it.”

“I have done too well, then. After the first forty-eight hours my own hopes collapsed. But I determined to fight it out; to stand within the temple; to let the spirit of the Lord descend! Do you want to know the result? Another week of it, and I shall begin to hate them. I shall want to poison them.”

“Miserable boy!” cried Rowland. “They are the loveliest of women!”

“Very likely! But they mean no more to me than a Bible text to an atheist!”

“I utterly fail,” said Rowland, in a moment, “to understand your relation to Miss Garland.”

Roderick shrugged his shoulders and let his hands drop at his sides. “She adores me! That ‘s my relation.” And he smiled strangely.

“Have you broken your engagement?”

“Broken it? You can’t break a ray of moonshine.”

“Have you absolutely no affection for her?”

Roderick placed his hand on his heart and held it there a moment. “Dead—dead—dead!” he said at last.

“I wonder,” Rowland asked presently, “if you begin to comprehend the beauty of Miss Garland’s character. She is a person of the highest merit.”

“Evidently—or I would not have cared for her!”

“Has that no charm for you now?”

“Oh, don’t force a fellow to say rude things!”

“Well, I can only say that you don’t know what you are giving up.”

Roderick gave a quickened glance. “Do you know, so well?”

“I admire her immeasurably.”

Roderick smiled, we may almost say sympathetically. “You have not wasted time.”

Rowland’s thoughts were crowding upon him fast. If Roderick was resolute, why oppose him? If Mary was to be sacrificed, why, in that way, try to save her? There was another way; it only needed a little presumption to make it possible. Rowland tried, mentally, to summon presumption to his aid; but whether it came or not, it found conscience there before it. Conscience had only three words, but they were cogent. “For her sake—for her sake,” it dumbly murmured, and Rowland resumed his argument. “I don’t know what I would n’t do,” he said, “rather than that Miss Garland should suffer.”

“There is one thing to be said,” Roderick answered reflectively. “She is very strong.”

“Well, then, if she ‘s strong, believe that with a longer chance, a better chance, she will still regain your affection.”

“Do you know what you ask?” cried Roderick. “Make love to a girl I hate?”

“You hate?”

“As her lover, I should hate her!”

“Listen to me!” said Rowland with vehemence.

“No, listen you to me! Do you really urge my marrying a woman who would bore me to death? I would let her know it in very good season, and then where would she be?”