The Complete Works of Henry James

by Henry James

  “I don’t know,” Roderick said, “I don’t heed the sense.” Miss Garland heard this, and Rowland looked at her. She looked at Roderick sharply and with a little blush. “I listen to Mary,” Roderick continued, “for the sake of her voice. It ‘s distractingly sweet!” At this Miss Garland’s blush deepened, and she looked away.

  Rowland, in Florence, as we know, had suffered his imagination to wander in the direction of certain conjectures which the reader may deem unflattering to Miss Garland’s constancy. He had asked himself whether her faith in Roderick had not faltered, and that demand of hers which had brought about his own departure for Switzerland had seemed almost equivalent to a confession that she needed his help to believe. Rowland was essentially a modest man, and he did not risk the supposition that Miss Garland had contrasted him with Roderick to his own advantage; but he had a certain consciousness of duty resolutely done which allowed itself to fancy, at moments, that it might be not illogically rewarded by the bestowal of such stray grains of enthusiasm as had crumbled away from her estimate of his companion. If some day she had declared, in a sudden burst of passion, that she was outwearied and sickened, and that she gave up her recreant lover, Rowland’s expectation would have gone half-way to meet her. And certainly if her passion had taken this course no generous critic would utterly condemn her. She had been neglected, ignored, forsaken, treated with a contempt which no girl of a fine temper could endure. There were girls, indeed, whose fineness, like that of Burd Helen in the ballad, lay in clinging to the man of their love through thick and thin, and in bowing their head to all hard usage. This attitude had often an exquisite beauty of its own, but Rowland deemed that he had solid reason to believe it never could be Mary Garland’s. She was not a passive creature; she was not soft and meek and grateful for chance bounties. With all her reserve of manner she was proud and eager; she asked much and she wanted what she asked; she believed in fine things and she never could long persuade herself that fine things missed were as beautiful as fine things achieved. Once Rowland passed an angry day. He had dreamed—it was the most insubstantial of dreams—that she had given him the right to believe that she looked to him to transmute her discontent. And yet here she was throwing herself back into Roderick’s arms at his lightest overture, and playing with his own half fearful, half shameful hopes! Rowland declared to himself that his position was essentially detestable, and that all the philosophy he could bring to bear upon it would make it neither honorable nor comfortable. He would go away and make an end of it. He did not go away; he simply took a long walk, stayed away from the inn all day, and on his return found Miss Garland sitting out in the moonlight with Roderick.

  Rowland, communing with himself during the restless ramble in question, had determined that he would at least cease to observe, to heed, or to care for what Miss Garland and Roderick might do or might not do together. Nevertheless, some three days afterward, the opportunity presenting itself, he deliberately broached the subject with Roderick. He knew this was inconsistent and faint-hearted; it was indulgence to the fingers that itched to handle forbidden fruit. But he said to himself that it was really more logical to be inconsistent than the reverse; for they had formerly discussed these mysteries very candidly. Was it not perfectly reasonable that he should wish to know the sequel of the situation which Roderick had then delineated? Roderick had made him promises, and it was to be expected that he should ascertain how the promises had been kept. Rowland could not say to himself that if the promises had been extorted for Mary Garland’s sake, his present attention to them was equally disinterested; and so he had to admit that he was indeed faint-hearted. He may perhaps be deemed too narrow a casuist, but we have repeated more than once that he was solidly burdened with a conscience.

  “I imagine,” he said to Roderick, “that you are not sorry, at present, to have allowed yourself to be dissuaded from making a final rupture with Miss Garland.”

  Roderick eyed him with the vague and absent look which had lately become habitual to his face, and repeated “Dissuaded?”

  “Don’t you remember that, in Rome, you wished to break your engagement, and that I urged you to respect it, though it seemed to hang by so slender a thread? I wished you to see what would come of it? If I am not mistaken, you are reconciled to it.”

  “Oh yes,” said Roderick, “I remember what you said; you made it a kind of personal favor to yourself that I should remain faithful. I consented, but afterwards, when I thought of it, your attitude greatly amused me. Had it ever been seen before?—a man asking another man to gratify him by not suspending his attentions to a pretty girl!”

  “It was as selfish as anything else,” said Rowland. “One man puts his selfishness into one thing, and one into another. It would have utterly marred my comfort to see Miss Garland in low spirits.”

  “But you liked her—you admired her, eh? So you intimated.”

  “I admire her profoundly.”

  “It was your originality then—to do you justice you have a great deal, of a certain sort—to wish her happiness secured in just that fashion. Many a man would have liked better himself to make the woman he admired happy, and would have welcomed her low spirits as an opening for sympathy. You were awfully queer about it.”

  “So be it!” said Rowland. “The question is, Are you not glad I was queer? Are you not finding that your affection for Miss Garland has a permanent quality which you rather underestimated?”

  “I don’t pretend to say. When she arrived in Rome, I found I did n’t care for her, and I honestly proposed that we should have no humbug about it. If you, on the contrary, thought there was something to be gained by having a little humbug, I was willing to try it! I don’t see that the situation is really changed. Mary Garland is all that she ever was—more than all. But I don’t care for her! I don’t care for anything, and I don’t find myself inspired to make an exception in her favor. The only difference is that I don’t care now, whether I care for her or not. Of course, marrying such a useless lout as I am is out of the question for any woman, and I should pay Miss Garland a poor compliment to assume that she is in a hurry to celebrate our nuptials.”

  “Oh, you ‘re in love!” said Rowland, not very logically. It must be confessed, at any cost, that this assertion was made for the sole purpose of hearing Roderick deny it.

  But it quite failed of its aim. Roderick gave a liberal shrug of his shoulders and an irresponsible toss of his head. “Call it what you please! I am past caring for names.”

  Rowland had not only been illogical, he had also been slightly disingenuous. He did not believe that his companion was in love; he had argued the false to learn the true. The true was that Roderick was again, in some degree, under a charm, and that he found a healing virtue in Mary’s presence, indisposed though he was to admit it. He had said, shortly before, that her voice was sweet to his ear; and this was a promising beginning. If her voice was sweet it was probable that her glance was not amiss, that her touch had a quiet magic, and that her whole personal presence had learned the art of not being irritating. So Rowland reasoned, and invested Mary Garland with a still finer loveliness.

  It was true that she herself helped him little to definite conclusions, and that he remained in puzzled doubt as to whether these happy touches were still a matter of the heart, or had become simply a matter of the conscience. He watched for signs that she rejoiced in Roderick’s renewed acceptance of her society; but it seemed to him that she was on her guard against interpreting it too largely. It was now her turn—he fancied that he sometimes gathered from certain nameless indications of glance and tone and gesture—it was now her turn to be indifferent, to care for other things. Again and again Rowland asked himself what these things were that Miss Garland might be supposed to care for, to the injury of ideal constancy; and again, having designated them, he divided them into two portions. One was that larger experience, in general, which had come to her with her arrival in Europe; the vague sense, borne in upon her imagination
, that there were more things one might do with one’s life than youth and ignorance and Northampton had dreamt of; the revision of old pledges in the light of new emotions. The other was the experience, in especial, of Rowland’s—what? Here Rowland always paused, in perfect sincerity, to measure afresh his possible claim to the young girl’s regard. What might he call it? It had been more than civility and yet it had been less than devotion. It had spoken of a desire to serve, but it had said nothing of a hope of reward. Nevertheless, Rowland’s fancy hovered about the idea that it was recompensable, and his reflections ended in a reverie which perhaps did not define it, but at least, on each occasion, added a little to its volume. Since Miss Garland had asked him as a sort of favor to herself to come also to Switzerland, he thought it possible she might let him know whether he seemed to have effectively served her. The days passed without her doing so, and at last Rowland walked away to an isolated eminence some five miles from the inn and murmured to the silent rocks that she was ungrateful. Listening nature seemed not to contradict him, so that, on the morrow, he asked the young girl, with an infinitesimal touch of irony, whether it struck her that his deflection from his Florentine plan had been attended with brilliant results.

  “Why, we are delighted that you are with us!” she answered.

  He was anything but satisfied with this; it seemed to imply that she had forgotten that she had solemnly asked him to come. He reminded her of her request, and recalled the place and time. “That evening on the terrace, late, after Mrs. Hudson had gone to bed, and Roderick being absent.”

  She perfectly remembered, but the memory seemed to trouble her. “I am afraid your kindness has been a great charge upon you,” she said. “You wanted very much to do something else.”

  “I wanted above all things to oblige you, and I made no sacrifice. But if I had made an immense one, it would be more than made up to me by any assurance that I have helped Roderick into a better mood.”

  She was silent a moment, and then, “Why do you ask me?” she said. “You are able to judge quite as well as I.”

  Rowland blushed; he desired to justify himself in the most veracious manner. “The truth is,” he said, “that I am afraid I care only in the second place for Roderick’s holding up his head. What I care for in the first place is your happiness.”

  “I don’t know why that should be,” she answered. “I have certainly done nothing to make you so much my friend. If you were to tell me you intended to leave us to-morrow, I am afraid that I should not venture to ask you to stay. But whether you go or stay, let us not talk of Roderick!”

  “But that,” said Rowland, “does n’t answer my question. Is he better?”

  “No!” she said, and turned away.

  He was careful not to tell her that he intended to leave them. One day, shortly after this, as the two young men sat at the inn-door watching the sunset, which on that evening was very striking and lurid, Rowland made an attempt to sound his companion’s present sentiment touching Christina Light. “I wonder where she is,” he said, “and what sort of a life she is leading her prince.”

  Roderick at first made no response. He was watching a figure on the summit of some distant rocks, opposite to them. The figure was apparently descending into the valley, and in relief against the crimson screen of the western sky, it looked gigantic. “Christina Light?” Roderick at last repeated, as if arousing himself from a reverie. “Where she is? It ‘s extraordinary how little I care!”

  “Have you, then, completely got over it?”

  To this Roderick made no direct reply; he sat brooding a while. “She ‘s a humbug!” he presently exclaimed.

  “Possibly!” said Rowland. “But I have known worse ones.”

  “She disappointed me!” Roderick continued in the same tone.

  “Had she, then, really given you hopes?”

  “Oh, don’t recall it!” Roderick cried. “Why the devil should I think of it? It was only three months ago, but it seems like ten years.” His friend said nothing more, and after a while he went on of his own accord. “I believed there was a future in it all! She pleased me—pleased me; and when an artist—such as I was—is pleased, you know!” And he paused again. “You never saw her as I did; you never heard her in her great moments. But there is no use talking about that! At first she would n’t regard me seriously; she chaffed me and made light of me. But at last I forced her to admit I was a great man. Think of that, sir! Christina Light called me a great man. A great man was what she was looking for, and we agreed to find our happiness for life in each other. To please me she promised not to marry till I gave her leave. I was not in a marrying way myself, but it was damnation to think of another man possessing her. To spare my sensibilities, she promised to turn off her prince, and the idea of her doing so made me as happy as to see a perfect statue shaping itself in the block. You have seen how she kept her promise! When I learned it, it was as if the statue had suddenly cracked and turned hideous. She died for me, like that!” And he snapped his fingers. “Was it wounded vanity, disappointed desire, betrayed confidence? I am sure I don’t know; you certainly have some name for it.”

  “The poor girl did the best she could,” said Rowland.

  “If that was her best, so much the worse for her! I have hardly thought of her these two months, but I have not forgiven her.”

  “Well, you may believe that you are avenged. I can’t think of her as happy.”

  “I don’t pity her!” said Roderick. Then he relapsed into silence, and the two sat watching the colossal figure as it made its way downward along the jagged silhouette of the rocks. “Who is this mighty man,” cried Roderick at last, “and what is he coming down upon us for? We are small people here, and we can’t undertake to keep company with giants.”

  “Wait till we meet him on our own level,” said Rowland, “and perhaps he will not overtop us.”

  “For ten minutes, at least,” Roderick rejoined, “he will have been a great man!” At this moment the figure sank beneath the horizon line and became invisible in the uncertain light. Suddenly Roderick said, “I would like to see her once more—simply to look at her.”

  “I would not advise it,” said Rowland.

  “It was her beauty that did it!” Roderick went on. “It was all her beauty; in comparison, the rest was nothing. What befooled me was to think of it as my property! And I had made it mine—no one else had studied it as I had, no one else understood it. What does that stick of a Casamassima know about it at this hour? I should like to see it just once more; it ‘s the only thing in the world of which I can say so.”

  “I would not advise it,” Rowland repeated.

  “That ‘s right, dear Rowland,” said Roderick; “don’t advise! That ‘s no use now.”

  The dusk meanwhile had thickened, and they had not perceived a figure approaching them across the open space in front of the house. Suddenly it stepped into the circle of light projected from the door and windows, and they beheld little Sam Singleton stopping to stare at them. He was the giant whom they had seen descending along the rocks. When this was made apparent Roderick was seized with a fit of intense hilarity—it was the first time he had laughed in three months. Singleton, who carried a knapsack and walking-staff, received from Rowland the friendliest welcome. He was in the serenest possible humor, and if in the way of luggage his knapsack contained nothing but a comb and a second shirt, he produced from it a dozen admirable sketches. He had been trudging over half Switzerland and making everywhere the most vivid pictorial notes. They were mostly in a box at Interlaken, and in gratitude for Rowland’s appreciation, he presently telegraphed for his box, which, according to the excellent Swiss method, was punctually delivered by post. The nights were cold, and our friends, with three or four other chance sojourners, sat in-doors over a fire of logs. Even with Roderick sitting moodily in the outer shadow they made a sympathetic little circle, and they turned over Singleton’s drawings, while he perched in the chimney-corner, blushing and grinnin
g, with his feet on the rounds of his chair. He had been pedestrianizing for six weeks, and he was glad to rest awhile at Engelthal. It was an economic repose, however, for he sallied forth every morning, with his sketching tools on his back, in search of material for new studies. Roderick’s hilarity, after the first evening, had subsided, and he watched the little painter’s serene activity with a gravity that was almost portentous. Singleton, who was not in the secret of his personal misfortunes, still treated him with timid frankness as the rising star of American art. Roderick had said to Rowland, at first, that Singleton reminded him of some curious little insect with a remarkable mechanical instinct in its antennae; but as the days went by it was apparent that the modest landscapist’s unflagging industry grew to have an oppressive meaning for him. It pointed a moral, and Roderick used to sit and con the moral as he saw it figured in Singleton’s bent back, on the hot hill-sides, protruding from beneath his white umbrella. One day he wandered up a long slope and overtook him as he sat at work; Singleton related the incident afterwards to Rowland, who, after giving him in Rome a hint of Roderick’s aberrations, had strictly kept his own counsel.