Roderick Hudson (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907)/Chapter 25
XXV
On the homeward walk that evening he preserved an ominous silence, and early on the morrow, saying nothing of his intentions, he started off alone: Rowland saw him measure with light elastic steps the rugged path to Engelberg. He was absent all day and gave no account of himself on his return, simply saying he was impossibly tired and going to bed early. When he had left the room Mary Garland drew near to their friend.
"I wish to ask you a question," she said. "What happened to Roderick yesterday at Engelberg?"
"You 've discovered that something did happen?"
"I 'm sure of it. Was it anything disagreeable? "
"I don't know how at the present moment he judges it. He met Princess Casamassima."
"Thank you!" said Mary; and she turned away.
The conversation had been brief, but it had not been the first exchange of words important far beyond its duration. Mary's question had at any rate for Rowland a great and particular sign — being the first she had ever asked him which Roderick himself could have answered better. Therefore she had betrayed as not before how little she "got out" of the latter. Rowland ventured to think this fact marked an era.
The next morning was sultry, and the air, usually so fresh at those altitudes, was oppressively heavy. Rowland lounged on the grass a while, near Singleton, who was at work under his white umbrella within view of the house; and then in quest of coolness he wandered away to the rocky ridge whence the view was across to the Jungfrau. To-day, however, the white summits were invisible; their heads were muffled in sullen clouds and the valleys beneath them curtained in dun-coloured mist. Rowland had a book in his pocket, which he took out and opened. But his page remained unturned; his own thoughts were more absorbing. His interview with Christina had left him all vibrating, and he was haunted with the memory of her almost blameless bitterness and of something sinister in this fresh physiognomy she had chosen to present. These things were immensely appealing, and he thought with richly renewed impatience of Roderick's having again become acquainted with them. It required little ingenuity to make it probable that certain visible marks in him had also appealed to Christina. His consummate indifference, his supreme defiance, would make him a magnificent trophy, and she had announced with sufficient distinctness that she had said good-bye to scruples. It was her fancy at present to treat the world as a garden of pleasure, and if hitherto she had played with Roderick's passion on its stem there was little doubt that she would now pluck it with a more merciless hand and drain it of its acrid sweetness. And why in the name of common consistency — though indeed it was the only consistency to have looked for — need Roderick have gone marching back to destruction? Rowland's meditations, even when they began in rancour, often brought him comfort; but on this occasion they hurt him as if they had been sharp-cornered objects bumped against in darkness. He recognised a sudden collapse of his moral energy; a current that had been flowing for two years with a breadth of its own seemed at last to submit to shrinkage and thinness. He looked away at the sallow vapours on the mountains; their dreariness had an analogy with the stale residuum of his own generosity. At last he had arrived at the very limit of the deference a sane man might pay to other people's folly; nay, rather, he had transgressed it, he had been befooled on a gigantic scale. He turned to his book and tried to woo back patience, but it gave him cold comfort and he tossed it angrily away. He pulled his hat over his eyes and tried to wonder dispassionately if atmospheric conditions might n't have to do with his gloom. He remained some time in this attitude, but was finally roused from it by an odd sense that although he had heard nothing some one had approached him. He looked up and saw Roderick standing before him on the turf. His mood made the spectacle unwelcome, and for a moment he felt himself ungraciously glare. Roderick's face, on the other hand, took up, even before he spoke, something that evidently figured to him as their old relation. It was if he had come back to him — and that, after a moment, made our friend sit up.
"I should like you to do me a favour," the young man presently said. "I should like you to lend me some money."
"How much do you wish?" Rowland asked.
"Well, say a thousand francs."
Rowland considered. "I don't wish to be indiscreet, but may I ask you what you propose to do with a thousand francs?"
"To go to Interlaken."
"And why should you go to Interlaken?"
The answer came at once. "Because that woman 's to be there."
Rowland broke into laughter, but his friend remained serenely grave. "You 've forgiven her then?" said Rowland.
Roderick, before answering, dropped upon the grass. But then, beside his companion, he spoke with emphasis. "Not a bit!"
"I don't understand."
"Neither do I. I only know that her beauty has the same extraordinary value as ever and that it has waked me up amazingly. Besides, she has asked me to come."
"She has asked you?"
"Yesterday, in so many words."
"Ah, the cruel creature!" cried Rowland, who was thinking of Mary Garland.
"Well," said Roderick, "I 'm perfectly willing to take her for that."
"But why need you take her for anything? Why, in the name of common sense, did you go back to her?"
"Why did I find her standing there like a goddess who had just stepped out of her cloud? Why did I look at her at all? Before I knew where I was the spell was cast."
Rowland, who had been sitting erect, threw himself back on the grass and lay for some time staring up at the sky. At last, raising himself again, "Are you perfectly serious?" he demanded.
"Deadly serious."
"Your idea 's to remain at Interlaken some time?"
"Indefinitely!" said Roderick; and it seemed to his companion that the tone in which he spoke this made it immensely well worth hearing.
"And your mother and cousin meanwhile are to remain here? It will soon be getting very cold, you know."
"It does n't seem much like it to-day."
"Very true; but to-day 's a day by itself."
"There 's nothing to prevent their going back to Lucerne. I quite depend upon your taking charge of them."
At this Rowland threw himself at his length again, and then again, after reflexion, faced his interlocutor. "How would you express," he asked, "the nature of the profit that you expect to derive from your excursion?"
"I see no need of expressing it. I shall express it by going. The case is simply that that appeals to me as an interest, and I find myself so delighted to recognise an interest that I have n't it in my heart to dash it away. As I say, she has waked me up, and it 's possible that something may come of that. She makes me live again—though I admit there 's a strange pain in the act of coming to life. But at least it 's movement, and what else, or who else, for so many weeks, has moved me?"Of this again Rowland considered. "You really feel then on the way—?"
"Don't ask too much. I only know that she makes my heart beat, makes 'me see visions."
"You feel at least encouraged?"
"I feel excited."
"You 're really looking better," Rowland went on after a moment.
"I 'm glad to hear it. Now that I 've answered your questions, therefore, please give me the money."
Rowland shook his head. "For that dire purpose I can't!"
"You can't?"
"It's impossible. Your idea 's too great a folly. I can't help you to it."
Roderick flushed a little, and his eyes lighted. "I 'll borrow what money I can then from Mary!" This was not viciously said; it had simply the ring of passionate resolution.
Instantly it brought Rowland to terms. He took a bunch of keys from his pocket and tossed it upon the grass. "The little brass one opens my dressing-case. You 'll find money in it."
Roderick let the keys lie; something seemed to have struck him; he looked askance at his friend. "You 're awfully considerate of Mary!"
"You certainly are not. Your proposal 's an outrage."
"Very likely. It 's proof the more of my desire."
"If you've so much steam on, then, use it for something else! You say you 're awake again. I'm delighted to believe it; only be so in the best sense. Is n't it very plain? If you 've the energy to desire you 've also the energy to reason and to judge. If you can care to go you can also care to stay, and, staying being the more profitable course, the inspiration, on that side, for a man who has his self-confidence to win back again, should be greater."
Roderick plainly failed to relish this lesson, and his face darkened as he listened to its echo. "I think, my dear man, you 're making a mistake."
Well, Rowland would at least drive his mistake home. "Do you believe that hanging about the Princess, on such terms, will do you any good? Do you believe it won't? In either case you should keep away from her. If it won't, it 's your duty; and if it will, you can get on without it."
"Do me good?" cried Roderick. "What do I want of 'good'—what should I do with 'good'? I want what she gives me, call it by what name you will. I want to ask no questions, but to take what comes and let it fill the impossible hours! But I did n't come to you to discuss the matter."
"I 've not the least desire to discuss it," said Rowland. "I simply protest."
Roderick meditated a moment. "I 've never yet thought twice about accepting any favour of you, but this one sticks in my throat."
"It 's not a favour. I lend you the money only under compulsion."
"Well, then, I 'll take it only under compulsion!" And, springing to his feet, Roderick marched away.
His words were ambiguous; Rowland lay on the grass wondering what they meant. Half an hour had not elapsed before he reappeared, heated with rapid walking and wiping his forehead. He flung himself down, and the difference between his perversity and his sincerity was somehow vivid in his eyes.
"I 've done my best!" he said. "My mother 's out of money; she 's expecting next week some circular notes from London. She had only ten francs in her pocket. Mary Garland gave me every sou she possessed in the world. It makes exactly thirty-four francs. That 's not enough."
"You asked Mary Garland?" Rowland cried.
"Yes, I asked her."
"And told her your purpose?"
"I named no names. But she knew."
"What then did she say?"
"Not a syllable. She simply emptied her purse."
Rowland turned over and buried his face in his arms. He felt a movement of irrepressible elation and barely stifled a cry of joy. Now, surely, Roderick had shattered the last link in the chain that bound Mary to him, and after this she would be free—! When he recovered his posture Roderick was still sitting there and had not touched the keys that lay on the grass.
"I don't know what 's the matter with me," said this young man, "but I 've an insurmountable aversion to taking your money."
"The matter, I suppose, is that you 've a grain of reason left."
"No, it 's not that. It 's a kind of brute instinct. I find it extremely provoking!" He sat there for some time with his head in his hands and his eyes on the ground. His expression had turned hard—his difficulty was clearly greater than he had expected. "You've succeeded in making this thing uncommonly unpleasant!" he at last exclaimed.
"I 'm sorry," said Rowland, "but I can't see it in any other way."
"That I believe, but what I resent is that the range of your vision should pretend to be the limit of my action. You can't feel for me nor judge for me, and there are certain things you know nothing about. I have suffered, sir!" Roderick went on with increasing emphasis and with the reawakened ring of his fine old Virginian pomposity. "I 've suffered damnable torments. Have I been such a placid, contented, comfortable creature these last six months that when I find a chance to forget my misery I should take such pains not to profit by it? You ask too much, it seems to me — for a man who himself has no occasion to play the hero. I don't say that invidiously; it 's your disposition, and you can't help it. But decidedly there are certain things you know nothing about."
Rowland listened to this outbreak with open eyes, and Roderick, if he had been less intent upon his own unhappy cause, would probably have perceived that he turned pale. "These things — what are they?" Rowland asked.
"Why, they're women, principally, and what relates to women. Women for you, by what I can make out, scarce have an existence. You 've no imagination of them, no sense of them, nothing in you to be touched by them."
"That 's a funny charge," said Rowland gravely.
"I don't make it without evidence."
"Then with what evidence?"
Roderick hesitated. "The way you treated Christina Light. I call that grossly obtuse."
"Obtuse?" Rowland repeated, frowning.
"Thick-skinned, beneath your good fortune."
"My good fortune?"
"There it is — it's all news to you! You had pleased her, interested her. I don't say she was dying of love for you, but she liked you so much that she would have been glad if you could have become a little aware of it."
"We 'll let this pass!" Rowland said after a silence.
"Oh, I don't insist. I 've only her own word for it."
"Her own word?"
"You've noticed, at least, I suppose, that she's not in general afraid to speak. I never repeated it, not because I was jealous, but because I was curious to see how long your ignorance would last if left to itself."
"I frankly confess it would have lasted for ever. And yet I don't at all hold my insensibility proved."
"Oh, don't say that," cried Roderick, "or I shall begin to suspect — what I must do you the justice to say I never have suspected — that you take yourself even more seriously than we, your good friends, take you. Upon my word, when I think of all this, your protest, as you call it, against the vivacity of my attention to that young lady strikes me as having its absurd side. There 's something monstrous in a man's pretending to lay down the law to a state of sensibility with which he 's unacquainted — in his expecting of a fellow a kind of sacrifice that it has been so easy for him not to have the occasion to make, and of which he does n't understand the very terms."
"Oh, oh!" cried Rowland.
"It's very easy to exclaim," Roderick went on; "but you must remember that there are such things as nerves and needs and senses and desires and a restless demon within, a demon that may sleep sometimes for a day, or for six months, but that sooner or later starts up and thumps at your ribs till you listen to him. If you can't conceive it, take it on trust and let a poor visionary devil live his life as he can!"
These words affected his sad auditor as something heard in a dream; it was impossible they had been actually spoken — so supreme an expression were they of the high insolence of egotism. Reality was somehow never so consistent and complete. But Roderick sat there balancing his beautiful head, and the echoes of his ugly mistake still lingered along the half-muffled mountain-side. Rowland suddenly felt the cup of his own ordeal full to overflowing, and his long-gathered bitterness surged into the simple clear passion of pain at wasted kindness. But he spoke without violence, and Roderick was probably at first far from measuring the depths beneath his tone.
"You 're incredibly ungrateful, I think, and you 're talking arrogant nonsense. What do you know about my needs and senses and my imagination? How do you know whether I 've loved or suffered? If I 've held my tongue and not troubled you with my complaints, you find it the most natural thing in the world to put a belittling construction on my silence! I 've loved quite as well as you; indeed I think I may say rather better, since I 've been constant. I 've been willing to give more than I received. I 've not forsaken one mistress because I thought another more beautiful, nor given up the other and believed all manner of evil about her because I had n't my way with her. I 've been a good friend to Christina Light, and it seems to me my friendship does her quite as much honour as your love!"
"Your love—your suffering—your silence—your friendship!" cried Roderick. "I declare I don't understand!"
"I dare say not. You 're not used to having to, in the least, where I 'm concerned; you 're not used to hearing me talk of my feelings or even to remembering that such things are possible, such luxuries thinkable to me. You 're altogether too much taken up with your interests. Be as much so as you like or as you must; I 've always respected your right. Only when I have kept myself in durance on purpose to leave you an open field, don't, by way of thanking me, come and call me an idiot."
"Oh, you claim then that you 've made sacrifices?"
"Several! You 've never suspected it?"
"If I had, do you suppose I would have allowed them?" Roderick magnificently demanded.
"They were sacrifices to friendship, and they were easily, eagerly, rejoicingly made. Only I don't enjoy having them thrown back in my teeth."
This was in all the conditions a sufficiently generous speech; but Roderick scanned it as he might have scanned the total of an account not presented in items. "Come, be more definite," he said. "Let me know where it is the shoe has pinched."
Rowland frowned; if he would n't take generosity he should have full justice. "It 's a perpetual sacrifice then to live with a remorseless egotist!"
"I 'm a remorseless egotist?" Roderick returned.
"Did it never occur to you?"
"An egotist to whom you have made perpetual sacrifices?" He repeated the words in a singular tone; a tone that denoted neither exactly indignation nor incredulity, but (strange as it might seem) a sudden violent curiosity for news about himself.
"You 're selfish," said Rowland; "you think only of yourself and believe only in your own history. You regard other people only as they play into your own hands. You 've always been very frank about it, and the thing seemed so mixed up with the nature of your genius and the very breath of your life that often one was willing to take the evil with the good and to be thankful that, considering your great talent, you were no worse. But if one was to believe in you as I 've done one was to pay a tax on one's faith!"
Roderick leaned his elbows on his knees, clasped his hands together and crossed them shadewise over his eyes. In this attitude for a moment he sat looking coldly at his friend. "So I 've made you very uncomfortable?" he went on.
"Extremely so."
"I 've been eager, grasping, obstinate, vain, ungrateful, indifferent, cruel?"
"I 've accused you mentally of all these things—with the particular exception of vanity."
"You 've therefore often hated me?"
"Never. I should have parted company with you before coming to that."
"But you 've wanted to part company, to bid me go on my way and be hanged?"
"Repeatedly. Then I 've had patience and for given you."
"Forgiven me, eh? Suffering all the while?"
"Yes, you may call it suffering."
Roderick thought a moment. "Why did you never tell me all this before?"
"Because my affection was always stronger than my resentment; because I preferred to err on the side of kindness; because I had myself in a measure launched you in the world and thrown you among temptations; and because nothing short of your unwarrantable aggression just now could have made me, with this effect of harshness, break my silence."
Roderick picked up a blade of long grass and began to bite it; Rowland was puzzled by his expression and manner. They were strangely detached and as if unnaturally quiet. "I must have been horrible," he presently resumed.
"I 'm not talking for your entertainment," his companion declared.
"Of course not. For my edification!" And as he spoke the air seemed colder for his breath.
"I 've spoken for my own relief," Rowland went on, "and so that you need never again go so utterly astray as you 've done this morning."
"It has been a terrible mistake then?" What his tone represented was doubtless no direct purpose of irony, but irresponsible, void of positive compunction, it jarred at moments almost like an insult. Rowland answered nothing. "And all this time," Roderick continued, "you 've been in love? Tell me then, please—if you don't mind—with whom."
Rowland felt the temptation to give him a palpable pang. "With whom but with the nearest—?"
"The nearest?" Roderick maintained his cold, large stare, which seemed so to neglect and overshoot the near. But then he brought it down. "You mean with poor Mary?"
"I mean with Miss Garland."
At the tone, suddenly, he coloured; something had touched him somewhere. He gave, however, at first, under control, the least possible sign. "How extraordinary! But I see. Heaven forgive us!"
Rowland took notice of the "us," while his companion, for further comment, simply fell back on the turf and lay for some time staring at the sky. At last he sprang to his feet, and Rowland rose also, conscious for the first time, with any sharpness, in all their intercourse, of having made an impression on him. He had driven in, as it were, a nail, and found in the tap of his hammer, for once in a way, a sensation.
"For how long has this been?" the young man went on.
"Since I first knew her."
"Two years! And you 've never told her?"
"Never."
"You 've told no one?"
"You 're the first person."
"Why then have you been silent?"
"Because of your engagement."
"But you 've done your best to keep that up."
"That's another matter!"
"It's very wonderful," Roderick presently continued. "It 's like something in a bad novel."
"We need n't expatiate on it," said Rowland. "All I wished to do was to rebut your charge that I 've enjoyed any special immunity."
But still his friend pondered. "All these months, while I was going my way! I wish you had some time mentioned it."
"I acted as was necessary, and that 's the end of the matter."
"You 've a very high opinion of her?"
"The highest."
"I remember now your occasionally expressing it and my being struck with it. But I never dreamed you were in love with her. It 's a pity," Roderick added, "that she does n't care for you."
Rowland had made his point and had no wish to prolong the conversation; but he would have liked to hear more of this, and he remained silent.
"You hope, I suppose, that she may some day be moved?" Roderick enquired.
"I should n't have offered to say so; but since you ask me, I do."
"Well, I don't believe it, you know. She idolises me, and if she never were to see me again she would idolise my memory."
This might be vivid insight and it might be deep fatuity. Rowland turned away; he could n't trust himself to speak.
"My indifference, my neglect of her, must have seemed to you too base," his companion pursued. "Altogether I must have appeared simply hideous."
"Do you really care," Rowland was prompted to ask, "for what you may have appeared?"
"Certainly. I've been damnably stupid. Isn't an artist supposed to be a man of fine perceptions? I have n't, as it turns out, had one."
"Well, you 've a beautiful one now, and we can start afresh."
"And yet," said Roderick, "though you 've suffered, in a degree, I don't believe you 've suffered so much as some other men would have done."
"Very likely not. In such matters quantitative analysis is difficult."
Roderick picked up his stick and stood looking at the ground. "I must nevertheless have seemed hideous," he repeated — "hideous." He turned away frowning, and Rowland offered no contradiction.
They were both silent a while, and at last Roderick gave a long, subdued exhalation, the discharge of a consciousness too suddenly overloaded, and began to move off.
"Where are you going?" Rowland then demanded.
"Oh, I don't care! To walk, to look about, to 'commune with nature.' You 've given me an idea, and I nowadays have so few that I 'm taking this one with me. I don't quite know what I can do with it, but perhaps I shall find out. Leave me to try — though I 've already been so stupid." This seemed a salutary impulse, yet Rowland felt a nameless doubt. "That, you know, damns me more than anything," Roderick went on. "Certainly I can shut up shop now."
Rowland's immediate, his personal relief had dropped after speaking; yet at sight of the way such a character could hang together he still felt justified. It was egotism always — the shock of taste, the humiliation of a proved blunder, the sense, above all, of a flagrant want of grace; but never a hint of simple sorrow for pain inflicted. He let the poor boy go and for some moments stood watching him; then of a sudden he yielded to an impulse all inconsequent, a desire to stop him, to have another word with him, not to lose sight of him. He called out, and Roderick turned. "I should like to go with you," said our friend.
"Oh, I 'm fit only to be alone. It 's awful!"
"You had better not think of it at all," Rowland cried, "than think in that way."
"There's only one way. I've been grotesque!" And he broke off and marched away, taking long steps and swinging his stick. Rowland still watched him and in another instant called to him again. Roderick stopped and looked back in silence; after which, abruptly turning, he disappeared below the crest of a hill.