You 're always right, I say; but, dear friend, in mercy, be wrong for once!""Oh yes, Mr.Mallet, be merciful!" said Mrs.Hudson, in a tone which, for all its gentleness, made Rowland stare.The poor fellow's stare covered a great deal of concentrated wonder and apprehension--a presentiment of what a small, sweet, feeble, elderly lady might be capable of, in the way of suddenly generated animosity.
There was no space in Mrs.Hudson's tiny maternal mind for complications of feeling, and one emotion existed only by turning another over flat and perching on top of it.She was evidently not following Roderick at all in his dusky aberrations.
Sitting without, in dismay, she only saw that all was darkness and trouble, and as Roderick's glory had now quite outstripped her powers of imagination and urged him beyond her jurisdiction, so that he had become a thing too precious and sacred for blame, she found it infinitely comfortable to lay the burden of their common affliction upon Rowland's broad shoulders.Had he not promised to make them all rich and happy? And this was the end of it!
Rowland felt as if his trials were, in a sense, only beginning.
"Had n't you better forget all this, my dear?" Mrs.Hudson said.
"Had n't you better just quietly attend to your work?""Work, madame?" cried Roderick."My work 's over.I can't work--I have n't worked all winter.If I were fit for anything, this sentimental collapse would have been just the thing to cure me of my apathy and break the spell of my idleness.
But there 's a perfect vacuum here!" And he tapped his forehead.
"It 's bigger than ever; it grows bigger every hour!""I 'm sure you have made a beautiful likeness of your poor little mother,"said Mrs.Hudson, coaxingly.
"I had done nothing before, and I have done nothing since!
I quarreled with an excellent man, the other day, from mere exasperation of my nerves, and threw away five thousand dollars!""Threw away--five thousand dollars!" Roderick had been wandering among formidable abstractions and allusions too dark to penetrate.But here was a concrete fact, lucidly stated, and poor Mrs.Hudson, for a moment, looked it in the face.
She repeated her son's words a third time with a gasping murmur, and then, suddenly, she burst into tears.Roderick went to her, sat down beside her, put his arm round her, fixed his eyes coldly on the floor, and waited for her to weep herself out.
She leaned her head on his shoulder and sobbed broken-heartedly.
She said not a word, she made no attempt to scold;but the desolation of her tears was overwhelming.
It lasted some time--too long for Rowland's courage.
He had stood silent, wishing simply to appear very respectful;but the elation that was mentioned a while since had utterly ebbed, and he found his situation intolerable.
He walked away--not, perhaps, on tiptoe, but with a total absence of bravado in his tread.
The next day, while he was at home, the servant brought him the card of a visitor.He read with surprise the name of Mrs.Hudson, and hurried forward to meet her.
He found her in his sitting-room, leaning on the arm of her son and looking very pale, her eyes red with weeping, and her lips tightly compressed.Her advent puzzled him, and it was not for some time that he began to understand the motive of it.Roderick's countenance threw no light upon it;but Roderick's countenance, full of light as it was, in a way, itself, had never thrown light upon anything.
He had not been in Rowland's rooms for several weeks, and he immediately began to look at those of his own works that adorned them.He lost himself in silent contemplation.
Mrs.Hudson had evidently armed herself with dignity, and, so far as she might, she meant to be impressive.
Her success may be measured by the fact that Rowland's whole attention centred in the fear of seeing her begin to weep.
She told him that she had come to him for practical advice;she begged to remind him that she was a stranger in the land.
Where were they to go, please? what were they to do?
Rowland glanced at Roderick, but Roderick had his back turned and was gazing at his Adam with the intensity with which he might have examined Michael Angelo's Moses.
"Roderick says he does n't know, he does n't care," Mrs.Hudson said;"he leaves it entirely to you."
Many another man, in Rowland's place, would have greeted this information with an irate and sarcastic laugh, and told his visitors that he thanked them infinitely for their confidence, but that, really, as things stood now, they must settle these matters between themselves;many another man might have so demeaned himself, even if, like Rowland, he had been in love with Mary Garland and pressingly conscious that her destiny was also part of the question.
But Rowland swallowed all hilarity and all sarca**, and let himself seriously consider Mrs.Hudson's petition.
His wits, however, were but indifferently at his command;they were dulled by his sense of the inexpressible change in Mrs.Hudson's attitude.Her visit was evidently intended as a formal reminder of the responsiblities Rowland had worn so lightly.
Mrs.Hudson was doubtless too sincerely humble a person to suppose that if he had been recreant to his vows of vigilance and tenderness, her still, small presence would operate as a chastisement.
But by some diminutive logical process of her own she had convinced herself that she had been weakly trustful, and that she had suffered Rowland to think too meanly, not only of her understanding, but of her social consequence.
A visit in her best gown would have an admonitory effect as regards both of these attributes; it would cancel some favors received, and show him that she was no such fool!
These were the reflections of a very shy woman, who, determining for once in her life to hold up her head, was perhaps carrying it a trifle extravagantly.