"You know we have very little money to spend," she said, as Rowland remained silent."Roderick tells me that he has debts and nothing at all to pay them with.He says I must write to Mr.Striker to sell my house for what it will bring, and send me out the money.When the money comes I must give it to him.
I 'm sure I don't know; I never heard of anything so dreadful!
My house is all I have.But that is all Roderick will say.
We must be very economical."
Before this speech was finished Mrs.Hudson's voice had begun to quaver softly, and her face, which had no capacity for the expression of superior wisdom, to look as humbly appealing as before.
Rowland turned to Roderick and spoke like a school-master."Come away from those statues, and sit down here and listen to me!"Roderick started, but obeyed with the most graceful docility.
"What do you propose to your mother to do?" Rowland asked.
"Propose?" said Roderick, absently."Oh, I propose nothing."The tone, the glance, the gesture with which this was said were horribly irritating (though obviously without the slightest intention of being so), and for an instant an imprecation rose to Rowland's lips.
But he checked it, and he was afterwards glad he had done so.
"You must do something," he said."Choose, select, decide!""My dear Rowland, how you talk!" Roderick cried.
"The very point of the matter is that I can't do anything.
I will do as I 'm told, but I don't call that doing.
We must leave Rome, I suppose, though I don't see why.
We have got no money, and you have to pay money on the railroads."Mrs.Hudson surreptitiously wrung her hands.
"Listen to him, please!" she cried."Not leave Rome, when we have staid here later than any Christians ever did before!
It 's this dreadful place that has made us so unhappy.""That 's very true," said Roderick, serenely."If I had not come to Rome, I would n't have risen, and if I had not risen, I should n't have fallen.""Fallen--fallen!" murmured Mrs.Hudson."Just hear him!""I will do anything you say, Rowland," Roderick added.
"I will do anything you want.I have not been unkind to my mother--have I, mother? I was unkind yesterday, without meaning it;for after all, all that had to be said.Murder will out, and my low spirits can't be hidden.But we talked it over and made it up, did n't we? It seemed to me we did.Let Rowland decide it, mother; whatever he suggests will be the right thing."And Roderick, who had hardly removed his eyes from the statues, got up again and went back to look at them.
Mrs.Hudson fixed her eyes upon the floor in silence.
There was not a trace in Roderick's face, or in his voice, of the bitterness of his emotion of the day before, and not a hint of his having the lightest weight upon his conscience.
He looked at Rowland with his frank, luminous eye as if there had never been a difference of opinion between them; as if each had ever been for both, unalterably, and both for each.
Rowland had received a few days before a letter from a lady of his acquaintance, a worthy Scotswoman domiciled in a villa upon one of the olive-covered hills near Florence.She held her apartment in the villa upon a long lease, and she enjoyed for a sum not worth mentioning the possession of an extraordinary number of noble, stone-floored rooms, with ceilings vaulted and frescoed, and barred windows commanding the loveliest view in the world.
She was a needy and thrifty spinster, who never hesitated to declare that the lovely view was all very well, but that for her own part she lived in the villa for cheapness, and that if she had a clear three hundred pounds a year she would go and really enjoy life near her sister, a baronet's lady, at Glasgow.
She was now proposing to make a visit to that exhilarating city, and she desired to turn an honest penny by sub-letting for a few weeks her historic Italian chambers.The terms on which she occupied them enabled her to ask a rent almost jocosely small, and she begged Rowland to do what she called a little genteel advertising for her.
Would he say a good word for her rooms to his numerous friends, as they left Rome? He said a good word for them now to Mrs.Hudson, and told her in dollars and cents how cheap a summer's lodging she might secure.He dwelt upon the fact that she would strike a truce with tables-d'hote and have a cook of her own, amenable possibly to instruction in the Northampton mysteries.
He had touched a tender chord; Mrs.Hudson became almost cheerful.
Her sentiments upon the table-d'hote system and upon foreign household habits generally were remarkable, and, if we had space for it, would repay analysis; and the idea of reclaiming a lost soul to the Puritanic canons of cookery quite lightened the burden of her depression.
While Rowland set forth his case Roderick was slowly walking round the magnificent Adam, with his hands in his pockets.
Rowland waited for him to manifest an interest in their discussion, but the statue seemed to fascinate him and he remained calmly heedless.
Rowland was a practical man; he possessed conspicuously what is called the sense of detail.He entered into Mrs.Hudson's position minutely, and told her exactly why it seemed good that she should remove immediately to the Florentine villa.She received his advice with great frigidity, looking hard at the floor and sighing, like a person well on her guard against an insidious optimism.
But she had nothing better to propose, and Rowland received her permission to write to his friend that he had let the rooms.
Roderick assented to this decision without either sighs or smiles.
"A Florentine villa is a good thing!" he said."I am at your service.""I 'm sure I hope you 'll get better there," moaned his mother, gathering her shawl together.
Roderick laid one hand on her arm and with the other pointed to Rowland's statues."Better or worse, remember this:
I did those things!" he said.
Mrs.Hudson gazed at them vaguely, and Rowland said, "Remember it yourself!""They are horribly good!" said Roderick.