Roderick turned to his friend, stretching his two hands out toward the lake and mountains, and shaking them with an eloquent gesture, as if his heart was too full for utterance.
"Pity me, sir; pity me!" he presently cried."Look at this lovely world, and think what it must be to be dead to it!""Dead?" said Rowland.
"Dead, dead; dead and buried! Buried in an open grave, where you lie staring up at the sailing clouds, smelling the waving flowers, and hearing all nature live and grow above you!
That 's the way I feel!"
"I am glad to hear it," said Rowland."Death of that sort is very near to resurrection.""It 's too horrible," Roderick went on; "it has all come over me here tremendously! If I were not ashamed, I could shed a bushel of tears.
For one hour of what I have been, I would give up anything I may be!""Never mind what you have been; be something better!""I shall never be anything again: it 's no use talking!
But I don't know what secret spring has been touched since I have lain here.Something in my heart seemed suddenly to open and let in a flood of beauty and desire.
I know what I have lost, and I think it horrible!
Mind you, I know it, I feel it! Remember that hereafter.
Don't say that he was stupefied and senseless;that his perception was dulled and his aspiration dead.
Say that he trembled in every nerve with a sense of the beauty and sweetness of life; that he rebelled and protested and shrieked; that he was buried alive, with his eyes open, and his heart beating to madness; that he clung to every blade of grass and every way-side thorn as he passed;that it was the most horrible spectacle you ever witnessed;that it was an outrage, a murder, a massacre!""Good heavens, man, are you insane?" Rowland cried.
"I never have been saner.I don't want to be bad company, and in this beautiful spot, at this delightful hour, it seems an outrage to break the charm.But I am bidding farewell to Italy, to beauty, to honor, to life! I only want to assure you that I know what I lose.
I know it in every pulse of my heart! Here, where these things are all loveliest, I take leave of them.Farewell, farewell!"During their passage of the Saint Gothard, Roderick absented himself much of the time from the carriage, and rambled far in advance, along the huge zigzags of the road.He displayed an extraordinary activity; his light weight and slender figure made him an excellent pedestrian, and his friends frequently saw him skirting the edge of plunging chasms, loosening the stones on long, steep slopes, or lifting himself against the sky, from the top of rocky pinnacles.Mary Garland walked a great deal, but she remained near the carriage to be with Mrs.Hudson.
Rowland remained near it to be with Miss Garland.
He trudged by her side up that magnificent ascent from Italy, and found himself regretting that the Alps were so low, and that their trudging was not to last a week.She was exhilarated;she liked to walk; in the way of mountains, until within the last few weeks, she had seen nothing greater than Mount Holyoke, and she found that the Alps amply justified their reputation.
Rowland knew that she loved nature, but he was struck afresh with the vivacity of her observation of it, and with her knowledge of plants and stones.At that season the wild flowers had mostly departed, but a few of them lingered, and Miss Garland never failed to espy them in their outlying corners.
They interested her greatly; she was charmed when they were old friends, and charmed even more when they were new.
She displayed a very light foot in going in quest of them, and had soon covered the front seat of the carriage with a tangle of strange vegetation.Rowland of course was alert in her service, and he gathered for her several botanical specimens which at first seemed inaccessible.One of these, indeed, had at first appeared easier of capture than his attempt attested, and he had paused a moment at the base of the little peak on which it grew, measuring the risk of farther pursuit.
Suddenly, as he stood there, he remembered Roderick's defiance of danger and of Miss Light, at the Coliseum, and he was seized with a strong desire to test the courage of his companion.
She had just scrambled up a grassy slope near him, and had seen that the flower was out of reach.As he prepared to approach it, she called to him eagerly to stop; the thing was impossible!
Poor Rowland, whose passion had been terribly starved, enjoyed immensely the thought of having her care, for three minutes, what became of him.He was the least brutal of men, but for a moment he was perfectly indifferent to her suffering.
"I can get the flower," he called to her."Will you trust me?""I don't want it; I would rather not have it!" she cried.
"Will you trust me?" he repeated, looking at her.
She looked at him and then at the flower; he wondered whether she would shriek and swoon, as Miss Light had done.
"I wish it were something better!" she said simply; and then stood watching him, while he began to clamber.Rowland was not shaped for an acrobat, and his enterprise was difficult;but he kept his wits about him, made the most of narrow foot-holds and coigns of vantage, and at last secured his prize.
He managed to stick it into his buttonhole and then he contrived to descend.There was more than one chance for an ugly fall, but he evaded them all.It was doubtless not gracefully done, but it was done, and that was all he had proposed to himself.
He was red in the face when he offered Miss Garland the flower, and she was visibly pale.She had watched him without moving.
All this had passed without the knowledge of Mrs.Hudson, who was dozing beneath the hood of the carriage.Mary Garland's eyes did not perhaps display that ardent admiration which was formerly conferred by the queen of beauty at a tournament;but they expressed something in which Rowland found his reward.
"Why did you do that?" she asked, gravely.
He hesitated.He felt that it was physically possible to say, "Because I love you!" but that it was not morally possible.