Mary GarlandHow it befell that Roderick had failed to be in Leghorn on his mother's arrival never clearly transpired;for he undertook to give no elaborate explanation of his fault.
He never indulged in professions (touching personal conduct)as to the future, or in remorse as to the past, and as he would have asked no praise if he had traveled night and day to embrace his mother as she set foot on shore, he made (in Rowland's presence, at least) no apology for having left her to come in search of him.
It was to be said that, thanks to an unprecedentedly fine season, the voyage of the two ladies had been surprisingly rapid, and that, according to common probabilities, if Roderick had left Rome on the morrow (as he declared that he had intended), he would have had a day or two of waiting at Leghorn.
Rowland's silent inference was that Christina Light had beguiled him into letting the time slip, and it was accompanied with a silent inquiry whether she had done so unconsciously or maliciously.
He had told her, presumably, that his mother and his cousin were about to arrive; and it was pertinent to remember hereupon that she was a young lady of mysterious impulses.
Rowland heard in due time the story of the adventures of the two ladies from Northampton.Miss Garland's wish, at Leghorn, on finding they were left at the mercy of circumstances, had been to telegraph to Roderick and await an answer;for she knew that their arrival was a trifle premature.
But Mrs.Hudson's maternal heart had taken the alarm.
Roderick's sending for them was, to her imagination, a confession of illness, and his not being at Leghorn, a proof of it;an hour's delay was therefore cruel both to herself and to him.
She insisted on immediate departure; and, unskilled as they were in the mysteries of foreign (or even of domestic)travel, they had hurried in trembling eagerness to Rome.
They had arrived late in the evening, and, knowing nothing of inns, had got into a cab and proceeded to Roderick's lodging.
At the door, poor Mrs.Hudson's frightened anxiety had overcome her, and she had sat quaking and crying in the vehicle, too weak to move.
Miss Garland had bravely gone in, groped her way up the dusky staircase, reached Roderick's door, and, with the assistance of such acquaintance with the Italian tongue as she had culled from a phrase-book during the calmer hours of the voyage, had learned from the old woman who had her cousin's household economy in charge that he was in the best of health and spirits, and had gone forth a few hours before with his hat on his ear, per divertirsi.
These things Rowland learned during a visit he paid the two ladies the evening after their arrival.Mrs.Hudson spoke of them at great length and with an air of clinging confidence in Rowland which told him how faithfully time had served him, in her imagination.
But her fright was over, though she was still catching her breath a little, like a person dragged ashore out of waters uncomfortably deep.
She was excessively bewildered and confused, and seemed more than ever to demand a tender handling from her friends.
Before Miss Garland, Rowland was distinctly conscious that he trembled.
He wondered extremely what was going on in her mind; what was her silent commentary on the incidents of the night before.
He wondered all the more, because he immediately perceived that she was greatly changed since their parting, and that the change was by no means for the worse.She was older, easier, more free, more like a young woman who went sometimes into company.
She had more beauty as well, inasmuch as her beauty before had been the depth of her expression, and the sources from which this beauty was fed had in these two years evidently not wasted themselves.
Rowland felt almost instantly--he could hardly have said why:
it was in her voice, in her tone, in the air--that a total change had passed over her attitude towards himself.She trusted him now, absolutely; whether or no she liked him, she believed he was solid.
He felt that during the coming weeks he would need to be solid.
Mrs.Hudson was at one of the smaller hotels, and her sitting-room was frugally lighted by a couple of candles.Rowland made the most of this dim illumination to try to detect the afterglow of that frightened flash from Miss Garland's eyes the night before.
It had been but a flash, for what provoked it had instantly vanished.
Rowland had murmured a rapturous blessing on Roderick's head, as he perceived him instantly apprehend the situation.
If he had been drinking, its gravity sobered him on the spot;in a single moment he collected his wits.The next moment, with a ringing, jovial cry, he was folding the young girl in his arms, and the next he was beside his mother's carriage, half smothered in her sobs and caresses.Rowland had recommended a hotel close at hand, and had then discreetly withdrawn.
Roderick was at this time doing his part superbly, and Miss Garland's brow was serene.It was serene now, twenty-four hours later;but nevertheless, her alarm had lasted an appreciable moment.
What had become of it? It had dropped down deep into her memory, and it was lying there for the present in the shade.But with another week, Rowland said to himself, it would leap erect again;the lightest friction would strike a spark from it.Rowland thought he had schooled himself to face the issue of Mary Garland's advent, casting it even in a tragical phase; but in her personal presence--in which he found a poignant mixture of the familiar and the strange--he seemed to face it and all that it might bring with it for the first time.In vulgar parlance, he stood uneasy in his shoes.
He felt like walking on tiptoe, not to arouse the sleeping shadows.