"Well, who else?"
"He lived with his mother. She is the best of women."
"Ah yes, I know all that one"s mother is. But she does not count as society. And who else?"
Rowland hesitated. He wondered whether Christina"s insistence was the result of a general interest in Roderick"s antecedents or of a particular suspicion. He looked at her; she was looking at him a little askance, waiting for his answer. As Roderick had said nothing about his engagement to the Cavaliere, it was probable that with this beautiful girl he had not been more explicit. And yet the thing was announced, it was public; that other girl was happy in it, proud of it. Rowland felt a kind of dumb anger rising in his heart. He deliberated a moment intently.
"What are you frowning at?" Christina asked.
"There was another person," he answered, "the most important of all: the young girl to whom he is engaged."
Christina stared a moment, raising her eyebrows. "Ah, Mr. Hudson is engaged?" she said, very simply. "Is she pretty?"
"She is not called a beauty," said Rowland. He meant to practice great brevity, but in a moment he added, "I have seen beauties, however, who pleased me less."
"Ah, she pleases you, too? Why don"t they marry?"
"Roderick is waiting till he can afford to marry."
Christina slowly put out her arm again and looked at the dimple in her elbow. "Ah, he "s engaged?" she repeated in the same tone. "He never told me."
Rowland perceived at this moment that the people about them were beginning to return to the dancing-room, and immediately afterwards he saw Roderick making his way toward themselves. Roderick presented himself before Miss Light.
"I don"t claim that you have promised me the cotillon," he said, "but I consider that you have given me hopes which warrant the confidence that you will dance with me."
Christina looked at him a moment. "Certainly I have made no promises,"
she said. "It seemed to me that, as the daughter of the house, I should keep myself free and let it depend on circ.u.mstances."
"I beseech you to dance with me!" said Roderick, with vehemence.
Christina rose and began to laugh. "You say that very well, but the Italians do it better."
This a.s.sertion seemed likely to be put to the proof. Mrs. Light hastily approached, leading, rather than led by, a tall, slim young man, of an unmistakably Southern physiognomy. "My precious love," she cried, "what a place to hide in! We have been looking for you for twenty minutes; I have chosen a cavalier for you, and chosen well!"
The young man disengaged himself, made a ceremonious bow, joined his two hands, and murmured with an ecstatic smile, "May I venture to hope, dear signorina, for the honor of your hand?"
"Of course you may!" said Mrs. Light. "The honor is for us."
Christina hesitated but for a moment, then swept the young man a courtesy as profound as his own bow. "You are very kind, but you are too late. I have just accepted!"
"Ah, my own darling!" murmured--almost moaned--Mrs. Light.
Christina and Roderick exchanged a single glance--a glance brilliant on both sides. She pa.s.sed her hand into his arm; he tossed his cl.u.s.tering locks and led her away.
A short time afterwards Rowland saw the young man whom she had rejected leaning against a doorway. He was ugly, but what is called distinguished-looking. He had a heavy black eye, a sallow complexion, a long, thin neck; his hair was cropped en brosse. He looked very young, yet extremely bored. He was staring at the ceiling and stroking an imperceptible moustache. Rowland espied the Cavaliere Giacosa hard by, and, having joined him, asked him the young man"s name.
"Oh," said the Cavaliere, "he "s a pezzo grosso! A Neapolitan. Prince Casama.s.sima."
CHAPTER VI. Frascati
One day, on entering Roderick"s lodging (not the modest rooms on the Ripetta which he had first occupied, but a much more sumptuous apartment on the Corso), Rowland found a letter on the table addressed to himself.
It was from Roderick, and consisted of but three lines: "I am gone to Frascati--for meditation. If I am not at home on Friday, you had better join me." On Friday he was still absent, and Rowland went out to Frascati. Here he found his friend living at the inn and spending his days, according to his own account, lying under the trees of the Villa Mondragone, reading Ariosto. He was in a sombre mood; "meditation"
seemed not to have been fruitful. Nothing especially pertinent to our narrative had pa.s.sed between the two young men since Mrs. Light"s ball, save a few words bearing on an incident of that entertainment. Rowland informed Roderick, the next day, that he had told Miss Light of his engagement. "I don"t know whether you "ll thank me," he had said, "but it "s my duty to let you know it. Miss Light perhaps has already done so."
Roderick looked at him a moment, intently, with his color slowly rising. "Why should n"t I thank you?" he asked. "I am not ashamed of my engagement."
"As you had not spoken of it yourself, I thought you might have a reason for not having it known."
"A man does n"t gossip about such a matter with strangers," Roderick rejoined, with the ring of irritation in his voice.
"With strangers--no!" said Rowland, smiling.
Roderick continued his work; but after a moment, turning round with a frown: "If you supposed I had a reason for being silent, pray why should you have spoken?"
"I did not speak idly, my dear Roderick. I weighed the matter before I spoke, and promised myself to let you know immediately afterwards. It seemed to me that Miss Light had better know that your affections are pledged."
"The Cavaliere has put it into your head, then, that I am making love to her?"
"No; in that case I would not have spoken to her first."
"Do you mean, then, that she is making love to me?"
"This is what I mean," said Rowland, after a pause. "That girl finds you interesting, and is pleased, even though she may play indifference, at your finding her so. I said to myself that it might save her some sentimental disappointment to know without delay that you are not at liberty to become indefinitely interested in other women."
"You seem to have taken the measure of my liberty with extraordinary minuteness!" cried Roderick.
"You must do me justice. I am the cause of your separation from Miss Garland, the cause of your being exposed to temptations which she hardly even suspects. How could I ever face her," Rowland demanded, with much warmth of tone, "if at the end of it all she should be unhappy?"
"I had no idea that Miss Garland had made such an impression on you.
You are too zealous; I take it she did n"t charge you to look after her interests."
"If anything happens to you, I am accountable. You must understand that."
"That "s a view of the situation I can"t accept; in your own interest, no less than in mine. It can only make us both very uncomfortable. I know all I owe you; I feel it; you know that! But I am not a small boy nor an outer barbarian any longer, and, whatever I do, I do with my eyes open. When I do well, the merit "s mine; if I do ill, the fault "s mine!
The idea that I make you nervous is detestable. Dedicate your nerves to some better cause, and believe that if Miss Garland and I have a quarrel, we shall settle it between ourselves."
Rowland had found himself wondering, shortly before, whether possibly his brilliant young friend was without a conscience; now it dimly occurred to him that he was without a heart. Rowland, as we have already intimated, was a man with a moral pa.s.sion, and no small part of it had gone forth into his relations with Roderick. There had been, from the first, no protestations of friendship on either side, but Rowland had implicitly offered everything that belongs to friendship, and Roderick had, apparently, as deliberately accepted it. Rowland, indeed, had taken an exquisite satisfaction in his companion"s deep, inexpressive a.s.sent to his interest in him. "Here is an uncommonly fine thing," he said to himself: "a nature unconsciously grateful, a man in whom friendship does the thing that love alone generally has the credit of--knocks the bottom out of pride!" His reflective judgment of Roderick, as time went on, had indulged in a great many irrepressible vagaries; but his affection, his sense of something in his companion"s whole personality that overmastered his heart and beguiled his imagination, had never for an instant faltered. He listened to Roderick"s last words, and then he smiled as he rarely smiled--with bitterness.
"I don"t at all like your telling me I am too zealous," he said. "If I had not been zealous, I should never have cared a fig for you."
Roderick flushed deeply, and thrust his modeling tool up to the handle into the clay. "Say it outright! You have been a great fool to believe in me."
"I desire to say nothing of the kind, and you don"t honestly believe I do!" said Rowland. "It seems to me I am really very good-natured even to reply to such nonsense."