Roderick at last repeated, as if arousing himself from a reverie. "Where she is? It "s extraordinary how little I care!"
"Have you, then, completely got over it?"
To this Roderick made no direct reply; he sat brooding a while. "She "s a humbug!" he presently exclaimed.
"Possibly!" said Rowland. "But I have known worse ones."
"She disappointed me!" Roderick continued in the same tone.
"Had she, then, really given you hopes?"
"Oh, don"t recall it!" Roderick cried. "Why the devil should I think of it? It was only three months ago, but it seems like ten years."
His friend said nothing more, and after a while he went on of his own accord. "I believed there was a future in it all! She pleased me--pleased me; and when an artist--such as I was--is pleased, you know!" And he paused again. "You never saw her as I did; you never heard her in her great moments. But there is no use talking about that! At first she would n"t regard me seriously; she chaffed me and made light of me. But at last I forced her to admit I was a great man. Think of that, sir! Christina Light called me a great man. A great man was what she was looking for, and we agreed to find our happiness for life in each other. To please me she promised not to marry till I gave her leave. I was not in a marrying way myself, but it was d.a.m.nation to think of another man possessing her. To spare my sensibilities, she promised to turn off her prince, and the idea of her doing so made me as happy as to see a perfect statue shaping itself in the block. You have seen how she kept her promise! When I learned it, it was as if the statue had suddenly cracked and turned hideous. She died for me, like that!" And he snapped his fingers. "Was it wounded vanity, disappointed desire, betrayed confidence? I am sure I don"t know; you certainly have some name for it."
"The poor girl did the best she could," said Rowland.
"If that was her best, so much the worse for her! I have hardly thought of her these two months, but I have not forgiven her."
"Well, you may believe that you are avenged. I can"t think of her as happy."
"I don"t pity her!" said Roderick. Then he relapsed into silence, and the two sat watching the colossal figure as it made its way downward along the jagged silhouette of the rocks. "Who is this mighty man,"
cried Roderick at last, "and what is he coming down upon us for? We are small people here, and we can"t undertake to keep company with giants."
"Wait till we meet him on our own level," said Rowland, "and perhaps he will not overtop us."
"For ten minutes, at least," Roderick rejoined, "he will have been a great man!" At this moment the figure sank beneath the horizon line and became invisible in the uncertain light. Suddenly Roderick said, "I would like to see her once more--simply to look at her."
"I would not advise it," said Rowland.
"It was her beauty that did it!" Roderick went on. "It was all her beauty; in comparison, the rest was nothing. What befooled me was to think of it as my property! And I had made it mine--no one else had studied it as I had, no one else understood it. What does that stick of a Casama.s.sima know about it at this hour? I should like to see it just once more; it "s the only thing in the world of which I can say so."
"I would not advise it," Rowland repeated.
"That "s right, dear Rowland," said Roderick; "don"t advise! That "s no use now."
The dusk meanwhile had thickened, and they had not perceived a figure approaching them across the open s.p.a.ce in front of the house. Suddenly it stepped into the circle of light projected from the door and windows, and they beheld little Sam Singleton stopping to stare at them. He was the giant whom they had seen descending along the rocks. When this was made apparent Roderick was seized with a fit of intense hilarity--it was the first time he had laughed in three months. Singleton, who carried a knapsack and walking-staff, received from Rowland the friendliest welcome. He was in the serenest possible humor, and if in the way of luggage his knapsack contained nothing but a comb and a second shirt, he produced from it a dozen admirable sketches. He had been trudging over half Switzerland and making everywhere the most vivid pictorial notes.
They were mostly in a box at Interlaken, and in grat.i.tude for Rowland"s appreciation, he presently telegraphed for his box, which, according to the excellent Swiss method, was punctually delivered by post. The nights were cold, and our friends, with three or four other chance sojourners, sat in-doors over a fire of logs. Even with Roderick sitting moodily in the outer shadow they made a sympathetic little circle, and they turned over Singleton"s drawings, while he perched in the chimney-corner, blushing and grinning, with his feet on the rounds of his chair. He had been pedestrianizing for six weeks, and he was glad to rest awhile at Engelthal. It was an economic repose, however, for he sallied forth every morning, with his sketching tools on his back, in search of material for new studies. Roderick"s hilarity, after the first evening, had subsided, and he watched the little painter"s serene activity with a gravity that was almost portentous. Singleton, who was not in the secret of his personal misfortunes, still treated him with timid frankness as the rising star of American art. Roderick had said to Rowland, at first, that Singleton reminded him of some curious little insect with a remarkable mechanical instinct in its antennae; but as the days went by it was apparent that the modest landscapist"s unflagging industry grew to have an oppressive meaning for him. It pointed a moral, and Roderick used to sit and con the moral as he saw it figured in Singleton"s bent back, on the hot hill-sides, protruding from beneath his white umbrella.
One day he wandered up a long slope and overtook him as he sat at work; Singleton related the incident afterwards to Rowland, who, after giving him in Rome a hint of Roderick"s aberrations, had strictly kept his own counsel.
"Are you always like this?" said Roderick, in almost sepulchral accents.
"Like this?" repeated Singleton, blinking confusedly, with an alarmed conscience.
"You remind me of a watch that never runs down. If one listens hard one hears you always--tic-tic, tic-tic."
"Oh, I see," said Singleton, beaming ingenuously. "I am very equable."
"You are very equable, yes. And do you find it pleasant to be equable?"
Singleton turned and grinned more brightly, while he sucked the water from his camel"s-hair brush. Then, with a quickened sense of his indebtedness to a Providence that had endowed him with intrinsic facilities, "Oh, delightful!" he exclaimed.
Roderick stood looking at him a moment. "d.a.m.nation!" he said at last, solemnly, and turned his back.
One morning, shortly after this, Rowland and Roderick took a long walk.
They had walked before in a dozen different directions, but they had not yet crossed a charming little wooded pa.s.s, which shut in their valley on one side and descended into the vale of Engelberg. In coming from Lucerne they had approached their inn by this path, and, feeling that they knew it, had hitherto neglected it in favor of untrodden ways. But at last the list of these was exhausted, and Rowland proposed the walk to Engelberg as a novelty. The place is half bleak and half pastoral; a huge white monastery rises abruptly from the green floor of the valley and complicates its picturesqueness with an element rare in Swiss scenery. Hard by is a group of chalets and inns, with the usual appurtenances of a prosperous Swiss resort--lean brown guides in baggy homespun, lounging under carved wooden galleries, stacks of alpenstocks in every doorway, sun-scorched Englishmen without shirt-collars. Our two friends sat a while at the door of an inn, discussing a pint of wine, and then Roderick, who was indefatigable, announced his intention of climbing to a certain rocky pinnacle which overhung the valley, and, according to the testimony of one of the guides, commanded a view of the Lake of Lucerne. To go and come back was only a matter of an hour, but Rowland, with the prospect of his homeward trudge before him, confessed to a preference for lounging on his bench, or at most strolling a trifle farther and taking a look at the monastery. Roderick went off alone, and his companion after a while bent his steps to the monasterial church. It was remarkable, like most of the churches of Catholic Switzerland, for a hideous style of devotional ornament; but it had a certain cold and musty picturesqueness, and Rowland lingered there with some tenderness for Alpine piety. While he was near the high-altar some people came in at the west door; but he did not notice them, and was presently engaged in deciphering a curious old German epitaph on one of the mural tablets.
At last he turned away, wondering whether its syntax or its theology was the more uncomfortable, and, to this infinite surprise, found himself confronted with the Prince and Princess Casama.s.sima.
The surprise on Christina"s part, for an instant, was equal, and at first she seemed disposed to turn away without letting it give place to a greeting. The prince, however, saluted gravely, and then Christina, in silence, put out her hand. Rowland immediately asked whether they were staying at Engelberg, but Christina only looked at him without speaking.
The prince answered his questions, and related that they had been making a month"s tour in Switzerland, that at Lucerne his wife had been somewhat obstinately indisposed, and that the physician had recommended a week"s trial of the tonic air and goat"s milk of Engelberg. The scenery, said the prince, was stupendous, but the life was terribly sad--and they had three days more! It was a blessing, he urbanely added, to see a good Roman face.
Christina"s att.i.tude, her solemn silence and her penetrating gaze seemed to Rowland, at first, to savor of affectation; but he presently perceived that she was profoundly agitated, and that she was afraid of betraying herself. "Do let us leave this hideous edifice," she said; "there are things here that set one"s teeth on edge." They moved slowly to the door, and when they stood outside, in the sunny coolness of the valley, she turned to Rowland and said, "I am extremely glad to see you." Then she glanced about her and observed, against the wall of the church, an old stone seat. She looked at Prince Casama.s.sima a moment, and he smiled more intensely, Rowland thought, than the occasion demanded. "I wish to sit here," she said, "and speak to Mr.
Mallet--alone."
"At your pleasure, dear friend," said the prince.
The tone of each was measured, to Rowland"s ear; but that of Christina was dry, and that of her husband was splendidly urbane. Rowland remembered that the Cavaliere Giacosa had told him that Mrs. Light"s candidate was thoroughly a prince, and our friend wondered how he relished a peremptory accent. Casama.s.sima was an Italian of the undemonstrative type, but Rowland nevertheless divined that, like other princes before him, he had made the acquaintance of the thing called compromise. "Shall I come back?" he asked with the same smile.
"In half an hour," said Christina.
In the clear outer light, Rowland"s first impression of her was that she was more beautiful than ever. And yet in three months she could hardly have changed; the change was in Rowland"s own vision of her, which that last interview, on the eve of her marriage, had made unprecedentedly tender.
"How came you here?" she asked. "Are you staying in this place?"
"I am staying at Engelthal, some ten miles away; I walked over."
"Are you alone?"
"I am with Mr. Hudson."
"Is he here with you?"
"He went half an hour ago to climb a rock for a view."
"And his mother and that young girl, where are they?"
"They also are at Engelthal."
"What do you do there?"
"What do you do here?" said Rowland, smiling.
"I count the minutes till my week is up. I hate mountains; they depress me to death. I am sure Miss Garland likes them."
"She is very fond of them, I believe."
"You believe--don"t you know? But I have given up trying to imitate Miss Garland," said Christina.
"You surely need imitate no one."