"I heard it, too," said Rowland with brevity."And it 's in honor of this piece of news that you have taken to your bed in this fashion?""Extremes meet! I can't get up for joy.""May I inquire how you heard your joyous news?--from Miss Light herself?""By no means.It was brought me by her maid, who is in my service as well.""Casamassima's loss, then, is to a certainty your gain?""I don't talk about certainties.I don't want to be arrogant, I don't want to offend the immortal gods.
I 'm keeping very quiet, but I can't help being happy.
I shall wait a while; I shall bide my time.""And then?"
"And then that transcendent girl will confess to me that when she threw overboard her prince she remembered that I adored her!""I feel bound to tell you," was in the course of a moment Rowland's response to this speech, "that I am now on my way to Mrs.Light's.""I congratulate you, I envy you!" Roderick murmured, imperturbably.
"Mrs.Light has sent for me to remonstrate with her daughter, with whom she has taken it into her head that I have influence.
I don't know to what extent I shall remonstrate, but I give you notice I shall not speak in your interest."Roderick looked at him a moment with a lazy radiance in his eyes.
"Pray don't!" he simply answered.
"You deserve I should tell her you are a very shabby fellow.""My dear Rowland, the comfort with you is that I can trust you.
You 're incapable of doing anything disloyal.""You mean to lie here, then, smelling your roses and nursing your visions, and leaving your mother and Miss Garland to fall ill with anxiety?""Can I go and flaunt my felicity in their faces?
Wait till I get used to it a trifle.I have done them a palpable wrong, but I can at least forbear to add insult to injury.I may be an arrant fool, but, for the moment, I have taken it into my head to be prodigiously pleased.
I should n't be able to conceal it; my pleasure would offend them;so I lock myself up as a dangerous character.""Well, I can only say, 'May your pleasure never grow less, or your danger greater!' "Roderick closed his eyes again, and sniffed at his rose.
"God's will be done!"
On this Rowland left him and repaired directly to Mrs.Light's.
This afflicted lady hurried forward to meet him.
Since the Cavaliere's report of her condition she had somewhat smoothed and trimmed the exuberance of her distress, but she was evidently in extreme tribulation, and she clutched Rowland by his two hands, as if, in the shipwreck of her hopes, he were her single floating spar.Rowland greatly pitied her, for there is something respectable in passionate grief, even in a very bad cause; and as pity is akin to love, he endured her rather better than he had done hitherto.
"Speak to her, plead with her, command her!" she cried, pressing and shaking his hands."She 'll not heed us, no more than if we were a pair of clocks a-ticking.Perhaps she will listen to you; she always liked you.""She always disliked me," said Rowland."But that does n't matter now.
I have come here simply because you sent for me, not because I can help you.
I cannot advise your daughter."
"Oh, cruel, deadly man! You must advise her; you shan't leave this house till you have advised her!" the poor woman passionately retorted.
"Look at me in my misery and refuse to help me! Oh, you need n't be afraid, I know I 'm a fright, I have n't an idea what I have on.
If this goes on, we may both as well turn scarecrows.
If ever a woman was desperate, frantic, heart-broken, I am that woman.
I can't begin to tell you.To have nourished a serpent, sir, all these years! to have lavished one's self upon a viper that turns and stings her own poor mother! To have toiled and prayed, to have pushed and struggled, to have eaten the bread of bitterness, and all the rest of it, sir--and at the end of all things to find myself at this pass.
It can't be, it 's too cruel, such things don't happen, the Lord don't allow it.I 'm a religious woman, sir, and the Lord knows all about me.With his own hand he had given me his reward!
I would have lain down in the dust and let her walk over me;I would have given her the eyes out of my head, if she had taken a fancy to them.No, she 's a cruel, wicked, heartless, unnatural girl!
I speak to you, Mr.Mallet, in my dire distress, as to my only friend.
There is n't a creature here that I can look to--not one of them all that I have faith in.But I always admired you.I said to Christina the first time I saw you that there at last was a real gentleman.
Come, don't disappoint me now! I feel so terribly alone, you see;I feel what a nasty, hard, heartless world it is that has come and devoured my dinners and danced to my fiddles, and yet that has n't a word to throw to me in my agony! Oh, the money, alone, that Ihave put into this thing, would melt the heart of a Turk!"During this frenzied outbreak Rowland had had time to look round the room, and to see the Cavaliere sitting in a corner, like a major-domo on the divan of an antechamber, pale, rigid, and inscrutable.
"I have it at heart to tell you," Rowland said, "that if you consider my friend Hudson"--Mrs.Light gave a toss of her head and hands."Oh, it 's not that.
She told me last night to bother her no longer with Hudson, Hudson!
She did n't care a button for Hudson.I almost wish she did;then perhaps one might understand it.But she does n't care for anything in the wide world, except to do her own hard, wicked will, and to crush me and shame me with her cruelty.""Ah, then," said Rowland, "I am as much at sea as you, and my presence here is an impertinence.I should like to say three words to Miss Light on my own account.But I must absolutely and inexorably decline to urge the cause of Prince Casamassima.
This is simply impossible."
Mrs.Light burst into angry tears."Because the poor boy is a prince, eh? because he 's of a great family, and has an income of millions, eh?
That 's why you grudge him and hate him.I knew there were vulgar people of that way of feeling, but I did n't expect it of you.Make an effort, Mr.Mallet; rise to the occasion; forgive the poor fellow his splendor.
