The secondary effect of Rowland's present admonition seemed reassuring."I beg you to wait," he said, "to forgive that shabby speech, and to let me reflect."And he walked up and down awhile, reflecting.At last he stopped, with a look in his face that Rowland had not seen all winter.
It was a strikingly beautiful look.
"How strange it is," he said, "that the ******st devices are the last that occur to one!" And he broke into a light laugh.
"To see Mary Garland is just what I want.And my mother--my mother can't hurt me now."
"You will write, then?"
"I will telegraph.They must come, at whatever cost.
Striker can arrange it all for them."
In a couple of days he told Rowland that he had received a telegraphic answer to his message, informing him that the two ladies were to sail immediately for Leghorn, in one of the small steamers which ply between that port and New York.They would arrive, therefore, in less than a month.
Rowland passed this month of expectation in no very serene frame of mind.
His suggestion had had its source in the deepest places of his agitated conscience; but there was something intolerable in the thought of the suffering to which the event was probably subjecting those undefended women.They had scraped together their scanty funds and embarked, at twenty-four hours' notice, upon the dreadful sea, to journey tremulously to shores darkened by the shadow of deeper alarms.
He could only promise himself to be their devoted friend and servant.
Preoccupied as he was, he was able to observe that expectation, with Roderick, took a form which seemed singular even among his characteristic singularities.If redemption--Roderick seemed to reason--was to arrive with his mother and his affianced bride, these last moments of error should be doubly erratic.He did nothing;but inaction, with him, took on an unwonted air of gentle gayety.
He laughed and whistled and went often to Mrs.Light's; though Rowland knew not in what fashion present circumstances had modified his relations with Christina.The month ebbed away and Rowland daily expected to hear from Roderick that he had gone to Leghorn to meet the ship.
He heard nothing, and late one evening, not having seen his friend in three or four days, he stopped at Roderick's lodging to assure himself that he had gone at last.A cab was standing in the street, but as it was a couple of doors off he hardly heeded it.
The hall at the foot of the staircase was dark, like most Roman halls, and he paused in the street-doorway on hearing the advancing footstep of a person with whom he wished to avoid coming into collision.
While he did so he heard another footstep behind him, and turning round found that Roderick in person had just overtaken him.
At the same moment a woman's figure advanced from within, into the light of the street-lamp, and a face, half-startled, glanced at him out of the darkness.He gave a cry--it was the face of Mary Garland.
Her glance flew past him to Roderick, and in a second a startled exclamation broke from her own lips.It made Rowland turn again.
Roderick stood there, pale, apparently trying to speak, but saying nothing.
His lips were parted and he was wavering slightly with a strange movement--the movement of a man who has drunk too much.Then Rowland's eyes met Miss Garland's again, and her own, which had rested a moment on Roderick's, were formidable!