# Roderick Hudson (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907)/Chapter 4

IV
It had been a very sage remark of Cecilia's that Roderick would change with a change in his circumstances. Rowland had telegraphed to New York for another berth on his steamer, and from the hour the answer came that youth's spirits rose to incalculable heights. He was radiant with good-humour, and his charming gaiety the evident pledge of a brilliant future. He had forgiven his old enemies and forgotten his old grievances—he seemed in every way reconciled to a world in which he was going to be important and wonderful. He was profusely jocose and suggestive, and, as Cecilia said, he had suddenly become so good that he might have been not so much beginning a Roman career as ending an earthly one. He took long walks with Rowland, who felt more and more the fascination of his surrender—a fascinated one too, in its degree—to all this complacency. Rowland returned several times to Mrs. Hudson's and found the two ladies doing their best to keep in tune with their companion's glee. Mary Garland, he thought, was succeeding better than her demeanour on his first visit had promised. He tried to have some undiverted talk with her, but her extreme reserve forced him to content himself with such response to his rather urgent overtures as might be extracted from her leaving him, very frankly, all the consciousness of ​them. It must be confessed, however, that if the response was vague, the satisfaction he drew from her mere colourless patience was great, and that after his second visit he kept seeing the element itself reflected in the most unlikely surfaces, the most unexpected places. It seemed strange that she should interest him so much at so slender a cost; but interest him she did, extraordinarily, and his interest had a quality altogether new to him. It made him restless and a trifle melancholy; he walked about absently, wondering and wishing. He wondered, among other things, why fate should have condemned him to make the acquaintance of a girl whom he would make a sacrifice to know better, just as he was leaving the country for years. It seemed to him that he was turning his back on a chance of happiness—happiness of a sort of which the slenderest germ should be cultivated. He asked himself whether, feeling as he did, if he had only himself to please, he would have given up his start and hung about. He had Roderick to please now, for whom disappointment would be cruel; but he took it for presumable that had there been no Roderick in the case the ship would be sailing without him. He asked the young man several questions about his cousin, but Roderick, throwing discretion to the winds on so many points, seemed to have reasons of his own for being reticent on this one. His measured answers quickened Rowland's curiosity, for the girl, with her irritating half-suggestions, had only to be a subject of guarded allusion in others to become a secret obsession. He learned from Roderick ​that she was the daughter of a country minister, a far-away cousin of his mother, settled in another part of the state; that she was one of half a dozen daughters, that the family had scant means, and that she had come a couple of months before to pay his mother a long visit. "It 's to be a very long one now," he said, "for it's settled that she remains while I 'm away."
The fermentation of beatitude in Roderick's soul reached its climax a few days before the young men were to make their farewells. He had been sitting with his friends on Cecilia's verandah, but for half an hour past he had said nothing. Lounging back against a column muffled in creepers and gazing idly at the stars, he kept chanting softly and with that indifference to ceremony for which he always found allowance, though it had nothing conciliatory but what his good looks gave it. At last, springing up, "I want to strike out hard!" he exclaimed; "I want to do something violent and indecent and impossible—to let off steam!"
"I 'll tell you what to do, this lovely weather," Cecilia said. "Give a picnic. It can be as violent, it can be even as indecent, as you like, and it will have the merit of leading off our hysterics into a safe channel, as well as yours."
Roderick accepted with all affability her very practical remedy for his nervous need, and a couple of days later the picnic was given. It was to be a family party, but Roderick, in his magnanimous geniality, insisted on inviting Mr. Striker, a decision which Rowland still more genially applauded. "And ​we 'll have Mrs. Striker too," he said, "if she'll come, to keep my mother in countenance; and at any rate we 'll have Miss Striker—the divine Petronilla!" The young lady thus denominated formed, with Mrs. Hudson, Miss Garland and Cecilia, the better part of the female contingent. Mr. Striker presented himself, sacrificing a morning's work, with a magnanimity greater even than Roderick's, and foreign support was further secured in the person of Mr. Whitefoot, the young Orthodox minister. Roderick had chosen his happy valley, the feasting-place; he knew it well and had passed many a summer afternoon there, lying at his length on the grass in the shade and looking away to the blue distances, the "purple rim" of the poet, which had the wealth of the world, all the unattainable of life, beyond them. A high-hung meadow stretched on one side to a peculiarly dark wood, in which he used to say there were strange beasts and "monsters," who could n't come out, but who put it out of the question that one should go in; and the meadow had high mossy rocks protruding through its grass and formed in the opposite direction the shore of a small lake. It was a cloudless August day; Rowland always remembered it, and the scene and everything that was said and done, with extraordinary distinctness. Roderick surpassed himself in friendly jollity, and at one moment, when exhilaration was at the highest, was seen in Mr. Striker's high white hat, drinking champagne from a broken tea-cup to Mr. Striker's health. Miss Striker had her father's light green eyes and almost ​his tendency to close one of them at a time for emphasis; she was dressed as if to sit for her photograph and remained for a long time with Roderick on a little promontory overhanging the lake. Mrs. Hudson kept all day a little meek apprehensive smile. She was afraid of an "accident," though unless Miss Striker (who indeed was a little of a romp) should push Roderick into the lake it was hard to see what accident could occur. Mrs. Hudson was as neat and crisp and uncrumpled at the end of the festival as at the beginning. Mr. Whitefoot, who but a twelve month later became a convert to Episcopacy and was already cultivating a certain sonority of private discourse, devoted himself to Cecilia. He had a little book in his pocket, out of which he read to her at intervals, lying stretched at her feet; and it was a lasting joke with Cecilia afterwards that she would never tell what Mr. Whitefoot's little book had been. Rowland had placed himself near Miss Garland while the feasting went forward on the grass. She wore a so-called gypsy hat—a little straw hat tied down over her ears, so as to cast her eyes into shadow, by a ribbon passing outside of it. When the company dispersed after lunch he proposed to her to take, in spite of Roderick's beasts and monsters, a stroll in the wood. She hesitated a moment and looked at Mrs. Hudson as if for permission to leave her. But Mrs. Hudson was listening to Mr. Striker, who sat gossiping to her with relaxed consistency, his waistcoat unbuttoned and his hat on his nose.
"You can give your cousin your society at any ​time," said Rowland. "But me perhaps you 'll never see again."
"Why then should we attempt to be friends, if nothing is to come of it?" she asked with homely logic. But by this time she had consented and they were treading the fallen pine-needles.
"Oh, one must take all one can get," said Rowland. "If we can be friends for half an hour it 's so much gained."
"Do you expect never to come back to Northampton again?" she went on with detachment.
"'Never' is a good deal to say. But I go to Europe for a long stay."
"Do you prefer that country so much to this?"
"I won't say that my preferences and reasons are all on one side. But I have the misfortune to be rather an idle man, and in Europe both the burden and the obloquy of idleness are less heavy than here."
She was silent for a few minutes; then at last, "In that surely we are better than Europe," she said. To a certain point Rowland agreed with her, but he demurred, to make her say more. "Would n't it be better," she accordingly asked, "to set at some work in order to get reconciled to America than to go to Europe just in order to get reconciled to sloth?"
"Doubtless, but you know work doesn't come to every one's hand."
"I come from a little place where it just does do that," said Mary Garland. "We all work; every one I know works. And really," she added ​presently, "I look at you with curiosity: you're the first unoccupied man I ever saw."
"Don't look at me too hard," Rowland laughed. "I shall sink into the earth. What 's the name of your little place?"
"West Nazareth," said Mary Garland with her usual directness. "It 's not so terribly small, though it 's smaller than Northampton."
"I wonder whether I could find any work at West Nazareth," Rowland said.
"You would n't like it very much," Miss Garland declared reflectively. "Though there are far finer woods there than these. We have miles and miles of woods."
"I might chop down trees," said Rowland. "That is if you allow it."
"Allow it? Why, where should we get our fire wood?" Then noticing that he had spoken jestingly she glanced at him askance, though with no visible diminution of her gravity. "Don't you know how to do anything at all? Have you no sort of profession?"
Rowland shook his head. "Absolutely none."
"What do you then do all day?"
"Nothing that would make a figure in a description. That's why, as I tell you, I'm going to Europe. There at least if I do nothing I shall see a great deal; and if I 'm not a producer I shall at any rate be an observer."
"Can't we observe everywhere?"
"Certainly; and I really think that in that way I make the most of my opportunities. Though I ​confess," he continued, "that I often remember there are things to be seen here to which I probably have not done justice. I should like for instance to see West Nazareth."
She looked round at him, open-eyed; not apparently that she exactly supposed he was jesting, for the expression of such a desire was not necessarily facetious; but as if he must have spoken with an ulterior motive. He had spoken in fact from the simplest of motives. The girl beside him appealed, strangely, to his sense of character, and even, in her way, to his sense of beauty, and, satisfied that her quality would be very much her own, and neither borrowed nor reflected nor imposed, he wished, positively as a help for liking her better, to make her show him how little her situation had had to give her. Her second movement now was to take him at his word. "Since you're free to do as you please, why don't you go there?"
"I 'm not free to do as I please now. I 've offered your cousin to bear him company to Europe, he has accepted with enthusiasm, and I can't back out."
"Are you going to Europe simply for his sake?"
Rowland hesitated. "I think I may almost say so."
Mary Garland walked along in silence. "Do you mean to do a great deal for him?" she asked at last.
"What I can. But my power of helping him is very small beside his power of helping himself."
For a moment she was silent again. "You 're very generous," she then simply said.
​"No, I 'm principally very shrewd. Roderick will repay me. It's a speculation. At first, I think," he added shortly afterwards, "you wouldn't have paid me that little compliment. You didn't believe in me."
She made no attempt to deny it. "I did n't see why you should wish to make Roderick discontented. I thought you were rather frivolous."
"You did me injustice. I don't think I'm that."
"It was because you 're unlike other men—those at least whom I 've seen."
"In what way?"
"Why, as you describe yourself. You have no duties, no profession, no home. You live for your pleasure."
"That 's all very true. And yet I maintain I strike myself as not frivolous."
"I hope not," she said quietly. They had reached a point where the wood-path forked and put forth two divergent tracks which appeared to lose themselves, at no great distance, in a tangle of undergrowth. The young girl seemed to think the difficulty of choice between them a reason for giving them up and turning back, but Rowland thought otherwise and detected agreeable grounds for preference in the left-hand path. As a compromise they sat down on a fallen log. Looking about him, Rowland espied a curious wild shrub with a spotted crimson leaf; he went and plucked a spray of it and brought it to his companion. He had never observed it before, but she immediately called it by its name. She expressed surprise at his not knowing it; it was ​extremely common. He presently brought her a specimen of another delicate plant, with a little blue-streaked flower. "I suppose that 's common too," he said, "but I 've never seen it—or noticed it at least." She answered that this one was rare, and cast about a little before she could recall its name. At last she remembered, expressing her surprise at his having found the plant in the woods; she supposed it grew only in the marshes. Rowland complimented her on her fund of useful information.
"It 's not especially useful," she answered; "but I like to know the names of plants as I do those of my acquaintances. When we walk in the woods at home—which we do so much—it seems as unnatural not to know what to call the flowers as it would be to see some one in the town with whom we should n't be on speaking terms."
"If there 's a question of frivolity," Rowland said, "I 'm sure you yourself have very little of it, unless at West Nazareth it 's considered frivolous to walk in the woods and nod to the nodding flowers. Do kindly tell me a little about yourself." And to compel her to begin, "I know you come of a race of theologians," he went on.
"No," she replied, deliberating; "they're not theologians, though they're ministers. We don't take a very firm stand upon doctrine; we 're practical and active rather; we have n't time to find reasons and phrases. We write sermons and preach them, but we do a great deal of hard work besides."
​"And of this hard work what has your share been?"
"The hardest part—not doing anything."
"What do you call doing nothing?"
"I taught some small children their lessons once; I must make the most of that. But I confess I did n't like it. Otherwise I 've only done little things at home as they turned up."
"What kind of things?"
"Oh, every kind. If you had seen my home you would understand."
Rowland would have liked to make her specify; but he took a peculiar pleasure in being felt as discreet. "To be happy, I imagine," he contented himself with saying, "you need to see results—those of your service, of your ability. You need somebody or something to expend yourself upon."
"That 's not so true as it once was; now that I 'm older I 've developed a turn for sitting about quite shamelessly. Certainly these two months that I 've been with Mrs. Hudson I 've done little else. And yet I 've enjoyed it. And now that I 'm probably to be with her all the while that her son 's away, I look forward to more with dreadful resignation."
"It's quite settled then that you're to remain with your cousin?"
"It depends upon their writing from home that I may stay. But that 's probable. Only I must not forget," she said, rising, "that the ground for my doing so is that she shall not be left alone."
"I'm glad to know that I shall probably often hear about you. I assure you I shall often wonder about you!" These slightly breathless words of ​Rowland's were half precipitation and half prudence. They were the simple truth, and he had asked himself why he should not tell her the truth. And yet they were not all of it; her hearing the rest would depend upon the way she received this instalment. She received it not only, as he had foreseen, without the sign of a flutter or a thought of conscious grace, but with a slight movement of nervous deprecation which seemed to betray itself in the quickening of her step. Evidently if he was to take pleasure in hearing about her it would have to be a satisfaction highly disinterested. She answered nothing, and Rowland too, as he walked beside her, was silent; but as he looked along the shadow-woven wood-path what he was really facing was three interminable years of disinterestedness. He ushered them in by talking composed civility until he had brought Miss Garland back to her companions.
He saw her but once again. He was obliged to be in New York a couple of days before sailing, and it was arranged that Roderick should overtake him at the last moment. The evening before he left Northampton he went to say farewell to Mrs. Hudson. The ceremony was brief. He soon perceived that the poor little lady was in the melting mood, and as he dreaded her tears he compressed a multitude of solemn promises into a silent handshake and took his leave. Mary Garland, she had told him, was in the back garden with Roderick; he might go out to them. He did so, and as he drew near he heard Roderick's high-pitched voice ringing behind the shrubbery. In a moment, ​emerging, he found the girl leaning against a tree while her cousin stood before her and talked with great emphasis. He asked pardon for interrupting them and said he wished only to bid her good-bye. She gave him her hand, and he held it an instant without a word. "Don't forget," he said to Roderick as he turned away. "And don't, in this company, repent of your bargain."
"I shall not let him," said Mary Garland, with a nearer approach to reckless cheer than he had yet heard on her lips. "I shall see that he 's punctual. He must go! I owe you an apology for having doubted that he ought to go!" And her face, in the summer dusk, was new and vague and handsome.
Roderick was punctual, eagerly punctual, and they went. Rowland for several days was occupied with material cares and lost sight of his accepted obsession. But the questions lurking in it only slumbered and they were sharply shaken up. The weather was fine, and the two young men always sat together upon deck late into the evening. One night, towards the last, they were at the stern of the great ship, watching her grind the solid blackness of the ocean into phosphorescent foam. They talked on these occasions of everything conceivable and had the air of having no secrets from each other. But it was on Roderick's conscience that this air belied him, and he was moreover too full of his native claims for any permanent reticence.
"I must tell you something," he broke out at last. "I should like you to know it, and you'll be so glad to know it. Besides, it 's only a question of ​time; three months hence probably you would have guessed it. I 'm engaged to marry Mary Garland."
Rowland sat staring; though the sea was calm it seemed to him that the ship gave a great dizzying lurch. But in a moment he contrived to answer coherently. "Engaged to marry her! I never supposed—I never imagined!—"
"That I was in love with her?" Roderick interrupted. "Neither did I before this last fortnight. But you came and put me into such ridiculous good-humour that I felt an extraordinary desire to spill over to some woman, and I suppose I took the nearest. Really I may say the dearest too, for Mary 's a dear; you know her too little to do her justice. I myself have only been learning to know her from three months ago, and have been falling in love with her without suspecting it. It appeared when I spoke to her that she thought distinctly better of me than I supposed. So the thing was settled. I must of course make lots of money before 'we can marry, and it's rather awkward, certainly, to engage one's self to a girl whom one is going to leave for years the next day. We shall be condemned for some time to come to do a terrible deal of abstract thinking about each other. But I wanted her blessing and I couldn't help asking for it. Unless a man's unnaturally selfish he needs to work for some one else than himself, and I 'm sure I shall run a smoother and swifter course for knowing that there 's a person so good and clever and charming, to whom my success will make the grand difference, waiting at Northampton for news of my greatness. If ever I 'm ​a dull companion and over-addicted to moping, remember in justice to me that I 'm in love and that the loved object is five thousand miles away."
Rowland listened to all this with a feeling that fortune had played him an elaborately devised trick. It had lured him out into mid-ocean and smoothed the sea and stilled the winds and given him a singularly sympathetic comrade, and then it had turned and delivered him a thumping blow in mid-chest. "Yes," he said after an attempt at the usual formal congratulation, "you certainly ought to do better—with Miss Garland waiting for you at Northampton!"
Roderick, now that he had broken ground, was vivid, was natural, was delightful, and rang a hundred changes on the assurance that he was a very happy man. Then at last, suddenly, his climax was a yawn and he declared that he must tumble in. Rowland let him go alone and sat there late between sea and sky.