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 Casamassima 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 space 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 gratitude 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."Damnation!" 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 pass, 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.
