He admired her, and indeed there was something admirable in her combination of beauty and talent, of isolation and tranquil self-support.He used sometimes to go into the little, high-niched, ordinary room which served her as a studio, and find her working at a panel six inches square, at an open casement, profiled against the deep blue Roman sky.She received him with a meek-eyed dignity that made her seem like a painted saint on a church window, receiving the daylight in all her being.
The breath of reproach passed her by with folded wings.
And yet Rowland wondered why he did not like her better.
If he failed, the reason was not far to seek.There was another woman whom he liked better, an image in his heart which refused to yield precedence.
On that evening to which allusion has been made, when Rowland was left alone between the starlight and the waves with the sudden knowledge that Mary Garland was to become another man's wife, he had made, after a while, the simple resolution to forget her.
And every day since, like a famous philosopher who wished to abbreviate his mourning for a faithful servant, he had said to himself in substance--"Remember to forget Mary Garland."Sometimes it seemed as if he were succeeding; then, suddenly, when he was least expecting it, he would find her name, inaudibly, on his lips, and seem to see her eyes meeting his eyes.All this made him uncomfortable, and seemed to portend a possible discord.
Discord was not to his taste; he shrank from imperious passions, and the idea of finding himself jealous of an unsuspecting friend was absolutely repulsive.More than ever, then, the path of duty was to forget Mary Garland, and he cultivated oblivion, as we may say, in the person of Miss Blanchard.
Her fine temper, he said to himself, was a trifle cold and conscious, her purity prudish, perhaps, her culture pedantic.
But since he was obliged to give up hopes of Mary Garland, Providence owed him a compensation, and he had fits of angry sadness in which it seemed to him that to attest his right to sentimental satisfaction he would be capable of falling in love with a woman he absolutely detested, if she were the best that came in his way.
And what was the use, after all, of bothering about a possible which was only, perhaps, a dream? Even if Mary Garland had been free, what right had he to assume that he would have pleased her?
The actual was good enough.Miss Blanchard had beautiful hair, and if she was a trifle old-maidish, there is nothing like matrimony for curing old-maidishness.
Madame Grandoni, who had formed with the companion of Rowland's rides an alliance which might have been called defensive on the part of the former and attractive on that of Miss Blanchard, was an excessively ugly old lady, highly esteemed in Roman society for her homely benevolence and her shrewd and humorous good sense.
She had been the widow of a German archaeologist, who had come to Rome in the early ages as an attache of the Prussian legation on the Capitoline.
Her good sense had been wanting on but a single occasion, that of her second marriage.This occasion was certainly a momentous one, but these, by common consent, are not test cases.
A couple of years after her first husband's death, she had accepted the hand and the name of a Neapolitan music-master, ten years younger than herself, and with no fortune but his fiddle-bow.The marriage was most unhappy, and the Maestro Grandoni was suspected of using the fiddle-bow as an instrument of conjugal correction.
He had finally run off with a prima donna assoluta, who, it was to be hoped, had given him a taste of the quality implied in her title.
He was believed to be living still, but he had shrunk to a small black spot in Madame Grandoni's life, and for ten years she had not mentioned his name.She wore a light flaxen wig, which was never very artfully adjusted, but this mattered little, as she made no secret of it.
She used to say, "I was not always so ugly as this; as a young girl I had beautiful golden hair, very much the color of my wig."She had worn from time immemorial an old blue satin dress, and a white crape shawl embroidered in colors; her appearance was ridiculous, but she had an interminable Teutonic pedigree, and her manners, in every presence, were easy and jovial, as became a lady whose ancestor had been cup-bearer to Frederick Barbarossa.
Thirty years' observation of Roman society had sharpened her wits and given her an inexhaustible store of anecdotes, but she had beneath her crumpled bodice a deep-welling fund of Teutonic sentiment, which she communicated only to the objects of her particular favor.
Rowland had a great regard for her, and she repaid it by wishing him to get married.She never saw him without whispering to him that Augusta Blanchard was just the girl.
It seemed to Rowland a sort of foreshadowing of matrimony to see Miss Blanchard standing gracefully on his hearth-rug and blooming behind the central bouquet at his circular dinner-table.The dinner was very prosperous and Roderick amply filled his position as hero of the feast.
He had always an air of buoyant enjoyment in his work, but on this occasion he manifested a good deal of harmless pleasure in his glory.
He drank freely and talked bravely; he leaned back in his chair with his hands in his pockets, and flung open the gates of his eloquence.
Singleton sat gazing and listening open-mouthed, as if Apollo in person were talking.Gloriani showed a twinkle in his eye and an evident disposition to draw Roderick out.Rowland was rather regretful, for he knew that theory was not his friend's strong point, and that it was never fair to take his measure from his talk.
"As you have begun with Adam and Eve," said Gloriani, "I suppose you are going straight through the Bible."He was one of the persons who thought Roderick delightfully fresh.
