Chapter 9

CHAPTER IX. Mary Garland

How it befell that Roderick had failed to be in Leghorn on his mother's
arrival never clearly transpired; for he undertook to give no elaborate
explanation of his fault. He never indulged in professions (touching
personal conduct) as to the future, or in remorse as to the past, and
as he would have asked no praise if he had traveled night and day to
embrace his mother as she set foot on shore, he made (in Rowland's
presence, at least) no apology for having left her to come in search of
him. It was to be said that, thanks to an unprecedentedly fine season,
the voyage of the two ladies had been surprisingly rapid, and that,
according to common probabilities, if Roderick had left Rome on the
morrow (as he declared that he had intended), he would have had a day or
two of waiting at Leghorn. Rowland's silent inference was that
Christina Light had beguiled him into letting the time slip, and it was
accompanied with a silent inquiry whether she had done so unconsciously
or maliciously. He had told her, presumably, that his mother and his
cousin were about to arrive; and it was pertinent to remember hereupon
that she was a young lady of mysterious impulses. Rowland heard in due
time the story of the adventures of the two ladies from Northampton.
Miss Garland's wish, at Leghorn, on finding they were left at the mercy
of circumstances, had been to telegraph to Roderick and await an
answer; for she knew that their arrival was a trifle premature. But Mrs.
Hudson's maternal heart had taken the alarm. Roderick's sending for them
was, to her imagination, a confession of illness, and his not being
at Leghorn, a proof of it; an hour's delay was therefore cruel both to
herself and to him. She insisted on immediate departure; and, unskilled
as they were in the mysteries of foreign (or even of domestic) travel,
they had hurried in trembling eagerness to Rome. They had arrived late
in the evening, and, knowing nothing of inns, had got into a cab
and proceeded to Roderick's lodging. At the door, poor Mrs. Hudson's
frightened anxiety had overcome her, and she had sat quaking and crying
in the vehicle, too weak to move. Miss Garland had bravely gone in,
groped her way up the dusky staircase, reached Roderick's door, and,
with the assistance of such acquaintance with the Italian tongue as she
had culled from a phrase-book during the calmer hours of the voyage,
had learned from the old woman who had her cousin's household economy in
charge that he was in the best of health and spirits, and had gone forth
a few hours before with his hat on his ear, per divertirsi.

These things Rowland learned during a visit he paid the two ladies the
evening after their arrival. Mrs. Hudson spoke of them at great length