Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/354

 was like the sudden light of a golden age to come. "How strange it is that the simplest arrangements are the last to suggest themselves!" And he broke into easy laughter. "To see Mary Garland 's just what I want. And my mother—my mother can't hurt me now!"

"You'll write then?"

"I 'll cable. 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 then plying between that port and New York. They would arrive therefore in less than a month. Rowland passed this month of expectation in no great riot of relief. His suggestion had had its source in the deepest places of his charity; but there was something intolerable in the thought of the pain to which the possible event might subject creatures so little forearmed. They had scraped together their scanty funds and embarked at twenty-four hours' notice upon the dreadful sea, only to be handed over at the end to an element still more capable of betraying them. He could but promise himself to be their stubborn even if disdained support. Preoccupied as he was, he could still observe how expectation, with Roderick, took a form which seemed singular even among his characteristic singularities. If redemption—the brilliant youth appeared to reason—was to arrive with his mother and his affianced bride, these last moments of error should be worth redeeming. He only 320