Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/48

 woman heavily depressed, and her marriage an irredeemable error which she had spent her life in trying to look in the face. She had found nothing to oppose to her husband's rigid and consistent will but the appearance of absolute compliance; her courage had sunk, and she had lived for a while in a sort of spiritual torpor. But at last, as her child emerged from babyhood, she had begun to find a certain charm in patience, to discover the uses of ingenuity, and to learn that somehow or other one can always arrange one's life. She had cultivated from this time forward a little plot of independent feeling, and it was of this private precinct that before her death she had given her son the key. Rowland's allowance at college was barely sufficient to maintain him decently, and, his degree nevertheless achieved, he was taken into his father's counting-house to do small drudgery on a proportionate stipend. For three years he earned his living as regularly as the obscure functionary in fustian who swept out the place. Mr. Mallet was consistent, but the perfection of his consistency was known only on his death. He left but a third of his property to his son, devoting the remainder to various public institutions and local charities. Rowland's third was a very easy competence, and he never felt a moment's jealousy of his fellow pensioners; but when one of the establishments which had figured most advantageously in his father's will bethought itself to affirm the existence of a later instrument in which it had been still more handsomely treated, the young man felt a sudden passionate need to repel the 14