Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/559

 was nothing I could ever do for him before; I 'll do what I can now."

He went off and Rowland remained alone. He watched in the flesh for seven long hours, but the vigil of his spirit was a thing that would never cease. The most rational of men wandered and lost himself in the dark places of passion, lashed his "conduct" with a scourge of steel, accusing it of cruelty and in justice: he would have lain down there in Roderick's place to unsay the words that had yesterday driven him forth on his ramble of despair. Roderick had been fond of saying that there are such things as necessary follies, and he, of all men, was now proving it. The great gaunt wicked cliff above them became almost company to him, as the chance-saved photograph of a murderer might become for a shipwrecked castaway a link with civilisation: it had but done its part too, and what were they both, in their stupidity, he and it, but dumb agents of fate? He tried at any rate to understand what had hideously happened. Not that it offered one healing touch; before the absoluteness, the grim majesty, of the fact explanations and suppositions had only an effect of contributive meanness. Roderick's stricken state had driven him, in the mere motion of flight, higher and further than he knew; he had outstayed supposeably the first menace of the storm and perhaps even found a dark distraction in watching it. Perhaps he had simply lost himself. The tempest had overtaken him, and when he tried to return it had been too late. He had attempted to descend the cliff in the treacherous gloom, he had made the inevitable slip, and whether 525