Roderick Hudson (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907)/Chapter 10
One morning, going into Roderick's studio, Rowland found the young sculptor entertaining Miss Blanchard — but entertaining her, as it were, quite at her own expense. She ministered, for him, to irritation, and he had never climbed to her sky-parlour with the exclamatory herd at large — exclamatory over her petals and dewdrops. He had once quoted Tennyson against her —
"And is there any moral shut
Within the bosom of the rose?"
"In all Miss Blanchard's roses you may be sure there is a moral," he had said. "You can see it sticking out its head, and if you go to smell the flower it scratches your nose." But on this occasion she had come with a propitiatory gift — introducing her friend and countryman Mr. Leavenworth. Mr. Leavenworth was a tall, expansive, bland gentleman, with a carefully-brushed whisker and a spacious, fair, well-favoured face, which seemed somehow to have more room in it than was occupied by a smile of superior benevolence, so that (with his smooth white forehead) it bore a certain resemblance to a large parlour with a very florid carpet, but without mural decoration. He held his head high, talked impressively, and told Roderick within five minutes that he was a widower travelling to distract his mind, and that he had lately retired from the proprietorship of large mines of borax in the Middle West. Roderick supposed at first that under the influence of his bereavement he had come to order a tombstone; but observing the extreme benevolence of his address to Miss Blanchard he credited him with a judicious prevision that on the day the tombstone should be completed a monument of his inconsolability might appear mistimed. Mr. Leavenworth, however, was disposed to give an Order,—to give it with a capital letter.
"You'll find me eager to patronise our indigenous talent," he said. "You may be sure that I 've employed a native architect for the large residential structure that I'm erecting on the banks of the Ohio. I've sustained a considerable loss; but are we not told that the office of art is second only to that of religion? That 's why I have come to you, sir. In the retreat that I 'm preparing, surrounded by the memorials of my wanderings, I hope to recover a certain degree of tone. They're doing what they can in Paris for the fine effect of some of its features; but the effect I have myself most at heart will be that of my library, filled with well-selected and beautifully-bound authors in groups relieved from point to point by high-class statuary. I should like to entrust you, can we arrange it, with the execution of one of these appropriate subjects. What do you say to a representation, in pure white marble, of the idea of Intellectual Refinement?"
"Whose idea, sir?" Roderick asked. "Your idea?"
But as at this question, and especially at a certain sound in it, Mr. Leavenworth looked a little blank, Miss Blanchard artfully interposed. "I wish I could induce Mr. Hudson to think he might perhaps do something with mine!"
It immediately relieved the tension and made Mr. Hudson consider her with great gravity. "If your idea resembles your personal type, Miss Blanchard, I quite see my figure. I close with you on Intellectual Refinement, Mr. Leavenworth, if this lady will sit for us."
Miss Blanchard demurred; the tribute might be ironic; and there was ever afterwards a reflexion of her uncertainty in her opinion of Roderick's genius. Mr. Leavenworth responded that, with all deference to Miss Blanchard's beauty, he desired something less breathingly actual,—more monumentally impersonal. "If I were to be the happy possessor of a likeness of Miss Blanchard," he added, "I shouldn't wish it in the form of a cold symbol."
He spoke as if the young woman's charms might compromise the chastity of his conception, but Roderick, after an instant, imperturbable, had drawn him into deep waters. Rowland, nervously conscious of this, appealed meanwhile to the judicious Augusta.
"Who 's your pompous friend?"
"A very worthy man. The architect of his own fortune—which is magnificent. One of nature's gentlemen!"
This was nobly sufficient, but Rowland turned in vague unrest to the bust of Miss Light. Like every one else in Rome by this time, Miss Blanchard had an opinion on that young woman's beauty, and, after her own fashion, she expressed it in a quoteable phrase. "She looks half like a Madonna and half like a ballerina!"
Mr. Leavenworth and Roderick arrived, however, under Rowland's anxious eyes, at an understanding that testified not a little on the part of each to the power nobly to unbend, and the young master, with a habit he had of finally coming round, in a rush of indifferent generosity, from some first crude challenge to patience—a habit that Rowland, whom it had caused to forgive him many things, had known himself privately to pronounce irresistible—the young master good-naturedly promised to do his best to rise to his client's conception. "His conception be hanged!" Roderick exclaimed none the less after Mr. Leavenworth had departed. "His conception is sitting on an india-rubber cushion with a pen in her ear and the lists of the stock-exchange in her hand. It 's a case for doing, of course, exactly as one likes—yet how can one like, by any possibility, anything that such a blatant humbug as that possibly can? It 's as much as one can do to like his awful money. I don't think," our young man added, "that I ever before swallowed anything that wanted so little to go down, and I 'm doubtless on my way now to any grovelling you please."
Mrs. Light meanwhile had fairly established herself in Roman society. "The dear God knows how," Madame Grandoni said to Rowland, who had mentioned to her several evidences of the lady's prosperity; "but a door is forced, of course, only as a heavy piece of furniture is moved—you shut your eyes and you push hard. A month ago she knew no one but her washerwoman, and now I 'm told that the cards of Roman princesses are to be seen on her table. Che vuole? She has opened her booth at the fair; she has her great natural wonder to show, and she beats her big drum outside. Her big drum is her piano nobile in a great palace, her brilliant equipage, her marvellous bonnets, her general bedizenment, and the phenomenon in the booth is her wonderful daughter. Christina's a better 'draw' than the two-headed calf or the learned pig. She's spending a lot of money, and you'll see that in two or three weeks she 'll take upon herself to open the season by giving a magnificent ball. Of course it's Christina's beauty that floats her. People go to see her because they 're curious."
"And they go again because they 're wonderstruck," said Rowland.
"To whom do you say it? Has n't she drawn even me? She came to see me of her own free will the other day, and for an hour she was deeply interesting. I think she 's an actress, but she believes in her part while she 's playing it. She had taken it into her head to believe she was very unhappy, and she sat there, where you 're sitting, and told me a tale of her miseries which brought tears to my eyes. She cried profusely—she cries as naturally as possible. She said she was weary of life and that she knew no one but me she could speak frankly to. She must speak or she should go mad. She sobbed as if her heart would break. I assure you it 's well for you susceptible young men that you don't see her when she sobs. She said in so many words that her mother was an infamous woman. Heaven knows what she meant unless perhaps only that Mrs. Light makes debts she knows she can't pay. She said the life they led was horrible; that it was monstrous a poor girl should be dragged about the world to be sold to the highest bidder. She was meant for better things; she could be perfectly happy without those dreadfulnesses. It was not money she wanted. I might not believe her, but she really cared for serious things—for the good, the beautiful and the true. Sometimes she thought of taking poison."
"What did you say to that?"
"I recommended her to come and see me instead. I would help her about as much and I was on the whole less unpleasant. Of course I could help her only by letting her talk herself out, and kissing her and patting her beautiful hands, and telling her that if she would be very patient and brave and quiet and clever, and sit very tight—in short exercise all the cardinal virtues—there would be something good for her in the end. About once in two months I expect her to reappear on the same errand, and meanwhile quite to forget my existence. I believe I melted to the point of telling her that I would find her some kind, quiet, respectable husband, and even one with a decent fortune; but she declared, almost with fury, that she was sick of the very name of husbands, which she begged I would never mention again. And in fact it was a rash offer; for I'm sure that there 's not a man of the kind that might really make a woman happy but would be afraid to marry a young person of her particular distinction. Looked at in that way she 's certainly very much to be pitied, and, indeed, altogether, though I don't think she either means all she says or, by a great deal, says all she means, I feel very sorry for her."
Rowland met the two ladies about this time at several entertainments and looked at Christina with a kind of imaginative attendrissement. He suspected more than once that there had been a passionate scene between them about coming out, and he wondered what arguments Mrs. Light had found effective. But Christina's face told no tales, and she moved about, beautiful and silent, looking absently over people's heads, barely heeding the men who pressed about her, and suggesting somehow that the soul of a world-wearied mortal had found its way into the blooming body of a goddess. "Where in the world has Miss Light been before she's turned twenty-one," observers with pretensions to earnestness asked, "to have left all her illusions behind?" And the general verdict was that, though she was incomparably beautiful, she was too disconcertingly indifferent. She was scarcely even vain enough. Young ladies who were not indifferent, and yet sometimes perhaps not beautiful either, were free to reflect that she was "not at all liked."
It would have been difficult to guess, all the same, how they reconciled this conviction with a variety of contradictory evidence and in especial with the spectacle of Roderick's inveterate devotion. All Rome might behold that he at least "liked" Christina Light. Wherever she appeared he was either awaiting her or immediately followed her. He was perpetually at her side, trying apparently to preserve some broken thread of talk, the fate of which was, to judge by her face, profoundly immaterial to the young lady. People in general smiled at the radiant good faith of the handsome young sculptor, and asked each other if he really supposed flowers of that rarity to be pluckable by mere geniuses who happened also to be mere Americans. But although Christina's deportment, as I have said, was one of high inexpressiveness, Rowland had drawn from Roderick no suspicion that he suffered from active cruelty, and he was therefore surprised at an incident that occurred one evening at a large musical party. Roderick, as usual, was not in a state of effacement, and on the ladies' taking the chairs which had been arranged for them he immediately placed himself beside Christina. As most of the gentlemen were standing his position made him as conspicuous as Hamlet at Ophelia's feet. Rowland was leaning somewhat apart, against the chimney-piece. There was a long solemn pause before the music began, and in the midst of it Christina rose, left her place, came the whole length of the immense room, with every one looking at her, and stopped before him. She was neither pale nor flushed; she had a dim smile.
"Will you do me a favour?"
"A thousand!"
"Not now, but at your earliest convenience. Please remind Mr. Hudson that he 's not in a New England village, that it 's not the custom in Rome to address one's conversation exclusively, night after night, to the same poor girl, and that—"
The music broke out with a great blare and covered her voice. She made a gesture of impatience, and Rowland offered her his arm and led her back to her seat.
The next day he repeated her words to Roderick, in whom they produced mere unabashed amusement. "Oh, the charming 'cheek' of her! She does every thing that comes into her head."
"Had she never asked you before not to talk to her so much?" Rowland enquired.
"On the contrary, she has often said to me 'Mind you now, I forbid you to leave me. Here comes that beast of a So-and-So.' She cares as little about the custom of the country as I do. What could be a better proof than her walking up to you with five hundred people looking at her? Is that, for beautiful watched girls, the custom of the country?"
"Why then should she take such a step?"
"Because as she sat there the notion took her. That 's reason enough for her. I 've imagined she wishes me well, as they say here — though she has never distinguished me in such a way as that."
Madame Grandoni had foretold the truth; Mrs. Light a couple of weeks later convoked all Roman society to a brilliant ball. Rowland went late and found the staircase so encumbered with flower-pots and servants that he was a long time making his way into the presence of the hostess. At last he approached her as she stood making curtsies at the door with her daughter by her side. Some of Mrs. Light's curtsies were very low, for she had the happiness of receiving a number of the social potentates of the Roman world. She was rosy with triumph, to say nothing of a less metaphysical cause, and was evidently vastly contented with herself, with her company and with all the omens and portents. Her daughter was less overtly jubilant and distributed her greetings with impartial frigidity. But if Christina was awfully detached, as they said, her detachment gave the greater relief to her magnificent beauty. Dressed simply in vaporous white relieved with half a dozen white roses, the perfection of her features and of her person, and the mysterious depth of her expression, seemed to glow with the white light of a splendid pearl. She recognised no one individually and made her salutations slowly, gravely, with her eyes on the ground. Rowland felt sure, however, that for himself her obeisance was subtly overdone, but he sighed patiently, as for the worrying whim of it, and reflected as he passed on that if she disliked him, which was all such minor ironies could mean, he had nothing to reproach himself with. He walked about, had a few words with Miss Blanchard, who, with a fillet of cameos in her hair, was leaning on the arm of Mr. Leavenworth, and at last came upon the Cavaliere Giacosa, modestly stationed in a corner. The little gentleman's coat-lappet was decorated with an enormous bouquet, and his neck encased in a voluminous white handkerchief of the fashion of thirty years ago. His arms were folded and his eyelids, before the glittering scene, contracted, though you saw through them the answering glitter of his in tensely dark vivacious pupil. He immediately embarked on an elaborate apology for not having yet manifested as he felt it his sense of the honour Rowland had done him.
"I 'm always on service with these ladies, you see, and that 's a duty to which one would n't willingly be faithless an instant."
"Evidently," said Rowland, "you 're a very devoted friend. Mrs. Light, in her situation, is very happy to be able so to depend on you."
"We are old friends," the Cavaliere gravely said. "Very good friends. I knew the signora many years ago, when she was the prettiest woman in Rome—or rather in Ancona, which is even better. The beautiful Christina now is perhaps the very greatest beauty in Europe."
"There's nothing more probable."
"Very well, sir, I taught her to read; I guided her little hands to touch the piano." And at these faded memories the Cavaliere's eyes glowed with an old Roman fire. Rowland half expected him to proceed with a flash of long-repressed passion, "And now—and now, sir, they treat me as you observed the other day!" But he only looked out at our friend hard from among his wrinkles, and seemed to remark instead, as with the social discipline of a thousand years, "Oh, I say nothing more. I 'm neither so vulgar nor so shallow as to complain!"
Evidently the Cavaliere was both deep and delicate, and Rowland could but repeat his respectful tribute. "You 're a devoted friend."
"Eh, che vuole? I 'm a devoted friend. A man may do himself justice after twenty years!"
Rowland after a pause made some remark about the beauty of the ball. It was very brilliant.
"Stupendous!" said the Cavaliere solemnly. "It 's a great day. We have four Roman princes, to say nothing of others." And he counted them over on his ringers and held up his hand triumphantly. "And there she stands, the girl to whom I—I, Giuseppino Giacosa—taught her alphabet and her piano-scales; there she stands in all her grace, and les grands de la terre come and do her homage. Here, in his quiet corner, her old master permits himself to be proud."
"It 's very friendly and very charming of him," Rowland benevolently said.
The Cavaliere drew his lids a little closer, but strange things came through. "It 's very natural, signore—at the same time that it 's very idiotic too. Christina's at any rate a brava ragazza; she remembers my little services. Here comes, however," he added in a moment, "the young Prince of the Belle-Arti. I 'm sure he has bowed lowest of all."
Rowland looked round and saw Roderick moving slowly across the room and casting about him his usual high light of contemplation. He presently joined them, nodded familiarly to the Cavaliere and immediately put to Rowland the largest "Have you seen her?"
"I 've seen Miss Light," Rowland answered on a smaller scale. "She 's looking remarkably well."
"I 'm intoxicated with her beauty!" Roderick continued so loud that several persons turned round. Rowland saw that he was flushed, and laid a hand on his arm, which he felt tremble, "If you 'll go straight away with me I 'll keep you company anywhere."
"Go straight away?" cried Roderick almost angrily. "Don't you suppose I intend to dance with her?"
The Cavaliere had been watching him attentively; he gently took possession of the other arm. "Softly, softly, dear young man. Let me speak to you as a father."
"Oh, speak even as a mother and I really shall not mind it!"
"Be very reasonable then and go away."
"Why the devil should I go away?"
"Because you 're too charmingly in love," said the Cavaliere.
"I might as well be in love here as in the streets."
"Carry your love as far as possible from that young woman. She 'll never listen to you—she can't."
"She 'can't'?" demanded Roderick. "She 's not the sort of person—she 's the very last—of whom you may say that. She can if she will. She does as she chooses."
"Up to a certain point. Beyond it—niente." And the Cavaliere's two forefingers made a wonderful airy sign. "It would take too long to explain; I only beg you to believe that if you think you can pretend to Miss Light you prepare for yourself de mauvais draps. Have you a princely title? have you a princely fortune? No? Then you're not her affair."
And the Cavaliere folded his arms again, like a man who has done his duty. Roderick wiped his forehead and looked askance at Rowland; he seemed to be guessing his thoughts, and it might have been imaginable that they made him colour. But he smiled blandly and, addressing the Cavaliere, "I 'm much obliged to you for the information," he gracefully declared. "Now that I 've obtained it, let me tell you that I 'm no more in love with Miss Light than my friend here is. He perfectly knows that. I admire her—yes, immensely. But that 's no one's business but my own, and though I have, as you say, neither a princely title nor a princely fortune, I mean to suffer neither that drawback nor those who can boast of its opposite to diminish my right."
"If you 're not in love, my dear young man," said the Cavaliere with his hand on his heart and an apologetic smile, "meno male. But let me entreat you as an affectionate old busybody to keep a watch on your sensibility. You 're young, you also are admirably beautiful; you have a brilliant genius and a generous heart. But—I may say it almost with authority—you 're not our young lady's 'fate.'"
Whether Roderick were in love or not, he was nettled by what apparently seemed to him too insistent a negation of an inspiring possibility. "You speak as if she had made her choice!" he answered. "Without pretending to confidential information on the subject, I 'm very sure she has done nothing of the sort."
"No, but she must make it soon," said the Cavaliere. And raising his forefinger, he laid it against his under lip. "She must choose very great things. And she will!"
"She 'll do exactly as her inclination prompts. She 'll marry the man who pleases her, if he has n't a dollar. I know her better than you."
The Cavaliere turned perhaps a little paler than usual, but he smiled more urbanely. "No, no, caro signorino, you don't know her better than I. You've not watched her day by day for twenty years. I too have admired her. She is a brava ragazza; she has never said an unkind word to me; the blessed Virgin be thanked! But she must have a great position and a brilliant destiny; they 've been marked out for her and she 'll submit. You had better believe me; it may save you some rash expense."
"I shall see what I shall see." But Roderick's serenity was strained.
"Then you 'll tell me. But I retire from the discussion," the Cavaliere added. "I 've no wish to provoke you to attempt to prove to me that I 'm a vieille bête. You're already très-monté."
"No more than is natural to a man who in an hour or so is to dance a cotillon with a divinity."
"A cotillon? has she promised?"
Roderick patted the air as for pity of those who pretended to guess the terms of the understanding of two such intimates. "You 'll see what you will see!"
The Cavaliere gave an exaggerated shrug. "You'll make a great many mourners!"
"What a mourner won't he have made already!" Rowland silently echoed. This was evidently not the first time that reference had been made between Roderick and the Cavaliere to the young man's possible illusion, and Roderick had failed to consider it the simplest and most natural course to say in three words to the vigilant little gentleman that there was no cause for alarm—his fancy was not free. Rowland hoped, obscurely, that his reticence had some basis of tact that was not immediately apparent; then he turned away with a vague pang: there was something insecure, so to say, in the basis of Roderick's radiance. The tide was setting to the regions of supper, and he drifted with it to the door. The crowd at this point was dense, and he was obliged to wait for some minutes before he could advance. At last he felt his neighbours dividing behind him and, looking about, he saw Christina pressing her way forward alone. She was noticing no one, and save for the fact of her being so at her ease one would n't have supposed she was in her mother's house. As she recognised Rowland she beckoned and, taking his arm, motioned him to lead her to the quarter of the spread tables. She said nothing till he had forced a passage and they stood somewhat isolated.
"Take me into the most out-of-the-way corner you can find," she then began, "and get me some where a piece of bread."
"Nothing more? There seems to be everything conceivable."
"A simple roll. Nothing more, on your peril. Only bring something for yourself."
It seemed to Rowland that the embrasure of a window (embrasures in Roman palaces are deep) was a retreat sufficiently obscure for Christina to execute whatever design she might have contrived against his equanimity. A roll, after he had found her a seat, was easily procured. As he presented it he remarked that, frankly speaking, he was at a loss to understand why she should have selected for the honour of so great an attention a poor man who could do so little to please her.
"Ah yes, of course I dislike you!" said Christina. "To tell the truth I had forgotten it. There are so many people here whom I dislike more that when I caught your eye just now you seemed an intimate friend. But I 've not come into this corner to talk nonsense," she went on. "You mustn't think I always do, eh?"
"I 've never heard you do anything else," said Rowland sturdily, having decided that he would keep only on the broad highroad with her.
"Very good. I like your frankness. It's quite true. You see I 'm a strange girl, and rather bold and bad. D'abord, I 'm frightfully egotistical. Don't flatter yourself you 've said anything very clever if you ever take it into your head to tell me so. I know it much better than you. So it is; I can't help it. I 'm tired to death of myself; I would give all I possess to get out of myself; but somehow at the end I find my self so vastly more interesting than nine-tenths of the people I meet. If a person wished to do me a favour I would say to him: 'I beg you with tears in my eyes to interest me. Be a brute, if necessary, to do it; only be something positive and strong—something that in looking at I can forget my detestable self!' Perhaps that 's nonsense too. If it is I can't help it either. I can only apologise for the nonsense that I know to be such, and that I talk—oh, for more reasons than I can tell you! I wonder whether, if I were to try you, you 'd understand me."
"I 'm afraid I should never understand," said Rowland, as if for her edification, "why a person on a good—or call it perhaps a bad—occasion can willingly talk nonsense."
"That proves how little you know about women. But I like your hearty directness. When I told you the other day, with my usual rudeness to every one, that you bored me so, I had an idea you were more formal—how do you say it?—more guindé. I 'm very capricious. To-night I like you better."
"Oh, I 'm not at all guindé," said Rowland gravely.
"I beg your pardon then for thinking so. Now I 've an idea that you'd make a faithful friend; an intimate friend—a friend to whom one could tell everything. For such a friend what would n't I give, don't you see?"
Rowland looked at her in stirred, yet in quite self-possessed, speculation. Was this a sincere yearning or only an equivocal purpose? Her beautiful eyes looked divinely candid; but then, if candour was beautiful, beauty, and such beauty, somehow carried questions so far! "I hesitate to recommend myself out and out for the office," he said, "but I believe that if you were to depend upon me for anything that a friend may do I should not be found wanting."
"Very good. One of the first things one asks of a friend is to judge one not by isolated acts, but by one's whole conduct. I care for your opinion—I don't know why."
"Nor do I, I confess!" Rowland laughed.
"What do you think of this affair?" she went on as if his confession did n't matter.
"Of your ball? Why, it 's a very grand affair."
"It 's horrible—that 's what it is. It 's a mere rabble. There are people here whom I never saw before, people who were never asked. Mamma went about inviting every one, asking other people to invite any one they knew, doing anything to have a crowd. I hope she's satisfied. It 's not my doing. I feel weary, I feel angry, I want to cry, I want to bite. I 've twenty minds to escape into my room and lock the door and let mamma s'en tirer as she can. By the way," she added in a moment, without a visible reason for the jump, "can you tell me something to read?"
Rowland stared at the disconnectedness of the question.
"Can you recommend me some books?" she repeated. "I know you literally have some. I 've no one else to ask. We never see one in our lives—where should we, and why? We make debts for clothes and champagne, but we can't spend a sou on our poor benighted minds. And yet, though you may not believe it, I really like things that are for the mind."
"I shall be most happy to lend you any books," Rowland said. "I 'll pick some out to-morrow and send them to you."
"No nasty novels then, please, if you don't mind. I'm tired of nasty novels—at one time I read several. I never was a bit looked after in that way. I can at all events imagine situations for myself beyond any in fiction — above all in our poor bête English. Some good poetry, if there is such a thing nowadays, and some memoirs and histories and books of facts."
"You shall be served. Your taste agrees with my own."
She was silent a moment, looking at him. Then suddenly, "Tell me something about Mr. Hudson," she exclaimed. "You 're very, very great friends?"
"Oh yes," said Rowland; "we 're very, very great friends."
"Tell me about him. Allons! Begin."
"Where shall I begin? You know him for yourself."
"No, I don't know him; I don't find him so easy to know. Since he has finished my bust and begun to come here disinterestedly, he has grown a great talker. He says very fine things; but does he mean all he says?"
"Few of us do that."
"You do, I imagine. You ought to know, for he tells me you discovered him." Rowland was silent, and Christina continued: " Do you consider him very, very, very clever?"
"Very, very, very."
"His talent's really distinguished?"
"So it seems to me."
"In short, he 's a great genius?"
"Yes, call him a great genius."
"And you found him vegetating in a little village and took him by the hand and set him on his feet in Rome?"
"Is that the popular legend?" Rowland asked.
"Oh, you need n't be modest. There was no great merit in it; there would have been none at least on my part in the same conditions. Great geniuses are not so common, and if I had discovered one in the wilderness I should have brought him out in the market-place to see how he would behave. It would be excessively amusing. You must find it so to watch Mr. Hudson, eh? Tell me this: do you think he 's going to be a real swell, a big celebrity, have his life written, make his fortune, and immortalise—as the real ones do, you know—the people he has done busts of and the women he has loved?"
"Well, that 's a large order," said Rowland. "I don't prophesy, but I 've good hopes."
Christina was silent. She stretched out her bare arm and looked at it a moment absently, turning it so as to see—or almost to see—the dimple in her elbow. This was apparently a frequent gesture with her; Rowland had already observed it. It was as coolly and naturally done as if she had been alone before her toilet-table. "So he 's one of the glories-to-be!" she suddenly resumed. "Don't you think I ought to be extremely flattered to have one of the glories-to-be perpetually hanging about? He 's the first such young lion I ever saw, but I should have known he was not a common mortal. There 's some thing strange about him. To begin with he has no manners. You may say that it's not for me to blame him, since I 've none myself. That 's very true, but the difference is that I can have them when I wish to (and very charming ones too; I 'll show you some day); whereas Mr. Hudson will never, never, never arrive—and thank God after all—at the least little tenue. For somehow one sees he 's a gentleman. He seems to have something urging, driving, pushing him, making him restless and defiant. You see it in his eyes. They're the finest, by the way, I ever saw. When a person has such eyes you forgive him his bad manners. I suppose they represent what 's called the sacred fire."
Rowland made no answer except to ask her in a moment if she would have another roll. She merely shook her head and went on—
"Tell me how you found him. Where was he—how was he?"
"He was in a place called Northampton Mass. Did you ever hear of it? He was studying law. I don't say he was learning it."
"It appears it was something horrible, eh?"
"Something horrible?"
"This little village. No society, no pleasures, no beauty, no interest."
"You've received a false impression. Northampton is n't so gay as Rome, but Roderick had some charming friends."
"Tell me all about them. Who were his charming friends?"
"Well, there was my cousin, through whom I made his acquaintance—a delightful woman."
"Young—pretty?"
"Yes, a good deal of both. And very clever."
"Did he make love to her?"
"Not in the least."
"Well, who else?"
"He lived with his mother. She 's quite the best of women."
"Ah yes, I know all that one's mother is. But she does not count as society. And who else?"
Rowland hesitated. He wondered whether Christina's insistence were the result of a general interest in Roderick's antecedents or of a particular suspicion. He looked at her; she was looking at him a little askance, waiting for his answer. As Roderick had said nothing about his engagement to the Cavaliere it was probable that with this object of his admiration he had not been more explicit. And yet the thing was announced, it was public; the other person concerned was happy in it, proud of it. Rowland, thinking of the other person, felt a kind of vicarious resentment. But he kept silence a moment longer. He deliberated intently.
"What in the world are you frowning at?" said Christina.
"There was some one else—quite his principal friend; the young lady to whom he 's engaged."
Christina stared, raising her eyebrows. "Ah, Mr. Hudson 's engaged?" she said very simply. "Is she interesting, is she pretty?"
"Very interesting, I think, as engaged to him." Rowland meant to practise great brevity, but in a moment he found himself saying: "And I also call her handsome."
"Ah then you like her, too? You must be glad of that, and so must he," Christina went on. "But why don't they marry?"
"Roderick 's waiting till he can afford it."
Christina slowly put out her arm again and looked at the dimple in her elbow. "Ah, il y a ça? He never told me."
Rowland perceived at this moment that the people about were ebbing back to the ball-room, and immediately afterwards he saw Roderick making his way to themselves. The young man stood the next moment before Miss Light.
"I don't claim that you 've promised me the cotillon," he said, "but I consider you 've given me hopes which warrant the confidence that you 'll dance it with me."
Christina looked at him a moment. "Certainly I 've made no promises," she said. "It seemed to me that, as the daughter of the house, I should keep my self free and let it depend on circumstances."
"Then I very earnestly entreat you." And the pressure was still more in the tone than in the words.
Christina rose and began to laugh. "You say that very well, but the Italians do it better."
This assertion seemed likely to be put to the proof, as Mrs. Light now hastily approached leading rather than led by a tall, slim, brown young man whose face was like a prize-design and whose race was vivid in his type. "My precious love," she cried, "what a place to hide in! We 've been looking for you for twenty minutes; I 've chosen a cavalier for you — and chosen well!"
The young man disengaged himself, made a ceremonious bow, clasped his two hands and murmured with an ecstatic smile "May I venture to hope, dear signorina, for the honour of your hand?"
"It would be fine if you might n't!" said Mrs. Light. "The honour 's for us!"
Christina hesitated but a moment, then swept the young man a curtsey as profound as his own salutation. "You 're very kind, Prince, but you 're too late. I 've just accepted!"
"Ah, voyons, my own darling!" murmured—almost moaned—Mrs. Light.
Christina and Roderick exchanged a single glance—a glance caught by Rowland and which attested on the part of each something of a new consciousness. She passed her hand into his arm; he tossed his ambrosial locks and led her away.
A short time afterwards Rowland saw the young man she had rejected leaning against a doorway. His countenance, constructed and regular, was yet as heavy as if it had been, for brow, nose and mouth, all cornice, column and basement. A portrait-figure of some Renaissance court where poison was used, his rather lustreless part there would have been to die of it. But he was distinguished and bored; he fingered his young moustache broodingly, as if it had been the relic of an ancestor, and looked up nostalgically at the rococo mythological world of the fine old florid ceiling. The creatures there would have indeed been more his Company and his "form," Rowland thought, than the modern polyglot crowd. Rowland espied the Cavaliere Giacosa hard by and, having joined him, asked him the young man's name.
"Oh, he 's a pezzo grosso! A rich Neapolitan. Prince Casamassima."