Roderick Hudson (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907)/Chapter 14
XIV
It happened some days later that, on a long afternoon ramble, Rowland took his way through one of the quiet corners of the Trastevere. He was particularly fond of this part of Rome, though he could hardly have expressed the sinister charm of it. As you pass away from the dusky swarming purlieus of the Ghetto you emerge into a region of empty, soundless, grass-grown lanes and alleys, where the shabby houses seem mouldering away in disuse and yet your footstep brings figures of startling Roman type to the doorways. There are few monuments here, but no part of Rome seemed more oppressively historic, more weighted with a ponderous past, more blighted with the melancholy of things that had had their day. When the yellow afternoon sunshine slept on the sallow battered walls and lengthened the shadows in the grassy courtyards of small closed churches the place acquired a strange fascination. The church of Saint Cecilia has one of these sunny waste-looking courts; the edifice seems abandoned to silence and the charity of chance devotion. Rowland never passed it without going in, and he was generally the only visitor. He entered it now, but he found that two persons had preceded him, both of whom were women. One was at her prayers at one of the side-altars; the other was seated against a column at the upper end of the nave. Rowland walked to the altar and paid in a momentary glance at the clever statue of the saint in death in the niche beneath it the usual tribute to the charm of polished ingenuity. As he turned away he looked at the person seated and recognised Christina Light. Seeing that she perceived him he advanced to speak to her.
She was sitting in a listless manner, her hands in her lap; her attitude spoke of weariness, and her walking-dress, in its simplicity, of the desire to escape observation. When he had greeted her he glanced back at her companion and recognised the faithful Assunta.
Christina found a smile to note this movement. "Are you looking round for Mr. Hudson? He's not here, I 'm happy to say."
"If he were here one might understand," said Row land. "This is a strange place to meet you alone."
"It's just the place to meet me. People call me a strange girl, and I might as well have the comfort of it. I came to take a walk; that, by the way, is part of my strangeness. I can't loll all the morning on a sofa and sit perched all the afternoon in a carriage. I get horribly restless; I must move; I must do something and see something. Mamma suggests a cup of tea. Meanwhile I put on an old dress and half a dozen veils, I take Assunta under my arm and we start on a pedestrian tour. It 's a bore that I can't take the poodle, but he attracts attention. We trudge about everywhere; there 's nothing I like so much. I hope you congratulate me on the simplicity of my tastes."
"I congratulate you on your great sense. To live in Rome and not to walk about would, I think, be poor pleasure. But you 're terribly far from home, and I 'm afraid you 're rather tired."
"A little—enough to sit here a while."
"Might I offer you my company while you rest?"
"If you 'll promise to amuse me. I 'm in dismal spirits."
Saying he would do what he could, Rowland brought a chair and placed it near her. He was not in love with her; he disapproved of her; he distrusted her; and yet he felt it a rare and expensive privilege to watch her, and he found her presence in every way important and momentous. The background of her nature had a sort of landscape largeness and was mysterious withal, emitting strange, fantastic gleams and flashes. Waiting for these was better sport than some kinds of fishing. Moreover it was not a disadvantage to talk with a girl who forced one to make sure of the sufficiency of one's wit; it was like having in one's bank-book after "wild" drafts: it settled the question of one's balance.
Assunta had risen from her prayers and, as he took his place, was coming back to her mistress. But Christina motioned her away. "No, no; while you 're about it say a few dozen more! Pray for me" she added in English. "Pray that I say nothing silly. She has been at it half an hour; I envy her volubility!"
"One envies good Catholics many things," said Rowland with conscious breadth.
"Oh, speak to me of that! I 've been through that too, though I 'm not so much a good Catholic as a bad one. Mamma's what I call a good one—ecco! There was a time when I wanted immensely to be a nun; it was not a laughing matter. It was when I was about sixteen years old. I read the 'Imitation' and the Life of Saint Catherine; I fully believed in the miracles of the saints and I was dying to have one of my own—little of a saint as I was! The least little accident that could have been twisted into a miracle would have carried me straight into the cloister. I had for three months—positively—the perfect vocation. It passed away, and as I sat here just now I was wondering what has become of it."
Rowland had already been sensible of something in this young lady's tone which he would have described as an easy use of her imagination, and this epitome of her religious experience failed to strike him as an authentic text. But it was no disfiguring mask, since she herself was evidently the foremost dupe of her inventions. She had a fictitious history in which she believed much more fondly than in her real one, and an infinite capacity for extemporised reminiscence adapted to the mood of the hour. She liked to carry herself further and further, to see herself in situation and action; and the vivacity and spontaneity of her character gave her really a starting-point in experience, so that the many-coloured flowers of fiction that blossomed in her talk were perversions of fact only if one could n't take them for sincerities of spirit. And Rowland felt that whatever she said of herself might have been, under the imagined circumstances; energy was there, audacity, the restless questioning soul. "I 'm afraid I 'm sadly prosaic," he said, "for in these many months now that I 've been in Rome I 've never ceased for a moment to look at the Faith simply from the outside. I don't see an opening as big as your finger-nail where I could creep into it!"
"What do you believe?" asked Christina, looking at him. "Do you believe anything at all?"
"I 'm very old-fashioned. I believe in the grand old English Bible."
"'English'—?"
"American then," Rowland smiled.
She let her beautiful eyes wander a while, and then gave a small sigh. "You're much to be envied!"
"Oh 'envied'—!" And Rowland fairly sounded bitter.
"Yes, you have rest."
"You 're too young to envy anybody anything."
"I'm not young; I've never been young! My mother took care of that. I was a little wrinkled old woman at ten."
"I 'm afraid," said Rowland in a moment, "that you 're fond of overloading the picture."
She looked at him a while in silence. "Do you wish to win my eternal gratitude? Prove to me that I 'm better than I suppose."
"I should have first to know what you really suppose."
She shook her head. "It would n't do! You would be horrified to learn even the things I imagine about myself, and shocked at the knowledge of evil displayed in my very mistakes."
"Well, then," said Rowland, "I'll ask no questions. But, at a venture, I promise you to catch you some day in the act of doing something very good."
"Are you too trying to flatter me? I thought you and I had fallen from the first into rather a truth-speaking vein."
"Oh, I've not given it up," said Rowland; and he determined, since he had the credit of homely directness, to push his advantage further. The opportunity seemed excellent. But while he was hesitating how to begin, his companion said, bending forward and clasping her hands in her lap: "Please tell me about your faith."
"My faith—?"
"The faith you said just now you have."
"Tell you about it?" Rowland looked cold. "Never in the world!"
She flushed a little. "Is it such a mighty mystery it can't be put into words or communicated to my inferior mind?"
"Such things—one's way of meeting, morally, the mystery of the universe—lie very deep down, at the bottom of one's trunk. One can't always put one's hand on them in a moment."
"Then of what use are they?" Christina asked; "a folded squashed garment that one never wears? Deep convictions, it seems to me," she said, "should be eloquent and aggressive. They should wish to make converts, to persuade and illumine, to take possession!"
"Is n't it true, rather, that the deeper they are the more they take the colour of one's general disposition? I 'm not aggressive, and certainly I 'm not eloquent."
"Well, I 'm sure I should n't greatly care for anything you might say," Christina rejoined. "It would certainly, after all, be half-hearted. You 're not in the least satisfied."
"How do you know that?"
"Oh, I'm an observer!"
"No one 's satisfied with everything, I suppose—but I assure you I complain of nothing."
"So much the worse for your honesty. To begin with, you 're in love."
"You would n't have me complain of that!"
"And it doesn't go well. There are grievous obstacles. So much I know. You need n't protest; I ask no questions. You 'll tell no one—me least of all. Why does one never see you?"
"Why, if I come to see you," said Rowland, deliberating, "it wouldn't be, it couldn't be, for a trivial reason—because I had not been for a month, because I was passing, because I admire you. It would be because I should have something very particular to say. I have n't come because I 've been slow in making up my mind to say it."
"You 're simply cruel then," the girl declared. "Something particular, in this ocean of inanities? In common charity, speak!"
"I doubt whether you 'll like it."
"Oh, I hope to goodness it 's not some tribute to my charms!" Christina wailed.
"It may be called a tribute to your reasonableness. That 's one of your charms, you know. You perhaps remember that I gave you a hint of it the other day at Frascati."
"Has it been hanging fire all this time? Then let it off—no matter with what bang. I promise not to stop my ears."
"It relates to my friend Hudson." And Rowland paused. She was looking at him expectantly; her face gave no other sign. "I 'm rather disturbed in mind about him. He seems to me at times not quite to have found his feet." He paused again, but Christina said nothing. "The case is simply this," he went on. "It was by my advice, you see, that he gave up his work at home and went in for the artist's, went in for this, life. I made him burn his ships, I brought him to Rome, I launched him in the world, and I 've undertaken to answer to—to his mother for his doing well. It 's not such smooth sailing as it might be, and I 'm inclined to put up prayers for fair winds. If he 's to succeed he must work—very quietly and very hard. It 's not news to you, I imagine, that Hudson 's a great admirer of yours."
Christina remained silent; she turned away her eyes with an air, not of confusion, but of deep deliberation. Violent frankness had, as a general thing, struck Rowland as the keynote of her system, but she had more than once given him a suggestion of an unfathomable power of calculation, and her silence now had for him vaguely something charged and ominous. He had of course rather sounded his scruples before deciding to make to an unprotected girl, for the needs of a cause—and not her cause, but his very own—the point that another man was in a state about her: the thing too much resembled, superficially, risking the disturbance of her peace. But he was clear that even rigid discretion is not bound to take such a person at more than her own estimate, and Christina presently reassured him as to the limits of her susceptibility. "Mr. Hudson's mad about me," she simply said.
Rowland flinched a trifle. Then, "Am I," he asked, "from this point of view of mine, to be glad or sorry?"
"I don't understand you."
"Why, is Hudson to be happy or unhappy?"
She hesitated a moment. "You wish him to be great in his profession? And for that you consider that he must be happy in his life?"
"Decidedly. I don't say it's a general rule, but I think it 's a rule for him."
"So that if he were very happy he would become very great?"
"He would at least do himself justice."
"And by that you mean a great deal?"
"A great deal."
Christina sank back in her chair and rested her eyes on the cracked and polished slabs of the pavement. At last she looked up. "You 've not forgotten, I suppose, that you told me he was engaged to be married?"
"By no means."
"He 's still engaged then?"
"To the best of my belief."
"And yet you desire that, as you say, he should be made happy by something I can do for him?"
"What I desire is this—that your great influence with him should be exerted for his good, that it should help him and not retard him. Understand me well. You probably know that your admirers, your victims, have rather a hapless time of it. I can answer for two of them. You don't know your own mind very well, I imagine, and as you like being admired the poor devil on whom you have cast your spell has to pay all the expenses. Since we 're really being frank I wonder whether I might n't say the great word."
"You need n't; I know it. I'm a beastly low flirt."
"No, not a 'low' one, rather a high one, since I 'm making an appeal to your intelligence and your generosity. I 'm pretty sure you can't imagine yourself marrying my friend."
"There's nothing I can't imagine. That's my difficulty."
Rowland's brow contracted impatiently. "I can't imagine it then!"
Christina flushed faintly; then very gently, "I'm not so bad as you think," she said.
"It 's not a question of badness; it 's a question of whether the conditions don't make the thing an extreme improbability."
"Worse and worse. I can be bullied then—or bribed?"
"You 're not so candid as you pretend to be. My feeling 's simply this," Rowland went on. "Hudson, as I understand him, does n't need, as an artist, the stimulus of strong emotion, of precarious passion. He 's better without it; he 's emotional and passionate and precarious enough when left to himself. The sooner passion 's at rest therefore the sooner he 'll settle down to work, and the fewer emotions he has that are mere emotions and nothing more the better for him. If you cared for him enough to marry him I should have nothing to say; I should never venture to interfere. But I greatly guess you don't, and therefore I suggest most respectfully that you leave him alone."
"If I leave him alone he 'll go on like a new clock, eh?"
"He 'll do better. He 'll have no excuses, no pretexts."
"Oh, he makes me a pretext, does he? I 'm much obliged!" cried Christina with a laugh. "What 's he doing now?"
"I can hardly say. He's like a very old clock indeed. He 's moody, desultory, idle, irregular, fantastic."
"Heavens, what a list! And it's all poor me?"
"No, not all. But you 're a part of it, and I turn to you because you 're a more tangible, sensible, responsible cause than the other things."
Christina raised her hand to her eyes and bent her head thoughtfully. Rowland was puzzled to measure the effect of his venture; she rather surprised him by her mildness. At last, without moving, "If I were to marry him," she asked, "what would have become of his fiancée?"
"I 'm bound to suppose that she would have become extremely unhappy."
Christina said nothing more, and Rowland, to let her make her reflexions, left his place and strolled away. Poor Assunta, sitting patiently on a stone bench and unprovided on this occasion with military consolation, gave him a bright frank smile which might have been construed as an expression of regret for herself and of intelligence for her mistress. Rowland presently seated himself again near that young woman.
"What do you think of your friend's infidelity to that person in the little place?" she asked with a sudden look at him.
"I don't like it."
"Was he very much in love with her?"
"He requested the favour of her hand. You may judge."
"Is she also poor?"
"Yes, she 's also poor."
"Is she very much in love with him?"
"I know her too little to say."
She paused again and then resumed. "You've settled in your mind then that I 'll never seriously listen to him?"
"I shall think it unlikely until the contrary 's proved."
"How shall it be proved? How do you know what passes between us?"
"I can judge of course only from appearances; but, like you, I am an observer. Hudson has not at all to me the air of the lucky lover."
"If he has a bad air there 's a good reason. His bad air 's his bad conscience. One must hope so at least. On the other hand, simply as a friend," she continued gently, "you think I can do him no good?"
The humility of her tone, combined with her beauty as she made this remark, was inexpressibly touching, and Rowland had an uncomfortable sense of being put at a disadvantage. "There are doubtless many good things you might do if you had proper opportunity," he said. "But you seem to be sailing with a current which leaves you little leisure for quiet benevolence. You live in the whirl and hurry of a world into which a poor artist can hardly find it to his advantage to follow you."
"In plain English I'm odiously frivolous. You put it very generously."
"I won't hesitate to say all my thought," said Row land. "For better or worse you seem to me to belong both by character and by destiny to what is called the world, the 'great,' the dangerous, the delightful world. You 're made to ornament it magnificently—you 're made to charm it irresistibly. You 're not made to be an artist's wife."
"I see. But even from your point of view that would depend upon the artist. Extraordinary talent might take him into the wonderful place you speak of."
Rowland smiled. "That's very true."
"If, as it is," Christina continued in a moment, "you take a low view of me—no, you need n't protest! I wonder what you would think if you knew certain things."
"What things do you mean?"
"Well, for example, how I was brought up. I 've had a horrid vulgar life. There must be some good in me, since I 've perceived it, since I 've turned and judged my circumstances."
"My dear Miss Light!" Rowland murmured remonstrantly.
She gave an almost harsh little laugh. "You don't want to hear! you don't want to have to think about that!"
"Have I a right to? You need n't justify yourself."
She turned upon him a moment the quickened light of her beautiful eyes, then fell to musing again. "Is there not some novel or some play," she asked at last, "in which a beautiful wicked woman who has ensnared a young man sees his father come to her and beg her to let him go?"
"I seem to remember many—and that the wicked woman generally weeps and makes the sacrifice."
"Well, I 'll try at least to weep. But tell me," she continued, "shall you consider—admitting your proposition—that in ceasing to be nice to Mr. Hudson, so that he may go about his business, I do something magnanimous, heroic, sublime, something with a fine name like that?"
Rowland, elated with the prospect of gaining his point, was about to reply that she would deserve the finest name in the world; but he instantly suspected that this tone would n't please her. Besides, it would n't express his meaning. "You do something I shall greatly respect," he contented himself with saying.
She made no answer and in a moment she beckoned to her maid. "What have I to do to-day?" she asked.
Assunta meditated. "Eh, it's a very busy day! Fortunately I 've a better memory than the signorina," she said, turning to Rowland. She began to count on her fingers, "We 've to go to the Piè di Marmo to see about those laces that were sent to be washed. You said also that you wished to say three sharp words to the Buonvicini about your pink dress. You want some moss rosebuds for to-night, and you won't get them for nothing! You dine at the Austrian Embassy, and that Frenchman 's to powder your hair. You 're to come home in time to receive, for the signora gives a dance. And so away, away till morning!"
"Ah, yes, the moss roses!"—Christina rose to this vision. "I must have a great lot—at least a hundred. Nothing but buds, eh? You must sew them in a kind of immense apron down the front of my dress. Packed tight together, eh? It will be delightfully barbarous. And then twenty more or so for my hair. They go very well with powder; don't you think so?" And she turned to Rowland. "I'm going en Pompadour."
"Going where?"
"To the Spanish Embassy, or whatever it is."
"All down the front, signorina? Dio buono! You must give me time!" Assunta cried.
"Yes, we'll go!" And she left her place. She walked slowly to the door of the church, looking at the pavement, and Rowland could n't have guessed if she were thinking of her apron of moss rosebuds or of her opportunity for a spiritual flight. Before reaching the door she turned away and stood gazing at an old picture, indistinguishable with blackness, over an altar. At last they passed out into the court. Glancing at her in the open air Rowland was startled; she might have been weeping like the wicked women of the plays. They had lost time, she said, and they must hurry; she sent Assunta to look for a coach. She remained silent a while, scratching the ground with the point of her parasol, and then at last, looking up, she thanked Rowland for his confidence in her "reasonableness." "It 's really very comfortable to be expected to do something good, after all the horrid things one has been used to doing—instructed, commanded, coerced to do. I 'll think over what you 've said to me." In that deserted quarter coaches are rare, and there was some delay in Assunta's procuring one. Christina talked of the church, of the picturesque old court, of that strange decaying corner of Rome. Rowland was perplexed; he was ill at ease. At last the cab arrived, but she waited a moment longer. "So, decidedly," she suddenly asked, "I can only hurt him?"
"You make me feel very brutal," said Rowland.
"And he 's such a fine fellow that it would be really a great pity, eh?"
"I shall praise him no more," Rowland said.
She turned away quickly, but she lingered still. "Do you remember promising me, soon after we first met, that at the end of six months you would tell me definitely what you thought of me?"
"It was a foolish promise."
"You gave it. Bear it in mind. I shall think of what you 've said to me. Farewell." The two women stepped into the carriage and it rolled away. Rowland stood for some minutes looking after it, and then went his way with a sigh. If this expressed general mistrust he ought three days afterwards to have been reassured. He received by the post a note containing these words—
"I've done it. Begin to respect me!
"C. L."
To be perfectly satisfactory, indeed, the note required a commentary. Calling that evening upon Roderick, he found one in the information offered him at the door by the old serving-woman—the startling information that the signorina had gone to Naples.