Roderick Hudson (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907)/Chapter 19

by Henry James

XIX

There came at last a couple of days during which Rowland was unable to go to the hotel. Late in the evening of the second Roderick appeared at his lodgings. In a few moments he announced that he had finished the bust of his mother.

"And it 's ripping, you know," he declared. "It 's quite my high-water mark."

"I 'm delighted to hear it," Rowland replied. "Never again talk to me about your inspiration being dead."

"Why not? This may be its last kick! I feel very tired. But the thing is n't too nauseating, though I do say it. They tell us we owe so much to our parents. Well, I 've paid the debt with interest!" He walked up and down, the purpose of his visit evidently still hung fire. "There 's one thing more I want to say," he presently resumed. "I feel as if I ought to tell you." He stopped before his companion with his head high and his face as clear as a beach at the ebb. "Your invention 's a failure!"

"My invention?" Rowland repeated.

"Bringing out my mother and Mary."

"A failure?"

"It 's no use! They don't help me."

Rowland had believed he had no more surprises for him; but that hero had himself a wide-eyed stare.

"They bore me to death," Roderick went on.

"Oh, oh!" cried Rowland.

"Listen, listen," said his friend with perfect gentleness. "I 'm not complaining of them; I 'm simply stating a fact. I 'm very sorry for them; I 'm greatly disappointed."

"Have you given them a fair trial?"

"Should n't you call it that? It seems to me I 've been sublime."

"You 've done very well. I 've been building great hopes on it."

"I've done too well—that's just what's the matter with me. After the first forty-eight hours my own hopes collapsed. But I determined to fight it out; to stand within the temple; to let the spirit of the Lord descend. Do you want to know the result? Another week of it and I shall begin to hate them. I shall want to poison them."

"Miserable boy!" Rowland groaned. "They're the most touching, most amiable of women."

"Very likely. But they mean no more to me than a piano means to a pig."

"I can say this," said Rowland in a moment. "I don't pretend to understand the state of your relations with Miss Garland."

Roderick shrugged his shoulders and let his hands drop at his sides. "She thinks all the world of me. She likes me as if I were good to eat. She 's saving me up, cannibal-fashion, as if I were a big feast. That 's the state of my relations." He smiled strangely.

"Have you broken off your engagement?"

"Broken it off? You can't break off a star in Orion. You can only," Roderick explained, "let it alone."

His friend waited a little. "Have you absolutely no affection for her?"

He placed his hand on his heart and held it there a moment. "Dead—dead—dead!"

"I wonder," Rowland presently observed, "if you really know what a charming girl she is. She 's an awfully charming girl."

"Evidently—or I should never have cared for her."

"She has completely ceased then to interest you in any way?"

"Oh, don't force a fellow to say base things!"

"Well, I can only say that you don't know what you 're giving up."

Roderick gave a quickened glance. "Do you know so well?"

"You must admit that you 've allowed me time to find out."

Roderick smiled almost sympathetically. "Well, you have n't wasted it!"

Rowland's thoughts were crowding upon him fast. If Roderick was resolute why should he be gainsaid? If Mary was to be sacrificed why in that way try to save her? There was another way; it only needed a little presumption to make it possible. Rowland tried to summon presumption to his aid; but whether it should come or not it was to find a particular consideration there before it. This presence consisted but of three words—only they were cogent. "For her sake—for her sake," it dumbly murmured; and Rowland resumed his argument. "I don't know what I would n't do," he said, "rather than that Miss Garland should be disappointed." He heard himself grotesquely use this term—which might have applied to a shopgirl,

"There's one thing, you know," Roderick answered with an odd earnestness. "She is very very plucky."

"Well then if she 's plucky, believe that with a longer chance, a better chance, she won't be too discouraged to endeavour to regain your affection."

"Do you know what you ask then?" Roderick demanded. "That I shall make love to a girl I hate?"

"You hate?"

"As her lover I should mortally hate her. Do you really urge my marrying a woman who would bore me to death? I should n't be long in letting her know it, and then, pray, where would the poor thing be?"

Rowland walked the length of the room a couple of times and stopped suddenly. "Go your way then. Say all this to her, not to me."

"To her? Why, I 'm afraid of her, don't you see? I want you to help me."

"My dear chap," said Rowland with a strained smile, "I can't help you any more."

Roderick frowned, hesitated a moment and then took his hat. "Oh, well," he said, "I 'm not so afraid of her as all that!" And he turned as if to depart.

"Stop!" cried Rowland as he laid his hand on the door.

Roderick paused and stood waiting, but only half patient.

"Come back; sit down there and listen to me. Of anything you say in your present state of mind you 'll live, I 'm certain, very bitterly to repent. You don't know what you really think, you don't know what you really feel. You don't know your own mind, you don't do justice to Miss Garland. All this is impossible here, where your conditions for it are of the worst. You 're blind, you 're deaf, you 're under a spell. To break it you must leave Rome."

"Leave Rome? Rome was never so dear to me."

"That's not of the smallest consequence. Leave it to-morrow."

"And where shall I go?"

"Go to some place where you may be alone with your mother and your cousin."

"Alone? You 'll not come?"

"Oh yes—if you ask it of me."

Roderick, inclining his head a little, looked at his friend askance. "I don't understand you, you know," he said. "I think I really wish you liked Mary either a little less or a little more."

Rowland felt himself flush, but he tried to keep his words from reflecting it. "You put it to me that I 'm to 'help' you, but on these present terms I can do nothing. If on the other hand you 'll leave your question exactly as it is for a couple of months, and meanwhile leave Rome, leave Italy, I 'll do what I can to ease you off in the event of your then still wishing to be liberated."

"I must do without your help then, really," Roderick replied. "Your terms are impossible. I 'll leave Rome at the time I 've always intended—at the end of June. My rooms and my mother's are taken till then; all my arrangements are made accordingly. We 'll go at our settled time—not before."

"You 're not candid," said Rowland. "Your real reason for staying has nothing to do with your rooms."

Roderick after an instant took this for what it was worth. "Well, if I 'm not candid it's for the first time in my life. Since you know so much about my real reason, let me hear it. No, stop!" he suddenly added, "I won't trouble you. You 're right—I 've an underhand motive. On the twenty-fourth of the month Christina Light 's to be married. As I take an immense interest in all that concerns her it 's an occasion on which I wish to be present."

"But you said the other day at Saint Peter's that it was by no means certain such an event would now take place."

"Apparently I was wrong. I 'm told the invitations are going out."

Rowland felt it would be vain to remonstrate and that his only resource was to make the best bargain possible. "If I offer no further opposition to your waiting for—what you want to wait for, will you promise, meanwhile and afterwards, for a certain period, to abide by my judgement, to be very quiet and very good and say and do nothing that may give alarm to Miss Garland?"

"For a certain period? For what period?" Roderick promptly demanded.

"Ah, don't screw me down so! Don't you understand that I 've taken you away from her, that I suffer for it in every corner of my mind, and that I must do what I can to give you back?"

"Do what you can then," said Roderick, throwing out and dropping his arms. "Do what you can, my dear man, by all means." He stood there an instant limpidly, beautifully passive—the image of some noble and incureable young spendthrift winding up a slightly sordid interview with his disagreeably lucid but quite trusty man of business. Then he gave his friend his hand firmly, as if in sanction of the latter's freedom of action—after which they separated.

His bust of his mother, whether or no it were a discharge of what he called the filial debt, was at least a most interesting thing. Rowland, at the time it was finished, met Gloriani one evening, and this confident critic was eager for news of it. "I 'm told our high-flying friend has really come down to earth. He has been doing a queer little old woman."

"A queer little old woman!" Rowland exclaimed. "My dear sir, she's Hudson's admirable mother."

"All the more reason for her being queer! It 's a thing for terra-cotta, eh?"

Rowland hesitated but a moment. "If there were a big enough piece in the world it would be a thing for ivory."

His friend looked doubtful. "Oh, ivoiy begs the question. Why not fine gold? It was described to me at all events as a charming piece of quaintness; a little demure, thin-lipped old lady with her head on one side and the prettiest wrinkles in the world—a sort of fairy godmother."

"Go and see it and judge for yourself," Rowland said.

"No, I seem to make out I 've been 'sold.' It must be quite the other thing, the vieux jeu, domestic detail, button-holes and hairpins for the campisanti. I wish the perverse young wretch would let me save him!"

But a day or two later Rowland met him again in the street and, as they were near, proposed they should adjourn to Roderick's studio. He consented, and on entering they found the young master of the scene. Roderick had from the first, as we know, never "grovelled" before the less frequent of his guests, and his noble detachment varied to-day by no perceptible shade. But his great confrère, like the truth-lover he really was, cared nothing for his manners; he cared only for the question of his value. The bust of Mrs. Hudson touched Gloriani as he was seldom touched; the beauty of it bloomed like a flower that had grown in the night. The poor lady's small, neat, timorous face had certainly no great character, but Roderick had presented its sweetness, its mildness, its minuteness, its still maternal passion, with the most unerring art. The truth was all tenderness, the tenderness all truth. Gloriani stood taking this in while Roderick wandered away into the neighbouring room.

"I give it up!" he said at last. "I don't understand it."

"But you like it?" Rowland insisted.

"Like it? It's a pearl of pearls. Tell me this," his companion added; "has he a special worship for her, is he one of your sons in a thousand?" And he gave Rowland almost a hard look.

"Why, she adores the ground he treads on," said Rowland, smiling.

"I take that for an answer! But it 's none of my business. Only if I, in his place, being suspected of having—what shall I call it?—a cold and corrupt heart, had risked that look of love, oh, oh! I should be called a pretty lot of names. Charlatan, poseur, arrangeur! But he can do as he chooses! My dear young man, I know you don't like me," he went on as Roderick came back. "But it 's a pity to waste your time on that, because you 're strong enough never to think of me again. You 're strong all round and everywhere."

Roderick even at this scarce departed from his dryness. "I'm sorry to differ from you, but I'm hopelessly weak."

Well, his visitor still allowed for his arrogance. "I told you last year that you would n't keep it up. I was a great ass. You will keep it up."

"I beg your pardon—I won't!" retorted Roderick.

"Though I 'm a great ass all the same, eh? Well, call me what you will, so long as you turn out this sort of thing. I don't suppose it makes any particular difference to you, but I shall rejoice, for myself, to have made this sign of how largely I count on you."

Roderick stood looking at him with a strange rigour. It turned slowly to a flush, and two glittering angry tears filled his eyes. It was the first time Rowland had ever seen them there; he saw them but once again. Poor Gloriani, he was sure, had never in his life spoken with less of the mocking spirit; but a profession of faith came wrongly, somehow, at such a moment, for Roderick's nerves. He turned away with his imprecation scarce suppressed. Gloriani was ever trying to get near life, but life now baffled him. "What's the matter with him?" he asked with simplicity.

Rowland gave a sad smile and touched his forehead. "Genius—too much of it!"

"Ah, one must n't have it so badly as that!" But Gloriani sent another parting, lingering look at the bust. "It 's as cool as a draught of the acqua Marcia—and as pretty as the plash of it. He is to be counted on. But I 'm glad, since his spirit 's so high, that mine 's a poorer thing. It makes," he explained with a laugh as he looked for Roderick to wave him goodbye and saw his back still turned, "it makes a more sociable studio!"

Rowland had purchased, as he supposed, temporary peace for Mary Garland; but his own spirit, in these days, was given over to the elements. The ideal life had been his general purpose, but the ideal life could only go on very real legs and feet, and the body and the extremities somehow failed always to move in concert. The days passed, but brought with them no official invitation to Christina Light's wedding. He occasionally met her, and he occasionally met Prince Casamassima; but the two were always separate: they were apparently taking their happiness in the inexpressive and isolated manner proper to people of social eminence. Rowland continued to see Madame Grandoni, for whom he felt a confirmed esteem. He had always talked to her with comfortable candour, but now he made her the confidant of his innermost worries. Roderick and Roderick's concerns had been a common theme with him, and it was in the natural course to talk of Mrs. Hudson's arrival and Mrs. Hudson's companion. In respect to certain equivocations, however, that he had not been ashamed to practise in regard to this young lady, she lost no time in putting his case for him in a nutshell. "At one moment you tell me the girl 's plain," she said; "the next you tell me she 's lovely. I 'll call on them, I 'll invite them. But one thing 's very clear; you 're in love with her down to the ground." Rowland, for all answer, glanced round to see that no one heard her, and it was odd to him that he should so like her saying it.

"More than that," she added, "you 've been in love with her these two years. There was that certain something about you—! I knew you were of what we Germans call a subjective turn of mind; but you had a twist of it more than was natural. Why did n't you tell me at once? You would have saved me a great deal of trouble. And poor Augusta Blanchard too!" With which Madame Grandoni produced, for their consumption, a colloquial plum. Miss Blanchard and Mr. Leavenworth were going to make a match; the young lady had been staying for a month at Albano, and as Mr. Leavenworth had been dancing attendance the event was a matter of course. Rowland, who had been lately reproaching himself with a failure of attention to Augusta's doings, made some such observation.

"But you did n't find it so," his hostess objected—"I mean when you, on your side, were so kind to her without seeming to care that it might have committed you. It was a matter of course perhaps that Mr. Leavenworth, who seems to be going about Europe with the sole view of picking up furniture for his 'home,' as he calls it, should think Miss Blanchard a very handsome morceau; but it was not a matter of course—or it need n't have been—that she should be willing to become a sort of superior table-ornament. She would have accepted you in a jiffy if you had tried."

"You 're supposing the insupposable," said Rowland. "She never gave me a particle of encourage ment."

"What would you have had her do? The poor girl did her best, and I 'm sure that when she surrendered to Mr. Leavenworth she was thinking of quite another gentleman."

"She thought of the pleasure her marriage would give him."

"Aye, pleasure indeed! She's a thoroughly good girl, but she has her little grain of feminine spite as well as the rest. Well, he 's richer than you, and she will have what she wants; but before I forgive you I must wait and see this new arrival—what do you call her?—Miss Garlant of the Back Woods. If I like her very much I 'll forgive you; if I don't I shall always bear you a grudge."

Rowland answered that he was sorry to forfeit any advantage she might offer him, but that his exculpatory passion for Miss Garland of the Back Woods was a figment of her fancy. Miss Garland of the Back Woods—he declared he liked that title—was engaged to another man. He himself had no claim.

"Well then," said Madame Grandoni, "if I like her we 'll have it that you ought to be what you say—perhaps mendaciously—that you 're not. If you fail in this it will be a double misdemeanour. The man she has accepted does n't care a straw for her. Leave me alone and I 'll tell her what I think of the man she has n't!"

As to Christina Light's marriage Madame Grandoni could say nothing positive. The maiden had of late made her several flying visits, in the intervals of the usual pre-matrimonial shopping and dress-fitting; she had spoken of the event with a toss of her head, as a matter which with a wise old friend who viewed things in their essence she need n't pretend to treat as a solemnity. It was for Prince Casamassima to do that. "It 's what they call a marriage of reason," she once had said. "That means, you know, a marriage of madness."

"What have you managed for her—since you must have managed something—in the way of advice?" Rowland asked.

"Very little, but that little has been a good word for the Prince. I know nothing of the mysteries of the young lady's heart. It may be a gold-mine, but at any rate it 's at the bottom of a very long shaft. The marriage in itself, however, is an excellent marriage. It's not only 'great,' but it's good. I think Christina 's quite capable of giving it some wrong turn, of spoiling somehow its beauty; but there 's no position in the world that would be sacred to her. The Prince is an irreproachable young man; there 's nothing against him, nothing inconvenient about him but that his name is, in his opinion, something to live up to. It 's not often, I fancy, that a personage wearing it has been put through his paces at this rate. No one knows the wedding-day; the cards of invitation have been printed half a dozen times over with a different date; each time Christina has destroyed them. There are people in Rome who are furious at the delay; they want to get away; they 're in a dreadful fright about the fever-season, but they 're dying to see the wedding, and if the day were fixed they would make their arrangements to wait for it. I think it very possible that after having kept them for a month and been the cause of a dozen cases of malaria, Christina will be married at sunrise by an old friar—in Romeo and Juliet fashion—and with simply the legal witnesses."

Rowland brooded a while. "I feel as if we had still to reckon with her."

"Do you mean," his friend asked, "that she may even yet run away with Mr. Hudson?"

It was more than he had meant, but it had struck him the next minute as not perhaps more than might be. "I 'm prepared for anything!"

"Do you mean that Mr. Hudson's ready?"

"Do you think she is?" Rowland asked.

"I think they're a precious pair—and yet that one has n't said all when one says, as I have so often done, that she likes drama, likes theatricals—what do you call them?—histrionics, for their own sweet sake. She 's certain to do every now and then something disinterested and sincere, something for somebody else than herself. She needs to think well of herself; she knows a fine character easily when she meets one; she hates to suffer by comparison, even though the comparison be made by herself alone; and when the figure she makes, to her own imagination, ceases to please or to amuse her she has to do something to smarten it up and give it a more striking turn. But of course she must always do that at somebody's expense—not one of her friends but must sooner or later pay, and the best of them doubtless the oftenest. Her attitudes and pretences may sometimes worry one, but I think we have most to pray to be guarded from her sincerities. Those are the prickles, after all, that she most turns upon her mother—and that she will turn yet upon her husband. But we mustn't, all the same," Madame Grandoni concluded, "give her up. Don't you!" she said with some emphasis to Rowland.

"Oh me!" he simply sighed: "I 'm prickle-proof!"

His sagacious friend came the next day to call on the two ladies from Northampton. She carried their shy affections by storm and made them promise to drink tea with her on the evening of the morrow. Her visit was an epoch in the life of poor Mrs. Hudson, who did nothing but make sudden desultory allusions to her for the next thirty-six hours. "To think of her being a foreigner!" she would exclaim after much intent reflexion over her knitting; "she speaks the language as if she were driving her own carriage—and with her whip well up in her hand, don't you think?" Then in a little while: "She was n't so much dressed as you might have expected. Did you notice how easy it was in the waist? I wonder if that 's the fashion?" Or "She 's very old to wear a jaunty hat; I should never dare to wear a jaunty hat!" Or "Did you notice her hands?—very pretty hands for such a stout person. A great many rings, but nothing very handsome. I suppose they 're handed down." Or "She 's certainly not handsome, but she lookswon derfully clever. I wonder why she does n't have some thing done to her teeth." Rowland also received a summons to Madame Grandoni's tea-drinking, and went betimes, as he had been requested. He took a fond interest, which he would have been at a loss to defend, in Mary Garland's first appearance, as he felt it to be, on any social, certainly on any critical, stage. The two ladies had arrived with Roderick, easily "interesting" but irrecoverably vague, in attendance. Miss Blanchard was also present, escorted by Mr. Leavenworth, and the party was completed by a couple of dozen artists of both sexes and various nationalities. It was a friendly and lively concourse, like all Madame Grandoni's parties, and in the course of the evening there was some excellent music. People often played and sang for her who were not in general to be heard for the asking. She was herself a superior musician, and singers found it a privilege to perform to her accompaniment. Rowland conversed with various persons, but for the first time in his life his charity deserted its post and his attention flagrantly strayed: they were rejoicingly conscious of but one young woman, who filled for him, though all by no motion of her own, the part of heroine of the occasion. Madame Grandoni had said that he sometimes spoke of this person as pretty and sometimes as plain; to-night if he had had occasion to describe her type he would recklessly have pronounced it "rich." It was as if she had somehow put lights in her dim windows and you could hear somewhere behind them the tuning of mystic fiddles. She was dressed more than he had ever seen her; it was becoming and gave her an importance, all attaching, for the eye. Two or three persons were apparently witty people, for she sat listening to them with her brilliant natural smile. Rowland, from an opposite corner, reflected that he had never varied in his appreciation of Miss Blanchard's classic contour, but that somehow to-night it impressed him hardly more than an effigy stamped on a bad modern medal. Roderick could not be accused of rancour, for he had approached Mr. Leavenworth with unstudied familiarity and, lounging against the wall with hands in pockets, held him evidently under the spell of the good gentleman's not quite being able to decide as to the biggest hat, as it were, that his dignity could put on. Now that he had done him an impertinence the young man apparently found him less intolerable. Mr. Leavenworth stood stirring his tea and silently opening and shutting his mouth, without looking at his interlocutor; he might have been a large drowsy dog snapping at flies. Rowland had found it agitating to be told Miss Blanchard would have married him for the asking, and he would have felt embarrassment in going to speak to her if he had n't worked it out so well, in the interval, from memory, that he had n't really trifled with her. The facile side of a union with Miss Blanchard had never been present to his mind; it had struck him as a thing, in all ways, to be compassed with a great effort, and he had not even renounced the effort: he had never come, he felt, so near it. He had half an hour's talk with her; a farewell talk, as it seemed to him—a farewell not to a real illusion, but to the idea that for him, in the matter of committing himself for life, grim thought, there could ever be a motive that would n't ache like a wound. Such a pressure would resemble that of the button of an electric bell kept down by the thumb—prescribing definite action to stop the merciless ring. He congratulated Miss Blanchard upon her engagement, and she received his good wishes as if he had been a servant, at dinner, presenting the potatoes to her elbow. She helped herself in moderation, but also all in profile. He had wished to be decent, but he felt the chill and his zeal relaxed, while he fell a-thinking that a certain natural ease in a woman was the most delightful thing in the world. There was Christina Light, who had decidedly too much, and there was Miss Blanchard, who had decidedly too little, and there was Mary Garland, who had decidedly the right amount. He went to Madame Grandoni in an adjoining room, where she was pouring out tea. "I 'll make you an excellent cup," she said, "because I 've forgiven you."

He looked at her, answering nothing; but he swallowed his tea with great gusto and a wait for more—more of everything; by all of which she could know he was gratified. In a moment he intimated that in so far as he had sinned he was now quite square with his conscience, but Madame Grandoni had already forgotten.

"The Back Woods then," she said, "grow such interesting plants? I like your young lady—she 's not a bit banal. And yet she escapes it so quietly — not, as they sometimes do, by standing on her head. I think that if she 'll let me make a friend of her I sha'n't bore her either. I have a flair — oh yes, in spite of Augusta, Augusta Victoria as I now call her—for the chance of their boring me. Miss Garlant, you deep creature, defies at any rate your account of her."

"She's unfortunately plain," said Rowland, laughing and reënforcing his account; "very simple and artless and ignorant—"

"But thoroughly neat and respectable!"—his old friend took him up. "Which, being interpreted, means 'She 's very handsome, very subtle, very clever, and has read hundreds of volumes on winter evenings in the country.'"

"You 're a veritable sorceress," Rowland made answer; "you frighten me away." As he was turning to leave her there rose above the hum of voices in the drawing-room the sharp grotesque note of a barking dog. Their eyes met in a glance of intelligence.

"There 's the veritable sorceress!" Madame Grandoni declared. "The sorceress and her necromantic poodle!" And she hastened back to the post of hospitality.

Rowland, accompanying her, found Christina Light erect in the middle of the drawing-room and looking about in perplexity. Her poodle, sitting on his haunches and gazing at the company, had apparently been expressing a sympathetic displeasure at the absence of a welcome. But in a moment Madame Grandoni had come to the girl's relief and Christina had tenderly kissed her.

"I had no idea," the young woman began while she surveyed the assembly, "that you had such a lot of grand people, or I would never have come in. The servant said nothing; he took me for an invitée. I came to spend a neighbourly half-hour; you know I have n't many left! It was too dismally dreary at home. I hoped I should find you alone and I brought Stenterello to play with the cat. Since I 'm here, at any rate, I beg you to let me stay. I 'm not dressed, but am I very hideous? I 'll sit in a corner and no one will notice me. My dear sweet lady, do let me stay! Only, why in the world did n't you ask me? I never have been to a little party like this. They must be very charming. No dancing—tea and conversation? No tea, thank you; but if you could spare a biscuit for Stenterello; a sweet biscuit, please. Really, why did n't you ask me? Do you have these things often? Madame Grandoni, it 's very unkind!" And the girl, who had delivered herself of the foregoing succession of sentences in her usual low, cool, penetrating voice, uttered these last words with a certain tremor of feeling. "I see," she went on; "I do very well for balls and great banquets, but when people wish to have a cosy, friendly, comfortable evening, they leave me out with the big flower-pots and the gilt candlesticks."

"I am sure you're welcome to stay, my dear," said Madame Grandoni, "and at the risk of displeasing you I must confess that if I did n't invite you it was because you are, in effect, so grand for small occasions and you come, as it were, so dear. Your dress will do very well, with its fifty flounces, and there 's no need of your going into a corner. Indeed since you 're here I propose to have the glory of it. You must remain where my people can see you."

"They 're evidently determined to do that by the way they stare. Do they think I 've come to dance a tarantella? Who are they all; do I know them?" And lingering in the spacious centre, with her arm passed into Madame Grandoni's, she let her eyes wander slowly from group to group; all groups of course observing her. Standing in the little circle of lamplight with the hood of an Eastern burnous shot with silver threads falling back from her beautiful head, while one hand gathered its voluminous shimmering folds and the other played with the silken top-knot on the uplifted head of her poodle, she was a figure radiantly romantic and might have suggested an extemporised tableau vivant. Rowland's position made it becoming for him to speak to her without delay. As she looked at him he saw that, judging by the light of her beautiful eyes, she was in a humour to a specimen of which she had not yet treated him. In a simpler person he would have called it a great and direct kindness, but in this young lady's deportment the flower was apt to be one thing and the perfume another. "Tell me about these people," she went on again: "I had no idea there were so many people in Rome I 've not seen. What are they all talking about? It 's all very clever, I suppose, and quite beyond me. There 's Miss Blanchard detaching herself as usual against the darkest object she can find. She would find means to make the Great Desert resemble a photographer's studio. But she 's too much like a head on a postage-stamp. And there 's that nice little old lady in black, Mrs. Hudson. What a dear little woman for a mother! Comme elle est proprette! And the other, the fiancée, of course she 's here. Ah, I see!" She paused; she was looking intently at Mary Garland. Rowland measured the sincerity of her glance and suddenly acquired a conviction. "I should like so much to know her!" she said, turning to Madame Grandoni. "She has a charming face; I 'm sure she 's the nicest person here. I wish very much you would introduce me. No, on second thoughts I would rather you did n't. I 'll speak to her bravely myself, as a friend of her—what do you call it in English?—her promesso sposo." Madame Grandoni and Rowland exchanged glances of baffled conjecture, and Christina flung off her burnous, crumpled it together and, with uplifted finger, tossing it into a corner, gave it in charge to her poodle, who straightway proceeded to squat on it with upright vigilance. Christina crossed the room with the step and smile of a ministering angel and introduced herself to the young lady from Northampton. She had once told Rowland that she would show him some day how awfully civil she knew how to be, and was now redeeming her promise. Rowland, watching her, saw Mary Garland rise slowly in response to her greeting and look at her with serious deep-gazing eyes. The almost dramatic opposition of these two keenly interesting girls touched him with a nameless apprehension, and after a moment he preferred to turn away. In doing so he noticed Roderick, who, standing planted on the train of a lady's dress, was watching the same passage with undisguised earnestness. There were several more pieces of music; Rowland sat in a corner and listened to them. When they were over the company began to take leave, Mrs. Hudson among the number. Rowland saw her come up to Madame Grandoni, clinging shyly to Mary Garland's arm. Mary looked a little as if she had just jumped, rather dangerously, to save her life or her honour, from some great height. The two ladies, he gathered, had appealed tacitly to Roderick, but Roderick now had his back turned. He had approached Christina, who, with an absent air, was sitting alone, where she had taken her place near her innocent rival to watch the guests pass out of the room. Her face, like Mary's, showed a vague afterglow, but only as an intenser radiance. Hearing Roderick's voice she looked up at him sharply; then silently, with a single quick gesture, she motioned him away. He obeyed her and came and joined his mother in bidding good-night to Madame Grandoni. Christina in a moment met Rowland's eyes and immediately beckoned him to come to her. He was familiar with her peremptory way and was not particularly surprised. She made a place for him on the sofa beside her; he wondered what was coming now. He was not sure it was not a mere fancy, but it seemed to him that he had never seen her look just as she was looking then. There was a high mildness, a sweetness of humility in it which threw into relief the rare nature, the strange life and play, of her beauty. "How many more metamorphoses," he asked himself, "am I to be treated to before we have done?"

"I want to tell you," said Christina, "I 've such a beautiful impression of Miss Garland. Are n't you glad?"

"Quite overjoyed, madam," Rowland returned.

She kept her eyes on him. "Ah, I see you don't believe a word of it!"

"Is it so hard to believe?"

"Not that people in general should admire her, but that I should. I 'm not good enough—that 's what you feel. But I want to tell you; I want to tell some one; I can't tell Miss Garland herself. She regards me already as a horrid false creature, and if I were to express to her frankly what I think of her I should simply disgust her. She would be quite right; she has Repose, and from that point of view I and my doings must seem monstrous. Unfortunately I have n't Repose—ah, what would n't I give for it! I 'm trembling now; if I could ask you to feel my arm you 'd see. But I want to tell you that I admire Miss Garland more than any of the people who call themselves her friends—except of course you. Oh, I know that! To begin with she 's extremely handsome and she has n't the least idea of it. Now that by itself, you know—!"

"She's not generally thought handsome," Rowland conscientiously said.

"Evidently! That 's the vulgarity of the taste of the rabble. Her head has great character, great natural style. If a woman 's not to scream out from every pore that she has an appearance—which is a most awful fate—quite the best thing for her is to carry that sort of dark lantern. On occasion she can flash it as far as she likes. She 'll not be thought pretty by people in general and desecrated as she passes by the stare of every vile wretch who chooses to thrust his nose under her bonnet; but a certain number of intelligent people will find it one of the delightful things of life to look at her. That lot 's as good as another. And then your friend has every virtue under heaven."

"You found that out soon," Rowland laughed.

"How long did it take you? I found it out before I ever spoke to her. I met her the other week in Saint Peter's; I knew it then. I knew it—do you want to know how long I 've known it?"

"Really," said Rowland, "I didn't mean to cross-examine you."

"Do you remember mamma's ball in December? We had some talk and you then mentioned her—not by name. You said but three words, but I saw you admired her and I knew that if you admired her she must have every virtue under heaven. That 's what you require."

"Upon my word," he declared, "you make three words go very far!"

"Oh, Mr. Hudson has also spoken of her."

"Ah, that's better!" said Rowland.

"I don't know. He does n't like her."

"Has he told you so?" The question left Rowland's lips before he could stay it—which he would have done on a moment's reflexion.

Christina looked at him intently. "Not in so many words," she said at last. "That would have been dishonourable, would n't it? But I know it from my knowledge of him. He does n't like perfection; he 's not bent on being so awfully safe and sound in his likings; he 's willing to risk something! Poor dear man, he risks too much!"

Rowland was silent; he did n't care for the thrust, but he was profoundly mystified. Christina beckoned to her poodle, and the dog marched stiffly across to her. She gave a loving twist to his rose-coloured top-knot and bade him go and fetch her burnous. He obeyed, gathered it up in his teeth and returned with great solemnity, dragging it along the floor.

"I do her justice. I do her full justice." She wonderfully kept it up. "I like to say that, I like to be able to say it. She 's full of intelligence and courage and devotion. She does n't do me a grain of justice; but that 's no harm—I mean above all no harm to her. There 's something so noble in the aversions of a good woman!"

"If you would give Miss Garland a chance," said Rowland, "I 'm sure she would be glad to be your friend."

"What do you mean by a chance? She has only to take it. I told her I liked her immensely, and she glared as if I had said something disgusting. She looks magnificent when she glares—like a Medusa crowned not with snakes but with a tremor of doves' wings." Christina rose with these words and began to gather her mantle about her. "I don't often like women—small blame to me," she went on. "In fact I generally detest 'em. But I should like to know that one well. I should like to have a friendship with her; I have never had one; they must be very delightful, good safe friendships. But I sha'n't have one now—not if she can help it! Ask her what she thinks of me; see what she 'll say. I don't want to know; keep it to yourself. It 's too sad. So we go through life. It 's fatality—that 's what they call it, is n't it? We make the most inconvenient good impression on people we don't care for; we inspire with loathing those we do. But I appreciate her, I do her justice; that 's the most important thing. It 's because I 've after all a lot of imagination. She has none. Never mind; it 's her only fault. Besides, imagination 's not a virtue—it 's a vice. I do her justice; I understand very well." She kept softly murmuring and looking about for Madame Grandoni. She saw the good lady near the door and put out her hand to Rowland for good-night. She held his hand an instant, fixing him with her eyes, by the living splendour of which he was momentarily dazzled. "Yes, I do her justice," she repeated. "And you do her more; you would lay down your life for her." With this she turned away and before he could answer she left him. She went to Madame Grandoni, grasped her two hands and held out a forehead to be kissed. The next moment she was gone.

"That was a happy accident!" said Madame Grandoni. "She never looked so beautiful and she made my little party brilliant."

"Beautiful verily!" Rowland answered. "But it was no accident."

"What was it then?"

"It was a plan. She wanted to see Mary Garland. She knew she was to be here."

"How so?"

"By Roderick evidently."

"And why did she wish to see her?"

"Heaven knows! I give it up."

"Ah, the bold bad girl!" Madame Grandoni sighed.

"No," said Rowland; "don't say that now. She 's too beautiful."

"Oh, you men—the best of you!"

"Well then," cried Rowland, "she 's too good!"