by Henry James
“Oh, I don’t envy Hudson anything he possesses,” Singleton said, “because to take anything away would spoil his beautiful completeness. ‘Complete,’ that ‘s what he is; while we little clevernesses are like half-ripened plums, only good eating on the side that has had a glimpse of the sun. Nature has made him so, and fortune confesses to it! He is the handsomest fellow in Rome, he has the most genius, and, as a matter of course, the most beautiful girl in the world comes and offers to be his model. If that is not completeness, where shall we find it?”
One morning, going into Roderick’s studio, Rowland found the young sculptor entertaining Miss Blanchard—if this is not too flattering a description of his gracefully passive tolerance of her presence. He had never liked her and never climbed into her sky-studio to observe her wonderful manipulation of petals. 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 Mr. Leavenworth. Mr. Leavenworth was a tall, expansive, bland gentleman, with a carefully brushed whisker and a spacious, fair, well-favored 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 parlor with a very florid carpet, but no pictures on the walls. He held his head high, talked sonorously, and told Roderick, within five minutes, that he was a widower, traveling to distract his mind, and that he had lately retired from the proprietorship of large mines of borax in Pennsylvania. Roderick supposed at first that, in his character of depressed widower, he had come to order a tombstone; but observing then the extreme blandness of his address to Miss Blanchard, he credited him with a judicious prevision that by the time the tombstone was completed, a monument of his inconsolability might have become an anachronism. But Mr. Leavenworth was disposed to order something.
“You will find me eager to patronize our indigenous talent,” he said. “I am putting up a little shanty in my native town, and I propose to make a rather nice thing of it. It has been the will of Heaven to plunge me into mourning; but art has consolations! In a tasteful home, surrounded by the memorials of my wanderings, I hope to take more cheerful views. I ordered in Paris the complete appurtenances of a dining-room. Do you think you could do something for my library? It is to be filled with well-selected authors, and I think a pure white image in this style,”—pointing to one of Roderick’s statues,—”standing out against the morocco and gilt, would have a noble effect. The subject I have already fixed upon. I desire an allegorical representation of Culture. Do you think, now,” asked Mr. Leavenworth, encouragingly, “you could rise to the conception?”
“A most interesting subject for a truly serious mind,” remarked Miss Blanchard.
Roderick looked at her a moment, and then—”The simplest thing I could do,” he said, “would be to make a full-length portrait of Miss Blanchard. I could give her a scroll in her hand, and that would do for the allegory.”
Miss Blanchard colored; the compliment might be ironical; and there was ever afterwards a reflection 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 colder, more monumental, more impersonal. “If I were to be the happy possessor of a likeness of Miss Blanchard,” he added, “I should prefer to have it in no factitious disguise!”
Roderick consented to entertain the proposal, and while they were discussing it, Rowland had a little talk with the fair artist. “Who is your friend?” he asked.
“A very worthy man. The architect of his own fortune—which is magnificent. One of nature’s gentlemen!”
This was a trifle sententious, and Rowland turned to the bust of Miss Light. Like every one else in Rome, by this time, Miss Blanchard had an opinion on the young girl’s beauty, and, in her own fashion, she expressed it epigrammatically. “She looks half like a Madonna and half like a ballerina,” she said.
Mr. Leavenworth and Roderick came to an understanding, and the young sculptor good-naturedly promised to do his best to rise to his patron’s conception. “His conception be hanged!” Roderick exclaimed, after he had departed. “His conception is sitting on a globe with a pen in her ear and a photographic album in her hand. I shall have to conceive, myself. For the money, I ought to be able to!”
Mrs. Light, meanwhile, had fairly established herself in Roman society. “Heaven knows how!” Madame Grandoni said to Rowland, who had mentioned to her several evidences of the lady’s prosperity. “In such a case there is nothing like audacity. A month ago she knew no one but her washerwoman, and now I am told that the cards of Roman princesses are to be seen on her table. She is evidently determined to play a great part, and she has the wit to perceive that, to make remunerative acquaintances, you must seem yourself to be worth knowing. You must have striking rooms and a confusing variety of dresses, and give good dinners, and so forth. She is spending a lot of money, and you ‘ll see that in two or three weeks she will take upon herself to open the season by giving a magnificent ball. Of course it is Christina’s beauty that floats her. People go to see her because they are curious.”
“And they go again because they are charmed,” said Rowland. “Miss Christina is a very remarkable young lady.”
“Oh, I know it well; I had occasion to say so to myself the other day. She came to see me, of her own free will, and for an hour she was deeply interesting. I think she ‘s an actress, but she believes in her part while she is playing it. She took it into her head the other day to believe that she was very unhappy, and she sat there, where you are sitting, and told me a tale of her miseries which brought tears into my eyes. She cried, herself, profusely, and 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 would 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 immoral woman. Heaven knows what she meant. She meant, I suppose, that she makes debts that 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 in poverty. It was not money she wanted. I might not believe her, but she really cared for serious things. Sometimes she thought of taking poison!”
“What did you say to that?”
“I recommended her,” said Madame Grandoni, “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 to be patient and she would be happy yet. About once in two months I expect her to reappear, on the same errand, and meanwhile to quite forget my existence. I believe I melted down to the point of telling her that I would find some good, quiet, affectionate husband for her; but she declared, almost with fury, that she was sick unto death of husbands, and begged I would never again mention the word. And, in fact, it was a rash offer; for I am sure that there is not a man of the kind that might really make a woman happy but would be afraid to marry mademoiselle. Looked at in that way she is 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 that 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 distant attendrissement. He imagined more than once that there had been a passionate scene between them about coming out, and wondered what arguments Mrs. Light had found effective. But Christina’s face told no tale
s, 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 is twenty,” observers asked, “to have left all her illusions behind?” And the general verdict was, that though she was incomparably beautiful, she was intolerably proud. Young ladies to whom the former distinction was not conceded were free to reflect that she was “not at all liked.”
It would have been difficult to guess, however, how they reconciled this conviction with a variety of conflicting 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 the thread of a disconnected 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 whether he really supposed that beauties of that quality were meant to wed with poor artists. But although Christina’s deportment, as I have said, was one of superb inexpressiveness, Rowland had derived from Roderick no suspicion that he suffered from snubbing, and he was therefore surprised at an incident which befell one evening at a large musical party. Roderick, as usual, was in the field, 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, at the play. 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 soft smile.
“Will you do me a favor?” she asked.
“A thousand!”
“Not now, but at your earliest convenience. Please remind Mr. Hudson that he is not in a New England village—that it is 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, who burst into joyous laughter. “She ‘s a delightfully strange girl!” he cried. “She must do everything that comes into her head!”
“Had she never asked you before not to talk to her so much?”
“On the contrary, she has often said to me, ‘Mind you now, I forbid you to leave me. Here comes that tiresome So-and-so.’ She cares as little about the custom as I do. What could be a better proof than her walking up to you, with five hundred people looking at her? Is that the custom for young girls in Rome?”
“Why, then, should she take such a step?”
“Because, as she sat there, it came into her head. That ‘s reason enough for her. I have 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 courtesies at the door, with her daughter by her side. Some of Mrs. Light’s courtesies 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 the general promise of destiny. Her daughter was less overtly jubilant, and distributed her greetings with impartial frigidity. She had never been so beautiful. 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 recognized no one individually, and made her courtesy slowly, gravely, with her eyes on the ground. Rowland fancied that, as he stood before her, her obeisance was slightly exaggerated, as with an intention of irony; but he smiled philosophically to himself, and reflected, as he passed into the room, that, if she disliked him, 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 he was surveying the scene with contracted eyelids, through which you saw the glitter of his intensely dark, vivacious pupil. He immediately embarked on an elaborate apology for not having yet manifested, as he felt it, his sense of the honor Rowland had done him.
“I am always on service with these ladies, you see,” he explained, “and that is a duty to which one would not willingly be faithless for an instant.”
“Evidently,” said Rowland, “you are a very devoted friend. Mrs. Light, in her situation, is very happy in having you.”
“We are old friends,” said the Cavaliere, gravely. “Old 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 most beautiful young girl in Europe!”
“Very likely,” said Rowland.
“Very well, sir, I taught her to read; I guided her little hands to touch the piano keys.” And at these faded memories, the Cavaliere’s eyes glittered more brightly. Rowland half expected him to proceed, with a little flash of long-repressed passion, “And now—and now, sir, they treat me as you observed the other day!” But the Cavaliere only looked out at him keenly from among his wrinkles, and seemed to say, with all the vividness of the Italian glance, “Oh, I say nothing more. I am not so shallow as to complain!”
Evidently the Cavaliere was not shallow, and Rowland repeated respectfully, “You are a devoted friend.”
“That ‘s very true. I am 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 is a great day. We have four Roman princes, to say nothing of others.” And he counted them over on his fingers and held up his hand triumphantly. “And there she stands, the girl to whom I—I, Giuseppe Giacosa—taught her alphabet and her piano-scales; there she stands in her incomparable beauty, and Roman princes come and bow to her. Here, in his corner, her old master permits himself to be proud.”
“It is very friendly of him,” said Rowland, smiling.
The Cavaliere contracted his lids a little more and gave another keen glance. “It is very natural, signore. The Christina is a good girl; she remembers my little services. But here comes,” he added in a moment, “the young Prince of the Fine Arts. I am sure he has bowed lowest of all.”
Rowland looked round and saw Roderick moving slowly across the room and casting about him his usual luminous, unshrinking looks. He presently joined them, nodded familiarly to the Cavaliere, and immediately demanded of Rowland, “Have you seen her?”
“I have seen Miss Light,” said Rowland. “She ‘s magnificent.”
“I ‘m half crazy!” cried Roderick; so loud that several persons turned round.
Rowland saw that he was flushed, and laid his hand on his arm. Roderick was trembling. “If you will go away,” Rowland said instantly, “I will go with you.”
“Go away?” cried Roderick, almost angrily. “I intend to dan
ce with her!”
The Cavaliere had been watching him attentively; he gently laid his hand on his other arm. “Softly, softly, dear young man,” he said. “Let me speak to you as a friend.”
“Oh, speak even as an enemy and I shall not mind it,” Roderick answered, frowning.
“Be very reasonable, then, and go away.”
“Why the deuce should I go away?”
“Because you are 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 Christina. She will not listen to you—she can’t.”
“She ‘can’t’?” demanded Roderick. “She is not a person of whom you may say that. She can if she will; she does as she chooses.”
“Up to a certain point. It would take too long to explain; I only beg you to believe that if you continue to love Miss Light you will be very unhappy. Have you a princely title? have you a princely fortune? Otherwise you can never have her.”
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 they made him blush a little. But he smiled blandly, and addressing the Cavaliere, “I ‘m much obliged to you for the information,” he said. “Now that I have obtained it, let me tell you that I am no more in love with Miss Light than you are. Mr. Mallet knows that. I admire her—yes, profoundly. 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 those advantages nor those who possess them to diminish my right.”