by Henry James
Rowland returned the next day, with plenty of zeal for the part Roderick had assigned to him. It had been arranged that they should go to Saint Peter’s. Roderick was in high good-humor, and, in the carriage, was watching his mother with a fine mixture of filial and professional tenderness. Mrs. Hudson looked up mistrustfully at the tall, shabby houses, and grasped the side of the barouche in her hand, as if she were in a sail-boat, in dangerous waters. Rowland sat opposite to Miss Garland. She was totally oblivious of her companions; from the moment the carriage left the hotel, she sat gazing, wide-eyed and absorbed, at the objects about them. If Rowland had felt disposed he might have made a joke of her intense seriousness. From time to time he told her the name of a place or a building, and she nodded, without looking at him. When they emerged into the great square between Bernini’s colonnades, she laid her hand on Mrs. Hudson’s arm and sank back in the carriage, staring up at the vast yellow facade of the church. Inside the church, Roderick gave his arm to his mother, and Rowland constituted himself the especial guide of Miss Garland. He walked with her slowly everywhere, and made the entire circuit, telling her all he knew of the history of the building. This was a great deal, but she listened attentively, keeping her eyes fixed on the dome. To Rowland himself it had never seemed so radiantly sublime as at these moments; he felt almost as if he had contrived it himself and had a right to be proud of it. He left Miss Garland a while on the steps of the choir, where she had seated herself to rest, and went to join their companions. Mrs. Hudson was watching a great circle of tattered contadini, who were kneeling before the image of Saint Peter. The fashion of their tatters fascinated her; she stood gazing at them in a sort of terrified pity, and could not be induced to look at anything else. Rowland went back to Miss Garland and sat down beside her.
“Well, what do you think of Europe?” he asked, smiling.
“I think it ‘s horrible!” she said abruptly.
“Horrible?”
“I feel so strangely—I could almost cry.”
“How is it that you feel?”
“So sorry for the poor past, that seems to have died here, in my heart, in an hour!”
“But, surely, you ‘re pleased—you ‘re interested.”
“I am overwhelmed. Here in a single hour, everything is changed. It is as if a wall in my mind had been knocked down at a stroke. Before me lies an immense new world, and it makes the old one, the poor little narrow, familiar one I have always known, seem pitiful.”
“But you did n’t come to Rome to keep your eyes fastened on that narrow little world. Forget it, turn your back on it, and enjoy all this.”
“I want to enjoy it; but as I sat here just now, looking up at that golden mist in the dome, I seemed to see in it the vague shapes of certain people and things at home. To enjoy, as you say, as these things demand of one to enjoy them, is to break with one’s past. And breaking is a pain!”
“Don’t mind the pain, and it will cease to trouble you. Enjoy, enjoy; it is your duty. Yours especially!”
“Why mine especially?”
“Because I am very sure that you have a mind capable of doing the most liberal justice to everything interesting and beautiful. You are extremely intelligent.”
“You don’t know,” said Miss Garland, simply.
“In that matter one feels. I really think that I know better than you. I don’t want to seem patronizing, but I suspect that your mind is susceptible of a great development. Give it the best company, trust it, let it go!”
She looked away from him for some moments, down the gorgeous vista of the great church. “But what you say,” she said at last, “means change!”
“Change for the better!” cried Rowland.
“How can one tell? As one stands, one knows the worst. It seems to me very frightful to develop,” she added, with her complete smile.
“One is in for it in one way or another, and one might as well do it with a good grace as with a bad! Since one can’t escape life, it is better to take it by the hand.”
“Is this what you call life?” she asked.
“What do you mean by ‘this’?”
“Saint Peter’s—all this splendor, all Rome—pictures, ruins, statues, beggars, monks.”
“It is not all of it, but it is a large part of it. All these things are impregnated with life; they are the fruits of an old and complex civilization.”
“An old and complex civilization: I am afraid I don’t like that.”
“Don’t conclude on that point just yet. Wait till you have tested it. While you wait, you will see an immense number of very beautiful things—things that you are made to understand. They won’t leave you as they found you; then you can judge. Don’t tell me I know nothing about your understanding. I have a right to assume it.”
Miss Garland gazed awhile aloft in the dome. “I am not sure I understand that,” she said.
“I hope, at least, that at a cursory glance it pleases you,” said Rowland. “You need n’t be afraid to tell the truth. What strikes some people is that it is so remarkably small.”
“Oh, it’s large enough; it’s very wonderful. There are things in Rome, then,” she added in a moment, turning and looking at him, “that are very, very beautiful?”
“Lots of them.”
“Some of the most beautiful things in the world?”
“Unquestionably.”
“What are they? which things have most beauty?”
“That is according to taste. I should say the statues.”
“How long will it take to see them all? to know, at least, something about them?”
“You can see them all, as far as mere seeing goes, in a fortnight. But to know them is a thing for one’s leisure. The more time you spend among them, the more you care for them.” After a moment’s hesitation he went on: “Why should you grudge time? It ‘s all in your way, since you are to be an artist’s wife.”
“I have thought of that,” she said. “It may be that I shall always live here, among the most beautiful things in the world!”
“Very possibly! I should like to see you ten years hence.”
“I dare say I shall seem greatly altered. But I am sure of one thing.”
“Of what?”
“That for the most part I shall be quite the same. I ask nothing better than to believe the fine things you say about my understanding, but even if they are true, it won’t matter. I shall be what I was made, what I am now—a young woman from the country! The fruit of a civilization not old and complex, but new and simple.”
“I am delighted to hear it: that ‘s an excellent foundation.”
“Perhaps, if you show me anything more, you will not always think so kindly of it. Therefore I warn you.”
“I am not frightened. I should like vastly to say something to you: Be what you are, be what you choose; but do, sometimes, as I tell you.”
If Rowland was not frightened, neither, perhaps, was Miss Garland; but she seemed at least slightly disturbed. She proposed that they should join their companions.
Mrs. Hudson spoke under her breath; she could not be accused of the want of reverence sometimes attributed to Protestants in the great Catholic temples. “Mary, dear,” she whispered, “suppose we had to kiss that dreadful brass toe. If I could only have kept our door-knocker, at Northampton, as bright as that! I think it’s so heathenish; but Roderick says he thinks it ‘s sublime.”
Roderick had evidently grown a trifle perverse. “It ‘s sublimer than anything that your religion asks you to do!” he exclaimed.
“Surely our religion sometimes gives us very difficult duties,” said Miss Garland.
“The duty of sitting in a whitewashed meeting-house and listening to a nasal Puritan! I admit that ‘s difficult. But it ‘s not sublime. I am speaking of ceremonies, of forms. It is in my line, you know, to make much of forms. I think this is a very beautiful one. Could n’t you do it?” he demanded, looking at his cousin.
She looked back at him int
ently and then shook her head. “I think not!”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know; I could n’t!”
During this little discussion our four friends were standing near the venerable image of Saint Peter, and a squalid, savage-looking peasant, a tattered ruffian of the most orthodox Italian aspect, had been performing his devotions before it. He turned away, crossing himself, and Mrs. Hudson gave a little shudder of horror.
“After that,” she murmured, “I suppose he thinks he is as good as any one! And here is another. Oh, what a beautiful person!”
A young lady had approached the sacred effigy, after having wandered away from a group of companions. She kissed the brazen toe, touched it with her forehead, and turned round, facing our friends. Rowland then recognized Christina Light. He was stupefied: had she suddenly embraced the Catholic faith? It was but a few weeks before that she had treated him to a passionate profession of indifference. Had she entered the church to put herself en regle with what was expected of a Princess Casamassima? While Rowland was mentally asking these questions she was approaching him and his friends, on her way to the great altar. At first she did not perceive them.
Mary Garland had been gazing at her. “You told me,” she said gently, to Rowland, “that Rome contained some of the most beautiful things in the world. This surely is one of them!”
At this moment Christina’s eye met Rowland’s and before giving him any sign of recognition she glanced rapidly at his companions. She saw Roderick, but she gave him no bow; she looked at Mrs. Hudson, she looked at Mary Garland. At Mary Garland she looked fixedly, piercingly, from head to foot, as the slow pace at which she was advancing made possible. Then suddenly, as if she had perceived Roderick for the first time, she gave him a charming nod, a radiant smile. In a moment he was at her side. She stopped, and he stood talking to her; she continued to look at Miss Garland.
“Why, Roderick knows her!” cried Mrs. Hudson, in an awe-struck whisper. “I supposed she was some great princess.”
“She is—almost!” said Rowland. “She is the most beautiful girl in Europe, and Roderick has made her bust.”
“Her bust? Dear, dear!” murmured Mrs. Hudson, vaguely shocked. “What a strange bonnet!”
“She has very strange eyes,” said Mary, and turned away.
The two ladies, with Rowland, began to descend toward the door of the church. On their way they passed Mrs. Light, the Cavaliere, and the poodle, and Rowland informed his companions of the relation in which these personages stood to Roderick’s young lady.
“Think of it, Mary!” said Mrs. Hudson. “What splendid people he must know! No wonder he found Northampton dull!”
“I like the poor little old gentleman,” said Mary.
“Why do you call him poor?” Rowland asked, struck with the observation.
“He seems so!” she answered simply.
As they were reaching the door they were overtaken by Roderick, whose interview with Miss Light had perceptibly brightened his eye. “So you are acquainted with princesses!” said his mother softly, as they passed into the portico.
“Miss Light is not a princess!” said Roderick, curtly.
“But Mr. Mallet says so,” urged Mrs. Hudson, rather disappointed.
“I meant that she was going to be!” said Rowland.
“It ‘s by no means certain that she is even going to be!” Roderick answered.
“Ah,” said Rowland, “I give it up!”
Roderick almost immediately demanded that his mother should sit to him, at his studio, for her portrait, and Rowland ventured to add another word of urgency. If Roderick’s idea really held him, it was an immense pity that his inspiration should be wasted; inspiration, in these days, had become too precious a commodity. It was arranged therefore that, for the present, during the mornings, Mrs. Hudson should place herself at her son’s service. This involved but little sacrifice, for the good lady’s appetite for antiquities was diminutive and bird-like, the usual round of galleries and churches fatigued her, and she was glad to purchase immunity from sight-seeing by a regular afternoon drive. It became natural in this way that, Miss Garland having her mornings free, Rowland should propose to be the younger lady’s guide in whatever explorations she might be disposed to make. She said she knew nothing about it, but she had a great curiosity, and would be glad to see anything that he would show her. Rowland could not find it in his heart to accuse Roderick of neglect of the young girl; for it was natural that the inspirations of a capricious man of genius, when they came, should be imperious; but of course he wondered how Miss Garland felt, as the young man’s promised wife, on being thus expeditiously handed over to another man to be entertained. However she felt, he was certain he would know little about it. There had been, between them, none but indirect allusions to her engagement, and Rowland had no desire to discuss it more largely; for he had no quarrel with matters as they stood. They wore the same delightful aspect through the lovely month of May, and the ineffable charm of Rome at that period seemed but the radiant sympathy of nature with his happy opportunity. The weather was divine; each particular morning, as he walked from his lodging to Mrs. Hudson’s modest inn, seemed to have a blessing upon it. The elder lady had usually gone off to the studio, and he found Miss Garland sitting alone at the open window, turning the leaves of some book of artistic or antiquarian reference that he had given her. She always had a smile, she was always eager, alert, responsive. She might be grave by nature, she might be sad by circumstance, she might have secret doubts and pangs, but she was essentially young and strong and fresh and able to enjoy. Her enjoyment was not especially demonstrative, but it was curiously diligent. Rowland felt that it was not amusement and sensation that she coveted, but knowledge—facts that she might noiselessly lay away, piece by piece, in the perfumed darkness of her serious mind, so that, under this head at least, she should not be a perfectly portionless bride. She never merely pretended to understand; she let things go, in her modest fashion, at the moment, but she watched them on their way, over the crest of the hill, and when her fancy seemed not likely to be missed it went hurrying after them and ran breathless at their side, as it were, and begged them for the secret. Rowland took an immense satisfaction in observing that she never mistook the second-best for the best, and that when she was in the presence of a masterpiece, she recognized the occasion as a mighty one. She said many things which he thought very profound—that is, if they really had the fine intention he suspected. This point he usually tried to ascertain; but he was obliged to proceed cautiously, for in her mistrustful shyness it seemed to her that cross-examination must necessarily be ironical. She wished to know just where she was going—what she would gain or lose. This was partly on account of a native intellectual purity, a temper of mind that had not lived with its door ajar, as one might say, upon the high-road of thought, for passing ideas to drop in and out at their pleasure; but had made much of a few long visits from guests cherished and honored—guests whose presence was a solemnity. But it was even more because she was conscious of a sort of growing self-respect, a sense of devoting her life not to her own ends, but to those of another, whose life would be large and brilliant. She had been brought up to think a great deal of “nature” and nature’s innocent laws; but now Rowland had spoken to her ardently of culture; her strenuous fancy had responded, and she was pursuing culture into retreats where the need for some intellectual effort gave a noble severity to her purpose. She wished to be very sure, to take only the best, knowing it to be the best. There was something exquisite in this labor of pious self-adornment, and Rowland helped it, though its fruits were not for him. In spite of her lurking rigidity and angularity, it was very evident that a nervous, impulsive sense of beauty was constantly at play in her soul, and that her actual experience of beautiful things moved her in some very deep places. For all that she was not demonstrative, that her manner was simple, and her small-talk of no very ample flow; for all that, as she had said, she was a young
woman from the country, and the country was West Nazareth, and West Nazareth was in its way a stubborn little fact, she was feeling the direct influence of the great amenities of the world, and they were shaping her with a divinely intelligent touch. “Oh exquisite virtue of circumstance!” cried Rowland to himself, “that takes us by the hand and leads us forth out of corners where, perforce, our attitudes are a trifle contracted, and beguiles us into testing mistrusted faculties!” When he said to Mary Garland that he wished he might see her ten years hence, he was paying mentally an equal compliment to circumstance and to the girl herself. Capacity was there, it could be freely trusted; observation would have but to sow its generous seed. “A superior woman”—the idea had harsh associations, but he watched it imaging itself in the vagueness of the future with a kind of hopeless confidence.
They went a great deal to Saint Peter’s, for which Rowland had an exceeding affection, a large measure of which he succeeded in infusing into his companion. She confessed very speedily that to climb the long, low, yellow steps, beneath the huge florid facade, and then to push the ponderous leathern apron of the door, to find one’s self confronted with that builded, luminous sublimity, was a sensation of which the keenness renewed itself with surprising generosity. In those days the hospitality of the Vatican had not been curtailed, and it was an easy and delightful matter to pass from the gorgeous church to the solemn company of the antique marbles. Here Rowland had with his companion a great deal of talk, and found himself expounding aesthetics a perte de vue. He discovered that she made notes of her likes and dislikes in a new-looking little memorandum book, and he wondered to what extent she reported his own discourse. These were charming hours. The galleries had been so cold all winter that Rowland had been an exile from them; but now that the sun was already scorching in the great square between the colonnades, where the twin fountains flashed almost fiercely, the marble coolness of the long, image-bordered vistas made them a delightful refuge. The great herd of tourists had almost departed, and our two friends often found themselves, for half an hour at a time, in sole and tranquil possession of the beautiful Braccio Nuovo. Here and there was an open window, where they lingered and leaned, looking out into the warm, dead air, over the towers of the city, at the soft-hued, historic hills, at the stately shabby gardens of the palace, or at some sunny, empty, grass-grown court, lost in the heart of the labyrinthine pile. They went sometimes into the chambers painted by Raphael, and of course paid their respects to the Sistine Chapel; but Mary’s evident preference was to linger among the statues. Once, when they were standing before that noblest of sculptured portraits, the so-called Demosthenes, in the Braccio Nuovo, she made the only spontaneous allusion to her projected marriage, direct or indirect, that had yet fallen from her lips. “I am so glad,” she said, “that Roderick is a sculptor and not a painter.”