Roderick Hudson

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 tales, and she moved about, beautiful and silent, looking absently over people’s heads, barely heeding the men who pressed about her, and suggesting somehow that the soul of a world-wearied mortal had found its way into the blooming body of a goddess. “Where in the world has Miss Light been before she 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 dance 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.”

“If you are not in love, my dear young man,” said the Cavaliere, with his hand on his heart and an apologetic smile, “so much the better. But let me entreat you, as an affectionate friend, to keep a watch on your emotions. You are young, you are handsome, you have a brilliant genius and a generous heart, but—I may say it almost with authority—Christina is not for you!”

Whether Roderick was in love or not, he was nettled by what apparently seemed to him an obtrusive negation of an inspiring possibility. “You speak as if she had made her choice!” he cried. “Without pretending to confidential information on the subject, I am sure she has not.”

“No, but she must make it soon,” said the Cavaliere. And raising his forefinger, he laid it against his under lip. “She must choose a name and a fortune—and she will!”

“She will do exactly as her inclination prompts! She will marry the man who pleases her, if he has n’t a dollar! I know her better than you.”

The Cavaliere turned a little paler than usual, and smiled more urbanely. “No, no, my dear young man, you do not know her better than I. You have not watched her, day by day, for twenty years. I too have admired her. She is a good girl; she has never said an unkind word to me; the blessed Virgin be thanked! But she must have a brilliant destiny; it has been marked out for her, and she will submit. You had better believe me; it may save you much suffering.”

“We shall see!” said Roderick, with an excited laugh.

“Certainly we shall see. But I retire from the discussion,” the Cavaliere added. “I have no wish to provoke you to attempt to prove to me that I am wrong. You are already excited.”

“No more than is natural to a man who in an hour or so is to dance the cotillon with Miss Light.”

“The cotillon? has she promised?”

Roderick patted the air with a grand confidence. “You ‘ll see!” His gesture might almost have been taken to mean that the state of his relations with Miss Light was such that they quite dispensed with vain formalities.

The Cavaliere gave an exaggerated shrug. “You make a great many mourners!”

“He has made one already!” Rowland murmured to himself. This was evidently not the first time that reference had been made between Roderick and the Cavaliere to the young man’s possible passion, and Roderick had failed to consider it the simplest and most natural course to say in three words to the vigilant little gentleman that there was no cause for alarm—his affections were preoccupied. Rowland hoped, silently, with some dryness, that his motives were of a finer kind than they seemed to be. He turned away; it was irritating to look at Roderick’s radiant, unscrupulous eagerness. The tide was setting toward the supper-room and he drifted with it to the door. The crowd at this point was dense, and he was obliged to wait for some minutes before he could advance. At last he felt his neighbors dividing behind him, and turning he saw Christina pressing her way forward alone. She was looking at no one, and, save for the fact of her being alone, you would not have supposed she was in her mother’s house. As she recognized Rowland she beckoned to him, took his arm, and motioned him to lead her into the supper-room. She said nothing until he had forced a passage and they stood somewhat isolated.