Roderick Hudson

“What I desire is this. That your great influence with him should be exerted for his good, that it should help him and not retard him. Understand me. You probably know that your lovers have rather a restless time of it. I can answer for two of them. You don’t know your own mind very well, I imagine, and you like being admired, rather at the expense of the admirer. Since we are really being frank, I wonder whether I might not say the great word.”

“You need n’t; I know it. I am a horrible coquette.”

“No, not a horrible one, since I am making an appeal to your generosity. I am pretty sure you cannot imagine yourself marrying my friend.”

“There ‘s nothing I cannot imagine! That is my trouble.”

Rowland’s brow contracted impatiently. “I cannot imagine it, then!” he affirmed.

Christina flushed faintly; then, very gently, “I am not so bad as you think,” she said.

“It is not a question of badness; it is a question of whether circumstances don’t make the thing an extreme improbability.”

“Worse and worse. I can be bullied, then, or bribed!”

“You are not so candid,” said Rowland, “as you pretend to be. My feeling is this. Hudson, as I understand him, does not need, as an artist, the stimulus of strong emotion, of passion. He’s better without it; he’s emotional and passionate enough when he ‘s left to himself. The sooner passion is at rest, therefore, the sooner he will settle down to work, and the fewer emotions he has that are mere emotions and nothing more, the better for him. If you cared for him enough to marry him, I should have nothing to say; I would never venture to interfere. But I strongly suspect you don’t, and therefore I would suggest, most respectfully, that you should let him alone.”

“And if I let him alone, as you say, all will be well with him for ever more?”

“Not immediately and not absolutely, but things will be easier. He will be better able to concentrate himself.”

“What is he doing now? Wherein does he dissatisfy you?”

“I can hardly say. He ‘s like a watch that ‘s running down. He is moody, desultory, idle, irregular, fantastic.”

“Heavens, what a list! And it ‘s all poor me?”

“No, not all. But you are a part of it, and I turn to you because you are a more tangible, sensible, responsible cause than the others.”

Christina raised her hand to her eyes, and bent her head thoughtfully. Rowland was puzzled to measure the effect of his venture; she rather surprised him by her gentleness. At last, without moving, “If I were to marry him,” she asked, “what would have become of his fiancee?”

“I am bound to suppose that she would be extremely unhappy.”

Christina said nothing more, and Rowland, to let her make her reflections, left his place and strolled away. Poor Assunta, sitting patiently on a stone bench, and unprovided, on this occasion, with military consolation, gave him a bright, frank smile, which might have been construed as an expression of regret for herself, and of sympathy for her mistress. Rowland presently seated himself again near Christina.

“What do you think,” she asked, looking at him, “of your friend’s infidelity?”

“I don’t like it.”

“Was he very much in love with her?”

“He asked her to marry him. You may judge.”

“Is she rich?”

“No, she is poor.”

“Is she very much in love with him?”

“I know her too little to say.”

She paused again, and then resumed: “You have settled in your mind, then, that I will never seriously listen to him?”

“I think it unlikely, until the contrary is proved.”

“How shall it be proved? How do you know what passes between us?”

“I can judge, of course, but from appearance; but, like you, I am an observer. Hudson has not at all the air of a prosperous suitor.”

“If he is depressed, there is a reason. He has a bad conscience. One must hope so, at least. On the other hand, simply as a friend,” she continued gently, “you think I can do him no good?”

The humility of her tone, combined with her beauty, as she made this remark, was inexpressibly touching, and Rowland had an uncomfortable sense of being put at a disadvantage. “There are doubtless many good things you might do, if you had proper opportunity,” he said. “But you seem to be sailing with a current which leaves you little leisure for quiet benevolence. You live in the whirl and hurry of a world into which a poor artist can hardly find it to his advantage to follow you.”

“In plain English, I am hopelessly frivolous. You put it very generously.”

“I won’t hesitate to say all my thought,” said Rowland. “For better or worse, you seem to me to belong, both by character and by circumstance, to what is called the world, the great world. You are made to ornament it magnificently. You are not made to be an artist’s wife.”

“I see. But even from your point of view, that would depend upon the artist. Extraordinary talent might make him a member of the great world!”

Rowland smiled. “That is very true.”

“If, as it is,” Christina continued in a moment, “you take a low view of me—no, you need n’t protest—I wonder what you would think if you knew certain things.”

“What things do you mean?”

“Well, for example, how I was brought up. I have had a horrible education. There must be some good in me, since I have perceived it, since I have turned and judged my circumstances.”

“My dear Miss Light!” Rowland murmured.

She gave a little, quick laugh. “You don’t want to hear? you don’t want to have to think about that?”

“Have I a right to? You need n’t justify yourself.”

She turned upon him a moment the quickened light of her beautiful eyes, then fell to musing again. “Is there not some novel or some play,” she asked at last, “in which some beautiful, wicked woman who has ensnared a young man sees his father come to her and beg her to let him go?”

“Very likely,” said Rowland. “I hope she consents.”

“I forget. But tell me,” she continued, “shall you consider—admitting your proposition—that in ceasing to flirt with Mr. Hudson, so that he may go about his business, I do something magnanimous, heroic, sublime—something with a fine name like that?”

Rowland, elated with the prospect of gaining his point, was about to reply that she would deserve the finest name in the world; but he instantly suspected that this tone would not please her, and, besides, it would not express his meaning.

“You do something I shall greatly respect,” he contented himself with saying.

She made no answer, and in a moment she beckoned to her maid. “What have I to do to-day?” she asked.

Assunta meditated. “Eh, it ‘s a very busy day! Fortunately I have a better memory than the signorina,” she said, turning to Rowland. She began to count on her fingers. “We have to go to the Pie di Marmo to see about those laces that were sent to be washed. You said also that you wished to say three sharp words to the Buonvicini about your pink dress. You want some moss-rosebuds for to-night, and you won’t get them for nothing! You dine at the Austrian Embassy, and that Frenchman is to powder your hair. You ‘re to come home in time to receive, for the signora gives a dance. And so away, away till morning!”

“Ah, yes, the moss-roses!” Christina murmured, caressingly. “I must have a quantity—at least a hundred. Nothing but buds, eh? You must sew them in a kind of immense apron, down the front of my dress. Packed tight together, eh? It will be delightfully barbarous. And then twenty more or so for my hair. They go very well with powder; don’t you think so?” And she turned to Rowland. “I am going en Pompadour.”