The Complete Works of Henry James

by Henry James

  “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.

  “Take me into the most out-of-the-way corner you can find,” she then said, “and then go and get me a piece of bread.”

  “Nothing more? There seems to be everything conceivable.”

  “A simple roll. Nothing more, on your peril. Only bring something for yourself.”

  It seemed to Rowland that the embrasure of a window (embrasures in Roman palaces are deep) was a retreat sufficiently obscure for Miss Light to execute whatever design she might have contrived against his equanimity. A roll, after he had found her a seat, was easily procured. As he presented it, he remarked that, frankly speaking, he was at loss to understand why she should have selected for the honor of a tete-a-tete an individual for whom she had so little taste.

  “Ah yes, I dislike you,” said Christina. “To tell the truth, I had forgotten it. There are so many people here whom I dislike more, that when I espied you just now, you seemed like an intimate friend. But I have not come into this corner to talk nonsense,” she went on. “You must not think I always do, eh?”

  “I have never heard you do anything else,” said Rowland, deliberately, having decided that he owed her no compliments.

  “Very good. I like your frankness. It ‘s quite true. You see, I am a strange girl. To begin with, I am frightfully egotistical. Don’t flatter yourself you have said anything very clever if you ever take it into your head to tell me so. I know it much better than you. So it is, I can’t help it. I am tired to death of myself; I would give all I possess to get out of myself; but somehow, at the end, I find myself so vastly more interesting than nine tenths of the people I meet. If a person wished to do me a favor I would say to him, ‘I beg you, with tears in my eyes, to interest me. Be strong, be positive, be imperious, if you will; only be something,—something that, in looking at, I can forget my detestable self!’ Perhaps that is nonsense too. If it is, I can’t help it. I can only apologize for the nonsense I know to be such and that I talk—oh, for more reasons than I can tell you! I wonder whether, if I were to try, you would understand me.”

  “I am afraid I should never understand,” said Rowland, “why a person should willingly talk nonsense.”

  “That proves how little you know about women. But I like your frankness. When I told you the other day that you displeased me, I had an idea you were more formal,—how do you say it?—more guinde. I am very capricious. To-night I like you better.”

  “Oh, I am not guinde,” said Rowland, gravely.

  “I beg your pardon, then, for thinking so. Now I have an idea that you would make a useful friend—an intimate friend—a friend to whom one could tell everything. For such a friend, what would n’t I give!”

  Rowland looked at her in some perplexity. Was this touching sincerity, or unfathomable coquetry? Her beautiful eyes looked divinely candid; but then, if candor was beautiful, beauty was apt to be subtle. “I hesitate to recommend myself out and out for the office,” he said, “but I believe that if you were to depend upon me for anything that a friend may do, I should not be found wanting.”

  “Very good. One of the first things one asks of a friend is to judge one not by isolated acts, but by one’s whole conduct. I care for your opinion—I don’t know why.”

  “Nor do I, I confess,” said Rowland with a laugh.

  “What do you think of this affair?” she continued, without heeding his laugh.

  “Of your ball? Why, it ‘s a very grand affair.”

  “It ‘s horrible—that ‘s what it is! It ‘s a mere rabble! There are people here whom I never saw before, people who were never asked. Mamma went about inviting every one, asking other people to invite any one they knew, doing anything to have a crowd. I hope she is satisfied! It is not my doing. I feel weary, I feel angry, I feel like crying. I have twenty minds to escape into my room and lock the door and let mamma go through with it as she can. By the way,” she added in a moment, without a visible reason for the transition, “can you tell me something to read?”

  Rowland stared, at the disconnectedness of the question.

  “Can you recommend me some books?” she repeated. “I know you are a great reader. I have no one else to ask. We can buy no books. We can make debts for jewelry and bonnets and five-button gloves, but we can’t spend a sou for ideas. And yet, though you may not believe it, I like ideas quite as well.”

  “I shall be most happy to lend you some books,” Rowland said. “I will pick some out to-morrow and send them to you.”

  “No novels, please! I am tired of novels. I can imagine better stories for myself than any I read. Some good poetry, if there is such a thing nowadays, and some memoirs and histories and books of facts.”

  “You shall be served. Your taste agrees with my own.”

  She was silent a moment, looking at him. Then suddenly—”Tell me s
omething about Mr. Hudson,” she demanded. “You are great friends!”

  “Oh yes,” said Rowland; “we are great friends.”

  “Tell me about him. Come, begin!”

  “Where shall I begin? You know him for yourself.”

  “No, I don’t know him; I don’t find him so easy to know. Since he has finished my bust and begun to come here disinterestedly, he has become a great talker. He says very fine things; but does he mean all he says?”

  “Few of us do that.”

  “You do, I imagine. You ought to know, for he tells me you discovered him.” Rowland was silent, and Christina continued, “Do you consider him very clever?”

  “Unquestionably.”

  “His talent is really something out of the common way?”

  “So it seems to me.”

  “In short, he ‘s a man of genius?”

  “Yes, call it genius.”

  “And you found him vegetating in a little village and took him by the hand and set him on his feet in Rome?”

  “Is that the popular legend?” asked Rowland.

  “Oh, you need n’t be modest. There was no great merit in it; there would have been none at least on my part in the same circumstances. Real geniuses are not so common, and if I had discovered one in the wilderness, I would have brought him out into the market-place to see how he would behave. It would be excessively amusing. You must find it so to watch Mr. Hudson, eh? Tell me this: do you think he is going to be a great man—become famous, have his life written, and all that?”

  “I don’t prophesy, but I have good hopes.”

  Christina was silent. She stretched out her bare arm and looked at it a moment absently, turning it so as to see—or almost to see—the dimple in her elbow. This was apparently a frequent gesture with her; Rowland had already observed it. It was as coolly and naturally done as if she had been in her room alone. “So he ‘s a man of genius,” she suddenly resumed. “Don’t you think I ought to be extremely flattered to have a man of genius perpetually hanging about? He is the first I ever saw, but I should have known he was not a common mortal. There is something strange about him. To begin with, he has no manners. You may say that it ‘s not for me to blame him, for I have none myself. That ‘s very true, but the difference is that I can have them when I wish to (and very charming ones too; I ‘ll show you some day); whereas Mr. Hudson will never have them. And yet, somehow, one sees he ‘s a gentleman. He seems to have something urging, driving, pushing him, making him restless and defiant. You see it in his eyes. They are the finest, by the way, I ever saw. When a person has such eyes as that you can forgive him his bad manners. I suppose that is what they call the sacred fire.”

  Rowland made no answer except to ask her in a moment if she would have another roll. She merely shook her head and went on:—

  “Tell me how you found him. Where was he—how was he?”

  “He was in a place called Northampton. Did you ever hear of it? He was studying law—but not learning it.”

  “It appears it was something horrible, eh?”

  “Something horrible?”

  “This little village. No society, no pleasures, no beauty, no life.”

  “You have received a false impression. Northampton is not as gay as Rome, but Roderick had some charming friends.”

  “Tell me about them. Who were they?”

  “Well, there was my cousin, through whom I made his acquaintance: a delightful woman.”

  “Young—pretty?”

  “Yes, a good deal of both. And very clever.”

  “Did he make love to her?”

  “Not in the least.”

  “Well, who else?”

  “He lived with his mother. She is the best of women.”

  “Ah yes, I know all that one’s mother is. But she does not count as society. And who else?”

  Rowland hesitated. He wondered whether Christina’s insistence was the result of a general interest in Roderick’s antecedents or of a particular suspicion. He looked at her; she was looking at him a little askance, waiting for his answer. As Roderick had said nothing about his engagement to the Cavaliere, it was probable that with this beautiful girl he had not been more explicit. And yet the thing was announced, it was public; that other girl was happy in it, proud of it. Rowland felt a kind of dumb anger rising in his heart. He deliberated a moment intently.

  “What are you frowning at?” Christina asked.

  “There was another person,” he answered, “the most important of all: the young girl to whom he is engaged.”

  Christina stared a moment, raising her eyebrows. “Ah, Mr. Hudson is engaged?” she said, very simply. “Is she pretty?”

  “She is not called a beauty,” said Rowland. He meant to practice great brevity, but in a moment he added, “I have seen beauties, however, who pleased me less.”

  “Ah, she pleases you, too? Why don’t they marry?”

  “Roderick is waiting till he can afford to marry.”

  Christina slowly put out her arm again and looked at the dimple in her elbow. “Ah, he ‘s engaged?” she repeated in the same tone. “He never told me.”

  Rowland perceived at this moment that the people about them were beginning to return to the dancing-room, and immediately afterwards he saw Roderick making his way toward themselves. Roderick presented himself before Miss Light.

  “I don’t claim that you have promised me the cotillon,” he said, “but I consider that you have given me hopes which warrant the confidence that you will dance with me.”

  Christina looked at him a moment. “Certainly I have made no promises,” she said. “It seemed to me that, as the daughter of the house, I should keep myself free and let it depend on circumstances.”

  “I beseech you to dance with me!” said Roderick, with vehemence.

  Christina rose and began to laugh. “You say that very well, but the Italians do it better.”

  This assertion seemed likely to be put to the proof. Mrs. Light hastily approached, leading, rather than led by, a tall, slim young man, of an unmistakably Southern physiognomy. “My precious love,” she cried, “what a place to hide in! We have been looking for you for twenty minutes; I have chosen a cavalier for you, and chosen well!”

  The young man disengaged himself, made a ceremonious bow, joined his two hands, and murmured with an ecstatic smile, “May I venture to hope, dear signorina, for the honor of your hand?”

  “Of course you may!” said Mrs. Light. “The honor is for us.”

  Christina hesitated but for a moment, then swept the young man a courtesy as profound as his own bow. “You are very kind, but you are too late. I have just accepted!”

  “Ah, my own darling!” murmured—almost moaned—Mrs. Light.

  Christina and Roderick exchanged a single glance—a glance brilliant on both sides. She passed her hand into his arm; he tossed his clustering locks and led her away.

  A short time afterwards Rowland saw the young man whom she had rejected leaning against a doorway. He was ugly, but what is called distinguished-looking. He had a heavy black eye, a sallow complexion, a long, thin neck; his hair was cropped en brosse. He looked very young, yet extremely bored. He was staring at the ceiling and stroking an imperceptible moustache. Rowland espied the Cavaliere Giacosa hard by, and, having joined him, asked him the young man’s name.

  “Oh,” said the Cavaliere, “he ‘s a pezzo grosso! A Neapolitan. Prince Casamassima.”

  CHAPTER VI.

  Frascati

  One day, on entering Roderick’s lodging (not the modest rooms on the Ripetta which he had first occupied, but a much more sumptuous apartment on the Corso), Rowland found a letter on the table addressed to himself. It was from Roderick, and consisted of but three lines: “I am gone to Frascati—for meditation. If I am not at home on Friday, you had better join me.” On Friday he was still absent, and Rowland went out to Frascati. Here he found his friend living at the inn and spending his days, according to his own account, lying und
er the trees of the Villa Mondragone, reading Ariosto. He was in a sombre mood; “meditation” seemed not to have been fruitful. Nothing especially pertinent to our narrative had passed between the two young men since Mrs. Light’s ball, save a few words bearing on an incident of that entertainment. Rowland informed Roderick, the next day, that he had told Miss Light of his engagement. “I don’t know whether you ‘ll thank me,” he had said, “but it ‘s my duty to let you know it. Miss Light perhaps has already done so.”