The Cavaliere lifted his shoulders a trifle, and gave an inscrutable smile. "Eh, dear signore, the Christina is very romantic!"
"So much so, you intimate, that she will eventually retract, in consequence not of a change of sentiment, but of a mysterious outward pressure?"
"If everything else fails, there is that resource. But it is mysterious, as you say, and you need n"t try to guess it. You will never know."
"The poor signorina, then, will suffer!"
"Not too much, I hope."
"And the poor young man! You maintain that there is nothing but disappointment in store for the infatuated youth who loses his heart to her!"
The Cavaliere hesitated. "He had better," he said in a moment, "go and pursue his studies in Florence. There are very fine antiques in the Uffizi!"
Rowland presently joined Mrs. Light, to whom her restless protege had not yet returned. "That "s right," she said; "sit down here; I have something serious to say to you. I am going to talk to you as a friend.
I want your a.s.sistance. In fact, I demand it; it "s your duty to render it. Look at that unhappy young man."
"Yes," said Rowland, "he seems unhappy."
"He is just come of age, he bears one of the greatest names in Italy and owns one of the greatest properties, and he is pining away with love for my daughter."
"So the Cavaliere tells me."
"The Cavaliere should n"t gossip," said Mrs. Light dryly. "Such information should come from me. The prince is pining, as I say; he "s consumed, he "s devoured. It "s a real Italian pa.s.sion; I know what that means!" And the lady gave a speaking glance, which seemed to coquet for a moment with retrospect. "Meanwhile, if you please, my daughter is hiding in the woods with your dear friend Mr. Hudson. I could cry with rage."
"If things are so bad as that," said Rowland, "it seems to me that you ought to find nothing easier than to dispatch the Cavaliere to bring the guilty couple back."
"Never in the world! My hands are tied. Do you know what Christina would do? She would tell the Cavaliere to go about his business--Heaven forgive her!--and send me word that, if she had a mind to, she would walk in the woods till midnight. Fancy the Cavaliere coming back and delivering such a message as that before the prince! Think of a girl wantonly making light of such a chance as hers! He would marry her to-morrow, at six o"clock in the morning!"
"It is certainly very sad," said Rowland.
"That costs you little to say. If you had left your precious young meddler to vegetate in his native village you would have saved me a world of distress!"
"Nay, you marched into the jaws of danger," said Rowland. "You came and disinterred poor Hudson in his own secluded studio."
"In an evil hour! I wish to Heaven you would talk with him."
"I have done my best."
"I wish, then, you would take him away. You have plenty of money. Do me a favor. Take him to travel. Go to the East--go to Timbuctoo. Then, when Christina is Princess Casama.s.sima," Mrs. Light added in a moment, "he may come back if he chooses."
"Does she really care for him?" Rowland asked, abruptly.
"She thinks she does, possibly. She is a living riddle. She must needs follow out every idea that comes into her head. Fortunately, most of them don"t last long; but this one may last long enough to give the prince a chill. If that were to happen, I don"t know what I should do! I should be the most miserable of women. It would be too cruel, after all I "ve suffered to make her what she is, to see the labor of years blighted by a caprice. For I can a.s.sure you, sir," Mrs. Light went on, "that if my daughter is the greatest beauty in the world, some of the credit is mine."
Rowland promptly remarked that this was obvious. He saw that the lady"s irritated nerves demanded comfort from flattering reminiscence, and he a.s.sumed designedly the att.i.tude of a zealous auditor. She began to retail her efforts, her hopes, her dreams, her presentiments, her disappointments, in the cause of her daughter"s matrimonial fortunes. It was a long story, and while it was being unfolded, the prince continued to pa.s.s to and fro, stiffly and solemnly, like a pendulum marking the time allowed for the young lady to come to her senses. Mrs. Light evidently, at an early period, had gathered her maternal hopes into a sacred sheaf, which she said her prayers and burnt incense to, and treated like a sort of fetish. They had been her religion; she had none other, and she performed her devotions bravely and cheerily, in the light of day. The poor old fetish had been so caressed and manipulated, so thrust in and out of its niche, so pa.s.sed from hand to hand, so dressed and undressed, so mumbled and fumbled over, that it had lost by this time much of its early freshness, and seemed a rather battered and disfeatured divinity. But it was still brought forth in moments of trouble to have its tinseled petticoat twisted about and be set up on its altar. Rowland observed that Mrs. Light had a genuine maternal conscience; she considered that she had been performing a sacred duty in bringing up Christina to set her cap for a prince, and when the future looked dark, she found consolation in thinking that destiny could never have the heart to deal a blow at so deserving a person. This conscience upside down presented to Rowland"s fancy a real physical image; he was on the point, half a dozen times, of bursting out laughing.
"I don"t know whether you believe in presentiments," said Mrs. Light, "and I don"t care! I have had one for the last fifteen years. People have laughed at it, but they have n"t laughed me out of it. It has been everything to me. I could n"t have lived without it. One must believe in something! It came to me in a flash, when Christina was five years old.
I remember the day and the place, as if it were yesterday. She was a very ugly baby; for the first two years I could hardly bear to look at her, and I used to spoil my own looks with crying about her. She had an Italian nurse who was very fond of her and insisted that she would grow up pretty. I could n"t believe her; I used to contradict her, and we were forever squabbling. I was just a little silly in those days--surely I may say it now--and I was very fond of being amused. If my daughter was ugly, it was not that she resembled her mamma; I had no lack of amus.e.m.e.nt. People accused me, I believe, of neglecting my little girl; if it was so, I "ve made up for it since. One day I went to drive on the Pincio in very low spirits. A trusted friend had greatly disappointed me. While I was there he pa.s.sed me in a carriage, driving with a horrible woman who had made trouble between us. I got out of my carriage to walk about, and at last sat down on a bench. I can show you the spot at this hour. While I sat there a child came wandering along the path--a little girl of four or five, very fantastically dressed in crimson and orange. She stopped in front of me and stared at me, and I stared at her queer little dress, which was a cheap imitation of the costume of one of these contadine. At last I looked up at her face, and said to myself, "Bless me, what a beautiful child! what a splendid pair of eyes, what a magnificent head of hair! If my poor Christina were only like that!" The child turned away slowly, but looking back with its eyes fixed on me.
All of a sudden I gave a cry, pounced on it, pressed it in my arms, and covered it with kisses. It was Christina, my own precious child, so disguised by the ridiculous dress which the nurse had amused herself in making for her, that her own mother had not recognized her. She knew me, but she said afterwards that she had not spoken to me because I looked so angry. Of course my face was sad. I rushed with my child to the carriage, drove home post-haste, pulled off her rags, and, as I may say, wrapped her in cotton. I had been blind, I had been insane; she was a creature in ten millions, she was to be a beauty of beauties, a priceless treasure! Every day, after that, the certainty grew. From that time I lived only for my daughter. I watched her, I caressed her from morning till night, I worshipped her. I went to see doctors about her, I took every sort of advice. I was determined she should be perfection.
The things that have been done for that girl, sir--you would n"t believe them; they would make you smile! Nothing was spared; if I had been told that she must have a bath every morning of molten pearls, I would have found means to give it to her. She never raised a finger for herself, she breathed nothing but perfumes, she walked upon velvet. She never was out of my sight, and from that day to this I have never said a sharp word to her. By the time she was ten years old she was beautiful as an angel, and so noticed wherever we went that I had to make her wear a veil, like a woman of twenty. Her hair reached down to her feet; her hands were the hands of a princess. Then I saw that she was as clever as she was beautiful, and that she had only to play her cards. She had masters, professors, every educational advantage. They told me she was a little prodigy. She speaks French, Italian, German, better than most natives. She has a wonderful genius for music, and might make her fortune as a pianist, if it was not made for her otherwise! I traveled all over Europe; every one told me she was a marvel. The director of the opera in Paris saw her dance at a child"s party at Spa, and offered me an enormous sum if I would give her up to him and let him have her educated for the ballet. I said, "No, I thank you, sir; she is meant to be something finer than a princesse de theatre." I had a pa.s.sionate belief that she might marry absolutely whom she chose, that she might be a princess out and out. It has never left me till this hour, and I can a.s.sure you that it has sustained me in many embarra.s.sments. Financial, some of them; I don"t mind confessing it! I have raised money on that girl"s face! I "ve taken her to the Jews and bade her put up her veil, and asked if the mother of that young lady was not safe! She, of course, was too young to understand me. And yet, as a child, you would have said she knew what was in store for her; before she could read, she had the manners, the tastes, the instincts of a little princess. She would have nothing to do with shabby things or shabby people; if she stained one of her frocks, she was seized with a kind of frenzy and tore it to pieces.
At Nice, at Baden, at Brighton, wherever we stayed, she used to be sent for by all the great people to play with their children. She has played at kissing-games with people who now stand on the steps of thrones! I have gone so far as to think at times that those childish kisses were a sign--a symbol--a portent. You may laugh at me if you like, but have n"t such things happened again and again without half as good a cause, and does n"t history notoriously repeat itself? There was a little Spanish girl at a second-rate English boarding-school thirty years ago!... The Empress certainly is a pretty woman; but what is my Christina, pray? I "ve dreamt of it, sometimes every night for a month. I won"t tell you I have been to consult those old women who advertise in the newspapers; you "ll call me an old imbecile. Imbecile if you please! I have refused magnificent offers because I believed that somehow or other--if wars and revolutions were needed to bring it about--we should have nothing less than that. There might be another coup d"etat somewhere, and another brilliant young sovereign looking out for a wife! At last, however,"
Mrs. Light proceeded with incomparable gravity, "since the overturning of the poor king of Naples and that charming queen, and the expulsion of all those dear little old-fashioned Italian grand-dukes, and the dreadful radical talk that is going on all over the world, it has come to seem to me that with Christina in such a position I should be really very nervous. Even in such a position she would hold her head very high, and if anything should happen to her, she would make no concessions to the popular fury. The best thing, if one is prudent, seems to be a n.o.bleman of the highest possible rank, short of belonging to a reigning stock. There you see one striding up and down, looking at his watch, and counting the minutes till my daughter reappears!"
Rowland listened to all this with a huge compa.s.sion for the heroine of the tale. What an education, what a history, what a school of character and of morals! He looked at the prince and wondered whether he too had heard Mrs. Light"s story. If he had he was a brave man. "I certainly hope you "ll keep him," he said to Mrs. Light. "You have played a dangerous game with your daughter; it would be a pity not to win. But there is hope for you yet; here she comes at last!"
Christina reappeared as he spoke these words, strolling beside her companion with the same indifferent tread with which she had departed.
Rowland imagined that there was a faint pink flush in her cheek which she had not carried away with her, and there was certainly a light in Roderick"s eyes which he had not seen there for a week.
"Bless my soul, how they are all looking at us!" she cried, as they advanced. "One would think we were prisoners of the Inquisition!" And she paused and glanced from the prince to her mother, and from Rowland to the Cavaliere, and then threw back her head and burst into far-ringing laughter. "What is it, pray? Have I been very improper? Am I ruined forever? Dear prince, you are looking at me as if I had committed the unpardonable sin!"
"I myself," said the prince, "would never have ventured to ask you to walk with me alone in the country for an hour!"
"The more fool you, dear prince, as the vulgar say! Our walk has been charming. I hope you, on your side, have enjoyed each other"s society."
"My dear daughter," said Mrs. Light, taking the arm of her predestined son-in-law, "I shall have something serious to say to you when we reach home. We will go back to the carriage."
"Something serious! Decidedly, it is the Inquisition. Mr. Hudson, stand firm, and let us agree to make no confessions without conferring previously with each other! They may put us on the rack first. Mr.
Mallet, I see also," Christina added, "has something serious to say to me!"
Rowland had been looking at her with the shadow of his lately-stirred pity in his eyes. "Possibly," he said. "But it must be for some other time."
"I am at your service. I see our good-humor is gone. And I only wanted to be amiable! It is very discouraging. Cavaliere, you, only, look as if you had a little of the milk of human kindness left; from your venerable visage, at least; there is no telling what you think. Give me your arm and take me away!"
The party took its course back to the carriage, which was waiting in the grounds of the villa, and Rowland and Roderick bade their friends farewell. Christina threw herself back in her seat and closed her eyes; a manoeuvre for which Rowland imagined the prince was grateful, as it enabled him to look at her without seeming to depart from his att.i.tude of distinguished disapproval. Rowland found himself aroused from sleep early the next morning, to see Roderick standing before him, dressed for departure, with his bag in his hand. "I am off," he said. "I am back to work. I have an idea. I must strike while the iron "s hot! Farewell!"
And he departed by the first train. Rowland went alone by the next.
CHAPTER VII. Saint Cecilia"s
Rowland went often to the Coliseum; he never wearied of it. One morning, about a month after his return from Frascati, as he was strolling across the vast arena, he observed a young woman seated on one of the fragments of stone which are ranged along the line of the ancient parapet. It seemed to him that he had seen her before, but he was unable to localize her face. Pa.s.sing her again, he perceived that one of the little red-legged French soldiers at that time on guard there had approached her and was gallantly making himself agreeable. She smiled brilliantly, and Rowland recognized the smile (it had always pleased him) of a certain comely a.s.sunta, who sometimes opened the door for Mrs. Light"s visitors. He wondered what she was doing alone in the Coliseum, and conjectured that a.s.sunta had admirers as well as her young mistress, but that, being without the same domiciliary conveniencies, she was using this ma.s.sive heritage of her Latin ancestors as a boudoir. In other words, she had an appointment with her lover, who had better, from present appearances, be punctual. It was a long time since Rowland had ascended to the ruinous upper tiers of the great circus, and, as the day was radiant and the distant views promised to be particularly clear, he determined to give himself the pleasure. The custodian unlocked the great wooden wicket, and he climbed through the winding shafts, where the eager Roman crowds had billowed and trampled, not pausing till he reached the highest accessible point of the ruin. The views were as fine as he had supposed; the lights on the Sabine Mountains had never been more lovely. He gazed to his satisfaction and retraced his steps. In a moment he paused again on an abutment somewhat lower, from which the glance dropped dizzily into the interior. There are chance anfractuosities of ruin in the upper portions of the Coliseum which offer a very fair imitation of the rugged face of an Alpine cliff. In those days a mult.i.tude of delicate flowers and sprays of wild herbage had found a friendly soil in the h.o.a.ry crevices, and they bloomed and nodded amid the antique masonry as freely as they would have done in the virgin rock. Rowland was turning away, when he heard a sound of voices rising up from below. He had but to step slightly forward to find himself overlooking two persons who had seated themselves on a narrow ledge, in a sunny corner. They had apparently had an eye to extreme privacy, but they had not observed that their position was commanded by Rowland"s stand-point. One of these airy adventurers was a lady, thickly veiled, so that, even if he had not been standing directly above her, Rowland could not have seen her face. The other was a young man, whose face was also invisible, but who, as Rowland stood there, gave a toss of his cl.u.s.tering locks which was equivalent to the signature--Roderick Hudson. A moment"s reflection, hereupon, satisfied him of the ident.i.ty of the lady. He had been unjust to poor a.s.sunta, sitting patient in the gloomy arena; she had not come on her own errand. Rowland"s discoveries made him hesitate. Should he retire as noiselessly as possible, or should he call out a friendly good morning? While he was debating the question, he found himself distinctly hearing his friends" words. They were of such a nature as to make him unwilling to retreat, and yet to make it awkward to be discovered in a position where it would be apparent that he had heard them.
"If what you say is true," said Christina, with her usual soft deliberateness--it made her words rise with peculiar distinctness to Rowland"s ear--"you are simply weak. I am sorry! I hoped--I really believed--you were not."
"No, I am not weak," answered Roderick, with vehemence; "I maintain that I am not weak! I am incomplete, perhaps; but I can"t help that. Weakness is a man"s own fault!"
"Incomplete, then!" said Christina, with a laugh. "It "s the same thing, so long as it keeps you from splendid achievement. Is it written, then, that I shall really never know what I have so often dreamed of?"
"What have you dreamed of?"
"A man whom I can perfectly respect!" cried the young girl, with a sudden flame. "A man, at least, whom I can unrestrictedly admire. I meet one, as I have met more than one before, whom I fondly believe to be cast in a larger mould than most of the vile human breed, to be large in character, great in talent, strong in will! In such a man as that, I say, one"s weary imagination at last may rest; or it may wander if it will, yet never need to wander far from the deeps where one"s heart is anch.o.r.ed. When I first knew you, I gave no sign, but you had struck me. I observed you, as women observe, and I fancied you had the sacred fire."
"Before heaven, I believe I have!" cried Roderick.
"Ah, but so little! It flickers and trembles and sputters; it goes out, you tell me, for whole weeks together. From your own account, it "s ten to one that in the long run you "re a failure."