Henry James - Henry James - The Complete Novels (The Greatest Novelists of All Time – Book 10)

“If you would give Miss Garland a chance,” said Rowland, “I am sure she would be glad to be your friend.”

“What do you mean by a chance? She has only to take it. I told her I liked her immensely, and she frowned as if I had said something disgusting. She looks very handsome when she frowns.” Christina rose, with these words, and began to gather her mantle about her. “I don’t often like women,” she went on. “In fact I generally detest them. But I should like to know Miss Garland well. I should like to have a friendship with her; I have never had one; they must be very delightful. But I shan’t have one now, either — not if she can help it! Ask her what she thinks of me; see what she will say. I don’t want to know; keep it to yourself. It’s too sad. So we go through life. It’s fatality — that’s what they call it, is n’t it? We please the people we don’t care for, we displease those we do! But I appreciate her, I do her justice; that’s the more important thing. It’s because I have imagination. She has none. Never mind; it’s her only fault. I do her justice; I understand very well.” She kept softly murmuring and looking about for Madame Grandoni. She saw the good lady near the door, and put out her hand to Rowland for good night. She held his hand an instant, fixing him with her eyes, the living splendor of which, at this moment, was something transcendent. “Yes, I do her justice,” she repeated. “And you do her more; you would lay down your life for her.” With this she turned away, and before he could answer, she left him. She went to Madame Grandoni, grasped her two hands, and held out her forehead to be kissed. The next moment she was gone.

“That was a happy accident!” said Madame Grandoni. “She never looked so beautiful, and she made my little party brilliant.”

“Beautiful, verily!” Rowland answered. “But it was no accident.”

“What was it, then?”

“It was a plan. She wished to see Miss Garland. She knew she was to be here.”

“How so?”

“By Roderick, evidently.”

“And why did she wish to see Miss Garland?”

“Heaven knows! I give it up!”

“Ah, the wicked girl!” murmured Madame Grandoni.

“No,” said Rowland; “don’t say that now. She’s too beautiful.”

“Oh, you men! The best of you!”

“Well, then,” cried Rowland, “she’s too good!”

The opportunity presenting itself the next day, he failed not, as you may imagine, to ask Mary Garland what she thought of Miss Light. It was a Saturday afternoon, the time at which the beautiful marbles of the Villa Borghese are thrown open to the public. Mary had told him that Roderick had promised to take her to see them, with his mother, and he joined the party in the splendid Casino. The warm weather had left so few strangers in Rome that they had the place almost to themselves. Mrs. Hudson had confessed to an invincible fear of treading, even with the help of her son’s arm, the polished marble floors, and was sitting patiently on a stool, with folded hands, looking shyly, here and there, at the undraped paganism around her. Roderick had sauntered off alone, with an irritated brow, which seemed to betray the conflict between the instinct of observation and the perplexities of circumstance. Miss Garland was wandering in another direction, and though she was consulting her catalogue, Rowland fancied it was from habit; she too was preoccupied. He joined her, and she presently sat down on a divan, rather wearily, and closed her Murray. Then he asked her abruptly how Christina had pleased her.

She started the least bit at the question, and he felt that she had been thinking of Christina.

“I don’t like her!” she said with decision.

“What do you think of her?”

“I think she’s false.” This was said without petulance or bitterness, but with a very positive air.

“But she wished to please you; she tried,” Rowland rejoined, in a moment.

“I think not. She wished to please herself!”

Rowland felt himself at liberty to say no more. No allusion to Christina had passed between them since the day they met her at Saint Peter’s, but he knew that she knew, by that infallible sixth sense of a woman who loves, that this strange, beautiful girl had the power to injure her. To what extent she had the will, Mary was uncertain; but last night’s interview, apparently, had not reassured her. It was, under these circumstances, equally unbecoming for Rowland either to depreciate or to defend Christina, and he had to content himself with simply having verified the girl’s own assurance that she had made a bad impression. He tried to talk of indifferent matters — about the statues and the frescoes; but today, plainly, aesthetic curiosity, with Miss Garland, had folded its wings. Curiosity of another sort had taken its place. Mary was longing, he was sure, to question him about Christina; but she found a dozen reasons for hesitating. Her questions would imply that Roderick had not treated her with confidence, for information on this point should properly have come from him. They would imply that she was jealous, and to betray her jealousy was intolerable to her pride. For some minutes, as she sat scratching the brilliant pavement with the point of her umbrella, it was to be supposed that her pride and her anxiety held an earnest debate. At last anxiety won.

“A propos of Miss Light,” she asked, “do you know her well?”

“I can hardly say that. But I have seen her repeatedly.”

“Do you like her?”

“Yes and no. I think I am sorry for her.”

Mary had spoken with her eyes on the pavement. At this she looked up. “Sorry for her? Why?”

“Well — she is unhappy.”

“What are her misfortunes?”

“Well — she has a horrible mother, and she has had a most injurious education.”

For a moment Miss Garland was silent. Then, “Is n’t she very beautiful?” she asked.

“Don’t you think so?”

“That’s measured by what men think! She is extremely clever, too.”

“Oh, incontestably.”

“She has beautiful dresses.”

“Yes, any number of them.”

“And beautiful manners.”

“Yes — sometimes.”

“And plenty of money.”

“Money enough, apparently.”

“And she receives great admiration.”

“Very true.”

“And she is to marry a prince.”

“So they say.”

Miss Garland rose and turned to rejoin her companions, commenting these admissions with a pregnant silence. “Poor Miss Light!” she said at last, simply. And in this it seemed to Rowland there was a touch of bitterness.

Very late on the following evening his servant brought him the card of a visitor. He was surprised at a visit at such an hour, but it may be said that when he read the inscription — Cavaliere Giuseppe Giacosa — his surprise declined. He had had an unformulated conviction that there was to be a sequel to the apparition at Madame Grandoni’s; the Cavaliere had come to usher it in.

He had come, evidently, on a portentous errand. He was as pale as ashes and prodigiously serious; his little cold black eye had grown ardent, and he had left his caressing smile at home. He saluted Rowland, however, with his usual obsequious bow.

“You have more than once done me the honor to invite me to call upon you,” he said. “I am ashamed of my long delay, and I can only say to you, frankly, that my time this winter has not been my own.” Rowland assented, ungrudgingly fumbled for the Italian correlative of the adage “Better late than never,” begged him to be seated, and offered him a cigar. The Cavaliere sniffed imperceptibly the fragrant weed, and then declared that, if his kind host would allow him, he would reserve it for consumption at another time. He apparently desired to intimate that the solemnity of his errand left him no breath for idle smoke-puffings. Rowland stayed himself, just in time, from an enthusiastic offer of a dozen more cigars, and, as he watched the Cavaliere stow his treasure tenderly away in his pocket-book, reflected that only an Italian could go through such a performance with uncompromised dignity. “I must confess,” the little old man resumed, “that even now I come on business not of my own — or my own, at least, only in a secondary sense. I have been dispatched as an ambassador, an envoy extraordinary, I may say, by my dear friend Mrs. Light.”