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

Rowland took up his hat. “You asked a while ago if I had come to help you,” he said. “If I knew how I might help you, I should be particularly glad.”

She stood silent a moment, reflecting. Then at last, looking up, “You remember,” she said, “your promising me six months ago to tell me what you finally thought of me? I should like you to tell me now.”

He could hardly help smiling. Madame Grandoni had insisted on the fact that Christina was an actress, though a sincere one; and this little speech seemed a glimpse of the cloven foot. She had played her great scene, she had made her point, and now she had her eye at the hole in the curtain and she was watching the house! But she blushed as she perceived his smile, and her blush, which was beautiful, made her fault venial.

“You are an excellent girl!” he said, in a particular tone, and gave her his hand in farewell.

There was a great chain of rooms in Mrs. Light’s apartment, the pride and joy of the hostess on festal evenings, through which the departing visitor passed before reaching the door. In one of the first of these Rowland found himself waylaid and arrested by the distracted lady herself.

“Well, well?” she cried, seizing his arm. “Has she listened to you — have you moved her?”

“In Heaven’s name, dear madame,” Rowland begged, “leave the poor girl alone! She is behaving very well!”

“Behaving very well? Is that all you have to tell me? I don’t believe you said a proper word to her. You are conspiring together to kill me!”

Rowland tried to soothe her, to remonstrate, to persuade her that it was equally cruel and unwise to try to force matters. But she answered him only with harsh lamentations and imprecations, and ended by telling him that her daughter was her property, not his, and that his interference was most insolent and most scandalous. Her disappointment seemed really to have crazed her, and his only possible rejoinder was to take a summary departure.

A moment later he came upon the Cavaliere, who was sitting with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, so buried in thought that Rowland had to call him before he roused himself. Giacosa looked at him a moment keenly, and then gave a shake of the head, interrogatively.

Rowland gave a shake negative, to which the Cavaliere responded by a long, melancholy sigh. “But her mother is determined to force matters,” said Rowland.

“It seems that it must be!”

“Do you consider that it must be?”

“I don’t differ with Mrs. Light!”

“It will be a great cruelty!”

The Cavaliere gave a tragic shrug. “Eh! it is n’t an easy world.”

“You should do nothing to make it harder, then.”

“What will you have? It’s a magnificent marriage.”

“You disappoint me, Cavaliere,” said Rowland, solemnly. “I imagined you appreciated the great elevation of Miss Light’s attitude. She does n’t love the prince; she has let the matter stand or fall by that.”

The old man grasped him by the hand and stood a moment with averted eyes. At last, looking at him, he held up two fingers.

“I have two hearts,” he said, “one for myself, one for the world. This one opposes Miss Light, the other adores her! One suffers horribly at what the other does.”

“I don’t understand double people, Cavaliere,” Rowland said, “and I don’t pretend to understand you. But I have guessed that you are going to play some secret card.”

“The card is Mrs. Light’s, not mine,” said the Cavaliere.

“It’s a menace, at any rate?”

“The sword of Damocles! It hangs by a hair. Christina is to be given ten minutes to recant, under penalty of having it fall. On the blade there is something written in strange characters. Don’t scratch your head; you will not make it out.”

“I think I have guessed it,” Rowland said, after a pregnant silence. The Cavaliere looked at him blankly but intently, and Rowland added, “Though there are some signs, indeed, I don’t understand.”

“Puzzle them out at your leisure,” said the Cavaliere, shaking his hand. “I hear Mrs. Light; I must go to my post. I wish you were a Catholic; I would beg you to step into the first church you come to, and pray for us the next half-hour.”

“For ‘us’? For whom?”

“For all of us. At any rate remember this: I worship the Christina!”

Rowland heard the rustle of Mrs. Light’s dress; he turned away, and the Cavaliere went, as he said, to his post. Rowland for the next couple of days pondered his riddle.

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Of Roderick, meanwhile, Rowland saw nothing; but he immediately went to Mrs. Hudson and assured her that her son was in even exceptionally good health and spirits. After this he called again on the two ladies from Northampton, but, as Roderick’s absence continued, he was able neither to furnish nor to obtain much comfort. Miss Garland’s apprehensive face seemed to him an image of his own state of mind. He was profoundly depressed; he felt that there was a storm in the air, and he wished it would come, without more delay, and perform its ravages. On the afternoon of the third day he went into Saint Peter’s, his frequent resort whenever the outer world was disagreeable. From a heart-ache to a Roman rain there were few importunate pains the great church did not help him to forget. He had wandered there for half an hour, when he came upon a short figure, lurking in the shadow of one of the great piers. He saw it was that of an artist, hastily transferring to his sketch-book a memento of some fleeting variation in the scenery of the basilica; and in a moment he perceived that the artist was little Sam Singleton.

Singleton pocketed his sketch-book with a guilty air, as if it cost his modesty a pang to be detected in this greedy culture of opportunity. Rowland always enjoyed meeting him; talking with him, in these days, was as good as a wayside gush of clear, cold water, on a long, hot walk. There was, perhaps, no drinking-vessel, and you had to apply your lips to some simple natural conduit; but the result was always a sense of extreme moral refreshment. On this occasion he mentally blessed the ingenuous little artist, and heard presently with keen regret that he was to leave Rome on the morrow. Singleton had come to bid farewell to Saint Peter’s, and he was gathering a few supreme memories. He had earned a purse-full of money, and he was meaning to take a summer’s holiday; going to Switzerland, to Germany, to Paris. In the autumn he was to return home; his family — composed, as Rowland knew, of a father who was cashier in a bank and five unmarried sisters, one of whom gave lyceum-lectures on woman’s rights, the whole resident at Buffalo, New York — had been writing him peremptory letters and appealing to him as a son, brother, and fellow-citizen. He would have been grateful for another year in Rome, but what must be must be, and he had laid up treasure which, in Buffalo, would seem infinite. They talked some time; Rowland hoped they might meet in Switzerland, and take a walk or two together. Singleton seemed to feel that Buffalo had marked him for her own; he was afraid he should not see Rome again for many a year.

“So you expect to live at Buffalo?” Rowland asked sympathetically.

“Well, it will depend upon the views — upon the attitude — of my family,” Singleton replied. “Oh, I think I shall get on; I think it can be done. If I find it can be done, I shall really be quite proud of it; as an artist of course I mean, you know. Do you know I have some nine hundred sketches? I shall live in my portfolio. And so long as one is not in Rome, pray what does it matter where one is? But how I shall envy all you Romans — you and Mr. Gloriani, and Mr. Hudson, especially!”