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

“I see no reason why we should not be frank,” she said. “I should think we were excellently placed for that sort of thing. You remember that formerly I cared very little what I said, don’t you? Well, I care absolutely not at all now. I say what I please, I do what I please! How did Mr. Hudson receive the news of my marriage?”

“Very badly,” said Rowland.

“With rage and reproaches?” And as Rowland hesitated again —“With silent contempt?”

“I can tell you but little. He spoke to me on the subject, but I stopped him. I told him it was none of his business, or of mine.”

“That was an excellent answer!” said Christina, softly. “Yet it was a little your business, after those sublime protestations I treated you to. I was really very fine that morning, eh?”

“You do yourself injustice,” said Rowland. “I should be at liberty now to believe you were insincere.”

“What does it matter now whether I was insincere or not? I can’t conceive of anything mattering less. I was very fine — is n’t it true?”

“You know what I think of you,” said Rowland. And for fear of being forced to betray his suspicion of the cause of her change, he took refuge in a commonplace. “Your mother, I hope, is well.”

“My mother is in the enjoyment of superb health, and may be seen every evening at the Casino, at the Baths of Lucca, confiding to every new-comer that she has married her daughter to a pearl of a prince.”

Rowland was anxious for news of Mrs. Light’s companion, and the natural course was frankly to inquire about him. “And the Cavaliere Giacosa is well?” he asked.

Christina hesitated, but she betrayed no other embarrassment. “The Cavaliere has retired to his native city of Ancona, upon a pension, for the rest of his natural life. He is a very good old man!”

“I have a great regard for him,” said Rowland, gravely, at the same time that he privately wondered whether the Cavaliere’s pension was paid by Prince Casamassima for services rendered in connection with his marriage. Had the Cavaliere received his commission? “And what do you do,” Rowland continued, “on leaving this place?”

“We go to Italy — we go to Naples.” She rose and stood silent a moment, looking down the valley. The figure of Prince Casamassima appeared in the distance, balancing his white umbrella. As her eyes rested upon it, Rowland imagined that he saw something deeper in the strange expression which had lurked in her face while he talked to her. At first he had been dazzled by her blooming beauty, to which the lapse of weeks had only added splendor; then he had seen a heavier ray in the light of her eye — a sinister intimation of sadness and bitterness. It was the outward mark of her sacrificed ideal. Her eyes grew cold as she looked at her husband, and when, after a moment, she turned them upon Rowland, they struck him as intensely tragical. He felt a singular mixture of sympathy and dread; he wished to give her a proof of friendship, and yet it seemed to him that she had now turned her face in a direction where friendship was impotent to interpose. She half read his feelings, apparently, and she gave a beautiful, sad smile. “I hope we may never meet again!” she said. And as Rowland gave her a protesting look —“You have seen me at my best. I wish to tell you solemnly, I was sincere! I know appearances are against me,” she went on quickly. “There is a great deal I can’t tell you. Perhaps you have guessed it; I care very little. You know, at any rate, I did my best. It would n’t serve; I was beaten and broken; they were stronger than I. Now it’s another affair!”

“It seems to me you have a large chance for happiness yet,” said Rowland, vaguely.

“Happiness? I mean to cultivate rapture; I mean to go in for bliss ineffable! You remember I told you that I was, in part, the world’s and the devil’s. Now they have taken me all. It was their choice; may they never repent!”

“I shall hear of you,” said Rowland.

“You will hear of me. And whatever you do hear, remember this: I was sincere!”

Prince Casamassima had approached, and Rowland looked at him with a good deal of simple compassion as a part of that “world” against which Christina had launched her mysterious menace. It was obvious that he was a good fellow, and that he could not, in the nature of things, be a positively bad husband; but his distinguished inoffensiveness only deepened the infelicity of Christina’s situation by depriving her defiant attitude of the sanction of relative justice. So long as she had been free to choose, she had esteemed him: but from the moment she was forced to marry him she had detested him. Rowland read in the young man’s elastic Italian mask a profound consciousness of all this; and as he found there also a record of other curious things — of pride, of temper, of bigotry, of an immense heritage of more or less aggressive traditions — he reflected that the matrimonial conjunction of his two companions might be sufficiently prolific in incident.

“You are going to Naples?” Rowland said to the prince by way of conversation.

“We are going to Paris,” Christina interposed, slowly and softly. “We are going to London. We are going to Vienna. We are going to St. Petersburg.”

Prince Casamassima dropped his eyes and fretted the earth with the point of his umbrella. While he engaged Rowland’s attention Christina turned away. When Rowland glanced at her again he saw a change pass over her face; she was observing something that was concealed from his own eyes by the angle of the church-wall. In a moment Roderick stepped into sight.

He stopped short, astonished; his face and figure were jaded, his garments dusty. He looked at Christina from head to foot, and then, slowly, his cheek flushed and his eye expanded. Christina returned his gaze, and for some moments there was a singular silence. “You don’t look well!” Christina said at last.

Roderick answered nothing; he only looked and looked, as if she had been a statue. “You are no less beautiful!” he presently cried.

She turned away with a smile, and stood a while gazing down the valley; Roderick stared at Prince Casamassima. Christina then put out her hand to Rowland. “Farewell,” she said. “If you are near me in future, don’t try to see me!” And then, after a pause, in a lower tone, “I was sincere!” She addressed herself again to Roderick and asked him some commonplace about his walk. But he said nothing; he only looked at her. Rowland at first had expected an outbreak of reproach, but it was evident that the danger was every moment diminishing. He was forgetting everything but her beauty, and as she stood there and let him feast upon it, Rowland was sure that she knew it. “I won’t say farewell to you,” she said; “we shall meet again!” And she moved gravely away. Prince Casamassima took leave courteously of Rowland; upon Roderick he bestowed a bow of exaggerated civility. Roderick appeared not to see it; he was still watching Christina, as she passed over the grass. His eyes followed her until she reached the door of her inn. Here she stopped and looked back at him.

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On the homeward walk, that evening, Roderick preserved a silence which Rowland allowed to make him uneasy. Early on the morrow Roderick, saying nothing of his intentions, started off on a walk; Rowland saw him striding with light steps along the rugged path to Engelberg. He was absent all day and he gave no account of himself on his return. He said he was deadly tired, and he went to bed early. When he had left the room Miss Garland drew near to Rowland.

“I wish to ask you a question,” she said. “What happened to Roderick yesterday at Engelberg?”