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

“Oh, this one is good! Look at him now.” Rowland looked, and saw that the prince had left his place by Mrs. Light and was marching restlessly to and fro between the villa and the parapet of the terrace. Every now and then he looked at his watch. “In this country, you know,” said the Cavaliere, “a young lady never goes walking alone with a handsome young man. It seems to him very strange.”

“It must seem to him monstrous, and if he overlooks it he must be very much in love.”

“Oh, he will overlook it. He is far gone.”

“Who is this exemplary lover, then; what is he?”

“A Neapolitan; one of the oldest houses in Italy. He is a prince in your English sense of the word, for he has a princely fortune. He is very young; he is only just of age; he saw the signorina last winter in Naples. He fell in love with her from the first, but his family interfered, and an old uncle, an ecclesiastic, Monsignor B— — hurried up to Naples, seized him, and locked him up. Meantime he has passed his majority, and he can dispose of himself. His relations are moving heaven and earth to prevent his marrying Miss Light, and they have sent us word that he forfeits his property if he takes his wife out of a certain line. I have investigated the question minutely, and I find this is but a fiction to frighten us. He is perfectly free; but the estates are such that it is no wonder they wish to keep them in their own hands. For Italy, it is an extraordinary case of unincumbered property. The prince has been an orphan from his third year; he has therefore had a long minority and made no inroads upon his fortune. Besides, he is very prudent and orderly; I am only afraid that some day he will pull the purse-strings too tight. All these years his affairs have been in the hands of Monsignor B— — who has managed them to perfection — paid off mortagages, planted forests, opened up mines. It is now a magnificent fortune; such a fortune as, with his name, would justify the young man in pretending to any alliance whatsoever. And he lays it all at the feet of that young girl who is wandering in yonder boschetto with a penniless artist.”

“He is certainly a phoenix of princes! The signora must be in a state of bliss.”

The Cavaliere looked imperturbably grave. “The signora has a high esteem for his character.”

“His character, by the way,” rejoined Rowland, with a smile; “what sort of a character is it?”

“Eh, Prince Casamassima is a veritable prince! He is a very good young man. He is not brilliant, nor witty, but he’ll not let himself be made a fool of. He’s very grave and very devout — though he does propose to marry a Protestant. He will handle that point after marriage. He’s as you see him there: a young man without many ideas, but with a very firm grasp of a single one — the conviction that Prince Casamassima is a very great person, that he greatly honors any young lady by asking for her hand, and that things are going very strangely when the young lady turns her back upon him. The poor young man, I am sure, is profoundly perplexed. But I whisper to him every day, ‘Pazienza, Signor Principe!’”

“So you firmly believe,” said Rowland, in conclusion, “that Miss Light will accept him just in time not to lose him!”

“I count upon it. She would make too perfect a princess to miss her destiny.”

“And you hold that nevertheless, in the mean while, in listening to, say, my friend Hudson, she will have been acting in good faith?”

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 assistance. 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 passion; 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 tomorrow, 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 Casamassima,” 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 assure 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 assumed designedly the attitude 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 pass 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 passed 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.