# Roderick Hudson (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907)/Chapter 17

XVII
How it occurred that Roderick had failed to be at Leghorn at the moment of his mother's arrival was never to be clearly set forth; for he undertook at no moment any elaborate explanation of his fault. He never indulged in professions (touching personal conduct) as to the future, or in remorse as to the past; and as he would have asked no praise if he had travelled night and day to embrace Mrs. Hudson as she set foot on shore, he made (in Rowland's presence at least) no apology for having left her to come in search of him. It was to be said that, thanks to an unprecedented fine season, the voyage of the two ladies had been surprisingly rapid, and that, according to common probabilities, if Roderick had left Rome on the morrow (as he declared that he had intended) he would still have had a day or two of waiting at Leghorn. Rowland's silent inference was that Christina Light had beguiled him into letting the time slip, and it was accompanied with a tacit enquiry as to the degree of her direct malice. Her interesting friend had told her, presumably, that his mother and his cousin were about to arrive; and it was pertinent to remember hereupon that she was a person of wayward motions. Rowland possessed himself more easily meanwhile of the recent history of the two troubled pilgrims. Mary ​Garland's wish, at Leghorn, on finding they were left to their own devices, had been to telegraph to Roderick and await an answer, for she was not unaware that they had rather stolen a march. But Mrs. Hudson's maternal heart had taken the alarm. Roderick's sending for them at all was, to her imagination, a confession of some pernicious ill, some visitation, probably, of malignant disease, and his not being at Leghorn a proof of the worst; an hour's delay was therefore cruel both to herself and to him. She insisted on immediate departure, and, unversed as they were in strange tongues and systems, they had somehow floundered along. Reaching Rome late in the evening and knowing nothing of inns, they had got into a cab and proceeded to Roderick's lodging. At the door poor Mrs. Hudson's trepidation had overcome her, and she had sat paralysed and weeping in the vehicle. Mary had bravely gone in, groped her way up the dusky staircase, gained Roderick's door and, with the assistance of such acquaintance with the local idiom as she had culled from a phrase-book during the calm hours of the voyage, learned from the old woman who had her cousin's household economy in charge that he was in the best of health and spirits and had gone forth a few hours before, his hat on his ear, per divertirsi.
These things Rowland learned during a visit paid the ladies the second evening of their stay. Mrs. Hudson spoke of them with great abundance and repetition and with an air of clinging confidence which told her visitor that he was now enshrined ​in her innermost faith. But her fright was over, though she was still catching her breath a little, like a person dragged ashore out of waters uncomfortably deep. She was exquisitely astray about everything, and appealed more than ever to correction and precaution. Before her companion he was distinctly conscious that he quaked. He wondered extremely what was going on in this young lady's mind, what had been her silent commentary on the incidents of the night before. He wondered all the more because he immediately perceived that she was now a person changed, and changed not to her disfigurement. She was older, easier, lighter; she had, as would have been said in Rome, more form. She had thus, he made out, more expression, facial and other, and it was beautifully as if this expression had been accumulating all the while, lacking on the scene of her life any channel to waste itself. It was like something she had been working at in the long days of home, an exquisite embroidery or a careful compilation, and she now presented the whole wealth of it as a kind of pious offering. Rowland felt almost instantly—he could hardly have said why; it was in her voice, in her tone, in the air—that a different principle governed her manner of regarding him. She built on him now absolutely; whether or no she liked him she believed in his solidity. He felt that during the coming weeks he should need to be solid. Mrs. Hudson was at one of the smaller hotels, and her sitting-room was frugally lighted by a couple of candles. He made the most of this dim illumination for some quest of the afterglow of that ​frightened flash from Mary's eyes the night before. It had been but a flash, for what provoked it had instantly vanished. Rowland, on this occasion, seeing the high delinquent instantly measure his peril, had mutely applauded the art of his recovery. If he had been drinking the quick consciousness sobered him; he had collected his wits with inimitable grace. The next moment, with a ringing jovial cry, he was folding the girl in his arms, and the next after he was beside his mother's cab, half smothered in her sobs and caresses. Rowland had recommended an hotel close at hand and had then discreetly retired. Roderick was at that time "playing up" to them all brilliantly, and Mary Garland's face was serene. It was clear now, twenty-four hours later; but her vision had none the less flared there for its minute. What had become of it? It had dropped down deep into her memory and was lying there for the present in the shade. From one day to another, Rowland yet said to himself, it would hold up its head, would begin to watch and listen, would rise again and confront him. Meanwhile he made the most of the hours—he passed them in the consciousness of being near her. The two ladies had passed the day indoors, resting, reacting, recovering. The younger, Rowland suspected, was not quite so spent as she suffered it to be assumed. She had remained with Mrs. Hudson to attend to her personal wants, which the latter seemed to think, now that she was in a foreign land with a southern climate and a Catholic religion, would forthwith be come very complex and formidable, though as yet ​they had simply resolved themselves into a desire for a great deal of tea and for a certain extremely familiar old black and white shawl across her feet as she lay on the sofa. But the sense of novelty was evidently strong upon Mary and the light of expectation in her eye. She was restless and excited; she moved about the room and went often to the window; she took everything in; she watched the Italian servants as they came and went; she had already had a long colloquy with the French chambermaid, who had published her views on the Roman question; she noted the small differences in the furniture, in the cookery, in the sounds that came in from the street. She might have been an exceptionally fine specimen-islander of an unclassed group, brought home by a great navigator and treatable as yet mainly by beads and comfits. Rowland was sure she observed to good purpose, that she only needed opportunity, and that she would gather impressions in clusters as thick as the purple bunches of a vintage. He wished immensely he might have a hand in the work; he wished he might show her Rome. That of course would be Roderick's office, but he promised himself at least to take advantage of off-hours.
"It behoves you to appreciate your good fortune, you know," he permitted himself to say. "To be young and eager, and yet old enough and wise enough to discriminate and reflect, and to come to Italy for the first time—that 's one of the greatest pleasures life has to offer. It 's but right to remind you of it, so that you may make the most of your chances and ​not accuse yourself later of having wasted the precious season."
Mary looked at him with her large smile and went to the window again. "I expect to enjoy it. Don't be afraid; I 'm not wasteful."
"I'm afraid we're not so very qualified, you know," said Mrs. Hudson. "We're told that you must know so much, that you must have read so many books. Our taste has not highly been cultivated. When I was a young lady at school I remember I had a medal with a pink ribbon for 'proficiency in ancient history'—the seven kings, or is it the seven hills? and Quintus Curtius and Julius Caesar, and—and that period, you know. I believe I have my medal somewhere in a drawer now, but I 've forgotten all about the kings. After Roderick came to Italy we tried to pursue a course. Last winter Mary used to read 'Corinne' to me in the evenings, and in the mornings she used to read another book to herself. What was it, Mary, that book that was so long, you know in fifteen volumes?"
"It was Sismondi's 'Italian Republics,'" Mary honestly answered.
Rowland showed, for all his precautions, an amusement; whereat the girl coloured. "And did you push quite through?"
"Yes, and began another—a shorter one—Roscoe's 'Leo the Tenth.'"
"Did you find them interesting?"
"Oh yes."
"Do you like history?"
"Some of it."
​"That's a woman's answer! And do you like art?"
She paused a moment. "I think I 've never seen any—except Roderick's. Of course I 've liked that."
"Ah, that proves nothing!" Rowland freely declared. "You must try other people's."
"I 'm sure she 'll only want to try," Mrs. Hudson interposed. "You 've great advantages now, my dear, with Roderick and Mr. Mallet," she said to Mary. "No young lady can ever have had greater. You come straight to the highest authorities. Roderick, I suppose, will show you the practice of art, and Mr. Mallet, perhaps, if he will be so good, will show you the theory. As an artist's wife you ought to know something at least about that."
"One learns a good deal about it here by simply living one's life," said Rowland; "by going and coming about one's daily avocations."
"Dear, dear, how wonderful that we should be here in the midst of it!" murmured Mrs. Hudson. "To think of art being out there in the streets! We did n't see much of it last evening as we drove from the station. But the streets were so dark, and we should n't have known, at any rate, where to look. Now, however, we 're quite ourselves, and Mary, I think, is really enjoying the revulsion."
"Oh, I 'm all right," this young woman replied; and she wandered again to the window, as if the very largeness of their case defied expansion.
Roderick came in at this moment and kissed his mother, and then went over and joined her companion. Rowland sat wth Mrs. Hudson, who evidently had a ​word she deemed important for his private ear. She followed her son with intensely earnest eyes.
"I wish to tell you, sir," she said, "how deeply indebted, how very grateful, what a happy mother I am! I feel I owe you all of it. To find my poor boy so handsome, so prosperous, so elegant, so famous—and ever to have doubted of you! What must you think of me? You 're our guardian angel; it 's what Mary and I call you."
Rowland felt himself wear in answer to this speech an anxiously impenetrable face. He could only murmur that he was glad she found Roderick looking well. He had of course promptly asked himself if it would n't be his best line to give her a word of warning—turn the handle of the door through which, later on, disappointment and its train might enter. But he had determined to say nothing and simply to wait for Roderick to find effective inspiration in the eyes now so deeply resting on him. It was even to be supposed he was actually looking for it; he remained some time at the window with his cousin. But at last he turned away and came over to the fire with the first fine cloud already on his brightness. In what wrong place had the poor girl happened to touch him? She presently followed him, and for an instant Rowland observed her watch him as if he struck her as strange. "Strange enough," thought their companion, "he may seem to her if he will!" Roderick looked at his friend with a vague peremptory pressure, a sign to him that he too must really mount to the breach. "Heaven help us all!" Rowland tacitly groaned; "are they already giving on his nerves?"
​"To-morrow, of course, we must begin to put you through the mill," Roderick said to his mother. "And be it hereby known to Mallet that we count upon him to turn the wheel."
"I will do as you please, my son," said Mrs. Hudson. "So long as I have you with me I don't care where I go. We must not take up too much of Mr. Mallet's time."
"His time's inexhaustible; he has nothing under the sun to do. Can you dream, Rowland, of anything more delirious than our company? If you had seen the big hole I 've been making in his life! Where will you go first? You have your choice—from the Scala Santa to the Cloaca Maxima."
"Let us take things in order," said Rowland. "We will go first to Saint Peter's church. Miss Garland, I hope you 're impatient to see Saint Peter's church."
"I should like to go first to Roderick's studio," Miss Garland declared.
"It 's a very horrid, nasty, depressing place, my studio," said Roderick. "But do whatever in the wide world you like."
"Yes, we must see your beautiful things before we can look contentedly at anything else," said Mrs. Hudson.
"I have no beautiful things," said Roderick. "You may see a dozen ghosts of dead dreams. What makes you look so—? But how is it you do look?"
This enquiry was abruptly addressed to his mother, who in response glanced appealingly at Mary, and raised a startled hand to her smooth hair.
"No, it 's your dear old face. What has come over ​it in my absence? It has got something in it, you know," he said, with quite a flicker of interest, to Rowland.
"It must have in it all the fond prayers she has been putting up for you," Mary gravely suggested.
"Oh, I don't suppose it represents the trace of orgies! But whatever it is, mammy, it's a great improvement; it makes you a very good face—very interesting, very decent, very solemn. It has two or three rare tragic lines in it; something might be done with it." And Roderick held one of the candles near the poor lady's head.
She was covered with confusion. "My son, my son," she said with dignity, "I don't understand you."
In a flash all his old alacrity had come to him. "I suppose a man may admire his own lovely mother! If you please, ma'am, you 'll sit to me for that beautiful head. I see it, I see it! I 'll make something that a queen can't get done for her."
Rowland respectfully urged her to assent; he saw Roderick was in the vein and he calculated on the spot, with one of his own odd flights, that this might lead to the masterpiece of the young sculptor's life. It was such a chance for "sincerity"—the very sincerity, immortal now, of the early Tuscans. Mrs. Hudson gave her promise at last, after many inarticulate protests and a fond request that she might be allowed to keep her knitting.
Rowland returned, the next day, with plenty of zeal for the part his friend had assigned him. It had been arranged that they should drive to Saint Peter's, and Roderick, whose sky had again cleared, watched ​his mother, in the carriage, on the way, with a fine mixture of filial and professional interest. Mrs. Hudson looked up ruefully at the high, sinister houses and grasped the side of the barouche as if she were launched in deep seas. Rowland sat opposite to Miss Garland, who appeared for the time totally oblivious of her companions. From the moment the carriage left the hotel she sat gazing wide-eyed and absorbed at the objects about them. If Rowland had felt more reckless he might have made a joke, or even a greater affair, of the dead weight of this tribute to the magic of Rome, the most candid, in a manner, that he had ever seen paid. From time to time he told her the name of a place or a building, and she nodded without looking at him. When they emerged into the great square between Bernini's colonnades she laid her hand on Mrs. Hudson's arm and sank back in the carriage, staring up at the golden immensities. Within the high doors at last Roderick gave his arm to his mother, and Rowland constituted himself the guide of the younger lady. He walked with her slowly everywhere, making the entire circuit and telling her all he knew, trying to tell her all he felt. This was no small matter, but she listened attentively, keeping her eyes on the dome. For Rowland himself it had never had such consecrating power; even, as might be, of the hushed human passions beneath it. He felt, in this promotion of its effect, almost as if he had designed it and had a right to be proud of it. He left Mary Garland awhile on the steps of the choir, where she had seated herself to rest, and went to join their companions. Mrs. Hudson was watching a circle of tattered contadini ​kneel before the image of Saint Peter. The fashion of their tatters fascinated her; she stood gazing at them in terrified pity and could be induced to look at almost nothing else. Rowland went back to Mary and sat down beside her.
"Well, what do you think of Europe?" he amicably asked.
"I think it 's dreadful!" she presently brought out.
"Dreadful?"
"I feel so strangely—I could almost cry."
"How is it then you feel?"
"So sorry for the poor little past that seems to have died here in my heart in an hour!"
"But surely you 're pleased—you 're interested."
"I 'm overwhelmed. Here in a single hour everything 's changed. It 's as if a wall somewhere about me had been knocked down at a stroke. Before me lies an immense new world, and it makes the old one, the little narrow familiar conceited one I 've always known, seem pitiful."
"But you did n't come to Rome to walk backward, to keep your eyes fastened on what you left. Forget it, turn away from it, give yourself up to this."
"I should like nothing better. But as I sat here just now, looking up at that golden mist in the dome, I seemed to see in it the vague shapes of certain people and things at home. To enjoy so much beauty and wonder is to break with the past—I mean with one's poor old own. And breaking 's a pain."
"Don't mind the pain, and it will cease to trouble you. Enjoy, enjoy; it 's your duty. Yours especially."
"Why mine especially?" the girl asked.
​"Because I'm so convinced that you 've a mind formed to do justice to everything interesting and beautiful. You 're extremely intelligent."
"You don't know," she simply said.
"In that matter one feels. I really think I know better than you. I don't want to seem patronising, but I see in you a capital subject for development. Give yourself the best company, trust yourself, let yourself go."
She looked away from him for some moments, down the gorgeous vista of the great church. "But what you say," she said at last, "means change."
"Change for the better," Rowland insisted.
"How can one tell? As one stands one knows the worst. It seems to me very frightful to develop," she went on.
"One is in for it in one way or another, and one might as well do it with a good grace as with a bad. Since one can't escape life it 's better to take it by the hand."
"Is this what you call life?" she presently asked.
"What do you mean by 'this'?"
"What 's around us—all this splendour, all Rome; pictures, ruins, statues, beggars, monks."
"It 's not all of it, but it 's a large part of it. All these things are impregnated with life; they 're the results of an immemorial, a complex and accumulated, civilisation."
"'Immemorial, complex, accumulated'—ah, those are words I 'm afraid of."
"There may be better ones for what I mean," Rowland smiled; "but I don't believe it 's in you to ​be really afraid of anything. Don't at any rate conclude on that point just yet. Wait till you 've tested your courage. While you wait you 'll see an immense number of very beautiful things—things that you 're made to understand. They won't leave you as they found you; then you can judge. Don't tell me I know nothing about your understanding. I 've a right to count upon it."
Mary gazed a while aloft into the dome. "I 'm not sure I understand that." And she nodded upward.
"I hope at least that at a cursory glance it pleases you. You need n't be afraid to tell the truth. What strikes some people," Rowland said, "is that it 's so disconcertingly small."
"Oh, it 's large enough; it will do for me. There are things in Rome, then," she added in a moment, turning and looking at him, "that are quite supremely beautiful?"
"Lots of them."
"Some of the most beautiful things in the world?"
"Unquestionably."
"What are they? which things have most beauty?"
"That's according to taste. I should say the antique sculpture."
"How long will it take to see it all; to know least something about it?"
"You can see it all, as far as mere seeing goes, in a fortnight. But to know it is a thing for one's leisure. The more time you spend with it the more you care for it." After a moment's hesitation he went on: "Why should you grudge time? It's all in your way, since you 're to be an artist's wife."
​"Oh, I 've thought of that," she said. "It may be that I shall always live here—among the most beautiful things in the world."
"Very possibly. I should like to see you ten years hence."
"I dare say that many things will by that time have come to me, and I certainly hope it. But I 'm nevertheless sure—!"
"Of what?" he asked as she paused.
"That for the most part I shall be quite stupidly unaltered by them. I ask nothing better than to believe the fine things you say about my understanding, but even if they 're true it won't matter. I shall be what I was made, what I am now—a young woman from the very heart of New England. The fruit of a civilisation as different as possible from this so strangely-mixed Roman."
"I 'm delighted to hear it. The heart of New England 's an excellent basis."
"Perhaps if you show me anything more you 'll grow rather tired of my basis. Therefore I warn you."
"I 'm not frightened. I should like extremely to make a request of you. Be what you are, what you like, what you must—be your very worst. But do, sometimes, as I tell you."
If Rowland was not frightened neither perhaps was his companion; but she brought their talk to an end as if not to make this promise. She proposed they should join the others.
Mrs. Hudson spoke under her breath; she could not be accused of the want of reverence often ​attributed to the crude heretic in the great Catholic temples. "Mary dear," she whispered, "suppose we had to kiss that dreadful brass toe. If I could only have kept our door-knocker at Northampton as bright as that! I think it 's heathenish, but Roderick says he thinks it 's sublime."
Roderick had evidently grown a trifle perverse. "It 's sublimer than anything that your religion asks you to do!"
"Surely our religion sometimes gives us very difficult duties," said Mary.
"The duty of sitting in a whitewashed meeting house and listening to a nasal Puritan! I admit that 's difficult. But it 's not sublime. I 'm speak ing of ceremonies, of magnificent forms. It 's in my line, you know, to make much of magnificent forms. I think this a very interesting case of a grand form. Could n't you do it?" he demanded, looking at his cousin. She looked back at him intently and then shook her head. "I think not!"
"Why not?"
"I don't know. I couldn't!"
During this little discussion our four friends were standing near the venerable image of the genius loci, and a squalid, savage-looking peasant, a tattered ruffian of the most orthodox Italian aspect, had been performing his devotions before it. He turned away crossing himself, and Mrs. Hudson gave a little shudder of horror.
"After that," she murmured, "I suppose he thinks ​he 's as good as any one! And here 's another. Oh, what a beautiful person!"
A young lady had approached the sacred effigy after having wandered away from a group of companions. She kissed the brazen toe, touched it with her forehead and, turning round to face our friends, presented herself to Rowland as Christina Light. He took account of this indication that she had suddenly begun again to pratiquer religiously, for it was but a few weeks before that she had treated him to a passionate profession of indifference. Had she already taken up the duties laid down by decorum for a Princess Casamassima? While Rowland was mentally asking these questions she had drawn nearer—she was moving toward the great altar. But at first she had not taken in our group.
Mary Garland had been watching her. "You told me," she said gently to Rowland, "that Rome contained some of the most beautiful things in the world. This surely is one of them!"
At this moment Christina's eye met Rowland's, and before giving him any sign of recognition she glanced rapidly at his companions. She saw Roderick, but without expression of it; she looked at Mrs. Hudson, she looked at Mary Garland. At Mary she looked with attention, with penetration, from head to foot, the slow pace at which she advanced making it possible. The next thing, as if she had perceived Roderick for the first time, she broke into a friendly, a radiant smile. In a moment he was at her side. She stopped, and he stood talking to her; she continued to look at Mary.
​"Why, Roderick knows her!" cried Mrs. Hudson in an awestruck whisper. "I supposed she was some great princess."
"She is—almost!" said Rowland. "She's the most beautiful girl in Europe, and Roderick has modelled her."
"'Modelled'—? Dear, dear!" murmured Mrs. Hudson, as if aghast at some vision of a new freedom. "What a very strange bonnet!"
"She has very strange eyes," said Mary, turning away.
The two ladies, with Rowland, took their way toward the door of the church. On their way they passed Mrs. Light and the Cavaliere, and Rowland informed his companions of the relation in which these personages stood to Roderick's young lady.
"Think of it, Mary!" said Mrs. Hudson. "What splendid people he must know! No wonder he found Northampton rather mild."
"I like the wise little old gentleman," said Mary.
"Why do you call him wise?" Rowland asked, struck with the observation.
"Because I think I 'm learning what wisdom is."
As they approached their egress they were over taken by Roderick, whose interview with Miss Light had left in his face a traceable afterglow. "So you 're acquainted with princesses?" said his mother, softly, as they passed into the portico.
"Miss Light isn't a princess!" he rather dryly returned.
"But Mr. Mallet says so," urged Mrs. Hudson, disappointed.
​"I meant that she 's going to be," said Rowland.
"It 's by no means certain that she 's even going to be!" Roderick answered.
"Ah then," Rowland laughed, "I give it up!"