Roderick Hudson Part 23

Rowland smiled. "What is your particular quarrel with this world?"

"It 's a general quarrel. Nothing is true, or fixed, or permanent. We all seem to be playing with shadows more or less grotesque. It all comes over me here so dismally! The very atmosphere of this cold, deserted church seems to mock at one's longing to believe in something. Who cares for it now? who comes to it? who takes it seriously? Poor stupid a.s.sunta there gives in her adhesion in a jargon she does n't understand, and you and I, proper, pa.s.sionless tourists, come lounging in to rest from a walk. And yet the Catholic church was once the proudest inst.i.tution in the world, and had quite its own way with men's souls. When such a mighty structure as that turns out to have a flaw, what faith is one to put in one's poor little views and philosophies? What is right and what is wrong? What is one really to care for? What is the proper rule of life? I am tired of trying to discover, and I suspect it 's not worth the trouble. Live as most amuses you!"

"Your perplexities are so terribly comprehensive," said Rowland, smiling, "that one hardly knows where to meet them first."

"I don't care much for anything you can say, because it 's sure to be half-hearted. You are not in the least contented, yourself."

"How do you know that?"

"Oh, I am an observer!"

"No one is absolutely contented, I suppose, but I a.s.sure you I complain of nothing."

"So much the worse for your honesty. To begin with, you are in love."

"You would not have me complain of that!"

"And it does n't go well. There are grievous obstacles. So much I know!

You need n't protest; I ask no questions. You will tell no one--me least of all. Why does one never see you?"

"Why, if I came to see you," said Rowland, deliberating, "it would n't be, it could n't be, for a trivial reason--because I had not been in a month, because I was pa.s.sing, because I admire you. It would be because I should have something very particular to say. I have not come, because I have been slow in making up my mind to say it."

"You are simply cruel. Something particular, in this ocean of inanities?

In common charity, speak!"

"I doubt whether you will like it."

"Oh, I hope to heaven it 's not a compliment!"

"It may be called a compliment to your reasonableness. You perhaps remember that I gave you a hint of it the other day at Frascati."

"Has it been hanging fire all this time? Explode! I promise not to stop my ears."

"It relates to my friend Hudson." And Rowland paused. She was looking at him expectantly; her face gave no sign. "I am rather disturbed in mind about him. He seems to me at times to be in an unpromising way." He paused again, but Christina said nothing. "The case is simply this,"

he went on. "It was by my advice he renounced his career at home and embraced his present one. I made him burn his ships. I brought him to Rome, I launched him in the world, and I stand surety, in a measure, to--to his mother, for his prosperity. It is not such smooth sailing as it might be, and I am inclined to put up prayers for fair winds. If he is to succeed, he must work--quietly, devotedly. It is not news to you, I imagine, that Hudson is a great admirer of yours."

Christina remained silent; she turned away her eyes with an air, not of confusion, but of deep deliberation. Surprising frankness had, as a general thing, struck Rowland as the key-note of her character, but she had more than once given him a suggestion of an unfathomable power of calculation, and her silence now had something which it is hardly extravagant to call portentous. He had of course asked himself how far it was questionable taste to inform an unprotected girl, for the needs of a cause, that another man admired her; the thing, superficially, had an uncomfortable a.n.a.logy with the shrewdness that uses a cat's paw and lets it risk being singed. But he decided that even rigid discretion is not bound to take a young lady at more than her own valuation, and Christina presently rea.s.sured him as to the limits of her susceptibility. "Mr. Hudson is in love with me!" she said.

Rowland flinched a trifle. Then--"Am I," he asked, "from this point of view of mine, to be glad or sorry?"

"I don't understand you."

"Why, is Hudson to be happy, or unhappy?"

She hesitated a moment. "You wish him to be great in his profession? And for that you consider that he must be happy in his life?"

"Decidedly. I don't say it 's a general rule, but I think it is a rule for him."

"So that if he were very happy, he would become very great?"

"He would at least do himself justice."

"And by that you mean a great deal?"

"A great deal."

Christina sank back in her chair and rested her eyes on the cracked and polished slabs of the pavement. At last, looking up, "You have not forgotten, I suppose, that you told me he was engaged?"

"By no means."

"He is still engaged, then?"

"To the best of my belief."

"And yet you desire that, as you say, he should be made happy by something I can do for him?"

"What I desire is this. That your great influence with him should be exerted for his good, that it should help him and not r.e.t.a.r.d him.

Understand me. You probably know that your lovers have rather a restless time of it. I can answer for two of them. You don't know your own mind very well, I imagine, and you like being admired, rather at the expense of the admirer. Since we are really being frank, I wonder whether I might not say the great word."

"You need n't; I know it. I am a horrible coquette."

"No, not a horrible one, since I am making an appeal to your generosity.

I am pretty sure you cannot imagine yourself marrying my friend."

"There 's nothing I cannot imagine! That is my trouble."

Rowland's brow contracted impatiently. "I cannot imagine it, then!" he affirmed.

Christina flushed faintly; then, very gently, "I am not so bad as you think," she said.

"It is not a question of badness; it is a question of whether circ.u.mstances don't make the thing an extreme improbability."

"Worse and worse. I can be bullied, then, or bribed!"

"You are not so candid," said Rowland, "as you pretend to be. My feeling is this. Hudson, as I understand him, does not need, as an artist, the stimulus of strong emotion, of pa.s.sion. He's better without it; he's emotional and pa.s.sionate enough when he 's left to himself. The sooner pa.s.sion is at rest, therefore, the sooner he will settle down to work, and the fewer emotions he has that are mere emotions and nothing more, the better for him. If you cared for him enough to marry him, I should have nothing to say; I would never venture to interfere. But I strongly suspect you don't, and therefore I would suggest, most respectfully, that you should let him alone."

"And if I let him alone, as you say, all will be well with him for ever more?"

"Not immediately and not absolutely, but things will be easier. He will be better able to concentrate himself."

"What is he doing now? Wherein does he dissatisfy you?"

"I can hardly say. He 's like a watch that 's running down. He is moody, desultory, idle, irregular, fantastic."

"Heavens, what a list! And it 's all poor me?"

"No, not all. But you are a part of it, and I turn to you because you are a more tangible, sensible, responsible cause than the others."