Part 14 (2/2)
Leavenworth was disposed to order something.
”You will find me eager to patronize our indigenous talent,” he said. ”I am putting up a little shanty in my native town, and I propose to make a rather nice thing of it. It has been the will of Heaven to plunge me into mourning; but art has consolations! In a tasteful home, surrounded by the memorials of my wanderings, I hope to take more cheerful views.
I ordered in Paris the complete appurtenances of a dining-room. Do you think you could do something for my library? It is to be filled with well-selected authors, and I think a pure white image in this style,”--pointing to one of Roderick's statues,--”standing out against the morocco and gilt, would have a n.o.ble effect. The subject I have already fixed upon. I desire an allegorical representation of Culture.
Do you think, now,” asked Mr. Leavenworth, encouragingly, ”you could rise to the conception?”
”A most interesting subject for a truly serious mind,” remarked Miss Blanchard.
Roderick looked at her a moment, and then--”The simplest thing I could do,” he said, ”would be to make a full-length portrait of Miss Blanchard. I could give her a scroll in her hand, and that would do for the allegory.”
Miss Blanchard colored; the compliment might be ironical; and there was ever afterwards a reflection of her uncertainty in her opinion of Roderick's genius. Mr. Leavenworth responded that with all deference to Miss Blanchard's beauty, he desired something colder, more monumental, more impersonal. ”If I were to be the happy possessor of a likeness of Miss Blanchard,” he added, ”I should prefer to have it in no fact.i.tious disguise!”
Roderick consented to entertain the proposal, and while they were discussing it, Rowland had a little talk with the fair artist. ”Who is your friend?” he asked.
”A very worthy man. The architect of his own fortune--which is magnificent. One of nature's gentlemen!”
This was a trifle sententious, and Rowland turned to the bust of Miss Light. Like every one else in Rome, by this time, Miss Blanchard had an opinion on the young girl's beauty, and, in her own fas.h.i.+on, she expressed it epigrammatically. ”She looks half like a Madonna and half like a ballerina,” she said.
Mr. Leavenworth and Roderick came to an understanding, and the young sculptor good-naturedly promised to do his best to rise to his patron's conception. ”His conception be hanged!” Roderick exclaimed, after he had departed. ”His conception is sitting on a globe with a pen in her ear and a photographic alb.u.m in her hand. I shall have to conceive, myself.
For the money, I ought to be able to!”
Mrs. Light, meanwhile, had fairly established herself in Roman society.
”Heaven knows how!” Madame Grandoni said to Rowland, who had mentioned to her several evidences of the lady's prosperity. ”In such a case there is nothing like audacity. A month ago she knew no one but her washerwoman, and now I am told that the cards of Roman princesses are to be seen on her table. She is evidently determined to play a great part, and she has the wit to perceive that, to make remunerative acquaintances, you must seem yourself to be worth knowing. You must have striking rooms and a confusing variety of dresses, and give good dinners, and so forth. She is spending a lot of money, and you 'll see that in two or three weeks she will take upon herself to open the season by giving a magnificent ball. Of course it is Christina's beauty that floats her. People go to see her because they are curious.”
”And they go again because they are charmed,” said Rowland. ”Miss Christina is a very remarkable young lady.”
”Oh, I know it well; I had occasion to say so to myself the other day.
She came to see me, of her own free will, and for an hour she was deeply interesting. I think she 's an actress, but she believes in her part while she is playing it. She took it into her head the other day to believe that she was very unhappy, and she sat there, where you are sitting, and told me a tale of her miseries which brought tears into my eyes. She cried, herself, profusely, and as naturally as possible. She said she was weary of life and that she knew no one but me she could speak frankly to. She must speak, or she would go mad. She sobbed as if her heart would break. I a.s.sure you it 's well for you susceptible young men that you don't see her when she sobs. She said, in so many words, that her mother was an immoral woman. Heaven knows what she meant. She meant, I suppose, that she makes debts that she knows she can't pay. She said the life they led was horrible; that it was monstrous a poor girl should be dragged about the world to be sold to the highest bidder. She was meant for better things; she could be perfectly happy in poverty. It was not money she wanted. I might not believe her, but she really cared for serious things. Sometimes she thought of taking poison!”
”What did you say to that?”
”I recommended her,” said Madame Grandoni, ”to come and see me instead. I would help her about as much, and I was, on the whole, less unpleasant. Of course I could help her only by letting her talk herself out and kissing her and patting her beautiful hands and telling her to be patient and she would be happy yet. About once in two months I expect her to reappear, on the same errand, and meanwhile to quite forget my existence. I believe I melted down to the point of telling her that I would find some good, quiet, affectionate husband for her; but she declared, almost with fury, that she was sick unto death of husbands, and begged I would never again mention the word. And, in fact, it was a rash offer; for I am sure that there is not a man of the kind that might really make a woman happy but would be afraid to marry mademoiselle.
Looked at in that way she is certainly very much to be pitied, and indeed, altogether, though I don't think she either means all she says or, by a great deal, says all that she means. I feel very sorry for her.”
Rowland met the two ladies, about this time, at several entertainments, and looked at Christina with a kind of distant attendriss.e.m.e.nt. He imagined more than once that there had been a pa.s.sionate scene between them about coming out, and wondered what arguments Mrs. Light had found effective. But Christina's face told no tales, and she moved about, beautiful and silent, looking absently over people's heads, barely heeding the men who pressed about her, and suggesting somehow that the soul of a world-wearied mortal had found its way into the blooming body of a G.o.ddess. ”Where in the world has Miss Light been before she is twenty,” observers asked, ”to have left all her illusions behind?” And the general verdict was, that though she was incomparably beautiful, she was intolerably proud. Young ladies to whom the former distinction was not conceded were free to reflect that she was ”not at all liked.”
It would have been difficult to guess, however, how they reconciled this conviction with a variety of conflicting evidence, and, in especial, with the spectacle of Roderick's inveterate devotion. All Rome might behold that he, at least, ”liked” Christina Light. Wherever she appeared he was either awaiting her or immediately followed her. He was perpetually at her side, trying, apparently, to preserve the thread of a disconnected talk, the fate of which was, to judge by her face, profoundly immaterial to the young lady. People in general smiled at the radiant good faith of the handsome young sculptor, and asked each other whether he really supposed that beauties of that quality were meant to wed with poor artists. But although Christina's deportment, as I have said, was one of superb inexpressiveness, Rowland had derived from Roderick no suspicion that he suffered from snubbing, and he was therefore surprised at an incident which befell one evening at a large musical party. Roderick, as usual, was in the field, and, on the ladies taking the chairs which had been arranged for them, he immediately placed himself beside Christina. As most of the gentlemen were standing, his position made him as conspicuous as Hamlet at Ophelia's feet, at the play. Rowland was leaning, somewhat apart, against the chimney-piece.
There was a long, solemn pause before the music began, and in the midst of it Christina rose, left her place, came the whole length of the immense room, with every one looking at her, and stopped before him. She was neither pale nor flushed; she had a soft smile.
”Will you do me a favor?” she asked.
”A thousand!”
”Not now, but at your earliest convenience. Please remind Mr. Hudson that he is not in a New England village--that it is not the custom in Rome to address one's conversation exclusively, night after night, to the same poor girl, and that”....
The music broke out with a great blare and covered her voice. She made a gesture of impatience, and Rowland offered her his arm and led her back to her seat.
The next day he repeated her words to Roderick, who burst into joyous laughter. ”She 's a delightfully strange girl!” he cried. ”She must do everything that comes into her head!”
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