Part 29 (1/2)
”But, surely, you 're pleased--you 're interested.”
”I am overwhelmed. Here in a single hour, everything is changed. It is as if a wall in my mind had been knocked down at a stroke. Before me lies an immense new world, and it makes the old one, the poor little narrow, familiar one I have always known, seem pitiful.”
”But you did n't come to Rome to keep your eyes fastened on that narrow little world. Forget it, turn your back on it, and enjoy all this.”
”I want to enjoy it; 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, as you say, as these things demand of one to enjoy them, is to break with one's past. And breaking is a pain!”
”Don't mind the pain, and it will cease to trouble you. Enjoy, enjoy; it is your duty. Yours especially!”
”Why mine especially?”
”Because I am very sure that you have a mind capable of doing the most liberal justice to everything interesting and beautiful. You are extremely intelligent.”
”You don't know,” said Miss Garland, simply.
”In that matter one feels. I really think that I know better than you.
I don't want to seem patronizing, but I suspect that your mind is susceptible of a great development. Give it the best company, trust it, let it 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!” cried Rowland.
”How can one tell? As one stands, one knows the worst. It seems to me very frightful to develop,” she added, with her complete smile.
”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 is better to take it by the hand.”
”Is this what you call life?” she asked.
”What do you mean by 'this'?”
”Saint Peter's--all this splendor, all Rome--pictures, ruins, statues, beggars, monks.”
”It is not all of it, but it is a large part of it. All these things are impregnated with life; they are the fruits of an old and complex civilization.”
”An old and complex civilization: I am afraid I don't like that.”
”Don't conclude on that point just yet. Wait till you have tested it. While you wait, you will see an immense number of very beautiful things--things that you are 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 have a right to a.s.sume it.”
Miss Garland gazed awhile aloft in the dome. ”I am not sure I understand that,” she said.
”I hope, at least, that at a cursory glance it pleases you,” said Rowland. ”You need n't be afraid to tell the truth. What strikes some people is that it is so remarkably small.”
”Oh, it's large enough; it's very wonderful. There are things in Rome, then,” she added in a moment, turning and looking at him, ”that are very, very beautiful?”
”Lots of them.”
”Some of the most beautiful things in the world?”
”Unquestionably.”