Roderick Dhu

“ Unless you have millions, you know, you have no chance."
"I feel like a beggar," said Rowland.
"Oh, some better girl than I will decide some day, after mature reflection, that on the whole you have enough. Mr. Hudson, of course, is nowhere; he has nothing but his genius and his beaux yeux."
Roderick had stood looking at Christina intently while she delivered herself, softly and slowly, of this surprising nonsense. When she had finished, she turned and looked at him; their eyes met, and he blushed a little. "Let me model you, and he who can may marry you!" ”

“ But the prince looked heavy-eyed toward Rowland and Roderick, to whom the young girl was turning, as if he had much rather his lot were cast with theirs.
"Is the villa inhabited?" Christina asked, pointing to the vast melancholy structure which rises above the terrace.
"Not privately," said Roderick. "It is occupied by a Jesuits' college, for little boys."
"Can women go in?"
"I am afraid not." And Roderick began to laugh. "Fancy the poor little devils looking up from their Latin declensions and seeing Miss Light standing there!" ”

“ She wore a so-called gypsy hat—a little straw hat tied down over her ears, so as to cast her eyes into shadow, by a ribbon passing outside of it. When the company dispersed after lunch he proposed to her to take, in spite of Roderick's beasts and monsters, a stroll in the wood. She hesitated a moment and looked at Mrs. Hudson as if for permission to leave her. But Mrs. Hudson was listening to Mr. Striker, who sat gossiping to her with relaxed consistency, his waistcoat unbuttoned and his hat on his nose.
"You can give your cousin your society at any time," said Rowland. ”

“ Hudson may be a new Phidias, but Venus and Juno—that ‘s you and I—arrived to-day in a very dirty cab; and were cheated by the driver, too.”
“But, my dear fellow,” objected Gloriani, “you don’t mean to say you are going to make over in cold blood those poor old exploded Apollos and Hebes.”
“It won’t matter what you call them,” said Roderick. “They shall be simply divine forms. They shall be Beauty; they shall be Wisdom; they shall be Power; they shall be Genius; they shall be Daring. ”

“ Roderick, for all answer, tossed the sheet back over the statue. "Oblige me, sir," he said, "oblige me! Never mention that thing again."
"Never mention it? Why my dear sir"—
"Never mention it. It 's an abomination!"
"An abomination! My Culture!"
"Yours indeed!" cried Roderick. "It 's none of mine. I disown it."
"Disown it, if you please," said Mr. Leavenworth sternly, "but finish it first!"
"I 'd rather smash it!" cried Roderick.
"This is folly, sir. You must keep your engagements."
"I made no engagement. A sculptor is n't a tailor. Did you ever hear of inspiration? Mine is dead! ”

“ Let Rowland decide it, mother; whatever he suggests will be the right thing." And Roderick, who had hardly removed his eyes from the exhibition of his work, got up again and went back to the great figure in which, during his divine first freshness, he had embodied his idea of the primal Adam.
Mrs. Hudson fixed her eyes upon the opposite wall. There was not a trace in Roderick's face or in his voice of the bitterness of his emotion of the day before, and not a hint of his having the lightest weight upon his conscience. ”

“ Rowland, on the contrary, wished to mediate. "You had better not refuse," he said to Miss Light, "until you 've seen Mr. Hudson's things in the marble. Your mother 's to come and look at some that I possess."
"Thank you; I 've no doubt you 'll see us. I dare say Mr. Hudson 's very clever; but I don't care for modern sculpture. I can't look at it."
"You shall care for my bust, I promise you!" Roderick declared with a laugh.
"To satisfy Miss Light," said the Cavaliere, "one of the old Greeks ought to come to life." ”

“ Roderick! But wait three years, sir, like me!" and Mr. Striker laughed, with a closed mouth and a noiseless shake of all his long person.
Mrs. Hudson smiled confusedly, at hazard; Miss Garland kept her eyes on her stitches. But it seemed to Rowland that the latter colored a little. "Oh, in three years, of course," he said, "we shall know each other better. Before many years are over, madam," he pursued, "I expect the world to know him. I expect him to be a great man!"
Mrs. Hudson looked at first as if this could be but an insidious device for increasing her distress by the assistance of irony. ”

“ I am delighted; only be so in the best sense. Is n't it very plain? If you have the energy to desire, you have also the energy to reason and to judge. If you can care to go, you can also care to stay, and staying being the more profitable course, the inspiration, on that side, for a man who has his self-confidence to win back again, should be greater."
Roderick, plainly, did not relish this simple logic, and his eye grew angry as he listened to its echo. "Oh, the devil!" he cried.
Rowland went on. "Do you believe that hanging about Christina Light will do you any good? Do you believe it won't? ”

“ Mrs. Hudson flung herself upon his neck for gratitude. “We ‘ll go to-morrow!” she cried. “The Lord is very good to me!”
Mary Garland said nothing to this; but she looked at Rowland, and her eyes seemed to contain a kind of alarmed appeal. Rowland noted it with exultation, but even without it he would have broken into an eager protest.
“Are you serious, Roderick?” he demanded.
“Serious? of course not! How can a man with a crack in his brain be serious? how can a muddlehead reason? But I ‘m not jesting, either; I can no more make jokes than utter oracles!” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Rowland, as he spoke, had an instinctive vision of the sentiments infallibly entertained for this beautiful and amusing youth by the women of his house.
Roderick frowned, and with an impatient gesture, "I do her justice," he cried; "may she never do me less!" Then after a moment's hesitation, "I'll tell you the perfect truth," he went on; "I have to fill a double place. I have to be my brother as well as myself. It's a good deal to ask of a man, especially when he has so little talent as I for being what he's not. ”

“ Christina said at last.
Roderick answered nothing; he only looked and looked, as if she had been a statue. "You are no less beautiful!" he presently cried.
She turned away with a smile, and stood a while gazing down the valley; Roderick stared at Prince Casamassima. Christina then put out her hand to Rowland. "Farewell," she said. "If you are near me in future, don't try to see me!" And then, after a pause, in a lower tone, "I was sincere!" She addressed herself again to Roderick and asked him some commonplace about his walk. But he said nothing; he only looked at her. ”

“ Roderick lay motionless except that he slightly turned his head towards his friend. He was smelling a large white rose, which he continued to present to his nose. In the darkness of the room he looked exceedingly pale, but his beautiful eyes quite shed a light. He let them rest for some time on Rowland, lying there like a Buddhist in an intellectual swoon, a deep dreamer whose perception should be slowly ebbing back to temporal matters. "Oh, I 'm not ill," he said at last. "I 've never been better in my life." ”

“ The fermentation of contentment in Roderick's soul reached its climax a few days before the young men were to make their farewells. He had been sitting with his friends on Cecilia's veranda, but for half an hour past he had said nothing. Lounging back against a vine-wreathed column and gazing idly at the stars, he kept caroling softly to himself with that indifference to ceremony for which he always found allowance, and which in him had a sort of pleading grace. At last, springing up: "I want to strike out, hard!" he exclaimed. "I want to do something violent, to let off steam!" ”

“ I can't think of her as happy."
"I don't pity her!" said Roderick. Then he relapsed into silence, and the two sat watching the colossal figure as it made its way downward along the jagged silhouette of the rocks. "Who is this mighty man," cried Roderick at last, "and what is he coming down upon us for? We are small people here, and we can't undertake to keep company with giants."
"Wait till we meet him on our own level," said Rowland, "and perhaps he will not overtop us."
"For ten minutes, at least," Roderick rejoined, "he will have been a great man!" ”

“ Roderick cried. "What am I to do now?" he went on. "I have n't an idea. I think of subjects, but they remain mere lifeless names. They are mere words—they are not images. What am I to do?"
Rowland was a trifle annoyed. "Be a man," he was on the point of saying, "and don't, for heaven's sake, talk in that confoundedly querulous voice." But before he had uttered the words, there rang through the studio a loud, peremptory ring at the outer door.
Roderick broke into a laugh. "Talk of the devil," he said, "and you see his horns! If that 's not a customer, it ought to be." ”

“ Rowland informed Roderick, the next day, that he had told Miss Light of his engagement. "I don't know whether you 'll thank me," he had said, "but it 's my duty to let you know it. Miss Light perhaps has already done so."
Roderick looked at him a moment, intently, with his color slowly rising. "Why should n't I thank you?" he asked. "I am not ashamed of my engagement."
"As you had not spoken of it yourself, I thought you might have a reason for not having it known."
"A man does n't gossip about such a matter with strangers," Roderick rejoined, with the ring of irritation in his voice. ”

“ That 's the question!"
"I don't pretend to say; the future 's a dead blank. But without you it 's not a blank—it 's certain damnation!"
"Mercy, mercy, mercy!" murmured Mrs. Hudson. Rowland made an effort to turn to account this precious symptom of a positive wish. "If I go with you, will you try to work?"
Roderick had up to this moment been looking as unperturbed as if the deep agitation of the day before were a thing of the remote past. But at these words his face changed formidably; he flushed and scowled, and all his passion returned. "Try to work!" he cried. "Try—try! work—work! ”

“ Roderick was young, impulsive, unpracticed in stoicism; it was a hundred to one that he was to pay the usual vulgar tribute to folly. But his friend had regarded it as securely gained to his own belief in virtue that he was not as other foolish youths are, and that he would have been capable of looking at folly in the face and passing on his way. Rowland for a while felt a sore sense of wrath. What right had a man who was engaged to that fine girl in Northampton to behave as if his consciousness were a common blank, to be overlaid with coarse sensations? ”

“ Everything is beautiful; everything is insolent, defiant, atrocious with beauty. Nothing is ugly but me—me and my poor dead brain!"
"Oh, my dearest son," pleaded poor Mrs. Hudson, "don't you feel any better?"
Roderick made no immediate answer; but at last he spoke in a different voice. "I came expressly to tell you that you need n't trouble yourselves any longer to wait for something to turn up. Nothing will turn up! It 's all over! I said when I came here I would give it a chance. I have given it a chance. Have n't I, eh? Have n't I, Rowland? It 's no use; the thing 's a failure! ”

“ Roderick said frankly that Switzerland made him less miserable than Italy, and the Alps seemed less to mock at his enforced leisure than the Apennines. He indulged in long rambles, generally alone, and was very fond of climbing into dizzy places, where no sound could overtake him, and there, flinging himself on the never-trodden moss, of pulling his hat over his eyes and lounging away the hours in perfect immobility. Rowland sometimes walked with him; though Roderick never invited him, he seemed duly grateful for his society. ”

“ The manner of his advent had visibly not been happy; Mrs. Hudson had seated herself near him in mute appeal, while Mary was sunk, up to her firm chin, in one of her eternal pretexts for the fine needle and the occupied attention.
Mrs. Hudson, however, instantly broke out to Rowland. "Oh, we have such comfortable news! Roderick 's now ready to leave Rome."
"It is n't decent to be too glad," said Roderick. "There is n't a harm this place can do us, or has done us, that has n't had something in it we shall ache for again in some better one." ”

“ The most that one could do, however, was to wait grimly and doggedly, suppressing an imprecation as, from time to time, one looked at one's watch. An attitude of positive urbanity toward life was not to be expected; it was doing one's duty to hold one's tongue and keep one's hands off one's own windpipe, and other people's. Roderick had long silences, fits of profound lethargy, almost of stupefaction. He used to sit in the garden by the hour, with his head thrown back, his legs outstretched, his hands in his pockets, and his eyes fastened upon the blinding summer sky. ”

“ Roderick had changed his sky, but he had not changed his mind; his humor was still that of which he had given Rowland a glimpse in that tragic explosion on the Lake of Como. He kept his despair to himself, and he went doggedly about the ordinary business of life; but it was easy to see that his spirit was mortally heavy, and that he lived and moved and talked simply from the force of habit. In that sad half-hour among the Italian olives there had been such a fierce sincerity in his tone, that Rowland began to abdicate the critical attitude. ”