Roderick Hudson (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907)/Chapter 2
II
In the evening, as he was smoking his cigar on the verandah, a light quick step pressed the gravel of the garden-path, and in a moment a young man, rising before them, had made his bow to Cecilia. It indicated either that he was an extreme intimate or was scantly versed in the common social forms. Cecilia, who was sitting near the steps, pointed to a neighbouring chair, but her visitor abruptly sought a place on a step at her feet and began to fan himself vigorously with his hat, breaking out into loud dispraise of the high temperature. "I 'm simply dripping wet!" he observed without ceremony.
"You walk too fast," said Cecilia. "You do every thing too fast."
"I know it, I know it!" he cried, passing his hand through his abundant dark hair and making it stand out in a picturesque shock. "I can't dawdle over things if I try. If I do anything at all I must do it so. There 's something inside of me that drives me. A demon of unrest!"
Cecilia gave a light laugh, and Rowland leaned forward in his hammock. He had placed himself in it at Bessie's request and was playing that he was her baby and that she was rocking him to sleep. She sat beside him swinging the hammock to and fro and chanting a lullaby. When he raised himself she pushed him back and said that the baby must finish its nap. "But I want to see the gentleman with the driving demon," said Rowland.
"Do demons know how to drive?" Bessie demanded. "It 's only old Mr. Hudson."
"Very well, I want to see old Mr. Hudson."
"Oh, never mind him!" said Bessie, with the brevity of contempt.
"You speak as if you didn't like him."
"I don't!" Bessie affirmed, putting Rowland to bed again. The hammock was swung at the end of the verandah, in the thickest shade of the climbing plants, and this fragment of dialogue had passed unnoticed. Rowland submitted a while longer to be cradled and contented himself with listening to Mr. Hudson's voice. It was a soft and not altogether masculine organ, and pitched on this occasion in a somewhat plaintive and pettish key. The young man's mood seemed fretful; he complained of the gnats, of the dust, of a shoe that hurt him, of having gone on an errand a mile to the other side of the town and found that the person he was in search of had left Northampton an hour before.
"Won't you have a cup of tea?" Cecilia asked.
"Perhaps that will restore your equanimity."
"Ay, by keeping me awake all night!" said Mr. Hudson. "At the best, to go down to the office is like getting into a bath with the water frozen. With my nerves set on edge by a sleepless night I should sit and shiver at home. That 's always charming for my mother."
"Your mother's well, I hope?"
"Oh, mother 's as usual."
"And Miss Garland?"
"Miss Garland's as usual too. Every one, every thing 's as usual. Nothing ever happens in this benighted town."
"I beg your pardon; things do happen some times," said Cecilia. "Here 's a dear cousin of mine arrived on purpose to sing to you the praises of your little bronze." And she called to Rowland to come and be introduced to Mr. Hudson. The young man sprang up with alacrity, and Rowland, coming forward to shake hands, had a good look at him in the light projected from the parlour window. Something seemed to shine out of Hudson's face as a warning against random compliments.
"Your statuette seems to me very interesting," Rowland gravely said. "It has given me immense pleasure."
"And my cousin really knows what things are worth," Cecilia went on. "My cousin 's a judge and a critic."
Hudson smiled and stared. "A judge—a critic?" he echoed, laughing. "He 's the first then I 've ever seen! Let me see what they look like;" and he drew Rowland nearer to the light. "Have they all such good heads as that? I should like to model yours."
"Oh do it!" said Cecilia. "It will keep him with us a while. He 's running off otherwise to Europe."
"Ah, off to Europe!" Hudson exclaimed with a melancholy cadence as they sat down. "Happy, happy man!"
But the note seemed to Rowland struck rather at random, for he failed to catch it again in the boyish candour of the visitor's talk. Hudson was a tall slim youth, with a singularly mobile and intelligent face. Rowland was struck at first only with its responsive vivacity, but it had presently affected him as full of a beauty of its own. The features were admirably chiselled and finished, and a frank smile played over them as gracefully as a breeze among flowers. The fault of the young man's whole structure was an excessive want of breadth. The forehead, though high and brave, was narrow; the jaw and the shoulders were narrow, and the result was an air of insufficient physical substance. But Mallet afterwards learned that this fair and slender stripling could draw upon a fund of nervous force outlasting and outwearying the endurance of sturdier temperaments. And certainly there was life enough in his eye to furnish an immortality. It was a generous dark grey eye, subject to an intermittent kindling glow which would have made a ruder visage striking, and which gave at times to Hudson's harmonious face an altogether extraordinary beauty. There was to Rowland's sympathetic sense a slightly pitiful disparity between the young sculptor's distinguished mask and the shabby gentility of his costume. Arrayed for a rural visit, a visit to a pretty woman, he was clad from head to foot in a white linen suit which had never been remarkable for the felicity of its cut and which had now quite lost its vivifying and redeeming crispness. He wore a bright red cravat, passed through a ring altogether too splendid to be valuable; he pulled and twisted, as he sat, a pair of yellow kid gloves; he emphasised his conversation with great dashes and flourishes of a silver-tipped walking-stick, and he kept constantly taking off and putting on one of those slouched sombreros which are the traditional property of the Virginian or Carolinian of romance. When his hat was on he was almost romantic, in spite of his mock elegance; and when it was off and he sat nursing it and turning it about and not knowing what to do with it, he could hardly be said to be awkward. He evidently had a native relish for rich accessories, and he appropriated what came to his hand. This was visible in his talk, which abounded in the superlative and the sweeping. His plastic sense took in conversation altogether the turn of colour.
Rowland, who was a temperate talker, sat by in silence, while Cecilia, who had told him that she desired his opinion upon her friend, used a good deal of characteristic art in leading the young man on to put himself before them. She perfectly succeeded, and Hudson rattled away for an hour with a volubility in which the innocence of youth and the assurance of felt and unwonted success were singularly blended. He gave his opinion on twenty topics, he opened up the crystal flood of local gossip, he described his repulsive routine at the office of Messrs. Striker and Spooner, counsellors-at-law, and he gave with a hundred happy touches an account of the annual boat-race between Harvard and Yale, which he had lately admired at Worcester. He had looked at the straining oarsmen and the swaying crowd and the whole great shining summer scene with the eye of the artist and of the lover of displayed life. For Rowland meanwhile the time passed well; Cecilia's visitor held his attention fast. Whenever Hudson surpassed himself in confidence or in magniloquence his hostess broke into a long, light, ambiguous laugh.
"Do you find me more of a fool than usual?" the young man then demanded. "Have I said any thing so ridiculous?"
"Go on, go on," Cecilia replied. "You 're but too much your wondrous self. Show Mr. Mallet how Mr. Striker read the Declaration of Independence on the 4th of July."
Hudson, like many men with a turn for the plastic arts, was an excellent mimic, and he represented with equal truth and drollery the accent and attitude of a pompous country lawyer sustaining the burden of this heavy honour of our national festival. The sonorous twang, the seesaw gestures, the patriotic pronunciation were vividly reproduced. But Cecilia's manner and the young man's quick response ruffled a little poor Rowland's responsible mind. He wondered if his cousin were not sacrificing the faculty of reverence in her bright beneficiary to her need for amusement. Hudson made no serious rejoinder to Rowland's compliment on his statuette until he rose to go. Rowland judged he would have forgotten it, and supposed the oversight to be a sign of the indifference of conscious power. But Hudson stood a moment before he said good-night, twirled his sombrero and hesitated for the first time. He gave Rowland a clear, penetrating glance, and then with a wonderfully frank, appealing smile, "You absolutely meant," he asked, "what you said a while ago about that thing of mine? It 's good—essentially good?"
"I really meant it," said Rowland, laying a kindly hand on his shoulder. "It 's very good indeed. It 's as you say, essentially good. That 's just the beauty and the interest of it."
Hudson's eyes glowed and expanded; he looked for some time in silence at this strange utterer of sweet sounds. "I have a notion you really know," he said at last. "But if you don't, you see, it does n't much matter."
"My cousin asked me to-day," said Cecilia, "if I supposed you knew yourself how good it is."
Hudson stared, flushing a little. "Perhaps not, then!"
"That may very well be," said Rowland. "I read in a book the other day that great talent in action—in fact the book said genius—is a kind of safe somnambulism. The artist performs great feats in a lucky dream. We must n't wake him up lest he should lose his balance."
"Oh, when he's back in bed again!" Hudson answered with a laugh. "Yes, call it a lucky dream. It was a very happy one."
"Tell me this," said Rowland. "Did you mean anything very particular by your young Waterdrinker? Does he represent an idea? Is he a pointed symbol?"
Hudson raised his eyebrows and gently stroked his hair. "Why, he's youth, you know; he's inno cence, he's health, he's strength, he 's curiosity. Yes, he's a lot of grand things."
"And is the cup also a symbol?"
"The cup is knowledge, pleasure, experience. Anything of that kind."
"Then he 's drinking very deep," said Rowland. Hudson gave an approving nod. "Well, poor wretch, you would n't have him die of thirst, would you?" But without awaiting a reply he called good night from the garden-path and lost himself in the darkness.
"Well, what do you make of him?" asked Cecilia, returning a short time afterwards from a visit of investigation in respect to the number of Bessie's blankets. Rowland replied after a little by a question of his own. "Isn't he a case of what 's called the artistic temperament? That 's interesting to see, for the 'likes' of us."
"Speak for your own temperament! But he's a very odd creature," Cecilia conceded.
"Who are his people? what has been his education?" Rowland asked.
"He has had no education beyond what he has picked up with little trouble for himself. His mother is a widow, of a Massachusetts country family, a little timid, tremulous woman, always troubled, always on pins and needles about her son. She had some property herself and married a Virginia gentleman—an owner of lands and slaves. He turned out, I believe, quite a dreadful sort of person and made great havoc with the resources, whatever they were, that she always speaks of as their fortune. Every thing, or almost everything, melted away, including Mr. Hudson himself. This is literally true, for he drank himself to death. Ten years ago his wife was left a widow, with scanty means and a couple of growing boys. She paid her husband's debts as best she could and came to establish herself here, where, by the death of a charitable relative, she had inherited an old-fashioned ruinous house. Roderick, our friend, was her pride and joy; but Stephen, the elder, was her comfort and support. I remember him later; he was a plain-faced, sturdy, practical lad, very different from his brother and in his way, I imagine, the making of a useful man. When the war broke out he found the New England blood running thicker in his veins than the Virginian, and immediately obtained a commission. He fell in some small hole-and-corner engagement, leaving his mother inconsolable. Roderick, however, has given her plenty to think about, and she has induced him by some mysterious art to take up a profession that he abhors and for which he is about as fit as I am to drive a locomotive. He grew up à la grâce de Dieu; he had no guidance—he could bear no control; he could only be horribly spoiled. Three or four years ago he broke off his connexion with a small college in this part of the state, where, I 'm afraid, he had given a good deal more attention to novels and billiards than to mathematics and Greek. Since then he has been reading law at the rate of a page a day. If he 's ever admitted to practice I 'm afraid all my friendship will scarce avail to make me give him my business. Good, bad or indifferent, the boy's, as you say, an artist—an artist to his fingers' ends."
"Why then," asked Rowland, "does n't he go right in for what he can do?"
"For several reasons. In the first place I don't think he more than half suspects his ability. The flame smoulders, but it 's never fanned by the breath of criticism. He sees nothing, hears nothing, to help him to self-knowledge. He 's hopelessly discontented, but he does n't know where to look for help. Then his mother, as she one day confessed to me, has a holy horror of a profession which consists exclusively, as she supposes, in making figures of people divested of all clothing. Sculpture, to her mind, is an insidious form of immorality, and for a young man of possibly loose leanings she considers the law a much safer training. Her father was, by her account, an eminent judge, she has two brothers at the bar, and her elder son had made a very promising beginning in the same line. She wishes the tradition to be kept up. I 'm pretty sure the law won't make Roderick's fortune, and I 'm afraid it will spoil his temper."
"What sort of a temper do you call it?"
"Oh, one to be trusted on the whole. It 's subject, like our New England summer, to sudden changes—which yet don't prevent our having a summer, and a magnificent one. I have known it to breathe flame and fury at ten o'clock in the evening, and soft, sweet music early on the morrow. It 's a very entertaining temper to observe. Fortunately I can observe it dispassionately, for I'm the only person in the place he has not quarrelled with."
"Has he then no companionship? Who's the Miss Garland you asked about?"
"A young woman staying with his mother, a sort of far-away cousin; a good, plain, honest girl, but not a person to represent sport for the artistic temperament or to minister to the joy of life. Roderick has a good share of the old Southern arrogance; he has the aristocratic temperament. He 'll have nothing to do with the small townspeople; he says they 're 'ignoble.' He can't endure his mother's friends—the old ladies and the ministers and the tea-party people; they bore him to death. So he comes and lounges here and rails at every thing and every one."
This youthful scoffer reappeared a couple of evenings later and confirmed the friendly feeling he had excited on Rowland's part. He was in an easier mood than before, he chattered less extravagantly and asked Rowland a number of rather primitive questions about the condition of the fine arts in New York and Boston. Cecilia, when he had gone, said that this had been the grateful effect of Rowland's eulogy of his work. Roderick was acutely sensitive, and Rowland's intelligent praise had steadied him: he had heard absolutely for the first time in his life the voice of taste and of authority. Rowland recognised afresh, recognised them as irresistible things, his personal charm and his presumable gift. He had an indefinable attraction—the something tender and divine of unspotted, exuberant, confident youth. The next day was Sunday, and Rowland proposed that they should take a long walk and that Roderick should show him the country. The young man assented gleefully, and in the morning, as Rowland, at the garden gate, was giving his hostess God-speed on her way to church, he came striding along the grassy margin of the road and out-whistling the music of the church-bells. It was one of those lovely days of the last of August when summer seems to balance in the scale with autumn. "Remember the day and take care you rob no orchards," said Cecilia as they separated.
The young men walked away at a steady pace, over hill and dale, through woods and fields, and at last found themselves on a grassy elevation studded with mossy rocks and red cedars. Just beneath them, in a great shining curve, flowed the generous Connecticut. They flung themselves on the grass and tossed stones into the river; they talked, they fell into intimacy, like old friends. Rowland lit a cigar and Roderick refused one with a grimace of extravagant disgust. He thought them vile things; he did n't see how decent people could tolerate them. Rowland was amused—he wondered what it was that made this ill-mannered speech seem perfectly inoffensive on his companion's lips. He belonged to the race of mortals, to be pitied or envied according as we view the matter, who are not held to a strict account for their aggressions. Looking at him as he lay stretched in the shade, Rowland vaguely likened him to some beautiful, supple, restless, bright-eyed animal, whose motions should have no deeper warrant than the tremulous delicacy of its structure and seem graceful to many persons even when they should be least convenient. Rowland watched the shadows on Mount Holyoke, listened to the gurgle of the river and sniffed the balsam of the pines. A gentle breeze had begun to tickle their summits and brought the smell of the mown grass across from the elm-dotted river-meadows. He sat up beside his companion and looked away at the far-spreading view, which affected him as melting for them both into such vast continuities and possibilities of possession. It touched him to the heart; suddenly a strange feeling of prospective regret took possession of him. Something seemed to tell him that later, in a foreign land, he should be haunted by it, should remember it all with longing and regret.
"It 's a wretched business," he said, "this virtual quarrel of ours with our own country, this everlasting impatience that so many of us feel to get out of it. Can there be no battle then, and is one's only safety in flight? This is an American day, an American landscape, an American atmosphere. It certainly has its merits, and some day when I 'm shivering with ague in classic Italy I shall accuse myself of having slighted them."
Roderick rose on still lighter wings to this genial flight, declaring that America was quite good enough for him, and that he had always thought it the duty of an honest citizen to stand by his own country and help it on. He had evidently thought nothing whatever about it—he was launching his doctrine on the inspiration of the moment. The doctrine expanded with the occasion, and he declared that he was above all an advocate for American art. He did n't see why we should n't produce the greatest works in the world. We were the biggest people, and we ought to have the biggest conceptions. The biggest conceptions, of course, would bring forth in time the biggest performances. We had only to be true to ourselves, to pitch in and not be afraid, to fling Imitation overboard and fix our eyes upon our National Individuality. "I declare," he cried, "there's a career for a man, and I have twenty minds to embrace it on the spot—to be the typical, original, aboriginal American artist! It 's inspiring!"
Rowland burst out laughing and told him that he liked his practice better than his theory and that a saner impulse than this had inspired his little Waterdrinker. Roderick took no offence and three minutes afterwards was talking volubly of some humbler theme—only half heeded by his friend, who had returned to cogitation. At last Rowland delivered himself of the upshot of his thought.
"How should you like," he suddenly demanded, "to go to Rome?"
Hudson stared, and with an emphasis which speedily consigned our National Individuality to perdition, responded that he should like it first-rate. "And I should like, by the same token," he added, "to go to Athens, to Constantinople, to Damascus, to the holy city of Benares, where there 's a golden statue of Brahma twenty feet tall."
"No," said Rowland with a certain literalness, "if you were to go to Rome you would have to settle down and work. Athens might help you, but for the present I should n't recommend Benares."
"It will be time to arrange details when I begin to pack my trunk," Hudson remarked.
"If you mean to turn sculptor the sooner you pack your trunk the better."
"Oh, but I 'm a practical man! What 's the small est sum per annum on which one can keep alive the sacred fire?"
"What 's the largest sum at your disposal?" Rowland returned.
Roderick stroked his light moustache, gave it a twist, and then announced, as with due importance, "Three hundred dollars."
"The money question could be arranged," said Rowland. "There are ways, you know, of raising money."
"'Know?' How should I know? I never yet discovered one."
"One of them consists," said Rowland, "in having a friend with a good deal more than he wants and in not being too proud to accept a part of it."
Roderick stared a moment and his face flushed. "Do you mean—do you mean—?" He stammered, he panted; he was greatly excited.
Rowland got up, blushing a little, and Roderick sprang to his feet. "In three words, if it 's in you really to go in for sculpture, you ought to get to Rome and study the antique. To get to Rome you need money. I 'm fond of fine statues and busts, but unfortunately I can't make them myself. I have to order them from those who know how. I order a dozen from you, to be executed at your convenience. To help you I pay you in advance."
Roderick pushed off his hat and pressed his forehead, still gazing at his companion. "Upon my soul, you believe in me!" he cried at last.
"Allow me to explain," said Rowland. "I believe in you if you 're prepared to work and to wait and to struggle and to exercise a great many virtues. And then I 'm afraid to say it, to force it upon you, lest I should disturb you more than I should help you. You must decide for yourself. I simply offer you an opportunity."
Hudson, with his face intensely lighted, stood for some time profoundly meditative. "You 've not seen my other things," he said suddenly. "Come and look at them."
"Now?"
"Yes, now. We'll walk home. We'll settle the question."
He passed his hand through Rowland's arm and they retraced their steps. They reached the town and made their way along a broad country street, dusky with the shade of magnificent elms. Rowland felt his companion's arm tremble in his own. They stopped at a large white house flanked with melancholy hemlocks, and passed through a little front garden paved with moss-coated bricks, and ornamented with parterres enclosed in ragged box edges. The mansion had an air of antiquated dignity, but it had seen its best days and evidently sheltered a shrunken household. Mrs. Hudson, Rowland was sure, might be seen in the garden of a morning, in a white apron and a pair of old gloves, engaged in frugal horticulture. Roderick's studio was behind, in the basement; a large empty room with the paper peeling off the walls. This represented, in the fashion of fifty years ago, a series of small fantastic landscapes of a hideous pattern, and the young sculptor had presumably torn it away in great scraps at moments of æsthetic exasperation. On a board in a corner was a heap of clay, and on the floor, against the wall, stood some dozen medallions, busts and figures in various stages of completion. To exhibit them Roderick had to place them one by one on the end of a long packing-box which served as a pedestal. He did so silently, making no explanations and looking at them himself with a strange air of refreshed credulity. Most of the things were portraits, and the three at which he looked longest were finished busts. One was a colossal head of a negro, tossed back, defiant, with distended nostrils; one was the portrait of a young man whom Rowland immediately perceived by the resemblance to be his lost brother; the last represented a gentleman with a pointed nose, a long close-shaven upper lip and a tuft on the end of his chin. This was a face peculiarly unadapted to sculpture; but as a piece of modelling it was the best, and it was admirable. It reminded Rowland, in its homely veracity, its quaint closeness, of the works of the early Italian Renaissance. On the pedestal was cut the name—Barnaby Striker Esq. Rowland recognised in these characters the legal luminary from whom his companion had undertaken to borrow the vital heat, and though the irony of portraiture was not gross it betrayed comically to one who could relish the secret that the features of the original had often been at the mercy of an exasperated eye. Beside these appeared several rough studies of the nude and two or three figures of a fanciful kind. The most noticeable (and it had singular beauty) was a small modelled design for a sepulchral monument, that evidently of Stephen Hudson. The young soldier lay sleeping eternally with his hand on his sword, the image of one of the crusaders Roderick had dreamed of in one of the cathedrals he had never seen. Rowland made no haste to pronounce; too much depended on his judgement. "Upon my word," cried his friend at last, "they seem to me, you know, very decent, not too helpless!"
And in truth as Rowland looked he saw they were strong. They were youthful, awkward, ignorant; the effort often was more apparent than the success. But the effort was signally powerful and intelligent; it seemed to Rowland that with its aim clearer it might easily hit the highest mark. Here and there indeed the mark had already been hit with a masterly ring. Rowland turned to Hudson, who stood with his hands in his pockets and his hair very much crumpled, looking at him askance. The light of admiration was in Rowland's eyes, and it caused the young man's handsome watching face to shine out in response. Rowland said at last simply: "You 've only to work hard."
"I think I know what that means," Roderick answered. He turned away, threw himself on a rickety chair and sat for some moments with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. "Work—work?" he said at last, looking up. "Ah, if I could only begin!" He glanced round the room a moment, and his eye encountered on the mantel-shelf the inimitable presence of Mr. Barnaby Striker. His smile vanished—he stared at it with an air of concentrated enmity. "I want to begin," he cried, "and I can't make a better beginning than this! Good-bye, Mr. Barnaby Striker!" He strode across the room, seized a hammer that lay at hand, and before Rowland could interfere, in the interest of art if not of morals, dealt a merciless blow upon Mr. Striker's skull. The bust cracked into a dozen pieces, which toppled with a great crash upon the floor. Rowland relished neither the destruction of the image nor his companion's expression in working it, but as he was about to express his displeasure the door opened and gave passage to a fresh-looking girl. She came in with a rapid step and startled face, as if she had been alarmed by the noise. Meeting the heap of shattered clay and the hammer in Roderick's hand, she gave a cry of horror. Her voice died away as she saw Rowland was a stranger, but she had sounded her reproach. "Why, Roderick, what on earth have you done?"
Roderick gave a joyous kick to the shapeless fragments. "I've driven the money-changers out of the temple!"
The traces retained shape enough to be recognised, and she gave a little moan of pity. She seemed not to understand the young man's allegory, but none the less to feel that it pointed to some great purpose, which must yet be an evil one from its being expressed in such a lawless fashion, and to perceive that Rowland was in some way accountable for it. She looked at him with prompt disapproval and turned away through the open door. Rowland looked after her with immediate interest.