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 Water-drinker. Roderick took no offense, and three minutes afterwards was talking volubly of some humbler theme, but half heeded by his companion, who had returned to his cogitations. At last Rowland delivered himself of the upshot of these. How would you like, he suddenly demanded, to go to Rome?
Hudson stared, and, with a hungry laugh which speedily consigned our National Individuality to perdition, responded that he would like it reasonably well. 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 is a golden statue of Brahma twenty feet tall.
Nay, said Rowland soberly, if you were to go to Rome, you should settle down and work. Athens might help you, but for the present I should nt recommend Benares.
It will be time to arrange details when I pack my trunk, said Hudson.
If you mean to turn sculptor, the sooner you pack your trunk the better.
Oh, but I m a practical man! What is the smallest sum per annum, on which one can keep alive the sacred fire in Rome?
What is the largest sum at your disposal?
Roderick stroked his light moustache, gave it a twist, and then announced with mock pomposity: Three hundred dollars!
The money question could be arranged, said Rowland. There are ways of raising money.
I should like to know a few! I never yet discovered one.
One consists, said Rowland, in having a friend with a good deal more than he wants, and not being too proud to accept a part of it.
Roderick stared a moment and his face flushed. Do you meando you mean?.... he stammered. He was greatly excited.
Rowland got up, blushing a little, and Roderick sprang to his feet. In three words, if you are to be a sculptor, you ought to go to Rome and study the antique. To go to Rome you need money. I m fond of fine statues, but unfortunately I cant make them myself. I have to order them. 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 wiped his forehead, still gazing at his companion. You believe in me! he cried at last.
Allow me to explain, said Rowland. I believe in you, if you are prepared to work and to wait, and to struggle, and to exercise a great many virtues. And then, I m afraid to say it, lest I should disturb you more than I should help you. You must decide for yourself. I simply offer you an opportunity.
Hudson stood for some time, profoundly meditative. You have not seen my other things, he said suddenly. Come and look at them.
Now?
Yes, we ll walk home. We ll settle the question.
He passed his hand through Rowlands 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 companions arm trembling 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 bordered with high box hedges. 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. Rodericks 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, in moments of aesthetic 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 quickened curiosity. 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 deceased brother; the last represented a gentleman with a pointed nose, a long, shaved upper lip, and a tuft on the end of his chin. This was a face peculiarly unadapted to sculpture; but as a piece of modeling it was the best, and it was admirable. It reminded Rowland in its homely veracity, its artless artfulness, of the works of the early Italian Renaissance. On the pedestal was cut the nameBarnaby Striker, Esq. Rowland remembered that this was the appellation of the legal luminary from whom his companion had undertaken to borrow a reflected ray, and although in the bust there was naught flagrantly set down in malice, it betrayed, comically to one who could relish the secret, that the features of the original had often been scanned with an irritated eye. Besides these there were 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 modeled design for a sepulchral monument; that, evidently, of Stephen Hudson. The young soldier lay sleeping eternally, with his hand on his sword, like an old crusader in a Gothic cathedral.
Rowland made no haste to pronounce; too much depended on his judgment. Upon my word, cried Hudson at last, they seem to me very good.
And in truth, as Rowland looked, he saw they were good. They were youthful, awkward, and ignorant; the effort, often, was more apparent than the success. But the effort was signally powerful and intelligent; it seemed to Rowland that it needed only to let itself go to compass great things. Here and there, too, success, when grasped, had something masterly. Rowland turned to his companion, who stood with his hands in his pockets and his hair very much crumpled, looking at him askance. The light of admiration was in Rowlands eyes, and it speedily kindled a wonderful illumination on Hudsons handsome brow. Rowland said at last, gravely, You have only to work!
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. Workwork? 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 vivid physiognomy of Mr. Barnaby Striker. His smile vanished, and he stared at it with an air of concentrated enmity. I want to begin, he cried, and I cant make a better beginning than this! Good-by, Mr. Striker! He strode across the room, seized a mallet that lay at hand, and before Rowland could interfere, in the interest of art if not of morals, dealt a merciless blow upon Mr. Strikers 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 companions look in working it, but as he was about to express his displeasure the door opened and gave passage to a young girl. She came in with a rapid step and startled face, as if she had been summoned by the noise. Seeing the heap of shattered clay and the mallet in Rodericks hand, she gave a cry of horror. Her voice died away when she perceived that Rowland was a stranger, but she murmured reproachfully, Why, Roderick, what have you done?
Roderick gave a joyous kick to the shapeless fragments. I ve driven the money-changers out of the temple! he cried.
The traces retained shape enough to be recognized, and she gave a little moan of pity. She seemed not to understand the young mans allegory, but yet to feel that it pointed to some great purpose, which must be an evil one, from being expressed in such a lawless fashion, and to perceive that Rowland was in some way accountable for it. She looked at him with a sharp, frank mistrust, and turned away through the open door. Rowland looked after her with extraordinary interest.
CHAPTER II. Roderick
Early on the morrow Rowland received a visit from his new friend. Roderick was in a state of extreme exhilaration, tempered, however, by a certain amount of righteous wrath. He had had a domestic struggle, but he had remained master of the situation. He had shaken the dust of Mr. Strikers office from his feet.
I had it out last night with my mother, he said. I dreaded the scene, for she takes things terribly hard. She does nt scold nor storm, and she does nt argue nor insist. She sits with her eyes full of tears that never fall, and looks at me, when I displease her, as if I were a perfect monster of depravity. And the trouble is that I was born to displease her. She does nt trust me; she never has and she never will. I dont know what I have done to set her against me, but ever since I can remember I have been looked at with tears. The trouble is, he went on, giving a twist to his moustache, I ve been too absurdly docile. I ve been sprawling all my days by the maternal fireside, and my dear mother has grown used to bullying me. I ve made myself cheap! If I m not in my bed by eleven oclock, the girl is sent out to explore with a lantern. When I think of it, I fairly despise my amiability. It s rather a hard fate, to live like a saint and to pass for a sinner! I should like for six months to lead Mrs. Hudson the life some fellows lead their mothers!
Allow me to believe, said Rowland, that you would like nothing of the sort. If you have been a good boy, dont spoil it by pretending you dont like it. You have been very happy, I suspect, in spite of your virtues, and there are worse fates in the world than being loved too well. I have not had the pleasure of seeing your mother, but I would lay you a wager that that is the trouble. She is passionately fond of you, and her hopes, like all intense hopes, keep trembling into fears. Rowland, as he spoke, had an instinctive vision of how such a beautiful young fellow must be loved by his female relatives.
Roderick frowned, and with an impatient gesture, I do her justice, he cried. May she never do me less! Then after a moments 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 is not. When we were both young together I was the curled darling. I had the silver mug and the biggest piece of pudding, and I stayed in-doors to be kissed by the ladies while he made mud-pies in the garden and was never missed, of course. Really, he was worth fifty of me! When he was brought home from Vicksburg with a piece of shell in his skull, my poor mother began to think she had nt loved him enough. I remember, as she hung round my neck sobbing, before his coffin, she told me that I must be to her everything that he would have been. I swore in tears and in perfect good faith that I would, but naturally I have not kept my promise. I have been utterly different. I have been idle, restless, egotistical, discontented. I have done no harm, I believe, but I have done no good. My brother, if he had lived, would have made fifty thousand dollars and put gas and water into the house. My mother, brooding night and day on her bereavement, has come to fix her ideal in offices of that sort. Judged by that standard I m nowhere!
Rowland was at loss how to receive this account of his friends domestic circumstances; it was plaintive, and yet the manner seemed to him over-trenchant. You must lose no time in making a masterpiece, he answered; then with the proceeds you can give her gas from golden burners.
So I have told her; but she only half believes either in masterpiece or in proceeds. She can see no good in my making statues; they seem to her a snare of the enemy. She would fain see me all my life tethered to the law, like a browsing goat to a stake. In that way I m in sight. It s a more regular occupation! that s all I can get out of her. A more regular damnation! Is it a fact that artists, in general, are such wicked men? I never had the pleasure of knowing one, so I could nt confute her with an example. She had the advantage of me, because she formerly knew a portrait-painter at Richmond, who did her miniature in black lace mittens (you may see it on the parlor table), who used to drink raw brandy and beat his wife. I promised her that, whatever I might do to my wife, I would never beat my mother, and that as for brandy, raw or diluted, I detested it. She sat silently crying for an hour, during which I expended treasures of eloquence. It s a good thing to have to reckon up ones intentions, and I assure you, as I pleaded my cause, I was most agreeably impressed with the elevated character of my own. I kissed her solemnly at last, and told her that I had said everything and that she must make the best of it. This morning she has dried her eyes, but I warrant you it is nt a cheerful house. I long to be out of it!
I m extremely sorry, said Rowland, to have been the prime cause of so much suffering. I owe your mother some amends; will it be possible for me to see her?
If you ll see her, it will smooth matters vastly; though to tell the truth she ll need all her courage to face you, for she considers you an agent of the foul fiend. She does nt see why you should have come here and set me by the ears: you are made to ruin ingenuous youths and desolate doting mothers. I leave it to you, personally, to answer these charges. You see, what she cant forgivewhat she ll not really ever forgiveis your taking me off to Rome. Rome is an evil word, in my mothers vocabulary, to be said in a whisper, as you d say damnation. Northampton is in the centre of the earth and Rome far away in outlying dusk, into which it can do no Christian any good to penetrate. And there was I but yesterday a doomed habitue of that repository of every virtue, Mr. Strikers office!
And does Mr. Striker know of your decision? asked Rowland.
To a certainty! Mr. Striker, you must know, is not simply a good-natured attorney, who lets me dogs-ear his law-books. Hes a particular friend and general adviser. He looks after my mothers property and kindly consents to regard me as part of it. Our opinions have always been painfully divergent, but I freely forgive him his zealous attempts to unscrew my head-piece and set it on hind part before. He never understood me, and it was useless to try to make him. We speak a different languagewe re made of a different clay. I had a fit of rage yesterday when I smashed his bust, at the thought of all the bad blood he had stirred up in me; it did me good, and it s all over now. I dont hate him any more; I m rather sorry for him. See how you ve improved me! I must have seemed to him wilfully, wickedly stupid, and I m sure he only tolerated me on account of his great regard for my mother. This morning I grasped the bull by the horns. I took an armful of law-books that have been gathering the dust in my room for the last year and a half, and presented myself at the office. Allow me to put these back in their places, I said. I shall never have need for them morenever more, never more, never more! So you ve learned everything they contain? asked Striker, leering over his spectacles. Better late than never. I ve learned nothing that you can teach me, I cried. But I shall tax your patience no longer. I m going to be a sculptor. I m going to Rome. I wont bid you good-by just yet; I shall see you again. But I bid good-by here, with rapture, to these four detested wallsto this living tomb! I did nt know till now how I hated it! My compliments to Mr. Spooner, and my thanks for all you have not made of me!