"It 's deucedly pretty," he said at last."But, my dear young friend, you can't keep this up.""I shall do better," said Roderick.
"You will do worse! You will become weak.You will have to take to violence, to contortions, to romanticism, in self-defense.This sort of thing is like a man trying to lift himself up by the seat of his trousers.He may stand on tiptoe, but he can't do more.
Here you stand on tiptoe, very gracefully, I admit; but you can't fly;there 's no use trying."
"My 'America' shall answer you!" said Roderick, shaking toward him a tall glass of champagne and drinking it down.
Singleton had taken the photograph and was poring over it with a little murmur of delight.
"Was this done in America?" he asked.
"In a square white wooden house at Northampton, Massachusetts,"Roderick answered.
"Dear old white wooden houses!" said Miss Blanchard.
"If you could do as well as this there," said Singleton, blushing and smiling, "one might say that really you had only to lose by coming to Rome.""Mallet is to blame for that," said Roderick."But I am willing to risk the loss."The photograph had been passed to Madame Grandoni.
"It reminds me," she said, "of the things a young man used to do whom I knew years ago, when I first came to Rome.
He was a German, a pupil of Overbeck and a votary of spiritual art.
He used to wear a black velvet tunic and a very low shirt collar;he had a neck like a sickly crane, and let his hair grow down to his shoulders.His name was Herr Schafgans.
He never painted anything so profane as a man taking a drink, but his figures were all of the simple and slender and angular pattern, and nothing if not innocent--like this one of yours.
He would not have agreed with Gloriani any more than you.
He used to come and see me very often, and in those days I thought his tunic and his long neck infallible symptoms of genius.
His talk was all of gilded aureoles and beatific visions;he lived on weak wine and biscuits, and wore a lock of Saint Somebody's hair in a little bag round his neck.
If he was not a Beato Angelico, it was not his own fault.
I hope with all my heart that Mr.Hudson will do the fine things he talks about, but he must bear in mind the history of dear Mr.Schafgans as a warning against high-flown pretensions.
One fine day this poor young man fell in love with a Roman model, though she had never sat to him, I believe, for she was a buxom, bold-faced, high-colored creature, and he painted none but pale, sickly women.He offered to marry her, and she looked at him from head to foot, gave a shrug, and consented.But he was ashamed to set up his menage in Rome.They went to Naples, and there, a couple of years afterwards, I saw him.The poor fellow was ruined.
His wife used to beat him, and he had taken to drinking.
He wore a ragged black coat, and he had a blotchy, red face.
Madame had turned washerwoman and used to make him go and fetch the dirty linen.His talent had gone heaven knows where!
He was getting his living by painting views of Vesuvius in eruption on the little boxes they sell at Sorrento.""Moral: don't fall in love with a buxom Roman model," said Roderick.
"I 'm much obliged to you for your story, but I don't mean to fall in love with any one."Gloriani had possessed himself of the photograph again, and was looking at it curiously."It 's a happy bit of youth," he said.
"But you can't keep it up--you can't keep it up!"The two sculptors pursued their discussion after dinner, in the drawing-room.Rowland left them to have it out in a corner, where Roderick's Eve stood over them in the shaded lamplight, in vague white beauty, like the guardian angel of the young idealist.Singleton was listening to Madame Grandoni, and Rowland took his place on the sofa, near Miss Blanchard.
They had a good deal of familiar, desultory talk.
Every now and then Madame Grandoni looked round at them.
Miss Blanchard at last asked Rowland certain questions about Roderick:
who he was, where he came from, whether it was true, as she had heard, that Rowland had discovered him and brought him out at his own expense.Rowland answered her questions;to the last he gave a vague affirmative.Finally, after a pause, looking at him, "You 're very generous," Miss Blanchard said.
The declaration was made with a certain richness of tone, but it brought to Rowland's sense neither delight nor confusion.
He had heard the words before; he suddenly remembered the grave sincerity with which Miss Garland had uttered them as he strolled with her in the woods the day of Roderick's picnic.
They had pleased him then; now he asked Miss Blanchard whether she would have some tea.
When the two ladies withdrew, he attended them to their carriage.
Coming back to the drawing-room, he paused outside the open door;he was struck by the group formed by the three men.They were standing before Roderick's statue of Eve, and the young sculptor had lifted up the lamp and was showing different parts of it to his companions.
He was talking ardently, and the lamplight covered his head and face.
Rowland stood looking on, for the group struck him with its picturesque symbolism.Roderick, bearing the lamp and glowing in its radiant circle, seemed the beautiful image of a genius which combined sincerity with power.Gloriani, with his head on one side, pulling his long moustache and looking keenly from half-closed eyes at the lighted marble, represented art with a worldly motive, skill unleavened by faith, the mere base maximum of cleverness.
Poor little Singleton, on the other side, with his hands behind him, his head thrown back, and his eyes following devoutly the course of Roderick's elucidation, might pass for an embodiment of aspiring candor, with feeble wings to rise on.In all this, Roderick's was certainly the beau role.
