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 name--Barnaby 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 Rowland's eyes, and it speedily kindled a wonderful illumination on Hudson's 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.
"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 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 can't 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.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 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 Roderick's 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 man's 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.