Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/70

 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 36