And that he, irritated by some of her sayings, had nevertheless seen her stand with her lily-like outline against his Byzantine triptych, like a wraith in his lonely dreams, almost frightened him, because it had made him lose his peace of mind.
It was Christmas Day, on which occasion the Marchesa Belloni entertained her boarders with a Christmas-tree in the drawing-room, followed by a dance in the old Guercino dining-room. To give a ball and a Christmas-tree was a custom with many hotel-keepers; and thepensionsthat gave no dance or Christmas-tree were known and numbered and were greatly blamed by the foreigners for this breach of tradition. There were instances of very excellentpensionsto which many travellers, especially ladies, never went, because there was neither a dance nor a Christmas-tree at Christmas.
The marchesa realized that her tree was expensive and that her dance cost money too and she would gladly have found an excuse for avoiding both, but she dared not: the reputation of herpension, as it happened, depended on its worldliness and smartness, on thetable-d'hôtein the handsome dining-room, where people dressed for dinner, and also on the brilliant party given at Christmas. And it was amusing to see how keen all the ladies were to receive gratis in their bill for a whole winter's stay a trashy Christmas present and the opportunity of dancing without having to pay for a glass oforgeadeand a bit of pastry, a sandwich and a cup of soup. Giuseppe, the old nodding major-domo, looked down contemptuously on this festivity: he remembered the gala pomp of his archducal evenings and considered the dance inferior and the tree paltry. Antonio, the limping porter, accustomed to his comparatively quiet life—fetching a visitor or taking him to the station; sorting the post twice a day at his ease; and, for the rest, pottering around his lodge and the lift—hated the dance, because of all the guests of the boarders, each of whom was entitled to invite two or three friends, and because of all that tiring fuss with carriages, when a good many of the visitors skipped into theirvetturawithout tipping him. Round about Christmas, therefore, relations between the marchesa and her two principal dignitaries became far from harmonious; and a hail of orders and abuse would patter down on the backs of the oldcameriere, crawling wearily up and down stairs with their hot-water cans in their trembling hands, and of the young greenhorns of waiters, colliding with one another in their undisciplined zeal and smashing the plates. And it was only now, when the whole staff was put to work, that people saw how old thecamerierewere and how young the waiters and qualified as disgraceful and shocking the thrifty method of the marchesa in employing none but wrecks and infants in her service. The one muscularfacchino, who was essential for hauling the luggage, cut an unexpected figure of virile maturity and robustness. But above everything the visitors detested the marchesa because of the great number of her servants, reflecting that now, at Christmas time, they would have to tip every one of them. No, they never imagined that the staff was so large! Quite unnecessarily large too! Why couldn't the marchesa engage a couple of strong young maids and waiters instead of all those old women and little boys? And there was much hushed plotting and confabulating in the corners of the passages and at meals, to decide on the tips to be given: they didn't want to spoil the servants, but still they were staying all the winter; and therefore one lira was hardly enough and they hesitated between one lira twenty-five and one lira fifty. But, when they counted on their fingers that there were fully five-and-twenty servants and that therefore they were close on forty lire out of pocket, they thought it an awful lot and they got up subscription-lists. Two lists went round, one of one lira and one of twelve lire a visitor, the latter subscription covering the whole staff. On this second list some, who had arrived a month before and who had arranged to leave, entered their names for ten lire and some for six lire. Five lire was by general consent considered too little; and, when it became known that the grimy æsthetic ladies intended to give five lire, they were regarded with the greatest contempt.
It all meant a lot of trouble and excitement. As Christmas drew nearer, people streamed to thepresepiiset up by painters in the Palazzo Borghese: a panorama of Jerusalem and the shepherds, the angels, the Magi and Mary and the Child in the manger with the ox and the ass. They listened in the Ara Coeli to the preaching of little boys and girls, who by turns climbed the platform and told the story of the Nativity, some shyly reciting a little poem, prompted by an anxious mother; others, girls especially, declaiming and rolling their eyes with the dramatic fervour of little Italian actresses and ending up with a religious moral. The people and countless tourists stood and listened to the preaching; a pleasant spirit prevailed in the church, where the shrill young children's voices were lifted up in oratory; there was laughter at a gesture or a point driven home; and the priests strolling round the church wore an unctuous smile because it was all so pretty and so satisfactory. And in the chapel of the Santo Bambino the miraculous wooden doll was bright with gold and jewels; and the close-packed multitude thronged to gaze at it.
All the visitors at Belloni's bought bunches of holly in the Piazza di Spagna to adorn their rooms with; and some, such as the Baronin van Rothkirch, set up a private Christmas-tree in their own rooms. On the evening before the great party, one and all went to admire these private trees, going in and out of one another's rooms; and all the boarders wore a kind, festive smile and welcomed everybody, however much at other times they might quarrel and intrigue against one another. It was universally agreed that the Baronin had taken great pains and that her tree was magnificent. Her bedroom had been cleverly metamorphosed into a boudoir, the beds draped to look like divans, the wash-hand-stands concealed; and the tree was radiant with candles and tinsel. And the Baronin, a little sentimentally inclined, for the season reminded her of Berlin and her lost domesticity, opened her doors wide to everybody and was even offering the two æsthetic ladies sweets, when the marchesa, also smiling, appeared at the door, with her bosom moulded in sky-blue satin and with even larger crystals than usual in her ears. The room was full: there were the Van der Staals, Cornélie, Rudyard, Urania Hope and other guests going in and out, so that it became impossible to move and they stood packed together or sat on the draped beds of the mother and daughter. The marchesa led in beside her a young man whom the others had not seen before, short, slender, with a pale olive complexion and dark, bright, witty, lively eyes. He was in dress-clothes and displayed the vague good manners of a pampered and carelessviveur, distinguished and yet conceited. And she proudly went up to the Baronin, who kept prettily wiping her moist eyes, and with a certain arrogance presented:
"My nephew, Duca di San Stefano, Principe di Forte-Braccio...."
The well-known Italian name sounded from her lips in the small, crowded room with deliberate distinctness; and all eyes went to the young man, who bowed low before the Baronin and then looked round the room with a vague, ironical glance. The marchesa's nephew had not yet been seen at the hotel that winter, but everybody knew that the young Duke of San Stefano, Prince of Forte-Braccio, was a nephew of the marchesa's and one of the advertisements for herpension. And, while the prince talked to the Baronin and her daughter, Urania Hope stared at him as a miraculous being from another world. She clung tight to Cornélie's arm, as though she were in danger of fainting at the sight of so much Italian nobility and greatness. She thought him very good-looking, very imposing, short and slender and pale, with his carbuncle eyes and his weary distinction and the white orchid in his button-hole. She would have loved to ask the marchioness to introduce her to herchicnephew, but she dared not, for she remembered her father's stockinet-factory at Chicago.
The Christmas-tree party and the dance took place the following night. It became known that the marchesa's nephew was coming that evening too; and a great excitement reigned throughout the day. The prince arrived after the presents had been taken down from the tree and distributed and made a sort of state entry by the side of his aunt, the marchesa, into the drawing-room, where the dancing had not yet begun, though the guests were sitting about the room, all fixing their eyes on the ducal and princely apparition.
Cornélie was strolling with Duco Van der Staal, who to his mother's and sisters' great surprise had fished out his dress-clothes and appeared in the big hall; and they both observed the triumphant entry of la Belloni and her nephew and laughed at the fanatically upturned eyes of the English and American ladies. They, Cornélie and Duco, sat down in the hall on two chairs, in front of a clump of palms, which concealed one of the doors of the drawing-room, while the dance began inside. They were talking of the statues in the Vatican, which they had been to see two days before, when they heard, as though close to their ears, a voice which they recognized as the marchesa's commanding organ, vainly striving to sink into a whisper. They looked round in surprise and perceived the hidden door, which was partly open, and through the open space they faintly distinguished the slim hand and black sleeve of the prince and a piece of the blue bosom of la Belloni, both seated on a sofa in the drawing-room. They were therefore back to back, separated by the half-open door. They listened for fun to the marchesa's Italian; the prince's answers were lisped so softly that they could scarcely catch them. And of what the marchesa said they heard only a few words and scraps of sentences. They were listening quite involuntarily, when they heard Rudyard's name clearly pronounced by the marchesa.
"And who besides?" asked the prince, softly.
"An English miss," said the marchesa. "Miss Taylor: she's sitting over there, by herself in the corner. A simple little soul.... The Baronin and her daughter.... The Dutchwoman: adivorcée.... And the pretty American."
"And those two very attractive Dutch girls?" asked the prince.
The music boom-boomed louder; and Cornélie and Duco did not catch the reply.
"And the divorced Dutchwoman?" the prince asked next.
"No money," the marchesa answered, curtly.
"And the young baroness?"
"No money," la Belloni repeated.
"So there's no one except the stocking-merchant?" asked the prince, wearily.
La Belloni became cross, but Cornélie and Duco could not understand the sentences which she rattled out through the boom-booming music. Then, during a lull, they heard the marchesa say:
"She is very pretty. She has tons and tons of money. She could have gone to a first-class hotel but preferred to come here because, as a young girl travelling by herself, she was recommended to me and finds it pleasanter here. She has the big sitting-room to herself and pays fifty lire a day for her two rooms. She does not care about money. She pays three times as much as the others for her wood; and I also charge her for the wine."
"She sells stockings," muttered the prince, obstinately.
"Nonsense!" said the marchesa. "Remember that there's nobody at the moment. Last winter we had rich English titled people with a daughter, but you thought her too tall. You're always discovering some objection. You mustn't be so difficult."
"I think those two little Dutch dolls attractive."
"They have no money. You're always thinking what you have no business to think."
"How much did papa promise you if you...."
The music boomed louder.
"... makes no difference.... If Rudyard talks to her.... Miss Taylor is easy.... Miss Hope...."
"I don't want so many stockings as all that."
"... very witty, I dare say.... If you don't care to...."
"No."
"... then I retire.... I'll tell Rudyard.... How much?"
"Sixty or seventy thousand: exactly."
"Are they urgent?"
"Debts are never urgent!"
"Do you agree?"
"Very well. But mind, I won't sell myself for less than ten millions.... And then you get...."
They both laughed; and again the names of Rudyard and Urania were pronounced.
"Urania?" he asked.
"Yes, Urania," replied la Belloni. "Those little Americans are very tactful. Look at the Comtesse de Castellane and the Duchess of Marlborough: how well they bear their husbands' honours! They cut an excellent figure. They are mentioned in every society column and always with respect."
"... All right then. I am tired of these wasted winters. But not less then ten millions."
"Five."
"No, ten."
The prince and the marchesa had stood up to go. Cornélie looked at Duco. He laughed:
"I don't quite understand them," he said. "It's a joke, of course."
Cornélie was startled:
"A joke, you think, Mr. Van der Staal?"
"Yes, they're humbugging."
"I don't believe it."
"I do."
"Have you any knowledge of human nature?"
"Oh, no, none at all!"
"I'm getting it, gradually. I believe that Rome can be dangerous and that an hotel-keeping marchesa, a prince and a Jesuit...."
"What about them?"
"Can be dangerous, if not to your sisters, because they have no money, but at any rate to Urania Hope."
"I don't believe it for a moment. It was all chaff. And it doesn't interest me. What do you think of Praxiteles'Eros? I think it the most divine statue that I ever saw. Oh, theEros, theEros! That is love, the real love, the predestined, fatal love, begging forgiveness for the suffering which it causes."
"Have you ever been in love?"
"No. I have no knowledge of human nature and I have never been in love. You are always so definite. Dreams are beautiful, statues are delightful and poetry is everything. TheErosexpresses love completely. The love of theErosis so beautiful! I could never love so beautifully as that.... No, it does not interest me to understand human nature; and a dream by Praxiteles, lingering in a mutilated marble torso, is nobler than anything that the world calls love."
She knitted her brows; her eyes were sombre.
"Let us go to the dancers," she said. "We are so out of it all here."
The day after the dance, at table, Cornélie received a strange impression: suddenly, as she sipped her delicious Genzano, ordered for her by Rudyard, she became aware that it was not by accident that she was sitting with the Baronin and her daughter, with Urania and Miss Taylor; she saw that the marchesa had an intention behind this arrangement. Rudyard, always civil, polite, thoughtful, always full of attentions, his pockets always filled with cards of introduction very difficult to obtain—or so at least he contended—talked without ceasing, lately more particularly to Miss Taylor, who went faithfully to hear all the best church music and always returned home in ecstasy. The pale, simple, thin little Englishwoman, who at first used to go into raptures over museums, ruins and the sunsets on the Aventine or the Monte Mario and who was tired by her rambles through Rome, now devoted herself exclusively to the hundreds of churches, visited and studied them all and above all faithfully attended the musical services and spoke ecstatically of the choir in the Sistine Chapel and the quaveringGloriasof the malesoprani.
Cornélie spoke to Mrs. Van der Staal and the Baronin von Rothkirch of the conversation between the marchesa and her nephew which she had heard through the half-open door; but neither of them, though interested and curious, took the marchesa's words seriously, regarding them only as so much thoughtless talk between a foolish, match-making aunt and an unwilling nephew. Cornélie was struck by seeing how unable people are to take things seriously; but the Baronin was quite indifferent, saying that Rudyard could do her no harm and was still supplying her with tickets; and Mrs. van der Staal, who had been in Rome a long time and was accustomed to little boarding-house conspiracies, considered that Cornélie was making herself too uneasy about the fair Urania's fate.
Suddenly, however, Miss Taylor disappeared from the table. They thought that she was ill, until it came to light that she had left the Pension Belloni. Rudyard said nothing; but, a few days later, the wholepensionknew that Miss Taylor had been converted to the Catholic faith and had moved to apensionrecommended by Rudyard, apensionfrequented bymonsignoriand noted for its religious tone. Her disappearance produced a certain constraint in the conversation between Rudyard, the German ladies and Cornélie; and the latter, in the course of a week which the Baronin was spending at Naples, changed her seat and joined her fellow-countrywomen the van der Staals. The Von Rothkirches also changed, because of the draught, said the Baronin; their seats were taken by new arrivals; and Urania was left alone with Rudyard at lunch and dinner, amid those foreign elements.
Cornélie reproached herself and one day spoke seriously to the American girl and warned her. But she dared not repeat what she had overheard at the dance; and her warning made no impression on Urania. And, when Rudyard had obtained for Miss Hope the privilege of a private audience of the Pope, Urania would not hear a word against Rudyard and considered him the kindest man whom she had ever met, Jesuit or no Jesuit.
But Rudyard continued to appear through a haze of mystery; and people were not agreed as to whether he was a priest or a layman.
"What do those strangers matter to you?" asked Duco.
They were sitting in his studio: Mrs. Van der Staal, Cornélie and the girls, Annie and Emilie. Annie was pouring out the tea; and they were discussing Miss Taylor and Urania.
"I am a stranger to you too!" said Cornélie.
"You are not a stranger to me, to us. But Miss Taylor and Urania don't matter. Hundreds of shadows pass through our lives: I don't see them and don't feel them."
"I have talked to you too much in the Borghese and on the Palatine to look upon you as a shadow."
"Rudyard is a dangerous shadow," said Annie.
"He has no hold over us," Duco replied.
Mrs. Van der Staal looked at Cornélie. She understood the enquiring glance and said, laughing:
"No, he has no hold over me either. Still, if I felt the need of a religion, I mean an ecclesiastical religion, I would rather be a Roman Catholic than a Protestant. But, as things are...."
She did not complete her sentence. She felt safe in this studio, in this soft, many-coloured profusion of beautiful things, in the affection of her friends; she felt in harmony with them all: with the worldly charm of that somewhat superficial mother and her two pretty girls, a little doll-like and vaguely cosmopolitan and a trifle vain of the little marquises with whom they danced and bicycled; and with that son, that brother, so very different from the three of them and yet obviously related to them, as a movement, a gesture, a single word would show. It also struck Cornélie that they accepted each other affectionately as they were: Duco, his mother and sisters, with their stories about the Princesses Colonna and Odescalchi; mevrouw and the girls, him, with his worn jacket and his unkempt hair. And, when he began to speak, especially about Rome, when he put his dream into words, in almost bookish sentences, which however flowed easily and naturally from his lips, Cornélie felt in harmony with her surroundings, secure and interested and to some extent lost that longing to contradict him which his artistic indolence sometimes aroused in her. And, besides, his indolence suddenly seemed to her merely apparent and perhaps an affectation, for he showed her sketches and water-colour drawings, not one of them finished, but every water-colour alive with light before all things, alive with all that light of Italy: the pearl sunsets over the molten emerald of Venice; thecampaniliof Florence drawn vaguely and dreamily across tender tea-rose skies; Siena fortress-like, blue-black in the bluish moonlight; the blazing sunshine behind St. Peter's; and, above all, the ruins, in every kind of light: the Forum in the bright sunlight, the Palatine by twilight, the Colosseum mysterious in the night; and then the Campagna: all the dream-like skies and luminous haze of the glad and sad Campagna, with pale-pink mauves, dewy blues, dusky violets or the swaggering ochres of pyro-technical sunsets and clouds flaring like the crimson pinions of the phoenix. And, when Cornélie asked him why nothing was finished off, he answered that nothing was right. He saw the skies as dreams, visions and apotheoses; and on his paper they became water and paint; and paint was not a thing to be finished off. Besides, he lacked the self-confidence. And then he laid his skies aside, he said, and sat down to copy Byzantine madonnas.
When he saw that his water-colours interested her nevertheless, he went on talking about himself: how he had at first raved over the noble and ingenuous Primitives, Giotto and especially Lippo Memmi; how, after that, spending a year in Paris, he had found nothing that excelled Forain: cold, dry satire in two or three lines; how, next, in the Louvre, Rubens had become revealed to him, Rubens whose own talent and whose own brush he used to trace amid all the prentice-work and imitations of his pupils, until he was able to tell which cherub was by Rubens himself in a sky full of cherubs painted by four or five disciples.
And then, he said, he would pass weeks without giving a thought to painting or taking up a brush and would go daily to the Vatican, lost in contemplation of the magnificent marbles.
Once he had sat dreaming a whole morning in front of theEros; once he had dreamt a poem there, to a very gentle, melodious, monotonous accompaniment, like an inward incantation. On coming home he had tried to put both poem and music on paper, but he had failed. Now he could no longer look at Forain, thought Rubens coarse and disgusting, but remained faithful to the Primitives:
"And suppose for a moment that I painted a lot and sent a lot of pictures to exhibitions? Should I be any the happier? Should I feel satisfied in having done something? I doubt it. Sometimes I do finish a water-colour and sell it; and then I can go on living for a month without troubling mamma. Money I don't care about. Ambition is quite foreign to my nature.... But don't let us talk about myself. Do you still think of the future and ... bread?"
"Perhaps," she said, with a melancholy laugh, while the studio around her grew dusk and dim and the figures of his mother and sisters, sitting silent, languid and uninterested in their easy chairs, gradually faded away and every colour slowly paled. "But I am so weak-minded. You say that you are not an artist; and I ... I am not an apostle."
"To give one's life a course: that is the difficulty. Every life has a line, an appointed course, a road, a path: life has to flow along that line to death and what comes after death; and that line is difficult to find. I shall never find my line."
"I don't see my line before me either."
"Do you know, a restlessness has come over me. Mamma, listen, a restlessness has come over me. I used to dream in the Forum, I was happy and didn't think about my line, my appointed course. Mamma, do you think about your line? Do you, girls?"
His sisters giggled in the dark, sunk in their low chairs, like two pussy-cats. Mamma got up:
"Duco dear, you know I can't follow you. I admire Cornélie for liking your water-colours and understanding what you mean by that line. My line is to go home at once, for it's very late."
"That's the line of the next two seconds. But there is a restlessness about my line that affects it for days and weeks to come. I am not leading the right life. The past is very beautiful and so peaceful, because it once was. But I have lost that peace. The present is very small. But the future!... Oh, if we could only find an aim ... for the future!"
They no longer listened; they went down the dark stairs, groping their way.
"Bread?" he asked himself, wonderingly....
One morning when Cornélie stayed indoors she went through the books that lay scattered about her room. And she found that it was useless for her to read Ovid, in order to study something of Roman manners, some of which had alarmed and shocked her; she found that Dante and Petrarch were too difficult to learn Italian from, whereas she had only to pick up a word or two in order to make herself understood in a shop or by the servants; she found Hare'sWalksa too wearisome guide, because every cobble-stone in Rome did not inspire her with the same interest that Hare evidently derived from it. Then she confessed to herself that she could never see Italy and Rome as Duco Van der Staal did. She never saw the light of the skies or the drifting of the clouds as he had seen them in his unfinished water-colour sketches. She had never seen the ruins transfigured in glory as he did in his hours of dreaming on the Palatine or in the Forum. She saw a picture merely with a layman's eye; a Byzantine madonna made no appeal to her. She was very fond of statues; but to fall head over cars in love with a mutilated marble torso, in the spirit in which he loved theEros, seemed to her sickly ... and yet it seemed to be the right spirit in which to see theEros. Well, not sickly, she admitted ... but morbid: the word, though she herself smiled at it, expressed her opinion better; not sickly, but morbid. And she looked upon an olive as a tree rather like a willow, whereas Duco had told her that an olive was the most beautiful tree in the world.
She did not agree with him, either about the olive or about theEros; and yet she felt that he was right from a certain mysterious standpoint on which there was no room for her, because it was like a mystic eminence amid impassable sensitive spheres which were not hers, even as the eminence was to her an unknown vantage-point of sensitiveness and vision. She did not agree with him and yet she was convinced of his greater rightness, his truer view, his nobler insight, his deeper feeling; and she was certain that her way of seeing Italy, in the disappointment of her disillusion, in the grey light of a growing indifference, was neither noble nor good; and she knew that the beauty of Italy escaped her, whereas to him it was like a tangible and comprehensible vision. And she cleared away Ovid and Petrarch and Hare's guide-book and locked them up in her trunk and took out the novels and pamphlets which had appeared that year about the woman movement in Holland. She took an interest in the problem and thought that it made her more modern than Duco, who suddenly seemed to her to belong to a bygone age, not modern, not modern. She repeated the words with enjoyment and suddenly felt herself stronger. To be modern: that should be her strength. One phrase of Duco's had struck her immensely, that exclamation:
"Oh, if we could only find an aim! Our life has a line, a path, which it must follow...."
To be modern: was that not a line? To find the solution of a modern problem: was that not an aim in life? He was quite right, from his point of view, from which he saw Italy; but was not the whole of Italy a past, a dream ... at least that Italy which Duco saw, a dreamy paradise of nothing but art? It could not be right to stand like that, to see like that a dream like that. The present was here: on the grey horizon muttered an approaching storm; and the latter-day problems flashed like lightning. Was that not what she had to live for? She felt for the woman, she felt for the girl: she herself had been the girl, brought up only as a social ornament, to shine, to be pretty and attractive and then of course to get married; she had shone and she had married; and now she was three-and-twenty, divorced from the husband who at one time had been her only aim and, for her sake, the aim of her parents; now she was alone, astray, desperate and utterly disconsolate: she had nothing to cling to and she suffered. She still loved him, cad and scoundrel though he was; and she had thought that she was doing something very clever, when she went abroad, to Italy, to study art. But she did not understand art, she did not feel Italy. Oh, how clearly she saw it, after those talks with Duco, that she would never understand art, even though she used to sketch a bit, even though she used to have a biscuit-group after Canova in her boudoir,Cupid and Psyche: so nice for a young girl! And with what certainty she now knew that she would never grasp Italy, because she did not think an olive-tree so very beautiful and had never seen the sky of the Campagna as a fluttering phoenix-wing! No, Italy would never be the consolation of her life....
But what then? She had been through much, but she was alive and very young. And once again, at the sight of those pamphlets, at the sight of that novel, the desire arose in her soul: to be modern, to be modern! And to take part in the problem of to-day! To live for the future! To live for her fellow-women, married or unmarried!...
She dared not look deep down into herself, lest she should waver. To live for the future!... It separated her a little more from Duco, that new ideal. Did she mind? Was she in love with him? No, she thought not. She had been in love with her husband and did not want to fall in love at once with the first agreeable young man whom she chanced to meet in Rome....
And she read the pamphlets, about the feminine problem and love. Then she thought of her husband, then of Duco. And wearily she dropped the pamphlets and reflected how sad it all was: people, women, girls. She, a woman, a young woman, an aimless woman: how sad her life was! And Duco: he was happy. And yet he was seeking the line of his life, yet he was looking out for his aim. A new restlessness had entered into him. And she wept a little and anxiously twisted herself on her cushions and clasped her hands and prayed, unconsciously, without knowing to whom she was praying:
"O God, tell me what to do!"
It was then, after a few days, that Cornélie conceived the idea of leaving the boarding-house and going to live in rooms. The hotel-life disturbed her budding thoughts, like a wind of vanity that was constantly blighting very vague and fragile blossoms; and, despite a torrent of abuse from the marchesa, who reproached her with having engaged to stay the whole winter, she moved into the rooms which she had found with Duco Van der Staal, after much hunting and stair-climbing. They were in the Via dei Serpenti, up any number of stairs: a set of two roomy, but almost entirely unfurnished apartments, containing only the absolute essentials; and, though the view extended far and wide above the house-tops of Rome to the circular ruin of the Colosseum, the rooms were rough and uncomfortable, bare and uninviting. Duco had not approved of them and said that they made him shiver, although they faced the sun; but there was something about the ruggedness of the place that harmonized with Cornélie's new mood.
When they parted that day, he thought how inartistic she was and she how unmodern he was. They did not meet again for several days; and Cornélie was very lonely, but did not feel her loneliness, because she was writing a pamphlet on the social position of divorced women. The idea was suggested to her by a few sentences in a tract on the feminist problem; and at once, without wasting much time in thought, she flung off her sentences in a succession of impulses and intuitions, rough-hewn, cold and clear; she wrote in an epistolary style, without literary art, as though to warn girls against cherishing too many illusions about marriage.
She had not made her rooms comfortable; she sat there, high up over Rome, with her view across the house-tops to the Colosseum, writing, writing and writing, absorbed in her sorrow, uttering herself in her stubborn sentences, feeling intensely bitter, but pouring the wormwood of her soul into her pamphlet. Mrs. Van der Staal and the girls, who came to see her, were surprised by her untidy appearance, her rough-looking rooms, with a dying fire in the little grate and with no flowers, no books, no tea and no cushions; and, when they went away after fifteen minutes, pleading urgent errands, they looked at one another, tripping down the endless stairs, with eyes of amazement, utterly at a loss to understand this transformation of an interesting, elegant little woman, surrounded by an aura of poetry and a tragic past, into an "independent woman," working furiously at a pamphlet full of bitter invective against society. And, when Duco looked her up again in a week's time and came to sit with her a little, he remained silent, stiff and upright in his chair, without speaking, while Cornélie read the beginning of her pamphlet to him. He was touched by the glimpses which it revealed to him of personal suffering and experience, but he was irritated by a certain discord between that slender, lily-like woman, with her drooping movements, and the surroundings in which she now felt at her ease, entirely absorbed in her hatred for the society—Hague society—which had become hostile to her because she refused to go on living with a cad who ill-treated her. And, while she was reading, Duco thought:
She would not write like that if she were not writing it all down from her own suffering. Why doesn't she make a novel of it? Why generalize from one's personal sorrows and why that bitter, warning voice?...
He did not like it. He thought the sound of that voice was hard, those truths so personal, that bitterness unattractive and that hatred of convention so small. And, when she put a question to him, he did not say much, nodded his head in vague approval and remained sitting in his stiff, uncomfortable attitude. He did not know what to answer, he was unable to admire, he thought her inartistic. And yet a great compassion welled up within him when he saw, in spite of it all, how charming she would be and what charm and womanly dignity would be hers could she find the line of her life and move harmoniously along that line with the music of her own movement. He now saw her taking a wrong road, a path pointed out to her by the fingers of others and not entered upon from the impulse of her own soul. And he felt the deepest pity for her. He, an artist, but above all a dreamer, sometimes saw vividly, despite his dreaming, despite his sometimes all-embracing love of line and colour and atmosphere; he, the artist and dreamer, sometimes very clearly saw the emotion looming through the outward actions of his fellow-creatures, saw it like light shining through alabaster; and he suddenly saw her lost, seeking, straying: seeking she herself knew not what, straying she herself knew not through what labyrinth, far from her line, the line of her life and the course of her soul's journey, which she had never yet found.
She sat before him excitedly. She had read her last pages with a flushed face, in a resonant voice, her whole being in a fever. She looked as if she would have liked to fling those bitter pages at the feet of her Dutch sisters, at the feet of all women. He, absorbed in his speculations, melancholy in his pity for her, had scarcely listened, nodding his head in vague approval. And suddenly she began to speak of herself, revealed herself wholly, told him her life: her existence as a young girl at the Hague, her education with a view to shining a little and being attractive and pretty, with not one serious glance at her future, only waiting for a good match, with a flirtation here and a little love-affair there, until she was married: a good match, in her own circle; her husband a first lieutenant of hussars, a fine, handsome fellow, of a good, distinguished family, with a little money. She had fallen in love with him for his handsome face and his fine figure, which his uniform showed to advantage, and he with her as he might have done with any other girl who had a pretty face. Then came the revelation of those very early days: the discord between their characters manifesting itself luridly at once. She, spoilt at home, dainty, delicate, fastidious, but selfishly fastidious and flying out against any offence to her own spoilt littleego; he no longer the lover but immediately and brutally the man with rights to this and rights to that, with an oath here and a roar there; she with neither the tact nor the patience to make of their foundering lives what could still be made of them, nervous, quick-tempered, quick to resent coarseness, which made his savagery flare up so violently that he ill-treated her, swore at her, struck her, shook her and banged her against the wall.
The divorce followed. He had not consented at first, content, in spite of all, to have a house and in that house a wife, female to him, the male, and declining to return to the discomfort of life in chambers, until she simply ran away, first to her parents, then to friends in the country, protesting loudly against the law, which was so unjust to women. He had yielded at last and allowed himself to be accused of infidelity, which was not beside the truth. She was now free, but stood as it were alone, looked at askance by all her acquaintances, refusing to yield to their conventional demand for that sort of half-mourning which, according to their conventional ideas, should surround a divorced woman and at once returning to her former life, the gay life of an unmarried girl. But she had felt that this could not go on, both because of her acquaintances and because of herself: her acquaintances looking at her askance and she loathing her acquaintances, loathing their parties and dinners, until she felt profoundly unhappy, lonely and forlorn, without anything or anybody to cling to, and experienced all the depression that weighs down on the divorced woman. Sometimes, in her heart of hearts, she reflected that by dint of great patience and great tact she might have managed that man, that he was not wicked, only coarse, that she was still fond of him, or at least of his handsome face and his sturdy figure. Love, no, it was not love; but had she ever thought of love as she now sometimes pictured it? And did not nearly everybody live more or less so-so, with a good deal of give and take?
But this regret she hardly confessed to herself, did not now confess to Duco; and what she did confess was her bitterness, her hatred of her husband, of marriage, of convention, of people, of the world, of all the great generalities, generalizing her own feelings into one great curse against life. He listened to her with pity. He felt that there was something noble in her, which, however, had been stifled from, the beginning. He forgave her for not being artistic, but he was sorry that she had never found herself, that she did not know what she was, who she was, what her life should be, or where the line of her life wound, the only path which she ought to tread, as every life follows one path. Oh, how often, if a person would let herself go, like a flower, like a bird, like a cloud, like a star which so obediently ran its course, she would find her happiness and her life, even as the flower or the bird finds them, even as the cloud drifts before the sun, even as the star follows its course through the heavens! But he told her nothing of his thoughts, knowing that, especially in her present mood of bitterness, she would not understand them and could derive no comfort from them, because they would be too vague for her and too far removed from her own manner of thinking. She thought of herself, but imagined that she was thinking of women and girls and their movement towards the future. Women's lines ... but had not every woman a line of her own? Only, how few of them knew it: their direction, their path, their line of life, their wavering course in the twilight of the future. And perhaps, because they did not know it for themselves, they were now all seeking together a broad path, a main road, along which they would march in troops, in a threatening multitude of women, in regiments of women, with banners and mottoes and war-cries, a broad path, parallel with the movement of the men, until the two paths would melt into one, until the troops of women would mingle with the troops of men, with equal rights and equal fullness of life....
He said nothing to her. She noticed his silence and did not see how much was going on within him, how earnestly he was thinking of her, how profoundly he pitied her. She thought that she had bored him. And suddenly, around her, she saw the dim, barren room, saw that the fire was out; and her zeal subsided, her fever cooled and she thought her pamphlet bad, lacking strength and conviction. What would she not have given for a word from him! But he sat silent, seemed to take no interest, probably did not admire her style of writing. And she felt sad, deserted, lonely, estranged from him and bitter because of the estrangement; she felt ready to weep, to sob; and, strange to say, in her bitterness she thought ofhim, of her husband, with his handsome face. She could not restrain herself, she wept. Duco came up to her, put his hand on her shoulder. Then she felt something of what was going on within him and that his silence was not due to coldness. She told him that she could not remain alone that evening: she was too wretched, too wretched. He comforted her, said that there was much that was good, much that was true in her pamphlet; that he was not a good judge of these modern questions; that he was never clever except when he talked about Italy; that he felt so little for people and so much for statues, so little for what was newly building for a coming century and so much for what lay in ruins and remained over from earlier centuries. He said it as though apologizing. She smiled through her tears but repeated that she could not stay alone that evening and that she was coming with him to Belloni's, to his mother and sisters. And they went together, they walked round together; and, to divert her mind, he spoke to her of his own thoughts, told her anecdotes of the Renascence masters. She did not hear what he said, but his voice was sweet to her ears. There was something so gentle about his indifference to the modern things that interested her, he had so much calmness, healing as balsam, in the restfulness of his soul, which allowed itself to move along the golden thread of his dreams, as though that thread was the line of his life, so much calmness and gentleness that she too grew calmer and gentler and looked up to him with a smile.
And, however far removed they might be from each other—he going along a dreamy path, she lost in an obscure maze—they nevertheless felt each other approaching, felt their souls drawing nearer to each other, while their bodies moved beside each other in the actual street, through Rome, in the evening. He put his arm through hers to guide her steps.
And, when they came in sight of Belloni's, she thanked him, she did not know exactly for what: for the look in his eyes, for his voice, for the walk, for the consolation which she felt inexplicably yet clearly radiating from him; and she was glad to have come with him this evening and to feel the distraction of the Bellonitable-d'hôtearound her.
But at night, alone, alone in her bare rooms, she was overcome by her wretchedness as by a sea of blackness; and, looking out at the Colosseum, which showed faintly as a black arc in the black night, she sobbed until she felt herself sinking to the point of death, derelict, lonely and forlorn, high up above Rome, above the roofs, above the pale lights of Rome by night, under the clouds of the black night, sinking and derelict, as though she were drifting, a ship-wrecked waif on an ocean which drowned the world and roared its plaint to the inexorable heavens.
Nevertheless Cornélie recovered her calmness when her pamphlet was finished. She unpacked her trunks, arranged her rooms a little more snugly and, now more at her ease, rewrote the pamphlet and, in the revision, improved her style and even her ideas. When she had done working in the morning, she usually lunched at a smallosteria, where she nearly always met Duco van der Staal and had her meal with him at a little table. As a rule she dined at Belloni's, beside the Van der Staals, in order to obtain a little diversion. The marchesa had not bowed to her at first, though she suffered her to attend hertable-d'hôte, at three lire an evening; but after a time she bowed to Cornélie again, with a bitter-sweet little smile, for she had relet her two rooms at a higher price. And Cornélie, in her calmer mood, found it pleasant to change in the evening, to see Mrs. Van der Staal and the girls, to listen to their little stories about the Romansalonsand to cast a glance over the long tables. And they saw that the guests were ever again different, as in a kaleidoscope of fleeting personalities. Rudyard had disappeared, owing money to the marchesa, no one knew whither; the Von Rothkirches had gone to Greece; but Urania Hope was still there and sat next to the Marchesa Belloni. On her other side was the nephew, the Prince of Forte-Braccio, Duke of San Stefano, who dined at Belloni's every night. And Cornélie saw that a sort of conspiracy was in progress, the marchesa and the prince laying siege to the vain little American from either side. And next day she saw twomonsignoriseated in eager conversation with Urania at the marchesa's table, while the marchesa and the prince nodded their heads. All the visitors commented on it, every eye was turned in that direction, everybody watched the manoeuvres and delighted in the romance.
Cornélie was the only one who was not amused. She would have liked to warn Urania against the marchesa, the prince and themonsignoriwho had taken Rudyard's place, but especially against marriage, even marriage with a prince and duke. And, growing excited, she spoke to Mrs. Van der Staal and the girls, repeating phrases out of her pamphlet, glowing with her red young hatred against society and people and the world.
Dinner was over; and, still eagerly talking, she went with the Van der Staals—mevrouw and the girls and Duco—to the drawing-room, sat down in a corner, resumed her conversation, flew out at mevrouw, who had contradicted her, and then suddenly saw a fat lady—the girls had already nicknamed her the Satin Frigate—come towards her with a smile and say, while still at some distance:
"I beg your pardon, but there's something I want to say. Look here, I have been to Belloni's regularly every winter for the last ten years, from January to Easter; and every evening after dinner—butonlyafter dinner—I sit inthiscorner, atthistable, onthissofa. I hope you won't mind, but I should be glad to have my own seat now."
And the Satin Frigate smiled amiably; but, when the Van der Staals and Cornélie rose in mute amazement, she dumped herself down with a rustle on the sofa, bobbed up and down for a moment on the springs, laid her crochet-work on the table with a gesture as though she were planting the Union Jack in a new colony and said, with her most amiable smile:
"Very much obliged. So many thanks."
Duco roared, the girls giggled, but the Satin Frigate merely nodded to them good-humouredly. And, not even yet realizing what had happened, astounded but gay, they sat down in another comer, the girls still seized with an irrepressible giggle. The two æsthetic ladies, in the evening-dress and the Jaegers, who sat reading at the table in the middle of the room, closed their two books with one slam, rose and indignantly went away, because people were laughing and talking in the drawing-room:
"It's a shame!" they said, aloud.
And, angular, arrogant and grimy, they stalked out through the door.
"What strange people!" thought Duco, smiling. "Shadows of people!... Their lines curl like arabesque through ours. Why do they cross our lines with their petty movements and why are ours never crossed by those which perhaps would be dearest to our souls?..."
He always took Cornélie back to the Via dei Serpenti. They walked slowly through the silent, deserted streets. Sometimes it was late in the evening, but sometimes it was immediately after dinner and then they would go through the Corso and he would generally ask her to come and sit at Aragno's for a little. She agreed and they drank their coffee amid the gaiety of the brightly-lit café, watching the bustle on the pavement outside. They exchanged few words, distracted by the passers-by and the visitors to the café; but they both enjoyed this moment and felt at one with each other. Duco evidently did not give a thought to the unconventionality of their behaviour; but Cornélie thought of Mrs. Van der Staal and that she would not approve of it or consent to it in one of her daughters, sitting alone with a gentleman in a café in the evening. And Cornélie also remembered the Hague and smiled at the thought of her Hague friends. And she looked at Duco, who sat quietly, pleased to be sitting with her, and drank his coffee and spoke a word now and again or pointed to a queer type or a pretty woman passing....
One evening, after dinner, he suggested that they should all go to the ruins. It was full moon, a wonderful sight. But mevrouw was afraid of malaria, the girls of foot-pads; and Duco and Cornélie went by themselves. The streets were quite empty, the Colosseum rose menacingly like a fortress in the night; but they went in and the moonlight blue of the night shone through the open arches: the round pit of the arena was black on one side with shadow, while the stream of moonlight poured in on the other side, like a white flood, like a cascade; and it was as though the night were haunted, as though the Colosseum were haunted by all the dead past of Rome, emperors, gladiators and martyrs; shadows prowled like lurking wild animals, a patch of light suggested a naked woman and the galleries seemed to rustle with the sound of the multitude. And yet there was nothing and Duco and Cornélie were alone, in the depths of the huge, colossal ruin, half in shadow and half in light; and, though she was not afraid, she was obsessed by that awful haunting of the past and pushed closer to him and clutched his arm and felt very, very small. He just pressed her hand, with his simple ease of manner, to reassure her. And the night oppressed her, the ghostliness of it all suffocated her, the moon seemed to whirl giddily in the sky and to expand to a gigantic size and spin round like a silver wheel. He said nothing, he was in one of his dreams, seeing the past before him. And silently they went away and he led her through the Arch of Titus into the Forum. On the left rose the ruins of the imperial palaces; and all around them stood the black fragments, with a few pillars soaring on high and the white moonlight pouring down like a ghostly sea out of the night. They met no one, but she was frightened and clung tighter to his arm. When they sat down for a moment on a fragment of the foundation of some ancient building, she shivered with cold. He started up, said that she must be careful not to catch a chill; and they walked on and left the Forum. He took her home and she went upstairs alone, striking a match to see her way up the dark staircase. Once in her room, she perceived that it was dangerous to wander about the ruins at night. She reflected how little Duco had spoken, not thinking of danger, lost in his nocturnal dream, peering into the awful ghostliness. Why ... why had he not gone alone? Why had he asked her to go with him? She fell asleep after a chaos of whirling thoughts: the prince and Urania, the fat satin lady, the Colosseum and the martyrs and Duco and Mrs. Van der Staal. His mother was so ordinary, his sisters charming but commonplace and he ... so strange! So simple, so unaffected, so unreserved; and for that very reason so strange. He would be impossible at the Hague, among her friends. And she smiled as she thought of what he had said and how he had said it and how he could sit quietly silent, for minutes on end, with a smile about his lips, as though thinking of something beautiful....
But she must warn Urania....
And she wearily fell asleep.
Cornélie's premonition regarding Mrs. Van der Staal's opinion of her intercourse with Duco was confirmed: mevrouw spoke to her seriously, saying that she would compromise herself if she went on like that and adding that she had spoken to Duco in the same sense. But Cornélie answered rather haughtily and nonchalantly, declared that, after always minding the conventions and becoming very unhappy in spite of it, she had resolved to mind them no longer, that she valued Duco's conversation and that she was not going to be deprived of it because of what people thought or said. And then, she asked Mrs. Van der Staal, who were "people?" Their three or four acquaintances at Belloni's? Who knew her besides? Where else did she go? Why should she care about the Hague? And she gave a scornful laugh, loftily parrying Mrs. Van der Staal's arguments.
The conversation caused a coolness between them. Wounded in her touchy over-sensitiveness, she did not come to dinner at Belloni's that evening. Next day, meeting Duco at their little table in theosteria, she asked him what he thought of his mother's rebuke. He smiled vaguely, raising his eyebrows, obviously nut realizing the commonplace truth of his mother's words, saying that those were just mamma's ideas, which, of course, were all very well and current in the set in which mamma and his sisters lived, but which he didn't enter into or bother about, unless Cornélie thought that mamma was right. And Cornélie blazed out contemptuously, shrugged her shoulders, asked who or what there was for whose sake she should allow herself to break off their friendly intercourse. They ordered amezzo-fiascobetween them and had a long, chatty lunch like two comrades, like two students. He said that he had been thinking over her pamphlet; he talked, to please her, about the modern woman, modern marriage, the modern girl. She condemned the way in which Mrs. Van der Staal was bringing up her daughters, that light, frivolous education and that endless going about on the look for a husband. She said that she spoke from experience.
They walked along the Via Appia that afternoon and went to the Catacombs, where a Trappist showed them round. When Cornélie returned home she felt pleasantly light and cheerful. She did not go out again; she piled up the logs on her fire against the evening, which was turning chilly, and supped off a little bread and jelly, so as not to go out for her dinner. Sitting in her tea-gown, with her hands folded over her head, she stared into the briskly burning logs and let the evening speed past her. She was satisfied with her life, so free, independent of everything and everybody. She had a little money, she could go on living like this. She had no great needs. Her life in rooms, in little restaurants was not expensive. She wanted no clothes. She felt satisfied. Duco was an agreeable friend: how lonely she would be without him! Only her life must acquire some aim. What aim? The feminist movement? But how, abroad? It was such a different movement to work at.... She would send her pamphlet now to a newly founded women's paper. But then? She wasn't in Holland and she didn't want to go to Holland; and yet there would certainly be more scope there for her activity, for exchanging views with others. Whereas here, in Rome.... An indolence overcame her, in the drowsiness of her cosy room. He certainly was a cultivated fellow, even though he was not modern. What a lot he knew about history, about Italy; and how cleverly he told it all! The way he explained Italy to her, she was interested in the country after all.
Only, he wasn't modern. He had no insight into Italian politics, into the struggle between the Quirinal and the Vatican, into anarchism, which was showing its head at Milan, into the riots in Sicily.... An aim in life: what a difficult thing it was! And, in her evening drowsiness after a pleasant day, she did not feel the absence of an aim and enjoyed the soft luxury of letting her thoughts glide on in unison with the sleepy evening hours, in a voluptuous self-indulgence. She looked at the sheets of her pamphlet, scattered over her big writing-table, a real table to work at: they lay yellow under the light of her reading-lamp; they had not all been recopied, but she was not in the mood now; she threw a log into the little grate and the fire smoked and blazed. So pleasant, that foreign habit of burning wood instead of coal....
And she thought of her husband. She missed him sometimes. Could she not have managed him, with a little tact and patience? After all, he was very nice during the period of their engagement. He was rough, but not bad. He might have sworn at her sometimes, but perhaps he did not mean any great harm. He waltzed divinely, he swung you round so firmly.... He was good-looking and, she had to confess, she was in love with him, if only for his handsome face, his handsome figure. There was something about his eyes and mouth that she was never able to resist. When he spoke, she had to look at his mouth. However, that was all over and done with....
After all, perhaps the life of the Hague was too monotonous for her temperament. She liked travelling, seeing new people, developing new ideas; and she had never been able to settle down in her little set. And now she was free, independent of all ties, of all people. If Mrs. Van der Staal was angry, she didn't care.... And, all the same, Ducowasrather modern, in his indifference to convention. Or was it merely the artistic side of him? Or was he, as a man who was not modern, indifferent to it even as she, a modern woman, was? A man could allow himself greater licence. A man was not so easily compromised.... A modern woman. She repeated the words proudly. She drew herself up, stretching out her arms, looked at herself in the glass: her slender figure, her delicate little face, a trifle pale, with the eyes big and grey and bright under their remarkably long lashes, her light-brown hair in a loose, tangled coil, the lines of her figure, like those of a drooping lily, very winsome in the creased folds of her old tea-gown, pale-pink and faded.... What was her path in life? She felt herself to be something more than a worker and a fighter, to be very complex, felt that she was a woman too, felt a great womanliness inside her, like a weakness which would hamper her energy. And she wandered through the room, unable to make up her mind to go to bed, and, staring into the gloomy ashes of the expiring fire, she thought of her future, of what she would become and how, of how she would go and whither, along which curve of life, wandering through what forests, winding through what alleys, crossing which other curves of which other, seeking souls....
The idea had long fixed itself in Cornélie's mind that she must speak to Urania Hope; and one morning she sent her a note asking for an appointment that afternoon. Miss Hope wrote back assenting; and at five o'clock Cornélie found her at home in her handsome and expensive sitting-room at Belloni's: many lights, many flowers; Urania hammering on the piano in an indoor gown of Venetian lace; the table decked with a rich tea, with cut bread-and-butter, cakes and sweets. Cornélie had said that she wanted to see Miss Hope alone, on a matter of importance, and at once asked if she would be alone, feeling a doubt about it, now that Urania was receiving her so formally. But Urania reassured her: she had said that she was at home to no one but Mrs. de Retz and was very curious to know what Cornélie had come to talk about. Cornélie reminded Urania of her former warning and, when Urania laughed, she took her hand and looked at her with such serious eyes that she made an impression of the American girl's frivolous nature and Urania became puzzled. Urania now suddenly thought it very momentous—a secret, an intrigue, a danger, in Rome!—and they whispered together. And Cornélie, no longer feeling anxious amid this increasing intimacy, confessed to Urania what she had heard through the half-open door: the marchesa's machinations with her nephew, whom she was absolutely bent on marrying to a rich heiress at the behest of the prince's father, who seemed to have promised her so much for putting the match through. Then she spoke of Miss Taylor's conversion, effected by Rudyard: Rudyard, who did not seem able to achieve his purpose with Urania, failing to obtain a hold on her confiding but frivolous, butterfly nature, and who, as Cornélie suspected, had for that reason incurred the disfavour of his ecclesiastical superiors and vanished without settling his debt to the marchesa. His place appeared to have been taken by the twomonsignori, who looked more dignified and worldly and displayed greater unctuousness, and were more lavish in smiles. And Urania, staring at this danger, at these pit-falls under her feet which Cornélie had suddenly revealed to her, now became really frightened, turned pale and promised to be on her guard. Really she would have liked to tell her maid to pack up at once, so flat they might leave Rome as soon as possible, for another town, anotherpension, one with lots of titled people: she adored titles! And Cornélie, seeing that she had made an impression, continued, spoke of herself, spoke of marriage in general, said that she had written a pamphlet against marriage and onThe SocialPosition of Divorced Women. And she spoke of the suffering which she had been through and of the feminist movement in Holland. And, once in the vein, she abandoned all restraint and talked more and more emphatically, until Urania thought her exceedingly clever, a very clever girl, to be able to argue and write like that on aquestion brulante, laying a fine stress on the first syllables of the French words. She admitted that she would like to have the vote and, as she said this, spread out the long train of her lace tea-gown. Cornélie spoke of the injustice of the law which leaves the wife nothing, takes everything from her and forces her entirely into her husband's power; and Urania agreed with her and passed the little dish of chocolate-creams. And, to the accompaniment of a second cup of tea, they talked excitedly, both speaking at once, neither listening to what the other was saying; and Urania said that it was a shame. From the general discussion they relapsed to the consideration of their particular interests: Cornélie depicted the character of her husband, unable, in the coarseness of his nature, to understand a woman or to consent that a woman should stand beside him and not beneath him. And she once more returned to the Jesuits, to the danger of Rome for rich girls travelling alone, to that virago of a marchesa and to the prince, that titled bait which the Jesuits flung to win a soul and to improve the finances of an impoverished Italian house which had remained faithful to the Pope and refused to serve the king. And both of them were so vehement and excited that they did not hear the knock and looked up only when the door slowly opened. They started, glanced round and both turned pale when they saw the Prince of Forte-Braccio enter the room. He apologized with a smile, said that he had seen a light in Miss Urania's sitting-room, that the porter had told him she was engaged, but that he had ventured to disobey her orders. And he sat down; and, in spite of all that they had been saying, Urania thought it delightful to have the prince sitting there and accepting a cup of tea at her hands and graciously consenting to eat a piece of cake.
And Urania showed her album of coats of arms—the prince had already contributed an impression of his—and next the album with patterns of the queen's ball-dresses. Then the prince laughed and felt in his pocket for an envelope; he opened it and carefully produced a cutting of blue brocade embroidered with silver and seed-pearls.
"What is it?" asked Urania, in ecstasy.
And he said that he had brought her a pattern of her majesty's last dress; his cousin—not a Black, like himself, but a White, belonging not to the papal but to the court party and a lady-in-waiting to the queen—had procured this cutting for him for Urania's album. Urania would see it herself: the queen would wear the dress at next week's court ball. He was not going, he did not even go to his cousin's officially, not to her parties; but he saw her sometimes, because of the family relationship, out of friendship. And he begged Urania not to give him away: it might injure him in his career—"What career?" Cornélie wondered to herself—if people knew that he saw much of his cousin; but he had called on her pretty often lately, for Urania's sake, to get her that pattern.
And Urania was so grateful that she forgot all about the social position of girls and women, married and unmarried, and would gladly have sacrificed her right to the franchise for such a charming Italian prince. Cornélie became vexed, rose, bowed coldly to the prince and drew Urania with her to the door:
"Don't forget what we have been saying," she warned her. "Be on your guard."
And she saw the prince look at her sarcastically as they whispered together, suspecting that she was talking about him, but proud of the power of his personality and title and attentions over the daughter of an American stockinet-manufacturer.
A coolness had arisen between Mrs. Van der Staal and Cornélie; and Cornélie no longer went to dine at Belloni's. She did not see mevrouw and the girls again for weeks; but she saw Duco daily. Notwithstanding the essential differences in their characters, they had grown so accustomed to being together that they missed each other if a day passed without their meeting; and so they had gradually come to lunch and dine together every day, almost as a matter of course: in the morning at theosteriaand in the evening at some small restaurant or other, usually very simply. To avoid dividing the bill, Duco would pay one time and Cornélie the next. Generally they had much to talk about: he taught her Rome, took her after lunch to all manner of churches and museums; and under his guidance she began to understand, appreciate and admire. By unconscious suggestion he inspired her with some of his ideas. She found painting very difficult, but understood sculpture much more readily. And she began to look upon him as not merely morbid; she looked up to him, he spoke quite simply to her, as from his exalted standpoint of feeling and knowledge and understanding, of very exalted matters which she, as a girl and later as a young married woman, had never seen in the glorious apotheosis which he caused to rise before her like the first gleam of a dawn, of a new day in which she beheld new types of life, created of all that was noblest in the artist's soul. He regretted that he could not show her Giotto in the Santa Croce at Florence and the Primitives in the Uffizi and that he had to teach her Rome straight away; but lie introduced her to all the exuberant art-life of the Papal Renascence, until, under the influence of his speech, she shared that life for a single intense second and until Michael Angelo and Raphael stood out before her, also living. After a day like this, he would think that, after all, she was not so hopelessly inartistic; and she thought of him with respect, even after the suggestion was interrupted and when she reflected on what she had seen and heard and really, deep down in herself, no longer understood things so well as she had that morning, because she was lacking in love for them. But so much glamour of colour arid of the past remained whirling before her eyes in the evening that it made her pamphlet seem drab and dull; and the feminist movement ceased to interest her and she did not care about Urania Hope.
He admitted to himself that he had quite lost his peace of mind, that Cornélie stood before him in his thoughts, between him and his old triptychs, that his lonely, friendless, ingenuous, simple life, content with wandering through and outside Rome, with reading, dreaming and now and then painting a little, had changed entirely in habit and in line, now that the line of his life had joined that of hers and they both seemed to be going one way, he did not really know why. Love was not exactly the word for the feeling that drew him towards her. And just very vaguely, inwardly and unconsciously he suspected, though he never actually said or even thought as much, that it was the line of her figure, which was marked by something almost Byzantine, the slenderness of the frame, the long arms, the drooping lily-line of the woman who suffered, with the melancholy in her grey eyes, overshadowed by their almost too-long lashes; that it was the noble shape of her hand, small and pretty for a tall woman; that it was a movement of her neck, as of a swaying stalk, or a tired swan trying to glance backwards. He had never met many women and those whom he had met had always seemed very ordinary; but she was unreal to him, in the contradictions of her character, in its vagueness and intangibility, in all the half-tints which escaped his eye, accustomed to half-tints though it was.... What was she like? What he had always seen in her character was a woman in a novel, a heroine in a poem. What was she as a living woman of flesh and blood? She was not artistic and she was not inartistic; she had no energy and yet she did not lack energy; she was not precisely cultivated and yet, obeying her impulse and her intuition, she wrote a pamphlet on one of the most modern questions and worked at it and revised and copied it, till it became a piece of writing no worse than another. She had a spacious way of thinking, loathing all the pettiness of the cliques, no longer feeling at home, after her suffering, in her little Hague set; and here, in Rome, at a dance, she listened behind a door to a nonsensical conspiracy, hardly worthy of the name, he thought, and had gone to Urania Hope to mingle with the confused curves of smaller lives, curves without importance, of people whom he despised for their lack of line, of colour, of vision, of haze, of everything that was dear as life to him and made up life for him.... What was she like? He did not understand her. But her curve was of importance to him. She was not without a line: a line of art and line of life; she moved in the dream of her own indefiniteness before his gazing eyes; and she loomed up out of the haze, as out of the twilight of his studio atmosphere, and stood before him like a phantom. He would not call that love; but she was dear to him like a revelation that was constantly veiling itself in secrecy. And his life as a lonely wanderer was, it was true, changed; but she had introduced no inharmonious habit into his life: he enjoyed taking his meals in a little café orosteria; and she took them with him easily and simply, not squalidly but pleasantly and harmoniously, with an adaptability and with just as much natural grace as when she used to dine of an evening at thetable-d'hôteat Belloni's. All this—that contradictory admixture of unreality, of inconsistency; that living vision of indefiniteness; that intangibility of her individual essence; that self-concealment of the soul; that blending of her essential characteristics—had become a charm to him: a restlessness, a need, a nervous want in his life, otherwise so restful, so easily contented and calm, but above all a charm, an indispensable everyday charm.
And, without troubling about what people might think, about what Mrs. Van der Staal thought, they would one day go to Tivoli together, or another day walk from Castel Gandolfo to Albano and drive to the Lago di Nemi and picnic at the Villa Sforza-Cesarini, with the broken capital of a classic pillar for a table. They rested side by side in the shadow of the trees, admired the camellias, silently contemplated the glassy clearness of the lake, Diana's looking-glass, and drove back over Frascati. They were silent in the carriage; and he smiled as he reflected how they had been taken everywhere that day for man and wife. She also thought of their increasing intimacy and at the same time thought that she would never marry again. And she thought of her husband and compared him with Duco, so young in the face but with eyes full of depth and soul, a voice so calm and even, with everything that he said so much to the point, so accurately informed; and then his calmness, his simplicity, his lack of passion, as though his nerves had schooled themselves only to feel the calmness of art in the dreamy mist of his life. And she confessed to herself, there, in the carriage beside him, amid the softly shelving hills, purpling away in the evening, while before her faded the rose-mallow of a pale gold sunset, that he was dear to her because of that cleverness, that absence of passion, that simplicity and that accuracy of information—a clear voice sounding up out of the dreamy twilight—and that she was happy to be sitting beside him, to hear that voice and by chance to feel his hand, happy in that her line of life had crossed his, in that their two lines seemed to form a path towards the increasing brightness, the gradual daily elucidation of their immediate future....