“It’s over,” he muttered. “I am beaten. She is stronger than me now, but not because she is a devil. I saw them together … I saw their embrace. She is stronger, he is stronger than I am … because of their happiness … I feel that, because of their happiness, they will always be stronger than me …”
He went to his room, which adjoined Urania’s bedroom. Sobs welled up in his chest. He threw himself, fully clothed, on his bed, swallowing his sobs in the slumbering night, which wrapped the castle in its downy folds. Then he got up, and looked out of the window. He saw the lake. He saw the pergola where they had fought a moment ago. The night was asleep, the caryatids rose gleaming from the shadow. And he tried to pinpoint the place of their fight and his defeat. And thinking superstitiously of their happiness he felt that it would never be possible to fight against it, never. Then he shrugged his shoulders, as if throwing off a burden.
“Non fa niente!” he said, consoling himself. “Domani meglio …”
By that he meant that tomorrow he would win, if not this victory, then another. And with his eyes still wet, he fell asleep like a child.
XL
URANIA SOBBED NERVOUSLY in Cornélie’s arms when Cornélie told the young princess that she was leaving the next day. They were alone with Duco in Urania’s private drawing-room.
“What happened?” she asked, sobbing.
Cornélie told her about the previous evening.
“Urania,” she said seriously, “I know I’m a flirt. I loved talking to Gilio; call it flirting if you like. I have never made a secret of it, either with Duco or with you. I regarded it as amusement and nothing more. Perhaps I was wrong; I have irritated you by it in the past. I promised you never to do it again, but it seems to be stronger than I am. It’s in my nature, and I won’t try to defend myself… I regarded it as something so trifling, a piece of fun and amusement. But perhaps it is bad. Will you forgive me? I’ve grown so fond of you: it would pain me if you did not forgive me …”
“Make it up with Gilio and stay …”
“Impossible, dearest girl. Gilio has insulted me, Gilio drew his knife against Duco, and I shall never forgive him that double insult. So it is impossible to stay any longer.”
“I shall be left so alone!” she sobbed. “I am very fond of you too, of both of you. Is there no way …? Robert is leaving me tomorrow too. I shall be all alone here. What do I have here? No one who loves me …”
“You have a lot, Urania. You have a goal to live for; you can do much good for those around you … You are interested in this castle, which is now yours.”
“It’s all so hollow!” she sobbed. “It gives me nothing. I need sympathy. Who cares for me? I have tried to love Gilio, and I do love him, but he, he cares nothing for me. No one here cares for me …”
“I believe your poor folk care about you. You have a noble cause.”
“I am glad of that, but I’m too young to live just for a cause. I have nothing else. No one cares for me here.”
“What about Prince Ercole …”
“No, he despises me. Shall I tell you something? I told you before that Gilio had told me there were no family jewels, that everything had been sold? Do you remember? Well, there are family jewels. I realised that from something the Countess di Rosavilla said. There are family jewels. But Prince Ercole keeps them in the Banca di Roma. They despise me and I am unworthy to wear them. And with me they act as if there is nothing left. And the worst thing! … is that all their friends, their whole coterie know that they are kept in the bank and they all approve of what Prince Ercole has done. My money is good enough for them, but I’m not good enough for their old jewels, their grandmothers’ jewels!”
“It’s scandalous,” said Cornélie.
“It’s the truth!” she sobbed. “Oh, make it up; stay here with me …”
“Judge for yourself, Urania: we really can’t.”
“It’s true,” she admitted with a sigh.
“It’s all my fault.”
“No, no. Gilio is sometimes so hotheaded …”
“But his hotheadedness, his passion and his jealousy are my fault. I am very sorry about it, Urania, for your sake. Forgive me. Come and see me in Rome, if you go there. Don’t forget me, and write to me, won’t you? Now I must pack. What time is the train?”
“Ten twenty-five,” said Duco. “We’ll go together.”
“Can I say goodbye to Prince Ercole? Have me announced.”
“What will you say to him?”
“The first thing that comes into my head: that a friend in Rome is ill, that I am going and Van der Staal is accompanying me, because I am nervous. I really don’t care what Prince Ercole thinks.”
“Cornélie …”
“Darling, I really have no more time. Give me a hug. Forgive me. And don’t forget me. Adieu, we had a precious time together: I’ve grown very fond of you …”
She struggled free of Urania, and Duco also said goodbye. They left the princess alone, sobbing. In the corridor they met Gilio.
“Where are you going?” he asked humbly.
“We’re leaving on the ten twenty-five train …”
“I am deeply sorry …”
But they went on and left him standing there, while Urania sobbed in the drawing-room.
XLI
IN THE TRAIN, in the scorching morning heat, they were silent, and they found the houses of Rome almost bursting out of their walls in the blazing sun. But in the studio it was cool, solitary and peaceful.
“Cornélie,” said Duco. “Tell me what happened between you and the prince. Why did you hit him?”
She pulled him onto the sofa, threw her arms round his neck and told him about the incident in the bridal chamber. She told him about the camera degli sposi. She told him about the thousand lire and the bracelet. She explained that she had kept quiet about this, so as not to bring up money worries, while he was finishing his watercolour for the exhibition in London.
“Duco,” she went on, “I had such a scare yesterday when I saw Gilio draw that knife. I felt as if I was going to faint, but I didn’t. I had never seen him like that, so passionate, capable of anything … Only then did I realise how much I loved you … I would have killed him if he had hurt you …”
“You shouldn’t have played with him,” he said severely. “He loves you …”
But despite his severe tone, he pulled her more firmly to him. She nuzzled against him as if in token of her sense of guilt.
“He’s just a little infatuated …” she said, defending herself weakly.
“He is passionately in love … You shouldn’t have played with him …”
She did not reply, caressing his face with her hand. She thought it was very sweet of him to reproach her like this: she liked the severe, serious tone, which he scarcely ever took with her. She knew she had that need to flirt in her, had done since she was a very young girl: for her it didn’t count, it was innocent amusement. She did not agree with Duco, but she considered it unnecessary to go on discussing it: it was as it was, she did not think about it, she did not argue about it: it was a difference of opinion, almost of taste, that did not matter. She was lying too comfortably against him, after the agitation of last night, after a sleepless night, after a hasty departure, a three-hour rail journey in the blistering heat, to make too many objections. She loved the quiet coolness of the studio, being alone together after the three weeks at San Stefano. There was such peace here, such a sense of repose, that it was wonderful. The high window was pulled full up and the warm air rushed balmily into the natural chilliness of the north-facing room. Duco’s easel, empty, stood waiting. It was their home, among all that colour and those artistic forms around her. Now she understood that colour and form: she was learning about Rome. She learned it all in the dream of her happiness. She thought little about the women’s question and scarcely glanced at the reviews of her pamphlet; they interested her very little. She thought Lippo’s angel was beautiful and the triptych panel by
Gentile da Fabriano and the flickering colours of the old chasubles. It was very little after the treasures of San Stefano, but it was theirs and their home. She said nothing else, she felt content, resting on Duco’s chest, and her fingers stroked his face.
“Banners is virtually sold,” he said, “for ninety pounds. I’ll send a telegram to London this afternoon … And then we can quickly give the prince back his money.”
“It’s Urania’s money,” she said faintly.
“But I don’t want the debt any longer …”
She sensed that he was a little angry, but she wasn’t in the mood to talk about money matters, and a heavenly languor flew through as she lay on his chest …
“Are you angry, Duco?”
“No … but you shouldn’t have done it …”
He held her closer, to show her he did not want to scold her, even though he felt she had acted wrongly. She felt that she had been wise not to mention the thousand lire to him, but she did not defend herself. They would be pointless words and she felt too content to talk about money.
“Cornélie,” he said. “Let’s get married …”
She looked at him in alarm, startled out of her happiness.
“Why?”
“Not for us. We’re just as happy without being married. But for the world, other people. Yes; we’ll start to feel more and more isolated. I’ve talked to Urania about it a few times. She was very sad, but she tolerated us … She thought it was an impossible relationship. Maybe she’s right. We can’t go anywhere. At San Stefano people acted as if they didn’t know that we lived together. That’s over now …”
“What do you care about the opinion of ‘little indifferent people, who cross your path by chance’, as you say? …”
“That is no longer the case: we owe the prince money and Urania is the only friend you have …”
“I have you: I don’t need anyone.”
He kissed her.
“Cornélie, it would be better if we got married. Then no one will be able to insult us as the prince dared to do.”
“He had narrow-minded ideas: how can you want to get married for the sake of a world and people like San Stefano and the prince?”
“The whole world is like that and we are in the world. We live among other people. It’s impossible to isolate yourself completely and isolation always takes its toll later. We have to conform with other people: it’s impossible existing by yourself the whole time, without any sense of community.”
“Duco, I don’t recognise you: such social ideas.”
“I’ve been thinking more recently.”
“I on the other hand am forgetting how to think … My darling, how serious you are this morning. While I am resting against you so beautifully after all that emotion, and that hot journey.”
“Really Cornélie, let’s get married …”
She rubbed up against him rather nervously, upset that he was persisting and violently shattering her happy mood …
“You are an unpleasant fellow. Why must we get married. It would make no difference to our situation. We wouldn’t worry about other people. We have such a wonderful life here, with your art. We don’t need anything except each other, your art and Rome. I love Rome so much now: I’ve changed completely. You’ve got to find another motif—to get down to work. When you’re doing nothing, you start thinking … in a social direction … and that’s not you at all … I don’t recognise you like that. And so narrow-mindedly social too. In order to get married! For God’s sake why, Duco? You know my ideas about marriage. I know from experience: it’s better not to …” She had got up and was searching mechanically in a portfolio among half-finished sketches.
“Your experience …” he repeated. “We know each other too well to be frightened of anything.”
She took the sketches out of the portfolio: they were the ideas that had emerged and which he had noted down while he was working on Banners. She looked through them and spread them out.
“Frightened?” she repeated vaguely.
“No,” he suddenly continued more firmly. “A person never knows another person. I don’t know you, I don’t know myself.”
Something deep inside herself warned her: don’t get married, don’t give in to him. It’s better not, it’s better not to … It was scarcely a whispering hint of a warning presentiment, it was not thought out, but unconscious and in her secret self. Because she was not aware of it, she did not think it, she scarcely heard it in herself. It went through her and it was not a feeling and it left only a recalcitrant resistance in her, very clearly … Only years later was she to understand that resistance …
“No, Duco, it’s better if we don’t …”
“Think about it, Cornélie.”
“It’s better if we don’t,” she repeated stubbornly. “Come on, let’s stop talking about it. It’s better if we don’t, but I hate saying no to you, because you want to. I never refuse you anything else. Apart from that I’d do anything in the world for you. But I have the feeling about this: it’s … better … if we don’t!”
She came over to him and embraced him, filled with the desire to caress.
“Don’t ask me again. What a cloud across your face! I can see that you’ll go on thinking about it.”
She stroked his forehead as if to wipe his frown away.
“Don’t think about it any more. I love you! I love you! I want nothing else but you … I am happy as we are, why aren’t you? Because Gilio was coarse and Urania prim? Come and look at your sketches. Are you going to get straight back to work? I love it when you’re working. Then I shall write something else: a piece about an old Italian castle. My memories of San Stefano. Perhaps a novella with the pergola as the background. Oh, that beautiful pergola … But yesterday, that knife! Duco, are you going to get back to work? Let’s have a look together. What a lot of ideas you had then! But don’t get too symbolical: I mean, don’t acquire those tics, those repetitions of yourself … That woman here, she’s beautiful … She is walking unconsciously on a downward path and those pushing hands around her, and those red flowers in the abyss … Duco, what did you mean by that?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t clear about it myself …”
“I like it, but I didn’t like that sketch. I don’t know why. There’s something unpleasant about it I find. I find the woman stupid. I don’t like those downward sloping lines: I like ascending lines, like in Banners. That flowed completely upwards out of the night, to the sun! How beautiful that was! What a pity we no longer have it, that it is being sold. If I were a painter I could never sell anything. I shall keep the sketches for it, as a souvenir. Don’t you think it’s awful that we no longer have it … He agreed: he also missed his Banners, which he loved. And together with her he searched through the other studies and sketches. But except for the unconscious woman there was nothing among them that was clear enough to be developed. And Cornélie did not want him to finish the unconscious woman: no, she did not like those downward sloping lines … But then he found sketches of landscape studies, of clouds and skies above the Campagna, Venice and Naples … And he set to work.
XLII
THEY WERE VERY THRIFTY, they had a little money and the months flowed past as if in a dream, through the scorching Rome summer. They continued their happy, isolated existence, seeing no one but Urania, who occasionally came to Rome, visited them, lunched with them in the studio and left again in the evening. Then Urania wrote to say that Gilio could no longer stand it at San Stefano and that they were going on a trip, first to Switzerland and later to Ostend. She came once more to say goodbye, and after that they saw no one else.
In the past Duco had known one artist, a painter and compatriot in Rome: now he knew no one, and saw no one. Their life in the cool studio was a lonely oasis existence in the sun-baked desert of Rome in August. To save money, they did not go into the mountains to somewhere cooler. They spent only what was absolutely necessary and their bohemian poverty with its backdrop of triptyc
h and chasuble colours was still full of happiness.
But money remained tight. Duco sold the occasional watercolour, but sometimes they had to resort to selling a knick-knack. And it was always very painful for Duco to part with something he had collected. Their needs were few, but the rent for the studio occasionally had to be paid. Cornélie wrote the odd letter or sketch, which paid for what clothes she needed. She had a certain chic way of wearing clothes, a talent for looking elegant in a worn old blouse. She took great care of her hair, her skin, her teeth and her nails. She would wear an old hat with a new veil; and a pair of fresh gloves with an old walking dress, and she wore everything with style. At home, in her pink peignoir, now completely faded, she made such a charming picture that Duco was forever sketching her. They scarcely ever went out to eat any more. Cornélie would cook up something at home, dreaming up easy recipes, would buy a flask of wine from the first wine and oil shop she passed, with coachmen drinking outside at tables, and they would eat better and cheaper at home than in the osteria. And Duco, now he no longer frequented the antique dealers down by the Tiber, spent nothing. But money remained tight. Once, after they had sold a silver crucifix for far too little, Cornélie was so discouraged that she sobbed against Duco’s chest. He comforted her, stroked her hair and maintained that he did not care that much for the crucifix. But she knew that it was a very beautiful anonymous sixteenth-century piece, and it pained him greatly to have lost it. And she told him seriously that things could not go on like this, that she could not be a burden on him, and that they must separate: that she would look for something, would go back to Holland … He was startled by her despair, and said that there was no need, that he would look after her, as a wife, but that he was an impractical fellow who could do nothing but daub a little, and not even enough to make a living. But she said that he must not talk like that, that he was a great artist, who did not have a facile, profitable productivity, but he was all the greater for that. She said that she did not want to live on his money, but wanted to fend for herself. And she gathered up the scattered remnants of her feminist ideas. Again he asked her to consent to a marriage: they would make things up with his mother and Mrs Van der Staal would restore the allowance she had given him when he had lived with her at Belloni. But in the first place she refused to contemplate marriage and in the second place to accept any support from his mother, just as he did not want money from Urania. How often Urania had offered to help! He had never wanted to accept: he had even been angry when Urania had given Cornélie a blouse, which she had accepted with a kiss.
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