Inevitable

III

THERE WAS A BUZZ of voices at dinner; the three or four long tables were full; the marchesa sat at the head of the centre table. Now and then she beckoned impatiently to Giuseppe, the old head waiter, who had dropped a spoon at an archducal court, and youthful waiters trotted about breathlessly. Sitting opposite her Cornélie found the benevolent fat gentleman whom the German ladies had called Mr Rudyard, and by her place setting her flask of Genzano. She thanked him with a smile, and talked to Mr Rudyard — the usual chit-chat: how she had been for a tour that afternoon, her first taste of Rome, the Forum, the Pincio. She talked to the German ladies and with the Englishwoman, who was always so tired from ‘sightseeing’, and the German ladies, an old baroness and her daughter, a young baroness, laughed with her at the two aesthetes whom Cornélie had encountered in the drawing-room that first morning. They were sitting some distance away; tall and angular, with unwashed hair, in strangely cut evening dresses that revealed bosoms and arms, comfortably covered by grey woollen vests, over which they had calmly draped strings of large blue beads. Both of them surveyed the long table, as if pitying anyone who had travelled to Rome to become acquainted with art, since they alone knew what art in Rome was. While eating, which they did unappetisingly, almost with their fingers, they read aesthetic works, frowning and occasionally looking up crossly because people were talking at table. With their pedantry, their impossible manners, their appalling taste in clothes, together with their great pretentiousness, they were typical English ladies on their travels, of the kind one finds nowhere but in Italy. The criticism of them at table was unanimous. They came to Pensione Belloni every winter, and painted watercolours in the Forum or on the Via Appia. And they were so extraordinary in their unprecedented originality, in their angular scruffiness, with their evening dresses, the woollens, the blue necklaces, the aesthetic books and their fingers busily picking meat apart, that all eyes were drawn to them by a Medusa-like attraction. The young baroness, a type from a fashionable magazine, incisive, quick-witted, with her round little German face and high sharply drawn eyebrows, laughed with Cornélie, and was showing her a sketchbook containing a drawing she had dashed off of the two aesthetic ladies, when Giuseppe led a young lady to the end of the table where Cornélie and Rudyard were sitting opposite each other. She had obviously just arrived, wished the assembled gathering a good evening, and sat down with a great rustle of material. All eyes turned from the aesthetic ladies towards this newcomer. It was immediately obvious that she was American, almost too beautiful, too young to be travelling alone, with a smiling self-assurance, as if she were at home, very white, with very lovely dark eyes, teeth like a dentist’s advertisement, her full bust sheathed in mauve linen with silver trimmings full of arabesques, on her heavily permed hair a large mauve hat with a cascade of black ostrich feathers, attached by an over-large paste clasp. Her silk underskirts rustled at every movement, the plumes waved, the paste glittered. And despite this showy appearance she was like a child, no more than twenty, with a naive look: she immediately addressed Cornélie and Rudyard; said she was tired, had come from Naples, had danced at Prince Cibo’s the night before, that her name was Miss Urania Hope, that her father lived in Chicago. That she had two brothers who, despite papa’s fortune, worked on a ranch way out West, but that she had been brought up like a spoilt child by her father, who nevertheless wanted her to stand on her own feet and so let her travel alone, and wanted to arrange joint outings in the Old World, in “dear old Italy”. She was overjoyed to hear that Cornélie was also travelling alone, and Rudyard teased the ladies about their newfangled notions, and the two baronesses applauded them. Miss Hope took an immediate liking to her Dutch fellow-traveller, but Cornélie, hesitant, gently declined, saying that she was busy and wanted to study in the museums. “My, my, so serious?” inquired Miss Hope respectfully, and the underskirts rustled, the plumes waved and the paste sparkled. She struck Cornélie as a multicoloured butterfly, nimble and unthinking, that was in danger of crashing into the conservatory glass of a confined existence. Though she felt no attraction to the strange creature that looked at the same time like a coquette and a child, she did feel pity, why she did not know. After supper Rudyard suggested a short walk to the two German ladies. The young baroness came over to Cornélie and asked her to join them, to see Rome by moonlight, nearby, around the Villa Medici. She was grateful for the kind words, and was going to put on a hat when Miss Hope ran after her.

“Stay with me in the drawing-room …”

“I’m going for a walk with the baroness,” replied Cornélie.

“That German lady?”

“Yes.”

“Does she belong to the nobility?”

“I fancy she does.”

“Are there many people from the nobility in this pensione?” asked Miss Hope eagerly.

Cornélie laughed.

“I don’t know. I only arrived here this morning.”

“I think there are. I’ve heard that there are lots of members of the nobility here. Are you a member of the nobility?”

“I was!” laughed Cornélie. “But I had to relinquish my title.”

“What a shame!” cried Miss Hope. “The nobility is so sweet. Do you know what I have? An album of coats-of-arms, of all sorts of families, and another album of samples — silk and brocade of every ball gown of the queen of Italy … Would you like to see it?”

“I’d love to,” laughed Cornélie. “But now I must put my hat on.”

She went off and returned in her hat and cape: the German ladies and Rudyard were already waiting in the vestibule and asked why she was laughing. She told them about the album of samples of the queen’s evening gowns, which caused great merriment.

“Who is he?” she asked the baroness, as they walked on ahead down the Via Sistina; the young baroness followed with Rudyard.

She found the baroness charming, but was struck, in this German woman from an aristocratic military background, by a cold, cynical view of life not exactly typical of her Berlin environment.

“I don’t know,” replied the baroness with some indifference. “We travel a lot. At the moment we have no house in Berlin. We want to enjoy our trip. Mr Rudyard is very nice. He helps us with all kinds of things: tickets for a papal mass, introductions here, invitations there. He appears to have considerable influence. What do I care who or what he is? Else feels the same. I take what he has to offer here and apart from that I don’t delve too deeply into him …”

They walked on.

The baroness took Cornélie’s arm.

“My dear child, don’t think us too cynical. I scarcely know you, but I like you. Odd, isn’t it, on our travels, suddenly to be sitting down to a pensione set menu with scrawny chicken. Don’t think us bad, or cynical. Oh, perhaps we are. Our cosmopolitan, dissolute life free of duty makes one like that: ignoble, cynical and selfish. Very selfish. Rudyard does us many favours. Why shouldn’t I accept them? I couldn’t care less who or what he is. I’m not putting myself under an obligation to him.”

Cornélie looked round involuntarily. In the street, almost completely dark, she saw Rudyard and the young baroness, almost whispering and acting mysteriously.

“And does your daughter feel the same?”

“Oh yes. We’re not under any obligation to him. We don’t even care greatly for him, with his pock-marked face and black nails. We simply accept his introductions. Do likewise. Or … don’t. Perhaps it would be nobler of you not to. I, I’ve become very selfish, through our travelling. What difference does it make to me …”

The dark street seemed to invite confidences, and Cornélie understood a little of that cynical indifference, unusual in a woman brought up amid narrow concepts of duty and morality. It was not noble; but was it not weariness at life’s tribulations? Whatever the case, she had a vague understanding of that indifferent tone, that nonchalant shrug of the shoulders …

And they turned past Hôtel Hassler and approached the Villa Medici. The full moon poured out its flood of white light, and Rome was bathed in the blue-white nocturnal glow. From the full basin of the fountain, beneath the black holm oaks, whose foliage provided an ebony frame for the painting of Rome, the abundant water splashed noisily down …

“Rome must be beautiful,” said Cornélie softly.

Rudyard and the young baroness had caught up, and heard Cornélie’s words.

“Rome is beautiful,” he said earnestly. “And Rome is more. Rome is a great consolation to many people.”

In the bluish moonlit night his words struck her. The city seemed to be undulating mystically at her feet. She looked at him: he stood before her, with his black coat, without much linen on show: always a fat, polite gentleman. His voice was very piercing, with a rich tone of conviction. She looked at him for a long time, unsure of herself and vaguely sensing an approaching suggestion, but mutely hostile.

Then he added, as if not wanting her to dwell too long on what he had said:

“A great consolation, for many people … since beauty consoles …”

And she found his last remark an aesthetic truism, but he had meant her to find it so.