Inevitable

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.