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 the _osteria_,
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 a _mezzo-fiasco_ between 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,
Duco _was_ rather 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....