The undertaking which Urania had given was so vague, however, that
Cornélie felt uneasy and spoke of it to Duco that evening, when she met
him at the restaurant. But he was not interested in Urania, in what
she did or didn't do; and he shrugged his shoulders indifferently.
Cornélie, on the other hand, was silent and absent-minded and did
not listen to what he was talking about: a side-panel of a triptych,
undoubtedly by Lippo Memmi, which he had discovered in a little shop by
the Tiber; the angel of the Annunciation, almost as beautiful as the
one in the Uffizi, kneeling with the stir of his last flight yet about
him, with the lily-stem in his hands. But the dealer asked two hundred
lire for it and he did not want to give more than fifty. And yet the
dealer had not mentioned Memmi's name, did not suspect that the angel
was by Memmi.
Cornélie was not listening; and suddenly she said: "I am going to the
Palazzo Ruspoli."
He looked up in surprise:
"What for?"
"To ask for Miss Hope."
He was dumb with amazement and stared at her open-mouthed.
"If she's not there," Cornélie went on, "it's all right. If she is, if
she has gone after all, I'll ask to speak to her on urgent business."
He did not know what to say, thinking her sudden idea so strange, so
eccentric, thinking it so unnecessary that her curve should cross the
curves of insignificant, indifferent people, that he did not know how
to choose his words. Cornélie glanced at her watch:
"It's past half-past nine. If she does go, she will go about this time."
She called the waiter and paid the bill. And she buttoned her coat and
stood up. He followed after her:
"Cornélie," he began, "isn't what you are doing rather strange? It'll
mean all sorts of worries for you."
"If one always objected to being worried, one would never do a good
action."
They walked on in silence, he moving irritably by her side. They did
not speak: he thought her intention simply crazy; she thought him
wanting in chivalry, not to wish to protect Urania. She was thinking
of her pamphlet, of her fellow-women; and she wanted to protect Urania
from marriage, from that prince. And they walked through the Corso
to the Palazzo Ruspoli. He became nervous, made another attempt to
restrain her; but she had already asked the porter:
"Is _il signore principe_ at home?"
The man looked at her suspiciously:
"No," he said, curtly.
"I believe he is. If so, ask if Miss Hope is with his excellency. Miss
Hope was not at home; I believe that she was coming to see the prince
this evening; and I want to speak to her urgently ... on a matter which
will not brook delay. Here: la Signora de Retz...."
She handed him her card. She spoke with the greatest self-possession
and referred to Urania's visit calmly and simply, as though it were an
everyday occurrence for American girls to call on Italian princes in
the evening and as though she were persuaded that the porter knew of
this custom. The man was disconcerted by her attitude, bowed, took the
card and went away. Cornélie and Duco waited in the portico.
He admired her calmness. He considered her behaviour eccentric; but
she carried out her eccentricity with a self-assurance which once more
showed her in a new light. Would he never understand her, would he
never grasp anything or know anything for certain of that changeful
and intangible vagueness of hers? He could never have spoken those few
words to that porter in just that tone! Where had she got that tact
from, that dignified, serious attitude towards that imposing janitor,
with his long cane and his cocked hat? She did it all as easily as she
ordered their simple dinner, with a pleasant familiarity, of the waiter
at their little restaurant.
The porter returned:
"Miss Hope and his excellency beg that you will come upstairs."
She looked at Duco with a triumphant smile, amused at his confusion:
"Will you come, too?"
"Why, no," he stammered. "I can wait for you here."
She followed the footman up the stairs. The wide corridor was hung with
family-portraits. The drawing-room-door was open and the prince came
out to meet her.
"Please forgive me, prince," she said, calmly, putting out her hand.
His eyes were small and pinched and gleamed like carbuncles; he was
white with rage; but he controlled himself and pressed his lips to the
hand which she gave him.
"Forgive me," she went on. "I want to speak to Miss Hope on an urgent
matter."
She entered the drawing-room; Urania was there, blushing and
embarrassed.
"You understand," Cornélie said, with a smile, "that I would not have
disturbed you if it had not been important. A question between women
... and still important!" she continued, jestingly and the prince
made an insipid, gallant reply. "May I speak to Miss Hope alone for a
moment?"
The prince looked at her. He suspected unfriendliness in her and more,
hostility. But he bowed, with his insipid smile, and said that he would
leave the ladies to themselves. He went to another room.
"What is it, Cornélie?" asked Urania, in agitation. She took Cornélie's
two hands and looked at her anxiously.
"Nothing," said Cornélie, severely. "I have nothing to say to you. Only
I had my suspicions and felt sure that you would not keep your promise.
I wanted to make certain if you were here. Why did you come?"
Urania began to weep.
"Don't cry!" whispered Cornélie, mercilessly. "For God's sake don't
start crying! You've done the most thoughtless thing imaginable...."
"I know I have!" Urania confessed, nervously, drying her tears.
"Then why did you do it?"
"I couldn't help it."
"Alone, with him, in the evening! A man well-known to be a bad lot."
"I know."
"What do you see in him?"
"I'm fond of him."
"You only want to marry him for his title. For the sake of his title
you're compromising yourself. What if he doesn't respect you this
evening as his future wife? What if he compels you to be his mistress?"
"Cornélie! Don't!"
"You're a child, a thoughtless child. And your father lets you travel
by yourself ... to see 'dear old Italy!' You're an American and
broad-minded: that's all right; to travel through the world pluckily on
your own is all right; but you're not a woman, you're a baby!"
"Cornélie...."
"Come away with me; say that you're going with me ... for an urgent
reason. Or no ... better say nothing. Stay. But I'll stay too."
"Yes, you stay too."
"We'll send for him now."
"Yes."
Cornélie rang the bell. A footman appeared.
"Tell his excellency that we are ready."
The man went away. In a little while the prince entered. He had never
been treated like this in his own house. He was seething with rage, but
he remained very polite and outwardly calm:
"Is the important matter settled?" he asked, with his small eyes and
his hypocritical smile.
"Yes; thank you very much for your discretion in leaving us to
ourselves," said Cornélie. "Now that I have spoken to Miss Hope, I am
greatly relieved by what she has told me. Aha, you would like to know
what we were talking about!"
The prince raised his eyebrows. Cornélie had spoken archly, holding
up her finger as though in threat, smiling; and the prince looked at
her and saw that she was handsome. Not with the striking beauty and
freshness of Urania Hope, but with a more complex attractiveness, that
of a married woman, divorced, but very young; that of a _fin-de-siècle_
woman, with a faintly perverse expression in her deep grey eyes, moving
under very long lashes; that of a woman of peculiar grace in the
drooping lines of her tired, lax, morbid charm: a woman who knew life;
a woman who saw through him: he was certain of it; a woman who, though
disliking him, nevertheless spoke to him coquettishly in order to
attract him, to win him, unconsciously, from sheer womanly perversity.
And he saw her, in her perverse beauty, and admired her, sensitive as
he was to various types of women. He suddenly thought her handsomer and
less commonplace than Urania and much more distinguished and not so
ingenuously susceptible to his title, a thing which he thought so silly
in Urania. He was suddenly at his ease with her, his anger subsided: he
thought it fun to have two good-looking women with him instead of one;
and he jested in return, saying that he was consumed with curiosity,
that he had been listening at the door, but had been unable to catch a
word, alas!
Cornélie laughed with coquettish gaiety and looked at her watch. She
said something about going, but sat down at the same time, unbuttoned
her coat and said to the prince:
"I have heard so much about your miniatures. Now that I have the
chance, may I see them?"
The prince was willing, charmed by the look in her eyes, by her voice;
he was all fire and flame in a second.
"But," said Cornélie, "my escort is waiting outside in the portico. He
would not come up: he doesn't know you. It is Mr. Van der Staal."
The prince laughed as he glanced at her. He knew of the gossip at
Belloni's. He did not for a moment doubt the existence of a _liaison_
between Van der Staal and Signora de Retz. He knew that they did not
care for the proprieties. And he began to like Cornélie very much.
"But I will send to Mr. Van der Staal at once to ask him to come up."
"He is waiting in the portico," said Cornélie. "He won't like to...."
"I'll go myself," said the prince, with obliging vivacity.
He left the room. The ladies stayed behind. Cornélie took off her coat,
but kept on her hat, because her hair was sure to be untidy. She looked
into the glass:
"Have you your powder on you?" she asked Urania.
Urania took her little ivory powder-box from her bag and handed it
to Cornélie. And, while Cornélie powdered her face, Urania looked at
her friend and did not understand. She remembered the impression of
seriousness which Cornélie had made on her at their first meeting:
studying Rome; afterwards, writing a pamphlet on the woman question
and the position of divorced women. Then her warnings against marriage
and the prince. And now she suddenly saw her as a most attractive,
frivolous woman, irresistibly charming, even more bewitching than
actually beautiful, full of coquetry in the depths of her grey eyes,
which glanced up and down under the curling lashes, simply dressed in
a dark silk blouse and a cloth skirt, but with so much distinction and
so much coquetry, with so much dignity and yet with a touch of yielding
winsomeness, that she hardly knew her.
But the prince had returned, bringing Duco with him. Duco was nervously
reluctant, not knowing what had happened, not grasping how Cornélie had
acted. He saw her sitting quietly, smiling; and she at once explained
that the prince was going to show her his miniatures.
Duco declared flatly that he did not care for miniatures. The prince
suspected from his irritable tone that he was jealous. And this
suspicion incited the prince to pay attentions to Cornélie. And he
behaved as though he were showing his miniatures only to _her_, as
though he were showing _her_ his old lace. She admired the lace in
particular and rolled it between her delicate fingers. She asked him to
tell her about his grandmothers, who used to wear the lace: had they
had any adventures? He told her one which made her laugh very much;
then he told an anecdote or two, vivaciously, flaming up under her
glance, and she laughed. Amid the atmosphere of that big drawing-room,
his study--it contained his writing-table--with the candles lighted
and flowers everywhere for Urania, a certain perverse gaiety began
to reign, a frivolous _joie de vivre_. But only between Cornélie and
the prince. Urania had fallen silent; and Duco did not speak a word.
Cornélie was a revelation to him also. He had never seen her like that:
not at the dance on Christmas Day, nor at the _table-d'hôte_, nor in
his studio, nor on their excursions, nor in their restaurant. Was she a
woman, or was she ten women?
And he confessed to himself that he loved her, that he loved her more
at each revelation, more with each woman that he saw in her, like a
new facet which she made to gleam and glitter. But he could not speak,
could not join in their pleasantry, feeling strange in that atmosphere,
strange in that atmosphere of buoyant animal spirits, caused by nothing
but aimless words, as though the French and Italian which they mixed up
together were dropping so many pearls, as though their jests shone like
so much tinsel, as though their equivocal playing upon words had the
iridescence of a rainbow....
The prince regretted that his tea was no longer fit to drink, but he
rang for some champagne. He thought that his plans had partly failed
that evening, for, fearing to lose Urania, he had intended to compel
her; seeing her hesitation, he had resolved to force the irreparable.
But his nature was so devoid of seriousness--he was marrying to please
his father and the Marchesa Belloni rather than himself; he enjoyed
his life quite as well with a load of debts and no wife as he could
hope to do with a wife and millions of money--that he began to consider
the failure of his plans highly amusing and had to laugh within
himself when he thought of his father, of his aunt the marchesa and of
their machinations, which had no effect on Urania, because a pretty,
flirtatious woman had objected.
"Why did she object?" he wondered, as he poured out the foaming
Monopole, spilling it over the glasses. "Why does she put herself
between me and the American stocking-seller? Is she herself in Italy to
hunt for a title?"
But he did not care: he thought the intruder charming, pretty, very
pretty, coquettish, seductive, bewitching. He fussed around her,
neglecting Urania, almost forgetting to fill her glass. And, when it
grew late and Cornélie at last rose to go and drew Urania's arm through
hers and looked at the prince with a glance of triumph which they
mutually understood, he whispered in her ear:
"I am ever so grateful to you for visiting me in my humble abode. You
have defeated me: I acknowledge myself defeated."
The words appeared to be merely an allusion to their jesting discussion
about nothing; but, uttered between him and her, between the prince and
Cornélie, they sounded full of meaning; and he saw the smile of victory
in her eyes....
He stayed behind in his room and poured himself out what remained of
the champagne. And, as he raised the glass to his lips, he said, aloud:
"_O, che occhi! Che belli occhi!... Che belli occhi!..._"