Urania wrote most charmingly. She said that they were having a very
quiet time with the old prince at San Stefano, as they were not
inviting visitors because the castle was too gloomy, too shabby, too
lonely, but that she would think it most delightful if Cornélie would
come and spend a few weeks with them. She added that she would send Mr.
Van der Staal an invitation as well. The letter was addressed to the
Via dei Serpenti and forwarded to Cornélie from there. She understood
from this that Gilio had not mentioned that she was living in Duco's
studio and she understood also that Urania accepted their _liaison_
without criticizing it....
_The Banners_ had been dispatched to London; and, now that Duco was
no longer working, a slight indolence and a vague boredom hung about
the studio, which was still cool, while the town was scorching. And
Cornélie wrote to Urania that she was very glad to accept and promised
to come in a week's time. She was pleased that she would meet no other
guests at the castle, for she had no dresses for a country-house visit.
But with her usual tact she freshened up her wardrobe, without spending
much money. This took up all the intervening days; and she sat sewing
while Duco lay on the sofa and smoked cigarettes. He also had accepted,
because of Cornélie and because the district around the Lake of San
Stefano, which was overlooked by the castle, attracted him. He promised
Cornélie with a smile not to be so stiff. He would do his best to make
himself agreeable. He looked down rather haughtily on the prince. He
considered him a scallywag, but no longer a bounder or a cad. He
thought him childish, but not base or ignoble.
Cornélie went off. He took her to the station. In the cab she kissed
him fondly and told him how much she would miss him during those few
days. Would he come soon? In a week? She would be longing for him;
she could not do without him. She looked deep into his eyes, which
she loved. He also said that he would be terribly bored without her.
Couldn't he come earlier, she asked. No, Urania had fixed the date.
When he helped her into a second-class compartment, she felt sad to
be going without him. The carriage was full; she occupied the last
vacant seat. She sat between a fat peasant and an old peasant-woman;
the man civilly helped her to put her little portmanteau in the rack
and asked whether she minded if he smoked his pipe. She civilly
answered no. Opposite them sat two priests in frayed cassocks. An
unimportant-looking little brown wooden box was lying between their
feet: it was the extreme unction, which they were taking to a dying
person.
The peasant entered into conversation with Cornélie, asked if she was
a foreigner: English, no doubt? The old peasant-woman offered her a
tangerine orange.
The remainder of the compartment was occupied by a middle-class family:
father, mother, a small boy and two little sisters. The slow train
shook, rattled and wound its way along, stopping constantly. The little
girls kept on humming tunes. At one station a lady stepped out of a
first-class carriage with a little girl of five, in a white frock and a
hat with white ostrich-feathers.
"_Oh, che bellezza_!" cried the small boy. "Mamma, mamma, look! Isn't
she beautiful? Isn't she lovely? _Divinamente_! Oh ... mamma!"
He closed his black eyes, lovelorn, dazzled by the little white girl of
five. The parents laughed, the priests laughed, everybody laughed. But
the boy was not at all confused:
"_Era una bellezza_!" he repeated once more, casting a glance of
conviction all around him.
It was very hot in the train. Outside, the mountains gleamed white
on the horizon and glittered like a fire with opal reflections.
Close to the railway stood a row of eucalyptus-trees, sickle-leaved,
brewing a heavy perfume. On the dry, sun-scorched plain, the wild
cattle grazed, lifting their black curly heads with indifference to
the train. In the stifling, stewing heat, the passengers' drowsy
heads nodded up and down, while a smell of sweat, tobacco-smoke and
orange-peel mingled with the scent of the eucalyptuses outside. The
train swung round a curve, rattling like a toy-train of tin coaches
almost tumbling over one another And a level stretch of unruffled la
zulite--metallic, crystalline, sky-blue--came into view, spreading into
an oval goblet between slopes of mountain-land, like a very deep-set
vase in which a sacred fluid was kept blue and pure and motionless
by a wall of rocky hills, which rose higher and higher until, as the
train swung and rattled round the clear goblet, at one lofty point a
castle stood, coloured like the rocks, broad, massive and monastic,
with the cloisters running down the slope. It rose in noble and sombre
melancholy; and from the train one could hardly distinguish what was
rock and what was building-stone, as though it were all one barbaric
growth, as though the castle had grown naturally out of the rock and,
in growing, had assumed something of the shape of a human dwelling of
the earliest times. And, as though the oval with its divine blue water
had been a sacred reservoir, the mountains hedged, in the Lake of San
Stefano and the castle rose as its sombre guardian.
The train wound along a curve by the water-side, swung round a bend,
then round another and stopped: San Stefano. It was a small, quiet
town, lying sleepily in the sun, without life or traffic, and visited
only in the winter by day-trippers, who came from Rome to see the
cathedral and the castle and tasted the wine of the country at the
_osteria._
When Cornélie alighted, she at once saw the prince.
"How sweet of you to come and look us up in our eyrie!" he cried, in
rapture, eagerly pressing her two hands.
He led her through the station to his little basket-carriage, with two
little horses and a tiny groom. A porter would bring her luggage to the
castle.
"It's delightful of you to come!" he repeated. "You have never been to
San Stefano before? You know the cathedral is famous. We shall go right
through the town: the road to the castle runs behind it."
He was smiling with pleasure. He started the horses with a click of
his tongue, with a repeated shake of the reins, like a child. They
flew along the road, between the low, sleepy little houses, across the
square, where in the glowing sunlight the glorious cathedral rose,
Lombardo-Romanesque in style, begun in the eleventh and added to in
every succeeding century, with the _campanile_ on the left and the
_battisterio_ on the right: marvels of architecture in red, black and
white marble, one vast sculpture of angels, saints and prophets and
all as it were covered with a thick dust of ages, which had long since
tempered the colours of the marble to rose, grey and yellow and which
hovered between the groups as the one and only thing that had been
left over of all those centuries, as though they had sunk into dust in
every crevice.
The prince drove across a long bridge, whose arches were the remains of
an ancient aqueduct and now stood in the river, the bed of which was
quite dried up, with children playing in it. Then he let the little
horses climb at a foot's pace. The road led steeply, winding, barren
and rocky, up to the castle, while valleys of olives sank beneath them,
affording an ever wider view over the ever wider panorama of blue-white
mountains and opal horizons gleaming in the sun, with suddenly a
glimpse of the lake, the oval goblet, now sunk deeper and deeper, as in
a fluted brim of sun-scorched hills, its blue growing deeper and more
precipitous, a mystic blue that caught all the blue of the sky, until
the air shimmered between lake and sky as in long spirals of light that
whirled before the eyes. Until suddenly there drifted an intoxication
of orange-blossom, a heavy, sensual breath as of panting love, as
though thousands of mouths were exhaling a perfumed breath that hung
stiflingly in the windless atmosphere of light, between the lake and
the sky.
The prince, happy and vivacious, talked a great deal, pointed this
way and that with his whip, clicked at the horses, asked Cornélie
questions, asked if she did not admire the landscape. Slowly, straining
the muscles of their hind-legs, the horses drew the carriage up the
ascent. The castle lay massive, huddling close to the ground. The lake
sank lower and lower. The horizons became wider, like a world; a fitful
breeze blew away some of the orange-blossom breath. The road became
broad, easy and level. The castle lay extended like a fortress, like
a town, behind its pinnacled walls, with gate within gate. They drove
in, across a courtyard, under an archway into a second courtyard. And
Cornélie received a sensation of awe, a vision of pillars, arches,
statues, arcades and fountains. They alighted.
Urania ran out to meet her, embraced her, welcomed her affectionately
and took her up the stairs and through the passages to her room. The
windows were open; she looked out at the lake and the town and the
cathedral. And Urania kissed her again and made her sit down. And
Cornélie was struck by the fact that Urania had grown thin and had lost
her former brilliant beauty of an American girl, with the unconscious
look of a _cocotte_ in her eyes, her smile and her clothes. She was
changed. She had "gone off" a little and was no longer so pretty, as
though her good looks had been a short-lived pretence, consisting
of freshness rather than line. But, if she had lost her bloom, she
had gained a certain distinction, a certain style, something that
surprised Cornélie. Her gestures were quieter, her voice was softer,
her mouth seemed smaller and was not always splitting open to display
her white teeth; her dress was exceedingly simple: a blue skirt and a
white blouse. Cornélie found it difficult to realize that the young
Princess of Forte-Braccio, Duchess of San Stefano, was Miss Urania
Hope of Chicago. A slight melancholy had come over her, which became
her, even though she was less pretty. And Cornélie reflected that
she must have some sorrow, which had smoothed her angles, but that
she was also tactfully accommodating herself to her entirely novel
environment. She asked Urania if she was happy. Urania said yes, with
her sad smile, which was so new and so surprising. And she told her
story. They had had a pleasant winter at Nice, but among a cosmopolitan
circle of friends, for, though her new relations were very kind, they
were exceedingly condescending and Virgilio's friends, especially the
ladies, kept her at arm's length in an almost insolent fashion. Already
during the honeymoon she had perceived that the aristocracy were
prepared to tolerate her, but that they could never forget that she was
the daughter of Hope the Chicago stockinet-manufacturer. She had seen
that she was not the only one who, though she was now a princess and
duchess, was accepted on sufferance and only for her millions: there
were others like herself. She had formed no friendships. People came
to her parties and dances: they were _frère et compagnon_ and hand and
glove with Gilio; the women called him by his Christian name, laughed
and flirted with him and seemed quite to approve of him for marrying
a few millions. To Urania they were just barely civil, especially the
women: the men were not so difficult. But the whole thing saddened
her, especially with all these women of the higher nobility--bearers
of the most famous names in Italy--who treated her with condescension
and always managed to exclude her from every intimacy, from all private
gatherings, from all cooperation in the matter of parties or charities.
When everything had been discussed, then they asked the Principessa
di Forte-Braccio to take part and offered her the place to which she
was entitled and even did so with scrupulous punctiliousness. They
manifestly treated her as a princess and an equal in the eyes of the
world, of the public. But in their own set she remained Urania Hope.
And the few other, middle-class millionaire elements of course ran
after her, but she kept these at a distance; and Gilio approved. And
what had Gilio said when she once complained of her grievance to
him? That she, by displaying tactfulness, would certainly conquer
her position, but with great patience and after many, many years.
She was now crying, with her head on Cornélie's shoulder: oh, she
reflected, she would never conquer them, those haughty women! What
after all was she, a Hope, compared with all those celebrated families,
which together made up the ancient glory of Italy and which, like the
Massimos, traced back their descent to the Romans of old?
Was Gilio kind? Yes, but from the beginning he had treated her as
"his wife." All his pleasantness, all his cheerfulness was kept for
others: he never talked to her much. And the young princess wept: she
felt lonely, she sometimes longed for America. She had now invited her
brother to stay with her, a nice boy of seventeen, who had come over
for her wedding and travelled about Europe a little before returning
to his farm in the Far West. He was her darling, he consoled her; but
he would be gone in a few weeks. And then what would she have left?
Oh, how glad she was that Cornélie had come! And how well she was
looking, prettier than she had ever seen her look! Van der Staal had
accepted: he would be here in a week. She asked, in a whisper, were
they not going to get married? Cornélie answered positively no; she was
not marrying, she would never marry again. And, in a sudden burst of
candour, unable to conceal things from Urania, she told her that she
was no longer living in the Via dei Serpenti, that she was living in
Duco's studio. Urania was startled by this breach of every convention;
but she regarded her friend as a woman who could do things which
another could not. So it was only their happiness and friendship, she
whispered, as though frightened, and without the sanction of society?
Urania remembered Cornélie's imprecations against marriage, and,
formerly, against the prince. But she did like Gilio a little now,
didn't she? Oh, she, Urania, would not be jealous again! She thought it
delightful that Cornélie had come; and Gilio, who was bored, had also
looked forward so to her arrival. Oh, no, Urania was no longer jealous!
And, with her head on Cornélie's shoulder and her eyes still full of
tears, she seemed merely to ask for a little friendship, a little
affection, a few kind words and caresses, this wealthy American child
who now bore the title of an ancient Italian house. And Cornélie felt
for her because she was suffering, because she was no longer a small,
insignificant person, whose line of life happened to cross her own.
She took her in her arms, comforted her, the weeping little princess,
as with a new friendship; she accepted her in her life as a friend,
no longer as a small, insignificant person. And, when Urania, staring
wide-eyed, remembered Cornélie's warning, Cornélie treated that warning
lightly and said that Urania ought to show more courage. Tact, she
possessed, innate tact. But she must be courageous and face life as it
came....
They stood up and, clasped in each other's arms, looked out of the
open window. The bells of the cathedral were pealing through the air;
the cathedral rose in noble pride from out of a very low huddle of
roofs, a gigantic cathedral for so small a town, an immense symbol of
ecclesiastical dominion over the roof-tops of the little town kneeling
in reverence. And the awe which had filled Cornélie in the courtyard,
among the arcades, statues and fountains, inspired her anew, because
glory and grandeur, dying but not dead, mouldering but not spent,
seemed to loom dimly from the mystic blue of the lake, from the age-old
architecture of the cathedral, up the orange-clad hills to the castle,
where at an open window stood a young foreign woman, discouraged,
although that phantom of glory and grandeur needed her millions in
order to endure for a few more generations....
"It is beautiful and stately, all this past," thought Cornélie. "It is
great. But still it is no longer anything. It is a phantom. For it is
gone, it is all gone, it is but a memory of proud and arrogant nobles,
of narrow souls that do not look towards the future."
And the future, with a confusion of social problems, with the waving of
new banners and streamers, now whirled before her in the long spirals
of light, which, like blue notes of interrogation, shimmered before her
eyes, between the lake and the sky.