At dinner there was a buzz of voices; the three or four long tables
were all full; the marchesa sat at the head of the centre table. Now
and then she beckoned impatiently to Giuseppe, the old major-domo,
who had dropped a spoon at an archducal court; and the unfledged
little waiters rushed about breathlessly. Cornélie found the obliging
stout gentleman, whom the German ladies called Mr. Rudyard, sitting
opposite her and her fiasco of Genzano beside her plate. She thanked
Mr. Rudyard with a smile and made the usual remarks: how she had been
for a drive that afternoon and had made her first acquaintance with
Rome, the Forum, the Pincio. She talked to the German ladies and
to the English one, who was always so tired with her sight-seeing;
and the Germans, a Baronin and the Baronesse her daughter, laughed
with her at the two æsthetes whom Cornélie had come upon that morning
in the drawing-room. The two were sitting some distance away, lank
and angular, grimy-haired, in curiously cut evening-dress, which
showed the breast and arms warmly covered with a Jaeger undervest,
on which, in their turn, lay strings of large blue beads. Their eyes
browsed over the long table, as though they were pitying everybody
who had come to Rome to learn about art, because they two alone knew
what art was. While eating, which they did unpleasantly, almost with
their fingers, they read æsthetic books, wrinkling their brows and
now and then looking up angrily, because the people about them were
talking. With their self-conceit, their impossible manners, their
worse than tasteless dress and their great air of superiority, they
represented types of travelling Englishwomen that are never met except
in Italy. They were unanimously criticized at the table. They came to
the Pension Belloni every winter and made drawings in water-colours
in the Forum or the Via Appia. And they were so remarkable in
their unprecedented originality, in their grimy angularity, with
their evening-dresses, their Jaegers, their strings of blue beads,
their æsthetic books and their meat-picking fingers, that all eyes
were constantly wandering in their direction, as though under the
influence of a Medusa spell.
The young baroness, a type out of the Fliegende Blätter, witty and
quick, with her little round, German face and arched, pencilled
eyebrows, was laughing with Cornélie and showing her a thumb-nail
caricature which she had made of the two æsthetic ladies in her
sketch-book, when Giuseppe conducted a young lady to the end of the
table where Cornélie and Rudyard sat opposite each other. She had
evidently just arrived, said "Evening" to everybody near her and sat
down with a great rustling. It was at once apparent that she was an
American, almost too good-looking, too young, to be travelling alone
like that, with a smiling self-possession, as if she were at home:
a very white complexion, very fine dark eyes, teeth like a dentist's
advertisement, her full breast moulded in mauve cloth plentifully
decorated with silver braid, on her heavily-waved hair a large mauve
hat with a cascade of black ostrich-feathers, fastened by an over-large
paste buckle. At every movement the silk of her petticoat rustled,
the feathers nodded, the paste buckle gleamed. And, notwithstanding all
this showiness, she was child-like: she was perhaps just twenty, with
an ingenuous expression in her eyes. She at once spoke to Cornélie,
to Rudyard; said that she was tired, that she had come from Naples,
that she had been dancing last night at Prince Cibo's, that her name
was Miss Urania Hope, that her father lived in Chicago, that she had
two brothers who, in spite of her father's money, were working on a
farm in the Far West, but that she had been brought up as a spoilt
child by her father, who, however, wanted her to be able to stand on
her own feet and was therefore making her travel by herself in the
Old World, in dear old Italy. She was delighted to hear that Cornélie
was also travelling alone; and Rudyard chaffed the ladies about their
modern views, but the Baronin and the Baronesse applauded them. Miss
Hope at once took a liking to her Dutch fellow-traveller and wanted
to arrange joint excursions; but Cornélie, withdrawing into herself,
made a tactful excuse, said that her time was fully engaged, that
she wanted to study in the museums.
"So serious?" asked Miss Hope, respectfully.
And the petticoat rustled, the plumes nodded, the paste buckle gleamed.
She made on Cornélie the impression of a gaudy butterfly, which,
sportive and unthinking, might easily one day dash itself to pieces
against the hot-house windows of our cabined existence. She felt no
attraction towards this strange, pretty little creature, who looked
like a child and a cocotte in one; but she felt sorry for her, she
did not know why.
After dinner, Rudyard proposed to take the two German ladies for
a little walk. The younger baroness came to Cornélie and asked if
she would come too, to see Rome by moonlight, quite close, from the
Villa Medici. She felt grateful for the kindly suggestion and was
just going to put on her hat, when Miss Hope ran after her:
"Stay and sit with me in the drawing-room."
"I am going for a walk with the Baronin," Cornélie replied.
"That German lady?"
"Yes."
"Is she a noblewoman?"
"I presume so."
"Are there many titled people in the house?" asked Miss Hope, eagerly.
Cornélie laughed:
"I don't know. I only arrived this morning."
"I believe there are. I heard that there were many titled people
here. Are you one?"
"I was!" Cornélie laughed. "But I had to give up my title."
"What a shame!" Miss Hope exclaimed. "I love titles. Do you know what
I've got? An album with the coats of arms of all sorts of families
and another album with patterns of silk and brocade from each of the
Queen of Italy's ball-dresses. Would you care to see it?"
"Very much indeed!" Cornélie laughed. "But I must put on my hat now."
She went and returned in a hat and cloak; the German ladies and
Rudyard were waiting in the hall and asked what she was laughing
at. She caused great merriment by telling them about the album with
the patterns of the queen's ball-dresses.
"Who is he?" she asked the Baronin, as she walked in front with her,
along the Via Sistina, while the Baronesse and Rudyard followed.
She thought the Baronin a charming person, but she was surprised to
find, in this German woman, who belonged to the titled military-class,
a coldly cynical view of life which was not exactly that of her
Berlin environment.
"I don't know," the Baronin answered, with an air of indifference. "We
travel a great deal. We have no house in Berlin at present. We want
to make the most of our stay abroad. Mr. Rudyard is very pleasant. He
helps us in all sorts of ways: tickets for a papal mass, introductions
here, invitations there. He seems to have plenty of influence. What
do I care who or what he is! Else agrees with me. I accept what he
gives us and for the rest I don't try to fathom him."
They walked on. The Baronin took Cornélie's arm:
"My dear child, don't think us more cynical than we are. I hardly know
you, but I've felt somehow drawn towards you. Strange, isn't it, when
one's abroad like this and has one's first talk at a table-d'hôte,
over a skinny chicken? Don't think us shabby or cynical. Oh, dear,
perhaps we are! Our cosmopolitan, irresponsible, unsettled life makes
us ungenerous, cynical and selfish. Very selfish. Rudyard shows us
many kindnesses. Why should I not accept them? I don't care who or
what he is. I am not committing myself in any way."
Cornélie looked round involuntarily. In the nearly dark street she saw
Rudyard and the young Baronesse, almost whispering and mysteriously
intimate.
"And does your daughter think so too?"
"Oh, yes! We are not committing ourselves in any way. We do not
even particularly like him, with his pock-marked face and his dirty
finger-nails. We merely accept his introductions. Do as we do. Or
... don't. Perhaps it will be better form if you don't. I ... I have
become a great egoist, through travelling. What do I care?..."
The dark street seemed to invite confidences; and Cornélie to some
extent understood this cynical indifference, particularly in a woman
reared in narrow principles of duty and morality. It was certainly
not good form; but was it not weariness brought about by the wear
and tear of life? In any case she vaguely understood it: that tone
of indifference, that careless shrugging of the shoulders....
They turned the corner of the Hotel Massier and approached the Villa
Medici. The full moon was pouring down its flood of white radiance
and Rome lay in the flawless blue glamour of the night. Overflowing
the brimming basin of the fountain, beneath the black ilexes, whose
leafage held the picture of Rome in an ebony frame, the waste water
splashed and clattered.
"Rome must be very beautiful," said Cornélie, softly.
Rudyard and the Baronesse had come nearer and heard what she said:
"Rome is beautiful," he said, earnestly. "And Rome is more. Rome is
a great consolation to many people."
His words, spoken in the blue moonlit night, impressed her. The city
seemed to lie in mystical billows at her feet. She looked at him,
as he stood before her in his black coat, showing but little linen,
the same stout, civil gentleman. His voice was very penetrating, with
a rich note of conviction in it. She looked at him long, uncertain
of herself and vaguely conscious of an approaching intimation, but
still antipathetic.
Then he added, as though he did not wish her to meditate too deeply
the words which he had uttered:
"A great consolation to many ... because beauty consoles."
And she thought his last words an æsthetic commonplace; but he had
meant her to think so.