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 not 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. For Duco had helped her to arrange
her sitting-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 drowsy 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 at 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 in 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 more. A man was not so easily compromised.... A
modern woman. She repeated the words proudly. Her drowsiness acquired
a certain arrogance. 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 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 decide 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....