They were in the great sombre dining-room, with the almost black
tapestries, with the almost black panels of the ceiling, with the
almost black oak carvings, with the black, monumental chimney-piece
and, above it, the arms of the family in black marble. The light of
two tall silver candle-sticks on the table merely cast a gleam over
the damask and crystal, but left the remainder of the too large room
in a gloomy obscurity of shadow, piled in the corners into masses of
densest shadow, with a fainter shadow descending from the ceiling like
a haze of dark velvet that floated in atoms above the candlelight. The
ancestral antiquity of San Stefano hovered above them in this room
like a palpable sense of awe, blended with a melancholy of black
silence and black pride. Here their words sounded muffled. This
still remained as it always had been, retaining as it were the
sacrosanctity of their aristocratic traditions, in which Urania
would never dare to alter anything, even as she hardly ventured to
open her mouth to speak or eat. They waited for a moment. Then a
double door was opened. And there entered like a spectral shade an
old, grey man, with his arm in the arm of the priest walking beside
him. Old Prince Ercole approached with very slow and stately steps,
while the chaplain regulated his pace by that stately slowness. He
wore a long black coat of an old-fashioned, roomy cut, which hung
about him in folds, something like a cassock, and on his silvery grey
hair, which waved over his neck, a black-velvet skull-cap. And the
others approached him with the greatest respect: first the marchesa;
then Urania, whom he kissed on the forehead, very slowly, as though
he were consecrating her; then Gilio, who submissively kissed his
father's hand. The old man nodded to young Hope, who bowed, and
glanced towards Cornélie. Urania presented her. And the prince said
a few amiable words to her, as though he were granting an audience,
and asked her if she liked Italy. When Cornélie had replied, Prince
Ercole sat down and handed his skull-cap to Giuseppe, who took it with
a deep bow. Then they all sat down: the marchesa and the chaplain
opposite Prince Ercole, who sat between Cornélie and Urania; Gilio
next to Cornélie; Bob Hope next to his sister:
"My legs don't show," he whispered.
"Ssh!" said Urania.
Giuseppe, revivified in his former dignity, standing at a sideboard,
solemnly filled the plates with soup. He was back in his element; he
was obviously grateful to Urania; he wore a distinguished air, as of
one whose mind is at peace, and looked like an elderly diplomatist in
his dress-coat. He amused Cornélie, who thought of Belloni's, where
he used to become impatient when the visitors were late at meals and
to rail at the young greenhorns of waiters whom the marchesa engaged
for economy's sake. When the two footmen had handed round the soup,
the chaplain stood up and said grace. Not a word had been spoken
yet. They ate the soup in silence, while the three servants stood
motionless. The spoons clinked against the plates and the marchesa
smacked her lips. The candles flickered now and again; and the shadow
fell more oppressively, like a haze of black velvet. Then Prince Ercole
addressed the marchesa. And turn by turn he addressed them all, with a
kindly, condescending dignity, in French and Italian. The conversation
became a little more general, but the old prince continued to lead
it. And Cornélie noticed that he was very civil to Urania. But she
remembered Gilio's words:
"Papa nearly had a stroke, because old Hope haggled over Urania's
dowry. Ten millions? Five millions? Not three millions! Dollars? No,
lire!"
And the prince suddenly struck her as the grey-haired egoism of San
Stefano's glory and aristocratic pride, struck her as the living
shade of the past that loomed behind him, as she had felt it that
afternoon, when she stood gazing with Urania into the deep, blue lake:
an exacting shade; a shade demanding millions; a shade demanding a new
increment of vitality; a spectral parasite who had sold his depreciated
symbols to gratify the vanity of a new commercial house, but who, in
his distinction, had been no match for the merchant's cunning. Their
title of princess and duchess for less than three million lire! Papa
had almost had a stroke, Gilio had said. And Cornélie, during the
measured, affable stiffness of the conversation led by Prince Ercole,
looked from the old prince and duke, seventy years of age, to the
breezy young Far-Westerner, aged eighteen, and from him to Prince
Gilio, the hope of the old house, its only hope. Here, in the gloom of
this dining-room, where he was bored and moreover still out of temper,
he seemed small, insignificant, shrunken, a paltry, distinguished
little viveur; and his carbuncle eyes, which could sparkle merrily
with wit and depravity, now looked dully, from under their drooping
lids, upon his plate, at which he picked without appetite.
She felt sorry for him; and her mind went back to the golden bridal
chamber. She despised him a little. She looked upon him not so much
as a man who could not obtain what he wanted but rather as a naughty
boy. And he must feel jealous of Bob, she reflected: jealous of his
young blood, which tingled in his cheeks, of his broad shoulders and
his broad chest. But still he amused her. He could be very agreeable,
gay and witty and vivacious, when in the mood, vivacious in his words
and in his wits. She liked him, when all was said. And then he was
good-hearted. She thought of the bracelet and especially the thousand
lire, always remembered, with a certain emotion, how touched she had
been during that walk up and down past the post-office, how touched
by his letter and his generous assistance. He had no backbone, he was
not a man to her; but he was witty and he had a very good heart. She
liked him as a friend and a pleasant companion. How dejected and moody
he was! But then why would he venture on those silly enterprises?...
She spoke to him now and again, but could not succeed in rousing
him from his depression. For the rest, the conversation dragged on
stiffly and affably, always led by Prince Ercole. The dinner came to
an end; and Prince Ercole rose from his chair. Giuseppe handed him his
skull-cap; every one said good-night to him; the doors were opened
and Prince Ercole withdrew, leaning on his chaplain's arm. Gilio,
still angry, disappeared. The marchesa, still terrified of Cornélie,
also disappeared, making the jettatura at her in the folds of her
dress. And Urania took Cornélie and Bob back with her to her own
drawing-room. They all three breathed again. They all talked freely, in
English: the boy said in despair that he wasn't getting enough to eat,
that he dared not eat enough to stay his hunger; and Cornélie laughed,
thinking him jolly, because of his wholesomeness, while Urania hunted
out some biscuits for him and a piece of cake left over from tea and
promised that he should have some cold meat and bread before they
went to bed. And they relaxed their minds after the pompous, stately
meal. Urania said that the old prince never appeared except at dinner,
but that she always looked him up in the morning and sat talking to
him for an hour or playing chess with him. At other times he played
chess with the chaplain. She was very busy, Urania. The reorganizing
of the housekeeping, which used to be left to a poor relation, who
now lived at a pension in Rome, took up a lot of her time. In the
mornings, she discussed a host of details with Prince Ercole, who,
notwithstanding his secluded life, knew about everything. Then she
had consultations with her architect from Rome about the restorations
to be effected in the castle: these consultations were sometimes held
in the old prince's study. Then she was having a big hostel built in
the town, an albergo dei poveri, a hostel for old men and women, for
which old Hope had given her a separate endowment. When she first came
to San Stefano she had been struck by the ruinous, tumbledown houses
and cottages of the poorer quarters, leprous and scabby with filth,
eaten up by their own poverty, in which a whole population vegetated
like toadstools. She was now building the hostel for the old people,
finding work on the estate for the young and healthy and looking after
the neglected children; she had built a new school-house. She talked
about all this very simply, while cutting cake for her brother Bob,
who was tucking in after his formal dinner. She asked Cornélie to
come with her one morning to see how the albergo was progressing,
to see the new school, run by two priests who had been recommended
to her by the monsignori.
Through the pointed windows the town loomed faintly in the depths
below; and the lines of the cathedral rose high into the sultry,
star-spangled night. And Cornélie thought to herself:
"It was not only for a shadow and an unsubstantial shade that she came
here, the rich American who thought titles 'so nice,' the child who
used to collect patterns of the queen's ball-dresses--she hides the
album now that she is a 'black' princess--the girl who used to trip
through the Forum in her white-serge tailor-made, without understanding
either ancient Rome or the dawn of the new future."
And, as Cornélie went to her own room through the silent heavy darkness
of the Castle of San Stefano, she thought:
"I write, but she acts. I dream and think; but she teaches the
children, though it be with the aid of a priest; she feeds and houses
old men and women."
Then, in her room, looking out at the lake under the summer night
all dusted with stars, she reflected that she too would like to be
rich and to have a wide field of labour. For now she had no field,
now she had no money and now ... now she longed only for Duco; and he
must not leave her too long alone in this castle, amid all this sombre
greatness, which oppressed her as with the weight of the centuries.