She looked earnestly straight ahead, dropped her head a little and stared straight in front of her. They were no longer eating. The two Italians got up, said goodbye and left. They were alone. The waiter had put out some fruit for them and withdrawn.
They were both silent for a moment. Then she spoke in a very soft voice and with such an air of tender melancholy that he could have burst into sobs of adoration.
“Of course I knew you would ask me that one day. It was in the nature of things. A great friendship like ours led naturally to that question. But it’s impossible, my dear Duco … It’s impossible, my dear boy … I have my ideas … but it’s not that. I’m against marriage …but it’s not that. In some cases a woman betrays all her ideals in a single instant … What is it then …?”
She stared wide-eyed, brushed her forehead, as if she could not see clearly … Still, she continued:
“The thing is … that I’m afraid of marriage. I’ve known it, I know what it is … I can see my husband clearly in front of me right now. I can see that habit, that drudgery in front of me, in which all nuance is erased. That’s what marriage is: habit, drudgery. And now I’ll tell you frankly: I think marriage is disgusting. I think that habit is disgusting. I think passion is beautiful, but marriage isn’t passion. Passion can be noble, and superhuman, but marriage is a human institution of petty human morality and calculation … And I’ve become afraid of such wise moral bonds. I have promised myself — and I think I shall keep that promise — never to marry again. My whole nature has become unsuitable. I am no longer the young girl from The Hague with her soirées and dinners, on the look-out for a husband, together with her parents … My love for him was passion! And in my marriage he wanted to bridle that passion till it became drudgery and habit. I rose up … Don’t let me talk about it. Passion is too short-lived to fill a marriage … Respect afterwards, etcetera? There’s no need to get married for that. I can respect, even unmarried. Of course, there is the question of children, there are all kinds of difficulties …I can’t think that through now. I just feel now, very seriously and calmly, that I am unsuited to marriage, and never want to marry again. I wouldn’t make you happy … Don’t be sad, Duco. I love you, you are dear to me. And perhaps … I’ve met you at the right moment. If I had met you earlier in my Hague days … you would certainly have been too high for me to aspire to. I wouldn’t have come to love you. Now I can understand you, respect you and look up to you. I’m saying this to you quite simply, that I love you and look up to you, look up to you, for all your softness, in a way that I never looked up to my husband, however much he asserted his masculine rights. And you must believe, with great firmness, that I am telling the truth. Flirting … is something I do only with Gilio …”
He looked at her through his silent tears. He got up, called the waiter, paid absent-mindedly, while his eyes were swimming and gleaming. They went out and she hailed a carriage and gave the address of Villa Doria-Pamphili. She remembered that the gardens were open. They drove there in silence, overwhelmed by their thoughts of the future, which opened trembling before them. Sometimes he took deep breaths and shivered all over. Once she squeezed his hand with great emotion. They got out at the gate of the villa, and walked together along its majestic avenues. Down below lay Rome, and they suddenly saw St Peter’s. But they did not talk, and she suddenly sat down on an antique bench and in her weakness began softly weeping. He put his arm round her and consoled her. She dried her tears, smiled and embraced him, returned his kiss … Dusk started to fall and they went back. He gave the address of his studio. She followed him there. And she gave herself to him, in the fullness of her honesty and truth, and with a love so powerful and overwhelming that she thought she would faint in his arms.
XXV
THEY DID NOT CHANGE their life. Duco, though, after a scene with his mother, no longer slept at Belloni, but in a box room, adjoining his studio, which at first had been full of suitcases and junk. Cornélie regretted the scene, since she had always liked Mrs Van der Staal and the girls. But she felt a surge of pride, and despised Mrs Van der Staal for being unable to understand Duco or her. Still, she would have liked to prevent the estrangement. At her suggestion Duco visited his mother again, but she remained cool and rejected him. After that Cornélie and Duco went to Naples. They were not running away, they just did it; Cornélie told Urania and the prince that she was going to Naples for a while and that Van der Staal might follow her. She did not know Naples and would very much appreciate it if Van der Staal could be her guide in and around the city. Cornélie kept on her rooms in Rome. And they spent two weeks of mindless, pure, intense happiness. Their love burgeoned in the golden southern skies of Naples, by the blue waves of Amalfi, Sorrento, Capri and Castellammare, simple, irresistible and calm. They glided gradually along the purple thread of their lives, hand in hand they followed the lines that had merged into a single path, oblivious to people’s laws and ideas, and their attitude was so lofty that their situation was not something shameless, although in themselves they despised the world. But their happiness softened all that pride in their soaring souls, as if it were strewing blossoms around them. They were living as if in a dream, at first among the marbles of the museum, later on the flower-covered cliffs of Amalfi, on the beach at Capri, or on the terrace of the hotel in Sorrento: the rush of the sea at their feet; yonder, in a pearly haze, vaguely white, like smudged chalk, Castellammare and Naples and the ghost of Vesuvius, with its hazy plume of smoke.
They kept away from everyone, from all people, all tourists: they ate at a small table and it was generally thought that they were newly-weds. Those who looked them up in the guest book saw their two names and commented in whispers. But they did not hear, they did not see, they were living their dream, looking into each other’s eyes or at the opal sky, the pearly sea, and the hazy white mountains in the distance, with the towns set in them like chalk patches.
When they had almost run out of money they smiled and returned to Rome and lived there as they had before; she in her rooms, he in his studio, and they had their meals together. But they pursued their dream among the ruins on the Via Appia, around Frascati: beyond the Ponte Molle, on the slopes of Monte Mario and in the gardens of the villas, among the statues and paintings, mixing their happiness with the atmosphere of Rome: he interweaving his new love with his love of Rome, she falling in love with Rome for his sake. And that enchantment created a kind of halo around them, so that they did not see ordinary life and did not meet ordinary people.
Finally, one afternoon, Urania found them both at home, in Cornélie’s room, with the fire lit, she staring smiling into the fire, he sitting at her feet, and she with her arm round his neck. And they were obviously giving so little thought to anything but their own love, that neither of them heard the knock, and both suddenly saw her standing in front of them, as an unsuspected reality. Their dream was over for that day. Urania laughed, Cornélie laughed, and Duco pulled up an armchair. And Urania, happy, beautiful, dazzling, told them that she was engaged. Where on earth had the two of them got to? she asked inquisitively. She was engaged now. She had already been to San Stefano and had seen the old prince. And everything was beautiful, good, and sweet: the old castle “a dear old house”, the old man “a dear old man”. She saw everything through the glittering curtain of her forthcoming tide of princess. The date of the wedding had been set, before Easter, so in just over three months. The ceremony was to be in San Carlo, with all the lustre of a great wedding. Her father was coming over for the occasion with her youngest brother. She was obviously apprehensive about their coming. And she couldn’t stop talking; she told them a thousand details about her trousseau, with which the marchesa was helping her. They were to live in Nice, in a large apartment. She was crazy about Nice: it was a good idea of Gilio’s. And in passing, suddenly remembering, she told them that she had become a Catholic. What a burden! But the monsignori were looking after everything, she was being guided by them. And the Pope was to receive her in a private audience, together with Gilio … The problem was her audience outfit, black of course, but velvet or satin? What did Cornélie recommend? She had such good taste. And the black lace veil fastened with diamonds … Tomorrow she was going to Nice with the marchesa and Gilio, to see their apartment …