“Are you eating at home?” he asked.
She gave him a funny look.
“Yes,” she said.
He did not want to ask any more questions, for fear of offending her.
“It would be very sweet of you,” he said, “if you would dine with me tonight. I’m bored. At present I have no close friends in Rome. Everyone is away. Not in the Grand-Hôtel, but in a cosy restaurant where they know me. I’ll call for you at seven o’clock. Be a darling, and do it! For my sake!”
He could not hold back his tears.
“I’d be delighted,” she said softly, with her smile.
They stood in the doorway of the house on Via del Babuino, where the studio was. He raised her hand to his lips, and kissed it fervently. Then he tipped his hat and left hurriedly. She slowly climbed the stairs, fighting back her emotion, before entering the studio.
XXIX
SHE FOUND DUCO lying listlessly on the sofa. He had a bad headache and she sat down beside him.
“Well?” he asked.
“The man was prepared to give eighty lire for the Memmi, he said: but he maintained that the triptych panel was not by Gentile da Fabriano; he remembered seeing the panel at your studio.”
“The man’s talking nonsense,” he replied. “Or he’s trying to get my Gentile for nothing …Cornélie, I really can’t sell them.”
“Alright Duco, then we’ll find some other way,” she said, putting her hand on his forehead that was contorted by his headache.
“Perhaps a few smaller things, a few knick-knacks…” he groaned.
“Perhaps…Shall I go back again this afternoon?”
“No, no … I’ll go. But really, we can buy such things, but can never sell them.”
“No Duco,” she admitted, laughing. “But yesterday I inquired what I could get for a couple of bracelets and I’ll sell them this afternoon. And then we’ll be able to manage for a month. But I wanted to tell you something. Do you know who I met?”
“No.”
“The prince.”
He frowned.
“I don’t like that blackguard,” he said.
“I’ve told you before, Duco: I don’t think he’s a blackguard. And I don’t believe he is. He invited us to dinner tonight, very simply.”
“No, I don’t feel like it …”
She was silent. She got up, boiled water on a paraffin stove and made tea.
“My dear Duco, I rather neglected lunch. A cup of tea and a sandwich is all I can offer you. Are you very hungry?”
“No,” he said evasively.
She hummed as she poured tea into an antique cup. She cut the bread and took him tea on the sofa. Then she sat next to him, also with a cup in her hand.
“Cornélie, would it be better if we had lunch in the osteria …?”
Laughing, she showed him her empty purse.
“Here are the stamps,” she said.
Disheartened, he flung himself on the cushions.
“My lovely man,” she went on. “Don’t be so down. This afternoon I’ll have money again, from the bracelets. I should have sold them before. Really, Duco, it’s nothing. Why didn’t you work? It would have cheered you up.”
“I wasn’t in the mood and I’ve got a headache …”
She was silent for a moment. Then she said,
“The prince was angry that we hadn’t written to him for help. He wanted to give me two hundred lire …”
“I hope you refused?” he said, furious.
“Of course,” she said calmly. “He invited us to stay at San Stefano, where they are spending the summer. I refused that too.”
“Why?”
“I wouldn’t have any clothes … But you wouldn’t want to go anyway, would you?”
“No,” he said flatly.
She drew his head to her and stroked his forehead. A broad area of reflected afternoon light shone through the studio window from the blue sky outside and the studio seemed to be alive with dusty light, in which the silhouettes stood out with their immobile gestures and unchanging emotions. The relief embroidery on the chasubles and stoles, the purple and azure blues of Gentile’s triptych panel, the mystical luxuriance of Memmi’s angel in its robe of heavily creasing brocade, the golden lily stem in the fingers — were like a piled treasure house of colour and shone in that reflected light like handfuls of jewels. On the easel was the watercolour of Banners, fine and noble. And as they sat there on the sofa, he with his head leaning against her, both of them drinking tea, they were harmoniously happy against that background of art. And it seemed incredible that they were worrying about a few hundred lire, since he was glowing within with a jewel-like colour, and her smile was like a sheen. But his eyes were discouraged and his hand hung limply.
She went out for a little while that afternoon, but soon returned home, telling him that she had sold the bracelets and that he now need not worry. And she sang and moved cheerfully about the studio. She had bought some things: an almond cake, rusks, half a bottle of port. She had brought them home in a basket and sang as she unpacked them. Her liveliness roused him: he got up and suddenly positioned himself in front of Banners. He looked at the light and reckoned that he still had an hour left to work. A wave of delight rose in him as he surveyed the watercolour: there were lots of good, beautiful things in it. It had breath and delicacy; it was modern without the gimmicks of modernism: there was a thought in it and yet a purity of a line and grouping. And the colour had a calm distinction: purple and grey and white; violet and grey and white; dark, dusk, light; night, dawn, day. The day particularly, the day dawning up there on high, was full of a white, confident sun: a white certainty, in which the future became clear. But the streamers, flags and standards and banners were like a cloud, fanning out with heraldic pride over the ecstatic heads of the women fighters …He sought out his colours, sought out his brushes, and worked solidly until there was no light left. And he sat down beside her, happy, content. In the twilight they drank some of the port and ate some of the cake. He had an appetite, he said: he was hungry …
At seven there was a knock at the door. He started, went to the door, and the prince came in. Duco’s forehead clouded, but the prince saw nothing in the darkening studio. Cornélie lit a lamp.
“Scusi, prince,” she said. “I’m embarrassed to say that Duco doesn’t feel like going out — he’s been working and is tired — I had no one to take a message to you to say we could not accept your invitation.”
“But you can’t be serious! I had so looked forward to seeing you both. What else am I to do with my evening …?”
And with his torrent of words, his complaints of a spoiled child wanting its own way, he began to persuade the reluctant, stiff Duco. Duco finally got up, shrugged his shoulders, smiled pityingly, almost insultingly, but gave way. But he could not suppress his feeling of reluctance; his jealousy at the swift repartee of Cornélie and the prince was still intense, like a pain. In the restaurant he was silent at first. Still, he made an effort to join in the conversation, remembering what Cornélie had said to him on that momentous day in the osteria: that she loved him, Duco; that she looked up to him, that she did not even compare the prince with him; but … that he was not cheerful and witty … And feeling his superiority because of that memory, despite his jealousy he smiled and rather talked down to the prince and tolerated his charm and flirtatiousness, because it amused Cornélie, that quick wordplay and those snappy sentences succeeding each other like the dialogue in a French play.
XXX
THE NEXT DAY the prince was due to go to San Stefano and early in the morning Cornélie wrote him the following note: