Читать книгу The Inevitable - Louis Couperus - Страница 5

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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.