But he puffed and blowed. He knew nothing about bricks, beams and measurements and did not understand where Urania had got that technical sense from. She was indefatigable. She went all over the works, while he cast up his eyes to Cornélie in entreaty. And at last, speaking in English, he begged his wife in Heaven’s name to come away. They went back to the carriage; the contractor took off his hat, the workmen raised their caps with an air of mingled gratitude and independence. And they drove to the cathedral, which Cornélie wanted to see. Urania showed her round. Gilio asked to be excused and went and sat on the steps of the altar, with his hands hanging over his knees, to cool himself.
CHAPTER XXXVII
A week had passed. Duco had arrived. After the solemn dinner in the gloomy dining-room, where Duco had been presented to Prince Ercole, the summer evening, when Cornélie and Duco went outside, was like a dream. The castle was already wrapped in heavy repose; but Cornélie had made Giuseppe give her a key. And they went out, to the pergola. The stars dusted the night sky with a pale radiance; and the moon crowned the hill-tops and shimmered faintly in the mystic depths of the lake. A breath of sleeping roses was wafted from the flower-garden beyond the pergola; and below, in the flat-roofed town, the cathedral, standing in its moonlit square, lifted its gigantic fabric to the stars. And sleep hung everywhere, over the lake, over the town and behind the windows of the castle; the caryatides and hermes—the satyrs and nymphs—slept, as they bore the leafy roof of the pergola, in the enchanted attitudes of the servants of the Sleeping Beauty. A cricket chirped, but fell silent the moment that Duco and Cornélie approached. And they sat down on an antique bench; and she flung her arms about his body and nestled against him:
“A week!” she whispered. “A whole week since I saw you, Duco, my darling. I cannot do so long without you. At everything that I thought and saw and admired I thought of you, of how lovely you would think it here. You have been here once before on an excursion. Oh, but that is so different! It is so beautiful just to stay here, not just to go on, but to remain. That lake, that cathedral, those hills! The rooms indoors: neglected but so wonderful! The three courtyards are dilapidated, the fountains are crumbling to pieces ... but the style of the atrio, the sombre gloom of the dining-room, the poetry of this pergola!... Duco, doesn’t the pergola remind you of a classic ode? You know how we used to read Horace together: you translated the verses so well, you improvised so delightfully. How clever you are! You know so much, you feel things so beautifully. I love your eyes, your voice, I love you altogether, I love everything that is you ... I can’t tell you how much, Duco. I have gradually surrendered myself to every word of you, to every sensation of you, to your love for Rome, to your love for museums, to your manner of seeing the skies which you put into your drawings. You are so deliriously calm, almost like this lake. Oh, don’t laugh, don’t make a jest of it: it’s a week since I saw you, I feel such a need to talk to you! Is it exaggerated? I don’t feel quite normal here either: there is something in that sky, in that light, that makes me talk like this. It is so beautiful that I can hardly believe that all this is ordinary life, ordinary reality.... Do you remember, at Sorrento, on the terrace of the hotel, when we looked out over the sea, over that pearl-grey sea, with Naples lying white in the distance? I felt like this then; but then I dared not speak like this: it was in the morning; there were people about, whom we didn’t see but who saw us and whom I suspected all around me; but now we are alone and now I want to tell you, in your arms, against your breast, how happy I am! I love you so! All my soul, all that is finest in me is for you. You laugh, but you don’t believe me. Or do you? Do you believe me?”
“Yes, I believe you, I am not laughing at you, I am only just laughing.... Yes, it is beautiful here.... I also feel happy. I am so happy in you and in my art. You taught me to work, you roused me from my dreams. I am so happy about The Banners: I have heard from London; I will show you the letters to-morrow. I have you to thank for everything. It is almost incredible that this is ordinary life. I have been so quiet too in Rome. I saw nobody; I just worked a bit, not very much; and I had my meals alone in the osteria. The two Italians—you know the men I mean—felt sorry for me, I think. Oh, it was a terrible week! I can no longer do without you.... Do you remember our first walks and talks in the Borghese and on the Palatine? How strange we were to each other then, not a bit in unison. But I believe I felt at once that all would be well and beautiful between us....”
She was silent and lay against his breast. The cricket chirped again, with a long quaver. But everything else slept....
“Between us,” she repeated, as though in a fever; and she embraced him passionately.
The whole night slept; and, while they breathed their life in each other’s arms, the enchanted caryatides—fauns and nymphs—lifted the leafy roof of the pergola above their heads, between them and the star-spangled sky.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
Gilio hated the villeggiatura at San Stefano. Every morning he had to be up and dressed by six o’clock, with Prince Ercole, Urania and the marchesa, to hear mass said by the chaplain in the private chapel of the castle. After that, he did not know what to do with his time. He had gone bicycling once or twice with Bob Hope, but the young Far-Westerner had too much energy for him, like Bob’s sister, Urania. He flirted and argued a little with Cornélie, but secretly he was still offended and angry with himself and her. He remembered her first arrival that evening at the Palazzo Ruspoli, when she came and disturbed his rendez-vous with Urania. And in the camera degli sposi she had for the second time been too much for him! He seethed with fury when he thought of it and he hated her and swore by all his gods to be revenged. He cursed his own lack of resolution. He had been too weak to use violence or force and there ought never to have been any need to resort to force: he was accustomed to a quick surrender. And he had to be told by her, that Dutchwoman, that his temperament did not respond to hers! What was there about that woman? What did she mean by it? He was so unaccustomed to thinking, he was such a thoughtless, easy-going, Italian child of nature, so accustomed to let his life run on according to his every whim and impulse, that he hardly understood her—though he suspected the meaning of her words—hardly understood that reserve of hers. Why should she behave so to him, this foreigner with her demoniacal new ideas, who cared nothing about the world, who would have nothing to do with marriage, who lived with a painter as his mistress! She had no religion and no morals—he knew about religion and morals—she belonged to the devil; demoniacal was what she was: didn’t she know all about Aunt Lucia Belloni’s manœuvres? And hadn’t Aunt Lucia warned him lately that she was a dangerous woman, an uncanny woman, a woman of the devil? She was a witch! Why should she refuse? Hadn’t he plainly seen her figure last night going through the courtyard in the moonlight, beside Van der Staal’s figure, and hadn’t he seen them opening the door that led to the terrace by the pergola? And hadn’t he waited an hour, two hours, without sleeping, until he saw them come back and lock the door after them? And why did she love only him, that painter? Oh, he hated him, with all the blazing hatred of his jealousy; he hated her, for her exclusiveness, for her disdain, for all her jesting and flirting, as though he were a buffoon, a clown! What was it that he asked? A favour of love, such as she granted her lover! He was not asking for anything serious, any oath or lifelong tie; he asked for so little: just one hour of love. It was of no importance: he had never looked upon that as of much importance. And she, she refused it to him! No, he did not understand her, but what he did understand was that she disdained him; and he, he hated the pair of them. And yet he was enamoured of her with all the violence of his thwarted passion. In the boredom of that villeggiatura, to which his wife forced him in her new love for their ruined eyrie, his hatred and the thought of his revenge formed an occupation for his empty brains. Outwardly he was the same as usual and flirted with Cornélie, flirted even more than usual, to annoy Van der Staal. And, when his cousin, the Countess di Rosavilla—his “white” cousin, the lady-in-waiting to the queen—came to spend a few days with them, he flirted with her too and tried to provoke Cornélie’s jealousy. He failed in this, however, and consoled himself with the countess, who made up to him for his disappointment. She was no longer a young woman, but represented the cold, sculptured Juno type, with a rather foolish expression; she had Juno eyes, protruding from their sockets; she was a leader of fashion at the Quirinal and in the “white” world; and her reputation for gallantry was generally known. She had never had a liaison with Gilio that lasted for longer than an hour. She had very simple ideas on love, without much variety. Her light-hearted depravity amused Gilio. And, flirting in the corners, with his foot on hers under her skirt, Gilio told her about Cornélie, about Duco and about the adventure in the camera degli sposi and asked his cousin whether she understood. No, the Countess di Rosavilla did not understand it any too well either. Temperament? Oh, yes, perhaps she—questa Cornelia—preferred fair men to dark: there were women who had a preference! And Gilio laughed. It was so simple, l’amore; there wasn’t very much to be said about it.