The marchesa entered all aquiver: she had thoughts of witchcraft. How did that woman know anything of her transactions with the old prince and the monsignori? How did she come to suspect that Urania's marriage and her conversion had enriched the marchesa to the tune of a few ten thousand lire?
She had not only had a lesson: she was shuddering, she was frightened. Was that woman a witch? Was she the devil? Had she the mal'occhio? And the marchesa made the sign of the jettatura with her little finger and fore-finger in the folds of her dress and muttered:
"Vade retro, Satanas...."
In her own drawing-room, Urania poured out tea. The three pointed windows of the room overlooked the town and the ancient cathedral, which in the orange reflection of the last gleams of sunset shot up for yet a moment out of its grey dust of ages with the dim huddle of its saints, prophets and angels. The room, hung with handsome tapestries—an allegory of Abundance: nymphs outpouring the contents of their cornucopias—was half old, half modern, not always perfect in taste and pure in tone, with here and there a few hideously commonplace modern ornaments, here and there some modern comfort that clashed with the rest, but yet cosy, inhabited and Urania's home. A young man rose from a chair and Urania introduced him to Cornélie as her brother. Young Hope was a strongly built, fresh-looking boy of eighteen; he was still in his bicycling-suit: it didn't matter, said his sister, just to drink a cup of tea. Laughing, she stroked his close-cropped round head and, with the ladies' permission, gave him his tea first: then he would go and change. He looked so strange, so new and so healthy as he sat there with his fresh, pink complexion, his broad chest, his strong hands and muscular calves, with the youthfulness of a young Yankee farmer who, notwithstanding the millions of "old man Hope," worked on his farm, way out in the Far West, to make his own fortune; he looked so strange in this ancient San Stefano, within view of that severely symbolical cathedral, against this background of old tapestries. And suddenly Cornélie was impressed still more strangely by the new young princess Her name—her American name of Urania—had a first-rate sound: "the Princess Urania" sounded unexpectedly well. But the little wife, a trifle pale, a trifle sad, with her clipping American accent, suddenly struck Cornélie as somewhat out of place amid the faded glories of San Stefano. Cornélie was continually forgetting that Urania was Princess of Forte-Braccio: she always thought of her as Miss Hope. And yet Urania possessed great tact, great ease of manner, a great power of assimilation. Gilio had entered; and the few words which she addressed to her husband were, quite naturally, almost dignified ... and yet carried, to Cornélie's ears, a sound of resigned disillusionment which made her pity Urania. She had from the beginning felt a vague liking for Urania; now she felt a fonder affection. She was sorry for this child, the Princess Urania. Gilio behaved to her with careless coolness, the marchesa with patronizing condescension. And then there was that awful loneliness around her, of all that ruined magnificence. She stroked her young brother's head. She spoilt him, she asked him if his tea was all right and stuffed him with sandwiches, because he was hungry after his bicycle-ride. She had him with her now as a reminder of home, a reminder of Chicago; she almost clung to him. But for the rest she was surrounded by the depressing gloom of the immense castle, the neglected glory of its ancient stateliness, the conceit of that aristocratic pride, which could do without her but not without her millions. And for Cornélie she had lost all her absurdity as an American parvenue and, on the contrary, had acquired an air of tragedy, as of a young sacrificial victim. How alien they were as they sat there, the young princess and her brother, with his muscular calves!
Urania displayed her portfolio of drawings and designs: the ideas of a young Roman architect for restoring the castle. And she became excited, with a flush in her cheeks, when Cornélie asked her if so much restoration would really be beautiful. Urania defended her architect. Gilio smoked cigarettes with an air of indifference; he was in a bad temper. The marchesa sat like an idol, with her leonine head and the crystals sparkling in her ears. She was afraid of Cornélie and promised herself to be on her guard. A major-domo came and announced to the princess that dinner was served. And Cornélie recognized old Giuseppe from the Pension Belloni, the old archducal major-domo, who had once dropped a spoon, according to Rudyard's story. She looked at Urania with a laugh and Urania blushed:
"Poor man!" she said, when Giuseppe was gone. "Yes, I took him from my aunt. He was so hard-worked at the Palazzo Belloni! Here he has very little to do and he has a young butler under him. The number of servants had to be increased in any case. He is enjoying a pleasant old age here, poor dear old Giuseppe.... There, Bob, now you haven't dressed!"
"She's a dear child," thought Cornélie, while they all rose and Urania gently reproached her brother, as she would a spoiled boy, for coming down to dinner in his knickerbockers.
CHAPTER XXXV
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 candlesticks 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 comers 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 candle-light. 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: