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Authors: Louis Couperus
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No, Italy would never be her life’s consolation …
But what then? She had been through a lot, but she was alive and very young. And again at the sight of those pamphlets, that novel, the longing reawakened in her heart: to be modern, to be modern! To tackle modern problems. To live for the Future! To live for Women, for Girls …
She did not dare look deep inside herself, afraid she might waver. To live for the Future … It separated her a little more from Duco, that new ideal. What did shecare, did she love him? No, she didn’t think so. She had loved her husband and did not want to fall immediately for the first nice young man who came along, whom she happened to meet in Rome …
And she read the pamphlets.
On the Women’s Question
and
Love.
Then she thought of her husband and then of Duco. And wearily she dropped the pamphlet, thinking how sad it was. People, women, girls. She, a young woman, an aimless woman, how sad she was in her life. And Duco, was he happy? But still he sought the line in his life, still he was on the lookout for his goal. A new restlessness had come over him. And she cried a little, and tossed and turned restlessly on her cushions, and wrung her hands, and prayed unconsciously, to whom she knew not.
“Oh God, tell me what we’re to do!”
XIII
I T WAS SOME DAYS after that Cornélie had the idea of leaving the
pensione
and taking rooms. Hotel life interfered with her emerging thoughts, like a wind of vanity that kept scorching scarcely formed blossoms, and despite a torrent of abuse from the
marchesa
, who accused her of having rented for the whole winter, she moved into the room, which she had found after much searching and climbing of stairs with Duco van der Staal. It was in Via dei Serpenti, many flights up, a suite of two spacious but almost completely unfurnished rooms: there were only the bare necessities, and though the view stretched far and wide across the massed houses of Rome to the circular ruin of the Colosseum, the rooms were bleak and cheerless, bare and uninhabitable. Duco had not liked them and said they made him shiver, although they faced the sun, but there was something about the awkwardness of this room that struck Cornélie in her new mood as harmonious. When they parted that day, he thought of her: how little of the artist there is in her; and she thought of him: how un-modern he is! They did not see each other again for days, and Cornélie was very lonely, but did not feel her loneliness, because she was writing a pamphlet about the Social Position of the Divorced Woman. That idea had come to her after she had read a few sentences in a pamphlet on the Women’s Movement, and suddenly, without having thought much about it, shewrote her sentences in a succession of bursts and intuitive leaps, awkward, cool and clear; she wrote in an epistolary style, artlessly, but with conviction and experience, as if to warn girls against having too many illusions about Marriage. She had not made her rooms comfortable; she sat there, high above Rome, looking over the rooftops towards the Colosseum, writing, immersing herself in her suffering, revealing herself in her recalcitrant sentences, bitter, but pouring the gall within her into her pamphlet. Mrs Van der Staal and the girls, who came to visit her, were astonished at her slovenly appearance, at her bleak rooms, the dying embers in the grate, not a flower, no books, no tea, and no cushions, and when they left after a quarter of an hour, on the pretext of having to go shopping, they looked at each other in amazement as they tripped down the endless staircase, utterly confused and mystified by her metamorphosis: from an interesting, elegant young woman, with an aura of poetry about her, and a tragic past—into a ‘free woman’, writing frantically at a pamphlet, with bitter imprecations against society. And when Duco visited her again after a week, and sat with her for a moment, he sat absolutely still, stiff as a board on
But what then? She had been through a lot, but she was alive and very young. And again at the sight of those pamphlets, that novel, the longing reawakened in her heart: to be modern, to be modern! To tackle modern problems. To live for the Future! To live for Women, for Girls …
She did not dare look deep inside herself, afraid she might waver. To live for the Future … It separated her a little more from Duco, that new ideal. What did shecare, did she love him? No, she didn’t think so. She had loved her husband and did not want to fall immediately for the first nice young man who came along, whom she happened to meet in Rome …
And she read the pamphlets.
On the Women’s Question
and
Love.
Then she thought of her husband and then of Duco. And wearily she dropped the pamphlet, thinking how sad it was. People, women, girls. She, a young woman, an aimless woman, how sad she was in her life. And Duco, was he happy? But still he sought the line in his life, still he was on the lookout for his goal. A new restlessness had come over him. And she cried a little, and tossed and turned restlessly on her cushions, and wrung her hands, and prayed unconsciously, to whom she knew not.
“Oh God, tell me what we’re to do!”
XIII
I T WAS SOME DAYS after that Cornélie had the idea of leaving the
pensione
and taking rooms. Hotel life interfered with her emerging thoughts, like a wind of vanity that kept scorching scarcely formed blossoms, and despite a torrent of abuse from the
marchesa
, who accused her of having rented for the whole winter, she moved into the room, which she had found after much searching and climbing of stairs with Duco van der Staal. It was in Via dei Serpenti, many flights up, a suite of two spacious but almost completely unfurnished rooms: there were only the bare necessities, and though the view stretched far and wide across the massed houses of Rome to the circular ruin of the Colosseum, the rooms were bleak and cheerless, bare and uninhabitable. Duco had not liked them and said they made him shiver, although they faced the sun, but there was something about the awkwardness of this room that struck Cornélie in her new mood as harmonious. When they parted that day, he thought of her: how little of the artist there is in her; and she thought of him: how un-modern he is! They did not see each other again for days, and Cornélie was very lonely, but did not feel her loneliness, because she was writing a pamphlet about the Social Position of the Divorced Woman. That idea had come to her after she had read a few sentences in a pamphlet on the Women’s Movement, and suddenly, without having thought much about it, shewrote her sentences in a succession of bursts and intuitive leaps, awkward, cool and clear; she wrote in an epistolary style, artlessly, but with conviction and experience, as if to warn girls against having too many illusions about Marriage. She had not made her rooms comfortable; she sat there, high above Rome, looking over the rooftops towards the Colosseum, writing, immersing herself in her suffering, revealing herself in her recalcitrant sentences, bitter, but pouring the gall within her into her pamphlet. Mrs Van der Staal and the girls, who came to visit her, were astonished at her slovenly appearance, at her bleak rooms, the dying embers in the grate, not a flower, no books, no tea, and no cushions, and when they left after a quarter of an hour, on the pretext of having to go shopping, they looked at each other in amazement as they tripped down the endless staircase, utterly confused and mystified by her metamorphosis: from an interesting, elegant young woman, with an aura of poetry about her, and a tragic past—into a ‘free woman’, writing frantically at a pamphlet, with bitter imprecations against society. And when Duco visited her again after a week, and sat with her for a moment, he sat absolutely still, stiff as a board on
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