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Edith Wharton - "The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton Part One"

The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton Part One

E >> Edith Wharton >> The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton Part One




Miss Lombard laid her hand on his arm.

"Don't excite yourself, father," she said in the detached tone of
a professional nurse.

He answered with a despairing gesture. "Ah, it's easy for you to
talk. You have years and years to spend with it; I am an old
man, and every moment counts!"

"It's bad for you," she repeated with gentle obstinacy.

The doctor's sacred fury had in fact burnt itself out. He
dropped into a seat with dull eyes and slackening lips, and his
daughter drew the curtain across the picture.

Wyant turned away reluctantly. He felt that his opportunity was
slipping from him, yet he dared not refer to Clyde's wish for a
photograph. He now understood the meaning of the laugh with
which Doctor Lombard had given him leave to carry away all the
details he could remember. The picture was so dazzling, so
unexpected, so crossed with elusive and contradictory
suggestions, that the most alert observer, when placed suddenly
before it, must lose his coordinating faculty in a sense of
confused wonder. Yet how valuable to Clyde the record of such a
work would be! In some ways it seemed to be the summing up of
the master's thought, the key to his enigmatic philosophy.

The doctor had risen and was walking slowly toward the door. His
daughter unlocked it, and Wyant followed them back in silence to
the room in which they had left Mrs. Lombard. That lady was no
longer there, and he could think of no excuse for lingering.

He thanked the doctor, and turned to Miss Lombard, who stood in
the middle of the room as though awaiting farther orders.

"It is very good of you," he said, "to allow one even a glimpse
of such a treasure."

She looked at him with her odd directness. "You will come
again?" she said quickly; and turning to her father she added:
"You know what Professor Clyde asked. This gentleman cannot give
him any account of the picture without seeing it again."

Doctor Lombard glanced at her vaguely; he was still like a person
in a trance.

"Eh?" he said, rousing himself with an effort.

"I said, father, that Mr. Wyant must see the picture again if he
is to tell Professor Clyde about it," Miss Lombard repeated with
extraordinary precision of tone.

Wyant was silent. He had the puzzled sense that his wishes were
being divined and gratified for reasons with which he was in no
way connected.

"Well, well," the doctor muttered, "I don't say no--I don't say
no. I know what Clyde wants--I don't refuse to help him." He
turned to Wyant. "You may come again--you may make notes," he
added with a sudden effort. "Jot down what occurs to you. I'm
willing to concede that."

Wyant again caught the girl's eye, but its emphatic message
perplexed him.

"You're very good," he said tentatively, "but the fact is the
picture is so mysterious--so full of complicated detail--that I'm
afraid no notes I could make would serve Clyde's purpose as well
as--as a photograph, say. If you would allow me--"

Miss Lombard's brow darkened, and her father raised his head
furiously.

"A photograph? A photograph, did you say? Good God, man, not
ten people have been allowed to set foot in that room! A
PHOTOGRAPH?"

Wyant saw his mistake, but saw also that he had gone too far to
retreat.

"I know, sir, from what Clyde has told me, that you object to
having any reproduction of the picture published; but he hoped
you might let me take a photograph for his personal use--not to
be reproduced in his book, but simply to give him something to
work by. I should take the photograph myself, and the negative
would of course be yours. If you wished it, only one impression
would be struck off, and that one Clyde could return to you when
he had done with it."

Doctor Lombard interrupted him with a snarl. "When he had done
with it? Just so: I thank thee for that word! When it had been
re-photographed, drawn, traced, autotyped, passed about from hand
to hand, defiled by every ignorant eye in England, vulgarized by
the blundering praise of every art-scribbler in Europe! Bah!
I'd as soon give you the picture itself: why don't you ask for
that?"

"Well, sir," said Wyant calmly, "if you will trust me with it,
I'll engage to take it safely to England and back, and to let no
eye but Clyde's see it while it is out of your keeping."

The doctor received this remarkable proposal in silence; then he
burst into a laugh.

"Upon my soul!" he said with sardonic good humor.

It was Miss Lombard's turn to look perplexedly at Wyant. His
last words and her father's unexpected reply had evidently
carried her beyond her depth.

"Well, sir, am I to take the picture?" Wyant smilingly pursued.

"No, young man; nor a photograph of it. Nor a sketch, either;
mind that,--nothing that can be reproduced. Sybilla," he cried
with sudden passion, "swear to me that the picture shall never be
reproduced! No photograph, no sketch--now or afterward. Do you
hear me?"

"Yes, father," said the girl quietly.

"The vandals," he muttered, "the desecrators of beauty; if I
thought it would ever get into their hands I'd burn it first, by
God!" He turned to Wyant, speaking more quietly. "I said you
might come back--I never retract what I say. But you must give
me your word that no one but Clyde shall see the notes you make."

Wyant was growing warm.

"If you won't trust me with a photograph I wonder you trust me
not to show my notes!" he exclaimed.

The doctor looked at him with a malicious smile.

"Humph!" he said; "would they be of much use to anybody?"

Wyant saw that he was losing ground and controlled his
impatience.

"To Clyde, I hope, at any rate," he answered, holding out his
hand. The doctor shook it without a trace of resentment, and
Wyant added: "When shall I come, sir?"

"To-morrow--to-morrow morning," cried Miss Lombard, speaking
suddenly.

She looked fixedly at her father, and he shrugged his shoulders.

"The picture is hers," he said to Wyant.

In the ante-chamber the young man was met by the woman who had
admitted him. She handed him his hat and stick, and turned to
unbar the door. As the bolt slipped back he felt a touch on his
arm.

"You have a letter?" she said in a low tone.

"A letter?" He stared. "What letter?"

She shrugged her shoulders, and drew back to let him pass.



II


As Wyant emerged from the house he paused once more to glance up
at its scarred brick facade. The marble hand drooped tragically
above the entrance: in the waning light it seemed to have relaxed
into the passiveness of despair, and Wyant stood musing on its
hidden meaning. But the Dead Hand was not the only mysterious
thing about Doctor Lombard's house. What were the relations
between Miss Lombard and her father? Above all, between Miss
Lombard and her picture? She did not look like a person capable
of a disinterested passion for the arts; and there had been
moments when it struck Wyant that she hated the picture.

The sky at the end of the street was flooded with turbulent
yellow light, and the young man turned his steps toward the
church of San Domenico, in the hope of catching the lingering
brightness on Sodoma's St. Catherine.

The great bare aisles were almost dark when he entered, and he
had to grope his way to the chapel steps. Under the momentary
evocation of the sunset, the saint's figure emerged pale and
swooning from the dusk, and the warm light gave a sensual tinge
to her ecstasy. The flesh seemed to glow and heave, the eyelids
to tremble; Wyant stood fascinated by the accidental
collaboration of light and color.

Suddenly he noticed that something white had fluttered to the
ground at his feet. He stooped and picked up a small thin sheet
of note-paper, folded and sealed like an old-fashioned letter,
and bearing the superscription:--


To the Count Ottaviano Celsi.


Wyant stared at this mysterious document. Where had it come
from? He was distinctly conscious of having seen it fall through
the air, close to his feet. He glanced up at the dark ceiling of
the chapel; then he turned and looked about the church. There
was only one figure in it, that of a man who knelt near the high
altar.

Suddenly Wyant recalled the question of Doctor Lombard's maid-
servant. Was this the letter she had asked for? Had he been
unconsciously carrying it about with him all the afternoon? Who
was Count Ottaviano Celsi, and how came Wyant to have been chosen
to act as that nobleman's ambulant letter-box?

Wyant laid his hat and stick on the chapel steps and began to
explore his pockets, in the irrational hope of finding there some
clue to the mystery; but they held nothing which he had not
himself put there, and he was reduced to wondering how the
letter, supposing some unknown hand to have bestowed it on him,
had happened to fall out while he stood motionless before the
picture.

At this point he was disturbed by a step on the floor of the
aisle, and turning, he saw his lustrous-eyed neighbor of the
table d'hote.

The young man bowed and waved an apologetic hand.

"I do not intrude?" he inquired suavely.

Without waiting for a reply, he mounted the steps of the chapel,
glancing about him with the affable air of an afternoon caller.

"I see," he remarked with a smile, "that you know the hour at
which our saint should be visited."

Wyant agreed that the hour was indeed felicitous.

The stranger stood beamingly before the picture.

"What grace! What poetry!" he murmured, apostrophizing the St.
Catherine, but letting his glance slip rapidly about the chapel
as he spoke.

Wyant, detecting the manoeuvre, murmured a brief assent.

"But it is cold here--mortally cold; you do not find it so?" The
intruder put on his hat. "It is permitted at this hour--when the
church is empty. And you, my dear sir--do you not feel the
dampness? You are an artist, are you not? And to artists it is
permitted to cover the head when they are engaged in the study of
the paintings."

He darted suddenly toward the steps and bent over Wyant's hat.

"Permit me--cover yourself!" he said a moment later, holding out
the hat with an ingratiating gesture.

A light flashed on Wyant.

"Perhaps," he said, looking straight at the young man, "you will
tell me your name. My own is Wyant."

The stranger, surprised, but not disconcerted, drew forth a
coroneted card, which he offered with a low bow. On the card was
engraved:--


Il Conte Ottaviano Celsi.


"I am much obliged to you," said Wyant; "and I may as well tell
you that the letter which you apparently expected to find in the
lining of my hat is not there, but in my pocket."

He drew it out and handed it to its owner, who had grown very
pale.

"And now," Wyant continued, "you will perhaps be good enough to
tell me what all this means."

There was no mistaking the effect produced on Count Ottaviano by
this request. His lips moved, but he achieved only an
ineffectual smile.

"I suppose you know," Wyant went on, his anger rising at the
sight of the other's discomfiture, "that you have taken an
unwarrantable liberty. I don't yet understand what part I have
been made to play, but it's evident that you have made use of me
to serve some purpose of your own, and I propose to know the
reason why."

Count Ottaviano advanced with an imploring gesture.

"Sir," he pleaded, "you permit me to speak?"

"I expect you to," cried Wyant. "But not here," he added,
hearing the clank of the verger's keys. "It is growing dark, and
we shall be turned out in a few minutes."

He walked across the church, and Count Ottaviano followed him out
into the deserted square.

"Now," said Wyant, pausing on the steps.

The Count, who had regained some measure of self-possession,
began to speak in a high key, with an accompaniment of
conciliatory gesture.

"My dear sir--my dear Mr. Wyant--you find me in an abominable
position--that, as a man of honor, I immediately confess. I have
taken advantage of you--yes! I have counted on your amiability,
your chivalry--too far, perhaps? I confess it! But what could I
do? It was to oblige a lady"--he laid a hand on his heart--"a
lady whom I would die to serve!" He went on with increasing
volubility, his deliberate English swept away by a torrent of
Italian, through which Wyant, with some difficulty, struggled to
a comprehension of the case.

Count Ottaviano, according to his own statement, had come to
Siena some months previously, on business connected with his
mother's property; the paternal estate being near Orvieto, of
which ancient city his father was syndic. Soon after his arrival
in Siena the young Count had met the incomparable daughter of
Doctor Lombard, and falling deeply in love with her, had
prevailed on his parents to ask her hand in marriage. Doctor
Lombard had not opposed his suit, but when the question of
settlements arose it became known that Miss Lombard, who was
possessed of a small property in her own right, had a short time
before invested the whole amount in the purchase of the Bergamo
Leonardo. Thereupon Count Ottaviano's parents had politely
suggested that she should sell the picture and thus recover her
independence; and this proposal being met by a curt refusal from
Doctor Lombard, they had withdrawn their consent to their son's
marriage. The young lady's attitude had hitherto been one of
passive submission; she was horribly afraid of her father, and
would never venture openly to oppose him; but she had made known
to Ottaviano her intention of not giving him up, of waiting
patiently till events should take a more favorable turn. She
seemed hardly aware, the Count said with a sigh, that the means
of escape lay in her own hands; that she was of age, and had a
right to sell the picture, and to marry without asking her
father's consent. Meanwhile her suitor spared no pains to keep
himself before her, to remind her that he, too, was waiting and
would never give her up.

Doctor Lombard, who suspected the young man of trying to persuade
Sybilla to sell the picture, had forbidden the lovers to meet or
to correspond; they were thus driven to clandestine
communication, and had several times, the Count ingenuously
avowed, made use of the doctor's visitors as a means of
exchanging letters.

"And you told the visitors to ring twice?" Wyant interposed.

The young man extended his hands in a deprecating gesture. Could
Mr. Wyant blame him? He was young, he was ardent, he was
enamored! The young lady had done him the supreme honor of
avowing her attachment, of pledging her unalterable fidelity;
should he suffer his devotion to be outdone? But his purpose in
writing to her, he admitted, was not merely to reiterate his
fidelity; he was trying by every means in his power to induce her
to sell the picture. He had organized a plan of action; every
detail was complete; if she would but have the courage to carry
out his instructions he would answer for the result. His idea
was that she should secretly retire to a convent of which his
aunt was the Mother Superior, and from that stronghold should
transact the sale of the Leonardo. He had a purchaser ready, who
was willing to pay a large sum; a sum, Count Ottaviano whispered,
considerably in excess of the young lady's original inheritance;
once the picture sold, it could, if necessary, be removed by
force from Doctor Lombard's house, and his daughter, being safely
in the convent, would be spared the painful scenes incidental to
the removal. Finally, if Doctor Lombard were vindictive enough
to refuse his consent to her marriage, she had only to make a
sommation respectueuse, and at the end of the prescribed delay no
power on earth could prevent her becoming the wife of Count
Ottaviano.

Wyant's anger had fallen at the recital of this simple romance.
It was absurd to be angry with a young man who confided his
secrets to the first stranger he met in the streets, and placed
his hand on his heart whenever he mentioned the name of his
betrothed. The easiest way out of the business was to take it as
a joke. Wyant had played the wall to this new Pyramus and
Thisbe, and was philosophic enough to laugh at the part he had
unwittingly performed.

He held out his hand with a smile to Count Ottaviano.

"I won't deprive you any longer," he said, "of the pleasure of
reading your letter."

"Oh, sir, a thousand thanks! And when you return to the casa
Lombard, you will take a message from me--the letter she expected
this afternoon?"

"The letter she expected?" Wyant paused. "No, thank you. I
thought you understood that where I come from we don't do that
kind of thing--knowingly."

"But, sir, to serve a young lady!"

"I'm sorry for the young lady, if what you tell me is true"--the
Count's expressive hands resented the doubt--"but remember that
if I am under obligations to any one in this matter, it is to her
father, who has admitted me to his house and has allowed me to
see his picture."

"HIS picture? Hers!"

"Well, the house is his, at all events."

"Unhappily--since to her it is a dungeon!"

"Why doesn't she leave it, then?" exclaimed Wyant impatiently.

The Count clasped his hands. "Ah, how you say that--with what
force, with what virility! If you would but say it to HER in
that tone--you, her countryman! She has no one to advise her;
the mother is an idiot; the father is terrible; she is in his
power; it is my belief that he would kill her if she resisted
him. Mr. Wyant, I tremble for her life while she remains in that
house!"

"Oh, come," said Wyant lightly, "they seem to understand each
other well enough. But in any case, you must see that I can't
interfere--at least you would if you were an Englishman," he
added with an escape of contempt.



III


Wyant's affiliations in Siena being restricted to an acquaintance
with his land-lady, he was forced to apply to her for the
verification of Count Ottaviano's story.

The young nobleman had, it appeared, given a perfectly correct
account of his situation. His father, Count Celsi-Mongirone, was
a man of distinguished family and some wealth. He was syndic of
Orvieto, and lived either in that town or on his neighboring
estate of Mongirone. His wife owned a large property near Siena,
and Count Ottaviano, who was the second son, came there from time
to time to look into its management. The eldest son was in the
army, the youngest in the Church; and an aunt of Count
Ottaviano's was Mother Superior of the Visitandine convent in
Siena. At one time it had been said that Count Ottaviano, who
was a most amiable and accomplished young man, was to marry the
daughter of the strange Englishman, Doctor Lombard, but
difficulties having arisen as to the adjustment of the young
lady's dower, Count Celsi-Mongirone had very properly broken off
the match. It was sad for the young man, however, who was said
to be deeply in love, and to find frequent excuses for coming to
Siena to inspect his mother's estate.

Viewed in the light of Count Ottaviano's personality the story
had a tinge of opera bouffe; but the next morning, as Wyant
mounted the stairs of the House of the Dead Hand, the situation
insensibly assumed another aspect. It was impossible to take
Doctor Lombard lightly; and there was a suggestion of fatality in
the appearance of his gaunt dwelling. Who could tell amid what
tragic records of domestic tyranny and fluttering broken purposes
the little drama of Miss Lombard's fate was being played out?
Might not the accumulated influences of such a house modify the
lives within it in a manner unguessed by the inmates of a
suburban villa with sanitary plumbing and a telephone?

One person, at least, remained unperturbed by such fanciful
problems; and that was Mrs. Lombard, who, at Wyant's entrance,
raised a placidly wrinkled brow from her knitting. The morning
was mild, and her chair had been wheeled into a bar of sunshine
near the window, so that she made a cheerful spot of prose in the
poetic gloom of her surroundings.

"What a nice morning!" she said; "it must be delightful weather
at Bonchurch."

Her dull blue glance wandered across the narrow street with its
threatening house fronts, and fluttered back baffled, like a bird
with clipped wings. It was evident, poor lady, that she had
never seen beyond the opposite houses.

Wyant was not sorry to find her alone. Seeing that she was
surprised at his reappearance he said at once: "I have come back
to study Miss Lombard's picture."

"Oh, the picture--" Mrs. Lombard's face expressed a gentle
disappointment, which might have been boredom in a person of
acuter sensibilities. "It's an original Leonardo, you know," she
said mechanically.

"And Miss Lombard is very proud of it, I suppose? She seems to
have inherited her father's love for art."

Mrs. Lombard counted her stitches, and he went on: "It's unusual
in so young a girl. Such tastes generally develop later."

Mrs. Lombard looked up eagerly. "That's what I say! I was quite
different at her age, you know. I liked dancing, and doing a
pretty bit of fancy-work. Not that I couldn't sketch, too; I had
a master down from London. My aunts have some of my crayons hung
up in their drawing-room now--I did a view of Kenilworth which
was thought pleasing. But I liked a picnic, too, or a pretty
walk through the woods with young people of my own age. I say
it's more natural, Mr. Wyant; one may have a feeling for art, and
do crayons that are worth framing, and yet not give up everything
else. I was taught that there were other things."

Wyant, half-ashamed of provoking these innocent confidences,
could not resist another question. "And Miss Lombard cares for
nothing else?"

Her mother looked troubled.

"Sybilla is so clever--she says I don't understand. You know how
self-confident young people are! My husband never said that of
me, now--he knows I had an excellent education. My aunts were
very particular; I was brought up to have opinions, and my
husband has always respected them. He says himself that he
wouldn't for the world miss hearing my opinion on any subject;
you may have noticed that he often refers to my tastes. He has
always respected my preference for living in England; he likes to
hear me give my reasons for it. He is so much interested in my
ideas that he often says he knows just what I am going to say
before I speak. But Sybilla does not care for what I think--"

At this point Doctor Lombard entered. He glanced sharply at
Wyant. "The servant is a fool; she didn't tell me you were
here." His eye turned to his wife. "Well, my dear, what have
you been telling Mr. Wyant? About the aunts at Bonchurch, I'll
be bound!"

Mrs. Lombard looked triumphantly at Wyant, and her husband rubbed
his hooked fingers, with a smile.

"Mrs. Lombard's aunts are very superior women. They subscribe to
the circulating library, and borrow Good Words and the Monthly
Packet from the curate's wife across the way. They have the
rector to tea twice a year, and keep a page-boy, and are visited
by two baronets' wives. They devoted themselves to the education
of their orphan niece, and I think I may say without boasting
that Mrs. Lombard's conversation shows marked traces of the
advantages she enjoyed."

Mrs. Lombard colored with pleasure.

"I was telling Mr. Wyant that my aunts were very particular."

"Quite so, my dear; and did you mention that they never sleep in
anything but linen, and that Miss Sophia puts away the furs and
blankets every spring with her own hands? Both those facts are
interesting to the student of human nature." Doctor Lombard
glanced at his watch. "But we are missing an incomparable
moment; the light is perfect at this hour."

Wyant rose, and the doctor led him through the tapestried door
and down the passageway.

The light was, in fact, perfect, and the picture shone with an
inner radiancy, as though a lamp burned behind the soft screen of
the lady's flesh. Every detail of the foreground detached itself
with jewel-like precision. Wyant noticed a dozen accessories
which had escaped him on the previous day.

He drew out his note-book, and the doctor, who had dropped his
sardonic grin for a look of devout contemplation, pushed a chair
forward, and seated himself on a carved settle against the wall.

"Now, then," he said, "tell Clyde what you can; but the letter
killeth."

He sank down, his hands hanging on the arm of the settle like the
claws of a dead bird, his eyes fixed on Wyant's notebook with the
obvious intention of detecting any attempt at a surreptitious
sketch.

Wyant, nettled at this surveillance, and disturbed by the
speculations which Doctor Lombard's strange household excited,
sat motionless for a few minutes, staring first at the picture
and then at the blank pages of the note-book. The thought that
Doctor Lombard was enjoying his discomfiture at length roused
him, and he began to write.

He was interrupted by a knock on the iron door. Doctor Lombard
rose to unlock it, and his daughter entered.

She bowed hurriedly to Wyant, without looking at him.

"Father, had you forgotten that the man from Monte Amiato was to
come back this morning with an answer about the bas-relief? He
is here now; he says he can't wait."

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