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The Valley Of Decision

E >> Edith Wharton >> The Valley Of Decision




While the Marquis was struggling to preserve the conversational art, and
Alfieri planning the savage revenge of the Misogallo, the course of
affairs in France had gained a wilder impetus. The abolition of the
nobility, the flight and capture of the King, his enforced declaration
of war against Austria, the massacres of Avignon, the sack of the
Tuileries--such events seemed incredible enough till the next had
crowded them out of mind. The new year rose in blood and mounted to a
bloodier noon. All the old defences were falling. Religion, monarchy,
law, were sucked down into the whirlpool of liberated passions. Across
that sanguinary scene passed, like a mocking ghost, the philosophers'
vision of the perfectibility of man. Man was free at last--freer than
his would-be liberators had ever dreamed of making him--and he used his
freedom like a beast. For the multitude had risen--that multitude which
no man could number, which even the demagogues who ranted in its name
had never seriously reckoned with--that dim, grovelling
indistinguishable mass on which the whole social structure rested. It
was as though the very soil moved, rising in mountains or yawning in
chasms about the feet of those who had so long securely battened on it.
The earth shook, the sun and moon were darkened, and the people, the
terrible unknown people, had put in the sickle to the harvest.

Italy roused herself at last. The emissaries of the new France were
swarming across the Alps, pervading the peninsula as the Jesuits had
once pervaded Europe; and in the mind of a young general of the
republican army visions of Italian conquest were already forming. In
Pianura the revolutionary agents found a strong republican party headed
by Gamba and his friends, and a government weakened by debt and
dissensions. The air was thick with intrigue. The little army could no
longer be counted on, and a prolonged bread-riot had driven Trescorre
out of the ministry and compelled the Duke to appoint Andreoni in his
place. Behind Andreoni stood Gamba and the radicals. There could be no
doubt which way the fortunes of the duchy tended. The Duke's would-be
protectors, Austria and the Holy See, were too busy organising the hasty
coalition of the powers to come to his aid, had he cared to call on
them. But to do so would have been but another way of annihilation. To
preserve the individuality of his state, or to merge it in the vision of
a United Italy, seemed to him the only alternatives worth fighting for.
The former was a futile dream, the latter seemed for a brief moment
possible. Piedmont, ever loyal to the monarchical principle, was calling
on her sister states to arm themselves against the French invasion. But
the response was reluctant and uncertain. Private ambitions and petty
jealousies hampered every attempt at union. Austria, the Bourbons and
the Holy See held the Italian principalities in a network of conflicting
interests and obligations that rendered free action impossible. Sadly
Victor Amadeus armed himself alone against the enemy.

Under such conditions Odo could do little to direct the course of
events. They had passed into more powerful hands than his. But he could
at least declare himself for or against the mighty impulse which was
behind them. The ideas he had striven for had triumphed at last, and his
surest hold on authority was to share openly in their triumph. A
profound horror dragged him back. The new principles were not those for
which he had striven. The goddess of the new worship was but a bloody
Maenad who had borrowed the attributes of freedom. He could not bow the
knee in such a charnel-house. Tranquilly, resolutely, he took up the
policy of repression. He knew the attempt was foredoomed to failure, but
that made no difference now: he was simply acting out the inevitable.

The last act came with unexpected suddenness. The Duke woke one morning
to find the citadel in the possession of the people. The impregnable
stronghold of Bracciaforte was in the hands of the serfs whose fathers
had toiled to build it, and the last descendant of Bracciaforte was
virtually a prisoner in his palace. The revolution took place quietly,
without violence or bloodshed. Andreoni waited on the Duke, and a
cabinet-council was summoned. The ministers affected to have yielded
reluctantly to popular pressure. All they asked was a constitution and
the assurance that no resistance would be offered to the French.

The Duke requested a few hours for deliberation. Left alone, he summoned
the Duchess's chamberlain. The ducal pair no longer met save on
occasions of state: they had not exchanged a word since the death of
Fulvia Vivaldi. Odo sent word to her Highness that he could no longer
answer for her security while she remained in the duchy, and that he
begged her to leave immediately for Vienna. She replied that she was
obliged for his warning, but that while he remained in Pianura her place
was at his side. It was the answer he had expected--he had never doubted
her courage--but it was essential to his course that she should leave
the duchy without delay, and after a moment's reflection he wrote a
letter in which he informed her that he must insist on her obedience. No
answer was returned, but he learned that she had turned white, and
tearing the letter in shreds had called for her travelling-carriage
within the hour. He sent to enquire when he might take leave of her, but
she excused herself on the plea of indisposition, and before nightfall
he heard the departing rattle of her wheels.

He immediately summoned Andreoni and announced his unconditional refusal
of the terms proposed to him. He would not give a constitution or
promise allegiance to the French. The minister withdrew, and Odo was
left alone. He had dismissed his gentlemen, and as he sat in his closet
a sense of deathlike isolation came over him. Never had the palace
seemed so silent or so vast. He had not a friend to turn to. De Crucis
was in Germany, and Trescorre, it was reported, had privately attended
the Duchess in her flight. The waves of destiny seemed closing over Odo,
and the circumstances of his past rose, poignant and vivid, before his
drowning sight.

And suddenly, in that moment of failure and abandonment, it seemed to
him again that life was worth the living. His indifference fell from him
like a garment. The old passion of action awoke and he felt a new warmth
in his breast. After all, the struggle was not yet over: though Piedmont
had called in vain on the Italian states, an Italian sword might still
be drawn in her service. If his people would not follow him against
France he could still march against her alone. Old memories hummed in
him at the thought. He recalled how his Piedmontese ancestors had gone
forth against the same foe, and the stout Donnaz blood began to bubble
in his veins.

A knock roused him and Gamba entered by the private way. His appearance
was not unexpected to Odo, and served only to reinforce his new-found
energy. He felt that the issue was at hand. As he expected, Gamba had
been sent to put before him more forcibly and unceremoniously the veiled
threat of the ministers. But the hunchback had come also to plead with
his master in his own name, and in the name of the ideas for which they
had once laboured together. He could not believe that the Duke's
reaction was more than momentary. He could not calculate the strength of
the old associations which, now that the tide had set the other way,
were dragging Odo back to the beliefs and traditions of his caste.

The Duke listened in silence; then he said: "Discussion is idle. I have
no answer to give but that which I have already given." He rose from his
seat in token of dismissal.

The moment was painful to both men. Gamba drew nearer and fell at the
Duke's feet.

"Your Highness," he said, "consider what this means. We hold the state
in our hands. If you are against us you are powerless. If you are with
us we can promise you more power than you ever dreamed of possessing."

The Duke looked at him with a musing smile. "It is as though you offered
me gold in a desert island," he said. "Do not waste such poor bribes on
me. I care for no power but the power to wipe out the work of these last
years. Failing that, I want nothing that you or any other man can give."

Gamba was silent a moment. He turned aside into the embrasure of the
window, and when he spoke again it was in a voice broken with grief.

"Your Highness," he said, "if your choice is made, ours is made also. It
is a hard choice, but these are fratricidal hours. We have come to the
parting of the ways."

The Duke made no sign, and Gamba went on with gathering anguish: "We
would have gone to the world's end with your Highness for our leader!"

"With a leader whom you could lead," Odo interposed. He went up to Gamba
and laid a hand on his shoulder. "Speak out, man," he said. "Say what
you were sent to say. Am I a prisoner?"

The hunchback burst into tears. Odo, with his arms crossed, stood
leaning against the window. The other's anguish seemed to deepen his
detachment.

"Your Highness--your Highness--" Gamba stammered.

The Duke made an impatient gesture. "Come, make an end," he said.

Gamba fell back with a profound bow.

"We do not ask the surrender of your Highness's person," he said.

"Not even that?" Odo returned with a faint sneer.

Gamba flushed to the temples, but the retort died on his lips.

"Your Highness," he said, scarce above a whisper, "the gates are
guarded; but the word for tonight is 'Humilitas.'" He knelt and kissed
Odo's hand. Then he rose and passed out of the room...

***

Before dawn the Duke left the palace. The high emotions of the night had
ebbed. He saw himself now, in the ironic light of morning, as a fugitive
too harmless to be worth pursuing. His enemies had let him keep his
sword because they had no cause to fear it. Alone he passed through the
gardens of the palace, and out into the desert darkness of the streets.
Skirting the wall of the Benedictine convent where Fulvia had lodged, he
gained a street leading to the marketplace. In the pallor of the waning
night the ancient monuments of his race stood up mournful and deserted
as a line of tombs. The city seemed a grave-yard and he the ineffectual
ghost of its dead past. He reached the gates and gave the watchword. The
gates were guarded, as he had been advised; but the captain of the watch
let him pass without show of hesitation or curiosity. Though he made no
effort at disguise he went forth unrecognised, and the city closed her
doors on him as carelessly as on any passing wanderer.

Beyond the gates a lad from the ducal stables waited with a horse. Odo
sprang into the saddle and rode on toward Pontesordo. The darkness was
growing thinner, and the meagre details of the landscape, with its
huddled farm-houses and mulberry-orchards, began to define themselves as
he advanced. To his left the field stretched, grey and sodden; ahead, on
his right, hung the dark woods of the ducal chase. Presently a bend of
the road brought him within sight of the keep of Pontesordo. His way led
past it, toward Valsecca; but some obscure instinct laid a detaining
hand on him, and at the cross-roads he bent to the right and rode across
the marshland to the old manor-house.

The farmyard lay hushed and deserted. The peasants who lived there would
soon be afoot; but for the moment Odo had the place to himself. He
tethered his horse to a gate-post and walked across the rough
cobble-stones to the chapel. Its floor was still heaped with farm-tools
and dried vegetables, and in the dimness a heavier veil of dust seemed
to obscure the painted walls. Odo advanced, picking his way among broken
ploughshares and stacks of maize, till he stood near the old marble
altar, with its sea-gods and acanthus volutes. The place laid its
tranquillising hush on him, and he knelt on the step beneath the altar.
Something stirred in him as he knelt there--a prayer, yet not a
prayer--a reaching out, obscure and inarticulate, toward all that had
survived of his early hopes and faiths, a loosening of old founts of
pity, a longing to be somehow, somewhere reunited to his old belief in
life.

How long he knelt he knew not; but when he looked up the chapel was full
of a pale light, and in the first shaft of the sunrise the face of Saint
Francis shone out on him...He went forth into the daybreak and rode away
toward Piedmont.

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