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The Valley Of Decision

E >> Edith Wharton >> The Valley Of Decision




That general belief in the perfectibility of man which cheered the
eighteenth-century thinkers in their struggle for intellectual liberty
coloured with a delightful brightness this vision of a renewed humanity.
It threw its beams on every branch of research, and shone like an
aureole round those who laid down fortune and advancement to purchase
the new redemption of mankind. Foremost among these, as Odo now learned,
were many of his own countrymen. In his talks with Vivaldi he first
explored the course of Italian thought and heard the names of the great
jurists, Vico and Gravina, and of his own contemporaries, Filangieri,
Verri and Beccaria. Vivaldi lent him Beccaria's famous volume and
several numbers of the "Caffe," the brilliant gazette which Verri and
his associates were then publishing in Milan, and in which all the
questions of the day, theological, economic and literary, were discussed
with a freedom possible only under the lenient Austrian rule.

"Ah," Vivaldi cried, "Milan is indeed the home of the free spirit, and
were I not persuaded that a man's first duty is to improve the condition
of his own city and state, I should long ago have left this unhappy
kingdom; indeed I sometimes fancy I may yet serve my own people better
by proclaiming the truth openly at a distance than by whispering it in
their midst."

It was a surprise to Odo to learn that the new ideas had already taken
such hold in Italy, and that some of the foremost thinkers on scientific
and economic subjects were among his own countrymen. Like all
eighteenth-century Italians of his class he had been taught to look to
France as the source of all culture, intellectual and social; and he was
amazed to find that in jurisprudence, and in some of the natural
sciences, Italy led the learning of Europe.

Once or twice Fulvia showed herself for a moment; but her manner was
retiring and almost constrained, and her father always contrived an
excuse for dismissing her. This was the more noticeable as she continued
to appear at the meetings of the Honey-Bees, where she joined freely in
the conversation, and sometimes diverted the guests by playing on the
harpsichord or by recitations from the poets; all with such art and
grace, and withal so much simplicity, that it was clear she was
accustomed to the part. Odo was thus driven to the not unflattering
conclusion that she had been instructed to avoid his company; and after
the first disappointment he was too honest to regret it. He was deeply
drawn to the girl; but what part could she play in the life of a man of
his rank? The cadet of an impoverished house, it was unlikely that he
would marry; and should he do so, custom forbade even the thought of
taking a wife outside of his class. Had he been admitted to free
intercourse with Fulvia, love might have routed such prudent counsels;
but in the society of her father's associates, where she moved, as in a
halo of learning, amid the respectful admiration of middle-aged
philosophers and jurists, she seemed as inaccessible as a young Minerva.

Odo, at first, had been careful not to visit Vivaldi too often; but the
Professor's conversation was so instructive, and his library so
inviting, that inclination got the better of prudence, and the young man
fell into the habit of turning almost daily down the lane behind the
Corpus Domini. Vivaldi, too proud to betray any concern for his personal
safety, showed no sign of resenting the frequency of these visits;
indeed, he received Odo with an increasing cordiality that, to an older
observer, might have betokened an effort to hide his apprehension.

One afternoon, escaping later than usual from the Valentino, Odo had
again bent toward the quiet quarter behind the palace. He was afoot,
with a cloak over his laced coat, and the day being Easter Monday the
streets were filled with a throng of pleasure-seekers amid whom it
seemed easy enough for a man to pass unnoticed. Odo, as he crossed the
Piazza Castello, thought it had never presented a gayer scene. Booths
with brightly-striped awnings had been set up under the arcades, which
were thronged with idlers of all classes; court-coaches dashed across
the square or rolled in and out of the palace-gates; and the Palazzo
Madama, lifting against the sunset its ivory-tinted columns and statues,
seemed rather some pictured fabric of Claude's or Bibbiena's than an
actual building of brick and marble. The turn of a corner carried him
from this spectacle into the solitude of a by-street where his own tread
was the only sound. He walked on carelessly; but suddenly he heard what
seemed an echo of his step. He stopped and faced about. No one was in
sight but a blind beggar crouching at the side-door of the Corpus
Domini. Odo walked on, listening, and again he heard the step, and again
turned to find himself alone. He tried to fancy that his ear had tricked
him; but he knew too much of the subtle methods of Italian espionage not
to feel a secret uneasiness. His better judgment warned him back; but
the desire to spend a pleasant hour prevailed. He took a turn through
the neighbouring streets, in the hope of diverting suspicion, and ten
minutes later was at the Professor's gate.

It opened at once, and to his amazement Fulvia stood before him. She had
thrown a black mantle over her head, and her face looked pale and vivid
in the fading light. Surprise for a moment silenced Odo, and before he
could speak the girl, without pausing to close the gate, had drawn him
toward her and flung her arms about his neck. In the first disorder of
his senses he was conscious only of seeking her lips; but an instant
later he knew it was no kiss of love that met his own, and he felt her
tremble violently in his arms. He saw in a flash that he was on unknown
ground; but his one thought was that Fulvia was in trouble and looked to
him for aid. He gently freed himself from her hold and tried to shape a
soothing question; but she caught his arm and, laying a hand over his
mouth, drew him across the garden and into the house. The lower floor
stood dark and empty. He followed Fulvia up the stairs and into the
library, which was also empty. The shutters stood wide, admitting the
evening freshness and a drowsy scent of jasmine from the garden.

Odo could not control a thrill of strange anticipation as he found
himself alone in this silent room with the girl whose heart had so
lately beat against his own. She had sunk into a chair, with her face
hidden, and for a moment or two he stood before her without speaking.
Then he knelt at her side and took her hands with a murmur of
endearment.

At his touch she started up. "And it was I," she cried, "who persuaded
my father that he might trust you!" And she sank back sobbing.

Odo rose and moved away, waiting for her overwrought emotion to subside.
At length he gently asked, "Do you wish me to leave you?"

She raised her head. "No," she said firmly, though her lip still
trembled; "you must first hear an explanation of my conduct; though it
is scarce possible," she added, flushing to the brow, "that you have not
already guessed the purpose of this lamentable comedy."

"I guess nothing," he replied, "save that perhaps I may in some way
serve you."

"Serve me?" she cried, with a flash of anger through her tears. "It is a
late hour to speak of service, after what you have brought on this
house!"

Odo turned pale. "Here indeed, madam," said he, "are words that need an
explanation."

"Oh," she broke forth, "and you shall have it; though I think to any
other it must be writ large upon my countenance." She rose and paced the
floor impetuously. "Is it possible," she began again, "you do not yet
perceive the sense of that execrable scene? Or do you think, by feigning
ignorance, to prolong my humiliation? Oh," she said, pausing before him,
her breast in a tumult, her eyes alight, "it was I who persuaded my
father of your discretion and prudence, it was through my influence that
he opened himself to you so freely; and is this the return you make?
Alas, why did you leave your fashionable friends and a world in which
you are so fitted to shine, to bring unhappiness on an obscure household
that never dreamed of courting your notice?"

As she stood before him in her radiant anger, it went hard with Odo not
to silence with a kiss a resentment that he guessed to be mainly
directed against herself; but he controlled himself and said quietly:
"Madam, I were a dolt not to perceive that I have had the misfortune to
offend; but when or how, I swear to heaven I know not; and till you
enlighten me I can neither excuse nor defend myself."

She turned pale, but instantly recovered her composure. "You are right,"
she said; "I rave like a foolish girl; but indeed I scarce know if I am
in my waking senses"--She paused, as if to check a fresh rush of
emotion. "Oh, sir," she cried, "can you not guess what has happened? You
were warned, I believe, not to frequent this house too openly; but of
late you have been an almost daily visitor, and you never come here but
you are followed. My father's doctrines have long been under suspicion,
and to be accused of perverting a man of your rank must be his ruin. He
was too proud to tell you this, and profiting today by his absence, and
knowing that if you came the spies would be at your heels, I resolved to
meet you at the gate, and welcome you in such a way that our enemies
should be deceived as to the true cause of your visits."

Her voice wavered on the last words, but she faced him proudly, and it
was Odo whose gaze fell. Never perhaps had he been conscious of cutting
a meaner figure; yet shame was so blent in him with admiration for the
girl's nobility and courage, that compunction was swept away in the
impulse that flung him at her feet.

"Ah," he cried, "I have been blind indeed, and what you say abases me to
earth. Yes, I was warned that my visits might compromise your father;
nor had I any pretext for returning so often but my own selfish pleasure
in his discourse; or so at least," he added in a lower voice, "I chose
to fancy--but when we met just now at the gate, if you acted a comedy,
believe me, I did not; and if I have come day after day to this house,
it is because, unknowingly, I came for you."

The words had escaped him unawares, and he was too sensible of their
untimeliness not to be prepared for the gesture with which she cut him
short.

"Oh," said she, in a tone of the liveliest reproach, "spare me this last
affront if you wish me to think the harm you have already done was done
unknowingly!"

Odo rose to his feet, tingling under the rebuke. "If respect and
admiration be an affront, madam," he said, "I cannot remain in your
presence without offending, and nothing is left me but to withdraw; but
before going I would at least ask if there is no way of repairing the
harm that my over-assiduity has caused."

She flushed high at the question. "Why, that," she said, "is in part, I
trust, already accomplished; indeed," she went on with an effort, "it
was when I learned the authorities suspected you of coming here on a
gallant adventure that I devised the idea of meeting you at the gate;
and for the rest, sir, the best reparation you can make is one that will
naturally suggest itself to a gentleman whose time must already be so
fully engaged."

And with that she made him a deep reverence, and withdrew to the inner
room.


2.5.

When the Professor's gate closed on Odo night was already falling and
the oil-lamp at the end of the arched passage-way shed its weak circle
of light on the pavement. This light, as Odo emerged, fell on a
retreating figure which resembled that of the blind beggar he had seen
crouching on the steps of the Corpus Domini. He ran forward, but the man
hurried across the little square and disappeared in the darkness. Odo
had not seen his face; but though his dress was tattered, and he leaned
on a beggar's staff, something about his broad rolling back recalled the
well-filled outline of Cantapresto's cassock.

Sick at heart, Odo rambled on from one street to another, avoiding the
more crowded quarters, and losing himself more than once in the
districts near the river, where young gentlemen of his figure seldom
showed themselves unattended. The populace, however, was all abroad, and
he passed as unregarded as though his sombre thoughts had enveloped him
in actual darkness.

It was late when at length he turned again into the Piazza Castello,
which was brightly lit and still thronged with pleasure-seekers. As he
approached, the crowd divided to make way for three or four handsome
travelling-carriages, preceded by linkmen and liveried out-riders and
followed by a dozen mounted equerries. The people, evidently in the
humour to greet every incident of the streets as part of a show prepared
for their diversion, cheered lustily as the carriages dashed across the
square; and Odo, turning to a man at his elbow, asked who the
distinguished visitors might be.

"Why, sir," said the other laughing, "I understand it is only an
Embassage from some neighbouring state; but when our good people are in
their Easter mood they are ready to take a mail-coach for Elijah's
chariot and their wives' scolding for the Gift of Tongues."

Odo spent a restless night face to face with his first humiliation.
Though the girl's rebuff had cut him to the quick, it was the vision of
the havoc his folly had wrought that stood between him and sleep. To
have endangered the liberty, the very life, perhaps, of a man he loved
and venerated, and who had welcomed him without heed of personal risk,
this indeed was bitter to his youthful self-sufficiency. The thought of
Giannone's fate was like a cold clutch at his heart; nor was there any
balm in knowing that it was at Fulvia's request he had been so freely
welcomed; for he was persuaded that, whatever her previous feeling might
have been, the scene just enacted must render him forever odious to her.
Turn whither it would, his tossing vanity found no repose; and dawn rose
for him on a thorny waste of disillusionment.

Cantapresto broke in early on this vigil, flushed with the importance of
a letter from the Countess Valdu. The lady summoned her son to dinner,
"to meet an old friend and distinguished visitor"; and a verbal message
bade Odo come early and wear his new uniform. He was too well acquainted
with his mother's exaggerations to attach much importance to the
summons; but being glad of an excuse to escape his daily visit at the
Palazzo Tournanches, he sent Donna Laura word that he would wait on her
at two.

On the very threshold of Casa Valdu, Odo perceived that unwonted
preparations were afoot. The shabby liveries of the servants had been
refurbished and the marble floor newly scoured; and he found his mother
seated in the drawing-room, an apartment never unshrouded save on the
most ceremonious occasions. As to Donna Laura, she had undergone the
same process of renovation, and with more striking results. It seemed to
Odo, when she met him sparkling under her rouge and powder, as though
some withered flower had been dipped in water, regaining for the moment
a languid semblance of its freshness. Her eyes shone, her hand trembled
under his lips, and the diamonds rose and fell on her eager bosom.

"You are late!" she tenderly reproached him; and before he had time to
reply, the double doors were thrown open, and the major-domo announced
in an awed voice: "His excellency Count Lelio Trescorre."

Odo turned with a start. To his mind, already crowded with a confusion
of thoughts, the name summoned a throng of memories. He saw again his
mother's apartments at Pianura, and the handsome youth with lace ruffles
and a clouded amber cane, who came and went among her other visitors
with an air of such superiority, and who rode beside the
travelling-carriage on the first stage of their journey to Donnaz. To
that handsome youth the gentleman just announced bore the likeness of
the finished portrait to the sketch. He was a man of about
two-and-thirty, of the middle height, with a delicate dark face and an
air of arrogance not unbecomingly allied to an insinuating courtesy of
address. His dress of sombre velvet, with a star on the breast, and a
profusion of the finest lace, suggested the desire to add dignity and
weight to his appearance without renouncing the softer ambitions of his
age.

He received with a smile Donna Laura's agitated phrases of welcome. "I
come," said he kissing her hand, "in my private character, not as the
Envoy of Pianura, but as the friend and servant of the Countess Valdu;
and I trust," he added turning to Odo, "of the Cavaliere Valsecca also."

Odo bowed in silence.

"You may have heard," Trescorre continued, addressing him in the same
engaging tone, "that I am come to Turin on a mission from his Highness
to the court of Savoy: a trifling matter of boundary-lines and customs,
which I undertook at the Duke's desire, the more readily, it must be
owned, since it gave me the opportunity to renew my acquaintance with
friends whom absence has not taught me to forget." He smiled again at
Donna Laura, who blushed like a girl.

The curiosity which Trescorre's words excited was lost to Odo in the
painful impression produced by his mother's agitation. To see her, a
woman already past her youth, and aged by her very efforts to preserve
it, trembling and bridling under the cool eye of masculine indifference,
was a spectacle the more humiliating that he was too young to be moved
by its human and pathetic side. He recalled once seeing a memento mori
of delicately-tinted ivory, which represented a girl's head, one side
all dewy freshness, the other touched with death; and it seemed to him
that his mother's face resembled this tragic toy, the side her mirror
reflected being still rosy with youth, while that which others saw was
already a ruin. His heart burned with disgust as he followed Donna Laura
and Trescorre into the dining-room, which had been set out with all the
family plate, and decked with rare fruits and flowers. The Countess had
excused her husband on the plea of his official duties, and the three
sat down alone to a meal composed of the costliest delicacies.

Their guest, who ate little and drank less, entertained them with the
latest news of Pianura, touching discreetly on the growing estrangement
between the Duke and Duchess, and speaking with becoming gravity of the
heir's weak health. It was clear that the speaker, without filling an
official position at the court, was already deep in the Duke's counsels,
and perhaps also in the Duchess's; and Odo guessed under his smiling
indiscretions the cool aim of the man who never wastes a shot.

Toward the close of the meal, when the servants had withdrawn, he turned
to Odo with a graver manner. "You have perhaps guessed, cavaliere," he
said, "that in venturing to claim the Countess's hospitality in so
private a manner, I had in mind the wish to open myself to you more
freely than would be possible at court." He paused a moment, as though
to emphasise his words; and Odo fancied he cultivated the trick of
deliberate speaking to counteract his natural arrogance of manner. "The
time has come," he went on, "when it seems desirable that you should be
more familiar with the state of affairs at Pianura. For some years it
seemed likely that the Duchess would give his Highness another son; but
circumstances now appear to preclude that hope; and it is the general
opinion of the court physicians that the young prince has not many years
to live." He paused again, fixing his eyes on Odo's flushed face. "The
Duke," he continued, "has shown a natural reluctance to face a situation
so painful both to his heart and his ambitions; but his feelings as a
parent have yielded to his duty as a sovereign, and he recognises the
fact that you should have an early opportunity of acquainting yourself
more nearly with the affairs of the duchy, and also of seeing something
of the other courts of Italy. I am persuaded," he added, "that, young as
you are, I need not point out to you on what slight contingencies all
human fortunes hang, and how completely the heir's recovery or the birth
of another prince must change the aspect of your future. You have, I am
sure, the heart to face such chances with becoming equanimity, and to
carry the weight of conditional honours without any undue faith in their
permanence."

The admonition was so lightly uttered that it seemed rather a tribute to
Odo's good sense than a warning to his inexperience; and indeed it was
difficult for him, in spite of an instinctive aversion to the man, to
quarrel with anything in his address or language. Trescorre in fact
possessed the art of putting younger men at their ease, while appearing
as an equal among his elders: a gift doubtless developed by the
circumstances of court life, and the need of at once commanding respect
and disarming diffidence.

He took leave upon his last words, declaring, in reply to the Countess's
protests, that he had promised to accompany the court that afternoon to
Stupinigi. "But I hope," he added, turning to Odo, "to continue our talk
at greater length, if you will favour me with a visit tomorrow at my
lodgings."

No sooner was the door closed on her illustrious visitor than Donna
Laura flung herself on Odo's bosom.

"I always knew it," she cried, "my dearest; but, oh, that I should live
to see the day!" and she wept and clung to him with a thousand
endearments, from the nature of which he gathered that she already
beheld him on the throne of Pianura. To his laughing reminder of the
distance that still separated him from that dizzy eminence, she made
answer that there was far more than he knew, that the Duke had fallen
into all manner of excesses which had already gravely impaired his
health, and that for her part she only hoped her son, when raised to a
station so far above her own, would not forget the tenderness with which
she had ever cherished him, or the fact that Count Valdu's financial
situation was one quite unworthy the stepfather of a reigning prince.

Escaping at length from this parody of his own sensations, Odo found
himself in a tumult of mind that solitude served only to increase.
Events had so pressed upon him within the last few days that at times he
was reduced to a passive sense of spectatorship, an inability to regard
himself as the centre of so many converging purposes. It was clear that
Trescorre's mission was mainly a pretext for seeing the Duke's young
kinsman; and that some special motive must have impelled the Duke to
show such sudden concern for his cousin's welfare. Trescorre need hardly
have cautioned Odo against fixing his hopes on the succession. The Duke
himself was a man not above five-and-thirty, and more than one chance
stood between Odo and the duchy; nor was it this contingency that set
his pulses beating, but rather the promise of an immediate change in his
condition. The Duke wished him to travel, to visit the different courts
of Italy: what was the prospect of ruling over a stagnant principality
to this near vision of the world and the glories thereof, suddenly
discovered from the golden height of opportunity? Save for a few weeks
of autumn villeggiatura at some neighbouring chase or vineyard, Odo had
not left Turin for nine years. He had come there a child and had grown
to manhood among the same narrow influences and surroundings. To be
turned loose on the world at two-and-twenty, with such an arrears of
experience to his credit, was to enter on a richer inheritance than any
duchy; and in Odo's case the joy of the adventure was doubled by its
timeliness. That fate should thus break at a stroke the meshes of habit,
should stoop to play the advocate of his secret inclinations, seemed to
promise him the complicity of the gods. Once in a lifetime, chance will
thus snap the toils of a man's making; and it is instructive to see the
poor puppet adore the power that connives at his evasion...

Trescorre remained a week in Turin; and Odo saw him daily at court, at
his lodgings, or in company. The little sovereignty of Pianura being an
important factor in the game of political equilibrium, her envoy was
sure of a flattering reception from the neighbouring powers; and
Trescorre's person and address must have commended him to the most
fastidious company. He continued to pay particular attention to Odo, and
the rumour was soon abroad that the Cavaliere Valsecca had been sent for
to visit his cousin, the reigning Duke; a rumour which, combined with
Donna Laura's confidential hints, made Odo the centre of much feminine
solicitude, and roused the Countess Clarice to a vivid sense of her
rights. These circumstances, and his own tendency to drift on the
current of sensation, had carried Odo more easily than he could have
hoped past the painful episode of the Professor's garden. He was still
tormented by the sense of his inability to right so grave a wrong; but
he found solace in the thought that his absence was after all the best
reparation he could make.

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