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BOOK II - THE NEW LIGHT: CHAPTER 9
Odo woke with a start. He had been trying to break down a great
gold-barred gate, behind which Fulvia, pale and disordered, struggled in
the clutch of the blind beggar of the Corpus Domini...
He sat up and looked about him. The gate was still there; but as he
gazed it resolved itself into his shuttered window, barred with wide
lines of sunlight. It was day, then! He sprang out of bed and flung open
the shutters. Beneath him lay the piazza of Vercelli, bathed in the
vertical brightness of a summer noon; and as he stared out on this
inexorable scene, the clock over the Hospital struck twelve.
Twelve o'clock! And he had promised to meet Vivaldi at dawn behind the
Umiliati! As the truth forced itself on Odo he dropped into a chair and
hid his face with a groan. He had failed them again, then--and this time
how cruelly and basely! He felt himself the victim of a conspiracy which
in some occult manner was forever forcing him to outrage and betray the
two beings he most longed to serve. The idea of a conspiracy flashed a
sudden light on his evening's diversion, and he sprang up with a cry.
Yes! It was a plot, and any but a dolt must have traced the soprano's
hand in this vulgar assault upon his senses. He choked with anger at the
thought of having played the dupe when two lives he cherished were
staked upon his vigilance...
To his furious summons Cantapresto presented a blank wall of ignorance.
Yes, the Cavaliere had given orders that the carriage should be ready
before daybreak; but who was authorised to wake the cavaliere? After
keeping the carriage two hours at the door Cantapresto had ventured to
send it back to the stable; but the horses should instantly be put to,
and within an hour they would be well forward on their journey.
Meanwhile, should the barber be summoned at once? Or would the cavaliere
first refresh himself with an excellent cup of chocolate, prepared under
Cantapresto's own supervision?
Odo turned on him savagely. "Traitor--spy! In whose pay--?"
But the words roused him to a fresh sense of peril. Cantapresto, though
he might have guessed Odo's intention, was not privy to his plan of
rejoining Vivaldi and Fulvia; and it flashed across the young man that
his self-betrayal must confirm the others' suspicions. His one hope of
protecting his friends was to affect indifference to what had happened;
and this was made easier, by the reflection that Cantapresto was after
all but a tool in more powerful hands. To be spied on was so natural to
an Italian of that day that the victim's instinct was rather to
circumvent the spy than to denounce him.
Odo dismissed Cantapresto with the reply that he would give orders about
the carriage later; desiring that meanwhile the soprano should purchase
the handsomest set of filigree ornaments to be found in Vercelli, and
carry them with the Cavaliere Valsecca's compliments to the Signorina
Malmocco.
Having thus rid himself of observation he dressed as rapidly as
possible, trying the while to devise some means of tracing Vivaldi. But
the longer he pondered the attempt the more plainly he saw its futility.
Vivaldi, doubtless from motives of prudence, had not named the friend
with whom he and Fulvia were to take shelter; nor did Odo even know in
what quarter of the city to seek them. To question the police was to
risk their last chance of safety; and for the same reason he dared not
enquire of the posting-master whether any travellers had set out that
morning for Lombardy. His natural activity of mind was hampered by a
leaden sense of remissness. With what anguish of spirit must Vivaldi and
Fulvia have awaited him in that hour of dawn behind the convent! What
thoughts must have visited the girl's mind as day broadened, the city
woke, and peril pressed on them with every voice and eye! And when at
length they saw that he had failed them, which way did their hunted
footsteps turn? Perhaps they dared not go back to the friend who had
taken them in for the night. Perhaps even now they wandered through the
streets, fearing arrest if they revealed themselves by venturing to
engage a carriage, at every turn of his thoughts Odo was mocked by some
vision of disaster; and an hour of perplexity yielded no happier
expedient than that of repairing to the meeting-place behind the
Umiliati. It was a deserted lane with few passers; and after vainly
questioning the blank wall of the convent and the gates of a
sinister-looking alms-house that faced it, he retraced his steps to the
inn.
He spent a day of futile research and bitter thoughts, now straying
forth in the hope of meeting Vivaldi, now hastening back to the Three
Crowns on the chance that some message might await him. He dared not let
his mind rest on what might have befallen his friends; yet the
alternative of contemplating his own course was scarcely more endurable.
Nightfall brought the conviction that the Professor and Fulvia had
passed beyond his reach. It was clear that if they were still in
Vercelli they did not mean to make their presence known to him, while in
the event of their escape he was without means of tracing them farther.
He knew indeed that their destination was Milan, but, should they reach
there safely, what hope was there of finding them in a city of
strangers? By a stroke of folly he had cut himself off from all
communication with them, and his misery was enhanced by the discovery of
his weakness. He who had fed his fancy on high visions, cherishing in
himself the latent patriot and hero, had been driven by a girl's caprice
to break the first law of manliness and honour! The event had already
justified her; and in a flash of self-contempt he saw himself as she no
doubt beheld him--the fribble preying like a summer insect on the slow
growths of difficult years...
In bitterness of spirit he set out the next morning for Pianura. A
half-melancholy interest drew him back to the scene of his lonely
childhood, and he had started early in order to push on that night to
Pontesordo. At Valsecca, the regular posting-station between Vercelli
and Pianura, he sent Cantapresto forward to the capital, and in a stormy
yellow twilight drove alone across the waste land that dipped to the
marshes. On his right the woods of the ducal chase hung black against
the sky; and presently he saw ahead of him the old square keep, with a
flight of swallows circling low about its walls.
In the muddy farm-yard a young man was belabouring a donkey laden with
mulberry-shoots. He stared for a moment at Odo's approach and then
sullenly returned to his task.
Odo sprang out into the mud. "Why do you beat the brute?" said he
indignantly. The other turned a dull face on him and he recognised his
old enemy Giannozzo.
"Giannozzo," he cried, "don't you know me? I am the Cavaliere Valsecca,
whose ears you used to box when you were a lad. Must you always be
pummelling something, that you can't let that poor brute alone at the
end of its day's work?"
Giannozzo, dropping his staff, stammered out that he craved his
excellency's pardon for not knowing him, but that as for the ass it was
a stubborn devil that would not have carried Jesus Christ without
gibbing.
"The beast is tired and hungry," cried Odo, his old compassion for the
sufferings of the farm-animals suddenly reviving. "How many hours have
you worked it without rest or food?"
"No more than I have worked myself," said Giannozzo sulkily; "and as for
its being hungry, why should it fare better than its masters?"
Their words had called out of the house a lean bent woman, whose
shrivelled skin showed through the rents in her unbleached shift. At
sight of Odo she pushed Giannozzo aside and hurried forward to ask how
she might serve the gentleman.
"With supper and a bed, my good Filomena," said Odo; and she flung
herself at his feet with a cry.
"Saints of heaven, that I should not have known his excellency! But I am
half blind with the fever, and who could have dreamed of such an
honour?" She clung to his knees in the mud, kissing his hands and
calling down blessings on him. "And as for you, Giannozzo, you
curd-faced fool, quick, see that his excellency's horses are stabled and
go call your father from the cow-house while I prepare his excellency's
supper. And fetch me in a faggot to light the fire in the bailiff's
parlour."
Odo followed her into the kitchen, where he had so often crouched in a
corner to eat his polenta out of reach of her vigorous arm. The roof
seemed lower and more smoke-blackened than ever, but the hearth was
cold, and he noticed that no supper was laid. Filomena led him into the
bailiff's parlour, where a mortal chill seized him. Cobwebs hung from
the walls, the window-panes were broken and caked with grime, and the
few green twigs which Giannozzo presently threw on the hearth poured a
cloud of smoke into the cold heavy air.
There was a long delay while supper was preparing, and when at length
Filomena appeared, it was only to produce, with many excuses, a loaf of
vetch-bread, a bit of cheese and some dried quinces. There was nothing
else in the house, she declared: not so much as a bit of lard to make
soup with, a handful of pasti or a flask of wine. In the old days, as
his excellency might remember, they had eaten a bit of meat on Sundays,
and drunk aquarolle with their supper; but since the new taxes it was as
much as the farmers could do to feed their cattle, without having a
scrap to spare for themselves. Jacopone, she continued, was bent double
with the rheumatism, and had not been able to drive a plough or to work
in the mulberries for over two years. He and the farm-lads sat in the
cow-stables when their work was over, for the sake of the heat, and she
carried their black bread out there to them: a cold supper tasted better
in a warm place, and as his excellency knew, all the windows in the
house were unglazed save in the bailiff's parlour. Her man would be in
presently to pay his duty to his excellency; but he had grown
dull-witted since the rheumatism took him, and his excellency must not
take it ill if his talk was a little childish.
Thereupon Filomena excused herself, that she might put a clean shirt on
Jacopone, and Odo was left to his melancholy musings. His mind had of
late run much on economic abuses; but what was any philandering with
reform to this close contact with misery? It was as though white hungry
faces had suddenly stared in at the windows of his brightly-lit life.
What did these people care for education, enlightenment, the religion of
humanity? What they wanted was fodder for their cattle, a bit of meat on
Sundays and a faggot on the hearth.
Filomena presently returned with her husband; but Jacopone had shrunk
into a crippled tremulous old man, who pulled a vague forelock at Odo
without sign of recognition. Filomena, it was clear, was master at
Pontesordo; for though Giannozzo was a man grown, and did a man's work,
he still danced to the tune of his mother's tongue. It was from her that
Odo, shivering over the smoky hearth, gathered the details of their
wretched state. Pontesordo being a part of the ducal domain, they had
led in their old days an easier life than their neighbours; but the new
taxes had stripped them as bare as a mulberry-tree in June.
"How is a Christian to live, excellency, with the salt-tax doubled, so
that the cows go dry for want of it; with half a zecchin on every pair
of oxen, a stajo of wheat and two fowls to the parish, and not so much
as a bite of grass allowed on the Duke's lands? In his late Highness's
day the poor folk were allowed to graze their cattle on the borders of
the chase; but now a man dare not pluck a handful of weeds there, or so
much as pick up a fallen twig; though the deer may trample his young
wheat, and feed off the patch of beans at his very door. They do say the
Duchess has a kind heart, and gives away money to the towns-folk; but we
country-people who spend our lives raising fodder for her game never
hear of her Highness but when one of her game-keepers comes down on us
for poaching or stealing wood.--Yes, by the saints, and it was her
Highness who sent a neighbour's lad to the galleys last year for felling
a tree in the chase; a good lad as ever dug furrow, but he lacked wood
for a new plough-share, and how in God's name was he to plough his field
without it?"
So she went on, like a torrent after the spring rains; but when he named
Momola she fell silent, and Giannozzo, looking sideways, drummed with
his heel on the floor.
Odo glanced from one to the other. "She's dead, then?" he cried.
Filomena opened deprecating palms. "Can one tell, excellency? It may be
she is off with the gypsies."
"The gypsies? How long since?"
"Giannozzo," cried his mother, as he stood glowering, "go see that the
stable is locked and his excellency's horses bedded down." He slunk out
and she began to gather up the remains of Odo's meagre supper.
"But you must remember when this happened."
"Holy Mother! It was the year we had frost in April and lost our
hatching for want of leaves. But as for that child of ingratitude, one
day she was here, the next she was gone--clean gone, as a nut drops from
the tree--and I that had given the blood of my veins to nourish her!
Since then, God is my witness, we have had nothing but misfortune. The
next year it was the weevils in the wheat; and so it goes."
Odo was silent, seeing it was vain to press her. He fancied that the
girl must have died--of neglect perhaps, or ill usage--and that they
feared to own it. His heart swelled, but not against them: they seemed
to him no more accountable than cowed hunger-driven animals.
He tossed impatiently on the hard bed Filomena had made up for him in
the bailiff's parlour, and was afoot again with the first light.
Stepping out into the farm-yard he looked abroad over the flat grey face
of the land. Around the keep stretched the new-ploughed fields and the
pollarded mulberry orchards; but these, with the clustered hovels of the
village, formed a mere islet in the surrounding waste of marsh and
woodland. The scene symbolised fitly enough of social conditions of the
country: the over-crowded peasantry huddled on their scant patches of
arable ground, while miles of barren land represented the feudal rights
that hemmed them in on every side.
Odo walked across the yard to the chapel. On the threshold he stumbled
over a heap of mulberry-shoots and a broken plough-share. Twilight held
the place; but as he stood there the frescoes started out in the slant
of the sunrise like dead faces floating to the surface of a river. Dead
faces, yes: plaintive spectres of his childish fears and longings, lost
in the harsh daylight of experience. He had forgotten the very dreams
they stood for: Lethe flowed between and only one voice reached across
the torrent. It was that of Saint Francis, lover of the poor...
The morning was hot as Odo drove toward Pianura, and limping ahead of
him in the midday glare he presently saw the figure of a hump-backed man
in a decent black dress and three-cornered hat. There was something
familiar in the man's gait, and in the shape of his large head, poised
on narrow stooping shoulders, and as the carriage drew abreast of him,
Odo, leaning from the window, cried out, "Brutus--this must be Brutus!"
"Your excellency has the advantage of me," said the hunchback, turning
on him a thin face lit by the keen eyes that had once searched his
childish soul.
Odo met the rebuff with a smile. "Does that," said he, "prevent my
suggesting that you might continue your way more comfortably in my
carriage? The road is hot and dusty, and, as you see, I am in want of
company."
The pedestrian, who seemed unprepared for this affable rejoinder, had
the sheepish air of a man whose rudeness has missed the mark.
"Why, sir," said he, recovering himself, "comfort is all a matter of
habit, and I daresay the jolting of your carriage might seem to me more
unpleasant than the heat and dust of the road, to which necessity has
long since accustomed me."
"In that case," returned Odo with increasing amusement, "you will have
the additional merit of sacrificing your pleasure to add to mine."
The hunchback stared. "And what have you or yours ever done for me," he
retorted, "that I should sacrifice to your pleasure even the wretched
privilege of being dusted by the wheels of your coach?"
"Why, that," replied Odo, "is a question I can scarce answer till you
give me the opportunity of naming myself.--If you are indeed Carlo
Gamba," he continued, "I am your old friend and companion Odo Valsecca."
The hunchback started. "The Cavaliere Valsecca!" he cried. "I had heard
that you were expected." He stood gazing at Odo. "Our next Duke!" he
muttered.
Odo smiled. "I had rather," he said, "that my past commended me than my
future. It is more than doubtful if I am ever able to offer you a seat
in the Duke's carriage; but Odo Valsecca's is very much at your
service."
Gamba bowed with a kind of awkward dignity. "I am grateful for a
friend's kindness," he said, "but I do not ride in a nobleman's
carriage."
"There," returned Odo with perfect good-humour, "you have had advantage
of ME; for I can no more escape doing so than you can escape spending
your life in the company of an ill-tempered man." And courteously
lifting his hat he called to the postillion to drive on.
The hunchback at this, flushing red, laid a hand on the carriage door.
"Sir," said he, "I freely own myself in the wrong; but a smooth temper
was not one of the blessings my unknown parents bequeathed to me; and I
confess I had heard of you as one little concerned with your inferiors
except as they might chance to serve your pleasure."
It was Odo's turn to colour. "Look," said he, "at the fallibility of
rumour; for I had heard of you as something of a philosopher, and here I
find you not only taking a man's character on hearsay but denying him
the chance to prove you mistaken!"
"I deny it no longer," said Gamba stepping into the coach; "but as to
philosophy, the only claim I can make to it is that of being by birth a
peripatetic."
His dignity appeased, the hunchback proved himself a most engaging
companion, and as the carriage lumbered slowly toward Pianura he had
time not only to recount his own history but to satisfy Odo as to many
points of the life awaiting him.
Gamba, it appeared, owed his early schooling to a Jesuit priest who,
visiting the foundling asylum, had been struck by the child's quickness,
and had taken him home and bred him to be a clerk. The priest's death
left his charge adrift, with a smattering of scholarship above his
station, and none to whom he could turn for protection. For a while he
had lived, as he said, like a street-cat, picking up a meal where he
could, and sleeping in church porches and under street-arcades, till one
of the Duke's servants took pity on him and he was suffered to hang
about the palace and earn his keep by doing the lacquey's errands. The
Duke's attention having been called to him as a lad of parts, his
Highness had given him to the Marquess of Cerveno, in whose service he
remained till shortly before that young nobleman's death. The hunchback
passed hastily over this period; but his reticence was lit by the angry
flash of his eyes. After the Marquess's death he had lived for a while
from hand to mouth, copying music, writing poetry for weddings and
funerals, doing pen-and-ink portraits at a scudo apiece, and putting his
hand to any honest job that came his way. Count Trescorre, who now and
then showed a fitful recognition of the tie that was supposed to connect
them, at length heard of the case to which he was come and offered him a
trifling pension. This the hunchback refused, asking instead to be given
some fixed employment. Trescorre then obtained his appointment as
assistant to the Duke's librarian, a good old priest engrossed in
compiling the early history of Pianura from the ducal archives; and this
post Gamba had now filled for two years.
"It must," said Odo, "be one singularly congenial to you, if, as I have
heard, you are of a studious habit. Though I suppose," he tentatively
added, "the library is not likely to be rich in works of the new
scientific and philosophic schools."
His companion received this observation in silence; and after a moment
Odo continued: "I have a motive in asking, since I have been somewhat
deeply engaged in the study of these writers, and my dearest wish is to
continue while in Pianura my examination of their theories, and if
possible to become acquainted with any who share their views."
He was not insensible of the risk of thus opening himself to a stranger;
but the sense of peril made him the more eager to proclaim himself on
the side of the cause he seemed to have deserted.
Gamba turned as he spoke, and their eyes met in one of those revealing
glances that lay the foundations of friendship.
"I fear, Cavaliere," said the hunchback with a smile, "that you will
find both branches of investigation somewhat difficult to pursue in
Pianura; for the Church takes care that neither the philosophers nor
their books shall gain a footing in our most Christian state. Indeed,"
he added, "not only must the library be free from heretical works, but
the librarian clear of heretical leanings; and since you have honoured
me with your confidence I will own that, the court having got wind of my
supposed tendency to liberalism, I live in daily expectation of
dismissal. For the moment they are content to keep their spies on me;
but were it not for the protection of the good abate, my superior, I
should long since have been turned out."
"And why," asked Odo, "do you speak of the court and the Church as one?"
"Because, sir, in our virtuous duchy the terms are interchangeable. The
Duke is in fact so zealous a son of the Church that if the latter showed
any leniency to sinners the secular arm would promptly repair her
negligence. His Highness, as you may have heard, is ruled by his
confessor, an adroit Dominican. The confessor, it is true, has two
rivals, the Countess Belverde, a lady distinguished for her piety, and a
German astrologer or alchemist, lately come to Pianura, and calling
himself a descendant of the Egyptian priesthood and an adept of the
higher or secret doctrines of Neoplatonism. These three, however, though
ostensibly rivals for the Duke's favour, live on such good terms with
one another that they are suspected of having entered into a secret
partnership; while some regard them all as the emissaries of the
Jesuits, who, since the suppression of the Society, are known to have
kept a footing in Pianura, as in most of the Italian states. As to the
Duke, the death of the Marquess of Cerveno, the failing health of the
little prince, and his own strange physical infirmities, have so preyed
on his mind that he is the victim of any who are unscrupulous enough to
trade on the fears of a diseased imagination. His counsellors, however
divided in doctrine, have at least one end in common; and that is, to
keep the light of reason out of the darkened chamber in which they have
confined him; and with such a ruler and such principles of government,
you may fancy that poor philosophy has not where to lay her head."
"And the people?" Odo pursued. "What of the fiscal administration? In
some states where liberty of thought is forbidden the material welfare
of the subject is nevertheless considered."
The hunchback shook his head. "It may be so," said he, "though I had
thought the principle of moral tyranny must infect every branch of
public administration. With us, at all events, where the Church party
rules, the privileges and exemptions of the clergy are the chief source
of suffering, and the state of passive ignorance in which they have kept
the people has bred in the latter a dull resignation that is the surest
obstacle to reform. Oh, sir," he cried, his eyes darkening with emotion,
"if you could see, as I do, the blind brute misery on which all the
magnificence of rank and all the refinements of luxury are built, you
would feel, as you drive along this road, that with every turn of the
wheels you are passing over the bodies of those who have toiled without
ceasing that you might ride in a gilt coach, and have gone hungry that
you might feast in Kings' palaces!"
The touch of rhetoric in this adjuration did not discredit it with Odo,
to whom the words were as caustic on an open wound. He turned to make
some impulsive answer; but as he did so he caught sight of the towers of
Pianura rising above the orchards and market-gardens of the suburbs. The
sight started a new train of feeling, and Gamba, perceiving it, said
quietly: "But this is no time to speak of such things."
A moment later the carriage had passed under the great battlemented
gates, with their Etruscan bas-reliefs, and the motto of the house of
Valsecca--Humilitas--surmounted by the ducal escutcheon.
Though the hour was close on noon the streets were as animated as at the
angelus, and the carriage could hardly proceed for the crowd obstructing
its passage. So unusual at that period was such a sight in one of the
lesser Italian cities that Odo turned to Gamba for an explanation. At
the same moment a roar rose from the crowd; and the coach turning into
the Corso which led to the ducal palace and the centre of the town, Odo
caught sight of a strange procession advancing from that direction. It
was headed by a clerk or usher with a black cap and staff, behind whom
marched two bare-foot friars escorting between them a middle-aged man in
the dress of an abate, his hands bound behind him and his head
surmounted by a paste-board mitre inscribed with the title: A Destroyer
of Female Chastity. This man, who was of a simple and decent aspect, was
so dazed by the buffeting of the crowd, so spattered by the mud and
filth hurled at him from a hundred taunting hands, and his countenance
distorted by so piteous a look of animal fear, that he seemed more like
a madman being haled to Bedlam than a penitent making public amends for
his offence.
"Are such failings always so severely punished in Pianura?" Odo asked,
turning ironically to Gamba as the mob and its victim passed out of
sight.
The hunchback smiled. "Not," said he, "if the offender be in a position
to benefit by the admirable doctrines of probabilism, the direction of
intention, or any one of the numerous expedients by which an indulgent
Church has smoothed the way of the sinner; but as God does not give the
crop unless man sows the seed, so His ministers bestow grace only when
the penitent has enriched the treasury. The fellow," he added, "is a man
of some learning and of a retired and orderly way of living, and the
charge was brought against him by a jeweller and his wife, who owed him
a sum of money and are said to have chosen this way of evading payment.
The priests are always glad to find a scape-goat of the sort, especially
when there are murmurs against the private conduct of those in high
places, and the woman, having denounced him, was immediately assured by
her confessor that any debt incurred to a seducer was null and void, and
that she was entitled to a hundred scudi of damages for having been led
into sin."
Content of BOOK II - THE NEW LIGHT: CHAPTER 9 [Edith Wharton's novel: The Valley Of Decision]
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