Edith Wharton: Complete Works. Edith Wharton

kind of pressure that makes men yield—when they feel it they will know what to do.”

      He looked at her with astonishment. “This is Gamba’s tone,” he said. “I have never heard you speak in this way before.”

      She colored again; and now with a profound emotion. “Yes,” she said, “it is Gamba’s tone. He and I speak for the same cause and with the same voice. We are of the people and we speak for the people. Who are your other counsellors? Priests and noblemen! It is natural enough that they should wish to make their side of the question heard. Listen to them, if you will—conciliate them, if you can! We need all the allies we can win. Only do not fancy they are really speaking for the people. Do not think it is the people’s voice you hear. The people do not ask you to weigh this claim against that, to look too curiously into the defects and merits of every clause in their charter. All they ask is that the charter should be given them!”

      She spoke with the low-voiced passion that possessed her at such moments. All acrimony had vanished from her tone. The expression of a great conviction had swept aside every personal animosity, and cleared the sources of her deepest feeling. Odo felt the pressure of her emotion. He leaned to her and their hands met.

      “It shall be given them,” he said.

      She lifted her face to his. It shone with a great light. Once before he had seen it so illumined, but with how different a brightness! The remembrance stirred in him some old habit of the senses. He bent over and kissed her.

      —————

VII.

      Never before had Odo so keenly felt the difference between theoretical visions of liberty and their practical application. His deepest heart-searchings showed him as sincerely devoted as ever to the cause which had enlisted his youth. He still longed above all things to serve his fellows; but the conditions of such service were not what he had dreamed. How different a calling it had been in Saint Francis’s day, when hearts inflamed with the new sense of brotherhood had but to set forth on their simple mission of almsgiving and admonition! To love one’s neighbor had become a much more complex business, one that taxed the intelligence as much as the heart, and in the course of which feeling must be held in firm subjection to reason. He was discouraged by Fulvia’s inability to understand the change. Hers was the missionary spirit; and he could not but reflect how much happier she would have been as a nun in a charitable order, a unit in some organized system of beneficence.

      He too would have been happier to serve than to command! But it is not given to the lovers of the Lady Poverty to choose their special rank in her household. Don Gervaso’s words came back to him with deepening significance, and he thought how truly the old chaplain’s prayer had been fulfilled. Honor and power had come to him, and they had abased him to the dust. The Humilitas of his fathers, woven, carved and painted on every side, pursued him with an ironical reminder of his impotence.

      Fulvia had not been mistaken in attributing his depression of spirit to de Crucis’s visit. It was the first time that de Crucis had returned to Pianura since the new Duke’s accession. Odo had welcomed him eagerly, had again pressed him to remain; but de Crucis was on his way to Germany, bound on some business which could not be deferred. Odo, aware of the renewed activity of the Jesuits, supposed that this business was connected with the flight of the French refugees, many of whom were gone to Coblentz; but on this point the abate was silent. Of the state of affairs in France he spoke openly and despondently. The immoderate haste with which the reforms had been granted filled him with fears for the future. Odo knew that Crescenti shared these fears, and the judgment of these two men, with whom he differed on fundamental principles, weighed with him far more than the opinions of the party he was supposed to represent. But he was in the case of many greater sovereigns of his day. He had set free the waters of reform, and the frail bark of his authority had been torn from its moorings and swept headlong into the central current.

      The next morning, to his surprise, the Duchess sent one of her gentlemen to ask an audience. Odo at once replied that he would wait on her Highness; and a few moments later he was ushered into his wife’s closet.

      She had just left her toilet, and was still in the morning négligée worn during that prolonged and public ceremonial. Freshly perfumed and powdered, her eyes bright, her lips set in a nervous smile, she curiously recalled the arrogant child who had snatched her spaniel away from him years ago in that same room. And was she not that child, after all? Had she ever grown beyond the imperious instincts of her youth? It seemed to him now that he had judged her harshly in the first months of their marriage. He had felt a momentary impatience when he had tried to force her roving impulses into the line of his own endeavor: it was easier to view her leniently now that she had almost passed out of his life.

      He wondered why she had sent for him. Some dispute with her household, doubtless; a quarrel with a servant, even—or perhaps some sordid difficulty with her creditors. But she began in a new key.

      “Your Highness,” she said, “is not given to taking my advice.”

      Odo looked at her in surprise. “The opportunity is not often accorded me,” he replied with a smile.

      Maria Clementina made an impatient gesture; then her face softened. Contradictory emotions flitted over it like the reflections cast by a hurrying sky. She came close to him and then drew away and seated herself in the high-backed chair where she had throned when he first saw her. Suddenly she blushed and began to speak.

      “Once,” she said in a low, almost inaudible voice, “I was able to give your Highness warning of an impending danger—” She paused and her eyes rested full on Odo.

      He felt his color rise as he returned her gaze. It was her first allusion to the past. He had supposed she had forgotten. For a moment he remained awkwardly silent.

      “Do you remember?” she asked.

      “I remember.”

      “The danger was a grave one. Your Highness may recall that but for my warning you would not have been advised of it.”

      “I remember,” he said again.

      She paused a moment. “The danger,” she repeated, “was a grave one; but it threatened only your Highness’s person. Your Highness listened to me then; will you listen again if I advise you of a greater—a peril threatening not only your person but your throne?”

      Odo smiled. He could guess now what was coming. She had been drilled to act as the mouthpiece of the opposition. He composed his features and said quietly: “These are grave words, madam. I know of no such peril—but I am always ready to listen to your Highness.”

      His smile had betrayed him, and a quick flame of anger passed over her face.

      “Why should you listen to me, since you never heed what I say?”

      “Your Highness has just reminded me that I did so once—”

      “Once!” she repeated bitterly. “You were younger then—and so was I!” She glanced at herself in the mirror with a dissatisfied laugh. Something in her look and movement touched the springs of compassion.

      “Try me again,” he said gently. “If I am older, perhaps I am also wiser, and therefore even more willing to be guided.”

      “Oh,” she caught him up with a sneer, “you are willing enough to be guided—we all know that.” She broke off, as though she felt her mistake and wished to make a fresh beginning. Again her face was full of fluctuating meaning; and he saw, beneath its shallow surface, the eddy of incoherent impulses. When she spoke, it was with a noble gravity.

      “Your Highness,” she said, “does not take me into your counsels; but it is no secret at court and in the town that you have in contemplation a grave political measure.”

      “I have made no secret of it,” he replied.

      “No—or I should be the last to know it!” she exclaimed, with one of her sudden lapses into