Edith Wharton: Complete Works. Edith Wharton

was his sovereign.

      The Duke was, in fact, a sickly narrow-faced young man with thick obstinate lips and a slight lameness that made his walk ungainly; but though no way resembling the ermine-cloaked King of the chapel at Pontesordo, he yet knew how to put on a certain majesty with his state-wig and his orders. As for the newly-married Duchess, who sat at the other end of the cabinet, caressing a toy spaniel, she was scant fourteen and looked a mere child in her great hoop and jewelled stomacher. Her wonderful fair hair, drawn over a cushion and lightly powdered, was twisted with pearls and roses, and her cheeks excessively rouged, in the French fashion; so that, as she rose on the approach of the visitors, she looked to Odo for all the world like the wooden Virgin hung with votive offerings in the parish church at Pontesordo. Though they were but three months married, the Duke, it was rumored, was never with her, preferring the company of the young Marquess of Cerveno, his cousin and heir-presumptive, a pale boy scented with musk and painted like a comedian, whom his Highness would never suffer away from him, and who now leaned with an impertinent air against the back of the ducal armchair. On the other side of the brazier sat the dowager Duchess, the Duke’s grandmother, an old lady so high and forbidding of aspect that Odo cast but one look at her face, which was yellow and wrinkled as a medlar, and surmounted, in the Spanish style, with black veils and a high coif. What these alarming personages said and did the child could never recall; nor were his own actions clear to him, except for a furtive caress that he remembered giving the spaniel as he kissed the Duchess’s hand; whereupon her Highness snatched up the pampered animal and walked away with a pout of anger. Odo noticed that her angry look followed him as he and Donna Laura withdrew; but the next moment he heard the Duke’s voice and saw his Highness limping after them.

      “You must have a furred cloak for your journey, cousin,” said he awkwardly, pressing something in the hand of Odo’s mother; who broke into fresh compliments and curtsies, while the Duke, with a finger on his thick lip, withdrew hastily into the closet.

      The next morning early they set out on their journey. There had been frost in the night and a cold sun sparkled on the palace-windows and on the marble church-fronts as their carriage lumbered through the streets, now full of noise and animation. It was Odo’s first glimpse of the town by daylight, and he clapped his hands with delight at sight of the people picking their way across the reeking gutters, the asses laden with milk and vegetables, the servant-girls bargaining at the provision-stalls, the shopkeepers’ wives going to mass in pattens and hoods, with scaldini in their muffs, the dark recessed openings in the palace-basements, where fruit-sellers, wine-merchants and coppersmiths displayed their wares, the pedlars hawking books and toys, and here and there a gentleman in a sedan-chair, returning flushed and disordered from a night at bassett or pharaoh. The travelling-carriage was escorted by half-a-dozen of the Duke’s troopers and Don Lelio rode at the door followed by two grooms. He wore a furred coat and boots, and never, to Odo, had he appeared more proud and splendid; but Donna Laura had hardly a word for him and he rode with the set air of a man who acquits himself of a troublesome duty.

      Outside the gates the spectacle seemed tame in comparison; for the road bent toward Pontesordo, and Odo was familiar enough with the look of the bare fields set here and there with oak-copses to which the leaves still clung. As the carriage skirted the marsh, his mother raised the windows, exclaiming that they must not expose themselves to the pestilent air; and though Odo was not yet addicted to general reflections he could not but wonder that she should display such dread of an atmosphere she had let him breathe since his birth. He knew, of course, that the sunset vapors on the marsh were unhealthy: everybody on the farm had a touch of the ague, and it was a saying in the village that no one lived at Pontesordo who could buy an ass to carry him away; but that Donna Laura, in skirting the place on a clear morning of frost, should show such fear of infection, gave a sinister emphasis to the ill-repute of the region. The thought, he knew not why, turned his mind to Momola, who often on damp evenings sat shaking and burning in the kitchen-corner. He reflected with a pang that he might never see her again, and leaning forward he strained his eyes for a glimpse of Pontesordo. They were passing through a patch of oaks; but where these ended the country opened, and beyond a belt of osiers and the mottled faded stretches of the marsh the keep stood up like a beckoning finger. Odo cried out as though in answer to its call; but that moment the road turned a knoll and bent across rising ground toward an unfamiliar region.

      “Thank God,” cried his mother lowering the window, “we’re rid of that poison and can breathe the air.”

      As the keep vanished Odo reproached himself for not having begged a pair of shoes for Momola. He had felt very sorry for her since the hunchback had spoken so strangely of life at the foundling hospital; and he had a sudden vision of her bare feet, pinched with cold and cut with the pebbles of the yard, perpetually running across the damp stone floors, with Filomena crying after her: “Hasten then, child of iniquity! You are slower than a day without bread!” He had almost resolved to speak of the foundling to his mother, who still seemed in a condescending humor; but his attention was unexpectedly distracted by a troop of Egyptians, who came along the road leading a dancing bear; and hardly had these passed when the chariot of an itinerant dentist engaged him. The whole way, indeed, was alive with such surprises; and at Valsecca, where they dined, they found the yard of the inn crowded with the sumpter-mules and servants of a cardinal travelling to Rome, who was to lie there that night and whose bedstead and saucepans had preceded him.

      Here, after dinner, Don Lelio took leave of Odo’s mother, with small show of regret on either side; the lady high and sarcastic, the gentleman sullen and polite; and both, as it seemed, easier when the business was despatched and the Count’s foot in the stirrup. He had so far taken little notice of Odo, but he now bent from the saddle and tapped the boy’s cheek, saying in his cold way: “In a few years I shall see you at court—” and with that rode away toward Pianura.

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IV.

      Lying that night at Pavia, the travellers set forward next morning for the city of Vercelli. The road, though it ran for the most part through flat mulberry-orchards, and rice-fields reflecting the pale blue sky in their sodden channels, would yet have appeared diverting enough to Odo had his mother been in the mood to reply to his questions; for whether their carriage overtook a party of strolling jugglers, travelling in a roofed-in wagon, with the younger children of the company running alongside in threadbare tights and trunk-hose decked with tinsel; or whether they drove through a village market-place, where yellow earthen crocks and gaudy Indian cottons, brass pails and braziers, and platters of bluish pewter, filled the stalls with a medley of color—at every turn was something that excited the boy’s wonder; but Donna Laura, who had fallen into a depression of spirits, lamenting the cold, her misfortunes and the discomfort of the journey, was at no more pains than the abate to satisfy the promptings of his curiosity. Odo had indeed met but one person who cared to listen to him, and that was the strange hunchback who had called himself Brutus. Remembering how entertainingly this odd guide had explained all the wonders of the ducal grounds, Odo began to regret that he had not asked his mother to let him have Brutus for a body-servant. Meanwhile no one attended to his questions, and the hours were beginning to seem long when, on the third day, they set out from Vercelli toward the hills.

      The cold increased as they rose; and Odo, though he had often wished to see the mountains, was yet dismayed at the gloomy and menacing aspect of the region on which they were entering. Leafless woods, prodigious boulders and white torrents foaming and roaring seemed a poor exchange for the pleasantly-ordered gardens of Pianura. Here were no violets and cowslips in bloom; hardly a green blade pierced the sodden roadside; and snow-drifts lingered in the shaded hollows. Donna Laura’s loudly-expressed fear of robbers seemed to increase the loneliness of the way, which now traversed tracts of naked moorland, now plunged again into forest; with no sign of habitation but here and there a cow-herd’s hut under the trees or a chapel standing apart on some grassy eminence. When night fell the waters grew louder, a stinging wind swept the woods, and the carriage, staggering from rut to rut, seemed every moment about to land them in some invisible ravine.

      Fear and cold at last benumbed the little boy, and when he woke he was being lifted from his seat and torches were flashing on a high escutcheoned