Edith Wharton: Complete Works. Edith Wharton

he cried with his hand on the door.

      Odo had acquired, at twenty-two, a nobility of carriage not incompatible with the boyish candor of his gaze, and becomingly set off by the brilliant dress-uniform of a lieutenant in one of the provincial regiments. He was tall and fair, and a certain languor of complexion, inherited from his father’s house, was corrected in him by the vivacity of the Donnaz blood. This now sparkled in his grey eye and gave a glow to his cheek, as he stepped across the threshold, treading on a sprig of cherry-blossom that had dropped unnoticed to the floor.

      Cantapresto, looking after him, caught sight of the flowers and kicked them aside with a contemptuous toe.

      “I sometimes think he botanizes,” he murmured with a shrug. “The Lord knows what queer notions he gets out of all those books!”

      —————

II.

      As an infusion of fresh blood to Odo were Alfieri’s meteoric returns to Turin. Life moved languidly in the strait-laced city, even to a young gentleman a-tiptoe for adventure and framed to elicit it as the hazel-wand draws water. Not that vulgar distractions were lacking. The town, as Cantapresto had long since advised him, had its secret leniencies, its posterns opening on clandestine pleasure; but there was that in Odo which early turned him from such cheap counterfeits of living. He accepted the diversions of his age, but with a clear sense of their worth; and the youth who calls his pleasures by their true name has learned the secret of resisting them.

      Alfieri’s coming set deeper springs in motion. His follies and extravagances were on a less provincial scale than those of Odo’s daily associates. The breath of a freer life clung to him and his allusions were so many glimpses into a larger world. His political theories were but the enlargement of his private grievances, but the mere play of criticism on accepted institutions was an exercise more novel and exhilarating than the wildest ride on one of his half-tamed thoroughbreds. Still chiefly a man of pleasure, and the slave, as always, of some rash infatuation, Alfieri was already shaking off the intellectual torpor of his youth; and the first stirrings of his curiosity roused an answering passion in Odo. Their tastes were indeed divergent, for to that external beauty which was to Odo the very bloom of life, Alfieri remained insensible; while of its imaginative counterpart, its prolongation in the realm of thought and emotion, he had but the most limited conception. But his love of ringing deeds woke the chivalrous strain in Odo, and his vague celebration of Liberty, that unknown goddess to whom altars were everywhere building, chimed with the other’s scorn of oppression and injustice. So far, it is true, their companionship had been mainly one of pleasure; but the temper of both gave their follies that provisional character which saves them from vulgarity.

      Odo, who had slept late on the morning after his friend’s return, was waked by the pompous mouthing of certain lines just then on every lip in Italy:—

      Meet was it that, its ancient seats forsaking,

      An Empire should set forth with dauntless sail,

      And braving tempests and the deep’s betrayal,

      Break down the barriers of inviolate worlds—

      That Cortez and Pizarro should esteem

      The blood of man a trivial sacrifice

      When, flinging down from their ancestral thrones

      Incas and Mexicans of royal line,

      They wrecked two Kingdoms to refresh thy palate—

      They were the verses in which the Abate Parini, in his satire of “The Morning,” apostrophizes the cup of chocolate which the lacquey presents to his master. Cantapresto had in fact just entered with a cup of this beverage, and Alfieri, who stood at his friend’s bedside with unpowdered locks and a fashionable undress of Parisian cut, snatching the tray from the soprano’s hands presented it to Odo in an attitude of mock servility.

      The young man sprang up laughing. It was the fashion to applaud Parini’s verse in the circles at which his satire was aimed, and none recited his mock heroics with greater zest than the young gentlemen whose fopperies he ridiculed. Odo’s toilet was indeed a rite almost as elaborate as that of Parini’s hero; and this accomplished, he was on his way to fulfil the very duty the poet most unsparingly derides: the morning visit of the cicisbeo to his lady; but meanwhile he liked to show himself above the follies of his class by joining in the laugh against them. When he issued from the powder-room in his gold-laced uniform, with scented gloves and carefully-adjusted queue, he presented the image of a young gentleman so clearly equal to the most flattering emergencies that Alfieri broke into a smile of half-ironical approval. “I see, my dear cavaliere, that it were idle to invite you to try one of the new Arabs I have brought with me from Spain, since it is plain other duties engage you; but I come to lay claim to your evening.”

      Odo hesitated. “The Queen holds a circle this evening,” he said.

      “And her lady-in-waiting is in attendance?” returned Alfieri. “And the lady-in-waiting’s gentleman-in-waiting also?”

      Odo made an impatient movement. “What inducements do you offer?” said he carelessly.

      Alfieri stepped close and tapped him on the sleeve. “Meet me at ten o’clock at the turn of the lane behind the Corpus Domini. Wear a cloak and a mask, and leave this gentleman at home with a flask of Asti.” He glanced at Cantapresto.

      Odo hesitated a moment. He knew well enough where such midnight turnings led, and across the vision evoked by his friend’s words a girl’s face flitted suddenly.

      “Is that all?” he said with a shrug. “You find me, I fear, in no humor for such exploits.”

      Alfieri smiled. “And if I say that I have promised to bring you?”

      “Promised—?”

      “To one as chary of exacting such pledges as I of giving them. If I say that you stake your life on the adventure, and that the stake is not too great for the reward—?”

      His sallow face had reddened with excitement, and Odo’s forehead reflected the flush. Was it possible—? but the thought set him tingling with disgust.

      “Why, you say little,” he cried lightly, “at the rate at which I value my life.”

      Alfieri turned on him. “If your life is worthless make it worth something!” he exclaimed. “I offer you the opportunity to-night.”

      “What opportunity?”

      “The sight of a face that men have laid down their lives to see.”

      Odo laughed and buckled on his sword. “If you answer for the risk, I agree to take it,” said he. “At ten o’clock then, behind the Corpus Domini.”

      If the ladies whom gallant gentlemen delight to serve could guess what secret touchstones of worth these same gentlemen sometimes carry into the adored presence, many a handsome head would be carried with less assurance and many a fond exaction less confidently imposed. If, for instance, the Countess Clarice di Tournanches, whose high-colored image reflected itself so complacently in her Venetian toilet-glass, could have known that the Cavaliere Odo Valsecca’s devoted glance saw her through the medium of a countenance compared to which her own revealed the most unexpected shortcomings, she might have received him with less airy petulance of manner. But how could so accomplished a mistress doubt the permanence of her rule? The Countess Clarice, in singling out young Odo Valsecca (to the despair of a score of more experienced cavaliers), had done him an honor that she could no more imagine his resigning than an adventurer a throne to which he is unexpectedly raised. She was a finished example of the pretty woman who views the universe as planned for her convenience. What could go wrong in a world where noble ladies lived in palaces hung with tapestry and damask, with powdered lacqueys to wait on them, a turbaned blackamoor to tend their parrots and monkeys, a coronet-coach at the door to carry them to mass or the ridotto, and a handsome cicisbeo to display on the promenade? Everything had combined to strengthen