Edith Wharton: Complete Works. Edith Wharton

equerries and distinguished for his brilliant career as an officer of the Piedmontese army—a man marked for the highest favors in a society where military influences were paramount. Passing at sixteen from an aristocratic convent to the dreary magnificence of the palazzo Tournanches, Clarice had found herself a lady-in-waiting at the dullest court in Europe and the wife of an army officer engrossed in his profession, and pledged by etiquette to the service of another lady. Odo Valsecca represented her escape from this bondage—the dash of romance and folly in a life of elegant formalities; and the Countess, who would not have sacrificed to him one of her rights as a court-lady or a nobil donna of the Golden Book, regarded him as the reward which Providence accords to a well-regulated conduct.

      Her room, when Odo entered it on taking leave of Alfieri, was crowded, as usual at that hour, with the hangers-on of the noble lady’s lever: the abatino in lace ruffles, handing about his latest rhymed acrostic, the jeweller displaying a set of enamelled buckles newly imported from Paris, and the black-breeched doctor with white bands, who concocted remedies for the Countess’s vapors and megrims. These personages, grouped about the toilet-table where the Countess sat under the hands of a Parisian hair-dresser, were picturesquely relieved against the stucco panelling and narrow mirrors of the apartment, with its windows looking on a garden set with mossy statues. To Odo, however, the scene suggested the most tedious part of his day’s routine. The compliments to be exchanged, the silly verses to be praised, the gew-gaws from Paris to be admired, were all contrasted in his mind with the vision of that other life which had come to him on the hillside of the Superga. On this mood the Countess Clarice’s sarcasms fell without effect. To be pouted at because he had failed to attend the promenade of the Valentino was to Odo but a convenient pretext for excusing himself from the Queen’s circle that evening. He had engaged with little ardor to join Alfieri in what he guessed to be a sufficiently commonplace adventure; but as he listened to the Countess’s chatter about the last minuet-step, and the relative merits of Sanspareil water and oil-of-lilies, of gloves from Blois and Vendôme, his impatience hailed any alternative as a release. Meanwhile, however, long hours of servitude intervened. The lady’s toilet completed, to the adjusting of the last patch, he must attend her to dinner, where, placed at her side, he was awarded the honor of carving the roast; must sit through two hours of biribì in company with the abatino, the doctor, and half-a-dozen parasites of the noble table; and for two hours more must ride in her gilt coach up and down the promenade of the Valentino.

      Escaping from this ceremonial, with the consciousness that it must be repeated on the morrow, Odo was seized with that longing for freedom that makes the first street-corner an invitation to flight. How he envied Alfieri, whose travelling-carriage stood at the beck of such moods! Odo’s scant means forbade evasion, even had his military duties not kept him in Turin. He felt himself no more than a puppet dancing to the tune of Parini’s satire, a puny doll condemmed, as the strings of custom pulled, to feign the gestures of immortal passions.

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III.

      The night was moonless, with cold dashes of rain, and though the streets of Turin were well-lit no lantern-ray reached the windings of the lane behind the Corpus Domini.

      As Odo, alone under the wall of the church, awaited his friend’s arrival, he wondered what risk had constrained the reckless Alfieri to such unwonted caution. Italy was at that time a vast network of espionage, and the Piedmontese capital passed for one of the best-policed cities in Europe; but even on a moonless night the law distinguished between the noble pleasure-seeker and the obscure delinquent whose fate it was to pay the other’s shot. Odo knew that he would probably be followed and his movements reported to the authorities; but he was almost equally certain that there would be no active interference in his affairs. What chiefly puzzled him was Alfieri’s insistence that Cantapresto should not be privy to the adventure. The soprano had long been the confidant of his pupil’s escapades, and his adroitness had often been of service in intrigues such as that on which Odo now fancied himself engaged. The place, again, perplexed him: a sober quarter of convents and private dwellings, in the very eye of the royal palace, scarce seeming the theatre for a light adventure. These incongruities revived his former wonder; nor was this dispelled by Alfieri’s approach.

      The poet, masked and unattended, rejoined his friend without a word; and Odo guessed in him an eye and ear alert for pursuit. Guided by the pressure of his arm, Odo was hurried round the bend of the lane, up a transverse alley and across a little square lost between high shuttered buildings. Alfieri, at his first word, gripped his arm with a backward glance; then urged him on under the denser blackness of an arched passage-way, at the end of which an oil-light glimmered. Here a gate in a wall confronted them. It opened at Alfieri’s tap, and Odo scented wet box-borders and felt the gravel of a path underfoot. The gate was at once locked behind them and they entered the ground-floor of a house as dark as the garden. Here a maid-servant of close aspect met them with a lamp and preceded them upstairs to a bare landing hung with charts and portulani. On Odo’s flushed anticipations this antechamber, which seemed the approach to some pedant’s cabinet, had an effect undeniably chilling; but Alfieri, heedless of his surprise, had cast off cloak and mask, and now led the way into a long conventual-looking room lined with book-shelves. A knot of middle-aged gentlemen of sober dress and manner, gathered about a cabinet of fossils in the centre of this apartment, looked up at the entrance of the two friends; then the group divided, and Odo with a start recognized the girl he had seen on the road to the Superga.

      She bowed gravely to the young men. “My father,” said she, in a clear voice without trace of diffidence, “has gone to his study for a book, but will be with you in a moment.”

      She wore a dress in keeping with her manner, its black stuff folds and the lawn kerchief crossed on her bosom giving height and authority to her slight figure. The dark unpowdered hair drawn back over a cushion made a severer setting for her face than the fluctuating brim of her shade-hat; and this perhaps added to the sense of estrangement with which Odo gazed at her; but she met his look with a smile, and instantly the rosy girl flashed through her grave exterior.

      “Here is my father,” said she; and her companion of the previous day stepped into the room with several folios under his arm.

      Alfieri turned to Odo. “This, my dear Odo,” said he, “is my distinguished friend, Professor Vivaldi, who has done us the honor of inviting us to his house.” He took the Professor’s hand. “I have brought you,” he continued, “the friend you were kind enough to include in your invitation—the Cavaliere Odo Valsecca.”

      Vivaldi bowed. “Count Alfieri’s friends,” said he, “are always welcome to my house; though I fear there is here little to interest a young gentleman of the Cavaliere Valsecca’s years.” And Odo detected a shade of doubt in his glance.

      “The Cavaliere Valsecca,” Alfieri smilingly rejoined, “is above his years in wit and learning, and I answer for his interest as I do for his discretion.”

      The Professor bowed again. “Count Alfieri, sir,” he said, “has doubtless explained to you the necessity that obliges me to be so private in receiving my friends; and now perhaps you will join these gentlemen in examining some rare fossil fish newly sent me from the Monte Bolca.”

      Odo murmured a civil rejoinder; but the wonder into which the sight of the young girl had thrown him was fast verging on stupefaction. What mystery was here? What necessity compelled an elderly professor to receive his scientific friends like a band of political conspirators? How, above all, in the light of the girl’s presence, was Odo to interpret Alfieri’s extravagant allusions to the nature of their visit?

      The company having returned to the cabinet of fossils, none seemed to observe his disorder but the young lady who was its cause; and seeing him stand apart she advanced with a smile, saying, “Perhaps you would rather look at some of my father’s other curiosities.”

      Simple as the words were, they failed to restore Odo’s self-possession, and for a moment he made no answer. Perhaps she partly guessed the cause of his commotion; yet it was not so much her beauty that silenced him, as the spirit that seemed to inhabit it.