Edith Wharton: Complete Works. Edith Wharton

Prince.

      Escaping at length from this parody of his own sensations, Odo found himself in a tumult of mind that solitude served only to increase. Events had so pressed upon him within the last few days that at times he was reduced to a passive sense of spectatorship, an inability to regard himself as the centre of so many converging purposes. It was clear that Trescorre’s mission was mainly a pretext for seeing the Duke’s young kinsman; and that some special motive must have impelled the Duke to show such sudden concern for his cousin’s welfare. Trescorre need hardly have cautioned Odo against fixing his hopes on the succession. The Duke himself was a man not above five-and-thirty, and more than one chance stood between Odo and the Duchy; nor was it this contingency that set his pulses beating, but rather the promise of an immediate change in his condition. The Duke wished him to travel, to visit the different courts of Italy: what was the prospect of ruling over a stagnant principality to this near vision of the world and the glories thereof, suddenly discovered from the golden height of opportunity? Save for a few weeks of autumn villeggiatura at some neighboring chase or vineyard, Odo had not left Turin for nine years. He had come there a child and had grown to manhood among the same narrow influences and surroundings. To be turned loose on the world at two-and-twenty, with such an arrears of experience to his credit, was to enter on a richer inheritance than any duchy; and in Odo’s case the joy of the adventure was doubled by its timeliness. That fate should thus break at a stroke the meshes of habit, should stoop to play the advocate of his secret inclinations, seemed to promise him the complicity of the gods. Once in a lifetime, chance will thus snap the toils of a man’s making; and it is instructive to see the poor puppet adore the power that connives at his evasion…

      Trescorre remained a week in Turin; and Odo saw him daily at court, at his lodgings, or in company. The little sovereignty of Pianura being an important factor in the game of political equilibrium, her envoy was sure of a flattering reception from the neighboring powers; and Trescorre’s person and address must have commended him to the most fastidious company. He continued to pay particular attention to Odo, and the rumor was soon abroad that the Cavaliere Valsecca had been sent for to visit his cousin, the reigning Duke; a rumor which, combined with Donna Laura’s confidential hints, made Odo the centre of much feminine solicitude, and roused the Countess Clarice to a vivid sense of her rights. These circumstances, and his own tendency to drift on the current of sensation, had carried Odo more easily than he could have hoped past the painful episode of the Professor’s garden. He was still tormented by the sense of his inability to right so grave a wrong; but he found solace in the thought that his absence was after all the best reparation he could make.

      Trescorre, though distinguishing Odo by his favors, had not again referred to the subject of their former conversation; but on the last day of his visit he sent for Odo to his lodgings and at once entered upon the subject.

      “His Highness,” said he, “does not for the present recommend your resigning your commission in the Sardinian army; but as he desires you to visit him at Pianura, and to see something of the neighboring courts, he has charged me to obtain for you a two years’ leave of absence from his Majesty’s service: a favor the King has already been pleased to accord. The Duke has moreover resolved to double your present allowance and has entrusted me with the sum of two hundred ducats, which he desires you to spend in the purchase of a travelling-carriage, and such other appointments as are suitable to a young gentleman of your rank and expectations.” As he spoke, he unlocked his despatch-box and handed a purse to Odo. “His Highness,” he continued, “is impatient to see you; and once your preparations are completed, I should advise you to set out without delay; that is,” he added, after one of his characteristic pauses, “if I am right in supposing that there is no obstacle to your departure.”

      Odo, inferring an allusion to the Countess Clarice, smiled and colored slightly. “I know of none,” he said.

      Trescorre bowed. “I am glad to hear it,” he said, “for I know that a man of your age and appearance may have other inclinations than his own to consider. Indeed, I have had reports of a connection that I should not take the liberty of mentioning, were it not that your interest demands it.” He waited a moment, but Odo remained silent. “I am sure,” he went on, “you will do me the justice of believing that I mean no reflexion on the lady, when I warn you against being seen too often in the quarter behind the Corpus Domini. Such attachments, though engaging at the outset to a fastidious taste, are often more troublesome than a young man of your age can foresee; and in this case the situation is complicated by the fact that the girl’s father is in ill odor with the authorities, so that, should the motive of your visits be mistaken, you might find yourself inconveniently involved in the proceedings of the Holy Office.”

      Odo, who had turned pale, controlled himself sufficiently to listen in silence, and with as much pretence of indifference as he could assume. It was the peculiar misery of his situation that he could not defend Fulvia without betraying her father, and that of the two alternatives prudence bade him reject the one that chivalry would have chosen. It flashed across him, however, that he might in some degree repair the harm he had done by finding out what measures were to be taken against Vivaldi; and to this end he carelessly asked:—“Is it possible that the Professor has done anything to give offence in such quarters?”

      His assumption of carelessness was perhaps overdone; for Trescorre’s face grew as blank as a shuttered house-front.

      “I have heard rumors of the kind,” he rejoined; “but they would scarcely have attracted my notice had I not learned of your honoring the young lady with your favors.” He glanced at Odo with a smile. “Were I a father,” he added, “with a son of your age, my first advice to him would be to form no sentimental ties but in his own society or in the world of pleasure—the only two classes where the rules of the game are understood.”

      —————

VI.

      Odo had appointed to leave Turin some two weeks after Trescorre’s departure; but the preparations for a young gentleman’s travels were in those days a momentous business, and one not to be discharged without vexatious postponements. The travelling-carriage must be purchased and fitted out, the gold-mounted dressing-case selected and engraved with the owner’s arms, servants engaged and provided with liveries, and the noble tourist’s own wardrobe stocked with an assortment of costumes suited to the vicissitudes of travel and the requirements of court life.

      Odo’s impatience to be gone increased with every delay, and at length he determined to go forward at all adventure, leaving Cantapresto to conclude the preparations and overtake him later. It had been agreed with Trescorre that Odo, on his way to Pianura, should visit his grandfather, the old Marquess, whose increasing infirmities had for some years past imprisoned him on his estates, and accordingly about the Ascension he set out in the saddle for Donnaz, attended only by one servant, and having appointed that Cantapresto should meet him with the carriage at Ivrea.

      The morning broke cloudy as he rode out of the gates. Beyond the suburbs a few drops fell, and as he pressed forward the country lay before him in the emerald freshness of a spring rain, vivid strips of vineyard alternating with silvery bands of oats, the domes of the walnut-trees dripping above the roadside, and the poplars along the water-courses all slanting one way in the soft continuous downpour. He had left Turin in that mood of clinging melancholy which waits on the most hopeful departures, and the landscape seemed an image of anticipations clouded with regret. He had had a stormy but tender parting with Clarice, whose efforts to act the forsaken Ariadne were somewhat marred by her irrepressible pride in her lover’s prospects, and whose last word had charged him to bring her back one of the rare lap-dogs bred by the monks of Bologna. Seen down the lengthening vista of separation even Clarice seemed regrettable; and Odo would have been glad to let his mind linger on their farewells. But another thought importuned him. He had left Turin without news of Vivaldi or Fulvia, and without having done anything to conjure the peril to which his rashness had exposed them. More than once he had been about to reveal his trouble to Alfieri; but shame restrained him when he remembered that it was Alfieri who had vouched for his discretion. After his conversation with Trescorre he had tried to find some way of sending a word of warning to Vivaldi; but he