Edith Wharton: Complete Works. Edith Wharton

Pontesordo being a part of the ducal domain, they had led in the old days an easier life than their neighbors; but the new taxes had stripped them as bare as a mulberry-tree in June.

      “How is a Christian to live, excellency, with the salt-tax doubled, so that the cows go dry for want of it; with half a zecchin on every pair of oxen, a stajo of wheat and two fowls to the parish, and not so much as a bite of grass allowed on the Duke’s lands? In his late Highness’s day the poor folk were allowed to graze their cattle on the borders of the chase; but now a man dare not pluck a handful of weeds there, or so much as pick up a fallen twig; though the deer may trample his young wheat, and feed off the patch of beans at his very door. They do say the Duchess has a kind heart, and gives away money to the towns-folk; but we country-people who spend our lives raising fodder for her game never hear of her Highness but when one of her game-keepers comes down on us for poaching or stealing wood.—Yes, by the saints, and it was her Highness who sent a neighbor’s lad to the galleys last year for felling a tree in the chase; a good lad as ever dug furrow, but he lacked wood for a new ploughshare, and how in God’s name was he to plough his field without it?”

      So she went on, like a torrent after the spring rains; but when he named Momola she fell silent, and Giannozzo, looking sideways, drummed with his heel on the floor.

      Odo glanced from one to the other. “She’s dead, then?” he cried.

      Filomena opened deprecating palms. “Can one tell, excellency? It may be she is off with the gypsies.”

      “The gypsies? How long since?”

      “Giannozzo,” cried his mother, as he stood glowering, “go see that the stable is locked and his excellency’s horses bedded down.” He slunk out and she began to gather up the remains of Odo’s meagre supper.

      “But you must remember when this happened.”

      “Holy Mother! It was the year we had frost in April and lost our hatching for want of leaves. But as for that child of ingratitude, one day she was here, the next she was gone—clean gone, as a nut drops from the tree—and I that had given the blood of my veins to nourish her! Since then, God is my witness, we have had nothing but misfortune. The next year it was the weevils in the wheat; and so it goes.”

      Odo was silent, seeing it was vain to press her. He fancied that the girl must have died—of neglect perhaps, or ill-usage—and that they feared to own it. His heart swelled, but not against them: they seemed to him no more accountable than cowed hunger-driven animals.

      He tossed impatiently on the hard bed Filomena had made up for him in the bailiff’s parlor, and was afoot again with the first light. Stepping out into the farm-yard he looked abroad over the flat gray face of the land. Around the keep stretched the new-ploughed fields and the pollarded mulberry-orchards; but these, with the hovels of the village, formed a mere islet in the surrounding waste of marsh and woodland. The scene symbolized fitly enough the social conditions of the country: the over-crowded peasantry huddled on their scant patches of arable ground, while miles of barren land represented the feudal rights that hemmed them in on every side.

      Odo walked across the yard to the chapel. On the threshold he stumbled over a heap of mulberry-shoots and a broken ploughshare. Twilight held the place; but as he stood there the frescoes started out in the slant of the sunrise like dead faces floating to the surface of a river. Dead faces, yes: plaintive spectres of his childish fears and longings, lost in the harsh daylight of experience. He had forgotten the very dreams they stood for: Lethe flowed between and only one voice reached across the torrent. It was that of Saint Francis, lover of the poor.

      The morning was hot as Odo drove toward Pianura, and limping ahead of him in the midday glare he presently saw the figure of a humpbacked man in a decent black dress and three-cornered hat. There was something familiar in the man’s gait, and in the shape of his large head, poised on narrow stooping shoulders, and as the carriage drew abreast of him, Odo, leaning from the window, cried out, “Brutus—this must be Brutus!”

      “Your excellency has the advantage of me,” said the hunchback, turning on him a thin face lit by the keen eyes that had once searched his childish soul.

      Odo met the rebuff with a smile. “Does that,” said he, “prevent my suggesting that you might continue your way more comfortably in my carriage? The road is hot and dusty, and, as you see, I am in want of company.”

      The pedestrian, who seemed unprepared for this affable rejoinder, had the sheepish air of a man whose rudeness has missed the mark.

      “Why, sir,” said he, recovering himself, “comfort is all a matter of habit, and I daresay the jolting of your carriage might seem to me more unpleasant than the heat and dust of the road, to which necessity has long since accustomed me.”

      “In that case,” returned Odo with increasing amusement, “you will have the additional merit of sacrificing your pleasure to add to mine.”

      The hunchback stared. “And what have you or yours ever done for me,” he retorted, “that I should sacrifice to your pleasure even the wretched privilege of being dusted by the wheels of your coach?”

      “Why, that,” replied Odo, “is a question I can scarce answer till you give me the opportunity of naming myself.—If you are indeed Carlo Gamba,” he continued, “I am your old friend and companion Odo Valsecca.”

      The hunchback started. “The cavaliere Valsecca!” he cried. “I had heard that you were expected.” He stood gazing at Odo. “Our next Duke!” he muttered.

      Odo smiled. “I had rather,” said he, “that my past commended me than my future. It is more than doubtful if I am ever able to offer you a seat in the Duke’s carriage; but Odo Valsecca’s is very much at your service.”

      Gamba bowed with a kind of awkward dignity. “I am grateful for a friend’s kindness,” he said, “but I do not ride in a nobleman’s carriage.”

      “There,” returned Odo with perfect good-humor, “you have the advantage of me; for I can no more escape doing so than you can escape spending your life in the company of an ill-tempered man.” And courteously lifting his hat he called to the postilion to drive on.

      The hunchback at this, flushing red, laid a hand on the carriage-door.

      “Sir,” said he, “I freely own myself in the wrong; but a smooth temper was not one of the blessings my unknown parents bequeathed to me; and I confess I had heard of you as one little concerned with your inferiors except as they might chance to serve your pleasure.”

      It was Odo’s turn to color. “Look,” said he, “at the fallibility of rumor; for I had heard of you as something of a philosopher, and here I find you not only taking a man’s character on hearsay but denying him the chance to prove you mistaken!”

      “I deny it no longer,” said Gamba stepping into the coach; “but as to philosophy, the only claim I can make to it is that of being by birth a peripatetic.”

      His dignity appeased, the hunchback proved himself a most engaging companion, and as the carriage lumbered slowly toward Pianura he had time not only to recount his own history but to satisfy Odo as to many points of the life awaiting him.

      Gamba, it appeared, owed his early schooling to a Jesuit priest who, visiting the foundling asylum, had been struck by the child’s quickness, and had taken him home and bred him to be a clerk. The priest’s death left his charge adrift, with a smattering of scholarship above his station, and none to whom he could turn for protection. For a while he had lived, as he said, like a street-cat, picking up a meal where he could, and sleeping in church-porches and under street-arcades, till one of the Duke’s servants took pity on him and he was suffered to hang about the palace and earn his keep by doing the lacquey’s errands. The Duke’s attention having been called to him as a lad of parts, his Highness had given him to the Marquess of Cerveno, in whose service he remained till shortly before that young nobleman’s death. The hunchback passed hastily over this period; but his reticence was lit by the angry flash of his eyes.