The Valley of Decision

2.11.

The Duchess was lodged in the Borromini wing of the palace, and thither
Odo was conducted that evening.

To eyes accustomed to such ceremonial there was no great novelty in the troop of powdered servants, the major-domo in his short cloak and chain, and the florid splendour of the long suite of rooms, decorated in a style that already appeared over-charged to the more fastidious taste of the day.  Odo’s curiosity centred chiefly in the persons peopling this scene, whose conflicting interests and passions formed, as it were, the framework of the social structure of Pianura, so that there was not a labourer in the mulberry-orchards or a weaver in the silk-looms but depended for his crust of black bread and the leaking roof over his head on the private whim of some member of that brilliant company.

The Duchess, who soon entered, received Odo with the flighty good-nature of a roving mind; but as her deep-blue gaze met his her colour rose, her eyes lingered on his face, and she invited him to a seat at her side.  Maria Clementina was of Austrian descent, and something in her free and noble port and the smiling arrogance of her manner recalled the aspect of her distant kinswoman, the young Queen of France.  She plied Odo with a hundred questions, interrupting his answers with a playful abruptness, and to all appearances more engaged by his person than his discourse.

“Have you seen my son?” she asked.  “I remember you a little boy scarce bigger than Ferrante, whom your mother brought to kiss my hand in the very year of my marriage.  Yes—­and you pinched my toy spaniel, sir, and I was so angry with you that I got up and turned my back on the company—­do you remember?  But how should you, being such a child at the time?  Ah, cousin how old you make me feel!  I would to God my son looked as you did then; but the Duke is killing him with his nostrums.  The child was healthy enough when he was born; but what with novenas and touching of relics and animal magnetism and electrical treatment, there’s not a bone in his little body but the saints and the surgeons are fighting over its possession.  Have you read ‘Emile,’ cousin, by the new French author—­I forget his name?  Well, I would have the child brought up like ‘Emile,’ allowed to run wild in the country and grow up sturdy and hard as a little peasant.  But what heresies am I talking!  The book is on the Index, I believe, and if my director knew I had it in my library I should be set up in the stocks in the market-place and all my court-gowns burnt at the Church door as a warning against the danger of importing the new fashions from France!—­I hope you hunt, cousin?” she cried suddenly. “’Tis my chief diversion and one I would have my friends enjoy with me.  His Highness has lately seen fit to cut down my stables, so that I have scarce forty saddle-horses to my name, and the greater part but sorry nags at that; yet I can still find a mount for any friend that will ride with me and I hope to see you among the number if the Duke can spare you now and then from mass and benediction.  His Highness complains that I am always surrounded by the same company; but is it my fault if there are not twenty persons at court that can survive a day in the saddle and a night at cards?  Have you seen the Belverde, my mistress of the robes?  She follows the hunt in a litter, cousin, and tells her beads at the death!  I hope you like cards too, cousin, for I would have all my weaknesses shared by my friends, that they may be the less disposed to criticise them.”

The impression produced on the Duchess by the cavaliere Valsecca was closely observed by several members of the group surrounding her Highness.  One of these was Count Trescorre, who moved among the courtiers with an air of ease that seemed to establish without proclaiming the tie between himself and the Duchess.  When Maria Clementina sat down at play, Trescorre joined Odo and with his usual friendliness pointed out the most conspicuous figures in the circle.  The Duchess’s society, as the Duke had implied, was composed of the livelier members of the court, chief among whom was the same Don Serafino who had figured so vividly in the reminiscences of Mirandolina and Cantapresto.  This gentleman, a notorious loose-liver and gamester, with some remains of good looks and a gay boisterous manner, played the leader of revels to her Highness’s following; and at his heels came the flock of pretty women and dashing spendthrifts who compose the train of a young and pleasure-loving princess.  On such occasions as the present, however, all the members of the court were obliged to pay their duty to her Highness; and conspicuous among these less frequent visitors was the Duke’s director, the suave and handsome Dominican whom Odo had seen leaving his Highness’s closet that afternoon.  This ecclesiastic was engaged in conversation with the Prime Minister, Count Pievepelago, a small feeble mannikin covered with gold lace and orders.  The deference with which the latter followed the Dominican’s discourse excited Odo’s attention; but it was soon diverted by the approach of a lady who joined herself to the group with an air of discreet familiarity.  Though no longer young, she was still slender and graceful, and her languid eye and vapourish manner seemed to Odo to veil an uncommon alertness of perception.  The rich sobriety of her dress, the jewelled rosary about her wrist, and most of all, perhaps, the murderous sweetness of the smile with which the Duchess addressed her, told him that here was the Countess Belverde; an inference which Trescorre confirmed.

“The Countess,” said he, “or I should rather say the Marchioness of Boscofolto, since the Duke has just bestowed on her the fief of that name, is impatient to make your acquaintance; and since you doubtless remember the saying of the Marquis de Montesquieu, that to know a ruler one must know his confessor and his mistress, you will perhaps be glad to seize both opportunities in one.”

The Countess greeted Odo with a flattering deference and at once drew him into conversation with Pievepelago and the Dominican.

“We are discussing,” said she, “the details of Prince Ferrante’s approaching visit to the shrine of our Lady of the Mountain.  This shrine lies about half an hour’s ride beyond my villa of Boscofolto, where I hope to have the honour of receiving their Highnesses on their return from the pilgrimage.  The Madonna del Monte, as you doubtless know, has often preserved the ducal house in seasons of peril, notably during the great plague of 1630 and during the famine in the Duchess Polixena’s time, when her Highness, of blessed memory, met our Lady in the streets distributing bread, in the dress of a peasant-woman from the hills, but with a necklace made of blood-drops instead of garnets.  Father Ignazio has lately counselled the little prince’s visiting in state the protectress of his line, and his Highness’s physician, Count Heiligenstern, does not disapprove the plan.  In fact,” she added, “I understand that he thinks all special acts of piety beneficial, as symbolising the inward act by which the soul incessantly strives to reunite itself to the One.”

The Dominican glanced at Odo with a smile.  “The Count’s dialectics,” said he, “might be dangerous were they a little clearer; but we must hope he distinguishes more accurately between his drugs than his dogmas.”

“But I am told,” the Prime Minister here interposed in a creaking rusty voice, “that her Highness is set against the pilgrimage and will put every obstacle in the way of its being performed.”

The Countess sighed and cast down her eyes, the Dominican remained silent, and Trescorre said quietly to Odo, “Her Highness would be pleased to have you join her in a game at basset.”  As they crossed the room he added in a low tone:  “The Duchess, in spite of her remarkable strength of character, is still of an age to be readily open to new influences.  I observed she was much taken by your conversation, and you would be doing her a service by engaging her not to oppose this pilgrimage to Boscofolto.  We have Heiligenstern’s word that it cannot harm the prince, it will produce a good impression on the people, and it is of vital importance to her Highness not to side against the Duke in such matters.”  And he withdrew with a smile as Odo approached the card-table.

Odo left the Duchess’s circle with an increased desire to penetrate more deeply into the organisation of the little world about him, to trace the operation of its various parts, and to put his hand on the mainspring about which they revolved; and he wondered whether Gamba, whose connection with the ducal library must give him some insight into the affairs of the court, might not prove as instructive a guide through this labyrinth as through the mazes of the ducal garden.

The Duke’s library filled a series of rooms designed in the classical style of the cinque-cento.  On the very threshold Odo was conscious of leaving behind the trivial activities of the palace, with the fantastic architecture which seemed their natural setting.  Here all was based on a noble permanence of taste, a convergence of accumulated effort toward a chosen end; and the door was fittingly surmounted by Seneca’s definition of the wise man’s state:  “Omnia illi secula ut deo serviunt.”

Odo would gladly have lingered among the books which filled the rooms with an incense-like aroma of old leather.  His imagination caressed in passing the yellowish vellum backs, the worn tooling of Aldine folios, the heavy silver clasps of ancient chronicles and psalters; but his first object was to find Gamba and renew the conversation of the previous day.  In this he was disappointed.  The only occupant of the library was the hunchback’s friend and protector, the abate Crescenti, a tall white-haired priest with the roseate gravity and benevolent air of a donator in some Flemish triptych.  The abate, courteously welcoming Odo, explained that he had despatched his assistant to the Benedictine monastery to copy certain ancient records of transactions between that order and the Lords of Valsecca, and added that Gamba, on his return, should at once be apprised of the cavaliere’s wish to see him.

The abate himself had been engaged, when his visitor entered, in collating manuscripts, but on Odo’s begging him to return to his work, he said with a smile:  “I do not suffer from an excess of interruptions, for the library is the least visited portion of the palace, and I am glad to welcome any who are disposed to inspect its treasures.  I know not, cavaliere,” he added, “if the report of my humble labours has ever reached you;” and on Odo’s affirmative gesture he went on, with the eagerness of a shy man who gathers assurance from the intelligence of his listener:  “Such researches into the rude and uncivilised past seem to me as essential to the comprehension of the present as the mastering of the major premiss to the understanding of a syllogism; and to those who reproach me for wasting my life over the chronicles of barbarian invasions and the records of monkish litigations, instead of contemplating the illustrious deeds of Greek sages and Roman heroes, I confidently reply that it is more useful to a man to know his own father’s character than that of a remote ancestor.  Even in this quiet retreat,” he went on, “I hear much talk of abuses and of the need for reform; and I often think that if they who rail so loudly against existing institutions would take the trouble to trace them to their source, and would, for instance, compare this state as it is today with its condition five hundred or a thousand years ago, instead of measuring it by the standard of some imaginary Platonic republic, they would find, if not less subject for complaint, yet fuller means of understanding and remedying the abuses they discover.”

This view of history was one so new in the abate Crescenti’s day that it surprised Odo with the revelation of unsuspected possibilities.  How was it that among the philosophers whose works he had studied, none had thought of tracing in the social and political tendencies of the race the germ of wrongs so confidently ascribed to the cunning of priests and the rapacity of princes?  Odo listened with growing interest while Crescenti, encouraged by his questions, pointed out how the abuses of feudalism had arisen from the small land-owner’s need of protection against the northern invader, as the concentration of royal prerogative had been the outcome of the king’s intervention between his great vassals and the communes.  The discouragement which had obscured Odo’s outlook since his visit to Pontesordo was cleared away by the discovery that in a sympathetic study of the past might lie the secret of dealing with present evils.  His imagination, taking the intervening obstacles at a bound, arrived at once at the general axiom to which such inductions pointed; and if he afterward learned that human development follows no such direct line of advance, but must painfully stumble across the wastes of error, prejudice and ignorance, while the theoriser traverses the same distance with a stroke of his speculative pinions; yet the influence of these teachings tempered his judgments with charity and dignified his very failures by a tragic sense of their inevitableness.

Crescenti suggested that Gamba should wait on Odo that evening; but the latter, being uncertain how far he might dispose of his time, enquired where the hunchback lodged, with a view of sending for him at a convenient moment.  Having dined at the Duchess’s table, and soon wearying of the vapid company of her associates, he yielded to the desire for contrast that so often guided his course, and set out toward sunset in search of Gamba’s lodging.

It was his first opportunity of inspecting the town at leisure, and for a while he let his curiosity lead him as it would.  The streets near the palace were full of noble residences, recording, in their sculptured doorways, in the wrought-iron work of torch-holders and window-grilles, and in every architectural detail, the gradual change of taste that had transformed the machicolations of the mediaeval fighter into the open cortiles and airy balconies of his descendant.  Here and there, amid these inveterate records of dominion, rose the monuments of a mightier and more ancient power.  Of these churches and monasteries the greater number, dating only from the ascendancy of the Valseccas, showed an ordered and sumptuous architecture; but one or two buildings surviving from the period of the free city stood out among them with the austerity of desert saints in a throng of court ecclesiastics.  The columns of the Cathedral porch were still supported on featureless porphyry lions worn smooth by generations of loungers; and above the octagonal baptistery ran a fantastic basrelief wherein the spirals of the vine framed an allegory of men and monsters symbolising, in their mysterious conflicts, the ever-recurring Manicheism of the middle ages.  Fresh from his talk with Crescenti, Odo lingered curiously on these sculptures, which but the day before he might have passed by as the efforts of ignorant workmen, but which now seemed full of the significance that belongs to any incomplete expression of human thought or feeling.  Of their relation to the growth of art he had as yet no clear notion; but as evidence of sensations that his forefathers had struggled to record, they touched him like the inarticulate stammerings in which childhood strives to convey its meaning.

He found Gamba’s lodging on the upper floor of a decayed palace in one of the by-lanes near the Cathedral.  The pointed arcades of this ancient building enclosed the remains of floriated mouldings, and the walls of the court showed traces of fresco-painting; but clothes-lines now hung between the arches, and about the well-head in the centre of the court sat a group of tattered women with half-naked children playing in the dirt at their feet.  One of these women directed Odo to the staircase which ascended between damp stone walls to Gamba’s door.  This was opened by the hunchback himself, who, with an astonished exclamation, admitted his visitor to a scantily furnished room littered with books and papers.  A child sprawled on the floor, and a young woman, who had been sewing in the fading light of the attic window, snatched him up as Odo entered.  Her back being turned to the light, he caught only a slender youthful outline; but something in the turn of the head, the shrinking curve of the shoulders, carried him back to the little barefoot figure cowering in a corner of the kitchen at Pontesordo, while the farm-yard rang with Filomena’s call—­“Where are you then, child of iniquity?”

“Momola—­don’t you know me?” he exclaimed.

She hung back trembling, as though the sound of his voice roused an echo of fear; but Gamba, reddening slightly, took her hand and led her forward.

“It is, indeed,” said he, “your excellency’s old playmate, the Momola of Pontesordo, who consents to share my poverty and who makes me forget it by the tenderness of her devotion.”

But Momola, at this, found voice.  “Oh, sir,” she cried, “it is he who took me in when I was half-dead and starving, who many a time went hungry to feed me, and who cares for the child as if it were his own!”

As she stood there, in her half-wild hollowed-eyed beauty, which seemed a sickly efflorescence of the marshes, pressing to her breast another “child of iniquity” as pale and elfish as her former self, she seemed to Odo the embodiment of ancient wrongs, risen from the wasted soil to haunt the dreams of its oppressors.

Gamba shrugged his shoulders.  “Why,” said he, “a child of my own is a luxury I am never likely to possess as long as I have wit to remember the fundamental axiom of philosophy:  entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatum; so it is natural enough fate should single me out to repair the negligence of those who have failed to observe that admirable principle.  And now,” he added, turning gently to Momola, “it is time to put the boy to bed.”

When the door had closed on her Odo turned to Gamba.  “I could learn nothing at Pontesordo,” he said.  “They seemed unwilling to speak of her.  What is her story and where did you first know her?”

Gamba’s face darkened.  “You will remember, cavaliere,” he said, “that some time after your departure from Pianura I passed into the service of the Marquess of Cerveno, then a youth of about twenty, who combined with graceful manners and a fair exterior a nature so corrupt and cowardly that he seemed like some such noble edifice as this, designed to house great hopes and high ambitions, but fallen to base uses and become the shelter of thieves and prostitutes.  Prince Ferrante being sickly from his birth, the Marquess was always looked on as the Duke’s successor, and to Trescorre, who even then, as Master of the Horse, cherished the ambitions he has since realised, no prospect could have been more distasteful.  My noble brother, to do him justice, has always hated the Jesuits, who, as you doubtless know, were all-powerful here before the recent suppression of the Order.  The Marquess of Cerveno was as completely under their control as the Duke is under that of the Dominicans, and Trescorre knew that with the Marquess’s accession his own rule must end.  He did his best to gain an influence over his future ruler, but failing in this resolved to ruin him.

“Cerveno, like all your house, was passionately addicted to the chase, and spent much time hunting in the forest of Pontesordo.  One day the stag was brought to bay in the farm-yard of the old manor, and there Cerveno saw Momola, then a girl of sixteen, of a singular wild beauty which sickness and trouble have since effaced.  The young Marquess was instantly taken; and though hitherto indifferent to women, yielded so completely to his infatuation that Trescorre, ever on the alert, saw in it an unexpected means to his end.  He instantly married Momola to Giannozzo, whom she feared and hated; he schooled Giannozzo in the part of the jealous and vindictive husband, and by the liberal use of money contrived that Momola, while suffered to encourage the Marquess’s addresses, should be kept so close that Cerveno could not see her save by coming to Pontesordo.  This was the first step in the plan; the next was to arrange that Momola should lure her lover to the hunting-lodge on the edge of the chase.  This lodge, as your excellency may remember, lies level with the marsh, and so open to noxious exhalations that a night’s sojourn there may be fatal.  The infernal scheme was carried out with the connivance of the scoundrels at the farm, who had no scruples about selling the girl for a few ducats; and as to Momola, can you wonder that her loathing of Giannozzo and of her wretched life at Pontesordo threw her defenceless into Trescorre’s toils?  All was cunningly planned to exasperate Cerveno’s passion and Momola’s longing to escape; and at length, pressed by his entreaties and innocently carrying out the designs of his foe, the poor girl promised to meet him after night-fall at the hunting-lodge.  The secrecy of the adventure, and the peril to which it exposed him (for Trescorre had taken care to paint Giannozzo and his father in the darkest colours) were fuel to Cerveno’s passion, and he went night after night to Pontesordo.  The time was August, when the marsh breathes death, and the Duke, apprised of his favourite’s imprudence, forbade his returning to the chase.

“Nothing could better have served Trescorre; for opposition spurred the Marquess’s languid temper, and he had now the incredible folly to take up his residence in the lodge.  Within three weeks the fever held him.  He was at once taken to Pianura, and on recovering from his seizure was sent to take the mountain air at the baths of Lucca.  But the poison was in his blood.  He never regained more than a semblance of health, and his madness having run its course, his passion for Momola turned to hate of the poor girl to whom he ascribed his destruction.  Giannozzo, meanwhile, terrified by the report that the Duke had winded the intrigue, and fearing to be charged with connivance, thought to prove his innocence by casting off his wife and disowning her child.

“What part I played in this grim business I leave your excellency to conceive.  As the Marquess’s creature I was forced to assist at the spectacle without power to stay its consequences; but when the child was born I carried the news to my master and begged him to come to the mother’s aid.  For answer, he had me beaten by his lacqueys and flung out of his house.  I stomached the beating and addressed myself to Trescorre.  My noble brother, whose insight is seldom at fault, saw that I knew enough to imperil him.  The Marquess was dying and his enemy could afford to be generous.  He gave me a little money and the following year obtained from the Duke my appointment as assistant librarian.  In this way I was able to give Momola a home, and to save her child from the Innocenti.  She and I, cavaliere, are the misshapen offspring of that cruel foster-parent, who rears more than half the malefactors in the state; but please heaven the boy shall have a better start in life, and perhaps grow up to destroy some of the evils on which that cursed charity thrives.”

This narrative, and the sight of Momola and her child, followed so strangely on the spectacle of sordid misery he had witnessed at Pontesordo, that an inarticulate pity held Odo by the throat.  Gamba’s anger against the people at the farm seemed as senseless as their own cruelty to their animals.  What were they all—­Momola, her child, and her persecutors—­but a sickly growth of the decaying social order?  He felt an almost physical longing for fresh air, light, the rush of a purifying wind through the atmosphere of moral darkness that surrounded him.