The Valley of Decision

2.7.

It was in fact Vivaldi who, putting aside the knot of idlers about the chaise, stepped forward at Odo’s approach.  The philosopher’s countenance was perturbed, his travelling-coat spattered with mud, and his daughter, hooded and veiled, clung to him with an air of apprehension that smote Odo to the heart.  He caught a blush of recognition beneath her veil; and as he drew near she raised a finger to her lip and faintly shook her head.

The mute signal reassured him.  “I see, sir,” said he, turning courteously to Vivaldi, “that you are in a bad plight, and I hope that I or my carriage may be of service to you.”  He ventured a second glance at Fulvia, but she had turned aside and was inspecting the wheel of the chaise with an air of the most disheartening detachment.

Vivaldi, who had returned Odo’s greeting without any sign of ill-will, bowed slightly and seemed to hesitate a moment.  “Our plight, as you see,” he said, “is indeed a grave one; for the wheel has come off our carriage and my driver here tells me there is no smithy this side Vercelli, where it is imperative we should lie tonight.  I hope, however,” he added, glancing down the road, “that with all the traffic now coming and going we may soon be overtaken by some vehicle that will carry us to our destination.”

He spoke calmly, but it was plain some pressing fear underlay his composure, and the nature of the emergency was but too clear to Odo.

“Will not my carriage serve you?” he hastily rejoined.  “I am for Vercelli, and if you will honour me with your company we can go forward at once.”

Fulvia, during this exchange of words, had affected to be engaged with the luggage, which lay in a heap beside the chaise; but at this point she lifted her head and shot a glance at her father from under her black travelling-hood.

Vivaldi’s constraint increased.  “This, sir,” said he, “is a handsome offer, and one for which I thank you; but I fear our presence may incommode you and the additional weight of our luggage perhaps delay your progress.  I have little fear but some van or waggon will overtake us before nightfall; and should it chance otherwise,” he added with a touch of irresistible pedantry, “why, it behoves us to remember that we shall be none the worse off, since the sage is independent of circumstances.”

Odo could hardly repress a smile.  “Such philosophy, sir, is admirable in principle, but in practice hardly applicable to a lady unused to passing her nights in a rice-field.  The region about here is notoriously unhealthy and you will surely not expose your daughter to the risk of remaining by the roadside or of finding a lodging in some peasant’s hut.”

Vivaldi drew himself up.  “My daughter,” said he, “has been trained to face graver emergencies with an equanimity I have no fear of putting to the touch—­’the calm of a mind blest in the consciousness of its virtue’; and were it not that circumstances are somewhat pressing—­” he broke off and glanced at Cantapresto, who was fidgeting about Odo’s carriage or talking in undertones with the driver of the chaise.

“Come, sir,” said Odo urgently, “Let my servants put your luggage up and we’ll continue this argument on the road.”

Vivaldi again paused.  “Sir,” he said at length, “will you first step aside with me a moment?” he led Odo a few paces down the road.  “I make no pretence,” he went on when they were out of Cantapresto’s hearing, “of concealing from you that this offer comes very opportune to our needs, for it is urgent we should be out of Piedmont by tomorrow.  But before accepting a seat in your carriage, I must tell you that you offer it to a proscribed man; since I have little reason to doubt that by this time the sbirri are on my track.”

It was impossible to guess from Vivaldi’s manner whether he suspected Odo of being the cause of his misadventure; and the young man, though flushing to the forehead, took refuge in the thought of Fulvia’s signal and maintained a self-possessed silence.

“The motive of my persecution,” Vivaldi continued, “I need hardly explain to one acquainted with my house and with the aims and opinions of those who frequent it.  We live, alas, in an age when it is a moral offence to seek enlightenment, a political crime to share it with others.  I have long foreseen that any attempt to raise the condition of my countrymen must end in imprisonment or flight; and though perhaps to have suffered the former had been a more impressive vindication of my views, why, sir, the father at the last moment overruled the philosopher, and thinking of my poor girl there, who but for me stands alone in the world, I resolved to take refuge in a state where a man may work for the liberty of others without endangering his own.”

Odo had listened with rising eagerness.  Was not here an opportunity, if not to atone, at least to give practical evidence of his contrition?

“What you tell me sir,” he exclaimed, “cannot but increase my zeal to serve you.  Here is no time to palter.  I am on my way to Lombardy, which, from what you say, I take to be your destination also; and if you and your daughter will give me your company across the border I think you need fear no farther annoyance from the police, since my passports, as the Duke of Pianura’s cousin, cover any friends I choose to take in my company.”

“Why, sir,” said Vivaldi, visibly moved by the readiness of the response, “here is a generosity so far in excess of our present needs that it encourages me to accept the smaller favour of travelling with you to Vercelli.  There we have friends with whom we shall be safe for the night, and soon after sunrise I hope we may be across the border.”

Odo at once followed up his advantage by pointing out that it was on the border that difficulties were most likely to arise; but after a few moments of debate Vivaldi declared he must first take counsel with his daughter, who still hung like a mute interrogation on the outskirts of their talk.

After a few words with her, he returned to Odo.  “My daughter,” said he, “whose good sense puts my wisdom to the blush, wishes me first to enquire if you purpose returning to Turin; since in that case, as she points out, your kindness might result in annoyances to which we have no right to expose you.”

Odo coloured.  “Such considerations, I beg your daughter to believe, would not weigh with me an instant; but as I am leaving Piedmont for two years I am not so happy as to risk anything by serving you.”

Vivaldi on this assurance at once consented to accept a seat in his carriage as far as Boffalora, the first village beyond the Sardinian frontier.  It was agreed that at Vercelli Odo was to set down his companions at an inn whence, alone and privately, they might gain their friend’s house; that on the morrow at daybreak he was to take them up at a point near the convent of the Umiliati, and that thence they were to push forward without a halt for Boffalora.

This agreement reached, Odo was about to offer Fulvia a hand to the carriage when an unwelcome thought arrested him.

“I hope, sir,” said he, again turning to Vivaldi, and blushing furiously as he spoke, “that you feel assured of my discretion; but I ought perhaps to warn you that my companion yonder, though the good-naturedest fellow alive, is not one to live long on good terms with a secret, whether his own or another’s.”

“I am obliged to you,” said Vivaldi, “for the hint; but my daughter and I are like those messengers who, in time of war, learn to carry their despatches beneath their tongues.  You may trust us not to betray ourselves; and your friend may, if he chooses, suppose me to be travelling to Milan to act as governor to a young gentleman of quality.”

The Professor’s luggage had by this been put on Odo’s carriage, and the latter advanced to Fulvia.  He had drawn a favourable inference from the concern she had shown for his welfare; but to his mortification she merely laid two reluctant finger tips in his hand and took her seat without a word of thanks or so much as a glance at her rescuer.  This unmerited repulse, and the constraint occasioned by Cantapresto’s presence, made the remainder of the drive interminable.  Even the Professor’s apposite reflections on rice-growing and the culture of the mulberry did little to shorten the way; and when at length the bell-towers of Vercelli rose in sight Odo felt the relief of a man who has acquitted himself of a tedious duty.  He had looked forward with the most romantic anticipations to the outcome of this chance encounter with Fulvia; but the unforgiving humour which had lent her a transitory charm now became as disfiguring as some physical defect; and his heart swelled with the defiance of youthful disappointment.

It was near the angelus when they entered the city.  Just within the gates Odo set down his companions, who took leave of him, the one with the heartiest expressions of gratitude, the other with a hurried inclination of her veiled head.  Thence he drove on to the Three Crowns, where he designed to lie.  The streets were still crowded with holiday-makers and decked out with festal hangings.  Tapestries and silken draperies adorned the balconies of the houses, innumerable tiny lamps framed the doors and windows, and the street-shrines were dressed with a profusion of flowers; while every square and open space in the city was crowded with booths, with the tents of ambulant comedians and dentists, and with the outspread carpets of snake-charmers, posture-makers and jugglers.  Among this mob of quacks and pedlars circulated other fantastic figures, the camp-followers of the army of hucksters:  dwarfs and cripples, mendicant friars, gypsy fortune-tellers, and the itinerant reciters of Ariosto and Tasso.  With these mingled the towns-people in holiday dress, the well-to-do farmers and their wives, and a throng of nondescript idlers, ranging from the servants of the nobility pushing their way insolently through the crowd, to those sinister vagabonds who lurk, as it were, in the interstices of every concourse of people.

It was not long before the noise and animation about him had dispelled Odo’s ill-humour.  The world was too fair to be darkened by a girl’s disdain, and a reaction of feeling putting him in tune with the humours of the market-place, he at once set forth on foot to view the city.  It was now near sunset and the day’s decline irradiated the stately front of the Cathedral, the walls of the ancient Hospital that faced it, and the groups gathered about the stalls and platforms obstructing the square.  Even in his travelling-dress Odo was not a figure to pass unnoticed, and he was soon assailed by laughing compliments on his looks and invitations to visit the various shows concealed behind the flapping curtains of the tents.  There were enough pretty faces in the crowd to justify such familiarities, and even so modest a success was not without solace to his vanity.  He lingered for some time in the square, answering the banter of the blooming market-women, inspecting the filigree-ornaments from Genoa, and watching a little yellow bitch in a hooped petticoat and lappets dance the furlana to the music of an armless fiddler who held the bow in his teeth.  As he turned from this show Odo’s eye was caught by a handsome girl who, on the arm of a dashing cavalier in somewhat shabby velvet, was cheapening a pair of gloves at a neighbouring stall.  The girl, who was masked, shot a dark glance at Odo from under her three-cornered Venetian hat; then, tossing down a coin, she gathered up the gloves and drew her companion away.  The manoeuvre was almost a challenge, and Odo was about to take it up when a pretty boy in a Scaramouch habit, waylaying him with various graceful antics, thrust a play-bill in his hand; and on looking round he found the girl and her gallant had disappeared.  The play-bill, with a wealth of theatrical rhetoric, invited Odo to attend the Performance to be given that evening at the Philodramatic Academy by the celebrated Capo Comico Tartaglia of Rimini and his world-renowned company of Comedians, who, in the presence of the aristocracy of Vercelli, were to present a new comedy entitled “Le Gelosie di Milord Zambo,” with an Intermezzo of singing and dancing by the best Performers of their kind.

Dusk was already falling, and Odo, who had brought no letters to the gentry of Vercelli, where he intended to stay but a night, began to wonder how he should employ his evening.  He had hoped to spend it in Vivaldi’s company, but the Professor not having invited him, he saw no prospect but to return to the inn and sup alone with Cantapresto.  In the doorway of the Three Crowns he found the soprano awaiting him.  Cantapresto, who had been as mute as a fish during the afternoon’s drive, now bustled forward with a great show of eagerness.

“What poet was it,” he cried, “that paragoned youth to the Easter sunshine, which, wherever it touches, causes a flower to spring up?  Here we are scarce alit in a strange city, and already a messenger finds the way to our inn with a most particular word from his lady to the Cavaliere Odo Valsecca.”  And he held out a perfumed billet sealed with a flaming dart.

Odo’s heart gave a leap at the thought that the letter might be from Fulvia; but on breaking the seal he read these words, scrawled in an unformed hand:—­

“Will the Cavaliere Valsecca accept from an old friend, who desires to renew her acquaintance with him, the trifling gift of a side-box at Don Tartaglia’s entertainment this evening?”

Vexed at his credulity, Odo tossed the invitation to Cantapresto; but a moment later, recalling the glance of the pretty girl in the market-place, he began to wonder if the billet might not be the prelude to a sufficiently diverting adventure.  It at least offered a way of passing the evening; and after a hurried supper he set out with Cantapresto for the Philodramatic Academy.  It was late when they entered their box, and several masks were already capering before the footlights, exchanging lazzi with the townsfolk in the pit, and addressing burlesque compliments to the quality in the boxes.  The theatre seemed small and shabby after those of Turin, and there was little in the old-fashioned fopperies of a provincial audience to interest a young gentleman fresh from the capital.  Odo looked about for any one resembling the masked beauty of the market-place; but he beheld only ill-dressed dowagers and matrons, or ladies of the town more conspicuous for their effrontery than for their charms.

The main diversion of the evening was by this begun.  It was a comedy in the style of Goldoni’s early pieces, representing the actual life of the day, but interspersed with the antics of the masks, to whose improvised drolleries the people still clung.  A terrific Don Spavento in cloak and sword played the jealous English nobleman, Milord Zambo, and the part of Tartaglia was taken by the manager, one of the best-known interpreters of the character in Italy.  Tartaglia was the guardian of the prima amorosa, whom the enamoured Briton pursued; and in the Columbine, when she sprang upon the stage with a pirouette that showed her slender ankles and embroidered clocks, Odo instantly recognised the graceful figure and killing glance of his masked beauty.  Her face, which was now uncovered, more than fulfilled the promise of her eyes, being indeed as arch and engaging a countenance as ever flashed distraction across the foot-lights.  She was greeted with an outburst of delight that cost her a sour glance from the prima amorosa, and presently the theatre was ringing with her improvised sallies, uttered in the gay staccato of the Venetian dialect.  There was to Odo something perplexingly familiar in this accent and in the light darting movements of her little head framed in a Columbine’s ruff, with a red rose thrust behind one ear; but after a rapid glance about the house she appeared to take no notice of him and he began to think it must be to some one else he owed his invitation.

From this question he was soon diverted by his increasing enjoyment of the play.  It was not indeed a remarkable example of its kind, being crudely enough put together, and turning on a series of ridiculous and disconnected incidents; but to a taste formed on the frigid elegancies of Metastasio and the French stage there was something refreshing in this plunge into the coarse homely atmosphere of the old popular theatre.  Extemporaneous comedies were no longer played in the great cities, and Odo listened with surprise to the swift thrust and parry, the inexhaustible flow of jest and repartee, the readiness with which the comedians caught up each other’s leads, like dancers whirling without a false step through the mazes of some rapid contradance.

So engaged was he that he no longer observed the Columbine save as a figure in this flying reel; but presently a burst of laughter fixed his attention and he saw that she was darting across the stage pursued by Milord Zambo, who, furious at the coquetries of his betrothed, was avenging himself by his attentions to the Columbine.  Half way across, her foot caught and she fell on one knee.  Zambo rushed to the rescue; but springing up instantly, and feigning to treat his advance as a part of the play, she cried out with a delicious assumption of outraged dignity:—­

“Not a step farther, villain!  Know that it is sacrilege for a common mortal to embrace one who has been kissed by his most illustrious Highness the Heir-presumptive of Pianura!”

“Mirandolina of Chioggia!” sprang to Odo’s lips.  At the same instant the Columbine turned about and swept him a deep curtsey, to the delight of the audience, who had no notion of what was going forward, but were in the humour to clap any whim of their favourite’s; then she turned and darted off the stage, and the curtain fell on a tumult of applause.

Odo had hardly recovered from his confusion when the door of the box opened and the young Scaramouch he had seen in the market-place peeped in and beckoned to Cantapresto.  The soprano rose with alacrity, leaving Odo alone in the dimly-lit box, his mind agrope in a labyrinth of memories.  A moment later Cantapresto returned with that air of furtive relish that always proclaimed him the bearer of a tender message.  The one he now brought was to the effect that the Signorina Miranda Malmocco, justly renowned as one of the first Columbines of Italy, had charged him to lay at the Cavaliere Valsecca’s feet her excuses for the liberty she had taken with his illustrious name, and to entreat that he would show his magnanimity by supping with her after the play in her room at the Three Crowns—­a request she was emboldened to make by the fact that she was lately from Pianura, and could give him the last news of the court.

The message chimed with Odo’s mood, and the play over he hastened back to the inn with Cantapresto, and bid the landlord send to the Signorina Miranda’s room whatever delicacies the town could provide.  Odo on arriving that afternoon had himself given orders that his carriage should be at the door the next morning an hour before sunrise; and he now repeated these instructions to Cantapresto, charging him on his life to see that nothing interfered with their fulfilment.  The soprano objected that the hour was already late, and that they could easily perform the day’s journey without curtailing their rest; but on Odo’s reiteration of the order he resigned himself, with the remark that it was a pity old age had no savings-bank for the sleep that youth squandered.