The Valley of Decision

2.2.

As an infusion of fresh blood to Odo were Alfieri’s meteoric returns to Turin.  Life moved languidly in the strait-laced city, even to a young gentleman a-tiptoe for adventure and framed to elicit it as the hazel-wand draws water.  Not that vulgar distractions were lacking.  The town, as Cantapresto had long since advised him, had its secret leniencies, its posterns opening on clandestine pleasure; but there was that in Odo which early turned him from such cheap counterfeits of living.  He accepted the diversions of his age, but with a clear sense of their worth; and the youth who calls his pleasures by their true name has learned the secret of resisting them.

Alfieri’s coming set deeper springs in motion.  His follies and extravagances were on a less provincial scale than those of Odo’s daily associates.  The breath of a freer life clung to him and his allusions were so many glimpses into a larger world.  His political theories were but the enlargement of his private grievances, but the mere play of criticism on accepted institutions was an exercise more novel and exhilirating than the wildest ride on one of his half-tamed thorough-breds.  Still chiefly a man of pleasure, and the slave, as always, of some rash infatuation, Alfieri was already shaking off the intellectual torpor of his youth; and the first stirrings of his curiosity roused an answering passion in Odo.  Their tastes were indeed divergent, for to that external beauty which was to Odo the very bloom of life, Alfieri remained insensible; while of its imaginative counterpart, its prolongation in the realm of thought and emotion, he had but the most limited conception.  But his love of ringing deeds woke the chivalrous strain in Odo, and his vague celebration of Liberty, that unknown goddess to whom altars were everywhere building, chimed with the other’s scorn of oppression and injustice.  So far, it is true, their companionship had been mainly one of pleasure; but the temper of both gave their follies that provisional character which saves them from vulgarity.

Odo, who had slept late on the morning after his friend’s return, was waked by the pompous mouthing of certain lines just then on every lip in Italy:—­

    Meet was it that, its ancient seats forsaking,
    An Empire should set forth with dauntless sail,
    And braving tempests and the deep’s betrayal,
    Break down the barriers of inviolate worlds—­
    That Cortez and Pizarro should esteem
    The blood of man a trivial sacrifice
    When, flinging down from their ancestral thrones
    Incas and Mexicans of royal line,
    They wrecked two kingdoms to refresh thy palate—­

They were the verses in which the abate Parini, in his satire of The Morning, apostrophizes the cup of chocolate which the lacquey presents to his master.  Cantapresto had in fact just entered with a cup of this beverage, and Alfieri, who stood at his friend’s bedside with unpowdered locks and a fashionable undress of Parisian cut, snatching the tray from the soprano’s hands presented it to Odo in an attitude of mock servility.

The young man sprang up laughing.  It was the fashion to applaud Parini’s verse in the circles at which his satire was aimed, and none recited his mock heroics with greater zest than the young gentlemen whose fopperies he ridiculed.  Odo’s toilet was indeed a rite almost as elaborate as that of Parini’s hero; and this accomplished, he was on his way to fulfil the very duty the poet most unsparingly derides:  the morning visit of the cicisbeo to his lady; but meanwhile he liked to show himself above the follies of his class by joining in the laugh against them.  When he issued from the powder-room in his gold-laced uniform, with scented gloves and carefully-adjusted queue, he presented the image of a young gentleman so clearly equal to the most flattering emergencies that Alfieri broke into a smile of half-ironical approval.  “I see, my dear cavaliere, that it were idle to invite you to try one of the new Arabs I have brought with me from Spain, since it is plain other duties engage you; but I come to lay claim to your evening.”

Odo hesitated.  “The Queen holds a circle this evening,” he said.

“And her lady-in-waiting is in attendance?” returned Alfieri.  “And the lady-in-waiting’s gentleman-in-waiting also?”

Odo made an impatient movement.  “What inducements do you offer?” said he carelessly.

Alfieri stepped close and tapped him on the sleeve.  “Meet me at ten o’clock at the turn of the lane behind the Corpus Domini.  Wear a cloak and a mask, and leave this gentleman at home with a flask of Asti.”  He glanced at Cantapresto.

Odo hesitated a moment.  He knew well enough where such midnight turnings led, and across the vision evoked by his friend’s words a girl’s face flitted suddenly.

“Is that all?” he said with a shrug.  “You find me, I fear, in no humour for such exploits.”

Alfieri smiled.  “And if I say that I have promised to bring you?”

“Promised—?”

“To one as chary of exacting such pledges as I of giving them.  If I say that you stake your life on the adventure, and that the stake is not too great for the reward—?”

His sallow face had reddened with excitement, and Odo’s forehead reflected the flush.  Was it possible—?  But the thought set him tingling with disgust.

“Why, you say little,” he cried lightly, “at the rate at which I value my life.”

Alfieri turned on him.  “If your life is worthless; make it worth something!” he exclaimed.  “I offer you the opportunity tonight.”

“What opportunity?”

“The sight of a face that men have laid down their lives to see.”

Odo laughed and buckled on his sword.  “If you answer for the risk, I agree to take it,” said he.  “At ten o’clock then, behind the Corpus Domini.”

If the ladies whom gallant gentlemen delight to serve could guess what secret touchstones of worth these same gentlemen sometimes carry into the adored presence, many a handsome head would be carried with less assurance, and many a fond exaction less confidently imposed.  If, for instance, the Countess Clarice di Tournanches, whose high-coloured image reflected itself so complacently in her Venetian toilet-glass, could have known that the Cavaliere Odo Valsecca’s devoted glance saw her through the medium of a countenance compared to which her own revealed the most unexpected shortcomings, she might have received him with less airy petulance of manner.  But how could so accomplished a mistress doubt the permanence of her rule?  The Countess Clarice, in singling out young Odo Valsecca (to the despair of a score of more experienced cavaliers) had done him an honour that she could no more imagine his resigning than an adventurer a throne to which he is unexpectedly raised.  She was a finished example of the pretty woman who views the universe as planned for her convenience.  What could go wrong in a world where noble ladies lived in palaces hung with tapestry and damask, with powdered lacqueys to wait on them, a turbaned blackamoor to tend their parrots and monkeys, a coronet-coach at the door to carry them to mass or the ridotto, and a handsome cicisbeo to display on the promenade?  Everything had combined to strengthen the Countess Clarice’s faith in the existing order of things.  Her husband, Count Roberto di Tournanches, was one of the King’s equerries and distinguished for his brilliant career as an officer of the Piedmontese army—­a man marked for the highest favours 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 vapours and megrims.  These personages, grouped about the toilet-table where the Countess sat under the hands of a Parisian hairdresser, 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 gewgaws 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 ardour 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 Vendome, 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 honour of carving the roast; must sit through two hours of biribi 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 condemned, as the strings of custom pulled, to feign the gestures of immortal passions.