The Valley of Decision

4.7.

Never before had Odo so keenly felt the difference between theoretical visions of liberty and their practical application.  His deepest heart-searchings showed him as sincerely devoted as ever to the cause which had enlisted his youth.  He still longed above all things to serve his fellows; but the conditions of such service were not what he had dreamed.  How different a calling it had been in Saint Francis’s day, when hearts inflamed with the new sense of brotherhood had but to set forth on their simple mission of almsgiving and admonition!  To love one’s neighbour had become a much more complex business, one that taxed the intelligence as much as the heart, and in the course of which feeling must be held in firm subjection to reason.  He was discouraged by Fulvia’s inability to understand the change.  Hers was the missionary spirit; and he could not but reflect how much happier she would have been as a nun in a charitable order, a unit in some organised system of beneficence.

He too would have been happier to serve than to command!  But it is not given to the lovers of the Lady Poverty to choose their special rank in her household.  Don Gervaso’s words came back to him with deepening significance, and he thought how truly the old chaplain’s prayer had been fulfilled.  Honour and power had come to him, and they had abased him to the dust.  The “Humilitas” of his fathers, woven, carved and painted on every side, pursued him with an ironical reminder of his impotence.

Fulvia had not been mistaken in attributing his depression of spirit to de Crucis’s visit.  It was the first time that de Crucis had returned to Pianura since the new Duke’s accession.  Odo had welcomed him eagerly, had again pressed him to remain; but de Crucis was on his way to Germany, bound on some business which could not be deferred.  Odo, aware of the renewed activity of the Jesuits, supposed that this business was connected with the flight of the French refugees, many of whom were gone to Coblentz; but on this point the abate was silent.  Of the state of affairs in France he spoke openly and despondently.  The immoderate haste with which the reforms had been granted filled him with fears for the future.  Odo knew that Crescenti shared these fears, and the judgment of these two men, with whom he differed on fundamental principles, weighed with him far more than the opinions of the party he was supposed to represent.  But he was in the case of many greater sovereigns of his day.  He had set free the waters of reform, and the frail bark of his authority had been torn from its moorings and swept headlong into the central current.

The next morning, to his surprise, the Duchess sent one of her gentlemen to ask an audience.  Odo at once replied that he would wait on her Highness; and a few moments later he was ushered into his wife’s closet.

She had just left her toilet, and was still in the morning negligee worn during that prolonged and public ceremonial.  Freshly perfumed and powdered, her eyes bright, her lips set in a nervous smile, she curiously recalled the arrogant child who had snatched her spaniel away from him years ago in that same room.  And was she not that child, after all?  Had she ever grown beyond the imperious instincts of her youth?  It seemed to him now that he had judged her harshly in the first months of their marriage.  He had felt a momentary impatience when he had tried to force her roving impulses into the line of his own endeavour:  it was easier to view her leniently now that she had almost passed out of his life.

He wondered why she had sent for him.  Some dispute with her household, doubtless; a quarrel with a servant, even—­or perhaps some sordid difficulty with her creditors.  But she began in a new key.

“Your Highness,” she said, “is not given to taking my advice.”

Odo looked at her in surprise.  “The opportunity is not often accorded me,” he replied with a smile.

Maria Clementina made an impatient gesture; then her face softened.  Contradictory emotions flitted over it like the reflections cast by a hurrying sky.  She came close to him and then drew away and seated herself in the high-backed chair where she had throned when he first saw her.  Suddenly she blushed and began to speak.

“Once,” she said in a low, almost inaudible voice, “I was able to give your Highness warning of an impending danger—­” She paused and her eyes rested full on Odo.

He felt his colour rise as he returned her gaze.  It was her first allusion to the past.  He had supposed she had forgotten.  For a moment he remained awkwardly silent.

“Do you remember?” she asked.

“I remember.”

“The danger was a grave one.  Your Highness may recall that but for my warning you would not have been advised of it.”

“I remember,” he said again.

She paused a moment.  “The danger,” she repeated, “was a grave one; but it threatened only your Highness’s person.  Your Highness listened to me then; will you listen again if I advise you of a greater—­a peril threatening not only your person but your throne?”

Odo smiled.  He could guess now what was coming.  She had been drilled to act as the mouthpiece of the opposition.  He composed his features and said quietly:  “These are grave words, madam.  I know of no such peril—­but I am always ready to listen to your Highness.”

His smile had betrayed him, and a quick flame of anger passed over her face.

“Why should you listen to me, since you never heed what I say?”

“Your Highness has just reminded me that I did so once—­”

“Once!” she repeated bitterly.  “You were younger then—­and so was I!” She glanced at herself in the mirror with a dissatisfied laugh.  Something in her look and movement touched the springs of compassion.

“Try me again,” he said gently.  “If I am older, perhaps I am also wiser, and therefore even more willing to be guided—­we all knew that.”  She broke off, as though she felt her mistake and wished to make a fresh beginning.  Again her face was full of fluctuating meaning; and he saw, beneath its shallow surface, the eddy of incoherent impulses.  When she spoke, it was with a noble gravity.

“Your Highness,” she said, “does not take me into your counsels; but it is no secret at court and in the town that you have in contemplation a grave political measure.”

“I have made no secret of it,” he replied.

“No—­or I should be the last to know it!” she exclaimed, with one of her sudden lapses into petulance.

Odo made no reply.  Her futility was beginning to weary him.  She saw it and again attempted an impersonal dignity of manner.

“It has been your Highness’s choice,” she said, “to exclude me from public affairs.  Perhaps I was not fitted by education or intelligence to share in the cares of government.  Your Highness will at least bear witness that I have scrupulously respected your decision, and have never attempted to intrude upon your counsels.”

Odo bowed.  It would have been useless to remind her that he had sought her help and failed to obtain it.

“I have accepted my position,” she continued.  “I have led the life to which it has pleased your Highness to restrict me.  But I have not been able to detach my heart as well as my thoughts from your Highness’s interests.  I have not learned to be indifferent to your danger.”

Odo looked up quickly.  She ceased to interest him when she spoke by the book, and he was impatient to make an end.

“You spoke of danger before,” he said.  “What danger?”

“That of forcing on your subjects liberties which they do not desire!”

“Ah,” said he thoughtfully.  That was all, then.  What a poor tool she made!  He marvelled that, in all these years, Trescorre’s skilful hands should not have fashioned her to better purpose.

“Your Highness,” he said, “has reminded me that since our marriage you had lived withdrawn from public affairs.  I will not pause to dispute by whose choice this has been; I will in turn merely remind your Highness that such a life does not afford much opportunity of gauging public opinion.”

In spite of himself a note of sarcasm had again crept into his voice; but to his surprise she did not seem to resent it.

“Ah,” she exclaimed, with more feeling than she had hitherto shown, “you fancy that, because I am kept in ignorance of what you think, I am ignorant also of what others think of you!  Believe me,” she said, with a flash of insight that startled him, “I know more of you than if we stood closer.  But you mistake my purpose.  I have not sent for you to force my counsels on you.  I have no desire to appear ridiculous.  I do not ask you to hear what I think of your course, but what others think of it.”

“What others?”

The question did not disconcert her.  “Your subjects,” she said quickly.

“My subjects are of many classes.”

“All are of one class in resenting this charter.  I am told you intend to proclaim it within a few days.  I entreat you at least to delay, to reconsider your course.  Oh, believe me when I say you are in danger!  Of what use to offer a crown to our Lady, when you have it in your heart to slight her servants?  But I will not speak of the clergy, since you despise them—­nor of the nobles, since you ignore their claims.  I will speak only of the people—­the people, in whose interest you profess to act.  Believe me, in striking at the Church you wound the poor.  It is not their bodily welfare I mean—­though Heaven knows how many sources of bounty must now run dry!  It is their faith you insult.  First you turn them against their masters, then against their God.  They may acclaim you for it now—­but I tell you they will hate you for it in the end!”

She paused, flushed with the vehemence of her argument, and eager to press it farther.  But her last words had touched an unexpected fibre in Odo.  He looked at her with his unseeing visionary gaze.

“The end?” he murmured.  “Who knows what the end will be?”

“Do you still need to be told?” she exclaimed.  “Must you always come to me to learn that you are in danger?”

“If the state is in danger the danger must be faced.  The state exists for the people; if they do not need it, it has ceased to serve its purpose.”

She clasped her hands in an ecstasy of wonder.  “Oh, fool, madman—­but it is not of the state I speak!  It is you who are in danger—­you—­you—­you—­”

He raised his head with an impatient gesture.

“I?” he said.  “I had thought you meant a graver peril.”

She looked at him in silence.  Her pride met his and thrilled with it; and for a moment the two were one.

“Odo!” she cried.  She sank into a chair, and he went to her and took her hand.

“Such fears are worthy neither of us,” he said gravely.

“I am not ashamed of them,” she said.  Her hand clung to him and she lifted her eyes to his face.  “You will listen to me?” she whispered in a glow.

He drew back chilled.  If only she had kept the feminine in abeyance!  But sex was her only weapon.

“I have listened,” he said quietly.  “And I thank you.”

“But you will not be counselled?”

“In the last issue one must be one’s own counsellor.”

Her face flamed.  “If you were but that!” she tossed back at him.

The taunt struck him full.  He knew that he should have let it lie; but he caught it up in spite of himself.

“Madam!” he said.

“I should have appealed to our sovereign, not to her servant!” she cried, dashing into the breach she had made.

He stood motionless, stunned almost.  For what she had said was true.  He was no longer the sovereign:  the rule had passed out of his hands.

His silence frightened her.  With an instinctive jealousy she saw that her words had started a train of thought in which she had no part.  She felt herself ignored, abandoned; and all her passions rushed to the defence of her wounded vanity.

“Oh, believe me,” she cried, “I speak as your Duchess, not as your wife.  That is a name in which I should never dream of appealing to you.  I have ever stood apart from your private pleasures, as became a woman of my house.”  She faced him with a flash of the Austrian insolence.  “But when I see the state drifting to ruin as the result of your caprice, when I see your own life endangered, your people turned against you, religion openly insulted, law and authority made the plaything of this—­this—­false atheistical creature, that has robbed me—­robbed me of all—­” She broke off helplessly and hid her face with a sob.

Odo stood speechless, spell-bound.  He could not mistake what had happened.  The woman had surged to the surface at last—­the real woman, passionate, self-centred, undisciplined, but so piteous, after all, in this sudden subjection to the one tenderness that survived in her.  She loved him and was jealous of her rival.  That was the instinct which had swept all others aside.  At that moment she cared nothing for her safety or his.  The state might perish if they but fell together.  It was the distance between them that maddened her.

The tragic simplicity of the revelation left Odo silent.  For a fantastic moment he yielded to the vision of what that waste power might have accomplished.  Life seemed to him a confusion of roving force that met only to crash in ruins.

His silence drew her to her feet.  She repossessed herself, throbbing but valiant.

“My fears for your Highness’s safety have led my speech astray.  I have given your Highness the warning it was my duty to give.  Beyond that I had no thought of trespassing.”

And still Odo was silent.  A dozen answers struggled to his lips; but they were checked by the stealing sense of duality that so often paralysed his action.  He had recovered his lucidity of vision, and his impulses faded before it like mist.  He saw life again as it was, an incomplete and shabby business, a patchwork of torn and ravelled effort.  Everywhere the shears of Atropos were busy, and never could the cut threads be joined again.

He took his wife’s hand and bent over it ceremoniously.  It lay in his like a stone.