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BOOK I - THE OLD ORDER: CHAPTER 7
1.7.
The Marquess of Cerveno had succumbed to the tertian ague contracted at
the hunting-lodge of Pontesordo; and this unforeseen calamity left but
one life, that of the sickly ducal infant, between Odo and the
succession to the throne of Pianura. Such was the news conveyed
post-haste from Turin by Donna Laura; who added the Duke's express wish
that his young kinsman should be fitted for the secular career, and the
information that Count Valdu had already entered his stepson's name at
the Royal Academy of Turin.
The Duke of Pianura being young and in good health, and his wife having
already given him an heir, the most sanguine imagination could hardly
view Odo as being brought much nearer the succession; yet the change in
his condition was striking enough to excuse the fancy of those about him
for shaping the future to their liking. The priestling was to turn
courtier and perhaps soldier; Asti was to be exchanged for Turin, the
seminary for the academy; and even the old chief of Donnaz betrayed in
his grumbling counsels to the boy a sense of the exalted future in which
they might some day serve him.
The preparations of departure and the wonder of his new state left Odo
little space wherein to store his thought with impressions of what he
was leaving; and it was only in after years, when the accretion of
superficial incident had dropped from his past, that those last days at
Donnaz gained their full distinctness. He saw them then, heavy with the
warmth of the long summer, from the topmost pine-belt to the bronzed
vineyards turning their metallic clusters to the sun; and in the midst
his small bewildered figure, netted in a web of association, and
seeming, as he broke away, to leave a shred of himself in every corner
of the castle.
Sharpest of all, there remained with him the vision of his last hour
with Don Gervaso. The news of Odo's changed condition had been received
in silence by the chaplain. He was not the man to waste words and he
knew the futility of asserting the Church's claim to the
heir-presumptive of a reigning house. Therefore if he showed no
enthusiasm he betrayed no resentment; but, the evening before the boy's
departure, led him, still in silence, to the chapel. Here the priest
knelt with Odo; then, raising him, sat on one of the benches facing the
high altar, and spoke a few grave words.
"You are setting out," said he, "on a way far different from that in
which it has been my care to guide you; yet the high road and the
mountain path may, by diverse windings, lead to the same point; and
whatever walk a man chooses, it will surely carry him to the end that
God has appointed. If you are called to serve Him in the world, the
journey on which you are now starting may lead you to the throne of
Pianura; but even so," he went on, "there is this I would have you
remember: that should this dignity come to you it may come as a calamity
rather than a joy; for when God confers earthly honours on a child of
His predilection, He sometimes deigns to render them as innocuous as
misfortune; and my chief prayer for you is that you should be raised to
this eminence, it may be at a moment when such advancement seems to
thrust you in the dust."
The words burned themselves into Odo's heart like some mystic writing on
the walls of memory, long afterward to start into fiery meaning. At the
time he felt only that the priest spoke with a power and dignity no
human authority could give; and for a moment all the stored influences
of his faith reached out to him from the dimly-gleaming altar.
The next sun rose on a new world. He was to set out at daylight, and
dawn found him at the casement, footing it in thought down the road as
yet undistinguishable in a dying glimmer of stars. Bruno was to attend
him to Turin; but one of the women presently brought word that the old
huntsman's rheumatism had caught him in the knee, and that the Marquess,
resolved not to delay his grandson's departure, had chosen Cantapresto
as the boy's companion. The courtyard, when Odo descended, fairly
bubbled with the voluble joy of the fat soprano, who was giving
directions to the servants, receiving commissions and instructions from
the aunts, assuring everybody of his undying devotion to the
heir-presumptive of Pianura, and citing impressive instances of the
responsibilities with which the great of the earth had formerly
entrusted him.
As a companion for Odo the abate was clearly not to Don Gervaso's taste;
but he stood silent, turning the comment of a cool eye on the soprano's
protestations, and saying only, as Cantapresto swept the company into
the circle of an obsequious farewell:--"Remember, signor abate, it is to
your cloth this business is entrusted." The abate's answer was a rush of
purple to the forehead; but Don Gervaso imperturbably added, "And you
lie but one night on the road."
Meanwhile the old Marquess, visibly moved, was charging Odo to respect
his elders and superiors, while in the same breath warning him not to
take up with the Frenchified notions of the court, but to remember that
for a lad of his condition the chief virtues were a tight seat in the
saddle, a quick hand on the sword and a slow tongue in counsel. "Mind
your own business," he concluded, "and see that others mind theirs."
The Marchioness thereupon, with many tears, hung a scapular about Odo's
neck, bidding him shun the theatre and be regular at confession; one of
the canonesses reminded him not to omit a visit to the chapel of the
Holy Winding-sheet, while the other begged him to burn a candle for her
at the Consolata; and the servants pressed forward to embrace and bless
their little master.
Day was high by this, and as the Marquess's travelling-chariot rumbled
down the valley the shadows seemed to fly before it. Odo at first lay
numb; but presently his senses woke to the call of the brightening
landscape. The scene was such as Salvator might have painted: wild
blocks of stone heaped under walnut-shade; here the white plunge of
water down a wall of granite, and there, in bluer depths, a charcoal
burner's hut sending up its spiral of smoke to the dark raftering of
branches. Though it was but a few hours since Odo had travelled from
Oropa, years seemed to have passed over him, and he saw the world with a
new eye. Each sound and scent plucked at him in passing: the roadside
started into detail like the foreground of some minute Dutch painter;
every pendent mass of fern, dark dripping rock, late tuft of harebell
called out to him: "Look well, for this is your last sight of us!" His
first sight too, it seemed: since he had lived through twelve Italian
summers without sense of the sun-steeped quality of atmosphere that,
even in shade, gives each object a golden salience. He was conscious of
it now only as it suggested fingering a missal stiff with gold-leaf and
edged with a swarming diversity of buds and insects. The carriage moved
so slowly that he was in no haste to turn the pages; and each spike of
yellow foxglove, each clouding of butterflies about a patch of
speedwell, each quiver of grass over a hidden thread of moisture, became
a marvel to be thumbed and treasured.
From this mood he was detached by the next bend of the road. The way,
hitherto winding through narrow glens, now swung to a ledge overhanging
the last escarpment of the mountains; and far below, the Piedmontese
plain unrolled to the southward its interminable blue-green distances
mottled with forest. A sight to lift the heart; for on those sunny
reaches Ivrea, Novara, Vercelli lay like sea-birds on a summer sea. It
was the future unfolding itself to the boy; dark forests, wide rivers,
strange cities and a new horizon: all the mystery of the coming years
figured to him in that great plain stretching away to the greater
mystery of heaven.
To all this Cantapresto turned a snoring countenance. The lively air of
the hills, the good fare of Donnaz, and the satisfaction, above all, of
rolling on cushions over a road he had thought to trudge on foot, had
lapped the abate in Capuan slumber. The midday halt aroused him. The
travellers rested at an inn on the edge of the hills, and here
Cantapresto proved to his charge that, as he phrased it, his belly had
as short a memory for food as his heart for injuries. A flask of Asti
put him in the talking mood, and as they drove on he regaled Odo with a
lively picture of the life on which he was about to enter.
"You are going," said he, "to one of the first cities of Europe; one
that has all the beauty and elegance of the French capital without its
follies and excesses. Turin is blessed with a court where good manners
and a fine tone are more highly prized than the extravagances of genius;
and I have heard it said of his Majesty that he was delighted to see his
courtiers wearing the French fashions outside their heads, provided they
didn't carry the French ideas within. You are too young, doubtless,
cavaliere, to have heard of the philosophers who are raising such a
pother north of the Alps: a set of madmen that, because their birth
doesn't give them the entree of Versailles, are preaching that men
should return to a state of nature, great ladies suckle their young like
animals, and the peasantry own their land like nobles. Luckily you'll
hear little of this infectious talk in Turin: the King stamps out the
philosophers like vermin or packs them off to splutter their heresies in
Milan or Venice. But to a nobleman mindful of the privileges of his
condition there is no more agreeable sojourn in Europe. The wines are
delicious, the women--er--accomplished--and though the sbirri may hug
one a trifle close now and then, why, with money and discretion, a
friend or two in the right quarters, and the wit to stand well with the
Church, there's no city in Europe where a man may have pleasanter sins
to confess."
The carriage, by this, was descending the last curves above the valley,
and before them, in a hollow of the hills, blinked the warm shimmer of
maize and vine, like some bright vintage brimming its cup. The soprano
waved a convivial hand.
"Look," he cried, "what Nature has done for this happy region! Where
herself has spread the table so bountifully, should her children hang
back from the feast? I vow, cavaliere, if the mountains were built for
hermits and ascetics, then the plain was made level for dancing,
banqueting and the pleasures of the villeggiatura. If God had meant us
to break our teeth on nuts and roots, why did He hang the vine with
fruit and draw three crops of wheat from this indulgent soil? I protest
when I look on such a scene as this, it is sufficient incentive to
lowliness to remember that the meek shall inherit the earth!"
This mood held Cantapresto till his after-dinner sleep overtook him; and
when he woke again the chariot was clattering across the bridge of
Chivasso. The Po rolled its sunset crimson between flats that seemed
dull and featureless after the broken scenery of the hills; but beyond
the bridge rose the towers and roofs of the town, with its
cathedral-front catching the last slant of light. In the streets dusk
had fallen and a lamp flared under the arch of the inn before which the
travellers halted. Odo's head was heavy, and he hardly noticed the
figures thronging the caffe into which they were led; but presently
there rose a shout of "Cantapresto!" and a ring of waving arms and
flashing teeth encircled his companion.
These appendages belonged to a troop of men and women, some masked and
in motley, others in discoloured travel-stained garments, who pressed
about the soprano with cries of joyous recognition. He was evidently an
old favourite of the band, for a duenna in tattered velvet fell on his
neck with genial unreserve, a pert soubrette caught him by the arm the
duenna left free, and a terrific Matamor with a nose like a scimitar
slapped him on the back with a tin sword.
Odo's glimpse of the square at Oropa told him that here was a band of
strolling players such as Cantapresto had talked of on the ride back to
Donnaz. Don Gervaso's instructions and the old Marchioness's warning
against the theatre were present enough in the boy's mind to add a touch
of awe to the curiosity with which he observed these strange objects of
the Church's reprobation. They struck him, it must be owned, as more
pitiable than alarming, for the duenna's toes were coming through her
shoes, and one or two of the children who hung on the outskirts of the
group looked as lean and hungry under their spangles as the
foundling-girl of Pontesordo. Spite of this they seemed a jolly crew,
and ready (at Cantapresto's expense) to celebrate their encounter with
the ex-soprano in unlimited libations of Asti and Val Pulicello. The
singer, however, hung back with protesting gestures.
"Gently, then, gently, dear friends--dear companions! When was it we
parted? In the spring of the year--and we meet now in the late summer.
As the seasons change so do our conditions: if the spring is a season of
folly, then is the harvest-time the period for reflection. When we last
met I was a strolling poet, glad to serve your gifted company within the
scope of my talents--now, ladies and gentlemen, now"--he drew himself up
with pride--"now you behold in me the governor and friend of the
heir-presumptive of Pianura."
Cries of incredulity and derision greeted this announcement, and one of
the girls called out laughingly, "Yet you have the same old cassock to
your back!"
"And the same old passage from your mouth to your belly," added an
elastic Harlequin, reaching an arm across the women's shoulders. "Come,
Cantapresto, we'll help you line it with good wine, to the health of his
most superlatively serene Highness, the heir-presumptive of Pianura; and
where is that fabulous personage, by the way?"
Odo at this retreated hastily behind the soprano; but a pretty girl
catching sight of him, he found himself dragged into the centre of the
company, who hailed him with fantastic obeisances. Supper meanwhile was
being laid on the greasy table down the middle of the room. The Matamor,
who seemed the director of the troupe, thundered out his orders for
maccaroni, fried eels and sausages; the inn-servants flanked the plates
with wine-flasks and lumps of black bread, and in a moment the hungry
comedians, thrusting Odo into a high seat at the head of the table, were
falling on the repast with a prodigious clatter of cutlery.
Of the subsequent incidents of the feast--the banter of the younger
women, the duenna's lachrymose confidences, the incessant interchange of
theatrical jargon and coarse pleasantry--there remained to Odo but a
confused image, obscured by the smoke of guttering candles, the fumes of
wine and the stifling air of the low-ceilinged tavern. Even the face of
the pretty girl who had dragged him from his concealment, and who now
sat at his side, plying him with sweets from her own plate, began to
fade into the general blur; and his last impression was of Cantapresto's
figure dilating to immense proportions at the other end of the table, as
the soprano rose with shaking wine-glass to favour the company with a
song. The chorus, bursting forth in response, surged over Odo's drowning
senses, and he was barely aware, in the tumult of noise and lights, of
an arm slipped about him, a softly-heaving pillow beneath his head, and
the gradual subsidence into dark delicious peace.
So, on the first night of his new life, the heir-presumptive of Pianura
fell asleep with his head in a dancing-girl's breast.
Content of BOOK I - THE OLD ORDER: CHAPTER 7 [Edith Wharton's novel: The Valley Of Decision]
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