The Valley of Decision

by Edith Wharton

  ***

  At nightfall a man opened the gate of the ducal gardens below the Chinese pavilion and stepped out into the deserted lane. He locked the gate and slipped the key into his pocket; then he turned and walked toward the centre of the town. As he reached the more populous quarters his walk slackened to a stroll; and now and then he paused to observe a knot of merry-makers or look through the curtains of the tents set up in the squares.

  The man was plainly but decently dressed, like a petty tradesman or a lawyer’s clerk, and the night being chill he wore a cloak, and had drawn his hat-brim over his forehead. He sauntered on, letting the crowd carry him, with the air of one who has an hour to kill, and whose holiday-making takes the form of an amused spectatorship. To such an observer the streets offered ample entertainment. The shrewd air discouraged lounging and kept the crowd in motion; but the open platforms built for dancing were thronged with couples, and every peep-show, wineshop and astrologer’s booth was packed to the doors. The shrines and street-lamps being all alight, and booths and platforms hung with countless lanterns, the scene was as bright as day; but in the ever-shifting medley of peasant-dresses, liveries, monkish cowls and carnival disguises, a soberly-clad man might easily go unremarked.

  Reaching the square before the Cathedral, the solitary observer pushed his way through the idlers gathered about a dais with a curtain at the back. Before the curtain stood a Milanese quack, dressed like a noble gentleman, with sword and plumed hat, and rehearsing his cures in stentorian tones, while his zany, in the short mask and green-and-white habit of Brighella, cracked jokes and turned hand-springs for the diversion of the vulgar.

  “Behold,” the charlatan was shouting, “the marvellous Egyptian love-philter distilled from the pearl that the great Emperor Antony dropped into Queen Cleopatra’s cup. This infallible fluid, handed down for generations in the family of my ancestor, the High Priest of Isis—”

  The bray of a neighbouring showman’s trumpet cut him short, and yielding to circumstances he drew back the curtain, and a tumbling-girl sprang out and began her antics on the front of the stage.

  “What did he say was the price of that drink, Giannina?” asked a young maidservant pulling her neighbour’s sleeve.

  “Are you thinking of buying it for Pietrino, my beauty?” the other returned with a laugh. “Believe me, it is a sound proverb that says: When the fruit is ripe it falls of itself.”

  The girl drew away angrily, and the quack took up his harangue:—“The same philter, ladies and gentlemen—though in confessing it I betray a professional secret—the same philter, I declare to you on the honour of a nobleman, whereby, in your own city, a lady no longer young and no way remarkable in looks or station, has captured and subjugated the affections of one so high, so exalted, so above all others in beauty, rank, wealth, power and dignities—”

  “Oh, oh, that’s the Duke!” sniggered a voice in the crowd.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I name no names!” cried the quack impressively.

  “No need to,” retorted the voice.

  “They do say, though, she gave him something to drink,” said a young woman to a youth in a clerk’s dress. “The saying is she studied medicine with the Turks.”

  “The Moors, you mean,” said the clerk with an air of superiority.

  “Well, they say her mother was a Turkey slave and her father a murderer from the Sultan’s galleys.”

  “No, no, she’s plain Piedmontese, I tell you. Her father was a physician in Turin, and was driven out of the country for poisoning his patients in order to watch their death-agonies.”

  “They say she’s good to the poor, though,” said another voice doubtfully.

  “Good to the poor? Ay, that’s what they said of her father. All I know is that she heard Stefano the weaver’s lad had the falling sickness, and she carried him a potion with her own hands, and the next day the child was dead, and a Carmelite friar, who saw the phial he drank from, said it was the same shape and size as one that was found in a witch’s grave when they were digging the foundations for the new monastery.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” shrieked the quack, “what am I offered for a drop of this priceless liquor?”

  The listener turned aside and pushed his way toward the farther end of the square. As he did so he ran against a merry-andrew who thrust a long printed sheet in his hand.

  “Buy my satirical ballads, ladies and gentlemen!” the fellow shouted.

  “Two for a farthing, invented and written by an own cousin of the great Pasquino of Rome! What will you have, sir? Here’s the secret history of a famous Prince’s amours with an atheist—here’s the true scandal of an illustrious lady’s necklace—two for a farthing…and my humblest thanks to your excellency.” He pocketed the coin, and the other, thrusting the broadsheets beneath his cloak, pushed on to the nearest coffee-house.

  Here every table was thronged, and the babble of talk so loud that the stranger, hopeless of obtaining refreshment, pressed his way into the remotest corner of the room and seated himself on an empty cask. At first he sat motionless, silently observing the crowd; then he drew forth the ballads and ran his eye over them. He was still engaged in this study when his notice was attracted by a loud discussion going forward between a party of men at the nearest table. The disputants, petty tradesman or artisans by their dress, had evidently been warmed by a good flagon of wine, and their tones were so lively that every word reached the listener on the cask.

  “Reform, reform!” cried one, who appeared by his dress and manner to be the weightiest of the company—“it’s all very well to cry reform; but what I say is that most of those that are howling for it no more know what they’re asking than a parrot that’s been taught the litany. Now the first question is: who benefits by your reform? And what’s the answer to that, eh? Is it the tradesmen? The merchants? The clerks, artisans, household servants, I ask you? I hear some of my fellow-tradesmen complaining that the nobility don’t pay their bills. Will they be better paid, think you, when the Duke has halved their revenues? Will the quality keep up as large households, employ as many lacqueys, set as lavish tables, wear as fine clothes, collect as many rarities, buy as many horses, give us, in short, as many opportunities of making our profit out of their pleasure? What I say is, if we’re to have new taxes, don’t let them fall on the very class we live by!”

  “That’s true enough,” said another speaker, a lean bilious man with a pen behind his ear. “The peasantry are the only class that are going to profit by this constitution.”

  “And what do the peasantry do for us, I should like to know?” the first speaker went on triumphantly. “As far as the fat friars go, I’m not sorry to see them squeezed a trifle, for they’ve wrung enough money out of our women-folk to lie between feathers from now till doomsday; but I say, if you care for your pockets, don’t lay hands on the nobility!”

  “Gently, gently, my friend,” exclaimed a cautious flaccid-looking man setting down his glass. “Father and son, for four generations, my family have served Pianura with Church candles, and I can tell you that since these new atheistical notions came in, the nobility are not the good patrons they used to be. But as for the friars, I should be sorry to see them meddled with. It’s true they may get the best morsel in the pot and the warmest seat on the hearth—and one of them, now and then, may take too long to teach a pretty girl her Pater Noster—but I’m not sure we shall be better off when they’re gone. Formerly, if a child too many came to poor folk they could always comfort themselves with the thought that, if there was no room for him at home, the Church was there to provide for him. But if we drive out the good friars, a man will have to count mouths before he dares look at his wife too lovingly.”

  “Well,” said the scribe with a dry smile, “I’ve a notion the good friars have always taken more than they gave; and if it were not for the gaping mouths under the cowl even a poor man might have victuals enough for his own.”

  The first speaker turned on him c
ontentiously.

  “Do I understand you are for this new charter, then?” he asked.

  “No, no,” said the other. “Better hot polenta than a cold ortolan.

  Things are none too good as they are, but I never care to taste first of a new dish. And in this case I don’t fancy the cook.”

  “Ah, that’s it,” said the soft man. “it’s too much like the apothecary’s wife mixing his drugs for him. Men of Roman lineage want no women to govern them!” He puffed himself out and thrust a hand in his bosom.

  “Besides, gentlemen,” he added, dropping his voice and glancing cautiously about the room, “the saints are my witness I’m not superstitious—but frankly, now, I don’t much fancy this business of the Virgin’s crown.”

  “What do you mean?” asked a lean visionary-looking youth who had been drinking and listening.

  “Why, sir, I needn’t say I’m the last man in Pianura to listen to women’s tattle; but my wife had it straight from Cino the barber, whose sister is portress of the Benedictines, that, two days since, one of the nuns foretold the whole business, precisely as it happened—and what’s more, many that were in the Church this morning will tell you that they distinctly saw the blessed image raise both arms and tear the crown from her head.”

  “H’m,” said the young man flippantly, “what became of the Bambino meanwhile, I wonder?”

  The scribe shrugged his shoulders. “We all know,” said he, “that Cino the barber lies like a christened Jew; but I’m not surprised the thing was known in advance, for I make no doubt the priests pulled the wires that brought down the crown.”

  The fat man looked scandalised, and the first speaker waved the subject aside as unworthy of attention.

  “Such tales are for women and monks,” he said impatiently. “But the business has its serious side. I tell you we are being hurried to our ruin. Here’s this matter of draining the marshes at Pontesordo. Who’s to pay for that? The class that profits by it? Not by a long way. It’s we who drain the land, and the peasants are to live on it.”

  The visionary youth tossed back his hair. “But isn’t that an inspiration to you, sir?” he exclaimed. “Does not your heart dilate at the thought of uplifting the condition of your down-trodden fellows?”

  “My fellows? The peasantry my fellows?” cried the other. “I’d have you know, my young master, that I come of a long and honourable line of cloth-merchants, that have had their names on the Guild for two hundred years and over. I’ve nothing to do with the peasantry, thank God!”

  The youth had emptied another glass. “What?” he screamed. “You deny the universal kinship of man? You disown your starving brothers? Proud tyrant, remember the Bastille!” He burst into tears and began to quote Alfieri.

  “Well,” said the fat man, turning a disgusted shoulder on this display of emotion, “to my mind this business of draining Pontesordo is too much like telling the Almighty what to do. If God made the land wet, what right have we to dry it? Those that begin by meddling with the Creator’s works may end by laying hands on the Creator.”

  “You’re right,” said another. “There’s no knowing where these new-fangled notions may land us. For my part, I was rather taken by them at first; but since I find that his Highness, to pay for all his good works, is cutting down his household and throwing decent people out of a job—like my own son, for instance, that was one of the under-steward’s boys at the palace—why, since then, I begin to see a little farther into the game.”

  A shabby shrewd-looking fellow in a dirty coat and snuff-stained stock had sauntered up to the table and stood listening with an amused smile.

  “Ah,” said the scribe, glancing up, “here’s a thoroughgoing reformer, who’ll be asking us all to throw up our hats for the new charter.”

  The newcomer laughed contemptuously. “I?” he said. “God forbid! The new charter’s none of my making. It’s only another dodge for getting round the populace—for appearing to give them what they would rise up and take if it were denied them any longer.”

  “Why, I thought you were hot for these reforms?” exclaimed the fat man with surprise.

  The other shrugged. “You might as well say I was in favour of having the sun rise tomorrow. It would probably rise at the same hour if I voted against it. Reform is bound to come, whether your Dukes and Princes are for it or against it; and those that grant constitutions instead of refusing them are like men who tie a string to their hats before going out in a gale. The string may hold for a while—but if it blows hard enough the hats will all come off in the end.”

  “Ay, ay; and meanwhile we furnish the string from our own pockets,” said the scribe with a chuckle.

  The shabby man grinned. “It won’t be the last thing to come out of your pockets,” said he, turning to push his way toward another table.

  The others rose and called for their reckoning; and the listener on the cask slipped out of his corner, elbowed a passage to the door and stepped forth into the square.

  It was after midnight, a thin drizzle was falling, and the crowd had scattered. The rain was beginning to extinguish the paper lanterns and the torches, and the canvas sides of the tents flapped dismally, like wet sheets on a clothes-line. The man drew his cloak closer, and avoiding the stragglers who crossed his path, turned into the first street that led to the palace. He walked fast over the slippery cobblestones, buffeted by a rising wind and threading his way between dark walls and sleeping house-fronts till he reached the lane below the ducal gardens. He unlocked the door by which he had come forth, entered the gardens, and paused a moment on the terrace above the lane.

  Behind him rose the palace, a dark irregular bulk, with a lighted window showing here and there. Before him lay the city, an indistinguishable huddle of roofs and towers under the rainy night. He stood awhile gazing out over it; then he turned and walked toward the palace. The garden alleys were deserted, the pleached walks dark as subterranean passages, with the wet gleam of statues starting spectrally out of the blackness.

  The man walked rapidly, leaving the Borromini wing on his left, and skirting the outstanding mass of the older buildings. Behind the marble buttresses of the chapel, he crossed the dense obscurity of a court between high walls, found a door under an archway, turned a key in the lock, and gained a spiral stairway as dark as the court. He groped his way up the stairs and paused a moment on the landing to listen. Then he opened another door, lifted a heavy hanging of tapestry, and stepped into the Duke’s closet. It stood empty, with a lamp burning low on the desk.

  The man threw off his cloak and hat, dropped into a chair beside the desk, and hid his face in his hands.

  4.9.

  It was the eve of the Duke’s birthday. A cabinet council had been called in the morning, and his Highness’s ministers had submitted to him the revised draft of the constitution which was to be proclaimed on the morrow.

  Throughout the conference, which was brief and formal, Odo had been conscious of a subtle change in the ministerial atmosphere. Instead of the current of resistance against which he had grown used to forcing his way, he became aware of a tacit yielding to his will. Trescorre had apparently withdrawn his opposition to the charter, and the other ministers had followed suit. To Odo’s overwrought imagination there was something ominous in the change. He had counted on the goad of opposition to fight off the fatal languor which he had learned to expect at such crises. Now that he found there was to be no struggle he understood how largely his zeal had of late depended on such factitious incentives. He felt an irrational longing to throw himself on the other side of the conflict, to tear in bits the paper awaiting his signature, and disown the policy which had dictated it. But the tide of acquiescence on which he was afloat was no stagnant back-water of indifference, but the glassy reach just above the fall of a river. The current was as swift as it was smooth, and he felt himself hurried forward to an end he could no longer escape. He took the pen which Trescorre handed him, and signed the constitution.

&n
bsp; The meeting over, he summoned Gamba. He felt the need of such encouragement as the hunchback alone could give. Fulvia’s enthusiasms were too unreal, too abstract. She lived in a region of ideals, whence ugly facts were swept out by some process of mental housewifery which kept her world perpetually smiling and immaculate. Gamba at least fed his convictions on facts. If his outlook was narrow it was direct: no roseate medium of fancy was interposed between his vision and the truth.