Crucial Instances by Edith Wharton
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Edith Wharton >> Crucial Instances
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So time passed and we reached the last months of '47. The villa on Iseo had
been closed since the end of August. Roberto had no great liking for his
gloomy palace in Milan, and it had been his habit to spend nine months
of the year at Siviano; but he was now too much engrossed in his work to
remain away from Milan, and his wife and sister had joined him there as
soon as the midsummer heat was over. During the autumn he had called me
once or twice to the city to consult me on business connected with his
fruit-farms; and in the course of our talks he had sometimes let fall a
hint of graver matters. It was in July of that year that a troop of Croats
had marched into Ferrara, with muskets and cannon loaded. The lighted
matches of their cannon had fired the sleeping hate of Austria, and the
whole country now echoed the Lombard cry: "Out with the barbarian!" All
talk of adjustment, compromise, reorganization, shrivelled on lips that
the live coal of patriotism had touched. Italy for the Italians, and
then--monarchy, federation, republic, it mattered not what!
The oppressor's grip had tightened on our throats and the clear-sighted
saw well enough that Metternich's policy was to provoke a rebellion and
then crush it under the Croat heel. But it was too late to cry prudence in
Lombardy. With the first days of the new year the tobacco riots had drawn
blood in Milan. Soon afterward the Lions' Club was closed, and edicts were
issued forbidding the singing of Pio Nono's hymn, the wearing of white and
blue, the collecting of subscriptions for the victims of the riots. To each
prohibition Milan returned a fresh defiance. The ladies of the nobility put
on mourning for the rioters who had been shot down by the soldiery. Half
the members of the Guardia Nobile resigned and Count Borromeo sent back
his Golden Fleece to the Emperor. Fresh regiments were continually pouring
into Milan and it was no secret that Radetsky was strengthening the
fortifications. Late in January several leading liberals were arrested and
sent into exile, and two weeks later martial law was proclaimed in Milan.
At the first arrests several members of the liberal party had hastily left
Milan, and I was not surprised to hear, a few days later, that orders had
been given to reopen the villa at Siviano. The Count and Countess arrived
there early in February.
It was seven months since I had seen the Countess, and I was struck with
the change in her appearance.
She was paler than ever, and her step had lost its lightness. Yet she
did not seem to share her husband's political anxieties; one would have
said that she was hardly aware of them. She seemed wrapped in a veil of
lassitude, like Iseo on a still gray morning, when dawn is blood-red on the
mountains but a mist blurs its reflection in the lake. I felt as though her
soul were slipping away from me, and longed to win her back to my care; but
she made her ill-health a pretext for not coming to confession, and for the
present I could only wait and carry the thought of her to the altar. She
had not been long at Siviano before I discovered that this drooping mood
was only one phase of her humor. Now and then she flung back the cowl of
melancholy and laughed life in the eye; but next moment she was in shadow
again, and her muffled thoughts had given us the slip. She was like the
lake on one of those days when the wind blows twenty ways and every
promontory holds a gust in ambush.
Meanwhile there was a continual coming and going of messengers between
Siviano and the city. They came mostly at night, when the household slept,
and were away again with the last shadows; but the news they brought stayed
and widened, shining through every cranny of the old house. The whole of
Lombardy was up. From Pavia to Mantua, from Como to Brescia, the streets
ran blood like the arteries of one great body. At Pavia and Padua the
universities were closed. The frightened vice-roy was preparing to withdraw
from Milan to Verona, and Radetsky continued to pour his men across the
Alps, till a hundred thousand were massed between the Piave and the Ticino.
And now every eye was turned to Turin. Ah, how we watched for the blue
banner of Piedmont on the mountains! Charles Albert was pledged to our
cause; his whole people had armed to rescue us, the streets echoed with
_avanti, Savoia!_ and yet Savoy was silent and hung back. Each day was
a life-time strained to the cracking-point with hopes and disappointments.
We reckoned the hours by rumors, the very minutes by hearsay. Then
suddenly--ah, it was worth living through!--word came to us that Vienna
was in revolt. The points of the compass had shifted and our sun had risen
in the north. I shall never forget that day at the villa. Roberto sent for
me early, and I found him smiling and resolute, as becomes a soldier on
the eve of action. He had made all his preparations to leave for Milan and
was awaiting a summons from his party. The whole household felt that great
events impended, and Donna Marianna, awed and tearful, had pleaded with
her brother that they should all receive the sacrament together the next
morning. Roberto and his sister had been to confession the previous day,
but the Countess Faustina had again excused herself. I did not see her
while I was with the Count, but as I left the house she met me in the
laurel-walk. The morning was damp and cold, and she had drawn a black scarf
over her hair, and walked with a listless dragging step; but at my approach
she lifted her head quickly and signed to me to follow her into one of the
recesses of clipped laurel that bordered the path.
"Don Egidio," she said, "you have heard the news?"
I assented.
"The Count goes to Milan to-morrow?"
"It seems probable, your excellency."
"There will be fighting--we are on the eve of war, I mean?"
"We are in God's hands, your excellency."
"In God's hands!" she murmured. Her eyes wandered and for a moment we stood
silent; then she drew a purse from her pocket. "I was forgetting," she
exclaimed. "This is for that poor girl you spoke to me about the other
day--what was her name? The girl who met the Austrian soldier at the fair
at Peschiera--"
"Ah, Vannina," I said; "but she is dead, your excellency."
"Dead!" She turned white and the purse dropped from her hand. I picked it
up and held it out to her, but she put back my hand. "That is for masses,
then," she said; and with that she moved away toward the house.
I walked on to the gate; but before I had reached it I heard her step
behind me.
"Don Egidio!" she called; and I turned back.
"You are coming to say mass in the chapel to-morrow morning?"
"That is the Count's wish."
She wavered a moment. "I am not well enough to walk up to the village this
afternoon," she said at length. "Will you come back later and hear my
confession here?"
"Willingly, your excellency."
"Come at sunset then." She looked at me gravely. "It is a long time since I
have been to confession," she added.
"My child, the door of heaven is always unlatched."
She made no answer and I went my way.
I returned to the villa a little before sunset, hoping for a few words
with Roberto. I felt with Faustina that we were on the eve of war, and the
uncertainty of the outlook made me treasure every moment of my friend's
company. I knew he had been busy all day, but hoped to find that his
preparations were ended and that he could spare me a half hour. I was not
disappointed; for the servant who met me asked me to follow him to the
Count's apartment. Roberto was sitting alone, with his back to the door, at
a table spread with maps and papers. He stood up and turned an ashen face
on me.
"Roberto!" I cried, as if we had been boys together.
He signed to me to be seated.
"Egidio," he said suddenly, "my wife has sent for you to confess her?"
"The Countess met me on my way home this morning and expressed a wish to
receive the sacrament to-morrow morning with you and Donna Marianna, and I
promised to return this afternoon to hear her confession."
Roberto sat silent, staring before him as though he hardly heard. At length
he raised his head and began to speak.
"You have noticed lately that my wife has been ailing?" he asked.
"Every one must have seen that the Countess is not in her usual health. She
has seemed nervous, out of spirits--I have fancied that she might be
anxious about your excellency."
He leaned across the table and laid his wasted hand on mine. "Call me
Roberto," he said.
There was another pause before he went on. "Since I saw you this morning,"
he said slowly, "something horrible has happened. After you left I sent for
Andrea and Gemma to tell them the news from Vienna and the probability of
my being summoned to Milan before night. You know as well as I that we have
reached a crisis. There will be fighting within twenty-four hours, if I
know my people; and war may follow sooner than we think. I felt it my duty
to leave my affairs in Andrea's hands, and to entrust my wife to his care.
Don't look startled," he added with a faint smile. "No reasonable man goes
on a journey without setting his house in order; and if things take the
turn I expect it may be some months before you see me back at Siviano.--But
it was not to hear this that I sent for you." He pushed his chair aside and
walked up and down the room with his short limping step. "My God!" he broke
out wildly, "how can I say it?--When Andrea had heard me, I saw him
exchange a glance with his wife, and she said with that infernal sweet
voice of hers, 'Yes, Andrea, it is our duty.'
"'Your duty?' I asked. 'What is your duty?'
"Andrea wetted his lips with his tongue and looked at her again; and her
look was like a blade in his hand.
"'Your wife has a lover,' he said.
"She caught my arm as I flung myself on him. He is ten times stronger than
I, but you remember how I made him howl for mercy in the old days when he
used to bully you.
"'Let me go,' I said to his wife. 'He must live to unsay it.'
"Andrea began to whimper. 'Oh, my poor brother, I would give my heart's
blood to unsay it!'
"'The secret has been killing us,' she chimed in.
"'The secret? Whose secret? How dare you--?'
"Gemma fell on her knees like a tragedy actress. 'Strike me--kill me--it is
I who am the offender! It was at my house that she met him--'
"'Him?'
"'Franz Welkenstern--my cousin,' she wailed.
"I suppose I stood before them like a stunned ox, for they repeated the
name again and again, as if they were not sure of my having heard it.--Not
hear it!" he cried suddenly, dropping into a chair and hiding his face in
his hands. "Shall I ever on earth hear anything else again?"
He sat a long time with his face hidden and I waited. My head was like a
great bronze bell with one thought for the clapper.
After a while he went on in a low deliberate voice, as though his words
were balancing themselves on the brink of madness. With strange composure
he repeated each detail of his brother's charges: the meetings in the
Countess Gemma's drawing-room, the innocent friendliness of the two
young people, the talk of mysterious visits to a villa outside the Porta
Ticinese, the ever-widening circle of scandal that had spread about their
names. At first, Andrea said, he and his wife had refused to listen to the
reports which reached them. Then, when the talk became too loud, they had
sent for Welkenstern, remonstrated with him, implored him to exchange into
another regiment; but in vain. The young officer indignantly denied the
reports and declared that to leave his post at such a moment would be
desertion.
With a laborious accuracy Roberto went on, detailing one by one each
incident of the hateful story, till suddenly he cried out, springing from
his chair--"And now to leave her with this lie unburied!"
His cry was like the lifting of a grave-stone from my breast. "You must not
leave her!" I exclaimed.
He shook his head. "I am pledged."
"This is your first duty."
"It would be any other man's; not an Italian's."
I was silent: in those days the argument seemed unanswerable.
At length I said: "No harm can come to her while you are away. Donna
Marianna and I are here to watch over her. And when you come back--"
He looked at me gravely. "_If_ I come back--"
"Roberto!"
"We are men, Egidio; we both know what is coming. Milan is up already; and
there is a rumor that Charles Albert is moving. This year the spring rains
will be red in Italy."
"In your absence not a breath shall touch her!"
"And if I never come back to defend her? They hate her as hell hates,
Egidio!--They kept repeating, 'He is of her own age and youth draws
youth--.' She is in their way, Egidio!"
"Consider, my son. They do not love her, perhaps; but why should they hate
her at such cost? She has given you no child."
"No child!" He paused. "But what if--? She has ailed lately!" he cried, and
broke off to grapple with the stabbing thought.
"Roberto! Roberto!" I adjured him.
He jumped up and gripped my arm.
"Egidio! You believe in her?"
"She's as pure as a lily on the altar!"
"Those eyes are wells of truth--and she has been like a daughter to
Marianna.--Egidio! do I look like an old man?"
"Quiet yourself, Roberto," I entreated.
"Quiet myself? With this sting in my blood? A lover--and an Austrian lover!
Oh, Italy, Italy, my bride!"
"I stake my life on her truth," I cried, "and who knows better than I? Has
her soul not lain before me like the bed of a clear stream?"
"And if what you saw there was only the reflection of your faith in her?"
"My son, I am a priest, and the priest penetrates to the soul as the angel
passed through the walls of Peter's prison. I see the truth in her heart as
I see Christ in the host!"
"No, no, she is false!" he cried.
I sprang up terrified. "Roberto, be silent!"
He looked at me with a wild incredulous smile. "Poor simple man of God!" he
said.
"I would not exchange my simplicity for yours--the dupe of envy's first
malicious whisper!"
"Envy--you think that?"
"Is it questionable?"
"You would stake your life on it?"
"My life!"
"Your faith?"
"My faith!"
"Your vows as a priest?"
"My vows--" I stopped and stared at him. He had risen and laid his hand on
my shoulder.
"You see now what I would be at," he said quietly. "I must take your place
presently--"
"My place--?"
"When my wife comes down. You understand me."
"Ah, now you are quite mad!" I cried breaking away from him.
"Am I?" he returned, maintaining his strange composure. "Consider a moment.
She has not confessed to you before since our return from Milan--"
"Her ill-health--"
He cut me short with a gesture. "Yet to-day she sends for you--"
"In order that she may receive the sacrament with you on the eve of your
first separation."
"If that is her only reason her first words will clear her. I must hear
those words, Egidio!"
"You are quite mad," I repeated.
"Strange," he said slowly. "You stake your life on my wife's innocence, yet
you refuse me the only means of vindicating it!"
"I would give my life for any one of you--but what you ask is not mine to
give."
"The priest first--the man afterward?" he sneered.
"Long afterward!"
He measured me with a contemptuous eye. "We laymen are ready to give the
last shred of flesh from our bones, but you priests intend to keep your
cassocks whole."
"I tell you my cassock is not mine," I repeated.
"And, by God," he cried, "you are right; for it's mine! Who put it on your
back but my father? What kept it there but my charity? Peasant! beggar!
Hear his holiness pontificate!" "Yes," I said, "I was a peasant and a
beggar when your father found me; and if he had left me one I might have
been excused for putting my hand to any ugly job that my betters required
of me; but he made me a priest, and so set me above all of you, and laid on
me the charge of your souls as well as mine."
He sat down shaken with dreadful tears. "Ah," he broke out, "would you have
answered me thus when we were boys together, and I stood between you and
Andrea?"
"If God had given me the strength."
"You call it strength to make a woman's soul your stepping-stone to
heaven?"
"Her soul is in my care, not yours, my son. She is safe with me."
"She? But I? I go out to meet death, and leave a worse death behind me!"
He leaned over and clutched my arm. "It is not for myself I plead but for
her--for her, Egidio! Don't you see to what a hell you condemn her if I
don't come back? What chance has she against that slow unsleeping hate?
Their lies will fasten themselves to her and suck out her life. You and
Marianna are powerless against such enemies."
"You leave her in God's hands, my son."
"Easily said--but, ah, priest, if you were a man! What if their poison
works in me and I go to battle thinking that every Austrian bullet may be
sent by her lover's hand? What if I die not only to free Italy but to free
my wife as well?"
I laid my hand on his shoulder. "My son, I answer for her. Leave your faith
in her in my hands and I will keep it whole."
He stared at me strangely. "And what if your own fail you?"
"In her? Never. I call every saint to witness!"
"And yet--and yet--ah, this is a blind," he shouted; "you know all and
perjure yourself to spare me!"
At that, my son, I felt a knife in my breast. I looked at him in anguish
and his gaze was a wall of metal. Mine seemed to slip away from it, like a
clawless thing struggling up the sheer side of a precipice.
"You know all," he repeated, "and you dare not let me hear her!"
"I dare not betray my trust."
He waved the answer aside.
"Is this a time to quibble over church discipline? If you believed in her
you would save her at any cost!"
I said to myself, "Eternity can hold nothing worse than this for me--" and
clutched my resolve again like a cross to my bosom.
Just then there was a hand on the door and we heard Donna Marianna.
"Faustina has sent to know if the _signar parocco_ is here."
"He is here. Bid her come down to the chapel." Roberta spoke quietly, and
closed the door on her so that she should not see his face. We heard her
patter away across the brick floor of the _salone_.
Roberto turned to me. "Egidio!" he said; and all at once I was no more than
a straw on the torrent of his will.
The chapel adjoined the room in which we sat. He opened the door, and in
the twilight I saw the light glimmering before the Virgin's shrine and the
old carved confessional standing like a cowled watcher in its corner. But
I saw it all in a dream; for nothing in heaven or earth was real to me but
the iron grip on my shoulder.
"Quick!" he said and drove me forward. I heard him shoot back the bolt of
the outer door and a moment later I stood alone in the garden. The sun had
set and the cold spring dusk was falling. Lights shone here and there in
the long front of the villa; the statues glimmered gray among the thickets.
Through the window-pane of the chapel I caught the faint red gleam of the
Virgin's lamp; but I turned my back on it and walked away.
* * * * *
All night I lay like a heretic on the fire. Before dawn there came a call
from the villa. The Count had received a second summons from Milan and was
to set out in an hour. I hurried down the cold dewy path to the lake. All
was new and hushed and strange as on the day of resurrection; and in the
dark twilight of the garden alleys the statues stared at me like the
shrouded dead.
In the _salone_, where the old Count's portrait hung, I found the
family assembled. Andrea and Gemma sat together, a little pinched, I
thought, but decent and self-contained, like mourners who expect to
inherit. Donna Marianna drooped near them, with something black over her
head and her face dim with weeping. Roberto received me calmly and then
turned to his sister.
"Go fetch my wife," he said.
While she was gone there was silence. We could hear the cold drip of the
garden-fountain and the patter of rats in the wall. Andrea and his wife
stared out of window and Roberto sat in his father's carved seat at the
head of the long table. Then the door opened and Faustina entered.
When I saw her I stopped breathing. She seemed no more than the shell of
herself, a hollow thing that grief has voided. Her eyes returned our images
like polished agate, but conveyed to her no sense of our presence. Marianna
led her to a seat, and she crossed her hands and nailed her dull gaze on
Roberto. I looked from one to another, and in that spectral light it seemed
to me that we were all souls come to judgment and naked to each other as to
God. As to my own wrongdoing, it weighed on me no more than dust. The only
feeling I had room for was fear--a fear that seemed to fill my throat and
lungs and bubble coldly over my drowning head.
Suddenly Roberto began to speak. His voice was clear and steady, and I
clutched at his words to drag myself above the surface of my terror. He
touched on the charge that had been made against his wife--he did not say
by whom--the foul rumor that had made itself heard on the eve of their
first parting. Duty, he said, had sent him a double summons; to fight for
his country and for his wife. He must clear his wife's name before he was
worthy to draw sword for Italy. There was no time to tame the slander
before throttling it; he had to take the shortest way to its throat. At
this point he looked at me and my soul shook. Then he turned to Andrea and
Gemma.
"When you came to me with this rumor," he said quietly, "you agreed to
consider the family honor satisfied if I could induce Don Egidio to let me
take his place and overhear my wife's confession, and if that confession
convinced me of her innocence. Was this the understanding?"
Andrea muttered something and Gemma tapped a sullen foot.
"After you had left," Roberto continued, "I laid the case before Don Egidio
and threw myself on his mercy." He looked at me fixedly. "So strong was his
faith in my wife's innocence that for her sake he agreed to violate the
sanctity of the confessional. I took his place."
Marianna sobbed and crossed herself and a strange look flitted over
Faustina's face.
There was a moment's pause; then Roberto, rising, walked across the room to
his wife and took her by the hand.
"Your seat is beside me, Countess Siviano," he said, and led her to the
empty chair by his own.
Gemma started to her feet, but her husband pulled her down again.
"Jesus! Mary!" We heard Donna Marianna moan.
Roberto raised his wife's hand to his lips. "You forgive me," he said, "the
means I took to defend you?" And turning to Andrea he added slowly: "I
declare my wife innocent and my honor satisfied. You swear to stand by my
decision?"
What Andrea stammered out, what hissing serpents of speech Gemma's clinched
teeth bit back, I never knew--for my eyes were on Faustina, and her face
was a wonder to behold.
She had let herself be led across the room like a blind woman, and had
listened without change of feature to her husband's first words; but as
he ceased her frozen gaze broke and her whole body seemed to melt against
his breast. He put his arm out, but she slipped to his feet and Marianna
hastened forward to raise her up. At that moment we heard the stroke
of oars across the quiet water and saw the Count's boat touch the
landing-steps. Four strong oarsmen from Monte Isola were to row him down
to Iseo, to take horse for Milan, and his servant, knapsack on shoulder,
knocked warningly at the terrace window.
"No time to lose, excellency!" he cried.
Roberto turned and gripped my hand. "Pray for me," he said low; and with a
brief gesture to the others ran down the terrace to the boat.
Marianna was bathing Faustina with happy tears.
"Look up, dear! Think how soon he will come back! And there is the
sunrise--see!"
Andrea and Gemma had slunk away like ghosts at cock-crow, and a red dawn
stood over Milan.
* * * * *
If that sun rose red it set scarlet. It was the first of the Five Days in
Milan--the Five Glorious Days, as they are called. Roberto reached the city
just before the gates closed. So much we knew--little more. We heard of him
in the Broletto (whence he must have escaped when the Austrians blew in
the door) and in the Casa Vidiserti, with Casati, Cattaneo and the rest;
but after the barricading began we could trace him only as having been
seen here and there in the thick of the fighting, or tending the wounded
under Bertani's orders. His place, one would have said, was in the
council-chamber, with the soberer heads; but that was an hour when every
man gave his blood where it was most needed, and Cernuschi, Dandolo,
Anfossi, della Porta fought shoulder to shoulder with students, artisans
and peasants. Certain it is that he was seen on the fifth day; for among
the volunteers who swarmed after Manara in his assault on the Porta Tosa
was a servant of palazzo Siviano; and this fellow swore he had seen his
master charge with Manara in the last assault--had watched him, sword
in hand, press close to the gates, and then, as they swung open before
the victorious dash of our men, had seen him drop and disappear in the
inrushing tide of peasants that almost swept the little company off its
feet. After that we heard nothing. There was savage work in Milan in those
days, and more than one well-known figure lay lost among the heaps of dead
hacked and disfeatured by Croat blades.
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