The Valley Of Decision

Prima che incontro alla festosa fronteI lugubri suoi lampi il ver baleni.

　　It was very still in the small neglected chapel. The noises of the farmcame faintly through closed doors--voices shouting at the oxen in thelower fields, the querulous bark of the old house-dog, and Filomena'sangry calls to the little white-faced foundling in the kitchen.

　　The February day was closing, and a ray of sunshine, slanting through aslit in the chapel wall, brought out the vision of a pale haloed headfloating against the dusky background of the chancel like a water-lilyon its leaf. The face was that of the saint of Assisi--a sunken ravagedcountenance, lit with an ecstasy of suffering that seemed not so much toreflect the anguish of the Christ at whose feet the saint knelt, as themute pain of all poor down-trodden folk on earth.

　　When the small Odo Valsecca--the only frequenter of the chapel--had beentaunted by the farmer's wife for being a beggar's brat, or when his earswere tingling from the heavy hand of the farmer's son, he found amelancholy kinship in that suffering face; but since he had fightingblood in him too, coming on the mother's side of the rude Piedmontesestock of the Marquesses di Donnaz, there were other moods when he turnedinstead to the stout Saint George in gold armour, just discerniblethrough the grime and dust of the opposite wall.

　　The chapel of Pontesordo was indeed as wonderful a storybook as fateever unrolled before the eyes of a neglected and solitary child. For ahundred years or more Pontesordo, a fortified manor of the Dukes ofPianura, had been used as a farmhouse; and the chapel was never openedsave when, on Easter Sunday, a priest came from the town to say mass. Atother times it stood abandoned, cobwebs curtaining the narrow windows,farm tools leaning against the walls, and the dust deep on the sea-godsand acanthus volutes of the altar. The manor of Pontesordo was very old.

　　The country people said that the great warlock Virgil, whosedwelling-place was at Mantua, had once shut himself up for a year in thetopmost chamber of the keep, engaged in unholy researches; and anotherlegend related that Alda, wife of an early lord of Pianura, had thrownherself from its battlements to escape the pursuit of the terribleEzzelino. The chapel adjoined this keep, and Filomena, the farmer'swife, told Odo that it was even older than the tower and that the wallshad been painted by early martyrs who had concealed themselves therefrom the persecutions of the pagan emperors.

　　On such questions a child of Odo's age could obviously have nopronounced opinion, the less so as Filomena's facts varied according tothe seasons or her mood, so that on a day of east wind or when the wormswere not hatching well, she had been known to affirm that the pagans hadpainted the chapel under Virgil's instruction, to commemorate theChristians they had tortured. In spite of the distance to which theseconflicting statements seemed to relegate them, Odo somehow felt asthough these pale strange people--youths with ardent faces under theirsmall round caps, damsels with wheat-coloured hair and boys no biggerthan himself, holding spotted dogs in leash--were younger and nearer tohim than the dwellers on the farm: Jacopone the farmer, the shrillFilomena, who was Odo's foster-mother, the hulking bully their son andthe abate who once a week came out from Pianura to give Odo religiousinstruction and who dismissed his questions with the invariableexhortation not to pry into matters that were beyond his years. Odo hadloved the pictures in the chapel all the better since the abate, with ashrug, had told him they were nothing but old rubbish, the work of thebarbarians.

　　Life at Pontesordo was in truth not very pleasant for an ardent andsensitive little boy of nine, whose remote connection with the reigningline of Pianura did not preserve him from wearing torn clothes andeating black bread and beans out of an earthen bowl on the kitchendoorstep.

　　"Go ask your mother for new clothes!" Filomena would snap at him, whenhis toes came through his shoes and the rents in his jacket-sleeves hadspread beyond darning. "These you are wearing are my Giannozzo's, as youwell know, and every rag on your back is mine, if there were any law forpoor folk, for not a copper of pay for your keep or a stitch of clothingfor your body have we had these two years come Assumption--. What'sthat? You can't ask your mother, you say, because she never comes here?

　　True enough--fine ladies let their brats live in cow-dung, but they musthave Indian carpets under their own feet. Well, ask the abate, then--hehas lace ruffles to his coat and a naked woman painted on his snuffbox--What? He only holds his hands up when you ask? Well, then, go askyour friends on the chapel-walls--maybe they'll give you a pair ofshoes--though Saint Francis, for that matter, was the father of thediscalced, and would doubtless tell you to go without!" And she wouldadd with a coarse laugh: "Don't you know that the discalced are shodwith gold?"It was after such a scene that the beggar-noble, as they called him atPontesordo, would steal away to the chapel and, seating himself on anupturned basket or a heap of pumpkins, gaze long into the face of themournful saint.

　　There was nothing unusual in Odo's lot. It was that of many children inthe eighteenth century, especially those whose parents were cadets ofnoble houses, with an appanage barely sufficient to keep their wives andthemselves in court finery, much less to pay their debts and clothe andeducate their children. All over Italy at that moment, had Odo Valseccabut known it, were lads whose ancestors, like his own, had been dukesand crusaders, but who, none the less, were faring, as he fared, onblack bread and hard blows, and the half-comprehended taunts of unpaidfoster-parents. Many, doubtless, there were who cared little enough, aslong as they might play morro with the farmer's lads and ride the coltbare-back through the pasture and go bird-netting and frog-hunting withthe village children; but some perhaps, like Odo, suffered in a dumbanimal way, without understanding why life was so hard on little boys.

　　Odo, for his part, had small taste for the sports in which Gianozzo andthe village lads took pleasure. He shrank from any amusement associatedwith the frightening or hurting of animals, and his bosom swelled withthe fine gentleman's scorn of the clowns who got their fun in so coarsea way. Now and then he found a moment's glee in a sharp tussle with oneof the younger children who had been tormenting a frog or a beetle; buthe was still too young for real fighting, and could only hang on theoutskirts when the bigger boys closed, and think how some day he wouldbe at them and break their lubberly heads. There were thus many hourswhen he turned to the silent consolations of the chapel. So familiar hadhe grown with the images on its walls that he had a name for every one:

　　the King, the Knight, the Lady, the children with guinea-pigs, basilisksand leopards, and lastly the Friend, as he called Saint Francis. Analmond-faced lady on a white palfrey with gold trappings represented hismother, whom he had seen too seldom for any distinct image to interferewith the illusion; a knight in damascened armour and scarlet cloak wasthe valiant captain, his father, who held a commission in the ducalarmy; and a proud young man in diadem and ermine, attended by a retinueof pages, stood for his cousin, the reigning Duke of Pianura.

　　A mist, as usual at that hour, was rising from the marshes betweenPontesordo and Pianura, and the light soon ebbed from the saint's face,leaving the chapel in obscurity. Odo had crept there that afternoon witha keener sense than usual of the fact that life was hard on little boys;and though he was cold and hungry and half afraid, the solitude in whichhe cowered seemed more endurable than the noisy kitchen where, at thathour, the farm hands were gathering for their polenta, and Filomena wasscreaming at the frightened orphan who carried the dishes to the table.

　　He knew, of course, that life at Pontesordo would not last forever--that in time he would grow up and be mysteriously transformed intoa young gentleman with a sword and laced coat, who would go to court andperhaps be an officer in the Duke's army or in that of some neighbouringprince; but, viewed from the lowliness of his nine years, that dazzlingprospect was too remote to yield much solace for the cuffs and sneers,the ragged shoes and sour bread of the present. The fog outside hadthickened, and the face of Odo's friend was now discernible only as aspot of pallor in the surrounding dimness. Even he seemed farther awaythan usual, withdrawn into the fog as into that mist of indifferencewhich lay all about Odo's hot and eager spirit. The child sat down amongthe gourds and medlars on the muddy floor and hid his face against hisknees.

　　He had sat there a long time when the noise of wheels and the crack of apostillion's whip roused the dogs chained in the stable. Odo's heartbegan to beat. What could the sounds mean? It was as though theflood-tide of the unknown were rising about him and bursting open thechapel door to pour in on his loneliness. It was, in fact, Filomena whoopened the door, crying out to him in an odd Easter Sunday voice, thevoice she used when she had on her silk neckerchief and gold chain orwhen she was talking to the bailiff.

　　Odo sprang up and hid his face in her lap. She seemed, of a sudden,nearer to him than any one else--a last barrier between himself and themystery that awaited him outside.

　　"Come, you poor sparrow," she said, dragging him across the threshold ofthe chapel, "the abate is here asking for you;" and she crossed herself,as though she had named a saint.

　　Odo pulled away from her with a last wistful glance at Saint Francis,who looked back at him in an ecstasy of commiseration.

　　"Come, come," Filomena repeated, dropping to her ordinary key as shefelt the resistance of the little boy's hand. "Have you no heart, youwicked child? But, to be sure, the poor innocent doesn't know! Comecavaliere, your illustrious mother waits.""My mother?" The blood rushed to his face; and she had called him"cavaliere"!

　　"Not here, my poor lamb! The abate is here; don't you see the lights ofthe carriage? There, there, go to him. I haven't told him, yourreverence; it's my silly tender-heartedness that won't let me. He'salways been like one of my own creatures to me--" and she confounded Odoby bursting into tears.

　　The abate stood on the doorstep. He was a tall stout man with a hookednose and lace ruffles. His nostrils were stained with snuff and he tooka pinch from a tortoise-shell box set with the miniature of a lady; thenhe looked down at Odo and shrugged his shoulders.

　　Odo was growing sick with apprehension. It was two days before theappointed time for his weekly instruction and he had not prepared hiscatechism. He had not even thought of it--and the abate could use thecane. Odo stood silent and envied girls, who are not disgraced bycrying. The tears were in his throat, but he had fixed principles aboutcrying. It was his opinion that a little boy who was a cavaliere mightweep when he was angry or sorry, but never when he was afraid; so heheld his head high and put his hand to his side, as though to rest it onhis sword.

　　The abate sneezed and tapped his snuff-box.

　　"Come, come, cavaliere, you must be brave--you must be a man; you haveduties, you have responsibilities. It's your duty to console yourmother--the poor lady is plunged in despair. Eh? What's that? Youhaven't told him? Cavaliere, your illustrious father is no more."Odo stared a moment without understanding; then his grief burst from himin a great sob, and he hid himself against Filomena's apron, weeping forthe father in damascened armour and scarlet cloak.

　　"Come, come," said the abate impatiently. "Is supper laid? for we mustbe gone as soon as the mist rises." He took the little boy by the hand.

　　"Would it not distract your mind to recite the catechism?" he inquired.

　　"No, no!" cried Odo with redoubled sobs.

　　"Well, then, as you will. What a madman!" he exclaimed to Filomena. "Iwarrant it hasn't seen its father three times in its life. Come in,cavaliere; come to supper."Filomena had laid a table in the stone chamber known as the bailiff'sparlour, and thither the abate dragged his charge and set him downbefore the coarse tablecloth covered with earthen platters. A tallow dipthrew its flare on the abate's big aquiline face as he sat opposite Odo,gulping the hastily prepared frittura and the thick purple wine in itswicker flask. Odo could eat nothing. The tears still ran down his cheeksand his whole soul was possessed by the longing to steal back and seewhether the figure of the knight in the scarlet cloak had vanished fromthe chapel wall. The abate sat in silence, gobbling his food like theold black pig in the yard. When he had finished he stood up, exclaiming:

　　"Death comes to us all, as the hawk said to the chicken. You must be aman, cavaliere." Then he stepped into the kitchen, and called out forthe horses to be put to.

　　The farm hands had slunk away to one of the outhouses, and Filomena andJacopone stood bowing and curtseying as the carriage drew up at thekitchen door. In a corner of the big vaulted room the little foundlingwas washing the dishes, heaping the scraps in a bowl for herself and thefowls. Odo ran back and touched her arm. She gave a start and looked athim with frightened eyes. He had nothing to give her, but he said:

　　"Good-bye, Momola"; and he thought to himself that when he was grown upand had a sword he would surely come back and bring her a pair of shoesand a panettone. The abate was calling him, and the next moment he foundhimself lifted into the carriage, amid the blessings and lamentations ofhis foster-parents; and with a great baying of dogs and clacking ofwhipcord the horses clattered out of the farmyard, and turned theirheads toward Pianura.

　　The mist had rolled back and fields and vineyards lay bare to the wintermoon. The way was lonely, for it skirted the marsh, where no one lived;and only here and there the tall black shadow of a crucifix ate into thewhiteness of the road. Shreds of vapour still hung about the hollows,but beyond these fold on fold of translucent hills melted into a skydewy with stars. Odo cowered in his corner, staring out awestruck at theunrolling of the strange white landscape. He had seldom been out atnight, and never in a carriage; and there was something terrifying tohim in this flight through the silent moon-washed fields, where no oxenmoved in the furrows, no peasants pruned the mulberries, and not agoat's bell tinkled among the oaks. He felt himself alone in a ghostlyworld from which even the animals had vanished, and at last he avertedhis eyes from the dreadful scene and sat watching the abate, who hadfixed a reading-lamp at his back, and whose hooked-nosed shadow, as thesprings jolted him up and down, danced overhead like the huge Pulcinellaat the fair of Pontesordo.