The Valley of Decision | Page 8

cried, springing forward in a passion of tears.
The lady, who was young, pale and handsome, pushed back her chair
with a warning hand.
"Child," she exclaimed, "your shoes are covered with mud; and, good
heavens, how you smell of the stable! Abate, is it thus you teach your
pupil to approach me?"
"Madam, I am abashed by the cavaliere's temerity. But in truth I
believe excessive grief has clouded his wits--'tis inconceivable how he
mourns his father!"
Donna Laura's eyebrows rose in a faint smile. "May he never have
worse to grieve for!" said she in French; then, extending her scented
hand to the little boy, she added solemnly: "My son, we have suffered
an irreparable loss."
Odo, abashed by her rebuke and the abate's apology, had drawn his
heels together in a rustic version of the low bow with which the
children of that day were taught to approach their parents.
"Holy Virgin!" said his mother with a laugh, "I perceive they have no
dancing-master at Pontesordo. Cavaliere, you may kiss my hand.
So--that's better; we shall make a gentleman of you yet. But what

makes your face so wet? Ah, crying, to be sure. Mother of God! as for
crying, there's enough to cry about." She put the child aside and turned
to the preceptor. "The Duke refuses to pay," she said with a shrug of
despair.
"Good heavens!" lamented the abate, raising his hands. "And Don
Lelio?" he faltered.
She shrugged again, impatiently. "As great a gambler as my husband.
They're all alike, abate: six times since last Easter has the bill been sent
to me for that trifle of a turquoise buckle he made such a to-do about
giving me." She rose and began to pace the room in disorder. "I'm a
ruined woman," she cried, "and it's a disgrace for the Duke to refuse
me."
The abate raised an admonishing finger. "Excellency...excellency..."
She glanced over her shoulder.
"Eh? You're right. Everything is heard here. But who's to pay for my
mourning the saints alone know! I sent an express this morning to my
father, but you know my brothers bleed him like leeches. I could have
got this easily enough from the Duke a year ago--it's his marriage has
made him so stiff. That little white-faced fool--she hates me because
Lelio won't look at her, and she thinks it's my fault. As if I cared whom
he looks at! Sometimes I think he has money put away...all I want is
two hundred ducats...a woman of my rank!" She turned suddenly on
Odo, who stood, very small and frightened, in the corner to which she
had pushed him. "What are you staring at, child? Eh! the monkey is
dropping with sleep. Look at his eyes, abate! Here, Vanna, Tonina, to
bed with him; he may sleep with you in my dressing-closet, Tonina. Go
with her, child, go; but for God's sake wake him if he snores. I'm too ill
to have my rest disturbed." And she lifted a pomander to her nostrils.
The next few days dwelt in Odo's memory as a blur of strange sights
and sounds. The super-acute state of his perceptions was succeeded
after a night's sleep by the natural passivity with which children accept
the improbable, so that he passed from one novel impression to another
as easily and with the same exhilaration as if he had been listening to a
fairy tale. Solitude and neglect had no surprises for him, and it seemed
natural enough that his mother and her maids should be too busy to
remember his presence.
For the first day or two he sat unnoticed on his little stool in a corner of

his mother's room, while packing-chests were dragged in, wardrobes
emptied, mantua-makers and milliners consulted, and troublesome
creditors dismissed with abuse, or even blows, by the servants lounging
in the ante-chamber. Donna Laura continued to show the liveliest
symptoms of concern, but the child perceived her distress to be but
indirectly connected with the loss she had suffered, and he had seen
enough of poverty at the farm to guess that the need of money was
somehow at the bottom of her troubles. How any one could be in want,
who slept between damask curtains and lived on sweet cakes and
chocolate, it exceeded his fancy to conceive; yet there were times when
his mother's voice had the same frightened angry sound as Filomena's
on the days when the bailiff went over the accounts at Pontesordo.
Her excellency's rooms, during these days, were always crowded, for
besides the dressmakers and other merchants there was the hairdresser,
or French Monsu--a loud, important figure, with a bag full of cosmetics
and curling-irons--the abate, always running in and out with messages
and letters, and taking no more notice of Odo