Early Short Stories Vol. 1

by Edith Wharton

  Wyant was silent. He had the puzzled sense that his wishes were being divined and gratified for reasons with which he was in no way connected.

  “Well, well,” the doctor muttered, “I don’t say no—I don’t say no. I know what Clyde wants—I don’t refuse to help him.” He turned to Wyant. “You may come again—you may make notes,” he added with a sudden effort. “Jot down what occurs to you. I’m willing to concede that.”

  Wyant again caught the girl’s eye, but its emphatic message perplexed him.

  “You’re very good,” he said tentatively, “but the fact is the picture is so mysterious—so full of complicated detail—that I’m afraid no notes I could make would serve Clyde’s purpose as well as—as a photograph, say. If you would allow me—”

  Miss Lombard’s brow darkened, and her father raised his head furiously.

  “A photograph? A photograph, did you say? Good God, man, not ten people have been allowed to set foot in that room! A PHOTOGRAPH?”

  Wyant saw his mistake, but saw also that he had gone too far to retreat.

  “I know, sir, from what Clyde has told me, that you object to having any reproduction of the picture published; but he hoped you might let me take a photograph for his personal use—not to be reproduced in his book, but simply to give him something to work by. I should take the photograph myself, and the negative would of course be yours. If you wished it, only one impression would be struck off, and that one Clyde could return to you when he had done with it.”

  Doctor Lombard interrupted him with a snarl. “When he had done with it? Just so: I thank thee for that word! When it had been re-photographed, drawn, traced, autotyped, passed about from hand to hand, defiled by every ignorant eye in England, vulgarized by the blundering praise of every art-scribbler in Europe! Bah! I’d as soon give you the picture itself: why don’t you ask for that?”

  “Well, sir,” said Wyant calmly, “if you will trust me with it, I’ll engage to take it safely to England and back, and to let no eye but Clyde’s see it while it is out of your keeping.”

  The doctor received this remarkable proposal in silence; then he burst into a laugh.

  “Upon my soul!” he said with sardonic good humor.

  It was Miss Lombard’s turn to look perplexedly at Wyant. His last words and her father’s unexpected reply had evidently carried her beyond her depth.

  “Well, sir, am I to take the picture?” Wyant smilingly pursued.

  “No, young man; nor a photograph of it. Nor a sketch, either; mind that,—nothing that can be reproduced. Sybilla,” he cried with sudden passion, “swear to me that the picture shall never be reproduced! No photograph, no sketch—now or afterward. Do you hear me?”

  “Yes, father,” said the girl quietly.

  “The vandals,” he muttered, “the desecrators of beauty; if I thought it would ever get into their hands I’d burn it first, by God!” He turned to Wyant, speaking more quietly. “I said you might come back—I never retract what I say. But you must give me your word that no one but Clyde shall see the notes you make.”

  Wyant was growing warm.

  “If you won’t trust me with a photograph I wonder you trust me not to show my notes!” he exclaimed.

  The doctor looked at him with a malicious smile.

  “Humph!” he said; “would they be of much use to anybody?”

  Wyant saw that he was losing ground and controlled his impatience.

  “To Clyde, I hope, at any rate,” he answered, holding out his hand. The doctor shook it without a trace of resentment, and Wyant added: “When shall I come, sir?”

  “Tomorrow—tomorrow morning,” cried Miss Lombard, speaking suddenly.

  She looked fixedly at her father, and he shrugged his shoulders.

  “The picture is hers,” he said to Wyant.

  In the ante-chamber the young man was met by the woman who had admitted him. She handed him his hat and stick, and turned to unbar the door. As the bolt slipped back he felt a touch on his arm.

  “You have a letter?” she said in a low tone.

  “A letter?” He stared. “What letter?”

  She shrugged her shoulders, and drew back to let him pass.

  II

  As Wyant emerged from the house he paused once more to glance up at its scarred brick facade. The marble hand drooped tragically above the entrance: in the waning light it seemed to have relaxed into the passiveness of despair, and Wyant stood musing on its hidden meaning. But the Dead Hand was not the only mysterious thing about Doctor Lombard’s house. What were the relations between Miss Lombard and her father? Above all, between Miss Lombard and her picture? She did not look like a person capable of a disinterested passion for the arts; and there had been moments when it struck Wyant that she hated the picture.

  The sky at the end of the street was flooded with turbulent yellow light, and the young man turned his steps toward the church of San Domenico, in the hope of catching the lingering brightness on Sodoma’s St. Catherine.

  The great bare aisles were almost dark when he entered, and he had to grope his way to the chapel steps. Under the momentary evocation of the sunset, the saint’s figure emerged pale and swooning from the dusk, and the warm light gave a sensual tinge to her ecstasy. The flesh seemed to glow and heave, the eyelids to tremble; Wyant stood fascinated by the accidental collaboration of light and color.

  Suddenly he noticed that something white had fluttered to the ground at his feet. He stooped and picked up a small thin sheet of note-paper, folded and sealed like an old-fashioned letter, and bearing the superscription:—

  To the Count Ottaviano Celsi.

  Wyant stared at this mysterious document. Where had it come from? He was distinctly conscious of having seen it fall through the air, close to his feet. He glanced up at the dark ceiling of the chapel; then he turned and looked about the church. There was only one figure in it, that of a man who knelt near the high altar.

  Suddenly Wyant recalled the question of Doctor Lombard’s maid-servant. Was this the letter she had asked for? Had he been unconsciously carrying it about with him all the afternoon? Who was Count Ottaviano Celsi, and how came Wyant to have been chosen to act as that nobleman’s ambulant letter-box?

  Wyant laid his hat and stick on the chapel steps and began to explore his pockets, in the irrational hope of finding there some clue to the mystery; but they held nothing which he had not himself put there, and he was reduced to wondering how the letter, supposing some unknown hand to have bestowed it on him, had happened to fall out while he stood motionless before the picture.

  At this point he was disturbed by a step on the floor of the aisle, and turning, he saw his lustrous-eyed neighbor of the table d’hote.

  The young man bowed and waved an apologetic hand.

  “I do not intrude?” he inquired suavely.

  Without waiting for a reply, he mounted the steps of the chapel, glancing about him with the affable air of an afternoon caller.

  “I see,” he remarked with a smile, “that you know the hour at which our saint should be visited.”

  Wyant agreed that the hour was indeed felicitous.

  The stranger stood beamingly before the picture.

  “What grace! What poetry!” he murmured, apostrophizing the St. Catherine, but letting his glance slip rapidly about the chapel as he spoke.

  Wyant, detecting the manoeuvre, murmured a brief assent.

  “But it is cold here—mortally cold; you do not find it so?” The intruder put on his hat. “It is permitted at this hour—when the church is empty. And you, my dear sir—do you not feel the dampness? You are an artist, are you not? And to artists it is permitted to cover the head when they are engaged in the study of the paintings.”

  He darted suddenly toward the steps and bent over Wyant’s hat.

  “Permit me—cover yourself!” he said a moment later, holding out the hat with an ingratiating gesture.

  A light flashed on Wyant.

  “Perhaps,�
� he said, looking straight at the young man, “you will tell me your name. My own is Wyant.”

  The stranger, surprised, but not disconcerted, drew forth a coroneted card, which he offered with a low bow. On the card was engraved:—

  Il Conte Ottaviano Celsi.

  “I am much obliged to you,” said Wyant; “and I may as well tell you that the letter which you apparently expected to find in the lining of my hat is not there, but in my pocket.”

  He drew it out and handed it to its owner, who had grown very pale.

  “And now,” Wyant continued, “you will perhaps be good enough to tell me what all this means.”

  There was no mistaking the effect produced on Count Ottaviano by this request. His lips moved, but he achieved only an ineffectual smile.

  “I suppose you know,” Wyant went on, his anger rising at the sight of the other’s discomfiture, “that you have taken an unwarrantable liberty. I don’t yet understand what part I have been made to play, but it’s evident that you have made use of me to serve some purpose of your own, and I propose to know the reason why.”

  Count Ottaviano advanced with an imploring gesture.

  “Sir,” he pleaded, “you permit me to speak?”

  “I expect you to,” cried Wyant. “But not here,” he added, hearing the clank of the verger’s keys. “It is growing dark, and we shall be turned out in a few minutes.”

  He walked across the church, and Count Ottaviano followed him out into the deserted square.

  “Now,” said Wyant, pausing on the steps.

  The Count, who had regained some measure of self-possession, began to speak in a high key, with an accompaniment of conciliatory gesture.

  “My dear sir—my dear Mr. Wyant—you find me in an abominable position—that, as a man of honor, I immediately confess. I have taken advantage of you—yes! I have counted on your amiability, your chivalry—too far, perhaps? I confess it! But what could I do? It was to oblige a lady”—he laid a hand on his heart—“a lady whom I would die to serve!” He went on with increasing volubility, his deliberate English swept away by a torrent of Italian, through which Wyant, with some difficulty, struggled to a comprehension of the case.

  Count Ottaviano, according to his own statement, had come to Siena some months previously, on business connected with his mother’s property; the paternal estate being near Orvieto, of which ancient city his father was syndic. Soon after his arrival in Siena the young Count had met the incomparable daughter of Doctor Lombard, and falling deeply in love with her, had prevailed on his parents to ask her hand in marriage. Doctor Lombard had not opposed his suit, but when the question of settlements arose it became known that Miss Lombard, who was possessed of a small property in her own right, had a short time before invested the whole amount in the purchase of the Bergamo Leonardo. Thereupon Count Ottaviano’s parents had politely suggested that she should sell the picture and thus recover her independence; and this proposal being met by a curt refusal from Doctor Lombard, they had withdrawn their consent to their son’s marriage. The young lady’s attitude had hitherto been one of passive submission; she was horribly afraid of her father, and would never venture openly to oppose him; but she had made known to Ottaviano her intention of not giving him up, of waiting patiently till events should take a more favorable turn. She seemed hardly aware, the Count said with a sigh, that the means of escape lay in her own hands; that she was of age, and had a right to sell the picture, and to marry without asking her father’s consent. Meanwhile her suitor spared no pains to keep himself before her, to remind her that he, too, was waiting and would never give her up.

  Doctor Lombard, who suspected the young man of trying to persuade Sybilla to sell the picture, had forbidden the lovers to meet or to correspond; they were thus driven to clandestine communication, and had several times, the Count ingenuously avowed, made use of the doctor’s visitors as a means of exchanging letters.

  “And you told the visitors to ring twice?” Wyant interposed.

  The young man extended his hands in a deprecating gesture. Could Mr. Wyant blame him? He was young, he was ardent, he was enamored! The young lady had done him the supreme honor of avowing her attachment, of pledging her unalterable fidelity; should he suffer his devotion to be outdone? But his purpose in writing to her, he admitted, was not merely to reiterate his fidelity; he was trying by every means in his power to induce her to sell the picture. He had organized a plan of action; every detail was complete; if she would but have the courage to carry out his instructions he would answer for the result. His idea was that she should secretly retire to a convent of which his aunt was the Mother Superior, and from that stronghold should transact the sale of the Leonardo. He had a purchaser ready, who was willing to pay a large sum; a sum, Count Ottaviano whispered, considerably in excess of the young lady’s original inheritance; once the picture sold, it could, if necessary, be removed by force from Doctor Lombard’s house, and his daughter, being safely in the convent, would be spared the painful scenes incidental to the removal. Finally, if Doctor Lombard were vindictive enough to refuse his consent to her marriage, she had only to make a sommation respectueuse, and at the end of the prescribed delay no power on earth could prevent her becoming the wife of Count Ottaviano.

  Wyant’s anger had fallen at the recital of this simple romance. It was absurd to be angry with a young man who confided his secrets to the first stranger he met in the streets, and placed his hand on his heart whenever he mentioned the name of his betrothed. The easiest way out of the business was to take it as a joke. Wyant had played the wall to this new Pyramus and Thisbe, and was philosophic enough to laugh at the part he had unwittingly performed.

  He held out his hand with a smile to Count Ottaviano.

  “I won’t deprive you any longer,” he said, “of the pleasure of reading your letter.”

  “Oh, sir, a thousand thanks! And when you return to the casa Lombard, you will take a message from me—the letter she expected this afternoon?”

  “The letter she expected?” Wyant paused. “No, thank you. I thought you understood that where I come from we don’t do that kind of thing—knowingly.”

  “But, sir, to serve a young lady!”

  “I’m sorry for the young lady, if what you tell me is true”—the Count’s expressive hands resented the doubt—“but remember that if I am under obligations to any one in this matter, it is to her father, who has admitted me to his house and has allowed me to see his picture.”

  “HIS picture? Hers!”

  “Well, the house is his, at all events.”

  “Unhappily—since to her it is a dungeon!”

  “Why doesn’t she leave it, then?” exclaimed Wyant impatiently.

  The Count clasped his hands. “Ah, how you say that—with what force, with what virility! If you would but say it to HER in that tone—you, her countryman! She has no one to advise her; the mother is an idiot; the father is terrible; she is in his power; it is my belief that he would kill her if she resisted him. Mr. Wyant, I tremble for her life while she remains in that house!”

  “Oh, come,” said Wyant lightly, “they seem to understand each other well enough. But in any case, you must see that I can’t interfere—at least you would if you were an Englishman,” he added with an escape of contempt.

  III

  Wyant’s affiliations in Siena being restricted to an acquaintance with his landlady, he was forced to apply to her for the verification of Count Ottaviano’s story.

  The young nobleman had, it appeared, given a perfectly correct account of his situation. His father, Count Celsi-Mongirone, was a man of distinguished family and some wealth. He was syndic of Orvieto, and lived either in that town or on his neighboring estate of Mongirone. His wife owned a large property near Siena, and Count Ottaviano, who was the second son, came there from time to time to look into its management. The eldest son was in the army, the youngest in the Church; and an aunt of Count Ottaviano’s was Mother Superior of the Visitandine con
vent in Siena. At one time it had been said that Count Ottaviano, who was a most amiable and accomplished young man, was to marry the daughter of the strange Englishman, Doctor Lombard, but difficulties having arisen as to the adjustment of the young lady’s dower, Count Celsi-Mongirone had very properly broken off the match. It was sad for the young man, however, who was said to be deeply in love, and to find frequent excuses for coming to Siena to inspect his mother’s estate.

  Viewed in the light of Count Ottaviano’s personality the story had a tinge of opera bouffe; but the next morning, as Wyant mounted the stairs of the House of the Dead Hand, the situation insensibly assumed another aspect. It was impossible to take Doctor Lombard lightly; and there was a suggestion of fatality in the appearance of his gaunt dwelling. Who could tell amid what tragic records of domestic tyranny and fluttering broken purposes the little drama of Miss Lombard’s fate was being played out? Might not the accumulated influences of such a house modify the lives within it in a manner unguessed by the inmates of a suburban villa with sanitary plumbing and a telephone?

  One person, at least, remained unperturbed by such fanciful problems; and that was Mrs. Lombard, who, at Wyant’s entrance, raised a placidly wrinkled brow from her knitting. The morning was mild, and her chair had been wheeled into a bar of sunshine near the window, so that she made a cheerful spot of prose in the poetic gloom of her surroundings.

  “What a nice morning!” she said; “it must be delightful weather at Bonchurch.”

  Her dull blue glance wandered across the narrow street with its threatening house fronts, and fluttered back baffled, like a bird with clipped wings. It was evident, poor lady, that she had never seen beyond the opposite houses.

  Wyant was not sorry to find her alone. Seeing that she was surprised at his reappearance he said at once: “I have come back to study Miss Lombard’s picture.”

  “Oh, the picture—” Mrs. Lombard’s face expressed a gentle disappointment, which might have been boredom in a person of acuter sensibilities. “It’s an original Leonardo, you know,” she said mechanically.