Edith Wharton - SSC 11

by Uncollected Stories (v2. 1)

  The girl turned her dense blue eyes toward Wyant; then, glancing away from him, she pointed to the canvas.

  “Notice the modeling of the left hand,” she began in a monotonous voice; “it recalls the hand of the Mona Lisa. The head of the naked genius will remind you of that of the St. John of the Louvre, but it is more purely pagan and is turned a little less to the right. The embroidery on the cloak is symbolic: you will see that the roots of this plant have burst through the vase. This recalls the famous definition of Hamlet’s character in Wilhelm Meister. Here are the mystic rose, the flame, and the serpent, emblem of eternity. Some of the other symbols we have not yet been able to decipher.”

  Wyant watched her curiously; she seemed to be reciting a lesson.

  “And the picture itself?” he said. “How do you explain that? Lux Mundi—what a curious device to connect with such a subject! What can it mean?”

  Miss Lombard dropped her eyes: the answer was evidently not included in her lesson.

  “What, indeed?” the doctor interposed. “What does life mean? As one may define it in a hundred different ways, so one may find a hundred different meanings in this picture. Its symbolism is as many-faceted as a well-cut diamond. Who, for instance, is that divine lady? Is it she who is the true Lux Mundi—the light reflected from jewels and young eyes, from polished marble and clear waters and statues of bronze? Or is that the Light of the World, extinguished on yonder stormy hill, and is this lady the Pride of Life, feasting blindly on the wine of iniquity, with her back turned to the light which has shone for her in vain? Something of both these meanings may be traced in the picture; but to me it symbolizes rather the central truth of existence: that all that is raised in incorruption is sown in corruption; art, beauty, love, religion; that all our wine is drunk out of skulls, and poured for us by the mysterious genius of a remote and cruel past.”

  The doctor’s face blazed: his bent figure seemed to straighten itself and become taller.

  “Ah,” he cried, growing more dithyrambic, “how lightly you ask what it means! How confidently you expect an answer! Yet here am I who have given my life to the study of the Renaissance; who have violated its tomb, laid open its dead body, and traced the course of every muscle, bone, and artery; who have sucked its very soul from the pages of poets and humanists; who have wept and believed with Joachim of Flora, smiled and doubted with AEneas Sylvius Piccolomini; who have patiently followed to its source the least inspiration of the masters, and groped in neolithic caverns and Babylonian ruins for the first unfolding tendrils of the arabesques of Mantegna and Crivelli; and I tell you that I stand abashed and ignorant before the mystery of this picture. It means nothing—it means all things. It may represent the period which saw its creation; it may represent all ages past and to come. There are volumes of meaning in the tiniest emblem on the lady’s cloak; the blossoms of its border are rooted in the deepest soil of myth and tradition. Don’t ask what it means, young man, but bow your head in thankfulness for having seen it!”

  Miss Lombard laid her hand on his arm.

  “Don’t excite yourself, father,” she said in the detached tone of a professional nurse.

  He answered with a despairing gesture. “Ah, it’s easy for you to talk. You have years and years to spend with it; I am an old man, and every moment counts!”

  “It’s bad for you,” she repeated with gentle obstinacy.

  The doctor’s sacred fury had in fact burnt itself out. He dropped into a seat with dull eyes and slackening lips, and his daughter drew the curtain across the picture.

  Wyant turned away reluctantly. He felt that his opportunity was slipping from him, yet he dared not refer to Clyde’s wish for a photograph. He now understood the meaning of the laugh with which Doctor Lombard had given him leave to carry away all the details he could remember. The picture was so dazzling, so unexpected, so crossed with elusive and contradictory suggestions, that the most alert observer, when placed suddenly before it, must lose his coordinating faculty in a sense of confused wonder. Yet how valuable to Clyde the record of such a work would be! In some ways it seemed to be the summing up of the master’s thought, the key to his enigmatic philosophy.

  The doctor had risen and was walking slowly toward the door. His daughter unlocked it, and Wyant followed them back in silence to the room in which they had left Mrs. Lombard. That lady was no longer there, and he could think of no excuse for lingering.

  He thanked the doctor, and turned to Miss Lombard, who stood in the middle of the room as though awaiting farther orders.

  “It is very good of you,” he said, “to allow one even a glimpse of such a treasure.”

  She looked at him with her odd directness. “You will come again?” she said quickly; and turning to her father she added: “You know what Professor Clyde asked. This gentleman cannot give him any account of the picture without seeing it again.”

  Doctor Lombard glanced at her vaguely; he was still like a person in a trance.

  “Eh?” he said, rousing himself with an effort.

  “I said, father, that Mr. Wyant must see the picture again if he is to tell Professor Clyde about it,” Miss Lombard repeated with extraordinary precision of tone.

  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?”

  “To-morrow—to-morrow 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 façade. 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.