The poet, masked and unattended, rejoined his friend without a word; and Odo guessed in him an eye and ear alert for pursuit. Guided by the pressure of his arm, Odo was hurried round the bend of the lane, up a transverse alley and across a little square lost between high shuttered buildings. Alfieri, at his first word, gripped his arm with a backward glance; then urged him on under the denser blackness of an arched passageway, at the end of which an oil-light glimmered. Here a gate in a wall confronted them. It opened at Alfieri’s tap and Odo scented wet box- borders and felt the gravel of a path under foot. The gate was at once locked behind them and they entered the ground-floor of a house as dark as the garden. Here a maidservant of close aspect met them with a lamp and preceded them upstairs to a bare landing hung with charts and portulani. On Odo’s flushed anticipations this antechamber, which seemed the approach to some pedant’s cabinet, had an effect undeniably chilling; but Alfieri, heedless of his surprise, had cast off cloak and mask, and now led the way into a long conventual-looking room lined with book-shelves. A knot of middle-aged gentlemen of sober dress and manner, gathered about a cabinet of fossils in the centre of this apartment, looked up at the entrance of the two friends; then the group divided, and Odo with a start recognised the girl he had seen on the road to the Superga.
She bowed gravely to the young men. “My father,” said she, in a clear voice without trace of diffidence, “has gone to his study for a book, but will be with you in a moment.”
She wore a dress in keeping with her manner, its black stuff folds and the lawn kerchief crossed on her bosom giving height and authority to her slight figure. The dark unpowdered hair drawn back over a cushion made a severer setting for her face than the fluctuating brim of her shade-hat; and this perhaps added to the sense of estrangement with which Odo gazed at her; but she met his look with a smile, and instantly the rosy girl flashed through her grave exterior.
“Here is my father,” said she; and her companion of the previous day stepped into the room with several folios under his arm.
Alfieri turned to Odo. “This, my dear Odo,” said he, “is my distinguished friend, Professor Vivaldi, who has done us the honour of inviting us to his house.” He took the Professor’s hand. “I have brought you,” he continued, “the friend you were kind enough to include in your invitation—the Cavaliere Odo Valsecca.”
Vivaldi bowed. “Count Alfieri’s friends,” said he, “are always welcome to my house; though I fear there is here little to interest a young gentleman of the Cavaliere Valsecca’s years.” And Odo detected a shade of doubt in his glance.
“The Cavaliere Valsecca,” Alfieri smilingly rejoined, “is above his years in wit and learning, and I answer for his interest as I do for his discretion.”
The Professor bowed again. “Count Alfieri, sir,” he said, “has doubtless explained to you the necessity that obliges me to be so private in receiving my friends; and now perhaps you will join these gentlemen in examining some rare fossil fish newly sent me from the Monte Bolca.”
Odo murmured a civil rejoinder; but the wonder into which the sight of the young girl had thrown him was fast verging on stupefaction. What mystery was here? What necessity compelled an elderly professor to receive his scientific friends like a band of political conspirators?
How above all, in the light of the girl’s presence, was Odo to interpret Alfieri’s extravagant allusions to the nature of their visit?
The company having returned to the cabinet of fossils, none seemed to observe his disorder but the young lady who was its cause; and seeing him stand apart she advanced with a smile, saying, “Perhaps you would rather look at some of my father’s other curiosities.”
Simple as the words were, they failed to restore Odo’s self-possession, and for a moment he made no answer. Perhaps she partly guessed the cause of his commotion; yet it was not so much her beauty that silenced him, as the spirit that seemed to inhabit it. Nature, in general so chary of her gifts, so prone to use one good feature as the palliation of a dozen deficiencies, to wed the eloquent lip with the ineffectual eye, had indeed compounded her of all fine meanings, making each grace the complement of another and every outward charm expressive of some inward quality. Here was as little of the convent-bred miss as of the flippant and vapourish fine lady; and any suggestion of a less fair alternative vanished before such candid graces. Odo’s confusion had in truth sprung from Alfieri’s ambiguous hints; and these shrivelling to nought in the gaze that encountered his, constraint gave way to a sense of wondering pleasure.
“I should like to see whatever you will show me,” said he, as simply as one child speaking to another; and she answered in the same tone, “Then we’ll glance at my father’s collections before the serious business of the evening begins.”
With these words she began to lead him about the room, pointing out and explaining the curiosities it contained. It was clear that, like many scholars of his day, Professor Vivaldi was something of an eclectic in his studies, for while one table held a fine orrery, a cabinet of coins stood near, and the book-shelves were surmounted by specimens of coral and petrified wood. Of all these rarities his daughter had a word to say, and though her explanations were brief and without affectation of pedantry, they put her companion’s ignorance to the blush. It must be owned, however, that had his learning been a match for hers it would have stood him in poor stead at the moment; his faculties being lost in the wonder of hearing such discourse from such lips. To his compliments on her erudition she returned with a smile that what learning she had was no merit, since she had been bred in a library; to which she suddenly added:—“You are not unknown to me, Cavaliere; but I never thought to see you here.”
The words renewed her hearer’s surprise; but giving him no time to reply, she went on in a lower tone:—“You are young and the world is fair before you. Have you considered that before risking yourself among us?”
She coloured under Odo’s wondering gaze, and at his random rejoinder that it was a risk any man would gladly take without considering, she turned from him with a gesture in which he fancied a shade of disappointment.
By this they had reached the cabinet of fossils, about which the interest of the other guests still seemed to centre. Alfieri, indeed, paced the farther end of the room with the air of awaiting the despatch of some tedious business; but the others were engaged in an animated discussion necessitating frequent reference to the folios Vivaldi had brought from his study.
The latter turned to Odo as though to include him in the group. “I do not know, sir,” said he, “whether you have found leisure to study these enigmas of that mysterious Sphinx, the earth; for though Count Alfieri has spoken to me of your unusual acquirements, I understand your tastes have hitherto lain rather in the direction of philosophy and letters;”
and on Odo’s prompt admission of ignorance, he courteously continued: “The physical sciences seem, indeed, less likely to appeal to the imaginative and poetical faculty in man, and, on the other hand, religion has appeared to prohibit their too close investigation; yet I question if any thoughtful mind can enter on the study of these curious phenomena without feeling, as it were, an affinity between such investigations and the most abstract forms of thought. For whether we regard these figured stones as of terriginous origin, either mere lusus naturae, or mineral formations produced by a plastic virtue latent in the earth, or whether as in fact organic substances lapidified by the action of water; in either case, what speculations must their origin excite, leading us back into that dark and
