“Giannozzo,” cried his mother, as he stood glowering, “go see that the stable is locked and his excellency’s horses bedded down.” He slunk out and she began to gather up the remains of Odo’s meagre supper.
“But you must remember when this happened.”
“Holy Mother! It was the year we had frost in April and lost our hatching for want of leaves. But as for that child of ingratitude, one day she was here, the next she was gone—clean gone, as a nut drops from the tree—and I that had given the blood of my veins to nourish her!
Since then, God is my witness, we have had nothing but misfortune. The next year it was the weevils in the wheat; and so it goes.”
Odo was silent, seeing it was vain to press her. He fancied that the girl must have died—of neglect perhaps, or ill usage—and that they feared to own it. His heart swelled, but not against them: they seemed to him no more accountable than cowed hunger-driven animals.
He tossed impatiently on the hard bed Filomena had made up for him in the bailiff’s parlour, and was afoot again with the first light.
Stepping out into the farmyard he looked abroad over the flat grey face of the land. Around the keep stretched the new-ploughed fields and the pollarded mulberry orchards; but these, with the clustered hovels of the village, formed a mere islet in the surrounding waste of marsh and woodland. The scene symbolised fitly enough of social conditions of the country: the over-crowded peasantry huddled on their scant patches of arable ground, while miles of barren land represented the feudal rights that hemmed them in on every side.
Odo walked across the yard to the chapel. On the threshold he stumbled over a heap of mulberry-shoots and a broken ploughshare. Twilight held the place; but as he stood there the frescoes started out in the slant of the sunrise like dead faces floating to the surface of a river. Dead faces, yes: plaintive spectres of his childish fears and longings, lost in the harsh daylight of experience. He had forgotten the very dreams they stood for: Lethe flowed between and only one voice reached across the torrent. It was that of Saint Francis, lover of the poor…
The morning was hot as Odo drove toward Pianura, and limping ahead of him in the midday glare he presently saw the figure of a humpbacked man in a decent black dress and three-cornered hat. There was something familiar in the man’s gait, and in the shape of his large head, poised on narrow stooping shoulders, and as the carriage drew abreast of him, Odo, leaning from the window, cried out, “Brutus—this must be Brutus!”
“Your excellency has the advantage of me,” said the hunchback, turning on him a thin face lit by the keen eyes that had once searched his childish soul.
Odo met the rebuff with a smile. “Does that,” said he, “prevent my suggesting that you might continue your way more comfortably in my carriage? The road is hot and dusty, and, as you see, I am in want of company.”
The pedestrian, who seemed unprepared for this affable rejoinder, had the sheepish air of a man whose rudeness has missed the mark.
“Why, sir,” said he, recovering himself, “comfort is all a matter of habit, and I daresay the jolting of your carriage might seem to me more unpleasant than the heat and dust of the road, to which necessity has long since accustomed me.”
“In that case,” returned Odo with increasing amusement, “you will have the additional merit of sacrificing your pleasure to add to mine.”
The hunchback stared. “And what have you or yours ever done for me,” he retorted, “that I should sacrifice to your pleasure even the wretched privilege of being dusted by the wheels of your coach?”
“Why, that,” replied Odo, “is a question I can scarce answer till you give me the opportunity of naming myself.—If you are indeed Carlo Gamba,” he continued, “I am your old friend and companion Odo Valsecca.”
The hunchback started. “The Cavaliere Valsecca!” he cried. “I had heard that you were expected.” He stood gazing at Odo. “Our next Duke!” he muttered.
Odo smiled. “I had rather,” he said, “that my past commended me than my future. It is more than doubtful if I am ever able to offer you a seat in the Duke’s carriage; but Odo Valsecca’s is very much at your service.”
Gamba bowed with a kind of awkward dignity. “I am grateful for a friend’s kindness,” he said, “but I do not ride in a nobleman’s carriage.”
“There,” returned Odo with perfect good-humour, “you have had advantage of ME; for I can no more escape doing so than you can escape spending your life in the company of an ill-tempered man.” And courteously lifting his hat he called to the postillion to drive on.
The hunchback at this, flushing red, laid a hand on the carriage door.
“Sir,” said he, “I freely own myself in the wrong; but a smooth temper was not one of the blessings my unknown parents bequeathed to me; and I confess I had heard of you as one little concerned with your inferiors except as they might chance to serve your pleasure.”
It was Odo’s turn to colour. “Look,” said he, “at the fallibility of rumour; for I had heard of you as something of a philosopher, and here I find you not only taking a man’s character on hearsay but denying him the chance to prove you mistaken!”
“I deny it no longer,” said Gamba stepping into the coach; “but as to philosophy, the only claim I can make to it is that of being by birth a peripatetic.”
His dignity appeased, the hunchback proved himself a most engaging companion, and as the carriage lumbered slowly toward Pianura he had time not only to recount his own history but to satisfy Odo as to many points of the life awaiting him.
Gamba, it appeared, owed his early schooling to a Jesuit priest who, visiting the foundling asylum, had been struck by the child’s quickness, and had taken him home and bred him to be a clerk. The priest’s death left his charge adrift, with a smattering of scholarship above his station, and none to whom he could turn for protection. For a while he had lived, as he said, like a street-cat, picking up a meal where he could, and sleeping in church porches and under street-arcades, till one of the Duke’s servants took pity on him and he was suffered to hang about the palace and earn his keep by doing the lacquey’s errands. The Duke’s attention having been called to him as a lad of parts, his Highness had given him to the Marquess of Cerveno, in whose service he remained till shortly before that young nobleman’s death. The hunchback passed hastily over this period; but his reticence was lit by the angry flash of his eyes. After the Marquess’s death he had lived for a while from hand to mouth, copying music, writing poetry for weddings and funerals, doing pen-and-ink portraits at a scudo apiece, and putting his hand to any honest job that came his way. Count Trescorre, who now and then showed a fitful recognition of the tie that was supposed to
