Crucial Instances

Crucial Instances Summary

Crucial Instances is Edith Wharton's second collection of short stories, published in 1901. The seven stories explore themes of art, morality, and the complexities of human relationships, often set against the backdrop of upper-class society.

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Crucial Instances Excerpt

Short Summary: This collection of seven short stories delves into the pivotal moments that define human experience, exploring themes of art, morality, and the complexities of social expectations.

Excerpt from 'The Duchess at Prayer':

"Have you ever questioned the long-shuttered front of an old Italian house, that motionless mask, smooth, mute, equivocal as the face of a priest behind which buzz the secrets of the confessional? Other houses declare the activities they shelter; they are the clear expressive cuticle of a life flowing close to the surface; but the old palace in its narrow street, the villa on its cypress-hooded hill, are as impenetrable as death. The tall windows are like blind eyes, the great door is a shut mouth. Inside there may be sunshine, the scent of myrtles, and a pulse of life through all the arteries of the huge frame; or a mortal solitude, where bats lodge in the disjointed stones and the keys rust in unused doors....

From the loggia, with its vanishing frescoes, I looked down an avenue barred by a ladder of cypress-shadows to the ducal escutcheon and mutilated vases of the gate. Flat noon lay on the gardens, on fountains, porticoes, and grottoes. Below the terrace, where a chrome-colored lichen had sheeted the balustrade as with fine laminae of gold, vineyards stooped to the rich valley clasped in hills. The lower slopes were strewn with white villages like stars spangling a summer dusk; and beyond these, fold on fold of blue mountain, clear as gauze against the sky. The August air was lifeless, but it seemed light and vivifying after the atmosphere of the shrouded rooms through which I had been led. Their chill was on me, and I hugged the sunshine.

"The Duchess's apartments are beyond," said the old man. He was the oldest man I had ever seen; so sucked back into the past that he seemed more like a memory than a living being. The one trait linking him with the actual was the fixity with which his small saurian eye held the pocket that, as I entered, had yielded a lira to the gate-keeper's child. He went on, without removing his eye: "For two hundred years nothing has been changed in the apartments of the Duchess."

"And no one lives here now?"

"No one, sir. The Duke goes to Como for the summer season."

I had moved to the other end of the loggia. Below me, through hanging groves, white roofs and domes flashed like a smile. "And that's Vicenza?"

"Proprio!" The old man extended fingers as lean as the hands fading from the walls behind us. "You see the palace roof over there, just to the left of the Basilica? The one with the row of statues like birds taking flight? That's the Duke's town palace, built by Palladio."

"And does the Duke come there?"

"Never. He prefers Como."

I looked into the old man's eyes. They were like sea-water seen through a haze. "And the Duchess?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "She was of the old religion. She died at her prayers."

He turned to a door behind him. "Shall we enter?"

We passed into a vaulted saloon, where a dim fresco detached itself from the ceiling like a cloud from a summer sky. Thence, by a corridor with statues in the niches, we came to the chapel. The shutters were closed, and only a pencil of light slanted across the altar. The old man knelt and struck a match. He applied it to a taper, which he handed to me. "You have a lira, perhaps?" he suggested. I dropped a coin into the box, and he lit two candles on the altar. Their flames wavered tremulously, like souls about to take flight. The light showed a small altar of pietra dura, surmounted by a copy of Guido's Madonna. The altar-steps were carpeted with moss, and the air was damp and cold.

"This is the Duchess's oratory," the old man murmured. "It has not been touched since her death." He turned abruptly and led me toward a heavy door at the end of the chapel. "Beyond this is her bedchamber." He hesitated, then added, "It is best to enter alone."

I crossed the threshold and found myself in a vast room, its walls hung with fading tapestries. A heavy velvet curtain veiled the bed, and against one wall stood an inlaid cabinet with doors slightly ajar. On a small writing-desk lay an open book, its pages curled with damp. As I stepped forward, a faint fragrance, as of withered roses, stirred the air, and I felt the weight of the past press upon me like a hand laid on my shoulder. This was a place where time had stopped, a shrine of unspoken sorrow and long-buried secrets.