His voice, perhaps, rather than what he said, seemed to have struck a yielding fibre. He felt her arm tremble in his hold; but after a moment she said with cruel distinctness: “There was no error. I came knowingly. It was the company and not the place I was deceived in.”
Odo drew back with a start; then, as if in spite of himself, he broke into a laugh. “By the saints,” said he, almost joyously, “I am sorry to be where I am not wanted; but, since no better company offers, will you not make the best of mine and suffer me to hand you in to supper with our friends?” And with a low bow he offered her his arm.
The effect was instantaneous. He saw her catch at the balustrade for support.
“Sancta simplicitas! ” he exulted, “and did you think to play the part at such short notice?” He fell at her feet and covered her hands with kisses. “My Fulvia! My poor child! Come with me, come away from here,” he entreated. “I know not what mad hazard has brought us thus together, but I thank God on my knees for the encounter. You shall tell me all or nothing, as you please—you shall presently dismiss me at your convent-gate, and never see me again if you so will it—but till then, I swear, you are in my charge, and no human power shall come between us!”
As he ended, the Marquess’s voice called gaily through the open window: “Friends, the burgundy is uncorked! Will you not join us in a glass of good French wine?”
Instantly Fulvia flung herself upon Odo. “Yes—yes; away—take me away from here!” she cried clinging to him. She had gathered her cloak about her and drawn the hood over her disordered hair. “Away! Away!” she repeated. “I cannot see them again. Good God, is there no other way out?”
With a gesture he warned her to be silent and drew her along the terrace in the shadow of the house. The gravel creaked beneath their feet, and she shook at the least sound; but her hand lay in his like a child’s and he felt himself her master.
At the farther end of the terrace a flight of steps led to a narrow strip of shore. He helped her down and after listening a moment gave a whistle. Presently they heard the low plash of oars and saw the prow of a gondola cautiously rounding the angle of the terrace. The water was shallow and the boatmen proceeded slowly and at length paused a few yards from the land.
“We can come no nearer,” one of them called; “what is it?”
“Your mistress is unwell and wishes to return,” Odo answered; and catching Fulvia in his arms he waded out with her to the gondola and lifted her over the side. “To Santa Chiara!” he ordered, as he laid her on the cushions beneath the felze; and the boatmen, recognizing her as one of their late fares, without more ado began to row rapidly toward the city.
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IV.
In the pitying darkness of the gondola she lay beyond speech, her hand in his, her breath coming fitfully. Odo waited in suspense, not daring to question her, yet sure that if she did not speak then she would never do so. All doubt and perplexity of spirit had vanished in the simple sense of her nearness. The throb of her hand in his was like the heart-beat of hope. He felt himself no longer a drifting spectator of life but a sharer in its gifts and renunciations. Which this meeting would bring he dared not yet surmise: it was enough that he was with Fulvia and that love had freed his spirit.
At length she began to speak. Her agitation was so great that he had difficulty in piecing together the fragments of her story; but for the moment he was more concerned in regaining her confidence than in seeking to obtain a clear picture of the past. Before she could end, the gondola rounded the corner of the narrow canal skirting the garden-wall of Santa Chiara. Alarmed lest he should lose her again he passionately urged her to receive him on the morrow; and after some hesitation she consented. A moment later their prow touched the postern and the boatman gave a low call which proved him no novice at the business. Fulvia signed to Odo not to speak or move; and they sat listening intently for the opening of the gate. As soon as it was unbarred she sprang ashore and vanished in the darkness of the garden; and with a cold sense of failure Odo heard the bolt slipping back and the stealthy fall of the oars as the gondola slid away under the shadow of the convent-wall. Whither was he being carried and would that bolt ever be drawn for him again? In the sultry dawn the convent loomed forbiddingly as a prison, and he could hardly believe that a few hours earlier the very doors now closed against him had stood open to all the world. They would open again; but whether to him, who could conjecture? He was resolved to see Fulvia again, but he shrank from the thought of forcing himself upon her. She had promised to receive him; but what revulsion of feeling might not the morrow bring?
Unable to sleep, he bade the boatmen carry him to the Lido. The sun was just rising above the Friulian Alps and the lagoon lay dull and smooth as a breathed-on mirror. As he paced the lonely sands he tried to reconstruct Fulvia’s broken story, supplementing it with such details as his experience of Venetian life suggested. It appeared that after her father’s death she had found herself possessed of a small sum of money which he had painfully accumulated for her during the two years they had spent in Pavia. Her only thought was to employ this inheritance in publishing the great work on the origin of civilization which Vivaldi had completed a few days before his last seizure. Through one of the professors of the University, who had been her father’s friend, she negotiated with a printer of Amsterdam for the production of the book, and the terms being agreed on, despatched the money and the manuscript thither by a sure hand. Both were duly delivered and the publisher had advanced so far in his work as to send Fulvia the proof-sheets of the first chapters, when he took alarm at the renewed activity of the Holy Office in France and Italy, declared there would be no market for the book in the present state of affairs, and refused either to continue printing it, or to restore the money, which he said had barely covered the setting-up of the type. Fulvia then attempted to recover the manuscript; but the publisher refusing to surrender it, she found herself doubly beggared at a stroke.
In this extremity she turned to a sister of her father’s, who lived near Treviso; and this excellent woman, though persuaded that her brother’s heretical views had doomed him to everlasting torment, did not scruple to offer his child a home. Here Fulvia had lived for two years when her aunt’s sudden death left her destitute; for the good lady, to atone for having given shelter to a niece of doubtful orthodoxy, had left the whole of her small property to the Church.
Fulvia’s only other relations were certain distant cousins of her mother’s, members of the Venetian nobility, but of the indigent class called Barnabotti, who lived on the bounty of the state. While in Treviso she had made the acquaintance of one of these cousins, a stirring noisy fellow involved in all the political agitations of the state. It was among the Barnabotti, the class most indebted to the government, that these seditious movements generally arose; and Fulvia’s cousin was one of the most notorious malcontents of his order. She had mistaken his revolutionary bluster for philosophic enlightenment; and, persuaded that he shared in her views, she rashly appealed to him for help. With the most eloquent expressions of sympathy he offered her a home under his own roof; but on reaching Venice she was but ill-received by his wife and family, who made no scruple of declaring that, being but pensioners themselves, they were in no state to nourish their pauper relatives. Fulvia could not but own that they were right; for they lived in the garret of a half-ruined house, pawning their very beds to pay for ices in the Piazza, and sitting at home all the week in dirty shifts and nightcaps that they might go to mass in silk and powder on a Sunday.
After two months of wretchedness with these unfriendly hosts, whom she vainly tried to conciliate by a hundred little services and attentions, the poor girl resolved to return to Milan, where she hoped to obtain some menial position in the household of one of her father’s friends. Her cousins, at this, made a great outcry, protesting that none of their blood should so demean herself, and that they would spare no efforts to find some better way of providing for her. Their noble connections gave Fulvia the hope that they might obtain a small pension for her, and she unsuspiciously yielded to their wishes; but to her dismay she learned, a few weeks later, that, thanks to their