“Do you accept my challenge, cavaliere?” she exclaimed, turning on Odo a glance confident of victory.
The Marquess meanwhile had approached the other nun with the intention of inducing her to unmask; but as Sister Mary of the Crucifix advanced to perform the same service for his friend, his irrepressible jealousy made him step hastily between them.
“Come cavaliere,” he cried, drawing Odo gaily toward the unknown nun, “since you have induced one of our fair guests to unmask perhaps you may be equally successful with the other, who appears provokingly indifferent to my advances.”
The masked nun had in fact retreated to a corner of the room and stood there, drawing her cloak about her, rather in the attitude of a frightened child than in that of a lady bent on a gallant adventure.
Sister Mary of the Crucifix approached her playfully. “My dear Sister Veronica,” said she, throwing her arm about the other’s neck, “hesitates to reveal charms which she knows must cast mine in the shade; but I am not to be outdone in generosity, and if the Marquess will unmask his friend I will do the same by mine.”
As she spoke she deftly pinioned the nun’s hands and snatched off her mask with a malicious laugh. The Marquess, entering into her humour, removed Odo’s at the same instant, and the latter, turning with a laugh, found himself face to face with Fulvia Vivaldi. He grew white, and Mary of the Crucifix sprang forward to catch her friend.
“Good God! What is this?” gasped the Marquess, staring from one to the other.
A glance of entreaty from Fulvia checked the answer on Odo’s lips, and for a moment there was silence in the room; then Fulvia, breaking away from her companion, fled out on the terrace. The other was about to follow; but Odo, controlling himself, stepped between them.
“Madam,” said he in a low voice, “I recognise in your companion a friend of whom I have long had no word. Will you pardon me if I speak with her alone?”
Sister Mary drew back with a meaning sparkle in her handsome eyes. “Why, this,” she cried, not without a touch of resentment, “is the prettiest ending imaginable; but what a sly creature, to be sure, to make me think it was her first assignation!”
Odo, without answering, hastened out on the terrace. It was so dark after the brightly lit room that for a moment he did not distinguish the figure which had sprung to the low parapet above the water; and he stumbled forward just in time to snatch Fulvia back to safety.
“This is madness!” he cried, as she hung upon him trembling.
“The boat,” she stammered in a strange sobbing voice—“the boat should be somewhere below—”
“The boat lies at the water-gate on the other side,” he answered.
She drew away from him with a gesture of despair. The struggle with Sister Mary had disordered her hair and it fell on her white neck in loosened strands. “My cloak—my mask—” she faltered vaguely, clasping her hands across her bosom; then suddenly dropped to a seat and burst into tears. Once before—but in how different a case!—he had seen her thus thrilled with weeping. Then fate had thrown him humbled at her feet, now it was she who cried him mercy in every line of her bowed head and shaken breast; and the thought of that other meeting flooded his heart with pity.
He knelt before her, seeking her hands. “Fulvia, why do you shrink from me?” he whispered. But she shook her head and wept on.
At last her sobs subsided and she rose to her feet. “I must go back,”
said she in a low tone, and would have passed him.
“Back? To the convent?”
“To the convent,” she said after him; but she made no farther effort to move.
The question that tortured him sprang forth. “You have taken the vows?”
“A month since,” she answered.
He hid his face in his hands and for a moment both were silent. “And you have no other word for me—none?” he faltered at last.
She fixed him with a hard bright stare. “Yes—one,” she cried; “keep a place for me among your gallant recollections.”
“Fulvia!” he said with sudden strength, and caught her by the arm.
“Let me pass!” she cried.
“No, by heaven!” he retorted; “not till you listen to me—not till you tell me how it is that I come upon you here!—Ah, child,” he broke out, “do you fancy I don’t see how little you belong in such scenes? That I don’t know you are here through some dreadful error? Fulvia,” he pleaded, “will you never trust me?” And at the word he burned with blushes in the darkness.
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?”
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 a 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, recognising her as one of their late fares, without more ado began to row rapidly toward the city.
3.4.
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?