Odo heard a slight movement behind him. He turned and saw that Fulviahad vanished. He understood her wish for concealment, but its futilitywas written in the glance with which de Crucis followed her flight.
The abate continued to speak in urgent tones. "I implore you," he said,"to lose no time in accompanying me to Pianura. The situation there iscritical and before now his Highness's death may have placed the reinsin your hands." He glanced at his watch. "If your excellency is not tootired to set out at once, my horses can be harnessed within the halfhour."Odo's heart sank. To have let his thoughts dwell on such a possibilityseemed to have done little to prepare him for its realisation. He hardlyunderstood what de Crucis was saying: he knew only that an hour beforehe had fancied himself master of his fate and that now he was again inbonds. His first clear thought was that nothing should part him fromFulvia.
De Crucis seemed to read the thought.
"Cavaliere," he said, "at a moment when time is so valuable you willpardon my directness. You are accompanying to Switzerland a lady who hasplaced herself in your charge--"Odo made no reply, and the other went on in the same firm but courteoustone: "Foreseeing that it would be difficult for you to leave her soabruptly I provided myself, in Venice, with a passport which will takeher safely across the border." He drew a paper from his coat. "This,"said he, handing it to Odo, "is the Papal Nuncio's authorisation to theSignorina Fulvia Vivaldi, known in religion as Sister Veronica, toabsent herself from Italy for an indefinite period. With this passportand a good escort your companion will have no difficulty in joining herfriends."Excess of astonishment kept Odo silent for a moment; and in that momenthe had as it were a fugitive glimpse into the workings of the greatpower which still strove for predominance in Italy. A safe-conduct fromthe Papal Nuncio to Fulvia Vivaldi was equivalent to her release fromher vows; and this in turn implied that, for the moment, religiousdiscipline had been frankly sacrificed to the pressure of politicalnecessities. How the invisible hands made and unmade the destinies ofthose who came in their way! How boldly the Church swept aside her owndefences when they obstructed her course! He was conscious, even at themoment, of all that men like de Crucis had to say in defence of thishigher expediency, this avowed discrimination between the factors ineach fresh combination of circumstances. He had himself felt the complexwonder of thoughtful minds before the Church's perpetual miracle ofchange disguised in immutability; but now he saw only the meaner side ofthe game, its elements of cruelty and falseness; and he felt himself nomore than a frail bark on the dark and tossing seas of ecclesiasticalintrigue. For a moment his heart shuddered back from its fate.
"No passport, no safe-conduct," he said at length, "can release me frommy duty to the lady who has placed herself in my care. I shall not leaveher till she has joined her friends."De Crucis bowed. "This is the answer I expected," he said, not withoutsadness.
Odo glanced at him in surprise. The two men, hitherto, had addressedeach other as strangers; but now something in the abate's tone recalledto Odo the familiarity of their former intercourse, their deep communityof thought, the significance of the days they had spent together in themonastery of Monte Cassino. The association of ideas brought before himthe profound sense of responsibility with which, at that time, he hadlooked forward to such an hour as this.
The abate was watching him gravely.
"Cavaliere," he said, "every instant counts, all you had once hoped todo for Pianura is now yours to accomplish. But in your absence yourenemies are not idle. His Highness may revoke your appointment at anyhour. Of late I have had his ear, but I have now been near a weekabsent, and you know the Duke is not long constant to onepurpose.--Cavaliere," he exclaimed, "I appeal to you not in the name ofthe God whom you have come to doubt, but in that of your fellow-men,whom you have wished to serve."Odo looked at him, not without a confused sense of the irony of such anappeal on such lips, yet with the distinct consciousness that it wasuttered in all sincerity, and that, whatever their superficial diversityof view, he and de Crucis were at one on those deeper questions thatgave the moment its real significance.
"It is impossible," he repeated, "that I should go with you."De Crucis was again silent, and Odo was aware of the renewed intentnessof his scrutiny. "If the lady--" broke from him once; but he checkedhimself and took a turn in the room.
Meanwhile a resolve was slowly forming itself in Odo. He would not befalse to the call which, since his boyhood, had so often made itselfheard before the voice of pleasure and self-interest; but he would atleast reserve the right to obey it in his own fashion and underconditions which left his private inclination free.
"There may be more than one way of serving one's fellows," he saidquietly. "Go back without me, abate. Tell my cousin that I resign myrights to the succession. I shall live my own life elsewhere, notunworthily, I hope, but as a private person."De Crucis had turned pale. For a moment his habitual self-command seemedabout to fail him; and Odo could not but see that a sincere personalregret was mingled with the political agent's consciousness of failure.
He himself was chiefly aware of a sense of relief, of self-recovery, asthough he had at last solved a baffling enigma and found himself oncemore at one with his fate.
Suddenly he heard a step behind him. Fulvia had re-entered the room. Shehad put off her drenched cloak, but the hair lay in damp strands on herforehead, deepening her pallor and the lines of weariness under hereyes. She moved across the room, carrying her head high and advancingtranquilly to Odo's side. Even in that moment of confused emotions hewas struck by the nobility of her gait and gesture.
She turned to de Crucis, and Odo had the immediate intuition that shehad recognised him.
"Will you let me speak a word privately to the cavaliere Valsecca?" shesaid.
The other bowed silently and turned away. The door closed on him, andOdo and Fulvia remained alone. For a moment neither spoke; then shesaid: "That was the abate de Crucis?"He assented.
She looked at him sadly. "You still believe him to be your friend?""Yes," he answered frankly, "I still believe him to be my friend, and,spite of his cloth, the friend of justice and humanity. But he is heresimply as the Duke's agent. He has been for some time the governor ofPrince Ferrante.""I knew," she murmured, "I knew--"He went up to her and caught her hands. "Why do we waste our time uponhim?" he exclaimed impatiently. "Nothing matters but that I am free atlast."She drew back, gently releasing herself. "Free--?""My choice is made. I have resigned my right to the succession. I shallnot return to Pianura."She continued to stare at him, leaning against the chair from which deCrucis had risen.
"Your choice is made! Your choice is made!" she repeated. "And you havechosen--""You," he said simply. "Will you go to France with me, Fulvia? Will yoube my wife and work with me at a distance for the cause that, in Italy,we may not serve together? I have never abandoned the aims your fathertaught me to strive for; they are dearer, more sacred to me than ever;but I cannot strive for them alone. I must feel your hand in mine, Imust know that your heart beats with mine, I must hear the voice ofliberty speak to me in your voice--" He broke off suddenly and went upto her. "All this is nothing," he said. "I love you. I cannot give youup. That is all."For a moment, as he spoke, her face shone with an extraordinary light.
She looked at him intently, as one who seemed to gaze beyond and throughhim, at some mystic vision that his words evoked. Then the brightnessfaded.
"The picture you draw is a beautiful one," she said, speaking slowly, insweet deliberate tones, "but it is not for me to look on. What you saidlast is not true. If you love me it is because we have thought the samethoughts, dreamed the same dream, heard the same voice--in each other'svoices, perhaps, as you say, but none the less a real voice, apart fromus and above us, and one which would speak to us as loudly if we wereapart--one which both of us must follow to the end."He gazed at her eagerly as she spoke; and while he gazed there came tohim, perversely enough, a vision of the life he was renouncing, not asit concerned the public welfare but in its merely personal aspect: avision of the power, the luxury, the sumptuous background of traditionalstate and prerogative in which his artistic and intellectua............