Fulvia, in the twilight, sat awaiting the Duke.
The room in which she sat looked out on a stone-flagged cloisterenclosing a plot of ground planted with yews; and at the farther end ofthis cloister a door communicated by a covered way with the ducalgardens. The house had formed a part of the convent of the PerpetualAdoration, which had been sold by the nuns when they moved to the newbuildings the late Duke had given them. A portion had been torn down tomake way for the Marquess of Cerveno's palace, and in the remainingfragment, a low building wedged between high walls, Fulvia had found alodging. Her whole dwelling consisted of the Abbess's parlour, in whichshe now sat, and the two or three adjoining cells. The tall presses inthe parlour had been filled with her father's books, and surmounted byhis globes and other scientific instruments. But for this the apartmentremained as unadorned as in her predecessor's day; and Fulvia, in heraustere black gown, with a lawn kerchief folded over her breast, and theunpowdered hair drawn back from her pale face, might herself have passedfor the head of a religious community.
She cultivated with almost morbid care this severity of dress andsurroundings. There were moments when she could hardly tolerate the paleautumnal beauty which her glass reflected, when even this phantom ofyouth and radiance became a stumbling-block to her spiritual pride. Shewas not ashamed of being the Duke of Pianura's mistress; but she had ahorror of being thought like the mistresses of other princes. Sheloathed all that the position represented in men's minds; she hadrefused all that, according to the conventions of the day, it entitledher to claim: wealth, patronage, and the rank and estates which it wascustomary for the sovereign to confer. She had taken nothing from Odobut his love, and the little house in which he had lodged her.
Three years had passed since Fulvia's flight to Pianura. From the momentwhen she and Odo had stood face to face again, it had been clear to himthat he could never give her up, to her that she could never leave him.
Fate seemed to have thrown them together in derision of their longstruggle, and both felt that lassitude of the will which is the reactionfrom vain endeavour. The discovery that he needed her, that the task forwhich he had given her up could after all not be accomplished withouther, served to overcome her last resistance. If the end for which bothstrove could best be attained together--if he needed the aid of herunfaltering faith as much as she needed that of his wealth andpower--why should any personal scruple stand between them? Why shouldshe who had given all else to the cause--ease, fortune, safety, and eventhe happiness that lay in her hand--hesitate to make the final sacrificeof a private ideal? According to the standards of her day there was nodishonour to a woman in being the mistress of a man whose rank forbadehis marrying her: the dishonour lay in the conduct which had come to beassociated with such relations. Under the old dispensation the influenceof the prince's mistress had stood for the last excesses of moral andpolitical corruption; why might it not, under the new law, come torepresent as unlimited a power for good?
So love, the casuist, argued; and during those first months, whenhappiness seemed at last its own justification, Fulvia lived in everyfibre. But always, even then, she was on the defensive against thathigher tribunal which her own conception of life had created. In spiteof herself she was a child of the new era, of the universal reactionagainst the falseness and egotism of the old social code. A standard ofconduct regulated by the needs of the race rather than by individualpassion, a conception of each existence as a link in the great chain ofhuman endeavour, had slowly shaped itself out of the wild theories andvague "codes" of the eighteenth-century moralists; and with this senseof the sacramental nature of human ties, came a renewed reverence formoral and physical purity.
Fulvia was of those who require that their lives shall be an affirmationof themselves; and the lack of inner harmony drove her to seek someoutward expression of her ideals. She threw herself with renewed passioninto the political struggle. The best, the only justification of herpower, was to use it boldly, openly, for the good of the people. All therepressed forces of her nature were poured into this single channel. Shehad no desire to conceal her situation, to disguise her influence overOdo. She wished it rather to be so visible a factor in his relationswith his people that she should come to be regarded as the ultimatepledge of his good faith. But, like all the casuistical virtues, thisposition had the rigidity of something created to fit a special case;and the result was a fixity of attitude, which spread benumbingly overher whole nature. She was conscious of the change, yet dared notstruggle against it, since to do so was to confess the weakness of hercase. She had chosen to be regarded as a symbol rather than a woman, andthere were moments when she felt as isolated from life as some marbleallegory in its niche above the market-place.
It was the desire to associate herself with the Duke's public life thathad induced her, after much hesitation, to accept the degree which theUniversity had conferred on her. She had shared eagerly in the work ofreconstructing the University, and had been the means of drawing toPianura several teachers of distinction from Padua and Pavia. It was herdream to build up a seat of learning which should attract students fromall parts of Italy; and though many young men of good family hadwithdrawn from the classes when the Barnabites were dispossessed, shewas confident that they would soon be replaced by scholars from otherstates. She was resolved to identify herself openly with the educationalreform which seemed to her one of the most important steps toward civicemancipation; and she had therefore acceded to the request of thefaculty that, on receiving her degree, she should sustain a thesisbefore the University. This ceremony was to take place a few days hence,on the Duke's birthday; and, as the new charter was to be proclaimed onthe same day, Fulvia had chosen as the subject of her discourse theConstitution recently promulgated in France.
She pushed aside the bundle of political pamphlets which she had beenstudying, and sat looking out at the strip of garden beyond the archesof the cloister. The narrow horizon bounded by convent walls symbolisedfitly enough the life she had chosen to lead: a life of artificialrestraints and renunciations, passive, conventual almost, in which eventhe central point of her love burned, now, with a calm devotional glow.
The door in the cloister opened and the Duke crossed the garden. Hewalked slowly, with the listless step she had observed in him of late;and as he entered she saw that he looked pale and weary.
"You have been at work again," she said. "A cabinet-meeting?""Yes," he answered, sinking into the Abbess's high carved chair.
He glanced musingly about the dim room, in which the shadow of thecloister made an early dusk. Its atmosphere of monastic calm, of whichthe significance did not escape him, fell soothingly on his spirit. Itsimplified his relation to Fulvia by tacitly restricting it within thebounds of a tranquil tenderness. Any other setting would have seemedless in harmony with their fate.
Better, perhaps, than Fulvia, he knew what ailed them both. Happinesshad come to them, but it had come too late; it had come tinged withdisloyalty to their early ideals; it had come when delay anddisillusionment had imperceptibly weakened the springs of passion. Forit is the saddest thing about sorrow that it deadens the capacity forhappiness; and to Fulvia and Odo the joy they had renounced had returnedwith an exile's alien face.
Seeing that he remained silent, she rose and lit the shaded lamp on thetable. He watched her as she moved across the room. Her step had lostnone of its flowing grace, of that harmonious impetus which years agohad drawn his boyish fancy in its wake. As she bent above the lamp, thecircle of light threw her face into relief against the deepening shadowsof the room. She had changed, indeed, but as those change in whom thesprings of life are clear and abundant: it was a development rather thana diminution. The old purity of outline remained; and deep below thesurface, but still visible sometimes to his lessening insight, the oldgirlish spirit, radiant, tender and impetuous, stirred for a moment inher eyes.
The lamplight fell on the pamphlets she had pushed aside. Odo picked oneup. "What are these?" he asked.
"They were sent to me by the English traveller whom Andreoni broughthere."He turned a few pages. "The old story," he said. "Do you never weary ofit?""An old story?" she exclaimed. "I thought it had been the newest in theworld. Is it not being written, chapter by chapter, before our veryeyes?"Odo laid the treatise aside. "Are you never afraid to turn the nextpage?" he asked.
"Afraid? Afraid of what?""That it may be written in blood."She uttered a quick exclamation; then her face hardened, and she said ina low tone: "De Crucis ............