The Valley of Decision

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?

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 civilisation 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 night-caps 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 exertions, she was to be admitted as a novice to the convent of Santa Chiara.  Though it was the common way of disposing of portionless girls, the liberal views of her cousins had reassured Fulvia, and she woke to her fate too late to escape it.  She was to enter on her novitiate on the morrow; but even had delay been possible she knew that both the civil and religious authorities would sustain her family in their course.

Her cousins, knowing her independent spirit, and perhaps fearing an outcry if they sequestered her too closely, had thought to soften her resistance by placing her in a convent noted for its leniencies; but to Fulvia such surroundings were more repugnant than the strictest monastic discipline.  The corruption of the religious orders was a favourite topic with her father’s friends, and the Venetian nuns were noted throughout Italy for their frivolous and dissipated lives; but nothing that Fulvia had heard or imagined approached the realities that awaited her.  At first the mere sense of imprisonment, of being cut off forever from the world of free thought and action which had been her native element, overwhelmed every other feeling, and she lay numb in the clutch of fate.  But she was too young for this merciful torpor to last, and with the returning consciousness of her situation came the instinctive effort to amend it.  How she longed then to have been buried in some strict order, where she might have spent her days in solitary work and meditation!  How she loathed the petty gossip of the nuns, their furtive reaching after forbidden pleasures!  The blindest bigotry would have been less insufferable than this clandestine commerce with the world, the strictest sequestration than this open parody of the monastic calling.  She sought in vain among her companions for an answering mind.  Many, like herself, were in open rebellion against their lot; but for reasons so different that the feeling was an added estrangement.  At last the longing to escape over-mastered every other sensation.  It became a fixed idea, a devouring passion.  She did not trust herself to think of what must follow, but centred every faculty on the effort of evasion.

At this point in her story her growing distress had made it hard for Odo to gather more than a general hint of her meaning.  It was clear, however, that she had found her sole hope of escape lay in gaining the friendship of one of the more favoured nuns.  Her own position in the community was of the humblest, for she had neither rank nor wealth to commend her; but her skill on the harpsichord had attracted the notice of the music-mistress and she had been enrolled in the convent orchestra before her novitiate was over.  This had brought her into contact with a few of the more favoured sisters, and among them she had recognised in Sister Mary of the Crucifix the daughter of the nobleman who had been her aunt’s landlord at Treviso.  Fulvia’s name was not unknown to the handsome nun, and the coincidence was enough to draw them together in a community where such trivial affinities must replace the ties of nature.  Fulvia soon learned that Mary of the Crucifix was the spoiled darling of the convent.  Her beauty and spirit, as much perhaps as her family connections, had given her this predominance; and no scruples interfered with her use of it.  Finding herself, as she declared, on the wrong side of the grate, she determined to gather in all the pleasures she could reach through it; and her reach was certainly prodigious.  Here Odo had been obliged to fall back on his knowledge of Venetian customs to conjecture the incidents leading up to the scene of the previous night.  He divined that Fulvia, maddened by having had to pronounce the irrevocable vows, had resolved to fly at all hazards; that Sister Mary, unconscious of her designs, had proposed to take her on a party of pleasure, and that the rash girl, blind to every risk but that of delay, had seized on this desperate means of escape.  What must have followed had she not chanced on Odo, she had clearly neither the courage nor the experience to picture; but she seemed to have had some confused idea of throwing herself on the mercy of the foreign nobleman she believed she was to meet.

So much Odo had gathered; and her voice, her gesture, the disorder of her spirit, supplied what her words omitted.  Not for a moment, either in listening to her or in the soberer period of revision, did he question the exact truth of her narrative.  It was the second time that they had met under strange circumstances; yet now as before the sense of her candour was his ruling thought.  He concluded that, whatever plight she found herself in, she would be its immediate justification; and felt sure he must have reached this conclusion though love had not had a stake in the verdict.  This perhaps but proved him the more deeply taken; for it is when passion tightens the net that reason flaps her wings most loudly.

Day was high when he returned to his lodgings, impatient for a word from Fulvia.  None had come; and as the hours passed he yielded to the most disheartening fancies.  His wretchedness was increased by the thought that he had once inflicted on her such suspense he was now enduring; and he went so far as to wonder if this were her revenge for Vercelli.  But if the past was intolerable to consider the future was all baffling fears.  His immediate study was how to see her; and this her continued silence seemed to refuse him.  The extremity of her plight was his best ally; yet here again anxiety suggested that his having been the witness of her humiliation must insensibly turn her against him.  Never perhaps does a man show less knowledge of human nature than in speculating on the conduct of his beloved; and every step in the labyrinth of his conjectures carried Odo farther from the truth.  This rose on him at nightfall, in the shape of a letter slipped in his hand by a lay-sister as he crossed the square before his lodgings.  He stepped to the light of the nearest shrine and read the few words in a tumult.  “This being Friday, no visitors are admitted to the convent; but I entreat you to come to me tomorrow an hour before benediction.”  A postcript added:  “It is the hour when visitors are most frequent.”

He saw her meaning in a flash:  his best chance of speaking with her was in a crowd, and his heart bounded at the significance of her admission.  Now indeed he felt himself lord of the future.  Nothing counted but that he was to see her.  His horizon was narrowed to the bars through which her hand would greet him; yet never had the world appeared so vast.

Long before the hour appointed he was at the gate of Santa Chiara.  He asked to speak with Sister Veronica and the portress led him to the parlour.  Several nuns were already behind the grate, chatting with a group of fashionable ladies and their gallants; but Fulvia was not among them.  In a few moments the portress returned and informed Odo that Sister Veronica was indisposed and unable to leave her cell.  His heart sank, and he asked if she had sent no message.  The portress answered in the negative, but added that the abbess begged him to come to her parlour; and at this his hopes took wing again.

The abbess’s parlour was preceded by a handsome antechamber, where Odo was bidden to wait.  It was doubtless the Reverend Mother’s hour for receiving company, for through the door beyond he heard laughter and music and the sound of lively talk.  Presently this door opened and Mary of the Crucifix entered.  In her monastic habit she looked coarse and overblown:  the severe lines and sober tints of the dress did not become her.  Odo felt an insurmountable repugnance at seeing her.  He could not conceive why Fulvia had chosen such an intermediary, and for the first time a stealing doubt tainted his thoughts of her.

Sister Mary seemed to read his mind.  “You bear me a grudge,” said she gaily; “but I think you will live to own that I do not return it.  Come with me if you wish to speak with Sister Veronica.”

Odo flushed with surprise.  “She is not too unwell to receive me?”

Sister Mary raised her eyebrows in astonishment.  “To receive her cousin?  Her nearest male relative, come from Treviso purposely to visit her?  The saints forbid!” she cried.  “The poor child is indeed dying—­but only to see her cousin!” And with that she seized his hand and hurried him down the corridor to a door on which she tapped three times.  It opened at once, and catching Odo by the shoulder she pushed him laughingly over the threshold and cried out as she vanished:  “Be careful not to agitate the sufferer!”

Odo found himself in a neat plain cell; but he had no eyes for his surroundings.  All that he saw was Fulvia, dressed in her nun’s habit and seated near the window, through which the afternoon light fell softly on her white coif and the austere folds of her dress.  She rose and greeted him with a smile.

“You are not ill, then?” he cried, stupidly, and the colour rose to her pale face.

“No,” she said, “I am not ill, and at first I was reluctant to make use of such a subterfuge; but to feign an indisposition was the only way of speaking with you privately, and, alas, in this school one soon becomes a proficient in deceit.”  She paused a moment and then added with an effort:  “Even this favour I could not have obtained save through Sister Mary of the Crucifix; but she now understands that you are an old friend of my father’s, and that my motive for wishing to see you is not what she at first supposed.”

This was said with such noble simplicity and so direct a glance, that Odo, confused by the sense of his own doubts, could only murmur as he bent over her hand:  “Fuoco di quest’ incendio non v’ assale.”

She drew back gently and signed him to a seat.  “I trust not,” she said, answering his citation; “but I think the flame through which Beatrice walked must have been less contaminating than this morass in which I flounder.”

She was silent a moment and he had leisure to steal a closer look at her.  It was the first time since their meeting that he had really seen her face; and he was struck by the touch of awe that had come upon her beauty.  Perhaps her recent suffering had spiritualised a countenance already pure and lofty; for as he looked at her it seemed to him that she was transformed into a being beyond earthly contact, and his heart sank with the sense of her remoteness.  Presently she began to speak and his consciousness of the distance between them was increased by the composure of her manner.  All signs of confusion and distress had vanished.  She faced him with the same innocent freedom as under her father’s roof, and all that had since passed between them seemed to have slipped from her without a trace.

She began by thanking him for coming, and then at once reverted to her desperate situation and to her determination to escape.

“I am alone and friendless,” she said, “and though the length of our past acquaintance” (and here indeed she blushed) “scarce warrants such a presumption, yet I believe that in my father’s name I may appeal to you.  It may be that with the best will to help me you can discover no way of doing so, but at least I shall have the benefit of your advice.  I now see,” she added, again deeply blushing, but keeping her eyes on his, “the madness of my late attempt, and the depth of the abyss from which you rescued me.  Death were indeed preferable to such chances; but I do not mean to die while life holds out a hope of liberation.”

As she spoke there flashed on Odo the reason of her remoteness and composure.  He had come to her as a lover:  she received him as a friend.  His longing to aid her was inspired by passion:  she saw in it only the natural impulse of benevolence.  So mortifying was the discovery that he hardly followed her words.  All his thoughts were engaged in reviewing the past; and he now saw that if, as she said, their acquaintance scarce warranted her appealing to him as a friend, it still less justified his addressing her as a lover.  Only once before had he spoken to her of love, and that under circumstances which almost forbade a return to the subject, or at least compelled an added prudence in approaching it.  Once again he found himself the prisoner of his folly, and stood aghast at the ingenuity of the punishment.  To play the part she ascribed to him was his only portion; and he resolved at least to play it like a man.

With what composure he might, he assured Fulvia of his desire to serve her, and asked if she had no hope of obtaining her release from the Holy See.  She answered:  none, since enquiry must reveal that she was the daughter of a man who had been prosecuted for heresy, and that after his death she had devoted the small sum he had left her to the publication of his writings.  She added that his Holiness, resolved to counteract the effects of the late Pope’s leniency, had greatly enlarged the powers of the Inquisition, and had taken special measures to prevent those who entered the religious life from renouncing their calling.

“Since I have been here,” she said, “three nuns have tried to obtain their release, and one has conclusively proved that she was forced to take the vows by fraud; but their pleas have been rejected, and mine would meet the same fate.  Indeed, the only result would be to deprive me of what little liberty I am allowed; for the three nuns I speak of are now the most closely watched in the convent.”

She went on to explain that, thanks to the connivance of Sister Mary of the Crucifix, her actual escape might be effected without much difficulty; but that she was now awake to the madness of taking so desperate a step without knowing whither it would lead her.

“To be safe,” she said, “I must cross the borders of Switzerland.  If I could reach Geneva I should be beyond the arm of the Holy Office, and at the University there I should find friends of my father who would surely take pity on my situation and help me to a living.  But the journey is long and difficult, and not to be safely attempted without some assurance of shelter on the way.”

It was on Odo’s lips to declare that he would provide her with shelter and escort; but at this moment three warning taps announced the return of Sister Mary of the Crucifix.

She entered merrily and at once laid one hand on Fulvia’s brow and caught her wrist in the other.  “The patient’s pulse has risen,” she declared, “and rest and a lowering treatment are essential.  I must ask the cavaliere to withdraw.”

Fulvia, with an air of constraint, held out her hand to Odo.

“I shall see you soon again?” he whispered; and Sister Mary, as though she had guessed his words, cried out, “I think your excellency may count on a recurrence of the seizure two days hence at the same hour!”