In the pitying darkness of the gondola she lay beyond speech, her handin his, her breath coming fitfully. Odo waited in suspense, not daringto question her, yet sure that if she did not speak then she would neverdo so. All doubt and perplexity of spirit had vanished in the simplesense of her nearness. The throb of her hand in his was like theheart-beat of hope. He felt himself no longer a drifting spectator oflife but a sharer in its gifts and renunciations. Which this meetingwould bring he dared not yet surmise: it was enough that he was withFulvia and that love had freed his spirit.
At length she began to speak. Her agitation was so great that he haddifficulty in piecing together the fragments of her story; but for themoment he was more concerned in regaining her confidence than in seekingto obtain a clear picture of the past. Before she could end, the gondolarounded the corner of the narrow canal skirting the garden-wall of SantaChiara. Alarmed lest he should lose her again he passionately urged herto receive him on the morrow; and after some hesitation she consented. Amoment later their prow touched the postern and the boatman gave a lowcall which proved him no novice at the business. Fulvia signed to Odonot to speak or move; and they sat listening intently for the opening ofthe gate. As soon as it was unbarred she sprang ashore and vanished inthe darkness of the garden; and with a cold sense of failure Odo heardthe bolt slipping back and the stealthy fall of the oars as the gondolaslid away under the shadow of the convent-wall. Whither was he beingcarried and would that bolt ever be drawn for him again? In the sultrydawn the convent loomed forbiddingly as a prison, and he could hardlybelieve that a few hours earlier the very doors now closed against himhad stood open to all the world. They would open again; but whether tohim, who could conjecture? He was resolved to see Fulvia again, but heshrank from the thought of forcing himself upon her. She had promised toreceive 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 wasjust rising above the Friulian Alps and the lagoon lay dull and smoothas a breathed-on mirror. As he paced the lonely sands he tried toreconstruct Fulvia's broken story, supplementing it with such details ashis experience of Venetian life suggested. It appeared that after herfather's death she had found herself possessed of a small sum of moneywhich he had painfully accumulated for her during the two years they hadspent in Pavia. Her only thought was to employ this inheritance inpublishing the great work on the origin of civilisation which Vivaldihad completed a few days before his last seizure. Through one of theprofessors of the University, who had been her father's friend, shenegotiated with a printer of Amsterdam for the production of the book,and the terms being agreed on, despatched the money and the manuscriptthither by a sure hand. Both were duly delivered and the publisher hadadvanced so far in his work as to send Fulvia the proof-sheets of thefirst chapters, when he took alarm at the renewed activity of the HolyOffice in France and Italy, declared there would be no market for thebook in the present state of affairs, and refused either to continueprinting it, or to restore the money, which he said had barely coveredthe setting-up of the type. Fulvia then attempted to recover themanuscript; but the publisher refusing to surrender it, she foundherself doubly beggared at a stroke.
In this extremity she turned to a sister of her father's, who lived nearTreviso; and this excellent woman, though persuaded that her brother'sheretical views had doomed him to everlasting torment, did not scrupleto offer his child a home. Here Fulvia had lived for two years when heraunt's sudden death left her destitute; for the good lady, to atone forhaving given shelter to a niece of doubtful orthodoxy, had left thewhole of her small property to the Church.
Fulvia's only other relations were certain distant cousins of hermother's, members of the Venetian nobility, but of the indigent classcalled Barnabotti, who lived on the bounty of the state. While inTreviso she had made the acquaintance of one of these cousins, astirring noisy fellow involved in all the political agitations of thestate. It was among the Barnabotti, the class most indebted to thegovernment, that these seditious movements generally arose; and Fulvia'scousin was one of the most notorious malcontents of his order. She hadmistaken his revolutionary bluster for philosophic enlightenment; and,persuaded that he shared in her views, she rashly appealed to him forhelp. With the most eloquent expressions of sympathy he offered her ahome under his own roof; but on reaching Venice she was but ill-receivedby his wife and family, who made no scruple of declaring that, being butpensioners themselves, they were in no state to nourish their pauperrelatives. Fulvia could not but own that they were right; for they livedin the garret of a half-ruined house, pawning their very beds to pay forices in the Piazza and sitting at home all the week in dirty shifts andnight-caps that they might go to mass in silk and powder on a Sunday.
After two months of wretchedness with these unfriendly hosts, whom shevainly tried to conciliate by a hundred little services and attentionsthe poor girl resolved to return to Milan, where she hoped to obtainsome menial position in the household of one of her father's friends.
Her cousins, at this, made a great outcry, protesting that none of theirblood should so demean herself, and that they would spare no efforts tofind some better way of providing for her. Their noble connections gaveFulvia the hope that they might obtain a small pension for her, and sheunsuspiciously yielded to their wishes; but to her dismay she learned afew weeks later, that, thanks to their exertions, she was to be admittedas a novice to the convent of Santa Chiara. Though it was the common wayof disposing of portionless girls, the liberal views of her cousins hadreassured Fulvia, and she woke to her fate too late to escape it. Shewas to enter on her novitiate on the morrow; but even had delay beenpossible she knew that both the civil and religious authorities wouldsustain her family in their course.
Her cousins, knowing her independent spirit, and perhaps fearing anoutcry if they sequestered her too closely, had thought to soften herresistance by placing her in a convent noted for its leniencies; but toFulvia such surroundings were more repugnant than the strictest monasticdiscipline. The corruption of the religious orders was a favourite topicwith her father's friends, and the Venetian nuns were noted throughoutItaly for their frivolous and dissipated lives; but nothing that Fulviahad heard or imagined approached the realities that awaited her. Atfirst the mere sense of imprisonment, of being cut off forever from theworld 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 thereturning consciousness of her situation came the instinctive effort toamend 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! Howshe loathed the petty gossip of the nuns, their furtive reaching afterforbidden pleasures! The blindest bigotry would have been lessinsufferable than this clandestine commerce with the world, thestrictest 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 reasonsso different that the feeling was an added estrangement. At last thelonging to escape over-mastered every other sensation. It became a fixedidea, a devouring passion. She did not trust herself to think of whatmust follow, but centred every faculty on the effort of evasion.
At this point in her story her growing distress had made it hard for Odoto 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 thefriendship of one of the more favoured nuns. Her own position in thecommunity was of the humblest, for she had neither rank nor wealth tocommend her; but her skill on the harpsichord had attracted the noticeof the music-mistress and she had been enrolled in the convent orchestrabefore her novitiate was over. This had brought her into contact with afew of the more favoured sisters, and among them she had recognised inSister Mary of the Crucifix the daughter of the nobleman who had beenher aunt's landlord at Treviso. Fulvia's name was not unknown to thehandsome nun, and the coincidence was enough to draw them together in acommunity where such trivial affinities must replace the ties of nature.
Fulvia soon learned that Mary of the Crucifix was the spoiled darling ofthe convent. Her beauty and spirit, as much perhaps as her familyconnections, had given her this predominance; and no scruples interferedwith her use of it. Finding herself, as she declared, on the wrong sideof the grate, she determined to gather in all the pleasures she couldreach through it; and her reach was certainly prodigious. Here Odo hadbeen obliged to fall back on his knowledge of Venetian customs toconjecture the incidents leading up to the scene of the previous night.
He divined that Fulvia, maddened by having had to pronounce theirrevocable vows, had resolved to fly at all hazards; that Sister Mary,unconscious of her designs, had proposed to take her on a party ofpleasure, and that the rash girl, blind to every risk but that of delay,had seized on this desperate means of escape. What must have followedhad she not chanced on Odo, she had clearly neither the courage nor theexperience to picture; but she seemed to have had some confused idea ofthrowing herself on the mercy of the foreign nobleman she believed shewas to meet.
So much Odo had gathered; and her voice, her gesture, the disorder ofher spirit, supplied what her words omitted. Not for a moment, either inlistening to her or in the soberer period of revision, did he questionthe exact truth of her narrative. It was the second time that they hadmet under strange ci............