Part 25 (1/2)

Odo's heart sank. To have let his thoughts dwell on such a possibility seemed to have done little to prepare him for its realisation. He hardly understood what de Crucis was saying: he knew only that an hour before he had fancied himself master of his fate and that now he was again in bonds. His first clear thought was that nothing should part him from Fulvia.

De Crucis seemed to read the thought.

”Cavaliere,” he said, ”at a moment when time is so valuable you will pardon my directness. You are accompanying to Switzerland a lady who has placed herself in your charge--”

Odo made no reply, and the other went on in the same firm but courteous tone: ”Foreseeing that it would be difficult for you to leave her so abruptly I provided myself, in Venice, with a pa.s.sport which will take her 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 the Signorina Fulvia Vivaldi, known in religion as Sister Veronica, to absent herself from Italy for an indefinite period. With this pa.s.sport and a good escort your companion will have no difficulty in joining her friends.”

Excess of astonishment kept Odo silent for a moment; and in that moment he had as it were a fugitive glimpse into the workings of the great power which still strove for predominance in Italy. A safe-conduct from the Papal Nuncio to Fulvia Vivaldi was equivalent to her release from her vows; and this in turn implied that, for the moment, religious discipline had been frankly sacrificed to the pressure of political necessities. How the invisible hands made and unmade the destinies of those who came in their way! How boldly the Church swept aside her own defences when they obstructed her course! He was conscious, even at the moment, of all that men like de Crucis had to say in defence of this higher expediency, this avowed discrimination between the factors in each fresh combination of circ.u.mstances. He had himself felt the complex wonder of thoughtful minds before the Church's perpetual miracle of change disguised in immutability; but now he saw only the meaner side of the game, its elements of cruelty and falseness; and he felt himself no more than a frail bark on the dark and tossing seas of ecclesiastical intrigue. For a moment his heart shuddered back from its fate.

”No pa.s.sport, no safe-conduct,” he said at length, ”can release me from my duty to the lady who has placed herself in my care. I shall not leave her till she has joined her friends.”

De Crucis bowed. ”This is the answer I expected,” he said, not without sadness.

Odo glanced at him in surprise. The two men, hitherto, had addressed each other as strangers; but now something in the abate's tone recalled to Odo the familiarity of their former intercourse, their deep community of thought, the significance of the days they had spent together in the monastery of Monte Ca.s.sino. The a.s.sociation of ideas brought before him the profound sense of responsibility with which, at that time, he had looked forward to such an hour as this.

The abate was watching him gravely.

”Cavaliere,” he said, ”every instant counts, all you had once hoped to do for Pianura is now yours to accomplish. But in your absence your enemies are not idle. His Highness may revoke your appointment at any hour. Of late I have had his ear, but I have now been near a week absent, and you know the Duke is not long constant to one purpose.--Cavaliere,” he exclaimed, ”I appeal to you not in the name of the G.o.d 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 an appeal on such lips, yet with the distinct consciousness that it was uttered in all sincerity, and that, whatever their superficial diversity of view, he and de Crucis were at one on those deeper questions that gave 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 intentness of his scrutiny. ”If the lady--” broke from him once; but he checked himself and took a turn in the room.

Meanwhile a resolve was slowly forming itself in Odo. He would not be false to the call which, since his boyhood, had so often made itself heard before the voice of pleasure and self-interest; but he would at least reserve the right to obey it in his own fas.h.i.+on and under conditions which left his private inclination free.

”There may be more than one way of serving one's fellows,” he said quietly. ”Go back without me, abate. Tell my cousin that I resign my rights to the succession. I shall live my own life elsewhere, not unworthily, I hope, but as a private person.”

De Crucis had turned pale. For a moment his habitual self-command seemed about to fail him; and Odo could not but see that a sincere personal regret was mingled with the political agent's consciousness of failure.

He himself was chiefly aware of a sense of relief, of self-recovery, as though he had at last solved a baffling enigma and found himself once more at one with his fate.

Suddenly he heard a step behind him. Fulvia had re-entered the room. She had put off her drenched cloak, but the hair lay in damp strands on her forehead, deepening her pallor and the lines of weariness under her eyes. She moved across the room, carrying her head high and advancing tranquilly to Odo's side. Even in that moment of confused emotions he was struck by the n.o.bility of her gait and gesture.

She turned to de Crucis, and Odo had the immediate intuition that she had recognised him.

”Will you let me speak a word privately to the cavaliere Valsecca?” she said.

The other bowed silently and turned away. The door closed on him, and Odo and Fulvia remained alone. For a moment neither spoke; then she said: ”That was the abate de Crucis?”

He a.s.sented.

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 here simply as the Duke's agent. He has been for some time the governor of Prince Ferrante.”

”I knew,” she murmured, ”I knew--”

He went up to her and caught her hands. ”Why do we waste our time upon him?” he exclaimed impatiently. ”Nothing matters but that I am free at last.”