The Valley of Decision Part 23

An hour later the two were well on their way toward Mestre, where a travelling-chaise awaited them. Odo, having learned that Andreoni was settled in Padua, had asked him to receive Fulvia in his house till the next night-fall; and the bookseller, whom he had taken into his confidence, was eager to welcome the daughter of the revered Vivaldi.

The extremes of hope and apprehension had left Fulvia too exhausted for many words, and Odo, after she had confirmed every particular of Sister Mary's story, refrained from questioning her farther. Thanks to her friend's resources she had been able to exchange her nun's dress for the plain gown and travelling-cloak of a young woman of the middle cla.s.s; and this dress painfully recalled to Odo the day when he had found her standing beside the broken-down chaise on the road to Vercelli.

The recollection was not calculated to put him at his ease; and indeed it was only now that he began to feel the peculiar constraint of his position. To Andreoni his explanation of Fulvia's flight had seemed natural enough; but on the subsequent stages of their journey she must pa.s.s for his mistress or his wife, and he hardly knew in what spirit she would take the misapprehensions that must inevitably arise.

At Mestre their carriage waited, and they drove rapidly toward Padua through the waning night. Andreoni, in his concern for Fulvia's safety, had prepared for her reception a little farm-house of his wife's, in a vineyard beyond the town; and here at daybreak it was almost a relief to Odo to commit his charge to the Signora Andreoni's care.

The day was spent indoors, and Andreoni having thought it more prudent to bring no servant from Padua, his wife prepared the meals for their guests and the bookseller drew a jar of his own wine from the cellar.

Fulvia kept to herself during the day; but at dusk she surprised Odo by entering the room with a trayful of plates and gla.s.ses, and helping their hostess to set out the supper-table. The few hours of rest had restored to her not only the serenity of the convent, but a lightness of step and glance that Odo had not seen in her since the early days of their friends.h.i.+p. He marvelled to see how the first breath of freedom had set her blood in motion and fanned her languid eye; but he could not suppress the accompanying thought that his own presence had failed to work such miracles.

They had planned to ride that night to a little village in the hills beyond Vicenza, where Fulvia's foster-mother, a peasant of the Vicentine, lived with her son, who was a vine-dresser; and supper was hardly over when they were told that their horses waited. Their kind hosts dared not urge them to linger; and after a hurried farewell they rode forth into the fresh darkness of the September night.

The new moon was down and they had to thread their way slowly through the stony lanes between the vineyards. At length they gained the open country, and growing more accustomed to the darkness put their horses to a trot. The change of pace, and the exhilaration of traversing an unknown country in the hush and mystery of night, combined to free their spirits, and Odo began to be aware that the barrier between them was lifted. To the charm of their intercourse at Santa Chiara was added that closer sympathy produced by the sense of isolation. They were enclosed in their common risk as in some secret meeting-place where no consciousness of the outer world intruded; and though their talk kept the safe level of their immediate concerns he felt the change in every inflection of Fulvia's voice and in the subtler emphasis of her silences.

The way was long, and he had feared that she would be taxed beyond her strength; but the miles seemed to fly beneath their horses' feet, and they could scarcely believe that the dark hills which rose ahead of them against a whitening sky marked the limit of their journey.

With some difficulty they found their way to the vine-dresser's house, a mere hut in a remote fold of the hills. From motives of prudence they had not warned the nurse of their coming; but they found the old woman already at work in her melon-patch and learned from her that her son had gone down to his day's labour in the valley. She received Fulvia with a tender wonder, as at some supernatural presence descending into her life, too much awed, till the first embraces were over, to risk any conjecture as to Odo's presence. But with the returning sense of familiarity--the fancied recovery of the nurseling's features in the girl's definite outline--came the inevitable reaction of curiosity, and the fugitives felt themselves coupled in the old woman's meaning smiles.

To Odo's surprise Fulvia received these innuendoes with baffling composure, parrying the questions she seemed to answer, and finally taking refuge in a plea for rest. But the accord of the previous night was broken; and when the travellers set out again, starting a little before sunset to avoid the vine-dresser's return, the constraint of the day began to weigh upon them. In Fulvia's case physical weariness perhaps had a share in the change; but whatever the cause, its effect was to make this stage of the journey strangely tedious to both.

Their way lay through the country north of Vicenza, whence they hoped by dawn to gain Peschiera on the lake of Garda, and hire a chaise which should take them across the border. For the first hour or two they had the new moon to light them; but as it set the sky clouded and drops of rain began to fall. Fulvia had hitherto shown a gay indifference to the discomforts of the journey; but she presently began to complain of the cold and to question Odo anxiously as to the length of the way. The hilliness of the country forced them to travel slowly, and it seemed to Odo that hours had elapsed before they saw lights in the valley below them. Their plan had been to avoid the towns on their way, and Fulvia, the night before, had contented herself with a half-hour's rest by the roadside; but a heavy rain was now falling, and she at once a.s.sented to Odo's tentative proposal that they should take shelter till the storm was over.

They dismounted at an inn on the outskirts of the village. The sleepy landlord stared as he unbarred the door and led them into the kitchen; but he offered no comment beyond remarking that it was a good night to be under cover.

Fulvia sank down on the wooden settle near the chimney, where a fire had been hastily kindled. She took no notice of Odo when he removed the dripping cloak from her shoulders, but sat gazing before her in a kind of apathy.

"I cannot eat," she said, as Odo pressed her to take her place at the table.

The innkeeper turned to him with a confidential nod. "Your lady looks fairly beaten," he said. "I've a notion that one of my good beds would be more to her taste than the best supper in the land. Shall I have a room made ready for your excellencies?"

"No, no," said Fulvia, starting up. "We must set out again as soon as we have supped."

She approached the table and hastily emptied the gla.s.s of country wine that Odo had poured out for her.

The innkeeper seemed a simple unsuspicious fellow, but at this he put down the plate of cheese he was carrying and looked at her curiously.

"Start out again at this hour of the night?" he exclaimed. "By the saints, your excellencies must be running a race with the sun! Or do you doubt my being able to provide you with decent lodgings, that you prefer mud and rain to my good sheets and pillows?"

"Indeed, no," Odo amicably interposed; "but we are hurrying to meet a friend who is to rejoin us tomorrow at Peschiera."

"Ah--at Peschiera," said the other, as though the name had struck him.

He took a dish of eggs from the fire and set it before Fulvia. "Well,"

he went on with a shrug, "it is written that none of my beds shall be slept in tonight. Not two hours since I had a gentleman here that gave the very same excuse for hurrying forward; though his horses were so spent that I had to provide him with another pair before he could continue his journey." He laughed and uncorked a second bottle.

"That reminds me," he went on, pausing suddenly before Fulvia, "that the other gentleman was travelling to meet a friend too; a lady, he said--a young lady. He fancied she might have pa.s.sed this way and questioned me closely; but as it happened there had been no petticoat under my roof for three days.--I wonder, now, if he could have been looking for your excellencies?"

Fulvia flushed high at this, but a sign from Odo checked the denial on her lips.

"Why," said he, "it is not unlikely, though I had fancied our friend would come from another direction. What was this gentleman like?"

The landlord hesitated, evidently not so much from any reluctance to impart what he knew as from the inability to express it. "Well," said he, trying to supplement his words by a vaguely descriptive gesture, "he was a handsome personable-looking man--smallish built, but with a fine manner, and dressed not unlike your excellency."

"Ah," said Odo carelessly, "our friend is an ecclesiastic.--And which way did this gentleman travel?" he went on, pouring himself another gla.s.s.

The landlord a.s.sumed an air of country cunning. "There's the fishy part of it," said he. "He gave orders to go toward Verona; but my boy, who chased the carriage down the road, as lads will, says that at the cross-ways below the old mill the driver took the turn for Peschiera."

Fulvia at this seemed no longer able to control herself. She came close to Odo and said in a low urgent tone: "For heaven's sake, let us set forward!"

Odo again signed to her to keep silent, and with an effort she resumed her seat and made a pretence of eating. A moment later he despatched the landlord to the stable, to see that the horses had been rubbed down; and as soon as the door closed she broke out pa.s.sionately.

"It is my fault," she cried, "it is all my fault for coming here. If I had had the courage to keep on this would never have happened!"

"No," said Odo quietly, "and we should have gone straight to Peschiera and landed in the arms of our pursuer--if this mysterious traveller is in pursuit of us."

His tone seemed to steady her. "Oh," she said, and the colour flickered out of her face.

"As it happens," he went on, "nothing could have been more fortunate than our coming here."

"I see--I see--; but now we must go on at once," she persisted.

He looked at her gravely. "This is your wish?"

She seemed seized with a panic fear. "I cannot stay here!" she repeated.

"Which way shall we go, then? If we continue to Peschiera, and this man is after us, we are lost."

"But if he does not find us he may return here--he will surely return here!"

"He cannot return before morning. It is close on midnight already.

Meanwhile you can take a few hours' rest while I devise means of reaching the lake by some mule-track across the mountain."

It cost him an effort to take this tone with her; but he saw that in her high-strung mood any other would have been less effective. She rose slowly, keeping her eyes on him with the look of a frightened child. "I will do as you wish," she said.

"Let the landlord prepare a bed for you, then. I will keep watch down here and the horses shall be saddled at daylight."

She stood silent while he went to the door to call the innkeeper; but when the order was given, and the door closed again, she disconcerted him by a sudden sob.

"What a burden I am!" she cried. "I had no right to accept this of you."

And she turned and fled up the dark stairs.

The night pa.s.sed and toward dawn the rain ceased. Odo rose from his dreary vigil in the kitchen, and called to the innkeeper to carry up bread and wine to Fulvia's room. Then he went out to see that the horses were fed and watered. He had not dared to question the landlord as to the roads, lest his doing so should excite suspicion; but he hoped to find an ostler who would give him the information he needed.

The stable was empty, however; and he prepared to bait the horses himself. As he stooped to place his lantern on the floor he caught the gleam of a small polished object at his feet. He picked it up and found that it was a silver coat-of-arms, such as are attached to the blinders and saddles of a carriage-harness. His curiosity was aroused, and holding the light closer he recognised the ducal crown of Pianura surmounting the "Humilitas" of the Valseccas.

The discovery was so startling that for some moments he stood gazing at the small object in his hand without being able to steady his confused ideas. Gradually they took shape, and he saw that, if the ornament had fallen from the harness of the traveller who had just preceded them, it was not Fulvia but he himself who was being pursued. But who was it who sought him and to what purpose? One fact alone was clear: the traveller, whoever he was, rode in one of the Duke's carriages, and therefore presumably upon his sovereign's business.

Odo was still trying to thread a way through these conjectures when a yawning ostler pushed open the stable-door.

"Your excellency is in a hurry to be gone," he said, with a surprised glance.