The Valley of Decision Part 36

He stood before her accusingly, almost, the pa.s.sion of the long fight surging up in him as he felt the weapon drop from his hand.

Fulvia had sat motionless under his appeal; but as he paused she rose with an impulsive gesture. "Oh, why do you torment me with questions?"

she cried, half-sobbing. "I venture to counsel a delay, and you arraign me as though I stood at the day of judgment!"

"It IS our day of judgment," he retorted. "It is the day on which life confronts us with our own actions, and we must justify them or own ourselves deluded." He went up to her and caught her hands entreatingly.

"Fulvia," he said, "I too have doubted, wavered--and if you will give me one honest reason that is worthy of us both--"

She broke from him to hide her weeping. "Reasons! reasons!" she stammered. "What does the heart know of reasons? I ask a favour--the first I ever asked of you--and you answer it by haggling with me for reasons!"

Something in her voice and gesture was like a lightning-flash over a dark landscape. In an instant he saw the pit at his feet.

"Some one has been with you. Those words were not yours," he cried.

She rallied instantly. "That is a pretext for not heeding them!" she returned.

The lightning glared again. He stepped close and faced her.

"The d.u.c.h.ess has been here," he said.

She dropped into a chair and hid her face from him. A wave of anger mounted from his heart, choking back his words and filling his brain with its fumes. But as it subsided he felt himself suddenly cool, firm, attempered. There could be no wavering, no self-questioning now.

"When did this happen?" he asked.

She shook her head despairingly.

"Fulvia," he said, "if you will not speak I will speak for you. I can guess what arguments were used--what threats, even. Were there threats?"

burst from him in a fresh leap of anger.

She raised her head slowly. "Threats would not have mattered," she said.

"But your fears were played on--your fears for my safety?--Fulvia, answer me!" he insisted.

She rose suddenly and laid her arms about his shoulders, with a gesture half-tender, half-maternal.

"Oh," she said, "why will you torture me? I have borne much for our love's sake, and would have borne this too--in silence, like the rest--but to speak of it is to relieve it; and my strength fails me!"

He held her hands fast, keeping his eyes on hers. "No," he said, "for your strength never failed you when there was any call on it; and our whole past calls on it now. Rouse yourself, Fulvia: look life in the face! You were told there might be troubles tomorrow--that I was in danger, perhaps?"

"There was worse--there was worse," she shuddered.

"Worse?"

"The blame was laid on me--the responsibility. Your love for me, my power over you, were accused. The people hate me--they hate you for loving me! Oh, I have destroyed you!" she cried.

Odo felt a slow cold strength pouring into all his veins. It was as though his enemies, in thinking to mix a mortal poison, had rendered him invulnerable. He bent over her with great gentleness.

"Fulvia, this is madness," he said. "A moment's thought must show you what pa.s.sions are here at work. Can you not rise above such fears? No one can judge between us but ourselves."

"Ah, but you do not know--you will not understand. Your life may be in danger!" she cried.

"I have been told that before," he said contemptuously. "It is a common trick of the political game."

"This is no trick," she exclaimed. "I was made to see--to understand--and I swear to you that the danger is real."

"And what if it were? Is the Church to have all the martyrs?" said he gaily. "Come, Fulvia, shake off such fancies. My life is as safe as yours. At worst there may be a little hissing to be faced. That is easy enough compared to facing one's own doubts. And I have no doubts now--that is all past, thank heaven! I see the road straight before me--as straight as when you showed it to me once before, years ago, in the inn-parlour at Peschiera. You pointed the way to it then; surely you would not hold me back from it now?"

He took her in his arms and kissed her lips to silence.

"When we meet tomorrow," he said, releasing her, "It will be as teacher and pupil, you in your doctor's gown and I a learner at your feet. Put your old faith in me into your argument, and we shall have all Pianura converted."

He hastened away through the dim gardens, carrying a boy's heart in his breast.

4.10.

The University of Pianura was lodged in the ancient Signoria or Town Hall of the free city; and here, on the afternoon of the Duke's birthday, the civic dignitaries and the leading men of the learned professions had a.s.sembled to see the doctorate conferred on the Signorina Fulvia Vivaldi and on several less conspicuous candidates of the other s.e.x.

The city was again in gala dress. Early that morning the new const.i.tution had been proclaimed, with much firing of cannon and display of official fireworks; but even these great news, and their attendant manifestations, had failed to enliven the populace, who, instead of filling the streets with their usual stir, hung ma.s.sed at certain points, as though curiously waiting on events. There are few sights more ominous than that of a crowd thus observing itself, watching in inconscient suspense for the unknown crisis which its own pa.s.sions have engendered.

It was known that his Highness, after the public banquet at the palace, was to proceed in state to the University; and the throng was thick about the palace gates and in the streets betwixt it and the Signoria.

Here the square was close-packed, and every window choked with gazers, as the Duke's coach came in sight, escorted meagrely by his equerries and the half-dozen light-horse that preceded him. The small escort, and the marked absence of military display, perhaps disappointed the splendour-loving crowd; and from this cause or another, scarce a cheer was heard as his Highness descended from his coach, and walked up the steps to the porch of ancient carved stone where the faculty awaited him.

The hall was already filled with students and graduates, and with the guests of the University. Through this grave a.s.semblage the Duke pa.s.sed up to the row of armchairs beneath the dais at the farther end of the room. Trescorre, who was to have attended his Highness, had excused himself on the plea of indisposition, and only a few gentlemen-in-waiting accompanied the Duke; but in the brown half-light of the old Gothic hall their glittering uniforms contrasted brilliantly with the black gowns of the students, and the sober broadcloth of the learned professions. A discreet murmur of enthusiasm rose at their approach, mounting almost to a cheer as the Duke bowed before taking his seat; for the audience represented the cla.s.s most in sympathy with his policy and most confident of its success.

The meetings of the faculty were held in the great council-chamber where the Rectors of the old free city had a.s.sembled; and such a setting was regarded as peculiarly appropriate to the present occasion. The fact was alluded to, with much wealth of historical and mythological a.n.a.logy, by the President, who opened the ceremonies with a polysyllabic Latin oration, in which the Duke was compared to Apollo, Hercules and Jason, as well as to the flower of sublunary heroes.

This feat of rhetoric over, the candidates were called on to advance and receive their degrees. The men came first, profiting by the momentary advantage of s.e.x, but clearly aware of its inability to confer even momentary importance in the eyes of the impatient audience. A pause followed, and then Fulvia appeared. Against the red-robed faculty at the back of the dais, she stood tall and slender in her black cap and gown.

The high windows of painted gla.s.s shed a paleness on her face, but her carriage was light and a.s.sured as she advanced to the President and knelt to receive her degree. The parchment was placed in her hand, the furred hood laid on her shoulders; then, after another flourish of rhetoric, she was led to the lectern from which her discourse was to be delivered. Odo sat just below her, and as she took her place their eyes met for an instant. He was caught up in the serene exaltation of her look, as though she soared with him above wind and cloud to a region of unshadowed calm; then her eyes fell and she began to speak.

She had a pretty mastery of Latin, and though she had never before spoken in public, her poetical recitations, and the early habit of intercourse with her father's friends, had given her a fair measure of fluency and self-possession. These qualities were raised to eloquence by the sweetness of her voice, and by the grave beauty which made the academic gown seem her natural wear, rather than a travesty of learning.

Odo at first had some difficulty in fixing his attention on what she said; and when he controlled his thoughts she was in the height of her panegyric of const.i.tutional liberty. She had begun slowly, almost coldly; but now her theme possessed her. One by one she evoked the familiar formulas with which his mind had once reverberated. They woke no echo in him now; but he saw that she could still set them ringing through the sensibilities of her hearers. As she stood there, a slight impa.s.sioned figure, warming to her high argument, his sense of irony was touched by the incongruity of her background. The wall behind her was covered by an ancient fresco, fast fading under its touches of renewed gilding, and representing the patron scholars of the mediaeval world: the theologians, law-givers and logicians under whose protection the free city had placed its budding liberties. There they sat, rigid and sumptuous on their Gothic thrones: Origen, Zeno, David, Lycurgus, Aristotle; listening in a kind of cataleptic helplessness to a confession of faith that scattered their doctrines to the winds. As he looked and listened, a weary sense of the reiterance of things came over him. For what were these ancient manipulators of ideas, prestidigitators of a vanished world of thought, but the forbears of the long line of theorists of whom Fulvia was the last inconscient mouthpiece? The new game was still played with the old counters, the new jugglers repeated the old tricks; and the very words now poured out in defence of the new cause were but mercenaries scarred in the service of its enemies. For generations, for centuries, man had fought on; crying for liberty, dreaming it was won, waking to find himself the slave of the new forces he had generated, burning and being burnt for the same beliefs under different guises, calling his instinct ideas and his ideas revelations; destroying, rebuilding, falling, rising, mending broken weapons, championing extinct illusions, mistaking his failures for achievements and planting his flag on the ramparts as they fell. And as the vision of this inveterate conflict rose before him, Odo saw that the beauty, the power, the immortality, dwelt not in the idea but in the struggle for it.

His resistance yielded as this sense stole over him, and with an almost physical relief he felt himself drawn once more into the familiar current of emotion. Yes, it was better after all to be one of that great unconquerable army, though, like the Trojans fighting for a phantom Helen, they might be doing battle for the shadow of a shade; better to march in their ranks, endure with them, fight with them, fall with them, than to miss the great enveloping sense of brotherhood that turned defeat to victory.

As the conviction grew in him, Fulvia's words regained their lost significance. Through the set mask of language the living thoughts looked forth, old indeed as the world, but renewed with the new life of every heart that bore them. She had left the abstract and dropped to concrete issues: to the gift of the const.i.tution, the benefits and obligations it implied, the new relations it established between ruler and subject and between man and man. Odo saw that she approached the question without flinching. No trace remained of the trembling woman who had clung to him the night before. Her old convictions repossessed her and she soared above human fears.

So engrossed was he that he had been unaware of a growing murmur of sound which seemed to be forcing its way from without through the walls of the ancient building. As Fulvia's oration neared its end the murmur rose to a roar. Startled faces were turned toward the doors of the council-chamber, and one of the Duke's gentlemen left his seat and made his way through the audience. Odo sat motionless, his eyes on Fulvia. He noticed that her face paled as the sound reached her, but there was no break in the voice with which she uttered the closing words of her peroration. As she ended, the noise was momentarily drowned under a loud burst of clapping; but this died in a hush of apprehension through which the outer tumult became more ominously audible. The equerry reentered the hall with a disordered countenance. He hastened to the Duke and addressed him urgently.

"Your Highness," he said, "the crowd has thickened and wears an ugly look. There are many friars abroad, and images of the Mountain Virgin are being carried in procession. Will your Highness be pleased to remain here while I summon an escort from the barracks?"

Odo was still watching Fulvia. She had received the applause of the audience with a deep reverence, and was now in the act of withdrawing to the inner room at the back of the dais. Her eyes met Odo's; she smiled and the door closed on her. He turned to the equerry.

"There is no need of an escort," he said. "I trust my people if they do not trust me."

"But, your Highness, the streets are full of demagogues who have been haranguing the people since morning. The crowd is shouting against the const.i.tution and against the Signorina Vivaldi."

A flame of anger pa.s.sed over the Duke's face; but he subdued it instantly.

"Go to the Signorina Vivaldi," he said, pointing to the door by which Fulvia had left the hall. "a.s.sure her that there is no danger, but ask her to remain where she is till the crowd disperses, and request the faculty in my name to remain with her."