Edith Wharton: Complete Works. Edith Wharton

the shifting brightness of torches.

      As Odo, in mask and travesty, stood observing the fantastically-dressed audience, the pasteboard theatre adorned with statuary, and the nuns flitting across the stage, his imagination, strung to the highest pitch by his own impending venture, was thrilled by the contrast between the outward appearance of the scene and its underlying reality. From where he stood he looked directly at the Abbess, who was seated with the Nuncio and his suite under the tall crucifix in the centre of the garden. As if to emphasize the irony of the situation, the torch fixed behind this noble group cast an enlarged shadow of the cross over the Abbess’s white gown and the splendid robes of her companions, who, though they wore the mask, had not laid aside their clerical dress. To Odo the juxtaposition had the effect of some supernatural warning, the shadow of the divine wrath projected on its heedless ministers; an impression heightened by the fact that, just opposite the cross, a lively figure of Pan, surmounting the pediment of the theatre, seemed to fling defiance at the Galilean intruder.

      The nuns, like the rest of the company, were masked; and it had been agreed between Odo and Fulvia that the latter should wear a wreath of myrtle above her veil. As almost all her companions had chosen brightly-colored flowers this dark green chaplet was easily distinguished among the clustered heads beneath the stage, and Odo had no doubt of being able to rejoin Fulvia in the moment of dispersal that should follow the conclusion of the play. He knew that the sisters were to precede their guests and be locked behind the grate before the ball began; but as they passed through the garden and cloisters the barrier between nuns and visitors would probably not be too strictly maintained. As he had foreseen, the company, attracted by the graceful procession, pressed forward regardless of the assistant mistresses’ protests, and the shadowy arcades were full of laughter and whispered snatches of talk as the white flock was driven back to its fold.

      Odo had withdrawn to the darkest angle of the cloister, close to a door leading to the pharmacy. It was here that Fulvia had told him to wait; and though he had lost sight of her when the audience rose, he stood confidently watching for the reappearance of the myrtle-wreath. Presently he saw it close at hand; and just then the line of sisters flowed toward him, driven forward by a group of lively masqueraders, among whom he seemed to recognize Cœur-Volant’s voice and figure. Nothing could have been more opportune, for the pressure swept the wearer of the myrtle-wreath almost into his arms; and as the intruders were dispersed and the nuns laughingly reformed their lines, her hand lingered in his and he felt himself drawn toward the door.

      It yielded to her touch and Odo followed her down a dark passage-way to the empty room where rows of old Faenza jars and quaintly-shaped flagons glimmered in the dusk. Beyond the pharmacy was another door, the key of which hung on the wall with the portress’s hood and cloak. Without a word the girl wrapped herself in the cloak and, fitting the key to the lock, softly opened the door. All this was done with a rapidity and assurance for which Odo was unprepared; but, reflecting that Fulvia’s whole future hung on the promptness with which each detail of her plan was executed, he concluded that her natural force of character had enabled her to assume an ease she could hardly feel.

      The door opened on the kitchen-garden, and brushing the lavender-hedges with her flying skirts she sped on ahead of Odo to the postern which the nuns were accustomed to use for their nocturnal escapades. Only the thickness of an oaken gate stood between Fulvia and the outer world. To her the opening of the gate meant the first step toward freedom, but to Odo the passing from their enchanted weeks of fellowship to the inner loneliness of his former life. He hung back silent while she drew the bolt.

      A moment later they had crossed the threshold and his gondola was slipping toward them out of the shadow of the wall. Fulvia sprang on board and he followed her under the felze. The warm darkness enclosing them stirred impulses which their daily intercourse had subdued, and in the sense of her nearness he lost sight of the conditions which had brought them together. The feeling seemed to communicate itself; for as the gondola rounded the angle of the convent-wall and swung out on the open, she drooped toward him with the turn of the boat and their lips met under the loosened masks.

      At the same instant the light of the Virgin’s shrine in the corner of the convent-wall fell through the window of the felze on the face lifted to Odo’s; and he found himself suddenly confronted by the tender eyes and malicious smile of Sister Mary of the Crucifix.

      “By Diana,” she cried as he started back, “I did but claim my pay in advance; nor do I think that, when she knows all, Sister Veronica will grudge me my reward!”

      He continued to stare at her in speechless bewilderment, and she went on with a kind of tender impatience: “You simpleton, can you not guess that you were watched, and that but for me your Veronica would at this moment be lying under lock and key in her cell? Instead of which,” she continued, speaking more slowly, and leaning back as though to enjoy the full savor of his suspense, “instead of which she now awaits you in a safe nook of my choosing, where, within half an hour’s time, you may atone to her with interest for the trifling infidelity into which I have betrayed you.”

      “She knows, then?” Odo faltered, not daring to say more in his ignorance of Sister Mary’s share in the secret.

      Sister Mary shook her head with a tantalizing laugh. “That you are coming? Alas, no, poor angel! She fancies that she has been sent from the convent to avoid you—as indeed she was, and by the Reverend Mother’s own order, who, it seems, had wind of the intrigue this morning. But, the saints be praised, the excellent sister who was ordered to attend her is in my pay, and instead of conducting her to her relatives of San Barnabò, who were to keep her locked up over night, has, if I mistake not, taken her to a good woman of my acquaintance—an old servant, in fact—who will guard her as jealously as the family plate till you and I come to her release.”

      As she spoke she put out her head and gave a whispered order to the gondolier; and at the word the boat swung round and headed for the city.

      In the violent reaction which this strange encounter produced, Odo was for the moment incapable of taking any clear note of his surroundings. Uncertain if he were not once more the victim of some such mischance as seemed to attend all his efforts to succor Fulvia, he sat in silent apprehension as the gondola shot across the Grand Canal and entered the labyrinth of water-ways behind San Moisè. Sister Mary took his silence philosophically.

      “You dare not speak to me, for fear of betraying yourself,” she said, “and I scarce wonder at your distrust; for your plans were so well laid that I had no notion of what was on foot, and must have remained in ignorance if Veronica had not been put in Sister Martha’s charge. But you will both live to thank me, and I hope,” she added, laughing, “to own that you would have done better to take me into your confidence from the first.”

      As she spoke the gondola touched at the head of a narrow passage which lost itself in the blackness of the overhanging houses. Sister Mary sprang out and drew Odo after her. A few yards down the alley she entered a plain low-storied house somewhat withdrawn behind its neighbors. Followed by Odo she groped her way up a dark flight of stairs and knocked at a door on the upper landing. A vague flutter within, indicative of whispers and uncertain movements, was followed by the slipping of the bolt, and a middle-aged woman looked out. She drew back with an exclamation of welcome, and Sister Mary, seizing Odo by the shoulders, pushed him across the threshold of a small dimly-lit kitchen.

      Fulvia, in her nun’s habit, cowered in the darkest corner; but at sight of Odo she sprang up, and ran toward him with a happy cry.

      —————

VI.

      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 nightfall; 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