Edith Wharton: Complete Works. Edith Wharton

      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 passionately.

      “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 color 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 passed 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 enquiries 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 recognized 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.

      Odo handed him the coat-of-arms. “Can you tell me what this is?” he asked carelessly. “I picked it up here a moment ago.”

      The other turned it over and stared. “Why,” said he, “that’s off the harness of the gentleman that supped here last night—the same that went on later to Peschiera.”

      Odo proceeded to question him about the mule-tracks over Monte Baldo, and having bidden him saddle the horses in half an hour, crossed the courtyard and reëntered the inn. A grey light was already falling through the windows, and he mounted the stairs and knocked on the door which he thought must be Fulvia’s. Her voice bade him enter and he found her seated fully dressed beside the window. She rose with a smile and he saw that she had regained her usual self-possession.

      “Do we set out at once?” she asked.

      “There is no great haste,” he answered. “You must eat first, and by that time the horses will be saddled.”

      “As you please,” she returned, with a readiness in which he divined the wish to make amends for her wilfulness of the previous night. Her eyes and cheeks glowed with an excitement which counterfeited the effects of a night’s rest, and he thought he had never seen her more radiant. She approached the table on which the wine and bread had been placed, and drew another chair beside her own.

      “Will you not share with me?” she asked, filling a glass for him.

      He took it from her with a smile. “I have good news for you,” he said, holding out the bit of silver which he had brought from the stable.

      She examined it wonderingly. “What does this mean?” she asked, looking up at him.

      “That it is I who am being followed—and not you.”

      She started and the ornament slipped from her hand.

      “You?” she faltered with a quick change of color.

      “This coat-of-arms,” he explained, “dropped from the harness of the traveller who left the inn just before our arrival last night.”

      “Well—” she said, still without understanding; “and do you know the coat?”

      Odo smiled. “It is mine,” he answered; “and the crown is my cousin’s. The traveller must have been a messenger of the Duke’s.”

      She stood leaning against the seat from which she had risen, one hand still grasping it while the other hung inert. Her lips parted but she did not speak. Her pallor disconcerted Odo and he went up to her and took her hand.

      “Do you not understand,” he said gently, “that there is no farther cause for alarm? I have no reason to think that the Duke’s messenger is in pursuit of me; but should he be so, and should he overtake us, he has no authority over you and no reason for betraying you to your enemies.”

      The blood poured back to her face. “Me! My enemies!” she stammered. “It is not of them I think.” She raised her head and faced him in a glow.

      For a moment he stood stupidly gazing at her; then the mist lifted and through it he saw a great light…

      —————

      The landlord’s knock warned them that their horses waited, and they rode out in the grey morning. The world about them still lay in shade, and as they climbed the wooded defile above the valley Odo was reminded of the days at Donnaz when he had ridden up the mountain in the same early light. Never since then had he felt, as he did now, the boy’s easy kinship with the unexpected, the sense that no encounter could be too wonderful to fit in with the mere wonder of living.

      To avoid the road to Peschiera they had resolved to cross the Monte Baldo by a mule-track which should bring them out at one of the villages on the eastern shore of Garda; and the search for this path led them up through steep rain-scented woods where they had to part the wet boughs as they passed. From time to time they regained the highway and rode abreast, almost silent at first with the weight of their new nearness, and then breaking into