“I insist upon knowing.”
“Your Excellency overwhelms me. The mere thoughtless speculation of an idle mind. I put two and two together, not even considering that, according to some people, they do not necessarily make four.”
“Come, explain yourself.”
“Why, her Highness, by what we hear, is not, and very sensibly, moved by this man’s meretricious Art—with a big A; and yet she is moved by his art.”
“Well?”
“Well, monsieur?”
“You suggest a personal interest?”
“I suggest nothing—nothing whatever.”
“Who was your informant?”
La Coque smiled, and shook his head.
The duke stood moody and preoccupied a moment. He had never in his heart approved this fantastic wooing by deputy; and had only abetted it for a diplomatic reason. It was still an open question with him and his duchess whether Maria Theresa destined Isabella for her son Joseph or for his younger brother Leopold, and, while that question hung in the balance, he had been willing to contribute what bias he could to the desired result. But supposing the girl’s own perversity was actually promising to confound that issue by way of an intrigue with the chosen instrument to its success! It was the day of slack moralities, and he had no hesitation in putting it so to himself, with little resentment but for the offence it implied against policy. And yet he loved his daughter in his way, and believed in her.
Believed in her, of course. She was utterly incapable of such a descent from all that constituted her his child and an Infanta of Spain. The thing was insanely preposterous—a vicious calumny. His expression cleared.
“My good Charles,” he said ironically, “your discretion is beyond praise; only, evidence withheld is little better than false evidence. I should recommend you, for the future, to modify your spite against a better man, or it may get you into trouble.”
And, with these severe words, he left the room.
La Roque, following, paused an instant to whisper in the ear of the crestfallen coxcomb:
“Mum, Charles—mum for your life! Mamselle Fanchette was it?—and in her Highness’s own suite It would never do to reveal the source, would it? But trust to my silence.”
La Coque, grinning savagely, struck his right hand softly into the palm of his left.
“A better man?” he muttered. “We’ll see. Let him conquer where he will, then. Only, if signs are reported true, the victory will not be exactly as desired.”
But from that moment his jealousy of the rival singer developed into a positive hatred.
Tirettaone morning was traversing an inner corridor of the palace on his way to the gardens, when, passing by a private door which gave egress from the Infanta’s apartments, he almost ran against a young woman who at that moment issued from the opening. The lady effected a quite natural little scream and start, notwithstanding the fact that her eyes had been, but the instant before, watching through the door-slit the young gentleman’s approach. He apologised becomingly, with many regrets for the alarm he had occasioned, and was proceeding on his way, when an exclamation from the girl arrested him. She had pressed a faultless little hand to that region in her dainty bodice under which her heart was presumably lodged, and, with her eyes half closed, appeared to be swaying slightly. He returned at once, and, with an aspect of real concern, offered his support.
Mademoiselle Becquet resisted, though faintly, the proffered assistance. There was, after all, something of the moralhors-d’œuvre, of the appetisingly unexpected, about this early capture of her slim waist by a shapely masculine arm. Finally she turned her head away, and, with a sigh, yielded herself to the embrace just as it appeared about to be withdrawn.
“You are better?” said Tiretta anxiously.
She gulped, still panting a little.
“It was the suddenness, monsieur. My heart is weak.” (The wicked fibster! It was as tough as indiarubber, what there was of it.)
He expressed his compunction:
“And soft, I am sure,” said he, “on behalf of a penitent sinner.”
She smiled, in a recovered way.
“If you please, monsieur. But you need not take advantage of that absolution. A soft heart is the most fatal possession a girl can own to in this bad world. It were as foolish as to flaunt her jewels in the Ghetto.”
Tiretta, with a laugh, released the slender waist.
“If you can stand alone,” he said.
“O, yes!” she answered—and indeed there was no doubt she could.
He looked at her with a twinkling gravity.
“What is your name, child?”
She dipped him a demure little curtsey.
“Fanchette Becquet, at your service, monsieur. I am her Highness’s confidential maid.”
“She is prettily served, Fanchette.”
“And handsomely, I am sure, monsieur. You see I return the compliment.”
He laughed again at her insolence—and checked himself suddenly.
“What on earth do you mean by that?”
“O!” she said innocently: “do you not love my mistress? Everybody loves her.”
He breathed again. There was safety in generalisations.
“If everybody loves her, then I suppose I must,” he said.
She clapped her pink hands.
“I will tell her. She will like to know that.”
He stared at the girl aghast; then nipped one of her slender wrists.
“If you dare! Are you off your head?”
“Perhaps, monsieur. You see you startled me so.”
“I don’t believe a word of it. I believe this was premeditated.”
“Yes, that is quite true.”
“It was?”
“I saw you coming before you saw me. I thought I should like to be her Highness’s proxy for your attentions. I would have let you kiss me, if you had offered.”
He released her, and stepped back.
“You are certainly mad,” he exclaimed.
She laughed: they were quite alone: then came close up to him.
“Would you like to practise again on me, monsieur—to test the softness of her heart by deputy? No?”
“I am no thief,” he said, as if stupefied. “Keep your jewels, for what I care.”
“That is well,” she answered mockingly, “since they are bespoken by another. Only I love an intrigue.”
He commanded himself by a great effort; assumed a chilling masterfulness, if he did not feel it.
“Listen to me,” he said. “I cannot pretend to know on what false and vicious assumptions you are daring thus to impeach my honour. They are mistaken, whatever they are; and let that suffice for you.”
Fanchette set her lips tight, and nodded her head once or twice.
“O! very well,” she said. “There is no harm done. If I am mistaken I am mistaken, that is all.”
He should have gone; but he unwisely lingered.
“I believe,” he said, “I ought to probe this to the bottom. Only gossip takes good care to be elusive.”
“It cannot help itself, monsieur,” said the girl. “It is all shaped upon signs and hints and glances—upon a mystic code which only the initiated can interpret.”
“Then in that case you are not one of the initiated.”
“I do my best, monsieur. Hey-day! Well, from my own point of view, I am sorry for my mistress—especially as she looks, for her entertainment, to the company this afternoon of so chill a cavalier.”
“What do you mean?”
“O! nothing, but that we are going, she and I, to that old Aquaviva’s garden; and without the she-dragon, who will be engaged over M. du Tillot.”
“Her Highness expects me to accompany her?”
“I did not say that. To think she could so commit herself! But she sighs over the incompleteness of her dear orange-grove, which, says she, only needs its Orpheus to be the sweetest garden under heaven.”
“It is melancholy to have to produce music to order, is it not, Fanchette?”
“I think it is, monsieur.”
“Well, I must respond, I suppose. It will only be a little while longer. It has this use, that you shall convince yourself by my behaviour of the wickedness of your innuendo.”
Convince herself as he convinced himself, no doubt. He told his conscience, as he walked away, that thus to go forward, steadfastly and dutifully, his eyes set to his mission, his ears deaf to the jeers and chuckles of scandal, was his only safe course. There was a story somewhere he had read of a prince whose way to a definite purpose lay up a stone-strewn hill, every pebble of which, when he came to the test, was clamant with an agonised or seductive voice entreating him to turn. And he did turn, and was changed into stone. Well, he must not be like that prince, that was all—an easy matter, it seemed. But the spirits of evil know their business better than man, or they would not provide so simple a lure for his ruin. It is the complicated trap which fails to beguile the confiding little mouse; the deadly snare consists in no more than a fragment of bait and a wire spring.
Just to go steadily forward: yes, but this unexpected halt, with its startling revelation, had suddenly made of that plain road a rather formidable maze. Had he appeared, noticeably appeared, to be making too personal a matter of this business? Then how was a part so impassioned to be played in a spirit of aloofness? He swore he was loyal to his mission, loyal to his friend, that he was a man of honour, that he had never consciously wavered in his fidelity. Of course he had not. The devil knows better than to inoculate his victims perceptibly. It is a very favourite trick of his to encourage a man, who knows nothing whatever about moral architecture, to build over-heavily upon his moral strength. Tiretta was so confident in his, that he had never thought of questioning its capacity for supporting any test. He did not now; he would not, Fanchette and all such mischievous gossips despite. He was just, he flattered himself, beginning to succeed in his romantic undertaking, and to feel a certain thrill in the near accomplishment of a task which had once promised to prove so distasteful. To withdraw now would certainly seem to give a colour to calumny. If only for the lady’s sake, he must prosecute his purpose to its triumphant end.
What a chivalrous Tiretta, to be sure; but indeed, he was not yet so conscious of his own state as to be guilty of lying to himself in the matter.
And in the meantime Mademoiselle Fanchette stood and looked after the retreating figure, and curtsied derisively to its back.
“You are a very pretty gentleman,” she said: “but I know a prettier.”
She had that other in her mind’s eye. He was also a musician, but of a very different “tone,” so to speak. He did not deal in the visionary stuff of dreams, but in the practical material of courtship—the sort of suitor a woman could understand. He set adorable words to intelligible music; one was at no trouble with him to puzzle out sentiments which fitted themselves quite naturally into the love-traffic they recorded and provoked. And he too was handsome, but in a braver, bolder way, wooing, as a man should, by compulsion. She was in fact very much under the thrall of this cavalier, though still coquetting—for business’ sake, as some Frenchwomen will—with the thought of capitulation.
And yet, with a curious perversity, she was jealous of the very quality she sneered at—acutely jealous of the mistress who might command, if she liked and as she liked, that dreamer of dreams. She did not understand M. Tiretta’s mystical rhapsodies (she had often, herself unseen or unobserved, heard him improvise), or the fine subtlety of his mind, or the rareness of his gift; she did not admire either his melancholy looks or his serene humour. But an uneasy suspicion as to the superior value of these qualifications, as compared with la Coque’s showy and meretricious ones, haunted her. She felt them like supercilious reflections on her own vulgar taste, or on what they seemed to imply to be such; and the thought, as with common natures, did not drive her to aspire, but to degrade. She had no wish, for herself or her lover, to rise to Tiretta’s level; she would have liked dearly to pull him down to theirs. Wherefore, in the prosecution of that amiable design, she had been quite ready to lend herself a subtle instrument to the ruin of that rival favourite. She would even, if provoked to it, have given her body to the task, as she had her soul. To hate and to seduce, to seduce because she hated, to risk loving because she had seduced—that was something her mental attitude. It was the passionist French view, and Fanchette was excessively French.
Allthe glowing air was steeped in incense. The mealy pollen of the orange blossoms, washed out by the rain of the preceding days, had dried and scattered its largesse, powdering with gold dust the purple whimples of the violets underneath. The smell of warm moistened grass rose to mix with and to freshen the languider perfume, whose excess had otherwise been cloying. No whisper breathed, no blade stirred in all the lovely grove. It was like a painted picture, each leaf of it, each waxen blossom, each incandescent globe of fruit drawn clear and motionless against its background of vivid blue; and so stilly luminous throughout, that its shadows were but tempered light, embroidered, like rich velvet, with spangles of brighter emerald; while the very prismatic sparkles with which the air was dusted seemed themselves to float asleep.
An hour ago a nightingale had sung, sweet as a little bell-glass; since when this hush had fallen on the grove, sunk in warm drowsiness within its encircling green—a quiet so profound, one might have fancied one could distinguish the soft rustle of the cloud-skirts, as now and then they trailed across the sky.
A single blossom dropped, and the whole illusion scattered, like a mirrored image in a pool into which an acorn has fallen.
On the instant there came into this voiceless paradise the figures of a man and a stunted boy. The man carried a lute or mandolin slung over his shoulder; the boy, large-headed and large-hatted like a gnome, followed importantly in the other’s footsteps.
“It is the enchanted garden of Hesperus,” said Tiretta, pausing on the threshold. He lowered his voice instinctively, as if he had broken unexpectedly into some woodland shrine of the gods; then went a soft step or two and paused again.
“It is a very good plantation,” said Bissy, tolerant and superior. “We have established it against some odds, signore, I can tell you.”
“What odds?” He looked at the imp vacantly, his thoughts elsewhere.
“Wind and snow,” said Bissy. “The trees have to be protected and fed. Though they are grafted on sound lemon stocks, they are capricious at first, like infants put to a wet-nurse, and require a deal of coaxing. When lusty, they become strong feeders, as Mamselle Fanchette will tell you.”
Tiretta caught the name.
“Who will tell me?”
“Fanchette. She is her Excellency’s lady. She likes to hear that these trees drink blood. They will supply right wedding tokens for the brides of brave men, she says.”
The old florist, busy and preoccupied, had not recognised the stranger when the latter had ridden over from Colorno to visit his gardens; but Bissy had at once, and had offered to escort the gentleman whither he would.
“It is down there, through the juniper thicket,” he said, pointing suddenly, with an air of shrewd confidence, “that one reaches the margin of the backwater where you first came upon her Excellency wading. Holy mother, what a state the old lady was in! It looked at first as if she would have liked to drinkyourblood, signore. And then all at once she changed.”
Tiretta took one step and nipped the elf by his ear.
“Ow—ow!” wailed Bissy; completely flabbergasted.
The chevalier looked formidable.
“Your tongue is too long, whelp. Stand still a moment while I clip it for you.”
“No, signore, don’t!”
“I think I have no choice.”
“For the love of the saints, signore. Ow—ow! I will tell you something. It is ill to hurt one who has tried to do you a service.”
“What service?”
“The ring, signore, that you threw away in a pet. I hunted for it, I did, when the water sank low in the creek; but I could not find it.”
“You had no thought of me in the matter, you egg. You wanted it for yourself.”
He seemed to warm from counterfeit to genuine anger as he spoke. He wrung the boy’s ear, so that the poor mannikin howled again.
“I’ve a mind to pull it off for you. What the devil do you mean, daring to criticise the actions of your betters!”
Suddenly conscious, in the midst of his fume, of its absurdity, he released his prisoner and stepped back. Poor Bissy, holding both hands to his smarting headpiece, stood wriggling and sniffing noisily.
“Stop that!” commanded the chevalier; “or I shall have a double reason for gagging you.”
He could not tell himself what had provoked him to the assault. The nature of a particularly unpalatable reminder might have been responsible for it. No self-respect likes to have recalled to it the processes of past humiliations, even though it directly owes to them its present position. Help a nerveless subject to decision, help a diffident lover to his mistress, but never thereafter imply to either of them that he was once other than the masterful hero your assistance made him.
Not that Bissy had been of much assistance to our hero on a certain occasion. Only things had altered since then; the old atmosphere of bitterness had sweetened to a strange new flavour.
Seeing the boy, with swollen lids and puckered face, trying to repress his sobs, remorse gripped Tiretta. That passion was always his besetting weakness. It urged him to reparations which were even more ill-advised than the hasty acts which led to them. If he had been unduly angry, he was inclined now to be unduly lenient.
“Come,” he said; “I haven’t killed you. Tell me the truth; what would you have done with the ring if you had found it?”
Bissy, morally chastened, gulped and snuffled.
“I should have done the honest thing, signore.”
“Good boy,” said Tiretta. And then he added magnanimously: “Well, if you are successful, you can keep it for your pains.”
That was generous of him, since the ring did not belong to him to dispose of—a conclusion perhaps shrewdly appreciated by the owlish urchin.
“I do not want it,” said Bissy, aggrieved and righteous. “The most I should expect would be a lira for my trouble. Her Excellency, no doubt, will give me that for her slipper.”
“What slipper, boy?”
“The one she lost in the pool. I found that, though I could not find the other.”
A sudden warmth seemed to suffuse Tiretta’s whole being. He held out his hand nonchalantly.
“I am staying at Colorno. I shall probably see her Highness this afternoon. Give it me, and I will return it to her.”
Bissy, still wiping his eyes, shook his head.
“I want the credit myself. Besides, I have not got it with me.”
“Listen here: I will give you a golden ducat for it.”
“Why, signore?”
Why, indeed? The shameful fool blushed before that small inquisitor. He stammered:
“I—I offended her Highness that day. It will serve as a peace-offering.”
“A dirty one,” said Bissy. “It is all stained and muddy.”
Tiretta had one infallible argument with the obdurate. It was the one which came to him naturally and confidently. He put his hand quite caressingly on the boy’s shoulder.
“Very well,” he said: “it does not matter. But, inasmuch as I have wronged you, child, I am going to atone with a song. Would you like to hear me make music?”
“If you please, signore.”
Tiretta penetrated a little way among the trees, and stopped, resting his back against a trunk.
“Sit there,” he said; and Bissy, allured and wondering, squatted before him like a toad.
The troubadour unstrung his instrument, and, tuning it a moment softly at his ear, wandered into a symphony as sweet as falling flowers. His eyes, as he played, grew dreamy and remote; he forgot his purpose and his company; the spirit of the haunted place stole into his brain, drugging it to oblivion of all else. The words came, when they came, independent of his own volition, it seemed:
“I know not what I love—A shadow, a delight,Like the morning moon,Thin wraith of her that nightBared warm to my impassioned dreams,And now so cold and distant seems.“I know not that I love—Yet one flower from its breastDoth breathe a sweeter perfumeThan it ever once possest.And why this is I do not know,But only joy that it is so.“I know not what is loveBut a thing of whims and hates,Since what my dreams fulfil to meHer scorn repudiatesThe moment that my eyes, awake,Would close for ever for her sake.”
“I know not what I love—A shadow, a delight,Like the morning moon,Thin wraith of her that nightBared warm to my impassioned dreams,And now so cold and distant seems.“I know not that I love—Yet one flower from its breastDoth breathe a sweeter perfumeThan it ever once possest.And why this is I do not know,But only joy that it is so.“I know not what is loveBut a thing of whims and hates,Since what my dreams fulfil to meHer scorn repudiatesThe moment that my eyes, awake,Would close for ever for her sake.”
“I know not what I love—
A shadow, a delight,
Like the morning moon,
Thin wraith of her that night
Bared warm to my impassioned dreams,
And now so cold and distant seems.
“I know not that I love—
Yet one flower from its breast
Doth breathe a sweeter perfume
Than it ever once possest.
And why this is I do not know,
But only joy that it is so.
“I know not what is love
But a thing of whims and hates,
Since what my dreams fulfil to me
Her scorn repudiates
The moment that my eyes, awake,
Would close for ever for her sake.”
He ended on a tumbled note; and to the sense of a sudden creeping in his heart. Something had moved on the threshold of the grove hard by. Bissy, his mouth agape, scrambled to his pudgy feet.
“It is Madonna,” said the boy. And then, approaching Tiretta, he whispered, “you shall have the slipper, signore,” and, retreating, scuttled from the grove, ducking his obeisance to the lady as he passed.
Tiretta remained motionless, a feeling of strange awe, of strange guilt at his heart. And, as he stood, she came on and passed him, and was gone into the grove.
Its sweet and fitting apparition; her footfall had seemed to make no sound; her robe was white as mist; one moment she had turned her grave innocent eyes to his, whether in wonder or rebuke he could not tell, and so in silence had moved on. He almost believed it, in truth, to be a spirit, conjured up of his unconscious rhapsody. Had she heard it, marked it, resented it? He hardly knew himself of what he had sung; from what spring of unearthly emotion what passion had risen into expression. Only this he knew—that no thought of friendship, of loyalty to another’s interests had inspired him.
Why should it have? It was no new thing for such abstract sentiments, bubbling up from the soundless deeps of his soul, to find on his lips their irresistible utterance. He was the voice on these occasions of something beyond his control, of something for which he could not be held responsible.
He stirred, in a sudden revulsion of feeling. A little heat of anger overtook him, and he consigned Fanchette to the devil. It was she who had tempted him into this situation, with her common winks and becks and nudges, so to speak—tempted him, and only to be snubbed for his pains. Why should he submit to being thus passed over, as if he had sinned against some code of conduct or good taste? He would follow, and ask her Highness point blank if his presence in the grove was desired or not.
Yet a thrill ran through his veins as he moved to give effect to his resolution. He felt it, and set his teeth, frowning, as a man might who resents his own blushes over some innocuous malapropism into which he has been betrayed.
She had paused among the trees at a little distance away, a slender spirit-like figure, seeming half diaphanous in the shadowy glow of things, claimed both of fancy and reality, like a leaf-dappled hamadryad. His mandolin slung over his arm, he went straight up to her, and, standing erect, the soldier uppermost, spoke out his thought:
“My presence here is unwelcome to your Highness?”
Her face looked pale; there was still a wonder in her eyes as she turned to him:
“It was quite unforeseen, monsieur.”
He bowed.
“I accept the rebuke. My coming was due to a misapprehension, for which I am not responsible. But the mistake is soon remedied.”
Her eyes seemed to wonder more and more. And then the faintest flush stole to her cheek.
“Do you not like my orange grove, monsieur?” she said.
“It is beautiful,” he answered. “I seem doomed unwittingly to desecrate your Highness’s chosen retreats.”
She looked down a moment; a minutest smile rose to her lips:
“I have no claim to it really,” she said; “only I love its sweetness and solitude. Bissy is its inspiring genius—as you seem to have discovered.”
He saw the sparkle in the eyes she raised, and stood spellbound by it.
“I had wronged the boy—hurt him,” he said very seriously; “and my song was in the nature of an atonement.”
“A strange one, surely, for a boy’s hurt.” She was grave all at once. “What had he done to offend you?”
“Will you please not to ask me? I am a hasty fool in many things.”
“You mean you sometimes give pain without intending it?”
He bowed his head.
“Monsieur,” she said, very earnestly, “in that case will you throw away that flower from your button-hole?”
He seemed to have instinctively known what was coming. He put his hand over the withered posy.
“My theme,” he said—“that night—it cannot have hurt you. Madame herself proposed it.”
“Whence did you gather your theme?” she asked him.
“From the floor of the arbour,” he answered. “What then? It was of his Highness’s martyrdom I made it the text.”
She sought his eyes, a wistful pain lined between her own.
“Ah!” he said, before the appeal on her lips could be spoken; “do not insist. Let me buy my right to it with a song—a dream—a memory—something I cannot explain elsewise.”
He had caught at his instrument; a madness seemed to have risen in his brain, desperate, inspired, overbearing, all in one; he hardly knew what he was saying or doing—only that some passion, insidious, unrealised till this moment, was mastering and overwhelming him. “Listen,” he whispered, while she stood before him white and wondering—“hear what it means to me—what emotions—what old sweet agonies of death and parting.” The music came to him, the words, the throbbing anguish of it, as he spoke:
“Love-in-a-mist! Blue eyes in tangled hair—Wet eyes that brim through lashes of dark rain—Where have I known your mystery, your pain?In what green gardens kissed your soft despair?“There was a parting once—but when? but where?I ask it of my heart, and ask in vain—Only a wild voice weeps across the main:‘Love-in-a-mist! Wet eyes in tangled hair!’”
“Love-in-a-mist! Blue eyes in tangled hair—Wet eyes that brim through lashes of dark rain—Where have I known your mystery, your pain?In what green gardens kissed your soft despair?“There was a parting once—but when? but where?I ask it of my heart, and ask in vain—Only a wild voice weeps across the main:‘Love-in-a-mist! Wet eyes in tangled hair!’”
“Love-in-a-mist! Blue eyes in tangled hair—
Wet eyes that brim through lashes of dark rain—
Where have I known your mystery, your pain?
In what green gardens kissed your soft despair?
“There was a parting once—but when? but where?
I ask it of my heart, and ask in vain—
Only a wild voice weeps across the main:
‘Love-in-a-mist! Wet eyes in tangled hair!’”
He ended; and a dead silence ensued. Then the girl, moving like one half stupefied, and with a sigh that seemed to rend her bosom, took a single step away and stopped.
“Forgive me,” said Tiretta. His mood was spent, exhausted for the moment; he could only utter that broken prayer.
She put her hand to her eyes, and seemed to stumble. He was by her side in a moment. “I did not mean it!” he said hoarsely. “God knows what tempted me!”
She looked up at him then very piteously.
“What gardens?” she whispered, as if she could have wept.
He answered like one in a dream:
“There were green bays; and the mist was over everything. Strange shapes came and went in it—they shrank and dilated. And the eyes of the women were like heaven in April—strange wet blue eyes behind the rain. They come out of sleep: they have haunted me since childhood—the strange eyes—the wild visions of the North. Ah, do not think me mad, Madonna!”
His breast was heaving, his hands entreating. She moved on, motioning to him to walk beside her. As they passed slowly together through the sweet scented shadows, he grew more composed—and she also, it seemed. Presently she spoke to him, in a low earnest voice:
“Will you try to forget it—never to let it be again?”
She held out her hand; and, like a man who delivers his own death-warrant, he detached the faded flower from his breast, and laid it reverently in that soft palm.
“Condemn me,” he muttered, walking with bowed head, “to a traitor’s death. I deserve the worst.”
“It was a momentary possession,” she answered. “The evil thing is gone.”
He sighed. “As I must go—as I must go, lest it come again.”
She did not answer. Stealing a look at her, he saw something in her face which made him knot his fingers together, as if forcibly to control some scarce endurable emotion. And so they wandered on, as it were in a tragic trance, both soul-stricken and both dumb. Threading the golden trees, as if always to weave deeper the silences between themselves and the common world, they came out presently, unconscious of how they had reached it, upon a green sward sloping to the river. And there the man turned, and gazed upon his companion.
“Do you not recognise the place?” he said—“of my shame?”
He saw her lips move, and the tears gather in her eyes.
“No, of mine.”
Could mortal fortitude forbear—endure further? With one mad step he had her in his arms, and their lips met.
Fanchettewas chattering to Aquaviva, like the intolerable magpie he thought her, when a couple, issuing from the orange grove, came into her ken approaching up a flowery path. She was silent instantly—a relief so grateful to the old gardener, that he was moved to raise his head from his work to examine into the cause of it. He grunted his satisfaction:
“That is a mercy. You will attend to your own duties now instead of interfering with mine.”
Fanchette tossed her head.
“What an old bear, to be sure! I shall have to withdraw my patronage.”
“Do,” said Aquaviva. “It will be the better for my reputation.”
She would have retorted, only that she was intent on other things. As the couple came near, she ran to her mistress, and smoothed and fondled her with a privileged intimacy.
“Ah! you have been exploring, you bad demoiselle, careless, as always, of your poor Fanchette’s credit. Look at the moss stains on your skirt, and the flower crushed in your bosom! And the sun has caught your neck and face, too, naughty mistress.”
As she readjusted things with dainty fluttering fingers, she just glanced with an arch smile at Tiretta—a little telegraphic signal, full of comprehension and meaning. He looked away immediately.
“There, that will do, Fanchette,” said Isabella, flushing finely. “It is time we went home, is it not? What is grandfather doing there?”
“He is doing something horrible, disgusting. You will not like to see it.”
More to escape an embarrassment than from any awakened curiosity, Isabella walked on. Tiretta, dropping behind a moment, whispered in the maid’s ear:
“Little liar!”
“If you please, monsieur,” murmured Fanchette demurely.
“She never expected me.”
“Did I not say so?”
“You implied that she did.”
“And was that why you came?”
He drew up, baffled. She gave a tiny laugh.
“It was to convince me of the wickedness of my innuendo, was it not?” she whispered. “Well, I am convinced, monsieur.”
He had better have been silent from the first. She put a finger to her lips.
“Hush!” she said. “You can trust in me—you can always trust in me.”
He should have answered; should have repudiated, then and finally, the implication. He hesitated—and the next moment they had overtaken the Infanta, where she had paused beside the old perfumer.
“Grandfather, what is that in your hand?”
The old man rose, groaning as he straightened his back. He held by the handle a lipped vessel, half-full of a sluggish ruby liquid.
“You should know,” he said. “It is what your loved oranges grow rich and fat on.”
“Not blood?”
“Bullocks’ blood.”
Isabella, with an exclamation of horror, shrunk back.
“Those are not oranges, my friend,” said Tiretta.
He pointed to a row of little shrubs or herbs, set in earthenware jars against a sunny wall. They were green and bushy, and the vessels were of many colours, fancifully designed and decorated.
“They are sweet basil, or basil-thyme, master,” said Aquaviva—“a common stock, until enriched by good feeding. It is the way of the world all over. It is blood which makes the quality—meat-juice, and plenty of it. These are having their first weaning, and the result will show in a year, or maybe two or three. Simple enough in themselves, they will flower, when they do, fit to grace a lady’s bower. ’Tis said they flourish best on the blood of murdered men.”
“Come away, Fanchette,” said Isabella. But the maid lingered.
“Harkee, my friend,” said Tiretta: “I will buy one of your basils unweaned—that pretty one at the end there in the green jar—and back it against all the rest to flower first and smell the sweetest.”
“As you will, master—and be a fool for your pains.”
Tiretta saw the young lady into her carriage—a service accepted by her very formally and silently—and presently rode back to Colorno, his purchase under his arm.
“... deep into the dying dayThe happy princess followed him.”
“... deep into the dying dayThe happy princess followed him.”
“... deep into the dying day
The happy princess followed him.”
Ithad been one delirious moment snatched from the hands of fate. So it was understood between them—an impulsive contact, passionate, transient, never to be spoken of or repeated. Isabella might, if she would, have made of that mute stipulation a definite compromise with her conscience, since a princess, no less than any other woman, was free to barter her lips for one instant of delight, provided she incurred thereby no after responsibility towards their ravisher. There were flowers, in the world of gallantry, to be sipped, as well as hives to be plundered; and one was not called upon to hold oneself bound to every honey-loving freebooter whom one permitted to settle a moment and taste.
She might have thought thus, I say; only, if she had, she would not have been the passion-pure child, innocent and affectionate, of our knowledge. She was, in fact, very troubled, very shamed, over what she had done, or allowed to be done. And yet her heart, conscious-guilty as it might feel, would thrill in the memory of that moment. Though she had since made one to that unspoken compact of silence and abstention, she never had a thought but that that instant of emotional self-surrender had delivered her, a rightful captive, into the hands of her conqueror. She could never now love another man; only her love must be content to remain for all time an abstraction, a pathetic dream, impossible of realisation. If only they would consent to leave it so; to let her die unwedded—perhaps in the peaceful seclusion of a cloister.
So a single kiss wrought on this loving nature, that it had for her the tragic sanctity of a pledge. It did not matter how extenuated by good resolutions. The fire once kindled would not so be quenched. Nor would the cold water these two engaged themselves to throw on their own heart-burnings have any effect but to make the heat glow presently the fiercer. That is a mere chemical commonplace, and, unless love is to be accepted for something other than a matter of gases and combustion, follows of necessity. Fire, to be put out by water, must be put out, and not simply fed.
It is true that, in the first of the reaction from that madness, they had both shrunk back aghast over the magnitude of the peril they had touched and escaped. Yet the very sympathy engendered of that common fright was fatal. It constituted between them a secret which by habit became a tender and a passionate one. Whatever distance was affected in their relations, there was that knowledge to obliterate it. They were at all times and in all places conscious of it and of one another.
And so, what was to be the end? An idle problem. If love could think of ends and retributions, love would not be love but sanity.
They continued to meet—were they not expected to meet? That was the mortal irony of it all. Omnipotence laid no embargo on their friendship—applauded and encouraged it, rather. The signs of their better understanding filled the oldgouvernantewith jubilation. “He comes to vindicate my belief in him,” she wrote to the duke. “In a little you will find the girl converted to your wishes.”
And Tiretta? He did not succumb without a struggle. He hated his own treachery, but he could not hate himself, so sanctified of that idyllic passion. For long he fought desperately to command his own humorous, philosophical, independent view of things—to remain “the master of his fate, the captain of his soul.” And all the time he knew that his only resource lay in flight; and he said to himself, “I await no more than her dismissal.” But she never spoke the word that was to banish him and kill his heart, and he said, “To abandon her unbidden, to leave her to bear the brunt of this alone, were to play the part of a coward.”
Specious, perhaps; yet in a measure the truth; only that his own defences weakened while he lingered.
And then at length he could battle no more, but, spent and exhausted, gave up the struggle. He was like a man who, having swum too far from shore in a tide-race, and seeking to return, grows slowly and agonisingly conscious of the futility of his efforts, and yields himself first to despair and then to resignation, keeping no more than afloat as he drifts out into the unknown. He had done his best, but the tide was too strong for him. Let those who had committed him to the effort take upon their own consciences the result.
In the first, pitying her embarrassment in his presence, responding, as he believed, to her unspoken wish, he rather avoided her; or, when they met, addressed her only with a grave and formal courtesy. The inevitable change happened one day when they chanced upon one another near the green arbour sacred to an unforgettable memory. She was standing there alone, looking down upon her own lily-pond, when he came upon her, and he would have withdrawn, with a low-spoken apology, only she stayed him. He stopped, his every vein tingling, beside her. She did not speak for a moment; and then she looked up in his face, with a sudden desperate resolve in her eyes.
“That day,” she said hurriedly—“when I spoke to you at last—I had meant it to show I was sorry for my rudeness. Why did you snub me about my lilies? I think you love the children better than you do me.”
“Love!” He repeated the word like one stupefied.
She was so unsophisticated, so incapable of maintaining, in the face of apparent unkindness, the pose to which her conscience had condemned her, that she was unable to qualify her reproach by a word.
He stood as if stunned; then very gently sought her unresisting hand, and raised it to his lips.
“If I might love you!” he whispered, imprisoning the soft palm, and gathering it fearfully to his breast. “But it is madness.”
“I thought you meant to show me so,” she answered—“that that was why you avoided me.”
“And if I did—what else was possible?” A long ecstatic sigh quivered from his lips. “I must go,” he said. “It is the only way. You must forget me and forgive me.” He bent suddenly, and looked in her face; and his voice broke. “O, my love, my love—keep back your tears!”
Gently she released her hand, turning away from him. And he strode a step or two, hither and thither, in unbearable pain.
“Why have they laid this cruelty on us?” he said. “I cannot live and endure it. Tell me to go.”
“I cannot.”
So near inaudible—so whispered from a bursting heart! He felt as if his own heart would break with the rapture of it. Again he turned from her, and strode forth and back.
“Prometheus!” he cried. “Give me my fire! I defy the gods! Afloat on the long drift of dreams—everything surrendered; everything believed possible; no to-morrow to this ecstasy. Isabel, we will be sweet lovers, my sweet love.”
One beautiful moment, in that embowered place, he held her in his arms; then put her gently from him.
“That I must teach you duplicity!” he said—“so truthful, so innocent! But we must be circumspect, or the dream will end. It is all a dream, is it not, dear love?”
She could not kill the happiness in her eyes; but she made them grave for his behoof.
“If we might talk,” she said; “knowing what we know, but never alluding to it; keeping for ever that dear secret—even from one another.”
“For ever!” he said. “Well, what have we to do with time? I would rather be mad than sane. Talk on, sweet music.”
“I have so much to say—and yet I have nothing. I think you have come into my heart, and that no words are needed there.”
“Yet we must talk, being mortal, for lucidity’s sake. Tell me, how did I steal in?”
“I cannot. Your voice made me sorry; and then—my own cruelty. Were you thinking of that when you sang to Bissy?”
“I suppose so.”
“I was frightened of myself, monsieur.”
“Monsieur?”
“What can I call you?”
“I will tell you. My real name is not that I am known by—a nom de guerre, in literal truth. My own I laid to rest long years ago, never again to be revived. But love knows its own resurrections. I will tell you. It is for your sweet ears, for your sweet lips alone; and you will keep my secret, Isabel?”
She promised, and to the end was faithful to her vow.
“And now,” said he, “where is my flower?”
To his rapture, she brought the little withered spray out from her bosom, and kissed it once and gave it to him.
“It shall lie on my dead heart,” he said.
Her voice was full, her eyes were shining, as she answered:
“It gave me a living one, I think. O, love, the strangeness and the sorrow of your music! It robbed me of my soul, of my will, that day I listened here.”
He gazed at her, his eyes rapt and dreaming.
“It was the rain,” he said. “Such a wild wet day, after long heat, brings to me always, like no other, the passion of the past.”
“Your past?”
“How can I say? Old pictures, old hauntings, young dead faces—the air is full of their streaming, the wind of their voices. And I know them, yet they are strange to me; I hear them, yet they utter no word. They were all born and perished ages before I reached the world; they come out of the wild beautiful places, the mists and mysteries of the green gardens where I kissed your eyes—yes,yourbeautiful eyes, beloved.”
“Not to part?” she whispered.
He did not answer, but he put his lips to the dead flower before he hid it in his breast.
“Are you terrified of me?” he said. “Do you think me mad?” And she answered, dwelling on his face: “Be mad, if to abandon me were reason.”
Drowned in that sunny ecstasy, they both stood silent for awhile. Then Tiretta sighed and stretched his shoulders, as if in blissful waking from a dream; and he looked with a tender humour at his comrade.
“I am not all moonstruck,” he said. “I would not have you think that of me, lady. I have rubbed shoulders with life. I can be practical on occasion. This tendency to rhapsodising is a sort of possession that visits me at times. It puts visions in my mind and words on my lips. Hold the North responsible for it.”
“You speak so strangely of the North,” she said wistfully; “and often I think your eyes are turned to it.”
“Over the long wastes of water. It shines there so mistily,” he answered; “it blossoms so full of faint entreating faces. Is it the way home, I wonder—the path to that real unknown God, the God of utter love, to whom, shrinking from the Jehovah of Israel, we are for ever blindly stretching out our arms—the God to whom we turn, as the poor world-broken turns from the high-altar to the pitiful Mother, the lovely and grief-hushing in some wonderful, inexplicable way? So it seems to me, my Isabel—the long far lands of home—the shores of unutterable consolation. Shall we go home together some day?”
She answered like Ruth, a very passion of emotion in her voice.
“Sweet love,” he said, deeply moved; “so dear and strange the North seems to me—a symbol and a mystery. And to reach it at last, just a sleep and a returning. You did not know I was of northern blood?”
“No, I did not know.”
“But I am, Isabel. When was it—when your great-great-great-great-grandfather was on the Spanish throne, and his fleet sailed northward to destroy the heretic. Do you know your house’s history, child—the magnificence and the shame of it? How those little islands, those little hazy islands, planted like green ramparts on the threshold of the unknown, called to their aid the winds and lightnings, and smote the invader, in his presumption, from their seas. And how of that vast flotilla few escaped; and not one but was disabled; while many beat round the northern limits, only to be dashed to pieces on the rocks and shoals of the western islands. And of those poor souls who found a landing there, hundreds were slain, and but a handful, sheltered of passion and pity, survived—pity that gave protection, passion that gave me my ancestors and my name. The sun and the mist meet in my blood, Isabel—the passion and the mystery of life. And sometimes one prevails, and I am human; and sometimes the other, and I am a seer or a lunatic.”
She listened, wondering a little; and then said she, “My strange love; let me look in your eyes.”
Smiling and unmoving he faced her; and she stood gazing in silence. Presently she said: “I have always wondered; and now I know. They are brown; and yet they are blue. It is the sea gleaming through their shadows.”
“It is the North,” he answered—“whither we are flying some day—you and I together, dear love. Listen!”
He took his lute, and sang softly to her: