Chapter X: The Orange Grove

All the 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 drink _your_ blood, 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 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!’”

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.