Chapter XIII: Tokens

He talked, having a willing listener--she laughed at him for a chatterbox. He had long fits of silence--she tried to enter into his dreams. Sometimes he was moody and troubled; and she knew why, and blamed herself for his self-reproach; sometimes, and that most often, they drifted soul to soul on a halcyon tide, and let the world go, and forgot everything but themselves and the rapture of living.

And they met and met; and still were faithful to their platonic compact. It was pretty to mark their idyll; but Nature, while she hung them with flowers, was for ever a little impatient of their content.

Nobody interfered with them; their intimacy was encouraged rather than suspected; the world conspired for their ruin. They were so little put to it to practise any duplicity, that their consciences almost came to acquit them of the necessity for it. In company they were called upon to display no greater decorum than good taste would have imposed upon a betrothed couple; and elsewhere, on the strength of that mutual understanding, they could consort in honest seeming, as if no guilty thought were at their hearts.

And, indeed, there was none in Isabella’s--a child of seventeen, and in love. Guilt is for criminals, who work the other way and through hate of their kind. Fanchette’s soul should have been the guilty one.

One day Tiretta took a queer object from his pocket. It was down in the deep gardens, and they were alone together again.

“Do you see that?” he said. It was a little white slipper, woefully grubby.

“If you please, Bonbec,” she answered. It was her name for him, quaint in its underlying confidence, but betraying nothing to chance ears.

“Well, do you not recognise it?”

“No. Stay----” she laughed and flushed. “Is it really the recovered relic of that day?”

“Relic?--indeed it is.”

“Horrible dirty little thing!”

“May I keep it?”

“O, Bonbec!”

“That and the flower--a priceless pair.”

“Priceless, indeed. What presents I make you!”

“I gave Bissy gold for this.”

“O, then, it is invaluable!”

“Lady, I have slept with it every night under my pillow.”

“I should at least have pulled off the heel if I had been you.”

“Tell me, may I keep it?”

“I wish I might give you something worth your taking, Bonbec.”

“Saving yourself, I could wish no dearer gifts. They speak heaven to me--yes, the little soiled slipper and the little crumpled flower. So much so that, in fairness, I want to make you as inestimable a gift in return. Isabel, will you take my pot of basil, and cherish it for me?”

“I will love to--dearly I will.”

“It is so inconsiderable a thing, it would pass for a mere compliment. I have a strange feeling about it--now do not wonder why, or whence it comes--that its flowering will coincide with our loves’ triumph; that it waits to be the symbol of our bridal. Is not that an odd superstition--irrational, meaningless; and yet somehow I cannot shake it off.”

He smiled; but his eyes were serious. She answered as movingly:

“If love can make it flower, dear my heart, that day shall come quickly.”

“So I feel it,” he said. “Tend it; touch it; breathe on it--no more will be needed. It will think the spring is in its green veins; it will open its little smiling eyes, like a waking infant, to you its mother. Fancy it our sleeping baby, Isabel.”

They were silent for awhile, the girl looking down with flushed cheeks. Presently she said:

“Will Bissy wonder, do you think?”

“Bissy?”

“Why you gave him gold for it--that other?”

“Ah-ha! Bissy is astute, a shrewd calculating elfin. He will not kill his goose with the golden eggs. The mine is not emptied of its possibilities for him. Trust him to be silent; and perish all scruples!”

He deprecated meeting trouble half-way; he bade her just drift and be happy. He was in one of his irresponsible moods, indolent and garrulous. Sometimes, he told her, he felt like a warm mass of animated jelly, afloat on a tropic sea, and just dreamily conscious of the sun and the soft swaying of the water. If only he could roll lazily round, and feel the contact of his lady radiate, and with her drift on for ever through the glassy silences!

“But I think there would be two sides to that,” responded Isabella very sensibly; “and only one would be turned to the sun. Picture the black abysses underneath, and what might rise up from them.”

He laughed:

“Then we will be two birds floating on tranced wings through the limitless blue.”

“And the storms, Bonbec?”

“Then two angels, it must be; and think of another side to that if you can.”

“I can only think of God, Bonbec.”

He looked at her, and laughed again; but suddenly was silent.

That night Fanchette, preparing her mistress for bed, made an impromptu statement, quite innocently:

“I have put the pot of basil in your Highness’s chambre-à-coucher.”

Isabella, guilty of an involuntary start, paused a moment to recover her self-possession.

“What pot of basil, girl?”

“O! I thought your Highness would know. It was delivered as from M. le chevalier, with his respectful compliments.”

“I recollect now. M. Tiretta, uncertain of his movements, begged me to hold the stakes, as it were, between himself and Aquaviva. You remember the challenge?”

Indeed, that explanation of his gift had been offered to the Infanta by M. Tiretta himself; and not as a contingent one. If there was to be any question of subterfuge, the guilt should rest with him.

Fanchette remembered very distinctly.

“I think then, with your Highness’s permission, it is well placed where it is,” she said.

Isabella, her colour a little heightened, found a difficulty in asking why.

“O, I have a sentiment about these things,” said Fanchette. “Warm thoughts will make the flowers in one’s bosom open prematurely--I have noticed that.”

“Are you proposing to me,” said Isabella, “to wear this entire bush as a posy?”

“Well, warm dreams, then,” said the maid. “They will make a very forcing-house of one’s bedroom--mademoiselle will see, if she has any love for this plant. It will come to blossom while she slumbers. Or perhaps she would rather I removed it. It is not good, say some people, to breathe in sleep the same air with flowers. They are like sweet-tongued suitors, best shut the other side of the door.”

“That will do, Fanchette. You are allowing your tongue too much freedom.”

“O, I did not mean to imply anything,” quoth injured innocence. “Your Highness, if you please, is so ready to think the worst of Fanchette. Only what I will venture to say is that, if you are not on the side of M. Tiretta in this business, it will be sensible of you to let me put the basil-pot elsewhere.”

“I am not, however, the least troubled with these scruples,” said Isabella courageously. “As you have put it there, it may remain, since its leaves at least smell sweet. And if I find I suffer from its neighbourhood, it will be simple to remove it.”

“O, if you ask me, I do not think you will suffer from it!” said the maid, airily pert.

“Good-night, Fanchette!”

“Good-night, your Highness, and fruitful dreams.”

The alcove where the Infanta slept had in it a little dim hanging lamp, which burnt all night. It was enough and no more to betray in shadowy contour the half-visionary sweetness of the face upon the pillow, the rounded shoulder, the waxen hand. She lay, on this night, so still, she hardly seemed to breathe. She was listening, her lips just parted, to the sounds in the great house dying away in the distance one by one. The last door boomed its remote thunder; the step of a sentry passed beneath her window, and attenuated and ceased; a profound stillness reigned everywhere. Then, sitting up, she sat thrilling a moment, and slid softly from her bed. Listening again, as if half fearful of what her own longing might bring upon her, she crept barefooted, in her ghostly night-robe, to the table where her treasure lay, and knelt, and put her arms about it, and buried her face in the fragrant leaves.

“My baby,” she whispered--“open, open your pretty eyes, and make me happy. Did I deny you? It was for love’s sake and your father’s, most dear. He would tell you so if he were here.”