Chapter XVI: Fast Bind, Fast Find

It was a very impressive ceremony, this betrothal by ring--conventual, almost sacramental in its character. The ambassador’s face had been flushed, his voice hushed, as he had presented this visible symbol of what was to him but something less than a hypostatic union, in which he himself modestly represented the third figure in the trinity. Whereafter, not as bride of Christ, but of Christ’s more confident vicegerent, the heir of Austria, stood Isabella, pledged by token of the shining gem half slipping from her listless finger.

The words were spoken, the gage hung there in witness of their numbing actuality; she was left alone with the duke her father. Its first heat of transport had faded from Don Philip’s cheek, and been succeeded by a rather rigid pallor, a look of hardness, both furtive and resentful. He uttered a little sardonic laugh--the most extreme expression of humour to be allowed himself by an Infant of Spain--and, pacing an aimless step or two, turned with a sudden violence on his child.

“Well?” he barked.

She shook her hand; and the ring dropped from it--fell and bounded on the carpet.

“It is too big for me,” she said piteously.

He stood transfixed a moment; then forgot his dignity so far as to dive and recover the desecrated trinket.

“God in heaven!” he began; then checked himself and choked down his fury. “A defect soon remedied,” he said, his voice quite hoarse.

“But not my unfitness to wear it,” she answered. “O, father, have pity on me!”

He went off like a madman, flinging back and forth the length of the room, and ended by stopping suddenly, his fists raised and clinched, to apostrophise space:

“That our dearest hopes should have come to be realised--and for this! That we should have devoted our love, our diplomacy, our peace of mind to the welfare of this monster of inconsistency and ingratitude!”

She cried out: “O, no, no! O, lord and father, not either!”

He came round, actually grinding his teeth:

“I foresaw this. I read indifference and rebellion in your reception of his Highness’s plenipotentiary. But I tell you that your protests will be of no avail; that we refuse to listen for an instant to any one of the fancied scruples which would deprive us, in the very fruition of our hopes, of the reward of so much disinterested self-sacrifice.”

She let the storm pass, waiting with bowed head; and presently, with an effort to command himself, he put a question to her:

“What is your unfitness? Speak!”

She looked up, then, the tears brimming in her eyes.

“I do not think I was born for a throne,” she said--so movingly, that his heart should have been touched a little. “Its grandeur frightens me.”

He waved that absurdity aside with _hauteur_. To scratch his pride was to find the cold, inflexible Spaniard.

“You were born your father’s daughter,” he said, with a brevity which was final. Then he bent his eyes searchingly on her. “Is there nothing else--no romantic folly of a young and foolish brain?”

For one moment, so temperate his tone had fallen, she had a mad impulse to tell him the truth, to throw herself upon his mercy and his love. But the thought of whom she might endanger thereby came to her, in time to stay the confession on her lips.

“I am so young, father,” she said. “If it is romance to want to keep my youth a little longer, and then to yield it to a humbler state than this, I am guilty of it, I suppose. But I do so love the simple things of life; and I am not heroic in the least.”

“What need of heroism here, you fool?”

“O, much, much! To throw away all that is dear to me to be an empress!”

Still he searched her young innocence with that frowning stare. At length, stirring, and setting his lips grimly, he made to close the colloquy:

“All folly and madness, as you must know. The step is taken; it is irrevocable; and you must reconcile yourself to the position imposed upon you.”

“Imposed--imposed!” She wrung her pretty hands, and, writhing, pressed them to her mouth. “O, that is it--no choice for me--to give myself away from all I love!”

She ran and threw herself at the duke’s feet, and caught at his hands, and wept to him:

“In mercy, father, do not make me do this thing!”

He sought to free himself from her; in his fury he even dragged her as she knelt, so that she almost fell before him.

“I think you are mad,” he said.

“Yes, mad,” she answered--“I am mad. You must not wed a mad woman to an emperor’s son.”

He was frightened a little over the vehemence of her despair. Whatever was to account for it, it was not to be laid, it seemed, by coercion. He must try other means, a different appeal. If a startled suspicion had risen in his heart, he must not betray it; his pride, indeed, prevented him. He passed a hand across his forehead, and forced himself to address her in calmer tones.

“Come,” he said; “control yourself, and try to be reasonable. Why, consider, my little Isabelita, what it is you ask of me--how utterly wild and impossible. You have not been ignorant of our plans for you, or of the steps by which they have reached at last this triumphant consummation. And all this time you have shown no sign of revolt, of anything but a tacit conforming to our wishes. What has suddenly changed you?” His face darkened in spite of himself.

“I think,” she said, “there are no slaves in all the world like princesses. It is not for me, as with the free and happy, to say to my father, ‘I have tried with all my heart because you desired it, and yet I cannot, and I know it would be wrong to give myself rather with aversion than with regard.’ It is enough with more fortunate girls to say ‘I do not love him.’ But what does that avail with us?”

“Aversion!”--he breathed the word in deep scorn--“when you have not even met him?”

“O, father! you have said it. I have not even met him.”

“What, then?” He burst out again, in spite of all his efforts at self-control. “Have you no sense of decency--of what your rank demands of you? There should be loftier motives than mere personal feeling behind these great alliances. But I will hear no more. My patience is exhausted.”

“I will not marry him.”

He stared at her in amazement.

“Sullen and obdurate!” he said. “You will not? We will see. O, I knew very well you had started with an insane prejudice--the mere peevish humour of an unreasonable child. But, beware! Kingdoms are not to be bandied on such terms of spoilt caprice. What or who has instigated you to this rebellion, I say? If any has abused his trust to do so, let him look well to the consequences of his daring.”

She was scared in her turn now--so scared, that her heart for an instant seemed to stop.

“I am a woman, father,” she said faintly; “why should you look for anything beyond a woman’s natural repugnance to being pledged against her choice or will?”

He did not answer for a minute; and then in a softened, more persuasive tone he said:

“A woman, child? To be sure; and I had thought it enough to appeal to the woman in you; the daughter first of all. How we had laboured for this alliance, prayed for it, rejoiced at last in its reality--ah, mon Dieu, you cannot know! And yet you should know. It has been the hope of our maturity; our comfort and solace in our days of bitter trial. It was to set us right with the world, to relieve us of our embarrassments, to enable us to do justice at last to the many poor souls long devoted to our fortunes. And with you it rested to be the almoner to all these pathetic needs.”

“Father--no! You kill me with your words!”

“Kill you? Ah, child, what if it kill your mother, in the frail state she is in, to learn of this final blow to her hopes?”

She had thrown her arms, as she knelt, across a chair, and now laid her face on them, abandoned to hopeless grief.

“Am I to speak her death-sentence then?” asked the duke, in a broken whisper.

Her face still hidden, she held out her poor left hand. Understanding, he slipped the ring upon the quivering finger, and, wise in the resolve to let well alone, went softly from the room, and left her to her despair.

In the corridor outside he came upon M. la Coque, who scanned his agitated face with a furtive curiosity. The duke motioned his favourite to follow him, and led the way into his private closet, where he threw himself into a chair, and began to fan his brow exhaustedly with his handkerchief.

“Charlot,” he said presently, looking up from under languid lids: “is the door shut?”

“It is fast, monseigneur.”

The duke signed to him to come nearer.

“You were witness of her reception of the pledge?”

“Of the Infanta’s?”

“Now who else? The Infanta’s, of course. Well, how did it strike you?”

“That mademoiselle, perhaps, made a little light of the gift.”

The duke dabbed his forehead, and sat up suddenly, with a sigh.

“Charlot?”

“Your Highness?”

“What was that you once hinted to me about someone’s art with a little a?”

“Your Highness thought fit at the time--very properly, I am sure--to reprove me for what was merely an idle speculation.”

“Very likely. You declined to state your authority, if I remember. Do you still?”

“That must be conditional.”

“On what?”

“On your condonation of a certain liaison.”

“Well, well. Who is the other party to it, Charlot?”

“I must crave your Highness’s absolution.”

“You have it, coquin.”

“It is Fanchette Becquet, then--the Infanta’s first femme de confiance.”

“Ah, rogue!” The duke frowned--then sighed again. “That is to bring corruption very near the fount of innocence.”

“Not corruption, monsieur, but salvation. If I have sacrificed myself to serve your Highness----”

“O--la--la! O to be sure! You are a very disinterested scamp. But that sort of sacrifice will never get you into heaven. And what was innocence doing to risk its salvation, my friend?”

“Has your Highness formed no opinion?”

The duke shrugged his shoulders, pettishly, wearifully.

“You smile, and hint, and shuffle round the truth, as if you would seek to have me understand it without compromise to yourself. Why the devil can’t you speak out?”

“What encouragement have I, when my motives are misconstrued into spite and jealousy? I was told once how this envious spirit of mine might get me into trouble. With deference, monseigneur, I think you sometimes hardly recognise your true friends.”

“Maybe, Charlot; and maybe I did you wrong. Only, if you are one and the best of them, as I do now incline to believe, in honesty speak out and prove it. Be candid as the day: I bid you; I beg you, Charlot my friend.”

“Well, then, I start on this: you sneer at my disinterestedness, as illustrated by this little affaire; but I will tell you I have a true passion for this girl; I desire to monopolise her affections; and yet I have bidden her so to contrive as that she shall fall under suspicion of an intrigue with the chevalier Tiretta.”

“O, just under suspicion? That will not harm you.”

“Monseigneur well knows that what is begun in play will often end in earnest. I risk that--and why? Out of devotion to your interests. Here is a case--which I will put so far specifically. A lover sends a friend to plead his cause for him--a mad thing to do, and the madder the more persuasive the friend. We know the proper advocate lives in his part; the cause is just worth him and no more; if he wins he takes the credit--and the fees. But supposing there are those among us who, having recognised the danger, are decided that the advocate must be foiled in his design at whatever cost. There is nothing for us then but so to brand his character that he will be forced to withdraw prematurely from the case. Your Highness smokes me?”

“Par exemple. That is where your little cocotte comes in.”

“That is where Fanchette comes in--and with what result as regards the subject of the real intrigue? Why that she learns at last with indignation that what is offered her is but the reversion of a passion she believed so single to herself; that a thirst she deemed divine is content to slake itself in the common ditch----”

“You flatter your Fanchette and your own taste, Charlot----”

“That, in short, her god of gold is revealed a god of brass, I thank your Highness. So this M. Tiretta, if I have judged aright, falls from his estate of perfection. After all, a woman wears a lover as she does a robe--exclusively, that is to say; a thing for her sole possession. Fashions grow out of fashion when the lesser ape them.”

The duke, meditating darkly awhile, rose from his chair, and went pacing frowningly to and fro.

“So,” said he, stopping suddenly in his walk, “I am to understand that you have taken these means on your own responsibility, and that you consider yourself justified in taking them. Why?”

“Because, in doing so, I believe myself to be acting as your Highness’s true friend.”

“But why, man, why? In what lies your justification? That is what I want to know.”

“In my little friend’s reports.”

“Of an intrigue?”

“Of an intrigue in the making, at least.”

“And now nipped in the bud?”

“If you authorise the process.”

“She knows nothing as yet of this amiable scheme to disenchant her?”

“Nothing. But the ground is all prepared.”

“You do not, sir, imply for a moment that my daughter----”

“Mademoiselle is as guiltless as the angels. I stake my soul on it.”

“I should have preferred something of more value. But let that pass.”

“You approve the scheme, then?”

“If necessary. But I trust that folly is ended; that all will be well henceforth. Nevertheless I applaud your true vigilance, my friend.”

“Upon my conscience, monseigneur, I think you should. Admit that I have manœuvred well both to circumvent scandal, and to make his own treachery recoil on the head of the betrayer.”

“That I could hold that forfeit. But the charge is too shadowy; and he is the archduke’s protégé. Still, the time may come. Now, the man must be got rid of--and without delay.”

“You will see to that, I think.”

“And in the meanwhile the Infanta remains with us, here at Parma.”

“Under watch, if I might suggest.”

“Charlot?”

“Your Highness?”

“I think, perhaps, it would be as well to put your scheme at once to the proof.”

“I will instruct Fanchette forthwith, sir.”

“Yes, that is right. It will, perhaps, relieve the situation.”

His mind cleared, he hummed a little stave, and turned roguishly on the other:

“I hope you will not find that the little cocotte, like your other advocate, has accommodated herself too realistically to her part. That were a cursed return for your trust in her.”

“I took it into the reckoning, sir. If she has, my own with her will come as soon as she has ceased to be of use, that is all.”

“O, shocking, shocking! Come, go call la Roque, and we will forget all this tedious stuff over a game at ombre.”