Chapter XXI: Across the Bridge

With the afternoon the town had resumed its normal aspect; the shops were re-opened; the stream of grave and frivolous circulated with its wonted restlessness and volubility. Only the ashes of a Lenten disposition seemed to have survived from the morning, the human traffic going sad-suited and with a mock attempt at seriousness in its demeanour. Still, the sky was blue, the little river sparkled, and the harnesses of the mules would not stop tinkling for all the enforced sobriety of the occasion.

A veiled young lady, coming from the direction of the Palazzo della Pilotta, hesitated an instant before setting foot on the crowded thoroughfare of the Ponte di Mezzo, and then made up her mind and went boldly forward. Half-way across, she just signed to a loiterer who stood leaning against the parapet, whereupon, detaching himself from his position, the man accompanied her footsteps, neither of them speaking a word. Making westward from the bridge--which continued across the water the main artery of traffic, that ancient Via Aemilia which exactly bisected the town--they presently reached a less frequented quarter; and, coming after a time to the open spaces neighbouring on the Barriera d’Azeglio, the girl at length, with a shrug of resignation, slackened her pace, and in the same moment invited her companion to speak.

“To have selected for a meeting place,” she exclaimed, “the most populous spot in the city! Bah! But I had no time to think.”

“What does it matter, Fanchette?”

She stopped, and looked at him, with a little fretful stamp of her foot.

“Are you tired of life that you say so?”

“Is my life in danger?”

“What do you suppose--here, in Parma?”

“I do not trouble myself to suppose anything.”

“You are too courageous to think of yourself, is it not? That would be very fine, if only sometimes you would think of other people.”

He looked at her meekly, without answering; nor did she speak for a little; but she had all the advantage of her veil in that mute inquisition.

“You are altered,” she said presently. “You look older and graver than you used.”

“I am both,” he said.

“Well, you have need to be serious. Also, I do not think you even as moderately good-looking as you were. But you are bronzed, which is something; and you have a scar on your temple. What have you been doing with yourself these eight months?”

“I have been helping to fight Austria’s enemies.”

“And have run away from them at last?”

“Yes--during a truce, while they are trying to negotiate terms of peace.”

“You have come to the wrong place for peace. You will soon find it so, unless you study more discretion. My God! the shock it was to me this morning to see you back again amongst us. What devil brought you? and why, having done wisely after all, couldn’t you let well alone?”

“I couldn’t, that is why--for no reason, I suppose, but just that I am my own weak illogical self. I wanted to make sure that I had done right--to find out----”

“What?”

“If she were happy.”

“Of course she is--that is to say as happy as it is proper for her to be under the circumstances. O, yes! it is quite consistent with your illogic, is it not, to give that sigh. If I had told you she was miserable, your face, no doubt, would have lighted up with a holy joy.”

“Is the wedding-day fixed?”

“It will be, sure and soon enough, when once we can cast our black. This misfortune--it is enough to make a saint blaspheme. But for its happening, it might likely have been fast-bind by this time; and then her felicity would have been her husband’s affair, and all would-be gallants might forego their tender concern--for her happiness, God preserve us!”

“If she is happy and contented, Fanchette, what makes you so angry over the postponement?”

“It aggravates me so to see you turn up again, when we had all thought you comfortably laid.”

“Ah-ha! Now we are revealing. Who are the ‘we’?”

“You are like to find out soon enough, unless you disappear as you came. I can tell you, monsieur, you went none too soon in the first instance.”

“I was beginning to realise myself that I was getting unpopular. And yet I was only too attentive to my task. Fanchette?”

“What do you want?”

“I want you to raise your veil.”

“Certainly I shall not.”

“You are afraid that your eyes might betray what your lips conceal.”

“O, indeed! And what is that?”

“That she is not happy at all. That she is miserable.”

“It is not true.”

“O, Fanchette! Is it not? You professed to be my friend once.”

“Am I not proving my friendship by meeting you like this--by running a hundred risks to save you from the consequences of your own madness?”

“I am indifferent to all consequences, so I may but see her.”

“Well, you have seen her; you have disturbed again the waters that had settled down so peacefully; and now I hope you are satisfied.”

“How can I say? She saw me, as I saw her; but with what result? Do you not know?”

“Never mind what I know.”

“That is as much as to confess that I have done harm in your opinion by coming.”

“Harm? My God, I should think you have done harm!”

He gave a little odd crowing laugh.

“You can’t help betraying the truth, you see, for all your efforts. But what does it matter? I have seen her face, and it is enough. Fanchette--” he touched the scar on his temple--“do you note this? It knocked me silly for the time being; and, while I lay insensible, I think my spirit left my body and flew to her. She was asleep; I could not wake her; and I turned to see how near the basil was to flowering. O, my God, girl! it was all shrunk and neglected; and I thought I took it in my hand and turned to her with wild reproach. But at that moment she opened her eyes, and, seeing the deathless sorrow in them, the words died upon my lips--and on the instant I awoke, to find someone staunching my wound. Tell me--does she keep the basil still--she has not forgotten it?”

Fanchette, like all fundamental worldlings, was helplessly superstitious. She stared and gasped behind her veil, hearing of this ghostly coincidence. How was she to dare henceforth, shrinking, conscious of her guilt, under the detective eyes of the unseen? She could only gulp and shake her head in answer.

He laughed again:

“And you pretend to me that she is happy!”

“O, monsieur!” said the girl, inclining at last towards the refuge of hysteria: “if she is not, have you any way to make her so? No way at all that is possible--that can conceivably end in anything but death to yourself and disaster to her. If she had not learned to forget, she had learned to be resigned; and now you come to undo again the work of months. It is cruel.”

“Is it not, Fanchette--a most damnable cruelty. But you do not know the full measure of my baseness. I promised the archduke himself that I would forbear, would withdraw myself from the temptation, would endeavour at the eleventh hour to vindicate my honour. But death was in the bargain; and, if in my despair I have broken it, it is the fault of Death, that would not come to me, however much I sought and called him. It is useless to threaten me with death.”

“O, in heaven’s name walk on! I shall betray myself.”

“Confess at once she is not happy, then.”

“There, I confess it. O, you have driven her mad!”

“Come on, Fanchette. Now, listen to me, and believe me. I had truly meant no more when I came than to see her, myself unsuspected--to comfort my eyes and my conscience with the assurance of her happiness--at least of her resignation--and then to go as silently as I had appeared. And what do I find?--a tragedy of unconquerable faith, that in its every look and gesture stabs me to the heart. Now you must tell me all--yes, all, all. She accepted my supposed desertion--how?”

“As you would have wished her to, no doubt.”

“She still believed in me?”

“Yes; and in your truth--even after she heard it reported you had gone to the wars.”

“God bless her--O, God bless her!”

“Will you not go away again now, monsieur?”

“Fanchette, are you not our friend--dear Fanchette?”

“It is madness, I say. I can do nothing. I will not listen.”

“Is she not happy since this morning? You will tell me that at least.”

“You will ruin her.”

“Ah! you do not know what we know. Ruin is in separation. Only to meet--to speak together once again!”

“Why should I help you to what I feel is not only wrong but useless? Likely, if I were to be found out, _I_ should be given to the death you so despise.”

“You need never be discovered. Tell me no more than where to come upon her. Then she can dismiss me or not as she wills. I swear I will go, if she bids me.”

“And if she does not?”

“It would be out of your hands. Only it is just that the decision at last should rest with her. I feel that now as I have never felt it before--mad fool that I am, always to be so governed by impulse. What right had I to judge for her, to repudiate my trust, to banish myself unbidden? She gave me her first beautiful troth, long before that other had made up his mind, and it was for her, not me, to cancel the bond if she would. And though I yielded to him, I took no oath, I made no promise; I said only I would seek a solution of the impossible in death. I was faithful to that--and Death refused the test. He fled me, while I sought him everywhere. And then I knew. There can be no solution of the impossible in Death the destroyer, but only in Love the creator. From Love I must seek the final decision. If it had been evident in her happiness, I say I would have gone again as I came. But now I will go no more until she bids me.”

He ceased, on a note of deep emotion, but of inflexible resolve, and for a space they walked on together in silence. Then presently the girl spoke, in a cold restrained little voice, whose tone might have been meant to convey anything between acquiescence and defiance.

“You do me honour, monsieur, thus finally to throw off the mask before me--to favour me for the first time with your full confidence. If I notice an inconsistency here and there, why it is only natural in a lover; and----”

“What inconsistency, Fanchette?”

“Your cruelty to her Highness, for instance, which suddenly becomes consideration for her; your bad faith to monseigneur the archduke, which all in a moment becomes righteousness. But it is all one for the moral, which is your determination to have your way at any cost. I have no more to say, then--only this. I have warned you, and you will not be warned--therefore do not blame me for any consequences that may ensue. For me, I have my duty to my mistress, and that is enough. For you, if you are resolved to rush upon your doom, there is this piece of information, which is in truth open to all. Her Highness goes to-morrow to Colorno, whither the duke her father will follow her in the course of a few days. It is just possible, in the interval before he comes, that she may be tempted to visit Aquaviva’s gardens, of which she is so affolée--but I do not know. Au revoir, monsieur--I wish I could say adieu.”

He would have detained her, to protest, to explain, to pay a glowing tribute to her friendship and generosity--but she would have none of it.

“Thank me when you are out of the wood,” she said. “For the moment, if you value your own safety, hide deeper in it--that is my advice. We may be watched and observed at this instant, for all I know--” and, peremptorily bidding him stay where he was, she turned and hurried away.