Chapter XXII: Anticipation

It is a mistake to suppose that it is the manly qualities in a man which invariably appeal most to women’s affections. Very often, indeed, it is their exact antitheses--indecision, dependence, helplessness--which excite in tender breasts the fondest response. Paradoxically, every woman is a mother before she is a virgin, else, save in foretasting the guerdon of love, could she never suffer the ordeal which is to qualify her for that reward. She becomes a mother by right of the test to which she has submitted, which is in truth the test of her capacity for cherishing the weakling, for nourishing, for protecting and for sympathising in all ways with its weakness. Wherefore, as she is the instinctive nurse of frailty, her affections turn more naturally to it than to the strength which is independent of her.

There are women, of course, who would always rather be coerced by a brutal husband than consulted by an irresolute one. There are women, also, of the manly, tailor-made type, to whom a sick dog or horse appeals with fifty times the force of an ailing child. But I make bold to think that they are in the minority, and that the mass of the sex is inclined to be attracted more by the weak than by the strong qualities in men. For weakness may be lovable, while strength is only admirable; and a woman defrauded in her helpful instinct is a woman deprived of her essential meaning.

If I have made it appear that Tiretta was a masterful character, I have sketched his portrait awry, and must revise it. He was, in truth, in many ways an entirely weak creature, impressionable, emotional, and lacking the first quality of decision. One sees how he had been persuaded to dance attendance on Fortune, lingering on in her ante-room in the vain hopes of that summons to her presence which a more resolute soul would have enforced. One sees how inconsistent he could be to his own self-sacrifices, when their fruits seemed to him to be unjustifiably delayed. He was full of passionate impulses and impotent remorses--a man in courage, a woman in regrets. Yet he had two qualities which were enough to redeem him utterly in all eyes that were truly feminine, and those were charm and lovableness. He was above all things lovable, and by virtue of that disposition alone might easily have captured and absorbed into his own a more guileful heart than that of the simple, affectionate child in whose soft bosom he had awakened the unconscious instincts of motherhood. Isabella startled to the knowledge of his reappearance with the mad rapture of a mother receiving back her long-lost child.

Now all would be well, her fluttering, unreasoning heart assured her; now all would be well, her illogical sex proclaimed. She could think of nothing but that he had returned, that the long, long days of doubt and anguish were ended, that the good reasons he had had for imposing them on her would be made lovingly clear. All the sorrows, the remorses, the dutiful resolutions of the past drear months took wing in a moment like doleful crows. For that, no doubt, her cruel disillusionment about her father was part to blame. Yet, all said, love, without question, would have had its way with her in the end. She had not the power to resist so dear an importunate; she was swayed in all things by affection, and she had no one trustworthy weapon in her soul’s armoury to oppose to it.

He had come back to her because he needed her--because they could not survive apart. To realise that was to forget all else--the danger once implied in her father’s half-veiled threats; Fanchette’s assurances that a certain one must sooner or later come to be convinced, and resigned to the thought, of his own impotence; the terror she herself had had that she had been cast off by him because she had been found wanting in the crucial test. If that had been so, his masculine resolution had been no proof against his need of her; and in proportion as he needed her his weakness was a thing for transport. It is characteristic of the needs of lovers that they appear insensible to the fear of, or the reasonable consideration for, any obligations whatsoever outside their own. Very dimly the thought of her engagement shadowed Isabella’s mind; it seemed like an illusion that change of circumstance had already half dissipated; she had a vague feeling that, were reference to the fact to be craftily avoided, the fact itself would gradually be overlooked and forgotten. She was like a punished child, dismissed back to her play, bearing, with the infinite pathos of childhood, no grudge against her unjust judges, happy only to be forgiven and thought no more about, while she revelled in the sunshine from which she had been so long debarred. She was happy--happy; laughter frolic’d in her eyes; a bird sang in her breast. She did not know how her crown of bliss was to realise itself; only somehow he would find a way; she was to see him, hear him, be loved by him once more.

All night her heart went dancing; it danced on to the joy of the morning, and awoke as if to a sense of wild reprieve. She kept her secret to herself--the secret of her knowledge of his return--but its fumes were in her brain, and she could not altogether hide the exhilaration they caused there. Fanchette, attending to her Highness’s toilette, was in a curiously silent mood--morose even, and uncommunicative. Her mistress sought, by every merry art, to coax the girl into a response to her own bright spirits. She laughed at and rallied her, she overflowed with kindness, she would not be denied for all the icy rebuffs she encountered. But without much avail, it seemed. In truth the camériste, perplexed and a little conscience-haunted, was in the last temper for welcoming such approaches. She could have wished rather for affront, impatience, inconsiderateness--anything that would have appeared to justify her in offence, to provoke her to retaliation. But this unassailable sweetness was so disarming that for the moment it confounded her.

In the afternoon she accompanied her mistress to Colorno; and, there in the carriage, urgency at last lent her desperation. She stiffened herself, and spoke:

“You are glad to be returning, mademoiselle?”

“O, how glad, Fanchette!”

To Colorno, with its unutterable memories; to paradise regained; to the gardens where the wild love-flower grew, which his lips, and hers, had kissed! That she was bidden on her way thither seemed like a tacit surrender by authority to the inevitable. It must have known what associations that restoration would awake.

All the journey hitherto she had lain back in a blissful trance, listening to the ponderous rolling of the wheels as they gathered up the reluctant miles, incessantly framing in her mind a picture of the reunion that was to be, with its joys, its tender reproaches, its loving reassurances. The past was to be resumed, as if no black winter of separation had ever interposed. And spring was coming--spring with its wakening birds, and the blossoms breaking in its orange-groves. Smiling, she looked at the faithful little basil-pot by her side, and secretly caressed its leaves, now long recovered from the neglect to which she had once in her cruelty committed them. She would have bent and kissed them but for Fanchette.

The maid, setting her lips resolutely, did not answer for awhile.

“Then, _I_ am not,” she said suddenly.

Isabella glanced at her, a little surprised.

“You do not like the country, Fanchette?”

“O! as for that,” said the girl, “the value of a place to me is the value of its company.”

“Well, you will have plenty in a little while.”

“Plenty, and to spare,” said Fanchette, drily.

“What do you mean, child?”

“I foresee just one too many for my peace of mind, that is all.”

“One! What one?”

“Cannot your Highness guess? Yet I saw very well that I was not the only one of us two to make note of somebody’s reappearance in Parma yesterday.”

Isabella gave a little gasp; but subterfuge was impossible to her. Only she sat silent, and breathing quickly, for a few moments.

“Well,” she said presently, with difficulty: “what if you were not? I do not see how your peace of mind is affected by M. Tiretta’s return.”

“Hush, I implore your Highness!” said Fanchette. “I would not betray the poor man, whatever distress his persistence may cause me. Possibly your Highness may have observed the recklessness of the act which brought us for that one instant together. I shuddered, I can tell you, for his safety--and it was all that he might whisper to me to meet him later on the Mezzo bridge.”

“And you met him?” There was soft eagerness, a restrained rapture, but no least suspicion in the fervid tone. Fanchette shrugged her shoulders perceptibly.

“What would you! One in the last extremity must take a bull by the horns. It is safer, at least, than to run away from him. Yes, I met him, mademoiselle.” She hardened herself to the passionate entreaty of the eyes, of the lips that mutely questioned her. “He had in truth,” she said, “been to the wars; and now, taking advantage of a truce, had come back like a roaring devil to renew his assault upon me.”

“To renew--what?”

“O, mademoiselle! I would have spared you; but you know you never would believe. Be assured, nevertheless, that I was not to be so harried from my honesty. I entreated him to release me for once and for all from his importunities; to abstain further from compromising me with one to whom my heart was given. Ah--bah! I might as well have appealed to a blood-thirsty tiger. And now I shall know what persecution to expect in this quiet place.”

Even as she ended, her voice faltered, as if in some instinctive misgiving, and she hung her head.

And Isabella? Incredulity, amazement, indignation--in turn each emotion flashed its light across the beautiful face, and quivered and passed--to be succeeded by scorn: scorn so sovereign, so consuming, that calumny, shrivelling in its overriding flame, died in an instant on those lying lips.

“Fanchette.”

“Yes, madame?”

“Fanchette, look at me.”

The girl obeyed, caught her breath with a start, and lowered her lids.

“Look at me, I say.”

Abject already in that revelation, the maid, half-whimpering, again essayed to lift her hang-dog eyes, and, in the very struggle to brazen out her falsehood, collapsed and burst into tears.

“Liar!” said Isabella softly. She was wrought beyond her gentle self: the wanton wickedness of the slander--never for one moment believed else by her incorruptible heart--had transformed her from a Hebe into a Megaera. “Are you not a liar?”

Fanchette, weeping hysterically, sought to gasp out an excuse:

“If I misunderstood his meaning----”

But lovely scorn swept the cowardly pretence aside:

“You misunderstood nothing. It is I who have misunderstood, who have been blind all this time to the true character of the despicable creature I have trusted. You vile thing, so to hire yourself out to traduce a noble name! Who urged you to it? In whose pay are you? Tell me, for I will know.”

She was translated, the sweet tolerant soul--stung to a passion the more deadly by reason of the sunshine and happiness from which she had been torn. Fanchette, completely cowed, sobbed and shivered in her corner. She had never even guessed at the existence of these slumbering fires, had never calculated on a faith so obstinate as to be utterly impervious to the assaults of jealousy. She was overwhelmed, terrified, not only by the crushing nature of the retort upon her, but by the particular insight which it revealed.

“O,--O!” she gasped and cried: “I will tell you, mademoiselle--I will tell you everything, if you will only give me a moment to recover.”

“You want time,” cried scorn, “to invent new lies. But you need not hope to deceive me again. I see it all at last--the hints, the cunning preparation of the ground, the snare you thought to lay for unsuspecting feet. And while I was confiding in you, resting on your sympathy, believing you my friend! O, shame upon such infamy! I will have you whipped, tortured, unless you confess to me at once that it was all a lie.”

Fanchette fell upon her knees in the coach with a suppressed scream. She knew enough to know that offended Spain, in so small a matter as the castigation of a servant, could find easy means to have its threats fulfilled to the letter, even in the face of obvious injustice. It would be the “question” first, and exoneration, if any, after. She shook with terror.

“I will confess,” she cried: “O, I will confess!”

“It was a lie?”

“Yes--yes.”

The Infanta’s red lip curled.

“Who urged you to it?--tell me.”

“O, mistress!”

“Tell me, I say.”

Fanchette choked and battled for breath, writhing her fingers about her face.

“Was it your own mean jealousy of one too noble to stoop to an understanding of your designs upon him? In that case----”

Again the camériste, too debased in her terror for resentment, cried out:

“No, no--mistress--listen to me: it was one--his Highness’s own favourite--he advised it.”

“He? Who?”

Fanchette writhed.

“My father’s friend? Who? I will know.”

“M. la Coque.”

“La Coque! that painted coxcomb!” Amazed, for all her scorn, the girl sat a moment dumbfounded. There was revealed here a knowledge, a conspiracy, she had never suspected.

Fanchette, frantic, once she had betrayed her lover, to exonerate him, went on half coherently:

“He--he is devoted to your Highness’s interests; he--he only wanted to save your Highness the consequences of a fatal step. It was our tr--true regard for your Highness that made us conspire to open your eyes to the real character of an adventurer.”

“To open my eyes--by a wicked lie!”

Still she sat, as if stupefied; then leaned forward, strangely quiet.

“You have opened my eyes, I think. This gentleman is your paramour, is he not?”

Fanchette was silent, hanging her head.

“Come, be bold, girl,” said the Infanta. “It is not your jealousy, is it, but the jealousy of that small and envious nature towards a nobility he can never reach that has bribed you to this baseness?” She leaned back, passing a hand across her forehead as if suddenly overcome. “That such as you,” she said, “should dare to sit in judgment on your betters.”

Some note of weariness, of shaken emotion, may have struck upon the acute intuitions of the culprit. She ceased crying, and, raising her head a little, dared a breathless retort:

“Not in judgment, but in sympathy, mademoiselle, since in imitating our betters we feel with them.”

“What is that you say?”

“No one should know better than your Highness how love intoxicates our reason.”

Isabella gazed at the speaker with eyes in which the indignation was slowly giving place to distress.

“Yes,” she said low.

“An intrigue is an intrigue,” said Fanchette, growing bolder as the other wavered. “If it is wrong, we look to high example to make it shameful to us. In the meantime one is powerless where one has given one’s heart away.”

“No doubt the blame is less yours than his,” said Isabella indistinctly.

“Ah!” said Fanchette--“if your Highness would only believe in the fondness of the intentions that actuated me. But since they are misunderstood, it is no good to dwell upon them. Only----”

“Only what, Fanchette?”

“Since our smallness, and envy, and painted coxcombry are not to your Highness’s taste, we had best retire, and leave you to your own devices. You will do what you will do; and I have done, in all disinterestedness, what I could. Perhaps you will believe me that, even while I was outraging my own feelings to try and safeguard your reputation, I was providing alternatively for the step from which I foresaw you would not be easily dissuaded.”

She spoke at last like an injured saint; but the venom in her heart, over that contumelious reference to her lover, was rankling and growing in bitter intensity as she recovered more and more her confidence.

“What step, Fanchette?” asked Isabella faintly.

The girl shrugged her shoulders slightly.

“Into the dark--that is all I can say--except that I know where someone is most likely to be found within the next few days.”

She knelt back, sniffing and mopping her eyes, while a silence of some minutes prevailed; and then a sad little voice came to her:

“Who shall throw the first stone? O, Fanchette, we are all sinners together!”