Chapter XXIII: “in the Silent Woody Places”

Bissy had a lodger--strictly Bissy, be it understood. Grandfather Aquaviva had declined from the first to be mixed up in the affair, or to do more than subordinate, for the occasion, his own domestic authority to that of the self-sufficient imp, who was wiser than an owl in his precocious generation. To Bissy was due the happy thought, the conduct of the negotiations which followed, and the ultimate agreement. He accepted the guest, and any responsibility attaching to him--which, nevertheless, he did not anticipate would be serious. Report, in that detached province of horticulture, dealt mistily with reputations, and Bissy, while having his own clues to the stranger’s identity, had no reason to connect that with any definite scandal. In any case, where ignorance was cash, it was folly to be wise. Let the lodger call himself what he would--il Signor Talé, or by any other mocking pseudonym--the essential consideration was the ducats, of which he was not sparing. For the first time in his life Bissy enjoyed the gratification of realising handsomely on his own native shrewdness. Grandfather, always preoccupied and unsuspecting, was content to laugh, to shrug his shoulders, and secretly to admire the elfish self-importance which had so much worldly foresight in it. He had the same clues to identification as the limb himself, but they lay unnoticed by him. Men and women always passed him by like shadows. They were only to be regarded as coming between the sun and his flower-beds, and the sooner they were gone the better for his content.

As for the guest himself, he had flown upon them, by his own account, from distant battle-fields, arriving errantly in their midst, in a moment, like a fragment of spent shell. It was the happiest of accidents, he declared, which had deposited him where he fell, repose, after that long flight, being the thing of all things which he most needed, together with the opportunity for restful self-communion apart from his fellows. He said this to Bissy, whom he first of all encountered at work in the orange-grove. It seemed some instinct had drawn him there, though of course he was ignorant of the geography of the place. His assurance was astounding, petrifying, but quite captivatingly compelling. What sweeter spot, he declared, could have offered for his purpose than these fragrant ambushes, wherein one might bury and repose oneself as in the dreaming thickets of Avalon. Was it possible that Providence could have knowingly directed his footsteps to this haven of rare comfort, where he might hide himself away deliciously, unsuspected and undisturbed? In that case of a guiding Will, it was conceivable that search might reveal some adjacent bower ready to welcome the wanderer into its hospitable arms. Did the boy know of any such? He would be willing to pay handsomely for the boon of a temporary lodging, however primitive, however homely, which neighboured on these perfumed solitudes.

Bissy, gulping down his wonder in a toad-like obstupefaction, suddenly pricked up his ears at that. There was promise here of a golden salve for the tweaking they had once received; only, it seemed, discretion was to be the order. He betrayed, therefore, no sign of recognition, but then and there he had his inspiration, and acted upon it. There was only their own little house, he said, on the southern limit of the gardens. If the signor fancied he could accommodate himself to such simple quarters, he would go and ask his grandfather if he would be willing to take him in for a time--_and_, he was careful to add, for such a tempting consideration as the signor had suggested.

The signor was greatly obliged--and greatly amused.

“Despatch, my fine lad,” he said. “I am not going to haggle over the inestimable value of peace and privacy to a war-sick spirit.”

And so it came that il Signor Talé imposed himself charmingly on the oddly contrasted couple--only always, it was understood, as Bissy’s guest. Aquaviva, for his part, affected an entire detachment in the matter, as though he himself were an independent visitor in his own house. But, for all his somewhat caustic reserve, he too was not long in falling under the irresistible spell of the stranger’s personality.

The house--a mere plastered and whitewashed cottage--stood at the extremity of the grounds on the Parma side. Aquaviva, it seemed, believed in that ideal condition of happiness, a lodge in the wilderness. The gardens were the life; the living-place but an insignificant if necessary adjunct to the life. So nature teaches us the right proportions of things. The nest on the rock, the “form” in the grass, the hollow in the tree-trunk--what are these but trifling accessories to possessions which embrace the infinite seas, the open hills, the rolling forests? It is the fit way to regard the values of existence, I am sure. In these days an old railway-carriage and five acres of garden should, it sometimes seems to me, suffice a man for his true proportionate needs.

The house, then, was small; and it was moreover inconvenient and none too clean. It was, after all, only the principal feature in a tiny steading, which included sheds, a miniature fowl-run and a dove-cote. An Indian fig-tree grew untrimmed against its wall; the flags of its yard were broken and moss-grown; a stave of its water-butt was broken, and so on. But it was enough for its purpose, which was to serve as a simple shelter from the elements, a dining and a sleeping place--and now, in its enlarged scope, as a retreat and belvedere.

At dinner-time the pigeons would fly down from their cote, and, entering the house by its open door, strut, with bobbing heads, about the stone-paved floor, watching for scraps. They soon came to recognise in il Signor Talé a sympathetic spirit, and to congregate about his chair with a persistent confidence which delighted him. In other respects he found in his quarters a seasonableness which glorified all shortcomings. His humble bed smelt of rosemary; the sparkle of insect life in his ewer testified to the living freshness of the stream from which it was daily replenished; appetite lent to the homely cuisine an epicurean relish. Raw ham, salted sausage, macaroni, thin broth followed by the _lesso_, or anæmic meat boiled down to produce it, sometimes a cut of _manzo_, which was hobbledehoy calf, cabbage served alone, and always _ricotta_, a sort of buttermilk cheese--on such country fare he was enthusiastic to batten, and his enjoyment of all things was as convincing as it was captivating. He had not been established two days before everyone was in love with him--Annina, the deaf old _contadina_ who did the marketing and general housekeeping, solemn Bissy, whose particular property he was, even Aquaviva himself, whom his charm and virile interest in all things won from reticence to an astonishing horticultural communicativeness. They all succumbed to him and became his unconscious confederates and abettors, jealously guarding the privacy it was understood he desired, jealously possessing him and shutting the world from their knowledge.

Not that in that respect there was much need for finesse. The season was yet early, the spot isolated, the gardens not sufficiently advanced to attract visitors. Yet it had been a mild winter, and crops, for the time of year, were well forward. Everything was flushing green, not with the chill reluctance of a northern spring, but with a fearless confidence in the loving-kindness of a climate which was always a true bountiful mother to its nurslings. Here but to peep was to open and expand, and the growth of a day was the full measure of its trust in nature. It was seldom that that trust was abused by cold winds or belated blizzards; but, even when this happened, the sun was quick and sure to staunch all wounds inflicted, and to win back the earth to smiles and reassurance.

So Tiretta came actually to inhabit the beautiful haunted place so associated with his first enchantment. It was no fortuitous choice, of course, which had led him there, laden, for all his baggage, with one soldierly valise; yet he had hardly hoped at the first to realise so easily and so compactly his scheme of opportunism. Now, if she came, he would be always on the spot to greet her--in what way circumstance must decide. His life, his whole happiness, was bound up in that chance: but would she come? He had only Fanchette’s hint to go upon. It might have been wholly unwarranted; it might have been actually designed to confine him to a given place, whereby the risk of meeting him elsewhere should be avoided. The thought necessarily suggested another: was _she_, actively or negatively, in collusion with her maid to procure such a fiasco? He had again only Fanchette’s admission for comfort. But Fanchette was a liar--he knew that instinctively. Still the girl had obviously sought to get rid of him, and the truth had been drawn from her only with reluctance. She would not have conceded even so much, unless the pressure of facts had been too strong for her to resist. On the other hand, she might have suggested the compromise entirely on her own responsibility, and with the intent, having definitely disposed of him, to keep the knowledge of his whereabouts a secret from her mistress.

That would be a stultifying development--in the lack of any. Yet what could he do now to counter such a design, if it existed? He understood that for some reason Fanchette, always a capricious quantity, had joined the forces against him--at the instigation of what or whom--or by the tacit acquiescence of whom? Not of her: his whole soul, his whole knowledge, rejected the thought of such shallowness, such treachery, on the part of one proved so incorruptible. They were inseparable affinities, bound by that subconscious compact, whose roots were in the mystery of the past. And then, if confirmation were needed, his pathetic dream! This man of dreams, indeed, trusted their evidence beyond the most convincing that could be offered by any living witness. He had seen his love’s eyes, once in that trance, once on the steps of the Madonna della Steccata, and had read therein a message of deathless fidelity. It was enough: he could not be mistaken: he would not wrong her or himself again by the shadow of one suspicion.

And yet, watching the passage of the fruitless hours, he would sometimes grow despondent, or angry with his own irresolution, or with the easy way in which he lent himself to the designs of his enemies. Would she ever come? Then he would stand listening, as if he heard in the deep places of his heart the voice of his love crying to him to hasten and deliver her from the hostile forces by which she was watched and environed. That was the worst of all; for what was he to do, how escape from the mesh of uncertainty in which he had involved himself? To break from it now were to betray himself and her--to invite the very tragedy he had come here to avoid. Not to avoid for his own sake, for he was reckless; but he must be wonderfully tender and considerate in all things which touched upon her wellbeing. For himself, he held his life lightly, lacking the reassurance which alone could give it a purpose and a value. He did not seem to care much what happened to him; what precautions he took were really nominal. That Bissy should know him was of course inevitable; yet there seemed no object in confessing himself to the boy--no object in anything in particular, indeed. It was that very indifference which was his unconscious safeguard. Where there is no atmosphere of concealment nobody suspects. He was accepted, generally, on his own showing, and, specifically, on his own merits.

Those were characteristic and sufficient. His mental suspense, his perpetual soul-hunger, never seemed to affect his winning attitude towards his surroundings. Outwardly he appeared that lovable, interested, oddly humorous creature who, endearing himself, without effort or design, to all about him, seemed troubled by no sense of responsibility towards anybody or anything in the world. He could not help himself there; the faculty of ingratiation was native to him and quite unforced. But it is wrong to judge such qualities as necessarily superficial. Popularly, the sparkling surface speaks the shallow current: it is as true as to insist that beauty is only skin deep. There are many of these old saws that need re-casting. Is there no deep thinker who has his playful side? It was sage Harcourt, was it not, whose “half-awakened bards” so offended the poet? As to exteriority, one might say, with as true a proverbial sententiousness, that the pint bottle of champagne is not to be told from the magnum by its effervescence. The fact is that manner is no indication of matter, and that some men can jest under torture while others cannot. It is just a question of constitution. Think of Keats, confined in quarantine on his death journey, desperately summoning up more puns in a week than he had ever been guilty of in a year. So, as il Signor Talé loitered in the wakening gardens, asking innumerable questions, making innumerable impracticable suggestions, delightedly absorbed, to all appearance, in floricultural lore, no one might have guessed from those rising bubbles the darkness of the tragic deeps from which they ascended.

These, to be sure, with whom he lived were simple country folk, unsophisticated save in the one direction of their business, and little apt at reading character. They were quite ready to accept him for what he palpably was--a charming and profitable addition to their _ménage_--without puzzling their brains as to what he might be. Parma was almost _terra incognita_ to them: it was ten miles away--it might have been a hundred, for any influence it bore upon their lives. The pulse-beats of it came to them like a sound of bells so distant as to seem no more than a pleasing rumour. They were indifferently interested in its events; hardly more so in its personalities. Once or twice the dead duchess was mentioned among them; but chiefly, it seemed, because she was associated with their local experience. Tiretta gathered that her memory was respected, though with some reserve due to the not yet forgotten resentment against the Spanish occupation. But with Isabella it was different. They all loved the young Infanta, so sweet, so natural, so prettily friendly. The visitor, cunning man, found no difficulty in “drawing” them on that subject, though, for net result, he learned no more of her than he knew already. They were quite uninformed as to the general march of events, knew nothing about the proposed Austrian alliance, were as unworldly disposed as though to their minds it was all wilderness outside this their garden of Eden. He could have found their pastoral _naïveté_ wonderfully refreshing, had the ferment in his mind been more amenable to such soothing influences; as it was, he could at least endure it good-humouredly.

One day--it was the third after his arrival--he came upon Aquaviva busily employed over a number of little shrubs which he had just fetched out from their winter shelter. The sight brought a shock of colour to the visitor’s cheek, a rather wistful smile to his lips. What memory was here laid bare and bleeding? It was like the disinterment of still breathing hope.

For some moments he watched the old man in silence. It was whimsically wonderful to him that the handling of these things should awaken no associations in that abstracted mind. Yet so it seemed. Not once had Aquaviva appeared, nor did he appear now, to connect him with any figure of the past. Presently Tiretta spoke:

“What are those, mi’ amico?”

He waited intent on the unsuspicious answer:

“They are basil-thyme, signore--little boudoir delicacies, which we cultivate for their scent. They will be very popular with the ladies when they flower.”

“When will they flower?”

Aquaviva hunched his shoulders.

“Who can say? It may be this year or the next. They are capricious, and fastidious, but fat feeders when they like. Sometimes they like, and sometimes they do not. These have all had their christening.”

“How do you mean their christening?”

Aquaviva leered round, with puckered lids, as he stooped.

“Blood, signore--good bullock’s blood. They thrive on it.”

“Will they not flower without?”

“They will flower; but it is all the difference between the weed and the exotic. So it is with human folks. We talk of blood in a man. It signifies nothing but generations of meat-eating, as against the minestra, the cabbage-soup, which the many, the nameless, have had to be content with for the replenishing of _their_ veins.”

“I see. It is the lord of many joints who is the lord of creation. And yet there is a virtue in blood. It can produce superior beauty as well as superior men.”

“Wherefore the basil, signore, whose appetite, like the human, grows fiercer with what it feeds on, till nothing but the blood of men will appease it.”

“Come, Aquaviva!”

“So it is said, signore--of murdered men.”

“Is that what your aristocrats here are delaying for?”

“O! they are young; their tastes are not formed; but I daresay a dose of it would facilitate their blossoming.”

Tiretta watched a little longer in silence, then turned and strolled away. It had been on his lips humorously to repeat a former challenge, to see if even that would succeed in evoking a response from a suddenly stimulated memory; but something had prevented him at the last--a quick-springing emotion which urged him into search of solitude for its indulgence.

Inevitably his steps led him towards the orange-grove. They were never long from wandering in that direction--and not only because of the magical associations of the place. Elsewhere the gardens were but lately rising and expanding from their sober winter levels, and they afforded as yet but little cover for a would-be solitary spirit. But, for “a green thought in a green shade” there was always the hushed welcome of this deep windless sanctuary, and it was therein that he looked to find a solution of the perplexities that beset his present condition. He knew very well what form that expectancy conjured up; it could not be but one in a spot so haunted. Here, if anywhere, he felt, the end would be decided.

The place was luminous now with young vivid gold and emerald; no sound broke its silences save the running footsteps of the little river beyond, whose unseen glitter seemed actually vocal, splintering the misty limits of the grove as with spars and points of iridescent laughter. Tiretta, entering but a little way into that enchanted solitude, stopped abruptly, and gave rein to the thought he had brought in with him.

Could it be that death waited on their reunion? He had only jested at the superstition on a former occasion: somehow now he did not feel inclined to jest at it. This pretty basil thing, which they had elected and consecrated for the symbol of their happiness! Its flowering was to be the sign; and when was it to flower? Not yet, nor remotely, if it was to be judged by these others; not even so soon as they, if Aquaviva had prophesied aright. And yet they had reached a crisis, whose solution, it seemed, must be a matter of days--of moments. The duke, if not arrived at Colorno already, was hourly expected. Why did she not come?

And, at that very instant, aware of a stealthy step behind him, he turned and saw Bissy.

There was something in the boy’s face, a suppressed emotion, a sort of furtive excitement, which startled and arrested him at once. Bissy carried a basket and a spud, with the latter of which, having deposited the former at a tree foot, he began to prod in an aimless way about the roots, obviously to give colour to some supposed business. Conscious of an odd unsteadiness in his feet, as if they had lost the sensation of contact with the ground, Tiretta approached the worker, and stood looking down.

“What is that for, Bissy?” he said. “To let in light and air?”

The boy did not answer for a moment; then suddenly ceased digging, and stood up, leaning on his spud like a perspiring goblin. Once or twice he gulped; and at last brought up resolution.

“To let in light and air--the signor has said it,” he answered.

Tiretta studied him, a strange smile on his lips.

“There is some mystery here,” he said low. “What is it, Bissy?”

“It is of your own making, signore. It has never been of mine. If you wish me still to respect it, I shall do so in all dutifulness, understanding that there is no reason in the world why il Signor Talé should be interested in the arrival this moment of someone in the gardens.”

“Of someone! Of whom, Bissy?” His voice did not seem to himself to belong to him.

“Of the owner of a little shoe I once pulled out of the mud, signore.”

“Bissy!”

He was as pale as death; he stood as if suddenly stricken mute. The boy, all honour to his elfin intelligence, showed his instant appreciation of the situation. He did not consider right or wrong; it was enough that these two, his dearest patrons, wished to meet--for whatever reason was their own business.

“Go through the grove, signore,” he whispered, “to the little sward by the river. I will fetch her to come and look at my oranges. She has that _cagna_ Fanchette with her, as sour and sullen as a duchess. But she shall not spy; I will see to that. Go, signore!”

And Tiretta obeyed--a mere pawn at last in the game of this conquering strategist. He put his hand one moment on the squat shoulder, then turned and passed to his destiny. Ecstasy filled the air; the voice of the little river rose jubilant to greet him; he paused at last on that embowered isthmus amid the inviolable trees. Minutes passed; his heart was beating to suffocation, and then--a quick light footfall--a quick febrile whisper:

“Bonbec!”