Chapter VII: Love-In-A-Mist

The next day opened wild and wet. In the night a west wind had driven in from the sea, and drawn a rushing curtain over the rainbow summer of the gardens. Isabella, for no reason that she could define, felt strangely restless and uneasy. She was not wont to weather moods, or to feel impatience over enforced confinements to her rooms. Now, quite inexplicably, that prospect seemed insufferable; something in her cried out for space and freedom; the call of the wind and the rain reached to her for the first time, as though an unsuspected door in her heart had suddenly blown open. As sin or fever dreams of water, eternally of a cool and cleansing stream, so her soul turned with longing to the cold purification of the storm. And presently, unable to resist, she put on cloak and hood, and slipped out undetected into the gardens.

The rain came in her face and blew it as pink as a flower; the wind snatched at her hair, and caught and played with a fluttering wisp of it. As she went on, a spirit of exhilaration rose to possess her, quite alone and at liberty as she was. State and observance seemed unreal things; there was not a soul abroad to remind her of them; she and nature were in one confidence together, as if, like old companions long mistily estranged, they were as mistily reunited.

Involuntarily, it seemed, her steps took her towards the spot associated with an incident of yesterday. There was a woven arbour near by the lily-pond, and her thoughts settled there, as in a hermitage sweet for meditation. She would like to sit and watch the drops plash in the water; she pictured the lilies drunk to satiety on the element they loved, and expanding their gorged cups till they could stretch no further; she foretasted the wet solitude of it all as a refuge from strange unrecognised emotions, a little distressful yet a little sweet, which seemed suddenly to have overtaken her, flowing from some primeval source.

The flowering borders, as she passed them, were all gravel-splashed and sodden. She saw an early blossom that she loved, a little blue starry thing of the fennel tribe, and stopped to shake its heavy-hanging sprays free of water, and to pluck one and put it in her bosom. Then she went on.

As she neared the arbour an instant panic seized her. Some sound, more self-betraying than her own light footfall, had penetrated to her through the flapping shutters of the wind--a voice, a tuneful vibration. She stood transfixed, her thoughts poised on the prick of swift escape. And then she flushed a little and remembered herself. She was the Infanta, mistress of her own actions and of her chosen retreat. Very resolute she stepped on, the trampling rain covering her approach, and paused once more, herself unseen, within close hearing of the sound.

It was the stranger, alone apparently within the arbour, and communing with himself through the medium most natural to him. For the first time she heard him, witless of any audience, delivering up his soul like an unconscious bird. She felt it like a revelation, while she stood spell-bound. There was no forced cleverness here, no artificial display, even of the sort that had won the children’s hearts; it was just moving thought transmuted into music.

She hardly gathered the import of the words, nor desired to. It was enough that they blent themselves inevitably with the haunting melody his fingers drew from the strings, and spoke with it a language that was articulate only to the soul. The effect was no more nor less than a sensuous selection of sweet sounds, gathered, as they offered themselves, into a fragrant bouquet, whose scent, to speak in symbols, touched the deep tears of things.

Suddenly conscious of something warmer than a raindrop on her cheek, Isabella started and moved. The music ceased on the instant. She took her shamefaced courage in hand, and entered the arbour.

He rose from the bench on which he had been seated, looking as if he saw an apparition. She smiled at him a little faintly.

“You did not know, monsieur, that this place was sacred to my meditations?”

“I did not know, Madonna. What can I do to expiate such desecration?”

“Not speak in mockery, at least.”

“Ah! Do I?”

“Your eyes betray you, I think. I will be candid with you, monsieur. It is not the first time I have read them so. Is it that you regard your mission with so little seriousness?” He was startled enough--on the point of prevaricating. “Will you not tell me the truth?” she said sincerely.

His brows bent a little.

“Will you have it, Madonna?” he answered in a moment. “See, I entered here, all unguessing of its holiness, to brood alone. The weather, I thought, secured me. But there are others, it seems, who feel its fascination no less. Will you not forgive the innocent sacrilege, and bid me go?”

“Are we, then, so distasteful to you that you must leave us in order to brood alone--on your injuries, perhaps?”

“I have injuries; but I do not wish to speak of them.”

“Monsieur, I stood a little while outside--I say it to my shame--listening to you. That is to confess; and will you not reciprocate my candour? _Please_, monsieur.”

The pretty entreaty quite disarmed him.

“I will speak the truth,” he said. “Do you ask me if I take my mission seriously? My answer to that is that his Highness the Archduke might choose a finer advocate to sound his praises, but never one more earnest or convinced.”

She looked down, drawing in the dust with the point of her little shoe.

“I have always heard of him as a very grave and virtuous prince,” she murmured.

“Believe it true, I beg you,” said Tiretta. “His ideals are the ideals of a conscientious ruler and a noble gentleman. He has wisdom beyond his years, but free of pedantry, most sweet and natural affections, a fine presence, and a will which, if strong, is neither arrogant nor obstinate.”

She did not answer for a little; and then she looked up.

“Well, you have fulfilled your part,” she said. “Was there need to make such a mystery about it?”

“There was so little, it seems,” he answered, “that your Highness has guessed it unspoken.”

“And yet, monsieur, is it the whole?”

“What more, Madonna?”

“Why, this paragon of a prince should surely need no panegyrist so to recommend him, unless, indeed, there were a conscious flaw somewhere in his perfection.”

He looked down in his turn; then suddenly up again, and boldly.

“If high-born ladies,” he said, “will masquerade as rustic wenches, wading for lilies, it is no sin to accept them as they appear.”

She drew back quickly.

“I think you may go, monsieur,” she said.

He bowed, and was leaving, when she stopped him.

“One moment. That sword of yours--so dedicated--a fine comment on your yesterday’s sentiment! A woman is a woman, is she not, and therefore to be saved insult?”

The chevalier’s handsome pale face seemed to go a thought whiter.

“It is not in the code,” he said, “that princes may not bestow insults. Your Highness took full advantage of that prerogative in refusing the token.” His eyes were suddenly burning; his lips set grim as judgment. “I have some reason, perhaps, to brood over my injuries,” he said. “They have known no salve, your Highness will understand, since, for friendship’s sake, I essayed a thankless task.”

He was again turning to go, and again she delayed him.

“Monsieur, I entreat you. A friend, I know, may act for a friend against his better inclination, and only because he is a friend. I do not doubt the independence of your mind or the honour of your principles.”

Tiretta bowed stiffly, but in silence.

“I ask you to forgive me,” she said.

It was so sweet and unexpected that for the moment he was quite taken back. Then his face flushed through all its even pallor.

“It is I who should be the petitioner,” he said. “I am your Highness’s sworn henchman from this hour.”

She smiled, rather tremulously, and, turning, signified with a gesture that she would prefer to be the one to go.

“No, monsieur: the grove shall be sacred to its songster. I beg you to continue to consecrate it. As for me, I am frightened already over the scolding I shall get if madame detects me returning through the rain.”

He ventured to delay her one moment:

“I am to be permitted to speak henceforth, as a true ambassador, what my heart dictates?”

“O, fie, monsieur!” she said; “to think that perfection could need any trumpeting!” And, with those smiling ambiguous words, she left him.

For some moments after she was gone Tiretta stood motionless, frowning into vacancy. Then, with a sigh, he stirred, and, perceiving in the act a little spray of some blue flower which had fallen from her bosom to the ground, stooped, and secured it, and held the thing wonderingly in his hand.

“Love-in-a-mist!” he whispered: “So in the strange North lands--my lands--they call it. Love-in-a-mist!”