THE POT OF BASIL
BY
BERNARD CAPES
AUTHOR OF
“A JAY OF ITALY,” “BAG AND BAGGAGE,” “JESSIE BAZLEY.”
LONDON
CONSTABLE & COMPANY LTD.
1913
NOTE
For the attempt here made to endue with life and circumstance a
little tragic romance of the past, the motive is to be referred to a
recently published book of memoirs, in whose pages is incidentally
made public for the first time the brief legend of which this is an
amplification. The author hopes that he will not be thought to have
dealt profanely with the spirit of a little tale, so old, so new, and
yet so touching in its eternal simplicity.
CONTENTS
I. The Nixie
II. Aquaviva
III. The Compact
IV. Love’s Ambassador
V. Il Trovatore
VI. Non Dolce far Niente
VII. Love-in-a-Mist
VIII. Correspondence
IX. The Decoy
X. The Orange Grove
XI. Sweet Basil
XII. Paolo and Francesca
XIII. Tokens
XIV. Confession
XV. A Bolt from the Blue
XVI. Fast bind, Fast find
XVII. The Lost Presence
XVIII. An Interview
XIX. “Mariana”
XX. The Face in the Crowd
XXI. Across the Bridge
XXII. Anticipation
XXIII. “In the Silent Woody Places”
XXIV. Rapture
XXV. Delirium
XXVI. Within the Presbytery
XXVII. The Cry in the Garden
XXVIII. A Posthumous Existence
XXIX. At Rest
THE POT OF BASIL
“Fair Isabel: poor simple Isabel.”
CHAPTER I.
THE NIXIE
It was a very hot day in Colorno, the petty Versailles of the Dukes
of Parma. The little channels irrigating the plains all about, and
drawn every one from the near depleted basin of the small river which
a few miles northward ran into the Po, were spun as thin as silver
wire. The effect from a distance was as of a network of snail-tracks,
stiffened in a dry morning, and all making for the oasis of the
village, where was to be found at least the shade of trees and
gardens. Elsewhere there was little. The domains of Don Philip, wrote
the Minister Maulevrier, _à propos_ some hounds “de toute beauté”
presented to the duke by his devoted father-in-law, Louis XV., were no
huntsman’s paradise, since they possessed “ni bois, ni fauve.” The
country was like a green tray, rimmed by the low blue ramparts of the
Alps and Apennines far distant. In the midst stood Colorno, a dainty
confection, as it were, of puff paste and sugar. It lay basking in the
sunlight, very white, very sleepy, very empty. Its duke and court were
at the capital, ten miles southward, Madame Louise-Elizabeth, its
restless scheming duchess, was hastening towards her cruel end at
Versailles--she was to die, like her father, like her husband, like
her son, like many another relation, of the common scourge, “la petite
vérole”--and only the three children of the marriage remained
ensconced, for purposes of health and education, at the “résidence
d’été.”
This country house, “élégante et spacieuse,” this Colorno itself,
are very meet in these days to point the moral of vainglory. The
palace, where the “Well-beloved’s” eldest and only married daughter
wasted her heart and her brains in the persistent endeavour to find
kingdoms for her offspring, as lesser mothers try to find “situations”
for theirs, the despised home, where “ne cesse de parcourir la carte
d’Europe,” chasing this or that crown to its imaginary resting-place
on the head of husband or child, has been transformed into a lunatic
asylum; the balcony, whence our Juliet leaned to whisper honeyed
phrases to her Romeo, is either gone, or witnesses to the rhapsodies
of a baser madness; the contiguous houses, where officers and
ministers and envoys plenipotentiary kept their state, the lodgings
where the smaller fry of parasites and courtiers worried out their
little excited lives of intrigue and scandal--all are delivered in
this twentieth century to the dry prose of commerce, and only the gilt
tracery on a wall here and there, or the sombre emblazonment of a
ceiling, testifies to the romance which once glowed and fevered there
until it perished consumed in its own heart-burnings.
The palace has achieved, one might say, its logical destiny; it
survives, but in a bad state of repair mental and material. The ducal
gardens also survive, but for the benefit of the “people.” Everywhere,
since those days, the flood of democracy has broken through the social
dam, and robbed exclusiveness of its most picturesque privileges. It
was predestined, it was inevitable; but I prefer, I confess, for my
part, to think of Colorno as it lay slumbering, before the vulgarising
cataclysm, on that sultry June morning in the year 1759.
There came lumbering up the high road from Florence a great travelling
carriage drawn by four bays, with a sober-suited postilion to each
pair, and a couple of travellers, no more, within. One might have
known that the younger of these men--though plainly enough dressed in
a suit of black velvet, with his head in a powdered bag-wig and a
simple black beaver set on it--was, from the very serene authority of
his expression, a person of particular distinction. He was, in fact,
the Archduke Joseph of Austria, heir-apparent to God knew what
dominions (the Seven Years’ War was then in the fourth of its
perennial stages), and on his way home from a minor diplomatic
mission--with which, despite his youth, he had been entrusted--to the
Court of Rome. He travelled incognito as the Comte de Falckenstein,
and, for the moment, had elected to eschew display. His entourage, his
personal equipage, had preceded him on the road; he himself desired to
lag a little for purposes of observation. For he was always observing,
was Archduke Joseph, and provisionally amending the scheme of things
after a process, despotically philosophic, which was all his own.
The archduke, _aetat._ 18, concluded a pretty prolonged silence with
an aphorism:--
“The last acquirement of ambitious minds, my good Tiretta, is
simplicity.”
The gentleman at his side, a humorous, interesting-looking young man
of twenty-six or so, heaved a profound sigh.
“At last!” he said. “I may talk, then, again?”
Joseph sniggered. His own lean young face was not without humour, but
intrinsically of the pedantic order. He was precociously inclined to
that form of superior banter, best described as scholastic jocosity,
which consists in demanding subservient laughter from the unamused.
That was largely the misfortune of his state. He was a serious,
well-intentioned young prince; but since no one might question his
conclusions, they were forced to be their own single support. He had
Platonic ideals of state, but the individual liberty they embraced
included no right to question his personal dictation of them. He would
make men tolerant by intolerance, which was exactly what the Jacobins,
by savager methods, came to attempt; and necessarily like them he
failed. He meant very well, and, under the circumstances, did not do
so badly in the end; but he died, after all, in the van of pathetic
failure, seeing all his hopes of a world converted by force to reason
overthrown. That, however, belongs to another story.
The archduke’s aphorism had capped some discussion, terminated by
himself, on the notorious dandyism of the Duke of Parma, through whose
territories they were then passing.
“You may talk, Tiretta,” he said. “Why not?”
“God and your Highness know,” answered the young gentleman. “I would
rather go without food than speech any day. And yet you impose silence
on me; and yet you condescend to call me your friend.”
He was a romantic-looking fellow, for all the character he gave
himself--slender, shapely, with dusk mournful eyes and well-knit
features. His mouth was peculiarly expressive, whether in smile or
sobriety, and the voice, whose freedom he so coveted, was low-toned
and caressing. He wore the nondescript military harness of his day,
scarcely to be called a uniform, consisting prominently of a dark blue
coat with white facings, high jack-boots, and a heavy sword at his
side. His natural hair, of a deep brown and slightly grizzled with
powder, was tied into a knot at the nape with a broad black ribbon,
and on his head was a hat like his companion’s, but adorned with a
pert black cockade.
“I am your friend, Tiretta,” said the prince. “That is why I will not
let you talk too much. You will profit by it some day, when I have
inured you to a wise reticence. The man of many words empties his
heart of thoughts.”
“I could plead,” answered Tiretta, with a little curious amused glance
at his companion, “that thoughts, like pea-blossom, throng the thicker
being culled; only I fear----”
“Fear what?”
“That you would wish to think it over.”
Joseph laughed. “Well,” said he, “deliver yourself.”
“I can be reticent,” said Tiretta. “I will talk your Highness an hour
by the clock to prove it; and all the time you will never guess the
secret I am keeping from you.”
“What is that?”
“That you have a smut on your nose.”
The prince instinctively rubbed that august feature; then, his lips a
little stiff, sat looking out of the window. Certainly his indulgence
had brought this on himself. He had met and attached this Tiretta to
his interests in Rome, where the stranger was known socially as _il
Trovatore_. Already and always a student of humanity, there was
something about the man, a mystery, a charm, which had curiously
puzzled and attracted the royal young metaphysician. Not that Tiretta
had made any mystery about himself. If he was a soldier of fortune, he
was still a soldier and a gentleman. He had fought with distinction,
on the Spanish side, in the wars of the Austrian succession; he had
been present at the battle of Piacenza. It was nothing, in that
“general post” of kingdoms and dynasties, that he should find himself
presently hobnobbing on friendly terms with a scion of the house whose
claims he had helped to contest. The European arena was all a welter
of Habsburgs and Bourbons, crossing, interlacing, intermarrying, and
having no particular aim in common but, like a litter of pigs, to
empty among them the Continental trough. It did not seem much to
matter which sat on what throne, so long as all available seats were
occupied by themselves. A martial spirit, with no genius for
genealogy, might very well, under such conditions, fight for the sake
of his sword rather than his cause; and likely that had been the case
with Tiretta. He was a mercenary, of the noble and romantic sort; a
free-lance, whose independence of mind shone through all his
undertakings. There is no permanence in the attachments of princes;
but, for the moment at least, it was this very quality of
“self-possession” in his friend which interested Joseph; and because
it seemed the antithesis of his own. Tiretta possessed _his_ own soul
apart, not by philosophy, but by some secret bestowal of it in a
dreamy Rosamund’s bower, to which only he knew the clue. When his eyes
looked fixed and misty, one might surmise that he was far away in that
enchanted spot, the spirit of which always appeared to speak in his
voice and manner. There was something magnetic about the man, which,
in the philosopher’s view, invited scientific analysis.
And yet the fellow was an irrepressible chatterer--that was the odd
thing; and wont, like all chatterers, to blunder into offence. Here
was an example.
Archduke Joseph tried to swallow the pleasantry, but his vanity was
not equal to the effort. He swelled a moment, then delivered himself,
with an icy _hauteur_:--
“You presume, monsieur, you presume upon my indulgence. That is not to
justify my condescension, but to rebuke it. Henceforth I desire you to
leave me to my meditations.”
Tiretta, instantly compunctious, ventured to disobey. He was easily
attached; he really liked the young man. His expressions of contrition
won favour after a time; he earnestly asserted that he was not the
irresponsible garrulous magpie the other thought him--that in the
causes of loyalty and affection he could be silent unto death. Let his
Highness test him and believe. Joseph smiled. Too much protest, too
many words.
“I mistrust all excess--even of fidelity,” he said.
“Your Highness begins, your Highness has said it,” cried Tiretta,
“where ordinarily old age is content to end--in the last wisdom of
simplicity. Be tolerant of us commoner minds, who, being little,
cannot afford, like your Highness, to do without some ostentation,
even in speech. An emperor can dress plain, can dismiss his escort,
can sit in silence self-contained, and remain an emperor. But we must
e’en have some garnish of embroidered coats and sounding words to
recommend us. Well, talking, like drink, grows on a man. So you give
me your liking, sum me up as a wind-bag, only a fond one.”
“I shall do nothing so foolish,” said Joseph, with a smile. “There is
no human nature, my good Tiretta, compounded of such simple
ingredients. To call a man a rogue, a fool, a miser, or what you will,
is the mere refuge of an indolent mind, which seizes upon some salient
feature to express the whole. Remark upon a man’s dandyism, as we have
been doing, but do not call him dandy; remark upon another’s
loquacity, but do not dismiss him as an empty chatterer.”
“Do not dismiss him at all,” said Tiretta gravely. “He will justify
your interest in him yet.”
He chaunted softly a little odd song (they were rolling over smooth
turf at the time)--something about a quarrel between a flower and its
roots, which he improvised for the occasion. It was his faculty for
doing this sort of thing which had procured him his name. He had a
very sweet voice. His mandolin rested in its case in the rack above
his head. Joseph had little ear or liking for music; yet there was a
quality in Tiretta’s which constantly fascinated while it aggravated
him.
“If you would condescend to prose,” he said drily.
“It was this,” said Tiretta. “The flower despised its own lowly roots,
its poor relations, which connected it with the soil. ‘I would stand
alone in my exclusiveness,’ it said; and it persuaded the scythe to
sever it. But, lo! the flower fell and died, and the roots sent forth
another blossom, fair as the first.”
The archduke patted the shoulder next him patronisingly.
“What does it mean, poet?”
“Nothing, sir, but that, stand a flower ever so high and glorious, the
roots have their use. All life springs at one time from the soil.”
“What is the moral?”
“O! the moral? Only that I love flowers.”
“Well, you are a funny fellow.”
“For being a root? It is natural for you to think so. But I shall hope
yet to prove my attachment.”
The prince glanced at him queerly, as if doubting his sanity; then
frowned, and sat looking from the window.
The postilions had had orders to avoid both Parma and Colorno. There
were private as well as state reasons for this step. The past month or
so had been signalised by some cautious _pourparlers_ in the matter of
a suggested marriage between the heir to the Austrian throne and the
eldest child and daughter of Don Philip, and both policy and punctilio
forbade a visit which might lend itself to misconstruction. If any
curiosity as to the person of his possible bride affected the sedate
young gentleman, he had no difficulty in repressing it. A glimpse had
perhaps acted upon him to rasher effect. For, for all his youthful
philosophy, Joseph was susceptible where girlish beauty was concerned.
He even fell in love, years later, with the looks of his own sister,
Marie-Antoinette, at Versailles, and playfully regretted that he could
not marry her. Reports, of course, of the charms of the young Infanta
Marie-Isabelle, had reached him; but then he was wise enough to
recognise that princesses were always beautiful. It was without
emotion that he saw the roofs and towers of Colorno appear and
disappear at a distance among the eastern greenery.
The carriage took a ford of the little river, and toiling up the slope
beyond, was proceeding on its way to join the Milan road, when it was
called to a sudden halt by the archduke.
“Tiretta!”
“Your Highness?”
“That was a bewitching vision.”
“It sits very prettily among its trees, to be sure.”
“Pooh, man! Get out and look back.”
Tiretta obeyed--and this is what he saw. The road ran straight across
the river, and within the south-eastern angle made by the two was
composed a little picture, very quaint and _ravissante_. It showed a
leafy corner shadowed by chestnut trees, and a patch of
green-embowered turf beyond, sloping to a tiny curved backwater, in
which lay a miniature islet set like an aquamarine in a ring, the
whole lying secluded from the road behind a high close hedge of
tamarisk and juniper, in the thick of which was sunk a wooden wicket.
But between the bank and islet was the wonder; for there, thigh-deep
in the water, stood a young girl, plainly arrested in the act of
reaching for a single golden lily which floated in the pool a yard or
two beyond her grasp. There she stood, half diverted, half aghast,
balancing herself by an overhanging branch, one slim arm raised, so
that its sleeve dropped down almost to her arm-pit, the other,
snatched hurriedly from its essay, pressing under to her knees her
rebellious skirt, which yet would rise and rise again in snowy
bubbles. The naiad’s umber hair had looped astray; the little milkmaid
hat upon her head, with its cherry ribbon and saucy bow, was tilted
askew; she stood transfixed a moment; then, with a laugh and shrug,
turned and waded ashore.
An odd small face, peering from the green, greeted her. Then both
disappeared, and only the swirling bobbing lily remained to tell of
the picture.
A voice spoke at Tiretta’s side. The archduke had alighted.
“Fantastic, lovely--a spirit of the beautiful water. How the sun and
shade fought for her face, her bosom! Tiretta.”
“Sir.”
“I would not willingly forget that vision. See, take this ring” (he
pulled a green intaglio from his finger)--“carry it to her; say that
the Count of Falckenstein presents his duty to the nixie of the pool,
and begs her to accept of this gage in token of his thraldom. No
delay--not a moment--or you will be too late.”
Tiretta, in his jack-boots, splashed back across the ford. He found
the wicket unfastened, and entered; a short hedgy lane carried him to
the chestnut trees and the patch of sward over against the islet. He
half expected to find the apparition vanished beyond recall--a dream,
an hallucination. But there she stood withdrawn into the green, a
flushed and laughing reality. Her sodden skirts clung about her; they
were hemmed with mud as if, a lily herself, she had been uprooted from
the water; her raised hands sought to restore symmetry to her
disordered locks; there was a gleam of snowy teeth, a flush of
translucent rose--he thought he had never seen a picture so
captivating. And hovering about the vision’s footsteps was a little
grotesque boy, comical, preposterous--a dwarf in fantastic keeping.
He advanced; she saw him, and was stricken into a stone-eyed Undine.
“Madam,” he said, “I bring a gage from the Count of Falckenstein
yonder to the nixie of the water. He bids me say that he will redeem
it at her will.”