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!”