TOKENS
He talked, having a willing listener--she laughed at him for a
chatterbox. He had long fits of silence--she tried to enter into his
dreams. Sometimes he was moody and troubled; and she knew why, and
blamed herself for his self-reproach; sometimes, and that most often,
they drifted soul to soul on a halcyon tide, and let the world go, and
forgot everything but themselves and the rapture of living.
And they met and met; and still were faithful to their platonic
compact. It was pretty to mark their idyll; but Nature, while she hung
them with flowers, was for ever a little impatient of their content.
Nobody interfered with them; their intimacy was encouraged rather than
suspected; the world conspired for their ruin. They were so little put
to it to practise any duplicity, that their consciences almost came to
acquit them of the necessity for it. In company they were called upon
to display no greater decorum than good taste would have imposed upon
a betrothed couple; and elsewhere, on the strength of that mutual
understanding, they could consort in honest seeming, as if no guilty
thought were at their hearts.
And, indeed, there was none in Isabella’s--a child of seventeen, and
in love. Guilt is for criminals, who work the other way and through
hate of their kind. Fanchette’s soul should have been the guilty one.
One day Tiretta took a queer object from his pocket. It was down in
the deep gardens, and they were alone together again.
“Do you see that?” he said. It was a little white slipper, woefully
grubby.
“If you please, Bonbec,” she answered. It was her name for him, quaint
in its underlying confidence, but betraying nothing to chance ears.
“Well, do you not recognise it?”
“No. Stay----” she laughed and flushed. “Is it really the recovered
relic of that day?”
“Relic?--indeed it is.”
“Horrible dirty little thing!”
“May I keep it?”
“O, Bonbec!”
“That and the flower--a priceless pair.”
“Priceless, indeed. What presents I make you!”
“I gave Bissy gold for this.”
“O, then, it is invaluable!”
“Lady, I have slept with it every night under my pillow.”
“I should at least have pulled off the heel if I had been you.”
“Tell me, may I keep it?”
“I wish I might give you something worth your taking, Bonbec.”
“Saving yourself, I could wish no dearer gifts. They speak heaven to
me--yes, the little soiled slipper and the little crumpled flower. So
much so that, in fairness, I want to make you as inestimable a gift in
return. Isabel, will you take my pot of basil, and cherish it for me?”
“I will love to--dearly I will.”
“It is so inconsiderable a thing, it would pass for a mere compliment.
I have a strange feeling about it--now do not wonder why, or whence it
comes--that its flowering will coincide with our loves’ triumph; that
it waits to be the symbol of our bridal. Is not that an odd
superstition--irrational, meaningless; and yet somehow I cannot shake
it off.”
He smiled; but his eyes were serious. She answered as movingly:
“If love can make it flower, dear my heart, that day shall come
quickly.”
“So I feel it,” he said. “Tend it; touch it; breathe on it--no more
will be needed. It will think the spring is in its green veins; it
will open its little smiling eyes, like a waking infant, to you its
mother. Fancy it our sleeping baby, Isabel.”
They were silent for awhile, the girl looking down with flushed
cheeks. Presently she said:
“Will Bissy wonder, do you think?”
“Bissy?”
“Why you gave him gold for it--that other?”
“Ah-ha! Bissy is astute, a shrewd calculating elfin. He will not kill
his goose with the golden eggs. The mine is not emptied of its
possibilities for him. Trust him to be silent; and perish all
scruples!”
He deprecated meeting trouble half-way; he bade her just drift and be
happy. He was in one of his irresponsible moods, indolent and
garrulous. Sometimes, he told her, he felt like a warm mass of
animated jelly, afloat on a tropic sea, and just dreamily conscious of
the sun and the soft swaying of the water. If only he could roll
lazily round, and feel the contact of his lady radiate, and with her
drift on for ever through the glassy silences!
“But I think there would be two sides to that,” responded Isabella
very sensibly; “and only one would be turned to the sun. Picture the
black abysses underneath, and what might rise up from them.”
He laughed:
“Then we will be two birds floating on tranced wings through the
limitless blue.”
“And the storms, Bonbec?”
“Then two angels, it must be; and think of another side to that if you
can.”
“I can only think of God, Bonbec.”
He looked at her, and laughed again; but suddenly was silent.
That night Fanchette, preparing her mistress for bed, made an
impromptu statement, quite innocently:
“I have put the pot of basil in your Highness’s chambre-à-coucher.”
Isabella, guilty of an involuntary start, paused a moment to recover
her self-possession.
“What pot of basil, girl?”
“O! I thought your Highness would know. It was delivered as from M. le
chevalier, with his respectful compliments.”
“I recollect now. M. Tiretta, uncertain of his movements, begged me to
hold the stakes, as it were, between himself and Aquaviva. You
remember the challenge?”
Indeed, that explanation of his gift had been offered to the Infanta
by M. Tiretta himself; and not as a contingent one. If there was to be
any question of subterfuge, the guilt should rest with him.
Fanchette remembered very distinctly.
“I think then, with your Highness’s permission, it is well placed
where it is,” she said.
Isabella, her colour a little heightened, found a difficulty in asking
why.
“O, I have a sentiment about these things,” said Fanchette. “Warm
thoughts will make the flowers in one’s bosom open prematurely--I have
noticed that.”
“Are you proposing to me,” said Isabella, “to wear this entire bush as
a posy?”
“Well, warm dreams, then,” said the maid. “They will make a very
forcing-house of one’s bedroom--mademoiselle will see, if she has any
love for this plant. It will come to blossom while she slumbers. Or
perhaps she would rather I removed it. It is not good, say some
people, to breathe in sleep the same air with flowers. They are like
sweet-tongued suitors, best shut the other side of the door.”
“That will do, Fanchette. You are allowing your tongue too much
freedom.”
“O, I did not mean to imply anything,” quoth injured innocence. “Your
Highness, if you please, is so ready to think the worst of Fanchette.
Only what I will venture to say is that, if you are not on the side of
M. Tiretta in this business, it will be sensible of you to let me put
the basil-pot elsewhere.”
“I am not, however, the least troubled with these scruples,” said
Isabella courageously. “As you have put it there, it may remain, since
its leaves at least smell sweet. And if I find I suffer from its
neighbourhood, it will be simple to remove it.”
“O, if you ask me, I do not think you will suffer from it!” said the
maid, airily pert.
“Good-night, Fanchette!”
“Good-night, your Highness, and fruitful dreams.”
The alcove where the Infanta slept had in it a little dim hanging
lamp, which burnt all night. It was enough and no more to betray in
shadowy contour the half-visionary sweetness of the face upon the
pillow, the rounded shoulder, the waxen hand. She lay, on this night,
so still, she hardly seemed to breathe. She was listening, her lips
just parted, to the sounds in the great house dying away in the
distance one by one. The last door boomed its remote thunder; the step
of a sentry passed beneath her window, and attenuated and ceased; a
profound stillness reigned everywhere. Then, sitting up, she sat
thrilling a moment, and slid softly from her bed. Listening again, as
if half fearful of what her own longing might bring upon her, she
crept barefooted, in her ghostly night-robe, to the table where her
treasure lay, and knelt, and put her arms about it, and buried her
face in the fragrant leaves.
“My baby,” she whispered--“open, open your pretty eyes, and make me
happy. Did I deny you? It was for love’s sake and your father’s, most
dear. He would tell you so if he were here.”