“What inconsistency, Fanchette?”
“Your cruelty to her Highness, for instance, which suddenly becomes consideration for her; your bad faith to monseigneur the archduke, which all in a moment becomes righteousness. But it is all one for the moral, which is your determination to have your way at any cost. I have no more to say, then—only this. I have warned you, and you will not be warned—therefore do not blame me for any consequences that may ensue. For me, I have my duty to my mistress, and that is enough. For you, if you are resolved to rush upon your doom, there is this piece of information, which is in truth open to all. Her Highness goes to-morrow to Colorno, whither the duke her father will follow her in the course of a few days. It is just possible, in the interval before he comes, that she may be tempted to visit Aquaviva’s gardens, of which she is so affolée—but I do not know. Au revoir, monsieur—I wish I could say adieu.”
He would have detained her, to protest, to explain, to pay a glowing tribute to her friendship and generosity—but she would have none of it.
“Thank me when you are out of the wood,” she said. “For the moment, if you value your own safety, hide deeper in it—that is my advice. We may be watched and observed at this instant, for all I know—” and, peremptorily bidding him stay where he was, she turned and hurried away.
CHAPTER XXII.
ANTICIPATION
It is a mistake to suppose that it is the manly qualities in a man which invariably appeal most to women’s affections. Very often, indeed, it is their exact antitheses—indecision, dependence, helplessness—which excite in tender breasts the fondest response. Paradoxically, every woman is a mother before she is a virgin, else, save in foretasting the guerdon of love, could she never suffer the ordeal which is to qualify her for that reward. She becomes a mother by right of the test to which she has submitted, which is in truth the test of her capacity for cherishing the weakling, for nourishing, for protecting and for sympathising in all ways with its weakness. Wherefore, as she is the instinctive nurse of frailty, her affections turn more naturally to it than to the strength which is independent of her.
There are women, of course, who would always rather be coerced by a brutal husband than consulted by an irresolute one. There are women, also, of the manly, tailor-made type, to whom a sick dog or horse appeals with fifty times the force of an ailing child. But I make bold to think that they are in the minority, and that the mass of the sex is inclined to be attracted more by the weak than by the strong qualities in men. For weakness may be lovable, while strength is only admirable; and a woman defrauded in her helpful instinct is a woman deprived of her essential meaning.
If I have made it appear that Tiretta was a masterful character, I have sketched his portrait awry, and must revise it. He was, in truth, in many ways an entirely weak creature, impressionable, emotional, and lacking the first quality of decision. One sees how he had been persuaded to dance attendance on Fortune, lingering on in her ante-room in the vain hopes of that summons to her presence which a more resolute soul would have enforced. One sees how inconsistent he could be to his own self-sacrifices, when their fruits seemed to him to be unjustifiably delayed. He was full of passionate impulses and impotent remorses—a man in courage, a woman in regrets. Yet he had two qualities which were enough to redeem him utterly in all eyes that were truly feminine, and those were charm and lovableness. He was above all things lovable, and by virtue of that disposition alone might easily have captured and absorbed into his own a more guileful heart than that of the simple, affectionate child in whose soft bosom he had awakened the unconscious instincts of motherhood. Isabella startled to the knowledge of his reappearance with the mad rapture of a mother receiving back her long-lost child.
Now all would be well, her fluttering, unreasoning heart assured her; now all would be well, her illogical sex proclaimed. She could think of nothing but that he had returned, that the long, long days of doubt and anguish were ended, that the good reasons he had had for imposing them on her would be made lovingly clear. All the sorrows, the remorses, the dutiful resolutions of the past drear months took wing in a moment like doleful crows. For that, no doubt, her cruel disillusionment about her father was part to blame. Yet, all said, love, without question, would have had its way with her in the end. She had not the power to resist so dear an importunate; she was swayed in all things by affection, and she had no one trustworthy weapon in her soul’s armoury to oppose to it.
He had come back to her because he needed her—because they could not survive apart. To realise that was to forget all else—the danger once implied in her father’s half-veiled threats; Fanchette’s assurances that a certain one must sooner or later come to be convinced, and resigned to the thought, of his own impotence; the terror she herself had had that she had been cast off by him because she had been found wanting in the crucial test. If that had been so, his masculine resolution had been no proof against his need of her; and in proportion as he needed her his weakness was a thing for transport. It is characteristic of the needs of lovers that they appear insensible to the fear of, or the reasonable consideration for, any obligations whatsoever outside their own. Very dimly the thought of her engagement shadowed Isabella’s mind; it seemed like an illusion that change of circumstance had already half dissipated; she had a vague feeling that, were reference to the fact to be craftily avoided, the fact itself would gradually be overlooked and forgotten. She was like a punished child, dismissed back to her play, bearing, with the infinite pathos of childhood, no grudge against her unjust judges, happy only to be forgiven and thought no more about, while she revelled in the sunshine from which she had been so long debarred. She was happy—happy; laughter frolic’d in her eyes; a bird sang in her breast. She did not know how her crown of bliss was to realise itself; only somehow he would find a way; she was to see him, hear him, be loved by him once more.