The pot of basil

by Bernard Capes

She shook her head; but he would not be gainsaid. The confidence of the autocrat was in him; he read in her mood nothing but the diffidence of a young soul temporarily overweighted by its own aggrandisement. There is no reason for supposing that he knew anything whatever about the real state of affairs; there is every reason for surmising that the truth would have been jealously withheld from him. He never once, in after months, alluded to Tiretta, or appeared to have kept in mind the part played by that romantic agent of his in the sequence of events. It is possible that, even had a hint of the truth been conveyed to him, he would have scorned to attach any consequence to the story. The cicisbeo of his day was almost as formal an institution in society as her ladyship’s pet lap-dog or confessore; sometimes, even, he was solemnly inducted in family conclave; and not seldom he was quite the most harmless member of the domestic circle. The first condescension of an archduke and destined emperor was sufficient to sweep all such ephemeral fancies into oblivion.

Well, if princes must be princes in these matters, Joseph had got, let it be admitted, the best that he deserved. I think so myself. I feel a little impatient, I must confess, of that enamoured philosopher, who, having sent as it were a professional appraiser to value his fancy, could behave to her, when acquired, as if she were the prize of his most single and determined devotion.

But he was really devoted to her—even passionately so; and if she repaid him with duty rather than affection, he was not the man or the philosopher to complain. He knew well enough that there must always be something lacking in unions of policy, which nothing but a miracle of chance could make soul-unions; and Joseph could not be unjust or unreasonable—save, perhaps, when he regarded the quality of his own reason and found it pre-eminent. So he was satisfied to remain the positive pole of love to his wife’s negative.

For the rest, the young archduchess did all, or almost all, that was expected of her. She was a dutiful wife, a gentle mistress, a timely mother; and if the one babe she bore to her husband was of her own sex, not her disinclination to oblige, but nature, was responsible for the reservation.

Infanticide, by unsophisticated girls, is often due to terror and repulsion over the totally unforeseen. On a higher plane we find the fruit of lovelessness regarded by its bearer with cold alien eyes. That is far too harsh a description of Isabella’s attitude towards her little infant; yet the thing seemed oddly strange to her, something queerly remote from her own knowledge and volition—a changeling, as it were, that had been deposited by her while she slept. It attracted her; she was curious about it; but in a detached way. It gratified her most in its relation to the task she had set herself, and which was now accomplished. She had given a potential heir to the throne; she had made him happy. Surely, now, she might look with confident eyes to her release. This poor physical residue of her had played out its part.

It had, in truth; and so we approach the end. There is no need to linger over it, now the little ground is cleared, and the other actors in the drama are put away like inessential shadows into the background. It is the passion of the moonlit garden once more—the rapture and the meeting.

It had been evident that the young wife was drooping; it had been increasingly evident since the birth of her child. Always frail and delicate, marriage, it seemed, had never with her, as with some fragile constitutions, stayed the tendency to decline, but had rather confirmed and increased it. Something was gone from her, indeed, which no vital force of love could replace. She seemed to fade where she stood, like a spent lily. As the months drew on she grew weaker and still weaker. Her husband saw, but without understanding. It was a transient indisposition in his eyes. Autocrats are incredulous of death. One night at the opera she fainted. Some moment in it had stabbed her with a too-poignant memory. There was consternation then; but she rallied—yet never to the ground she had lost, and was still steadily yielding. She grew to be the shadow of herself; yet not so much the shadow as the phantasm. Her beauty did not go, nor her young symmetry; only it was strangely refined, as if some light within shone through dissolving walls.

And yet she was never but gentle and lovely-sweet with all; very patient, uncomplaining, but always without merriment or laughter.

And so one day there dawned upon her the third anniversary of her lover’s death.

On that day she would not look upon her basil. For a week past she had put it aside where her eyes could not encounter it. There had been signs, which yet the wild longing in her heart could not find courage to verify. Now she dared not put them to the test; she dared not risk the ruin of her hopes until the last possible moment of endurance.