A Man’s Ransom.
Tito was soon down among the crowd, and, notwithstanding his
indifferent reply to Nello’s question about his chance acquaintance, he
was not without a passing wish, as he made his way round the piazza to
the Corso degli Adimari, that he might encounter the pair of blue eyes
which had looked up towards him from under the square bit of white
linen drapery that formed the ordinary hood of the contadina at festa
time. He was perfectly well aware that that face was Tessa’s; but he
had not chosen to say so. What had Nello to do with the matter? Tito
had an innate love of reticence—let us say a talent for it—which acted
as other impulses do, without any conscious motive, and, like all
people to whom concealment is easy, he would now and then conceal
something which had as little the nature of a secret as the fact that
he had seen a flight of crows.
But the passing wish about pretty Tessa was almost immediately eclipsed
by the recurrent recollection of that friar whose face had some
irrecoverable association for him. Why should a sickly fanatic, worn
with fasting, have looked at _him_ in particular, and where in all his
travels could he remember encountering that face before? Folly! such
vague memories hang about the mind like cobwebs, with tickling
importunity—best to sweep them away at a dash: and Tito had pleasanter
occupation for his thoughts. By the time he was turning out of the
Corso degli Adimari into a side-street he was caring only that the sun
was high, and that the procession had kept him longer than he had
intended from his visit to that room in the Via de’ Bardi, where his
coming, he knew, was anxiously awaited. He felt the scene of his
entrance beforehand: the joy beaming diffusedly in the blind face like
the light in a semi-transparent lamp; the transient pink flush on
Romola’s face and neck, which subtracted nothing from her majesty, but
only gave it the exquisite charm of womanly sensitiveness, heightened
still more by what seemed the paradoxical boy-like frankness of her
look and smile. They were the best comrades in the world during the
hours they passed together round the blind man’s chair: she was
constantly appealing to Tito, and he was informing her, yet he felt
himself strangely in subjection to Romola with that simplicity of hers:
he felt for the first time, without defining it to himself, that loving
awe in the presence of noble womanhood, which is perhaps something like
the worship paid of old to a great nature-goddess, who was not
all-knowing, but whose life and power were something deeper and more
primordial than knowledge. They had never been alone together, and he
could frame to himself no probable image of love-scenes between them:
he could only fancy and wish wildly—what he knew was impossible—that
Romola would some day tell him that she loved him. One day in Greece,
as he was leaning over a wall in the sunshine, a little black-eyed
peasant girl, who had rested her water-pot on the wall, crept gradually
nearer and nearer to him, and at last shyly asked him to kiss her,
putting up her round olive cheek very innocently. Tito was used to love
that came in this unsought fashion. But Romola’s love would never come
in that way: would it ever come at all?—and yet it was that topmost
apple on which he had set his mind. He was in his fresh youth—not
passionate, but impressible: it was as inevitable that he should feel
lovingly towards Romola as that the white irises should be reflected in
the clear sunlit stream; but he had no coxcombry, and he had an
intimate sense that Romola was something very much above him. Many men
have felt the same before a large-eyed, simple child.
Nevertheless, Tito had had the rapid success which would have made some
men presuming, or would have warranted him in thinking that there would
be no great presumption in entertaining an agreeable confidence that he
might one day be the husband of Romola—nay, that her father himself was
not without a vision of such a future for him. His first auspicious
interview with Bartolommeo Scala had proved the commencement of a
growing favour on the secretary’s part, and had led to an issue which
would have been enough to make Tito decide on Florence as the place in
which to establish himself, even if it had held no other magnet.
Politian was professor of Greek as well as Latin at Florence,
professorial chairs being maintained there, although the university had
been removed to Pisa; but for a long time Demetrio Calcondila, one of
the most eminent and respectable among the emigrant Greeks, had also
held a Greek chair, simultaneously with the too predominant Italian.
Calcondila was now gone to Milan, and there was no counterpoise or
rival to Politian such as was desired for him by the friends who wished
him to be taught a little propriety and humility. Scala was far from
being the only friend of this class, and he found several who, if they
were not among those thirsty admirers of mediocrity that were glad to
be refreshed with his verses in hot weather, were yet quite willing to
join him in doing that moral service to Politian. It was finally agreed
that Tito should be supported in a Greek chair, as Demetrio Calcondila
had been by Lorenzo himself, who, being at the same time the
affectionate patron of Politian, had shown by precedent that there was
nothing invidious in such a measure, but only a zeal for true learning
and for the instruction of the Florentine youth.
Tito was thus sailing under the fairest breeze, and besides convincing
fair judges that his talents squared with his good fortune, he wore
that fortune so easily and unpretentiously that no one had yet been
offended by it. He was not unlikely to get into the best Florentine
society: society where there was much more plate than the circle of
enamelled silver in the centre of the brass dishes, and where it was
not forbidden by the Signory to wear the richest brocade. For where
could a handsome young scholar not be welcome when he could touch the
lute and troll a gay song? That bright face, that easy smile, that
liquid voice, seemed to give life a holiday aspect; just as a strain of
gay music and the hoisting of colours make the work-worn and the sad
rather ashamed of showing themselves. Here was a professor likely to
render the Greek classics amiable to the sons of great houses.
And that was not the whole of Tito’s good fortune; for he had sold all
his jewels, except the ring he did not choose to part with, and he was
master of full five hundred gold florins.
Yet the moment when he first had this sum in his possession was the
crisis of the first serious struggle his facile, good-humoured nature
had known. An importunate thought, of which he had till now refused to
see more than the shadow as it dogged his footsteps, at last rushed
upon him and grasped him: he was obliged to pause and decide whether he
would surrender and obey, or whether he would give the refusal that
must carry irrevocable consequences. It was in the room above Nello’s
shop, which Tito had now hired as a lodging, that the elder Cennini
handed him the last quota of the sum on behalf of Bernardo Rucellai,
the purchaser of the two most valuable gems.
“_Ecco, giovane mio_!” said the respectable printer and goldsmith, “you
have now a pretty little fortune; and if you will take my advice, you
will let me place your florins in a safe quarter, where they may
increase and multiply, instead of slipping through your fingers for
banquets and other follies which are rife among our Florentine youth.
And it has been too much the fashion of scholars, especially when, like
our Pietro Crinito, they think their scholarship needs to be scented
and broidered, to squander with one hand till they have been fain to
beg with the other. I have brought you the money, and you are free to
make a wise choice or an unwise: I shall see on which side the balance
dips. We Florentines hold no man a member of an Art till he has shown
his skill and been matriculated; and no man is matriculated to the art
of life till he has been well tempted. If you make up your mind to put
your florins out to usury, you can let me know to-morrow. A scholar may
marry, and should have something in readiness for the _morgen-cap.
Addio_.”[1]
[1] A sum given by the bridegroom to the bride the day after the
marriage. _Morgengabe_.
As Cennini closed the door behind him, Tito turned round with the smile
dying out of his face, and fixed his eyes on the table where the
florins lay. He made no other movement, but stood with his thumbs in
his belt, looking down, in that transfixed state which accompanies the
concentration of consciousness on some inward image.
“A man’s ransom!”—who was it that had said five hundred florins was
more than a man’s ransom? If now, under this mid-day sun, on some hot
coast far away, a man somewhat stricken in years—a man not without high
thoughts and with the most passionate heart—a man who long years ago
had rescued a little boy from a life of beggary, filth, and cruel
wrong, had reared him tenderly, and been to him as a father—if that man
_were_ now under this summer sun toiling as a slave, hewing wood and
drawing water, perhaps being smitten and buffeted because he was not
deft and active? If he were saying to himself, “Tito will find me: he
had but to carry our manuscripts and gems to Venice; he will have
raised money, and will never rest till he finds me out”? If that were
certain, could he, Tito, see the price of the gems lying before him,
and say, “I will stay at Florence, where I am fanned by soft airs of
promised love and prosperity; I will not risk myself for his sake”? No,
surely not, _if it were certain_. But nothing could be farther from
certainty. The galley had been taken by a Turkish vessel on its way to
Delos: _that_ was known by the report of the companion galley, which
had escaped. But there had been resistance, and probable bloodshed; a
man had been seen falling overboard: who were the survivors, and what
had befallen them amongst all the multitude of possibilities? Had not
he, Tito, suffered shipwreck, and narrowly escaped drowning? He had
good cause for feeling the omnipresence of casualties that threatened
all projects with futility. The rumour that there were pirates who had
a settlement in Delos was not to be depended on, or might be nothing to
the purpose. What, probably enough, would be the result if he were to
quit Florence and go to Venice; get authoritative letters—yes, he knew
that might be done—and set out for the Archipelago? Why, that he should
be himself seized, and spend all his florins on preliminaries, and be
again a destitute wanderer—with no more gems to sell.
Tito had a clearer vision of that result than of the possible moment
when he might find his father again, and carry him deliverance. It
would surely be an unfairness that he, in his full ripe youth, to whom
life had hitherto had some of the stint and subjection of a school,
should turn his back on promised love and distinction, and perhaps
never be visited by that promise again. “And yet,” he said to himself,
“if I were certain that Baldassarre Calvo was alive, and that I could
free him, by whatever exertions or perils, I would go now—now I have
the money: it was useless to debate the matter before. I would go now
to Bardo and Bartolommeo Scala, and tell them the whole truth.” Tito
did not say to himself so distinctly that if those two men had known
the whole truth he was aware there would have been no alternative for
him but to go in search of his benefactor, who, if alive, was the
rightful owner of the gems, and whom he had always equivocally spoken
of as “lost;” he did not say to himself—what he was not ignorant
of—that Greeks of distinction had made sacrifices, taken voyages again
and again, and sought help from crowned and mitred heads for the sake
of freeing relatives from slavery to the Turks. Public opinion did not
regard this as exceptional virtue.
This was his first real colloquy with himself: he had gone on following
the impulses of the moment, and one of those impulses had been to
conceal half the fact; he had never considered this part of his conduct
long enough to face the consciousness of his motives for the
concealment. What was the use of telling the whole? It was true, the
thought had crossed his mind several times since he had quitted Nauplia
that, after all, it was a great relief to be quit of Baldassarre, and
he would have liked to know _who_ it was that had fallen overboard. But
such thoughts spring inevitably out of a relation that is irksome.
Baldassarre was exacting, and had got stranger as he got older: he was
constantly scrutinising Tito’s mind to see whether it answered to his
own exaggerated expectations; and age—the age of a thickset,
heavy-browed, bald man beyond sixty, whose intensity and eagerness in
the grasp of ideas have long taken the character of monotony and
repetition, may be looked at from many points of view without being
found attractive. Such a man, stranded among new acquaintances, unless
he had the philosopher’s stone, would hardly find rank, youth, and
beauty at his feet. The feelings that gather fervour from novelty will
be of little help towards making the world a home for dimmed and faded
human beings; and if there is any love of which they are not widowed,
it must be the love that is rooted in memories and distils perpetually
the sweet balms of fidelity and forbearing tenderness.
But surely such memories were not absent from Tito’s mind? Far in the
backward vista of his remembered life, when he was only seven years
old, Baldassarre had rescued him from blows, had taken him to a home
that seemed like opened paradise, where there was sweet food and
soothing caresses, all had on Baldassarre’s knee; and from that time
till the hour they had parted, Tito had been the one centre of
Baldassarre’s fatherly cares.
And he had been docile, pliable, quick of apprehension, ready to
acquire: a very bright lovely boy, a youth of even splendid grace, who
seemed quite without vices, as if that beautiful form represented a
vitality so exquisitely poised and balanced that it could know no
uneasy desires, no unrest—a radiant presence for a lonely man to have
won for himself. If he were silent when his father expected some
response, still he did not look moody; if he declined some labour—why,
he flung himself down with such a charming, half-smiling, half-pleading
air, that the pleasure of looking at him made amends to one who had
watched his growth with a sense of claim and possession: the curves of
Tito’s mouth had ineffable good-humour in them. And then, the quick
talent to which everything came readily, from philosophical systems to
the rhymes of a street ballad caught up at a hearing! Would any one
have said that Tito had not made a rich return to his benefactor, or
that his gratitude and affection would fail on any great demand?
He did not admit that his gratitude had failed; but _it was not
certain_ that Baldassarre was in slavery, not certain that he was
living.
“Do I not owe something to myself?” said Tito, inwardly, with a slight
movement of his shoulders, the first he had made since he had turned to
look down at the florins. “Before I quit everything, and incur again
all the risks of which I am even now weary, I must at least have a
reasonable hope. Am I to spend my life in a wandering search? _I
believe he is dead_. Cennini was right about my florins: I will place
them in his hands to-morrow.”
When, the next morning, Tito put this determination into act he had
chosen his colour in the game, and had given an inevitable bent to his
wishes. He had made it impossible that he should not from henceforth
desire it to be the truth that his father was dead; impossible that he
should not be tempted to baseness rather than that the precise facts of
his conduct should not remain for ever concealed.
Under every guilty secret there is hidden a brood of guilty wishes,
whose unwholesome infecting life is cherished by the darkness. The
contaminating effect of deeds often lies less in the commission than in
the consequent adjustment of our desires—the enlistment of our
self-interest on the side of falsity; as, on the other hand, the
purifying influence of public confession springs from the fact, that by
it the hope in lies is for ever swept away, and the soul recovers the
noble attitude of simplicity.
Besides, in this first distinct colloquy with himself the ideas which
had previously been scattered and interrupted had now concentrated
themselves; the little rills of selfishness had united and made a
channel, so that they could never again meet with the same resistance.
Hitherto Tito had left in vague indecision the question whether, with
the means in his power, he would not return, and ascertain his father’s
fate; he had now made a definite excuse to himself for not taking that
course; he had avowed to himself a choice which he would have been
ashamed to avow to others, and which would have made him ashamed in the
resurgent presence of his father. But the inward shame, the reflex of
that outward law which the great heart of mankind makes for every
individual man, a reflex which will exist even in the absence of the
sympathetic impulses that need no law, but rush to the deed of fidelity
and pity as inevitably as the brute mother shields her young from the
attack of the hereditary enemy—that inward shame was showing its
blushes in Tito’s determined assertion to himself that his father was
dead, or that at least search was hopeless.