Under the Plane-Tree.
On the day of San Giovanni it was already three weeks ago that Tito had
handed his florins to Cennini, and we have seen that as he set out
towards the Via de’ Bardi he showed all the outward signs of a mind at
ease. How should it be otherwise? He never jarred with what was
immediately around him, and his nature was too joyous, too
unapprehensive, for the hidden and the distant to grasp him in the
shape of a dread. As he turned out of the hot sunshine into the shelter
of a narrow street, took off the black cloth berretta, or simple cap
with upturned lappet, which just crowned his brown curls, pushing his
hair and tossing his head backward to court the cooler air, there was
no brand of duplicity on his brow; neither was there any stamp of
candour: it was simply a finely-formed, square, smooth young brow. And
the slow absent glance he cast around at the upper windows of the
houses had neither more dissimulation in it, nor more ingenuousness,
than belongs to a youthful well-opened eyelid with its unwearied
breadth of gaze; to perfectly pellucid lenses; to the undimmed dark of
a rich brown iris; and to a pure cerulean-tinted angle of whiteness
streaked with the delicate shadows of long eyelashes. Was it that
Tito’s face attracted or repelled according to the mental attitude of
the observer? Was it a cypher with more than one key? The strong,
unmistakable expression in his whole air and person was a negative one,
and it was perfectly veracious; it declared the absence of any uneasy
claim, any restless vanity, and it made the admiration that followed
him as he passed among the troop of holiday-makers a thoroughly willing
tribute.
For by this time the stir of the Festa was felt even in the narrowest
side-streets; the throng which had at one time been concentrated in the
lines through which the procession had to pass, was now streaming out
in all directions in pursuit of a new object. Such intervals of a Festa
are precisely the moments when the vaguely active animal spirits of a
crowd are likely to be the most petulant and most ready to sacrifice a
stray individual to the greater happiness of the greater number. As
Tito entered the neighbourhood of San Martino, he found the throng
rather denser; and near the hostelry of the _Bertucce_, or Baboons,
there was evidently some object which was arresting the passengers and
forming them into a knot. It needed nothing of great interest to draw
aside passengers unfreighted with a purpose, and Tito was preparing to
turn aside into an adjoining street, when, amidst the loud laughter,
his ear discerned a distressed childish voice crying, “Loose me! Holy
Virgin, help me!” which at once determined him to push his way into the
knot of gazers. He had just had time to perceive that the distressed
voice came from a young contadina, whose white hood had fallen off in
the struggle to get her hands free from the grasp of a man in the
parti-coloured dress of a _cerretano_, or conjuror, who was making
laughing attempts to soothe and cajole her, evidently carrying with him
the amused sympathy of the spectators. These, by a persuasive variety
of words signifying simpleton, for which the Florentine dialect is rich
in equivalents, seemed to be arguing with the contadina against her
obstinacy. At the first moment the girl’s face was turned away, and he
saw only her light-brown hair plaited and fastened with a long silver
pin; but in the next, the struggle brought her face opposite Tito’s,
and he saw the baby features of Tessa, her blue eyes filled with tears,
and her under-lip quivering. Tessa, too, saw _him_, and through the
mist of her swelling tears there beamed a sudden hope, like that in the
face of a little child, when, held by a stranger against its will, it
sees a familiar hand stretched out.
In an instant Tito had pushed his way through the barrier of
bystanders, whose curiosity made them ready to turn aside at the sudden
interference of this handsome young signor, had grasped Tessa’s waist,
and had said, “Loose this child! What right have you to hold her
against her will?”
The conjuror—a man with one of those faces in which the angles of the
eyes and eyebrows, of the nostrils, mouth, and sharply-defined jaw, all
tend upward—showed his small regular teeth in an impish but not
ill-natured grin, as he let go Tessa’s hands, and stretched out his own
backward, shrugging his shoulders, and bending them forward a little in
a half-apologetic, half-protesting manner.
“I mean the ragazza no evil in the world, Messere: ask this respectable
company. I was only going to show them a few samples of my skill, in
which this little damsel might have helped me the better because of her
kitten face, which would have assured them of open dealing; and I had
promised her a lapful of confetti as a reward. But what then? Messer
has doubtless better confetti at hand, and she knows it.”
A general laugh among the bystanders accompanied these last words of
the conjuror, raised, probably, by the look of relief and confidence
with which Tessa clung to Tito’s arm, as he drew it from her waist, and
placed her hand within it. She only cared about the laugh as she might
have cared about the roar of wild beasts from which she was escaping,
not attaching any meaning to it; but Tito, who had no sooner got her on
his arm than he foresaw some embarrassment in the situation, hastened
to get clear of observers who, having been despoiled of an expected
amusement, were sure to re-establish the balance by jests.
“See, see, little one! here is your hood,” said the conjuror, throwing
the bit of white drapery over Tessa’s head. “_Orsù_, bear me no malice;
come back to me when Messere can spare you.”
“Ah! Maestro Vaiano, she’ll come back presently, as the toad said to
the harrow,” called out one of the spectators, seeing how Tessa started
and shrank at the action of the conjuror.
Tito pushed his way vigorously towards the corner of a side-street, a
little vexed at this delay in his progress to the Via de’ Bardi, and
intending to get rid of the poor little contadina as soon as possible.
The next street, too, had its passengers inclined to make holiday
remarks on so unusual a pair; but they had no sooner entered it than he
said, in a kind but hurried manner, “Now, little one, where were you
going? Are you come by yourself to the Festa?”
“Ah, no!” said Tessa, looking frightened and distressed again; “I have
lost my mother in the crowd—her and my father-in-law. They will be
angry—he will beat me. It was in the crowd in San Pulinari—somebody
pushed me along and I couldn’t stop myself, so I got away from them.
Oh, I don’t know where they’re gone! Please, don’t leave me!”
Her eyes had been swelling with tears again, and she ended with a sob.
Tito hurried along again: the Church of the Badia was not far off. They
could enter it by the cloister that opened at the back, and in the
church he could talk to Tessa—perhaps leave her. No! it was an hour at
which the church was not open; but they paused under the shelter of the
cloister, and he said, “Have you no cousin or friend in Florence, my
little Tessa, whose house you could find; or are you afraid of walking
by yourself since you have been frightened by the conjuror? I am in a
hurry to get to Oltrarno, but if I could take you anywhere near—”
“Oh, I _am_ frightened: he was the devil—I know he was. And I don’t
know where to go. I have nobody: and my mother meant to have her dinner
somewhere, and I don’t know where. Holy Madonna! I shall be beaten.”
The corners of the pouting mouth went down piteously, and the poor
little bosom with the beads on it above the green serge gown heaved so,
that there was no longer any help for it: a loud sob _would_ come, and
the big tears fell as if they were making up for lost time. Here was a
situation! It would have been brutal to leave her, and Tito’s nature
was all gentleness. He wished at that moment that he had not been
expected in the Via de’ Bardi. As he saw her lifting up her holiday
apron to catch the hurrying tears, he laid his hand, too, on the apron,
and rubbed one of the cheeks and kissed the baby-like roundness.
“My poor little Tessa! leave off crying. Let us see what can be done.
Where is your home—where do you live?”
There was no answer, but the sobs began to subside a little and the
drops to fall less quickly.
“Come! I’ll take you a little way, if you’ll tell me where you want to
go.”
The apron fell, and Tessa’s face began to look as contented as a
cherub’s budding from a cloud. The diabolical conjuror, the anger and
the beating, seemed a long way off.
“I think I’ll go home, if you’ll take me,” she said, in a half whisper,
looking up at Tito with wide blue eyes, and with something sweeter than
a smile—with a childlike calm.
“Come, then, little one,” said Tito, in a caressing tone, putting her
arm within his again. “Which way is it?”
“Beyond Peretola—where the large pear-tree is.”
“Peretola? Out at which gate, pazzarella? I am a stranger, you must
remember.”
“Out at the Por del Prato,” said Tessa, moving along with a very fast
hold on Tito’s arm.
He did not know all the turnings well enough to venture on an attempt
at choosing the quietest streets; and besides, it occurred to him that
where the passengers were most numerous there was, perhaps, the most
chance of meeting with Monna Ghita and finding an end to his
knight-errant-ship. So he made straight for Porta Rossa, and on to
Ognissanti, showing his usual bright propitiatory face to the mixed
observers who threw their jests at him and his little heavy-shod maiden
with much liberality. Mingled with the more decent holiday-makers there
were frolicsome apprentices, rather envious of his good fortune;
bold-eyed women with the badge of the yellow veil; beggars who thrust
forward their caps for alms, in derision at Tito’s evident haste;
dicers, sharpers, and loungers of the worst sort; boys whose tongues
were used to wag in concert at the most brutal street games: for the
streets of Florence were not always a moral spectacle in those times,
and Tessa’s terror at being lost in the crowd was not wholly
unreasonable.
When they reached the Piazza d’Ognissanti, Tito slackened his pace:
they were both heated with their hurried walk, and here was a wider
space where they could take breath. They sat down on one of the stone
benches which were frequent against the walls of old Florentine houses.
“Holy Virgin!” said Tessa; “I am glad we have got away from those women
and boys; but I was not frightened, because you could take care of me.”
“Pretty little Tessa!” said Tito, smiling at her. “What makes you feel
so safe with me?”
“Because you are so beautiful—like the people going into Paradise: they
are all good.”
“It is a long while since you had your breakfast, Tessa,” said Tito,
seeing some stalls near, with fruit and sweetmeats upon them. “Are you
hungry?”
“Yes, I think I am—if you will have some too.”
Tito bought some apricots, and cakes, and comfits, and put them into
her apron.
“Come,” he said, “let us walk on to the Prato, and then perhaps you
will not be afraid to go the rest of the way alone.”
“But you will have some of the apricots and things,” said Tessa, rising
obediently and gathering up her apron as a bag for her store.
“We will see,” said Tito aloud; and to himself he said, “Here is a
little contadina who might inspire a better idyl than Lorenzo de’
Medici’s ‘Nencia da Barberino,’ that Nello’s friends rave about; if I
were only a Theocritus, or had time to cultivate the necessary
experience by unseasonable walks of this sort! However, the mischief is
done now: I am so late already that another half-hour will make no
difference. Pretty little pigeon!”
“We have a garden and plenty of pears,” said Tessa, “and two cows,
besides the mules; and I’m very fond of them. But my father-in-law is a
cross man: I wish my mother had not married him. I think he is wicked;
he is very ugly.”
“And does your mother let him beat you, poverina? You said you were
afraid of being beaten.”
“Ah, my mother herself scolds me: she loves my young sister better, and
thinks I don’t do work enough. Nobody speaks kindly to me, only the
Pievano (parish priest) when I go to confession. And the men in the
Mercato laugh at me and make fun of me. Nobody ever kissed me and spoke
to me as you do; just as I talk to my little black-faced kid, because
I’m very fond of it.”
It seemed not to have entered Tessa’s mind that there was any change in
Tito’s appearance since the morning he begged the milk from her, and
that he looked now like a personage for whom she must summon her little
stock of reverent words and signs. He had impressed her too differently
from any human being who had ever come near her before, for her to make
any comparison of details; she took no note of his dress; he was simply
a voice and a face to her, something come from Paradise into a world
where most things seemed hard and angry; and she prattled with as
little restraint as if he had been an imaginary companion born of her
own lovingness and the sunshine.
They had now reached the Prato, which at that time was a large open
space within the walls, where the Florentine youth played at their
favourite _Calcio_—a peculiar kind of football—and otherwise exercised
themselves. At this mid-day time it was forsaken and quiet to the very
gates, where a tent had been erected in preparation for the race. On
the border of this wide meadow, Tito paused and said—
“Now, Tessa, you will not be frightened if I leave you to walk the rest
of the way by yourself. Addio! Shall I come and buy a cup of milk from
you in the Mercato to-morrow morning, to see that you are quite safe?”
He added this question in a soothing tone, as he saw her eyes widening
sorrowfully, and the corners of her mouth falling. She said nothing at
first; she only opened her apron and looked down at her apricots and
sweetmeats. Then she looked up at him again and said complainingly—
“I thought you would have some, and we could sit down under a tree
outside the gate, and eat them together.”
“Tessa, Tessa, you little siren, you would ruin me,” said Tito,
laughing, and kissing both her cheeks. “I ought to have been in the Via
de’ Bardi long ago. No! I must go back now; you are in no danger.
There—I’ll take an apricot. Addio!”
He had already stepped two yards from her when he said the last word.
Tessa could not have spoken; she was pale, and a great sob was rising;
but she turned round as if she felt there was no hope for her, and
stepped on, holding her apron so forgetfully that the apricots began to
roll out on the grass.
Tito could not help looking after her, and seeing her shoulders rise to
the bursting sob, and the apricots fall—could not help going after her
and picking them up. It was very hard upon him: he was a long way off
the Via de’ Bardi, and very near to Tessa.
“See, my silly one,” he said, picking up the apricots. “Come, leave off
crying, I will go with you, and we’ll sit down under the tree. Come, I
don’t like to see you cry; but you know I must go back some time.”
So it came to pass that they found a great plane-tree not far outside
the gates, and they sat down under it, and all the feast was spread out
on Tessa’s lap, she leaning with her back against the trunk of the
tree, and he stretched opposite to her, resting his elbows on the rough
green growth cherished by the shade, while the sunlight stole through
the boughs and played about them like a winged thing. Tessa’s face was
all contentment again, and the taste of the apricots and sweetmeats
seemed very good.
“You pretty bird!” said Tito, looking at her as she sat eyeing the
remains of the feast with an evident mental debate about saving them,
since he had said he would not have any more. “To think of any one
scolding you! What sins do you tell of at confession, Tessa?”
“Oh, a great many. I am often naughty. I don’t like work, and I can’t
help being idle, though I know I shall be beaten and scolded; and I
give the mules the best fodder when nobody sees me, and then when the
Madre is angry I say I didn’t do it, and that makes me frightened at
the devil. I think the conjuror was the devil. I am not so frightened
after I’ve been to confession. And see, I’ve got a _Breve_ here that a
good father, who came to Prato preaching this Easter, blessed and gave
us all.” Here Tessa drew from her bosom a tiny bag carefully fastened
up. “And I think the holy Madonna will take care of me; she looks as if
she would; and perhaps if I wasn’t idle, she wouldn’t let me be
beaten.”
“If they are so cruel to you, Tessa, shouldn’t you like to leave them,
and go and live with a beautiful lady who would be kind to you, if she
would have you to wait upon her?”
Tessa seemed to hold her breath for a moment or two. Then she said
doubtfully, “I don’t know.”
“Then should you like to be my little servant, and live with me?” said
Tito, smiling. He meant no more than to see what sort of pretty look
and answer she would give.
There was a flush of joy immediately. “Will you take me with you now?
Ah! I shouldn’t go home and be beaten then.” She paused a little while,
and then added more doubtfully, “But I should like to fetch my
black-faced kid.”
“Yes, you must go back to your kid, my Tessa,” said Tito, rising, “and
I must go the other way.”
“By Jupiter!” he added, as he went from under the shade of the tree,
“it is not a pleasant time of day to walk from here to the Via de’
Bardi; I am more inclined to lie down and sleep in this shade.”
It ended so. Tito had an unconquerable aversion to anything unpleasant,
even when an object very much loved and desired was on the other side
of it. He had risen early; had waited; had seen sights, and had been
already walking in the sun: he was inclined for a siesta, and inclined
all the more because little Tessa was there, and seemed to make the air
softer. He lay down on the grass again, putting his cap under his head
on a green tuft by the side of Tessa. That was not quite comfortable;
so he moved again, and asked Tessa to let him rest his head against her
lap; and in that way he soon fell asleep. Tessa sat quiet as a dove on
its nest, just venturing, when he was fast asleep, to touch the
wonderful dark curls that fell backward from his ear. She was too happy
to go to sleep—too happy to think that Tito would wake up, and that
then he would leave her, and she must go home. It takes very little
water to make a perfect pool for a tiny fish, where it will find its
world and paradise all in one, and never have a presentiment of the dry
bank. The fretted summer shade, and stillness, and the gentle breathing
of some loved life near—it would be paradise to us all, if eager
thought, the strong angel with the implacable brow, had not long since
closed the gates.
It really was a long while before the waking came—before the long dark
eyes opened at Tessa, first with a little surprise, and then with a
smile, which was soon quenched by some preoccupying thought. Tito’s
deeper sleep had broken into a doze, in which he felt himself in the
Via de’ Bardi, explaining his failure to appear at the appointed time.
The clear images of that doze urged him to start up at once to a
sitting posture, and as he stretched his arms and shook his cap, he
said—
“Tessa, little one, you have let me sleep too long. My hunger and the
shadows together tell me that the sun has done much travel since I fell
asleep. I must lose no more time. Addio,” he ended, patting her cheek
with one hand, and settling his cap with the other.
She said nothing, but there were signs in her face which made him speak
again in as serious and as chiding a tone as he could command—
“Now, Tessa, you must not cry. I shall be angry; I shall not love you
if you cry. You must go home to your black-faced kid, or if you like
you may go back to the gate and see the horses start. But I can stay
with you no longer, and if you cry, I shall think you are troublesome
to me.”
The rising tears were checked by terror at this change in Tito’s voice.
Tessa turned very pale, and sat in trembling silence, with her blue
eyes widened by arrested tears.
“Look now,” Tito went on, soothingly, opening the wallet that hung at
his belt, “here is a pretty charm that I have had a long while—ever
since I was in Sicily, a country a long way off.”
His wallet had many little matters in it mingled with small coins, and
he had the usual difficulty in laying his finger on the right thing. He
unhooked his wallet, and turned out the contents on Tessa’s lap. Among
them was his onyx ring.
“Ah, my ring!” he exclaimed, slipping it on the forefinger of his
right-hand. “I forgot to put it on again this morning. Strange, I never
missed it! See, Tessa,” he added, as he spread out the smaller
articles, and selected the one he was in search of. “See this pretty
little pointed bit of red coral—like your goat’s horn, is it not?—and
here is a hole in it, so you can put it on the cord round your neck
along with your _Breve_, and then the evil spirits can’t hurt you: if
you ever see them coming in the shadow round the corner, point this
little coral horn at them, and they will run away. It is a ‘buona
fortuna,’ and will keep you from harm when I am not with you. Come,
undo the cord.”
Tessa obeyed with a tranquillising sense that life was going to be
something quite new, and that Tito would be with her often. All who
remember their childhood remember the strange vague sense, when some
new experience came, that everything else was going to be changed, and
that there would be no lapse into the old monotony. So the bit of coral
was hung beside the tiny bag with the scrap of scrawled parchment in
it, and Tessa felt braver.
“And now you will give me a kiss,” said Tito, economising time by
speaking while he swept in the contents of the wallet and hung it at
his waist again, “and look happy, like a good girl, and then—”
But Tessa had obediently put forward her lips in a moment, and kissed
his cheek as he hung down his head.
“Oh, you pretty pigeon!” cried Tito, laughing, pressing her round
cheeks with his hands and crushing her features together so as to give
them a general impartial kiss.
Then he started up and walked away, not looking round till he was ten
yards from her, when he just turned and gave a parting beck. Tessa was
looking after him, but he could see that she was making no signs of
distress. It was enough for Tito if she did not cry while he was
present. The softness of his nature required that all sorrow should be
hidden away from him.
“I wonder when Romola will kiss my cheek in that way?” thought Tito, as
he walked along. It seemed a tiresome distance now, and he almost
wished he had not been so soft-hearted, or so tempted to linger in the
shade. No other excuse was needed to Bardo and Romola than saying
simply that he had been unexpectedly hindered; he felt confident their
proud delicacy would inquire no farther. He lost no time in getting to
Ognissanti, and hastily taking some food there, he crossed the Arno by
the Ponte alia Carraja, and made his way as directly as possible
towards the Via de’ Bardi.
But it was the hour when all the world who meant to be in particularly
good time to see the Corso were returning from the Borghi, or villages
just outside the gates, where they had dined and reposed themselves;
and the thoroughfares leading to the bridges were of course the issues
towards which the stream of sightseers tended. Just as Tito reached the
Ponte Vecchio and the entrance of the Via de’ Bardi, he was suddenly
urged back towards the angle of the intersecting streets. A company on
horseback, coming from the Via Guicciardini, and turning up the Via de’
Bardi, had compelled the foot-passengers to recede hurriedly. Tito had
been walking, as his manner was, with the thumb of his right-hand
resting in his belt; and as he was thus forced to pause, and was
looking carelessly at the passing cavaliers, he felt a very thin cold
hand laid on his. He started round, and saw the Dominican friar whose
upturned face had so struck him in the morning. Seen closer, the face
looked more evidently worn by sickness and not by age; and again it
brought some strong but indefinite reminiscences to Tito.
“Pardon me, but—from your face and your ring,”—said the friar, in a
faint voice, “is not your name Tito Melema?”
“Yes,” said Tito, also speaking faintly, doubly jarred by the cold
touch and the mystery. He was not apprehensive or timid through his
imagination, but through his sensations and perceptions he could easily
be made to shrink and turn pale like a maiden.
“Then I shall fulfil my commission.”
The friar put his hand under his scapulary, and drawing out a small
linen bag which hung round his neck, took from it a bit of parchment,
doubled and stuck firmly together with some black adhesive substance,
and placed it in Tito’s hand. On the outside was written in Italian, in
a small but distinct character—
“_Tito Melema, aged twenty-three, with a dark, beautiful face, long
dark curls, the brightest smile, and a large onyx ring on his right
forefinger_.”
Tito did not look at the friar, but tremblingly broke open the bit of
parchment. Inside, the words were—
“_I am sold for a slave: I think they are going to take me to Antioch.
The gems alone will serve to ransom me_.”
Tito looked round at the friar, but could only ask a question with his
eyes.
“I had it at Corinth,” the friar said, speaking with difficulty, like
one whose small strength had been overtaxed—“I had it from a man who
was dying.”
“He is dead, then?” said Tito, with a bounding of the heart.
“Not the writer. The man who gave it me was a pilgrim, like myself, to
whom the writer had intrusted it, because he was journeying to Italy.”
“You know the contents?”
“I do not know them, but I conjecture them. Your friend is in slavery:
you will go and release him. But I am unable to talk now.” The friar,
whose voice had become feebler and feebler, sank down on the stone
bench against the wall from which he had risen to touch Tito’s hand,
adding—
“I am at San Marco; my name is Fra Luca.”