Tito’s Dilemma.
When Fra Luca had ceased to speak, Tito still stood by him in
irresolution, and it was not till, the pressure of the passengers being
removed, the friar rose and walked slowly into the church of Santa
Felicita, that Tito also went on his way along the Via de’ Bardi.
“If this monk is a Florentine,” he said to himself; “if he is going to
remain at Florence, everything must be disclosed.” He felt that a new
crisis had come, but he was not, for all that, too evidently agitated
to pay his visit to Bardo, and apologise for his previous
non-appearance. Tito’s talent for concealment was being fast developed
into something less neutral. It was still possible—perhaps it might be
inevitable—for him to accept frankly the altered conditions, and avow
Baldassarre’s existence; but hardly without casting an unpleasant light
backward on his original reticence as studied equivocation in order to
avoid the fulfilment of a secretly recognised claim, to say nothing of
his quiet settlement of himself and investment of his florins, when, it
would be clear, his benefactor’s fate had not been certified. It was at
least provisionally wise to act as if nothing had happened, and for the
present he would suspend decisive thought; there was all the night for
meditation, and no one would know the precise moment at which he had
received the letter.
So he entered the room on the second storey—where Romola and her father
sat among the parchment and the marble, aloof from the life of the
streets on holidays as well as on common days—with a face only a little
less bright than usual, from regret at appearing so late: a regret
which wanted no testimony, since he had given up the sight of the Corso
in order to express it; and then set himself to throw extra animation
into the evening, though all the while his consciousness was at work
like a machine with complex action, leaving deposits quite distinct
from the line of talk; and by the time he descended the stone stairs
and issued from the grim door in the starlight, his mind had really
reached a new stage in its formation of a purpose.
And when, the next day, after he was free from his professorial work,
he turned up the Via del Cocomero towards the convent of San Marco, his
purpose was fully shaped. He was going to ascertain from Fra Luca
precisely how much he conjectured of the truth, and on what grounds he
conjectured it; and, further, how long he was to remain at San Marco.
And on that fuller knowledge he hoped to mould a statement which would
in any case save him from the necessity of quitting Florence. Tito had
never had occasion to fabricate an ingenious lie before: the occasion
was come now—the occasion which circumstance never fails to beget on
tacit falsity; and his ingenuity was ready. For he had convinced
himself that he was not bound to go in search of Baldassarre. He had
once said that on a fair assurance of his father’s existence and
whereabout, he would unhesitatingly go after him. But, after all, _why_
was he bound to go? What, looked at closely, was the end of all life,
but to extract the utmost sum of pleasure? And was not his own blooming
life a promise of incomparably more pleasure, not for himself only, but
for others, than the withered wintry life of a man who was past the
time of keen enjoyment, and whose ideas had stiffened into barren
rigidity? Those ideas had all been sown in the fresh soil of Tito’s
mind, and were lively germs there: that was the proper order of
things—the order of nature, which treats all maturity as a mere nidus
for youth. Baldassarre had done his work, had had his draught of life:
Tito said it was _his_ turn now.
And the prospect was so vague:—“I think they are going to take me to
Antioch:” here was a vista! After a long voyage, to spend months,
perhaps years, in a search for which even now there was no guarantee
that it would not prove vain: and to leave behind at starting a life of
distinction and love: and to find, if he found anything, the old
exacting companionship which was known by rote beforehand. Certainly
the gems and therefore the florins were, in a sense, Baldassarre’s: in
the narrow sense by which the right of possession is determined in
ordinary affairs; but in that large and more radically natural view by
which the world belongs to youth and strength, they were rather his who
could extract the most pleasure out of them. That, he was conscious,
was not the sentiment which the complicated play of human feelings had
engendered in society. The men around him would expect that he should
immediately apply those florins to his benefactor’s rescue. But what
was the sentiment of society?—a mere tangle of anomalous traditions and
opinions, which no wise man would take as a guide, except so far as his
own comfort was concerned. Not that he cared for the florins save
perhaps for Romola’s sake: he would give up the florins readily enough.
It was the joy that was due to him and was close to his lips, which he
felt he was not bound to thrust away from him and so travel on,
thirsting. Any maxims that required a man to fling away the good that
was needed to make existence sweet, were only the lining of human
selfishness turned outward: they were made by men who wanted others to
sacrifice themselves for their sake. He would rather that Baldassarre
should not suffer: he liked no one to suffer; but could any philosophy
prove to him that he was bound to care for another’s suffering more
than for his own? To do so he must have loved Baldassarre devotedly,
and he did _not_ love him: was that his own fault? Gratitude! seen
closely, it made no valid claim: his father’s life would have been
dreary without him: are we convicted of a debt to men for the pleasures
they give themselves?
Having once begun to explain away Baldassarre’s claim, Tito’s thought
showed itself as active as a virulent acid, eating its rapid way
through all the tissues of sentiment. His mind was destitute of that
dread which has been erroneously decried as if it were nothing higher
than a man’s animal care for his own skin: that awe of the Divine
Nemesis which was felt by religious pagans, and, though it took a more
positive form under Christianity, is still felt by the mass of mankind
simply as a vague fear at anything which is called wrong-doing. Such
terror of the unseen is so far above mere sensual cowardice that it
will annihilate that cowardice: it is the initial recognition of a
moral law restraining desire, and checks the hard bold scrutiny of
imperfect thought into obligations which can never be proved to have
any sanctity in the absence of feeling. “It is good,” sing the old
Eumenides, in Aeschylus, “that fear should sit as the guardian of the
soul, forcing it into wisdom—good that men should carry a threatening
shadow in their hearts under the full sunshine; else, how should they
learn to revere the right?” That guardianship may become needless; but
only when all outward law has become needless—only when duty and love
have united in one stream and made a common force.
As Tito entered the outer cloister of San Marco, and inquired for Fra
Luca, there was no shadowy presentiment in his mind: he felt himself
too cultured and sceptical for that: he had been nurtured in contempt
for the tales of priests whose impudent lives were a proverb, and in
erudite familiarity with disputes concerning the Chief Good, which had
after all, he considered, left it a matter of taste. Yet fear was a
strong element in Tito’s nature—the fear of what he believed or saw was
likely to rob him of pleasure: and he had a definite fear that Fra Luca
might be the means of driving him from Florence.
“Fra Luca? ah, he is gone to Fiesole—to the Dominican monastery there.
He was taken on a litter in the cool of the morning. The poor Brother
is very ill. Could you leave a message for him?”
This answer was given by a _fra converso_, or lay brother, whose accent
told plainly that he was a raw contadino, and whose dull glance implied
no curiosity.
“Thanks; my business can wait.”
Tito turned away with a sense of relief. “This friar is not likely to
live,” he said to himself. “I saw he was worn to a shadow. And at
Fiesole there will be nothing to recall me to his mind. Besides, if he
should come back, my explanation will serve as well then as now. But I
wish I knew what it was that his face recalled to me.”