The Prize is nearly Grasped.
Tito walked along with a light step, for the immediate fear had
vanished; the usual joyousness of his disposition reassumed its
predominance, and he was going to see Romola. Yet Romola’s life seemed
an image of that loving, pitying devotedness, that patient endurance of
irksome tasks, from which he had shrunk and excused himself. But he was
not out of love with goodness, or prepared to plunge into vice: he was
in his fresh youth, with soft pulses for all charm and loveliness; he
had still a healthy appetite for ordinary human joys, and the poison
could only work by degrees. He had sold himself to evil, but at present
life seemed so nearly the same to him that he was not conscious of the
bond. He meant all things to go on as they had done before, both within
and without him: he meant to win golden opinions by meritorious
exertion, by ingenious learning, by amiable compliance: he was not
going to do anything that would throw him out of harmony with the
beings he cared for. And he cared supremely for Romola; he wished to
have her for his beautiful and loving wife. There might be a wealthier
alliance within the ultimate reach of successful accomplishments like
his, but there was no woman in all Florence like Romola. When she was
near him, and looked at him with her sincere hazel eyes, he was subdued
by a delicious influence as strong and inevitable as those musical
vibrations which take possession of us with a rhythmic empire that no
sooner ceases than we desire it to begin again.
As he trod the stone stairs, when he was still outside the door, with
no one but Maso near him, the influence seemed to have begun its work
by the mere nearness of anticipation.
“Welcome, Tito mio,” said the old man’s voice, before Tito had spoken.
There was a new vigour in the voice, a new cheerfulness in the blind
face, since that first interview more than two months ago. “You have
brought fresh manuscript, doubtless; but since we were talking last
night I have had new ideas: we must take a wider scope—we must go back
upon our footsteps.”
Tito, paying his homage to Romola as he advanced, went, as his custom
was, straight to Bardo’s chair, and put his hand in the palm that was
held to receive it, placing himself on the cross-legged leather seat
with scrolled ends, close to Bardo’s elbow.
“Yes,” he said, in his gentle way; “I have brought the new manuscript,
but that can wait your pleasure. I have young limbs, you know, and can
walk back up the hill without any difficulty.”
He did not look at Romola as he said this, but he knew quite well that
her eyes were fixed on him with delight.
“That is well said, my son.” Bardo had already addressed Tito in this
way once or twice of late. “And I perceive with gladness that you do
not shrink from labour, without which, the poet has wisely said, life
has given nothing to mortals. It is too often the ‘palma sine pulvere,’
the prize of glory without the dust of the race, that attracts young
ambition. But what says the Greek? ‘In the morning of life, work; in
the mid-day, give counsel; in the evening, pray.’ It is true, I might
be thought to have reached that helpless evening; but not so, while I
have counsel within me which is yet unspoken. For my mind, as I have
often said, was shut up as by a dam; the plenteous waters lay dark and
motionless; but you, my Tito, have opened a duct for them, and they
rush forward with a force that surprises myself. And now, what I want
is, that we should go over our preliminary ground again, with a wider
scheme of comment and illustration: otherwise I may lose opportunities
which I now see retrospectively, and which may never occur again. You
mark what I am saying, Tito?”
He had just stooped to reach his manuscript, which had rolled down, and
Bardo’s jealous ear was alive to the slight movement.
Tito might have been excused for shrugging his shoulders at the
prospect before him, but he was not naturally impatient; moreover, he
had been bred up in that laborious erudition, at once minute and
copious, which was the chief intellectual task of the age; and with
Romola near, he was floated along by waves of agreeable sensation that
made everything seem easy.
“Assuredly,” he said; “you wish to enlarge your comments on certain
passages we have cited.”
“Not only so; I wish to introduce an occasional _excursus_, where we
have noticed an author to whom I have given special study; for I may
die too soon to achieve any separate work. And this is not a time for
scholarly integrity and well-sifted learning to lie idle, when it is
not only rash ignorance that we have to fear, but when there are men
like Calderino, who, as Poliziano has well shown, have recourse to
impudent falsities of citation to serve the ends of their vanity and
secure a triumph to their own mistakes. Wherefore, my Tito, I think it
not well that we should let slip the occasion that lies under our
hands. And now we will turn back to the point where we have cited the
passage from Thucydides, and I wish you, by way of preliminary, to go
with me through all my notes on the Latin translation made by Lorenzo
Valla, for which the incomparable Pope Nicholas the Fifth—with whose
personal notice I was honoured while I was yet young, and when he was
still Thomas of Sarzana—paid him (I say not unduly) the sum of five
hundred gold scudi. But inasmuch as Valla, though otherwise of dubious
fame, is held in high honour for his severe scholarship, whence the
epigrammatist has jocosely said of him that since he went among the
shades, Pluto himself has not dared to speak in the ancient languages,
it is the more needful that his name should not be as a stamp
warranting false wares; and therefore I would introduce an _excursus_
on Thucydides, wherein my castigations of Valla’s text may find a
fitting place. My Romola, thou wilt reach the needful volumes—thou
knowest them—on the fifth shelf of the cabinet.”
Tito rose at the same moment with Romola, saying, “I will reach them,
if you will point them out,” and followed her hastily into the
adjoining small room, where the walls were also covered with ranges of
books in perfect order.
“There they are,” said Romola, pointing upward; “every book is just
where it was when my father ceased to see them.”
Tito stood by her without hastening to reach the books. They had never
been in this room together before.
“I hope,” she continued, turning her eyes full on Tito, with a look of
grave confidence—“I hope he will not weary you; this work makes him so
happy.”
“And me too, Romola—if you will only let me say, I love you—if you will
only think me worth loving a little.”
His speech was the softest murmur, and the dark beautiful face, nearer
to hers than it had ever been before, was looking at her with
beseeching tenderness.
“I do love you,” murmured Romola; she looked at him with the same
simple majesty as ever, but her voice had never in her life before sunk
to that murmur. It seemed to them both that they were looking at each
other a long while before her lips moved again; yet it was but a moment
till she said, “I know _now_ what it is to be happy.”
The faces just met, and the dark curls mingled for an instant with the
rippling gold. Quick as lightning after that, Tito set his foot on a
projecting ledge of the book-shelves and reached down the needful
volumes. They were both contented to be silent and separate, for that
first blissful experience of mutual consciousness was all the more
exquisite for being unperturbed by immediate sensation.
It had all been as rapid as the irreversible mingling of waters, for
even the eager and jealous Bardo had not become impatient.
“You have the volumes, my Romola?” the old man said, as they came near
him again. “And now you will get your pen ready; for, as Tito marks off
the scholia we determine on extracting, it will be well for you to copy
them without delay—numbering them carefully, mind, to correspond with
the numbers in the text which he will write.”
Romola always had some task which gave her a share in this joint work.
Tito took his stand at the leggio, where he both wrote and read, and
she placed herself at a table just in front of him, where she was ready
to give into her father’s hands anything that he might happen to want,
or relieve him of a volume that he had done with. They had always been
in that position since the work began, yet on this day it seemed new;
it was so different now for them to be opposite each other; so
different for Tito to take a book from her, as she lifted it from her
father’s knee. Yet there was no finesse to secure an additional look or
touch. Each woman creates in her own likeness the love-tokens that are
offered to her; and Romola’s deep calm happiness encompassed Tito like
the rich but quiet evening light which dissipates all unrest.
They had been two hours at their work, and were just desisting because
of the fading light, when the door opened and there entered a figure
strangely incongruous with the current of their thoughts and with the
suggestions of every object around them. It was the figure of a short
stout black-eyed woman, about fifty, wearing a black velvet berretta,
or close cap, embroidered with pearls, under which surprisingly massive
black braids surmounted the little bulging forehead, and fell in rich
plaited curves over the ears, while an equally surprising carmine tint
on the upper region of the fat cheeks contrasted with the surrounding
sallowness. Three rows of pearls and a lower necklace of gold reposed
on the horizontal cushion of her neck; the embroidered border of her
trailing black velvet gown and her embroidered long-drooping sleeves of
rose-coloured damask, were slightly faded, but they conveyed to the
initiated eye the satisfactory assurance that they were the splendid
result of six months’ labour by a skilled workman; and the
rose-coloured petticoat, with its dimmed white fringe and seed-pearl
arabesques, was duly exhibited in order to suggest a similar pleasing
reflection. A handsome coral rosary hung from one side of an
inferential belt, which emerged into certainty with a large clasp of
silver wrought in niello; and, on the other side, where the belt again
became inferential, hung a scarsella, or large purse, of crimson
velvet, stitched with pearls. Her little fat right-hand, which looked
as if it had been made of paste, and had risen out of shape under
partial baking, held a small book of devotions, also splendid with
velvet, pearls, and silver.
The figure was already too familiar to Tito to be startling, for Monna
Brigida was a frequent visitor at Bardo’s, being excepted from the
sentence of banishment passed on feminine triviality, on the ground of
her cousinship to his dead wife and her early care for Romola, who now
looked round at her with an affectionate smile, and rose to draw the
leather seat to a due distance from her father’s chair, that the coming
gush of talk might not be too near his ear.
“_La cugina_?” said Bardo, interrogatively, detecting the short steps
and the sweeping drapery.
“Yes, it is your cousin,” said Monna Brigida, in an alert voice,
raising her fingers smilingly at Tito, and then lifting up her face to
be kissed by Romola. “Always the troublesome cousin breaking in on your
wisdom,” she went on, seating herself and beginning to fan herself with
the white veil hanging over her arm. “Well, well; if I didn’t bring you
some news of the world now and then, I do believe you’d forget there
was anything in life but these mouldy ancients, who want sprinkling
with holy water if all I hear about them is true. Not but what the
world is bad enough nowadays, for the scandals that turn up under one’s
nose at every corner—_I_ don’t want to hear and see such things, but
one can’t go about with one’s head in a bag; and it was only
yesterday—well, well, you needn’t burst out at me, Bardo, I’m not going
to tell anything; if I’m not as wise as the three kings, I know how
many legs go into one boot. But, nevertheless, Florence is a wicked
city—is it not true, Messer Tito? for you go into the world. Not but
what one must sin a little—Messer Domeneddio expects that of us, else
what are the blessed sacraments for? And what I say is, we’ve got to
reverence the saints, and not to set ourselves up as if we could be
like them, else life would be unbearable; as it will be if things go on
after this new fashion. For what do you think? I’ve been at the wedding
to-day—Dianora Acciajoli’s with the young Albizzi that there has been
so much talk of—and everybody wondered at its being to-day instead of
yesterday; but, _cieli_! such a wedding as it was might have been put
off till the next Quaresima for a penance. For there was the bride
looking like a white nun—not so much as a pearl about her—and the
bridegroom as solemn as San Giuseppe. It’s true! And half the people
invited were _Piagnoni_—they call them _Piagnoni_ (funeral mourners:
properly, paid mourners) now, these new saints of Fra Girolamo’s
making. And to think of two families like the Albizzi and the Acciajoli
taking up such notions, when they could afford to wear the best! Well,
well, they invited me—but they could do no other, seeing my husband was
Luca Antonio’s uncle by the mother’s side—and a pretty time I had of it
while we waited under the canopy in front of the house, before they let
us in. I couldn’t stand in my clothes, it seemed, without giving
offence; for there was Monna Berta, who has had worse secrets in her
time than any I could tell of myself, looking askance at me from under
her hood like a _pinzochera_, (a Sister of the Third Order of Saint
Francis: an uncloistered nun) and telling me to read the Frate’s book
about widows, from which she had found great guidance. Holy Madonna! it
seems as if widows had nothing to do now but to buy their coffins, and
think it a thousand years till they get into them, instead of enjoying
themselves a little when they’ve got their hands free for the first
time. And what do you think was the music we had, to make our dinner
lively? A long discourse from Fra Domenico of San Marco, about the
doctrines of their blessed Fra Girolamo—the three doctrines we are all
to get by heart; and he kept marking them off on his fingers till he
made my flesh creep: and the first is, Florence, or the Church—I don’t
know which, for first he said one and then the other—shall be scourged;
but if he means the pestilence, the Signory ought to put a stop to such
preaching, for it’s enough to raise the swelling under one’s arms with
fright: but then, after that, he says Florence is to be regenerated;
but what will be the good of that when we’re all dead of the plague, or
something else? And then, the third thing, and what he said oftenest,
is, that it’s all to be in our days: and he marked that off on his
thumb, till he made me tremble like the very jelly before me. They had
jellies, to be sure, with the arms of the Albizzi and the Acciajoli
raised on them in all colours; they’ve not turned the world quite
upside down yet. But all their talk is, that we are to go back to the
old ways: for up starts Francesco Valori, that I’ve danced with in the
Via Larga when he was a bachelor and as fond of the Medici as anybody,
and he makes a speech about the old times, before the Florentines had
left off crying ‘Popolo’ and begun to cry ‘Palle’—as if that had
anything to do with a wedding!—and how we ought to keep to the rules
the Signory laid down heaven knows when, that we were not to wear this
and that, and not to eat this and that—and how our manners were
corrupted and we read bad books; though he can’t say that of _me_—”
“Stop, cousin!” said Bardo, in his imperious tone, for he had a remark
to make, and only desperate measures could arrest the rattling
lengthiness of Monna Brigida’s discourse. But now she gave a little
start, pursed up her mouth, and looked at him with round eyes.
“Francesco Valori is not altogether wrong,” Bardo went on. “Bernardo,
indeed, rates him not highly, and is rather of opinion that he
christens private grudges by the name of public zeal; though I must
admit that my good Bernardo is too slow of belief in that unalloyed
patriotism which was found in all its lustre amongst the ancients. But
it is true, Tito, that our manners have degenerated somewhat from that
noble frugality which, as has been well seen in the public acts of our
citizens, is the parent of true magnificence. For men, as I hear, will
now spend on the transient show of a Giostra sums which would suffice
to found a library, and confer a lasting possession on mankind. Still,
I conceive, it remains true of us Florentines that we have more of that
magnanimous sobriety which abhors a trivial lavishness that it may be
grandly open-handed on grand occasions, than can be found in any other
city of Italy; for I understand that the Neapolitan and Milanese
courtiers laugh at the scarcity of our plate, and think scorn of our
great families for borrowing from each other that furniture of the
table at their entertainments. But in the vain laughter of folly wisdom
hears half its applause.”
“Laughter, indeed!” burst forth Monna Brigida again, the moment, Bardo
paused. “If anybody wanted to hear laughter at the wedding to-day they
were disappointed, for when young Niccolò Macchiavelli tried to make a
joke, and told stories out of Franco Sacchetti’s book, how it was no
use for the Signoria to make rules for us women, because we were
cleverer than all the painters, and architects, and doctors of logic in
the world, for we could make black look white, and yellow look pink,
and crooked look straight, and, if anything was forbidden, we could
find a new name for it—Holy Virgin! the Piagnoni looked more dismal
than before, and somebody said Sacchetti’s book was wicked. Well, I
don’t read it—they can’t accuse _me_ of reading anything. Save me from
going to a wedding again, if that’s to be the fashion; for all of us
who were not Piagnoni were as comfortable as wet chickens. I was never
caught in a worse trap but once before, and that was when I went to
hear their precious Frate last Quaresima in San Lorenzo. Perhaps I
never told you about it, Messer Tito?—it almost freezes my blood when I
think of it. How he rated us poor women! and the men, too, to tell the
truth, but I didn’t mind that so much. He called us cows, and lumps of
flesh, and wantons, and mischief-makers—and I could just bear that, for
there were plenty others more fleshy and spiteful than I was, though
every now and then his voice shook the very bench under me like a
trumpet; but then he came to the false hair, and, O misericordia! he
made a picture—I see it now—of a young woman lying a pale corpse, and
us light-minded widows—of course he meant me as well as the rest, for I
had my plaits on, for if one is getting old, one doesn’t want to look
as ugly as the Befana,[1]—us widows rushing up to the corpse, like
bare-pated vultures as we were, and cutting off its young dead hair to
deck our old heads with. Oh, the dreams I had after that! And then he
cried, and wrung his hands at us, and I cried too. And to go home, and
to take off my jewels, this very clasp, and everything, and to make
them into a packet, _fù tutt’uno_; and I was within a hair of sending
them to the Good Men of Saint Martin to give to the poor, but, by
heaven’s mercy, I bethought me of going first to my confessor, Fra
Cristoforo, at Santa Croce, and he told me how it was all the work of
the devil, this preaching and prophesying of their Fra Girolamo, and
the Dominicans were trying to turn the world upside down, and I was
never to go and hear him again, else I must do penance for it; for the
great preachers Fra Mariano and Fra Menico had shown how Fra Girolamo
preached lies—and that was true, for I heard them both in the Duomo—and
how the Pope’s dream of San Francesco propping up the Church with his
arms was being fulfilled still, and the Dominicans were beginning to
pull it down. Well and good: I went away _con Dio_, and made myself
easy. I am not going to be frightened by a Frate Predicatore again. And
all I say is, I wish it hadn’t been the Dominicans that poor Dino
joined years ago, for then I should have been glad when I heard them
say he was come back—”
[1] The name given to the grotesque black-faced figures, supposed to
represent the Magi, carried about or placed in the windows on Twelfth
Night: a corruption of Epifania.
“Silenzio!” said Bardo, in a loud agitated voice, while Romola half
started from her chair, clasped her hands, and looked round at Tito, as
if now she might appeal to him. Monna Brigida gave a little scream, and
bit her lip.
“Donna!” said Bardo, again, “hear once more my will. Bring no reports
about that name to this house; and thou, Romola, I forbid thee to ask.
My son is dead.”
Bardo’s whole frame seemed vibrating with passion, and no one dared to
break silence again. Monna Brigida lifted her shoulders and her hands
in mute dismay; then she rose as quietly as possible, gave many
significant nods to Tito and Romola, motioning to them that they were
not to move, and stole out of the room like a culpable fat spaniel who
has barked unseasonably.
Meanwhile, Tito’s quick mind had been combining ideas with
lightning-like rapidity. Bardo’s son was not really dead, then, as he
had supposed: he was a monk; he was “come back:” and Fra Luca—yes! it
was the likeness to Bardo and Romola that had made the face seem
half-known to him. If he were only dead at Fiesole at that moment! This
importunate selfish wish inevitably thrust itself before every other
thought. It was true that Bardo’s rigid will was a sufficient safeguard
against any intercourse between Romola and her brother; but _not_
against the betrayal of what he knew to others, especially when the
subject was suggested by the coupling of Romola’s name with that of the
very Tito Melema whose description he had carried round his neck as an
index. No! nothing but Fra Luca’s death could remove all danger; but
his death was highly probable, and after the momentary shock of the
discovery, Tito let his mind fall back in repose on that confident
hope.
They had sat in silence, and in a deepening twilight for many minutes,
when Romola ventured to say—
“Shall I light the lamp, father, and shall we go on?”
“No, my Romola, we will work no more to-night. Tito, come and sit by me
here.”
Tito moved from the reading-desk, and seated himself on the other side
of Bardo, close to his left elbow.
“Come nearer to me, figliuola mia,” said Bardo again, after a moment’s
pause. And Romola seated herself on a low stool and let her arm rest on
her father’s right knee, that he might lay his hand on her hair, as he
was fond of doing.
“Tito, I never told you that I had once a son,” said Bardo, forgetting
what had fallen from him in the emotion raised by their first
interview. The old man had been deeply shaken, and was forced to pour
out his feelings in spite of pride. “But he left me—he is dead to me. I
have disowned him for ever. He was a ready scholar as you are, but more
fervid and impatient, and yet sometimes rapt and self-absorbed, like a
flame fed by some fitful source; showing a disposition from the very
first to turn away his eyes from the clear lights of reason and
philosophy, and to prostrate himself under the influences of a dim
mysticism which eludes all rules of human duty as it eludes all
argument. And so it ended. We will speak no more of him: he is dead to
me. I wish his face could be blotted from that world of memory in which
the distant seems to grow clearer and the near to fade.”
Bardo paused, but neither Romola nor Tito dared to speak—his voice was
too tremulous, the poise of his feelings too doubtful. But he presently
raised his hand and found Tito’s shoulder to rest it on, while he went
on speaking, with an effort to be calmer.
“But _you_ have come to me, Tito—not quite too late. I will lose no
time in vain regret. When you are working by my side I seem to have
found a son again.”
The old man, preoccupied with the governing interest of his life, was
only thinking of the much-meditated book which had quite thrust into
the background the suggestion, raised by Bernardo del Nero’s warning,
of a possible marriage between Tito and Romola. But Tito could not
allow the moment to pass unused.
“Will you let me be always and altogether your son? Will you let me
take care of Romola—be her husband? I think she will not deny me. She
has said she loves me. I know I am not equal to her in birth—in
anything; but I am no longer a destitute stranger.”
“Is it true, my Romola?” said Bardo, in a lower tone, an evident
vibration passing through him and dissipating the saddened aspect of
his features.
“Yes, father,” said Romola, firmly. “I love Tito—I wish to marry him,
that we may both be your children and never part.”
Tito’s hand met hers in a strong clasp for the first time, while she
was speaking, but their eyes were fixed anxiously on her father.
“Why should it not be?” said Bardo, as if arguing against any
opposition to his assent, rather than assenting. “It would be a
happiness to me; and thou, too, Romola, wouldst be the happier for it.”
He stroked her long hair gently and bent towards her.
“Ah, I have been apt to forget that thou needest some other love than
mine. And thou wilt be a noble wife. Bernardo thinks I shall hardly
find a husband fitting for thee. And he is perhaps right. For thou art
not like the herd of thy sex: thou art such a woman as the immortal
poets had a vision of when they sang the lives of the heroes—tender but
strong, like thy voice, which has been to me instead of the light in
the years of my blindness... And so thou lovest him?”
He sat upright again for a minute, and then said, in the same tone as
before, “Why should it not be? I will think of it; I will talk with
Bernardo.”
Tito felt a disagreeable chill at this answer, for Bernardo del Nero’s
eyes had retained their keen suspicion whenever they looked at him, and
the uneasy remembrance of Fra Luca converted all uncertainty into fear.
“Speak for me, Romola,” he said, pleadingly. “Messer Bernardo is sure
to be against me.”
“No, Tito,” said Romola, “my godfather will not oppose what my father
firmly wills. And it is your will that I should marry Tito—is it not
true, father? Nothing has ever come to me before that I have wished for
strongly: I did not think it possible that I could care so much for
anything that could happen to myself.”
It was a brief and simple plea; but it was the condensed story of
Romola’s self-repressing colourless young life, which had thrown all
its passion into sympathy with aged sorrows, aged ambition, aged pride
and indignation. It had never occurred to Romola that she should not
speak as directly and emphatically of her love for Tito as of any other
subject.
“Romola mia!” said her father fondly, pausing on the words, “it is true
thou hast never urged on me any wishes of thy own. And I have no will
to resist thine; rather, my heart met Tito’s entreaty at its very first
utterance. Nevertheless, I must talk with Bernardo about the measures
needful to be observed. For we must not act in haste, or do anything
unbeseeming my name. I am poor, and held of little account by the
wealthy of our family—nay, I may consider myself a lonely man—but I
must nevertheless remember that generous birth has its obligations. And
I would not be reproached by my fellow-citizens for rash haste in
bestowing my daughter. Bartolommeo Scala gave his Alessandra to the
Greek Marullo, but Marullo’s lineage was well-known, and Scala himself
is of no extraction. I know Bernardo will hold that we must take time:
he will, perhaps, reproach me with want of due forethought. Be patient,
my children: you are very young.”
No more could be said, and Romola’s heart was perfectly satisfied. Not
so Tito’s. If the subtle mixture of good and evil prepares suffering
for human truth and purity, there is also suffering prepared for the
wrong-doer by the same mingled conditions. As Tito kissed Romola on
their parting that evening, the very strength of the thrill that moved
his whole being at the sense that this woman, whose beauty it was
hardly possible to think of as anything but the necessary consequence
of her noble nature, loved him with all the tenderness that spoke in
her clear eyes, brought a strong reaction of regret that he had not
kept himself free from that first deceit which had dragged him into the
danger of being disgraced before her. There was a spring of bitterness
mingling with that fountain of sweets. Would the death of Fra Luca
arrest it? He hoped it would.