Part 32 (2/2)
”That's right; and I'll bring you some breakfast, and show you the bimbo. Good-night.”
Tessa took up her bowl and lantern, and closed the door behind her. The pretty loving apparition had been no more to Balda.s.sarre than a faint rainbow on the blackness to the man who is wrestling in deep waters. He hardly thought of her again till his dreamy waking pa.s.sed into the more vivid images of disturbed sleep.
But Tessa thought much of him. She had no sooner entered the house than she told Monna Lisa what she had done, and insisted that the stranger should be allowed to come and rest in the outhouse when he liked. The old woman, who had had her notions of making him a useful tenant, made a great show of reluctance, shook her head, and urged that Messer Naldo would be angry if she let any one come about the house. Tessa did not believe that. Naldo had said nothing against strangers who lived nowhere; and this old man knew n.o.body except one person, who was not Nofri.
”Well,” conceded Monna Lisa, at last, ”if I let him stay for a while and carry things up the hill for me, thou must keep thy counsel and tell n.o.body.”
”No,” said Tessa, ”I'll only tell the bimbo.”
”And then,” Monna Lisa went on, in her thick undertone, ”G.o.d may love us well enough not to let Messer Naldo find out anything about it. For he never comes here but at dark; and as he was here two days ago, it's likely he'll never come at all till the old man's gone away again.”
”Oh me! Monna,” said Tessa, clasping her hands, ”I wish Naldo had not to go such a long, long way sometimes before he comes back again.”
”Ah, child! the world's big, they say. There are places behind the mountains, and if people go night and day, night and day, they get to Rome, and see the Holy Father.”
Tessa looked submissive in the presence of this mystery, and began to rock her baby, and sing syllables of vague loving meaning, in tones that imitated a triple chime.
The next morning she was unusually industrious in the prospect of more dialogue, and of the pleasure she should give the poor old stranger by showing him her baby. But before she could get ready to take Balda.s.sarre his breakfast, she found that Monna Lisa had been employing him as a drawer of water. She deferred her paternosters, and hurried down to insist that Balda.s.sarre should sit on his straw, so that she might come and sit by him again while he ate his breakfast. That att.i.tude made the new companions.h.i.+p all the more delightful to Tessa, for she had been used to sitting on straw in old days along with her goats and mules.
”I will not let Monna Lisa give you too much work to do,” she said, bringing him some steaming broth and soft bread. ”I don't like much work, and I daresay you don't. I like sitting in the suns.h.i.+ne and feeding things. Monna Lisa says, work is good, but she does it all herself, so I don't mind. She's not a cross old woman; you needn't be afraid of her being cross. And now, you eat that, and I'll go and fetch my baby and show it you.”
Presently she came back with the small mummy-case in her arms. The mummy looked very lively, having unusually large dark eyes, though no more than the usual indication of a future nose.
”This is my baby,” said Tessa, seating herself close to Balda.s.sarre.
”You didn't think it was so pretty, did you? It is like the little Gesu, and I should think the Santa Madonna would be kinder to me now, is it not true? But I have not much to ask for, because I have everything now--only that I should see my husband oftener. You may hold the bambino a little if you like, but I think you must not kiss him, because you might hurt him.”
She spoke this prohibition in a tone of soothing excuse, and Balda.s.sarre could not refuse to hold the small package. ”Poor thing! poor thing!”
he said, in a deep voice which had something strangely threatening in its apparent pity. It did not seem to him as if this guileless loving little woman could reconcile him to the world at all, but rather that she was with him against the world, that she was a creature who would need to be avenged.
”Oh, don't you be sorry for me,” she said; ”for though I don't see him often, he is more beautiful and good than anybody else in the world. I say prayers to him when he's away. You couldn't think what he is!”
She looked at Balda.s.sarre with a wide glance of mysterious meaning, taking the baby from him again, and almost wis.h.i.+ng he would question her as if he wanted very much to know more.
”Yes, I could,” said Balda.s.sarre, rather bitterly.
”No, I'm sure you never could,” said Tessa, earnestly. ”You thought he might be Nofri,” she added, with a triumphant air of conclusiveness.
”But never mind; you couldn't know. What is your name?”
He rubbed his hand over his knitted brow, then looked at her blankly and said, ”Ah, child, what is it?”
It was not that he did not often remember his name well enough; and if he had had presence of mind now to remember it, he would have chosen not to tell it. But a sudden question appealing to his memory, had a paralysing effect, and in that moment he was conscious of nothing but helplessness.
Ignorant as Tessa was, the pity stirred in her by his blank look taught her to say--
”_Never_ mind: you are a stranger, it is no matter about your having a name. Good-bye now, because I want my breakfast. You will come here and rest when you like; Monna Lisa says you may. And don't you be unhappy, for we'll be good to you.”
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