Part 34 (1/2)

He paused again. He had used the clearest and strongest words he could think of. It was useless to say more, until he had some sign that Balda.s.sarre understood him. Perhaps his mind was too distempered or too imbecile even for that: perhaps the shock of his fall and his disappointed rage might have quite suspended the use of his faculties.

Presently Balda.s.sarre began to move. He threw away the broken dagger, and slowly and gradually, still trembling, began to raise himself from the ground. t.i.to put out his hand to help him, and so strangely quick are men's souls that in this moment, when he began to feel his atonement was accepted, he had a darting thought of the irksome efforts it entailed. Balda.s.sarre clutched the hand that was held out, raised himself and clutched it still, going close up to t.i.to till their faces were not a foot off each other. Then he began to speak, in a deep trembling voice--

”I saved you--I nurtured you--I loved you. You forsook me--you robbed me--you denied me. What can you give me? You have made the world bitterness to me; but there is one draught of sweetness left--_that you shall know agony_.”

He let fall t.i.to's hand, and going backwards a little, first rested his arm on a projecting stone in the wall, and then sank again in a sitting posture on the straw. The outleap of fury in the dagger-thrust had evidently exhausted him.

t.i.to stood silent. If it had been a deep yearning-emotion which had brought him to ask his father's forgiveness, the denial of it might have caused him a pang which would have excluded the rus.h.i.+ng train of thought that followed those decisive words. As it was, though the sentence of unchangeable hatred grated on him and jarred him terribly, his mind glanced round with a self-preserving instinct to see how far those words could have the force of a substantial threat. When he had come down to speak to Balda.s.sarre, he had said to himself that if his effort at reconciliation failed, things would only be as they had been before.

The first glance of his mind was backward to that thought again, but the future possibilities of danger that were conjured up along with it brought the perception that things were _not_ as they had been before, and the perception came as a triumphant relief. There was not only the broken dagger, there was the certainty, from what Tessa had told him, that Balda.s.sarre's mind was broken too, and had no edge that could reach him. t.i.to felt he had no choice now: he must defy Balda.s.sarre as a mad, imbecile old man; and the chances were so strongly on his side that there was hardly room for fear. No; except the fear of having to do many unpleasant things in order to save himself from what was yet more unpleasant. And one of those unpleasant things must be done immediately: it was very difficult.

”Do you mean to stay here?” he said.

”No,” said Balda.s.sarre, bitterly, ”you mean to turn me out.”

”Not so,” said t.i.to; ”I only ask.”

”I tell you, you have turned me out. If it is your straw, you turned me off it three years ago.”

”Then you mean to leave this place?” said t.i.to, more anxious about this certainty than the ground of it.

”I have spoken,” said Balda.s.sarre.

t.i.to turned and re-entered the house. Monna Lisa was nodding; he went up to Tessa, and found her crying by the side of her baby.

”Tessa,” he said, sitting down and taking her head between his hands; ”leave off crying, little goose, and listen to me.”

He lifted her chin upward, that she might look at him, while he spoke very distinctly and emphatically.

”You must never speak to that old man again. He is a mad old man, and he wants to kill me. Never speak to him or listen to him again.”

Tessa's tears had ceased, and her lips were pale with fright.

”Is he gone away?” she whispered.

”He will go away. Remember what I have said to you.”

”Yes; I will never speak to a stranger any more,” said Tessa, with a sense of guilt.

He told her, to comfort her, that he would come again to-morrow; and then went down to Monna Lisa to rebuke her severely for letting a dangerous man come about the house.

t.i.to felt that these were odious tasks; they were very evil-tasted morsels, but they were forced upon him. He heard Monna Lisa fasten the door behind him, and turned away, without looking towards the open door of the hovel. He felt secure that Balda.s.sarre would go, and he could not wait to see him go. Even _his_ young frame and elastic spirit were shattered by the agitations that had been crowded into this single evening.

Balda.s.sarre was still sitting on the straw when the shadow of t.i.to pa.s.sed by. Before him lay the fragments of the broken dagger; beside him lay the open book, over which he had pored in vain. They looked like mocking symbols of his utter helplessness; and his body was still too trembling for him to rise and walk away.

But the next morning, very early, when Tessa peeped anxiously through the hole in her shutter, the door of the hovel was open, and the strange old man was gone.

CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE.

WHAT FLORENCE WAS THINKING OF.