Part 40 (2/2)

”Let me try to give him some wine,” said Romola, coming forward. She loosened the small flask which she carried at her belt, and, leaning towards the prostrate body, with a deft hand she applied a small ivory implement between the teeth, and poured into the mouth a few drops of wine. The stimulus acted: the wine was evidently swallowed. She poured more, till the head was moved a little towards her, and the eyes of the old man opened full upon her with the vague look of returning consciousness.

Then for the first time a sense of complete recognition came over Romola. Those wild dark eyes opening in the sallow deep-lined face, with the white beard, which was now long again, were like an unmistakable signature to a remembered handwriting. The light of two summers had not made that image any fainter in Romola's memory: the image of the escaped prisoner, whom she had seen in the Duomo the day when t.i.to first wore the armour--at whose grasp t.i.to was paled with terror in the strange sketch she had seen in Piero's studio. A wretched tremor and palpitation seized her. Now at last, perhaps, she was going to know some secret which might be more bitter than all that had gone before. She felt an impulse to dart away as from a sight of horror; and again, a more imperious need to keep close by the side of this old man whom, the divination of keen feeling told her, her husband had injured.

In the very instant of this conflict she still leaned towards him and kept her right-hand ready to administer more wine, while her left was pa.s.sed under his neck. Her hands trembled, but their habit of soothing helpfulness would have served to guide them without the direction of her thought.

Balda.s.sarre was looking at _her_ for the first time. The close seclusion in which Romola's trouble had kept her in the weeks preceding her flight and his arrest, had denied him the opportunity he had sought of seeing the Wife who lived in the Via de' Bardi: and at this moment the descriptions he had heard of the fair golden-haired woman were all gone, like yesterday's waves.

”Will it not be well to carry him to the steps of San Stefano?” said Romola. ”We shall cease then to stop up the street, and you can go on your way with your bier.”

They had only to move onward for about thirty yards before reaching the steps of San Stefano, and by this time Balda.s.sarre was able himself to make some efforts towards getting off the bier, and propping himself on the steps against the church-doorway. The charitable brethren pa.s.sed on, but the group of interested spectators, who had nothing to do and much to say, had considerably increased. The feeling towards the old man was not so entirely friendly now it was quite certain that he was alive, but the respect inspired by Romola's presence caused the pa.s.sing remarks to be made in a rather more subdued tone than before.

”Ah, they gave him his morsel every day in the Stinche--that's why he can't do so well without it. You and I, Cecco, know better what it is to go to bed fasting.”

”_Gnaffe_! that's why the Magnificent Eight have turned out some of the prisoners, that they may shelter honest people instead. But if every thief is to be brought to life with good wine and wheaten bread, we Ciompi had better go and fill ourselves in Arno while the water's plenty.”

Romola had seated herself on the steps by Balda.s.sarre, and was saying, ”Can you eat a little bread now? perhaps by-and-by you will be able, if I leave it with you. I must go on, because I have promised to be at the hospital. But I will come back if you will wait here, and then I will take you to some shelter. Do you understand? Will you wait? I will come back.”

He looked dreamily at her, and repeated her words, ”come back.” It was no wonder that his mind was enfeebled by his bodily exhaustion, but she hoped that he apprehended her meaning. She opened her basket, which was filled with pieces of soft bread, and put one of the pieces into his hand.

”Do you keep your bread for those that can't swallow, madonna?” said a rough-looking fellow, in a red night-cap, who had elbowed his way into the inmost circle of spectators--a circle that was pressing rather closely on Romola.

”If anybody isn't hungry,” said another, ”I say, let him alone. He's better off than people who've got craving stomachs and no breakfast.”

”Yes, indeed; if a man's a mind to die, it's a time to encourage him, instead of making him come back to life against his will. Dead men want no trencher.”

”Oh, you don't understand the Frate's charity,” said a young man in an excellent cloth tunic, whose face showed no signs of want. ”The Frate has been preaching to the birds, like Saint Anthony, and he's been telling the hawks they were made to feed the sparrows, as every good Florentine citizen was made to feed six starving beggar-men from Arezzo or Bologna. Madonna, there, is a pious Piagnone: she's not going to throw away her good bread on honest citizens who've got all the Frate's prophecies to swallow.”

”Come, madonna,” said he of the red cap, ”the old thief doesn't eat the bread, you see: you'd better try _us_. We fast so much, we're half saints already.”

The circle had narrowed till the coa.r.s.e men--most of them gaunt from privation--had left hardly any margin round Romola. She had been taking from her basket a small horn-cup, into which she put the piece of bread and just moistened it with wine; and hitherto she had not appeared to heed them. But now she rose to her feet, and looked round at them.

Instinctively the men who were nearest to her pushed backward a little, as if their rude nearness were the fault of those behind. Romola held out the basket of bread to the man in the night-cap, looking at him without any reproach in her glance, as she said--

”Hunger is hard to bear, I know, and you have the power to take this bread if you will. It was saved for sick women and children. You are strong men; but if you do not choose to suffer because you are strong, you have the power to take everything from the weak. You can take the bread from this basket; but I shall watch by this old man; I shall resist your taking the bread from _him_.”

For a few moments there was perfect silence, while Romola looked at the faces before her, and held out the basket of bread. Her own pale face had the slightly pinched look and the deepening of the eye-socket which indicate unusual fasting in the habitually temperate, and the large direct gaze of her hazel eyes was all the more impressive.

The man in the night-cap looked rather silly, and backed, thrusting his elbow into his neighbour's ribs with an air of moral rebuke. The backing was general, every one wis.h.i.+ng to imply that he had been pushed forward against his will; and the young man in the fine cloth tunic had disappeared.

But at this moment the armed servitors of the Signoria, who had begun to patrol the line of streets through which the procession was to pa.s.s, came up to disperse the group which was obstructing the narrow street.

The man addressed as Cecco retreated from a threatening mace up the church-steps, and said to Romola, in a respectful tone--

”Madonna, if you want to go on your errands, I'll take care of the old man.”

Cecco was a wild-looking figure: a very ragged tunic, made s.h.a.ggy and variegated by cloth-dust and clinging fragments of wool, gave relief to a pair of bare bony arms and a long sinewy neck; his square jaw shaded by a bristly black beard, his bridgeless nose and low forehead, made his face look as if it had been crushed down for purposes of packing, and a narrow piece of red rag tied over his ears seemed to a.s.sist in the compression. Romola looked at him with some hesitation.

”Don't distrust me, madonna,” said Cecco, who understood her look perfectly; ”I am not so pretty as you, but I've got an old mother who eats my porridge for me. What! there's a heart inside me, and I've bought a candle for the most Holy Virgin before now. Besides, see there, the old fellow is eating his sop. He's hale enough: he'll be on his legs as well as the best of us by-and-by.”

<script>