Part 44 (1/2)
”The brute will not be satisfied till he has emptied the bag,” thought t.i.to: but aloud he said,--”Swallowed all as easily as you swallow a cup of Trebbiano. Ha! I see torches: there must be a dead body coming.
The pestilence has been spreading, I hear.”
”Santiddio! I hate the sight of those biers. Good-night,” said Spini, hastily moving off.
The torches were really coming, but they preceded a church dignitary who was returning homeward; the suggestion of the dead body and the pestilence was t.i.to's device for getting rid of Spini without telling him to go. The moment he had moved away, t.i.to turned to Romola, and said, quietly--
”Do not be alarmed by anything that _bestia_ has said, my Romola. We will go on now: I think the rain has not increased.”
She was quivering with indignant resolution; it was of no use for t.i.to to speak in that unconcerned way. She distrusted every word he could utter.
”I will not go on,” she said. ”I will not move nearer home until I have some security against this treachery being perpetrated.”
”Wait, at least, until these torches have pa.s.sed,” said t.i.to, with perfect self-command, but with a new rising of dislike to a wife who this time, he foresaw, might have the power of thwarting him in spite of the husband's predominance.
The torches pa.s.sed, with the Vicario dell' Arcivescovo, and due reverence was done by t.i.to, but Romola saw nothing outward. If for the defeat of this treachery, in which she believed with all the force of long presentiment, it had been necessary at that moment for her to spring on her husband and hurl herself with him down a precipice, she felt as if she could have done it. Union with this man! At that moment the self-quelling discipline of two years seemed to be nullified: she felt nothing but that they were divided.
They were nearly in darkness again, and could only see each other's faces dimly.
”Tell me the truth, t.i.to--this time tell me the truth,” said Romola, in a low quivering voice. ”It will be safer for you.”
”Why should I desire to tell you anything else, my angry saint?” said t.i.to, with a slight touch of contempt, which was the vent of his annoyance; ”since the truth is precisely that over which you have most reason to rejoice--namely, that my knowing a plot of Spini's enables me to secure the Frate from falling a victim to it.”
”What is the plot?”
”That I decline to tell,” said t.i.to. ”It is enough that the Frate's safety will be secured.”
”It is a plot for drawing him outside the gates that Spini may murder him.”
”There has been no intention of murder. It is simply a plot for compelling him to obey the Pope's summons to Rome. But as I serve the popular government, and think the Frate's presence here is a necessary means of maintaining it at present, I choose to prevent his departure.
You may go to sleep with entire ease of mind to-night.”
For a moment Romola was silent. Then she said, in a voice of anguish, ”t.i.to, it is of no use: I have no belief in you.”
She could just discern his action as he shrugged his shoulders, and spread out his palms in silence. That cold dislike which is the anger of unimpa.s.sioned beings was hardening within him.
”If the Frate leaves the city--if any harm happens to him,” said Romola, after a slight pause, in a new tone of indignant resolution,--”I will declare what I have heard to the Signoria, and you will be disgraced.
What if I am your wife?” she went on, impetuously; ”I will be disgraced with you. If we are united, I am that part of you that will save you from crime. Others shall not be betrayed.”
”I am quite aware of what you would be likely to do, _anima mia_,” said t.i.to, in the coolest of his liquid tones; ”therefore if you have a small amount of reasoning at your disposal just now, consider that if you believe me in nothing else, you may believe me when I say I will take care of myself, and not put it in your power to ruin me.”
”Then you a.s.sure me that the Frate is warned--he will not go beyond the gates?”
”He shall not go beyond the gates.”
There was a moment's pause, but distrust was not to be expelled.
”I will go back to San Marco now and find out,” Romola said, making a movement forward.
”You shall not!” said t.i.to, in a bitter whisper, seizing her wrists with all his masculine force. ”I am master of you. You shall not set yourself in opposition to me.”
There were pa.s.sers-by approaching. t.i.to had heard them, and that was why he spoke in a whisper. Romola was too conscious of being mastered to have struggled, even if she had remained unconscious that witnesses were at hand. But she was aware now of footsteps and voices, and her habitual sense of personal dignity made her at once yield to t.i.to's movement towards leading her from the loggia.