Part 13 (1/2)
”No, t.i.to,” said Romola, ”my G.o.dfather will not oppose what my father firmly wills. And it is your will that I should marry t.i.to--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 pa.s.sion 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 t.i.to 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 t.i.to'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 t.i.to'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 t.i.to 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 n.o.ble 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.
Note 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.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN.
THE SHADOW OF NEMESIS.
It was the lazy afternoon time on the seventh of September, more than two months after the day on which Romola and t.i.to had confessed their love to each other.
t.i.to, just descended into Nello's shop, had found the barber stretched on the bench with his cap over his eyes; one leg was drawn up, and the other had slipped towards the ground, having apparently carried with it a ma.n.u.script volume of verse, which lay with its leaves crushed. In a corner sat Sandro, playing a game at _mora_ by himself, and watching the slow reply of his left fingers to the arithmetical demands of his right with solemn-eyed interest.
Treading with the gentlest step, t.i.to s.n.a.t.c.hed up the lute, and bending over the barber, touched the strings lightly while he sang--
”Quant' e bella giovinezza, Che si fugge tuttavia!
Chi vuol esser lieto sia, Di doman non c'e certezza.”
[Note 1.]
Nello was as easily awaked as a bird. The cap was off his eyes in an instant, and he started up.
”Ah, my Apollino! I am somewhat late with my siesta on this hot day, it seems. That comes of not going to sleep in the natural way, but taking a potion of potent poesy. Hear you, how I am beginning to match my words by the initial letter, like a Trovatore? That is one of my bad symptoms: I am sorely afraid that the good wine of my understanding is going to run off at the spigot of authors.h.i.+p, and I shall be left an empty cask with an odour of dregs, like many another incomparable genius of my acquaintance. What is it, my Orpheus?” here Nello stretched out his arms to their full length, and then brought them round till his hands grasped t.i.to's curls, and drew them out playfully. ”What is it you want of your well-tamed Nello? For I perceive a coaxing sound in that soft strain of yours. Let me see the very needle's eye of your desire, as the sublime poet says, that I may thread it.”
”That is but a tailor's image of your sublime poet's,” said t.i.to, still letting his fingers fall in a light dropping way on the strings. ”But you have divined the reason of my affectionate impatience to see your eyes open. I want, you to give me an extra touch of your art--not on my chin, no; but on the zazzera, which is as tangled as your Florentine politics. You have an adroit way of inserting your comb, which flatters the skin, and stirs the animal spirits agreeably in that region; and a little of your most delicate orange-scent would not lie amiss, for I am bound to the Scala palace, and am to present myself in radiant company.
The young cardinal Giovanni de' Medici is to be there, and he brings with him a certain young Bernardo Dovizi of Bibbiena, whose wit is so rapid that I see no way of out-rivalling it save by the scent of orange-blossoms.”
Nello had already seized and flourished his comb, and pushed t.i.to gently backward into the chair, wrapping the cloth round him.
”Never talk of rivalry, bel giovane mio: Bernardo Dovizi is a keen youngster, who will never carry a net out to catch the wind; but he has something of the same sharp-muzzled look as his brother Ser Piero, the weasel that Piero de' Medici keeps at his beck to slip through small holes for him. No! you distance all rivals, and may soon touch the sky with your forefinger. They tell me you have even carried enough honey with you to sweeten the sour Messer Angelo; for he has p.r.o.nounced you less of an a.s.s than might have been expected, considering there is such a good understanding between you and the Secretary.”
”And between ourselves, Nello mio, that Messer Angelo has more genius and erudition than I can find in all the other Florentine scholars put together. It may answer very well for them to cry me up now, when Poliziano is beaten down with grief, or illness, or something else; I can try a flight with such a sparrow-hawk as Pietro Crinito, but for Poliziano, he is a large-beaked eagle who would swallow me, feathers and all, and not feel any difference.”
”I will not contradict your modesty there, if you will have it so; but you don't expect us clever Florentines to keep saying the same things over again every day of our lives, as we must do if we always told the truth. We cry down Dante, and we cry up Francesco Cei, just for the sake of variety; and if we cry you up as a new Poliziano, heaven has taken care that it shall not be quite so great a lie as it might have been. And are you not a pattern of virtue in this wicked city? with your ears double-waxed against all siren invitations that would lure you from the Via de' Bardi, and the great work which is to astonish posterity?”
”Posterity in good truth, whom it will probably astonish as the universe does, by the impossibility of seeing what was the plan of it.”
”Yes, something like that was being prophesied here the other day.
Cristoforo Landino said that the excellent Bardo was one of those scholars who lie overthrown in their learning, like cavaliers in heavy armour, and then get angry because they are over-ridden--which pithy remark, it seems to me, was not a herb out of his own garden; for of all men, for feeding one with an empty spoon and gagging one with vain expectation by long discourse, Messer Cristoforo is the pearl. Ecco!
you are perfect now.” Here Nello drew away the cloth. ”Impossible to add a grace more! But love is not always to be fed on learning, eh? I shall have to dress the zazzera for the betrothal before long--is it not true?”