CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.
AFTER-THOUGHTS.
"You are easily frightened, though," said Piero, with another scornfullaugh. "My portrait is not as good as the original. But the old fellow_had_ a tiger look: I must go into the Duomo and see him again."
"It is not pleasant to be laid hold of by a madman, if madman he be,"said Lorenzo Tornabuoni, in polite excuse of Tito, "but perhaps he isonly a ruffian. We shall hear. I think we must see if we haveauthority enough to stop this disturbance between our people and yourcountrymen," he added, addressing the Frenchman.
They advanced toward the crowd with their swords drawn, all the quietspectators making an escort for them. Tito went too: it was necessarythat he should know what others knew about Baldassarre, and the firstpalsy of terror was being succeeded by the rapid devices to which mortaldanger will stimulate the timid.
The rabble of men and boys, more inclined to hoot at the soldier andtorment him than to receive or inflict any serious wounds, gave way atthe approach of signori with drawn swords, and the French soldier wasinterrogated. He and his companions had simply brought their prisonersinto the city that they might beg money for their ransom: two of theprisoners were Tuscan soldiers taken in Lunigiana; the other, an elderlyman, was with a party of Genoese, with whom the French foragers had cometo blows near Fivizzano. He might be mad, but he was harmless. Thesoldier knew no more, being unable to understand a word the old mansaid. Tito heard so far, but he was deaf to everything else till he wasspecially addressed. It was Tornabuoni who spoke.
"Will you go back with us, Melema? Or, since Messere is going off toSigna now, will you wisely follow the fashion of the times and go tohear the Frate, who will be like the torrent at its height this morning?It's what we must all do, you know, if we are to save our Mediceanskins. _I_ should go if I had the leisure."
Tito's face had recovered its colour now, and he could make an effort tospeak with gaiety.
"Of course I am among the admirers of the inspired orator," he said,smilingly; "but, unfortunately, I shall be occupied with the Segretariotill the time of the procession."
"_I_ am going into the Duomo to look at that savage old man again," saidPiero.
"Then have the charity to show him to one of the hospitals fortravellers, Piero mio," said Tornabuoni. "The monks may find outwhether he wants putting into a cage."
The party separated, and Tito took his way to the Palazzo Vecchio, wherehe was to find Bartolommeo Scala. It was not a long walk, but, forTito, it was stretched out like the minutes of our morning dreams: theshort spaces of street and piazza held memories, and previsions, andtorturing fears, that might have made the history of months. He felt asif a serpent had begun to coil round his limbs. Baldassarre living, andin Florence, was a living revenge, which would no more rest than awinding serpent would rest until it had crushed its prey. It was not inthe nature of that man to let an injury pass unavenged: his love and hishatred were of that passionate fervour which subjugates all the rest ofthe being, and makes a man sacrifice himself to his passion as if itwere a deity to be worshipped with self-destruction. Baldassarre hadrelaxed his hold, and had disappeared. Tito knew well how to interpretthat: it meant that the vengeance was to be studied that it might besure. If he had not uttered those decisive words--"He is a madman"--ifhe could have summoned up the state of mind, the courage, necessary foravowing his recognition of Baldassarre, would not the risk have beenless? He might have declared himself to have had what he believed to bepositive evidence of Baldassarre's death; and the only persons who couldever have had positive knowledge to contradict him, were Fra Luca, whowas dead, and the crew of the companion galley, who had brought him thenews of the encounter with the pirates. The chances were infiniteagainst Baldassarre's having met again with any one of that crew, andTito thought with bitterness that a timely, well-devised falsehood mighthave saved him from any fatal consequences. But to have told thatfalsehood would have required perfect self-command in the moment of aconvulsive shock: he seemed to have spoken without any preconception:the words had leaped forth like a sudden birth that had been begottenand nourished in the darkness.
Tito was experiencing that inexorable law of human souls, that weprepare ourselves for sudden deeds by the reiterated choice of good orevil which gradually determines character.
There was but one chance for him now; the chance of Baldassarre'sfailure in finding his revenge. And--Tito grasped at a thought moreactively cruel than any he had ever encouraged before: might not his ownunpremeditated words have some truth in them? Enough truth, at least,to bear him out in his denial of any declaration Baldassarre might makeabout him? The old man looked strange and wild; with his eager heartand brain, suffering was likely enough to have produced madness. If itwere so, the vengeance that strove to inflict disgrace might be baffled.
But there was another form of vengeance not to be baffled by ingeniouslying. Baldassarre belonged to a race to whom the thrust of the daggerseems almost as natural an impulse as the outleap of the tiger's talons.Tito shrank with shuddering dread from disgrace; but he had also thatphysical dread which is inseparable from a soft pleasure-loving nature,and which prevents a man from meeting wounds and death as a welcomerelief from disgrace. His thoughts flew at once to some hiddendefensive armour that might save him from a vengeance which no subtletycould parry.
He wondered at the power of the passionate fear that possessed him. Itwas as if he had been smitten with a blighting disease that had suddenlyturned the joyous sense of young life into pain.
There was still one resource open to Tito. He might have turned back,sought Baldassarre again, confessed everything to him--to Romola--to allthe world. But he never thought of that. The repentance which cuts offall moorings to evil, demands something more than selfish fear. He hadno sense that there was strength and safety in truth; the only strengthhe trusted to lay in his ingenuity and his dissimulation. Now that thefirst shock, which had called up the traitorous signs of fear, was wellpast, he hoped to be prepared for all emergencies by cool deceit--anddefensive armour.
It was a characteristic fact in Tito's experience at this crisis, thatno direct measures for ridding himself of Baldassarre ever occurred tohim. All other possibilities passed through his mind, even to his ownflight from Florence; but he never thought of any scheme for removinghis enemy. His dread generated no active malignity, and he would stillhave been glad not to give pain to any mortal. He had simply chosen tomake life easy to himself--to carry his human lot, if possible, in sucha way that it should pinch him nowhere; and the choice had, at varioustimes, landed him in unexpected positions. The question now was, notwhether he should divide the common pressure of destiny with hissuffering fellow-men; it was whether all the resources of lying wouldsave him from being crushed by the consequences of that habitual choice.