Romola

  CHAPTER THIRTY.

  THE AVENGER'S SECRET.

  It was the first time that Baldassarre had been in the Piazza del Duomosince his escape. He had a strong desire to hear the remarkable monkpreach again, but he had shrunk from reappearing in the same spot wherehe had been seen half naked, with neglected hair, with a rope round hisneck--in the same spot where he had been called a madman. The feeling,in its freshness, was too strong to be overcome by any trust he had inthe change he had made in his appearance; for when the words "_somemadman, surely_," had fallen from Tito's lips, it was not their basenessand cruelty only that had made their viper sting--it was Baldassarre'sinstantaneous bitter consciousness that he might be unable to prove thewords false. Along with the passionate desire for vengeance whichpossessed him had arisen the keen sense that his power of achieving thevengeance was doubtful. It was as if Tito had been helped by somediabolical prompter, who had whispered Baldassarre's saddest secret inthe traitor's ear. He was not mad; for he carried within him thatpiteous stamp of sanity, the clear consciousness of shattered faculties;he measured his own feebleness. With the first movement of vindictiverage awoke a vague caution, like that of a wild beast that is fierce butfeeble--or like that of an insect whose little fragment of earth hasgiven way, and made it pause in a palsy of distrust. It was thisdistrust, this determination to take no step which might betray anythingconcerning himself, that had made Baldassarre reject Piero di Cosimo'sfriendly advances.

  He had been equally cautious at the hospital, only telling, in answer tothe questions of the brethren there, that he had been made a prisoner bythe French on his way from Genoa. But his age, and the indications inhis speech and manner that he was of a different class from the ordinarymendicants and poor travellers who were entertained in the hospital, hadinduced the monks to offer him extra charity: a coarse woollen tunic toprotect him from the cold, a pair of peasant's shoes, and a few_danari_, smallest of Florentine coins, to help him on his way. He hadgone on the road to Arezzo early in the morning; but he had paused atthe first little town, and had used a couple of his _danari_ to gethimself shaved, and to have his circle of hair clipped short, in hisformer fashion. The barber there had a little hand-mirror of brightsteel: it was a long while, it was years, since Baldassarre had lookedat himself, and now, as his eyes fell on that hand-mirror, a new thoughtshot through his mind. "Was he so changed that Tito really did not knowhim?" The thought was such a sudden arrest of impetuous currents, thatit was a painful shock to him; his hand shook like a leaf, as he putaway the barber's arm and asked for the mirror. He wished to seehimself before he was shaved. The barber, noticing his tremulousness,held the mirror for him.

  No, he was not so changed as that. He himself had known the wrinkles asthey had been three years ago; they were only deeper now: there was thesame rough, clumsy skin, making little superficial bosses on the brow,like so many cipher-marks; the skin was only yellower, only looked morelike a lifeless rind. That shaggy white beard--it was no disguise toeyes that had looked closely at him for sixteen years--to eyes thatought to have searched for him with the expectation of finding himchanged, as men search for the beloved among the bodies cast up by thewaters. There was something different in his glance, but it was adifference that should only have made the recognition of him the morestartling; for is not a known voice all the more thrilling when it isheard as a cry? But the doubt was folly: he had felt that Tito knewhim. He put out his hand and pushed the mirror away. The strongcurrents were rushing on again, and the energies of hatred and vengeancewere active once more.

  He went back on the way towards Florence again, but he did not wish toenter the city till dusk; so he turned aside from the highroad, and satdown by a little pool shadowed on one side by alder-bushes stillsprinkled with yellow leaves. It was a calm November day, and he nosooner saw the pool than he thought its still surface might be a mirrorfor him. He wanted to contemplate himself slowly, as he had not daredto do in the presence of the barber. He sat down on the edge of thepool, and bent forward to look earnestly at the image of himself.

  Was there something wandering and imbecile in his face--something likewhat he felt in his mind?

  Not now; not when he was examining himself with a look of eager inquiry:on the contrary, there was an intense purpose in his eyes. But at othertimes? Yes, it must be so: in the long hours when he had the vagueaching of an unremembered past within him--when he seemed to sit in darkloneliness, visited by whispers which died out mockingly as he strainedhis ear after them, and by forms that seemed to approach him and floataway as he thrust out his hand to grasp them--in those hours, doubtless,there must be continual frustration and amazement in his glance. Andmore horrible still, when the thick cloud parted for a moment, and, ashe sprang forward with hope, rolled together again, and left himhelpless as before; doubtless, there was then a blank confusion in hisface, as of a man suddenly smitten with blindness.

  Could he prove anything? Could he even begin to allege anything, withthe confidence that the links of thought would not break away? Wouldany believe that he had ever had a mind filled with rare knowledge, busywith close thoughts, ready with various speech? It had all slipped awayfrom him--that laboriously-gathered store. Was it utterly and for evergone from him, like the waters from an urn lost in the wide ocean? Or,was it still within him, imprisoned by some obstruction that might oneday break asunder?

  It might be so; he tried to keep his grasp on that hope. For, since theday when he had first walked feebly from his couch of straw, and hadfelt a new darkness within him under the sunlight, his mind hadundergone changes, partly gradual and persistent, partly sudden andfleeting. As he had recovered his strength of body, he had recoveredhis self-command and the energy of his will; he had recovered the memoryof all that part of his life which was closely enwrought with hisemotions; and he had felt more and more constantly and painfully theuneasy sense of lost knowledge. But more than that--once or twice, whenhe had been strongly excited, he had seemed momentarily to be in entirepossession of his past self, as old men doze for an instant and get backthe consciousness of their youth: he seemed again to see Greek pages andunderstand them, again to feel his mind moving unbenumbed among familiarideas. It had been but a flash, and the darkness closing in againseemed the more horrible; but might not the same thing happen again forlonger periods? If it would only come and stay long enough for him toachieve a revenge--devise an exquisite suffering, such as a mere rightarm could never inflict!

  He raised himself from his stooping attitude, and, folding his arms,attempted to concentrate all his mental force on the plan he mustimmediately pursue. He had to wait for knowledge and opportunity, andwhile he waited he must have the means of living without beggary. Whathe dreaded of all things now was, that any one should think him afoolish, helpless old man. No one must know that half his memory wasgone: the lost strength might come again; and if it were only for alittle while, _that_ might be enough.

  He knew how to begin to get the information he wanted about Tito. Hehad repeated the words "Bratti Ferravecchi" so constantly after they hadbeen uttered to him, that they never slipped from him for long together.A man at Genoa, on whose finger he had seen Tito's ring, had told himthat he bought that ring at Florence, of a young Greek, well-dressed,and with a handsome dark face, in the shop of a _rigattiere_ calledBratti Ferravecchi, in the street also called Ferravecchi. Thisdiscovery had caused a violent agitation in Baldassarre. Until then hehad clung with all the tenacity of his fervent nature to his faith inTito, and had not for a moment believed himself to be wilfully forsaken.At first he had said, "My bit of parchment has never reached him; thatis why I am still toiling at Antioch, But he is searching; he knowswhere I was lost: he will trace me out, and find me at last." Then,when he was taken to Corinth, he induced his owners, by the assurancethat he should be sought out and ransomed, to provide securely againstthe failure of any inquiries that might be made about him at Antioch;and at Corinth he thought joyfully, "Here, a
t last, he must find me.Here he is sure to touch, whichever way he goes." But before anotheryear had passed, the illness had come from which he had risen with bodyand mind so shattered that he was worse than worthless to his owners,except for the sake of the ransom that did not come. Then, as he sathelpless in the morning sunlight, he began to think, "Tito has beendrowned, or they have made _him_ a prisoner too. I shall see him nomore. He set out after me, but misfortune overtook him. I shall seehis face no more." Sitting in his new feebleness and despair,supporting his head between his hands, with blank eyes and lips thatmoved uncertainly, he looked so much like a hopelessly imbecile old man,that his owners were contented to be rid of him, and allowed a Genoesemerchant, who had compassion on him as an Italian, to take him on boardhis galley. In a voyage of many months in the Archipelago and along theseaboard of Asia Minor, Baldassarre had recovered his bodily strength,but on landing at Genoa he had so weary a sense of his desolateness thathe almost wished he had died of that illness at Corinth. There was justone possibility that hindered the wish from being decided: it was thatTito might not be dead, but living in a state of imprisonment ordestitution; and if he lived, there was still a hope for Baldassarre--faint, perhaps, and likely to be long deferred, but still a hope, thathe might find his child, his cherished son again; might yet again clasphands and meet face to face with the one being who remembered him as hehad been before his mind was broken. In this state of feeling he hadchanced to meet the stranger who wore Tito's onyx ring, and thoughBaldassarre would have been unable to describe the ring beforehand, thesight of it stirred the dormant fibres, and he recognised it. That Titonearly a year after his father had been parted from him should have beenliving in apparent prosperity at Florence, selling the gem which heought not to have sold till the last extremity, was a fact thatBaldassarre shrank from trying to account for: he was glad to be stunnedand bewildered by it, rather than to have any distinct thought; he triedto feel nothing but joy that he should behold Tito again. Perhaps Titohad thought that his father was dead; somehow the mystery would beexplained. "But at least I shall meet eyes that will remember me. I amnot alone in the world."

  And now again Baldassarre said, "I am not alone in the world; I shallnever be alone, for my revenge is with me."

  It was as the instrument of that revenge, as something merely externaland subservient to his true life, that he bent down again to examinehimself with hard curiosity--not, he thought, because he had any carefor a withered, forsaken old man, whom nobody loved, whose soul was likea deserted home, where the ashes were cold upon the hearth, and thewalls were bare of all but the marks of what had been. It is in thenature of all human passion, the lowest as well as the highest, thatthere is a point where it ceases to be properly egoistic, and is like afire kindled within our being to which everything else in us is merefuel.

  He looked at the pale black-browed image in the water till he identifiedit with that self from which his revenge seemed to be a thing apart; andhe felt as if the image too heard the silent language of his thought.

  "I was a loving fool--I worshipped a woman once, and believed she couldcare for me; and then I took a helpless child and fostered him; and Iwatched him as he grew, to see if he would care for me only a little--care for _me_ over and above the good he got from me. I would have tornopen my breast to warm him with my life-blood if I could only have seenhim care a little for the pain of my wound. I have laboured, I havestrained to crush out of this hard life one drop of unselfish love.Fool! men love their own delights; there is no delight to be had in me.And yet I watched till I believed I saw what I watched for. When he wasa child he lifted soft eyes towards me, and held my hand willingly: Ithought, this boy will surely love me a little: because I give my lifeto him and strive that he shall know no sorrow, he will care a littlewhen I am thirsty--the drop he lays on my parched lips will be a joy tohim... Curses on him! I wish I may see him lie with those red lipswhite and dry as ashes, and when he looks for pity I wish he may see myface rejoicing in his pain. It is all a lie--this world is a lie--thereis no goodness but in hate. Fool! not one drop of love came with allyour striving: life has not given you one drop. But there are deepdraughts in this world for hatred and revenge. I have memory left forthat, and there is strength in my arm--there is strength in my will--andif I can do nothing but kill him--"

  But Baldassarre's mind rejected the thought of that brief punishment.His whole soul had been thrilled into immediate unreasoning belief inthat eternity of vengeance where he, an undying hate, might clutch forever an undying traitor, and hear that fair smiling hardness cry andmoan with anguish. But the primary need and hope was to see a slowrevenge under the same sky and on the same earth where he himself hadbeen forsaken and had fainted with despair. And as soon as he tried toconcentrate his mind on the means of attaining his end, the sense of hisweakness pressed upon him like a frosty ache. This despised body, whichwas to be the instrument of a sublime vengeance, must be nourished anddecently clad. If he had to wait he must labour, and his labour must beof a humble sort, for he had no skill. He wondered whether the sight ofwritten characters would so stimulate his faculties that he mightventure to try and find work as a copyist: _that_ might win him somecredence for his past scholarship. But no! he dared trust neither handnor brain. He must be content to do the work that was most like that ofa beast of burden: in this mercantile city many porters must be wanted,and he could at least carry weights. Thanks to the justice thatstruggled in this confused world in behalf of vengeance, his limbs hadgot back some of their old sturdiness. He was stripped of all else thatmen would give coin for.

  But the new urgency of this habitual thought brought a new suggestion.There was something hanging by a cord round his bare neck; somethingapparently so paltry that the piety of Turks and Frenchmen had sparedit--a tiny parchment bag blackened with age. It had hung round his neckas a precious charm when he was a boy, and he had kept it carefully onhis breast, not believing that it contained anything but a tiny scrollof parchment rolled up hard. He might long ago have thrown it away as arelic of his dead mother's superstition; but he had thought of it as arelic of her love, and had kept it. It was part of the piety associatedwith such _brevi_, that they should never be opened, and at any previousmoment in his life Baldassarre would have said that no sort of thirstwould prevail upon him to open this little bag for the chance of findingthat it contained, not parchment, but an engraved amulet which would beworth money. But now a thirst had come like that which makes men opentheir own veins to satisfy it, and the thought of the possible amulet nosooner crossed Baldassarre's mind than with nervous fingers he snatchedthe _breve_ from his neck. It all rushed through his mind--the longyears he had worn it, the far-off sunny balcony at Naples lookingtowards the blue waters, where he had leaned against his mother's knee;but it made no moment of hesitation: all piety now was transmuted into ajust revenge. He bit and tore till the doubles of parchment were laidopen, and then--it was a sight that made him pant--there _was_ anamulet. It was very small, but it was as blue as those far-off waters;it was an engraved sapphire, which must be worth some gold ducats.Baldassarre no sooner saw those possible ducats than he saw some of themexchanged for a poniard. He did not want to use the poniard yet, but helonged to possess it. If he could grasp its handle and try its edge,that blank in his mind--that past which fell away continually--would notmake him feel so cruelly helpless: the sharp steel that despised talentsand eluded strength would be at his side, as the unfailing friend offeeble justice. There was a sparkling triumph under Baldassarre's blackeyebrows as he replaced the little sapphire inside the bits of parchmentand wound the string tightly round them.

  It was nearly dusk now, and he rose to walk back towards Florence. Withhis _danari_ to buy him some bread, he felt rich: he could lie out inthe open air, as he found plenty more doing in all corners of Florence.And in the next few days he had sold his sapphire, had added to hisclothing, had bought a bright dagger, and had still a pair of goldflorins left. Bu
t he meant to hoard that treasure carefully: hislodging was an outhouse with a heap of straw in it, in a thinlyinhabited part of Oltrarno, and he thought of looking about for work asa porter.

  He had bought his dagger at Bratti's. Paying his meditated visit thereone evening at dusk, he had found that singular rag-merchant justreturned from one of his rounds, emptying out his basketful of brokenglass and old iron amongst his handsome show of miscellaneoussecond-hand goods. As Baldassarre entered the shop, and looked towardsthe smart pieces of apparel, the musical instruments, and weapons, whichwere displayed in the broadest light of the window, his eye at oncesingled out a dagger hanging up high against a red scarf. By buying thedagger he could not only satisfy a strong desire, he could open hisoriginal errand in a more indirect manner than by speaking of the onyxring. In the course of bargaining for the weapon, he let drop, withcautious carelessness, that he came from Genoa, and had been directed toBratti's shop by an acquaintance in that city who had bought a veryvaluable ring here. Had the respectable trader any more such rings?

  Whereupon Bratti had much to say as to the unlikelihood of such ringsbeing within reach of many people, with much vaunting of his own rareconnections, due to his known wisdom, and honesty. It might be truethat he was a pedlar--he chose to be a pedlar; though he was rich enoughto kick his heels in his shop all day. But those who thought they hadsaid all there was to be said about Bratti when they had called him apedlar, were a good deal further off the truth than the other side ofPisa. How was it that he could put that ring in a stranger's way? Itwas, because he had a very particular knowledge of a handsome youngsignor, who did not look quite so fine a feathered bird when Brattifirst set eyes on him as he did at the present time. And by a questionor two Baldassarre extracted, without any trouble, such a rough andrambling account of Tito's life as the pedlar could give, since the timewhen he had found him sleeping under the Loggia de' Cerchi. It neveroccurred to Bratti that the decent man (who was rather deaf, apparently,asking him to say many things twice over) had any curiosity about Tito;the curiosity was doubtless about himself, as a truly remarkable pedlar.

  And Baldassarre left Bratti's shop, not only with the dagger at hisside, but also with a general knowledge of Tito's conduct and position--of his early sale of the jewels, his immediate quiet settlement ofhimself at Florence, his marriage, and his great prosperity.

  "What story had he told about his previous life--about his father?"

  It would be difficult for Baldassarre to discover the answer to thatquestion. Meanwhile, he wanted to learn all he could about Florence.But he found, to his acute distress, that of the new details he learnedhe could only retain a few, and those only by continual repetition; andhe began to be afraid of listening to any new discourse, lest it shouldobliterate what he was already striving to remember.

  The day he was discerned by Tito in the Piazza del Duomo, he had thefresh anguish of this consciousness in his mind, and Tito's ready speechfell upon him like the mockery of a glib, defying demon.

  As he went home to his heap of straw, and passed by the booksellers'shops in the Via del Garbo, he paused to look at the volumes spreadopen. Could he by long gazing at one of those books lay hold of theslippery threads of memory? Could he, by striving, get a firm graspsomewhere, and lift himself above these waters that flowed over him?

  He was tempted, and bought the cheapest Greek book he could see. Hecarried it home and sat on his heap of straw, looking at the charactersby the light of the small window; but no inward light arose on them.Soon the evening darkness came; but it made little difference toBaldassarre. His strained eyes seemed still to see the white pages withthe unintelligible black marks upon them.