Romola Page 12

  CHAPTER ELEVEN.

  TITO'S DILEMMA.

  When Fra Luca had ceased to speak, Tito still stood by him inirresolution, and it was not till, the pressure of the passengers beingremoved, the friar rose and walked slowly into the church of SantaFelicita, that Tito also went on his way along the Via de' Bardi.

  "If this monk is a Florentine," he said to himself; "if he is going toremain at Florence, everything must be disclosed." He felt that a newcrisis had come, but he was not, for all that, too evidently agitated topay his visit to Bardo, and apologise for his previous non-appearance.Tito's talent for concealment was being fast developed into somethingless neutral. It was still possible--perhaps it might be inevitable--for him to accept frankly the altered conditions, and avow Baldassarre'sexistence; but hardly without casting an unpleasant light backward onhis original reticence as studied equivocation in order to avoid thefulfilment of a secretly recognised claim, to say nothing of his quietsettlement of himself and investment of his florins, when, it would beclear, his benefactor's fate had not been certified. It was at leastprovisionally wise to act as if nothing had happened, and for thepresent he would suspend decisive thought; there was all the night formeditation, and no one would know the precise moment at which he hadreceived the letter.

  So he entered the room on the second storey--where Romola and her fathersat among the parchment and the marble, aloof from the life of thestreets on holidays as well as on common days--with a face only a littleless bright than usual, from regret at appearing so late: a regret whichwanted no testimony, since he had given up the sight of the Corso inorder to express it; and then set himself to throw extra animation intothe evening, though all the while his consciousness was at work like amachine with complex action, leaving deposits quite distinct from theline of talk; and by the time he descended the stone stairs and issuedfrom the grim door in the starlight, his mind had really reached a newstage in its formation of a purpose.

  And when, the next day, after he was free from his professorial work, heturned up the Via del Cocomero towards the convent of San Marco, hispurpose was fully shaped. He was going to ascertain from Fra Lucaprecisely how much he conjectured of the truth, and on what grounds heconjectured it; and, further, how long he was to remain at San Marco.And on that fuller knowledge he hoped to mould a statement which wouldin any case save him from the necessity of quitting Florence. Tito hadnever had occasion to fabricate an ingenious lie before: the occasionwas come now--the occasion which circumstance never fails to beget ontacit falsity; and his ingenuity was ready. For he had convincedhimself that he was not bound to go in search of Baldassarre. He hadonce said that on a fair assurance of his father's existence andwhereabout, he would unhesitatingly go after him. But, after all, _why_was he bound to go? What, looked at closely, was the end of all life,but to extract the utmost sum of pleasure? And was not his own bloominglife a promise of incomparably more pleasure, not for himself only, butfor others, than the withered wintry life of a man who was past the timeof keen enjoyment, and whose ideas had stiffened into barren rigidity?Those ideas had all been sown in the fresh soil of Tito's mind, and werelively germs there: that was the proper order of things--the order ofnature, which treats all maturity as a mere nidus for youth.Baldassarre had done his work, had had his draught of life: Tito said itwas _his_ turn now.

  And the prospect was so vague:--"I think they are going to take me toAntioch:" here was a vista! After a long voyage, to spend months,perhaps years, in a search for which even now there was no guaranteethat it would not prove vain: and to leave behind at starting a life ofdistinction and love: and to find, if he found anything, the oldexacting companionship which was known by rote beforehand. Certainlythe gems and therefore the florins were, in a sense, Baldassarre's: inthe narrow sense by which the right of possession is determined inordinary affairs; but in that large and more radically natural view bywhich the world belongs to youth and strength, they were rather his whocould extract the most pleasure out of them. That, he was conscious,was not the sentiment which the complicated play of human feelings hadengendered in society. The men around him would expect that he shouldimmediately apply those florins to his benefactor's rescue. But whatwas the sentiment of society?--a mere tangle of anomalous traditions andopinions, which no wise man would take as a guide, except so far as hisown comfort was concerned. Not that he cared for the florins saveperhaps for Romola's sake: he would give up the florins readily enough.It was the joy that was due to him and was close to his lips, which hefelt he was not bound to thrust away from him and so travel on,thirsting. Any maxims that required a man to fling away the good thatwas needed to make existence sweet, were only the lining of humanselfishness turned outward: they were made by men who wanted others tosacrifice themselves for their sake. He would rather that Baldassarreshould not suffer: he liked no one to suffer; but could any philosophyprove to him that he was bound to care for another's suffering more thanfor his own? To do so he must have loved Baldassarre devotedly, and hedid _not_ love him: was that his own fault? Gratitude! seen closely, itmade no valid claim: his father's life would have been dreary withouthim: are we convicted of a debt to men for the pleasures they givethemselves?

  Having once begun to explain away Baldassarre's claim, Tito's thoughtshowed itself as active as a virulent acid, eating its rapid way throughall the tissues of sentiment. His mind was destitute of that dreadwhich has been erroneously decried as if it were nothing higher than aman's animal care for his own skin: that awe of the Divine Nemesis whichwas felt by religious pagans, and, though it took a more positive formunder Christianity, is still felt by the mass of mankind simply as avague fear at anything which is called wrong-doing. Such terror of theunseen is so far above mere sensual cowardice that it will annihilatethat cowardice: it is the initial recognition of a moral law restrainingdesire, and checks the hard bold scrutiny of imperfect thought intoobligations which can never be proved to have any sanctity in theabsence of feeling. "It is good," sing the old Eumenides, in Aeschylus,"that fear should sit as the guardian of the soul, forcing it intowisdom--good that men should carry a threatening shadow in their heartsunder the full sunshine; else, how should they learn to revere theright?" That guardianship may become needless; but only when alloutward law has become needless--only when duty and love have united inone stream and made a common force.

  As Tito entered the outer cloister of San Marco, and inquired for FraLuca, there was no shadowy presentiment in his mind: he felt himself toocultured and sceptical for that: he had been nurtured in contempt forthe tales of priests whose impudent lives were a proverb, and in eruditefamiliarity with disputes concerning the Chief Good, which had afterall, he considered, left it a matter of taste. Yet fear was a strongelement in Tito's nature--the fear of what he believed or saw was likelyto rob him of pleasure: and he had a definite fear that Fra Luca mightbe the means of driving him from Florence.

  "Fra Luca? ah, he is gone to Fiesole--to the Dominican monastery there.He was taken on a litter in the cool of the morning. The poor Brotheris very ill. Could you leave a message for him?"

  This answer was given by a _fra converso_, or lay brother, whose accenttold plainly that he was a raw contadino, and whose dull glance impliedno curiosity.

  "Thanks; my business can wait."

  Tito turned away with a sense of relief. "This friar is not likely tolive," he said to himself. "I saw he was worn to a shadow. And atFiesole there will be nothing to recall me to his mind. Besides, if heshould come back, my explanation will serve as well then as now. But Iwish I knew what it was that his face recalled to me."