He satisfied her by giving the small mummy a butterfly kiss, and then putting his hand on her shoulder and turning her face towards him, said, “You like looking at the baby better than looking at your husband, you false one!”
She was still kneeling, and now rested her hands on his knee, looking up at him like one of Fra Lippo Lippi’s round-cheeked adoring angels.
“No,” she said, shaking her head; “I love you always best, only I want you to look at the bambino and love him; I used only to want you to love me.”
“And did you expect me to come again so soon?” said Tito, inclined to make her prattle. He still felt the effects of the agitation he had undergone—still felt like a man who has been violently jarred; and this was the easiest relief from silence and solitude.
“Ah, no,” said Tessa, “I have counted the days—today I began at my right thumb again—since you put on the beautiful chain-coat, that Messer San Michele gave you to take care of you on your journey. And you have got it on now,” she said, peeping through the opening in the breast of his tunic. “Perhaps it made you come back sooner.”
“Perhaps it did, Tessa,” he said. “But don’t mind the coat now. Tell me what has happened since I was here. Did you see the tents in the Prato, and the soldiers and horsemen when they passed the bridges—did you hear the drums and trumpets?”
“Yes, and I was rather frightened, because I thought the soldiers might come up here. And Monna Lisa was a little afraid too, for she said they might carry our kids off; she said it was their business to do mischief. But the Holy Madonna took care of us, for we never saw one of them up here. But something has happened, only I hardly dare tell you, and that is what I was saying more Aves for.”
“What do you mean, Tessa?” said Tito, rather anxiously. “Make haste and tell me.”
“Yes, but will you let me sit on your knee? because then I think I shall not be so frightened.”
He took her on his knee, and put his arm round her, but looked grave: it seemed that something unpleasant must pursue him even here.
“At first I didn’t mean to tell you,” said Tessa, speaking almost in a whisper, as if that would mitigate the offence; “because we thought the old man would be gone away before you came again, and it would be as if it had not been. But now he is there, and you are come, and I never did anything you told me not to do before. And I want to tell you, and then you will perhaps forgive me, for it is a long while before I go to confession.”
“Yes, tell me everything, my Tessa.” He began to hope it was after all a trivial matter.
“Oh, you will be sorry for him: I’m afraid he cries about something when I don’t see him. But that was not the reason I went to him first; it was because I wanted to talk to him and show him my baby, and he was a stranger that lived nowhere, and I thought you wouldn’t care so much about my talking to him. And I think he is not a bad old man, and he wanted to come and sleep on the straw next to the goats, and I made Monna Lisa say, ‘Yes, he might,’ and he’s away all the day almost, but when he comes back I talk to him, and take him something to eat.”
“Some beggar, I suppose. It was naughty of you, Tessa, and I am angry with Monna Lisa. I must have him sent away.”
“No, I think he is not a beggar, for he wanted to pay Monna Lisa, only she asked him to do work for her instead. And he gets himself shaved, and his clothes are tidy: Monna Lisa says he is a decent man. But sometimes I think he is not in his right mind: Lupo, at Peretola, was not in his right mind, and he looks a little like Lupo sometimes, as if he didn’t know where he was.”
“What sort of face has he?” said Tito, his heart beginning to beat strangely. He was so haunted by the thought of Baldassarre, that it was already he whom he saw in imagination sitting on the straw not many yards from him. “Fetch your stool, my Tessa, and sit on it.”
“Shall you not forgive me?” she said, timidly, moving from his knee.
“Yes, I will not be angry—only sit down, and tell me what sort of old man this is.”
“I can’t think how to tell you: he is not like my stepfather Nofri, or anybody. His face is yellow, and he has deep marks in it; and his hair is white, but there is none on the top of his head: and his eyebrows are black, and he looks from under them at me, and says, ‘Poor thing!’ to me, as if he thought I was beaten as I used to be; and that seems as if he couldn’t be in his right mind, doesn’t it? And I asked him his name once, but he couldn’t tell it me: yet everybody has a name—is it not true? And he has a book now, and keeps looking at it ever so long, as if he were a Padre. But I think he is not saying prayers, for his lips never move;—ah, you are angry with me, or is it because you are sorry for the old man?”
Tito’s eyes were still fixed on Tessa; but he had ceased to see her, and was only seeing the
