“It is well, madonna,” said the second youth. “It is a holy beginning. And when you have taken those vanities from your head, the dew of heavenly grace will descend on it.” The infusion of mischief was getting stronger, and putting his hand to one of the jewelled pins that fastened her braids to the biretta, he drew it out. The heavy black plait fell down over Monna Brigida’s face, and dragged the rest of the headgear forward. It was a new reason for not hesitating: she put up her hands hastily, undid the other fastenings, and flung down into the basket of doom her beloved crimson-velvet biretta, with all its unsurpassed embroidery of seed-pearls, and stood an unrouged woman, with grey hair pushed backward from a face where certain deep lines of age had triumphed over embonpoint.
But the biretta was not allowed to lie in the basket. With impish zeal the youngsters lifted it, and held it up pitilessly, with the false hair dangling.
“See, venerable mother,” said the taller youth, “what ugly lies you have delivered yourself from! And now you look like the blessed Saint Anna, the mother of the Holy Virgin.”
Thoughts of going into a convent forthwith, and never showing herself in the world again, were rushing through Monna Brigida’s mind. There was nothing possible for her but to take care of her soul.
Of course, there were spectators laughing: she had no need to look round to assure herself of that. Well! it would, perhaps, be better to be forced to think more of Paradise. But at the thought that the dear accustomed world was no longer in her choice, there gathered some of those hard tears which just moisten elderly eyes, and she could see but dimly a large rough hand holding a red cross, which was suddenly thrust before her over the shoulders of the boys, while a strong guttural voice said—
“Only four quattrini, madonna, blessing and all! Buy it. You’ll find a comfort in it now your wig’s gone. Deh! what are we sinners doing all our lives? Making soup in a basket, and getting nothing but the scum for our stomachs. Better buy a blessing, madonna! Only four quattrini; the profit is not so much as the smell of a danaro, and it goes to the poor.”
Monna Brigida, in dim-eyed confusion, was proceeding to the further submission of reaching money from her embroidered scarsella, at present hidden by her silk mantle, when the group round her, which she had not yet entertained the idea of escaping, opened before a figure as welcome as an angel loosing prison-bolts.
“Romola, look at me!” said Monna Brigida, in a piteous tone, putting out both her hands.
The white troop was already moving away, with a slight consciousness that its zeal about the headgear had been superabundant enough to afford a dispensation from any further demand for penitential offerings.
“Dear cousin, don’t be distressed,” said Romola, smitten with pity, yet hardly able to help smiling at the sudden apparition of her kinswoman in a genuine, natural guise, strangely contrasted with all memories of her. She took the black drapery from her own head, and threw it over Monna Brigida’s. “There,” she went on soothingly, “no one will remark you now. We will turn down the Via del Palagio and go straight to our house.”
They hastened away, Monna Brigida grasping Romola’s hand tightly, as if to get a stronger assurance of her being actually there.
“Ah, my Romola, my dear child!” said the short fat woman, hurrying with frequent steps to keep pace with the majestic young figure beside her; “what an old scarecrow I am! I must be good—I mean to be good!”
“Yes, yes; buy a cross!” said the guttural voice, while the rough hand was thrust once more before Monna Brigida: for Bratti was not to be abashed by Romola’s presence into renouncing a probable customer, and had quietly followed up their retreat. “Only four quattrini, blessing and all—and if there was any profit, it would all go to the poor.”
Monna Brigida would have been compelled to pause, even if she had been in a less submissive mood. She put up one hand deprecatingly to arrest Romola’s remonstrance, and with the other reached out a grosso, worth many white quattrini, saying, in an entreating tone—
“Take it, good man, and begone.”
“You’re in the right, madonna,” said Bratti, taking the coin quickly, and thrusting the cross into her hand; “I’ll not offer you change, for I might as well rob you of a mass. What! we must all be scorched a little, but you’ll come off the easier; better fall from the window than the roof. A good Easter and a good year to you!”
“Well, Romola,” cried Monna Brigida, pathetically, as Bratti left them, “if I’m to be a Piagnone it’s no matter how I look!”
“Dear cousin,” said Romola, smiling at her affectionately, “you don’t know how much better you look than you ever did before. I see now how good-natured your face is, like yourself. That red and finery seemed to thrust themselves forward and hide expression. Ask our Piero or any other painter if he would not rather paint your portrait now than before. I think all lines of the human face have something either touching or grand, unless they seem to come from low passions. How fine old men are, like my godfather! Why should not old women look grand and simple?”
“Yes, when one gets to be sixty, my Romola,” said Brigida, relapsing a little; “but I’m only fifty-five, and Monna Berta, and everybody—but it’s no use: I will be good, like you. Your mother, if she’d been alive, would have been as old as I am; we were cousins together. One must either die or get old. But it doesn’t matter about being old, if one’s a Piagnone.”
LII
A Prophetess
The incidents of that Carnival
