Meanwhile Vaiano had turned round, raising his hands to his mitre with the intention of changing his dress, when his quick eye recognised Tito and Tessa who were both looking at him, their faces being shone upon by the light of his tapers, while his own was in shadow.
“Ha! my children!” he said, instantly, stretching out his hands in a benedictory attitude, “you are come to be married. I commend your penitence—the blessing of Holy Church can never come too late.”
But whilst he was speaking, he had taken in the whole meaning of Tessa’s attitude and expression, and he discerned an opportunity for a new kind of joke which required him to be cautious and solemn.
“Should you like to be married to me, Tessa?” said Tito, softly, half enjoying the comedy, as he saw the pretty childish seriousness on her face, half prompted by hazy previsions which belonged to the intoxication of despair.
He felt her vibrating before she looked up at him and said, timidly, “Will you let me?”
He answered only by a smile, and by leading her forward in front of the cerretano, who, seeing an excellent jest in Tessa’s evident delusion, assumed a surpassing sacerdotal solemnity, and went through the mimic ceremony with a liberal expenditure of lingua furbesca or thieves’ Latin. But some symptoms of a new movement in the crowd urged him to bring it to a speedy conclusion and dismiss them with hands outstretched in a benedictory attitude over their kneeling figures. Tito, disposed always to cultivate goodwill, though it might be the least select, put a piece of four grossi into his hand as he moved away, and was thanked by a look which, the conjuror felt sure, conveyed a perfect understanding of the whole affair.
But Tito himself was very far from that understanding, and did not, in fact, know whether, the next moment, he should tell Tessa of the joke and laugh at her for a little goose, or whether he should let her delusion last, and see what would come of it—see what she would say and do next.
“Then you will not go away from me again,” said Tessa, after they had walked a few steps, “and you will take me to where you live.” She spoke meditatively, and not in a questioning tone. But presently she added, “I must go back once to the Madre though, to tell her I brought the cocoons, and that I am married, and shall not go back again.”
Tito felt the necessity of speaking now; and in the rapid thought prompted by that necessity, he saw that by undeceiving Tessa he should be robbing himself of some at least of that pretty trustfulness which might, by-and-by, be his only haven from contempt. It would spoil Tessa to make her the least particle wiser or more suspicious.
“Yes, my little Tessa,” he said, caressingly, “you must go back to the Madre; but you must not tell her you are married—you must keep that a secret from everybody; else some very great harm would happen to me, and you would never see me again.”
She looked up at him with fear in her face.
“You must go back and feed your goats and mules, and do just as you have always done before, and say no word to anyone about me.”
The corners of her mouth fell a little.
“And then, perhaps, I shall come and take care of you again when you want me, as I did before. But you must do just what I tell you, else you will not see me again.”
“Yes, I will, I will,” she said, in a loud whisper, frightened at that blank prospect.
They were silent a little while; and then Tessa, looking at her hand, said—
“The Madre wears a betrothal ring. She went to church and had it put on, and then after that, another day, she was married. And so did the cousin Nannina. But then she married Gollo,” added the poor little thing, entangled in the difficult comparison between her own case and others within her experience.
“But you must not wear a betrothal ring, my Tessa, because no one must know you are married,” said Tito, feeling some insistence necessary. “And the buona fortuna that I gave you did just as well for betrothal. Some people are betrothed with rings and some are not.”
“Yes, it is true, they would see the ring,” said Tessa, trying to convince herself that a thing she would like very much was really not good for her.
They were now near the entrance of the church again, and she remembered her cocoons which were still in Tito’s hand.
“Ah, you must give me the boto,” she said; “and we must go in, and I must take it to the Padre, and I must tell the rest of my beads, because I was too tired before.”
“Yes, you must go in, Tessa; but I will not go in. I must leave you now,” said Tito, too feverish and weary to reenter that stifling heat, and feeling that this was the least difficult way of parting with her.
“And not come back? Oh, where do you go?” Tessa’s mind had never formed an image of his whereabout or his doings when she did not see him: he had vanished, and her thought, instead of following him, had stayed in the same spot where he was with her.
“I shall come back some time, Tessa,” said Tito, taking her under the cloisters to the door of the church. “You must not cry—you must go to sleep, when you have said your beads. And here is money to buy your breakfast. Now kiss me, and look happy, else I shall not come again.”
She made a great effort over herself as she put up her lips to kiss him, and submitted to be gently turned round, with her face towards the door of the church. Tito
