The Cloister and the Hearth Part 92

CHAPTER LVIII

GERARD took a modest lodging on the west bank of the Tiber, and every day went forth in search of work, taking a specimen round to every shop he could hear of that executed such commissions.

They received him coldly. "We make our letter somewhat thinner than this," said one. "How dark your ink is," said another. But the main cry was, "What avails this? Scant is the Latin writ here now. Can ye not write Greek?"

"Ay, but not nigh so well as Latin."

"Then you shall never make your bread at Rome."

Gerard borrowed a beautiful Greek ma.n.u.script at a high price, and went home with a sad hole in his purse, but none in his courage.

In a fortnight he had made vast progress with the Greek character; so then, to lose no time, he used to work at it till noon, and hunt customers the rest of the day.

When he carried round a better Greek specimen than any they possessed, the traders informed him that Greek and Latin were alike unsalable; the city was thronged with works from all Europe. He should have come last year.

Gerard bought a psaltery.

His landlady, pleased with his looks and manners, used often to speak a kind word in pa.s.sing. One day she made him dine with her, and somewhat to his surprise asked him what had dashed his spirits. He told her. She gave him her reading of the matter. "Those sly traders," she would be bound, "had writers in their pay for whose work they received a n.o.ble price and paid a sorry one. So no wonder they blow cold on you. Methinks you write too well. How know I that? say you. Marry--marry, because you lock not your door, like the churl Pietro, and women will be curious.

Ay, ay, you write too well for _them_."

Gerard asked an explanation.

"Why," said she, "your good work might put out the eyes of that they are selling."

Gerard sighed. "Alas! dame, you read folk on the ill side, and you so kind and frank yourself."

"My dear little heart, these Romans are a subtle race. Me? I am a Siennese, thanks to the Virgin."

"My mistake was leaving Augsburg," said Gerard.

"Augsburg?" said she, haughtily; "is that a place to even to Rome? I never heard of it for my part."

She then a.s.sured him that he should make his fortune in spite of the booksellers. "Seeing thee a stranger, they lie to thee without sense or discretion. Why all the world knows that our great folk are bitten with the writing spider this many years, and pour out their money like water, and turn good land and houses into writ sheepskins to keep in a chest or a cupboard. G.o.d help them, and send them safe through this fury, as he hath through a heap of others; and in sooth hath been somewhat less cutting and stabbing among rival factions, and vindictive eating of their opposites' livers, minced and fried, since Scribbling came in. Why _I_ can tell you two. There is his eminence Cardinal Ba.s.sarion, and his holiness the Pope himself. There be a pair could keep a score such as thee a writing night and day. But I'll speak to Teresa; she hears the gossip of the court."

The next day she told him she had seen Teresa, and had heard of five more signors who were bitten with the writing spider. Gerard took down their names, and bought parchment, and busied himself for some days in preparing specimens. He left one, with his name and address, at each of these signors' doors, and hopefully awaited the result.

There was none.

Day after day pa.s.sed and left him heartsick.

And strange to say this was just the time when Margaret was fighting so hard against odds to feed her male dependents at Rotterdam, and arrested for curing without a licence instead of killing with one.

Gerard saw ruin staring him in the face.

He spent the afternoons picking up canzonets and mastering them. He laid in playing cards to colour, and struck off a meal per day.

This last stroke of genius got him into fresh trouble.

In these "camere locande" the landlady dressed all the meals, though the lodgers bought the provisions. So Gerard's hostess speedily detected him, and asked him if he was not ashamed of himself: by which brusque opening, having made him blush and look scared, she pacified herself all in a moment, and appealed to his good sense whether Adversity was a thing to be overcome on an empty stomach.

"Patienza, my lad! times will mend, meantime I will feed you for the love of heaven" (Italian for "gratis").

"Nay, hostess," said Gerard, "my purse is not yet quite void, and it would add to my trouble an if true folk should lose their due by me."

"Why you are as mad as your neighbour Pietro, with his one bad picture."

"Why, how know you 'tis a bad picture?"

"Because n.o.body will buy it. There is one that hath no gift. He will have to don casque and glaive, and carry his panel for a shield."

Gerard p.r.i.c.ked up his ears at this: so she told him more. Pietro had come from Florence with money in his purse, and an unfinished picture; had taken her one unfurnished room, opposite Gerard's, and furnished it neatly. When his picture was finished, he received visitors and had offers for it: these, though in her opinion liberal ones, he had refused so disdainfully as to make enemies of his customers. Since then he had often taken it out with him to try and sell, but had always brought it back; and, the last month, she had seen one movable after another go out of his room, and now he wore but one suit, and lay at night on a great chest. She had found this out only by peeping through the keyhole, for he locked the door most vigilantly whenever he went out. "Is he afraid we shall steal his chest, or his picture that no soul in all Rome is weak enough to buy?"

"Nay, sweet hostess, see you not 'tis his poverty he would screen from view?"

"And the more fool he! Are all our hearts as ill as his? A might give us a trial first any way."

"How you speak of him. Why his case is mine; and your countryman to boot."

"Oh, we Siennese love strangers. His case yours? nay 'tis just the contrary. You are the comeliest youth ever lodged in this house; hair like gold; he is a dark sour-visaged loon. Besides you know how to take a woman on her better side; but not he. Natheless I wish he would not starve to death in my house, to get me a bad name. Any way, one starveling is enough in any house. You are far from home, and it is for me, which am the mistress here, to number your meals--for me and the Dutch wife, your mother, that is far away: we two women shall settle that matter. Mind thou thine own business, being a man, and leave cooking and the like to us, that are in the world for little else that I see but to roast fowls, and suckle men at starting, and sweep their grown-up cobwebs."

"Dear kind dame, in sooth you do often put me in mind of my mother that is far away."

"All the better; I'll put you more in mind of her before I have done with you." And the honest soul beamed with pleasure.

Gerard not being an egotist, nor blinded by female partialities, saw his own grief in poor proud Pietro; and the more he thought of it, the more he resolved to share his humble means with that unlucky artist; Pietro's sympathy would repay him. He tried to waylay him: but without success.

One day he heard a groaning in the room. He knocked at the door, but received no answer. He knocked again. A surly voice bade him enter.

He obeyed somewhat timidly, and entered a garret furnished with a chair, a picture, face to wall, an iron basin, an easel, and a long chest, on which was coiled a haggard young man with a wonderfully bright eye.

Anything more like a coiled cobra ripe for striking the first comer was never seen.

"Good Signor Pietro," said Gerard, "forgive me that, weary of my own solitude, I intrude on yours; but I am your nighest neighbour in this house, and methinks your brother in fortune. I am an artist too."

"You are a painter? Welcome, signor. Sit down on my bed."

And Pietro jumped off and waved him into the vacant throne with a magnificent demonstration of courtesy.

Gerard bowed, and smiled; but hesitated a little. "I may not call myself a painter. I am a writer, a caligraph. I copy Greek and Latin ma.n.u.scripts, when I can get them to copy."

"And you call that an artist?"

"Without offense to your superior merit, Signor Pietro."

"No offence, stranger, none. Only, me seemeth an artist is one who thinks and paints his thought. Now a caligraph but draws in black and white the thoughts of another."