Romola

by George Eliot

  CHAPTER THIRTY SIX.

  ARIADNE DISCROWNS HERSELF.

  It was more than three weeks before the contents of the library were allpacked and carried away. And Romola, instead of shutting her eyes andears, had watched the process. The exhaustion consequent on violentemotion is apt to bring a dreamy disbelief in the reality of its cause;and in the evening, when the workmen were gone, Romola took herhand-lamp and walked slowly round amongst the confusion of straw andwooden cases, pausing at every vacant pedestal, every well-known objectlaid prostrate, with a sort of bitter desire to assure herself thatthere was a sufficient reason why her love was gone and the world wasbarren for her. And still, as the evenings came, she went and wentagain; no longer to assure herself, but because this vivifying of painand despair about her father's memory was the strongest life left to heraffections. On the 23rd of December, she knew that the last packageswere going. She ran to the loggia at the top of the house that shemight not lose the last pang of seeing the slow wheels move across thebridge.

  It was a cloudy day, and nearing dusk. Arno ran dark and shivering; thehills were mournful; and Florence with its girdling stone towers hadthat silent, tomb-like look, which unbroken shadow gives to a city seenfrom above. Santa Croce, where her father lay, was dark amidst thatdarkness, and slowly crawling over the bridge, and slowly vanishing upthe narrow street, was the white load, like a cruel, deliberate Fatecarrying away her father's lifelong hope to bury it in an unmarkedgrave. Romola felt less that she was seeing this herself than that herfather was conscious of it as he lay helpless under the imprisoningstones, where her hand could not reach his to tell him that he was notalone.

  She stood still even after the load had disappeared, heedless of thecold, and soothed by the gloom which seemed to cover her like a mourninggarment and shut out the discord of joy. When suddenly the great bellin the palace-tower rang out a mighty peal: not the hammer-sound ofalarm, but an agitated peal of triumph; and one after another everyother bell in every other tower seemed to catch the vibration and jointhe chorus. And, as the chorus swelled and swelled till the air seemedmade of sound--little flames, vibrating too, as if the sound had caughtfire, burst out between the turrets of the palace and on the girdlingtowers.

  That sudden clang, that leaping light, fell on Romola like sharp wounds.They were the triumph of demons at the success of her husband'streachery, and the desolation of her life. Little more than three weeksago she had been intoxicated with the sound of those very bells; and inthe gladness of Florence, she had heard a prophecy of her own gladness.But now the general joy seemed cruel to her: she stood aloof from thatcommon life--that Florence which was flinging out its loud exultation tostun the ears of sorrow and loneliness. She could never join hands withgladness again, but only with those whom it was in the hard nature ofgladness to forget. And in her bitterness she felt that all rejoicingwas mockery. Men shouted pagans with their souls full of heaviness, andthen looked in their neighbours' faces to see if there was really such athing as joy. Romola had lost her belief in the happiness she had oncethirsted for: it was a hateful, smiling, soft-handed thing, with anarrow, selfish heart.

  She ran down from the loggia, with her hands pressed against her ears,and was hurrying across the antechamber, when she was startled byunexpectedly meeting her husband, who was coming to seek her.

  His step was elastic, and there was a radiance of satisfaction about himnot quite usual.

  "What! the noise was a little too much for you?" he said; for Romola, asshe started at the sight of him, had pressed her hands all the closeragainst her ears. He took her gently by the wrist, and drew her armwithin his, leading her into the saloon surrounded with the dancingnymphs and fauns, and then went on speaking: "Florence is gone quite madat getting its Great Council, which is to put an end to all the evilsunder the sun; especially to the vice of merriment. You may well lookstunned, my Romola, and you are cold. You must not stay so late underthat windy loggia without wrappings. I was coming to tell you that I amsuddenly called to Rome about some learned business for BernardoRucellai. I am going away immediately, for I am to join my party at SanGaggio to-night, that we may start early in the morning. I need giveyou no trouble; I have had my packages made already. It will not bevery long before I am back again."

  He knew he had nothing to expect from her but quiet endurance of what hesaid and did. He could not even venture to kiss her brow this evening,but just pressed her hand to his lips, and left her. Tito felt thatRomola was a more unforgiving woman than he had imagined; her love wasnot that sweet clinging instinct, stronger than all judgments, which, hebegan to see now, made the great charm of a wife. Still, this petrifiedcoldness was better than a passionate, futile opposition. Her pride andcapability of seeing where resistance was useless had the inconvenience.

  But when the door had closed on Tito, Romola lost the look of coldimmobility winch came over her like an inevitable frost whenever heapproached her. Inwardly she was very far from being in a state ofquiet endurance, and the days that had passed since the scene which haddivided her from Tito had been days of active planning and preparationfor the fulfilment of a purpose.

  The first thing she did now was to call old Maso to her.

  "Maso," she said, in a decided tone, "we take our journey to-morrowmorning. We shall be able now to overtake that first convoy of cloth,while they are waiting at San Piero. See about the two mules to-night,and be ready to set off with them at break of day, and wait for me atTrespiano."

  She meant to take Maso with her as far as Bologna, and then send himback with letters to her godfather and Tito, telling them that she wasgone and never meant to return. She had planned her departure so thatits secrecy might be perfect, and her broken love and life be hiddenaway unscanned by vulgar eyes. Bernardo del Nero had been absent at hisvilla, willing to escape from political suspicions to his favouriteoccupation of attending to his land, and she had paid him the debtwithout a personal interview. He did not even know that the library wassold, and was left to conjecture that some sudden piece of good fortunehad enabled Tito to raise this sum of money. Maso had been taken intoher confidence only so far that he knew her intended journey was asecret; and to do just what she told him was the thing he cared most forin his withered wintry age.

  Romola did not mean to go to bed that night. When she had fastened thedoor she took her taper to the carved and painted chest which containedher wedding-clothes. The white silk and gold lay there, the long whiteveil and the circlet of pearls. A great sob rose as she looked at them:they seemed the shroud of her dead happiness. In a tiny gold loop ofthe circlet a sugar-plum had lodged--a pink hailstone from the shower ofsweets: Tito had detected it first, and had said that it should alwaysremain there. At certain moments--and this was one of them--Romola wascarried, by a sudden wave of memory, back again into the time of perfecttrust, and felt again the presence of the husband whose love made theworld as fresh and wonderful to her as to a little child that sits instillness among the sunny flowers: heard the gentle tones and saw thesoft eyes without any lie in them, and breathed again that large freedomof the soul which comes from the faith that the being who is nearest tous is greater than ourselves. And in those brief moments the tearsalways rose: the woman's lovingness felt something akin to what thebereaved mother feels when the tiny fingers seem to lie warm on herbosom, and yet are marble to her lips as she bends over the silent bed.

  But there was something else lying in the chest besides thewedding-clothes: it was something dark and coarse, rolled up in a closebundle. She turned away her eyes from the white and gold to the darkbundle, and as her hands touched the serge, her tears began to bechecked. That coarse roughness recalled her fully to the present, fromwhich love and delight were gone. She unfastened the thick white cordand spread the bundle out on the table. It was the grey serge dress ofa sister belonging to the third order of Saint Francis, living in theworld but especially devoted to deeds of piety--a personage whom theFlorentines were accu
stomed to call a Pinzochera. Romola was going toput on this dress as a disguise, and she determined to put it on atonce, so that, if she needed sleep before the morning, she might wake upin perfect readiness to be gone. She put off her black garment, and asshe thrust her soft white arms into the harsh sleeves of the sergemantle and felt the hard girdle of rope hurt her fingers as she tied it,she courted those rude sensations: they were in keeping with her newscorn of that thing called pleasure which made men base--that dexterouscontrivance for selfish ease, that shrinking from endurance and strain,when others were bowing beneath burdens too heavy for them, which nowmade one image with her husband. Then she gathered her long hairtogether, drew it away tight from her face, bound it in a great hardknot at the back of her head, and taking a square piece of black silk,tied it in the fashion of a kerchief close across her head and under herchin; and over that she drew the cowl. She lifted the candle to themirror. Surely her disguise would be complete to any one who had notlived very near to her. To herself she looked strangely like herbrother Dino: the full oval of the cheek had only to be wasted; theeyes, already sad, had only to become a little sunken. Was she gettingmore like him in anything else? Only in this, that she understood nowhow men could be prompted to rush away for ever from earthly delights,how they could be prompted to dwell on images of sorrow rather than ofbeauty and joy.

  But she did not linger at the mirror: she set about collecting andpacking all the relics of her father and mother that were too large tobe carried in her small travelling-wallet. They were all to be put inthe chest along with her wedding-clothes, and the chest was to becommitted to her godfather when she was safely gone. First she laid inthe portraits; then one by one every little thing that had a sacredmemory clinging to it was put into her wallet or into the chest.

  She paused. There was still something else to be stript away from her,belonging to that past on which she was going to turn her back for ever.She put her thumb and her forefinger to her betrothal ring; but theyrested there, without drawing it off. Romola's mind had been rushingwith an impetuous current towards this act, for which she was preparing:the act of quitting a husband who had disappointed all her trust, theact of breaking an outward tie that no longer represented the inwardbond of love. But that force of outward symbols by which our activelife is knit together so as to make an inexorable external identity forus, not to be shaken by our wavering consciousness, gave a strangeeffect to this simple movement towards taking off her ring--a movementwhich was but a small sequence of her energetic resolution. It broughta vague but arresting sense that she was somehow violently rending herlife in two: a presentiment that the strong impulse which had seemed toexclude doubt and make her path clear might after all be blindness, andthat there was something in human bonds which must prevent them frombeing broken with the breaking of illusions.

  If that beloved Tito who had placed the betrothal ring on her finger wasnot in any valid sense the same Tito whom she had ceased to love, whyshould she return to him the sign of their union, and not rather retainit as a memorial? And this act, which came as a palpable demonstrationof her own and his identity, had a power unexplained to herself, ofshaking Romola. It is the way with half the truth amidst which we live,that it only haunts us and makes dull pulsations that are never borninto sound. But there was a passionate voice speaking within her thatpresently nullified all such muffled murmurs.

  "It cannot be! I cannot be subject to him. He is false. I shrink fromhim. I despise him!"

  She snatched the ring from her finger and laid it on the table againstthe pen with which she meant to write. Again she felt that there couldbe no law for her but the law of her affections. That tenderness andkeen fellow-feeling for the near and the loved which are the mainoutgrowth of the affections, had made the religion of her life: they hadmade her patient in spite of natural impetuosity: they would havesufficed to make her heroic. But now all that strength was gone, or,rather, it was converted into the strength of repulsion. She hadrecoiled from Tito in proportion to the energy of that young belief andlove which he had disappointed, of that lifelong devotion to her fatheragainst which he had committed an irredeemable offence. And it seemedas if all motive had slipped away from her, except the indignation andscorn that made her tear herself asunder from him.

  She was not acting after any precedent, or obeying any adopted maxims.The grand severity of the stoical philosophy in which her father hadtaken care to instruct her, was familiar enough to her ears and lips,and its lofty spirit had raised certain echoes within her; but she hadnever used it, never needed it as a rule of life. She had endured andforborne because she loved: maxims which told her to feel less, and notto cling close lest the onward course of great Nature should jar her,had been as powerless on her tenderness as they had been on her father'syearning for just fame. She had appropriated no theories: she hadsimply felt strong in the strength of affection, and life without thatenergy came to her as an entirely new problem.

  She was going to solve the problem in a way that seemed to her verysimple. Her mind had never yet bowed to any obligation apart frompersonal love and reverence; she had no keen sense of any other humanrelations, and all she had to obey now was the instinct to sever herselffrom the man she loved no longer.

  Yet the unswerving resolution was accompanied with continually varyingphases of anguish. And now that the active preparation for herdeparture was almost finished, she lingered: she deferred writing theirrevocable words of parting from all her little world. The emotions ofthe past weeks seemed to rush in again with cruel hurry, and takepossession even of her limbs. She was going to write, and her handfell. Bitter tears came now at the delusion which had blighted heryoung years, tears very different from the sob of remembered happinesswith which she had looked at the circlet of pearls and the pinkhailstone. And now she felt a tingling shame at the words of ignominyshe had cast, at Tito--"Have you robbed some one else who is _not_dead?" To have had such words wrung from her--to have uttered them toher husband seemed a degradation of her whole life. Hard speech betweenthose who have loved is hideous in the memory, like the sight ofgreatness and beauty sunk into vice and rags.

  That heart-cutting comparison of the present with the past urged itselfupon Romola till it even transformed itself into wretched sensations:she seemed benumbed to everything but inward throbbings, and began tofeel the need of some hard contact. She drew her hands tight along theharsh knotted cord that hung from her waist. She started to her feetand seized the rough lid of the chest: there was nothing else to go in?No. She closed the lid, pressing her hand upon the rough carving, andlocked it.

  Then she remembered that she had still to complete her equipment as aPinzochera. The large leather purse or scarsella, with small coin init, had to be hung on the cord at her waist (her florins and smalljewels, presents from her godfather and cousin Brigida, were safelyfastened within her serge mantle)--and on the other side must hang therosary.

  It did not occur to Romola, as she hung that rosary by her side, thatsomething else besides the mere garb would perhaps be necessary toenable her to pass as a Pinzochera, and that her whole air andexpression were as little as possible like those of a sister whoseeyelids were used to be bent, and whose lips were used to move in silentiteration. Her inexperience prevented her from picturing distantdetails, and it helped her proud courage in shutting out any forebodingof danger and insult. She did not know that any Florentine woman hadever done exactly what she was going to do: unhappy wives often tookrefuge with their friends, or in the cloister, she knew, but both thosecourses were impossible to her; she had invented a lot for herself--togo to the most learned woman in the world, Cassandra Fedele, at Venice,and ask her how an instructed woman could support herself in a lonelylife there.

  She was not daunted by the practical difficulties in the way or the darkuncertainty at the end. Her life could never be happy any more, but itmust not, could not, be ignoble. And by a pathetic mixture of childishromance with her woman's trials,
the philosophy which had nothing to dowith this great decisive deed of hers had its place in her imaginationof the future: so far as she conceived her solitary loveless life atall, she saw it animated by a proud stoical heroism, and by anindistinct but strong purpose of labour, that she might be wise enoughto write something which would rescue her father's name from oblivion.After all, she was only a young girl--this poor Romola, who had foundherself at the end of her joys.

  There were other things yet to be done. There was a small key in acasket on the table--but now Romola perceived that her taper was dyingout, and she had forgotten to provide herself with any other light. Ina few moments the room was in total darkness. Feeling her way to thenearest chair, she sat down to wait for the morning.

  Her purpose in seeking the key had called up certain memories winch hadcome back upon her during the past week with the new vividness thatremembered words always have for us when we have learned to give them anew meaning. Since the shook of the revelation which had seemed todivide her for ever from Tito, that last interview with Dino had neverbeen for many hours together out of her mind. And it solicited her allthe more, because while its remembered images pressed upon her almostwith the imperious force of sensations, they raised struggling thoughtswhich resisted their influence. She could not prevent herself fromhearing inwardly the dying prophetic voice saying again and again,--"Theman whose face was a blank loosed thy hand and departed; and as he went,I could see his face, and it was the face of the great Tempter... Andthou, Romola, didst wring thy hands and seek for water, and there wasnone... and the plain was bare and stony again, and thou wast alone inthe midst of it. And then it seemed that the night fell, and I saw nomore." She could not prevent herself from dwelling with a sort ofagonised fascination on the wasted face; on the straining gaze at thecrucifix; on the awe which had compelled her to kneel; on the lastbroken words and then the unbroken silence--on all the details of thedeath-scene, which had seemed like a sudden opening into a world apartfrom that of her lifelong knowledge.

  But her mind was roused to resistance of impressions that, from beingobvious phantoms, seemed to be getting solid in the daylight. As astrong body struggles against fumes with the more violence when theybegin to be stifling, a strong soul struggles against phantasies withall the more alarmed energy when they threaten to govern in the place ofthought.

  What had the words of that vision to do with her real sorrows? Thatfitting of certain words was a mere chance; the rest was all vague--nay,those words themselves were vague; they were determined by nothing buther brother's memories and beliefs. He believed there was somethingfatal in pagan learning; he believed that celibacy was more holy thanmarriage; he remembered their home, and all the objects in the library;and of these threads the vision was woven. What reasonable warrantcould she have had for believing in such a vision and acting on it?None. True as the voice of foreboding had proved, Romola saw withunshaken conviction that to have renounced Tito in obedience to awarning like that, would have been meagre-hearted folly. Her trust hadbeen delusive, but she would have chosen over again to have acted on itrather than be a creature led by phantoms and disjointed whispers in aworld where there was the large music of reasonable speech, and the warmgrasp of living hands.

  But the persistent presence of these memories, linking themselves in herimagination with her actual lot, gave her a glimpse of understandinginto the lives which had before lain utterly aloof from her sympathy--the lives of the men and women who were led by such inward images andvoices.

  "If they were only a little stronger in me," she said to herself, "Ishould lose the sense of what that vision really was, and take it for aprophetic light. I might in time get to be a seer of visions myself,like the Suora Maddalena, and Camilla Rucellai, and the rest."

  Romola shuddered at the possibility. All the instruction, all the maininfluences of her life had gone to fortify her scorn of that sicklysuperstition which led men and women, with eyes too weak for thedaylight, to sit in dark swamps and try to read human destiny by thechance flame of wandering vapours.

  And yet she was conscious of something deeper than that coincidence ofwords which made the parting contact with her dying brother live anew inher mind, and gave a new sisterhood to the wasted face. If there weremuch more of such experience as his in the world, she would like tounderstand it--would even like to learn the thoughts of men who sank inecstasy before the pictured agonies of martyrdom. There seemed to besomething more than madness in that supreme fellowship with suffering.The springs were all dried up around her; she wondered what other watersthere were at which men drank and found strength in the desert. Andthose moments in the Duomo when she had sobbed with a mysteriousmingling of rapture and pain, while Fra Girolamo offered himself awilling sacrifice for the people, came back to her as if they had been atransient taste of some such far-off fountain. But again she shrankfrom impressions that were alluring her within the sphere of visions andnarrow fears which compelled men to outrage natural affections as Dinohad done.

  This was the tangled web that Romola had in her mind as she sat weary inthe darkness. No radiant angel came across the gloom with a clearmessage for her. In those times, as now, there were human beings whonever saw angels or heard perfectly clear messages. Such truth as cameto them was brought confusedly in the voices and deeds of men not at alllike the seraphs of unfailing wing and piercing vision--men who believedfalsities as well as truths, and did the wrong as well as the right.The helping hands stretched out to them were the hands of men whostumbled and often saw dimly, so that these beings unvisited by angelshad no other choice than to grasp that stumbling guidance along the pathof reliance and action which is the path of life, or else to pause inloneliness and disbelief, which is no path, but the arrest of inactionand death.

  And so Romola, seeing no ray across the darkness, and heavy withconflict that changed nothing, sank at last to sleep.