Romola

by George Eliot

  CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN.

  THE TABERNACLE UNLOCKED.

  Romola was waked by a tap at the door. The cold light of early morningwas in the room, and Maso was come for the travelling-wallet. The oldman could not help starting when she opened the door, and showed him,instead of the graceful outline he had been used to, crowned with thebrightness of her hair, the thick folds of the grey mantle and the paleface shadowed by the dark cowl.

  "It is well, Maso," said Romola, trying to speak in the calmest voice,and make the old man easy. "Here is the wallet quite ready. You willgo on quietly, and I shall not be far behind you. When you get out ofthe gates you may go more slowly, for I shall perhaps join you beforeyou get to Trespiano."

  She closed the door behind him, and then put her hand on the key whichshe had taken from the casket the last thing in the night. It was theoriginal key of the little painted tabernacle: Tito had forgotten todrown it in the Arno, and it had lodged, as such small things will, inthe corner of the embroidered scarsella which he wore with the purpletunic. One day, long after their marriage, Romola had found it there,and had put it by, without using it, but with a sense of satisfactionthat the key was within reach. The cabinet on which the tabernaclestood had been moved to the side of the room, close to one of thewindows, where the pale morning light fell upon it so as to make thepainted forms discernible enough to Romola, who know them well,--thetriumphant Bacchus, with his clusters and his vine-clad spear, claspingthe crowned Ariadne; the Loves showering roses, the wreathed vessel, thecunning-eyed dolphins, and the rippled sea: all encircled by a floweryborder, like a bower of paradise. Romola looked at the familiar imageswith new bitterness and repulsion: they seemed a more pitiable mockerythan ever on this chill morning, when she had waked up to wander inloneliness. They had been no tomb of sorrow, but a lying screen.Foolish Ariadne! with her gaze of love, as if that bright face, with itshyacinthine curls like tendrils among the vines, held the deep secret ofher life!

  "Ariadne is wonderfully transformed," thought Romola. "She would lookstrange among the vines and the roses now."

  She took up the mirror, and looked at herself once more. But the sightwas so startling in this morning light that she laid it down again, witha sense of shrinking almost as strong as that with which she had turnedfrom the joyous Ariadne. The recognition of her own face, with the cowlabout it, brought back the dread lest she should be drawn at last intofellowship with some wretched superstition--into the company of thehowling fanatics and weeping nuns who had been her contempt fromchildhood till now. She thrust the key into the tabernacle hurriedly:hurriedly she opened it, and took out the crucifix, without looking atit; then, with trembling fingers, she passed a cord through the littlering, hung the crucifix round her neck, and hid it in the bosom of hermantle. "For Dino's sake," she said to herself. Still there were theletters to be written which Maso was to carry back from Bologna. Theywere very brief. The first said--

  "Tito, my love for you is dead; and therefore, so far as I was yours, Itoo am dead. Do not try to put in force any laws for the sake offetching me back: that would bring you no happiness. The Romola youmarried can never return. I need explain nothing to you after the wordsI uttered to you the last time we spoke long together. If you supposedthem to be words of transient anger, you will know now that they werethe sign of an irreversible change.

  "I think you will fulfil my wish that my bridal chest should be sent tomy godfather, who gave it me. It contains my wedding-clothes and theportraits and other relics of my father and mother."

  She folded the ring inside this letter, and wrote Tito's name outside.The next letter was to Bernardo del Nero:--

  "Dearest Godfather,--If I could have been any good to your life bystaying I would not have gone away to a distance. But now I am gone.Do not ask the reason; and if you love my father, try to prevent any onefrom seeking me. I could not bear my life at Florence. I cannot bearto tell any one why. Help to cover my lot in silence. I have askedthat my bridal chest should be sent to you: when you open it, you willknow the reason. Please to give all the things that were my mother's tomy cousin Brigida, and ask her to forgive me for not saying any words ofparting to her.

  "Farewell, my second father. The best thing I have in life is still toremember your goodness and be grateful to you.

  "Romola."

  Romola put the letters, along with the crucifix, within the bosom of hermantle, and then felt that everything was done. She was ready now todepart.

  No one was stirring in the house, and she went almost as quietly as agrey phantom down the stairs and into the silent street. Her heart waspalpitating violently, yet she enjoyed the sense of her firm tread onthe broad flags--of the swift movement, which was like a chained-upresolution set free at last. The anxiety to carry out her act, and thedread of any obstacle, averted sorrow; and as she reached the PonteRubaconte, she felt less that Santa Croce was in her sight than that theyellow streak of morning which parted the grey was getting broader andbroader, and that, unless she hastened her steps, she should have toencounter faces.

  Her simplest road was to go right on to the Borgo Pinti, and then alongby the walls to the _Porta_, San Gallo, from which she must leave thecity, and this road carried her by the Piazza di Santa Croco. But shewalked as steadily and rapidly as ever through the piazza, not trustingherself to look towards the church. The thought that any eyes might beturned on her with a look of curiosity and recognition, and thatindifferent minds might be set speculating on her private sorrows, madeRomola shrink physically as from the imagination of torture. She feltdegraded even by that act of her husband from which she was helplesslysuffering. But there was no sign that any eyes looked forth fromwindows to notice this tall grey sister, with the firm step, and proudattitude of the cowled head. Her road lay aloof from the stir of earlytraffic, and when she reached the Porta San Gallo, it was easy to passwhile a dispute was going forward about the toll for panniers of eggsand market produce which were just entering.

  Out! Once past the houses of the Borgo, she would be beyond the lastfringe of Florence, the sky would be broad above her, and she would haveentered on her new life--a life of loneliness and endurance, but offreedom. She had been strong enough to snap asunder the bonds she hadaccepted in blind faith: whatever befell her, she would no more feel thebreath of soft hated lips warm upon her cheek, no longer feel the breathof an odious mind stifling her own. The bare wintry morning, the chillair, were welcome in their severity: the leafless trees, the sombrehills, were not haunted by the gods of beauty and joy, whose worship shehad forsaken for ever.

  But presently the light burst forth with sudden strength, and shadowswere thrown across the road. It seemed that the sun was going to chaseaway the greyness. The light is perhaps never felt more strongly as adivine presence stirring all those inarticulate sensibilities which areour deepest life, than in these moments when it instantaneously awakensthe shadows. A certain awe which inevitably accompanied this mostmomentous act of her life became a more conscious element in Romola'sfeeling as she found herself in the sudden presence of the impalpablegolden glory and the long shadow of herself that was not to be escaped.Hitherto she had met no one but an occasional contadino with mules, andthe many turnings of the road on the level prevented her from seeingthat Maso was not very far ahead of her. But when she had passed Pietraand was on rising ground, she lifted up the hanging roof of her cowl andlooked eagerly before her.

  The cowl was dropped again immediately. She had seen, not Maso, but--two monks, who were approaching within a few yards of her. The edge ofher cowl making a pent-house on her brow had shut out the objects abovethe level of her eyes, and for the last few moments she had been lookingat nothing but the brightness on the path and at her own shadow, talland shrouded like a dread spectre.

  She wished now that she had not looked up. Her disguise made herespecially dislike to encounter monks: they might expect some piouspasswords of which she knew nothing, and she walked along
with a carefulappearance of unconsciousness till she had seen the skirts of the blackmantles pass by her. The encounter had made her heart beatdisagreeably, for Romola had an uneasiness in her religious disguise, ashame at this studied concealment, which was made more distinct by aspecial effort to appear unconscious under actual glances.

  But the black skirts would be gone the faster because they were goingdown-hill; and seeing a great flat stone against a cypress that rosefrom a projecting green bank, she yielded to the desire which the slightshock had given her, to sit down and rest.

  She turned her back on Florence, not meaning to look at it till themonks were quite out of sight, and raising the edge of her cowl againwhen she had seated herself, she discerned Maso and the mules at adistance where it was not hopeless for her to overtake them, as the oldman would probably linger in expectation of her.

  Meanwhile she might pause a little. She was free and alone.