CHAPTER FORTY.
AN ARRESTING VOICE.
When Romola sat down on the stone under the cypress, all thingsconspired to give her the sense of freedom and solitude: her escape fromthe accustomed walls and streets; the widening distance from herhusband, who was by this time riding towards Siena, while every hourwould take her farther on the opposite way; the morning stillness; thegreat dip of ground on the roadside making a gulf between her and thesombre calm of the mountains. For the first time in her life she feltalone in the presence of the earth and sky, with no human presenceinterposing and making a law for her.
Suddenly a voice close to her said--
"You are Romola de' Bardi, the wife of Tito Melema."
She knew the voice: it had vibrated through her more than once before;and because she knew it, she did not turn round or look up. She satshaken by awe, and yet inwardly rebelling against the awe. It was oneof those black-skirted monks who was daring to speak to her, andinterfere with her privacy: that was all. And yet she was shaken, as ifthat destiny which men thought of as a sceptred deity had come to her,and grasped her with fingers of flesh.
"You are fleeing from Florence in disguise. I have a command from Godto stop you. You are not permitted to flee."
Romola's anger at the intrusion mounted higher at these imperativewords. She would not turn round to look at the speaker, whose examininggaze she resented. Sitting quite motionless, she said--
"What right have you to speak to me, or to hinder me?"
"The right of a messenger. You have put on a religious garb, and youhave no religious purpose. You have sought the garb as a disguise. Butyou were not suffered to pass me without being discerned. It wasdeclared to me who you were: it is declared to me that you are seekingto escape from the lot God has laid upon you. You wish your true nameand your true place in life to be hidden, that you may choose foryourself a new name and a new place, and have no rule but your own will.And I have a command to call you back. My daughter, you must return toyour place."
Romola's mind rose in stronger rebellion with every sentence. She wasthe more determined not to show any sign of submission, because theconsciousness of being inwardly shaken made her dread lest she shouldfall into irresolution. She spoke with more irritation than before.
"I will not return. I acknowledge no right of priests and monks tointerfere with my actions. You have no power over me."
"I know--I know you have been brought up in scorn of obedience. But itis not the poor monk who claims to interfere with you: it is the truththat commands you. And you cannot escape it. Either you must obey it,and it will lead you; or you must disobey it, and it will hang on youwith the weight of a chain which you will drag for ever. But you willobey it, my daughter. Your old servant will return to you with themules; my companion is gone to fetch him; and you will go back toFlorence."
She started up with anger in her eyes, and faced the speaker. It wasFra Girolamo: she knew that well enough before. She was nearly as tallas he was, and their faces were almost on a level. She had started upwith defiant words ready to burst from her lips, but they fell backagain without utterance. She had met Fra Girolamo's calm glance, andthe impression from it was so new to her, that her anger sank ashamed assomething irrelevant.
There was nothing transcendent in Savonarola's face. It was notbeautiful. It was strong-featured, and owed all its refinement tohabits of mind and rigid discipline of the body. The source of theimpression his glance produced on Romola was the sense it conveyed toher of interest in her and care for her apart from any personal feeling.It was the first time she had encountered a gaze in which simple humanfellowship expressed itself as a strongly-felt bond. Such a glance ishalf the vocation of the priest or spiritual guide of men, and Romolafelt it impossible again to question his authority to speak to her. Shestood silent, looking at him. And he spoke again.
"You assert your freedom proudly, my daughter. But who is so base asthe debtor that thinks himself free?"
There was a sting in those words, and Romola's countenance changed as ifa subtle pale flash had gone over it.
"And you are flying from your debts: the debt of a Florentine woman; thedebt of a wife. You are turning your back on the lot that has beenappointed for you--you are going to choose another. But can man orwoman choose duties? No more than they can choose their birthplace ortheir father and mother. My daughter, you are fleeing from the presenceof God into the wilderness."
As the anger melted from Romola's mind, it had given place to a newpresentiment of the strength there might be in submission, if this man,at whom she was beginning to look with a vague reverence, had some validlaw to show her. But no--it was impossible; he could not know whatdetermined her. Yet she could not again simply refuse to be guided; shewas constrained to plead; and in her new need to be reverent while sheresisted, the title which she had never given him before came to herlips without forethought, "My father, you cannot know the reasons whichcompel me to go. None can know them but myself. None can judge for me.I have been driven by great sorrow. I am resolved to go."
"I know enough, my daughter: my mind has been so far illuminatedconcerning you, that I know enough. You are not happy in your marriedlife; but I am not a confessor, and I seek to know nothing that shouldbe reserved for the seal of confession. I have a divine warrant to stopyou, which does not depend on such knowledge. You were warned by amessage from heaven, delivered in my presence--you were warned beforemarriage, when you might still have lawfully chosen to be free from themarriage-bond. But you chose the bond; and in wilfully breaking it--Ispeak to you as a pagan, if the holy mystery of matrimony is not sacredto you--you are breaking a pledge. Of what wrongs will you complain, mydaughter, when you yourself are committing one of the greatest wrongs awoman and a citizen can be guilty of--withdrawing in secrecy anddisguise from a pledge which you have given in the face of God and yourfellow-men? Of what wrongs will you complain, when you yourself arebreaking the simplest law that lies at the foundation of the trust whichbinds man to man--faithfulness to the spoken word? This, then, is thewisdom you have gained by scorning the mysteries of the Church?--not tosee the bare duty of integrity, where the Church would have taught youto see, not integrity only, but religion."
The blood had rushed to Romola's face, and she shrank as if she had beenstricken. "I would not have put on a disguise," she began; but shecould not go on,--she was too much shaken by the suggestion in theFrate's words of a possible affinity between her own conduct and Tito's.
"And to break that pledge you fly from Florence: Florence, where thereare the only men and women in the world to whom you owe the debt of afellow-citizen."
"I should never have quitted Florence," said Romola, tremulously, "aslong as there was any hope of my fulfilling a duty to my father there."
"And do you own no tie but that of a child to her father in the flesh?Your life has been spent in blindness, my daughter. You have lived withthose who sit on a hill aloof, and look down on the life of theirfellow-men. I know their vain discourse. It is of what has been in thetimes which they fill with their own fancied wisdom, while they scornGod's work in the present. And doubtless you were taught how there werepagan women who felt what it was to live for the Republic; yet you havenever felt that you, a Florentine woman, should live for Florence. Ifyour own people are wearing a yoke, will you slip from under it, insteadof struggling with them to lighten it? There is hunger and misery inour streets, yet you say, `I care not; I have my own sorrows; I will goaway, if peradventure I can ease them.' The servants of God arestruggling after a law of justice, peace, and charity, that the hundredthousand citizens among whom you were born may be governed righteously;but you think no more of this than if you were a bird, that may spreadits wings and fly whither it will in search of food to its liking. Andyet you have scorned the teaching of the Church, my daughter. As ifyou, a wilful wanderer, following your own blind choice, were not belowthe humblest Florentine woman who str
etches forth her hands with her ownpeople, and craves a blessing for them; and feels a close sisterhoodwith the neighbour who kneels beside her and is not of her own blood;and thinks of the mighty purpose that God has for Florence; and waitsand endures because the promised work is great, and she feels herselflittle."
"I was not going away to ease and self-indulgence," said Romola, raisingher head again, with a prompting to vindicate herself. "I was goingaway to hardship. I expect no joy: it is gone from my life."
"You are seeking your own will, my daughter. You are seeking some goodother than the law you are bound to obey. But how will you find good?It is not a thing of choice: it is a river that flows from the foot ofthe Invisible Throne, and flows by the path of obedience. I say again,man cannot choose his duties. You may choose to forsake your duties,and choose not to have the sorrow they bring. But you will go forth;and what will you find, my daughter? Sorrow without duty--bitter herbs,and no bread with them."
"But if you knew," said Romola, clasping her hands and pressing themtight, as she looked pleadingly at Fra Girolamo; "if you knew what itwas to me--how impossible it seemed to me to bear it."
"My daughter," he said, pointing to the cord round Romola's neck, "youcarry something within your mantle; draw it forth, and look at it."
Romola gave a slight start, but her impulse now was to do just whatSavonarola told her. Her self-doubt was grappled by a stronger will anda stronger conviction than her own. She drew forth the crucifix. Stillpointing towards it, he said--
"There, my daughter, is the image of a Supreme Offering, made by SupremeLove, because the need of man was great."
He paused, and she held the crucifix trembling--trembling under a suddenimpression of the wide distance between her present and her past self.What a length of road she had travelled through since she first tookthat crucifix from the Frate's hands! Had life as many secrets beforeher still as it had for her then, in her young blindness? It was athought that helped all other subduing influences; and at the sound ofFra Girolamo's voice again, Romola, with a quick involuntary movement,pressed the crucifix against her mantle and looked at him with moresubmission than before.
"Conform your life to that image, my daughter; make your sorrow anoffering: and when the fire of Divine charity burns within you, and youbehold the need of your fellow-men by the light of that flame, you willnot call your offering great. You have carried yourself proudly, as onewho held herself not of common blood or of common thoughts; but you havebeen as one unborn to the true life of man. What! you say your love foryour father no longer tells you to stay in Florence? Then, since thattie is snapped, you are without a law, without religion: you are nobetter than a beast of the field when she is robbed of her young. Ifthe yearning of a fleshly love is gone, you are without love, withoutobligation. See, then, my daughter, how you are below the life of thebeliever who worships that image of the Supreme Offering, and feels theglow of a common life with the lost multitude for whom that offering wasmade, and beholds the history of the world as the history of a greatredemption in which he is himself a fellow-worker, in his own place andamong his own people! If you held that faith, my beloved daughter, youwould not be a wanderer flying from suffering, and blindly seeking thegood of a freedom which is lawlessness. You would feel that Florencewas the home of your soul as well as your birthplace, because you wouldsee the work that was given you to do there. If you forsake your place,who will fill it? You ought to be in your place now, helping in thegreat work by which God will purify Florence, and raise it to be theguide of the nations. What! the earth is full of iniquity--full ofgroans--the light is still struggling with a mighty darkness, and yousay, `I cannot bear my bonds; I will burst them asunder; I will go whereno man claims me'? My daughter, every bond of your life is a debt: theright lies in the payment of that debt; it can lie nowhere else. Invain will you wander over the earth; you will be wandering for ever awayfrom the right."
Romola was inwardly struggling with strong forces: that immense personalinfluence of Savonarola, which came from the energy of his emotions andbeliefs: and her consciousness, surmounting all prejudice, that hiswords implied a higher law than any she had yet obeyed. But theresisting thoughts were not yet overborne.
"How, then, could Dino be right? He broke ties. He forsook his place."
"That was a special vocation. He was constrained to depart, else hecould not have attained the higher life. It would have been stifledwithin him."
"And I too," said Romola, raising her hands to her brow, and speaking ina tone of anguish, as if she were being dragged to some torture."Father, you may be wrong."
"Ask your conscience, my daughter. You have no vocation such as yourbrother had. You are a wife. You seek to break your ties in self-willand anger, not because the higher life calls upon you to renounce them.The higher life begins for us, my daughter, when we renounce our ownwill to bow before a Divine law. That seems hard to you. It is theportal of wisdom, and freedom, and blessedness. And the symbol of ithangs before you. That wisdom is the religion of the Cross. And youstand aloof from it: you are a pagan; you have been taught to say, `I amas the wise men who lived before the time when the Jew of Nazareth wascrucified.' And that is your wisdom! To be as the dead whose eyes areclosed, and whose ear is deaf to the work of God that has been sincetheir time. What has your dead wisdom done for you, my daughter? Ithas left you without a heart for the neighbours among whom you dwell,without care for the great work by which Florence is to be regeneratedand the world made holy; it has left you without a share in the Divinelife which quenches the sense of suffering Self in the ardours of anever-growing love. And now, when the sword has pierced your soul, yousay, `I will go away; I cannot bear my sorrow.' And you think nothingof the sorrow and the wrong that are within the walls of the city whereyou dwell: you would leave your place empty, when it ought to be filledwith your pity and your labour. If there is wickedness in the streets,your steps should shine with the light of purity; if there is a cry ofanguish, you, my daughter, because you know the meaning of the cry,should be there to still it. My beloved daughter, sorrow has come toteach you a new worship: the sign of it hangs before you."
Romola's mind was still torn by conflict. She foresaw that she shouldobey Savonarola and go back: his words had come to her as if they werean interpretation of that revulsion from self-satisfied ease, and ofthat new fellowship with suffering, which had already been awakened inher. His arresting voice had brought a new condition into her life,which made it seem impossible to her that she could go on her way as ifshe had not heard it; yet she shrank as one who sees the path she musttake, but sees, too, that the hot lava lies there. And the instinctiveshrinking from a return to her husband brought doubts. She turned awayher eyes from Fra Girolamo, and stood for a minute or two with her handshanging clasped before her, like a statue. At last she spoke, as if thewords were being wrung from her, still looking on the ground.
"My husband... he is not... my love is gone!"
"My daughter, there is the bond of a higher love. Marriage is notcarnal only, made for selfish delight. See what that thought leads youto! It leads you to wander away in a false garb from all theobligations of your place and name. That would not have been, if youhad learned that it is a sacramental vow, from which none but God canrelease you. My daughter, your life is not as a grain of sand, to beblown by the winds; it is a thing of flesh and blood, that dies if it besundered. Your husband is not a malefactor?"
Romola started. "Heaven forbid! No; I accuse him of nothing."
"I did not suppose he was a malefactor. I meant, that if he were amalefactor, your place would be in the prison beside him. My daughter,if the cross comes to you as a wife, you must carry it as a wife. Youmay say, `I will forsake my husband,' but you cannot cease to be awife."
"Yet if--oh, how could I bear--" Romola had involuntarily begun to saysomething which she sought to banish from her mind again.
"Make your marriage-sorrows an o
ffering too, my daughter: an offering tothe great work by which sin and sorrow are being made to cease. The endis sure, and is already beginning. Here in Florence it is beginning,and the eyes of faith behold it. And it may be our blessedness to diefor it: to die daily by the crucifixion of our selfish will--to die atlast by laying our bodies on the altar. My daughter, you are a child ofFlorence; fulfil the duties of that great inheritance. Live forFlorence--for your own people, whom God is preparing to bless the earth.Bear the anguish and the smart. The iron is sharp--I know, I know--itrends the tender flesh. The draught is bitterness on the lips. Butthere is rapture in the cup--there is the vision which makes all lifebelow it dross for ever. Come, my daughter, come back to your place!"
While Savonarola spoke with growing intensity, his arms tightly foldedbefore him still, as they had been from the first, but his face alightas from an inward flame, Romola felt herself surrounded and possessed bythe glow of his passionate faith. The chill doubts all melted away; shewas subdued by the sense of something unspeakably great to which she wasbeing called by a strong being who roused a new strength within herself.In a voice that was like a low, prayerful cry, she said--
"Father, I will be guided. Teach me! I will go back."
Almost unconsciously she sank on her knees. Savonarola stretched outhis hands over her; but feeling would no longer pass through the channelof speech, and he was silent.