CHAPTER SIXTY ONE.
DRIFTING AWAY.
On the eighth day from that memorable night Romola was standing on thebrink of the Mediterranean, watching the gentle summer pulse of the seajust above what was then the little fishing village of Viareggio.
Again she had fled from Florence, and this time no arresting voice hadcalled her back. Again she wore the grey religious dress; and thistime, in her heart-sickness, she did not care that it was a disguise. Anew rebellion had risen within her, a new despair. Why should she careabout wearing one badge more than another, or about being called by herown name? She despaired of finding any consistent duty belonging tothat name. What force was there to create for her that supremelyhallowed motive which men call duty, but which can have no inwardconstraining existence save through some form of believing love?
The bonds of all strong affection were snapped. In her marriage, thehighest bond of all, she had ceased to see the mystic union which is itsown guarantee of indissolubleness, had ceased even to see the obligationof a voluntary pledge: had she not proved that the things to which shehad pledged herself were impossible? The impulse to set herself freehad risen again with overmastering force; yet the freedom could only bean exchange of calamity. There is no compensation for the woman whofeels that the chief relation of her life has been no more than amistake. She has lost her crown. The deepest secret of humanblessedness has half whispered itself to her, and then for ever passedher by.
And now Romola's best support under that supreme woman's sorrow hadslipped away from her. The vision of any great purpose, any end ofexistence which could ennoble endurance and exalt the common deeds of adusty life with divine ardours, was utterly eclipsed for her now by thesense of a confusion in human things which made all effort a meredragging at tangled threads; all fellowship, either for resistance oradvocacy, mere unfairness and exclusiveness. What, after all, was theman who had represented for her the highest heroism: the heroism not ofhard, self-contained endurance, but of willing, self-offering love?What was the cause he was struggling for? Romola had lost her trust inSavonarola, had lost that fervour of admiration which had made herunmindful of his aberrations, and attentive only to the grand curve ofhis orbit. And now that her keen feeling for her godfather had thrownher into antagonism with the Frate, she saw all the repulsive andinconsistent details in his teaching with a painful lucidity whichexaggerated their proportions. In the bitterness of her disappointmentshe said that his striving after the renovation of the Church and theworld was a striving after a mere name which told no more than the titleof a book: a name that had come to mean practically the measures thatwould strengthen his own position in Florence; nay, often questionabledeeds and words, for the sake of saving his influence from suffering byhis own errors. And that political reform which had once made a newinterest in her life seemed now to reduce itself to narrow devices forthe safety of Florence, in contemptible contradiction with thealternating professions of blind trust in the Divine care.
It was inevitable that she should judge the Frate unfairly on a questionof individual suffering, at which she looked with the eyes of personaltenderness, and _he_ with the eyes of theoretic conviction. In thatdeclaration of his, that the cause of his party was the cause of God'skingdom, she heard only the ring of egoism. Perhaps such words haverarely been uttered without that meaner ring in them; yet they are theimplicit formula of all energetic belief. And if such energetic belief,pursuing a grand and remote end, is often in danger of becoming ademon-worship, in which the votary lets his son and daughter passthrough the fire with a readiness that hardly looks like sacrifice;tender fellow-feeling for the nearest has its danger too, and is apt tobe timid and sceptical towards the larger aims without which life cannotrise into religion. In this way poor Romola was being blinded by hertears.
No one who has ever known what it is thus to lose faith in a fellow-manwhom he has profoundly loved and reverenced, will lightly say that theshock can leave the faith in the Invisible Goodness unshaken. With thesinking of high human trust, the dignity of life sinks too; we cease tobelieve in our own better self, since that also is part of the commonnature which is degraded in our thought; and all the finer impulses ofthe soul are dulled. Romola felt even the springs of her once activepity drying up, and leaving her to barren egoistic complaining. Had not_she_ had her sorrows too? And few had cared for her, while she hadcared for many. She had done enough; she had striven after theimpossible, and was weary of this stifling crowded life. She longed forthat repose in mere sensation which she had sometimes dreamed of in thesultry afternoons of her early girlhood, when she had fancied herselffloating naiad-like in the waters.
The clear waves seemed to invite her: she wished she could lie down tosleep on them and pass from sleep into death. But Romola could notdirectly seek death; the fulness of young life in her forbade that. Shecould only wish that death would come.
At the spot where she had paused there was a deep bend in the shore, anda small boat with a sail was moored there. In her longing to glide overthe waters that were getting golden with the level sun-rays, she thoughtof a story which had been one of the things she had loved to dwell on inBoccaccio, when her father fell asleep and she glided from her stool tosit on the floor and read the `Decamerone.' It was the story of thatfair Gostanza who in her lovelorn-ness desired to live no longer, butnot having the courage to attack her young life, had put herself into aboat and pushed off to sea; then, lying down in the boat, had wrapt hermantle round her head, hoping to be wrecked, so that her fear would behelpless to flee from death. The memory had remained a mere thought inRomola's mind, without budding into any distinct wish; but now, as shepaused again in her walking to and fro, she saw gliding black againstthe red gold another boat with one man in it, making towards the bendwhere the first and smaller boat was moored. Walking on again, she atlength saw the man land, pull his boat ashore and begin to unloadsomething from it. He was perhaps the owner of the smaller boat also:he would be going away soon, and her opportunity would be gone withhim--her opportunity of buying that smaller boat. She had not yetadmitted to herself that she meant to use it, but she felt a suddeneagerness to secure the possibility of using it, which disclosed thehalf-unconscious growth of a thought into a desire.
"Is that little boat yours also?" she said to the fisherman, who hadlooked up, a little startled by the tall grey figure, and had made areverence to this holy Sister wandering thus mysteriously in the eveningsolitude.
It _was_ his boat; an old one, hardly seaworthy, yet worth repairing toany man who would buy it. By the blessing of San Antonio, whose chapelwas in the village yonder, his fishing had prospered, and he had now abetter boat, which had once been Gianni's who died. But he had not yetsold the old one. Romola asked him how much it was worth, and then,while he was busy, thrust the price into a little satchel lying on theground and containing the remnant of his dinner. After that, shewatched him furling his sail and asked him how he should set it if hewanted to go out to sea, and then pacing up and down again, waited tosee him depart.
The imagination of herself gliding away in that boat on the darkeningwaters was growing more and more into a longing, as the thought of acool brook in sultriness becomes a painful thirst. To be freed from theburden of choice when all motive was bruised, to commit herself,sleeping, to destiny which would either bring death or else newnecessities that might rouse a new life in her!--it was a thought thatbeckoned her the more because the soft evening air made her long to restin the still solitude, instead of going back to the noise and heat ofthe village.
At last the slow fisherman had gathered up all his movables and waswalking away. Soon the gold was shrinking and getting duskier in seaand sky, and there was no living thing in sight, no sound but thelulling monotony of the lapping waves. In this sea there was no tidethat would help to carry her away if she waited for its ebb; but Romolathought the breeze from the land was rising a little. She got into theboat, unfurled the sail, and fastened
it as she had learned in thatfirst brief lesson. She saw that it caught the light breeze, and thiswas all she cared for. Then she loosed the boat from its moorings, andtried to urge it with an oar, till she was far out from the land, tillthe sea was dark even to the west, and the stars were disclosingthemselves like a palpitating life over the wide heavens. Resting atlast, she threw back her cowl, and, taking off the kerchief underneath,which confined her hair, she doubled them both under her head for apillow on one of the boat's ribs. The fair head was still very youngand could bear a hard pillow.
And so she lay, with the soft night air breathing on her while sheglided on the water and watched the deepening quiet of the sky. She wasalone now: she had freed herself from all claims, she had freed herselfeven from that burden of choice which presses with heavier and heavierweight when claims have loosed their guiding hold.
Had she found anything like the dream of her girlhood? No. Memorieshung upon her like the weight of broken wings that could never belifted--memories of human sympathy which even in its pains leaves athirst that the Great Mother has no milk to still. Romola felt orphanedin those wide spaces of sea and sky. She read no message of love forher in that far-off symbolic writing of the heavens, and with a greatsob she wished that she might be gliding into death.
She drew the cowl over her head again and covered her face, choosingdarkness rather than the light of the stars, which seemed to her likethe hard light of eyes that looked at her without seeing her. Presentlyshe felt that she was in the grave, but not resting there: she wastouching the hands of the beloved dead beside her, and trying to wakethem.