The Dying Message.
When Romola arrived at the entrance of San Marco she found one of the
Frati waiting there in expectation of her arrival. Monna Brigida
retired into the adjoining church, and Romola was conducted to the door
of the chapter-house in the outer cloister, whither the invalid had
been conveyed; no woman being allowed admission beyond this precinct.
When the door opened, the subdued external light blending with that of
two tapers placed behind a truckle-bed, showed the emaciated face of
Fra Luca, with the tonsured crown of golden hair above it, and with
deep-sunken hazel eyes fixed on a small crucifix which he held before
him. He was propped up into nearly a sitting posture; and Romola was
just conscious, as she threw aside her veil, that there was another
monk standing by the bed, with the black cowl drawn over his head, and
that he moved towards the door as she entered; just conscious that in
the background there was a crucified form rising high and pale on the
frescoed wall, and pale faces of sorrow looking out from it below.
The next moment her eyes met Fra Luca’s as they looked up at her from
the crucifix, and she was absorbed in that pang of recognition which
identified this monkish emaciated form with the image of her fair young
brother.
“Dino!” she said, in a voice like a low cry of pain. But she did not
bend towards him; she held herself erect, and paused at two yards’
distance from him. There was an unconquerable repulsion for her in that
monkish aspect; it seemed to her the brand of the dastardly
undutifulness which had left her father desolate—of the grovelling
superstition which could give such undutifulness the name of piety. Her
father, whose proud sincerity and simplicity of life had made him one
of the few frank pagans of his time, had brought her up with a silent
ignoring of any claims the Church could have to regulate the belief and
action of beings with a cultivated reason. The Church, in her mind,
belonged to that actual life of the mixed multitude from which they had
always lived apart, and she had no ideas that could render her
brother’s course an object of any other feeling than incurious,
indignant contempt. Yet the lovingness of Romola’s soul had clung to
that image in the past, and while she stood rigidly aloof, there was a
yearning search in her eyes for something too faintly discernible.
But there was no corresponding emotion in the face of the monk. He
looked at the little sister returned to him in her full womanly beauty,
with the far-off gaze of a revisiting spirit.
“My sister!” he said, with a feeble and interrupted but yet distinct
utterance, “it is well thou hast not longer delayed to come, for I have
a message to deliver to thee, and my time is short.”
Romola took a step nearer: the message, she thought, would be one of
affectionate penitence to her father, and her heart began to open.
Nothing could wipe out the long years of desertion; but the culprit,
looking back on those years with the sense of irremediable wrong
committed, would call forth pity. Now, at the last, there would be
understanding and forgiveness. Dino would pour out some natural filial
feeling; he would ask questions about his father’s blindness—how
rapidly it had come on? how the long dark days had been filled? what
the life was now in the home where he himself had been nourished?—and
the last message from the dying lips would be one of tenderness and
regret.
“Romola,” Fra Luca began, “I have had a vision concerning thee. Thrice
I have had it in the last two months: each time it has been clearer.
Therefore I came from Fiesole, deeming it a message from heaven that I
was bound to deliver. And I gather a promise of mercy to thee in this,
that my breath is preserved in order to—”
The difficult breathing which continually interrupted him would not let
him finish the sentence.
Romola had felt her heart chilling again. It was a vision, then, this
message—one of those visions she had so often heard her father allude
to with bitterness. Her indignation rushed to her lips.
“Dino, I thought you had some words to send to my father. You forsook
him when his sight was failing; you made his life very desolate. Have
you never cared about that? never repented? What is this religion of
yours, that places visions before natural duties?”
The deep-sunken hazel eyes turned slowly towards her, and rested upon
her in silence for some moments, as if he were meditating whether he
should answer her.
“No,” he said at last; speaking as before, in a low passionless tone,
as of some spirit not human, speaking through dying human organs. “No;
I have never repented fleeing from the stifling poison-breath of sin
that was hot and thick around me, and threatened to steal over my
senses like besotting wine. My father could not hear the voice that
called me night and day; he knew nothing of the demon-tempters that
tried to drag me back from following it. My father has lived amidst
human sin and misery without believing in them: he has been like one
busy picking shining stones in a mine, while there was a world dying of
plague above him. I spoke, but he listened with scorn. I told him the
studies he wished me to live for were either childish trifling—dead
toys—or else they must be made warm and living by pulses that beat to
worldly ambitions and fleshly lusts, for worldly ambitions and fleshly
lusts made all the substance of the poetry and history he wanted me to
bend my eyes on continually.”
“Has not my father led a pure and noble life, then?” Romola burst
forth, unable to hear in silence this implied accusation against her
father. “He has sought no worldly honours; he has been truthful; he has
denied himself all luxuries; he has lived like one of the ancient
sages. He never wished you to live for worldly ambitions and fleshly
lusts; he wished you to live as he himself has done, according to the
purest maxims of philosophy, in which he brought you up.”
Romola spoke partly by rote, as all ardent and sympathetic young
creatures do; but she spoke with intense belief. The pink flush was in
her face, and she quivered from head to foot. Her brother was again
slow to answer; looking at her passionate face with strange passionless
eyes.
“What were the maxims of philosophy to me? They told me to be strong,
when I felt myself weak; when I was ready, like the blessed Saint
Benedict, to roll myself among thorns, and court smarting wounds as a
deliverance from temptation. For the Divine love had sought me, and
penetrated me, and created a great need in me; like a seed that wants
room to grow. I had been brought up in carelessness of the true faith;
I had not studied the doctrines of our religion; but it seemed to take
possession of me like a rising flood. I felt that there was a life of
perfect love and purity for the soul; in which there would be no uneasy
hunger after pleasure, no tormenting questions, no fear of suffering.
Before I knew the history of the saints, I had a foreshadowing of their
ecstasy. For the same truth had penetrated even into pagan philosophy:
that it is a bliss within the reach of man to die to mortal needs, and
live in the life of God as the Unseen Perfectness. But to attain that I
must forsake the world: I must have no affection, no hope, wedding me
to that which passeth away; I must live with my fellow-beings only as
human souls related to the eternal unseen life. That need was urging me
continually: it came over me in visions when my mind fell away weary
from the vain words which record the passions of dead men: it came over
me after I had been tempted into sin and had turned away with loathing
from the scent of the emptied cup. And in visions I saw the meaning of
the Crucifix.”
He paused, breathing hard for a minute or two: but Romola was not
prompted to speak again. It was useless for her mind to attempt any
contact with the mind of this unearthly brother: as useless as for her
hand to try and grasp a shadow. When he spoke again his heaving chest
was quieter.
“I felt whom I must follow: but I saw that even among the servants of
the Cross who professed to have renounced the world, my soul would be
stifled with the fumes of hypocrisy, and lust, and pride. God had not
chosen me, as he chose Saint Dominic and Saint Francis, to wrestle with
evil in the Church and in the world. He called upon me to flee: I took
the sacred vows and I fled—fled to lands where danger and scorn and
want bore me continually, like angels, to repose on the bosom of God. I
have lived the life of a hermit, I have ministered to pilgrims; but my
task has been short: the veil has worn very thin that divides me from
my everlasting rest. I came back to Florence that—”
“Dino, you _did_ want to know if my father was alive,” interrupted
Romola, the picture of that suffering life touching her again with the
desire for union and forgiveness.
”—That before I died I might urge others of our brethren to study the
Eastern tongues, as I had not done, and go out to greater ends than I
did; and I find them already bent on the work. And since I came,
Romola, I have felt that I was sent partly to thee—not to renew the
bonds of earthly affection, but to deliver the heavenly warning
conveyed in a vision. For I have had that vision thrice. And through
all the years since first the Divine voice called me, while I was yet
in the world, I have been taught and guided by visions. For in the
painful linking together of our waking thoughts we can never be sure
that we have not mingled our own error with the light we have prayed
for; but in visions and dreams we are passive, and our souls are as an
instrument in the Divine hand. Therefore listen, and speak not
again—for the time is short.”
Romola’s mind recoiled strongly from listening to this vision. Her
indignation had subsided, but it was only because she had felt the
distance between her brother and herself widening. But while Fra Luca
was speaking, the figure of another monk had entered, and again stood
on the other side of the bed, with the cowl drawn over his head.
“Kneel, my daughter, for the Angel of Death is present, and waits while
the message of heaven is delivered: bend thy pride before it is bent
for thee by a yoke of iron,” said a strong rich voice, startlingly in
contrast with Fra Luca’s.
The tone was not that of imperious command, but of quiet
self-possession and assurance of the right, blended with benignity.
Romola, vibrating to the sound, looked round at the figure on the
opposite side of the bed. His face was hardly discernible under the
shadow of the cowl, and her eyes fell at once on his hands, which were
folded across his breast and lay in relief on the edge of his black
mantle. They had a marked physiognomy which enforced the influence of
the voice: they were very beautiful and almost of transparent delicacy.
Romola’s disposition to rebel against command, doubly active in the
presence of monks, whom she had been taught to despise, would have
fixed itself on any repulsive detail as a point of support. But the
face was hidden, and the hands seemed to have an appeal in them against
all hardness. The next moment the right-hand took the crucifix to
relieve the fatigued grasp of Fra Luca, and the left touched his lips
with a wet sponge which lay near. In the act of bending, the cowl was
pushed back, and the features of the monk had the full light of the
tapers on them. They were very marked features, such as lend themselves
to popular description. There was the high arched nose, the prominent
under-lip, the coronet of thick dark hair above the brow, all seeming
to tell of energy and passion; there were the blue-grey eyes, shining
mildly under auburn eyelashes, seeming, like the hands, to tell of
acute sensitiveness. Romola felt certain they were the features of Fra
Girolamo Savonarola, the prior of San Marco, whom she had chiefly
thought of as more offensive than other monks, because he was more
noisy. Her rebellion was rising against the first impression, which had
almost forced her to bend her knees.
“Kneel, my daughter,” the penetrating voice said again, “the pride of
the body is a barrier against the gifts that purify the soul.”
He was looking at her with mild fixedness while he spoke, and again she
felt that subtle mysterious influence of a personality by which it has
been given to some rare men to move their fellows.
Slowly Romola fell on her knees, and in the very act a tremor came over
her; in the renunciation of her proud erectness, her mental attitude
seemed changed, and she found herself in a new state of passiveness.
Her brother began to speak again—
“Romola, in the deep night, as I lay awake, I saw my father’s room—the
library—with all the books and the marbles and the leggio, where I used
to stand and read; and I saw you—you were revealed to me as I see you
now, with fair long hair, sitting before my father’s chair. And at the
leggio stood a man whose face I could not see. I looked, and looked,
and it was a blank to me, even as a painting effaced; and I saw him
move and take thee, Romola, by the hand; and then I saw thee take my
father by the hand; and you all three went down the stone steps into
the streets, the man whose face was a blank to me leading the way. And
you stood at the altar in Santa Croce, and the priest who married you
had the face of death; and the graves opened, and the dead in their
shrouds rose and followed you like a bridal train. And you passed on
through the streets and the gates into the valley, and it seemed to me
that he who led you hurried you more than you could bear, and the dead
were weary of following you, and turned back to their graves. And at
last you came to a stony place where there was no water, and no trees
or herbage; but instead of water, I saw written parchment unrolling
itself everywhere, and instead of trees and herbage I saw men of bronze
and marble springing up and crowding round you. And my father was faint
for want of water and fell to the ground; and the man 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. And thou, Romola, didst
wring thy hands and seek for water, and there was none. And the bronze
and marble figures seemed to mock thee and hold out cups of water, and
when thou didst grasp them and put them to my father’s lips, they
turned to parchment. And the bronze and marble figures seemed to turn
into demons and snatch my father’s body from thee, and the parchments
shrivelled up, and blood ran everywhere instead of them, and fire upon
the blood, till they all vanished, and the plain was bare and stony
again, and thou wast alone in the midst of it. And then it seemed that
the night fell and I saw no more... Thrice I have had that vision,
Romola. I believe it is a revelation meant for thee: to warn thee
against marriage as a temptation of the enemy; it calls upon thee to
dedicate thyself—”
His pauses had gradually become longer and more frequent, and he was
now compelled to cease by a severe fit of gasping, in which his eyes
were turned on the crucifix as on a light that was vanishing. Presently
he found strength to speak again, but in a feebler, scarcely audible
tone.
“To renounce the vain philosophy and corrupt thoughts of the heathens:
for in the hour of sorrow and death their pride will turn to mockery,
and the unclean gods will—”
The words died away.
In spite of the thought that was at work in Romola, telling her that
this vision was no more than a dream, fed by youthful memories and
ideal convictions, a strange awe had come over her. Her mind was not
apt to be assailed by sickly fancies; she had the vivid intellect and
the healthy human passion, which are too keenly alive to the constant
relations of things to have any morbid craving after the exceptional.
Still the images of the vision she despised jarred and distressed her
like painful and cruel cries. And it was the first time she had
witnessed the struggle with approaching death: her young life had been
sombre, but she had known nothing of the utmost human needs; no acute
suffering—no heart-cutting sorrow; and this brother, come back to her
in his hour of supreme agony, was like a sudden awful apparition from
an invisible world. The pale faces of sorrow in the fresco on the
opposite wall seemed to have come nearer, and to make one company with
the pale face on the bed.
“Frate,” said the dying voice.
Fra Girolamo leaned down. But no other word came for some moments.
“Romola,” it said next.
She leaned forward too: but again there was silence. The words were
struggling in vain.
“Fra Girolamo, give her—”
“The crucifix,” said the voice of Fra Girolamo.
No other sound came from the dying lips.
“Dino!” said Romola, with a low but piercing cry, as the certainty came
upon her that the silence of misunderstanding could never be broken.
“Take the crucifix, my daughter,” said Fra Girolamo, after a few
minutes. “His eyes behold it no more.”
Romola stretched out her hand to the crucifix, and this act appeared to
relieve the tension of her mind. A great sob burst from her. She bowed
her head by the side of her dead brother, and wept aloud.
It seemed to her as if this first vision of death must alter the
daylight for her for evermore.
Fra Girolamo moved towards the door, and called in a lay Brother who
was waiting outside. Then he went up to Romola and said in a tone of
gentle command, “Rise, my daughter, and be comforted. Our brother is
with the blessed. He has left you the crucifix, in remembrance of the
heavenly warning—that it may be a beacon to you in the darkness.”
She rose from her knees, trembling, folded her veil over her head, and
hid the crucifix under her mantle. Fra Girolamo then led the way out
into the cloistered court, lit now only by the stars and by a lantern
which was held by some one near the entrance. Several other figures in
the dress of the dignified laity were grouped about the same spot. They
were some of the numerous frequenters of San Marco, who had come to
visit the Prior, and having heard that he was in attendance on the
dying Brother in the chapter-house, had awaited him here.
Romola was dimly conscious of footsteps and rustling forms moving
aside: she heard the voice of Fra Girolamo saying, in a low tone, “Our
brother is departed;” she felt a hand laid on her arm. The next moment
the door was opened, and she was out in the wide piazza of San Marco,
with no one but Monna Brigida, and the servant carrying the lantern.
The fresh sense of space revived her, and helped her to recover her
self-mastery. The scene which had just closed upon her was terribly
distinct and vivid, but it began to narrow under the returning
impressions of the life that lay outside it. She hastened her steps,
with nervous anxiety to be again with her father—and with Tito—for were
they not together in her absence? The images of that vision, while they
clung about her like a hideous dream not yet to be shaken off, made her
yearn all the more for the beloved faces and voices that would assure
her of her waking life.
Tito, we know, was not with Bardo; his destiny was being shaped by a
guilty consciousness, urging on him the despairing belief that by this
time Romola possessed the knowledge which would lead to their final
separation.
And the lips that could have conveyed that knowledge were for ever
closed. The prevision that Fra Luca’s words had imparted to Romola had
been such as comes from the shadowy region where human souls seek
wisdom apart from the human sympathies which are the very life and
substance of our wisdom; the revelation that might have come from the
simple questions of filial and brotherly affection had been carried
into irrevocable silence.