The Tabernacle Unlocked.
Romola was waked by a tap at the door. The cold light of early morning
was in the room, and Maso was come for the travelling-wallet. The old
man could not help starting when she opened the door, and showed him,
instead of the graceful outline he had been used to, crowned with the
brightness of her hair, the thick folds of the grey mantle and the pale
face 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 will go
on quietly, and I shall not be far behind you. When you get out of the
gates you may go more slowly, for I shall perhaps join you before you
get to Trespiano.”
She closed the door behind him, and then put her hand on the key which
she had taken from the casket the last thing in the night. It was the
original key of the little painted tabernacle: Tito had forgotten to
drown it in the Arno, and it had lodged, as such small things will, in
the corner of the embroidered scarsella which he wore with the purple
tunic. One day, long after their marriage, Romola had found it there,
and had put it by, without using it, but with a sense of satisfaction
that the key was within reach. The cabinet on which the tabernacle
stood had been moved to the side of the room, close to one of the
windows, where the pale morning light fell upon it so as to make the
painted forms discernible enough to Romola, who knew them well,—the
triumphant Bacchus, with his clusters and his vine-clad spear, clasping
the crowned Ariadne; the Loves showering roses, the wreathed vessel,
the cunning-eyed dolphins, and the rippled sea: all encircled by a
flowery border, like a bower of paradise. Romola looked at the familiar
images with new bitterness and repulsion: they seemed a more pitiable
mockery than ever on this chill morning, when she had waked up to
wander in loneliness. They had been no tomb of sorrow, but a lying
screen. Foolish Ariadne! with her gaze of love, as if that bright face,
with its hyacinthine curls like tendrils among the vines, held the deep
secret of her life!
“Ariadne is wonderfully transformed,” thought Romola. “She would look
strange among the vines and the roses now.”
She took up the mirror, and looked at herself once more. But the sight
was so startling in this morning light that she laid it down again,
with a sense of shrinking almost as strong as that with which she had
turned from the joyous Ariadne. The recognition of her own face, with
the cowl about it, brought back the dread lest she should be drawn at
last into fellowship with some wretched superstition—into the company
of the howling fanatics and weeping nuns who had been her contempt from
childhood till now. She thrust the key into the tabernacle hurriedly:
hurriedly she opened it, and took out the crucifix, without looking at
it; then, with trembling fingers, she passed a cord through the little
ring, hung the crucifix round her neck, and hid it in the bosom of her
mantle. “For Dino’s sake,” she said to herself. Still there were the
letters to be written which Maso was to carry back from Bologna. They
were very brief. The first said—
“Tito, my love for you is dead; and therefore, so far as I was yours, I
too am dead. Do not try to put in force any laws for the sake of
fetching me back: that would bring you no happiness. The Romola you
married can never return. I need explain nothing to you after the words
I uttered to you the last time we spoke long together. If you supposed
them to be words of transient anger, you will know now that they were
the sign of an irreversible change.
“I think you will fulfil my wish that my bridal chest should be sent to
my godfather, who gave it me. It contains my wedding-clothes and the
portraits 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 by
staying 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 one
from seeking me. I could not bear my life at Florence. I cannot bear to
tell any one why. Help to cover my lot in silence. I have asked that my
bridal chest should be sent to you: when you open it, you will know the
reason. Please to give all the things that were my mother’s to my
cousin Brigida, and ask her to forgive me for not saying any words of
parting to her.
“Farewell, my second father. The best thing I have in life is still to
remember your goodness and be grateful to you.
“Romola.”
Romola put the letters, along with the crucifix, within the bosom of
her mantle, and then felt that everything was done. She was ready now
to depart.
No one was stirring in the house, and she went almost as quietly as a
grey phantom down the stairs and into the silent street. Her heart was
palpitating violently, yet she enjoyed the sense of her firm tread on
the broad flags—of the swift movement, which was like a chained-up
resolution set free at last. The anxiety to carry out her act, and the
dread of any obstacle, averted sorrow; and as she reached the Ponte
Rubaconte, she felt less that Santa Croce was in her sight than that
the yellow streak of morning which parted the grey was getting broader
and broader, and that, unless she hastened her steps, she should have
to encounter faces.
Her simplest road was to go right on to the Borgo Pinti, and then along
by the walls to the Porta San Gallo, from which she must leave the
city, and this road carried her by the Piazza di Santa Croce. But she
walked as steadily and rapidly as ever through the piazza, not trusting
herself to look towards the church. The thought that any eyes might be
turned on her with a look of curiosity and recognition, and that
indifferent minds might be set speculating on her private sorrows, made
Romola shrink physically as from the imagination of torture. She felt
degraded even by that act of her husband from which she was helplessly
suffering. But there was no sign that any eyes looked forth from
windows to notice this tall grey sister, with the firm step, and proud
attitude of the cowled head. Her road lay aloof from the stir of early
traffic, and when she reached the Porta San Gallo, it was easy to pass
while a dispute was going forward about the toll for panniers of eggs
and market produce which were just entering.
Out! Once past the houses of the Borgo, she would be beyond the last
fringe of Florence, the sky would be broad above her, and she would
have entered on her new life—a life of loneliness and endurance, but of
freedom. She had been strong enough to snap asunder the bonds she had
accepted in blind faith: whatever befell her, she would no more feel
the breath of soft hated lips warm upon her cheek, no longer feel the
breath of an odious mind stifling her own. The bare wintry morning, the
chill air, were welcome in their severity: the leafless trees, the
sombre hills, were not haunted by the gods of beauty and joy, whose
worship she had forsaken for ever.
But presently the light burst forth with sudden strength, and shadows
were thrown across the road. It seemed that the sun was going to chase
away the greyness. The light is perhaps never felt more strongly as a
divine presence stirring all those inarticulate sensibilities which are
our deepest life, than in these moments when it instantaneously awakens
the shadows. A certain awe which inevitably accompanied this most
momentous act of her life became a more conscious element in Romola’s
feeling as she found herself in the sudden presence of the impalpable
golden 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, and
the many turnings of the road on the level prevented her from seeing
that Maso was not very far ahead of her. But when she had passed Pietra
and was on rising ground, she lifted up the hanging roof of her cowl
and looked 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 of her
cowl making a pent-house on her brow had shut out the objects above the
level of her eyes, and for the last few moments she had been looking at
nothing but the brightness on the path and at her own shadow, tall and
shrouded like a dread spectre.
She wished now that she had not looked up. Her disguise made her
especially dislike to encounter monks: they might expect some pious
passwords of which she knew nothing, and she walked along with a
careful appearance of unconsciousness till she had seen the skirts of
the black mantles pass by her. The encounter had made her heart beat
disagreeably, for Romola had an uneasiness in her religious disguise, a
shame at this studied concealment, which was made more distinct by a
special effort to appear unconscious under actual glances.
But the black skirts would be gone the faster because they were going
down-hill; and seeing a great flat stone against a cypress that rose
from a projecting green bank, she yielded to the desire which the
slight shock had given her, to sit down and rest.
She turned her back on Florence, not meaning to look at it till the
monks were quite out of sight, and raising the edge of her cowl again
when she had seated herself, she discerned Maso and the mules at a
distance where it was not hopeless for her to overtake them, as the old
man would probably linger in expectation of her.
Meanwhile she might pause a little. She was free and alone.