Coming Back.
“Rise, my daughter,” said Fra Girolamo at last. “Your servant is
waiting not far off with the mules. It is time that I should go onward
to Florence.”
Romola arose from her knees. That silent attitude had been a sort of
sacrament to her, confirming the state of yearning passivity on which
she had newly entered. By the one act of renouncing her resolve to quit
her husband, her will seemed so utterly bruised that she felt the need
of direction even in small things. She lifted up the edge of her cowl,
and saw Maso and the second Dominican standing with their backs towards
her on the edge of the hill about ten yards from her; but she looked at
Savonarola again without speaking, as if the order to Maso to turn back
must come from him and not from her.
“I will go and call them,” he said, answering her glance of appeal;
“and I will recommend you, my daughter, to the Brother who is with me.
You desire to put yourself under guidance, and to learn that wisdom
which has been hitherto as foolishness to you. A chief gate of that
wisdom is the sacrament of confession. You will need a confessor, my
daughter, and I desire to put you under the care of Fra Salvestro, one
of the brethren of San Marco, in whom I most confide.”
“I would rather have no guidance but yours, father,” said Romola,
looking anxious.
“My daughter, I do not act as a confessor. The vocation I have
withdraws me from offices that would force me into frequent contact
with the laity, and interfere with my special duties.”
“Then shall I not be able to speak to you in private? if I waver, if—”
Romola broke off from rising agitation. She felt a sudden alarm lest
her new strength in renunciation should vanish if the immediate
personal influence of Savonarola vanished.
“My daughter, if your soul has need of the word in private from my
lips, you will let me know it through Fra Salvestro, and I will see you
in the sacristy or in the choir of San Marco. And I will not cease to
watch over you. I will instruct my brother concerning you, that he may
guide you into that path of labour for the suffering and the hungry to
which you are called as a daughter of Florence in these times of hard
need. I desire to behold you among the feebler and more ignorant
sisters as the apple-tree among the trees of the forest, so that your
fairness and all natural gifts may be but as a lamp through which the
Divine light shines the more purely. I will go now and call your
servant.”
When Maso had been sent a little way in advance, Fra Salvestro came
forward, and Savonarola led Romola towards him. She had beforehand felt
an inward shrinking from a new guide who was a total stranger to her:
but to have resisted Savonarola’s advice would have been to assume an
attitude of independence at a moment when all her strength must be
drawn from the renunciation of independence. And the whole bent of her
mind now was towards doing what was painful rather than what was easy.
She bowed reverently to Fra Salvestro before looking directly at him;
but when she raised her head and saw him fully, her reluctance became a
palpitating doubt. There are men whose presence infuses trust and
reverence; there are others to whom we have need to carry our trust and
reverence ready-made; and that difference flashed on Romola as she
ceased to have Savonarola before her, and saw in his stead Fra
Salvestro Maruffi. It was not that there was anything manifestly
repulsive in Fra Salvestro’s face and manner, any air of hypocrisy, any
tinge of coarseness; his face was handsomer than Fra Girolamo’s, his
person a little taller. He was the long-accepted confessor of many
among the chief personages in Florence, and had therefore had large
experience as a spiritual director. But his face had the vacillating
expression of a mind unable to concentrate itself strongly in the
channel of one great emotion or belief—an expression which is fatal to
influence over an ardent nature like Romola’s. Such an expression is
not the stamp of insincerity; it is the stamp simply of a shallow soul,
which will often be found sincerely striving to fill a high vocation,
sincerely composing its countenance to the utterance of sublime
formulas, but finding the muscles twitch or relax in spite of belief,
as prose insists on coming instead of poetry to the man who has not the
divine frenzy. Fra Salvestro had a peculiar liability to visions,
dependent apparently on a constitution given to somnambulism.
Savonarola believed in the supernatural character of these visions,
while Fra Salvestro himself had originally resisted such an
interpretation of them, and had even rebuked Savonarola for his
prophetic preaching: another proof, if one were wanted, that the
relative greatness of men is not to be gauged by their tendency to
disbelieve the superstitions of their age. For of these two there can
be no question which was the great man and which the small.
The difference between them was measured very accurately by the change
in Romola’s feeling as Fra Salvestro began to address her in words of
exhortation and encouragement. After her first angry resistance of
Savonarola had passed away, she had lost all remembrance of the old
dread lest any influence should drag her within the circle of
fanaticism and sour monkish piety. But now again, the chill breath of
that dread stole over her. It could have no decisive effect against the
impetus her mind had just received; it was only like the closing of the
grey clouds over the sunrise, which made her returning path monotonous
and sombre.
And perhaps of all sombre paths that on which we go back after treading
it with a strong resolution is the one that most severely tests the
fervour of renunciation. As they re-entered the city gates the light
snow-flakes fell about them; and as the grey sister walked hastily
homeward from the Piazza di San Marco, and trod the bridge again, and
turned in at the large door in the Via de’ Bardi, her footsteps were
marked darkly on the thin carpet of snow, and her cowl fell laden and
damp about her face.
She went up to her room, threw off her serge, destroyed the parting
letters, replaced all her precious trifles, unbound her hair, and put
on her usual black dress. Instead of taking a long exciting journey,
she was to sit down in her usual place. The snow fell against the
windows, and she was alone.
She felt the dreariness, yet her courage was high, like that of a
seeker who has come on new signs of gold. She was going to thread life
by a fresh clue. She had thrown all the energy of her will into
renunciation. The empty tabernacle remained locked, and she placed
Dino’s crucifix outside it.
Nothing broke the outward monotony of her solitary home, till the night
came like a white ghost at the windows. Yet it was the most memorable
Christmas-eve in her life to Romola, this of 1494.