The fire had given Ragna an idea; she crept out of bed and took from her writing case Angelescu's sketch of Prince Mirko, and the portraits of him she had cut from illustrated journals. She looked at them in turn, the handsome, smiling, indifferent face looked out from the slips of paper, as it always had, but to her it was changed. She saw now, as she had not before, the selfish hardness of the sensual mouth, the nonchalant boldness of the almond-shaped eyes, the impress of self-indulgence over the whole face. This, then, was her dream-hero, this! Have all idols clay feet, she wondered? It was more than love she had lost, more than innocence,—it was the ideal of all her girlhood, all her maiden hopes and dreams. Tears filled her eyes; suddenly she lifted the pictures to her lips, and kissed them passionately, then dashing the tears away, she laid them, one by one on the fire, watched them flame up and shrivel to fluttering black rags,—and crept back to bed.
"It is over," she thought, "all over. I will put the past behind me, as though nothing had been; it is destroyed, as the flames destroyed the pictures. It is idiotic to pretend that one little hour of weakness can ruin one's whole life! I shall put it behind me, I shall forget it all, I shall wipe it from my memory. It shall not influence my life—except that I shall be wiser in the future."
So said Ragna; she had yet to realize that the future is made up of the past—of a thousand pasts, that one can no more wipe a past event out of one's life, than one can discard all one's past personality, the growth of years and of circumstance, and put on a new one. Every act has it consequence, and the complex interweaving of these consequences build up what men call fate,—also we are bound as much by the consequences of the acts of others, as by those of our own,—we are bound by the acts of countless generations past. Every day that passes, we dislodge stones that shall rebound, we know not where, or when, in the years to come, stones that shall wound men and women we will never know, who will be unconscious of our existence.
CHAPTER VII
The whole party was dull as a result of the veglione, following in that the general relaxation in the surrounding atmosphere.
With the evening of Mardi Gras, the carnival gaiety had reached its highest pitch, the flame had burnt itself out with the moccoli and the reaction precipitated the city from an orgy of light and colour into the grey asceticism of fasting and prayer. Rome, for six weeks, turned her back on the World, the Flesh and the Devil. The gay crowds who had paraded the streets in mask and domino now flocked to the churches for early Mass, the charming sinner sought the confessional, and if, on Sundays, irrepressible Frivolity lifted a corner of the pall of Piety, giving the outer world a glimpse of twinkling eyes and flashing teeth, Monday promptly replaced the black veil. Even the sun was keeping Lent; day after day the dawn rose on grey, sodden skies. Draggled black-robed priests plodded unceasingly through the rain, and dripping multitudes thronged the churches tramping the slime of the streets in over the marble floors.
"I've had enough of this!" Astrid complained over and over again, "for Heaven's sake let us get to some place where the sun shines!"
Estelle Hagerup had lost her enthusiasm for the Eternal City, with all the pictures covered up in the churches, and the awful weather that kept one from getting about there was nothing left to do, she declared. Even listening to a sweet-voiced gentleman in striped trousers, singing "Lontano del mar" is apt to pall on one, especially if the said gentleman happens to know no other song.
To Ragna the penitential weeks were most irksome, as above all else she wished to forget, and the very spirit of the season, imbued as it was with introspection, examination of conscience, and the reviewing of past days, would, in spite of her efforts, insistently present to her mental vision that which she most desired to blot from her memory. She shunned the churches for the very reiteration of the endless litanies seemed to take possession of her thoughts and drive them in a vicious circle, round and round and ever back again to the same old theme. Pagan Rome was no better; filled as it was, with painful association it could afford her no relief. It was with unfeigned joy then, that she greeted Fru Bjork's decision to leave the Eternal City for Florence.