“‘But that day will come,’ cried George vehemently, ‘and that speedily.’
“‘Perhaps,’ said Fleurange. ‘Who knows what time has in store for us? And who knows that in time the obstacle may not come from yourself?’
“She endeavored to say these last words in a playful tone. They were hardly uttered before she suddenly stopped; but the shade of the large cypresses that bordered the road prevented George from seeing the tears that inundated her face.”
Thus they part, under the cypresses. George thinks she is only leaving for a short time, to return again. She goes back to the convent, to bury there her broken heart and the hopes her own strong will has blighted. But convents are not built on broken hearts; and Madre Maddalena, who is none the less gifted with common sense and worldly prudence for leading a retired and saintly life, sends her back into the world “to continue the contest,” for the reasons already given, with these words:
“O my poor child! it would be much easier for me to tell you to remain and never leave us again. It would be sweeter for me to preserve you thus from all the sufferings that yet await you. But, believe me, the day will come when you will rejoice you were not spared these sufferings; and you will acknowledge that she who is now speaking to you knew you better than you knew yourself.”
Fleurange goes back to the world, to her uncle’s family, which is gradually recovering its fall through the efforts of Clement, her cousin, who was the first to welcome her among them. Notwithstanding her suffering, she carries on all the duties of life like a Christian woman, without despondency as though God were blotted out of the world, and equally without that foolish ostentation of gaiety sometimes assumed. She never thought with Dorothea that she had suffered “all the troubles of all the people on the face of the earth.” The hour never came to her “in which the waves of suffering shook her too thoroughly to leave any power of thought”; not that she suffered or loved less than Dorothea, but because she saw through all something higher than human suffering and more lovely than human love. That pagan hour never came to her, when Dorothea “repeated what the merciful eyes of solitude have looked on for ages in the spiritual struggles of man”; when “she besought hardness, and coldness, and aching weariness to bring her relief from the mysterious incorporeal might of her anguish”; nor did “she lie on the bare floor and let the night grow cold around her, while her grand woman’s frame was shaken by sobs as if she had been a despairing child.” Fleurange never, as did Dorothea, “yearned toward the perfect Right, that it might make a throne within her, and rule her errant wrong.” Whether she yearned or not, she knew what was right and what was wrong, and, by praying to God for help and strength, she did right. If women in love stop to ask themselves what is the “perfect right,” in nine cases out of ten in love matters the perfect right will be the absolute wrong. Right is fixed; there is a law in those things, as in all questions of the soul, not evolved out of the individual’s brains, but out of the heart of Christian charity, which is in Christ. Duty does not depend on feeling “the largeness of the world,” and on being “a part of that involuntary, palpitating life,” but on being a creation of God. George Eliot tends to pantheism, and, spite of herself, Christian instinct only prompts her heroine to do what is right. If we are “a part of that involuntary and palpitating life,” and nothing more, there is no necessary reason for charity.
The difference between Dorothea and Fleurange, two characters which, allowing for side differences of clime, are naturally similar, consists in all the sufferings of the one bearing the aspect of self-torture, whilst those of the other are a sacrifice. The sorrows of Fleurange, which, after all, are much greater than those of Dorothea, are endured for God’s sake and as coming from God. They are not a whit less painful to nature on this account; but they are explicable, and have a meaning which Dorothea never seems to realize. One suffers because she cannot help herself; the other because it is God’s will. On George Eliot’s principle, there is no guarantee for a person doing right at all, inasmuch as it is so very difficult to determine what is right. If right be “a part of that involuntary and palpitating life” only, it has no meaning beyond what is contained in the word accident; that is to say, right and wrong are effects of circumstance. Nor is this forcing a meaning, as may be seen from various passages in the book—unless, indeed, we have read them very wrongly. Thus, she speaks of the spirit struggling “against universal pressure, which will one day be too heavy for it, and bring the heart to its final pause.” She sneers at our referring a man “to the divine regard with perfect confidence,” and says: “Nay, it is even held sublime for our neighbor to expect the utmost there, however little he may have got from us.” And in another place: “Any one watching keenly the stealthy convergence of human lots sees a slow preparation of effects from one life on another, which tells like a calculated irony on the indifference or frozen stare with which we look at our unintroduced neighbor. Destiny stands by sarcastic, with our dramatis personæ folded in her hand.”
This sounds very fine, and that last sentence might have been written by one of the Greek poets. It is beautifully pagan; but, after all, human life is regulated in man and woman by a will that is free to use or reject the “slow preparation of effects,” to laugh at the phantom, destiny; and when it pleases God to bring this lesser life of time to “a final pause,” man goes before his Creator to give an account of his servitude indeed, but not of his slavery.
Fleurange writes from the convent to the princess. She herself had arranged the plot which was to blind George to her final departure, and this is how the princess receives the letter of the girl who had so freely offered up her heart on the altar of duty. The princess knew of the sacrifice. It is doubtful whether Rosamond Vincy ever displayed her unconscious selfishness so thoroughly as this:
“The Princess Catherine, in an elegant morning négligé, was alone with the Marquis Adelardi in her small salon, when a letter was brought her on a silver salver. She glanced at the address.