The White Sister Part 18

On learning that Ugo was already in bed, she said she would wait in the large sitting-room while the doctor went in to see what could be done. If the Captain would see her, she would speak to him when Pieri had finished his work.

Nearly three-quarters of an hour pa.s.sed before he joined her.

'It is a bad fracture,' he said, 'and it will require an operation if he is not to be lamed for life. I should much prefer to perform it in a proper place. There is none better than the private hospital of the White Sisters and it is by far the nearest. Do you happen to know the place?'

The Princess said that she did and that she was a patroness of the Convent. The surgeon observed that it was now past eleven, and that the patient could not be moved before morning. If she agreed with him and would lend her motor for the purpose, he would communicate with the hospital and take the Captain there himself between eight and nine o'clock. For the present he needed no special nursing, and the orderly seemed to be an unusually intelligent young fellow, who could be trusted and was sincerely attached to his master. The Princess agreed to everything, and asked whether the Captain wished to see her.

He did, and when she stood beside him he pressed her hand gratefully and thanked her with real feeling for her great kindness. She answered, before Pica, that she would always do anything in her power for any one of his name, and she explained that she would be at the hospital on the following morning to see that he had a good private room and received special care. He thanked her again and bade her good-night. Two or three minutes later he heard the motor puffing and wheezing, and Pica came back after shutting the door. Ugo now sent him over to the guard-room with a message to the lieutenant on duty, requesting him to write a brief official account of the occurrence and to send it by hand to headquarters the next morning. It was necessary that another officer should take Ugo's place in command of the fort while he was in hospital.

Pica came back again in a few moments. Then Ugo insisted on having writing-materials, and sat up, propped with cus.h.i.+ons, while he wrote a short note to the Minister of War, explaining what had happened, and that he would not leave his home on the morrow till his brother had arrived, but that some further arrangement must be made if Giovanni was to lodge in the house, which would probably be wanted for the officer who was to take his own place. Pica was to be at the Minister's own residence at seven o'clock with this note and was to wait for an answer. The Minister was known to be a very early riser and would have plenty of time to arrange matters as he thought best.

Ugo was now in a good deal of pain, and it seemed very long before the panes of his window turned from black to grey as the dawn fore-lightened. He made Pica get him coffee, and soon after sunrise the orderly brought one of the men from the guard-house to remain within call in case the Captain needed anything. Pica took his bicycle and went off to the city with the note for the Minister.

As Ugo had antic.i.p.ated, Giovanni arrived in a station cab while the orderly was still absent, and was admitted by the soldier, on his representing that he was a relation of the Captain's and had come a long distance to see him. The man briefly explained that Ugo was in bed, having been wounded in the foot during the night, but was in no danger.

A moment later the brothers were together.

Ugo saw a man standing beside his bed and holding out his hand whom he would certainly not have recognised if he had met him in the street. His skin was almost as dark as an Arab's, and he wore a brown beard which had reddened in streaks under the African sun. He was as lean as a half-starved greyhound, but did not look ill, and his eyes were fiery and deeper set than formerly. His head had been shaved when he had worn a turban, but the hair was now more than half an inch long, and was as thick as a beaver's fur. He was dressed in a suit of thin grey clothes which he had picked up in Ma.s.sowah, and which did not fit him, and his canvas shoes were in a bad way. When he spoke, it was with a slight accent, unlike any that Ugo had heard, and he occasionally hesitated as if trying to find a word.

After the first greetings, he sat down and told the main facts of his story. When he paused the two looked at each other and after a while they laughed.

'The disguise is complete,' Ugo said. 'But are you going to call on the Minister in those clothes? If you are seen near the magazine in that condition you will be warned off and I shall have to explain who you are.'

'I suppose I could get into a uniform of yours, since I have grown thin,' Giovanni answered. 'We are the same height, I remember, and as I am in the artillery no one can find fault with me for wearing the uniform of another regiment than my own, in an emergency. It will be better than presenting myself before the Minister in these rags! I suppose you have got your captaincy by this time?'

'Six months ago!'

They talked on, and Ugo explained that he was to be taken to the hospital of the White Sisters soon after eight o'clock.

'I shall go with you,' Giovanni answered, 'and see you installed in your room. The Minister does not want me till twelve o'clock.'

They agreed to tell Pica, when he returned, that Giovanni was an artillery officer and a relative who had just arrived from a long journey without any luggage. As the orderly had known that the Captain expected a visitor before long, he would not be surprised, and the relations.h.i.+p would account for Giovanni's name.

The latter selected an undress uniform from his brother's well-stocked wardrobe and proceeded to scrub and dress in the adjoining dressing-room, talking to Ugo through the open door and asking him questions about old friends and comrades. Ugo told him of the Princess Chiaromonte's visit and of her kindness in coming with Doctor Pieri on the previous evening. Giovanni appeared at the door, half dressed.

'Did you tell her that I am alive?' he asked.

'No. The Ministry has made an official secret of it, so I have told no one.'

'And you say that she will be at the hospital this morning! We shall meet, then. I wonder whether she will know me.'

'It is impossible, I should say,' Ugo answered, looking at his brother's lean face and heavy beard. 'I hardly recognise you even now!'

Giovanni finished dressing and came out at last, looking very smart in Ugo's clothes. He had asked no questions about Angela, for he felt tolerably sure that Ugo had never known her, and it was his intention to go directly from the hospital to Madame Bernard's lodgings, where he hoped to find them both as he had left them. He could not bring himself to make vague and roundabout inquiries just then, and he was still less inclined to confide his love story to this brother whom he hardly felt that he knew. So he kept his own counsel and waited, as he had learned to do in five years of slavery.

The Minister sent back a line by Pica to say that Giovanni was to come to him at noon, and would then receive his instructions as to a change of lodging, if any should seem advisable. There was a word of sympathy also for Ugo.

In less than an hour more, Giovanni had helped Pica to carry Ugo down to the Princess's motor, which had appeared punctually, bringing Doctor Pieri, and the wounded man was comfortably placed in the limousine with the surgeon beside him and Giovanni sitting opposite. Ugo introduced his brother as a relation who had arrived very opportunely that morning.

The motor buzzed away from the door, and reached the Convent of Santa Giovanna d'Aza in a few minutes. The sky had cleared after the rain and the April sun was s.h.i.+ning gloriously.

CHAPTER XII

Sister Giovanna was the supervising nurse for the week, and in the natural course of her duty it was she who went to the telephone when Doctor Pieri called up the hospital at seven o'clock. In a few words he explained the case as far as was necessary, and begged the Sister to have a good room ready for the patient; he believed that Number Two was vacant.

It was, and the wounded man could have it. The Doctor said he would bring him in a motor towards nine o'clock.

'The patient's name, if you please,' said Sister Giovanna in a businesslike tone.

'Captain Severi. I do not know his first name. What is the matter, Sister?'

The nun had uttered a low exclamation of surprise, which Pieri had heard distinctly.

'Nothing,' she answered, controlling her voice. 'Is he a son of the late general of that name?'

'I do not know, Sister. He is a friend of the Princess Chiaromonte. Is it all right? I am busy.'

'Yes,' answered the nun's voice. 'It is all right.'

She hung up the receiver and went to give the necessary orders, rather whiter about the lips than usual. The fact that the injured officer was a friend of her aunt's seemed to make it certain that he was one of the brothers of whom Giovanni had often spoken, and the mere thought that she was to see him in an hour or two was disturbing. For a moment she was strongly impelled to beg the Mother Superior that some one else might take her place during the morning; but in the first place it seemed cowardly to leave her post; and secondly, in order to explain her position, she would have been obliged to tell the Mother Superior her whole story, which she had never done. Monsignor Saracinesca knew it, and Madame Bernard, but no one else whom she ever saw nowadays.

Then came the comforting inward suggestion that Giovanni would have wished her to do all she could for his brother, and this at once made a great difference. She went to see that the room was in perfect order, though she was quite sure that it was, and she sent for the orderlies on duty and told them to be especially careful in moving a patient who would soon be brought, and to get ready a certain new chair which was especially constructed for carrying persons who had received injuries of the feet only, and who did not require to be transported on the ordinary stretcher, which always gives a patient the idea that his case is a serious one.

She also went out to the lodge, to warn the portress that Captain Severi was expected, and must not be kept waiting even a few seconds longer than was necessary. The excellent Anna looked up with some surprise, for she had never kept any one waiting without good cause, since she had been in charge of the gate, but she bent her head obediently and said nothing. It seems to be a general rule with religious houses that no one is ever to wait in the street for admittance; the barrier, which is often impa.s.sable, is the door that leads inward from the vestibule.

When everything was prepared for Ugo's reception, Sister Giovanna went back to the duties which kept her constantly occupied in the morning hours and often throughout the day. She was personally responsible to the house-surgeon for the carrying out of all directions given the nurses, as he was, in grave cases, to the operating surgeon or visiting physician. It was her business to inspect everything connected with the hospital, from the laundry, the sterilising apparatus, and the kitchen, to the dispensary, where she was expected to know from day to day what supplies were on hand and what was needed. She was ultimately answerable for the smallest irregularity or accident, and had to report everything to the Mother Superior every evening after Vespers and before supper. During her week, every one in the establishment came to her for all matters that concerned the hospital and the nurses on duty by day or night; but she had nothing to do with those who were sent out to private cases. They reported themselves and gave an account of their work to the Mother Superior, whenever they returned to the Convent.

The supervising nurse for the week did not sleep in her cell, but lay down on a pallet bed behind a curtain, in her office on the first floor, close to the dispensary, where she could be called at a moment's notice, though it rarely happened that she was disturbed between ten o'clock at night and five in the morning.

The Mother Superior had introduced the system soon after she had taken charge of the Convent hospital, of which the management now differed from that of most similar inst.i.tutions in this respect, for the most competent Sisters took turns in the arduous task of supervision, from week to week. At other times they went to private cases when required, or acted as ordinary nurses. Any one who has any knowledge of hospitals managed by religious orders is aware that no two of them work by precisely the same rules, and that the rules themselves are largely the result of the Mother Superior's own experience, modified by the personal theories and practice of the operating surgeon and the princ.i.p.al visiting physician. The scale of everything relating to the administration is, of course, very small compared with that of any public hospital, and all responsibility therefore weighs more directly on the doctors and nurses in charge at any given moment than on a board of management; in other words, on the right individuals rather than on a body.

Princess Chiaromonte rose early and drove to the Convent in a cab, intending to come home in the motor which was to bring Ugo and the doctor. She rang, was admitted, and asked for the supervising nurse.

The portress, who knew her by sight, at once led her to the large hall already mentioned, and rang the bell which gave warning that some one was waiting who had business in the hospital. She drew one of the chairs forward for the Princess and went back to the lodge. A moment later a novice opened the door that led to the wards, and the visitor repeated her request, without mentioning her name.

The novice bowed and disappeared, and several minutes pa.s.sed before Sister Giovanna came. She had last seen her aunt ill in bed and flushed with fever, but the Princess had changed too little in five years not to be instantly recognised by any one who had known her so recently.

Both women made a movement of surprise, and the nun stood still an instant, still holding the handle of the door. Of the two, however, she was the first to regain her composure. Her aunt rose with alacrity indeed, and held out her hand, but she coloured a little and laughed with perceptible awkwardness. She had long wished to see her niece, but the meeting had come too unexpectedly to be pleasant.

'I hope you have felt no ill effects from your illness?' Sister Giovanna spoke calmly, in a tone of civil inquiry.

'Oh, none at all!' answered the Princess. 'Thanks to your wonderful nursing,' she added, with rather too much eagerness. 'I had hoped to tell you before now how grateful I am; but though I have been here more than once, you were never here when I came.'

Sister Giovanna bent her head slightly.

'There is really nothing to thank me for,' she said. 'The novice said you wished to see me; can I be of any service to you?'