The White Sister Part 2

Such righteousness as his had venial sins to expiate, what hope was there left for men of ordinary earthly pa.s.sions and failings?

It was a consolation to think of that, Angela told herself, now that the tide of darkness had ebbed back to the depth of terror whence it had risen; and when at last the long dream slowly dissolved before returning reality the lonely girl's eyes overflowed with natural tears at the thought that her father's motionless lips would never move again, even to reprove her, and that she was looking for the last time on all that earth still held of him who had given her life.

CHAPTER III

Three days later Angela sat alone in her morning-room, reading a letter from Giovanni Severi. All was over now--the lying in state, the funeral at the small parish church, the interment in the cemetery of San Lorenzo, where the late Prince had built a temporary tomb for himself and his family, under protest, because modern munic.i.p.al regulations would not allow even such a personage as he to be buried within the walls, in his own family vault, at Santa Maria del Popolo. But he had been confident that even if he did not live to see the return of the Pope's temporal power, his remains would soon be solemnly transferred to the city, to rest with those of his fathers; and he had looked forward to his resurrection from a sepulchre better suited to his earthly rank and spiritual worth than a brick vault in a public cemetery, within a hundred yards of the thrice-anathematised crematorium, and of the unhallowed burial-ground set aside for Freemasons, anarchists, Protestants, and Jews. But no man can be blamed fairly for wis.h.i.+ng to lie beside his forefathers, and if Prince Chiaromonte had failed to see that the destiny of Italy had out-measured the worldly supremacy of the Vatican in the modern parallelogram of forces, that had certainly been a fault of judgment rather than of intention. He had never wavered in his fidelity to his ideal, nor had he ever voluntarily submitted to any law imposed by the 'usurper.'

'That excellent Chiaromonte is so extremely clerical,' Pope Leo the Thirteenth had once observed to his secretary with his quiet smile.

But Angela missed her father constantly, not understanding that he had systematically forced her to look to him as the judge and master of her existence, and she wondered a little why she almost longed for his grave nod, and his stern frown of disapproval, and even for the daily and hourly reproof under which she had so often chafed. Madame Bernard had been installed in the palace since the day of the fatal accident, and she was kindness personified, full of consideration and forethought; yet the girl was very lonely and miserable from morning till night, and when she slept she dreamed of the dead Knight of Malta's face, of the yellow light of the wax torches, and the voices of the priests.

On the fourth day a letter came from Giovanni, the first she had ever received from him. She did not even know his handwriting, and she looked at the signature before reading the note to see who had written to her so soon. When she understood that it was he, a flood of suns.h.i.+ne broke upon her gloom. The bright morning sun had indeed been s.h.i.+ning through the window for an hour, but she had not known it till then.

It was not a love-letter. He used those grammatically illogical but superfinely courteous forms which make high Italian a mystery to strangers who pick up a few hundred words for daily use and dream that they understand the language. He used the first person for himself, but spoke of her in the third singular; he began with: 'Most gentle Donna Angela,' and he signed his full name at the end of a formal phrase setting forth his profoundly respectful homage. She would have been much surprised and perhaps offended if he had expressed himself in any more familiar way. Brought up as she had been under the most old-fas.h.i.+oned code in Europe when at home, and under the frigid rule of the Ladies of the Sacred Heart when she was at school, any familiarity of language seemed to her an outrage on good manners, and might even be counted a sin if she condescended to it in speaking with a man who was not yet her husband. She had been made to address her father in the third person feminine singular ever since she had learned to talk, precisely as Giovanni wrote to her; and if she prayed to the Deity with the less formal second person plural, this was doubtless because the Italian prayers had been framed in less refined and courteous times than her own.

In spite of his stiff grammar, however, Severi managed to write things that brought the colour to her face and the light to her eyes. He said, for instance, that he was coming to see her that very afternoon; that in order not to attract attention at the gate of the palace he would wear civilian's dress, and that he hoped she would not only receive him, but would send Madame Bernard out of the room for a little while, so that he might speak to her alone.

The proposal was so delightful and yet so disturbing that Angela thought it must be wicked and tried to examine her conscience at once; but it shut up like an oyster taken out of the water and pretended to be perfectly insensible, turn it and probe it how she would.

So she gave it up; and she did so the more readily because it would be quite impossible to see Giovanni that afternoon, enchanting as the prospect would have been. Her aunt the Marchesa had sent word that she was coming at four o'clock with the lawyer to explain Angela's position to her, and it was impossible to say how long the two might stay. Meanwhile she must send word to Giovanni not to come, for it would not suffice that he should be refused admittance at the gate, since he might chance to present himself just when the Marchesa drove up, which would produce a very bad impression. Angela was ashamed to send her maid with a note to a young officer, and she would not trust one of the men-servants; she turned for advice to Madame Bernard, who was her only confidante.

'What am I to do?' she asked when she had explained everything. 'He is generally at the War Office at this time and he may not even go home before he comes here. I see no way but to send a note.'

'He would certainly go home to change his clothes,' answered the practical Frenchwoman; 'but it is not necessary for you to write. I will telephone to the War Office, and if the Count is there I will explain everything.'

Angela looked at her doubtfully.

'But then the servant who telephones will know,' she objected.

'The servant? Why? I do not understand. I shall speak myself. No one will be there to hear.'

'Yourself? My father never could, and I never was shown how to do it.

Are you sure you understand the thing? It is very complicated, I believe.'

Madame Bernard was not surprised, for she knew the ways of the Palazzo Chiaromonte; but she smiled and a.s.sured the young girl that a telephone was not really such a dangerous instrument as she had been led to believe.

'I once tried to make a few st.i.tches with a sewing-machine,' Angela said, apparently in explanation.

'A telephone is different,' Madame Bernard answered gravely. 'Shall I ask the Count to come to-morrow at four o'clock, instead of to-day?'

Angela hesitated, and then blushed faintly.

'Do you think----' she began, but she stopped and hesitated. 'He would be angry, I am sure----' She seemed to be suddenly distressed.

'Your father?' asked the Frenchwoman, guessing what she meant. 'My dear Princess----'

'Oh, please don't call me that!' cried Angela. 'You never do----'

'You see, you are a great personage now, my dear child,' Madame Bernard answered, 'and I am no longer your governess----'

'But you are my friend, dear, dear Madame Bernard! Indeed, I think you are my only friend now!'

And thereupon Angela threw her arms round the little woman's neck and kissed her very affectionately. Madame Bernard's fresh face beamed with pleasure.

'Thank you, my dear,' she answered. 'And as for your father, my child, he is without doubt in heaven; and that means that he now judges you by your intentions and no longer by appearances only.'

This sage little speech rea.s.sured Angela, though she soon afterwards asked herself whether it was quite loyal to allow any one to say that the Prince had ever judged her 'by appearances only.' But while she was making this reflection Madame Bernard was already telephoning to Giovanni, who was at the War Office, as Angela supposed, and he answered with alacrity that he would come to the palace on the following afternoon and ask to see Madame Bernard on a matter of business. It was really her business to teach French, as all the servants knew, and if they thought that the young officer came to ask about some lessons for himself or a friend, so much the better. Madame Bernard was naturally practical, and Giovanni was by nature quick-witted; so the matter was settled in a few words, to the satisfaction of both; and when Angela was merely told that he was coming she was much more pleased than she was willing to show, and she said no more about her father's hypothetical disapproval.

That afternoon she received the Marchesa del Prato and the lawyer downstairs in the second of the outer drawing-rooms. It was cold there, but she had not quite dared to order a fire to be made, because the Prince had never allowed fires except in the inner rooms, which were still closed under the notarial seals. The place had a certain grandeur of its own, for the ma.s.sive decorations, the heavy furniture, and the rich brocade curtains all dated from the best period of Louis the Fourteenth's reign. On the walls there were four or five first-rate pictures, the largest of which was a magnificent portrait of a former Chiaromonte by Vand.y.k.e; there was a Holy Family by Guercino, another by Bonifacio, a Magdalen with the box of ointment, by Andrea del Sarto, and one or two smaller paintings of no inconsiderable value.

But at that hour the light was bad, for the afternoon had turned cold and rainy after a beautiful morning, and at four o'clock it was still too early to have lamps. A few moments after the hour, a servant opened the door, held the curtains aside, and announced the visitor.

'Her Excellency, the Princess Chiaromonte!'

Angela started slightly at the name. The last Princess Chiaromonte who had pa.s.sed through that doorway had been her mother, and in her solitude the girl had not even been told that her uncle had already a.s.sumed the t.i.tle of the head of the house. The lacquey paid no attention whatever to the quiet man in black who followed the Princess, holding his hat against his chest with both hands and advancing with a bowing motion at every step, as if he were saluting the family chairs as he pa.s.sed them. Angela vaguely remembered his solemnly obsequious face.

Her aunt seemed to have grown taller and larger, as she bent to imprint a formal kiss on the girl's cheek, and then sat down in one of the huge old easy-chairs, while the lawyer seated himself at a respectful distance on an ottoman stool with his high hat on his knees. Angela took her place at one end of the stiff sofa that stood directly under the Vand.y.k.e portrait, and she waited for her aunt to speak.

The Princess had evidently prepared herself, for she spoke clearly and did not pause for some time.

'Your uncle has a slight attack of influenza,' she said; 'otherwise he would have come with me, and I should have been more than glad if he himself could have explained the whole situation to you instead of leaving that painful duty to me. You are well aware, my dear Angela, that your father always clung to the most prejudiced traditions of the intransigent clericals, and could never be induced to conform to any of the new regulations introduced by the Italian Government. In point of fact, I do not think he quite realised that the old order had pa.s.sed away when he was a mere boy, and that the new was to be permanent, if not everlasting. If he had, he would have acted very differently, I am sure, and my present duty would have been much easier than it is. Are you quite certain that you understand that?'

Angela was quite certain that she did, and nodded quietly, though she could not see how her father's political convictions could affect her own present situation.

'I have no doubt,' continued the Princess, 'that he brought you up to consider yourself the heiress of all his fortune, though not of the t.i.tle, which naturally goes to the eldest male heir. Am I right?'

'He never told me anything about my inheritance,' Angela replied.

'So much the better. It will be easier for me to explain your rather unusual position. In the first place, I must make it clear to you that your father and mother declined to go before the mayor at the Capitol when they were married, in spite of the regulations which had then been in force a number of years. They were devout Catholics and the blessing of the Church was enough for them. According to your father, to go through any form of civil ceremony, before or after the wedding, was equivalent to doubting the validity of the sacrament of marriage.'

'Naturally,' Angela a.s.sented, as her aunt paused and looked at her.

'Very naturally.' The Princess's eyes began to glitter oddly, and the lawyer turned his hat uneasily on his knees. 'Very naturally, indeed!

Unfortunately for you, however, your father was not merely overlooking a munic.i.p.al regulation, as he supposed; he was deliberately bidding defiance to the laws of Italy.'

'What do you mean?' asked Angela rather nervously.

'It is very painful to explain,' answered the elder woman with gleaming eyes and a disagreeable smile. 'The simple truth is that as your father and mother were not civilly married--civilly, you understand--they were not legally married at all, and the law will never admit that they were!'

Angela's hand tightened on the arm of the old sofa.

'Not married?' she cried. 'My father and mother not married? It is impossible, it is monstrous----'

'Not "legally" married, I said,' replied the Princess. 'To be legally married, it is absolutely necessary to go before the mayor at the Capitol and have the civil ceremony properly performed. Am I right?'

she asked, turning suddenly to the lawyer. 'It is absolutely necessary, is it not?'