The White Sister Part 22

Again she looked away from the light, but her face could not turn whiter than it was.

'It was terribly sudden,' said Monsignor Saracinesca, after a moment's pause. 'You will no doubt wait a few days before seeing him, till you feel quite able to face what must be a very painful interview.'

'I am not afraid of it now. I was weak when we recognised each other.

I cannot quite remember--I heard him call me and I saw his eyes----'

'And you must have fainted. You were carried out to the well at once.'

'Who carried me?' asked the nun quickly.

'Doctor Pieri and Giovanni Severi.'

She made a slight movement.

'He carried me!'

She spoke almost unconsciously, and a very faint glow rose through her paleness, as when white gla.s.s is warmed an instant in the mouth of the furnace and then drawn back and quickly cooled again.

'Shall I talk with him before you meet?' asked the churchman presently.

Sister Giovanna did not answer at once; she seemed to be thinking.

'You know better than any one what my life has been,' she said at last. 'It was to you that I went for advice five years ago, and again before I took the veil. If you had thought it even distantly possible that he might be alive, you would not have let me take final vows.'

'Heaven forbid!' answered Monsignor Saracinesca very earnestly.

'Though I believed him dead, you knew that I loved him with all my heart.'

'Yes. As dearly as when you had last seen him alive.'

'I love him still. Is that wrong?'

'No.'

He said the word without hesitation, in all sincerity and true conviction, but the nun had expected another answer; a quick movement of the head showed that she was surprised.

'Are you sure?' she asked in a low and wondering tone.

'Yes, because I am sure that your love for him is as innocent as it ever was. The religious life is not meant to kill human affection.

Saint Benedict loved his sister Scholastica devotedly; Saint Francis was probably more sincerely attached to Saint Clare than to any living person.'

'I only know that I love him as dearly as ever,' said Sister Giovanna.

The churchman looked at her keenly for a moment, and she did not avoid his eyes.

'Would you break your vows for him?' he asked, with sudden directness.

The nun started as if he had struck her and half rose from her chair.

'Break my vows?' she cried, her eyes blazing with indignation.

But Monsignor Saracinesca only nodded and laid his thin hand flat on the table, towards her. She sank to her seat again.

'Then I know that, although you may love him more than any one in the world, you do not love him better than the work you have promised to do.'

'Heaven forbid!'

He had used the very same expression a few moments earlier, but with a different tone; for him it had been an a.s.severation of good faith, but with her it was more like a prayer. She had resented his question as if it had been an insult, but when he showed how much he trusted her, she began to distrust herself. She would die the martyr's death rather than break her vows in deed, but she was too diffident of her own womanhood not to fear a fall from the dignity of heartfelt resignation to the inward ignominy of an earthly regret. Besides, 'the work she had promised to do' had been promised for his sake, not for its own; not for any gain to her soul, but in the earnest hope that it might profit his, by G.o.d's mercy. Since he was not dead, but alive, the chief purpose of it died with his return to life. She did not love the work she had promised to do more than she loved him; that was not true, and never had been. All had been for him--her vow, her work, and her prayers. Heaven forbid, indeed, that she should now set him before them; yet it was hard not to do so and there was only one possible way; in a changed sense they must be given for him still, and for his salvation, else she could not give at all.

Monsignor Saracinesca had watched her progress from her noviciate to her present position of responsibility, and had often spoken of her with the Mother Superior. He would not have advised every nun to do what he thought best in her case. There was not another in the community, except the Mother herself, whom he would have trusted so fully. But, being what she was, his honourable sense of justice to a man who had suffered much and must suffer more impelled him to act as he did. As he himself said, it was a matter of opinion and judgment, and his own approved the course. Those may blame him who think otherwise, but no one can find fault with Sister Giovanna for following his advice; she had a right to believe that it was the best, and as for herself, she had never hesitated. The mere suggestion that she should not see Giovanni at least once and alone looked to her outrageous and contrary to all sense, as perhaps it was.

Monsignor Saracinesca would see him first and arrange the meeting. He thought it should take place in the cloistered garden.

'Why not here, in my office?' asked the nun.

But the churchman objected. If the two were to talk together, out of hearing, they must not be out of sight. Never, under any circ.u.mstances, should any one be able to say that there had been any secrecy about their interview. He himself would bring Giovanni to the place and the Mother Superior would accompany the nun. He and the Mother would withdraw into the hall and wait until Sister Giovanna dismissed Severi. The Mother would then join her, and Monsignor Saracinesca would go away with Giovanni.

In order to forestall evil speaking more effectually, the two should meet on the afternoon of the day on which the nun's week of duty as supervising nurse came to an end. On that evening she would go away to nurse a private case, and before that patient was recovered, Ugo Severi would certainly be well enough to go home, and Giovanni's daily visits to the hospital would have ceased. It would thus be easy to prove that after their only interview, in what might be called a public place, they had not been within the same walls at the same time.

No one who has watched the politics of the so-called 'socialist' party in Rome during the past twenty years will wonder at these precautions nor even call them exaggerated. To all intents and purposes the 'Vatican question' has ceased to exist; the Italian Government may fairly be said to be at peace with the Church; the old bitterness may survive amongst certain prejudiced people, chiefly in small towns, but the spirit of this time is a spirit of good-will and mutual forbearance, and the forces that were once so fiercely opposed actually work together for the common good in many more cases than the world knows of. The first article of the Italian Const.i.tution states that the religion of the Kingdom is that of the Roman Catholic Church; it is, and it will continue to be, and no attempt will ever be made on the part of the Monarchy to change or to cancel that opening clause.

The danger to which the Church is exposed lies in another quarter, and threatens not only the Church, but Christianity in all its forms; not only Christianity, but the Monarchy; and not the Monarchy only, but all const.i.tutional and civilised government. It is anarchy; and though it boasts itself to be socialism, true socialists disclaim it and its doings and all its opinions. If it can be so far honoured as to be counted as a party, it is the party that murdered King Humbert, that a.s.sa.s.sinated the Empress of Austria, and that would sooner or later kill the Pope, if he left the safe refuge which some persons still insist on calling his prison.

It is the party that continually spies upon all religious and charitable inst.i.tutions in Rome, and does not hesitate to invent stories of crime outright when it fails to detect one of those little flaws which its press magnifies to stains of abomination.

Monsignor Saracinesca understood these things better than the others concerned, and at least as well as any one in Rome. As for Giovanni, he had known him a little in former days and took him to be a man of honour, who would submit to any conditions necessary for protecting the nun from calumny. But he could hardly believe that the young officer's feelings had undergone no change in five years, for he judged men as most men judge each other. It was one thing to fall in love with a charming young girl in her first season; it was quite another to love her faithfully for five years, without ever seeing her or hearing from her, and to feel no disappointment on finding her as much changed as Angela was now, pale, sorrow-worn, and of no particular age. The true bloom of youth is something real, but it rarely lasts more than two years; it is as subtle and indescribable as the bloom of growing roses, which is gone within an hour after they are cut, though their beauty may be preserved for many days. There was the nun's habit, too, and the veil and wimple, proclaiming another and a greater change from which there was no return.

Ippolito Saracinesca had never been in love, even in his early youth; it was no wonder that he was mistaken in such a man as Giovanni Severi. The only danger he reckoned with lay in Sister Giovanna's own heart, and he felt that he could count on her courage, her self-respect, and most of all on her profoundly religious nature. No danger is ever overcome without danger, said Mimos. In the case of such a woman it was better, for her sake, to accept such risk as there might be in a single interview which must be decisive and final, than to let her live on haunted by disturbing memories and hara.s.sed by regret.

CHAPTER XIV

It was raining when Giovanni and Monsignor Saracinesca rang at the door of the Convent. The Mother Superior had ordered two rush-bottomed chairs to be brought out of the hall and placed under the shelter of the cloister just on one side of the gla.s.s door; for Sister Giovanna was to receive a visit, as she explained, from an officer who had known her father and had business with her. Such things had happened before in the community, and the lay sister was not surprised. She carried the chairs out and set them in what she considered a proper position, about two yards apart and both facing the garden. The rain fell softly and steadily, the sky was of an even dove-grey, and the smell of the damp earth and the early spring flowers filled the cloister.

Giovanni was a soldier and would impose his military punctuality upon the prelate, who, like most churchmen, had a clearer idea of eternity than of definite time. As the Convent clock was striking, therefore, the Mother Superior and Sister Giovanna came down the narrow stairs, for they had been together a quarter of an hour, though they had scarcely exchanged half-a-dozen words. They walked slowly round under the vaulted cloister, the Mother on the right, the nun on the left, according to the rigid custom, and they had just turned the last corner and were in sight of the two chairs when the gla.s.s door opened.

Monsignor Saracinesca's voice was heard.

'Remember what I have said. I trust you, and you know that the cloister is open to every one.'

'Yes,' Giovanni answered, as both appeared on the threshold.

They saw the two nuns already near and made a few steps to meet them.

Monsignor Saracinesca greeted the Mother, who bent her head as she answered him; Giovanni stood still, his eyes fixed on Angela's face.

But she looked steadily down at the flagstones, and her hands were hidden under the broad scapular of white cloth that hung straight down from under her gorget to her feet.

There are no awkward silences when churchmen or nuns meet, still less if the meeting takes place by appointment, for each knows exactly what he or she is expected to say and says it, deliberately and without hesitation. In less than a minute after they had met, the Mother and Monsignor Saracinesca entered the hall together and closed the gla.s.s door after them. The soldier and the nun were face to face at last.