The White Sister Part 25

'You will not do it again,' she said simply. 'Of course I forgive you.'

'Thank you. It is all I can expect, since you have told me that I was asking the impossible. You see Madame Bernard sometimes, do you not?'

'Yes. Almost every week.'

'She will give me news of you. I suppose I must not send you a message by her. That would be against the rules!'

'The message might be!' Sister Giovanna actually smiled again. 'But if it is not, there is no reason why she should not bring me a greeting from you.'

'But not a letter?'

'No. I would not take it from her. It would have to be given to the Mother Superior. If she were willing to receive it at all, it would be her duty to read it, and she would judge whether it should be given to me or not.'

'Is that the rule?' Giovanni asked, more indifferently than she had expected.

'Yes. It is the rule in our order. If it were not, who could prevent any one from writing to a nun?'

'I was not finding fault with it. I must not keep you standing here any longer. If you will not sit down and talk a little more, I had better be going.'

'Yes. You have been here long enough, I think.'

He did not press her. He was so submissive that if he had begged permission to stay a few minutes more she would have consented, and she wished he would, when she saw him holding out his hand to say good-bye; but she was too well pleased at having dominated his wild temper to make a suggestion which might betray weakness in herself.

She took his hand and was a little surprised to find it as cold as hers had been when he came; but his face was not pale--she forgot that five years of Africa had bronzed it too much for paleness--and he was very quiet and collected. She went to the door of the hall with him and opened it before he could do so for himself.

They parted almost like mere acquaintances, he bowing on the step, she bending her head. The Mother Superior and Monsignor Saracinesca had been sitting by the table, talking, but both had risen and come forward as soon as the pair appeared outside the gla.s.s door. It all pa.s.sed off very satisfactorily, and the Mother Superior gave a little sigh of relief when the churchman and the soldier went away together, leaving her and Sister Giovanna standing in the hall. She felt that Monsignor Saracinesca had been right, after all, in approving the meeting, and that she had been mistaken in thinking that it must endanger the nun's peace.

She said nothing, but she was quietly pleased, and a rare, sweet smile softened her marble features. She asked no questions about what had pa.s.sed, being quite sure that all was well, and that if there had ever been anything to fear, it was gone.

The prelate and Giovanni walked along the quiet street in silence for some distance; then Severi stopped suddenly, as many Italians do when they are going to say something important.

'You will help me, I am sure,' he said, speaking impetuously from the first. 'Though I never knew you well in old times, I always felt that you were friendly. You will not allow her to ruin both our lives, will you?'

'What sort of help do you want from me?' asked the tall churchman, bending his eyes to the energetic young face.

'The simplest thing in the world!' Giovanni answered. 'We were engaged to be married when I left with that ill-fated expedition. She thought me dead. She must be released from her vows at once! That is all.'

'It is out of the question,' answered Monsignor Saracinesca, with supernal calm.

'Out of the question?' Giovanni frowned angrily. 'Do you mean that it cannot be done? But it is only common justice! She is as much my wife as if you had married us and I had left her at the altar to go to Africa!

You cannot be in earnest!'

'I am. In the first place, there is no ground for granting a dispensation.'

'No ground?' cried Severi indignantly. 'We loved each other, we meant to marry! Is that no reason?'

'No. You were not even formally betrothed, either before your parish priest or the mayor. Without a solemn promise in the proper form and before witnesses, there is no binding engagement to marry. That is not only canonical law, but Italian common law, too.'

'We had told each other,' Giovanni objected. 'That was enough.'

'You are wrong,' answered Monsignor Saracinesca gently. 'The Church will do nothing that the law would not do, and the law would not release Sister Giovanna, or any one else, from a legal obligation taken under the same circ.u.mstances as the religious one she has a.s.sumed.'

'What do you mean?'

'This. If, instead of becoming a nun, Angela had married another man after you were lost, Italian law would not annul the marriage in order that she might become your wife.'

'Of course not!'

'Then why should the Church annul an obligation which is quite as solemn as marriage?'

Giovanni thought he had caught the churchman in a fallacy.

'I beg your pardon,' he replied. 'I was taught as a boy that marriage is a sacrament, but I never heard that taking the veil was one!'

'Quite right, in principle. In reality, it is considered, for women, the equivalent of ordination, and therefore as being of the nature of a sacrament.'

'I am not a theologian, to discuss equivalents,' retorted Giovanni roughly.

'Very true, but a man who knows nothing of mathematics may safely accept the statement of a mathematician about a simple problem. That is not the point, however. If you remember, I said that "under the same circ.u.mstances" the Church would not do what the law would not. The Church considers a nun's final vows to be as binding under its regulations as the law considers that any civil contract is. The "circ.u.mstances" are therefore exactly similar.'

Giovanni was no match for his cool antagonist in an argument. He cut the discussion short by a direct question.

'Is it in the Pope's power to release Sister Giovanna from her vows, or not?'

'Yes. It is--in principle.'

'Then put your principles into practice and make him do it!' cried the soldier rudely.

Monsignor Saracinesca was unmoved by this attack, which he answered with calm dignity.

'My dear Captain,' he said, 'in the first place, no one can "make" the Pope do things. That is not a respectful way of speaking.'

Giovanni was naturally courteous and he felt that he had gone too far.

'I beg your pardon,' he answered. 'I mean no disrespect to the Pope, though I tell you frankly that I do not believe in much, and not at all in his authority. What I ask is common justice and your help as a friend. I ask you to go to him and lay the case before him fairly, as before a just man, which I heartily believe him to be. You will see that he will do what you admit is in his power and give Sister Giovanna her dispensation.'

'If you and she had been married before your disappearance,' argued the churchman, 'His Holiness would a.s.suredly not refuse. If you had been solemnly betrothed before your parish priest as well as legally promised in marriage at the Capitol, he might make an exception, though a civil betrothal is valid only for six months, under Italian law. But there was no marriage and no such engagement.'

Giovanni found himself led into argument again.

'We had intended to bind ourselves formally,' he objected. 'I have heard it said by priests that everything depends on the intention and that without it the most solemn sacrament is an empty show! Will you doubt our intention if I give you my word that it was mine, and if Sister Giovanna a.s.sures you that it was hers?'

'Certainly not! The Pope would not doubt you either, I am sure.'

'Then, in the name of all that is just and right, what is the obstacle?

If you admit that the intention is the one important point, and that it existed, what ground have you left?'

'That is begging the question, Captain. It is true that without the intention a sacrament is an empty show, but the intention without the sacrament is of no more value than intention without performance would be in law. Less, perhaps. There is another point, however, which you have quite overlooked. If a request for a dispensation were even to be considered, it ought to come from Sister Giovanna herself.'