The White Sister Part 34

'You are quite mistaken,' she said. 'I will deliver your message and Sister Giovanna shall give you her answer herself.'

She went towards the door, gliding across the floor noiselessly in her felt shoes; but just before she went out she turned to Giovanni again, and suddenly her eyes were blazing like live coals.

'And if you have the heart to kill yourself when you have talked with her,' she said, 'you are a coward, who never deserved to live and be called a man!'

She was gone before Giovanni could have answered, and the man who had risked life and limb to save others twelve hours earlier smiled faintly at the good Mother's womanly wrath and feminine invective.

He lay still on his back, staring at the ceiling, and he began to wonder what day of the week it would be when he would not be able to see it any more, and whether the end would come at night, or when the sunlight was streaming in, or on a rainy afternoon. He did not believe that Angela would be with him in a few minutes, and if she came--she would say----

The strength of the morphia was not yet quite spent, and he fell asleep in the middle of his train of thought, as had happened while he was speaking to the Mother in the early morning.

When he awoke the broad stripe of suns.h.i.+ne no longer fell across the counterpane, but lay on the gleaming tiles beyond the foot of the bed; and it fell, too, on Sister Giovanna's white frock and veil, for she was standing there motionless, waiting for him to waken. His head felt queer for a moment, and he wondered whether she would be standing on the same spot, with the same look, when he would be dying, a few days hence. There were deep purplish-brown rings under her eyes, which seemed to have sunk deeper in their sockets; there was no colour in her lips, or scarcely more than a shade; her young cheeks had grown suddenly hollow. For the Mother--her mother--had told her everything, and it was almost more than she could bear.

He looked at her two or three times, fixing his eyes on the ceiling in the intervals, to make sure that it was she and that he was awake; for there was something in his head that disturbed him now, a sort of beating on one side of the brain, with a dull feeling at the back, as if there were a quant.i.ty of warm lead there that kept his skull on the pillow. It was the beginning of fever, but he did not know it; it was the forewarner of the death he was choosing. The experienced nurse saw it in his face.

'Giovanni, do you know me?' she asked softly, coming a step nearer.

Instantly, he had all his faculties again.

'Yes; come to me,' he answered.

She came nearer and stood beside him.

'Sit down,' he said. 'This is the side--the side of my good arm. Sit down and let me take your hand, dear.'

She wondered at his quiet tone and gentle manner. They almost frightened her, for she remembered taking care of impatient, short-tempered people who had suddenly softened like this just at the end. But there was no reason in the world why he should die now, and she dismissed the thought as she took the hand he put out and held it. It was icy cold, as strong men's hands generally are when a fever is just beginning. She tried to warm it between hers, covering it up between her palms as much as she could; but she herself was not warm either, for she had been in her cell, where there was no sun in the morning, and the air was chilly and damp, because it had rained in all night.

Giovanni spoke again before she could find words.

'My life is in your hands, with my hand, Angela,' he said. 'Do what you will with it.'

He felt that she shook from head to foot, like a young tree that is rudely struck. He went on, as if he had prepared his words, though he had not even thought of them.

'With your love and your companions.h.i.+p, I shall not miss a limb, I shall not regret my profession, I shall be perfectly happy. Alone, I will not be forced artificially to live out my life a wretched cripple.'

It was brutal, and perhaps he knew it; but he was desperate and fate had given him a weapon to move any woman. In plain truth, it was as cruel as if he had put a pistol to his head and threatened to pull the trigger if she would not marry him. He had not done that yet, even when she had been in his room at Monteverde and the loaded revolver had been between them.

Sister Giovanna kept his hand bravely in hers and sat still, though it was hard. The question which must be answered, and which she alone could answer, had been asked with frightful directness, and though she had known only too well that it was coming, its tremendous import paralysed her and she could not speak.

It was plainly this: Should she kill him, of her own free will, for the sake of the solemn vow she had taken? Or should she save his life by breaking, even under permission, what she looked on as an absolutely inviolable promise?

What made her position most terrible was the absolute certainty of the fatal result, and its close imminence. In his condition, to put off the operation for another day, in order to consider her answer, would be to condemn him to death according to all probability of human science, since a few hours longer than that would put probability out of the question and make it a positive certainty. She could not speak; her tongue would not move when she tried to form words and her breath made no sound in her throat.

For some time Giovanni said nothing more, and lay quite still. When he spoke again, his voice was gentle.

'Dear, since it must be, I should like it to come like this, if you will--with my hand between yours.'

It was too much, and she cried aloud and bowed herself. But the mortal pain freed her tongue, and a moment later she broke out in a fervent appeal.

'Live, Giovanni, live--for Christ's good sake who died for you--for my sake, too--for your own! Live the life that is still before you, and you can make it great! If you love me, make it a n.o.ble life for that, if for nothing else! Do you know, all Rome is ringing with the story of what you did last night--the King, the Court, the Ministers are sending for news of you every half-hour--the world is calling you a hero--will you let them think that you are afraid of an operation, or will you let my enemy tell the world that you have let yourself die for my sake? That is what it comes to, one or the other of those things!'

Severi smiled faintly and shook his head without lifting it from the pillow.

'No man will call me coward,' he answered; 'and no one would believe Princess Chiaromonte--not if she took oath on her death-bed!'

'Will nothing move you?' cried the unhappy woman, in utter despair.

'Nothing that I can say? Not the thought of what life will mean to me when you are gone? Not my solemn a.s.surance that I can do nothing--nothing----'

'You can!' Giovanni cried, with sudden and angry energy. 'You are willing to let me die rather than risk the salvation of your own soul.

That is the naked truth of all this.'

Her hands left his as if they had lost their strength, and she rose at the same instant and tottered backwards against the near wall, speechless and transfixed with horror at the mere thought that what he said might be true.

But Giovanni's eyes did not follow her; the door had opened quietly, and Monsignor Saracinesca was there and had heard the last words.

The prelate's face expressed neither displeasure nor reproach; it was only very thoughtful.

Giovanni was in no humour to receive a visit from a priest just then, even though the latter was an old acquaintance and had once been a friend. Moreover, the last time they had been together, they had parted on anything but good terms. Giovanni spoke first.

'Have you come, like the others, to accuse me of committing suicide?'

he asked.

The answer was unexpected and uncompromising.

'No.'

Sister Giovanna, still half-stunned and steadying herself against the wall, turned wondering eyes to the speaker. The angry look in Severi's face changed to one of inquiry. He strongly suspected that the churchman had come to 'convert' him, as the phrase goes, and he was curious to see what line of argument a man of such intelligence and integrity would take.

'No,' repeated Monsignor Saracinesca, 'I have come for quite another purpose, which I hope to accomplish if you will listen to reason.'

The nun stood erect now, though still leaning back against the wall, and she had hidden her hands under her scapular.

'I do not think I am unreasonable,' Giovanni answered quietly. 'My position is this----'

'Do not tire yourself by going over it all,' the prelate answered. 'I understand your position perfectly, for I have been with the Mother Superior nearly half-an-hour. I am going to take something upon myself, as a man, which some of my profession may condemn. I am going to do it because I believe it is the right course, and I trust that G.o.d will forgive me if it is not.'

There was a tremor in the good man's voice, and he ceased speaking, as if to repeat inwardly the solemn words he had just spoken.

'What are you going to do?' asked Giovanni Severi.

On the question, the nun came forward and rested one hand on the chair in which she had sat, leaning towards the prelate at the same time, with parted lips and eyes full of a strange antic.i.p.ation.

'You know, I daresay, that I am Secretary to the Cardinal Vicar, and that such cases as yours are to a great extent within my province?'

Giovanni did not know this, but nodded; the nun, who knew it, bent her head, wondering more and more what was coming, and not daring to guess. Neither spoke.

'I am going to lay the whole matter before the Cardinal Vicar at once,' Monsignor Saracinesca continued calmly. 'I can be with him in twenty minutes, and I am going to tell him the plain truth. I do not think that any nun was ever more true to her vows than Sister Giovanna has been since your return. But there is a limit beyond which fidelity to an obligation may bring ruin and even death on some one whom the promise did not at first concern. When the limit is reached, it is the plain duty of those who have received that promise to relieve the maker of it from its observance, even though not asked to do so. That is what I am going to say to the Cardinal Vicar in half-an-hour. Are you satisfied?'

Sister Giovanna sank sideways upon the chair, with her arm resting on the back of it, and she hid her face in her sleeve.