The White Sister Part 21

Her lips were livid, but she ruled the rising storm and sat quite still, her fingers twisted together and straining on her knee. If Sister Giovanna had looked up, she would have wondered how mere sympathy could be so deep and stirring. But she could not; her own struggle was too desperate. Minutes pa.s.sed before she spoke again, and then there was a change in her, for her voice was much more steady.

'It was so easy to be good when he was dead.'

She had been happy an hour ago, yesterday, last week, working and waiting for the blessed end, believing that he had died to serve his country and that G.o.d would let him meet her in heaven. Why had he come back now, too late for earth, but a lifetime too soon for heaven? It had been so easy to be strong and brave and faithful for his sake, when he was dead. It was little enough that she had said, but each word had meant a page of her life. Mother Veronica heard, and she understood.

'Pray,' she said, after a long time; and her voice came as from very far away, for she too had told her story in that one syllable.

Human nature turned upon her, rebellious, with a rending cry.

'I cannot! He is alive! He is here! Don't you understand? How can I pray? For what? That he may die again? G.o.d of mercy! And if not that, can I pray to be free? Free? Free from what? Free to do what? To die?

Not even that! Others will be taken, but I shall live--thirty, forty, fifty years, knowing that he is alive--knowing that I may see him any day!'

The elder woman's white fingers twined round each other more desperately, for Sister Giovanna's face was turned full to her now, and their eyes were meeting; the young nun's were fierce with pain, but the Mother's were strangely l.u.s.treless and dull.

'No,' she said, mechanically answering the last words, 'you must not see him.'

'Not see him once?'

Sister Giovanna leaned far forwards, grasping the arms of the easy-chair, and her voice came thick and hoa.r.s.e. Did the woman with the marble face think that she, too, was made of stone? Not see the man she had loved, who had been suddenly, violently dead, who was alive again, and had come back to her? The Mother could not be in earnest! If she was, why did she not answer now? Why was she sitting there, with that strange look, silently wringing her hands?

Even in her cruel distress Sister Giovanna felt a sort of wonder.

Perhaps the Mother had not meant what she said, and would not speak lest she should contradict herself. The mere thought was a hope; whether for good or evil the tortured girl knew not, but it loosed her tongue.

'He will come to me!' she cried. 'He will, I tell you! You do not know him! Did you hear his voice as I did when he called me? Did you see his face? Could walls or bars keep such a man from the woman he loves?

I must face him myself, and to face him I must kill something in me--cut it out, tear it up from its roots--I am only a woman after all!

A nun can be a woman still, a weak woman, who has loved a man very, very dearly----'

'Oh, Angela, hus.h.!.+ For the love of Heaven, my child, my child!'

To Sister Giovanna's unspeakable amazement, the unbending nature was breaking down, the marble saint, with the still white face, who had bidden her pray, and never see Giovanni again. She felt herself lifted from her seat and clasped in a despairing embrace; she felt the small nervous frame shaking in the storm of an emotion she could not understand, though she knew it was as great as her own and as terrible to bear, and that the heart that beat against hers was breaking, too.

Neither shed a tear; tears would have been heavenly refreshment, but they would not come. Another moment and Angela felt herself sinking back into her chair, and when she opened her eyes the Mother Superior was at the table, half seated, half lying across it, on the heaps of papers and account-books, and her outstretching hands clasped the foot of the old crucifix beside the leaden inkstand.

'Miserere mei, Domine!'

The voice of her prayer broke the stillness like a silver bell. Then she began to recite the greatest of the penitential psalms.

'Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee, O Lord: Lord, hear my voice.'

And by long habit, yet with some dim hope of peace, Sister Giovanna responded:

'Let Thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications.'

They said it to the end, verse answering verse, and the prayer of the King-Poet stilled the throbbing of hurts too deep to heal.

Two hours after she had fainted in the hall, Sister Giovanna was doing her work in the hospital again as usual. A wonderful amount of physical resistance can be got out of moral conviction, and there is no such merciful shelter for mental distress as a uniform, from the full dress of a field-marshal to a Sister of Charity's cornet.

Of the persons who had been witnesses of the scene, the Doctor and Ugo Severi could be trusted, and Princess Chiaromonte was too much afraid of Giovanni to brew gossip about his love-affair. There remained the two orderlies, who could not be prevented from telling the story to their wives and friends if they liked; but they were trusty, middle-aged men of good character; they shared the affectionate admiration for Sister Giovanna which almost every one in the Convent hospital felt for her, and they would be the very last to say a word to her discredit. These circ.u.mstances account well enough for the fact that the story did not get into the newspapers at the time.

Sister Giovanna went back to her work, but she did not go near Ugo Severi, and she gave strict orders that his brother, if he came to see him again during the day, was to be accompanied to the door of the room by an orderly. As Ugo had swallowed nothing but a cup of black coffee before coming to the hospital, and was therefore in a condition to take ether, Pieri had given notice that he would operate on the injured foot at two o'clock. There would be no need for the presence of the supervising nurse, who would have no difficulty in keeping out of Giovanni's way for the present, as he would certainly not be allowed to roam the hospital in search of her.

She meant to meet him once and alone, no matter how she might be hindered, and nothing that the Mother Superior or Monsignor Saracinesca could say should make it impossible. She knew that he would try every means of seeing her, and when he succeeded in making an opportunity which she could accept, she would take it, come what might; till then, she must wait, and while she was waiting she would find the strength she needed.

That was her plan, and it was simple enough. She might be mistaken about many questions, but nothing could make that seem wrong which her conscience told her was right. And it was right to see him once; she was sure of it. The rest was confused and uncertain and she took no thought what she should say; she only knew she must make him understand, though it would be hard, and when that was done, she would not see him again while she lived.

She meant to make that final parting a certainty by going to Rangoon with the next mission; nothing should change her determination now.

Her feet were heavy that day, and her voice was dull and m.u.f.fled when she gave her orders; but she made no mistakes. Many a man has fought more stubbornly and bravely after a wound and a fall than at the outset, and few men could tell themselves that they were braver than Sister Giovanna was when she recovered control of her actions after the first stunning shock.

She stayed in her office as much of the time as possible. In due course the a.s.sistant head-nurse came to report that Pieri had finished his work and that Captain Ugo had recovered well from the ether; his brother was with him and would stay till eight o'clock, the hour at which all visitors were required to leave the hospital except in cases of extreme danger. Sister Giovanna nodded and wrote a few lines in the day-book.

It was then half-past three. Clearly Giovanni's plan was to spend as many hours as possible under the roof, in the hope of seeing her; for though the operation had been a long one, requiring the skill of a great surgeon to perform it well, Ugo was in no danger from it, and it might be supposed that a man who had just come back from such an experience as Giovanni had lived through would wish to see a few old friends on the first day of his return, or would be obliged, at the very least, to attend to some necessary business. Sister Giovanna did not know that his return was being purposely kept a secret from the public press, and that he was far safer from reporters while he stayed in the Convent hospital than he could be in his lodging.

At five o'clock the door of her office opened, and to her surprise she saw Monsignor Saracinesca standing before her, hat in hand. She could not remember that she had ever seen him there before, but it was an office, after all, and there was no reason why he should not come to it if he had business with her. She rose to receive him. He shut the door, which was the only one, bowed gravely, and took one of the two spare rush-bottomed chairs and seated himself, before he spoke.

'The Mother Superior sent for me,' he said, 'and I have been with her an hour. She has asked me to come to you. Are you at leisure?'

'Unless I am called. I am on duty.'

He noticed the m.u.f.fled tone and the slowness of her speech. She sat facing him, on the other side of the plain table, her open report-book before her.

'You will not blame the Mother Superior for sending me, Sister. She is in the deepest distress for you. You must have seen that, when you spoke with her this morning.'

'She was more than kind.'

Monsignor Saracinesca sighed, but the nun did not notice it. Now that she knew why he had come, she needed all her strength and courage again.

He went on quietly with his short explanation. Mother Veronica had told him of what had happened in the hall; he had known the rest long ago from Sister Giovanna herself. That was the substance, and he wasted no words. Then he paused, and she knew what was coming next, for he would speak of a possible meeting; but how he would regard that she could not guess, and she waited steadily for the blow if it was to be one.

'The Mother Superior thinks that you should not see him,' he said.

'I know. She told me so.'

'I do not agree with her,' said Monsignor Saracinesca slowly.

The nun turned her face from the afternoon light, but said nothing; with the greatest sacrifice of her life before her she should not feel joy rising like the dawn in her eyes, at the mere thought of seeing the man whose love she must renounce.

'We are human,' said the churchman, 'and our victories must be human, to be worth anything. It was in His humanity that Christ suffered and overcame. It is not victory to slink from the fight and shut oneself up in a fortress that is guarded by others. Men and women must be good men and women in this world if they hope to be saints hereafter, and there is no such thing as inactive goodness.'

Sister Giovanna looked at him again, but still she did not speak.

'Though I am a priest,' continued Monsignor Saracinesca, 'I am a man of the world in the sense of having belonged to it, and I now live less apart from it than I could wish, though it is not such a thoroughly bad place as those say who do not know it. I do not feel that I got rid of all obligations to those who still belong to it when I was ordained, and I do not think that when you took the veil in a working order, you dropped all obligation to the persons with whom you had lived till then. In doing so, you might be depriving some one else of a right.'

Sister Giovanna listened to this exposition in silence and tried to follow it.

'In my opinion,' the prelate went on, 'Giovanni Severi has a just claim to see you. I speak under authority and I may be wrong, but it can only be a matter of judgment and of opinion, and since your Mother Superior has asked for mine, I give it as well as I can. You are not a cloistered nun, Sister. There is no reason why you should not receive a friend whom you have believed to be dead for years and who has unexpectedly come back to life.'

'Back to the life I left for his sake!'