The White Sister Part 5

Angela turned quite towards him now and repeated his own words.

'And what right have I to ask you to keep your promise and marry me?

When you gave your word, you thought I had a great name and was heir to a splendid fortune. You were deceived. I am a "dest.i.tute foundling"--the lawyers have proved it, and the proof of their proofs is that I am obliged to accept the charity of my old governess, G.o.d bless her! If ever a man had a right to take back his word, you have.

Take it, if you will. You are free!'

Giovanni stood up beside her, almost angry.

'Do you think I wanted your fortune?' he asked, a little pale under his tan.

'Do you think I am afraid of poverty?'

Her lips were still parted in a smile after she had asked the question, and with the gesture of an older woman she tapped his arm half reproachfully. The colour came back to his brown face.

'I fear poverty for you,' he answered, 'and I am going to fight it for your sake if you have the courage to wait for me. Have you?'

'I will wait for ever,' she said simply as she laid her hand in his.

'Then I shall leave the army at once,' he replied. 'So far, I have made what is called a good career, but promotion is slow and the pay is wretched until a man is very high up. An artillery officer is an engineer, you know, and a military engineer can always find well-paid work, especially if he is an electrician, as I am. In two years I promise you that we shall be able to marry and be at least comfortable, and there is no reason why I should not make a fortune quite equal to what my father has lost.'

He spoke with the perfect confidence of a gifted and sanguine man, sure of his own powers, and his words pleased her. Perhaps what had attracted her most in him from the beginning had been his enthusiasm and healthy faith in the world, which had contrasted brilliantly with her father's pessimism and bigoted political necrolatry, if I may coin a word from the Greek to express an old-fas.h.i.+oned Roman's blind wors.h.i.+p of the dead past.

Angela was pleased, as any woman would have been, but she protested against what she knew to be a sacrifice.

'No,' she said decidedly, 'you must not give up the army and your career for the sake of making money, even for me. Do no officers marry on their pay? I am sure that many do, and manage very well indeed. You told me not long ago that you were expecting promotion from day to day; and in any case I could not marry you within a year, at the least.'

'If I do not begin working at once, that will be just a year lost,'

objected Giovanni.

'A year! Will that make much difference?'

'Why not ten, then? As if a year would not be a century long, while I am waiting for you--as if it were not already half a lifetime since last month, when we told each other the truth! Wait? Yes, if I must; for ever, as you said awhile ago, if there is no other way. But if it can be helped, then not an hour, not a minute! Why should we let happiness pa.s.s us by and not take it when we may and can? There is not enough in the world, as it is; and you cannot even pretend that you are generous if you do not take your share, since what fate means for you is useless for any one else! No, dear, no! We will take the fruit there is on the tree, and leave none to rot on the branch after we are gone. Promise to marry me a year from to-day, and leave the rest to me--will you?'

'Yes--but promise me one thing, too. Do not resign to-morrow, nor next week, as I know you mean to do. Take a month to think it over, and to look about you. You are so impulsive--well, so generous--that you are capable of sending in your resignation to-morrow.'

'It is already written,' Giovanni answered. 'I was going to send it in to-night.'

'I knew it! But you must not. Please, please, take a little time--it will be so much wiser. I will wait for you for ever, or I will promise to marry you a year from to-day, even if we have to live on bread and water. Indeed I will! But, at least, be a little cautious! It will be far better to marry on your pay--and you will surely get your captaincy in a few months--than to be stranded without even that, in case you do not find the work you hope for. Don't you see? I am sure it is good advice.'

Giovanni knew that it was, if caution were ever worth practising in human affairs; but that has often been doubted by brave and light-hearted men. Giovanni yielded a little reluctantly. If she had asked him to make it two months instead of one, he would have refused, for it seemed to him intolerable to lose a moment between decision and action, and his thoughts doubled their stride with every step, in a geometrical progression; a moment hence, a minute would be an hour, an hour a month, a month a lifetime. Men have won battles in that temper; but it has sometimes cost them their life.

'I know you are sensible,' Giovanni said, taking Angela's hand between his, 'but it is to please you that I agree to wait a month. It is not because it looks wise, as it does. For one man who succeeds by wisdom, ten win by daring. Who knows what may chance in a month, or what may happen to put out of reach what I could do to-day?'

'Nothing!'

Angela gave her answer with the delicious little smile of superiority which the youngest woman and even the merest girl can wear, when she is sure that she is right and that the man she loves is wrong. It may be only about sewing on a b.u.t.ton, or about the weather, or it may concern great issues; but it is always the same when it comes: it exasperates weak men, and the stronger sort like it, as they more especially delight in all that is womanly in woman, from heroic virtue to pathetic weakness.

'Nothing can happen in a month to prevent you from resigning then, as you could to-day,' Angela said confidently.

The faint smile disappeared, and she grew thoughtful, not for herself, but for him, and looked at Saint Ursula again. Her hand still lay in his, on the edge of the mantelpiece, and while she gazed at the engraving she knew that he was looking at her and was moving nearer; she felt that he was going to kiss her, but she did not resist this time though the colour was rising in her throat, and just under the exquisitely shaped petal of peach-blossom on which his eyes were fixed, and which was really only the tip of her ear, though it was so like the leaf of a flower that the scent of the bloom came to his memory when his lips touched the spot at last.

His hand shut closer over hers at the same moment, and hers fluttered under his fingers like a small soft bird; but there was no resistance.

He kissed the tip of her ear, and she turned towards him a little; his kiss pressed her cool cheek, and she moved again; their eyes met, very near, and dark, and full of light, and then his lips touched hers at last.

Destiny has many disguises and many moods. Sometimes, as on that day at the telephone, the unexpected leaps up from its hiding-place and strikes stunning blows, right and left, like Orestes among the steers in Tauris, or a maniac let loose among sane men; but sometimes Fate lurks in her lair, silently poring over the tablets of the future, and she notes all we say, scrawling 'Folly' against our wisest speeches, and stamping 'So be it' under the carelessly spoken jest.

She was busy while the young lovers kissed for the first time, by the mantelpiece; but no inward warning voice had told Angela that she herself was sealing the order of her life irrevocably when she gave Giovanni the best advice she could, and he accepted it to please her, making his instinct obey his judgment for her sake. A man is foolish who takes an important step without consulting the woman who loves him most dearly, be she mother, sister, wife, or sweetheart; but he is rarely wise if he follows her advice, like a rule, to the letter, for no woman goes from thought to accomplishment by the same road as a man. You cannot make a pointer of a setter, nor teach a bulldog to retrieve.

If Giovanni had sent in his resignation that evening, or even during the next day, as he was ready to do, it would have been accepted in the ordinary course of things; he would then, without doubt, have found employment for his talents and energy, either at home or abroad.

He would in all probability have succeeded in life, because he possessed the elements of success; he would have married Angela in due time, and the two would probably have lived happily for many years, because they were suited to each other in all ways and were possessed of excellent const.i.tutions. If all this had happened, their story would have little interest except for themselves, or as an example to young couples; and it is a deplorable fact that there is hardly anything so dull and tiresome in the world as a good example. The h.o.a.rdings along life's dusty roads are plentifully plastered with good examples, in every stage of preservation, from those just fresh from the moral bill-poster's roll, redolent of paste, to the good old ones that are peeling off in tatters, as if in sheer despair because n.o.body has ever stopped to look at them. May the G.o.ds of literature keep all good story-tellers from concocting advertis.e.m.e.nts of the patent virtues!

The most important and decisive moment in Angela's life, from its beginning to its end, had pa.s.sed so quietly that she never suspected its presence, and almost the very next instant brought her the first kiss of the only man she had ever loved, or was to love thereafter.

CHAPTER V

Madame Bernard had not overstated the advantages of the lodging she occasionally let to foreign ladies who travelled alone and practised economy, and Angela refused to occupy it till she had satisfied herself that her old governess's own room was just as large and just as sunny and just as comfortable.

In the first place, it was much bigger than she had expected, and when she had spread out all her possessions and put away her clothes, and had arranged her pretty toilet set and the few books that were quite her own, she found that she was not at all cramped for s.p.a.ce. The ceiling was not very high, it was true, and there was only one window, but it was a very wide one, and outside it there was a broad iron shelf securely fixed, on which four good-sized flower-pots were set out in the suns.h.i.+ne. It was true that there were no flowers yet, but the two plants of carnations were full of buds and had been very carefully tended, a tiny rose-bush promised to bear three or four blossoms before long, and the pot of basil was beginning to send up curly green shoots. Opposite the window, and beyond the quiet street, there was a walled garden, in which there were some orange and mandarin trees.

Between the two bedrooms there was the sitting-room, which was a little smaller than either, but quite big enough for two women.

Indeed, Madame Bernard ate her meals there all winter, because the little dining-room at the back of the house was not so cheerful and was much colder. An enlarged coloured photograph of the long-deceased Captain Bernard, in the uniform worn by the French artillery at the time of the Franco-Prussian War, hung on one of the walls, over an upright piano; it had a black frame, and was decorated with a wreath of everlasting daisies tied with a black bow. Underneath the portrait a tiny holy-water basin of old Tyrolese pewter was fastened to the wall. This Madame Bernard filled every year at Easter, when the parish priest came to bless the rooms, and every year she renewed the wreath on the anniversary of her husband's death; for she was a faithful soul and practised such little rites with a sort of cheerful satisfaction that was not exactly devout, but certainly had a religious source.

Captain Bernard had been a das.h.i.+ng fellow and there was no knowing what his soul might not need in the place his widow vaguely described as 'beyond' when she spoke of his presumable state, though in the case of Angela's father, for instance, it was always 'heaven' or 'paradise.' Apparently Madame Bernard had the impression that her husband's immortal part was undergoing some very necessary cure before partaking of unmixed bliss.

'Military men have so many temptations, my dear,' she said to Angela, thinking more of the deceased Captain than of being tactful,--'I mean,'

she said, correcting herself, 'in France.'

Angela was not afraid of temptation for Giovanni; rightly or wrongly, she trusted that her love would be his s.h.i.+eld against the wicked world and her name his prayer in need, and she smiled at Madame Bernard's speech. The big old parrot on his perch c.o.c.ked his head.

'Especially the cavalry and artillery,' the good lady went on to explain.

'a drrroite--conversion!' roared the parrot in a terrific voice of command.

Angela jumped in her chair, for it was the first time she had heard the creature speak in that tone; but Madame Bernard laughed, as if it pleased her.

'It is absolutely my poor husband's tone,' she said calmly. 'Coco,'

she said, turning to the bellicose bird, 'the Prussians are there!'

'Feu!' yelled the parrot suddenly, dancing with rage on his bar. 'Feu!

'cre nom d'un nom d'un p't.i.t bon Dieu!'

'Every intonation!' laughed the little Frenchwoman gaily. 'You understand why I love my Coco!'

But Angela thought there was something grimly horrible in the coming back of the dead soldier's voice from battles fought long ago.

Giovanni came to see her two days after she had moved, but this time Madame Bernard did not leave them together very long. She had a lively sense of her responsibility, now that the young girl was altogether in her charge, and she felt that the proprieties must be strictly observed. It must never be thought that Giovanni was free to see Angela alone whenever he pleased, merely because her people had turned her out.