Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  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 circumstances, 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 Constitution 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 constitutional 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 assassinated 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 institutions 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 harassed 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 glass 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 glass 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 glass door after them. The soldier and the nun were face to face at last.

  As soon as Giovanni heard the door shut he made one step forward and stretched out both his hands, thinking to take hers. She made no movement, but raised her eyes, and when he saw them, they were still and dull. Then she slowly held out her right hand, and it was cold and inert when he took it. She drew back at once and sat down, and he took the other chair, bringing it a little nearer, and turning it so that he could see her. He was cruelly disappointed, but he was the first to speak.

  ‘I thought you were glad to know tha
t I am alive,’ he said coldly, ‘but I see that you were only frightened, the other day. I am sorry to have startled you.’

  She steadied herself before answering.

  ‘Yes, I was startled. Your letter did not reach me till afterwards.’

  The garden was whirling before her as if she were being put under ether, and the little twisted columns that upheld the arches of the cloister chased each other furiously, till she thought she was going to fall from her chair. She could not hear what he said next, for a surging roar filled her ears as when the surf breaks at an angle on a long beach and sounds one deep, uninterrupted note. He was explaining why the mail steamer had not reached Italy several days before him, but she did not understand; she only knew when he ceased speaking.

  ‘It is the inevitable — always the inevitable,’ she said, making a desperate effort and yet not saying anything she wished to say.

  But her tone told him how deeply she was moved, and his fiery energy broke out.

  ‘Nothing is inevitable!’ he cried. ‘There is nothing that cannot be undone, if I can live to undo it!’

  That was not what she expected, if she expected anything, but it brought back her controlling self that had been dazed and wandering and had left her almost helpless. She started and turned her face full to his, but drawing back in her chair.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she asked.

  ‘Angela!’

  The appeal of love was in his voice, as he bent far forward, but she raised her hand in warning.

  ‘No, “Sister Giovanna,” please,’ she said, checking him, though gently.

  He felt the slight rebuke, and remembered that the place was public to the community.

  ‘It was not by chance that you took my name with the veil,’ he said, almost in a whisper. ‘Did you love me then?’

  ‘I believed that you had been dead two years,’ answered the nun slowly.

  ‘But did you love me still, when I was dead?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She did not lower her voice, for she was not ashamed, but she looked down. He forgot her rebuke, and called her by her old name again, that had meant life and hope and everything to him through years of captivity.

  ‘Angela!’ He did not heed her gesture now, nor the quick word she spoke. ‘Yes, I will call you Angela — you love me now — —’

  She checked him again, with more energy.

  ‘Hush! If you cannot be reasonable, I shall go away!’

  ‘Reasonable!’

  There was contempt in his tone, but he sat upright again and said no more.

  ‘Listen to me,’ said Sister Giovanna, finding some strength in the small advantage she had just gained. ‘I have not let you come here in order to torment you or cheat you, and I mean to tell you the truth. You have a right to know it, and I still have the right to tell it, because there is nothing in it of which I am ashamed. Will you hear me quietly, whatever I say?’

  ‘Yes, I will. But I cannot promise not to answer, when you have done.’

  ‘There is no answer to what I am going to say. It is to be final.’

  ‘We shall see,’ said Giovanni gravely, though with no conviction.

  But the nun was satisfied, for he was clearly willing to listen. The meeting had disturbed her peace even more than she had expected, but she had done her best during several days to prepare herself for it, and had found strength to decide what she must say, and to repeat it over and over again till she knew it by heart.

  ‘You were reported to be dead,’ she began— ‘killed with the rest of them. You had your share in the great military funeral, and I, and all the world, believed that you were buried with your comrades. Your name is engraved with theirs upon their tomb, in the roll of honour, as that of a man who perished in his country’s service. I went there with Madame Bernard before I began my noviciate, and I went again, for the last time, before I took the veil. I had loved you living and I loved you dead.’

  Giovanni moved as if he were going to speak, but she would not let him.

  ‘No, hear me!’ she cried anxiously. ‘I offered God my life and my strength for your sake, and if I have done any good here in five years, as novice and nun, it has been in the hope that it might be accepted for you, if your soul needed it. Though you may not believe in such things, do you at least understand me?’

  ‘Indeed I do, and I am grateful — most grateful.’

  She was a little disappointed by his tone, for he spoke with an evident effort.

  ‘It was gladly given,’ she said. ‘But now you have come back to life — —’

  She hesitated. With all her courage and strength, she could not quite control her memory, and the words she had prepared so carefully were suddenly confused. Giovanni completed the sentence for her in his own way.

  ‘I have come to life to find you dead for me, as I have been dead for you. Is that what you were going to say?’

  She was still hesitating.

  ‘Was it that?’ he insisted.

  ‘No,’ she answered, at last. ‘Not dead for you — alive for you.’

  He would have caught at a straw, and the joy came into his face as he quickly held out his hand to her; but she would not take it: hers were both hidden under her white cloth scapular and she shrank from him. The light went out of his eyes.

  ‘I might have known!’ he said, deeply disappointed. ‘You do not mean it. I suppose you will explain that you are alive to pray for me!’

  ‘You promised to listen quietly, whatever I might say.’

  ‘Yes.’ He controlled himself. ‘I will,’ he added, after a moment. ‘Go on.’

  ‘I am not changed,’ said Sister Giovanna, ‘but my life is. That is what I meant by the inevitable. No person can undo what I have done’ — Giovanni moved impatiently— ‘no power can loose me from my vows.’

  In spite of himself, the man’s temper broke out.

  ‘You are mad,’ he answered roughly, ‘or else you do not know that you can be free.’

  ‘Hush!’ cried the nun, trying once more to check him. ‘Your promise — remember it!’

  ‘I break it! I will not listen meekly to such folly! Before you took the vow, you had given me your word, as I gave you mine, that we would be man and wife, and since I am not dead, no promise or oath made after that is binding! I know that you love me still, as you did then, and if you will not try to free yourself, then by all you believe, and by all I honour, I will set you free!’

  It was a challenge if it was not a threat, and Sister Giovanna defended herself as she could. But she was painfully conscious that something in her responded with a thrill to the cry of the pursuer. Nevertheless, she answered with a firm refusal.

  ‘You cannot make me do what I will not,’ she said.

  ‘I can and I will!’ he retorted vehemently. ‘It is monstrous that you should be bound by a promise made in ignorance, under a wretched mistake, on a false report that I was dead!’

  ‘We were not even formally betrothed — —’

  ‘We loved each other,’ interrupted Giovanni, ‘and we had told each other so. That is enough. We belong to each other just as truly as if we were man and wife — —’

  ‘Even if we were,’ said the nun, interrupting him in her turn, ‘if I had taken my vows in the belief that my husband had been dead for years, I would not ask to be released!’

  He stared at her, his temper suddenly chilled in amazement.

  ‘But if it were a mistake,’ he objected, ‘if the Pope offered you a dispensation, would you refuse it?’

  Sister Giovanna was prepared, for she had thought of that.

  ‘If you had given a man your word of honour to pay a debt you owed him, would you break your promise if you suddenly found that you could use the money in another way, which would give you the keenest pleasure?’

  ‘That is quite different! How can you ask such an absurd question?’

  ‘It is not absurd, and the case is not so different as you think. I have given my word to God in h
eaven, and I must pay my debt.’

  Giovanni was indignant again, and rebelled.

  ‘You used to tell me that your God was just!’

  ‘And I have heard you say that your only god was honour!’ retorted the nun.

  ‘Yes!’ he answered hotly. ‘It is! Honour teaches that the first promise given must be fulfilled before all others!’

  ‘I have been taught that vows made to God must not be broken.’

  She rose, as if the speech were final. Though they had been talking only a few minutes, she already felt that she could not bear much more.

  ‘Surely you are not going already!’ he cried, starting to his feet.

  Sister Giovanna turned so that she was face to face with him.

  ‘What is there left to say?’ she asked, with a great effort.

  ‘Everything! I told you that I would answer when you had finished, and now that you have nothing left to say, you must hear me! You said you would — —’

  ‘I said that there could be no answer.’ Nevertheless she waited, motionless.