‘There is only one, Mother, and you know it; but for that only one’s love I would live, not merely with one arm, but if every bone in my body were broken and twisted out of shape beyond remedy. Mother, go and tell her so, and bring me her answer — will you?’
The nun straightened herself, and her face showed what she suffered; but Giovanni did not understand.
‘You are afraid,’ he said, with rising contempt in his tone. ‘You are afraid to take my message. It would move her! It might tempt her from the right way! It might put it into her head to beg for a dispensation after all, and the sin would be on your soul! I understand — I did not really mean that you should ask her. You let her watch here last night when you knew I could not waken, but you were careful that she should be gone before I opened my eyes. You see, I have guessed the truth! I only wonder why you let her stay at all!’
He moved his head impatiently on the pillow. The Mother Superior had drawn herself up rather proudly, folding her hands under her scapular and looking down at him coldly, her face like a marble mask again.
‘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 sunshine 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 quantity 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 companionship, 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 noble 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 assurance 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 transf
ixed 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 God 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 anticipation.
‘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.
‘Will the Cardinal listen to you?’ asked Giovanni, his voice unsteady with emotion.
‘What I recommend is usually done,’ answered the prelate, without a shade of arrogance, but with the quiet certainty of a man in power. ‘What I ask of you is, to submit at once to the operation that alone can save you, on the strength of my assurance that I am going to do my utmost to obtain what you desire.’
‘It is hard to believe!’ Giovanni exclaimed, almost to himself.
The nun moved her head silently from side to side without lifting her face from her arm.
‘You can believe me,’ Monsignor Saracinesca answered. ‘I give you my solemn promise before God, and my word of honour before men, that I will do the utmost in my power to succeed. Do you believe me?’
Giovanni held out his sound hand. The churchman came nearer and took it.
‘Will you risk the operation on that?’ he asked.
The light of a profound gratitude illuminated the young soldier’s tired face, and his fingers pressed Monsignor Saracinesca’s spasmodically; but his voice was quiet when he spoke.
‘Sister Giovanna — —’
‘Yes?’
The nun looked up suddenly and drew a sharp breath, for her joy was almost agonising.
‘Will you kindly go and tell Doctor Pieri that I am ready?’
The nun rose with a spring and was at the door in an instant, and in her heart rang such a chorus of glory and rejoicing as not even the angels have heard since the Morning Stars sang together.
Of her, I think the most rigid cannot say that she had not endured to the end, for her vow’s sake. Whether the churchman was too human in his sympathies or not may be an open question; if he was, he had the courage to make himself alone responsible, for, as he had foretold, what he recommended was done; if he was wrong, he has at least the consolation of having brought unspeakable happiness to three human beings. For the mother, whose heart had so nearly broken for her child, had her share of joy, too, and it was no small one.
Stradella
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXIII
The original frontispiece
CHAPTER I
THE SENATOR MICHELE Pignaver, being a childless widower of several years’ standing and a personage of wealth and worth in Venice, made up his mind one day that he would marry his niece Ortensia, as soon as her education was completed. For he was a man of culture and of refined tastes, fond of music, much given to writing sonnets and to reading the works of the elegant Politian, as well as to composing sentimental airs for the voice and lute. He patronised arts and letters with vast credit and secret economy; for he never gave anything more than a supper and a recommendation to the poets, musicians, and artists who paid their court to him and dedicated to him their choicest productions. The supper was generally a frugal affair, but his reputation in æsthetic matters was so great that a word from him to a leader of fashion, or a letter of introduction to a Venetian Ambassador abroad, often proved to be worth more than the gold he abstained from giving. He spoke Latin, he could read Greek, and his taste in poetry was so highly cultivated that he called Dante’s verse rough, uncouth, and vulgar — precisely as Horace Walpole, seventy or eighty years later, could not conceive how any one could prefer Shakespeare’s rude lines to the elegant verses of Mr. Pope. For the Senator lived in the age when Louis XIV. was young, and Charles II. had been restored to the throne only a few years before the beginning of this story.
Pignaver was about fifty years old. There is no good reason why a widower of that age, robust and temperate, and hardly grey, should not take a wife; perhaps there is really no reason, either, why he should not marry a girl of eighteen, if she will have him, and where neither usage nor ecclesiastical ordinances are opposed to it, the young lady may even be his niece. Besides, in the present case, the Senator would appear to his peers and associates to be conferring a favour on the object of his elderly affections, and to be crowning the series of favours he had already conferred. For Ortensia was the penniless child of his brother-in-law, a scapegrace who had come to a bad end in Crete. The Senator’s wife had taken the child t
o her heart, having none of her own, and had brought her up lovingly and wisely, little dreaming that she was educating her own successor. If she had known it, she might have behaved differently, for her lord had never succeeded in winning her affections, and she regarded him to the end with mingled distrust and dislike, while he looked upon her as an affliction and a thorn in his side. Yet they were both very good people in their way. She died comparatively young, and he deemed it only just that after enduring the thorn so long, he should enjoy the rose for the rest of his life.
When Ortensia was seventeen and a half her uncle announced his matrimonial intentions to her, fastened a fine string of pearls round her throat, kissed her on the forehead, and left her alone to meditate on her good fortune.
Her reflections were of a mixed character, however, and not all pleasant. The idea that she could disobey or resist did not occur to her, of course, for the Senator had always appeared to her as the absolute lord of his household, against whose will it was useless to make any opposition, and she knew what an important person he was considered to be amongst his equals.
But in her inmost heart she knew that he was not really what he made people think he was. She had a ready sense of humour, and she felt that under his ponderous disguise of importance he was quite a ridiculous person. He was miserly to meanness; he was as vain as an ape; he was a man who had flattered himself, and had been flattered by others, into a sort of artificially inflated doll that imposed on many people and deceived almost all. And yet Ortensia was aware of something in him that frightened her a little, though she could not quite tell what it was. Possibly, like many externally artificial people, there was a cruel side to his character. There are men who become ridiculous as soon as they cease to be dangerous, and who are most dangerous when they fear that they are just going to become a laughing-stock.
Ortensia reflected on these things after her uncle had given her the pearls and had kissed her on the forehead. The pearls were very beautiful, but the kiss had been distinctly disagreeable. The Senator waxed his moustaches to make them stay up, as many men did then, and she thought that if a cold hard-boiled egg, surrounded with bristles like a hair-brush, had touched her forehead, the sensation would have been very much the same, and she shook her delicate shoulders in disgust at the thought, and slowly rubbed the offended spot with two fingers, while her other hand played with the string of pearls in her lap.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 1285