Chapter 18

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_ CHAPTER XVIII

Giovanni opened his eyes at last, looked at the ceiling for a few moments, and then closed them again. Plain white ceilings are very much alike, and for all he could see as he looked up he was at home in his own bed, at dawn, and there was plenty of time for another nap. He felt unaccountably heavy, too, though not exactly sleepy, and it would be pleasant to feel himself going off into unconsciousness again for a while, knowing that there was no hurry.

But his eyes had not been shut long before he became aware that he was in a strange place. He could not sleep again because an unfamiliar odour of iodoform irritated his nostrils; he missed something, too, either some noise outside to which he was used or some step near him. In the little house at Monteverde he could always hear his orderly cleaning the stable early in the morning; he grew suddenly uneasy and tried to turn in his bed, and instead of the noise of broom and bucket and sousing, he heard the indescribably soft sound of felt shoes on tiles as the Mother Superior came to his side.

Then, in a flash, he remembered everything, up to the time when he had been hurt, and after the moment when he had at first come to himself in the room where he now was. His eyes opened again, and he saw and recognised the Mother Superior, whom he had often seen and spoken with during his brother's stay in the hospital. Suddenly he was quite himself, for his hurt was altogether local and he had lost little blood; he only felt half paralysed on that side.

'Were there many killed?' he asked quietly.

'We do not know,' the Mother answered. 'When it is a little later I will telephone for news. It is barely five o'clock yet.'

'Thank you, Mother.' He shut his eyes again and said no more.

The Mother Superior opened the window and let in the fresh morning air, full of the glow of the rising sun, for the room looked to the eastward, across the broad bend of the Tiber and towards the Palatine. She turned out the electric light in the corner, then went to the window again and refreshed herself by drawing long breaths at regular intervals, as she had been taught to do when she was a beginner at nursing. Presently the injured man called her and she went to the bedside again.

'It would be very kind of you to take down a few words which I should like to dictate,' he said. 'No,' he continued quickly, as he saw a grave look in the nun's face, 'it is not my will! It will be a short report of what happened before the explosion. They will want it at headquarters and my head is quite clear now. Will you write for me, Mother?'

'Of course.'

There is always a pencil with a memorandum-pad in every private room of a hospital, for the use of the nurse and the doctor. The Mother Superior took both from the table and sat down close to the bed, and Giovanni dictated what he had to say in a clear and businesslike way that surprised her, great as her experience had been. When he had finished, he asked her to read it over to him, and pointed out one small correction to be made.

'I think I can sign it with my left hand, if you will hold it up for me,' he said.

His fingers traced his name with the pencil, though very unsteadily, and he begged her to send it to headquarters at once. There was always some one on duty there, he explained, if it was only the subaltern commanding the guard. She need not be afraid of leaving him alone for a few moments, he added, for he was in no pain and did not feel at all faint. Besides, she would now send him another nurse--he had not thanked her for taking care of him herself during the night--he hoped she would forgive his omission--he was still----

And thereupon, while in the very act of speaking, he fell asleep again, exhausted by the effort he had made, and still under the influence of the strong drug. The Mother understood, glanced at him and slipped away, closing the door very softly. She knew that stage of awakening from the influence of opium, with its alternating 'zones' of sleep and waking.

It was half-past five now, and a spring morning, and all was astir downstairs; lay sisters were gathering the broken glass into baskets, the portress was clearing away the wreck of broken panes from the outer hall, and the nun who had charge of the chapel was preparing the altar for matins. No one was surprised to see the Mother Superior in the cloister so early, for she was often the first to rise and almost always the last to go to rest; the novices said that the little white volcano never slept at all, but was only 'quiescent' during a part of the night.

She found one of the orderlies scrubbing the outer doorstep, and despatched him at once with Giovanni's report, which she had put into an envelope and directed. He was to bring back an answer if there was any; and when he was gone, as he had not finished his job, she took the scrubbing broom in her small hands and finished it herself, with more energy, perhaps, than had been expended upon the stones for some time. Before she had quite done, the portress caught sight of her and was filled with horror.

'For the love of heaven!' she cried, trying to take the broom herself.

The nun would not let it go, however, and pushed her aside gently, with a smile.

'If any one should see your Reverence!' protested the portress.

'My dear Anna,' answered the Mother Superior, giving the finishing strokes, 'they would see an old woman washing a doorstep, and no harm would be done.'

But the example remained impressed on the good lay sister's mind for ever, and to her last days she will never tire of telling the novices how the Mother Superior washed the doorstep of the hospital herself on the morning after the explosion at Monteverde.

The delivery of the report produced a more immediate result than either Giovanni or the Mother had expected. The accident had happened near sunset, and the story of Giovanni's heroic behaviour had been repeated everywhere before midnight. The men who had found him had, of course, reported the fact after the first confusion was over, but it was some time before the news got up to any superior officer, though the King's aide-de-camp had left instructions that any information about Giovanni was to be telephoned to the Quirinal at once. When it had been understood at last that he was in the private hospital of the White Sisters, badly injured but alive, it was too late to think of sending an officer to make inquiries in person. On the other hand, six o'clock in the morning is not too early for most modern sovereigns, general officers, and members of the really hard-working professions, among which literature is sometimes included. In half-an-hour Giovanni's little report had been read, copied, telephoned, and telegraphed, and in less than half-an-hour more a magnificent personage in the uniform of a colonel of cavalry on the General Staff, accompanied by a less gorgeous but extremely smart subaltern, stopped at the door of the Convent hospital in a Court carriage. He came to ask after Captain Severi on behalf of the Sovereign, and to ascertain whether he could perhaps be seen during the morning. He was told that this must depend on the surgeon's decision; he expressed his thanks to the portress with extreme civility and drove away again. Before long other officers came to make similar inquiries, in various uniforms and in slightly varying degrees of smartness, from the representative of the War Office and the Commander-in-Chief's aide-de-camp to unpretending subalterns in undress uniform, who were on more or less friendly terms with Giovanni and were suddenly very proud of it, since he had become a hero.

Then came the reporters and besieged the door for news--an untidy lot of men at that hour, unshaven, hastily dressed, and very sorry for themselves because they had been beaten up by their respective papers so early in the morning. They were also extremely disappointed because the portress had no story to tell and would not hear of letting them in; and they variously described her afterwards as Cerberus, Argus, and the Angel of the Flaming Sword, which things agree not well together. The portress had a busy morning, even after Doctor Pieri had come and had written out a bulletin which she could show to all comers as an official statement of the injured man's condition.

The great surgeon and the Mother Superior sat on opposite sides of his bed, and now that the sun had risen high the blinds were half drawn together and hooked in the old-fashioned Roman way, to keep out some of the light, while the glass was left open. A broad stripe of sunshine fell across the counterpane below Giovanni's knees, and a sharp twittering and a rushing of wings broke the stillness every few seconds, as the circling swallows flew past the half-open window.

'So you refuse to undergo the operation?' Pieri said, after a long pause. 'Is that your last word? Shall I go away and leave you to die?'

'How long will that take?' asked Giovanni calmly.

'Probably from four to ten days, according to circumstances,' replied the surgeon.

'Say a week, more or less. Will it hurt much?'

'Not unless you have lockjaw, which is possible. If you do, you will suffer.'

'Horribly,' said the Mother Superior, unconsciously covering her eyes with one hand for a moment; she had seen men die of tetanus.

'You will give me anaesthetics,' Giovanni answered philosophically. 'Besides, I would rather bear pain for a day or two than go through life a cripple with an empty sleeve!'

'It is deliberate suicide,' said the Mother Superior sadly.

'I incline to think so, too,' echoed the surgeon, 'though I believe the priests do not exactly consider it so.'

Though he was half paralysed by his injury, Giovanni Severi smiled grimly.

'It would be very amusing if I died with the priests on my side after all,' he said, 'and against our good Mother Superior, too! You don't know how kind she is, Doctor; she has sat up all night with me herself!'

Pieri was surprised, and looked quietly at the nun, who immediately rose and went to the window, pretending to arrange the blinds better. But there are moments when the truth seems to reveal itself directly to more than one person at the same time. The surgeon, whose intuitions were almost feminine in their swift directness, guessed at once why the Mother did not answer: not only she had not sat up with Giovanni herself, but she had allowed Sister Giovanna to do so, and as the patient had not wakened and recognised his nurse, it was not desirable that he should now know the truth. As for Giovanni himself, the certainty that came over him was more like 'thought-reading,' for neither he himself nor any one else could have explained the steps of reasoning by which he reached his conclusion. It was probably a mere guess, which happened to be right, and was founded on a little anxious shrinking of the Mother Superior's head and shoulders when she crossed the room and went to the window, as if she had something to hide. Giovanni saw it, and then his eyes met Pieri's for a moment, and each was sure that the other knew.

'I need not ask you,' Giovanni said, 'whether you are absolutely sure that I must die if you do not take off my arm at the shoulder?'

'Humanly speaking,' replied the other gravely, 'I am quite sure that gangrene will set in before to-morrow morning, and that is certain death in your case.'

'Why do you say, in my case?'

'Because,' Pieri answered with a little impatience, 'if it began in your foot, for instance, or in your hand, it would take some little time to reach the vital parts, and the arm or leg could still be amputated; but in your case it will set in so near the heart that no operation will be of any use after it begins. Do you understand?'

'Perfectly. I shall take less time to die, for the same reason.'

Severi was very quiet about it; but the Mother Superior turned on him suddenly from the window, her small face very white.

'It is suicide,' she said--'deliberate, intentional suicide, and no right-thinking man, priest or layman, would call it by any other name, let Doctor Pieri say what he will! You are in full possession of your senses, and even of your health and strength, at this moment, and you are assured that you run no risk if you submit to the doctors, but that if you will not you must die! You are choosing death where you can choose life, and that is suicide if anything is! Doctor Pieri knows well enough what a good priest would say, and so do I, who have been a nurse for a quarter of a century! If the injury were internal, and if there were a real risk to your life in operating, you would have the right, the moral right, to choose between the danger of dying under ether and the comparative certainty of dying of the injury. But this is a specific case. You are young, strong, absolutely healthy, and the chance of your dying from the anaesthetic is not one in thousands, whereas, if nothing is done, death is certain. I ask you, before God and man and on your honour, whether you do not know that you are committing suicide--nothing less than cowardly, dastardly self-murder!'

'If I am, it is my affair,' answered Giovanni coldly; 'but you need not leave out the rest. You believe that if I choose to die I shall go straight to everlasting punishment. I believe that if there is a God--and I do not deny that there may be--I shall not be damned because I would rather not live at all than go on living as half a man. And now, if you will let me have a cup of coffee and a roll, I shall be very grateful, for I have had nothing to eat since yesterday at one o'clock!'

He probably knew well enough what such a request meant just then--the putting off of a possible operation for hours, owing to the impossibility of giving ether to a man who has lately eaten anything. The Mother Superior and the surgeon looked at each other rather blankly.

'Shall I die any sooner if I am starved?' asked Giovanni almost roughly.

Pieri began to explain the danger, but Severi at once grew more impatient.

'I know all that,' he said, 'and I have told you my decision. I refuse to undergo an operation. If you choose to make me suffer from starvation I suppose it is in your power, though I am not sure. I fancy I can still stand and walk, and even my one hand may be of some use! If you do not give me something to eat, I shall get out of bed and fight my way to the larder!'

He smiled as he uttered the threat, as if he were not jesting about his own death. Pieri did not like it, and turned to the door.

'Since you talk of fighting,' he said, 'I would give you ether by force, if I could, and let the law do what it would after I had saved your life in spite of you! If you chose to blow your brains out afterwards, that would not concern me!'

Thereupon he disappeared, shutting the door more sharply than doctors usually do when they leave a sick-room. The Mother Superior went to the bedside and leaned over Giovanni, looking into his eyes with an expression of profoundest entreaty.

'I implore you to change your mind,' she said in a low and beseeching voice, 'for the sake of the mother who bore you----'

'She is dead,' Giovanni answered quietly.

'For the sake of them that live and love you, them----'

'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 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 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.

[THE END]
F Marion Crawford's Novel: White Sister

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