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The Woman Thou Gavest Me: Being the Story of Mary O'Neill, a novel by Hall Caine |
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Part 1. My Girlhood - Chapter 20 |
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_ FIRST PART. MY GIRLHOOD TWENTIETH CHAPTER In the late afternoon of the same day we were sitting together for the last time on the terrace of the Reverend Mother's villa. It was a peaceful evening, a sweet and holy time. Not a leaf was stirring, not a breath of wind was in the air; but the voice of a young boy, singing a love-song, came up from somewhere among the rocky ledges of the vineyards below, and while the bell of the monastic church behind us was ringing the Ave Maria, the far-off bell of the convent church at Gonzano was answering from the other side of the lake--like angels calling to each other from long distances in the sky. "Mary," said the Reverend Mother, "I want to tell you a story. It is the story of my own life--mine and my sister's and my father's." I was sitting by her side and she was holding my hand in her lap, and patting it, as she had done during the interview of the morning. "They say the reason so few women become nuns is that a woman is too attached to her home to enter the holy life until she has suffered shipwreck in the world. That may be so with most women. It was not so with me. "My father was what is called a self-made man. But his fortune did not content him. He wanted to found a family. If he had had a son this might have been easy. Having only two daughters, he saw no way but that of marrying one of us into the Italian nobility. "My sister was the first to disappoint him. She fell in love with a young Roman musician. The first time the young man asked for my sister he was contemptuously refused; the second time he was insulted; the third time he was flung out of the house. His nature was headstrong and passionate, and so was my father's. If either had been different the result might not have been the same. Yet who knows? Who can say?" The Reverend Mother paused for a moment. The boy's voice in the vineyard was going on. "To remove my sister from the scene of temptation my father took her from Rome to our villa in the hills above Albano. But the young musician followed her. Since my father would not permit him to marry her he was determined that she should fly with him, and when she hesitated to do so he threatened her. If she did not meet him at a certain hour on a certain night my father would be dead in the morning." The Reverend Mother paused again. The boy's voice had ceased; the daylight was dying out. "My sister could not bring herself to sacrifice either her father or her lover. Hence she saw only one way left--to sacrifice herself." "Herself?" The Reverend Mother patted my hand. "Isn't that what women in tragic circumstances are always doing?" she said. "By some excuse--I don't know what--she persuaded our father to change rooms with her that night--he going upstairs to her bedroom in the tower, and she to his on the ground floor at the back, opening on to the garden and the pine forest that goes up the hill. "What happened after that nobody ever knew exactly. In the middle of the night the servants heard two pistol shots, and next morning my sister was found dead--shot to the heart through an open window as she lay in my father's bed. "The authorities tried in vain to trace the criminal. Only one person had any idea of his identity. That was my father, and in his fierce anger he asked himself what he ought to do in order to punish the man who had killed his daughter. "Then a strange thing happened. On the day before the funeral the young musician walked into my father's room. His face was white and wasted, and his eyes were red and swollen. He had come to ask if he might be allowed to be one of those to carry the coffin. My father consented. 'I'll leave him alone,' he thought. 'The man is punished enough.' "All the people of Albano came to the funeral and there was not a dry eye as the cortege passed from our chapel to the grave. Everybody knew the story of my sister's hopeless love, but only two in the world knew the secret of her tragic death--her young lover, who was sobbing aloud as he staggered along with her body on his shoulder, and her old father, who was walking bareheaded and in silence, behind him." My heart was beating audibly and the Reverend Mother stroked my hand to compose me--perhaps to compose herself also. It was now quite dark, the stars were coming out, and the bells of the two monasteries on opposite sides of the lake were ringing the first hour of night. "That's my sister's story, Mary," said the Reverend Mother after a while, "and the moral of my own is the same, though the incidents are different. "I was now my father's only child and all his remaining hopes centred in me. So he set himself to find a husband for me before the time came when I should form an attachment for myself. His choice fell on a middle-aged Roman noble of distinguished but impoverished family. "'He has a great name; you will have a great fortune--what more do you want?' said my father. "We were back in Rome by this time, and there--at school or elsewhere--I had formed the conviction that a girl must passionately love the man she marries, and I did not love the Roman noble. I had also been led to believe that a girl should be the first and only passion of the man who marries her, and, young as I was, I knew that my middle-aged lover had had other domestic relations. "Consequently I demurred, but my father threatened and stormed, and then, remembering my sister's fate, I pretended to agree, and I was formally engaged. "I never meant to keep my promise, and I began to think out schemes by which to escape from it. Only one way seemed open to me then, and cherishing the thought of it in secret, I waited and watched and made preparations for carrying out my purpose. "At length the moment came to me. It was mid-Lent, and a masked ball was given by my fiance's friends in one of the old Roman palaces. I can see it still--the great hall, ablaze with glowing frescoes, beautiful Venetian candelabras, gilded furniture, red and yellow damask and velvet, and then the throng of handsome men in many uniforms and beautiful women with rows of pearls falling from their naked throats. "I had dressed myself as a Bacchante in a white tunic embroidered in gold, with bracelets on my bare arms, a tiger-skin band over my forehead, and a cluster of grapes in my hair. "I danced every dance, I remember, most of them with my middle-aged lover, and I suppose no one seemed so gay and happy and heedless. At three o'clock in the morning I returned home in my father's carriage. At six I had entered a convent. "Nobody in the outer world ever knew what had become of me, and neither did I know what happened at home after I left it. The rule of the convent was very strict. Sometimes, after morning prayers, the Superior would say, 'The mother of one of you is dead--pray for her soul,' and that was all we ever heard of the world outside. "But nature is a mighty thing, my child, and after five years I became restless and unhappy. I began to have misgivings about my vocation, but the Mother, who was wise and human, saw what was going on in my heart. 'You are thinking about your father,' she said, 'that he is growing old, and needing a daughter to take care of him. Go out, and nurse him, and then come back to your cell and pray.' "I went, but when I reached my father's house a great shock awaited me. A strange man was in the porter's lodge, and our beautiful palace was let out in apartments. My father was dead--three years dead and buried. After my disappearance he had shut himself up in his shame and grief, for, little as I had suspected it and hard and cruel as I had thought him, he had really and truly loved me. During his last days his mind had failed him and he had given away all his fortune--scattered it, no one knew how, as something that was quite useless--and then he died, alone and broken-hearted." That was the end of the Reverend Mother's narrative. She did not try to explain or justify or condemn her own or her sister's conduct, neither did she attempt to apply the moral of her story to my own circumstances. She left me to do that for myself. I had been spell-bound while she spoke, creeping closer and closer to her until my head was on her breast. For some time longer we sat like this in the soft Italian night, while the fire-flies came out in clouds among the unseen flowers of the garden and the dark air seemed to be alive with sparks of light. When the time came to go to bed the Reverend Mother took me to my room, and after some cheerful words she left me. But hardly had I lain down, shaken to the heart's core by what I had heard, and telling myself that the obedience of a daughter to her father, whatever he might demand of her, was an everlasting and irreversible duty, imposed by no human law-giver, and that marriage was a necessity, which was forced upon most women by a mysterious and unyielding law of God, when the door opened and the Reverend Mother, with a lamp in her hand, came in again. "Mary," she said, "I forgot to tell you that I am leaving the Sacred Heart. The Sisters of my old convent have asked me to go back as Superior. I have obtained permission to do so and am going shortly, so that in any case we should have been parted soon. It is the Convent of. . . ." Here she gave me the name of a private society of cloistered nuns in the heart of Rome. "I hope you will write to me as often as possible, and come to see me whenever you can. . . . And if it should ever occur that . . . but no, I will not think of that. Marriage is a sacred tie, too, and under proper conditions God blesses and hallows it." With that she left me in the darkness. The church bell was ringing, the monks of the Passionist monastery were getting up for their midnight offices. _ |
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