CHAPTER VI
Angela lived for weeks in a state of sleepless apathy, so far as her companion could see. She scarcely spoke, and ate barely enough to keep herself alive. She seemed not to sleep at all, for two or three times during every night Madame Bernard got up and came to her room, and she always found her lying quite motionless on her back, her eyes wide open and staring at the tasteless little pattern of flowers stencilled in colours on the ceiling. Once Madame Bernard proposed to take away the night-light that burned in a cup on the floor, but Angela shook her head almost energetically. She never opened a book either, nor occupied herself in any way, but seemed content to sit still all day and to lie awake all night, never complaining, and never even speaking unless her friend asked her a direct question. Every morning at sunrise she put on her hat and went to the ancient church of San Crisogono, which is served by Trinitarian monks. Sometimes Madame Bernard went with her, but more often she was accompanied by the one woman-servant who cooked and did the housework.
The unhappy girl found neither consolation nor hope in the daily service; she went to it because, somehow, it seemed to be the only thing she could do for the dead. She knelt down every day on the same spot, and remained kneeling till after the priest and the acolyte weregone; she took her missal with her, but never looked at it, and her lips never moved in prayer; she felt no impulse to go to confession, nor any devotional craving for the Communion. The mass was a mere form to her, but she attended it regularly, as if she expected that much of herself and would not do less than the least that seemed to be her duty. That was all. Prayer in any form of words frightened her, for it soon brought her near to that blinding darkness which she had already met twice and had learned to dread; her present misfortune was incomparably greater than those that had gone before, and she was sure that if the outer night rose round her again it would take her soul down into itself to eternal extinction. If she had been physically stronger, she might have tried to call this a foolish delusion; weak as she was, and growing daily weaker, it seemed as certain as that her body must perish instantly if she walked over a precipice. The past was distorted, the present had no meaning, and there was no future; she vaguely understood Dante's idea that the body may be left on earth, apparently alive, for years after the soul has departed from it, for the evil Alberigo's spirit told the poet that his own body and Branca d'Oria's were still animated by demons when their souls were already in the torment of the eternal ice. But Angela felt rather as if her living self were a mere senseless shell, uninhabited by any spirit, bad or good, and moved by the mechanics of nature rather than by her own will or another's.
Madame Bernard watched her with growing anxietyas the days and weeks brought no change. The little lodging in Trastevere was very silent, and Coco sat disconsolately drooping his wings on his perch when his mistress was out, as she was during more than half the day, giving the lessons by which she and Angela lived. The girl sometimes did not move from her chair throughout the long morning any more than if she had been paralysed, or at most she tried to tend the flowers. The roses were blooming now, and on fine days, when the windows were open, the aromatic perfume of the young carnations floated in with the sunbeams. Angela did not notice the scent, and for all the pleasure the blossoms gave her they might have been turnips and potatoes. But there was a feeble underlying thought of duty in plucking off a small withered leaf here and there, and in picking out the tiny weeds that tried to grow round the flower-stems. From very far away she heard Madame Bernard telling her, an age ago, that she could tend the flowers and take care of the parrot by way of helping in the house.
Coco regarded her efforts with melancholy contempt, and turned his back on her when she came near him, and even when she changed the water in his tin cup. As he only drank three or four drops in a day, it probably seemed to him a work of supererogation. While his mistress was out he rarely uttered a sound; but when he heard her footstep in the short passage outside, he gave vent to his feelings and hailed her return with boisterous shouts and unearthly whistling of old French military tunes. Even the noise he made did not disturbAngela; she hardly heard him, for her nerves were not overwrought, but deadened almost to insensibility.
Madame Bernard consulted a young doctor, a man of talent, who was taking lessons of her for the sake of his practice among foreigners. She used to say that between her pupils, and their friends and relations, she could get the best advice on any matter without paying a penny for it. The young physician answered that he could not help her much without seeing the patient, but that the best thing for Angela would be to eat and sleep well and not to fret.
Some such idea had probably occurred to the little Frenchwoman, for she laughed gaily in the doctor's face, and he, not being paid to look serious, joined in her laughter.
'You cannot say it is bad advice,' he said, 'and you wanted me to say something. Let me see the young lady, and I will tell you honestly whether I know of anything that will do her good, as I would tell a colleague.'
They agreed that he should call one evening on pretence of taking an extra lesson in a leisure hour; he came at the appointed time, and watched Angela narrowly during the short time she remained in the room. When she was gone, he gave his opinion without hesitation.
'The best thing for her would be a good illness,' he said. 'You look surprised! I will try to explain. That young lady is stronger than you think. It would do her a world of good to shed tears, but she cannot because her unconscious power of resistance has beenexercised till it has grown rigid. You have heard of Hindu devotees who hold up one arm till it stiffens in that position, so that they could not move it if they tried. That is an image of what I mean, unless it is the thing itself. After learning the terrible news Donna Angela unconsciously steeled herself against her natural impulse to break down. She has a strong will, and the result is what you see. The strain of resisting was so great that it deadened her to all sensation in a few hours. If she could fall ill, the tension would relax; in my opinion it will do so when her physical strength is worn out by starvation and lack of sleep, but a simple specific malady, like the whooping-cough or the measles, would be better for her. If you cannot break up her present condition, and if she has any organic weakness of the heart, it may stop beating one of these days. That is what is called dying of a broken heart, my dear Madame Bernard. There is no medicine against that like a broken leg!'
'Fie!' cried Madame Bernard. 'You have no human feeling at all!'
'I am sorry,' answered the physician, with a smile, 'but it is my business to have a head instead. You asked my opinion and I have given it, as I would to another doctor. The old-fashioned ones would laugh at me, the younger ones would understand.'
'If you could only make the poor child sleep a little! Is there nothing?'
'She is not neurasthenic,' the doctor objected. 'It would be of no use to give her sleeping medicines, forafter a few days they would have no effect, except to excite her nerves unnaturally.'
'Or something to give her an appetite,' suggested Madame Bernard vaguely.
'She has an excellent appetite if she only knew it. The reason why she does not eat is that she does not know she is hungry, though she is half starved. I served in the African campaign when I was a young military surgeon. I have seen healthy men faint for want of food when they had plenty at hand because they could not realise that they were hungry in their intense preoccupation. Great emotions close the entrance to the stomach, often for a considerable time. It is well known, and it is easier than you think to form the habit of living on next to nothing. It is the first step that counts.'
'As they said of Saint Denis when he carried his head three steps after it was cut off,' said Madame Bernard thoughtfully, and without a smile.
'Precisely,' the doctor assented. 'I myself have seen a man sit his horse at a full gallop, without relaxing his hold, for fifty yards after he had been shot through the head. The seat of the nerves that direct automatic motion is not in the brain, but appears to be in the body, near the spine. When it is not injured, what used to be called unconscious cerebration may continue for several seconds after death. Similarly, bodily habits, like feeling hunger or being insensible to it, appear to have their origin in those ganglions and not in any sort of thought. Consequently, thought alone, without astrong exercise of the will, has little effect upon such habits of the body. When a man does a thing he does not mean to do, and says "I cannot help it," he is admitting this fact. If you were to ask Donna Angela if she means to starve herself to death deliberately, she would deny it with indignation, but would tell you that she really cannot eat, and meanwhile she is starving. Give her a comparatively harmless illness like the measles, severe enough to break up the ordinary automatic habits of the body, and she will eat again, with an excellent appetite. In all probability I could give her the measles by artificial means, but unfortunately that sort of treatment is not yet authorised!'
The young doctor, who was not by any means a dreamer, seemed much amused at his own conclusion, which looks absurd even on paper, and Madame Bernard did not believe a word he said. In questions of medicine women are divided into two great classes, those who will consult any doctor and try anything, and those who only ask the doctor's opinion when they are forced to, and who generally do precisely the opposite of what he suggests. This is a more practical view and is probably the safer, if they must go to one of the two extremes. Moreover, doctors are so much inclined to disagree that when three of them give a unanimous opinion it is apt to be worthless.
The only immediate result of Madame Bernard's consultation with the doctor was that she disappointed one of her pupils the next day in order to gain an hour, which she devoted to making a very exquisite 'mousse devolaille' for Angela. The poor girl was much touched, but could only eat two or three mouthfuls, and the effort she made to overcome her repugnance was so unmistakable that the good little Frenchwoman was more anxious for her than hurt at the failure.
She had tried two sciences, she said to herself, but the doctor of medicine had talked the nonsense of theories to her, and the combined wisdom of Vatel, Brillat-Savarin, and Carême had proved fruitless. A person who could not eat Madame Bernard's 'mousse de volaille' could only be cured by a miracle. Accordingly, she determined to consult a churchman without delay, and went out early in the afternoon. Angela did not notice that she was dressed with more than usual care, as if for a visit of importance.
She had been gone about half-an-hour, and the young girl was sitting in her accustomed place, listless and apathetic as usual, when the door-bell rang, and a moment later the woman-servant came in, saying that a foreign gentleman was on the landing who insisted on seeing Angela, even though she was alone. After giving a long and not flattering description of his appearance, the woman held out the card he had given her. Angela glanced at it and read the name of Filmore Durand, and above, in pencil, half-a-dozen words: 'I have brought you a portrait.'
Angela did not understand in the least, though she tried hard to concentrate her thoughts.
'Ask the gentleman to come in,' she answered at last, hardly knowing what she said.
She turned her face to the window again, and in the course of thirty seconds, when she was roused by Durand's voice in the room, she had almost forgotten that he was in the house. She had not heard English spoken since she had left his studio on the morning when her father died, and she started at the sound. For weeks, nothing had made such an impression on her.
She rose to receive the great painter, who was standing near the table in the middle of the room, looking at her in surprise and real anxiety, for she was little more than a shadow of the girl he had painted six weeks or two months earlier. He himself had brought in a good-sized picture, wrapped in new brown paper; it stood beside him on the floor, reaching as high as his waist, and his left hand rested on the upper edge. He held out the other to Angela, who took it apathetically.
'You have been very ill,' he said in a tone of concern.
'No,' she answered. 'I am only a little tired. Will you not sit down?'
She sank into her seat again, and one thin hand lay on the cushioned arm of the chair. Instead of seating himself, Durand lifted the picture, still wrapped up, and set it upright on the table, so that it faced her.
'I heard,' he said in a low voice, 'so I did this for you from memory and a photograph.'
There was a sudden crackling and tearing of the strong paper as he ripped it off with a single movement, and then there was absolute silence for some time. Angela seemed not even to breathe, as she leaned forward with parted lips and unwinking, wondering eyes.
Then, without even a warning breath, a cry broke from her heart.
'He is not dead! You have seen him again! He is alive—they have cheated me!'
Then she choked and leaned back, pressing her handkerchief to her mouth.
Instead of answering, the painter bent his head and looked down sideways at his own astounding handiwork, and for the second time in that year he was almost satisfied. Presently, as Angela said nothing more, he was going to move the canvas, to show it in a better light, but she thought he meant to take it away.
'No!' she cried imperatively. 'Not yet! Let me see it—let me understand——'
Her words died away and she was silent again, her eyes fixed on the portrait. At last she rose, came forward, and laid both her thin hands on the narrow black and gold frame.
'I must have it,' she said. 'You must let me have it, though I cannot pay for it. But I will some day. I will work till I can earn enough money, or till I die—and if that comes soon, they will give you back the picture. You cannot take it away!'
Durand saw that she had not understood.
'It is for you,' he said. 'I painted it to give to you. You see, after your father died, I kept yours—I never meant them to have it, but it seemed as if I owed you something for it, and this is to pay my debt. Do you see?'
'How kind you are!' she cried. 'How very, verykind! I do not quite follow the idea—my head is always so tired now—but I knew you would understand how I should feel—if I accepted it without any return!'
So far as arithmetic went, the man of genius and the broken-hearted girl were equally far from ordinary reckoning. Durand knew that by a turn of luck he had been able to keep the only portrait he had ever been sorry to part with when it was finished, and he was intimately convinced that he owed somebody something for such an unexpected pleasure; on her side, Angela was quite sure that unless the portrait of the man she had loved was to be an equivalent for some sort of obligation she could not be satisfied to keep it all her life unpaid for.
It filled the little sitting-room with light and colour, as a Titian might have done; it was as intensely alive as Giovanni Severi had been—the eyes were full of those quick little coruscations of fire that had made them so unlike those of other men, the impulsive nostrils seemed to quiver, the healthy young blood seemed to come and go in the tanned cheeks, the square shoulders were just ready to make that quick, impatient little movement that had been so characteristic of him, so like the sudden tension of every muscle when a thoroughbred scents sport or danger. No ordinary artist would ever have seen all there was in the man, even in a dozen sittings, but the twin gifts of sight and memory had unconsciously absorbed and held the whole, and a skill that was never outdone in its time had made memory itself visible on the canvas. Something that was neithera 'harmless illness' nor a 'miracle' had waked Angela from her torpor.
'How can I thank you?' she asked, after a long pause. 'You do not know what it is to me to see his living face—you will call it an illusion—it seems as if——'
She broke off suddenly and pressed her handkerchief to her lips again.
'Only what you call the unreal can last unchanged for a while,' the painter said, catching at the word she had used, and thinking more of his art than of her. 'Only an ideal can be eternal, but every honest attempt to give it shape has a longer life than any living creature. Nature makes only to destroy, but art creates for the very sake of preserving the beautiful.'
She heard each sentence, but was too absorbed in the portrait to follow his meaning closely. Perhaps it would have escaped her if she had tried.
'Only good and evil are everlasting,' she said, almost unconsciously repeating words she had heard somewhere when she was a child.
Durand looked at her quickly, but he saw that she was not really thinking.
'What is "good"?' he asked, as if he were sure that there was no answer to the question.
It attracted her attention, and she turned to him; she was coming back to life.
'Whatever helps people is good,' she said.
'The French proverb says "Help thyself and God will help thee,"' suggested Durand.
'No, it should be "Help others, and God will help you,"' Angela answered.
The artist fixed his eyes on her as he nodded a silent assent; and suddenly, though her face was so changed, he knew it was more like his portrait of her than ever, and that the prophecy of his hand was coming to fulfilment.
He stayed a moment longer, and asked if he could be of any service to her or Madame Bernard. She thanked him vaguely, and almost smiled. He felt instinctively that she was thinking of what she had last said, and was wishing that some one would tell her how she might do something for others, rather than that another should do anything for her.
She went with him to the door at the head of the stairs and let him out herself.
'Thank you,' she said, 'thank you! You don't know what you have done for me!'
He looked at her in thoughtful silence for a few seconds, holding her hand as if they were old friends.
'There is no such thing as death,' he said gravely.
And with this odd speech he left her and went slowly down the narrow stone steps; and though she watched him till he disappeared at the next landing, he did not once turn his head.
When she was in the sitting-room she set the framed picture on a straight chair near the window and sat down before it in her accustomed seat; and Durand's last words came back to her again and again, as if they were begging to be remembered and understood. Her memory brought with them many exhortations and sayingsfrom the sacred books, but none of them seemed to mean just what she knew that little speech of his must mean if she could quite understand it.
She had come to life again unexpectedly, and the spell of her dreadful solitude was broken. She did not think it strange that her eyes were dry as she gazed at the well-loved face, while the inner voice told her that there was 'no such thing as death.' The dead man had done his duty, and he expected her to do hers until the time came for them to meet for ever.
In the aimless wandering of her thoughts during the past weeks she had only understood that he was gone. In an uncounted moment, while she had been turning over the leaves of a book, or idly talking with Madame Bernard, or plucking a withered leaf from one of the plants outside the window, he had been fighting for his life and had lost it. Perhaps she had been quietly asleep just then. She had heard people say they were sure that if anything happened to those they dearly loved, some warning would reach them; she had heard tales of persons appearing at the moment of their death to those dearest to them, and even to indifferent people. Such stories were but idle talk, for while she had been reading the news out to Madame Bernard, she had been expecting to hear that the expedition was advancing successfully on its way, she had been wondering what chance there was of getting a letter from the interior, she had been intimately convinced that Giovanni was safe, well, and making good progress, when he had been dead a fortnight.
Madame Bernard had read the details, so far as they were known, but she had wisely said nothing except that the news was fully confirmed. Angela herself had refused to touch a newspaper since that day; it had been enough that he was gone—to know how, or even to guess, would be a suffering she could not face. What had been found of the poor men who had perished had been brought home; there had been a great military funeral for them; their names were inscribed for ever on the roll of honour. In time, when the political situation changed, an effort would be made to avenge their death, no doubt; for every man who had been murdered a hundred would be slain, or more, if possible, till even a Scythian might feel satisfied that their angry spirits were appeased by blood. Angela knew nothing of all this, for she never left the house except to go to early mass every day, and Madame Bernard never spoke of the dead man nor of the lost expedition.
When the governess came home, a little after sunset, Angela was still sitting before the picture, her chin resting on her hand and her elbow on her knee as she leaned forward to see better in the failing light. The girl turned her head with a bright smile, and Madame Bernard started in surprise when she saw the portrait.
'It is he!' she cried. 'It is he, to the very life!'
'Yes,' Angela answered softly, 'it is Giovanni. He has been telling me that I must do my part, as he did his. He is waiting for me, but I cannot go to him till my share is done.'
She was gazing at the face again, while MadameBernard looked from it to her in undisguised astonishment.
'I do not understand, my dear,' she said very gently. 'Who has brought you this wonderful picture?'
She hardly expected an explanation, and she guessed that the portrait was Durand's work, for few living painters could have made such a likeness, and none would have painted it in that way, which was especially his own. To her surprise Angela turned on her chair without rising, and told her just what had happened, since he had come in early in the afternoon bringing the picture with him. When she had finished she turned to it again, as if there were nothing more to be said, and at that moment Coco began to talk in a tone that made further conversation impossible. Madame Bernard took him on her hand and disappeared with him.
When she came back, Angela was standing on a chair holding up the portrait with both hands and trying to hang it by the inner edge of the frame on an old nail she had found already driven into the wall. Madame Bernard at once began to help her, as if not at all surprised at her sudden energy, though it seemed nothing less than miraculous.
They succeeded at last, and both got down from their chairs and drew back two steps to judge of the effect.
'It is a little too high,' Angela said thoughtfully. To-morrow I will get a cord and two rings to screw into the frame at the back, and then we will hang it just as it should be.'
'Perhaps we could put it in a better light,' Madame Bernard suggested. 'The room is so dark now that one cannot judge of that.'
'He must be where he can see me,' Angela said.
Her friend looked puzzled, and the young girl smiled again, quite naturally.
'I am not dreaming,' she said, as if answering a question not spoken. 'I do not mean that the picture can really see, any more than I believe that what they call "miraculous images" of saints are the saints themselves! But when I see the eyes of the portrait looking straight at me, I feel that he himself must see me, from where he is; and he will see me do my part, as he has done his. At least, I hope I may.'
She went to her own room, and Madame Bernard followed her to light the little lamp for her as she had always done of late. But to-day Angela insisted on doing it herself.
'You must not wait on me any more,' said the girl. 'I have been very idle for weeks, but I did not understand, and you will forgive me, because you are so good and kind.'
'You are a little angel, my dear!' cried Madame Bernard, much affected. 'They did right to name you Angela!'
But Angela shook her head, as she put the paper shade over the cheap lamp, and then went to the window to close the inner shutters before drawing the chintz curtains.
'I have been a very useless little angel,' she answered,'and I am sorry for it. But I mean to do better now, and you will help me, won't you?'
'That is all I ask! But to tell the truth, I was discouraged to-day, and I have been to ask the advice of a very good man. There! I have told you, and I am glad of it, because I hate secrets! He has promised to come and see you, and talk to you, but now that you are yourself again——' She stopped, as if embarrassed.
'Who is he?' asked Angela with a shade of distrust. 'A priest?'
'Please do not be angry!' Madame Bernard began to repent of what she had done. 'I was so much distressed—I felt that you were slipping out of the world day by day, just dying of a broken heart, so I went to see him this afternoon.'
'I am not going to die,' Angela said confidently. 'Who is he? I think I know at last what I must do, without the advice of a priest. But tell me who he is.'
'He is such a good man, my dear—Monsignor Saracinesca.'
'That is different,' Angela said, changing her tone at once. 'I shall be very glad to see Monsignor Saracinesca. He is a real saint, if there is one living.'
CHAPTER VII
There is a religious house in Rome, beyond the Tiber and not far from Porta Portese, which I will call the Convent of the White Sisters of Santa Giovanna d'Aza. Their order is a branch of a great and ancient one, though it has not had a separate existence a very long time. The convent contains one of the best private hospitals in Italy, and the Sisters also go out as trained nurses, like those of several other orders. But they do something more, which the others do not; for almost every year two or three, or even four of them go out to the Far East to work in the leper hospitals which missionaries have established in Rangoon and elsewhere; and a good many have gone in the last ten years, but few will ever return.
The convent is much larger than any one would suppose who judged merely from the uninteresting stuccoed wall which faces the quiet street, and in which there are a few plain windows without shutters and a large wooden door, painted a dull green. This door, which is the main entrance, is opened and shut by the portress as often as a hundred times a day and more; but when it is open there is nothing to be seen within but a dark vestibule paved with flagstones; and the portress's wooden face is no more prepossessing than the wall itself. Ifany one asks her a question, she answers civilly in a businesslike tone, with a hard foreign accent, for she is the widow of one of the Swiss Guards at the Vatican; but she is naturally silent, stolid, mechanical, and trustworthy. She is a lay sister and is called Sister Anna, and she lives in a small room on the left of the vestibule, as you go in, five steps above the stone pavement. She is very rarely relieved from her duties for a few hours at a time, and all the patients must pass her when they enter or leave the house, as well as the doctors, and the visitors whose smart carriages and motor cars often stand waiting in the narrow street. Fifty times a day, perhaps, the door-bell rings and Sister Anna deliberately flaps down the five steps in her heavily-soled slippers to admit one person or another, and fifty times, again, she flaps down to let them out again. The reason why she does not go mad or become an imbecile is that she is Swiss. That, at least, is how it strikes the celebrated surgeon, Professor Pieri, who is at the convent very often because he has many of his patients brought there to be operated on and nursed.
The truth is that the hospital is a thoroughly modern one, which has been built as an extension of buildings that date from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It is managed on soundly scientific principles, without the least fuss, or any 'board of trustees' or 'committee of management,' or any of that cumbrous administration which makes so many public hospitals as intricate as labyrinths, only to be threaded with a clue of red tape, and proportionately unpractical.
There is a still and sunny garden within, surrounded by a wide and dry cloister, above which the ancient building rises only one story on the three sides of the square; but on the fourth side, which looks towards the sun at noon, there are three stories, which have been built lately, and the hospital wards are in that wing, one above the other. On the opposite side, a door opens from the cloister to the choir of the church, which has also an outer entrance from the street, now rarely used; for the chaplain comes and goes through the cloister, the vestibule, and the green door where the portress is.
Beyond her lodge there is a wide hall, with clerestory windows and glass doors opening to the cloister and the garden; and from this hall the hospital itself is reached by a passage through which all the patients are taken. The Mother Superior's rooms are those above the cloister on the further side of the garden, and have three beautiful thirteenth century windows divided by pairs of slender columns, so that each window has two little arches.
In the middle of the garden there is an old well with three arches of carved stone that spring from three pillars and meet above the centre of the well-head, and the double iron chain runs over a wheel, and has two wrought copper buckets, one at each end of it; but the water is now used only for watering the flowers. There are stone seats round the well, too, on which three old nuns often sit and sun themselves on fine days. They are the last of the Sisters of the old time, when there was no hospital and no training school, and the nuns used to do anything in the way of nursing that was asked ofthem by rich or poor, with a good heart and a laudable intention, but without even the simplest elements of modern prophylaxis, because it had not been invented then. For that has all been discovered quite recently, as we older men can remember only too well.
There are many roses in the garden, and where there is most sun there is a large bed of carnations, but not of the finer sorts; they are just plain red and white ones, that fill the air with a scent of warm cloves on still mornings in the late spring, when it is beginning to be hot. But if this description has seemed tedious, you must know that Angela lived in the convent and worked there for five whole years after Giovanni was lost in Africa; so that it was needful to say something about her surroundings.
An accomplished psychologist would easily fill a volume with the history of Angela's soul from the day on which she learned the bad news till the morning when she made her profession and took the final vows of her order in the little convent church. But one great objection to psychological analysis in novels seems to be that the writer never gets beyond analysing what he believes that he himself would have felt if placed in the 'situation' he has invented for his hero or heroine. Thus analysed, Angela Chiaromonte would not have known herself, any more than those who knew her best, such as Madame Bernard and her aunt the Princess, would have recognised her. I shall not try to 'factorise' the result represented by her state of mind from time to time; still less shall I employ a mathematical process to provethat the ratio ofdxtodyis twicex, the change in Angela at any moment of her moral growth.
What has happened must be logical, just because it has happened; if we do not understand the logic, that may or may not be the worse for us, but the facts remain.
It is easy, too, to talk of a 'vocation' and to lay down the law regarding it, in order to say that such and such a woman acted wisely in entering a religious order, or that such another made a mistake. The fact that there is no such law is itself the reason why neither a man nor a woman is permitted nowadays to take permanent vows until after a considerable period of probation, first as a 'postulant' and then as a novice.
For my own part, when Angela Chiaromonte left Madame Bernard's pleasant rooms in Trastevere and went into the convent hospital of Santa Giovanna d'Aza through the green door, I do not believe that she had the very smallest intention of becoming a nun, nor that she felt anything like what devout persons call a 'vocation.' It was not to disappear from the world for ever that she went there, and it was not in order to be alone with her sorrow, though that would have been a natural and human impulse; nor was it because she felt herself drawn to an existence of asceticism and mystic meditation.
The prospect of work was what attracted her. She was a perfectly healthy-minded girl, and though she might never cease to mourn the man she had loved, it was to be foreseen that in all other respects she might recover entirely from the terrible shock and live out anormal life. Under ordinary circumstances that is what would have happened; she would have gone back to the world after a time, outwardly the same, though inwardly changed in so far as all possibilities of love and marriage were concerned; she would have lived in society, year after year, growing old gracefully and tenderly, as some unmarried women do whose stories we never knew or have forgotten, but whose hearts are far away, watching for the great To-morrow, beside a dead man's grave, or praying before an altar whence the god has departed. They are women whom we never call 'old maids,' perhaps because we feel that in memory they are sharing their lives with a well-loved companion whom we cannot see. That might have been Angela's future.
But a brutal fact put such a possibility out of the question. She was a destitute orphan, living on the charity of her former governess, whereas her nature was independent, brave, and self-reliant. When she rose above the wave that had overwhelmed her, and opened her eyes and found her senses again, her instinct was to strike out for herself, and though she talked with Monsignor Saracinesca again and again, she had really made up her mind after her first conversation with him. She saw that she must work for her living, but at the same time she longed to devote her life to some good work for Giovanni's sake. The churchman told her that if she could learn to nurse the sick, she might accomplish both ends.
He never suggested that she should become a nun, or take upon herself any permanent obligation. Hehad seen much of human nature; the girl was very young, and perhaps he underrated the strength of her love for the dead man, and thought that she might yet marry happily and live a normal woman's life. But there was no reason why she should not become a trained nurse in the meantime, and there was room for her in the nuns' hospital of Saint Joan of Aza, an institution which owes its first beginnings and much of its present success to the protection of the Saracinesca family, and more particularly to the Princess herself, the beautiful Donna Corona of other days, and to her second son, Monsignor Ippolito. The hospital was always in need of young nurses, especially since a good many of the older ones were going to the Far East, and when there was a choice the Mother Superior gave the preference to applicants from the better classes.
The matter was therefore settled without difficulty, and Angela was soon installed in the tiny room which remained her cell for years afterwards. It contained a narrow iron bedstead, and during the day a small brass cross always lay on the white coverlet; there was a chest of drawers, a minute table on which stood an American nickeled alarum clock; there was one rush-bottomed chair, and the only window looked westwards over the low city wall towards Monteverde, where the powder magazine used to stand before it was blown up. The window was latticed half-way up, which did not hinder Angela from seeing the view when she had time to look at it.
She wore a plain grey frock at first, but when she wasin the wards it was quite covered by the wide white cotton garment which all the nurses wore when on duty. Occasionally Madame Bernard came and took her for a walk, and sometimes she went out on an errand with one of the nuns; but she did not care very much for that, possibly because she was not under any restraint. The beautiful enclosed garden was wide and sunny, and she could generally be alone there; when the weather was fine she could wander about between the beds of roses and carnations or sit on a bench, and if it rained she could walk up and down under the cloisters. The three old nuns who came out to sun themselves paid no attention to her, beyond nodding rather shakily when she bent her head to them in respectful salutation. They had seen more than a hundred girls enter the convent, to work and grow old like themselves, and one more neither made any difference to them nor possessed for them the least interest. That strange petrifaction had begun in them which overtakes all very old monks and nuns who have never had very active minds. From doing the same things, with no appreciable variation, at the same hours for fifty, sixty, and even seventy years, they become so perfectly mechanical that their bodies are always in one of a limited number of attitudes, less and less pronounced as great age advances, till they at last cease to move at all and die, as the hands of a clock stop when it has run down.
But the three old nuns belonged to a past generation, and it was not probable that the younger Sisters would ever be like them. The Mother Superior was a smalland active woman, with quick black eyes, a determined mouth, and a strangely pale face. She seemed to be incapable of being tired. Among themselves the novices called her the little white volcano. When the one who had invented the epithet repeated it to Monsignor Saracinesca in confession, and he gently told her that it was wrong to speak disrespectfully of her superior, she rather pertly asked him whether any one who lived under a volcano could fail to 'respect' it; whereat he shook his head gravely inside the confessional, but his spiritual mouth twitched with amusement, in spite of himself. The four novices were inclined to distrust Angela at first, however, as she was not even a postulant, and it was not till she became one of themselves that she was initiated into their language.
It was not long before this took place, however. From the first, she showed a most unusual aptitude in learning the mechanical part of her profession, and her extraordinary memory made it easy for her to remember the lectures which were given for the nurses three times a week, generally by the house surgeon, but occasionally by the great Doctor Pieri, who had been a pupil of Basini of Padua and was a professor in the University of Rome. He showed especial interest in Angela, and the pert little novice wickedly suggested that he was falling in love with her; but the truth was that he at once distinguished in her the natural gifts which were soon to make her the most valuable nurse at his disposal.
The Mother Superior expected that she would become vain and gave her some energetic lectures on the evils ofconceit. There was a sort of fury of good about the pale woman that carried everything before it. She was just, but her righteous anger was a ready firebrand, and when it burst into flame, as often happened, her eloquence was extraordinary. Her face might have been carved out of white ice, but her eyes glowed like coals and her words came low, quick, and clear, and wonderfully to the point. As a girl, her temper had been terrific, and had estranged her from her own family; but her unconquerable will had forged it into a weapon that never failed her in a just cause and was never drawn in an unjust one. Monsignor Saracinesca sometimes thought that Saint Paul must have had the same kind of fiery and fearless temperament.
It sometimes outran facts, if it always obeyed her intention, as happened one day when she privately gave Angela a sermon on vanity which would have made the other novices tremble at the time and feel very uncomfortable for several days afterwards. When she had wound up her peroration and finished, she drew two or three fierce little breaths and scrutinised the young girl's face; but to her surprise it had not changed in the least. The clear young eyes were as steady and quiet as ever; if they expressed anything, it was a quiet admiration which the older woman had not hitherto roused in the younger members of her community.
'Pray for me, Mother,' Angela said, 'and I will try to be less vain.'
The other looked at her again very keenly, and then, instead of answering, asked a question.
'Why do you wish to be a nun?'
Angela had lately asked herself the same thing, but she replied with some diffidence:
'If I can do a little good, by working very hard all my life, I hope that it may be allowed to help the soul of a person who died suddenly.'
The Mother Superior's white face softened a little.
'That is a good intention,' she said. 'If it is sincere and lasting, you will be a good nun. You may begin your noviciate on Sunday if you have made up your mind.'
'I am ready.'
'Very well. I have only one piece of advice to give you, and perhaps I shall remind you of it often, for it was given to me very late, and I should have been the better for it. Try to remember what I tell you.'
'I will remember, Mother.'
'It is this. Count your failures but not your successes. You cannot surprise God by the amount of good you do. There are girls who enter upon the noviciate just as hard-working students go up for an examination, hoping to astonish their examiners by the amount they know. That is well enough at the university, but it is all wrong in religion. Work how you will, you cannot be perfect, and, if you were, you could only be what God made man before sin came. Each student is trying to beat all the others, and one succeeds. We are not trying to outdo each other; there are no marks in our examination and there is no competition. We are working together to save life in a world where millions die for want of care. To do less than the best we can is failure, for each of us,and the best we can all do together is very little compared with all there is to be done. Faith, Hope, and Charity are all we have to help us, all we can ask of Heaven. Believe, hope, and help others while you live, and all will go well hereafter, never fear! Not to help, not to believe, not to hope, even during one moment, is to fail in that moment. Where the sum is light, it is easy to count the dark places, but not the light itself. That is what I mean, my daughter, when I say, keep account of your failures but not of your successes. Try to remember it.'
'Indeed I will,' Angela answered.
She went back to her work, and the Mother Superior's words thereafter became the rule of her life; but she was not sent for again to listen to a lecture on vanity, and the small White Volcano was inclined to think that it had made a mistake in breaking out, and inwardly offered a conditional apology.
Angela worked hard, and made such progress that before the two years of her noviciate were over Doctor Pieri said openly that she was the best surgical nurse in the hospital, and one of the best for ordinary illnesses, considering how limited her experience had been. The nursing of wounds is more mechanical than the nursing of a fever, for instance, and can be sooner learned by a beginner, where the surgeon himself is always at hand. On the other hand, the value of surgical nursing depends on relative perfection of detail and rigorous adherence to the set rules of prophylaxis, whereas other nursing often requires that judgment which only experience cangive. Surgery is a fine art that has reached a high degree of development in the treatment of facts, about which good surgeons are generally right. A great deal of noise is made over surgeons' occasional mistakes, which are advertised by their detractors, but we hear little of their steady and almost constant success. Medicine, on the other hand, must very often proceed by guesswork; but for that very reason it covers up its defects more anxiously, and is more inclined to talk loudly of its victories. Every great physician admits that a good deal of his science is psychological; and psychology deals with the unknown, or with what is only partially knowable. A mathematician may smile and answer that 'infinity' is much more than partially 'unknowable,' but that, by using it, the differential calculus gives results of most amazing accuracy, and is such a simple affair that, if its mere name did not inspire terror, any fourth-form schoolboy could easily be made to understand it, and even taught to use it. What we call the soul may be infinite or infinitesimal, or finite, or it may be the Hegelian Nothing, which is Pure Being under another name; whatever it is, our acquaintance with it is not knowledge of it, since whatever we can find out about it is based on the Criticism exercised by Pure Reason and not on experience; and the information which Pure Reason gives us about the soul is not categorical but antinomial; and by the time medicine gets into these transcendental regions, consciously or unconsciously, it ceases to be of much practical use in curing 'pernicious anaemia' or any similarly obscure disease.
All this digression only explains why Angela was a better nurse in surgical cases than in ordinary illnesses after she had been two years in training; but that circumstance is connected with what happened to her later, as will be clear in due time.
In most respects she changed very little, so far as any one could see. No one in the convent knew how she hoped against all reason, during those two years, that Giovanni might yet be heard of, though there was not the least ground for supposing that he could have escaped when all the others had perished; and indeed, while she still hoped, she felt that it was very foolish, and when she had a long talk with Monsignor Saracinesca before taking the veil, she did not even speak of such a possibility.
She had long ago decided that she would take the veil at the expiration of the two years, but she wished to define her position clearly to the three persons whom she cared for and respected most. These were Madame Bernard, Monsignor Saracinesca, and the Mother Superior, whose three characters were as different as it would have been possible to pick out amongst the acquaintance of a lifetime.
Angela asked permission to go with Madame Bernard to the cemetery of San Lorenzo, where a monument marked the grave of those who had fallen in the expedition. It was a large square pillar of dark marble, surmounted by a simple bronze cross. On the four sides there were bronze tablets, on which were engraved the names of the officers and men, and that of GiovanniSeveri was second, for he had been the second in command.
No one was near and Angela knelt down upon the lowest of the three steps that formed the base. After a moment Madame Bernard knelt beside her. The novice's eyes were fixed on the bronze tablet and her lips did not move. Her companion watched her furtively, expecting to see some sign of profound emotion, or of grief controlled, or at least the shadow of a quiet sadness. But there was nothing, and after two or three minutes Angela rose deliberately, went up the remaining steps, and pressed her lips upon the first letters of Giovanni's name. She turned and descended the steps with a serene expression, as Madame Bernard got up from her knees.
'Death was jealous of me,' Angela said.
She had never heard of Erinna; she did not know that a maiden poetess had made almost those very words immortal in one lovely broken line that has come down to us from five and twenty centuries ago. In the Everlasting Return they fell again from a maiden's lips, but they roused no response; Madame Bernard took them for a bit of girlish sentiment, and scarcely heeded them, while she wondered at Angela's strangely calm manner.
They walked back slowly along the straight way between the tombs.
'I loved him living and I love him dead,' said the young novice slowly. 'He cannot come back to me, but some day I may go to him.'
'Yes,' answered Madame Bernard without conviction.
The next world had always seemed very vague to her; and besides, poor Giovanni had been a soldier, and she knew something of military men, and wondered where they went when they died.
'You are a very good woman,' Angela continued, following her own train of thought; 'do you think it is wrong for a nun to love a dead man?'
'Dear me!' exclaimed the little Frenchwoman in some surprise. 'How can one love a man who is dead? It is impossible; consequently it is not wrong!'
Angela looked at her quickly and then walked on.
'There is no such thing as death,' she said.
It was Filmore Durand's odd speech that had come back to her often during two years; when she repeated it to herself she saw his portrait of Giovanni, which still hung in Madame Bernard's sitting-room, and presently it was not a picture seen in memory, but Giovanni himself.
Madame Bernard shrugged her shoulders and smiled vaguely.
'Death is a fact,' she said prosaically. 'It is the reason why we cannot live for ever!'
The reason was not convincing to Angela, but as she saw no chance of being understood, she went back to the starting-point.
'Then you do not think it can possibly be wrong for a nun to love some one who is dead?' she asked, her tone turning the statement into a question.
'Of course not!' cried the governess almost impatiently. 'You might as well think yourself in love with his tombstone and then fancy it a sin!'
So one of Angela's three friends had answered her question very definitely. The answer was not worthless, because Madame Bernard was a very honest, matter-of-fact woman; on the contrary, it represented a practical opinion, and that is always worth having, though the view it defines may be limited. Angela did not try to explain further what she had meant, and Madame Bernard always avoided subjects she could not understand. The two chatted pleasantly about other things as they returned to the convent, and the little Frenchwoman trotted contentedly back to her lodgings, feeling that the person she loved best in the world was certain to turn out a very good and happy nun.
Angela was not yet so sure of this, and she took the first opportunity of consulting Monsignor Saracinesca. They sat and talked together on one of the stone seats in the cloistered garden. He is a tall, thin man, with a thoughtful face and a quiet manner. In his youth he was once entangled in the quarrels of a Sicilian family, as I have narrated elsewhere, and behaved with great heroism. After that, he laboured for many years as a simple parish priest in a fever-plagued district, and he only consented to return to Rome when he realised that his health was gravely impaired.
Angela put her question with her usual directness and watched his face. He knew her story, so that there was nothing to explain.
'Is it wrong to love him still?' she asked.
But Monsignor Ippolito did not speak until his silencehad lasted so long that Angela was a little frightened; not that he had any real doubt as to her intention, but because it was his duty to examine such a case of conscience in all its aspects.
'What does your own instinct tell you?' he asked at last.
'That it will not be wrong,' Angela answered with conviction. 'But I may be mistaken. That is why I come to you for advice.'
Again the churchman mused in silence for a while.
'I will tell you what I think,' he said, when he had made up his mind. 'There is a condition, which depends only on yourself, and of which you are the only judge. You ask my advice, but I can only show you how to ask it of your own heart. If your love for the man who is gone looks forward, prays and hopes, it will help you; if it looks back with tears for what might have been and with longing for what can never be, it will hinder you. More than that I cannot say.'
'I look forward,' Angela answered confidently. 'I pray and I hope.'
'If you are sure of that, you are safe,' said Monsignor Saracinesca. 'No one but yourself can know.'
'I began to work here hoping and praying that if I could do any good at all it might help him, wherever he is,' Angela went on. 'That is the only vocation I ever felt, and now I wish to take the veil because I think that as a professed nun I may be able to use better what little I have learned in two years and a half than if I stay on as a lay sister. It is not for myself, except in so far as Iknow that the only way to help him is to do my best here. As I hope that God may be merciful to him, so I hope that God will accept my work, my prayers, and my faith.'
The prelate looked at the delicate face and earnest eyes, and the quietly spoken words satisfied him and a little more. There could be nothing earthly in such love as that, he was sure, and such simple faith would not be disappointed. It was not the first time in his experience as a priest that he had known and talked with a woman from whom sudden death had wrenched the man she loved, or whom inevitable circumstances had divided from him beyond all hope of reunion; but he had never heard one speak just as Angela spoke, nor seen that look in another face. He was convinced, and felt that he could say nothing against her intention.
But she herself was not absolutely sure even then, and she went to the Mother Superior that evening to ask her question for the last time. The Mother was seated at her writing-table, and one strong electric lamp shed its vivid light from under a perfectly dark shade upon the papers that lay under her hand and scattered before her—bills, household accounts, doctors' and nurses' reports, opened telegrams, humble-looking letters written on ruled paper and smart notes in fashionable handwritings. People who imagine that the Mother Superior of a nursing order which has branches in many parts of the world spends her time in meditation and prayer are much mistaken.
'Sit down,' said the small white volcano, withoutlooking up or lifting her thin forefinger from the column of figures she was checking.
The room would have been very dark but for the light which the white paper reflected upwards upon the nun's whiter face, and into the dark air. Angela sat down at a distance as she was bidden, and waited some minutes, till the Mother Superior had set her initials at the foot of the sheet with a blue pencil, and raised her face to peer into the gloom.
'Who is it?' she asked in a businesslike tone, still dazzled by the light.
'I am Angela, Mother. May I ask you a question?'
'Yes.'
The voice had changed even in that single word, and was kind and encouraging.
'Two years ago, before I became a novice, you asked me why I wanted to be a nun, Mother. You thought my intention was good. Now that there is still time before I make my profession, I have come to ask you once again what you think.'
'So far as I know, I think you can be a good nun,' answered the Mother Superior without waiting to hear more, for she never wasted time if she could possibly help it.
Angela understood her and told her story quickly and clearly, without a quiver or an inflection of pain in her voice. It was necessary, for the Mother did not know it all, and listened with concentrated attention. But before it was ended she had made up her mind what to say.
'My dear child,' said she, 'I am not your confessor!And besides, I am prejudiced, for you are a good nurse and I need you and wish you to stay. Do you feel that there is any reason why you should be less conscientious than you have been so far, if you promise to go on working with us as long as you live?'
'No,' Angela answered.
'Or that there is any reason why you should have less faith in God, less hope of heaven, or less charity towards your fellow-creatures if you promise to give your whole life to God, in nursing those who suffer, with the hope of salvation hereafter?'
'No, I do not feel that there can be any reason.'
'Then do not torment yourself with any more questions, for life is too short! To throw away time is to waste good, and save evil. Believe always, and then work with all your might! Work, work, work! Work done for God's sake is prayer to God, and a thousand hours on your knees are not worth as much as one night spent in helping a man to live—or to die—when you are so tired that you can hardly stand, and every bone in your body aches, and you are half-starved too! Work for every one who needs help, spare every one but yourself, think of every one before yourself. It is easy to do less than your best, it is impossible to do more, and yet you must try to do more, always more, till the end! That should be a nun's life.'
The Mother Superior had led that life till it was little less than a miracle that she was still alive herself, and altogether a wonder that her fiery energy had not eaten up the small frail earthly part of her long ago.
'But it must not be for the sake of the end,' she went on, before Angela could speak, 'else you will be working only for the hope of rest, and you will try to kill yourself with work, to rest the sooner! You must think of what you are doing because it is for others, not for what it will bring you by and by, God willing. Pray to live long and to do much more before you die, if it be good; for there is no end of the sickness and suffering and pain in this world; but few are willing to help, and fewer still know how!'
She was silent, but her eyes were speaking still as Angela saw them looking at her over the shaded light, her pale features illuminated only by the soft reflection from the paper on the table.
The young girl felt a deep and affectionate admiration for her, and resolved never to forget the brave words, but to treasure them with those others spoken two years ago: 'Count your failures but not your successes.'
She rose to take her leave, and, standing before the writing-table, with each hand hidden in the opposite sleeve, she bent her head respectfully.
'Thank you, Mother,' she said.
The nun nodded gravely, still looking at her, but said nothing more, and Angela left the room, shutting the door without noise. The Mother Superior did not go back to her accounts at once, though her hand mechanically drew the next sheet from the pile, so that it lay ready before her. She was thinking of her own beginnings, more than twenty years ago, and comparing her own ardent nature with what she knew of Angela's:and then, out of her great experience of character, a doubt arose and troubled her strangely, though she opposed it as if it had been a temptation to injustice, or at least to ungenerous thinking. It was a suspicion that such marvellous calm as this novice showed could not be all real; that there was something not quite explicable about her perfect submission, humility, and obedience; that under the saintly exterior a fire might be smouldering which would break out irresistibly some day, and not for good.
The woman who had been tried doubted the untried novice. Perhaps it was nothing more than that, and natural enough; but it was very disturbing, because she also felt herself strongly attached to Angela, and to suspect her seemed not only unfair, but disloyal. Yet it was the bounden duty of the Mother to study the characters of all who lived under her authority and direction, and to forestall their possible shortcomings by a warning, an admonition, or an encouraging word, as the case might be.
She had done what she could, but she was dissatisfied with herself; and at the very moment when Angela was inwardly repeating her stirring words and committing them to memory for her lifetime, the woman who had spoken them was tormented by the thought that she had not said half enough, or still worse, that she had perhaps made a mistake altogether. For the first time since she had fought her first great battle with herself, she had the sensation of being near a mysterious force of nature which she did not understand; but she hadbeen twenty years younger then, and the present issue was not to depend on her own strength but on another's, and it involved the salvation of another's soul.
It was long before she bent over the columns of figures again, yet she did not reproach herself with having wasted time. The first of all her many duties, and the most arduous, was to think for others; to work for them was a hundred times easier and was rest and refreshment by contrast.
Angela would have been very much surprised if she could have known what was passing in the Mother Superior's mind, while she herself felt nothing but relief and satisfaction because her decision had now become irrevocable. If she had been bidden to wait another year, she would have waited patiently and without a murmur, because she could not be satisfied with anything less than apparent certainty; but instead, she had been encouraged to take the final step, after which there could be no return.
That was the inevitable. Human destiny is most tragic when the men and women concerned are doing their very utmost to act bravely and uprightly, while each is in reality bringing calamity on the other.
Acting on the only evidence she had a right to trust, the Mother Superior knew that she would not be justified in hindering Angela from taking the veil. Few had ever done so well in the noviciate, none had ever done better, and her natural talent for the profession of nursing was altogether unusual. There had never been one like her in the hospital. As for her character, sheseemed to have no vanity, no jealousy, no temper, no moodiness. The Mother had never known such an even and well-balanced disposition as hers. Would it have been wise to keep her back longer, because she seemed too perfect? Would it have been just? Would it not, indeed, have been very wrong to risk discouraging her, now that she was quite ready? She was almost twenty-one years old and had taken no step hastily. More than two years and a half had passed since she had entered the convent, and in all that time no one had been able to detect the smallest fault in her, either of weakness or of hastiness, still less of anything like the pride she might actually have felt in her superiority. To keep her back now would be to accuse perfection of being imperfect; it would be as irrational as to call excellence a failing. More than that, it would have a bad effect on the whole community, a danger which could not be overlooked.
Three years later, the Mother understood the warning doubt that had assailed her; and when a precious life was in the balance she put herself on trial before her judging conscience and the witness of her memory. But though the judge was severe and the testimony unerring, they acquitted her of all blame, and told her that she had acted for the best, according to her light, on that memorable evening.
Within less than a month Angela took the veil in the convent church, and thenceforth she was Sister Giovanna, for that was the name she chose.