Part 9 (1/2)

”I will do all you tell me,” she answered quietly.

Dalrymple had some English medicines with him on his travels, and not knowing what might be required of him at the convent, he had brought with him a couple of tiny bottles.

”This when she coughs--ten drops,” he said, handing the bottles to the nun. ”And five drops of this once an hour, until her chest feels freer.”

He gave her minute directions, as far as he could, about the general treatment of the patient, which Maria repeated and got by heart.

”I will let you know before twenty-three o'clock what the cardinal says to the plan,” she said. ”In this way you will be able to come up by daylight.”

As Dalrymple took his leave, he held out his hand, forgetting that he was in Italy.

”It is not our custom,” said Maria Addolorata, thrusting each of her own hands into the opposite sleeve.

But there was nothing cold in her tone. On the contrary, Dalrymple fancied that she was almost on the point of laughing at that moment, and he blushed at his awkwardness. But she could not see his face.

”Your most humble servant,” he said, bowing to her.

”Good day, Signor Doctor,” she answered, through the open door, as the portress jingled her keys and prepared to follow Dalrymple.

So he took his departure, not without much satisfaction at the result of his first attempt.

CHAPTER VII.

SOR TOMMASO recovered but slowly, though his injuries were of themselves not dangerous. His complexion was apoplectic and gouty, he was no longer young, and before forty-eight hours had gone by his wounds were decidedly inflamed and he had a little fever. At the same time he was by no means a courageous man, and he was ready to cry out that he was dead, whenever he felt himself worse. Besides this, he lost his temper several times daily with Dalrymple, who resolutely refused to bleed him, and he insisted upon eating and drinking more than was good for him, at a time when if he had been his own patient he would have enforced starvation as necessary to recovery.

Meanwhile the cardinal had exerted his influence with his sister, the abbess, and had so far succeeded that Dalrymple, who went every day to the convent, was now made to stand with his back to the abbess's open door, in order that he might at least ask her questions and hear her own answers. Many an old Italian doctor can tell of even stranger and more absurd precautions observed by the nuns of those days. As soon as the oral examination was over, Maria Addolorata shut the door and came out into the parlour, where Dalrymple finished his visit, prolonging it in conversation with her by every means he could devise.

Though enc.u.mbered with a little of the northern shyness, Dalrymple was not diffident. There is a great difference between shyness and diffidence. Diffidence distrusts itself; shyness distrusts the mere outward impression made on others. At this time Dalrymple had no object beyond enjoying the pleasure of talking with Maria Addolorata, and no hope beyond that of some day seeing her face without the veil. As for her voice, his present position as doctor to the convent made it foolish for him to run the risk of being caught listening for her songs behind the garden wall. But he had not forgotten what Annetta had told him, and Maria Addolorata's soft intonations and liquid depths of tone in speaking led him to believe that the peasant girl had not exaggerated the nun's gift of singing.

One day, after he had seen her and talked with her more than half a dozen times, he approached the subject, merely for the sake of conversation, saying that he had been told of her beautiful voice by people who had heard her across the garden.

”It is true,” she answered simply. ”I have a good voice. But it is forbidden here to sing except in church,” she added with a sigh. ”And now that my aunt is ill, I would not displease her for anything.”

”That is natural,” said Dalrymple. ”But I would give anything in the world to hear you.”

”In church you can hear me. The church is open on Sundays at the Benediction service. We are behind the altar in the choir, of course.

But perhaps you would know my voice from the rest because it is deeper.”

”I should know it in a hundred thousand,” a.s.severated the Scotchman, with warmth.

”That would be a great many--a whole choir of angels!” And the nun laughed softly, as she sometimes did, now that she knew him so much better.

There was something warm and caressing in her laughter, short and low as it was, that made Dalrymple look at those full white hands of hers and wonder whether they might not be warm and caressing too.

”Will you sing a little louder than the rest next Sunday afternoon, Sister Maria?” he asked. ”I will be in the church.”

”That would be a great sin,” she answered, but not very gravely.