Part 11 (2/2)

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, G.o.d 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 had been 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 pa.s.sing 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, she seemed 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sailed 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.

CHAPTER VIII

Five years after Giovanni Severi had left Rome to join the ill-fated expedition in Africa, his brother Ugo obtained his captaincy and at the same time was placed in charge of the powder magazine at Monteverde, which Sister Giovanna could see in the distance from her latticed window. The post was of considerable importance, but was not coveted because it required the officer who held it to live at a considerable distance from the city, with no means of getting into town which he could not provide for himself; for there is no tramway leading down the right bank of the Tiber. The magazine was actually guarded by a small detachment of artillery under two subalterns who took the night duty by turns, and both officers and men were relieved at regular intervals by others; but the captain in command held his post permanently and lived in a little house by himself, a stone's throw from the gate of the large walled enclosure in which the low buildings stood. For some time it had been intended to build a small residence for the officer in charge, but this had not been begun at the date from which I now take up my story.

The neighbourhood is a lonely one, but there are farm-houses scattered about at varying distances from the high-road which follows the river, mostly in the neighbourhood of the hill that bears the name of Monteverde and seems to have been the site of a villa in which Julius Caesar entertained Cleopatra.

As every one will understand, Ugo Severi's duties consisted in keeping an account of the ammunition and explosives deposited in the vaults of the magazine and in exercising the utmost vigilance against fire and other accidents. The rule against smoking, for instance, did not apply outside the enclosure, but Ugo gave up cigarettes, even in his own house, as soon as he was appointed to the post, and took care that every one should know that he had done so.

He was a hard-working, hard-reading, rather melancholic man who had never cared much for society and preferred solitude to a club; a fair man, with the face of a student and not over robust, but nevertheless energetic and determined where his duty was concerned. He lived alone in the little house, with his orderly, a clever Sicilian, who cooked for him; a peasant woman from a neighbouring farm-house came every morning to sweep the rooms, make the two beds, and scrub the two stone steps before the door and clean the kitchen.

The house was like hundreds of other little houses in the Campagna. On the ground floor there was a cross-vaulted hall where the Captain transacted business and received the reports of the watch; there was a tiny kitchen also, a stable at the back for two horses, and a narrow chamber adjoining it, in which Pica, the orderly, slept. Upstairs there was only one story, consisting of a large room with a loggia looking across the river towards San Paolo, a bedroom of moderate dimensions, and a dressing-room.

The place was more luxuriously furnished than might have been expected, for though Captain Ugo was not a rich man, he was by no means dependent on his pay. General Severi had lived to retrieve a part of his fortune, and had died rather suddenly of heart-failure after a bad attack of influenza, leaving his property to be divided equally between his two surviving sons and their sister. The latter had married away from Rome, and Ugo's younger brother was in the navy, so that he was now the only member of his family left in Rome.

He was a man of taste and reading, who had entered the army to please his father and would have left it on the latter's death if he had not been persuaded by his superiors that he had a brilliant career before him and might be a general at fifty, if he stuck to the service. He had answered that he would do so if he might have some post of trust in which he would have time for study; the command of the magazine at Monteverde was vacant just then, and as no more influential person wanted to live in such a dull place, he got it.

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