'It is!' retorted the doctor, who could not bear contradiction. 'She ought to know better, and I shall tell her so. Go home at once, Sister, and go to bed and stay there!'

'I am quite able to work,' protested Sister Giovanna quietly. 'There is nothing the matter with me.'

Still the doctor glared at her.

'Show me your tongue!' he said roughly.

The nun meekly opened her mouth and put out her little tongue: it was as pink as a rose-leaf. The doctor grunted, grabbed her wrist and began to count the pulse. Presently he made another inarticulate noise, as if he were both annoyed and pleased at having been mistaken.

'Something on your mind?' he asked, more kindly--'some mental distress?'

'Yes.' The word was spoken reluctantly.

'I am sorry I was impatient,' he said, and his large brown eyes softened behind his round spectacles as he turned to enter the sick-room.

It was not his business to ask what had so greatly disturbed the peace of Sister Giovanna.

CHAPTER X

When the Princess Chiaromonte was getting well, she asked some questions of her doctor, to which he replied as truthfully as he could. She inquired, for instance, whether she had been delirious at the beginning, and whether she had talked much when her mind was wandering, and his answers disturbed her a little. As sometimes happens in such cases, she had disjointed recollections of what she had said, and vague visions of herself that were not mere creations of her imagination. It was like a dream that had not been quite a dream; opium-eaters know what the sensation is better than other men. Under the influence of laudanum, or the pipe, or the hypodermic, they have talked brilliantly, but they cannot remember what the conversation was about; or else they know that they have been furiously angry, but cannot recall the cause of their wrath nor the person on whom it was vented; or they have betrayed a secret, but for their lives they could not say who it was to whom they told it. The middle-aged woman of the world felt that her reputation was a coat of many colours, and her past, when she looked back to it, was like a badly-constructed play in which the stage is crowded with personages who have little connection with each other. There was much which she herself did not care to remember, but much more that no one else need ever know; and as she had never before been delirious, nor even ill, the thought that she had now perhaps revealed incidents of her past life was anything but pleasant.

'It is so very disagreeable to think that I may have talked nonsense,'

she said to the doctor, examining one of her white hands thoughtfully.

'Do not disturb yourself about that,' he answered in a rea.s.suring tone, for he understood much better than she guessed. 'A good trained nurse is as silent about such accidental confessions as a good priest is about intentional ones.'

'Confession!' cried the Princess, annoyed. 'As if I were concealing a crime! I only mean that I probably said very silly things. By the bye, I had several nurses, had I not? You kept changing them. Do you happen to know who that Sister Giovanna was, who looked so ill? You sent her back after two days, I think, because you thought she might break down. She reminded me of a niece of mine whom I have not seen for years, but I did not like to ask her any questions, and besides, I was much too ill.'

'I have no idea who she was before she entered the order,' the doctor answered.

He was often asked such futile questions about nurses, and would not have answered them if he had been able to do so. But in asking information the Princess was unwittingly conveying it, for it flashed upon him that Sister Giovanna was perhaps indeed that niece of whom she spoke, and whom she was commonly said to have defrauded of her fortune; the nun herself had told him of the sick woman's delirious condition, and he remembered her looks and her admission that she was in mental distress. All this tallied very well with the guess that her aunt had made some sort of confession of her deed while her mind was wandering, and that she now dimly recalled something of the sort. He put the theory away for future consideration, and left the Princess in ignorance that he had thought of it or had even attached any special meaning to her words.

She was far from satisfied, however, and made up her mind to follow up the truth at all costs. As a first step, she sent a generous donation to the Convent of the White Sisters, as soon as she was quite recovered; and as her illness had not been serious enough to explain such an important thank-offering, she wrote a line to say that she had never been ill before, and had been so much impressed by the care she had received that she felt she must really do something to help such an excellent inst.i.tution. It would give her keen pleasure to visit the hospital, she said in conclusion, but that was no doubt too great a favour to ask.

In thanking her, the Mother Superior replied that it would be no favour at all, and that the Princess would be welcome whenever she chose to send word that she was coming. On the day following that, the Mother told Sister Giovanna what had happened, and with characteristic directness asked what she thought about her aunt's charity.

'It is very kind of her,' answered the young nun in that monotonous, businesslike tone which all religious use when speaking of an apparently charitable action for the motive of which they are not ready to vouch, though they have no reasonable ground for criticism.

People of the world often speak in that voice when unexpectedly asked to give an opinion about some person whom they dislike but do not dare to abuse.

The little white volcano flared up energetically, however.

'I hate that sort of answer!' she cried, with a delicate snort.

Sister Giovanna looked at her in surprise, but said nothing.

'I cannot refuse the money,' said the Mother Superior, 'but I heartily wish I could! She has given it in order to come here and to be well received if she chooses to come again. I am sure of that, and she can have no object in coming here except to make mischief for you. It may be wicked of me, but I do not trust that lady in the least! Do you?'

She asked the question suddenly.

'She cannot harm me more than she did years ago,' Sister Giovanna answered.

'I wish that were certain!' said the other. 'I wish I had gone to nurse her myself that night instead of sending you!'

She was so evidently in earnest that the Sister was even more surprised than before, and wondered what was the matter. But as it was not her place to ask questions, and as the Mother Superior's doubt, or presentiment of trouble, was evidently suggested by sincere affection for herself, she said nothing, and went about her work without letting her mind dwell too long on the conversation. Men and women who lead the religious life in earnest acquire a much greater control of their secret thoughts than ordinary people can easily believe it possible to exercise.

Nevertheless, the Princess's voice came back to her ears when she was alone and told the story over and over again; and somehow her aunt was often mentioned in the Convent as a recent benefactress who was showing a lively interest in the hospital, and would perhaps give further large sums to it which could be expended for good. Sister Giovanna never said anything when the subject came up, but she could not help thinking of Judas's suggestion that the alabaster box of precious ointment might have been sold and given to the poor, and a disturbing spirit whispered that Princess Chiaromonte, whose past might well be compared with the Magdalen's, had done what Iscariot would have advised.

In due time, too, the great lady visited the Convent and hospital, and was shown over it systematically by the Mother Superior herself, followed by an approving little escort of nurses and novices, for it was of course permissible to appreciate and admire the smart clothes of a benefactress, whereas it would have been the height of levity to bestow so much attention on a lady visitor who was merely fashionable and had done nothing for the inst.i.tution. This, at least, was the novices' point of view. But the little white volcano seemed quietly cross, and held her small head very high as she led the Princess from one ward to another to the beautifully fitted operating-room; and when she spoke her tone was strangely cold and mordant, as a woman's voice sometimes sounds in the Alps, when she speaks across an ice-fall or a frozen lake.

The Princess looked behind her repeatedly, and her eyes sought her niece's face amongst those she saw, but she asked no questions about her, and apparently gave all her attention to what was shown her.

Sister Giovanna was in her cell during all that time, and should no doubt have been occupied; but instead, she was standing idly at her window, looking through one of the diamond-shaped openings in the lattice, in the direction of Monteverde. She was hardly aware of what she saw, however, for in imagination she was following her aunt through the halls and wards and long corridors, and a struggle was going on in her heart which hurt her and made her despise herself.

The woman who had ruined her life was under the same roof with her again, and she could not forgive her; and that seemed a very great sin. What had she gained in the five years that had gone by since the beginning of her noviciate, if she could not even forgive an injury?

That was the question. Since her life had led her to nothing better than smouldering resentment and sharp regret, it had not been the holy life she had meant it to be--the failure she must score against herself was a total one, a general defeat--and all that she had believed she had been doing for the dead man's sake must count for nothing, since she had not once been really in a state of grace.

No doubt her self-accusation went too far, as a confessor would have told her, or even the Mother Superior, if that good and impulsive woman had known what was in her mind. But Sister Giovanna did not believe she could go far enough in finding fault with herself for such great sins as her regret for a married life that might have been, and her lasting anger against a person who had robbed her; and it was while she was standing at her latticed window that morning that she first thought of making an even more complete sacrifice by joining the Sisters who intended to go out to the Rangoon leper hospital in the spring.

It was not with the hope of dying young that she wished to go and face death daily, but in the earnest desire to escape from what she called her temptation, and to regain that peace of mind which had been hers for a long time and now was gone. She had made for herself a little treasure-house of grace laid up, to be offered for Giovanni's soul, and the gold of her affliction and the jewels of her unselfish labours had been gathered there to help him. That had been her simple and innocent belief, but it had broken down suddenly as soon as she discovered that she was only a human, resentful, regretful woman after all, as far below the mystic detachment from the outward world as she had been in those first days of her grief, at Madame Bernard's, when she had sat listless all the day long, a broken-hearted girl. What she had taken for gold and had stored up for Giovanni's welfare was only the basest metal, her jewels were but chips of gaudy gla.s.s, her sacrifice was a failure after all. Worse than that, her dead man came back alive from his grave and haunted her in dreams, threatening righteous judgment on the woman who had cheated her and him of earthly happiness.

I shall not dwell on what she felt. Men and women who have honestly tried to lead the good life for years and have suddenly realised that they are as human as ever before, will understand what I have written.

The rest must either believe that it is true or, not believing, read on for the sake of knowing Sister Giovanna's strange story, or else throw my book aside for a dull novel not worth reading. We cannot always be amusing, and real life is not always gay.

The young nun waited in her cell till the Mother Superior herself opened the door and entered. For the Princess was gone, after seeing everything, praising everything with the flattering indiscrimination of total ignorance, and, finally, after asking permission to make another visit. She had spent ten minutes in the Mother's own rooms before leaving, and had asked the names of the three Sisters who had taken care of her in succession, writing them down on the back of a visiting-card. She wished to remember them in her prayers, she said; but the little white volcano almost laughed in her face, and the black diamond eyes twinkled furiously as they turned away to hide their scornful amus.e.m.e.nt--so strong was the nun's conviction that the new benefactress was a humbug. The Princess looked at the names quite calmly after she had written them--Sister Saint Paul, Sister Giovanna, and Sister Marius--and asked whether she had seen any of them during her visit. But the Mother Superior answered that they were all three either nursing private cases or not on duty, which might mean that they were resting in their cells.

Sister Giovanna started slightly as the door of her cell opened, for she had scarcely realised that she had not moved from the window for a long time. The elder woman had not taken the trouble to knock, and, strange to say, a faint blush rose in the Sister's face as if she had been surprised and were a little ashamed of being caught in idleness instead of reading her breviary for the day or doing something useful with her hands. The black eyes looked at her searchingly, for nothing escaped them.

'What have you been thinking of?' asked the impulsive woman.

There was a moment's silence.

'The Rangoon lepers,' answered the Sister in a quiet voice.

The Mother Superior's white face hardened strangely.

'The Princess Chiaromonte is gone,' she said rather sharply, 'and you are wanted in the surgical ward at once.'

She turned without another word and went quickly away, leaving the door open. It was clear that she was not pleased with the answer she had received.

Six weeks later Sister Giovanna went to her rooms on the other side of the cloistered court after first chapel and knocked at the door. It was a Monday morning in March, and she was to be Supervising Nurse for the week, but the custom was to go on duty at eight o'clock and it was not yet seven.

'Well?' asked the Mother Superior, looking up from her papers, while the young nun remained standing respectfully at the corner of the big desk.

The tone did not invite confidence; for some reason as yet unexplained the Mother had avoided speaking with her best nurse since that morning in the cell.