The White Sister Part 17

'It is impossible,' he said emphatically.

'On the contrary,' returned Madame Bernard, 'it is perfectly true. If you do not believe me, look at this!'

She opened her governess's reticule and fumbled amongst the little school-books and papers it contained. In a moment she brought out a letter, sealed, stamped, and postmarked, and held it up before the tall prelate's eyes.

It was addressed to 'Donna Angela Chiaromonte,' to the care of Madame Bernard at the latter's lodgings in Trastevere, the stamp was an Italian one, and the postmark was that of the military post-office in Ma.s.sowah. Monsignor Saracinesca looked at the envelope curiously, took it from Madame Bernard and examined the stamped date. Then he asked her if she was quite sure of the handwriting, and she a.s.sured him that she was; Giovanni had written before he started into the interior with the expedition, and she herself had received the letter from the postman and had given it to Angela. What was more, after Angela had gone to live at the Convent, Madame Bernard had found the old envelope of the letter in a drawer and had kept it, and she had just looked at it before leaving her house.

'He is alive,' she said with conviction; 'he has written this letter to her, and he does not know that she is a nun. He is coming home, I am sure!'

Monsignor Saracinesca was a man of great heart and wide experience, but such a case as this had never come to his knowledge. He stood still in deep thought, bending a little as he rested both his hands on the battered silver k.n.o.b of his old stick.

'He is coming home!' repeated Madame Bernard in great distress. 'What are we to do?'

'What were you going to do just now, when I met you at the door?'

asked the prelate.

'I do not know! I was going to see her! Perhaps I would have broken the news to her gently, perhaps I would have said nothing and kept the letter to give it to her at another time! How can I tell what I would have done? It would have depended so much on the way she took the first suggestion! People have died of joy, Monseigneur! A little weakness of the heart, a sudden joyful surprise, it stops beating--that has happened before now!'

'Yes. It has happened before now. I knew of such a case myself.'

'And I adore the child!' cried the impulsive Frenchwoman, ready to burst into tears. 'Oh, what shall we do? What ought we to do?'

'Do you know the Mother Superior?'

'Oh yes! Quite well. Are you going to tell me that I should take the letter to her? She is a cold, hard woman, Monseigneur! A splendid woman to manage a hospital, perhaps, but she has no more heart than a steel machine! She will burn the letter, and never tell any one!'

'I think you are mistaken about her,' answered the churchman gravely.

'She has more heart than most of us, and I believe that even you yourself are not more devoted to Sister Giovanna than she is.'

'Really, Monseigneur? Is it possible? Are you sure? What makes you think so?'

'To the best of my knowledge and belief, what I have told you is the truth, though I might find it hard to explain my reasons for saying so. But before you go to the Mother Superior, or speak of the matter to Sister Giovanna, there is something else to be done. This letter, by some strange accident of the post, may have been written before Giovanni Severi died. There is a bare possibility that it may have been mislaid in the post-office, or that he may have given it to a comrade to post, who forgot it--many things may happen to a letter.'

'Well? What must I do?'

'If he is alive, the fact is surely known already at headquarters, and you should make inquiries. To give Sister Giovanna a letter from the dead man would be wrong, in my opinion, for it would cause her needless and harmful pain. If he is dead, it should be burned, I think. But if he is really alive, after all, you have no right to burn it, and sooner or later she must have it and know the truth, with as little danger to her health and peace of mind as possible.'

'You are right, Monseigneur,' answered Madame Bernard. 'What you say is full of wisdom. I have three lessons to give this morning, and as soon as I am free I will go myself to the house of a superior officer whose daughter I used to teach, and he will find out the truth by the telephone in a few minutes.'

'I think that is the best course,' said the churchman.

So they parted, for he was going to Saint Peter's, and she turned in the direction of the nearest tramway, hastening to her pupils. And meanwhile the inevitable advanced on its unchanging course.

For Giovanni Severi was alive and well, and was on his way to Rome.

CHAPTER XI

Giovanni Severi's adventures, between his supposed death in the ma.s.sacre of the expedition and his unexpected reappearance at Ma.s.sowah nearly five years later, would fill an interesting little volume in themselves; but inasmuch as an account of them would not make this story clearer and would occupy much s.p.a.ce, it is enough to state the bare facts in a few words. Such tales of danger, suffering, and endurance have often been told at first hand, by the heroes of them, far more vividly and correctly than a mere story-teller can narrate them on hearsay.

The expedition had been attacked and destroyed by a handful of natives from a wandering tribe that was camping very near. Within a few minutes their chief was informed of what they had done, and he rode out to the spot with a large body of men at his heels. Among the dead, Giovanni Severi lay bleeding from a gash in the head, but not mortally hurt. The chief was by no means a mere dull savage, and finding an Italian officer alive, he recognised at once that it would be a mistake to knock him on the head and leave him with his comrades to be disposed of by the vultures and hyaenas. On the other hand, he must not be allowed to escape to the Italian colony with news of the disaster.

At some future time, and from a safe distance, it might be possible to obtain a large ransom for him; or, on the other hand, if a large force were ever sent up the country to revenge the outrage, it might be to the credit of the chief if he could prove that the deed had been done without his knowledge and that he had treated the only survivor humanely. He therefore took possession of Giovanni and provided for his safety in a simple manner by merely stating that if the prisoner escaped he would cut off ten heads, but if any harm came to him, he would cut off at least a hundred. As no one doubted but that he would keep his word, as he invariably did in such matters, Giovanni had but small chance of ever regaining his liberty, and none at all presented itself for nearly five years. During that time he travelled with his captors or lived in camps, many hundreds of miles from the outposts of civilisation; he learned their language and the chief insisted on learning his, as it might be useful; furthermore, he was required to teach his master whatever he could about modern warfare and what little he knew of agriculture and its arts of peace. In return he was well fed, well lodged when possible, and as well clad as any man in the tribe except the chief himself, which was not saying much.

His chance came at last and he did not let it pa.s.s. It involved killing one of his guards, stunning another, and seizing the chief's own camel, and it was not without great risk to his life that he got away. A fortnight later he had travelled five hundred miles and reported himself at headquarters in Ma.s.sowah, dressed in a long native shirt, a dirty turban, and nothing else, as Captain Giovanni Severi, formerly of the Staff and late of the expedition that had perished five years earlier.

It chanced, for the inevitable was at work, that the mail steamer for Italy was to leave the next morning and a small man-of-war on the following day, also homeward bound. Giovanni wrote to Angela Chiaromonte by the former and went on board the Government vessel twenty-four hours afterwards. He himself sent no telegram, because he did not know where his brothers were and he feared lest a telegraphic message might give Angela a bad shock, if it reached her at all.

Moreover, he had no news of her and could get no information whatever, so that he addressed his letter to Madame Bernard's old lodgings on the mere possibility that it might reach its destination.

Any one might have supposed that the news of his escape would have been in the papers before he reached Italy, for it was telegraphed to the War Office in Rome by the officer in command of the force at Ma.s.sowah. But the Minister chose to keep the intelligence a secret till Giovanni's arrival, because he expected to gain much information from him and feared lest the newspapers should get hold of him and learn facts from him which would be more useful to Italy if not made public; and when the Italian Government wishes to keep a secret, it can do so quite as well as any other, to the despair of the public press.

The consequence of the Minister's instructions was that Giovanni was met by a superior officer who came on board the man-of-war at Naples in order to forestall any possible attempt on the part of correspondents to get hold of him, and also for the purpose of giving him further directions for his conduct. He was to proceed to Rome at once, and the Minister would receive him privately on the following day at twelve o'clock. He was recommended not to go to an hotel, but to put up with his brother, who, as he now learned, was at Monteverde, and had been privately informed of his arrival and warned to be discreet.

The mail steamer which had brought Giovanni's letter to Madame Bernard had stopped at Port Said, Alexandria, and Messina, but the man-of-war came direct to Naples, and though slower than the packet-boat, arrived there only a few hours later. Madame Bernard's inquiries, made through the old colonel whose daughter she had formerly taught, proved fruitless, because the War Office would not allow Giovanni's coming to be known, and the result was that she took the letter home with her in her bag, and spent the evening in a very disturbed state of mind, debating with herself as to what she ought to do. She would have given anything to open the envelope, if only to see the date, and once or twice, when she reflected on the importance of knowing whether the writer was alive before giving his letter to Sister Giovanna, she almost yielded; but not quite, for she was an honourable little woman, according to her lights.

Late on that night Giovanni got into the train that was to bring him to Rome before Madame Bernard would be ready to go out in the morning.

Ugo Severi had been summoned by the Minister some days previously, and had been told that his brother was alive and coming home, and would lodge with him. Meanwhile Captain Ugo was put on his honour to say nothing of the matter to his friends. Such a recommendation was, in fact, needed, as Ugo would otherwise have informed the Princess Chiaromonte, if no one else. Considering how much feeling she had shown about Giovanni's supposed death, it would have been only humane to do so; but the Minister's instructions were precise and emphatic, and Ugo kept what he knew to himself and thought about it so continually that Confucianism temporarily lost its interest for him.

He had always been on good terms with Giovanni, though they had not seen much of each other after the latter was appointed to the Staff.

As for the brother who was in the Navy, Ugo rarely saw him or even heard of him, and since their father had died he himself had led a very lonely existence. His delight on learning that Giovanni had escaped and was returning may be imagined, for, in spite of his apparent coldness and love of solitude, he was a man of heart, and like many Italians of all cla.s.ses his ideal of happiness would have been to live quietly under one roof with his brothers and sister.

There is probably no other people in the world that finds such permanent satisfaction in what most of us would think a dull family life. It is a survival of the ancient patriarchal way of living, when the 'family' was a religion and its head was at once its absolute ruler and its high priest.

The only preparation which Ugo had made for receiving Giovanni was the purchase of an iron folding camp-bed. He told his orderly that a brother officer of his might have to spend a night in the house before long, which was strictly true. In due time a soldier on a bicycle brought him an official note from the Minister, informing him that Giovanni had reached Naples and would appear at Monteverde on the following morning. This note came late in the afternoon, and Ugo thought it needless to inform Pica, as Giovanni would certainly not wish to go to bed as soon as he arrived, so that the little bedstead need not be set up till he actually came.

At ten o'clock that evening, Ugo rose from his easy-chair, stretched himself, and whistled for Pica as usual. The orderly brought him his boots, his cloak, his sabre, and his cap, all of which he put on, as he always did, before going downstairs, for it was the hour at which he invariably inspected the neighbourhood. It was his practice to begin by walking round the outside of the enclosure, his man carrying a good lantern; he then examined the interior of the s.p.a.ce, and finally visited the guard-room and exchanged a word with the officer on duty for the night. Of late, he had occasionally gone out again between twelve and one o'clock, before going to bed; for two or three suspicious-looking characters had been seen in the neighbourhood of the magazine, like the man in the battered brown hat who had come upon Pica one afternoon and had asked his way. There was, in fact, a disquieting suspicion at headquarters that an attempt might be made to blow up one of the magazines; the detachments of soldiers on duty had therefore been strengthened and the officers in charge had been instructed to exercise the greatest vigilance.

When Captain Ugo went out of his door as usual, with Pica at his heels, the night was dark and it was just beginning to rain. The two went directly from the little house to the gate of the enclosure, and Ugo answered the sentry's challenge mechanically and walked briskly along the straight wall to the corner. Turning to the right then, he was following the next stretch at a good pace when he stumbled and nearly fell over something that lay in his path. As Pica held up the lantern close behind him, a man sprang up from the ground, where he must have been lying asleep, probably in liquor. By the uncertain light and in the rain, Ugo saw only the blurred vision of an individual in a ragged and dripping overcoat, with an ugly, blotched face and a ruined hat.

An instant later, and just as Ugo was challenging the man, two shots were fired. The first smashed and extinguished the lantern in Pica's hand without hurting him; the second took effect, and the Captain staggered against the wall, but instead of falling, sat down suddenly on the wet ground with his back against the masonry. The ruffian was gone and Pica had dashed after him in a fruitless pursuit, for the breaking of the lantern in his hand had checked the orderly as he was about to spring at the miscreant, who thus gained a sufficient start to ensure his escape.

In a few seconds the officer on duty and three or four of the men were on the spot with lights.

'You will have to carry me,' said the Captain calmly enough. 'I am shot in the foot and something is broken. Turn out the guard, Lieutenant, as a matter of principle and have the neighbourhood searched, though you will not find any one now. The fellow has got clean away.'

The men lifted him and carried him towards his house. Before they reached the door Pica met them, breathing hard and muttering Sicilian imprecations on the man who had wounded his master and got away; but while the Captain was being taken upstairs the orderly lit a candle and went to the telephone in the hall. He glanced at the address-book and then without hesitation he asked the central office to give him Princess Chiaromonte's number. His reason for doing so was simple: she was the only person in Rome who had ever appeared in the light of a friend of the Captain's family; she would do the right thing at once, Pica thought, and would send the best surgeon in Rome out to Monteverde in a motor in the shortest possible time. She was at home that evening, as it turned out, and at Pica's request she came to the telephone herself and heard his story.

She answered that she would try and get Doctor Pieri to go at once in her own motor, as he had the reputation of being the best surgeon in the city, but that if he could not be found she would send another doctor without delay. Pica went upstairs and found the Captain stretched on his bed in his wet clothes, while the three soldiers who had carried him up were trying to pull his boot off instead of cutting it. One of the younger officers from the magazine was already scouring the neighbourhood in obedience to Ugo's orders.

Pica sent the men away at once with the authority which a favourite orderly instinctively exercises over his less fortunate comrades. He was neither stupid nor quite unskilled, however, and in a few minutes he had slit the Captain's boot down the seam at the back and removed it almost without hurting him, as well as the merino sock. The small round wound was not bleeding much, but it was clear that the bone of the ankle was badly injured and the whole foot was already much swollen. The revolver had evidently been of small calibre, but the charge had been heavy and the damage was considerable. Pica had the sense not to attempt to make any bandage beyond laying two soft folded handkerchiefs one upon the other to the wound and loosely confining them with a silk one. While he was busy with this, he explained what he had done. The Captain, who knew that he was badly hurt and guessed that he might be lamed for life by unskilful treatment, was glad to hear that the famous Pieri had been called. He said that he felt no pain worth speaking of, and he questioned his man as to the latter's impression of what had happened. Pica did not believe in anarchists and gave it as his opinion that the ruffian was an ordinary bad character who was in daily expectation of being arrested for some crime and who had fallen asleep in his cups, not knowing that he was close to the magazine. Being awakened suddenly, he had probably supposed himself overtaken by justice, had fired and run away. The explanation was plausible, at all events. Neither Ugo nor his man believed that any one would really try to blow up the place, for they regarded that as quite impossible without the collusion of some one of the soldiers, which was not to be thought of.

While they were talking, Pica managed to get off the Captain's outer clothes; but as they were partly wet with rain, the bed was now damp.

He therefore went and got the new camp bedstead and set it up, spread dry blankets and sheets over it, and lifted Ugo to it without letting the injured foot hang down, for he was a fairly strong man and was far from clumsy.

The change had just been successfully made when a motor was heard coming up the short stretch from the high-road to the house, and Pica hastened downstairs to open the door for the surgeon. To his surprise, but much to his satisfaction, the Princess Chiaromonte was the first to get out in the rain, bareheaded, but m.u.f.fled in a waterproof. She had no footman and no umbrella, and she made a quick dash for the door, followed at once by Doctor Pieri. She recognised the handsome orderly and smiled at him as she shook the rain-drops from her hair and then gave him her cloak.

'Is he badly hurt?' she asked quickly; but she saw from Pica's face that it was not a matter of life and death, and she did not wait for his answer. 'We will go upstairs at once,' she added, leading the way to the steps.