The White Sister Part 31

Sister Giovanna listened with wide eyes and parted lips, for the world she had lived in during more than five-and-twenty years was wrenched from its path and sent whirling into s.p.a.ce at a tangent she could not follow; there was nothing firm under her feet, she had nothing substantial left, not even the name she had once called her own. It had all been unreal. The dead Knight of Malta lying in state in the great palace had not been her father; the delicate woman with the ascetic face, who had died when she had been a little child, had not been her mother; they had never registered her birth at the Munic.i.p.ality because she had not been their child and had not even been born in Rome; they had not taken the proper legal steps to adopt her and make her their heir, because they had been ashamed of her own mother. And her own mother was before her, Mother Veronica, the Superior of the Convent in which she had taken refuge because they had left her a dest.i.tute, nameless, penniless waif, after promising to make her their daughter in the eyes of the law. She knew that without a certificate of birth a girl could not easily be legally married in Italy; if the Prince had lived and she had been about to marry, what would he have done about that? But he was gone, and she would not ask herself such a question, for the answer seemed to be that he would have done something dishonest rather than admit the truth. A deep resentment sprang up in her against the dead man and woman who had not honourably kept their solemn promise to her mother, and her aunt's lawless act and hatred of her sank into insignificance beside their sin of omission. If the Princess's confession during her illness had not been altogether the invention of a fevered brain, and if there had really been a will, it had been worthless, and its destruction had not robbed Angela of a farthing. She and her mother had been cheated and their lives made desolate by those other two; she must not think of it, lest she should hate the dead, as she had dreaded to hate the living.

All this had flashed upon her mind in one of those quick visions of the truth by which we sometimes become aware of many closely connected facts simultaneously, without taking account of each. After the Mother Superior had ceased speaking the silence lasted only a few seconds, but it seemed long to her now that she had told her secret and was waiting to be answered. Would her daughter forgive her? The young nun's face expressed nothing she felt at that moment; for the staring eyes and parted lips remained mechanically fixed in a look of blind surprise long after her thoughts were on the wing; and her thoughts flew far, but their wide-circling flight brought them back, like swallows, as swiftly as they had flown away.

Then her heart spoke, and in another moment she was at her mother's knee, like a child, with a little natural cry that had never pa.s.sed her lips before. For a breathing-s.p.a.ce both guessed what heaven might hold of rest, refreshment, and peace, and the march of tragic fate was stayed while mother and daughter communed together, and dreamed of never parting on earth but to meet in heaven, of keeping their sweet secret from all the world as something sacred for themselves, of working side by side, in one life, one love, one faith, one hope, of facing all earthly trouble together, and of fighting every battle of the spirit hand in hand.

Two could bear what one could not. Sister Giovanna felt that fresh strength was given her, and the long-tried elder woman was conscious that her will to do good was renewed and doubled and trebled, so that it could accomplish twice and three times as much as before. Her daughter would not leave her now, to be a martyr in the East, as the only escape from herself and from the man who loved her too daringly.

Why should she go? If she still felt that she must leave Rome for a time, she could go to one of the order's houses far away, but not to the East, the deadly East! Heaven did not love useless suffering; the Church condemned all self-sacrifice that was not meet, right, and reasonable. In due time she would come back, when all danger was over, when Giovanni had lived through the first days of surprise, disappointment, and pa.s.sion.

The sunset glow had faded and twilight was coming on when the two went down the steps and crossed the cloistered garden to the chapel, for it was the hour for Vespers. They walked as usual, with an even, noiseless tread, the young nun on the left of her superior and keeping step with her, but not quite close to her, for that would not have been respectful; yet each felt as if the other's hand were in hers and their hearts were beating gently with the same loving thought. Peace had come upon them and they felt that it would be lasting.

At the chapel door they separated; the Mother Superior pa.s.sed to her high-backed, carved seat at the end, the three aged nuns who had survived from other times sat next to her in the order of their years, and Sister Giovanna took her appointed place much farther down. A number of seats were empty, belonging to those nurses who were attending private cases.

Cloistered nuns spend many hours of the day and night in chapel, but the working orders use short offices and have much lat.i.tude as to the hours at which their services are held. Except on Sundays and at daily ma.s.s, no priest officiates; the Mother Superior or Mother Prioress leads with her side of the choir, the Sub-Prioress, or the Mistress of the Novices, or whoever is second in authority, responds with the other nuns. The Office of Saint Dominic for Vespers practically consists of one short Psalm, a very diminutive Lesson, one Hymn, and the beautiful Canticle 'My soul doth magnify the Lord'; then follows a little prayer and the short responsory, and all is over. The whole service does not last ten minutes.

The women's voices answered each other peacefully, and then rose together in the quaint old melody of the hymn, the sweet notes of the younger ones carried high on the stronger tones of the elder Sisters, while the three old nuns droned on in a sort of patient, nasal, half-mannish counter-tenor, scarcely p.r.o.nouncing the words they sang, but making an accompaniment that was not wholly unpleasing.

Two versicles of responsory next, and then the Mother Superior began to intone the Magnificat, and Sister Giovanna took up the grand plain-chant with the others. In spite of her deep trouble, the words had never meant to her what they meant now, and she felt her world lifted up from earth to the gates of Peace.

But she was not to reach the end of the wonderful song that day.

'And His mercy is on them that fear Him, from generation to generation,' the nuns sang.

With a crash, as if a thunderbolt had fallen at their feet in the choir, the Great Unforeseen once more flashed from its hiding-place and hurled itself into their midst.

The chapel rocked to and fro twice with a horrible noise of loosened masonry grinding on itself, and the panes of the high windows fell in three separate showers and were smashed to thousands of splinters on the stone floor, the lights went out, the sacred ornaments on the altar toppled and fell upon each other, the twilight that glimmered through the broken windows alone overcame the darkness in the wrecked church. The destruction was sudden, violent, and quick. In less than fifteen seconds after the shock, perfect stillness reigned again.

The Sisters, in their first terror, caught at each other instinctively, or grasped the woodwork with convulsed hands. One or two novices had screamed outright, but the most of them uttered an ejaculatory prayer, more than half unconscious. The Mother Superior was standing upright and motionless in her place.

'Is any one hurt?' she asked steadily, and looking round the semicircle in the gloom.

No answer came to her question.

'If any one of you was struck by anything,' she said again, 'let her speak.'

No one had been hurt, for the small choir was under the apse of the chapel and there were no windows there.

'Let us go to the hospital at once,' she said. 'The patients will need us.'

Her calm imposed itself upon the young novices and one or two of the more nervous Sisters; the others were brave women and had only been badly startled and shaken, for which no one could blame them. They filed out, two and two, by the side door of the choir, Mother Veronica coming last. From the cloister they could see that the big gla.s.s door of the reception-hall was smashed, and that the windows overhead on that side were also broken. Singularly enough, not one of those on the other side was injured.

All had felt the certainty that a dynamite bomb had been exploded somewhere in the building with the intention of blowing up the hospital. As they fell out of their ranks and scattered in twos and threes, hastening to the different parts of the establishment where each did her accustomed work, Sister Giovanna naturally found herself beside the Mother Superior. As one of the supervising nurses, she was, of course, needed in the hospital itself with her superior.

'What do you think it was, Mother?' she asked in a low tone.

'Nothing but dynamite could have done such damage----'

She was still speaking, when a lay sister rushed out of the door they were about to enter, with a broom in her hand, which she had evidently forgotten to put down.

'The powder magazine at Monteverde!' she cried excitedly. 'I saw it from the window! It was like fireworks! It has blown up with everybody in it, I am sure!'

CHAPTER XVII

The lay sister was right. The great powder magazine at Monteverde had been blown up, but by what hands no one has ever surely known. The destruction was sudden, complete, tremendous, for a large quant.i.ty of dynamite had been stored in the deep vaults. Today, a great hollow in the side of the hill and near the road marks the spot where the buildings stood. Many stories have been told of the catastrophe; many tales have been repeated about suspicious characters who had been seen in the neighbourhood before the fatal event, and for some of these there is fairly good authority.

All those who were in the city when the explosion took place, and I myself was in Rome at the time, will remember how every one was at first convinced that his own house had been struck by lightning or suddenly shaken to its foundations. Every one will remember, too, the long and ringing shower of broken gla.s.s that followed instantly upon the terrific report. Every window looking westward was broken at once, except some few on the lower stories of houses protected by buildings opposite.

Giovanni Severi was in the main building over the vaults a short time before the catastrophe, having just finished a special inspection which had occupied most of the afternoon. He was moving to leave the place when an unfamiliar sound caught his ears, a noise m.u.f.fled yet sharp, like that of the discharge of musketry heard through a thick wall. The junior officers and the corporal who were with him heard it, too, but did not understand its meaning. Giovanni, however, instantly remembered the story told by one of the survivors from a terrible explosion of ammunition near Naples many years previously. That m.u.f.fled sound of quick firing came from metallic cartridges exploding within the cases that held them; each case would burst and set fire to others beside it; like the spark that runs along a fuse, the train of boxes would blow up in quick succession till the large stores of gunpowder were fired and then a ma.s.s of dynamite beyond. There were divisions in the vaults, there were doors, there were walls, but Giovanni well knew that no such barriers would avail for more than a few minutes.

Without raising his voice, he led his companions to the open door, speaking as he went.

'The magazine will blow up in two or three minutes at the outside,' he said. 'Send the men running in all directions, and go yourselves, to warn the people in the cottages near by to get out of doors at once.

It will be like an earthquake; every house within five hundred yards will be shaken down. Now run! Run for your lives and to save the lives of others! Call out the men as you pa.s.s the gates.'

The three darted away across the open s.p.a.ce that lay between the central building and the guard-house. Giovanni ran, too, but not away from the danger. There were sentries stationed at intervals all round the outer wall, as round the walls of a prison, and they would have little chance of life if they remained at their posts. Giovanni ran like a deer, but even so he lost many seconds in giving his orders to each sentinel, to run straight for the open fields to the nearest cottages and to give warning. The astonished sentinels obeyed instantly, and Giovanni ran on. He reached the very last just too late; at that moment the thunder of the explosion rent the air. He felt the earth rock and was thrown violently to the ground; then something struck his right arm and shoulder, pinning him down; he closed his eyes and was beyond hearing or feeling.

Within three-quarters of an hour the road to Monteverde was thronged with vehicles of all sorts and with crowds of people on foot. The nature of the disaster had been understood at once by the soldiery, and the explanation had spread among the people, rousing that strange mixture of curiosity and horror that draws the common throng to the scene of every accident or crime. But amongst the very first the King was on the spot with half-a-dozen superior officers, and in the briefest possible time the search for dead and wounded began. The story of Giovanni's splendid presence of mind and heroic courage ran from mouth to mouth. The junior officers and the men whom he had sent in all directions came in and reported themselves to the officer who had taken charge of everything for the time being. Only one man was missing--only one man and Giovanni himself. A few casualties amongst the peasants were reported, but not a life had been lost and hardly a bone was broken. Yet Giovanni was missing.

With the confidence of men who understood that the magazine must have been so entirely destroyed at once as to annihilate all further danger in an instant, the searchers went up to the ruin of the outer wall and peered into the great dusty pit out of which the foundations of the magazine had been hurled hundreds of feet into the air. Something of the outline of the enclosure could still be traced, and the sentinels whom Giovanni had warned from their post had already told their story.

They found, too, that the missing man himself had been one of the sentries, and the inference was clear: their commanding officer had been killed before he had reached the last post.

For a long time they searched in vain. Great ma.s.ses of masonry had shot through the outer wall and had rolled on or been stopped by the inequalities of the ground. Most of the wall itself was fallen and its direction could only be traced by a heap of ruins. Twilight had turned to darkness, and the search grew more and more difficult as a fine rain began to fall. Below, the mult.i.tude was already ebbing back to Rome; it was dark, it was wet, hardly any one had been hurt, and there was nothing to see: the best thing to be done was to go home.

It was late when a squad of four artillerymen heard a low moan that came from under a heap of stones close by them. In an instant they were at work with the pickaxes and spades they had borrowed from the peasants' houses, foreseeing what their work would be. From time to time they paused a moment and listened. Before long they recognised their comrade's voice.

'Easy, brothers! Don't crack my skull with your pickaxes, for Heaven's sake!'

'Is the Captain there?' asked one of the men.

'Dead,' answered the prisoner. 'He was warning me when we were knocked down together. Make haste, but for goodness' sake be careful!'

They were trained men and they did their work quickly and well. What had happened was this. The heavy and irregular ma.s.s of masonry that had pinned Giovanni to the ground by his arm had helped to make a sort of shelter, across which a piece of the outer wall had fallen without breaking, followed by a ma.s.s of rubbish. By what seemed almost a miracle to the soldiers, their companion was entirely unhurt, and no part of the officer's body had been touched except the arm that lay crushed beneath the stones.

They cleared away the rubbish and looked at him as he lay on his back pale and motionless under the light of their lanterns. They knew what he had done now; they understood that of them all he was the hero. One of the men took off his cap reverently, and immediately the others followed his example, and so they all stood for a few moments looking at him in silence and in deference to his brave deeds. Then they set to work in silence to move the heavy block of broken masonry that had felled him, and their comrade helped them too, though he was stiff and bruised and dazed from the terrific shock. As the ma.s.s yielded at last before their strength and rolled away, one of the men uttered a cry.

'He is alive!' he exclaimed. 'He moved his head!'

Before he had finished speaking the man was on his knees beside Giovanni, tearing open his tunic and his shirt to listen for the beating of his heart. It was faint but audible. Giovanni Severi was not dead yet, and a few moments later his artillerymen were carrying him down the hill towards the road, his injured arm swinging like a rag at his side.

They did not wait for orders; there were a number of carriages still in the road and the men had no idea where their superiors might be.

Their first thought was to get Giovanni conveyed to a hospital as soon as possible.

'We must take him to the White Sisters,' said the eldest of them.

'That is where his brother was so long.'

The others a.s.sented readily enough; and finding an empty cab in the road, they lifted the wounded officer into it and pulled up the hood against the rain, whilst two of them crept in under it, telling the cabman where to go.