The White Sister
F >> F. Marion Crawford >> The White SisterTHE WHITE SISTER
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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK . BOSTON . CHICAGO
SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., Limited
LONDON . BOMBAY . CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
TORONTO
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[Illustration: VIOLA ALLEN AS THE WHITE SISTER]
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The White Sister
_By_ F. Marion Crawford
Author of "The Diva's Ruby," "Saracinesca," "In the Palace of the
King," etc.
A. L. BURT COMPANY
PUBLISHERS--NEW YORK
Macmillan Standard Library
All Rights Reserved
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COPYRIGHT, 1908,
BY F. MARION CRAWFORD.
COPYRIGHT, 1909,
BY F. MARION CRAWFORD.
COPYRIGHT, 1909,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published May, 1909. Reprinted May, June,
twice, July, August, twice, September, October, November, December,
1909; February, 1910; March, November, 1910; February, 1911;
September, 1913.
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THE WHITE SISTER
CHAPTER I
'I cannot help it,' said Filmore Durand quietly. 'I paint what I see.
If you are not pleased with the likeness, I shall be only too happy to
keep it.'
The Marchesa protested. It was only a very small matter, she said, a
something in the eyes, or in the angle of the left eyebrow, or in the
turn of the throat; she could not tell where it was, but it gave her
niece a little air of religious ecstasy that was not natural to her.
If the master would only condescend to modify the expression the least
bit, all would be satisfactory.
Instead of condescending, Filmore Durand smiled rather indifferently
and gave his pallet and brushes to his man, who was already waiting at
his elbow to receive them. For the famous American portrait-painter
detested all sorts of litter, such as a painting-table, brush-jars,
and the like, as much as his great predecessor Lenbach ever did, and
when he was at work his old servant brought him a brush, a tube of
colour, a knife, or a pencil, as each was needed, from a curtained
recess where everything was kept ready and in order.
'I like it as it is,' said Giovanni Severi, resting his hands on the
hilt of his sabre, as he sat looking thoughtfully from the portrait to
the original.
The young girl smiled, pleased by his approbation of the likeness,
which she herself thought good, though it by no means flattered. On
the contrary, it made her look older than she was, and much more sad;
for though the spring laughed in her eyes when she looked at the
officer to whom people said she was engaged, their counterparts in the
portrait were deep and grave. Certain irregularities of feature, too,
were more apparent in the painting than in nature. For instance, there
was a very marked difference between the dark eyebrows; for whereas
the right one made a perfect curve, the other turned up quite sharply
towards the forehead at the inner end, as if it did not wish to meet
its fellow; and the Marchesa del Prato was quite sure that Angela's
delicate nose had not really that aquiline and almost ascetic look
which the great master had given it. In fact, the middle-aged woman
almost wished that it had, for of all things that could happen she
would have been best pleased that her niece should turn out to have a
vocation and should disappear into some religious order as soon as
possible. This was not likely, and the Marchesa was by no means ready
to accept, as an alternative, a marriage with Giovanni Severi, whom
she had long looked upon as her own private property.
Filmore Durand glanced from one to another of the three in quick
succession, stroked his rather bristly moustache, and lit a cigarette,
not because he wanted to smoke, but because he could not help it,
which is a very different thing. Then he looked at his picture and
forgot that he was not alone with it; and it still pleased him, after
a fashion, though he was not satisfied with what he had done.
Great artists and great writers are rarely troubled by theories; one
of the chief characteristics of mature genius is that it springs
directly from conception to expression without much thought as to the
means; a man who has used the same tools for a dozen years is not
likely to take his chisel by the wrong end, nor to hesitate in
choosing the right one for the stroke to be made, much less to 'take a
sledge-hammer to kill a fly,' as the saying is. His unquiet mind has
discovered some new and striking relation between the true and the
beautiful; the very next step is to express that relation in clay, or
in colour, or in words. While he is doing so he rarely stops to think,
or to criticise his own half-finished work; he is too sure of himself,
just then, to pause, and, above all, he is too happy, for all the real
happiness he finds in his art is there, between the painfully
disquieting ferment of the mental chaos that went before and the more
or less acute disappointment which is sure to come when the finished
work turns out to be less than perfect, like all things human. It is
in the race from one point to the other that he rejoices in his
strength, believes in his talent, and dreams of undying glory; it is
then that he feels himself a king of men and a prophet of mankind; but
it is when he is in this stage that he is called vain, arrogant, and
self-satisfied by those who do not understand the distress that has
gone before, nor the disillusionment which will follow soon enough,
when the hand is at rest and cool judgment marks the distance between
a perfect ideal and an attainable reality. Moreover, the less the lack
of perfection seems to others, the more formidable it generally looks
to the great artist himself.
It was often said of Durand that his portraits were prophetic; and
often again that his brushes were knives and scalpels that dissected
his sitters' characters upon the canvas like an anatomical
preparation.
'I cannot help it,' he always said. 'I paint what I see.'
It was not his fault if pretty Donna Angela Chiaromonte had thrown a
white veil over her dark hair, just to try the effect of it, the very
first time she had been brought to his studio, or that she had been
standing beside an early fifteenth century altar and altar-piece which
he had just bought and put up at one end of the great hall in which he
painted. He was not to blame if the veiling had fallen on each side of
her face, like a nun's head-dress, nor if her eyes had grown shadowy
at that moment by an accident of light or expression, nor yet if her
tender lips had seemed to be saddened by a passing thought. She had
not put on the veil again, and he had not meant that a suggestion of
suffering ecstatically borne should dim her glad girlhood in his
picture; but he had seen the vision once, and it had come out again
under his brush, in spite of him, as if it were the necessary truth
over which the outward expression was moulded like a lovely mask, but
which must be plain in her face to every one who had once had a
glimpse of it.
The painter contemplated his work in silence from within an Olympian
cloud of cigarette smoke that almost hid him from the others, who now
exchanged a few words in Italian, which he only half understood. They
spoke English with him, as they would have spoken French with a
Frenchman, and probably even German with a German, for modern Roman
society has a remarkable gift of tongues and is very accomplished in
other ways.
'What I think most wonderful,' said the Marchesa del Prato, who
detested her husband's pretty niece, 'is that he has not made a Carlo
Dolce picture of you, my dear. With your face, it would have been so
easy, you know!'
Giovanni Severi's hands moved a little and the scabbard of his sabre
struck one of his spurs with a sharp clink; for he was naturally
impatient and impulsive, as any one could see from his face. It was
lean and boldly cut; his cheeks were dark from exposure rather than by
nature, there were reddish lights in his short brown hair, and his
small but vigorous moustache was that of a rather fair man who has
lived much in sun and wind in a hot climate. His nose was Roman and
energetic, his mouth rather straight and hard; yet few would have
thought his face remarkable but for the eyes, which betrayed his
nature at a glance; they were ardent rather than merely bold, and the
warm, reddish-brown iris was shot with little golden points that
coruscated in the rays of the sun, but emitted a fiery light of their
own when his temper was roused. If his look had been less frank and
direct, or if his other features had suggested any bad quality, his
eyes would probably have been intolerably disagreeable to meet; as it
was, they warned all comers that their possessor was one of those
uncommon and dangerous men who go to the utmost extremes when they
believe themselves in the right and are constitutionally incapable of
measuring danger or considering consequences when they are roused.
Giovanni Severi was about eight-and-twenty, and wore the handsome
uniform of an artillery officer on the Staff. He had not liked the
Marchesa's remark, and the impatient little clink of his scabbard
against his spur only preceded his answer by a second.
'Happily for Angela,' he said, 'we are not in the studio of a
caricaturist.'
The Marchesa, who could be near-sighted on occasion, put up her
tortoiseshell-mounted eyeglass and looked at him aggressively; but as
he returned her gaze with steadiness, she soon turned away.
'You are extremely rude,' she said coldly.
For she herself made clever caricatures in water-colours, and she knew
what Giovanni meant. Angela's mother had been a very devout woman and
had died young, but had incurred the hatred of the Marchesa by
marrying the very man whom the latter had picked out for herself,
namely, the elder of two brothers, and the Marchesa had reluctantly
consented to marry the other, who had a much less high-sounding title
and a far smaller fortune. She had revenged herself in various small
ways, and had often turned her brother-in-law's wife to ridicule by
representing her as an ascetic mediaeval saint, in contorted attitudes
of ecstasy, with sunken cheeks and eyes like saucers full of ink. Like
many other people, Giovanni had seen some of these drawings, for the
resentful Marchesa had not destroyed them when the Princess
Chiaromonte died; but no one had yet been unkind enough to tell Angela
of their existence. The girl did not like her aunt by marriage, it was
true, but with a singularly simple and happy disposition, and a total
absence of vanity, she apparently possessed her mother's almost
saintly patience, and she bore the Marchesa's treatment with a
cheerful submission which exasperated the elder woman much more than
any show of temper could have done.
Just now, seeing that trouble of some sort was imminent, she made a
diversion by coming down from the low movable platform, on which her
chair had been placed for the sitting, and she spoke to the artist
while she studied her own portrait. Durand was a very thin man, and so
tall that Angela had to look very high to see his face as she stood
beside him.
'I could never be as good as the picture looks,' she said in English,
with a little laugh, 'nor so dreadfully in earnest! But it is very
nice of you to think that I might!'
'You will never be anything but good,' answered Filmore Durand, 'and
it's not necessarily dreadful to be in earnest about it.'
'You are a moralist. I see.' observed the Marchesa, putting on a sweet
smile as she rose and came forward, followed by Giovanni.
'I don't know,' replied the painter. 'What is a moralist?'
'A person who is in earnest about other people's morals,' suggested
Angela gaily.
'Really!' cried the Marchesa, with a most emphatic English
pronunciation of the word. 'One would think that you had been brought
up in a Freemasons' lodge!'
In view of the fact that Angela's father was one of the very last
survivors of the 'intransigent' clericals, this was quite the most
cutting speech the Marchesa could think of. But Filmore Durand failed
to see the point.
'What has Freemasonry to do with morality?' he inquired with bland
surprise.
'Nothing at all,' answered the Marchesa smartly, 'for it is the
religion of the devil.'
'Dear me!' The artist smiled. 'What strong prejudices you have in
Rome!'
'Are you a Freemason?' the noble lady asked, with evident nervousness;
and she glanced from his face to Angela, and then at the door.
'Well--no--I'm not,' the painter admitted with a slight drawl, and
evidently amused. 'But then I'm not a moralist either, though I
suppose I might be both and yet go on painting about the same.'
'I think not,' said the Marchesa so stiffly that Giovanni almost
laughed aloud. 'We must be going,' she added, suddenly relaxing to
graciousness again. 'It has been such a privilege to see you day after
day, my dear Mr. Durand, and to watch you working in your own
surroundings. My brother-in-law will come to-morrow. I have no doubt
that he will be much pleased with the portrait.'
Filmore Durand smiled indifferently but with politeness as he bowed
over the Marchesa's hand. He did not care a straw whether Angela's
father liked the picture or not, being in love with it himself, and
much more anxious to keep it than to be paid for it.
'When shall I see you again?' Giovanni had asked of Angela, almost in
a whisper, while the Marchesa was speaking.
Instead of answering she shook her head, for she could not decide at
once, but as her glance met his a delicate radiance tinged her cheeks
for a moment, as if the rosy light of a clear dawn were reflected in
her face. The young soldier's eyes flashed as he watched her; he drew
his breath audibly, and then bit his upper lip as if to check the
sound and the sensation that had caused it. Angela heard and saw, for
she understood what moved him, so far as almost childlike simplicity
can have intuition of what most touches a strong man. She was less
like the portrait now than a moment earlier; her lips, just parting in
a little half-longing, half-troubled smile, were like dark rose leaves
damp with dew, her eyelids drooped at the corners for an instant, and
the translucent little nostrils quivered at the mysterious thrill that
stirred her maiden being.
The two young people had not known each other quite a year, for she
had never seen Severi till she had left the convent to go out into
society and to take her place at her widowed father's table as his
only child; but at their first meeting Giovanni had felt that of all
women he had known, none but she had ever called his nature to hers
with the longing cry of the natural mate. At first she was quite
unconscious of her power, and for a long time he looked in vain for
the slightest outward sign that she was moved when she saw him making
his way to her in a crowded drawing-room, or coming upon her suddenly
out of doors when she was walking in the villa with her old governess,
the excellent Madame Bernard, or riding in the Campagna with her
father. Giovanni's duties were light, and he had plenty of time to
spare, and his pertinacity in finding her would have been compromising
if he had been less ingeniously tactful. It was by no means easy to
meet her in society either, for, in spite of recent social
developments, Prince Chiaromonte still clung to the antiquated
political mythology of Blacks and Whites, and strictly avoided the
families he persisted in calling 'Liberals,' on the ground that his
father had called them so in 1870, when he was a small boy. It was not
until he had bored himself to extinction in the conscientious effort
to take the girl out, that he appealed to his sister-in-law to help
him, though he knew that neither she nor his brother was truly
clerical at heart. Even then, if it had been clear to him that
Giovanni Severi had made up his mind to marry Angela if he married at
all, the Prince would have forced himself to bear agonies of boredom
night after night, rather than entrust his daughter to the Marchesa;
but such an idea had never entered his head, and he would have scouted
the suggestion that Angela would ever dare to encourage a young man of
whom he had not formally approved; and while she was meeting Giovanni
almost daily, and dancing with him almost every evening, her father
was slowly negotiating an appropriate marriage for her with the eldest
son of certain friends who were almost as clerical and intransigent as
himself. The young man was a limp degenerate, with a pale face, a weak
mouth, and an inherited form of debility which made him fall asleep
wherever he was, if nothing especial happened to keep his eyes open;
he not only always slept from ten at night till nine the next morning
with the regularity of an idiot, but he went to sleep wherever he sat
down, in church, at dinner, and even when he was driving. Neither his
own parents nor Prince Chiaromonte looked upon this as a serious
drawback in the matter of marriage. A man who slept all day and all
night was a man out of mischief, not likely to grumble nor to make
love to his neighbour's wife; he would therefore be a model husband.
When he fell asleep in the drawing-room in summer, his consort would
sit beside him and brush away the flies; in winter she would be
careful to cover him up lest he should catch cold; at mass she could
prick him with a hat-pin to keep him awake; as for the rest, she would
bear one of the oldest names in Europe, her husband would be a
strictly religious and moral person, and she would be very rich. What
more could any woman ask? Evidently nothing, and Prince Chiaromonte
therefore continued to negotiate the marriage in the old-fashioned
manner, without the least intention of speaking about it to Angela
till everything was altogether settled between the family lawyers, and
the wedding could take place in six weeks. It was not the business of
young people to fathom the intentions of their all-wise parents, and
meanwhile Angela was free to go to parties with her aunt, and her
intended husband was at liberty to sleep as much as he liked. The
negotiations would probably occupy another two or three months, for
the family lawyers had disagreed as to the number of times that Angela
should be allowed to take the carriage out every day, and this had to
be stipulated in the marriage contract, besides the number of dishes
there were to be at luncheon and dinner and the question whether, if
Angela took coffee after her meals, it should be charged to her
husband, who took none, or against the income arising from her dowry.
The family lawyers were both very old men and understood these
difficult matters thoroughly, but neither would have felt that he was
doing his duty to his client if he had not quarrelled with the other
over each point. From week to week each reported progress to his
employer, and on the whole the two fathers felt that matters were
going on well, without any undue delay.
But the Fates frowned grimly on the marriage and on all things
connected with it, for on the very morning during which Filmore Durand
finished Angela's portrait, and before she had left his studio in the
Palazzo Borghese, something happened which not only put a stop to the
leisurely labours of the two lawyers, but which profoundly changed
Angela's existence, and was the cause of her having a story quite
different from that of a good many young girls who are in love with
one man but are urged by their parents to marry another. The interest
of this tale, if it has any, lies in no such simple conflict of forces
as that, and it is enough to know that while her father had been busy
over her marriage, Angela Chiaromonte had fallen in love with Giovanni
Severi, and had, indeed, as much as promised to marry him; and that a
good many people, including the Marchesa del Prato, already suspected
this, though they had not communicated their suspicions to the girl's
father, partly because he was not liked, and partly because he hardly
ever showed himself in the world. The situation is thus clearly
explained, so far as it was known to the persons concerned at the
moment when the Great Unforeseen flashed from its hiding-place and
hurled itself into their midst.
As Filmore Durand went with the Marchesa towards the entrance hall,
followed by the young people, he called his man to open the outer
door, but almost at the same moment he heard his voice at the
telephone; the servant was a Swiss who spoke German, English, and
Italian, and had followed the artist for many years. He was evidently
answering an inquiry about the Marchesa just as he heard her step.
'The lady is here,' he said. 'She is coming to the telephone herself.'
He looked round as the four approached, for the instrument was placed
on the right side of the large door that opened upon the landing.
'Some one for your ladyship,' he said in English, holding out the
receiver to the Marchesa.
She took it and put it to her ear, repeating the usual Italian
formula.
'Ready--with whom am I speaking? Yes. I am the Marchesa del Prato, she
herself. What is it?'
There was a pause while she listened, and then Angela saw her face
change suddenly.
'Dead?' she shrieked into the telephone. 'Half-an-hour ago?'
She still held the receiver to her ear, but she was stretching out her
left hand as if she needed support. Durand took her by the arm and
elbow, prepared to hold her up if she showed signs of fainting. Angela
was already on her other side.
'Who is dead?' the girl asked quietly enough, but with evident
anxiety.
'Your father,' answered the Marchesa, with such sudden and brutal
directness that Giovanni started forward, and Durand stared in
surprise, for he knew enough Italian to understand as much as that.
Angela made two steps backwards, slowly and mechanically, like a blind
man who has unexpectedly run against a wall; like the blind, too, she
held out her hands before her, as if to assure herself that she was
getting out of reach of the obstacle. Her face had turned white and
her eyes were half closed.
The Marchesa no longer seemed to be in need of support and watched
her.
'My poor child!' she cried, in a tone of conventional sympathy. 'I
should have broken the news to you gradually----'
'You should indeed!' answered Giovanni with stern emphasis.
He was already leading Angela to one of the nearest of the high-backed
chairs that stood ranged against the dark-green wall of the hall. She
sat down, steadying herself by his arm.
'Run over by a motor car almost at his own door,' said the Marchesa,
in a lower tone and in English, as she turned slightly towards Durand.
'Killed on the spot! It is too awful! My poor brother-in-law!'
'Get some brandy and some cold water,' said the artist to his man,
watching the girl's pale face and twitching hands.
'Yes,' said Giovanni, who was bending over her anxiously. 'Bring
something quickly! She is going to faint.'
But Angela was not fainting, nor even half-unconscious. She had felt
as if something hard had struck her between the eyes, without quite
stunning her. She attempted to get up, but realised her weakness and
waited a moment before trying again. Then she rose to her feet with an
effort and stood straight and rigid before her aunt, her eyes quite
open now.
'Come!' she said, almost imperiously, and in a voice unlike her own.
In a moment they were gone, and the artist was standing before the
portrait he had finished, looking into its eyes as if it were alive.
He had been deeply shocked by what had just happened, and was
sincerely sorry for Angela, though he had not the least idea whether
she had loved her father or not, but his face was calm and thoughtful
again, now that she was gone, and expressed a quiet satisfaction which
had not been there before. For it seemed to him that the picture was a
precious reality, and that the young girl who had sat for it was only
nature's copy, and not perfect at that; and perhaps the reality would
not be taken from him, now, since Prince Chiaromonte had come to an
untimely end; and the prospect of keeping the canvas was exceedingly
pleasing to Filmore Durand. He had never painted anything that had
disappointed him less, or that he was less willing to part with, and
during the last day or two he had even thought of making a replica of
it for the Prince in order to keep the original, for no copy, though
it were made by himself most conscientiously, could ever be quite so
good. But now that the Prince was dead, it was possible that the
heirs, if there were any besides Angela, would be glad to be excused
from paying a large sum for a picture they did not want. He was sure
from the young girl's manner that she would no more care to possess a
portrait of herself than a coloured postcard of the Colosseum or a
plaster-cast of one of Canova's dancing-girls. This was not flattering
to the artist, it was true, but in the present case he would rather
keep his own painting than have it appreciated ever so highly by any
one else.