In the late afternoon of the same day we were sitting together for the
last time on the terrace of the Reverend Mother's villa.
It was a peaceful evening, a sweet and holy time. Not a leaf was
stirring, not a breath of wind was in the air; but the voice of a young
boy, singing a love-song, came up from somewhere among the rocky ledges
of the vineyards below, and while the bell of the monastic church behind
us was ringing the Ave Maria, the far-off bell of the convent church at
Gonzano was answering from the other side of the lake--like angels
calling to each other from long distances in the sky.
"Mary," said the Reverend Mother, "I want to tell you a story. It is the
story of my own life--mine and my sister's and my father's."
I was sitting by her side and she was holding my hand in her lap, and
patting it, as she had done during the interview of the morning.
"They say the reason so few women become nuns is that a woman is too
attached to her home to enter the holy life until she has suffered
shipwreck in the world. That may be so with most women. It was not so
with me.
"My father was what is called a self-made man. But his fortune did not
content him. He wanted to found a family. If he had had a son this might
have been easy. Having only two daughters, he saw no way but that of
marrying one of us into the Italian nobility.
"My sister was the first to disappoint him. She fell in love with a
young Roman musician. The first time the young man asked for my sister
he was contemptuously refused; the second time he was insulted; the
third time he was flung out of the house. His nature was headstrong and
passionate, and so was my father's. If either had been different the
result might not have been the same. Yet who knows? Who can say?"
The Reverend Mother paused for a moment. The boy's voice in the vineyard
was going on.
"To remove my sister from the scene of temptation my father took her
from Rome to our villa in the hills above Albano. But the young musician
followed her. Since my father would not permit him to marry her he was
determined that she should fly with him, and when she hesitated to do so
he threatened her. If she did not meet him at a certain hour on a
certain night my father would be dead in the morning."
The Reverend Mother paused again. The boy's voice had ceased; the
daylight was dying out.
"My sister could not bring herself to sacrifice either her father or
her lover. Hence she saw only one way left--to sacrifice herself."
"Herself?"
The Reverend Mother patted my hand. "Isn't that what women in tragic
circumstances are always doing?" she said.
"By some excuse--I don't know what--she persuaded our father to change
rooms with her that night--he going upstairs to her bedroom in the
tower, and she to his on the ground floor at the back, opening on to the
garden and the pine forest that goes up the hill.
"What happened after that nobody ever knew exactly. In the middle of the
night the servants heard two pistol shots, and next morning my sister
was found dead--shot to the heart through an open window as she lay in
my father's bed.
"The authorities tried in vain to trace the criminal. Only one person
had any idea of his identity. That was my father, and in his fierce
anger he asked himself what he ought to do in order to punish the man
who had killed his daughter.
"Then a strange thing happened. On the day before the funeral the young
musician walked into my father's room. His face was white and wasted,
and his eyes were red and swollen. He had come to ask if he might be
allowed to be one of those to carry the coffin. My father consented.
'I'll leave him alone,' he thought. 'The man is punished enough.'
"All the people of Albano came to the funeral and there was not a dry
eye as the cortège passed from our chapel to the grave. Everybody knew
the story of my sister's hopeless love, but only two in the world knew
the secret of her tragic death--her young lover, who was sobbing aloud
as he staggered along with her body on his shoulder, and her old father,
who was walking bareheaded and in silence, behind him."
My heart was beating audibly and the Reverend Mother stroked my hand to
compose me--perhaps to compose herself also. It was now quite dark, the
stars were coming out, and the bells of the two monasteries on opposite
sides of the lake were ringing the first hour of night.
"That's my sister's story, Mary," said the Reverend Mother after a
while, "and the moral of my own is the same, though the incidents are
different.
"I was now my father's only child and all his remaining hopes centred in
me. So he set himself to find a husband for me before the time came when
I should form an attachment for myself. His choice fell on a
middle-aged Roman noble of distinguished but impoverished family.
"'He has a great name; you will have a great fortune--what more do you
want?' said my father.
"We were back in Rome by this time, and there--at school or elsewhere--I
had formed the conviction that a girl must passionately love the man she
marries, and I did not love the Roman noble. I had also been led to
believe that a girl should be the first and only passion of the man who
marries her, and, young as I was, I knew that my middle-aged lover had
had other domestic relations.
"Consequently I demurred, but my father threatened and stormed, and
then, remembering my sister's fate, I pretended to agree, and I was
formally engaged.
"I never meant to keep my promise, and I began to think out schemes by
which to escape from it. Only one way seemed open to me then, and
cherishing the thought of it in secret, I waited and watched and made
preparations for carrying out my purpose.
"At length the moment came to me. It was mid-Lent, and a masked ball was
given by my fiancé's friends in one of the old Roman palaces. I can see
it still--the great hall, ablaze with glowing frescoes, beautiful
Venetian candelabras, gilded furniture, red and yellow damask and
velvet, and then the throng of handsome men in many uniforms and
beautiful women with rows of pearls falling from their naked throats.
"I had dressed myself as a Bacchante in a white tunic embroidered in
gold, with bracelets on my bare arms, a tiger-skin band over my
forehead, and a cluster of grapes in my hair.
"I danced every dance, I remember, most of them with my middle-aged
lover, and I suppose no one seemed so gay and happy and heedless. At
three o'clock in the morning I returned home in my father's carriage. At
six I had entered a convent.
"Nobody in the outer world ever knew what had become of me, and neither
did I know what happened at home after I left it. The rule of the
convent was very strict. Sometimes, after morning prayers, the Superior
would say, 'The mother of one of you is dead--pray for her soul,' and
that was all we ever heard of the world outside.
"But nature is a mighty thing, my child, and after five years I became
restless and unhappy. I began to have misgivings about my vocation, but
the Mother, who was wise and human, saw what was going on in my heart.
'You are thinking about your father,' she said, 'that he is growing old,
and needing a daughter to take care of him. Go out, and nurse him, and
then come back to your cell and pray.'
"I went, but when I reached my father's house a great shock awaited me.
A strange man was in the porter's lodge, and our beautiful palace was
let out in apartments. My father was dead--three years dead and buried.
After my disappearance he had shut himself up in his shame and grief,
for, little as I had suspected it and hard and cruel as I had thought
him, he had really and truly loved me. During his last days his mind had
failed him and he had given away all his fortune--scattered it, no one
knew how, as something that was quite useless--and then he died, alone
and broken-hearted."
That was the end of the Reverend Mother's narrative. She did not try to
explain or justify or condemn her own or her sister's conduct, neither
did she attempt to apply the moral of her story to my own circumstances.
She left me to do that for myself.
I had been spell-bound while she spoke, creeping closer and closer to
her until my head was on her breast.
For some time longer we sat like this in the soft Italian night, while
the fire-flies came out in clouds among the unseen flowers of the garden
and the dark air seemed to be alive with sparks of light.
When the time came to go to bed the Reverend Mother took me to my room,
and after some cheerful words she left me. But hardly had I lain down,
shaken to the heart's core by what I had heard, and telling myself that
the obedience of a daughter to her father, whatever he might demand of
her, was an everlasting and irreversible duty, imposed by no human
law-giver, and that marriage was a necessity, which was forced upon most
women by a mysterious and unyielding law of God, when the door opened
and the Reverend Mother, with a lamp in her hand, came in again.
"Mary," she said, "I forgot to tell you that I am leaving the Sacred
Heart. The Sisters of my old convent have asked me to go back as
Superior. I have obtained permission to do so and am going shortly, so
that in any case we should have been parted soon. It is the Convent
of. . . ."
Here she gave me the name of a private society of cloistered nuns in the
heart of Rome.
"I hope you will write to me as often as possible, and come to see me
whenever you can. . . . And if it should ever occur that . . . but no, I
will not think of that. Marriage is a sacred tie, too, and under proper
conditions God blesses and hallows it."
With that she left me in the darkness. The church bell was ringing, the
monks of the Passionist monastery were getting up for their midnight
offices.