CHAPTER I_The White Sister

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THE 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

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BY F. MARION CRAWFORD.

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 mediæval 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.

Late in the afternoon he stopped before the closed gateway of the

Palazzo Chiaromonte and pushed the little postern that stood ajar. The

big porter was within, standing dejectedly before the door of his

lodge, and already dressed in the deep mourning which is kept in

readiness in all the great Roman houses. The painter asked in broken

Italian if the bad news was true, and the man nodded gravely, pointing

to the gates. They would not be shut unless the master were dead.

Durand asked after Donna Angela, but the porter was not communicative.

She had come in with her aunt and both were upstairs; he suspected the

painter of being a foreign newspaper correspondent and would say

nothing more.

The American thanked him and went away; after all, he had come to make

sure that the Prince was really dead, and he was conscious that his

wish to keep the portrait was the only motive of his inquiry.

He strolled away through the crowded streets, blowing such clouds of

cigarette smoke about him that people looked at him in surprise. It

was almost sunset, in February, and it was just before Lent. Rome is

at her gayest then, though the old Carnival is as dead and gone as Pio

Nono, Garibaldi, the French military occupation, the hatred of the

Jesuits, and all that made the revival of Italy in the nineteenth

century the most thrilling romance that ever roused Italian passion

and stirred the world's sympathy. Durand was not old enough to

remember those times, and he had never been in Rome at all till he was

nearly thirty years of age and on the first wave of his high success;

but he had read about the past, and to his unspoiled sight and vivid

imagination Rome was still romantic and the greatest city in the

world, ancient or modern; and somehow when he thought of his picture

and of Angela's face, and remembered the scene at the telephone, he

felt that he was himself just within the sphere of some mysterious and

tragic action which he could not yet understand, but which might

possibly affect his own life.

'This is a serio-comic world,' he said to himself as he slowly made

his way down the Corso, watching the faces of the people he passed,

because he never passed a face in the street without glancing at it,

stopping now and then to look into a shop window where there was

nothing to see that he had not seen a thousand times elsewhere,

smoking cigarettes without number, thinking of Angela's portrait, and

mechanically repeating his little epigram over and over again, to a

sort of tune in his head, with variations and transpositions that

meant nothing at all.

'This is a serio-comic world. This is a comico-serious world. This

world is a serious comico-serial. This is a worldly-serious comedy.'

And so forth, and so on; and a number of more or less good-looking

women of the serio-comic world, whose portraits he had painted, and

several more or less distinguished men who had sat to him, passed the

man of genius and greeted him as if they were rather pleased to show

that they knew him; but they would have been shocked if they could

have heard the silly words the great painter was mechanically

repeating to himself as he idled along the pavement, musing on the

picture he hoped to keep, and already regarded as his masterpiece and

chief treasure.