Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 500
It was something of a jar to go back into the streets, so full of noise and bustle; and all the way home with the Reverend Mother I was forming the resolution of telling her that very night that I meant to be a nun, for, stirred to the depths of my soul by what I had seen and remembering what my poor mother had wished for me, I determined that no other life would I live under any circumstances.
Then came the shock.
As we drew up at our door a postman was delivering letters. One of them was for the Reverend Mother and I saw in a moment that it was in my father’s handwriting. She read it in silence, and in silence she handed it to me. It ran:
“Madam,
“I have come to Rome to take back my daughter. I believe her education will now be finished, and I reckon the time has arrived to prepare her for the change in life that is before her.
“The Bishop of our diocese has come with me, and we propose to pay our respects to you at ten o’clock prompt to-morrow morning.
“Yours, Madam,
“DANIEL O’NEILL.”
NINETEENTH CHAPTER
I saw, as by a flash of light, what was before me, and my whole soul rose in rebellion against it. That my father after all the years during which he had neglected me, should come to me now, when my plans were formed, and change the whole current of my life, was an outrage — an iniquity. It might be his right — his natural right — but if so his natural right was a spiritual wrong — and I would resist it — to my last breath and my last hour I would resist it.
Such were the brave thoughts with which I passed that night, but at ten o’clock next morning, when I was summoned to meet my father himself, it was on trembling limbs and with a quivering heart that I went down to the Reverend Mother’s room.
Except that his hair was whiter than before my father was not much changed. He rose as I entered, saying, “Here she is herself,” and when I went up to him he put his hands on my shoulders and looked into my face.
“Quite a little Italian woman grown! Like your mother though,” he said, and then speaking over my head to the Bishop, who sat on the other side of the room, he added:
“Guess this will do, Bishop, eh?”
“Perfectly,” said the Bishop.
I was colouring in confusion at the continued scrutiny, with a feeling of being looked over for some unexplained purpose, when the Reverend Mother called me, and turning to go to her I saw, by the look of pain on her face that she, too, had been hurt by it.
She put me to sit on a stool by the side of her chair, and taking my right hand she laid it in her lap and held it there during the whole of the interview.
The Bishop, whom I had never seen before, was the first to speak. He was a type of the fashionable ecclesiastic, suave, smiling, faultlessly dressed in silk soutane and silver buckled shoes, and wearing a heavy gold chain with a jewelled cross.
“Reverend Mother,” he said, “you would gather from Mr. O’Neill’s letter that he wishes to remove his daughter immediately — I presume there will be no difficulty in his doing so?”
The Reverend Mother did not speak, but I think she must have bent her head.
“Naturally,” said the Bishop, “there will be a certain delay while suitable clothes are being made for her, but I have no doubt you will give Mr. O’Neill your help in these preparations.”
My head was down, and I did not see if the Reverend Mother bowed again. But the two gentlemen, apparently satisfied with her silence, began to talk of the best date for my removal, and just when I was quivering with fear that without a word of protest I was to be taken away, the Reverend Mother said:
“Monsignor!”
“Reverend Mother!”
“You are aware that this child” — here she patted my trembling hand— “has been with me for ten years?”
“I am given to understand so.”
“And that during that time she has only once been home?”
“I was not aware — but no doubt it is as you say.”
“In short, that during the greater part of her life she has been left to my undivided care?”
“You have been very good to her, very, and I’m sure her family are extremely grateful.”
“In that case, Monsignor, doesn’t it seem to you that I am entitled to know why she is being so suddenly taken away from me, and what is the change in life which Mr. O’Neill referred to in his letter?”
The smile which had been playing upon the Bishop’s face was smitten away from it by that question, and he looked anxiously across at my father.
“Tell her,” said my father, and then, while my heart thumped in my bosom and the Reverend Mother stroked my hand to compose me, the Bishop gave a brief explanation.
The time had not come when it would be prudent to be more definite, but he might say that Mr. O’Neill was trying to arrange a happy and enviable future for his daughter, and therefore he wished her to return home to prepare for it.
“Does that mean marriage?” said the Reverend Mother.
“It may be so. I am not quite prepared to . . .”
“And that a husband has already been found for her?”
“That too perhaps. I will not say . . .”
“Monsignor,” said the Reverend Mother, sitting up with dignity “is that fair?”
“Fair?”
“Is it fair that after ten years in which her father has done nothing for her, he should determine what her life is to be, without regard to her wish and will?”
I raised my eyes and saw that the Bishop looked aghast.
“Reverend Mother, you surprise me,” he said. “Since when has a father ceased to be the natural guardian of his child? Has he not been so since the beginning of the world? Doesn’t the Church itself build its laws on that foundation?”
“Does it?” said the Reverend Mother shortly. And then (I could feel her hand trembling as she spoke): “Some of its servants do, I know. But when did the Church say that anybody — no matter who — a father or anybody else — should take the soul of another, and control it and govern it, and put it in prison? . . .”
“My good lady,” said the Bishop, “would you call it putting the girl in prison to marry her into an illustrious family, to give her an historic name, to surround her with the dignity and distinction . . .”
“Bishop,” said my father, raising his hand, “I guess it’s my right to butt in here, isn’t it?”
I saw that my father’s face had been darkening while the Reverend Mother spoke, and now, rolling his heavy body in his chair so as to face her, he said:
“Excuse me, ma’am, but when you say I’ve done nothing for my gel here I suppose you’ll allow I’ve kept her and educated her?”
“You’ve kept and educated your dogs and horses, also, I dare say, but do you claim the same rights over a human being?”
“I do, ma’am — I think I do. And when the human being happens to be my own daughter I don’t allow that anybody else has anything to say.”
“If her mother were alive would she have nothing to say?”
I thought my father winced at that word, but he answered:
“Her mother would agree to anything I thought best.”
“Her mother, so far as I can see, was a most unselfish, most submissive, most unhappy woman,” said the Reverend Mother.
My father glanced quickly at me and then, after a moment, he said:
“I’m obliged to you, ma’am, much obliged. But as I’m not a man to throw words away I’ll ask you to tell me what all this means. Does it mean that you’ve made plans of your own for my daughter without consulting me?”
“No, sir.”
“Then perhaps it means that the gel herself . . .”
“That may be so or not — I cannot say. But when you sent your daughter to a convent-school . . .”
“Wrong, ma’am, wrong for once. It was my wife’s sister — who thinks the gel disobedient and rebellious and unruly . . .”
“Then your wife’s sister is either a very stupid or a very bad-hearted woman.”
“Ma’am?”
“I have known your daughter longer than she has, and there isn’t a word of truth in what she says.”
It was as much as I could do not to fall on the Reverend Mother’s neck, but I clung to her hand with a convulsive grasp.
“May be so, ma’am, may be no,” said my father. “But when you talk about my sending my daughter to a convent-school I would have you know that I’ve been so busy with my business . . .”
“That you haven’t had time to take care of the most precious thing God gave you.”
“Ma’am,” said my father, rising to his feet, “may I ask what right you have to speak to me as if . . .”
“The right of one who for ten years has been a mother to your motherless child, sir, while you have neglected and forgotten her.”
At that my father, whose bushy eyebrows were heavily contracted, turned to the Bishop.
“Bishop,” he said, “is this what I’ve been paying my money for? Ten years’ fees, and middling high ones too, I’m thinking?”
And then the Bishop, apparently hoping to make peace, said suavely:
“But aren’t we crossing the river before we reach the bridge? The girl herself may have no such objections. Have you?” he asked, turning to me.
I was trembling more than ever now, and at first I could not reply.
“Don’t you wish to go back home with your father?”
“No, sir,” I answered.
“And why not, please?”
“Because my father’s home is no home to me — because my aunt has always been unkind to me, and because my father has never cared for me or protected me, and because . . .”
“Well, what else?”
“Because . . . because I wish to become a nun.”
There was silence for a moment, and then my father broke into bitter laughter.
“So that’s it, is it? I thought as much. You want to go into partnership with the Mother in the nun business, eh?”
“My mother wished me to become a nun, and I wish it myself, sir.”
“Your mother was a baby — that’s what she was.”
“My mother was an angel, sir,” I said, bridling up, “and when she was dying she hoped I should become a nun, and I can never become anything else under any circumstance.”
“Bah!” said my father, with a contemptuous lift of the hand, and then turning to the Reverend Mother he said:
“Hark here, ma’am. There’s an easy way and a hard way in most everything. I take the easy way first, and if it won’t work I take the hard way next, and then it’s stiff pulling for the people who pull against me. I came to Rome to take my daughter home. I don’t feel called upon to explain why I want to take her home, or what I’m going to do with her when I get her there. I believe I’ve got the rights of a father to do what I mean to do, and that it will be an ugly business for anybody who aids and abets my daughter in resisting her father’s will. So I’ll leave her here a week longer, and when I come back, I’ll expect her to be ready and waiting and willing — ready and waiting and willing, mind you — to go along with me.”
After saying this my father faced about and with his heavy flat step went out of the room, whereupon the Bishop bowed to the Reverend Mother and followed him.
My heart was by this time in fierce rebellion — all that the pacifying life of the convent-school had done for me in ten years being suddenly swept away — and I cried:
“I won’t do it! I won’t do it!”
But I had seen that the Reverend Mother’s face had suddenly become very white while my father spoke to her at the end and now she said, in a timid, almost frightened tone:
“Mary, we’ll go out to Nemi to-day. I have something to say to you.”
TWENTIETH CHAPTER
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.
