'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 assented 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.
In less than a quarter of an hour the cab stopped before the hospital of the White Sisters, and when the portress opened the door, the two artillerymen explained what had happened and begged that their officer might be taken in at once; and, moreover, that the portress would kindly get some money with which to pay the cabman, as they could only raise seven sous between them.
The Mother Superior had supposed that there would be many wounded, and had directed that the orderlies should be ready at the door with stretchers, although the Convent hospital did not receive accident cases or casualties except in circumstances of extreme emergency. The hospital of the Consolazione, close to the Roman Forum, was the proper place for these, but it was very much farther, and the White Sisters were so well known in all Trastevere that they were sometimes called upon, even in the middle of the night, to take in a wounded man who could not have lived to reach the great hospital beyond the Tiber.
Under the brilliant electric light in the main hall, the Mother Superior recognised Giovanni's unconscious face; his crushed arm, hanging down like a doll's, and his torn and soiled uniform, told the rest. He was taken at once to the room his brother had occupied so long. The Mother Superior herself helped the surgeon and another Sister to do all that could be done then. Sister Giovanna knew nothing of his coming, for she was in the wards, where there was much to be done. The patients who had fever had been severely affected by the terrible explosion, and most of them were more or less delirious and had to be quieted. In the windows that look westward every pane of glass was broken, though the outer shutters had been closed at sunset, a few minutes before the catastrophe. There were heaps of broken glass to be cleared away, and the patients whose beds were now exposed to draughts were moved. Sister Giovanna, who was not the supervising nurse for the week, worked quietly and efficiently with the others, carrying out all directions as they were given; but her heart misgave her, and when one of the nuns came in and said in a low voice that an officer from Monteverde had been brought in with his arm badly crushed, she steadied herself a moment by the foot of an iron bedstead. In the shaded light of the ward no one noticed her agonised face.
Presently she was able to ask where the officer was, and the Sister who had brought the news announced that he was in Number Two. It was Giovanni now, and not his brother, the unhappy woman was sure of that, and every instinct in her nature bade her go to him at once. But the unconscious volition of those long trained to duty is stronger than almost any impulse except that of downright fear, and Sister Giovanna stayed where she was, for there was still much to be done.
About half-an-hour later the Mother Superior entered the ward and found her and led her quietly out. When they were alone together, the elder woman told her the truth.