The White Sister

by F. Marion Crawford

She asked the question suddenly.

'She cannot harm me more than she did years ago,' Sister Giovanna answered.

'I wish that were certain!' said the other. 'I wish I had gone to nurse her myself that night instead of sending you!'

She was so evidently in earnest that the Sister was even more surprised than before, and wondered what was the matter. But as it was not her place to ask questions, and as the Mother Superior's doubt, or presentiment of trouble, was evidently suggested by sincere affection for herself, she said nothing, and went about her work without letting her mind dwell too long on the conversation. Men and women who lead the religious life in earnest acquire a much greater control of their secret thoughts than ordinary people can easily believe it possible to exercise.

Nevertheless, the Princess's voice came back to her ears when she was alone and told the story over and over again; and somehow her aunt was often mentioned in the Convent as a recent benefactress who was showing a lively interest in the hospital, and would perhaps give further large sums to it which could be expended for good. Sister Giovanna never said anything when the subject came up, but she could not help thinking of Judas's suggestion that the alabaster box of precious ointment might have been sold and given to the poor, and a disturbing spirit whispered that Princess Chiaromonte, whose past might well be compared with the Magdalen's, had done what Iscariot would have advised.

In due time, too, the great lady visited the Convent and hospital, and was shown over it systematically by the Mother Superior herself, followed by an approving little escort of nurses and novices, for it was of course permissible to appreciate and admire the smart clothes of a benefactress, whereas it would have been the height of levity to bestow so much attention on a lady visitor who was merely fashionable and had done nothing for the institution. This, at least, was the novices' point of view. But the little white volcano seemed quietly cross, and held her small head very high as she led the Princess from one ward to another to the beautifully fitted operating-room; and when she spoke her tone was strangely cold and mordant, as a woman's voice sometimes sounds in the Alps, when she speaks across an ice-fall or a frozen lake.

The Princess looked behind her repeatedly, and her eyes sought her niece's face amongst those she saw, but she asked no questions about her, and apparently gave all her attention to what was shown her. Sister Giovanna was in her cell during all that time, and should no doubt have been occupied; but instead, she was standing idly at her window, looking through one of the diamond-shaped openings in the lattice, in the direction of Monteverde. She was hardly aware of what she saw, however, for in imagination she was following her aunt through the halls and wards and long corridors, and a struggle was going on in her heart which hurt her and made her despise herself.

The woman who had ruined her life was under the same roof with her again, and she could not forgive her; and that seemed a very great sin. What had she gained in the five years that had gone by since the beginning of her noviciate, if she could not even forgive an injury? That was the question. Since her life had led her to nothing better than smouldering resentment and sharp regret, it had not been the holy life she had meant it to be—the failure she must score against herself was a total one, a general defeat—and all that she had believed she had been doing for the dead man's sake must count for nothing, since she had not once been really in a state of grace.

No doubt her self-accusation went too far, as a confessor would have told her, or even the Mother Superior, if that good and impulsive woman had known what was in her mind. But Sister Giovanna did not believe she could go far enough in finding fault with herself for such great sins as her regret for a married life that might have been, and her lasting anger against a person who had robbed her; and it was while she was standing at her latticed window that morning that she first thought of making an even more complete sacrifice by joining the Sisters who intended to go out to the Rangoon leper hospital in the spring.

It was not with the hope of dying young that she wished to go and face death daily, but in the earnest desire to escape from what she called her temptation, and to regain that peace of mind which had been hers for a long time and now was gone. She had made for herself a little treasure-house of grace laid up, to be offered for Giovanni's soul, and the gold of her affliction and the jewels of her unselfish labours had been gathered there to help him. That had been her simple and innocent belief, but it had broken down suddenly as soon as she discovered that she was only a human, resentful, regretful woman after all, as far below the mystic detachment from the outward world as she had been in those first days of her grief, at Madame Bernard's, when she had sat listless all the day long, a broken-hearted girl. What she had taken for gold and had stored up for Giovanni's welfare was only the basest metal, her jewels were but chips of gaudy glass, her sacrifice was a failure after all. Worse than that, her dead man came back alive from his grave and haunted her in dreams, threatening righteous judgment on the woman who had cheated her and him of earthly happiness.