The Woman Thou Gavest Me; Being the Story of Mary O'Neill. Sir Hall Caine
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.
TWENTY-FIRST CHAPTER
A week later I was living with my father in the Hotel Europa on the edge of the Piazza di Spagna.
He was kinder to me than he had ever been before, but he did not tell me what the plans were which he had formed for my future, and I was left to discover them for myself.
Our apartment was constantly visited by ecclesiastics—Monsignori, Archbishops, even one of the Cardinals of the Propaganda, brought there by Bishop Walsh (the Bishop of our own diocese), and I could not help but hear portions of their conversation.
"It will be difficult, extremely difficult," the Cardinal would say. "Such marriages are not encouraged by the Church, which holds that they are usually attended by the worst consequences to both wife and husband. Still—under the exceptional circumstances—that the bridegroom's family was Catholic before it was Protestant—it is possible, just possible. … "
"Cardinal," my father would answer, while his strong face was darkening, "excuse me, sir, but I'm kind of curious to get the hang of this business. Either it can be done or it can't. If it can, we'll just sail in and do it. But if it can't, I believe I'll go home quick and spend my money another way."
Then there would be earnest assurances that in the end all would be right, only Rome moved slowly, and it would be necessary to have patience and wait.
My father waited three weeks, and meantime he occupied himself in seeing the sights of the old city.
But the mighty remains which are the luminous light-houses of the past—the Forum with the broken columns of its dead centuries; the Coliseum with its gigantic ruins, like the desolate crater of a moon; the Campagna with its hollow, crumbling tombs and shattered aqueducts—only vexed and irritated him.
"Guess if I had my way," he said, "I would just clean out this old stone-yard of monuments to dead men, and make it more fit for living ones."
At length the Bishop came to say that the necessary business had been completed, and that to mark its satisfactory settlement the Pope had signified his willingness to receive in private audience both my father and myself.
This threw me into a state of the greatest nervousness, for I had begun to realise that my father's business concerned myself, so that when, early the following morning (clad according to instructions, my father in evening dress and I in a long black mantilla), we set out for the Vatican, I was in a condition of intense excitement.
What happened after we got out of the carriage at the bronze gate near St. Peter's I can only describe from a vague and feverish memory. I remember going up a great staircase, past soldiers in many-coloured coats, into a vast corridor, where there were other soldiers in other costumes. I remember going on and on, through salon after salon, each larger and more luxurious than the last, and occupied by guards still more gorgeously dressed than the guards we had left behind. I remember coming at length to a door at which a Chamberlain, wearing a sword, knelt and knocked softly, and upon its being opened announced our names. And then I remember that after all this grandeur as of a mediæval court I found myself in a plain room like a library with a simple white figure before me, and … I was in the presence of the Holy Father himself.
Can I ever forget that moment?
I had always been taught in the Convent to think of the Pope with a reverence only second to that which was due to the Saints, so at first I thought I should faint, and how I reached the Holy Father's feet I do not know. I only know that he was very sweet and kind to me, holding out the delicate white hand on which he wore the fisherman's emerald ring, and smoothing my head after I had kissed it.
When I recovered myself sufficiently to look up I saw that he was an old man, with a very pale