The Strolling Saint; being the confessions of the high and mighty Agostino D'Anguissola tyrant of Mondolfo and Lord of Carmina in the state of Piacenza Read online

  CHAPTER III. THE PIETISTIC THRALL

  That evening my mother talked to me at longer length than I remember herever to have done before.

  It may be that she feared lest Gino Falcone should have aroused in menotions which it was best to lull back at once into slumber. It may bethat she, too, had felt something of the crucial quality of that momentin the armoury, just as she must have perceived my first hesitation toobey her slightest word, whence came her resolve to check this mutinyere it should spread and become too big for her.

  We sat in the room that was called her private dining-room, but which,in fact, was all things to her save the chamber in which she slept.

  The fine apartments through which I had strayed as a little lad in myfather's day, the handsome lofty chambers, with their frescoed ceilings,their walls hung with costly tapestries, many of which had come from thelooms of Flanders, their floors of wood mosaics, and their great carvedmovables, had been shut up these many years.

  For my mother's claustral needs sufficient was provided by the alcovein which she slept, the private chapel of the citadel in which she wouldspend long hours, and this private dining-room where we now sat. Intothe spacious gardens of the castle she would seldom wander, intoour town of Mondolfo never. Not since my father's departure upon hisill-starred rebellion had she set foot across the drawbridge.

  "Tell me whom you go with, and I will tell you what you are," says theproverb. "Show me your dwelling, and I shall see your character," say I.

  And surely never was there a chamber so permeated by the nature of itstenant as that private dining-room of my mother's.

  It was a narrow room in the shape of a small parallelogram, with thewindows set high up near the timbered, whitewashed ceiling, so that itwas impossible either to look in or to look out, as is sometimes thecase with the windows of a chapel.

  On the white space of wall that faced the door hung a great woodenCrucifix, very rudely carved by one who either knew nothing of anatomy,or else--as is more probable--was utterly unable to set down hisknowledge upon timber. The crudely tinted figure would be perhaps halfthe natural size of a man; and it was the most repulsive and hideousrepresentation of the Tragedy of Golgotha that I have ever seen. Itfilled one with a horror which was far indeed removed from the pioushorror which that Symbol is intended to arouse in every true believer.It emphasized all the ghastly ugliness of death upon that most barbarousof gallows, without any suggestion of the beauty and immensity of theDivine Martyrdom of Him Who in the likeness of the sinful flesh wasAlone without sin.

  And to me the ghastliest and most pitiful thing of all was an artificewhich its maker had introduced for the purpose of conveying somesuggestion of the supernatural to that mangled, malformed, less thanhuman representation. Into the place of the wound made by the spear ofLonginus, he had introduced a strip of crystal which caught the light atcertain angles--more particularly when there were lighted tapers in theroom--so that in reflecting this it seemed to shed forth luminous rays.

  An odd thing was that my mother--who looked upon that Crucifix with eyesthat were very different from mine--would be at pains in the eveningwhen lights were fetched to set a taper at such an angle as was bestcalculated to produce the effect upon which the sculptor had counted.What satisfaction it can have been to her to see reflected from thatglazed wound the light which she herself had provided for the purpose,I am lost to think. And yet I am assured that she would contemplate thatshining effluence in a sort of ecstatic awe, accounting it somethingvery near akin to miracle.

  Under this Crucifix hung a little alabaster font of holy-water, intothe back of which was stuck a withered, yellow branch of palm, which wasrenewed on each Palm Sunday. Before it was set a praying-stool of plainoak, without any cushion to mitigate its harshness to the knees.

  In the corner of the room stood a tall, spare, square cupboard,capacious but very plain, in which the necessaries of the table weredisposed. In the opposite corner there was another smaller cupboard witha sort of writing-pulpit beneath. Here my mother kept the accounts ofher household, her books of recipes, her homely medicines and the heavydevotional tomes and lesser volumes--mostly manuscript--out of which shenourished her poor starving soul.

  Amongst these was the Treatise of the Mental Sufferings of Christ--thebook of the Blessed Battista of Varano, Princess of Camerino, whofounded the convent of Poor Clares in that city--a book whose almostblasphemous presumption fired the train of my earliest misgivings.

  Another was The Spiritual Combat, that queer yet able book of the clericScupoli--described as the "aureo libro," dedicated "Al Supremo Capitanoe Gloriosissimo Trionfatore, Gesu Cristo, Figliuolo di Maria," and thisdedication in the form of a letter to Our Saviour, signed, "Your mosthumble servant, purchased with Your Blood." 1

  1 This work, which achieved a great vogue and of which several editions were issued down to 1750, was first printed in 1589. Clearly, however, MS. copies were in existence earlier, and it is to one of these that Agostino here refers.

  Down the middle of the chamber ran a long square-ended table of oak,very plain like all the rest of the room's scant furnishings. At thehead of this table was an arm-chair for my mother, of bare wood withoutany cushion to relieve its hardness, whilst on either side of the boardstood a few lesser chairs for those who habitually dined there. Thesewere, besides myself, Fra Gervasio, my tutor; Messer Giorgio, thecastellan, a bald-headed old man long since past the fighting ageand who in times of stress would have been as useful for purposes ofdefending Mondolfo as Lorenza, my mother's elderly woman, who sat belowhim at the board; he was toothless, bowed, and decrepit, but he was verydevout--as he had need to be, seeing that he was half dead already--andthis counted with my mother above any other virtue.2

  2 Virtu is the word used by Agostino, and it is susceptible to a widertranslation than that which the English language affords, comprising asit does a sense of courage and address at arms. Indeed, it is not clearthat Agostino is not playing here upon the double meaning of the word.

  The last of the four who habitually sat with us was Giojoso, theseneschal, a lantern-jawed fellow with black, beetling brows, about whomthe only joyous thing was his misnomer of a name.

  Of the table that we kept, beyond noting that the fare was ever of alenten kind and that the wine was watered, I will but mention that mymother did not observe the barrier of the salt. There was no sittingabove it or below at our board, as, from time immemorial, is theuniversal custom in feudal homes. That her having abolished it was anact of humility on her part there can be little doubt, although this wasa subject upon which she never expressed herself in my hearing.

  The walls of that room were whitewashed and bare.

  The floor was of stone overlain by a carpet of rushes that was changedno oftener than once a week.

  From what I have told you, you may picture something of the chill gloomof the place, something of the pietism which hung upon the very air ofthat apartment in which so much of my early youth was spent. And it had,too, an odour that is peculiarly full of character, the smell whichis never absent from a sacristy and rarely from conventual chambers; asmell difficult to define, faint and yet tenuously pungent, and likeno other smell in all the world that I have ever known. It is a mustyodour, an odour of staleness which perhaps an open window and the freshair of heaven might relieve but could not dissipate; and to this is wed,but so subtly that it would be impossible to say which is predominant,the slight, sickly aroma of wax.

  We supped there that night in silence at about the hour that poor GinoFalcone would be taking his departure. Silence was habitual with us atmeal-times, eating being performed--like everything else in that drabhousehold--as a sort of devotional act. Occasionally the silence wouldbe relieved by readings aloud from some pious work, undertaken at mymother's bidding by one or another of the amanuenses.

  But on the night in question there was just silence, broken chiefly bythe toothless slobber of the castellan over the soft meats that wereespe
cially prepared for him. And there was something of grimness inthat silence; for none--and Fra Gervasio less than any--approved theunchristian thing that out of excess of Christianity my mother had donein driving old Falcone forth.

  Myself, I could not eat at all. My misery choked me. The thought of thatold servitor whom I had loved being sent a wanderer and destitute, andall through my own weakness, all because I had failed him in his need,just as I had failed myself, was anguish to me. My lip would quiver atthe thought, and it was with difficulty that I repressed my tears.

  At last that hideous repast came to an end in prayers of thanksgivingwhose immoderate length was out of all proportion to the fare provided.

  The castellan shuffled forth upon the arm of the seneschal; Lorenzafollowed at a sign from my mother, and we three--Gervasio, my mother,and I--were left alone.

  And here let me say a word of Fra Gervasio. He was, as I have alreadywritten, my father's foster-brother. That is to say, he was the childof a sturdy peasant-woman of the Val di Taro, from whose lusty, healthybreast my father had suckled the first of that fine strength that hadbeen his own.

  He was older than my father by a month or so, and as often happens insuch cases, he was brought to Mondolfo to be first my father's playmate,and later, no doubt, to have followed him as a man-at-arms. But a chillthat he took in his tenth year as a result of a long winter immersion inthe icy waters of the Taro laid him at the point of death, and lefthim thereafter of a rather weak and sickly nature. But he was quickand intelligent, and was admitted to learn his letters with my father,whence it ensued that he developed a taste for study. Seeing that byhis health he was debarred from the hardy open life of a soldier, hisscholarly aptitude was encouraged, and it was decided that he shouldfollow a clerical career.

  He had entered the order of St. Francis; but after some years atthe Convent of Aguilona, his health having been indifferent and theconventual rules too rigorous for his condition, he was given licenceto become the chaplain of Mondolfo. Here he had received the kindliesttreatment at the hands of my father, who entertained for his sometimeplaymate a very real affection.

  He was a tall, gaunt man with a sweet, kindly face, reflecting hissweet, kindly nature; he had deep-set, dark eyes, very gentle in theirgaze, a tender mouth that was a little drawn by lines of suffering andan upright wrinkle, deep as a gash, between his brows at the root of hislong, slender nose.

  He it was that night who broke the silence that endured even after theothers had departed. He spoke at first as if communing with himself,like a man who thinks aloud; and between his thumb and his longforefinger, I remember that he kneaded a crumb of bread upon which hiseyes were intent.

  "Gino Falcone is an old man, and he was my lord's best-loved servant. Hewould have died for my lord, and joyfully; and now he is turned adrift,to die to no purpose. Ah, well." He heaved a deep sigh and fell silent,whilst I--the pent-up anguish in me suddenly released to hear mythoughts thus expressed--fell soundlessly to weeping.

  "Do you reprove me, Fra Gervasio?" quoth my mother, quite emotionless.

  The monk pushed back his stool and rose ere he replied. "I must," hesaid, "or I am unworthy of the scapulary I wear. I must reprove thisunchristian act, or else am I no true servant of my Master."

  She crossed herself with her thumb-nail upon the brow and upon the lips,to repress all evil thoughts and evil words--an unfailing sign that shewas stirred to anger and sought to combat the sin of it. Then she spoke,meekly enough, in the same cold, level voice.

  "I think it is you who are at fault," she told him, "when you callunchristian an act which was necessary to secure this child to Christ."

  He smiled a sad little smile. "Yet even so, it were well you shouldproceed with caution and with authority; and in this you have none."

  It was her turn to smile, the palest, ghostliest of smiles, and even forso much she must have been oddly moved. "I think I have," said she, andquoted, "'If thy right hand offend thee, hack it off.'"

  I saw a hot flush mount to the friar's prominent cheek-bones. Indeed, hewas a very human man under his conventual robe, with swift stirringsof passion which the long habit of repression had not yet succeededin extinguishing. He cast his eyes to the ceiling in such a glance ofdespair as left me thoughtful. It was as an invocation to Heaven tolook down upon the obstinate, ignorant folly of this woman who accountedherself wise and who so garbled the Divine teaching as to blaspheme withcomplacency.

  I know that now; at the time I was not quite so clear-sighted as to readthe full message of that glance.

  Her audacity was as the audacity of fools. Where wisdom, full-fledged,might have halted, trembling, she swept resolutely onward. Before herstood this friar, this teacher and interpreter, this man of holy lifewho was accounted profoundly learned in the Divinities; and he told herthat she had done an evil thing. Yet out of the tiny pittance of herknowledge and her little intellectual sight--which was no better than ablindness--must she confidently tell him that he was at fault.

  Argument was impossible between him and her. Thus much I saw, and Ifeared an explosion of the wrath of which I perceived in him the signs.But he quelled it. Yet his voice rumbled thunderously upon his nextwords.

  "It matters something that Gino Falcone should not starve," he said.

  "It matters more that my son should not be damned," she answered him,and with that answer left him weapon-less, for against the armour of acrassness so dense and one-ideaed there are no weapons that can prevail.

  "Listen," she said, and her eyes, raised for a moment, comprehended bothof us in their glance. "There is something that it were best I tell you,that once for all you may fathom the depth of my purpose for Agostinohere. My lord his father was a man of blood and strife..."

  "And so were many whose names stand to-day upon the roll of saints andare its glory," answered the friar with quick asperity.

  "But they did not raise their arms against the Holy Church and againstChrist's Own most holy Vicar, as did he," she reminded him sorrowfully."The sword is an ill thing save when it is wielded in a holy cause. Inmy lord's hands, wielded in the unholiest of all causes, it became athing accursed. But God's anger overtook him and laid him low at Perugiain all the strength and vigour that had made him arrogant as Lucifer. Itwas perhaps well for all of us that it so befell."

  "Madonna!" cried Gervasio in stern horror.

  But she went on quite heedless of him. "Best of all was it for me, sinceI was spared the harshest duty that can be imposed upon a woman and awife. It was necessary that he should expiate the evil he had wrought;moreover, his life was become a menace to my child's salvation. It washis wish to make of Agostino such another as himself, to lead his onlyson adown the path of Hell. It was my duty to my God and to my son toshield this boy. And to accomplish that I would have delivered up hisfather to the papal emissaries who sought him."

  "Ah, never that!" the friar protested. "You could never have done that!"

  "Could I not? I tell you it was as good as done. I tell you that thething was planned. I took counsel with my confessor, and he showed me myplain duty."

  She paused a moment, whilst we stared, Fra Gervasio white-faced and withmouth that gaped in sheer horror.

  "For years had he eluded the long arm of the pope's justice," sheresumed. "And during those years he had never ceased to plot andplan the overthrow of the Pontifical dominion. He was blinded by hisarrogance to think that he could stand against the hosts of Heaven. Hisstubbornness in sin had made him mad. Quem Deus vult perdere..." Andshe waved one of her emaciated hands, leaving the quotation unfinished."Heaven showed me the way, chose me for Its instrument. I sent him word,offering him shelter here at Mondolfo where none would look to find him,assuming it to be the last place to which he would adventure. He was tohave come when death took him on the field of Perugia."

  There was something here that I did not understand at all. And in likecase, it seemed, was Fra Gervasio, for he passed a hand over his brow,as if to clear thence some veils that clogged
his understanding.

  "He was to have come?" he echoed. "To shelter?" he asked.

  "Nay," said she quietly, "to death. The papal emissaries had knowledgeof it and would have been here to await him."

  "You would have betrayed him?" Fra Gervasio's voice was hoarse, his eyeswere burning sombrely.

  "I would have saved my son," said she, with quiet satisfaction, in atone that revealed how incontestably right she conceived herself to be.

  He stood there, and he seemed taller and more gaunt than usual, for hehad drawn himself erect to the full of his great height--and he was aman who usually went bowed. His hands were clenched and the knucklesshowed blue-white like marble. His face was very pale and in his templea little pulse was throbbing visibly. He swayed slightly upon hisfeet, and the sight of him frightened me a little. He seemed so full ofterrible potentialities.

  When I think of vengeance, I picture to myself Fra Gervasio as I beheldhim in that hour. Nothing that he could have done would have surprisedme. Had he fallen upon my mother then, and torn her limb from limb,it would have been no more than from the sight of him I might haveexpected.

  I have said that nothing that he could have done would have surprisedme. Rather should I have said that nothing would have surprised me savethe thing he did.

  Whilst a man might have counted ten stood he so--she seeing nothing ofthe strange transfiguration that had come over him, for her eyes weredowncast as ever. Then quite slowly, his hands unclenched, his armsfell limply to his sides, his head sank forward upon his breast, and hisfigure bowed itself lower than was usual. Quite suddenly, quite softly,almost as a man who swoons, he sank down again into the chair from whichhe had risen.

  He set his elbows on the table, and took his head in his hands. A groanescaped him. She heard it, and looked at him in her furtive way.

  "You are moved by this knowledge, Fra Gervasio," she said and sighed. "Ihave told you this--and you, Agostino--that you may know how deep, howineradicable is my purpose. You were a votive offering, Agostino;you were vowed to the service of God that your father's life might bespared, years ago, ere you were born. From the very edge of death wasyour father brought back to life and strength. He would have used thatlife and that strength to cheat God of the price of His boon to me."

  "And if," Fra Gervasio questioned almost fiercely, "Agostino in the endshould have no vocation, should have no call to such a life?"

  She looked at him very wistfully, almost pityingly. "How should thatbe?" she asked. "He was offered to God. And that God accepted the gift,He showed when He gave Giovanni back to life. How, then, could it cometo pass that Agostino should have no call? Would God reject that whichHe had accepted?"

  Fra Gervasio rose again. "You go too deep for me, Madonna," he saidbitterly. "It is not for me to speak of my gifts save reverently and inprofound and humble gratitude for that grace by which God bestowed themupon me. But I am accounted something of a casuist. I am a doctor oftheology and of canon law, and but for the weak state of my health Ishould be sitting to-day in the chair of canon law at the University ofPavia. And yet, Madonna, the things you tell me with such assurance makea mock of everything I have ever learnt."

  Even I, lad as I was, perceived the bitter irony in which he spoke. Notso she. I vow she flushed under what she accounted his praise of herwisdom and divine revelation; for vanity is the last human weakness tobe discarded. Then she seemed to recollect herself. She bowed her headvery reverently.

  "It is God's grace that reveals to me the truth," she said.

  He fell back a step in his amazement at having been so thoroughlymisunderstood. Then he drew away from the table. He looked at her ashe would speak, but checked on the thought. He turned, and so, withoutanother word, departed, and left us sitting there together.

  It was then that we had our talk; or, rather, that she talked, whilst Isat listening. And presently as I listened, I came gradually once moreunder the spell of which I had more than once that day been on the pointof casting off the yoke.

  For, after all, you are to discern in what I have written here, betweenwhat were my feelings at the time and what are my criticisms of to-dayin the light of the riper knowledge to which I have come. The handlingof a sword had thrilled me strangely, as I have shown. Yet was I readyto believe that such a thrill was but a lure of Satan's, as my motherassured me. In deeper matters she might harbour error, as Fra Gervasio'sirony had shown me that he believed. But we went that night into nogreat depths.

  She spent an hour or so in vague discourse upon the joys of Paradise, inshowing me the folly of jeopardizing them for the sake of the fleetingvanities of this ephemeral world. She dealt at length upon the love ofGod for us, and the love which we should bear to Him, and she read tome passages from the book of the Blessed Varano and from Scupoli to addpoint to her teachings upon the beauty and nobility of a life thatis devoted to God's service--the only service of this world in whichnobility can exist.

  And then she added little stories of martyrs who had suffered for thefaith, of the tortures to which they had been subjected, and of thehappiness they had felt in actual suffering, of the joy that their verytorments had brought them, borne up as they were by their faith and thestrength of their love of God.

  There was in all this nothing that was new to me, nothing that I didnot freely accept and implicitly believe without pausing to judge orcriticize. And yet, it was shrewd of her to have plied me then asshe did; for thereby, beyond doubt, she checked me upon the point ofself-questioning to which that day's happenings were urging me, and shebrought me once more obediently to heel and caused me to fix my eyesmore firmly than ever beyond the things of this world and upon theglories of the next which I was to make my goal and aim.

  Thus came I back within the toils from which I had been for a momenttempted to escape; and what is more, my imagination fired to some touchof ecstasy by those tales of sainted martyrs, I returned willingly tothe pietistic thrall, to be held in it more firmly than ever yet before.

  We parted as we always parted, and when I had kissed her cold hand Iwent my way to bed. And if I knelt that night to pray that God mightwatch over poor errant Falcone, it was to the end that Falcone might bebrought to see the sin and error of his ways and win to the grace of ahappy death when his hour came.