CHAPTER IV. LUISINA
Of the four years that followed little mention need be made in thesepages, save for one incident whose importance is derived entirely fromthat which subsequently befell, for at the time it had no meaning forme. Yet since later it was to have much, it is fitting that it should berecorded here.
It happened that a month or so after old Falcone had left us therewandered one noontide into the outer courtyard of the castle two pilgrimfathers, on their way--as they announced--from Milan to visit the HolyHouse at Loreto.
It was my mother's custom to receive all pilgrim wayfarers and beggarsin this courtyard at noontide twice in each week to bestow upon themfood and alms. Rarely was she, herself, present at that alms-giving;more rarely still was I. It was Fra Gervasio who discharged the officeof almoner on the Countess of Mondolfo's behalf. Occasionally the whinesand snarls of the motley crowd that gathered there--for they were notinfrequently quarrelsome--reached us in the maschio tower where we hadour apartments. But on the day of which I speak I chanced to stand inthe pillared gallery above the courtyard, watching the heaving, surginghuman mass below, for the concourse was greater than usual.
Cripples there were of every sort, and all in rags; some with twisted,withered limbs, others with mere stumps where limbs had been lopped off,others again--and there were many of these--with hideous runningsores, some of which no doubt would be counterfeit--as I now know--andcontrived with poultices of salt for the purpose of exciting charityin the piteous. All were dishevelled, unkempt, ragged, dirty, and,doubtless, verminous. Most were greedy and wolfish as they thrust oneanother aside to reach Fra Gervasio, as if they feared that the supplyof alms and food should be exhausted ere their turn arrived. Amongstthem there was commonly a small sprinkling of mendicant friars, some ofthese, perhaps, just the hypocrite rogues that I have since discoveredmany of them to be, though at the time all who wore the scapulary wereholy men in my innocent eyes. They were mostly, or so they pretended,bent upon pilgrimages to distant parts, living upon such alms as theycould gather on their way.
On the steps of the chapel Fra Gervasio would stand--gaunt andimpassive--with his posse of attendant grooms behind him. One of thelatter, standing nearest to our almoner, held a great sack of brokenbread; another presented a wooden, trough-like platter filled withslices of meat, and a third dispensed out of horn cups a poor, thin, andrather sour, but very wholesome wine, which he drew from the skins thatwere his charge.
From one to the other were the beggars passed on by Fra Gervasio, andlastly came they back to him, to receive from his hands a piece ofmoney--a grosso, of which he held the bag himself.
On the day of which I write, as I stood there gazing down upon that massof misery, marvelling perhaps a little upon the inequality of fortune,and wondering vaguely what God could be about to inflict so muchsuffering upon certain of His creatures, to cause one to be born intopurple and another into rags, my eyes were drawn by the insistent stareof two monks who stood at the back of the crowd with their shoulders tothe wall.
They were both tall men, and they stood with their cowls over theirtonsures, in the conventual attitude, their hands tucked away into theample sleeves of their brown habits. One of this twain was broader thanhis companion and very erect of carriage, such as was unusual in a monk.His mouth and the half of his face were covered by a thick brown beard,and athwart his countenance, from under the left eye across his nose andcheek, ran a great livid scar to lose itself in the beard towards theright jaw. His deep-set eyes regarded me so intently that I coloureduncomfortably under their gaze; for accustomed as I was to seclusion, Iwas easily abashed. I turned away and went slowly along the gallery tothe end; and yet I had a feeling that those eyes were following me, and,indeed, casting a swift glance over my shoulder ere I went indoors, Isaw that this was so.
That evening at supper I chanced to mention the matter to Fra Gervasio.
"There was a big bearded capuchin in the yard at alms-time to-day--" Iwas beginning, when the friar's knife clattered from his hand, and helooked at me with eyes of positive fear out of a face from which thelast drop of blood had abruptly receded. I checked my inquiry at thesight of him thus suddenly disordered, whilst my mother, who, as usual,observed nothing, made a foolish comment.
"The little brothers are never absent, Agostino."
"This brother was a big brother," said I.
"It is not seemly to make jest of holy men," she reproved me in herchilling voice.
"I had no thought to jest," I answered soberly. "I should neverhave remarked this friar but that he gazed upon me with so great anintentness--so great that I was unable to bear it."
It was her turn to betray emotion. She looked at me full and long--foronce--and very searchingly. She, too, had grown paler than was herhabit.
"Agostino, what do you tell me?" quoth she, and her voice quivered.
Now here was a deal of pother about a capuchin who had stared at theMadonnino of Anguissola! The matter was out of all proportion to thestir it made, and I conveyed in my next words some notion of thatopinion.
But she stared wistfully. "Never think it, Agostino," she besought me."You know not what it may import." And then she turned to Fra Gervasio."Who was this mendicant?" she asked.
He had by now recovered from his erstwhile confusion. But he was stillpale, and I observed that his hand trembled.
"He must have been one of the two little brothers of St. Francis ontheir way, they said, from Milan to Loreto on a pilgrimage."
"Not those you told me are resting here until to-morrow?"
From his face I saw that he would have denied it had it lain within hispower to utter a deliberate falsehood.
"They are the same," he answered in a low voice.
She rose. "I must see this friar," she announced, and never in all mylife had I beheld in her such a display of emotion.
"In the morning, then," said Fra Gervasio. "It is after sunset," heexplained. "They have retired, and their rule..." He left the sentenceunfinished, but he had said enough to be understood by her.
She sank back to her chair, folded her hands in her lap and fell intomeditation. The faintest of flushes crept into her wax-like cheeks.
"If it should be a sign!" she murmured raptly, and then she turned againto Fra Gervasio. "You heard Agostino say that he could not bear thisfriar's gaze. You remember, brother, how a pilgrim appeared near SanRufino to the nurse of Saint Francis, and took from her arms the childthat he might bless it ere once more he vanished? If this should be asign such as that!"
She clasped her hands together fervently. "I must see this friar ere hedeparts again," she said to the staring, dumbfounded Fra Gervasio.
At last, then, I understood her emotion. All her life she had prayedfor a sign of grace for herself or for me, and she believed that here atlast was something that might well be discovered upon inquiry to bean answer to her prayer. This capuchin who had stared at me fromthe courtyard became at once to her mind--so ill-balanced upon suchmatters--a supernatural visitant, harbinger, as it were, of my futuresaintly glory.
But though she rose betimes upon the morrow, to see the holy man ere hefared forth again, she was not early enough. In the courtyard whithershe descended to make her way to the outhouse where the two were lodged,she met Fra Gervasio, who was astir before her.
"The friar?" she cried anxiously, filled already with forebodings. "Theholy man?"
Gervasio stood before her, pale and trembling. "You are too late,Madonna. Already he is gone."
She observed his agitation now, and beheld in it a reflection of herown, springing from the selfsame causes. "Oh, it was a sign indeed!"she exclaimed. "And you have come to realize it, too, I see." Next, in aburst of gratitude that was almost pitiful upon such slight foundation,"Oh, blessed Agostino!" she cried out.
Then the momentary exaltation fell from that woman of sorrows. "This butmakes my burden heavier, my responsibility greater," she wailed. "Godhelp me bear it!"
Thus passed that incide
nt so trifling in itself and so misunderstood byher. But it was never forgotten, and from time to time she would alludeto it as the sign which had been vouchsafed me and for which greatshould be my thankfulness and my joy.
Save for that, in the four years that followed, time flowed anuneventful course within the four walls of the big citadel--for beyondthose four walls I was never once permitted to set foot; and althoughfrom time to time I heard rumours of doings in the town itself, of theaffairs of the State whereof I was by right of birth the tyrant, andof the greater business of the big world beyond, yet so trained andschooled was I that I had no great desire for a nearer acquaintance withthat world.
A certain curiosity did at times beset me, spurred not so much by thelittle that I heard as by things that I read in such histories as mystudies demanded I should read. For even the lives of saints, andHoly Writ itself, afford their student glimpses of the world. But thiscuriosity I came to look upon as a lure of the flesh, and to resist.Blessed are they who are out of all contact with the world, since tothem salvation comes more easily; so I believed implicitly, as I wastaught by my mother and by Fra Gervasio at my mother's bidding.
And as the years passed under such influences as had been at work uponme from the cradle, influences which had known no check save that briefone afforded by Gino Falcone, I became perforce devout and pious fromvery inclination.
Joyous transports were afforded me by the study of the life of thatSaint Luigi of the noble Mantuan House of Gonzaga--in whom I saw anideal to be emulated, since he seemed to me to be much in my own caseand of my own estate--who had counted the illusory greatness of thisworld well lost so that he might win the bliss of Paradise. Similarlydid I take delight in the Life, written by Tommaso da Celano, of thatblessed son of Pietro Bernardone, the merchant of Assisi, that Franciswho became the Troubadour of the Lord and sang so sweetly the praisesof His Creation. My heart would swell within me and I would weep hot andvery bitter tears over the narrative of the early and sinful part of hislife, as we may weep to see a beloved brother beset by deadly perils.And greater, hence, was the joy, the exultation, and finally the sweetpeace and comfort that I gathered from the tale of his conversion, ofhis wondrous works, and of the Three Companions.
In these pages--so lively was my young imagination and so wroughtupon by what I read--I suffered with him again his agonies of hope, Ithrilled with some of the joy of his stupendous ecstasies, and I almostenvied him the signal mark of Heavenly grace that had imprinted thestigmata upon his living body.
All that concerned him, too, I read: his Little Flowers, his Testament,The Mirror of Perfection; but my greatest delight was derived from hisSong of the Creatures, which I learnt by heart.
Oftentimes since have I wondered and sought to determine whether it wasthe piety of those lauds that charmed me spiritually, or an appeal tomy senses made by the beauty of the lines and the imagery which theAssisian used in his writings.
Similarly I am at a loss to determine whether the pleasure I took inreading of the joyous, perfumed life of that other stigmatized saint,the blessed Catherine of Siena, was not a sensuous pleasure rather thanthe soul-ecstasy I supposed it at the time.
And as I wept over the early sins of St. Francis, so too did I weep overthe rhapsodical Confessions of St. Augustine, that mighty theologianafter whom I had been named, and whose works--after those concerning St.Francis--exerted a great influence upon me in those early days.
Thus did I grow in grace until Fra Gervasio, who watched me narrowly andanxiously, seemed more at ease, setting aside the doubts that earlierhad tormented him lest I should be forced upon a life for which I had novocation. He grew more tender and loving towards me, as if something ofpity lurked within the strong affection in which he held me.
And, meanwhile, as I grew in grace of spirit, so too did I grow ingrace of body, waxing tall and very strong, which would have been nowisesurprising but that those nurtured as was I are seldom lusty. The mindfeeding overmuch upon the growing body is apt to sap its strengthand vigour, besides which there was the circumstance that I continuedthroughout those years a life almost of confinement, deprived of all theexercises by which youth is brought to its fine flower of strength.
As I was approaching my eighteenth year there befell another incident,which, trivial in itself, yet has its place in my development and soshould have its place within these confessions. Nor did I judge ittrivial at the time--nor were trivial the things that followed outof it--trivial though it may seem to me to-day as I look back upon itthrough all the murk of later life.
Giojoso, the seneschal, of whom I have spoken, had a son, a greatraw-boned lad whom he would have trained as an amanuensis, but who wasone of Nature's dunces out of which there is nothing useful to be made.He was strong-limbed, however, and he was given odd menial duties toperform about the castle. But these he shirked where possible, as he hadshirked his lessons in earlier days.
Now it happened that I was walking one spring morning--it was in Mayof that year '44 of which I am now writing--on the upper of thethree spacious terraces that formed the castle garden. It was but anindifferently tended place, and yet perhaps the more agreeable on thataccount, since Nature had been allowed to have her prodigal, luxuriantway. It is true that the great boxwood hedges needed trimming, and thatweeds were sprouting between the stones of the flights of steps that ledfrom terrace to terrace; but the place was gay and fragrant with wildblossoms, and the great trees afforded generous shade, and the long rankgrass beneath them made a pleasant couch to lie on during the heat ofthe day in summer. The lowest terrace of all was in better case. It wasa well-planted and well-tended orchard, where I got many a colic in myearlier days from a gluttony of figs and peaches whose complete ripeningI was too impatient to await.
I walked there, then, one morning quite early on the upper terraceimmediately under the castle wall, and alternately I read from the DeCivitate Dei which I had brought with me, alternately mused upon thematter of my reading. Suddenly I was disturbed by a sound of voices justbelow me.
The boxwood hedge, being twice my height and fully two feet thick,entirely screened the speakers from my sight.
There were two voices, and one of these, angry and threatening, Irecognized for that of Rinolfo--Messer Giojoso's graceless son; theother, a fresh young feminine voice, was entirely unknown to me; indeedit was the first girl's voice I could recall having heard in all myeighteen years, and the sound was as pleasantly strange as it wasstrangely pleasant.
I stood quite still, to listen to its expostulations.
"You are a cruel fellow, Ser Rinolfo, and Madonna the Countess shall betold of this."
There followed a crackling of twigs and a rush of heavy feet.
"You shall have something else of which to tell Madonna's beatitude,"threatened the harsh voice of Rinolfo.
That and his advances were answered by a frightened screech, a screechthat moved rapidly to the right as it was emitted. There came moresnapping of twigs, a light scurrying sound followed by a heavier one,and lastly a panting of breath and a soft pattering of running feet uponthe steps that led up to the terrace where I walked.
I moved forward rapidly to the opening in the hedge where these stepsdebouched, and no sooner had I appeared there than a soft, lithe bodyhurtled against me so suddenly that my arms mechanically went round it,my right hand still holding the De Civitate Dei, forefinger enclosedwithin its pages to mark the place.
Two moist dark eyes looked up appealingly into mine out of a frightenedbut very winsome, sun-tinted face.
"O Madonnino!" she panted. "Protect me! Save me!"
Below us, checked midway in his furious ascent, halted Rinolfo, his bigface red with anger, scowling up at me in sudden doubt and resentment.
The situation was not only extraordinary in itself, but singularlydisturbing to me. Who the girl was, or whence she came, I had no thoughtor notion as I surveyed her. She would be of about my own age, orperhaps a little younger, and from her garb it was plain that shebelonged
to the peasant class. She wore a spotless bodice of whitelinen, which but indifferently concealed the ripening swell of her youngbreast. Her petticoat, of dark red homespun, stopped short above herbare brown ankles, and her little feet were naked. Her brown hair, longand abundant, was still fastened at the nape of her slim neck, but fellloose beyond that, having been disturbed, no doubt, in her scuffle withRinolfo. Her little mouth was deeply red and it held strong young teeththat were as white as milk.
I have since wondered whether she was as beautiful as I deemed her inthat moment. For it must be remembered that mine was the case of the sonof Filippo Balducci--related by Messer Boccaccio in the merry talesof his Decamerone 1--who had come to years of adolescence without everhaving beheld womanhood, so that the first sight of it in the streetsof Florence affected him so oddly that he vexed his sire with foolishquestions and still more foolish prayers.
1 In the Introduction to the Fourth Day.
So was it now with me. In all my eighteen years I had by my mother'scareful contriving never set eyes upon a woman of an age inferior to herown. And--consider me foolish if you will but so it is--I do not thinkthat it had occurred to me that they existed, or else, if they did, thatin youth they differed materially from what in age I found them. Thus Ihad come to look upon women as just feeble, timid creatures, over-proneto gossip, tears, and lamentations, and good for very little that Icould perceive.
I had been unable to understand for what reason it was that San Luigi ofGonzaga had from years of discretion never allowed his eyes to rest upona woman; nor could I see wherein lay the special merit attributed tothis. And certain passages in the Confessions of St. Augustine andin the early life of St. Francis of Assisi bewildered me and left mepuzzled.
But now, quite suddenly, it was as if revelation had come to me. It wasas if the Book of Life had at last been opened for me, and at a glanceI had read one of its dazzling pages. So that whether this brown peasantgirl was beautiful or not, beautiful she seemed to me with the radiantbeauty that is attributed to the angels of Paradise. Nor did I doubtthat she would be as holy, for to see in beauty a mark of divine favouris not peculiar only to the ancient Greeks.
And because of the appeal of this beauty--real or supposed--I was veryready with my protection, since I felt that protection must carrywith it certain rights of ownership which must be very sweet and werecertainly desired.
Holding her, therefore, within the shelter of my arms, where in herheedless innocence she had flung herself, and by very instinct strokingwith one hand her little brown head to soothe her fears, I becametruculent for the first time in my new-found manhood, and boldlychallenged her pursuer.
"What is this, Rinolfo?" I demanded. "Why do you plague her?"
"She broke up my snares," he answered sullenly, "and let the birds gofree."
"What snares? What birds?" quoth I.
"He is a cruel beast," she shrilled. "And he will lie to you,Madonnino."
"If he does I'll break the bones of his body," I promised in a toneentirely new to me. And then to him--"The truth now, poltroon!" Iadmonished him.
At last I got the story out of them: how Rinolfo had scattered grainin a little clearing in the garden, and all about it had set twigs thatwere heavily smeared with viscum; that he set this trap almost daily,and daily took a great number of birds whose necks he wrung and had themcooked for him with rice by his silly mother; that it was a sin in anycase to take little birds by such cowardly means, but that since amongstthese birds there were larks and thrushes and plump blackbirds and othersweet musicians of the air, whose innocent lives were spent in singingthe praises of God, his sin became a hideous sacrilege.
Finally I learnt that coming that morning upon half a score of poorfluttering terrified birds held fast in Rinolfo's viscous snares, thelittle girl had given them their liberty and had set about breakingup the springes. At this occupation he had caught her, and there is nodoubt that he would have taken a rude vengeance but for the sanctuarywhich she had found in me.
And when I had heard, behold me for the first time indulging theprerogative that was mine by right of birth, and dispensing justice atMondolfo like the lord of life and death that I was there.
"You, Rinolfo," I said, "will set no more snares here at Mondolfo, norwill you ever again enter these gardens under pain of my displeasure andits consequences. And as for this child, if you dare to molest her forwhat has happened now, or if you venture so much as to lay a finger uponher at any time and I have word of it, I shall deal with you as with afelon. Now go."
He went straight to his father, the seneschal, with a lying tale of myhaving threatened him with violence and forbidden him ever to enter thegarden again because he had caught me there with Luisina--as the childwas called--in my arms. And Messer Giojoso, full of parental indignationat this gross treatment of his child, and outraged chastity atthe notion of a young man of churchly aims, as were mine, being inperversive dalliance with that peasant-wench, repaired straight tomy mother with the story of it, which I doubt not lost nothing by itsrepetition.
Meanwhile I abode there with Luisina. I was in no haste to let her go.Her presence pleased me in some subtle, quite indefinable manner; and mysense of beauty, which, always strong, had hitherto lain dormant withinme, was awake at last and was finding nourishment in the graces of her.
I sat down upon the topmost of the terrace steps, and made her sitbeside me. This she did after some demur about the honour of it and herown unworthiness, objections which I brushed peremptorily aside.
So we sat there on that May morning, quite close together, for whichthere was, after all, no need, seeing that the steps were of a noblewidth. At our feet spread the garden away down the flight of terracesto end in the castle's grey, buttressed wall. But from where we sat wecould look beyond this, our glance meeting the landscape a mile or soaway with the waters of the Taro glittering in the sunshine, and theApennines, all hazy, for an ultimate background.
I took her hand, which she relinquished to me quite freely and franklywith an innocence as great as my own; and I asked her who she was andhow she came to Mondolfo. It was then that I learnt that her name wasLuisina, that she was the daughter of one of the women employed in thecastle kitchen, who had brought her to help there a week ago from BorgoTaro, where she had been living with an aunt.
To-day the notion of the Tyrant of Mondolfo sitting--almost corampopulo--on the steps of the garden of his castle, clasping the hand ofthe daughter of one of his scullions, is grotesque and humiliating. Atthe time the thought never presented itself to me at all, and had itdone so it would have troubled me no whit. She was my first glimpseof fresh young maidenhood, and I was filled with pleasant interest anddesirous of more acquaintance with this phenomenon. Beyond that I didnot go.
I told her frankly that she was very beautiful. Whereupon she looked atme with suddenly startled eyes that were full of fearful questionings,and made to draw her hand from mine. Unable to understand her fears, andseeking to reassure her, to convince her that in me she had a friend,one who would ever protect her from the brutalities of all the Rinolfosin the world, I put an arm about her shoulders and drew her closer tome, gently and protectingly.
She suffered it very stonily, like a poor fascinated thing that isrobbed by fear of its power to resist the evil that it feels enfoldingit.
"O Madonnino!" she whispered fearfully, and sighed. "Nay, you must not.It... it is not good."
"Not good?" quoth I, and it was just so that that fool of a son ofBalducci's must have protested in the story when he was told by hisfather that it was not good to look on women. "Nay, now, but it is goodto me."
"And they say you are to be a priest," she added, which seemed to me avery foolish and inconsequent thing to add.
"Well, then? And what of that?" I asked.
She looked at me again with those timid eyes of hers. "You should be atyour studies," said she.
"I am," said I, and smiled. "I am studying a new subject."
"Madonnino, i
t is not a subject whose study makes good priests," sheannounced, and puzzled me again by the foolish inconsequence of herwords.
Already, indeed, she began to disappoint me. Saving my mother--whom Idid not presume to judge at all, and who seemed a being altogetherapart from what little humanity I had known until then--I had foundthat foolishness was as natural to women as its bleat to a sheep or itscackle to a goose; and in this opinion I had been warmly confirmed byFra Gervasio. Now here in Luisina I had imagined at first that I haddiscovered a phase of womanhood unsuspected and exceptional. She wasdriving me to conclude, however, that I had been mistaken, and thathere was just a pretty husk containing a very trivial spirit, whosecompanionship must prove a dull affair when custom should have staledthe first impression of her fresh young beauty.
It is plain now that I did her an injustice, for there was about herwords none of the inconsequence I imagined. The fault was in myself andin the profound ignorance of the ways of men and women which went handin hand with my deep but ineffectual learning in the ways of saints.
Our entertainment, however, was not destined to go further. For at themoment in which I puzzled over her words and sought to attach to themsome intelligent meaning, there broke from behind us a scream that flungus apart, as startled as if we had been conscious indeed of guilt.
We looked round to find that it had been uttered by my mother. Not tenyards away she stood, a tall black figure against the grey backgroundof the lichened wall, with Giojoso in attendance and Rinolfo slinkingbehind his father, leering.