CHAPTER VIII. THE VISION
Pray as we might, night came and still the image gave no sign. The crowdmelted away, with promises to return at dawn--promises that soundedalmost like a menace in my ears.
I was alone once more, alone with my thoughts and these made sport ofme. It was not only upon the unresponsiveness of St. Sebastian that mymind now dwelt, nor yet upon the horrid dread that this unresponsivenessmight be a sign of Heaven's displeasure, an indication that as acustodian of that shrine I was unacceptable through the mire of sinthat still clung to me. Rather, my thoughts went straying down themountain-side in the wake of that gallant company, that stern-faced manand that gentle-eyed little lady who had hung upon his arm. Before theeyes of my mind there flashed again the brilliance of their arms, in myears rang the thunder of their chargers' hooves, whilst the image of thegirl in her shimmering, bronze-hued robe remained insistently.
Theirs the life that should have been mine! She such a companion asshould have shared my life and borne me children of my own. And I wouldburn with shame again in memory, as I had burnt in actual fact, to thinkthat she should have beheld me in so unkempt and bedraggled a condition.
How must I compare in her eyes with the gay courtiers who would dailyhover in her presence and hang upon her gentle speech? What thought ofme could I hope should ever abide with her, as the image of her abodewith me? Or, if she thought of me at all, she must think of me just asa poor hermit, a man who had donned the anchorite's sackcloth and turnedhis back upon a world that for him was empty.
It is very easy for you worldly ones who read, to conjecture what hadbefallen me. I was enamoured. In a meeting of eyes had the thing come tome. And you will say that it is little marvel, considering the seclusionof all my life and particularly that of the past few months, that thefirst sweet maid I beheld should have wrought such havoc, and conqueredmy heart by the mere flicker of her lashes.
Yet so much I cannot grant your shrewdness.
That meeting was predestined. It was written that she should come andtear the foolish bandage from my eyes, allowing me to see for myselfthat, as Fra Gervasio had opined, my vocation was neither for hermitagenor cloister; that what called me was the world; and that in the worldmust I find salvation since I was needed for the world's work.
And none but she could have done that. Of this I am persuaded, as youshall be when you have read on.
The yearnings with which she filled my soul were very different fromthose inspired by the memory of Giuliana. That other sinful longing,she entirely effaced at last, thereby achieving something that had beenimpossible to prayers and fasting, to scourge and cilice. I longed forher almost beatifically, as those whose natures are truly saintly longfor the presence of the blessed ones of Heaven. By the sight of her Iwas purified and sanctified, washed clean of all that murk of sinfuldesire in which I had lain despite myself; for my desire of her was theblessed, noble desire to serve, to guard, to cherish.
Pure was she as the pale narcissus by the streams, and serving her whatcould I be but pure?
And then, quite suddenly, upon the heels of such thoughts came thereaction. Horror and revulsion were upon me. This was but a freshsnare of Satan's baiting to lure me to destruction. Where the memoryof Giuliana had failed to move me to aught but penance and increasingrigours, the foul fiend sought to engage me with a seeming purity to myultimate destruction. Thus had Anthony, the Egyptian monk, been tempted;and under one guise or another it was ever the same Circean lure.
I would make an end. I swore it in a mighty frenzy of repentance, in avery lust to do battle with Satan and with my own flesh and a phreneticjoy to engage in the awful combat.
I stripped off my ragged habit, and standing naked I took up my scourgeof eglantine and beat myself until the blood flowed freely. But that wasnot enough. All naked as I was, I went forth into the blue night, andran to a pool of the Bagnanza, going of intent through thickets ofbramble and briar-rose that gripped and tore my flesh and lacerated meso that at times I screamed aloud in pain, to laugh ecstatically thenext moment and joyfully taunt Satan with his defeat.
Thus I tore on, my very body ragged and bleeding from head to foot, andthus I came to the pool in the torrent's course. Into this I plunged,and stood with the icy waters almost to my neck, to purge the unholyfevers out of me. The snows above were melting at the time, and the poolwas little more than liquid ice. The chill of it struck through me tothe very marrow, and I felt my flesh creep and contract until it seemedlike the rough hide of some fabled monster, and my wounds stung as iffire were being poured into them.
Thus awhile; then all feeling passed, and a complete insensibilityto the cold of the water or the fire of the wounds succeeded. All wasnumbed, and every nerve asleep. At last I had conquered. I laughedaloud, and in a great voice of triumph I shouted so that the shout wentechoing round the hills in the stillness of the night:
"Satan, thou art defeated!"
And upon that I crawled up the mossy bank, the water gliding from mylong limbs. I attempted to stand. But the earth rocked under my feet;the blueness of the night deepened into black, and consciousness wasextinguished like a candle that is blown out.
. . . . . . . .
She appeared above me in a great effulgence that emanated from herselfas if she were grown luminous. Her robe was of cloth of silver and ofa dazzling sheen, and it hung closely to her lissom, virginal form,defining every line and curve of it; and by the chaste beauty of her Iwas moved to purest ecstasy of awe and worship.
The pale, oval face was infinitely sweet, the slanting eyes of heavenlyblue were infinitely tender, the brown hair was plaited into two longtresses that hung forward upon either breast and were entwined withthreads of gold and shimmering jewels. On the pale brow a brilliantglowed with pure white fires, and her hands were held out to me inwelcome.
Her lips parted to breathe my name.
"Agostino d'Anguissola!" There were whole tomes of tender meaning inthose syllables, so that hearing her utter them I seemed to learn allthat was in her heart.
And then her shining whiteness suggested to me the name that must behers.
"Bianca!" I cried, and in my turn held out my arms and made as if toadvance towards her. But I was held back in icy, clinging bonds, whoserelentlessness drew from me a groan of misery.
"Agostino, I am waiting for you at Pagliano," she said, and it did notoccur to me to wonder where might be this Pagliano of which I could notremember ever to have heard. "Come to me soon."
"I may not come," I answered miserably. "I am an anchorite, the guardianof a shrine; and my life that has been full of sin must be givenhenceforth to expiation. It is the will of Heaven."
She smiled all undismayed, smiled confidently and tenderly.
"Presumptuous!" she gently chid me. "What know you of the will ofHeaven? The will of Heaven is inscrutable. If you have sinned inthe world, in the world must you atone by deeds that shall serve theworld--God's world. In your hermitage you are become barren soil thatwill yield naught to yourself or any. Come then from the wilderness.Come soon! I am waiting!"
And on that the splendid vision faded, and utter darkness once moreencompassed me, a darkness through which still boomed repeatedly thefading echo of the words:
"Come soon! I am waiting!"
. . . . . . . .
I lay upon my bed of wattles in the hut, and through the little unglazedwindows the sun was pouring, but the dripping eaves told of rain thathad lately ceased.
Over me was bending a kindly faced old man in whom I recognized the goodpriest of Casi.
I lay quite still for a long while, just gazing up at him. Soon mymemory got to work of its own accord, and I bethought me of the pilgrimswho must by now have come and who must be impatiently awaiting news.
How came I to have slept so long? Vaguely I remembered my last night'spenance, and then came a black gulf in my memory, a gap I could notbridge. But uppermost leapt the anxieties concerning the image of St.Seb
astian.
I struggled up to discover that I was very weak; so weak that I was gladto sink back again.
"Does it bleed? Does it bleed yet?" I asked, and my voice was so smalland feeble that the sound of it startled me.
The old priest shook his head, and his eyes were very full ofcompassion.
"Poor youth, poor youth!" he sighed.
Without all was silent; there was no such rustle of a multitude as Ilistened for. And then I observed in my cell a little shepherd-lad whohad been wont to come that way for my blessing upon occasions. He washalf naked, as lithe as a snake and almost as brown. What did he there?And then someone else stirred--an elderly peasant-woman with a wrinkledkindly face and soft dark eyes, whom I did not know at all.
Somehow, as my mind grew clearer, last night seemed ages remote. Ilooked at the priest again.
"Father," I murmured, "what has happened?"
His answer amazed me. He started violently. Looked more closely, andsuddenly cried out:
"He knows me! He knows me! Deo gratias!" And he fell upon his knees
Now here it seemed to me was a sort of madness. "Why should I not knowyou?" quoth I.
The old woman peered at me. "Ay, blessed be Heaven! He is awake atlast, and himself again." She turned to the lad, who was staring at me,grinning. "Go tell them, Beppo! Haste!"
"Tell them?" I cried. "The pilgrims? Ah, no, no--not unless the miraclehas come to pass!"
"There are no pilgrims here, my son," said the priest.
"Not?" I cried, and cold horror descended upon me. "But they should havecome. This is Holy Friday, father."
"Nay, my son, Holy Friday was a fortnight ago."
I stared askance at him, in utter silence. Then I smiled halftolerantly. "But father, yesterday they were all here. Yesterday was..."
"Your yesterday, my son, is sped these fifteen days," he answered. "Allthat long while, since the night you wrestled with the Devil, you havelain exhausted by that awful combat, lying there betwixt life and death.All that time we have watched by you, Leocadia here and I and the ladBeppo."
Now here was news that left me speechless for some little while. Myamazement and slow understanding were spurred on by a sight of my handslying on the rude coverlet which had been flung over me. Emaciated theyhad been for some months now. But at present they were as white assnow and almost as translucent in their extraordinary frailty. I becameincreasingly conscious, too, of the great weakness of my body and thegreat lassitude that filled me.
"Have I had the fever?" I asked him presently.
"Ay, my son. And who would not? Blessed Virgin! who would not after whatyou underwent?"
And now he poured into my astonished ears the amazing story that hadoverrun the country-side. It would seem that my cry in the night, myexultant cry to Satan that I had defeated him, had been overheard bya goatherd who guarded his flock in the hills. In the stillness hedistinctly heard the words that I had uttered, and he came tremblingdown, drawn by a sort of pious curiosity to the spot whence it hadseemed to him that the cry had proceeded.
And there by a pool of the Bagnanza he had found me lying prone, mywhite body glistening like marble and almost as cold. Recognizing in methe anchorite of Monte Orsaro, he had taken me up in his strong armsand had carried me back to my hut. There he had set about reviving me byfriction and by forcing between my teeth some of the grape-spirit thathe carried in a gourd.
Finding that I lived, but that he could not arouse me and that my icycoldness was succeeded by the fire of fever, he had covered me with myhabit and his own cloak, and had gone down to Casi to fetch the priestand relate his story.
This story was no less than that the hermit of Monte Orsaro had beenfighting with the devil, who had dragged him naked from his hut and hadsought to hurl him into the torrent; but that on the very edge ofthe river the anchorite had found strength, by the grace of God, tooverthrow the tormentor and to render him powerless; and in proof ofit there was my body all covered with Satan's claw-marks by which I hadbeen torn most cruelly.
The priest had come at once, bringing with him such restoratives as heneeded, and it is a thousand mercies that he did not bring a leech, orelse I might have been bled of the last drops remaining in my shrunkenveins.
And meanwhile the goatherd's story had gone abroad. By morning it was onthe lips of all the country-side, so that explanations were not lackingto account for St. Sebastian's refusal to perform the usual miracle, andno miracle was expected--nor had the image yielded any.
The priest was mistaken. A miracle there had been. But for what hadchanced, the multitude must have come again confidently expecting thebleeding of the image which had never failed in five years, and had theimage not bled it must have fared ill with the guardian of theshrine. In punishment for his sacrilegious ministry which must be heldresponsible for the absence of the miracle they so eagerly awaited, wellmight the crowd have torn me limb from limb.
Next the old man went on to tell me how three days ago there had come tothe hermitage a little troop of men-at-arms, led by a tall, bearded manwhose device was a sable band upon an argent field, and accompanied by afriar of the order of St. Francis, a tall, gaunt fellow who had wept atsight of me.
"That would be Fra Gervasio!" I exclaimed. "How came he to discover me?"
"Yes--Fra Gervasio is his name," replied the priest.
"Where is he now?" I asked.
"I think he is here."
In that moment I caught the sound of approaching steps. The door opened,and before me stood the tall figure of my best friend, his eyes alleagerness, his pale face flushed with joyous excitement.
I smiled my welcome.
"Agostino! Agostino!" he cried, and ran to kneel beside me and take myhand in his. "O, blessed be God!" he murmured.
In the doorway stood now another man, who had followed him--one whoseface I had seen somewhere yet could not at first remember where. He wasvery tall, so that he was forced to stoop to avoid the lintel of the lowdoor--as tall as Gervasio or myself--and the tanned face was bearded bya heavy brown beard in which a few strands of grey were showing. Acrosshis face there ran the hideous livid scar of a blow that must havecrushed the bridge of his nose. It began just under the left eye, andcrossed the face downwards until it was lost in the beard on theright side almost in line with the mouth. Yet, notwithstanding thatdisfigurement, he still possessed a certain beauty, and the deep-set,clear, grey-blue eyes were the eyes of a brave and kindly man.
He wore a leather jerkin and great thigh-boots of grey leather, and fromhis girdle of hammered steel hung a dagger and the empty carriages of asword. His cropped black head was bare, and in his hand he carried a capof black velvet.
We looked at each other awhile, and his eyes were sad and wistful, ladenwith pity, as I thought, for my condition. Then he moved forward with acreak of leather and jingle of spurs that made pleasant music.
He set a hand upon the shoulder of the kneeling Gervasio.
"He will live now, Gervasio?" he asked.
"O, he will live," answered the friar with an almost fierce satisfactionin his positive assurance. "He will live and in a week we can move himhence. Meanwhile he must be nourished." He rose. "My good Leocadia, haveyou the broth? Come, then, let us build up this strength of his. Thereis haste, good soul; great haste!" She bustled at his bidding, and soonoutside the door there was a crackling of twigs to announce the lightingof a fire. And then Gervasio made known to me the stranger.
"This is Galeotto," he said. "He was your father's friend, and would beyours."
"Sir," said I, "I could not desire otherwise with any who was myfather's friend. You are not, perchance, the Gran Galeotto?" I inquired,remembering the sable device on argent of which the priest had told me.
"I am that same," he answered, and I looked with interest upon one whosename had been ringing through Italy these last few years. And then, Isuddenly realized why his face was familiar to me. This was the man whoin a monkish robe had stared so insistently at me that day
at Mondolfofive years ago.
He was a sort of outlaw, a remnant of the days of chivalry andfree-lances, whose sword was at the disposal of any purchaser. He rodeat the head of a last fragment of the famous company that Giovanni de'Medici had raised and captained until his death. The sable band whichthey adopted in mourning for that warrior, earned for their founder theposthumous title of Giovanni delle Bande Nere.
He was called Il Gran Galeotto (as another was called Il Gran Diavolo)in play upon the name he bore and the life he followed. He had been inbad odour with the Pope for his sometime association with my father, andhe was not well-viewed in the Pontifical domains until, as I was soonto learn, he had patched up a sort of peace with Pier Luigi Farnese,who thought that the day might come when he should need the support ofGaleotto's free-lances.
"I was," he said, "your father's closest friend. I took this at Perugia,where he fell," he added, and pointed to his terrific scar. Then helaughed. "I wear it gladly in memory of him."
He turned to Gervasio, smiling. "I hope that Giovanni d'Anguissola's sonwill hold me in some affection for his father's sake, when he shall cometo know me better."
"Sir," I said, "from my heart I thank you for that pious, kindlywish; and I would that I might fully correspond to it. But Agostinod'Anguissola, who has been so near to death in the body, is, indeed,dead to the world already. Here you see but a poor hermit namedSebastian, who is the guardian of this shrine."
Gervasio rose suddenly. "This shrine..." he began in a fierce voice,his face inflamed as with sudden wrath. And there he stopped short. Thepriest was staring at him, and through the open door came Leocadia witha bowl of steaming broth. "We'll talk of this again," he said, and therewas a sort of thunder rumbling in the promise.