Rafael Sabatini - The Strolling Saint

The sight of my mother startled me more than I can say. It filled me with a positive dread of things indefinable. Never before had I seen her coldly placid countenance so strangely disordered, and her unwonted aspect it must have been that wrought so potently upon me.

No longer was she the sorrowful spectre, white-faced, with downcast eyes and level, almost inanimate, tones. Her cheeks were flushed unnaturally, her lips were quivering, and angry fires were smouldering in her deep-set eyes.

Swiftly she came down to us, seeming almost to glide over the ground. Not me she addressed, but poor Luisina; and her voice was hoarse with an awful anger.

"Who are you, wench?" quoth she. "What make you here in Mondolfo?"

Luisina had risen and stood swaying there, very white and with averted eyes, her hands clasping and unclasping. Her lips moved; but she was too terrified to answer. It was Giojoso who stepped forward to inform my mother of the girl's name and condition. And upon learning it her anger seemed to increase.

"A kitchen-wench!" she cried. "O horror!"

And quite suddenly, as if by inspiration, scarce knowing what I said or that I spoke at all, I answered her out of the store of the theological learning with which she had had me stuffed.

"We are all equals in the sight of God, madam mother."

She flashed me a glance of anger, of pious anger than which none can be more terrible.

"Blasphemer!" she denounced me. "What has God to do with this?"

She waited for no answer, rightly judging, perhaps, that I had none to offer.

"And as for that wanton," she commanded, turning fiercely to Giojoso, "let her be whipped hence and out of the town of Mondolfo. Set the grooms to it."

But upon that command of hers I leapt of a sudden to my feet, a tightening about my heart, and beset by a certain breathlessness that turned me pale.

Here again, it seemed, was to be repeated—though with methods a thousand times more barbarous and harsh—the wrong that was done years ago in the case of poor Gino Falcone. And the reason for it in this instance was not even dimly apparent to me. Falcone I had loved; indeed, in my eighteen years of life he was the only human being who had knocked for admission upon the portals of my heart. Him they had driven forth. And now, here was a child—the fairest creature of God's that until that hour I had beheld, whose companionship seemed to me a thing sweet and desirable, and whom I felt that I might love as I had loved Falcone. Her too they would drive forth, and with a brutality and cruelty that revolted me.

Later I was to perceive the reasons better, and much food for reflection was I to derive from realizing that there are no spirits so vengeful, so fierce, so utterly intolerant, ungovernable, and feral as the spirits of the devout when they conceive themselves justified to anger.

All the sweet teaching of Charity and brotherly love and patience is jettisoned, and by the most amazing paradox that Christianity has ever known, Catholic burns heretic, and heretic butchers Catholic, all for the love of Christ; and each glories devoutly in the deed, never heeding the blasphemy of his belief that thus he obeys the sweet and gentle mandates of the God Incarnate.

Thus, then, my mother now, commanding that hideous deed with a mind at peace in pharisaic self-righteousness.

But not again would I stand by as I had stood by in the case of Falcone, and let her cruel, pietistic will be done. I had grown since then, and I had ripened more than I was aware. It remained for this moment to reveal to me the extent. Besides, the subtle influence of sex—all unconscious of it as I was—stirred me now to prove my new-found manhood.

"Stay!" I said to Giojoso, and in uttering the command I grew very cold and steady, and my breathing resumed the normal.

He checked in the act of turning away to do my mother's hideous bidding.

"You will give Madonna's order to the grooms, Ser Giojoso, as you have been bidden. But you will add from me that if there is one amongst them dares to obey it and to lay be it so much as a finger upon Luisina, him will I kill with these two hands."

Never was consternation more profound than that which I flung amongst them by those words. Giojoso fell to trembling; behind him, Rinolfo, the cause of all this garboil, stared with round big eyes; whilst my mother, all a-quiver, clutched at her bosom and looked at me fearfully, but spoke no word.

I smiled upon them, towering there, conscious and glad of my height for the first time in my life.

"Well?" I demanded of Giojoso. "For what do you wait? About it, sir, and do as my mother has commanded you."

He turned to her, all bent and grovelling, arms outstretched in ludicrous bewilderment, every line of him beseeching guidance along this path so suddenly grown thorny.

"Ma—madonna!" he stammered.

She swallowed hard, and spoke at last.

"Do you defy my will, Agostino?"

"On the contrary, madam mother, I am enforcing it. Your will shall be done; your order shall be given. I insist upon it. But it shall lie with the discretion of the grooms whether they obey you. Am I to blame if they turn cowards?"

O, I had found myself at last, and I was making a furious, joyous use of the discovery.

"That... that were to make a mock of me and my authority," she protested. She was still rather helpless, rather breathless and confused, like one who has suddenly been hurled into cold water.

"If you fear that, madam, perhaps you had better countermand your order."

"Is the girl to remain in Mondolfo against my wishes? Are you so... so lost to shame?" A returning note of warmth in her accents warned me that she was collecting herself to deal with the situation.

"Nay," said I, and I looked at Luisina, who stood there so pale and tearful. "I think that for her own sake, poor maid, it were better that she went, since you desire it. But she shall not be whipped hence like a stray dog."

"Come, child," I said to her, as gently as I could. "Go pack, and quit this home of misery. And be easy. For if any man in Mondolfo attempts to hasten your going, he shall reckon with me."

I laid a hand for an instant in kindliness and friendliness upon her shoulder. "Poor little Luisina," said I, sighing. But she shrank and trembled under my touch. "Pity me a little, for they will not permit me any friends, and who is friendless is indeed pitiful."

And then, whether the phrase touched her, so that her simple little nature was roused and she shook off what self-control she had ever learnt, or whether she felt secure enough in my protection to dare proclaim her mind before them all, she caught my hand, and, stooping, kissed it.

"O Madonnino!" she faltered, and her tears showered upon that hand of mine. "God reward you your sweet thought for me. I shall pray for you, Madonnino."

"Do, Luisina," said I. "I begin to think I need it."

"Indeed, indeed!" said my mother very sombrely. And as she spoke, Luisina, as if her fears were reawakened, turned suddenly and went quickly along the terrace, past Rinolfo, who in that moment smiled viciously, and round the angle of the wall.

"What... what are my orders, Madonna?" quoth the wretched seneschal, reminding her that all had not yet been resolved.

She lowered her eyes to the ground, and folded her hands. She was by now quite composed again, her habitual sorrowful self.

"Let be," she said. "Let the wench depart. So that she goes we may count ourselves fortunate."

"Fortunate, I think, is she," said I. "Fortunate to return to the world beyond all this—the world of life and love that God made and that St. Francis praises. I do not think he would have praised Mondolfo, for I greatly doubt that God had a hand in making it as it is to-day. It is too... too arid."