The Strolling Saint Part 8

"Agostino!" came my mothers voice in remonstrance, and such is the power of habit that for a moment it controlled me and subdued my violence.

Nevertheless I went on, "You smiled to see your spite succeed. You smiled to see that poor child driven hence by your contriving; you smiled to see your broken snares avenged. And you were following after her no doubt to tell her all this and to smile again. This is all so, it is not?"

"Heh! By Bacchus!" said he for the third time, and at that my patience gave out utterly. Ere any could stop me I had seized him by throat and belt and shaken him savagely.

"Will you answer me like a fool?" I cried. "Must you be taught sense and a proper respect of me?"

"Agostino! Agostino!" wailed my mother. "Help, Ser Giojoso! Do you not see that he is mad!"

I do not believe that it was in my mind to do the fellow any grievous hurt. But he was so ill-advised in that moment as to attempt to defend himself. He rashly struck at one of the arms that held him, and by the act drove me into a fury ungovernable.

"You dog!" I snarled at him from between clenched teeth. "Would you raise your hand to me? Am I your lord, or am I dirt of your own kind?

Go learn submission." And I flung him almost headlong down the flight of steps.

There were twelve of them and all of stone with edges still sharp enough though blunted here and there by time. The fool had never suspected in me the awful strength which until that hour I had never suspected in myself. Else, perhaps, there had been fewer insolent shrugs, fewer foolish answers, and, last of all, no attempt to defy me physically.

He screamed as I flung him; my mother screamed; and Giojoso screamed.

After that there was a panic-stricken silence whilst he went thudding and b.u.mping to the bottom of the flight. I did not greatly care if I killed him. But he was fortunate enough to get no worse hurt than a broken leg, which should keep him out of mischief for a season and teach him respect for me for all time.

His father scuttled down the steps to the a.s.sistance of that precious son, who lay moaning where he had fallen, the angle at which the half of one of his legs stood to the rest of it, plainly announcing the nature of his punishment.

My mother swept me indoors, loading me with reproaches as we went. She dispatched some to help Giojoso, others she sent in urgent quest of Fra Gervasio, me she hurried along to her private dining-room. I went very obediently, and even a little fearfully now that my pa.s.sion had fallen from me.

There, in that cheerless room, which not even the splashes of sunlight falling from the high-placed windows upon the whitewashed wall could help to gladden, I stood a little sullenly what time she first upbraided me and then wept bitterly, sitting in her high-backed chair at the table's head.

At last Gervasio came, anxious and flurried, for already he had heard some rumour of what had chanced. His keen eyes went from me to my mother and then back again to me.

"What has happened?" he asked.

"What has not happened?" wailed my mother. "Agostino is possessed."

He knit his brows. "Possessed?" quoth he.

"Ay, possessed--possessed of devils. He has been violent. He has broken poor Rinolfo's leg."

"Ah!" said Gervasio, and turned to me frowning with full tutorial sternness. "And what have you to say, Agostino?"

"Why, that I am sorry," answered I, rebellious once more. "I had hoped to break his dirty neck."

"You hear him!" cried my mother. "It is the end of the world, Gervasio.

The boy is possessed, I say."

"What was the cause of your quarrel?" quoth the friar, his manner still more stern.

"Quarrel?" quoth I, throwing back my head and snorting audibly. "I do not quarrel with Rinolfos. I chastise them when they are insolent or displease me. This one did both."

He halted before me, erect and very stern--indeed almost threatening.

And I began to grow afraid; for, after all, I had a kindness for Gervasio, and I would not willingly engage in a quarrel with him. Yet here I was determined to carry through this thing as I had begun it.

It was my mother who saved the situation.

"Alas!" she moaned, "there is wicked blood in him. He has the abominable pride that was the ruin and downfall of his father."

Now that was not the way to make an ally of Fra Gervasio. It did the very opposite. It set him instantly on my side, in antagonism to the abuser of my father's memory, a memory which he, poor man, still secretly revered.

The sternness fell away from him. He looked at her and sighed. Then, with bowed head, and hands clasped behind him, he moved away from me a little.

"Do not let us judge rashly," he said. "Perhaps Agostino received some provocation. Let us hear..."

"O, you shall hear," she promised tearfully, exultant to prove him wrong. "You shall hear a yet worse abomination that was the cause of it."

And out she poured the story that Rinolfo and his father had run to tell her--of how I had shown the fellow violence in the first instance because he had surprised me with Luisina in my arms.

The friar's face grew dark and grave as he listened. But ere she had quite done, unable longer to contain myself, I interrupted.

"In that he lied like the muckworm that he is," I exclaimed. "And it increases my regrets that I did not break his neck as I intended."

"He lied?" quoth she, her eyes wide open in amazement--not at the fact, but at the audacity of what she conceived my falsehood.

"It is not impossible," said Fra Gervasio. "What is your story, Agostino?"

I told it--how the child out of a very gentle and Christian pity had released the poor birds that were taken in Rinolfo's limed twigs, and how in a fury he had made to beat her, so that she had fled to me for shelter and protection; and how, thereupon, I had bidden him begone out of that garden, and never set foot in it again.

"And now," I ended, "you know all the violence that I showed him, and the reason for it. If you say that I did wrong, I warn you that I shall not believe you."

"Indeed..." began the friar with a faint smile of friendliness. But my mother interrupted him, betwixt sorrow and anger.

"He lies, Gervasio. He lies shamelessly. O, into what a mora.s.s of sin has he not fallen, and every moment he goes deeper! Have I not said that he is possessed? We shall need the exorcist."

"We shall indeed, madam mother, to clear your mind of foolishness," I answered hotly, for it stung me to the soul to be branded thus a liar, to have my word discredited by that of a lout such as Rinolfo.

She rose a sombre pillar of indignation. "Agostino, I am your mother,"

she reminded me.

"Let us thank G.o.d that for that, at least, you cannot blame me,"

answered I, utterly reckless now.

The answer crushed her back into her chair. She looked appealingly at Fra Gervasio, who stood glum and frowning. "Is he... is he perchance bewitched?" she asked the friar, quite seriously. "Do you think that any spells might have."

He interrupted her with a wave of the hand and an impatient snort

"We are at cross purposes here," he said. "Agostino does not lie. For that I will answer."

"But, Fra Gervasio, I tell you that I saw them--that I saw them with these two eyes--sitting together on the terrace steps, and he had his arm about her. Yet he denies it shamelessly to my face."

"Said I ever a word of that?" I appealed me to the friar. "Why, that was after Rinolfo left us. My tale never got so far. It is quite true. I did sit beside her. The child was troubled. I comforted her. Where was the harm?"