She heard him through in that immovable attitude, one hand pressed to her heart, her poor pale lips moving now and again, but no sound coming from them, her face a white mask of pain and horror.
When he had done, so wrought upon was I by the sorrow of that countenance that I went forward again to fling myself upon my knees before her.
"Mother, forgive!" I pleaded. And getting no answer I put up my hands to take hers. "Mother!" I cried, and the tears were streaming down my face.
But she recoiled before me.
"Are you my child?" she asked in a voice of horror. "Are you the thing that has grown out of that little child I vowed to chastity and to God? Then has my sin overtaken me—the sin of bearing a son to Giovanni d'Anguissola, that enemy of God!"
"Ah, mother, mother!" I cried again, thinking perhaps by that all-powerful word to move her yet to pity and to gentleness.
"Madonna," cried Gervasio, "be merciful if you would look for mercy."
"He has falsified my vows," she answered stonily. "He was my votive offering for the life of his impious father. I am punished for the unworthiness of my offering and the unworthiness of the cause in which I offered it. Accursed is the fruit of my womb!" She moaned, and sank her head upon her breast.
"I will atone!" I cried, overwhelmed to see her so distraught.
She wrung her pale hands.
"Atone!" she cried, and her voice trembled. "Go then, and atone. But never let me see you more; never let me be reminded of the sinner to whom I have given life. Go! Begone!" And she raised a hand in tragical dismissal.
I shrank back, and came slowly to my feet. And then Gervasio spoke, and his voice boomed and thundered with righteous indignation.
"Madonna, this is inhuman!" he denounced. "Shall you dare to hope for mercy being yourself unmerciful?"
"I shall pray for strength to forgive him; but the sight of him might tempt me back with the memory of the thing that he has done," she answered, and she had returned to that cold and terrible reserve of hers.
And then things that Fra Gervasio had repressed for years welled up in a mighty flood. "He is your son, and he is as you have made him."
"As I have made him?" quoth she, and her glance challenged the friar.
"By what right did you make of him a votive offering? By what right did you seek to consecrate a child unborn to a claustral life without thought of his character, without reck of the desires that should be his? By what right did you make yourself the arbiter of the future of a man unborn?"
"By what right?" quoth she. "Are you a priest, and do you ask me by what right I vowed him to the service of God?"
"And is there, think you, no way of serving God but in the sterility of the cloister?" he demanded. "Why, since no man is born to damnation, and since by your reasoning the world must mean damnation, then all men should be encloistered, and soon, thus, there would be an end to man. You are too arrogant, Madonna, when you presume to judge what pleases God. Beware lest you fall into the sin of the Pharisee, for often have I seen you stand in danger of it."
She swayed as if her strength were failing her, and again her pale lips moved.
"Enough, Fra Gervasio! I will go," I cried.
"Nay, it is not yet enough," he answered, and strode down the room until he stood between her and me. "He is what you have made him," he repeated in denunciation. "Had you studied his nature and his inclinations, had you left them free to develop along the way that God intended, you would have seen whether or not the cloister called him; and then would have been the time to have taken a resolve. But you thought to change his nature by repressing it; and you never saw that if he was not such as you would have him be, then most surely would you doom him to damnation by making an evil priest of him.
"In your Pharisaic arrogance, Madonna, you sought to superimpose your will to God's will concerning him—you confounded God's will with your own. And so his sins recoil upon you as much as upon any. Therefore, Madonna, do I bid you beware. Take a humbler view if you would be acceptable in the Divine sight. Learn to forgive, for I say to you to-day that you stand as greatly in need of forgiveness for the thing that Agostino has done, as does Agostino himself."
He paused at last, and stood trembling before her, his eyes aflame, his high cheek-bones faintly tinted. And she measured him very calmly and coldly with her sombre eyes.
"Are you a priest?" she asked with steady scorn. "Are you indeed a priest?" And then her invective was loosened, and her voice shrilled and mounted as her anger swayed her. "What a snake have I harboured here!" she cried. "Blasphemer! You show me clearly whence came the impiety and ungodliness of Giovanni d'Anguissola. It had the same source as your own. It was suckled at your mother's breast."
A sob shook him. "My mother is dead, Madonna!" he rebuked her.
"She is more blessed, then, than I; since she has not lived to see what a power for sin she has brought forth. Go, pitiful friar. Go, both of you. You are very choicely mated. Begone from Mondolfo, and never let me see either of you more."
She staggered to her great chair and sank into it, whilst we stood there, mute, regarding her. For myself, it was with difficulty that I repressed the burning things that rose to my lips. Had I given free rein to my tongue, I had made of it a whip of scorpions. And my anger sprang not from the things she said to me, but from what she said to that saintly man who held out a hand to help me out of the morass of sin in which I was being sunk. That he, that sweet and charitable follower of his Master, should be abused by her, should be dubbed blasphemer and have the cherished memory of his mother defiled by her pietistic utterances, was something that inflamed me horribly.
But he set a hand upon my shoulder.
"Come, Agostino," he said very gently. He was calm once more. "We will go, as we are bidden, you and I."
And then, out of the sweetness of his nature, he forged all unwittingly the very iron that should penetrate most surely into her soul.
"Forgive her, my son. Forgive her as you need forgiveness. She does not understand the thing she does. Come, we will pray for her, that God in His infinite mercy may teach her humility and true knowledge of Him."
I saw her start as if she had been stung.
"Blasphemer, begone!" she cried again; and her voice was hoarse with suppressed anger.
And then the door was suddenly flung open, and Rinolfo clanked in, very martial and important, his hand thrusting up his sword behind him.
"Madonna," he announced, "the Captain of Justice from Piacenza is here."
CHAPTER II. THE CAPTAIN OF JUSTICE
There was a moment's silence after Rinolfo had flung that announcement.
"The Captain of Justice?" quoth my mother at length, her voice startled. "What does he seek?"
"The person of my Lord Agostino d'Anguissola," said Rinolfo steadily.
She sighed very heavily. "A felon's end!" she murmured, and turned to me. "If thus you may expiate your sins," she said, speaking more gently, "let the will of Heaven be done. Admit the captain, Ser Rinolfo."
He bowed, and turned sharply to depart.
"Stay!" I cried, and rooted him there by the imperative note of my command.
Fra Gervasio was more than right when he said that mine was not a nature for the cloister. In that moment I might have realized it to the full by the readiness with which the thought of battle occurred to me, and more by the anticipatory glow that warmed me at the very thought of it. I was the very son of Giovanni d'Anguissola.
"What force attends the captain?" I inquired.