Pure was she as the pale narcissus by the streams, and serving her what could I be but pure?
And then, quite suddenly, upon the heels of such thoughts came the reaction. Horror and revulsion were upon me. This was but a fresh snare of Satan's baiting to lure me to destruction. Where the memory of Giuliana had failed to move me to aught but penance and increasing rigours, the foul fiend sought to engage me with a seeming purity to my ultimate 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 a very lust to do battle with Satan and with my own flesh and a phrenetic joy to engage in the awful combat.
I stripped off my ragged habit, and standing naked I took up my scourge of eglantine and beat myself until the blood flowed freely. But that was not enough. All naked as I was, I went forth into the blue night, and ran to a pool of the Bagnanza, going of intent through thickets of bramble and briar-rose that gripped and tore my flesh and lacerated me so that at times I screamed aloud in pain, to laugh ecstatically the next moment and joyfully taunt Satan with his defeat.
Thus I tore on, my very body ragged and bleeding from head to foot, and thus 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 unholy fevers out of me. The snows above were melting at the time, and the pool was little more than liquid ice. The chill of it struck through me to the very marrow, and I felt my flesh creep and contract until it seemed like the rough hide of some fabled monster, and my wounds stung as if fire were being poured into them.
Thus awhile; then all feeling passed, and a complete insensibility to the cold of the water or the fire of the wounds succeeded. All was numbed, and every nerve asleep. At last I had conquered. I laughed aloud, and in a great voice of triumph I shouted so that the shout went echoing 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 my long limbs. I attempted to stand. But the earth rocked under my feet; the blueness of the night deepened into black, and consciousness was extinguished like a candle that is blown out.
She appeared above me in a great effulgence that emanated from herself as if she were grown luminous. Her robe was of cloth of silver and of a 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 I was moved to purest ecstasy of awe and worship.
The pale, oval face was infinitely sweet, the slanting eyes of heavenly blue were infinitely tender, the brown hair was plaited into two long tresses that hung forward upon either breast and were entwined with threads of gold and shimmering jewels. On the pale brow a brilliant glowed with pure white fires, and her hands were held out to me in welcome.
Her lips parted to breathe my name.
"Agostino d'Anguissola!" There were whole tomes of tender meaning in those syllables, so that hearing her utter them I seemed to learn all that was in her heart.
And then her shining whiteness suggested to me the name that must be hers.
"Bianca!" I cried, and in my turn held out my arms and made as if to advance towards her. But I was held back in icy, clinging bonds, whose relentlessness drew from me a groan of misery.
"Agostino, I am waiting for you at Pagliano," she said, and it did not occur to me to wonder where might be this Pagliano of which I could not remember ever to have heard. "Come to me soon."
"I may not come," I answered miserably. "I am an anchorite, the guardian of a shrine; and my life that has been full of sin must be given henceforth 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 of Heaven? The will of Heaven is inscrutable. If you have sinned in the world, in the world must you atone by deeds that shall serve the world—God's world. In your hermitage you are become barren soil that will 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 more encompassed me, a darkness through which still boomed repeatedly the fading echo of the words:
"Come soon! I am waiting!"
I lay upon my bed of wattles in the hut, and through the little unglazed windows the sun was pouring, but the dripping eaves told of rain that had lately ceased.
Over me was bending a kindly faced old man in whom I recognized the good priest of Casi.
I lay quite still for a long while, just gazing up at him. Soon my memory got to work of its own accord, and I bethought me of the pilgrims who 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's penance, and then came a black gulf in my memory, a gap I could not bridge. But uppermost leapt the anxieties concerning the image of St. Sebastian.
I struggled up to discover that I was very weak; so weak that I was glad to sink back again.
"Does it bleed? Does it bleed yet?" I asked, and my voice was so small and feeble that the sound of it startled me.
The old priest shook his head, and his eyes were very full of compassion.
"Poor youth, poor youth!" he sighed.
Without all was silent; there was no such rustle of a multitude as I listened for. And then I observed in my cell a little shepherd-lad who had been wont to come that way for my blessing upon occasions. He was half 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 wrinkled kindly face and soft dark eyes, whom I did not know at all.
Somehow, as my mind grew clearer, last night seemed ages remote. I looked at the priest again.
"Father," I murmured, "what has happened?"
His answer amazed me. He started violently. Looked more closely, and suddenly 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 know you?" quoth I.
The old woman peered at me. "Ay, blessed be Heaven! He is awake at last, 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 miracle has 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 have come. 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 half tolerantly. "But father, yesterday they were all here. Yesterday was..."
"Your yesterday, my son, is sped these fifteen days," he answered. "All that long while, since the night you wrestled with the Devil, you have lain 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 lad Beppo."
Now here was news that left me speechless for some little while. My amazement and slow understanding were spurred on by a sight of my hands lying on the rude coverlet which had been flung over me. Emaciated they had been for some months now. But at present they were as white as snow and almost as translucent in their extraordinary frailty. I became increasingly conscious, too, of the great weakness of my body and the great lassitude that filled me.