I prayed that evening more fervently than I had prayed since quitting
Monte Orsaro. It was as if all the influences of my youth, which lately
had been shaken off in the stir of intrigue and of rides that had seemed
the prelude to battle, were closing round me again.
Even as a woman had lured me once from the ways to which I seemed
predestined, only to drive me back once more the more frenziedly, so now
it almost seemed as if again a woman should have lured me to the world
but to drive me from it again and more resolutely than ever. For I was
anew upon the edge of a resolve to have done with all human interests
and to seek the peace and seclusion of the cloister.
And then I bethought me of Gervasio. I would go to him for guidance, as
I had done aforetime. I would ride on the morrow to seek him out in the
convent near Piacenza to which he had withdrawn.
I was disturbed at last by the coming of a page to my chamber with the
announcement that my lord was already at supper.
I had thoughts of excusing myself, but in the end I went.
The repast was spread, as usual, in the banqueting-hall of the castle;
and about the splendid table was Pier Luigi's company, amounting to
nigh upon a score in all. The Duke himself sat on Monna Bianca's right,
whilst on her left was Cosimo.
Heeding little whether I was observed or not, I sank to a vacant place,
midway down the board, between one of the Duke's pretty young gentlemen
and one of the ladies of that curious train--a bold-eyed Roman woman,
whose name, I remember, was Valeria Cesarini, but who matters nothing in
these pages. Almost facing me sat Giuliana, but I was hardly conscious
of her, or conscious, indeed, of any save Monna Bianca.
Once or twice Bianca's glance met mine, but it fell away again upon the
instant. She was very pale, and there were wistful lines about her lips;
yet her mood was singular. Her eyes had an unnatural sparkle, and ever
and anon she would smile at what was said to her in half-whispers, now
by the Duke, now by Cosimo, whilst once or twice she laughed outright.
Gone was the usual chill reserve with which she hedged herself about to
distance the hateful advances of Pier Luigi. There were moments now when
she seemed almost flattered by his vile ogling and adulatory speeches,
as if she had been one of those brazen ladies of his Court.
It wounded me sorely. I could not understand it, lacking the wit to see
that this queer mood sprang from the blow I had dealt her, and was the
outward manifestation of her own pain at the shattering of the illusions
she had harboured concerning myself.
And so I sat there moodily, gnawing my lip and scowling darkly upon Pier
Luigi and upon my cousin, who was as assiduous in his attentions as his
master, and who seemed to be receiving an even greater proportion of her
favours. One little thing there was to hearten me. Looking at the Lord
of Pagliano, who sat at the table's head, I observed that his glance
was dark as it kept watch upon his daughter--that chaste white lily that
seemed of a sudden to have assumed such wanton airs.
It was a matter that stirred me to battle, and forgotten again were my
resolves to seek Gervasio, forgotten all notion of abandoning the world
for the second time. Here was work to be done. Bianca was to be guarded.
Perhaps it was in this that she would come to have need of me.
Once Cosimo caught my gloomy looks, and he leaned over to speak to the
Duke, who glanced my way with languid, sneering eyes. He had a score to
settle with me for the discomfiture he had that morning suffered at my
hands thanks to Bianca's collaboration. He was a clumsy fool, when all
is said, and confident now of her support--from the sudden and extreme
friendliness of her mood--he ventured to let loose a shaft at me in a
tone that all the table might overhear.
“That cousin of yours wears a very conventual hang-dog look,” said he to
Cosimo. And then to the lady on my right--“Forgive, Valeria,” he begged,
“the scurvy chance that should have sat a shaveling next to you.” Lastly
he turned to me to complete this gross work of offensiveness.
“When do you look, sir, to enter the life monastic for which Heaven has
so clearly designed you?”
There were some sycophants who tittered at his stupid pleasantry; then
the table fell silent to hear what answer I should make, and a frown sat
like a thundercloud upon the brow of Cavalcanti.
I toyed with my goblet, momentarily tempted to fling its contents in
his pustuled face, and risk the consequences. But I bethought me of
something else that would make a deadlier missile.
“Alas!” I sighed. “I have abandoned the notion--constrained to it.”
He took my bait. “Constrained?” quoth he. “Now what fool did so
constrain you?”
“No fool, but circumstance,” I answered. “It has occurred to me,” I
explained, and I boldly held his glance with my own, “that as a simple
monk my life would be fraught with perils, seeing that in these times
even a bishop is not safe.”
Saving Bianca (who in her sweet innocence did not so much as dream of
the existence of such vileness as that to which I was referring and by
which a saintly man had met his death) I do not imagine that there was
a single person present who did not understand to what foul crime I
alluded.
The silence that followed my words was as oppressive as the silence
which in Nature preludes thunder.
A vivid flame of scarlet had overspread the Duke's countenance. It
receded, leaving his cheeks a greenish white, even to the mottling
pimples. Abashed, his smouldering eyes fell away before my bold, defiant
glance. The fingers of his trembling hand tightened about the slender
stem of his Venetian goblet, so that it snapped, and there was a gush
of crimson wine upon the snowy napery. His lips were drawn back--like a
dog's in the act of snarling--and showed the black stumps of his broken
teeth. But he made no sound, uttered no word. It was Cosimo who spoke,
half rising as he did so.
“This insolence, my lord Duke, must be punished; this insult wiped out.
Suffer me...”
But Pier Luigi reached forward across Bianca, set a hand upon my
cousin's sleeve, and pressed him back into his seat silencing him.
“Let be,” he said. And looked up the board at Cavalcanti. “It is for
my Lord of Pagliano to say if a guest shall be thus affronted at his
board.”
Cavalcanti's face was set and rigid. “You place a heavy burden on my
shoulders,” said he, “when your excellency, my guest, appeals to me
against another guest of mine--against one who is all but friendless and
the son of my own best friend.”
“And my worst enemy,” cried Pier Luigi hotly.
“That is your excellency's own concern, not mine,” said Cavalcanti
coldly. “But since you appeal to me I will say that Messer
d'Anguissola's words were ill-judged in such a season. Yet in justice
I must add that it is not the way of youth to weigh its words too
carefully; and you gave him provocation. When a man--be he never so
high--permits himself to taunt another, he would do well to see that he
is not himself vulnerable to taunts.”
Farnese rose with a horrible oath, and every one of his gentlemen with
him.
“My lord,” he said, “this is to take sides against me; to endorse the
affront.”
“Then you mistake my intention,” rejoined Cavalcanti, with an icy
dignity. “You appeal to me for judgment. And between guests I must hold
the scales dead-level, with no thought for the rank of either. Of your
chivalry, my lord Duke, you must perceive that I could not do else.”
It was the simplest way in which he could have told Farnese that he
cared nothing for the rank of either, and of reminding his excellency
that Pagliano, being an Imperial fief, was not a place where the Duke of
Parma might ruffle it unchecked.
Messer Pier Luigi hesitated, entirely out of countenance. Then his eyes
turned to Bianca, and his expression softened.
“What says Madonna Bianca?” he inquired, his manner reassuming some
measure of its courtliness. “Is her judgment as unmercifully level?”
She looked up, startled, and laughed a little excitedly, touched by the
tenseness of a situation which she did not understand.
“What say I?” quoth she. “Why, that here is a deal of pother about some
foolish words.”
“And there,” cried Pier Luigi, “spoke, I think, not only beauty but
wisdom--Minerva's utterances from the lips of Diana!”
In glad relief the company echoed his forced laugh, and all sat down
again, the incident at an end, and my contempt of the Duke increased to
see him permit such a matter to be so lightly ended.
But that night, when I had retired to my chamber, I was visited by
Cavalcanti. He was very grave.
“Agostino,” he said, “let me implore you to be circumspect, to keep a
curb upon your bitter tongue. Be patient, boy, as I am--and I have more
to endure.”
“I marvel, sir, that you endure it,” answered I, for my mood was
petulant.
“You will marvel less when you are come to my years--if, indeed, you
come to them. For if you pursue this course, and strike back when such
men as Pier Luigi tap you, you will not be likely to see old age. Body
of Satan! I would that Galeotto were here! If aught should happen to
you...” He checked, and set a hand upon my shoulder.
“For your father's sake I love you, Agostino, and I speak as one who
loves you.”
“I know, I know!” I cried, seizing his hand in a sudden penitence. “I
am an ingrate and a fool. And you upheld me nobly at table. Sir, I swear
that I will not submit you to so much concern again.”
He patted my shoulder in a very friendly fashion, and his kindly
eyes smiled upon me. “If you but promise that--for your own sake,
Agostino--we need say no more. God send this papal by-blow takes his
departure soon, for he is as unwelcome here as he is unbidden.”
“The foul toad!” said I. “To see him daily, hourly bending over Monna
Bianca, whispering and ogling--ugh!”
“It offends you, eh? And for that I love you! There. Be circumspect and
patient, and all will be well. Put your faith in Galeotto, and endure
insults which you may depend upon him to avenge when the hour strikes.”
Upon that he left me, and he left me with a certain comfort. And in the
days that followed, I acted upon his injunction, though, truth to tell,
there was little provocation to do otherwise. The Duke ignored me, and
all the gentlemen of his following did the like, including Cosimo. And
meanwhile they revelled at Pagliano and made free with the hospitality
to which they had not been bidden.
Thus sped another week in which I had not the courage again to approach
Bianca after what had passed between us at our single interview. Nor
for that matter was I afforded the opportunity. The Duke and Cosimo
were ever at her side, and yet it almost seemed as if the Duke had given
place to his captain, for Cosimo's was the greater assiduity now.
The days were spent at bowls or pallone within the castle, or upon
hawking-parties or hunting-parties when presently the Duke's health was
sufficiently improved to enable him to sit his horse; and at night there
was feasting which Cavalcanti must provide, and on some evenings we
danced, though that was a diversion in which I took no part, having
neither the will nor the art.
One night as I sat in the gallery above the great hall, watching them
footing it upon the mosaic floor below, Giuliana's deep, slow voice
behind me stirred me out of my musings. She had espied me up there and
had come to join me, although hitherto I had most sedulously avoided
her, neither addressing her nor giving her the opportunity to address me
since the first brazen speech on her arrival.
“That white-faced lily, Madonna Bianca de' Cavalcanti, seems to have
caught the Duke in her net of innocence,” said she.
I started round as if I had been stung, and at sight of my empurpling
face she slowly smiled, the same hateful smile that I had seen upon
her face that day in the garden when Gambara had bargained for her with
Fifanti.
“You are greatly daring,” said I.
“To take in vain the name of her white innocence?” she answered, smiling
superciliously. And then she grew more serious. “Look, Agostino, we were
friends once. I would be your friend now.”
“It is a friendship, Madonna, best not given expression.”
“Ha! We are very scrupulous--are we not?--since we have abandoned the
ways of holiness, and returned to this world of wickedness, and raised
our eyes to the pale purity of the daughter of Cavalcanti!” She spoke
sneeringly.
“What is that to you?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she answered frankly. “But that another may have raised his
eyes to her is something. I am honest with you. If this child is aught
to you, and you would not lose her, you would do well to guard her more
closely than you are wont. A word in season. That is all my message.”
“Stay!” I begged her now, for already she was gliding away through the
shadows of the gallery.
She laughed over her shoulder at me--the very incarnation of effrontery
and insolence.
“Have I moved you into sensibility?” quoth she. “Will you condescend
to questions with one whom you despise?--as, indeed,” she added with a
stinging scorn, “you have every right to do.”
“Tell me more precisely what you mean,” I begged her, for her words had
moved me fearfully.
“Gesu!” she exclaimed. “Can I be more precise? Must I add counsels?
Why, then, I counsel that a change of air might benefit Madonna Bianca's
health, and that if my Lord of Pagliano is wise, he will send her into
retreat in some convent until the Duke's visit here is at an end. And
I can promise you that in that case it will be the sooner ended. Now, I
think that even a saint should understand me.”
With that last gibe she moved resolutely on and left me.
Of the gibe I took little heed. What imported was her warning. And I
did not doubt that she had good cause to warn me. I remembered with a
shudder her old-time habit of listening at doors. It was very probable
that in like manner had she now gathered information that entitled her
to give me such advice.
It was incredible. And yet I knew that it was true, and I cursed my
blindness and Cavalcanti's. What precisely Farnese's designs might be I
could not conceive. It was hard to think that he should dare so much as
Giuliana more than hinted. It may be that, after all, there was no more
than just the danger of it, and that her own base interests urged her to
do what she could to avert it.
In any case, her advice was sound; and perhaps, as she said, the removal
of Bianca quietly might be the means of helping Pier Luigi's unwelcome
visit to an end.
Indeed, it was so. It was Bianca who held him at Pagliano, as the
blindest idiot should have perceived.
That very night I would seek out Cavalcanti ere I retired to sleep.