Sir Percival allowed his body to be marched round about Antonio's domain and in and out of the chais: but his mind and soul persisted in sticking fast somewhere else. While Antonio was explaining the Bordeaux wine-press, the baronet abruptly whipped out a pocket-book and began scribbling some figures which did not appear to have much connection with wine. Mr. Crowberry was equally trying. He asked Antonio at least forty questions, most of them extremely technical; but he did not listen to more than half a dozen of the monk's answers. As for Isabel, although she accompanied the others in a dutiful manner and listened to all Antonio said, she hardly spoke. Antonio divined what it was that vexed her. At the moment of the introduction she had counted on seeing before she was seen.
The dinner-bell jangled punctually at four o'clock. Mrs. Baxter had arrived, along with a Portuguese servant who was already on good terms with José in the kitchen. The Excellent Creature had brought three knives, three forks, two spoons, and a napkin for each person, as well as eighteen finely-cut wine-glasses. She was a stoutish little person, looking like an old maid of the middle class, but with unmistakable aspirations to the dignity of what she called "a decayed gentlewoman." Young Crowberry presented Antonio to her in a set speech.
"Madam," he said, making a low bow and sweeping the floor with the brim of his hat, "I trust I have your leave to introduce the worthy Senhor Oliveira da Rocha, whose lowly roof you are honoring by your presence. His rugged frame conceals an honest heart; and, while he sets before us our frugal fare, I make bold to hope that the evident sincerity of his welcome will assist you to condone the inevitable defects of his hospitality. Senhor da Rocha, I have the good fortune to make you acquainted with a gracious lady, and one of the chief ornaments of her sex, than whom the world contains no more Excellent Creature, Mrs. Baxter."
Antonio heard the first sentences of this harangue with horror. Such merciless teasing of a woman, a poor woman, a helpless widow, a dependent who could hardly retaliate, stung his ears. But he soon discovered that Mrs. Baxter had not yet found young Crowberry out. She heard him with approval, and received Antonio's greetings in a condescending manner.
When they entered the dining-room the soup was on the table. José's old spoons made so evident an impression on Mrs. Baxter that young Crowberry turned to her and said:
"Madam, it is hoped that we shall see our way to leave at least two of them behind."
Whenever Mrs. Baxter could not understand young Crowberry's remarks she bestowed upon him a beaming smile. Antonio, whose blood had run cold, breathed again as the smile appeared; but he felt some apology was needed for such perilous jesting at his table. In a low voice he said to Isabel, who was on his right:
"As that young man's old tutor, I fear he hardly does me credit."
"As Mrs. Baxter's old pupil," Isabel answered, "I'm sure she doesn't mind."
This time their eyes met more guardedly; but there was still much in the lady's glance which the monk could not fathom. It was as though their acquaintanceship already had a past, and was to have a future; as though they had often sat side by side before, eating and drinking or talking together; as though they were bearing themselves formally before fellow-guests who could not be allowed to suspect their good comradeship; as though they had a thousand confidences whereof to disburden themselves so soon as they should be alone. Not that Antonio made any such complete analysis as this while he was ladling out the soup from the green bowl. He was conscious of little more than a fine pleasure in the presence of this beautiful English girl who was entering so willingly and naturally into his rough life.
Everybody praised the cream of cauliflowers. In default of soup-plates, it was ladled into small round, gaily-painted dishes, about four inches deep. A dozen of them had cost Antonio the equivalent of an English shilling at the fair of Santa Iria a year before. All the dishes differed in pattern and color. Young Crowberry was the first to eat his last spoonful of soup; and, having done so, he discovered at the bottom of his dish a violet leopard, with green spots, climbing a pink tree. He shoved it towards Mrs. Baxter.
"Alas, madam," he said. "The pity of it. How sad that the industrious artist whose work I am contemplating should have lacked those blessings of education which you, ma'am, are so signally qualified to impart! I protest that neither this cærulean quadruped nor the blushing vegetable to whose apex he aspires are to be found figured on any of the numerous pages which the late spendthrift Goldsmith devoted to the description of Animated Nature. I protest—"
So did Crowberrypère, who had been listening to some eager talk of Sir Percy's. He gave Crowberryfilsa kick under the narrow table, and once more lent Sir Percy his right ear.
"Mine," said Isabel to Antonio, "is a blue bird, with an orange-colored tail. I should love to eat soup every night out of this nest of his."
"It is your own," said Antonio. "I will send it up to-morrow."
Not knowing the Portuguese etiquette which prescribed that Antonio should make the offer and that she should decline it, Isabel simply spoke what was in her heart.
"Mine?" she said gratefully. "How good you are! But no. It's old and valuable. I could never think of it."
"Very old," smiled Antonio. "The potter made it last year for the village fair. And very valuable. My man, José, bought twelve of them for a penny each. It is not worth naming."
At the news that she could possess the blue and orange bird without leaving her host more than one penny the worse Isabel was as pleased as a child. Meanwhile, Sir Percy continued his conversation with Mr. Crowberry and ignored his daughter. A Portuguese papa would have kept sharp ears and eyes upon his offspring; but the monk knew too much of English ways to be surprised.
José stamped in with the trout. When he had set them down and there was no further risk of his dropping both fishes and dishes on the stone floor, Antonio disclosed his name, his offices, and his virtues to the company, in English and in Portuguese. José blushed, saluted, and fled.
Within a ten-mile radius of the abbey less than a hundredweight of butter was churned in the whole year. Not an ounce was made by José. As for the olive oil, Antonio distrusted its fineness. Accordingly the trout had been simply steamed. They were served with a sauce made from the yolks of eggs, cream, and the juice of lemons. The host saw with pride that this dish was a success; but Sir Percy cleared his plate without seeming to know whether he was eating a mountain trout or a red herring. At last, when José was taking away the plates, he swung round towards Antonio like a weathercock on a rusty pivot, and said abruptly:
"Senhor Rocha, I hear you know all about alujezos."
"Azulejos," interrupted Mr. Crowberry, correcting him.
"Ajulezos," snapped Sir Percy, without turning his head.
"It's a hard word to pronounce," said Antonio; "and a strange word altogether. As azulejos are little blue-and-white tiles, one would naturally think that it is derived from azul, our Portuguese word for 'blue,' andej, one of our diminutives—a bluelet, a blueling, a little thing of blue. But that's a pure coincidence. The word comes straight from the Arabic."
Sir Percy stared. Antonio thought he was incredulous.
"I mean the word, not the thing," he explained. "The azulejos up at the abbey are not Moorish, of course. They are of the seventeenth century, produced under Dutch influence, but far finer, I think, than any Delft. All the same, we have genuine Moorish azulejos in Portugal; for example, in the Palace at Cintra."
Sir Percy stared harder than ever.
"We'll talk about it later on. Not now. After dinner," said Mr. Crowberry hastily. "Sir Percy, you've not tasted your wine."
The wine-merchant himself had already tasted three glasses. The wine was a white wine, somewhat resembling a very dry sherry, but as refreshing as young Moselle. The two Crowberrys praised its clearness, Isabel admired its color, Mrs. Baxter said it was a little sour, and Sir Percy, having drained his glass at a single gulp, kindly said he would have some more.
The lifting of the great casserole's lid filled the room with fragrant vapors. With this dish José served a salad of bitter oranges and three bottles of the farm's best red wine. Mrs. Baxter said that this wine would be improved by the addition of a little hot water, nutmeg, and honey. Unhappily the Crowberrys, whose hearts were with the ports and fruity Burgundies, also failed to note its subtler beauties. Nevertheless, the older Crowberry drank a whole bottle by himself, and then loudly insisted on trying the new champagne.
"We demand it, dead or alive," said young Crowberry.
The champagne was brought at last. José walked in with it slowly, holding it neck downwards. Antonio rose, took the bottle to the doorway and released the cork. With a cunning movement he reverted the bottle the instant the explosion had disgorged the sediment. When he poured out the liquid, the bubbles danced like diamonds upon amber. It was not very good wine; but the excitements attending it put everybody into a good temper, Sir Percy not excepted.
The remaining delicacies were set on the table all at once. For the ladies Antonio had taken care to provide two dishes of sweets. The first was filled with heart-shaped marmeladas, or quince jellies, firm enough to cut with a knife and not in the least sticky. The second was a custard of goat's milk and eggs, flavored with spices and white wine. There were also six tiny snow-white cheeses, some fine broas, and a pyramid of grandly colored fruits. The coffee, for once, was not grain-and-dandelion, but real Brazilian.
Knowing Mr. Crowberry's weakness, the monk signed to José that he should serve the brandy in small glasses, and that he should not leave the flasks on the table. When the cigar-box went round, Mr. Crowberry did not recognize it as one which Antonio had received in his presence four years before, a thousand miles away. His mind was busy with another thought. Filling up his largest glass with white wine, he rose to his feet, cleared his throat, and said pompously:
"To the Queens of England and Portugal. May their Majesties and their subjects be happy. God save the Queens."
Everybody stood up and drank. José, knowing that some good work was a-doing, saluted. But when the others sat down again, Mr. Crowberry remained standing.
"I haven't done yet," he said. "There's another toast. Ladies and gentlemen, I take leave to propose the health of Senhor Francisco Manoel Oliveira da Rocha. May God forgive him for having such a name. Ladies and gentlemen, he's a jolly good fellow. Personally, I don't like his claret; but, to be candid, I don't like anybody's. I've tasted worse stuff from Bordeaux at half a guinea a bottle."
Young Crowberry applauded noisily. Mrs. Baxter, who had dined well, blinked at the speaker like a sleepy pussy-cat. Sir Percival listened with almost excessive politeness. He had emerged from his abstraction, and was ashamed of his earlier brusqueness. Isabel's gaze was riveted on her painted plate.
"When I reflect," continued Mr. Crowberry, "that Senhor da Rocha has accomplished all this on a few guineas of capital and almost single-handed, I am more than ever proud to be his friend. The weeks I passed with him in England were the pleasantest of my life. Sir Percy ... Ladies ... I congratulate you on your neighbor. He has given us a dinner fit for kings. I say once more, he's a jolly good fellow, and I empty my glass to his lifelong health and happiness."
Young Crowberry, using both hands, rattled the blades of two knives against the rims of two plates, at the same time stamping on the stone floor and yapping out, "Hear, hear!" in a voice like a terrier's bark. The toast was drunk.
Antonio rose to respond. But it was nearly half a minute before he opened his mouth. Mr. Crowberry's unexpected compliment gave him an opportunity for which he was unprepared, and English was not his native tongue. At last he said:
"Mr. Crowberry, ladies and gentlemen. I cannot accept your compliments, for I do not deserve them; but I thank you most heartily for your kind wishes. I thank you, also, for the honor you have done me in coming to this little house. You, sir, have kindly spoken of our picnic as a dinner; but I am under no delusions, and I thank you, most of all, for your leniency towards our roughness and shortcomings."
Mrs. Baxter graciously inclined her head, as if to bestow a plenary indulgence where it was urgently needed; but the others cried, "No! Not at all!"
"And now," Antonio went on, "I have a toast on my own account, though I'm the only one to drink it. I propose the health of my guests. Mr. Crowberry's was the only face I knew when I landed in your beautiful England, and his was the last face I saw when I sailed away. Without his generosity I might not be on this farm to-day. It does me good to see him again. He is—I hope I'm pronouncing the word right—he's a jolligoodfellow."
"And so say I," sang out young Crowberry. "He's a block of the young chip."
"As for Sir Percival Kaye-Templeman and ... and Her Ladyship," added the monk, suddenly becoming hazy as to the status of a baronet's daughter, "I am indeed happy to have such neighbors. We place our services, such as they are, entirely at their Excellencies' disposal; and at Madame Baxter's also. Mr. Crowberry, you are aware, sir, that I used to work in the abbey vineyards, over seven years ago. I knew all the monks. I knew the old Abbot. He was a saint. He died a day or two after they turned him out, at Navares, the little town you passed through this morning. So it is natural I should have a great deal of reverence for the old place. And I am thankful, more thankful than words can express, that it has passed to owners who will not hold so sacred a spot in disrespect. Often and often I have feared for its fate."
An awkward silence followed Antonio's speech. Mr. Crowberry fidgeted in his chair. Isabel colored warmly, and Sir Percy straightened his back more stiffly than ever. Suddenly young Crowberry came to the rescue with a comical wail.
"What about Me?" he asked. "I'm a guest, and you haven't praised Me? Why ain't I a jolligoodfellow, too?"
"You are already jolly and, some day, I hope you will be good," said Antonio, smiling good-humoredly at his pupil. "Ladies and gentlemen, with my whole heart, I drink to you all."
Everybody turned to Sir Percy. He seemed desirous of responding, but something held him down. Young Crowberry sprang into the breach once more.
"Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking," he said, rising, "I will nevertheless, however, try to attempt to endeavor to thank you on behalf of us all. Now for my own toast. The Ladies—God bless 'em. Senhor, I believe you have on your right a Lady Abbess who will give you every satisfaction. If, however, Her Ladyship should fail in anything, you have only to report the matter to Madame Baxter. I drain my glass to the Ladies."
The four men drank. Isabel darted a grateful glance at young Crowberry, as if to thank him for delivering her from a painful situation; but he did not see it. Mrs. Baxter sat up, gasped, blushed, and managed to say:
"I am sure, Mr. Edward, we are very much obliged."
"Last not least, here's to José, the cook," cried young Crowberry, and, raising his voice, he called through the door in Portuguese: "Hola, José, how the devil are we to drink your health when there isn't any more wine?"
After José had been toasted and had saluted in response, Antonio suggested that he had detained his visitors too long, and that they were doubtless wishing to see more of their new home before dark. Sir Percy seemed grateful. Pulling himself together, he acknowledged the monk's hospitality with almost excessive earnestness, and pressed him to come often to the abbey. They walked together to the road.
"And I am truly to have the blue-and-orange bird?" said Isabel. "You're sure you won't miss him very much?"
"Not a bit," said Antonio. "I know he will have a good home."
He stood watching the chariot as it rolled away. At the bend of the road she turned and waved her hand.
The wine-merchant and his son did not drive home with Sir Percy and the ladies. They preferred to walk.
"Now then," demanded Crowberryfils, pouncing upon Antonio as he returned from the gate. "Out with it. What do you think of Isabel?"
But Crowberrypère, following hard on his heels, swiftly sent the youth about his business. He wanted ten minutes' talk, he said, with Antonio alone.
"Da Rocha," he began, as they paced the shady length of the chief pergola; "believe me, it was one of the greatest disappointments of my life when I could not lend you the two thousand pounds you wrote for. If I'd only had sense enough to stick to wine, you could have had the money twice over in a jiffy. But I'm up to the ears in these damned railways; and Heaven only knows what will be the end."
"A big profit, I hope," said the monk.
"More likely a big smash. But leave all that. It's too late to alter it. Now, about these abbey vineyards. It struck me that I might get somebody to buy the buildings and to lease you the vineyards on easy terms. The only man I could think of was Sir Percy. I knew he was finding England a bit uncomfortable. You see, he's gone through nearly all his money."
"How? Gambling? Drinking? Or what?"
"Worse. Inventions. He worshiped his young wife. She died suddenly, and I think it turned him a bit mad. Anyhow, he's gone through two fortunes. All spent on experiments and patents. He has invented dozens of things people don't want. Ten thousand pounds went over a balloon with wings and a rudder. He has perfected a substitute for indigo; but it costs twice as much as the genuine article. I believe his new way of boring cannons has been taken up by the Government; but an artillery colonel stole the idea and collared all the profits. I don't doubt Sir Percy has invented a thing or two this very day, at your table."
"You say he has spent all his money," objected Antonio. "If so, how could he buy the abbey?"
"Wait," said Mr. Crowberry. "Men like Sir Percy can't get down to their last penny as easily as you or I. Sir Percy's is an old family—older than any of our dukes, save one. Families like those are all spread out, through intermarriage. There's always some aunt or cousin, when it comes to the worst, who will send you five hundred pounds and a nasty letter. In this case, Sir Percy got the five hundred near home. It was his daughter Isabel's. She has a separate estate that can't be pawned. This five hundred came out of income."
"But the price of the abbey was three thousand pounds."
"Don't interrupt. It was three thousand guineas. That is, three thousand pounds for the Lisbon Government and three hundred for the Fazenda official. Two thousand eight hundred remain to be paid."
Antonio's heart brimmed with wrath and shame and bitterness.
"I couldn't have managed it but for an amazing stroke of luck," Mr. Crowberry continued. "Over these damned railways, I got mixed up with a sort of broker who knew all about Portugal. I don't like him; but he's a mighty clever fellow. Perhaps you know him. He got a peerage from your Government for lending them money at forty per cent. He's the Viscount de Ponte Quebrada."
Antonio succeeded in remaining silent.
"Strangely enough, he knew this very abbey. It was the week after I had your letter. I told him that a friend of mine wanted to buy the vineyards; and he recognized the name of the place at once. I tried to get him to lend you two thousand on it; but he wouldn't do it to a stranger. Then I asked him to lend it to Sir Percy; and he seemed quite struck with the idea.
"That very night he went and saw Sir Percy on his own account, and they made some sort of three-cornered bargain. The Viscount has squared the Fazenda, and he's given Sir Percy introductions for getting a railway concession—Lisbon to Oporto—worth millions! I suspect the Viscount will get the millions, and Sir Percy will be the figure-head. As for the two thousand eight hundred, they've to pay three hundred on New Year's Day, and the balance in five half-yearly instalments."
"Who will pay? The Viscount? Or the daughter Isabel?"
"Keep quiet. It seems the Viscount told Sir Percy, on the quiet, that there are several jobs about this abbey which they can work together. He mentioned one. These al—I mean, azulejos. Sir Percy has invented a way of getting them down."
Antonio's heart almost stood still.
"They can't, they daren't," he cried at last. "Till the abbey is wholly paid for, how dare they?"
"Who's to object? Hasn't the Fazenda man got three hundred, all for himself? Isn't he going to do anything to earn the money? Da Rocha, I always said you were not a man of the world. They dare, they can, and they will rip down those damned old tiles. And when they've got them down here they're going to get them down in other places—other old convents. The Viscount can get six hundred pounds a set. They're wanted for museums and galleries."
"He can get at least a thousand," cried Antonio.
"So much the better for Sir Percy and the Viscount. That's how the twenty-eight hundred is to be paid. It'll be all right. Now, about your lease of the vineyards."
"Mr. Crowberry," said Antonio, halting and looking with a white face at his friend. "Don't think me ungrateful. But this hurts me to the quick. What if the monks should return to buy back their own? Nay, less. What if one of them should merely revisit it? Those azulejos were their chief pride. What will they say when they know that this, in a sense, is my doing; that it wouldn't have happened if I had never written to you for money?"
"Who's going to tell 'em?" demanded the other, vexed. "If you don't, nobody else will."
"Whether they ever know it or not," said Antonio, "I tell you I'd rather you should pluck out one of my eyes than tear down those azulejos."
"Then you deserve to have been born one-eyed," retorted Mr. Crowberry, thoroughly aroused. "I never heard such tomfoolery in my life. This is what I get for trying to do you a good turn. Gad! As if you didn't put enough of a wet blanket on us all when you proposed our healths! I'll tell you what it is. There's too much damnable gush in this hole of a Portugal, and that's why you're all beggars."
Antonio was about to reply hotly; but the wine-merchant stopped him.
"No," he said, "I take that back. We won't quarrel. But you've upset me badly. I go away on Thursday or Friday. We've only one clear day to fix this lease. Don't be a fool."
"If the azulejos cannot be spared," replied Antonio, terribly agitated, "I cannot become Sir Percy's tenant."
"But, my ridiculous friend, look here. Sir Percy doesn't want a tenant—neither you nor anybody else. He's leasing you the vineyards to oblige me. D'ye expect me to go and make conditions when he's doing you a favor?"
Antonio began pacing up and down, with bent head and hands clasped behind his back. He strode, six steps this way and six steps back, over and over again, with a feverish tread, like an animal in a cage. After a full minute he threw up his head, and said:
"Do me one more kindness. Give me till to-morrow. In the afternoon I will come to the guest-house, to bring a little bowl for Miss Kaye-Templeman. Till then, I beg that you will not say a word of this to anyone?"
Waving down Mr. Crowberry's wrath with an imperious hand, he plunged under the orange trees. The Englishman took a couple of steps after him; then he shrugged his shoulders and strolled back to the house.
"What do you really and truly think of Isabel?" asked young Crowberry, who had headed Antonio off among the trees. This time he meant to have his answer.
The monk looked at him sadly, and passed a hand over his burning eyes.
"The Senhorita and I talked very little," he replied. "So far as I know, I like her."
"Is she pretty?"
"Yes."
"And clever?"
"I think so."
"She's as clever as a don. That's the trouble. All head, no heart. And as proud as Lucifer."
Young Crowberry saw that Antonio could hardly endure his chatter.
"Something's wrong," he said, with genuine concern in his boyish voice. "What are you down in the doleful dumps for?"
At first Antonio shook his head. But the youth's frank distress touched him. The trouble was too great to be confined within one breast; so he detailed Sir Percy's plan. When he had finished he added:
"But why should I worry you with all this? You are young, you are buoyant. You have been brought up amidst different religious ideas. This is a matter you cannot understand."
Young Crowberry gripped the monk's fore-arm with a quick, fierce grip. As he let it drop, he retorted intensely:
"Senhor da Rocha, as you say, I am young. But even I have learned one thing that you haven't. There is not always a merry heart under a cap and bells. My jabber is flippant, no doubt. But ... but God knows how much I care for the things you say I can't understand."
Antonio was startled clean out of his trouble.
"You don't mean to tell me, Edward," he said, "that you have begun to care about religion—to care deeply with all your heart?"
The youth bowed his head.
"Tell me how much you mean," Antonio demanded eagerly.
But Mr. Crowberry appeared in the doorway of the house and stepped out to join them. His son saw him, and said hurriedly in Antonio's ear:
"We leave on Thursday. I want a talk—a long one, a quiet one. Your man José told me a tale about a ghost in the chapel. I said I would watch there to-morrow night. I can get the key. Say that you will join me. But not a word to anybody."
After a second's consideration, Antonio promised. And when a quarter of an hour later he said his farewells at the farm-gate he added softly, in young Crowberry's ear:
"Till to-morrow night ... among the azulejos."
"The gentlemen are all down at the other buildings," said the English maid-servant who opened the guest-house door to Antonio. "I think they said they would be in the chapel. Miss Kaye-Templeman is in, and Mrs. Baxter."
The monk hesitated. After a single meeting, would it be correct to ask for Sir Percy's daughter instead of finding Sir Percy himself? He was not sure. Yet his dread and loathing of what the Englishman might be doing in the chapel held him back from following. Antonio knew his limitations. After all, he was still flesh and blood, and he could not be sure of mastering his wrath in the presence of a sacrilegious despoiler.
"You may tell Miss Kaye-Templeman that Mr. Oliveira da Rocha is here," he said.
After he had repeated his name twice, the maid led him into the tiny ante-chamber. Antonio saw that the engraved portrait of Saint Benedict had been taken down. It was leaning in a corner, face to the wall; and, in its stead, hung a small oil-painting of two horses and a stable-boy, in the manner of Morland. The large crucifix had been removed from the place of honor; but its shape could still be seen, like the shadow of a dim cross on the white wall.
"Mr. Oliver Kosher," mumbled the maid to somebody in the principal room.
As Antonio passed through the inner door he saw that Isabel was alone. She rose and came forward with such complete control of her blue eyes that the monk had a momentary fear of not being wanted. But there was warmth in her voice and a welcome in her smile. When she caught sight of the gaudy bowl in her visitor's hand she gave a little cry of unaffected joy.
"You've brought the blue bird," she said. "I felt quite sure you would forget all about him. How can I thank you properly?"
"By saying no more about such a trifle," answered Antonio, placing the bowl in her hand.
Hardly listening, she turned her treasure this way and that, as if it had been a piece of Sèvres. For the first time Antonio was able to look at her critically. She was only a head shorter than himself; which meant that she was taller than six women out of seven. She stood up as straight as her father; but, while Sir Percy looked as though he had swallowed a steel ramrod, Isabel Kaye-Templeman was as graceful and supple as a perfectly-grown young tree. She was slender, yet so exquisitely developed in proportion to her height that Antonio felt he was never likely to see a more perfect figure. Her abundant hair was brown-golden—perhaps more golden than brown—and as fine as threads of silk.
Finding the Portuguese October warmer than an English July, Isabel had put on a high-waisted, full-skirted dress of pink-sprigged muslin. Over the shoulders, which were cut rather low, she wore a gauzy scarf, unprimly fastened at the throat by an unjeweled brooch of old gold. As she fondled the penny bowl Antonio observed the fine whiteness and slenderness of her wrists and fingers and the high-bred grace of every little movement.
"You will excuse Mrs. Baxter?" Isabel asked, suddenly coming back to formality. "She lies down in the afternoon. My father and the others are at the abbey. Shall we go down and join them? They expect you. I think they want you to help them."
"Let us join them," said the monk.
While Isabel was upstairs putting on her gloves and hat Antonio paced up and down the familiar room. A carpet, some easy chairs, two small tables, and very many pictures and ornaments had already been unpacked. Most of these importations were pleasing in themselves; but they were incongruous with a Portuguese interior, especially when it was the interior of a semi-monastic building. Antonio, however, hardly gave all this bric-à-brac a glance. He was revolving in his mind, for the twentieth time, a bold plan.
With a promptitude which contradicted one of the monk's delusions about ladies, Isabel reappeared in a large straw hat and announced that she was ready. They started at once. But, instead of taking the direct road, the monk chose a roundabout path to the abbey.
"This is not the way," said Isabel, halting after they had walked forty or fifty yards.
"It is not the shortest way, but it is the best," Antonio answered. "It takes only five minutes longer and it passes the most beautiful spot in the whole domain."
She seemed a shade vexed, and did not speak again until they reached the spot of which Antonio had spoken. It was part of a ravine. Rustic steps led down to the margin of the water, which broadened in this place to a rippling pool. From a face of brown rock, to the right, the bright torrent came tumbling in a thunderous cascade. To the left, at the lower end of the pool, it raced seawards almost hidden in a leafy, ferny, stony channel, whence its voice ascended like the throbbing, booming sound of an organ. Generation after generation of monkish gardeners had chosen this sheltered spot for the rearing of their most precious trees. Araucarias, deodars, date-palms, and cedars of Lebanon were mingled with cork-oaks, eucalyptus, willows, sea-pines, plum-trees, planes, and chestnuts. Ten or twelve tree-ferns overtopped by a giant palm suggested a tropical forest. Stepping-stones had been fixed in the pool at its narrowest part, and on the other bank was a grotto-chapel hewn in the face of a boulder as big as a house.
The stepping-stones were slippery with spray from the loud cascade; but Isabel tripped from one to another confidently and easily, scarcely touching Antonio's proffered hand. On the further bank she paused, to take breath, and stood gazing westward. Below her lay a hundred acres of wood, softly musical with the twittering and singing of birds and with the hum of the hidden torrent. Further down rose the monastery. Beyond, in the plain, could be seen Antonio's farm; and, still further to the west, the Atlantic.
"This is the spot I meant," said Antonio.
"It is very beautiful," was all her answer. She spoke it in so cheerless a tone that Antonio was concerned.
"England is beautiful too," he said. "At first it is only natural you should be homesick."
"Homesick?" she echoed, suddenly facing him with defiant eyes. "I'm not homesick. I don't know what it means. I don't know what Home means, either."
Antonio was startled. Three or four speeches came to his tongue's tip, some of them inquisitive, all of them sympathetic. Finally he said:
"Home is not built in a day. I myself was not bred and born in this part of Portugal. At first every face was strange. But it is home now. This torrent is the stream that runs through the kitchen of the abbey where I used to work. It is the brook that refreshes my little farm. Once it was no more to me than so many gallons of water. Now it talks and sings to me like a friend. Little by little you will learn to love this place."
"I loved it as soon as I saw it," she retorted. "But I don't love it now. I loved it for about three hours."
"Three hours? Why three hours?"
"We arrived here about noon. We left about three. I loved it till we came to your house for dinner. Then..."
Antonio waited anxiously.
"Then," she continued, with a visible effort, "I ... longed with all my soul to be back in England. You said ... you remember what you said about our respecting this sacred place?"
"I remember," said Antonio, his heart swelling with thankfulness. He had cudgelled his wits in vain for a way of introducing his plan; but here was the opportunity ready to his hand.
"Well," she said, "we haven't come from England to respect this sacred place in the least. We have come to ruin and defile it. Those blue-and-white tile-pictures in the chapel are the most wonderful things I've ever seen; but we have come to tear them down. We have come to use the big rooms and long corridors for all sorts of experiments. We shall make them grimy with smoke and foul with fumes; and some fine day we shall have an accident and blow the whole place into the Atlantic, and ourselves with it."
Her bitter and vehement fluency struck the monk dumb.
"That isn't all," she added more bitterly than ever. "When they've fished us up out of the Atlantic and dressed our wounds we shall start making plans for a railway. We shall lose all our own money and make all the honest people in the district lose theirs too. But what will it matter? We shall get something for our gold and silver. We shall be honored with the company of the men who're going to make fortunes out of us and out of your country—men who don't know their own grandfathers. One of them will be kind enough to buy this domain from us for an old song and to build a fine square house out of the ruins. Senhor da Rocha, that is the way we are going to respect your sacred place."
Antonio succeeded in meeting her defiant gaze with a show of calmness; but there was a tremor in his voice as he said:
"If I did not know that the Senhorita is witty I should say that the Senhorita is doing herself a little injustice."
She knitted her brows while she framed an answer.
"Yes," she said. "The Senhor is right. The Senhorita is doing herself a little injustice. She ought to add, in her own defense, that she wouldn't have agreed so easily to come here had she known that anybody cared about the place. She thought nobody would be one atom the worse, save the bats and spiders. Yesterday she learned the truth. But she learned it too late."
In his eagerness the monk strode close to her side.
"Too late?" he echoed. "No, it is not too late. You have great influence with your father. There are fifty places in Portugal cheaper and more accessible and all together more convenient than this for your experiments and your railways."
"Don't call them mine," she commanded. "I hate and loathe them all. But, I repeat, it is too late. Neither I nor anyone else in this world has a grain of influence with my father. Opposition drives him mad."
Her tone was even more decisive than her words. But Antonio could not face the fact that he was beaten. Had not Mr. Crowberry distinctly stated that Sir Percy had gained possession of the abbey solely by the help of Isabel's private fortune? She was not a schoolgirl. She was of full age; and if she was paying the piper surely she had something to do with calling the tune.
Yet how was he to remind her of her rights? Was not his intervention sure to be resented as the extreme of impertinence? Mr. Crowberry had not said that his revelations concerning the Kaye-Templeman finances were made in confidence; but probably this was an oversight of which it would be mean to take advantage.
The painful silence lengthened. Antonio ended it by starting on a new line.
"Those tiles," he said, "are not mere curiosities, to be carted about from one museum to another. I feel as if they are alive—as if your illustrious father will be flaying a living thing when he tears them from the wall. They were not ordered from a shop, and unpacked, and stuck all over the chapel like so much wallpaper from Paris. They represent the life and miracles and martyrdom of a saint of this Order—a saint of the Portuguese Benedictine congregation who spent ten years in this monastery. He died in your England, for the Faith."
She moved uneasily. Thinking he was gaining his point Antonio continued:
"Those tiles were not the work of one hireling artist. In a sense the whole community drew and painted them. Until they were turned out the monks cherished the archives of their abbey; and these showed how, under three successive Abbots, the cartoons gradually grew to perfection. Look. From here you can see the cemetery where the bones of those dead monks lie. Their souls will bless you from heaven if you will spare the chapel they made so glorious."
"Senhor da Rocha," said Isabel, dryly and rather coldly, "we are at cross purposes. You will be shocked; but I can't help it. I don't believe in monks and monasteries, nuns and nunneries. The monks' heaven is my hell. Their God is my Devil. Forgive me if I hurt you; but it seems to me that there can be only two kinds of monks. Those who are not fanatics are hypocrites; and those who are not hypocrites are fanatics. How can any really sane and honest man worship the Creator by despising His creation?"
Antonio was about to reply, when she added hastily:
"No. Forgive me. I have spoken too plainly. Let me return to the point. I mean this: on behalf of any ordinary man or woman who loves this place for old sakes' sake I would work my hardest to spare it. But not for dead monks."
"Then work your hardest for me," pleaded Antonio eagerly. "Don't you regard me as an ordinary man, who loves the place for old sakes' sake?"
"No, I don't," she said, recovering her ease. "You are not an ordinary man. You will grieve over the azulejos for a few days; then, amidst your many interests, you will forget them. Or, better still, you will come to be glad that they have been taken away from a dark, shut-up hill-side sepulcher and placed where millions of people can see them and admire them."
"You mean," he said scornfully, "that if I were a poor man; if I had a beautiful wife; if she and I had grown up together almost from the cradle; if her life were altogether bound up with mine—you mean that if someone should take her away by force and show her every night from the stage of a theater, to a thousand people ... you mean, I ought to be grateful and glad!"
His own illustration startled him. It had leaped into his mind and out from his lips without his consent. It startled Isabel still more; for the tones in which it was uttered were sharper than knives. Once more she lost the mastery over her eyes.
"We must be going," she said curtly, as soon as she could frame a sentence.
They descended through the wood without further speech until the monastery gleamed between the trees. Then Isabel halted and said:
"You ought to believe that I am a better judge than you of my father's character. I repeat that I shall do more harm than good by asking him to spare these tiles. To ask him such a thing will be a more difficult and unpleasant task than you imagine. But, if nothing else will satisfy you, I will try."
"I thank you with all my soul," answered the monk. "But I will exact no promises. As you say, you are the best judge."
"Let me speak one more word—for your comfort," she added. "This morning my father returned from the chapel dejected. He is no longer confident that he can strip the azulejos from the wall. Remember, not a single tile must be broken or the buyer will not have them. My father may fail."
"God grant he may," said Antonio fervently.
"You must indulge me," she answered, "if I find it a trifle hard to say Amen."
They found young Crowberry smoking a cigar outside the principal door of the monastery.
"Are the others inside?" Isabel asked.
Young Crowberry meditated a few moments. Then, with his hands clasped behind him, like a dame-school child repeating a lesson, he answered in an absurd monotone:
"I am Abbot of all I survey,My right there is none to dispute;From the center right down to the sayI am free to behave like a brute."
"He is trying to make a parody on some lines by Cowper, one of our English poets who died thirty or forty years ago," Isabel explained to the bewildered Antonio. "I suppose he means the others have gone back home."
"Our respective sires have verily got them gone," said young Crowberry. And, dropping his affectation, he added, "I don't know how you managed to miss 'em, coming down from the house."
"Why have they gone away?"
"To mix a new mixture. Sir Percy has an idea."
Isabel led the way into the monastery. She entered it with a proprietary air which made the monk suspect that Sir Percy had deceived her and that she believed the place to be wholly paid for. Suspicion became certainty. He felt convinced that this was not a woman who would knowingly lend herself to Sir Percy's bargain with the Visconde.
"Show me one of the monks' cells," she commanded.
Antonio hesitated. The spectacle of a graceful girl tripping along the stern and dark corridors had already given him a slight shock. But the cells! Into whose cell could he take her? Decidedly he had no right to show her any save his own.
To his own they went. The monk could never enter the narrow room without emotion, and he was forced to go to the window to hide his anguish. What if this should prove to be his last entrance? What if Sir Percy should indeed defile and destroy the whole abbey?
"It's actually clean," said Isabel, amazed.
"What did you expect?" asked Antonio, turning round and speaking coldly.
"I've no idea. But I know I didn't expect cleanliness," she said. "Who is this bishop? They seem to have stuck his portrait up all over the place."
"He is not a bishop," put in young Crowberry. "He is Saint Benedict, the great Abbot, father of all the monks of the West."
Antonio started. The young man's tone was respectful, and it was evident that he was speaking sympathetically of matters about which he had been reading and thinking. Isabel, however, took little notice of the answer. As usual, she hardly recognized young Crowberry's continued existence. One after another she pulled out Antonio's empty drawers and opened his empty cupboards. Had she realized that the monks had been expelled only seven years before and that many of them must be still living, nothing in the world would have induced her to pry into their sancta; but it was evident that she pictured the monks of Portugal pretty much as she pictured the monks of old England. To her they were forgotten men, vanished into dust ages ago; and there could be no more indelicacy in ransacking their old haunts than in examining the sculptures of a long-empty sarcophagus.
From the cell they went to the cloister. There Isabel quickly espied the spiral staircase; and, having ascended it, she sat down on Antonio's favorite seat of cork. The quiet beauty of the scene subdued her; and not a syllable was spoken until they had retraced their steps and reached the monks' entrance to the chapel.
Before setting foot in the monastery young Crowberry had thrown away his cigar; and on the chapel threshold, with unostentatious reverence, he uncovered his head. They went in, young Crowberry leading.
No irreparable injury had been done. Only in the north-west corner of the nave was there any trace of Sir Percy's operations. He had taken down part of a creamy marble cornice which ran along the top edge of the azulejos, level with the sills of the high-placed windows. A circular saw occupied the marble's old place. On the floor were two carboys of acid, a short ladder, and half a dozen chisels, large and small.
By tacit consent none of the three mentioned this display of apparatus. Indeed, they affected not to see it. Young Crowberry still took the initiative. Standing opposite the western wall, he besought Antonio to explain the azulejos.
The ten blue-and-white pictures were worked out in tiles which encrusted the walls to a height of about fifteen feet. There was one on each side of the grand western door, and there were four on each of the north and south walls of the nave. Each picture measured about twelve feet across and was framed in decorative tile-work wherein green and yellow were added to the blue. Antonio began on the right-hand side of the western door.
"First," he said, "we have the Saint's birth. Like our divine Lord, he was born an outcast. His mother and father were on pilgrimage. Notice the Latin scroll,Non erat eis locus in diversorio: 'There was no room for them in the inn.' Through the trees you see the village of Carcavoa as it was before the earthquake, with a Gothic church and two spires."
The next picture was the one from which Sir Percy had removed the cornice; but Antonio did not change his tone.
"Second," he continued. "The Saint's boyhood. The book he is reading, in the shadow of the wayside shrine, is the 'Little Hours of the Blessed Virgin.' The scroll reads,Zelus domus tuae comedit me: The zeal of thy house hath eaten me up.' The games the other boys are playing are played in Portuguese villages to-day. The bullock-carts are unchanged also. Notice the two cats—lanky cats with long clever heads; they are Portuguese cats all over."
The third picture was pierced by the doorway which gave access to the cloisters; and the designers of the azulejos had made bold use of what might have been a disfigurement. The picture showed a small monastery. The gables, the dormer windows, the round arches, and the stumpy belfry of this little monastery were depicted in blue, on the tiles; but where there ought to have been a blue-painted doorway one saw the solid jamb and lintel of the doorway through which young Crowberry and the others had entered the chapel. The figure of the Saint was nowhere to be seen; but all the men and women in the picture were crowding hurriedly towards the doorway as if they would see the last of somebody who had passed into the cloister. Above the solid lintel chubby blue boys were painted lying on their chests and trying to look down into the building.
"The Saint," Antonio explained, "has entered a religious house. And as that religious house was this very abbey, you see the point of the doorway. On the scroll,Magister adest et vocat te: 'The Master is here and calleth thee.'"
Antonio successively pointed out the pictures of the Saint's first Mass, with blue angels helping to uphold the Chalice, and of the Saint's first miracle, with Oporto in the distance. This ended the series on the north wall. At the marble balustrade of the gilded sanctuary, he explained the stalls, the retablo, and the boldly-ribbed Gothic vaulting, at least a century older than the nave. Then he worked back along the south wall, making short comments on the Saint's shipwreck and second miracle, his preaching to prisoners, his landing in England, and his visit to the Abbey of Westminster, once Benedictine.
"Your Westminster Abbey looks strange," said Antonio. "It is before the alterations of Wren; but I admit the faults of the picture. The next one is better. It is the Saint's death at—I think you pronounce it Tyburn. The horses and most of the faces are quite English. The hurdle on which he has been drawn is broken. Notice the one-eyed man with the butcher's knife. On the scroll are the Saint's last words, the same as Saint Stephen's,Domine ne statuas illis hoc peccatum: 'Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.'"
This tenth, and last of the tile-pictures was on the left of the western door; but not until Antonio ceased speaking did he notice a small leather-covered box resting on the ground at the foot of the green and yellow border of azulejos. It was gilt-lettered P. L. K.-T. The lid was off, showing the stoppers of four chemists' bottles and some fine steel tools.
In the same instant, both Antonio and young Crowberry had the same thought. "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." The words were grimly appropriate to Sir Percy's act of sacrilege; yet young Crowberry felt sure that Antonio had only recognized their appropriateness when it was too late. As for the monk, although his eyes met Isabel's for no more than a moment, he saw that she was wounded.
"When was the Saint hanged?" asked young Crowberry, in order to end the awkward pause. "In what reign?"
"In the reign of Isabel," Antonio answered.
Young Crowberry opened his eyes wide. The monk, however, had already realized his second mishap.
"I mean Elizabeth, Queen Elizabeth, of course," he burst out. "The Portuguese for Elizabeth is Isabel. It's the same name."
But Miss Kaye-Templeman was already moving towards the cloister doorway. Antonio, suddenly losing his English, turned desperately to young Crowberry.
"You've done it this time," said the youth dolefully.
"Wait here," commanded Antonio, in Portuguese. "Don't follow."
He sprang after the lady and overtook her in the cloister, although she quickened her footsteps at the noise of Antonio's. When she saw that explanations were inevitable, she got in the first word.
"Senhor da Rocha," she said, haughtily, "I am willing—perhaps over willing—to be talked to. But I decline to be talked at. This is your gratitude for my offer of help. As for 'the reign of Isabel,' I am too dull to see the joke; but I can see the insult."
She walked on.
"Hear me one moment, I entreat," cried Antonio. "Have we not, both you and I, enough troubles, solid troubles? I have told you some of mine; and, although I do not know what they are, I can see that you have great sorrows too. For Heaven's sake let us not add to them by needless misunderstandings."
He kept level with her as she walked; but she heard him with averted eyes.
"I swear," he added, "that I was not talking at you. I swear I didn't catch sight of your father's hateful tools till I had finished speaking. As for 'the reign of Isabel,' I am a Portuguese. In Portuguese King Charles is Carlos, King Edward is Duarte, King James is Thiago, Queen Elizabeth is Isabel. Those bottles and tools upset me; and I forgot to translate the name."
When he saw that she neither vouchsafed him an answer nor paused in her walk his pride was roused.
"One minute more, and I will not trouble the Senhorita again," he said, with as much hauteur as her own. "I have offered an explanation and I have sworn that it is true. As for insults, I never give them, though I receive many. You are neither reasonable nor just. I have done."
He was turning away. But her pride broke down. She stopped and faced him, and her blue eyes suddenly shone with a rush of tears.
"Yes," she cried. "Scold me, abuse me, make me wretched. It doesn't seem natural for anybody to be kind very long. Hate the sight of me, like everybody else. Call me unreasonable. So I am. Call me unjust. So I am. If there's anything more, I'm ready."
Antonio stared at her in amazement as she clenched her fine hands and stamped one of her small feet. "All head and no heart," young Crowberry had said of this poor Isabel; and, for twenty-four hours, the monk had taken it for granted that young Crowberry was right. Yet, as she stood wet-eyed before him, she seemed to be all one big, bursting, breaking heart.
Her tears helped him like lenses to read her through and through. He discerned the tragedy of her girlhood, passed between a selfish woman and a father who was half a madman. He pictured her, dragged from place to place, from failure to failure, from humiliation to humiliation. He understood why she had builded icy barriers of pride to repel the insolent pity of those who found entertainment in her father's fiascos. And he saw, what she did not see herself, that under all her defenses and pretenses was the heart of a little child. He was filled with a yearning to comfort her; but he could only stand and gaze at her with infinite compassion.
"Yesterday," she went on, "I was happy. But to-day..."
He waited for her to say "I am miserable." But she had seen the pity in his brown velvet eyes and it stung her.
"To-day," she said, "I hate you!"
As the main path from the monastery to the guest-house was broad and open, Miss Kaye-Templeman declined Antonio's protection. The glance and tone, however, which softened her words of refusal suggested to the monk that he was forgiven.
"You can't endure my escort," he said, with a ghost of a smile, "because you still hate me."
"I don't hate you," she retorted. "I never did hate you—not you in particular. For the moment I simply hated every thing and every place and every body. It's over now. Pray believe I don't make such an exhibition of myself often. And please forget, if you can, that I was so weak and silly. Good-bye. I will tell my father you are still at the abbey."
Antonio returned to the chapel. Young Crowberry was kneeling on the lowest step of the altar, facing the empty tabernacle. He rose in confusion and came to meet the monk.
"I thought you had taken her up to the guest-house," he said, as they walked out into the cloisters. "I heard you both go outside. I suppose you wasted your breath. Isabel Kaye-Templeman will never forgive you."
"The Senhorita has forgiven me already," said Antonio. "Or, to be exact, my explanation is accepted."
"Then you've some magic power over her," declared young Crowberry. "I thought so yesterday, at dinner. Now, I am sure of it. With everybody else she's as hard as nails."
"I imagine that bitter experiences have made her suspicious and reserved," said Antonio. "For that I don't blame her. But one thing pains me, beyond words. I can understand Miss Kaye-Templeman having prejudices against the Catholic Church; but she seems equally contemptuous of all religion."
"At Sir Percy's house," explained young Crowberry, "or more strictly speaking, at Sir Percy's innumerable houses and lodgings, you can depend on meeting, any Sunday night, half a dozen second-rate men of science. They're all anti-Christians and most of them are blank atheists. I've heard them talk two or three times. Their position seems to be that we know more than our grandfathers did about the way the world is made; and, therefore, the world made itself. They can't argue; or, if they can, they don't. They coolly take it for granted that everybody who still clings to Christianity is an antiquated fool."
"You think clearly, Edward, and you talk sensibly. In a minute I'm going to ask you about yourself," said Antonio. "But tell me. How far has this poor Miss Isabel been perverted by what she has heard?"
"When she consented to come and live here," Edward replied, "I heard somebody ask her how she would get on without an English church. Isabel simply answered: 'If I've given up church-going, in England, why should I begin it again in Portugal?'"
They emerged from the building and looked up the paths; but Sir Percy was not in sight. Antonio led his companion back to the spiral stairway; and when they were seated on the roof of the cloister he drew forth the truth concerning young Crowberry's state of mind and soul.
From his English journals and reviews the monk had gathered some imperfect notions of the new ecclesiastical movement which a scholar of Cambridge had set going at Oxford. He knew the names of Pusey and of Newman, and was conversant with the main argument of the notorious "Tract Ninety," although it had issued from the press only a few months before. But it was from the lips of Edward Crowberry that he received his first connected account of the matter. The young man, as Antonio had said, thought clearly and talked sensibly. Unlike the leaders of the movement he was unembarrassed by the need to reconcile his new findings with his old utterances; and therefore he saw further than much wiser men into the movement's future. Perhaps some of his more striking sentences had adhered to his mind after the perusal of books and articles; but he understood what he had read, and he had made it his own.
"Our English skeptics," he said, "have thought to take away from us our Christianity. Our Christianity remains; and we are also regaining the Church. In England the very idea of the Church had almost passed away. Our bishops had almost ceased to rule and to teach. Our sacraments had become mere commemorations—like birthdays and anniversaries. But the Church is emerging from the mists. I believe that in a hundred years from now hardly any Christianity will be professed save in communion with the Church. On the one side we shall have the ancient Church, boldly affirming supernatural religion, proclaiming the deposit of faith, cherishing her holy mysteries; and, on the other, we shall have a great band of thinkers and teachers for whom this world is all. The nondescript waverers, betwixt and between, will disappear. There will be only Isabel Kaye-Templemans and..."
"And Edward Crowberrys," said Antonio, coming to the relief of his modesty. "You prophesy boldly. But please make one point still plainer. What will this Church be? I have read something about a Via Media. Many of your writers seem to think there will be three Churches, the Eastern, the Western, and the English—Constantinople, Rome, and Canterbury. They seem to believe that the Church of England can purge herself of heresy while persisting in schism. Am I right?"
"You are right," said young Crowberry. "That is their hope. But do not judge them harshly. There is much in our national Church for us Englishmen to be proud of. And there is much in our history, much in our temperament, which will make our return to the Roman obedience a bitter pill to swallow. I know little of the Eastern Church. There are hardly any English books about it. But what has the East to do with England? On the point which divided West and East, England believes with the West. No. The only Church to which we can return is the Church from which we broke away."
"You are young and sanguine," returned Antonio. "You will want more than a hundred years before the English schism is ended. But I believe that, before you are middle-aged, you will see thousands of individuals returning home one by one. You have told me that these earnest men in Oxford claim to be fighting the battle of the Apostolical Succession. Those men will soon learn that they are already well advanced on the road to re-union with the Apostolic See. The Church in England was destroyed by monarchs' commands and by lawyers' pens; but it cannot be restored, bodily, by similar means. It will be rebuilt out of individual converts, like the Churches founded by the apostles. It will not be a wholesale, sudden, man-made event like the conversion of the Franks after the baptism of Clovis."
They sat silent, looking across the sea towards England, the hidden and beloved isle. At length Antonio asked:
"Does your father know which way your thoughts are running?"
"My father drinks and swears," young Crowberry answered. "But according to his lights he is a Christian. It is his teachers' fault, not his own, that he believes the Pope to be Anti-Christ, or the Man of Sin, or the Scarlet Woman. He ceased to read and think so long ago that his ideas cannot be changed. What would you have me do? I say nothing. I go my own way. The same with my friends. They think I'm a mere rattle like a few dry peas in a box. Let them. I prefer it."
"But, sooner or later, you must take the great step and you must declare it. What will your father say then?"
"He will say what he always says when I cross him—that I shan't have a penny of his money. If he were still rich I could stand up and simply say, 'Sir, keep the money; only pray let me call my soul my own.' But I know, and he knows, and each of us knows the other knows, that there won't be a penny to leave. In his old age I must support my father, and I shall be proud to do it. But, meanwhile, I can only hold my tongue."
After another long pause the monk said:
"One more question. This young lady Isabel. You were so eager to know my opinion of her. Why? Is there anything between you?"
Young Crowberry laughed aloud; and only when his laughter had subsided through many guffaws and chucklings could he speak.
"Is there anything between me and Isabel?" he echoed. "Yes. There is. By Jove, there's a good deal. There's an iron door. There's a brick wall. No, a stone wall—stone-cold, like a wall of ice. Anything between us? There's the whole world; also the sun, moon, planets, and fixed stars, not to mention a few comets and the Milky Way." And he chuckled again.
"Yet you're greatly interested in her," objected Antonio.
"No doubt," admitted young Crowberry. "I'm inquisitive. I'm mightily curious to know what there is behind the iron door, what there is over the brick wall. Not that it is reciprocal. Isabel thinks of me as a mere infant. Or, rather, Isabel doesn't think of me at all. She can't remember my existence; and I can't forget hers. She rubs up my quills the wrong way; but I can't even prick her fingers."
"You know her ten times better than I do," said Antonio. "Yet, after our two meetings, I suspect that you misjudge her. Any hardness—and I haven't found her so hard, after all—may be her misfortune, rather than her fault, like her irreligion. To tell the truth, Edward, I thought you wanted to marry her."
"Marry Isabel?" whistled the young man. "I might as well propose to marry Helen or Cleopatra. By the way, I don't believe that either Helen or Cleopatra was half so good-looking as Isabel. She's younger than either of 'em; but the point is that she's three years older than poor little Edward. No. Fortunately I don't want Isabel. If I did, it would be a sad case of unrequited affection."
He fixed his eyes once more on the far-spread waters. When he spoke again, it was with a solemnity in strange contrast with his interlude of jesting.
"Senhor da Rocha," he said. "I shall never marry. For months this has been growing clearer and clearer to my mind. For the present I shall stick to my engineering. I shall make more in ten years out of tunnels and embankments than my father has made in thirty out of barrels and bottles. And afterwards? I don't know. But something is in store for me which forbids me to marry."
His words moved Antonio deeply. Sixteen years before, his own vocation had proclaimed itself to his soul in this very way. He turned reverent eyes upon his companion; for had not God chosen this strange youth to be a priest and perhaps a monk? In repose Edward Crowberry's face was not without nobility. For the first time Antonio thoroughly understood him. He perceived that Edward's quickness to seize the humors of life connoted a deep sense of its pathos. Under the glittering spray of his jests and sarcasms was an unending undertone of world-woe. Young Crowberry saw, better than others, the sharp outlines of Time's successive moments because their infinitely varying curves and angles cut brilliant patterns in the near background of Eternity.
An inward voice spoke to Antonio. It was as clear as any of the commands which had guided him in the great crises of his history; and he obeyed it without parleying.
"Let us go down," he said.
They went down. Sir Percy had not arrived. The monk walked out and scanned the path. Nobody was in sight.
"You believe," he said to young Crowberry, as he re-entered the chapel, "that some work, some sacred work, is reserved for you in the future? Are you willing to do a good work this very night?"
"You mean," said the youth, "am I willing to sit up with you and to disprove that monstrous tale about a monk's ghost? I am willing. I told you so yesterday."
"No and Yes," Antonio answered. "We will disprove the midnight ghost. But I mean something else. Will you work with me against Sir Percy to save these azulejos?"
Young Crowberry started.
"It smacks of disloyalty to your friends, of disobedience to your father, of deceit all round," Antonio went on. "But think. We cannot serve your friends and your father better than by frustrating a sacrilege of which they will be ashamed when the gains are spent. Remember, these azulejos are not Sir Percy's. He has paid to the Government, which stole this place, hardly more than a tenth of the price, and he has no right to carry a handful of dust or a chip of stone outside the gates. Don't answer me in a hurry. Refuse if your conscience so bids you, and I shall not complain."
He walked away and sat down in his old stall. Young Crowberry moved slowly to the white marble doorpost set in the blue midst of the azulejos and leaned against it, with his head bowed. At the end of five minutes he strode boldly up to the sanctuary rails and said:
"I will help."
Footsteps resounded in the cloister, and, a few seconds later, Mr. Crowberry and Sir Percy appeared, talking loudly. They kept their hats on their heads and their cigars in their mouths. The baronet, who carried a glazed jar, was so intent on his operations that he forgot to greet the monk.
"Well?" asked Mr. Crowberry, sidling close to Antonio. "You've turned up? And you've come to your senses?"
"From your point of view, my answer is No," said the monk. "I have not come to my senses. Has Sir Percy come to his? Does he still persist in removing what isn't his own?"
"He persists," said Mr. Crowberry. "And I can't blame him. If he doesn't steal the stuff, somebody else will. Now take my advice. Don't be an ass. Ten minutes ago, up at the house, Sir Percy nearly blew his daughter's head off for suggesting that the azulejos should be left alone. They've got to come down. Give him a lift and you can make your own terms about the lease of the vineyards. Cross him, and you will lose the vineyards—and the azulejos'll come down all the same."
"Hallo, you've come!" bawled out Sir Percy to Antonio. "We've been waiting for you all day. Hurry up and look at my saw."
The monk stepped forward.
The frame of the circular saw was ingeniously secured to the face of the azulejos by means of leather suckers, such as boys play with among cobble-stones. This simple and portable device served its purpose without doing the tiles the smallest harm. The saw itself had a gear which caused it to descend in the frame as the teeth cut their way downward. Mounting the short ladder at Sir Percy's bidding, Antonio saw that a groove had been chiseled in the cement and that it was filled with an evil-smelling mixture of acids.