"First, we took off that white stone," explained Sir Percy, pointing to the marble cornice. "D'ye see? Then we cut out this channel. D'ye see? Mark the principle. The great thing is, not to try and get the azulejos off the cement, but to get the cement, azulejos, and all, off the wall. D'ye see? It doesn't matter how rough we are with the front of the wall and the back of the cement, so long as we don't crack the tile. That's the principle. D'ye see? Now, pour in a pint or so of this."
"You'll do it better yourself," said Antonio, descending the ladder. Sir Percy promptly climbed up and poured out another acid from his stone jar.
"The acids rot the cement," he went on. "That's the principle. They disintegrate it. You see? Then the saw sets to work. It goes through the cement as if it's Bath brick. We shall get down two lots of azulejos in two places. That'll give us elbow-room for cutting through the cement backs of the lot between with a mason's saw. You understand—a long saw with two handles? D'ye see? The acid and the round saw here and there; and the long saw in between. That's the principle."
The baronet stared at Antonio, waiting for his opinion.
"Well?" he demanded impatiently.
"I am quite unable," said the monk coolly, "to suggest the smallest improvement in your Excellency's invention. But the daylight is failing. If your Excellency works by candle-light or lamp-light, some azulejos will probably be broken. Let the acids work all night; and let us all meet here at eight o'clock to-morrow morning."
"Nonsense," cried Sir Percy. "We've time to get down the first lot."
"And what about dinner?" asked Crowberrypère, in great alarm.
"Yes. Dinner?" echoed Crowberryfils.
"Dinner be hanged!" cried Sir Percy angrily.
"Your Excellency must give the acids all night to work," said Antonio.
"Yes, your Excellency really must," added young Crowberry. "Perhaps your Excellency has forgotten that the great Carthaginian Hannibal likewise employed an acid—namely vinegar—to make rocks friable, during his famous crossing of the Alps, as is narrated by the historian Livy in his twenty-first book. I know the passage well, having had to copy it out twenty times at school for putting pepper in the usher's pipe."
"Shut up!" snapped his indignant father. But the youth was not abashed.
"If Hannibal left his puddles of vinegar out all night," he said, "I, for one, cannot be a party to your Excellency's doing differently. I'm off."
He moved away. Antonio followed. Mr. Crowberry senior, glad of any excuse to get back punctually for dinner, hurried in their train. Sir Percy gaped after them in deep disgust. Then he flung down his chisel upon the pavement and strode out after the others.
"At eleven o'clock to-night," whispered young Crowberry in Antonio's ear.
"At eight o'clock to-morrow morning," said Antonio in a loud voice.
He went his way and they went theirs.
Had the black monk's ghost attended his vigil in the abbey chapel young Crowberry could hardly have seen it. His labors among the azulejos preoccupied him for over four hours, and it was within an hour of dawn when he stole back on tip-toe to his room in the guest-house.
As for Antonio, he did not go to bed at all. After parting from young Crowberry at the chapel-door, he hastened straight to wake up José; and as soon as he had made sure that José understood the part he had to play, it was time for the monk's morning splash in the deepest pool of the brook. After Antonio had shaved and dressed himself with unusual care, both master and man sat down to a first breakfast much ampler than usual; for who could tell what might befall?
The monk took care to arrive a few minutes late at the chapel. Sir Percy was there already, high on his ladder.
"Hallo," he cried, without wasting breath or time in saying a Good morning. "The stuff works. D'ye hear? It works. We shall cut through the cement like cheese."
"Don't say cheese," pleaded young Crowberry, appearing in the doorway. "It makes me hungry. Say putty, or chalk, or soft soap."
He was swept into the chapel by Mrs. Baxter, who suddenly filled the doorway like a wave bursting through an arch on a limestone coast. Behind Mrs. Baxter could be heard the loud voice of Mr. Crowberry. Antonio advanced to greet the lady and to express his hope that she was well.
"No, Signor Da Rocha, I am not well," responded Mrs. Baxter tartly. "Since you asked me, I am very ill indeed. But who cares? I have long ceased to look for gratitude; but it seems that I must no longer expect common humanity."
"By common humanity, ma'am," said young Crowberry, "I assume you mean ham and eggs, or possibly kidneys and bacon. I too, alas, have looked for them in vain."
"I allude," said Mrs. Baxter severely, "to the fact that I have been dragged from bed, despite my sick and suffering condition, without a morsel of breakfast, to catch my death of cold at an unearthly hour in this living tomb. I do not allude, Mr. Edward, to kidneys and bacon."
"What's this about kidneys and bacon?" demanded Mr. Crowberry, hurrying up with an eagerness which made him almost sprightly. "Where? When? How on earth have you managed it?"
Antonio abandoned the two voluptuaries to the tender mercies of young Crowberry; for Isabel was standing in the doorway. Her walk through the morning air had painted her cheeks a delicate rose-pink; but, as she stood among them with white ungloved hands showing against her blue dress of fine stuff, and with a large white feather curled round her blue hat, she seemed like the azulejos, all blue and white.
"So you have come to see the end?" she said.
"Who knows?" he retorted, smiling sadly. "Will the saw survive the acid? We shall see. But I crave leave to thank you. You have interceded with your illustrious father."
"I have," she said, "and my illustrious father simply ordered me off to bed, like a small child. You don't understand him. He has never noticed that I am grown up into quite an old young woman. He still calls Mrs. Baxter my governess. I believe he thinks she still gives me lessons in arithmetic and spelling. I did my best; but it was worse than nothing."
"If you had succeeded triumphantly," he answered, with one of his unconscious glances into the depths of her eyes, "I could not be more grateful than I am."
Young Crowberry came forward and presented his morning compliments. He added that Sir Percy had found a defect in the vertical traveler of his circular saw and that he wished to be unbothered by onlookers while he put it right. The young man went on to suggest that it might divert that Excellent Creature Mrs. Baxter from the contemplation of her wrongs if they showed her round the monastery.
Grumbling gruffly at his fate, Mr. Crowberry the elder joined the party. Mrs. Baxter composed her features to an iron immobility. She was evidently determined to approve of nothing.
"I confess, ma'am," said young Crowberry, "that the humble entertainment we have to offer is poorer in excitement than some others; for example, than the public hangings which are provided for the nobility and gentry of our own country at this same hour of eight o'clock."
Nobody laughed.
"You are standing," the youth rattled on, "in a monastery, or monasterium. The word is derived, ma'am, as you are aware, frommonachus, a monk, andsterium, a sterium. This passage is called a corridor, fromcurro, meaning 'I run,' anddor, a door. You observe the doors on both sides. With your permission, ma'am, we will proceed to the kitchen."
The white kitchen was filled with bright sunshine. The sun's beams came flashing back from the great hood of burnished copper, and the singing torrent was quick with glancing lights. Young Crowberry showed Mrs. Baxter the long turnspit, turned by a wheel at the end, and gravely assured her that it was capable of roasting a pigeon, whole.
"What is that wordPaz, between the windows?" asked Isabel.
"It is Portuguese for 'Peace,' the watchword of the Benedictine order," Antonio answered. "The monks here were Benedictines."
"What were they here for?" Mr. Crowberry demanded.
Antonio hesitated. Then he quietly gave the answer:
"To pray, and to praise God."
"Praise God, indeed!" cried Mr. Crowberry. "A fine way of praising God to stuff and guzzle from one year's end to another! I'll tell you what it is, da Rocha. You've got your tongue in your cheek. You're a man with fifty times too much sense to believe that the Almighty is pleased with the praises of a greasy pack of gormandizers and soakers. Thank goodness your country has turned 'em out."
He strode out of the kitchen with all the dignity of a churchwarden carrying the collection-plate into the vestry. The others followed.
"What is behind these doors?" demanded Mr. Crowberry.
"Cells," said Antonio, curtly.
"Cells?"
"Why not, sir?" asked young Crowberry, in honeyed tones. "Why not cells here as in other penitential establishments? All the best prisons have them. I thought it was a matter of common knowledge that the principal occupation of a monk when he gets into a monastery is to prevent the other monks getting out."
"Shut up!" snapped his father, striding on.
Mrs. Baxter spoke at last. She adventured the point of her shoe and the tip of her nose into Antonio's cell, which had been left open.
"Is this the condemned cell, Mr. Edward?" she asked with a shudder.
"They're all condemned cells, ma'am," Edward answered. "Every monk was condemned to penal servitude for life. At the end of his term he was taken out to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. A few days after, he was buried alive, or walled up. If this didn't cure him of his errors the Abbot began to think it was really time for something to be done; and he was sentenced to take a bath."
Antonio turned away, grievously wounded. After their solemn conversations on the highest and holiest things, these jests scorched him like hot irons. But, upon reflection, he could condone much of young Crowberry's offense. Doubtless the youth had a good motive in plying the edged tool of ridicule against the prejudices of his companions. But his main excuse lay in his inability to take monks seriously. The youth did not know that Antonio was himself a monk, and that this had been Antonio's cell and that Antonio had spoken to his Lord within it. He had never consciously met a monk in his life. Monks to him were like mailed knights to a reader of historical novels; they were merely the picturesque literary fictions of Mrs. Radcliffe, of Sir Walter Scott, of "Monk" Lewis. Or, rather, monks to young Crowberry were pretty much what exorcists had been to Antonio. Although the Church still ordained exorcists, and exorcists were prayed for every Good Friday, Antonio had turned more than one light pleasantry about them.
Nevertheless the monk could have wished that young Crowberry had spoken otherwise. When every allowance had been made, his irony remained more mischievous than useful; and Antonio determined to counteract it. Turning to Mrs. Baxter he gave her a rapid sketch of a monk's day. At the very outset, when he told her how every monk answered the loud knock at his cell door before daybreak with "Thanks be to God!" the Excellent Creature shivered; but, in spite of herself, she grew interested. Even Mr. Crowberry condescended to return and to give the orator his grudging attention. But at Isabel Antonio threw only two furtive glances; for she seemed to be hearing him with distaste.
"Thank you," snorted Crowberrypère, as the monk's voice ceased. "You merely confirm what I've always said. For my part I believe that the Almighty intended us to enjoy the good things of life. If not, why did He provide 'em? Pssh! Humbug! D'ye mean to tell me, sir, that the Almighty's pleased with all this nonsensical fasting—with madmen clemming 'emselves till they're like a gang of scarecrows, with their bones sticking out through their skins? No, da Rocha, you don't. I tell you again that you've got your tongue in your cheek."
"Apparently Mr. da Rocha has his tongue in both his cheeks at once," put in Crowberryfils. "I gather, sir, that these regrettable monks were, at one and the same time, a gang of bony scarecrows starving themselves to death and also a pack of fat and greasy gormandizers and guzzlers. Such Jesuitical duplicity makes me shudder."
"Come to think of it," blurted out his father, "I shouldn't be surprised if da Rocha here is a Jesuit monk in disguise. Where's his whiskers? Where's his wife? I don't call it natural."
"A Jesuit monk?" moaned Mrs. Baxter, recoiling in horror. "How dreadful!" And she grabbed at Isabel's arm as if to snatch a helpless victim out of danger.
"There's no such a thing as a Jesuit monk, madam," smiled Antonio. "The Jesuits are a Society, not a monastic order."
"There are Jesuit nuns, anyhow," muttered Mrs. Baxter, scowling darkly. "England is full of them."
"Pardon me," exclaimed Antonio, keeping all his good temper. "That can hardly be. There are women-Benedictines, women-Dominicans, women-Carmelites, and so on; but there's no such thing as a woman-Jesuit."
"Pardon me, too," retorted Mrs. Baxter warmly. "I am English and I ought to know. I repeat that England is full of female Jesuits. So how can you stand there, Signor, and say that Jesuits are never women?"
"They are women, of course," interrupted Mr. Crowberry; "old women. Silly old women. Why, they walk about in petticoats, and nothing pleases 'em so much as putting on finery and dressing up images, like little girls dressing up dolls. Tut! But come, da Rocha, out with the truth. I'll lay you a dozen of old Madeira against a half a dozen of your new champagne that you can't swear your Bible oath that you aren't a Jesuit in disguise."
"I won't have the Madeira; but lend me your pocket Bible," demanded Antonio.
"Lay your hand on your heart, instead," Mr. Crowberry answered.
It was plainly necessary to take up the gauntlet which had been thrown down; so Antonio placed his hand on his heart, and said:
"I swear I am not a Jesuit, either in disguise or out of it. I never was a Jesuit; am not now; and never shall be."
"Amen," said Mr. Crowberry, not without traces of thankfulness and earnestness in his tones; "I'm glad you're letting me off the old Madeira. Hallo! Time's up. Here's Sir Percy."
"D'ye hear? Am I to wait all day while you stand there chattering?" Sir Percy bawled out. And he strode back into the chapel.
Everybody made haste to follow. But before they could see whence it proceeded a horrible noise set their teeth on edge. It was as though somebody was creaking a basket-lid near a hive of buzzing bees. Antonio knew that the saw had begun to revolve. He pressed forward and found Sir Percy's gray-headed stolid man-servant Jackson working a treadle at the foot of the azulejos. High above Jackson's head the saw was grinding round in the acidulated cement.
"It works!" cried Sir Percy. "D'ye hear, all of you? D'ye see? It works!"
As the saw's teeth bit and chewed the acrid cud a fine gritty dust flew up into a sunbeam and glittered like the spray of a waterfall. The noise increased, until it resembled the drawing of a great slate pencil backwards along a vast slate. Isabel and Mrs. Baxter put their fingers in their ears.
"It works, it works, it works!" repeated Sir Percy. His eyes shone. Antonio glanced at him and shuddered. One moment he looked like a boy of twenty; the next, he looked a hundred years old.
The saw went on gnawing, gnawing, biting, biting, screaming, screaming, like an obscene fiend, until the back of one azulejo seemed to be wholly cut through. This first azulejo—a tile about eight inches long—formed part of the multi-colored border which framed the picture of the Saint's pious boyhood. Antonio watched it with a white face and a thumping heart. Suddenly he shouted:
"Look out! Stand clear!"
Almost in the same instant the tile leaped forward and crashed down upon the pavement, smashing up into four or five pieces. Mrs. Baxter wailed aloud. Isabel sprang like a flash to examine the damage, and the others were soon at her elbows. They found that the saw had cut down cleanly to a certain distance; but the tile had fallen outward before the scission was complete, and the cement on its lower part had broken jaggedly from the wall.
Sir Percy closed and opened his eyes like a man dazed. Isabel moved to his side. But he recovered himself swiftly and brushed her away.
"What does it matter?" he demanded, in great wrath and scorn. "What are you all standing there like stuck pigs for? It's the border. We can mend it. What does it matter? D'ye hear?"
He cast a glance at the saw. It was correctly placed for cutting down the azulejo which stood below its fallen neighbor. Waving Jackson aside he placed his own foot on the treadle and worked away with feverish energy. Hummings, creakings, and screamings once more filled the holy place.
After the onlookers had fallen back a few yards, the monk found himself close to Isabel. He did not look at her, nor she at him; but he felt instinctively that she was not on his side. Standing with tense limbs and straining eyes she seemed to be putting her whole mind and will towards her father's triumph and Antonio's defeat.
"Take care of your skulls!" sang out young Crowberry. His light tenor voice rose almost to a scream.
Jackson jumped clear; but Sir Percy held his ground until the second azulejo lay shattered at his feet. Then he ceased working the treadle and moved with slow, short steps into the middle of the nave. As he did so the saw, framework and all, plunged after the azulejo with a tremendous crash.
In contrast with the hideous noises which had preceded it, the silence in the chapel was uncanny. Mr. Crowberry sat down abruptly on an old black bench. Mrs. Baxter wiped away real or simulated tears. Antonio and Isabel, once more side by side, stared at the ruins of the saw and its gear. Young Crowberry leaned glumly against the doorpost. Jackson maintained his deaf-mute stolidity.
Sir Percy began to walk up and down the nave. His military rigidity was gone; and instead of standing as straight as a poplar he bent and crouched like a thunder-blasted, storm-beaten oak. Antonio, in his moment of victory, suddenly caught sight of Sir Percy's eyes. They were like the eyes of a long-hunted, worn-out tiger brought suddenly to bay; and, at the sight of them, the monk's heart nearly broke with love and pity. Involuntarily he took a step or two towards the stricken man.
"Get out of my way!" thundered Sir Percy, blazing into terrible anger. "Clear out!"
A chisel was lying in his path. With the toe of his finely-made boot he dealt it so forcible a kick that the iron went ringing across the pavement and chipped a petal from a rose in the lower border of the Saint's Shipwreck. As he strode towards Jackson he limped a little.
"So your dead monks have fought for you and won," said Isabel bitterly, turning round upon Antonio.
"Sir Percy will try again," he answered.
"My father never tries again," said she, once more turning away her face.
Just then they heard a sickening cry of pain; and the monk saw Sir Percy drop heavily from the top of the short ladder. Jackson caught him as he fell. The luckless baronet had been trying to discover the cause of his failure and had thrust his hand into a pool of burning acid. He sank against Jackson's rock-like shoulder and swooned away.
Antonio instantly took command. His strong voice rang through the chapel like a brazen trumpet.
"Mr. Crowberry," he said, "run to the kitchen. There are bowls on a dresser. Bring us water from the stream at once. Edward, rush up to the house. Bring oil and lint—oil and silk or linen or whatever you can. Mrs. Baxter, you will kindly go and prepare his bed at once."
He did not name Isabel; for she was already bending over her father with such anguish in her blue eyes that Antonio could hardly bear the sight. For a moment he was forced to turn aside.
"Take heart," he said softly in her ear, as soon as he was able to speak. "We shall bring him round. For an hour or two, I fear he will have great pain; but there is an ointment at my farm which will give him ease. Be brave. Cheer up. He must not open his eyes on weeping faces."
While Jackson unfastened the prostrate man's collar and Mr. Crowberry bathed his forehead with cold water from the torrent, Antonio hurried through the doorway and sped up the spiral stairs which led to the roof of the cloister. But, about six feet from the top, he pushed open a somber door and entered a long attic which ran over the ceilings of the monk's cells, parallel with the north wall of the chapel.
In the faint light he made out José faithfully crouching in the place which had been appointed him. By his side lay an old ramrod and a mallet. In the mortar between the granite blocks of the wall were the holes which Antonio and young Crowberry had bored in the night. Their measurements were so exact that José's ramrod had easily struck out the azulejos the moment he heard the preconcerted signals of "Look out!" and "Take care of your skulls!"
"Did I do right, your Worship, in knocking over that skriking saw as well?" asked José.
"You did right," said Antonio quickly. "We have won; and now we must care for the enemy's wounded. Sir Percy has burned his hand with acid. Run to the farm. Open the green box. Bring back the yellow ointment as fast as your legs can carry you."
José raced off, hiding ramrod and mallet under his coat. Hardly had he vanished before it flashed across Antonio's mind that some virtue might remain in the drugs which the Cellarer had left behind four years before. He found the cupboard, smashed it open, and ran back to the chapel with oil, lint, ointment, and a cordial.
When José reappeared he was just in time to take a hand with Antonio and Jackson in carrying Sir Percy back to the guest-house. Young Crowberry had ridden off for the Navares doctor. In the baronet's comfortless room the monk lavished all his leech-craft; and soon, under the sway of a strong draught, the sufferer fell asleep.
Isabel accompanied Antonio to the door. He cut short her thanks, and was hurrying away homeward after José, when he heard her light step behind him. She had something to say; but her courage failed her and she did not say it.
"There is something else that I can do?" asked the monk.
"Yes," she answered, with a great effort. "You can ... you can promise..."
"I can promise ... what?"
Isabel blushed furiously.
"Nothing," she said. "Good-bye."
She fled back to the steps. But he caught her and seized the white hand which was about to turn the brass knob.
"You shall tell me," he insisted, mastering her with his velvet eyes. "I can promise ... what?"
"You can promise," she said, looking on the ground, "that I may see you again."
A chariot was at the guest-house door when Antonio called to enquire about Sir Percy's progress. At the horses' heads stood Jackson waiting. Rugs, portmanteaux, and a brass-clamped trunk had already been strapped in their places.
"H'llo!" sang out young Crowberry's light voice from the top of the steps. "You're the very man we were coming to see. We were coming to say good-bye."
"You and your father?"
"I and my father and Sir Percy. We're off to Lisbon. The doctor from Navares was here all yesterday afternoon. Seemed rather clever. He liked the way you'd dressed the hand; but he doesn't like Sir Percy's general health, especially his heart. So the guv'nor and I are taking him to the chief Lisbon doctor. We shall go to Oporto by sea next week—the guv'nor and I—and from there to London."
He descended the bottom step; and, after marching off Antonio by the arm to a spot out of Jackson's hearing, he added:
"Don't get the idea that I repent of helping to save the azulejos. We did the right thing. All the same, I'm not happy about it. In a sense we're to blame for Sir Percy's burnt hand. Hang it, he's a brick, after all! I couldn't stand pain like that. He doesn't give a single moan. But it isn't Sir Percy who upsets me most. It's Isabel. I said she was all head and no heart. By Jove, think of it! No heart! Yet she's hardly left his bedside these twenty-four hours. She waits on him hand and foot; and sometimes the look in her eyes is just about as much as I can stand."
"This Isabel certainly has a heart," said Antonio. "If she's unlike other people, it's because she has more heart, not less. I hope the Senhorita will not be fatigued by her journey to Lisbon."
"She isn't going."
"Not going? You don't intend to leave these ladies alone?"
"No. We're leaving them in charge of a friend. Besides, there'll be Jackson."
"The friend is a man?"
"Quite. He's a man from top to toe. His name is Francisco Manoel Oliveira da Rocha."
Before the monk could reply, they were joined by Mr. Crowberry, to whom Jackson had announced Antonio's arrival.
"You're welcome, da Rocha," he said heartily. "This will save us an hour. We were meaning to call and see you on our way to Lisbon. Teddy has told you the news. We want you to be as neighborly as you can to the ladies. It will only be for eight or nine days."
"I shall be happy to serve the Senhoras," answered Antonio.
"Happy? So you ought to be. But you don't look it. Come, damn it all, what did you tell me yourself? The worst of the year's work is over; and you said you were going to study. My advice is ... Don't. Give yourself a rest. Run up here of an evening for a bit of music or a game of cribbage."
"Or for a quiet pipe and glass with that Excellent Creature Mrs. Baxter," put in young Edward.
"Do the Senhoras approve of this?" asked Antonio.
"We didn't ask 'em," Mr. Crowberry answered. "But never fear. They'll jump at it."
"And Sir Percy?"
"He approves of you entirely. Y' see, da Rocha, I've been giving you glowing testimonials. I've said that if I were the Grand Turk himself I would trust you with the latch-key of the harem. I don't doubt though," added Mr. Crowberry, chuckling and digging at Antonio's ribs, "that you've been a bit of a dog in your time. Eh? And none the worse for it either. Still, the point is you're as steady as an old horse, now. Besides, supposing you wanted to make love to Isabel, it would be all the same. You'd simply get a frost-bite."
"I am entirely at the service of all your Excellencies," said Antonio, rather stiffly.
"Thanks," Mr. Crowberry answered. "But don't be too much at the service of Mrs. Baxter. Between ourselves, she's a selfish, lazy, avaricious old humbug. She looks the picture of good temper; but don't be taken in. Mrs. Baxter boasts that she has stuck to the Kaye-Templemans through thick and thin; but she's buttered her own bread thick all the time. She is a rich woman—all out of Sir Percy. When the ship begins to sink, Mrs. Baxter'll be the first to rat."
"Then how must I treat her?" Antonio asked.
"Simply leave her alone. She'll spend her days in bed, like a dormouse—only, dormice don't wake up every four hours to ask if it isn't feeding-time. Even while Sir Percy has been in all this pain, Mrs. Baxter has had the servants running about after her the same as usual."
"What about Jackson?"
"Oh, he'll sleep all day too. He'll find a snug corner and smoke and dose till dinner-time. But he doesn't soak. And, if there's work to do, he'll do it. Jackson's all right. But come inside."
On the threshold of the large room Isabel met them. Want of sleep had paled her cheeks and dulled her eyes; but an unwonted softness of expression made her more beautiful in the monk's view than ever before. He could not help feeling glad that she was remaining behind, and proud that she was to be in his charge. Isabel led Antonio straight to Sir Percy, who was sitting in a rocking-chair with his arm in a sling.
The baronet was more changed than his daughter. He looked weak and old; but he was no longer distraught. After he had answered Antonio's inquiries gratefully, he said:
"Senhor da Rocha, it is possible I have behaved towards you with curtness or even with downright uncouthness. If so, I ask your pardon most sincerely, and I beg you to set it all down to my preoccupation with a scheme which has failed. My daughter and I will never forget your kindness. Indeed, we are about to presume still further upon it. You know that I shall be absent a few days in Lisbon, and we are hoping that you will be so very good as to come now and then to this house."
It seemed strange to Antonio. But he reflected that the English were strange people, and that Sir Percy was far stranger than most of his compatriots. Again he reflected that neither Sir Percy nor Mr. Crowberry, in spite of their friendliness, regarded him as other than a simple farmer who would never cease to be conscious of their differences of station. Accordingly he replied:
"Far from asking me a service, your Excellency, on the contrary, is doing me a great honor. I value it so much that he may take his journey with an easy mind."
Jackson brought in two bottles of tawny port, bearing the familiar label of Castro and de Mattos. Healths were drunk all round; and although Sir Percy, Isabel and Antonio did not drink more than two full glasses between them, the bottles were quickly emptied. Farewells were said. Then Sir Percy was placed in the carriage, with Crowberrypèreat his side. Crowberryfilsclimbed upon the box, accompanied by the Portuguese groom, who had come with the party from Oporto. At Sir Percy's suggestion, Antonio took the vacant seat opposite Mr. Crowberry, so that he should save his legs a mile of the journey home. Before entering the carriage, however, the monk turned to Isabel and enquired:
"At what hours will my visits be least unacceptable to the Senhoras?"
"Come up this afternoon," cried Mr. Crowberry, emphatically. "It'll be to-day they'll feel loneliest, when all we noisy nuisances are gone. To-day and to-morrow."
"But you need sleep?" said Antonio to Isabel. He intended to express no more than his genuine solicitude; but his soft eyes met hers with another glance of unconscious tenderness. She colored so noticeably that he made haste to add: "So I will not come until four o'clock."
Standing on tiptoe beside the chariot Isabel gave her father a single kiss. It was plain that such outward marks of affection were not often exchanged between them, and that the public giving and taking of this one kiss meant more than a thousand kisses between less reserved beings. Even young Crowberry seemed to notice it, as though he had eyes in his back; for he cracked a whip, and the chariot lurched on its way.
At four o'clock Antonio found Mrs. Baxter waiting in state to receive him. Although the light blue silk dress into which she had packed herself for the occasion made the Excellent Creature look almost as broad as long, she was not a wholly unpleasing body. Her hair, primly parted in the middle, and drawn tightly over her temples, was still glossy and black. Her insistent smile showed white and regular teeth, and the color in her cheeks gave her a buxom and wholesome look in odd contrast with her hypochondriac complaints. She wore a very large oval brooch containing a lock of hair which, presumably, had pertained to the lamented Baxter; also gold ear-rings and a fine gold chain.
It soon became evident that Mr. Crowberry had been descanting upon Antonio's importance; for Mrs. Baxter was determined to convince the visitor of her own past greatness. She monopolized the conversation. Beginning with an account of a happy girlhood spent amidst every luxury in a part of England unnamed, she went on to speak of her rashly romantic marriage with the dashing ne'er-do-well Baxter; or her universally-envied beauty as a bride; of her tearing her veil in church, and of her coming out in a gust of rain to find a black cat sitting on the vicar's first wife's gravestone—three infallible portents of evil. Next, of the handsome, but unpractical, Baxter's prompt and inconsiderate demise; of the un-Christian obduracy of her flint-hearted father, who would neither forgive nor finance his headstrong offspring; and of the entirely diabolical behavior of the surviving Baxters.
Up to this point Isabel had sat bending over some embroidery, with an air of finding all such work distasteful; but when the Excellent Creature began putting the finishing touches to her character-sketch of the late Miss Caroline Sophia Baxter, she got up unostentatiously and went softly to the window. Mrs. Baxter did not mind, but proceeded to praise the admirable Providence which had suddenly thrown her into the path of dear Lady Kaye-Templeman. A hundred details followed, and Antonio's eye began to rove. Nor did it rove vainly; for when Mrs. Baxter explained how she and dear Lady Kaye-Templeman had grown to be practically two sisters, the monk saw the slender girl in the window tap the floor impatiently with her small foot.
"Of course, I was with her at the end," said Mrs. Baxter, mopping away tears. "How could I have been anywhere else? Her last thoughts were of her darling child. 'Clara,' she said to me, 'promise me that you will never desert my Isabel.'"
The small foot tapped more sharply.
"And I neverhavedeserted her," concluded the Excellent Creature, "although families of the highest quality and the first respectability have sought to induce me, by the most tempting offers, to enter their establishments. No, Signor, I've never deserted poor Isabel, and, until she is dead or married, I never will."
"There are clouds coming up from the Atlantic," said Isabel, turning round abruptly. "Mrs. Baxter, we must either lose the pleasure of Mr. da Rocha's company, or else let him be soaked through."
Filled with a deep dread of the dreary half-hour when, having recited her own history, she must listen to another's, Mrs. Baxter was relieved to see Antonio go. The Iberian flourishes which adorned his parting compliments completed her satisfaction. Why had no one ever spoken so nicely to her in England? She shook hands with Antonio, and very graciously pressed him to come and drink tea as soon as he should be able.
Isabel accompanied him to the top of the stone steps.
"I'm so sorry," she said.
"Sorry?"
"About Mrs. Baxter. No! Don't say anything insincere. I know as well as you do that you hated it as much as I did. I could put up with the tale when it was half truth and half white lies. But it has changed with every telling until it's nearly all jet-black fibs. My mother liked her poor friends more than her rich ones; but Mrs. Baxter was not her friend. Nor is Mrs. Baxter's name Clara. It is plain Jane."
Antonio smiled. "Anyhow, I've got it over," he said. "It had to come, some time or other. But where are your clouds that are going to drench me to the skin?"
"Over there," answered Isabel, pointing to one tiny milk-white cirrus adrift in the clear blue lake of heaven. "It's as large as a man's hand. You think I'm irreligious; but I've read the Bible, and I remember something about a cloud no bigger than a man's hand which worked some miracle."
"That little cloud delivered Israel from drought and from famine," said Antonio.
"And this little cloud has delivered you from Mrs. Baxter and from ... me," she retorted.
"It is banishing me from you," said Antonio, with prompt gallantry.
"If you wish to see me again—though I can't think why you should," she said, in as colorless a tone as she could command, "don't always come in the afternoon, or to the house. Mrs. Baxter will drive you mad. Come in the morning, to the ravine—that pretty pool with the cascade and the stepping-stones. I shall be there reading on fine days. It's a shame to pen you up in a stuffy house. Besides, you said it was your favorite spot. Mrs. Baxter is calling. Good-bye."
When Isabel reached the pool with the stepping-stones Antonio was already there. He could have wished that Miss Kaye-Templeman had not suggested what might look like surreptitious meetings; but, being a Portuguese gentleman as well as a monk, he could do no other than attend her at the place she had appointed.
It was a perfect morning. The sun shone more hotly and brightly than on many a day of July, making one thankful for the shade of the trees, and for the cold spray of the waterfall. Hundreds of birds were singing, and a great Japanese medlar scented the air. Yet, after half an hour or so of uneasy talk on commonplace topics, the monk turned home again with a smarting breast.
Somehow the lady gave him a feeling that he had intruded; that he had committed an indelicacy in so swiftly taking her at her word; and that he was beginning to bore her. The afternoon, before, on the top of the steps, she had seemed sorry to see him go; but, at the stepping-stones, she seemed rather to regret his having come. While her politeness was unexceptionable, their good-comradeship appeared to be at an end.
His failure to retain her favor piqued Antonio. Like many another monk before him, he had often found pleasure in the belief that, if need arose, he could hold his own as a man of the world. Nor did the pleasantness of such a belief spring altogether from sinful pride. He had sought to hallow God's name and to hasten the coming of the Kingdom by sacrificing his share of life's delights and excitements; and he naturally preferred to think that the world he had renounced was a world in which he would have triumphed, and not a world in which he would have blundered and failed. The first eventful days which followed the arrival of all these English people at the abbey had ministered so subtly to his complacency that the awakening was all the ruder. Beneath the surface of his monkish humility the natural man began to stir proudly and imperiously towards the regaining of his dominance.
The next day was Sunday. So as to save the faces of poor Magarida and her family, Antonio avoided the ten o'clock crowd and fulfilled his obligation at the seven o'clock low Mass. This was the Mass most favored of the local Saints and Blessed Ones; but although the cura and the worshipers were full of quiet devotion the monk found it hard to keep his thoughts from wandering. Nearly all the way home Isabel tripped daintily hither and thither before his mind's eyes. He soon decided that he must not present himself again either at pool or at guest-house for a day or two; but this resolution only enhanced the dreariness of his mood.
Reaching the farm about nine o'clock he was about to prepare his lonely breakfast when José appeared with a letter. It had been brought, he said, by Sir Percy's Portuguese servant, whom José proceeded to denounce as an inquisitive minx and a saucy chatterbox. Antonio broke the seal and read:
Mrs. Baxter presents her compliments to Signor da Rocha and requests the pleasure of his company to-morrow (Sunday) afternoon, for tea. Mrs. B. trusts that Signor R. reached home yesterday before the shower.
Saturday Evening.
Underneath Mrs. Baxter's expansive script the monk saw a few infinitesimal characters, so minute that in spite of his keen eyes he was forced to hold them up to the light. At first they looked like a wavy and broken line, about half an inch long; but he deciphered them at last. They ran:
Do come. I. K-T.
"For instance," said José indignantly. "She asked me point-blank, plump out, whether your Worship is engaged to be married."
Antonio wheeled round so sharply that he almost let the paper fall. It took him some moments to realize that José was not quoting Isabel, but only Isabel's servant.
"I up and asked her, straight off, if she was engaged to be married herself," continued José. "And when she said No, I said, 'With a tongue like that I don't wonder at it.' Then she went home."
Antonio forced a laugh and turned back to light a couple of pine-cones on the hearth. But when José had set out for church he picked up the note again and read Isabel's message thrice over. Only nine letters; yet they harped and sang around him as if they had been the Nine Muses, and all his heaviness and dreariness fled away from their silver voices.
Later on, while he was conning his breviary under the orange-trees, the monk suddenly faced a question. It came to him as he recited the None psalmQuomodo dilexi legem, at the wordstota die meditatio mea est. Could he truthfully say that his "meditation all day long" was still upon God? He examined his conscience.
The result was not unsatisfactory. After years of loneliness his mind surely needed the tonic of intercourse with minds of its own order. Mr. Crowberry and his son had certainly wrecked his plan of autumn meditation and study; but after all, these two were associated with the most crowded and stirring months of Antonio's career, and he could hardly be cool at their irruption into the quiet life of the farm. Again, the affair of the azulejos had distracted him greatly; but surely God had been the substratum of his long thinkings, and the firmament overarching them all. As for Isabel, he was spending time with her at Sir Percy's express request. That he should find delight in her society was proper and right. As a da Rocha, whose ancestors had fought against the Moors to establish the Portuguese kingdom and against the Spaniards to restore it, he naturally felt invigorated by his encounters with a gently bred and high-born damsel.
Although he was perfectly honest in all this inward searching, the monk, nevertheless, failed to push the probe right home. Isabel had been confided to his neighborly good-will, Isabel was intellectual, Isabel spoke his beloved English, Isabel was an aristocrat, like himself; therefore Isabel's temporary prominence in his thoughts was explained. It did not occur to him that Isabel was also the prettiest and daintiest girl he had ever seen, and that this fact might have some little to do with his interest in her. But he was not wholly to blame for the omission. Barely ten days had passed since his escape from Margarida, and Antonio was taking it for fully granted that he was eternally proof against girls as girls and women as women.
When José came in from church the monk translated Mrs. Baxter's note aloud, and stated that he would accept the invitation. He added that he would take care to pass the chapel, and, if possible, to collect the pieces of the two broken azulejos. The two men sat awhile in the garden smoking their Sunday cigars and saying little. José's peace of mind was evidently not being disturbed by Sir Percy's daughter as it had been disturbed by Senhor Jorge's. After his master had refused a plump, bouncing, rosy-cheeked, black-eyed heiress, all covered with gold, like Margarida, José did not fear his accepting a slender, icy, shell-pink, simply-garbed, unbejeweled stranger like Miss Kaye-Templeman. He would almost as soon have believed that Antonio was in danger of Mrs. Baxter.
The monk set out at three o'clock. Instead of taking his usual short cut up the bed of the torrent he followed the road through the great gates and the avenue of camellias to the monastery. He tried the door of the chapel; but it was locked. Deeply disappointed, he was turning away when Isabel came in sight, descending the steep path from the pool. She greeted him with more openness and friendliness than ever before.
"I've come to meet you," she added, "to save my own life. Whatever happens, don't let Mrs. Baxter know I wrote that little bit on her letter. She gave it to me to seal."
"It was wrong of you," said Antonio, with mock censoriousness.
"I know. Very wrong," she retorted. "But Mrs. Baxter began it. After her Mrs. B. and Signor R., surely there had to be a postscript. But tell me. Didn't I see you rattling the door of the chapel?"
"I hoped it might be unlocked," he said, a little awkwardly, "and I thought I might take the liberty of picking up those broken tiles. Perhaps they could be patched together and cemented back into their places."
The thought of the azulejos clouded her gaiety, and she did not dissemble an impatient pout. Antonio drew out his old-fashioned silver watch.
"Twenty-five minutes past three," he said. "We are too early for Mrs. Baxter."
"For Mrs. B., you mean," she answered, dismissing her impatience. "Very well, Signor R.; let us go and gather up the fragments."
From her embroidered bag she drew out a tiny handkerchief, a set of ivory tablets, and, last of all, a long thin key. The monk recognized it at once. It was of old Spanish work, damascened; and Antonio could not doubt that if the Fazenda official had been a less ignorant man he would have ordered a cheap duplicate, so as to keep the original for himself. Isabel drove it into the keyhole; and, a moment later, the well-hung door rolled back on its hinges and the afternoon sun filled the chapel with warm light.
They entered. Nothing had been touched since the moment of Sir Percy's accident. Without a word the monk stepped forward and began putting together the broken framework of the saw. After some hesitation Isabel joined him. Kneeling near his side she sorted out the shattered azulejos and succeeded fairly well in piecing them together.
"What shall we do with them?" she asked. "We have no cement. Besides, I am not sure that my father won't prefer to put them back himself. By the way, don't tell Mrs. Baxter what we've been doing."
"Give them to me," Antonio answered. And, having transferred them to a short plank, he carried the pieces off to his own cell and placed them in the cupboard. The damage to the two tiles was irreparable; but he resolved to puzzle out the secret of their manufacture and to make new ones in their stead.
"We can go now, can't we?" begged Isabel, when he returned to the chapel. There was a dutiful, almost daughterly, submissiveness in her manner which cooed to his pride more softly and winsomely than he knew.
"We can go," he said. "There will be time to take the path over the stepping-stones."
They relocked the chapel and mounted through the wood. Here and there its brown carpet of pine-needles was tawny with flecks and dapplings of mellow sunshine. In a patch of old garden, round an image of Saint Scholastica, they found autumn snowdrops, saffron, and sweet-smelling ranunculus. Overhead a blue gum-tree was in full flower, and all the while the wood hummed and thrilled with the diapason of the hidden torrent.
After they had crossed the stepping-stones Isabel halted, as if to absorb the loveliness of the rippling pool. Antonio remained silent, awaiting her good pleasure. Suddenly she said, without turning her eyes towards his:
"This is the place where I was so disagreeable yesterday morning."
He was too much surprised to reply.
"Isn't it?" she demanded.
"No," said Antonio. "It is the place, where, yesterday morning, we ... where we didn't get on together as well as before."
"It was all my fault," she persisted. "I had a silly fit of prudishness, like a young miss just home from school. All the time we were trying to talk I was wondering what you thought of me for asking you to meet me alone in a wood."
"English ways are different from Portuguese," suggested Antonio.
"Not so very different, after all," she said. "Ask Mrs. Baxter. Or, rather, take care that you don't say half a word to Mrs. Baxter about it. If you do she will swoon away with horror at the news of my brazen forwardness."
"If you will lend me your little ivory tablets," replied Antonio, "I shall be able to begin making notes of all the things I am not to mention before Mrs. Baxter."
"Be serious for a minute," she urged with a heightening of color. "Unless I can make you understand, we must not meet this way any more. If we mustn't, if we can't, I don't expect it will matter very much to you; but ... it will to me."
Her eyes met Antonio's. This time it was he who colored up and fell into confusion. The only reply he could think of was a stilted compliment.
"The Senhorita does me a great and an undeserved honor," he stammered.
"Don't," she commanded, with an impatient gesture. "When you talk like that I hate you. Be sincere. Besides, I'm not a Senhorita. If I were a Senhorita I should have jet-black hair and big sentimental eyes, and I should never walk more than a mile in my life, and I should no more dream of meeting you like this than of dancing on a boa-constrictor. Are you going to talk like that any more? If so, we'll go home this minute and you can do it on the way."
Antonio had met his match. If Isabel had been a man he could have met imperiousness with imperiousness, sarcasm with sarcasm, demand with demand, until he had established his will. But Isabel mastered him. He could only stand before her, like a refined and handsome José, awaiting orders.
"What you must understand is this," she said. "You have promised to come and talk to me now and then, while my father is in Lisbon. You've promised, and I want you to do it. I must talk to somebody sometimes, mustn't I? But I'd rather not have you at all than have any more times like Friday afternoon with Mrs. Baxter. You may think that, because she finished the story of her life on Friday, you've got the worst of it over; but you haven't. You've still to hear about the dear Marchioness of Witheringfield. Mrs. Baxter didn't know the dear Marchioness from Eve; but the tale will take an hour, all the same. Also, you've to hear how Mrs. Baxter lost the Baxter jewels, which she never possessed; and how she undermined her health nursing me through a month's fever, though it was really only a two-days' cold in the head; and how she rescued the little Viscount Datton from a burning house, which she never saw in her life. Don't think me spiteful. I simply can't stand it. Of course, you must put up with Mrs. Baxter once in a while; but, speaking generally, if you're coming any more to talk to me, I want you to talk to me here, at this pool, in the mornings."
"If I come here, to this pool, in the mornings," asked Antonio, who had recovered himself, "how do you know that I shan't inflict on you a string of histories as long as Mrs. Baxter's?"
Although he did not mean to fish for a compliment, his ears expected some pleasing reply; and he was a little crestfallen when she replied brusquely:
"Perhaps you will. Only don't you see, they will be histories I haven't heard fifty times already. Come to-morrow morning. Now we ought to be going. It must be close on four o'clock."
The next morning Isabel and Antonio conversed, to the accompaniment of the cascade's deep music, for nearly an hour. The morning following, their talk lasted eighty minutes. On the Wednesday Antonio again drank tea with Mrs. Baxter, who regaled him with the full story of the little Viscount Datton's escape from the blaze at Datton Towers; of his lordship's ingratitude and eventual marriage; and of the young Viscountess Datton's scandalous callousness when her consort broke his collar-bone in a steeple-chase. On the Friday morning the monk met Isabel again at the pool. Business took him to Villa Branca on the Saturday; but Sunday afternoon saw him striding over the stepping-stones once more.
Although these sunny hours were seasons of delight and refreshment to Antonio's human spirit, they did not parch the springs of his Christly life. Every night he continued the pious practice of self-examination; and he was able, in all honesty and reverence, to justify himself by the example of his Lord.Diligebat Jesus Martham et sororem ejus Mariam, "Jesus loved Martha and her sister Mary;" and, on the eve of His passion he fortified His weary spirit for the last conflict by abiding quietly in Martha's and Mary's house. And, in this sense—diligebat not amabat—Antonio loved Isabel. He was drawn to her by silken cords of pity for a loneliness and lovelessness far worse than his own. He loved, with a fine spiritual sympathy unwarped by earthly passion, the brave, truthful ardent soul underneath the ice of her pride. No doubt he found a sensuous pleasure in the softness of her voice, in her ever-varying beauty, and in her never-failing grace; but these charms delighted him by reason of an exquisite fitness, like the fitness of richly embroidered vestments and pure golden chalices or monstrances in great acts of spiritual worship. He loved her with a sacred and not with a profane love.
Nevertheless, the monk knew that he was only a weak mortal, and that he had drifted into a situation rife with perils. He remembered that better Christians than he had made shipwreck of their faith through yielding themselves too confidently to feminine companionship. He recalled the solemn warning of Saint Paul: "Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall." But, so far as his own safety was concerned, a single consideration sufficed to reassure him. In a few days Sir Percy would return, and it was almost certain that he would bid his women-folk pack their chattels and depart before the second instalment of purchase-money fell due. Within a month, perhaps within a week, Isabel would pass out of Antonio's life. Once more he would have to settle down with José to their dull and lonesome grind, and probably years would drag away before he could hear an English voice again.
Antonio, however, was not selfish enough to think only of his own salvation and perfection. The situation had its perils for Isabel as well as for himself; and therefore he followed up his monk's self-examination by meditating, as a man of the world, on Isabel's interests. Although he would miss her sorely, Antonio was prepared to surrender her, when the time came, without a murmur, as he had learned to surrender many lesser delights before; but was Isabel equally able and willing to surrender Antonio? She was young, she was lonely, she was deeply affectionate as only a reserved woman can be; so was he doing right in occupying her thoughts more and more? After striving to act like the very soul of honor towards the slow-witted and shallow Margarida, was he not in danger of behaving dishonorably towards this finely-tempered, deep-hearted lady?
These questions suddenly pressed themselves upon his conscience with so much ardor as he was crossing the stepping-stones on the second Sunday afternoon that he halted in the midst of the spray from the cascade and almost resolved to turn back. But he decided that there was no cause for alarm. In Isabel's view the difference in their stations must surely repress any rash outgoings of her maiden fancy. The da Rochas could boast a longer and a less dubitable pedigree than the Kaye-Templemans; but Antonio had perceived among the English a disrespect for all aristocracies save their own. Besides, Isabel knew not a leaf or a twig of his family tree. To her he was a self-made man, a yeoman working with his own hands. Educated, traveled, interesting, ambitious, refined he might be; but, in the social scale, he was still a yeoman before the eyes of Isabel.
No. Surely there was no peril, no need to turn back. At not one of their meetings by the pool-side had there been the slightest approach to sentimental interchanges. They had talked of a hundred matters. Portuguese, English, and universal, and Isabel had gone so far as to tell a score or two of intimate experiences from which Antonio could rebuild the gray history of her unpeaceful life. But there had been no more personal explanations, no more half-quarrels, no more uncontrolled glances or blushes, no more of anything outside the frank good-fellowship of fast friends in the first flush of friendship. So Antonio did not turn back.
Isabel appeared at last, holding out some papers. A post had arrived from Lisbon, bringing the news that Sir Percy was much better. As the burnt hand was still useless, Mr. Crowberry had written out the bulletin; and, enclosed with his letter to Isabel were two for Antonio. The first, from Crowberrypère, contained little more than compliments and thanks; but the second, in the loose handwriting of Crowberryfils, was more interesting. It ran:
Dear Joligoodfellow.
IhopethiswillfindyouwellasitleavesmeatpresentthankGodforit.
Now that the alujezos (or ajuzelos, or azelujos) are safe, isn't it time you took a holiday? Why not come back to England with Sir Percy and Isabel? I don't expect they'll stay in Portugal.
I will bet a guinea that you've either quarreled with Isabel or that you haven't. When you write, don't forget to say what you really think of her.
Give my love to that Excellent Creature Mrs. Baxter. Also to the Baxter jewels. Also to those monsters of ingratitude, inhumanity, and impiety Miss Sophia Baxter and the Viscount and Viscountess Datton. Also, if you dare, to Isabel. And accept the same yourself from
Your most respectful and obedientTEDDY CROWBERRY.
It occurred to Antonio that in neither of the letters was a date given for Sir Percy's return to the guest-house. He was on the point of asking Isabel whether it was mentioned in Mr. Crowberry's bulletin; but he saw that the question could be interpreted in an uncouth sense, and therefore he did not put it. The answer, however, was writ plain in Isabel's face. He swiftly analyzed her cheerfulness into two principal components—her thankfulness for Sir Percy's improved health and her relief at the prolongation of her liberty. Isabel's laugh was more free and gay. She seemed to be more of a girl and less of a woman. Indeed, for a few minutes, she became almost a child. For a while she stood hurling stones into the heart of the waterfall, as into the white down and iridescent feathers of a great bird's breast; and as soon as she wearied of this exercise she began to sail boats of cork-bark down the hurrying waters of the pool, scolding or encouraging her favorite as if it had been alive.
When Isabel at last sat down she demanded, with her usual abruptness:
"Why have you never told me about the Portuguese ladies—about the senhoritas? I'm tired of Dom Miguel and Dom Pedro, and Affonso Henriques and the Cardinal-King. As for growing grapes, by this time I know as much about it as you do. Talk to me about the senhoritas."
"What can I say about them," objected Antonio, "except that they are exceedingly beautiful, exceedingly virtuous, and exceedingly charming."
"And exceedingly dull," she said. "But be serious. Answer me. Is it true that Portuguese men are only half Christians? Is it true that, where women are concerned, you are out-and-out Moors? Don't you all look on women either as toys or as slaves?"
"If young Mr. Crowberry were here," retorted Antonio, "he would tell you how we tie up the ladies of our harems in sacks and drop them into the Tagus."
"I'm glad young Mr. Crowberry is hundreds of miles away," she declared. "When I've the patience to listen to him, I admit some of his satire is clever. But he bores me. I mean, he annoys me. I suppose it's because we've both got yellow hair."
"You have not got yellow hair," said Antonio.
"Never mind what sort of hair I've got. Tell me about the senhoritas. How do they spend their time?"
"Perhaps they could answer themselves—though I doubt it," he said. "People say they eat and drink and sleep; they dress and go to church; and, the rest of the time, they look out of the window."
"Is it still true," she asked, "that their ... their suitors come and stand under the windows at night, for hours at a time, with guitars?"
"Not always with guitars," explained Antonio, "but the rest is still true. If you want a senhorita you must stand under her window, night after night, for months, wet or fine. When her window is on the third floor you get a crick in the neck."
"But what do they talk about?"
"Nothing. They make eyes."
Her questions ceased, and the monk hoped that they were finished with a risky topic. Suddenly, however, she turned upon him and blurted out:
"Do you have to crick your neck for Margarida?"
Antonio jumped. The question struck him entirely dumb. Margarida! At first he could only stare at the questioner blankly. Then his stung pride made itself felt. The blank stare gave place to a flash of indignation. Her eyes quailed before the angry fires in his.
"No," he said, slowly and coldly. "I do not have to crick my neck for Margarida."
Isabel's face showed that she was troubled and almost frightened at what she had done. But he made no haste to condone her offense. He was capable of forgiving the injury almost as soon as it was committed; but he could not so easily surmount his disappointment at hearing anything like indelicacy from her lips. Graver still was this sudden revelation that Isabel did, after all, think thoughts of him as a lover and a marrying man. And it gradually dawned upon him that there had been something nervous in her gaiety from the moment of her bringing the Crowberry's letters. He understood at last that she had come determined to probe him with her sudden question.
He got up and moved away a few yards to a point from which he could see the Atlantic; and there he stood, taking scrupulous counsel with himself. Was it or was it not his duty to make a fresh draft upon the candor with which he had ended the match-making of Senhor Jorge? No. It was not. Yet something had to be done. What hint ought he to drop, or what counter-stroke ought he to deliver? For one foolish half-moment he almost entertained a mean plan of letting Isabel believe that there was indeed something between himself and Margarida.
"I am so sorry," murmured a soft and penitent voice almost in his ear.
After long indecision he asked, in dry tones and without turning to look at her:
"What made you say it?"
Her pause was longer than his. At length she answered:
"It wasn't idle curiosity."
"Then what was it?"
"I hardly know. Only it ... It seemed so dreadful."
"Dreadful?"
"I mean," she explained hastily, "it would be dreadful if you made a marriage like that. To say so is unpardonable impertinence on my part, no doubt. But, to be perfectly frank, I ... well, I suppose I've idealized you a little. You're not like other people I've met. And it shocked me to think of you settling down and, so to speak, giving up the fight."
"What fight?" asked the monk, not willing to help her out.
"Fight is the wrong word. Never mind. You know what I mean. Of course, this Margarida is good and domesticated and she'll make some farmer or tradesman an excellent wife. But can she read or write? Has she more than three ideas in her head? Could she talk with you, or understand you, or even sympathize with you, in anything that matters?"
"I suppose she could," said Antonio. "The simple things of life are the things that matter."
"To simple people, certainly. But you are not simple. You are complicated. Your teeth are easily set on edge. You are sentimental, romantic."
"I am sentimental? I am romantic?" he echoed, with an unfree incredulous laugh. "You are the first to find it out."
"It's true, all the same. What about that shut-up dismal monastery down there? Haven't you woven more romance around it than any ladye ever wove around her dead knight? What about the azulejos? Aren't you you as sentimental over them as any love-sick youth over a withered rose or a lock of hair? Why, you were ready to quarrel with us all, your old friends included, for the sake of a sentimental memory."
"Tell me," the monk demanded, turning to read her eyes, "what do you know about Margarida? What have you heard? Who has been talking to you?"
She was silent.
"From whom have you heard Margarida's name?" he insisted.
"You will think very badly of me," she confessed. "I heard it from Fisher, my maid. Oh, yes! look scandalized by all means. I don't care. The poor girl is in exile. Joanninha, our Portuguese cook, doesn't know much English, and she's old enough to be Fisher's mother. Mrs. Baxter never speaks to Fisher except to scold her or order her about. If I didn't let her chatter now and again to me, she'd go mad. Not that I listen to half she says; but I should be telling you a downright lie if I pretended that I didn't prick up my ears when she began about you and Margarida."
"What did she say?"
"Very little. Only that Joanninha had been gossiping in the village shop, and that somebody had said something about the Senhor Oliveira da Rocha marrying this Margarida."
Antonio relapsed into moody silence. The news that his name was still being linked with Margarida's filled him with chagrin, if only for the sake of Senhor Jorge and his family. When, however, his thoughts came back to Isabel he softened. He saw no reason for doubting that she was disinterested in dreading the disaster of his union with an unlettered and unintelligent country lass, and he was unconsciously flattered by her generous recognition of his finer temperament. Isabel, waiting at his elbow like a repentant child, felt the softening; and, plucking up fresh courage, she said:
"You haven't told me yet if it is true. You've only told me that you don't crick your neck."
"Which do you think?" asked the monk rather sharply. "Do you believe this gossip or not?"
"I don't," she replied, without hesitation. "But ... there's just one thing that might make me credit it."
"What is it?"
"Well. This Margarida is certainly very pretty. She has an adorable color and wonderful eyes, and she wears her mantilla beautifully. Besides—"
"But you've never seen her," interrupted Antonio in alarm.
"Yes, I have. This morning. In church. At Mass. Why weren't you there? I thought you were obliged to go. I went with Joanninha. Don't ask me to say that I liked it. The gilded wood and the crude colors hurt my eyes, and the music was fearful. I couldn't understand a word of the sermon and I didn't know what they were doing at the altar, so I had to pass the time looking at Margarida. If I were a man, I could fall in love with her."
"You went to church?" repeated Antonio, bewildered. Throughout their many talks during the week he had avoided the subject of religion. He had seen that it ruffled her, and he preferred not to discuss it until they knew one another's first principles and prejudices in less weighty matters. But he had not once failed, night or morning, to commend the work of Isabel's conversion to Our Lady of Perpetual Succor, or to pray that he might become the instrument of the Holy Ghost therein.
"Why did you go?" he asked. "To look at Margarida?'
"Most decidedly not," she retorted with spirit. "I didn't know who the pretty girl in the mantilla was till I came home. Fisher only told me this gossip two hours ago."
"Then you went to church to see what it was like?" he persisted, hoping, nevertheless, that there was some better reason.