Young Crowberry had his way. After the Villa Branca attorney had been paid, Antonio was driven to the principal inn and served with such a luncheon as he had not eaten for twenty years. The next day, Sunday, after the military Mass, the monk ate a still more elaborate meal and whiled away the hour of digestion by reclining on the shaded balcony looking at the promenaders in the Passeio and listening to the band. In the cool of the evening they set out in a luxurious chariot towards Oporto. Three days were spent on the journey.
It was a triumphal progress. One of young Crowberry's first acts on arriving at an inn was to send forward a mounted messenger, with full instructions, to the next halting-place. As these couriers bruited it in every wayside wineshop that a bountiful Englishman was on the road, Antonio's chariot was attended by troops of brown-footed, brown-eyed, black-haired children who threw flowers at the travelers and trotted alongside the wheels pleading for "five little reis"—the Portuguese farthing. Instead ofcinco reisyoung Crowberry flung out tostões, or fivepenny pieces, such as most of the youngsters had never handled on their own account before, and the chariot rolled on amidst pæans of joy.
In Oporto, where Antonio had supported life on a few pence a day, the travelers put up at a French-managed hotel and drank dry champagne from Reims. Emboldened by this lively draught, young Crowberry dealt with Neumann and Mual to such purpose that they thankfully accepted three hundred pounds in full discharge of Antonio's outstanding obligations. With the abbey deeds in Antonio's valise the travelers took the direct road for Lisbon, where the archbishops and bishops, as peers of the kingdom, had assembled for the opening of the Cortes. Here and there along the route young Crowberry pointed out the cuttings and embankments for the projected railway. In Coimbra they rested two days and read up every book they could find in the University library which bore upon the case before them.
Young Crowberry was for a theatrical burst upon the whole bench of bishops in Lisbon; but the prudent Antonio sought out his own diocesan and confided to him the whole story. The prelate heard him attentively and with growing emotion. He told Antonio that the Dominicans and Franciscans had already recovered certain houses in Portugal, and that the Government, having got its money, was winking at the return of the Orders. He bestowed upon the monk a fervent blessing and bade him return the next day.
Within forty-eight hours Antonio was received by three-fourths of the Portuguese hierarchy, and by the Papal Nuncio as well. His tale brought tears to the eyes of all, not excepting a political bishop who was supposed to believe that Portugal would be better off without the religious Orders than with them. The Nuncio dispatched a special memorandum to Rome, and three of the bishops wrote long letters to Benedictine abbots abroad, including an abbot-president, asking for their counsel.
Young Crowberry's deportment among these dignitaries left a little to be desired. At his entrance he would kneel and kiss the ring of a suffragan with disconcerting ardor, and the next minute he would begin to tell the Primate of the Spains a funny story in execrable French. On the whole, however, young Crowberry was better liked for his worldliness than for his piety. His dinner at the Bragança Hotel made a deep impression upon those ecclesiastics who were not too dignified to assist at it; and when their magnificent month drew to a close the Englishman and Antonio left Lisbon with the knowledge that they had committed no grave blunders and that they had made a host of powerful friends.
José received the Senhor Crôbri warmly. Within two days of the Englishman's arrival at the abbey the mortgages on the farm and the sea-sand vineyards were cleared off and the silver spoons came back from pawn. On Saint Isabel's Day both José and young Crowberry were assigned to cells in the monastery; and from that morning community life was solidly established and the work of God was regularly performed in choir. At Christmas, with Antonio's permission, another novice arrived in the person of an English clergyman who had been young Crowberry's closest friend.
Months passed. Twice Antonio received ecclesiastical notables at the abbey and twice he was bidden to Lisbon. At length it was found possible to form a small cosmopolitan community of monks from Brazil, Spain, Bavaria, and Belgium. As the sole link between Portugal's old and new Benedictine life, and as the savior of the abbey for his Order, every one looked towards Antonio as the new Abbot. But he set his face like a flint against the plan.
"My Lord," he said to the Nuncio, who had been expressly charged to impart to him the blessing of Pio Nono, and to inquire what boon Antonio most desired, "ask the Holy Father to intercede with those who would make me Abbot against my will. For more than twenty years I have dwelt in the world, buying and selling, and I am not fit to guide the simplest monk in the religious life. Suffer me to obey my Master's word. I hear Him saying,Vade, recumbe in novissimo loco."
"Father Antonio stops his ears too soon," observed the German Abbot-President who was assisting at the interview. "In the same verse of the Gospel he will find alsoAmice, ascende snperius. But let him be consoled. The anniversary of his ordination, and of his expulsion from the house he has saved, is drawing near. On that day let him say his first Mass; and after he has said it, let all things be set in order."
On the day of his first Mass Antonio rose at dawn and climbed the spiral stairway to his bench on the roof of the cloister. A cardinal, three bishops, and two abbots were sleeping within the abbey walls, and a duke and his duchess were up at the guest-house. The monk yearned for solitude after a distracting week, and the cell was too narrow for his expanding and aspiring soul.
Muffled in a warm new cloak which young Crowberry had forced upon him in Lisbon, Antonio bent his whole mind and soul to the ineffably sacred and glorious Work which lay before him. At last, after all these years of dogged battle, he had won the fight. At last the dead Abbot's prophecy was about to be fulfilled, and he, Antonio, was about to break the most holy Body and to hold up in the great chalice the most precious Blood.
To his dismay he found it difficult to meditate steadfastly upon God's unspeakable Gift. Try as he would, he could not concentrate an undivided mind upon the crowning mystery of faith. That his thoughts should wander a little on the morning of such an anniversary was perhaps natural; but somehow every thought led back to Isabel. He rebuked himself sharply, and forced his mind once more to pious thinkings. He called to memory the holy Francis of Assisi who died a deacon, and the holy Benedict who died a layman. If these two saints, who stood so high among all the saints of the universal Church, had never presumed to offer the Holy Sacrifice, how could he, Antonio, who had lived less than ten years in religion and more than forty in the world, dare to say this Mass?
Despite his efforts to dislodge it, the thought of Isabel neither moved nor weakened. Words which she had spoken on the last afternoon at the cascade rang like bugles through his brain. In terrible wrath and bitterness she had cried: "I will come back! You will succeed. You will regain the abbey. You will fill it with monks. But remember. I will come back. On the day of your triumph I will be there. It isn't only you Southern people who love revenge. I will be there. I will come back!"
He rose from the bench and gazed at the calm Atlantic, glittering under the first sunbeams. But he could not banish the echo of her words. Isabel was coming back! Not for revenge. Ever since the end of his second novena to Saint Isabel he had rested quietly in a firm confidence that his prayers for Isabel Kaye-Templeman had been granted, and that his great hope had been fulfilled. She was coming back, not in hatred, but in peace.
No. All this was folly, and worse. How could she come back? How could she, after twenty years, find out what was happening in a corner of distant Portugal? The very idea was madness. Nevertheless Antonio could not drive it away. He descended to his cell, but her invisible presence seemed to fill it; and it was only in the chapel that he firmly regrasped the threads of his inward preparations for the coming Sacrifice.
Eager whisperings in the nave drove him back to his cell. Lay folk from far and near were beginning to arrive. All of them had risen before daybreak, and some of them had been tramping all night. Throughout the country-side an exaggerated account of Antonio's acts and sufferings had sustained so much embellishment that he was already being venerated as a saint of heroic virtue. Had he not, simply by praying in the Navares church, caused an English lord to spring up, so to speak, out of the earth with fifty contos of reis, all in gold? Had he not cast a devil out of the shaggy, wild-eyed José? Had he not withstood the rich and beautiful Margarida? Had he not wrought the indisputable miracle of changing common wine into champagne simply by standing a bottle on its head? Had he not driven away from the azulejos the stiff Englishman with the icy, golden-haired daughter, all by a supernatural spell of holy anger? And, to crown all, was he not making a cardinal and three bishops to grow where never more than one bishop had grown before?
A little later the mere sightseers were reinforced by files of devouter worshipers whose Christian souls had glowed and burned at the tale of Antonio's faithfulness; and, by degrees, the reverential expectancy of these more earnest spirits hushed all unseemly shufflings and whisperings. According to Portuguese custom there were no seats, and everybody knelt on the floor. As the nave became more crowded the strange silence became deeper. It was broken at last by the unrestrained sobbing of the widow Joanna Quintella, who was suddenly filled with bitter remorse for having fastened upon Antonio his nickname of "the abbey miser." Her example was too much for the weaker wills, and one after another joined her in weeping.
The cardinal and the bishops, whose visit was unofficial, had stipulated that they should not be expected to make a ceremonious entrance or to bear themselves with any appearance of defiance towards the obsolescent laws against the Orders. They seated themselves without ostentation in stalls which were only distinguished from the stalls of the monks by thin cushions and kneelers stuffed with straw. There, with bowed heads, they prayed not only for Antonio and for the restored Benedictine life of Portugal, but also for a renewal of the fervor with which each one of them had said his first Mass long years before.
On the stroke of ten the sacred ministers emerged from the sacristy. As his assistant priest Antonio was accompanied by one of the new community, a young Benedictine from Brazil. A Franciscan from a restored house in Entre Minho e Douro was deacon, and the sub-deacon was the village cura. The servers were José and Brother Cypriano, last of the old lay-brethren, who had arrived the night before from Evora.
As Antonio appeared a murmur of awe escaped from the intent crowd in the nave. The monk had recovered his power of concentration, and his face was not like the face of a mortal man. But he moved forward, all unconscious that the people were not pleading with God for mercy upon him as a poor and presumptuous sinner.
To make a way to the sanctuary the acolytes had almost to push through the people; and at one point the procession was brought to a momentary halt. Instantly a handsome woman, whom Antonio remembered as one of the belles of Senhor Jorge's serão, held up a puzzled, big-eyed child and said, in eager tones loud enough for the monk to hear:
"Look, little one, look! It is a saint that is passing by!"
At the same moment a rough young farmer bent forward and clumsily kissed the hem of Antonio's chasuble. The monk recoiled and almost let the sacred vessels fall. The man's touch and the woman's words had cut him like knives. A saint! He, Antonio the hard, the proud, a saint! All the selfishness of his life rose up before him. His long coldness to José; his persistent aloofness from the life of the village which he ought to have shared and uplifted; his whipping and driving of Isabel with whips of rebuke and argument when he ought to have led her with silken cords of sympathy; his repeated refusals of charity when a little more fasting and a little more labor would have enabled him to feed the hungry; his self-esteem; his want of meekness under opposition and insult—these, all these, were the solid facts of his life, standing up as gaunt and huge as monstrous rocks with only one poor shrunken runnel of love trickling down between. A saint! If the sacred vestments had not been hanging from his shoulders he would have cried, "No, good people, no! Pray for me. I am the poorest sinner of you all."
The crucifer cleared a passage through the kneeling, murmuring, weeping people, and the procession moved on, picking a way among the broad-brimmed hats and wallets of provisions which lay on the pavement. After making five or six yards of progress it came to a halt again. His pious preoccupation could not wholly blind Antonio's eyes to the picturesqueness of the sight. The many-colored kerchiefs of the women, the rich olive skins and glossy black hair of the children, and the bright waistbands of the men were made ten times more sumptuous by the cool, monotonous background of blue-and-white azulejos. Here and there a knot of shepherds, in sheepskins, knelt with their long staves rising up like spears above the heads of an army. Two or three fans moved languidly, like gaudy flowers swaying in a breeze. Straight ahead, beyond the black monks and the purple prelates, rose the high altar, with the Virgin and her Child enthroned above the soft flames of six tall candles, set in candle-sticks of burnished gold.
As the procession resumed its march Antonio's glance was suddenly seized by a sight which almost made him stumble. Close to the wall, beside the cloister doorway, knelt Isabel. Her form was enveloped in an exquisitely fine dust-cloak of silver-gray, and a black lace mantilla covered her head. Yet, even before he saw her face, he knew that it was she. The cherubs in the azulejos above the doorway seemed to be looking down upon her curiously, as if they found in her something different from common clay. Her gaze was fixed upon the ground.
Recovering his self-control by a supreme effort, Antonio advanced to the sanctuary and made the due obeisances. Then he knelt down before the altar. No one wondered that his silent prayer was long; for was he not a saint and was not this his first Mass? The silence was profound from one end of the chapel to the other.
But Antonio's prayers were not what the onlookers thought. Isabel had come back; and, according to his practice, it was necessary to face the fact squarely in the light of common prudence. For nearly twenty years he had cherished one great hope concerning her until it had become a belief. For nearly twenty years he had given thanks to Saint Isabel for her miraculous intercession. But it was possible that, for nearly twenty years, he had been hugging a delusion.
"On the day of your triumph I will be there." So she had spoken; and she was keeping her word. "It isn't only you Southern people who love revenge." So she had stormed on; and perhaps it was for revenge that she was come. With a sickening of heart Antonio suddenly remembered reading in the Villa Branca paper a sordid story of a passionate woman in Sicily who had murdered a virtuous young priest on the steps of the altar. He remembered also young Crowberry's account of the throwing of a bomb at the new Emperor Napoleon in Paris. So far as he knew, such deeds were un-English; and, although Isabel was imperious, he could not credit her with a smoldering Latin vindictiveness leaping up into a fiery blaze of showy crime. Yet, after all, he knew so little of women, so little of the new hysteria which men told him was rife in the world.
What ought he to do? For himself and for his own life he did not care. His work was done; and if God willed that he should add the poor offering of his own blood to the infinite worth of the immaculate Host, he was ready to pour it forth. But what if there should be scandal, or, worse still, sacrilege? Or what if some desperate deed should wreak pain or death upon the innocent people? Ought he to rise from his knees, and to implore the prelates to grant him immediate audience in a place apart? With the whole might of his soul he besought Saint Isabel to intercede for him and to show him God's will.
A child in the nave let fall a rosary of copper beads. At the noise of the metal on the stone Antonio rose up. An inward voice bade him say his Mass and leave the rest with God. Making the sign of the cross, he invoked the Triune Name and said, in a clear voice, "Introibo ad altare Dei."
At the Confiteor his earnestness was so terrible that the subdeacon shrank back, understanding for the first time the blackness and foulness and meanness of the smallest sin against the eternal holiness and majesty and love. Even in the nave, where it was impossible to hear Antonio's voice or to see his face, the poignancy of the monk's Confiteor made itself felt. Like ripe corn bowing before a wind, the most hardened and careless bent lower and yearned forward in an anguish of contrition for forgotten sins; and when Antonio pronounced the wordsindulgentiam, absolutionem et remissionemthe whole chapel respired one great sigh, as if a merciful king had just ended the suspense of a culprit condemned to death. At the Gloria all hearts soared up like birds to hymn the good God in the heights.
After the first Gospel one of the bishops arose to preach. He recited for a text the words of Isaias,Dicam aquiloni, Da, et austro, Noli prohibere. Affer filios meos de longinquo, et filias meas ab extremis terrae: "I will say to the north, Give, and to the south, Hold not back. Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth." His magniloquent exordium was worthy of the bishop's reputation as the most eloquent preacher in the Peninsula. In stately periods he began to show how north and south had indeed given their sons to rebuild the Benedictine Order in Portugal. But, at such a moment, his eloquence jarred. He himself was the first to become convinced of its discordance; and, suddenly changing the key, he humbly asked the prayers of all on Antonio's behalf and went back to his place.
The Creed, which young Crowberry and his clerical friend had been brought up to regard as a penitential chain dragging at the human intellect, was sung more triumphantly than a battle-song or a national anthem, with all the eagerness of enthusiastic faith. When Antonio turned and saidOrate, fratres, even the sightseers prayed.
At last Antonio began the Canon. At the commemoration of the living, Isabel was the chief burden of his prayer. Having prayed for her, he thrust her from his mind and pressed on to the supreme moment of the Consecration. Spreading his hands over the oblation, he raised his eyes to the ivory figure of the Crucified. As he gazed, scales fell from his eyes. He saw, as he had never seen before, the everlasting sacrifice which lay behind and around the cross of Calvary. He saw behind the Victim who hung dying for three hours on the first Good Friday, theAgnus qui occisus est ab origine mundi, "The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." He saw theSacerdos in tetemum, "The Priest for ever,"semper vivens ad interpellandum pro nobis, "ever living to make intercession for us." He understood that the unutterable miracle of which he, Antonio, was about to become the instrument was not a stroke of strange magic, but a gracious overflow of that everlasting intercession. From books he had known these things with his mind; but now he knew them with his whole soul. His priestly instrumentality, like the rod of Moses, was about to strike the Rock; but the bright stream waiting to gush forth was the everlasting love of the Redeemer, flowing onward in its fullness whether Mass was said or not. Yet the children of Israel had died of thirst had not Moses raised his rod; and it was through him, Antonio, a weak and unworthy priest on earth, that men were about to receive the supreme bounty of thePontifex qui consedit in dextera sedis magnitudinis in cœlis, "the High Priest who sitteth on the right hand of the Majesty in heaven."
When he elevated the sacred Host, Cypriano was ready to ring the sacring bells; but awe stayed his hand. From the cardinal in his purple down to the poorest hind in his sheepskin, all adored the God of God and Light of Light. Every heart cried,Verbum caro factum est: "The Word is made flesh and is dwelling among us, and we are beholding His glory."
Antonio pronounced the wordsSimili modoand took the cup. At last God was fulfilling the old Abbot's prophecy: "I see Antonio standing before the high altar. I see him holding up our great chalice. I see him offering the Holy Sacrifice for us all." He raised the great chalice, with the blood-red rubies, which José had saved from the Viscount. Once again Cypriano tried to ring the sacring bell; once again the general awe restrained him. In deepest reverence all adored the precious Blood. Then burst forth the thankful cryBenedictus: "Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord."
Very solemnly and intently Antonio made the memento of the dead, especially of the dead Abbot and the fathers and brethren of the old community. He had said the Pater Noster thousands and thousands of times before; but as he stood before the altar every one of its petitions ascended from his lips without a trace of formalism or staleness. And when the time came for him to receive the celestial Bread, hisDomine, non sum dignus: "Lord, I am not worthy that Thou shouldst enter under my roof," was not merely a devout reading of seemly words from the printed missal; it was an uttering forth of his inmost soul.
The sacrifice was consummated. He took the ablutions and covered the chalice. When the deacon had sungIte, missa est, men and women who had never tried to sing the response before joined the choir of monks in thundering out a mightyDeo gratias. Then the prelates knelt to receive Antonio's blessing. The lordly cardinal was the first to kneel. He knelt as if he were the meanest altar-boy rather than a prince of Holy Roman Church, and all the others made haste to follow his example. The monk, in deepest humility, blessed the people.
Antonio's thanksgiving was less prolonged than his brethren expected. But when they crowded round to escort him to the place of honor in the refectory he begged most earnestly that the meal might proceed without him. To the fervid protests of the cardinal and the foreign abbots he responded that from the morrow onwards he would re-enter the path of unquestioning obedience; but, for the remainder of this one day he humbly sought leave to go and come as might seem him good.
As soon as he had wrung out a reluctant consent Antonio slowly crossed the cloister garden. Two or three of the new monks sprang forward to attend him; but he waved them aside and went on, with slow steps and bent head. A bell clanged, and they melted away. He quickened his pace until he gained the door with the secret lock; and, before the echoes of the bell had ceased humming in the still air, he was standing on the causeway outside the cloister.
Not since the night of the thunderstorm had he walked along those moss-grown slabs. At the end of the causeway, where he had lifted Isabel upon his shoulder, he hesitated a short moment. Then he stepped down and followed a woodland path until the soft thunder of the cascade boomed upon his ear. The earth under his tread was sweet and bright with thousands of May flowers, and the May birds sang as they had sung on the May morning of Sebastian's last Mass.
Not for twenty years had Antonio set foot within a furlong of the stepping-stones. But José had obeyed his orders to the letter. A few gaps in the trees had been filled up, but otherwise nothing was changed. As he climbed the path the dull pounding of the tumbling water drowned the crooning of the stream at his feet, and at last he caught the silvery flash of the cascade through the trees, like a great fish struggling in a basket of reeds. And the flash of the cascade was not all Antonio saw. He saw as well a fine silver-gray cloak thrown down on a flat boulder; and standing beside it, a nun of the Order of the Visitation.
"I knew that you would come," said Isabel quietly as Antonio emerged from the bushes.
"I knew I should find you here," Antonio answered, more quietly still.
It seemed no more than a few feverish months since their parting. The boulder, the stepping-stones, the pool, the cascade, the rapids, the palms, the mimosas, the tree-ferns, the cypresses—all seemed unchanged. He raised his eyes and gazed steadily at Isabel. Time had not filched away her loveliness. Indeed, the nun's head-dress served even better than the golden ringlets of old to frame her beautiful features and to heighten both the blueness of her eyes and the whiteness of her brow. Like her father before her, she held herself as erect in middle-age as in youth. If some of the girlish bloom had gone, the loss was more than made good by new charms of womanly tenderness and Christian peacefulness.
"You see I have kept my word," she said, speaking easily and quite naturally. "On the day we parted, did I not say that I would come back? I have come."
"Yes," echoed Antonio, like a man in a dream. "You have come."
"When you saw me," she added, with a smile, "perhaps you thought I had come to shoot you or to stab you; or to set the chapel on fire, bishops and abbots and all."
Not for a moment had he lowered his gaze from her face. Merely to behold her again and to hear her voice, whatever her words might be, was happiness enough. The accord between them was so perfect that there was no need for questions, answers, news, explanations, reminiscences, plans, greetings, farewells. But she was waiting for him to speak; and at last, in the same dreamy tone as before, he pointed to her nun's dress and said:
"This wonderful thing came to pass, did it not, on the eighth of July, twenty months after you went away? That day was the feast of Saint Isabel of Portugal. It was also the last day of a novena I had been making to this very end. On that day, as I sat in the chapel, I heard women's voices, far-off and sweet, chanting the Divine Office; and I knew that this miracle had come to pass."
"You were not mistaken," she said, in low tones. "I awoke to my vocation on the eighth of July, the year but one after I left this place."
Minutes passed before either of them spoke again. Not that time and distance had been able to estrange them. They were one in heart and mind as they had never been before. But Isabel's mood had swiftly become attuned to Antonio's. It was enough to be at his side on their old battle-field and to know how perfect was their peace. For a long while they stood speechless with the great light of the Atlantic sparkling before their eyes and the great music of the cascade resounding in their ears. Antonio was the first to break the silence.
"Happiness is not the principal thing," he said, still gazing at the sea. "But I should like to know that you are happy."
"I am happy," she answered in a firm voice. "Entirely happy."
"For that," he said simply, "I thank God."
Another silence followed, longer than the other. At last she said:
"You are weary. You must sit down. Our time together is very short, so let me say what I ought to say."
They sat down on the boulder.
"That afternoon you sent me away," she began, "I went home with hatred and vengeance in my heart. I hated you and I hated God. I did not sleep; but, until dawn, neither did I shed a single tear. My hatred was like a terrible joy. It filled me so full that it left no room for grief. But when the sun shone upon my white roses and all the birds began to sing, my hatred snapped like a dry reed, and I threw myself on the bed and wept until I thought I should die.
"Gradually hope returned. I knew that you loved me; and I told myself that you would come to the cascade and that you would fall on your knees and implore my pardon. I even decided what I would wear, and I chose out a turquoise-blue ribbon for my hair because I thought you had admired it.
"Happily I had some pride left. I didn't go to the Cascade. But I bound my hair with the turquoise-blue ribbon all the same, and waited for you to come to the house.
"You know you never came. Instead, your man José appeared. I heard chaff flying backwards and forwards between himself and the servants. Fisher repeated some of it to me; and I learned that you had started at sunrise on a long day's journey.
"That was the last unendurable blow. You had run away lest I should summon you again to the cascade, or burst into your farm, or do some other shameless thing. It stung me to the quick. I became in a single moment as hard and cold as iron in a frost, and as bitter as poison. I pictured you coming up the next morning to say a ceremonious Good-bye—coming up all cool and self-possessed and hateful. It was too much. I decided to join my father at once. I enforced my will like a tyrant; and, before you came back, we were gone."
She paused. Antonio's human heart was breaking to tell her how he had passed that night kneeling on the floor beside her bed. But he held his peace; and Isabel went on:
"In one point you did me immediate good. I put down my foot boldly, and insisted that we should leave Portugal at once. As soon as we landed in England I sent Mrs. Baxter away. But I grew more hard and bitter every day. At last, partly from distraction, partly out of prudence, I mastered enough of business to go through my own and my father's affairs. One evening I made a cruel discovery. It was only a matter of five hundred pounds; but it overwhelmed me. I found that this abbey had never been in any sense mine. From my father I found out his plan concerning the azulejos; and from old Mr. Crowberry I found that you knew how things stood all along. Then I remembered some of my words to you, and my frozen heart melted at the sudden knowledge of your chivalry. Even when I threatened to burn the abbey down you held your tongue."
It puzzled Antonio that she should make so much of so little.
"Not chivalry," he protested quietly. "How else could I have behaved? Leave it. Come, tell me, Isabel, what first drew you to the religious life."
"I am telling you as fast as I can," she retorted, with all the old quickness and spirit. "From that day I ceased to glower at the memory of you in sullen hate. I began to be almost impersonally interested in your conduct, your ideals, your character. The theme engrossed me all day long. I recalled everything you had told me of the years before we met. I lived again through every moment of the fortnight we were together. And it became plainer and plainer that I could only explain you in one way. You were too healthy, too clear-eyed, too much of a man to be a fanatic; yet you were breathing your every breath under the sway of a supernatural idea. Against my will I was forced to admit that the idea must be true."
She paused again, weighing her words. Then she added:
"Of course, I knew that men have seemed to do wonderful things under the sway of ideas that are only delusions. Your idea was not a delusion. No man can get out of a delusion one atom more than he has put into it; but I saw that the idea—I mean, the supernatural reality—which dominated your cool brain was a reality from which you drew a mysterious something—a something quite beyond your own self, quite beyond your own nature. I had felt it, time after time, in your presence. It was not an illusion. It was there, indisputably there.
"What could this something be? I strove to square it with a dozen theories in turn, and I gave it twenty names; but not one would fit. At last, it occurred to me that after all, your own account of it might be true. Antonio ... you can hardly understand. In England faith is weak. There we have nearly all been taught the greater Christian verities; yet it smote me like a thunderbolt from heaven when I suddenly explained your life on the theory that the whole Christian gospel is truer than the stars. At the most I had believed that its truths had been realities in Palestine eighteen hundred years ago, and that the devout memory of them helped us and ennobled us to-day, like a stirring tale that is told. But, in one overwhelming revelation, I saw it as the eternal life of men. I can't find words. I saw it as something more vital than the air, something nearer to us than our own selves. I saw it as an unquenchable light, with the sun blinking in it like a farthing candle at noonday. And I saw your life, Antonio, reflecting that light and burning in the midst of it like a gem."
He bent his head as if in pain; but she finished her speech.
"Yes, I understood your life at last," she said very softly. "It was thevita abscondita cum Christo in Deo, 'the life that is hid with Christ in God.'"
"God knows," he rejoined solemnly, "that I am not aping humility when I say that my life has been wilful and sinful and proud. Speak of such a life no more, I entreat. Speak of yourself. Tell me how you became a nun."
"As soon as I had accounted for your life," said Isabel, "I was faced by a still harder riddle. How was I to account for my own life; and especially, for the way my life had become intertangled with yours? At the first glance I seemed to have been thrown across your path merely to try you. I seemed to be merely a single rung in your ladder to perfection. But, to be candid, I was not humble enough to rest satisfied with that. Surely I had some rôle of my own. To be simply another person's trial, another person's springboard to heaven, was not enough for a whole life.
"Throughout one black week my new-found faith suffered an almost total eclipse. I rebelled in loathing against God for sacrificing me in the cause of your monkish perfection. Why should he have chosen me for so dreadful a work instead of some woman who had had her share of happiness? His cruelty seemed devilish.
"My doubts grew until they broke of their own weight. One day, soon after my poor father died, I had been bitterly recalling what seemed to be the cruelest fact of all—the fact that, for four years before I saw your face, I had lived in the supernatural persuasion that you were my destiny and that your life needed mine. Suddenly it flashed upon me that a man and a woman may be predestined to commingle their lives on some basis other than conventional love and marriage. I knew that my love for you was not such love as I saw among the lovers and the married people around me; and that from ordinary marriage I had always recoiled.
"It was on the strand of a beautiful English bay, with white cliffs running out miles into the blue water, that I worked out this new thought to the logical end. It was the eighth of July. At about eleven in the morning I held the key in my hand. Antonio, I did not love you less; but my new faith rushed back a million fold and I loved God so much more that at last I saw my love for you in its true light. I saw it as the means to an end. I saw that you had been sent to me, as Saint Philip was sent to the treasurer of Queen Candace, to make me a Christian. You, a monk, were raised up to make me a nun.
"I saw much more. I saw that, for years and years, I had been fighting for happy human relationships. I, for whom God's love had reserved this richer bliss, had cried out, year after year, for a father, a mother, a sister, a brother, a friend. My bitterest cry, Antonio, had been for you; but God knows that I had cried out for you less as a husband than as a comrade and a most dear friend. On that July morning I saw why our Lord had refused me the lower good to grant me the higher, and how He had sorely wounded me that His balm might more sweetly heal me."
Isabel ceased. Her long speech had been growing less and less easy until she could not utter another word. The nun thought that the cause was in herself. Why had she not confined herself to reciting the precise words with which she had come prepared? Or why had she not taken the still better course of throwing all her preparation to the winds and of pouring out her heart to Antonio in whatever words might come? Why had she muddled fragments of a set speech with a nervous impromptu?
She did not know that the cause of her failure was in the listener. Although her story told Antonio that his dearest prayer had been superabundantly answered, the old wound in his heart was bleeding afresh. For half a moment, with an exquisite spiritual jealousy which was beyond his will, he was jealous of his Lord. Throughout the long years of his growing love of God his chaste love of Isabel had never died; and he could not bear the thought that perhaps this love was no longer requited. He tried to speak; but his tongue was tied. Antonio's heart sank. What was this mystery? How was it that their accord was broken at the very moment when it should have been most perfect?
When the pause had become intolerable Isabel ended it. She began speaking quickly and nervously. The forced lightness of her tones contrasted almost painfully with her grave earnestness of a few minutes before.
"Your question is answered," she said. "I have told you how I became a nun. I did not rush into a convent, like a damsel of romance, out of chagrin at a disappointment in love. My disappointment, if we may use the word, was only the means of opening my eyes to a vocation as real as your own."
Only! Antonio could see that their wonderful love had accomplished all she said. But was it only that, and nothing more? Again he strove to speak; again he failed; and again it was Isabel who ended the pause.
"For three or four months," she said, in an even more matter-of-fact tone than before, "I lived with Lady Julia Blighe. I entered the convent at Christmas. Probably you, a monk of Saint Benedict, can hardly take the convents of our Order seriously. Our chant is made easy, all on three notes. We have flowers in our rooms. Each nun has a silver spoon. I have always been a coward when it came to physical hardships."
"I know your Order and I revere it," protested Antonio, finding speech at last. "You are not a coward. The inward mortification is harder to practise than the outward. I know that the poor people used to call your nuns 'the holy Maries.' But tell me how you are employed."
"I teach in the school," she answered. "That is why I am here to-day. Let me explain. We have had in our care three sisters from the Beira Alta, daughters of a Portuguese Marquis. Their education is finished. I brought them out to Oporto and handed them over to their parents last week. Before I left England I told our Mother Superior all about you, save your name, and it is with her consent that I have come here to-day. But I believed that your monks had been restored years and years ago. I expected to see you for half an hour in a monastery parlor. A sister of the Third Order of Saint Dominic is traveling with me on her way to bring back some pupils from Lisbon. We reached your little town, Navares, last night. There we heard this news. The people could talk of nothing else."
The hardness went out of her tone, and her voice faltered as she added softly: "They told me, Antonio, that this would be your first Mass. They told me how you have fought and what you have suffered."
The blue eyes which looked at him so wistfully as she spoke were the blue eyes which had brimmed with tears twenty years before when she had "cried and cried and cried like a baby" at the sight of his worn-out cloak and had sobbed: "Poor Antonio! You poor Antonio! My poor Antonio!" His heart broke at the sight. After twenty years she had come back. Amidst the old sights and sounds she was sitting hardly an arm's length from him. Isabel had come back. But in less than one little hour they must stand up for the last parting and he would never see her in this world any more. And meanwhile a frosty monster of false reserve was devouring their tiny store of golden moments one by one.
Antonio sprang to his feet.
"Isabel," he said desperately, "you think I didn't care. You think I never loved you. Listen. The night you went away I was ready to drop down with fatigue and hunger after riding and tramping from sunrise to sunset over the mountains. But how did I spend that dreadful night? I spent it in your chamber, kneeling on the floor against your bed, drinking deep of such anguish for you as I pray God you have never tasted for me. How did I spend the next day? Only by miracle upon miracle was I held back from thundering after you on the fleetest horse in the country-side. Hour after hour that day I tramped, tramped, tramped north, forgetting God and thinking only of you, till I came to a saint's grave."
She rose hastily and raised one slender white hand, as if to ward off his burning words. But he would not be put to silence.
"Call me a sentimentalist, a madman, an apostate, anything you will," he cried. "But here is the sheer truth. Whenever I sat down to eat and drink at the farm you were there, invisibly but undeniably there, sitting at my right hand. Whenever I went into my cell I heard you searching in the cupboard for something you could not find. You haunted these woods all night and all day. To enter the guest-house was like being dragged into a chamber of torture. More. Believe me or not, as you will. To-day is the first time for twenty years that I have set foot on these stones, or set eyes on yonder cascade, or touched this boulder with my hand. Isabel, in memory of you I have charged José to tend this place like a shrine; but I behold it now for the first time since I stood here, at sunrise, the day after you went away."
His words burst from him like a stampede of eager, bright-eyed creatures suddenly released from long captivity. It was as though he would storm and batter down the gates of her heart and reclaim his ancient place. She recoiled from him.
"No more, no more!" she cried. "I did not come for this. Antonio, in God's name, no more!"
"It is in God's name," he retorted, "that I must and will say more. Isabel, when you went away I did not know I loved you. I thought my grief was no more than an aching, bleeding wound of sympathy, of pity. But, little by little, I came to know that I loved you. Not with profane love. I came to believe that our Lord had vouchsafed to me a love such as unfallen man would have had for unfallen woman, and I believed that you, Isabel, loved me with as holy a love in return. It was not a love which weaned me from the love of God. It was a way of loving God more, and of loving Him more perfectly. I even learned to thank God for our separation; because I knew my human weakness and I knew how swiftly this love of you, which was also a love of God, might be changed into a deceitful love of self. But to-day what do I find? That your love for me was only a delusion, a phase, a stage, a means to another end—that, and that only."
He strode up and down, as if he would shake from his shoulders this last and heaviest of his griefs. But when he reached the spot where he had pronounced his final answer twenty years before he heard a step at his side and felt a light touch on his hand.
"No, Antonio," she said "No. Not that and that only."
He started violently. She was facing him, with downcast eyes and with the rose-pink of girlhood once more glowing in her cheeks. Her voice was low and sweet.
"Antonio," she said very slowly, "how strange it all is, and wonderful! You sent me away in autumn, when the sun made haste to set and the storm had torn the leaves from the trees. I have come back in the spring, amidst thousands of birds and millions of flowers. I have come back in the sunshine to find that you loved me even more than I loved you."
Her voice died away so gently that Antonio could not be sure whether the headlong waterfall and the delirious birds had not robbed him of some sweet saying. At last she spoke again and said:
"Yes, Antonio, you loved me more than I loved you. But do not think that I loved you little or lightly. Above all, do not fear that my love is dead. Antonio, I will tell you what I had never meant to tell anybody in this world."
He waited a long time before she began her confession. To help her he bent his gaze upon the ground. At last he heard her speaking, so softly that he had to strain his ears to listen.
"I, too," she said, "cherished such a love. But I am no theologian. Although my love of you had awakened my love of God, I thought it was wrong to go on cherishing it after its work was done. For years and years I thrust it away as a snare. I so crowded my waking hours with prayer and labor and study that no time was left for other thoughts. But, time after time—not thrice, or ten times, but five hundred—my nights have been rosy with the same wonderful dream. In my dream I seem to have entered into the bliss of heaven, and to be moving in the fullness of the love of God, as in a soft glory of life-giving golden light. At the beginning of my dream it is always a churchly heaven, pillared and domed, with holy chants drifting hither and thither like clouds of incense and with clouds of incense mounting upward like holy chants. But, little by little, it changes. The dim dome widens and brightens into a blue sky, with the smoke of the incense sailing in it like pearly clouds; and the stark pillars soften into tree trunks crowned with cool foliage and hung with clinging roses. Instead of rolling organs I hear the surf of a summer sea breaking on soft sand, and instead of the chants I hear the birds, and thousands of brooks ringing like little bells. Cool grass, gay with wild flowers, spreads itself in the place of golden streets and marble pavements. But, all the time, the same holy light is over it all, like the light before a summer sunset among green hills. Then I become conscious that the heaven I am walking in is not some strange unhomely land high above the stars.Video cÅ“lum novunt et terram novam: 'I see a new heaven and a new earth,' and I know, with sudden joy, that I am walking in this beautiful world, made new, purged of evil and pain, and wholly conformed to the mind of God.
"My dream unfolds always in the same way. Gradually I see that the woods in which I am walking are woods I have walked in before. The voices of the sea and the brooks are good to hear, because they are the voices of old friends. At last I push past a mimosa, on fire with golden flowers like a burning bush, and I halt on the margin of this pool. I wait, with the cascade rumbling at me like thunder and flashing at me like lightning. I turn round; and, without hearing your footfall, I find you at my side. Then we wander off together, sometimes down deep ravines, sometimes up through pines to brown moorlands purple with heather, sometimes along the banks of lakes and rivers, or along the sea-shore, with the holy light always over us and with God's love nearer to us than our own souls. That is my dream."
After pausing a little, she added:
"At first I thought my dream was a snare. I say again that I am not a theologian. Still, I tried to puzzle out if such dreams were against sound doctrine. At first I feared they were. But I came to see that the words of our Lord, 'In the resurrection they neither marry nor are married,' referred to marrying of an earthly kind. Many another scripture came to my mind; and many another thought came to comfort me. Our Mother, the Blessed Virgin crowned in heaven—is she not a woman still? And do we not think of this saint or of that as still a man or still a woman, as the case may be? Is the life hereafter to be a blank Nirvana? Will it be less richly personal than the life we are living now? But these are only my own poor thoughts, worth less than nothing. I rest rather in two great scriptures.In domo Patris mei mansiones multÅ“ sunt: 'In my Father's house are many mansions.' And again, 'Eye hath not seen, nor hath the ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man what things God hath prepared for those who love Him.' But let me be plain to the end. My dreams are beyond my control; and, when I am awake, I do not willingly dwell on these thoughts."
The big bell of the monastery, vocal once more after seven-and-twenty years of silence, struck twelve. The monk and the nun listened to the strokes without speaking. Before the last echoes died away Brother Cypriano rang the Angelus.
"Angelus Domini nuntiavit Mariœ," said Antonio, with bowed head. And Isabel responded:
"Et concepit de Spiritu sancto."
When the pious exercise was finished she said:
"It is time to go."
"No," cried Antonio, suddenly perceiving that she had picked up her cloak and mantilla. "You must not go."
"I must go," she said, smiling gently. "Antonio, things are changed indeed. In the old days your great aim was to drive me away."
"You must not go," he said, with the utmost energy. "The Duchess of Ribeira Grande is at the guest-house, with servants. There is room for you and for your friend the Dominican sister. You need rest, until to-morrow. You must not go."
She shook her head, still smiling gently, and held out her hand.
"Good-bye, Antonio," she said.
He took the hand; but instead of grasping it and letting it fall he held it, and said once more:
"Until to-morrow you must not go."
She began to disengage her fingers. Antonio gripped them fiercely and pleaded not only with his voice, but with his eyes.
"Isabel," he said, "one room at the guest-house is still yours. It can be made ready for you and for your friend to-night. It is your old room, with the white roses. I have suffered no one to enter it for twenty years."
This time she left her hand in his. The monk's voice, his brown velvet eyes, his clasp, and the rush of old memories were too much for her. She trembled a little; and suddenly a rain of tears fell upon Antonio's hand.
"Antonio," she sobbed, "I must go. Now. Don't ask me again. But, before I go, there is one thing more to tell you."
For many moments her weeping would not let her speak. At last she whispered between her sobs:
"That little bowl. The bowl you gave me, with the blue-and-orange bird. Do not despise me. When the time came, I felt I could give up the whole world, except that. For two months I turned a deaf ear to God, all because I couldn't give up ... that."
The exceeding bitterness of the memory made her sob afresh. When she could speak again, she said:
"Antonio, I will tell you where the little bowl is to-day. It has been made into a lamp. I had it encased in brass, so that it cannot break, and plated over with the purest silver. It hangs in a little church, in a slum near the London docks. It burns before the image of Saint Antonio."
Antonio could not speak. He forgot that he was still holding her hand, and she did not remember that she had not taken it away. After a long time she murmured, almost inaudibly:
"Antonio ... one night I gave you a rose."
He released her white fingers. Then he drew forth his breviary and placed it in her hand. She took it wonderingly; but he averted his eyes. Isabel gazed at the worn volume. She could see that there was some kind of a book-marker, marking the Office of the day. She opened the book and saw a pressed white rose, flecked and veined with faint blood-red.
She looked at it a long, long while. Then she shut the book and gave it back to Antonio. Without another word he wrapped the thin wrap about her form and helped her to arrange the mantilla on her shoulders. When the moment of parting came she simply gave him her hand, like a proud English lady; and he, like a courtly Portuguese gentleman, bent over it and lightly kissed her finger-tips.
She went away by the path she had taken on their last afternoon, twenty years before. Antonio, strangely calm, watched her as she pressed up the steep way. He was conscious that she still walked with willowy, girlish grace. He remembered how he had watched her that other afternoon, and how he had wondered if she would turn round and look back.
The two cypresses hid her from his sight. He breathed a quiet prayer for herself and for him. But he did not close his eyes; for they were fixed on the one point where she would reappear. His being was filled full with such peace and bliss as he had never known.
She reappeared. She turned round. She waved her hand. She was gone.
As soon as Antonio re-entered the porch of the monastery the Fathers thronged forward pressing him to break his long fast. But he shook his head and trudged on, looking neither to the right hand nor to the left. In the cool cloister he paused a moment upon the slab which covered the body of Sebastian. Then he turned into the narrow doorway and climbed, with dragging steps, to his old seat on the flat roof. One of the younger monks tried to follow; but José and Cypriano barred his passage. The two sturdy fellows, eyeing one another jealously, stood guard on either side of the gloomy opening, like two genii keeping the door of a cave.
Antonio sat down on the bench of cork. At the same moment a carriage rolled out through the principal gate of the abbey. He knew that it was bearing Isabel to rejoin her friend at Navares. Down the dusty hill it went; past the farm; and onwards until it was no more than a tremulous black spot against the whiteness of the road. As it approached the pine-woods some plate of burnished brass in the harness caught the light and blazed at Antonio for a moment, like a tiny sun. Then the shadow engulfed it, and he saw it no more.
Very calmly and with perfect concentration of mind Antonio resumed his devout thanksgiving for his first Mass. God had enabled him to rebuild His broken altar and to offer upon it the Holy Sacrifice. In the dazzling refulgence of that immense grace his sufferings and hardships were no more than grains of dust dancing in a sunbeam. The chief events of his past re-enacted themselves before him, like a stage show, and he saw that his life had been an unbroken pageant of divine mercy, full of glittering lights and rich shadows. He recalled all that God had done in him, andvidit quod esset bonum; "he saw that it was good."
When the monk's thanksgiving was finished Isabel reclaimed his mind. The strange peace which had descended upon them both, as she gazed at their white rose, abode with him still. There was no rebellion in his soul, no ache in his heart. The whole history of their love unrolled its bright length before him, like a holy scroll illuminated in blue and blood-red and gold, and he found nothing written therein that he would have altered or erased.Vidit quod esset bonum. It was good, all good, to the end.
He sat and pondered upon their wonderful love. At first he was confident that Isabel and he, he and Isabel, were the lovers of lovers, the supreme lovers of all time. But humility brought him a larger thought. Surely, before Isabel and he were born, there had been men and women loving as purely and as grandly. And surely there would be men and women loving as grandly and as purely after he and Isabel were dead.
Compared with all this love, of all these lovers in all the past and all the present, surely the shining of the sun was as darkness? He closed his eyes that he might behold the greater light. And, in that surpassing radiance, he seemed to be reading the deepest secrets of eternity and to be solving the riddle at the inmost heart of the universe. He saw innumerable loves ever ascending, like golden mists, out of the love of God. He saw those innumerable loves returning into the love of God again, like rivers into the sea. And with every return of love he saw the love of God growing richer and sweeter, like a fruit ripening in the sun. It seemed as if even God himself were waxing greater and as if, in the act of creation, the Creator took as well as gave. Without creation God must still have been perfect; but even God could rise from the lower perfection to the higher. Without creation the eternal Word was like a trumpet blown on an illimitable plain: but, with creation, the Word was like that same trumpet resounding and reverberating amidst re-echoing hills. God had need of man. God was Love, a pure white ray of love, and humanity was a prism turning this way and that and breaking the whiteness into the fairest colors. All love was one. Antonio's love for Isabel, Isabel's love for Antonio, was a drop flung forth from the bottomless ocean of the love of God to shine like a gem in the sunlight.
No. Not like a mere grain of spray which leaped free and sparkled for a moment and then fell back to lose its identity for ever. Rather was it like the immortal soul of a new-born babe, a something suddenly existing, a something with no past, but with an everlasting future, a something with an eternal identity which even God himself could not destroy. God would no more revoke and destroy His emanations of love than He would revoke and destroy His emanations of being. Innumerable loves would chime for ever in noblest harmony with the love of God, like brooks murmuring with the sea—vox turbÅ“ magnÅ“, vox aquaram multarum et vox tonitruorum magnorum: "a voice of a great multitude, a voice of great waters, a voice of mighty thunderings."
The monk rested awhile in this thought. He knew it was the thought of Isabel's dream. But suddenly a white light blazed in his soul. Isabel vanished as if she had never been. All the human love he had been cherishing fell from him, like a dying torch from the grasp of a man who strides forth out of a cave into the blinding light of a summer noon. Antonio was caught up into an ecstasy of the pure love of God.
When he opened his eyes at last and gazed upon the Atlantic he knew that he was weary. The hands were weary that had labored so roughly for his Lord. The feet were weary that had tramped so many a league in dust and heat; and the brain was weary that had puzzled and worried and planned till it could puzzle and worry and plan no more. But it mattered not at all. Was not the day's work done? There was plenty of time to sleep. Ranging over wood and meadow and stream, Antonio's gaze came to rest in the little clearing between the ending of the orange-groves and the beginning of the vineyards; and he looked with longing at the white cross which rose tall and slender above the monks' graves.
Peace filled earth and heaven. His tired eye-lids drooped over Antonio's eyes. The airs around him were rich with scents of lemon-blossom and suckle. The Atlantic lay unvexed by wind; and the ocean swell, as it searched the creeks and caves, hummed no louder than a heavy-laden honey-bee lumbering home.
THE END