ISABEL
I
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
Crowberry _père_ at his side. Crowberry _fils_ climbed 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 never _have_ deserted 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."
II
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 psalm _Quomodo dilexi legem_, at the words _tota 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."
III
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 Crowberry _père_, contained little more
than compliments and thanks; but the second, in the loose handwriting
of Crowberry _fils_, 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 obedient_
TEDDY 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.
"I went because I wanted to," she answered. "But come back to the
point. Is it true about Margarida?"
He had gradually become aware of a new sympathy between them. All
the resentment and distrust faded out of his heart. His gaze sought
hers; and not until he could look down into her eyes did he answer:
"It is not true. It never was. It never will be."
The last syllable had hardly sped clear of his lips when the monk was
struck dumb by the truth. It flashed from Isabel's radiant eyes like
a flaming sword into his heart. A moment later she had turned away
her face; but she could not hide the magic roses, the great crimson
roses, which sprang to full bloom upon her cheeks. He knew her
secret; and she knew that it was known.
To cover her trouble and confusion, she moved to find her little
gloves and the embroidered bag. Antonio stooped down before her and
was the first to pick them up; but she snatched them almost roughly
out of his hand.
"We've stayed too long," she said. "I must go."
In a twinkling she had crossed the stepping-stones and was in full
flight for home. No wood-nymph pursued by a god of old ever flew
with more gazelle-like grace; and the ravine seemed shorn of nearly
all its beauty when the trees hid her from Antonio's eyes.
IV
On Monday morning, although he had business in Navares, Antonio was
early at the pool. Throughout a sleepless night his moods had
wavered from bitter self-reproach to laborious self-justification.
But, amidst all the waverings, one decision stood firm. He must see
Isabel at once. He must not run away. He must not tolerate, either
on his part or on hers, any spurious delicacy, any eluding of a
thorough understanding.
Try as he would Antonio could not wholly close his eyes to the grim
humor of the situation. Within the narrow space of three weeks two
young and handsome heiresses had thrown themselves at his, a monk of
Saint Benedict's, head. But, while this oddity brought a bitter
smile to his lips, he was not able to take pleasure or pride in
events which were bringing pain and humiliation to others. The
feeling uppermost in his heart was one of shame and sorrow for his
indiscretion and weakness in meeting Isabel so secretly and so often.
About half-past ten she came, looking pale and rather frail. But she
had nerved herself for the ordeal before her, and she was calm and
self-controlled.
"I knew you would come," she said quietly. "Yet I feared you
wouldn't. Early this morning I nearly sent Jackson down to the farm
with a note; but I didn't want people to talk."
"I came nearly an hour ago," the monk replied. His tones were so
grave and his manner so solemn that a flush of resentment rose to her
cheek.
"Don't make things worse than they are," she cried angrily. "Aren't
they difficult enough already? You won't help matters by looking and
speaking as if you've come to a funeral."
Antonio could not retort that he was indeed standing by a graveside
and that he had come to drop a farewell tear upon their dead
happiness. He waited for her next words.
"We're obliged to talk out our talk whether we like it or not," she
continued, turning her back upon him and tearing at the fronds of a
young mimosa. "I'm not an actress. I can't pretend that I don't
know what we both know perfectly well. You can; but I can't. If I
left it all to you, I suppose you'd tell me some more about the
Emperor Pedro, or about sea-sand grapes. You'd be perfectly polite
and, as you imagine, perfectly considerate; and you'd go back to the
farm at twelve o'clock."
"I came here," answered Antonio, "expressly to talk and to listen
without a moment's false delicacy or a shade of pretense."
"Thank you," she said, with a tinge of irony.
Her slender white fingers were still wantonly busy with the mimosa.
The monk racked his wits desperately for an opening sentence. He
would have preferred the easier task of facing Senhor Jorge and Donna
Perpetua and Sir Percy and Mrs. Baxter and the Visconde de Ponte
Quebrada and Queen Victoria's Comptroller and the Fazenda official
all combined. Words refused to come. But it fell out that his
dumbness was all for the best.
"Listen," said Isabel, without turning around. "You don't expect me
to find this interview very delightful, do you? You'll admit that
it's easier for me to talk about usurpers and bunches of grapes than
about ... than about all this. I'll tell you what I've done.
Perhaps I've done wrong, as usual; but I can't help it. I'm going to
give you a letter--I mean a paper, a scribble. Some things are so
much easier to write than to say. After I've given it to you I'm
going away for a walk. I shall come back in half an hour. You may
open my little bag. It is in there."
Antonio loosened the cords of the silken pouch with respectful hands.
It contained the damascened key of the chapel, a tiny lump of shining
felspar picked up from the path, a pair of fine gloves, two or three
small coins, and a folded paper. As he drew the paper forth, a
snapping of twigs made him look up. Isabel was breaking her way
through the trees.
His hand trembled as he unfolded the document. It was a quarto sheet
filled from top to bottom with Isabel's fine writing. The monk
glanced down the hill to make sure that she had come to no harm; and
as soon as he caught sight of her walking quickly along one of the
woodland paths, he sat down on a warm boulder and began to read these
lines:
_Four years ago you and Mr. Austin Crowberry visited the Earl of
Oakland. You dined at Castle Oakland, and stayed all the next day._
_The Countess of Oakland is my aunt. I hardly ever see her, because
my father quarreled with the Earl nearly twenty years ago. But the
Earl has a niece, Lady Julia Blighe, whom I met in London a few days
after you went away. Perhaps you remember her. She is a little
over-magnificent, and wears too much jewelry at once; but people go
mad over her, and some say she is the most beautiful woman in
England._
_You made a most extraordinary impression on Lady Julia. She
admitted giving you a flower. I grew tired of hearing about
you--nearly bored to death. At first she caused me to picture you as
a beautiful Byronic hero, with a Great Grief or a Dark Secret; and I
detest all that sort of trash and gush. But one day, while she was
chattering, a miracle happened. I can't describe it. Perhaps it was
like someone throwing wide a door that had always been shut, or
setting free a bird or animal that had always been caged. All in one
moment you became the most important fact in the world. Why? How?
I don't know. I thought I knew you through and through. Often I
could have said to Lady Julia: "No. That's all wrong. You know
nothing about him."_
_I can't explain it. I am simply telling you the fact. From that
time you haunted me. I became absolutely certain that our lives,
some day, would meet; more certain than I am of the sun's existence
and the moon's. When Mr. Crowberry told me of the plan for buying
this place, and my becoming your neighbor out in these wilds, I ought
to have been overwhelmed by the astonishing coincidence; but it
seemed as natural and inevitable as the sunrise._
_At the first moment--no, not the first--I mean, the second moment of
our meeting at your farm, I was mortified because you tried to look
at me before I could look at you. Why did you do it? It was unkind.
I had been thinking of you for four years; but you, if you thought of
me at all, couldn't have thought of me more than four days. Yet,
although you were in such a hurry to beat off my eyes, I saw in an
instant that you were exactly as I had imagined you. Oporto and the
Douro were not in the least like the engravings they showed me in
England: but you were my dream come true. And all the time I sat on
your right hand at dinner, I felt as if I had known you for years and
years. You are not as clever as I expected; but you are gentle, and
I am not one bit afraid of you._
_We nearly quarreled about monks and about the azulejos, did we not?
Still, it was only on the surface. You think I make too little of
religion; I think you make too much: but we have agreed quite
amicably to differ. Deep down in our hearts we are at one._
_Since the day my father went to Lisbon I have been happy, for the
first time in my life. You left me to make all the approaches; but I
was very, very happy until Fisher mentioned Margarida. Last night I
ached and burned with shame, because I had let fall the veil from my
heart. But this morning I am glad and thankful._
_You are not like other men. And I think I am not wholly like other
women. As soon as you have read this paper we are going to tear it
into thousands of pieces. So I will be bold. Mine is not the only
secret that is out. I know you love me, my friend, my only friend in
the world._
Antonio paused in his reading. For a moment he felt an immense
relief at learning that he was not to blame. But he reminded himself
that his blamelessness did not help Isabel one whit. Here was a
mystical passion, an inscrutable supernatural love. No one could
explain its beginning, no one could foretell its end. Only by a
great effort did he resume the reading of the paper. It continued:
_So much for the past. Now for the present and the future. What are
we to do? Don't be hurt, dearest friend, if I write bluntly about
practical matters._
_There is a difference in our stations. I suspect that your blood is
really nobler than mine and that your escutcheon is less tarnished;
but, from the point of view of my friends, this will be a
misalliance. Don't be angry. I mention it only to bid you disregard
it. I have pondered it well and it weighs less than a sparrow's
feather. I am nothing to the people in England; and they shall be
nothing to me. Tell me, though; was it this that held you back from
wooing me? I believe it was; and that is why the advances came from
my side. But, after this, remember! You must court me, woo me. If
I command it, you must crick your neck for me, as if I were a
Senhorita._
_And now about my father. You may fear that it will be a blow to
him. Certainly it will amaze him and disconcert him. But if you
were not in the case, my friend, I should have to amaze him and
disconcert him some other way. So long as I and Mrs. Baxter and
Jackson are with him, he doesn't realise the flight of time. He
thinks of me as a little girl, and of himself as a man of forty who
must needs be up and doing. He has fought his hard fight and he
deserves his rest. More. He needs it. The Navares doctor says he
will go out like a candle in a gale if he does not surrender.
Whatever you may think, I love my father; and, even for your sake, I
would not leave his side if it were not wholly for his good. God
knows I am honest in this and in every word I have written._ ISABEL.
Mechanically refolding the sheet, Antonio rose to his feet and drew a
deep breath. In a few minutes Isabel would return. She would steal
as shyly as a young deer through the branches. She would expect him
to spring towards her, to clasp her in his arms, to murmur proud
words of possession, to lavish in her ears his long-hoarded treasure
of love-words, to press kisses on her hands, her cheeks, her eyes,
her hair. Like a terrifying tocsin her words clanged in his brain:
"My friend, my only friend in the world, you love me!"
He turned his gaze towards the Atlantic. But the day was growing
sultry. Thunder was in the air and mists hid the great waters. He
dared not look into the woods lest he should espy the slender figure
tripping towards him. And somehow he could not lift up his eyes and
his heart to heaven. In this cruel issue his inborn instincts of a
courtly gentleman wore down his acquired habits of piety, until it
savored of a coarseness or of a lapse from honor to breathe a word of
this rare ladye's secret, even into the pitiful ears of God's saints
and angels. Thus earth and sea and sky alike failed him. He closed
his eyes.
Suddenly a rosy light and a delicious perfumed warmth seemed to
suffuse his body and soul. Of course. His way was plain. God had
frozen his cry for help upon his lips because it was no longer God's
will that he should mortify his manhood in dogged fidelity to
obsolete vows. He had vowed his vows in the belief that the Order
would continue, and that he would live and die in its midst, upheld
by its hourly discipline and devotion. He had not left the Order:
the Order had left him. For seven years he had labored to restore
it, and he had failed. He was free.
Free. Free to be as other men, free to hail the most wonderful and
beautiful of maidens, free to exult over her, free to receive her
marvelous love and to give it back a thousand-fold. He opened his
eyes, and involuntarily held out his arms.
With bent head Isabel was picking her way up the slope. Her
exquisite hands held her pretty dress of sprigged muslin clear of the
thorny undergrowth. Sunbeams played with her golden ringlets.
Antonio watched her with a sense of intoxication. This lovely girl
was his, body and spirit, all his.
She drew nearer until he could see the blue of her large eyes, the
peach-bloom of her soft cheeks. Then, with the suddenness of an
earthquake, the greatest miracle of his life befell.
Hundreds of times in the past, especially at seasons of abounding
faith and high ecstasy, he had prayed that the Blessed Virgin would
fly to his relief if ever he should weaken in this most perilous of
his vows. "Pray for me, O Mother of mothers, O Virgin of virgins!"
he had cried again and again. "Pray for me whenever I cannot, or
will not, pray for myself." And, as Isabel parted the branches
behind the mimosa, those hundreds of old prayers were answered.
Celestial fire and supernal power filled his whole being so suddenly
and mightily that he was conscious of a physical pang, of a roaring
in his ears like rushing winds and resounding waters, of a great
brightness before his eyes.
He stepped forward and held back the last bough.
V
The heat of conflict and the flush of victory had wrought so great a
change in Antonio's expression that Isabel started when they came
face to face. But she interpreted his transfiguration as an ecstasy
of love and joy; and her blue eyes suddenly shone with a radiance as
wonderful as his own.
Before her proud and happy gaze Antonio's cheeks grew pale. It was
as if a pet lamb were looking up to him for a caress, when all the
time he was gripping a butcher's knife behind his back. It was as if
some smiling friend were holding out to him an exquisite vase full of
lilies and roses which he must straightway dash into pieces. Isabel
seemed so frail, so soft, so white, so trustful, so lamb-like; and
her love was surely the most fragrant and beautiful thing in all the
world.
"You are coy," she said laughing gaily. "And you have turned as pale
as a swooning heroine in an English novel. I suppose you're going to
say, 'Give me time: this is so sudden!'"
Although Antonio remained silent, no doubt of his love crossed her
mind. Had she not read love in his eyes, time after time? She took
it for granted that he was merely tongue-tied because of the
strangeness of the situation.
"You have read it?" she asked, drawing the folded paper from his
unresisting hand. "Every word?"
He bowed assent. For a minute or two her slender fingers busied
themselves tearing the document first into ribbons, then into small
squares, and finally into tiny shreds. After she had mixed the
shreds well together she ran to the lower end of the pool and threw
them, one small handful at a time, into the swirling rapids.
"You are tired," said Antonio when she returned. "The day is sultry.
Later on there will be thunder. You have walked a long way. You
must sit down."
Isabel seated herself on the flat boulder. But although there was
room at her side the monk remained standing. She pouted
unconsciously and darted two furtive glances at his eyes. The first
glance was only a glance of slight disappointment and of shy reproof;
but the second was a glance of sudden anguish and sickening fear.
The silence lengthened until she could bear it no longer.
"Speak to me!" she commanded indignantly. "Why do you stand there
saying nothing? I suppose you despise me?"
"Isabel," he said, calling her by her name for the first time, "you
know I don't despise you."
He spoke her name in a voice so strangely sweet that her ears tingled
and her heart leaped. And when his brown velvet eyes looked into
hers with sorrowful tenderness all her pride broke down.
"Then why are you so cruel?" she cried. "Why do you make it so hard
for me? Haven't I humiliated myself enough? You are cruel. Why do
you not tell me that you love me?"
The supernal grace and might which had miraculously fulfilled
Antonio's body and soul enabled him to triumph over temptation; but
they did not deliver him from anguish. The sword which was about to
rend the heart of Isabel scorched him as it circled downward for its
dreadful work. Her coming ordeal was already his; and he stood in
the midst of it as in a burning fiery furnace.
Isabel sprang up and faced him. Their eyes were less than a yard
apart. Antonio's continued silence was sufficient answer; but she
fought fiercely against the truth. Clasping her white hands
desperately against her breast, she challenged him in short, panting
sentences.
"This is horrible, too horrible," she began, "I tell you it is too
horrible. You can't, you daren't look me in the eyes and say you
don't love me!" And when he still delayed to speak she raised her
voice and commanded sharply: "Answer!"
He looked her in the eyes with immeasurable sadness, and answered:
"I do not love you in the way you mean."
"The way I mean? What is the way I mean? Either you love me or you
don't. There are no two ways in love." She spoke hotly and with
scorn.
"In the paper you've just torn up," he replied, "you called me your
dearest friend in the world. In that sense, I love you. In all the
world, you are my dearest friend."
"And no more? Not an atom more?"
He hesitated.
"Come," she said bitterly. "You are trying me too far. If this is
some subtlety, some finesse, let us save it until another day. For
the last time, I ask you: Can you stand up here in the sight of the
God you believe in, and say that I am no more to you than your
dearest friend?"
It came home to Antonio that he could not, with perfect truthfulness,
say that she was his friend and no more. Yet how was he to evade her
question? Plainly the cruel, hateful moment had come for striking
the fair vase to pieces, for driving the butcher's knife into the
white lamb's heart. He raised his head and resumed the mastery over
her by a single movement of his inextinguishable will.
"My dearest friend in the world," he said gently. "If I am to blame
for the smallest fraction of this wonderful and terrible thing which
has come to pass, I crave your pardon here and now with all my heart,
and I will ask God's pardon every day until I die. But ... for God's
sake, let us forget. Let yesterday and to-day be as if they had
never been. How a woman like you could ever waste one thought of
love on a man like me neither of us can explain."
She heard him with wildly staring eyes.
"You offer me," he concluded, "a gift beyond all price. But I must
turn my back, I must close my eyes, I must stop my ears. I am
pledged to another Bride."
They were the words he had used to Senhor Jorge. But, this time, he
uttered them proudly; for he had meditated upon them often since the
serão. He knew that they were not a mean verbal quibble, and that
they enshrined the foremost fact of his life. As they left his lips
the spiritual world was as real and near as the cascade, as real and
near as the mossy boulder, as real and near as Isabel.
His delicacy moved the monk to turn away without even the briefest
glance at the effect of his declaration upon Isabel. But she did not
desire his consideration. Something magnetic in her anger compelled
him to raise his eyes. He saw that she too had moved away.
"Another Bride?" she repeated slowly, barbing every syllable with
scorn. "Another Bride? Indeed. What an entirely enviable young
woman!"
For a few moments her sarcasm sustained her. With her hands hanging
easily at her side she stood haughtily erect, smiling a scornful
smile. But it did not last. Without warning she ran towards him and
cried, with a break in her voice:
"It isn't true!"
"It is true," said the monk, very gently.
"It is not true!" she went on, stamping her foot. "It isn't. It
can't be. If it were true you would have told me before. You'd have
dropped a hint, you'd have talked about her. I tell you it isn't
true. If it were true you'd have told me when you denied the talk
about Margarida. You are a man. You are not a cur and a brute."
"This is unjust," cried Antonio. "How could I tell you yesterday,
after Margarida? You ran away home like the wind. And why should I
drop hints? Surely they would have been a great impertinence. How
should I dream that you, an English lady, with a proud old name,
would ever think so of me, a wine-merchant's clerk?"
"Then why did you make love to me fifty times?" she retorted.
"Fifty times? Made love? This is madness. On my honor and
conscience I have not breathed a word of love to you even once."
"Who said you'd breathed words? I didn't. But you've made love with
your eyes. Over and over and over again you have looked at me as if
I was as much to you as you were to me, and as if you and I were the
only beings in the world."
"I swear you are mistaken, utterly mistaken," cried Antonio.
Isabel had ceased to listen. She clenched her hands together once
more against her breast and stood gazing towards the mists which hid
the Atlantic. When she spoke again it was not to Antonio. She
seemed rather to be thinking aloud, with quick impassioned utterance.
"So this is the end," she began. "Yet how long it has been in
coming! I have been happy for ten days--ten whole days. When was I
ever happy for three days and nights before? But it's over now.
What a memory to carry to my grave--the memory of this end! I've
made a fool of myself. I've made myself cheaper than dirt. I've
pressed myself on a man who won't have me."
Antonio took a step forward; but, without paying him the smallest
attention, she continued:
"It's happened to other women, no doubt. But the other women weren't
so hungry and thirsty for a little happiness as I was. They didn't
have mothers who died the day they were born. They didn't have
fathers who forget their very existence for months and months at a
time. They've had homes, they've had friends, they've had all the
lesser love. But I ... I have had nothing, from anybody, anywhere,
ever."
She laughed a laugh like iron against iron. The monk could endure it
no longer. He sprang to her side. For the first time, he touched
her hand. She snatched it free as if he had burnt it, and looked at
him fiercely.
"Go away," she cried, "I hate you!"
"No," he said. "I won't go away till you are less unhappy, and till
you forgive me."
His gentle compulsion mastered her. She allowed him to lead her back
to the boulder. This time he sat down at her side. As he did so she
bent her head. Tears came into her eyes. Suddenly she covered her
face with her hands and wept without restraint.
Antonio, sitting so near to her that he could have encircled her with
his arm, suffered as bitterly as Isabel. The momentary temptation to
trample on his vow no longer had the slightest power over him; but
his whole heart yearned to end her grief, or, at the least, to
comfort her. She was so like a sobbing, heartbroken child that it
seemed inhuman to sit beside her without drawing her head to his
shoulder or even stroking her hands. Yet he knew that it would be
more inhuman still to rise up and move away.
She overcame her sobs at last; and, turning upon him eyes like April
skies, she demanded abruptly:
"This Bride? What is she like?"
"Let us not talk of her now," said Antonio, as soon as he could
command his words. "Surely it is better not."
"Is she like Margarida?"
"No."
"Prettier?"
"For Heaven's sake," he pleaded, "do not ask these questions?"
"Answer me at once. Is she prettier than I am? In England they call
me pretty. I suppose I'm ugly to a Portuguese. I suppose she's a
hundred times more beautiful than I am."
"There are different kinds of beauty," said Antonio.
"Is she clever?"
Antonio considered well. Then he replied:
"In Her case I should not use the word 'clever.' But, I entreat you,
ask me no more."
He rose to his feet with a look which silenced her. A moment
afterwards she too sprang up. Stepping quickly to the pool, she
dipped her little handkerchief in the laughing water and tried to
bathe away the traces of her tears. When she sailed back towards him
she came proudly.
"This ought to be the end," she said. "I ought not to see you alone
again. But I don't forbid you to come just once more. Perhaps I
shall be here to-morrow morning. I don't say I shall, and I don't
say I shan't."
Her steady gaze commanded an answer: but it was only by a huge effort
that Antonio succeeded in replying:
"You have spoken truly. We ought not to meet alone again."
"No, we ought not. Most decidedly we ought not," she flashed back
scornfully. "But we will!"
And without another word or glance she hastened away.
VI
Isabel could not sleep. In order to postpone the hour of solitude
she had sat up late talking to Fisher, practising Portuguese with
Joanninha, and writing letters to her few friends in England.
Finally she had astounded Mrs. Baxter by asking to be told all about
the early life of the callous young Viscountess Datton and by
listening without a murmur to the details which the Excellent
Creature multitudinously invented. But the moment came when Mrs.
Baxter's love of bed overbore her love of hearing herself talk. She
rang the bell and Jackson came in, yawning, with the candles.
When Isabel lay down she set the whole power of her will to the
barricading of her mind against the day's cruel memories. But it was
all in vain. Every word she had spoken to Antonio, every syllable of
his replies, vibrated afresh in her ears, scorching them with shame.
Twice or thrice she clenched her fist as if she would strike some
invisible enemy or revenge herself on the author of her loss and
humiliation. Sometimes her cheeks burned crimson: sometimes she felt
all the blood ebb from them. Her spiritual anguish brought in its
wake a physical pain, sickening and hardly bearable, like the pains
after the first shock of a dizzy fall or a brutal blow. She seemed
to be aching all over; and more than once she moaned aloud.