BOOK VI

"ITE, MISSA EST"

I

Having charged José to place himself at the disposal of Mrs. Baxter,

Antonio took the road for Villa Branca about an hour after sunrise.

Utter weariness had brought a few hours' sleep to his eyelids; but he

felt unrested and unrefreshed. By the time he reached Santa Iria

fatigue compelled him to hire a horse.

While his mount was a-saddling the monk sat musing outside the

wine-shop. What was Isabel doing? Of what was she thinking? Had

she slept? Was she truly hating him at last? Would she come once

more to the cascade?

In answer to this last question he could hardly restrain himself from

leaping on the half-ready horse and galloping off like a whirlwind to

her presence. At the moment of his leaving the farm-house, two hours

before, this all-day expedition to Villa Branca had seemed the height

of prudence; but he suddenly saw it as the depth of cowardice and

brutality. She would come to the cascade, in vain; and, later on,

she would learn from José's lips how he had turned tail and run away.

Antonio cringed and burned. A moment later, however, he knew that he

had done right. She would not be at the cascade.

"To-morrow," he said to himself, with a dull pain gnawing in his cold

and heavy heart, "I shall see her for the last time. She will make

no sign. She will say good-bye as if there has been nothing between

us. Blessed Mother of God, help us to the end!"

He took out Sir Percy's letter and perused it once more to distract

his thoughts. He read:

_Dear Senhor da Rocha,--_

_A post just to hand apprises me of your gentility to my daughter and

her governess. The fact that I fully expected such courteous

behavior on your part does not diminish my gratitude in respect of

it; and I beg you to believe in the sincerity of my regret that I

shall be unable to present my acknowledgments in person._

_I indulge the hope that a proposal which I am about to make may not

be unacceptable to you. From our mutual friend Mr. Austin Crowberry

I learn that you wished to purchase the abbey domain, but that your

offers were unacceptable to the Minister of Finances._

_I have paid a deposit of £500 to the chief of the Fazenda at Villa

Branca, and am engaged to pay £300 on New Year's Day and the balance

(£2500) in five half-yearly instalments. As I have become closely

associated with an enterprise which will involve my residing

alternately in Lisbon and London, I should find it convenient to

transfer to yourself my whole bargain as regards the abbey. That is

to say, I forfeit the £500 already paid and leave you to find £2800

on the dates above referred to. I also ask your acceptance of the

larger articles of English furniture recently placed by me in the

guest-house, and I have instructed Jackson, my man, to bring away

personal luggage only._

_As my movements are erratic, perhaps you will indulge me by

completing the business with my agents, Messrs. Lemos Monteiro and

Smithson, Rua do Carmo, Lisbon, who have written to Villa Branca

preparing the officials for your visit. Failing your approval I will

make other arrangements; but, meanwhile, I beg that you will add to

your unfailing kindness by taking care of the keys, and that you will

believe me to be_

_Your obliged and obedient servant,_

_Percival Kaye-Templeman._

Once in the saddle, with the well-beloved music of horse-hoofs in his

ears, Antonio found it easier to abstract his mind from bitter

thoughts. He applied his whole brain to problems of finance. Two

thousand five hundred pounds in two years and a half. At first it

had staggered him; but he was going to take the risk. His own and

José's hard cash hoardings would pay the New Year's Day instalment

nearly twice over. By mortgaging the farm and the sea-sand

vineyards, and by pledging his personal credit he could pay the July

five hundred and keep two or three hundred towards the instalment due

the following January, making up the balance from the year's

wine-sales. Fifteen hundred pounds would remain payable; and this

sum he hoped to raise in due course by a bold stroke involving a

mortgage on the abbey itself.

The chief of the Fazenda received his visitor effusively. This time

the monk was not required to lean against a pile of stolen books. He

sat in the chief's own chair and was offered wine of the chief's own

stealing. As three hundred pounds of Isabel's money had stuck to the

chief's fingers the great man was more than willing to accept Antonio

in Sir Percy's place; for he had just learned that the Englishman

would be unable to meet his obligations, and he was mortally afraid

of a reopening of the transaction in Lisbon. He even threw out

mysterious hints as to further concessions which might be arranged.

Antonio listened attentively. His conscience allowed him to plan the

outwitting of the Portuguese Government as regards money which was

not honestly theirs. But as soon as he perceived that the official

was bent on more pickings for himself the monk became obtuse. He was

not willing to assist any man in the work of more completely damning

his soul; and, although Antonio clearly foresaw that he was making an

enemy and preparing sore troubles for himself in the future, he

steadfastly held out against temptation.

The autumn day was drawing to its twilight when Antonio, having given

up his horse at Santa Iria, trudged up the path to his own door.

Half the way home Isabel had queened his whole mind. On leaving

Villa Branca he had sought to preoccupy himself with the most

complicated arithmetic; but, little by little, Isabel had reclaimed

her empire. As he mounted the doorstep his heart thumped heavily.

Had she written? Had she sent a message by José? Or, most terrible

and beautiful possibility of all, would he find her sitting in the

house, as in her rightful place?

He entered. There was no Isabel enlightening the dim and cheerless

room. He hurried to the table whereon, José was accustomed to leave

the letters. There was nothing. His heart chilled and shrank.

Still, there was to-morrow. Yes. He was certain to see her

to-morrow.

José stamped in noisily and handed Antonio two keys.

"They have gone," he said.

So sharp a blade of anguish pierced his soul that Antonio let the

keys fall on the brick floor.

"Gone?" he echoed. "Who? When? Why? Where?"

"The English senhoras," answered José. "They started about three

o'clock, to Lisbon."

Antonio sank down upon a coffer. He had used up the last of his

strength in tramping from Santa Iria, and he had eaten nothing all

day.

"I don't understand it very well," continued José. "I reached the

guest-house at half-past eight. I thought they weren't to leave

until to-morrow. I worked under the Senhor Jaxo. He didn't hurry

himself at all. Joanninha brought us cold meat and white bread and

strong wine. Joanninha is the cook. She has the longest tongue,

your Worship, in Portugal. She made me angry, talking about your

Worship."

"About me? How?" asked Antonio. He felt sick and faint.

"She heard me say that your Worship would attend the senhoras

to-morrow morning. She said: 'Where is his Excellency to-day? I

suppose he's gone to see Senhor Jorge's Margarida.' I said: 'No, his

Worship has something better to do. He has gone to Villa Branca to

mind his own business, and it would be a good thing if everybody else

would do the same.' There was an English servant in the room, called

Ficha. She's maid to the Senhorita Isabel. Joanninha translated to

her what I'd said, and they both laughed, and I was very angry."

"What has this to do with the senhoras going away in such a hurry?"

asked Antonio. But, even as he finished putting the question, his

own fears supplied the answer.

"It's nothing to do with the senhoras hurrying away at all," said

José humbly. "I beg your Worship's pardon for repeating such

nonsense. All I know is that some bells rang and the Senhor Jaxo

went out, and when he came back he was in a great rage. Joanninha

told me that the Senhorita Isabel had decided to go to her

illustrious father at once, and that nobody dared oppose her."

"Did you see the senhoras? Were they well?"

"I think they were well, because I heard them quarreling," José

answered. "The dark senhora, the old one, has a temper that made me

tremble, your Worship. They went away, the senhoras and the servants

in two old shut-up carriages, but they are going to hire a better

carriage on the way. I saw the old senhora, when she handed me the

keys. She sent you a long message, but I don't think Joanninha could

translate it properly. So I asked would she write, but she didn't.

They locked all up and gave me the keys. Then they went away. They

didn't say when they will come back. I think, your Worship, that

they are all mad."

"José," said his master, after a long silence, "I have eaten nothing

all day. Let me break my fast. Afterwards I have something to tell

you. Prepare me what you can while I change my clothes."

He climbed the steep and narrow stairs painfully. His cold tub

revived him, and his old clothes gave him ease. But, as he lifted

his worn cloak from its hook, the wound in his heart burst open

afresh. He remembered how often Isabel had sat, in all her

daintiness, upon that same cloak's clean but rusty folds; and how, on

her own confession, she had "cried and cried and cried like a baby"

at the sight of its threadbareness.

By the time he descended José had grilled two small trout and was

placing a bottle of good white wine upon the table. Antonio's heart

was wrung anew at the thought of the simple fellow's unfailing

devotion. Isabel had come and had gone; but José remained, loving

and serving his strange master with a dumb love passing the love of

women. The monk forced his faithful disciple to sit down at table

with him and to take his fair share of the dainty fish and the

animating wine. When they had finished eating and drinking he said:

"José, I have been a good deal in and about the guest-house and the

abbey since we saved the azulejos, and many strange things have

happened. The end of it all is this. Here are the keys of the

guest-house. Upstairs, in the green box, I have all the keys of the

abbey. To-day, as you know, I have been to Villa Branca. We are in

legal possession of the abbey domain, and everything in it. Within

three years we must raise three thousand pounds. With God's help it

can be done. The English people will never come back."

He closed his eyes wearily. When he half-opened them he saw José by

the light of the one candle, bowing his head and silently repeating

thankful prayers. The monk quailed. For himself, as well as for

José, this ought to be a night of praise and rejoicing. Yet Antonio

found it the darkest hour of his life. The abbey keys seemed no more

than a few bits of metal. Or, if they were more than bits of metal,

they were the keys of a prison, the keys which were locking Isabel

outside his life.

He took his candle and went to bed. But, despite his weariness, he

could not sleep. Where was she? In what rough inn, amidst what

discomforts and indignities, was she lying? If he jumped up at once

and tramped southward until he could find a horse, when would he

overtake her? To-morrow, he calculated, about noon. He imagined

himself thundering after her chariot, like a highwayman in a picture.

He pictured her pretty alarm, her radiant joy, her gracious

forgiveness, their ecstasy of reunion.

Suddenly the monk remembered with a shock that he had not said all

his Office. Busy or idle, sick or well, glad or sad, he had never

failed to recite it before. He still had None, Vespers, and Compline

to say. Lighting the candle and opening his breviary he began to

repeat the holy words. But he had not uttered half a dozen sentences

before he shut the book with a snap.

Half an hour later he arose, put together all the keys, and went down

stairs. The new moon had not set, and its brightness lured him forth

from his narrow room into the peace of the night. As a matter of

course he took the path to the abbey.

Although the ruts of wheels, her wheels, made him shiver he did not

turn back. He opened the chapel with the long key she had so often

handled, and sitting down in his old stall, he tried to say the rest

of None; but a white form, her form, hindered him, and a soft, glad

voice, her voice, cried: "Antonio, Antonio, Antonio--what a beautiful

name!" He groped his way to his own cell, and he could almost see

and hear her opening his cupboards. He hastened through the

cloisters and escaped into the wood by the secret door.

Some dead leaves fled before him, their tripping sound was no lighter

than the fall of her elfin feet. The moon suddenly peeped at him

through a clearing; and he saw her moon-white shoulders. The chirrup

of a brimming brook struck upon his ear; and he seemed to be carrying

her once more in his arms, while she murmured: "Listen, Antonio, all

the world is singing."

He knew that the guest-house must tear his wound wide open, and that

he ought to hurry home to the farm; but an irresistible influence

drew him on. He reached the broad path. He stood under the casement

whence she had flung the white rose. It was still ajar.

He turned the key in the lock and entered the ghostly and silent

house. There was enough moonlight in the salon to show him the blue

ottoman whereon she had so often sat. He hurried out of the room

with a heart ready to burst.

At the foot of the stairs he paused. They led to her chamber. Could

he bear to cross its threshold, to lean out of the window as she had

leaned out after the thunder, and to look at the bed where she had

lain sobbing for his sake? He knew he could not bear it. But his

intellect had ceased to govern him and he ascended the stairs.

A broad moonbeam lit up every corner of her chamber. Like a man

dazed he lurched to the window. There were the roses and there were

the thorns. He turned to gaze at her couch. The fine linen had been

taken away; but there was the place where she had lain, there was the

pillow which her golden head had pressed. What had her last night

been? Had she hated him or did she love him still? Had she cursed

God or had she prayed?

For a moment his mind turned the question over in a numb, impersonal

way. Then he came back with a rush to himself and, in a single

moment, his chalice of agony welled up and brimmed over. He flung

himself down on his knees and stretched out desperate hands and

hungry arms across the narrow bed.

Although long minutes passed his dry-eyed, stony anguish remained.

But at last his inward, spiritual man spoke. Was he committing a

grievous sin? Was he breaking, in spirit, a vow which he was only

keeping in the letter? Had he forsaken the Creator for a creature?

Slowly, but very surely, his conscience framed the answer. No, he

had not sinned. In all his desire of her there was still nothing of

the carnal mind. He was racked and scorched by anguish, not because

he had lost her love, but because he had been forced to break her

heart by refusing her his own. She was a child, a poor lonely child

with neither man nor woman to love her, nor any God to console her;

and he, Antonio, had flung her back into a still blacker frost and

sharper famine, to pine and wither without love and without faith.

Yet, in all this, he had simply obeyed God. He had obeyed the God

who commanded Abram to offer up Isaac, the God who "spared not His

own Son, but freely gave Him up for us all."

The moonbeam softly faded from the chamber. But Antonio did not

move. His weary limbs and exhausted brain could resist no longer;

and, still kneeling against her pillow with his arms outstretched

across her bed, he fell asleep.

II

When the monk awoke day was dawning. For a while memory failed him.

But as soon as he understood that he was in Isabel's room he leaped

up and hastened downstairs.

He knew that he ought to go straight home. But his feet, despite

their soreness, turned towards the stepping-stones. He retraced the

path by which she had left him, hardly thirty-six hours before. Past

the cypresses, through the mimosas, he went; and before the sun rose

he was standing in the icy spray of the thunderous waterfall. He

longed to plunge into the crystal pool; but her invisible presence

abashed him, and with an ever-sharpening pain he hurried away.

As he regained the farm, he found José burning some dead leaves. Why

could he not tear down these clinging memories of Isabel from his

heart, as José could tear down ivies from the trees, and fling them

a-top of the glowing, fuming pyre? The gust of pale, acrid smoke

which nipped his nostrils was bitter-sweet.

After a dip in the brook he drank some of the sham coffee and forced

down a hunk of coarse bread. But when he faced his routine he found

that he could neither work nor pray. The black and red letters in

his breviary danced impishly before his eyes; and when he took up a

pen to write out some accounts he marked the paper with more blots

than figures. Both door and window were wide open to the morning

breeze; yet the room suffocated him.

At last a plan formed in Antonio's brain and he did not delay its

execution. Stuffing a piece of bread in his pocket he sought out

José and said:

"To-morrow my hard work will begin. To-day I am going to Navares.

After to-night I will not leave you so much alone."

He set out, striding northward with long strides. Every stride was a

symbol of his renunciation; for he knew that by this time Isabel

would have left her inn and that every moment was taking her farther

southward to Lisbon. On he pressed. As landmark after landmark came

in sight a flood of old memories diluted his bitter potion of

new-brewed sorrow. He lived over again the afternoon of his dusty

march from the monastery amid a throng of monks and soldiers and the

evening of his solitary return. But not for long. An hour before

the white houses of Navares shone in the morning sun Isabel had once

more become the sole tenant of his mind.

The doors of the Navares' corn-factor's granary, where the monks had

held their council, were wide open; but Antonio did not pause to look

inside. As on the night of his flight, he hurried through the town

and only rested when he came to the knoll where he had bivouacked

twice before. Thence, after munching a little bread, he took the

short cut through the maize-fields to the village of the old cura;

for the old cura's grave was the goal of his hasty pilgrimage.

By an irony of fate a rustic wedding had drawn the whole population

to the church and churchyard. Their mirth so mocked the pilgrim's

mood that he had a mind to go away. But he mixed with the throngs

until his resentment at their gaiety was turned to thankfulness for

the excess of human joy over human sorrow. At last a horn was blown

from the door of a neighboring barn, and the crowd swept out of the

churchyard like stampeding buffaloes.

The plain grave of the old cura lay in a sheltered corner on the

north side of the chancel. Pious hands had brightened it with a

yellow and purple nosegay that very morning. Antonio did not kneel

down. He simply uncovered his head and strove to pray. For five

minutes it was like chewing chaff. Some devil whispered in the

monk's ear that his errand was not only silly, but in doubtful taste.

The old cura was a saint, no doubt; but what had so rough a diamond

to do with so soft and lustrous and exquisite a pearl as Isabel?

Thus spake the devil, but Antonio refused his ear. Knowing that

prayer comes with praying, he prayed on.

Not until he had replaced his hat on his head and was about to go

were his prayers answered. But when the answer came, it was an

answer indeed. It almost struck him down, like the great light which

struck down Saul on the way to Damascus, and he was forced to lean

against the church wall. It was an answer which both healed the

worst of his grief and showed him the most of his duty in a single

flash. It thrust into his hand a golden key to the whole mystery of

Isabel, past and future.

Like a man whose shoulders have suddenly been eased of a burden he

swung out homewards, holding his head high. Without knowing it, he

talked to himself aloud, uttering broken phrases of hope and

thankfulness. Yes, he had found the key, the master-key to all that

had happened. As he strode along he recalled his association with

Isabel from the beginning, and there was no lock his key did not fit.

Even the problem which had tried his faith most sorely was solved.

In confiding to him her story of the mysterious influence which he

had begun to exercise over her, four years before she saw his face,

Isabel had declared that their lives were interfused in an

irresistible destiny. She had spoken of this as a fact more

undeniable than the sun and moon. She evidently believed with her

whole soul that God's hand had brought them together. Yet Antonio,

all through her pleading, had remained more persuaded than ever that

the selfsame God had called him to the celibate life. And the

apparent impossibility of reconciling these two equally clear,

equally honest convictions had kindled a fiery ordeal for the monk's

faith. The only way out of it seemed to be that all inward

illumination was a delusion--_totum corpus tenebrosum_, "the whole

body full of darkness"--and that perhaps there was no Divine

Enlightener at all. But this wonderful new thought which had come to

him at the old cura's grave explained everything. He thrust it into

the most complicated wards of his spiritual doubts, and it turned as

smoothly as the damascened key was wont to turn in the lock of the

chapel. The doors of Isabel's soul rolled open before his eyes, and

a bright light shone into the furthest cranny.

As for his duty to her in the present and in the future, he

understood it no less certainly than he understood her chaste love

for him in the past. And, as soon as this duty was plain, he made

haste to begin doing it; for it was a duty of prayer, of specific,

faithful, heroic, loving, unceasing prayer. He prayed as he walked,

with increasing exultation.

So rapt was he by his holy work that Antonio hardly noticed the

difference between the dusty, lonely road and the cobbled streets of

noisy Navares. He pressed southward without a pause. Was he not

going home? After a day and a night of banishment had not the farm

once more become the tranquil home of his body, and had not the

chapel once more become the rapturous home of his soul? He strode

the last long league of his homeward journey as if it had been the

first; and when he met José at the gate his face was shining like an

angel's.

True to his word, Antonio rose early the next morning and threw

himself body and soul into hard work. Now that the abbey domain had

come under his care, there were hundreds of things to be done. As

the sunny and well-drained slopes were exceptionally suitable for the

culture of a profitable amber-colored wine, Antonio decided to double

the area of the monk's old vineyard immediately. In order to effect

this extension and to repair the damage done by seven years' neglect,

it became necessary to engage nearly a score of helpers, half a dozen

of whom would have to be retained in permanent employ. José, with

one resident laborer, continued to live at the farm, while the monk

quietly resumed occupation of his own cell in the monastery.

On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, Antonio dined at the farm with

José; and on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, José dined with his

master beside the stream in the monastery kitchen. At these

week-night meals, the conversation was usually a review of the day's

operations and a debate as to the work of the morrow; but on Sundays,

when dinner was eaten ceremoniously in the guest-house, such topics

were not mentioned, and the talk was of the great world's doings as

chronicled in Antonio's English paper, of Portugal's troubles, and,

above all, of churchly and holy things.

Not only during these Sunday talks, but also throughout their

work-a-day intercourse, José was conscious of a change in Antonio.

Hitherto, the monk had simply accepted the shaggy fellow's dumb

affection; but, after the day of his visit to the old cura's grave,

he began to show that he requited it as well. The last remains of

his aloofness vanished, his speech grew gentler, and he became more

watchful of José's health and comfort. Nor was the monk's manner

changed towards José alone. In all things and to all persons he was

more tender and less cold.

On the long winter evenings the two men busied themselves with blue

pigments and white glazes, until they succeeded in fabricating

tolerable copies of the two broken azulejos. When this was achieved,

they began a series of experiments, with a view to distilling a new

liqueur from eucalyptus. By rashly gulping down a mouthful of the

first pint, José almost burned out his tongue. Nevertheless, they

persevered; and, in the long run, the monkish talent for

cordial-making enabled Antonio to mollify the harshness of the fiery

elixir, and to render it palatable. In January they shipped samples

to agents in fever-cursed regions of Spanish America, and offered to

supply the liqueur in bulk at a high price.

Meanwhile, Antonio was waxing stronger in faith, and hope, and love.

Every day he recited the whole of his Office in his old stall,

sometimes with José's assistance, sometimes alone. He began also to

hear Mass in the village church every Wednesday and Friday, and to

say the whole rosary every Sunday afternoon. In meditating on the

fifteen Mysteries, he habitually applied them to the case of Isabel;

and, somehow, these thinkings never became trite or stale. In

pursuance of his plan for Isabel's well-being, he redoubled his

prayers, and offered half his Mass-hearings and communions with the

same intention.

The winter passed and the spring came; and still he had not heard a

word from her or about her. Sometimes a memory of her would suddenly

overwhelm him. When he dined at the farm with José there seemed to

be always three persons, not two, at the table. He felt that she was

sitting at his right hand, where she had sat when he gave her the

painted bowl; and so strong was his sense of her presence that he

would often halt in the midst of a sentence, as if to ask her pardon

for the dryness of the talk. After the morrow of her flight, he

never visited the stepping-stones, although he repeatedly gave José

minute instructions for the conserving of the pool's beauties. As

for Isabel's chamber, he locked it up, and never re-entered it. Yet,

in spite of this reverence for everything she had touched, he never

moped or repined. He confided Isabel, as he had confided the fate of

the abbey, to the might and love of God.

When July came, he made a novena in honor of Saint Isabel, the holy

queen of Portugal, whose silver shrine was the glory of the Poor

Clare's great convent opposite Coimbra, on the heights above the

Mondego. And in August he received a long letter from young

Crowberry. Seven of its eight pages were concerned with England's

theological and ecclesiastical affairs: but in the midst of the page

devoted to personal matters, the young man had written:

_Of course, you know that Isabel has taken her father to live at

Weymouth. I never see them; but I hear they are both well, and that

Sir Percy has become quite reasonable and docile. Have they told you

how she put her foot down and sent away that Excellent Creature, Mrs.

Baxter? If she hadn't pulled up Sir Percy I'm told he would have

died. Now, what did you really and truly think of Isabel? Did you

see much of her, or did she sulk? Tell me when you write._

Antonio wrote a long letter in reply; but he did not tell young

Crowberry what he really and truly thought about Isabel, nor did he

so much as mention her name. His novena was answered. It was enough

for him to know that Sir Percy lived, and that she was well.

The grape-harvest in September was a good one, and it was only by

cutting an hour from his sleep-time that the monk could fill full his

appointed measures of work and prayer. Then came October, with its

vintage of memories. On the anniversary of Senhor Jorge's serao

Antonio could be serene; for Margarida had just been happily married

to a handsome and honorable young man of Leiria, the son of a

prosperous builder. But with the approach of the anniversary of his

first meeting with Isabel he grew troubled; and, to divert his

thoughts, he departed hurriedly for Lisbon, where he had business to

transact with the shippers of his wines and cordials. In Lisbon he

learned that a journey to England would be to his advantage. But

England meant Isabel; so, on the anniversary of her flight from the

guest-house, he turned his back on the capital and hastened home.

By mortgaging his farm the monk succeeded in paying the third

instalment of the abbey's price. He faced the New Year with less

than twenty pounds of ready money, and with the obligation to find

five hundred by the first of July. A request for a more flexible

arrangement was flung back at him by the Fazenda official with

vindictive contempt. As the spring advanced, Antonio laid his plan

for the immediate outright purchase of the abbey on a fifteen hundred

pound mortgage before four separate persons; but without exception

they either could not or would not entertain it. In these

circumstances he felt bound to cut down his gifts to village

charities and his bounties to the hangers-on of the countryside. As

a result, José came home one day with a black eye, received while he

was punishing three village loafers for calling the Senhor da Rocha a

skin-flint and a miser.

By May-day Antonio's sales of stock and the pledging of his credit

had brought him in only three hundred pounds, and there was nothing

left that he could pawn without crippling himself hopelessly in the

near future. But he was not cast down. He was doing his utmost, and

he calmly left the rest with God.

III

Very early one morning, at the end of May, Antonio heard light

footsteps passing his cell. Although he sprang up immediately from

bed he could not open his door in time to see the intruder's face or

form. He caught no more than half a moment's glimpse of a slender

and darkly garbed figure disappearing round the angle of the corridor.

Having scrambled into his clothes, he started in pursuit. The light

tap-tap of shod feet on the stones told him that his visitor was

making for the chapel. The monk, who was barefooted, followed

noiselessly.

Peeping into the chapel through the little door amid the azulejos,

Antonio saw a tall spare man kneeling before the altar. Even if his

back had not been turned to Antonio it would have been impossible to

see his face, because he was hiding it in his hands. The stranger

wore a long black cloak, uncomfortably thick and heavy for the torrid

Portuguese summer. But it was plain that he did not find it too

warm. With long, thin, death-pale hands, he drew its folds more

closely round his body; and, as he did so, the familiar movement

revealed his identity to Antonio.

It was Father Sebastian.

Antonio hurried forward and knelt at his side. But Sebastian did not

move, nor did he cease praying for four or five minutes; and when at

last he turned towards Antonio it was without the slightest sign of

surprise. Rising painfully, he left the altar and made a gesture,

inviting Antonio to follow him.

As Sebastian had stood next to Antonio in juniority among the

choir-monks, the stalls of the two men were side by side. Sebastian

sat down in his old place and Antonio did likewise. The chapel was

dim; but the younger man could see that the elder's body had wasted

almost to a skeleton. Yet there was nothing repellent about him.

The bloom on his cheeks and the fire in his eyes had the solemn

beauty of a sunset in an autumnal forest. When he began to speak his

voice was so soft and sweet that it seemed to come from some far-off

holy height.

"To-day, Father Antonio," he said, "completes the ninth year since

you sat on the cloister roof and heard the hoofs of the horsemen who

had come to thrust us from this house. And, this morning, it is just

nine years since you were raised to the priesthood. I asked our Lord

to give me strength for the journey, so that I might spend this

anniversary with you. He has heard me."

"Who told you that I was here?" Antonio asked.

Sebastian did not reply. But there was that in his eyes which gave

Antonio a sufficient answer. Here was a saint who walked in the

light.

"Nine years," mused Sebastian aloud. "And you have not yet said your

first Mass."

"No," replied Antonio. "But God is good. Every year He enables me

to send a little cask of wine for the altar to a poor church in

England. Six days a week I work amid wine; and is not wine the

matter of His great Sacrament? It consoles me to know that although

I cannot say Mass, I can serve His table. Although I cannot, like

Mary, his mother, bear Him in my hands, I can be like those other

Marys at the sepulcher. _Emerunt aromata ut venientes ungerent

Jesum_: 'They brought sweet spices that they might anoint Jesus.'"

"He is not a God of the dead, but of the living," said Sebastian, in

sweet, far-off tones. "We do not offer a dead Christ. Say rather

that you are like that favored unknown to whom He sent two disciples

saying, _Ubi est diversorium ubi pascha cum discipulis meis

manducem_: 'Where is the guest-chamber where I may eat the Passover

with My disciples?' But come. Our time together is short, and there

is much to say. First of all, I have brought your breviary which you

charged me to keep."

He pointed to a package lying on the Prior's seat. Antonio rose and

took it with joyful gratitude. When he returned to his stall he said:

"Suffer my questions first. Whence do you come? Where have you

lived these nine long years?"

"For a few months I was with the English fathers in Lisbon,"

Sebastian answered. "They were kind; but when it became plain that

the Portuguese Benedictine congregation must come to an end, I

crossed Spain and sought asylum at the Montserrat, where men used to

believe the Holy Grail was treasured. There was much work for me to

do there in the School of Music; and I found strength to do it, for

we lived like eagles high up in the pure air, three thousand feet

above the sea. But Madrid followed the example of Lisbon. Greedy

eyes were cast on our possessions. They accused us of being

Carlists, just as in Portugal they accused us of being Miguelistas:

and only eighteen months after leaving this abbey, I was again an

exile. Since then I have dwelt in three religious houses; and every

one of them has been suppressed."

"Can it be," asked Antonio uneasily, "that the Orders are themselves

to blame, as men say? Here we dwelt in simplicity and piety, living

by our own labor and feeding the poor. But was this house an

exception? Had the majority of other monks indeed sunk into gluttony

and sloth?"

"In every monastery from which I have been driven," said Sebastian,

"our evictors poured regrets and compliments upon us. It was always

the misdeeds of 'others,' for which we had to suffer. But whenever I

questioned an exiled community, I found they had received the same

compliments. Those mysterious 'others' have still to be found.

According to the statesmen, all religious houses individually are

fountains of light and blessing to their neighbors; but collectively

they are a dark curse on the nations."

"Unbelieving men are determined to mulct us of all we have," said

Antonio, "and therefore they must needs invent crimes to suit our

punishment. They hang us first and indict us afterwards."

"They oppress us," agreed Sebastian, "in the great and sacred name of

liberty. But the avarice of godless men is the mainspring of it all.

I have seen five houses confiscated 'for the good of the People'; and

in not one case have the People received a third of the plunder. But

enough of this. Tell me your own story."

"Where is the Prior?"

"He is dead. He died in Belgium."

"The Cellarer?"

"He is dead. He died in Brazil."

"Father Isidoro?"

"He is dead. He died in Spain."

With a sinking heart, Antonio named the choir-monks one by one; and,

after each name, Sebastian answered: "He is dead." Father Sebastian

believed that Brother Cypriano was still alive; but, of the Fathers,

only he and Antonio were left.

"_Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine_," murmured Antonio.

"_Et lux perpetua luceat eis_," Sebastian responded.

"To-morrow morning," added Sebastian, "will be the anniversary of the

Abbot's last Mass. If our Lord will give me strength I shall say

Mass at this altar once more."

After a pause, Antonio began to relate his history from the moment of

his quitting the council at Navares. Every fact that threw light on

his operations for regaining the abbey he stated with precision. But

he did not mention Margarida, and he referred to Isabel only as Sir

Percy's moneyed daughter. When he had finished, Sebastian looked at

him with steadfast pitiful eyes and said:

"These have been great sacrifices and cruel hardships for the sake of

our Lord, and they will not be in vain. But you have not told me

all. My brother, I feel that you have kept silence concerning your

most costly sacrifice, your bitterest ordeal. Why not tell me all?"

Antonio's pride rebelled. The desire to ease his heart by pouring

out its hoard of solitary grief was strong; but his gentleman's

instincts of reticence were stronger. For some time he remained

silent. But an inward voice sternly bade him speak; and he spoke.

He told the short tale of Margarida. Then he unfolded the whole case

of Isabel, glossing over nothing. He scrupulously added an account

of his actions and feelings on the night and morrow of her flight.

When he had finished he sat with bowed head and waited for

Sebastian's judgment. But Sebastian remained silent.

"You do not speak," said Antonio. "Perhaps I have given you the

impression that my ordeal was carnal, and that this English maiden

was a direct emissary of Satan. If you think so, I have spoken

blunderingly indeed."

"Satan exists and he is busy enough," returned Sebastian. "But in

trying to find the cause of any strange thing that happens I have

learned to think of Satan last. Nearly all our temptations arise

from our own self-love and carelessness. Many other temptations are

God's provings and perfectings of our spiritual mettle. Satan is not

omnipresent and his angels are only a shrunken legion. But have

patience. Let me think."

He resumed his meditation. At last he turned and said:

"This was not a temptation from the devil. Neither did it spring

from corruptness in your heart or in hers. I am persuaded that our

Lord's work is somehow in it all. Perhaps you will never know in

this world what work it is; but that is not your affair."

"Sometimes," said Antonio slowly, "it troubles my conscience. As I

told you just now, I didn't hold out to the very end. I gave way

within my heart; but when I opened my eyes she had vanished."

"You do wrong to be troubled," said Sebastian. "You held out to the

bitter end of the trial God had appointed you. When you told this

Isabel finally to go, she went. That was the end. All that happened

afterwards was mere reaction."

"The next day," persisted Antonio, "I did not say my Office. My

heart bled for her as it never bled for the Abbot, or for you,

Sebastian, or for this place."

"It bled for her, not for yourself," Sebastian explained. "In

profane love, the lover who thinks he is grieving for the beloved is

only grieving over his own loss of her, over his own short

bereavement, or over his own humiliation and discomfiture. With you,

Antonio, it was not so. You did not wish to take; you wished to

give."

"Do not make me out a saint when I know I am a sinner," said Antonio,

almost sharply. "If she had been old, and tart, and ugly, would my

heart have bled for her all the same?"

"Perhaps not," Sebastian retorted. "But, if she had been old and

ugly, neither would there have been much virtue in giving her up. Do

not complain of her beauty. You had heroic work to do, and her

beauty helped you to do it better. In England there are Puritans who

would say that these azulejos and these gilded carvings must hinder

us from doing the Work of God."

"I do not follow you," said Antonio.

"Tell me," Sebastian asked abruptly, "how you stand with the payments

you have bound yourself to make."

Antonio drew from his breast an account over which he had pored and

pored for a month without making the adverse balance a vintem less.

Sebastian conned it attentively from beginning to end. Then he said:

"Follow me to my old cell and bring me paper and ink."

He rose with so much difficulty that Antonio had to support him; but

once fairly on his feet he moved quickly over the pavement. At the

door of the cell Antonio left him; but before he had finished cutting

a new quill and replenishing the sand-sprinkler in his own room,

Sebastian rejoined him. Sitting down painfully at the tiny table he

swiftly wrote a very short letter. Without reading it over he folded

it, sealed it with a small brass seal which he drew from his pocket,

and addressed it to a Spanish nobleman in a small town of the

Asturias.

"Let this be despatched at once," he said. "There is no time to

lose."

"A post leaves Navares in three days," replied Antonio. "José shall

take the letter there this morning."

"It is well," said Sebastian. "And when this José returns, let me

see him as soon as he is rested."

The cell was brighter than the chapel, and Antonio perceived that his

friend was become almost as insubstantial as a ghost. He called to

mind a passage from a new English poet about a man who, having wasted

to a shadow, was ready to be resumed into the Great Shadow, the

shadow and blackness of death. But Sebastian seemed rather to be a

pure white flame, waiting to be drawn into the Great Light.

"You have not broken your fast," cried Antonio in shame and alarm.

"You must eat. I have good wine. You must rest. You must sleep.

When the heat is over we will talk again, and you shall see José."

"It has been meat and drink and rest and sleep to see you again,

Father Antonio, and to hear what you have told me," the other

answered. "But you are right. I must sleep. I will obey your

orders."

At breakfast Sebastian ate and drank nothing save an ounce or two of

bread and an egg beaten up in white wine. When the meal was over he

declined Antonio's pressing offer of a comfortable bed from the

guest-house, and lay down on the straw mattress in his own cell.

There he soon fell into so profound a sleep that he did not hear

Antonio drenching the window with bucketful after bucketful of water

to counteract the blazing heat.

At night José, wearing his best coat and his most diffident manner,

dined with the two monks in a corner of the refectory. Sebastian,

with bright eyes and glowing cheeks, did most of the talking. He

praised the wine and the food, although he touched little of either;

and throughout the repast he was full of an eager cheerfulness such

as Antonio had never seen in him before. After dinner he drew from

José an exact account of his mental and spiritual state: for Antonio

had told him of the poor fellow's desire to become a monk.

"José," he demanded, at the end of his questioning, "You have learnt

Latin. Can you translate, _Irascimini: et nolite peccare_?"

"I can, Father," answered José proudly. "It means, 'Be angry and sin

not.'"

"So it does. You did well to be angry with the greedy and lazy

good-for-nothings who spake evil of Father Antonio. But you did ill

to thrash them and to come home with that black eye. Go on being

angry with sin; but learn to love sinners."

"Can't I be a monk, Father? May I not have the habit?" pleaded José,

in consternation. "I am glad I thrashed them; but I'm sure I shan't

need to thrash them again."

"The habit is a comfort and a help," Sebastian replied, "but we must

not give it you to-night. Live as you have been living, in the love

of our Lord and in obedience to Father Antonio. For the present you

can wear no habit more acceptable to God than the coat in which you

do your daily duty about the farm. Do not hang your head. I foresee

that an abbot will once more rule within these walls, and that you,

José will die as one of his family. Have patience."

A sudden change came over Sebastian as he ceased speaking. The

hectic bloom faded from his cheeks, and the heavy lids drooped over

his preternaturally bright eyes. A moment later he sank forward

against the table. Antonio and José sprang at once to his help. He

had swooned. They made haste to bear him bodily to his cell. It was

an easy task; for beyond the weight of his cloak there seemed to be

hardly anything to carry. After they had laid him on his bed and

dashed water from the torrent in his face, he revived and said

faintly:

"Thanks, thanks, thanks, I am well. Leave me. I shall say mass

to-morrow at five o'clock. Leave me."

He fell into another unnatural sleep. But Antonio did not leave him.

All through the short warm night he watched and prayed. At last the

dull chant of the Atlantic was drowned under the glittering trills of

near blackbirds. Day dawned. The sun rose above Sebastian's Spain;

and the sleeper awoke.

He answered the traditional _Benedicamus Domino_ with so ringing a

_Deo gratias_ that Antonio thought a miracle had happened. Sebastian

looked stronger and healthier than ever before. Even José, who had

been sleeping heavily on the corridor floor, was aroused by

Sebastian's two words.

They repaired to the chapel. There Father Sebastian heard the

confessions of his two companions. Without delay he proceeded to the

sacristy. Antonio followed him and began to lift from its drawer one

of the less costly vestments which had never been taken away. It was

green and gold, as appointed in the Ordo for that day. But

Sebastian, having bidden him replace it, drew forth a black chasuble,

simply embroidered with a plain white cross. Antonio felt justly

rebuked. When the Abbot was dead, and the Prior and all the fathers

save two, surely it was meet that the survivor's Mass should be a

Mass of requiem.

From his pocket-case, Sebastian took the unconsecrated wafers which

he had brought from Lisbon. He finished his vesting and preparation

and they re-entered the chapel. José was kneeling devoutly on the

lowest step of the sanctuary. Outside, hundreds of birds were in

full boisterous song.

Father Sebastian went to the foot of the altar and began to say Mass.

He uttered the words quickly and clearly, and made the genuflections

without difficulty. Indeed, Antonio, as he poured water over the

white and fleshless fingers at the psalm Lavabo, marveled more than

ever at the miracle of his friend's sudden strength. At the

commemoration of the dead, the intensity of Sebastian's recollection

seemed to make the whole chapel thrill and throb, like a bed of reeds

in a wind.

After he had given the most holy Body to Antonio and to José,

Sebastian concluded the Mass and returned to the sacristy with a firm

tread. He laid aside the sacred vestments and came back to his old

stall in order to make his thanksgiving. Antonio, also in his old

stall, knelt at Sebastian's side.

The ascending sun cleared the top of the hill and shone into the

chapel. The diadem of the Holy Child blazed with glory. In all the

trees happy birds redoubled their songs.

Half an hour passed. José, arising noisily, made Antonio open his

eyes. But Father Sebastian knelt without moving against the sloping

book-board. José clattered out. Still Father Sebastian did not

move. Antonio waited, revering his friend's ecstasy of communion

with his Lord. He waited long. But meanwhile a broad sunbeam had

been working westward; and at last it poured its burning gold upon

the bended head.

Antonio was stepping softly forward to screen his friend from the

fierce ray when a sudden instinct bade him kneel down and look into

Sebastian's face. But Sebastian's wide-open, rapturous eyes did not

gaze into Antonio's; nor were they beholding any earthly thing. So

beautiful was the sight that Antonio's exclamation was more a shout

of joy than a cry of fear. Into his mind there rushed the words of

Isaias which had been Sebastian's favorite scripture in the old days,

_Regem in decore suo videbunt oculi ejus_: "His eyes shall see the

King in His beauty; they shall behold the land which is very far off."

Antonio and José buried the body of Sebastian that night on the sunny

side of the cloister, between the third and fourth pillars, just

under the tile-picture of Enos, with its legend, _Ambulavit cum Deo

et non apparuit, quia tulit eum Deus_: "He walked with God and was no

more seen, for God took him."

IV

On the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, just thirty days after

Sebastian's death, Antonio heard Mass in the village church.

Forty-eight hours were left to him before his payment to the Villa

Branca Fazenda became due. In the strong-box at home he had only

three hundred and twelve pounds towards his debt of five hundred.

Nothing had been received from Sebastian's friend in Spain, although

sufficient time had elapsed for a reply to reach the farm.

Nevertheless, Antonio rose from his knees at the end of Mass and took

his way homeward with a serene spirit.

From the point where he and José had seen the ruts of young

Crowberry's wheels nearly two years before, the monk heard thumping

hoofs. He gazed down the road and saw an advancing cloud of dust. A

few moments later he made out the milk-white Branco which had

succeeded coal-black Negro as the Navares' post-horse. Thomé, the

postman, drew rein and handed Antonio two letters.

The first was from young Crowberry. It ran:

_Dear Friend da Rocha._

_You will be sorry to hear that my father died last week, suddenly.

I know you will pray for him; and I hope you will pray for me too._

_Strange to say, Sir Percy also passed away last week, two days after

my father. I saw it in the papers, but I know no details. At

Christmas my father saw him at Weymouth, and he seemed well._

_As our affairs are tangled, I have much to do. Write to me soon.

My thoughts turn to you very often nowadays. Tell me how you do, all

round. I remain, your sincere friend. Edward Crowberry._

The second letter contained a draft for two hundred pounds payable at

sight in Navares. Antonio regarded it without emotion. Even the

fact that it was unaccompanied by a single line of writing from the

sender did not stir him. He had fully expected that the money would

arrive in due time from somewhere, and it was no surprise to find it

in his hand. A single thought filled every corner of his mind.

Isabel was a thousand miles away, sunk in deepest sorrow, with none

to comfort her.

Thomé slapped Branco's neck noisily so as to arouse Antonio from his

reverie and to remind him that the postage had not yet been paid.

Although it was not the first time he had seen a man tear open a

bulletin of death at the roadside in the full blaze of noon, Thomé

was sympathetic. But business was business. In his turn every man

had to die; but meanwhile Thomé had to live. Antonio took the hint

and gave the man his money.

When José saw the draft, half an hour later, he so far forgot a

would-be monk's decorum as to execute a rustic dance. The next

minute, without being conscious of any incongruity, he said:

"Father I knew this money would come. I knew it this morning, at

Mass. What did the Introit say? _Nunc scio vere quia misit Dominus

angelum suum, et eripuit me_: 'Now I know verily that the Lord hath

sent His angel and hath delivered me.' I knew. _Deo gratias_."

"_Deo gratias_," echoed Antonio. But his eyes were dull and there

was no ring of exultation in his tone. He arose and went to his

cell; but she seemed to be there, opening the cupboards and searching

sadly for what she could not find. He ascended to the roof of the

cloister: but restlessness dragged him down again. Wandering out

into the open-air his feet turned of themselves towards the

guest-house. He meant to go no further than the steps where she had

said, "Promise that I may see you again," and where he had carried

her like a child in his arms; but he soon opened the door and made

his way to the _salon_. The sight of the blue ottoman quickly drove

him out again, and he mounted the stairs until he stood outside her

chamber. The little key was in his pocket, for he never allowed it

to go out of his sight. He fumbled for it and touched it. But it

seemed to burn him. He hurried down the stairs and out of the house.

Striding along the broad path he returned to the abbey and entered

the chapel. As he sat down in his old place a sudden thought came to

his help. This was the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, the

twenty-ninth of June; and on the eighth of July all Portugal would be

celebrating the feast of Saint Isabel, Portugal's holy Queen. There

was just time, neither a day too much nor a day too little, for the

nine days of his novena. He clutched at the coincidence like a

drowning man at a straw; and although in less perilous moments he

might have called it a straw, indeed, he found in it a plank to buoy

up his sinking soul.

There and then he began his nine day's pleading for the Saint's

intercession. In deep humility he made use of a little ill-printed

pamphlet, bought by José years before for a vintem at a village fair.

Outside this penny chap-book one saw a rough woodcut of the Holy

Queen, with a crown on her brow and a scepter in her hand. Inside

one found a sequence of pious exercises for the novena, set forth in

the simplest and shortest words of the vernacular. Antonio could

have extemporized more dignified prayers; but he believed in the

communion of saints and chose to link himself with the child-like

faith of the poor and humble.

On the last of June he tramped into Navares to cash the Spanish

draft, and on the first of July he rode into Villa Branca to pay away

his money. All the way out and home, on both the days, he prayed.

Every morning of the nine he heard Mass at the village, and on three

mornings he communicated as well. He besought José to pray for a

special intention; and, breaking through his reserve, he asked some

of the village Saints and Blessed Ones to do the same.

Meanwhile the work in vineyard and distillery had grown heavy.

Throughout his novena he devoted six hours of the twenty-four to

sleep and meals, four to Mass, Office, and prayers, and all the rest

to account-keeping and manual labor. The resultant exhaustion of his

bodily strength seemed to sharpen his spiritual senses. On the

fourth day, as he and José were saying Lauds, Antonio could hardly

resist the belief that Sebastian's voice was joining in the holy

Work. When Lauds were finished and he was busy among the vines, he

decided that his overstrained nerves had been wrought upon by his

knowledge that Sebastian's grave was only a few yards away, just

outside the cloister doorway. The next morning, however, his inward

ear seemed to hear afar off a vast babble of deep voices, as if all

the generations of Saint Benedict's sons throughout thirteen hundred

years were reciting Lauds together.

On the sixth and seventh and eighth mornings this mighty murmur of

deep voices reverberated persistently in his ears, like the echoes of

distant Niagaras and Atlantics. On the ninth morning, after his Mass

and communion, he heard it again; but this time there was a

difference. While he was beseeching the Isabel in heaven to pray for

the Isabel on earth, an ineffable harmony filled the ears of his

soul. Blending with the deep voices he heard voices that were high

and sweet and clear, like woodbine and sweet honeysuckle and roses

intertwining among the sturdy trunks and branches of an ancient

forest. It was as if all the generations of Saint Benedict's

daughters had added their songs to the songs of all Saint Benedict's

sons.

The tide of harmony ebbed slowly away. But it left behind it a

strange peace in Antonio's soul; even as the tides of ocean bathe the

burning sands and leave them clean and cool. The peace which filled

him passed his understanding, and he did not try to explain it.

Rising up quietly, he gave the little book back to José and went

about his work.

October came again; but this time Antonio did not run away. Until

the Indian summer ended he was quieter than usual; but he met its

memories without bitterness. The door of Isabel's room was still

kept locked; he still avoided the stepping-stones, and every night

and morning he remembered her in his prayers; but she had receded

from the foreground of his life.

November and December were crowded with money troubles. The sales of

the farm and sea-sand wines increased every year, and there was a

constant demand for the two liqueurs: but Antonio's customers soon

perceived that he was not a hard man, and they imposed upon him by

taking excessive credit. His business needed capital; but every

development had to be paid for out of revenue. Worst of all, a

further instalment of five hundred pounds fell due on New Year's Day.

There was young Crowberry; but, after what he had said about his

father's confused affairs, the monk did not think it fair to ask him

for a loan. There was also Sebastian's Asturian nobleman; but

loyalty to his dead friend restrained Antonio from requesting the

Spaniard's further help. In his difficulty he wrote to Senhor Castro

and followed up the letter by presenting himself in person at the old

Castro cellars in Oporto early in December.

Senhor Castro, who had grown old and liverish, did not want to be

troubled. He admitted that Antonio's English journey had firmly

established the Castro fortunes; but, although he was a rich man, he

gave proofs that all his money was invested beyond immediate recall.

In the long run, Antonio crossed the bridge of boats from Gaia

empty-handed.

He searched for the cobbler, his old landlord; but the whole family

had gone to Brazil. Twice or thrice during his heart-wearing stay in

the city he was cheered by the best of greetings in the worst of

Portuguese from Gallegos to whom he had been kind nine years before.

These Gallegos, however, did not help him to raise five hundred

pounds. They were the Gallegos who had failed; for the Gallegos who

had succeeded were all returned into Galicia with their savings.

A few days before Christmas the monk clinched a bad bargain with a

small firm of so-called Anglo-Portuguese bankers, who were really

common money-lenders in bankers' clothing. The head of the firm

hailed from Hamburg and his partner was a Portuguese Jew. These

plausible rascals agreed to lend Antonio a thousand pounds on

unconscionable terms. Although the nominal interest was only seven

per cent., one extra and another made it over twenty. For sending a

clerk to attend the transfer at Villa Branca they required forty

pounds, although his expenses could not exceed twelve. The

conditions as to repayment were harsh. As security, the usurers

required a first mortgage on the abbey, a second mortgage on the

farm, a note of hand from Antonio, and a hold on the receipts from

wine. The monk's heart sank as he signed the fatal parchment; but he

espied the gleam in the Hamburg man's eye too late.

On New Year's Day, Antonio had a moment of brightness when the abbey

passed finally out of the control of the Fazenda official; but he

soon found that he had exchanged a whip for a scorpion. Before the

moneylender's clerk returned to Oporto he confided vexatious

instructions to the most unprincipled of the Villa Branca attorneys,

who rarely allowed a month to pass thereafter without sending for

Antonio on some frivolous pretext. Whenever this objectionable

person and his still more objectionable wife desired a Sunday jaunt

they drove over to the farm or the abbey, sponging on Antonio's

hospitality and poking inquisitorial noses into everything. One day

the pair brought two char-à-bancs full of their kindred to celebrate

the senhora's birthday by a picnic at the stepping-stones; and when

Antonio very courteously begged that the good things might be drunk

and eaten in some other part of the domain, the attorney promptly

became his active enemy.

Years passed. In spite of a hundred obstacles the wines and liqueurs

made steady progress, and Antonio seemed to be within reach of his

goal. Having ground out to the usurers nearly two thousand pounds in

legal costs, interest, and repayment of principal, he owed them less

than two hundred. A debt on his farm still remained; but the

Navares' mortgagee was a reasonable man who was willing to wait. The

monk reckoned that one more prosperous year would release him from

the moneylenders' clutches and that, two years later, both the farm

and the abbey would be his.

But Portugal's honest, hardworking men and women were once more being

brought to the brink of ruin by the politicians. The minister, Costa

Cabral, having been created Count of Thomar, sought to repay Queen

Maria da Gloria by measures of excessive royalism; and immediately

all the turbulent spirits in the country were let loose. Some

rough-and-ready poet dashed down a Portuguese Marseillaise, in which

an imaginary "Mary of the Fountain" was hymned as a Joan of Arc

raised up to save the fatherland. In Villa Branca and Navares,

Antonio often heard the lads singing:

Maria of the Fountain

Has a sword in her hand,

To slay the false Cabrals,

The traitors to their land.

Forward! brothers, forward!

Forward! be our cry;

On! for holy Freedom

To conquer or to die.

Suddenly the Septembrists took arms. Under the Viscount Sa da

Bandeira there broke out the insurrection called by some the Mob-war

and by others the war of Maria da Fonte. Cabral fell, and the

Marshal Saldanha filled his place. To end the bloodshed and disorder

foreign Powers intervened.

On the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, exactly four years after

Antonio began his memorable novena to Saint Isabel, the Convention of

Granada was signed and a general amnesty was declared. The good news

reached the farm on Saint Isabel's day, and Antonio hoped against

hope that the dates were good omens. But within two years Cabral was

once more in power; and, two years later, Saldanha and his soldiers

once more turned him out.

One morning Thomé and Branco, both grown old, brought a letter to

announce the bankruptcy of the Lisbon shippers to whom Antonio had

entrusted the collection of his accounts. The news came barely a

week before a further payment of one hundred pounds fell due to the

moneylenders. Antonio immediately hired a fast horse and hastened to

Oporto. In answer to his request, the Jew and the German blandly

offered to renew his bonds on terms so outrageous that the monk

walked out of their office. But only three days remained, of which

one was a holiday. He called at Senhor Castro's house to find the

master dead.

On the face of it, to raise a sum of two hundred pounds on property

worth three thousand was an absurdly easy task, and Antonio counted

on being able to wash his hands of the moneylenders within

twenty-four hours. But owing to the political unrest an acute

financial crisis prevailed in Oporto. Money was scarce and lenders

were shy. Antonio's security was scores of leagues away, and there

was no time to inspect it; nor could the title be easily

investigated, as the deeds were in the money-lenders' hands.

On his last day of grace the monk presented himself again at the

so-called bank and stated that he would accept the hard terms

offered. He was received with a volley of abuse.

"What?" roared Senhor Neumann. "You have the impudence to come here

again? After all our kindness the other day, what did we get?

Nothing but ingratitude and insults. Get out. We're sick of the

whole business. I'm determined to be done with it once for all. If

you've brought our money, pay it and don't argue. If not, we

foreclose the mortgage, and I shall write to Villa Branca to-night."

"You are quite right, Neumann," said Senhor Mual. "We were talked to

like dirt. Senhor da Rocha could not have turned his back on us more

offensively if we had been downright extortioners or common

money-lenders. But don't be too hard on a man in a hole."

"I shall write to Villa Branca to-night," persisted the German. "I

like business to be pleasant. What did the Senhor come here for at

all, if he didn't mean to be straightforward? I like business to end

as pleasantly as it begins. I like dealing with gentlemen."

Antonio bit his tongue. Senhor Mual spoke again; and once more

Senhor Neumann retorted. At last their trite play-acting came to its

usual end with the German loudly exclaiming:

"Very well, very well, have your way. We're a brace of soft-hearted

old fools. Every scamp that comes along can get round us; it'll

serve us right if we both die in the Misericordia."

Antonio signed fresh papers and hurried back to José. He spent three

days writing English and Spanish and Portuguese letters to his

customers in the Americas, unfolding new offers of discounts and a

proposal for cash-payments against bills of lading. The result was

the loss of half his Latin patrons, whose business could only be

conducted on credit. Concurrently with these disasters the Lisbon

Government kept on demanding larger and larger taxes; and Antonio

never caught sight of the old white horse Branco without a shrinking

of heart.

The monk fought on. To save a pound or two a year he gave up his

English papers. But crisis followed crisis, and before long he owed

Neumann and Mual almost as much as he had borrowed from them in the

first instance. The two scoundrels played with him like anglers

playing a pike. Sometimes they gave him so much line that he seemed

to be regaining the deep broad flood of freedom. For a year at a

time their letters would be friendly and the Villa Branca persecution

would cease; but whenever the debt fell below three hundred pounds

they struck sharply and began winding the firmly hooked fish

pitilessly back to the bank. They knew how to enmesh him in

widespread nets of petty litigation; and, although Antonio was far

cleverer than the attorney, his cleverness availed him nothing. The

affidavits of his opponents were invariably perjurious, but the monk

scorned to swear falsely in reply, even on the most trifling point.

Had he possessed money to carry appeals into the higher courts he

might have obtained justice; but he never succeeded in going further

than the Villa Branca court of first instance, where local corruption

smiled at the maxim that Truth is mighty and must prevail.

Throughout these trials Antonio constantly advanced in the love of

God and his neighbor. Although he could not give money, he gave his

time and strength and knowledge to the help of the weak and harassed

around him. A new cura came to the village, who soon discerned the

spirituality of his mysterious parishioner and insisted on his

enjoying the great consolation of serving at Mass. Meanwhile the

monk kept up the daily recitation of the Divine Office in his old

stall. Very often he was cheered by hearing again with his inward

ear the vast, sweet chant of all Saint Benedict's sons and daughters.

In spite of his troubles he was nearly always cheerful; and he would

often echo the words of Saint Paul and say, _In omnibus tribulationem

patimus_: "We suffer trouble on every side, but we are not in

anguish, we are perplexed, but not in despair, we suffer persecution,

but we are not forsaken, we are cast down, but we are not destroyed."

One morning, when he was dressing for an iniquitous law-suit, Antonio

noticed that his hair at the temples had begun to turn gray. The

next moment he remembered that it was the eve of his birthday, and

that on the morrow he would be fifty years old.

V

Late one December night, as he lay in his lonely cell, a furious gale

aroused Antonio from sleep. Something was groaning and creaking

outside. He sat bolt upright and listened until he became certain

that the great iron cross which formed the finial to the chapel roof

had worked loose.

The monk sprang up and ran out into the rain. Scaling the chapel

wall by means of a swaying ladder, he found to his dismay that the

cross was within an ace of falling. There was no time to run down to

the farm for help, nor even to return to the abbey for tools. The

only action that could avail was to stand with his whole weight on

the last ridge-stone and to hold up the cross against the wind with

his whole strength.

Antonio took the cross in his arms. The sou'-wester, roaring like a

thousand lions, thrashed him with stinging thongs of cold rain and

did its best to hurl him down, cross and all. But he held on. Time

after time the ridge shook like a bog under his feet, and the great

finial tugged at his arms like a captured beast striving to escape.

His hands bled through gripping the sharp edges of the iron. Once or

twice, during the first half-hour, he was on the point of relaxing

his grasp; but a great thought put endurance into his heart and

strength into his arms. He thought of his Lord, cleaving to the

cross on Calvary with an intensity of love which fastened Him there

more securely than the iron nails. He thought of the darkness which

was over all the land from the sixth to the ninth hour. Hitherto the

monk had thought of that darkness as a mere absence of light; but, as

he clung to the iron, with the brutal tempest howling and roaring and

screaming, with the roofs and the trees whining and moaning, and with

the icy darts of rain wounding him like thorns, he understood that it

was a darkness reeling with all the sin of the world and envenomed

with the hot panting of all hell's devils. With blood on both his

hands and pains like red-hot needles in both his feet Antonio thanked

God for this livelier sense of his Savior's passion, and he repeated

the words of Saint Paul, _Mortificationem Jesu in corpore nostro

circumferentes_: "Bearing about in our bodies the dying of Jesus."

Towards dawn, when the world seemed to be rocking under him and he

was ready to faint, Antonio recalled that other night of storm when,

in the chapel below, Isabel had nestled in his arms. Her presence

seemed to be with him once more. It was as though her white slender

hands were helping his to uphold the thick black iron, and as though

her soft, sweet tones were murmuring encouragement in his ear. The

gale and the rain bellowed and spat, but Isabel's voice softly

drowned their din. _Erat cum bestiis, et angelus ministrabat illi_:

"He was among wild beasts, and an angel ministered unto him."

José, hurrying to the abbey before sunrise to report serious damage

among the sea-sand vines, arrived just in time to save both the cross

and his master. Having driven in a wedge, he made haste to help

Antonio down and to coax him into bed. To bed the monk went; and in

bed he remained for a week, consumed by fever and tortured by

nightmares. He seemed to be holding the lockless, boltless door of

the chapel against the two usurers and the chief of the Fazenda and

the Villa Branca attorney. He, Antonio, was holding it shut by

fiercely pressing knees and thighs and arms and hands, and shoulders

and brow against the oak while his enemies charged at it like roaring

waves at a cliff.

When the monk arose from bed his magnificent health was gone. He

suffered from headaches, and could no longer walk to the neighboring

towns or do much manual labor. To employ his enforced leisure he

advertised himself in two or three English and French papers as a

private tutor wishing to receive one or two boarder-pupils for

instruction in the classics, modern languages, and commercial

routine; but there was no response.

Happily this illness befell during one of Antonio's periods of relief

from the usurers' persecution. He knew, however, that such calms

always heralded storms; and therefore he determined to use what

health and strength remained to him in a grand effort to break out of

the usurers' power. His debt, or rather their claim, stood at about

nine hundred pounds. By selling the mortgaged farm and sea-sand

vineyards, and also the whole plant, stock, and good-will of the wine

and liqueur business as a going concern, Antonio could pay off the

nine hundred and turn his back on Neumann and Mual forever. In the

event of local lenders clamoring for the liquidation of the floating

debts which he had incurred on the strength of his personal credit,

he would be able to satisfy them by mortgaging the abbey timber and

part of the domain with a Navares mortgagee. Then, although his

health was enfeebled and José was no longer young, he would set

himself to the task of clearing off the last debts by branding his

amber-colored wine and pushing it in England.

Although so many miracles had been vouchsafed to him, both in his

spiritual and in his temporal affairs, Antonio continued to employ

all his energy and prudence. He maintained his old policy of doing

the best he could and leaving the rest to God; but, until he had done

his utmost, he would have felt it irreverent to expect a miracle. He

would plan his campaign and dispose his forces and post his

safeguards as if everything depended on his own arm and his own

brain; and then, but only then, he would fall down in deepest

humility and demand the divine help as if everything depended upon

God. Accordingly he went about his new operations with so much

circumspection that it was high summer before he saw his way to act

decisively.

A payment of two hundred pounds to the usurers was almost due. It

was payable through the Villa Branca attorney. Antonio had over a

hundred in notes at the abbey, and he reckoned that the foreign

drafts in the hands of his banker at Navares would yield at least a

hundred and twenty more. As traveling fatigued him he made up his

mind to combine the Navares and Villa Branca journeys in one. At

Navares he would cash his drafts and open his negotiations for the

sale of the farm and the wine-business; and thence he would ride over

the hills to Villa Branca and pay away his two hundred.

There was no hitch at the Navares bank. The drafts realized one

hundred and thirty-one pounds. With a thankful heart Antonio placed

the paper money in his pocket-book and stowed it safely away in his

belt of English leather. But before he was ready to go two men

pushed the door open and strode hastily to the counter.

"It has come?" demanded the elder.

"No. Nothing," said the banker. "But I expect another post

to-night."

The younger man staggered back as if he had been struck. As soon as

he turned Antonio knew him. He was Margarida's brother, Luis.

Senhor Jorge had been dead two years, and Luis was the head of the

house. The elder man Antonio recognized as Margarida's husband, the

builder's son from Leiria, who had set up business on his own account

in Navares. Not wishing to intrude into their trouble, the monk

tried to slip out unobserved. But Luis saw his face and hurried

towards him with a cry of joy.

"It is the Senhor da Rocha," he cried. "Theophilo, you are saved."

"We shall see," said Theophilo quietly.

"Let us go to the Campo," suggested Antonio. "There we can talk

quietly."

They walked along the shady side of the street until they came to the

deserted public garden. Under an old lime-tree they sat down, beside

a plashing fountain, and the monk waited for the others to speak.

"It is a matter of money," stinted Theophilo, "and it is not with my

consent that Luis troubles your Worship about it."

"Before my father died," Luis began, "he called me to him and said:

'Luis, you and your brothers and sister have health and a little

wealth, but I can't expect that you won't have troubles. When

troubles come, be men and fight them as I have fought mine. But, if

ever they are too strong for you, go to Manoel da Rocha up at the old

abbey. We have seen little of him, through a misunderstanding that

was no fault of his; but I know his worth. Tell him your trouble and

he will help you out.' Those were my father's very words; and that's

why I stopped your Worship at the bank."

"Your father was one of the best men I ever met," said Antonio. "May

he rest in peace. Tell me your trial; and if I can help you I will."

"It is not easy to tell," faltered Luis. "If we cannot raise a conto

of reis by three o'clock Theophilo must go to prison. My mother and

Margarida will die of disgrace."

"Luis has not told your Worship," broke in Theophilo proudly, "that

if I go to prison I go for another's crime. Before God, I am

innocent. In an accursed hour I became the friend of Victor

Sequeira, the treasurer to the municipal council. When I began

business he lent me a few milreis. Last year he persuaded me to

endorse some bills. He swore it was a matter of form. The bills

have been protested, and I am responsible. On Monday I found that

Sequeira ran away last week and that the bills were fraudulent, and

that I cannot clear myself of complicity in the swindle. For my

wife's sake they gave me four days to find the money. The time

expires at three o'clock. We have pledged everything; but we still

need a conto of reis. That is the tale. Luis has made me tell it.

We have no right to expect that your Worship is interested in such a

miserable affair."

"I am interested, I am grieved most deeply," said Antonio, in great

agitation. "I know what it is to suffer terribly through signing

papers in a hurry. But ... a conto of reis! Two hundred and twenty

English pounds!"

"It is a great sum," answered Luis simply. "But if your Worship had

it, he would lend us the money. It is only for a few hours. The

bank expects a post to-night. Theophilo has written to his father,

and the money will come."

"Senhor Theophilo," said Antonio, who had become very pale, "at this

moment I have two hundred and thirty-eight pounds in my belt. I

meant to sleep here to-night, at the hospedaria, and to go on

Saturday to pay the money away at Villa Branca. To settle my debt

there is more than life or death to me."

Theophilo curled his lip.

"Your Worship is scornful," added Antonio. "If your Worship were not

too well-bred he would say that I am telling a tale such as men

nearly always tell when they are asked for a loan of money. No doubt

Luis here partly thinks the same. Everybody in the village knows

that I make a great deal of money and that I spend no more than a

peasant. Everybody knows that I'm called the abbey miser and that I

give away hardly a pound a year."

They remained silent.

"But everybody doesn't know," the monk continued, "that for more than

fifteen years I have been in the grip of Oporto money-lenders.

Everybody doesn't know that I have paid thousands of pounds--yes,

thousands--in costs and interest, and that I still owe nearly as much

as the original loan. I was going to Villa Branca to pay them nearly

a conto of reis, and I had set my whole heart on getting out of their

power. If I must renew this part of the debt it will be on ruinous

terms, and I have no longer the health to go on fighting."

"I have stated already," declared the proud Theophilo, "that Luis has

troubled your Worship without my consent. If I must go to prison ...

well, to prison I must go, as better men have gone before me."

"Not so fast," said the monk. "Humanly speaking, is it certain your

father will send the funds? Have you recent knowledge of his

financial position? Can he disengage money from his business at such

short notice? If I let you have the use of my conto of reis till

to-morrow night, is there a risk of my losing it?"

"None!" cried Luis. But Theophilo, having reflected, said:

"I thank the Senhor. I shall not trouble him. There is a risk. An

Englishman, from one of their great cities called Scotland, is

contractor for works at Figueira da Foz. He has farmed out his

contract to my father, and he is treating him unfairly. Your

Worship, there is a risk."

Antonio sat staring at the fountain. In spite of the great heat he

felt cold. At three o'clock Senhor Jorge's son-in-law and

Margarida's husband must be thrown into a felon's prison for a crime

not his own, in default of one conto of reis. And he, Antonio, had a

conto of reis in his belt. By lending this proud and honest man the

money he could perform a work of mercy which would pluck six men and

women out of an inferno of despair and raise them to a paradise of

thankfulness.

But there was a risk, a grave risk. Judging by his experience of

Portuguese mercantile concerns, Antonio could indulge only a faint

hope of Theophilo's receiving the money from Leiria before it was due

at Villa Branca. And in that event--

The Navares clock struck two. Theophilo sprang to his feet.

"Adeus, Senhor," he said, "and thanks."

"No!" cried Antonio, plunging after him and gripping his arm. "I

have not refused. An hour remains. Give me thirty minutes. This is

a terrible affair. Stay here. In half an hour I will return."

Without awaiting an answer he hurried away. Quitting the Alameda by

a side gate, he dived into a sunless alley and pushed at the door of

the church of the Santa Cruz. It swung inwards. He hastened along

the broad nave until he came to the brazen grille which barred the

chapel of the Santissimo. There he sank down on the plank floor and,

stretching despairing hands to the Presence on the altar, he cried

out in agony, _Domine, quid me vis facere_: "Lord, what wilt Thou

have me to do?"

The answer came swiftly. It was as though a voice, a strong Man's

voice, yet a voice even sweeter than Isabel's, said in his ear:

"Antonio, lend Theophilo your conto of reis."

Of all the supernal voices which had ever spoken to him, this was the

nearest and the clearest. If the brazen grille had opened and an

angel had come forth proclaiming it with the voice of a trumpet,

Antonio could not have been more sure that his Lord was bidding him

lend Theophilo the money. Yet he could not, all in a moment, accept

the answer. Horror, kindling almost to anger, filled his soul.

So this was to be the end. For fifteen years he had been slaving to

fill the pockets of infamous extortioners; and now he was to take the

price of freedom and pay it away to replace the plunderings of a

runaway swindler. A hideous thought, more foul and hideous than the

blankest atheism, rushed into his mind. It was a thought about God.

That God existed Antonio could not doubt; nor could he question that

God intervened, as the Christians believe, in men's and women's

lives. The Christians said that He was all-powerful, all-knowing,

and all-loving. But perhaps the truth was, after all, that He was

all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-mocking.

Antonio could grant that a work of mercy to men should take

precedence of a work of praise towards God. But if God had intended

him for works of mercy, why had He called him into a contemplative

Order, and why had He suffered him to go on finding a dozen contos

for usurers while he was refusing pence to honest men? And Isabel,

his breaking of the heart of Isabel--how did that supreme deed fit

into the sorry scheme? Yes, God had mocked him. He had made the

world, and all the men and women in it, as a puppet-show to divert

His eternal boredom. He had sat lounging on the arch of heaven for

five-and-twenty years watching his, Antonio's, toil and strife just

as a lazy lout lolls on the grass watching ants working hour after

hour at the ant-hill which he intends to kick to pieces before he

goes home.