The monk did not deliberately think these thoughts. They swept

thunderously over him like a tidal wave drowning a lowland coast.

For a moment they roared in his ears and took away his wits. But as

he came to the surface he rallied all the forces of his soul and

struck out desperately to regain his rock of faith. God was no

mocker. He was Love, all Love; and the thick blackness of this new

and dreadful ordeal was only a shadow cast by the eternal Light.

Nevertheless, Antonio all but failed to resist the sucking undertow

of fresh doubts and to maintain his foothold amidst the battering

surf of despair.

Close beside him, on an altar to the right of the grille, rose a

statue of the Blessed Virgin, crowned with a golden crown and robed

in the blue velvet robe of an eighteenth-century Portuguese princess.

To her Antonio cried out for help. When words of his own refused to

come he poured forth the words of Saint Bernard's prayer _Memorare_.

For a prolonged while no help came, and he crouched on the planks,

shrinking from the heavy stripes which God had appointed him. He

remembered the ruined abbeys of England. Doubtless stronger and

wiser men than he had labored to restore them to the Church and to

her Orders; but three hundred years had passed, and so far as Antonio

knew, not one monastic house had been rebuilt upon the old

foundations. Perhaps it was the divine will that the Orders,

renouncing the world, should never be too long rooted in this acre or

that; and perhaps it was ordained that they must renew their vows to

the Lady Poverty in hovels and barns and caves. But, in that case,

why had God bidden him waste his life in separation from the exiled

brethren of his Order? He gazed through the grille as if he would

demand the answer. But the ears of his soul heard no word save:

"Antonio, lend Theophilo your conto of reis. Antonio, lend Theophilo

your conto of reis."

Not yet could he submit. The smoldering rebellion in his heart was

quickening for a burst of flame. At last his eyes rested on the

faded gilt legend running along the pedestal of the Virgin's

blue-robed image, _Ecce ancilla Domini, fiat mihi secundum verbum

tuum_: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it unto me according to

thy word." To Antonio this brief scripture recalled more than the

pearly moment when the Virgin of virgins, despising the evil tongues

of men and looking steadfastly into the deep, dark eyes of sorrow,

surrendered herself to the will of God; for it recalled also the

fiery hour when he himself, in the same words, had finally accepted

the monastic life. With the memory of old battles and old victories

there rushed upon him new graces.

"_Ecce servus Domini_," he cried in sudden triumph, "_fiat mihi

secundum verbum tuum!_" And, having prostrated himself with loving

reverence before his Master, he rose up and sped back to the Campo,

where Theophilo was striding up and down.

"Senhor Theophilo," said the monk, "I will lend you my conto of reis."

Theophilo stared at him in amazement. So sure had he felt of

Antonio's refusal that he would not have remained in the Campo had

there been any other quiet and open place wherein to spend his last

hour of freedom. He resisted; flushed; seized the monk's hand and

dropped it the same moment; and at last began to stammer incoherent

protests and thanks.

"But I will lend it," continued Antonio, "only on one condition."

"On any condition you like," cried Theophilo, beside himself with

joy. "If it's a hundred per cent, I don't mind. I'll work like a

slave to pay back every vintem and still I shall be your Excellency's

debtor."

"I ask harder terms than a hundred per cent," explained the monk

quietly. "My condition is this. Pledge me your word that if your

father's money does not come in time to settle my own debt in Villa

Branca you will never reproach yourself on my account. Promise that

you will believe me when I say that, although I shall be happier

to-morrow night with your father's conto of reis, I shall not be

miserable without it. Promise to believe that, if your father fails

us, I shall have no grievance against him or against Luis or against

you."

Theophilo could only stand stock still, staring and breathing hard.

The clock struck half-past two.

"Quick!" urged Antonio. "There's no time to lose. See, here is the

conto of reis. Pledge me your word that you will obey my condition,

and the money is yours."

"Your Worship cannot mean this," broke in Luis. He had leaned

against Antonio expecting to find him a broken reed, and he could

hardly believe that this oak-like sturdiness was not a delusion.

"I mean every word," Antonio answered. "Come, take the money. I

trust you to remember the terms."

He drew a few notes from the pocket-book and pressed all the rest

into Theophilo's hand. The young builder clutched them eagerly; but

a moment later he sought to thrust them back.

"No," he groaned, "I cannot, I must not. My father will fail me and

you will curse us!"

"Come," answered Antonio gently, "I will tell you a secret. I have a

Friend. While you sat by this fountain I went and asked His advice.

I have asked it many and many a time, and He has never misled me yet.

He told me to lend you this conto of reis. If the post does not

bring a conto in its place, do not grieve. It is between my Friend

and me. Go."

They looked at him wonderingly; but he hastened away. From the far

side of the garden he saw them stand a whole minute irresolute. Then

Luis seized Theophilo's arm and they walked off quickly into the

town. As for Antonio, he returned to the church of Santa Cruz, and

there, in a corner, he began to say his Office. He recited it

without rapture, but with a quietness of mind which was better than

ecstasy.

Towards four o'clock two men entered the nave and knelt before the

brazen grille. They did not discover Antonio; but, from his obscure

corner, he could see their faces as they rose from their knees, and

he knew that they had guessed Who was his Friend.

VI

The post arrived at six o'clock; but it brought no letter from

Theophilo's father. Luis, with a pale face came to the hospedaria

after dinner and broke the news falteringly. Glancing through the

window, Antonio saw Theophilo pacing up and down outside. The monk

put on his hat and walked into the street.

"Senhor, this is terrible," moaned Theophilo. "There is nothing."

"It is terrible indeed," answered Antonio, smiling. "At half-past

two you make me a promise, and at half-past six you break it. Come,

remember. Cheer up."

They walked beside him with downcast eyes.

"Come," he said again. "This will never do. Tell me. Does Donna

Margarida know what you have been passing through?"

"Thank God, she does not, and she never shall!" cried Theophilo.

"Very well. Let us go to your home and hear some music and be gay.

I'm a country booby, and when I visit the town I want to see some

life. It is dull in the inn."

Theophilo became voluble in apologies for his negligence. He

despatched one of the stable-boys hot-foot to warn the Senhora of

their approach and followed with Antonio and Luis. In ten minutes

they reached a garish new house, faced all over with colored tiles.

Margarida received her old flame with slight chilliness. Although

she had turned thirty-five her good looks were not greatly

diminished. With her sat Perpetua, Jorge, Lucia, and Juliana, her

four black-eyed children, who were struck dumb by the advent of the

handsome stranger. At first the proceedings were dull and frigid

enough to remind Antonio of his first visit to Margarida's home. But

Luis and Theophilo, in reaction from their days of stress and terror,

soon became almost hysterically gay. The guitars came out; and when

everyone was tired of singing and strumming _fados_ Antonio devoted

himself to the little Jorge and his three tongue-tied sisters. He

gradually wooed them out of their shyness by telling them a tale of

the buried city of Troja, at the mouth of the Sado. By the time he

was half through a revised version of the Three Hunchbacks of Setubal

the audience had begun to be more tongue-free than himself; and when

he made Perpetua hold the candle so that his clenched left fist and

his right-hand fingers and knuckles threw upon the wall a shadow of a

long-eared rabbit nibbling a cabbage as big as itself, the house rang

with shouts of laughter.

The children were sent to bed at nine, wailing bitterly at their

banishment. Theophilo took the guitar and played softly, so as not

to keep them awake. He had a sympathetic touch and his music soothed

Antonio. Sitting in a great chair, the monk looked round the room

and wondered. His conto of reis had gone. In forty hours it would

be too late to pay the attorney, and the usurers could be trusted so

to foreclose the mortgage as to swindle him out of nearly all he had.

Yet, somehow, he was happier than he had been for many a day. For a

short while he asked himself if it were not callous to gaze so calmly

at the wreck of his life's work. Ought he not to be aching and

smarting and bleeding as he had ached and smarted and bled for

Isabel? Did he truly care as deeply for the abbey and for the Order

as he had cared for her?

All these probings left him unpricked. His contentment obstinately

refused to be ruffled. Breaking his rule, he drank two glasses of

sweet wine and ate a whole broa of Margarida's making. When he rose

to go Margarida's manner was perceptibly less aloof, and she begged

him to come again. At the street door Theophilo said:

"Your Excellency has heaped kindness upon kindness. How shall I ever

repay him?"

"By permitting me to visit his house again to-morrow night," answered

Antonio; "your Worship will have become my creditor. Adeus."

He worked his hand free from Theophilo's iron grip and returned to

the hospedaria, where he fell asleep as soon as his head touched the

pillow. Next morning, after Mass, he did not lose a moment in

opening negotiations for the raising of an immediate conto of reis on

his encumbered assets. But Luis and Theophilo, in pledging all they

possessed, had almost exhausted the ready-money resources of Navares.

Late in the after noon Antonio thought he was succeeding; but the

existence of the Oporto usurers' second mortgage on the farm blocked

the way. At four o'clock he gave up the struggle and went to Santa

Cruz to say his Office. At half-past five he sat down in the

hospedaria to dine.

Just after the soup tureen had been placed on the table a tremendous

noise arose from the street. Every dog in Navares was outside,

barking his hardest, and the iron shoes of a spirited horse were

hammering on the cobbles. The Gallego waiter rushed downstairs to

welcome the guest. Doors banged, hostlers shouted, buckets clanked,

a horse neighed. The inn cat, which Antonio had been nursing, leaped

from his knee and rushed downstairs to the lobby whence the prolonged

wail of a badly scratched dog immediately ascended.

The monk, alone at the table, filled his gaudy plate with vegetable

soup and began to eat. The stranger came upstairs to his room amidst

a babble of welcoming voices. Through the thin wall Antonio could

hear him drop his heavy boots on the bare floor. A cheerful

splashing followed. The Gallego waiter, hurrying in with a dish of

bacalhau, white cabbage, and hard-boiled eggs, excitedly explained to

Antonio that the newcomer was an Englishman; and, five minutes later,

a plumpish, rather florid man, with a clean-shaven face and soft

yellow hair, strode into the room calling out an order for green wine.

Antonio rose and found himself face to face with young Crowberry.

But, somehow, he could not feel in the least degree surprised.

"Good evening, Teddy," he said quietly. "Welcome to Navares."

Young Crowberry jumped. He stared blankly across the soup at the

gray-haired man with the gentle voice. Then he flung himself forward

against the table so impetuously that a brown water-pot was

overturned and an empty glass jumped down to the floor with a crash.

"Da Rocha! By Jove! Da Rocha!" he cried, wringing the monk's hand.

"Man, I've come all the way from England to find you. Why the deuce

did you drop writing? And what do you mean by growing gray hairs?

How's José and all the little Josés, and the champagne and all the

little champagnes, and the orange brandy? Have you pawned the

spoons? Da Rocha! By Jove!"

"Come round and sit beside me," said Antonio.

As the deluge from the overturned water-pot had soaked the cloth all

round him the monk bade the waiter remove his cover and young

Crowberry's to the little table by the window.

"And ask him to bring green wine," said young Crowberry. "Quarts,

Gallons, Buckets, Hogsheads, Bottomless pits. I'm as thirsty as the

devil."

When orderly conversation became possible, the monk was able to

puzzle out a mystery which had pained him. By comparing notes and

sifting dates they found that one letter from Antonio must have gone

down in the wreck of the mail-boat _Hortensia_, and that another

letter had reached England while an unsatisfactory sub-tenant was

occupying young Crowberry's chambers. After this misunderstanding

had been righted the monk proceeded to draw out his friend's recent

history. He found that young Crowberry, in his own phrase, had made

three fortunes, of which he had lost two and three-quarters in

financing foreign railway companies by whom he had been employed.

"But what does it matter?" demanded young Crowberry. "I've a quarter

of a fortune left, and I'm hoping it'll be enough for my scheme. The

man I'm trying to get in with isn't greedy."

"Explain," asked the monk.

"I'm hoping to buy a share of a snug little business and settle

down," young Crowberry answered. "A wine business. I was born among

bottles, and a cellar's better than a tunnel. That's why I've come

to Portugal. I've invested four thousand pounds in British Funds for

miscellaneous purposes, and to-morrow I'm going to offer my remaining

five thousand to a man named da Rocha for a partnership."

Antonio heard him without visible emotion. For a long minute he

gazed quietly into the street. At last he said:

"Edward, you asked me half an hour ago if I had pawned the spoons.

They were pawned two years ago, to pay a Jew twenty per cent interest

on a loan I'd repaid twice over. But it's a long story. Drink your

coffee. Then we will go to your room."

In young Crowberry's room Antonio disclosed his secret. He began

with his brief experiences as a youth in Lisbon. Rapidly and vividly

he described his brief skepticism, his vocation to the religious

life, his noviciate, his full profession, his ordination, his

expulsion from the abbey, and his vow at the farm. Omitting only the

affairs of Margarida and Isabel, he brought the history right down to

that very day and to the moment of his failing to raise money in

replacement of Theophilo's conto of reis. He slurred lightly over

every passage in the narrative which might sound like self-praise,

and sought rather to exhibit himself as a blunderer who ought to have

attained his end years and years ago. He wound up by saying simply:

"It is our Lord who has sent you here to-day. If you have it with

you, I will borrow a conto of reis and we will ride over to Villa

Branca together in the morning. On the way we will talk about the

partnership. My maximum price for a half-share will be a thousand

pounds."

"My minimum offer is five thousand," said the engineer firmly.

"Remember that I'm hoping to foist myself upon you till death do us

part. I have wound up all my affairs in England. Meanwhile here is

a conto of reis."

Some one knocked loudly at the door. It was the Gallego announcing

that two senhores wished to see the Senhor da Rocha at once. The

senhores, treading on the Gallego's heels, turned out to be Theophilo

and Luis. They pressed into the room, but fell back at the sight of

a stranger.

"You may speak freely, Theophilo," said Antonio. "This is the Senhor

Crowberry. He knows my affairs. Tell me what you want. My own

trouble is over. Senhor Crowberry has brought me a conto of reis."

"And here it is," put in Crowberry, opening his pocket-book. "I

don't know how much a conto may be; but if it's less than two

thousand pounds, help yourself."

"No," cried Theophilo. "We want nothing. Senhor da Rocha, I have

wonderful news. Sequeira has come back. He had mixed the town money

up with his own, but he is not a thief. He has just come back from

Lisbon, and he has repaid me every vintem of what Luis and I paid to

the municipal chamber yesterday. See. Here are the notes. Seven

contos and two hundred milreis."

"And a special post has arrived from Leiria," added the radiant Luis,

"with a conto from Theophilo's father. Theophilo, show it to their

Excellencies."

"How many contos are here?" asked Crowberry, spreading out his notes.

"At the present exchange, you have at least twelve," said Antonio.

"A conto is a million reis of our money and more than two hundred

pounds of yours, at par."

"So we've twenty million reis altogether," Crowberry chuckled.

"Let's change 'em into coppers and swim in 'em to see what it's like.

Hasn't any gentleman got a conto or two more? I once knew a duke who

overlooked a whole threepenny-bit for a week. It was in the lining

of his old coat."

Luis and Theophilo stared at the Englishman with open mouths. They

could not understand a word he said, but this made him the more

marvelous. From Crowberry they shifted their wonder to Antonio. He

seemed to have called down from the skies a familiar sprite who

handed out millions as coolly as one boy giving another a few screws

of newspaper for the tail of his kite.

"Put back your money, all of you," commanded Antonio. "Theophilo,

give me your father's conto and we are square. And have I your leave

to present my friend to Donna Margarida?"

The whole party made haste to the tiled house, where Jorge and his

sisters hailed Antonio with shouts of joy. They were shy of young

Crowberry at first; but, having asked ten minutes' leave of absence,

the Englishman slipped out to a confeitaria and returned laden with

so exciting a load of candied oranges, Elvas plums, Coimbra marzipan,

and Spanish chocolate that Antonio's star was eclipsed for half an

hour. The guitars and the sweet wine came out once more. Later on

young Crowberry began to tease poor Margarida with such exaggerated

compliments, in bad Portuguese, that Antonio was forced to kick his

heel and to explain in hurried English that Navares was neither

London nor Paris. But Theophilo did not take offense, and the visit

was entirely a success.

On the way home Antonio asked:

"Do you hear anything of Miss Kaye-Templeman and Mrs. Baxter?"

"The widow Baxter is now the widow Lamb," answered Crowberry. "Lamb

was a master-tanner. He survived the wedding six months. That's all

I know. As for Isabel, I've heard nothing for years and years and

years. After her father died she went to live with Lady Julia

Blighe. By the way, you never told me what you really and truly

thought of her."

Antonio turned the subject.

"When you say," he demanded, "that you are planning to live and die

with me, what do you mean? If you are looking for a rural life, with

the sports of a country gentleman, England is the only place to find

it. If it's wine that interests you, I'm sorry; because you drink

too much already. What do you mean?"

"I am not looking for the sports of a country gentleman," said

Crowberry. "As for wine, you are mistaken. I drink a glass or two a

day of the lightest at meals, and I never touch port or spirits. Da

Rocha, I will tell you what I mean. Perhaps you were pained in my

bedroom when I did not show great astonishment at hearing that you

are Father Antonio, a monk of Saint Benedict."

"I was not pained. But I wondered."

"Father Antonio, I guessed your secret years ago. I guessed it on

the voyage home from Lisbon. I guessed that you were working to

regain the abbey. From what Sir Percy told my father, I believed you

secured it after we went away. I imagined that you had resumed the

cloistered life and that this was why you didn't write to your old

friends in the world."

"But you came out, this time, to become my partner as a wine-grower,"

objected Antonio.

"Yes and No. I came out with money to buy vineyards and to work for

my living as you have done. I meant to buy them as close to the

abbey as I could. I meant to seek you out and to ask you ... to tell

you..."

"Go on," said Antonio, taking his arm as they walked, "To ask me

what? To tell me what?"

"To tell you that the burning desire of my soul," broke out the other

ardently, "is to become a monk, like you. To ask you for your

prayers and for your help. And when I saw you standing over your

soup, still in a layman's dress, I didn't alter my mind."

Antonio remembered the vision of young Crowberry's future which had

unrolled itself before him while the youth and he sat side by side on

the cloister roof the day before Sir Percy failed to tear down the

azulejos. In reverent thankfulness he listened to this older

Crowberry without interrupting him again. But the Englishman

misinterpreted his silence, and added hastily:

"Let me be plain. I don't claim to have the highest and holiest

vocation. Some would say there is cowardice in what I want to do. I

am running away from the world. The truth is that so long as I am in

the world I cannot love and praise God. Whenever I have a pit and a

gallery to play to, I am a rattle, a gas-bag, a mountebank. In spite

of myself I jest about the holiest things, thus injuring others as

well as myself. I want to work hard with my hands, to rise early, to

sleep and eat roughly, and to learn to pray. Let people call me a

coward if they please. I'm nearly forty. I've made my money, and

I'm standing aside to let needier men make theirs. Besides, I hate

railways. They will do more harm than good."

Antonio was still mute.

"When a middle-aged man in my country has made a competency," young

Crowberry continued, "he either remains in business to make money

which he does not need, or he retires and lives a life of selfish and

expensive pleasure. A few, a very few, devote themselves to

philanthropy or politics, and I honor them for it; but it has been

breathed into my soul that I am to help mankind by prayer. Da Rocha,

you are silent. You are shocked. You think that, instead of rising

up early to pray, I ought to rise up early to go hounding and

shooting the poor beasts and birds who have as much right to their

lives as I have to mine."

"I have been silent," rejoined Antonio, "only because I could not

speak for thankfulness. Nearly twenty years ago I knew that you

would become a priest, and I hoped that you might become a monk."

"You consent? I may be your pupil?" cried the Englishman.

"I consent. You may be my helper, my fellow-laborer. You have much

to learn and much to unlearn. Listen. This very night your training

shall begin. Resolve that you will never again say you are as

thirsty as the devil. The rest we will talk of to-morrow."

Antonio smiled kindly as he spoke. Young Crowberry noticed that the

monk's expression was full of a solemn sweetness which had not been

visible in the old days. At the same moment he became conscious of

Antonio's broken health. The monk walked rather slowly and leaned

heavily on the layman's arm. They did not speak another word till

they reached the inn door.

Next morning, when Antonio awoke, he found young Crowberry standing

over him with a bowl of Brazilian coffee and goat's milk, a

newly-baked roll of white bread, and, rarest delicacy of all, a pat

of butter. Protest was useless. A quarter of an hour later the

sprucest barber in Navares appeared and shaved Antonio with the skill

of a German. At seven o'clock horses began stamping outside; and, at

five minutes past, Antonio and the Englishman were seated in a

well-hung carriage behind a pair of bays.

"Does the Jehu understand English?" asked young Crowberry, cutting

short Antonio's remonstrances against all this luxury. "No. He

doesn't." "Good. Then, most reverend and illustrious Father, listen

to me. One month from this date I, the most irreverend Senhor Teddy

Crowberry, will begin to be your most docile servant. I shall obey

you in all things. You shall be my Lord Abbot till one of us dies.

But, for this month, your Reverence will obey me. Argument is

useless. If I spend five guineas a day for thirty days, remember

that I hope to live on fivepence a week for the following thirty

years."

"A month! It is impossible," cried Antonio. "Besides, José expects

me back to-night."

"I think he doesn't. An old ruffian on a white horse has taken him a

letter from me. I was nearly asking him to send on your shirts to

the inn at Villa Branca; but, if your Excellency will forgive my

disgusting rudeness, I couldn't feel sure that you had a shirt to

send. From Villa Branca we shall go to Oporto and punch the heads of

those Jews. We shall wind up all your affairs there. Thence we

shall go to Braga and see the Archbishop. After that, back to

Coimbra, and to Lisbon to see the Patriarch and the Pope's Nuncio,

and perhaps to Evora. See what a lot I know! I've been thinking it

all over and over and over in the night. You are the only

Benedictine left in Portugal, and we shall have to get these big pots

to help us. Pah! How the sun does blaze. I'm as thirsty as an

archbishop."

Young Crowberry had his way. After the Villa Branca attorney had

been paid, Antonio was driven to the principal inn and served with

such a luncheon as he had not eaten for twenty years. The next day,

Sunday, after the military Mass, the monk ate a still more elaborate

meal and whiled away the hour of digestion by reclining on the shaded

balcony looking at the promenaders in the Passeio and listening to

the band. In the cool of the evening they set out in a luxurious

chariot towards Oporto. Three days were spent on the journey.

It was a triumphal progress. One of young Crowberry's first acts on

arriving at an inn was to send forward a mounted messenger, with full

instructions, to the next halting-place. As these couriers bruited

it in every wayside wineshop that a bountiful Englishman was on the

road, Antonio's chariot was attended by troops of brown-footed,

brown-eyed, black-haired children who threw flowers at the travelers

and trotted alongside the wheels pleading for "five little reis"--the

Portuguese farthing. Instead of _cinco reis_ young Crowberry flung

out tostões, or fivepenny pieces, such as most of the youngsters had

never handled on their own account before, and the chariot rolled on

amidst pæans of joy.

In Oporto, where Antonio had supported life on a few pence a day, the

travelers put up at a French-managed hotel and drank dry champagne

from Reims. Emboldened by this lively draught, young Crowberry dealt

with Neumann and Mual to such purpose that they thankfully accepted

three hundred pounds in full discharge of Antonio's outstanding

obligations. With the abbey deeds in Antonio's valise the travelers

took the direct road for Lisbon, where the archbishops and bishops,

as peers of the kingdom, had assembled for the opening of the Cortes.

Here and there along the route young Crowberry pointed out the

cuttings and embankments for the projected railway. In Coimbra they

rested two days and read up every book they could find in the

University library which bore upon the case before them.

Young Crowberry was for a theatrical burst upon the whole bench of

bishops in Lisbon; but the prudent Antonio sought out his own

diocesan and confided to him the whole story. The prelate heard him

attentively and with growing emotion. He told Antonio that the

Dominicans and Franciscans had already recovered certain houses in

Portugal, and that the Government, having got its money, was winking

at the return of the Orders. He bestowed upon the monk a fervent

blessing and bade him return the next day.

Within forty-eight hours Antonio was received by three-fourths of the

Portuguese hierarchy, and by the Papal Nuncio as well. His tale

brought tears to the eyes of all, not excepting a political bishop

who was supposed to believe that Portugal would be better off without

the religious Orders than with them. The Nuncio dispatched a special

memorandum to Rome, and three of the bishops wrote long letters to

Benedictine abbots abroad, including an abbot-president, asking for

their counsel.

Young Crowberry's deportment among these dignitaries left a little to

be desired. At his entrance he would kneel and kiss the ring of a

suffragan with disconcerting ardor, and the next minute he would

begin to tell the Primate of the Spains a funny story in execrable

French. On the whole, however, young Crowberry was better liked for

his worldliness than for his piety. His dinner at the Bragança Hotel

made a deep impression upon those ecclesiastics who were not too

dignified to assist at it; and when their magnificent month drew to a

close the Englishman and Antonio left Lisbon with the knowledge that

they had committed no grave blunders and that they had made a host of

powerful friends.

José received the Senhor Crôbri warmly. Within two days of the

Englishman's arrival at the abbey the mortgages on the farm and the

sea-sand vineyards were cleared off and the silver spoons came back

from pawn. On Saint Isabel's Day both José and young Crowberry were

assigned to cells in the monastery; and from that morning community

life was solidly established and the work of God was regularly

performed in choir. At Christmas, with Antonio's permission, another

novice arrived in the person of an English clergyman who had been

young Crowberry's closest friend.

Months passed. Twice Antonio received ecclesiastical notables at the

abbey and twice he was bidden to Lisbon. At length it was found

possible to form a small cosmopolitan community of monks from Brazil,

Spain, Bavaria, and Belgium. As the sole link between Portugal's old

and new Benedictine life, and as the savior of the abbey for his

Order, every one looked towards Antonio as the new Abbot. But he set

his face like a flint against the plan.

"My Lord," he said to the Nuncio, who had been expressly charged to

impart to him the blessing of Pio Nono, and to inquire what boon

Antonio most desired, "ask the Holy Father to intercede with those

who would make me Abbot against my will. For more than twenty years

I have dwelt in the world, buying and selling, and I am not fit to

guide the simplest monk in the religious life. Suffer me to obey my

Master's word. I hear Him saying, _Vade, recumbe in novissimo loco_."

"Father Antonio stops his ears too soon," observed the German

Abbot-President who was assisting at the interview. "In the same

verse of the Gospel he will find also _Amice, ascende snperius_. But

let him be consoled. The anniversary of his ordination, and of his

expulsion from the house he has saved, is drawing near. On that day

let him say his first Mass; and after he has said it, let all things

be set in order."

VII

On the day of his first Mass Antonio rose at dawn and climbed the

spiral stairway to his bench on the roof of the cloister. A

cardinal, three bishops, and two abbots were sleeping within the

abbey walls, and a duke and his duchess were up at the guest-house.

The monk yearned for solitude after a distracting week, and the cell

was too narrow for his expanding and aspiring soul.

Muffled in a warm new cloak which young Crowberry had forced upon him

in Lisbon, Antonio bent his whole mind and soul to the ineffably

sacred and glorious Work which lay before him. At last, after all

these years of dogged battle, he had won the fight. At last the dead

Abbot's prophecy was about to be fulfilled, and he, Antonio, was

about to break the most holy Body and to hold up in the great chalice

the most precious Blood.

To his dismay he found it difficult to meditate steadfastly upon

God's unspeakable Gift. Try as he would, he could not concentrate an

undivided mind upon the crowning mystery of faith. That his thoughts

should wander a little on the morning of such an anniversary was

perhaps natural; but somehow every thought led back to Isabel. He

rebuked himself sharply, and forced his mind once more to pious

thinkings. He called to memory the holy Francis of Assisi who died a

deacon, and the holy Benedict who died a layman. If these two

saints, who stood so high among all the saints of the universal

Church, had never presumed to offer the Holy Sacrifice, how could he,

Antonio, who had lived less than ten years in religion and more than

forty in the world, dare to say this Mass?

Despite his efforts to dislodge it, the thought of Isabel neither

moved nor weakened. Words which she had spoken on the last afternoon

at the cascade rang like bugles through his brain. In terrible wrath

and bitterness she had cried: "I will come back! You will succeed.

You will regain the abbey. You will fill it with monks. But

remember. I will come back. On the day of your triumph I will be

there. It isn't only you Southern people who love revenge. I will

be there. I will come back!"

He rose from the bench and gazed at the calm Atlantic, glittering

under the first sunbeams. But he could not banish the echo of her

words. Isabel was coming back! Not for revenge. Ever since the end

of his second novena to Saint Isabel he had rested quietly in a firm

confidence that his prayers for Isabel Kaye-Templeman had been

granted, and that his great hope had been fulfilled. She was coming

back, not in hatred, but in peace.

No. All this was folly, and worse. How could she come back? How

could she, after twenty years, find out what was happening in a

corner of distant Portugal? The very idea was madness. Nevertheless

Antonio could not drive it away. He descended to his cell, but her

invisible presence seemed to fill it; and it was only in the chapel

that he firmly regrasped the threads of his inward preparations for

the coming Sacrifice.

Eager whisperings in the nave drove him back to his cell. Lay folk

from far and near were beginning to arrive. All of them had risen

before daybreak, and some of them had been tramping all night.

Throughout the country-side an exaggerated account of Antonio's acts

and sufferings had sustained so much embellishment that he was

already being venerated as a saint of heroic virtue. Had he not,

simply by praying in the Navares church, caused an English lord to

spring up, so to speak, out of the earth with fifty contos of reis,

all in gold? Had he not cast a devil out of the shaggy, wild-eyed

José? Had he not withstood the rich and beautiful Margarida? Had he

not wrought the indisputable miracle of changing common wine into

champagne simply by standing a bottle on its head? Had he not driven

away from the azulejos the stiff Englishman with the icy,

golden-haired daughter, all by a supernatural spell of holy anger?

And, to crown all, was he not making a cardinal and three bishops to

grow where never more than one bishop had grown before?

A little later the mere sightseers were reinforced by files of

devouter worshipers whose Christian souls had glowed and burned at

the tale of Antonio's faithfulness; and, by degrees, the reverential

expectancy of these more earnest spirits hushed all unseemly

shufflings and whisperings. According to Portuguese custom there

were no seats, and everybody knelt on the floor. As the nave became

more crowded the strange silence became deeper. It was broken at

last by the unrestrained sobbing of the widow Joanna Quintella, who

was suddenly filled with bitter remorse for having fastened upon

Antonio his nickname of "the abbey miser." Her example was too much

for the weaker wills, and one after another joined her in weeping.

The cardinal and the bishops, whose visit was unofficial, had

stipulated that they should not be expected to make a ceremonious

entrance or to bear themselves with any appearance of defiance

towards the obsolescent laws against the Orders. They seated

themselves without ostentation in stalls which were only

distinguished from the stalls of the monks by thin cushions and

kneelers stuffed with straw. There, with bowed heads, they prayed

not only for Antonio and for the restored Benedictine life of

Portugal, but also for a renewal of the fervor with which each one of

them had said his first Mass long years before.

On the stroke of ten the sacred ministers emerged from the sacristy.

As his assistant priest Antonio was accompanied by one of the new

community, a young Benedictine from Brazil. A Franciscan from a

restored house in Entre Minho e Douro was deacon, and the sub-deacon

was the village cura. The servers were José and Brother Cypriano,

last of the old lay-brethren, who had arrived the night before from

Evora.

As Antonio appeared a murmur of awe escaped from the intent crowd in

the nave. The monk had recovered his power of concentration, and his

face was not like the face of a mortal man. But he moved forward,

all unconscious that the people were not pleading with God for mercy

upon him as a poor and presumptuous sinner.

To make a way to the sanctuary the acolytes had almost to push

through the people; and at one point the procession was brought to a

momentary halt. Instantly a handsome woman, whom Antonio remembered

as one of the belles of Senhor Jorge's serão, held up a puzzled,

big-eyed child and said, in eager tones loud enough for the monk to

hear:

"Look, little one, look! It is a saint that is passing by!"

At the same moment a rough young farmer bent forward and clumsily

kissed the hem of Antonio's chasuble. The monk recoiled and almost

let the sacred vessels fall. The man's touch and the woman's words

had cut him like knives. A saint! He, Antonio the hard, the proud,

a saint! All the selfishness of his life rose up before him. His

long coldness to José; his persistent aloofness from the life of the

village which he ought to have shared and uplifted; his whipping and

driving of Isabel with whips of rebuke and argument when he ought to

have led her with silken cords of sympathy; his repeated refusals of

charity when a little more fasting and a little more labor would have

enabled him to feed the hungry; his self-esteem; his want of meekness

under opposition and insult--these, all these, were the solid facts

of his life, standing up as gaunt and huge as monstrous rocks with

only one poor shrunken runnel of love trickling down between. A

saint! If the sacred vestments had not been hanging from his

shoulders he would have cried, "No, good people, no! Pray for me. I

am the poorest sinner of you all."

The crucifer cleared a passage through the kneeling, murmuring,

weeping people, and the procession moved on, picking a way among the

broad-brimmed hats and wallets of provisions which lay on the

pavement. After making five or six yards of progress it came to a

halt again. His pious preoccupation could not wholly blind Antonio's

eyes to the picturesqueness of the sight. The many-colored kerchiefs

of the women, the rich olive skins and glossy black hair of the

children, and the bright waistbands of the men were made ten times

more sumptuous by the cool, monotonous background of blue-and-white

azulejos. Here and there a knot of shepherds, in sheepskins, knelt

with their long staves rising up like spears above the heads of an

army. Two or three fans moved languidly, like gaudy flowers swaying

in a breeze. Straight ahead, beyond the black monks and the purple

prelates, rose the high altar, with the Virgin and her Child

enthroned above the soft flames of six tall candles, set in

candle-sticks of burnished gold.

As the procession resumed its march Antonio's glance was suddenly

seized by a sight which almost made him stumble. Close to the wall,

beside the cloister doorway, knelt Isabel. Her form was enveloped in

an exquisitely fine dust-cloak of silver-gray, and a black lace

mantilla covered her head. Yet, even before he saw her face, he knew

that it was she. The cherubs in the azulejos above the doorway

seemed to be looking down upon her curiously, as if they found in her

something different from common clay. Her gaze was fixed upon the

ground.

Recovering his self-control by a supreme effort, Antonio advanced to

the sanctuary and made the due obeisances. Then he knelt down before

the altar. No one wondered that his silent prayer was long; for was

he not a saint and was not this his first Mass? The silence was

profound from one end of the chapel to the other.

But Antonio's prayers were not what the onlookers thought. Isabel

had come back; and, according to his practice, it was necessary to

face the fact squarely in the light of common prudence. For nearly

twenty years he had cherished one great hope concerning her until it

had become a belief. For nearly twenty years he had given thanks to

Saint Isabel for her miraculous intercession. But it was possible

that, for nearly twenty years, he had been hugging a delusion.

"On the day of your triumph I will be there." So she had spoken; and

she was keeping her word. "It isn't only you Southern people who

love revenge." So she had stormed on; and perhaps it was for revenge

that she was come. With a sickening of heart Antonio suddenly

remembered reading in the Villa Branca paper a sordid story of a

passionate woman in Sicily who had murdered a virtuous young priest

on the steps of the altar. He remembered also young Crowberry's

account of the throwing of a bomb at the new Emperor Napoleon in

Paris. So far as he knew, such deeds were un-English; and, although

Isabel was imperious, he could not credit her with a smoldering Latin

vindictiveness leaping up into a fiery blaze of showy crime. Yet,

after all, he knew so little of women, so little of the new hysteria

which men told him was rife in the world.

What ought he to do? For himself and for his own life he did not

care. His work was done; and if God willed that he should add the

poor offering of his own blood to the infinite worth of the

immaculate Host, he was ready to pour it forth. But what if there

should be scandal, or, worse still, sacrilege? Or what if some

desperate deed should wreak pain or death upon the innocent people?

Ought he to rise from his knees, and to implore the prelates to grant

him immediate audience in a place apart? With the whole might of his

soul he besought Saint Isabel to intercede for him and to show him

God's will.

A child in the nave let fall a rosary of copper beads. At the noise

of the metal on the stone Antonio rose up. An inward voice bade him

say his Mass and leave the rest with God. Making the sign of the

cross, he invoked the Triune Name and said, in a clear voice,

"_Introibo ad altare Dei_."

At the Confiteor his earnestness was so terrible that the subdeacon

shrank back, understanding for the first time the blackness and

foulness and meanness of the smallest sin against the eternal

holiness and majesty and love. Even in the nave, where it was

impossible to hear Antonio's voice or to see his face, the poignancy

of the monk's Confiteor made itself felt. Like ripe corn bowing

before a wind, the most hardened and careless bent lower and yearned

forward in an anguish of contrition for forgotten sins; and when

Antonio pronounced the words _indulgentiam, absolutionem et

remissionem_ the whole chapel respired one great sigh, as if a

merciful king had just ended the suspense of a culprit condemned to

death. At the Gloria all hearts soared up like birds to hymn the

good God in the heights.

After the first Gospel one of the bishops arose to preach. He

recited for a text the words of Isaias, _Dicam aquiloni, Da, et

austro, Noli prohibere. Affer filios meos de longinquo, et filias

meas ab extremis terrae_: "I will say to the north, Give, and to the

south, Hold not back. Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from

the ends of the earth." His magniloquent exordium was worthy of the

bishop's reputation as the most eloquent preacher in the Peninsula.

In stately periods he began to show how north and south had indeed

given their sons to rebuild the Benedictine Order in Portugal. But,

at such a moment, his eloquence jarred. He himself was the first to

become convinced of its discordance; and, suddenly changing the key,

he humbly asked the prayers of all on Antonio's behalf and went back

to his place.

The Creed, which young Crowberry and his clerical friend had been

brought up to regard as a penitential chain dragging at the human

intellect, was sung more triumphantly than a battle-song or a

national anthem, with all the eagerness of enthusiastic faith. When

Antonio turned and said _Orate, fratres_, even the sightseers prayed.

At last Antonio began the Canon. At the commemoration of the living,

Isabel was the chief burden of his prayer. Having prayed for her, he

thrust her from his mind and pressed on to the supreme moment of the

Consecration. Spreading his hands over the oblation, he raised his

eyes to the ivory figure of the Crucified. As he gazed, scales fell

from his eyes. He saw, as he had never seen before, the everlasting

sacrifice which lay behind and around the cross of Calvary. He saw

behind the Victim who hung dying for three hours on the first Good

Friday, the _Agnus qui occisus est ab origine mundi_, "The Lamb slain

from the foundation of the world." He saw the _Sacerdos in tetemum_,

"The Priest for ever," _semper vivens ad interpellandum pro nobis_,

"ever living to make intercession for us." He understood that the

unutterable miracle of which he, Antonio, was about to become the

instrument was not a stroke of strange magic, but a gracious overflow

of that everlasting intercession. From books he had known these

things with his mind; but now he knew them with his whole soul. His

priestly instrumentality, like the rod of Moses, was about to strike

the Rock; but the bright stream waiting to gush forth was the

everlasting love of the Redeemer, flowing onward in its fullness

whether Mass was said or not. Yet the children of Israel had died of

thirst had not Moses raised his rod; and it was through him, Antonio,

a weak and unworthy priest on earth, that men were about to receive

the supreme bounty of the _Pontifex qui consedit in dextera sedis

magnitudinis in cœlis_, "the High Priest who sitteth on the right

hand of the Majesty in heaven."

When he elevated the sacred Host, Cypriano was ready to ring the

sacring bells; but awe stayed his hand. From the cardinal in his

purple down to the poorest hind in his sheepskin, all adored the God

of God and Light of Light. Every heart cried, _Verbum caro factum

est_: "The Word is made flesh and is dwelling among us, and we are

beholding His glory."

Antonio pronounced the words _Simili modo_ and took the cup. At last

God was fulfilling the old Abbot's prophecy: "I see Antonio standing

before the high altar. I see him holding up our great chalice. I

see him offering the Holy Sacrifice for us all." He raised the great

chalice, with the blood-red rubies, which José had saved from the

Viscount. Once again Cypriano tried to ring the sacring bell; once

again the general awe restrained him. In deepest reverence all

adored the precious Blood. Then burst forth the thankful cry

_Benedictus_: "Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord."

Very solemnly and intently Antonio made the memento of the dead,

especially of the dead Abbot and the fathers and brethren of the old

community. He had said the Pater Noster thousands and thousands of

times before; but as he stood before the altar every one of its

petitions ascended from his lips without a trace of formalism or

staleness. And when the time came for him to receive the celestial

Bread, his _Domine, non sum dignus_: "Lord, I am not worthy that Thou

shouldst enter under my roof," was not merely a devout reading of

seemly words from the printed missal; it was an uttering forth of his

inmost soul.

The sacrifice was consummated. He took the ablutions and covered the

chalice. When the deacon had sung _Ite, missa est_, men and women

who had never tried to sing the response before joined the choir of

monks in thundering out a mighty _Deo gratias_. Then the prelates

knelt to receive Antonio's blessing. The lordly cardinal was the

first to kneel. He knelt as if he were the meanest altar-boy rather

than a prince of Holy Roman Church, and all the others made haste to

follow his example. The monk, in deepest humility, blessed the

people.

Antonio's thanksgiving was less prolonged than his brethren expected.

But when they crowded round to escort him to the place of honor in

the refectory he begged most earnestly that the meal might proceed

without him. To the fervid protests of the cardinal and the foreign

abbots he responded that from the morrow onwards he would re-enter

the path of unquestioning obedience; but, for the remainder of this

one day he humbly sought leave to go and come as might seem him good.

As soon as he had wrung out a reluctant consent Antonio slowly

crossed the cloister garden. Two or three of the new monks sprang

forward to attend him; but he waved them aside and went on, with slow

steps and bent head. A bell clanged, and they melted away. He

quickened his pace until he gained the door with the secret lock;

and, before the echoes of the bell had ceased humming in the still

air, he was standing on the causeway outside the cloister.

Not since the night of the thunderstorm had he walked along those

moss-grown slabs. At the end of the causeway, where he had lifted

Isabel upon his shoulder, he hesitated a short moment. Then he

stepped down and followed a woodland path until the soft thunder of

the cascade boomed upon his ear. The earth under his tread was sweet

and bright with thousands of May flowers, and the May birds sang as

they had sung on the May morning of Sebastian's last Mass.

Not for twenty years had Antonio set foot within a furlong of the

stepping-stones. But José had obeyed his orders to the letter. A

few gaps in the trees had been filled up, but otherwise nothing was

changed. As he climbed the path the dull pounding of the tumbling

water drowned the crooning of the stream at his feet, and at last he

caught the silvery flash of the cascade through the trees, like a

great fish struggling in a basket of reeds. And the flash of the

cascade was not all Antonio saw. He saw as well a fine silver-gray

cloak thrown down on a flat boulder; and standing beside it, a nun of

the Order of the Visitation.

VIII

"I knew that you would come," said Isabel quietly as Antonio emerged

from the bushes.

"I knew I should find you here," Antonio answered, more quietly still.

It seemed no more than a few feverish months since their parting.

The boulder, the stepping-stones, the pool, the cascade, the rapids,

the palms, the mimosas, the tree-ferns, the cypresses--all seemed

unchanged. He raised his eyes and gazed steadily at Isabel. Time

had not filched away her loveliness. Indeed, the nun's head-dress

served even better than the golden ringlets of old to frame her

beautiful features and to heighten both the blueness of her eyes and

the whiteness of her brow. Like her father before her, she held

herself as erect in middle-age as in youth. If some of the girlish

bloom had gone, the loss was more than made good by new charms of

womanly tenderness and Christian peacefulness.

"You see I have kept my word," she said, speaking easily and quite

naturally. "On the day we parted, did I not say that I would come

back? I have come."

"Yes," echoed Antonio, like a man in a dream. "You have come."

"When you saw me," she added, with a smile, "perhaps you thought I

had come to shoot you or to stab you; or to set the chapel on fire,

bishops and abbots and all."

Not for a moment had he lowered his gaze from her face. Merely to

behold her again and to hear her voice, whatever her words might be,

was happiness enough. The accord between them was so perfect that

there was no need for questions, answers, news, explanations,

reminiscences, plans, greetings, farewells. But she was waiting for

him to speak; and at last, in the same dreamy tone as before, he

pointed to her nun's dress and said:

"This wonderful thing came to pass, did it not, on the eighth of

July, twenty months after you went away? That day was the feast of

Saint Isabel of Portugal. It was also the last day of a novena I had

been making to this very end. On that day, as I sat in the chapel, I

heard women's voices, far-off and sweet, chanting the Divine Office;

and I knew that this miracle had come to pass."

"You were not mistaken," she said, in low tones. "I awoke to my

vocation on the eighth of July, the year but one after I left this

place."

Minutes passed before either of them spoke again. Not that time and

distance had been able to estrange them. They were one in heart and

mind as they had never been before. But Isabel's mood had swiftly

become attuned to Antonio's. It was enough to be at his side on

their old battle-field and to know how perfect was their peace. For

a long while they stood speechless with the great light of the

Atlantic sparkling before their eyes and the great music of the

cascade resounding in their ears. Antonio was the first to break the

silence.

"Happiness is not the principal thing," he said, still gazing at the

sea. "But I should like to know that you are happy."

"I am happy," she answered in a firm voice. "Entirely happy."

"For that," he said simply, "I thank God."

Another silence followed, longer than the other. At last she said:

"You are weary. You must sit down. Our time together is very short,

so let me say what I ought to say."

They sat down on the boulder.

"That afternoon you sent me away," she began, "I went home with

hatred and vengeance in my heart. I hated you and I hated God. I

did not sleep; but, until dawn, neither did I shed a single tear. My

hatred was like a terrible joy. It filled me so full that it left no

room for grief. But when the sun shone upon my white roses and all

the birds began to sing, my hatred snapped like a dry reed, and I

threw myself on the bed and wept until I thought I should die.

"Gradually hope returned. I knew that you loved me; and I told

myself that you would come to the cascade and that you would fall on

your knees and implore my pardon. I even decided what I would wear,

and I chose out a turquoise-blue ribbon for my hair because I thought

you had admired it.

"Happily I had some pride left. I didn't go to the Cascade. But I

bound my hair with the turquoise-blue ribbon all the same, and waited

for you to come to the house.

"You know you never came. Instead, your man José appeared. I heard

chaff flying backwards and forwards between himself and the servants.

Fisher repeated some of it to me; and I learned that you had started

at sunrise on a long day's journey.

"That was the last unendurable blow. You had run away lest I should

summon you again to the cascade, or burst into your farm, or do some

other shameless thing. It stung me to the quick. I became in a

single moment as hard and cold as iron in a frost, and as bitter as

poison. I pictured you coming up the next morning to say a

ceremonious Good-bye--coming up all cool and self-possessed and

hateful. It was too much. I decided to join my father at once. I

enforced my will like a tyrant; and, before you came back, we were

gone."

She paused. Antonio's human heart was breaking to tell her how he

had passed that night kneeling on the floor beside her bed. But he

held his peace; and Isabel went on:

"In one point you did me immediate good. I put down my foot boldly,

and insisted that we should leave Portugal at once. As soon as we

landed in England I sent Mrs. Baxter away. But I grew more hard and

bitter every day. At last, partly from distraction, partly out of

prudence, I mastered enough of business to go through my own and my

father's affairs. One evening I made a cruel discovery. It was only

a matter of five hundred pounds; but it overwhelmed me. I found that

this abbey had never been in any sense mine. From my father I found

out his plan concerning the azulejos; and from old Mr. Crowberry I

found that you knew how things stood all along. Then I remembered

some of my words to you, and my frozen heart melted at the sudden

knowledge of your chivalry. Even when I threatened to burn the abbey

down you held your tongue."

It puzzled Antonio that she should make so much of so little.

"Not chivalry," he protested quietly. "How else could I have

behaved? Leave it. Come, tell me, Isabel, what first drew you to

the religious life."

"I am telling you as fast as I can," she retorted, with all the old

quickness and spirit. "From that day I ceased to glower at the

memory of you in sullen hate. I began to be almost impersonally

interested in your conduct, your ideals, your character. The theme

engrossed me all day long. I recalled everything you had told me of

the years before we met. I lived again through every moment of the

fortnight we were together. And it became plainer and plainer that I

could only explain you in one way. You were too healthy, too

clear-eyed, too much of a man to be a fanatic; yet you were breathing

your every breath under the sway of a supernatural idea. Against my

will I was forced to admit that the idea must be true."

She paused again, weighing her words. Then she added:

"Of course, I knew that men have seemed to do wonderful things under

the sway of ideas that are only delusions. Your idea was not a

delusion. No man can get out of a delusion one atom more than he has

put into it; but I saw that the idea--I mean, the supernatural

reality--which dominated your cool brain was a reality from which you

drew a mysterious something--a something quite beyond your own self,

quite beyond your own nature. I had felt it, time after time, in

your presence. It was not an illusion. It was there, indisputably

there.

"What could this something be? I strove to square it with a dozen

theories in turn, and I gave it twenty names; but not one would fit.

At last, it occurred to me that after all, your own account of it

might be true. Antonio ... you can hardly understand. In England

faith is weak. There we have nearly all been taught the greater

Christian verities; yet it smote me like a thunderbolt from heaven

when I suddenly explained your life on the theory that the whole

Christian gospel is truer than the stars. At the most I had believed

that its truths had been realities in Palestine eighteen hundred

years ago, and that the devout memory of them helped us and ennobled

us to-day, like a stirring tale that is told. But, in one

overwhelming revelation, I saw it as the eternal life of men. I

can't find words. I saw it as something more vital than the air,

something nearer to us than our own selves. I saw it as an

unquenchable light, with the sun blinking in it like a farthing

candle at noonday. And I saw your life, Antonio, reflecting that

light and burning in the midst of it like a gem."

He bent his head as if in pain; but she finished her speech.

"Yes, I understood your life at last," she said very softly. "It was

the _vita abscondita cum Christo in Deo_, 'the life that is hid with

Christ in God.'"

"God knows," he rejoined solemnly, "that I am not aping humility when

I say that my life has been wilful and sinful and proud. Speak of

such a life no more, I entreat. Speak of yourself. Tell me how you

became a nun."

"As soon as I had accounted for your life," said Isabel, "I was faced

by a still harder riddle. How was I to account for my own life; and

especially, for the way my life had become intertangled with yours?

At the first glance I seemed to have been thrown across your path

merely to try you. I seemed to be merely a single rung in your

ladder to perfection. But, to be candid, I was not humble enough to

rest satisfied with that. Surely I had some rôle of my own. To be

simply another person's trial, another person's springboard to

heaven, was not enough for a whole life.

"Throughout one black week my new-found faith suffered an almost

total eclipse. I rebelled in loathing against God for sacrificing me

in the cause of your monkish perfection. Why should he have chosen

me for so dreadful a work instead of some woman who had had her share

of happiness? His cruelty seemed devilish.

"My doubts grew until they broke of their own weight. One day, soon

after my poor father died, I had been bitterly recalling what seemed

to be the cruelest fact of all--the fact that, for four years before

I saw your face, I had lived in the supernatural persuasion that you

were my destiny and that your life needed mine. Suddenly it flashed

upon me that a man and a woman may be predestined to commingle their

lives on some basis other than conventional love and marriage. I

knew that my love for you was not such love as I saw among the lovers

and the married people around me; and that from ordinary marriage I

had always recoiled.

"It was on the strand of a beautiful English bay, with white cliffs

running out miles into the blue water, that I worked out this new

thought to the logical end. It was the eighth of July. At about

eleven in the morning I held the key in my hand. Antonio, I did not

love you less; but my new faith rushed back a million fold and I

loved God so much more that at last I saw my love for you in its true

light. I saw it as the means to an end. I saw that you had been

sent to me, as Saint Philip was sent to the treasurer of Queen

Candace, to make me a Christian. You, a monk, were raised up to make

me a nun.

"I saw much more. I saw that, for years and years, I had been

fighting for happy human relationships. I, for whom God's love had

reserved this richer bliss, had cried out, year after year, for a

father, a mother, a sister, a brother, a friend. My bitterest cry,

Antonio, had been for you; but God knows that I had cried out for you

less as a husband than as a comrade and a most dear friend. On that

July morning I saw why our Lord had refused me the lower good to

grant me the higher, and how He had sorely wounded me that His balm

might more sweetly heal me."

Isabel ceased. Her long speech had been growing less and less easy

until she could not utter another word. The nun thought that the

cause was in herself. Why had she not confined herself to reciting

the precise words with which she had come prepared? Or why had she

not taken the still better course of throwing all her preparation to

the winds and of pouring out her heart to Antonio in whatever words

might come? Why had she muddled fragments of a set speech with a

nervous impromptu?

She did not know that the cause of her failure was in the listener.

Although her story told Antonio that his dearest prayer had been

superabundantly answered, the old wound in his heart was bleeding

afresh. For half a moment, with an exquisite spiritual jealousy

which was beyond his will, he was jealous of his Lord. Throughout

the long years of his growing love of God his chaste love of Isabel

had never died; and he could not bear the thought that perhaps this

love was no longer requited. He tried to speak; but his tongue was

tied. Antonio's heart sank. What was this mystery? How was it that

their accord was broken at the very moment when it should have been

most perfect?

When the pause had become intolerable Isabel ended it. She began

speaking quickly and nervously. The forced lightness of her tones

contrasted almost painfully with her grave earnestness of a few

minutes before.

"Your question is answered," she said. "I have told you how I became

a nun. I did not rush into a convent, like a damsel of romance, out

of chagrin at a disappointment in love. My disappointment, if we may

use the word, was only the means of opening my eyes to a vocation as

real as your own."

Only! Antonio could see that their wonderful love had accomplished

all she said. But was it only that, and nothing more? Again he

strove to speak; again he failed; and again it was Isabel who ended

the pause.

"For three or four months," she said, in an even more matter-of-fact

tone than before, "I lived with Lady Julia Blighe. I entered the

convent at Christmas. Probably you, a monk of Saint Benedict, can

hardly take the convents of our Order seriously. Our chant is made

easy, all on three notes. We have flowers in our rooms. Each nun

has a silver spoon. I have always been a coward when it came to

physical hardships."

"I know your Order and I revere it," protested Antonio, finding

speech at last. "You are not a coward. The inward mortification is

harder to practise than the outward. I know that the poor people

used to call your nuns 'the holy Maries.' But tell me how you are

employed."

"I teach in the school," she answered. "That is why I am here

to-day. Let me explain. We have had in our care three sisters from

the Beira Alta, daughters of a Portuguese Marquis. Their education

is finished. I brought them out to Oporto and handed them over to

their parents last week. Before I left England I told our Mother

Superior all about you, save your name, and it is with her consent

that I have come here to-day. But I believed that your monks had

been restored years and years ago. I expected to see you for half an

hour in a monastery parlor. A sister of the Third Order of Saint

Dominic is traveling with me on her way to bring back some pupils

from Lisbon. We reached your little town, Navares, last night.

There we heard this news. The people could talk of nothing else."

The hardness went out of her tone, and her voice faltered as she

added softly: "They told me, Antonio, that this would be your first

Mass. They told me how you have fought and what you have suffered."

The blue eyes which looked at him so wistfully as she spoke were the

blue eyes which had brimmed with tears twenty years before when she

had "cried and cried and cried like a baby" at the sight of his

worn-out cloak and had sobbed: "Poor Antonio! You poor Antonio! My

poor Antonio!" His heart broke at the sight. After twenty years she

had come back. Amidst the old sights and sounds she was sitting

hardly an arm's length from him. Isabel had come back. But in less

than one little hour they must stand up for the last parting and he

would never see her in this world any more. And meanwhile a frosty

monster of false reserve was devouring their tiny store of golden

moments one by one.

Antonio sprang to his feet.

"Isabel," he said desperately, "you think I didn't care. You think I

never loved you. Listen. The night you went away I was ready to

drop down with fatigue and hunger after riding and tramping from

sunrise to sunset over the mountains. But how did I spend that

dreadful night? I spent it in your chamber, kneeling on the floor

against your bed, drinking deep of such anguish for you as I pray God

you have never tasted for me. How did I spend the next day? Only by

miracle upon miracle was I held back from thundering after you on the

fleetest horse in the country-side. Hour after hour that day I

tramped, tramped, tramped north, forgetting God and thinking only of

you, till I came to a saint's grave."

She rose hastily and raised one slender white hand, as if to ward off

his burning words. But he would not be put to silence.

"Call me a sentimentalist, a madman, an apostate, anything you will,"

he cried. "But here is the sheer truth. Whenever I sat down to eat

and drink at the farm you were there, invisibly but undeniably there,

sitting at my right hand. Whenever I went into my cell I heard you

searching in the cupboard for something you could not find. You

haunted these woods all night and all day. To enter the guest-house

was like being dragged into a chamber of torture. More. Believe me

or not, as you will. To-day is the first time for twenty years that

I have set foot on these stones, or set eyes on yonder cascade, or

touched this boulder with my hand. Isabel, in memory of you I have

charged José to tend this place like a shrine; but I behold it now

for the first time since I stood here, at sunrise, the day after you

went away."

His words burst from him like a stampede of eager, bright-eyed

creatures suddenly released from long captivity. It was as though he

would storm and batter down the gates of her heart and reclaim his

ancient place. She recoiled from him.

"No more, no more!" she cried. "I did not come for this. Antonio,

in God's name, no more!"

"It is in God's name," he retorted, "that I must and will say more.

Isabel, when you went away I did not know I loved you. I thought my

grief was no more than an aching, bleeding wound of sympathy, of

pity. But, little by little, I came to know that I loved you. Not

with profane love. I came to believe that our Lord had vouchsafed to

me a love such as unfallen man would have had for unfallen woman, and

I believed that you, Isabel, loved me with as holy a love in return.

It was not a love which weaned me from the love of God. It was a way

of loving God more, and of loving Him more perfectly. I even learned

to thank God for our separation; because I knew my human weakness and

I knew how swiftly this love of you, which was also a love of God,

might be changed into a deceitful love of self. But to-day what do I

find? That your love for me was only a delusion, a phase, a stage, a

means to another end--that, and that only."

He strode up and down, as if he would shake from his shoulders this

last and heaviest of his griefs. But when he reached the spot where

he had pronounced his final answer twenty years before he heard a

step at his side and felt a light touch on his hand.

"No, Antonio," she said "No. Not that and that only."

He started violently. She was facing him, with downcast eyes and

with the rose-pink of girlhood once more glowing in her cheeks. Her

voice was low and sweet.

"Antonio," she said very slowly, "how strange it all is, and

wonderful! You sent me away in autumn, when the sun made haste to

set and the storm had torn the leaves from the trees. I have come

back in the spring, amidst thousands of birds and millions of

flowers. I have come back in the sunshine to find that you loved me

even more than I loved you."

Her voice died away so gently that Antonio could not be sure whether

the headlong waterfall and the delirious birds had not robbed him of

some sweet saying. At last she spoke again and said:

"Yes, Antonio, you loved me more than I loved you. But do not think

that I loved you little or lightly. Above all, do not fear that my

love is dead. Antonio, I will tell you what I had never meant to

tell anybody in this world."

He waited a long time before she began her confession. To help her

he bent his gaze upon the ground. At last he heard her speaking, so

softly that he had to strain his ears to listen.

"I, too," she said, "cherished such a love. But I am no theologian.

Although my love of you had awakened my love of God, I thought it was

wrong to go on cherishing it after its work was done. For years and

years I thrust it away as a snare. I so crowded my waking hours with

prayer and labor and study that no time was left for other thoughts.

But, time after time--not thrice, or ten times, but five hundred--my

nights have been rosy with the same wonderful dream. In my dream I

seem to have entered into the bliss of heaven, and to be moving in

the fullness of the love of God, as in a soft glory of life-giving

golden light. At the beginning of my dream it is always a churchly

heaven, pillared and domed, with holy chants drifting hither and

thither like clouds of incense and with clouds of incense mounting

upward like holy chants. But, little by little, it changes. The dim

dome widens and brightens into a blue sky, with the smoke of the

incense sailing in it like pearly clouds; and the stark pillars

soften into tree trunks crowned with cool foliage and hung with

clinging roses. Instead of rolling organs I hear the surf of a

summer sea breaking on soft sand, and instead of the chants I hear

the birds, and thousands of brooks ringing like little bells. Cool

grass, gay with wild flowers, spreads itself in the place of golden

streets and marble pavements. But, all the time, the same holy light

is over it all, like the light before a summer sunset among green

hills. Then I become conscious that the heaven I am walking in is

not some strange unhomely land high above the stars. _Video cœlum

novunt et terram novam_: 'I see a new heaven and a new earth,' and I

know, with sudden joy, that I am walking in this beautiful world,

made new, purged of evil and pain, and wholly conformed to the mind

of God.

"My dream unfolds always in the same way. Gradually I see that the

woods in which I am walking are woods I have walked in before. The

voices of the sea and the brooks are good to hear, because they are

the voices of old friends. At last I push past a mimosa, on fire

with golden flowers like a burning bush, and I halt on the margin of

this pool. I wait, with the cascade rumbling at me like thunder and

flashing at me like lightning. I turn round; and, without hearing

your footfall, I find you at my side. Then we wander off together,

sometimes down deep ravines, sometimes up through pines to brown

moorlands purple with heather, sometimes along the banks of lakes and

rivers, or along the sea-shore, with the holy light always over us

and with God's love nearer to us than our own souls. That is my

dream."

After pausing a little, she added:

"At first I thought my dream was a snare. I say again that I am not

a theologian. Still, I tried to puzzle out if such dreams were

against sound doctrine. At first I feared they were. But I came to

see that the words of our Lord, 'In the resurrection they neither

marry nor are married,' referred to marrying of an earthly kind.

Many another scripture came to my mind; and many another thought came

to comfort me. Our Mother, the Blessed Virgin crowned in heaven--is

she not a woman still? And do we not think of this saint or of that

as still a man or still a woman, as the case may be? Is the life

hereafter to be a blank Nirvana? Will it be less richly personal

than the life we are living now? But these are only my own poor

thoughts, worth less than nothing. I rest rather in two great

scriptures. _In domo Patris mei mansiones multœ sunt_: 'In my

Father's house are many mansions.' And again, 'Eye hath not seen,

nor hath the ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man

what things God hath prepared for those who love Him.' But let me be

plain to the end. My dreams are beyond my control; and, when I am

awake, I do not willingly dwell on these thoughts."

The big bell of the monastery, vocal once more after seven-and-twenty

years of silence, struck twelve. The monk and the nun listened to

the strokes without speaking. Before the last echoes died away

Brother Cypriano rang the Angelus.

"_Angelus Domini nuntiavit Mariœ_," said Antonio, with bowed head.

And Isabel responded:

"_Et concepit de Spiritu sancto_."

When the pious exercise was finished she said:

"It is time to go."

"No," cried Antonio, suddenly perceiving that she had picked up her

cloak and mantilla. "You must not go."

"I must go," she said, smiling gently. "Antonio, things are changed

indeed. In the old days your great aim was to drive me away."

"You must not go," he said, with the utmost energy. "The Duchess of

Ribeira Grande is at the guest-house, with servants. There is room

for you and for your friend the Dominican sister. You need rest,

until to-morrow. You must not go."

She shook her head, still smiling gently, and held out her hand.

"Good-bye, Antonio," she said.

He took the hand; but instead of grasping it and letting it fall he

held it, and said once more:

"Until to-morrow you must not go."

She began to disengage her fingers. Antonio gripped them fiercely

and pleaded not only with his voice, but with his eyes.

"Isabel," he said, "one room at the guest-house is still yours. It

can be made ready for you and for your friend to-night. It is your

old room, with the white roses. I have suffered no one to enter it

for twenty years."

This time she left her hand in his. The monk's voice, his brown

velvet eyes, his clasp, and the rush of old memories were too much

for her. She trembled a little; and suddenly a rain of tears fell

upon Antonio's hand.

"Antonio," she sobbed, "I must go. Now. Don't ask me again. But,

before I go, there is one thing more to tell you."

For many moments her weeping would not let her speak. At last she

whispered between her sobs:

"That little bowl. The bowl you gave me, with the blue-and-orange

bird. Do not despise me. When the time came, I felt I could give up

the whole world, except that. For two months I turned a deaf ear to

God, all because I couldn't give up ... that."

The exceeding bitterness of the memory made her sob afresh. When she

could speak again, she said:

"Antonio, I will tell you where the little bowl is to-day. It has

been made into a lamp. I had it encased in brass, so that it cannot

break, and plated over with the purest silver. It hangs in a little

church, in a slum near the London docks. It burns before the image

of Saint Antonio."

Antonio could not speak. He forgot that he was still holding her

hand, and she did not remember that she had not taken it away. After

a long time she murmured, almost inaudibly:

"Antonio ... one night I gave you a rose."

He released her white fingers. Then he drew forth his breviary and

placed it in her hand. She took it wonderingly; but he averted his

eyes. Isabel gazed at the worn volume. She could see that there was

some kind of a book-marker, marking the Office of the day. She

opened the book and saw a pressed white rose, flecked and veined with

faint blood-red.

She looked at it a long, long while. Then she shut the book and gave

it back to Antonio. Without another word he wrapped the thin wrap

about her form and helped her to arrange the mantilla on her

shoulders. When the moment of parting came she simply gave him her

hand, like a proud English lady; and he, like a courtly Portuguese

gentleman, bent over it and lightly kissed her finger-tips.

She went away by the path she had taken on their last afternoon,

twenty years before. Antonio, strangely calm, watched her as she

pressed up the steep way. He was conscious that she still walked

with willowy, girlish grace. He remembered how he had watched her

that other afternoon, and how he had wondered if she would turn round

and look back.

The two cypresses hid her from his sight. He breathed a quiet prayer

for herself and for him. But he did not close his eyes; for they

were fixed on the one point where she would reappear. His being was

filled full with such peace and bliss as he had never known.

She reappeared. She turned round. She waved her hand. She was gone.

As soon as Antonio re-entered the porch of the monastery the Fathers

thronged forward pressing him to break his long fast. But he shook

his head and trudged on, looking neither to the right hand nor to the

left. In the cool cloister he paused a moment upon the slab which

covered the body of Sebastian. Then he turned into the narrow

doorway and climbed, with dragging steps, to his old seat on the flat

roof. One of the younger monks tried to follow; but José and

Cypriano barred his passage. The two sturdy fellows, eyeing one

another jealously, stood guard on either side of the gloomy opening,

like two genii keeping the door of a cave.

Antonio sat down on the bench of cork. At the same moment a carriage

rolled out through the principal gate of the abbey. He knew that it

was bearing Isabel to rejoin her friend at Navares. Down the dusty

hill it went; past the farm; and onwards until it was no more than a

tremulous black spot against the whiteness of the road. As it

approached the pine-woods some plate of burnished brass in the

harness caught the light and blazed at Antonio for a moment, like a

tiny sun. Then the shadow engulfed it, and he saw it no more.

Very calmly and with perfect concentration of mind Antonio resumed

his devout thanksgiving for his first Mass. God had enabled him to

rebuild His broken altar and to offer upon it the Holy Sacrifice. In

the dazzling refulgence of that immense grace his sufferings and

hardships were no more than grains of dust dancing in a sunbeam. The

chief events of his past re-enacted themselves before him, like a

stage show, and he saw that his life had been an unbroken pageant of

divine mercy, full of glittering lights and rich shadows. He

recalled all that God had done in him, and _vidit quod esset bonum_;

"he saw that it was good."

When the monk's thanksgiving was finished Isabel reclaimed his mind.

The strange peace which had descended upon them both, as she gazed at

their white rose, abode with him still. There was no rebellion in

his soul, no ache in his heart. The whole history of their love

unrolled its bright length before him, like a holy scroll illuminated

in blue and blood-red and gold, and he found nothing written therein

that he would have altered or erased. _Vidit quod esset bonum_. It

was good, all good, to the end.

He sat and pondered upon their wonderful love. At first he was

confident that Isabel and he, he and Isabel, were the lovers of

lovers, the supreme lovers of all time. But humility brought him a

larger thought. Surely, before Isabel and he were born, there had

been men and women loving as purely and as grandly. And surely there

would be men and women loving as grandly and as purely after he and

Isabel were dead.

Compared with all this love, of all these lovers in all the past and

all the present, surely the shining of the sun was as darkness? He

closed his eyes that he might behold the greater light. And, in that

surpassing radiance, he seemed to be reading the deepest secrets of

eternity and to be solving the riddle at the inmost heart of the

universe. He saw innumerable loves ever ascending, like golden

mists, out of the love of God. He saw those innumerable loves

returning into the love of God again, like rivers into the sea. And

with every return of love he saw the love of God growing richer and

sweeter, like a fruit ripening in the sun. It seemed as if even God

himself were waxing greater and as if, in the act of creation, the

Creator took as well as gave. Without creation God must still have

been perfect; but even God could rise from the lower perfection to

the higher. Without creation the eternal Word was like a trumpet

blown on an illimitable plain: but, with creation, the Word was like

that same trumpet resounding and reverberating amidst re-echoing

hills. God had need of man. God was Love, a pure white ray of love,

and humanity was a prism turning this way and that and breaking the

whiteness into the fairest colors. All love was one. Antonio's love

for Isabel, Isabel's love for Antonio, was a drop flung forth from

the bottomless ocean of the love of God to shine like a gem in the

sunlight.

No. Not like a mere grain of spray which leaped free and sparkled

for a moment and then fell back to lose its identity for ever.

Rather was it like the immortal soul of a new-born babe, a something

suddenly existing, a something with no past, but with an everlasting

future, a something with an eternal identity which even God himself

could not destroy. God would no more revoke and destroy His

emanations of love than He would revoke and destroy His emanations of

being. Innumerable loves would chime for ever in noblest harmony

with the love of God, like brooks murmuring with the sea--_vox

turbœ magnœ, vox aquaram multarum et vox tonitruorum magnorum_:

"a voice of a great multitude, a voice of great waters, a voice of

mighty thunderings."

The monk rested awhile in this thought. He knew it was the thought

of Isabel's dream. But suddenly a white light blazed in his soul.

Isabel vanished as if she had never been. All the human love he had

been cherishing fell from him, like a dying torch from the grasp of a

man who strides forth out of a cave into the blinding light of a

summer noon. Antonio was caught up into an ecstasy of the pure love

of God.

When he opened his eyes at last and gazed upon the Atlantic he knew

that he was weary. The hands were weary that had labored so roughly

for his Lord. The feet were weary that had tramped so many a league

in dust and heat; and the brain was weary that had puzzled and

worried and planned till it could puzzle and worry and plan no more.

But it mattered not at all. Was not the day's work done? There was

plenty of time to sleep. Ranging over wood and meadow and stream,

Antonio's gaze came to rest in the little clearing between the ending

of the orange-groves and the beginning of the vineyards; and he

looked with longing at the white cross which rose tall and slender

above the monks' graves.

Peace filled earth and heaven. His tired eye-lids drooped over

Antonio's eyes. The airs around him were rich with scents of

lemon-blossom and suckle. The Atlantic lay unvexed by wind; and the

ocean swell, as it searched the creeks and caves, hummed no louder

than a heavy-laden honey-bee lumbering home.

THE END