"Mother," said Gabriel, "I have something to say to thee." They were
in the half-orange room, and she had looked in to give her good-night
kiss to the lonely student, but his words arrested her at the door.
She sat down and gazed lovingly at her handsome eldest-born, in whom
her dead husband lived as in his prime. "'Twill be of Isabella," she
thought, with a stir in her breast, rejoiced to think that the
brooding eyes of the scholar had opened at last to the beauty and
goodness of the highborn heiress who loved him.
"Mother, I have made a great resolution, and 'tis time to tell thee."
Her eyes grew more radiant.
"My blessed Gabriel!"
"Nay, I fear thou wilt hate me."
"Hate thee!"
"Because I must leave thee."
"'Tis the natural lot of mothers to be left, my Gabriel."
"Ah, but this is most unnatural. Oh, my God! why am I thus tried?"
"What meanest thou? What has happened?" The old woman had risen.
"I must leave Portugal."
"Wherefore? in Heaven's name! Leave Portugal?"
"Hush, or the servants will hear. I would become," he breathed low, "a
Jew!"
Dona da Costa blenched, and stared at him breathless, a strange light
in her eyes, but not that which he had expected.
"'Tis the finger of God!" she whispered, awestruck.
"Mother!" He was thrilled with a wild suspicion.
"Yes, my father was a Jew. I was brought up as a Jewess."
"Hush! hush!" he cautioned her again, and going to the door peered
into the gloom. "But my father?" he asked, shutting the door
carefully.
She shook her head.
"His family, though likewise Marranos, were true believers. It was the
grief of my life that I dared never tell him. Often since his death,
memories from my girlhood have tugged at my heart. But I durst not
influence my children's faith--it would have meant deadly peril to
them. And now--O Heaven!--perchance torture--the stake--!"
"No, mother, I will fly to where faith is free."
"Then I shall lose thee all the same. O God of Israel, Thy vengeance
hath found me at last!" And she fell upon the couch, sobbing,
overwrought. He stood by, helpless, distracted, striving to hush her.
"How did this thing happen to you?" she sobbed.
Briefly he told her of his struggles, of the episode of Dom Diego, of
his conviction that the Old Testament was the true and sufficient
guide to life.
"But why flee?" she asked. "Let us all return to Judaism; thy brother
Vidal is young and malleable, he will follow us. We will be secret;
from my girlhood I know how suspicion may be evaded. We will gradually
change all the servants save Pedro, and have none but blacks. Why
shouldst thou leave this beautiful home of thine, thy friends, thy
station in society, thy chances of a noble match?"
"Mother, thou painest me. What is all else beside our duty to truth,
to reason, to God? I must worship all these under the naked sky."
"My brave boy! forgive me!" And she sprang up to embrace him. "We will
go with thee; we will found a new home at Amsterdam."
"Nay, not at thy years, mother." And he smoothed her silver hair.
"Yea; I, too, have studied the Old Testament." And her eyes smiled
through their tears. "'Wherever thou goest, I will go. Thy country
shall be my country, and thy God my God.'"
He kissed her wet cheek.
Ere they separated in the gray dawn they had threshed out ways and
means; how to realize their property with as little loss and as little
observation as possible, and how secretly to ship for the Netherlands.
The slightest imprudence might betray them to the Holy Office, and so
Vidal was not told till 'twas absolutely essential.
The poor young man grew pale with fright.
"Wouldst drive me to Purgatory?" he asked.
"Nay, Judaism hath no Purgatory." Then seeing the consolation was
somewhat confused, Gabriel added emphatically, to ease the distress of
one he loved dearly, "There is no Purgatory."
Vidal looked more frightened than ever. "But the Church says--" he
began.
"The Church says Purgatory is beneath the earth; but the world being
round, there is no beneath, and, mayhap, men like ourselves do inhabit
our Antipodes. And the Church holds with Aristotle that the heavens be
incorruptible, and contemns Copernicus his theory; yet have I heard
from Dom Diego de Balthasar, who hath the science of the University,
that a young Italian, hight Galileo Galilei, hath just made a wondrous
instrument which magnifies objects thirty-two times, and that
therewith he hath discovered a new star. Also doth he declare the
Milky Way to be but little stars; for the which the Holy Office is
wroth with him, men say."
"But what have I to make with the Milky Way?" whimpered Vidal, his own
face as milk.
Gabriel was somewhat taken aback. "'Tis the infallibility of the Pope
that is shaken," he explained. "But in itself the Christian faith is
more abhorrent to Reason than the Jewish. The things it teaches about
God have more difficulties."
"What difficulties?" quoth Vidal. "I see no difficulties."
But in the end the younger brother, having all Gabriel's
impressionability, and none of his strength to stand alone, consented
to accompany the refugees.
During those surreptitious preparations for flight, Gabriel had to go
about his semi-ecclesiastical duties and take part in Church
ceremonies as heretofore. This so chafed him that he sometimes
thought of proclaiming himself; but though he did not shrink from the
thought of the stake, he shrank from the degradation of imprisonment,
from the public humiliation, foreseeing the horror of him in the faces
of all his old associates. And sometimes, indeed, it flashed upon him
how dear were these friends of his youth, despite reason and religion;
how like a cordial was the laughter in their eyes, the clasp of their
hands, the well-worn jests of college and monastery, market-place and
riding-school! How good it was, this common life, how sweet to sink
into the general stream and be borne along effortless! Even as he
knelt, in conscious hypocrisy, the emotion of all these worshippers
sometimes swayed him in magnetic sympathy, and the crowds of
holiday-makers in the streets, festively garbed, stirred him to
yearning reconciliation. And now that he was to tear himself away, how
dear was each familiar haunt--the woods and waters, the pleasant hills
strewn with grazing cattle! How caressingly the blue sky bent over him,
beseeching him to stay! And the town itself, how he loved its steep
streets, the massive Moorish gates, the palaces, the monasteries, the
whitewashed houses, the old-fashioned ones, quaint and windowless, and
the newer with their protrusive balcony-windows--ay, and the very
flavor of garlic and onion that pervaded everything; how oft he had
sauntered in the Rua das Flores, watching the gold-workers! And as he
moved about the old family home he had a new sense of its intimate
appeal. Every beautiful panel and tile, every gracious curve of the
great staircase, every statue in its niche, had a place, hitherto
unacknowledged, in his heart, and called to him.
But greater than the call of all these was the call of Reason.