II
When the monk awoke day was dawning. For a while memory failed him. But as soon as he understood that he was in Isabel's room he leaped up and hastened downstairs.
He knew that he ought to go straight home. But his feet, despite their soreness, turned towards the stepping-stones. He retraced the path by which she had left him, hardly thirty-six hours before. Past the cypresses, through the mimosas, he went; and before the sun rose he was standing in the icy spray of the thunderous waterfall. He longed to plunge into the crystal pool; but her invisible presence abashed him, and with an ever-sharpening pain he hurried away.
As he regained the farm, he found José burning some dead leaves. Why could he not tear down these clinging memories of Isabel from his heart, as José could tear down ivies from the trees, and fling them a-top of the glowing, fuming pyre? The gust of pale, acrid smoke which nipped his nostrils was bitter-sweet.
After a dip in the brook he drank some of the sham coffee and forced down a hunk of coarse bread. But when he faced his routine he found that he could neither work nor pray. The black and red letters in his breviary danced impishly before his eyes; and when he took up a pen to write out some accounts he marked the paper with more blots than figures. Both door and window were wide open to the morning breeze; yet the room suffocated him.
At last a plan formed in Antonio's brain and he did not delay its execution. Stuffing a piece of bread in his pocket he sought out José and said:
"To-morrow my hard work will begin. To-day I am going to Navares. After to-night I will not leave you so much alone."
He set out, striding northward with long strides. Every stride was a symbol of his renunciation; for he knew that by this time Isabel would have left her inn and that every moment was taking her farther southward to Lisbon. On he pressed. As landmark after landmark came in sight a flood of old memories diluted his bitter potion of new-brewed sorrow. He lived over again the afternoon of his dusty march from the monastery amid a throng of monks and soldiers and the evening of his solitary return. But not for long. An hour before the white houses of Navares shone in the morning sun Isabel had once more become the sole tenant of his mind.
The doors of the Navares' corn-factor's granary, where the monks had held their council, were wide open; but Antonio did not pause to look inside. As on the night of his flight, he hurried through the town and only rested when he came to the knoll where he had bivouacked twice before. Thence, after munching a little bread, he took the short cut through the maize-fields to the village of the old cura; for the old cura's grave was the goal of his hasty pilgrimage.
By an irony of fate a rustic wedding had drawn the whole population to the church and churchyard. Their mirth so mocked the pilgrim's mood that he had a mind to go away. But he mixed with the throngs until his resentment at their gaiety was turned to thankfulness for the excess of human joy over human sorrow. At last a horn was blown from the door of a neighboring barn, and the crowd swept out of the churchyard like stampeding buffaloes.
The plain grave of the old cura lay in a sheltered corner on the north side of the chancel. Pious hands had brightened it with a yellow and purple nosegay that very morning. Antonio did not kneel down. He simply uncovered his head and strove to pray. For five minutes it was like chewing chaff. Some devil whispered in the monk's ear that his errand was not only silly, but in doubtful taste. The old cura was a saint, no doubt; but what had so rough a diamond to do with so soft and lustrous and exquisite a pearl as Isabel? Thus spake the devil, but Antonio refused his ear. Knowing that prayer comes with praying, he prayed on.
Not until he had replaced his hat on his head and was about to go were his prayers answered. But when the answer came, it was an answer indeed. It almost struck him down, like the great light which struck down Saul on the way to Damascus, and he was forced to lean against the church wall. It was an answer which both healed the worst of his grief and showed him the most of his duty in a single flash. It thrust into his hand a golden key to the whole mystery of Isabel, past and future.
Like a man whose shoulders have suddenly been eased of a burden he swung out homewards, holding his head high. Without knowing it, he talked to himself aloud, uttering broken phrases of hope and thankfulness. Yes, he had found the key, the master-key to all that had happened. As he strode along he recalled his association with Isabel from the beginning, and there was no lock his key did not fit.
Even the problem which had tried his faith most sorely was solved. In confiding to him her story of the mysterious influence which he had begun to exercise over her, four years before she saw his face, Isabel had declared that their lives were interfused in an irresistible destiny. She had spoken of this as a fact more undeniable than the sun and moon. She evidently believed with her whole soul that God's hand had brought them together. Yet Antonio, all through her pleading, had remained more persuaded than ever that the selfsame God had called him to the celibate life. And the apparent impossibility of reconciling these two equally clear, equally honest convictions had kindled a fiery ordeal for the monk's faith. The only way out of it seemed to be that all inward illumination was a delusion—totum corpus tenebrosum, "the whole body full of darkness"—and that perhaps there was no Divine Enlightener at all. But this wonderful new thought which had come to him at the old cura's grave explained everything. He thrust it into the most complicated wards of his spiritual doubts, and it turned as smoothly as the damascened key was wont to turn in the lock of the chapel. The doors of Isabel's soul rolled open before his eyes, and a bright light shone into the furthest cranny.
As for his duty to her in the present and in the future, he understood it no less certainly than he understood her chaste love for him in the past. And, as soon as this duty was plain, he made haste to begin doing it; for it was a duty of prayer, of specific, faithful, heroic, loving, unceasing prayer. He prayed as he walked, with increasing exultation.
So rapt was he by his holy work that Antonio hardly noticed the difference between the dusty, lonely road and the cobbled streets of noisy Navares. He pressed southward without a pause. Was he not going home? After a day and a night of banishment had not the farm once more become the tranquil home of his body, and had not the chapel once more become the rapturous home of his soul? He strode the last long league of his homeward journey as if it had been the first; and when he met José at the gate his face was shining like an angel's.
True to his word, Antonio rose early the next morning and threw himself body and soul into hard work. Now that the abbey domain had come under his care, there were hundreds of things to be done. As the sunny and well-drained slopes were exceptionally suitable for the culture of a profitable amber-colored wine, Antonio decided to double the area of the monk's old vineyard immediately. In order to effect this extension and to repair the damage done by seven years' neglect, it became necessary to engage nearly a score of helpers, half a dozen of whom would have to be retained in permanent employ. José, with one resident laborer, continued to live at the farm, while the monk quietly resumed occupation of his own cell in the monastery.
On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, Antonio dined at the farm with José; and on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, José dined with his master beside the stream in the monastery kitchen. At these week-night meals, the conversation was usually a review of the day's operations and a debate as to the work of the morrow; but on Sundays, when dinner was eaten ceremoniously in the guest-house, such topics were not mentioned, and the talk was of the great world's doings as chronicled in Antonio's English paper, of Portugal's troubles, and, above all, of churchly and holy things.
Not only during these Sunday talks, but also throughout their work-a-day intercourse, José was conscious of a change in Antonio. Hitherto, the monk had simply accepted the shaggy fellow's dumb affection; but, after the day of his visit to the old cura's grave, he began to show that he requited it as well. The last remains of his aloofness vanished, his speech grew gentler, and he became more watchful of José's health and comfort. Nor was the monk's manner changed towards José alone. In all things and to all persons he was more tender and less cold.
On the long winter evenings the two men busied themselves with blue pigments and white glazes, until they succeeded in fabricating tolerable copies of the two broken azulejos. When this was achieved, they began a series of experiments, with a view to distilling a new liqueur from eucalyptus. By rashly gulping down a mouthful of the first pint, José almost burned out his tongue. Nevertheless, they persevered; and, in the long run, the monkish talent for cordial-making enabled Antonio to mollify the harshness of the fiery elixir, and to render it palatable. In January they shipped samples to agents in fever-cursed regions of Spanish America, and offered to supply the liqueur in bulk at a high price.
Meanwhile, Antonio was waxing stronger in faith, and hope, and love. Every day he recited the whole of his Office in his old stall, sometimes with José's assistance, sometimes alone. He began also to hear Mass in the village church every Wednesday and Friday, and to say the whole rosary every Sunday afternoon. In meditating on the fifteen Mysteries, he habitually applied them to the case of Isabel; and, somehow, these thinkings never became trite or stale. In pursuance of his plan for Isabel's well-being, he redoubled his prayers, and offered half his Mass-hearings and communions with the same intention.
The winter passed and the spring came; and still he had not heard a word from her or about her. Sometimes a memory of her would suddenly overwhelm him. When he dined at the farm with José there seemed to be always three persons, not two, at the table. He felt that she was sitting at his right hand, where she had sat when he gave her the painted bowl; and so strong was his sense of her presence that he would often halt in the midst of a sentence, as if to ask her pardon for the dryness of the talk. After the morrow of her flight, he never visited the stepping-stones, although he repeatedly gave José minute instructions for the conserving of the pool's beauties. As for Isabel's chamber, he locked it up, and never re-entered it. Yet, in spite of this reverence for everything she had touched, he never moped or repined. He confided Isabel, as he had confided the fate of the abbey, to the might and love of God.
When July came, he made a novena in honor of Saint Isabel, the holy queen of Portugal, whose silver shrine was the glory of the Poor Clare's great convent opposite Coimbra, on the heights above the Mondego. And in August he received a long letter from young Crowberry. Seven of its eight pages were concerned with England's theological and ecclesiastical affairs: but in the midst of the page devoted to personal matters, the young man had written:
Of course, you know that Isabel has taken her father to live at Weymouth. I never see them; but I hear they are both well, and that Sir Percy has become quite reasonable and docile. Have they told you how she put her foot down and sent away that Excellent Creature, Mrs. Baxter? If she hadn't pulled up Sir Percy I'm told he would have died. Now, what did you really and truly think of Isabel? Did you see much of her, or did she sulk? Tell me when you write.
Antonio wrote a long letter in reply; but he did not tell young Crowberry what he really and truly thought about Isabel, nor did he so much as mention her name. His novena was answered. It was enough for him to know that Sir Percy lived, and that she was well.
The grape-harvest in September was a good one, and it was only by cutting an hour from his sleep-time that the monk could fill full his appointed measures of work and prayer. Then came October, with its vintage of memories. On the anniversary of Senhor Jorge's serao Antonio could be serene; for Margarida had just been happily married to a handsome and honorable young man of Leiria, the son of a prosperous builder. But with the approach of the anniversary of his first meeting with Isabel he grew troubled; and, to divert his thoughts, he departed hurriedly for Lisbon, where he had business to transact with the shippers of his wines and cordials. In Lisbon he learned that a journey to England would be to his advantage. But England meant Isabel; so, on the anniversary of her flight from the guest-house, he turned his back on the capital and hastened home.
By mortgaging his farm the monk succeeded in paying the third instalment of the abbey's price. He faced the New Year with less than twenty pounds of ready money, and with the obligation to find five hundred by the first of July. A request for a more flexible arrangement was flung back at him by the Fazenda official with vindictive contempt. As the spring advanced, Antonio laid his plan for the immediate outright purchase of the abbey on a fifteen hundred pound mortgage before four separate persons; but without exception they either could not or would not entertain it. In these circumstances he felt bound to cut down his gifts to village charities and his bounties to the hangers-on of the countryside. As a result, José came home one day with a black eye, received while he was punishing three village loafers for calling the Senhor da Rocha a skin-flint and a miser.
By May-day Antonio's sales of stock and the pledging of his credit had brought him in only three hundred pounds, and there was nothing left that he could pawn without crippling himself hopelessly in the near future. But he was not cast down. He was doing his utmost, and he calmly left the rest with God.