V
"The gentlemen are all down at the other buildings," said the English maid-servant who opened the guest-house door to Antonio. "I think they said they would be in the chapel. Miss Kaye-Templeman is in, and Mrs. Baxter."
The monk hesitated. After a single meeting, would it be correct to ask for Sir Percy's daughter instead of finding Sir Percy himself? He was not sure. Yet his dread and loathing of what the Englishman might be doing in the chapel held him back from following. Antonio knew his limitations. After all, he was still flesh and blood, and he could not be sure of mastering his wrath in the presence of a sacrilegious despoiler.
"You may tell Miss Kaye-Templeman that Mr. Oliveira da Rocha is here," he said.
After he had repeated his name twice, the maid led him into the tiny ante-chamber. Antonio saw that the engraved portrait of Saint Benedict had been taken down. It was leaning in a corner, face to the wall; and, in its stead, hung a small oil-painting of two horses and a stable-boy, in the manner of Morland. The large crucifix had been removed from the place of honor; but its shape could still be seen, like the shadow of a dim cross on the white wall.
"Mr. Oliver Kosher," mumbled the maid to somebody in the principal room.
As Antonio passed through the inner door he saw that Isabel was alone. She rose and came forward with such complete control of her blue eyes that the monk had a momentary fear of not being wanted. But there was warmth in her voice and a welcome in her smile. When she caught sight of the gaudy bowl in her visitor's hand she gave a little cry of unaffected joy.
"You've brought the blue bird," she said. "I felt quite sure you would forget all about him. How can I thank you properly?"
"By saying no more about such a trifle," answered Antonio, placing the bowl in her hand.
Hardly listening, she turned her treasure this way and that, as if it had been a piece of Sèvres. For the first time Antonio was able to look at her critically. She was only a head shorter than himself; which meant that she was taller than six women out of seven. She stood up as straight as her father; but, while Sir Percy looked as though he had swallowed a steel ramrod, Isabel Kaye-Templeman was as graceful and supple as a perfectly-grown young tree. She was slender, yet so exquisitely developed in proportion to her height that Antonio felt he was never likely to see a more perfect figure. Her abundant hair was brown-golden—perhaps more golden than brown—and as fine as threads of silk.
Finding the Portuguese October warmer than an English July, Isabel had put on a high-waisted, full-skirted dress of pink-sprigged muslin. Over the shoulders, which were cut rather low, she wore a gauzy scarf, unprimly fastened at the throat by an unjeweled brooch of old gold. As she fondled the penny bowl Antonio observed the fine whiteness and slenderness of her wrists and fingers and the high-bred grace of every little movement.
"You will excuse Mrs. Baxter?" Isabel asked, suddenly coming back to formality. "She lies down in the afternoon. My father and the others are at the abbey. Shall we go down and join them? They expect you. I think they want you to help them."
"Let us join them," said the monk.
While Isabel was upstairs putting on her gloves and hat Antonio paced up and down the familiar room. A carpet, some easy chairs, two small tables, and very many pictures and ornaments had already been unpacked. Most of these importations were pleasing in themselves; but they were incongruous with a Portuguese interior, especially when it was the interior of a semi-monastic building. Antonio, however, hardly gave all this bric-à-brac a glance. He was revolving in his mind, for the twentieth time, a bold plan.
With a promptitude which contradicted one of the monk's delusions about ladies, Isabel reappeared in a large straw hat and announced that she was ready. They started at once. But, instead of taking the direct road, the monk chose a roundabout path to the abbey.
"This is not the way," said Isabel, halting after they had walked forty or fifty yards.
"It is not the shortest way, but it is the best," Antonio answered. "It takes only five minutes longer and it passes the most beautiful spot in the whole domain."
She seemed a shade vexed, and did not speak again until they reached the spot of which Antonio had spoken. It was part of a ravine. Rustic steps led down to the margin of the water, which broadened in this place to a rippling pool. From a face of brown rock, to the right, the bright torrent came tumbling in a thunderous cascade. To the left, at the lower end of the pool, it raced seawards almost hidden in a leafy, ferny, stony channel, whence its voice ascended like the throbbing, booming sound of an organ. Generation after generation of monkish gardeners had chosen this sheltered spot for the rearing of their most precious trees. Araucarias, deodars, date-palms, and cedars of Lebanon were mingled with cork-oaks, eucalyptus, willows, sea-pines, plum-trees, planes, and chestnuts. Ten or twelve tree-ferns overtopped by a giant palm suggested a tropical forest. Stepping-stones had been fixed in the pool at its narrowest part, and on the other bank was a grotto-chapel hewn in the face of a boulder as big as a house.
The stepping-stones were slippery with spray from the loud cascade; but Isabel tripped from one to another confidently and easily, scarcely touching Antonio's proffered hand. On the further bank she paused, to take breath, and stood gazing westward. Below her lay a hundred acres of wood, softly musical with the twittering and singing of birds and with the hum of the hidden torrent. Further down rose the monastery. Beyond, in the plain, could be seen Antonio's farm; and, still further to the west, the Atlantic.
"This is the spot I meant," said Antonio.
"It is very beautiful," was all her answer. She spoke it in so cheerless a tone that Antonio was concerned.
"England is beautiful too," he said. "At first it is only natural you should be homesick."
"Homesick?" she echoed, suddenly facing him with defiant eyes. "I'm not homesick. I don't know what it means. I don't know what Home means, either."
Antonio was startled. Three or four speeches came to his tongue's tip, some of them inquisitive, all of them sympathetic. Finally he said:
"Home is not built in a day. I myself was not bred and born in this part of Portugal. At first every face was strange. But it is home now. This torrent is the stream that runs through the kitchen of the abbey where I used to work. It is the brook that refreshes my little farm. Once it was no more to me than so many gallons of water. Now it talks and sings to me like a friend. Little by little you will learn to love this place."
"I loved it as soon as I saw it," she retorted. "But I don't love it now. I loved it for about three hours."
"Three hours? Why three hours?"
"We arrived here about noon. We left about three. I loved it till we came to your house for dinner. Then..."
Antonio waited anxiously.
"Then," she continued, with a visible effort, "I ... longed with all my soul to be back in England. You said ... you remember what you said about our respecting this sacred place?"
"I remember," said Antonio, his heart swelling with thankfulness. He had cudgelled his wits in vain for a way of introducing his plan; but here was the opportunity ready to his hand.
"Well," she said, "we haven't come from England to respect this sacred place in the least. We have come to ruin and defile it. Those blue-and-white tile-pictures in the chapel are the most wonderful things I've ever seen; but we have come to tear them down. We have come to use the big rooms and long corridors for all sorts of experiments. We shall make them grimy with smoke and foul with fumes; and some fine day we shall have an accident and blow the whole place into the Atlantic, and ourselves with it."
Her bitter and vehement fluency struck the monk dumb.
"That isn't all," she added more bitterly than ever. "When they've fished us up out of the Atlantic and dressed our wounds we shall start making plans for a railway. We shall lose all our own money and make all the honest people in the district lose theirs too. But what will it matter? We shall get something for our gold and silver. We shall be honored with the company of the men who're going to make fortunes out of us and out of your country—men who don't know their own grandfathers. One of them will be kind enough to buy this domain from us for an old song and to build a fine square house out of the ruins. Senhor da Rocha, that is the way we are going to respect your sacred place."
Antonio succeeded in meeting her defiant gaze with a show of calmness; but there was a tremor in his voice as he said:
"If I did not know that the Senhorita is witty I should say that the Senhorita is doing herself a little injustice."
She knitted her brows while she framed an answer.
"Yes," she said. "The Senhor is right. The Senhorita is doing herself a little injustice. She ought to add, in her own defense, that she wouldn't have agreed so easily to come here had she known that anybody cared about the place. She thought nobody would be one atom the worse, save the bats and spiders. Yesterday she learned the truth. But she learned it too late."
In his eagerness the monk strode close to her side.
"Too late?" he echoed. "No, it is not too late. You have great influence with your father. There are fifty places in Portugal cheaper and more accessible and all together more convenient than this for your experiments and your railways."
"Don't call them mine," she commanded. "I hate and loathe them all. But, I repeat, it is too late. Neither I nor anyone else in this world has a grain of influence with my father. Opposition drives him mad."
Her tone was even more decisive than her words. But Antonio could not face the fact that he was beaten. Had not Mr. Crowberry distinctly stated that Sir Percy had gained possession of the abbey solely by the help of Isabel's private fortune? She was not a schoolgirl. She was of full age; and if she was paying the piper surely she had something to do with calling the tune.
Yet how was he to remind her of her rights? Was not his intervention sure to be resented as the extreme of impertinence? Mr. Crowberry had not said that his revelations concerning the Kaye-Templeman finances were made in confidence; but probably this was an oversight of which it would be mean to take advantage.
The painful silence lengthened. Antonio ended it by starting on a new line.
"Those tiles," he said, "are not mere curiosities, to be carted about from one museum to another. I feel as if they are alive—as if your illustrious father will be flaying a living thing when he tears them from the wall. They were not ordered from a shop, and unpacked, and stuck all over the chapel like so much wallpaper from Paris. They represent the life and miracles and martyrdom of a saint of this Order—a saint of the Portuguese Benedictine congregation who spent ten years in this monastery. He died in your England, for the Faith."
She moved uneasily. Thinking he was gaining his point Antonio continued:
"Those tiles were not the work of one hireling artist. In a sense the whole community drew and painted them. Until they were turned out the monks cherished the archives of their abbey; and these showed how, under three successive Abbots, the cartoons gradually grew to perfection. Look. From here you can see the cemetery where the bones of those dead monks lie. Their souls will bless you from heaven if you will spare the chapel they made so glorious."
"Senhor da Rocha," said Isabel, dryly and rather coldly, "we are at cross purposes. You will be shocked; but I can't help it. I don't believe in monks and monasteries, nuns and nunneries. The monks' heaven is my hell. Their God is my Devil. Forgive me if I hurt you; but it seems to me that there can be only two kinds of monks. Those who are not fanatics are hypocrites; and those who are not hypocrites are fanatics. How can any really sane and honest man worship the Creator by despising His creation?"
Antonio was about to reply, when she added hastily:
"No. Forgive me. I have spoken too plainly. Let me return to the point. I mean this: on behalf of any ordinary man or woman who loves this place for old sakes' sake I would work my hardest to spare it. But not for dead monks."
"Then work your hardest for me," pleaded Antonio eagerly. "Don't you regard me as an ordinary man, who loves the place for old sakes' sake?"
"No, I don't," she said, recovering her ease. "You are not an ordinary man. You will grieve over the azulejos for a few days; then, amidst your many interests, you will forget them. Or, better still, you will come to be glad that they have been taken away from a dark, shut-up hill-side sepulcher and placed where millions of people can see them and admire them."
"You mean," he said scornfully, "that if I were a poor man; if I had a beautiful wife; if she and I had grown up together almost from the cradle; if her life were altogether bound up with mine—you mean that if someone should take her away by force and show her every night from the stage of a theater, to a thousand people ... you mean, I ought to be grateful and glad!"
His own illustration startled him. It had leaped into his mind and out from his lips without his consent. It startled Isabel still more; for the tones in which it was uttered were sharper than knives. Once more she lost the mastery over her eyes.
"We must be going," she said curtly, as soon as she could frame a sentence.
They descended through the wood without further speech until the monastery gleamed between the trees. Then Isabel halted and said:
"You ought to believe that I am a better judge than you of my father's character. I repeat that I shall do more harm than good by asking him to spare these tiles. To ask him such a thing will be a more difficult and unpleasant task than you imagine. But, if nothing else will satisfy you, I will try."
"I thank you with all my soul," answered the monk. "But I will exact no promises. As you say, you are the best judge."
"Let me speak one more word—for your comfort," she added. "This morning my father returned from the chapel dejected. He is no longer confident that he can strip the azulejos from the wall. Remember, not a single tile must be broken or the buyer will not have them. My father may fail."
"God grant he may," said Antonio fervently.
"You must indulge me," she answered, "if I find it a trifle hard to say Amen."