V
The heat of conflict and the flush of victory had wrought so great a change in Antonio's expression that Isabel started when they came face to face. But she interpreted his transfiguration as an ecstasy of love and joy; and her blue eyes suddenly shone with a radiance as wonderful as his own.
Before her proud and happy gaze Antonio's cheeks grew pale. It was as if a pet lamb were looking up to him for a caress, when all the time he was gripping a butcher's knife behind his back. It was as if some smiling friend were holding out to him an exquisite vase full of lilies and roses which he must straightway dash into pieces. Isabel seemed so frail, so soft, so white, so trustful, so lamb-like; and her love was surely the most fragrant and beautiful thing in all the world.
"You are coy," she said laughing gaily. "And you have turned as pale as a swooning heroine in an English novel. I suppose you're going to say, 'Give me time: this is so sudden!'"
Although Antonio remained silent, no doubt of his love crossed her mind. Had she not read love in his eyes, time after time? She took it for granted that he was merely tongue-tied because of the strangeness of the situation.
"You have read it?" she asked, drawing the folded paper from his unresisting hand. "Every word?"
He bowed assent. For a minute or two her slender fingers busied themselves tearing the document first into ribbons, then into small squares, and finally into tiny shreds. After she had mixed the shreds well together she ran to the lower end of the pool and threw them, one small handful at a time, into the swirling rapids.
"You are tired," said Antonio when she returned. "The day is sultry. Later on there will be thunder. You have walked a long way. You must sit down."
Isabel seated herself on the flat boulder. But although there was room at her side the monk remained standing. She pouted unconsciously and darted two furtive glances at his eyes. The first glance was only a glance of slight disappointment and of shy reproof; but the second was a glance of sudden anguish and sickening fear. The silence lengthened until she could bear it no longer.
"Speak to me!" she commanded indignantly. "Why do you stand there saying nothing? I suppose you despise me?"
"Isabel," he said, calling her by her name for the first time, "you know I don't despise you."
He spoke her name in a voice so strangely sweet that her ears tingled and her heart leaped. And when his brown velvet eyes looked into hers with sorrowful tenderness all her pride broke down.
"Then why are you so cruel?" she cried. "Why do you make it so hard for me? Haven't I humiliated myself enough? You are cruel. Why do you not tell me that you love me?"
The supernal grace and might which had miraculously fulfilled Antonio's body and soul enabled him to triumph over temptation; but they did not deliver him from anguish. The sword which was about to rend the heart of Isabel scorched him as it circled downward for its dreadful work. Her coming ordeal was already his; and he stood in the midst of it as in a burning fiery furnace.
Isabel sprang up and faced him. Their eyes were less than a yard apart. Antonio's continued silence was sufficient answer; but she fought fiercely against the truth. Clasping her white hands desperately against her breast, she challenged him in short, panting sentences.
"This is horrible, too horrible," she began, "I tell you it is too horrible. You can't, you daren't look me in the eyes and say you don't love me!" And when he still delayed to speak she raised her voice and commanded sharply: "Answer!"
He looked her in the eyes with immeasurable sadness, and answered:
"I do not love you in the way you mean."
"The way I mean? What is the way I mean? Either you love me or you don't. There are no two ways in love." She spoke hotly and with scorn.
"In the paper you've just torn up," he replied, "you called me your dearest friend in the world. In that sense, I love you. In all the world, you are my dearest friend."
"And no more? Not an atom more?"
He hesitated.
"Come," she said bitterly. "You are trying me too far. If this is some subtlety, some finesse, let us save it until another day. For the last time, I ask you: Can you stand up here in the sight of the God you believe in, and say that I am no more to you than your dearest friend?"
It came home to Antonio that he could not, with perfect truthfulness, say that she was his friend and no more. Yet how was he to evade her question? Plainly the cruel, hateful moment had come for striking the fair vase to pieces, for driving the butcher's knife into the white lamb's heart. He raised his head and resumed the mastery over her by a single movement of his inextinguishable will.
"My dearest friend in the world," he said gently. "If I am to blame for the smallest fraction of this wonderful and terrible thing which has come to pass, I crave your pardon here and now with all my heart, and I will ask God's pardon every day until I die. But ... for God's sake, let us forget. Let yesterday and to-day be as if they had never been. How a woman like you could ever waste one thought of love on a man like me neither of us can explain."
She heard him with wildly staring eyes.
"You offer me," he concluded, "a gift beyond all price. But I must turn my back, I must close my eyes, I must stop my ears. I am pledged to another Bride."
They were the words he had used to Senhor Jorge. But, this time, he uttered them proudly; for he had meditated upon them often since the serão. He knew that they were not a mean verbal quibble, and that they enshrined the foremost fact of his life. As they left his lips the spiritual world was as real and near as the cascade, as real and near as the mossy boulder, as real and near as Isabel.
His delicacy moved the monk to turn away without even the briefest glance at the effect of his declaration upon Isabel. But she did not desire his consideration. Something magnetic in her anger compelled him to raise his eyes. He saw that she too had moved away.
"Another Bride?" she repeated slowly, barbing every syllable with scorn. "Another Bride? Indeed. What an entirely enviable young woman!"
For a few moments her sarcasm sustained her. With her hands hanging easily at her side she stood haughtily erect, smiling a scornful smile. But it did not last. Without warning she ran towards him and cried, with a break in her voice:
"It isn't true!"
"It is true," said the monk, very gently.
"It is not true!" she went on, stamping her foot. "It isn't. It can't be. If it were true you would have told me before. You'd have dropped a hint, you'd have talked about her. I tell you it isn't true. If it were true you'd have told me when you denied the talk about Margarida. You are a man. You are not a cur and a brute."
"This is unjust," cried Antonio. "How could I tell you yesterday, after Margarida? You ran away home like the wind. And why should I drop hints? Surely they would have been a great impertinence. How should I dream that you, an English lady, with a proud old name, would ever think so of me, a wine-merchant's clerk?"
"Then why did you make love to me fifty times?" she retorted.
"Fifty times? Made love? This is madness. On my honor and conscience I have not breathed a word of love to you even once."
"Who said you'd breathed words? I didn't. But you've made love with your eyes. Over and over and over again you have looked at me as if I was as much to you as you were to me, and as if you and I were the only beings in the world."
"I swear you are mistaken, utterly mistaken," cried Antonio.
Isabel had ceased to listen. She clenched her hands together once more against her breast and stood gazing towards the mists which hid the Atlantic. When she spoke again it was not to Antonio. She seemed rather to be thinking aloud, with quick impassioned utterance.
"So this is the end," she began. "Yet how long it has been in coming! I have been happy for ten days—ten whole days. When was I ever happy for three days and nights before? But it's over now. What a memory to carry to my grave—the memory of this end! I've made a fool of myself. I've made myself cheaper than dirt. I've pressed myself on a man who won't have me."
Antonio took a step forward; but, without paying him the smallest attention, she continued:
"It's happened to other women, no doubt. But the other women weren't so hungry and thirsty for a little happiness as I was. They didn't have mothers who died the day they were born. They didn't have fathers who forget their very existence for months and months at a time. They've had homes, they've had friends, they've had all the lesser love. But I ... I have had nothing, from anybody, anywhere, ever."
She laughed a laugh like iron against iron. The monk could endure it no longer. He sprang to her side. For the first time, he touched her hand. She snatched it free as if he had burnt it, and looked at him fiercely.
"Go away," she cried, "I hate you!"
"No," he said. "I won't go away till you are less unhappy, and till you forgive me."
His gentle compulsion mastered her. She allowed him to lead her back to the boulder. This time he sat down at her side. As he did so she bent her head. Tears came into her eyes. Suddenly she covered her face with her hands and wept without restraint.
Antonio, sitting so near to her that he could have encircled her with his arm, suffered as bitterly as Isabel. The momentary temptation to trample on his vow no longer had the slightest power over him; but his whole heart yearned to end her grief, or, at the least, to comfort her. She was so like a sobbing, heartbroken child that it seemed inhuman to sit beside her without drawing her head to his shoulder or even stroking her hands. Yet he knew that it would be more inhuman still to rise up and move away.
She overcame her sobs at last; and, turning upon him eyes like April skies, she demanded abruptly:
"This Bride? What is she like?"
"Let us not talk of her now," said Antonio, as soon as he could command his words. "Surely it is better not."
"Is she like Margarida?"
"No."
"Prettier?"
"For Heaven's sake," he pleaded, "do not ask these questions?"
"Answer me at once. Is she prettier than I am? In England they call me pretty. I suppose I'm ugly to a Portuguese. I suppose she's a hundred times more beautiful than I am."
"There are different kinds of beauty," said Antonio.
"Is she clever?"
Antonio considered well. Then he replied:
"In Her case I should not use the word 'clever.' But, I entreat you, ask me no more."
He rose to his feet with a look which silenced her. A moment afterwards she too sprang up. Stepping quickly to the pool, she dipped her little handkerchief in the laughing water and tried to bathe away the traces of her tears. When she sailed back towards him she came proudly.
"This ought to be the end," she said. "I ought not to see you alone again. But I don't forbid you to come just once more. Perhaps I shall be here to-morrow morning. I don't say I shall, and I don't say I shan't."
Her steady gaze commanded an answer: but it was only by a huge effort that Antonio succeeded in replying:
"You have spoken truly. We ought not to meet alone again."
"No, we ought not. Most decidedly we ought not," she flashed back scornfully. "But we will!"
And without another word or glance she hastened away.