VI
Isabel could not sleep. In order to postpone the hour of solitude she had sat up late talking to Fisher, practising Portuguese with Joanninha, and writing letters to her few friends in England. Finally she had astounded Mrs. Baxter by asking to be told all about the early life of the callous young Viscountess Datton and by listening without a murmur to the details which the Excellent Creature multitudinously invented. But the moment came when Mrs. Baxter's love of bed overbore her love of hearing herself talk. She rang the bell and Jackson came in, yawning, with the candles.
When Isabel lay down she set the whole power of her will to the barricading of her mind against the day's cruel memories. But it was all in vain. Every word she had spoken to Antonio, every syllable of his replies, vibrated afresh in her ears, scorching them with shame. Twice or thrice she clenched her fist as if she would strike some invisible enemy or revenge herself on the author of her loss and humiliation. Sometimes her cheeks burned crimson: sometimes she felt all the blood ebb from them. Her spiritual anguish brought in its wake a physical pain, sickening and hardly bearable, like the pains after the first shock of a dizzy fall or a brutal blow. She seemed to be aching all over; and more than once she moaned aloud.
Even without her shame and grief Isabel could hardly have slept. All through the afternoon and evening the air had been growing sultrier and sultrier. Not once in England, not even during brazen August, had she known such a stifling heat. Both her windows stood wide open; but they seemed to be admitting fiery vapors rather than life-giving airs. Even the fine linen sheet was too hot and heavy to be endured. She flung it aside and lay with nothing to cover her save a plain night-robe of the thinnest Indian silk. At first she tossed from side to side; but so much exertion soon exhausted her, and she lay still, gasping for breath.
At length the heat became unendurable. She rose and went to the window. Two or three miles away, over the woods, over the abbey, beyond Antonio's farm, the surly Atlantic was growling his muffled growl through the sultry air. Quite near at hand the shrunken torrent was rumbling down through the underwoods. Isabel listened. The airy ocean and the seaward-hurrying brook seemed to invite her, and to be beckoning her with cool hands. She leaned out, fain to be a little nearer.
There was no moon, and the stars could not pierce the stagnant clouds. Yet the night was not solidly dark. The outlines of the taller trees could be traced against the sky, and the pavement which surrounded the guest-house glimmered like white limestone.
Isabel was suddenly filled with an overmastering desire to break her prison walls and to walk free under the open sky. Apart from its bitter associations she would have lacked courage to visit the pool and the cascade in the dead of night; for the narrow path thither wound in and out of somber thickets. But the broad way, broad enough for a carriage, which ran down from the guest-house to the abbey, and thence, through the avenue of camellias, to the principal gate had no terrors for a soul almost untroubled by superstitious fears. It seemed to the half-stifled, heart-sick Isabel that if she could escape from the house unheard by Jackson and Mrs. Baxter she might find life and healing in those ampler spaces. She did not admit to herself that the broad path and, especially, the paved space in front of the abbey attracted her because they were rich in unembittered memories of hours with Antonio. Room, more room; air, more air: she thought she wanted nothing besides.
Having dressed herself swiftly in her lightest garments she threw over her hair a black lace mantilla which she had bought in Oporto, thrust her shoes and stockings into her little bag and crept barefoot to the door. It creaked a little when she closed it behind her; but the steady sequence of sounds which continued to come from the bedroom of Mrs. Baxter proved that the Excellent Creature had heard nothing. Isabel turned away with a shrug of distaste, and descended the stairs. There was no need to listen for the snoring of Jackson, who could have gone on sleeping restfully if she had clattered about the corridor in clogs.
The two bolts of the front door were not very hard to draw back, and the latch was easily lifted. On the top step, where she had talked thrice with Antonio, Isabel drew on her stockings and shoes. Then she closed the door behind her, latched it softly, and stole on tiptoe out of earshot down the path.
It was not much cooler in the open than in her chamber. Still, she was glad that she had exchanged her narrow cell for freedom. Besides, the far-stretching woods and the vast heavens were more in scale with her immeasurable sorrow. She walked on quickly, eager to hasten away from her hateful prison. The path was cheerful because it led down to the open lowlands and the refreshing sea.
Midnight, to Isabel's mind, usually held no more terrors than noonday. But when a vague shape confronted her under a tree she started violently. Some gossip of Joanninha's awoke in her memory—some ridiculous village story about a ghostly monk who haunted the domain on dark nights. Advancing boldly upon it she found that the vague shape was only a dead trunk clothed in creepers. She tried to laugh; but the laugh would not come, and suddenly she knew what was meant by fear.
Her instinct was to turn and run home. But the path behind her, backed by the enormous mass of the mountain, looked like a tunnel bored through coal, while the path ahead of her led towards Antonio and José, towards the soft lights and faint voices of the sea. Daring neither to go back nor to stand still, she hurried on until her foot struck a slab of stone.
She had reached the paved space in front of the abbey. The western gable of the chapel hulked up high into the gloom, like the poop of a man-o'-war aground. Upon the warm stone steps, with her back to the door, she sat down until she had regained all her breath and lost nearly all her fears. Isabel saw no reason why she should not sit there until dawn. She hid her face in her hands, and tried to sleep.
A growling in the east aroused her. It was no louder than the Atlantic's growling in the west. Isabel knew that it was thunder; but it seemed to be so far away that she was not alarmed. What surprised her was its long protraction. Unlike the intermittent din of an English thunderstorm it rumbled on unceasingly, until Isabel could almost have believed that she was listening to the echoes of an Armageddon raging among the burnt, far-off hills of Spain. Suddenly, however, a blaze of lightning showed her the terrified Atlantic's ashen face. She had never dreamed of such lightning before. Flash trod upon flash so eagerly that there was a continuous dance of light. The half-seconds of dimness between seemed more positive than the lightning. They were like the convulsive twitchings of a great eyelid over a terrible eye; and Isabel thought she saw flashes of darkness rather than flashes of light.
From the neighborhood of the stepping-stones came a shattering noise, as sharp as a pistol-shot and as loud as an exploding magazine. Immediately, afterwards, as if obeying a preconcerted signal, a fearful cannonading and fusillading began to rage on every hand. Armageddon had swept westward.
Isabel sprang up and huddled back into the scanty shelter of the shallow doorway. So long as there was no rain she welcomed the gigantic grandeur of the thunder, and the cold, pitiless beauty of the lightning. But the rain's herald did not delay to blow his blast. Isabel could not see them; but she felt a swirl of dust and dead leaves rush past her in obedience to his command. Gritty atoms clung to her lips. At the same moment ten thousand trees began to rock and moan in pain; and a warm drop fell upon Isabel's hand.
Down rushed the rain. At first it struck straight down from heaven, but, after a few seconds, it smote the wood slantwise, like millions of thin javelins hurled from a height. The thunder never ceased crackling, banging, booming; and the lightnings were so bright that the tree-trunks stood like smoke-blackened men wielding brilliant scimitars amidst the flying javelins.
Isabel was greedily watching the strife when the wind veered, and a battery of rain discharged its whole broadside full at her face. The gust lasted only a moment; but, when it had passed, her thin dinner-dress was wet all over. She knew that there would be fifty gusts all as bad as the first or worse, and that she must either enter the chapel or be drenched to the skin.
She drew the key from her bag. The lightnings served her for a lantern as she drove the steel into the keyhole; but before she could turn it in the lock another burst of cold rain smacked rudely at her bare shoulders. At length she pushed back the door. The lightnings seemed to leap into the chapel the moment she opened it, like a pack of eager dogs rushing in before their master. Swifter than greyhounds the cold white-and-blue radiance flashed over the cold white-and-blue of the azulejos, and then licked back into the dark.
In her retreat from the rain Isabel had forgotten supernatural terrors. But as soon as she was fairly over the threshold Joanninha's ghost-story rushed anew into her mind, and she was thankful for the lightnings which had shown her that the place was empty. Yet she dared not shut herself up in the chapel; so she resolved to stand just inside.
Without any warning a third gust sucked the great door out of her weak hand. The oak fell to, with a bang, which was nearly drowned in a sharp clap of thunder. Isabel leaped back to reopen it, and tugged at the handle with all her might. But the bolts and springs of the lock had done their work. And the key was outside.
Isabel did not lose her head. As soon as she had recovered from the first shock, the good blood of her old English stock thrilled in her veins. Here was an adventure. Antonio instantly flew into her thoughts, as usual. To-morrow she would meet Antonio. To-morrow she would tell him, this contemptuous Antonio, how she had passed a night of thunder and lightning in a haunted chapel. To-morrow Antonio should be made to realize what sort of a woman he was flouting. To-morrow Antonio would hang his head at the thought of his dull, superstitious, spiritless Portuguese bride.
Propping herself against the wall she took stock of the situation. The chapel was dry; and although her dress was wet it was not wet enough to give her a cold. In four or five hours it would be daylight, and she would have courage to find the spiral staircase. Once on the flat roof of the cloister she would be able to see Jackson and the other servants searching for her. Jackson and the servants and Antonio. They would be sure to send first thing for Antonio.
The warmth with which she pictured Antonio's arrival ebbed away when she suddenly remembered that she was leaning against the blue-and-white tile-painting of the Saint's death at Tyburn. With a little shiver she crossed over to the azulejos representing the Saint's birth. Meanwhile, the rain was still lashing the glass, and the thunder was making a din like the toppling of crags into cañons. What troubled her most was the jeweled crown on the head of the image above the altar. The bluish-white lightning seemed to have an affinity for the bluish-white stones, and several times Isabel felt sure that the brilliance lingered among the points of the diadem after it had fled from the rest of the chapel.
Once she could have sworn that some one entered through the cloister doorway, and that footsteps sounded upon the pavement; but the thunder was loud at the time, and she decided that she had only heard its reverberations. None the less, the fright weakened her nerve. All in a moment she felt weary, chilly, hungry, and so utterly miserable that she nearly cried. She pulled herself up in time and tried to brace up her nerves by chewing the bitter bark of irony. "This is one of my lucky days," she said to herself. "From this morning onward it has been wholly delightful. What a good grateful girl I ought to be!"
An ear-splitting clap of thunder put an end to her soliloquy. So awful was the crash that Isabel listened shuddering for the noise of falling walls and roofs. Not one stone or slate gave way; but she heard a sound a thousand times more fearful. It was a voice, a mumbling voice which seemed to prolong the worn-out rumblings of the thunder; a voice deep and rich; the voice of a man; a voice somewhere in the chapel.
Her heart nearly stopped beating. She strained terrified eyes into the furthest darkness. And she did not strain them in vain. In close succession four or five white beams of lightning lit up the choir.
A monk, in black, was kneeling before the altar.
Isabel's piercing scream was louder than the thunder and the rain. She collapsed in a heap on the pavement. But she did not swoon. Struggling to her feet she dashed herself desperately against the massive door. It stood like a rock. Moaning wildly, she dragged at the lock with both hands. It did not yield a hair's-breadth. A moment later she heard footsteps; and turning round she had one lightning vision of the black monk hurrying towards her. She shrieked again and made a dash in the direction of the cloister doorway. Before she could reach it another white flash showed her the black monk only an arm's length away. As the flash passed she struck a mad blow into the darkness and, hitting nothing, she stumbled and fell forward. But two strong, unghostly arms caught her just in time; and instead of striking the cold stones she found herself upheld by something soft and warm.
Without waiting for the lightning to reveal his face, Isabel knew that she was in the arms of Antonio. Never in her life before had she yielded to any man's caress, save the rare and shamefaced kisses of her father. Yet Antonio's arms seemed to be her natural place, like its nest to a bird. For a few seconds she did not think of identifying the black monk. She believed that the black monk had been on the point of striking her dead, and that some grand magic of love had conjured up Antonio to stand between them in the nick of time. Trembling like a leaf and panting like a runner after a race, she pressed and clung to him, as a terrified child clings to its mother in the dark.
"You are Isabel?" said Antonio. He had known from her first scream that it was she; but he thought it might comfort her to hear his voice speaking her name.
"Yes. I am Isabel," she murmured. And although a sharp memory of the plighted Bride bade her banish herself at once from his clasp she abandoned herself more than before to the warmth and softness of his gentle strength.
"You are safe, quite safe," he said; for she was still trembling all over. "There is no ghost. It was only I."
No ghost? Only he? What did it mean? Isabel roused her deliciously drowsing wits. No ghost. Only he. She opened her eyes. But the chapel was filled full with darkness, and she could not see his face.
A moment afterwards a prolonged blazing of huge lightnings made the place brighter than day. The azulejos, the high windows, and the gilded carvings shone out like blue and white and yellow fires. Isabel could see Antonio's anxious eyes gazing down into her own. And she had time to see much more. She saw his Benedictine habit; she saw that he and the black monk were one and the same man.
She leaped away from him in terror. But terror did not endure. At the touch of his reassuring hand seeking her arm in the gloom, a light as bright as the lightning's blazed within her and a thunderbolt of overwhelming joy swept her off her feet. With a great cry of gladness she flung herself once more against his breast.
"It's true, it's really true?" she clamored. "Speak. Answer me at once. You're not deceiving me? Your Bride is not a real woman after all?"
"You have surprised my secret, and I trust you to keep it," he answered. "When the monks were here they knew me as Father Antonio."
"Antonio, Antonio, Antonio—what a beautiful name!" she cried. "Come, Father Antonio, tell me. Your Bride is only Religion, or the Church, or the Virgin, or something like that?"
Her tone dismayed the monk even more than her words shocked him; and he remained silent.
"You cannot deny it," she exulted. Another flash of lightning silenced her; but the radiant eyes and glowing cheeks on which it shone were more eloquent than her words. And as soon as the swift darkness closed over them her words rang in it like New Year's bells at midnight. "You don't deny it, you can't, you daren't," she sang. "Your Bride is all a mere sentiment, like the azulejos; a romance; an ideal."
"First of all," demanded Antonio, "how did you come here to-night?"
"God sent me. I believe there's a God, at last."
He moved a little, so as to loosen her clasp. But, in her almost hysterical rapture, she did not perceive the movement.
"You are wet through," he said. But she only answered:
"What does it matter?"
"Quick!" he commanded. "There is a lull in the rain. You must go home this moment."
"I won't," said she. "We will stay here."
"Isabel," he retorted sternly, "we will not stay here. You are mad. The storm has driven you out of your senses. Or perhaps it was the ghost you thought you saw. You must go home this instant. What if you have been missed? What if your servants should find us here? What will Mrs. Baxter say? And what shall I say to your father?"
Until he spoke his last sentence Isabel heard him unmoved; but at the thought of her father the arms which held Antonio weakened. Very slowly she let him go. None the less, she sought to argue. The monk, however, enforced his will. Gripping her arm he marched her almost roughly to the west door, and fumbled for the lock.
"It's no use," she said. "The key is outside. We must stay here."
His only answer was to take her arm again and to lead her through the smaller doorway into the cloister. At the moment of their emerging from the chapel a shaft of lightning lit up a bubbling lake of muddy water, under which lay drowned the cloister garden. Two sides of the cloister itself were also under water.
"I am frightened," she said, with genuine fear, as Antonio drew her into a gloomy corridor. He could feel her shrinking back and trembling; so he threw his arm around her waist and hurried her on. As they passed through the kitchen the uproar of the torrent reminded Antonio of the night of his fight with José. But he did not pause. He threaded passage after passage, room after room, until he had worked round to the little door with the Reading monk's secret lock. His fingers searched among the hidden levers, and at last the door stood open.
Frequent lightning still swept sea and land; but the thunder had dragged its great guns northward and was pounding over Navares. The rain had ceased. The monk, however, did not hurry Isabel over the threshold; for the overarching trees were pouring down water like an aqueduct cracked by an earthquake. He considered earnestly.
"Come," he said, with an abruptness which startled her. "I must wrap you in this cloak."
With much tucking and folding he contrived to wrap his habit about her slender body and to adjust the mantilla over her fragrant hair.
"Now, I suppose, I'm a nun," she laughed.
The speech would have stung him had he not remembered her behavior in his cell, twelve days before, and her evident persuasion that monks and nuns were only picturesque archaisms, with no serious existence outside the pages of novelists and the dreams of pious sentimentalists. But he did not give her time to expand her flippancy.
"Let us go," he said.
They went. For about twenty paces the paved causeway which led to the little door gave them dry foothold. Thenceforward, however, the paths to the guest-house had become rushing streams. Even without the aid of the lightning one could see gleaming water everywhere. Isabel glanced down dolefully at her feet.
"We can't," she said.
"We must," he insisted.
"Look at my shoes," she moaned.
Antonio considered again. Then he asked:
"You will let me carry you?"
"If we can't wait," she answered, after a long pause, "and if you're sure there's no other way ... you may carry me."
He stepped down from the causeway and bent his back so that she could seat herself upon his shoulder.
"You must hold fast," he said.
Very shyly she slipped round his neck a soft arm which trembled. Antonio straightened himself up and plashed forward. Once or twice he came to dips in the path where the water was higher than his knees, but the young giant stamped through the whirlpools like another Saint Christopher. On they went, guided by the flickering lightning. At length they reached the main path. It was hardly ankle deep in water. He quickened his pace, until the guest-house loomed in sight. Then he gently set Isabel down on a boulder away from the drip of the trees and released her from the clumsy habit, which he folded up and laid on another great stone.
"You left the door unlocked?" he whispered.
"Yes."
"For Heaven's sake don't speak so loud. Better still, don't speak at all. I'm going to carry you as softly as I can to the steps. Don't breathe a word on the way. And don't open the door until I am back under the trees. I shall wait to see that you are safe. Now!"
"No, no, not yet," she whispered.
"Yes. Now. This moment. You are mad."
"I know. But, Antonio, promise. To-morrow morning. At the cascade."
"I promise," he said.
Once more he lifted her up: but this time, as the distance was so short, he carried her in his arms like a child. He did not look at her; but he knew that she was strangely light with a fairy lightness, that her shoulders were snow and her hair pure gold, and that she was as fine and delicate as a lily. Before he took his first stride towards the guest-house he paused, straining his ears for any sound within. Around him, in the woods, a hundred little streams went bubbling and tinkling. Here and there thankful birds were piping their peace-pipes after the din of the battle. The chant of the Atlantic, freshened by the breeze, was loud and glad.
"Listen, Antonio," she murmured. "All the world is singing."
Gripping her as if he would choke her next words before she could speak them, the monk crossed the path. Twelve strides sufficed him for their journey. At the foot of the steps he put her down; and, before she could whisper Good-night, he was speeding noiselessly back to the great stone.
As soon as she had entered the guest-house and closed the door he made haste to put on his habit; for the air had grown cold. Then he shrank into the dripping trees and waited. By this time the clouds were gone and the stars were shining.
Isabel appeared at the window and beckoned imperiously. He stole softly forward and saw her hand moving like a white butterfly among the creepers clustering round the casement. She broke off a half-blown rose which had not been shattered by the storm and threw it to Antonio. He caught it deftly; but his fingers closed too tightly on its thorns, and when he re-entered the abbey to exchange his habit for his old cloak he saw that the white flower was flecked and veined with blood.