VII
Two miles outside Navares a hurrying horseman almost collided with the head of the monks' procession. He turned out to be a courier from Lisbon with an urgent letter for the Prior.
Pleased to be spared the rest of the journey to the monastery, and still better pleased with the broad coin which the Cellarer gave him from the community's scanty purse, the messenger delivered his package and was about to set his horse's head homewards, without inquiring what the monks' exodus might mean, when Carvalho bade him halt.
"Your Reverence," said Carvalho to the Prior none too respectfully, "I have no orders to stop letters, but I have positive orders that your Reverences must not attempt to harangue the people of Navares. And I have further orders that your Reverences must not remain in Navares beyond noon to-morrow. I am to conduct all who wish it to Lisbon, where the Government will settle the matter of the pensions of your Reverences as soon as possible."
He showed the Prior two more sheets from the Viscount's inexhaustible store of papers in support of his announcement. For a moment the Prior lost his self-control.
"Cur!" he said.
Carvalho bowed, with the scornful smile of borrowed power towards fallen greatness, and rode off to dispose his men in two extended files, which could, if necessary, envelop the monks completely. The Prior also went back along the line, briefly telling the news to each pair of monks and bidding them be ready for a council in their lodging at Navares.
As the Cellarer's kinsman, the Navares corn-merchant, lived on the outskirts of the town, the shelter of his house was gained before news of the monks' arrival had reached the townspeople. The corn-merchant was a convinced Liberal, and something of an anti-clerical: but he received the Cellarer's brethren with hearty sympathy and lavish hospitality. He gave up to the Abbot his own room. The beds of clean straw which he caused to be made along the whole length of a newly lime-washed granary were softer than the mattresses at the monastery, and his supper of soup and salt fish and cheese and wine was appetizing and abundant. Perhaps his best deed, however, was his expulsion of Carvalho and the corporal, who coolly walked into the granary so as to listen to the monks' discussions.
"Very well," shouted Carvalho after the Cellarer had convinced him that his precious papers gave him no right to violate a private domicile, "I go: but I forbid their Reverences to hold any kind of assembly."
"Their Reverences," retorted the corn-merchant, who feared man even less than he feared God, "will do as they please so long as they are in my house. As for your Worship, he will kindly walk out of it."
After supper the council began. Veni Creator Spiritus was sung. Then the Prior rose, with the letter from Lisbon in his hand, and said.
"Dear Fathers and Brethren. God help us to bear our many sorrows. The courier has brought bad news.
"For some reason, which the Visconde de Ponte Quebrada could explain, our house was the first to be seized. But before many days have passed the spoilers will possess themselves of all the houses of our Order. We are forbidden to take counsel with any other community of outcast religious, or to establish ourselves in new houses. Without God's help this is the end of the Portuguese Benedictine congregation.
"From man we have nothing to hope. The Government is one of bad faith. In my hand I have the proofs that the earlier laws of this Spring were shams. All the time it was intended to suppress the Orders entirely: but the Government dared not let the people see the thick end of the wedge. They have revealed it at last with fear and trembling. Their Bill was fathered upon one Minister alone, the Senhor Joaquim d'Aguiar. It was arranged that, in the event of public indignation, the other Ministers were to repudiate openly both the Senhor d'Aguiar and his Bill, although, in secret, it was their joint act and deed. Portugal is being governed in a poisonous mist of tricks and lies.
"But why does the Portuguese people suffer God to be robbed and His servants thrown into the highway without crowding to the rescue? Alas, dear Fathers and Brethren, I know the answer. Our poor land is sick of war: but there is a deeper reason why even the most fervent Catholics will not unsheath the sword again in our defense. Dom Miguel deceived them. Just as Dom Pedro has made a sham of Liberalism, so Dom Miguel has made a sham of piety. Dom Miguel raised the cry of 'Throne and Altar.' But he cared only for the Throne. If Saint Michael and all the angels should descend to earth in our defense, the Catholics of Portugal might join their banners: but the Portuguese Catholics will not believe again in any merely human leader. They remember Evora Monte.
"More: in many lands this tyranny and treachery of the Government will be applauded and upheld. Many lands have lent the Emperor Pedro money, and they claim the right to influence him in secret. The Protestants of England will rejoice in our downfall because we are Catholics and monks: the atheists and Jews of France and the Low Countries because we are Christians. The oppression of monks will spread. Spain, France, even Italy, will suffer. Pater dimitte illis; non enim sciunt quid faciunt: 'Father, forgive them; they know not what they do.'"
The long room was growing dimmer while the Prior was speaking, and when he had finished he could hardly see the features of his auditors. For two or three long minutes silence blended itself with the dusk. The livelier-minded among the monks sat still because they felt that the Prior's words were all too true, while the simpler souls were cowed and hushed by the splintering of their last props of hope.
The Prior, not wishing to impose his bare opinions upon the community, went to the window and read aloud the long and clear letter from Lisbon which a devout layman had made so much haste to despatch. At the end of his reading he called for candles; and, as soon as they were brought, he threw the council open.
No one spoke. All eyes were fixed on Antonio, all ears were waiting for his words. Amidst the prosaic discomforts of their hot march the monks had seen the young priest merely as one more dusty and perspiring exile: but, after the speech of the Prior, they recovered some of the mood in which they had listened to the Abbot's prophecy the night before. The scene had a solemnity of its own. Instead of carved stalls the monks sat on boxes, casks, and heaps of straw: but the few candles, casting vague shadows of black-robed figures upon the death-white walls, filled the mind with bodings of supernatural mystery. One and all gazed upon Antonio's face, fully persuaded that he would speak and ready to obey.
Antonio, becoming conscious of their expectation, flushed and fastened his eyes upon the ground. The Prior, putting into words the general feeling, said gently:
"Father Antonio, be not afraid. What said our Father Saint Benedict in the Holy Rule? Ideo autem omnes ad consilium vocari diximus; quia saepe juniori Dominus revelat quod melius est: 'We have ordained that all be called to Council, because it is often to the youngest that God revealeth what is best.' Speak."
The Prior's words, the intent looks of his brethren, the shadows, the candle-flames, the silence, seemed to Antonio like so many hands, great and small, held out hungrily for his words. Besides, was it not disloyal, mean, unbrotherly, to lock away a secret from his brethren? At this thought the hands came searching and plucking in his very breast. But the heavenly light, which had been burning like a bright lamp within him all day long, once more showed him his duty. He knew that among the monks were old men of enfeebled mind and weakened will, whose worn wits would not be proof against the artful pryings and questionings of spies, and that he had no right to burden them with a secret they could not keep. Yet this was a minor consideration. The supreme fact was that God was saying to him, "Hold thy peace."
Only when the silence had become unbearable did Antonio answer:
"Father Prior, indulge me. If I must speak, I crave leave to speak last."
As affectation and false humility were faults which had long been cast out of the community, the Prior reluctantly took Antonio at his word. Indeed, there was that in the young priest's voice which compelled the acquiescence of all.
"Then let us, Fathers and Brethren," said the Prior at length, "speak in turn. I will begin. But all I shall say is subject to alteration, nay, perhaps to complete reversal, by the council Father Antonio shall give us."
A low murmur of approval rounded off his words.
"My own council," continued the Prior, "would be this. The Father Cellarer knows to a vintem how much money we can find. Let us, for the present, turn our cheek to the smiter and abandon our community life. Let each of us decide where and how he can best live till we have bettered or worsened our case in Lisbon, and let him declare to the Father Cellarer what money he will need. For the present Father Isidoro and Brother Cypriano and I will remain here with our beloved Father Abbot. He believes"—here the Prior's voice trembled—"that God will call his soul away to-morrow; and it is not for us to say 'God forbid.' But be it to-morrow, or next week, or next month, or next year, here we stay, Father Isidoro, Brother Cypriano and I, even though all the horses and men in Portugal be sent to move us. And, when we have laid our beloved Father's remains in the earth, I will join the Father Cellarer in Lisbon. We shall live in the house of the writer of this letter, the Senhor Aureliano Gonçalves de Sousa, the notary, in the Rua Augusta. Let every one of us keep in touch, one with another, at that address until our future is clearly known."
The Cellarer spoke in the same sense. He was followed by the monks in turn. Every one of them, with varying degrees of conviction, repeated the Prior's saving clause about Antonio's coming words, and every one of them endorsed the Prior's counsel.
Father Isidoro and seven other choir-monks added that their refuge would be in a house of their Order on Spanish soil, just across the Guadiana. It appeared that they had been discussing the matter all day, and that they had fixed upon this particular Spanish monastery because it was within two hours' ride of Portugal. Father Sebastian announced that he would take shelter at the Inglezinhos in Lisbon. These English Fathers, he said, could not be suppressed because they were secular priests and British subjects: but they had a cloister and something of community life. Other monks spoke of Vigo, of Santiago de Compostela, of Salamanca, and of a new house in Belgium where there was a strict observance. Two dreamed of Monte Cassino itself, and one surprised the Council by mentioning a Benedictine house in Protestant England, not far from legendary Glastonbury. Some of the oldest Fathers named friends, clerical and lay, in various cities of Portugal, beneath whose roofs they could die quietly if the Prior's and the Cellarer's fight in Lisbon should end in defeat. As for the lay-brethren, they decided to go in a body to Evora, where Brother Lorenzo had claims on the protection of the Archbishop.
It was inevitable that these announcements should generate in the Council an unmonkish excitement. After having been so long persuaded that they would live the rest of their lives and die their due deaths within the same square mile of earth, there was something strangely fascinating in this sudden unrolling of the map of Europe. The solid sorrow of their dispossession was almost hidden for the moment under a whirl and flutter of little arrangements; even as a fatal reef is hidden under the pretty spray of the rollers it has smashed to glittering atoms. The buzz of talk which followed on the more formal speaking was not without the shrill note of schoolboys as they discuss a thousand plans for an approaching holiday.
The Cellarer who, despite his preoccupation with its temporals, was one of the community's most spiritually-minded members, swiftly detected the danger.
"Father Prior," he said loudly, "all have spoken save Father Antonio."
His bright firm voice cut through the dull buzz like an eagle dashing through starlings, scattering them all in flight. Every monk felt the just rebuke, and once more there was silence.
"Father Antonio," said the Prior, quietly and kindly.
Antonio felt that he could not speak from his place by the wall. He rose and advanced with bowed head into the midst of his brethren. The corn-merchant's tiny candles were flickering down into their sockets; and he waited a few moments in the hope that darkness might enveil him before he opened his mouth. But the lights leaped into fuller brightness. He raised his head. Everywhere he saw eyes, eyes—old eyes and young eyes, loving eyes and stern eyes, dull eyes and eager eyes, hopeful eyes and fearful eyes—everywhere eyes, eyes fixed on him, Antonio, alone.
"Father Prior—" he began. But his prepared words were taken away. The eyes went on piercing him until he felt like the holy martyr Sebastian in the midst of the sharp arrows. At last words burst from him.
"My Fathers, my Brethren," he cried. "Forgive me. To-morrow I am going back into the world."
One of the lights went out suddenly, as if Antonio's apostasy had struck it down like a blow. But for five or six seconds no one stirred or spoke. A second candle-flame leaped up and died away. Then, in the dimness, uprose a confused murmuring, sharpened here and there by exclamations of scorn or anger or bitter sorrow. More distinctly than the rest was heard the garrulous contempt of Father Bernardo, whose lapses into the sin of gluttony had so often scandalized the brethren. Father Bernardo's righteous scorn was sincere. He had no vocation to be a saint or a hero himself; but he knew that saints and heroes were necessary, and he despised Antonio for turning his back upon the light.
The Cellarer left his seat and came to Antonio's side. Isidore and Sebastian followed him, and other monks showed signs of doing the same. But before a word could be breathed into his ear, Antonio wrenched himself out of the midst of the increasing group and threw himself on his knees at the Prior's feet.
"For the love of Jesus Christ," he pleaded, in low intense tones, "bid them leave me in peace."
The Prior took one of the remaining candles and looked at Antonio intently. At first a shade of scorn darkened his cheek; for he imagined that he saw in Antonio's eyes no more than the physical anguish of a hunted animal. But he looked more deeply; and he saw more.
"Fathers and Brethren," he commanded. "Let us have order and silence. Father Sebastian shall speak with Father Antonio; and, after him, the Father Cellarer. It is time for Compline."
As everybody knew the almost invariable prayers and psalms of Compline by heart, there was no need for fresh candles, and the community began to recite the office. All had resumed their places save Antonio, who moved slowly away to the obscurest corner, near the granary door. There he stood, blending his prayers and praises with those of his brethren for the last time. He joined in the Confession with deep humility, smiting his breast: and when the Hebdomadarius gave the Absolution, Antonio crossed himself as if Calvary itself were before his eyes. In due time the Psalms, the Hymn, the Little Chapter, and Pater Noster had been said, and the monks began the proper Antiphon of the Blessed Virgin, Salve Regina. Repeating the pious words, Antonio quietly opened the granary door; and, at the end of the prayer Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, he slipped forth into the soft night.
Across the courtyard a light was burning in the room where the Abbot still lay in unnatural sleep. Antonio drew near and gazed through the glass. The old man's hands were clasped on his breast, and his garment fell into stiff folds like the alabaster draperies of a mitered effigy on a tomb. Antonio breathed towards the frail body the prayer he had heard at the beginning of Compline, Noctem quietam et finem perfectum: "May the Almighty Lord grant him a quiet night and a perfect end."
As he turned away with a bursting heart he came face to face with Father Sebastian, who had seen his stealthy flight. Sebastian, as usual, was drawing his habit closely round his body. There was more than usual of the consumptive glow on his cheek and of the too bright fire in his eyes. The two men faced each other searchingly.
"Father Antonio," asked Sebastian at last, "is this our Lord's work or the devil's?"
"It is our Lord's," returned Antonio in a firm voice. "Take heed that you do not hinder it."
He brushed past and opened the wicket which led into the high road. But, before he passed out, he seized his friend's thin hand in a fierce grip.
"Sebastian," he said, "ask all my brethren to forgive me and to pray for me. Take care of my breviary, if you can. Good-bye."
A sentry challenged him as he strode forth: but Antonio threw him aside. "I am not your prisoner," he said; and the fellow, bemused by wine and by fatigue, fell back without another word.
Hurrying though Navares he contrived to pass the apothecary's shop unobserved by the throng of leading townsmen who were warmly debating the rights and wrongs of the monks' case. Outside the taverns he was less successful; and in one instance, a lewd insult which was flung after him led to bitter rejoinders and a scuffle. A young man, whose pleasant face contrasted oddly with his words, ran after Antonio to say that the monks ought to have been driven out long ago: but, on the other hand, four separate men offered him hospitality, ranging from a pull of wine to a night's lodging.
Thanking friends and forgiving foes, the young priest pressed forward until the last houses of Navares were more than a league behind him. Only then did he sink down to rest. His halting-place was on a more northerly point of the long range of hills on which stood the monastery from which he had been cast into exile. By the stars he knew that exactly twenty-four hours had passed since his reverie on the cork bench, on the flat roof of the cloister.
The airs around him, like the airs of the night before in the monastery garden, were rich with scents of lemon-blossom and honeysuckle. The Atlantic still lay unvexed by wind: but the ocean swell, as it searched the creeks and caves, hummed heavily and wearily, like a great bee mining in the bells of flowers that held no honey.