VIII
Had the black monk's ghost attended his vigil in the abbey chapel young Crowberry could hardly have seen it. His labors among the azulejos preoccupied him for over four hours, and it was within an hour of dawn when he stole back on tip-toe to his room in the guest-house.
As for Antonio, he did not go to bed at all. After parting from young Crowberry at the chapel-door, he hastened straight to wake up José; and as soon as he had made sure that José understood the part he had to play, it was time for the monk's morning splash in the deepest pool of the brook. After Antonio had shaved and dressed himself with unusual care, both master and man sat down to a first breakfast much ampler than usual; for who could tell what might befall?
The monk took care to arrive a few minutes late at the chapel. Sir Percy was there already, high on his ladder.
"Hallo," he cried, without wasting breath or time in saying a Good morning. "The stuff works. D'ye hear? It works. We shall cut through the cement like cheese."
"Don't say cheese," pleaded young Crowberry, appearing in the doorway. "It makes me hungry. Say putty, or chalk, or soft soap."
He was swept into the chapel by Mrs. Baxter, who suddenly filled the doorway like a wave bursting through an arch on a limestone coast. Behind Mrs. Baxter could be heard the loud voice of Mr. Crowberry. Antonio advanced to greet the lady and to express his hope that she was well.
"No, Signor Da Rocha, I am not well," responded Mrs. Baxter tartly. "Since you asked me, I am very ill indeed. But who cares? I have long ceased to look for gratitude; but it seems that I must no longer expect common humanity."
"By common humanity, ma'am," said young Crowberry, "I assume you mean ham and eggs, or possibly kidneys and bacon. I too, alas, have looked for them in vain."
"I allude," said Mrs. Baxter severely, "to the fact that I have been dragged from bed, despite my sick and suffering condition, without a morsel of breakfast, to catch my death of cold at an unearthly hour in this living tomb. I do not allude, Mr. Edward, to kidneys and bacon."
"What's this about kidneys and bacon?" demanded Mr. Crowberry, hurrying up with an eagerness which made him almost sprightly. "Where? When? How on earth have you managed it?"
Antonio abandoned the two voluptuaries to the tender mercies of young Crowberry; for Isabel was standing in the doorway. Her walk through the morning air had painted her cheeks a delicate rose-pink; but, as she stood among them with white ungloved hands showing against her blue dress of fine stuff, and with a large white feather curled round her blue hat, she seemed like the azulejos, all blue and white.
"So you have come to see the end?" she said.
"Who knows?" he retorted, smiling sadly. "Will the saw survive the acid? We shall see. But I crave leave to thank you. You have interceded with your illustrious father."
"I have," she said, "and my illustrious father simply ordered me off to bed, like a small child. You don't understand him. He has never noticed that I am grown up into quite an old young woman. He still calls Mrs. Baxter my governess. I believe he thinks she still gives me lessons in arithmetic and spelling. I did my best; but it was worse than nothing."
"If you had succeeded triumphantly," he answered, with one of his unconscious glances into the depths of her eyes, "I could not be more grateful than I am."
Young Crowberry came forward and presented his morning compliments. He added that Sir Percy had found a defect in the vertical traveler of his circular saw and that he wished to be unbothered by onlookers while he put it right. The young man went on to suggest that it might divert that Excellent Creature Mrs. Baxter from the contemplation of her wrongs if they showed her round the monastery.
Grumbling gruffly at his fate, Mr. Crowberry the elder joined the party. Mrs. Baxter composed her features to an iron immobility. She was evidently determined to approve of nothing.
"I confess, ma'am," said young Crowberry, "that the humble entertainment we have to offer is poorer in excitement than some others; for example, than the public hangings which are provided for the nobility and gentry of our own country at this same hour of eight o'clock."
Nobody laughed.
"You are standing," the youth rattled on, "in a monastery, or monasterium. The word is derived, ma'am, as you are aware, from monachus, a monk, and sterium, a sterium. This passage is called a corridor, from curro, meaning 'I run,' and dor, a door. You observe the doors on both sides. With your permission, ma'am, we will proceed to the kitchen."
The white kitchen was filled with bright sunshine. The sun's beams came flashing back from the great hood of burnished copper, and the singing torrent was quick with glancing lights. Young Crowberry showed Mrs. Baxter the long turnspit, turned by a wheel at the end, and gravely assured her that it was capable of roasting a pigeon, whole.
"What is that word Paz, between the windows?" asked Isabel.
"It is Portuguese for 'Peace,' the watchword of the Benedictine order," Antonio answered. "The monks here were Benedictines."
"What were they here for?" Mr. Crowberry demanded.
Antonio hesitated. Then he quietly gave the answer:
"To pray, and to praise God."
"Praise God, indeed!" cried Mr. Crowberry. "A fine way of praising God to stuff and guzzle from one year's end to another! I'll tell you what it is, da Rocha. You've got your tongue in your cheek. You're a man with fifty times too much sense to believe that the Almighty is pleased with the praises of a greasy pack of gormandizers and soakers. Thank goodness your country has turned 'em out."
He strode out of the kitchen with all the dignity of a churchwarden carrying the collection-plate into the vestry. The others followed.
"What is behind these doors?" demanded Mr. Crowberry.
"Cells," said Antonio, curtly.
"Cells?"
"Why not, sir?" asked young Crowberry, in honeyed tones. "Why not cells here as in other penitential establishments? All the best prisons have them. I thought it was a matter of common knowledge that the principal occupation of a monk when he gets into a monastery is to prevent the other monks getting out."
"Shut up!" snapped his father, striding on.
Mrs. Baxter spoke at last. She adventured the point of her shoe and the tip of her nose into Antonio's cell, which had been left open.
"Is this the condemned cell, Mr. Edward?" she asked with a shudder.
"They're all condemned cells, ma'am," Edward answered. "Every monk was condemned to penal servitude for life. At the end of his term he was taken out to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. A few days after, he was buried alive, or walled up. If this didn't cure him of his errors the Abbot began to think it was really time for something to be done; and he was sentenced to take a bath."
Antonio turned away, grievously wounded. After their solemn conversations on the highest and holiest things, these jests scorched him like hot irons. But, upon reflection, he could condone much of young Crowberry's offense. Doubtless the youth had a good motive in plying the edged tool of ridicule against the prejudices of his companions. But his main excuse lay in his inability to take monks seriously. The youth did not know that Antonio was himself a monk, and that this had been Antonio's cell and that Antonio had spoken to his Lord within it. He had never consciously met a monk in his life. Monks to him were like mailed knights to a reader of historical novels; they were merely the picturesque literary fictions of Mrs. Radcliffe, of Sir Walter Scott, of "Monk" Lewis. Or, rather, monks to young Crowberry were pretty much what exorcists had been to Antonio. Although the Church still ordained exorcists, and exorcists were prayed for every Good Friday, Antonio had turned more than one light pleasantry about them.
Nevertheless the monk could have wished that young Crowberry had spoken otherwise. When every allowance had been made, his irony remained more mischievous than useful; and Antonio determined to counteract it. Turning to Mrs. Baxter he gave her a rapid sketch of a monk's day. At the very outset, when he told her how every monk answered the loud knock at his cell door before daybreak with "Thanks be to God!" the Excellent Creature shivered; but, in spite of herself, she grew interested. Even Mr. Crowberry condescended to return and to give the orator his grudging attention. But at Isabel Antonio threw only two furtive glances; for she seemed to be hearing him with distaste.
"Thank you," snorted Crowberry père, as the monk's voice ceased. "You merely confirm what I've always said. For my part I believe that the Almighty intended us to enjoy the good things of life. If not, why did He provide 'em? Pssh! Humbug! D'ye mean to tell me, sir, that the Almighty's pleased with all this nonsensical fasting—with madmen clemming 'emselves till they're like a gang of scarecrows, with their bones sticking out through their skins? No, da Rocha, you don't. I tell you again that you've got your tongue in your cheek."
"Apparently Mr. da Rocha has his tongue in both his cheeks at once," put in Crowberry fils. "I gather, sir, that these regrettable monks were, at one and the same time, a gang of bony scarecrows starving themselves to death and also a pack of fat and greasy gormandizers and guzzlers. Such Jesuitical duplicity makes me shudder."
"Come to think of it," blurted out his father, "I shouldn't be surprised if da Rocha here is a Jesuit monk in disguise. Where's his whiskers? Where's his wife? I don't call it natural."
"A Jesuit monk?" moaned Mrs. Baxter, recoiling in horror. "How dreadful!" And she grabbed at Isabel's arm as if to snatch a helpless victim out of danger.
"There's no such a thing as a Jesuit monk, madam," smiled Antonio. "The Jesuits are a Society, not a monastic order."
"There are Jesuit nuns, anyhow," muttered Mrs. Baxter, scowling darkly. "England is full of them."
"Pardon me," exclaimed Antonio, keeping all his good temper. "That can hardly be. There are women-Benedictines, women-Dominicans, women-Carmelites, and so on; but there's no such thing as a woman-Jesuit."
"Pardon me, too," retorted Mrs. Baxter warmly. "I am English and I ought to know. I repeat that England is full of female Jesuits. So how can you stand there, Signor, and say that Jesuits are never women?"
"They are women, of course," interrupted Mr. Crowberry; "old women. Silly old women. Why, they walk about in petticoats, and nothing pleases 'em so much as putting on finery and dressing up images, like little girls dressing up dolls. Tut! But come, da Rocha, out with the truth. I'll lay you a dozen of old Madeira against a half a dozen of your new champagne that you can't swear your Bible oath that you aren't a Jesuit in disguise."
"I won't have the Madeira; but lend me your pocket Bible," demanded Antonio.
"Lay your hand on your heart, instead," Mr. Crowberry answered.
It was plainly necessary to take up the gauntlet which had been thrown down; so Antonio placed his hand on his heart, and said:
"I swear I am not a Jesuit, either in disguise or out of it. I never was a Jesuit; am not now; and never shall be."
"Amen," said Mr. Crowberry, not without traces of thankfulness and earnestness in his tones; "I'm glad you're letting me off the old Madeira. Hallo! Time's up. Here's Sir Percy."
"D'ye hear? Am I to wait all day while you stand there chattering?" Sir Percy bawled out. And he strode back into the chapel.
Everybody made haste to follow. But before they could see whence it proceeded a horrible noise set their teeth on edge. It was as though somebody was creaking a basket-lid near a hive of buzzing bees. Antonio knew that the saw had begun to revolve. He pressed forward and found Sir Percy's gray-headed stolid man-servant Jackson working a treadle at the foot of the azulejos. High above Jackson's head the saw was grinding round in the acidulated cement.
"It works!" cried Sir Percy. "D'ye hear, all of you? D'ye see? It works!"
As the saw's teeth bit and chewed the acrid cud a fine gritty dust flew up into a sunbeam and glittered like the spray of a waterfall. The noise increased, until it resembled the drawing of a great slate pencil backwards along a vast slate. Isabel and Mrs. Baxter put their fingers in their ears.
"It works, it works, it works!" repeated Sir Percy. His eyes shone. Antonio glanced at him and shuddered. One moment he looked like a boy of twenty; the next, he looked a hundred years old.
The saw went on gnawing, gnawing, biting, biting, screaming, screaming, like an obscene fiend, until the back of one azulejo seemed to be wholly cut through. This first azulejo—a tile about eight inches long—formed part of the multi-colored border which framed the picture of the Saint's pious boyhood. Antonio watched it with a white face and a thumping heart. Suddenly he shouted:
"Look out! Stand clear!"
Almost in the same instant the tile leaped forward and crashed down upon the pavement, smashing up into four or five pieces. Mrs. Baxter wailed aloud. Isabel sprang like a flash to examine the damage, and the others were soon at her elbows. They found that the saw had cut down cleanly to a certain distance; but the tile had fallen outward before the scission was complete, and the cement on its lower part had broken jaggedly from the wall.
Sir Percy closed and opened his eyes like a man dazed. Isabel moved to his side. But he recovered himself swiftly and brushed her away.
"What does it matter?" he demanded, in great wrath and scorn. "What are you all standing there like stuck pigs for? It's the border. We can mend it. What does it matter? D'ye hear?"
He cast a glance at the saw. It was correctly placed for cutting down the azulejo which stood below its fallen neighbor. Waving Jackson aside he placed his own foot on the treadle and worked away with feverish energy. Hummings, creakings, and screamings once more filled the holy place.
After the onlookers had fallen back a few yards, the monk found himself close to Isabel. He did not look at her, nor she at him; but he felt instinctively that she was not on his side. Standing with tense limbs and straining eyes she seemed to be putting her whole mind and will towards her father's triumph and Antonio's defeat.
"Take care of your skulls!" sang out young Crowberry. His light tenor voice rose almost to a scream.
Jackson jumped clear; but Sir Percy held his ground until the second azulejo lay shattered at his feet. Then he ceased working the treadle and moved with slow, short steps into the middle of the nave. As he did so the saw, framework and all, plunged after the azulejo with a tremendous crash.
In contrast with the hideous noises which had preceded it, the silence in the chapel was uncanny. Mr. Crowberry sat down abruptly on an old black bench. Mrs. Baxter wiped away real or simulated tears. Antonio and Isabel, once more side by side, stared at the ruins of the saw and its gear. Young Crowberry leaned glumly against the doorpost. Jackson maintained his deaf-mute stolidity.
Sir Percy began to walk up and down the nave. His military rigidity was gone; and instead of standing as straight as a poplar he bent and crouched like a thunder-blasted, storm-beaten oak. Antonio, in his moment of victory, suddenly caught sight of Sir Percy's eyes. They were like the eyes of a long-hunted, worn-out tiger brought suddenly to bay; and, at the sight of them, the monk's heart nearly broke with love and pity. Involuntarily he took a step or two towards the stricken man.
"Get out of my way!" thundered Sir Percy, blazing into terrible anger. "Clear out!"
A chisel was lying in his path. With the toe of his finely-made boot he dealt it so forcible a kick that the iron went ringing across the pavement and chipped a petal from a rose in the lower border of the Saint's Shipwreck. As he strode towards Jackson he limped a little.
"So your dead monks have fought for you and won," said Isabel bitterly, turning round upon Antonio.
"Sir Percy will try again," he answered.
"My father never tries again," said she, once more turning away her face.
Just then they heard a sickening cry of pain; and the monk saw Sir Percy drop heavily from the top of the short ladder. Jackson caught him as he fell. The luckless baronet had been trying to discover the cause of his failure and had thrust his hand into a pool of burning acid. He sank against Jackson's rock-like shoulder and swooned away.
Antonio instantly took command. His strong voice rang through the chapel like a brazen trumpet.
"Mr. Crowberry," he said, "run to the kitchen. There are bowls on a dresser. Bring us water from the stream at once. Edward, rush up to the house. Bring oil and lint—oil and silk or linen or whatever you can. Mrs. Baxter, you will kindly go and prepare his bed at once."
He did not name Isabel; for she was already bending over her father with such anguish in her blue eyes that Antonio could hardly bear the sight. For a moment he was forced to turn aside.
"Take heart," he said softly in her ear, as soon as he was able to speak. "We shall bring him round. For an hour or two, I fear he will have great pain; but there is an ointment at my farm which will give him ease. Be brave. Cheer up. He must not open his eyes on weeping faces."
While Jackson unfastened the prostrate man's collar and Mr. Crowberry bathed his forehead with cold water from the torrent, Antonio hurried through the doorway and sped up the spiral stairs which led to the roof of the cloister. But, about six feet from the top, he pushed open a somber door and entered a long attic which ran over the ceilings of the monk's cells, parallel with the north wall of the chapel.
In the faint light he made out José faithfully crouching in the place which had been appointed him. By his side lay an old ramrod and a mallet. In the mortar between the granite blocks of the wall were the holes which Antonio and young Crowberry had bored in the night. Their measurements were so exact that José's ramrod had easily struck out the azulejos the moment he heard the preconcerted signals of "Look out!" and "Take care of your skulls!"
"Did I do right, your Worship, in knocking over that skriking saw as well?" asked José.
"You did right," said Antonio quickly. "We have won; and now we must care for the enemy's wounded. Sir Percy has burned his hand with acid. Run to the farm. Open the green box. Bring back the yellow ointment as fast as your legs can carry you."
José raced off, hiding ramrod and mallet under his coat. Hardly had he vanished before it flashed across Antonio's mind that some virtue might remain in the drugs which the Cellarer had left behind four years before. He found the cupboard, smashed it open, and ran back to the chapel with oil, lint, ointment, and a cordial.
When José reappeared he was just in time to take a hand with Antonio and Jackson in carrying Sir Percy back to the guest-house. Young Crowberry had ridden off for the Navares doctor. In the baronet's comfortless room the monk lavished all his leech-craft; and soon, under the sway of a strong draught, the sufferer fell asleep.
Isabel accompanied Antonio to the door. He cut short her thanks, and was hurrying away homeward after José, when he heard her light step behind him. She had something to say; but her courage failed her and she did not say it.
"There is something else that I can do?" asked the monk.
"Yes," she answered, with a great effort. "You can ... you can promise..."
"I can promise ... what?"
Isabel blushed furiously.
"Nothing," she said. "Good-bye."
She fled back to the steps. But he caught her and seized the white hand which was about to turn the brass knob.
"You shall tell me," he insisted, mastering her with his velvet eyes. "I can promise ... what?"
"You can promise," she said, looking on the ground, "that I may see you again."