VIII
Not more than two hours after Antonio's return to his farm a messenger arrived from the guest-house and handed in two letters. The first ran:
Mrs. Baxter presents her compliments to Signor da Rocha and begs to request that he will call to-day without fail, as Mrs. B. is under the unpleasant obligation of making a painful communication to Signor R.
The second letter was shorter still. It contained the single line:
I must see you too.
Antonio's amazement quickly gave place to indignation. He had examined his conscience concerning the whole business too often to deceive himself, and he knew that he was not to blame for what had happened. Yet here he was, summoned to endure a lecture from the vulgar Mrs. Baxter. Worse still, when Sir Percy came back he would be told the tale. Antonio would be regarded ever afterwards as an abuser of a sacred trust, a heartless trifler with young affections, an outsider, a brute, a cur fit for the horse-whip. And he would have to suffer all this injustice in silence, because he could only clear himself by disgracing the lady.
As he grew cooler the monk became certain that Isabel had not deliberately betrayed him to Mrs. Baxter. Probably she had broken down after her protracted excitements and had let slip some fatal admission in a moment of hysteria. Or perhaps a chattering servant had seen her walking with Antonio in the woods. Gravest possibility of all, some sharp eyes or ears might have detected her absence in the middle of the night. At this last thought he seized his hat and set out for the guest-house at once.
When he reached the road, still soft after the rain, some hoof-marks reassured him. He recognized them as the shoe-prints of Negro, an old post-horse ridden by the casual letter-carrier of Navares. News of some kind had evidently arrived from Sir Percy. Perhaps he was ill, or dying. The monk's heart melted towards Isabel as he perceived that new troubles were hurrying to smite her, and he would gladly have submitted to the bitter censures of Mrs. Baxter in their stead.
Isabel met him about fifty yards from the guest-house door. She looked more beautiful than ever, but her expression dismayed him. No traces lingered of the exaltation to which she had attained only a few hours before. She seemed proud, hard, defiant.
"We have heard from my father," she said quickly. "The unexpected—I mean the half-expected—has happened. We are to pack and go, as we have packed and gone from twenty places before. It isn't azulejos this time. It's a railway. But it'll be all the same in the end. He wants us to start for Lisbon the day after to-morrow. Mrs. Baxter will tell you everything."
To Antonio's surprise she neither referred to her note nor said a word on her personal account, but led him straight into the salon where Mrs. Baxter was seated in the midst of confusion. Isabel's pictures had already been removed from the walls, and Jackson could be heard in a back-room nailing down a packing-case. The noises fell on Antonio's heart like blows on a coffin-lid.
"I have learned, Madame, with concern, that you are compelled to undertake a fatiguing journey," said Antonio in his most formal style. "Let me repeat my assurance that I remain, at all times, entirely at your service."
"I'm sure you do, Signor, I'm sure you do," wailed Mrs. Baxter. "But tell me, Signor, what do you think of it all? I was saying, only this morning, how comforting it was that we were settled for life, and how delightful it would be to spend the rest of my days in the salubrious air of this favored spot, enlivened by the profitable conversation of a congenial neighbor."
Isabel listened to her governess with a scornful lip. What Mrs. Baxter had really said, only that morning, was that she had determined to write Sir Percy her mind at once; that, through the almost incredible deficiencies of the village shops and the unscriptural errors of Joanninha, she was being starved and poisoned, both in body and soul; that she had never stayed in such a hole before, and never meant to again; that, after enjoying the intimacy of some of the first personages in England, she found it intolerable to have only one neighbor, especially when he was only a small yeoman with no table-napkins and not enough forks to go round; and, finally, that she flatly declined to remain after Christmas in any Portuguese place save Lisbon or Oporto.
"The Senhora does me too much honor," said Antonio, without enthusiasm. "But this is not final? The Senhoras will return?"
"Sir Percival Kaye-Templeman never returns anywhere," snapped Mrs. Baxter, "I declare, Signor, that he drags me about like a slave. If it hadn't been for my death-bed promise to the sainted mother of that darling child sitting on the blue ottoman, I should have left him a thousand times."
The darling child arose from the blue ottoman and went to an escritoire. She opened a drawer and took something from it.
"Mrs. Baxter is forgetting to give you my father's letter," she said. "He tells us he has written to thank you for all you have done."
Antonio received the sealed letter into his hand; and, as neither of the ladies proffered him leave to read it in their presence, he placed it in his breast-pocket.
"For the present my father also begs you to take the keys of the abbey," added Isabel. "Here they are. He says he has explained everything in his letter. As for this guest-house, there are only two keys. We will give them to you when we go, on Thursday."
Antonio's heart leaped like a bird at her words about the abbey keys; but it sank like a stone as she said, "we go on Thursday." So violent was his agitation that, to cover it, he rose from his seat and advanced to the open drawer of the escritoire where the keys were lying. He dared not look at Isabel.
"If the chapel key is not here," she said, in an off-hand way, "you know where to find it."
She placed the bunch in his hand. There were about twenty keys, great and small, bright and dull, and they tinkled together pleasantly as Antonio carried them back to his place. But they sounded in his ears more like a far-heard knell than a merry chime.
"I suppose you must go now?" she inquired.
"My pet, my darling pet," expostulated Mrs. Baxter, looking daggers. "What on earth will Signor de Rocha think? He'll think you want to hunt him out of the house."
"So I do. There's a waterfall somewhere in the grounds. I want him, if he has time, to show me the way to it. A waterfall and stepping-stones. Perhaps, Mrs. Baxter, you will come with us."
"Stepping-stones!" gasped Mrs. Baxter. "Not if they were made of solid gold. Not if you paid me a million pounds. Why, you've quite forgotten, Isabel, darling, that if it hadn't been for stepping-stones, poor little Lady Margaret Barricott would be alive to-day!"
"Then you won't come? Senhor da Rocha, have you really the leisure to take me?"
"I have the leisure," answered Antonio formally. "And, if I had not, leisure should be made. Mrs. Baxter, I will send up my man to-morrow to assist you in the packing of your goods, and I will certainly attend you on Thursday. Meanwhile, I am your obedient servant."
Isabel was already in the ante-chamber and Antonio did not overtake her until she was descending the steps. Dangling the keys he walked beside her without speech until they reached the shelter of the trees. Then he drew from his pocket the long steel key of the chapel and halted a moment while he placed it among the others.
"You see that I had brought it," he said. "This morning I forgot to give it you."
"Pray don't explain," she commanded curtly. "We've had explanations enough and to spare."
He relocked the old-fashioned key-ring and they resumed their march, Isabel going first along the narrow path. Antonio felt thankful for the short respite from talk. He knew that he was on his way to the sharpest fight of all. Although there was nothing of love in Isabel's manner towards him, he divined that she had invited him to the cascade in order to overthrow him by some final argument or appeal.
Could he be sure that he would once more succeed in resistance? He took stock of his weapons and forces. In sheer dialectic he knew that he was Isabel's match; for the very slowness of his English gave him a certain advantage. Nor was he greatly her inferior in rhetorical resource. What he feared was Isabel's unconscious challenging of his chivalry. He did not dread the wiles of deliberate coquetry, even if she had been capable of practicing them; and, most emphatically, he did not dread the seductiveness of her physical charms, because the stern battle against the flesh was a battle he had fought and won long years before. But he dreaded, with a dread nearly driving him into cowardice, the hateful task of bringing hot tears into her cool blue eyes and of breaking her soft voice into heart-broken sobbings.
He glanced at Isabel as she pressed onward a yard or so ahead. As always, she was the soul and body of grace. The poise of her golden head upon her swan-white neck, her proud shoulders, her exquisite waist, her fine hands plucking at the autumn leaves, her little feet which seemed hardly to touch the earth—all these charms were as adorable as ever. Yet there was something unusual in her port and gait. Perhaps she was less willowy, more rigid. She advanced with a masterful air as if to say: "To-day there shall be no nonsense. I lead: you follow. You are mine to do as I please with. Until this afternoon I have indulged you as I might indulge a favorite young horse. I've let you just smell the halter and then go galloping off to the other end of the field. I've let you lead me a breathless dance through the buttercups and clover. But you have bucked and jibbed and bolted and neighed and tossed up your head and shaken out your mane and tail long enough. This time I mean to put the halter on. So let there be no mistake about it."
Antonio observed all this and was thankful. So long as she chose to be peremptory, scornful, logical, he was safe. The encounter, though painful, would not be perilous. But let her once soften and he was lost. He felt that, even with the remains of yesterday's miraculous grace in his heart, he would be powerless against a tear or a sob. His two sleepless nights and the unwonted stress of romantic emotions were wearing him down, and he inwardly prayed that he might not be tempted beyond what he would bear.
When she reached the pool, Isabel did not cross the stepping-stones. Halting some distance from the brawling waterfall, and hardly waiting for Antonio to approach her, she began:
"We have had many long talks at this pool. To-day's talk will be short. Surely I have crawled to you enough on my hands and knees, and I will do it no more."
Antonio said nothing.
"There's not an hour to lose," she went on. "If you and I are going to do the right thing, I must tell Mrs. Baxter to stop the packing at once. You jump! You turn pale. I suppose you're shocked to hear me call it the right thing. I can't help it. I must speak the truth. It is the right thing. And the opposite thing is not only wrong; it's wicked, it's blasphemous, it's a crime. No. Don't interrupt me. You needn't think we're going over all the old, old arguments again."
"You have changed your mind rather swiftly," said Antonio, refusing to be suppressed. "Barely four hours ago you seemed to acquiesce in—"
"In my fate," she said, with a bitter laugh. "So I did. You worked on my feelings. Don't think me coarse and brutal; but I'll give you one illustration. You spread for me your cloak. Do you think I didn't see how old it was? When I thought of that, and of all the hardships you'd suffered, my heart broke and I cried and cried and cried like a baby. But I've changed my mind. I admire you as much as ever; but I don't admire the way you are going on. A man like you ought to have the best cloak in the world, and all the rest of the best things with it. You are a poet, you are a delicate gentleman. I see it every time you pour out a drop of wine or touch a flower. You would rejoice in exquisite things more than any woman."
"Shall I offend you, Isabel?" he asked, coloring up, "if I remind you that this talk is to be short? We are not getting on."
"Yes, we are getting on fast," she retorted. "I say that I hate the way you are living. To save money and to buy back this place for the Benedictines is all very well; but I say that your sacrifices are overdone, and that God must be grieved by your excesses. He has shown that you are not meant to be a monk. He has driven your brethren away, and instead of them he has sent you ... me. No. I'm not conceited. I don't think I'm wonderful. But I'm your destiny, and that's everything. You were not called to monasticism; you were called to me. That is, you were called to be a monk only to save you from the wrong woman, only until the appointed day should dawn for you and me to meet. It has dawned. Yes, Antonio, I can quote Scripture, and I don't quote it irreverently either. The day has dawned. And 'To-day if ye will hear His voice, harden not your heart.' If you do, it will be a sin; just as I suppose it's a sin for a man to harden his heart against the call to be a monk."
"No more of this, I pray," cried Antonio. "If there is some great new fact, let us have it; but let us not hark back to what we have threshed out already."
"Very well," she said. "Here is the great new fact. My father. What did I tell you about him? I told you that his next experiment will kill him. But there's only one way of snatching him out of peril. Pardon me for telling you that this abbey is mine. It was bought with my money, and I am, to some extent, mistress of my father's movements in Portugal. If I flatly decline to leave here; if I pension off Mrs. Baxter; and if ... if you do what is right by yourself and by me; then, and only then, will my father come down from the clouds and look facts in the face. If I go back to Lisbon, I go back to kill him."
Deeply pained, Antonio raised a hand to stop her. She took a step forward and looked at him with steady eyes, but with trembling lips.
"Do you think, do you truly believe, that I would say a thing like this if it were not true?" she demanded in low, quivering tones. "Oh, Antonio, I have always known it. In your heart you despise me. You think I'm so far sunk in shamelessness that I am taking the name of God in vain and concocting lies about my father's life, so as to scare you into marrying me."
"Before Heaven, Isabel, I think no such foul thought," he answered solemnly. "But I am puzzled. If this abbey is yours, not his; and if you are mistress of his movements; why not assert your authority without dragging in me? Why not pension off Mrs. Baxter and get a companion from England? Why not despatch a post to Lisbon to-night informing your father that you will be no party to his new scheme, and that you insist on his recruiting quietly here?"
"And you?" she demanded.
"I? No doubt we should meet sometimes."
"No doubt, no doubt," she echoed with scorching scorn. "We should meet sometimes, and talk about the weather. You nearly make me hate you. Have you blood in your veins or water? Have you a heart in your breast or a cold stone? I tell you this is a crime, it is a blasphemy. You call it religion: I call it a black sin against God."
Her terrible earnestness challenged Antonio to answer once and for all.
"Isabel," he said sternly. "Crime and blasphemy are hard words. You speak of God. I will speak of God too. If there is one thing I am sure of, it is that God has called me to live this life which I am living, and to do this work which I am doing. I am more sure of it than I am of these rocks under our feet. As for your father, God knows that I do not speak heartlessly; but your father's life is in God's hands, not mine. You can rid yourself of Mrs. Baxter and compel him to rest in England without forcing me to break my vows."
"Your vows, your precious vows, always your vows!" she cried, in anger and great contempt.
"Yes," he retorted instantly, "my vows, always my vows. They are precious to me indeed, and I will beg you not to speak of them lightly."
She faced him with increasing anger. But, before she could speak, Antonio suddenly repented himself of his sharpness.
"Isabel," he said, in quieter tones. "Think. You despise me for keeping my vows. But suppose I had vowed my vows to you. And suppose I should break them, for some other woman. What then?"
"I would kill her. And you too."
For a moment her wrathful excitement hindered her logical perceptions; but as soon as she recognized his meaning she cried:
"It's different, all different! I'm real; your Bride isn't. Besides, She has deserted you. She's run away, or She's dead. You are free."
"No, Isabel," he said. "Think again. Suppose to-day I should vow my vow to you. Suppose your father, or someone else, should pluck you suddenly from my side so that I could never find you again. Nay, more. Suppose you were untrue to me and that you abandoned me. Would you have me say: 'She has gone. I shall never see her again. To-morrow I will seek another bride?' No, Isabel, no. If you say Yes, I shan't believe it. I know your soul too well. Even if you broke yours, my vow would still be there, and you would despise me for not keeping it. Am I right or wrong?"
He had unguardedly lowered his tones to a perilous tenderness, and he was unconsciously gazing at her with the gaze she could never resist. Her lips lost their hardness and began to tremble, and her eyelids drooped over her eyes.
Antonio involuntarily recoiled from the danger. He knew in an instant that his fate was quivering in the balance. His heart had bled at every harsh word he spoke to her; and he knew that to sweep away the last shaken ruins of his defenses, she needed only to throw herself weeping into his arms. He knew that if she should once sob out, "Antonio, Antonio, don't send me away," his doom would then and there be sealed.
All this Antonio knew. But Isabel did not know it. His sudden movement of recoil stung her back into anger.
"Are you right or wrong?" she echoed bitterly. "You're right, of course. You always are. Even when you're wrong fifty times over, you can argue yourself into the right. I call it cowardly."
He exhaled a deep breath. The peril was past. Her scorn he could withstand.
"I have come to the end," she cried. "The very end. Listen. You are blighting my life, but I won't let you blight your own. Mark me well. This place is mine. These lands are mine. I have the right to go to-night and to set the whole abbey ablaze; and where will your work be then?"
The threat did not alarm him; but the cruelty of it, coming from such lips as hers, cut him to the marrow. He was on the point of retorting that the place was not hers at all, and that her father had deceived her on a wretched point of money. But her anguish was bitter enough without this new mortification; so he held his peace.
"I can make a bonfire of it this minute," she went on passionately. "I hate it. How I should love to see it blaze! But I won't. And I won't sell this place. And when I've left it on Thursday, I'll never come back till you seek me on your knees. Never!"
Still Antonio held his peace. Isabel picked up her little bag. But she did not turn immediately towards home. She stood awaiting his final word. When it failed to come her indignation rose to its climax.
"No!" she cried. "I've altered my mind. I will come back. I foresee the end. You will never seek me. You hate me. But I will come back. You'll go on slaving, slaving, starving, starving, praying, praying, and breaking hearts in the name of God. But I will come back. You'll succeed. You'll regain the abbey. You'll fill it with monks. But remember. I will come back. On the day of your triumph, I will be there. It isn't only you Southern people who love revenge. I will be there. I will come back!"
Antonio had been silently praying for sudden grace in his own dire need; but he ceased to pray for himself and prayed with all his soul for her. She turned to go.
They stood facing one another as they had stood so often during these two bitter days of their ordeal. Try as he would the monk could not conceal his agony of holy love; and under the spell of his gaze the devil of revengeful hate which had entered into Isabel rent her poor heart and fled away. They looked at each other a long time. Then, in a breaking voice, she said softly:
"Antonio. I don't hate you. I love you. This is the very last time. Do you send Isabel away? Is it true that I must go?"
With a sharp moan of anguish and with hands thrust out for mercy he gave his answer.
"For the love of Jesus Christ," he cried. "Go! And may the merciful God help us both!"
He closed his eyes in desperate prayer. But God and the Virgin Mother and the whole company of heaven seemed to have forsaken him. No light shown, no supernal fortitude came down. Instead of a vision of ministering angels, his mind's eyes saw only Isabel. Isabel, standing there. Isabel, weeping. Isabel, wounded to death by his cruel sword. Isabel, hoping against hope for his mercy. Isabel, his Isabel, rarer than gold, lovelier than the dawn, purer than snow, waiting to dart like a bird into the nest of his love.
He could fight no longer. Stepping one staggering step forward he held out his arms and opened his eyes.
She had vanished.
A moment later he caught sight of her pressing up the path above him. She was going swiftly, looking neither to the right hand nor to the left. Now and again a ray of the sinking sun shone upon her hair, till she seemed a queen crowned or a saint glorified.
With all his heart Antonio yearned to leap after her, to capture her like a shy creature of the woods, and to bear her back in triumph, seated on his shoulder as she had sat after the thunderstorm. But his limbs refused to obey. His feet seemed to have been rooted for centuries in the granite. He could not move an inch.
Two cypresses, which they had often halted to admire, hid her from his sight. A groan, which he could not stifle, broke from the monk. There was one more point in the path, one only, where she could reappear. Would she turn round? Would she look back? As he waited, red-hot pincers seemed to be working and worming within him as if they would have his heart out of his body. He felt as if he were bleeding at every pore.
She reappeared. She did not turn round. She did not look back. She was gone.