Chapter XV: Book VI: "ite, Missa Est" (1)

I

Having charged José to place himself at the disposal of Mrs. Baxter, Antonio took the road for Villa Branca about an hour after sunrise. Utter weariness had brought a few hours' sleep to his eyelids; but he felt unrested and unrefreshed. By the time he reached Santa Iria fatigue compelled him to hire a horse.

While his mount was a-saddling the monk sat musing outside the wine-shop. What was Isabel doing? Of what was she thinking? Had she slept? Was she truly hating him at last? Would she come once more to the cascade?

In answer to this last question he could hardly restrain himself from leaping on the half-ready horse and galloping off like a whirlwind to her presence. At the moment of his leaving the farm-house, two hours before, this all-day expedition to Villa Branca had seemed the height of prudence; but he suddenly saw it as the depth of cowardice and brutality. She would come to the cascade, in vain; and, later on, she would learn from José's lips how he had turned tail and run away. Antonio cringed and burned. A moment later, however, he knew that he had done right. She would not be at the cascade.

"To-morrow," he said to himself, with a dull pain gnawing in his cold and heavy heart, "I shall see her for the last time. She will make no sign. She will say good-bye as if there has been nothing between us. Blessed Mother of God, help us to the end!"

He took out Sir Percy's letter and perused it once more to distract his thoughts. He read:

_Dear Senhor da Rocha,--_

_A post just to hand apprises me of your gentility to my daughter and her governess. The fact that I fully expected such courteous behavior on your part does not diminish my gratitude in respect of it; and I beg you to believe in the sincerity of my regret that I shall be unable to present my acknowledgments in person._

_I indulge the hope that a proposal which I am about to make may not be unacceptable to you. From our mutual friend Mr. Austin Crowberry I learn that you wished to purchase the abbey domain, but that your offers were unacceptable to the Minister of Finances._

_I have paid a deposit of £500 to the chief of the Fazenda at Villa Branca, and am engaged to pay £300 on New Year's Day and the balance (£2500) in five half-yearly instalments. As I have become closely associated with an enterprise which will involve my residing alternately in Lisbon and London, I should find it convenient to transfer to yourself my whole bargain as regards the abbey. That is to say, I forfeit the £500 already paid and leave you to find £2800 on the dates above referred to. I also ask your acceptance of the larger articles of English furniture recently placed by me in the guest-house, and I have instructed Jackson, my man, to bring away personal luggage only._

_As my movements are erratic, perhaps you will indulge me by completing the business with my agents, Messrs. Lemos Monteiro and Smithson, Rua do Carmo, Lisbon, who have written to Villa Branca preparing the officials for your visit. Failing your approval I will make other arrangements; but, meanwhile, I beg that you will add to your unfailing kindness by taking care of the keys, and that you will believe me to be_

_Your obliged and obedient servant,_
_Percival Kaye-Templeman._

Once in the saddle, with the well-beloved music of horse-hoofs in his ears, Antonio found it easier to abstract his mind from bitter thoughts. He applied his whole brain to problems of finance. Two thousand five hundred pounds in two years and a half. At first it had staggered him; but he was going to take the risk. His own and José's hard cash hoardings would pay the New Year's Day instalment nearly twice over. By mortgaging the farm and the sea-sand vineyards, and by pledging his personal credit he could pay the July five hundred and keep two or three hundred towards the instalment due the following January, making up the balance from the year's wine-sales. Fifteen hundred pounds would remain payable; and this sum he hoped to raise in due course by a bold stroke involving a mortgage on the abbey itself.

The chief of the Fazenda received his visitor effusively. This time the monk was not required to lean against a pile of stolen books. He sat in the chief's own chair and was offered wine of the chief's own stealing. As three hundred pounds of Isabel's money had stuck to the chief's fingers the great man was more than willing to accept Antonio in Sir Percy's place; for he had just learned that the Englishman would be unable to meet his obligations, and he was mortally afraid of a reopening of the transaction in Lisbon. He even threw out mysterious hints as to further concessions which might be arranged. Antonio listened attentively. His conscience allowed him to plan the outwitting of the Portuguese Government as regards money which was not honestly theirs. But as soon as he perceived that the official was bent on more pickings for himself the monk became obtuse. He was not willing to assist any man in the work of more completely damning his soul; and, although Antonio clearly foresaw that he was making an enemy and preparing sore troubles for himself in the future, he steadfastly held out against temptation.

The autumn day was drawing to its twilight when Antonio, having given up his horse at Santa Iria, trudged up the path to his own door. Half the way home Isabel had queened his whole mind. On leaving Villa Branca he had sought to preoccupy himself with the most complicated arithmetic; but, little by little, Isabel had reclaimed her empire. As he mounted the doorstep his heart thumped heavily. Had she written? Had she sent a message by José? Or, most terrible and beautiful possibility of all, would he find her sitting in the house, as in her rightful place?

He entered. There was no Isabel enlightening the dim and cheerless room. He hurried to the table whereon, José was accustomed to leave the letters. There was nothing. His heart chilled and shrank. Still, there was to-morrow. Yes. He was certain to see her to-morrow.

José stamped in noisily and handed Antonio two keys.

"They have gone," he said.

So sharp a blade of anguish pierced his soul that Antonio let the keys fall on the brick floor.

"Gone?" he echoed. "Who? When? Why? Where?"

"The English senhoras," answered José. "They started about three o'clock, to Lisbon."

Antonio sank down upon a coffer. He had used up the last of his strength in tramping from Santa Iria, and he had eaten nothing all day.

"I don't understand it very well," continued José. "I reached the guest-house at half-past eight. I thought they weren't to leave until to-morrow. I worked under the Senhor Jaxo. He didn't hurry himself at all. Joanninha brought us cold meat and white bread and strong wine. Joanninha is the cook. She has the longest tongue, your Worship, in Portugal. She made me angry, talking about your Worship."

"About me? How?" asked Antonio. He felt sick and faint.

"She heard me say that your Worship would attend the senhoras to-morrow morning. She said: 'Where is his Excellency to-day? I suppose he's gone to see Senhor Jorge's Margarida.' I said: 'No, his Worship has something better to do. He has gone to Villa Branca to mind his own business, and it would be a good thing if everybody else would do the same.' There was an English servant in the room, called Ficha. She's maid to the Senhorita Isabel. Joanninha translated to her what I'd said, and they both laughed, and I was very angry."

"What has this to do with the senhoras going away in such a hurry?" asked Antonio. But, even as he finished putting the question, his own fears supplied the answer.

"It's nothing to do with the senhoras hurrying away at all," said José humbly. "I beg your Worship's pardon for repeating such nonsense. All I know is that some bells rang and the Senhor Jaxo went out, and when he came back he was in a great rage. Joanninha told me that the Senhorita Isabel had decided to go to her illustrious father at once, and that nobody dared oppose her."

"Did you see the senhoras? Were they well?"

"I think they were well, because I heard them quarreling," José answered. "The dark senhora, the old one, has a temper that made me tremble, your Worship. They went away, the senhoras and the servants in two old shut-up carriages, but they are going to hire a better carriage on the way. I saw the old senhora, when she handed me the keys. She sent you a long message, but I don't think Joanninha could translate it properly. So I asked would she write, but she didn't. They locked all up and gave me the keys. Then they went away. They didn't say when they will come back. I think, your Worship, that they are all mad."

"José," said his master, after a long silence, "I have eaten nothing all day. Let me break my fast. Afterwards I have something to tell you. Prepare me what you can while I change my clothes."

He climbed the steep and narrow stairs painfully. His cold tub revived him, and his old clothes gave him ease. But, as he lifted his worn cloak from its hook, the wound in his heart burst open afresh. He remembered how often Isabel had sat, in all her daintiness, upon that same cloak's clean but rusty folds; and how, on her own confession, she had "cried and cried and cried like a baby" at the sight of its threadbareness.

By the time he descended José had grilled two small trout and was placing a bottle of good white wine upon the table. Antonio's heart was wrung anew at the thought of the simple fellow's unfailing devotion. Isabel had come and had gone; but José remained, loving and serving his strange master with a dumb love passing the love of women. The monk forced his faithful disciple to sit down at table with him and to take his fair share of the dainty fish and the animating wine. When they had finished eating and drinking he said:

"José, I have been a good deal in and about the guest-house and the abbey since we saved the azulejos, and many strange things have happened. The end of it all is this. Here are the keys of the guest-house. Upstairs, in the green box, I have all the keys of the abbey. To-day, as you know, I have been to Villa Branca. We are in legal possession of the abbey domain, and everything in it. Within three years we must raise three thousand pounds. With God's help it can be done. The English people will never come back."

He closed his eyes wearily. When he half-opened them he saw José by the light of the one candle, bowing his head and silently repeating thankful prayers. The monk quailed. For himself, as well as for José, this ought to be a night of praise and rejoicing. Yet Antonio found it the darkest hour of his life. The abbey keys seemed no more than a few bits of metal. Or, if they were more than bits of metal, they were the keys of a prison, the keys which were locking Isabel outside his life.

He took his candle and went to bed. But, despite his weariness, he could not sleep. Where was she? In what rough inn, amidst what discomforts and indignities, was she lying? If he jumped up at once and tramped southward until he could find a horse, when would he overtake her? To-morrow, he calculated, about noon. He imagined himself thundering after her chariot, like a highwayman in a picture. He pictured her pretty alarm, her radiant joy, her gracious forgiveness, their ecstasy of reunion.

Suddenly the monk remembered with a shock that he had not said all his Office. Busy or idle, sick or well, glad or sad, he had never failed to recite it before. He still had None, Vespers, and Compline to say. Lighting the candle and opening his breviary he began to repeat the holy words. But he had not uttered half a dozen sentences before he shut the book with a snap.

Half an hour later he arose, put together all the keys, and went down stairs. The new moon had not set, and its brightness lured him forth from his narrow room into the peace of the night. As a matter of course he took the path to the abbey.

Although the ruts of wheels, her wheels, made him shiver he did not turn back. He opened the chapel with the long key she had so often handled, and sitting down in his old stall, he tried to say the rest of None; but a white form, her form, hindered him, and a soft, glad voice, her voice, cried: "Antonio, Antonio, Antonio--what a beautiful name!" He groped his way to his own cell, and he could almost see and hear her opening his cupboards. He hastened through the cloisters and escaped into the wood by the secret door.

Some dead leaves fled before him, their tripping sound was no lighter than the fall of her elfin feet. The moon suddenly peeped at him through a clearing; and he saw her moon-white shoulders. The chirrup of a brimming brook struck upon his ear; and he seemed to be carrying her once more in his arms, while she murmured: "Listen, Antonio, all the world is singing."

He knew that the guest-house must tear his wound wide open, and that he ought to hurry home to the farm; but an irresistible influence drew him on. He reached the broad path. He stood under the casement whence she had flung the white rose. It was still ajar.

He turned the key in the lock and entered the ghostly and silent house. There was enough moonlight in the salon to show him the blue ottoman whereon she had so often sat. He hurried out of the room with a heart ready to burst.

At the foot of the stairs he paused. They led to her chamber. Could he bear to cross its threshold, to lean out of the window as she had leaned out after the thunder, and to look at the bed where she had lain sobbing for his sake? He knew he could not bear it. But his intellect had ceased to govern him and he ascended the stairs.

A broad moonbeam lit up every corner of her chamber. Like a man dazed he lurched to the window. There were the roses and there were the thorns. He turned to gaze at her couch. The fine linen had been taken away; but there was the place where she had lain, there was the pillow which her golden head had pressed. What had her last night been? Had she hated him or did she love him still? Had she cursed God or had she prayed?

For a moment his mind turned the question over in a numb, impersonal way. Then he came back with a rush to himself and, in a single moment, his chalice of agony welled up and brimmed over. He flung himself down on his knees and stretched out desperate hands and hungry arms across the narrow bed.

Although long minutes passed his dry-eyed, stony anguish remained. But at last his inward, spiritual man spoke. Was he committing a grievous sin? Was he breaking, in spirit, a vow which he was only keeping in the letter? Had he forsaken the Creator for a creature?

Slowly, but very surely, his conscience framed the answer. No, he had not sinned. In all his desire of her there was still nothing of the carnal mind. He was racked and scorched by anguish, not because he had lost her love, but because he had been forced to break her heart by refusing her his own. She was a child, a poor lonely child with neither man nor woman to love her, nor any God to console her; and he, Antonio, had flung her back into a still blacker frost and sharper famine, to pine and wither without love and without faith. Yet, in all this, he had simply obeyed God. He had obeyed the God who commanded Abram to offer up Isaac, the God who "spared not His own Son, but freely gave Him up for us all."

The moonbeam softly faded from the chamber. But Antonio did not move. His weary limbs and exhausted brain could resist no longer; and, still kneeling against her pillow with his arms outstretched across her bed, he fell asleep.

II

When the monk awoke day was dawning. For a while memory failed him. But as soon as he understood that he was in Isabel's room he leaped up and hastened downstairs.

He knew that he ought to go straight home. But his feet, despite their soreness, turned towards the stepping-stones. He retraced the path by which she had left him, hardly thirty-six hours before. Past the cypresses, through the mimosas, he went; and before the sun rose he was standing in the icy spray of the thunderous waterfall. He longed to plunge into the crystal pool; but her invisible presence abashed him, and with an ever-sharpening pain he hurried away.

As he regained the farm, he found José burning some dead leaves. Why could he not tear down these clinging memories of Isabel from his heart, as José could tear down ivies from the trees, and fling them a-top of the glowing, fuming pyre? The gust of pale, acrid smoke which nipped his nostrils was bitter-sweet.

After a dip in the brook he drank some of the sham coffee and forced down a hunk of coarse bread. But when he faced his routine he found that he could neither work nor pray. The black and red letters in his breviary danced impishly before his eyes; and when he took up a pen to write out some accounts he marked the paper with more blots than figures. Both door and window were wide open to the morning breeze; yet the room suffocated him.

At last a plan formed in Antonio's brain and he did not delay its execution. Stuffing a piece of bread in his pocket he sought out José and said:

"To-morrow my hard work will begin. To-day I am going to Navares. After to-night I will not leave you so much alone."

He set out, striding northward with long strides. Every stride was a symbol of his renunciation; for he knew that by this time Isabel would have left her inn and that every moment was taking her farther southward to Lisbon. On he pressed. As landmark after landmark came in sight a flood of old memories diluted his bitter potion of new-brewed sorrow. He lived over again the afternoon of his dusty march from the monastery amid a throng of monks and soldiers and the evening of his solitary return. But not for long. An hour before the white houses of Navares shone in the morning sun Isabel had once more become the sole tenant of his mind.

The doors of the Navares' corn-factor's granary, where the monks had held their council, were wide open; but Antonio did not pause to look inside. As on the night of his flight, he hurried through the town and only rested when he came to the knoll where he had bivouacked twice before. Thence, after munching a little bread, he took the short cut through the maize-fields to the village of the old cura; for the old cura's grave was the goal of his hasty pilgrimage.

By an irony of fate a rustic wedding had drawn the whole population to the church and churchyard. Their mirth so mocked the pilgrim's mood that he had a mind to go away. But he mixed with the throngs until his resentment at their gaiety was turned to thankfulness for the excess of human joy over human sorrow. At last a horn was blown from the door of a neighboring barn, and the crowd swept out of the churchyard like stampeding buffaloes.

The plain grave of the old cura lay in a sheltered corner on the north side of the chancel. Pious hands had brightened it with a yellow and purple nosegay that very morning. Antonio did not kneel down. He simply uncovered his head and strove to pray. For five minutes it was like chewing chaff. Some devil whispered in the monk's ear that his errand was not only silly, but in doubtful taste. The old cura was a saint, no doubt; but what had so rough a diamond to do with so soft and lustrous and exquisite a pearl as Isabel? Thus spake the devil, but Antonio refused his ear. Knowing that prayer comes with praying, he prayed on.

Not until he had replaced his hat on his head and was about to go were his prayers answered. But when the answer came, it was an answer indeed. It almost struck him down, like the great light which struck down Saul on the way to Damascus, and he was forced to lean against the church wall. It was an answer which both healed the worst of his grief and showed him the most of his duty in a single flash. It thrust into his hand a golden key to the whole mystery of Isabel, past and future.

Like a man whose shoulders have suddenly been eased of a burden he swung out homewards, holding his head high. Without knowing it, he talked to himself aloud, uttering broken phrases of hope and thankfulness. Yes, he had found the key, the master-key to all that had happened. As he strode along he recalled his association with Isabel from the beginning, and there was no lock his key did not fit.

Even the problem which had tried his faith most sorely was solved. In confiding to him her story of the mysterious influence which he had begun to exercise over her, four years before she saw his face, Isabel had declared that their lives were interfused in an irresistible destiny. She had spoken of this as a fact more undeniable than the sun and moon. She evidently believed with her whole soul that God's hand had brought them together. Yet Antonio, all through her pleading, had remained more persuaded than ever that the selfsame God had called him to the celibate life. And the apparent impossibility of reconciling these two equally clear, equally honest convictions had kindled a fiery ordeal for the monk's faith. The only way out of it seemed to be that all inward illumination was a delusion--_totum corpus tenebrosum_, "the whole body full of darkness"--and that perhaps there was no Divine Enlightener at all. But this wonderful new thought which had come to him at the old cura's grave explained everything. He thrust it into the most complicated wards of his spiritual doubts, and it turned as smoothly as the damascened key was wont to turn in the lock of the chapel. The doors of Isabel's soul rolled open before his eyes, and a bright light shone into the furthest cranny.

As for his duty to her in the present and in the future, he understood it no less certainly than he understood her chaste love for him in the past. And, as soon as this duty was plain, he made haste to begin doing it; for it was a duty of prayer, of specific, faithful, heroic, loving, unceasing prayer. He prayed as he walked, with increasing exultation.

So rapt was he by his holy work that Antonio hardly noticed the difference between the dusty, lonely road and the cobbled streets of noisy Navares. He pressed southward without a pause. Was he not going home? After a day and a night of banishment had not the farm once more become the tranquil home of his body, and had not the chapel once more become the rapturous home of his soul? He strode the last long league of his homeward journey as if it had been the first; and when he met José at the gate his face was shining like an angel's.

True to his word, Antonio rose early the next morning and threw himself body and soul into hard work. Now that the abbey domain had come under his care, there were hundreds of things to be done. As the sunny and well-drained slopes were exceptionally suitable for the culture of a profitable amber-colored wine, Antonio decided to double the area of the monk's old vineyard immediately. In order to effect this extension and to repair the damage done by seven years' neglect, it became necessary to engage nearly a score of helpers, half a dozen of whom would have to be retained in permanent employ. José, with one resident laborer, continued to live at the farm, while the monk quietly resumed occupation of his own cell in the monastery.

On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, Antonio dined at the farm with José; and on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, José dined with his master beside the stream in the monastery kitchen. At these week-night meals, the conversation was usually a review of the day's operations and a debate as to the work of the morrow; but on Sundays, when dinner was eaten ceremoniously in the guest-house, such topics were not mentioned, and the talk was of the great world's doings as chronicled in Antonio's English paper, of Portugal's troubles, and, above all, of churchly and holy things.

Not only during these Sunday talks, but also throughout their work-a-day intercourse, José was conscious of a change in Antonio. Hitherto, the monk had simply accepted the shaggy fellow's dumb affection; but, after the day of his visit to the old cura's grave, he began to show that he requited it as well. The last remains of his aloofness vanished, his speech grew gentler, and he became more watchful of José's health and comfort. Nor was the monk's manner changed towards José alone. In all things and to all persons he was more tender and less cold.

On the long winter evenings the two men busied themselves with blue pigments and white glazes, until they succeeded in fabricating tolerable copies of the two broken azulejos. When this was achieved, they began a series of experiments, with a view to distilling a new liqueur from eucalyptus. By rashly gulping down a mouthful of the first pint, José almost burned out his tongue. Nevertheless, they persevered; and, in the long run, the monkish talent for cordial-making enabled Antonio to mollify the harshness of the fiery elixir, and to render it palatable. In January they shipped samples to agents in fever-cursed regions of Spanish America, and offered to supply the liqueur in bulk at a high price.

Meanwhile, Antonio was waxing stronger in faith, and hope, and love. Every day he recited the whole of his Office in his old stall, sometimes with José's assistance, sometimes alone. He began also to hear Mass in the village church every Wednesday and Friday, and to say the whole rosary every Sunday afternoon. In meditating on the fifteen Mysteries, he habitually applied them to the case of Isabel; and, somehow, these thinkings never became trite or stale. In pursuance of his plan for Isabel's well-being, he redoubled his prayers, and offered half his Mass-hearings and communions with the same intention.

The winter passed and the spring came; and still he had not heard a word from her or about her. Sometimes a memory of her would suddenly overwhelm him. When he dined at the farm with José there seemed to be always three persons, not two, at the table. He felt that she was sitting at his right hand, where she had sat when he gave her the painted bowl; and so strong was his sense of her presence that he would often halt in the midst of a sentence, as if to ask her pardon for the dryness of the talk. After the morrow of her flight, he never visited the stepping-stones, although he repeatedly gave José minute instructions for the conserving of the pool's beauties. As for Isabel's chamber, he locked it up, and never re-entered it. Yet, in spite of this reverence for everything she had touched, he never moped or repined. He confided Isabel, as he had confided the fate of the abbey, to the might and love of God.

When July came, he made a novena in honor of Saint Isabel, the holy queen of Portugal, whose silver shrine was the glory of the Poor Clare's great convent opposite Coimbra, on the heights above the Mondego. And in August he received a long letter from young Crowberry. Seven of its eight pages were concerned with England's theological and ecclesiastical affairs: but in the midst of the page devoted to personal matters, the young man had written:

_Of course, you know that Isabel has taken her father to live at Weymouth. I never see them; but I hear they are both well, and that Sir Percy has become quite reasonable and docile. Have they told you how she put her foot down and sent away that Excellent Creature, Mrs. Baxter? If she hadn't pulled up Sir Percy I'm told he would have died. Now, what did you really and truly think of Isabel? Did you see much of her, or did she sulk? Tell me when you write._

Antonio wrote a long letter in reply; but he did not tell young Crowberry what he really and truly thought about Isabel, nor did he so much as mention her name. His novena was answered. It was enough for him to know that Sir Percy lived, and that she was well.

The grape-harvest in September was a good one, and it was only by cutting an hour from his sleep-time that the monk could fill full his appointed measures of work and prayer. Then came October, with its vintage of memories. On the anniversary of Senhor Jorge's serao Antonio could be serene; for Margarida had just been happily married to a handsome and honorable young man of Leiria, the son of a prosperous builder. But with the approach of the anniversary of his first meeting with Isabel he grew troubled; and, to divert his thoughts, he departed hurriedly for Lisbon, where he had business to transact with the shippers of his wines and cordials. In Lisbon he learned that a journey to England would be to his advantage. But England meant Isabel; so, on the anniversary of her flight from the guest-house, he turned his back on the capital and hastened home.

By mortgaging his farm the monk succeeded in paying the third instalment of the abbey's price. He faced the New Year with less than twenty pounds of ready money, and with the obligation to find five hundred by the first of July. A request for a more flexible arrangement was flung back at him by the Fazenda official with vindictive contempt. As the spring advanced, Antonio laid his plan for the immediate outright purchase of the abbey on a fifteen hundred pound mortgage before four separate persons; but without exception they either could not or would not entertain it. In these circumstances he felt bound to cut down his gifts to village charities and his bounties to the hangers-on of the countryside. As a result, José came home one day with a black eye, received while he was punishing three village loafers for calling the Senhor da Rocha a skin-flint and a miser.

By May-day Antonio's sales of stock and the pledging of his credit had brought him in only three hundred pounds, and there was nothing left that he could pawn without crippling himself hopelessly in the near future. But he was not cast down. He was doing his utmost, and he calmly left the rest with God.

III

Very early one morning, at the end of May, Antonio heard light footsteps passing his cell. Although he sprang up immediately from bed he could not open his door in time to see the intruder's face or form. He caught no more than half a moment's glimpse of a slender and darkly garbed figure disappearing round the angle of the corridor.

Having scrambled into his clothes, he started in pursuit. The light tap-tap of shod feet on the stones told him that his visitor was making for the chapel. The monk, who was barefooted, followed noiselessly.

Peeping into the chapel through the little door amid the azulejos, Antonio saw a tall spare man kneeling before the altar. Even if his back had not been turned to Antonio it would have been impossible to see his face, because he was hiding it in his hands. The stranger wore a long black cloak, uncomfortably thick and heavy for the torrid Portuguese summer. But it was plain that he did not find it too warm. With long, thin, death-pale hands, he drew its folds more closely round his body; and, as he did so, the familiar movement revealed his identity to Antonio.

It was Father Sebastian.

Antonio hurried forward and knelt at his side. But Sebastian did not move, nor did he cease praying for four or five minutes; and when at last he turned towards Antonio it was without the slightest sign of surprise. Rising painfully, he left the altar and made a gesture, inviting Antonio to follow him.

As Sebastian had stood next to Antonio in juniority among the choir-monks, the stalls of the two men were side by side. Sebastian sat down in his old place and Antonio did likewise. The chapel was dim; but the younger man could see that the elder's body had wasted almost to a skeleton. Yet there was nothing repellent about him. The bloom on his cheeks and the fire in his eyes had the solemn beauty of a sunset in an autumnal forest. When he began to speak his voice was so soft and sweet that it seemed to come from some far-off holy height.

"To-day, Father Antonio," he said, "completes the ninth year since you sat on the cloister roof and heard the hoofs of the horsemen who had come to thrust us from this house. And, this morning, it is just nine years since you were raised to the priesthood. I asked our Lord to give me strength for the journey, so that I might spend this anniversary with you. He has heard me."

"Who told you that I was here?" Antonio asked.

Sebastian did not reply. But there was that in his eyes which gave Antonio a sufficient answer. Here was a saint who walked in the light.

"Nine years," mused Sebastian aloud. "And you have not yet said your first Mass."

"No," replied Antonio. "But God is good. Every year He enables me to send a little cask of wine for the altar to a poor church in England. Six days a week I work amid wine; and is not wine the matter of His great Sacrament? It consoles me to know that although I cannot say Mass, I can serve His table. Although I cannot, like Mary, his mother, bear Him in my hands, I can be like those other Marys at the sepulcher. _Emerunt aromata ut venientes ungerent Jesum_: 'They brought sweet spices that they might anoint Jesus.'"

"He is not a God of the dead, but of the living," said Sebastian, in sweet, far-off tones. "We do not offer a dead Christ. Say rather that you are like that favored unknown to whom He sent two disciples saying, _Ubi est diversorium ubi pascha cum discipulis meis manducem_: 'Where is the guest-chamber where I may eat the Passover with My disciples?' But come. Our time together is short, and there is much to say. First of all, I have brought your breviary which you charged me to keep."

He pointed to a package lying on the Prior's seat. Antonio rose and took it with joyful gratitude. When he returned to his stall he said:

"Suffer my questions first. Whence do you come? Where have you lived these nine long years?"

"For a few months I was with the English fathers in Lisbon," Sebastian answered. "They were kind; but when it became plain that the Portuguese Benedictine congregation must come to an end, I crossed Spain and sought asylum at the Montserrat, where men used to believe the Holy Grail was treasured. There was much work for me to do there in the School of Music; and I found strength to do it, for we lived like eagles high up in the pure air, three thousand feet above the sea. But Madrid followed the example of Lisbon. Greedy eyes were cast on our possessions. They accused us of being Carlists, just as in Portugal they accused us of being Miguelistas: and only eighteen months after leaving this abbey, I was again an exile. Since then I have dwelt in three religious houses; and every one of them has been suppressed."

"Can it be," asked Antonio uneasily, "that the Orders are themselves to blame, as men say? Here we dwelt in simplicity and piety, living by our own labor and feeding the poor. But was this house an exception? Had the majority of other monks indeed sunk into gluttony and sloth?"

"In every monastery from which I have been driven," said Sebastian, "our evictors poured regrets and compliments upon us. It was always the misdeeds of 'others,' for which we had to suffer. But whenever I questioned an exiled community, I found they had received the same compliments. Those mysterious 'others' have still to be found. According to the statesmen, all religious houses individually are fountains of light and blessing to their neighbors; but collectively they are a dark curse on the nations."

"Unbelieving men are determined to mulct us of all we have," said Antonio, "and therefore they must needs invent crimes to suit our punishment. They hang us first and indict us afterwards."

"They oppress us," agreed Sebastian, "in the great and sacred name of liberty. But the avarice of godless men is the mainspring of it all. I have seen five houses confiscated 'for the good of the People'; and in not one case have the People received a third of the plunder. But enough of this. Tell me your own story."

"Where is the Prior?"

"He is dead. He died in Belgium."

"The Cellarer?"

"He is dead. He died in Brazil."

"Father Isidoro?"

"He is dead. He died in Spain."

With a sinking heart, Antonio named the choir-monks one by one; and, after each name, Sebastian answered: "He is dead." Father Sebastian believed that Brother Cypriano was still alive; but, of the Fathers, only he and Antonio were left.

"_Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine_," murmured Antonio.

"_Et lux perpetua luceat eis_," Sebastian responded.

"To-morrow morning," added Sebastian, "will be the anniversary of the Abbot's last Mass. If our Lord will give me strength I shall say Mass at this altar once more."

After a pause, Antonio began to relate his history from the moment of his quitting the council at Navares. Every fact that threw light on his operations for regaining the abbey he stated with precision. But he did not mention Margarida, and he referred to Isabel only as Sir Percy's moneyed daughter. When he had finished, Sebastian looked at him with steadfast pitiful eyes and said:

"These have been great sacrifices and cruel hardships for the sake of our Lord, and they will not be in vain. But you have not told me all. My brother, I feel that you have kept silence concerning your most costly sacrifice, your bitterest ordeal. Why not tell me all?"

Antonio's pride rebelled. The desire to ease his heart by pouring out its hoard of solitary grief was strong; but his gentleman's instincts of reticence were stronger. For some time he remained silent. But an inward voice sternly bade him speak; and he spoke.

He told the short tale of Margarida. Then he unfolded the whole case of Isabel, glossing over nothing. He scrupulously added an account of his actions and feelings on the night and morrow of her flight. When he had finished he sat with bowed head and waited for Sebastian's judgment. But Sebastian remained silent.

"You do not speak," said Antonio. "Perhaps I have given you the impression that my ordeal was carnal, and that this English maiden was a direct emissary of Satan. If you think so, I have spoken blunderingly indeed."

"Satan exists and he is busy enough," returned Sebastian. "But in trying to find the cause of any strange thing that happens I have learned to think of Satan last. Nearly all our temptations arise from our own self-love and carelessness. Many other temptations are God's provings and perfectings of our spiritual mettle. Satan is not omnipresent and his angels are only a shrunken legion. But have patience. Let me think."

He resumed his meditation. At last he turned and said:

"This was not a temptation from the devil. Neither did it spring from corruptness in your heart or in hers. I am persuaded that our Lord's work is somehow in it all. Perhaps you will never know in this world what work it is; but that is not your affair."

"Sometimes," said Antonio slowly, "it troubles my conscience. As I told you just now, I didn't hold out to the very end. I gave way within my heart; but when I opened my eyes she had vanished."

"You do wrong to be troubled," said Sebastian. "You held out to the bitter end of the trial God had appointed you. When you told this Isabel finally to go, she went. That was the end. All that happened afterwards was mere reaction."

"The next day," persisted Antonio, "I did not say my Office. My heart bled for her as it never bled for the Abbot, or for you, Sebastian, or for this place."

"It bled for her, not for yourself," Sebastian explained. "In profane love, the lover who thinks he is grieving for the beloved is only grieving over his own loss of her, over his own short bereavement, or over his own humiliation and discomfiture. With you, Antonio, it was not so. You did not wish to take; you wished to give."

"Do not make me out a saint when I know I am a sinner," said Antonio, almost sharply. "If she had been old, and tart, and ugly, would my heart have bled for her all the same?"

"Perhaps not," Sebastian retorted. "But, if she had been old and ugly, neither would there have been much virtue in giving her up. Do not complain of her beauty. You had heroic work to do, and her beauty helped you to do it better. In England there are Puritans who would say that these azulejos and these gilded carvings must hinder us from doing the Work of God."

"I do not follow you," said Antonio.

"Tell me," Sebastian asked abruptly, "how you stand with the payments you have bound yourself to make."

Antonio drew from his breast an account over which he had pored and pored for a month without making the adverse balance a vintem less. Sebastian conned it attentively from beginning to end. Then he said:

"Follow me to my old cell and bring me paper and ink."

He rose with so much difficulty that Antonio had to support him; but once fairly on his feet he moved quickly over the pavement. At the door of the cell Antonio left him; but before he had finished cutting a new quill and replenishing the sand-sprinkler in his own room, Sebastian rejoined him. Sitting down painfully at the tiny table he swiftly wrote a very short letter. Without reading it over he folded it, sealed it with a small brass seal which he drew from his pocket, and addressed it to a Spanish nobleman in a small town of the Asturias.

"Let this be despatched at once," he said. "There is no time to lose."

"A post leaves Navares in three days," replied Antonio. "José shall take the letter there this morning."

"It is well," said Sebastian. "And when this José returns, let me see him as soon as he is rested."

The cell was brighter than the chapel, and Antonio perceived that his friend was become almost as insubstantial as a ghost. He called to mind a passage from a new English poet about a man who, having wasted to a shadow, was ready to be resumed into the Great Shadow, the shadow and blackness of death. But Sebastian seemed rather to be a pure white flame, waiting to be drawn into the Great Light.

"You have not broken your fast," cried Antonio in shame and alarm. "You must eat. I have good wine. You must rest. You must sleep. When the heat is over we will talk again, and you shall see José."

"It has been meat and drink and rest and sleep to see you again, Father Antonio, and to hear what you have told me," the other answered. "But you are right. I must sleep. I will obey your orders."

At breakfast Sebastian ate and drank nothing save an ounce or two of bread and an egg beaten up in white wine. When the meal was over he declined Antonio's pressing offer of a comfortable bed from the guest-house, and lay down on the straw mattress in his own cell. There he soon fell into so profound a sleep that he did not hear Antonio drenching the window with bucketful after bucketful of water to counteract the blazing heat.

At night José, wearing his best coat and his most diffident manner, dined with the two monks in a corner of the refectory. Sebastian, with bright eyes and glowing cheeks, did most of the talking. He praised the wine and the food, although he touched little of either; and throughout the repast he was full of an eager cheerfulness such as Antonio had never seen in him before. After dinner he drew from José an exact account of his mental and spiritual state: for Antonio had told him of the poor fellow's desire to become a monk.

"José," he demanded, at the end of his questioning, "You have learnt Latin. Can you translate, _Irascimini: et nolite peccare_?"

"I can, Father," answered José proudly. "It means, 'Be angry and sin not.'"

"So it does. You did well to be angry with the greedy and lazy good-for-nothings who spake evil of Father Antonio. But you did ill to thrash them and to come home with that black eye. Go on being angry with sin; but learn to love sinners."

"Can't I be a monk, Father? May I not have the habit?" pleaded José, in consternation. "I am glad I thrashed them; but I'm sure I shan't need to thrash them again."

"The habit is a comfort and a help," Sebastian replied, "but we must not give it you to-night. Live as you have been living, in the love of our Lord and in obedience to Father Antonio. For the present you can wear no habit more acceptable to God than the coat in which you do your daily duty about the farm. Do not hang your head. I foresee that an abbot will once more rule within these walls, and that you, José will die as one of his family. Have patience."

A sudden change came over Sebastian as he ceased speaking. The hectic bloom faded from his cheeks, and the heavy lids drooped over his preternaturally bright eyes. A moment later he sank forward against the table. Antonio and José sprang at once to his help. He had swooned. They made haste to bear him bodily to his cell. It was an easy task; for beyond the weight of his cloak there seemed to be hardly anything to carry. After they had laid him on his bed and dashed water from the torrent in his face, he revived and said faintly:

"Thanks, thanks, thanks, I am well. Leave me. I shall say mass to-morrow at five o'clock. Leave me."

He fell into another unnatural sleep. But Antonio did not leave him. All through the short warm night he watched and prayed. At last the dull chant of the Atlantic was drowned under the glittering trills of near blackbirds. Day dawned. The sun rose above Sebastian's Spain; and the sleeper awoke.

He answered the traditional _Benedicamus Domino_ with so ringing a _Deo gratias_ that Antonio thought a miracle had happened. Sebastian looked stronger and healthier than ever before. Even José, who had been sleeping heavily on the corridor floor, was aroused by Sebastian's two words.

They repaired to the chapel. There Father Sebastian heard the confessions of his two companions. Without delay he proceeded to the sacristy. Antonio followed him and began to lift from its drawer one of the less costly vestments which had never been taken away. It was green and gold, as appointed in the Ordo for that day. But Sebastian, having bidden him replace it, drew forth a black chasuble, simply embroidered with a plain white cross. Antonio felt justly rebuked. When the Abbot was dead, and the Prior and all the fathers save two, surely it was meet that the survivor's Mass should be a Mass of requiem.

From his pocket-case, Sebastian took the unconsecrated wafers which he had brought from Lisbon. He finished his vesting and preparation and they re-entered the chapel. José was kneeling devoutly on the lowest step of the sanctuary. Outside, hundreds of birds were in full boisterous song.

Father Sebastian went to the foot of the altar and began to say Mass. He uttered the words quickly and clearly, and made the genuflections without difficulty. Indeed, Antonio, as he poured water over the white and fleshless fingers at the psalm Lavabo, marveled more than ever at the miracle of his friend's sudden strength. At the commemoration of the dead, the intensity of Sebastian's recollection seemed to make the whole chapel thrill and throb, like a bed of reeds in a wind.

After he had given the most holy Body to Antonio and to José, Sebastian concluded the Mass and returned to the sacristy with a firm tread. He laid aside the sacred vestments and came back to his old stall in order to make his thanksgiving. Antonio, also in his old stall, knelt at Sebastian's side.

The ascending sun cleared the top of the hill and shone into the chapel. The diadem of the Holy Child blazed with glory. In all the trees happy birds redoubled their songs.

Half an hour passed. José, arising noisily, made Antonio open his eyes. But Father Sebastian knelt without moving against the sloping book-board. José clattered out. Still Father Sebastian did not move. Antonio waited, revering his friend's ecstasy of communion with his Lord. He waited long. But meanwhile a broad sunbeam had been working westward; and at last it poured its burning gold upon the bended head.

Antonio was stepping softly forward to screen his friend from the fierce ray when a sudden instinct bade him kneel down and look into Sebastian's face. But Sebastian's wide-open, rapturous eyes did not gaze into Antonio's; nor were they beholding any earthly thing. So beautiful was the sight that Antonio's exclamation was more a shout of joy than a cry of fear. Into his mind there rushed the words of Isaias which had been Sebastian's favorite scripture in the old days, _Regem in decore suo videbunt oculi ejus_: "His eyes shall see the King in His beauty; they shall behold the land which is very far off."

Antonio and José buried the body of Sebastian that night on the sunny side of the cloister, between the third and fourth pillars, just under the tile-picture of Enos, with its legend, _Ambulavit cum Deo et non apparuit, quia tulit eum Deus_: "He walked with God and was no more seen, for God took him."

IV

On the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, just thirty days after Sebastian's death, Antonio heard Mass in the village church. Forty-eight hours were left to him before his payment to the Villa Branca Fazenda became due. In the strong-box at home he had only three hundred and twelve pounds towards his debt of five hundred. Nothing had been received from Sebastian's friend in Spain, although sufficient time had elapsed for a reply to reach the farm. Nevertheless, Antonio rose from his knees at the end of Mass and took his way homeward with a serene spirit.

From the point where he and José had seen the ruts of young Crowberry's wheels nearly two years before, the monk heard thumping hoofs. He gazed down the road and saw an advancing cloud of dust. A few moments later he made out the milk-white Branco which had succeeded coal-black Negro as the Navares' post-horse. Thomé, the postman, drew rein and handed Antonio two letters.

The first was from young Crowberry. It ran:

_Dear Friend da Rocha._

_You will be sorry to hear that my father died last week, suddenly. I know you will pray for him; and I hope you will pray for me too._