Chapter XVIII: Book VI: "ite, Missa Est" (4)

The blue eyes which looked at him so wistfully as she spoke were the blue eyes which had brimmed with tears twenty years before when she had "cried and cried and cried like a baby" at the sight of his worn-out cloak and had sobbed: "Poor Antonio! You poor Antonio! My poor Antonio!" His heart broke at the sight. After twenty years she had come back. Amidst the old sights and sounds she was sitting hardly an arm's length from him. Isabel had come back. But in less than one little hour they must stand up for the last parting and he would never see her in this world any more. And meanwhile a frosty monster of false reserve was devouring their tiny store of golden moments one by one.

Antonio sprang to his feet.

"Isabel," he said desperately, "you think I didn't care. You think I never loved you. Listen. The night you went away I was ready to drop down with fatigue and hunger after riding and tramping from sunrise to sunset over the mountains. But how did I spend that dreadful night? I spent it in your chamber, kneeling on the floor against your bed, drinking deep of such anguish for you as I pray God you have never tasted for me. How did I spend the next day? Only by miracle upon miracle was I held back from thundering after you on the fleetest horse in the country-side. Hour after hour that day I tramped, tramped, tramped north, forgetting God and thinking only of you, till I came to a saint's grave."

She rose hastily and raised one slender white hand, as if to ward off his burning words. But he would not be put to silence.

"Call me a sentimentalist, a madman, an apostate, anything you will," he cried. "But here is the sheer truth. Whenever I sat down to eat and drink at the farm you were there, invisibly but undeniably there, sitting at my right hand. Whenever I went into my cell I heard you searching in the cupboard for something you could not find. You haunted these woods all night and all day. To enter the guest-house was like being dragged into a chamber of torture. More. Believe me or not, as you will. To-day is the first time for twenty years that I have set foot on these stones, or set eyes on yonder cascade, or touched this boulder with my hand. Isabel, in memory of you I have charged José to tend this place like a shrine; but I behold it now for the first time since I stood here, at sunrise, the day after you went away."

His words burst from him like a stampede of eager, bright-eyed creatures suddenly released from long captivity. It was as though he would storm and batter down the gates of her heart and reclaim his ancient place. She recoiled from him.

"No more, no more!" she cried. "I did not come for this. Antonio, in God's name, no more!"

"It is in God's name," he retorted, "that I must and will say more. Isabel, when you went away I did not know I loved you. I thought my grief was no more than an aching, bleeding wound of sympathy, of pity. But, little by little, I came to know that I loved you. Not with profane love. I came to believe that our Lord had vouchsafed to me a love such as unfallen man would have had for unfallen woman, and I believed that you, Isabel, loved me with as holy a love in return. It was not a love which weaned me from the love of God. It was a way of loving God more, and of loving Him more perfectly. I even learned to thank God for our separation; because I knew my human weakness and I knew how swiftly this love of you, which was also a love of God, might be changed into a deceitful love of self. But to-day what do I find? That your love for me was only a delusion, a phase, a stage, a means to another end--that, and that only."

He strode up and down, as if he would shake from his shoulders this last and heaviest of his griefs. But when he reached the spot where he had pronounced his final answer twenty years before he heard a step at his side and felt a light touch on his hand.

"No, Antonio," she said "No. Not that and that only."

He started violently. She was facing him, with downcast eyes and with the rose-pink of girlhood once more glowing in her cheeks. Her voice was low and sweet.

"Antonio," she said very slowly, "how strange it all is, and wonderful! You sent me away in autumn, when the sun made haste to set and the storm had torn the leaves from the trees. I have come back in the spring, amidst thousands of birds and millions of flowers. I have come back in the sunshine to find that you loved me even more than I loved you."

Her voice died away so gently that Antonio could not be sure whether the headlong waterfall and the delirious birds had not robbed him of some sweet saying. At last she spoke again and said:

"Yes, Antonio, you loved me more than I loved you. But do not think that I loved you little or lightly. Above all, do not fear that my love is dead. Antonio, I will tell you what I had never meant to tell anybody in this world."

He waited a long time before she began her confession. To help her he bent his gaze upon the ground. At last he heard her speaking, so softly that he had to strain his ears to listen.

"I, too," she said, "cherished such a love. But I am no theologian. Although my love of you had awakened my love of God, I thought it was wrong to go on cherishing it after its work was done. For years and years I thrust it away as a snare. I so crowded my waking hours with prayer and labor and study that no time was left for other thoughts. But, time after time--not thrice, or ten times, but five hundred--my nights have been rosy with the same wonderful dream. In my dream I seem to have entered into the bliss of heaven, and to be moving in the fullness of the love of God, as in a soft glory of life-giving golden light. At the beginning of my dream it is always a churchly heaven, pillared and domed, with holy chants drifting hither and thither like clouds of incense and with clouds of incense mounting upward like holy chants. But, little by little, it changes. The dim dome widens and brightens into a blue sky, with the smoke of the incense sailing in it like pearly clouds; and the stark pillars soften into tree trunks crowned with cool foliage and hung with clinging roses. Instead of rolling organs I hear the surf of a summer sea breaking on soft sand, and instead of the chants I hear the birds, and thousands of brooks ringing like little bells. Cool grass, gay with wild flowers, spreads itself in the place of golden streets and marble pavements. But, all the time, the same holy light is over it all, like the light before a summer sunset among green hills. Then I become conscious that the heaven I am walking in is not some strange unhomely land high above the stars. _Video cœlum novunt et terram novam_: 'I see a new heaven and a new earth,' and I know, with sudden joy, that I am walking in this beautiful world, made new, purged of evil and pain, and wholly conformed to the mind of God.

"My dream unfolds always in the same way. Gradually I see that the woods in which I am walking are woods I have walked in before. The voices of the sea and the brooks are good to hear, because they are the voices of old friends. At last I push past a mimosa, on fire with golden flowers like a burning bush, and I halt on the margin of this pool. I wait, with the cascade rumbling at me like thunder and flashing at me like lightning. I turn round; and, without hearing your footfall, I find you at my side. Then we wander off together, sometimes down deep ravines, sometimes up through pines to brown moorlands purple with heather, sometimes along the banks of lakes and rivers, or along the sea-shore, with the holy light always over us and with God's love nearer to us than our own souls. That is my dream."

After pausing a little, she added:

"At first I thought my dream was a snare. I say again that I am not a theologian. Still, I tried to puzzle out if such dreams were against sound doctrine. At first I feared they were. But I came to see that the words of our Lord, 'In the resurrection they neither marry nor are married,' referred to marrying of an earthly kind. Many another scripture came to my mind; and many another thought came to comfort me. Our Mother, the Blessed Virgin crowned in heaven--is she not a woman still? And do we not think of this saint or of that as still a man or still a woman, as the case may be? Is the life hereafter to be a blank Nirvana? Will it be less richly personal than the life we are living now? But these are only my own poor thoughts, worth less than nothing. I rest rather in two great scriptures. _In domo Patris mei mansiones multœ sunt_: 'In my Father's house are many mansions.' And again, 'Eye hath not seen, nor hath the ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man what things God hath prepared for those who love Him.' But let me be plain to the end. My dreams are beyond my control; and, when I am awake, I do not willingly dwell on these thoughts."

The big bell of the monastery, vocal once more after seven-and-twenty years of silence, struck twelve. The monk and the nun listened to the strokes without speaking. Before the last echoes died away Brother Cypriano rang the Angelus.

"_Angelus Domini nuntiavit Mariœ_," said Antonio, with bowed head. And Isabel responded:

"_Et concepit de Spiritu sancto_."

When the pious exercise was finished she said:

"It is time to go."

"No," cried Antonio, suddenly perceiving that she had picked up her cloak and mantilla. "You must not go."

"I must go," she said, smiling gently. "Antonio, things are changed indeed. In the old days your great aim was to drive me away."

"You must not go," he said, with the utmost energy. "The Duchess of Ribeira Grande is at the guest-house, with servants. There is room for you and for your friend the Dominican sister. You need rest, until to-morrow. You must not go."

She shook her head, still smiling gently, and held out her hand.

"Good-bye, Antonio," she said.

He took the hand; but instead of grasping it and letting it fall he held it, and said once more:

"Until to-morrow you must not go."

She began to disengage her fingers. Antonio gripped them fiercely and pleaded not only with his voice, but with his eyes.

"Isabel," he said, "one room at the guest-house is still yours. It can be made ready for you and for your friend to-night. It is your old room, with the white roses. I have suffered no one to enter it for twenty years."

This time she left her hand in his. The monk's voice, his brown velvet eyes, his clasp, and the rush of old memories were too much for her. She trembled a little; and suddenly a rain of tears fell upon Antonio's hand.

"Antonio," she sobbed, "I must go. Now. Don't ask me again. But, before I go, there is one thing more to tell you."

For many moments her weeping would not let her speak. At last she whispered between her sobs:

"That little bowl. The bowl you gave me, with the blue-and-orange bird. Do not despise me. When the time came, I felt I could give up the whole world, except that. For two months I turned a deaf ear to God, all because I couldn't give up ... that."

The exceeding bitterness of the memory made her sob afresh. When she could speak again, she said:

"Antonio, I will tell you where the little bowl is to-day. It has been made into a lamp. I had it encased in brass, so that it cannot break, and plated over with the purest silver. It hangs in a little church, in a slum near the London docks. It burns before the image of Saint Antonio."

Antonio could not speak. He forgot that he was still holding her hand, and she did not remember that she had not taken it away. After a long time she murmured, almost inaudibly:

"Antonio ... one night I gave you a rose."

He released her white fingers. Then he drew forth his breviary and placed it in her hand. She took it wonderingly; but he averted his eyes. Isabel gazed at the worn volume. She could see that there was some kind of a book-marker, marking the Office of the day. She opened the book and saw a pressed white rose, flecked and veined with faint blood-red.

She looked at it a long, long while. Then she shut the book and gave it back to Antonio. Without another word he wrapped the thin wrap about her form and helped her to arrange the mantilla on her shoulders. When the moment of parting came she simply gave him her hand, like a proud English lady; and he, like a courtly Portuguese gentleman, bent over it and lightly kissed her finger-tips.

She went away by the path she had taken on their last afternoon, twenty years before. Antonio, strangely calm, watched her as she pressed up the steep way. He was conscious that she still walked with willowy, girlish grace. He remembered how he had watched her that other afternoon, and how he had wondered if she would turn round and look back.

The two cypresses hid her from his sight. He breathed a quiet prayer for herself and for him. But he did not close his eyes; for they were fixed on the one point where she would reappear. His being was filled full with such peace and bliss as he had never known.

She reappeared. She turned round. She waved her hand. She was gone.

As soon as Antonio re-entered the porch of the monastery the Fathers thronged forward pressing him to break his long fast. But he shook his head and trudged on, looking neither to the right hand nor to the left. In the cool cloister he paused a moment upon the slab which covered the body of Sebastian. Then he turned into the narrow doorway and climbed, with dragging steps, to his old seat on the flat roof. One of the younger monks tried to follow; but José and Cypriano barred his passage. The two sturdy fellows, eyeing one another jealously, stood guard on either side of the gloomy opening, like two genii keeping the door of a cave.

Antonio sat down on the bench of cork. At the same moment a carriage rolled out through the principal gate of the abbey. He knew that it was bearing Isabel to rejoin her friend at Navares. Down the dusty hill it went; past the farm; and onwards until it was no more than a tremulous black spot against the whiteness of the road. As it approached the pine-woods some plate of burnished brass in the harness caught the light and blazed at Antonio for a moment, like a tiny sun. Then the shadow engulfed it, and he saw it no more.

Very calmly and with perfect concentration of mind Antonio resumed his devout thanksgiving for his first Mass. God had enabled him to rebuild His broken altar and to offer upon it the Holy Sacrifice. In the dazzling refulgence of that immense grace his sufferings and hardships were no more than grains of dust dancing in a sunbeam. The chief events of his past re-enacted themselves before him, like a stage show, and he saw that his life had been an unbroken pageant of divine mercy, full of glittering lights and rich shadows. He recalled all that God had done in him, and _vidit quod esset bonum_; "he saw that it was good."

When the monk's thanksgiving was finished Isabel reclaimed his mind. The strange peace which had descended upon them both, as she gazed at their white rose, abode with him still. There was no rebellion in his soul, no ache in his heart. The whole history of their love unrolled its bright length before him, like a holy scroll illuminated in blue and blood-red and gold, and he found nothing written therein that he would have altered or erased. _Vidit quod esset bonum_. It was good, all good, to the end.

He sat and pondered upon their wonderful love. At first he was confident that Isabel and he, he and Isabel, were the lovers of lovers, the supreme lovers of all time. But humility brought him a larger thought. Surely, before Isabel and he were born, there had been men and women loving as purely and as grandly. And surely there would be men and women loving as grandly and as purely after he and Isabel were dead.

Compared with all this love, of all these lovers in all the past and all the present, surely the shining of the sun was as darkness? He closed his eyes that he might behold the greater light. And, in that surpassing radiance, he seemed to be reading the deepest secrets of eternity and to be solving the riddle at the inmost heart of the universe. He saw innumerable loves ever ascending, like golden mists, out of the love of God. He saw those innumerable loves returning into the love of God again, like rivers into the sea. And with every return of love he saw the love of God growing richer and sweeter, like a fruit ripening in the sun. It seemed as if even God himself were waxing greater and as if, in the act of creation, the Creator took as well as gave. Without creation God must still have been perfect; but even God could rise from the lower perfection to the higher. Without creation the eternal Word was like a trumpet blown on an illimitable plain: but, with creation, the Word was like that same trumpet resounding and reverberating amidst re-echoing hills. God had need of man. God was Love, a pure white ray of love, and humanity was a prism turning this way and that and breaking the whiteness into the fairest colors. All love was one. Antonio's love for Isabel, Isabel's love for Antonio, was a drop flung forth from the bottomless ocean of the love of God to shine like a gem in the sunlight.

No. Not like a mere grain of spray which leaped free and sparkled for a moment and then fell back to lose its identity for ever. Rather was it like the immortal soul of a new-born babe, a something suddenly existing, a something with no past, but with an everlasting future, a something with an eternal identity which even God himself could not destroy. God would no more revoke and destroy His emanations of love than He would revoke and destroy His emanations of being. Innumerable loves would chime for ever in noblest harmony with the love of God, like brooks murmuring with the sea--_vox turbœ magnœ, vox aquaram multarum et vox tonitruorum magnorum_: "a voice of a great multitude, a voice of great waters, a voice of mighty thunderings."

The monk rested awhile in this thought. He knew it was the thought of Isabel's dream. But suddenly a white light blazed in his soul. Isabel vanished as if she had never been. All the human love he had been cherishing fell from him, like a dying torch from the grasp of a man who strides forth out of a cave into the blinding light of a summer noon. Antonio was caught up into an ecstasy of the pure love of God.

When he opened his eyes at last and gazed upon the Atlantic he knew that he was weary. The hands were weary that had labored so roughly for his Lord. The feet were weary that had tramped so many a league in dust and heat; and the brain was weary that had puzzled and worried and planned till it could puzzle and worry and plan no more. But it mattered not at all. Was not the day's work done? There was plenty of time to sleep. Ranging over wood and meadow and stream, Antonio's gaze came to rest in the little clearing between the ending of the orange-groves and the beginning of the vineyards; and he looked with longing at the white cross which rose tall and slender above the monks' graves.

Peace filled earth and heaven. His tired eye-lids drooped over Antonio's eyes. The airs around him were rich with scents of lemon-blossom and suckle. The Atlantic lay unvexed by wind; and the ocean swell, as it searched the creeks and caves, hummed no louder than a heavy-laden honey-bee lumbering home.

THE END