MARGARIDA
I
Towards nightfall on the feast of the Three Kings the heavens were
opened. From every inch of the somber sky descended cold, straight
rain until the roads were rivers and the hill-sides began to sing.
When the storm burst Antonio was in the abbey chapel, saying Vespers
in his old stall. He had duly observed the great festival of the
Epiphany, abstaining from servile work and hearing Mass at the
village: and, as on Sundays, he was rounding off the holy day by
saying his Office in the choir. But the vehemence of the storm
alarmed him. He rose hastily, and made his way through the darkling
cloisters and corridors.
As he neared the kitchen a roaring sound filled Antonio's startled
ears. It was the torrent. Although he had rammed the sluice-gate
well home only half an hour before, the stream was racing through the
kitchen in a foaming flood.
"The sluice-gate has broken," said Antonio to himself. "The timbers
must have rotted all of a sudden. But there's just time to get out."
Only the faintest light gleamed through the tunnel under the
refectory. By lying on his chest upon the stones Antonio could just
see the leaden sky. He could see, too, that the water was rising
higher and higher, and that the space between the level of the water
and the center of the tunnel vaulting was less than two feet.
The monk flung off his habit and jumped down into the torrent. It
almost touched his arm-pits. The waters were icy cold; but this
troubled him less than their headlong violence which threatened to
sweep him away.
He entered the tunnel. As it was barely five feet from floor to
keystone, the broad-shouldered giant had to hump his back and to work
himself along in a frog-like posture. More than once stones, bowled
along by the force of the flood, struck cruelly at his feet and
ankles, and it was only by clutching with bleeding fingers at the
sides of the vault that he could make the smallest headway. Even
while he was escaping from it the water went on rising: and it was
with dripping locks, and with eyes and ears full of muddy water, that
he finally broke out into the free air.
The rain was pouring down so torrentially as he climbed up to the
bank that he would have been as dry in the middle of the stream. As
for his clothes, which he had rolled up as usual and laid behind a
bush, he knew they must be wetter than his skin. Still, there was
nothing for it but to scramble into them and dash for home. Antonio
stooped to pick up the bundle.
It was gone.
In a flash he knew that Man as well as Nature had come to fight him.
The instinct of danger made him spring back from the water and clench
both fists to strike. And he had hardly a second to wait Like a
beast from its lair, a black body sprang at him out of the pouring
trees.
The staggering suddenness of its onslaught nearly flung Antonio to
the ground. Before he knew what was happening, his assailant had
dragged him to within a yard of the stream's edge and was making
ready to shove him into the swirling water. But the monk got his
grip just in time; and the stranger, fearful of meeting the end he
had planned for Antonio, lurched back over the sodden grass.
Locked together, both men paused for breath. In one point Antonio
had the advantage. He was at ease in thin cotton undergarments,
while his adversary was encumbered by soaked garments of peasant
stuff and cut. On the other hand, the stranger was fresh for the
fray, whereas Antonio's battling against the flood in the tunnel had
broken his wind. Meanwhile, to cool them for the second round, the
stinging rain thrashed down impatiently upon them both.
With a tremendous rally of strength Antonio hurled the other away
from him and then rushed in like lightning to get a better grip. He
succeeded; and little by little he began to crush his foe down upon
the sloppy ground. He had no relish for manslaughter even in
self-defense; and, instead of thrusting him into the stream, he
sought only to pin the stranger down with hands and knees and to make
him give satisfaction for his murderous onrush. But the monk's
strength began to fail him. His half-frozen feet were bleeding, his
heart was thumping against his ribs, the veins on his forehead stood
out like thick string, and his breath came and went in quick, thick
gasps.
The stranger felt his opportunity; and, inch by inch, Antonio was
dragged, pushed, shouldered, butted, elbowed, kneed back to the
torrent's brim. But the ground was slippery: and both the wrestlers
slithered and crashed down heavily.
They were up again in a twinkling, facing each other with intent
eyes. The stranger's shoulders were bent and his hands touched his
knees as he crouched for a second spring. At the sight of him a
white flash of memory blazed across Antonio's mind. Those tigerish
eyes, those hunched shoulders, those great, terrible hands outspread
upon those clumsy knees--he had seen them all before. By this time
his eyes were used to the dusk and mist, and he knew he was not
deceived: for he could discern a wound on the peasant's cheek.
Before the other had time to make his pounce, the monk cried out in
imperious tones:
"Hold. I know you. We are friends!"
"Friends?" hissed the stranger. "Pretty friends! I don't make
friends with thieves and atheists."
All the same, his taut muscles relaxed. Antonio's tone had awed him
a little, and Antonio's words had puzzled him a great deal. His
shoulders unbent and he did not spring.
"I am not an atheist and I am not a thief," said Antonio sternly.
"But even thieves and atheists are not so bad as murderers. Why have
you tried to drown me in this torrent?"
"Because you're a spy and a blasphemer and a robber."
"Tell me your name," the monk demanded. And when the other only
responded by a threatening gesture he added: "Never mind. I know it
already. You are called José. You live at Pedrinha das Areias."
The peasant's clenched hands dropped open at his sides, and he gave a
low cry of astonishment and fright.
"You fought with Dom Pedro at the siege of Oporto," continued the
monk. "It was there you lost two fingers from your left hand. Wait.
I haven't finished. Nearly four years ago you were one of the troop
which came to drive the monks out of this abbey. You were sent back
home for quarreling with another soldier about religion. You rode
back to Oliveira on your own horse. Now, I ask you again, why have
you tried to murder me?"
"It's a lie that I came here to drive out monks," cried the peasant,
nearly choking with anger. "I didn't know we'd been sent on such
dirty work."
"Why have you tried to murder me?"
"Because ... because you're in the pay of that accursed Viscount.
Murder you? Yes, God helping me, I'll do it this minute!"
"God is not helping you, and you won't do it this minute," said
Antonio calmly. "Now that I've got back my wind you haven't a ghost
of a chance. You lost two fingers fighting, like a brave man, at
Oporto. Understand. If there's no other way, I shall have to twist
either your right wrist or your left ankle to keep you quiet. So--"
His mouth was stopped by José's lightning onslaught. Once more they
rocked to and fro in a terrible embrace. But Antonio had spoken the
truth. His wind had come back, and there was no chance for José.
Within forty seconds the monk had his man fairly down. He pinned
him, face upwards, on the grass, kneeling upon his thighs and
gripping his shoulders with hands like steel. And all the time the
streaming rain came pouring, pouring, pouring down.
"José," began Antonio, in a voice of infinite pity and kindness, "my
poor friend--"
A horrible imprecation broke from the writhing peasant. It was the
more frightful to hear because it so evidently came from lips which
rarely cursed or swore.
"José," the monk commanded, altering his tone, "in the name of Jesus
Christ I charge you to listen. I am your friend. I am not in the
pay of the Viscount of Ponte Quebrada. I was in the abbey to-night
simply to pray and to worship God."
But José was staring at him with wide eyes. The hatred had died out
of his face, and he struggled hard to seize some elusive memory.
Suddenly he cried:
"Tell me. That night. There were young monks, two monks, at the
gate. One coughed and was like death. The other ..."
He paused and looked at Antonio with eyes that yearned. The monk
started. If he answered, his secret would be out. Yet how could he
be silent? An inward voice bade him answer freely.
"I was the other monk," he said. "In the monastery they called me
Father Antonio."
As he spoke he released his captive and stood up. José stumbled to
his feet like a man dazed, and faced Antonio in the rain with bent
head and fidgeting hands.
"Give me my clothes," ordered the monk.
The peasant drew forth an almost dry bundle of clothes from a hollow
tree and would have helped Antonio to put them on. But the monk
waved him aside and was soon inside the garments.
"Follow me," he said.
In spite of his bleeding feet he set a breakneck pace down the hill.
At the boundary wall of the abbey, where the torrent foamed through
the broken arch, he halted; and if the pair had not been able to leap
from boulder to boulder like mountain-goats they could not have
regained the open heath. The night grew blacker; and twice or
thrice, where there were patches of clay, they slipped and fell. But
no bones were broken; and in less than three quarters of an hour from
the beginning of their fight the two men were at Antonio's door.
II
The heap of pine-cones burning on Antonio's narrow hearth crackled
pleasantly and gave out fragrant vapors. But, as the monk crouched
over it chafing his nerveless hands, he could not help thinking of
the blaze he had seen in the vast fireplace of a famous old English
banqueting-hall at the close of a chilly, rainy day. The
recollection increased his resentment against the shaggy José, who
was waiting for his new master's word as meekly as a drenched
sheep-dog on a moor. Antonio's pity was submerged for the moment
under his disgust at having had to fight for life, half-naked, in a
tropical downpour.
"Here are some dry clothes," he said sharply, opening a chest and
throwing out the suit in which he had ridden to Villa Branca. And,
while José was changing, he stamped upstairs to do the same.
Antonio boasted three suits in all. The oldest was the dripping
raiment he was actually wearing--the clothes which José had bundled
into the hollow tree. The second was the suit he had lent to his
guest. The third was the masterpiece in broadcloth which a London
tailor had made at the expense of Messrs. Crowberry and Castro for
Antonio's memorable journey. Over and above these the monk possessed
his habit.
It was a choice between the patched, rusty-black habit or the fine
gentleman's broadcloth. Antonio hesitated. At last he put on the
habit and returned to the kitchen.
José, awkward in his town-made clothes, stood waiting. From the
extreme of bloodthirstiness he had passed to the extreme of
sheepishness: and, as Antonio entered in his monkish garb, he
retreated a step and went down clumsily on his knees as if he saw a
priest on his way to the altar.
"Get up," said Antonio. "I am wearing my monk's habit simply because
my clothes are wet. Get up. Nearer the fire. Sit down. Tell me
why you were at the abbey to-night."
José got up and approached the hearth, where he seated himself on the
keg which was Antonio's second-best stool. But he remained
tongue-tied. The monk repeated his question.
"Your Reverence--" began José. Then his tongue was tied once more.
"Never mind 'Your Reverence' just now," said Antonio, more kindly.
"Tell me a plain tale. What were you doing at the abbey? Why did
you try to drown me before you gave me a chance to explain? It is a
serious matter. If I'd been a weaker man, at this moment you would
be a murderer."
"I did wrong, Father," said José humbly. "But God knows I thought I
was doing right. I thought your Reverence had found out about the
things and that he'd come to steal them."
"What things?"
"The things the Viscount of Pont' Quebrad' buried in the ground."
Antonio started violently. He paced the room. Then he hurried back
to the fireside and said:
"Wait. We must understand one another. When we monks were driven
out, all those things were still in the sacristy. All I know about
the Viscount burying them in the ground is this. One night in Oporto
a gentleman from Lisbon told me that the Viscount and the captain had
pretended to bury them. He said the Viscount was a wonderful
play-actor. But he told me that all Lisbon believed he had never
buried them at all. He had smuggled them out of the country."
"That's what everybody thinks, Father," said José, so eagerly that
his tongue was fairly loosened. "And the Viscount had to leave
Portugal. But he didn't steal the things at all. Only he tried to:
so he deserved to be punished all the same. Didn't he, Father?"
"He did. But I don't understand."
"It was this way, Father. The captain--may God bless him, he was a
fine man till he met the Viscount--the captain, he ordered me to go
home. That night I rode as far as Oliveira, five leagues from
Pedrinha. There I found that my mother was dead. May God rest her
soul! I felt I couldn't go home; so I sold my horse in Oliveira for
sixty-seven milreis. I only got two milreis for the saddle because
it belonged to the Government. Still, they owed me my pay, didn't
they, Father?"
"Get on, get on," snapped Antonio. "What has all this to do with the
Viscount and the things?"
"When I'd sold the horse I came back to the abbey. I wanted to see
what became of the monks and whether the Viscount would beat the
Abbot. It took me all day, tracking over the mountains. In the
middle of the afternoon I saw the monks down at the bottom of the
hill marching to Navares, with some of our men on horses. But I
didn't turn back. I had a score to settle with Sergeant Carvalho, if
he hadn't gone to Navares. It was all on account of Ferreira, the
fat corporal. Only myself knows how--"
"You came back to the abbey over the mountains. Go on."
"I didn't dare walk in at the gates, so I waited till it was dark and
climbed the wall in the wood behind what they call the guest-house.
It was nearly midnight. As I got near the guest-house, I heard
voices among the trees. There were two men, with a dark lantern."
"The Viscount and the captain?"
"Yes, Father. They were digging, in their shirtsleeves, only the
captain was doing all the work. I thought it was strange, Father; so
I crawled along softly and hid myself where I could see what they
were doing. When the hole was dug they went into the trees. The
Viscount trod on the brim of my hat, but he didn't see it. They came
back with some flat boxes and put them in the hole. The captain went
to work very hard to fill the hole up again; but the Viscount swore
at him and said: 'The more dirt you chuck in now the more we shall
have to shovel out to-morrow night.' So they filled it in loose and
covered it up with dead leaves. Then they hid the spades in the
bushes and went away."
"And you didn't?"
"I stayed, Father. I knew they had been burying what was not theirs.
So I found one of the spades and unburied the boxes and carried them
on my head to a sand-pit that I'd tumbled into when I climbed over
the wall. I buried them there, in loose sand, where one place looked
just like another."
"That was clever," said Antonio. "Go on."
"All the next day I lay hiding, with only one piece of bread to eat
and water to drink. But I was glad I hadn't gone away. At night
they came again, with ropes and canvas. They began talking about
some mules, and the Viscount kept mentioning a name that I can't
remember; only I know it wasn't Portuguese. Then they raked off the
dead leaves and started digging. But, oh, Father! I wonder they
didn't find me and skin me alive, because when they saw the hole was
empty, I nearly burst myself to keep from laughing. They would have
heard me, sure enough, if they hadn't fallen to quarreling. In the
end the Viscount said the captain had stolen a march on him, and he
called him a--"
"Never mind what he called him."
"At that the captain struck the Viscount in the face. I was
frightened then. I thought there was going to be murder. But all of
a sudden they made up the quarrel and the captain said: 'What are we
going to do?' The Viscount said: 'Those thieves of monks have hidden
it, and we'll find it, or some of them shall swing for it.' But the
captain said: 'What if we can't find it? What about the Government?'
The Viscount said: 'That's easy. When the van and the men come from
Lisbon we'll bring them to this hole. We can take our Bible oath,
both of us, that we buried it here ourselves, for fear of treachery
among the men: and we can swear that we haven't the ghost of an idea
who has taken it away. But we'll find it to-night if we search till
morning; and next week it shall be in England, safe and sound.' Then
they took the lantern to begin hunting: so I picked myself up and
slipped off to the sand-pit."
"And they didn't follow?"
"Not at once, Father. They did not come there till day-break. But
the sun the day before had dried all the sand the same color. They
stuck in sticks both sides of the right place: but they didn't find
it."
José ceased.
"And what happened next?"
"I don't know, Father. Some say the Marquis almost made people
believe he was dumbfounded when the new soldiers from Lisbon dug in
the hole. But that can't be right; because he left the hole open. I
only know that people said he had never put the things in the hole at
all, and he had to leave Portugal, and the captain was turned out of
the army. That's all."
Antonio took two more turns up and down the room before he demanded:
"Where are the things now?"
José's face clouded; and his eyes, which had burned brightly with
excitement during his recital, were suddenly dulled by trouble. A
few moments later he became visibly ashamed of his suspiciousness,
and he would have begun stammering a speech if Antonio, who could
read the whole of his simple mind, had not said:
"Wait. I understand. You believe our Lord sent you to snatch back
His own from wicked men. For nearly four years you have guarded the
treasure like a faithful watch-dog, and now you hesitate to trust me.
It is natural."
José stared in wonder at this mysterious monk, who knew his thoughts
even better than he knew them himself.
"But listen," Antonio went on. "For nearly four years I too have
guarded a secret. The night when you dug up the boxes, José, that
same night was the last night the world saw me as a monk. Like you,
I lay all that night under the trees. Since then the world has known
me as a clerk, a wine-grower, a commercial traveler, a farmer. But
to-night, as soon as you asked me for my secret, I gave it. You are
the only man in the world who knows that the owner of this little
farm is the monk Antonio. Still, although I've told you my secret,
that does not force you to tell me yours."
José stirred uneasily.
"This is what I propose," concluded Antonio. "I will swear to you,
here and now, a solemn oath that if you tell me your secret I will
never reveal it until the monks return. And you, on your part, shall
swear that you will not breathe a hint of my own secret to a living
soul."
"The things are buried in the cloister," José blurted out. "There
are graves there, under the stones, but they haven't all got monks
inside. I lifted up a gravestone with no printing on it and I put
the boxes in. It's on the north side, to the left, just opposite the
little Moses in the bulrushes."
"I thank you, José, and I admire you," said Antonio, pressing the
huge hand. "All the same, we will swear our oaths. It will make
both of us easier in our minds."
A small book of the Gospels, printed in the vernacular, lay on the
table. Antonio placed his hand upon it, and swore in clear words and
solemn tones that he would keep the secret of the buried boxes. The
oath he dictated to José was longer and more picturesque. Before
framing it he elicited the names of the saints whom José's family had
most delighted to honor. Eventually the young peasant swore himself
to secrecy by the holy Gospels; by the true faith of a Christian; by
Nossa Senhora dos Remedios de Lamego; by San Torquato of Guimarães;
by San Braz; by San Pedro d' Alcantará; by the Pope's three crowns;
by his mother's memory; and by his own hopes of eternal salvation.
Antonio felt a qualm or two in enouncing such a formula: but did not
the success of his life's work demand that José should be held back
from his own impulsiveness by every chain his faith could forge?
When the oaths had been sworn, Antonio went to the door. The rain
had ceased and a few stars were glinting weakly in the watery sky.
"Hadn't you better go, while it is fair?" he said to José. "Never
mind about the clothes. Bring them back when your own are dry, and
we will finish our talk."
But José did not hasten forth. "If you please, Father," he said
awkwardly, "I'd ... I'd rather stay here."
"Stay here?"
"Yes. I'd like to be your servant, Father. And I'd like to learn to
be a monk."
Antonio stopped on the brink of half-derisive, half-angry laughter.
He remembered the apostle's injunction: "Strengthen the
feeble-minded." This dull-witted hind had acted, after all, like a
Christian hero; and Antonio suddenly said to himself: "He has the
mind of a little child; but of such are the Kingdom of Heaven."
"A monk, José?" he echoed, kindly. "Not yet, I fear. Why, only
to-night you tried to murder me. Even Saint Dominic, who founded his
Order to fight against the enemies of our religion, would not have
approved of you up there in the rain. But you say you would be my
servant. How? What about your own farm?"
"They cheated me out of it, Father--the lawyers. I got only two
hundred milreis. I work at a cooper's in Navares: but it is all
indoors, and trade is so slack he only keeps me on out of charity.
He would be glad if I didn't darken the door again. I would like to
be your servant."
Antonio walked once more to the door and looked out. The sky was
clearing. High in the East, encircled by creamy cloud-banks, he
could see one stretch of blue, as blue as a tarn set deep in mountain
snows; and in the midst of it shone a great soft star. Then he
remembered that this was the feast of the Three Kings. He recalled
the antiphon he had recited in the day's Office, _Stella ista sicut
flamma coruscat_: "Like as a flame doth that Star sparkle and showeth
God, the King of Kings. The Wise Men beheld it, and to the great
King they offered their gifts." Ought he, Antonio, to offer as gifts
to the King his dearly-prized solitude, his monastic silence, his
studious privacy, in order that he might reward this simple soul and
shield it from the world? He first bowed his head; then raised it to
the star, craving heavenly light.
"Can I stay, Father?" persisted José, doggedly.
"You can stay," said Antonio, with his eyes still fixed on the star
in the East.
III
José stayed. Before February came in, he was a changed man. The
unshared secret of the buried boxes had been too big and too heavy
for his rustic wits, and had forced him into an unnatural attitude of
taciturnity and suspiciousness. But no sooner had he shifted the
burden of responsibility to Antonio's broad shoulders than his innate
gaiety returned. The war, his wounds, his mother's death, and the
loss of his farm had conspired to congeal José's heart and to seal
his lips; and for years he had not sung a song right through. But
one sunny morning, as he was working among the orange-trees, a knot
in his brain seemed to slip free, and he began to pipe like a bird.
Antonio did not regret his sacrifice. José was an all-round farmer,
with an eagerness for work which made him worth his weight in silver.
In his native parish of Pedrinha das Areias he had learned the art of
treating vines after the fashion of the growers in Collares, the
famous vine-land near Cintra. In order to profit by his skill,
Antonio bought, for thirty pounds, a straggling parcel of land
alongside the Atlantic. There José and he planted chosen vines. The
leafless canes, protruding from the sand, wore a hopeless look in
winter: but they were well-rooted in the subsoil, and, when the
summer suns began to burn, a covering of sand six feet thick kept the
roots so moist and cool that the leaves were green and fresh long
after the other vines looked parched and dry.
Antonio, however, was grateful for José not only as a farm-servant, a
fellow-vintner, and a cooper. More than once, while the peasant's
cheerful voice was caroling out old songs of love and war, Antonio
found himself saying, "Non est bonum esse hominem solunt: 'It is not
good for man to be alone.' After all, I am a monk and not a hermit."
José's quarters were in the outbuildings, where he enjoyed a bedroom
much larger and more cheerful than his master's. He ate his morning
meal alone: but, when the day's work was over, the two men dined
together in the principal room of the farm-house. Dinner was always
served ceremoniously. Even on fast-days, when it was merely an
eight-ounce supper of wine and dark bread, both master and servant
put on black coats and soft white collars. After dinner Antonio
generally sat down to read. He subscribed to two English
periodicals--a weekly paper and a quarterly review--so that, in the
event of his visiting England again, he might not be out of touch
with his hosts' thought and life. Meanwhile José would sit near the
lamp or the window, carving one of the new bits of furniture with
which he was gradually beautifying the little house. Later in the
evening, a blackboard was produced and Antonio proceeded with José's
education.
As a schoolmaster Antonio was unconventional. José could neither
read nor write his native language: but the monk began by teaching
him Latin. He taught José to form large capital letters, which came
much easier than a cursive script to his rough hands. At the very
first lesson the pupil learned how to write, spell, and pronounce
_pater_ and _mater_, and how to translate these words in the light of
the Portuguese _padre_ and _madre_. Within a week, having mastered
the present indicative of _amo_ and also the first and second
declensions of nouns, he could print on the board _Pater amat
filium_, with the Portuguese equivalent _O padre ama o filho_ in the
line below. Antonio omitted mention of exceptional genders or
inflexions, and discreetly concealed the existence of the subjunctive
mood. He did not attempt to impart the Latin of Cicero but only a
rough-and-ready _lingua rustica_ which he hoped to polish at his
leisure into the language of the Missal and the Breviary.
Pride in his classical scholarship led José, one day of Lent, into an
indiscretion. Upon a barn-door he carved deeply with his knife
"Pater Antonius" in big letters and "Josephus" in smaller characters
underneath. Antonio made him place a new panel in the door, after
cutting out and burning the old one; and, at the same time, he
reminded him sternly how he had sworn never to let fall the remotest
hint that his master was a monk.
To guard against any fatal slip of José's tongue, Antonio forbade his
servant from that hour to call him Father in any circumstances
whatsoever. José's face fell, and he said dolefully:
"I'd been hoping, Father--I mean, Senhor--to make my Easter
confession to your Reverence--I mean, to your Worship. Yes, and I'd
been hoping that your Rever--that your Worship might be saying his
Easter Mass in the abbey chapel and that I might serve it."
Antonio knew that he would only bewilder the honest fellow's mind if
he attempted to explain confessors' faculties; and that it would be
still worse to admit that he, though a choir-monk, had not yet said
his first Mass. So he simply shook his head, and replied:
"No, José, we must fulfil our Easter duties, both of us, in the
parish church. These are bad times for monks in Portugal. And
remember, above all, that you must give up calling me 'Your
Reverence' and 'Father.'"
Nevertheless the priest allowed the layman to share much of his
religious life. Before they parted for the night they told their
beads antiphonally. At dinner, when Antonio had said his Order's
two-word grace before meat, _Benedictus benedicat_, he would edify
José by relating some miracle or heroic act of the saint for the day.
On the mornings of Sundays and days of obligation they tramped to the
parish Mass together; and in the evenings they stole into the dim
abbey and performed their pious exercises in choir.
In the autumn of that year the two men pressed seventeen pipes of
rough wine. After putting aside two pipes for their own consumption
they sold off the remainder for fourteen pounds. As a result of
grafting upon old roots Antonio also pressed about a dozen gallons of
good wine for his great experiment. This pressing he jealously
cellared in a little cask, of José's making, which had been for
months under daily treatment so that the wood should help rather than
hurt the wine. Of course, the new vineyard on the sea-shore was too
young to yield a harvest: but the plants waxed and throve exceedingly.
While Antonio was thus busied, another vintage was going forward
almost under his eyes. One morning, about the middle of September,
José rushed into the kitchen exclaiming that two women and three men
were openly and calmly picking the grapes in the neglected vineyards
of the abbey, and that they had somehow opened the outbuildings where
the wine-presses and vats were stored.
Antonio paced up and down the kitchen twenty times before he could
come to a decision. As the secret guardian of the abbey, he could
not ignore these trespassers, who, if they were unchallenged, might
easily grow bolder until they committed some act of desecration. On
the other hand, there were dangers attending his interference with
people who might turn out to be acting in a legal manner. He
decided, however, to go up to the abbey and use his own eyes. Before
setting out he slipped into his pocket a good Havana cigar, one of a
boxful which had been pressed upon him in England.
The foreman of the vintagers was sitting in the shade of the
monastery buildings, smoking a pipe of Brazilian tobacco.
"Good days, Senhor," said Antonio in a friendly tone. "Your Worship
is luckier than I am. I made the Fazenda an offer for this vineyard,
and they didn't even ask me to sit down."
"The Ministerio da Fazenda in Lisbon?" asked the foreman.
"No, in Villa Branca."
The foreman laughed a meaning laugh, Antonio changed his ground.
"We're pressing about twenty pipes down there in the valley," he said
pointing out the farm. "But it's poor stuff. The vines have been
neglected for years."
"So have these," the foreman grumbled. "Yet we're expected to take
home wine fit for the Queen."
Antonio described his experiment in the vineyard on the sea-shore,
and asked for the foreman's opinion and advice so deferentially that
the man was pleased and flattered. When the monk rose to go the
foreman suddenly said:
"The Senhor mustn't say I told him. But I don't wonder the chief of
the Fazenda at Villa Branca bowed him out. The chief takes every
grape in this vineyard every year, by his own authority, without
paying a vintem to anybody. That's how Portugal is robbed. We might
as well have Dom Miguel back again."
A burden rolled from Antonio's heart. So long as the Villa Branca
official had an interest in snubbing off possible leasers or buyers
the monastery would be safe. He readily promised never to reveal the
source from which he had learned so spicy a secret; and, after deeply
impressing the foreman by giving him a cigar which had truly seen
both Cuba and England, he returned home.
The day Antonio received payment for the sale of his rough wine he
tendered José his wages. In rural Portugal a servant's annual wages
ranged from four and a half to five and a half pounds a year, with
the addition of a coarse cloak every second year. Antonio offered
José the price of a cloak and five pounds.
"This money," said José, holding it in his hand, "is taken from your
Worship's savings--the money that's to buy back the abbey?"
"It is your own, fairly earned," the monk responded. "Mind you don't
lose it. Have you a safe place to keep it?"
"Yes," said José promptly. "I shall bury it."
Antonio laughed. "You're like a fox," he said. "How many cemeteries
have you?"
With some pride, José admitted, in mysterious tones, that he had
three distinct and untraceable hiding-places, not counting the grave
in the abbey-cloisters where he had buried the boxes. Becoming more
at ease, he finally asked leave to ease his mind of an oppressive
secret. Deep in a drift of sand near the new vineyard he had laid
away one hundred pounds--the round remainder of moneys he had
received for his horse and his farm and from a small legacy.
Blushing at his own presumption, he begged Antonio to let him add
this sum to the English pounds which his master was hording up for
the abbey's redemption. Antonio, deeply touched, agreed to accept
the money: but only on condition that José should be allowed a clear
year in which to alter his mind.
Had Antonio been giving one hundred pounds instead of receiving it,
José could not have been more grateful. But he had still something
to ask.
"Since I saw those men and women up there in the vineyard, I'm not
easy at nights," he said. "I'm thinking the boxes ought to be buried
in our own garden. And, if I can have the cart and the bullock, I'll
dig up everything that I've got and bring it here."
During the next dark night the two men opened the grave in the
cloisters and brought away the boxes, which they reburied in a dry
place within sight of José's window. The morning after, José set out
in the bullock-cart, with a spade, a dark lantern, some sacking, and
two empty barrels hidden under a heap of straw.
He was away two days. When he returned it was with so abashed an air
that Antonio thought the hiding places had been found empty. But the
lifting of the straw told a different tale. Although José had lost
his farm, he had saved the household gods and heirlooms. There were
two carved coffers filled with fine linen; a box of old Portuguese
faience in which the Persian influence was still strong; five musty
books of fusty piety; a fowling-piece, much more dangerous to the
sportsman than to the game; and some great, round, solid, honest
vessels of copper and pewter which shone, after José had polished
them, like suns and moons.
IV
Three years' hard labor turned Antonio's tangled vineyards and
languishing orangeries into an earthly paradise. The red roses
nearly covering the white walls of his golden-thatched farm-house,
the round plot of well-kept turf in front, the bright flower-beds and
the trim gate, gave quite an English appearance to the little
farmstead. All the potsherds and rubbish had been removed from the
bed of the stream, while the cascades and pools had been made fewer
and grander. Trellises, pergolas, and arches everywhere showed that
José had been no less industrious than his master.
Up in the village the gossips had plenty of news to keep them busy.
The successive arrivals of Antonio's wine-press from France, of his
vine-slips from vineyards all over Europe, and of his books and
papers from England were so many nine-days' wonders. Fifty wild
stories were set going as to his parentage, his past, and his
prospects: but it never entered anybody's head that he had dwelt for
years, almost in their midst, as a monk of Saint Benedict.
Antonio was regular in church-attendance: but he took care to conceal
nearly all his piety. For example, he denied himself the consolation
of occasionally serving the cura's Mass, lest his good Latin and his
intelligent grasp of every point in the ritual should betray him. He
communicated more frequently than was usual in the parish: but no one
ever thought of numbering him among those few devotees in the village
who were profanely called _os beatos e as beatas_--the Saints and
Blessed Ones.
What interested the parish much more than Antonio's religion was
Antonio's prosperity. It became known that every hectare of his
long-neglected vineyard was earning a hundred per cent more than any
other hectare within ten leagues. It was also known that he was
distilling a new kind of orange brandy for medicinal use, which he
exported to Rio de Janeiro at a high price. Rumor said that, when
his sea-sand vineyard should begin to bear fruit, Collares would sink
to the second place. Most wonderful of all, it was known that the
cellars at Antonio's farm contained some curious wooden racks in
which two or three hundred bottles of blended white wine were
standing on their heads. This blended white wine, according to a
villager who did occasional work at the farm under José, was intended
to rival French champagne, a famous but mysterious beverage which no
native of the parish had ever drunk or seen.
Upon the undeniable fact of Antonio's prosperity the gossips
naturally proceeded to erect fantastic prophecies about his
matrimonial intentions. No tongues wagged concerning José. Had the
gossips known of his hundred pounds, his copper and pewter and fine
linen, the case would have been different; but, if they thought of
him at all, they regarded him as a wild-eyed, eccentric boor who
might go mad at any moment, and was certainly better without a wife
to beat or murder. Antonio, however, was worth the gossips' while.
During his first year in the parish they mentally married him off to
Joanna Quintella, a widow who had lost her husband in the civil wars.
Joanna was hardly thirty, had not outlived all her good looks, and
was possessed of nearly sixty pounds.
This was just after the monk had sold off his first pressing of wine
for fourteen pounds. But, with the growth of his prosperity, his
prospective brides advanced in importance. The gossips jilted poor
Joanna and betrothed Antonio successively to Catharina Rodrigues de
Barros Lopes, the farrier's second daughter; to Maria da Conceiçao
d'Araujo, the cura's younger sister; and to Beatriz Amelia Martins,
who had lived six months in Lisbon with her sister, the wife of a
customs-house officer. But when it leaked out that Antonio went
nearly every month to the bank in Villa Branca with drafts from
Oporto, Rio de Janeiro, and even London, the match with Donna Beatriz
was broken off.
Within the wide boundaries of the parish only one bride remained:
but, for a time, not one of the gossips was presumptuous enough to
link her name with Antonio's. Ever since she began coiling up her
hair, it had been taken for granted that her father would have to go
to Villa Branca or, at the very least, to Navares in order to find a
sufficiently important husband for Margarida Clara Maria dos Santos
Rebolla. When, however, the apothecary received an invoice from
Lisbon charging him half a pound for a single bottle of champagne the
maiden's fate was sealed. The inquisitive crowd who paid the
apothecary three vintens a head for a spoonful of the champagne were
disgusted with their bargain: but when the apothecary's arithmetic
was applied to Antonio's case they recovered their spirits and
unanimously made over Margarida Clara Maria to the young Croesus of
the valley who was about to gild the parish with glory.
Margarida's parents were not surprised on learning what the parish
expected of them; for had they not already brooded long and earnestly
over the same plan? Not to mention the Babylonian wickedness of
Villa Branca and Navares, town husbands were not acceptable to the
worthy couple, because town fortunes, town incomes, town reputations,
lay too much at the mercy of the politicians. Indeed, Senhor Jorge
Maria dos Santos Rebolla held politics in so much horror that he
would not seriously entertain the idea of Antonio as a son-in-law
until he had satisfied himself that the young vintner was unpoisoned
by factious doctrines.
Senhor Jorge made his inquiries in person. On an October afternoon,
just after the heavier labors of the vintage were ended, he called
upon Antonio and asked him to sign a petition for the replacement of
a bridge which had been swept away on the terrible night of Antonio's
fight with José. The monk received his visitor with honor and
without suspicion. He knew him as an estimable lavrador, or large
farmer: but he had never heard of Margarida. Outside his
church-going, Antonio had no dealings with the village.
When the monk had subscribed his name of da Rocha to the petition,
the lavrador thanked him and rolled it up.
"Not that it will do any good," he added. "In this parish we've
never learned to crawl up the sleeves of politicians. Ah! When the
last politician is dead, Portugal will come to life again."
Antonio said nothing. But Senhor Jorge did not desist. To catechise
a stranger about his political opinions was always a breach of good
manners, and in Portugal it was still dangerous. Nevertheless the
lavrador continued:
"Senhor, everybody says you are a clever man. You have been in
England and France and Spain and, some say, in Brazil. You have seen
many things. I am not a Miguelista; but I want to know if we are any
better off under the Liberals."
Antonio took time to think. When he had decided that there was
nothing to lose by frankness he said:
"Your Worship is older than I, and far wiser. But here is my answer.
I, too, am no Miguelista. If Liberalism truly meant equal freedom
and justice for all, I should be a Liberal. But Liberalism in
Portugal is only a name. Your Worship speaks of England and France.
I have traveled in those countries. One frosty morning, two hundred
years ago, the English cut off their King's head with a sharp axe in
the name of Liberty: but the Englishmen who did that deed equaled the
king before long in oppression and intolerance. Fifty years ago, in
the name of Liberty, some Frenchmen guillotined the King of France:
but I have seen a French river where, a few months afterwards, the
men who did that deed drowned barge-load after barge-load of those
who held other opinions. Yes, your Worship. In a single town, in
four months, nearly ten thousand were shot or drowned--more than the
tyrant Miguel put to death in all Portugal, in all his unhappy
career."
"Then the Senhor does not believe in Republics?" asked the lavrador.
"If all our citizens were good and wise and in possession of the
whole truth," answered Antonio, "a Republic would be the best form of
government. But the Portuguese are no more fit than the French for
such an experiment. Nay, I will go further. The Portuguese are not
ripe even for the English kind of Parliament. Our deputies are not
the true choice of the people. They fill their pockets with the
people's money; and their empty quarrels poison the nation's blood.
But I have said too much. After all, what do I know of politics? I
leave politics alone, and..."
He weighed his words. When he uttered them, they came softly and
slowly.
"As for me," he said, "I hope to serve Portugal in some better way."
The lavrador had not understood every word Antonio said, but he felt
sure he was on the right side. He rose up with an approving nod and
very modestly asked if he might have a sight of his host's famous
vineyards and cellars.
Antonio, who was always willing to exhibit and explain everything to
any serious inquirer, rich or poor, gladly consented. He made it
plain, as they walked round the property, that he had introduced no
novelties for novelty's sake, and he was able to give a good reason
for every departure from local practice.
On the whole the lavrador was appreciative; but the champagne worried
him. He would have preferred to see Margarida Clara Maria in the
care of a husband whose wine-bottles stood on their heels and not on
their heads. Still, inverted wine-bottles were less detestable than
topsy-turvy morals or politics. Antonio seemed to be respectably but
not excessively religious; he was healthy; he was industrious; he was
unencumbered by relatives; and, best of all, he was successful. What
more could be reasonably hoped for in a son-in-law? As Senhor Jorge
said good-bye, he wrung Antonio's hand with a bargain-sealing grip
which surprised the monk exceedingly.
The very next Sunday enabled Senhor Jorge and Donna Perpetua, his
consort, to open their campaign. During the cura's sermon bursts of
rain began lashing at the south windows of the church, and it was
raining smartly when Mass came to an end. José borrowed a
grass-waterproof: but, although the servant could wear this peasant's
garment, the master's dignity as a landed proprietor forbade him to
do likewise. Senhor Jorge seized his opportunity, and insisted that
Antonio should take shelter in his house, which stood less than half
a mile from the church.
Gossip nudged gossip and busybody winked at busybody as the two men
hastened off together. But Antonio saw neither the nudges nor the
winks; and he entered the lavrador's domain talking freely of farming
and of weather.
The buildings which met the monk's eyes were not like a farm-house in
England. As in England, they formed three sides of a quadrangle: but
there the resemblance ended. The square yard was covered nearly
three feet deep with gorse-litter. The buildings to the right and
left housed cattle, horses, wine-presses, tools and stores of all
kinds. The principal façade boasted two stories, the lower serving
as a byre. The upper story made some architectural pretension. A
broad flight of stone steps climbed up to it; and the front door was
set back in a three-arched loggia.
As Antonio mounted the steps he saw that blue and white tiles lined
the inside of the loggia and that the stone floor had been newly
whitened. His host pushed open the nail-studded door, and they
entered a large room lit by three windows in the further wall. Many
doors and door-posts crowded the two side-walls; and Antonio knew
that these were the entrances to bedrooms not much bigger than his
own old cell at the abbey. There were a few pieces of strong old
furniture and some pots and crocks even more imposing than José's:
but there was no cheerful fire to dispel the rawness and gloom of the
stormy autumn day, and, altogether, the place lacked comfort.
Donna Perpetua received Antonio with an attentive cordiality greatly
exceeding the utmost a mere weather-bound churchgoer had a right to
expect; but the monk ascribed her warmth to old-fashioned habits of
hospitality. One after another her three sons, Luiz, Gaspar, and
Affonso, strode into the room. After exchanging greetings with the
visitor they sat down, side by side, and did not utter a word.
Antonio turned to them more than once with remarks or inquiries: but
he could get nothing in return save gasps, grins, and flushes. As
Donna Perpetua and her husband were not much more at their ease, the
conversation soon languished; and, when Antonio perceived that he was
doing all the talking, it ceased altogether.
Strangely enough, the whole family appeared to regard the ensuing
silence as a thing altogether natural and seemly, like a silence in
church. When it had lasted long enough, Donna Perpetua arose from
her chair in a curiously formal manner, and, going to one of the side
doors, called out, "Margarida!" But the monk, although he was
vaguely conscious that the others were preoccupied and constrained,
still suspected nothing.
The door opened, and Margarida Clara Maria dos Santos Rebolla came
forward into the meager light. Antonia recognized her at once as a
damsel he had often seen kneeling on the church floor in the front
row of women. So far as his thoughts had ever engaged themselves
with her, she had interested him by her dark eyes and by the country
bloom on her olive skin. He remembered how, that very morning, she
had pleasantly filled in the picture of rustic piety.
Antonio rose as she entered. He saw that her head was rather less
attractive without the black lace mantilla she always wore in church.
Her face was a little too broad and her abundant hair was braided too
tightly. But, to make up for the mantilla, Margarida had adorned her
person with unfamiliar splendors. Of her fine lawn camisole only the
snowy sleeves could be seen. The rest was hidden by an over-bodice
richly embroidered in many-colored wools. Her ample apron was even
more magnificent than the bodice. Its bold stripes, triangles,
circles, stars and crosses stood out nearly a quarter of an inch from
the velvet ground in wools of blue, orange, vermilion and green. The
full skirt, rather short, revealed a pair of serviceable ankles.
Margarida's ribbed stockings were white, and there was more
embroidery on her velvet slippers. But the maiden's chief glory was
her jewelry. Heart-shaped filigree ear-rings, of gold purer than an
English sovereign, hung from her ears. These hearts were fully two
inches long. Her three golden necklaces sustained two more filigree
hearts, each as long as her longest finger, and a solid gold cross
set with colored stones. The greater part of her belt was also built
up from traceried squares and circles of pure gold.
The monk feared that he had gazed too long and curiously either at
these gorgeous trappings or at their wearer: for Margarida suddenly
blushed crimson from her topmost necklace to the roots of her black
hair. Donna Perpetua pronounced a formula of introduction; but,
overwhelmed by maidenly confusion, Margarida said nothing in answer
to Antonio's few words. She fled to her mother's chair and huddled
on a stool beside her.
There was another silence. But Antonio was unperturbed. Not only
long years before, as a youth in Portugal, but also during his
journey with young Crowberry, he had assisted at bourgeois and
rich-peasant functions equally tiresome. Near Blaye, on the Gironde,
and again at a _tertulia_ in Valladolid, he had seen the men herding
stupidly at one side of the room while the women clung together at
the other. A look through the window told him that the rain had
ceased; so he resolved to stay ten minutes more, for decency's sake,
and then to go home.
"Down in the valley we are less gay than this," he said to Donna
Perpetua, without intending to be ironical. "My man José and I are
the only human beings within two miles."
Donna Perpetua threw a glance at her husband, as if to remind him of
some pre-arrangement.
"If the Senhor is lonely," said the lavrador, "he must come to our
_serões_. On Thursdays, at the full moon. That means next Thursday,
about seven o'clock. He will do us a great honor."
"He will indeed," added Donna Perpetua. "And if he plays the
mandolin let him bring it with him."
Antonio knew that at the serões, or soirees, of Portuguese farm-folk
there was much lore to be learned which one might search for vainly
in libraries. Besides, it would hardly be neighborly to refuse an
invitation so heartily given and so kindly meant.
"All the honor," he said, "is on the other side. I will very gladly
come."
Only at that moment did he discern the position. Donna Perpetua's
glance at Margarida lasted not much longer than a flash of lightning;
but, like a flash of lightning, it revealed the truth to Antonio.
The furtive looks of Margarida's brothers, both at their sister and
at one another, confirmed the revelation; and the evident relief and
satisfaction of Senhor Jorge established it beyond a doubt.
Not without traces of hauteur in his manner and curtness in his
speech Antonio thanked his hosts for their hospitality and took his
leave.
V
The monk strode homewards with wrath in his heart. At both their
encounters Jorge dos Santos Rebolla had deceived him by false
pretenses. Antonio now understood that the petition for the new
bridge was merely an excuse for a spying visit to his little
territory; and the lavrador's solicitude for the dryness of Antonio's
skin was equally undisinterested. He had been trapped into a
compromising position before all the eyes in the parish, and he could
hardly get out of it without giving pain to the unoffending
Margarida, annoyance to himself, and an opportunity to the
gossip-mongers of the village.
Besides, the affair was a blow to Antonio's pride. He had often
recalled, with some complacency, his skillful treatment of the young
English beauty who gave him the hot-house flower, as well as his tact
towards other great ladies who had failed to dissemble their regard.
Yet here he was, enmeshed in the first net which a pair of rustic
match-makers had troubled to spread. Again, if a Francisco Manoel
Oliveira da Rocha were free to wed, it would not be with a daughter
of Senhor Jorge.
He swung down the muddy track slashing murderously with his thin
English walking-stick at the wet brambles. But Father Antonio had
not ceased to be a monk. Every night he examined his conscience, and
nearly all day long, in his endeavor toward perfection, he maintained
a keen-eyed watch against the approaches of sin. So he reined in his
bitter thoughts with sudden strength, and set himself to analyze
their causes. Experience had taught him how easily un-Christian
pride can be confused with righteous anger.
Before his trim white house rose into sight Antonio re-entered the
state of grace, and was once more in love and charity with all his
neighbors. The results of Senhor Jorge's proceedings were bound to
be gravely embarrassing; but his motives, after all, could not be
called disgraceful. It was a father's duty to secure his daughter's
happiness; and Antonio could not deny that Senhor Jorge's choice
implied a certain compliment to himself. Again, the lavrador could
not be blamed for the devices he was using to press the business
forward. No one, save José, knew that a Benedictine monk was living
on the borders of the parish; and probably Senhor Jorge thought he
was doing a shy young bachelor a service by taking charge of the
courtship.
These charitable thoughts towards the people who had drawn Antonio
into a mess did not, however, help him to get out of it. The slight
coldness and stiffness of his farewells could hardly have been
noticed by Donna Perpetua and the family. And on Thursday they would
expect him at their serão. What was he to do?
According to the cowardly and selfish rules of worldly prudence, his
only safe course was to sham some illness or to invent some bogus
call of business which would enable him to evade the serão. But such
ways were not Antonio's. He had given his promise and he meant to
keep it. Indeed, reflection convinced him that the serão would give
him his best opportunity of putting an end to the affair. Outside
the church Senhor Jorge had publicly compromised Antonio; at the
serão Antonio would publicly put himself right again. The parish
should see that he was not a woman-hater and a hermit: but the parish
should see, also, that he was not a marrying man.
About eight that night, as master and man were returning from their
usual Sunday evening exercises in the abbey chapel, Antonio told José
that he had sheltered under Senhor Jorge's roof and that he had
promised to assist at one of his serões. José tramped along without
replying: but it was plain he had a comment to make.
"Is there something you want to say, José?" asked Antonio. "If so,
why don't you say it?"
After stumping on another twenty paces in silence José grunted:
"Senhor Jorge has a daughter."
"I know. The Senhorita Margarida."
Although they were a third of a mile from home José shut his mouth
and did not open it again until they were in the house, with the door
shut. Then he spoke.
"I ask pardon of your Reverence," he began, using the forbidden title
with unconcealed deliberation. "Your Reverence is a holy monk. He
understands Latin and French and English. He understands oranges and
grapes, and winepresses and stills, better than anybody else in
Portugal. But he doesn't understand all the ways of the
world--especially young women."
"While you, José," retorted Antonio, "understand all the ways of the
world--especially young women--perfectly."
"I don't, Father," protested José in alarm, "and nobody else,
either--may God help us all! But I understand a thing here and a
thing there. The truth is, Father--"
"Don't call me Father. The truth is what?"
"The truth is," replied José, in a mysterious whisper, "they want to
find a husband for the Senhorita Margarida."
"Go on."
"Senhor Jorge wants to find some one rich--like your Worship. And
Donna Perpetua wants to find a born gentleman--like your Worship."
"Not to beat about the bush," Antonio interrupted, "you mean that
Senhor Jorge and Donna Perpetua want ... me?"
José admitted it and began apologizing for his presumptuous
interference; but Antonio cut him short by saying:
"You have done quite right to talk with me like this. Thanks. Never
ask pardon for speaking plainly. Now we will eat our bread."
It was the custom of the two men to dine on Sundays before going up
to the abbey, and to eat a small broa, dipped in wine, on their
return. They sat down to this simple supper, without any more words
about Margarida, and confined themselves to arranging the farm-work
for the morrow. At half-past eight José lit his lantern and went off
to bed.
The monk made no haste to follow his example. The room was chilly
after the rain: so he kindled a fire of cork-cuttings and
walnut-shells. It blazed up lustily, and José's copper and pewter
reflected the cheerful light. Antonio blew out the useless candle,
drew a chair up to the warmth, and sat down.
Outside, the stillness was profound. José, no doubt, had already
fallen asleep. No dog barked, no bird of night cried. Even the
Atlantic lay hushed.
From the heart of this silent loneliness the spirit of Antonio fared
forth, craving the company of living men. He thought first of his
old companions, the fathers and brethren of his Order; of the Abbot,
of the Cellarer, of Sebastian, of Cypriano. But it was little more
than an hour since he had walked past the doors of their abandoned
cells and had sat in the midst of their empty stalls; and, try as he
might, he could only think of them as impalpable ghosts hovering over
the dim and deserted abbey. Then he tried to think of Crowberry, of
the young Queen Victoria's nonchalant Comptroller, of the
clean-shaven, wiry, iron-willed Duke. But England seemed ever so far
away, on the other side of a thousand miles of rain and darkness; and
only one memory stood up warm and clear. It was the memory of that
summer evening, when the vane on the gray church tower burned like a
flame and when the blue smoke from the cottage hearths and the
children's merry cries had suddenly turned the exile sick with
yearning for love and home.
Yes. Although all other English memories were faint, that one scene
rebuilt itself before his mind's eyes, solid, richly colored, vocal.
He saw once more the cattle knee-deep in clear, purling waters beside
the steep old bridge, and he heard the rooks cawing. It was so like
a happening of yesterday that he remembered even the chaff of Mr.
Crowberry about his Portuguese sweetheart, Teresa or Dolores or
Luiza, or Carmen or Maria.
Maria. Margarida was named Maria. Margarida Clara Maria. The
syllables resounded in his brain like tinkling cymbals. They revived
that morning's experiences in the lavrador's house with so full an
actuality that Antonio's mind-painting of the golden English village
faded into gray and brown. Margarida. When Donna Perpetua called
out her name she had stepped forth; and now, once more, as Antonio
breathed it, she seemed to be advancing through the lonesome byways
of his heart.
Perhaps the Rebollas were discussing him at that very moment. He
tried to imagine Senhor Jorge holding forth to his trio of
inarticulate sons. But he failed. The picture which his imagination
persisted in painting was a picture of Donna Perpetua talking to
Margarida.
Donna Perpetua, like Senhor Jorge and the three dumb dogs of sons,
was doubtless a worthy creature. But the picture looked better
without her. Again, the comfortless living-room of the lavrador made
an unamiable background. Antonio's fire of cork-bark and nut-shells
had sunk from a blaze to a glow, and the bright eyes of the polished
copper vessels no longer winked and peeped down upon his privacy.
But the unwonted warmth, after the long walk in the fresh air and his
draught of generous wine, made him drowsy. His will was no longer
supreme. And so it came to pass that a soft dream-shape stole in
upon him and sat down on the other side of the hearth. Margarida.
Her presence seemed good to Antonio. Her voice, her cheeks, her
arms, her movements were soft and gentle. She had great, mild,
stupid, kind eyes, like the eyes of the contented English kine beside
the steep stone bridge. Margarida was brainless: but her
brainlessness rested his own brains, weary with plans and fears.
Sitting beside her, without speaking, brought healing to his fretted
spirit. Margarida did not challenge the soul to high romantic
passion. She sat there not like a proud maiden to be wooed and won
through stress and storm but more like a comely, cosy, docile, loving
young matron. Antonio, ever drowsier and drowsier, surrendered
himself more and more completely to unheroic peace. He had battled
for long years in the teeth of bitter winds and icy currents: but at
last he yielded himself up to the deliciousness of drifting down a
summer stream, warmed by the sun and hardly ruffled by scented
zephyrs.
Margarida seemed to have come nearer. She was at the further end of
the hearth no longer, but was sitting on one of José's carved coffers
at his side. All the room felt soft and silken. As Antonio's drowsy
eyes closed, his right arm sought Margarida's waist that he might
gently draw her to his breast....
He awoke in an instant and started up with a cry. For two or three
moments his wits went on sleeping, and he could not say if he
breathed in heaven or on earth or in hell. The fire had almost died
out, and he would have been standing in complete darkness if two
dull, red eyes had not stared at him from the hearth. Antonio
pressed agonizing hands against his throbbing temples and moaned a
broken prayer.
As he came to himself the door was flung open and José rushed in with
a lantern. He had heard the cry.
"It is nothing," said Antonio. "I fell asleep in my chair, and I had
... I had a kind of nightmare."
"It's these new-fangled French wines of your Worship's," José
grumbled. "Give me honest green wine, old-fashioned Portuguese. It
drowns your nightmares before they are born."
VI
Antonio kept his promise and took part in the Thursday serão at the
farm of Senhor Jorge.
The monk's robust common-sense would not suffer him to be tormented
by false scruples. On the preceding Monday, when he accomplished his
daily duty of self-examination, he had not failed to recall his
Sunday night's surrender to the dream-maiden: but a well-instructed
conscience acquitted him of blame. Antonio knew how to distinguish
between the deliberate thoughts or imaginations of his waking moments
and the unbidden guests of his dreams. Under the saintly Abbot he
had studied perfection in a manly school where morbid
super-sensitiveness could not exist an hour: and he was too keenly
alive to his real faults to accuse himself of fanciful sins. His
drowsy, involuntary pleasure in the shadowy Margarida's presence was
not sin; it was only homesickness. All the same he did not wish the
vision to return: and therefore he began to lay a new emphasis on the
lines _Procul recedant somnia, Et noctium phantasmata_, when he
recited the Compline hymn.
Having first ascertained that local usage permitted him to do so,
Antonio took José with him to the serão. The servant wore his Sunday
clothes; the master his second-best. Both of them were glad that
they had spent some pains and time on their appearance; for they were
joined, half-way, by a fellow-guest in all the glory of feast-day
raiment. In the bright moonlight they recognized this sumptuous
personage as one Emilio Domingos Carneiro, the eldest son of a small
farmer. Although he was on foot, he was appareled for proud feats of
horsemanship. Bright spurs stood out from his tall jack-boots, and
he wore a horseman's jacket of black cloth, felted. His fine white
shirt was fastened by silver buttons, and a light red sash topped his
tight breeches. To make up for the steed which he did not possess,
Emilio carried a business-like whip.
At a cross-road the party picked up Emilio's two cousins, Joaquina
and Candida Carneiro. These strapping damsels wore green cloth
skirts, large green silk kerchiefs with the ends drawn cross-wise
over their camisoles, and aprons of many colors. Their hats were
enormous. If the brims had not been caught up to the pork-pie crowns
by means of blue and yellow cords, they would have measured three
feet in diameter.
As Antonio neared the threshing-floor where the serão was to be held,
he noticed with satisfaction that not many of the guests had arrayed
themselves after the fashion of the resplendent Carneiros. Most of
those present had come to work as well as to play, and they were
dressed accordingly.
Donna Perpetua and her husband welcomed Antonio with proprietary
airs. Towards José they were sufficiently gracious, and Donna
Perpetua expressed her pleasure at the sight of the speechless
fellow's mandolin. Luiz and his brothers were already hard at play
on the threshing-floor; but of Margarida nothing was to be seen.
Perhaps, thought Antonio, she was sitting among the group of young
men and women who were husking maize on the sheltered side of the
threshing-floor.
The night was warm and balmy. From the south-west a few clouds had
begun to rise: but the round moon was riding free, high among the
sparkling stars. A tinkling of guitars and the chattering and light
laughter of youths and maidens rippled the surface of the enormous
silence. The scene was almost as bright as day. Here a girl's gold
ear-ring, there a man's buckles or buttons of old silver, caught and
flung back the faerie light. Some of the older women were spinning.
Eight-pointed wooden wheels whirred round, buzzing like bees. A
youth as handsome as a god lolled on a log, carving an ox-yoke.
Where the maidens sat all together, the colors were like peacocks'
tails and rainbows; and it was there that the moonlight lingered
wantonly on plump arms and little ivory hands.
A clapping of palms proclaimed the end of the game, and Luiz made
haste to begin another. He and Affonso climbed up two poplars, one
on the north side of the threshing-floor, the other on the south; and
to these trees they tied the two ends of a thin rope, so as to
stretch it at a height of eight or nine feet from the ground. Before
making his end fast, Luiz passed it through the handle of a coarse
brown jug. Descending to the ground, he picked up a six-foot
clothes-prop, made from the dried stalk of a giant cabbage, and with
this he shoved the jug along the rope until it dangled absurdly over
the center of the floor. Then he produced a clean white handkerchief
and sang out for the first player.
The youth who had been carving the ox-yoke dropped his work and
leaped into the ring like a Greek athlete into the arena. Everybody
clapped hands again. The handkerchief was bound over his eyes and
the light pole was placed in his hand. Luiz turned him
three-quarters round; clutched his arm and walked him half-a-dozen
paces this way and that; and then, retreating to the edge of the
floor, began to count a hundred, loudly and quickly.
The handsome youth, with self-confidence apparent in every limb and
muscle, stepped back, swung the pole around his head, and smashed
mightily at the point where he thought the jug was hanging. Empty
air received the blow, and a burst of laughter mocked him. Luiz went
on counting, and many of the older people counted with him, aloud.
At forty the youth struck again; but he was all at sea, and he was
marching further away from the line. At seventy, eighty-five, ninety
he slashed thrice more; and at a hundred he dragged off his bandage
to find that he had walked nearly off the threshing-floor on the
further side. Amidst applause, he came back, smiling pleasantly, and
resumed his carving of the yoke.
Emilio was the next to try. This was his great game, and the four
blows he struck were all within a yard of the jug. Once he missed it
by less than a hand's breadth. But Emilio was not in luck, and he
uncovered his eyes a little sulkily, only recovering his good spirits
when six or seven players in succession failed more signally than
himself.
At last José put himself forward. Never having seen the sport
before, he had been loud in ridicule of Emilio and the other
pole-wielders. His career was short and inglorious. He cut fiercely
at nothing before Luiz could count five. Then, losing his head, he
advanced rapidly towards the bevy of young women, brandishing his
weapon and laying about him right and left. The girls sprang up
screaming and took to flight. At thirty-seven José's feet struck a
heap of maize-leaves and he came down tremendously, full length among
the cobs. This was the kind of climax to delight the rural mind; and
the night was rent by shouts and shrieks of laughter.
Unhappily José was not a good loser. He struggled to his feet with
that wild tigerish rage in his eyes which Antonio had seen before;
and if his master had not sprung to the rescue and murmured words in
his ear there would have been trouble.
"It's nothing," said Antonio. "It's only a game. Stay here, where
you are. And give me the handkerchief. I'll try myself. Watch me
while I make a bigger fool of myself than all the rest of you put
together."
The girls came flocking back as Antonio, advancing to a spot exactly
under the jug, submitted to the bandaging of his eyes. He became
conscious, at once, of a different mood in the spectators. Nearly
all the gabbling ceased. Everybody was gazing curiously at the
mysterious Senhor Francisco Manoel Oliveira da Rocha, the man who had
trod the golden streets of London, the man who caused bottles of wine
to be worth three milreis each by standing them upon their heads,
and, above all, the man who was going to marry Margarida dos Santos
Rebolla.
The counting began. To the blindfolded man it had an uncanny sound;
for nine-tenths of the onlookers were chanting the numbers with Luiz
in a subdued, expectant sing-song. But he kept his senses about him.
During the few moments while Luiz was turning him round and pushing
him about, Antonio had bent his whole mind to the business of
smashing the jug. Not that he expected or even wished to smash it.
On the contrary, he had come forward determined to fail. But it was
part of his nature to do with all his wits and might whatever he took
in hand.
Luiz bawled out twenty before Antonio made his first stroke. He did
not touch the jug; but neither did he thwack the vacant air, for he
distinctly felt the rebound of the pole's tip from the rope. He
moved a pace to the right and struck again; but the pole encountered
nothing. Meanwhile he knew that he had come near to victory, because
the sing-song of the spectators had suddenly grown sharper and more
excited. He went back half a step and swept the space above him with
a curving stroke as Luiz reached sixty-three.
So uproarious a shout arose that Antonio did not hear the jug break,
and he thought for a half a second that, in fulfilment of his
prophecy to poor José, he had made himself the supreme fool of the
evening. But, a twinkling later, the broken pieces crashed loudly at
his feet, and, in the same moment, he knew that the intolerable
counting had ceased. Somebody rushed forward to loosen the bandage;
and, as it fell from his eyes, he saw Margarida standing with a
beaming face among the young women.
Before he could greet her, a general stampede whirled Margarida out
of sight. The younger guests were rushing to take up positions for a
new sport in which all could join. Emilio explained to Antonio that
it was to be a game of rounders, played with a clay pot instead of a
ball. This little pot, such as could be bought any fair-day for a
vintem, had no handle. It was of red clay, baked thin and brittle.
The players stood round in an extended circle.
Donna Perpetua, as the hostess, led off by throwing the pot to
Emilio; but, as soon as he had caught it, she resumed her place among
the matrons. Emilio, after taking aim fixedly at Joaquina Carneiro,
who was close at hand on his right, turned suddenly on his heel and
tossed the clay to Rosalina Saldanha, a graceful blonde who was far
away on his left. These ruses and pretenses were the salt of the
game. The bowl flew spinning through the air in less than two
seconds: but Rosalina was on the alert, and she caught it with her
two slender hands amidst applause.
Clouds from the south-west were mounting higher, but the moon still
shone brilliantly. Under the trees a lazy guitarist went on
strumming his thin, moonlight music, as crisp as hoar-frost and
tinkling like icicles. Whenever the pot was flung high, fifty bright
eyes saw, up above it, the planets and the stars; but the players
were too young and too happy to moralize. In their unstudied
attitudes they made up a picture full of rhythmic grace.
Four times the pot hurtled its way to José; and four times he caught
it before it touched the ground. At the fourth catch, he turned it
like lightning to Emilio; and Emilio spun it slowly and gracefully
into the hands of Margarida.
Margarida paused, clasping the red clay in fingers which were less
slender than Rosalina Saldanha's, but whiter. Every eye was fixed
upon her. She knew that she ought to toss the bowl to one of her
brothers, or to a young woman, or to one of the older men. But an
irresistible impulse moved her another way; and, with glowing cheeks
and radiant eyes, she sent it curving across the space which
separated her from Antonio.
Had it dashed like a stone from the catapult-hand of José or flashed
like a meteor from the palm of Emilio the monk could have caught the
pot. But Margarida's action took him unawares. What was he to do?
When the pot was in his hand, how was he to treat her public act of
favor? If he should--
His thinking was over in a flash; but it was too late. He plunged at
the pot clumsily and missed his catch. The pot struck the hard floor
and broke into a hundred pieces.
As a rule the smashing of the pot was the signal for a burst of
mocking merriment. But instead of a light-hearted uproar there was
an awe-struck silence. Everybody seemed to recoil from a sinister
omen. Two more pots stood on a log, in readiness for the second and
third rounds of the game; but no one stirred a step to fetch them.
Antonio's gaze involuntarily followed the general movement and rested
on the face of Margarida. The glow was gone from her cheeks, the
light from her eyes. Very pale, she turned away.
A weak gust of wind rattled two or three dead leaves across the
threshing-floor and a few cold drops fell from the darkening sky.
"The lamps are lighted in the barn," cried the voice of Senhor Jorge.
"Come in, all of you, before the rain."
VII
Senhor Jorge's lamps were not as bright as full moons. Their smoky
flames lit up the vast barn so feebly that candles had to be set at
the elbows of the knitters and stitchers and spinners. The
spattering of the rain against the dusty windows made a dreariful
sound.
There were games that could be played in a barn every bit as gay as
the games of the open air. But the merry-makers had lost their good
spirits, and nobody gave a lead towards recovering them. One by one
the maids and youths sat down on full sacks or empty barrels, or
squatted on the ground. When all were seated Donna Perpetua very
politely begged José to tune his mandolin and to sing a fado, or
love-song.
For the sake of the young people, Antonio felt glad. More than once
he had heard José singing folk-songs which would have brought smiles
to the faces of the most austere; and he took it for granted that
José would break out with one of these rollicking lays. José,
however, succumbed to the surrounding depression. Having tuned his
mandolin, which was unusually large and sonorous, he began playing a
doleful prelude.
Had his mind been free to enjoy it, Antonio would have found the
music brimful of charm. The descending minor scale was occasionally,
but not always, used in ascending passages, and the monk could not
doubt that José had received some tradition of tonality which urban
ears would have rejected with ignorant scorn. As José played on, it
seemed that he changed the scale more often than the key. At last he
subsided into a more familiar gamut and began to sing in slow and
mournful tones:
"O! fountain weeping softly,
Thou canst not weep for ever:
But the full fountains of my tears
Shall be congealed never.
"O! weep, my eyes, and weep, my heart,
Bereaved and forsaken;
Weep as the holy Virgin wept
The night her Son was taken.
"Alas! the sadness of my life.
Alas! my life of sadness;
Would I had wings to fly with thee,
O Swallow, Bird of Gladness!
"O Eagle! flying up so high,
Upon thy strong wings fleet me;
O Eagle! lift me to that sky
Where she prepares to greet me."
José ceased singing, but went on playing. Although a printed page of
music meant no more than so many black lines and dots and rings to
his untutored mind, he was a musician to his finger-tips, and he
could expound to others in tones many an emotion which he could not
express even to himself in words. Unlike most Portuguese performers,
whose melodic phrases were short-winded and very conventionally
joined together, he was capable of trailing out long-drawn melodies
and of welding them into forms of his own. José's huge fingers
stroked the strings so subtly that the monk could almost see the
eagle urging up, up, up, above the purple serras, above the moon and
stars, until it swept on unwearied wings through the gates into the
City.
But Antonio could not give himself up to watching the great bird's
flight. He was painfully conscious that he and his man were killing
the serão. In breaking the bowl he had almost broken poor
Margarida's heart; and here was José driving everybody down into the
depths of the blues. He glanced apologetically towards Donna
Perpetua: but the candle on the trestle-table beside her lit up the
unshed tears in her gray eyes so weirdly that he hastened to gaze
upon the ground.
José's threnody ended at last, and he stumped back to his place
without the slightest acknowledgment of the listeners' chastened
applause. From a corner one of the guitarists struck up a lively
dance-tune; but his notes sounded so thin after José's that he broke
off of his own accord. To save the situation, Antonio plunged in
desperately and asked if Donna Perpetua knew any riddles.
Yes. Donna Perpetua knew several.
"Who is it," she asked, "that knows the hour but not the month; that
wears spurs but never rides a-horse; that has a saw but isn't a
carpenter; that carries a pick-axe but isn't a quarryman; that delves
in the ground but gains no wages?"
Antonio could not guess: but his ignorance was covered up by a
general shout of "The cock!"
"Good," cooed Donna Perpetua. "Now explain this: 'Before the father
is born the son is climbing up to the roof.'"
"Smoke!" roared everybody.
"What is born on the mountain," she continued, "and comes to sing in
the house?"
The shrill voices of the old women were loudest in the chorus of "A
spindle!"
"And who is it who is born on a dunghill, yet comes to eat with the
king at his table?"
"A fly!" was the immediate unanimous answer.
Donna Perpetua beamed benevolently upon the company. It had pleased
her to be made prominent. The guests were equally pleased: for had
they not shown the brightness of their wits, or, at the very least,
of their memories? Antonio was entertained in a different way.
These cut-and-dried riddles and answers reminded him of a village
school which he had visited in England and of the joyous heartiness
with which the rosy-cheeked boys and girls, in answer to the
teacher's question, "What is hell?" roared out, "It is a bottomless
and horrible pit, full of fire."
By way of returning the compliment, Donna Perpetua invited Antonio to
propound one or two of the riddles he had heard in England.
Unguardedly he gave consent: and only when he began racking his
memory did he perceive his mistake. He had heard a feeble riddle in
a country house about a door being a jar; but the pun could not be
made in Portuguese. Again, he knew by heart a rhymed enigma, said to
be Byron's, on the letter H; but this was worse still. Apart from
the Portuguese having no aspirate, how could he render the line
"'Twas whispered in heaven, 'twas muttered in hell" into a language
which spelled heaven with a "c" and hell with an "i"? At last he cut
short a very uncomfortable silence by saying that the only English
conundrums he knew could not be translated. At this remark the girls
hung their heads modestly and the matrons gave silent thanks that
they had not been born in an apostate country where the very riddles
brimmed with blasphemies and lewdnesses.
"England is no good," grunted Emilio, who had been playing a tune on
his jack-boots with the handle of his whip. "The English have plenty
of money; but they live dogs' lives. In England there are no fruits,
no flowers. They have no wine save what we send them from Portugal.
When the rain stops, there is a fog. No Englishman ever sees the
sun."
"Things are hardly so bad as that," said Antonio, smiling. "In July
and August I have known the sun in England shine as fiercely as any
sun in Portugal. It is true there are no grapes or oranges, except
those that grow in glass hot-houses; but the English have apples and
pears, cherries and strawberries, plums and damsons, as fine as ours.
Their flowers are wonderful; and I wish everybody in Portugal could
see an English village."
Emilio, whose father had suffered wrongs under Marshal Beresford
during the Regency, thwacked his boot again with the whip-stock and
mumbled. Antonio was concerned. He and José had already gone far
towards wrecking the serão, and he saw the necessity of avoiding a
quarrel. So he added what he conscientiously believed, saying, in a
conciliatory tone:
"The English are not the equals of the Portuguese. But they are a
fine people and a great nation."
"I have heard," put in Senhor Jorge, "that the English are not happy."
"They were merry once," Antonio answered, "and they will be merry
once more when they regain the Faith."
"Yes," said Donna Perpetua devoutly. "Only those who are going to be
happy in the next life can be truly happy in this."
"Yet the English ought to be happy," objected Senhor Jorge, growing
restive at all this piety. "They have the best government in the
world."
"Even the best government in the world is very bad," Antonio
retorted. "Still, with all its faults, the English government is
indeed the best in Europe. There is much more intrigue and
corruption in their public life than they care to recognize; but one
can get justice in their courts, and, except for Catholics, there is
almost complete liberty. If we Portuguese had a government one half
so good--"
A thin, short, bald, bent old man with a long white beard and madly
bright eyes leaped out of the shadow and startled Antonio by shouting:
"Till he comes back there'll be no good government in Portugal.
They'll go on being thieves and cowards. Yes, thieves. The French
were thieves and bullies. The English were thieves and bullies too.
Dom Miguel was the worst thief and coward of them all. As for the
Queen--"
Antonio staunched the flow of eloquence before treason could burst
forth.
"Whom do you speak of?" he demanded quickly. "You say 'Till he comes
back.' Who?"
While the old man stood glaring at the monk with trembling lips,
Senhor Jorge bent over and whispered in Antonio's ear:
"Have patience with him, your Worship. He is a Sebastianista--the
only Sebastianista for leagues around. On all other points he is
saner than I am. He is a good man. I beg your Worship to indulge
him."
Antonio did more than indulge the hoary monomaniac. He strained
forward, all ears. That there should be a Sebastianista left alive
in Portugal amazed him. From the lips of a very old Jesuit he had
once heard of some Sebastianistas in the forests of Brazil, and the
Abbot had mentioned a Sebastianista whom he had seen, as a child, in
the Açores. But a Sebastianista was the last curiosity Antonio had
expected to meet at Senhor Jorge's serão.
"Tell us all about it," he asked.
"Ah, your Excellency," moaned the old man, "I am a poor blacksmith
and no scholar, and I cannot use fine words."
"Don't some people believe," asked Antonio, egging him on, "that King
Sebastião was killed by the Moors at the battle of al-Kasr al-Kebir?
Don't they say his body rests in the church of the Jeronymos at
Belem?"
"Lies, all lies!" cried the Sebastianista. "Why were we beaten at
Alcacer-Kibir by those hounds of infidels? Because they were braver
or stronger? No. It was because we had sinned and the just God
punished us. But I tell your Excellency that not one hair of the
King's head fell to the ground. He departed unhurt from the battle.
The tomb in the Jeronymos is emptier than this barrel."
Unfortunately the barrel which the Sebastianista kicked with the iron
tip of his wooden shoe gave back a blunt sound which proved that it
was full. The girls began to titter; but the old man raved on,
unabashed.
"Yes," he cried, "King Sebastião, the brave, the good, the Desired,
escaped without a scratch on his body, although he had fought a
hundred Moors hand-to-hand. He slew eighty with his own sword. He
is waiting in the enchanted isle. Waiting, waiting, waiting. God
knows things are bad enough in Portugal. But they will be worse.
And when they are worst of all, he will come back. The Hidden Prince
will come back, riding on a white horse. He will drive out the
thieves and cowards. He will deal out justice to rich and poor
alike. He will set up the Fifth Empire."
"The Fifth Empire?" echoed Antonio, astonished at hearing such a
phrase from such lips. "What is the Fifth Empire?"
"It is the Empire which King Sebastião will set up," said the old man.
"But, come now, Senhor Joaquim," objected Emilio pertly. "Isn't it
rather a long time since King Sebastião went away? Tell us. How
long ago?"
"It was before my grandfather was born," snapped the old man,
wheeling defiantly towards Emilio.
"Then when he comes back he'll be thrice as old as you are. He'll
have no hair, no teeth, and he'll be as blind as a bat. So how much
good will he be?"
"How much good will the King be?" bellowed the Sebastianista. "How
much good? Senhor Emilio Domingos Carneiro, I'll tell you. If he's
an old man, thank God for that! Portugal has suffered enough from
the young ones. And hark to this: He'll be a true old Portuguese.
He'll be a man, not a dandy. He won't crack whips and wear spurs
unless he can mount a horse without falling off on the other side."
At this home-thrust most of the young men chuckled or laughed
outright, while the girls giggled. Donna Perpetua, however, was
flurried and Emilio's cousins tried to protest. With ready tact
Senhor Jorge preserved the peace.
"Come, Joaquim," he said. "Talking has made you thirsty. Come with
me and I'll find you a mug of good wine to drink King Sebastião's
health in."
The old man, proud at having had the best of it, departed nimbly in
his host's wake and was no more heard or seen.
"Does the Senhor believe that Dom Sebastião will ever return?" asked
the handsome yoke-carver, turning to Antonio.
"I've just been reckoning," the monk answered, "that it is more than
two hundred and sixty years since the day of the battle."
Two hundred and sixty meant little to the handsome youth, who had
never had occasion to engage his brains with any such number. He
knew that he possessed ten fingers and ten toes, and that there were
seven days in the week and that his father owned eight bullocks; but
who had ever heard of such a number as two hundred and sixty? He
stared at Antonio blankly.
"It seems to me," put in José, "that when we see Dom Sebastião on a
white horse, it will be his ghost."
He uttered the word "ghost" in a tone which made the pretty Rosalina
Saldanha clasp her pretty hands and emit a pretty squeak. The other
damsels squeaked after her, in chorus. They reveled in ghost-tales,
although they dreaded them.
Antonio laughed.
"Your Worship may laugh," railed Emilio, who seemed determined to
shine in one way or another. "But he wouldn't laugh if he saw what
some people have seen."
The girls cuddled together in delicious fright.
"Perhaps your Worship has not heard," continued the dandy, feeling
important, "about the lobis-homem of Rio Briga, between Santarem and
Thomar?"
Antonio had not heard of this particular case. But he was familiar
with the lobis-homem or were-wolf superstition in general, and he
detested it as a poisonous survival from dark and cruel days. He
knew that, in remote mountain hamlets, this lingering pagan lie
sometimes brought life-long anguish to the very unfortunates who most
needed help and love. Involuntarily the monk's eyes sought Donna
Perpetua's. He saw that she wished as little as he did to hear of
were-wolves.
"Are not all tales of lobis-homens alike?" said Antonio to Emilio.
"Will not your Worship tell us another tale instead? I have heard
that a Moorish maiden was once turned to stone up in these hills."
"It's a tale for little girls," snorted Emilio. Horror suited his
narrative style better than romance. But he tried to recite the
legend of a young peasant who heard one of the stones of the fountain
cry out piteously. He went on to tell how the peasant released the
Moor-maiden from the spell and married her; how she wrought him
grief; and how her evil-spirit was cast out by a hermit. But
Emilio's touch was heavy; and, as every one present knew the story by
heart already, he bored his audience badly.
"Your Excellency lives almost by himself," said a pleasant,
middle-aged woman, pausing in her spinning and looking towards
Antonio, "so it is important he should be on his guard against the
cock's egg."
Antonio looked bewildered.
"Once every seven years," she explained, "the cock lays a tiny egg,
as round as a marble and as black as ink. It is smaller than a
pigeon's. As a rule the rats get it and no harm is done. But, if
your Excellency has no rats, take care. If the egg is not destroyed
a monster will come out of it. Perhaps you won't see him; but,
wherever he is hatched, he causes the death of the master of the
house within the year."
She resumed her spinning. Antonio thanked her politely and promised
that he would show no mercy to any egg as black as ink and as round
as a marble which he might find about his farm.
"You can't be always sure you've found the egg," said the woman,
pausing again. "So it's a good thing always to leave a pair of
scissors open on a shelf, especially at night."
Antonio perceived that the open scissors made the sign of the Cross;
and it thrilled him to find, in this peasant-woman's chatter about
eggs and scissors, a miniature picture of the millennial struggle
between heathenism and Christianity. For he had common-sense enough
to understand that, while she held the Christian Faith with all her
heart and mind, she was only half-serious about her grandsires'
goblins and demons.
"Are open scissors good against anything else besides monsters out of
black eggs?" asked José.
"Yes," answered the spinner. "They're good against witches."
"I was hoping they might be good against ghosts," grumbled José.
Antonio was surprised. José was still only half-educated; but he had
never before found him superstitious. As for the more serious
guests, they were scandalized. The farrier's wife, Donna Catharina
de Barros Lopes, who was a "Blessed One," said aloud:
"Thanks be to God there are no witches left! As for ghosts, there
never were any."
"Then the Senhora has never been up to the old abbey chapel on a dark
night?" asked José doggedly.
Antonio could not believe his ears. As for the other guests, they
sat up and bent forward, all sudden excitement. There were no more
affected little squeaks from the maidens. All, even the men, were
struck dumb at the news that a ghost walked within a league of Senhor
Jorge's barn. Emilio Carneiro, whose farm was only a mile and a half
from one of the abbey gates, turned white with terror.
"No," answered the Blessed One curtly. "I do not go, Senhor, up to
the old abbey chapel on dark nights. And what is more, I don't
intend to."
"I am glad to hear it," said José, with maddening slowness. "The
Senhora is better at home. And the rest of your Worships too."
When the general excitement could no longer be suppressed, Senhor
Jorge, who had just re-entered the room, demanded sternly:
"What is all this? Why are we better at home?"
"Because," said José in awe-struck tones, "it's very easy for us to
talk and be brave here, in the light and in good company. But I
don't think we should stay up there very long if we saw--"
"If we saw--?" urged six or seven voices.
"If we saw a monk, all in black, sitting in his stall, with a face as
white as a curd cheese."
Rosalina Saldanha screamed and collapsed into the stout arms of
Joanna Quintella. Twenty people began talking at once, and
bombarding José with questions.
"No," cried Antonio loudly. "No more. We've had more than enough of
witchcraft and ghosts and superstition. Donna Perpetua--Senhor
Jorge--I ask pardon for interfering."
"Your Worship is quite right," answered Senhor Jorge, with warmth.
"In my own house such talk is forbidden. We don't want the maids in
hysterics. Luiz--Affonso--every one is dying of thirst and hunger.
Where are the broas?"
The two young men, whose limbs were brisker than their tongues,
jumped up and began filling roughly glazed and gaily painted jugs and
mugs with green wine from a newly broached cask. Senhor Jorge was
famous for his hospitality, and even José's ghost was forgotten for a
moment in the good-tempered rough-and-tumble.
Margarida, who had remained invisible since the breaking of the bowl,
now reappeared. She and her brother Gaspar each carried a basket of
broas. These were not the plain work-a-day broas; they looked paler,
because of an admixture of fine flour, and they were sweetened with
honey and flavored with spice. Gaspar began distributing his
dainties at the far ends of the barn, while Margarida served the
notables round the candles.
Antonio could not unlearn in a single moment his old habits; and
therefore, when he took his broa from Margarida's hand, he thanked
her with the softly strong tones and the momentary boldness of the
eyes which, without his knowing or intending it, had captivated more
than one high lady in England. If Donna Perpetua or the farrier's
wife or the spinner had offered the broa, he would have expressed his
thanks in the same way. But poor Margarida found in his voice and
glance a lover-like reverence, meant for herself alone. She forgot
the evil omen of the broken bowl, and hurried away with rosy fires
burning on her cheeks and love-lights dancing in her eyes.
VIII
When the serão was beginning to break up, Senhor Jorge asked Antonio
into the house in order that he might judge some old wine. After it
had been tasted and praised, the lavrador gazed at the monk wistfully
and said:
"I hope the Senhor is not superstitious?"
"Superstitious? I hope not," Antonio replied. "And I promise,
Senhor Jorge, that I will speak very plainly to my man José about
that ridiculous ghost-story."
"I wasn't thinking of your man José," said the lavrador. And, after
an awkward pause, he added: "That clay pot. Your Worship failed to
catch it. And just after the pot broke the sky was darkened. It ...
it upset my Margarida very much."
Antonio's heart sank. Had Senhor Jorge been merely a selfish
match-maker, bent on marrying off Margarida for his own profit, it
would have been easy to rebuff him by silent contempt. But the monk
knew that he was face to face with an honest Portuguese of the old
school who was sacrificing pride to duty.
To gain time Antonio poured another spoonful of wine into the thin
English glass. Having warmed it with his hand, he swirled it round,
sniffed it, and held it up to the lamp. But he did not drink it.
Replacing it on the table, he said:
"Have two or three minutes' patience with me, Senhor Jorge, while I
perform one of the hardest tasks of a life which has not been easy.
For three years I have lived like a hermit. To-night is my first
social recreation since I settled down in this parish."
"Go on," urged Senhor Jorge. His face was paler and his mouth
twitched.
"My farm was a tangled wilderness. Our work claimed all our time.
Now and again business took me to Navares or Villa Branca; but I
hardly knew the names of half-a-dozen people in this village. Your
Worship, I will come to the point. When you called at my farm I did
not know you had a daughter. I had seen the Senhorita Margarida in
church; but until her mother called her into our presence last Sunday
I did not know she was yours."
"You know now," muttered the lavrador angrily. "And I'd like to hear
what's wrong with her. If any one has breathed a whisper against her
I'll kill him with my own hands. Yes!" he cried, raising his voice,
"I'll do it as easily as I'd cut a pig's throat."
"Not so fast," said Antonio. "I have not heard one word against
Margarida. And I can use my eyes. I know she's as good as gold."
"Then what's wrong? Out with it! Isn't she pretty enough for your
Worship? Most people call her a beauty. Or are you afraid she won't
have enough money?"
"Her beauty is so great that it would be wasted in an out-of-the-way
corner like my farm," said the monk, keeping his temper. "As for
money, it's the last thing in the world I should think of. But the
truth is, I do not mean to marry."
After he had stared at Antonio a full minute, the lavrador's stern
face suddenly relaxed and he burst into unaffected laughter.
"If that's all, friend Francisco," he chuckled, clapping Antonio on
the back, "it's less than nothing. Why, I myself didn't mean to
marry: and look at me to-day! De Barros Lopes, the farrier, swore
he'd never marry; and he has eight children. Old Martins said he
would hang himself before he would marry; and this is his third wife."
"Then old Martins has taken my share," said Antonio curtly. "I
repeat I shall not marry."
"The reason?"
"My ... my work."
"Work? Is your Worship the only man in Portugal who works? There's
a bit of work, now and again, on my own farm. Is it the worse done
because there's a mistress, and three stout sons and the best
daughter a man ever had? Work! My wife and I squabble sometimes;
but the best day's work I ever did was to get married."
The monk held his peace. Senhor Jorge, genuinely desirous of
promoting Antonio's happiness as well as Margarida's, chaffed him
with rough heartiness.
"Come, come," said he. "Your head's full of cobwebs. You've been
hiding yourself too long in holes and corners. Don't be a fool.
It's all very well while you're young and healthy; but, when days and
nights of sickness come, who will nurse you then, and put up with
your foibles? And who will carry on the wine-making when you're dead
and gone? Come, you don't want to let the grand old family of Da
Rocha die out? Besides ... a man without a woman is only half a man."
Senhor Jorge uttered his concluding sentence with a meaning change of
tone. But, even if his own daughter Margarida had not been involved,
the lavrador had too much delicacy to expand this clinching argument.
Antonio, however, scented the meaning.
What was he to say? All these arguments against celibacy, and a host
of others more refined, had hurled themselves in his teeth a dozen
years before, when he first contemplated the vow of chastity. But
the answers which satisfied him were not available in the presence of
Senhor Jorge. He could not reply that he had deliberately renounced
his high-sounding names until events forced him to resume them; that
he welcomed roughness and solitary vigils of pain in thankful honor
of the Man of Sorrows; and that the succession of Saint Benedict's
spiritual family was secure until the end of the world. With bent
head and knitted brows he remained mute.
"Then I will persuade you no more," said Senhor Jorge. "If my wife
knew I had said half so much, she would never forgive me. By Saint
Braz! To think I should be begging and praying anybody to be so kind
as to marry Marge! Before I asked for Perpetua, I had to go down
almost on my bended knees. Pssh! Sometimes, before she braided up
her hair, I've watched Margaridinha playing about the house and I've
thought how I would hum and haw and hesitate when a suitor should
come along. I thank your Worship. For to-night I've done with him.
If he wants to speak to me after Mass next Sunday he may; but next
Sunday will be his last chance."
Antonio flung himself against the door before his ruffled host could
open it.
"One moment," he pleaded in low, insistent tones. "Here and now let
me say, once for all, that neither next Sunday nor any other day can
I do myself this great honor. Senhor Jorge, I shall never forget the
extreme compliment you have paid me. Senhor, I trust you to keep my
secret. I cannot ask for Margarida because ... already ... I am..."
"You are married already," hissed the lavrador, blazing into terrible
indignation.
"No. No, no, a thousand times. But ... I am plighted to another
Bride."
He turned away abruptly and walked to the tiny window. The scudding
moon had escaped from the black rain-clouds, and Antonio thought he
could discern the white belfry of the abbey chapel rising above the
distant pine-woods.
"Another bride?" echoed Senhor Jorge, more wrathful than ever. "Who?
Where? When? It's that chalk-faced chit of a Rosalina Saldanha!"
"No," Antonio answered, wheeling round. "Neither Rosalina Saldanha
nor any other mortal woman you've ever seen or heard of."
"Then where is she? Why does she leave you year after year alone?
Tut! A fine bride. Let her take you or leave you. You're a fool to
stand it."
"We will not quarrel," said the monk. "If you knew all, you would
not malign Her. It may be years, many years more, that I must live
alone. But my faith is plighted, and there's an end."
This time it was the older man who walked to the window. After a
long time he asked, without looking round:
"Why did not your Worship think of this before? Why did he come here
to-night, leading on my poor Marge, and setting all the tongues
a-wagging?"
There was an obvious and fair retort; but Antonio did not make it.
Instead, he answered:
"For that blunder I ask pardon. I had promised to come to the serão:
and I had some foolish idea that it would give me a chance of putting
matters right. In England I prided myself on having tact in these
things. But pride goes before a fall. Forgive me for not staying
away. I have blundered worse than a village booby. Yet I hope, in
spite of all, that we may part friends."
They parted friends.
Out in the open, Antonio said to José:
"Hear me for one minute on a matter we need never mention again. I
have made it plain to Senhor Jorge that I am not free to marry the
Senhorita Margarida."
"But Senhor Jorge was not satisfied with that?"
"I told him," replied Antonio awkwardly, "that I am already plighted
to another Bride. You know what Bride I mean, José?"
"Yes. But Senhor Jorge doesn't."
Half a mile further on Antonio demanded:
"About this ghost--this black monk in the chapel. I was
thunderstruck. I thought you were mad."
"For once in my life," said the peasant, "I had all my wits about me.
I overheard that cockatoo of an Emilio saying that he often took a
stroll in the abbey gardens, after his day's work. He was lying; but
I didn't want the other young fellows to begin prowling about up
there."
"They'll prowl all the more now."
"They never will, your Worship," affirmed José flatly. "They're the
poorest lot I ever saw. There isn't a man among them. Why, at
Pedrinha das Areias, if we had heard of a ghost, a dozen of us would
have turned out to see how ghosts looked after they have been soused
with buckets of cold water. Here they're fops and cowards. No, your
Worship. From to-night the abbey is safe."
Antonio marveled at José's shrewdness. It was of a piece with his
shrewdness in choosing the sun-baked sand-pit for burying the boxes
of the Viscount. All the same he felt it his duty, as José's
spiritual director, to rebuke him mildly, saying:
"But there's no ghost there at all."
Hardly were the words out of his mouth before he regretted them.
Fresh from his well-meaning prevarication with Senhor Jorge, who was
he to censure others? He hoped José would not notice the
inconsistency; but he hoped in vain.
"I never said there was any ghost," chuckled José. "I said there was
a monk, all in black, in his stall. You know what monk I mean, your
Worship."
"But Emilio Carneiro doesn't," said Antonio.
They laughed loudly together and strode on, talking with unwonted
gaiety under the bright moon. Had not the master rid himself of
match-makers, and had not the man made the abbey safer than ever?
"Sing," begged the monk.
The peasant struck up a rousing song in praise of wine. But in the
middle of the third verse he stopped. They were crossing the road
which led from Navares to the main gate of the abbey. José sank on
one knee and pored over something he had seen.
Two wheels had cut two deep grooves in the wet sand. José measured
the distance between them with his two palms. Then he examined the
marks of the horse's shoes.
"These wheels," he said, "were not Portuguese. And, unless they've
shod him in Lisbon or Oporto, these shoes didn't belong to a
Portuguese horse."
Antonio hardly heard him. High on the hill, from inside the
principal window of the abbey guest-house, the flame of a candle
looked out like a living thing.