A PORTUGUESE HOME
"He was a man of single countenance,
Of frank address and simple faith."
--_Francisco de Sá de Miranda._
IT was twilight when Antonio, Jose, the patient oxen and the frisky dog
reached home.
Great was the joy over that home-coming. The father, sitting propped
with pillows by the hearth, put his left hand in blessing upon the
head of his eldest son and exclaimed "_Graças à Deus_," thanks be to
God. The mother, weeping tears of joy, held Antonio's strong body in
her arms for a long moment. Joanna, the tall bronzed sister, who had
just come in with the pails from milking, greeted him with a glad kiss
upon the forehead. Shy, thirteen-year-old Malfada, her jet black hair
floating over her shoulders, hugged the big brother, and then ran to
a shadowy corner to watch him. Two-year-old baby Tareja held out her
chubby hands: Antonio had her on his shoulder now. The green parrot in
its gilded cage cried "_Accolade, accolade_," in a shrill tone.
Joanna quickly began preparing for supper the _bôlos de bacalhau_--the
Portuguese delicacy for feast days--made of minced salt fish, mixed
with garlic, shaped into cakes and fried in olive oil.
Jose ran out and put the oxen into their corner of the farm-yard near
the house, fed them and the cow, the chickens and the pig; brought in
firewood, and, last of all, filled the red earthenware jar with cool
water from the well on the terrace below the garden.
Soon the supper was ready. With thankful hearts and glad talk the
family gathered around the long, dark, polished chestnut-wood table.
The father's chair was drawn to the side nearest the hearth where a
bright fire blazed, lighting the room. The mother held little Tareja.
Joanna kept the plates filled with _bacalhau_, with _brôa_--the maize
and rye bread of Portugal--with the vegetable stew of gourds, dried
beans and rice, flavored with bacon, which was the usual supper-dish;
then, with ripe olives, fresh figs and sweet seed cakes. Malfada helped
the father take his food. Jose ate hungrily, and once in a while
slipped a piece of _brôa_, or bacon, into Carlos' mouth.
The front door stood open. Beyond the trees, the shadow of twilight
lingered in the valley. The hills were bathed in rosy mist.
The Almaida home was one of the better class of small farmhouses.
It stood in the centre of a hillside farm of about four acres. It
was a square, plastered stone house, whitewashed inside and out.
The overhanging eaves of the red-tiled roof were painted deep red
underneath. This was the house where Senhor Miguel Almaida's father,
his grandfather and great-grandfather had lived.
The central room, into which one entered from the vine-clad porch, was
uncarpeted. The furnishings showed that the Almaidas were a family of
more than peasant rank.
At one end of the room stood a large cupboard or cabinet of carved
chestnut-wood. Its shelves were full of odds and ends,--some old pieces
of English ware, souvenirs of long ago days when trade relations
existed with Great Britain, and there was a silver platter of the fine
old Portuguese handwork of two hundred years ago. There were also a few
books on the shelves, and a violin, a guitar and a flute.
Against the wall, opposite the cabinet, were the beds, separated from
one another by partitions which did not reach quite to the top of the
room.
On the walls hung framed colored pictures of the Portuguese hero king,
Affonso Henriquez, of Inez de Castro and Prince Pedro, her lover. A
large gilt-framed mirror hung near the door, and over the mantel was a
crucifix.
Never was there a cleaner or a prettier farmhouse in all Portugal.
Never were there better-trained, more obedient children than Miguel
Almaida's.
The father, in these many days when he had to sit helpless by the
fireside in his arm-chair, felt grateful for his tidy home, his
good wife, and his dutiful children. He was a man of middle height,
thick-set in figure. He was of grave character and of great common
sense. Even during this illness he kept himself cheerful and of good
hope.
While the mother strained and cared for the milk, the older sisters
washed and put away the dishes. Jose sat on a low stool by his father's
side, holding Tareja on his knee, and listening to Antonio's stories
about America, of his voyage home, and of the revolution in Portugal.
Indeed the events in Portugal were of more interest even than the
wonders of far-away America.
"Our country has changed very little in the past ten, twenty and
perhaps fifty years. Now we can hope for better times," said Miguel
Almaida.
News of the revolution had been slow in reaching the hillside farm.
What the father had heard before as rumors Antonio now told him as
facts.
The revolution had taken place while Antonio was on the voyage from New
York to Gibraltar. The news had greeted him when he landed. As he had
journeyed from Gibraltar to Lisbon, the capital city of Portugal, and
then, northward still, to Guimarães, people everywhere were talking of
the great event. Since then, travelling by foot from Guimarães out into
the hill country and past the little market-place, always the one topic
of interest had been King Manuel's banishment and the fact that the
Portuguese people were now to rule and govern themselves.
Jose could not understand all that the change meant. But to Antonio
and his father it meant better times,--not so much money to be paid
in taxes, better laws, and a chance for the children to go to school.
Almost all of the education which the Almaida children had received had
been at home. Senhor Almaida was a man better educated than many of his
neighbors.
When the evening work was done, the mother and the two older sisters
drew around the hearth. Tiny Tareja soon fell asleep in the mother's
arms. Joanna and Malfada began to embroider: Portuguese girls do
beautiful work with their needles. The hearth-fire of maple wood burned
brilliantly. Two candles on the mantel lighted up the crucifix.
Every few moments the parrot in its cage near the mantel, opened its
eyes, blinked, and called out "_Accolade! à deus!_"--Welcome! Good-by!
"I am sure the old parrot remembers you, Antonio," the mother said,
each time. "He has not talked so much as this for six months."
Now it was that Antonio opened his heavy travelling-bag. One by one he
took out the presents he had brought. Joanna and Malfada quickly put
aside their work.
First there was a silver watch for the father,--who had never before in
all his life owned a watch.
Next came three silver-link hand-bags, the largest for the mother, the
middle sized one for Joanna, the smallest for Malfada.
When Malfada hung the bag from her round wrist and held it forth to
look at it, Antonio burst into a hearty laugh and said: "That is just
the way I imagined that Malfada would dangle the little bag from her
wrist."
Antonio put the present for sleeping Tareja into his mother's hands.
It was a wonderful American doll with yellow hair and with eyes which
would shut and open, and it was dressed all in white, just as Joanna
had sometimes, on rare visits to Guimarães, seen foreign children
dressed.
Then how gleefully they all laughed at the next present which Antonio
brought out! It was for the house,--a china salt-cellar, red and round
like a tomato.
"We must put it in the cabinet. It is too fine to use except on
holidays and feast-days," said the mother.
Jose's present was the last to appear. Now it was the little boy's turn
to receive a paper-covered package, tied with pink string.
Jose's short fingers trembled in impatience as he untied the
string,--careful, even in his haste, not to break it, for a piece of
string was very precious to the boy.
Off came the paper and out came a square white box. Off came the
box-cover and out came an engine and four gaily painted cars,--such a
wonderful toy as Jose had never seen before.
It was an evening always to be remembered in the Almaida family.
They looked at one another's presents. They listened to Antonio's
tales of great American cities and railroads and bridges, of active,
rapid-moving people, and of his own work as foreman on a section of
railroad diggers.
By and by the mother saw that the father, in his arm-chair, was growing
tired. So she told the children it was time to go to bed, because they
could hear more to-morrow about all these things.
Jose took the engine and cars, the box and the pink string to bed
with him, and held them clasped in both hands to make sure that the
treasures were real.
He was very wide-awake. He heard his mother and Antonio talking after
they had helped the father to his bed. And the little boy never forgot
Antonio's last words to his mother that night:
"Before I went away from home, mother, you said to me 'Each morning,
resolve not to do anything during all the day which will make you feel
sorry when night comes.' I remembered that each morning, mother, and it
kept me always from wrong ways and wrong places."