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.
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.
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 pronouncepaterandmater, and how to translate these words in the light of the Portuguesepadreandmadre. Within a week, having mastered the present indicative ofamoand also the first and second declensions of nouns, he could print on the boardPater amat filium, with the Portuguese equivalentO padre ama o filhoin 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-readylingua rusticawhich 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.
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 calledos 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 atertuliain 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 ourserões. 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.
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."
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 linesProcul 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.