Under a heat which amazed Antonio the quays and the dock became more unsavory every day: but he did not quit theQueen of the Medway. His friend the Excise officer agreed with Mr. Crowberry that decency required patient waiting until after the King's funeral. Meanwhile, however, the dock charges and other expenses were running on. Accordingly, Antonio drafted a discreet and respectful letter to the comptroller of the royal cellars, asking him to affix seals to a small bonded warehouse in which the wine could await his convenience. Mr. Crowberry admired and signed the letter and despatched it through a privileged middleman. The comptroller's people accepted the proposal with surprising alacrity; and within a week of his reaching London the cargo lay safely under lock and seal and Antonio was free.
Through pure thoughtlessness Mr. Crowberry recommended Antonio to a hostelry where his expenses were a pound a day. After one night's stay he quitted these noisy and expensive quarters for a modest lodging within sight of green fields, up Tottenham Court Road. At first English habits upset him. He tried both beer and porter, and could not decide which was the more undesirable. The clarets, and even the ports, which he tasted at Mr. Crowberry's were heavy and all wrong. The saddles of mutton, the sirloins of beef and the boiled salmon were supremely excellent: but, on the whole, Antonio could not divine why the wealthy and table-loving English fed so unwisely and so unwell.
Mingling with a good-humored Cockney crowd, who made room for "the Dago," Antonio saw the funeral procession of the King. He found the state-coaches much inferior to those he had seen in Lisbon: but the military pageant was beyond everything he had imagined. His chief thrill, however, went through him at the sight of the Duke of Wellington, whom a young Cockney, with vague notions concerning the Peninsular War, pointed out to Antonio as "the good old Djook wot beat yer 'oller." Antonio was much more deeply moved by the figure of the veteran warrior than by the gorgeously empalled royal coffin. He had heard many an evil word against the Iron Duke and against the cynical selfishness of England in making poor Portugal her cat's paw under a guise of magnanimity: but he instinctively uncovered as the grand old soldier rode by.
A more indefatigable sightseer than Antonio never descended upon the monuments and public collections of London. He saw every notable object once, and the worthier sights many times over. The pictures overpowered him. As for the churches, he entered every one of the few that were open: but Wren's buildings to Antonio, like Lisbon's churches to an Englishman, seemed nearly all alike.
He heard Mass every morning at the lumbering Sardinian Chapel, near Lincoln's Inn Fields. He also visited the new Catholic church called St. Mary Moorfields, of which the London Papists were immensely proud: but he thought it poor and small. Now and again he attended, without assistingin sacris, some Protestant services. At the first of them he heard a City incumbent harangue a somnolent congregation of twelve against the idolatrous practice of setting up images in churches: but Antonio was more bewildered than edified, because the very small communion-table was overtopped by a very large image of a lion assisting a very large image of a unicorn to sustain the royal arms. In the too bare Saint Paul's Cathedral and the too much encumbered Westminster Abbey he heard organ-playing and anthem-singing beautiful beyond his dreams: but he could not understand why the Church of England should have renounced the Mass while lavishing pains and money on two fragments of the Divine Office. Again, one Sunday night, at Wesley's Chapel in City Road, Antonio heard so sound a sermon on repentance and restitution that his heart grew warm with thankfulness until the preacher took a sudden hop, skip, and jump into a confused doctrine of Justification which made God less just than man.
A week after the King's obsequies Antonio waited on Mr. Crowberry to remind him that the comptroller of the Queen's cellars had made no sign. Mr. Crowberry, fearful of giving offense, was for indefinite waiting: but Antonio at last obtained leave to bring the matter to a head on the ground that he wished to supervise the bottling before returning to Portugal. The comptroller's secretary received the young Portuguese with courtesy: but, unfortunately, he had nothing satisfactory to say.
One morning, when the hourly thought of his inaction, at an extra cost to the Castro firm of four pounds a week, had begun to corrode his self-respect, the Portuguese called on the comptroller again and pressed him to name a date.
"I am glad you have called," said the great man. "I could not write what I am about to say. Will it derange the firm of Castro if I cancel the order?"
Antonio started.
"I should add," the comptroller continued, "that in no case can I accept, or pay for, these wines for a considerable time. You have heard, no doubt, that the administration of the Privy Purse and of the royal household has not been, in all points, wholly satisfactory."
Antonio turned very pale. Had he, by his headstrong importunity, annoyed the firm's most distinguished customer and done irreparable harm? It seemed so. But a moment later a plan flashed into his mind.
"If I could have a letter," he said, rising, "to say that owing to His Majesty's death no more wine can be received at present, and that we are free to sell our shipment elsewhere, I think Mr. Crowberry will write at once relieving your Excellency of further anxiety in the matter."
The comptroller purred with pleasure at Antonio's "Excellency," a word which he had only heard applied to the persons of ambassadors. He thanked Antonio and showed him out graciously. The next day Mr. Crowberry was reading such a letter as his assistant had asked for.
Antonio, entering the Jermyn Street office as his chief was ending the perusal, noted with concern that there had been another bout of drinking. Suddenly Mr. Crowberry, flaming with rage, dashed the letter down on his desk and exploded like a shell. His fearful threats flew out like red-hot nails and the air seemed sulphurous with his blasphemies. His nouns and verbs were few, and the solid matter of his discourse could hardly be discerned through the lurid vapors of his cursings. He swore that, although he had been True Blue all his life, he would straightway turn Republican. Concerning the comptroller he was contradictory, first vowing that he would see him burning in hell before he would excuse him from receiving a single bottle, and then declaring that he would pour every drop of the liquid down the cur's throat. He added a rude expression about the young Queen, whereupon Antonio intervened.
"All this is my doing," he said. "I asked the comptroller yesterday to write this letter."
Mr. Crowberry swung round and faced him in speechless astonishment.
"He told me flatly that he could neither receive nor pay for our wine for a very long time," Antonio explained. "He asked us to release him from the bargain. At first I was aghast. But a plan occurred to me. Perhaps I did wrong—"
"Wrong?" roared Mr. Crowberry. "Wrong?" And he hurled out half a dozen fresh oaths. "I'll tell you what it is, Mr. Rocha," he bellowed. "You're a damned upstart, and it was a damned bad day for everybody when that silly old idiot Castro picked you up out of the gutter."
"Mr. Austin Crowberry," flashed back Antonio in tones as sharp as knives, "you will be good enough not to insult me. If we begin comparing pedigrees it will not be to your advantage."
"Pssh!" sneered the other, "you remind me of the damned Irish. Every drunken Paddy you meet is descended from a king. I never met a foreigner yet who didn't turn out to be a count or a marquis. Pah! Shut up. You make me sick."
A tremendous effort enabled Antonio to hold his tongue and to move towards the door. But this silent move only served to drive his employer mad.
"So this letter is your doing?" he roared, flinging himself with his back against the door-handle.
"I thought—" Antonio began.
"Thought? You thought? Who are you to begin thinking? For two pins I'd give you a damned good hiding."
Antonio's face became as white as a sheet. There was no longer a monk in the room: only a man. He faced his employer with eyes which made him quail. But he did not lose his head. Suddenly he wheeled round and drew from a brass bowl on the table two of the tiny pins which were used to attach enclosures to letters.
"Here are your two pins, Senhor," he said, flinging them with infinite scorn at Crowberry's feet. "Now give me my damned good hiding."
He fell back two paces with his left arm raised in guard and his right fist clenched to return blow for blow. But Mr. Crowberry did not take up the challenge. He blenched; blinked; gasped; smirked; edged away; and finally blurted out peevishly:
"Leave the room. Go out of my office at once."
Antonio brushed him aside and stepped into the street. His heart was still hot with anger, and he still smarted under the insults. With long strides he hastened mechanically along Piccadilly towards Apsley House, which had come to be his favorite walk. But he had hardly reached the old French Embassy when there was a turmoil behind him, and voices crying "Stop!" He turned round and saw Mr. Crowberry's office-boy and one of the junior clerks.
"Mr. Crowb'ry, 'e ses will yer come back at once."
"Did Mr. Crowberry say nothing else?"
"No, sir."
"Tell Mr. Crowberry I shall be in Hyde Park, just inside the arch beyond the palace of the Duke of Wellington. I shall not wait longer than twelve o'clock."
At five minutes before noon Mr. Crowberry dashed into the Park upon a bony bay hack, hurriedly hired at the nearest mews. The ride had sobered him: and, at the sight of his honest shamefacedness, Antonio's wrath and pride broke down into love and pity. He helped his chief to alight: and at the mere touch of hands both men knew that they were reconciled.
"It was brandy," said Crowberry very humbly.
"I'm glad to hear it," Antonio answered. "If I thought it was wine I'd never help to make or sell another drop as long as I live."
"Of course I apologize," added the merchant awkwardly.
"It's all over and done with," said Antonio. "Let us forget it and speak of other matters."
"Quite so," agreed Crowberry. "But there's just one point. Don't offer to fight me when I'm sober. English fists strike hard."
"And there's just one point more," retorted Antonio genially but with conviction. "Don't offer to fight me when I'm drunk. Portuguese fists strike harder. Now let me tell you my plan."
Mr. Crowberry insisted that the plan should not be unfolded until they were sitting at meat at his club; and, on the clear understanding that nothing should be drunk beyond a bottle of Bordeaux and some soda-water, Antonio accepted the invitation.
Across a thoroughly English leg of lamb, with green peas, new potatoes and mint sauce, Antonio expounded his designs. He started from the fact that Royalty's house-managers were treating the firm of Castro with thoroughgoing selfishness. He went on to say that when kings and queens, with incomes of half a million pounds a year, were unscrupulous in guarding their own convenience, it was high time that Senhor Castro, who had only been lifted out of imminent bankruptcy by the strong hand of Mr. Crowberry, should obtain his just due.
Mr. Crowberry agreed, and added a disloyal observation.
"But we shall make nothing of the comptroller," Antonio continued. "I find it is your law that the Queen can do no wrong. Her Majesty cannot be sued. Even if she could, it would be madness to try it. No. Here is my plan. We will let the comptroller off with a mere trifle—say, a hundred dozen. Then we will sell the bulk of the stuff to your nobility and gentry at a high price, on the strength of our having brought it over in a specially chartered vessel for the King, whose untimely decease has deranged the transaction."
Mr. Crowberry's face clouded. He had hoped to hear a less distasteful proposition. "I am not a Cheap Jack," he said a little stiffly.
"You misunderstand me," said Antonio, flushing. "I should hate puffing and touting as much as anybody. We won't print or even write a single line. We will go in person to your best clients and will offer them not more than fifty dozens each as a great favor. We will show them the original order and the comptroller's letter. The news will spread; and we shall get back all our outlay and collect most of our profit six months earlier than we should get a penny from the Queen."
Senhor Castro's partner tilted back his heavy chair on its hind legs and knitted his brows. At last he said:
"You are right. We've been badly treated. We must look after Number One. Besides, Castro needs the money, and I'm not going to lend the firm any more. As you say, it can be done with discretion and dignity. To-morrow I'll give you a list of likely people. You shall start at once."
Antonio, however, insisted that Mr. Crowberry should pilot him to the first half-dozen clients. Except Mr. Crowberry's own establishment, where a lax housekeeper looked very badly after the widower and his son, the monk had never entered a private house in England, and he called it unreasonable to send him on so delicate an errand alone.
With a wry face Mr. Crowberry gave in. The same afternoon the comptroller accepted his hundred dozens, and kindly wrote a further letter giving the house of Castro leave to do as they pleased with the remainder of their own property. And by the evening of the following day the odd pair of commercial travelers had sold nearly a thousand pounds' worth of wine. In five houses out of six their visit was received with gushing gratitude. To possess the Castro port seemed to fire the knights' and baronets' imaginations; not because it was the magnificent remnant of an unparalleled vintage, but because it had narrowly escaped being drunk by a king.
So delighted was the volatile Crowberry with his experiences that he swung right round and announced that he would accompany Antonio on a fortnight's tour through the Home and Midland counties. He hired a roomy and well-hung post-chaise, loaded it with ten dozen bottles as samples, and was out of London within thirty hours of broaching the scheme.
After the smells and smoke and uproar of London the fair English country was like paradise to Antonio. He knew the beautiful Minho of Portugal: but this England was more beautiful still. Once, as they rolled through a village in Bucks, the gracious loveliness of the scene almost broke his heart. The mellow beams of the setting sun were softly caressing the square tower of the church and glorifying the solemn old yews which girt it round. Over all, the motionless, gilded weathercock burned like a flame in a high wind. Children were shouting and playing outside white cottages half hidden under red roses. Up to their knees in murmuring water beside a steep gray bridge, dreamy-eyed cattle swished their tails and chewed their cud. The bright green meadows were enameled with myriads of white and pink and blue and yellow flowers, and the wanton hedgerows wore long streamers of convolvulus and honeysuckle. High in the giant elms rooks cawed steadily with a raucous but homely sound.
"Never mind," chaffed Mr. Crowberry, "you'll see her again soon."
"Her?" echoed Antonio, starting.
"Yes. Her. Teresa or Dolores or Maria or Luiza or Carmen. Don't be down in the dumps. You'll see her again before long."
"I think not," said Antonio. But he winced as he realized how nearly the wine-merchant had interpreted his mood. The children's cries, the curling smoke of the homesteads, all the sweet sights and sounds of the village, had awakened in him a vague sense of his lovelessness and loneliness. He was glad when, half an hour later, they reached their inn: and before he surrendered himself to imperious sleep he knelt for a long, long time beside the great mahogany bed and prayed as he had not prayed for many a day.
Altogether, Mr. Crowberry and Antonio sold six thousand pounds' worth of wine. In only three out of the seven-and-forty houses they visited was their reception suspicious or cool. Indeed, their errand was so acceptable that they rarely slept or dined at an inn.
Antonio had heard much of English wealth and luxury: but the solid comfort and daily lavishness amazed him. Often on the well-kept roads he would encounter a dashing equipage drawn by high-stepping slender grays and followed by a pack of spotted Dalmatian dogs. Sometimes he got more than a glimpse of rigid, expressionless footmen, powdered and gorgeously appareled, and of bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked ladies in high-waisted dresses and with plumes nodding over their pretty heads. Nor did his post-chaise ever bowl many miles without passing some ivied castle or stately home.
At the squires' and lords' tables Antonio was a success. He rarely spoke until he was addressed: but such remarks as he made were all sensible and interesting, and his foreign accent made them piquant to hear. At every meal the talk turned sooner or later to the townsmen's agitation for abolishing the Corn Laws and for fostering industrialism at all costs until England became the workshop of the world. In his rôle of the Intelligent Foreigner Antonio was generally asked his opinion. He would reply that no nation could be enduringly healthy and wealthy unless the majority of her children nourished themselves directly from Mother Earth; and although this way of putting it rather bewildered his hosts, Antonio's practical conclusion in favor of agriculture was always applauded.
Too often for the monk's ease the table-talk turned to religion. The English notables took it for granted that, as an Intelligent Foreigner, Antonio must be a French skeptic. They hated atheism less than Popery; and although most of them were church-going men, they would have preferred that Antonio should believe nothing at all to his believing in the Christian religion plus the Pope. On such occasions Antonio always strained his wits to turn the subject: but whenever his host or a fellow-guest had the bad taste to be persistent he would reply with spirit that Rome was no more intolerant to Protestantism than Canterbury was to Dissent; that perfunctory and greedy priests were no more common than perfunctory and greedy parsons; and that the essential truths of revealed religion were far more widely and firmly believed in Portugal than in England. Once or twice a fellow-diner, who had heard of the suppression of the monasteries, would launch a jest or a sneer against monks: whereupon Antonio would boldly answer:
"They were good men. I made wine for years in an abbey vineyard, and I ought to know."
Once, strangely enough, Antonio and Mr. Crowberry ate a lugubrious luncheon in the house of a poor and proud Catholic family who had kept the faith, with occasional lapses, through the three centuries of persecution. But intermarriage and isolation had done them no good. When Mr. Crowberry introduced his lieutenant as a fellow-believer they responded uneasily. They seemed to be without a trace of the missionary spirit, and to look with alarm upon the incipient revival of Catholicism lest the mob should shout out for new penal laws. An extremely aged French priest, a refugee from the Terror, was their chaplain; and all they wished was to be left alone in a tiny Popish enclave among the surrounding Protestantism.
In the long run, however, Antonio could not judge them harshly. Five or six of the great houses he visited were called This or That Abbey, or The Other Priory, and their spacious halls had been the refectories or chapter-houses of religious orders. Often a mouldering arch or a traceried window of the monks' church had been conserved for its picturesqueness; and as Antonio lingered among these holy relics he could understand the negation of the Papacy and the denunciation of monasticism on which the Tudor aristocrats founded their fortunes and builded their houses. Early one morning as he stood beside a broken pillar which alone survived to mark the site of one of the most renowned monasteries in Britain, his heart sank at the thought of his own white chapel, fronting the Atlantic storms all neglected and forsaken. If, after three hundred years, no one had restored these waste places of Zion in England, how could he hope, single-handed, to do better in Portugal? But he remembered with joy the essential difference. Portugal had torn a limb from the Church: but she had not lost the Faith.
Amidst this whirl of distractions Antonio was secretly living his religious life with unwonted fervor. Not only did he recite the Office with close attention but he lost no opportunity of fighting on the angels' side. As the acknowledged expert of the company he told the truth emphatically about spirits, and even preached up French clarets as against the Englishman's favorite liquored port. At first these opinions disconcerted Mr. Crowberry: but, at the second hearing, he took Antonio on one side and astonished him by saying that it was the cleverest move he had ever seen in his life. Antonio, however, could endure this cynical misjudgment: for he had the satisfaction of knowing that he had frightened at least one brandy-sot out of his ugly and suicidal habit.
It was at the dinner-table of an earl that the monk perceived most sharply the contrast between his inward and his outward life. While he was donning in his room the fine clothes with which Mr. Crowberry had equipped him for the journey, he had been suddenly filled with such a sense of God's love and presence as he had never known before. Throughout the lively dinner, although he took his due part in conversation, this ecstasy endured. He seemed to be two persons in one body. Across the table he could see himself reflected in the beveled mirror of a vast mahogany sideboard. At closer quarters the mirror reflected the butler solemnly pouring champagne into tall French flutes of purest silver. In the back of the picture, brilliantly lit by many candles, Antonio could see his own reflection. He thought of the Antonio in flapping clothes who had lived for weeks in Oporto on salt fish and dark bread so that he might repay the cura's loan, and he compared him with the new Antonio, in broadcloth and fine linen. On his left sat the earl's niece, a magnificent young dame with a rope of pearls round her neck and a diamond tiara in her hair. According to a custom of Puritan England, which has always bewildered visitors from less prudish countries, she was dining in a kind of ball-dress which revealed arms and shoulders as white and shapely as a statue's. All the themes of the talk were of the world, worldly: but Antonio's whole heart remained in heaven.
Not that he was always indifferent to the charms and graces of beautiful women. On the contrary, he was generally at his best in their presence. And women, in their turn, were enchanted with Antonio, Indeed, one self-willed beauty concealed so little of her admiration for the handsome and courtly Southerner that during a tour of the greenhouses she plucked a flower which he had admired and placed it in his hand. Her look, as she did so, had meanings: but Antonio was not a gawk, and he received the keepsake with such easy tact that the affair would have ended had not the inquisitive Crowberry caught the lady's eye. From that day forward he hardly ceased rallying Antonio on his conquest. Having heard that, in Portugal, a commoner shares the title of the Duchess he marries, Mr. Crowberry began to call Antonio "Your Grace" and to paint lurid pictures of the frightful revenge shortly to be wreaked by Antonio's jilted Teresa.
On returning to London and to the Jermyn Street office Mr. Crowberry found that the news of his offer had spread, and that orders had arrived by post which would exhaust the whole shipment of wine. A little figuring showed that Antonio's plan had earned for the firm of Castro eleven hundred pounds more than the sum which would have been tardily paid by the royal household. Mr. Crowberry was radiant. He pressed upon Antonio a hundred guineas, and added that if Senhor Castro did not give him a hundred guineas more he was an even worse miser than he looked. Mr. Crowberry concluded by saying that Antonio was too good for a piggery like Oporto, and that he must stay and make his fortune in London.
Antonio shook his head. How did he know that he was not already too late, and that the abbey had not passed irrevocably into desecrating hands? Now that he had amassed his two hundred pounds his course was clear. Besides, he was home-sick. For days he had been thinking of his famous namesake, the holy Antonio, called of Padua, but properly of Lisbon, whose crowning self-mortification was to exile himself for life from beautiful Portugal.
Nevertheless, he gave way to the next request of his kindly chief. Young Edward Crowberry, a muffish youth with soft yellow hair, was to be placed for three years in the Oporto office; and, with a view to shaking him up and opening his mind, Mr. Crowberry begged Antonio to take him overland through France and Spain. He himself, he said, would go by sea and meet them at Oporto.
Landing at Boulogne one August afternoon, Antonio and his charge traveled by a fast public coach to Amiens, and there, for the first time, the monk found his dreams of a Gothic cathedral come true. From Amiens they went to Beauvais, whose overweening choir offended his religious sense. At Rouen he lingered in wonder. The cathedral, with its unstudied harmony of many styles, reminded him of the Church herself—a divine idea working itself out in history through many minds, yet never in self-contradiction. Notre Dame de Paris also impressed him deeply: it seemed bigger than Paris, bigger than France, and to be challenging both the metropolis and the nation to a truer grandeur of spirit and conduct. In the dimness cast by the thirteenth-century glass of Chartres he thought of Westminster Abbey, with its huddle of pagan monuments, and compared it with our Lady's glorious shrine, wherein not a single body, not even a saint's, lay buried. The stone embroideries of the west front of Tours recalled to him Henry the Fourth's saying that it ought to be under a glass case: and Antonio liked it the less on that account.
A torrential burst of rain had so replenished the meager Loire that the travelers reached the city of Saint Martin in a light boat, from which they saw some of the châteaux of Touraine. But at the riverside inns Antonio was as deeply engrossed in the common wines as in the neighboring architecture. As he drank them, white and red, he understood the wit and elegance of the Tourangeans, and wondered what the English would become if they could daily drink such draughts in place of their nerve-destroying tea, their brandied port, and their sluggish beer. But, although Mr. Crowberry senior had enjoined Antonio to show Mr. Crowberry junior as many cellars and vineyards as possible, the monk recognized the hopelessness of sending the brisk juices of the Loire to the stolid drinkers of the Thames; and therefore he pushed on through Poitiers and Angoulême to Bordeaux.
At Bordeaux the two inquirers hired an imposing chariot. They were armed with letters of introduction to the great growers; and decency required that they should keep up appearances during their triumphal progress through the Medoc. The vintage was in full swing: but it lacked the gaiety of the vintage in Portugal. Most of the vintagers were strangers from Poitiers, who did their work, drew their pay, and went home to spend it. The little bush-vines also, though marvelously well tended, lacked the picturesqueness of Portugal: and Antonio almost excited his yellow-haired charge by describing the great bunches of purple grapes pending from the green roof of a pergola, or blooming like clustered plums high in some tree with which the vine was intertwined.
The two were fêted at Brane Cantenac; patronized a little at the Château Margaux; treated respectfully at the Châteaux Lafitte, Leoville, and Larose; and received with open arms at the Château Latour. Young Crowberry expanded rapidly under the attentions which were lavished on him as the son of a big buyer: and it was only by hurrying him out of Pauillac in the nick of time that his mentor forestalled a desperate love-affair with a Basque maiden, dark and slender. As for Antonio, as an expert from Oporto, he was treated with deference, and he made the most of his opportunities. He would taste attentively the ripe grapes and then compare them with the wines of the same vineyard, both young and old.
From Royan, at the mouth of the Gironde, they ran before the wind in a smack as far as San Sebastian, in Spain, and posted thence, past bald limestone mountains, to Burgos. Young Crowberry, in whom Wine and his glimpse of Woman had wrought wonders, found the cathedral of Burgos worth all the cathedrals of France put together: and Antonio himself, while conscious of its faults, felt strangely moved by its beauties. Three days later they were in Valladolid, where young Crowberry, making rapid progress, declared that with a box of building-bricks he himself would design a better cathedral than Herrera's fragment. At Salamanca, the last stopping-place in Spain, nearly all that Antonio had read about architecture was contradicted. Here was a cathedral raised in almost the worst period of Gothic: yet it impressed the beholder as one of the grandest temples in the world.
They left Salamanca early one October morning, while the city's grand towers and domes were still sharply silhouetted against the golden east. Young Crowberry was garrulous and dogmatic about everything; but Antonio hardly spoke, for he was nearing Portugal. Mile after mile of dreary plain resounded under the mules' little hoofs. At last the road began to climb awful mountains whence the malaria had driven nearly every living thing. They passed stone-huts of prehistoric hill-men, and Roman military monuments with braggart inscriptions. Then they descended. The landscape relaxed its frown. A few vines greened narrow terraces here and there in the rocks. Soon afterwards they reached a white house in the midst of orange trees. Two soldiers came out with muskets.
Antonio was once more in Portugal.
On the morrow of young Crowberry's reunion with his impatient father at Oporto, Antonio made haste to give an account of his stewardship. About ten pounds in gold remained in his purse and he held, still uncashed, a letter of credit for thirty pounds more. Mr. Crowberry burst out laughing.
"If Teddy hadn't told me ten times over that he's fared like a fighting-cock," he said, "I should believe you've been living on fresh air and ship's biscuit."
"I did my best to make him enjoy his travels," responded Antonio, "but, at the same time, I was reasonably careful."
"You've made a man of him, anyway," said the proud parent. "He used to be the biggest muff in England. Believe me or not: but I've never had to knock him down until this morning."
"This morning you knocked him down?" echoed Antonio, aghast. As a Portuguese he had been accustomed to see parents obey their children.
"Thank God, yes," said Mr. Crowberry heartily. "He was too damnably impudent about claret. But pick up this money. I don't want it, and I won't have it."
The Englishman's determination was unshakable, so Antonio picked up the coins and the draft. But he did so with reluctance: for it made doubly hard his task of announcing that he sought release from the firm of Castro.
Mr. Crowberry was first incredulous, then contemptuous, and finally furious. He tried every device, from ridicule to blasphemy, in order to dissuade Antonio from his purpose. But the monk respectfully and gratefully stood firm. His heart, he said, was in the South. He hoped to buy a derelict farm which adjoined the vineyards of the suppressed abbey where he had made wine before coming to Oporto. More: he had even thought of approaching the Government for a lease of the monks' vineyards, with an option of outright purchase at the end of ten years. His intention, he added, was to make a Portuguese claret of supreme quality, such as should please an unprejudiced English palate more than the wines of Bordeaux, the growths of the grandest châteaux hardly excepted. He ended by very modestly begging Mr. Crowberry to act as his London agent on liberal terms.
Senhor Castro, on whom Mr. Crowberry ultimately devolved the task of shaking their assistant's resolution, was less unwilling to see Antonio go. He was a timid man: and although the operation with the Waterloo port had brought him an unexpected five hundred pounds at a very awkward moment of pressure in his private finance, he was fearful lest the next bold campaign should lead all concerned into disaster. Accordingly he presented his faithful servant with twenty pounds, to go with Mr. Crowberry's hundred guineas, and assured him of his friendly interest in all that Antonio might attempt in the South.
Mounted upon a stout little white horse which he knew he could sell at a profit after finishing his journey, Antonio set his face southward one misty October morning. In his belt he carried two hundred and seventy-three pounds of English bank-notes and gold, as well as a few thousand reis in Portuguese silver for his expenses on the road. But although this beltful was so much larger than he had dared to hope for, he returned at once to the severe frugality of the days before he set sail for England. He hardly ever lay or ate in an inn. Tethering the docile little horse to a tree, he would take his night's rest in some out-of-the-way thicket. His meals were once more of black bread, snowy cheese, and ruby wine. These he would vary by occasional purchases of fruit. The last of the fresh figs and the first of the dried were in the markets, and the monk's halfpenny bought two heaped handsful of either.
With forebodings of change in his heart, Antonio made the short detour which would bring him to the parish of the old cura. His fear was not belied. The spruceness of the gardens and the crystal clearness of the presbytery windows were infallible signs that a new reign had begun.
"When did the old padre die?" asked Antonio of a fisherman who was lounging against the church wall.
"Last year, Senhor."
"Had he a long illness?"
"Not long. My son was with him when he died. The reverend Bishop was there too. On his last day our padre told them all that he was glad to be done with his pains and troubles; but he said he would cheerfully bear them longer, if it was God's will, so that he might change his life and begin to do a little good."
"But surely he had done good already!" exclaimed Antonio.
"Senhor," said the fisherman, almost resentfully, "we didn't know it till he was gone, because his ways were rough: but he was a saint walking the earth. Good? Had he done good? I dare say he had done more good than your Worship."
As Antonio continued his ride south he fell to thinking. In England he had once sat at dinner next to a whiskered curate, who was hot with anger against a proposal by one of the new-fangled High Churchmen to call a chapel-of-ease Saint Alban's. As far as Antonio could ascertain the Church of England recognized no saints after the apostolic age, and certainly none after the fourth century. Yet Antonio himself could name at least three Christians who had died saints' deaths, and at least one who had lived a saint's life.
Strangely enough it was on the same day, only a few hours after his pious reverie about sainthood, that Antonio succumbed for a season to the wiles of the devil. At midday the autumn sun was strong and he entered a roadside shanty for a pull of wine. Two or three peasants who were drinking made way for him respectfully; and Antonio's patriotic pride was stirred by the contrast between their quiet dignity and the vulgar shouting so common in the estaminets of France. The wine was bright and sharp, the floor was clean, and the little wooden hut was pleasantly dim and cool. But suddenly Antonio caught sight of himself in a cheap mirror, in a tawdry gilt frame, which hung behind the counter. The glass was so bad that it distorted the handsomest faces into lopsided masks.
In an instant Antonio was transported back to England and to the great dining-room of the earl with its lordly sideboard and beveled mirror. He did not remember his unworldly ecstasy of that night: he saw only the beeswax candles, the snowy linen, the bubble-thin glasses, the crimson roses, the creaming wine, the scarlet footmen, and the white-armed young beauty in her proud diamonds and soft pearls. That—all that—was the flattering, delicious life on which he had turned his back in order that he might live and die in a wilderness, toiling early and late on stock-fish and chick-peas and dark bread and peasant's wine.
Tired out as he was by hard days and nights this sudden temptation overthrew Antonio. The cabin which had lured him aside from the garish dusty road by its dimness and coolness suddenly seemed foul and mean, the soft-eyed, soft-voiced countrymen seemed louts, the refreshing wine seemed sugar and vinegar. Forgetting everybody's presence he broke into a loud, bitter laugh, flung down the price of ten glasses of wine, scrambled upon his horse and dashed away.
"That man is mad," said one of the peasants, gazing after the bobbing black core of the dwindling cloud of dust.
"He has committed a crime," said another more gravely.
"He is a Spaniard," said a third: and all felt that he had uttered the crowning word of horror.
For the first time in his life Antonio was cruel to a dumb beast. He struck at his horse's flanks savagely, lashing him on through dust and heat. His whole soul was storming with rebellion. But a whinnying sound of pain and fear recalled him to his better self. He reined in his horse. The poor brute, accustomed to a gentle Portuguese master and filled with fright and bewilderment at these strange doings, whinnied again.
Leaping down, Antonio patted the quivering neck and looked round in the hope that there might be water. The scene which met his eyes shamed him. He was within a stone's-throw of the pine-clad hill where he had passed his first night out of doors, just after he fled from his brethren at Navares. With a rush of penitence he obeyed the sign. He thought of that good horse Babieca, the battle-charger of the Cid—that good horse who knelt down of his own accord outside the hidden shrine at the capture of Toledo. Still stroking and patting his animal's neck, Antonio led the way up into the grove. There he found the curved bark of a cork tree, and, turning up the two ends, he poured into this rude horse-trough every drop of wine from the skins in his saddle-bags and held it to the parched muzzle as a peace-offering.
The little white horse, having an excellent judgment, speedily licked the cork dry: but Antonio made no haste to remount. Unless some ill befell, he would know before nightfall whether he had come on a fool's errand or not. This was the last day of his journey: and it was fitting that he should recover a clear mind and a quiet spirit.
What sights were in store for him? Would he find the brook-side farm as trim as the old cura's presbytery, with a new master tending the orangery and the vineyard? And what of the monastery? Perhaps children were playing in and out of the cells, while beasts chewed maize-leaves in the cloisters. For more than two years Antonio had lacked news of the abbey's fate. Indeed, only twice since his northward flight had he heard a word about it. The man from Lisbon, to whom he owed his start in the house of Castro, had told Antonio that the Lisbon authorities were not forcing the sale of this particular property because they did not wish to revive the scandal of Ponte Quebrada and the stolen treasures. But this was two summers ago: and much might have happened since then.
Recumbent under the pines Antonio began to revolve plans of action in case either the farm or the abbey should have passed into other hands. But he soon desisted from his thinking. After all, had not the same problem pressed upon him many a time in Oporto, and had he not always solved it in the same way? To keep the holy place inviolate until the monk's toil and self-denial should enable him to return—this surely was God's part of the work. Antonio rose to his feet, confident that he was not too late.
The clock was striking five when he cantered through Navares. As he passed the tavern where he had been insulted, and the white barns of the corn-merchant, he seemed to be revisiting hardly recognizable scenes; for the failing light of the November afternoon was not like the June evening of the monks' exodus. Most of the vines beside the roads had been stripped of their leaves, and such foliage as remained was discolored and tattered. And there was something melancholy in the autumn fields, where giant gourds of many colors lay on the bare earth among the drooping maize-plants. He pressed on. Very soon he reached the spot where the Prior had met the courier from Lisbon: but he was hardly sure of it in the gloom. The darkness deepened, and his little white horse trotted through it, glimmering like a ghost. At last the pleasant voice of hurrying waters hailed him through the dusk.
He had reached the farm.
No light, no sound, met Antonio's straining eyes and ears as he climbed the knoll. Leaving his horse to graze, he advanced eagerly into the midst of the silent buildings. They were still deserted. He pushed through rank growths into the orangery, and as he touched one of the pale orbs above his head he knew that the farm had lain all the time uncared-for and untilled. With a full heart he gave thanks to God.
The dull booming of the sulky Atlantic was almost drowned by the cheerful clatter of the headlong brook. Antonio drew near to the vociferous waters as if to compel an answer to his question. Hardly an hour before those waters had leaped down the mountain above the guest-house, they had danced through the monks' vineyard, they had plunged along the dark tunnel which led them under the refectory, they had resounded strangely in the vast kitchen, they had emerged into the Abbot's garden, and at last they had tumbled headlong down the slopes to seethe and shout at Antonio's feet. He would fain have demanded of them, "Is all well?"
But it was needful to possess his soul in patience until the rising of the moon: so Antonio returned to his saddle-bags and drew forth a supper of bread and dried figs. From time to time he would mount the knoll and would peer vainly through the darkness in the direction of the monastery. Once or twice, to kill time, he wandered back along the road: but he soon returned, for the moaning of the Atlantic made itself drearily insistent whenever he got out of hearing of the merry torrent.
As the hour of moonrise drew nearer the monk's heart beat faster. Deep down in his soul there was still a calm confidence that all was well: but the surface of his mind was tumultuous with myriad hopes and fears. He tried to groom his horse and left the work half done: he began to say his rosary and broke off half-way through the second Mystery: he sat down, rose up, and sat down again twenty times. Perhaps the monastery had escaped desecration: but who could assure him that winter gales and summer heats and spring floods had not torn off roofs or shrunk up timbers or whirled away walls? For all he knew the moon would rise upon a ruin.
At length a smear of watery light along the horizon showed that the moon's orb was urging up into a bank of mist. Antonio turned and ran to the top of the knoll in time to see a vague luminosity blanching the leaden waters of the ocean. Near objects became visible. He could make out the white oblong of the farmstead and the white flanks of his horse. But the further landscape and the tops of the hills seemed withdrawn into denser shadow than before.
The suspense was hard to bear: but Antonio knew it could not be prolonged. Above the bank of cloud stars were shining in a clear heaven. He waited. Now and again he uttered fragments of prayers.
The cloud-bank went on sinking slowly into the sea all the time the moon was mounting out of it, until the rim of the round shield gleamed like a piece of old silver-gilt through the last smoky veil. Then the rim of the shield pushed up clear, shining against the blue as cold and sharp and bright as a scythe. Antonio yearned towards it, trembling all over: but he did not turn round till the entire white orb was floating free before his eyes.
He gazed down the knoll and saw, as clear as noon-day, the old camp of the monks and the troopers. He saw the extent of the farm, its house and buildings, its fields and vineyards and orchards. He saw the Atlantic, firm and shining, like a field of ice. He saw his horse, tethered to a tree and grazing softly. He saw the swirling brook, like liquid jet, bearing curds and suds and bergs of snow. He saw the straight pines, the jeweled orange-grove, the white road, the violet heavens. Then, with the Name upon his lips, he turned round.
High on her holy hill, with a rich curtain of pine-woods drawn out behind her throne, the abbey chapel looked down upon Antonio all white and fair and inviolate. The rains which had burst around her and the suns which had burned upon her had only enhanced her whiteness, till she shone like her Lord, transfigured upon Mount Hermon. A cry burst from Antonio's lips. His heart sangTola pulchra es amica mea: "Thou art altogether fair, my love." The chapel seemed a glorious ark, newly borne to rest upon her Ararat by the floods of silver moonlight. Like Saint John on Patmos Antonio could have cried: "I see the holy city, the new Jerusalem, descending from heaven, from God, arrayed like a Bride adorned for her Bridegroom." In Antonio's ears, as in John's, an angel seemed to say: "Come, and I will show thee the Bride, the spouse of the Lamb."
Antonio had planned to wait until daybreak before he sought entrance to his old home. But the Spirit of God bade him re-enter the sacred place in the first ecstasy of his vision. "Spiritus et sponsa dicunt, Veni: The Spirit and the Bride say, Come,'" Antonio murmured; and he began to climb the hill.
Antonio knew a spot where the brook, swollen with winter rains, had smashed down the arch through which it used to flow: and there he scrambled up into the abbey domain. The ever-mounting moon illuminated the familiar scenes with fairy radiance.
Emitte lucem tuam, said Antonio in fervent prayer and thanksgiving, as he breasted the weed-grown slope. "Send forth thy light and thy truth: they shall lead me to thy holy hill, and to thy tabernacles, and I will go unto the altar of God." And when an opening in the trees once more showed him the glistening chapel his mind swung from the Psalter to the Apocalypse, and he thought once more of Saint John's vision of the Bridehabentem claritatem Dei: "having the clear-shining of God, and her light like a precious stone's, like a jasper's, like crystal."
Grass was growing between the paving-stones in front of the chapel and lichens flourished on the north wall. The gardens were unkempt, and one had to break a way through alleys and avenues. On banks and terraces the fleshy-leaved ice-plant had secured firm holding. But, so far as outward appearances went, the abbey had suffered no irreparable harm.
Massive padlocks guarded all the entrances, while seals, affixed to stout bands of linen, spoke eloquently of the zeal which the Government had shown after the affair of their precious Visconde de Ponte Quebrada. But Antonio was not to be dismayed by locks, bolts, and bars. For years he had cherished a plan of obtaining entrance to the monastery, and he did not delay its execution.
Antonio knew that, hidden in the wood, there was a sluice by which the torrent's waters could be diverted from the abbey kitchen into their original channel. This sluice had been used only four times a year, when the bed of the stream was cleaned out: but it was kept in good working order. As he plunged under the trees the monk understood the difference between the brightest moonlight and the weakest daylight: but he had little difficulty in finding what he sought.
The gear of the sluice was stiff: but Antonio was strong, and his task was soon accomplished. For the first time in three years the water began gurgling among the dust and dead leaves of its ancient bed, and nothing but a slender runnel was left for the stone channel which ran through the kitchen.
Antonio threw off his boots and socks and outer garments and swung himself down into the ankle-deep stream. Before him yawned the black tunnel by which the waters passed over the whole width of the refectory, a distance of about eight yards. He went down on his hands and knees and crawled along towards the ghostly light which gleamed at the further end. His progress was painful. The small boulders which had accumulated in the passage during three years of neglect cut his hands and bruised his knees and tore his feet. But he did not turn back; and soon he was standing in the moon-lit kitchen.
The blue-and-white tiles, the blue Pas on its white ground, the stoves, the great jars and pots, the burnished copper chimney—all were there as of old. Antonio opened the door of the refectory. Six or seven of the bottles emptied by the Visconde and the captain had been stacked in a corner, probably by some person who went through the monastery before the padlocking and sealing: but in all other respects the noble room was in perfect order.
The monk made his way to the cells. They had not been disturbed since the monks quitted them. The big candelabrum had not been removed from the cell of the Abbot. Antonio entered his own cell with a thumping pulse. The few books and oddments which, despite the strict letter of Saint Benedict's rule, had been considered his own, were all in their due places. A spare habit was hanging on the wall. Portugal's wonderful climate had kept it so dry and sweet that he put it on as if it were the coat he had left lying on the grass outside.
The garb had not grown strange to Antonio: for since his expulsion from the abbey rarely had a day passed without his saying some part of the Divine Office, garbed in the rusty habit which he had worn at Navares. But, as he donned the Benedictine uniform in his own cell of a Benedictine abbey, the monk's emotion overpowered him. The cell was too straight and dark for the immense and sublime expansion of his spirit. He hastened out, along the dim corridor, and up the winding steps which led to the flat roof of the cloister.
Antonio sat down on the cork bench where he had mused on the night of his ordination, just before he heard the chink of steel. The November moonlight was not less gracious than the May dusk. The cross in the monks' graveyard uprose as white and slender as a taper on an altar, and all the earth seemed consecrated ground. And there the young priest sat for a long time, without moving, while he recalled, beginning with the march to Navares, the motley events which had filled the one-and-forty months of his exile. Finally he lived over again his last night in the abbey. Other men, other scenes, other words, other deeds seemed faint and far away: but the face of the dying Abbot was clear in his memory, and the old man's words might still have been sounding in the young monk's ears. Above all else the Abbot's prophecy rang out like bells: "I see our chapel, swept and garnished. I see Antonio, in his old place, doing the work of God."
The hour was come. He rose and descended the spiral stairway. At the entrance of the chapel he paused, and, falling upon his knees, implored pardon for his brief apostasy in the roadside wine-shop. Then with bowed head and reverent steps he crossed the sacred threshold.
The few windows were placed so high and were so deeply set in the thick walls that very little moonlight could enter the chapel. Nearly all the nave was filled with darkness. But the choir, raised on a marble floor, could be dimly seen, while the altar, higher still, received the full glory of the light. The doors of the empty tabernacle were wide open, as on Good Friday, the six tall candles still stood in their places, and no one had removed the vases with their silver-gilt symbols of the Holy Eucharist—wheat-ears and vine-leaves and grapes. Behind the crucifix rose a statue of our Lady treading down a serpent and holding forth towards Antonio the divine Child. Upon his head was a crown set with brilliants of old paste which burned bluish white in the cold moonlight.
Antonio groped his way to his old stall. There, humbly kneeling upon his knees, he offered up his prayers and praise. He prayed for his brethren of three years before, picturing each one of them in his particular stall; and his most fervent petitions were for the good estate of Father Sebastian, alive or dead.
It was the time of Matins. He thought of his monastic brethren throughout the world rising from their beds to praise God, some of them under the soaring vaults of proud and rich abbeys, some of them in the poor lodgings of weary exiles. His prodigious memory enabled him, without the aid of a book, to recite nearly the whole of Matins, including parts of the Proper; and this he did, rising up and kneeling down as if the whole community were reciting the Office with him.
As he rose from his knees the moon's light had all but faded from the chapel. Only upon the bright points of the Holy Child's diadem did some stray beam mysteriously linger. And Antonio, abiding in his place, his soul filled full with peace, said softly: "Civitas non eget sole: 'The city hath no need of the sun, nor of the moon to beam in her; for God's clear-shining hath enlightened her and her lamp is the Lamb.'"
Thus did Antonio, in his old place, begin once more to do the Work of God.
The village nearest to the abandoned farm nestled on the other side of the hill, about four miles away. Thither Antonio tramped at sunrise. Had he ridden his horse the natives might have formed swollen notions as to his wealth and manner of life: so he footed it modestly, in his oldest clothes.
The tiny, parchment-faced old dame at whose wine-shop he ate and drank a threepenny breakfast was able and willing to tell him nearly all he wanted to know. The farm, she said, belonged to a bed-ridden widow in Navares, whose husband and two sons had been killed by the same Constitutionalist volley during the first Miguelista attack on Oporto. This poor widow, she added, was living unhappily with her only daughter, the wife of a Navares tanner.
It was safe for Antonio to show himself openly in the village and to ask his questions: for the monks had kept inclosure with such strictness that the villagers could have no recollection of the younger fathers. But he deemed it prudent to hold his tongue about the deserted monastery; and, having put down his three vintens, he struck out a path over the hills to Navares.
Fortunately the tanner was at home. He was an overgrown man whose bad humor evidently proceeded from dyspepsia: and the monk did not envy the hapless woman who had to subsist on his charity. Eying Antonio's boots and clothes with suspicion, the tanner answered every question so curtly and sulkily that Antonio at last showed spirit, and said:
"Perhaps it will be better for me to employ a notary?"
"Notary? No, certainly not," gasped the tanner, suddenly alarmed. He was slothful in business; and every lawyer within twenty miles knew him well as a chronic defendant in the civil courts.
"I will give your Worship's mother-in-law one hundred and fifty pounds for the whole property," said Antonio, "provided the offer is accepted to-day."
"One hundred and fifty pounds?" snorted the tanner, secretly overjoyed; "the Senhor is joking. He means three hundred; and even then I should be as good as making him a present of the place."
Antonio, who had learned in Oporto and in London to read the faces of men cleverer than the tanner, saw that, even if he cut his offer down to a hundred and twenty-five, he could still be sure of the farm. But he knew that a hundred and fifty was the fair price: and, although he had denied himself a penn'orth of cheese at breakfast, he was not going to make twenty-five pounds out of a widow's extremity.
"Your Worship's presents are not wanted," he retorted stiffly, taking up his hat. "I said a hundred and fifty. I meant it. I don't haggle. Good day."
The tanner spluttered out a long speech, and finally dragged Antonio upstairs into a stuffy little room where his wife's mother was lying in bed with a black rosary in her thin white hand. He appealed to Antonio, in the name of the commonest decency and humanity, to avoid future prickings of conscience by giving the ridiculous price of two hundred pounds for the best farm in all Portugal, thus defrauding a dying widow of a round hundred only.
"You may take it or leave it," said Antonio. "One hundred and fifty pounds, not a vintem more, not a vintem less. Stay. The winter is coming, and the Senhora's blood needs warming. I come from a wine-lodge in Oporto. I have taken wines to England for the King himself. See. Over and above the price, I will send the Senhora ten pounds' worth of old port-wine, and God grant it may do her good."
The aged sufferer looked up at the monk in thankful astonishment. She had been a personage in her time: but deference and kindness had lately become so unfamiliar that she had expected to die without encountering them again. Clutching her beads, she mumbled at Antonio some words of gratitude and benediction.
The tanner was first greatly chagrined and afterwards a little ashamed: and, at the foot of the stairs, he agreed to his visitor's terms. It was arranged that Antonio should return at noon with a notary to complete the purchase. The cura of Navares, to whom the monk had recourse, named a trustworthy man of law: and by four o'clock the money had passed from Antonio's belt to the tanner's cash-box, the necessary documents had been signed, sealed, and delivered, and the new owner was tramping back to the farm with the keys in his pocket.
As in the cells and corridors of the great abbey, so in the low rooms of the little farm-house the Portuguese sun had counteracted the Portuguese rains, and the place was clean and dry. Some bulky chests, two heavy tables, a dresser, and two wooden bedsteads had been left behind, for the simple reason that the original cabinet-maker had constructed them inside the house, and there was no door or window wide enough for their egress. Antonio noted with satisfaction that two or three pounds would buy all he required in the way of linen, chairs, crockery, and household utensils.
Through want of irrigation the oranges on the trees were small, sour, and hard. Antonio, however, was much more interested in the vines. To an untrained eye they would have seemed a hopeless intertanglement of decaying leaves, with sparse bunches of withered currants hiding here and there: but Antonio quickly saw that skill and hard labor would reclaim them. Better still, he found a three-acre patch of light arable land which almost realized his ideal site for an entirely new vineyard of bush-vines. The wine-press, in one of the outbuildings, had seen better days: but this did not worry Antonio, as he was determined, in any case, to import a new wine-making plant from Bordeaux.
Next morning the young farmer was early in the saddle on his way to Villa Branca, ten leagues to the east. He had learned at Navares that Villa Branca was the seat of a puissant official representing the Fazenda, or Portuguese Exchequer, and that the suppressed abbeys and monasteries of the district were administered by this exalted personage. He cantered into Villa Branca with a clear proposal to make. Would the Fazenda accept an annual rent of fifty pounds for the abbey lands, at the same time giving Antonio the option of buying the whole property, at the end of ten years, for two thousand pounds? If so he, Antonio, would engage to cultivate the lands and to keep the buildings in repair.
Although his ride was ten leagues long, the monk reached the local offices of the Fazenda nearly an hour earlier than the official, who lived a hundred yards away. The waiting-room was more than half filled with high stacks of books, most of them in old calf bindings. A glance showed that these were the spoils of monastic libraries, dumped down anyhow in the Fazenda building until somebody from Lisbon should arrive to divide them between the national and municipal libraries. Antonio picked up a volume at random. It was a sequence of Lenten meditations in French; and the hand of some long dead Augustinian had filled the fly-leaves with pious annotations. Antonio was poring over this crabbed and faded script when the Personage entered the room.
Had it been his first encounter with a highly-placed civil servant, the monk would have concluded that the Personage knew his secret; that his design, as an ardent Benedictine religious, of restoring the abbey to his Order was perfectly understood; and that the haughtiness and suspiciousness of the Personage's manner were accordingly explained. But Antonio's years in the world had made him familiar with the masterfulness of the State's so-called servants and with their rudeness to the hard-working people from whom their excessive salaries were extracted. So he kept his temper, and even tried to commend his proposal by stating it in studiously respectful language.
The Personage, leaving Antonio standing against a pile of stolen books, listened with increasing impatience and scorn: and, before the monk had finished, he interrupted him to say that such a transaction was out of the question; that the Minister would not listen to it for a moment; that he, the Personage, had received no instructions from Lisbon to press forward the sale of this particular abbey; and that, when it came into the market, the reserve price would be not less than three thousand pounds, paid in cash, once for all, forthwith.
Antonio tried in vain to argue. He exhibited the fifty pounds, which he had brought with him as a first installment, to cold eyes; for the Personage saw no way of sticking to the money himself. The deeds of the little farm, which Antonio was for showing as proofs that he was a man of substance, were waved aside; and when he began to speak of giving references to solid and reputable citizens of Oporto and London, the Personage had ceased to listen. A bell rang, a clerk appeared, some remarks were exchanged, and Antonio, without being able to say that he had received insults or even inattention, somehow found himself in the glaring street.
He rode home with a troubled face. Righteous anger, bitter disappointment, gnawing fear possessed him in turn. But, as he entered his little home and began to unpack the few things he had bought for its furnishing, his spirits rose. The knife and fork with which he ate his plain supper had wooden handles; his goblet was of almost opaque glass an eighth of an inch thick; the coarse tablecloth was more brown than white, and his lamp was a candle stuck in a bottle. Nevertheless he supped happily, even gaily; and it was with sustained fervor that he recited what remained of his Office.
Strenuous days followed. From the late November sunrise to the early November sunset Antonio labored harder than a navvy. The making of the new vineyard was his principal care: and by the end of the year the toughest part of the job had been soundly done. Only on a Sunday did the toiler rest from his labors. On the morning of that day he would hear Mass in the over-gilded village church; and, in the evening, when darkness fell, he would crawl along the torrent's bed into the abbey kitchen, and thence steal softly to his old stall in the chapel. There he would recite Compline from memory: and afterwards, prostrate before the empty tabernacle, he would beseech his Lord to fulfil those last and grandest words of the Abbot's prophecy: "I see Antonio standing before the high altar. I see him holding up our great chalice. I see him offering the Holy Sacrifice for us all."