"You do not speak," said Antonio. "Perhaps I have given you the impression that my ordeal was carnal, and that this English maiden was a direct emissary of Satan. If you think so, I have spoken blunderingly indeed."
"Satan exists and he is busy enough," returned Sebastian. "But in trying to find the cause of any strange thing that happens I have learned to think of Satan last. Nearly all our temptations arise from our own self-love and carelessness. Many other temptations are God's provings and perfectings of our spiritual mettle. Satan is not omnipresent and his angels are only a shrunken legion. But have patience. Let me think."
He resumed his meditation. At last he turned and said:
"This was not a temptation from the devil. Neither did it spring from corruptness in your heart or in hers. I am persuaded that our Lord's work is somehow in it all. Perhaps you will never know in this world what work it is; but that is not your affair."
"Sometimes," said Antonio slowly, "it troubles my conscience. As I told you just now, I didn't hold out to the very end. I gave way within my heart; but when I opened my eyes she had vanished."
"You do wrong to be troubled," said Sebastian. "You held out to the bitter end of the trial God had appointed you. When you told this Isabel finally to go, she went. That was the end. All that happened afterwards was mere reaction."
"The next day," persisted Antonio, "I did not say my Office. My heart bled for her as it never bled for the Abbot, or for you, Sebastian, or for this place."
"It bled for her, not for yourself," Sebastian explained. "In profane love, the lover who thinks he is grieving for the beloved is only grieving over his own loss of her, over his own short bereavement, or over his own humiliation and discomfiture. With you, Antonio, it was not so. You did not wish to take; you wished to give."
"Do not make me out a saint when I know I am a sinner," said Antonio, almost sharply. "If she had been old, and tart, and ugly, would my heart have bled for her all the same?"
"Perhaps not," Sebastian retorted. "But, if she had been old and ugly, neither would there have been much virtue in giving her up. Do not complain of her beauty. You had heroic work to do, and her beauty helped you to do it better. In England there are Puritans who would say that these azulejos and these gilded carvings must hinder us from doing the Work of God."
"I do not follow you," said Antonio.
"Tell me," Sebastian asked abruptly, "how you stand with the payments you have bound yourself to make."
Antonio drew from his breast an account over which he had pored and pored for a month without making the adverse balance a vintem less. Sebastian conned it attentively from beginning to end. Then he said:
"Follow me to my old cell and bring me paper and ink."
He rose with so much difficulty that Antonio had to support him; but once fairly on his feet he moved quickly over the pavement. At the door of the cell Antonio left him; but before he had finished cutting a new quill and replenishing the sand-sprinkler in his own room, Sebastian rejoined him. Sitting down painfully at the tiny table he swiftly wrote a very short letter. Without reading it over he folded it, sealed it with a small brass seal which he drew from his pocket, and addressed it to a Spanish nobleman in a small town of the Asturias.
"Let this be despatched at once," he said. "There is no time to lose."
"A post leaves Navares in three days," replied Antonio. "José shall take the letter there this morning."
"It is well," said Sebastian. "And when this José returns, let me see him as soon as he is rested."
The cell was brighter than the chapel, and Antonio perceived that his friend was become almost as insubstantial as a ghost. He called to mind a passage from a new English poet about a man who, having wasted to a shadow, was ready to be resumed into the Great Shadow, the shadow and blackness of death. But Sebastian seemed rather to be a pure white flame, waiting to be drawn into the Great Light.
"You have not broken your fast," cried Antonio in shame and alarm. "You must eat. I have good wine. You must rest. You must sleep. When the heat is over we will talk again, and you shall see José."
"It has been meat and drink and rest and sleep to see you again, Father Antonio, and to hear what you have told me," the other answered. "But you are right. I must sleep. I will obey your orders."
At breakfast Sebastian ate and drank nothing save an ounce or two of bread and an egg beaten up in white wine. When the meal was over he declined Antonio's pressing offer of a comfortable bed from the guest-house, and lay down on the straw mattress in his own cell. There he soon fell into so profound a sleep that he did not hear Antonio drenching the window with bucketful after bucketful of water to counteract the blazing heat.
At night José, wearing his best coat and his most diffident manner, dined with the two monks in a corner of the refectory. Sebastian, with bright eyes and glowing cheeks, did most of the talking. He praised the wine and the food, although he touched little of either; and throughout the repast he was full of an eager cheerfulness such as Antonio had never seen in him before. After dinner he drew from José an exact account of his mental and spiritual state: for Antonio had told him of the poor fellow's desire to become a monk.
"José," he demanded, at the end of his questioning, "You have learnt Latin. Can you translate,Irascimini: et nolite peccare?"
"I can, Father," answered José proudly. "It means, 'Be angry and sin not.'"
"So it does. You did well to be angry with the greedy and lazy good-for-nothings who spake evil of Father Antonio. But you did ill to thrash them and to come home with that black eye. Go on being angry with sin; but learn to love sinners."
"Can't I be a monk, Father? May I not have the habit?" pleaded José, in consternation. "I am glad I thrashed them; but I'm sure I shan't need to thrash them again."
"The habit is a comfort and a help," Sebastian replied, "but we must not give it you to-night. Live as you have been living, in the love of our Lord and in obedience to Father Antonio. For the present you can wear no habit more acceptable to God than the coat in which you do your daily duty about the farm. Do not hang your head. I foresee that an abbot will once more rule within these walls, and that you, José will die as one of his family. Have patience."
A sudden change came over Sebastian as he ceased speaking. The hectic bloom faded from his cheeks, and the heavy lids drooped over his preternaturally bright eyes. A moment later he sank forward against the table. Antonio and José sprang at once to his help. He had swooned. They made haste to bear him bodily to his cell. It was an easy task; for beyond the weight of his cloak there seemed to be hardly anything to carry. After they had laid him on his bed and dashed water from the torrent in his face, he revived and said faintly:
"Thanks, thanks, thanks, I am well. Leave me. I shall say mass to-morrow at five o'clock. Leave me."
He fell into another unnatural sleep. But Antonio did not leave him. All through the short warm night he watched and prayed. At last the dull chant of the Atlantic was drowned under the glittering trills of near blackbirds. Day dawned. The sun rose above Sebastian's Spain; and the sleeper awoke.
He answered the traditionalBenedicamus Dominowith so ringing aDeo gratiasthat Antonio thought a miracle had happened. Sebastian looked stronger and healthier than ever before. Even José, who had been sleeping heavily on the corridor floor, was aroused by Sebastian's two words.
They repaired to the chapel. There Father Sebastian heard the confessions of his two companions. Without delay he proceeded to the sacristy. Antonio followed him and began to lift from its drawer one of the less costly vestments which had never been taken away. It was green and gold, as appointed in the Ordo for that day. But Sebastian, having bidden him replace it, drew forth a black chasuble, simply embroidered with a plain white cross. Antonio felt justly rebuked. When the Abbot was dead, and the Prior and all the fathers save two, surely it was meet that the survivor's Mass should be a Mass of requiem.
From his pocket-case, Sebastian took the unconsecrated wafers which he had brought from Lisbon. He finished his vesting and preparation and they re-entered the chapel. José was kneeling devoutly on the lowest step of the sanctuary. Outside, hundreds of birds were in full boisterous song.
Father Sebastian went to the foot of the altar and began to say Mass. He uttered the words quickly and clearly, and made the genuflections without difficulty. Indeed, Antonio, as he poured water over the white and fleshless fingers at the psalm Lavabo, marveled more than ever at the miracle of his friend's sudden strength. At the commemoration of the dead, the intensity of Sebastian's recollection seemed to make the whole chapel thrill and throb, like a bed of reeds in a wind.
After he had given the most holy Body to Antonio and to José, Sebastian concluded the Mass and returned to the sacristy with a firm tread. He laid aside the sacred vestments and came back to his old stall in order to make his thanksgiving. Antonio, also in his old stall, knelt at Sebastian's side.
The ascending sun cleared the top of the hill and shone into the chapel. The diadem of the Holy Child blazed with glory. In all the trees happy birds redoubled their songs.
Half an hour passed. José, arising noisily, made Antonio open his eyes. But Father Sebastian knelt without moving against the sloping book-board. José clattered out. Still Father Sebastian did not move. Antonio waited, revering his friend's ecstasy of communion with his Lord. He waited long. But meanwhile a broad sunbeam had been working westward; and at last it poured its burning gold upon the bended head.
Antonio was stepping softly forward to screen his friend from the fierce ray when a sudden instinct bade him kneel down and look into Sebastian's face. But Sebastian's wide-open, rapturous eyes did not gaze into Antonio's; nor were they beholding any earthly thing. So beautiful was the sight that Antonio's exclamation was more a shout of joy than a cry of fear. Into his mind there rushed the words of Isaias which had been Sebastian's favorite scripture in the old days,Regem in decore suo videbunt oculi ejus: "His eyes shall see the King in His beauty; they shall behold the land which is very far off."
Antonio and José buried the body of Sebastian that night on the sunny side of the cloister, between the third and fourth pillars, just under the tile-picture of Enos, with its legend,Ambulavit cum Deo et non apparuit, quia tulit eum Deus: "He walked with God and was no more seen, for God took him."
On the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, just thirty days after Sebastian's death, Antonio heard Mass in the village church. Forty-eight hours were left to him before his payment to the Villa Branca Fazenda became due. In the strong-box at home he had only three hundred and twelve pounds towards his debt of five hundred. Nothing had been received from Sebastian's friend in Spain, although sufficient time had elapsed for a reply to reach the farm. Nevertheless, Antonio rose from his knees at the end of Mass and took his way homeward with a serene spirit.
From the point where he and José had seen the ruts of young Crowberry's wheels nearly two years before, the monk heard thumping hoofs. He gazed down the road and saw an advancing cloud of dust. A few moments later he made out the milk-white Branco which had succeeded coal-black Negro as the Navares' post-horse. Thomé, the postman, drew rein and handed Antonio two letters.
The first was from young Crowberry. It ran:
Dear Friend da Rocha.
You will be sorry to hear that my father died last week, suddenly. I know you will pray for him; and I hope you will pray for me too.
Strange to say, Sir Percy also passed away last week, two days after my father. I saw it in the papers, but I know no details. At Christmas my father saw him at Weymouth, and he seemed well.
As our affairs are tangled, I have much to do. Write to me soon. My thoughts turn to you very often nowadays. Tell me how you do, all round. I remain, your sincere friend. Edward Crowberry.
The second letter contained a draft for two hundred pounds payable at sight in Navares. Antonio regarded it without emotion. Even the fact that it was unaccompanied by a single line of writing from the sender did not stir him. He had fully expected that the money would arrive in due time from somewhere, and it was no surprise to find it in his hand. A single thought filled every corner of his mind. Isabel was a thousand miles away, sunk in deepest sorrow, with none to comfort her.
Thomé slapped Branco's neck noisily so as to arouse Antonio from his reverie and to remind him that the postage had not yet been paid. Although it was not the first time he had seen a man tear open a bulletin of death at the roadside in the full blaze of noon, Thomé was sympathetic. But business was business. In his turn every man had to die; but meanwhile Thomé had to live. Antonio took the hint and gave the man his money.
When José saw the draft, half an hour later, he so far forgot a would-be monk's decorum as to execute a rustic dance. The next minute, without being conscious of any incongruity, he said:
"Father I knew this money would come. I knew it this morning, at Mass. What did the Introit say?Nunc scio vere quia misit Dominus angelum suum, et eripuit me: 'Now I know verily that the Lord hath sent His angel and hath delivered me.' I knew.Deo gratias."
"Deo gratias," echoed Antonio. But his eyes were dull and there was no ring of exultation in his tone. He arose and went to his cell; but she seemed to be there, opening the cupboards and searching sadly for what she could not find. He ascended to the roof of the cloister: but restlessness dragged him down again. Wandering out into the open-air his feet turned of themselves towards the guest-house. He meant to go no further than the steps where she had said, "Promise that I may see you again," and where he had carried her like a child in his arms; but he soon opened the door and made his way to thesalon. The sight of the blue ottoman quickly drove him out again, and he mounted the stairs until he stood outside her chamber. The little key was in his pocket, for he never allowed it to go out of his sight. He fumbled for it and touched it. But it seemed to burn him. He hurried down the stairs and out of the house.
Striding along the broad path he returned to the abbey and entered the chapel. As he sat down in his old place a sudden thought came to his help. This was the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, the twenty-ninth of June; and on the eighth of July all Portugal would be celebrating the feast of Saint Isabel, Portugal's holy Queen. There was just time, neither a day too much nor a day too little, for the nine days of his novena. He clutched at the coincidence like a drowning man at a straw; and although in less perilous moments he might have called it a straw, indeed, he found in it a plank to buoy up his sinking soul.
There and then he began his nine day's pleading for the Saint's intercession. In deep humility he made use of a little ill-printed pamphlet, bought by José years before for a vintem at a village fair. Outside this penny chap-book one saw a rough woodcut of the Holy Queen, with a crown on her brow and a scepter in her hand. Inside one found a sequence of pious exercises for the novena, set forth in the simplest and shortest words of the vernacular. Antonio could have extemporized more dignified prayers; but he believed in the communion of saints and chose to link himself with the child-like faith of the poor and humble.
On the last of June he tramped into Navares to cash the Spanish draft, and on the first of July he rode into Villa Branca to pay away his money. All the way out and home, on both the days, he prayed. Every morning of the nine he heard Mass at the village, and on three mornings he communicated as well. He besought José to pray for a special intention; and, breaking through his reserve, he asked some of the village Saints and Blessed Ones to do the same.
Meanwhile the work in vineyard and distillery had grown heavy. Throughout his novena he devoted six hours of the twenty-four to sleep and meals, four to Mass, Office, and prayers, and all the rest to account-keeping and manual labor. The resultant exhaustion of his bodily strength seemed to sharpen his spiritual senses. On the fourth day, as he and José were saying Lauds, Antonio could hardly resist the belief that Sebastian's voice was joining in the holy Work. When Lauds were finished and he was busy among the vines, he decided that his overstrained nerves had been wrought upon by his knowledge that Sebastian's grave was only a few yards away, just outside the cloister doorway. The next morning, however, his inward ear seemed to hear afar off a vast babble of deep voices, as if all the generations of Saint Benedict's sons throughout thirteen hundred years were reciting Lauds together.
On the sixth and seventh and eighth mornings this mighty murmur of deep voices reverberated persistently in his ears, like the echoes of distant Niagaras and Atlantics. On the ninth morning, after his Mass and communion, he heard it again; but this time there was a difference. While he was beseeching the Isabel in heaven to pray for the Isabel on earth, an ineffable harmony filled the ears of his soul. Blending with the deep voices he heard voices that were high and sweet and clear, like woodbine and sweet honeysuckle and roses intertwining among the sturdy trunks and branches of an ancient forest. It was as if all the generations of Saint Benedict's daughters had added their songs to the songs of all Saint Benedict's sons.
The tide of harmony ebbed slowly away. But it left behind it a strange peace in Antonio's soul; even as the tides of ocean bathe the burning sands and leave them clean and cool. The peace which filled him passed his understanding, and he did not try to explain it. Rising up quietly, he gave the little book back to José and went about his work.
October came again; but this time Antonio did not run away. Until the Indian summer ended he was quieter than usual; but he met its memories without bitterness. The door of Isabel's room was still kept locked; he still avoided the stepping-stones, and every night and morning he remembered her in his prayers; but she had receded from the foreground of his life.
November and December were crowded with money troubles. The sales of the farm and sea-sand wines increased every year, and there was a constant demand for the two liqueurs: but Antonio's customers soon perceived that he was not a hard man, and they imposed upon him by taking excessive credit. His business needed capital; but every development had to be paid for out of revenue. Worst of all, a further instalment of five hundred pounds fell due on New Year's Day.
There was young Crowberry; but, after what he had said about his father's confused affairs, the monk did not think it fair to ask him for a loan. There was also Sebastian's Asturian nobleman; but loyalty to his dead friend restrained Antonio from requesting the Spaniard's further help. In his difficulty he wrote to Senhor Castro and followed up the letter by presenting himself in person at the old Castro cellars in Oporto early in December.
Senhor Castro, who had grown old and liverish, did not want to be troubled. He admitted that Antonio's English journey had firmly established the Castro fortunes; but, although he was a rich man, he gave proofs that all his money was invested beyond immediate recall. In the long run, Antonio crossed the bridge of boats from Gaia empty-handed.
He searched for the cobbler, his old landlord; but the whole family had gone to Brazil. Twice or thrice during his heart-wearing stay in the city he was cheered by the best of greetings in the worst of Portuguese from Gallegos to whom he had been kind nine years before. These Gallegos, however, did not help him to raise five hundred pounds. They were the Gallegos who had failed; for the Gallegos who had succeeded were all returned into Galicia with their savings.
A few days before Christmas the monk clinched a bad bargain with a small firm of so-called Anglo-Portuguese bankers, who were really common money-lenders in bankers' clothing. The head of the firm hailed from Hamburg and his partner was a Portuguese Jew. These plausible rascals agreed to lend Antonio a thousand pounds on unconscionable terms. Although the nominal interest was only seven per cent., one extra and another made it over twenty. For sending a clerk to attend the transfer at Villa Branca they required forty pounds, although his expenses could not exceed twelve. The conditions as to repayment were harsh. As security, the usurers required a first mortgage on the abbey, a second mortgage on the farm, a note of hand from Antonio, and a hold on the receipts from wine. The monk's heart sank as he signed the fatal parchment; but he espied the gleam in the Hamburg man's eye too late.
On New Year's Day, Antonio had a moment of brightness when the abbey passed finally out of the control of the Fazenda official; but he soon found that he had exchanged a whip for a scorpion. Before the moneylender's clerk returned to Oporto he confided vexatious instructions to the most unprincipled of the Villa Branca attorneys, who rarely allowed a month to pass thereafter without sending for Antonio on some frivolous pretext. Whenever this objectionable person and his still more objectionable wife desired a Sunday jaunt they drove over to the farm or the abbey, sponging on Antonio's hospitality and poking inquisitorial noses into everything. One day the pair brought two char-à-bancs full of their kindred to celebrate the senhora's birthday by a picnic at the stepping-stones; and when Antonio very courteously begged that the good things might be drunk and eaten in some other part of the domain, the attorney promptly became his active enemy.
Years passed. In spite of a hundred obstacles the wines and liqueurs made steady progress, and Antonio seemed to be within reach of his goal. Having ground out to the usurers nearly two thousand pounds in legal costs, interest, and repayment of principal, he owed them less than two hundred. A debt on his farm still remained; but the Navares' mortgagee was a reasonable man who was willing to wait. The monk reckoned that one more prosperous year would release him from the moneylenders' clutches and that, two years later, both the farm and the abbey would be his.
But Portugal's honest, hardworking men and women were once more being brought to the brink of ruin by the politicians. The minister, Costa Cabral, having been created Count of Thomar, sought to repay Queen Maria da Gloria by measures of excessive royalism; and immediately all the turbulent spirits in the country were let loose. Some rough-and-ready poet dashed down a Portuguese Marseillaise, in which an imaginary "Mary of the Fountain" was hymned as a Joan of Arc raised up to save the fatherland. In Villa Branca and Navares, Antonio often heard the lads singing:
Maria of the FountainHas a sword in her hand,To slay the false Cabrals,The traitors to their land.
Forward! brothers, forward!Forward! be our cry;On! for holy FreedomTo conquer or to die.
Suddenly the Septembrists took arms. Under the Viscount Sa da Bandeira there broke out the insurrection called by some the Mob-war and by others the war of Maria da Fonte. Cabral fell, and the Marshal Saldanha filled his place. To end the bloodshed and disorder foreign Powers intervened.
On the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, exactly four years after Antonio began his memorable novena to Saint Isabel, the Convention of Granada was signed and a general amnesty was declared. The good news reached the farm on Saint Isabel's day, and Antonio hoped against hope that the dates were good omens. But within two years Cabral was once more in power; and, two years later, Saldanha and his soldiers once more turned him out.
One morning Thomé and Branco, both grown old, brought a letter to announce the bankruptcy of the Lisbon shippers to whom Antonio had entrusted the collection of his accounts. The news came barely a week before a further payment of one hundred pounds fell due to the moneylenders. Antonio immediately hired a fast horse and hastened to Oporto. In answer to his request, the Jew and the German blandly offered to renew his bonds on terms so outrageous that the monk walked out of their office. But only three days remained, of which one was a holiday. He called at Senhor Castro's house to find the master dead.
On the face of it, to raise a sum of two hundred pounds on property worth three thousand was an absurdly easy task, and Antonio counted on being able to wash his hands of the moneylenders within twenty-four hours. But owing to the political unrest an acute financial crisis prevailed in Oporto. Money was scarce and lenders were shy. Antonio's security was scores of leagues away, and there was no time to inspect it; nor could the title be easily investigated, as the deeds were in the money-lenders' hands.
On his last day of grace the monk presented himself again at the so-called bank and stated that he would accept the hard terms offered. He was received with a volley of abuse.
"What?" roared Senhor Neumann. "You have the impudence to come here again? After all our kindness the other day, what did we get? Nothing but ingratitude and insults. Get out. We're sick of the whole business. I'm determined to be done with it once for all. If you've brought our money, pay it and don't argue. If not, we foreclose the mortgage, and I shall write to Villa Branca to-night."
"You are quite right, Neumann," said Senhor Mual. "We were talked to like dirt. Senhor da Rocha could not have turned his back on us more offensively if we had been downright extortioners or common money-lenders. But don't be too hard on a man in a hole."
"I shall write to Villa Branca to-night," persisted the German. "I like business to be pleasant. What did the Senhor come here for at all, if he didn't mean to be straightforward? I like business to end as pleasantly as it begins. I like dealing with gentlemen."
Antonio bit his tongue. Senhor Mual spoke again; and once more Senhor Neumann retorted. At last their trite play-acting came to its usual end with the German loudly exclaiming:
"Very well, very well, have your way. We're a brace of soft-hearted old fools. Every scamp that comes along can get round us; it'll serve us right if we both die in the Misericordia."
Antonio signed fresh papers and hurried back to José. He spent three days writing English and Spanish and Portuguese letters to his customers in the Americas, unfolding new offers of discounts and a proposal for cash-payments against bills of lading. The result was the loss of half his Latin patrons, whose business could only be conducted on credit. Concurrently with these disasters the Lisbon Government kept on demanding larger and larger taxes; and Antonio never caught sight of the old white horse Branco without a shrinking of heart.
The monk fought on. To save a pound or two a year he gave up his English papers. But crisis followed crisis, and before long he owed Neumann and Mual almost as much as he had borrowed from them in the first instance. The two scoundrels played with him like anglers playing a pike. Sometimes they gave him so much line that he seemed to be regaining the deep broad flood of freedom. For a year at a time their letters would be friendly and the Villa Branca persecution would cease; but whenever the debt fell below three hundred pounds they struck sharply and began winding the firmly hooked fish pitilessly back to the bank. They knew how to enmesh him in widespread nets of petty litigation; and, although Antonio was far cleverer than the attorney, his cleverness availed him nothing. The affidavits of his opponents were invariably perjurious, but the monk scorned to swear falsely in reply, even on the most trifling point. Had he possessed money to carry appeals into the higher courts he might have obtained justice; but he never succeeded in going further than the Villa Branca court of first instance, where local corruption smiled at the maxim that Truth is mighty and must prevail.
Throughout these trials Antonio constantly advanced in the love of God and his neighbor. Although he could not give money, he gave his time and strength and knowledge to the help of the weak and harassed around him. A new cura came to the village, who soon discerned the spirituality of his mysterious parishioner and insisted on his enjoying the great consolation of serving at Mass. Meanwhile the monk kept up the daily recitation of the Divine Office in his old stall. Very often he was cheered by hearing again with his inward ear the vast, sweet chant of all Saint Benedict's sons and daughters. In spite of his troubles he was nearly always cheerful; and he would often echo the words of Saint Paul and say,In omnibus tribulationem patimus: "We suffer trouble on every side, but we are not in anguish, we are perplexed, but not in despair, we suffer persecution, but we are not forsaken, we are cast down, but we are not destroyed."
One morning, when he was dressing for an iniquitous law-suit, Antonio noticed that his hair at the temples had begun to turn gray. The next moment he remembered that it was the eve of his birthday, and that on the morrow he would be fifty years old.
Late one December night, as he lay in his lonely cell, a furious gale aroused Antonio from sleep. Something was groaning and creaking outside. He sat bolt upright and listened until he became certain that the great iron cross which formed the finial to the chapel roof had worked loose.
The monk sprang up and ran out into the rain. Scaling the chapel wall by means of a swaying ladder, he found to his dismay that the cross was within an ace of falling. There was no time to run down to the farm for help, nor even to return to the abbey for tools. The only action that could avail was to stand with his whole weight on the last ridge-stone and to hold up the cross against the wind with his whole strength.
Antonio took the cross in his arms. The sou'-wester, roaring like a thousand lions, thrashed him with stinging thongs of cold rain and did its best to hurl him down, cross and all. But he held on. Time after time the ridge shook like a bog under his feet, and the great finial tugged at his arms like a captured beast striving to escape. His hands bled through gripping the sharp edges of the iron. Once or twice, during the first half-hour, he was on the point of relaxing his grasp; but a great thought put endurance into his heart and strength into his arms. He thought of his Lord, cleaving to the cross on Calvary with an intensity of love which fastened Him there more securely than the iron nails. He thought of the darkness which was over all the land from the sixth to the ninth hour. Hitherto the monk had thought of that darkness as a mere absence of light; but, as he clung to the iron, with the brutal tempest howling and roaring and screaming, with the roofs and the trees whining and moaning, and with the icy darts of rain wounding him like thorns, he understood that it was a darkness reeling with all the sin of the world and envenomed with the hot panting of all hell's devils. With blood on both his hands and pains like red-hot needles in both his feet Antonio thanked God for this livelier sense of his Savior's passion, and he repeated the words of Saint Paul,Mortificationem Jesu in corpore nostro circumferentes: "Bearing about in our bodies the dying of Jesus."
Towards dawn, when the world seemed to be rocking under him and he was ready to faint, Antonio recalled that other night of storm when, in the chapel below, Isabel had nestled in his arms. Her presence seemed to be with him once more. It was as though her white slender hands were helping his to uphold the thick black iron, and as though her soft, sweet tones were murmuring encouragement in his ear. The gale and the rain bellowed and spat, but Isabel's voice softly drowned their din.Erat cum bestiis, et angelus ministrabat illi: "He was among wild beasts, and an angel ministered unto him."
José, hurrying to the abbey before sunrise to report serious damage among the sea-sand vines, arrived just in time to save both the cross and his master. Having driven in a wedge, he made haste to help Antonio down and to coax him into bed. To bed the monk went; and in bed he remained for a week, consumed by fever and tortured by nightmares. He seemed to be holding the lockless, boltless door of the chapel against the two usurers and the chief of the Fazenda and the Villa Branca attorney. He, Antonio, was holding it shut by fiercely pressing knees and thighs and arms and hands, and shoulders and brow against the oak while his enemies charged at it like roaring waves at a cliff.
When the monk arose from bed his magnificent health was gone. He suffered from headaches, and could no longer walk to the neighboring towns or do much manual labor. To employ his enforced leisure he advertised himself in two or three English and French papers as a private tutor wishing to receive one or two boarder-pupils for instruction in the classics, modern languages, and commercial routine; but there was no response.
Happily this illness befell during one of Antonio's periods of relief from the usurers' persecution. He knew, however, that such calms always heralded storms; and therefore he determined to use what health and strength remained to him in a grand effort to break out of the usurers' power. His debt, or rather their claim, stood at about nine hundred pounds. By selling the mortgaged farm and sea-sand vineyards, and also the whole plant, stock, and good-will of the wine and liqueur business as a going concern, Antonio could pay off the nine hundred and turn his back on Neumann and Mual forever. In the event of local lenders clamoring for the liquidation of the floating debts which he had incurred on the strength of his personal credit, he would be able to satisfy them by mortgaging the abbey timber and part of the domain with a Navares mortgagee. Then, although his health was enfeebled and José was no longer young, he would set himself to the task of clearing off the last debts by branding his amber-colored wine and pushing it in England.
Although so many miracles had been vouchsafed to him, both in his spiritual and in his temporal affairs, Antonio continued to employ all his energy and prudence. He maintained his old policy of doing the best he could and leaving the rest to God; but, until he had done his utmost, he would have felt it irreverent to expect a miracle. He would plan his campaign and dispose his forces and post his safeguards as if everything depended on his own arm and his own brain; and then, but only then, he would fall down in deepest humility and demand the divine help as if everything depended upon God. Accordingly he went about his new operations with so much circumspection that it was high summer before he saw his way to act decisively.
A payment of two hundred pounds to the usurers was almost due. It was payable through the Villa Branca attorney. Antonio had over a hundred in notes at the abbey, and he reckoned that the foreign drafts in the hands of his banker at Navares would yield at least a hundred and twenty more. As traveling fatigued him he made up his mind to combine the Navares and Villa Branca journeys in one. At Navares he would cash his drafts and open his negotiations for the sale of the farm and the wine-business; and thence he would ride over the hills to Villa Branca and pay away his two hundred.
There was no hitch at the Navares bank. The drafts realized one hundred and thirty-one pounds. With a thankful heart Antonio placed the paper money in his pocket-book and stowed it safely away in his belt of English leather. But before he was ready to go two men pushed the door open and strode hastily to the counter.
"It has come?" demanded the elder.
"No. Nothing," said the banker. "But I expect another post to-night."
The younger man staggered back as if he had been struck. As soon as he turned Antonio knew him. He was Margarida's brother, Luis. Senhor Jorge had been dead two years, and Luis was the head of the house. The elder man Antonio recognized as Margarida's husband, the builder's son from Leiria, who had set up business on his own account in Navares. Not wishing to intrude into their trouble, the monk tried to slip out unobserved. But Luis saw his face and hurried towards him with a cry of joy.
"It is the Senhor da Rocha," he cried. "Theophilo, you are saved."
"We shall see," said Theophilo quietly.
"Let us go to the Campo," suggested Antonio. "There we can talk quietly."
They walked along the shady side of the street until they came to the deserted public garden. Under an old lime-tree they sat down, beside a plashing fountain, and the monk waited for the others to speak.
"It is a matter of money," stinted Theophilo, "and it is not with my consent that Luis troubles your Worship about it."
"Before my father died," Luis began, "he called me to him and said: 'Luis, you and your brothers and sister have health and a little wealth, but I can't expect that you won't have troubles. When troubles come, be men and fight them as I have fought mine. But, if ever they are too strong for you, go to Manoel da Rocha up at the old abbey. We have seen little of him, through a misunderstanding that was no fault of his; but I know his worth. Tell him your trouble and he will help you out.' Those were my father's very words; and that's why I stopped your Worship at the bank."
"Your father was one of the best men I ever met," said Antonio. "May he rest in peace. Tell me your trial; and if I can help you I will."
"It is not easy to tell," faltered Luis. "If we cannot raise a conto of reis by three o'clock Theophilo must go to prison. My mother and Margarida will die of disgrace."
"Luis has not told your Worship," broke in Theophilo proudly, "that if I go to prison I go for another's crime. Before God, I am innocent. In an accursed hour I became the friend of Victor Sequeira, the treasurer to the municipal council. When I began business he lent me a few milreis. Last year he persuaded me to endorse some bills. He swore it was a matter of form. The bills have been protested, and I am responsible. On Monday I found that Sequeira ran away last week and that the bills were fraudulent, and that I cannot clear myself of complicity in the swindle. For my wife's sake they gave me four days to find the money. The time expires at three o'clock. We have pledged everything; but we still need a conto of reis. That is the tale. Luis has made me tell it. We have no right to expect that your Worship is interested in such a miserable affair."
"I am interested, I am grieved most deeply," said Antonio, in great agitation. "I know what it is to suffer terribly through signing papers in a hurry. But ... a conto of reis! Two hundred and twenty English pounds!"
"It is a great sum," answered Luis simply. "But if your Worship had it, he would lend us the money. It is only for a few hours. The bank expects a post to-night. Theophilo has written to his father, and the money will come."
"Senhor Theophilo," said Antonio, who had become very pale, "at this moment I have two hundred and thirty-eight pounds in my belt. I meant to sleep here to-night, at the hospedaria, and to go on Saturday to pay the money away at Villa Branca. To settle my debt there is more than life or death to me."
Theophilo curled his lip.
"Your Worship is scornful," added Antonio. "If your Worship were not too well-bred he would say that I am telling a tale such as men nearly always tell when they are asked for a loan of money. No doubt Luis here partly thinks the same. Everybody in the village knows that I make a great deal of money and that I spend no more than a peasant. Everybody knows that I'm called the abbey miser and that I give away hardly a pound a year."
They remained silent.
"But everybody doesn't know," the monk continued, "that for more than fifteen years I have been in the grip of Oporto money-lenders. Everybody doesn't know that I have paid thousands of pounds—yes, thousands—in costs and interest, and that I still owe nearly as much as the original loan. I was going to Villa Branca to pay them nearly a conto of reis, and I had set my whole heart on getting out of their power. If I must renew this part of the debt it will be on ruinous terms, and I have no longer the health to go on fighting."
"I have stated already," declared the proud Theophilo, "that Luis has troubled your Worship without my consent. If I must go to prison ... well, to prison I must go, as better men have gone before me."
"Not so fast," said the monk. "Humanly speaking, is it certain your father will send the funds? Have you recent knowledge of his financial position? Can he disengage money from his business at such short notice? If I let you have the use of my conto of reis till to-morrow night, is there a risk of my losing it?"
"None!" cried Luis. But Theophilo, having reflected, said:
"I thank the Senhor. I shall not trouble him. There is a risk. An Englishman, from one of their great cities called Scotland, is contractor for works at Figueira da Foz. He has farmed out his contract to my father, and he is treating him unfairly. Your Worship, there is a risk."
Antonio sat staring at the fountain. In spite of the great heat he felt cold. At three o'clock Senhor Jorge's son-in-law and Margarida's husband must be thrown into a felon's prison for a crime not his own, in default of one conto of reis. And he, Antonio, had a conto of reis in his belt. By lending this proud and honest man the money he could perform a work of mercy which would pluck six men and women out of an inferno of despair and raise them to a paradise of thankfulness.
But there was a risk, a grave risk. Judging by his experience of Portuguese mercantile concerns, Antonio could indulge only a faint hope of Theophilo's receiving the money from Leiria before it was due at Villa Branca. And in that event—
The Navares clock struck two. Theophilo sprang to his feet.
"Adeus, Senhor," he said, "and thanks."
"No!" cried Antonio, plunging after him and gripping his arm. "I have not refused. An hour remains. Give me thirty minutes. This is a terrible affair. Stay here. In half an hour I will return."
Without awaiting an answer he hurried away. Quitting the Alameda by a side gate, he dived into a sunless alley and pushed at the door of the church of the Santa Cruz. It swung inwards. He hastened along the broad nave until he came to the brazen grille which barred the chapel of the Santissimo. There he sank down on the plank floor and, stretching despairing hands to the Presence on the altar, he cried out in agony,Domine, quid me vis facere: "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?"
The answer came swiftly. It was as though a voice, a strong Man's voice, yet a voice even sweeter than Isabel's, said in his ear:
"Antonio, lend Theophilo your conto of reis."
Of all the supernal voices which had ever spoken to him, this was the nearest and the clearest. If the brazen grille had opened and an angel had come forth proclaiming it with the voice of a trumpet, Antonio could not have been more sure that his Lord was bidding him lend Theophilo the money. Yet he could not, all in a moment, accept the answer. Horror, kindling almost to anger, filled his soul.
So this was to be the end. For fifteen years he had been slaving to fill the pockets of infamous extortioners; and now he was to take the price of freedom and pay it away to replace the plunderings of a runaway swindler. A hideous thought, more foul and hideous than the blankest atheism, rushed into his mind. It was a thought about God. That God existed Antonio could not doubt; nor could he question that God intervened, as the Christians believe, in men's and women's lives. The Christians said that He was all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving. But perhaps the truth was, after all, that He was all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-mocking.
Antonio could grant that a work of mercy to men should take precedence of a work of praise towards God. But if God had intended him for works of mercy, why had He called him into a contemplative Order, and why had He suffered him to go on finding a dozen contos for usurers while he was refusing pence to honest men? And Isabel, his breaking of the heart of Isabel—how did that supreme deed fit into the sorry scheme? Yes, God had mocked him. He had made the world, and all the men and women in it, as a puppet-show to divert His eternal boredom. He had sat lounging on the arch of heaven for five-and-twenty years watching his, Antonio's, toil and strife just as a lazy lout lolls on the grass watching ants working hour after hour at the ant-hill which he intends to kick to pieces before he goes home.
The monk did not deliberately think these thoughts. They swept thunderously over him like a tidal wave drowning a lowland coast. For a moment they roared in his ears and took away his wits. But as he came to the surface he rallied all the forces of his soul and struck out desperately to regain his rock of faith. God was no mocker. He was Love, all Love; and the thick blackness of this new and dreadful ordeal was only a shadow cast by the eternal Light. Nevertheless, Antonio all but failed to resist the sucking undertow of fresh doubts and to maintain his foothold amidst the battering surf of despair.
Close beside him, on an altar to the right of the grille, rose a statue of the Blessed Virgin, crowned with a golden crown and robed in the blue velvet robe of an eighteenth-century Portuguese princess. To her Antonio cried out for help. When words of his own refused to come he poured forth the words of Saint Bernard's prayerMemorare. For a prolonged while no help came, and he crouched on the planks, shrinking from the heavy stripes which God had appointed him. He remembered the ruined abbeys of England. Doubtless stronger and wiser men than he had labored to restore them to the Church and to her Orders; but three hundred years had passed, and so far as Antonio knew, not one monastic house had been rebuilt upon the old foundations. Perhaps it was the divine will that the Orders, renouncing the world, should never be too long rooted in this acre or that; and perhaps it was ordained that they must renew their vows to the Lady Poverty in hovels and barns and caves. But, in that case, why had God bidden him waste his life in separation from the exiled brethren of his Order? He gazed through the grille as if he would demand the answer. But the ears of his soul heard no word save:
"Antonio, lend Theophilo your conto of reis. Antonio, lend Theophilo your conto of reis."
Not yet could he submit. The smoldering rebellion in his heart was quickening for a burst of flame. At last his eyes rested on the faded gilt legend running along the pedestal of the Virgin's blue-robed image,Ecce ancilla Domini, fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it unto me according to thy word." To Antonio this brief scripture recalled more than the pearly moment when the Virgin of virgins, despising the evil tongues of men and looking steadfastly into the deep, dark eyes of sorrow, surrendered herself to the will of God; for it recalled also the fiery hour when he himself, in the same words, had finally accepted the monastic life. With the memory of old battles and old victories there rushed upon him new graces.
"Ecce servus Domini," he cried in sudden triumph, "fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum!" And, having prostrated himself with loving reverence before his Master, he rose up and sped back to the Campo, where Theophilo was striding up and down.
"Senhor Theophilo," said the monk, "I will lend you my conto of reis."
Theophilo stared at him in amazement. So sure had he felt of Antonio's refusal that he would not have remained in the Campo had there been any other quiet and open place wherein to spend his last hour of freedom. He resisted; flushed; seized the monk's hand and dropped it the same moment; and at last began to stammer incoherent protests and thanks.
"But I will lend it," continued Antonio, "only on one condition."
"On any condition you like," cried Theophilo, beside himself with joy. "If it's a hundred per cent, I don't mind. I'll work like a slave to pay back every vintem and still I shall be your Excellency's debtor."
"I ask harder terms than a hundred per cent," explained the monk quietly. "My condition is this. Pledge me your word that if your father's money does not come in time to settle my own debt in Villa Branca you will never reproach yourself on my account. Promise that you will believe me when I say that, although I shall be happier to-morrow night with your father's conto of reis, I shall not be miserable without it. Promise to believe that, if your father fails us, I shall have no grievance against him or against Luis or against you."
Theophilo could only stand stock still, staring and breathing hard. The clock struck half-past two.
"Quick!" urged Antonio. "There's no time to lose. See, here is the conto of reis. Pledge me your word that you will obey my condition, and the money is yours."
"Your Worship cannot mean this," broke in Luis. He had leaned against Antonio expecting to find him a broken reed, and he could hardly believe that this oak-like sturdiness was not a delusion.
"I mean every word," Antonio answered. "Come, take the money. I trust you to remember the terms."
He drew a few notes from the pocket-book and pressed all the rest into Theophilo's hand. The young builder clutched them eagerly; but a moment later he sought to thrust them back.
"No," he groaned, "I cannot, I must not. My father will fail me and you will curse us!"
"Come," answered Antonio gently, "I will tell you a secret. I have a Friend. While you sat by this fountain I went and asked His advice. I have asked it many and many a time, and He has never misled me yet. He told me to lend you this conto of reis. If the post does not bring a conto in its place, do not grieve. It is between my Friend and me. Go."
They looked at him wonderingly; but he hastened away. From the far side of the garden he saw them stand a whole minute irresolute. Then Luis seized Theophilo's arm and they walked off quickly into the town. As for Antonio, he returned to the church of Santa Cruz, and there, in a corner, he began to say his Office. He recited it without rapture, but with a quietness of mind which was better than ecstasy.
Towards four o'clock two men entered the nave and knelt before the brazen grille. They did not discover Antonio; but, from his obscure corner, he could see their faces as they rose from their knees, and he knew that they had guessed Who was his Friend.
The post arrived at six o'clock; but it brought no letter from Theophilo's father. Luis, with a pale face came to the hospedaria after dinner and broke the news falteringly. Glancing through the window, Antonio saw Theophilo pacing up and down outside. The monk put on his hat and walked into the street.
"Senhor, this is terrible," moaned Theophilo. "There is nothing."
"It is terrible indeed," answered Antonio, smiling. "At half-past two you make me a promise, and at half-past six you break it. Come, remember. Cheer up."
They walked beside him with downcast eyes.
"Come," he said again. "This will never do. Tell me. Does Donna Margarida know what you have been passing through?"
"Thank God, she does not, and she never shall!" cried Theophilo.
"Very well. Let us go to your home and hear some music and be gay. I'm a country booby, and when I visit the town I want to see some life. It is dull in the inn."
Theophilo became voluble in apologies for his negligence. He despatched one of the stable-boys hot-foot to warn the Senhora of their approach and followed with Antonio and Luis. In ten minutes they reached a garish new house, faced all over with colored tiles.
Margarida received her old flame with slight chilliness. Although she had turned thirty-five her good looks were not greatly diminished. With her sat Perpetua, Jorge, Lucia, and Juliana, her four black-eyed children, who were struck dumb by the advent of the handsome stranger. At first the proceedings were dull and frigid enough to remind Antonio of his first visit to Margarida's home. But Luis and Theophilo, in reaction from their days of stress and terror, soon became almost hysterically gay. The guitars came out; and when everyone was tired of singing and strummingfadosAntonio devoted himself to the little Jorge and his three tongue-tied sisters. He gradually wooed them out of their shyness by telling them a tale of the buried city of Troja, at the mouth of the Sado. By the time he was half through a revised version of the Three Hunchbacks of Setubal the audience had begun to be more tongue-free than himself; and when he made Perpetua hold the candle so that his clenched left fist and his right-hand fingers and knuckles threw upon the wall a shadow of a long-eared rabbit nibbling a cabbage as big as itself, the house rang with shouts of laughter.
The children were sent to bed at nine, wailing bitterly at their banishment. Theophilo took the guitar and played softly, so as not to keep them awake. He had a sympathetic touch and his music soothed Antonio. Sitting in a great chair, the monk looked round the room and wondered. His conto of reis had gone. In forty hours it would be too late to pay the attorney, and the usurers could be trusted so to foreclose the mortgage as to swindle him out of nearly all he had. Yet, somehow, he was happier than he had been for many a day. For a short while he asked himself if it were not callous to gaze so calmly at the wreck of his life's work. Ought he not to be aching and smarting and bleeding as he had ached and smarted and bled for Isabel? Did he truly care as deeply for the abbey and for the Order as he had cared for her?
All these probings left him unpricked. His contentment obstinately refused to be ruffled. Breaking his rule, he drank two glasses of sweet wine and ate a whole broa of Margarida's making. When he rose to go Margarida's manner was perceptibly less aloof, and she begged him to come again. At the street door Theophilo said:
"Your Excellency has heaped kindness upon kindness. How shall I ever repay him?"
"By permitting me to visit his house again to-morrow night," answered Antonio; "your Worship will have become my creditor. Adeus."
He worked his hand free from Theophilo's iron grip and returned to the hospedaria, where he fell asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow. Next morning, after Mass, he did not lose a moment in opening negotiations for the raising of an immediate conto of reis on his encumbered assets. But Luis and Theophilo, in pledging all they possessed, had almost exhausted the ready-money resources of Navares. Late in the after noon Antonio thought he was succeeding; but the existence of the Oporto usurers' second mortgage on the farm blocked the way. At four o'clock he gave up the struggle and went to Santa Cruz to say his Office. At half-past five he sat down in the hospedaria to dine.
Just after the soup tureen had been placed on the table a tremendous noise arose from the street. Every dog in Navares was outside, barking his hardest, and the iron shoes of a spirited horse were hammering on the cobbles. The Gallego waiter rushed downstairs to welcome the guest. Doors banged, hostlers shouted, buckets clanked, a horse neighed. The inn cat, which Antonio had been nursing, leaped from his knee and rushed downstairs to the lobby whence the prolonged wail of a badly scratched dog immediately ascended.
The monk, alone at the table, filled his gaudy plate with vegetable soup and began to eat. The stranger came upstairs to his room amidst a babble of welcoming voices. Through the thin wall Antonio could hear him drop his heavy boots on the bare floor. A cheerful splashing followed. The Gallego waiter, hurrying in with a dish of bacalhau, white cabbage, and hard-boiled eggs, excitedly explained to Antonio that the newcomer was an Englishman; and, five minutes later, a plumpish, rather florid man, with a clean-shaven face and soft yellow hair, strode into the room calling out an order for green wine.
Antonio rose and found himself face to face with young Crowberry. But, somehow, he could not feel in the least degree surprised.
"Good evening, Teddy," he said quietly. "Welcome to Navares."
Young Crowberry jumped. He stared blankly across the soup at the gray-haired man with the gentle voice. Then he flung himself forward against the table so impetuously that a brown water-pot was overturned and an empty glass jumped down to the floor with a crash.
"Da Rocha! By Jove! Da Rocha!" he cried, wringing the monk's hand. "Man, I've come all the way from England to find you. Why the deuce did you drop writing? And what do you mean by growing gray hairs? How's José and all the little Josés, and the champagne and all the little champagnes, and the orange brandy? Have you pawned the spoons? Da Rocha! By Jove!"
"Come round and sit beside me," said Antonio.
As the deluge from the overturned water-pot had soaked the cloth all round him the monk bade the waiter remove his cover and young Crowberry's to the little table by the window.
"And ask him to bring green wine," said young Crowberry. "Quarts, Gallons, Buckets, Hogsheads, Bottomless pits. I'm as thirsty as the devil."
When orderly conversation became possible, the monk was able to puzzle out a mystery which had pained him. By comparing notes and sifting dates they found that one letter from Antonio must have gone down in the wreck of the mail-boatHortensia, and that another letter had reached England while an unsatisfactory sub-tenant was occupying young Crowberry's chambers. After this misunderstanding had been righted the monk proceeded to draw out his friend's recent history. He found that young Crowberry, in his own phrase, had made three fortunes, of which he had lost two and three-quarters in financing foreign railway companies by whom he had been employed.
"But what does it matter?" demanded young Crowberry. "I've a quarter of a fortune left, and I'm hoping it'll be enough for my scheme. The man I'm trying to get in with isn't greedy."
"Explain," asked the monk.
"I'm hoping to buy a share of a snug little business and settle down," young Crowberry answered. "A wine business. I was born among bottles, and a cellar's better than a tunnel. That's why I've come to Portugal. I've invested four thousand pounds in British Funds for miscellaneous purposes, and to-morrow I'm going to offer my remaining five thousand to a man named da Rocha for a partnership."
Antonio heard him without visible emotion. For a long minute he gazed quietly into the street. At last he said:
"Edward, you asked me half an hour ago if I had pawned the spoons. They were pawned two years ago, to pay a Jew twenty per cent interest on a loan I'd repaid twice over. But it's a long story. Drink your coffee. Then we will go to your room."
In young Crowberry's room Antonio disclosed his secret. He began with his brief experiences as a youth in Lisbon. Rapidly and vividly he described his brief skepticism, his vocation to the religious life, his noviciate, his full profession, his ordination, his expulsion from the abbey, and his vow at the farm. Omitting only the affairs of Margarida and Isabel, he brought the history right down to that very day and to the moment of his failing to raise money in replacement of Theophilo's conto of reis. He slurred lightly over every passage in the narrative which might sound like self-praise, and sought rather to exhibit himself as a blunderer who ought to have attained his end years and years ago. He wound up by saying simply:
"It is our Lord who has sent you here to-day. If you have it with you, I will borrow a conto of reis and we will ride over to Villa Branca together in the morning. On the way we will talk about the partnership. My maximum price for a half-share will be a thousand pounds."
"My minimum offer is five thousand," said the engineer firmly. "Remember that I'm hoping to foist myself upon you till death do us part. I have wound up all my affairs in England. Meanwhile here is a conto of reis."
Some one knocked loudly at the door. It was the Gallego announcing that two senhores wished to see the Senhor da Rocha at once. The senhores, treading on the Gallego's heels, turned out to be Theophilo and Luis. They pressed into the room, but fell back at the sight of a stranger.
"You may speak freely, Theophilo," said Antonio. "This is the Senhor Crowberry. He knows my affairs. Tell me what you want. My own trouble is over. Senhor Crowberry has brought me a conto of reis."
"And here it is," put in Crowberry, opening his pocket-book. "I don't know how much a conto may be; but if it's less than two thousand pounds, help yourself."
"No," cried Theophilo. "We want nothing. Senhor da Rocha, I have wonderful news. Sequeira has come back. He had mixed the town money up with his own, but he is not a thief. He has just come back from Lisbon, and he has repaid me every vintem of what Luis and I paid to the municipal chamber yesterday. See. Here are the notes. Seven contos and two hundred milreis."
"And a special post has arrived from Leiria," added the radiant Luis, "with a conto from Theophilo's father. Theophilo, show it to their Excellencies."
"How many contos are here?" asked Crowberry, spreading out his notes.
"At the present exchange, you have at least twelve," said Antonio. "A conto is a million reis of our money and more than two hundred pounds of yours, at par."
"So we've twenty million reis altogether," Crowberry chuckled. "Let's change 'em into coppers and swim in 'em to see what it's like. Hasn't any gentleman got a conto or two more? I once knew a duke who overlooked a whole threepenny-bit for a week. It was in the lining of his old coat."
Luis and Theophilo stared at the Englishman with open mouths. They could not understand a word he said, but this made him the more marvelous. From Crowberry they shifted their wonder to Antonio. He seemed to have called down from the skies a familiar sprite who handed out millions as coolly as one boy giving another a few screws of newspaper for the tail of his kite.
"Put back your money, all of you," commanded Antonio. "Theophilo, give me your father's conto and we are square. And have I your leave to present my friend to Donna Margarida?"
The whole party made haste to the tiled house, where Jorge and his sisters hailed Antonio with shouts of joy. They were shy of young Crowberry at first; but, having asked ten minutes' leave of absence, the Englishman slipped out to a confeitaria and returned laden with so exciting a load of candied oranges, Elvas plums, Coimbra marzipan, and Spanish chocolate that Antonio's star was eclipsed for half an hour. The guitars and the sweet wine came out once more. Later on young Crowberry began to tease poor Margarida with such exaggerated compliments, in bad Portuguese, that Antonio was forced to kick his heel and to explain in hurried English that Navares was neither London nor Paris. But Theophilo did not take offense, and the visit was entirely a success.
On the way home Antonio asked:
"Do you hear anything of Miss Kaye-Templeman and Mrs. Baxter?"
"The widow Baxter is now the widow Lamb," answered Crowberry. "Lamb was a master-tanner. He survived the wedding six months. That's all I know. As for Isabel, I've heard nothing for years and years and years. After her father died she went to live with Lady Julia Blighe. By the way, you never told me what you really and truly thought of her."
Antonio turned the subject.
"When you say," he demanded, "that you are planning to live and die with me, what do you mean? If you are looking for a rural life, with the sports of a country gentleman, England is the only place to find it. If it's wine that interests you, I'm sorry; because you drink too much already. What do you mean?"
"I am not looking for the sports of a country gentleman," said Crowberry. "As for wine, you are mistaken. I drink a glass or two a day of the lightest at meals, and I never touch port or spirits. Da Rocha, I will tell you what I mean. Perhaps you were pained in my bedroom when I did not show great astonishment at hearing that you are Father Antonio, a monk of Saint Benedict."
"I was not pained. But I wondered."
"Father Antonio, I guessed your secret years ago. I guessed it on the voyage home from Lisbon. I guessed that you were working to regain the abbey. From what Sir Percy told my father, I believed you secured it after we went away. I imagined that you had resumed the cloistered life and that this was why you didn't write to your old friends in the world."
"But you came out, this time, to become my partner as a wine-grower," objected Antonio.
"Yes and No. I came out with money to buy vineyards and to work for my living as you have done. I meant to buy them as close to the abbey as I could. I meant to seek you out and to ask you ... to tell you..."
"Go on," said Antonio, taking his arm as they walked, "To ask me what? To tell me what?"
"To tell you that the burning desire of my soul," broke out the other ardently, "is to become a monk, like you. To ask you for your prayers and for your help. And when I saw you standing over your soup, still in a layman's dress, I didn't alter my mind."
Antonio remembered the vision of young Crowberry's future which had unrolled itself before him while the youth and he sat side by side on the cloister roof the day before Sir Percy failed to tear down the azulejos. In reverent thankfulness he listened to this older Crowberry without interrupting him again. But the Englishman misinterpreted his silence, and added hastily:
"Let me be plain. I don't claim to have the highest and holiest vocation. Some would say there is cowardice in what I want to do. I am running away from the world. The truth is that so long as I am in the world I cannot love and praise God. Whenever I have a pit and a gallery to play to, I am a rattle, a gas-bag, a mountebank. In spite of myself I jest about the holiest things, thus injuring others as well as myself. I want to work hard with my hands, to rise early, to sleep and eat roughly, and to learn to pray. Let people call me a coward if they please. I'm nearly forty. I've made my money, and I'm standing aside to let needier men make theirs. Besides, I hate railways. They will do more harm than good."
Antonio was still mute.
"When a middle-aged man in my country has made a competency," young Crowberry continued, "he either remains in business to make money which he does not need, or he retires and lives a life of selfish and expensive pleasure. A few, a very few, devote themselves to philanthropy or politics, and I honor them for it; but it has been breathed into my soul that I am to help mankind by prayer. Da Rocha, you are silent. You are shocked. You think that, instead of rising up early to pray, I ought to rise up early to go hounding and shooting the poor beasts and birds who have as much right to their lives as I have to mine."
"I have been silent," rejoined Antonio, "only because I could not speak for thankfulness. Nearly twenty years ago I knew that you would become a priest, and I hoped that you might become a monk."
"You consent? I may be your pupil?" cried the Englishman.
"I consent. You may be my helper, my fellow-laborer. You have much to learn and much to unlearn. Listen. This very night your training shall begin. Resolve that you will never again say you are as thirsty as the devil. The rest we will talk of to-morrow."
Antonio smiled kindly as he spoke. Young Crowberry noticed that the monk's expression was full of a solemn sweetness which had not been visible in the old days. At the same moment he became conscious of Antonio's broken health. The monk walked rather slowly and leaned heavily on the layman's arm. They did not speak another word till they reached the inn door.
Next morning, when Antonio awoke, he found young Crowberry standing over him with a bowl of Brazilian coffee and goat's milk, a newly-baked roll of white bread, and, rarest delicacy of all, a pat of butter. Protest was useless. A quarter of an hour later the sprucest barber in Navares appeared and shaved Antonio with the skill of a German. At seven o'clock horses began stamping outside; and, at five minutes past, Antonio and the Englishman were seated in a well-hung carriage behind a pair of bays.
"Does the Jehu understand English?" asked young Crowberry, cutting short Antonio's remonstrances against all this luxury. "No. He doesn't." "Good. Then, most reverend and illustrious Father, listen to me. One month from this date I, the most irreverend Senhor Teddy Crowberry, will begin to be your most docile servant. I shall obey you in all things. You shall be my Lord Abbot till one of us dies. But, for this month, your Reverence will obey me. Argument is useless. If I spend five guineas a day for thirty days, remember that I hope to live on fivepence a week for the following thirty years."
"A month! It is impossible," cried Antonio. "Besides, José expects me back to-night."
"I think he doesn't. An old ruffian on a white horse has taken him a letter from me. I was nearly asking him to send on your shirts to the inn at Villa Branca; but, if your Excellency will forgive my disgusting rudeness, I couldn't feel sure that you had a shirt to send. From Villa Branca we shall go to Oporto and punch the heads of those Jews. We shall wind up all your affairs there. Thence we shall go to Braga and see the Archbishop. After that, back to Coimbra, and to Lisbon to see the Patriarch and the Pope's Nuncio, and perhaps to Evora. See what a lot I know! I've been thinking it all over and over and over in the night. You are the only Benedictine left in Portugal, and we shall have to get these big pots to help us. Pah! How the sun does blaze. I'm as thirsty as an archbishop."