Chapter V: Book II: The Return (3)

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."