Chapter VII: Book III: Margarida (2)

"If the Senhor is lonely," said the lavrador, "he must come to our _serões_. On Thursdays, at the full moon. That means next Thursday, about seven o'clock. He will do us a great honor."

"He will indeed," added Donna Perpetua. "And if he plays the mandolin let him bring it with him."

Antonio knew that at the serões, or soirees, of Portuguese farm-folk there was much lore to be learned which one might search for vainly in libraries. Besides, it would hardly be neighborly to refuse an invitation so heartily given and so kindly meant.

"All the honor," he said, "is on the other side. I will very gladly come."

Only at that moment did he discern the position. Donna Perpetua's glance at Margarida lasted not much longer than a flash of lightning; but, like a flash of lightning, it revealed the truth to Antonio. The furtive looks of Margarida's brothers, both at their sister and at one another, confirmed the revelation; and the evident relief and satisfaction of Senhor Jorge established it beyond a doubt.

Not without traces of hauteur in his manner and curtness in his speech Antonio thanked his hosts for their hospitality and took his leave.

V

The monk strode homewards with wrath in his heart. At both their encounters Jorge dos Santos Rebolla had deceived him by false pretenses. Antonio now understood that the petition for the new bridge was merely an excuse for a spying visit to his little territory; and the lavrador's solicitude for the dryness of Antonio's skin was equally undisinterested. He had been trapped into a compromising position before all the eyes in the parish, and he could hardly get out of it without giving pain to the unoffending Margarida, annoyance to himself, and an opportunity to the gossip-mongers of the village.

Besides, the affair was a blow to Antonio's pride. He had often recalled, with some complacency, his skillful treatment of the young English beauty who gave him the hot-house flower, as well as his tact towards other great ladies who had failed to dissemble their regard. Yet here he was, enmeshed in the first net which a pair of rustic match-makers had troubled to spread. Again, if a Francisco Manoel Oliveira da Rocha were free to wed, it would not be with a daughter of Senhor Jorge.

He swung down the muddy track slashing murderously with his thin English walking-stick at the wet brambles. But Father Antonio had not ceased to be a monk. Every night he examined his conscience, and nearly all day long, in his endeavor toward perfection, he maintained a keen-eyed watch against the approaches of sin. So he reined in his bitter thoughts with sudden strength, and set himself to analyze their causes. Experience had taught him how easily un-Christian pride can be confused with righteous anger.

Before his trim white house rose into sight Antonio re-entered the state of grace, and was once more in love and charity with all his neighbors. The results of Senhor Jorge's proceedings were bound to be gravely embarrassing; but his motives, after all, could not be called disgraceful. It was a father's duty to secure his daughter's happiness; and Antonio could not deny that Senhor Jorge's choice implied a certain compliment to himself. Again, the lavrador could not be blamed for the devices he was using to press the business forward. No one, save José, knew that a Benedictine monk was living on the borders of the parish; and probably Senhor Jorge thought he was doing a shy young bachelor a service by taking charge of the courtship.

These charitable thoughts towards the people who had drawn Antonio into a mess did not, however, help him to get out of it. The slight coldness and stiffness of his farewells could hardly have been noticed by Donna Perpetua and the family. And on Thursday they would expect him at their serão. What was he to do?

According to the cowardly and selfish rules of worldly prudence, his only safe course was to sham some illness or to invent some bogus call of business which would enable him to evade the serão. But such ways were not Antonio's. He had given his promise and he meant to keep it. Indeed, reflection convinced him that the serão would give him his best opportunity of putting an end to the affair. Outside the church Senhor Jorge had publicly compromised Antonio; at the serão Antonio would publicly put himself right again. The parish should see that he was not a woman-hater and a hermit: but the parish should see, also, that he was not a marrying man.

About eight that night, as master and man were returning from their usual Sunday evening exercises in the abbey chapel, Antonio told José that he had sheltered under Senhor Jorge's roof and that he had promised to assist at one of his serões. José tramped along without replying: but it was plain he had a comment to make.

"Is there something you want to say, José?" asked Antonio. "If so, why don't you say it?"

After stumping on another twenty paces in silence José grunted:

"Senhor Jorge has a daughter."

"I know. The Senhorita Margarida."

Although they were a third of a mile from home José shut his mouth and did not open it again until they were in the house, with the door shut. Then he spoke.

"I ask pardon of your Reverence," he began, using the forbidden title with unconcealed deliberation. "Your Reverence is a holy monk. He understands Latin and French and English. He understands oranges and grapes, and winepresses and stills, better than anybody else in Portugal. But he doesn't understand all the ways of the world--especially young women."

"While you, José," retorted Antonio, "understand all the ways of the world--especially young women--perfectly."

"I don't, Father," protested José in alarm, "and nobody else, either--may God help us all! But I understand a thing here and a thing there. The truth is, Father--"

"Don't call me Father. The truth is what?"

"The truth is," replied José, in a mysterious whisper, "they want to find a husband for the Senhorita Margarida."

"Go on."

"Senhor Jorge wants to find some one rich--like your Worship. And Donna Perpetua wants to find a born gentleman--like your Worship."

"Not to beat about the bush," Antonio interrupted, "you mean that Senhor Jorge and Donna Perpetua want ... me?"

José admitted it and began apologizing for his presumptuous interference; but Antonio cut him short by saying:

"You have done quite right to talk with me like this. Thanks. Never ask pardon for speaking plainly. Now we will eat our bread."

It was the custom of the two men to dine on Sundays before going up to the abbey, and to eat a small broa, dipped in wine, on their return. They sat down to this simple supper, without any more words about Margarida, and confined themselves to arranging the farm-work for the morrow. At half-past eight José lit his lantern and went off to bed.

The monk made no haste to follow his example. The room was chilly after the rain: so he kindled a fire of cork-cuttings and walnut-shells. It blazed up lustily, and José's copper and pewter reflected the cheerful light. Antonio blew out the useless candle, drew a chair up to the warmth, and sat down.

Outside, the stillness was profound. José, no doubt, had already fallen asleep. No dog barked, no bird of night cried. Even the Atlantic lay hushed.

From the heart of this silent loneliness the spirit of Antonio fared forth, craving the company of living men. He thought first of his old companions, the fathers and brethren of his Order; of the Abbot, of the Cellarer, of Sebastian, of Cypriano. But it was little more than an hour since he had walked past the doors of their abandoned cells and had sat in the midst of their empty stalls; and, try as he might, he could only think of them as impalpable ghosts hovering over the dim and deserted abbey. Then he tried to think of Crowberry, of the young Queen Victoria's nonchalant Comptroller, of the clean-shaven, wiry, iron-willed Duke. But England seemed ever so far away, on the other side of a thousand miles of rain and darkness; and only one memory stood up warm and clear. It was the memory of that summer evening, when the vane on the gray church tower burned like a flame and when the blue smoke from the cottage hearths and the children's merry cries had suddenly turned the exile sick with yearning for love and home.

Yes. Although all other English memories were faint, that one scene rebuilt itself before his mind's eyes, solid, richly colored, vocal. He saw once more the cattle knee-deep in clear, purling waters beside the steep old bridge, and he heard the rooks cawing. It was so like a happening of yesterday that he remembered even the chaff of Mr. Crowberry about his Portuguese sweetheart, Teresa or Dolores or Luiza, or Carmen or Maria.

Maria. Margarida was named Maria. Margarida Clara Maria. The syllables resounded in his brain like tinkling cymbals. They revived that morning's experiences in the lavrador's house with so full an actuality that Antonio's mind-painting of the golden English village faded into gray and brown. Margarida. When Donna Perpetua called out her name she had stepped forth; and now, once more, as Antonio breathed it, she seemed to be advancing through the lonesome byways of his heart.

Perhaps the Rebollas were discussing him at that very moment. He tried to imagine Senhor Jorge holding forth to his trio of inarticulate sons. But he failed. The picture which his imagination persisted in painting was a picture of Donna Perpetua talking to Margarida.

Donna Perpetua, like Senhor Jorge and the three dumb dogs of sons, was doubtless a worthy creature. But the picture looked better without her. Again, the comfortless living-room of the lavrador made an unamiable background. Antonio's fire of cork-bark and nut-shells had sunk from a blaze to a glow, and the bright eyes of the polished copper vessels no longer winked and peeped down upon his privacy. But the unwonted warmth, after the long walk in the fresh air and his draught of generous wine, made him drowsy. His will was no longer supreme. And so it came to pass that a soft dream-shape stole in upon him and sat down on the other side of the hearth. Margarida.

Her presence seemed good to Antonio. Her voice, her cheeks, her arms, her movements were soft and gentle. She had great, mild, stupid, kind eyes, like the eyes of the contented English kine beside the steep stone bridge. Margarida was brainless: but her brainlessness rested his own brains, weary with plans and fears. Sitting beside her, without speaking, brought healing to his fretted spirit. Margarida did not challenge the soul to high romantic passion. She sat there not like a proud maiden to be wooed and won through stress and storm but more like a comely, cosy, docile, loving young matron. Antonio, ever drowsier and drowsier, surrendered himself more and more completely to unheroic peace. He had battled for long years in the teeth of bitter winds and icy currents: but at last he yielded himself up to the deliciousness of drifting down a summer stream, warmed by the sun and hardly ruffled by scented zephyrs.

Margarida seemed to have come nearer. She was at the further end of the hearth no longer, but was sitting on one of José's carved coffers at his side. All the room felt soft and silken. As Antonio's drowsy eyes closed, his right arm sought Margarida's waist that he might gently draw her to his breast....

He awoke in an instant and started up with a cry. For two or three moments his wits went on sleeping, and he could not say if he breathed in heaven or on earth or in hell. The fire had almost died out, and he would have been standing in complete darkness if two dull, red eyes had not stared at him from the hearth. Antonio pressed agonizing hands against his throbbing temples and moaned a broken prayer.

As he came to himself the door was flung open and José rushed in with a lantern. He had heard the cry.

"It is nothing," said Antonio. "I fell asleep in my chair, and I had ... I had a kind of nightmare."

"It's these new-fangled French wines of your Worship's," José grumbled. "Give me honest green wine, old-fashioned Portuguese. It drowns your nightmares before they are born."

VI

Antonio kept his promise and took part in the Thursday serão at the farm of Senhor Jorge.

The monk's robust common-sense would not suffer him to be tormented by false scruples. On the preceding Monday, when he accomplished his daily duty of self-examination, he had not failed to recall his Sunday night's surrender to the dream-maiden: but a well-instructed conscience acquitted him of blame. Antonio knew how to distinguish between the deliberate thoughts or imaginations of his waking moments and the unbidden guests of his dreams. Under the saintly Abbot he had studied perfection in a manly school where morbid super-sensitiveness could not exist an hour: and he was too keenly alive to his real faults to accuse himself of fanciful sins. His drowsy, involuntary pleasure in the shadowy Margarida's presence was not sin; it was only homesickness. All the same he did not wish the vision to return: and therefore he began to lay a new emphasis on the lines _Procul recedant somnia, Et noctium phantasmata_, when he recited the Compline hymn.

Having first ascertained that local usage permitted him to do so, Antonio took José with him to the serão. The servant wore his Sunday clothes; the master his second-best. Both of them were glad that they had spent some pains and time on their appearance; for they were joined, half-way, by a fellow-guest in all the glory of feast-day raiment. In the bright moonlight they recognized this sumptuous personage as one Emilio Domingos Carneiro, the eldest son of a small farmer. Although he was on foot, he was appareled for proud feats of horsemanship. Bright spurs stood out from his tall jack-boots, and he wore a horseman's jacket of black cloth, felted. His fine white shirt was fastened by silver buttons, and a light red sash topped his tight breeches. To make up for the steed which he did not possess, Emilio carried a business-like whip.

At a cross-road the party picked up Emilio's two cousins, Joaquina and Candida Carneiro. These strapping damsels wore green cloth skirts, large green silk kerchiefs with the ends drawn cross-wise over their camisoles, and aprons of many colors. Their hats were enormous. If the brims had not been caught up to the pork-pie crowns by means of blue and yellow cords, they would have measured three feet in diameter.

As Antonio neared the threshing-floor where the serão was to be held, he noticed with satisfaction that not many of the guests had arrayed themselves after the fashion of the resplendent Carneiros. Most of those present had come to work as well as to play, and they were dressed accordingly.

Donna Perpetua and her husband welcomed Antonio with proprietary airs. Towards José they were sufficiently gracious, and Donna Perpetua expressed her pleasure at the sight of the speechless fellow's mandolin. Luiz and his brothers were already hard at play on the threshing-floor; but of Margarida nothing was to be seen. Perhaps, thought Antonio, she was sitting among the group of young men and women who were husking maize on the sheltered side of the threshing-floor.

The night was warm and balmy. From the south-west a few clouds had begun to rise: but the round moon was riding free, high among the sparkling stars. A tinkling of guitars and the chattering and light laughter of youths and maidens rippled the surface of the enormous silence. The scene was almost as bright as day. Here a girl's gold ear-ring, there a man's buckles or buttons of old silver, caught and flung back the faerie light. Some of the older women were spinning. Eight-pointed wooden wheels whirred round, buzzing like bees. A youth as handsome as a god lolled on a log, carving an ox-yoke. Where the maidens sat all together, the colors were like peacocks' tails and rainbows; and it was there that the moonlight lingered wantonly on plump arms and little ivory hands.

A clapping of palms proclaimed the end of the game, and Luiz made haste to begin another. He and Affonso climbed up two poplars, one on the north side of the threshing-floor, the other on the south; and to these trees they tied the two ends of a thin rope, so as to stretch it at a height of eight or nine feet from the ground. Before making his end fast, Luiz passed it through the handle of a coarse brown jug. Descending to the ground, he picked up a six-foot clothes-prop, made from the dried stalk of a giant cabbage, and with this he shoved the jug along the rope until it dangled absurdly over the center of the floor. Then he produced a clean white handkerchief and sang out for the first player.

The youth who had been carving the ox-yoke dropped his work and leaped into the ring like a Greek athlete into the arena. Everybody clapped hands again. The handkerchief was bound over his eyes and the light pole was placed in his hand. Luiz turned him three-quarters round; clutched his arm and walked him half-a-dozen paces this way and that; and then, retreating to the edge of the floor, began to count a hundred, loudly and quickly.

The handsome youth, with self-confidence apparent in every limb and muscle, stepped back, swung the pole around his head, and smashed mightily at the point where he thought the jug was hanging. Empty air received the blow, and a burst of laughter mocked him. Luiz went on counting, and many of the older people counted with him, aloud. At forty the youth struck again; but he was all at sea, and he was marching further away from the line. At seventy, eighty-five, ninety he slashed thrice more; and at a hundred he dragged off his bandage to find that he had walked nearly off the threshing-floor on the further side. Amidst applause, he came back, smiling pleasantly, and resumed his carving of the yoke.

Emilio was the next to try. This was his great game, and the four blows he struck were all within a yard of the jug. Once he missed it by less than a hand's breadth. But Emilio was not in luck, and he uncovered his eyes a little sulkily, only recovering his good spirits when six or seven players in succession failed more signally than himself.

At last José put himself forward. Never having seen the sport before, he had been loud in ridicule of Emilio and the other pole-wielders. His career was short and inglorious. He cut fiercely at nothing before Luiz could count five. Then, losing his head, he advanced rapidly towards the bevy of young women, brandishing his weapon and laying about him right and left. The girls sprang up screaming and took to flight. At thirty-seven José's feet struck a heap of maize-leaves and he came down tremendously, full length among the cobs. This was the kind of climax to delight the rural mind; and the night was rent by shouts and shrieks of laughter.

Unhappily José was not a good loser. He struggled to his feet with that wild tigerish rage in his eyes which Antonio had seen before; and if his master had not sprung to the rescue and murmured words in his ear there would have been trouble.

"It's nothing," said Antonio. "It's only a game. Stay here, where you are. And give me the handkerchief. I'll try myself. Watch me while I make a bigger fool of myself than all the rest of you put together."

The girls came flocking back as Antonio, advancing to a spot exactly under the jug, submitted to the bandaging of his eyes. He became conscious, at once, of a different mood in the spectators. Nearly all the gabbling ceased. Everybody was gazing curiously at the mysterious Senhor Francisco Manoel Oliveira da Rocha, the man who had trod the golden streets of London, the man who caused bottles of wine to be worth three milreis each by standing them upon their heads, and, above all, the man who was going to marry Margarida dos Santos Rebolla.

The counting began. To the blindfolded man it had an uncanny sound; for nine-tenths of the onlookers were chanting the numbers with Luiz in a subdued, expectant sing-song. But he kept his senses about him. During the few moments while Luiz was turning him round and pushing him about, Antonio had bent his whole mind to the business of smashing the jug. Not that he expected or even wished to smash it. On the contrary, he had come forward determined to fail. But it was part of his nature to do with all his wits and might whatever he took in hand.

Luiz bawled out twenty before Antonio made his first stroke. He did not touch the jug; but neither did he thwack the vacant air, for he distinctly felt the rebound of the pole's tip from the rope. He moved a pace to the right and struck again; but the pole encountered nothing. Meanwhile he knew that he had come near to victory, because the sing-song of the spectators had suddenly grown sharper and more excited. He went back half a step and swept the space above him with a curving stroke as Luiz reached sixty-three.

So uproarious a shout arose that Antonio did not hear the jug break, and he thought for a half a second that, in fulfilment of his prophecy to poor José, he had made himself the supreme fool of the evening. But, a twinkling later, the broken pieces crashed loudly at his feet, and, in the same moment, he knew that the intolerable counting had ceased. Somebody rushed forward to loosen the bandage; and, as it fell from his eyes, he saw Margarida standing with a beaming face among the young women.

Before he could greet her, a general stampede whirled Margarida out of sight. The younger guests were rushing to take up positions for a new sport in which all could join. Emilio explained to Antonio that it was to be a game of rounders, played with a clay pot instead of a ball. This little pot, such as could be bought any fair-day for a vintem, had no handle. It was of red clay, baked thin and brittle. The players stood round in an extended circle.

Donna Perpetua, as the hostess, led off by throwing the pot to Emilio; but, as soon as he had caught it, she resumed her place among the matrons. Emilio, after taking aim fixedly at Joaquina Carneiro, who was close at hand on his right, turned suddenly on his heel and tossed the clay to Rosalina Saldanha, a graceful blonde who was far away on his left. These ruses and pretenses were the salt of the game. The bowl flew spinning through the air in less than two seconds: but Rosalina was on the alert, and she caught it with her two slender hands amidst applause.

Clouds from the south-west were mounting higher, but the moon still shone brilliantly. Under the trees a lazy guitarist went on strumming his thin, moonlight music, as crisp as hoar-frost and tinkling like icicles. Whenever the pot was flung high, fifty bright eyes saw, up above it, the planets and the stars; but the players were too young and too happy to moralize. In their unstudied attitudes they made up a picture full of rhythmic grace.

Four times the pot hurtled its way to José; and four times he caught it before it touched the ground. At the fourth catch, he turned it like lightning to Emilio; and Emilio spun it slowly and gracefully into the hands of Margarida.

Margarida paused, clasping the red clay in fingers which were less slender than Rosalina Saldanha's, but whiter. Every eye was fixed upon her. She knew that she ought to toss the bowl to one of her brothers, or to a young woman, or to one of the older men. But an irresistible impulse moved her another way; and, with glowing cheeks and radiant eyes, she sent it curving across the space which separated her from Antonio.

Had it dashed like a stone from the catapult-hand of José or flashed like a meteor from the palm of Emilio the monk could have caught the pot. But Margarida's action took him unawares. What was he to do? When the pot was in his hand, how was he to treat her public act of favor? If he should--

His thinking was over in a flash; but it was too late. He plunged at the pot clumsily and missed his catch. The pot struck the hard floor and broke into a hundred pieces.

As a rule the smashing of the pot was the signal for a burst of mocking merriment. But instead of a light-hearted uproar there was an awe-struck silence. Everybody seemed to recoil from a sinister omen. Two more pots stood on a log, in readiness for the second and third rounds of the game; but no one stirred a step to fetch them. Antonio's gaze involuntarily followed the general movement and rested on the face of Margarida. The glow was gone from her cheeks, the light from her eyes. Very pale, she turned away.

A weak gust of wind rattled two or three dead leaves across the threshing-floor and a few cold drops fell from the darkening sky.

"The lamps are lighted in the barn," cried the voice of Senhor Jorge. "Come in, all of you, before the rain."

VII

Senhor Jorge's lamps were not as bright as full moons. Their smoky flames lit up the vast barn so feebly that candles had to be set at the elbows of the knitters and stitchers and spinners. The spattering of the rain against the dusty windows made a dreariful sound.

There were games that could be played in a barn every bit as gay as the games of the open air. But the merry-makers had lost their good spirits, and nobody gave a lead towards recovering them. One by one the maids and youths sat down on full sacks or empty barrels, or squatted on the ground. When all were seated Donna Perpetua very politely begged José to tune his mandolin and to sing a fado, or love-song.

For the sake of the young people, Antonio felt glad. More than once he had heard José singing folk-songs which would have brought smiles to the faces of the most austere; and he took it for granted that José would break out with one of these rollicking lays. José, however, succumbed to the surrounding depression. Having tuned his mandolin, which was unusually large and sonorous, he began playing a doleful prelude.

Had his mind been free to enjoy it, Antonio would have found the music brimful of charm. The descending minor scale was occasionally, but not always, used in ascending passages, and the monk could not doubt that José had received some tradition of tonality which urban ears would have rejected with ignorant scorn. As José played on, it seemed that he changed the scale more often than the key. At last he subsided into a more familiar gamut and began to sing in slow and mournful tones:

"O! fountain weeping softly,
Thou canst not weep for ever:
But the full fountains of my tears
Shall be congealed never.

"O! weep, my eyes, and weep, my heart,
Bereaved and forsaken;
Weep as the holy Virgin wept
The night her Son was taken.

"Alas! the sadness of my life.
Alas! my life of sadness;
Would I had wings to fly with thee,
O Swallow, Bird of Gladness!

"O Eagle! flying up so high,
Upon thy strong wings fleet me;
O Eagle! lift me to that sky
Where she prepares to greet me."

José ceased singing, but went on playing. Although a printed page of music meant no more than so many black lines and dots and rings to his untutored mind, he was a musician to his finger-tips, and he could expound to others in tones many an emotion which he could not express even to himself in words. Unlike most Portuguese performers, whose melodic phrases were short-winded and very conventionally joined together, he was capable of trailing out long-drawn melodies and of welding them into forms of his own. José's huge fingers stroked the strings so subtly that the monk could almost see the eagle urging up, up, up, above the purple serras, above the moon and stars, until it swept on unwearied wings through the gates into the City.

But Antonio could not give himself up to watching the great bird's flight. He was painfully conscious that he and his man were killing the serão. In breaking the bowl he had almost broken poor Margarida's heart; and here was José driving everybody down into the depths of the blues. He glanced apologetically towards Donna Perpetua: but the candle on the trestle-table beside her lit up the unshed tears in her gray eyes so weirdly that he hastened to gaze upon the ground.

José's threnody ended at last, and he stumped back to his place without the slightest acknowledgment of the listeners' chastened applause. From a corner one of the guitarists struck up a lively dance-tune; but his notes sounded so thin after José's that he broke off of his own accord. To save the situation, Antonio plunged in desperately and asked if Donna Perpetua knew any riddles.

Yes. Donna Perpetua knew several.

"Who is it," she asked, "that knows the hour but not the month; that wears spurs but never rides a-horse; that has a saw but isn't a carpenter; that carries a pick-axe but isn't a quarryman; that delves in the ground but gains no wages?"

Antonio could not guess: but his ignorance was covered up by a general shout of "The cock!"

"Good," cooed Donna Perpetua. "Now explain this: 'Before the father is born the son is climbing up to the roof.'"

"Smoke!" roared everybody.

"What is born on the mountain," she continued, "and comes to sing in the house?"

The shrill voices of the old women were loudest in the chorus of "A spindle!"

"And who is it who is born on a dunghill, yet comes to eat with the king at his table?"

"A fly!" was the immediate unanimous answer.

Donna Perpetua beamed benevolently upon the company. It had pleased her to be made prominent. The guests were equally pleased: for had they not shown the brightness of their wits, or, at the very least, of their memories? Antonio was entertained in a different way. These cut-and-dried riddles and answers reminded him of a village school which he had visited in England and of the joyous heartiness with which the rosy-cheeked boys and girls, in answer to the teacher's question, "What is hell?" roared out, "It is a bottomless and horrible pit, full of fire."

By way of returning the compliment, Donna Perpetua invited Antonio to propound one or two of the riddles he had heard in England. Unguardedly he gave consent: and only when he began racking his memory did he perceive his mistake. He had heard a feeble riddle in a country house about a door being a jar; but the pun could not be made in Portuguese. Again, he knew by heart a rhymed enigma, said to be Byron's, on the letter H; but this was worse still. Apart from the Portuguese having no aspirate, how could he render the line "'Twas whispered in heaven, 'twas muttered in hell" into a language which spelled heaven with a "c" and hell with an "i"? At last he cut short a very uncomfortable silence by saying that the only English conundrums he knew could not be translated. At this remark the girls hung their heads modestly and the matrons gave silent thanks that they had not been born in an apostate country where the very riddles brimmed with blasphemies and lewdnesses.

"England is no good," grunted Emilio, who had been playing a tune on his jack-boots with the handle of his whip. "The English have plenty of money; but they live dogs' lives. In England there are no fruits, no flowers. They have no wine save what we send them from Portugal. When the rain stops, there is a fog. No Englishman ever sees the sun."

"Things are hardly so bad as that," said Antonio, smiling. "In July and August I have known the sun in England shine as fiercely as any sun in Portugal. It is true there are no grapes or oranges, except those that grow in glass hot-houses; but the English have apples and pears, cherries and strawberries, plums and damsons, as fine as ours. Their flowers are wonderful; and I wish everybody in Portugal could see an English village."

Emilio, whose father had suffered wrongs under Marshal Beresford during the Regency, thwacked his boot again with the whip-stock and mumbled. Antonio was concerned. He and José had already gone far towards wrecking the serão, and he saw the necessity of avoiding a quarrel. So he added what he conscientiously believed, saying, in a conciliatory tone:

"The English are not the equals of the Portuguese. But they are a fine people and a great nation."

"I have heard," put in Senhor Jorge, "that the English are not happy."

"They were merry once," Antonio answered, "and they will be merry once more when they regain the Faith."

"Yes," said Donna Perpetua devoutly. "Only those who are going to be happy in the next life can be truly happy in this."

"Yet the English ought to be happy," objected Senhor Jorge, growing restive at all this piety. "They have the best government in the world."

"Even the best government in the world is very bad," Antonio retorted. "Still, with all its faults, the English government is indeed the best in Europe. There is much more intrigue and corruption in their public life than they care to recognize; but one can get justice in their courts, and, except for Catholics, there is almost complete liberty. If we Portuguese had a government one half so good--"

A thin, short, bald, bent old man with a long white beard and madly bright eyes leaped out of the shadow and startled Antonio by shouting:

"Till he comes back there'll be no good government in Portugal. They'll go on being thieves and cowards. Yes, thieves. The French were thieves and bullies. The English were thieves and bullies too. Dom Miguel was the worst thief and coward of them all. As for the Queen--"

Antonio staunched the flow of eloquence before treason could burst forth.

"Whom do you speak of?" he demanded quickly. "You say 'Till he comes back.' Who?"

While the old man stood glaring at the monk with trembling lips, Senhor Jorge bent over and whispered in Antonio's ear:

"Have patience with him, your Worship. He is a Sebastianista--the only Sebastianista for leagues around. On all other points he is saner than I am. He is a good man. I beg your Worship to indulge him."

Antonio did more than indulge the hoary monomaniac. He strained forward, all ears. That there should be a Sebastianista left alive in Portugal amazed him. From the lips of a very old Jesuit he had once heard of some Sebastianistas in the forests of Brazil, and the Abbot had mentioned a Sebastianista whom he had seen, as a child, in the Açores. But a Sebastianista was the last curiosity Antonio had expected to meet at Senhor Jorge's serão.

"Tell us all about it," he asked.

"Ah, your Excellency," moaned the old man, "I am a poor blacksmith and no scholar, and I cannot use fine words."

"Don't some people believe," asked Antonio, egging him on, "that King Sebastião was killed by the Moors at the battle of al-Kasr al-Kebir? Don't they say his body rests in the church of the Jeronymos at Belem?"

"Lies, all lies!" cried the Sebastianista. "Why were we beaten at Alcacer-Kibir by those hounds of infidels? Because they were braver or stronger? No. It was because we had sinned and the just God punished us. But I tell your Excellency that not one hair of the King's head fell to the ground. He departed unhurt from the battle. The tomb in the Jeronymos is emptier than this barrel."

Unfortunately the barrel which the Sebastianista kicked with the iron tip of his wooden shoe gave back a blunt sound which proved that it was full. The girls began to titter; but the old man raved on, unabashed.

"Yes," he cried, "King Sebastião, the brave, the good, the Desired, escaped without a scratch on his body, although he had fought a hundred Moors hand-to-hand. He slew eighty with his own sword. He is waiting in the enchanted isle. Waiting, waiting, waiting. God knows things are bad enough in Portugal. But they will be worse. And when they are worst of all, he will come back. The Hidden Prince will come back, riding on a white horse. He will drive out the thieves and cowards. He will deal out justice to rich and poor alike. He will set up the Fifth Empire."

"The Fifth Empire?" echoed Antonio, astonished at hearing such a phrase from such lips. "What is the Fifth Empire?"

"It is the Empire which King Sebastião will set up," said the old man.

"But, come now, Senhor Joaquim," objected Emilio pertly. "Isn't it rather a long time since King Sebastião went away? Tell us. How long ago?"

"It was before my grandfather was born," snapped the old man, wheeling defiantly towards Emilio.

"Then when he comes back he'll be thrice as old as you are. He'll have no hair, no teeth, and he'll be as blind as a bat. So how much good will he be?"

"How much good will the King be?" bellowed the Sebastianista. "How much good? Senhor Emilio Domingos Carneiro, I'll tell you. If he's an old man, thank God for that! Portugal has suffered enough from the young ones. And hark to this: He'll be a true old Portuguese. He'll be a man, not a dandy. He won't crack whips and wear spurs unless he can mount a horse without falling off on the other side."

At this home-thrust most of the young men chuckled or laughed outright, while the girls giggled. Donna Perpetua, however, was flurried and Emilio's cousins tried to protest. With ready tact Senhor Jorge preserved the peace.

"Come, Joaquim," he said. "Talking has made you thirsty. Come with me and I'll find you a mug of good wine to drink King Sebastião's health in."

The old man, proud at having had the best of it, departed nimbly in his host's wake and was no more heard or seen.

"Does the Senhor believe that Dom Sebastião will ever return?" asked the handsome yoke-carver, turning to Antonio.

"I've just been reckoning," the monk answered, "that it is more than two hundred and sixty years since the day of the battle."

Two hundred and sixty meant little to the handsome youth, who had never had occasion to engage his brains with any such number. He knew that he possessed ten fingers and ten toes, and that there were seven days in the week and that his father owned eight bullocks; but who had ever heard of such a number as two hundred and sixty? He stared at Antonio blankly.

"It seems to me," put in José, "that when we see Dom Sebastião on a white horse, it will be his ghost."

He uttered the word "ghost" in a tone which made the pretty Rosalina Saldanha clasp her pretty hands and emit a pretty squeak. The other damsels squeaked after her, in chorus. They reveled in ghost-tales, although they dreaded them.

Antonio laughed.

"Your Worship may laugh," railed Emilio, who seemed determined to shine in one way or another. "But he wouldn't laugh if he saw what some people have seen."

The girls cuddled together in delicious fright.

"Perhaps your Worship has not heard," continued the dandy, feeling important, "about the lobis-homem of Rio Briga, between Santarem and Thomar?"

Antonio had not heard of this particular case. But he was familiar with the lobis-homem or were-wolf superstition in general, and he detested it as a poisonous survival from dark and cruel days. He knew that, in remote mountain hamlets, this lingering pagan lie sometimes brought life-long anguish to the very unfortunates who most needed help and love. Involuntarily the monk's eyes sought Donna Perpetua's. He saw that she wished as little as he did to hear of were-wolves.

"Are not all tales of lobis-homens alike?" said Antonio to Emilio. "Will not your Worship tell us another tale instead? I have heard that a Moorish maiden was once turned to stone up in these hills."

"It's a tale for little girls," snorted Emilio. Horror suited his narrative style better than romance. But he tried to recite the legend of a young peasant who heard one of the stones of the fountain cry out piteously. He went on to tell how the peasant released the Moor-maiden from the spell and married her; how she wrought him grief; and how her evil-spirit was cast out by a hermit. But Emilio's touch was heavy; and, as every one present knew the story by heart already, he bored his audience badly.

"Your Excellency lives almost by himself," said a pleasant, middle-aged woman, pausing in her spinning and looking towards Antonio, "so it is important he should be on his guard against the cock's egg."

Antonio looked bewildered.

"Once every seven years," she explained, "the cock lays a tiny egg, as round as a marble and as black as ink. It is smaller than a pigeon's. As a rule the rats get it and no harm is done. But, if your Excellency has no rats, take care. If the egg is not destroyed a monster will come out of it. Perhaps you won't see him; but, wherever he is hatched, he causes the death of the master of the house within the year."

She resumed her spinning. Antonio thanked her politely and promised that he would show no mercy to any egg as black as ink and as round as a marble which he might find about his farm.

"You can't be always sure you've found the egg," said the woman, pausing again. "So it's a good thing always to leave a pair of scissors open on a shelf, especially at night."

Antonio perceived that the open scissors made the sign of the Cross; and it thrilled him to find, in this peasant-woman's chatter about eggs and scissors, a miniature picture of the millennial struggle between heathenism and Christianity. For he had common-sense enough to understand that, while she held the Christian Faith with all her heart and mind, she was only half-serious about her grandsires' goblins and demons.

"Are open scissors good against anything else besides monsters out of black eggs?" asked José.

"Yes," answered the spinner. "They're good against witches."

"I was hoping they might be good against ghosts," grumbled José.

Antonio was surprised. José was still only half-educated; but he had never before found him superstitious. As for the more serious guests, they were scandalized. The farrier's wife, Donna Catharina de Barros Lopes, who was a "Blessed One," said aloud:

"Thanks be to God there are no witches left! As for ghosts, there never were any."

"Then the Senhora has never been up to the old abbey chapel on a dark night?" asked José doggedly.

Antonio could not believe his ears. As for the other guests, they sat up and bent forward, all sudden excitement. There were no more affected little squeaks from the maidens. All, even the men, were struck dumb at the news that a ghost walked within a league of Senhor Jorge's barn. Emilio Carneiro, whose farm was only a mile and a half from one of the abbey gates, turned white with terror.

"No," answered the Blessed One curtly. "I do not go, Senhor, up to the old abbey chapel on dark nights. And what is more, I don't intend to."

"I am glad to hear it," said José, with maddening slowness. "The Senhora is better at home. And the rest of your Worships too."

When the general excitement could no longer be suppressed, Senhor Jorge, who had just re-entered the room, demanded sternly:

"What is all this? Why are we better at home?"

"Because," said José in awe-struck tones, "it's very easy for us to talk and be brave here, in the light and in good company. But I don't think we should stay up there very long if we saw--"

"If we saw--?" urged six or seven voices.

"If we saw a monk, all in black, sitting in his stall, with a face as white as a curd cheese."

Rosalina Saldanha screamed and collapsed into the stout arms of Joanna Quintella. Twenty people began talking at once, and bombarding José with questions.

"No," cried Antonio loudly. "No more. We've had more than enough of witchcraft and ghosts and superstition. Donna Perpetua--Senhor Jorge--I ask pardon for interfering."

"Your Worship is quite right," answered Senhor Jorge, with warmth. "In my own house such talk is forbidden. We don't want the maids in hysterics. Luiz--Affonso--every one is dying of thirst and hunger. Where are the broas?"

The two young men, whose limbs were brisker than their tongues, jumped up and began filling roughly glazed and gaily painted jugs and mugs with green wine from a newly broached cask. Senhor Jorge was famous for his hospitality, and even José's ghost was forgotten for a moment in the good-tempered rough-and-tumble.

Margarida, who had remained invisible since the breaking of the bowl, now reappeared. She and her brother Gaspar each carried a basket of broas. These were not the plain work-a-day broas; they looked paler, because of an admixture of fine flour, and they were sweetened with honey and flavored with spice. Gaspar began distributing his dainties at the far ends of the barn, while Margarida served the notables round the candles.

Antonio could not unlearn in a single moment his old habits; and therefore, when he took his broa from Margarida's hand, he thanked her with the softly strong tones and the momentary boldness of the eyes which, without his knowing or intending it, had captivated more than one high lady in England. If Donna Perpetua or the farrier's wife or the spinner had offered the broa, he would have expressed his thanks in the same way. But poor Margarida found in his voice and glance a lover-like reverence, meant for herself alone. She forgot the evil omen of the broken bowl, and hurried away with rosy fires burning on her cheeks and love-lights dancing in her eyes.

VIII

When the serão was beginning to break up, Senhor Jorge asked Antonio into the house in order that he might judge some old wine. After it had been tasted and praised, the lavrador gazed at the monk wistfully and said:

"I hope the Senhor is not superstitious?"

"Superstitious? I hope not," Antonio replied. "And I promise, Senhor Jorge, that I will speak very plainly to my man José about that ridiculous ghost-story."

"I wasn't thinking of your man José," said the lavrador. And, after an awkward pause, he added: "That clay pot. Your Worship failed to catch it. And just after the pot broke the sky was darkened. It ... it upset my Margarida very much."

Antonio's heart sank. Had Senhor Jorge been merely a selfish match-maker, bent on marrying off Margarida for his own profit, it would have been easy to rebuff him by silent contempt. But the monk knew that he was face to face with an honest Portuguese of the old school who was sacrificing pride to duty.

To gain time Antonio poured another spoonful of wine into the thin English glass. Having warmed it with his hand, he swirled it round, sniffed it, and held it up to the lamp. But he did not drink it. Replacing it on the table, he said:

"Have two or three minutes' patience with me, Senhor Jorge, while I perform one of the hardest tasks of a life which has not been easy. For three years I have lived like a hermit. To-night is my first social recreation since I settled down in this parish."

"Go on," urged Senhor Jorge. His face was paler and his mouth twitched.

"My farm was a tangled wilderness. Our work claimed all our time. Now and again business took me to Navares or Villa Branca; but I hardly knew the names of half-a-dozen people in this village. Your Worship, I will come to the point. When you called at my farm I did not know you had a daughter. I had seen the Senhorita Margarida in church; but until her mother called her into our presence last Sunday I did not know she was yours."

"You know now," muttered the lavrador angrily. "And I'd like to hear what's wrong with her. If any one has breathed a whisper against her I'll kill him with my own hands. Yes!" he cried, raising his voice, "I'll do it as easily as I'd cut a pig's throat."

"Not so fast," said Antonio. "I have not heard one word against Margarida. And I can use my eyes. I know she's as good as gold."

"Then what's wrong? Out with it! Isn't she pretty enough for your Worship? Most people call her a beauty. Or are you afraid she won't have enough money?"

"Her beauty is so great that it would be wasted in an out-of-the-way corner like my farm," said the monk, keeping his temper. "As for money, it's the last thing in the world I should think of. But the truth is, I do not mean to marry."

After he had stared at Antonio a full minute, the lavrador's stern face suddenly relaxed and he burst into unaffected laughter.

"If that's all, friend Francisco," he chuckled, clapping Antonio on the back, "it's less than nothing. Why, I myself didn't mean to marry: and look at me to-day! De Barros Lopes, the farrier, swore he'd never marry; and he has eight children. Old Martins said he would hang himself before he would marry; and this is his third wife."

"Then old Martins has taken my share," said Antonio curtly. "I repeat I shall not marry."

"The reason?"

"My ... my work."

"Work? Is your Worship the only man in Portugal who works? There's a bit of work, now and again, on my own farm. Is it the worse done because there's a mistress, and three stout sons and the best daughter a man ever had? Work! My wife and I squabble sometimes; but the best day's work I ever did was to get married."

The monk held his peace. Senhor Jorge, genuinely desirous of promoting Antonio's happiness as well as Margarida's, chaffed him with rough heartiness.

"Come, come," said he. "Your head's full of cobwebs. You've been hiding yourself too long in holes and corners. Don't be a fool. It's all very well while you're young and healthy; but, when days and nights of sickness come, who will nurse you then, and put up with your foibles? And who will carry on the wine-making when you're dead and gone? Come, you don't want to let the grand old family of Da Rocha die out? Besides ... a man without a woman is only half a man."

Senhor Jorge uttered his concluding sentence with a meaning change of tone. But, even if his own daughter Margarida had not been involved, the lavrador had too much delicacy to expand this clinching argument. Antonio, however, scented the meaning.

What was he to say? All these arguments against celibacy, and a host of others more refined, had hurled themselves in his teeth a dozen years before, when he first contemplated the vow of chastity. But the answers which satisfied him were not available in the presence of Senhor Jorge. He could not reply that he had deliberately renounced his high-sounding names until events forced him to resume them; that he welcomed roughness and solitary vigils of pain in thankful honor of the Man of Sorrows; and that the succession of Saint Benedict's spiritual family was secure until the end of the world. With bent head and knitted brows he remained mute.

"Then I will persuade you no more," said Senhor Jorge. "If my wife knew I had said half so much, she would never forgive me. By Saint Braz! To think I should be begging and praying anybody to be so kind as to marry Marge! Before I asked for Perpetua, I had to go down almost on my bended knees. Pssh! Sometimes, before she braided up her hair, I've watched Margaridinha playing about the house and I've thought how I would hum and haw and hesitate when a suitor should come along. I thank your Worship. For to-night I've done with him. If he wants to speak to me after Mass next Sunday he may; but next Sunday will be his last chance."

Antonio flung himself against the door before his ruffled host could open it.