Chapter VIII: Book III: Margarida (3)

"One moment," he pleaded in low, insistent tones. "Here and now let me say, once for all, that neither next Sunday nor any other day can I do myself this great honor. Senhor Jorge, I shall never forget the extreme compliment you have paid me. Senhor, I trust you to keep my secret. I cannot ask for Margarida because ... already ... I am..."

"You are married already," hissed the lavrador, blazing into terrible indignation.

"No. No, no, a thousand times. But ... I am plighted to another Bride."

He turned away abruptly and walked to the tiny window. The scudding moon had escaped from the black rain-clouds, and Antonio thought he could discern the white belfry of the abbey chapel rising above the distant pine-woods.

"Another bride?" echoed Senhor Jorge, more wrathful than ever. "Who? Where? When? It's that chalk-faced chit of a Rosalina Saldanha!"

"No," Antonio answered, wheeling round. "Neither Rosalina Saldanha nor any other mortal woman you've ever seen or heard of."

"Then where is she? Why does she leave you year after year alone? Tut! A fine bride. Let her take you or leave you. You're a fool to stand it."

"We will not quarrel," said the monk. "If you knew all, you would not malign Her. It may be years, many years more, that I must live alone. But my faith is plighted, and there's an end."

This time it was the older man who walked to the window. After a long time he asked, without looking round:

"Why did not your Worship think of this before? Why did he come here to-night, leading on my poor Marge, and setting all the tongues a-wagging?"

There was an obvious and fair retort; but Antonio did not make it. Instead, he answered:

"For that blunder I ask pardon. I had promised to come to the serão: and I had some foolish idea that it would give me a chance of putting matters right. In England I prided myself on having tact in these things. But pride goes before a fall. Forgive me for not staying away. I have blundered worse than a village booby. Yet I hope, in spite of all, that we may part friends."

They parted friends.

Out in the open, Antonio said to José:

"Hear me for one minute on a matter we need never mention again. I have made it plain to Senhor Jorge that I am not free to marry the Senhorita Margarida."

"But Senhor Jorge was not satisfied with that?"

"I told him," replied Antonio awkwardly, "that I am already plighted to another Bride. You know what Bride I mean, José?"

"Yes. But Senhor Jorge doesn't."

Half a mile further on Antonio demanded:

"About this ghost--this black monk in the chapel. I was thunderstruck. I thought you were mad."

"For once in my life," said the peasant, "I had all my wits about me. I overheard that cockatoo of an Emilio saying that he often took a stroll in the abbey gardens, after his day's work. He was lying; but I didn't want the other young fellows to begin prowling about up there."

"They'll prowl all the more now."

"They never will, your Worship," affirmed José flatly. "They're the poorest lot I ever saw. There isn't a man among them. Why, at Pedrinha das Areias, if we had heard of a ghost, a dozen of us would have turned out to see how ghosts looked after they have been soused with buckets of cold water. Here they're fops and cowards. No, your Worship. From to-night the abbey is safe."

Antonio marveled at José's shrewdness. It was of a piece with his shrewdness in choosing the sun-baked sand-pit for burying the boxes of the Viscount. All the same he felt it his duty, as José's spiritual director, to rebuke him mildly, saying:

"But there's no ghost there at all."

Hardly were the words out of his mouth before he regretted them. Fresh from his well-meaning prevarication with Senhor Jorge, who was he to censure others? He hoped José would not notice the inconsistency; but he hoped in vain.

"I never said there was any ghost," chuckled José. "I said there was a monk, all in black, in his stall. You know what monk I mean, your Worship."

"But Emilio Carneiro doesn't," said Antonio.

They laughed loudly together and strode on, talking with unwonted gaiety under the bright moon. Had not the master rid himself of match-makers, and had not the man made the abbey safer than ever?

"Sing," begged the monk.

The peasant struck up a rousing song in praise of wine. But in the middle of the third verse he stopped. They were crossing the road which led from Navares to the main gate of the abbey. José sank on one knee and pored over something he had seen.

Two wheels had cut two deep grooves in the wet sand. José measured the distance between them with his two palms. Then he examined the marks of the horse's shoes.

"These wheels," he said, "were not Portuguese. And, unless they've shod him in Lisbon or Oporto, these shoes didn't belong to a Portuguese horse."

Antonio hardly heard him. High on the hill, from inside the principal window of the abbey guest-house, the flame of a candle looked out like a living thing.