I
Antonio slept soundly until sunrise. When he awoke the larks were in full song. He sat up. The carpet of pine-needles around him was curiously patterned with long black stripes—the tree-trunks' shadows cast by the low, strong sun. No wind moved in the wood: but out at sea the weather seemed to have freshened, for the chaunt of the Atlantic was quicker and louder.
The monk knelt down and said his morning prayers. Then, obeying the call of the great waters, he arose and struck along the margin of a maize-field towards the shore. In half an hour he was ankle-deep in fine yellow sand. But the beach fell away too steeply and the undertow sucked too strongly for a plunge, so he turned and plodded northward.
Two miles of toilsome going brought him to a little estuary, about a furlong wide. Along the further bank sprawled a white village with a considerable tower: but none of the villagers appeared to be astir. The out-flowing tide had left a deep pool of clear water. Antonio swiftly stripped and jumped in; and only when the level of the water had so far fallen that further swimming was impossible did he emerge from his bath.
Refreshed and strengthened he turned inland and pushed up-stream until he reached a point to which the salt water never rose. There, in a cold cascade, he washed his under-garments; and while they were drying in the sun he sat under an evergreen oak, wrapped in his coarse habit, and began to recite the Divine Office. Although he had perforce left behind at Navares the bundle which contained three volumes of his breviary, he had brought away in his hand the Pars Æstiva, from which he had said the last Compline with his brethren; and, by the time his clothes were dry, he had recited the whole of Matins, Lauds, and Prime.
Having dressed himself Antonio sat down to mature his plans. He decided, first of all, to forswear false pride. Excepting one volume of a breviary and the poor clothes he sat in he was without a possession in the world. It was true that he owned a pair of brawny arms, and he was willing and eager to use them hard from morning to night: but he felt that the prime necessity was to exchange his habit for a layman's dress. It was not fitting that a monk of Saint Benedict should wander about like a mendicant friar. Accordingly, Antonio resolved to enter the village and to seek aid, for the first and last time, from the secular clergy.
He waded the stream above the cascade and descended the northern bank until he reached a lane roughly paved with boulders. The lane wound in and out between low walls: but it led at last to the foot of a mound on which rose a vast oblong church with lime-washed walls and granite quoins. The sacristan, in a very short and skimpy scarlet gown, was in the act of unlocking the doors; and, through his offices, Antonio soon found himself in the ample presence of the padre-cura.
The padre-cura received his visitor with uncertain approval. He was a hard-headed old man, whose counsels were less eagerly sought by his flock in the confession than in difficult cases of calving, or boat-caulking, or bush-vine pruning. He believed every article of the longest and latest of the creeds implicitly, and lived becomingly: but there was not a tinge of the mystic in his personality. The sight of a monk slightly nettled him. This secular priest felt that a religious must be contemptuous of his common-sense, every-day Christianity, and that he must be tacitly challenging him to a superfine and unpractical piety. Besides, the cura's friends were Liberals, and they had quieted his qualms concerning the new laws against the monasteries by assuring him, as they assured so many others of his class, that the swollen revenues of the suppressed houses would go to augment the wretched stipends of the rural clergy.
Antonio began to explain whence he had come. But the sacristan was already tugging away at the bell-rope, and the cura interrupted.
"You are not a lay-brother?" he demanded. "You are a priest?"
"I am a priest," answered Antonio.
"Then you shall say my Mass," said the cura promptly. "We will talk about your business at breakfast."
"I cannot say your Mass, Father," responded Antonio, flushing sadly. "I was ordained priest only forty-eight hours ago, and yesterday morning we were driven from the abbey. God alone knows when and where my first Mass will be said."
The old cura's heart melted towards the young monk. Unmystical though he was, he recalled the high mood of his own ordination day, the fine happiness of his own first Mass. He laid his rough hand kindly on Antonio's shoulder.
"Come," he said, "if you can't say my Mass, at least you shall serve it."
Antonio served the cura's Mass at a gilded altar, tricked out with gaudy vases of faded crimson paper roses in the very worst taste he had ever seen. But the old priest, despite the nasality of his Latin and the jerkiness of his genuflexions, said Mass with an intensity of recollection which edified the server exceedingly; and the few peasants who knelt on the boarded floor were not behind him in devotion.
The cura's breakfast was enlarged in Antonio's honor. Over and above the inevitable bacalhau, or salted stock-fish, there was a whole hake. It had been caught only half a dozen hours before, and it made a fine show with its head and tail projecting over the ends of a long rough dish, gaily painted with birds and flowers. There was also a piled-up mess of boiled beef and ham sausage, banked on rice and white cabbage and moated round with a broth full of chick-peas. Each breakfaster was also served with a couple of eggs, fried in olive oil; and the meal was rounded off by a basket of late strawberries. To wash down the solids the cura opened three bottles of sharp green wine.
Antonio ate and drank sparingly. During the meal he confined himself to answering his host's innumerable questions, and listening, without resentment, to sly hints about monkish arrogance and luxury: but while the cura was busy with his strawberries, he told simply and shortly the tale of the alien Visconde de Ponte Quebrada. As he ceased speaking he saw that the old man was half won round to the monks' side.
"And now, what are you going to do?" asked the cura.
"For the present," said Antonio, "I am going back into the world. I will be a burden upon none. I am going to work; and, when I have put a little money by, I have a plan of doing something for my Order."
"What can you do for a living?"
"I understand vines and wine. At the abbey I had charge of the vineyard."
"You are making your way to Oporto?"
"Yes. To Oporto."
"Very well. I sell two pipes of green wine every year to a firm there. I will give you a letter. But what about your clothes? You can't go back into the world like this."
"I sought you this morning, Father," said Antonio with a great effort, "for this very reason."
"How much money have you?"
"Not any, Father. Beyond one volume of my breviary and the clothes you see me wearing, I have nothing in this world."
The old man emitted his amazement in a protracted, clucking noise. Then he rose abruptly and commanded:
"Come with me."
In an otherwise empty room at the head of the stairs stood a large clothes-press. As the cura threw open its doors a waft of camphor and lavender filled Antonio's nostrils. Unfolding some linen wrappers the cura took out a suit of black clothes, such as country tailors make for doctors and lawyers and officials.
"I have worn these clothes twice," said the cura, "once at the Bishop's funeral and once at my niece's wedding. Ah, my friend, I was a man in those days, not a shrimp. That was before I had my fever. I could eat a dinner with any man in the diocese; yes, and empty a bottle too. But since I've lost my appetite and come down to skin and bone, what good are these clothes to me? They'd flap about on me like a sack on a scarecrow. Take them, my son, and a good riddance to them."
As the cura had just consumed fully three pounds' weight of bacalhau, hake, beef, vegetables, and dark bread, to say nothing of the strawberries and the eggs, Antonio's gravity was shaken. His host was still so rosy and rotund that the young monk dared not picture him as he must have been before he sank to his shrimp-like and skin-and-bone condition. But it was only for a moment that he found the old man ridiculous. The main thing was that he was relieving Antonio's need with a tact as beautiful as his generosity.
The cura went to the window while Antonio donned the clothes. They fitted him ill, but not intolerably. Indeed, the cura, when he turned round, affirmed that there was not a tailor in Lisbon itself who could have fitted Antonio better. There was a difficulty about a hat, the monk's head being larger than the cura's; and it was finally agreed that a decent hat must be dispensed with until the traveler reached the nearest town, and that an improvisation of straw or grass must meanwhile serve in its stead.
Leading the way to his bedroom the old man unlocked a large coffer of chestnut-wood, and drew up from its depths a tarnished silver snuff-box. Within the snuff-box nestled a tiny leather pouch. The cura shook its contents into his left palm. Altogether there were eleven pieces of English gold, seven whole sovereigns and four halves. Such English pounds, libras esterlinas, and "half-pounds" were almost the sole gold currency in Portugal.
"I am going to lend you five pounds," said the cura. "If you can save enough to repay it while I am alive, so much the better. If you can do nothing till after I am dead, have Masses said for my soul. Here, take it, my son, and God bless you."
So big a lump swelled in Antonio's throat that it was a long time before he could answer. At last he managed to utter his thanks and to declare stoutly that he would accept one pound only, to be repaid within the year. The cura grew angry, but the monk was firm. After much argument the dispute was ended by Antonio's accepting two half-pounds in English gold and a further half-pound in Portuguese tostões and vintens.*
* The Portuguese real (plural reis) is an imaginary coin. Twenty reis make one vintem (plural vintens) the Portuguese penny. One hundred reis, or five vintems made one tostão (plural tostões). The large silver piece called mil reis (1000 reis) is nominally worth 4s. 5d., but is practically a dollar.
By this time the sun was pouring down floods of fire from the heights of heaven. The cura closed the shutters and insisted that Antonio should rest on his bed till the fiercest heat should be passed. He himself descended to the living-room to say his Office and to indite the letter to the Operto wine-merchants—an unfamiliar and formidable task, which was only achieved after two hours of grunting and groaning and ink-spilling and striding about.
Lying on the straw-stuffed bed, with his head on a hard pillow less than ten inches square, Antonio tried to recall all that had happened since the clink of steel cut short his reverie on the roof of the cloister. But out of forty-eight hours he had slept barely five. Drowsiness crept over him, and he fell asleep.
When he awoke and opened the shutters he knew by the sun that it must be about five o'clock in the afternoon. He hastened downstairs. A smell of salt fish and warmed-up beef and hot oil prepared him for the cura's pressing invitation to stay to dinner, which he gratefully and decisively refused.
At the presbytery door a handsome young peasant, goad in hand, was waiting alongside a pair of bullocks and a cart. The bullocks, fawn-colored, with great soft eyes, had horns a yard long. The cart was of a type unchanged since the days of the Romans. The wheels were simply iron-bound disks of wood cut in one piece from the round trunks of big trees: the cart itself was stuck round with a dozen upright staves, to fence in the load.
Wringing his benefactor's hand for the seventh time and uttering a final word of gratitude, Antonio was about to begin his march when the peasant came forward to help him into the cart. It was vain to protest. The cura, who had never walked three continuous leagues in his life, laughed to scorn the monk's earnest declaration that he preferred to go afoot. The cart, he said, was hired and paid for as far as the nearest town, and he was not going to have a thousand reis thrown away.
There was nothing for it but obedience. The peasant had softened the rigors of the vehicle by flinging in a heap of heather and bracken: and as soon as his passenger was stretched full length on the greenery he made haste to rig up an awning on the poles. This consisted of one of the huge waterproofs, plaited from reeds or grass, in which the Portuguese peasantry walk about on rainy days looking like animated Kaffir huts. The son of Saint Benedict winced at so much pampering: but the cura was not to be withstood.
As the bullocks began to slouch forward Antonio felt some kind of a package being thrust through the bars behind his head, while a rough voice muttered in his ear:
"Adeus! And pray to God for an old sinner!"
The peasant gently plied the goad, and the bullocks quickened their pace to about two miles an hour. Fortunately the road was deserted, and no one met or overtook the chariot. At the first turning Antonio's impulse to leap out and walk was nearly irresistible; but respect for the cura restrained him. Leaning on one elbow he opened his breviary and recited the remainder of the day's Office as far as the end of Vespers. This done, he could tolerate his position no longer. The jolting of the rigid cart over an ill-made and worse mended road, and the skriking of the unoiled axle, he might have endured: but the snail's pace, and, worst of all, the feeling that he was like a fatted beast in the pen on the way to a fair, chafed him beyond bearing. So at sunset he descended, and, giving the driver one of his tostões, declared that he would complete the journey on foot. For five minutes the peasant obstinately insisted on marching with his passenger, cart and bullocks and all, as far as the town: but this the monk, fearful of being led to an inn where he would have to spend more tostões, would not allow. The peasant gave way at last; and, placing in Antonio's hand the packet which the cura had thrust between the bars of the cart, he wished him God-speed, and turned his clumsy beasts and creaking machine back towards the south.
With legs half-paralyzed by the cramping cart and sadly encumbered by his unfamiliar clothes, Antonio's first steps were like those of a drunken man. But he soon got into his stride and reached the town before the shops were closed. The felt sombrero which he bought amidst an increasing crowd of gaping idlers was the cheapest he could find: but it left him less change than he expected out of one of his half-pounds. Outside the shop a brown-eyed, bare-footed boy was waiting to guide the stranger to the inn; but Antonio gave him a vintem and pressed forward on his journey.
About an hour before midnight he reached a moss-grown aqueduct which supplied the water-wheel of a lonely orangery. Climbing the bank from which its clear spring gushed forth, the tired wayfarer sat down on the warm stones and opened the cura's package. It held a bottle of green wine, a loaf of rye bread, and some hunks of cold boiled beef; also, wrapped up in many wrappings, one more English pound.
Tears came into the monk's eyes. Throughout the griefs and partings of the two days just past he had been dry-eyed and calm: but this was beyond bearing. Mechanically holding open in his hand the book which it was too dark to read, he recited Compline, adding a heartfelt supplication for the cura's good estate. Then he ate a little of the dark bread, drank a few cool draughts from the hurrying spring, and lay down to sleep.
Before slumber had fully sealed his eyelids some sudden influence roused Antonio up. As plainly as if an angel's voice had spoken, he knew that in that moment the soul of the Abbot had passed to God. He arose and sank upon his knees, devoutly offering fervent prayers. Then he lay down once more, strangely filled with peace and with a feeling that all was well. He could not sleep; but he lay looking up into the violet heavens as though he half expected to see appearing in their highest heights a new bright star.