I
Until one o'clock in the morning Antonio and José sat in council. But their session was barren.
Who was up at the guest-house? Could it be the Viscount de Ponte Quebrada, resuming his search for the buried pictures and chalices? They thought not. The Viscount had become a considerable personage, and could not afford to run such risks. Or was it the Viscount's old accomplice, the Captain? Perhaps. The Captain had little to lose. But no: it could not be he. A thief would never have proclaimed his presence by setting lights in front windows.
For a minute or two Antonio indulged a hope that the visitor was merely his old adversary, the official of the Fazenda at Villa Branca. But José shook his head, and said that such a guess was too good to be true. He went on to avow a presentiment that the abbey had been sold. Antonio could not contradict him, and the two men sat silent for a long time.
"Come and speak to me at dawn," said the monk, going at last to the hearthside and lighting José's lantern. "Perhaps it will be best for one of us to march up boldly to the guest-house. As the nearest neighbors we can easily make some excuse."
José shook his head again and departed without a word.
Soon after daybreak they met in the garden, and the master confessed that his man was right. God only knew what high strategy and petty tactics they might have to employ in their defense of His house; and it would be the worst policy to thrust themselves into notice.
The autumn sun was rising behind the abbey hill. Pearly mists hid everything. But, as the glorious orb ascended, the tides of vapor began to ebb. Here and there the tops of the higher pines showed themselves above the drifting mists, like masts and shrouds of ships wrecked in milky shallows. A minute later the chapel and the monastery buildings appeared, huge and vague as an enchanter's palace suddenly exhaled from twilight seas of foam.
As the outlines sharpened, Antonio recalled his vigil on the moonlit night of his return. He remembered the fear which preceded it—the sickening fear that he might be too late. But he remembered also how he had finally trusted in God to guard His own.
"Come, José," he said. "You have done your share and I have tried to do mine. Our Lord will do His. It is time for prayers."
He led the way to the narrow room which served them as oratory, and drew back a curtain from a picture of Our Lady of Perpetual Succor. José's education had advanced so far that he was able to recite Terce in Latin. They sat down facing one another, on benches which José had carved like stalls, and began the Hour. At the psalm Levavi oculos, peace and strength entered their souls.
"I have lifted up my eyes unto the hills, from whence my help shall come," said Antonio.
"My help is from the Lord, who made heaven and earth," responded José slowly and attentively.
Their faith waxed stronger as the psalm proceeded. "Behold, He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep," said José; and Antonio answered: "The Lord is thy keeper: the Lord is thy defense upon thy right hand." José said: "The sun shall not burn thee by day, nor the moon by night." Antonio said: "The Lord keepeth thee from all evil." José said: "May the Lord keep thy coming in and thy going out, from this time forth and for ever." And by way of Amen, Antonio put his whole soul into the appointed Gloria Patri, and into the first words of the following psalm Laetatus sum, "I was glad."
They parted at the oratory door, and consumed separately their first breakfast, which consisted of rye bread and of a so-called coffee made from roasted grain and the roots of dandelion. Before six José was at work removing gorgeously discolored leaves from a pergola, while Antonio planted some vines which had come to him from Sexard in Hungary. As they moved about they could plainly see the buildings and out-buildings of the abbey; for the mists had drifted away. But no smoke rose from the guest-house chimney, and the place gave no sign of life.
At half-past ten, when José was in the kitchen preparing almoco, or second breakfast, Antonio heard a dull muttering of hoofs on the sandy road. He dropped his tools and began running like a hare up the ravine, so as to get a view of the horseman from behind a boulder. Ducking his head and shoulders he kept himself out of sight.
The noise of the horse's feet stopped. Antonio was startled. He raised his head and saw a mounted man stooping from the saddle, and fumbling with the latch of the farm gate. While he remained in this position it was impossible to make out his age, or class, or nationality. The monk, however, did not wait. He turned and raced back to warn José. But, before he could reach the kitchen door, the horseman came cantering down the slope.
He sat his bay horse rather stiffly and in an un-Portuguese style. His clothes looked English. As he drew near, Antonio saw that he was young and blonde. The monk had a feeling that he and this stranger had met before.
It was young Crowberry.
When he recognized Antonio a flash of joy lit up the youth's pale blue eyes. But, instead of greeting his old cicerone simply and straightforwardly, he jumped down from his horse and began to declaim some prepared rigmarole.
"Zounds! By'r Lady!" he cried, "whom have we here? Marry, by my halidom, I trow it is the goodly knight Oliveira da Rocha himself."
"Why not speak English?" asked Antonio, wringing the young man's hand.
"English?" he retorted. "If you're disrespectful, Senhor da Rocha, I'll begin speaking Portuguese."
"Pode," said the monk. Which meant "he may."
Young Crowberry fumbled in his pockets and fished up a manuscript phrase-book which had been compiled for him, he pretended, by some pitiful friend in Oporto. After turning the pages this way and that, he asked:
"Está prompto o almoço?" Young Crowberry meant "Is breakfast ready?"
"Not quite," said Antonio.
"O que tem Fossa Mercê: What has your Worship got?"
"Brown bread, green figs, white cheese, purple grapes, red wine, and black coffee."
"De-me alguma bebida: Give me something to drink."
"I don't understand," said Antonio, shaking his head.
José, hearing voices, thrust his shaggy face through the window and glared at young Crowberry, with his mouth almost as wide open as his eyes.
"This," said Antonio, "is José Ribeiro, the régisseur of the Château da Rocha. He knows more about sea-sand wine than any other man north of Collares." And, turning to José, he explained in Portuguese: "You have heard me speak of the English Senhor Crowberry. This is his son. Go and kill a chicken—the fat brown one."
When José had departed on his murderous errand, Antonio brought their guest a large glass of green wine. Young Crowberry drank it with a wry face; but he admitted that it acted like a charm in quenching his thirst. They walked out into the vineyards.
"And now, Senhor Eduardo, explain yourself," demanded the monk.
"I came on ahead—last night," said Senhor Eduardo.
"Ahead of whom?"
"Of the others."
By this time Antonio was getting irritated by young Crowberry's tiresome smartness; and he was on the point of asking him, rather sharply, not to be a young ass. But he restrained himself and waited. At last young Crowberry said:
"They are in Coimbra. Dirty hole. They're following next week. I came on ahead to chase out the rats and beetles."
"We saw a light last night in the guest-house window," said Antonio. "Do you mean to tell me you opened the place in the dark, and slept there by yourself?"
"Certainly. What of it?"
"Simply this. My dear Eduardo, you are not half such a muff as you try to look, and not one tenth such a ne'er-do-well. But about these 'others.' Who are they? Why are they coming here? How long will they stay?"
"Firstly," replied Edward Crowberry, "there's the guv'nor. Secondly and thirdly, there's Sir Percy and his daughter. Fourthly, there's Mrs. Baxter. Fifthly and sixthly and all-the-restly, there's the servants."
"Who are Sir Percy and his daughter? And who is Mrs. Baxter?"
"Sir Percy is Sir Percival Lannion Kaye-Templeman. His daughter is named Isabel. Lady Kaye-Templeman died before I was born. That's why there's a Mrs. Baxter. She's called Isabel's governess; but it's Isabel who does the governing."
"Why are they coming here?"
"The devil only knows. I'm sure they don't."
Antonio stopped dead.
"Master Edward," he said, "if you're wanting to be a wit or a rattle you shall practice on me at breakfast. But not now; not here. Why are these English people coming here with your father?"
"What's the use of asking me?" demanded young Crowberry, somewhat injured. "It's a complicated business, and I haven't brains enough to puzzle it out."
"Then use such brains as you've got. Have they bought the abbey, or taken it on lease, or what?"
"Something of that sort," pouted the young man. "The guv'nor will explain. I tell you I don't understand it."
A jangling bell announced that breakfast was ready. Young Crowberry threw up his hat and shouted for joy.
José's fat brown chicken did not remind the guest of a Surrey capon. But as his teeth were good and his appetite still better, he devoured two-thirds of it with relish, and had still enough hunger left for the fruit and bread and cheese. During the meal he consumed a whole bottle of wine and, to finish off, he drank a large cup of corn-and-dandelion coffee, as well as two little glasses of Antonio's orange brandy. Then he lit one of his own cigars. Antonio excused himself from smoking.
Soothed and warmed by these good things, young Crowberry gradually became a reasonable human being. He began to talk naturally, and the monk was rejoiced to see that he was vastly improved. It turned out that he had gone back home after only eight months in Oporto, and that he had thrown up the wine-trade in favor of civil engineering. He told Antonio about the railway mania in England, and nearly all his talk was of cuttings, viaducts, and tunnels. Only with difficulty was he led back to the abbey.
"All I know is this," he said at last. "You wrote to the pater about raising a thousand or two and buying the place yourself, didn't you? Well, the old man'd have done it like a shot, only he was putting his last shilling into the Sheffield and Birmingham Railway. I expect he'll lose it all in the long run. But he wanted to find you the money. So he's made some kind of a bargain with Sir Percy. They've been jabbering and scribbling over it for a year. Sir Percy's supposed to have bought the abbey from the Portuguese Government. Don't ask me how he's managed it. I always thought he was so hard up he couldn't buy a penny bun."
The monk's heart beat fast.
"But if this Sir Percy has bought it," he asked, trying to conceal his intense anxiety, "what good is it to me?"
"Any amount," said young Crowberry. "You don't want a lot of tumbling-down cells and chapels and cloisters; you only want vineyards. As for Sir Percy, he does not want to be bothered with vineyards; he only wants a nice place. So you're to be offered a perpetual lease of the vines. No, not perpetual. Only nine hundred and ninety-nine years. So don't waste any time."
The room, with its odors of food and wine and tobacco, suddenly seemed to stifle Antonio. He felt faint and sick. Under the coarse tablecloth his two hands were so tightly clenched that the nails cut his flesh.
At first he blamed his own stark folly in writing to Mr. Crowberry. But he quickly remembered how long had been his deliberation and how many his prayers before writing the letter. Indeed, he had not posted it until, as he believed, the voice of the Holy Ghost said "Yea." For a few moments Satan entered into the monk's heart. So this was God's way of keeping faith with His champions! Seven years, seven hungry, lonely, loveless years of unceasing toil ... and for what? For this: that the holy house of God and the venerated home of Antonio and his brethren should become "a nice place" for the spendthrift heretic.
Into the ears of the monk's soul the arch-tempter breathed his poison. "If you had known last night, under the moon, what you know this morning," he whispered, "you would not have let Margaridinha's bowl smash into atoms. Poor Margaridinha! First you broke the bowl, and now you are breaking her heart. She has sobbed all night, for your sake. But it is not too late. Go back to Senhor Jorge. Say to him—"
Antonio sprang up and strode to the open door.
"The devil," said young Crowberry.
"Yes. The devil!" cried Antonio, turning upon him with a terrible look.
But the promise of Terce was suddenly fulfilled: Dominus custodit te ab omni malo. Without the smallest anti-devilish volition on Antonio's part, without one Retro me, Satana, without one syllable of prayer, without one crossing of his breast, the tempter vanished back like a spent flash of lightning into the dark. Nor did he flee leaving behind him a void. It seemed that in his unholy footprints stood a strong angel of consolation. Antonio's faith returned with three-fold force. Once more he knew that God would do His part, and that these new happenings were parts of His design. Perhaps He was about to draw Antonio and José along mysterious ways. Perhaps it was His will that they must press with torn raiment and bleeding feet through many a thorn-brake and over leagues of sharp-edged, burning stones. But it was to victory and triumph, not to defeat and shame that the path ran.
When the monk, with inarticulate apologies, resumed his place at the table, the terrible look in his eyes had given place to radiant happiness.
"That's right," said young Crowberry. "I was getting frightened. I was beginning to remember a story I read years and years and years ago, when I was only a young fellow, like yourself. It was something about a man falling down dead, because somebody had broken good news to him too suddenly."