IV
Under a heat which amazed Antonio the quays and the dock became more unsavory every day: but he did not quit the Queen of the Medway. His friend the Excise officer agreed with Mr. Crowberry that decency required patient waiting until after the King's funeral. Meanwhile, however, the dock charges and other expenses were running on. Accordingly, Antonio drafted a discreet and respectful letter to the comptroller of the royal cellars, asking him to affix seals to a small bonded warehouse in which the wine could await his convenience. Mr. Crowberry admired and signed the letter and despatched it through a privileged middleman. The comptroller's people accepted the proposal with surprising alacrity; and within a week of his reaching London the cargo lay safely under lock and seal and Antonio was free.
Through pure thoughtlessness Mr. Crowberry recommended Antonio to a hostelry where his expenses were a pound a day. After one night's stay he quitted these noisy and expensive quarters for a modest lodging within sight of green fields, up Tottenham Court Road. At first English habits upset him. He tried both beer and porter, and could not decide which was the more undesirable. The clarets, and even the ports, which he tasted at Mr. Crowberry's were heavy and all wrong. The saddles of mutton, the sirloins of beef and the boiled salmon were supremely excellent: but, on the whole, Antonio could not divine why the wealthy and table-loving English fed so unwisely and so unwell.
Mingling with a good-humored Cockney crowd, who made room for "the Dago," Antonio saw the funeral procession of the King. He found the state-coaches much inferior to those he had seen in Lisbon: but the military pageant was beyond everything he had imagined. His chief thrill, however, went through him at the sight of the Duke of Wellington, whom a young Cockney, with vague notions concerning the Peninsular War, pointed out to Antonio as "the good old Djook wot beat yer 'oller." Antonio was much more deeply moved by the figure of the veteran warrior than by the gorgeously empalled royal coffin. He had heard many an evil word against the Iron Duke and against the cynical selfishness of England in making poor Portugal her cat's paw under a guise of magnanimity: but he instinctively uncovered as the grand old soldier rode by.
A more indefatigable sightseer than Antonio never descended upon the monuments and public collections of London. He saw every notable object once, and the worthier sights many times over. The pictures overpowered him. As for the churches, he entered every one of the few that were open: but Wren's buildings to Antonio, like Lisbon's churches to an Englishman, seemed nearly all alike.
He heard Mass every morning at the lumbering Sardinian Chapel, near Lincoln's Inn Fields. He also visited the new Catholic church called St. Mary Moorfields, of which the London Papists were immensely proud: but he thought it poor and small. Now and again he attended, without assisting in sacris, some Protestant services. At the first of them he heard a City incumbent harangue a somnolent congregation of twelve against the idolatrous practice of setting up images in churches: but Antonio was more bewildered than edified, because the very small communion-table was overtopped by a very large image of a lion assisting a very large image of a unicorn to sustain the royal arms. In the too bare Saint Paul's Cathedral and the too much encumbered Westminster Abbey he heard organ-playing and anthem-singing beautiful beyond his dreams: but he could not understand why the Church of England should have renounced the Mass while lavishing pains and money on two fragments of the Divine Office. Again, one Sunday night, at Wesley's Chapel in City Road, Antonio heard so sound a sermon on repentance and restitution that his heart grew warm with thankfulness until the preacher took a sudden hop, skip, and jump into a confused doctrine of Justification which made God less just than man.
A week after the King's obsequies Antonio waited on Mr. Crowberry to remind him that the comptroller of the Queen's cellars had made no sign. Mr. Crowberry, fearful of giving offense, was for indefinite waiting: but Antonio at last obtained leave to bring the matter to a head on the ground that he wished to supervise the bottling before returning to Portugal. The comptroller's secretary received the young Portuguese with courtesy: but, unfortunately, he had nothing satisfactory to say.
One morning, when the hourly thought of his inaction, at an extra cost to the Castro firm of four pounds a week, had begun to corrode his self-respect, the Portuguese called on the comptroller again and pressed him to name a date.
"I am glad you have called," said the great man. "I could not write what I am about to say. Will it derange the firm of Castro if I cancel the order?"
Antonio started.
"I should add," the comptroller continued, "that in no case can I accept, or pay for, these wines for a considerable time. You have heard, no doubt, that the administration of the Privy Purse and of the royal household has not been, in all points, wholly satisfactory."
Antonio turned very pale. Had he, by his headstrong importunity, annoyed the firm's most distinguished customer and done irreparable harm? It seemed so. But a moment later a plan flashed into his mind.
"If I could have a letter," he said, rising, "to say that owing to His Majesty's death no more wine can be received at present, and that we are free to sell our shipment elsewhere, I think Mr. Crowberry will write at once relieving your Excellency of further anxiety in the matter."
The comptroller purred with pleasure at Antonio's "Excellency," a word which he had only heard applied to the persons of ambassadors. He thanked Antonio and showed him out graciously. The next day Mr. Crowberry was reading such a letter as his assistant had asked for.
Antonio, entering the Jermyn Street office as his chief was ending the perusal, noted with concern that there had been another bout of drinking. Suddenly Mr. Crowberry, flaming with rage, dashed the letter down on his desk and exploded like a shell. His fearful threats flew out like red-hot nails and the air seemed sulphurous with his blasphemies. His nouns and verbs were few, and the solid matter of his discourse could hardly be discerned through the lurid vapors of his cursings. He swore that, although he had been True Blue all his life, he would straightway turn Republican. Concerning the comptroller he was contradictory, first vowing that he would see him burning in hell before he would excuse him from receiving a single bottle, and then declaring that he would pour every drop of the liquid down the cur's throat. He added a rude expression about the young Queen, whereupon Antonio intervened.
"All this is my doing," he said. "I asked the comptroller yesterday to write this letter."
Mr. Crowberry swung round and faced him in speechless astonishment.
"He told me flatly that he could neither receive nor pay for our wine for a very long time," Antonio explained. "He asked us to release him from the bargain. At first I was aghast. But a plan occurred to me. Perhaps I did wrong—"
"Wrong?" roared Mr. Crowberry. "Wrong?" And he hurled out half a dozen fresh oaths. "I'll tell you what it is, Mr. Rocha," he bellowed. "You're a damned upstart, and it was a damned bad day for everybody when that silly old idiot Castro picked you up out of the gutter."
"Mr. Austin Crowberry," flashed back Antonio in tones as sharp as knives, "you will be good enough not to insult me. If we begin comparing pedigrees it will not be to your advantage."
"Pssh!" sneered the other, "you remind me of the damned Irish. Every drunken Paddy you meet is descended from a king. I never met a foreigner yet who didn't turn out to be a count or a marquis. Pah! Shut up. You make me sick."
A tremendous effort enabled Antonio to hold his tongue and to move towards the door. But this silent move only served to drive his employer mad.
"So this letter is your doing?" he roared, flinging himself with his back against the door-handle.
"I thought—" Antonio began.
"Thought? You thought? Who are you to begin thinking? For two pins I'd give you a damned good hiding."
Antonio's face became as white as a sheet. There was no longer a monk in the room: only a man. He faced his employer with eyes which made him quail. But he did not lose his head. Suddenly he wheeled round and drew from a brass bowl on the table two of the tiny pins which were used to attach enclosures to letters.
"Here are your two pins, Senhor," he said, flinging them with infinite scorn at Crowberry's feet. "Now give me my damned good hiding."
He fell back two paces with his left arm raised in guard and his right fist clenched to return blow for blow. But Mr. Crowberry did not take up the challenge. He blenched; blinked; gasped; smirked; edged away; and finally blurted out peevishly:
"Leave the room. Go out of my office at once."
Antonio brushed him aside and stepped into the street. His heart was still hot with anger, and he still smarted under the insults. With long strides he hastened mechanically along Piccadilly towards Apsley House, which had come to be his favorite walk. But he had hardly reached the old French Embassy when there was a turmoil behind him, and voices crying "Stop!" He turned round and saw Mr. Crowberry's office-boy and one of the junior clerks.
"Mr. Crowb'ry, 'e ses will yer come back at once."
"Did Mr. Crowberry say nothing else?"
"No, sir."
"Tell Mr. Crowberry I shall be in Hyde Park, just inside the arch beyond the palace of the Duke of Wellington. I shall not wait longer than twelve o'clock."
At five minutes before noon Mr. Crowberry dashed into the Park upon a bony bay hack, hurriedly hired at the nearest mews. The ride had sobered him: and, at the sight of his honest shamefacedness, Antonio's wrath and pride broke down into love and pity. He helped his chief to alight: and at the mere touch of hands both men knew that they were reconciled.
"It was brandy," said Crowberry very humbly.
"I'm glad to hear it," Antonio answered. "If I thought it was wine I'd never help to make or sell another drop as long as I live."
"Of course I apologize," added the merchant awkwardly.
"It's all over and done with," said Antonio. "Let us forget it and speak of other matters."
"Quite so," agreed Crowberry. "But there's just one point. Don't offer to fight me when I'm sober. English fists strike hard."
"And there's just one point more," retorted Antonio genially but with conviction. "Don't offer to fight me when I'm drunk. Portuguese fists strike harder. Now let me tell you my plan."
Mr. Crowberry insisted that the plan should not be unfolded until they were sitting at meat at his club; and, on the clear understanding that nothing should be drunk beyond a bottle of Bordeaux and some soda-water, Antonio accepted the invitation.
Across a thoroughly English leg of lamb, with green peas, new potatoes and mint sauce, Antonio expounded his designs. He started from the fact that Royalty's house-managers were treating the firm of Castro with thoroughgoing selfishness. He went on to say that when kings and queens, with incomes of half a million pounds a year, were unscrupulous in guarding their own convenience, it was high time that Senhor Castro, who had only been lifted out of imminent bankruptcy by the strong hand of Mr. Crowberry, should obtain his just due.
Mr. Crowberry agreed, and added a disloyal observation.
"But we shall make nothing of the comptroller," Antonio continued. "I find it is your law that the Queen can do no wrong. Her Majesty cannot be sued. Even if she could, it would be madness to try it. No. Here is my plan. We will let the comptroller off with a mere trifle—say, a hundred dozen. Then we will sell the bulk of the stuff to your nobility and gentry at a high price, on the strength of our having brought it over in a specially chartered vessel for the King, whose untimely decease has deranged the transaction."
Mr. Crowberry's face clouded. He had hoped to hear a less distasteful proposition. "I am not a Cheap Jack," he said a little stiffly.
"You misunderstand me," said Antonio, flushing. "I should hate puffing and touting as much as anybody. We won't print or even write a single line. We will go in person to your best clients and will offer them not more than fifty dozens each as a great favor. We will show them the original order and the comptroller's letter. The news will spread; and we shall get back all our outlay and collect most of our profit six months earlier than we should get a penny from the Queen."
Senhor Castro's partner tilted back his heavy chair on its hind legs and knitted his brows. At last he said:
"You are right. We've been badly treated. We must look after Number One. Besides, Castro needs the money, and I'm not going to lend the firm any more. As you say, it can be done with discretion and dignity. To-morrow I'll give you a list of likely people. You shall start at once."
Antonio, however, insisted that Mr. Crowberry should pilot him to the first half-dozen clients. Except Mr. Crowberry's own establishment, where a lax housekeeper looked very badly after the widower and his son, the monk had never entered a private house in England, and he called it unreasonable to send him on so delicate an errand alone.
With a wry face Mr. Crowberry gave in. The same afternoon the comptroller accepted his hundred dozens, and kindly wrote a further letter giving the house of Castro leave to do as they pleased with the remainder of their own property. And by the evening of the following day the odd pair of commercial travelers had sold nearly a thousand pounds' worth of wine. In five houses out of six their visit was received with gushing gratitude. To possess the Castro port seemed to fire the knights' and baronets' imaginations; not because it was the magnificent remnant of an unparalleled vintage, but because it had narrowly escaped being drunk by a king.
So delighted was the volatile Crowberry with his experiences that he swung right round and announced that he would accompany Antonio on a fortnight's tour through the Home and Midland counties. He hired a roomy and well-hung post-chaise, loaded it with ten dozen bottles as samples, and was out of London within thirty hours of broaching the scheme.
After the smells and smoke and uproar of London the fair English country was like paradise to Antonio. He knew the beautiful Minho of Portugal: but this England was more beautiful still. Once, as they rolled through a village in Bucks, the gracious loveliness of the scene almost broke his heart. The mellow beams of the setting sun were softly caressing the square tower of the church and glorifying the solemn old yews which girt it round. Over all, the motionless, gilded weathercock burned like a flame in a high wind. Children were shouting and playing outside white cottages half hidden under red roses. Up to their knees in murmuring water beside a steep gray bridge, dreamy-eyed cattle swished their tails and chewed their cud. The bright green meadows were enameled with myriads of white and pink and blue and yellow flowers, and the wanton hedgerows wore long streamers of convolvulus and honeysuckle. High in the giant elms rooks cawed steadily with a raucous but homely sound.
"Never mind," chaffed Mr. Crowberry, "you'll see her again soon."
"Her?" echoed Antonio, starting.
"Yes. Her. Teresa or Dolores or Maria or Luiza or Carmen. Don't be down in the dumps. You'll see her again before long."
"I think not," said Antonio. But he winced as he realized how nearly the wine-merchant had interpreted his mood. The children's cries, the curling smoke of the homesteads, all the sweet sights and sounds of the village, had awakened in him a vague sense of his lovelessness and loneliness. He was glad when, half an hour later, they reached their inn: and before he surrendered himself to imperious sleep he knelt for a long, long time beside the great mahogany bed and prayed as he had not prayed for many a day.