IV
On the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, just thirty days after Sebastian's death, Antonio heard Mass in the village church. Forty-eight hours were left to him before his payment to the Villa Branca Fazenda became due. In the strong-box at home he had only three hundred and twelve pounds towards his debt of five hundred. Nothing had been received from Sebastian's friend in Spain, although sufficient time had elapsed for a reply to reach the farm. Nevertheless, Antonio rose from his knees at the end of Mass and took his way homeward with a serene spirit.
From the point where he and José had seen the ruts of young Crowberry's wheels nearly two years before, the monk heard thumping hoofs. He gazed down the road and saw an advancing cloud of dust. A few moments later he made out the milk-white Branco which had succeeded coal-black Negro as the Navares' post-horse. Thomé, the postman, drew rein and handed Antonio two letters.
The first was from young Crowberry. It ran:
Dear Friend da Rocha.
You will be sorry to hear that my father died last week, suddenly. I know you will pray for him; and I hope you will pray for me too.
Strange to say, Sir Percy also passed away last week, two days after my father. I saw it in the papers, but I know no details. At Christmas my father saw him at Weymouth, and he seemed well.
As our affairs are tangled, I have much to do. Write to me soon. My thoughts turn to you very often nowadays. Tell me how you do, all round. I remain, your sincere friend. Edward Crowberry.
The second letter contained a draft for two hundred pounds payable at sight in Navares. Antonio regarded it without emotion. Even the fact that it was unaccompanied by a single line of writing from the sender did not stir him. He had fully expected that the money would arrive in due time from somewhere, and it was no surprise to find it in his hand. A single thought filled every corner of his mind. Isabel was a thousand miles away, sunk in deepest sorrow, with none to comfort her.
Thomé slapped Branco's neck noisily so as to arouse Antonio from his reverie and to remind him that the postage had not yet been paid. Although it was not the first time he had seen a man tear open a bulletin of death at the roadside in the full blaze of noon, Thomé was sympathetic. But business was business. In his turn every man had to die; but meanwhile Thomé had to live. Antonio took the hint and gave the man his money.
When José saw the draft, half an hour later, he so far forgot a would-be monk's decorum as to execute a rustic dance. The next minute, without being conscious of any incongruity, he said:
"Father I knew this money would come. I knew it this morning, at Mass. What did the Introit say? Nunc scio vere quia misit Dominus angelum suum, et eripuit me: 'Now I know verily that the Lord hath sent His angel and hath delivered me.' I knew. Deo gratias."
"Deo gratias," echoed Antonio. But his eyes were dull and there was no ring of exultation in his tone. He arose and went to his cell; but she seemed to be there, opening the cupboards and searching sadly for what she could not find. He ascended to the roof of the cloister: but restlessness dragged him down again. Wandering out into the open-air his feet turned of themselves towards the guest-house. He meant to go no further than the steps where she had said, "Promise that I may see you again," and where he had carried her like a child in his arms; but he soon opened the door and made his way to the salon. The sight of the blue ottoman quickly drove him out again, and he mounted the stairs until he stood outside her chamber. The little key was in his pocket, for he never allowed it to go out of his sight. He fumbled for it and touched it. But it seemed to burn him. He hurried down the stairs and out of the house.
Striding along the broad path he returned to the abbey and entered the chapel. As he sat down in his old place a sudden thought came to his help. This was the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, the twenty-ninth of June; and on the eighth of July all Portugal would be celebrating the feast of Saint Isabel, Portugal's holy Queen. There was just time, neither a day too much nor a day too little, for the nine days of his novena. He clutched at the coincidence like a drowning man at a straw; and although in less perilous moments he might have called it a straw, indeed, he found in it a plank to buoy up his sinking soul.
There and then he began his nine day's pleading for the Saint's intercession. In deep humility he made use of a little ill-printed pamphlet, bought by José years before for a vintem at a village fair. Outside this penny chap-book one saw a rough woodcut of the Holy Queen, with a crown on her brow and a scepter in her hand. Inside one found a sequence of pious exercises for the novena, set forth in the simplest and shortest words of the vernacular. Antonio could have extemporized more dignified prayers; but he believed in the communion of saints and chose to link himself with the child-like faith of the poor and humble.
On the last of June he tramped into Navares to cash the Spanish draft, and on the first of July he rode into Villa Branca to pay away his money. All the way out and home, on both the days, he prayed. Every morning of the nine he heard Mass at the village, and on three mornings he communicated as well. He besought José to pray for a special intention; and, breaking through his reserve, he asked some of the village Saints and Blessed Ones to do the same.
Meanwhile the work in vineyard and distillery had grown heavy. Throughout his novena he devoted six hours of the twenty-four to sleep and meals, four to Mass, Office, and prayers, and all the rest to account-keeping and manual labor. The resultant exhaustion of his bodily strength seemed to sharpen his spiritual senses. On the fourth day, as he and José were saying Lauds, Antonio could hardly resist the belief that Sebastian's voice was joining in the holy Work. When Lauds were finished and he was busy among the vines, he decided that his overstrained nerves had been wrought upon by his knowledge that Sebastian's grave was only a few yards away, just outside the cloister doorway. The next morning, however, his inward ear seemed to hear afar off a vast babble of deep voices, as if all the generations of Saint Benedict's sons throughout thirteen hundred years were reciting Lauds together.
On the sixth and seventh and eighth mornings this mighty murmur of deep voices reverberated persistently in his ears, like the echoes of distant Niagaras and Atlantics. On the ninth morning, after his Mass and communion, he heard it again; but this time there was a difference. While he was beseeching the Isabel in heaven to pray for the Isabel on earth, an ineffable harmony filled the ears of his soul. Blending with the deep voices he heard voices that were high and sweet and clear, like woodbine and sweet honeysuckle and roses intertwining among the sturdy trunks and branches of an ancient forest. It was as if all the generations of Saint Benedict's daughters had added their songs to the songs of all Saint Benedict's sons.
The tide of harmony ebbed slowly away. But it left behind it a strange peace in Antonio's soul; even as the tides of ocean bathe the burning sands and leave them clean and cool. The peace which filled him passed his understanding, and he did not try to explain it. Rising up quietly, he gave the little book back to José and went about his work.
October came again; but this time Antonio did not run away. Until the Indian summer ended he was quieter than usual; but he met its memories without bitterness. The door of Isabel's room was still kept locked; he still avoided the stepping-stones, and every night and morning he remembered her in his prayers; but she had receded from the foreground of his life.
November and December were crowded with money troubles. The sales of the farm and sea-sand wines increased every year, and there was a constant demand for the two liqueurs: but Antonio's customers soon perceived that he was not a hard man, and they imposed upon him by taking excessive credit. His business needed capital; but every development had to be paid for out of revenue. Worst of all, a further instalment of five hundred pounds fell due on New Year's Day.
There was young Crowberry; but, after what he had said about his father's confused affairs, the monk did not think it fair to ask him for a loan. There was also Sebastian's Asturian nobleman; but loyalty to his dead friend restrained Antonio from requesting the Spaniard's further help. In his difficulty he wrote to Senhor Castro and followed up the letter by presenting himself in person at the old Castro cellars in Oporto early in December.
Senhor Castro, who had grown old and liverish, did not want to be troubled. He admitted that Antonio's English journey had firmly established the Castro fortunes; but, although he was a rich man, he gave proofs that all his money was invested beyond immediate recall. In the long run, Antonio crossed the bridge of boats from Gaia empty-handed.
He searched for the cobbler, his old landlord; but the whole family had gone to Brazil. Twice or thrice during his heart-wearing stay in the city he was cheered by the best of greetings in the worst of Portuguese from Gallegos to whom he had been kind nine years before. These Gallegos, however, did not help him to raise five hundred pounds. They were the Gallegos who had failed; for the Gallegos who had succeeded were all returned into Galicia with their savings.
A few days before Christmas the monk clinched a bad bargain with a small firm of so-called Anglo-Portuguese bankers, who were really common money-lenders in bankers' clothing. The head of the firm hailed from Hamburg and his partner was a Portuguese Jew. These plausible rascals agreed to lend Antonio a thousand pounds on unconscionable terms. Although the nominal interest was only seven per cent., one extra and another made it over twenty. For sending a clerk to attend the transfer at Villa Branca they required forty pounds, although his expenses could not exceed twelve. The conditions as to repayment were harsh. As security, the usurers required a first mortgage on the abbey, a second mortgage on the farm, a note of hand from Antonio, and a hold on the receipts from wine. The monk's heart sank as he signed the fatal parchment; but he espied the gleam in the Hamburg man's eye too late.
On New Year's Day, Antonio had a moment of brightness when the abbey passed finally out of the control of the Fazenda official; but he soon found that he had exchanged a whip for a scorpion. Before the moneylender's clerk returned to Oporto he confided vexatious instructions to the most unprincipled of the Villa Branca attorneys, who rarely allowed a month to pass thereafter without sending for Antonio on some frivolous pretext. Whenever this objectionable person and his still more objectionable wife desired a Sunday jaunt they drove over to the farm or the abbey, sponging on Antonio's hospitality and poking inquisitorial noses into everything. One day the pair brought two char-à-bancs full of their kindred to celebrate the senhora's birthday by a picnic at the stepping-stones; and when Antonio very courteously begged that the good things might be drunk and eaten in some other part of the domain, the attorney promptly became his active enemy.
Years passed. In spite of a hundred obstacles the wines and liqueurs made steady progress, and Antonio seemed to be within reach of his goal. Having ground out to the usurers nearly two thousand pounds in legal costs, interest, and repayment of principal, he owed them less than two hundred. A debt on his farm still remained; but the Navares' mortgagee was a reasonable man who was willing to wait. The monk reckoned that one more prosperous year would release him from the moneylenders' clutches and that, two years later, both the farm and the abbey would be his.
But Portugal's honest, hardworking men and women were once more being brought to the brink of ruin by the politicians. The minister, Costa Cabral, having been created Count of Thomar, sought to repay Queen Maria da Gloria by measures of excessive royalism; and immediately all the turbulent spirits in the country were let loose. Some rough-and-ready poet dashed down a Portuguese Marseillaise, in which an imaginary "Mary of the Fountain" was hymned as a Joan of Arc raised up to save the fatherland. In Villa Branca and Navares, Antonio often heard the lads singing:
Maria of the Fountain
Has a sword in her hand,
To slay the false Cabrals,
The traitors to their land.
Forward! brothers, forward!
Forward! be our cry;
On! for holy Freedom
To conquer or to die.
Suddenly the Septembrists took arms. Under the Viscount Sa da Bandeira there broke out the insurrection called by some the Mob-war and by others the war of Maria da Fonte. Cabral fell, and the Marshal Saldanha filled his place. To end the bloodshed and disorder foreign Powers intervened.
On the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, exactly four years after Antonio began his memorable novena to Saint Isabel, the Convention of Granada was signed and a general amnesty was declared. The good news reached the farm on Saint Isabel's day, and Antonio hoped against hope that the dates were good omens. But within two years Cabral was once more in power; and, two years later, Saldanha and his soldiers once more turned him out.
One morning Thomé and Branco, both grown old, brought a letter to announce the bankruptcy of the Lisbon shippers to whom Antonio had entrusted the collection of his accounts. The news came barely a week before a further payment of one hundred pounds fell due to the moneylenders. Antonio immediately hired a fast horse and hastened to Oporto. In answer to his request, the Jew and the German blandly offered to renew his bonds on terms so outrageous that the monk walked out of their office. But only three days remained, of which one was a holiday. He called at Senhor Castro's house to find the master dead.
On the face of it, to raise a sum of two hundred pounds on property worth three thousand was an absurdly easy task, and Antonio counted on being able to wash his hands of the moneylenders within twenty-four hours. But owing to the political unrest an acute financial crisis prevailed in Oporto. Money was scarce and lenders were shy. Antonio's security was scores of leagues away, and there was no time to inspect it; nor could the title be easily investigated, as the deeds were in the money-lenders' hands.
On his last day of grace the monk presented himself again at the so-called bank and stated that he would accept the hard terms offered. He was received with a volley of abuse.
"What?" roared Senhor Neumann. "You have the impudence to come here again? After all our kindness the other day, what did we get? Nothing but ingratitude and insults. Get out. We're sick of the whole business. I'm determined to be done with it once for all. If you've brought our money, pay it and don't argue. If not, we foreclose the mortgage, and I shall write to Villa Branca to-night."
"You are quite right, Neumann," said Senhor Mual. "We were talked to like dirt. Senhor da Rocha could not have turned his back on us more offensively if we had been downright extortioners or common money-lenders. But don't be too hard on a man in a hole."
"I shall write to Villa Branca to-night," persisted the German. "I like business to be pleasant. What did the Senhor come here for at all, if he didn't mean to be straightforward? I like business to end as pleasantly as it begins. I like dealing with gentlemen."
Antonio bit his tongue. Senhor Mual spoke again; and once more Senhor Neumann retorted. At last their trite play-acting came to its usual end with the German loudly exclaiming:
"Very well, very well, have your way. We're a brace of soft-hearted old fools. Every scamp that comes along can get round us; it'll serve us right if we both die in the Misericordia."
Antonio signed fresh papers and hurried back to José. He spent three days writing English and Spanish and Portuguese letters to his customers in the Americas, unfolding new offers of discounts and a proposal for cash-payments against bills of lading. The result was the loss of half his Latin patrons, whose business could only be conducted on credit. Concurrently with these disasters the Lisbon Government kept on demanding larger and larger taxes; and Antonio never caught sight of the old white horse Branco without a shrinking of heart.
The monk fought on. To save a pound or two a year he gave up his English papers. But crisis followed crisis, and before long he owed Neumann and Mual almost as much as he had borrowed from them in the first instance. The two scoundrels played with him like anglers playing a pike. Sometimes they gave him so much line that he seemed to be regaining the deep broad flood of freedom. For a year at a time their letters would be friendly and the Villa Branca persecution would cease; but whenever the debt fell below three hundred pounds they struck sharply and began winding the firmly hooked fish pitilessly back to the bank. They knew how to enmesh him in widespread nets of petty litigation; and, although Antonio was far cleverer than the attorney, his cleverness availed him nothing. The affidavits of his opponents were invariably perjurious, but the monk scorned to swear falsely in reply, even on the most trifling point. Had he possessed money to carry appeals into the higher courts he might have obtained justice; but he never succeeded in going further than the Villa Branca court of first instance, where local corruption smiled at the maxim that Truth is mighty and must prevail.
Throughout these trials Antonio constantly advanced in the love of God and his neighbor. Although he could not give money, he gave his time and strength and knowledge to the help of the weak and harassed around him. A new cura came to the village, who soon discerned the spirituality of his mysterious parishioner and insisted on his enjoying the great consolation of serving at Mass. Meanwhile the monk kept up the daily recitation of the Divine Office in his old stall. Very often he was cheered by hearing again with his inward ear the vast, sweet chant of all Saint Benedict's sons and daughters. In spite of his troubles he was nearly always cheerful; and he would often echo the words of Saint Paul and say, In omnibus tribulationem patimus: "We suffer trouble on every side, but we are not in anguish, we are perplexed, but not in despair, we suffer persecution, but we are not forsaken, we are cast down, but we are not destroyed."
One morning, when he was dressing for an iniquitous law-suit, Antonio noticed that his hair at the temples had begun to turn gray. The next moment he remembered that it was the eve of his birthday, and that on the morrow he would be fifty years old.