VI
The post arrived at six o'clock; but it brought no letter from Theophilo's father. Luis, with a pale face came to the hospedaria after dinner and broke the news falteringly. Glancing through the window, Antonio saw Theophilo pacing up and down outside. The monk put on his hat and walked into the street.
"Senhor, this is terrible," moaned Theophilo. "There is nothing."
"It is terrible indeed," answered Antonio, smiling. "At half-past two you make me a promise, and at half-past six you break it. Come, remember. Cheer up."
They walked beside him with downcast eyes.
"Come," he said again. "This will never do. Tell me. Does Donna Margarida know what you have been passing through?"
"Thank God, she does not, and she never shall!" cried Theophilo.
"Very well. Let us go to your home and hear some music and be gay. I'm a country booby, and when I visit the town I want to see some life. It is dull in the inn."
Theophilo became voluble in apologies for his negligence. He despatched one of the stable-boys hot-foot to warn the Senhora of their approach and followed with Antonio and Luis. In ten minutes they reached a garish new house, faced all over with colored tiles.
Margarida received her old flame with slight chilliness. Although she had turned thirty-five her good looks were not greatly diminished. With her sat Perpetua, Jorge, Lucia, and Juliana, her four black-eyed children, who were struck dumb by the advent of the handsome stranger. At first the proceedings were dull and frigid enough to remind Antonio of his first visit to Margarida's home. But Luis and Theophilo, in reaction from their days of stress and terror, soon became almost hysterically gay. The guitars came out; and when everyone was tired of singing and strumming fados Antonio devoted himself to the little Jorge and his three tongue-tied sisters. He gradually wooed them out of their shyness by telling them a tale of the buried city of Troja, at the mouth of the Sado. By the time he was half through a revised version of the Three Hunchbacks of Setubal the audience had begun to be more tongue-free than himself; and when he made Perpetua hold the candle so that his clenched left fist and his right-hand fingers and knuckles threw upon the wall a shadow of a long-eared rabbit nibbling a cabbage as big as itself, the house rang with shouts of laughter.
The children were sent to bed at nine, wailing bitterly at their banishment. Theophilo took the guitar and played softly, so as not to keep them awake. He had a sympathetic touch and his music soothed Antonio. Sitting in a great chair, the monk looked round the room and wondered. His conto of reis had gone. In forty hours it would be too late to pay the attorney, and the usurers could be trusted so to foreclose the mortgage as to swindle him out of nearly all he had. Yet, somehow, he was happier than he had been for many a day. For a short while he asked himself if it were not callous to gaze so calmly at the wreck of his life's work. Ought he not to be aching and smarting and bleeding as he had ached and smarted and bled for Isabel? Did he truly care as deeply for the abbey and for the Order as he had cared for her?
All these probings left him unpricked. His contentment obstinately refused to be ruffled. Breaking his rule, he drank two glasses of sweet wine and ate a whole broa of Margarida's making. When he rose to go Margarida's manner was perceptibly less aloof, and she begged him to come again. At the street door Theophilo said:
"Your Excellency has heaped kindness upon kindness. How shall I ever repay him?"
"By permitting me to visit his house again to-morrow night," answered Antonio; "your Worship will have become my creditor. Adeus."
He worked his hand free from Theophilo's iron grip and returned to the hospedaria, where he fell asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow. Next morning, after Mass, he did not lose a moment in opening negotiations for the raising of an immediate conto of reis on his encumbered assets. But Luis and Theophilo, in pledging all they possessed, had almost exhausted the ready-money resources of Navares. Late in the after noon Antonio thought he was succeeding; but the existence of the Oporto usurers' second mortgage on the farm blocked the way. At four o'clock he gave up the struggle and went to Santa Cruz to say his Office. At half-past five he sat down in the hospedaria to dine.
Just after the soup tureen had been placed on the table a tremendous noise arose from the street. Every dog in Navares was outside, barking his hardest, and the iron shoes of a spirited horse were hammering on the cobbles. The Gallego waiter rushed downstairs to welcome the guest. Doors banged, hostlers shouted, buckets clanked, a horse neighed. The inn cat, which Antonio had been nursing, leaped from his knee and rushed downstairs to the lobby whence the prolonged wail of a badly scratched dog immediately ascended.
The monk, alone at the table, filled his gaudy plate with vegetable soup and began to eat. The stranger came upstairs to his room amidst a babble of welcoming voices. Through the thin wall Antonio could hear him drop his heavy boots on the bare floor. A cheerful splashing followed. The Gallego waiter, hurrying in with a dish of bacalhau, white cabbage, and hard-boiled eggs, excitedly explained to Antonio that the newcomer was an Englishman; and, five minutes later, a plumpish, rather florid man, with a clean-shaven face and soft yellow hair, strode into the room calling out an order for green wine.
Antonio rose and found himself face to face with young Crowberry. But, somehow, he could not feel in the least degree surprised.
"Good evening, Teddy," he said quietly. "Welcome to Navares."
Young Crowberry jumped. He stared blankly across the soup at the gray-haired man with the gentle voice. Then he flung himself forward against the table so impetuously that a brown water-pot was overturned and an empty glass jumped down to the floor with a crash.
"Da Rocha! By Jove! Da Rocha!" he cried, wringing the monk's hand. "Man, I've come all the way from England to find you. Why the deuce did you drop writing? And what do you mean by growing gray hairs? How's José and all the little Josés, and the champagne and all the little champagnes, and the orange brandy? Have you pawned the spoons? Da Rocha! By Jove!"
"Come round and sit beside me," said Antonio.
As the deluge from the overturned water-pot had soaked the cloth all round him the monk bade the waiter remove his cover and young Crowberry's to the little table by the window.
"And ask him to bring green wine," said young Crowberry. "Quarts, Gallons, Buckets, Hogsheads, Bottomless pits. I'm as thirsty as the devil."
When orderly conversation became possible, the monk was able to puzzle out a mystery which had pained him. By comparing notes and sifting dates they found that one letter from Antonio must have gone down in the wreck of the mail-boat Hortensia, and that another letter had reached England while an unsatisfactory sub-tenant was occupying young Crowberry's chambers. After this misunderstanding had been righted the monk proceeded to draw out his friend's recent history. He found that young Crowberry, in his own phrase, had made three fortunes, of which he had lost two and three-quarters in financing foreign railway companies by whom he had been employed.
"But what does it matter?" demanded young Crowberry. "I've a quarter of a fortune left, and I'm hoping it'll be enough for my scheme. The man I'm trying to get in with isn't greedy."
"Explain," asked the monk.
"I'm hoping to buy a share of a snug little business and settle down," young Crowberry answered. "A wine business. I was born among bottles, and a cellar's better than a tunnel. That's why I've come to Portugal. I've invested four thousand pounds in British Funds for miscellaneous purposes, and to-morrow I'm going to offer my remaining five thousand to a man named da Rocha for a partnership."
Antonio heard him without visible emotion. For a long minute he gazed quietly into the street. At last he said:
"Edward, you asked me half an hour ago if I had pawned the spoons. They were pawned two years ago, to pay a Jew twenty per cent interest on a loan I'd repaid twice over. But it's a long story. Drink your coffee. Then we will go to your room."
In young Crowberry's room Antonio disclosed his secret. He began with his brief experiences as a youth in Lisbon. Rapidly and vividly he described his brief skepticism, his vocation to the religious life, his noviciate, his full profession, his ordination, his expulsion from the abbey, and his vow at the farm. Omitting only the affairs of Margarida and Isabel, he brought the history right down to that very day and to the moment of his failing to raise money in replacement of Theophilo's conto of reis. He slurred lightly over every passage in the narrative which might sound like self-praise, and sought rather to exhibit himself as a blunderer who ought to have attained his end years and years ago. He wound up by saying simply:
"It is our Lord who has sent you here to-day. If you have it with you, I will borrow a conto of reis and we will ride over to Villa Branca together in the morning. On the way we will talk about the partnership. My maximum price for a half-share will be a thousand pounds."
"My minimum offer is five thousand," said the engineer firmly. "Remember that I'm hoping to foist myself upon you till death do us part. I have wound up all my affairs in England. Meanwhile here is a conto of reis."
Some one knocked loudly at the door. It was the Gallego announcing that two senhores wished to see the Senhor da Rocha at once. The senhores, treading on the Gallego's heels, turned out to be Theophilo and Luis. They pressed into the room, but fell back at the sight of a stranger.
"You may speak freely, Theophilo," said Antonio. "This is the Senhor Crowberry. He knows my affairs. Tell me what you want. My own trouble is over. Senhor Crowberry has brought me a conto of reis."
"And here it is," put in Crowberry, opening his pocket-book. "I don't know how much a conto may be; but if it's less than two thousand pounds, help yourself."
"No," cried Theophilo. "We want nothing. Senhor da Rocha, I have wonderful news. Sequeira has come back. He had mixed the town money up with his own, but he is not a thief. He has just come back from Lisbon, and he has repaid me every vintem of what Luis and I paid to the municipal chamber yesterday. See. Here are the notes. Seven contos and two hundred milreis."
"And a special post has arrived from Leiria," added the radiant Luis, "with a conto from Theophilo's father. Theophilo, show it to their Excellencies."
"How many contos are here?" asked Crowberry, spreading out his notes.
"At the present exchange, you have at least twelve," said Antonio. "A conto is a million reis of our money and more than two hundred pounds of yours, at par."
"So we've twenty million reis altogether," Crowberry chuckled. "Let's change 'em into coppers and swim in 'em to see what it's like. Hasn't any gentleman got a conto or two more? I once knew a duke who overlooked a whole threepenny-bit for a week. It was in the lining of his old coat."
Luis and Theophilo stared at the Englishman with open mouths. They could not understand a word he said, but this made him the more marvelous. From Crowberry they shifted their wonder to Antonio. He seemed to have called down from the skies a familiar sprite who handed out millions as coolly as one boy giving another a few screws of newspaper for the tail of his kite.
"Put back your money, all of you," commanded Antonio. "Theophilo, give me your father's conto and we are square. And have I your leave to present my friend to Donna Margarida?"
The whole party made haste to the tiled house, where Jorge and his sisters hailed Antonio with shouts of joy. They were shy of young Crowberry at first; but, having asked ten minutes' leave of absence, the Englishman slipped out to a confeitaria and returned laden with so exciting a load of candied oranges, Elvas plums, Coimbra marzipan, and Spanish chocolate that Antonio's star was eclipsed for half an hour. The guitars and the sweet wine came out once more. Later on young Crowberry began to tease poor Margarida with such exaggerated compliments, in bad Portuguese, that Antonio was forced to kick his heel and to explain in hurried English that Navares was neither London nor Paris. But Theophilo did not take offense, and the visit was entirely a success.
On the way home Antonio asked:
"Do you hear anything of Miss Kaye-Templeman and Mrs. Baxter?"
"The widow Baxter is now the widow Lamb," answered Crowberry. "Lamb was a master-tanner. He survived the wedding six months. That's all I know. As for Isabel, I've heard nothing for years and years and years. After her father died she went to live with Lady Julia Blighe. By the way, you never told me what you really and truly thought of her."
Antonio turned the subject.
"When you say," he demanded, "that you are planning to live and die with me, what do you mean? If you are looking for a rural life, with the sports of a country gentleman, England is the only place to find it. If it's wine that interests you, I'm sorry; because you drink too much already. What do you mean?"
"I am not looking for the sports of a country gentleman," said Crowberry. "As for wine, you are mistaken. I drink a glass or two a day of the lightest at meals, and I never touch port or spirits. Da Rocha, I will tell you what I mean. Perhaps you were pained in my bedroom when I did not show great astonishment at hearing that you are Father Antonio, a monk of Saint Benedict."
"I was not pained. But I wondered."
"Father Antonio, I guessed your secret years ago. I guessed it on the voyage home from Lisbon. I guessed that you were working to regain the abbey. From what Sir Percy told my father, I believed you secured it after we went away. I imagined that you had resumed the cloistered life and that this was why you didn't write to your old friends in the world."
"But you came out, this time, to become my partner as a wine-grower," objected Antonio.
"Yes and No. I came out with money to buy vineyards and to work for my living as you have done. I meant to buy them as close to the abbey as I could. I meant to seek you out and to ask you ... to tell you..."
"Go on," said Antonio, taking his arm as they walked, "To ask me what? To tell me what?"
"To tell you that the burning desire of my soul," broke out the other ardently, "is to become a monk, like you. To ask you for your prayers and for your help. And when I saw you standing over your soup, still in a layman's dress, I didn't alter my mind."
Antonio remembered the vision of young Crowberry's future which had unrolled itself before him while the youth and he sat side by side on the cloister roof the day before Sir Percy failed to tear down the azulejos. In reverent thankfulness he listened to this older Crowberry without interrupting him again. But the Englishman misinterpreted his silence, and added hastily:
"Let me be plain. I don't claim to have the highest and holiest vocation. Some would say there is cowardice in what I want to do. I am running away from the world. The truth is that so long as I am in the world I cannot love and praise God. Whenever I have a pit and a gallery to play to, I am a rattle, a gas-bag, a mountebank. In spite of myself I jest about the holiest things, thus injuring others as well as myself. I want to work hard with my hands, to rise early, to sleep and eat roughly, and to learn to pray. Let people call me a coward if they please. I'm nearly forty. I've made my money, and I'm standing aside to let needier men make theirs. Besides, I hate railways. They will do more harm than good."
Antonio was still mute.
"When a middle-aged man in my country has made a competency," young Crowberry continued, "he either remains in business to make money which he does not need, or he retires and lives a life of selfish and expensive pleasure. A few, a very few, devote themselves to philanthropy or politics, and I honor them for it; but it has been breathed into my soul that I am to help mankind by prayer. Da Rocha, you are silent. You are shocked. You think that, instead of rising up early to pray, I ought to rise up early to go hounding and shooting the poor beasts and birds who have as much right to their lives as I have to mine."
"I have been silent," rejoined Antonio, "only because I could not speak for thankfulness. Nearly twenty years ago I knew that you would become a priest, and I hoped that you might become a monk."
"You consent? I may be your pupil?" cried the Englishman.
"I consent. You may be my helper, my fellow-laborer. You have much to learn and much to unlearn. Listen. This very night your training shall begin. Resolve that you will never again say you are as thirsty as the devil. The rest we will talk of to-morrow."
Antonio smiled kindly as he spoke. Young Crowberry noticed that the monk's expression was full of a solemn sweetness which had not been visible in the old days. At the same moment he became conscious of Antonio's broken health. The monk walked rather slowly and leaned heavily on the layman's arm. They did not speak another word till they reached the inn door.
Next morning, when Antonio awoke, he found young Crowberry standing over him with a bowl of Brazilian coffee and goat's milk, a newly-baked roll of white bread, and, rarest delicacy of all, a pat of butter. Protest was useless. A quarter of an hour later the sprucest barber in Navares appeared and shaved Antonio with the skill of a German. At seven o'clock horses began stamping outside; and, at five minutes past, Antonio and the Englishman were seated in a well-hung carriage behind a pair of bays.
"Does the Jehu understand English?" asked young Crowberry, cutting short Antonio's remonstrances against all this luxury. "No. He doesn't." "Good. Then, most reverend and illustrious Father, listen to me. One month from this date I, the most irreverend Senhor Teddy Crowberry, will begin to be your most docile servant. I shall obey you in all things. You shall be my Lord Abbot till one of us dies. But, for this month, your Reverence will obey me. Argument is useless. If I spend five guineas a day for thirty days, remember that I hope to live on fivepence a week for the following thirty years."
"A month! It is impossible," cried Antonio. "Besides, José expects me back to-night."
"I think he doesn't. An old ruffian on a white horse has taken him a letter from me. I was nearly asking him to send on your shirts to the inn at Villa Branca; but, if your Excellency will forgive my disgusting rudeness, I couldn't feel sure that you had a shirt to send. From Villa Branca we shall go to Oporto and punch the heads of those Jews. We shall wind up all your affairs there. Thence we shall go to Braga and see the Archbishop. After that, back to Coimbra, and to Lisbon to see the Patriarch and the Pope's Nuncio, and perhaps to Evora. See what a lot I know! I've been thinking it all over and over and over in the night. You are the only Benedictine left in Portugal, and we shall have to get these big pots to help us. Pah! How the sun does blaze. I'm as thirsty as an archbishop."
Young Crowberry had his way. After the Villa Branca attorney had been paid, Antonio was driven to the principal inn and served with such a luncheon as he had not eaten for twenty years. The next day, Sunday, after the military Mass, the monk ate a still more elaborate meal and whiled away the hour of digestion by reclining on the shaded balcony looking at the promenaders in the Passeio and listening to the band. In the cool of the evening they set out in a luxurious chariot towards Oporto. Three days were spent on the journey.
It was a triumphal progress. One of young Crowberry's first acts on arriving at an inn was to send forward a mounted messenger, with full instructions, to the next halting-place. As these couriers bruited it in every wayside wineshop that a bountiful Englishman was on the road, Antonio's chariot was attended by troops of brown-footed, brown-eyed, black-haired children who threw flowers at the travelers and trotted alongside the wheels pleading for "five little reis"—the Portuguese farthing. Instead of cinco reis young Crowberry flung out tostões, or fivepenny pieces, such as most of the youngsters had never handled on their own account before, and the chariot rolled on amidst pæans of joy.
In Oporto, where Antonio had supported life on a few pence a day, the travelers put up at a French-managed hotel and drank dry champagne from Reims. Emboldened by this lively draught, young Crowberry dealt with Neumann and Mual to such purpose that they thankfully accepted three hundred pounds in full discharge of Antonio's outstanding obligations. With the abbey deeds in Antonio's valise the travelers took the direct road for Lisbon, where the archbishops and bishops, as peers of the kingdom, had assembled for the opening of the Cortes. Here and there along the route young Crowberry pointed out the cuttings and embankments for the projected railway. In Coimbra they rested two days and read up every book they could find in the University library which bore upon the case before them.
Young Crowberry was for a theatrical burst upon the whole bench of bishops in Lisbon; but the prudent Antonio sought out his own diocesan and confided to him the whole story. The prelate heard him attentively and with growing emotion. He told Antonio that the Dominicans and Franciscans had already recovered certain houses in Portugal, and that the Government, having got its money, was winking at the return of the Orders. He bestowed upon the monk a fervent blessing and bade him return the next day.
Within forty-eight hours Antonio was received by three-fourths of the Portuguese hierarchy, and by the Papal Nuncio as well. His tale brought tears to the eyes of all, not excepting a political bishop who was supposed to believe that Portugal would be better off without the religious Orders than with them. The Nuncio dispatched a special memorandum to Rome, and three of the bishops wrote long letters to Benedictine abbots abroad, including an abbot-president, asking for their counsel.
Young Crowberry's deportment among these dignitaries left a little to be desired. At his entrance he would kneel and kiss the ring of a suffragan with disconcerting ardor, and the next minute he would begin to tell the Primate of the Spains a funny story in execrable French. On the whole, however, young Crowberry was better liked for his worldliness than for his piety. His dinner at the Bragança Hotel made a deep impression upon those ecclesiastics who were not too dignified to assist at it; and when their magnificent month drew to a close the Englishman and Antonio left Lisbon with the knowledge that they had committed no grave blunders and that they had made a host of powerful friends.
José received the Senhor Crôbri warmly. Within two days of the Englishman's arrival at the abbey the mortgages on the farm and the sea-sand vineyards were cleared off and the silver spoons came back from pawn. On Saint Isabel's Day both José and young Crowberry were assigned to cells in the monastery; and from that morning community life was solidly established and the work of God was regularly performed in choir. At Christmas, with Antonio's permission, another novice arrived in the person of an English clergyman who had been young Crowberry's closest friend.
Months passed. Twice Antonio received ecclesiastical notables at the abbey and twice he was bidden to Lisbon. At length it was found possible to form a small cosmopolitan community of monks from Brazil, Spain, Bavaria, and Belgium. As the sole link between Portugal's old and new Benedictine life, and as the savior of the abbey for his Order, every one looked towards Antonio as the new Abbot. But he set his face like a flint against the plan.
"My Lord," he said to the Nuncio, who had been expressly charged to impart to him the blessing of Pio Nono, and to inquire what boon Antonio most desired, "ask the Holy Father to intercede with those who would make me Abbot against my will. For more than twenty years I have dwelt in the world, buying and selling, and I am not fit to guide the simplest monk in the religious life. Suffer me to obey my Master's word. I hear Him saying, Vade, recumbe in novissimo loco."
"Father Antonio stops his ears too soon," observed the German Abbot-President who was assisting at the interview. "In the same verse of the Gospel he will find also Amice, ascende snperius. But let him be consoled. The anniversary of his ordination, and of his expulsion from the house he has saved, is drawing near. On that day let him say his first Mass; and after he has said it, let all things be set in order."