VII
Senhor Jorge's lamps were not as bright as full moons. Their smoky flames lit up the vast barn so feebly that candles had to be set at the elbows of the knitters and stitchers and spinners. The spattering of the rain against the dusty windows made a dreariful sound.
There were games that could be played in a barn every bit as gay as the games of the open air. But the merry-makers had lost their good spirits, and nobody gave a lead towards recovering them. One by one the maids and youths sat down on full sacks or empty barrels, or squatted on the ground. When all were seated Donna Perpetua very politely begged José to tune his mandolin and to sing a fado, or love-song.
For the sake of the young people, Antonio felt glad. More than once he had heard José singing folk-songs which would have brought smiles to the faces of the most austere; and he took it for granted that José would break out with one of these rollicking lays. José, however, succumbed to the surrounding depression. Having tuned his mandolin, which was unusually large and sonorous, he began playing a doleful prelude.
Had his mind been free to enjoy it, Antonio would have found the music brimful of charm. The descending minor scale was occasionally, but not always, used in ascending passages, and the monk could not doubt that José had received some tradition of tonality which urban ears would have rejected with ignorant scorn. As José played on, it seemed that he changed the scale more often than the key. At last he subsided into a more familiar gamut and began to sing in slow and mournful tones:
"O! fountain weeping softly,
Thou canst not weep for ever:
But the full fountains of my tears
Shall be congealed never.
"O! weep, my eyes, and weep, my heart,
Bereaved and forsaken;
Weep as the holy Virgin wept
The night her Son was taken.
"Alas! the sadness of my life.
Alas! my life of sadness;
Would I had wings to fly with thee,
O Swallow, Bird of Gladness!
"O Eagle! flying up so high,
Upon thy strong wings fleet me;
O Eagle! lift me to that sky
Where she prepares to greet me."
José ceased singing, but went on playing. Although a printed page of music meant no more than so many black lines and dots and rings to his untutored mind, he was a musician to his finger-tips, and he could expound to others in tones many an emotion which he could not express even to himself in words. Unlike most Portuguese performers, whose melodic phrases were short-winded and very conventionally joined together, he was capable of trailing out long-drawn melodies and of welding them into forms of his own. José's huge fingers stroked the strings so subtly that the monk could almost see the eagle urging up, up, up, above the purple serras, above the moon and stars, until it swept on unwearied wings through the gates into the City.
But Antonio could not give himself up to watching the great bird's flight. He was painfully conscious that he and his man were killing the serão. In breaking the bowl he had almost broken poor Margarida's heart; and here was José driving everybody down into the depths of the blues. He glanced apologetically towards Donna Perpetua: but the candle on the trestle-table beside her lit up the unshed tears in her gray eyes so weirdly that he hastened to gaze upon the ground.
José's threnody ended at last, and he stumped back to his place without the slightest acknowledgment of the listeners' chastened applause. From a corner one of the guitarists struck up a lively dance-tune; but his notes sounded so thin after José's that he broke off of his own accord. To save the situation, Antonio plunged in desperately and asked if Donna Perpetua knew any riddles.
Yes. Donna Perpetua knew several.
"Who is it," she asked, "that knows the hour but not the month; that wears spurs but never rides a-horse; that has a saw but isn't a carpenter; that carries a pick-axe but isn't a quarryman; that delves in the ground but gains no wages?"
Antonio could not guess: but his ignorance was covered up by a general shout of "The cock!"
"Good," cooed Donna Perpetua. "Now explain this: 'Before the father is born the son is climbing up to the roof.'"
"Smoke!" roared everybody.
"What is born on the mountain," she continued, "and comes to sing in the house?"
The shrill voices of the old women were loudest in the chorus of "A spindle!"
"And who is it who is born on a dunghill, yet comes to eat with the king at his table?"
"A fly!" was the immediate unanimous answer.
Donna Perpetua beamed benevolently upon the company. It had pleased her to be made prominent. The guests were equally pleased: for had they not shown the brightness of their wits, or, at the very least, of their memories? Antonio was entertained in a different way. These cut-and-dried riddles and answers reminded him of a village school which he had visited in England and of the joyous heartiness with which the rosy-cheeked boys and girls, in answer to the teacher's question, "What is hell?" roared out, "It is a bottomless and horrible pit, full of fire."
By way of returning the compliment, Donna Perpetua invited Antonio to propound one or two of the riddles he had heard in England. Unguardedly he gave consent: and only when he began racking his memory did he perceive his mistake. He had heard a feeble riddle in a country house about a door being a jar; but the pun could not be made in Portuguese. Again, he knew by heart a rhymed enigma, said to be Byron's, on the letter H; but this was worse still. Apart from the Portuguese having no aspirate, how could he render the line "'Twas whispered in heaven, 'twas muttered in hell" into a language which spelled heaven with a "c" and hell with an "i"? At last he cut short a very uncomfortable silence by saying that the only English conundrums he knew could not be translated. At this remark the girls hung their heads modestly and the matrons gave silent thanks that they had not been born in an apostate country where the very riddles brimmed with blasphemies and lewdnesses.
"England is no good," grunted Emilio, who had been playing a tune on his jack-boots with the handle of his whip. "The English have plenty of money; but they live dogs' lives. In England there are no fruits, no flowers. They have no wine save what we send them from Portugal. When the rain stops, there is a fog. No Englishman ever sees the sun."
"Things are hardly so bad as that," said Antonio, smiling. "In July and August I have known the sun in England shine as fiercely as any sun in Portugal. It is true there are no grapes or oranges, except those that grow in glass hot-houses; but the English have apples and pears, cherries and strawberries, plums and damsons, as fine as ours. Their flowers are wonderful; and I wish everybody in Portugal could see an English village."
Emilio, whose father had suffered wrongs under Marshal Beresford during the Regency, thwacked his boot again with the whip-stock and mumbled. Antonio was concerned. He and José had already gone far towards wrecking the serão, and he saw the necessity of avoiding a quarrel. So he added what he conscientiously believed, saying, in a conciliatory tone:
"The English are not the equals of the Portuguese. But they are a fine people and a great nation."
"I have heard," put in Senhor Jorge, "that the English are not happy."
"They were merry once," Antonio answered, "and they will be merry once more when they regain the Faith."
"Yes," said Donna Perpetua devoutly. "Only those who are going to be happy in the next life can be truly happy in this."
"Yet the English ought to be happy," objected Senhor Jorge, growing restive at all this piety. "They have the best government in the world."
"Even the best government in the world is very bad," Antonio retorted. "Still, with all its faults, the English government is indeed the best in Europe. There is much more intrigue and corruption in their public life than they care to recognize; but one can get justice in their courts, and, except for Catholics, there is almost complete liberty. If we Portuguese had a government one half so good—"
A thin, short, bald, bent old man with a long white beard and madly bright eyes leaped out of the shadow and startled Antonio by shouting:
"Till he comes back there'll be no good government in Portugal. They'll go on being thieves and cowards. Yes, thieves. The French were thieves and bullies. The English were thieves and bullies too. Dom Miguel was the worst thief and coward of them all. As for the Queen—"
Antonio staunched the flow of eloquence before treason could burst forth.
"Whom do you speak of?" he demanded quickly. "You say 'Till he comes back.' Who?"
While the old man stood glaring at the monk with trembling lips, Senhor Jorge bent over and whispered in Antonio's ear:
"Have patience with him, your Worship. He is a Sebastianista—the only Sebastianista for leagues around. On all other points he is saner than I am. He is a good man. I beg your Worship to indulge him."
Antonio did more than indulge the hoary monomaniac. He strained forward, all ears. That there should be a Sebastianista left alive in Portugal amazed him. From the lips of a very old Jesuit he had once heard of some Sebastianistas in the forests of Brazil, and the Abbot had mentioned a Sebastianista whom he had seen, as a child, in the Açores. But a Sebastianista was the last curiosity Antonio had expected to meet at Senhor Jorge's serão.
"Tell us all about it," he asked.
"Ah, your Excellency," moaned the old man, "I am a poor blacksmith and no scholar, and I cannot use fine words."
"Don't some people believe," asked Antonio, egging him on, "that King Sebastião was killed by the Moors at the battle of al-Kasr al-Kebir? Don't they say his body rests in the church of the Jeronymos at Belem?"
"Lies, all lies!" cried the Sebastianista. "Why were we beaten at Alcacer-Kibir by those hounds of infidels? Because they were braver or stronger? No. It was because we had sinned and the just God punished us. But I tell your Excellency that not one hair of the King's head fell to the ground. He departed unhurt from the battle. The tomb in the Jeronymos is emptier than this barrel."
Unfortunately the barrel which the Sebastianista kicked with the iron tip of his wooden shoe gave back a blunt sound which proved that it was full. The girls began to titter; but the old man raved on, unabashed.
"Yes," he cried, "King Sebastião, the brave, the good, the Desired, escaped without a scratch on his body, although he had fought a hundred Moors hand-to-hand. He slew eighty with his own sword. He is waiting in the enchanted isle. Waiting, waiting, waiting. God knows things are bad enough in Portugal. But they will be worse. And when they are worst of all, he will come back. The Hidden Prince will come back, riding on a white horse. He will drive out the thieves and cowards. He will deal out justice to rich and poor alike. He will set up the Fifth Empire."
"The Fifth Empire?" echoed Antonio, astonished at hearing such a phrase from such lips. "What is the Fifth Empire?"
"It is the Empire which King Sebastião will set up," said the old man.
"But, come now, Senhor Joaquim," objected Emilio pertly. "Isn't it rather a long time since King Sebastião went away? Tell us. How long ago?"
"It was before my grandfather was born," snapped the old man, wheeling defiantly towards Emilio.
"Then when he comes back he'll be thrice as old as you are. He'll have no hair, no teeth, and he'll be as blind as a bat. So how much good will he be?"
"How much good will the King be?" bellowed the Sebastianista. "How much good? Senhor Emilio Domingos Carneiro, I'll tell you. If he's an old man, thank God for that! Portugal has suffered enough from the young ones. And hark to this: He'll be a true old Portuguese. He'll be a man, not a dandy. He won't crack whips and wear spurs unless he can mount a horse without falling off on the other side."
At this home-thrust most of the young men chuckled or laughed outright, while the girls giggled. Donna Perpetua, however, was flurried and Emilio's cousins tried to protest. With ready tact Senhor Jorge preserved the peace.
"Come, Joaquim," he said. "Talking has made you thirsty. Come with me and I'll find you a mug of good wine to drink King Sebastião's health in."
The old man, proud at having had the best of it, departed nimbly in his host's wake and was no more heard or seen.
"Does the Senhor believe that Dom Sebastião will ever return?" asked the handsome yoke-carver, turning to Antonio.
"I've just been reckoning," the monk answered, "that it is more than two hundred and sixty years since the day of the battle."
Two hundred and sixty meant little to the handsome youth, who had never had occasion to engage his brains with any such number. He knew that he possessed ten fingers and ten toes, and that there were seven days in the week and that his father owned eight bullocks; but who had ever heard of such a number as two hundred and sixty? He stared at Antonio blankly.
"It seems to me," put in José, "that when we see Dom Sebastião on a white horse, it will be his ghost."
He uttered the word "ghost" in a tone which made the pretty Rosalina Saldanha clasp her pretty hands and emit a pretty squeak. The other damsels squeaked after her, in chorus. They reveled in ghost-tales, although they dreaded them.
Antonio laughed.
"Your Worship may laugh," railed Emilio, who seemed determined to shine in one way or another. "But he wouldn't laugh if he saw what some people have seen."
The girls cuddled together in delicious fright.
"Perhaps your Worship has not heard," continued the dandy, feeling important, "about the lobis-homem of Rio Briga, between Santarem and Thomar?"
Antonio had not heard of this particular case. But he was familiar with the lobis-homem or were-wolf superstition in general, and he detested it as a poisonous survival from dark and cruel days. He knew that, in remote mountain hamlets, this lingering pagan lie sometimes brought life-long anguish to the very unfortunates who most needed help and love. Involuntarily the monk's eyes sought Donna Perpetua's. He saw that she wished as little as he did to hear of were-wolves.
"Are not all tales of lobis-homens alike?" said Antonio to Emilio. "Will not your Worship tell us another tale instead? I have heard that a Moorish maiden was once turned to stone up in these hills."
"It's a tale for little girls," snorted Emilio. Horror suited his narrative style better than romance. But he tried to recite the legend of a young peasant who heard one of the stones of the fountain cry out piteously. He went on to tell how the peasant released the Moor-maiden from the spell and married her; how she wrought him grief; and how her evil-spirit was cast out by a hermit. But Emilio's touch was heavy; and, as every one present knew the story by heart already, he bored his audience badly.
"Your Excellency lives almost by himself," said a pleasant, middle-aged woman, pausing in her spinning and looking towards Antonio, "so it is important he should be on his guard against the cock's egg."
Antonio looked bewildered.
"Once every seven years," she explained, "the cock lays a tiny egg, as round as a marble and as black as ink. It is smaller than a pigeon's. As a rule the rats get it and no harm is done. But, if your Excellency has no rats, take care. If the egg is not destroyed a monster will come out of it. Perhaps you won't see him; but, wherever he is hatched, he causes the death of the master of the house within the year."
She resumed her spinning. Antonio thanked her politely and promised that he would show no mercy to any egg as black as ink and as round as a marble which he might find about his farm.
"You can't be always sure you've found the egg," said the woman, pausing again. "So it's a good thing always to leave a pair of scissors open on a shelf, especially at night."
Antonio perceived that the open scissors made the sign of the Cross; and it thrilled him to find, in this peasant-woman's chatter about eggs and scissors, a miniature picture of the millennial struggle between heathenism and Christianity. For he had common-sense enough to understand that, while she held the Christian Faith with all her heart and mind, she was only half-serious about her grandsires' goblins and demons.
"Are open scissors good against anything else besides monsters out of black eggs?" asked José.
"Yes," answered the spinner. "They're good against witches."
"I was hoping they might be good against ghosts," grumbled José.
Antonio was surprised. José was still only half-educated; but he had never before found him superstitious. As for the more serious guests, they were scandalized. The farrier's wife, Donna Catharina de Barros Lopes, who was a "Blessed One," said aloud:
"Thanks be to God there are no witches left! As for ghosts, there never were any."
"Then the Senhora has never been up to the old abbey chapel on a dark night?" asked José doggedly.
Antonio could not believe his ears. As for the other guests, they sat up and bent forward, all sudden excitement. There were no more affected little squeaks from the maidens. All, even the men, were struck dumb at the news that a ghost walked within a league of Senhor Jorge's barn. Emilio Carneiro, whose farm was only a mile and a half from one of the abbey gates, turned white with terror.
"No," answered the Blessed One curtly. "I do not go, Senhor, up to the old abbey chapel on dark nights. And what is more, I don't intend to."
"I am glad to hear it," said José, with maddening slowness. "The Senhora is better at home. And the rest of your Worships too."
When the general excitement could no longer be suppressed, Senhor Jorge, who had just re-entered the room, demanded sternly:
"What is all this? Why are we better at home?"
"Because," said José in awe-struck tones, "it's very easy for us to talk and be brave here, in the light and in good company. But I don't think we should stay up there very long if we saw—"
"If we saw—?" urged six or seven voices.
"If we saw a monk, all in black, sitting in his stall, with a face as white as a curd cheese."
Rosalina Saldanha screamed and collapsed into the stout arms of Joanna Quintella. Twenty people began talking at once, and bombarding José with questions.
"No," cried Antonio loudly. "No more. We've had more than enough of witchcraft and ghosts and superstition. Donna Perpetua—Senhor Jorge—I ask pardon for interfering."
"Your Worship is quite right," answered Senhor Jorge, with warmth. "In my own house such talk is forbidden. We don't want the maids in hysterics. Luiz—Affonso—every one is dying of thirst and hunger. Where are the broas?"
The two young men, whose limbs were brisker than their tongues, jumped up and began filling roughly glazed and gaily painted jugs and mugs with green wine from a newly broached cask. Senhor Jorge was famous for his hospitality, and even José's ghost was forgotten for a moment in the good-tempered rough-and-tumble.
Margarida, who had remained invisible since the breaking of the bowl, now reappeared. She and her brother Gaspar each carried a basket of broas. These were not the plain work-a-day broas; they looked paler, because of an admixture of fine flour, and they were sweetened with honey and flavored with spice. Gaspar began distributing his dainties at the far ends of the barn, while Margarida served the notables round the candles.
Antonio could not unlearn in a single moment his old habits; and therefore, when he took his broa from Margarida's hand, he thanked her with the softly strong tones and the momentary boldness of the eyes which, without his knowing or intending it, had captivated more than one high lady in England. If Donna Perpetua or the farrier's wife or the spinner had offered the broa, he would have expressed his thanks in the same way. But poor Margarida found in his voice and glance a lover-like reverence, meant for herself alone. She forgot the evil omen of the broken bowl, and hurried away with rosy fires burning on her cheeks and love-lights dancing in her eyes.