"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."