"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.
V
Altogether, Mr. Crowberry and Antonio sold six thousand pounds' worth of wine. In only three out of the seven-and-forty houses they visited was their reception suspicious or cool. Indeed, their errand was so acceptable that they rarely slept or dined at an inn.
Antonio had heard much of English wealth and luxury: but the solid comfort and daily lavishness amazed him. Often on the well-kept roads he would encounter a dashing equipage drawn by high-stepping slender grays and followed by a pack of spotted Dalmatian dogs. Sometimes he got more than a glimpse of rigid, expressionless footmen, powdered and gorgeously appareled, and of bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked ladies in high-waisted dresses and with plumes nodding over their pretty heads. Nor did his post-chaise ever bowl many miles without passing some ivied castle or stately home.
At the squires' and lords' tables Antonio was a success. He rarely spoke until he was addressed: but such remarks as he made were all sensible and interesting, and his foreign accent made them piquant to hear. At every meal the talk turned sooner or later to the townsmen's agitation for abolishing the Corn Laws and for fostering industrialism at all costs until England became the workshop of the world. In his rôle of the Intelligent Foreigner Antonio was generally asked his opinion. He would reply that no nation could be enduringly healthy and wealthy unless the majority of her children nourished themselves directly from Mother Earth; and although this way of putting it rather bewildered his hosts, Antonio's practical conclusion in favor of agriculture was always applauded.
Too often for the monk's ease the table-talk turned to religion. The English notables took it for granted that, as an Intelligent Foreigner, Antonio must be a French skeptic. They hated atheism less than Popery; and although most of them were church-going men, they would have preferred that Antonio should believe nothing at all to his believing in the Christian religion plus the Pope. On such occasions Antonio always strained his wits to turn the subject: but whenever his host or a fellow-guest had the bad taste to be persistent he would reply with spirit that Rome was no more intolerant to Protestantism than Canterbury was to Dissent; that perfunctory and greedy priests were no more common than perfunctory and greedy parsons; and that the essential truths of revealed religion were far more widely and firmly believed in Portugal than in England. Once or twice a fellow-diner, who had heard of the suppression of the monasteries, would launch a jest or a sneer against monks: whereupon Antonio would boldly answer: