A torrential burst of rain had so replenished the meager Loire that the travelers reached the city of Saint Martin in a light boat, from which they saw some of the châteaux of Touraine. But at the riverside inns Antonio was as deeply engrossed in the common wines as in the neighboring architecture. As he drank them, white and red, he understood the wit and elegance of the Tourangeans, and wondered what the English would become if they could daily drink such draughts in place of their nerve-destroying tea, their brandied port, and their sluggish beer. But, although Mr. Crowberry senior had enjoined Antonio to show Mr. Crowberry junior as many cellars and vineyards as possible, the monk recognized the hopelessness of sending the brisk juices of the Loire to the stolid drinkers of the Thames; and therefore he pushed on through Poitiers and Angoulême to Bordeaux.
At Bordeaux the two inquirers hired an imposing chariot. They were armed with letters of introduction to the great growers; and decency required that they should keep up appearances during their triumphal progress through the Medoc. The vintage was in full swing: but it lacked the gaiety of the vintage in Portugal. Most of the vintagers were strangers from Poitiers, who did their work, drew their pay, and went home to spend it. The little bush-vines also, though marvelously well tended, lacked the picturesqueness of Portugal: and Antonio almost excited his yellow-haired charge by describing the great bunches of purple grapes pending from the green roof of a pergola, or blooming like clustered plums high in some tree with which the vine was intertwined.
The two were fêted at Brane Cantenac; patronized a little at the Château Margaux; treated respectfully at the Châteaux Lafitte, Leoville, and Larose; and received with open arms at the Château Latour. Young Crowberry expanded rapidly under the attentions which were lavished on him as the son of a big buyer: and it was only by hurrying him out of Pauillac in the nick of time that his mentor forestalled a desperate love-affair with a Basque maiden, dark and slender. As for Antonio, as an expert from Oporto, he was treated with deference, and he made the most of his opportunities. He would taste attentively the ripe grapes and then compare them with the wines of the same vineyard, both young and old.
From Royan, at the mouth of the Gironde, they ran before the wind in a smack as far as San Sebastian, in Spain, and posted thence, past bald limestone mountains, to Burgos. Young Crowberry, in whom Wine and his glimpse of Woman had wrought wonders, found the cathedral of Burgos worth all the cathedrals of France put together: and Antonio himself, while conscious of its faults, felt strangely moved by its beauties. Three days later they were in Valladolid, where young Crowberry, making rapid progress, declared that with a box of building-bricks he himself would design a better cathedral than Herrera's fragment. At Salamanca, the last stopping-place in Spain, nearly all that Antonio had read about architecture was contradicted. Here was a cathedral raised in almost the worst period of Gothic: yet it impressed the beholder as one of the grandest temples in the world.
They left Salamanca early one October morning, while the city's grand towers and domes were still sharply silhouetted against the golden east. Young Crowberry was garrulous and dogmatic about everything; but Antonio hardly spoke, for he was nearing Portugal. Mile after mile of dreary plain resounded under the mules' little hoofs. At last the road began to climb awful mountains whence the malaria had driven nearly every living thing. They passed stone-huts of prehistoric hill-men, and Roman military monuments with braggart inscriptions. Then they descended. The landscape relaxed its frown. A few vines greened narrow terraces here and there in the rocks. Soon afterwards they reached a white house in the midst of orange trees. Two soldiers came out with muskets.
Antonio was once more in Portugal.
VI
On the morrow of young Crowberry's reunion with his impatient father at Oporto, Antonio made haste to give an account of his stewardship. About ten pounds in gold remained in his purse and he held, still uncashed, a letter of credit for thirty pounds more. Mr. Crowberry burst out laughing.
"If Teddy hadn't told me ten times over that he's fared like a fighting-cock," he said, "I should believe you've been living on fresh air and ship's biscuit."