IV
Three years' hard labor turned Antonio's tangled vineyards and languishing orangeries into an earthly paradise. The red roses nearly covering the white walls of his golden-thatched farm-house, the round plot of well-kept turf in front, the bright flower-beds and the trim gate, gave quite an English appearance to the little farmstead. All the potsherds and rubbish had been removed from the bed of the stream, while the cascades and pools had been made fewer and grander. Trellises, pergolas, and arches everywhere showed that José had been no less industrious than his master.
Up in the village the gossips had plenty of news to keep them busy. The successive arrivals of Antonio's wine-press from France, of his vine-slips from vineyards all over Europe, and of his books and papers from England were so many nine-days' wonders. Fifty wild stories were set going as to his parentage, his past, and his prospects: but it never entered anybody's head that he had dwelt for years, almost in their midst, as a monk of Saint Benedict.
Antonio was regular in church-attendance: but he took care to conceal nearly all his piety. For example, he denied himself the consolation of occasionally serving the cura's Mass, lest his good Latin and his intelligent grasp of every point in the ritual should betray him. He communicated more frequently than was usual in the parish: but no one ever thought of numbering him among those few devotees in the village who were profanely called os beatos e as beatas—the Saints and Blessed Ones.
What interested the parish much more than Antonio's religion was Antonio's prosperity. It became known that every hectare of his long-neglected vineyard was earning a hundred per cent more than any other hectare within ten leagues. It was also known that he was distilling a new kind of orange brandy for medicinal use, which he exported to Rio de Janeiro at a high price. Rumor said that, when his sea-sand vineyard should begin to bear fruit, Collares would sink to the second place. Most wonderful of all, it was known that the cellars at Antonio's farm contained some curious wooden racks in which two or three hundred bottles of blended white wine were standing on their heads. This blended white wine, according to a villager who did occasional work at the farm under José, was intended to rival French champagne, a famous but mysterious beverage which no native of the parish had ever drunk or seen.
Upon the undeniable fact of Antonio's prosperity the gossips naturally proceeded to erect fantastic prophecies about his matrimonial intentions. No tongues wagged concerning José. Had the gossips known of his hundred pounds, his copper and pewter and fine linen, the case would have been different; but, if they thought of him at all, they regarded him as a wild-eyed, eccentric boor who might go mad at any moment, and was certainly better without a wife to beat or murder. Antonio, however, was worth the gossips' while. During his first year in the parish they mentally married him off to Joanna Quintella, a widow who had lost her husband in the civil wars. Joanna was hardly thirty, had not outlived all her good looks, and was possessed of nearly sixty pounds.
This was just after the monk had sold off his first pressing of wine for fourteen pounds. But, with the growth of his prosperity, his prospective brides advanced in importance. The gossips jilted poor Joanna and betrothed Antonio successively to Catharina Rodrigues de Barros Lopes, the farrier's second daughter; to Maria da Conceiçao d'Araujo, the cura's younger sister; and to Beatriz Amelia Martins, who had lived six months in Lisbon with her sister, the wife of a customs-house officer. But when it leaked out that Antonio went nearly every month to the bank in Villa Branca with drafts from Oporto, Rio de Janeiro, and even London, the match with Donna Beatriz was broken off.
Within the wide boundaries of the parish only one bride remained: but, for a time, not one of the gossips was presumptuous enough to link her name with Antonio's. Ever since she began coiling up her hair, it had been taken for granted that her father would have to go to Villa Branca or, at the very least, to Navares in order to find a sufficiently important husband for Margarida Clara Maria dos Santos Rebolla. When, however, the apothecary received an invoice from Lisbon charging him half a pound for a single bottle of champagne the maiden's fate was sealed. The inquisitive crowd who paid the apothecary three vintens a head for a spoonful of the champagne were disgusted with their bargain: but when the apothecary's arithmetic was applied to Antonio's case they recovered their spirits and unanimously made over Margarida Clara Maria to the young Croesus of the valley who was about to gild the parish with glory.
Margarida's parents were not surprised on learning what the parish expected of them; for had they not already brooded long and earnestly over the same plan? Not to mention the Babylonian wickedness of Villa Branca and Navares, town husbands were not acceptable to the worthy couple, because town fortunes, town incomes, town reputations, lay too much at the mercy of the politicians. Indeed, Senhor Jorge Maria dos Santos Rebolla held politics in so much horror that he would not seriously entertain the idea of Antonio as a son-in-law until he had satisfied himself that the young vintner was unpoisoned by factious doctrines.