VI
Antonio kept his promise and took part in the Thursday serão at the farm of Senhor Jorge.
The monk's robust common-sense would not suffer him to be tormented by false scruples. On the preceding Monday, when he accomplished his daily duty of self-examination, he had not failed to recall his Sunday night's surrender to the dream-maiden: but a well-instructed conscience acquitted him of blame. Antonio knew how to distinguish between the deliberate thoughts or imaginations of his waking moments and the unbidden guests of his dreams. Under the saintly Abbot he had studied perfection in a manly school where morbid super-sensitiveness could not exist an hour: and he was too keenly alive to his real faults to accuse himself of fanciful sins. His drowsy, involuntary pleasure in the shadowy Margarida's presence was not sin; it was only homesickness. All the same he did not wish the vision to return: and therefore he began to lay a new emphasis on the lines Procul recedant somnia, Et noctium phantasmata, when he recited the Compline hymn.
Having first ascertained that local usage permitted him to do so, Antonio took José with him to the serão. The servant wore his Sunday clothes; the master his second-best. Both of them were glad that they had spent some pains and time on their appearance; for they were joined, half-way, by a fellow-guest in all the glory of feast-day raiment. In the bright moonlight they recognized this sumptuous personage as one Emilio Domingos Carneiro, the eldest son of a small farmer. Although he was on foot, he was appareled for proud feats of horsemanship. Bright spurs stood out from his tall jack-boots, and he wore a horseman's jacket of black cloth, felted. His fine white shirt was fastened by silver buttons, and a light red sash topped his tight breeches. To make up for the steed which he did not possess, Emilio carried a business-like whip.
At a cross-road the party picked up Emilio's two cousins, Joaquina and Candida Carneiro. These strapping damsels wore green cloth skirts, large green silk kerchiefs with the ends drawn cross-wise over their camisoles, and aprons of many colors. Their hats were enormous. If the brims had not been caught up to the pork-pie crowns by means of blue and yellow cords, they would have measured three feet in diameter.
As Antonio neared the threshing-floor where the serão was to be held, he noticed with satisfaction that not many of the guests had arrayed themselves after the fashion of the resplendent Carneiros. Most of those present had come to work as well as to play, and they were dressed accordingly.
Donna Perpetua and her husband welcomed Antonio with proprietary airs. Towards José they were sufficiently gracious, and Donna Perpetua expressed her pleasure at the sight of the speechless fellow's mandolin. Luiz and his brothers were already hard at play on the threshing-floor; but of Margarida nothing was to be seen. Perhaps, thought Antonio, she was sitting among the group of young men and women who were husking maize on the sheltered side of the threshing-floor.
The night was warm and balmy. From the south-west a few clouds had begun to rise: but the round moon was riding free, high among the sparkling stars. A tinkling of guitars and the chattering and light laughter of youths and maidens rippled the surface of the enormous silence. The scene was almost as bright as day. Here a girl's gold ear-ring, there a man's buckles or buttons of old silver, caught and flung back the faerie light. Some of the older women were spinning. Eight-pointed wooden wheels whirred round, buzzing like bees. A youth as handsome as a god lolled on a log, carving an ox-yoke. Where the maidens sat all together, the colors were like peacocks' tails and rainbows; and it was there that the moonlight lingered wantonly on plump arms and little ivory hands.
A clapping of palms proclaimed the end of the game, and Luiz made haste to begin another. He and Affonso climbed up two poplars, one on the north side of the threshing-floor, the other on the south; and to these trees they tied the two ends of a thin rope, so as to stretch it at a height of eight or nine feet from the ground. Before making his end fast, Luiz passed it through the handle of a coarse brown jug. Descending to the ground, he picked up a six-foot clothes-prop, made from the dried stalk of a giant cabbage, and with this he shoved the jug along the rope until it dangled absurdly over the center of the floor. Then he produced a clean white handkerchief and sang out for the first player.