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Read Ebook: The New Christianity; or The Religion of the New Age by Bland Salem Goldworth
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Ebook has 89 lines and 4201 words, and 2 pages
"A little while will help. I am growing bigger every day." Jose drew his slight figure to its fullest height.
Antonio was silent.
"Did you get my post-card, Antonio?" Jose asked timidly, after a few moments.
"Yes; that is why I came home, Jose." Antonio threw his arm lovingly over the little brother's shoulder as they walked on, side by side.
"Please, oh please, do not speak about it before the others,--about my writing to you," Jose begged in a half frightened voice.
"I will not speak about it, Jose, I promise you." Antonio looked down at his brother, whom he remembered as little more than a baby. It was hard to realize that this mere child had been the head of the family for five months.
A PORTUGUESE HOME
IT was twilight when Antonio, Jose, the patient oxen and the frisky dog reached home.
Jose ran out and put the oxen into their corner of the farm-yard near the house, fed them and the cow, the chickens and the pig; brought in firewood, and, last of all, filled the red earthenware jar with cool water from the well on the terrace below the garden.
The front door stood open. Beyond the trees, the shadow of twilight lingered in the valley. The hills were bathed in rosy mist.
The Almaida home was one of the better class of small farmhouses. It stood in the centre of a hillside farm of about four acres. It was a square, plastered stone house, whitewashed inside and out. The overhanging eaves of the red-tiled roof were painted deep red underneath. This was the house where Senhor Miguel Almaida's father, his grandfather and great-grandfather had lived.
The central room, into which one entered from the vine-clad porch, was uncarpeted. The furnishings showed that the Almaidas were a family of more than peasant rank.
At one end of the room stood a large cupboard or cabinet of carved chestnut-wood. Its shelves were full of odds and ends,--some old pieces of English ware, souvenirs of long ago days when trade relations existed with Great Britain, and there was a silver platter of the fine old Portuguese handwork of two hundred years ago. There were also a few books on the shelves, and a violin, a guitar and a flute.
Against the wall, opposite the cabinet, were the beds, separated from one another by partitions which did not reach quite to the top of the room.
On the walls hung framed colored pictures of the Portuguese hero king, Affonso Henriquez, of Inez de Castro and Prince Pedro, her lover. A large gilt-framed mirror hung near the door, and over the mantel was a crucifix.
Never was there a cleaner or a prettier farmhouse in all Portugal. Never were there better-trained, more obedient children than Miguel Almaida's.
The father, in these many days when he had to sit helpless by the fireside in his arm-chair, felt grateful for his tidy home, his good wife, and his dutiful children. He was a man of middle height, thick-set in figure. He was of grave character and of great common sense. Even during this illness he kept himself cheerful and of good hope.
While the mother strained and cared for the milk, the older sisters washed and put away the dishes. Jose sat on a low stool by his father's side, holding Tareja on his knee, and listening to Antonio's stories about America, of his voyage home, and of the revolution in Portugal. Indeed the events in Portugal were of more interest even than the wonders of far-away America.
"Our country has changed very little in the past ten, twenty and perhaps fifty years. Now we can hope for better times," said Miguel Almaida.
News of the revolution had been slow in reaching the hillside farm. What the father had heard before as rumors Antonio now told him as facts.
The revolution had taken place while Antonio was on the voyage from New York to Gibraltar. The news had greeted him when he landed. As he had journeyed from Gibraltar to Lisbon, the capital city of Portugal, and then, northward still, to Guimar?es, people everywhere were talking of the great event. Since then, travelling by foot from Guimar?es out into the hill country and past the little market-place, always the one topic of interest had been King Manuel's banishment and the fact that the Portuguese people were now to rule and govern themselves.
Jose could not understand all that the change meant. But to Antonio and his father it meant better times,--not so much money to be paid in taxes, better laws, and a chance for the children to go to school. Almost all of the education which the Almaida children had received had been at home. Senhor Almaida was a man better educated than many of his neighbors.
When the evening work was done, the mother and the two older sisters drew around the hearth. Tiny Tareja soon fell asleep in the mother's arms. Joanna and Malfada began to embroider: Portuguese girls do beautiful work with their needles. The hearth-fire of maple wood burned brilliantly. Two candles on the mantel lighted up the crucifix.
Now it was that Antonio opened his heavy travelling-bag. One by one he took out the presents he had brought. Joanna and Malfada quickly put aside their work.
First there was a silver watch for the father,--who had never before in all his life owned a watch.
Next came three silver-link hand-bags, the largest for the mother, the middle sized one for Joanna, the smallest for Malfada.
When Malfada hung the bag from her round wrist and held it forth to look at it, Antonio burst into a hearty laugh and said: "That is just the way I imagined that Malfada would dangle the little bag from her wrist."
Antonio put the present for sleeping Tareja into his mother's hands. It was a wonderful American doll with yellow hair and with eyes which would shut and open, and it was dressed all in white, just as Joanna had sometimes, on rare visits to Guimar?es, seen foreign children dressed.
Then how gleefully they all laughed at the next present which Antonio brought out! It was for the house,--a china salt-cellar, red and round like a tomato.
"We must put it in the cabinet. It is too fine to use except on holidays and feast-days," said the mother.
Jose's present was the last to appear. Now it was the little boy's turn to receive a paper-covered package, tied with pink string.
Jose's short fingers trembled in impatience as he untied the string,--careful, even in his haste, not to break it, for a piece of string was very precious to the boy.
Off came the paper and out came a square white box. Off came the box-cover and out came an engine and four gaily painted cars,--such a wonderful toy as Jose had never seen before.
It was an evening always to be remembered in the Almaida family. They looked at one another's presents. They listened to Antonio's tales of great American cities and railroads and bridges, of active, rapid-moving people, and of his own work as foreman on a section of railroad diggers.
Jose took the engine and cars, the box and the pink string to bed with him, and held them clasped in both hands to make sure that the treasures were real.
He was very wide-awake. He heard his mother and Antonio talking after they had helped the father to his bed. And the little boy never forgot Antonio's last words to his mother that night:
"Before I went away from home, mother, you said to me 'Each morning, resolve not to do anything during all the day which will make you feel sorry when night comes.' I remembered that each morning, mother, and it kept me always from wrong ways and wrong places."
GARDEN AND VINEYARD
"Tr
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