CHAPTER XLIII
A week or so after the departure of Lord Minster, Mildred suggestedthat they should, on the following day, vary their amusements by goingup to the Convent, a building perched on the hills some thousand feetabove the town of Funchal, in palanquins, or rather hammocks swungupon long poles. Arthur, who had never yet travelled in theseluxurious conveyances, jumped at the idea, and even Miss Terry, whenshe discovered that she was to be carried, made no objection. Theparty was completed by the addition of a newly-married couple of whomMrs. Carr had known something at home, and who had come to Madeira tospend the honeymoon. Lady Florence also had been asked, but, rather toArthur's disappointment, she could not come.
When the long line of swinging hammocks, each with its two sturdybearers, were marshalled, and the adventurous voyagers had settledthemselves in them, they really formed quite an imposing procession,headed as it was by the extra-sized one that carried Miss Terry, whocomplained bitterly that "the thing wobbled and made her feel sick."
But to Arthur's mind there was something effeminate in allowinghimself, a strong, active man, to be carted up hills as steep as theside of a house by two perspiring wretches; so, hot as it was, he, tothe intense amusement of his bearers, elected to get out and walk. Thenewly-married man followed his example, and for a while they went ontogether, till presently the latter gravitated towards his wife'spalanquin, and, overcome at so long a separation, squeezed her handbetween the curtains. Not wishing to intrude himself on their conjugalfelicity, Arthur in his turn gravitated to the side of Mrs. Carr, whowas being lightly swung along in the second palanquin some twentyyards behind Miss Terry's. Shortly afterwards they observed a signalof distress being flown by that lady, whose arm was to be seenviolently agitating her green veil from between the curtains of herhammock, which immediately came to a dead stop.
"What is it?" cried Arthur and Mildred, in a breath, as they arrivedon the scene of the supposed disaster.
"My dear Mildred, will you be so kind as to tell that man" (pointingto her front bearer, a stout, flabby individual) "that he must not goon carrying me. I must have a cooler man. It makes me positively illto see him puffing and blowing and dripping under my nose like a freshbasted joint."
Miss Terry's realistic description of her bearer's appearance, whichwas, to say the least of it, limp and moist, was no exaggeration. Butthen she herself, as Arthur well remembered, was no feather-weight,especially when, as in the present case, she had to be carted up theside of a nearly perpendicular hill some miles long, a fact very wellexemplified by the condition of the bearer.
"My dear Agatha," replied Mildred, laughing, "what is to be done? Ofcourse the man is hot, you are not a feather-weight; but what is to bedone?"
"I don't know, but I won't go on with him, it's simply disgusting; hemight let himself out as a watering-cart."
"But we can't get another here."
"Then he must cool himself, the others might come and fan him. I won'tgo on till he is cool, and that's flat."
"He will take hours to cool, and meanwhile we are broiling on this hotroad. You really must come on, Agatha."
"I have it," said Arthur. "Miss Terry must turn herself round with herhead towards the back of the hammock, and then she won't see him."
To this arrangement the aggrieved lady was after some difficultypersuaded to accede, and the procession started again.
Their destination reached, they picnicked as they had arranged, andthen separated, the bride and bridegroom strolling off in onedirection, and Mildred and Arthur in another, whilst Miss Terrymounted guard over the plates and dishes.
Presently Arthur and Mildred came to a little English-looking grove ofpine and oak, that extended down a gentle slope and was bordered by asteep bank, at the foot of which great ferns and beautiful Madeiraflowers twined themselves into a shelter from the heat. Here they satdown and gazed at the splendid and many-tinted view set in itsbackground of emerald ocean.
"What a view it is," said Arthur. "Look, Mildred, how dark the clumpsof sugar-cane look against the green of the vines, and how pretty thered roofs of the town are peeping out of the groves of fruit-trees. Doyou see the great shadow thrown upon the sea by that cliff? how deepand cool the water looks within it, and how it sparkles where the sunstrikes."
"Yes, it is beautiful, and the pines smell sweet."
"I wish Angela could see it," he said, half to himself. Mildred, whowas lying back lazily among the ferns, her hat off, her eyes closed,so that the long dark lashes lay upon her cheek, and her head restingon her arm, suddenly started up.
"What is the matter?"
"Nothing, you woke me from a sort of dream, that's all."
"This spring I remember going with her to look at a view near theAbbey House, and saying--what I often think when I look at anythingbeautiful and full of life--that it depressed one to know that allthis was so much food for death, and its beauty a thing that to-day isand to-morrow is not."
"And what did she say?"
"She said that to her it spoke of immortality, and that in everythingaround her she saw evidence of eternal life."
"She must be very fortunate. Shall I tell you of what it reminds me?"
"What?"
"Of neither death nor immortality, but of the full, happy, pulsingexistence of the hour, and of the beautiful world that pessimists likeyourself and mystics like your Angela think so poorly of, but which isreally so glorious and so rich in joy. Why, this sunlight and thoseflowers, and the wide sparkle of that sea, are each and all ahappiness, and the health in our veins and the beauty in our eyes,deep pleasures that we never realize till we lose them. Death, indeed,comes to us all, but why add to its terrors by thinking of them whilstit is far off? And, as for life after death, it is a faint, vaguething, more likely to be horrible than happy. This world is our onlyreality, the only thing that we can grasp; here alone we _know_ thatwe can enjoy, and yet how we waste our short opportunities forenjoyment! Soon youth will have slipped away, and we shall be too oldfor love. Roses fade fastest, Arthur, when the sun is bright; in theevening when they have fallen, and the ground is red with witheringpetals, do you not think we shall wish that we had gathered more?"
"Yours is a pleasant philosophy, Mildred," he said, struggling faintlyin his own mind against her conclusions.
But at this moment, somehow, his fingers touched her own and werepresently locked fast within her little palm, and for the first timein his life they sat hand in hand. But, happily for him, he did notventure to look into her eyes, and, before many minutes had passed,Miss Terry's voice was heard calling him loudly.
"I suppose that you must go," said Mildred, with a shade of vexationin her voice and a good many shades upon her face, "or she will beblundering down here. I will come, too; it is time for tea."
On arriving at the spot whence the sounds proceeded, they found MissTerry surrounded by a crowd of laughing and excited bearers, andpouring out a flood of the most vigorous English upon an unfortunateislander, who stood, a silver mug in each hand, bowing and shrugginghis shoulders, and enunciating with every variety of movementindicative of humiliation, these mystic words:
"Mee washeeuppee, signora, washeeuppee--e."
"What _is_ the matter now, Agatha?"
"Matter, why I woke up and found this man stealing the cups; I chargedhim at once with my umbrella, but he dodged and I fell down, and theumbrella has gone over the rock there. Take him up at once, Arthur--there's the stolen property on his person. Hand him over to justice."
"Good gracious, Agatha, what are you thinking about? The poor man onlywants to wash the things out."
"Then I should like to know why he could not tell me so in plainEnglish," said Miss Terry, retiring discomfited amidst shouts oflaughter from the whole party, including the supposed thief.
After tea they all set out on a grand beetle-hunting expedition, andso intent were they upon this fascinating pursuit that they did notnote the flight of time, till suddenly Mildred, p
ulling out her watch,gave a pretty cry of alarm.
"Do you know what time it is, good people? Half-past six, and theCustances are to dine with us at a quarter-past-seven. It will take usa good hour to get down; what _shall_ we do?"
"I know," said Arthur, "there are two sledges just below; I saw themas we came up. They will take us down to Funchal in a quarter of anhour, and we can get to the Quinta by about seven."
"Arthur, you are invaluable; the very thing. Come on, all of you,quick."
Now these sledges are peculiar to Madeira, being made on the principleof the bullock car, with the difference that they travel down thesmooth, stone-paved roadways by their own momentum, guided by twoskilled conductors, each with one foot naked to prevent his slipping,who hold the ropes, and when the sledge begins to travel more swiftlythan they can follow, mount upon the projecting ends of the runnersand are carried with it. By means of the swift and exhilarating rushof these sledges, the traveller traverses the distance, that it takessome hours to climb, in a very few minutes. Indeed, his journey up anddown may be very well compared with that of the well-known Britishsailor who took five hours to get up Majuba mountain, but, accordingto his own forcibly told story, came down again with an almostincredible rapidity. It may therefore be imagined that sledge-travelling in Madeira is not very well suited to nervous voyagers.
Miss Terry had at times seen these wheelless vehicles shoot from thetop of a mountain to the bottom like a balloon with the gas out, andhad also heard of occasional accidents in connection with them.Stoutly she vowed that nothing should induce her to trust her neck toone of them.
"But you must, Agatha, or else be left behind. They are as safe as achurch, and I can't leave the Custances to wait till half-past eightfor dinner. Come, get in. Arthur can go in front and hold you; I willsit behind."
Thus admonished--Miss Terry entered groaning, Arthur taking his seatbeside her, and Mrs. Carr hers in a sort of dickey behind. The newly-married pair, who did not half like it, possessed themselves of thesmaller sledge, determined to brave extinction in each other's arms.Then the conductors seized the ropes, and, planting their one nakedfoot firmly before them, awaited the signal to depart.
"Stop," said Miss Terry, lifting the recovered umbrella, "that man hasforgotten to put on his shoe and stocking on his right leg. He willcut his foot, and, besides, it doesn't look respectable to be seenflying through a place with a one-legged ragamuffin----"
"Let her go," shouted Arthur, and they did, to some purpose, for in aminute they were passing down that hill like a flash of light. Woodsand houses appeared and vanished like the visions of a dream, and thesoft air went singing away on either side of them as they clove it,flying downwards at an angle of thirty degrees, and leaving nothingbehind them but the sound of Miss Terry's lamentations. Soon theyneared the bottom, but there was yet a dip--the deepest of them all,with a sharp turn at the end of it--to be traversed.
Away went the little connubial sled in front like a pigeon down thewind; away they sped after it like an eagle in pursuit; _crack_ wentthe little sledge into the corner, and out shot the happy pair;_crash_ went the big sledge into it, and Arthur became conscious of awild yell, of a green veil fluttering through the air, and of a fallas on to a feather-bed. Miss Terry's superior weight had brought herto her mother earth the first, and he, after a higher heavenwardflight, had lit upon the top of her. He picked her up and sat her downagainst a wall to recover her breath, and then fished Mildred, dirtyand bruised, but as usual laughing, out of a gutter; the loving pairhad already risen and in an agony of mutual anxiety were rubbing eachother's shins. And then he started back with a cry, for there beforehim, surveying the disaster with an air of mingled amusement andbenevolence, stood--Sir John and Lady Bellamy.
Had it been the Prince and Princess of Evil--if, as is probable, thereis a Princess--Arthur could scarcely have been more astounded. Somehowhe had always in his thoughts regarded Sir John and Lady Bellamy, whenhe thought about them at all, as possessing indeed individualcharacters and tendencies, but as completely "adscripti glebae" of theneighbourhood of the Abbey House as that house itself. He would assoon have expected to see Caresfoot's Staff re-rooted in the soil ofMadeira, as to find them strolling about Funchal. He rubbed his eyes;perhaps, he thought, he had been knocked silly and was labouring undera hallucination. No, there was no doubt about it; there they were,just the same as he had seen them at Isleworth, except that ifpossible Sir John looked even more like a ripe apple than usual, whilethe sun had browned his wife's Egyptian face and given her a lastfinish as a perfect type of Cleopatra. Nor was the recognition on hisside only, for next second his hand was grasped first by Sir John andthen by Lady Bellamy.
"When we last met, Mr. Heigham," said the gentleman, with a benevolentbeam, "I think I expressed a wish that we might soon renew ouracquaintance, but I little thought under what circumstances our nextmeeting would take place," and he pointed to the overturned sledgesand the prostrate sledgers.
"You have had a very merciful escape," chimed in Lady Bellamy,cordially; "with so many hard stones about, affairs might have endeddifferently."
"Now then, Mr. Heigham, we had better set to and run, that is, ifAgatha has got a run left in her, or we shall be late after all. Thankgoodness nobody is hurt; but we must find a hammock for Agatha, for tojudge from her groans she thinks she is. Is my nose---- Oh, I beg yourpardon," and Mrs. Carr stopped short, observing for the first timethat he was talking to strangers.
"Do not let me detain you, if you are in a hurry. I am so thankfulthat nobody is hurt," said Lady Bellamy. "I believe that we arestopping at the same hotel, Mr. Heigham, I saw your name in the book,so we shall have plenty of opportunities of meeting."
But Arthur felt that there was one question which he must ask beforehe went on, whether or no it exceeded the strict letter of hisagreement with Philip; so, calling to Mrs. Carr that he was coming, hesaid, with a blush,
"How was Miss Caresfoot when--when you last saw her, Lady Bellamy?"
"Perfectly well," she answered, smiling.
"And more lovely than ever," added her husband.
"Thank you for that news, it is the best I have heard for some time.Good-bye for the present, we shall meet to-morrow at breakfast," andhe ran on after the others, happier than he had been for months,feeling that he had come again within call of Angela, and as though hehad never sat hand in hand with Mildred Carr.