A minute or two after the boat in which Arthur was being piloted to the
shore, under the guidance of the manager of Miles’ Hotel, had left the
side of the vessel, Mrs. Carr’s steam-launch shot up alongside of them,
its brass-work gleaming in the sunlight like polished gold. On the
deck, near the little wheel, stood Mrs. Carr herself, and by her side,
her martial cloak around her, lay Miss Terry, still as any log.
“Mr. Heigham,” said Mrs. Carr, in a voice that sounded across the water
like a silver bell, “I forgot that you will not be able to find your
way to my place by yourself to-morrow, so I will send down a
bullock-car to fetch you; you have to travel about with bullocks here,
you know. Good-bye,” and, before he could answer, the launch’s head was
round, and she was tearing through the swell at the rate of fourteen
knots.
“That’s her private launch,” said the manager of the hotel to Arthur,
“it is the quickest in the island, and she always goes at full steam.
She must have come some way round to tell you that, too. There’s her
place, over there.”
“Mrs. Carr comes here every year, does she not?”
“Oh, yes, every year; but she is very early this year; our season does
not begin yet, you know. She is a great blessing to the place, she
gives so much away to the poor peasants. At first she used to come with
old Mr. Carr, and a wonderful nurse they say she made to the old
gentleman till he died.”
“Does she entertain much?”
“Not as a rule, but sometimes she gives great balls, splendid affairs,
and a series of dinner-parties that are the talk of the island. She
hardly ever goes out anywhere, which makes the ladies in the place
angry, but, I believe, that they all go to her balls and dinners.
Mostly, she spends her time up in the hills, collecting butterflies and
beetles. She has got the most wonderful collection of Egyptian
curiosities up at the house there, too, though why she keeps them here
instead of in England, I am sure I don’t know. Her husband began the
collection when he was a young man, and collected all his life, and she
has gone on with it since.”
“I wonder that she has not married again.”
“Well, it can’t be for want of asking, if half of what they say is
true; for, according to that, every single gentleman under fifty who
has been at Madeira during the last five years has had a try at her,
but she wouldn’t look at one of them. But of course that is gossip— and
here we are at the landing-place. Sit steady, sir; those fellows will
pull the boat up.”
Had it not been for the pre-occupied and uncomfortable state of his
mind, that took the flavour out of all that he did, and persistently
thrust a skeleton amidst the flowers of every landscape, Arthur should
by rights have enjoyed himself very much at Madeira.
To live in one of the lofty rooms of “Miles’ Hotel,” protected by thick
walls and cool, green shutters, to feel that you are enjoying all the
advantages of a warm climate without its drawbacks, and that, too,
however much people in England may be shivering—which they mostly do
all the year round—is in itself a luxury. And so it is, if the day is
hot, to dine chiefly off fish and fruit, and such fruit! and then to
exchange the dining-room for the cool portico, with the sea-breeze
sweeping through it, and, pipe in hand, to sink into a slumber that
even the diabolical shrieks of the parrots, tied by the leg in a line
below, are powerless to disturb. Or, if you be energetic —I speak of
Madeira energy—you may stroll down the little terraced walk, under the
shade of your landlord’s vines, and contemplate the growing mass of
greenery that in this heavenly island makes a garden. You can do more
than this even; for, having penetrated through the brilliant
flower-beds, and recruited exhausted nature under a fig-tree, you can
engage, in true English fashion, in a game of lawn- tennis, which done,
you will again seek the shade of the creeping vines or spreading
bananas, and in a springy hammock take your well- earned repose.
All these things are the quintessence of luxury, so much so that he who
has once enjoyed them will long to turn lotos-eater, forget the painful
and laborious past, and live and die at “Miles’ Hotel.” Oh, Madeira!
gem of the ocean, land of pine-clad mountains that foolish men love to
climb, valleys where wise ones much prefer to rest, and of smells that
both alike abhor; Madeira of the sunny sky and azure sea, land flowing
with milk and honey, and overflowing with population, if only you
belonged to the country on which you depend for a livelihood, what a
perfect place you would be, and how poetical one could grow about you!
a consummation which, fortunately for my readers, the recollection of
the open drains, the ill-favoured priests, and Portuguese officials
effectually prevents.
On the following morning, at twelve punctually, Arthur was informed
that the conveyance had arrived to fetch him. He went down, and was
quite appalled at its magnificence. It was sledge-like in form, built
to hold four, and mounted on wooden runners that glided over the round
pebbles with which the Madeira streets are paved, with scarcely a
sound, and as smoothly as though they ran on ice. The chariot, as
Arthur always called it afterwards, was built of beautiful woods, and
lined and curtained throughout with satin, whilst the motive power was
supplied by two splendidly harnessed white oxen. Two native servants,
handsome young fellows, dressed in a kind of white uniform, accompanied
the sledge, and saluted Arthur on his appearance with much reverence.
It took him, however, some time before he could make up his mind to
embark in a conveyance that reminded him of the description of
Cleopatra’s galley, and smelt more sweet; but finally he got in, and
off he started, feeling that he was the observed of all observers, and
followed by at least a score of beggars, each afflicted with some
peculiar and dreadful deformity or disease. And thus, in triumphal
guise, they slid down the quaint and narrow streets, squeezed in for
the sake of shade between a double line of tall, green-shuttered
houses; over the bridges that span the vast open drains; past the
ochre-coloured cathedral; down the promenade edged with great
magnolia-trees, that made the air heavy with their perfume, and where
twice a week the band plays, and the Portuguese officials march up and
down in all the pomp and panoply of office; onward through the dip,
where the town slopes downwards to the sea; then up again through more
streets, and past a stretch of dead wall, after which the chariot
wheels through some iron gates, and he is in fairyland. On each side of
the carriage-way there spreads a garden calculated to make English
horticulturists gnash their teeth with envy, through the bowers of
which he could catch peeps of green turf and of the blue sea beyond.
Here the cabbage palm shot its smooth and lofty trunk high into the
air, there the bamboo waved its leafy ostrich plumes, and all about and
around the soil was spread like an Indian shawl, with many a gorgeous
flower and many a splendid fruit. Arthur thought of the garden of Eden
and the Isles of the Blest, and whilst his eyes, accustomed to nothing
better than our poor English roses, were still fixed upon the blazing
masses of pomegranate flower, and his senses were filled with the sweet
scent of orange and magnolia blooms, the oxen halted before the portico
of a stately building, white-walled and green-shuttered like all
Madeira houses.
Then the slaves of the chariot assisted him to descend, whilst other
slaves of the door bowed him up the steps, and he stood in a great cool
hall, dazzling dark after the brilliancy of the sunlight. And here no
slave awaited him, but the princess of this fair domain, none other
than Mildred Carr herself, clad all in summer white, and with a smile
of welcome in her eyes.
“I am so glad that you have come. How do you like Madeira? Do you find
it very hot?”
“I have not seen much of it yet; but this place is lovely, it is like
fairyland, and, I believe, that you,” he added, with a bow, “are the
fairy queen.”
“Compliments again, Mr. Heigham. Well, I was the sleeping beauty last
time, so one may as well be a queen for a change. I wonder what you
will call me next?”
“Let me see: shall we say—an angel?”
“Mr. Heigham, stop talking nonsense, and come into the drawing-room.”
He followed her, laughing, into an apartment that, from its noble
proportions and beauty, might fairly be called magnificent. Its ceiling
was panelled with worked timber, and its floor beautifully inlaid with
woods of various hue, whilst the walls were thickly covered with
pictures, chiefly sea-pieces, and all by good masters. He had, however,
but little time to look about him, for a door opened at the further end
of the room, and admitted the portly person of Miss Terry, arrayed in a
gigantic sun hat and a pair of green spectacles. She seemed very hot,
and held in her hand a piece of brown paper, inside of which something
was violently scratching.
“I’ve caught him at last,” she said, “though he did avoid me all last
year. I’ve caught him.”
“Good gracious! caught what?” asked Arthur, with great interest.
“What! why him that Mildred wanted,” she replied, regardless of grammar
in her excitement. “Just look at him, he’s beautiful.”
Thus admonished, Arthur carefully undid the brown paper, and next
moment started back with an exclamation, and began to dance about with
an enormous red beetle grinding its jaws into his finger.
“Oh, keep still, do, pray,” called Miss Terry, in alarm, “don’t shake
him off on any account, or we shall lose him for the want of a little
patience, as I did when he bit my finger last year. If you’ll keep him
quite still, he won’t leave go, and I’ll ring for John to bring the
chloroform bottle.”
Arthur, feeling that the interests of science were matters of a higher
importance than the well-being of his finger, obeyed her injunction to
the letter, hanging his arm (and the beetle) over the back of a chair
and looking the picture of silent misery.
“Quite still, if you please, Mr. Heigham, quite still; is not the
animal’s tenacity interesting?”
“No doubt to you, but I hope your pet beetle is not poisonous, for he
is gnashing his pincers together inside my finger.”
“Never mind, we will treat you with caustic presently. Mildred, don’t
laugh so much, but come and look at him; he’s lovely. John, please be
quick with that chloroform bottle.”
“If this sort of thing happens often, I don’t think that I should
collect beetles from choice, at least not large ones,” groaned Arthur.
“Oh, dear,” laughed Mrs. Carr, “I never saw anything so absurd. I don’t
know which looks most savage, you or the beetle.”
“Don’t make all that noise, Mildred, you will frighten him, and if once
he flies we shall never catch him in this big room.”
Here, fortunately for Arthur, the servant arrived with the required
bottle, into which the ferocious insect was triumphantly stoppered by
Miss Terry.
“I am so much obliged to you, Mr. Heigham, you are a true collector.”
“For the first and last time,” mumbled Arthur, who was sucking his
finger.
“I am infinitely obliged to you, too, Mr. Heigham,” said Mrs. Carr, as
soon as she had recovered from her fit of laughing; “the beetle is
really very rare; it is not even in the British Museum. But come, let
us go in to luncheon.”
After that meal was over, Mrs. Carr asked her guest which he would like
to see, her collection of beetles or of mummies.
“Thank you, Mrs. Carr, I have had enough of beetles for one day, so I
vote for the mummies.”
“Very well. Will you come, Agatha?”
“Now, Mildred, you know very well that I won’t come. Just think, Mr.
Heigham: I only saw the nasty things once, and then they gave me the
creeps every night for a fortnight. As though those horrid Egyptian
‘fellahs’ weren’t ugly enough when they were alive without going and
making great skin and bone dolls of them—pah!”
“Agatha persists in believing that my mummies are the bodies of people
like she saw in Egypt last year.”
“And so they are, Mildred. That last one you got is just like the boy
who used to drive my donkey at Cairo—the one that died, you know—I
believe they just stuffed him, and said that he was an ancient king.
Ancient king, indeed!” And Miss Terry departed, in search for more
beetles.
“Now, Mr. Heigham, you must follow me. The museum is not in the house.
Wait, I will get a hat.”
In a minute she returned, and led the way across a strip of garden to a
detached building, with a broad verandah, facing the sea. Scarcely ten
feet from this verandah, and on the edge of the sheer precipice, was
built a low wall, leaning over which Arthur could hear the wavelets
lapping against the hollow rock two hundred feet beneath him. Here they
stopped for a moment to look at the vast expanse of ocean, glittering
in the sunlight like a sea of molten sapphires and heaving as gently as
an infant’s bosom.
“It is very lovely; the sea moves just enough to show that it is only
asleep.”
“Yes; but I like it best when it is awake, when it blows a hurricane—
it is magnificent. The whole cliff shakes with the shock of the waves,
and sometimes the spray drives over in sheets. That is when I like to
sit here; it exhilarates me, and makes me feel as though I belonged to
the storm, and was strong with its strength. Come, let us go in.”
The entrance to the verandah was from the end that faced the house, and
to gain it they passed under the boughs of a large magnolia-tree. Going
through glass doors that opened outwards into the verandah, Mrs. Carr
entered a room luxuriously furnished as a boudoir. This had apparently
no other exit, and Arthur was beginning to wonder where the museum
could be, when she took a tiny bramah key from her watch-chain, and
with it opened a door that was papered and painted to match the wall
exactly. He followed her, and found himself in a stone passage, dimly
lighted from above, and sloping downwards, that led to a doorway graven
in the rock, on the model of those to be seen at the entrance of
Egyptian temples.
“Now, Mr. Heigham,” she said, flinging open another door, and stepping
forward, “you are about to enter ‘The Hall of the Dead.’”
He went in, and a strange sight met his gaze. They were standing in the
centre of one side of a vast cave, that ran right and left at right
angles to the passage. The light poured into it in great rays from
skylights in the roof, and by it he could see that it was hollowed out
of the virgin rock, and measured some sixty feet or more in length, by
about forty wide, and thirty high. Down the length of each side of the
great chamber ran a line of six polished sphinxes, which had been hewn
out of the surrounding granite, on the model of those at Carnac, whilst
the walls were elaborately painted after the fashion of an Egyptian
sepulchre. Here Osiris held his dread tribunal on the spirit of the
departed; here the warrior sped onward in his charging chariot; here
the harper swept his sounding chords; and here, again, crowned with
lotus flowers, those whose corpses lay around held their joyous
festivals.
In the respective centres of each end of the stone chamber a colossus
towered in its silent and unearthly grandeur. That to the right was a
statue of Osiris, judge of the souls of the dead, seated on his
judgment-seat, and holding in his hand the source and the bent-headed
sceptre. Facing him at the other end of the hall was the effigy of the
mighty Ramses, his broad brow encircled by that kingly symbol which few
in the world’s history have worn so proudly, and his noble features
impressing those who gaze upon them from age to age with a sense of
scornful power and melancholy calm, such as does not belong to the
countenance of the men of their own time. And all around, under this
solemn guardianship, each upon a polished slab of marble, and enclosed
in a case of thick glass, lay the corpses of the Egyptian dead, swathed
in numberless wrappings, as in their day the true religion that they
held was swathed in symbols and in mummeries.
Here were to be found the high-priest of the mysteries of Isis, the
astronomer whose lore could read the prophecies that are written in the
stars, the dark magician, the renowned warrior, the noble, the musician
with his cymbals by his side, the fair maiden who had—so said her cedar
coffin-boards—died of love and sorrow, and the royal babe, all sleeping
the same sleep, and waiting the same awakening. This princess must have
been well known to Joseph, that may have been her who rescued Moses
from the waters, whilst the babe belongs to a dynasty of which the
history was already merging into tradition when the great pyramid
reared its head on Egypt’s fertile plains.
Arthur stood, awed at the wonderful sight.
“Never before,” said he, in that whisper which we involuntarily use in
the presence of the dead, “did I realize my own insignificance.”
The thought was abruptly put, but the words represented well what was
passing in his mind, what must pass in the mind of any man of culture
and sensibility when he gazes on such a sight. For in such presences
the human mite of to-day, fluttering in the sun and walking on the
earth that these have known and walked four thousand years ago, must
indeed learn how infinitely small is the place that he occupies in the
tale of things created; and yet, if to his culture and sensibility he
adds religion, a word of living hope hovers on those dumb lips. For
where are the spirits of those that lie before him in their eternal
silence! Answer, withered lips, and tell us what judgment has Osiris
given, and what has Thoth written in his awful book? Four thousand
years! Old human husk, if thy dead carcass can last so long, what limit
is there to the life of the soul it held?
“Did you collect all these?” asked Arthur, when he had made a
superficial examination of the almost countless treasures of the
museum.
“Oh, no; Mr. Carr spent half his long life, and more money than I can
tell you, in getting this collection together. It was the passion of
his life, and he had this cave hollowed at enormous cost, because he
thought that the air here would be less likely to injure them than the
English fogs. I have added to it, however. I got those papyri and that
beautiful bust of Berenice, the one in black marble. Did you ever see
such hair?”
Arthur thought to himself that he had at that moment some not far from
his heart that must be quite as beautiful, but he did not say so.
“Look, there are some curious things;” and she opened an air-tight case
that contained some discoloured grains and a few lumps of shrivelled
substance.
“What are they?”
“This is wheat taken from the inside of a mummy, and those are supposed
to be hyacinth bulbs. They came from the mummy-case of that baby
prince, and I have been told that they would still grow if planted.”
“I can scarcely believe that: the principle of life must be extinct.”
“Wise people say, you know, that the principle of life can never become
extinct in anything that has once lived, though it may change its form;
but I do not pretend to understand these things. However, we will
settle the question, for we will plant one, and, if it grows, I will
give the flower to you. Choose one.”
Arthur took the biggest lump from the case, and examined it curiously.
“I have not much faith in your hyacinth; I am sure that it is dead.”
“Ah! but many things that seem more dead than that have the strangest
way of suddenly breaking into life,” she said, with a little sigh.
“Give it to me; I will have it planted;” and then, with a quick glance
upward, “I wonder if you will be here to see it bloom.”
“I don’t think that either of us will see it bloom in this world,” he
answered, laughing, and took his leave.