A week or so after the departure of Lord Minster, Mildred suggested
that they should, on the following day, vary their amusements by going
up to the Convent, a building perched on the hills some thousand feet
above the town of Funchal, in palanquins, or rather hammocks swung upon
long poles. Arthur, who had never yet travelled in these luxurious
conveyances, jumped at the idea, and even Miss Terry, when she
discovered that she was to be carried, made no objection. The party was
completed by the addition of a newly-married couple of whom Mrs. Carr
had known something at home, and who had come to Madeira to spend the
honeymoon. Lady Florence also had been asked, but, rather to Arthur’s
disappointment, she could not come.
When the long line of swinging hammocks, each with its two sturdy
bearers, were marshalled, and the adventurous voyagers had settled
themselves in them, they really formed quite an imposing procession,
headed as it was by the extra-sized one that carried Miss Terry, who
complained bitterly that “the thing wobbled and made her feel sick.”
But to Arthur’s mind there was something effeminate in allowing
himself, a strong, active man, to be carted up hills as steep as the
side of a house by two perspiring wretches; so, hot as it was, he, to
the intense amusement of his bearers, elected to get out and walk. The
newly-married man followed his example, and for a while they went on
together, till presently the latter gravitated towards his wife’s
palanquin, and, overcome at so long a separation, squeezed her hand
between the curtains. Not wishing to intrude himself on their conjugal
felicity, Arthur in his turn gravitated to the side of Mrs. Carr, who
was being lightly swung along in the second palanquin some twenty yards
behind Miss Terry’s. Shortly afterwards they observed a signal of
distress being flown by that lady, whose arm was to be seen violently
agitating her green veil from between the curtains of her hammock,
which immediately came to a dead stop.
“What is it?” cried Arthur and Mildred, in a breath, as they arrived on
the scene of the supposed disaster.
“My dear Mildred, will you be so kind as to tell that man” (pointing to
her front bearer, a stout, flabby individual) “that he must not go on
carrying me. I must have a cooler man. It makes me positively ill to
see him puffing and blowing and dripping under my nose like a fresh
basted joint.”
Miss Terry’s realistic description of her bearer’s appearance, which
was, to say the least of it, limp and moist, was no exaggeration. But
then she herself, as Arthur well remembered, was no feather-weight,
especially when, as in the present case, she had to be carted up the
side of a nearly perpendicular hill some miles long, a fact very well
exemplified by the condition of the bearer.
“My dear Agatha,” replied Mildred, laughing, “what is to be done? Of
course the man is hot, you are not a feather-weight; but what is to be
done?”
“I don’t know, but I won’t go on with him, it’s simply disgusting; he
might 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’t
go on till he is cool, and that’s flat.”
“He will take hours to cool, and meanwhile we are broiling on this hot
road. You really must come on, Agatha.”
“I have it,” said Arthur. “Miss Terry must turn herself round with her
head towards the back of the hammock, and then she won’t see him.”
To this arrangement the aggrieved lady was after some difficulty
persuaded to accede, and the procession started again.
Their destination reached, they picnicked as they had arranged, and
then separated, the bride and bridegroom strolling off in one
direction, and Mildred and Arthur in another, whilst Miss Terry mounted
guard over the plates and dishes.
Presently Arthur and Mildred came to a little English-looking grove of
pine and oak, that extended down a gentle slope and was bordered by a
steep bank, at the foot of which great ferns and beautiful Madeira
flowers twined themselves into a shelter from the heat. Here they sat
down and gazed at the splendid and many-tinted view set in its
background of emerald ocean.
“What a view it is,” said Arthur. “Look, Mildred, how dark the clumps
of sugar-cane look against the green of the vines, and how pretty the
red roofs of the town are peeping out of the groves of fruit-trees. Do
you see the great shadow thrown upon the sea by that cliff? how deep
and cool the water looks within it, and how it sparkles where the sun
strikes.”
“Yes, it is beautiful, and the pines smell sweet.”
“I wish Angela could see it,” he said, half to himself. Mildred, who
was 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 resting on
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 the Abbey
House, and saying—what I often think when I look at anything beautiful
and full of life—that it depressed one to know that all this was so
much food for death, and its beauty a thing that to-day is and
to-morrow is not.”
“And what did she say?”
“She said that to her it spoke of immortality, and that in everything
around 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, pulsing
existence of the hour, and of the beautiful world that pessimists like
yourself and mystics like your Angela think so poorly of, but which is
really so glorious and so rich in joy. Why, this sunlight and those
flowers, and the wide sparkle of that sea, are each and all a
happiness, 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 whilst it is
far off? And, as for life after death, it is a faint, vague thing, more
likely to be horrible than happy. This world is our only reality, the
only thing that we can grasp; here alone we _know_ that we can enjoy,
and yet how we waste our short opportunities for enjoyment! Soon youth
will have slipped away, and we shall be too old for love. Roses fade
fastest, Arthur, when the sun is bright; in the evening when they have
fallen, and the ground is red with withering petals, do you not think
we shall wish that we had gathered more?”
“Yours is a pleasant philosophy, Mildred,” he said, struggling faintly
in his own mind against her conclusions.
But at this moment, somehow, his fingers touched her own and were
presently locked fast within her little palm, and for the first time in
his life they sat hand in hand. But, happily for him, he did not
venture 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 vexation in
her voice and a good many shades upon her face, “or she will be
blundering down here. I will come, too; it is time for tea.”
On arriving at the spot whence the sounds proceeded, they found Miss
Terry surrounded by a crowd of laughing and excited bearers, and
pouring out a flood of the most vigorous English upon an unfortunate
islander, who stood, a silver mug in each hand, bowing and shrugging
his shoulders, and enunciating with every variety of movement
indicative 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 charged
him at once with my umbrella, but he dodged and I fell down, and the
umbrella 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 only
wants to wash the things out.”
“Then I should like to know why he could not tell me so in plain
English,” said Miss Terry, retiring discomfited amidst shouts of
laughter from the whole party, including the supposed thief.
After tea they all set out on a grand beetle-hunting expedition, and so
intent were they upon this fascinating pursuit that they did not note
the flight of time, till suddenly Mildred, pulling out her watch, gave
a pretty cry of alarm.
“Do you know what time it is, good people? Half-past six, and the
Custances are to dine with us at a quarter-past-seven. It will take us
a good hour to get down; what _shall_ we do?”
“I know,” said Arthur, “there are two sledges just below; I saw them as
we came up. They will take us down to Funchal in a quarter of an hour,
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 principle
of the bullock car, with the difference that they travel down the
smooth, stone-paved roadways by their own momentum, guided by two
skilled conductors, each with one foot naked to prevent his slipping,
who hold the ropes, and when the sledge begins to travel more swiftly
than they can follow, mount upon the projecting ends of the runners and
are carried with it. By means of the swift and exhilarating rush of
these sledges, the traveller traverses the distance, that it takes some
hours to climb, in a very few minutes. Indeed, his journey up and down
may be very well compared with that of the well-known British sailor
who took five hours to get up Majuba mountain, but, according to his
own forcibly told story, came down again with an almost incredible
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 the
top of a mountain to the bottom like a balloon with the gas out, and
had also heard of occasional accidents in connection with them. Stoutly
she vowed that nothing should induce her to trust her neck to one of
them.
“But you must, Agatha, or else be left behind. They are as safe as a
church, and I can’t leave the Custances to wait till half-past eight
for dinner. Come, get in. Arthur can go in front and hold you; I will
sit behind.”
Thus admonished—Miss Terry entered groaning, Arthur taking his seat
beside her, and Mrs. Carr hers in a sort of dickey behind. The newly-
married pair, who did not half like it, possessed themselves of the
smaller sledge, determined to brave extinction in each other’s arms.
Then the conductors seized the ropes, and, planting their one naked
foot firmly before them, awaited the signal to depart.
“Stop,” said Miss Terry, lifting the recovered umbrella, “that man has
forgotten to put on his shoe and stocking on his right leg. He will cut
his foot, and, besides, it doesn’t look respectable to be seen flying
through a place with a one-legged ragamuffin——”
“Let her go,” shouted Arthur, and they did, to some purpose, for in a
minute they were passing down that hill like a flash of light. Woods
and houses appeared and vanished like the visions of a dream, and the
soft air went singing away on either side of them as they clove it,
flying downwards at an angle of thirty degrees, and leaving nothing
behind them but the sound of Miss Terry’s lamentations. Soon they
neared 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 the
wind; away they sped after it like an eagle in pursuit; _crack_ went
the little sledge into the corner, and out shot the happy pair; _crash_
went the big sledge into it, and Arthur became conscious of a wild
yell, of a green veil fluttering through the air, and of a fall as on
to a feather-bed. Miss Terry’s superior weight had brought her to her
mother earth the first, and he, after a higher heavenward flight, had
lit upon the top of her. He picked her up and sat her down against a
wall to recover her breath, and then fished Mildred, dirty and bruised,
but as usual laughing, out of a gutter; the loving pair had already
risen and in an agony of mutual anxiety were rubbing each other’s
shins. And then he started back with a cry, for there before him,
surveying the disaster with an air of mingled amusement and
benevolence, stood—Sir John and Lady Bellamy.
Had it been the Prince and Princess of Evil—if, as is probable, there
is a Princess—Arthur could scarcely have been more astounded. Somehow
he had always in his thoughts regarded Sir John and Lady Bellamy, when
he thought about them at all, as possessing indeed individual
characters and tendencies, but as completely “adscripti glebae” of the
neighbourhood of the Abbey House as that house itself. He would as soon
have expected to see Caresfoot’s Staff re-rooted in the soil of
Madeira, as to find them strolling about Funchal. He rubbed his eyes;
perhaps, he thought, he had been knocked silly and was labouring under
a hallucination. No, there was no doubt about it; there they were, just
the same as he had seen them at Isleworth, except that if possible Sir
John looked even more like a ripe apple than usual, while the sun had
browned his wife’s Egyptian face and given her a last finish as a
perfect type of Cleopatra. Nor was the recognition on his side only,
for next second his hand was grasped first by Sir John and then by Lady
Bellamy.
“When we last met, Mr. Heigham,” said the gentleman, with a benevolent
beam, “I think I expressed a wish that we might soon renew our
acquaintance, but I little thought under what circumstances our next
meeting would take place,” and he pointed to the overturned sledges and
the prostrate sledgers.
“You have had a very merciful escape,” chimed in Lady Bellamy,
cordially; “with so many hard stones about, affairs might have ended
differently.”
“Now then, Mr. Heigham, we had better set to and run, that is, if
Agatha has got a run left in her, or we shall be late after all. Thank
goodness nobody is hurt; but we must find a hammock for Agatha, for to
judge from her groans she thinks she is. Is my nose—— Oh, I beg your
pardon,” and Mrs. Carr stopped short, observing for the first time that
he was talking to strangers.
“Do not let me detain you, if you are in a hurry. I am so thankful that
nobody is hurt,” said Lady Bellamy. “I believe that we are stopping 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 before he
went on, whether or no it exceeded the strict letter of his agreement
with Philip; so, calling to Mrs. Carr that he was coming, he said, 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,” and he
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 he had
never sat hand in hand with Mildred Carr.