The Actress in High Life Part 13

"A truly apostolic aim!" Lady Mabel exclaimed, looking triumphantly round on her old follower.

The descending road here narrowed suddenly, and Moodie reined back his horse, silent in the sad conviction that Lady Mabel had already got beyond that half-way house between the region of evangelical purity and idolatrous Rome.

In the narrow valley, overgrown with shrubs and brushwood at the foot of the hill, they came suddenly on a large number of swine luxuriating in the cool waters, or on the shady banks of a brook. The swine vanished instantly amidst the thickets, though hundreds were still heard grunting and squealing around them, and the travelers might have taken them for wild denizens of the wilderness, had not a fierce growl attracted their attention, and they saw on the opposite bank a man reclining under a _carob_ tree, one hand resting on the neck of a huge dog, who yet showed two savage rows of teeth, and fixed his vigilant and angry eyes on the intruders. The wild air of the master delighted Lady Mabel, for there was mingled with it a savage dignity as he stretched his manly form on the wolf-skin spread out under him, and gazed calmly on the party drawing near. While their horses stopped to drink at the stream, they observed him narrowly--he receiving this attention with stoic indifference. A long gun lay on the ground beside him, and his garments, made chiefly of the dressed skins of animals, defied brier or thorn.

"Are we on the road to Evora?" L'Isle asked, by way of opening a parley; but the man merely waved his hand gently toward the hill and path before them. Resolved to make him speak, L'Isle asked, "What game have you killed to-day?"--for he saw some animal lying in the moss at the foot of the tree. The hunter silently held up a lynx and an otter, which he had lately snared, and seemed to forget the presence of strangers in contemplating his game. Despairing of extracting a word, the travelers rode on.

"What a silent, unsocial wretch!" Mrs. Shortridge exclaimed. "He seems to prefer the company of a savage hound, and his dead game, to that of living Christians."

"He thinks a heretic no Christian, if he thinks at all," said L'Isle; and he called to the guide, to ask what this wild man was.

"He is a swine-herd."

"Indeed!" said Lady Mabel. "I took him for a bandit, or a bold hunter, at least."

"But he is the swine-herd of the great monastery of the Paulists, who own half the lands on the southern slope of Serra d'Ossa. He is a matchless hunter too, spending fewer nights under a roof than on the mountain-side, where all the game is as much his, as the swine he keeps is the property of the good fathers. They have the best bacon in all Portugal, and plenty of it, as many a poor man can tell; and they know this man's value, for he were a bold thief that pinched the ear of his smallest pig."

"As soon as I get back to Elvas," said Lady Mabel, "I will send Major Warren to make his acquaintance. The major will be charmed with him. For his ambition is to take all sorts of game, in every possible way; and though I have, or might have had, the history of all his hunts by heart, neither lynx or otter has yet figured in the scene.

You remember, Colonel L'Isle, how much satisfaction he expressed when you lately hinted at the probability of our brigade finding itself in the north of Portugal early in the coming campaign. I at first thought that the soldier saw some military advantage in the movement, but found it was only the sportsman's delight at the hope of visiting Truzos Montes, and killing one of the few Caucasian goats that yet linger on the most inaccessible heights there."

"No gamester," said L'Isle, "is more a slave to the dice. That at this time a soldier should be so little 'lost in the world's debate' as to be eager, above all things, to kill a goat!"

They had now reached a point which gave them a fine view of the southern side of Serra d'Ossa, so different from the northern, being fertile, and showing many a cultivated spot upon its lower slopes, while the light, fleecy clouds, gathering before the gentle western wind, now veiled and then revealed the overhanging dark blue ridge that crowned the scene. The guide pointed out the broad possessions of the great monastery of the Paulists. At a distance, on the right, rose Evora Monte, built like a watch-tower on a lofty hill; and, to the south, the monastic towers and Gothic spires of Evora, the city of monks, raised high above the plain, could be seen from afar.

"Why," asked Mrs. Shortridge, "do these people always build their towns on hills?"

"That is a true English question," answered L'Isle. "At home, in our bleak northern climate, we naturally seek sheltered situations. These people as naturally select an airy site, above the parching heat and poisoned air of the valleys. In founding colonies in tropical countries we English, and the Dutch, have constantly blundered, acting as if still at home; and choosing low and pestilential spots, establish only hospitals and graveyards where we meant to build towns; while the Spaniards and Portuguese, from the instinct of habit, select the most salubrious situations within their reach. Moreover, high points are safer from attack, and stronger to resist an enemy; and the Christians of the peninsula were taught by seven centuries of conflict with the Moors, that the safety of a man's house is the first point, its convenience the second. Now, we islanders have long been but a half military people. Content with incuring the guilt of war abroad, we have carefully abstained from bringing it home to our own doors."

"But we never wage any but just wars," said Lady Mabel.

"We, at least," said L'Isle, "always find some plausible grounds on which to justify our wars--to ourselves."

They were now on the outskirts of the undulating plain, on which a rich soil overlying the granite rocks extends from Evora southward to the city of Beja. The signs of cultivation and population multiplied as they went on. The fields became larger and more frequent; detached farm houses were seen on either hand, and they fell in on the road with many peasants riding large and spirited a.s.ses, or driving oxen all light bays with enormous horns, and so sleek and well grown, that the commissary gazed on them with admiring eye and watering mouth, and p.r.o.nounced them equally fit for the yoke or the shambles.

It was a relief to find themselves once more in a cultivated country, and Lady Mabel gazed round, admiring the prospect. "There is," she observed, "one drawback to the landscape. At home, one of the most enlivening features in our rural scenes, are the white sheep scattered on the hills, but here they are almost black."

"But the goats you see are generally white," answered L'Isle. "It is, too, the more picturesque animal, and well supplies what is wanting in the sheep."

Evora was at hand. L'Isle launched out into an erudite discourse on the aqueduct of Sertorius, which, stretching its long line of arches from the neighboring hills, was converging with their road to the city. As they entered it he was giving Lady Mabel all the pros and cons, as to whether it was really the work of that redoubtable Roman.

The commissary was luxuriously antic.i.p.ating the shade and rest before him, when to his surprise and regret, L'Isle led the party another way, and halted them before a small but striking building, which here crowned the aqueduct at its termination in the city.

"Look, Lady Mabel. Observe it well, Mrs. Shortridge. This castellum is a miniature embodiment of Roman taste and skill in architecture. This is no ruin calling upon the imagination to play the hazardous part of filling up the gaps made by the hand of time. We see it as the Moor, the Goth, the Roman saw it, save the loss of a few vases which adorned the depressed parapet, and the scaling plaster which here and there betrays that the builder used that cheap but immortal material, the Roman brick."

Much did Lady Mabel admire this architectural gem, scarcely tarnished by the elements in nineteen centuries, and much more would L'Isle have found to say of it, when the commissary, impatiently fanning himself with his hat, ventured to ask, "how much longer shall we stay broiling in the noon-day sun, staring at this Roman sentry-box?"

"Sentry-box!" said Mrs. Shortridge, with a puzzled air, "were the Romans a gigantic people?"

"There were giants in those days," said Lady Mabel, gravely, gazing on the castellum. But a crowd of idlers and beggars began to collect around the cavalcade, and turning, they rode off, and were soon enjoying the shelter, if not the more substantial hospitality, of the _Estalagem de San Antonio_.

CHAPTER X.

Tell me, recluse Monastic, can it be A disadvantage to thy beams to s.h.i.+ne?

A thousand tapers may gain light from thee: Is thy light less or worse for lighting mine?

If, wanting light, I stumble, shall Thy darkness not be guilty of my fall?

Make not thyself a prisoner, thou art free: Why dost thou turn thy palace to a jail?

Thou art an eagle; and befits it thee To live immured like a cloister'd snail?

Let toys seek corners: things of cost Gain worth by view; hid jewels are but lost.

Francis Quarles.

In the afternoon, the commissary going out in search of the objects of his journey, grain and bullocks for the troops, L'Isle strolled out with the ladies to survey the curiosities of Evora, and Moodie followed closely Lady Mabel's steps.

"If I am to play the part of _cicerone_," said L'Isle, "I will begin by reminding you that the history of many races and eras is indissolubly connected with the Peninsula, and especially the southern part of it. Here we find the land of _Tars.h.i.+sh_ of Scripture, so well known to the Phoenicians, who, in an adjacent province of Spain, built another Sidon, and founded Cadiz before Hector and Achilles fought at Troy.

"Yet they found the Celto-Iberian here before them--who after that built Evora, according to Portuguese historians, some eight or ten centuries before Christ. The Greeks, too, stretched their commerce and their colonies to this land. The Carthaginians made themselves masters of this country. The Romans turned them out, to give place in time to the Vandals; who were driven over into Africa by the Goths--whose dominion was, at the end of two centuries, overthrown by the Arabs; who, after a war of seven centuries, were expelled in turn by the descendants of their Gothic rivals. The land still shows many traces of these revolutions. In the neighborhood of this city the rude altar of the Druid still commemorates the early Celt. The majesty of the Roman temple here forms a singular contrast with the delicacy of the Arabian monuments, and the Gothic architecture with the simplicity of the modern edifices."

"A truly Ciceronian introduction to your duties as _cicerone_," said Lady Mabel. "But I have yet to see much that you describe so eloquently. To my eye the most striking feature of Evora at this day is its ecclesiastical aspect. It is full of churches, chapels, and monkish barracks, and seems to be held by a strong garrison of these soldiers of the Pope."

"Baal's prophets are four hundred and fifty men," said old Moodie, in loud soliloquy behind.

"I have often heard the Pope called Antichrist, but never knew him dubbed Baal before," said Lady Mabel. "Although not one of his flock, I cannot but feel a deep interest in the head of the Latin Church, now that the venerable old man is so shamefully treated; carried off and kept a prisoner in France, to be bullied, threatened, and cajoled, with a view to appropriate the papal influence to the furtherance of this Corsican's ambition."

"You had better leave all those feelings to his own flock, my lady."

"Is it possible, Moodie," Lady Mabel retorted, "that you do not know that we are on the Pope's side in this quarrel? We are bound to sympathize with him, not only in politics but in religion, against his unbelieving enemies. We must forget all minor differences, and think only of the faith we hold in common. Even you must admit that it is better to see the Almighty dimly through mists and clouds, or even though our view be obstructed by a crowd of doubtful saints, than to turn our backs on the Christian G.o.dhead, and deny his existence like these G.o.dless French. I a.s.sure you I have become a strong friend to the Pope."

"The more is the pity," groaned Moodie. "But what is written is written."

"I know, Moodie, that you believe that we who have deserted the Kirk of Scotland, and crossed the border in search of a church, have already traveled a long way toward Rome."

"About half-way, my lady. The church of England is no abiding place, but merely an inn on that road."

"Why," exclaimed Mrs. Shortridge, "is Moodie so much dissatisfied with our church? For my part it does not seem natural to me for genteel people to go any where else."

"You may find, madam," said Moodie, "a great many genteel people going some where else. Gentry is no election to grace."

Mrs. Shortridge resented the insinuation by indignant silence; but Lady Mabel, who had her own object in exasperating Moodie's sectarian zeal, now asked him: "What is the last symptom of backsliding you have seen in me?"

"It seems to me, my lady, that you are getting strangely intimate with the Romish faith and rites, for one who does not believe and practice them. It is a sinful curiosity, like that of the children of Israel, which first made them familiar with the abominations among their neighbors, then led them to practice the idolatries they had witnessed."

"But may there not be something sinful, Moodie, in denouncing the errors and corruptions of the Romanists, without having thoroughly searched them out?"