The Actress in High Life Part 19

Lady Mabel was delighted with the method and the scale of this branch of rural industry. "We have Moors enough in Scotland. Indeed, I wish so much of them had not fallen to papa's lot. But when I go home, I will endeavor to turn these wastes to better account, and rival our friend here, by establis.h.i.+ng a bee farm on a grand scale."

"You must not forget to carry the rosemary and other choice plants with you," said Mrs. Shortridge, "and some beams of the Portuguese sun, to secure two seasons of flowers in the year."

While she was yet speaking, a snake glided slowly across her path. Starting back in terror, she uttered a little scream, and begged L'Isle to kill it without delay.

"How shall I kill it," he said, laughing at her alarm. "Shall I bruise the serpent's head with my heel, or shall I draw my sword on a reptile?"

"In any way you please, so you do kill it," she exclaimed, seeing the snake stop and raise its head to look at them.

But the farmer now interfered: "Spare his life, this is one of my best friends. You see that he shows not the least fear. While providing for himself, he works too for me, destroying the frogs and lizards that make sad havoc among my bees."

Returning to the house, they found in front of it the mules laden and the horses saddled for the journey. Observing that Moodie looked particularly rueful this morning, Lady Mabel asked him what was the matter, and he admitted that he was very unwell. "But with bad food and worse water, loss of sleep and worry of mind, a man soon gets worn out in this unhappy country; You, my lady, look jaded enough, too."

"Oh, never mind my looks," she answered. "I feel perfectly well, and can travel on until I get tanned as brown as these Moorish girls. But I am afraid Moodie, you are paying the penalty for last night's insult to the patron saint of the house. Some saints are at times a little revengeful, and your troubled mind and aching body you may owe to him. Pray take the earliest opportunity to make amends."

"Who is the offended saint?" asked Mrs. Shortridge.

"I suppose," said Lady Mabel, "it is St. Meliboeus, the patron saint of bees and honey."

"Take care," said L'Isle, laughing. "You are usurping the Pope's function, and adding a new name to the calender."

"But what shall we do for Moodie?" she asked. "Whether stricken by the saint or not, something must be done to relieve him."

"Your saint had nothing to do with my sickness," said Moodie, angrily. "I was unwell yesterday, though I did not complain. I am sure I was poisoned by that rascally innkeeper at Evora, with some trash he called wine, which was nothing but drugged vinegar."

"If bad wine has poisoned you, good wine is the only antidote," said L'Isle, and bidding his servant bring a cup and bottle from the hamper, he persuaded Moodie to try the remedy.

Moodie tasted it with some hesitation, but the wine was excellent, and in truth, just what he stood in need of. On being urged, he took a good draught, and at L'Isle's suggestion, stowed away the bottle in his valise for future reference.

Their host would receive but a small remuneration for the well timed hospitality he had afforded the travelers. But the ladies had selected sundry spare articles from their wardrobe, and delighted his daughters with the gift of finery, such as they had never possessed before. As L'Isle was turning to ride off, the farmer said, with a courteous air: "When you or any friend of yours come this way, pray remember, sir, you have a poor house here, always at your command."

CHAPTER XIII.

Crabbed age and youth cannot live together; Youth is full of pleasure, age is full of care; Youth like summer morn, age like winter weather; Youth like summer brave, age like winter bare.

Youth is full of sport, age's breath is short; Youth is nimble, age is lame; Youth is hot and bold, age is weak and cold; Youth is wild, and age is tame.

Shakspeare.

They had ridden but a short way, when Lady Mabel, reining in her horse, placed herself along side of Moodie, to ask how he felt now.

She feared lest he might be too unwell to undergo the fatigues of the day. But, thanks to L'Isle's prescription, Moodie was already another man. He sat bolt upright in the saddle, with a martial air, and looked around as if ready for any emergency. She no longer felt any fears for him. His curiosity, too, seemed to be awakened, for he said: "You are a great botanist, my lady, and know every kind of plant. Pray, what were those two tall trees near the farmer's house, with bare trunks and feathery tops?"

"They are date palms," said Lady Mabel. "You see more and more of them the nearer you get to Africa."

"Indeed!" said Moodie, with more astonishment than the information seemed to warrant.

"Yes," she continued; "and they bear a luscious and nouris.h.i.+ng fruit, which, in the deserts of Africa, is the chief food of the people. It is to them what oatmeal is to the Scot."

"And how far are we from Africa?" said Moodie, dreading the answer, but striving to put the question in an indifferent tone.

"Why some people say that Africa begins at the Pyrenees, but Colonel L'Isle, who knows the country thoroughly, says that the Sierra de Monchique is the true boundary. The kingdom of Algarve, lying beyond those mountains, is, in climate, soil, and vegetation, truly African; and it is only the strip of salt water that separates it from Morocco, that prevents its forming part of that country."

"I never heard of the kingdom of Algarve before," said Moodie, pondering the information he had received. "How far are we from it?"

"We will not find it a long day's journey to one of the chief towns,"

said Lady Mabel. "Its name--its name is Mauropolis, the city of the Moors. It lies on the border of Algarve, just like Berwick on the border of Scotland, only Algarve is a beautiful and fertile country, which poor Scotland is only to a Scot."

"It is an ill bird that fouls its own nest," growled Moodie in an undertone. "Have you forgot, my lady, that you are yourself a Scot!"

"A Scot!" said she, deliberately, as if now first considering that point. "My mother was an Englishwoman. So far, I am not a Scot."

"But your father! Your father, my lady!" Moodie angrily exclaimed. "He is a true Scot, and knows the worth of old Scotland well."

"He does, indeed," said she; "and has always thought it an excellent country--to come from; so he marched off at eighteen, and has seldom been back there since."

"So we are on the borders of Africa!" exclaimed Moodie, speaking to himself aloud.

"Why, do you not see Moodie, that the people grow darker, each day, as we travel on?"

"The innkeeper at Evora is dark enough," said he, that truth flas.h.i.+ng on him; "but the farmer and his girls are browner still by many a shade."

"You will think them fair," said Lady Mabel, "when you have traveled far enough onward," and, leaving him confused and alarmed, she cantered on to join Mrs. Shortridge.

Now Moodie was a shrewd man, perhaps a little too shrewd, with an eye open to human depravity; he was learned, too, in his way; many a heavy tome of Scotch controversial divinity had been thumbed by him as carefully as his Bible; but he never dwelt on any thing he found there not sustaining his preconceived notions. He involuntarily slighted those parts even of Scripture that he could not wrest to his purpose.

Many an historical and traditionary fact, too, floated loosely on his mind; but his geographical education had been sadly neglected. A topographical knowledge of half a dozen s.h.i.+res, a general notion of the shape of old Scotland, and a hazy outline of the sister kingdom, made up all he had attained to. Had you laid before him a chart of the sea coast of Bohemia, first discovered by our great dramatist, it would not have startled him in the least, and he was ready to look for Africa at any point of the compa.s.s.

He now saw clearly that this journey was part of a plot. L'Isle had first won the confidence of father and daughter; then availing himself of her love for botany, had habituated her to his presence and protection on short excursions around Elvas; he had used the commissary and his wife to beguile Lady Mabel from her father's protection, under pretence of a short journey to a neighboring town.

Having now rid himself of the innocent commissary, he was leading her by devious paths far beyond pursuit. Lady Mabel seemed bewitched, and no longer saw with her own eyes. Was Mrs. Shortridge a simple gull or something worse? "Perhaps," thought Moodie, "Colonel Bradshawe is right;" for an eaves-dropping valet had given his scandal wings.

Moodie was not deeply read in romance; but he remembered the traditionary tale of the young Scotch heiress, who, while a party of her retainers were escorting her to the house of her guardian, was set upon by a neighboring chieftain at the head of his clan. Her followers, concealing the girl under a huge caldron, stood round it for her defence, and when the last man had fallen the victorious suitor carried off the girl, and married her for her lands. This, too, was a plain case of abducting an heiress, not indeed by violence, but with consummate art. Setting aside the rare attractions of the lady, in Moodie's estimation the prize was immense. L'Isle, with all his lofty airs, was but a commoner, with perhaps no fortune but his sword, a mere adventurer, and Lord Strathern's broad acres were an irresistible temptation; though, in truth, this coveted domain counted thousands of acres of sheep-walk to the hundreds of plough land.

Having made this matter clear to his own mind, Moodie cursed in his heart Lord Strathern's fatuity and the facile disposition Lady Mabel had so unexpectedly betrayed. But, though sorely troubled, he was not a man to despair. He resolved to watch L'Isle closely, and to rack his own invention for some way to foil his schemes, while taking care not to betray the least suspicion of them.

Meanwhile, Lady Mabel, as she could not herself visit Algarve, was extracting from L'Isle a full account of that delightful region. And he described well the picturesque and lofty mountains that cut off its narrow strip of maritime territory from the rest of Portugal; its tropical vegetation and its animal life, its perpetual summer, tempered alternately by the ocean and the mountain breeze. When he mentioned any fact which Lady Mabel thought might liken this region to Africa in Moodie's imagination, she would turn and repeat it for his benefit. Thus, the wolves and the wild boars abounding in the mountains, became to him nameless monsters infesting the country; the serpents were magnified in bulk, and the poisonous lizard redoubled its venom. The fevers common there grew more malignant; the plague broke out occasionally, and a few earthquakes were thrown in to enliven the narrative. She garbled it too, sadly, suppressing the fact that Algarve had furnished a large proportion of the adventurers who had discovered and conquered India and Brazil, and its mariners of this day, the best in Portugal, she converted into Barbary corsairs. She said nothing about Algarve having been the first province to rise against the French, or about the half-dozen adventurous seamen who had sailed boldly in a fis.h.i.+ng-boat to Brazil, to inform the regent that Portugal still dared to struggle and to hope.

L'Isle overheard and wondered at her perversion of his account of Algarve, without detecting her motive, and Moodie thought her evident desire to visit this region proved her little less than mad, for only her version of select portions of L'Isle's remarks reached his ears.

"It is singular," said L'Isle, "that the Moors should have been more thoroughly driven out of Algarve, the most southern province, than out of others north of it. Its maritime position perhaps made it easy for them to escape to Morocco. But the people are not so dark as in Alemtejo, and many of the women are beautifully fair. In fact, I have seen as lovely faces there as in any country but our own."

Lady Mabel took care not to enlighten Moodie by repeating to him this observation, and he remained convinced that L'Isle had been describing beforehand to the ladies the country he was leading them to.

"The heat, fatigue, and discomfort of the last four days had almost worn out Mrs. Shortridge's strength, and now suggested to Lady Mabel some sage reflections on travel in general, as the result of her experience.

"Traveling is certainly one of the pleasures of life, with this peculiarity, that it affords most pleasure when the journey is over.

With all the interest and excitement attending it, there are some drawbacks. We gratify our curiosity at times at no little cost. In the search after strange manners, the traveler may have to adopt them; in inspecting the various conditions under which men can live, we must often subject ourselves to these conditions, and thus acquire practical experience in place of theoretical knowledge. We cannot, like Don Cleofus, command the services of Asmodeus, to enable us to be lookers-on without becoming parties in the scenes we witness. To know how the Arab lives, we must for a time become an Arab; and to pry into the inner mysteries of Hottentot life, you must make yourself a Hottentot."