"Wait here, please. I wish a word in private with Lady Vyell—if you will forgive me, ma'am?"
"Why to be sure, sir," she answered, wondering. As he turned, she walked on with him. After some fifty paces she confronted him under the pale-green dappled shadows of the alley.
"Something has happened? Is it serious?"
"Yes."
Looking straight before him, as they resumed their walk, he told her; in brief words that seemed, as he jerked them out, to be pumped from him; that made no single coherent sentence, and yet were concise as a despatch.
This in substance was Mr. Hanmer's report:—
They had remained on the terrace, seated, as she had left them— Captain and Mrs. Harry, Miss Quiney and he. The Captain was talking. . . . A servant brought word that two ladies—Mr. Hanmer could not recall their names—had called from Boston and desired to see Mrs. Vyell. "Surely," protested Mrs. Harry, "they must mean Lady Vyell?" The servant was positive: Mrs. Captain Vyell had been the name. "They are anxious to pay their respects," suggested Miss Quiney. "Anxious indeed! Why we landed but a few hours since. They must have galloped." Miss Quiney was sent to offer them refreshment and discover their business.
Miss Quiney goes off on her errand. Minutes elapse. After many minutes the servant reappears. "Miss Quiney requests Mrs. Harry's attendance." Mrs. Harry goes.
"Women are queer cattle," says Captain Harry sententiously, and talks on. By-and-by the servant appears yet again. Mr. Hanmer is sent for. "Why, 'tis like a story I've read somewhere, about a family sent one by one to stop a tap running," says Captain Harry. "But I'll say this for the women—I'm always the last they bother."
Following the servant, Mr. Hanmer—so runs his report—enters the great drawing-room to find Miss Quiney stretched on the sofa, her face buried in cushions, and Mrs. Harry standing erect and confronting two ladies of forbidding aspect.
"In brief," concluded Mr. Hanmer, "she sent me for you."
"To confront them with her? I wonder what their business can be. . . ." With a glance at his side face she added, "I think you have not told me all."
"No," he confessed haltingly; "that's true enough. In—in fact
Mrs. Harry first employed me to show them to the door."
"And—on the way?"
"Honoured madam—"
"They said—what?—quoting whom?"
"A Mr. Silk. But again—ma'am, I am awkward at lying. I cannot manage it."
"I like you the better for it."
"I did not believe—"
"Yet you might have believed. . . . And suppose that it were true, sir?"
He shook visibly. "I pray God to protect you," he managed to stammer.
Her face was white, but she answered him steadily. "I believe you to be a good man. . . . I will go to them. Where is Dicky?" She glanced back along the alley.
"Dicky will stand where I have told him to stand: for hours unless I release him."
"Is that your naval code? And can a mere child stand by it so proudly? Oh," cried she, fixing on him a look he remembered all his days, "would to God I had been born a man!"
Yet fearlessly as any man she entered the great drawing-room. Miss Quiney still lay collapsed on her sofa. Mrs. Harry bent over her, but faced about.
"Mr. Hanmer managed, then, to discover you? Two women have called. . . . I thought it better, their errand being what it was, to show them out."
"I can guess it, perhaps," Ruth caught her up with a wan smile.
"They managed to talk with him before he gave them their dismissal."
"Forgive me. I had not thought them capable—"
"There is nothing to forgive," Ruth assured her. "They probably told the truth, and the fault is mine."
Miss Quiney, incredulous, slowly raised her face from the cushions and stared.
"Yes," repeated Ruth, "the fault is entirely mine."
"But—but," stammered Mrs. Harry. Ruth had turned away towards the window, and the honest wife stared after her, against the light. "But he will make it all right when he returns." She started, of a sudden. Cunningly as Ruth had dressed herself, Mrs. Harry's eyes guessed the truth. "You have written to him?"
"No."
"He guesses, at least?"
"No."
"Then you are writing to him? There is enough time."
"No."
Their eyes met. Ruth's asked, "And if I do not, will you?" Mrs.
Harry's met them for a few seconds and were abased.
No words passed between these two. "And as for my Tatty," said Ruth lightly, stepping to the sofa, "she is not to write. I command her."
Chapter V.
A PROLOGUE TO NOTHING.
Sir Oliver wrote cheerfully. His lawsuit was prospering; his prompt invasion of the field had disconcerted Lady Caroline and her advisers. He had discovered fresh evidence of the late Sir Thomas's insanity. His own lawyers were sanguine. They assured him that, at the worst, the Courts would set aside the '46 will, and fall back for a compromise on that of '44, which gave the woman a life-interest only in the Downton estates. But the case would not be taken this side of the Long Vacation. . . . (It was certain, then, that he could not return in time.)
He had visited Bath and spent some weeks with his mother. He devoted a page or two to criticism of that fashionable city. It was clear he had picked up many threads of his younger days; had renewed old acquaintances and made a hundred new ones. Play, he wrote, was a craze in England; the stakes frightened a home-comer from New England. For his part, he gamed but moderately.
"As for the women, you have spoilt me for them. I see none—not one, dearest—who can hold a taper to you. Their artifices disgust me; and I watch them, telling myself that my Ruth has only to enter their balls and assemblies to triumph—nay, to eclipse them totally. . . . And this reminds me to say that I have spoken with my mother. She had heard, of course, from more than one. Lady Caroline's account had been merely coarse and spiteful; but by that lady's later conduct she was already prepared to discount it. The pair encountered in London, at my Lady Newcastle's; and my mother (who has spirit) refused her bow. Diana, to her credit, appears to have done you more justice; and Mrs. Harry writes reams in your praise. To be sure my mother, not knowing Mrs. Harry, distrusts her judgment for a Colonial's; but I vow she is the soundest of women. . . . In short, dear Ruth, we have only to regularise things and we are forgiven. The good soul dotes on me, and imagines she has but a few years left to live. This softens her. . . .
"There is a rumour—credit it, if you can!—that my Aunt Caroline intends to espouse a Mr. Adam Rouffignac, a foreigner and a wine merchant; I suppose (since he is reputed rich) to arm herself with money to pay her lawyers. What his object can be, poor man, I am unable to conjecture. It is a strange world. While her ugly mother mates at the age of fifty, Diana—who started with all the advantages of looks—withers upon the maiden thorn. . . ."
His letters, every one, concluded with protests of affection. She rejoiced in them. But it was now certain that he could not return in time.
At length, as her day drew near, she wrote to him, conceiving this to be her duty. She knew that he would take a blow from what she had to tell, and covered it up cleverly, lightly covering all her own dread. She hoped the child would be a boy. ("But why do I hope it?" she asked herself as she penned the words, and thought of Dicky.)
She said nothing of Mr. Silk's treachery; nothing of her ostracism. This indeed, during the later months, she recognised for the blessing it was.
Towards the end she felt a strange longing to have her mother near, close at hand, for her lying-in. The poor silly soul could not travel alone. . . . Ruth considered this and hit on the happy inspiration of inviting Mrs. Strongtharm to bring her. Tatty was useless, and among the few women who had been kind Mrs. Strongtharm had been the kindest.
Ruth sat down and penned a letter; and Mrs. Strongtharm, unable to write, responded valiantly. She arrived in a cart, with Mrs. Josselin at her side; and straightway alighting and neglecting Mrs. Josselin, sailed into a seventh heaven of womanly fuss. She examined the baby-clothes critically.
"Made with your own pretty hands—and with all this mort o' servants tumblin' over one another to help ye. But 'tis nat'ral. . . . It came to nothing with me, but I know. And expectin' a boy o' course. . . . La! ye blushin' one, don't I know the way of it!"
When Ruth's travail came on her the three were gathered by candle-light in Sir Oliver's dressing-room. Beyond the door, attended by her maid and a man-midwife, Ruth shut her teeth upon her throes. So the prologue opens.
PROLOGUE.
Mrs. Josselin sits in an armchair, regarding the pattern of the carpet with a silly air of self-importance; Mrs. Strongtharm in a chair opposite. By the window Miss Quiney, pulling at her knuckles, stares out through the dark panes. A clock strikes.
Miss Quiney (with a nervous start). Four o'clock . . . nine hours. . . .
Mrs. Strongtharm. More. The pains took her soon after six. . . . When her bell rang I looked at the clock. I remember.
Miss Quiney. My poor Ruth.
Mrs. Strongtharm. Eh? The first, o' course. . . . But a long labour's often the best.
Miss Quiney. There has not been a sound for hours.
Mrs. Strongtharm. She's brave. They say, too, that a man-child, if he's a real strong one, will wait for daybreak; but that's old women's notions, I shouldn't wonder.
Miss Quiney. A man-child? You think it will be?
Mrs. Strongtharm. (She exchanges a glance with Mrs. Josselin, who has looked up suddenly and nods.) Certain.
Mrs. Josselin. Certain, certain! I wonder, now, what they'll call him! After Sir Oliver, perhaps. Her own father's name was Michael. In my own family—that's the Pocock's—the men were mostly Williams and Georges. Called after the Kings of England.
Mrs. Strongtharm (yawns). Oliver Cromwell was as good as any king, and better. Leastways my mar says so. For my part, I don't bother my head wi' these old matters.
Miss Quiney (tentatively). Do you know, I was half hoping it would be a girl, just like my darling. (To herself) God forgive me, when I think—
Mrs. Strongtharm (interrupting the thought). She won't be hoping for a girl. You don't understand these things, beggin' your pardon, ma'am.
Miss Quiney (meekly). No.
Mrs. Josselin. You don't neither of you understand. How should you?
Mrs. Strongtharm (stung). I understand as well as a fool, I should hope! (She turns to Miss Quiney.) 'Twas a nat'ral wish in ye, ma'am, that such a piece o' loveliness should bear just such another. But wait a while; they're young and there's time. . . . My lady wants a boy first, like every true woman that loves her lord. There's pride an' wonder in it. All her life belike she's felt herself weak an' shivered to think of battles, and now, lo an' behold, she's the very gates o' strength with an army marchin' forth to conquer the world. Ha'n't ye never caught your breath an' felt the tears swellin' when ye saw a regiment swing up the street?
Miss Quiney. Ah! . . . Is it like that?
Mrs. Strongtharm. It's like all that, an' more. . . . An' though I've wet my pillow afore now with envy of it, I thank the Lord for givin' a barren woman the knowledge.
A pause.
Mrs. Josselin (with a silly laugh). What wonderful patterns they make in the carpets nowadays! Look at this one, now—runnin' in and out so that the eye can't hardly follow it; and all for my lord's dressing-room! Cost a hundred pound, I shouldn't wonder.
Mrs. Strongtharm. T'cht!
Mrs. Josselin. He must be amazing fond of her. Fancy, my Ruth! . . . It's a pity he's not home, to take the child.
Mrs. Strongtharm. Men at these times are best out o' the way.
Mrs. Josselin. When my first was born, Michael—that's my husband—stayed home from sea o' purpose to take it. My first was a girl. No, not Ruth; Ruth was born after my man died, and I had her christened Ruth because some one told me it stood for "sorrow." I had three before Ruth—a girl an' two boys, an' buried them all.
Miss Quiney (listening). Hush!
Mrs. Josselin (not hearing, immersed in her own mental flow). If you call a child by a sorrowful name it's apt to ward off the ill-luck. Look at Ruth now—christened in sorrow an' married, after all, to the richest in the land!
Miss Quiney (in desperation). Oh, hush! hush!
A low moan comes from the next room. The women sit silent, their faces white in the dawn that now comes stealing in at the window, conquering the candle-light by little and little.
Mrs. Strongtharm. I thought I heard a child's cry. . . . They cry at once.
Miss Quiney. Ah? I fancied it, too—a feeble one.
Mrs. Strongtharm (rising after a long pause). Something is wrong. . . .
As she goes to listen at the door, it opens, and the man-midwife enters. His face is grave.
Mrs. Strongtharm and Miss Quiney ask him together, under their breath—Well?
He answers: It is well. We have saved her life, I trust.
—And the child?
—A boy. It lived less than a minute. . . . Yet a shapely child. . . .
Miss Quiney clasps her hands. Shall she, within her breast, thank God? She cannot. She hears the voice saying,—
A very shapely child. . . . But the labour was difficult. There was some pressure on the brain, some lesion.
They would have denied Ruth sight of the poor little body, but she stretched out her arms for it and insisted. Then as she held it, flesh of her flesh, to her breast and felt it cold, she—she, whose courage had bred wonder in them, even awe—she who had smiled between her pangs, murmuring pretty thanks—wailed low, and, burying her face, lay still.
Chapter VI.
CHILDLESS MOTHER.
In the sad and cheated days that followed, she, with the milk of motherhood wasting in her, saw with new eyes—saw many things heretofore hidden from her.
She did not believe in any scriptural God. But she believed—she could not help believing—in an awful Justice overarching all human life with its law, as it overarched the very stars in heaven. And this law she believed to rest in goodness, accessible to the pure conscience, but stern against the transgressor.
Because she believed this, she had felt that the marriage rite, with such an one as Mr. Silk for intercessor between her vows and a clean Heaven, could be but a sullying of marriage. Yes, and she felt it still; of this, at any rate, she was sure.
But in her pride—as truly she saw it, in her pride of chastity—she had left the child out of account. He had inherited the world to face, not armed with her weapon of scorn. He had not won freedom through a scourge. He had grown to his fate in her womb, and in the womb she had betrayed him.
She had been blind, blind! She had lived for her lover and herself. To him and to her (it had seemed) this warm, transitory life belonged; a fleeting space of time, a lodge leased to bliss. . . . Now she fronted the truth, that between the selfish rapture of lovers Heaven slips a child, smiling at the rapture, provident for the race. Now she read the secret of woman's nesting instinct; the underlying wisdom stirring the root of it, awaking passion not to satisfy passion, but that the world may go on and on to its unguessed ends. Now she could read ironically the courtship of man and maid, dallying by river-paths, beside running water, overarched by boughs that had protected a thousand such courtships. Each pair in turn—poor fools! —had imagined the world theirs, compressed into their grasp; whereas the wise world was merely flattering, coaxing them, preparing for the child.
She should have been preparing, too. For what are women made but for motherhood? She? She had had but a hand to turn, a word to utter, and this child—healthily begotten, if ever child was, and to claim, if ever child could, the best—has broken triumphing through the gate of her travail. But she had betrayed him. The new-born spirit had arrived expectant, had cast one look across the threshold, and with one wail had fled. Through and beyond her answering wail, as she laid her head on the pillow, she heard the lost feet, the small betrayed feet, pattering away into darkness.
When she grew stronger, it consoled her a little to talk with Mrs. Strongtharm; not confiding her regrets and self-reproaches, but speculating much on this great book of Maternity into which she had been given a glimpse. The metaphor was Mrs. Strongtharm's.
"Ay," said that understanding female, "a book you may call it, and a wonderful one; written by all the women, white an' black, copper-skin an' red-skin, that ever groped their way in it with pangs an' joys; for every one writes in it as well as reads. What's more, 'tis all in one language, though they come, as my man would say, from all the airts o' Babel."
"I wonder," mused Ruth, "if somewhere in it there's a chapter would tell me why, when I lie awake and think of my lost one, 'tis his footsteps I listen for—feet that never walked!"
"Hush ye, now. . . . Isn't it always their feet, the darlings! Don't the sound of it, more'n their voices, call me to door a dozen times a day? . . . I never bore child; but I made garments in hope o' one. Tell me, when you knitted his little boots, wasn't it different from all the rest?"
"Ah, put them away!"
"To be sure, dearie, to be sure—all ready for the next."
"I shall never have another child."
Mrs. Strongtharm smiled tolerantly.
"Never," Ruth repeated; "never; I know it."
With the same assurance of prophesy she answered her lover on his return, a bare two months later.
"But you must have known. . . . Even your letters kept it secret. Yet, had you written, the next ship would have brought me. Surely you did not doubt that?"
"No."
"Then why did you not tell me?"
It was the inevitable question. She had forestalled it so often in her thoughts that, when uttered at last, it gave her a curious sensation of re-enacting some long-past scene.
"I thought you did not care for children."
He was pacing the room. He halted, and stared at her in sheer astonishment. Many a beautiful woman touches the height of her beauty after the birth of her first child; and this woman had never stood before him in loveliness that, passing comprehension, so nearly touched the divine. But her perversity passed comprehension yet farther.
"Do you call that an answer?" he demanded.
"No. . . . You asked, and I had to say something; but it is no answer. Forgive me. It was the best I could find."
He still eyed her, between wrath and admiration.
"I think," she said, after a pause, "the true answer is just that I did wrongly—wrongly for the child's sake."
"That's certain. And your own?"
"My own? That does not seem to me to count so much. . . . Neither of us believe that a priest can hallow marriage; but once I felt that the touch of a certain one could defile it."
"You have never before reproached me with that."
"Nor mean to now. I chose to run from him; but, dear, I do not ask to run from the consequences."
"The blackguard has had his pretty revenge. Langton told me of it.
. . . All the prudes of Boston gather up their skirts, he says."
"What matter? Are we not happier missing them? . . . Honester, surely, and by that much at any rate the happier."
"Marry me, and I promise to force them all back to your feet."
She laughed quietly, almost to herself, a little wearily. "Can you not see, my dear lord, that I ask for no such triumph? It is good of you—oh, I see how good!—to desire it for me. But did we want these people in our forest days?"
"One cannot escape the world," he muttered.
"What? Not when the world is so quick to cast one out?"
"Ruth," he said, coming and standing close to her, "I do not believe you have given me the whole answer even yet. The true reason, please!"
"Must a woman give all her reasons? . . . She follows her fate, and at each new turning she may have a dozen, all to be forgotten at the next."
"I am sure you harbour some grudge—some reservation?" His eyes questioned her.
She kept him waiting for some seconds.
"My lord, women have no consistency but in this—they are jealous when they love. As your slave, I demand nothing; as your mistress, I demand only you. But if you wished also to set me high among women, you should have given me all or nothing. . . . You did not offer to take me with you. I was not worthy to be shown to that proud folk, your family."
"If you had breathed a wish, even the smallest hint of one—"
"I had no wish, save that you should offer it. I had only some pride. I was—I am—well content; only do not come back and offer me these women of Boston, or anything second best in your eyes, however much the gift may cost you."
"Have it as you will," said he, after a long pause. "I was wrong, and I beg your pardon. But I was less wrong than your jealousy suspects. My family will welcome you. Forgive me that I thought it well—that it might save you any chance of humiliation—to prepare them."
She swept him a curtsy. "They are very good," she said.
He detected the irony, yet he persisted, holding his temper well in
control. "But all this presupposes, you see, that you marry me.
. . . Ruth, you confess that you were wrong, for the child's sake.
He is dead; and, on the whole, so much the better, poor mite!
But for another, should another be born—"
"There would be time," she said quietly. "But we shall never have another."
She had hardened strangely. It was as if the milk of motherhood, wasting in her, had packed itself in a crust about her heart. He loved her; she never ceased to love him; but whereas under the public scourge something had broken, letting her free of opinion, to love the good and hate the evil for their own sakes, under this second and more mysterious visitation, she kept her courage indeed, but certainty was hers no longer; nor was she any longer free of opinion, but hardened her heart against it consciously, as against an enemy.
Not otherwise can I account for the image of Ruth Josselin—my Lady Vyell—Lady Good-for-Nothing—as under these various names it flits, for the next few years, through annals, memoirs, correspondence, scandalous chronicles; now vindicated, now glanced at with unseemly nods and becks, anon passionately denounced; now purely shining, now balefully, above and between the clouds of those times; but always a star and an object of wonder.
"In all Massachusetts," writes the Reverend Hiram Williams, B.D., in his tract entitled A Shoe Over Edom, "was no stronghold of Satan to compare with that built on a slope to the rearward of Boston, by Sir O—V—, Baronet. Here with a woman, born of this Colony, of passing wit and beauty (both alike the dower of the Evil One), he kept house to the scandal of all devout persons, entertaining none but professed Enemies of our Liberties, Atheists, Gamesters." Here one may pause and suspect the reverend castigator of confusing several dislikes in one argument. It is done sometimes, even in our own day, by religious folk who polemise in politics. "Cards they played on the Sabbath. Plays they rehearsed too, by Shakespeare, Dryden, Congreve and others, whose names may guarantee their lewdness. . . . The woman, I have said, was fair; but of that sort their feet go down ever to Hell. . . ."
"My Noll's Belle Sauvage," writes Langton to Walpole, "continues a riddle. I shall never solve it; yet 'till I have solved it, expect me not. 'Tis certain she loves him; and because she loves him, her loyalty allows not hint of sadness even to me, his best friend. Guess why she likes me? 'Tis because (I am sure of it) even in the old clouded days I never took money from Noll, nor borrowed a shilling that I didn't repay within the week. She is a puzzle, I say; but somehow the key lies in this—She is a woman that pays her debts. . . .
"They sail for Europe next spring; but not, as I understand for England, where his family may not receive her, and where by consequence he will not expose her to their slights. If I have made you impatient to set eyes on her, you must e'enpack and pay that long-promised visit to Florence. She is worth the pilgrimage."
They sailed in the early spring of 1752—Langton with them—and duly came to port in the Tagus. From Lisbon, after a short stay, they travelled to Paris, and from Paris across Switzerland to Italy, visiting in turn Turin, Venice, Ravenna, Florence, Rome, Naples, and returning from that port to Lisbon, where (the situation so charmed him) Sir Oliver bought and furnished a villa overlooking the Tagus.
As she passes through Paris we get a glimpse of her in the Memoirs of that agreeable rattle, Arnauld de Jouy:—
"I must not forget to tell of an amusing little comedy of error played at the Opera-house this season (1752). All Paris was agog to see the famous English—or rather Irish—beauty, my Lady Coventry, newly arrived in the Capital. She was one of the Gunning sisters, over whom all London had already lost its head so wildly that I am assured a shoemaker made no small sum by exhibiting their pantoufles to the porters and chairmen at three sous a gaze. . . . On a certain night, then, it was rumoured that she would pay her first visit to the Opera, but none could say whose box she intended to honour. . . . It turned out to be the Duc de Luxembourg's, and upon my lady's entrance—a little late—the whole audience rose to its feet in homage, though Visconti happened just then to be midway in an aria. The singer faltered at the interruption, perplexed; her singing stopped, and lifting her eyes to the lines of boxes she dropped a sweeping curtsy—to the opposite side of the house! . . . All eyes turn, and behold! right opposite to Beauty Number One, into the box of Mme. the Marechale de Lowendahl there has just entered a Beauty Number Two, not one whit less fair—so regally fair indeed that the audience, yet standing, turn from one to the other, uncertain which to salute. Nor were they resolved when the act closed.
"Meantime my Lady Coventry (for in truth the first-comer was she) has sent her husband out to the foyer, to make enquiries. He comes back and reports her to be the lady of Sir Oliver Vyell, a great American Governor [But here we detect de Jouy in a slight error] newly arrived from his Province; that she is by birth an American, and has never visited Europe before. 'She must be Pocahontas herself, then,' says the Gunning, and very prettily sends across after the second Act, desiring the honour of her acquaintance. Nay, this being granted, she goes herself to the Marechale's box, and the pair sit together in full view of all—a superb challenge, and made with no show (as I believe, with no feeling) of jealousy. The audience is entranced. . . . Report said later that my Lady Coventry, who was given to these small indiscretions, asked almost in her first breath, yet breathlessly, her rival's age. Her rival smiled and told it. 'Then you are older than I—but how long have you been married?' This, too, her rival told her. 'Then,' sighed the Gunning, 'perhaps you do not love your lord as I love my Cov. It is wearing to the looks; but 'faith, I cannot help it!'"
From Lisbon Sir Oliver paid several flying visits to England, where his suit against Lady Caroline still dragged. Nor was it concluded until the summer of 1754, when the Gentleman's Magazine yields us the following:—
"June 4. A cause between Sir Oliver Vyell, baronet, plaintiff, and the lady of the late Sir Thomas, defendant, was tried in the Court of King's Bench by a special jury. The subject of the litigation was a will of Sir Thomas, suspected to be made when he was not of sound mind; and it appeared that he had made three—one in 1741, another in 1744, and a third in 1746. In the first only a slender provision was made for his lady, by the second a family estate in Devonshire, of 2,000 pounds per annum, was given her for her life, and by the third the whole estate real and personal was left to be disposed of at her discretion without any provision for the heir-at-law. The jury, after having withdrawn for about an hour and a half, set aside the last and confirmed the second. In a hearing before the Lord Chancellor some time afterwards in relation to the costs, it was deemed that the lady should pay them all, both at common law and in Chancery."
Thus we see our Ruth by glimpses in these years which were far from being the best or the happiest of her life—"an innocent life, yet far astray."
But one letter of hers abides, kept in contrition by the woman to whom she wrote it, and in this surely the noble soul of her mounts like a star and shines, clear above the wreck of her life.
"MY DEAR MRS. HARRY,—"
"Let there be few words between us. My child did not live, and I shall never bear my lord another; therefore, outside of your feelings and mine, what you did or left undone matters not at all in this world. You talk of the next, and there you go beyond me; but if there be a next world, and my forgiveness can help you there, why you had it long ago! . . . 'You reproach yourself constantly,' you say; 'You should have told him and you withheld the letter;' 'You did wickedly'—and the rest. Oh, my dear, will you not see that I have been a mother, too, and understand? In your place I might have done the same. Yes? No? At any rate I should have known the temptation.
"Yours affectionately,"
"RUTH."
The law business ended, she and Sir Oliver sailed for Boston and spent a few weeks at Eagles. He had resigned the Collectorship of Customs, but with no intent to return and make England his home. His attachment to Eagles had grown; he was perpetually making fresh plans to enlarge and adorn it; and he proposed henceforth, laying aside all official cares, to spend his summers in New England, his winters in the softer climate of Lisbon.
BOOK V.
LISBON AND AFTER.
Chapter I.
ACT OF FAITH.
"How is it possible for people beholding that glorious Body to worship any Being but Him who created it!"
Upon the stroke of nine the procession filed forth into the Square. It was headed by about a hundred Dominican friars, bearing the banner of their founder. The banner displayed a Cross betwixt an olive tree and a sword, with the motto Justitia et Misericordia.
After the Dominicans walked five penitents; each with a sergeant, or Familiar, attending. Two of the five wore black mitres, three were bareheaded. All walked barefoot, clad in black sleeveless coats, and each carried a long wax candle. These had escaped the extreme sentence; and after them came one, a woman, who had escaped it also, but narrowly and as by fire. In token of this her black robe was painted over with flames, having their points turned downward. Close behind followed three men on whose san-benitos the flames pointed upward. These were being led to execution, and two of them who carried boards on their breasts, painted with dogs and serpents, were to die by fire for having professed doctrines contrary to the Faith; the third, who carried no board, was a "Relapsed," and might look forward to the privilege of being strangled before being cast to the flame. To each of these three was assigned, in addition to the Familiar, a couple of Jesuit priests, to walk beside him and exhort him.
The man who was to be strangled came through the gateway of the Inquisition Office with his gaze bent to the ground, apparently insensible to the mob of sightseers gathered in the Square. The doomed man who followed—a mere youth, and, by his face, a Jew—stared about him fiercely and eagerly. The third was an old man, with ragged hair and beard, and a complexion bleached by long imprisonment in the dark. He halted, blinking, uncertain how to plant his steps. Then, feeling rather than seeing the sun, he stretched up both arms to it, dropping his taper, calling aloud as might a preacher, "How is it possible for people, beholding that glorious Body, to worship any Being but Him who created it!"
A Jesuit at his side flung an arm across the old man's mouth; and as quickly the Familiar whipped out a cloth, pulled his head back, and gagged him. The young Jew had turned and was staring, still with his fierce, eager look. He was wheeled about and plucked forward.
Next through the gateway issued a troupe of Familiars on horseback, some of them nobles of the first families in Portugal; after them the Inquisitors and other Officers of the Court upon mules; last of all, amid a train of nobles, the Inquisitor-General himself on a white horse led by two grooms: his delicate hands resting on the reins, his face a pale green by reason of the sunlight falling on it through a silken scarf of that colour pendant over the brim of his immense black hat.
All this passed before Ruth's eyes, and close, as she sat in the mule-chaise beside Sir Oliver. She would have drawn the leathern curtains, but he had put out a hand forbidding this.
She could not at any rate have escaped hearing the old man's exclamation; for their chaise was jammed in the crowd beside the gateway. Her ears still kept the echo of his vibrant voice; almost she was persuaded that his eyes had singled her out from the crowd.
—And why not? Had not she, also, cause to know what cruelties men will commit in the name of religion?
Her heart was wrathful as well as pitiful. Her lord had given her no warning of the auto-da-fe, and she now suspected that in suggesting this Sunday morning drive he had purposely decoyed her to it. Presently, as the crowd began to clear, he confirmed the suspicion.
"Since we are here, we may as well see the sp—" He was going to say "sport," but, warned by a sudden stiffening of her body, he corrected the word to "spectacle." "They erect a grand stand on these occasions; or, if you prefer, we can bribe them to give room for the chaise."
He bent forward and called to the coachman, "Turn the mules' heads, and follow!"
"Indeed I will not," she said firmly. "Do you go—if such crimes amuse you. . . . For me, I shall walk home."
He shrugged his shoulders. "It is the custom of the country. . . . But, as for your walking, I cannot allow it for a moment. Juan shall drive you home."
She glanced at him. His eyes were fixed on the opposite side of the square, and she surprised in them a look of recognition not intended for her. Following the look, she saw a chaise much like their own, moving slowly with the throng, and in it a woman seated.
Ruth knew her. She was Donna Maria, Countess of Montalagre; and of late Sir Oliver's name had been much coupled with hers.
This Ruth did not know; but she had guessed for some time that he was unfaithful. She had felt no curiosity at all to learn the woman's name. Now an accident had opened her eyes, and she saw.
Her first feeling was of slightly contemptuous amusement. Donna Maria, youthful wife of an aged and enfeebled lord, passed for one of the extremely devout. She had considerable beauty, but of an order Ruth could easily afford to scorn. It was the bizarrerie of the affair that tickled her, almost to laughter—Donna Maria's down-dropt gaze, the long lashes veiling eyes too holy-innocent for aught but the breviary; and he—he of all men!—playing the lover to this little dunce, with her empty brain, her narrow religiosity!
But on afterthought, she found it somewhat disgusting too.
"I thank you," she said. "Juan shall drive me home, then. It will not, I hope, inconvenience you very much, since I see the Countess of Montalagre's carriage across the way. No doubt she will offer you a seat."
He glanced at her, but her face was cheerfully impassive.
"That's an idea!" he said. "I will run and make interest with her."
He alighted, and gave Juan the order to drive home. He lifted his hat, and left her. She saw Donna Maria's start of simulated surprise. Also she detected, or thought she detected, the sly triumph of a woman who steals a man.
All this she had leisure to observe; for Juan, a Gallician, was by no means in a hurry to turn the mules' heads for home. He had slewed his body about, and was gazing wistfully after the throng.
"Your Excellency, it would be a thousand pities!"
"Hey?"
"There has not been a finer burning these two years, they tell me. And that old blasphemer's beard, when they set a light to it! . . . I am a poor Gallego, your Excellency, and at home get so few chances of enjoyment. Also I have dropped my whip, and it is trodden on, broken. In the crowd at the Terreiro de Paco I may perchance borrow another."
Ruth alighted in a blaze of wrath.
"Wretched man," she commanded, "climb down!"
"Your Excellency—"
"Climb down! You shall go, as your betters have gone, to feed your eyes with these abominations. . . . Nay, how shall I scold you, who do what your betters teach? But climb down. I will drive the mules myself."
"His Excellency will murder me when he hears of it. But, indeed, was ever such a thing heard of?" Nevertheless the man was plainly in two minds.
"It is not for you to argue, but to obey my orders."
He descended, still protesting. She mounted to his seat, and took the reins and whip.
"The brutes are spirited, your Excellency. For the love of God have a care of them!"
For answer she flicked them with the whip—he had lied about the broken whip—and left him staring.
The streets were deserted. All Lisbon had trooped to the auto-da-fe. If any saw and wondered at the sight of a lady driving like a mere bolhero, she heeded not. The mules trotted briskly, and she kept them to it.
She had ceased to be amused, even scornfully. As she drove up the slope of Buenos Ayres—the favourite English suburb, where his villa stood overlooking Tagus—a deep disgust possessed her. It darkened the sunshine. It befouled, it tarnished, the broad and noble mirror of water spread far below.
"Were all men beasts, then?"
Chapter II.
DONNA MARIA.
They would dine at four o'clock. On Sundays Sir Oliver chose to dine informally with a few favoured guests; and these to-day would make nine, not counting Mr. Langton, who might be reckoned one of the household.
By four o'clock all had arrived—the British envoy, Mr. Castres, with his lady; Lord Charles Douglas, about to leave Lisbon after a visit of pleasure; Mrs. Hake, a sister of Governor Hardy of New York—she, with an invalid husband and two children, occupied a villa somewhat lower down the slope of Buenos Ayres; white-haired old Colonel Arbuthnot, doyen of the English residents; Mr. Hay, British Consul, and Mr. Raymond, one of the chiefs of the English factory, with their wives. . . . Ruth looked at the clock. All were here save only their host, Sir Oliver.
Mr. Langton, with Lord Charles Douglas, had returned from the auto-da-fe. Like his friend George Selwyn—friend these many years by correspondence only—Mr. Langton was a dilettante in executions and like horrors, and had taken Lord Charles to the show, to initiate him. He reported that they had left Sir Oliver in a press of the crowd, themselves hurrying away on foot. He would doubtless arrive in a few minutes. Mr. Langton said nothing of the executions.
Mr. Castres, too, ignored them. He knew, of course, that the auto-da-fe had taken place, and that the Court had witnessed it in state from a royal box. But his business, as tactful Envoy of a Protestant country, was to know nothing of this. He went on talking with Mrs. Hake, who—good soul—actually knew nothing of it. Her children absorbed all her care; and having heard Miriam, the younger, cough twice that morning, she was consulting the Envoy on the winter climate of Lisbon—was it, for instance, prophylactic against croup.
At five minutes past four Sir Oliver arrived. Before apologising he stood aside ceremoniously in the doorway to admit a companion—the Countess of Montalegre.
"I have told them," said he as Donna Maria tripped forward demurely to shake hands, "to lay for the Countess. The business was long, by reason of an interminable sermon, and at the end there was a crush at the exit from the Terreiro de Paco and a twenty good minutes' delay— impossible to extricate oneself. Had I not persuaded the Countess to drive me all the way home, my apologies had been a million instead of the thousand I offer."
Had he brought the woman in defiance? Or was it merely to discover how much, if anything, Ruth suspected? If to discover, his design had no success. Ruth saw—it needed less than half a glance—Batty Langton bite his lip and turn to the window. Lord Charles wore a faintly amused smile. These two knew, at any rate. For the others she could not be sure. She greeted Donna Maria with a gentle courtesy.
"We will delay dinner with pleasure," she said, "while my waiting-woman attends on you."
During the few minutes before the Countess reappeared she conversed gaily with one and another of her guests. Her face had told him nothing, and her spirit rose on the assurance that, at least, she was puzzling him.
Yet all the while she asked herself the same questions. Had he done this to defy her? Or to sound her suspicions?
In part he was defying her; as he proved at table by talking freely of the auto-da-fe. Donna Maria sat at his right hand, and added a detail here and there to his description. The woman apparently had no pity in her for the unhappy creatures she had seen slowly and exquisitely murdered. Were they not heretics, serpents, enemies of the true Faith?
"But ah!" she cried once with pretty affectation. "You make me forget my manners! . . . Am I not, even now, talking of these things among Lutherans? Your good lady, for instance?"
At the far end of the table, Ruth—speaking across Mr. Castres and engaging Mrs. Hake's ear, lest it should be attracted by this horrible conversation—discussed the coming war with France. She upheld that the key of it lay in America. He maintained that India held it—"Old England, you may trust her; money's her blood, and the blood she scents in a fight. She'll fasten on India like a bulldog." Colonel Arbuthnot applauded. "Where the treasure is," quoted Ruth, "there the heart is also. You give it a good British paraphrase. . . . But her real blood—some of the best of it—beats in America. There the French challenge her, and she'll have, spite of herself, to take up the challenge. Montcalm! . . . He means to build an empire there." "Pardon me"—Mr. Castres smiled indulgently—"you are American born, and see all things American in a high light. We skirmish there . . . backwoods fighting, you may call it."
"With a richer India at the back of the woods. Oh! I trust England, and Pitt, when his hour comes. England reminds me of Saul, always going forth to discover a few asses and always in the end discovering a kingdom. Other nations build the dream, dreams being no gift of hers. Then she steps in, thrusts out the dreamers, inherits the reality. America, though you laugh at it, has cost the best dreaming of two nations—Spain first, and now France—and the best blood of both. Bating Joan of Arc—a woman—France hasn't bred a finer spirit than Montcalm's since she bred Froissart's men. But to what end? England will break that great heart of his."
She was talking for talking's sake, only anxious to divert Mrs. Hake's ears from the conversation her own ears caught, only too plainly.
Mrs. Hake said, "I prefer to believe Mr. Castres. My brother writes that every one is quitting New York, and I'm only thankful-if war must come, over there—that we've taken our house on a three years' lease only. No one troubles about Portugal, and I must say that I've never found a city to compare with Lisbon. The suburbs! . . . Why, this very morning I saw the city itself one pall of smoke. You'd have thought a main square was burning. Yet up here, in Buenos Ayres, it might have been midsummer. . . . The children, playing in the garden, called me out to look at the smoke. Was there a fire? I must ask Sir Oliver."
Mrs. Hake had raised her voice; but Ruth managed to intercept the question.
All the while she was thinking, thinking to herself.—"And he, who can speak thus, once endured shame to shield me! He laughs at things infinitely crueller. . . . Yet they differ in degree only from what then stirred him to fight. . . ."
—"Have I then so far worsened him? Is the blame mine?"
—"Or did the curse but delay to work in him?—in him, my love and my hero? Was it foreordained to come to this, though I would at any time have given my life to prevent it?"
Again she thought.—"I have been wrong in holding religion to be the great cause why men are cruel,—as in believing that free-thought must needs humanise us all. Strange! that I should discover my error on this very day has showed me men being led by religion to deaths of torture. . . . Yet an error it must be. For see my lord—hear how he laughs as cruelly, even, as the devote at his elbow!"
They had loitered some while over dessert, and Ruth's eye sought Donna Maria's, to signal her before rising and leaving the gentlemen to their wine. But Donna Maria was running a preoccupied glance around the table and counting with her fingers. . . . Presently the glance grew distraught and the silly woman fell back in her chair with a cry.
"Jesus! We are thirteen!"
"Faith, so we are," said Sir Oliver with an easy laugh, after counting.
"And I the uninvited one! The calamity must fall on me—there is no other way!"
"But indeed there is another way," said Ruth, rising with a smile.
"In my country the ill-luck falls on the first to leave the table.
And who should that be, here, but the hostess?"
Chapter III.
EARTHQUAKE.
The auto-da-fe was but a preliminary to the festivities and great processions of All Saints. For a whole week Lisbon had been sanding its squares and streets, painting its signboards, draping its balconies and windows to the fourth and fifth stories with hangings of crimson damask. Street after street displayed this uniform vista of crimson, foil for the procession, with its riot of gorgeous dresses, gold lace, banners, precious stones.
Ruth leaned on the balustrade of her villa garden, and looked down over the city, from which, made musical by distance, the bells of thirty churches called to High Mass. Their chorus floated up to her on the delicate air; and—for the chimneys of Lisbon were smokeless, the winter through, in all but severest weather, and the citizens did their cooking over braziers—each belfry stood up distinct, edged with gold by the brilliant morning sun. Aloft the sky spread its blue bland and transparent; far below her Tagus mirrored it in a lake of blue. Many vessels rode at anchor there. The villas to right and left and below her, or so much of them as rose out of their embosoming trees, took the sunlight on walls of warm yellow, with dove-coloured shadows.
She was thinking. . . . He had tried to discover how much she suspected; and when neither in word or look would she lower her guard, he had turned defiant. This very morning he had told her that, if she cared to use it, a carriage was at her disposal. For himself, the Countess of Montalegre had offered him a seat in hers, and he had accepted. . . . He had told her this at the last moment, entering her room in the full court dress the state procession demanded; and he had said it with a studied carelessness, not meeting her eyes.
She had thanked him, and added that she was in two minds about going. She was not dressed for the show, and doubted if her maid could array her in time.
"We go to the Cathedral," said he. "I should recommend that or the
Church of St. Vincent, where, some say, the Mass is equally fine."
"If I go, I shall probably content myself with the procession."
"If that's so, I've no doubt Langton will escort you. He likes processions, though he prefers executions. To a religious service I doubt your bribing him."
Upon this they had parted, each well aware that, but a few weeks ago, this small expedition would have been planned together, discussed, shared, as a matter of course. At parting he kissed her hand—he had always exquisite manners; and she wished him a pleasant day with a voice quite cheerful and unconstrained.
From the sunlit terrace she looked almost straight down upon the garden of Mrs. Hake's villa. The two little girls were at play there. She heard their voices, shrill above the sound of the church bells. Now and again she caught a glimpse of them, at hide-and-seek between the ilexes.
She was thinking. If only fate had given her children such as these! . . . As it was, she could show a brave face. But what could the future hold?
She heard their mother calling to them. They must have obeyed and run to her, for the garden fell silent of a sudden. The bells, too, were ceasing—five or six only tinkled on.
She leaned forward over the balustrade to make sure that the children were gone. As she did so, the sound of a whimper caught her ear. She looked down, and spoke soothingly to a small dog, an Italian greyhound, a pet of Mr. Langton's, that had run to her trembling, and was nuzzling against her skirt for shelter. She could not think what ailed the creature. Belike it had taken fright at a noise below the terrace—a rumbling noise, as of a cart mounting the hill heavily laden with stones.
The waggon, if waggon it were, must be on the roadway to the left. Again she leaned forward over the balustrade. A faint tremor ran through the stonework on which her arms rested. For a moment she fancied it some trick of her own pulse.
But the tremor was renewed. The pulsation was actually in the stonework. . . . And then, even while she drew back, wondering, the terrace under her feet heaved as though its pavement rested on a wave of the sea. She was thrown sideways, staggering; and while she staggered, saw the great flagstones of the terrace raise themselves on end, as notes of a harpsichord when the fingers withdraw their pressure.
She would have caught again at the balustrade. But it had vanished, or rather was vanishing under her gaze, toppling into the garden below. The sound of the falling stones was caught up in a long, low rumble, prolonged, swelling to a roar from the city below. Again the ground heaved, and beneath her—she had dropped on her knees, and hung, clutching the little dog, staring over a level verge where the balustrade had run—she saw Lisbon fall askew, this way and that: the roofs collapsing, like a toy structure of cards. Still the roar of it swelled on the ear; yet, strange to say, the roar seemed to have nothing to do with the collapse, which went on piecemeal, steadily, like a game. The crescendo was drowned in a sharper roar and a crash close behind her—a crash that seemed the end of all things. . . . The house! She had not thought of the house. Turning, she faced a cloud of dust, and above it saw, before the dust stung her eyes, half-blinding her, that the whole front of the villa had fallen outwards. It had, in fact, fallen and spread its ruin within two yards of her feet. Had the terrace been by that much narrower, she must have been destroyed. As it was, above the dust, she gazed, unhurt, into a house from which the front screen had been sharply caught away, as a mask snatched from a face.
By this the horror had become a dream to her. As in a dream she saw one of her servants—a poor little under-housemaid, rise to her knees from the floor where she had been flung, totter to the edge of the house-front, and stand, piteously gazing down over a height impossible to leap.
A man's voice shouted. Around the corner of the house, from the stables, Mr. Langton came running, by a bare moment escaping death from a mass of masonry that broke from the parapet, and crashed to the ground close behind his heels.
"Lady Vyell! Where is Lady Vyell?"
Ruth called to him, and he scrambled towards her over the gaping pavement. He called as he came, but she could distinguish no words, for within the last few seconds another and different sound had grown on the ear—more terrible even than the first roar of ruin.
"My God! look!" He was at her side, shouting in her ear, for a wind like a gale was roaring past them down from the hills. With one hand he steadied her against it, lest it should blow her over the verge. His other pointed out over Tagus.
She stared. She did not comprehend; she only saw that a stroke more awful than any was falling, or about to fall. The first convulsion had lifted the river bed, leaving the anchored ships high and dry. Some lay canted almost on their beam ends. As the bottom sank again they slowly righted, but too late; for the mass of water, flung to the opposite shore, and hurled back from it, came swooping with a refluent wave, that even from this high hillside was seen to be monstrous. It fell on their decks, drowning and smothering: their masts only were visible above the smother, some pointing firmly, others tottering and breaking. Some rose no more. Others, as the great wave passed on, lurched up into sight again, broken, dismasted, wrenched from their moorings, spinning about aimlessly, tossed like corks amid the spume; and still, its crest arching, its deep note gathering, the great wave came on straight for the harbour quay.
Ruth and Langton, staring down on this portent, did not witness the end; for a dense cloud of dust, on this upper side dun-coloured against the sunlight, interposed itself between them and the city, over which it made a total darkness. Into that darkness the great wave passed and broke; and almost in the moment of its breaking a second tremor shook the hillside. Then, indeed, wave and earthquake together made universal roar, drowning the last cry of thousands; for before it died away earthquake and wave together had turned the harbour quay of Lisbon bottom up, and engulfed it. Of all the population huddled there to escape from death in the falling streets, not a corpse ever rose to the surface of Tagus.
But Ruth saw nothing of this. She clung to Langton, and his arm was about her. She believed, with so much of her mind as was not paralysed, that the end of the world was come.
As the infernal hubbub died away on the dropping wind, she glanced back over her shoulder at the house. The poor little criada-moga was no longer there, peering over the edge she dared not leap. Nay, the house was no longer there—only three gaunt walls, and between them a heap where rooms, floors, roof had collapsed together.
Of a sudden complete silence fell about them. As her eyes travelled along the edge of the terrace where the balustrade had run, but ran no longer, she had a sensation of standing on the last brink of the world, high over nothingness. Langton's arm still supported her.
"As safe here as anywhere," she heard him saying. "For the chance that led you here, thank whatever Gods may be."
"But I must find him!" she cried.
"Eh? Noll?—find Noll? Dear lady, small chance of that!"
"I must find him."
"He was to attend High Mass in the Cathedral—"
"Yes . . . with that woman. What help could such an one bring to him if—if—Oh, I must find him, I say!"
"The Cathedral," he repeated. "You are brave; let your own eyes look for it." He had withdrawn his arm.
"Yet I must search, and you shall search with me. You were his friend, I think?"
"Indeed, I even believed so. . . . I was thinking of you. . . .
It is almost certain death. Do you say that he is worth it?"
"Do you fear death?" she asked.
"Moderately," he answered. "Yet if you command me, I come; if you go, I go with you."
"Come."
Chapter IV.
THE SEARCH.
They set out hand in hand. The small dog ran with them.
Even the beginning of the descent was far from easy, for the high walls that had protected the villa-gardens of Buenos Ayres lay in heaps, cumbering the roadway, and in places obliterating it.
About a hundred and fifty yards down the road, by what had been the walled entrance to the Hakes' garden, they sighted two forlorn small figures—the six and five year old Hake children, Sophie and Miriam, who recognised Ruth and, running, clung to her skirts.
"Mamma! Where is mamma?"
"Dears, where did you leave her last?"
"She pushed us out through the gateway, here, and told us to stand in the middle of the road while she ran back to call daddy. She said no stones could fall on us here. But she has been gone ever so long, and we can't hear her calling at all."
While Ruth gathered them to her and attempted to console them, Mr. Langton stepped within the ruined gateway. In a minute or so he came back, and his face was grave.
She noted it. "What can we do with them?" she asked, and added with a haggard little smile, "I had actually begun to tell them to run up to our house and wait, forgetting—"
"They had best wait here, as their mother advised."
"It is terrible!"
He lifted his shoulders slightly. "If once we begin—"
"No, you are right," she said, with a shuddering glance down the road; and bade the little ones rest still as their mother had commanded. She was but going down to the city (she said) to see if the danger was as terrible down there. The two little ones cried and clung to her; but she put them aside firmly, promising to look for their mamma when she returned. Langton did not dare to glance at her face.
The dark cloud dust met them, a gunshot below, rolling up the hillside from the city. They passed within the fringe of it, and at once the noonday sun was darkened for them. In the unnatural light they picked their way with difficulty.
"She was lying close within the entrance," said Langton. "The gateway arch must have fallen on her as she turned. . . . One side of her skull was broken. I pulled down some branches and covered her."
"Your own face is bleeding."
"Is it?" He put up a hand. "Yes—I remember, a brick struck me, on my way from the stables—no, a beam grazed me as I ran for the back-stairs, meaning to get you out that way. The stairs were choked. . . . I made sure you were in the house. The horses . . . have you ever heard a horse scream?"
She shivered. At a turn of the road they came full in view of the black pall stretching over the city. Flames shot up through it, here and there. Lisbon was on fire in half a dozen places at least; and now for the first time she became aware that the wind had sprung up again and was blowing violently. She could not remember when it first started: the morning had been still, the Tagus—she recalled it—unruffled.
At the very foot of the hill they came on the first of three fires— two houses blazing furiously, and a whole side-street doomed, if the wind should hold. Among the ruins of a house, right in the face of the fire, squatted a dozen persons, men and women, all dazed by terror. The women had opened their parasols—possibly to screen their faces from the heat—albeit they might have escaped this quite easily by shifting their positions a few paces. None of these folk betrayed the smallest interest in Ruth or in Langton. Indeed, they scarcely lifted their eyes.
The suburbs were deserted, for the earthquake had surprised all Lisbon in a pack, crowded within its churches, or in its central streets and squares. Yet the emptiness of what should have been the thoroughfares astonished them scarcely less than did the piles of masonry, breast-high in places, over which they picked their way in the uncanny twilight. They had scarcely passed beyond the glare of the burning houses when Langton stumbled over a corpse—the first they encountered. He drew Ruth aside from it, entreating her in a low voice to walk warily. But she had seen.
"We shall see many before we reach the Cathedral," she said quietly.
They stumbled on, meeting with few living creatures; and these few asked them no questions, but went by, stumbling, with hands groping, as though they moved in a dream. A voice wailed "Jesus! Jesus!" and the cry, issuing Heaven knew whence, shook Ruth's nerve for a moment.
Once Langton plucked her by the arm and pointed to some men with torches moving among the ruins. She supposed that they were seeking for the dead; but they were, in fact, incendiaries, already at work and in search of loot.
She passed three or four of these blazing houses, some kindled no doubt by incendiaries, but others by natural consequences of the earthquake; for the kitchens, heated for the great feast, had communicated their fires to the falling timberwork on which the houses were framed; and by this time the city was on fire in at least thirty different places. The scorched smell mingled everywhere with an odour of sulphur.
There were rents in the streets, too—chasms, half-filled with rubble, reaching right across the roadway. After being snatched back by Langton from the brink of one of these chasms, Ruth steeled her heart to be thankful when a burning house shed light for her footsteps. At the houses themselves, after an upward glance or two, she dared not look again. They leaned this way and that, the fronts of some thrust outward at an angle to forbid any but the foolhardiest from passing underneath.
But, indeed, they had little time to look aloft as they penetrated to streets littered, where the procession had passed, with wrecked chaises, dead mules, human bodies half-buried and half-burnt, charred limbs protruding awkwardly from heaps of stones. Here, by ones and twos, pedestrians tottered past, crying that the world was at an end; here, on a heap where, belike, his shop had stood, a man knelt praying aloud; here a couple of enemies met by chance, seeking their dead, and embraced, beseeching forgiveness for injuries past. These sights went by Ruth as in a dream; and as in a dream she heard the topple and crack of masonry to right and left. Langton guided her; and haggard, perspiring, they bent their heads to the strange wind now howling down the street as through a funnel, and foot by foot battled their way.
The wind swept over their bent heads, carrying flakes of fire to start new conflagrations. The stream of these flakes became so steady that Ruth began to count on it to guide her. She began to think that amid all this dissolution to right and left, some charm must be protecting them both, when, as he stretched a hand to help her across a mound of rubble she saw him turn, cast a look up and fall back beneath a rush of masonry. A flying brick struck her on the shoulder, cutting the flesh. For the rest, she stood unscathed; but her companion lay at her feet, with legs buried deep, body buried to the ribs.
"Your hand!" she gasped.
He stretched it out feebly, but withdrew it in an agony; for the stones crushed his bowels.