Book 5. Lisbon And After - Chapter 5. The Finding

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_ BOOK V. LISBON AND AFTER
CHAPTER V. THE FINDING

"Hola!" hailed a man, signalling by a brazier with his back to the wind. "For what are you seeking?"

Ruth halted, gripping her stiletto. This man might help her, perhaps. At any rate, he seemed a cool-headed fellow who made the best of things.

For two hours she had searched, and for the time her strength was nearly spent. Dust filled her hair and caked her long eyelashes. Her face, haggard with woe and weariness, was a mask of dust.

"For one," she answered, "who was to have attended High Mass in the Cathedral."

"Eh?" The man swept a hand to the ruined shell of that building, at the end of the Square, and to a horrible pile of masonry covering many hundreds of bodies. "If he reached there, your Excellency had better go home and pray for his soul; that is, if your Excellency believes it efficacious. But first, will your Excellency sit here and rest?--no, not on the lee side, in the fumes of the charcoal, but to windward here, where the fire is bright, and where I have the honour to give room. . . . So your Excellency did not attend the Mass?--not approving of it, maybe?"

"It would seem that you know me?" said Ruth, answering something in his tone, not his words.

The question set him chuckling. "Not by that token--though 'faith 'tis an ill wind blows nobody good. This earthquake, considered philosophically, is a great opportunity for heretics. You and I, for example, may sit here in the very middle of the square and talk blasphemy to our heart's content; whereas--" He broke off. "But I forget my manners. I ought to have started by saying that no one, having once set eyes on your Excellency's face could ever forget it; and, by St. James, that is no more than the truth!"

"Where have you seen me before?"

"By the gateway of the Holy Office, in a carriage with your lord beside you. I marked his face, too. What it is to be young and rich and beautiful! . . . And yet you might have remembered me, seeing that I made part of the procession, though--praise be to fate!-- A modest one."

Ruth gazed at him. "I remember you," she said slowly; "you were one of the Penitents."

"They were gracious enough to call me so. Yes, I can understand that a san-benito makes some difference to a man's personal appearance. . . . And old Gonsalvez--I saw your Excellency wince and your Excellency's beauty turn pale when he cast up his hands to the sun. . . . Hey? _How is it possible_--how went the words?"

Ruth had them well by heart. "_How is it possible for people, beholding that glorious Body, to worship any Being but Him who created it?_"

Right--word for word! Well, they made a lens for that glorious Body and fried old Gonsalvez with it. Were you looking on?"

"No," said Ruth, and shivered.

"Well, I did--perforce. 'Twas part of my lesson; for you must know that I, too, had had my little difficulty over that same glorious Sun, touching his standing still over Gibeon at the command of ancient Joshua. 'Faith, I've no quarrel with a miracle or so, up and down; but that one! . . . Well, they convinced me I was a fool to have any doubt, and a worse fool to let it slip off the tongue. And yet," said the Penitent, warming his hands and casting a look up at the sky, where the dust-cloud had given place to a rolling pall of smoke, "what a treat it is to let the tongue wag at times!"

Ruth, her strength refreshed by the few minutes' rest, thanked him and arose to continue her search.

"Stay," said the Penitent. "Your Excellency has not heard all the story, nor yet arrived near the moral. . . . Between ourselves the reverend fathers were lenient with me because--well, it may have been because I hold some influence among the beggars of Lisbon, who are numerous and not always meek, in spite of the promise that meekness shall inherit the earth. I may confess, in short, that my presence in the procession was to some extent a farce, and the result of a compromise. But, all the same, your Excellency does ill to disbelieve in miracles: as I dare say your Excellency, casting an eye about Lisbon on this particular day of All the Saints, will not dispute?"

"Alas, sir! I have seen too many horrors to-day to be in any mood to argue."

"Then," said the Penitent, skipping up, "you are in the precise mood to be convinced; as I have seen men, under extremity of torture, ready to believe anything. Come!"

She hesitated. "Where would you lead me?"

"To a miracle," he answered, and, with a fine gesture, flinging his tattered cloak over his shoulder, he led the way. He strode rapidly down a couple of streets. Once or twice coming to a chasm across the roadway he paused, drew back, and cleared it with a leap. But at these pitfalls he neither turned nor offered Ruth a hand. She followed him panting, so agile was his pace.

The first street ran south, the second east. He entered a third which turned north again as if to lead back into the Square. After following it for twenty yards he halted and allowed her to catch up with him.

"You are a devoted wife," said the Penitent admiringly. "Would it alter your devotion at all to know that he was with another woman?"

"No," answered Ruth. "I knew it, in fact." She wondered that this beggar man could force her to speak so frankly.

"In an earthquake," said he, "one gets down to naked truth, or near to it. If he were unfaithful now--would that alter your desire to find and save him?"

"Sir, why do you ask these things?"

"Did your Excellency not know that its beggars are the eyes of Lisbon? But you have not answered me."

"Nor will. That I am here--is it not enough?"

The Penitent peered at her in the dim light and nodded. He led her forward a pace or two and pointed to something imbedded in a pile of stones, lime, rubble. It was the wreck of a chaise. Two males lay crushed under it, their heads and a couple of legs protruding. A splintered door, wrenched from its hinges, lay face-uppermost crowning the heap. It bore a coronet and the arms of Montalegre.

"Are they--" she stammered, but caught at her voice and recovered it. "--Are they _here_, under this?"

"No," he said, and again led the way, crossing the street to a house of which the upper storey overhung the street, supported by a line of pillars. Three or four of these pillars had fallen. Of the rest, nine out of ten stood askew, barely holding up the house, through the floors of which stout beams had thrust themselves and stuck at all angles from the burst plaster.

"Here is Milord Vyell," said the Penitent, picking up a broken lath and pointing with it.

He lay on his back, as he had lain for close upon three hours, deep in the shadow of the overhanging house. His eyes were wide open. They stared up at the cobwebs that dangled from the broken plaster. A pillar, in weight maybe half a ton, rested across his thighs; an oaken beam across his chest and his broken left arm. The two pinned him hopelessly.

Clutched to him in his right lay Donna Maria. She seemed to sleep, with her head turned from his breast and laid upon the upper arm. The weight of the pillar resting on her bowels had squeezed the life out of her. She was dead: her flesh by this time almost cold.

"Oliver!--Ah, look at me!--I am here--I have come to help!"

The lids twitched slightly over his wide eyes. In the dim light she could almost be sworn that the lips, too, moved as though to speak. But no words came, and the eyes did not see her.

He was alive. What else mattered?

She knelt and flung her arms about the pillar. Frantically, vainly, she tugged at it: not by an inch or the tenth part of an inch could she stir it.

"Speak to me, Oliver! . . . Look at least!"

"If your Excellency will but have patience!" The Penitent stepped out into the street and she heard him blowing a whistle. Clearly he was a man to be obeyed; for in less than ten minutes a dozen figures crowded about the entrance, shutting out the day. This darkness of their making was in truth their best commendation. For against any one of them coming singly Ruth had undoubtedly held her dagger ready. They grumbled, too, and some even cursed the Penitent for having dragged them away from their loot. The Penitent called them cheerfully his little sons of the devil, and adjured them to fall to work or it would be the worse for them.

For his part, he lifted no hand: but stood overseer as the ruffians lifted the pillar, Ruth straining her strength with theirs.

But when they came to lift Donna Maria, for a moment something hitched, and Ruth heard the sound of rending cloth. The poor wretch in her death-agony had bitten through Sir Oliver's arm to the bone. The corpse yet clenched its jaws on the bite. They had to wrench the teeth open--delicate pretty teeth made for nibbling sweetmeats.

To his last day Oliver Vyell bore the mark of those pretty teeth, and took it to the grave with him.

Ruth drew out a purse. But the Penitent, though they grumbled, would suffer his scoundrels to take no fee. Nay, he commanded two, and from somewhere out of devastated Lisbon they fetched a sedan-chair for the broken man. "You may pay these if you will," said he. "Honestly, they deserve it."

On her way westward, following the chair, she called to them to stop and search whereabouts Mr. Langton had fallen. They found him with the small greyhound standing guard beside the body. His head was pillowed on his arm, and he lay as one quietly sleeping. _

Read next: Book 5. Lisbon And After: Chapter 6. Documents

Read previous: Book 5. Lisbon And After: Chapter 4. The Search

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