Chapter III.
EARTHQUAKE.
The auto-da-fe was but a preliminary to the festivities and greatprocessions of All Saints. For a whole week Lisbon had been sandingits squares and streets, painting its signboards, draping itsbalconies and windows to the fourth and fifth stories with hangingsof crimson damask. Street after street displayed this uniform vistaof crimson, foil for the procession, with its riot of gorgeousdresses, gold lace, banners, precious stones.
Ruth leaned on the balustrade of her villa garden, and looked downover the city, from which, made musical by distance, the bells ofthirty churches called to High Mass. Their chorus floated up to heron the delicate air; and--for the chimneys of Lisbon were smokeless,the winter through, in all but severest weather, and the citizens didtheir cooking over braziers--each belfry stood up distinct, edgedwith gold by the brilliant morning sun. Aloft the sky spread itsblue bland and transparent; far below her Tagus mirrored it in a lakeof blue. Many vessels rode at anchor there. The villas to right andleft and below her, or so much of them as rose out of theirembosoming trees, took the sunlight on walls of warm yellow, withdove-coloured shadows.
She was thinking. . . . He had tried to discover how much shesuspected; and when neither in word or look would she lower herguard, he had turned defiant. This very morning he had told herthat, if she cared to use it, a carriage was at her disposal.For himself, the Countess of Montalegre had offered him a seat inhers, and he had accepted. . . . He had told her this at the lastmoment, entering her room in the full court dress the stateprocession 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 arrayher in time.
"We go to the Cathedral," said he. "I should recommend that or theChurch 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 likesprocessions, though he prefers executions. To a religious service Idoubt 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 hadalways exquisite manners; and she wished him a pleasant day with avoice quite cheerful and unconstrained.
From the sunlit terrace she looked almost straight down upon thegarden of Mrs. Hake's villa. The two little girls were at playthere. She heard their voices, shrill above the sound of the churchbells. Now and again she caught a glimpse of them, at hide-and-seekbetween 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 thefuture hold?
She heard their mother calling to them. They must have obeyed andrun 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 childrenwere gone. As she did so, the sound of a whimper caught her ear.She looked down, and spoke soothingly to a small dog, an Italiangreyhound, a pet of Mr. Langton's, that had run to her trembling, andwas nuzzling against her skirt for shelter. She could not think whatailed the creature. Belike it had taken fright at a noise below theterrace--a rumbling noise, as of a cart mounting the hill heavilyladen 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 ranthrough the stonework on which her arms rested. For a moment shefancied it some trick of her own pulse.
But the tremor was renewed. The pulsation was actually in thestonework. . . . And then, even while she drew back, wondering, theterrace under her feet heaved as though its pavement rested on a waveof the sea. She was thrown sideways, staggering; and while shestaggered, saw the great flagstones of the terrace raise themselveson end, as notes of a harpsichord when the fingers withdraw theirpressure.
She would have caught again at the balustrade. But it had vanished,or rather was vanishing under her gaze, toppling into the gardenbelow. The sound of the falling stones was caught up in a long, lowrumble, prolonged, swelling to a roar from the city below. Again theground heaved, and beneath her--she had dropped on her knees, andhung, clutching the little dog, staring over a level verge where thebalustrade had run--she saw Lisbon fall askew, this way and that: theroofs collapsing, like a toy structure of cards. Still the roar ofit swelled on the ear; yet, strange to say, the roar seemed to havenothing to do with the collapse, which went on piecemeal, steadily,like a game. The crescendo was drowned in a sharper roar and a crashclose behind her--a crash that seemed the end of all things. . . .The house! She had not thought of the house. Turning, she faced acloud of dust, and above it saw, before the dust stung her eyes,half-blinding her, that the whole front of the villa had fallenoutwards. It had, in fact, fallen and spread its ruin within twoyards of her feet. Had the terrace been by that much narrower, shemust have been destroyed. As it was, above the dust, she gazed,unhurt, into a house from which the front screen had been sharplycaught away, as a mask snatched from a face.
By this the horror had become a dream to her. As in a dream she sawone of her servants--a poor little under-housemaid, rise to her kneesfrom the floor where she had been flung, totter to the edge of thehouse-front, and stand, piteously gazing down over a heightimpossible to leap.
A man's voice shouted. Around the corner of the house, from thestables, Mr. Langton came running, by a bare moment escaping deathfrom a mass of masonry that broke from the parapet, and crashed tothe ground close behind his heels.
"Lady Vyell! Where is Lady Vyell?"
Ruth called to him, and he scrambled towards her over the gapingpavement. He called as he came, but she could distinguish no words,for within the last few seconds another and different sound had grownon 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 windlike a gale was roaring past them down from the hills. With one handhe 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 moreawful than any was falling, or about to fall. The first convulsionhad lifted the river bed, leaving the anchored ships high and dry.Some lay canted almost on their beam ends. As the bottom sank againthey slowly righted, but too late; for the mass of water, flung tothe opposite shore, and hurled back from it, came swooping with arefluent wave, that even from this high hillside was seen to bemonstrous. It fell on their decks, drowning and smothering: theirmasts only were visible above the smother, some pointing firmly,others tottering and breaking. Some rose no more. Others, as thegreat wave passed on, lurched up into sight again, broken, dismasted,wrenched from their moorings, spinning about aimlessly, tossed likecorks amid the spume; and still, its crest arching, its deep notegathering, the great wave came on straight for the harbour quay.
Ruth and Langton, staring down on this portent, did not witness theend; for a dense cloud of dust, on this upper side dun-colouredagainst the sunlight, interposed itself between them and the city,over which it made a total darkness. Into that darkness the greatwave passed and broke; and almost in the moment of its breaking asecond tremor shook the hillside. Then, indeed, wave and earthquaketogether made universal roar, drowning the last cry of thousands; forbefore it died away earthquake and wave together had turned theharbour quay of Lisbon bottom up, and engulfed it. Of all thepopulation 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 wasabout her. She believed, with so much of her mind as was notparalysed, that the end of the world was come.
As the infernal hubbub died away on the dropping win
d, she glancedback 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 betweenthem a heap where rooms, floors, roof had collapsed together.
Of a sudden complete silence fell about them. As her eyes travelledalong the edge of the terrace where the balustrade had run, but ranno longer, she had a sensation of standing on the last brink of theworld, high over nothingness. Langton's arm still supported her.
"As safe here as anywhere," she heard him saying. "For the chancethat 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 himif--if--Oh, I must find him, I say!"
"The Cathedral," he repeated. "You are brave; let your own eyes lookfor it." He had withdrawn his arm.
"Yet I must search, and you shall search with me. You were hisfriend, 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 yougo, I go with you."
"Come."
Lady Good-for-Nothing: A Man's Portrait of a Woman Page 45