Lady Good-for-Nothing Part 55

He stretched it out feebly, but withdrew it in an agony; for the stones crushed his bowels.

"You are hurt?"

"Killed." He contrived a smile. "Not so wide as a church door," he quoted, looking up at her strangely through the wan light; "but 'twill serve."

"My friend! and I cannot help you!" She plucked vainly at the ma.s.s of stones burying his legs.

He gasped on his anguish, and controlled it.

"Let be these silly bricks. . . . They belong to some grocer's kitchen-chimney, belike--but they have killed me, and may as well serve for my tomb. Reach me your hand."

He took it and thrust it gently within the breast of his waistcoat.

There, guided by him, her fingers closed on the handle of a tiny stiletto.

"The sheath too . . . it is sewn by a few st.i.tches only." He looked up into her eyes. "You are too beautiful to be wandering these streets alone."

"I understand," she said gravely.

"Now go." He pressed the back of her hand to his lips, and released it.

"Can I do nothing?" she asked, with a hard sob.

"Yes . . . 'tis unlucky, they say, to accept a knife without paying for it. One kiss. . . . You may tell Noll. Is it too high a price?"

She knelt and kissed him on the brow.

"Ah! . . ." He drew a long sigh. "I have held you to-day, and to-day you have kissed me. Go now."

She went. The dog ran with her a little way, then turned and crept back to its master.

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 Ma.s.s in the Cathedral."

"Eh?" The man swept a hand to the ruined sh.e.l.l 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 Ma.s.s?--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 n.o.body 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 wors.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+vered.

"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."