Chapter III.
Without his parents.
The sun in England seems to shine because he cannot help it; the sun
in Italy seems to shine because he means it, and wants to mean
it. Thus he shone the next morning, including in his attentions a
curious little couple, husband and wife, who, attended by a guide, and
borne by animals which might be mules and might be donkeys, and were
not lovely to look on except through sympathy with their ugliness,
were slowly ascending a steep terraced and zigzagged road, with olive
trees above and below them. They were on the south side of the hill,
and the olives gave them none of the little shadow they have in their
power, for the trees next the sun were always below the road. The man
often wiped his red, innocent face, and looked not a little
distressed; but the lady, although as stout as he, did not seem to
suffer, perhaps because she was sheltered by a very large bonnet After
a silence of a good many minutes, she was the first to speak.
"I can't say but I'm disappointed in the olives, Thomas," she
remarked. "They ain't much to keep the sun off you!"
"They wouldn't look bad along a brookside in Essex!" returned her
husband. "Here they do seem a bit out of place!"
"Well, but, poor things! how are they to help it--with only a trayful
of earth under their feet! If you planted a priest on a terrace he
would soon be as thin as they!"
They had just passed a very stout priest, in a low broad hat, and
cassock, and she laughed merrily at her small joke. They were an
English country parson and his wife, abroad for the first time in
their now middle-aged lives, and happy as children just out of
school. Incapable of disliking anybody, there was no unkindness in
Mrs. Porson's laughter.
"I don't see," she resumed, "how they ever can have a picnic in such a
country!"
"Why not?"
"There's no place to sit down!"
"Here's a whole hill-side!"
"But so hard!" she answered. "There's not an inch of turf or grass in
any direction!"
The pair--equally plump, and equally good-natured--laughed together.
I need not give more of their talk. It was better than most talk, yet
not worth recording. Their guide, perceiving that they knew no more of
Italian than he did of English, had withdrawn to the rear, and stumped
along behind them all the way, holding much converse with his donkeys
however, admonishing now this one, now that one, and seeming not a
little hurt with their behaviour, to judge from the expostulations
that accompanied his occasionally more potent arguments. Assuredly the
speed they made was small; but it was a festa, and hot.
They were on the way to a small town some distance from the shore, on
the crest of the hill they were now ascending. It would, from the
number of its inhabitants, have been in England a village, but there
are no villages in the Riviera. However insignificant a place may be,
it is none the less a town, possibly a walled town. Somebody had told
Mr. and Mrs. Person they ought to visit Graffiacane, and to
Graffiacane they were therefore bound: why they ought to visit it, and
what was to be seen there, they took the readiest way to know.
The place was indeed a curious one, high among the hills, and on the
top of its own hill, with approaches to it like the trenches of a
siege. All the old towns in that region seem to have climbed up to
look over the heads of other things. Graffiacane saw over hills and
valleys and many another town--each with its church standing highest,
the guardian of the flock of houses beneath it; saw over many a
water-course, mostly dry, with lovely oleanders growing in the middle
of it; saw over multitudinous oliveyards and vineyards; saw over mills
with great wheels, and little ribbons of water to drive them--running
sometimes along the tops of walls to get at their work; saw over
rugged pines, and ugly, verdureless, raw hillsides--away to the sea,
lying in the heat like a heavenly vat in which all the tails of all
the peacocks God was making, lay steeped in their proper dye. Numerous
were the sharp turns the donkeys made in their ascent; and at this
corner and that, the sweetest life-giving wind would leap out upon the
travellers, as if it had been lying there in wait to surprise them
with the heavenliest the old earth, young for all her years, could
give them. But they were getting too tired to enjoy anything, and were
both indeed not far from asleep on the backs of their humble beasts,
when a sudden, more determined yet more cheerful assault of their
guide upon his donkeys, roused both them and their riders; and looking
sleepily up, with his loud _heeoop_ ringing in their ears, and a sense
of the insidious approach of two headaches, they saw before them the
little town, its houses gathered close for protection, like a brood of
chickens, and the white steeple of the church rising above them, like
the neck of the love-valiant hen.
Passing through the narrow arch of the low-browed gateway, hot as was
the hour, a sudden cold struck to their bones. For not a ray of light
shone into the narrow street. The houses were lofty as those of a
city, and parted so little by the width of the street that friends on
opposite sides might almost from their windows have shaken
hands. Narrow, rough, steep old stone-stairs ran up between and inside
the houses, all the doors of which were open to the air--here,
however, none of the sweetest. Everywhere was shadow; everywhere one
or another evil odour; everywhere a look of abject and dirty
poverty--to an English eye, that is. Everywhere were pretty children,
young, slatternly mothers, withered-up grandmothers, the gleam of
glowing reds and yellows, and the coolness of subdued greens and fine
blues. Such at least was the composite first impression made on Mr.
and Mrs. Porson. As it was a festa, more men than usual were looking
out of cavern-like doorways or over hand-wrought iron balconies, were
leaning their backs against door-posts, and smoking as if too lazy to
stop. Many of the women were at prayers in the church. All was
orderly, and quieter than usual for a festa. None could have told the
reason; the townsfolk were hardly aware that an undefinable oppression
was upon them--an oppression that lay also upon their visitors, and
the donkeys that had toiled with them up the hills and slow-climbing
valleys.
It added to the gloom and consequent humidity of the town that the
sides of the streets were connected, at the height of two or perhaps
three stories, by thin arches--mere jets of stone from the one house
to the other, with but in rare instance the smallest superstructure to
keep down the key of the arch. Whatever the intention of them, they
might seem to serve it, for the time they had straddled there
undisturbed had sufficed for moss and even grass to grow upon those
which Mr. Porson now regarded with curious speculation. A bit of an
architect, and foiled, he summoned at last what Italian he could,
supplemented it with Latin and a terminational _o_ or _a_ tacked to
any French or English word that offered help, and succeeded, as he
believed, in gathering from a by-stander, that the arches were there
because of the earthquakes.
He had not language enough of any sort to pursue the matter, else he
would have asked his informant how the arch they were looking at could
be of any service, seeing it had no weight on the top, and but a
slight endlong pressure must burst it up. Turning away to tell his
wife what he had learned, he was checked by a low rumbling, like
distant thunder, which he took for the firing of festa guns, having
discovered that Italians were fond of all kinds of noises. The next
instant they felt the ground under their feet move up and down and
from side to side with confused motion. A sudden great cry arose. One
moment and down every stair, out of every door, like animals from
their holes, came men, women, and children, with a rush. The
earthquake was upon them.
But in such narrow streets, the danger could hardly be less than
inside the houses, some of which, the older especially, were ill
constructed--mostly with boulder-stones that had neither angles nor
edges, hence little grasp on each other beyond what the friction of
their weight, and the adhesion of their poor old friable cement, gave
them; for the Italians, with a genius for building, are careless of
certain constructive essentials. After about twenty seconds of
shaking, the lonely pair began to hear, through the noise of the cries
of the people, some such houses as these rumbling to the earth.
They were far more bewildered than frightened. They were both of good
nerve, and did not know the degree of danger they were in, while the
strangeness of the thing contributed to an excitement that helped
their courage. I cannot say how they might have behaved in an hotel
full of their countrymen and countrywomen, running and shrieking, and
altogether comporting themselves as if they knew there was no God. The
fear on all sides might there have infected them; but the terror of
the inhabitants who knew better than they what the thing meant, did
not much shake them. For one moment many of the people stood in the
street motionless, pale, and staring; the next they all began to run,
some for the gateway, but the greater part up the street, staggering
as they ran. The movement of the ground was indeed small--not more,
perhaps, than half an inch in any direction--but fear and imagination
weakened all their limbs. They had not run far, however, before the
terrible unrest ceased as suddenly as it had begun.
The English pair drew a long breath where they stood--for they had not
stirred a step, or indeed thought whither to run--and imagining it
over for a hundred years, looked around them. Their guide had
disappeared. The two donkeys stood perfectly still with their heads
hanging down. They seemed in deep dejection, and incapable of
movement. A few men only were yet to be seen. They were running up the
street. In a moment more it would be empty. They were the last of
those that had let the women go to church without them. They were
hurrying to join them in the sanctuary, the one safe place: the rest
of the town might be shaken in heaps on its foundations, but the
church would stand! Guessing their goal, the Porsons followed
them. But they were neither of a build nor in a condition to make
haste, and the road was uphill. No one place, however, was far from
another within the toy-town, and they came presently to an open
_piazza_, on the upper side of which rose the great church. It had a
square front, masking with its squareness the triangular gable of the
building. Upon this screen, in the brightest of colours, magenta and
sky-blue predominating, was represented the day of judgment--the
mother seated on the right hand of the judge, and casting a pitiful
look upon the miserable assembly on her left. The square was a good
deal on the slope, and as they went slowly up to the church, they kept
looking at the picture. The last tatters of the skirt of the crowd had
disappeared through the great door, and but for themselves the square
was empty. All at once the picture at which they were gazing, the
spread of wall on which it was painted, the whole bulk of the huge
building began to shudder, and went on shuddering--"just," Mr. Porson
used to say when describing the thing to a friend, "like the skin of a
horse determined to get rid of a gad-fly." The same moment the tiles
on the roof began to clatter like so many castanets in the hands of
giants, and the ground to wriggle and heave. But they were too much
absorbed in what was before their eyes to heed much what went on under
their feet. The oscillatory displacement of the front of the church
did not at most seem to cover more than a hand-breadth, but it was
enough. Down came the plaster surface, with the judge and his mother,
clashing on the pavement below, while the good and the bad yet stood
trembling. A few of the people came running out, thinking the open
square after all safer than the church, but there was no rush to the
open air. The shaking had lasted about twenty seconds, or at most half
a minute, when, without indication to the eyes watching the front,
there came a roaring crash and a huge rumbling, through and far above
which, rose a multitudinous shriek of terror, dismay, and agony, and a
number of men and women issued as if shot from a catapult. Then a few
came straggling out, and then--no more. The roof had fallen upon the
rest.
With the first rush from the church, the shaking ceased utterly, and
the still earth seemed again the immovable thing the English
spectators had conceived her. Of what had taken place there was little
sign on the earth, no sign in the blue sun-glorious heaven; only in
the air there was a cloud of dust so thick as to look almost solid,
and from the cloud, as it seemed, came a ghastly cry, mingled of
shrieks and groans and articulate appeals for help. The cry kept on
issuing, while the calm front of the church, dominated by that
frightful canopy, went on displaying the assembled nations delivered
from their awful judge. While the multitude groaned within, it spread
itself out to the sun in silent composure, welcoming and cherishing
his rays in what was left of its gorgeous hues.
The Porsons stood for a moment stunned, came to their senses, and made
haste to enter the building. With white faces and trembling hands,
they drew aside the heavy leather curtain that hung within the great
door, but could for a moment see nothing; the air inside seemed filled
with a solid yellow dust As their eyes recovered from the sudden
change of sunlight for gloom, however, they began to distinguish the
larger outlines, and perceived that the floor was one confused heap of
rafters and bricks and tiles and stones and lime. The centre of the
roof had been a great dome; now there was nothing between their eyes
and the clear heaven but the slowly vanishing cloud of ruin. In the
mound below they could at first distinguish nothing human--could not
have told, in the dim chaos, limbs from broken rafters. Eager to help,
they dared not set their feet upon the mass--not that they feared the
walls which another shock might bring upon their heads, but that they
shuddered lest their own added weight should crush some live human
creature they could not descry. Three or four who had received little
or no hurt, were moving about the edges of the heap, vaguely trying to
lift now this, now that, but yielding each attempt in despair, either
from its evident uselessness, or for lack of energy. They would give a
pull at a beam that lay across some writhing figure, find it
immovable, and turn with a groan to some farther cry. How or where
were they to help? Others began to come in with white faces and
terror-stricken eyes; and before long the sepulchral ruin had little
groups all over it, endeavouring in shiftless fashion to bring rescue
to the prisoned souls.
The Porsons saw nothing they could do. Great beams and rafters which
it was beyond their power to move an inch, lay crossed in all
directions; and they could hold little communication with those who
were in a fashion at work. Alas, they were little better than vainly
busy, while the louder moans accompanying their attempts revealed that
they added to the tortures of those they sought to deliver! The two
saw more plainly now, and could distinguish contorted limbs, and here
and there a countenance. The silence, more and more seldom broken, was
growing itself terrible. Had they known how many were buried there,
they would have wondered so few were left able to cry out. At moments
there was absolute stillness in the dreadful place. The heart of
Mrs. Porson began to sink.
"Do come out," she whispered, afraid of her own voice. "I feel so sick
and faint, I fear I shall drop."
As she spoke something touched her leg. She gave a cry and started
aside. It was a hand, but of the body to which it belonged nothing
could be seen. It must have been its last movement; now it stuck there
motionless. Then they spied amid sad sights a sadder still. Upon the
heap, a little way from its edge, sat a child of about three, dressed
like a sailor, gazing down at something--they could not see
what. Going a little nearer, they saw it--the face of a fair woman,
evidently English, who lay dead, with a great beam across her
heart. The child showed no trace of tears; his white face seemed
frozen. The stillness upon it was not despair, but suggested a world
in which hope had never yet been born. Pity drove Mrs. Porson's
sickness away.
"My dear!" she said; but the child took no heed. Her voice, however,
seemed to wake something in him. He started to his feet, and rushing
at the beam, began to tug at it with his tiny hands. Mrs. Porson burst
into tears.
"It's no use, darling!" she cried.
"Wake mamma!" he said, turning, and looking up at her.
"She will not wake," sobbed Mrs. Porson.
Her husband stood by speechless, choking back the tears of which,
being an Englishman, he was ashamed.
"She _will_ wake," returned the boy. "She always wakes when I kiss
her."
He knelt beside her, to prove upon her white face the efficacy of the
measure he had never until now known to fail. That he had already
tried it was plain, for he had kissed away much of the dust, though
none of the death. When once more he found that she did not even close
her lips to return his passionate salute, he desisted. With that
saddest of things, a child's sigh, and a look that seemed to Mrs.
Porson to embody the riddle of humanity, he reseated himself on the
beam, with his little feet on his mother's bosom, where so often she
had made them warm. He did not weep; he did not fix his eyes on his
mother; his look was level and moveless and set upon nothing. He
seemed to have before him an utter blank--as if the outer wall of
creation had risen frowning in front, and he knew there was nothing
behind it but chaos.
"Where is your papa?" asked Mr. Porson.
The boy looked round bewildered.
"Gone," he answered; nor could they get anything more from him.
"Was your papa with you here?" asked Mrs. Porson.
He answered only with the word _Gone_, uttered in a dazed fashion.
By this time all the men left in the town were doing their best, under
the direction of an intelligent man, the priest of a neighbouring
parish. They had already got one or two out alive, and their own
priest dead. They worked well, their terror of the lurking earthquake
forgotten in their eagerness to rescue. From their ignorance of the
language, however, Mr. Porson saw they could be of little use; and in
dread of doing more harm than good, he judged it better to go.
They stood one moment and looked at each other in silence. The child
had dropped from the beam, and lay fast asleep across his mother's
bosom, with his head on a lump of mortar. Without a word spoken,
Mrs. Person, picking her way carefully to the spot, knelt down by the
dead mother, tenderly kissed her cheek, lifted the sleeping child, and
with all the awe, and nearly all the tremulous joy of first
motherhood, bore him to her husband. The throes of the earthquake had
slain the parents, and given the child into their arms. Without look
of consultation, mark of difference, or sign of agreement, they turned
in silence and left the terrible church, with the clear summer sky
looking in upon its dead.
As they passed the door, the sun met them shining with all his
might. The sea, far away across the tops of hills and the clefts of
valleys, lay basking in his glory. The hot air quivered all over the
wide landscape. From the flight of steps in front of the church they
looked down on the streets of the town, and beyond them into space. It
looked the best of all possible worlds--as neither plague, famine,
pestilence, earthquakes, nor human wrongs, persuade me it is not,
judged by the high intent of its existence. When a man knows that
intent, as I dare to think I do, _then_ let him say, and not till
then, whether it be a good world or not. That in the midst of the
splendour of the sunny day, in the midst of olives and oranges, grapes
and figs, ripening swiftly by the fervour of the circumambient air,
should lie that charnel-church, is a terrible fact, neither to be
ignored, nor to be explained by the paltry theory of the greatest good
to the greatest number; but the end of the maker's dream is not this.
When they turned into the street that led to the gate, they found the
donkeys standing where they had left them. Their owner was not with
them. He had gone into the church with the rest, and was killed. When
they caught sight of the patient, dejected animals, unheeded and
unheeding, then first they spoke, whispering in the awful stillness of
the world: they must take the creatures, and make the best of their
way back without a guide! They judged that, as the road was chiefly
down hill, and the donkeys would be going home, they would not have
much difficulty with them. At the worst, short and stout as they were,
they were not bad walkers, and felt more than equal to carrying the
child between them. Not a person was in the street when they mounted;
almost all were in the church, at its strange, terrible service. Mrs.
Porson mounted the strongest of the animals, her husband placed the
sleeping child in her arms, and they started, he on foot by the side
of his wife, and his donkey following. No one saw them pass through
the gate of the town.
They were not sure of the way, for they had been partly asleep as they
came, but so long as they went downward, and did not leave the road,
they could hardly go wrong! The child slept all the way.
