"If I were equal to it, I"d get a pencil, and preserve such great nuggets of abstract truth."
"When you are so concretely and distractingly enchanting, what other refuge is there for a man than the abstract?"
"Is the abstract a refuge?" she asked, looking dreamily out over the dark waters of the harbor. "Perhaps it is. It certainly suggests coolness which should be grateful tonight." Then turning, and with a mirthful and provoking gleam in her eyes, he remarked, "I should think this weather would be just to your taste."
"Why so?"
"Oh, you have become enough of a Yankee to guess."
"Would you say that even this furnace-like air cannot quicken my blood?"
"My friend, I do not believe that anything could quicken your pulse one beat."
"I"ll demonstrate the contrary," he said, with a quick flash in his eyes.
"Put your finger on my pulse."
She laughingly did so. By a slight, quick movement he clasped her hand, and it appeared to him that the pa.s.sion which he knew to be in his face was reflected in hers. She did not withdraw her hand. For an instant there was a subtle, swift interchange of thought. She saw he was about to speak plainly, pa.s.sionately; she felt herself yielding as never before in all her experience. It was as if a wave of emotion was lifting and sweeping her away. He held her eyes; a smile began to part her lips; the thought came to him that words were not essential, that she was giving herself to him through the agency of the brilliant eyes which at the first had awakened his wondering surmises. He gently drew her to her feet, and she did not resist. He bent toward her that he might look deeper into her rosy face, and felt her sweet breath coming quickly against his cheek. Then, as his lips parted to speak, a low, deep sound far to the southeast caught his attention. Still clasping hands they faced it. With awful rapidity it approached, increasing, deepening, pervading the air to the sky, bellowing as if from the centre of the earth, filling their ears with its unutterable and penetrating power, and appalling their hearts by its supernatural weirdness. They shrank before it down the balcony and through the window into the drawing-room, cowering, trembling, speechless.
They were scarcely within the apartment before the large, substantial mansion rocked as if it had been a cork, and the waters of the harbor had pa.s.sed under it. The balcony on which they had stood an instant before went down, leaving gaping darkness in its place.
With an agonized shriek Miss Ainsley threw her arms about Clancy. As with uncertain footing he sought to place her on a sofa they were both thrown violently upon it. He saw the chandeler swaying to and fro, as if a thousand lights were dancing before his eyes; saw the other guests staggering and falling. Statuettes, bric-a-brac, and articles of furniture came crashing down; part of the ceiling fell with a thud, raising a stifling dust, which, choking the shrieking voices, rendered more distinct the grinding sound, as walls of solid masonry drew apart, gaped, and closed under the impulse of immeasurable power.
Above all rose the mysterious thunder, which was not thunder, because now it seemed to come from unknown depths. Time is but relative, and the occupants of the room felt as if they were pa.s.sing through an eternity of agony.
The climax of horror was reached when the gas was extinguished, and all were left in pitchy darkness. It seemed as if reason itself would go, but as suddenly as the convulsion had begun, it ceased. There was a second or two of breathless waiting, and then Clancy shouted, "Come, quick. There may be another shock."
With his right hand he struck a match, and, supporting Miss Ainsley by his left arm, led the way.
"Oh, what is it?" she gasped.
"An earthquake. Come; courage. We must get away from all buildings." Half lifting her, he swiftly sought the street, and then the adjacent open ground of the Battery.
"All here?" he asked, panting, and looking around. The others soon appeared, Mr. Willoughby coming last, and carrying his half-fainting wife.
The negro servants had preceded, and were already on their knees, groaning and praying. From every side other fugitives were pouring in.
"Miss Ainsley, you are with friends and as safe here as you can be anywhere," Clancy said hastily. "There are others in the heart of the city," and he dashed away, regardless of her appealing cry to return.
As Clancy rushed up Meeting Street he felt that any moment might be his last, and yet he was more appalled at himself than at the awful sights about him. The human mind in such crises is endowed with wonderful capacity. It seemed to him that his eyes took in all details as he pa.s.sed, and that his brain comprehended them. People were rushing from their homes, or carrying out the feeble and injured. His way was impeded by fugitives, whose faces were seen by the street-lamps to be ghastly pale and horror-stricken. The awful impression of the final day of doom was heightened by the comparative nudity of many, both men and women; and among the mult.i.tudinous images pa.s.sing through Clancy"s mind was a picture of the Judgment Day by one of the old masters, with its naked, writhing human forms.
The air was resonant with every tone of anguish, hoa.r.s.e shoutings, shrill screams, and the plaintive cries of children. Above all other sounds articulate and inarticulate was heard the word "G.o.d," as the stricken people appealed to Him, some on their knees, others as they stood dazed and almost paralyzed, and others still as they rushed toward open places for safety.
"Yes, G.o.d," muttered Clancy. "May He forgive me for having forgotten Him!
There are but two thoughts left in this wreck, G.o.d and Mara. How unworthy were my recent motives and pa.s.sion! How unlike the love which leads me inevitably to breathe the name of Mara in my appeal to G.o.d!"
CHAPTER XL
"G.o.d"
Had Mara"s heart been hers to keep or to give when she met Bodine, she could easily have learned to love him for his own sake. Mrs. Bodine"s impression was well founded, that Mara, unlike most girls, was suited to such an alliance. The trouble was, that, before Bodine became friend, then lover, she had given to Clancy what she could not recall, although she strove to do so with a will singularly resolute, and from the strongest convictions of hopeless discord between him and herself. With the purpose to make her father"s friend happy was also blended the powerful motive to extricate herself. She had felt that she must tear up by the roots the affection which had been growing for years before she had recognized it, and at times, as we have seen, thought it was yielding to the unrelenting grasp of her will. Again, discouraged and appalled by its hold upon every fibre of her being, she would recognize how futile had been her efforts.
She could not, like many others, divert her thoughts and preoccupy her mind by various considerations apart from the truth that she had promised to marry a man whom she did not love. Although so warped, her nature was too simple, too concentrated, to permit any weak drifting toward events.
She believed that her life had narrowed down to Bodine, and she had decided to become his devoted wife at every cost to herself, flow great that cost would be she was learning sadly, day by day and hour by hour. As we know, she had permitted Bodine to learn her purpose at a time of excitement and enthusiasm--at a time when his profound distress touched her deepest sympathies. She had also hoped, that, when the irrevocable words had been spoken on each side, the calm of fixed purpose and certainty would fall upon her spirit.
She had been disappointed. She trembled with a strange dread whenever she recalled the moment when Bodine drew her to himself, conscious now of a truth, before unknown, that there was something in her nature not amenable to enthusiasm, spiritual exaltation, or her pa.s.sion for self-sacrifice--something that would not shrink from death for his sake yet which did shrink from his kisses upon her lips.
Never had she suffered as during the last few days, for she was being taught by the inexorable logic of facts and events. In Ella"s crystal nature she saw what her own love should be, and might have been. She had witnessed the girl"s wild impulse to follow her lover to the depths of the harbor, and her own heart gave swift interpretation. She was alive because a Northern boy, deemed incapable of anything better than selfish, reckless love-making, had unhesitatingly risked his life to save one who had spurned him. Even Mrs. Hunter"s prejudice had been compelled to yield, and she to admit the young fellow"s n.o.bility, of which she was a living proof.
The wretched thought haunted Mara that Owen Clancy, unblinded, had discovered for himself, what had been forced upon her, that there were Northern people with whom he could gladly affiliate. The shadow of death had not been so dark and baleful as the shadow of the past in which she so long had dwelt, for in the former there had been light enough to reveal the folly and injustice of indiscriminating prejudice and enmity. Worse than all these thoughts, piercing like shafts of light the darkness which had obscured her judgment, was the truth, upon which she could not reason, that she shrunk with an ever-increasing dread from words and acts of love unprompted by her heart.
Like a rock, however, amid all this chaos--this breaking up of the old which left nothing stable in its place--remained her purpose to go forward. On this evening which was to witness a wilder chaos than that of her long-repressed yet pa.s.sionate heart, she had said sternly, "My word has been pa.s.sed, my honor is involved, and he shall never learn that I have trembled and faltered."
Mrs. Hunter had retired, overcome by the heat, and, believing that she could endure the sultriness better in the little parlor, Mara had turned down the gas, and was sitting by an open window. The city seemed singularly quiet. The street on which she dwelt contained a large population, yet the steps on the pavement were comparatively few. Her own languor was general, and people sought refuge in the seclusion and the undress permitted in their own homes.
In a vague, half-conscious way she wondered that a large city could be so still at that hour. "Like myself," she murmured, "it is half shrouded in gloom and gives but slight hint of much that is hidden, that ever must be hidden.--I wonder where he is to-night. Oh, I"ve no right to think of him at all. Why can"t I say, "Stop," and end it?--this miserable stealing away of my thoughts until will, like a jailer, pursues and drags them back. Why should a presentiment of danger to him weigh down my spirit to-night? What other peril can he be exposed to except that of marrying a beauty and an heiress? Ah! peril enough, if his heart shrinks like mine. Here, now, _quit_," and the word came sharply and angrily in her self-condemnation.
Then in the silence began that distant groan of nature. It was so distinct, so unlike anything she had ever heard in its horrible suggestion of all physical evil that she shrank from the window overwhelmed by a nameless dread. Instinctively she turned up the gas, that she might not face the terror in darkness. As she did so she thought of the rush and roar of the last year"s cyclone, but in the next breath learned that this was something infinitely worse--what, she was too confused and terrified to imagine. Then she was thrown to the floor. Raising herself partially on a chair she witnessed an event which paralyzed her with horror. The wall toward the street, with its mirror, pictures, windows, and all pertaining to it fell outward with a crash.
For a second all was still, as she looked into the darkness which had swallowed up the front and sheltering side of her home. Then immediately about her began a wail of human anguish which grew in agonized intensity, gathering volume far and near until it became like the death-cry of a city. Unconsciously she was joining in it--that involuntary "oh-h," that crescendo tidal wave of sound sweeping upward from despairing humanity.
Then this mighty and bitter cry seemed to become articulate in the word "G.o.d." With an instinct swift, inevitable, and irresistible as the power that had shaken the city, the thought of G.o.d as the only other power able to cope with the mysterious destroyer, entered into all hearts and found expression.
Clouds of stifling, whitish-looking dust now came pouring into the unprotected apartment, obscuring the street and rendering dim even the familiar objects near the terrified girl. For a few moments the nervous shock was so great that Mara felt as if paralyzed. She remained lying on the floor, half supporting herself by the chair, waiting in breathless expectation for she knew not what. The malign power had been so vast, and its work so swift, that even her fearless spirit was overwhelmed.
The shrieks, groans, and prayers, the hurrying steps in the dust-clouded street at last forced upon her attention the fact that all were seeking to escape from the buildings. With difficulty she regained her feet and tottered to Mrs. Hunter"s room, but found, to her dismay, that she could not open the door. She called and even shrieked, but there was no answer.
A sense of utter desolation and helplessness overpowered her. Who could come to her aid? Bodine could not. At such a time he would be almost helpless himself, and there were women in his charge. With a bitterness also akin to the death, which she momentarily expected, she knew that her thoughts had flown to Clancy and to no other human being at that hour. She was learning what all others discovered in the stress of the earthquake, that everything not absolutely essential to life and soul was swept away and almost forgotten.
To go into the street and get help seemed her only resource, and she made her way down the stairs to where had been the doorway. In vain she appealed to the flying forms. Her cries were unheard in the awful din of shrieks, prayers, groans, and calls of the separated to their friends. The impression made was of a wild panic in which the frenzied thought of flight, escape, predominated.
She was about to return in something like despair, feeling that she could not leave her aunt, when she saw a tall form rushing toward her. A second later she recognized Owen Clancy leaping over the ruins of her home. With a cry, she fell into his outstretched arms, faint, trembling, yet with a sense of refuge, a thrill of exquisite joy before unknown in all her life.
"Mara, dear Mara, you are not hurt?" he asked breathlessly.
"No, oh, thank G.o.d, you have come!"
Again there was the same ominous growl, deep in the earth, which once heard could never be mistaken, never forgotten. Lifting her up Clancy carried her swiftly from beneath the shattered buildings to the middle of the street. She clung to him almost convulsively as the earth again swayed and trembled beneath them, and the awful moan of nature swelled, then died away in the distance. There was an instant of agonized, breathless suspense, then the wail of the stricken city rose again with a deeper accent of terror, a more pa.s.sionate appeal to heaven, and the effort to escape to the wider s.p.a.ces was renewed in a more headlong flight.
"Mara," said Clancy, "at this hour, when everything may be swept away in a moment, there is nothing left for me but you and G.o.d. Will you trust me, and let me do my very best to save you?"
"Oh, Owen, Owen, G.o.d forgive me!" She uttered the words like a despairing cry, then buried her face upon his breast.
With a dread greater than that inspired by the earthquake he thought: "Is it too late? Can she have married Bodine?" The anguish in her tone combined with her action had revealed both her love and its hopelessness.
He said gently, yet firmly: "We must act now and quickly. Where is Mrs.
Hunter?"
Mara had apparently become speechless from grief. Without a word she turned swiftly, and taking his hand led him toward the ruined building.
"No, stay here. It will not be safe for you to enter," and pushing her gently back he ran up the exposed stairway, into the parlor, noticing with dismay the general wreck and the danger Mara had run.