They were well round the entry curve, and almost beyond the reach of daylight, when John stopped.
"What is it?" Walter asked.
"Do you not recognize it?"
Nora saw that he was asking her. She looked around. But it was tunnel very much like all the rest they had walked through. "Was it here?" she asked.
"Aye."
"How can you possibly tell?" Walter laughed.
John walked to the side wall on their left and pointed to an X scratched in one of the bricks. "That marks the transverse centreline of the blind number one shaft above us here."
"So—the rails ended here," Nora said. "The powder barrels were over there and some burned timber. And, Pengilly, you were"—she walked to a point a little to the left of the midline—"here, I think."
"No," John said, walking to a point only two feet away from her. "It was here."
They all laughed at his pedantry. Pengilly came forward to the point John had marked, looked at it, looked at the roof from where the overburden had fallen and crushed his foot, and then, to the surprise of all, threw back his head and roared with laughter.
A few chains farther and they came to the long straight run—over 2,500 yards. Here the scaffolding for the bricklayers was still in place and the brick courses were only partially complete. Walter demonstrated how they married each lining ring of brick with its counterpart in the brick invert. "Where we have a brick invert, which is about 1800 yards altogether, we build it immediately behind the advancing face of the drift, so that we can lay this track for carrying out the muck. Where we leave the living stone as a natural invert, it's three feet, almost three feet, above this. Later, we can confine the ballast below the road in sections, where we expose the rings of the brick invert and marry the tunnel rings to them."
"Oh yes?" Arabella said.
"Letterman," John called. "Come behind a moment. You and Pengilly go back a bit. Let it get dark here."
Arabella looked inquiringly at Nora who shrugged back her own incomprehension.
"What's this?" Walter asked.
"You'll see," John said. "I hope."
When the two torches were far enough away he turned to face up the tunnel and said, "Look!" They strained their eyes and then saw what he meant as gradually, one after another, the faint pools of light that fell down the ventilation shafts came just within the limits of visibility. The dark around was so intense that the first glimmer, from the nearest shaft, had no anchorage and seemed to float away, the merest ghost of a gleam, as their eyes strained to hold it. Then came their gasps of wonder and delight as the next pool came, as if by magic, into view, then the next, then the next, in slow succession. By the time the most distant one hovered on the threshold, the nearest pool was almost bright; the gradation between them stretched the perspective to a depth that seemed infinite. It was an infinite line of pale to darkest gray, aimed at them—at each one of them—lost in an infinity of blackest black.
Walter was the first to speak, and in a voice almost as faint as the light. "I would never have imagined it," he said. "Never. When did you first notice it?"
"The same time as you," John answered. "I wasn't sure…I thought with almost two days and no working, it might have cleared enough."
"Do you mean…" Arabella began but was unable to frame the question.
"We may…" Walter said, not struck with the full meaning of his words until he actually spoke them, "we may be the first people—the first people ever, d'you realize that, ever in all of history, to see such a sight."
Sobered still further by the thought, they looked back, but the increasing adaptation of their vision was now revealing facets of the rock face and the drift itself was growing visible. That eerie floating of gray phantoms in a void was gone.
"Why?" Nora asked. "Why d'you say the first?"
"Well," John said. "Where is there another…where has there ever been another drift eight foot wide and more than a mile long, with ten shafts in a dead straight line, only a hundred to three hundred-odd feet below ground? And one where people walk in the dark, with the air clear from two days' idleness… the chances against all that are so enormous, I'd say Thornton's almost certainly correct. No one's ever seen that before."
"Well!" Walter stirred them all back to life. "It's gone now. The effect. For me, anyway. I must say that is a sight I shall remember for a long time. A very long time."
"A sight?" Arabella said more gently, as if to compensate for his rumbustiousness. "A vision."
"Yes," Nora whispered, still treasuring it.
"Righty-oh Pengilly, Letterman!" John called.
And when they brought their torches into view again the light was painful. But at least now they could see every detail as they passed.
"Did you really imagine that, before we entered?" Walter asked John.
"Something like it—I had no idea it would be so beautiful."
Walter shook his head. "That's a faculty I envy. To imagine how things might seem in unknown conditions."
"No great art, surely," John scoffed.
"I don't know about art, but I say it could save you thousands of pounds in the years ahead."
And Nora, proudly listening, thought there were times when Thornton's mind showed real flashes of insight.
And Arabella, listening too, and remembering a time when that very faculty had led Stevenson into error, wondered whether or not to point out that even the best and sharpest faculties without divine and moral guidance, are a snare and a delusion; she thought better of it and decided to find or make some quiet occasion in which to remind Mr. Stevenson of it privately.
Although both men had started by explaining every detail of the drift to the ladies in the most considerate way, it was not long before they vanished, in spirit at least, into their own technical world. After all, this was the first time both of them had walked every foot of the drift, from portal to portal. Behind them Nora and Arabella picked what crumbs they could and walked as if through a foreign museum of the underworld.
"Look!" John would say. "We had thought of five rings of brick here. This is the seven-sixty-eight-yard mark. But having taken—"
"Wait!" Walter would protest, laughingly. "Are you counting each yard?"
"No," John would be mystified, "but that formation there, where the cracks make the shape of a giraffe—that is the seven-seventy-yard mark."
"How do you know?"
"I know the wall patterns at ten yard intervals throughout the drift. As I was saying—having taken a closer look, I think we want to begin the six-ring course here…"
And so on. In the end, Nora and Arabella had to remind them that tomorrow was the next true working day. Thornton ruefully agreed with Stevenson that the provisional specification for the rings would need revising all the length of the drift, in the light of the experience gained on bricking the southern curve. And, to avoid any imputation that Stevenson, who was already clear in his own mind what was needed, had unduly influenced the engineer, Thornton would make his own survey independently and the two would compare notes on New Year's Day.
By this time they were approaching number seven, the deepest shaft of all. John, who had hurried them past the other shafts, now made them halt. "And you two, Pengilly and Letterman, rest those lights over there and come and see this, too."
When Pengilly was close, John said to him: "This is thy shaft, lad. Tha'st never seen it from't bottom I'll warrant."
"I a'nt neither, that's a fact," Pengilly said.
"Look!" Arabella cried. "A star! I can see a star!"
"Oh yes!" Nora was equally excited. "So can I! Look, dear! Two stars."
And their enthusiasm was so warm that the men, though they had seen the effect often enough before, pretended to share the discovery, admiring the two stars of whatever constellation happened to be in a position at that time to shine directly down the shaft.
"But they are moving," Nora said. "They must be shooting stars."
"That is the motion
of the earth," John told her. And the idea made her so giddy that she automatically reached out for his support.
Despite this and the earlier vision, their dusty, uncomfortable walk—so long anticipated, so soon over—was a disappointment for Nora and Arabella. Each yard of rock had spoken volumes to John and Walter; yet, try as she might, neither wife could see anything other than long torchlight vistas of rough, dull, gray rock, interrupted here and there by stretches of timber shoring and of brick—for two thousand eight hundred and eighty-five yards. Both privately concluded that any ten yards of drift, taken at haphazard, was very much like any other ten yards of drift. Their relief as they negotiated the final curve, leading to the Oval Shaft and out into Deanroyd cutting, was almost palpable. Only two men so totally absorbed in their vocation as John and Walter could have failed to notice it.
Before they left the railroad, John paid off the two men, who set off at once into the tunnel, the way they had just come, both delighted. They took the two protective burnooses with them.
"Easiest money they've ever earned," Walter said.
But John let his words die and then told the other three, all of them still looking at the north portal: "We four have just walked down the centre line of what, this day twelvemonth will be the longest man-made tunnel in the modern world—and the ancient world, too, for all I know."
"Aren't there canal tunnels longer?" Arabella asked.
"Moleholes!" John said contemptuously. "Look at that! That is a tunnel. And this man here and me will have built it."
"Si monumentum requiris…" Walter began.
But John clapped him on the back and cried "No! I don't want it to be one tunnel; not just one tunnel. I want folk to stand in the middle of England—some place where a dozen railways meet—and say that!"
And the impudence, the hubris, of his words took Walter's breath away. But Arabella, thinking he must be joking, merely laughed.
Then, they all went up to the turnpike.
"This is the first time we've had snow here since the day of the strike," Walter said, and he looked around as if he still expected to see some trace of that day's events.
"How is young Tommy coming along?" Arabella asked.
"Oh!" Nora cried, suddenly remembering the wrapping in which Tommy had sealed his drawings for her. "Look!" She dug the paper from the bottom of her pocket book. "He made me a drawing of those quaint silver coins for a present, but see what he wrapped it in."
They all read the address and laughed. "Lancashire, near Yorkshire! I like that very much," John said. "He's not so daft, that Tommy."
"He's not daft at all," Nora said.
At that moment, as they were about to take the lane up to Rough Stones, they heard a sound that made them turn and stare at one another in open bewilderment. Arabella's face was the first to light in recognition, quickly followed by John's and Walter's.
"She's back, then," Walter said.
"Who? What is it? Who is back?" Nora looked from one to the other.
"This is what I mentioned," Arabella said. "Lady Henshaw." She turned to the men. "Don't tell her. See if she can guess."
Nora listened. "A circus?"
They laughed. "Better than that," John said.
"It's goats," Nora said next. "If you told me it's a travelling goat slaughterer, I'd believe you."
"You could go the length and breadth of England and not see this," Walter said.
"Oh what is it?" Nora almost screamed, straining her eyes along the road.
"Here it comes," John said.
And around the corner at Stone House came a string of about two dozen goats, black, white, piebald, and one roan sport, bleating, trotting, walking, stumbling, gasping, panting, as they lurched and strained at the traces of a very handsome town chariot. It was the elegant sort of closed carriage one would expect to see drawn by a pair of grays at the very least.
"I don't believe it!" Nora laughed.
"A unique sight," Walter agreed. "And so is she."
They watched this extraordinary troupe all the way along the turnpike until it drew level, by which time the noise and the smell were both fairly powerful. The coachman looked fixedly ahead with a disdainful air almost superior enough to compensate for his motley twenty-four-in-hand. The four watchers expected the coach to sweep by in all its bizarre majesty, but a voice from within suddenly shrieked "Stop!" The goats took this as a command to them and came slewing to a halt, leaving the coachman no office other than to apply the brake as fast as he could. The animals nearest the coach flattened themselves to the road, well aware that it could be a second or so before the brake operated. As a result, the coach actually slid to rest above at least half of its draft. Near the head of the line, a billy mounted a nanny immediately in front of him; he had been trying to get aboard her for most of the journey and his efforts alone must have accounted for half the motion of the vehicle.
This frank little drama helped the four of them to concentrate on the carriage, whose dark interior still concealed its occupant. The postillion leaped down and, poking his head under the back of the coach, began to shout, in a strong Welsh accent: "Out from under there you wretched little artists! Get out! Come on!"
As he merely spoke to them without attempting to hit or kick, they paid no attention but continued to sit there, panting, scratching, wagging their ears, and bleating.
As if in obedience to his command, a middle-aged lady with a round, almost nut-brown face peered out of the open carriage window. "Madoc!" she bawled in a cracked and very unmusical voice.
"My lady?" he said, coming around to where she could see him.
"What are you doing? Who are you talking to?"
He shrugged with weary resignation and pointed lamely at the road under the carriage.
"Who?" she insisted even louder.
"I know you never believe it," he said defensively. "But they've got under there again."
"You're talking rubbish man."
"Well listen!" Madoc almost out-bellowed her. "Where d'you think that noise is coming from?"
"You are as confused as ever," she said with all the considerable patrician calm she could muster. "Drunk I shouldn't wonder. Get back on the coach this minute."
He shrugged once more, with the same weariness, and returned to the back of the coach. As a parting shot, before hoisting himself aboard, he stooped and shrieked at the goats, pointing at them with one finger outstretched: "I 'ope you all get run over!" The goat nearest to him, almost between his legs, tried to bite his finger, but that was the full extent of the attention they paid him.
Hearing him, Lady Henshaw now poked her head out of the window. "Be silent!" she bawled.
He, now seated again, and pulling the coach rug around him, looked heavenward.
"You are dismissed!" she went on. He mouthed the rest of her words, silently, in time with her: "The moment I find someone to replace you. You are dismissed."
The four astonished onlookers had to rearrange their faces very quickly as she turned to them. For one lunatic moment, it seemed she was about to offer Madoc's post to them as she peered from one to the other through her lorgnettes.
"You're all too far away," she said. And her voice, after the shrieking she had given the postillion, was so soft and gentle and her smile so warm that they all involuntarily moved toward her.
"Is one of you Mrs. Stevenson?" she asked. "Do put up your hats, thank you, gentlemen."
John quickly stepped forward. "Allow me, my lady. Mrs. Thornton…Mrs. Stevenson." The two ladies curtseyed in response to a gracious nod from the carriage window. "Mr. Walter Thornton, engineer to the Manchester and Leeds, and I am John Stevenson, contractor on that working."
Lady Henshaw's eyes lit up with satisfaction. "I have shares in all of you," she said. But then a sudden doubt invaded her. "You do eat properly I hope," she asked sternly. They nodded their assurance. "Plenty of goats meat?" she said.
"All we want," John confirmed.
"Can't have too muc
h," she said. "I'll send you some. It's the next best thing to venison, you know." She looked up the line of goats in front of the coach, where the copulating billy was just reaching the deep pelvic thrusts of his extremis. "It's easily come by." She sniffed as she turned back to them.
They stood in various degrees of embarrassment.
"Mrs. Stevenson," she said, "I'd be grateful if you'd call on me. Any day next week."
"Gladly, my lady," Nora curtseyed.
"Benham," Lady Henshaw called to her coachman. "If Monty has finished with Pamela, you may proceed."
They stood in silence, wanting to laugh, yet fearing to be thought indelicate, while the coachman shouted strange oaths, and the goats at the head scrabbled in the snow, and those under the coach crawled, slid, or let themselves be dragged into the open air. At last, by some miracle, they were all brought standing and facing approximately forward—and only two had to be rescued by Madoc from death by strangulation. They took so long to sort out that Monty was beginning to sniff again at the delights of Pamela, never more than a foot from his nostrils. But just as he got his beard upon her haunches Benham gave a final explosive "hapaaaoi!" and the ragged motley jerked its antic way down the turnpike, the bleating and the stench fading quickly on the winter air.
World From Rough Stones Page 51