Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  Reginald Lindo walked on considering the matter. Suddenly he said, “The archdeacon thinks I ought to resign. What do you think, Miss Bonamy?”

  Her heart began to beat quickly. He was seeking her advice! — asking her opinion in this matter so utterly important to him, so absolutely vital! For a moment she could not speak, she was so filled with surprise. Then she said gently, her eyes on the pavement, “I do not think I can judge.”

  “But you must have heard — more I dare say than I have!” he rejoined with a forced laugh. “Will you tell me what you think?”

  She looked before her, her face troubled. Then she spoke bravely.

  “I think you should judge for yourself,” she said in a low tone, full of serious feeling. “The responsibility is yours. I do not think that you should depend entirely on any one’s advice, but should try to do right according to your conscience — not acting hastily, but coolly, and on reflection.”

  They were almost at Mr. Bonamy’s door when she said this, and he traversed the remainder of the distance without speaking. At the steps he halted and held out his hand. “Thank you,” he said simply. “I hope I shall use this advice to better purpose than the last you gave me. Please remember me to your sister. Good-by.”

  She bowed silently and went in, and he turned back and walked up the street. The dusk was falling. A few yards in front of him the lame lamplighter was going his rounds, ladder on shoulder. In every other shop the gas was beginning to gleam. The night was coming, was almost come, yet still above the houses the sky, a pale greenish-blue, was bright with daylight, against which the great tower of the church stood up bulky and black. The young man was in a curious mood. Though he walked the common pavement, he felt himself, as he gazed upward, alone with his thoughts which went back, will he nill he, to his first evening in Claversham. He remembered how free from reproach or stumbling-blocks his path had seemed then, to what blameless ends he had in fancy devoted himself. What works of thanksgiving, small but beneficent as the tiny rills which steal downward through the ferns to the pasture, he had planned. And in the centre of that past dream of the future he pictured now — Kate Bonamy. Well, the reality had been different.

  He was just beginning to wonder when he would be likely to meet her again, and to dwell with curious pleasure on some of the details of her dress and appearance, when the sudden clatter of hoofs behind him caused him to turn his head. Far down the street a rider had just turned the corner, and was now galloping up the middle of the roadway, the manner in which he urged on his pony speaking loudly of disaster and ill news. Opposite the rector he pulled up and cried out, “Where is the doctor’s, sir?”

  Lindo turned sharply round and rang the bell of the house behind him, which happened to be Gregg’s.

  “Here,” he said briefly. “What is it, my man?”

  “An explosion in the Big Pit at Baerton,” the man replied, almost blubbering with excitement and the speed at which he had come. “There is like to be fifty killed and as many hurt, I was told. But I came straight off.”

  “When did it happen?” Lindo asked, a wave of wild excitement following his first impulse of horror.

  “About an hour and a quarter ago, as near as I can say,” the messenger, a farm laborer called from the plough, answered.

  Dr. Gregg was out, and the clergyman walked by the side of the horse, a crowd gathering behind him as the news spread, to the house of Mr. Keogh the other doctor, who fortunately lived close by. He was at home, and, the messenger going in to tell him the particulars, in five minutes his gig was at the door, The rector, who had gone in too, came out with him, and, without asking leave, climbed to the seat beside him.

  “Hallo!” said the surgeon, an elderly man, stout and white-haired, “are you coming, too, Mr. Lindo?”

  “I think,” the rector answered, “that there may be cases in which you can do little and I much. Mr. Walker, the vicar of Baerton, is ill in bed, I know; and as the news has come to me first, I think I ought to go.”

  “Right you are!” said Mr. Keogh gruffly. “Let go!”

  In another moment the fast trotting cob was whirling the two men down the street. They turned the corner sharply, and as the breeze met them on the bridge, compelling Lindo to turn up the collar of his coat and draw the rug more closely round him, the church clock in the town behind them struck the half-hour. “Half-past five,” said the rector. The surgeon did not answer. They were in the open country now, the hedges speeding swiftly by them in the light of the lamps, and the long outline of Bear Hill, a huge misshapen hump which rose into a point at one end, lying dim and black before them. A night drive is always impressive. In the gloom, in the sough of the wind, in the sky serenely star-lit, in a tumult of hurrying clouds, in the rattle of the wheels, in the monotonous fall of the hoofs, there is an appeal to the sombre side of a man. How much more when the sough of the wind seems to the imagination a cry of pain, and the night is a dark background on which the fancy paints dying faces! At such a time the cares of life, which day by day rise one beyond another and prevent us dwelling over-much on the end, sink into pettiness, leaving us face to face with weightier issues.

  “There have been accidents here before?” the clergyman asked, after a long silence.

  “Thirty-five years ago there was one!” his companion answered, with a groan which betrayed his apprehensions. “Good heavens, sir, I remember it now! I was young then and fresh from the hospitals; but it was almost too much for me!”

  “I hope that this one has been exaggerated,” Lindo replied, entering fully into the other’s feelings. “I did not quite understand the man’s account; but, as far as I could follow it, one of the two shafts — the downcast shaft I think it was — was jammed full of rubbish and rendered quite useless.”

  “Just what I expected!” ejaculated his companion.

  “And they could now communicate with the workings only through the upcast shaft, in which they had rigged up some temporary lifting gear.”

  “Ay, and it is the deepest pit here,” the surgeon chimed in, as the horse began to breast the steeper part of the ascent, and the furnace fires, before and above them, began to flicker and glow, now sinking into darkness, now flaming up like beacon-fires. “The workings are two thousand feet below the surface, man!”

  “Stop!” Lindo said. “Here is some one looking for us, I think.”

  Two women with shawls over their heads came to the side of the gig. “Be you the doctors?” said one of them; and then in another minute the two were following her up the side of the cutting which here confined the road. The hillside gained, they were hurried round pit-banks and slag-heaps, and under cranes and ruinous sinking walls, and over and under mysterious obstacles, sometimes looming large in the gloom and sometimes lying unseen at their feet — until they emerged at length with startling abruptness into a large circle of dazzling light. Four great fires were burning close together, and round them, motionless and for the most part silent, in appearance almost apathetic, stood hundreds of dark shadows — men and women waiting for news.

  The silence and inaction of so large a crowd struck a chill to Lindo’s heart. When he recovered himself, he was standing in the midst of a dozen rough fellows, some half-stripped, some muffled up in pilot-jackets or coarse shiny clothes. The crowd seemed to be watching them, and they spoke now and then to one another in a desultory expectant fashion, from which he judged they were in authority.

  “It is a bad job — a very bad job!” his companion was saying nervously. “Is there anything I can do yet?”

  “Well, that depends, doctor,” answered one of the men, his manner of speaking proving that he was not a mere working collier. “There is no one up yet,” he added, eyeing the doctor dubiously. “But it does not exactly follow that you can do nothing. Some of us have just come up, and there is a shift of men exploring down there now. Three bodies have been recovered, and they are at the foot of the shaft; and three poor fellows have been found alive, of whom one has since
died. The other two are within fifty yards of the shaft, and as comfortable as we can make them. But they are bad — too bad to come up in a bucket; and we can rig up nothing bigger at present so there they are fixed. The question is, will you go down to them?”

  Mr. Keogh’s face fell, and he shook his head. He was no longer young, and to descend a sheer depth of five hundred yards in a bucket dangling at the end of a makeshift rope was not in his line. “No, thank you,” he said, “I could not do it.”

  “Come, doctor,” the man persisted — he was the manager of a neighboring colliery— “you will be there in no time.”

  “Just so,” said the surgeon drily. “It is the coming back is the rub, you see, Mr. Peat. No, thank you, I could not.”

  The other still urged him. “These poor fellows are about as bad as they can be, and you know if the mountain will not go to Mahomet, Mahomet must go to the mountain.”

  “I know; and if it were a mountain, well and good,” Mr. Keogh answered, smiling in sickly fashion as his eye strayed to a black well-like hole close at hand — a mere hole in some loose planks surmounted by a windlass and fringed with ugly wreckage. “But it is not. It is quite the other thing, you see.”

  Mr. Peat, the manager, shrugged his shoulders, and glanced at his companions rather in sorrow than surprise. Lindo, standing behind the doctor, saw the look. Till then he had stood silent. Now he pressed forward. “Did I hear you say that one of the injured men died after he was found?” he asked.

  “Yes, that is so,” the manager answered, looking keenly at him, and wondering who he was.

  “The others that are hurt — are their lives in danger?”

  “I am afraid so,” the man replied.

  “Then I have a right to be with them,” the rector answered quickly. “I am a clergyman, and I have hastened here, fearing this might be the case. But I have also attended an ambulance class, and I can dress a burn. Besides, I am a younger man than our friend here, and, if you will let me down, I will go.”

  “By George, sir!” exclaimed the manager, looking round for approval and smiting his thigh heavily, “you are a man as well as a parson, and down you shall go, and thank you! You may make the men more comfortable, and any way you will put heart into them, for you have some to spare yourself. As for danger, there is none! — Jack!” — this in a louder voice to some one in the background— “just twitch that rope! And get that tub up, will you? Look slippery now.”

  Lindo felt a hand on his arm and, obeying the silent gesture of the nearest gaunt figure, stepped aside. In a twinkling the man stripped off the parson’s long coat and put on him the pilot jacket from his own shoulders; a second man gave Lindo a peaked cap of stiff leather in place of his soft hat and a third fastened a pit lamp round his neck, explaining to him how to raise the wick without unlocking the lamp, and also showing him that, if it hung too much on one side or were upset, its flame would expire of itself. And upon one thing Lindo was never tired of dwelling afterward — the kindly tact of these rough men, and how by seemingly casual words, and even touches, the roughest sought to encourage him, while ignoring the possibility of his feeling alarm.

  Meanwhile Mr. Keogh, standing in a state of considerable perplexity and discomfiture where the rector had left him, heard a well-known voice at his elbow, and turned to find that Gregg had arrived. The younger doctor was not the man to be awed into silence, and, as he came up, was speaking loudly. “Hallo, Mr. Keogh!” he said. “Heard you were before me. Have you got them all in hand? Cuts or burns mostly, eh?”

  “They are not above ground yet,” Mr. Keogh answered. He and Gregg were not on speaking; terms, but such an emergency as this was allowed to override their estrangement.

  “Oh, then we shall have to wait,” Gregg answered, looking round on the scene with a mixture of curiosity and professional aplomb. “I wish I had spared my horse. Any other medical man here?”

  “No; and they want one of us to go down in the bucket,” Keogh explained. “There are some injured men at the foot of the shaft. I have a wife and children, and I thought that perhaps you — —”

  “Would not mind breaking my neck!” Gregg retorted with decision. “No, thank you, not for me I hope to have a wife and children some day, and I will keep my neck for them. Go down!” he repeated, looking round with extreme scorn. “Pooh! No one can expect us to do it! It is these people’s business, and they are used to it; but there is not a sane man in the kingdom, besides, would go down that place after what has just happened. It is a quarter of a mile as a stone falls, if it is an inch!”

  “It is all that,” assented the other, much relieved.

  “And a height makes me giddy,” Dr. Gregg added.

  “I feel the same now,” said his elder.

  “No; every man to his trade,” Gregg concluded, settling the matter to his satisfaction. “Let them bring them up, and we will doctor them. But while they are below ground —— Hallo!”

  His last word was an oath of surprise and anger. Happening to glance round, the doctor saw Lindo coming forward to the shaft, and recognized him in spite of his disguise. One look, and Gregg would cheerfully have given ten pounds either to have had the rector away, or to have arrived a little later himself. He had reckoned already in his own mind that, if no outsider went down, he could scarcely be blamed for taking care of himself. But, if the rector went down, the matter would wear a different aspect. And Dr. Gregg saw this so clearly that he turned pale with rage and chagrin, and swore more loudly than before.

  CHAPTER XXI.

  IN PROFUNDIS.

  The young clergyman’s face, as he walked forward to the shaft, formed no index to his mind, for while it remained calm and even wore a faint smile, he was inwardly conscious of a strong desire to take hold of anything which presented itself, even a straw. He stepped gravely into the tub amid a low murmur, and, clutching the iron bar above it, felt himself at a word of command lifted gently into the air, and swung over the shaft. For an uncomfortable five seconds or so he remained stationary; then there was a jerk — another — and the dark figures, the lines of faces, and the glare of the fires leapt suddenly above his head. He found himself dropping through space with a swift, sickening motion, as of one falling away from himself. His heart rose into his throat. There was a loud buzzing in his ears, and yet above this he heard the dull rattling sound of the rope being paid out. Every other sense was spent in the stern clutch of his hands on the bar above his head.

  In a few seconds the horrible sensation of falling passed away. He was no longer in space with nothing stable about him, but in a small tub at the end of a tough rope. Except for a slight swaying motion, he hardly knew that he was still descending; and presently a faint light, more diffused than his own lamp, grew visible. Then he came gently to a standstill, and some one held up a lantern to his face. With difficulty he made out two huge figures standing beside him, who laid hold of his tub and pulled it toward them until it rested on something solid. “You are welcome,” growled one, as, aided by a hand of each, Lindo stepped out. “You will be the doctor, I suppose, master? Well, this way. Catch hold of my jacket.”

  Lindo obeyed, being only too glad of the help thus given him; for though the men seemed to move about with ease and certainty, he could make out nothing but shapeless gloom. “Now you sit right down there,” continued the collier, when they had moved a few yards, “and you will get the sight of your eyes in a bit.”

  He did as he was bid, and one by one the objects about him became visible. His first feeling was one of astonishment. He had put a quarter of a mile of solid earth between himself and the sunlight, and yet, for all he could see, he might be merely in a cellar under a street. He found himself seated on a rough bench, in a low-roofed, windowless, wooden cabin, strangely resembling a very dirty London office in a fog. True, everything was black — very black. On another bench, opposite him, sat the two colliers who had received him, their lamps between their knees. His first impulse was to tell them hurriedly that
he was not the doctor. “I am afraid you must be disappointed,” he added, “but I hope one will follow me down. I am a clergyman, and I want to do something for those poor fellows, if you will take me to them.”

  The two men betrayed no surprise, but he who had spoken before quietly poked up the wick of his lamp and held the lantern up so as to get a good view of his face. “Ay, ay,” he said, nodding, as he lowered it again. “I thought you weren’t unbeknown to me. You are the parson we fetched to poor Lucas a while ago. Well, Jim will have a rare cageful of his friends with him to-night.”

  The rector shuddered. Such apathy, such matter-of-factness was new to him. But though his heart sank as the collier rose and, swinging his lamp in his hand, passed through the doorway, he made haste to follow him; and the man’s next words, “You had best look to your steps, master, for there is a deal of rubbish come down” — pointing as they did to a material danger — brought him, in the diversion of his thoughts, something like relief.

  The road on which he found himself, being the main heading or highway of the pit, was a good wide one. It was even possible to stand upright in it. Here and there, however, it was partially blocked by falls of coal caused by the explosion, and over one of these his guide put out his hand to assist him. Lindo’s lamp was by this time burning low. The pitman silently took it and raised the wick, a grim smile distorting his face as he handed it back. “You will be about the first of the gentry,” he muttered, “as has been down this pit without paying his footing.”

  Lindo took the words for a hint, and was shocked by the man’s insensibility. “My good fellow,” he answered, “if that is all, you shall have what you like another time. But for heaven’s sake let us think of these poor fellows now.”

  The man turned on him and swore furiously. “Do you think I meant that?” he cried, with another violent oath.