Whether Owen had come back, in my opinion, a hero, or an unpardoned and
disgraced man, appeared after his first swift glance into my face to
affect him very little, if at all; and I had to admit to myself that
whatever else he may have failed in, he had arrived at Ffynon with a
full knowledge of the duty which he had undertaken.
As a boy, he had always loved engineering, and when in those bright and
happy days he and I had discussed his golden future, the _pros_ had
generally ended in favour of his becoming an engineer.
"All things considered, I should like this best, Gwladys," he would say.
And though in these very youthful days he appeared to care more for
poetry and the finest of the fine arts, yet it was here, I believe, that
his true talent lay. Owen had not been idle during the four years of
his exile, he had studied engineering as a profession when he was at
Oxford, and during these years he had gone through a course of practical
training with regard to the duties of a mining engineer, not only in the
German mines, but in the North of England. He now brought this
knowledge to bear on the rather slow working and unprofitable mine at
Ffynon. This mine, which belonged to our mother, had at one time
yielded a great deal of coal and was a source of much wealth, but of
late, year by year, the mine yielded less, and its expenses became
greater. It was worked on an old-fashioned system; it had not the
recent improvements with regard to ventilation; and many serious
accidents had taken place in consequence. Neither was the manager
popular, he worked the mine recklessly, and many accidents of the most
fatal character were constantly taking place from the falls of roofs,
this expression meaning the giving way of great portions of the coal for
want of proper supports being put under it. A short time before Owen's
return, the manager of the mine for some more flagrant act of
carelessness than usual, had been dismissed, and it was on hearing this,
that Owen had written to David, telling him of his studies and his
profession, reminding him also that when a boy he had more than once
gone down into the old mine at Ffynon, that with his present knowledge
he believed the mine to be still rich in coal, and that it only needed
to be properly worked to yield a fine return. He spoke strongly against
the unprofitable and expensive system which had hitherto been adopted;
and finally he begged of David to give him permission to step into the
manager's shoes, and for at least a year to have absolute control of the
mine: promising at the end of that time to reduce order out of chaos, to
lessen current expenses, and to bring in the first instalments of what
should be large profits.
He had frankly told David his reason for this: he had a debt to pay, a
debt of love and gratitude it was true, but still a debt that fretted
his proud spirit, a debt that must be paid before he could know
happiness again. But it was just on account of this reason that David
hesitated to accept the services of one whose knowledge of the work he
meant to undertake, was certainly great. The primary motive in Owen's
heart, seemed to David, in the present state of Ffynon mine, hardly a
worthy one. Coal was valuable, gold scarce, but lives were precious; it
seemed to David that until all was done to insure the safety of the
lives of those men and boys who worked in the mine, gold ought to weigh
very low in the balance, and as he alone of us all knew something truly
of his brother's character, so he hesitated to accept his offer; but
while David hesitated, mother urged. Mother was ignorant of the miner's
life; gold to mother was not valueless: she had dreams of the Morgans
being restored to all their former riches and power, she had also,
notwithstanding his one fall, still implicit faith in Owen. Owen would
not only win the gold but make the mine safe. It was a grief to her to
leave Tynycymmer, but it was a counterbalancing delight to live on any
terms for a year with her favourite son; she urged the acceptance of his
offer. Thus urged, David yielded.
We moved to Ffynon. Owen arrived, eager, hopeful, enthusiastic, as of
old. Handsome and brilliant as ever he looked as gay as though he had
never known a sorrow. So I thought for the first week after his
arrival, then I saw that his spirits were fitful, sometimes I fancied a
little forced; a bad report of the mine would depress him for the day,
whereas good news would send his gay laugh echoing all over the small
house.
Thus I found myself in the midst of mining life. Mother, hitherto
profoundly ignorant of such matters, now took up the popular theme with
interest and zest.
She and I learned what _fire-damp_, _black-damp_, _after-damp_ meant.
We learned the relative destructiveness of explosions by gas and
inundations by water. Then we became great on the all-important subject
of ventilation. We knew what the steam jet could do, what furnace
ventilation could effect. I admired the Davy lamps, learned something
of their construction, and at last, I obtained the strongest wish I at
present possessed, namely, a visit to this underground region of awe and
danger, myself. It is a hackneyed theme, and I need scarcely describe
it at length. I remember stepping on to the cage with some of the
enthusiasm which I had admired in Miles' brave hero brother, and long
before I reached the bottom of the shaft, suffering from an intolerable
sense of suffocation, and shivering and shaking with inward fear, such
as must have overtaken poor little James on that fatal day. Finally,
when I got to the bottom, recovering my courage, rejoicing in the free
current of fresh air which was blown down from the great fan above,
growing accustomed to the dim light of the Davy lamps, and then
discovering little, by little, that the mine with its rail-roads, its
levels, its drift ways, where the loaded trams of coal ran swiftly down,
impelled by their own weight, its eager, grimy workers, its patient
horses, destined many of them to live and die in this underground gloom,
was very like a town, and had an order and method of its own.
The knowledge gained by the visit, the knowledge gained by listening to
Owen's and David's conversation, the knowledge perhaps greater than all,
which I had won by my friendship for Miles and Nan, inspired in me the
strongest respect and admiration for the brave collier. He works in the
dark, his heroic deeds are little heard of beyond his own circle, and
yet he is as true a hero as the soldier in the field of battle or the
sailor in the storm: his battle-field is the mine, his enemies, earth,
air, fire, and water. Any moment the earth can bury him in a living
tomb, a vast quantity of that solid coal may give way, and crush him
beneath its weight; any instant, the air, in the poisoned form of black,
or after-damp, may fill his lungs, take all power from his limbs, fell
him in his strength and prime to the earth, and leave him there dead; or
in half an instant, through the explosion of a match, the wrong
adjustment of a safety-lamp, the whole mine may from end to end become a
cavern of lurid fire, destroying every living thing within its reach.
Or one stroke too many of the miner's pick, may let in a volume of black
and stagnant water from an unused and forgotten pit, which rising slowly
at first, then gaining, in volume, in strength, in rapidity, buries the
miners in a watery grave of horrible and loathsome desolation.
Yes, the miners are brave; for small pay they toll unremittingly,
labouring in the dark, exposed to many dangers. Day by day these men go
down into the mines literally with their lives in their hands. The
wives, mothers, sisters, know well what the non-arrival of a husband,
father, brother means. They hope a little, fear much, weep over the
mangled remains when they can even have that poor source of consolation,
and then the widow who has lost her husband, dries her eyes, puts her
shoulder to the wheel, and like a true Spartan woman, when his turn
comes, sends down her boy to follow in his father's steps, and, if God
wills it, to die bravely, as his father died before him.
I visited the schools about Ffynon, and noticed the bright dark-eyed,
Welsh children, each boy among them destined to become a collier as he
grew up. Many of these boys shrank from it, struggled against it,
feared it as a coming nightmare; some few, as the dreaded time drew
near, ran away to sea, preferring the giving up of father and mother,
and encountering the hardships of the sea, to the greater hardships of
the mine, but most of them yielded to the inevitable fate.
I found, too, on observation that the colliers of Ffynon were a
religious people; the sentiments I had heard in astonishment and almost
awe dropping from the lips of little Miles, I found were the sentiments
rather of the many than the few. They lived an intense life, and they
needed, and certainly possessed, an intense faith.
The body of them were not Church people; they had a simple and
impassioned service of their own, generally held in the Welsh tongue.
At these services they prayed and sang and listened to fervent
addresses. At these services, after an accident, slight or great, the
men and women often bowed their heads and wept. Their services were
alive and warm, breathing the very breath of devotion, suited to their
untrained, but strong natures. They left them with the sense of a
present God alive in each heart; a God who would go with them into the
mine, who would accompany them through the daily toil and danger, and,
if need be, and His will called them, would carry them safely, even in a
chariot of fire, into the Golden City.
To the religious miner, the descriptions of Heaven as written in the
Apocalypse, were the very life of his life. He loved to sit by his fire
on Sunday evenings, and slowly read from the well-worn page to his
listening wife, and his lads and lasses, of the city sparkling with gems
and rich with gold. To the man who toiled in the deepest of darkness, a
land without night or shadow was a theme of rapture. To the man who
knew danger and pain, who fought every day with grim death, that
painless shore, that eternal calm, that home where father, mother,
brother, sister, rudely parted and torn asunder here, should be
together, and God with them, was as an anchor to his soul. No place on
earth could be more real and present than Heaven was to the religious
collier. Take it from him, and he could do no more work in the dark and
dangerous mine; leave it with him, and he was a hero. The colliers had
one proud motto, one badge of honour, which each father bequeathed as
his most precious possession to his son--this motto was "Bravery;" one
stigma of everlasting disgrace which, once earned, nothing could wipe
out, "Cowardice." In the collier's creed _no_ stone was too heavy to
roll away to rescue a brother from danger. Into the midst of the fire
and the flood, into the fatal air of the after-damp, they must go
without shrinking to save a companion who had fallen a victim to these
dangers. Each man as he toiled to rescue his fellow man, knew well that
he in his turn, would risk life itself for him. No man reflected credit
on himself for this, no man regarded it as other than his most simple
and obvious duty.
Into the midst of this simple, brave, and in many ways noble people,
came Owen with his science and his skill. He went down into the mine
day after day, quickly mastered its intricacies, quickly discovered its
defects, quickly lighted upon its still vast stores of unused treasures.
At the end of a month he communicated the result to David. I was
seated by the open window, and I heard, in detached sentences, something
of what was spoken, as the brothers paced the little plot of ground
outside, arm in arm. As I watched them, I noticed for the first time
some of the old look of confidence and passion on Owen's face. The
expressive eyes revealed this fact to me--the full hazel irids, the
pupils instinct with fire, the whole eyes brimming with a long-lost
gladness, proclaimed to me that the daring, the ambition I had loved,
was not dead.
"Give me but a year, David," I heard him say in conclusion. "Give me
but one year, and I shall see my way to it. In a year from this time,
if you but give me permission to do as I think best, the mine shall
begin to pay you back what I have lost to you!"
David's voice, in direct contrast to Owen's, was deep and sad.
"I don't want that," he said, laying his hand on his brother's arm, "I
want something else."
"What?" asked Owen.
"I want something else," continued David. "This is it. Owen, I want
you to help me to fulfil a duty, a much neglected duty. I take myself
to task very much for the gross way I have passed it by hitherto. God
knows it was my ignorance, not my wilful neglect, but I ought to have
known; this is no real excuse. Owen, I have lived contented at
Tynycymmer, and forgotten, or almost forgotten, this old mine. I left
things in the hands of the manager; I received the money it brought
without either thought or comment. And all the time, God help me, the
place was behind its neighbours. I had not much money to expend on it,
and I was content it should be worked on the old system, never thinking,
never calculating, that the old system involved danger and loss of life.
The mine is not ventilated as the other mines are; in no mine in the
neighbourhood do so many deaths occur. You yourself have discovered it
to be full of many dangers. So, Owen, what I ask of you is this, help
me to lift this sin of my neglect off my soul. I don't want the money,
Owen; it is enough for me, it is more than enough, to see you as you now
are; the money, I repeat, is a thing to me of no value, but the people's
lives are of much. I can and will raise the sum you require to put the
mine into a state of safety, to perfect the ventilation, to do all that
can be done to lessen the danger for the colliers. Do your part in this
as quickly as possible, Owen, and let us think nothing of money gains
for the present."
While David was speaking, Owen had again drawn a veil of perfect
immobility over his face. Impossible, with this veil on, to guess his
thoughts, or fathom his feelings.
"Of course, of course," he said, "the ventilation shall be improved and
all that is necessary done."