THE TREFETHENS
As Peveril walked with his newly made acquaintance through the brisk
mining-town, of whose very name he had been ignorant until that day,
Mark Trefethen directed his attention to its various places and
objects of interest. Of one small but handsome stone building,
surrounded by grass and shade-trees, he said:
"There's where the swells get's their beer."
Peveril instantly knew it for a club-house, and, with a pang of regret
for the lost comforts of such an establishment, glanced enviously at
its cosey interior, disclosed through open windows.
At length they reached the modest cottage, built on the plan of a
hundred others, that Mark Trefethen rented from the company and called
his home. The room into which Peveril was ushered was scrupulously
clean and neat, but seemed to him painfully bare and cheerless. It was
lighted by a single, unshaded lamp, that stood in the middle of an
oilcloth-covered table laid for supper. Half a dozen cheap wooden
chairs and a sewing-machine of inferior grade completed its
furnishing. The new-comer had only time for a single glance at these
things as he entered the door, before his recent acquaintance of the
train, who now seemed almost like an old friend, sprang forward with
outstretched hand, exclaiming:
"I'm so glad you've come, for I was afraid father might not find you,
or you might get tired of waiting, or that something might have
happened to take you some other place. I would have gone back myself,
only father wouldn't have it that way, and claimed 'twas his place to
fetch you."
"Surely, son; and why not? Could I do less than give the first welcome
to one who has done for us what Mr. Peril has? Mother, take a step and
shake hands wi' him who saved our boy to us this day. I couldn't
believe it till I seen him hit 'Blacky' such a blow as but one other
in all Red Jacket has ever struck. What do you think of one
ninety-five for a record?"
"Oh, father! you surely didn't take him--"
But Tom's words were lost in the heartfelt though somewhat trying
greeting that Peveril was at that moment receiving from Mrs.
Trefethen. She was a large woman, whose ample form was unconfined by
stay or lace, and with whom to "take a step" was evidently an
exertion. That she was also of an emotional nature was shown by the
tears that rolled in little well-defined channels down her cheeks as
she made an elephantine courtesy before her guest.
"Mister Peril, sir," she said, in a voice that seemed to bubble up
through an overflow of tears, "may you never hexperience the feelinks
of a mother, more especial the mother of a honly son, which 'arrowing
is no name for them. As I were saying to Miss Penny this very day--a
true lady, sir, if there is one in hall Red Jacket, and wife of No. 2,
timber boss, my Mark being the same in No. 3--Miss Penny, sez I--but,
laws! what's the use of telling sich things to a mere man? as I
frequent sez to my Mark and my Tom, which he hain't no more'n a boy
when all's said and done, if he does claim to vote, and halways on the
side of 'is father, when, if wimmen had the privilege--as Miss Penny,
who is a geniwine lady, and by no means a woman-sufferer, has frequent
said to me, that it's a burning shame they shouldn't--things would be
more naturally equalled up. Same time, young sir, seeing has 'ow
you've come--"
"And is also nearly starved," interrupted Mark Trefethen. "Let's have
supper. You've done yourself proud, mother, and give Mr. Peril a
master-welcome; but eating before talking, say I, and so let us fall
to."
Faint with hunger as he was, the guest needed no second invitation to
seat himself at the homely but hospitable table, on which was placed a
great dish of corned beef and cabbage, another of potatoes, a wheaten
loaf, and a pot of tea. Cups, plates, and saucers were of thickest
stone-ware, knives and forks were of iron, and spoons were of pewter,
but Peveril managed to make successful use of them all, and though
betraying a woful ignorance of the proper functions of a knife, ate
his first working-man's meal with all of a working-man's appetite and
hearty appreciation.
Mrs. Trefethen occupied a great rocking-chair at one end of the
table, surrounded by a group of clamorous little ones, into whose open
mouths she dropped bits of food as though they were so many young
birds in a nest, and kept up an unceasing flow of conversation
regarding her friend Mrs. Penny, to which Peveril strove to pay polite
attention.
From the opposite end her husband expatiated between mouthfuls upon
the fate that had overtaken 'Blacky' that evening, but Peveril was too
hungry to talk, and so apparently was Tom. These four were waited on
by a slim, rosy-cheeked lass, with demure expression but laughing
eyes, to whom the guest had not been introduced, but who, from her
likeness to Tom, he rightly concluded must be his sister. She was
addressed as "Nelly."
After supper the three men adjourned to a little front porch, where
Mark Trefethen lighted a pipe and questioned Peveril concerning his
plans for the future. After listening attentively to all that his
guest chose to tell of himself, he said:
"It's plain, lad, thee's not been brought up to work, and knows nought
of mining; but thee's got head to learn and muscle to work with. So if
'ee wants job thee shall have it, or Mark Trefethen 'll know why. Now
I tell 'ee what. Bide along of us, and be certain of welcome. Take
to-morrow to look about, and by night I'll have news for you."
Gratefully accepting this invitation, the Oxford undergraduate slept
that night in a tiny chamber of the Trefethen cottage, from which he
shrewdly suspected Miss Nelly had been turned out to make room for
him.
The next day he went with his new-found friends to the mine, where, in
the "Dry," he saw the underground laborers change into their
red-stained working-suits. Then he watched them clamber, a dozen at a
time, into the great ore-cages and disappear with startling suddenness
down the black shaft into unknown depths of darkness. After all were
gone he spent some time in the "compressor-room" of the engine-house
with Tom, who was there on duty. The remainder of the day he passed in
wandering among shaft-houses, rock-crushers, ore-cars, and shops,
making close observations, asking questions, and gaining a deal of
information concerning the mining of copper.
That evening Mark Trefethen told him that he had made arrangements by
which he could, if he chose, go to work in the mine the following
morning. "Job's wi' timber gang, lad," he said, "in bottom level. It's
hard work and little pay at first--only one twenty-five the day--but
if 'ee's game for it, job's thine."
"I am game to try it, at any rate," replied the young man, gratefully,
"and will also try my best to prevent you from being ashamed of me."
"No fear, lad. Only fear is I'll be proud of thee, and lat others see
it, which would be very bad indeed. Now, I'll bate 'ee hasn't rag of
clothing fit for mine work."
"I have only what I am wearing," answered Peveril, who had left his
trunks in Hancock, "but I guess they will do until I can earn the
money to buy others more suitable."
[Illustration: PEVERIL GOES TO WORK]
"Do, lad! They'd be ruined forever in first five minutes. Besides,
thee'd be laughing-stock of whole mine, if 'ee went down dressed like
Jim Dandy. No, no; come along of me and I'll rig 'ee out proper."
So Peveril was taken to the company store, where, with Mark Trefethen
to vouch for him, he was allowed to purchase, on credit, two
blue-flannel shirts, a suit of brown canvas, a pair of heavy hobnailed
shoes, two pairs of woollen socks, a hard, round-topped hat, a
dinner-pail, and a miner's lamp. As these things were, by order of the
timber boss, charged to "Dick Peril," that was the name under which
our young Oxonian began his new life and became known in the strange
community to which erratic fortune had led him.
On the following morning he sallied forth from the Trefethen cottage
with a tin dinner-pail on one arm, his working-suit under the other,
and uncomfortably conscious that he was curiously regarded by every
person whom he met on his way to the mine. As the "Dry" was already
overcrowded, he shared Tom's locker, and was grateful for the
opportunity of changing his clothing in the comparative seclusion of
the compressor-room rather than in company with the two hundred men
who thronged the steam-heated building devoted especially to that
purpose.
Having assumed his new garments, and feeling very awkward in them,
Peveril made his way to the shaft-mouth. There he was joined by Mark
Trefethen, who regarded the change made in his protege's appearance
with approving eyes. Together, and in company with a stream of men
talking in a bewildering Babel of tongues, they climbed flight after
flight of wooden stairs to the uppermost floor of the tall
shaft-house.
An empty cage that had just deposited its load of copper conglomerate
was again ready to descend into the black depths, and, hurrying
Peveril forward, Mark Trefethen, with half a dozen other miners,
entered it. An iron gate closed behind them and a gong clanged in the
engine-house.
"Hold fast, lad, and remember there's no danger," was all that the
timber boss had time to say. Then the bottom seemed to drop out of
everything, and Peveril, experiencing the sickening sensation of
having left his stomach at the top of the shaft, found himself rushing
downward with horrible velocity through utter blackness. Instinctively
reaching out for something by which to hold on, he clutched a
rough-coated arm, but his grasp was rudely shaken off, and a gruff
voice bade him keep his hands to himself.
He could not frame an answer, for his brain was in a whirl, his ears
were filled with a dull roaring, and a whistling rush of air caught
away his breath. The motion of the cage was so smooth and noiseless
that after a while he could not tell whether it were going up or down,
though it seemed to be doing both, as though poised on a gigantic
spring. At length faint glimmers of light began to flash past as it
shot by the mouths of working levels, and finally it stopped with a
jerk that threw its passengers into a confused huddle.
A gate was flung open, and as Peveril stumbled out of the cage he was
only conscious of dancing lights, a crashing rumble of iron against
iron, and a medley of shouting voices. At the same time all these
sounds seemed far away and unreal.