into Sicaster, determined on selling the business which she had built up
and developed so successfully. Until the day of that conversation the
idea of giving up the shop had never entered her mind; she had more than
once foreseen that she might have to raise ready money on the strength
of her prosperous establishment, but she had not contemplated
relinquishing it altogether, for she knew--no one better--that as the
population of Savilestowe increased because of the new industry which
she was founding in its midst, so would the trade of the Golden Teapot
wax beyond her wildest dreams. But certain information given her by her
father brought matters to a crisis, and when Jeckie came to such
passages in life she was as quick in action as she was rapid in thought.
Farnish, since the beginning of his daughter's great adventure, had
grown greatly in self-importance. Like Albert Grice, he believed himself
to be a sharer, even a guiding spirit, in the wonderful enterprise. Long
since promoted from his first position as a sort of glorified errand-boy
to that of superintendent of transit and collector of small accounts,
he now wore his second-best clothes every day, and was seen much about
the village and at Sicaster. Jeckie had found out that he was to be
trusted if given a reasonable amount of liberty; consequently, she had
left him pretty much to his own devices. Of late he had taken to
frequenting the bar-parlour of the "Coach-and-Four" every evening after
his early supper, and as he never returned home in anything more than a
state of quite respectable up-liftedness, Jeckie said nothing. He was
getting on in years, she remembered, and some licence must be permitted
him; besides, she had for a long time given him an increased amount of
pocket-money, and it now mattered nothing to her how or where he laid it
out so long as he behaved himself, and did his light work faithfully.
They had come to be better friends, and she had allowed him, in some
degree, to make evident his parental position, and had condescended now
and then to ask his advice in small matters. And in the village, and in
Sicaster, he was no longer Farnish, the broken farmer, but Mr. Farnish,
father of one of the wealthiest women in the neighbourhood.
The problem of Jeckie's wealth--and how much money she really had was
only known to her bankers and guessed at by her solicitors--had long
excited interest in Savilestowe and its immediate surroundings. It was
well known that she had extended her original business in such
surprising fashion that her vans and carts now carried a radius of many
miles; she had been so enterprising that she had considerably damaged
the business of more than one grocer in Sicaster and Cornchester; the
volume of her trade was at least six times as great as that which George
Grice had ever known in his best days. Yet the discerning knew very well
that Miss Farnish had not made, could not have made, all the money she
was reputed to possess out of her shop, big and first-class as it was.
And if Jeckie, who never told anybody everything, could have been
induced to speak, she would have agreed with the folk who voiced this
opinion. The truth was that as she had made money she had begun to
speculate, and after some little practice in the game had become
remarkably proficient at it; she had found her good luck following her
in this risky business as splendidly as it had followed her in selling
bacon and butter. But, it was only a very few people--bankers,
stockbrokers, solicitors--who knew of this side of her energetic career.
What the Savilestowe folk did know was that Jecholiah Farnish had made
no end of brass; some of them were not quite sure how; some suspected
how. Jeckie said and did nothing to throw any light on the subject. It
pleased and suited her that people knew she was wealthy, and her own
firm belief--for she was blind enough on certain points--was that she
was believed to be a great deal richer than--as she herself knew, in
secret--she really was.
It fell to Farnish to disabuse her on this point.
Farnish, returning home one night from the customary symposium at the
"Coach-and-Four," found Jeckie peacefully mending linen by the parlour
fire. It had come to be an established ceremony, since more friendly
relations were set up between them, that father and daughter took a
night-cap together before retiring, and exchanged a little pleasant
conversation during its consumption; on this occasion Farnish, after the
gin-and-water had relapsed into a moody quietude. He was usually only
too ready to talk, and Jeckie glanced at him in surprise as he sat
staring at the fire, leaving his glass untouched.
"You're very quiet to-night," she said. "Has aught happened?"
Farnish started, stared at her, and leaned forward.
"Aye, mi lass!" he replied. "Summat has happened! I've been hearin'
summat; summat 'at's upset me; summat 'at I niver expected to hear." He
leaned still nearer, and dropped his voice to a whisper. "Jecholiah, mi
lass!" he went on, in almost awe-struck tones. "Folks is--talkin'!"
"Folks! what folks?" exclaimed Jeckie in genuine amazement. "An'
talkin'? What about?"
"It's about you, mi lass," answered Farnish. "I heerd it to-night, i'
private fro' a friend o' mine as doesn't want his name mentionin', but's
a dependable man. He tell'd me on t'quiet, i' a corner at t'
'Coach-and-Four'; he thowt you owt to know, this man did. He say 'at
it's bein' talked on, not only i' Savilestowe here, but all round
t'neighbourhood. Dear--dear!--it's strange how long a tale tak's to get
to t'ears o' t'person 'at's chiefly concerned!"
"Now then--out with it!" commanded Jeckie. "What's it all about?"
Farnish glanced at her a look which was half fearful, half-inquiring.
"They're sayin' 'at you and Lucilla Grice hes come to t'end o' your
brass, or close on it," he whispered. "Some on 'em 'at reckons to know
summat about it's been reckonin' up what you mun ha' laid out, and
comparin' it wi' what they knew she hed, and what they think you hed,
and they say you mun be about at t'last end. An' they say, 'at it'll be
months yet afore t'pit'll be ready for working, and 'at ye'll niver be
able to keep up t'expense, and 'at ye'll eyther hev to sell to somebody
'at can afford to go on wi' it, or gi' t'job up altogether, and lose all
t'brass--an' it mun be a terrible amount bi' now--'at you've wared on
it. That's what's bein' whispered about, mi lass!"
"Aught else?" demanded Jeckie.
"Well, theer is summat," admitted Farnish. "They say 'at ye never paid
them two London gentlemen 'at did such a lot at t'beginning o' things;
'at they went away thro' t'place wi'out their brass, an'----"
"That'll do!" interrupted Jeckie. "Is that all?"
"All, mi lass," assented Farnish. "Except 'at it's a common notion 'at
ye'll niver be able to carry t'job through! Now, what is t'truth, mi
lass? I'm reight fair upset, as you can see."
"Sup your drink and go to bed and sleep sound!" said Jeckie
contemptuously. "An' tell any damned fool 'at talks such stuff again to
you 'at he'd better wait and watch things a bit. Money! I'll let 'em see
whether I haven't money! More nor anybody knows on!"
Farnish went to bed satisfied and confident; but when he had gone Jeckie
sat by the fire, motionless, staring at the embers until they died out
to a white ash. She was thinking, and reckoning, and scheming, and when
at last, she too retired, it was to lie awake more than half the night
revolving her plans. She was up again by six o'clock next morning, and
at seven was with the manager of the works--a clever, capable,
thoroughly-experienced man who had been recommended to her by Revis, of
Heronshawe Main, and in whom, accordingly, she had every confidence. He
stared in astonishment as Jeckie, who had wrapped head and shoulders in
an old Paisley shawl, came stalking into his temporary office. "I want a
word with you," said Jeckie, going straight to the point after her usual
fashion. She shut the door and motioned him to sit down at his desk. "I
want plain answers to a couple of questions. First--how long will it be
before we get this pit into working order?"
The manager reflected a moment.
"Barring accidents, ten months," he answered.
"Second," continued Jeckie, "how much money shall we want to see us
through? Take your time; reckon it out. Carefully, now; leave a good
margin."
The manager nodded, took paper and pencil, and began to figure; Jeckie
stood statue-like at his side, watching in silence as he worked. Ten
minutes passed, then he drew a thick line beneath his last sum total of
figures, and pointed to it.
"That," he said. "Ample!"
Jeckie picked up the sheet of paper, folded it, slipped it under her
shawl, and turned to the door.
"That's all right," she said. "I only wanted to know. Get on!"
This it was that sent her, dressed in her best, a fine figure of a
woman, just on the right side of middle age, into Sicaster that morning.
But before she reached the town she called in at Albert Grice's villa.
It was still early, and Albert and Lucilla were seated at their
breakfast table. Jeckie walked in on them, closed the door, after making
certain that the parlour-maid was not lingering on the mat outside,
declined to eat or drink, pulled a chair up to the table, and produced
the sheet of paper on which the manager had made his reckoning.
"Look here!" she said. "You know that this--what with that building
scheme and one thing and another--is costing us a lot more nor ever we'd
reckoned on; things always does. Now then, I've made Robinson work
out--carefully--exactly how much more we shall have to lay out yet
before that pit's in full working order. Here's the amount. Look at it!"
Albert and Lucilla bent their heads over the sheet of paper. Albert made
a sound which expressed nothing; Lucilla screamed.
"Mercy on us!" she exclaimed. "I can't find any more money; it's
impossible! Why----"
"Never said you could," interrupted Jeckie. "I'll find it; all t'lot.
But ... bear in mind, when I've found that, as I will, at once, my share
in our united capital'll be just eight times as much as yours. So, of
course, your share in the profits'll be according. D'you see!"
Lucilla made no answer, but Albert immediately assumed the air of a wise
and knowing business man.
"Oh, of course, that's right enough, Lucilla!" he said. "That's
according to strict principles. Share in profits in relation to amount
of capital held by each partner. You'll be able to find this capital?"
he continued, turning to Jeckie. "It 'ud never do for things to
stop--now!"
"I'll find it--at once," declared Jeckie. "Naught's going to stop. But
your wife must sign this memorandum that the sharing's to be as I've
just said, and we'll have the deed of partnership altered in accordance.
After all, it'll make no difference to you. You'll get your profits on
your capital just the same." She produced a typewritten document which
she had prepared herself after her interview with the manager, and when
Lucilla had signed it, went off in silence to the town. Her first visit
was to the bank, where she asked for a certain box which reposed in the
strong-room; she opened it in a waiting-room, took from it a bundle of
securities, gave the box back to the clerk, and going out, repaired to a
stock and share broker's. Within half an hour she was back at the bank,
and there, in the usual grim silence in which she usually transacted
similar business, paid in to the credit of Farnish & Grice a cheque
which represented a very heavy amount of money.
And now came the last desperate move. She had just sold every stock and
share she possessed; she had only one thing left to sell, and that was
the business in which she had been so successful. She walked twice round
the old market place before she finally made up her mind. It was fifteen
years since she had caused the golden teapot to be placed over the door
of the house which she had rented from Stubley, and she had prospered
beyond belief. There was no such business as hers in that neighbourhood.
And there were folk who would be only too willing to buy it. She turned
at last and walked determinedly into the shop of the leading grocer in
Sicaster, a man of means, who was at that time Mayor of the old borough.
If anybody was to step into her shoes he was the man.
He was just within the shop, a big, old-fashioned place, when Jeckie
walked in, and he stared at her in surprise. Jeckie showed neither
surprise nor embarrassment; now that her mind was made up she was as
cool and matter-of-fact as ever, and her voice and manner showed none of
the agitation which she had felt ten minutes before.
"I want a few minutes' talk with you, Mr. Bradingham," she said. "Can
you spare them?"
"Certainly, Miss Farnish!" answered the grocer, an elderly,
prosperous-looking man, who only needed his mayoral chain over his smart
morning coat to look as if he were just about to step on the bench.
"Come this way."
He led her into a private office at the rear of the shop and gave her a
chair by his desk; Jeckie began operations before he had seated himself.
"Mr. Bradingham!" she said. "You know what a fine business I have
yonder at Savilestowe?"
Bradingham laughed--there was a note of humour in the sound.
"We all know that who are in the same trade, Miss Farnish," he answered.
"I should think you've got all the best families, within six miles
round, on your books! You're a wonderful woman, you know."
"Mr. Bradingham," said Jeckie, "I want to sell my business as it stands.
I want to devote all my time to yon colliery. I've made lots o' money
out of the grocery trade, and lots more out o' what I made in that way,
but that's naught to what I'm going to make out o' coal. So--I must
sell. Will you buy?--as it stands--stock, goodwill, book debts (all
sound, you may be sure, else there wouldn't be any!), vans, carts,
everything? I'd rather sell to you than to anybody, 'cause you'll carry
it on as I did. You can make a branch of this business of yours, or you
can keep up the old name--whichever seems best to you."
Bradingham looked silently at his visitor for what seemed to her a long
time.
"That's what you really want, then?" he said at last. "To concentrate on
your new venture."
"I don't believe in running two businesses," answered Jeckie. "I'm
beginning to feel--I do feel!--that it's got to be one or t'other.
And--it's going to be coal!"
"You've sunk a lot in that pit, already?" he remarked.
"Aye--and more than a lot!" responded Jeckie. "But it's naught to what
I mean to pull out of it!"
Bradingham continued to watch his visitor for a minute or two and she
saw that he was thinking and calculating.
"I've no objection to buying your business," he said at last. "Look
here--I'll drive out to Savilestowe this afternoon, and you can show me
everything, and the books, and so on, and then we'll talk. I'm due at
the Mayor's parlour now. Three o'clock then."
As Jeckie drove back to Savilestowe she remembered something. She
remembered the day on which she had run down from Applecroft to get old
George Grice's help, and how he had come up and found poverty and ruin.
Now, another man was coming to see and value what she had created--he
would find a splendid trade, a rich and flourishing business--all made
by herself. But it must go. The pit was yawning for money--more
money--still more money. And as in a vision, she saw sacks of gold, and
wagon loads of silver, and bundles of scrip, and handfuls of banknotes
all being hastened into the blackness of the shaft and disappearing
there. It was as if Mammon, the ever-hungry, ever-demanding, sat at the
foot, refusing to be appeased.
CHAPTER VIII
_The Commination Service_
At five o'clock that afternoon, by mutual agreement, Jeckie Farnish sold
to John Bradingham the stock and goodwill of her grocery business, and a
few days later she paid in another heavy cheque to the credit of Farnish
and Grice, and, at the same date, secured the alteration in the deed of
partnership which made matters straight between her and Lucilla. There
was something of a grim desperation in Jeckie's face as she walked out
of the solicitor's office whereat this transaction had been effected;
she was feeling something that she had no desire to speak of. But
Lucilla felt it, too, and said it.
"Well!" she remarked in a low tone as the two partners walked away from
the town. "I don't know how it is with you, but I've put my last penny
into that pit! Me and Albert's got just enough to live comfortably on
till we begin to get some returns, but I can't ever find any more
capital!"
"No need!" said Jeckie, almost fiercely. "Wait! as I'm doing."
She herself knew well enough that she, too, had thrown in her last
penny; there was nothing for it now but to see the additional capital
flow out steadily, and to wait in patience until the first yields
brought money. In the meantime, she was not going to waste money on
herself and her father. Selling most of the furniture which she had
gradually accumulated, and leaving the house behind the shop, which had
become an eminently comfortable dwelling, she transferred Farnish and
herself to a cottage near the pit, told him that there they were going
to stop until riches came, and settled down to watch the doings of the
little army of workers into whose pockets her money was going at express
speed. Wait--yes, there was nothing else to do.
There was not a man amongst all that crowd of toilers, from the
experienced managers to the chance-employed navvy, who did not know
Jeckie Farnish at that stage of her career. She was at the scene of
operations as soon as work began of a morning; she was there until the
twilight came to end the day. Here, there, everywhere she was to be met
with. Now she was with the masons who were building the cottages on her
bit of land outside the Leys; now with the men who were constructing a
solid road from the pit-mouth to the highway; now with the navvies who
were making the link of railway that would connect Savilestowe Main
Colliery with the great trunk line a mile off behind the woods; now,
careless of danger and discomfort, she was down one or other of the twin
shafts, feverishly eager to see how much farther their sinkers were
approaching to the all-important regions beneath. Sometimes she had
Lucilla in her wake; sometimes Albert; sometimes Farnish. But none of
these three possessed her pertinacity and endurance; a general daily
look round satisfied each. Jeckie, when she was not in her bed or
snatching a hasty meal, was always on the spot. Her money was at stake,
and it behoved her to see that she was getting full value for every
pennyworth of it.
She was not the only perpetual haunter of Savilestowe Leys at that time.
The men who worked there at one or other of the diverse jobs which the
making of a coal-mine necessitates--all of them strangers to the place
until the new industry brought them to it--became familiar with a figure
which was as odd and strange as that of Jeckie Farnish was grim and
determined. Morning, noon, and night a man forever hung around the scene
of operations, a man who was not allowed to cross the line of the
premises and had more than once been turned out of them, but whom nobody
and nothing could prevent from looking over fences and through gaps in
the hedgerows and haunting the various means of ingress and egress, a
wild, unkempt bright-eyed man, who was always talking to himself, and
who, whenever he got the chance, talked hard and fast and vehemently to
anyone he was able to lay a mental grappling-iron upon; a man with a
grievance, Ben Scholes. He was always in evidence. While Jeckie
patrolled her armies within, Scholes kept his watch without; he was as a
man who, having had a treasure stolen from him, knows where the thief
has bestowed it, and henceforth takes an insane delight in watching
thief and treasure.
The first result of Scholes's discovery that Jeckie Farnish had done
him over his forty acres of land was that he took to drink. Immediately
after leaving the sign of the Golden Teapot he turned in at the
"Coach-and-Four," and found such comfort in drinking rum-and-water while
he retailed his grievances to the idlers in the inn-kitchen that he went
there again next day, and fell into the habit of tippling and
gossiping--if that could be called gossiping which resolved itself into
telling and retelling the story of his woes to audiences of anything
from one to a dozen. Few things interest a Yorkshireman more than to
hear how Jack has done Bill and how Jack contrived to accomplish it, and
while Scholes never got any sympathy--every member of his congregation
secretly admiring Jeckie for her smartness and cleverness--he never
failed to attract attention. There were many houses of call in that
neighbourhood; Scholes began a regular round of them; he had a tale to
tell which was never likely to pall on folk whose one idea was to get
money by any means, fair or foul, and the sight of his lean face and
starveling beard at the door of parlour or kitchen was enough to arouse
an eager, however oft repented, invitation.
"Nah, then, Scholes!--come thi ways in, and tell us how Jeckie Farnish
did tha' out o' thi bit o' land--here, gi' t'owd lad a drop o' rum to
set his tongue agate! Ecod, shoe's t'varry devil his-self for smartness
is that theer Jecholiah! Nah, then, Scholes, get on wi' t'tale!"
Scholes had no objection to telling his tale over and over again, and
there was not a pair of ears in all that neighbourhood which had not
heard it; if not at first, then at second hand--nor was there a soul
which did not feel a certain warmth in recognising Jeckie Farnish's
astuteness; Scholes himself recognised it.
"Ye see, shoo hed me afore iver shoo come to t'house!" he would say.
"Knew t'coal wor theer afore iver shoo come reck'nin' to want to buy mi
fotty acre and mak' an orchard on't! But niver a word to me! Buyin',
shoo wor, not fotty acre o' poor land, d'ye see, but what they call
t'possibilities 'at ligged beneath it! T'possibilities o' untold wealth!
As should ha' been mine. Nowt but a moral thief--that's what shoo is,
yon Jecholiah. Clever' 'er may be--I don't say shoo isn't, but a moral
thief."
"Tha means an immoral thief," said one of his listeners.
"I mean what I say!" retorted Scholes. "I know t'English language better
nor what thou does. A moral thief!--that's what yon woman is. I appeal
to t'company. If ye nobbut come to consider, same as judges and juries
does at t'sizes, how shoo did me, ye'll see 'at, morally speakin', shoo
robbed me o' my lawful rights. Ye see--for happen ye've forgotten some
o' t'fine points o' t'matter, it wor i' this way----"
Then he would tell his tale all over again, and would afterwards argue
it out, detail by detail, with his audience. In that part of Yorkshire
the men are fond of hearing their own tongues, and wherever Scholes
went the companies of the inn-kitchens were converted into debating
societies.
One night, Scholes, full of rum and of delight in his grievance, went
home and found his wife dead. As he had left her quite well when he went
out in the morning, the shock sobered him, and certain affecting
sentences in the Burial Service at which he was perforce present a few
days later turned his thoughts toward religion. The truth was that
Scholes, already half mad through his exaggeration of his wrongs,
developed religious mania in a very sudden fashion. But no one suspected
it, and the vicar, who was something of a simpleton, believed him to
have undergone a species of conversion; Scholes, anyhow, forsook the
public-house for the house of prayer, and was henceforth to be seen in
company of a large prayer-book at all the services, Sunday and week-day.
Very close observers might have noticed that he took great pleasure in
those of the Psalms which invoke wrath and vengeance on enemies, and, on
days when the choir was not present and the service was said, manifested
infinite delight in repeating the Psalmist's denunciation in an
unnecessarily loud voice. But no one remarked anything, and if the vicar
secretly wished that his new sheep would not bleat quite so loudly, he
put the excess of vocalisation down to the fact that Scholes was new to
his job and anxious to obey the directions of the Rubrics. Moreover, he
reflected, the probability was that Scholes would soon tire of
attendance on the services, and would settle down to the conventional
and respectable churchmanship of most of the folk around him.
Scholes, however, developed his mania. He suddenly got rid of his farm,
realised all that he was worth, and went to live, quite alone, in a
small cottage near the churchyard. From that time forward he divided his
time between the church services and the doings on Savilestowe Leys.
Whenever there was a service he was always in church--but so soon as
ever any service was over he was off to the end of the village, to haunt
the hedgerows and fences, and button-hole anybody who cared to hear his
story. This went on for many an eventful month, and at last became a
matter of no moment; Ben Scholes, said all the village, was a bit
cracked, and if it pleased him to spend ten minutes in church, and all
the rest of the day hanging about the outskirts of Jeckie Farnish's pit,
why not? But in the last months of the operations at the new pit, the
first day of another Lent came round, and the vicar, with Scholes and a
couple of old alms-women as a congregation, read the Commination
Service. Scholes had never heard this before, and the vicar was somewhat
taken aback at the vigour with which he responded to certain
fulminations.
"Cursed," read the vicar in unaffected and mellifluous tones, more
suited to a benediction, "cursed is he that smiteth his neighbour
secretly!"
"Amen!" responded Scholes, suddenly starting, as if a thought struck
him. "Amen!"
"Cursed," presently continued the vicar, "is he that putteth his trust
in man...."
"Amen, amen!" said Scholes fervently. "Amen!"
"Cursed," continued the vicar, glancing round at his respondent
parishioner, and nervously hurrying forward, "are...."
"Covetous persons, extortioners!" exclaimed Scholes, anticipating
certain passages to come. "Amen, amen! So they are--amen!"
Then without waiting to hear what it was that the prophet David bore
witness for, he clapped his prayer-book together with a loud noise, and
hurried from the church; through one of the windows the vicar saw him
walking among the tombs outside, gesticulating, and evidently talking to
himself. When the service was over, he went out to him. "I fear the
service distressed you, Scholes," he began, diffidently. "You are----"
Scholes waved his arms abroad.
"Nowt o' t'sort!" he exclaimed. "I wor delighted wi' it! I could like to
hev that theer service read ivery Sunda'! I wor allus wantin' to mak'
sure 'at a certain person 'at I could name wor cursed. An', of course,
wheer theer's cursin' theer's vengeance--vengeance, vengeance!"
"Don't forget, Scholes, that it has been wisely said, 'Vengeance is
Mine: I will repay, saith the Lord,'" answered the vicar, in his mildest
tones. "You must remember----"
"Now, then, I forget nowt!" retorted Scholes. "I know all about it. But
t'Lord mun use instruments--human instruments! Aw, it's varry
comfortin', is what ye and me read together this mornin'--varry
comfortin' to me. Cursed! 'Covetous persons'! Aw!--ye needn't go far
away to find _one_!"
The vicar was one of those men who dislike scenes and enthusiasm, and he
left Scholes to himself, meditating among the gravestones, and went home
to tell his wife that he wished somebody would give the man a quiet hint
that loud upliftings of voice were not desirable in public worship. But
next Sunday Scholes was not in his accustomed place--the front pew in
the south aisle--nor did he come to church again. The clauses in the
Commination Service had set his crazy brain off on another tack, and
from the day on which he heard them he forgot the temporary anæsthetic
which religious observance had brought to him, and sought out his older
and more familiar one--drink. He took to frequenting the "Brown Cow," a
hostelry of less pretensions than the "Coach-and-Four," and there he
would sit for hours, quietly drinking rum and water--as inoffensive,
said the landlady, as a pet lamb in a farm-house kitchen.
For Scholes no longer talked about his grievance. He became strangely
quiescent; sharper observers than the landlady would have seen that he
was moody. He never talked to anybody at this stage, though he muttered
a great deal to himself, and occasionally smiled and laughed, as if the
thought of something pleased him. But one night, as he sat alone in a
corner of the "Brown Cow," there came in a couple of navvies whom he
recognised as workers at the hated pit, and a notion came into his
mentality, which, crazy as it was rapidly becoming, yet still retained
much of its primitive craftiness. He treated these men to liquor; they
came to be treated again the following night, and the night after that;
they and Scholes henceforth met regularly of an evening in their corner,
and drank and whispered for hours at a time.
There came a day whereon these men and Scholes no longer forgathered at
the "Brown Cow." Instead, they met at Scholes's cottage. It was a lonely
habitation, a tumbled-down sort of place in the lee of the old
tithe-barn, and had been empty for years before Scholes took it and
furnished it with odds and ends of seating and bedding. It stood well
out of the village, and could be reached unobserved from more than one
direction. Here the two navvies with whom he had made friends at the
"Brown Cow" began to come. Scholes laid in a supply of liquor for their
delectation. And here, round a smoky lamp and a spirit bottle, the three
were wont to talk in whispers far into the night.
Had Jeckie Farnish or Lucilla Grice known of what it was that these
three men talked--one of them already obsessed with the belief that he
was the Lord's chosen instrument of vengeance, the other two cunningly
anxious to profit by it--neither would have slept in their beds, nor
felt one moment's peace until Scholes and his companions were safely
laid by the heels. But they knew nothing; nothing, at any rate, that was
discomposing or threatening. Ever since the time of putting more capital
into the concern the making of the colliery had gone on successfully and
even splendidly. The two shafts, up-cast and down-cast, had been sunk
to depths of several hundreds of feet without any encountering of more
than the ordinary difficulties; the two great dangers, water and running
sand, had not presented themselves. On the surface the building of the
various sheds and offices had proceeded rapidly; some were already
roofed in; in one the winding machinery and engines had been installed.
The connection road was made; the link of railway finished; and on the
high ground above the Leys three rows of ugly red-brick cottages were
steadily approaching completion. The man who made his silent
calculations that morning when Jeckie Farnish stood by him in grim
silence came to her one day with a sheepish smile on his face.
"I was a bit out in my reckoning, Miss Farnish," he said. "But it was on
the right side! At the rate we're going at now we'll be finished, and
the pit'll be working from six to eight weeks sooner than I thought.
You'd better hurry those builders on with the cottages; you'll be
wanting to fill them before so long."
Jeckie needed no admonition to hurry anything. She was speeding up all
the work as rapidly as she could, for good reasons which she kept to
herself. Once more the outlay was proving greater than had been
anticipated, and she knew that if the manager's final reckoning of ten
months from the time of her sale of the grocery business had been kept
to she would have had to raise more capital. She was secretly overjoyed
when Revis, of Heronshawe Main, drove over one day, made a careful
inspection of all that had been done, and was then being done, and
corroborated Robinson's revised opinion--the pit would be at work six
weeks sooner than she had thought.
"And I reckon you'll be rare and glad to see the first tubs o' coal
wound, my lass!" he said heartily as he drove off. "I know I was!"
Jeckie nodded and smiled; she was too thankful for his opinion to put
her feelings into words. That night she was wakeful--not from anxiety,
but from satisfaction and anticipation. Two months more, and the money
that had been sunk in that pit would be coming out of its depths again,
multiplied, increased....
In the middle of that night a brilliant flash of lurid flame followed by
a roar that shook her cottage to its foundations and left it rocking,
sent her headlong from her bed. And as she stood sick and trembling,
grasping at the lintel of her window, she heard, in the deadly silence
that followed, a sudden outburst of the big bell of the church, pealing
as if for victory.
CHAPTER IX
_The Bell Rings_
Jeckie Farnish was a strong woman; physically as well as mentally she
was the strongest woman in all those parts. She had scarcely ever known
what it was to feel a sudden giving way of strength; the end of a long
day's toil usually found her fresh and vigorous, ready for and gladly
anticipating the labours of the morrow. Nor had she ever known what it
was to experience a mental giving way; the nearest approach to it--only
a momentary one--had been on that day, long years before, whereon George
Grice had turned his back on her and her father's fallen fortunes. She
had felt mentally sick and physically weak then, as though all the
strength had been dashed out of her mind and body. But the feeling had
quickly passed under the reviving fire of her anger and resentment, and
since then she had rarely felt a qualm that affected her in either
sense--determination and resolution had always kept her going. There
were folks in the parish who were fond of saying that she was moulded of
beaten iron with a steel core in the middle--it was their way of
expressing a belief that nothing on earth below or in heaven above could
move or bend her.
But as the vivid flash of flame and the infernal roar which followed it
passed away, Jeckie standing in her night-clothes between her bed and
her curtained window, felt herself stricken from head to foot; she was
sick, in heart and brain. She suddenly realised that she was shaking
throughout her strongly-fashioned frame, that her knees were knocking
one against the other, her feet rattling on the floor, her fingers
working as from a terrible shock. And in the silence she heard her heart
thumping and thumping and thumping--it made her think of the engines at
the pit which pumped up the leaking water as the shafts were driven
deeper and deeper into the earth. She tried to lift a hand towards her
heaving breast; it dropped back, nerveless, to her side.
"Oh God!" she breathed at last. "What is it? What is it?"
The hurrying of folk in the street outside roused her out of her
momentary paralysis, and with an effort she stumbled rather than walked
to the window-place, drew aside curtain and blind, flung open a
casement, and leaned out into the night. And at what she saw, a moan
burst from her lips, and she began to tremble as with a violent attack
of ague. For the night was one of brilliantly clear moonlight, and from
her window she could see all across the Leys and the buildings upon
which she had expended such vast sums. And over the newly made pit, so
rapidly approaching completion, hung a great umbrella-shaped cloud of
dun-coloured smoke, thick and rolling, and from the pit mouth itself
issued spurts and flickers of bright flame, which, as she stared,
horror-stricken, began to gather at one place into a steady, spreading
blaze. Thitherwards men were already beginning to hasten from the open
doors of the cottages, calling to each other as they ran. And above
their voices, never ceasing, sounded the frantic ringing of the big bell
of the church, maddening in its insistence.
She leaned farther out of the window and called to the folk who were
hurrying past; called several times before she attracted attention. But
at last a white face looked up and a voice hailed her--the voice of one
of the principal foremen in the machinery department at the pit.
"Miss Farnish!" he called. "Miss Farnish!--it's an explosion! The
down-cast shaft! And look there!--the pit's on fire!"
He pointed a shaking arm across the flat expanse of land before the
cottage, and Jeckie saw that the gathering flame about the mouth of the
shaft had suddenly leaped into a great mass of lurid light. Its
brightness illumined the whole area around it, and she saw then that the
surface works which had steadily grown up around the excavations had
either been blown away or were left in shapeless bulks of ruinous
masonry. Towards these from all directions men were running like ants
swarming about a broken down nest.
She turned away from the window, and with no other light than the glare
from without, sought for and huddled her shaking limbs into the first
garments that came to hand. And as she fastened them about her, scarce
knowing how, a hand began to beat upon her door, and Farnish called to
her, once, twice, thrice, before she realised that the sounds were human
and had any significance.
"Jeckie, mi lass!" Farnish was calling. "Jeckie! Jeckie!"
"What is it?" she asked at last in a dull, strained voice, so strange in
its sound that she found herself wondering at it. "What do you want?"
"Yon noise?" cried Farnish, who slept at the back of the cottage.
"What's it about, mi lass? What's it mean?"
"The pit's blown up," answered Jeckie, with almost sullen indifference.
"It's on fire, too. You can come in and see for yourself."
Farnish pushed the door open and entered; he was half whimpering, half
moaning as he crossed the floor towards the window. But Jeckie, now
wrapped in a thick ulster coat and tying a shawl round her head and
neck, said nothing. Her heart had resumed its normal action by then; she
was only conscious that she felt sick and faint. She stared stupidly at
her father's figure, darkly outlined against the glow of the fire.
"God ha' mercy on us!" groaned Farnish. "A bad job! a bad job! Howiver
can it ha' come about, and what mun be done? It's all of a flame,
and----"
"Come out!" commanded Jeckie. "I must see for myself what's----"
She had laid a hand on the half-open door of the bedroom, when it was
suddenly wrenched out of her grasp, and she herself thrown backwards
across the bed by a second and apparently more violent explosion, which
came simultaneously with another vivid burst of orange-coloured flame.
Jeckie remembered afterwards what curious and vivid impressions she had
in that moment. As she herself was flung over the edge of her thick
feather-bed she saw Farnish thrown away from the window, his arms
whirling in the air like the sails of a wind-mill; she heard a musical
tinkle of falling glass, making a sort of background to his startled
outcry. And she saw things. The vividness of the glare lit up a
glass-fronted case on the bedroom wall wherein was a stuffed squirrel;
it also lit up a framed text of Scripture, set in a floral bordering of
hideous design, and a little weather-glass, furnished with two figures,
one of which, a man, came out for fine weather, while the other, a
woman, emerged for wet; years afterwards she had vivid recollections of
how these two quaint puppets were violently agitated at the end of their
wires. And then there was gloom again, and silence, and she heard
Farnish gathering himself up from the floor, moaning.
"Are you hurt?" she asked, dully and indifferently. "Is aught wrong?"
"T'window were blown right in on mi face," answered Farnish, "I'm
bleedin' somewhere. What about yoursen, mi lass?"
Jeckie was seeking for matches and a candle. The candle had been blown
out of its tin holder and had rolled into a corner. When she found and
lighted it it was to reveal Farnish with a trickle or two of blood on
his cheeks and scarce a pane of glass left in the window. She pointed
him to a towel, and turned to the door. "That 'ud be the other shaft,"
she said in a low voice, and in a fashion that made Farnish afraid.
"It's been a put-up job. I've enemies! But I'll best 'em yet! I'll not
be bet!"
Without another word she went downstairs and out into the street, and
Farnish, left alone, looked dolefully at his face as envisaged to him in
Jeckie's mirror. Something glittered on one of his projecting
cheekbones, and he groaned again as he picked out a sliver of glass.
Then he wiped his face with the towel, and, still moaning and bewailing,
descended to the living-room. In those days Jeckie no longer locked up
the spirits, and he, accordingly, went to the cupboard, got out the gin,
and mixed himself a stiff drink. And as he stood sipping it he muttered
to himself.
"A bad job!" said Farnish. "A bad, bad job! All that theer brass--gone
i' th' twinklin' of an eye, as the sayin' is! An' who can ha' done it?"
He, too, went into the street at last. By that time the whole village
was out of bed and abroad, and while the more active of the men folk
were flocking towards the scene of the explosion, the older men and the
women were hanging in groups about the doors of the houses and cottages,
gazing fearfully at the great cupola of smoke that hung over the Leys.
Farnish joined one such group, the members of which were already
recounting with great zest their own particular private experiences.
"Our Sarah's little lad, Albert James, wor flung fair out o' t'bed and
ageean t'wall!" declared one woman. "And his father's heead wor jowled
ageean t'chest o' drawers! An' our cottage rocked same as if it wor a
earthquake--I made sure 'at all t'place 'ud come tummlin' down about wor
ears!"
"Aye, an theer isn't a pane o' glass left whole in our front windows!"
said another. "Blown reight into t'kitchen they wor, and I would like to
know who's goin' to pay for t'mendin'! This is what comes o' mekkin'
coal-pits i' a quiet, peaceable place same as what this wor afore Jeckie
Farnish started on at t'game! I allus did say 'at no good 'ud come o'
t'job, and 'at we should all on us be blowed up i' wor beds some fine
night, and if we hevn't been to-night it nowt but a merciful
dispensation o' Providence 'at we hevn't! An' I hope 'at t'job's
finished, and 'at we shall hev' no more on't--theer's nowt 'ud suit me
better nor to see all t'coal-miners tak theer-sens off and leave us i'
peace as we used to be, for I'm sure----"
"Hod this wisht!" broke in one of the few men who had kept back from the
Leys. "That's talkin' like a fooil!--doesn't ta see 'at this here'll
mean no end o' money lost to them 'at's mekkin' t'pit, and theer's
Mestur Farnish stannin' theer? How is it, Mestur Farnish?--d'ye knaw owt
about how it happened like?"
"I know no more about it nor what you do," answered Farnish, who was
standing at the end of a group of cottages, staring blankly at the flame
and smoke which glared and rolled in front. "It's a bad job--a bad job!
An' what's yon theer bell ringin' for--is it somebody 'at's gone to
ring for t'Sicaster fire brigade, or what?"
"Why, theer wor a young feller started off on his bicycle for that theer
purpose, as soon as t'first explosion wor over," answered the man.
"Besides, they wodn't hear our bell as far off as Sicaster--t'wind's i'
t'wrong quarter, an' all. I been wonderin' what t'bell wor ringin' for,
missen. How would it be if we stepped up to t'church, like?"
Farnish, realising the hopelessness of going near the pit, joined the
two or three men who turned in the direction of the church. As they
hurried up the street, a dog-cart dashed past them; the young man who
had hastened to Sicaster for the fire brigade had called at Albert
Grice's house on his way, and Albert and Lucilla, panic-stricken, were
flying to what might be the grave of their hopes, and more than one man
who watched them pass noticed that Lucilla was driving, and flogging the
smart cob to the utmost limit of his speed, while Albert, pale and
frightened, cowered in the lower seat at her side. Behind them presently
came the Sicaster fire engine, its bell ringing clangerously as the
steaming horses clattered through the village; in its brazen loudness
the frantic ringing of the church bell was lost to hearing, and when
Farnish and his companions came to the churchyard and comparative
silence, it had ceased altogether.
"Whoever wor ringin' must ha' been ringin' for t'fire engine," muttered
one of the men. "Ye see, he's stopped now 'at t'fire brigade's comed. It
mun ha' been t'sexton." But just then the sexton, accompanied by the
vicar, came hurrying through the little wicket-gate at the farther end
of the churchyard. Encountering the other men at the porch, they stopped
short.
"Who is in there, ringing that bell?" demanded the vicar. "Who's
this?--you, Farnish? Did they send some one up from the pit to ring? If
so, they must have broken into the church."
"Notwithstanding," interrupted the sexton, solemnly, "'at everybody in
t'parish know 'at t'keys is in my possession, and close by!"
"I know naught about it," answered Farnish. "We come up here to find out
who it wor, and what he wor ringin' for, ye see."
High over their heads the big bell once more gave tongue--loudly,
clamorously, insistently. It rang out a score of times; then stopped as
suddenly as it had begun. And one of the men, stepping back, as the
rest, headed by the sexton, made for the porch, and looking up towards
the head of the great square tower, let out a sharp exclamation.
"There's a man up there, looking ower t'parapet!" he said. "See
yer!--there, wi' t'moon shinin' on his face! Look!"
The other men fell back, and shading their eyes from the bright
moonlight, stared in the direction indicated. There, leaning over the
battlemented parapet of the tower, immediately above one of the most
grotesque of its gargoyles, appeared a weird and sinister figure--a man
whose unkempt hair and sparse beard were being blown about his face by
the light breeze. One of the younger men there, whose sight was keen,
suddenly uttered a sound of recognition.
"Ecod!" he exclaimed. "It's Ben Scholes!"
The vicar uttered a sound too--dismal, and full of foreboding.
"Mad," he muttered. "Mad--undoubtedly! Scholes!" he went on, calling
upwards to the figure silhouetted against the sky. "Scholes! What are
you doing there? Come down, my good fellow, come down at once!"
But Scholes shook his floating locks, vigorously and emphatically.
"Naught o' t'sort, parson!" he answered, his voice coming with curious
force from his airy station. "T'job isn't half done in yet! Ye don't
understand--how should yer? Ye see, it wor you 'at put t'idee into mi
mind when ye read them comfortable passages t'other week, and I said
'Amen and Amen' to 'em. 'Cursed be covetous persons'--and sich like. I
knew then, d'ye see, 'at I wor what they call t'instrument o' vengeance
on yon theer Jecholiah. It hed to be, parson it hed to be! I wor doomed,
as it weer, to blow her and her devil's wark to perdition, as t'sayin'
is. Aye!--listen, all on yer--it wor through me 'at t'pit's been blown
up! Three hundred pound o' good money I wared to get it blown into
t'air. And I mun ring, I mun ring, all through the night, till t'sun
rises on t'scene o' desolation; ring, d'ye understand, to show how
t'Lord hes vengeance on bad 'uns like yon theer woman! Three hundred
pound!--but I gat it done! Flame and smoke, parson!--I see'd 'em rise
out o' t'pit. And then I rang, and rang, and rang--and I mun ring agen
till t'sun rises ower yon woods. So may all them 'at cheats poor folk
perish!"
"Mad!" repeated the vicar, looking helplessly round him. "What does he
mean! And how can we get at him?"
"He means, sir, 'at he's paid some of them miners three hundred pound to
blow t'pit up," answered the sexton, who was a sharp-witted man, "and as
to gettin' at him, it's none to be done till he chooses to come down.
There's naught but a straight ladder, and a man-hole at t'end on it,
into yon belfry, and if he stands on t'trap door i' that man-hole he can
keep all t'parish out as long as he likes. See you!--he's at it again!"
Scholes had suddenly disappeared from the parapet, and a moment later
the big bell began clamouring once more.
"Didn't he say he mun ring till sunrise?" said the sexton. "He will
ring!"
Farnish went hurrying home through the crowds in the village street.
There was a light in the window of the living-room, and when he walked
in, he found Jeckie, white-faced and grim, standing by a newly lighted
lamp, staring at nothing. He went up and touched her timidly, and for
the first time in her life she started, as if in fear. But Farnish was
too full of news to notice that her nerves were gone.
"Jeckie, mi lass!" he said. "It's yon man Ben Scholes's 'at's at
t'bottom o' this here! He paid some fellers three hundred pound to blow
t'pit up--and he's gone mad wi' t'glory on it--mad!"
CHAPTER X
_Black Depths_
The cottage to which Jeckie had removed her father and herself, and such
household belongings as were absolutely necessary to their simple
standard of comfort, faced due east; consequently, when the sun rose
above the fringe of woods that morning its beams shone direct into the
little living-room. And they fell full on Jeckie, who sat bolt upright
at the table, her hands stretched out and tightly clasped on its
surface, her eyes staring straight in front of her, her lips white and
set. So she had sat for hours--motionless, silent. The tall clock in the
corner had ticked away its record of minutes; the darkness had gone; the
grey light had stolen in; there had come a glow in the skies and a
gradual lighting of the window; finally, the sun had shown a ruddy,
round face above the tapering pines and firs on the hilltop behind the
Leys, and in the meadows and orchards the blackbirds and thrushes had
begun to pipe and trill. But the breaking of a new day had caused no
change in Jeckie Farnish's attitude. It was, said Farnish, talking of it
after to his cronies, as if she had been turned into stone.
"Theer wor niver a word out on her, poor lass, after I'd telled her what
I'd gathered up at t'church porch," said he. "When she heeard 'at yon
Ben Scholes had paid fellers three hundred pound to blow up t'pit she
collapsed, as they call it, into t'chair and ligged her hand on t'table,
and theer she sat, starin' and starin', hour after hour, till I wor fair
afraid! I leeted t'lamp, and made t'fire, and brewed a pot a' tea, but I
couldn't get her to put her lips to it. Wheer I laid t'cup at her side
at four o'clock, theer it wor at seven--untasted. And not one word did
she spake, all that time--nobbut sat and stared and stared i' front on
her, as if she'd see summat. An happen she did see summat--how can I
say?"
But Jeckie moved at last. As Farnish, well-nigh beyond his wits with
fear and anxiety, stood by the hearth, watching her, a hurried step
sounded on the flagged path outside the cottage, and Robinson, the
manager, came hastening in, grimy and dishevelled. She stirred then; but
it was only the stirrings of a burning eye and a dry lip.
"Well?" she said, in such a faint whisper that both men started and
looked anxiously at her. "Well? Speak!"
Robinson threw out both hands with a gesture of despair. "It's worse
than I thought!" he answered, huskily. "No use pretending it isn't; it's
far worse. We've made as thorough an examination as we could, and it's
terrible to see what damage has been done. Work of all this time--many a
long month!--all destroyed, in both shafts. They're blocked with
wreckage! Brickwork, ironwork, everything's been blown out in both. The
downcast's the worst. And--and that's not all!"
"What is all?" asked Jeckie. "Say it! I want to know."
Robinson glanced at Farnish, and Jeckie was quick to interpret the look.
She turned on her father as if he had been a house dog.
"Go out!" she commanded. "Outside!--and shut the door. Now then," she
demanded as Farnish hurried into the garden and pulled the door tight
after him. "Say it straight out! What is--all?"
Robinson dropped into a chair and for a moment rested his head on his
hands; when he raised it again his face was as white as Jeckie's.
"I've been down that down-cast shaft, through the wreckage, as far as I
could--Hargreaves and I went down, an hour since," he replied. "You
never saw such a sight!--those fellows must have used some explosive
that's more powerful than anything we've ever used for ordinary
blasting. Those heavy cast-iron plates that we used for that stretch of
tubbing, now--twisted and curled as if they'd been sheets of
paper--ribs, brackets, flanges--I couldn't have believed that such
things could have been, well, just made into ribbons, as if they'd been
no more than putty. The timbering and the masonry, of course, are just
so much splinters and dust, but the ironwork--well, it beats me how it's
happened! Still, in time, all that could be put right--there'd be long
delay, to be sure, and awful expense--all would have to be done over
again--it's like starting all over again, but----"
He paused, shook his head, shivered a little as if at some
recollection, and for a moment seemed as if he had lost the thread of
his story.
"Get on to what there is of the rest of it!" commanded Jeckie. "There's
more!"
Robinson started; the last word appeared to spur him up.
"More!" he exclaimed, almost emphatically. "More? Yes more!--lots more.
The worst of it! My God!"
"Will you get it out?" said Jeckie, in a low voice that betrayed her
concentrated anxiety. "Say it, man. I want to know."
Robinson made an effort, and pulled himself together. He gave Jeckie a
queer, sidelong glance.
"I went down, through the wreckage, as far as I could," he said.
"And--there's been more than the mere blowing up of timber and masonry,
and iron fittings. We heard it, down there; heard it unmistakably--me
and Hargreaves. I heard it; he heard it. Oh, yes; there's no doubt of
it. The explosion must have blown out a tremendous lot of wall surface
stuff in the lowest workings they'd got to, where they hadn't started
any masonry or tubbing, you understand. Because--we heard! No mistaking
it! Once--just once--I've heard it before. Never to be forgotten,
that--no!"
"For God's sake, man, speak plainly!" said Jeckie. "Heard--what!"
Robinson glanced fearfully around him as he bent nearer to her. He spoke
but one word, in a tense whisper.
"Water!"
Jeckie started back, and her drawn face grew white to the lips. She,
too, spoke the word he had spoken, in a lower whisper than his.
"Water!"
Robinson edged his chair near to the table and tapped the edge with a
forefinger on which there was both grime and blood.
"I tell you we heard it--me and Hargreaves," he said. "I say--no
mistaking it. This explosion, now--it must have blown a pretty
considerable hole into the lowest part of the shaft, where they've been
at work this last week or two, and it's released--it may be a thin bed
of quicksand that we didn't suspect, or water-logged sandstone or sand,
or something of that sort, if you follow me, but there's the
fact--water! It's running into the shaft at, I should say, the rate of
thousands of gallons a minute; we could hear it fairly roaring down
there. It's no use; it's there!"
"What'll happen?" asked Jeckie in a curiously hard voice.
"The shafts'll be flooded to the brim in twenty-four hours," answered
Robinson. "To the brim!'
"You said shafts!" exclaimed Jeckie.
"It's running into the up-cast, too," said Robinson. "We examined that.
There must have been--must be--an extensive bed of quicksand lying
between both shafts. Anyhow, it's there. I tell you, they'll be flooded
to the brim!"
Jeckie's mind went back to a certain conversation she had once had with
Revis, of Heronshawe Main. He too, had met with an obstacle in water,
and had surmounted it.
"But it can be pumped out?" she suggested.
"Aye!" assented Robinson. "But how long will it take as things are, and
how long after that to get matters put as straight as they were last
night, and how much will it cost? It's no use denying it--all that we've
done, all that we'd arrived at, is just--ruined!"
Jeckie suddenly got up from the table. She went across to the window,
and pulling aside the half-curtain that veiled the lower panes, looked
out across the Leys. The surface works of the new pit were either
levelled with the ground or showing gaunt and ruinous against the
sky-line; crowds of curious sightseers were grouped about them; above
everything, a sinister blot on the otherwise sun-filled sky, a cloud of
yellow smoke still hung, heavy and significant, as if loath to float
away from the scene of destruction. And as suddenly as she had risen
from her seat so she turned on Robinson with a quick movement and with a
flash of her old spirit. "But the coal's still there!" she exclaimed.
"The coal's still there--to be got!"
Robinson looked at her for a moment in silence. Of late she had taken
him into her confidence, pretty deeply, and she suddenly saw of what he
was thinking. Money!--always money! And she began to think, too, of the
money that had gone into the pit, and of how much more would be wanted
now to recover what had so gone. It was as if one had lost a sovereign
down some grating in the street, and must needs pay another to get it
back.
"I say the coal's still there!" she repeated with fierce insistence. "To
be got, do you hear? It's got to be got--that water'll have to be pumped
out, and everything put in order again, and do you think I'm going to
lose all I've laid out?" she went on, suddenly beating her fist on the
table. "We must get to work at once!"
Robinson moved his head from side to side; something in the movement
suggested difficulty, perhaps hopelessness.
"It's for you to decide," he said, dully. "It'll cost--I don't know what
it won't cost. If you'd hear that water pouring in! And as things are,
the shafts cumbered up with ruin; we can do nothing to stop it."
Jeckie snatched up her ulster, and began to put it on.
"Come on!" she said, turning to the door. "I'm going there myself."
Robinson sighed heavily as he pulled himself out of his chair and
followed her into the sunlight. And he sighed again and shook his head
as they set out across the Leys in the direction of the wrecked pit.
"There's naught to be done at present," he said, dejectedly. "It'll be
days before we know the full extent of the damage. And we shall have to
wait till we find out how high this water's going to rise--we don't know
yet what weight there is behind it, down there. We're all in the dark."
"Something's got to be done!" declared Jeckie. Badly shaken though she
was, a flash of her old indomitable spirit still woke to life at odd
moments. "We can't stand about doing nothing," she went on. "The coal's
there, I tell you!"
There were plenty of people standing about, doing nothing, on the edge
of the scene of disaster, and among them Albert and Lucilla Grice.
Lucilla was in tears, and Albert was in apparently heated argument with
some of the officials, who turned to Robinson as he and Jeckie drew
near.
"Mr. Grice is blaming us because he says there ought to have been a
watch kept over these shafts," said one of them. "I've told him there
were watchmen."
"Then how comes it that somebody could get down there and place these
explosives where they did," demanded Albert. "Don't tell me! There's
been no proper watch kept at all, or this couldn't ha' happened. And all
my wife's money invested in this!--and blown to pieces!"
He gave Jeckie a sidelong glance, as if laying the blame on her
shoulders. He chanced to be in her way where he stood, and she
unceremoniously elbowed him aside.
"Your wife's money!" she snarled as she passed him. "What's her bit o'
money compared to what I've put in? Come on, Robinson--I'm going down
that shaft as far as I can--to find out how things are."
"It's dangerous," said Robinson. "We risked a lot, me and Hargreaves."
"Where you've been I can go--and I'm going," declared Jeckie. "Come
on--we'll go together."
The others, standing round, watched Jeckie's descent into the tangled
mass of iron, wood, masonry; she herself, following her manager, cared
nothing for danger, and was only intent on listening for the dread sound
of which he had spoken. And, at last, when they had made their way a
good two hundred feet into the shaft, penetrating through broken and
twisted plates and girders, Robinson paused and held up the lantern he
was carrying as a sign that they could go no farther.
"Listen!" he said in a whisper. "You'll hear!"
Jeckie steadied herself among the wreckage, looking down the darkness
beneath it. And suddenly, in the silence that hung all round them, she
heard, far below, in the gloomy depths which her imagination pictured
the steady, heavy rush of water. It was unmistakable--and once again she
felt sick in heart and brain, and weak of body.
"It's increased in volume since I was down," muttered Robinson as he
stood at her side. "It's as I said before--the pit'll be flooded out.
There's no help for it. It must be rising fast, that water."
He tore away a loose piece of iron from the wreckage close by, and
dropped it through the twisted mass beneath their standing place. The
sound of its heavy splash came almost at once.
"You hear!" he exclaimed. "It's within thirty or forty feet of us now!
It'll be up here before long; it'll rise to the brim. There's nothing to
be done, Miss Farnish--we'd best make our way up again."
When Jeckie climbed out of the last mass of wreckage at the mouth of
the shaft, it was to find Revis standing close by, talking to the men
who hung about. He came up to her with a face full of grave concern.
"This is a bad job, my lass!" he said in low tones. "I'm as sorry for
you as I can be!" He turned from her to Robinson. "Water rising?" he
asked.
"Aye, fast as it can!" answered Robinson. "There must have been a
tremendous lot released right down where they'd got to. And we were
close on to the seam, too!"
"Rising in both shafts?" inquired Revis.
Robinson gave him a significant look.
"Both!" he answered.
Revis drew him aside; the others, watching them, heard the two men
talking technicalities; Jeckie caught chance terms and expressions here
and there--"water-laden bed"; "dangerous feeder"; "water-logged trias";
"drainage tunnel"; "Poetsch's method"; "Gebhardt and Koenig's method";
"Kind-Chaudron system"; "winding and pumping"--she understood little or
nothing of it, and at that moment did not care to inquire; all that she
realised was that the work into which she had put so much energy, and
whereon she had laid out all her beloved money, was in danger of utter
ruin. She let Albert grumble and growl to the men, and Lucilla weep
fretfully; she herself stood silent and motionless, watching Revis and
the manager.
Revis came to her at last, motioning Albert and Lucilla to join them.
He looked graver than before.
"This is a very bad job!" he said in a low voice. "There seems to be no
doubt that this explosive, whatever it was--and it must have been of
extraordinary force--has tapped an exceptionally heavy lot of water. The
mine'll be flooded--that is, these two shafts will. It's a good job you
hadn't got the whole thing finished and opened out, for in that case, if
this explosion had happened, you'd have had all the workings flooded,
and there'd probably have been serious loss of life. As it is----"
Jeckie interrupted him--the question of what might have been had no
interest for her.
"Can't the water be pumped out?" she asked. "You had trouble yourself
that way?"
"Aye, you can pump!" agreed Revis. "But--you don't know what amount of
water there is yet. It looks to me, from what Robinson says, as if there
was a sort of subterranean lake down there. Pump, aye!--but ... a long
and terrible job. And--now don't be frightened!--the thing is--will it
be worth it?"
"The coal's there!" exclaimed Jeckie, dogged and determined.
Revis looked from her to the Grices. Lucilla was grasping a tear-soaked
handkerchief and gazing at him in the last throes of despairing anxiety;
Albert stood with his lips a little open, expectant of wisdom from the
man of experience.
"Yes," said Revis, at last. "But--it's no use shirking
difficulties--this may be a quicksand that forms a thick cover all over
the measures of whatever extent they may be. The fact is--you don't know
what's happened down there, nor where you are."
"The coal's there!" repeated Jeckie. "It's there, I say! We've got to
get it."
CHAPTER XI
_The Sentence_
On the evening of that eventful day--a day of comings and goings about
the ruined colliery--Farnish stayed later than usual at the
"Coach-and-Four." There had never been so much to talk about in the
whole history of Savilestowe as there was that evening, and he, as
father of Jeckie Farnish, was a person of consequence in the debate
which was carried on in the bar-parlour to the latest hours allowed by
the licensing laws. But he went home at last, to find the cottage in
darkness; there was not even the gleam of the last ashes of the usual
wood fire to welcome him when he opened the door which admitted to the
living-room. "I misdoubt yon poor lass o' mine is still hangin' about
them shafts!" he muttered, as he began to feel around him in the
darkness. "It's nat'ral on her part, an' all, but it'll do no good, no
good!" Then he struck a match, drawn from a box which was always handy
at the corner of the mantelpiece, and as he turned to where the lamp was
kept, saw Jeckie. She sat in an easy chair at the other side of the
hearth, but in no lounging attitude, such as is commonly affected by
folk who sit in easy chairs. Instead, she was bolt upright and rigid,
and for a moment Farnish wondered if she had been stricken with
paralysis, or was dead. But a sudden flash of her keen eyes showed him
that she was alive enough.
"Why, Jecholiah, mi lass!" he exclaimed, as he lighted the lamp. "What's
this here? Sittin' there i' t'darkness?--no light, no fire! Ye mo'nt tek
on so, Jecholiah--it's o' no use, and bad for a body."
"Who said aught about takin' on?" answered Jeckie, with a sombre stare
at him. "I was thinkin'--can't one think in t'dark as well as in
t'light?"
"I dare say they can, mi lass," assented Farnish. "I done it misen, more
nor once, and a varry bad thing it is--what ye happen to think i'
t'dark's allus magnified, as it weer. Let me get you a drop o' summat,
now?--and then go to yer bed and try for a bit o' sleep--ye need it."
"You can get something for yourself," answered Jeckie. "I want naught!"
Farnish had no objection to this invitation. He got out the bottle of
gin, mixed himself a tumbler to his liking, and sitting down in his own
chair, wagged his head over the glass.
"I been tryin' to collect a bit o' information," he said. "Yon theer Ben
Scholes--as were at t'bottom o' this unfortunate episode, as t'term
is--he's clean disappeared. They laid wait for him to come down out o'
t'church tower; watched for him most o' t'day, but he niver come, and as
t'afternoon were drawing to an end, some on 'em stormed his citadel.
Went up t'ladder to t'chamber i' t'tower wheer they toll t'bells--but
t'bird hed flown. An' now they're sayin' 'at Scholes knew some secret
way in and out o' t'church, and 'at he's off wi' them fellers 'at he
bribed to blow t'pit up. Howsomeiver, Jecholiah, mi lass, t'police is on
t'track of all on 'em, and ye'll hev t'satisfaction o' seein'
malefactors browt to justice. There is them 'at I've been talkin' wi'
'at says 'at i' their opinion it's a hengin' matter--high treason, or
summat o' that sort, but chuse how, it'll mean 'at they'll be clapped i'
gaol for t'rest o' their lives, and never come out no more. So ye mun
cheer up!"
Jeckie glowered at him in the dim light of the lamp.
"What good'll that do me?" she demanded, contemptuously. "Will it repair
t'damage they've done? I don't care whether they catch Ben Scholes or
no! Him and them other devils can go where they like, for all I care! I
want to hear naught about 'em. They've done their job. It's over!"
"Aye, why, mi lass," expostulated Farnish. "But theer's what t'scholars
terms poetic justice. It 'ud be nowt but right if these here chaps were
browt to it. Now, it 'ud nobbut be t'proper thing if they could be
henged--and happen drawn and quartered, same as yere done i' t'good old
times--on t'scene o' their misdeeds. But I doubt whether that theer 'ud
be allowed nowadays--we'm all too soft-hearted. Hev a drop o' comfort,
Jecholiah, mi lass, and then get to your bed."
"No!" retorted Jeckie. "I haven't done thinking."
Farnish left her thinking, and went to bed himself, and slept soundly.
But the habits of a lifetime had made him an early riser, and he was up
again and downstairs as the grey dawn broke over the village. And there
he found Jeckie still sitting just as he had left her, some hours
before, and in the light of his chamber candlestick he saw something
that made him start back in amazement.
"The Lord ha' mercy on us, mi lass!" he exclaimed in awe-struck accents.
"What's come o' your hair? Look at yoursen!"
The feminine instinct never wholly dies out, and Jeckie lifted herself
to her feet, and, taking the candle from her father's hand, looked into
the old mirror which hung above the mantelpieces. Then she saw what he
meant. Her hair, thick, luxuriant still, and till the day before black
and glossy as in her days of young womanhood, was now patched freely
with grey strands, and here and there with unmistakable threads of
white. She stood, looked, turned away, and set down the candle.
"Aye!" she muttered, as if to herself. "Aye!--and there's a lot o'
thinkin', and plannin', and schemin' to do yet!"
None knew that better than she did. Of all the folk who from personal
motives or from sheer natural curiosity discussed the present and future
situation of the unlucky mine, none were so keenly aware of the real
state of things as its principal proprietor. Lucilla might weep and
bewail, and Albert indulge in platitudes which he fondly believed to be
oracular sayings of the deepest wisdom, but Jeckie, essentially
practical and businesslike, knew what the real problem was. There was so
much capital left. It would have sufficed amply, if things had gone on
as they were going on before the explosions. But now the pit was ruined
in its upper and lower workings, and an immense amount of labour in
pumping, clearing, and restoring was absolutely necessary before it
could be brought back to the state in which it had been when Scholes
achieved his revenge. Could she last out?
It was not in her to be idle. She sought the opinion of numerous
experts; she went carefully into the all-important question of the
money; at last she went to work once more. It was a fell and sinister
enemy that had to be encountered first, for the shafts, as Robinson had
prophesied, were flooded to the brim. But there the water had paused in
its upward progress, and she gave the word to start on its clearance.
Henceforth the village saw nothing but the progress of this grim fight.
There was now no more clanging of steel and iron about the place; no
more work at the rows of cottages which should soon have been filled by
miners and their families; there was nothing but the ceaseless clearing
of the shafts from the dark flood which had been released from its
unsuspected source in the bowels of the earth--and the fear lest, when
all this was accomplished, some further eruption might not break out and
render all the labour in vain.
And as before, when hope was high and the fruition of her toiling and
scheming seemed certain, so now, when all was doubt and anxiety, Jeckie
Farnish haunted the scene from early morning till the evening shadows
fell. She aged rapidly in those days; the patches of white thickened in
the dark hair; the keen eyes grew harassed and hunted; about the firm
mouth lines and seams appeared which nothing would ever smooth away
again. She grew strangely silent; it seemed to those whose business
brought them into touch with her that all she did throughout the day was
to watch and watch and watch. She said little to Farnish; she ate and
drank mechanically--no more, observed Farnish to his cronies, than kept
the health in her body, now growing thin and gaunt; and at night she sat
alone in the cottage, always staring at the fire which her father took
care to keep going; if it had not been for him, he said, there would
have been no fire, for she had no interest in anything but the ceaseless
clearance of the dark floods which were being drawn and pumped away. It
was useless, too, he said, to sit with her and attempt to cheer her up;
she just sat, staring before her. So Farnish continued to attend the
nightly symposium at the "Coach-and-Four," and in the living-room of
their cottage Jeckie sat motionless, her eyes fixed on the bit of red
glow in the grate, thinking.
She was so sitting one night, long after darkness had fallen, and when
there was no light in the place beyond a rapidly dying lamp and the dull
gleam of the fire, when, behind her chair, she heard the latch of the
door lifted, and a footstep which she knew to be a man's. She believed
it to be Farnish, who had come in an hour before his time, and she took
no heed. But then fell silence, a strange and frightening silence, and
at last she turned her head and looked. And there, half in shadow, half
in the light, staring at her out of glowing eyes, stood Scholes.
The man whom Jeckie had so cunningly dispossessed of his lawful rights,
had always been more or less of an unkempt, carelessly attired
individual--the sort of man who neglected hair and beard, and wore his
clothes as if they had been thrown on with one of his own pitchforks.
But as he stood there now, motionless, staring at her, he reminded
Jeckie of pictures which she had seen; pictures of prophets, hermits,
anchorites. His head was bare, and his untrimmed, uncombed locks fell
about his ears and shoulders; even in that dim light she could see
leaves and straw in them, and in the straggling beard which mingled with
them. The rest of him, as she saw it, was wrapped in an ancient,
weather-stained ulster coat, in rags at all its extremities, and tied
about the waist with a piece of old cart rope. He carried a long staff
of hazel in one hand; the other clawed meditatively at his beard as he
stood fixedly staring at the woman who, in her turn, stared at him over
her shoulder. And, suddenly, Jeckie forgot hair, beard, the strange
garb, and saw nothing but the man's burning eyes, which never shifted
their intense gaze from her face. Before many seconds had elapsed she
would have given much to withdraw her own gaze--twice she tried to close
her eyelids, in the vain hope that this was a phantom, a bad dream. But
Scholes held her; and at last he spoke, in a queer, hollow voice which
sent a thrill of fear through her. For Jeckie Farnish, like all country
folk of her sort, and in spite of her hard-hearted, practical
temperament, was intensely superstitious, and it seemed to her that
this was either Scholes's ghost or that if he were really there in the
flesh he had become endowed with supernatural powers. And as he spoke
she cowered before him, trembling in every limb.
"So ye're sittin' theer, Jecholiah, all bi yersen, doin' nowt but
thinkin'!" said the queer voice. "An' to be sure, when all's said and
done, that's t'inevitable end of all them 'at compasses evil. Ye've nowt
to do now but think, and think, and think! Here's t'end of all your
schemin' and contrivin' and sellin' yer soul for brass! Wheer's yer
brass, now? Gone!--and ye'll niver see one penny on it agen--niver!
Ye're doomed, Jecholiah! Ye've been doomed to destruction ever since
that day when yer carried yer bad heart into a poor man's house, wi'
full determination to cheat him. Ye reckoned to be buyin' one thing when
ye knew well 'at ye wor buyin' another. An' what ye wor doin' then wor
this--ye were sellin' yer soul to t'Devil! Ye cheated me to mi face; but
ye can't cheat him 'at put it into yer mind to cheat me! An' theer's
others powers beside him, and I've been their instrument. I wor nowt but
an agent i' bringing you to destruction. For ye're destroyed, Jecholiah!
Ye can work and tew, tew and work, labour and better labour, at yon
black water, but ye'll never clear it; it's t'flood o' vengeance 'at's
come down on yer! If ye'd been content to mak' yer brass honest and
straight, nowt would ha' happened to ye; and ye'd ha' had all 'at yer've
lost. Lost! lost! lost! Sit theer, and stare and stare at yer bit o'
fire till it dies out; yer last hopes'll die wi' that, for niver one
penny o' yer brass will ye iver see out o' that land 'at once were mine
and 'at ye cheated me out on. Ye ran t'race i' yer own way, Jecholiah,
and ye're beaten!"
The burning eyes and strange figure suddenly vanished into the gloom
from which they had appeared, and at the same moment the light of the
lamp, which had been growing fainter and fainter while the queer voice
sounded, gave one leap, showed Jeckie that she was alone in the
living-room, and died out. Then came blackness, for at the same time the
red ashes in the grate sank into sombre grey, and with the blackness an
intense silence. She knew then that what she had seen was Scholes's
ghost, and with a lifting of her hands to her head and a sudden catching
of her breath, she half rose, and in the action fell forward across the
hearth.
Farnish, coming home an hour later, found her lying there unconscious.
And, in unconsciousness or semi-consciousness, she lay in her bed for a
long time, hovering between life and death. One season had merged into
another before Jeckie came to herself. Farnish and his younger daughter
were at her bedside when her eyes first opened with full intelligence,
and for a moment she believed that the old days at Applecroft were back
again, and that they were all together. But in the next she remembered
and realised, and after one quick glance at Rushie she turned her face
to the wall with a gesture that seemed to implore silence.
It takes much to kill a woman of such a constitution, and Jeckie began
to mend. But it was long before she spoke a word to any of those who
came about her as to the events that had led up to her illness. It was
to Farnish that she spoke at last; he had never failed in constant
attendance on her, and sat for hours in her room, watching her, waking
or sleeping. And as he sat by her side one grey afternoon she suddenly
turned her eyes on him with a flash of their old power.
"How long have I been here?" she demanded.
Farnish, mindful of the doctor's orders, tried to evade a direct answer.
"Ye'd best not to bother about that theer, mi lass," he said,
soothingly. "Ye're mendin' varry weel now, and t'doctor says 'at if
ye're nobbut kept quiet, and hev nowt to worry yer, ye'll soon be up and
doin', so----"
"I shall have plenty to worry about if you don't tell me what I want to
know," insisted Jeckie. "How long have I been ill? Out with it!"
"Why, then, a matter o' two or three month, mi lass," replied Farnish.
"But ye've been well looked to. Me an' yer sister Rushie, we've been wi'
you all t'time--she's been a reight good 'un, has Rushie--never left
t'place, and----"
Jeckie made a movement of impatience.
"What's gone on across there?" she demanded, pointing a wasted hand to
the window. "What have they done? How are things?"
Farnish, who sat by the bedside twiddling his thumbs in sign of deep
perplexity, shook his head.
"Now, Jecholiah, mi lass!" he said, with a poor attempt at firmness.
"That's t'varry thing 'at t'doctor said ye worrn't to be allowed to talk
about. So----"
"If you don't tell me, I'll get up and see for myself!" she retorted.
"You'd better say!"
"Why, then," answered Farnish, "if I mun say, all I can say is, 'at you
were took badly Mestur Revis he's hed all t'affairs i' hand. He come
forrard and said 'at he'd tak it all on his shoulders, i' your interest.
And he's t'only man 'at can rightly say how things is--I can't. I know
nowt, mi lass--'ceptin' what I've telled you."
"I must see him," said Jeckie.
"Ye mun ha' t'doctor's consent first, mi lass," replied Farnish.
She lay quiet for some time after that; then she suddenly asked a
question which made Farnish stare at her.
"Has naught been heard of Ben Scholes?"
Farnish made a curious exclamation.
"Scholes!" he said. "Aye, for sure! He wor found dead, i' Wake Wood,
some time ago; they say he'd evidently been i' hiding theer, and theer
he'd died. Queer, worrn't it, mi lass?"
But Jeckie made no answer. She knew now, for certain, that it was
Scholes's ghost that had come to her, and that all was lost.
CHAPTER XII
_The Second Exodus_
Those who ministered to her in her convalescence found it difficult to
understand Jeckie Farnish's curious apathy and indifference to the
things about her. Once her sister was out of danger, Rushie had gone
home to Binks and her children; Binks was by that time a bustling
tradesman in Sicaster, and had prospered so well that Rushie wore a real
sealskin coat and sported gold chains and diamond rings. It had been
Binks's idea that his wife should go to the rescue when Jeckie was taken
ill; blood, said Binks, with the air of a Solomon, was thicker than
water when all's said and done, and bygones should be bygones, and in no
half-measures. So Rushie waited on Jeckie hand and foot, and Jeckie,
after she had come to herself, watched her going about the sick room and
said nothing. At that time, indeed, she said nothing to anybody, and
when Rushie had returned, leaving her sister in charge of Farnish and a
neighbour-woman, she said less. Farnish began to wonder if her illness
had affected her mind, and voiced his doubts to the doctor; the doctor
made him leave Jeckie alone; she would speak, he said, as soon as she
wanted to.
There came a time when Farnish was obliged to speak, whether Jeckie
wanted to hear or not. He approached her bedside one day in a
shamefaced, diffident manner, looking doubtfully at her.
"Jecholiah, mi lass," said Farnish, "theer's a little matter 'at I mun
mention to yer, though I'm sure I wouldn't trouble yer wi' it if it
could be helped. But ye see, mi lass, when ye were ta'en badly an' could
do nowt for yersen, I hed to tak things i' hand, and of course, I hed to
lay out money. I knew wheer you kep' a certain supply down theer i'
t'owd bewro i' t'kitchen corner, and I hed to force t'lock and lay hands
on it. That's three months and more since, and for all I've been varry
careful about layin' it out, it's come to an end, as all such
commodities, as they term 'em, does. What mun I do, mi lass?"
Jeckie made an effort of memory, and remembered how much money there had
been in the old bureau of which her father spoke--something between
forty and fifty pounds, as far as she could recollect. She made a rapid
calculation and found that Farnish had spent between three and four
pounds a week during her illness. There was nothing extravagant in such
expenditure at such a time. But she gave him a sharp, searching look.
"You made that do? You have borrowed aught from anybody?" she demanded.
"Surely not, mi lass!" protested Farnish. "No!"
"Not from them Binkses?" questioned Jeckie.
"Nowt from nobody, Jecholiah," said Farnish. "It's panned out very well,
ower fourteen weeks. There's happen a pound or so left. But----"
"Go downstairs, and come up again when I knock on t'floor," said
Jeckie. "I have a bit in my box."
Farnish went away in his usual obedient fashion, and when he had gone,
Jeckie, who hitherto had been unable to get out of bed unaided, made
shift to rise, and to wrap a shawl round her shoulders. Weak as she was,
her first action was characteristic--to totter to the door and lock it.
That cost her trembling limbs an effort; she had to summon all her small
reserve of strength and to pause once or twice in order to cross the
floor to a heavy, iron-clamped box which stood in one corner of the
room, staying again on the way to extract a key from a certain
hiding-place beneath the carpet. And when this box was unlocked she
found it difficult work to lift out and lay aside the various things
that lay within; it took some time before she had got down to the bottom
and had there unearthed a smaller box, wherein, months before, when she
had been obliged to face possible contingencies, she had placed a
personal reserve fund. The key of that box was in an old satchel kept
within the larger one; she found it at last and laid bare her secret
store.
Weak and trembling as she was, Jeckie could not forbear the satisfaction
of counting over this money. She had deposited there a thousand pounds
in banknotes, and fifty in gold, and she slowly counted paper and coin.
It was all there, all safe, and she took ten pounds in gold, put the
rest back, and with many tremblings and restings, locked up the two
boxes, unlocked the door, knocked loudly on the floor, and climbed back
into bed.
"There's ten pound," she said when Farnish came up in response to her
summons. "Make it go as far as you can."
She turned her face away then, as if wanting no talk on the matter, and
Farnish took the hint and the money and went quietly away. It astonished
him, as Jeckie grew stronger, that she asked no questions about his
expenditure; once upon a time, she would have made him account for every
penny. But now she seemed indifferent; she was indifferent, indeed, to
everything, and there came a time when she showed no interest in the
doctor's visits, as if she cared nothing whether he was doing her good
or not. But all that time she was steadily improving, and at last the
doctor told her, in Farnish's presence, that there was no need for him
to come again and that she could get up.
"Ye'll be glad to take a look round, no doubt, mi lass," observed
Farnish, when the doctor had gone. "It'll liven you up."
Jeckie made no reply. The neighbour-woman got her up next day, helped
her to dress, and bustled about in the hope of making her comfortable at
her first rising. When Jeckie was dressed this good Samaritan went
downstairs and returned with an easy chair and cushions.
"I'll put this here agen t'winda, Miss Farnish," she said with cheery
officiousness. "Ye'll be able to look out theer ower t'pit, and see what
they're a-doin' on theer. Nowt so lively as it wor afore t'accident, but
theer is things bein' done theer, an' happen ye'll like to get a glimpse
on' em, for, of course, ye mun ha' been anxious, an'----"
"Put that chair in that corner!" snapped Jeckie, with a sudden gleam of
her old temper. "An' hold yer wisht about t'pit! When I want to talk
about t'pit, I'll let you know."
The woman had sufficient sense to see that her charge was irritable, and
she made no answer; she had enough wit, too, to place the easy chair in
a corner of the room from which it was impossible to see out of the
window. And in that corner Jeckie spent the first period of her
convalescence, at first doing nothing, afterwards occupying herself in
mending her linen.
Farnish came upstairs every now and then, always with some question--was
she wanting aught? But Jeckie never wanted anything; she ate and drank
whatever was put before her without remark and with apparent
indifference, and so the days went by. And during the whole of that time
she never asked her father a question save once.
"Where," she asked suddenly, one day, as Farnish hung about the bedroom
in his usual aimless, good-intentioned fashion, "where did they bury
Scholes?"
"Why, i' t'churchyard, to be sure, mi lass!" answered Farnish, glad to
break the silence which he found so trying. "Wheer else? Ligged him i'
t'same grave as his missus--ye'll know t'spot; halfway down that new
piece o' ground 'at they took in fro' Stubley's ten-acre a few years
sin'. Aye, he wor buried all reight theer, wor Ben--same as anybody
else. Why, mi lass?"
"Naught!" answered Jeckie, and relapsed into her usual silence.
The same silence continued when she at last went downstairs. And there
Farnish noticed that she never went near the window of the living-room;
it, like that of her bedroom, overlooked the ill-fated colliery. For
awhile she accepted the help and ministrations of the neighbour-woman;
then one day she gave her some money and with the curt remark that in
future she and her father could fend for themselves, dismissed her. She
began to go about the cottage then, and to do the household work, and
Farnish, who was somewhat shrewd as regards observation, noticed that
one night, when the darkness had fallen, she fitted two muslin blinds to
the window of the living-room and the window of her chamber above; the
light could come in through them, but no one could see out.
"It's t'same as if our Jeckie niver wanted to set her eyes on yon theer
pit an' its surroundings niver no more!" observed Farnish, narrating
this curious circumstance to his principal crony. "Shutten 'em clean
out, as it weer!"
"An' no wonder, considerin' how things has befallen," remarked the
crony. "If things hed turned out wi' onny affair o' mine as that's
turned out wi' her, d'ye think I should want to hev' it i' front o' my
eyes, allus remindin' me o' what had happened? Nowt o' t'sort!"
"Aye!" said Farnish, reflectively. "But--she knows nowt, as yet."
There came a time when Jeckie had to know. One morning, when she was
fully restored to health, though now a gaunt and haggard woman,
grey-haired and spiritless, Farnish, who had been out in the village,
came in as she was washing up the breakfast things in the scullery and
approached her with evident concern.
"Jecholiah, mi lass," he said, in a low voice, "theer's Mestur Revis
outside, i' his trap. He's called at t'doctor's as he came through
Sicaster, and t'doctor says you're now fit to hev a bit o' business
talk. And Mestur Revis is varry anxious to come in and hev it, now. How
will it be, mi lass?"
Jeckie finished polishing her china before she answered, and Farnish
stood by, silent, anxiously waiting.
"Happen I know as much as Revis or anybody else can tell," she said at
last in a queer voice. "And happen I got to know it in a way 'at neither
Revis nor you, nor anybody, 'ud understand. But--tell him to come in."
Farnish went out to the colliery proprietor, who sat in his smart
dog-cart, meditatively surveying the scene on the other side of the
road. There were no signs of activity now about the pit on which Jeckie
had set such hopes; the surface buildings stood as ruinous as the
explosions had left them; on the hillside the cottages intended for the
miners were just as they were when all work had come to an end on them;
over the whole surface of the Leys there was ruin and desolation. And
Revis had just shaken his head and heaved a deep sigh when Farnish
emerged from the cottage.
"She'll see you now, if you'll please go in, Mestur Revis," said
Farnish. Then he looked half entreatingly, half wistfully at the big
man. "Ye'll break it gentle to her, sir?" he added. "She's in a queer
state of mind, to my thinking."
"Leave it to me, my lad," said Revis, as he got out of his dog-cart.
"I'll make it as easy as I can for her."
He went up the path to the cottage door, tapped, and walked in. Jeckie
sat in her accustomed corner, in the shadows, but Revis saw how she had
changed, and it was with a curious mixture of pity and wonder and
interest that he went up and held out his hand to her.
"Well, my lass!" he said, with a sympathetic effort to put some
cheeriness into his voice. "You've had a bad time of it, to be sure,
poor thing! But--you're better?"
"Well enough to hear aught you've to say, Mr. Revis," answered Jeckie.
"And--sit down and tell me straight out, if you please. You know me!"
Revis gave her a searching look and pulled a chair in front of her.
"Aye!" he said. "I think I know! Well, it's not cheering news, but you'd
better know it. You know already that I've done what I could to look
after things for you while you've been ill?"
"Yes, and I'm obliged to you," answered Jeckie. "You were always a good
friend."
"It was this way," continued Revis. "When you were taken ill that
brother-in-law of yours, Binks, came to me and asked me if I couldn't do
something to help. I came over and consulted with him and your partner
and her husband. We went right into things. Of course you know that when
your illness came you were just at the end of your capital?"
"Who should know better!" exclaimed Jeckie, bitterly.
"Well, that was so," asserted Revis. "So--everything stopped, with those
shafts still half-full of water, and----"
"I know how they were, and how all else was," interrupted Jeckie. "You
can't tell me anything about that!"
"To be sure!" said Revis, humouring her. "Well, the question was--was it
worth while putting more capital--it would have had to be a lot more
capital!--to clear the mine, get all going again, and go on? Now, I had
some talk with two or three influential men in the district, and we
decided to come to your help if we could see that all the money you and
Mrs. Albert Grice had put in, and all that we should have to put in
would be got back--that, in short, the results would justify the
expenditure. In other words, what amount of coal is under this property
and close to it? You understand?"
For the first time for many long months a faint flush of colour came to
Jeckie Farnish's haggard cheeks, and she spoke with some show of
interest.
"You mean to say that there's a doubt?" she asked.
"We'll leave doubts out," answered Revis. "That was the real problem. I
put aside all the investigations that you made before you started, and
made some of my own, at my own expense. You know what a thorough man I
am about such things. Well, I made, at once, more borings, in different
parts, not only of your property, but in the land round about. I've
known the truth now for a week or two; it's an unpleasant one. There's
without doubt a good bed beneath your land, but a small one. What you'd
have got out of it would possibly have given you back your capital and a
bit over. But there's none elsewhere! And your pit's been so ruined by
that explosion, and there's such a body of water that----"
"I understand," said Jeckie, interrupting him with a significant look.
"It's useless!"
"If you want plain words, my lass--yes!" answered Revis. "To get that
pit cleared and to go on again would cost far more than you'd ever get
back. I reckoned everything up, with your partner's assistance--you know
she'd power to act for you if you couldn't--and things were just
here--what with paying everything up to the time of stoppage and so on,
you've just come to the end of your capital, and--there you are! It's a
very sad thing, but it's one of these things that have to be faced."
"The workmen and all the rest of them?" asked Jeckie.
"All paid off--gone, weeks since," replied Revis, laconically.
"And the stuffs about those shafts--material--the building material at
those cottages, and all that?" she inquired.
"Sold--to settle things up," said Revis. "Your partner had power to do
all that, you know, as you couldn't. We all made the biggest effort we
could for you and for her. To put things in a nutshell--you owe nothing
to the bank or to anybody, and the whole concern is just a ruin which
anybody can take up and remake if they like. I would have liked, but it
isn't worth it."
Jeckie looked steadily at her visitor for a long time.
"Then," she said at last, in a low voice that was curiously firm,
"then--I've nothing?"
Revis shook his head.
"Nothing," he answered. "Nothing! except the forty acres that you bought
in the beginning."
He was surprised to hear Jeckie laugh. He was something of a student of
human nature, this big, bluff man, but he could not gauge the precise
meaning of that laugh, and he looked at the woman before him, in some
slight alarm, which she was quick to recognise.
"I'm not going mad, Revis," she said. "I was only thinking that at the
end of all that I've got--forty acres! Those forty acres!"
"How much did you give for them?" he asked, inquisitively. "A lot? I'd
an idea it was for next to naught that you got them."
Jeckie suddenly got up from her chair, and turned towards the hearth.
She stood looking into the fire for some time, and when, at last, she
glanced at her visitor there was a look in her eyes which Revis never
forgot.
"What did I give for them?" she said in a low, concentrated voice.
"Man!--I don't know--yet!--what I gave for them!"
Revis stood staring at her for a moment of wonder. Her answer was beyond
him. And as he had no reply to it he turned to go. But Jeckie stopped
him.
"Wait a minute," she said. "A question--Lucilla Grice and her husband?"
"They've left the neighbourhood," replied Revis. "They sold their house
and furniture and went away. I don't know where they've gone."
Jeckie said no more, and Revis went out, said a few words to Farnish,
and drove off. And Farnish went indoors, and found Jeckie already
setting about the preparations for their early dinner. He was astonished
to find that she began to be talkative that day; still more astonished
that, when evening came, she cooked a hot supper, encouraged him to eat,
ate heartily herself, and before they went to bed mixed a goodly tumbler
of grog for each of them. It was, thought Farnish, like old times, and
he went to his chamber in high content.
But as the grey dawn broke a few hours later, Farnish woke to find
Jeckie, fully dressed, standing at his bedside. He stared at her in
astonishment.
"Get up; get dressed; come down; we're going away," said Jeckie. "Don't
talk, but do as I tell you. There'll be some breakfast ready by the time
you're down."
Farnish obeyed; he was still as clay in his elder daughter's hands. And
an hour later, still obedient though wondering, he followed her out of
the cottage, and up the empty street of Savilestowe, past what had once
been Grice's, past what had once been the Golden Teapot, past the last
house, past the last tree. At the top of the hill, and as the morning
broke, he turned and looked back, having some strange intuition that he
was being taken away from a place which he had known long and would
never see again. He stood looking for some minutes; when he turned,
Jeckie, who had never once looked back, was marching stolidly ahead.
CHAPTER XIII
_The Lustre Jug_
Some eight or nine years after the morning on which Jeckie Farnish and
her father had walked out of their native village for the last time,
never to be heard of again in those parts, a man, who had just arrived
by train at Scarhaven, the time being seven o'clock of a bitterly cold
November evening, turned away from the railway station and betook
himself, shivering in the north-east wind that swept inland from the
sea, towards a part of the town wherein cheap lodgings were to be found.
In the light of the street lamps he showed himself to any who chanced to
look at him as a not over-well clad, somewhat shabby man, elderly,
greyish of hair and beard, who carried an old umbrella in one hand and a
much worn hand-bag in the other. Not the sort of man, this, anyone would
have said, who had much money to spend--nevertheless, when, after some
ten minutes of hard walking, he came to the end of a badly lighted
street in a dismal quarter, he turned into the bar-parlour of a corner
tavern and ordered hot whisky and a cheap cigar. In the light of the
place his shabbiness was more apparent, yet it was shabbiness of the
genteel sort. His overcoat was threadbare, but well brushed; his boots,
patched in more than one place, were sound of sole and firm of heel and
had been well cleaned and polished; his linen was clean and he wore
gloves. A keen observer of men and things would have said, after
inspecting him, that here was a man who had known better days.
Under the cheering influence of his whisky and his cigar, this man shook
off the chill of the streets and the sea wind and began to feel more
comfortable in flesh and bone.
He settled himself in a corner of the bar-parlour and picked up a
newspaper from an adjoining table, there was a good fire in the grate
close by, and he glanced at it approvingly as at the face of an old
friend, and occasionally stretched out a hand to it. In this fashion he
spent half an hour; at the end of that time he pulled out a watch, and
here again a keen observer would have noted something of significance.
The watch hung from a cheap steel chain, of the sort that you can buy
anywhere for a couple of shillings, but the watch itself was a good,
first-class article of solid gold, old, no doubt, but valuable. He
replaced it in his pocket with an air of indecision; then, apparently,
making up his mind about something, he had his glass replenished, and
for another half-hour he sat, gradually growing warmer and more
courageous. But soon after eight o'clock had struck from a neighbouring
church tower, he rose, buttoned his overcoat about his throat, and,
picking up bag and umbrella, made for the door. Ere he had reached it
another moment of apparent indecision came over him. It ended in his
returning to the bar and asking to be supplied with a bottle of whisky.
He counted out its price from a handful of silver which he drew from his
hip pocket, and, placing the bottle in the bag, made his exit and went
out again into the night.
It was a badly-lighted street down which this man turned--a street of
small, mean houses, wherein there were few lights in the windows and the
gas lamps were placed far apart. Consequently, he had some difficulty in
finding the number he wanted, and was obliged to look closely within the
doorways to get an idea of its exact situation. But he got it at last,
and knocked--to wait until a slight opening of the door revealed a
dimly-lighted, narrow passage, and a girl between the lamp and himself.
"Mrs. Watson in?" he asked, making as if to enter. The girl shook her
head.
"Mrs. Watson's dead, sir--died three years ago," she answered. "Name of
Marshall here now."
The inquirer appeared to be seriously taken aback.
"Sorry to hear that," he said. "I used to get a night's lodgings with
her in years past. Do they let lodgings here now?"
"No, sir," said the girl, "but there's plenty of houses where they do,
both sides of the street. You'll see cards in the windows, sir."
The man thanked his informant and went away--to look for the cards of
which the girl had spoken. There were plenty of these cards in the
windows. He could see them, dismal and ghost-like in the gloom, and very
soon he paused, irresolute.
"One's as good as another, I reckon," he muttered at last. "And when
you can't afford an hotel----"
Then he knocked at the door by which he was just then standing. There
was some delay there, but when the door opened there was a strong light
in the passage behind it, and he found himself confronting a tall,
gaunt, white-haired woman, gowned in rusty black, over whose shoulders
were thrown an old Paisley shawl. He looked uninterestedly at her--one
landlady was pretty much as other landladies.
"Can you let me have a room and a bit of supper and breakfast?" he
began. "I used to put up at Mrs. Watson's, lower down, but I find she
dead, so----"
Then he suddenly stopped, hearing the woman catch her breath and seeing
a quick start of surprise in her as she leaned forward to stare at him.
And he, too, leaned nearer, and stared.
"Good Lord!" he muttered. "Jeckie! Jeckie Farnish! Well, I never!"
Jeckie held the door wider, motioning the applicant to step inside.
"I knew you, Albert Grice, as soon as you spoke," she said, in a dull,
almost sullen voice. "Come in! I can find what you want. Where's your
wife?" she went on, as she pointed him to a hat-stand. "Is she here,
waiting anywhere, in the town, or is it just for yourself?"
Albert set down his umbrella and bag, and began to take off his coat.
"Lucilla's dead," he replied, shortly. "Five or six years since. I'd no
idea of coming across you! I was here, once or twice--business, you
know--for a night, some years since, at that Mrs. Watson's----"
"Come this way," said Jeckie. She walked before him down the narrow
passage to a living-room at the end, a homely, comfortable place, where
there was a bright fire, something cooking on the range, and, in an
elbow-chair at the side of the hearth, an old, white-bearded man who
smiled and nodded as Albert walked in. "You remember him," continued
Jeckie, pointing to Farnish. "He's lost his memory--he wouldn't know you
from Adam!--he's forgotten all about Savilestowe, and he thinks he's a
retired farmer--wi' lots o' money!" she added, grimly. "Speak to
him--but take no notice of what he says--he talks all sorts o' soft
stuff."
Albert went up to Farnish and offered his hand.
"Ah, how do you do, sir?" he asked. "Hope I see you well, sir?"
"Ah, how do you do, sir?" responded Farnish, with another infantile
smile. "I hope you're well yourself? Friend o' my dowter's, no doubt,
sir, and kindly welcome. Jecholiah, mi lass, what'll the gentleman tak'
to drink--ye mun get out the sperrits--and there'll be a bit o' tobacco
in the jar, somewhere, no doubt."
"Sit you down," said Jeckie, motioning Albert to another elbow-chair.
"There's some hot supper in t'oven; plenty of it, and good, too, and
we'll have it in a minute, and then he'll go to his bed--he's quiet and
harmless enough, but his mind's gone--at least his memory has."
"Does he ever take a glass?" asked Albert, staring curiously at Farnish.
"I see he's got his pipe handy."
"Oh, I give him a drop every night before he goes to bed," said Jeckie,
already bustling about the hearth. "That does him no harm."
Albert went back into the passage and returned with his bottle of
whisky. Seeing a corkscrew hanging on the delf-ledge, he drew the cork,
mixed two tumblers of grog, and handed one to Farnish and offered the
other to Jeckie.
"Nay, drink it yourself," said Jeckie. "I don't mind one after supper,
but not now. You haven't made it over strong for him?"
"It'll not hurt him," replied Albert, pointing to the label on the
bottle. "Sound stuff, that. Best respects, sir!"
"And my best respects to you, sir, and many on 'em," answered Farnish.
"Allers glad to see a gentleman o' your sort, sir--friends o' my
dowter's."
"He thinks all my lodgers are friends 'at come to see us," observed
Jeckie. "Poor old feller!--he's been like that this three year."
Albert sat sipping his drink and watching father and daughter. Farnish
had become white and doddering; Jeckie's hair was as white as his, and
she was as gaunt as a scarecrow, and looked all the more so because of
her height and her strong-boned figure, but she was evidently as
bustling as ever, and not without some spark of her old fire. And
before long she set a smoking-hot Irish stew on the table, and bade
Albert to fall to and eat heartily; there was always plenty of good,
plain food in her house, she added, dryly, and nobody went with their
bread unbuttered. So Albert ate and grew warm and satisfied, and, when,
later on, Jeckie was seeing Farnish to his bed, he sat by the fire, and
drank more whisky, and wondered, in vague, purposeless fashion, about
the vagaries of life.
Jeckie came back to him at last, and dropped into the chair which
Farnish had left empty. Albert indicated his bottle.
"Well, I don't mind a drop," she said. "A woman 'at works as hard as I
do can do with a glass last thing at night. I've some good stuff o' my
own in that cupboard--you must try it when you've finished your glass."
"Good health, then," said Albert. He looked speculatively at her as he
lifted his glass. "I was never more surprised in my life," he went on,
confidentially, "than when you opened that door! For--it's all a long
time ago!"
Jeckie, holding the tumbler which he had given her in both hands, stared
meditatively at the fire for some time before replying.
"Aye!" she said at last. "I've had more lives nor one i' my time! You've
never been back there?"
"Never!" answered Albert. "Have you?"
Jeckie shook her head.
"There's naught could ever make me do that," she said. "It was over and
done with. Once I thought of emigrating and starting afresh, but there
was him"--she nodded towards the stairs. "I had to think of him. So I
came here, and furnished this bit of a house, and started taking in
lodgers--chance folk, like yourself. It's been--well, just a comfortable
living. T'old fellow upstairs is satisfied, especially since he lost all
his memory. And that's the main thing, anyhow, now. There's naught
else."
Albert said nothing, and there was a long pause before Jeckie spoke
again. Then she asked a question.
"What might you be doing?"
"Bit o' travelling," replied Albert. "The old line--a patent food. No
great thing; but, as you say, it's, well, just a nice living. For a
single man, keeps one going; and I can manage a cigar now and then, and
a drop o' that," he added, with a knowing sidelong glance at the bottle.
"I don't complain."
Jeckie shrugged her shoulders.
"What's the use?" she said.
Albert suddenly rose, went out into the passage, and came back with a
packet in his hand, which he presented to her.
"This is the stuff," he said. "Invaluable for children, invalids, and
old people. You might try it on your father; it's grand stuff for old
'uns when they've lost their teeth. Lately I've done very nicely with
it. What I want is to get a bigger connection with leading firms in some
of these towns. I'm going to try a whole day here to-morrow. I've only
one of these Scarhaven firms on my list at present. Now, you'll have an
idea about where I should go, eh? Happen you can suggest...."
They continued talking for an hour or two, facing each other across the
hearth, two broken things, with a past behind them, and a bottle between
them, each secretly conscious of mutual knowledge, and neither daring to
speak of it. They talked of anything but the past, any trifle of the
moment; yet the consciousness of the past was there, spectre-like, and
each felt it. And, at last, as the clock struck eleven, Jeckie rose and
lighted a candle.
"I'll show you your room," she said. "You can depend on the bed being
well-aired; I'm always particular about that; and there's everything
you'll want. And I'll have a good breakfast ready at half-past eight."
When she had shown Albert to his room she went downstairs again, and,
gathering the Paisley shawl about her, sat in front of the fire, staring
at it and thinking, until the red ashes grew grey, and the grey ashes
white. It was past midnight then, but she had so sat, and so heard the
clocks strike twelve for many a long year.
"As sure as I'm a born woman," she muttered, she rose at last, "it was
Ben Scholes's spirit 'at I saw that night! And I were none wrong when I
said to Revis 'at I didn't know what I gave for that land! for who knows
what I'll have to pay for it yet! But I've kept paying, and paying, and
paying, on account; but what about t'balance?"
She went slowly and heavily upstairs and looked in on Farnish. The old
man was fast asleep, his hands clasped over his breast.
"He's all right," she muttered as she left his room. "He never had any
great love of money."
Albert found a good breakfast of eggs and bacon ready for him when he
came down in the morning, and did justice to it. Jeckie stood by the
fire and talked to him while he ate, but again there was no reference to
the past. And before nine o'clock he had got into his coat and hat, to
start out on his round.
"I want to get done by four," he said. "I must go on to Kingsport
to-night. So now--what do I owe?"
"Why if you give me three-and-six, it'll do," answered Jeckie. With the
coins which he gave her still in her hand, she followed him to the
street door and looked out into a grey sea-fog that was rolling slowly
up the street. She continued to look when he had said good-bye and gone
quickly away ... she watched his disappearing figure until the sea-fog
swallowed it up. She went back to the living-room then, and took down
from the mantelpiece an old lustre-jug which she had treasured all
through her life, since the time of her girlhood at Applecroft, and in
which she now kept her small change. And as she dropped the
three-and-six in it, the lustre-jug slipped from her fingers, and was
broken into fragments on the hearthstone. Presently, she picked up the
fragments and went out into the yard behind the house and threw them
away on the dustheap; bits of pot, not more shattered than her own self.
THE END
* * * * *
_Novels by_
J. S. FLETCHER
THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL
THE SECRET OF THE BARBICAN
THE MILL OF MANY WINDOWS
THE COPPER BOX
THE HEAVEN-KISSED HILL
EXTERIOR TO THE EVIDENCE
THE VALLEY OF HEADSTRONG MEN
THE LOST MR. LINTHWAITE