They did not look like women, or at least a stranger new to the district
might easily have been misled by their appearance, as they stood
together in a group, by the pit's mouth. There were about a dozen of
them there--all “pit-girls,” as they were called; women who wore a
dress more than half masculine, and who talked loudly and laughed
discordantly, and some of whom, God knows, had faces as hard and brutal
as the hardest of their collier brothers and husbands and sweethearts.
They had lived among the coal-pits, and had worked early and late at the
“mouth,” ever since they had been old enough to take part in the heavy
labor. It was not to be wondered at that they had lost all bloom of
womanly modesty and gentleness. Their mothers had been “pit-girls” in
their time, their grandmothers in theirs; they had been born in coarse
homes; they had fared hardly, and worked hard; they had breathed in the
dust and grime of coal, and, somehow or other, it seemed to stick to
them and reveal itself in their natures as it did in their bold unwashed
faces. At first one shrank from them, but one's shrinking could not
fail to change to pity. There was no element of softness to rule or even
influence them in their half savage existence.
On the particular evening of which I speak, the group at the pit's mouth
were even more than usually noisy. They were laughing, gossiping and
joking,--coarse enough jokes,--and now and then a listener might have
heard an oath flung out as if all were well used to the sound. Most of
them were young women, though there were a few older ones among them,
and the principal figure in the group--the center figure, about whom the
rest clustered--was a young woman. But she differed from the rest in two
or three respects. The others seemed somewhat stunted in growth; she was
tall enough to be imposing. She was as roughly clad as the poorest of
them, but she wore her uncouth garb differently. The man's jacket of
fustian, open at the neck, bared a handsome sunbrowned throat. The man's
hat shaded a face with dark eyes that had a sort of animal beauty, and a
well-molded chin. It was at this girl that all the rough jokes seemed to
be directed.
“I'll tell thee, Joan,” said one woman, “we'st ha' thee sweetheartin'
wi' him afore th' month's out.”
“Aye,” laughed her fellows, “so we shall. Tha'st ha' to turn soft
after aw. Tha conna stond out again' th' Lunnon chap. We'st ha' thee
sweetheartin', Joan, i' th' face o' aw tha'st said.”
Joan Lowrie faced them defiantly:
“Tha'st noan ha' me sweetheartin' wi' siccan a foo',” she said, “I amna
ower fond o' men folk at no time. I've had my fill on 'em; and I'm noan
loike to tak' up wi' such loike as this un. An' he's no an a Lunnoner
neither. He's on'y fro' th' South. An th' South is na Lunnon.”
“He's getten' Lunnon ways tho',” put in another. “Choppin' his words up
an' mincin' 'em sma'. He's noan Lancashire, ony gowk could tell.”
“I dunnot see as he minces so,” said Joan roughly. “He dunnot speak our
loike, but he's well enow i' his way.”
A boisterous peal of laughter interrupted her.
“I thowt tha' ca'ed him a foo' a minute sin',” cried two or three voices
at once. “Eh, Joan, lass, tha'st goin' t' change thy moind, I see.”
The girl's eyes flashed.
“Theer's others I could ca' foo's,” she said; “I need na go far to
foind foo's. Foo' huntin's th' best sport out, an' th' safest. Leave th'
engineer alone an' leave me alone too. It 'll be th' best fur yo'.”
She turned round and strode out of the group.
Another burst of derisive laughter followed her, but she took no notice
of it She took no notice of anything--not even of the two men who at
that very moment passed and turned to look at her as she went by.
“A fine creature!” said one of them.
“A fine creature!” echoed the other. “Yes, and you see that is precisely
it, Derrick. 'A fine creature'--and nothing else.”
They were the young engineer and his friend the Reverend Paul Grace,
curate of the parish. There were never two men more unlike, physically
and mentally, and yet it would have been a hard task to find two natures
more harmonious and sympathetic. Still most people wondered at and
failed to comprehend their friendship. The mild, nervous little Oxonian
barely reached Derrick's shoulder; his finely cut face was singularly
feminine and innocent; the mild eyes beaming from behind his small
spectacles had an absent, dreamy look. One could not fail to see at
the first glance, that this refined, restless, conscientious little
gentleman was hardly the person to cope successfully with Riggan.
Derrick strode by his side like a young son of Anak--brains and muscle
evenly balanced and fully developed.
He turned his head over his shoulder to look at Joan Lowrie once again.
“That girl,” said Grace, “has worked at the pit's mouth from her
childhood; her mother was a pit girl until she died--of hard work,
privation and ill treatment. Her father is a collier and lives as most
of them do--drinking, rioting, fighting. Their home is such a home as
you have seen dozens of since you came here; the girl could not better
it if she tried, and would not know how to begin if she felt inclined.
She has borne, they tell me, such treatment as would have killed most
women. She has been beaten, bruised, felled to the earth by this father
of hers, who is said to be a perfect fiend in his cups. And yet she
holds to her place in their wretched hovel, and makes herself a slave
to the fellow with a dogged, stubborn determination. What can I do with
such a case as that, Derrick?”
“You have tried to make friends with the girl?” said Derrick.
Grace colored sensitively.
“There is not a man, woman or child in the parish,” he answered, “with
whom I have not conscientiously tried to make friends, and there
is scarcely one, I think, with whom I have succeeded. Why can I not
succeed? Why do I always fail? The fault must be with myself----”
“A mistake that at the outset,” interposed Derrick. “There is no
'fault' in the matter; there is simply misfortune. Your parishioners are
so unfortunate as not to be able to understand you, and on your part you
are so unfortunate as to fail at first to place yourself on the right
footing with them. I say 'at first' you observe. Give yourself time,
Grace, and give them time too.”
“Thank you,” said the Reverend Paul. “But speaking of this girl--'That
lass o' Lowrie's,' as she is always called--Joan I believe her name is.
Joan Lowrie is, I can assure you, a weight upon me. I cannot help her
and I cannot rid my mind of her. She stands apart from her fellows. She
has most of the faults of her class, but none of their follies; and she
has the reputation of being half feared, half revered. The man who dared
to approach her with the coarse love-making which is the fashion among
them, would rue it to the last day of his life. She seems to defy all
the world.”
“And it is impossible to win upon her?”
“More than impossible. The first time I went to her with sympathy, I
felt myself a child in her hands. She never laughed nor jeered at me
as the rest do. She stood before me like a rock, listening until I had
finished speaking. 'Parson,' she said, 'if thal't leave me alone, I'll
leave thee alone,' and then turned about and walked into the house. I
am nothing but 'th' parson' to these people, and 'th' parson' is one for
whom they have little respect and no sympathy.”
He was not far wrong. The stolid heavy-natured colliers openly
looked down upon 'th' parson.' A 'bit of a whipper snapper,' even the
best-natured called him in sovereign contempt for his insignificant
physical proportions. Truly the sensitive little gentleman's lines had
not fallen in pleasant places. And this was not all. There was another
source of discouragement with which he had to battle in secret, though
of this he would have felt it almost dishonor to complain. But
Derrick's keen eyes had seen it long ago, and, understanding it well, he
sympathized with his friend accordingly. Yet, despite the many rebuffs
the curate had met with, he was not conquered by any means. His was not
an easily subdued nature, after all. He was very warm on the subject of
Joan Lowrie this evening--so warm, indeed, that the interest the mere
sight of the girl had awakened in Derrick's mind was considerably
heightened. They were still speaking of her when they stopped before the
door of Grace's modest lodgings.
“You will come in, of course?” said Paul.
“Yes,” Derrick answered, “for a short time. I am tired and shall feel
all the better for a cup of Mrs. Burnie's tea,” pushing the hair back
from his forehead, as he had a habit of doing when a little excited.
He made the small parlor appear smaller than ever, when he entered it.
He was obliged to bend his head when he passed through the door, and it
was not until he had thrown himself into the largest easy chair, that
the trim apartment seemed to regain its countenance.
Grace paused at the table, and with a sudden flush, took up a letter
that lay there among two or three uninteresting-looking epistles.
“It is a note from Miss Anice,” he said, coming to the hearth and
applying his pen-knife in a gentle way to the small square envelope.
“Not a letter, Grace?” said Derrick with a smile.
“A letter! Oh dear, no! She has never written me a letter. They are
always notes with some sort of business object. She has very decided
views on the subject of miscellaneous letter-writing.”
He read the note himself and then handed it to Derrick.
It was a compact, decided hand, free from the suspicion of an
unnecessary curve.
“Dear Mr. Grace,--
“Many thanks for the book. You are very kind indeed. Pray
let us hear something more about your people. I am afraid
papa must find them very discouraging, but I cannot help
feeling interested. Grandmamma wishes to be remembered to
you,
“With more thanks,
“Believe me your friend,
“Anice Barholm.”
Derrick refolded the note and handed it back to his friend. To tell
the truth, it did not impress him very favorably. A girl not yet twenty
years old, who could write such a note as this to a man who loved her,
must be rather _too_ self-contained and well balanced.
“You have never told me much of this story, Grace,” he said.
“There is not much to tell,” answered the curate, flushing again. “She
is the Rector's daughter. I have known her three years. You remember I
wrote to you about meeting her while you were in India. As for the rest,
I do not exactly understand myself how it is that I have gone so far,
having so--so little encouragement--in fact having had no encouragement
at all; but, however that is, it has grown upon me, Derrick,--my feeling
for her has grown into my life. She has never cared for me. I am quite
sure of that, you see. Indeed, I could hardly expect it. It is not her
way to care for men as they are likely to care for her, though it will
come some day, I suppose--with the coming man,” half smiling. “She is
simply what she signs herself here, my friend Anice Barholm, and I am
thankful for that much. She would not write even that if she did not
mean it.”
“Bless my soul,” broke in Derrick, tossing back his head impatiently;
“and she is only nineteen yet, you say?”
“Only nineteen,” said the curate, with simple trustfulness in his
friend's sympathy, “but different, you know, from any other woman I have
ever seen.”
The tea and toast came in then, and they sat down together to partake of
it Derrick knew Anice quite well before the meal was ended, and yet
he had not asked many questions. He knew how Grace had met her at her
father's house--an odd, self-reliant, very pretty and youthful-looking
little creature, with the force and decision of half a dozen ordinary
women hidden in her small frame; how she had seemed to like him; how
their intimacy had grown; how his gentle, deep-rooted passion had grown
with it; how he had learned to understand that he had nothing to hope
for.
“I am a little fearful for the result of her first visit here,” said
Grace, pushing his cup aside and looking troubled. “I cannot bear to
think of her being disappointed and disturbed by the half-savage state
in which these people live. She knows nothing of the mining districts.
She has never been in Lancashire, and they have always lived in the
South. She is in Kent now, with Mrs. Barholm's mother. And though I have
tried, in my short letters to her, to prepare her for the rough side of
life she will be obliged to see, I am afraid it is impossible for her to
realize it, and it may be a shock to her when she comes.”
“She is coming to Riggan then?” said Derrick.
“In a few weeks. She has been visiting Mrs. Galloway since the Rector
gave up his living at Ashley wolde, and Mrs. Barholm told me to-day that
she spoke in her last letter of coming to them.”
The moon was shining brightly when Derrick stepped out into the street
later in the evening, and though the air was somewhat chill it was by no
means unpleasant. He had rather a long walk before him. He disliked
the smoke and dust of the murky little town, and chose to live on its
outskirts; but he was fond of sharp exercise, and regarded the distance
between his lodging and the field of his daily labor as an advantage.
“I work off a great deal of superfluous steam between the two places,”
he said to Grace at the door. “The wind coming across Boggart Brow has a
way of scattering and cooling restless plans and feverish fancies, that
is good for a man. Half a mile of the Knoll Road is often enough to blow
all the morbidness out of a fellow.”
To-night by the time he reached the corner that turned him upon the
Knoll Road, his mind had wandered upon an old track, but it had been
drawn there by a new object,--nothing other than Joan Lowrie, indeed.
The impression made upon him by the story of Joan and her outcast life
was one not easy to be effaced. The hardest miseries in the lot of a
class in whom he could not fail to be interested, were grouped about
that dramatic figure. He was struck, too, by a painful sense of
incongruity.
“If she had been in this other girl's niche,” he said, “if she had lived
the life of this Anice----”
But he did not finish his sentence. Something, not many yards beyond
him, caught his eye--a figure seated upon the road-side near a collier's
cottage--evidently a pit girl in some trouble, for her head was bowed
upon her hands, and there was a dogged sort of misery expressed in her
very posture.
“A woman,” he said aloud. “What woman, I wonder. This is not the time
for any woman to be sitting here alone.”
He crossed the road at once, and going to the girl, touched her lightly
on the shoulder.
“My lass,” he said good-naturedly, “what ails you?”
She raised her head slowly as if she were dizzy and bewildered. Her face
was disfigured by a bruise, and on one temple was a cut from which the
blood trickled down her cheek; but the moonlight showed him that it was
Joan. He removed his hand from her shoulder and drew back a pace.
“You have been hurt!” he exclaimed.
“Aye,” she answered deliberately, “I've had a hurt--a bad un.”
He did not ask her how she had been hurt. He knew as well as if she had
told him, that it had been done in one of her father's fits of drunken
passion. He had seen this sort of thing before during his sojourn in the
mining districts. But, shamefully repulsive as it had been to him, he
had never felt the degradation of it as fiercely as he did now.
“You are Joan Lowrie?” he said.
“Aye, I'm Joan Lowrie, if it 'll do yo' ony good to know.”
“You must have something done to that cut upon your temple.”
She put up her hand and wiped the blood away, as if impatient at his
persistence.
“It 'll do well enow as it is,” she said.
“That is a mistake,” he answered. “You are losing more blood than you
imagine. Will you let me help you?”
She stirred uneasily.
Derrick took no notice of the objection. He drew his handkerchief
from his pocket, and, after some little effort, managed to stanch the
bleeding, and having done so, bound the wound up. Perhaps something
in his sympathetic silence and the quiet consideration of his manner
touched Joan. Her face, upturned almost submissively, for the moment
seemed tremulous, and she set her lips together. She did not speak until
he had finished, and then she rose and stood before him immovable as
ever.
“Thank yo',” she said in a suppressed voice, “I canna say no more.”
“Never mind that,” he answered, “I could have done no less. If you could
go home now----”
“I shall na go whoam to neet,” she interrupted him.
“You cannot remain out of doors!” he exclaimed.
“If I do, it wunnot be th' first toime,” meeting his startled glance
with a pride which defied him to pity or question her. But his sympathy
and interest must have stirred her, for the next minute her manner
softened. “I've done it often,” she added, “an' nowts nivver feared me.
Yo' need na care, Mester, I'm used to it.”
“But I cannot go away and leave you here,” he said.
“You canna do no other,” she answered.
“Have you no friends?” he ventured hesitatingly.
“No, I ha' not,” she said, hardening again, and she turned away as if
she meant to end the discussion. But he would not leave her. The spirit
of determination was as strong in his character as in her own. He tore
a leaf from his pocket-book, and, writing a few lines upon it, handed it
to her. “If you will take that to Thwates' wife,” he said, “there will
be no necessity for your remaining out of doors all night.”
She took it from him mechanically; but when he finished speaking, her
calmness left her. Her hand began to tremble, and then her whole frame,
and the next instant the note fell to the ground, and she dropped into
her old place again, sobbing passionately and hiding her face on her
arms.
“I wunnot tak' it!” she cried. “I wunnot go no wheer an' tell as I'm
turned loike a dog into th' street.”
Her misery and shame shook her like a tempest. But she subdued herself
at last.
“I dunnot see as yo' need care,” she protested half resentfully. “Other
folk dunnot. I'm left to mysen most o' toimes.” Her head fell again and
she trembled from head to foot.
“But I do care!” he returned. “I cannot leave you here and will not. If
you will trust me and do as I tell you, the people you go to need know
nothing you do not choose to tell them.”
It was evident that his determination made her falter, and seeing this
he followed up his advantage and so far improved it that at last, after
a few more arguments, she rose slowly and picked up the fallen paper.
“If I mun go, I mun,” she said, twisting it nervously in her fingers,
and then there was a pause, in which she plainly lingered to say
something, for she stood before him with a restrained air and downcast
face. She broke the silence herself, however, suddenly looking up and
fixing her large eyes full upon him.
“If I was a lady,” she said, “happen I should know what to say to yo';
but bein' what I am, I dunnot. Happen as yo're a gentleman yo' know what
I'd loike to say an' canna--happen yo' do.”
Even as she spoke, the instinct of defiance in her nature struggled
against that of gratitude; but the finer instinct conquered.
“We will not speak of thanks,” he said. “I may need help some day, and
come to you for it.”
“If yo' ivver need help at th' pit will yo' come to me?” she demanded.
“I've seen th' toime as I could ha' gi'en help to th' Mesters ef I'd had
th' moind. If yo'll promise _that_----”
“I will promise it,” he answered her.
“An' I'll promise to gi' it yo',” eagerly. “So that's settled. Now I'll
go my ways. Good neet to yo'.”
“Good night,” he returned, and uncovering with as grave a courtesy as he
might have shown to the finest lady in the land, or to his own mother or
sister, he stood at the road-side and watched her until she was out of
sight.