The Root of All Evil
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.
