The Root of All Evil

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.