Trevlyn Hold

CHAPTER XXXI

DOWN THE SHAFT

It was only too true. Whether from fire-damp, the rushing in of water, or some other mischief to which coal-pits are liable, was as yet scarcely known: nothing was certain except the terrible calamity itself. Of the men who had gone down the mine that morning, some were dead, others dying. Meg Pennet echoed the shrieks of the women as she flew forward and pushed through the crowd collected round the mouth of the pit. The same confusion prevailed there that prevails in similar scenes of distress and disaster elsewhere.

"And Mr. Chattaway himself was down the shaft, you say? He went down this morning? My friends, it is altogether an awful calamity."

The woman pushed in yet further and confronted the speaker, her white face drawn with anguish. He was the minister of a dissenting chapel, a Mr. Lloyd, and well known to the miners, some of whom went regularly to hear him preach.

"No, sir; Chattaway was na down the shaft; he is na one of the dead, more luck to him," she said, her words brought out brokenly, her bosom heaving. "Chattaway have this morning made me a widda and my young children fatherless. My man was stiff with rheumatiz, he was—no more fit to go to work nor I be to go down that shaft and carry up his poor murdered body. I knowed his errand as soon as I heerd his horse's feet. He made him get off the settle, and druv him out to work as he'd drive a dog; and when I told him of his hardness, he lifted up his whip agin me. Yes! Pennet's down with the rest of 'em; sent by him: and I be a lone widda."

"Her says right," interposed a voice. "It wasn't the master as went down the shaft; it were young Rupert Trevlyn."

"Rupert Trevlyn," uttered the minister in startled tones. "I hope he is not down."

"Yes, he's down, sir."

"But where can Mr. Chattaway be?" exclaimed Ford, the clerk, who made one of the throng. "Do you know, Meg Pennet?"

"He's where ill-luck have overtook him for his cruelty to us," answered Meg Pennet, flinging her hair from her sorrowful face. "I telled him the ill he forced on others might happen come home to him—that he might soon be lying in his pain, for aught he knew. And he went right off to the ill then and there—and he's a-lying in it."

The sympathies of the hearers were certainly not given to Mr. Chattaway. He was no favourite with his dependants at Blackstone, any more than with his neighbours around the Hold. But the woman's words were strange, and they pressed for an explanation.

"He be lying under the wall o' the old ruin," was her reply. "I come upon him there, and I guess his brave horse had flung him. When I'd ha' lifted him, he cried out with pain—as my poor man was a-crying in the night with his back—and I saw him lay hisself down again after I'd left him. And Chattaway he swore at me for my help—and you can go to him and be swore at too. Happen his leg be broke."

The minister turned away to seek Mr. Chattaway. Unless completely disabled, it was necessary that he should be at the scene; no one of any particular authority was there to give orders; and the inevitable confusion attendant on such a calamity was thereby increased. Ford, the clerk, sped after Mr. Lloyd, and one or two stragglers followed him; but the rest were chained to the more exciting scene of the disaster.

Mr. Chattaway had raised himself when they reached him, and was holding on by the wall. He broke into a storm of grumbling, especially at Ford, and asked why he could not have found him out sooner. As if Ford could divine what had befallen him! Mr. Lloyd stooped and touched the ankle, which was a good deal swollen. It was sprained, Chattaway said; but he thought he could manage to get on his horse with their assistance. He abused the beggar unmercifully, and expressed his intention of calling a meeting of his brother-magistrates, that measures might be taken to rid the country of tramps and razor-grinders; and he finished up in the heat of argument by calling the accident which had befallen him a cursed misfortune.

"Hush!" quietly interrupted Mr. Lloyd. "I should call it a blessing."

Chattaway stared at him and deemed that he was carrying religion rather too far. As he looked, it struck him that both his rescuers wore very sad countenances; Ford in particular was excessively crestfallen. A sarcastic smile crossed his face.

"A blessing! to have my ankle sprained, and waste my morning in this fashion? Thank you, Mr. Lloyd! You gentlemen who have nothing better to do with your time than preach it away may think little of such an interruption, but to men of business it is not agreeable. A blessing!"

"Yes, I believe it to have come to you as such—sent direct from God. Were you not going into the pit this morning?"

"Yes, I was," impatiently answered Mr. Chattaway. "I should be there now, but for this—blessing! I wish you would not–"

"Just so," interrupted Mr. Lloyd, calmly. "And this fall has no doubt saved your life. There has been an accident in the pit, and the poor fellows who went down a few hours ago full of health and life, are about to be carried up dead."

The words brought Mr. Chattaway to his senses. "An accident!" he repeated. "What accident?—of what nature?" turning hastily to Ford.

"Fire-damp, I believe, sir."

"Who was down?" was the next eager question.

"The usual men, sir. And—and—Mr. Rupert Trevlyn."

Chattaway with some difficulty repressed a shout. Idea after idea crowded upon his brain, one chasing another. Foremost amongst them rose distinctly the one thought of the morning from which he had striven to escape and could not: "Nothing can bring me security save the death of Rupert." Had the half-encouraged wish brought its realisation.

"Rupert Trevlyn down the shaft!" he repeated, the moisture breaking over his face. "I know he went down; I sent him; but—but—did he not come up again?"

"No," gloomily replied Ford, who really liked Rupert; "he is down now. There's no hope that he'll come up alive."

Whether consternation deadened his physical suffering, or his ankle, from the rest it had had, was really less painful, Mr. Chattaway contrived to get pretty comfortably to the scene of action. The crowd had increased; people were coming up from far and near. Medical men had arrived, ready to give their services in case any sufferers were brought up alive. One of them examined Mr. Chattaway's ankle, and bound it up; the hurt, he said, was only a temporary one.

He, the owner of that pit, sat down on the side of a hand-barrow, for he could not stand, and issued his orders in sharp, concise tones; and the bodies began to be brought to the surface. One of the first to appear was that of the unfortunate man, Bean, to whom he had sent the message by Rupert. Chattaway looked on, half-dazed. Would Rupert's body be the next? He could not realise the fact that he, from whom he had dreaded he knew not what, should soon be laid at his feet, cold and lifeless. Was he glad or sorry? Did grief for Rupert predominate? Or did the intense relief the death must bring overpower any warmer feeling? Perhaps Mr. Chattaway could not yet tell.

They were being brought up pretty quickly now, and were laid on the ground beside him, to be recognised by the unhappy relatives. The men to whom Chattaway had spoken that morning were amongst them: he had ordered them down as he rode off, and one and all had obeyed the mandate. Did he regret their fate? Did he compassionate the weeping wives and children? In a degree, perhaps, yes; but not as most men would have done.

A tall form interposed between him and the mouth of the pit—that of Meg Pennet. She had been watching for a body which had not yet been brought up. Suddenly she turned to Mr. Chattaway.

"You have killed him, master; you have made my children orphans. But for your coming in your hardness to drive him out when he warn't fit to go, we should ha' had somebody still to work for us. Happen you may have heered of a curse? I'd like to give ye one now."

"Somebody take this woman away," cried Chattaway. "She'll be better at home."

"Ay, take her away," retorted Meg; "don't let her plaints be heered, lest folk might say they be just. Send her home to her fatherless children, and send her dead man after her to lie among 'em till his burial. Happen, when you come to your death, Mr. Chattaway, you'll have us all afore your mind, to comfort you!"

She stopped. Another ill-fated man was being drawn up, and she turned to wait for it, her hands clenched, her face white and haggard in its intensity. The burden came, and was laid near the rest; but it was not the one for which she waited. Another woman darted forward; she knew it too well; and she clasped her hands round it, and sobbed in agony. Meg Pennet turned resolutely to the mouth of the pit again, watching still.

"Be they all dead? How many was down?"

The voice came from behind Meg Pennet, and she screamed and started. There stood her husband. How had he escaped from the pit?

"I haven't been a-nigh it," he answered. "I couldn't get down to the pit, try as I would, without a rest, and I halted at Green's. Who's dead among 'em, and who's alive?"

"God be thanked!" exclaimed Meg Pennet, with a sob of emotion.

All Mr. Chattaway's faculties were strained on the mouth of that yawning pit, and what it might yield up. As body after body was brought to the surface—seven of them were up now—he cast his anxious looks upon it, expecting to recognise the fair face of Rupert Trevlyn. Expecting and yet dreading—don't think him worse than he was; with the frightened, half-shrinking dread ordinarily experienced by women, or by men of nervous and timid temperament. So utterly did this suspense absorb him as to make him almost oblivious to the painful features of the scene, the wails of woe and bursts of lamentation.

Happening for a minute to turn his eyes from the pit, he saw in the distance a pony-carriage approaching, which looked uncommonly like that of Miss Diana Trevlyn. Instinct told him that the two figures seated in it were his wife and Miss Diana, although as yet he could not see whether they were women or men. It was slowly winding down a distant hill, and would have to ascend another and come over the flat stretch of country ere it could reach them. He beckoned his clerk Ford to him in a sort of terror.

"Run, Ford! Make all speed. I think I see Miss Trevlyn's pony-carriage yonder with the ladies in it. Don't let them approach. Tell them to turn aside, to the office, and I'll come to them. Anywhere; anywhere but here."

Ford ran with all his might. He met the carriage just at the top of the nearest hill, and unceremoniously laid his hand upon the pony, giving Mr. Chattaway's message as well as his breathless state would allow—begging they would turn aside and not approach the pit.

It was evident that they were strangers as yet to the news, but the crowd and excitement round the pit had been causing them apprehension and a foreshadowing of the truth. Miss Diana, paying, as it appeared, little heed to the message, extended her whip in the direction of the scene.

"I see what it is, Ford. Don't beat about the bush. How many were down the shaft?"

"A great many, ma'am," was Ford's reply. "The pit was in full work to-day."

"Was it fire-damp?"

"I believe so."

"Mr. Chattaway's safe, you say? He was not down? I suppose he was not likely to be down?"

"No," answered Ford. But the thought of Mr. Chattaway's accident from another source, which he did not know whether to disclose or not, and the consciousness of a worse calamity, caused him to speak hesitatingly. Miss Diana was quick of apprehension, and awoke it.

"Was any one down the shaft besides the men? Was—where's Rupert Trevlyn?"

Ford looked as if he dared not answer.

Mrs. Chattaway caught the alarm. She half rose in the low carriage, and stretched out her hands in a pleading attitude; as though Ford held the issues of life and death.

"Oh, speak, speak! He was not down the shaft! Surely Rupert was not down the shaft!"

"He had gone down but a short time before," said the young man in a whisper—for where was the use of denying the fact, now that they had guessed it? "We shall all mourn him, ma'am. I had almost as soon it had been me."

"Gone down the shaft but a short time before!" mechanically repeated Miss Diana in her horror. But she was interrupted by a cry from Ford. Mrs. Chattaway had fallen back on her seat in a fainting-fit.

CHAPTER XXXII

A SHOCK FOR MR. CHATTAWAY

The brightness of the day was turning to gloom, as if the heavens sympathised with the melancholy scene upon earth. Quietly pushing his way through the confusion, moans and lamentations, the mass of human beings surrounding the mouth of the pit, was a tall individual whose acquaintance you have made before. It was Mr. Daw with his red umbrella: the latter an unvarying appendage, whether the sun was shining or the clouds dropped rain. He went straight up to certain pale faces lying there in a row, and glanced at them one by one.

"They are saying that Rupert Trevlyn is amongst the sufferers," he observed to those nearest to him.

"So he is, master."

"I do not see him here."

"No; he ain't up yet."

"Is there no hope that he may be brought to the surface alive?"

They shook their heads. "Not now. He have been down too long. There's not a chance for him."

Something like emotion passed over Mr. Daw's features.

"How came he to be down the pit?" he asked. "Was it his business to go down?"

"Not in ord'nary. No: 'tworn't once in six months as there was aught to take him there."

"Then what took him there to-day?" was Mr. Daw's next question.

"The master sent him," replied the man, pointing towards Chattaway.

Apparently Mr. Daw had not observed Chattaway before, and he turned and walked towards him. Vexation at the loss of Rupert—it may surely be called vexation rather than grief, since he had not known Rupert sufficiently long to love him—a loss so sudden and terrible, was rendering Mr. Daw unjust. Chattaway's worst enemy could not fairly blame him with reference to the fate of Rupert: but Mr. Daw was in a hasty mood.

"Is it true that you sent Rupert Trevlyn down the shaft only a few minutes before this calamity occurred?"

The address and the speaker equally took Mr. Chattaway by surprise. His attention was riveted on something then being raised from the shaft, and he had not noticed the stranger. Hastily turning his head, he saw, first the conspicuous red umbrella, next its obnoxious and dangerous owner.

Ah, but no longer dangerous now. That terrible fear was over for ever. With the first glimpse, Mr. Chattaway's face had turned to a white heat, from the force of habit; but the next moment's reflection reassured him, and he retained his equanimity.

"What did you say, sir?"

"Was there no one else, Mr. Chattaway, to serve your turn, but you must send down your wronged and unhappy nephew?" reiterated Mr. Daw, in tones that penetrated to every ear. "I have heard it said, since I came into this neighbourhood, that Mr. Chattaway would be glad, if by some lucky chance Squire Trevlyn's grandson and legal heir could be put out of his path. It seems he has succeeded in accomplishing it."

Mr. Chattaway's face grew dark and frowning. "Take care what you say, sir, or you shall answer for your words. I ask you what you mean."

"And I ask you—Was there no one you could despatch this morning into that dangerous mine, then on the very eve of exploding, but that helpless boy, Rupert, who might not resist your authority, and so went to his death? Was there no one, I ask?"