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Chapter Nine
Earth – Air – Fire – Water
Whether Owen had come back, in my opinion, a hero, or an unpardoned and disgraced man, appeared after his first swift glance into my face to affect him very little, if at all; and I had to admit to myself that whatever else he may have failed in, he had arrived at Ffynon with a full knowledge of the duty which he had undertaken.
As a boy, he had always loved engineering, and when in those bright and happy days he and I had discussed his golden future, the pros had generally ended in favour of his becoming an engineer.
“All things considered, I should like this best, Gwladys,” he would say. And though in these very youthful days he appeared to care more for poetry and the finest of the fine arts, yet it was here, I believe, that his true talent lay. Owen had not been idle during the four years of his exile, he had studied engineering as a profession when he was at Oxford, and during these years he had gone through a course of practical training with regard to the duties of a mining engineer, not only in the German mines, but in the North of England. He now brought this knowledge to bear on the rather slow working and unprofitable mine at Ffynon. This mine, which belonged to our mother, had at one time yielded a great deal of coal and was a source of much wealth, but of late, year by year, the mine yielded less, and its expenses became greater. It was worked on an old-fashioned system; it had not the recent improvements with regard to ventilation; and many serious accidents had taken place in consequence. Neither was the manager popular, he worked the mine recklessly, and many accidents of the most fatal character were constantly taking place from the falls of roofs, this expression meaning the giving way of great portions of the coal for want of proper supports being put under it. A short time before Owen’s return, the manager of the mine for some more flagrant act of carelessness than usual, had been dismissed, and it was on hearing this, that Owen had written to David, telling him of his studies and his profession, reminding him also that when a boy he had more than once gone down into the old mine at Ffynon, that with his present knowledge he believed the mine to be still rich in coal, and that it only needed to be properly worked to yield a fine return. He spoke strongly against the unprofitable and expensive system which had hitherto been adopted; and finally he begged of David to give him permission to step into the manager’s shoes, and for at least a year to have absolute control of the mine: promising at the end of that time to reduce order out of chaos, to lessen current expenses, and to bring in the first instalments of what should be large profits.
He had frankly told David his reason for this: he had a debt to pay, a debt of love and gratitude it was true, but still a debt that fretted his proud spirit, a debt that must be paid before he could know happiness again. But it was just on account of this reason that David hesitated to accept the services of one whose knowledge of the work he meant to undertake, was certainly great. The primary motive in Owen’s heart, seemed to David, in the present state of Ffynon mine, hardly a worthy one. Coal was valuable, gold scarce, but lives were precious; it seemed to David that until all was done to insure the safety of the lives of those men and boys who worked in the mine, gold ought to weigh very low in the balance, and as he alone of us all knew something truly of his brother’s character, so he hesitated to accept his offer; but while David hesitated, mother urged. Mother was ignorant of the miner’s life; gold to mother was not valueless: she had dreams of the Morgans being restored to all their former riches and power, she had also, notwithstanding his one fall, still implicit faith in Owen. Owen would not only win the gold but make the mine safe. It was a grief to her to leave Tynycymmer, but it was a counterbalancing delight to live on any terms for a year with her favourite son; she urged the acceptance of his offer. Thus urged, David yielded.
We moved to Ffynon. Owen arrived, eager, hopeful, enthusiastic, as of old. Handsome and brilliant as ever he looked as gay as though he had never known a sorrow. So I thought for the first week after his arrival, then I saw that his spirits were fitful, sometimes I fancied a little forced; a bad report of the mine would depress him for the day, whereas good news would send his gay laugh echoing all over the small house.
Thus I found myself in the midst of mining life. Mother, hitherto profoundly ignorant of such matters, now took up the popular theme with interest and zest.
She and I learned what fire-damp, black-damp, after-damp meant. We learned the relative destructiveness of explosions by gas and inundations by water. Then we became great on the all-important subject of ventilation. We knew what the steam jet could do, what furnace ventilation could effect. I admired the Davy lamps, learned something of their construction, and at last, I obtained the strongest wish I at present possessed, namely, a visit to this underground region of awe and danger, myself. It is a hackneyed theme, and I need scarcely describe it at length. I remember stepping on to the cage with some of the enthusiasm which I had admired in Miles’ brave hero brother, and long before I reached the bottom of the shaft, suffering from an intolerable sense of suffocation, and shivering and shaking with inward fear, such as must have overtaken poor little James on that fatal day. Finally, when I got to the bottom, recovering my courage, rejoicing in the free current of fresh air which was blown down from the great fan above, growing accustomed to the dim light of the Davy lamps, and then discovering little, by little, that the mine with its rail-roads, its levels, its drift ways, where the loaded trams of coal ran swiftly down, impelled by their own weight, its eager, grimy workers, its patient horses, destined many of them to live and die in this underground gloom, was very like a town, and had an order and method of its own.
The knowledge gained by the visit, the knowledge gained by listening to Owen’s and David’s conversation, the knowledge perhaps greater than all, which I had won by my friendship for Miles and Nan, inspired in me the strongest respect and admiration for the brave collier. He works in the dark, his heroic deeds are little heard of beyond his own circle, and yet he is as true a hero as the soldier in the field of battle or the sailor in the storm: his battle-field is the mine, his enemies, earth, air, fire, and water. Any moment the earth can bury him in a living tomb, a vast quantity of that solid coal may give way, and crush him beneath its weight; any instant, the air, in the poisoned form of black, or after-damp, may fill his lungs, take all power from his limbs, fell him in his strength and prime to the earth, and leave him there dead; or in half an instant, through the explosion of a match, the wrong adjustment of a safety-lamp, the whole mine may from end to end become a cavern of lurid fire, destroying every living thing within its reach. Or one stroke too many of the miner’s pick, may let in a volume of black and stagnant water from an unused and forgotten pit, which rising slowly at first, then gaining, in volume, in strength, in rapidity, buries the miners in a watery grave of horrible and loathsome desolation.
Yes, the miners are brave; for small pay they toll unremittingly, labouring in the dark, exposed to many dangers. Day by day these men go down into the mines literally with their lives in their hands. The wives, mothers, sisters, know well what the non-arrival of a husband, father, brother means. They hope a little, fear much, weep over the mangled remains when they can even have that poor source of consolation, and then the widow who has lost her husband, dries her eyes, puts her shoulder to the wheel, and like a true Spartan woman, when his turn comes, sends down her boy to follow in his father’s steps, and, if God wills it, to die bravely, as his father died before him.
I visited the schools about Ffynon, and noticed the bright dark-eyed, Welsh children, each boy among them destined to become a collier as he grew up. Many of these boys shrank from it, struggled against it, feared it as a coming nightmare; some few, as the dreaded time drew near, ran away to sea, preferring the giving up of father and mother, and encountering the hardships of the sea, to the greater hardships of the mine, but most of them yielded to the inevitable fate.
I found, too, on observation that the colliers of Ffynon were a religious people; the sentiments I had heard in astonishment and almost awe dropping from the lips of little Miles, I found were the sentiments rather of the many than the few. They lived an intense life, and they needed, and certainly possessed, an intense faith.
The body of them were not Church people; they had a simple and impassioned service of their own, generally held in the Welsh tongue. At these services they prayed and sang and listened to fervent addresses. At these services, after an accident, slight or great, the men and women often bowed their heads and wept. Their services were alive and warm, breathing the very breath of devotion, suited to their untrained, but strong natures. They left them with the sense of a present God alive in each heart; a God who would go with them into the mine, who would accompany them through the daily toil and danger, and, if need be, and His will called them, would carry them safely, even in a chariot of fire, into the Golden City.
To the religious miner, the descriptions of Heaven as written in the Apocalypse, were the very life of his life. He loved to sit by his fire on Sunday evenings, and slowly read from the well-worn page to his listening wife, and his lads and lasses, of the city sparkling with gems and rich with gold. To the man who toiled in the deepest of darkness, a land without night or shadow was a theme of rapture. To the man who knew danger and pain, who fought every day with grim death, that painless shore, that eternal calm, that home where father, mother, brother, sister, rudely parted and torn asunder here, should be together, and God with them, was as an anchor to his soul. No place on earth could be more real and present than Heaven was to the religious collier. Take it from him, and he could do no more work in the dark and dangerous mine; leave it with him, and he was a hero. The colliers had one proud motto, one badge of honour, which each father bequeathed as his most precious possession to his son – this motto was “Bravery;” one stigma of everlasting disgrace which, once earned, nothing could wipe out, “Cowardice.” In the collier’s creed no stone was too heavy to roll away to rescue a brother from danger. Into the midst of the fire and the flood, into the fatal air of the after-damp, they must go without shrinking to save a companion who had fallen a victim to these dangers. Each man as he toiled to rescue his fellow man, knew well that he in his turn, would risk life itself for him. No man reflected credit on himself for this, no man regarded it as other than his most simple and obvious duty.
Into the midst of this simple, brave, and in many ways noble people, came Owen with his science and his skill. He went down into the mine day after day, quickly mastered its intricacies, quickly discovered its defects, quickly lighted upon its still vast stores of unused treasures. At the end of a month he communicated the result to David. I was seated by the open window, and I heard, in detached sentences, something of what was spoken, as the brothers paced the little plot of ground outside, arm in arm. As I watched them, I noticed for the first time some of the old look of confidence and passion on Owen’s face. The expressive eyes revealed this fact to me – the full hazel irids, the pupils instinct with fire, the whole eyes brimming with a long-lost gladness, proclaimed to me that the daring, the ambition I had loved, was not dead.
“Give me but a year, David,” I heard him say in conclusion. “Give me but one year, and I shall see my way to it. In a year from this time, if you but give me permission to do as I think best, the mine shall begin to pay you back what I have lost to you!”
David’s voice, in direct contrast to Owen’s, was deep and sad.
“I don’t want that,” he said, laying his hand on his brother’s arm, “I want something else.”
“What?” asked Owen.
“I want something else,” continued David. “This is it. Owen, I want you to help me to fulfil a duty, a much neglected duty. I take myself to task very much for the gross way I have passed it by hitherto. God knows it was my ignorance, not my wilful neglect, but I ought to have known; this is no real excuse. Owen, I have lived contented at Tynycymmer, and forgotten, or almost forgotten, this old mine. I left things in the hands of the manager; I received the money it brought without either thought or comment. And all the time, God help me, the place was behind its neighbours. I had not much money to expend on it, and I was content it should be worked on the old system, never thinking, never calculating, that the old system involved danger and loss of life. The mine is not ventilated as the other mines are; in no mine in the neighbourhood do so many deaths occur. You yourself have discovered it to be full of many dangers. So, Owen, what I ask of you is this, help me to lift this sin of my neglect off my soul. I don’t want the money, Owen; it is enough for me, it is more than enough, to see you as you now are; the money, I repeat, is a thing to me of no value, but the people’s lives are of much. I can and will raise the sum you require to put the mine into a state of safety, to perfect the ventilation, to do all that can be done to lessen the danger for the colliers. Do your part in this as quickly as possible, Owen, and let us think nothing of money gains for the present.”
While David was speaking, Owen had again drawn a veil of perfect immobility over his face. Impossible, with this veil on, to guess his thoughts, or fathom his feelings.
“Of course, of course,” he said, “the ventilation shall be improved and all that is necessary done.”
Chapter Ten
Little Twenty
I had not forgotten my promise to visit Nan on the day her brother first went down into the mine.
I selected a bundle of illustrated papers – some old copies of Punch– as, judging from the delight I took in them myself, I hoped they would make little Nan laugh. I also put a sixpenny box of paints into my pocket. These sixpenny paint-boxes were the most delightful things the Tynycymmer children had ever seen, so, doubtless, they would look equally nice in the eyes of Nan.
The Thomas’s cottage was one of a row that stood just over the pit bank. I ascended the rather steep hill which led to it, entered the narrow path which ran in front of the whole row of houses, and where many women were now hanging out clothes to dry, and knocked at Nan’s door. She did not hear me; she was moving briskly about within, and singing to her work. Her voice sounded happy, and the Welsh words and Welsh air were gay. I knocked a second time, then went in.
“I am so glad to hear you singing, Nan,” I said. “I was sure you would be in trouble, for I thought Miles had gone into the mine to-day!”
Little Nan was arranging some crockery on the white dresser. She stopped at the sound of my voice, and turned round with the large china tea-pot in her hand. When I had seen her on Saturday, seated weeping on the old cinder-heap, I had regarded her as a very little child. Now I perceived my mistake. Nan was no child; she was a miniature woman. I began to doubt what effect my copies of Punch and my sixpenny paints would produce on this odd mixture; more particularly when she said, in a quiet old-fashioned voice – “But he did go into the mine, Miss Morgan; Miles went down the shaft at five o’clock this mornin’.”
“You take it very calmly when the time comes,” I continued; “I thought you would have been in a terrible state.”
“Yes, ain’t I easy,” said Nan, “I never thought as the Lord ’ud help me like this; why, I ain’t frighted at all.”
“But there’s just as much danger as ever there was,” I said. “Your not being frightened does not make it at all safer for Miles down in the pit.”
I made this remark, knowing that it was both unkind and disagreeable; but I was disappointed; I had meant to turn comforter – I was provoked to find my services unnecessary.
“There ain’t no danger to-day,” replied Nan, to my last pleasant assurance.
“How can you say that?” I asked.
“’Cause the Lord revealed it to me in a dream.”
Now I, too, believed in dreams. I was as superstitious as the most superstitious Welsh girl could possibly be. Gwen, my isolated life, my Welsh descent, had all made me this; it was, therefore, with considerable delight, that, just when I was beginning to place Nan very low in my category of friends, I found that I could claim her for a kindred spirit.
“You are a very odd little girl,” I said; “but I’m sure I shall like you. See! I’ve brought you Punch, and the Illustrated News, and a box of paints, and perhaps I shall show you how to colour these pictures, as the children did at Tynycymmer.”
Then I seated myself uninvited, and unrolled my treasures; my newspapers, my copies of Punch, my paint-box with the lid off, were all revealed to Nan’s wondering eyes.
“Get me a saucer and a cup of water,” I said, “and I’ll show you how to colour this picture, and then you can pin it up against the wall for your father to see when he comes home.”
“If you please, miss,” said Nan, dropping a little curtsey, and then coming forward and examining the print in question with a critical eye, “if you please, miss, I’d rayther not.”
“What do you mean?” I said.
“Well, miss, I’m very gratified to you; but, father, he don’t like pictures pasted up on the walls, and, indeed, Miss Morgan,” getting very red, her sloe-black eyes gleaming rather angrily, “I ’as no time for such child’s play as lookin’ at pictures, and colourin’ of ’em, and makin’ messes in cups and plates. I ’as enough to do to wash h’up the cups and saucers as is used for cookin’, and keepin’ the house tidy, and makin’ the money go as far and as comfort as possible. I’m very gratified to you, miss; but I ’as no time for that nonsense. I ain’t such a baby as I looks.”
As little Nan spoke, she grew in my eyes tall and womanly, while I felt myself getting smaller and smaller, in fact, taking the place I had hitherto allotted to her. I rolled up my despised goods hastily, rose to my feet, and spoke —
“You are not half as nice as you looked. I am very sorry that I disturbed so busy and important a person. As I see you don’t want me, I shall wish you good morning.”
I had nearly reached the door, when Nan ran after me, laid her hand on my arm, and looked into my face with her eyes full of tears.
“I ain’t a wishin’ you to go,” she said, “I wants you to set down and talk to me woman-like.”
“How old are you? you strange creature,” I said; but I was restored to good humour, and sat down willingly enough.
“I’m ten,” said Nan, “I’m small for my h’age, I know.”
“You are, indeed, small for your age,” I said, “and your age is very small. Why, Nan, whatever you may pretend about it, you are a baby.”
“No, I ain’t,” said Nan, gravely and solemnly, “it ain’t years only as makes us babies or womans, ’tis – ”
“What?” I said, “do go on.”
“Well, miss, I b’lieves as ’tis anxiety. Miles says as I has a very h’anxious mind. He says I takes it from mother, and that ages one up awful.”
“I’ve no doubt of it,” I said. “I’ve felt it myself, ’tis overpowering.”
“I don’t think you knows it much, miss,” said Nan. “I should say from the looks o’ you, that you was much younger nor me.”
“Mind what you’re about,” I said, “I’m sixteen – a young lady full grown. But come, now, Nan, with all your anxiety, you were merry enough when I came in – you did sing out in such a jolly style, – I thought you such a dear little thing; I did not know you were an old croak.”
“Why yes,” said Nan, half-smiling, and inclined to resume her song, “I’m as light as a feather this mornin’, that’s the Lord’s doing.”
“What did the Lord do for you, Nan?”
“He sent me a token, miss, as sure as sure could be, and it came just in the minute before waking.”
“What was it?” I repeated, for little Nan had paused, her face had grown soft and almost beautiful; the hard unpleasing lines of care and anxiety had vanished, and in their stead, behold! the eyes were full of love and faith, the lips tender, trustful, but withal, triumphant.
“I was sore fretted,” she began, “as father couldn’t go down with Miles; he had to stay to go ever the mine with the strange gentleman as is to be manager, and Miles going down h’all alone, reminded me sore of Stephie. And I was frettin’, frettin’, frettin’, and the prayers, nor the hymns, nor nothing, couldn’t do me no good, and Miles hisself, at last, he were fain to be vexed with me, and when I went to bed my heart was h’all like a lump o’ lead, and I felt up to forty, at the very least, and then it was that the Lord saw the burden was too big for me, and He sent me the dream.”
“What was it? Nan.”
“I thought, miss, as I seed the Lord Hisself, all pitiful and of tender mercy. I seed Him as plain as I sees you, and He looked me through and through, very sorrowful, as I shouldn’t trust Him, and Miles, he was standin’ on the cage, just afore it went down, and there was an empty place near Miles, and I saw that every one had their comrade and friend with them, ’cept Miles; and then the Lord, He went and stood by Miles, on the empty space, and He put His arm round Miles, and he looked at me, and I saw the Lord and Miles going down into the dark, dark pit together.”
“I’m sure that was true,” I said, “that was very much what Miles said himself, don’t you remember? You were much better after your dream, were you not? Nan.”
“Yes, miss, I was light and easy in my mind, as if I was twenty!”
“What do you mean, now?” I said.
“Well, Miss Morgan, I can’t help it. I know I’m queer, the folks all say I’m queer. I know I haven’t h’aged with my years. Sometimes, miss, the anxiety brings me up to fifty, and I feels my hair’s a-turnin’ white; then again, I’m thirty, and forty; most times I feels like thirty, but now and then, as to-day, the Lord gives me a special revelation, and then, why, I’m as light as a feather, and down to twenty, but I’m never below that, miss.”
And yet I meant to offer that creature toys! Such was my mental comment, but before I could speak again, the door was opened, and a tall man – coal-black – with gleaming eyeballs, and snowy teeth, came in. He took no notice of me, perhaps he did not see me, but in passing through to another room, he called out in a full cheery voice —
“I say, little lass, how do you feel?”
“Fine, father, down to twenty.”
“Well, Twenty, bustle about, and get me some dinner; I’ll be ready for it in ten minutes.”
“I must go away now,” I said, rising.
“No, miss, that you mustn’t; I wants you to see father. Father’s a wonderful man, Miss Morgan, he have had a sight o’ trouble one way and t’other, and he’s up to fifty in years; but the Lord, He keeps him that strong and full o’ faith, he never passes thirty, in his mind; but there, what a chatterbox I am, and father a wantin’ his dinner!”
The old-fashioned mortal moved away, laid a coarse but clean cloth on a small table, dished up some bacon and potatoes in a masterly manner, and placed beside them a tin vessel – which, she informed me, was a miner’s “jack” – full of cold tea.
“Father will never go down into the mine without his jack o’ tea,” she explained; and just then the miner, his face and hands restored to their natural hue, came in.
“Father,” said Nan, in quite a stately fashion, “this lady is Miss Morgan; she’s a very kind lady, and she spoke good words to Miles o’ Saturday.”
“Mornin’, miss,” said the miner, pulling his front lock of hair, “I’m proud to see you, miss, and that I am; and now, lass,” turning to his daughter, “you’ll have no call to be anxious now no more, for this young lady’s brother was h’all over the mine this mornin’, and he and Squire Morgan promises that all that is right shall be done, and the place made as snug and tight as possible. That young gentleman, miss,” again addressing me, “is very sharp; he knows wot he’s about, that he do!”
“Is the mine dangerous?” I asked.
“No, no,” said the collier, winking impressively at me, while Nan was helping herself to a potato, “but might be made safer, as I says, might be made safer; another shaft let down, and wentilation made more fresh. But there! praise the Lord, ’tis all to be done, and that in no time; why, that mine will be so safe in a month or two, that little Nan might go and play there, if she so minded.”
As the big man spoke, looking lovingly at his tiny daughter, and the daughter replied, with anxious, knitted brows, “You know, father, as I don’t play,” he looked the younger of the two.
“No more you does, Twenty,” he replied, “but even Twenty can put away her fears and sing us a song when she hears a bit of good news.”
“Shall I sing a hymn? father.”
“Well, yes, my lass, I does feel like praisin’ – there, you begin, and I’ll foller up.”
Little Nan laid down her knife and fork, fixed her dark eyes straight before her, clasped her hands, and began —
“We shall meet beyond the river,
By and by,
And the darkness shall be over,
By and by.
With the toilsome journey done,
And the glorious battle won,
We shall shine forth as the sun,
By and by.”
She paused, looked at her father, who joined her in the next verse —
“We shall strike the harps of glory,
By and by.
We shall sing redemption’s story.
By and by.
And the strains for evermore
Shall resound in sweetness o’er
Yonder everlasting shore,
By and by.
“We shall see and be like Jesus
By and by.
Who a crown of life shall give us,
By and by.
All the blest ones who have gone
To the land of life and song,
We with gladness shall rejoin
By and by!”
I have given the words, but I cannot describe the fervent looks that accompanied them, nor catch any echo here, of the sweet voice of the child, or the deep and earnest tones of the man. The strong spiritual life in both their natures came leaping to the surface, the man forgot the stranger by his hearth, he saw his God; the child, too, forgot her fears and her anxieties, and as she sang she became really young.
