The Stars Look Down

ONE

When Martha awoke it was still dark and bitter cold. The wind, pouring across the North Sea, struck freezingly through the cracks which old subsidences had opened in the two-roomed house. Waves pounded distantly. The rest was silence.

She lay quite still in the kitchen bed, holding herself rigidly away from Robert whose coughing and restlessness had fitfully broken the night. For a minute she reflected, sternly facing the new day, choking down the bitterness she felt against him. Then with an effort she got up.

Her bare feet felt the stone floor like ice. She struggled into her clothes quickly, with the active movements of a powerful woman not yet forty. Yet when she had dressed, the exertion left her panting. She was not hungry now — for some queer reason the worst of her hunger had gone days before — but she was sick, deathly sick. Dragging herself to the sink she turned on the tap. No water came. The pipe was frozen.

She lost herself momentarily, stood with her calloused hand pressed against her swollen side staring through the window towards the hesitant dawn. Miners’ rows beneath her, stretching dimly, row upon row. To the right the blackness of Sleescale town, the harbour beyond with one cold light and then the colder sea. To the left the stark outline of Neptune No. 17’s headgear rising like a gallows against the pale east sky, dominating the town, the harbour and the sea.

The furrow deepened on Martha’s brow. Three months now the strike had gone on. At the misery of it she turned abruptly from the window and began to get the fire alight. It was difficult. She had only the damp driftwood that Sammy had gathered the day before and some duff, the worst kind of dross, fetched in by Hughie off the pit-tip. It maddened her that she, Martha Fenwick, always used to fine silkstone coal, to a real collier’s fire, should be forced to potch with duff. But at last she had it going. She went through the back door, smashed the new ice on the water-butt with one resentful blow, filled the kettle, came back and set it to boil.

The kettle was a long time. But when it boiled she filled a cup and sat crouched before the fire clasping the cup with both hands, sipping it slowly. The scalding water warmed her, sent vague currents of life through her numbed body. It was not so good as tea; no, no, nothing like tea; but for all that it was good, she felt herself “coming to.” The flames darting about the green wood illuminated a bit of old newspaper, torn from her kindling, lying on the pipeclayed hearth. Mr. Keir Hardie asked in the House of Commons whether, since the destitution is as great as ever in the North, the Government proposes a measure to enable the education authorities to take steps to feed destitute children. The answer given was that the Government did not intend to give authorities power to feed destitute children. Still sipping her hot water she read it idly. Her face, gaunt as bone, showed nothing, neither interest nor resentment; nothing. It was inscrutable like death.

Suddenly she turned. Yes. He was awake, lying upon his side, his cheek on his palm, in the familiar way, watching her. Instantly, all the bitterness surged over her again. Everything, everything, everything — him. Then he began to cough, she knew he had been holding it for fear of her. It was not a racking cough, but a deep, gentle, experienced cough. It was an intimate cough. In fact the cough was himself, not unkindly, possessing him almost benignly. It filled his mouth with a vast quantity of phlegm. Raising himself upon his elbow he spat upon the square of Tit-Bits. He seemed always to be cutting these squares from Tit-Bits, cutting them carefully, painstakingly, with her old bone-handled potato knife. He had a stock of them, never ran out. He would spit upon the little square, contemplate the result, fold and burn it… burn it with a sort of optimism. When he was in bed he dropped the little packets over the edge… burned them when he got up.

She felt a sudden hatred of him and the cough that was he, but she rose, refilled the cup with hot water and handed it to him. He took it in silence.

It was lighter. The clock had been the first thing pawned, the temple marble clock her father had won for bowling — a fine man her father and a real champion at pot-stour bowls! — but she judged the time about seven o’clock. She twisted one of David’s stockings round her neck, pulled on a man’s cloth cap which was now her own, then got into her shabby black cloth coat. That, at least, was something, her coat. She was not a shawl-woman. Never. She was respectable, was, and would be, in spite of everything. All her life… respectable.

Without speaking, without looking at him, she went out, the front door this time. Bracing her figure to the bitter wind she set off down Cowpen Street, the steep slant leading to the town. It was colder outside, terribly cold. The Terraces were deserted, not a soul in sight. She passed the Salutation, passed Middlerig, passed the deserted steps of the Institute, covered with frozen spittle, the spume of past debate. The side wall was chalked, Mass meeting at three. Charley Gowlan the check-weigher had wrote that — the big boozy waster.

She shivered and tried to hasten her pace. But she could not go faster. The child within her, still without life, lay heavy as lead, pulling, dragging, bending her down. To be like this; at such a time! Three grown sons; David, the youngest, nearly fifteen; and then to be caught. She clenched her hands. Indignation boiled within her. Him, again, coming home in liquor, silently, doggedly, in liquor, to have his will of her.

In the town most of the shops were shut. Many of them would not open. Not even the Co-op., where credit, strained to the uttermost, was finally exhausted. What did it matter, anyway, she had one red twopenny token in her purse; that would buy her plenty, wouldn’t it? Not Masters either — for two days he had been shuttered, glutted with pledges, her own good things among them, his three brass balls dangling without promise. Not Murchison, nor Dobbs, nor Bates. They were all shut, all frightened, dead frightened of trouble.

She turned the corner into Lamb Street, crossed the road opposite Ramage’s, went down the narrow Scut to the slaughter-house. As she approached, her face brightened. Hob was there, sweeping the concrete yard, sweeping in his shirt-sleeves and leather apron.

“Anything this morning, Hob?” Her voice was quiet and she stood quiet, waiting until he should notice her.

He had noticed her all along, but still kept his head down, slushing the water with his brush. Steam rose from his wet red arms. She did not mind. Hob was all right, Hob knew her, Hob would do what he could. She waited.

“You haven’t a bit left-ower, Hob?” She was not asking much, an unwanted piece, a piece of the lights or pluck, usually thrown out as offal.

He stopped at last, not looking at her, surly because he must refuse.

“Aw’ve nowt in the place.”

She looked at him.

“No?”

He shook his head.

“Not nowt! Ramage made us kill six a’clock last night and cart everything te the shop. He must ov heard aw was handin’ out nap bones. Near blew my head off!”

She drew in her lips. So Ramage had stopped their chance of soup, of a scanty liver-fry. She looked worried. Hob was slashing viciously with the brush.

She walked away, thinking, hastening gradually, back through the Scut, along Lamb Street to the harbour. One glance was enough. She stopped short while the wind billowed her skirt, dismay at last flooding her pinched face. Not a chance of a herring even; though she had brought herself to the point of asking the Macers’ charity. The Annie Macer lay with the other boats, lined behind the stubby breakwater, nets snug, untouched. The weather, she thought, heavily, letting her gaze shift to the dirty churning waves beyond. None of the boats had been out.

Martha turned slowly and began, droopingly, to go back. More people in the streets now, the town bestirring, a few carts clattering over the cobbles. Harkness of Bethel Street School went by, a little man with a pointed beard, gold-rimmed glasses and a warm overcoat; some rope-work girls in clogs; a clerk to the Council Offices hurrying, blowing on his hands. They all avoided her, studiously, avoided her eye. They did not know her. But they did know she was from the Terraces, part of the trouble, the blight that had lain upon the town these last three months. Her feet dragged as she began to climb the hill.

Outside Teasdale’s bakery, a horse and van stood loading bread for delivery. Dan Teasdale, the son, hurried in and out with a big basket on his arm, loaded with new-baked loaves. As she came abreast the shop the hot sweet scent of the new bread rose from the basement bakehouse, and caught her by the throat. Instinctively she paused. She could have swooned with desire for the bread. At that moment Dan came out with another basketful. He saw her, saw the ravening in her face. He paled; a kind of horror clouded his eyes. Without thinking, he took a loaf and thrust it into her hands.

She said nothing, not a word, but a mist of gratitude, the nearest she ever got to tears, danced before her as she continued up Cowpen Street into Sebastopol Row. She liked Dan, a decent lad who was working for his ticket at the Neptune, but now, since the strike, was helping his father, driving the van, delivering the bread; he often spoke to Davey. Breathing a little fast from the climb, she laid her hand upon the door of her house.

“Mrs. Kinch’s Alice has the congestion.” Hannah Brace, her next-door neighbour, stopped her on the way in.

Martha nodded: all that week the children of the Terraces had been going down with pneumonia.

“I’ll look round later, tell Mrs. Kinch,” she said and entered her own house.

They were up and dressed, the four of them, Robert and her three sons, gathered round the fire; but as usual her eyes fell first on Sammy. He smiled at her, that ready, tight-lipped grin which sent his deep-set blue eyes right out of sight beneath his nobby forehead. There was an infinite hardihood behind Sam’s grin. He was only nineteen, already a hewer in the Neptune, Martha’s eldest son, her favourite.

“Eh, look,” Sam winked at David. “Look what yer mother has been and gone and done. She’s been and gone and done and pinched a loaf for ye.”

In his corner Davey smiled dutifully; a thin, quiet white-faced boy with a long, serious, stubborn face. His shoulder-blades stuck out as he stooped over the fire; his big dark eyes looked inquisitive usually, but they were less inquisitive now. He was fourteen years of age, horse-putter in the Neptune, Paradise section, nine hours each day underground bank to bank, now on strike and rather peckish.

“What do ye think about it, lads?” Sam went on. “Here’s your uncle Sammy trainin’ for the living-skeleton act. Loses ten stone a fortnight, doin’ the Hints for Stout Ladies, doin’ the cure for corpulency. And then wor mother walks in wi’ a banquet. Hard lines on Sammy, eh, Hughie lad?”

Martha drew down her dark brows at him.

“You’re lucky to be getting it.” And she began to slice the loaf.

They all watched her, fascinated; even Hughie looked up from cobbling a patch on his old football boots, and it took a lot to take Hughie’s mind off football. Hughie was mad on football, centre forward — at seventeen, mind you — of the local Sleescale team when not hand-putting in the Paradise section of the Neptune. Hughie did not answer Sam. Hughie never had much to say, silent, even more silent than his silent father. But Hughie looked at the loaf.

“Pardon me, mother,” Sammy jumped up and took the plate. “Whatever in the world wor I thinkin’ ov te forget my manners. Allow me, said the Duke, in his magnificent uniform ov the Tyneside Hussars.” He offered the plate to his father.

Robert took a slice. He looked at it, then at Martha.

“Did this come from the Guardians? If it did I’m not wantin’ it.”

She looked back at him.

He said in a defeated voice:

“I’m asking you if this bread came from the Guardians?”

She still looked at him, still thinking of his madness in flinging their savings into the strike. She said:

“No.”

Sammy stepped in with loud cheerfulness.

“What in all the world does it matter, wor all goin’ te eat it, I suspect.” He met his father’s eyes with the same hardy cheerfulness. “Ye needna look that way, dad. All gud things come te an end. And aw’m not bleedin’ well sorry. Aw want te be workin’. Not sittin’ about handless like, waitin’ for mother te fetch in wor bait.” He turned to Davey: “Here, count, have a doormat — do. Don’t hesitate. Believe me, they’ll only be chucked out.”

Martha snatched back the plate from his hand.

“Aw don’t like that kind of fun, Sammy. You oughtna te mock good food.”

She frowned upon him heavily. But she gave him the biggest slice. And serving Hughie next, she kept the smallest to herself.

TWO

Ten o’clock. David took up his cap, slipped out, and sauntered along the unevenly sunk pavement of Inkerman Row. All the miners’ rows in Sleescale were named after the glorious victories of the Crimea. The top row, David’s row, was Inkerman; the next Alma; the one below Sebastopol; and the lowest of all, Joe’s row, was Balaclava. David was on his way to Joe’s house now, to see “if Joe was comin’ out.”

The wind had fallen, the sun broke through unexpectedly. Though dazzled, not quite used to it, the brilliant profusion of sunshine was beautiful to David. In winter, when he was working, often he did not see real sunlight for days on end. Dark in the morning when he went down; dark at night when he came up.

But to-day, though cold, was bright, flooding his being with a strange brightness, reminding him oddly of those rare occasions when his father took him fishing up the Wansbeck. Away from darkness and pit dirt, green hazel woods, a ripple of clean water—

“Look, dad, look!” as a clump of early primroses yielded themselves to his excited eye.

He turned the corner of Balaclava Row.

Like the other rows, Balaclava stretched for a bad five hundred yards — a reach of grimed stone houses sooty black in colour, but daubed and seamed with clumsy veins of white where mortar had been added to fill the larger and more recent cracks. The square chimneys, broken and uneven, looked drunken; the long line of roofs undulated from subsidences, like a wavy sea; the yards were palinged with decayed railway sleepers, broken stubs and rusty corrugated iron, backed by heaps of slag and pit-waste. Each yard had its closet and each closet had its pail. An iron pail. The closets stood like sentry-boxes, between the rows, and at the end of the rows was a huddle of home-made outhouses, built on lumpy ground beside a span of naked rail tracks. Neptune No. 17 stood up near the middle, with the hummocky drab of the Snook behind. The Snook was all waste land, cracked and puddled and seamed with the old Neptune workings that went back one hundred years. The old Scupperhole yawned in the Snook. All of it had to do with pits. The far flat background was all pit chimneys, pit heaps, pit-head gear, pit everything. A string of washing flapping its vivid blues and scarlets against the dreary pattern of dirt caught the eye like an affront. That string of washing gave to the picture a grim, perverted beauty.

David knew it all and he did not like it much. He liked it less now. Over the long line of dreary back-to-back dwellings there hung an air of apathy and defeat. Some colliers — Slogger Leeming, Keeker Howe, Bob Ogle and a few others that made up the gambling school in ordinary times — squatted upon their hunkers against the wall. They were not schoolin’ now, they had no coppers for schoolin’, they were just crookin’ their houghs. They squatted in silence. Bob Ogle, marrow in the Paradise foreshift, stroking the narrow head of his whippet bitch, nodded to Davey. Slogger Leeming said:

“How, then, Davey?”

David said:

“How, again, Slogger?”

The others looked at him curiously, identifying him with Robert, his father, who had brought them out. They saw a pale-faced boy dressed in a shoddy suit he had out-grown, a cotton muffler and heavy pit clogs because his boots were in pawn, with hair that needed cutting, thin wrists and work-big hands.

He felt their scrutiny upon him, and sustained it calmly as, with his chin thrust well out, he walked towards Number 19, which was Joe’s house. Above the doorway of No. 19 was a notice irregularly painted: Agent Flyaway Cycles. Undertaking. Boards kept. David went in.

Joe and his dad, Charley Gowlan, were at breakfast: a china bowl was on the wooden table full of cold pot pie, a big brown teapot stood beside it, a tin of condensed milk punched open, and a raggedly hacked loaf. The clutter of the table was unbelievable; the whole house — two rooms joined by a perpendicular ladder — was cluttered. Dirt, disorder, food in plenty, a roaring fire, clothes flung everywhere, dishes unwashed, the smell of living, beer, grease, sweat, a dirty blousy comfort.

“Hulloh, lad, how are ye this mornin’?” Charley Gowlan, with his night-shirt tucked into his trousers, his galluses hanging loose over his fat stomach, his bare feet in carpet slippers, shoved a big bit of meat into his big mouth. He waved the knife in his big red fist and nodded agreeably to David. Charley was always agreeable: never anything but friendly, ay, a matey beggor, Big Charley Gowlan, the check-weigher at the Neptune. Well in with the men; well in with Barras. Willing to turn his hand to anything, from housekeeping — since his wife was dead these three years — back to rabbit dodging or salmon poaching up the Coquet.

David sat down and watched Joe and Charley eat. They ate with infinite relish: Joe’s young jaws champed methodically, Charley smacked his fat lips as he knifed out the rich jellied gravy from the pot pie. David couldn’t help himself; his teeth watered painfully, a thin trickle of saliva ran into his mouth. Suddenly, when they were nearly done, Charley paused, as at an afterthought, in his knifing at the bowl.

“Would ye like te scrape the pot, lad?”

David shook his head: something in him made him refuse. He smiled.

“I’ve had my breakfast.”

“Ah, weel. If ye’ve had yor bait.” Charley’s small eyes twinkled slyly in his big red face. He finished the dish. “An’ how does yor feyther take it now we’re like to be beat?”

“I don’t know.”

Charley licked his knife and sighed contentedly.

“A heap o’ trouble it’s been. Aw diddent want it. Heddon diddent want it. There’s none ov us wanted it. Meykin’ trouble ower backskins and a happenny ton raise. Aw said from the start it was no gud.”

David looked at Charley. Charley was the men’s check-weigher, a lodge official, and well in with Heddon the Union agent from Tynecastle. Charlie knew it wasn’t just the backskins, nor the halfpenny rise. He said thoughtfully:

“There’s a lot of water in Scupper Flats.”

“Watter!” Charley smiled: a broad omniscient smile. His work never took him inbye; he checked his tubs upon the surface as they came screeching to the bank. He could afford to be omniscient. “The Paradise always was a wet beggor. Watter’s been there mony a day. An’ Scupper Flats is like to be no worse than the rest o’t. Yor feyther’s not feared ov a drop watter, is he?”

Conscious of Charley’s slow grin, David sat hard upon his indignation. He said indifferently:

“He’s worked in it twenty-five years, he oughtn’t to be feared of it.”

“That’s reet, that’s reet, aw know all aboot it. Stick up for yor dad. If you doan’t then God knows who will. Aw think none the worse ov ye for it. Yor a canny lad.” He belched wind loudly, scliffed over to his seat by the fire, yawned, stretched himself and began to fill his blackened clay.

Joe and David went out.

“He don’t have to go in the Paradise!” Joe remarked irreverently the moment the door had banged. “The old beggor, it would do him a power of good to stand in the wet places like I have to.”

“It isn’t only the wet, Joe,” David persisted. “You know what my dad says.”

“I know, I know! I’m sick of hearin’ it an’ so are the rest of the lads, Davey. Yor dad has got notions about Scupper Flats. He thinks he knows the whole shoot!”

David said warmly:

“He knows a lot, let me tell you. He didn’t start it for fun.”

Joe said:

“Naw! But some of the lads did. They was sick of workin’ in water and thought it was fun for to stop. Now they’ve had that much bloddy fun they’d give their navels for to start in again, ay, even if the Flats were roofed with water.”

“Well! Let them start in again.”

Joe said sourly:

“They’re goin’ to start, bet your bloddy life, you wait till the meetin’ at three. But don’t get up on your hind legs. I’m as sick of it as you are. I’m sick of the whole bloddy pit anyhow. I’m goin’ to slip my hook first chance I get. I’m not goin’ to be stuck in this sheugh all my days. I want to get some brass and see a bit of life.”

David remained silent, troubled and indignant, feeling that life was going all against him. He wanted to get out of the Neptune too — but not Joe’s way. He remembered that occasion when Joe had run away before and been brought back, blubbering, by Roddam, the police sergeant, to be soundly leathered by his father.

They walked on without speaking, Joe swaggering a little, throwing his weight about, his hands in his pockets. He was a finely built lad, two years older than David, with square shoulders, a straight back, thick curly black hair and small alert brown eyes. Joe was extremely good-looking in a physical way. And Joe knew it. His glance was full of self-assurance, the very tilt of his cap dashing, conceited, aggressive. Presently he resumed:

“Ye’ve got to have money if you want to have sport. And will you ever make money in the pit? Not on your bloddy soul. Not big money, you won’t. Well, I want to have sport. And I want big money. I’m goin’ places. You’re lucky, you are. You’re goin’ to Tynecassel, maybe. Your dad wants you to go to college, that’s another of his notions, like. But I’ve got to look out for myself. And I’m goin’ to look out for myself. See! That’s how to do it. Get there first or somebody’ll get there afore ye.” He suddenly shut off his bluster and slapped David heartily upon the back. He smiled at him, a genial, affable smile. When Joe chose, none could be more genial, more affable — a geniality which warmed the heart, an affability which radiated from Joe’s handsome brown eyes and revealed him as a prince of good fellows.

“Come on, now, to the boat, Davey, we’ll set a shoreline, then we’ll row out and see what we can pick up.”

By this time they had passed down Quay Street and reached the shore. They dropped over the sea wall on to the hard sand below. A high range of dunes matted with coarse grass and salt-stung rushes lay behind them. David liked the dunes. On barfe-Saturdays in the summer, when they had come outbye from the Neptune and his dad had gone with the marrows in his set to split up at the Salutation, David would be amongst the rushes, all alone, listening to the sound of the lark, dropping his book to search for the tiny roaring speck against the bright blue sky. He felt that he would like to lie down there now. His head was giddy again, the thick slice of new bread which he had eaten so ravenously lay like lead in his stomach. But Joe was already at the breakwater.

They climbed the breakwater and reached the harbour. There, in the slack scummy water, some lads from the Terraces were fishing for coal. With an old pail, knocked full of holes, fixed to a pole, they were dredging for lumps which had fallen off the barges in working times. Deprived of the fortnightly allowance from the pit, they were scraping in the mud for fuel which would otherwise have been forgotten. Joe looked at them with secret contempt. He paused, his legs planted wide apart, hands still bulging in his trouser pockets. He despised them. His cellar was full of good coal pinched off the pit head, he had pinched it himself, the best in the heap. His belly was full of food, good food, Charley, his dad, had looked after that. There was only one way to do it. Take things, go for them, get them, not stand shivering and half-starved, scratching about in the feeble hope that something would take a soft-hearted jump and come tumbling in your bucket.

“How do, Joe, lad,” Ned Softley, the weak-witted trapper in the Paradise, called out, propitiating. His long nose was red, his undersized skimpy frame shuddered spasmodically from cold. He laughed vaguely. “Got a fag, Joe, hinny? Aw’m dyin’ for a smoke.”

“Curse it, Ned, lad…” Joe’s sympathy was instant and magnificent. “If this isn’t my last!” He pulled a fag from behind his ear, considered it sadly, and lit it with the friendliest regret. But once Ned’s back was turned, Joe grinned. Naturally Joe had a full packet of Woodbines in his pocket. But was Joe going to let Ned know that? Not on your life! Still grinning he turned to David when a shout made him swing round again.

It was Ned’s shout, a loud protesting wail. He had filled his sack, or near enough, after three hours’ work in the biting wind and had made to shoulder it for home. But Jake Wicks was there before him. Jake, a burly lout of seventeen, had been waiting calmly to appropriate Ned’s coal. He picked up the sack and with a pugnacious stare at the others coolly sauntered down the harbour.

A roar of laughter went up from the crowd of lads. God, could you beat it! Jake pinching Softley’s duff, walking away with it easy as you like, while Ned screamed and whimpered after him like a lunatic. It was the epitome of humour — Joe’s laugh was louder than any.

But David did not laugh. His face had turned quite pale.

“He can’t take that coal,” he muttered. “It’s Softley’s coal. Softley worked for it.”

“I’d like to see who’d stop him.” Joe choked with his own amusement, “Oh, Gor, look at Softley’s mug, just take a look at it…”

Young Wicks advanced along the jetty, easily carrying the sack, followed by the weeping Softley and a ragged, derisive crowd.

“It’s my duff,” Softley kept whimpering, while the tears ran down his cheeks. “Aw mucked for it, aw did, for my mam te hev a fire…”

David clenched his fists and took a side step right in the path of Wicks. Jake drew up suddenly.

“Hello,” he said, “what’s like the matter with you?”

“That’s Ned’s duff you’ve got,” David said from between his teeth. “You can’t take it this way. It’s not fair. It’s not right.”

“Holy Gee!” Jake said blankly. “And who’ll stop me like?”

“I will.”

Everybody stopped laughing. Jake carefully put down the sack.

“You will?”

David jerked his head affirmatively. He could not speak now, his whole being was so tense with indignation. He boiled at the injustice of Jake’s action. Wicks was almost a man, he smoked, swore and drank like a man, he was a foot taller and two stones heavier than David. But David didn’t care. Nothing mattered, nothing, except that Wicks should be stopped from victimising Softley.

Wicks held out his two fists, one on top of the other.

“Knock down the blocks,” he taunted. It was the traditional invitation to fight.

David took one look at Jake’s full pimply face surmounted by its bush of tow-coloured hair. Everything was defined and vivid. He could see the blackheads in Jake’s unhealthy skin, a tiny stye coming on his left eyelid. Then like a flash he knocked Jake’s fists down and smashed his right fist hard into Jake’s nose.

It was a lovely blow. Jake’s nose flattened visibly and spurted a stream of blood. The crowd roared and a thrill of fierce exhilaration shot up David’s spine.

Jake retreated, shook his head like a dog, then came in wildly, swinging his arms like flails.

At the same moment someone on the fringe of the crowd gave a warning shout.

“Look out, lads, here’s Wept comin’.”

David hesitated, half-turned his head and took Jake’s fist full on his temple. All at once the scene receded mysteriously, he felt giddy, he fancied for an instant he was going down the pit shaft, so sudden was the darkness that rushed upon him, so loud the ringing in his ears. Then he fainted.

The crowd took one look at David, then scattered hastily. Even Ned Softley hurried away. But he had his coal now.

Meanwhile Wept came up. He had been walking along the shore, contemplating the thin ebb and flow of the furthest waves upon the sand. Jesus Wept was very fond of the sea. Every year he took ten days out of the Neptune and spent them at Whitley Bay quietly walking up and down the front between boards bearing his favourite text: Jesus wept for the sins of the world. The same text was painted in gold letters outside his little house, which was why, though his own name was Clem Dickery, he was known as Wept or, less commonly, Jesus Wept. Although he was a collier Wept did not live in the Terraces. His wife, Susan Dickery, kept the small homemade mutton pie shop at the end of Lamb Street and the Dickerys lived above the shop. Susan favoured a more violent text. It was: Prepare to meet thy God. She had it printed upon all her paper bags, which gave rise to the saying in Sleescale: Eat Dickery’s pies and prepare to meet thy God. But the pies were very good. David liked the pies. And he liked Clem Dickery. Wept was a quiet little fanatic. And he was at least sincere.

When David came round, dazedly opening his eyes, Wept was bending over him, slapping the palms of his hands, watching him with a certain melancholy solicitude.

“I’m right enough, now,” David said, raising himself upon his elbow weakly.

Wept, with remarkable restraint, made no reference to the fight. Instead he said:

“When did ye eat food last?”

“This morning. I had my breakfast.”

“Can ye stand up?”

David got to his feet, holding on to Wept’s arm, swaying unsteadily, trying to smile it off.

Wept looked at him darkly. He always went directly for the truth. He said:

“Yor weak for want ov food. Come away wi’ me to my house.” Still supporting David he led him slowly over the sands, across the dunes, and into his house in Lamb Street.

In the kitchen of Wept’s house David sat down by the table. It was in this room that Wept held his “kitchen meetings.” From the walls highly coloured allegories flamed: The Last Trumpet, The Judgment Seat, The Broad and Narrow Paths. A great many angels were in the pictures, upbearing sexless blond figures in spotless garments to the blare of golden trumpets. Light blazed upon the angels. But there was darkness too, wherein, amidst the ruins of Corinthian columns, the beasts of darkness roared, and harried the massed hordes that trembled upon the abyss.

Hung from the mantelpiece were strings of dried herbs and seaweeds. Wept knew all the simples, gathered them assiduously in their season by the hedgerows and amongst the rocks. He stood by the fire now, brewing some camomile tea in a small marled tea-pot. Finally he poured out a cup and offered it to David. Then without a word he went out of the room.

David drank the infusion. It was bitter, but aromatic and steaming hot. It warmed him, comforted him and strengthened him, caused him to forget all about the fight, made him feel hungry. At that the door opened and Wept came in again followed by his wife. She was oddly like him, a small neat woman, dressed all in black, quiet, restrained in movement, with that same composed intentness of expression. Without speaking she put a plate before David. On the plate were two new-baked mutton pies. From a little blue enamel jug she poured some hot gravy over each pie.

“Eat them slow,” she observed calmly. Then she drew back to where her husband stood. They both studied him as, after a moment’s hesitation, he began to eat.

The pies were delicious, the gravy rich and savoury. He finished the first to the last crumb; then, looking up suddenly, caught their serious eyes still fixed upon him. In a solemn undertone Wept quoted: “I will nourish you and your little ones; and he comforted and spake kindly unto them.”

David tried to smile his gratitude; but something, the unexpectedness of this kindness he had received, caught him by the throat. He hated it in himself but he could not help it. A terrible rush of feeling came upon him, the memory of what he had been through, of what they had all been through in these last three months. He felt the horror of it: the scrimping, the pawning, the latent bitterness between his parents, his mother’s anger, his father’s obstinacy. He was only fourteen. Yesterday he had eaten a turnip taken from Liddle’s Farm. In this rich and beautiful world he had gone like a beast to the field and taken a turnip to appease his hunger.

He supported his head on his thin hand. A sudden passionate aspiration rose in him to do something… something… something to prevent all this. Something to uplift and heal humanity. He must do it. He would do it A tear dropped from his eye and mingled with the gravy of the mutton pie. Upon the walls the angels blew their trumpets. Shamefaced, David blew his nose.

THREE

Half-past one; and lunch at the Law almost over. Sitting up straight, with his bare knees under the white damask and his boots barely touching the deep red Axminster, Arthur continued to importune his father with loving, troubled eyes. The concealed tension in the air, the sense of crisis, dismayed, almost paralysed him. As was always the case in the face of an emotional crisis, his appetite was gone, even the pretence of eating made him sick. He knew that the men were meeting to-day, his father’s men who ought to have been working honestly and faithfully in his father’s pit. He knew that everything hinged upon the meeting, whether the men would go back or this awful strike go on. A little shiver of anxiety went through him at the thought; his eyes burned with loyalty towards his father.

He was waiting, too, for the invitation to accompany his father to Tynecastle, he had been waiting since ten o’clock that morning when he had heard the order given to Bartley to have the dog-cart ready. But the usual invitation did not come. His father was going to Tynecastle, going to Todd’s, and he, Arthur, was not going with him. It was very hard to bear.

At the table a certain amount of calm conversation went on, conducted and dominated by his father. During the entire period of the strike this calm conversation had been maintained. Always on quite irrelevant subjects — the Choral Union’s next performance of the Messiah maybe, or how mother’s new medicine was suiting her, or how fresh the flowers on grandma’s grave had kept — and always calm, perfectly calm. Richard Barras was a calm man. Everything he did exhibited inflexible control. He sat at the head of his table, with iron serenity, as though the three months’ strike at his Neptune colliery were the merest quibble. He sat very straight in his big chair — that was why Arthur sat straight too — eating cheese, celery of his own growing and bath oliver biscuits. It was plain food, the whole lunch was plain, Barras would have nothing but the plainest dishes — he liked regularity, too — thin sliced beef, cold ham, a joint of mutton, in their turn. He despised richness and show upon the table. He permitted neither. He ate almost abtractedly, compressing his lips which were narrow, and of a good colour, crunching the celery with his sound teeth. He was not a big man, but he had a fine chest, thick arms and big hands. He conveyed a powerful sense of physical vitality. His complexion was florid, his neck so short and muscular his head seemed sunk in the barrel of his chest. His iron-grey head was closely cut, his cheek-bones prominent, his eyes unusually penetrating and well defined. He had a northern look about him not exactly rugged but solid, hard. A man of firm conviction and sound evangelical belief, a Liberal, a strong Sabbatarian, who held family evening prayers, gave readings from the Scripture which often made Arthur cry, and was not afraid to own that he had written hymns in his youth. There was nothing that Barras was afraid to own. As he sat there, against the yellow varnished background of the large American organ which — from his love of Handel — he had built into the dining-room at a great expense, he radiated his own spiritual integrity. Arthur often felt this radiation. He loved his father. To Arthur his father was absolute, he was like God.

“Come, Arthur, eat your pudding, dear,” Aunt Carrie, chiding him gently, recalled his perplexed eyes to his plate. St. George’s pudding, made up of cake-ends, the burnt pieces, which he detested. But he struggled with it, hoping his father would notice and approve. Hilda had finished already, was staring straight ahead with her dark, forbidding expression. Grace, smiling and artless, was enjoying a secret happiness with herself.

“Shall you be home for tea, Richard?” Aunt Carrie asked respectfully.

“Yes! At five o’clock.” The voice was concise and self-controlled.

“Yes, Richard.”

“You might ask Harriet if she has any commissions for me, to-day.”

“Yes, Richard.”

Aunt Carrie inclined her head. She always showed a glad passion of obedience towards Richard; and in any case her head was usually inclined. She carried it to one side in token of her submission; submission to everybody and to everything; but chiefly to her lot in life. She knew her position, did Aunt Caroline Wandless. Though she was of a good Northumberland family, a county family, she did not presume upon it. She never presumed, not even upon the fact that she was Richard’s sister-in-law. She looked after the children, gave them lessons every forenoon in the schoolroom, sat up with them when they were sick, waited hand and foot on Harriet, prepared delicacies, did the flowers, darned socks, knitted comforters and turned over the dirty linen of the household, all with an air of genteel subservience. Five years before, when Harriet took to her bed, Aunt Carrie had come to the Law, to make herself useful as she had always done on the occasions of Harriet’s confinements. At forty, with a thickening figure, a pale plump face, a brow creased by a slightly worried frown and neutral untidy hair, she was still making herself useful. She must have had innumerable opportunities to assert herself. But she had never forgotten that she was a dependant, she had acquired the little tricks of the dependant. She kept a tea-pot in her own room and a private store of biscuits; while the others were talking, she would slip out of a room silently, as though deciding suddenly she was not wanted; in public she spoke with marked correctness to the servants, but in private she would talk to them agreeably, even familiarly, with pleasant propitiating ways: Now, Ann, would you care to have this blouse? Look, it’s hardly worn, child… She had a little money of her own: about one hundred pounds a year from Consols. She dressed always in the same shade of grey. She limped slightly from a carriage accident in her youth and there was a vague inference, wholly untrue, that she had, at the same time, been badly treated by a gentleman. She was extremely fond of hot baths and took one every night of her life. Her horror was that she might be found using the bathroom when Richard required it. Occasionally this gave her nightmare, from which she awoke pale and sweating, convinced that Richard had seen her in the bath.

Barras surveyed the table. No one was eating.

“Will you take a biscuit, Arthur?” he inquired firmly, with his hand on the silver lid of the squat glass barrel.

“No, thank you, father.” Arthur swallowed tremulously.

Richard filled his glass with water, held it for a moment with a steady hand. The water seemed more clear, more cold because he held it. He drank slowly.

Silence. Richard rose and went out of the room.

Arthur almost burst into tears. Why, why was his father not taking him to Tynecastle, on to-day of all days, when he wanted to be near him? Why was he not taking him to Todd’s? His father obviously had business with Adam Todd, who was a mining engineer, his father’s oldest friend; but that didn’t matter, he could have taken him surely, and let him play with Hetty. With a swelling heart he hung about the hall, which Aunt Carrie always referred to as the vestibule, staring at the pattern of black and white tiles, staring at his father’s lovely pictures on the walls, hoping against hope. Hilda had gone straight upstairs, marching to her room with a book. But it didn’t matter. There was never much feeling between Hilda and himself. She was too abrupt, severe, unreasonably passionate; she appeared always to be struggling within herself, struggling against something unseen. Though she was only seventeen, three months ago, just before the strike began, she had put her hair up. That removed her further than ever. He felt that Hilda was not lovable. She was not good-looking either. She was harsh, with an air of despising everything. She had an olive skin. She did not smell nice.

While he stood in the hall, Grace came down from the schoolroom with an apple in her hand.

“Let’s go and see Boxer,” she begged. “Do let’s go, Arthur.”

He gazed down at Grace. She was eleven years of age, a year younger, a foot shorter than himself. He envied Grace her happiness. Grace had the happiest disposition. She was a sweet, lovely, dreadfully untidy child. The crock-comb pushed lop-sidedly through her soft fair hair gave her little face a comic look of wonder. Her big blue eyes radiated an artless innocence. Even Hilda loved Grace. He had seen her, after the most violent display of temper, catch hold of Grace and hug her passionately.

Arthur considered: should he go with Grace, or should he not? He wanted to go, yet didn’t want to go. He could not make up his mind, it was always painful for him to make up his mind. He wavered. At last he shook his head.

“You go,” he said sombrely. “I’m worried about the strike.”

“Are you, Arthur?” she asked wonderingly.

He nodded; and the feeling that he was denying himself the pleasure of seeing the pony munch the apple made him even sadder than before.

When Grace had gone he stood listening. At last his father came downstairs. He carried a flat black leather case under his arm, but he took no notice of Arthur whatever, he went straight into the waiting dog-cart and was driven away.

Arthur was humiliated, broken-hearted, crushed. It was not that he minded missing Tynecastle, nor yet that he minded missing Todd’s. Hetty was nice, of course; he liked her long silky plaits, her bright smile, the warm feeling of her when, as she sometimes did, she flung her arms round him and asked him to buy her chocolate cream with his Saturday sixpence. Oh yes, he liked Hetty, he would marry her, no doubt, when he grew up. He liked her brother, too, Alan Todd; and he liked old man Todd — as Alan called his father — with his ragged, tobacco-stained moustache, the little yellow spots on his eyes and his funny scent of cloves and something else. But it did not in the least upset him not to see them. What upset him, ravaged him, tortured and killed him was this neglect — this miserable neglect from his own father.

Perhaps he wasn’t worth noticing, perhaps that really was the trouble. He was so small for his age and, he supposed, not very strong — he had heard Aunt Carrie several times: Arthur is delicate! Though Hilda had been to school in Harrogate and Grace was going soon, he, Arthur, would not go to school. He had so few friends, too, it was extraordinary how few people came to the Law. He was morbidly aware of himself as shy, sensitive, lonely. Being fair, he blushed easily, which often made him wish the ground would swallow him. He longed with all his soul for the time when he would be working with his father in the Neptune. At sixteen he would start, learning the practical side; then some classes, his certificate; and finally the wonderful day when he went into partnership with his father. Ah, that was a day to live for.

And meanwhile, with tears smarting in his eyes, he wandered aimlessly through the front door. The grounds of the Law lay before him, a fine span of lawn with a laburnum in the middle, then a paddock sloping to the dene. Two belts of trees lay upon either side, cutting off all that was unbeautiful in the view. Actually the house stood quite close to Sleescale, upon the law or hill which gave the place its name. Yet it might have been a hundred miles away for all that was seen of pit chimneys and pit dirt. It was a good stone house, square fronted, with a portico in the, Georgian style, a later addition built out behind, and a big conservatory attached. The front of the house was covered by smartly clipped ivy. Though it was completely unostentatious — how Richard hated ostentation! — everything was in the most spotless order: the lawn shaven, its edges cut as by a knife, not a weed marring the long red blaze drive. There was a great deal of white paint about, the best white paint, on gates, palings, the window sashes and woodwork of the glass house. Richard liked it so; and though he kept only one man — Bartley — there were always plenty willing to come up from the Neptune to “crible for the mester.”

Arthur’s woebegone gaze travelled down the pleasant prospect. Should he go down to Grace? He thought yes, at first, then he thought no. Desolate, he couldn’t make up his mind. Then, as usual, he left it, wandering away from the decision, wandering back into the hall. Absently, he stared at the pictures upon the walls, these pictures on which his father set such store. Every year his father would buy a picture, sometimes two, through Vincent, the big art dealer in Tynecastle, spending what seemed to Arthur — whose ears absorbed the last detail of his father’s conversation — incredible sums. Yet consciously Arthur approved this action of his father, as he approved all his father’s actions, and he approved his father’s taste as well. Yes, they really were lovely pictures, large canvases, superbly coloured. Stone, Orchardson, Watts, Leighton, Holman Hunt, oh, Holman Hunt especially. Arthur knew the names. Knew that these — as his father said — would be the old masters of the future. One in particular, The Garden Lovers, entranced him with its sweetness, it was so lovely it gave him a queer pain, a kind of longing, low down in his stomach.

Arthur frowned, hesitated, looking up and down the hall. He wanted to think, to puzzle things out about this awful strike, his father’s strange and preoccupied departure for Todd’s. Turning, he went along the passage and into the lavatory. He locked himself in. Here, at last, he was safe.

The lavatory was his retreat; the place where no one could disturb him, where he took his troubles some days and on others gave himself to his dreams. The lavatory was a lovely place to dream in. It reminded him, somehow, of a church, a cathedral aisle, for it was a tall room with a cold churchy smell and a varnished wallpaper made up of little gothic arches, he got a feeling here like when he looked at The Garden Lovers.

Arthur let down the oblong varnished cover and seated himself with his head in his palms and elbows on his knees. He felt, suddenly, an extra pang of anxiety and stress. Overpowered by a desire for consolation, he shut his eyes tight. With that fervour which often took him, dear God, he prayed, make the strike end to-day, make all the men go back to work for my father, make them see their mistake, dear God, you know, dear God, how good my father is, I love him, dear God, and I love You too, make the men do right like he does and don’t let them strike any more, and let me hurry up and be with my father in the Neptune quick for Jesus’ sake, amen.

FOUR

Richard Barras returned at five o’clock to find Armstrong and Hudspeth were waiting for him. He arrived, with cold unhurried precision, frowning slightly, bringing the stem pulse of his personality into the house, to find them sitting on two hall chairs, side by side, staring at the floor in silence. Aunt Carrie in a flutter of uncertainty had put them there. George Armstrong was, of course, the viewer of the Neptune and would have gone ordinarily to the smoking-room. But Hudspeth was only the underviewer who had once been merely the overman, and he had, moreover, been with the safety-men, had come straight out the pit with dirty boots, wet knickerbockers, stick and leather cap complete. Impossible to admit him to sully Richard’s room. Altogether a difficult situation for Aunt Carrie; she had compromised by leaving them in the vestibule.

At the sight of the two men Richard’s expression did not change. He had expected them. But through the cold weight of his inflexibility a faint gleam momentarily irradiated his eye, then was instantly suppressed. Armstrong and Hudspeth rose. A short silence.

“Well?” Richard asked.

Armstrong nodded emotionally.

“It’s done with, thank God.”

Richard received the news without a sign, as though the faint break in Armstrong’s voice was repugnant to him. He remained erect, veiled within himself, apart. At length he stirred, made a gesture with his hand and led the way into the dining-room. He went to the sideboard, an enormous oak piece of Dutch origin carved in baroque taste with the heads of smiling children, and poured whisky into two glasses, then he pulled the bell, ordered tea upon a tray for himself. Ann brought it immediately.

The three men drank standing — Hudspeth put his tot away neat at one stolid swallow, Armstrong took his with a lot of soda in quick, nervous gulps. He was a nervous man, George Armstrong, a man who seemed always to live upon his nerves. He worried a great deal, was upset by trifles, lost his temper easily with the men but got through a vast amount of work by the sheer nervous intensity of his application. A medium-sized man going bald on the top, with rather a drawn face and pouches under his eyes, he was, in spite of his irritability, quite popular in the town. He had a good baritone voice and sang at the Masonic concerts. He was married, with five children, felt his responsibilities acutely and was, in his soul, desperately afraid of losing his job. Now he excused his nervous hand with his short deprecatory laugh.

“Before God I’m not sorry it’s over, Mr. Barras, the whole stupid business. It’s been a pretty rough time for all of us. I’d rather work a year double shift than go through these three months again.”

Barras ignored all this. He said:

“How did it end?”

“They had a meeting at the Institute. Fenwick spoke but they wouldn’t listen to him. Next Gowlan, you know Charley Gowlan, the checkweigher, he got up and said there was nothing for it but to start. Then Heddon let loose on them. He’d come in special from Tynecastle. He didn’t mince his meat. Not on your life, Mr. Barras. Told them they’d no right to have come out without Union support. Said the Federation disowned the whole business. Called them a pack of confounded fools, only saving your presence, Mr. Barras, he used a different word for trying to run things on their own. Then they voted. Eight hundred odd in favour of starting. Seven against.”

There was a pause.

“And what then?” Barras said.

“They came up to the office, a crowd of them — Heddon, Gowlan, Ogle, Howe and Dinning, and pretty small they looked, I can tell you. They asked for you. But I told them what you’d said, that you’d see none of them till they’d started in again. So Gowlan made a speech, he’s not a bad sort, for all he’s a boozer. Said they were beat and knew it. Heddon came on then with the usual Union claptrap, made a song and dance about taking the case to Harry Nugent in Parliament, but that was just to save his own face. To cut it short, they’re whacked, they’ve asked to start in on the fore shift to-morrow. I said we’d see you, sir, and let them know your answer by six.”

Richard finished his tea.

“So they want to start. I see,” he said. He appeared to regard the situation as interesting, and to review it without emotion. Three months ago he had secured the Parsons contract for coking coal. These contracts were precious, they were rare and very hard to get. With the contract in his pocket he had begun operations, driving into the Scupper Flats district of the Paradise and starting to strip the Dyke of its special coking coal, the only coking coal remaining in the Neptune.

Then the men had walked out on him, in spite of him, in spite of their Union. The contract was not in his pocket now, it was in the fire. He had forfeited the contract. He had lost twenty thousand pounds.

The pale smile fixed upon his lips seemed to say, interesting, upon my soul!

Armstrong said:

“Shall I post the notices then, Mr. Barras?”

Richard compressed his lips, let his eye dwell upon the obsequious Armstrong with sudden distaste.

“Yes,” he said coldly. “Let them start in to-morrow.”

Armstrong sighed with relief, he moved instinctively towards the door. But Hudspeth, whose obtuse mind dealt only with the obvious, stood twisting his cap in his hands.

“What about Fenwick?” he asked. “Has he to be started?”

Barras said:

“That remains with Fenwick.”

“And the other pump?” went on Hudspeth laboriously. He was a big dull-looking fellow with a long upper lip and a heavy, sallow face.

Richard moved restively.

“What other pump?”

“The hogger-pump you spoke about three months back, the day the lads came out. It ud take a lot of that water out Scupper Flats. Take it quicker, I mean, leave less muck for to stand in…”

Cold as ice, Richard said:

“You are sadly mistaken if you think I am proceeding in Scupper Flats. That coking coal must await another contract.”

“Whatever you say, sir.” Hudspeth’s earthy face coloured deeply.

“That’s all, then,” Barras said in his clear, reasonable voice. “You might let it be known that I’m glad for the men’s sakes they’re going back. All that unnecessary hardship in the town has been abominable.”

“I’ll certainly do that, Mr. Barras,” agreed Armstrong.

Barras was silent; and as there appeared nothing more to be said Armstrong and Hudspeth left the house.

For a moment Barras remained with his back to the fire, thinking; then he locked away the whisky in the sideboard, picked up two lumps of sugar which had fallen on the tray and methodically replaced them in the sugar basin. It hurt him to see untidiness, to think even of a lump of sugar being wasted. At the Law nothing must be wasted, he could not stand it. Especially in small ways this was manifest. Matches he habitually stinted. He would use a pencil to its last bare inch. Lights must be turned out regularly, soap ends pressed into the new cake, hot water husbanded, even the fire banked with a modicum of dross. The sound of breaking china drove the blood to his head. Aunt Carrie’s chief virtue, in his eyes, was the rigour of her housekeeping.

He stood quietly, examining his white, well-cared-for hands. Then he opened the door, and slowly ascended the stairs. He did not see Arthur, whose upturned anxious face made a tremulous white moon in the semi-darkness of the hall. He entered his wife’s room.

“Harriet!”

“Yes, Richard!”

She was sitting up in bed with three pillows behind and a bed rest in front, crocheting. She had three pillows because someone had said three pillows were best. And she crocheted because young Dr. Lewis, her newest doctor, had prescribed it for her nerves. But now she paused, her eyes raised to his. Her eyes had thick black eyebrows above and very brown skin underneath, the pigmented skin of the complete neurotic. She smiled, rather apologetically, and touched her glossy hair, which lay undone, framing her sallow face.

“You don’t mind, Richard? I had one of my bad headaches. I had to make Caroline give my scalp a little brush this afternoon.” And she smiled again — her suffering invalid smile, the sad smile of the invalid, a confirmed invalid. She suffered from her back, her stomach, her nerves. From time to time she had the most prostrating headaches for which toilet vinegar was useless, for which everything was useless but Caroline’s gentle brushing of her head. On these occasions Aunt Carrie would stand for an hour on end gently, soothingly brushing Harriet’s head with long slow strokes. No one had been able to get to the root of Harriet’s trouble. Not really. She had exhausted Drs. Riddel, Scott and Proctor, the doctors of Sleescale; she had seen half the specialists in Tynecastle, she had turned in despair to a nature healer, a homeopathist, a herbalist, an electrical physicist who swathed her in the most marvellous magnetic belts. Each of the quacks had started by being wonderful, the man at last, as Harriet said; and each had sadly proved himself — like Riddel, Scott, Proctor and the Tynecastle specialists — to be a fool. Not that Harriet despaired. She had her own case in hand, she read persistently, perseveringly, patiently, a great many books upon the subject of her own complaints. Useless, alas! All, all useless. It was not that Harriet did not try. She had tried every medicine under the sun, her room was surrounded by bottles, dozens of bottles, tonics, sedatives, liniments, alleviatives, antispasmodics, everything — all the physic that had been prescribed for her in the past five years. It could at least be said of Harriet that she never threw a bottle away. Some of the bottles had only one dose out of them — Harriet had such experience that after even one spoonful she could say: “Put it away. I know it’ll do me no good.” The bottle was put on the shelf.

It was terrible. But Harriet was very patient. She was confined to bed. Yet she ate very well. At times, indeed, she ate magnificently, that was part of her trouble, her stomach it must be, she had such gas. She was amiable, though, she had never been known to disagree with her husband, but was always docile, yielding, sympathetic. She shirked none of the more intimate wifely duties. She was there: in bed. She had a big white body, and an air of sanctity. She conveyed the strange impression of being like a cow. But she was very pious. Perhaps she was a sacred cow.

Barras looked at her as from a long way off. How exactly did he regard her? At the moment it was impossible to say.

“Is your headache better now?”

“Yes, Richard, it is a little better. Not gone, but a little better. After Caroline had done brushing my hair I made her pour me a little of that valerian mixture young Dr. Lewis gave me. I think it helped.”

“I meant to bring you some grapes from Tynecastle but I forgot.”

“Thank you, Richard.” Amazing how often Richard forgot those grapes; but the intention was there. “You went to Todd’s, of course.”

His expression stiffened ever so slightly. Arthur, still busy with his enigma, should have seen that look.

“Yes, I went there. They are all well, Hetty looking prettier than ever, full of her birthday; she’s thirteen next week.” He broke off, turned towards the door. “By the way, the strike’s broken. The men start in to-morrow.”

Her small mouth made the letter O; she placed her hand protectively against her flannelette swathed heart.

“Oh, Richard, I’m so glad. Why didn’t you tell me at once? That’s splendid, such a relief.”

He paused, the door half open. He said:

“You may expect me to-night.” Then he went out.

“Yes, Richard.”

Harriet lay on her back, the pleased surprise still lingering upon her face. Then she took a slip of paper and a silver pencil with a small cairngorm set at the end. She wrote neatly: “Remember tell Dr. Lewis heart gave a great thump when Richard delivered good news.” She paused, meditatively, then underlined the word great. Finally she took up her work and began placidly to crochet.

FIVE

It was quite dark as Armstrong and Hudspeth came through the big white gates of the Law and entered the avenue of tall beech trees — known locally as Sluice Dene — which led towards Hedley Road and the town. They walked some distance apart, and in silence, for neither cared much for the other; but at last Hudspeth, smarting under the snub he had received, ground out bitterly:

“He makes a man feel like dirt on times. He’s a cold devil right enough. I cannot make him out. I cannot make him out no how.”

Armstrong smiled to himself in the darkness. He despised Hudspeth secretly as a man of no education, a man who had worked his way up, succeeding more through doggedness than actual merit; he was often irritated, humiliated even, by the other’s bluntness and physical assertiveness; it was pleasant to see him humiliated in his turn.

“How d’you mean?” He pretended not to understand.

“What I damwell say,” said Hudspeth disagreeably.

Armstrong said:

“He knows what he’s about.”

“Ay, he knows his job. And God help us if we didn’t know ours. He’d not spare us. He’s that perfect himself he’d have no mercy whatever. Did you hear him, too?” He paused, mimicking Barras bitterly, “All the unnecessary hardship In the town. Good Christ, that was funny.”

“No, no,” Armstrong said quickly. “He meant that.”

“Meant it like hell! He’s the meanest devil in Sleescale and that’s saying something. He’s just flaming inside over losing his contract. And I’ll tell you another thing since I’m about it. I’m damned glad we’re shot of Scupper Flats. Though I’ve kept my trap shut I’ve been feeling pretty near Fenwick’s way about that bloody water.”

Armstrong darted a sharp, disapproving glance at Hudspeth:

“That’s no way to talk, man.”

There was a short silence, then, sulkily, Hudspeth declared:

“It’s a sheugh of a place, anyhow.”

But Armstrong said nothing. They tramped on in silence, down Hedley Road, and into Cowpen Street past the Terraces. As they drew near the corner a blare of light and a hubbub of voices from the Salutation made both men turn their heads. Armstrong remarked, with an obvious desire to change the subject:

“They’ve a full house to-night.”

“Ay, and a tight one,” Hudspeth answered, still sulking. “Amour has started tick again. The first time he’s had the slate out for a fortnight.”

Not speaking any more they went on to post the notices.

SIX

Back in the Salutation the row increased. The pub was full jammed to suffocation, swirling with smoke, words, bright lights and the fumes of beer. Bert Amour stood behind the bar in his shirt-sleeves with the big chalked slate — the tally of men and drinks — slung on the wall beside him. Bert was a knowing one; for the last two weeks in the face of curses and entreaties he had refused all credit; but now, with pay-Saturday a near-by certainty, he had re-established himself at a stroke. The bar was open; and payment deferred.

“Fill them up, Bert, lad.” Charley Gowlan thumped hard with his pint pot and called for another round. Charley was not drunk, he was never really drunk, he became saturated like a sponge, he sweated and took on the pallid look of veal, but no one had ever seen him wholly soused. Some of the crowd about him were well lit-up, however — Tally Brown, old Reedy and Slogger Leeming in particular. The Slogger was quite wildly drunk. He was a rough lot, the Slogger, with a red, bashed-in face, a flat nose and one blue-white cauliflower ear. He had been a boxer in his youth, and had fought in the St. James’s Hall under the captivating title of the Pitboy Wonder; but drink and other things had burned him out; he was back once more in the pit — no longer a pitboy and no longer a wonder; with nothing to show for the prowess of those golden days but a hot good nature, a vicious left swing and the sadly battered face.

Always the unofficial toastmaster in the pub, Charley Gowlan rapped on the table again; he was displeased at the lack of levity in the company, he wanted the old cosy sociability of the Salutation to be re-established. He remarked:

“We’ve had to put up wi’ plenty in the last three months. Come on, lads, wor not downhearted. It’s a poor heart that niver rejoices.” His pig-like gaze beamed over the company, seeking the familiar lush approval. But they were all too sick and surly to approve. Instead he caught Robert Fenwick’s eye fixed sardonically upon his. Robert stood in his usual place, the far corner by the bar, drinking steadily, as though nothing held much interest for him now.

Gowlan raised his pot.

“Drink up, Robert, mon. Ye might as well get wet inside te-night. Ye’ll be wet enough outside te-morrow.”

Robert appeared to study Gowlan’s beery face with singular detachment. He said:

“We’ll all be wet enough some day.”

The company shouted:

“Shut up yer face, Robert.”

“Be quiet, mon. Ye had yer say at the meetin’.”

“We’ve heerd ower much about that these last three months.”

A film of sadness, of weariness came upon Robert’s face, he looked back at them with defeated eyes.

“All right, lads. Have it yer own way. I’ll say nowt more.”

Gowlan grinned slyly:

“If yer feared to go down the Paradise why doan’t ye say so?”

Slogger Leeming said:

“Shut up yer face, Gowlan. Yer nowt but a blatterin’ woman. Robert here’s my marrow. See! He hews fair an’ addles fair. He knows more about the bloddy pit than y’ know about yer own mickey.”

There was a silence while the crowd held its breath, hoping there might be a fight. But no, Charley never fought, he merely grinned beerily. The tension lapsed into disappointment.

Then the door swung open. Will Kinch came into the pub and elbowed his way uncertainly to the bar.

“Stand us a pint, Bert, for God’s sake, I feel I could do wi’ it.”

Interest reawakened, and was focused upon Will.

“How, then! what’s the matter with ye, Will?”

Will pushed the lank hair back from his brow, gripped the pot and faced them shakily.

“There’s plenty the matter wi’ me, lads.” He spat as though to cleanse his mouth of dirt. Then with a rush: “My Alice is badly, lads, she’s got the pneumonia. The missus wanted her to have a drop hough tea. I went down to Ramage’s a quarter hour since. Ramage hissel’ was standin’ there, ahint the counter, big fat belly an’ all. ‘Mister Ramage,’ I says perfectly civil, ‘will ye gie us a small end o’ hough for my little lass that’s badly an’ aw’ll pay ye pay-Saturday for certain.’” Here Will’s lips went pale; he began to tremble all over his body. But he clenched his teeth and forced himself to go on. “Weel, lads, he looked me up an’ down, then down an’ up. ‘I’ll give ye no hough,’ he says, jest like that. ‘Aw, come, Mister Ramage,’ I says upset like. ‘Spare us a little end piece, the lock-oot’s ower, pay-Saturday’s come a fortnight certain, I’ll pay ye then as God’s my maker.’” Pause. “He said nowt for a bit, lads, but jest gien me that look. Then he says, like he wer speakin’ to a dog, ‘I’ll give ye nothin’, not even a rib of bone. Yer a disgrace te the town, you an’ yer lot. Ye walk out on your work for nowt, then come cadgin’ to decent fowks for charity. Get out of my shop afore a have ye thrown out’.” Pause. “So aw jest got out, lads.”

Dead silence had come upon the company while Will spoke; and he finished in a mortal stillness. Bob Ogle moved first.

“By God!” he groaned. “That’s too much.”

Then Slogger jumped up, half-tight.

“It is too much,” he shouted, “we’ll not put up wi’t.”

Everybody started talking at once; an uproar. Slogger was on his feet, shouldering drunkenly through the crowd.

“I’ll not lie down under this, lads. I’ll see that bastard Ramage for mysel’. Come on, Will. Ye’ll have the best for the lass and not a measly end o’ hough.” He caught hold of Kinch affectionately and dragged him to the door. The others surged round, followed, supported them. The pub cleared in a minute. It was a miracle: no “time, gentlemen, please” had ever cleared that bar so quickly. Full one minute — empty the next. Robert alone waited, watching the astounded Amour with his sad, disillusioned eyes. He had another drink. But at last he went, too.

Outside, the crowd was swelled by a score of the younger men, the corner lads, the hangers on. They had no idea what it meant, but they scented excitement, trouble, a fight — since Slogger was laying his weight about. They marched in a body down Cowpen Street. Young Joe Gowlan shoved his way into the thick of it.

Round the corner they went and into Lamb Street, but when they got to Ramage’s a check awaited them. Ramage’s was shut. The big shop, closed for the night, was blank, unlit, presenting nothing but a cold iron-shuttered front and the name above: James Ramage — Flesher. Not even a window to smash!

Balked. Slogger let out a howl. The drink was in his blood; and his blood was up. He wasn’t done, no, by God, he wasn’t. There were other shops, here, next door to Ramage, shops without shutters, Bates, for instance, and Murchison, the licensed grocer’s, which had nothing but a plain bar and padlocked door.

Slogger let out another yell.

“We’re not beat, lads, we’ll take Murchison’s instead.” He made a run at the door, raised his heavy boot, smashed hard on the lock. At the same time somebody from the back of the crowd threw a brick. The brick shattered the window of the shop. That did it: the crash of the glass gave the signal to loot.

They swarmed round the door, beat it down, burst into the shop. Most of them were drunk and all of them had not seen proper food for weeks. Tally Brown seized a ham and shoved it under his arm; old Reedy grabbed at some tins of fruit; Slogger, his maudlin sympathy for Will Kinch’s Alice completely forgotten, knocked in the bung of a barrel of beer. Some women from the Quay, attracted by the noise, pressed in behind the men and began in a panic to snatch at anything: pickles, sauce, soap, it didn’t matter so long as it was something, they were too terrified to look, they simply snatched feverishly and thrust what they took below their shawls. The street lamp outside threw a cold clear light upon them.

It was Joe Gowlan who thought of the till, Joe had no use for the grub — like his dad he was too well fed — but Joe could use that till.

Falling on his hands and knees he squirmed between the legs of the pushing men, crawled round behind the counter, and found the cash drawer. Unlocked! Gloating over old Murchison’s carelessness, Joe slipped his hand into the smooth bowl, his fingers clutched at the silver in the bowl, a good round fistful, and slid it easily into his pocket. Then, rising to his feet, he darted through the door and took to his heels.

As Joe came out of the shop Robert entered it. At least, he stood on the threshold, the uneasiness upon his face turning slowly to dismay.

“What are ye doing, lads?” His tone was pleading: the pathos of this misdirected violence hurt him. “Ye’ll get in trouble ower this.”

Nobody took the slightest notice of him. He raised his voice.

“Stop it, ye fools. Can’t ye see it’s the worst thing ye could do? Nobody’ll have any pity on us now. Stop. I tell ye, stop.”

No one stopped.

A spasm came over Robert’s face. He made to push into the crowd, but just then a sound behind caused him to swing round full in the lamplight. The police: Roddam from the Quay-side beat and the new sergeant from the station.

“Fenwick!” Roddam shouted instantly in recognition and laid his hands on Robert.

At that shout a louder shout went up from those inside:

“The cops! Get out, lads, it’s the cops.” And an avalanche of living, inextricably mingled forms disgorged itself through the door. Roddam and the sergeant made no attempt to stop the avalanche. They stood rather stupidly and let it go past them; then, still holding Robert, Roddam entered the shop.

“Here’s another, sergeant,” Roddam said in sudden exultation.

Amongst the desolation of the looted shop, swaying helplessly astride the beer barrel, sat Slogger Leeming. He held to the bung-hole with one blissful finger. He was blind to the world.

The sergeant looked at Slogger, the shop, then at Robert.

“This is serious,” he said in a hard, official voice. “You’re Fenwick. The man who started the strike.”

Robert returned his look steadily. Robert said:

“I did nothing.”

The sergeant said:

“Of course you did nothing.”

Robert opened his lips to explain; saw suddenly the hopelessness of it all. He said nothing. He submitted. He was taken with the Slogger to the cells.

SEVEN

Five days later, at four o’clock in the afternoon, Joe Gowlan strolled easily along the Scottswood Road of Tynecastle, making scrutiny of those windows which displayed the card APARTMENTS. Tynecastle, that keen bustling city of the North, full of movement and clamour and brisk grey colour, echoing to the clang of trams, the clatter of feet, the beat of ship-yard hammers, had engulfed Joe graciously. Joe’s eyes had always been turned towards Tynecastle — it was only eighteen miles from his native town — as a place of possibilities and adventure. Joe looked well, a bright-complexioned, curly-haired young man with his boots dazzlingly brushed and a cheerful air of knowing his way about. But for all his shiny look Joe was broke. Since he had run away from home, the two pounds in silver, stolen from Murchison’s till, had been pleasantly dissipated in a style more sophisticated than Joe’s untarnished aspect might have suggested. Joe had seen the gallery of the Empire Music Hall, the inside of Lowe’s bar, and other places. Joe had bought beer, cigarettes and the most captivating blue postcards. And now, his last sixpence honourably spent in a wash, a brush and a shine, Joe was looking for a decent lodging.

Down the Scottswood Road he went, past the wide iron pens of the cattle-market, past the Duke of Cumberland, past Plummer Street and Elswick East Terrace. The day was dull but dry, the streets pulsed pleasantly, on the railway lower down an incoming train whistled importantly, and was answered by the deep chord of a steamer’s siren as she warped out in the Tyne below. Joe had a stimulating sense of life around him and within him he felt the world like a great big football at his feet and lustily prepared to boot it.

Beyond Plummer Street Joe paused outside a house which bore the sign, Lodging House: Good Beds: Men Only. He contemplated the house thoughtfully but, with a faint negation of his curly head, sauntered on. A moment later a girl, walking quickly in the same direction, came abreast of him and then passed by. Joe’s eyes glistened; his whole body stiffened. She was a neat little piece right enough, small feet and ankles, trim waist, smart hips, and her head in the air like a queen. His gaze lingered enviously, followed her as she crossed the road, skipped up the steps and briskly let herself into 117A Scottswood Road. Fascinated, Joe stopped and moistened his lips which had gone rather dry. In the window of 117A Scottswood Road was a card which said APARTMENTS. “By gum!” Joe said. He buttoned up his jacket and, crossing without hesitation, he rang the bell.

It was she who came to the door, made, by the removal of her hat, suddenly more intimate to him. She was even nicer than he had thought: about sixteen, maybe, with a small nose, clear grey eyes and a waxen complexion into which her recent walk had whipped a fresh colour. Her ears were very small and close to the side of her head. Her mouth was the nicest though, he told himself. It was a big mouth, not deeply red, but very soft with an entrancing little membrane to the upper lip.

“Well,” she asked sharply.

Joe smiled at her modestly, lowered his eyes, took off his cap and twisted it in his hands. No one could register homely virtue better than Joe: he did it to perfection.

“Excuse me, miss, but I was lookin’ for lodgings.”

She did not smile back at him; her lip curled, she considered him distastefully. Jenny Sunley did not like her mother to keep lodgers: not even the single lodger whom the spare top back accommodated. She thought it low, and “lowness” was to Jenny the unpardonable sin.

She smoothed her blouse, put her hands upon her neat shiny belt, and said with a certain arrogance:

“I suppose you better come in.”

Stepping reverently he followed her into the narrow passage, and was conscious instantly of the smell and sound of pigeons. Coo-coo, coo-coo, coo-coo! He looked up. No pigeons were visible, but on the half landing the bathroom door stood open revealing a small string of washing: long black stockings and several white garments. Hers, thought Joe delightedly, swiftly; but he masked his eyes before she had time to blush. She did blush though, for that neglected door, and her tone was suddenly shrewish as, with a toss of her head, she declared:

“It’s in here if you want to know. The back room!”

He went after her, entering “the back room,” a small blowsy much-lived-in apartment, full of old bits of horse-hair furniture, penny magazines, presents from Whitley Bay and bags of pigeon meal. Two blue chequer homers sat solemnly on the mantelpiece. Beside the hot fire, rocking herself gently in a squeaky chair, reading Home Chat, sat an indolent, untidy woman, with big eyes and a lot of hair piled up on the top of her head.

“Here, ma, it’s somebody about the room.” And flinging herself haughtily upon the broken-springed sofa, Jenny picked up a battered magazine and took, most conspicuously, no further interest in the matter.

Mrs. Sunley went on with her rocking comfortably. Only the crack of doom would have stopped Ada Sunley making herself comfortable. She was always making herself comfortable: taking off a shoe, or easing her stays, or having a little baking soda to break the wind, or a cup of tea, or a little sit down, or a look at a paper till the kettle boiled. Ada was a fat, friendly, dreamy slattern. Occasionally she nagged her husband, but mostly she was easy-going. She had been in service in her “young days,” a “good family,” she always insisted. She was romantic, she liked to look at the new moon; and superstitious, she never wore green, walked under a ladder or spilled salt without throwing it over her left shoulder; she adored a good novelette, especially the kind where the dark quiet one “got him” in the end. She wanted to be rich, she was always going in for competitions, limericks chiefly, and hoping to win a lot of money. But Ada’s limericks were hopeless. She often had remarkable ideas, Ma’s brain waves, they were called, amongst the family: to repaper a room or cover the sofa in a nice pink plush, or re-enamel the bath, or retire to the country, or start a hotel, or a ribbon shop, or even to write “a story”—she was sure she had the gift. But none of Ada’s ideas ever came to fruit. Ada never got far from her rocker. Alf, her husband, frequently said to her mildly: “My Gawd, Ada, you’re barmy!”

“Oh,” she said now. “I thought it was the club-man.” Pause. “So you’re looking for a room?”

“Yes, mam.”

“We only take one young man.” When she met people for the first time, Ada always tried to put on a faint air, but it soon slipped off. “Our last gentleman left a week ago. Should you require part board as well?”

“Yes, mam, if it wouldn’t trouble you.”

“You should have to sit down with the family. We’re six in family here. Me, my husband, Jenny there, who’s out all day at Slattery’s, Phyllis, Clarice and Sally, my youngest.” She paused, considered him more shrewdly: “Who are you, by the bye? And where are you from?”

Joe’s eyes fell humbly, but a wave of panic swept him. He had come in for a bit of a lark really, a kind of try-on just for fun, but now he knew he must get in, he simply must. She was a plum, that Jenny, she really was a plum, she had him simply gasping. But what the hell was he going to say? Strings of sympathetic lies flashed through his head and were instantly rejected. Where was his luggage, his money to pay in advance? Hell! He sweated. He despaired. Suddenly the inspiration came, nothing better surely than the truth, ah, that was it — he glowed inside — the truth, not the whole truth, of course, but something like the truth. He flung up his head and faced her. He said with conscious honesty:

“I could tell a pack of lies to you, mam, but I’d rather tell you the truth. I’ve run away from home.”

“Well I never!”

The magazine was lowered, and this time the rocking did stop: Mrs. Sunley and Jenny both stared at him with a new interest. Romance in the best tradition had flown into the frowsy room.

Joe said:

“I had a terrible time, I couldn’t bear it no longer. My mother died, my father used to leather me till I could hardly stand. We had a strike an’ all at wor pit. I diddent… I diddent have enough to eat.” Manly emotion glistened in Joe’s eyes as he went on… oh, it was glorious… glorious… he had them eating out of his hand!

“So your mother died?” Ada breathed.

Joe nodded dumbly — the last convention was fulfilled.

Ada let her big balmy eyes travel over his brushed and combed handsomeness with a rising sympathy. He’s had a hard enough time, poor young man, she reflected, and that good-looking too, with his bright brown eyes and curly hair. But curly hair don’t pay the rent, no indeed it don’t, with Sally’s music to think of…. Ada started to rock again. For all her sluttish indolence Ada Sunley was no fool. She took herself in hand.

“Look here,” she declared in a matter-of-fact tone, “you can’t come to us on pity. You’ve got to have a shop, a regular shop. Now, my Alf said to-day they was taking on at Millington-Yarrow’s, the foundry in Yarrow, you understand, Platt Lane way. Try there! If you’re lucky, come back. If you’re unlucky, do the other thing.”

“Yes, mam.”

Joe held his chastened probity till he was out of the house, then in his exultation he bounded across the street.

“Here, you with the face!” He grabbed a passing message boy by the collar. “Tell us the road to Millington’s Foundry or I’ll break your blasted neck!”

He almost ran to Yarrow, and it was a long, long way. He presented himself at the Foundry. He lied nobly, obscenely, and showed his sweating muscle to the foreman. His luck held, they were in urgent need of hands, he was taken on, as puddler’s assistant, at twenty-five shillings a week. After the pit it was riches. And there was Jenny, Jenny, Jenny…

He came back to Scottswood Road in easy stages, holding himself in, telling himself he must be careful, do nothing in a hurry, work it up slow. But triumph rose gloating through the thin veneer of caution as he came into the back room once more.

The whole family sat there, had just finished tea. Ada lounged at the top of the table and next to her sat Jenny. Then came the three younger girls: Phyllis, cast in the image of her mother, blonde, languid, and thirteen years of age, Clarice, dark, leggy and eleven and a half, with a beautiful scarlet ribbon, removed from a chocolate box of Jenny’s, in her hair, and finally Sally, a queer thing of ten, with Jenny’s big mouth, hostile black eyes and a self-possessed stare. At the end of the table was Alfred, husband of Ada, father of the four girls and head of the house, an insignificant pasty-faced man with drooping shoulders and a sparse ginger moustache. He had also a crick in his neck, no collar and watery eyes. Alf was a house-painter, a house-painter who swallowed a fair amount of white lead in the process of slabbing it upon Tynecastle house fronts. The lead gave him his pallid face, sundry pains in his “stummick” and that faint blue line which could be made out along the edge of Alf’s gums. The crick in his neck, however, came not from painting but from pigeons. Alf was a fancier, his passion was pigeons, blue and red chequers, homers, lovely prize homers. And flighting his homers, watching them fly the empyrean blue, had gradually brought Alf’s neck to this singular obliquity.

Joe surveyed the company, exclaimed joyously:

“They’ve taken me on. I start to-morrow. Twenty-five bob a week.”

Jenny had obviously forgotten him; but Ada looked pleased in her indolent way.

“Didn’t I tell you, now? You’ll pay me fifteen a week, that’ll leave you ten clear, in the meantime that’s to say. You’ll soon have a rise. Puddlers earn good money.” She yawned delicately behind her hand, then sketchily cleared a space upon the littered table. “Sit in and have a pick. Clarry, fetch a cup and saucer from the scull’ry and run round to Mrs. Gresley’s, there’s a dear, for three penn’orth corned ham, see you watch her weight too. Might as well have something tasty for a start. Alf, this is Mr. Joe Gowlan, our new gentleman.”

Alf stopped his slow mastication of a final tea-soaked crust to give Joe a laconic yet impressive nod. Clarry slammed in with a newly washed cup and saucer, inky tea was poured, the corned ham appeared with half a loaf and Alf solemnly pushed across the mustard.

Joe sat next to Jenny on the horse-hair sofa. It intoxicated him to be beside her, to think how marvellously he had managed it. She was wonderful, never before had desire stricken him so deeply, so suddenly. He set himself to please, to captivate them — not Jenny, of course, oh, dear no, Joe knew a thing or two better than that! He smiled, his open good-hearted smile; he talked, made easy converse, invented little anecdotes connected with his past; he flattered Ada, joked with the children; he even told a story, a splendidly proper funny story he had once heard at a minstrel entertainment given by the Band of Hope — not that he had really belonged to the Band of Hope — he had joined the night before the concert, dissevered himself abruptly from the pious movement on the following morning. The story went well: for all except Sally who received it scornfully and Jenny whose haughtiness remained unmoved. Ada shook with laughter, her hands on her fat sides, shedding hairpins all over the place:

“An’ Bones found the blue-bottle in his sarsparilla… well, I say, Mr. Gowlan…”

“Ah, call me Joe, Mrs. Sunley. Treat me like one of the family, mam.”

He was getting them, he’d get them all soon enough, the thrill of it went to his head like wine. This was the way, he could do it, he could take hold of life, squeeze the fat out of it. He’d get on, have what he wanted, anything, everything, just wait and see.

Later, Alf invited Joe to see him feed his pigeons. They went out to the yard, where the pearly doves preened themselves, ducked their heads in and out of Alf’s home-made dovecote, delicately pecked the grain. Removed from the presence of his wife, where he sat mute and mild as milk, Alf revealed himself a little hero of a man with views beyond his pigeons upon beer, patriotism and Spearmint’s prospects in the Derby. He was affable to Joe, proffered a friendly fag. But Joe chafed, burned to be back with Jenny. When the cigarette was smoked, he excused himself, drifted back into the house.

Jenny was alone in the back room. She still sat upon the sofa, deep in the same magazine.

“Excuse me,” Joe murmured. “I was wondering if you would show me my room.”

She did not even lower the magazine which she held with her little finger elegantly crooked.

“One of the kids will show you.”

He did not move.

“Don’t you go out for a stroll at night… on your half-day… like this?”

No answer.

“You serve in a shop, don’t you?” he tried once more patiently. He had a vague remembrance of Slattery’s — a big plate-glassed drapery stores in Grainger Street.

She condescended to look at him.

“What if I do?” she said flatly. “It’s none of your business. And when it comes to that I don’t serve. That’s a low common word and I hate it. I’m at Slattery’s. I’m in the millinery and extremely refined work it is too. I hate anything that’s common and low. I hate men who work dirty more than anything.” And the magazine went up again with a jerk. Joe rubbed his jaw reflectively, taking her all in, neat ankles, slender hips, trim little bosom. So you don’t like men who work dirty, he thought with a secret grin; well, by gum, you’re going to like a dirty worker in me.

EIGHT

For Martha the disgrace was terrible; never in all her life had she dreamed of such a thing, no, never. It was horrible. As she went about her work in the kitchen, testing the potatoes with a fork, lifting the pot lid to see that the stew was right, she tried not to think about it. But it was no use, she had to think. In vain she fought it, battled it away, the thought that she, Martha Redpath that was, should have come to this. They had always been decent folk her folks, the Redpaths, decent chapel folk, decent Methodist folk, decent collier folk, she could go back a full four generations with pride and find never a blemish on the stock. They had all worked underground decently and conducted themselves decently above. But now? Now she was not a Redpath, she was a Fenwick, the wife of Robert Fenwick. And Robert Fenwick was in gaol.

A spasm of bitterness went over her face. In gaol. The scene burned her, as it had done a hundred times, the whole burning scene: Robert standing in the dock with Leeming beside him, Leeming of all men; James Ramage on the bench, coarse and red-faced and bullying, not mincing his words, saying exactly what he thought. She had gone to the court. She would go, it was her place to go. She had been there, she had seen and heard everything. Three weeks without the option. She could have screamed when Ramage sentenced him. She could have died; but her pride kept her up, helped her to put on a stony face. Her pride had helped her through those frightful days, helped her even this afternoon when, returning with her messages from the town, the wife of Slogger Leeming had waylaid her at Alma corner and remarked with loud-voiced sympathy that their men would be out on Saturday. Their men and out!

With a look at the clock — the first thing Sammy had got out of pawn for her — she pulled the tin bath before the fire and began to fill it with hot water from the wash-house. She used an iron pot as dipper and the journeys to and fro with the heavy weight taxed her severely. Lately she had not been well, indeed, she knew she was not well and just now she felt weak and shaky. She had a pain too. For a minute she had to stop to ease the catch in her side. Worry, she knew, had done it, she was a strong woman; she felt she would be better if only the child within her showed signs of life. But there was no movement, nothing but a dragging heaviness, a weight.

The clock struck five, and shortly after the tramp of feet echoed along the Terrace, the slow tramp of tired men. Nine hours from bank to bank and the Terraces to climb at the end of it. But it was good honest work, bred in their bones, and in her bones too. Her sons were young and strong. It was their work. She desired no other.

The door opened upon her thought and the three came in, Hughie first, then David, and finally Sammy with a sawn balk of timber tucked under his arm, for her kindling. Dear Sammy. Always thoughtful of her. A rush of warmth came round the brooding coldness of her heart, she wanted suddenly to have Sammy in her arms and to weep.

They were searching her face; the house had been oppressive these last days; and Martha had been oppressive too, hard on them and difficult. She knew that and she knew that they were searching her face. Though she had been to blame it hurt her.

“How, mother,” Sammy smiled, his teeth showing white against the black coal dust that sweat had caked on him.

She loved the way he called her mother, not that “mam” in common usage here; but she merely nodded towards the bath that was ready and turned back to set the table.

With their mother in the room the three lads took off their boots, jackets, their pit drawers and singlets, all sodden with water, sweat and pit dirt. Together, naked to the buff, they stood scouring themselves in the tiny steaming bath. There was never much room and it was always friendly. But there was not much joking to-night. Sam in a tentative way nudged Davey and grinned:

“Ower the bed a bit, ye elephant.” And again remarked: “Whey, mon, have ye swallowed the soap?” But there was nothing genuine in the way of fun. The heaviness in the house, in Martha’s face, precluded it. They dressed with no horse-play, sat in to their dinner almost in silence.

It was a beautiful dinner, huge helpings of savoury stew with onions and floury potatoes. Martha’s dinners were always beautiful, she knew the value of a good dinner to a man. Now, thank God, that the wicked strike was stopped she could let them have their food. She sat watching them eat, replenishing their plates. Though she did not feel like eating herself, she drank some tea. Yet even the tea didn’t help her much. A stray pain started in her back, tugged at her breasts, and slipped out of her again before she recognised the nature of the pain.

Her sons had finished dinner. David was the first to rise, going to the corner where his books were kept, seating himself on a low stool by the cheek of the fire with a pencil in his hand and jotter upon his knee. Latin, Martha thought glumly, he’s doing Latin now, and the thought, striking across her bitter mood, irked her strangely. It was part of Robert’s doing, this education, this wanting the boy to go to college, to sit for the scholarship next year, to get above himself. Robert had started him with Mr. Carmichael at the old Bethel Street night classes. And she, coming of a long line of pitmen, a proudly class-conscious woman, despised book learning in her own kind, and felt that no good would come of it.

Hughie got up next, went into the wash-house, returned with a hammer and last, his old football boots and twelve new leather studs. At the back of the kitchen, away from everyone, he squatted down, bent his dark head, still shiny from the bath, and began, in his own way, both taciturn and absorbed, to hammer in the studs. Last Saturday he had kept back sixpence of his pay from her, never saying a word, simply keeping it back. She might have guessed why. Football! Not just the love of the sport, though he loved it with all his heart. No, no. Hughie’s interest, she knew, lay deeper. Hughie wanted to be a star, a footballer in the big league, an athlete who drew six pounds a week for his supreme cleverness at the game. That was at once the secret, the ambition of Hughie’s soul. That kept him from cigarettes, from touching even one glass of beer which he might have had on Sundays; that kept him from talking to the girls — Hughie never so much as looked at a girl, she knew, though plenty of them looked at Hughie; that set him running miles at night, training he called it; tired or not he would go out, she might rest assured, the minute he had finished his boots.

Martha’s frown deepened. She approved with all her heart Hughie’s spartan life, nothing could be better. But to what cause? To leave the pit! He, too, striving with all his soul to leave the pit. She had no faith in his glittering illusion and no fear that he might achieve it. Yet it worried her, this queer intensity of Hughie’s, oh yes, it harassed her.

Instinctively her eyes turned to Sammy, who still sat at the table, restlessly making patterns on the oilcloth with the back of his fork. He was conscious of her gaze for, after a moment, he laid down the fork and sheepishly got up. He hung about with his hands in his pockets, then went to the tiny square of mirror above the sink. He took the comb that lay always on the back of the enamel soap rack, wetted it, and carefully parted his hair. Then he took a clean collar, she had starched and ironed it only that afternoon, which hung on the rail by the fire. He put on the collar, arranged his tie freshly, smartened himself up. Then, whistling self-consciously, he whipped up his cap and moved jauntily to the door.

Martha’s hand, lying upon her knee, clenched so tightly the knuckles showed like bone.

“Sammy!”

Sam, half out the door, turned as if he had been shot.

“Where are ye going, Sammy?”

“I’m goin’ out, mother.”

She would not let his smile soften her.

“I know ye’re goin’ out. But where are ye goin’ out to?”

“I’m goin’ down the street.”

“Are ye goin’ down Quay Street?”

He looked at her, his plain honest face flushed and dogged now.

“Yes, I am goin’ down Quay Street mother, if ye want to know.”

Her instinct was true, then: he was going to see Annie Macer. She hated the Macers, distrusted them, the improvident father, that wild Plug Macer, the son. They were in the same category as the Leemings — not quite respectable. They were not even colliers, they were “fisherfoak,” part of that separate community which lived an uncertain life—“waste and wantry” Martha called it, faring on the fat of the land one month, boat and nets mortgaged the next. She had nothing against Annie’s character, some held she was a decent lass. But she was not the lass for her Sammy. She came from the wrong stock, she hawked fish in the open street, she had even gone to Yarmouth, one bad year, to retrieve the Macers’ fortunes, as a herring gutter. Sammy, her own dear son, whom she hoped one day to see the finest hewer in the Neptune, married to a herring gutter. Never. Never! She drew a long, deep breath.

“I don’t want ye to go out to-night, Sammy.”

“But you know, mother, I promised. Pug Macer and me was goin’ out. And Annie’s comin’ too.”

“Never mind that, Sammy.” Her voice turned harsh, strident. “I don’t want ye to go.”

He faced her; and in his loving, dog-like eyes she saw an unexpected firmness.

“Annie’s expecting me, mother. I’m sorry, but I’m going.”

He went out and very quietly closed the door.

Martha sat perfectly rigid; for the first time in his life Sammy had disobeyed her. She felt as if he had struck her on the face. Conscious of the covert glances of David and Hughie she tried to take command of herself. She rose, cleared the table, washed the dishes with hands that trembled.

David said:

“Shall I dry for you, mother?”

She shook her head, dried the dishes herself, sat down with some mending. With some difficulty she threaded her needle. She took up an old pit singlet of Sammy’s, so patched and darned scarcely any of the original flannel remained. The sight of the old pit singlet tore at her heart. She had been too harsh with Sammy, she felt suddenly that she had not taken him the right way, that she, not Sam, had been to blame. The thought pierced her. Sam would do anything for her, anything, if only she treated him properly.

With clouded eyes, she made to take up the singlet when all at once the pain in her back came on again. The pain was bad this time, transfixing her, and in the instant she knew it for what it was. Dismayed, she waited. The pain went, returned. Without a word she got up and went out of the back door of the kitchen. She walked with difficulty up the back. She went into the closet. Yes, it was that.

She came out, stood for a moment surrounded by the quiet darkness of the night, supporting herself against the low dividing fence with one hand, holding her swollen body with the other. It had come upon her then, while her husband was in prison, the last indignity. And before her grown sons. Inscrutable as the darkness which lay about her, she thought rapidly. She would not have Dr. Scott, nor Mrs. Reedy, the midwife, either. Robert had flung away their savings madly in the strike. She was in debt, she could not, she would not tolerate further expense. Within a minute her mind was made up.

She returned to the house.

“David! Run round to Mrs. Brace. Tell her to look in to me now.”

Startled, he looked at her questioningly. She was never a great one for David, who had always been his father’s boy, but now the expression in his eyes moved her. She said kindly:

“Never worry, Davey. I’m just not well.” As he scurried out she went over to the kist where she kept such linen as she had, unlocked it. Then, awkwardly, lifting one foot up to the other, she climbed the ladder to the lads’ room above.

Mrs. Brace, the neighbour, came in presently from next door. She was a kindly woman, short of breath and very stout: indeed, she looked, poor soul, as though she were going to have a baby herself. But it was not so. Hannah Brace was ruptured, as she phrased it, she had a big umbilical hernia, the result of repeated pregnancies, and, though her husband Harry faithfully promised her the article every Christmas, as yet no truss to restrain it: every night when she went to bed she solemnly pushed back the bulging mass, every morning when she got up the thing bulged out again. She had become almost attached to her rupture, it formed a topic of conversation, she spoke about it to her intimates as people do about the weather. She went up the ladder very cautiously too, and disappeared into the room above.

David and Hughie sat in the kitchen. Hughie had given over his cobbling, and now pretended to interest himself with a paper. David also pretended to read. But from time to time the two looked at each other, confronted by the mystery secretly unfolding in the room above, and in the eyes of each there was a strange shame. To think of it; and their own mother!

No sound came from the bedroom but the heavy thump of feet as Mrs. Brace moved about. Once she called down for a kettle of hot water. Davey handed it to her.

At ten o’clock Sam came back rather pale about the gills, his jaw set to meet a most tremendous row. They told him. He flushed, as he did so easily, and remorse flooded him. Sam never could bear ill will. He lifted his eyes to the ceiling.

“My poor mother,” he said. It was the most any of them dared to say.

At twenty minutes to eleven Mrs. Brace came down carrying a small newspaper package. She looked saddened and put out; she washed her red hands at the sink, took a drink of cold water; then she addressed herself to Sammy — the eldest:

“A little lass,” she said, “a bonny thing, but dead. Ay, still-born. I’d have done as well as Mrs. Reedy, don’t yon fret. But I niver had no chance. I’ll come in te-morrow an’ lay the littlin out. Take yer mother up a cup of cocoa now. She’s fair to middling; an’ I’ve my man’s bait to see to for the fore shift.” She lifted the package carefully, smiled gently at David who saw that red was coming through the newspaper, then she waddled out.

Sam made the cocoa and took it up. He remained about ten minutes. When he came down, his face was pale as clay, and the sweat had broken on his brow. He had come from his courting to look on death. David hoped that Sam might speak, say that their mother was comfortable. But all Sam said was:

“Get into bed, here, lads. We’ll sleep three thegither in the kitchen for a bit.”

Next morning, which was Tuesday, Mrs. Brace came in to see to Martha and, as she had promised, she laid out the still-born child. David returned from the pit earlier than the others; that night he had been lucky and ridden to bank two cage-loads ahead of the main shift. He entered the kitchen in the half-darkness. And there, upon the dresser, lay the body of the child.

He went over and looked at it with a queer catch of fear and awe. It was very small, its hands no bigger than the petals of a water lily. The tiny fingers had no nails. The palm of his own hand would have covered its face; the pinched, marble-white features, were perfect; the tiny blue lips parted as in wonderment that life was not. Mrs. Brace, with the real professional touch, had stuffed the mouth and nostrils with cotton-wool. Looking over his shoulder now, not without pride, she explained:

“It looks mortal pretty. But she couldna bear it upstairs wi’ her, your mother, Davey.”

David hardly heard her. A stubborn resentment surged within him as he gazed at the dead-born infant. Why should it be so? Why shouldn’t his mother have had food, care, attention, all that her condition demanded? Why was his child not living, smiling, sucking at the breast? It hurt him, stirred him to a fierce indignation. As on that occasion when the Wepts had given him food, a chord vibrated deeply, painfully within his being; and again he swore with all the inarticulate passion of his young soul to do something… something… he didn’t know what or how… but he would do it… strike some destroying stroke against the pitiful inhumanities of life.

Sam and Hughie came in together. They looked at the baby. Still in their pit clothes they ate the fried bacon Mrs. Brace had prepared. It was not the usual good meal, the potatoes were lumpy, there was insufficient water for the bath, the kitchen was upset, everything untidy, they missed their mother’s hand.

Later, when Sammy came down from upstairs he looked at his brothers furtively. He said awkwardly:

“She won’t have no funeral. I’ve talked an’ talked, but she won’t have it. She says since the lock-out we can’t face the expense.”

“But, Sammy, we must,” David cried. “Ask Mrs. Brace…”

Mrs. Brace was called to reason with Martha. It was useless, Martha was inexorable, an iron bitterness had seized her over this child she had not wanted and which now had no want of her. No funeral was exacted by law. She would not have it, none of the trappings or panoply of death.

Hughie, always clever with his hands, made a neat enough coffin from plain pit boards. They put clean white paper inside and laid the body in the rude shell. Then Hughie nailed on the lid.

Late on Thursday night Sam took the box under his arm and set out alone. He forbade Hughie and David to accompany him. It was dark and windy. They did not know where he had gone until he came back. Then he told them. He had borrowed five shillings from Pug Macer, Annie’s eldest brother, and given it to Geddes, the cemetery keeper. Geddes had let him bury the child privately in a corner of the graveyard. David often thought of that shallow grave; he never knew where it was; but he did know it was not near the pauper graves; this much Sammy told him.

Friday passed and Saturday came: the day of Robert’s release. Martha had been confined on Monday night. By Saturday afternoon she was up, waiting… waiting for him, for Robert.

He arrived at eight o’clock, to find her in the kitchen alone. He entered so quietly she did not know he was there until the sound of his cough made her spin round as she stood, still bent over the fire. They stared at each other, he quietly, without rancour, she with that terrible bitterness burning like dark fire in her eyes. Neither spoke. He flung his cap on the sofa, sat down at the table like a weary man. Immediately she went to the oven, drew out his plate of cooked dinner kept hot for him there. She placed it before him in that same terrible silence.

He began to eat, casting quick glances at her figure from time to time, glances that became charged with a strange apology. At length he said:

“What’s like the matter, my lass?”

She quivered with anger.

“Don’t call me your lass.”

He understood then what had happened; a kind of wonder stirred in him.

“What was it?” he asked.

She knew he had always wanted a daughter. And to cut him more she told him that his daughter was dead.

“So that was the way of it,” he sighed; and then: “Did ye have a bad time, lass?”

It was too much. She did not deign to answer at once; but with embittered servitude she removed his empty plate and placed his tea before him; then she said:

“I’m used to bad times like, since ever I knew you.”

Though he had come home for peace, her savage attitude provoked his tired blood.

“I canna help the way things hev gone,” he said with a sudden bitterness to match her own. “I hope ye understand they gaoled me for nowt.”

“I do not understand,” she answered, hand on her hip, facing him.

“They had their knife in me ower the strike, don’t ye see!”

“I’m not surprised,” she retorted, panting with anger.

It was then that his nerves broke. What, under heaven, had he done? He had brought the men out, because in his very marrow he feared for them in Scupper Flats, and in the end they had scoffed at him and spat upon him and let him go to gaol for nothing. Fury seethed in him, against her and against his fate. He lifted his hand and struck her on the face.

She did not flinch, she received the blow gratefully. Her nostrils dilated.

“Thanks,” she said. “That was good of ye. ’Twas all I needed.”

He sank back into his chair, paler than she. Then he began to cough, his deep booming cough. He was torn by this paroxysm. When it had passed he sat bowed, defeated; then he rose, threw off his clothes, got into the kitchen bed.

Next day, Sunday, though he awakened at seven, he stopped in bed all forenoon. She was up early and went to chapel. She forced herself to go, enduring the looks, slights and sympathy of the Bethel Street congregation, partly to show him up, partly to establish her own respectability. Dinner was a misery, especially for the lads. They hated it when open anger came between their father and mother. It paralysed the house, lay upon them like a degradation.

After dinner Robert walked down to the pit. He expected to find himself sacked. But he was not sacked. Dimly he realised that his friendship with Heddon, the miners’ agent, and with Harry Nugent of the Federation had helped him here. Fear of real trouble with the Union had saved his job for him at the Neptune.

He came straight home, sat reading by the fire, went silently to bed. Next morning the caller woke him, at two o’clock he was in the pit working the early fore shift.

All day long she prepared for his return in that same storm of unappeased bitterness. She would show him, make him pay… she kept looking at the clock, waiting for the hours to pass.

At the end of the shift he returned, dead beat and soaked to the skin. She prepared to wound him with her silent anger, but somehow the sight of him killed all the rankling in her heart.

“What’s like the matter?” she asked instinctively.

He leaned against the table, stifling his cough, gasping for breath.

“They’ve couped the cavils,” he said, meaning that the draw for positions in the Paradise had been overruled. “They’ve black-listed me, gi’en me the worst place in the whole district. A scabby three-foot roof. I’ve lay on my stomach in water, hewin’, all the shift.”

A throb of compassion beat within her. And with that beat of anguish something she had thought dead came painfully alive. She reached out her hands.

“Let me help ye, my lad. Let me help ye with your claes.”

She helped him strip the filthy sodden clothes. She helped him to the bath. She knew she still loved him.

NINE

David, five hundred feet underground and two miles from the main shaft, reckoned it was nearly bait time. He was in the Paradise, the Mixen-section of Paradise, the lowest level of the Neptune pit with Globe Coal two hundred feet above, and Five Quarter a hundred higher still. He had no watch, but the number of journeys he had made with his tubs from the flat to the landing gave him the clue. He stood beside Dick, his galloway, in the landing — where the full tubs which he, the horse putter, drove up, were hitched to the mechanical haulage and pulled outbye on the Paradise haulage road. He was waiting for Tally Brown to switch the empties. Though he hated the Paradise, David always liked the landing. It was cool, after a hot sweaty run, and he could stand upright without fear of banging his head.

While David waited he reflected on his own good fortune. He could barely believe it, that this should be his last Saturday in the Neptune. Not only his last Saturday; but his last day! No, he could not fully realise his luck.

He had always hated the pit. Some of the lads liked it, took to the work like a duck to water. But not he. Never! Perhaps his imagination was too vivid, he couldn’t lose the sense of being shut up, buried in these dark little warrens, deep down underground. He always remembered, too, in the Five Quarter Seam, that he was under the sea. Mr. Carmichael, the junior master at Bethel Street Council School, who had helped him over the scholarship, had told him the name of that queer sensation of feeling shut down. Deep underground; deep under the sea. While above the sun shone, the wind blew fresh, the waves broke white and lovely.

He always set himself stubbornly against that feeling. He’d be hanged if he’d give way to a thing like that. Yet, he was glad, glad to be leaving the Neptune, the more so as he had always had the odd notion that once a boy went down the pit, the pit claimed him, refused to let him go. Old pit-men said that, joking. In the darkness David laughed to himself, it was a joke, that, right enough.

Here Tally switched the empty tubs. David coupled them in a train of four, sprang on to the bar, clicked his tongue to Dick and set off down the pitch-black incline. Bang, bang went the tubs, jerking and crashing behind him on the badly laid track as he gathered speed. David prided himself on driving fast, of all the horse putters in the Paradise he could drive the fastest; and he was used to the banging of the tubs, he did not mind the din. What he did mind was the bother when a tub ran off; it nearly killed him, the raxing and straining to lift it back upon the line.

Down he went, down, down, smashing along at a glorious pace, balancing, guiding, knowing when to duck his head and when to throw his weight against the curve. It was reckless, terribly reckless, his father often checked him for driving so fast. But David loved the thrill of it. He drew up with a magnificent jolt at the putters’ flat.

Here, as he had anticipated, Ned Softley and Tom Reedy, the two hand putters who pushed the tubs from the coal face to the flat, were squatted in the refuge hole eating their bait.

“Come on, ye old beggor, and have yer snap,” Tom called out with his mouth full of bread and cheese, and he moved up the refuge hole to make room.

David liked Tom — a big, good-natured lad who had taken Joe’s place in the flat. He had often wondered where Joe had got to, what he was doing; and he wondered, too, why he missed Joe so little — Joe, after all, had been his mate. Perhaps it was because Tom Reedy had made so good a substitute: as genial as Joe, more willing to help with a run-off tub, less ready in the matter of lewd profanity. But though David was fond of Tom’s company he shook his head negatively:

“I’m going inbye, Tom.”

David really wanted to eat his bait with his father; whenever he got the chance he took his bait-poke and went in; he wasn’t going to miss it this last day.

The slant of the coal face was so low he had to bend himself double. The tunnel was like a rabbit run for size, so inky black his naked light, smoking a little, seemed hardly to carry a foot, and so wet, his feet made squelching noises as he plugged along. Once he hit his head against the hard scabby whinstone roof and swore gently.

When he reached the face his father and Slogger had not knocked off, but were still hewing coal to fill the empty tubs that Tom and Ned would shortly bring in. Stark naked except for boots and pit drawers, they were working bord and pillar. The place was awful, David knew, the work frightfully hard. He sat down on a dry bit, watching, waiting till they should finish. Robert, twisted sideways under the jud, was nicking the coal ready to bring it down. His breath came in short gasps, sweat ran out of every pore of his body, he looked done. There was no room to turn, the roof was so low it seemed to flatten him. Yet he worked tenaciously, with experience and wonderful skill. With him worked the Slogger. His enormous hairy torso and bull neck made him a titan beside Robert. He never spoke a word, kept chewing tobacco furiously, chewing and spitting and hewing. Yet David, with a quick pulse of gratitude, saw that he was saving his father, taking the heavy end of the stick, doing all the hardest bits himself. The sweat rained off Slogger’s bashed-in face, he bore no resemblance to the Pitboy Wonder.

At last they knocked off, wiped themselves with their singlets, slipped them on, came over and sat down.

“How, Davey?” said Robert when he saw his son.

“How again, dad?”

Harry Grace and Bob Ogle emerged from another heading and joined them. Hughie, his brother, followed silently. They all began to eat their bait.

To Davey, after a hard morning’s driving, the bread and cold bacon his mother had put up for him was delicious. He saw, however, that his father barely ate, merely drinking enormous draughts of cold tea from his bottle. And he had pie, too, in his poke. Since Robert and Martha had been reconciled she had made him the most appetising pokes. But Robert gave half of the pie to Slogger; he said he was not hungry.

“It ud take any mon’s appetite away,” remarked Harry Brace with a nod towards Robert’s heading. “It’s a bitch of a place for sure.”

“There’s no bloddy head room,” agreed Slogger, chewing pie with the noisy relish of a man whose missus usually gave him cut bread and dripping. “But this is bloddy good pie.”

“It’s the wet,” commented Ogle. “We hev it an’ all. Man, the roof fair bleeds water.”

There was a silence, broken only by the snoring of air through the wind-bore cast of the pump. The sound echoed in the darkness, mingled with the suck and gurgle of water through the lower snore-holes. Though they barely heard that sound, subconsciously each man approved it, aware, deep down within himself, that it meant the proper functioning of the pump.

Harry Brace turned to Robert.

“It’s not as wet as in the Scupper, though.”

“No!” said Robert quietly, “we’re well out o’ that sheugh.”

Slogger said:

“If the wet irks ye, Harry, lad, ye better ask the missus for a clout.”

Everybody laughed. Carried away by his success, Slogger gaily nudged David in the ribs.

“You’re a clivor young fella, Davey. Can ye do anything about my wet backside?”

“What about kicking it?” Davey suggested dryly.

There was a louder laugh than ever. Slogger grinned: in the dim light of that dark place he looked like some gay gigantic devil bent on a rich Satanic jest.

“Good lad! Good lad! That would warm it reet enough.” He approved Davey, taking his measure with one white eye. “Ye are a clivor fella after all. Is’t true what I hear, that yer goin’ te the Baddeley College to teach all the professors in Tynecassel?”

David said:

“I hope they’ll teach me, Slogger.”

“But for why in all the world are ye going?” expostulated Slogger with a wink at Robert. “Don’t ye want to grow up a proper collier like me wi’ an elegant figger an’ face? An’ a canny bit o’ money tucked away in the Fiddler’s bank.”

This time Robert did not see the joke.

“He’s going because I want him to get out of this,” he said sternly; and the burning stress he laid upon that word silenced them all. “He’s taken his chance. He’s worked hard, has got his scholarship, he goes to Tynecastle Monday.”

There was a pause, then Hughie, the silent one, suddenly declared:

“I wish I could get the length of Tynecassel. I’d fair love to see the United regular.” The longing in Hughie’s voice made Slogger laugh again.

“Don’t ye worry, lad.” He slapped Hughie on the back. “Ye’ll be playin’ for the United yerself one of they days. I’ve seen ye, I know what ye can do. Mon, I heard the Tynecassel spotter wor coming down to watch ye at the next Sleescale match.”

Hughie coloured under his dirt. He knew Slogger was pulling his leg. But he didn’t care. He’d get there one day, for all their jokes. He’d show them, and show them soon, he would!

All at once Brace lifted his head, cocked one ear towards the slant.

“Hey!” he exclaimed, “what’s like the matter wi’ the pump?”

Slogger stopped chewing, every one sat perfectly still, listening into the darkness. The snoring of the pump had stopped. For a full minute none of them spoke. David felt a queer cold pricking run down his spine.

“Dammit,” Slogger said slowly with a sort of obtuse wonder. “Will ye lissen to that! The pump has let up on us.”

Ogle, who was not long working in the Paradise, got to his feet and felt for the feeder. Hastily, he called out:

“The level’s rising. There’s more water here. A heap more water.” He paused, fumbling about with his arm in the water of the feeder; then, with sudden anxiety: “I’ll better fetch the deputy.”

“Wait!” Robert stopped him with a sudden sharp command; then in a reasoning tone he added: “Don’t be runnin’ outbye like a bairn, mon. Let Dinning bide where he is. Hover a bit! Hover a bit! There’s never any trouble with a bucket pump. And there’s nowt serious the matter wi’ this pump. It’s only some sludge choked up the clack. I’ll see to it myself.”

He got up in a quiet, unhurried style and went down the slant. The others waited, not speaking. In five minutes there came the slow suck of the cleared valve, the throaty gurgle of the restarted pump. Another three minutes and the healthy snoring was restored. The tension binding the men relaxed. A great sense of pride in his father’s knowledge broke over David.

“I’ll be damned…” Ogle sighed.

Slogger derided him.

“Don’t ye know there’s niver need to worry wi’ Robert Fenwick in the sett. Come on and fill some tubs. You’ll addle nowt by sittin’ here all day.” He rose, tugged off his singlet; Brace, Hughie and Ogle went back to their heading; David started towards his tubs, passing Robert as he came down the dip.

“You made short work o’ that, Robert,” Slogger said. “Ogle nearly had us roofed!” and he laughed extravagantly.

But Robert did not laugh. He pulled off his singlet with a curiously remote expression on his drawn face. Then he threw it down without looking. The singlet fell in a puddle of water.

They restarted. Swinging their picks, cutting, bringing down the coal. The sweat broke out on them again. The pit dirt clogged their skin. Five hundred feet down, two miles from shaft bottom. The moisture seeped slowly from the roof, it dropped incessantly like unseen rain in a pitch-dark night. And over and above it all there rose the measured stertor of the pump.

TEN

At the end of that shift David led his galloway to the stables and saw him comfortable.

This was the worst bit of all, he had known it would be the worst of all, but it was worse even than he had thought. With firm strokes David caressed the pony’s neck. Dick turned his long head, seemed to look at David with those soft blind eyes, then nuzzled towards the pocket of his jacket. Often David saved a bit of bread from his bait, or maybe a biscuit. But to-day there was something special; he pulled out a lump of cheese — Dick went simply mad about cheese — and slowly fed the pony, breaking off little pieces, holding them flat on his palm, spinning out the pleasure for Dick and for himself. The wet velvety feel of the galloway’s muzzle on his hand brought a lump to his throat. He slowly rubbed his wet hand on the lapel of his jacket, took a last look at Dick and went rapidly away.

He walked outbye down the main road, passing the place where a fall of roof had killed three men the year before: Harrower, and the two brothers Neil and Allen Preston, he had been there when they dug them out, all mangled, flattened, their chests caved in and bloody, their mouths pressed full of dirt. David would never forget that fall. He always walked slower under the place with a stubborn determination to show that he was not afraid.

Along the road he was joined by Tom Reedy and his brother Jack, Softley, Ogle, young Cha Leeming, son of the Slogger, by Dan Teasdale and some others. They reached the shaft bottom where a big crowd stood waiting to ride the bank, jammed together yet patient. The cage was single and could take only twelve persons at a time. Besides the Paradise the cage was serving Globe and Five Quarter Coal, the levels above. David found himself squeezed next to Wept, away from the larking of Tom Reedy and Softly. Wept fixed him with his dark, intense gaze.

“Ye’re going to college, then, to Tynecassel?”

David nodded. Again it seemed to him too strange to be real. Perhaps he was a little worn by the last six months, the strain of working by night, of studying with Mr. Carmichael, whirling to Tynecastle to sit the scholarship, learning joyfully of the result. The silent struggle between his mother and his father had worried him too: Robert doggedly intent that he should get the scholarship and leave the pit, Martha equally determined he should remain. When the news had come of his success, she had said nothing, not one word. She had not even prepared his clothes for his departure, she would have no hand in it, she would not.

“Ye must mind Tynecassel, lad,” Wept said. “Ye’re takin’ your journey into the wilderness where they meet with darkness in the daytime and grope in the noonday as in the night. Here!” He slipped his hand into his inside pocket and pulled out a thin folded finger-marked booklet much soiled by coal dust. “You’ll find counsel in this! It’s been good company to me many a bait time in this very pit.”

David took the tract, colouring. He did not want it; at the same time he did not want to hurt Wept’s feelings. Awkwardly he turned the pages — the light was bad, he could barely see, but he could think of nothing else to do. Suddenly his lamp flickered and a phrase leaped up to him: No servant can serve two masters, ye cannot serve God and mammon.

Wept watched him with intent eyes. Over his shoulder Tom Reedy whispered slyly:

“Has he gi’en ye the winner of the three o’clock?”

Around him the men were beginning to sway. The cage crashed down. From the back someone shouted:

“All in, lads! All in.”

There was a rush, the usual squash for places. David jammed in with the rest. The cage lifted, swishing up the guides, up, up as though plucked by a gigantic hand. Daylight came flooding down to meet it. There came a clang, the bar lifted, the men crushed out into the sweet daylight as though welded in a solid mass.

David clattered down the steps with the men, crossed the pit yard, took his place in the pay line outside the offices. It was a bright June day. The hard outline of the headgear, stocks and spinning pulleys, even the smoking upcast stack, was softened by the languid beauty of the day. A wonderful day to be leaving the pit.

The line moved slowly forward. David saw his father come out of the cage, he had been the last to ride the bank, and take his place right at the end of the line. Then he observed the dogcart from the Law drive through the yard gates. The occurrence of the dogcart was quite normal: every pay-Saturday Richard Barras drove down to the offices while the men stood lined up for their envelopes. It was a sort of ritual.

The dogcart took a neat sweep, its yellow spokes flashing in the sun, and brought up opposite the offices. Richard Barras descended, holding himself erect, and disappeared through the main door of the offices. Bartley was already at the horse’s head. Arthur Barras, who had been wedged between the two, remained seated in the dogcart.

From a distance, as he moved slowly forward, David studied Arthur; wondered about him idly. Without in the least knowing why, he felt a strange sympathy for Arthur; an extremely odd sensation, peculiar, paradoxical almost, as if he were sorry for Arthur. It was ridiculous considering their respective situations. Yet the small boy, undersized for his age, perched all by himself upon the seat of the dogcart with his soft fair hair ruffled by the breeze, looked so very much alone. He invoked protection. And he was so serious, his gravity, his serious preoccupation lay upon him like a sadness. When he discovered that he was pitying Arthur Barras David almost laughed aloud.

His turn at the window came. He went forward, received his pay envelope thrust through the opening by Pettit, the cashier. Then he lounged over to the yard gates to await his father. As he reached the gate post and leaned his back against it, Annie Macer passed down Cowpen Street. At the sight of him she smiled and stopped. She did not speak; Annie seldom spoke until she was spoken to; no, she stopped and smiled out of friendship; but she waited until he should speak to her.

“All by yourself, Annie?” he said companionably. He liked Annie Macer; he really did like her; he could understand perfectly why Sam should be so gone on her. She was so simple, fresh, homely. She had no pride. She was herself. Transparently there was no nonsense about Annie. For some absurd reason he associated Annie with a little silvery fresh herring. Yet Annie was not little, nor had she the least resemblance to a herring. She was a big-boned strapping girl of his own age, with generous hips and a fine firm bosom; she wore a blue serge skirt and coarse hand-knitted stockings. Annie knitted these stockings herself; she had never read a book in her life; but she had knitted a great many pairs of stockings.

“It’s my last day this, Annie,” he declared, making conversation to detain her. “I’m done with the Neptune for good… water, muck, ponies, tubs and all.”

She smiled tolerantly.

“I’m not sorry,” he added. “No, you may bet your life I’m not sorry.”

She nodded her head understandingly. There fell a silence. She looked up and down the street. Then with her friendly smile she nodded again and went off.

Pleased, he followed her with his eyes. It struck him that she had not spoken a single word. Yet he had enjoyed every minute of her company. Good for Annie Macer!

Turning again he looked towards his father: he was still a long way from the window. What a time Pettit was taking to-day. He leaned back, kicking his heels against the post.

Suddenly he became aware that he, in his turn, was being observed: Barras, escorted by Armstrong, had returned to the dogcart, they stood together, the owner and the viewer, staring directly at him. He stared back at them, dourly, determined not to be put down by them; after all, he was leaving the pit, wasn’t he? — he didn’t give tuppence now. For a minute they continued talking, then Armstrong laughed respectfully, raised his hand and beckoned him over. He had half a mind not to go, yet he did go, taking care, however, to go slowly.

“Mr. Armstrong tells me that you have won a scholarship at the Baddeley.”

David saw that Barras was in high good humour; yet felt the keen scrutiny of his small cold eyes.

“I’m very pleased,” Barras went on, “to hear of your success. What are you after — at the Baddeley?”

“I want to take my B.A.”

“H’m — your B.A.? Why don’t you go in for mining engineering?”

David answered defiantly, something in Barras provoked his defiance:

“I’ve no interest in the work.”

His defiance slid off Barras like water off cold stone.

“Really… no interest?”

“No! I don’t like it underground.”

“You don’t like it,” Barras echoed aloofly. “You want to take up teaching.”

David saw that Armstrong had told him.

“No, no. I’ll not stop at teaching.” He regretted the remark instantly. That hot defiant pride had betrayed him into revealing himself. He felt the incongruity of it, standing there in his pit clothes with Arthur there in the dogcart looking and listening; he felt like some sickly hero of an autobiography — Log Cabin to White House; but he was stubborn enough not to withdraw. If Barras asked, he’d tell him outright what he meant to do.

But Barras seemed to have no curiosity whatever, no consciousness of antagonism. He simply went on, as though he had not heard David, went on to moralise:

“Education is a fine thing. I never stand in anyone’s way. When you finish at the Baddeley you might let me know. I’m on the Board! I might get you into one of the County schools. We always have a place for junior teachers.”

He seemed to recede from David behind the strong lenses of his glasses. Remotely, thus, he slipped his hand into his trousers pocket, pulled out a large white palmful of silver. In his unhurried style he picked out a half-crown, weighed it mentally; then he put it back, selecting instead a two-shilling piece.

“Here’s a florin,” he said calmly, rather majestically, making it a gift and a dismissal.

David was so dumbfounded he took the coin. He stood with it in his hand while Barras mounted, took his seat in the dogcart. He was dimly conscious of Arthur’s friendly smile upon him. Then the dogcart moved off.

A wild impulse to laugh came over David. He recollected the text in the tract Wept had given him. “Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” Inwardly he repeated: “Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Ye cannot serve God…” It was funny, oh, it was funny!

He turned abruptly and went towards the yard gates where Robert now stood, in his turn, waiting for him. David saw that his father had been a spectator of the whole scene. He saw that his father was furious. Robert was pale with fury, he kept his eyes down, not looking at David.

They went out of the yard together, side by side, walking up Cowpen Street. Not a word passed between them. A little way up they were joined by Swee Messer. Immediately Robert began to talk to Swee in an ordinary friendly way. Swee was a good-looking blond-haired lad, always light-hearted and gay, a filler, not in the Paradise but in Globe Coal, higher up. Swee’s real name was Oswey Messuer, his father was the barber in Lamb Street, a naturalised Austrian who had been settled twenty years in Sleescale. They were popular, father and son, each in his own sphere, the son gaily filling tubs in the pit, the father meekly lathering chins in the parlour of his shop.

Robert went on talking to Swee as though nothing had happened to disturb him. As Swee branched off along Freehold Street he said:

“Tell your dad I’ll be down four o’clock as usual.”

But the moment Swee was gone Robert’s face relapsed into its former bitterness. His features seemed to contract, to tighten upon the bone. In silence he tramped along with David until they reached half-way up Cowpen Street. Then he paused. Opposite was Middlerig, the back yard of the old cow-stalls, a filthy place, an eyesore to the town, rank with rotting straw, ordure and an enormous dung-heap. He faced David.

“What did he gie ye, son?” he asked quietly.

“He gave me two shillings, dad.” And David exposed the florin which he still kept, from shame, gripped tightly, secretly in his palm.

Robert took the coin, looked at it, silently, then flung it from him with a savage force.

“There,” he said, as though the word hurt him. “There!”

The florin pitched right into the centre of the dung-heap.

ELEVEN

The night, the great night of the Millington Social arrived. Millington’s, situated at the dead end of a lane off Platt Street, employed about two hundred men and, though small, was not without impressiveness, especially if viewed on a dull March afternoon. From the chimneys of the furnaces, in which the iron was melted, tongues of red flame and dense clouds of smoke belched upwards. The drab sky, illuminated by the white-hot stream of molten metal flowing from the cupolas to the ladles, seemed to burn with a brassy glare. Pungent fumes rising from the foundry floor as the liquid iron poured into the moulds assailed the nostrils. The ears were stung by the heavy thud of hammers, the ringing of the fettlers’ chisels as they dressed the iron castings, the whirring of driving belts and gear wheels, the piercing scream of the lathes and the milling machines, the burr of the saws as they gnawed into metal. And through the haze emerging from the open doors the eye picked up the dim figures of men, stripped to the waist because of the tremendous heat.

The chief product of the foundry was colliery equipment — iron tubs, haulage gear, roofing bars and heavy forged shackle-bolts, but competition was keen in this market, and Millington’s kept going more through their conservative connection with old-established firms than through enterprise. Millington’s was itself an old-established firm. Millington’s had tradition. And part of that tradition was the Social Club.

Millington’s Social Club, founded in the ’seventies by the Grand Old Man — Wesley Millington, catered in the most benevolent manner for the Workman and the Workman’s Family. The Club had four sections: Literary, Rambling, Photography — Dark Room included — and Athletic. But the scintillating event in the Social Club’s calendar was the Dance, known from time immemorial as the Social, and held, invariably, in the Oddfellows’ Hall.

To-night, Friday, March 23rd, was the actual night of gaiety and gladness; yet Joe went home from his work at the foundry in a crush of sombre meditation. Naturally Joe was going to the Social, he was already a prime favourite in the Club, a rising member in the boxing section, likely candidate for the novices’ billiards handicap. Joe had done pretty well in these last eight months, filled out substantially, put more muscle on his shoulders and, in his own phrase, made a deuce of a lot of pals. He was a grand mixer, Joe, a hearty slapper on the back, with a resonant: “How do, ole man!” a ready laugh — a fine manly laugh — a firm handshake and he was, oh, such a lovely teller of a smutty story. Everybody at the works, from Porterfield, the foreman, to Mr. Stanley Millington himself, everyone who really mattered, seemed to take to Joe; at least everyone but Jenny.

Jenny! Joe thought of her as he tramped over the High Level Bridge, reviewing the situation with a moody eye. She was going to the Social with him, certainly she was. But what did that mean, when all was said and done? Nothing, plain nothing at all! How far had he got with Jenny in these eight months? Not so very far, by gum, no, not so very far. He had taken her out plenty — Jenny loved to go out — spent money on her, yes, spent his good money like water. But what had he received in return? A few kisses, a few short kisses, surrendered unwillingly, a few pushed-away embraces which only whetted his appetite for more.

He let out a long, gloomy breath: if Jenny thought she’d make a mug out of him she was mistaken, he’d tell her a few plain truths, chuck the whole thing and be done with her. But no, he’d said that before. He’d said that a dozen times before. And he hadn’t chucked her. He wanted her, even more than on that first day… and even then he had wanted her badly enough. He cursed right out loud.

She puzzled him: treating him sometimes with a haughty arrogance, sometimes with coquettish intimacy. She was always pleasantest to him when he was all dressed up in his new blue serge suit and the derby hat she had made him buy. But if by chance she met him in his dirty dungarees she sailed past him with a distant air, almost froze him with her look. It was the same when they went out: if he took her to a good seat at the Empire, she purred, smiled up into his face, let him hold her hand; yet, if he suggested a stroll after dark round the Town Moor, she would accompany him quite pettishly, her head well in the air, her answers short and snappy, keeping herself a full yard from his side. When he asked her to McGuigan’s coffee-stall for sausage and mash she would sniff and say: “That’s the sort of place my father goes to.” But an invitation to Leonard’s High Class Tea Rooms in the High Street found her beaming, snuggling to his side. She wanted to be above her family, better than they; she corrected her father, her mother and her sisters, Sally especially. She was always correcting him, too, pulling him up, disdainfully telling him how to raise his hat, carry his cane, walk on the outside of the pavement, and crook his little finger when he drank his tea. She was terribly genteel, crammed with etiquette culled from the columns of the women’s penny journals. From the same columns she got her fashion hints, “shapes” for the dresses she made herself, advice on how to keep her hands white, how “the white of an egg mixed with the rinsing water” would bring out the glossy lustre of her hair.

Mind you, he did not mind this striving towards refined gentility, in fact he liked it, little things like her Jockey Club scent or her lace camisole — pink ribbon threaded, seen through her blouse — excited him, made him feel that she was different from the street tarts he had possessed occasionally, during these tantalising months of hope deferred.

The very thought of what he had endured goaded his desire intolerably. As he went up the front steps of 117A Scottswood Road he told himself that he would bring matters to a head to-night or know the reason why.

When he went into the back room he saw from the clock that he was late. Already Jenny had gone upstairs to dress. Mrs. Sunley was lying down in the parlour with a sick headache. Phyllis and Clarry had gone into the street to play. It was left to Sally to give him his tea.

“Where’s your dad?” Joe asked suddenly when he had wolfed his two kippers and the best part of a new loaf, and swilled down three big cups of tea.

“Gone to Birmingham. The secretary couldn’t go, so dad went instead. He’s taken all the club homers and ours too. For to-morrow.”

Joe lifted his fork and picked his teeth reflectively. So Alf had a free trip to Birmingham for the Saturday Pigeon Flight. Lucky dog!

Studying Joe critically, Sally now loosed upon him a shaft from her precocious wit.

“Don’t swallow that fork,” she warned him gravely. “It’ll rattle when you do the polka.”

He scowled at her. He was only too well aware that Sally loathed him, however much he tried he could not win her round. He had the uncomfortable feeling, under her dark eyes, that Sally saw through him; sometimes her shrill derisive laugh cutting into his manly conversation would take him completely aback, rend his composure from him, make him blush horribly.

His scowl gratified her; her eyes sparkled. Though she was only eleven, her sense of drollery was acute. Gaily she went on with the game of taking him off.

“You ought to be a good dancer, too, you’ve such big feet. Can you reverse, Miss Sunley? Yes indeed, Joe, I mean Mr. Gowlan, excuse the liberty. Shall we try? Please do, Mr. Gowlan, dear. Isn’t the music too lovelee? Ouch! ye beggor, ye tramped on me corn.”

She was really very funny, screwing up her comic little face, rolling her big black eyes, mimicking Jenny’s fastidious accent to perfection.

“Shall I stand you an ice, my deah? Or would you prefer tripe? Beautiful tripe. Straight from the cow. You can have all the curly bits.” She jerked her head upwards. “She’s curling her hair upstairs. Miss Sunley. Jenny, the lady toff what sleeps with the clothes-peg on her nose. Been at it for an hour. Come straight from in the millineree, not serving mind you, that’s what the slaveys do, that’s comming! Made me heat the irons, she did, caught me a cuff on the ear for the good of the house. There’s temper for you, Joseph, take a stitch in time before you leap!”

“Ah, be quiet will you… you cheeky little brat.” He rose from the table, made for the door.

She pretended to blush, remarking mincingly:

“Don’t be so formal, Mr. Gowlan, dear. Just call me plain Maggie. With such lovelee eyes ain’t it a shame you smoke. Oh, don’t think of leaving me so soon,” deliberately she got in his way, “just let me sing you a song before you go, Mr. Gowlan. One tiny little song.” Folding her hands in coy imitation of Jenny standing at the piano she began, very falsetto:

“See the little pansy faces,

Growing in the garden there…”

She stopped when the door banged behind him, burst into a peal of delighted laughter, then took a flying header on to the sofa. She lay curled up on the edge whanging the springs with her own delight.

Upstairs Joe shaved, scrubbed himself, robed carefully in the best blue serge, knotted a new green tie, neatly laced his shiny brown boots. Even so he was ready before Jenny; he waited impatiently in the hall. Yet when she did come down she took his breath away, knocked the puff right out of him: dressed in a pink frock, white satin shoes, a white crochet shawl — known in the vogue of the moment as a fascinator—over her hair. Her grey eyes had a cool lustre in her clear, petalled face. She was delicately sucking a scented cachou.

“By gum, Jenny, you look a treat!”

She accepted his homage as a matter of course, slipped her everyday cloth coat over her finery, took the front door key with a womanly air and put it in her coat pocket. Then she caught sight of his brown boots. Her lip dropped.

“I wish, Joe,” she said peevishly, “that you had got yourself a pair of pumps. I told you to a week ago.”

“Ah, all the fellows wear these at the Social, I asked them.”

“Don’t be a fool! As if I didn’t know! You’ll make me look ridiculous with these brown boots. Have you got the cab?”

“Cab!” His jaw fell; did she think he was Carnegie? he said sulkily: “We’re going by tram.”

Her eyes frosted with temper.

“I see! So that’s what you think of me! I’m not good enough to have a cab.”

From the landing above Ada called out:

“Don’t be late, you two. I’ve taken a Daisy powder and I’m going to bed.”

“Don’t you worry, ma,” Jenny answered in a mortal huff. “We certainly shan’t be late.”

They caught a red tram which was, unfortunately, very full. The tram’s fullness made Jenny more sulky, she stared the conductor out of countenance when he asked Joe for something smaller. During the whole journey she did not speak. But at last they reached Yarrow, got out of the crowded red tram. They approached the Oddfellows’ Hall in the chill silence of her offended dignity. When they entered the hall the Social had already begun.

Actually, it was not a bad Social, an intimate informal affair rather like the annual gathering of a large and happy middle-class family. At one end of the hall were tables set out with the supper: cakes, sandwiches, biscuits, green jellies, lots of small hard oranges that looked full of pips and were, bright red bottles of kola and two huge brass urns for tea and coffee. At the other end on a very high platform, screened by two aspidistras and a palm, was the orchestra, a grand orchestra, it had a full bass drum, used without stint, and Frank McGarvie at the piano. No one could put in more wonderful “twiddley-bits” than Frank. And the time? Impossible to put a foot wrong with Frank McGarvie’s time, it was so wonderful, as though bunged out with a hammer—La de dee, La de dee, La de dee — the floor of the Oddfellows’ Hall went up on the la and down, reverberating, on that final dee.

Every one was matey, there was no side, no nonsense of pencil and programme. Two foolscap sheets — beautifully written out by Frank McGarvie’s sister — were pasted on opposite walls indicating the number and order of the dances! Valse… Nights of Gladness, 2 Valetta… In a Gondola with You, and so on. Much companionable crowding took place round the lists, giggling, craning of necks, linking of arms, commingling of perfume, perspiration and exclamations: “Hey, Bella, hinny, can ye do the military two-step?”: in which fashion partners were achieved. Or a young husky, having scanned the list, might take a gallant slide across the slippy powdered floor, his impetus carrying him straight on to the bosom of his beloved. “It’s the lancers, lass, diddent ye know? Come on an’ dance it wi’ us.”

Jenny took a look at the assembly. She saw the poor refreshments, the pasted programmes on the steamy walls, the cheap and gaudy dresses, bright red, blue and green, the ridiculous dress suit of old Mike McKenna, the honoured master of ceremonies; she saw that gloves and slippers were considered by many to be non-essential; she saw the coterie of fat elderly puddlers’ wives seated in a corner, conversing amicably while their offspring skipped and hopped and slid upon the floor before them. Jenny saw all this in one long look. Then she turned up her pretty nose.

“This,” she sniffed to Joe, “gives me the pip.”

“What?” he gaped.

She snapped at him then, “It’s not nice, it’s not classy, it’s low.”

“But aren’t you going to dance?”

She tossed her head indifferently.

“Oh, we might as well, I suppose, take the benefit of the floor. The tickets are paid for, aren’t they?”

So they danced, but she held herself well away from him, and well apart from all the hand-clapping and stamping and screeches of merriment round about.

“Who’s that?” said she disdainfully as they two-stepped past the door.

Joe followed her eyes. That was an inoffensive looking fellow, a middle-aged man, with a round head, a compact figure and slightly bandy legs.

“Jack Lynch,” Joe said. “He’s a blacksmith in the shop. Seems to have a notion of you.”

“Him!” Jenny said, smirking stiffly at her own wit. “I’ve seen better in a cage.”

She lapsed into her monosyllabic mood, lifting her eyebrows, keeping her head well up in the air, condescending. She wanted it to be seen that she was, in her own phrase, above all this.

Yet Jenny was a little premature. Gradually, as the evening wore on, people began to drop in: not the workpeople, the plain members of the Club who had crowded to the Social at the start, but the honorary members, a few draughtsmen from the drawing office, Mr. Irving, the accountant, and his wife, Morgan, the cashier, and actually old Mr. Clegg, the works manager. Jenny unbent slightly; she even smiled at Joe:

“It seems to be improving.”

No sooner had she spoken than the doors swung open and Stanley Millington arrived, Mr. Stanley himself, our Mr. Stanley. It was a great moment. He entered genially, crisp and well-groomed in a very smart dinner suit, bringing his fiancée with him.

This time Jenny really sat up, fixing her shrewd noticing stare upon the two smart young people as they smiled and shook hands with several of the older members of the Club.

“That’s Laura Todd with him,” she whispered breathlessly. “You know, her father’s the mining engineer in the Groat Market, I see her about plenty I can tell you. They got engaged last August, it was in the Courier.”

Joe stared at her eager face. Jenny’s burning interest in the “smart” society of Tynecastle, her delight in being posted to the last detail, left him quite nonplussed. But she now unbent completely towards him.

“Why aren’t we dancing, Joe?” she murmured, and rose to twirl languorously in his arms near Millington and Miss Todd.

“That frock of hers… a model… straight out of Bonar’s,” she whispered confidentially in Joe’s ears as they swept past. Bonar’s was, of course, the last word in Tynecastle. “And that lace…” she lifted her eyes expressively… “well…”

The gaiety increased, the drum thundered, Frank McGarvie put in more twiddley-bits than ever, the pace got fast and furious. Every one was so glad that young Mr. Stanley had found “time to come.” And to bring Miss Laura with him, too! Stanley Millington was “well thought of” in Yarrow. His father had died some years before while Stanley was seventeen and still at school at St. Bede’s. Stanley had therefore come hot foot to the works — athletic, upstanding, very fresh complexioned, with the small beginnings of a moustache — to learn the business under old Henry Clegg. Now, at twenty-five, Stanley was in command, enthusiastic and indefatigable, always extremely eager to do what he called the correct thing. Every one agreed that Stanley had the right spirit, it was the advantage of having been “at a good school.”

Founded fifty years before by a group of rich northern nonconformist merchants, St. Bede’s, in the short span of its existence, had achieved the true public school tradition. Prefects, fags, tuck shop, esprit de corps, inspiring school song, St. Bede’s has them all and more, as though Dr. Fuller, the first head master, had gone round all the ancient schools of England with a butterfly net, capturing skilfully from each the choicest of its customs. Sport bulks largely at St. Bede’s. Colours are awarded freely. They are pretty colours; purple, scarlet and gold. Stanley, passionately devoted to his old school, was naturally devoted to its colours. Usually he wore something on his person — tie, cuff links, braces or suspenders, emblazoned in the famous purple, scarlet and gold — a kind of testimony to the true sportsmanship for which St. Bede’s has always stood.

In a manner of speaking, Mr. Stanley’s sportsmanship was the reason of his coming to the Social. He wanted to be decent, to do the decent, the correct thing. And so he was here, extremely agreeable, shaking horny hands, interspersing his waltzes with Laura with several dances with the heavier wives of the old employees.

As the evening wore on, Jenny’s bright smile, which had developed upon the entry of our Mr. Stanley and Laura Todd, became a trifle fixed; her laughter, which always seemed to ripple out, as she wheeled past either the one, or the other, or both, a trifle forced. Jenny was burning to be “noticed” by Miss Todd, dying simply for our Mr. Stanley to ask her to dance. But, no, nothing happened, it really was too bad. Instead Jack Lynch kept staring at her, following her about, trying to get the chance to ask her for a dance.

Jack was not a bad lad, the trouble was that Jack was drunk. Everybody knew that Jack was fond of a bead and to-night, nipping in and out of the Hall to the adjacent Duke of Cumberland, Jack had strung a good few beads on his alcoholic rosary. In the ordinary way Jack would have stood by the Hall door, nodding happily to the music and at the end gone home unsteadily upon his bandy legs to bed. But to-night Jack’s bad angel hovered near.

The last dance before supper Jack straightened his tie, and swaggered over to Jenny.

“Come awa’, hinny,” he said in his broad Tyneside. “You an’ me’ll show them.”

Jenny tossed her head and looked pointedly across the room. Joe, sitting beside her, said:

“Away you go, Jack. Miss Sunley’s dancing with me.”

Jack swayed on his feet:

“But aw want her to dawnce wi’ me.” He reached out his arm with rough gallantry. There was not an ounce of harm in Jack but he staggered, so that his big paw fell accidentally on Jenny’s shoulder.

Jenny screamed dramatically. And Joe, rising in a sudden heat, planted a right hook dexterously on the point of Jack’s chin. Jack measured his length on the floor. Hubbub broke.

“I say, what’s all this?” Mr. Stanley, thrusting his way forward, came through the crowd to where Joe stood gallantly with his chest stuck out and his arm round the pale-faced, frightened Jenny. “What’s happened? What’s the trouble?”

The manly Joe, with his heart in his boots, replied virtuously:

“He was drunk, Mr. Millington, rotten drunk. A fellow’s got to draw the line somewhere.” Joe had been out on a beautiful blind with Lynch the Saturday before, they had both been chucked out of the Empire Bar, but he forgot, oh, he rose above that now. “He was drunk and interfered with my friend, Mr. Stanley. I only protected her.”

Stanley took in the pair of them — the clean-limbed young fellow… beauty in distress; then, with a frown, the figure of the fallen drunkard.

“Drunk,” he exclaimed. “That’s too bad, really too bad. I can’t have any of that here! My people are decent people and I want them to enjoy themselves decently. Carry him out, will you. Attend to it, Mr. Clegg, please. And let him come and see me at the office to-morrow. He can have his ticket.”

Jack Lynch, the obscenity, was carried out. Next day he was sacked. Stanley turned again to Joe and Jenny; smiled in answer to Joe’s grin and Jenny’s melting winsomeness.

“That’s all right,” he nodded reassuringly. “You’re Joe Gowlan, aren’t you? I know you perfectly. I know all you chaps, make a point of it. Introduce me to your girl, Joe. How do you do, Miss Sunley? You must dance with me if you will, Miss Sunley, take that little unpleasantness away if we can. And you, Joe, let me introduce you to my girl. Perhaps you’ll dance with her, eh?”

So Jenny floated away ecstatically in the arms of Mr. Stanley, holding herself very, very properly, elbow fashionably straight, conscious that every eye in the room was fixed upon her. And Joe pranced heavily with Miss Todd, whose eyes seemed to find amusement in him and a certain interest.

“That was a lovely punch,” she said with the little humorous twist to her lips that was her mannerism.

He admitted the punch to be a superior punch, feeling virtuous and painfully ill at ease.

“I like a chap,” she casually commented, “to be able to take care of himself.” She smiled again. “But don’t look as if you’d suddenly joined the Good Templars.”

Stanley, Miss Todd, Jenny and Joe took supper together. Jenny was in heaven. She smiled, showed her pretty teeth, cast her dark lashes down entrancingly; she ate jelly with her fork; left a little of everything upon her plate. She was a little shaken when Laura Todd, lifting an orange, bit into the skin off-handedly with her white teeth. She was even more shaken when Laura nonchalantly borrowed Stanley’s handkerchief. But it was rapture, rapture, all of it, every moment. And to crown all, when it was over, and the Social breaking up, Joe, in atonement for that earlier sin of omission, magnificently commandeered a cab.

The last compliments were exchanged; good-byes called, much waving of hands. In a flutter of petticoats and excitement Jenny stepped into the greenish mildewed vehicle which smelt of mice, funerals, weddings and damp livery stables. The little woolly balls of her fascinator dangled deliriously. She sank back in the cushions.

“Oh, Joe,” she gushed. “It’s been perfectly lovely. I didn’t know you knew Mr. Millington so well. Why didn’t you tell me? I’d no idea. He’s very nice. She is too, of course. Not good-looking, mind you, a bit of a one to go, I should say. Real style, though. That dress she had on cost pounds and pounds let me tell you, the last word, and I should know. Did you notice when she bit that orange, though? and the hanky?… I could have dropped. My! I wouldn’t have done a thing like that. Not at all ladylike. Do you hear me, Joe, listen!”

He assured her tenderly that he heard. Alone with her in the dark cab, the longing he had for her rose suddenly to fever heat. His whole body flamed, swelled with that longing. All the evening he had held her in his arms, felt her thinly covered body against his. For months she had staved him off. Now he had her, here, alone. Burning, he shifted his position, carefully edged nearer to her, as she lay back in the corner of the cab, and slipped his arm round her waist. She was still talking nineteen to the dozen, excited, lifted out of herself, gay.

“Some day I’ll have a dress like hers, Miss Todd’s I mean. Satin it was and real lace edging. She knows what’s what I’ll be bound. She’s got the look of a real fast one, too, you can always tell.”

Gently, very gently he drew her close to him, murmured, making his voice caressing:

“I’m not wanting to talk about her, Jenny. I didn’t notice her at all. It’s you I noticed. I’m noticin’ you now!”

She giggled, well pleased.

“You’re far, far better lookin’ than her. And your dress looked a heap prettier an’ all.”

“Two and four the material cost, Joe… I got the pattern out of Weldon’s.”

“By gum, you’re a wonder, Jenny…” He continued skilfully to flatter her. And the more he flattered, the more he fondled her. He could feel she was excited, strung up, letting him do little things he had never been allowed to do before. Elation swelled in him. Thirsting for her, he moved ever so cautiously.

Suddenly she called out sharply:

“Don’t, Joe! Don’t! You got to behave.”

“Ah, what’s your worry, my dear,” he soothed her.

“No, Joe, no! It’s wrong. It isn’t right.”

“It isn’t wrong, Jenny,” he whispered piously. “Don’t we love each other?”

Tactically it was perfect. Whatever his status in the billiards handicap, Joe certainly was no novice in the seducer’s gentle art. Flustered, feeling him close to her:

“But, no, Joe… well, not here, Joe.”

“Ah, Jenny…”

She struggled.

“Look, Joe, we’re nearly there. See, Plummer Street. We’re nearly home. Let me go, Joe. Let me go.”

Sullenly he lifted his hot face from her neck, saw that she was right. Burning with disappointment, he almost gave way to loud profanity. But he got out, helped her to alight, flung a shilling to the scarecrow of a jarvie, followed her up the steps. The curve of her figure from behind, her simple act of taking the key and sliding it into the keyhole maddened him with desire. Then he remembered that Alf, her father, was away for the night.

In the kitchen, lit only by the firelight, she faced him: for all her offended maidenhood she seemed reluctant to go to bed. The excitement, the unusualness of it all worked in her, and her triumph at the Social still buzzed in her head. She postured a little coyly.

“Will I light the gas and make you some cocoa, Joe?”

With an effort he mastered his sullenness, his frantic desire to seize her. Plaintively he said:

“You don’t give a fella a chance, Jenny. Come on and sit on the sofa a bit. I haven’t had a word with you all night.”

Half-awakened, half-afraid, she stood undecided; it was so dull to say good night and go to bed; and Joe really looked awful handsome tonight; taking that cab, too, he had behaved handsome. She giggled again:

“Well… it won’t hurt us to talk.” She moved to the sofa.

On the sofa he took her close in his arms: it was easier now that he had done it before; she tried only half-heartedly to snatch herself away. He felt the excitement, the unusualness of the whole evening vibrating through her body.

“Don’t Joe, don’t. We got to behave.” She kept on repeating it, not knowing what she said.

“Ah, Jenny, you must. You know I’m mad about you. You know we love each other.”

Fascinated, terrified in one breath, resisting, yielding, lost in fear, pain and something unknown:

“But, Joe… You’re hurting me, Joe.”

He knew he had her now, knew with a wild delicious knowledge that this, at last, was Jenny.

The fire was going out. The grate empty. Now that it was long over and her period of snivelling done, she whispered:

“Hold me tight, Joe… tighter, Joe dear.”

God! Could you beat it, and him lying there uncomfortable as the devil, with some of her hair getting in his mouth. As she snuggled up to him, offering her pale, tear-stained, pretty face — now shorn of all silly affectation — for his kiss she was for once simple and beautiful like one of her father’s little pearly doves. Yet now he almost, yes, he almost could have kicked her. There was, of course, the extenuating circumstances; this was, as he had said, Joe’s first real love.

TWELVE

Saturday night had its routine at the Law. After cold supper Hilda played to her father upon the organ. And to-night, the last Saturday of November 1909, at eight o’clock, Hilda was playing the first movement of Handel’s Water Music while Barras sat in his chair supporting his forehead in his hand, listening. Hilda did not like playing to her father. But Hilda played. It was part of Barras’s routine that Hilda should play.

Richard Barras held closely to his routine. This did not stamp Barras as a creature of habit. In stature he was above habit. And routine was not his master but the echo rather, the constantly resounding echo of his principle. To comprehend Richard Barras it is necessary to begin by admitting this principle. He was a man of principle and not, be it understood, of hypocritical principle. He was sincere.

He was, too, a moral man. He despised those weaknesses into which humanity is so frequently and unhappily betrayed. He was incapable, for example, of thinking of any woman but his wife. Though Harriet was an invalid she was in effect his wife. His wife. He despised the grosser appetites of men; rich food and wines, overeating, overdrinking, oversleeping, luxury, sensuality, all the excesses of bodily indulgence were abhorrent to him. He ate plainly and usually drank water. He did not smoke. Though his suit was always well made and of good material, he had few clothes and no vanity for dress.

He had his pride, of course, the natural pride of a liberal, enlightened man. He knew himself as a man of position and substance; he was a mine owner, the owner of the Neptune, whose family had worked the Neptune pits for just one hundred years. He took a real satisfaction in the family succession, beginning with Peter Barras who in 1805 had originally sunk No. 1 shaft into the Snook, known now as the Old Neptune, leaving a tidy little pit to his son William who in his turn had sunk shafts Nos. 2 and 3. As for Peter William, Richard’s own father, he had bored No. 4, a shrewd and well-judged stroke from which Richard was now benefiting hugely. The foundation of the family name and fortune by these shrewd, hard-headed men gratified Richard deeply. He prided himself on inheriting, on developing the qualities of his forebears, on his own shrewdness and hard-headedness, his ability to drive a hard bargain.

Socially, he was not openly aspiring. When, in conversation, the name of some county notable cropped up Barras had a way of calmly interjecting: “And what’s he worth?” inferring with a mild amusement that his neighbour’s financial position was contemptible. Thus while he enjoyed the deference of his banker and his lawyer he was not a snob — he despised the pettiness of the word. Though Harriet Wandless was of a county family he had not married Harriet for the distinction of her pedigree. He had married Harriet to make Harriet his wife.

The suggestion of a passion arises here. Yet Barras was a man of no apparent passions. The strength of his personality was terrific; but it was a static, a glacial strength. He had no violence, no towering passions, no gusts of fiery emotion. What was alien to him he rejected; what was not alien he possessed. The evidence of Harriet, taken in camera, is, positively, the clue. But Harriet, on the mornings which succeeded these regular nocturnal idylls, merely ate a large breakfast soulfully — with the placid satisfaction of a cow that had been successfully milked. Such visible biological evidence as Harriet’s modesty afforded was both positive and negative. But the examination of Harriet’s stomach contents would undoubtedly have revealed cud.

Richard himself gave a few clues. He was a secret man. This secrecy was definitely a quality. Not the ordinary banal secrecy of concealment, but a subtler secrecy, a secrecy which sternly resented prying and froze all familiarity with a look. He seemed icily to say, I am myself and will be myself but that is no concern of any one but myself. And to continue, I dominate myself but I will be dominated by no one but myself. The static glacier again.

It must not be assumed, however, that Richard’s qualities were cast entirely in this out-size arctic mould. Barras had some very individual characteristics. His love of organ music, of Handel, of the Messiah in particular. His devotion to art, to sound established art as manifested in the expensive pictures upon his walls. His loyalty to the domestic unities. His inveterate neatness and precision. And finally his acquisitiveness.

Here, at last, lies the hidden intention of Richard’s soul, the very core of the man himself. He loved his possessions passionately, his pit, his house, his pictures, his property, everything that was his This accounted for his abomination of waste, of which the pale reflection was Aunt Carrie’s acquired inability “to throw anything out.” Aunt Carrie often protested this openly and Barras was always pleased. Barras himself never threw anything out. Papers, documents, receipts, records of transactions, everything — all neatly docketed and locked away in Barras’s desk. It was almost a religion, this docketing and locking away. It had a spiritual quality. It was most exemplary. It rang in harmony with his love of Handel. It had, like Handel, impressive breadth and depth and a kind of impenetrable religiosity, but it had its basis in simple avarice. For, beyond everything, the secret and consuming passion of Barras’s soul was his love of money. Though he masked it cleverly, deceiving even himself, he adored money. He hugged it to him and nourished it, the glowing scene of his wealth, his own substance.

Meanwhile Hilda had finished with Handel. At least she had finished with Water Music. And in the normal way she would have restored her music to the long piano stool and gone straight upstairs. But to-night Hilda seemed determined to propitiate. Staring straight at the keyboard she said:

“Would you like Largo, father?”

It was his favourite piece, the piece which impressed him beyond all others, the piece which made Hilda wish to scream.

She played it slowly and with sonorous rhythm.

There was a silence. Without removing his hand from his forehead he said:

“Thank you, Hilda.”

She got off the stool, stood on the other side of the table. Though her face wore the familiar forbidding look, she was trembling inside. She said:

“Father!”

“Well, Hilda!” His voice appeared reasonable.

She took a long breath. For weeks she had been nerving herself to take that breath. She said:

“I’m nearly twenty, now, father. It’s nearly three years since I came home from school. All that time I’ve been at home doing nothing. I’m tired of doing nothing. I want to do something for a change. I want you to let me go away and do something.”

He uncovered his eyes and measured her curiously. He repeated:

“Do something?”

“Yes, do something,” she said violently. “Let me train for something. Get some position.”

“Some position?” The same remote tone of wonder. “What position?”

“Any position. To be your secretary. To be a nurse. Or let me go in for medicine. I’d like that best of all.”

He studied her again, still pleasantly ironic.

“And what,” he said, “is to happen when you marry?”

“I’ll never get married,” she burst out. “I’d hate to get married. I’m far too ugly ever to get married.”

Coldness crept into his face but his tone did not change. He said:

“You have been reading the papers, Hilda.”

His penetration brought the blood to her sallow face. It was true. She had read the morning paper. The day before there had been a raid by suffragists on Downing Street, during a Cabinet meeting, and violent scenes when some women attempted to rush the House of Commons. It had brought Hilda’s brooding to a head.

“An attempt was made to rush,” he quoted musingly, “to rush… the House of Commons.” He made it sound the last insanity.

She bit her lip fiercely. She said:

“Father, let me go away and study medicine. I want to be a doctor.”

He said:

“No, Hilda.”

“Let me go, father,” she said.

He said:

“No, Hilda.”

“Let me.” An almost frantic intercession in her voice.

He said nothing.

A silence fell. Her face had gone chalky white now. He contemplated the ceiling with an air of absent interest. For about a minute they remained like this, then, quite undramatically, she turned and went out of the room.

He did not seem to notice that Hilda had gone. Hilda had broken an inviolable convention. He sealed his mind against Hilda.

He sat for about half an hour, then he rose and carefully turned out the gas and went up to his study. He always went to his study after Hilda had played to him on Saturday nights. The study was a spacious and comfortable room, thickly carpeted, with a massive desk, dark red curtains screening the windows, and several photographs of the Colliery hung upon the walls. Barras sat down at his desk, pulled out his ring of keys, selected one with meticulous care and unlocked the top middle drawer. From the top middle drawer he took out three ordinary red-backed account books and with a familiar touch began to examine them. The first was a list of his investments, written carefully in his own neat handwriting. He considered it detachedly, a pleased yet non-committal smile touching his lips. He lifted a pen, without dipping it in the ink and ran the point delicately down the row of figures. Suddenly he paused, reflected seriously, deciding to sell that block of 1st Preference United Collieries. They had touched their peak recently; his confidential information regarding their current profits was of an adverse nature; yes, he would sell. He smiled again faintly, recognising his own shrewd instinct, his money sense. He never made a mistake, and why need he? Every security in this little book was virtually gilt-edged, guaranteed, impregnable. Again he made a rapid calculation. The total pleased him.

Then he turned to the second book. This second book gave the list of his house property in Sleescale and the district. Most of the Terraces belonged to Barras — it was a sore point with him that Ramage, the butcher, had half of Balaclava Row — and in Tynecastle he had several sound blocks of “weeklies.” These tenements, which lay down by the river, and yielded their rents to a weekly collector, were immensely profitable. Richard never regretted these tenements, his own idea, though Bannerman, his lawyer, handled the actual business with a quiet discretion. He made a note to speak to Bannerman on a point of costs.

And finally, with a sense of relaxation, a fondling touch, he drew the third book towards him. There was the list of his pictures with the prices he had paid for each. He considered it tolerantly. It amused him to consider that he had spent twenty thousand pounds, a fortune, virtually, on pictures. Well, it was a sound investment too — they were on his walls, appreciating in value, growing rare and old like the Titians and Rembrandts… but he would buy no more. No, he had paid his homage to art. It was enough.

He looked at his watch. His lips made a little clicking sound that it should be so late. Carefully, he put his books away, relocked the top middle drawer and went up to his bedroom.

He took out his watch again and wound up his watch. He took a drink of water from the carafe beside his bed. Then he began to undress. The quiet movements of his powerful figure had a set inevitability. The movements were regular and systematic. The movements admitted no other movements. Each movement had a deliberate self-interest. The white strong hands spoke a dumb alphabet of their own. This way… like this… the best way to do it is this way… the best way for me… there may be other ways… but this way is the best way for me… for me. In the half light of the bedroom the symbolism of the hands was strangely menacing.

At last Barras was ready. He circled on his dark purple dressing-gown. He stood for a moment smoothing his jaw with his fingers. Then he went steadily along the corridor.

Hilda, sitting in the darkness of her own room, heard the heavy tread of her father as he entered her mother’s room next door. Her body contracted, she held herself quite rigid. Her face wore a tormented look. Desperately she tried to shut her ears but she could not shut her ears. She could never shut her ears. The tread advanced. Subdued voices. A heavy deliberate creak. Hilda’s whole body shuddered. In an agony of loathing she waited. The sounds began.

THIRTEEN

Joe lounged in the living-room at Scottswood Road paying not the slightest heed to Alf Sunley who sat by the table reading aloud the selections of Captain Sanglar for Gosforth Park Races. This afternoon Joe and Alf were going to the races, though Joe, from the sullen expression in his face and his contemptuous indifference to the Captain’s information, did not appear to exult unduly at the prospect. Replete with dinner, he lay back in his chair with his feet on the window-sill, indulging himself in surly meditation.

“Taking form for courses I confidently nap Lord Kell’s Nesfield for the Eldon Plate, making that well-tried filly my three-star selection for the day…”

As Alf’s voice droned on Joe’s eyes roved glumly round the room. God, what a sickening place! What a hole! And to think, to think actually that he had put up with it for over three years! Nearly four, in fact! Was he going to stick it much longer? He couldn’t believe it, the way time had slipped in, and left him still here, like a stranded whale. Where, curse it, was his ambition? Was he going to waste himself here all his life?

Soberly reviewed, the position impressed him as being not altogether lively. At Millington’s in these four years he had got on well enough. Yes, well enough… but well enough was not good enough, not nearly good enough for Joe Gowlan. He was puddling now, earning his regular three pounds a week; and that, at twenty-two, was something. He was popular — a faint complacent gleam broke through his present gloom — wonderfully popular. He was one of the lads! Mr. Millington appeared to take an interest in him, too, always stopped and spoke as he came through the works, but nothing definite ever seemed to come of it. Nothing, dammit, thought Joe, glooming.

What had he done for himself? He had three suits instead of one, three pairs of brown boots and a lot of fancy ties; he had a few quid in his pocket; he had improved his physique, even boxed at St. James’s Hall; he knew his way around the town; he knew some tricks. But what else? Nothing, dammit, nothing, thought Joe, again, glooming worse. He was still a workman living in lodgings, with no money to brag about, and he was still… still mixed up with Jenny.

Joe moved restlessly. Jenny represented the peak, the crisis, the goading thorn of his present discontent. Jenny was in love with him, clinging to him, mucking him up. Could anything be bloodier? At first, naturally, his vanity had been tickled, it had been a bit of all right having Jenny running after him, hanging on his elbow as, with his chest well out, and his derby well back, he brown-booted jauntily down the street.

But now he wasn’t so jaunty, by a half of a long chop. He was fed up with Jenny. Well, no, perhaps he wouldn’t put it so strong as that — she was still soft, still desirable in his arms, and their love-making, the fierce consummation of his desire, snatched secretly here in this room, in his own room, outside after dark, in doorways, round by the back of Elswick stables, in all sorts of queer and unexpected places, that, he had to admit, was still sweet. But it was… oh, it was too easy now. There was no difficulty, no resistance in Jenny; there was even a faint eagerness about her sometimes, and sometimes a sense of neglect when he left her alone too long. Oh, hell! He might just as well have been married to Jenny.

And he didn’t want to be married to Jenny, nor to any other Jenny. Not to be tied up for life, not him. He was too wise a bird for that sort of snare. He wanted to get on, make his way, pile up some money. He wanted to scrape some of the gilt, the real gilt off the gingerbread.

He frowned. She was too much in his life, changing it too much, she really was upsetting him. This very afternoon, for instance, hearing that he was going to Gosforth with her father and leaving her at home she had dissolved in sudden scalding tears, had been pacified only at the cost of promising to take her with them. She was upstairs, dressing, now.

Oh, blast! Joe took a sudden fierce kick at the stool in front of him, making Alf stop reading and look up in mild surprise.

“You’re not lissenin’, Joe,” Alf remonstrated. “What’s the good of me wastin’ my breath if you don’t lissen.”

Joe answered disagreeably:

“That fellow don’t know nowt. He gets his tips straight from the horses’ mouths. An’ the horses is all liars. I’m goin’ to get my information from Dick Jobey on the course. He’s a pal o’ mine and a man as knows what he’s talkin’ about.”

Alf gave a short expressive laugh.

“What’s like the matter with you, Joe? I’d stopped readin’ about the horses ten minutes ago. I was readin’ about the new aeroplane this fella Bleeryoh has got, you know, him that flew the Channel last year.”

Joe grunted:

“Aw’ll have a fleet o’ bloody aeroplanes myself one o’ these days. You watch.”

Alf squinted over the edge of the paper.

“I’ll watch,” he agreed with enormous sarcasm.

The door opened and Jenny came in. Joe looked up grumpily:

“You’re ready at last.”

“I’m ready,” she admitted brightly; all traces of her recent weeping had vanished and, as was often the case after a bout of tearful petulance, she was brisk, blithe as a lark. “Like my new hat?” she asked, tilting her head for him archly. “Pretty nice, mister?”

Through all his moodiness he had to grant that she did look nice. The new hat, which she wore so dashingly, set off her pale prettiness. Her figure was extraordinarily attractive, she had the most beautifully modelled legs and hips. Physically the loss of her virginity had improved her. She was riper, more assured, less anæmic; she had more go in her; she was near her point of perfection.

“Come on, then,” she laughed. “Come on you too, dad. Don’t keep me waiting or we’ll be late.”

“Keep you waiting!” Joe expostulated.

And Alf, nodding his head commiseratingly, sighed.

“Women!”

The three set out for Gosforth Park by tram, Jenny sitting between the two men, very straight and happy, while the tram bumped and bounded along North Road.

“I want to make some money,” she remarked confidentially to Joe, patting her handbag.

“You’re not the only one,” Joe answered rudely.

They went into the two-shilling ring which was pleasantly full, just enough people to interest Jenny, not enough to crowd her. She was delighted; the white railings against the bright green of the course, the colours of the jockeys, the sleek lovely horses, the shouts of the bookies under their big blue and gold umbrellas, the movement, animation and excitement of the ring, the fashionable dresses, the celebrities seen not too distantly in the paddock.

“Look, Joe, look,” she cried, clutching his arm. “There’s Lord Kell! Isn’t he a gentleman!”

Lord Kell, doyen of British sport, millionaire landowner of the North, florid, sidewhiskered and genial, stood chatting to a little scrap of a man, Lew Lester, his jockey.

Joe grunted enviously:

“If he thinks Nesfield’s goin’ to win he’s up a gum tree.” Then he barged off to find Dick Jobey.

He had a lot of trouble in finding Dick, for Dick was in the ten-shilling enclosure; but by getting hold of the ticktacker, Joe managed to summon Dick to the railings.

“Sorry to bother you, Mr. Jobey,” Joe began with ingratiating friendliness. “I was just wondering if you had anything. I’m not botherin’ about myself. I never do have much on. But I’ve got my young lady and her dad along with us… my lass, you see… she’d just dance with delight if she took a couple of shillings off the ring.”

Dick Jobey tapped the toe of his neat black shoe against the railings, very pleasant and non-committal. The convention that bookmakers are full-bodied and purple-faced, talking with one corner of the mouth whilst a large cigar occupies the other, receives the lie from Dick Jobey of Tynecastle. Dick was a bookmaker, a bookmaker in quite a large way, with an office in Bigg Market and a branch in Yarrow across the road from the Catholic Church. But Dick smoked the mildest of cigarettes, drank only mineral water. A nice, quiet, affable, plainly dressed, medium-sized man who never swore, never bellowed the odds, and was never seen on any race-course but the local Gosforth Park. It was rumoured, indeed, amongst his many friends, that Dick went to Gosforth once a year to pick buttercups.

“Have you anything, then, Mr. Jobey, that I can tell the lass?”

Dick Jobey inspected Joe. He liked the tone of Joe’s remark; he had seen Joe box at St. James’s Hall; he felt, altogether, that Joe was a “likely lad.” And as Dick had a weakness for likely lads, he allowed Joe to cultivate him, to run odd commissions for him. Altogether Joe had been assiduous in worming his way into Dick Jobey’s favour. Dick spoke at last.

“I wouldn’t let her do anything till the last race, Joe.”

“No, Mr. Jobey.”

“But she might have a little on, then. Not much, you know, just half a crown for fun.”

“Yes, Mr. Jobey.”

“Of course you never can tell.”

“No, Mr. Jobey.” An excited pause. “Is it Nesfield you fancy?”

Dick shook his head.

“She hasn’t an earthly, that one. Let your young lady have a half a crown on Pink Bud. Just half a crown, mind you. And just for fun.”

Dick Jobey smiled, nodded and quietly strolled away. Thrilling with triumph, Joe elbowed his way back to Alf and Jenny.

“Oh, Joe,” Jenny protested, “wherever have you been? There’s the first race over and I’ve never even betted yet.”

In a right good humour he assured her that she could bet now to her heart’s content. Blandly he listened while she and Alf discussed their fancies. Jenny was all for picking out the pretty names, the nicest colours, or a horse belonging to someone particularly notable. Joe beamed approval. With continued blandness he accepted he money, placed her bets. She lost, lost again, and once again.

“Now isn’t that too bad?” Jenny exclaimed, completely dashed at the end of the fourth race. She had wanted so much to win. Jenny was not mean, she was generous to a fault, and quite careless of her few half-crowns; but it would have been simply lovely to win.

Alf, who had been following Captain Sanglar doggedly with nothing to show for it but an odds-on place, reassured her.

“We’ll get it all back on Nesfield, lass. She’s the three-star nap of the day.”

Gloating inside, Joe heard him plump for Nesfield.

Jenny studied her programme doubtfully.

“I’m not so sure about your old Captain,” she said. “What do you think, Joe?”

“You never can tell,” Joe suggested artlessly. “That’s Lord Kell’s filly, isn’t it?”

“So it is.” Jenny brightened. “I forgot about that. Yes, I think I better have Nesfield.”

“What about Pink Bud?” Joe ventured rather vaguely.

“Never heard of it,” Alf said promptly.

And Jenny:

“Oh no, Joe… Lord Kell’s horse for me.”

“Well” said Joe, moving off. “Have it your own way. But I think I’ll do Pink Bud.”

He took all the money he had with him, four pounds in all, and boldly slammed it on Pink Bud. He got fives about the animal, saw the price shorten rapidly to three. Then they were off. He stood at the rails, holding on tight, watching the massed horses swing round the bend. Faster, faster; he sweated, hardly dared to breathe. Panting, he watched them enter the straight, approach the post. Then he let out a wild yell. Pink Bud was home by a good two lengths.

The minute the numbers were up he collected his winnings, stuffed the four five-pound notes tight into his inside pocket, slipped the four sovereigns in his vest, buttoned up his coat, cocked his hat and swaggered back to Jenny.

“Oh, Joe,” Jenny nearly wept, “why didn’t I…”

“Yes, why didn’t you?” he bubbled over. “You should have taken my tip. I’ve won a packet. And don’t say I didn’t warn you. I told you I was going to do it. I’d a notion about Pink Bud all the time.” He could have hugged himself with the delight of having got ahead of them. The sight of her pale, woebegone face made him laugh. He said patronisingly: “Don’t make a song about it, Jenny. I’ll take you out with me to-night. We’ll paint the old town red.”

Skilfully, they gave Alf the slip on the way out. They had done it before; and this time it was easy. Alf, plodding along with his head down, was far too busy cursing Captain Sanglar to see that they were dodging him.

They got to Tynecastle shortly after six, strolled up New-gate Street into Haymarket. All Joe’s earlier despondency had vanished, swept away by a sort of boisterous magnanimity. He condescended towards Jenny with a large, forgiving geniality; he even let her take his arm.

Suddenly, as they turned the corner of Northumberland Street, Joe stiffened, gasped:

“By gum, it can’t be him!” Then he let out a whoop. “Davey! Hey, Davey Fenwick, man!”

David stopped, turned; a slow recognition spread over his face.

“Why, Joe… it’s not you!”

“Ay, it’s me right enough,” Joe crowed, falling upon David with manly exuberance. “It’s me and none other. There’s only one Joe Gowlan in Tynecassel.”

They all laughed. Joe, with a princely wave of his hand, making the necessary introduction.

“This is Miss Sunley, Davey. Little friend of mine. An’ this is Davey, Jenny, a regular pal of Joe’s in the good old days.”

David looked at Jenny. He looked right into her clear, wide eyes. Then, under her smile, he smiled too. Admiration dawned upon his face. Very politely they shook hands.

“Jenny and me was just going to have a bit of snap,” Joe remarked, irresistibly taking charge of the situation. “But now we’ll all have a bit of snap. Fancy a bit of snap, Davey?”

“You bet,” David agreed enthusiastically. “We’re quite near Nun Street. Let’s pop into Lockhart’s.”

Joe nearly collapsed.

“Lockhart’s,” he repeated to Jenny. “Did ye hear him say Lockhart’s?”

“What’s wrong?” inquired David blankly. “It’s a jolly good spot. I often go there for a cup of cocoa in the evening.”

“Cocoa,” moaned Joe weakly, pretending to support himself against an adjacent lamp-post. “Does he take us for a couple of true blue Rechabites?”

“Now, behave, Joe, do,” Jenny entreated him, exchanging a demure glance with David.

Joe galvanised himself dramatically. He went up to David with great effect.

“Look here, my lad. You’re not in the pit now. You’re with Mr. Joe Gowlan. An’ he’s standin’ treat. So shut yer gob an’ come on.”

Saying no more, Joe thrust his thumb in his arm-hole and led the way down Northumberland Street to the Percy Grill. David and Jenny followed. They entered, sat down at a table. Joe’s exhibitionism was superb. This was one of the things he really enjoyed: showing off his ease, address, aplomb, showing off himself. In the Percy Grill he was at home: this last year he had frequently been here with Jenny. A small place it was, common and showy, with a good deal of gilt and a good many red lamp shades, a kind of annexe to the adjoining pub known as the Percy Vaults. There was one waiter with a napkin stuffed into his waistcoat, who came fawning upon them in answer to Joe’s sophisticated call.

“What’ll you have?” Joe demanded. “Mine’s a whisky. An’ yours, Jenny? A port, eh? An’ yours, Davey? Be careful now, lad, an’ don’t say cocoa.”

David smiled, remarked that in this instance he would prefer beer.

When the drinks were brought, Joe ordered a lavish meal: chops, sausages and chip potatoes. Then he lolled back in his seat, inspecting David critically, finding him lankier, maturer, curiously improved. With a burst of curiosity he asked:

“What are ye doin’ with yerself now, Davey? Ye’re changed a lot, man.”

David had certainly changed. He was nearly twenty-one now but his pale face and smooth dark hair made him a little older. His brow was good, his chin as stubborn as before. He was inclined to leanness about the jaw, he had a taut and rather finely drawn look, but his shy smile was a delight. He smiled now.

“There’s nothing much to tell, Joe.”

“Ah, come on now,” said Joe patronisingly.

“Well…” said David….

These last three years had not been easy for him, they had left their mark, knocked the immaturity out of his face for good. He had come up to Baddeley on his scholarship of sixty pounds a year, taking lodgings at Westgate Hill opposite the Big Lamp. The money was ridiculously inadequate, his allowance from home sometimes did not come — Robert had once been laid up for two months on end — and David had frequently been up against it. On one occasion he had carried a man’s bag from Central Station to earn a sixpence for his supper.

It was nothing really, his enthusiasm carried him through it with a rush. The enthusiasm came from the discovery of his own ignorance. The first month at Baddeley had demonstrated him as a raw pit lad who had stumbled by good luck, hard elementary coaching and a little natural-born sense into a scholarship. At that David had set himself to get hold of something. He began to read: not the stereotyped reading prescribed by the classes, not just his Gibbon, Macaulay, perhaps but he read well. He read entranced, bewildered sometimes, but stubborn always. He joined the Fabian Society, squeezed sixpence for a gallery seat at the symphony concerts, came to know Beethoven there and Bach, wandered to the Tynecastle Municipal Gallery to discover the beauty of Whistler, Degas and the solitary glowing Manet there.

It was not easy, it was in fact a little pathetic, this troubled, solitary seeking. He was too poor, shabby and proud to make many friends. He wanted friends, but they must come to him.

Then he began to teach, going out to the poorer districts — Saltley, Witton, Hebburn — as a pupil teacher in the elementary schools. He should, of course, by reason of his ideals, have loved it; instead he hated it — the pale, undernourished and often sickly children from the slum areas distracted his attention, distressed him horribly. He wanted to give them boots, clothes and food — not thump the multiplication table into their bemused little heads. He wanted to cart them away to the Wansbeck and set them playing there in the sunshine, instead of rowing them for failing to learn ten lines of incomprehensible “poetry,” about Lycidas dying ere his prime. His heart bled at times for these wretched kids. He knew immediately and irrevocably that he was no use at a blackboard, would never be any good; that this teaching was only a means to an end, that he must get out of it presently, into another, more active, more combative sphere. He must take his B.A. next year, quickly, then move on.

David stopped suddenly: his rare smile broke out again.

“O Lord! Have I been talking all this time? You asked for the sad, sad story… that’s my only excuse!”

But Jenny refused to let him make light of it; she was terribly impressed.

“My,” she remarked, animated yet bashful. “I’d no idea I was going to meet anybody so important.” The port had brought a faint flush to her cheeks; she sparkled upon him.

David looked at her wryly.

“Important! that’s a rich piece of sarcasm, Miss Jenny.”

But Miss Jenny did not mean it for sarcasm. She had never met a student, a real student of Baddeley College before. Students of the Baddeley belonged mostly to a social world on which Jenny had as yet merely gazed with envy. Besides, she thought David, though rather shabby beside Joe’s smooth opulence, quite a good-looking young man — interesting was the word! And finally she felt that Joe had treated her abominably lately — it would be “nice” to play off David against him and make him thoroughly jealous. She murmured:

“It frightens me to death to think of all these books you study. And that B.A. too. My!”

“It’ll probably land me in some nice unventilated school, teaching underfed little kids.”

“But don’t you want to?” She was incredulous. “A teacher! That’s a lovely thing to be!”

He shook his head in smiling apology and was about to argue with her when the arrival of the chops, sausages and chips created a diversion. Joe divided them thoughtfully. He divided them extremely thoughtfully. At first Joe had heard David with an envious, slightly mocking grin, with a guffaw all ready, perfectly ready to take David down a peg. Then he had seen David look at Jenny. That was when it came to Joe, the marvellous, the wholly marvellous idea. He lifted his head, handed David his plate solicitously.

“That’s all right for you, Davey, boy?”

“Fine, thanks, Joe.” David smiled: he hadn’t seen a plateful like that in weeks.

Joe nodded, graciously passed Jenny the mustard and ordered her another port.

“What was that you were saying, Davey?” he inquired kindly. “About getting on beyond the teaching like?”

David shook his head deprecatingly.

“You wouldn’t be interested, Joe, not a bit.”

“But we are — aren’t we, Jenny?” Real enthusiasm in Joe’s voice. “Go on an’ tell us more, man.”

David gazed from one to the other: encouraged by Joe’s grave attention, by Jenny’s bright eyes. He plunged into it.

“It’s just like this, then. Don’t think I’m drunk, or a prig, or a candidate for the City Asylum. When I’ve got my B.A. I may have to take up teaching for a bit. That’ll only be for bread and butter. I’m not educating myself to teach. I’m not cut out for teaching — too impatient, I suppose. I’m educating myself to fight. What I honestly want to do is different, and it’s hard, terribly hard to explain. But it just amounts to this. I want to do something for my own kind, for the men who work in the pits. You know, Joe, what the work is. Take the Neptune, we’ve both been in it, you know what it’s done to my father. You know what the conditions are… and the pay. I want to help to change things, to make them better.”

Joe thought, he’s mad, quite bleeding well barmy. But he said, very suavely:

“Go on, Davey, that’s the stuff to give them.”

David, glowing to his subject, exclaimed:

“No, Joe, you probably think I’m talking through my hat. But you might get a better idea of what I mean if you take a look at the history of the miners — yes, the history of the miners in Northumberland only sixty or seventy years ago. They worked under something like the feudal system. They were treated as barbarians… outcasts. They had no education. Learning was checked amongst them. The conditions were terrible, improper ventilation, accidents through the owners refusing to take precautions against firedamp. Women and children of six years of age allowed to go down the pit… children of six, mind you. Boys kept eighteen hours a day underground. The men bonded, so they couldn’t stir a foot without being chucked out their houses or chucked into prison. Tommy shops everywhere — kept usually by a relative of the viewer — with the pitman compelled to buy his provisions there and his wages confiscated on pay day to settle the balance….”

All at once he broke off and laughed awkwardly towards Jenny.

“This can’t possibly interest you! I’m an idiot to bother you with it.”

“No, indeed,” she declared admiringly. “I think it’s most awfully clever of you to know all that.”

“Go on, Davey,” urged the genial Joe, signalling another port for Jenny. “Tell us more.”

But this time David shook his head definitely.

“I’ll keep it all for the Fabian Society debate. That’s when the windbags really get going. But perhaps you do see what I mean. Conditions have improved since those terrible days I’m talking about, we’ve marched a certain distance. But we haven’t marched far enough. There still are appalling hardships in some of the pits, rotten pay, and too many accidents, People don’t seem to realise. I heard a man in the tram the other day. He was reading the paper. His friend asked him what was the news. He answered: ‘Nothing. Nothing, at all. Just another of these pit accidents.’… I looked over his shoulder and saw that fifteen men had been killed in an explosion at Nottingham.”

There was a short pause. Jenny’s eyes dimmed sympathetically. Jenny had swallowed three large ports and all her emotions were beautifully responsive; she vibrated, equipoised, ready to laugh with the joy of life or weep for the sadness of death. She had come to like port quite a lot, had Jenny. A ladylike drink she considered it, a wine, too, which classed it as a beverage infinitely refined. Joe, naturally, had introduced her to it.

Joe broke the silence:

“You’ll go far, Davey,” he said solemnly. “You’re streets ahead of me. You’ll be in Parliament while I’m puddlin’ steel.”

“Don’t be an ass,” David said shortly.

But Jenny had heard; her attention towards David increased. She began, really, to devote herself to him. Her demure glances now became more demure, more significant. She sparkled. She knew all the time, of course, that she was playing David against Joe. It was extremely fascinating to have two strings to her bow.

They talked of lighter things; they talked of what Joe had done; talked and laughed until ten o’clock, all very merry and friendly. Then with a start David became aware of the time.

“Heavens above!” he exclaimed. “And I’m supposed to be working!”

“Don’t go yet,” Jenny protested. “The evening’s young.”

“I don’t want to, but I must, I really must. I’ve got a History Class exam. On Monday.”

“Well,” Joe declared roundly, “we’ll see you on Tuesday, Davey lad, like we’ve arranged. And ye’ll not get away from us so easy next time.”

The party broke up, Jenny retired to “tidy up,” Joe paid the bill with a flourish of five-pound notes.

Outside, while they waited on Jenny, Joe suddenly stopped masticating his toothpick:

“She’s a nice lass that, Davey.”

“She is, indeed. I admire your taste.”

“My taste!” Joe laughed quite heartily. “You’ve got it all wrong, lad. We’re just friends. There’s not a thing between Jenny and me.”

“Really?” David sounded interested all at once.

“Ay, really!” Joe laughed again at the very idea. “I’d no idea you were getting hold of the wrong end of the stick.”

Jenny joined them and they walked three abreast to the corner of Collingwood Street, where David branched off along Westgate Road.

“Don’t forget now,” Joe said. “Tuesday night for sure.” The final handshake was cordial; Jenny’s fingers conveyed just the politest sensation of a squeeze.

David walked home on air to his scrubby room; propped up Mignet’s Histoire de la Révolution Française, and lit his pipe.

Simply grand, he thought, meeting Joe so unexpectedly; odd, too, that they should not have met before. But Tynecastle was a big place with, as Joe had said, only one Joe Gowlan in it.

David seemed to be thinking quite a lot about Joe. But the face which danced through the pages of Mignet was not Joe’s face. It was the smiling face of Jenny.

FOURTEEN

David called at 117A Scottswood Road on the following Tuesday. It was unfortunate, considering how much he had looked forward to the evening, that Joe should be detained at Millington’s working overtime. But there it was and couldn’t be helped: poor Joe had to work his overtime. David, nevertheless, enjoyed himself hugely. Though his opportunities had been so few, his nature was really sociable, he came prepared to enjoy himself and he did. The Sunleys, pre-informed by Jenny, were inclined at first to treat him with suspicion. They expected superiority. But soon the atmosphere thawed, supper appeared on the table, and hilarity filled the air. Mrs. Sunley, shedding her lethargy for once, had made a rarebit — and, as Sally remarked, Ma’s rarebits were a treat. Alf, with the help of two tea-spoons and the pepper pot, had demonstrated his own especial method of dovecote construction. A fortune it would have made him, if he’d only patented it. Jenny, looking delicious in a fresh print frock, had poured the tea herself — Ma being too flushed and flustered from her exertions in the kitchen.

David couldn’t keep his eyes off Jenny. Against the slipshod background of her home she bloomed for him. During his years in Tynecastle he had hardly spoken to a woman; at Sleescale, of course, he had been far from the stage of “walking out”—as it was traditionally known in the Terraces. Jenny was the first… absolutely the first to lay the spell of sex upon him.

A warm air wafted in through the half-open window of the back room; and though it bore the exhalation of ten thousand chimney pots it held for David the scent of spring. He watched, waited for Jenny’s smile: the soft crinkling of her lip was the most delicious thing he had ever seen. It was like the unfolding of a flower. When she passed him his cup and their fingers touched a divine softness flowed into him.

Jenny, conscious of the effect she was producing, was flattered. And when Jenny felt flattered she was at her very best. Yet actually she was not greatly attracted to David, when their fingers met she knew no answering thrill. Jenny was in love with Joe.

Jenny had begun by despising Joe, his bad manners, his roughness, the fact, as she expressed it, that “he worked dirty.” Strange as it may seem, these were the very qualities which had subdued her. Jenny was made to be bullied, deep down in her being lay an unconscious recognition of the brutality which had mastered her. Meanwhile, however, Jenny was very pleased with this new conquest: it would “learn” Joe, when he heard of it, not to treat her so casually.

Supper over, Alf suggested music. They went into the parlour. Outside was the subdued evening hum of the street, inside it was pleasantly cool and airy. While Sally played her accompaniments, Jenny sang Juanita and Sweet Marie, come to me. Though her voice was thin and rather forced Jenny was very effective by the piano. When she finished Sweet Marie she offered to sing Passing By, but Alf, loudly supported by Clarry and Phyllis, had begun to clamour for Sally.

“Sally’s the top of the bill,” he remarked confidentially to David. “If we can get her started you’ll see some fun. She’s a great little comedienne. Her and me go to the Empire regularly every week.”

“Come on, Sally,” Clarry begged. “Do Jack Pleasants.”

Phyllis urged:

“Yes, Sally, please. And Florrie Forde.”

But Sally, perched apathetically on the piano stool, refused. Picking out melancholy bass notes with one finger:

“I’m not in the mood. He,” jerking her head towards David, “he wants to hear Jenny, not me.”

Aside, Jenny gave a superior little laugh:

“She only wants to be coaxed.”

Sally flared instantly:

“All right, then, Miss Sweet Marie Sunley, I’ll do it without the coaxing.” She straightened herself upon the stool.

At fifteen, Sally was still small and tubby, but she had something, a queer something that gripped and fascinated. Now her short figure became electric. She frowned, then into her plain little face there flowed an irresistible mockery. She struck a frightful discord.

“By special request,” she mimicked, “the other Miss Sunley will sing Molly o’ Morgan.” And she let herself go.

It was good, terribly good. The song was nothing, just a popular number of the day, but Sally made it something. She did not sing the song; she parodied it: she burlesqued it; she went falsetto; she suddenly went soulful: she wept almost, for the tragedy of Molly’s forsaken lovers.

Forgetting what Jenny would have called her manners, she concluded with a disgraceful impersonation of the monkey which might reasonably have been expected to accompany Miss o’ Morgan’s organ.

Everyone but Jenny was convulsed. But Sally, without giving them time to recover, dashed into I was standing at the corner of the street. She ceased to be the monkey. She became Jack Pleasants; she became a dull bumpkin, sluggish as a turnip, supporting the wall of the village pub. You saw the straw in her hair as she sang:

Vociferously Alf clapped his appreciation. Sally smiled at him wickedly from the corner of her eye; she winked, restoring her sex, and sang Yip I addy I ay. She developed a bosom, a rich deep voice and wonderful hips. It was Florrie Forde. Florrie, to the life.

She ended suddenly. She slid from the stool, swung round, and faced them, smiling.

“Rotten,” she exclaimed, screwing up her nose. “Not worth a slab of toffee. Let me get out before the ripe tomatoes come.” And she skipped out of the room.

Later, Jenny apologised to David for Sally’s oddity.

“You must excuse her, she’s often terribly queer. And temper. My! I’m afraid,” lowering her voice. “It’s very stupid, but I’m afraid she’s rather inclined to be jealous of me.”

“Surely not,” David smiled. “She’s just a kid.”

“She’s getting on for sixteen,” Jenny contradicted primly. “And she really does hate to see anyone paying me attention. I can tell you it makes things pretty difficult for me. As if I could help it.”

Assuredly Jenny could not help it: Heavens! that was like blaming a rose for its perfume, a lily for its purity.

David went home that night more convinced than ever that she was adorable.

He began to call regularly, to drop in of an evening. Occasionally he encountered Joe; more often he did not. Joe, with an air of tremendous preoccupation, was working overtime feverishly and seldom in evidence at No. 117A. Then David asked Jenny to go out with him: they began to take excursions together, curious excursions for Jenny, walks on the Aston Hills, a ramble to Liddle, a picnic, actually to Esmond Dene. Secretly, Jenny was contemptuous of all this junketing. She was accustomed to Joe’s lordly escort, to the Percy Grill, the Bioscope, Carrick’s—“going places” meant, for Jenny, crowds, entertainment, a few glasses of port, money spent upon her. David had no money to spend upon her. She did not for a moment doubt that he would have taken her to all her favourite resorts had his purse permitted. David was a nice young man, she liked him, though occasionally she thought him very odd. On the afternoon they went to Esmond Dene he quite bewildered her.

She was not very keen to visit Esmond, she thought it a common place, a place where it costs nothing to get in, and the very lowest people sprawled upon the grass and ate out of paper bags. Some of the commonest girls from the shop went there with their fellows on Sundays. But David appeared so much to wish her to go that she agreed.

He began by taking her the long way round so that he might show her the swallows’ nests. Quite eagerly he asked:

“Have you ever seen the nests, Jenny?”

She shook her head.

“I’ve only been here once, and I was a kid then, about five.”

He seemed astounded.

“But it’s the loveliest spot, Jenny! I take a walk here every week. It’s got moods, this place, just like the human soul, sometimes dark and melancholy, sometimes sunny, full of sunshine. Look! Just look at these nests, under the eaves of the lodge.”

She looked very carefully; but she could see only some daubs of mud plastered against the wall. Baffled, feeling rather angrily that she was missing something, she accompanied him past the banqueting hall, down the rhododendron walk to the waterfall. They stood together on the little arched stone bridge.

“See these chestnuts, Jenny,” he exclaimed happily. “Don’t they open out the sky? And the moss there on these stones. And the mill there, look, isn’t it wonderful? It’s exactly like one of the early Corots!”

She saw an old ruin of a house, with a red tiled roof and a wooden mill-wheel, covered with ivy and all sorts of queer colours. But it was a queer kind of tumbled-down place, and in any case it was no good now, it wasn’t working. She felt angrier than ever. They had tramped quite a long way, her feet were swollen, hurting her in her new tight shoes which she had thought such a bargain, four and eleven reduced from nine shillings, at the sales. She had seen nothing but grass, trees, flowers and sky, heard nothing but the sound of water and birds, eaten nothing but some damp egg sandwiches and two Canary bananas — they were not even the big waxy Jamaica kind which she preferred. She was confused, puzzled, all “upside down”; cross with David, herself, Joe, life, her shoes — was she really getting a corn? — cross with everything. She wanted a cup of tea, a glass of port, something! Standing there, on that lovely arched stone bridge, she compressed her rather pale lips, then opened them to say something extremely disagreeable. But at that moment she caught sight of David’s face.

His face was so happy, so rapt, suffused with such ardour, intensity and love that it took her all of a heap. She giggled suddenly. She giggled and giggled; it was so funny she could not stop. She had a perfect paroxysm of almost hysterical enjoyment.

David laughed too, out of sheer sympathy.

“What’s the matter, Jenny?” he kept asking. “Do tell me what’s the joke!”

“I don’t know,” she gasped, going into a fresh spasm of mirth. “That’s just it. I don’t know… I don’t know what I’m laughing at.”

At last she dried her streaming eyes on her small lace-edged hanky — an extra nice hanky, a lady had left in the toilet at Slattery’s.

“Oh dear,” she sighed. “That was a scream, wasn’t it?” This was a favourite phrase of Jenny’s: all events of unusual significance, when they lay beyond Jenny’s comprehension, were classed sympathetically as screams.

She felt quite restored, however, rather fond of him now; she allowed him to take her arm and be very close to her as they climbed the steep hill of the Dene towards the tram. But she cut the afternoon shorter than it might have been, pleaded tiredness, refused to let him see her to her home.

She went along Scottswood Road in a restless, excitable mood, nursing the idea which had come to her as she sat beside David in the tram. The street teemed with life. It was Saturday, about six o’clock; people were starting to stroll about, to enjoy themselves; it was a time that Jenny loved, the time when she most commonly set out with Joe.

She let herself into the house quietly and, by a stroke of luck which made her heart leap, she met Joe in the passage coming out.

“Hello, Joe,” she said brightly, forgetting that for a week she had cut him dead.

“Hello!” he said, not looking at her.

“I’ve had such a scream of an afternoon, Joe,” she went on gaily, coquettishly. “You’d have died, honestly you’d have died. I’ve seen every kind of swallow but a real one.”

He darted a quick suspicious glance at her as she stood in the dim passage blocking his way. She saw the look and came a little closer, making herself seductive, asking him with her face, her eyes, her body.

“Couldn’t you and I go out to-night, Joe?” she murmured seductively. “Honest, I’ve had a sickening afternoon. I’ve missed you a lot lately. I want to go out with you. I want to. Here I am ready, all dressed up…”

“Ah, what—”

She pressed against him, began to smooth his coat lapel, to slip her white finger into his buttonhole, with a childish yet suggestive appeal.

“I’m just dying to have a fling. Let’s go to the Percy Grill, Joe, and have a rare old time. You know, Joe… you know what…”

He shook his head rudely.

“No,” he said in a surly voice. “I’m busy, I’m worried, I’ve got things on my mind.” He brushed past her, banged through the door and was gone.

She lay back against the wall of the passage, her mouth a little open, her eyes upon the street door. She had asked him, lowered herself to ask him. She had held herself wide open, wide open, longing for him, and he had chucked a surly refusal in her face. Humiliation rushed over her; never, in all her life, had she been so wounded, so humiliated. Pale with temper, she bit her lips fiercely. She lay there for a moment mad, simply, with fury. Then she gathered herself, flung her head in the air, went into the back room as if nothing had happened.

Tossing her hat and gloves upon the sofa, she began to make herself a cup of tea. Ada, reclining in the rocker, lowered her magazine and watched her with displeasure.

“Where you been?” Ada asked laconically, very coldly.

“Out.”

“H’umph… out with that young Fenwick fella, eh?”

“Certainly,” Jenny agreed with a calm tranquillity. “Out with David Fenwick. And a most lovely afternoon I’ve had. Simply perfect. Such wonderful flowers and birds we’ve seen. He’s a nice fellow, oh, he really is nice.”

Ada’s indolent bosom heaved ominously.

“So he’s nice, is he?”

“Yes, indeed.” Jenny paused in her unruffled measuring of the tea to nod graciously. “He’s the nicest and best fellow I’ve ever met. I’m quite carried away by him.” And very airily she began to hum.

Ada could stand it no longer.

“Don’t hum at me,” she quivered with indignation. “I won’t have it. And let me tell you this, madam, I think you’re behaving shocking. You’re not treating Joe right. For four years now he’s run after you, taken you out and all, as good as your intended. And the minute this other young man comes along you turn Joe down and go cohorting all over the place with him…. It’s not fair on Joe.”

Jenny paused and sipped her tea with ladylike restraint.

“I think nothing of Joe Gowlan, ma. I could have Joe just by the raising of my little finger. But I haven’t raised it. Not just yet.”

“So that’s it, my lady! Joe isn’t good enough for you now… not grand enough now this school teacher has come on the carpet. You’re a fine customer, right enough. I should think so. Let me tell you, my lady, that I didn’t go about it that way with your dad. I treated him proper and human. And if you don’t treat Joe the same you’ll lose him as sure as your name’s Jenny Sunley.”

“A lot I care, ma.” Jenny smiled pityingly. “Even if I never did set eyes on Joe Gowlan again.”

Mrs. Sunley exploded.

“You might not then. Joe’s upset. Joe’s terrible upset. He’s just been in here talking to me now. There was tears in his eyes, poor fella, when he was speaking to me about you. He don’t know what to do. And he’s got trouble on him, too, trouble at the foundry. You’re treating him shameful, but mark my words, no man’ll put up with that kind of thing for long. So just look out. You’re a bad heartless girl. I’ve had a good mind to tell your dad.” Ada delivered the final threat and sealed off the conversation by raising her magazine with a jerk. She had said her say, done her duty, and Jenny could like it or lump it!

Jenny’s smile was still superior as she finished her tea. Still condescending and even more superior as she picked up her hat and gloves, swept from the room and mounted the stairs.

In her own bedroom, however, something went wrong with Jenny’s smile. She stood alone, in the middle of the cold worn linoleum like a wretched, forsaken, spoiled child. She let her hat and gloves slip from her. Then with a great gulp she flung herself upon the bed. She lay flat upon the bed as though embracing it. Her skirt, caught above one knee, exposed a tender patch of white skin above her black stocking. Her abandon was unutterable. She sobbed and sobbed as if her heart would break.

Joe, strutting down Bigg Market to see Dick Jobey, with whom he had private and important business, was telling himself gleefully:

“It’s working, lad! By gum, it’s working.”

FIFTEEN

Ten days later, early in the forenoon, Joe presented himself at the foundry offices and asked to see Mr. Stanley.

“Well, Joe, what is it?” Stanley Millington asked, looking up from his desk, set in the centre of the old-fashioned high-windowed room, full of papers, books and blue prints, with maroon walls covered by photographs of employee groups, officials of the firm, outings of the Social Club and big castings dangling precariously from cranes.

Joe said respectfully:

“I’ve just worked my week’s notice, Mr. Millington. I didn’t want to go without saying good-bye.”

Our Mr. Stanley sat up in his chair.

“Heavens, man, you don’t mean to say you’re leaving us. Why, that’s too bad. You’re one of the bright lights of the shop. And the Social Club too. What’s the trouble? Anything I can put right?”

Joe shook his head with a kind of manly melancholy.

“No, Mr. Stanley, sir, it’s just private trouble. Nothing to do with the shop. I like it there fine. It’s… it’s just a matter between my lass and me.”

“Good God, Joe!” Mr. Stanley burned. “You don’t mean…” Our Mr. Stanley remembered Jenny; our Mr. Stanley had recently married Laura; our Mr. Stanley was straight, so to speak, from the nuptial bed and his mood was dramatically propitious: “You don’t mean to say she’s chucked you.”

Joe nodded dumbly.

“I’ll have to get out. I can’t stick the place any longer. I’ll have to get right away.”

Millington averted his eyes. Bad luck on the man, oh, rotten bad luck. Taking it like a sportsman, too! To give Joe time he tactfully took out his pipe, slowly filled it from the tobacco jar on the desk bearing the St. Bede’s colours, straightened his St. Bede’s tie and said:

“I’m sorry, Joe.” Chivalry towards woman permitted him to say no more: he could not indict Jenny. But he went on: “I’m doubly sorry to lose you. Joe. As a matter of fact I’ve had you at the back of my mind for some time. I’ve been watching you. I wanted to make an opening for you, give you a lift.”

Dammit to hell, thought Joe grimly, why didn’t you do it then? Smiling gratefully, he said:

“That was good of you, Mr. Stanley.”

“Yes!” Puffing thoughtfully. “I like your style, Joe. You’re the type of man I like to work with — open and decent. Education counts very little these days. It’s the man himself who matters. I wanted to give you your chance.” Long pause. “However, I won’t attempt to dissuade you now. There’s no good offering a man stones when he wants bread. In your circumstance I should probably do exactly the same thing. Go away and try to forget.” He paused again, pipe in hand, realising with a sudden fullness of heart how happy was his position with Laura, how different from poor old Joe’s. “But remember what I’ve said, Joe. I really mean it. If and when you want to come back there’ll be a job waiting on you here. A decent job. You understand, Joe?”

“Yes, Mr. Stanley,” Joe managed manfully.

Millington got up, took the pipe from his mouth and held out his hand, encouraging Joe to face his present destiny.

“Good-bye, Joe. I know we’ll meet again.”

They shook hands. Joe turned and went out. He hurried down Platt Street, caught a tram, urged it mentally to speed. He hurried along Scottswood Road, entered No. 117A quietly, slipped softly upstairs and packed his bag. He packed everything. When he came to the framed photograph of herself which Jenny had given him he contemplated it for a minute, grinned slightly, detached the photograph and packed the frame. It was a good frame, anyway, a silver frame.

With the bulging bag in his big fist he came downstairs, plumped the bag in the hall and entered the back room. Ada, as usual, was in the rocker, her untidy curves overflowing while she took what she called her forenoon go-easy.

“Good-bye, Mrs. Sunley.”

“What!” Ada almost jumped out of the chair.

“I’m sacked,” Joe announced succinctly. “I’ve lost my job, Jenny’s finished with me, I can’t stand it any longer, I’m off.”

“But, Joe…” Ada gasped. “You’re not serious?”

“I’m dead serious.” Joe was not doleful now: this would have been dangerous, invoking protests from Ada that he should remain. He was firm, determined, controlled. He was going, a man who had been outraged, whose mind now was inexorably made up. And as such the impressionable Ada accepted him.

“I knew it,” she wailed. “I knew it the way Jenny was going on. I told her. I told her you wouldn’t stand it. She’s treated you shocking.”

“Worse than shocking,” Joe amended grimly.

“And to think you’ve lost your job on top of it, oh, Joe, I’m sorry. It’s wicked. What on earth are you going to do?”

“I’ll find a job,” Joe said resolutely. “But it’ll be far enough from Tynecastle.”

“But, Joe… won’t you…”

“No!” bawled Joe suddenly. “I won’t. I won’t do anything. I’ve suffered enough. I’ve been done down by my best friend. I’ll stand no more of it.”

David, of course, was Joe’s trump card. But for David, Joe would never have slipped out of the affair like this. Impossible. In every way impossible. He would have been questioned, pursued, spied on at every turn. Even as he spoke this thought flashed across Joe’s mind; and a great surge of elation at his own cleverness came over him. Yes, he was clever; he was an artist; it was marvellous to be standing here pulling the wool over her eyes, laughing up his sleeve at every one of them.

“Mind you, I bear no ill feeling, Mrs. Sunley,” he declared finally. “Tell Jenny I forgive her. And say good-bye to the others for me. I can’t face them. I’m too upset.”

Ada didn’t want to let him go. She, indeed, was the one who seemed upset. But what could she do with this injured man? Joe left the house as he had entered it: in the best tradition and without a stain on his character.

That evening Jenny returned late. It was Slattery’s Summer Sale and this being Friday, the last full day of that hateful period, the establishment did not close until nearly eight o’clock. Jenny came in at quarter past.

Ada was alone in the house: with remarkable energy she had arranged it so, sending Clarry and Phyllis “out,” Alf and Sally to the first house of the Empire.

“I want to speak to you, Jenny.”

Something unusual vibrated in her mother’s voice, but Jenny was too tired to bother. She was dead tired, indisposed too, which made it worse, she’d had a killing day.

“That Slattery’s,” she declared wearily, flinging herself on a chair. “I’m sick of it. Ten blessed hours I’ve been on my feet. They’re all hot and swollen. I’ll have varicose veins if I go on much longer. I used to think it was a toney job. What a hope! It’s worse than ever, the class of women we’re getting now is fierce.”

“Joe,” remarked Mrs. Sunley acidly, “has left.”

“Left?” Jenny echoed, bewildered.

“Left this morning! Left for good.”

Jenny understood. Her pale face went absolutely blanched. She stopped caressing her swollen stockinged feet and sat up. Her grey eyes stared, not at her mother, but at nothing. She looked frightened. Then she recovered herself.

“Give me my tea, mother,” she said in an odd tone. “Don’t say another word. Just give me my tea and shut up.”

Ada drew a deep breath and all the pent-up scolding died upon her tongue. She knew something of her Jenny — not everything, but enough to know that Jenny must at this moment be obeyed. She “shut up” and gave Jenny her tea.

Very slowly Jenny ate her tea, it was really dinner, some cottage pie kept hot in the oven. She still sat very erect, still stared straight in front of her. She was thinking.

When she had finished she turned to her mother.

“Now, listen, ma,” she said, “and listen hard. I know you’re all ready to begin on me. I know every word that’s ready to come off your tongue. I’ve treated Joe rotten and all the rest of it. I know, I tell you. I know it all. So don’t say it. Then you’ll have nothing to regret. See! And now I’m going to bed.”

She left her dumbfounded mother and walked wearily upstairs. She felt incredibly tired. If only she had a port, a couple of ports to buck her up. Suddenly she felt she would give anything for one cheering glass of port. Upstairs she threw off her things, some on to a chair, some on to the floor, anywhere, anyhow. She got into bed. Thank God Clarry, who shared the room, was not there to bother her.

In the cool darkness of her room she lay flat upon her back, still thinking… thinking. There was no hysteria this time, no floods of tears, no wild beating at the pillow. She was perfectly calm; but for all her calmness she was frightened.

She faced the fact that Joe had thrown her over, a frightful blow, a blow almost mortally damaging to her pride, a blow which had struck her psychologically at the worst possible time. She was sick of Slattery’s, sick of the long hours of standing, stretching, snipping, sick of being politely patronising to the common women customers. Only to-day her six years at Slattery’s had risen up to confront her; she had told herself firmly she must get out of it. She was sick of her home, too; sick of the crowded, littered, blowsy place. She wanted a house of her own, her own things; she wanted to meet people, give little tea parties, have proper “society.” But suppose she never had her wish? Suppose it was a case of Slattery’s and Scottswood Road all her life — there lay the vital cause of Jenny’s sudden alarm. In Joe she had lost one opportunity. Would she lose the other?

She put in a great deal of cold hard thinking before she fell asleep. But she woke next morning feeling refreshed. Saturday was her half-day and when she came home at one o’clock she ate her lunch quickly and hurried upstairs to change. She spent a great deal of time upon her dressing; choosing her smartest frock, a pearl grey with pale pink trimmings, doing her hair in a new style, carefully smoothing her complexion with Vinolia cold cream. The result satisfied her. She went down to the parlour to wait for David.

She expected him at half-past two, but he came a good ten minutes before his time, thrilling with eagerness to see her. One glance reassured Jenny: he was head over ears in love with her. She let him in herself and he stood stock still in the passage, consuming her with his ardent eyes.

“Jenny,” he whispered. “You’re too good to be true.”

As she led the way into the parlour she laughed, pleased: David, she was forced to admit, had a way of saying things far beyond Joe’s capacity. But he had brought her the stupidest little present: not chocolates or candy or even perfume; nothing useful: but a bunch of wallflowers, hardly a bunch even, a small sort of posy which couldn’t have cost more than twopence at one of the market barrows. But never mind, never mind about that now. She smiled:

“I’m that pleased to see you, David, really I am, and such lovely flowers.”

“They’re nothing much, but they’re sweet, Jenny, and so are you. Their petals have a kind of mist on them… it’s like the lovely mist on your eyes.”

She did not know what to say; this style of conversation left her completely at a loss; she supposed it came from all the books he’d read in these last three years—“poems and that like.” Ordinarily she would have bustled away with the wallflowers, making the correct ladylike remark: “I really do love arranging flowers.” But this afternoon she did not wish to bustle away from him. She wanted to keep near him. Still holding the flowers she sat down primly on the couch. He sat beside her, smiling at the stem propriety of their attitudes.

“We look like we were having our photograph taken.”

“What?” She gazed at him blankly, making him laugh outright.

“You know, Jenny,” he said, “I’ve never met anyone more… oh, more completely innocent than you. Like Francesca… Hither all dewy from her cloister fetched… a man called Stephen Phillips wrote that.”

Her eyes were downcast. Her grey dress, pale soft face and still hands clasping the flowers did give her a queer nunlike quality. She remained very quiet after he had spoken, wondering what on earth he meant. Innocent? Was he — could he be kidding her? No, surely not, he was too far gone on her for that. She said at length:

“You’re not to make fun of me. I haven’t been feeling too well this day or two.”

“Oh, Jenny.” His concern was instant. “What’s been wrong?”

She sighed, began to pick at the stem of one of his flowers.

“They’ve all been down on me here, all of them… Then there’s been trouble with Joe… he’s gone away.”

“Joe gone?”

She nodded.

“But why? In the name of goodness why?”

She was silent a moment, then, still plucking pathetically at the flower:

“He was jealous… He wouldn’t stay because… oh, well, if you must know, because I like you better than him.”

“But, Jenny,” he protested, confused. “Joe said… do you mean… do you really mean that after all Joe was fond of you?”

“Don’t let’s talk about it,” she answered with a little shiver. “I won’t talk about it. They’ve been on about it all the time. They blame me because I couldn’t stand Joe…” She lifted her eyes to his suddenly. “I can’t help myself, can I, David?”

At the subtle implication in her words his heart beat loudly, with a quick and exquisite elation. She preferred him. She had called him David. Gazing into her eyes as on that first evening when they met, he lost himself, knowing only that he loved her, wanting her with all his soul. There was no one in the world but Jenny. There would never be anyone but Jenny. The thought, simply of her name, Jenny, was enchantment: a lark singing, a bud opening, beauty and sweetness, melody and perfume in one. With all the ardour of his young and hungry soul he desired her. He bent towards her, and she did not draw away.

“Jenny,” he murmured above the beating of his heart. “Do you mean that you like me?”

“Yes, David.”

“Jenny,” he whispered. “I knew right from the start it would be like this. You do love me, Jenny?”

She gave a little nervous nod.

He took her in his arms. Nothing in all his life transcended the rapture of that kiss. He kissed her lightly, almost reverently. There was a tragic youthfulness, a complete betrayal of his inexperience in the tender awkwardness of that embrace. It was the queerest kiss she had ever known. Some curious quality in the kiss helped a tear tremulously down her cheek, another, and another.

“Jenny… you’re crying. Don’t you love me? Oh, my dear, tell me what’s wrong.”

“I do love you, David. I do,” she whispered. “I haven’t got anybody but you. I want you to go on loving me. I want you to take me out of here. I hate it here. I hate it. They’ve been beastly to me. And I’m sick of working in the millinery. I’ll not put up with it another minute. I want to be with you, right away. I want us to be married and happy and, oh, everything, David.”

The emotion in her voice moved him beyond the edge of ecstasy.

“I’ll take you away, Jenny. As soon as ever I can. Whenever I take my degree and get a post.”

She burst into tears.

“Oh, David, but that’s another whole year. And you’ll be in Durham, at the University, away from me. You’ll forget me. I couldn’t wait as long as that. I’m sick of it here, I tell you. Couldn’t you get a post now?” She wept bitterly; she did not know why.

It distressed him terribly to see her crying: he saw that she was overwrought and highly strung: but every sob she gave seemed to pierce him like a wound.

He soothed her, stroking her brow as her head lay upon his shoulder.

“It’s not so very long, Jenny. And don’t worry, oh, my dear, don’t worry. Why, I daresay I could get a post now if it came to the bit. I’m quite qualified to teach, you see. I’ve got the B.Litt already, you can take that in two years at the Baddeley. It’s not worth anything, nothing like the B.A., but I daresay if it came to a push I could get a job on the strength of it.”

“Could you, David?” Her streaming eyes implored him. “Oh, do try, David! How would you set about it?”

“Well.” Still stroking her brow he humoured her. Only the madness of his love made him go on. “I might write to a man at home who’s got some influence. A man named Barras. He might get me in somewhere in the county. But you see…”

“I do see, David,” she gulped. “I see exactly what you mean. You must take your B.A. But why not take it afterwards? Oh, think, David, you and me together in a nice little house somewhere. You working in the evenings with all your great big important books on the table and me sitting there beside you. It’s not so very hard to teach during the day. Then you can study, oh, ever so hard at night. Why, David, it would be wonderful. Wonderful!”

The picture, painted so romantically by Jenny, stirred him to a smiling tenderness. He looked at her protectively.

“But you see, Jenny, we must be practical…”

She smiled through her tears.

“David, David… don’t say another word. I’m so happy, I don’t want you to spoil it.” She jumped up, laughing. “Now, listen! We’ll go for a beautiful walk. Let’s go to Esmond Dene, it’s so lovely there, I do love it so, what with the trees and that beautiful old mill. And we’ll talk it all over, every bit of it. After all it wouldn’t do any harm just to write to this gentleman, Mr. Barras…” She broke off, fascinating him with her lovely eyes, all liquid and melting with her suppressed tears. She kissed him quickly, then ran off to get ready.

He stood smiling; uplifted, enraptured, perhaps a little perplexed. But nothing mattered beside the fact that Jenny loved him. She loved him. And he loved her. He thrilled with tenderness, an ardent hope for the future. Jenny would wait, of course she would wait… he was only twenty-two… he must take his B.A., she would come to see that later.

While he remained there, waiting for Jenny, the door flew open and Sally came into the room. She stopped short when she saw him.

“I didn’t know you were here,” she said, frowning. “I only came to get some music.”

Her frown was like a cloud sailing into the clear sky of his happiness. She had always been very odd with him, abrupt, caustic, perversely disagreeable. She seemed to have a grudge against him, an instinct for flicking him on the raw. Suddenly he wanted to be on good terms with Sally now that he was so happy, now that he was marrying her sister. And on an impulse he said:

“Why do you look at me that way, Sally? Is it because you dislike me?”

She faced him steadily: she wore an old blue drill costume, relic of her last year’s school days; her hair was very untidy.

“I don’t dislike you,” she said, with none of her usual precocious flippancy.

He saw that she was speaking the truth. He smiled.

“But you’re… you’re always so sour to me.”

She answered with uncommon gravity:

“You know where to get sugar if you want it.” And lowering her eyes suddenly she turned and went out of the room.

As Sally went through the door Jenny came swimming in.

“What’s the little cat been saying to you?” Not waiting for his reply she took his arm with a proprietary air, gave it a gentle squeeze. “Come along now, dear. I’m dying for us to have our lovely, lovely talk.”

She was bright now, yes, bright as a bird was Jenny. And why not? Hadn’t she every reason to be pleased, with a fiancé, not just a “boy” but a real fiancé, qualified to be a teacher. Oh! Marvellous to have a fiancé who was a teacher. She’d get out of Slattery’s right away, and out of Scottswood Road as well. She’d show them, show Joe too, she’d have a church wedding to spite them all, with a notice in the paper, she’d always set her mind on a church wedding, now what would she wear, something simple but nice… oh, yes, nice… nice… nice.

When David returned from his walk he wrote to Barras, “just to please” Jenny. A week later he had an answer, offering him a post as junior master at the New Bethel Street Council School in Sleescale. He showed it to Jenny, tom between reason and the rapture of his love for her, thinking of his parents, his career, wondering what she would say. She flung her arms round his neck.

“Oh, David, darling,” she sobbed. “Isn’t that marvellous, too marvellous for words? Aren’t you glad I made you write? Isn’t it really wonderful?”

Pressed against her, his eyes shut, his lips on hers holding her, oh, so tight, he felt with surging intoxication that she was right: it was really quite wonderful.

SIXTEEN

That morning, even before the telegram arrived for his father, Arthur was conscious of a singular elation. He awoke into it, was aware from the moment he opened his eyes upon the square of blue sky through his open window that life was very precious — full of sunshine and strength and hope. Naturally he did not always wake this way. Some mornings there was no sunshine, nothing awaited him but heaviness, a kind of immobile darkness, and the dismal sense of his own deficiencies.

Why was he so happy? That, like his moods of misery, remained inexplicable. Perhaps a premonition of the morning telegram, or of seeing Hetty in the afternoon. More likely the joyful recognition of his own improvement for, lying in bed with his hands clasped behind his head and the long span of his eighteen-year body luxuriously stretched, his first real thought had been: “I didn’t eat the strawberries.”

Of course, the strawberries, though he was very fond of them, were nothing in themselves; they were a symbol, they stood for his own strength. Half-smiling, he recapitulated. The table last night, Aunt Caroline, head on one side as usual, purring, portioning the luscious bowl of home-grown strawberries — a rare luxury on Barras’s austere table. And the cream too, he nearly forgot the big silver jug of yellow cream — nothing he liked better than strawberries and cream. “Now, Arthur,” he heard Aunt Caroline say, preparing to delve generously for him. Then, himself, quickly: “No thank you, Aunt Carrie. I shan’t have any strawberries to-night.” “But, Arthur…” Surprise, even consternation in Aunt Carrie’s voice; his father’s aloof eye fixed momentarily upon him. Aunt Carrie again: “Aren’t you well, Arthur, my dear?” Himself, laughing: “Perfectly well, Aunt Carrie, I just don’t feel like strawberries to-night.” He had sat, with watering teeth, watching them eat the strawberries.

That was the way to do it, a little thing, perhaps, but the book said bigger things would follow. Yes, he was satisfied this morning. “I do wish Arthur would show more character.” His mother’s petulant remark, overheard as he passed along the corridor outside her room, and fixed through all these months in the very centre of his mind, receded now, answered by his conduct towards the strawberries!

He jumped out of bed — it was wrong, really, to lie dreaming in bed — went through his exercises vigorously before the open window, dashed into the bathroom and took a cold bath: really cold, mind you, not a trickle, even, from the hot tap to temper the icy plunge. He came back to his room, glowing, dressed in his working suit with his eyes fixed religiously upon the placard which hung on the wall opposite his bed. The placard said in large heavily inked letters: I will! Beneath this was another: “Look every man straight between the eyes!”

Arthur finished lacing his boots, his heavy boots, for he would be going inbye today, and was ready. He went to a drawer, unlocked it and picked out a small red book; The Cure of Self-consciousness, one of a series of such books entitled The Will and the Way—and sat down seriously upon the edge of his bed to read. He always read one chapter before breakfast when, as the book declared, the mind was most receptive; and he preferred his bedroom because of its privacy — these little red books were a secret, guarded jealously.

Outside the edge of his concentration he heard the movements of the house: the slow pad, pad of Aunt Carrie in his mother’s room, Grace’s laugh and scurry towards the bathroom, the sullen thud of Hilda overhead as she grudgingly got out of bed to face the day. His father had been up an hour ago; early rising was part of his father’s routine, inevitable somehow, never questioned, expected.

Arthur paused momentarily in his reading: The human will is capable of controlling not only the destiny of one man but the destinies of many men. That faculty of mind which determines either to do or forbear to do, that faculty whereby we determine, among two courses, which we shall embrace or pursue can affect not only our own lives but the lives of many others.

How true that was! If only for that single reason one must cultivate the will — not for the effects upon oneself but for these wide and far-flung consequences upon others. He wanted to be strong, to have control, resolution, mastery over himself. He knew his own defects, his natural shyness and awkwardness, his proneness to burrow in his own reserve, but beyond everything his incorrigible tendency to dream.

Like all gentle and sensitive natures, he was tempted to escape from the harsh reality of life through the gateway of his imagination. How wonderful were these dreams! How often he saw himself performing some terrific act of heroism at the Neptune… or perhaps it was a little child he saved from drowning or from an express train, walking away quietly without giving his name, only to be discovered afterwards and carried shoulder high by a delirious crowd… or it was a hulking brute he knocked out for bullying a woman… or he stood upon a platform, spellbinding an enormous audience with his oratory… or again, at some select dinner table, partnered by Hetty Todd, he fascinated her and the company at large by the ease and brilliance of his address… oh, there was no limit to the dazzling wonder of those dreams. But he realised their danger, he had put them behind him, he would be strong now, magnificently strong. He was nearly nineteen; in a year would finish his course in mining engineering. Life had… oh yes, life really had begun, and it was necessary to bring courage to bear upon it. Courage and determination. I will, Arthur said firmly, closing the book and staring zealously at the placard. He shut his eyes tight and repeated the phrase several times into himself, burning the words, as it were, into his soul. I will, I will, I will… Then he went down to breakfast.

His father, who preferred to breakfast half an hour before the others, had almost finished; he was drinking a last cup of coffee, reflectively, with the paper on his knee. He nodded silently in answer to Arthur’s good morning. There was nothing peremptory in that nod, none of the freezing curtness which sometimes cut Arthur to the bone. The nod this morning held an indulgent tranquillity: it fell upon Arthur like a caress, it reinforced, admitted his devotion, acknowledged him as an individual. He smiled with happiness, began intently to chip the top from his egg, warmly conscious of his father’s continued gaze.

“I think, Arthur,” Barras said, suddenly, as though he had decided to speak, “I think we may have interesting news today.”

“Yes, father?”

“We have the prospect of a contract.”

“Yes, father?” Arthur looked up blushing. That “We” simply was magnificent, including him, making him one with his father, enrolling him already as a partner in the mine.

“A first-rate contract, I may add, with P. W. & Company.”

“Yes, father.”

“You’re pleased?” Barras inquired with amiable satire.

“Oh yes, father.”

Barras nodded again.

“It’s our coking coal they want. I had begun to think we should never get started on that seam again. But if they meet our price we shall start work there next week. Start to strip the Dyke in Scupper Flats.”

“When shall you know, father?”

“This morning,” Barras answered; and as though Arthur’s direct question had made him suddenly resent his previous unbending, he raised his paper and from behind it said authoritatively: “Be ready at nine sharp, please. I don’t wish to be kept waiting.”

Arthur returned to his egg industriously, gratified at the information he had received. But suddenly a thought disturbed him. He remembered something… something most disturbing. Scupper Flats! He lifted his eyes quickly towards the screened figure of his father. He wanted to ask… he most terribly wanted to ask a question. Should he, could he, or had be better not? While he vacillated, Aunt Carrie came in with Grace and Hilda. Aunt Carrie wore her usual look of pleasantness which she put on every morning, regularly, naturally, just as she put in her false teeth.

“Your mother’s had a splendid night.” Brightly she apostrophised Arthur. Though the information was for Richard, Carrie knew better than address him outright: all Aunt Carrie’s methods were indirect, protective of her own and the general peace.

Arthur passed her the toast without hearing a word. His mind was focused entirely upon his own disturbing thought… Scupper Flats. He did not feel half so happy now, he began to feel worried and upset. He kept his eyes upon his plate. And under his brooding the splendour of the morning slowly waned. He could have cried out with vexation: why should it always be, this sudden turn of his being from ecstatic lightness to heaviness and dismay?

He gazed across at Grace in a sort of envy, watching her as she dealt with the marmalade cheerfully and happily. Grace was always the same: at sixteen she had the same sweetness, the same happy unconsciousness that he remembered so vividly in those days when they used both to tumble off Boxer’s back. Why, only yesterday he had seen her come up the Avenue with Dan Teasdale, munching a big red apple, with a sort of cheerful comradeship. She, who was going next month to a finishing school at Harrogate, went chewing apples through the town in broad daylight, and with Dan Teasdale, the baker’s son! He, no doubt, had given her the apple, for he was munching its neighbour. If Aunt Carrie had seen her there would have been a row and no mistake.

Here Grace caught his eyes upon her before he could remove them, smiled at him and silently articulated a single word. At least she shaped her lips to the word, just breathed it across the table towards him. But he knew what it was. Grace, still smiling at him cheerfully, was saying “Hetty!” Whenever Grace caught him in a mood of introspection she deduced that he was dreaming of Hetty Todd.

He shook his head vaguely — an action which seemed to cause her the most intense amusement. Her eyes glistened with fun, she simply bubbled with some inward joy. But as her mouth was full of toast and marmalade, the result was calamitous. Grace spluttered suddenly, coughed, choked and got very red in the face.

“Oh dear,” she gasped at last. “Something went the wrong way.”

Hilda frowned at her:

“Drink some coffee quickly, then. And don’t be such a little jay.”

Grace obediently drank her coffee. Hilda watched her; sitting erect and severe, the frown still lingering, making her dark face harsh.

“I don’t think,” she said firmly, “that you will ever learn to behave.”

The remark was like a rap across the knuckles. That at least was how Arthur would have felt it. And yet, he knew that Hilda loved Grace. Curious! Yes, it struck him always as intensely curious this love of Hilda for Grace. It was violent somehow, yet disciplined; like a caress united to a blow; watchful; both dormant and possessive; made up of sudden anger and tenderness quickly subdued. Hilda wanted Grace to be with her; Hilda would give everything to be loved by Grace. Yet Hilda, he felt, openly scorned the least demonstration of affection which might attract Grace to her, which might evoke Grace’s love.

With a quick impatience he turned from the thought — that was another fault he must correct, the wandering tendency of his too inquisitive mind. Hadn’t he enough to occupy him since that conversation with his father? He finished his coffee, rolled his napkin in the bone ring and sat waiting for his father to rise. On the way to the pit he would ask… or perhaps mightn’t it be better on the way home?

At last Barras finished with the paper. He did not let it drop beside him; he folded it neatly with his white, beautifully kept hands; his fingers smoothed, preserved the paper; then he passed it to Aunt Carrie without a word.

Hilda always took the paper the moment Barras went out, and Barras knew that Hilda took it. But he chose rather loftily to ignore that obtrusive fact.

He went out of the room followed by Arthur and in five minutes both were in the dogcart spanking towards the pit. Arthur nerved himself to speak. The words were on his tongue a dozen times and in a dozen different ways. “By the bye, father,” he would say: or simply “Father, do you think…” or perhaps “It has suddenly struck me, father…” would be a more propitious opening. All the permutations and combinations ranged themselves for his choice: he saw himself speaking, heard the words he spoke. But he said nothing. It was agony. Then, to his infinite relief, Barras calmly cut right into the heart of his distress.

“We had a little trouble some years ago over the Scupper Flats. Do you remember?”

“Yes, father, I remember.” Arthur stole a quick glance at his father, who sat upright and composed beside him.

“A wretched business! I didn’t want it. Who does want trouble? But that trouble was thrust upon me. It cost me dearly.” He disposed of the matter, slid it back quietly into the archives of the past, moralising: “Life is a hard business, sometimes, Arthur. It is necessary to preserve one’s position in the face of circumstance.” Then in a moment he said: “But this time we shall have no trouble.”

“You think not, father?”

“I’m sure of it. The men had a lesson last time they won’t be in a hurry to repeat.” His tone was considered, reasonable; he balanced the argument dispassionately. “No doubt the Scupper will turn out a wet section, but for that matter Mixen and the whole of Paradise is wet. They’re used to these conditions. Quite used to them.”

As his father spoke, saying so little yet conveying so much, a tremendous wave of comfort flowed over Arthur, obliterating all the nebulous anxieties and fears which had tormented him for the last hour. They became effaced, like puny sand castles washed straight and clean by some vigorous advancing tide. Gratitude overwhelmed him. He loved his father for this serenity, for this calm, unruffled strength. He sat silent, conscious of his father’s presence near to him. He was untroubled now. The brightness of the morning was restored.

They bowled down Cowpen Street at a fine pace, entered the pit yard, went straight into the office. Armstrong was there, obviously waiting, for he stood at the window idly tapping the pane with his thumb. He spun round as Barras entered.

“A wire for you, Mr. Barras.” And, in a moment, showing that he knew the telegram’s significance, “I thought maybe I’d better wait.”

Barras took the orange slip from the desk and opened it without hurry.

“Yes,” he said calmly. “It’s all right. They’ve agreed to our price.”

“Then we start in the Flats on Monday?” Armstrong said.

Barras nodded.

Armstrong stroked his lips with the back of his hand, an odd self-conscious gesture. For no apparent reason he had a sheepish look. Suddenly the telephone rang. Almost with relief, Armstrong walked over to the desk and lifted the receiver to his ear.

“Hello, hello.” He listened for a moment, then glanced across at Barras. “It’s Mr. Todd of Tynecastle. He’s been on twice this morning already.”

Barras took the instrument from Armstrong.

“Yes, yes, this is Richard Barras… yes, Todd, I’m glad to say it’s settled.”

He broke off, listening, then in an altered tone he said:

“Don’t be absurd, Todd. Yes, of course. What? I said of course!”

Another pause while the familiar impatient furrow gathered on Barras’s forehead.

“I tell you yes.” A rasp entered his voice. “What nonsense, man! I should think so. Not over the ’phone. What? I don’t see the slightest need. Yes, I shall be in Tynecastle this afternoon. Where? At your house? What’s that? Indigestion? Dear, dear…” The sarcastic emphasis in Barras’s voice grew more pronounced and his eyes, searching the office irritably, found Arthur’s suddenly and remained there, communicating, derisive. “…Your liver again? What a pity! Something disagreed with you. Well, since you’re seedy I suppose I’d better call on you. But I refuse to take you seriously. Yes, I absolutely refuse. Listen, I’ll bring Arthur with me. Tell Hetty to expect him.”

He rang off abruptly, stood for a few seconds, the contemptuous smile still touching his lips, then he remarked to Arthur:

“We might as well look up Todd this afternoon. He seems to have been a trifle indiscreet again… in his diet. I never heard him sound so dismal.” He gave the brittle smile that served him for a laugh and turned to go. Armstrong, with an obsequious echo of Barras’s amusement, threw open the office door. The two men went into the pit yard together.

Arthur remained in the office with mixed and rather curious thoughts. He knew, of course, that Todd’s indiscretion was drink, not violent spasms of intoxication, but a quiet, melancholy and diligent application to the bottle which from time to time laid him up with jaundice. Though these bouts are not serious and had come to be accepted generally as inevitable and innocuous, Arthur never learned of them without pain. He liked Adam Todd, pitied him as a pathetic and defeated figure. He sensed that Todd, in his own youth, had known the burning ardours, the fears and hopes which afflict the sensitive soul. It was impossible to conceive that Todd, a small morose seedy man, stained with nicotine and soaked with alcohol, had once been eager and responsive to the promise of life, that his torpid eye had ever brightened or been stirred. But it was so. In his young days, when he served his apprenticeship along with Richard Barras in the Tynecastle Main, Todd had been a lively blade, full of enthusiasm for the career he had mapped out. Then the years had rolled over him. He lost his wife in child-birth. A case, the important North Hetton case, in which he was retained as the expert witness by the Briggs-Hetton Company went against him. His reputation suffered, his interest flagged, he distrusted his own decisions, his practice started to decline. His children began to grow away from him: now Laura, his favourite, had married; Alan seemed more set on the pursuit of “a good time” than the reanimation of the firm; Hetty was intent on enjoyment and her own affairs. Gradually Todd had withdrawn into himself, had stopped going out except to the County Club where, from eight until eleven on most nights, he could be found in his customary chair, drinking silently, smoking, listening, throwing out an occasional word, wearing the fixed and slightly apathetic air of a man who has finally accepted disillusionment.

As he went about his work that morning Arthur somehow couldn’t get the thought of old Todd out of his head. And when, at three o’clock in the afternoon, he accompanied his father to Tynecastle and walked up College Row towards Todd’s house he had a strange and unaccountable sense of expectation, as though some chord vibrated between his own eager personality and the snuffy personality of Adam Todd. He could not understand the feeling, it was baffling and new.

Barras rang the bell and almost at once the door opened. Todd himself let them in — that was typical of him, he never stood on ceremony — wearing an old dun dressing-gown and down-at-heel slippers.

“Well,” Barras said, glancing sideways at Todd. “You’re not in bed.”

“No, no, I’m all right.” Todd pushed up the gold-rimmed glasses that always lay at the end of his veinous nose; the glasses immediately slipped down again. “It’s just a chill. I’ll be right as rain in a couple of days.”

“Quite,” Barras agreed suavely. That Todd should always attribute his bilious attacks to chill really amused Barras, though he did not show it. He had the bland air of condescending to his old friend, even of humouring him. He had, too, an air of immense prosperity and success standing above the seedy little man in the stained dressing-gown within that narrow and rather dingy hall, where the maroon wall-paper, the heavy umbrella stand and presentation fumed oak barometer gave out a resigned, a patient sadness.

“I wanted to talk to you, you know, Richard.” Todd addressed the remark to his slippers and he did so with a certain hesitation.

“So I gathered.”

“You didn’t mind my ringing this morning?”

“My dear Todd, why should I?” Richard’s condescension grew more expansive; and Todd’s hesitation correspondingly increased.

“I felt I had to speak to you.” It was almost an apology.

“Quite so.”

“Well,” Todd paused, “we’d better go in the back room. I’ve a spot of fire there. I find it chilly, my blood’s thin I suppose.” He paused again, preoccupied, worried, and let his eyes drift round to Arthur; he smiled his indefinite smile. “Perhaps you’d like to go up to Hetty, Arthur. Laura looked over from Yarrow this afternoon. They’re upstairs in the drawing-room now.”

Arthur coloured instantly. The conversation had excited him. Todd had something unusual to discuss with his father, he had hoped to be included, maturely, in their conversation. But now he saw himself discarded, sent ignominiously to join the women-folk. He felt utterly humiliated; he attempted to cover it by pretending not to care.

“Yes, I’ll go up,” he said glibly, forcing a smile.

Todd nodded:

“You know your way, my boy.”

Barras turned his glance of critical indulgence upon Arthur.

“I shan’t be long,” he said off-handedly, “we must catch the five-ten home.” Then he followed Todd into the back room.

Arthur remained standing in the hall, his cheek still twitching from that attempted smile. He felt horribly slighted. It was always the same: one word, the mere inflection of a voice, would do it, he was so easily offended, so quickly abashed. A kind of torment at his own wretched temperament took hold of him, mixed up with a provoked, indignant curiosity as to what Todd’s business might be with his father. Was it money Todd wished to borrow, or what? Why was Todd so anxious, his father so contemptuous and masterful? A smarting wave of exasperation surged over Arthur when suddenly he raised his head and saw Hetty coming down the stairs.

“Arthur!” cried Hetty, hurrying down. “I thought I heard you. Why on earth didn’t you sing out?”

She came to him and held out her hand. Immediately, with an almost magical abruptness, his mood altered. He looked down at her in welcome, forgetting his father and Todd in an overmastering desire to impress her. All at once he wanted to shine before Hetty, and more, he felt himself capable of doing so. Not that it was his nature to be like this; the whole thing was the reaction of that preceding rebuff.

“Hello, Hetty,” he said briskly. Then, observing that she was dressed for the street, “I say, are you going out?”

She smiled without a trace of shyness — Hetty was never shy.

“I said I’d walk down with Laura. She’s just going.” Pausing, she made a pert little face. “I’ve been doing the heavy with the rich married sister all the afternoon. But I’ll dash back and give you tea the minute I get rid of her.”

“Come and have tea with me at Dilley’s,” he suggested on an impulse.

She clapped her hands at the unexpected invitation.

“Lovely, Arthur, lovely!”

He studied her, thinking how pretty she looked since she had put her hair up. Now, at eighteen, Hetty was more than ever a pretty little thing. Though Hetty’s features were not pretty, though Hetty ought not to have been pretty, she was pretty. She was small-boned with thin wrists and small hands. She had large greenish eyes and an insignificant nose and a palish skin. But her hair was soft and blonde and she wore it attractively fluffed out from her smooth white narrow forehead. Her eyes always had a moist lustre and occasionally her pupils were wide and black, and those big black pupils against the soft blonde hair were extremely attractive. That was Hetty’s secret. She was not beautiful. But she was attractive, composed and vivacious, and provocative and appealing, rather like a nice sleek little cat. Now she smiled most appealingly at Arthur and said in a kind of artless baby talk she sometimes used:

“Nice Arthur to take Hetty to Dilley’s. Hetty likes to go to Dilley’s.”

“You mean you like going with me?” he inquired with that same factitious confidence.

“Mmm!” she agreed. “Arthur and Hetty have nice time at Dilley’s. Much nicer than here.” Unconsciously she stressed the last word. Hetty did not care much for the background of her home. It was an old house, 15 College Row, with an out-of-date atmosphere which particularly annoyed her and made her keep on trying to force her father into moving to a smarter residence.

“It’s those old coffee éclairs you’re keen on,” he persisted, striving for more balm to ease his wounded pride. “And not me?”

She screwed up her nose at him — very artless and sweet.

“Will Arthur really buy Hetty nice coffee éclair? Hetty adores coffee éclairs.”

A warning cough made them both swing round. Laura stood in the hall beside them, pulling on her gloves with too obvious preoccupation. Immediately the kittenish expression faded from Hetty’s face. Quite sharply she declared:

“What a start to give anyone, Laura! You ought to let people hear you coming.”

“I did cough,” Laura said dryly. “And I was just going to sneeze.”

“Clever!” said Hetty, darting a sharp glance at her sister.

Laura continued to pull on her gloves, gazing from one to the other quizzically. She was beautifully but quietly dressed in a dark navy costume. Arthur had not seen much of Laura since her marriage to Stanley Millington. For some obscure reason he was never quite comfortable with Laura. Hetty he understood, she was sweet, oh, transparently guileless! But Laura left him always at a loss. Her restraint in particular, that curious emotional flatness, the sense of some carefully hidden quality, a watchfulness almost, behind her pale, humorous face, disturbed him strangely.

“Come along, then,” Hetty exclaimed pettishly; Laura’s placidity, her well-turned-out air seemed to annoy her further. “Don’t let’s stand here all day. Arthur’s taking me to Dilley’s.”

A slight smile came to Laura’s lips; she did not speak. As they went through the door into the street Arthur turned the conversation hastily.

“How is Stanley?” he asked.

“He’s very well,” Laura answered pleasantly. “I think he’s golfing this afternoon.”

They continued to talk of trivialities until they reached the corner of Grainger Street, where Laura said good-bye good-naturedly and left them to keep an appointment with Bonar, her tailor.

“She’s mad about clothes,” Hetty explained with a sharp laugh the minute Laura had gone. She let her fingers come to rest lightly on Arthur’s arm as they walked towards Dilley’s. “If she wasn’t so extravagant she might be a little more decent to me.”

“How do you mean, Hetty?”

“Well, she only gives me five pounds a month for my dress allowance, and pocket money and everything.”

He gazed at her in astonishment.

“Does Laura really allow you that, Hetty? Why, that’s pretty generous of her.”

“I’m glad you think so.” Hetty looked piqued, almost sorry she had spoken. “She can jolly well afford it, anyhow. She made a good match, didn’t she?”

There was a pause.

“I can never quite fathom Laura,” Arthur said, puzzled.

“I’m not surprised.” Hetty gave her ingenuous laugh again. “I could tell you a few things about her, not that I would though, not for anything in the world.” She dismissed the subject with a virtuous little shiver.

“I’m glad I’m not like her, anyway. So don’t let’s talk of it.”

Here they entered Dilley’s and Hetty, responding to the warm note of gaiety which met them, switched her mood to one of composed vivacity. It was half-past four and the place was crowded: Dilley’s was considered smart for tea in Tynecastle. The Resort of the Elite! — this was the proud boast used in the advertisement columns of the Courier. An orchestra was playing behind some palms, a pleasant chatter of voices met them as they went into the Mikado room, done after Sullivan in the Japanese taste. They sat down at a bamboo table and Arthur ordered tea.

“Rather nice, here.” He leaned across towards Hetty, who was nodding brightly to her friends in the crowded room. There was, in fact, a regular clientèle for afternoon tea at Dilley’s, mainly the younger generation of Tynecastle, sons and daughters of the well-to-do doctors, lawyers and merchants of the city, a perfect aristocracy of provincial snobbism and style. Hetty was quite a figure in this smartish little clique. Hetty was really popular. Though old man Todd was only a mining engineer in a not very flourishing way of business Hetty went out a great deal. She was young, sure of herself and in the swim. She was known to have a head on her shoulders. The wise ones who had prophesied a good match for pretty little Hetty, always smiled knowingly when she was seen about with Arthur Barras.

She sipped her tea nonchalantly.

“Alan’s over there.” Gaily, with a wave of recognition, she indicated her brother. “With Dick Purves and some of the Nomad Rugger crowd. We ought to go across.”

Arthur looked over dutifully to where her brother Alan, who ought to have been at the office, lounged with half a dozen young fellows at a table in the centre of the room, the smoke from their cigarettes rising with heroic languor.

“Don’t let’s bother about them, Hetty,” he murmured. “It’s nicer by ourselves.”

Hetty, sitting up with a sparkle in her eye, aware of admiring glances directed towards her, toyed absently with her cake fork.

“That Purves boy,” she remarked. “He’s too absurdly good-looking.”

“He’s just an ass.” Arthur glared across at a vapidly handsome youth with crinkly hair parted in the middle.

“Oh no, Arthur, he’s quite a nice boy, really. He dances beautifully.”

“He’s a conceited fop.” Jealously taking Hetty’s hand under the table he whispered: “You like me better than him, don’t you, Hetty?”

“Of course, you silly boy.” Hetty laughed lightly and let her eyes come back to Arthur. “He’s only a stupid little bank clerk. He’ll never be anything worth while.”

“I will, Hetty,” Arthur declared fervently.

“Well, naturally, Arthur.”

“Wait till I go in with father… just wait… you’ll see.” He paused, excited suddenly by the prospect of the future, eager to impress her with his own ardour. “We landed a new contract to-day, Hetty. With P. W. & Co. A whacking good one. You just wait and see.”

She widened her eyes at him ingenuously.

“Going to make lots and lots more money?”

He nodded seriously.

“But it isn’t just that, Hetty. It’s… oh, everything. Being in with father, pulling my weight at the Neptune, the way all we Barrases have done, thinking of settling down too, having someone to work for. Honestly, Hetty, it thrills me when I think about it.”

Quite carried away, he gazed at her, his face alight with eagerness.

“It is rather nice, isn’t it, Arthur?” she agreed, studying him with a sympathetic smile. She really was quite drawn to him at this moment. He looked his best with a faint colour in his cheeks and this ardour in his eyes. Of course, he was not really good-looking, she had regretfully to admit it, his fair eyelashes, pale complexion and thin jaw gave him too sensitive an air. He couldn’t for an instant be compared to Dick Purves, who was the most handsome boy. But he was, on the whole, rather a dear, with the Neptune pit and pots of money simply waiting on him. She let him hold her hand under the table again.

“I’m enjoying myself tremendously, this afternoon,” he said impulsively. “I don’t know why.”

“Don’t you?”

“Well, yes, I do.”

They both laughed. Her laugh, whereby she showed her small even teeth, enthralled him.

“Are you enjoying it too, Hetty?”

“Yes, of course.”

The feel of her fragile hand beneath the table set his heart thumping with its silent promise. A kind of intoxication mounted to his head, a glorious sense of hope — in himself, in Hetty, in the future. He reached the crisis of his boldness. Nerving himself, he said with a rush:

“Listen, Hetty, I’ve been meaning to ask you for a long time, why can’t we be engaged?”

She laughed again, not in the least disconcerted, pressing his hand lightly.

“You’re such a dear, Arthur.”

His colour came and went. He blurted out:

“You know how I feel about you, Hetty. I think I’ve always felt that way. Remember how we played at the Law when we were kids. You’re the nicest girl I know. Father’ll be giving me a partnership soon…” His own incoherence brought him up short.

Hetty considered swiftly. She had been proposed to before, callow offers made usually in the semi-darkness when “sitting-out” at dances. But this was different, this was the real thing. And yet her shrewdness warned her not to hurry. She saw quite sharply how ridiculous her premature engagement to Arthur might be, the subject of gossip, malicious innuendo. Besides, she wanted to have her fling before she settled down.

“You’re a dear, Arthur,” she breathed, with downcast lashes. “A perfect dear. And you know how fond I am of you. But I do think we’re both a little young for anything, well, official. We’ve got our understanding, of course. Everything’s all right between us.”

“You do like me then, Hetty?” he whispered.

“Oh, Arthur, you know I do.”

An immense elation possessed him. At the facile intensity of his emotion tears came into his eyes. He felt unbelievably happy. He felt mature and manly, capable of anything, he could have thanked her on his knees for loving him.

A few minutes passed.

“Well,” she said with a sigh, “I suppose I must get back and see how old man Todd is getting on.”

He looked at his watch.

“Twenty to five. I promised to meet father at the five-ten train.”

“I’ll walk with you to the station.”

He smiled at her tenderly. Already her devotion to himself, as to her invalid father, entranced him. He beckoned to the waitress with a lordly confidence and paid the bill. They rose to go.

On the way out they stopped for a moment at Alan’s table. Alan was a good sort, a big heavy smiling fellow, inclined perhaps to be lazy and a little wild. But there was no real harm in him. He played football for the Northern Nomads, was in the Territorials and knew a few barmaids by their Christian names. Now amidst a certain amount of chaff and laughter he began to jolly Arthur for taking Hetty out to tea. Usually Arthur was painfully shy under banter, but this afternoon he scored off Alan right and left. His spirits bounded higher. He felt strong, happy, confident. He knew that little things would never worry him again, his flushing, his fits of lassitude and depression, his complex of inferiority, his jealousy. Purves, for instance, “glad-eyeing” Hetty, trying “to get off with her,” was no more than a silly little bank clerk, completely negligible. With a final repartee that set the table in a roar he lit a cigarette and gallantly escorted Hetty to the street.

They walked to the Central, Arthur bathed in a warm, unusual glow of self-approval, like an actor who had given a brilliant performance in a leading part. Yes, he had done well. He understood that Hetty wanted him to be like this: not stammering and sheepish but full of confidence, assured.

They entered the station and walked up the platform together, a little early, for the train was not in and Barras had not yet arrived. Suddenly Hetty stopped.

“By the way, Arthur,” she exclaimed, “I’ve just been wondering. Why did your father come to see mine to-day?”

He drew up, facing her, completely taken aback by the unexpectedness of her remark.

“It’s rather odd,” she smiled, “now I come to think of it. Dad can’t bear seeing any one when he’s seedy and yet he got on the telephone to Sleescale three times this morning. Why was it, Arthur?”

“I don’t know,” he hesitated, still staring at her. “As a matter of fact I was wondering why myself.” He paused. “I’ll ask father.”

She laughed and pressed his arm.

“Of course not, silly. Don’t look so serious, what in all the world does it matter?”

SEVENTEEN

At half-past four that afternoon David emerged from Bethel Street School and crossed the hard concrete playground towards the street. The school, already known as New Bethel Street to distinguish it from the old shut-down school, was a building of shiny, purplish bricks erected on a high piece of waste land at the top of Bethel Street. The opening of New Bethel Street six months ago had caused a general shuffle around amongst the county educational staff and a vacancy for one new junior teacher. It was this appointment that David had received.

New Bethel Street School was not pretty. It was semidetached severely into halves. Upon one half, in grey stone inset, was carved the word BOYS; upon the other, in equally huge letters, GIRLS. For each sex, separated by a menacing spiked fence, there was a vaulted entrance. A great many white tiles had got into the construction of the school and a smell of disinfectant somehow managed to permeate the corridors. Taken altogether the school succeeded in resembling a large public convenience.

David’s dark figure moved rapidly under the lowering and wind-swept sky and seemed to indicate that he was eager to leave the school. It was a cold night and as he had no coat he turned up the collar of his jacket and fairly spurted down the windy street. Suddenly he recognised and was inclined to smile at his own eagerness. He was still unused to the idea of himself as a married man and a master at New Bethel Street. He must, as Strother said, begin to cultivate decorum.

He had been married six months and was settled with Jenny in a small house behind the Dunes. A most tremendous business it had been finding the house — the right house, as Jenny put it. Naturally the Terraces were impossible: Jenny wouldn’t have looked at a miners’ row “for love nor money”; and David felt it wise in the meantime to be at the other end of the town from his parents. Their reaction to his marriage had made things difficult.

High and low they had searched. Rooms furnished or unfurnished Jenny would not have. But at last they had pitched on a small plaster-fronted detached house in Lamb Lane, the straggling continuation of Lamb Street. The house belonged to Wept’s wife, who had one or two “bits” of property in her own name in Sleescale, and who let them have the house for ten shillings a week because it had stood unlet for the previous two quarters and now showed signs of damp. Even so, the rent was more than David could afford on a salary of £70 a year. Still he had not wished to disappoint Jenny, who had from the first taken quite a fancy to the house, since it did not stand vulgarly in a row and had actually a patch of front garden. Jenny insisted that the garden would afford them a most refined seclusion and hinted romantically at the wonders she would work in the way of cultivating it.

Nor had he cared to stint her over the house’s furnishing: Jenny was so bright and intrepid, so set on having “the exact thing” that she would tirelessly ransack a dozen shops rather than confess defeat — how, in the face of such enthusiasm, could he freeze her warm housewifely spirit! Yet he had eventually been obliged to take a stand and in the end they had compromised. Three rooms of the house were furnished on credit: kitchen, parlour, bedroom — the last with a noble suite of stained walnut, the pride of Jenny’s heart. For the rest she had taken it out in chintzes, muslin curtains and a superb selection of lace doyleys.

David was happy… very happy in this house behind the Dunes — these last six months had been far and away the happiest of his life. And before that there had been the honeymoon. Never, never would David forget the joy of that week… those seven blessed days at Cullercoats. Naturally he had thought a honeymoon out of the question. But Jenny, tenacious as ever where romantic tradition was involved, had fiercely insisted; and Jenny, revealing unsuspected treasure, had produced fifteen pounds, her six years’ money from the Slattery savings fund, and handed it firmly to him. She had, moreover, in the face of all his protests, argued him into buying himself a new ready-made suit out of the money to replace the shabby grey he wore. Her way of putting it involved no humiliation. Jenny, at least, was never mean; where money was concerned Jenny never thought twice. He had bought the suit; they had spent the honeymoon on Jenny’s money. He would never in all his life forget Jenny for that.

The wedding ceremony had been a failure — though he had been prepared for worse — a chilly affair in the Plummer Street church with Jenny unnatural and stiff, a pretentious breakfast at Scottswood Road, a horrible rigidity between the opposing factions of Sunleys and Fenwicks. But the week at Cullercoats had blown it all away. Jenny had been wonderful to him, revealing an ardour — startling yet beautiful. He had expected her to be timid; the depth of her passion had overwhelmed him. She loved him… she loved him… she really loved him.

He had discovered, of course, that she had been unfortunate, there was no escape from the stark physiology of this fact. Sobbing in his arms that first bitter-sweet night she had told him the whole story; though he had not wished to hear and had begged her, unhappily, to stop. But she would, she must explain, it had happened, she wept, when she was just, oh, just a girl, a well-to-do commercial traveller, in the millinery line, of course, a perfect brute, a beast of a man, had taken advantage of her. He was drunk and forty, she not yet sixteen. He was bald, too, she remembered, with a little mole on his chin, and his name, oh, his name was Harris. She had not been untrue to herself; she had struggled, fought, but her resistance had been useless; terrified, she had been afraid to tell her mother. It had happened only once and never, never, never again with any one in all the world.

Tears filled David’s eyes as he held her in his arms, compassion added to his love, his ardour leavened by a sublime pity. Poor Jenny, poor, darling little Jenny!

After the honeymoon they had come direct to Sleescale where his work at New Bethel Street had immediately begun. Here, alas, the run of his good luck was checked.

He was not happy at the school. He had always recognised that teaching would never be his trade, he was too impulsive, too eager for results. He wanted to reform the world. And now, in charge of Standard IIIA, a class full of little boys and girls of nine, inky, untidy, apathetic, he was conscious of the irony of this beginning. He chafed at the creaking system, controlled by bell and whistle and cane, loathed equally the Grand March as thumped on the piano by Miss Mimms, his opposite number in III? and her acidulous “now children” heard through the thin partition fifty times a day. As in his period of pupil-teaching, he wanted to change the whole curriculum, cut the idiotic non-essentials on which visiting inspectors set such store, ignore the Battle of Hastings, the latitude of Cape Town, the sing-song recitation of capitals and dates, substitute Hans Andersen for the prim Crown Reader, awaken the children, fan their flickering interest, stimulate the mind rather than the memory. Of course all his attempts, his suggestions towards this end had met with the chilliest reception. Every hour of every day he felt that he did not belong to this environment. In the Staff Room it was the same, he felt himself alien, treated distantly by his colleagues, frozen by the virgin Mimms. Nor could he disguise from himself the fact that Strother, the head master, disliked him. Strother was a square, official man, an M.A. of Durham with a ponderous manner and a fussy, pedantic mind. He wore black suits, had a heavy black moustache, was something of a martinet. He had been second master at the old school, knew all about David, his family and origin; despised him for having worked in the pit; for not having taken the B.A.; felt that he had been foisted upon him; went out of his way to be difficult, contemptuous and severe. If only Mr. Carmichael had been head, everything would have been different; but Carmichael, though applying for the post, had not even reached the short leet. He had no influence. In disgust he had accepted a village school at Wallington. He had written a long letter to David asking David to visit him soon, to come for a week-end occasionally. The letter was full of the pessimism of a discouraged man.

But David was not discouraged: he was young, enthusiastic, determined to make his way. And as he swung round the corner of Lamb Street, braced by the keen wind, he swore to himself that he would get on, out of New Bethel Street, away from Strother’s paltriness, into something finer. The chance would come. And, by heaven, he would take it.

Half-way down Lamb Street he saw a figure advancing on the same side of the road: it was Ramage, James Ramage, the butcher, vice-chairman of the school board, mayor in prospect for the town. David prepared to nod civilly. He did nod. But Ramage passed without the slightest recognition; his lowering gaze dwelt blankly upon David as though he looked through him.

David coloured, set his jaw hard. There, he thought, is an enemy of mine. Coming at the end of a trying day this last snub cut him pretty deeply. But as he let himself into his house he tried to banish it, calling out cheerily to Jenny as soon as he came inside the door.

She appeared in a fetching pink blouse which he had never seen before, her hair newly shampooed and smartly arranged.

“Why, Jenny, you like like the queen.”

She held him off, posing nicely, coquettishly:

“Now, don’t crush my new blouse, Mister Man.” Lately she had taken to calling him Mister Man: it jarred abominably, he must tell her to stop. Not now, of course… she might stop of her own accord. With his arm round her trim hips he steered her to the kitchen where, through the open door, he saw a comforting fire. But she protested:

“No, not there, David. I won’t have us in the kitchen.”

“But, Jenny… I’m used to kitchens… and it’s so lovely and warm there.”

“No, I won’t have it, bad Mister Man. You know what we said. No falling off. We got to use the front room. It’s terribly common to sit in the kitchen.”

She led the way to the parlour where a green fire smoked unpromisingly.

“Now you sit there till I fetch the tea.”

“But hang it all, Jenny…”

She settled him with a pretty little gesture, bustled out. In five minutes she brought in tea: a tray first, then a tall nickel-plated cake stand — a recent purchase, such a bargain, bought on the near prospect of people calling — and finally two little Japanese paper serviettes.

“Now you be quiet, Mister Man.” Again she stilled his bewildered protest almost before he uttered it. She poured him a cup of not very hot tea, politely handed him a serviette, placed the cake stand at his elbow. She was like a small girl playing with a doll’s tea-set. He could stand it no longer.

“My heavens, Jenny,” in humourous exasperation, “what in the name of thunder does this mean? I’m hungry. I want a good high tea, a kipper or eggs, or a couple of Wept’s prepare to meet thy Gods.”

“Now, David, don’t swear. You know I wasn’t brought up to it. And don’t be impatient. Just wait and see. A cup in your hand is very nice once in a while. And I’ll be having visitors soon enough. I want to try things out. Have some of that seed-cake. I bought it in Murchison’s.”

He swallowed hard, choking down his resentment with an effort. In silence he made the best of “a cup in his hand,” Murchison’s damp seed-cake, stringy shop bread streaked with bought jam. For a split second he couldn’t help thinking of the tea his mother used to set before him when he was working, earning a wage not half what he earned now: a home-baked crusty loaf to hack at will, a big pot of butter, cheese and home-made blueberry jam — bought jam, like bought pastry, was never in Martha’s home. But the very disloyalty of that swift vision brought him swiftly back to Jenny. He smiled tenderly at her.

“In your own inimitable words, Jenny, you’re a scream.”

“Oh, I am, am I? You’re coming round, I see, Mister Man. Well, what’s been happening at the school to-day?”

“Nothing much, Jenny, darling.”

“It’s always nothing much!”

“Well, Jenny…”

“Well, what?”

“Oh, nothing, dear.”

He filled his pipe slowly. How could he tell her the dull tale of his struggle and rebuffs. Some might like that, but not Jenny. She expected some glittering story of success, of how the head master had commended him, of a dazzling stroke which would bring him quick promotion. He didn’t want to upset her. And he couldn’t lie to her.

A short silence followed, then, lightly she switched to another perilous topic.

“Tell me, then. Have you made up your mind about Arthur Barras?”

“Well… I’m not eager to take him on.”

“But it’s such a chance,” she protested. “To think you were asked by Mr. Barras himself.”

He answered shortly:

“I think I’ve had too much to do with Barras. I don’t like him. I’m sorry in a way I ever wrote to him. It’s hateful to feel that I’m indebted to him for my job.”

“You’re so stupid, David. He’s got such influence. I think it’s splendid he should have an interest in you, asking you to tutor his son.”

“I don’t take it as an interest. He’s a man I’ve no time for, Jenny. It’s merely an attempt to make his benevolence convincing.”

“And who should he want to convince?”

Quite sharply he answered:

“Himself!”

Pause. She had no idea what he meant. The fact was that Barras, meeting David in Cowpen Street on the previous Saturday, had stopped him with an air of patronage, questioned him with an aloof interest and finally asked him to come to the Law three nights a week to brush up Arthur’s mathematics. Arthur was weak in mathematics, and would need tuition before he could sit the final examination for his certificate.

Jenny tossed her head.

“I don’t think,” she informed him, “that you know what you’re talking about.” She looked for a minute as if she might add something. But she said no more, and in a huff gathered together the tea things, carried them out of the room.

Silence in the little room with the new wood fire and the new wood furniture. Then David got up, laid his books out upon the table, stirred up the fire with the poker. He made an effort. Deliberately he closed his mind to the Barras affair and sat down to work.

He was behind the schedule he had mapped out for himself and it worried him. Somehow he did not find the opportunities for study he had expected. Teaching was hard, much harder than he had imagined. He was often tired when he came home; he was tired to-night; and distractions had a way of cropping up. He gritted his teeth, propped his head up with both hands, fastened his attention firmly upon Jusserand. He must, he simply must work for this confounded B.A.: it was the only way to get on; to lift up Jenny and himself.

For half an hour he worked splendidly, undisturbed. Then Jenny slipped in and perched herself upon the arm of his chair. She was repentant for her petulance, kittenish, coy.

“David, dear,” she slipped her arm round his shoulder. “I’m sorry I was cross, really I am. I’ve had such a dull day, p’raps that’s why I’ve been looking forward to to-night ever and ever so much.”

He half-smiled, pressed his cheek against her round young breast, his eyes still firmly upon the book.

“You weren’t cross and it is dull for you.”

She stroked the back of his head, coaxing.

“It has really been dull, David. I’ve hardly spoken to a soul but old Mr. Murchison in the stores and the woman where I priced some silk, oh, and one or two people who came to the door. I… I was thinking we might go out to-night to cheer ourselves up.”

“But I’ve got to work, Jenny. You know that as well as I do.” Eyes still fastened upon the book.

“Oh… you haven’t always got to bury yourself in these stupid old books, David. You can take to-night off… you can work some other time.”

“No, honestly, Jenny, it’s important.”

“Oh, you could, David, you could if you wanted to.”

Astounded, perplexed, he lifted his eyes at last and studied her for a moment.

“But where on earth can you want to go to? It’s cold and wet outside. Home’s the best place.”

She had it all ready, arranged, carefully planned. She brought it out with a rush.

“We could take the train to Tynecastle; the six-ten. There’s a popular concert in the Eldon Hall, something really nice. I looked up the paper and some of the Whitley Bay entertainers are to be there; that’s what they do in the winter, you know. There’s Colin Loveday, for instance, he’s got such a lovely tenor. The tickets only cost one and three, so the money’s nothing. Oh, do let’s go, David, we’ll have a lovely time. I’ve been so down, I do want a bit of a fling. Don’t be an old stick-in-the-mud.”

There was a short silence. He did not wish to be an old stick-in-the-mud. He was tired, obsessed by the necessity for study; it was, as he had said, a wet, inhospitable night outside; the concert did not attract him. Suddenly an idea, a grand idea, struck him. His eyes lit up:

“Listen, Jenny! How about this! I’ll take to-night off, like you suggest. I’ll run up and fetch down Sam and Hughie. We’ll bank up the fire, make a hot-pot supper and play rummy. Talk about your entertainers… they’re not in the hunt with Sam. Our Sammy’s the best you ever heard, he’ll keep you in stitches all the time.” It honestly was, he felt, a great idea: he had been worried over his estrangement from his family, he wanted to be one with his brothers again, this was a marvellous opportunity to break the ice. But as his face brightened, Jenny’s fell.

“No,” she said coldly, “I wouldn’t like that at all. Your family hasn’t treated me right, David. I’ll not have them make a back door of my house.”

Another silence. He compressed his lips firmly. He felt that she was unreasonable and unjust, it was not fair to ask him to go into Tynecastle on a night like this. He would not go. Suddenly he saw tears rise smarting to her eyes. That did it. He could not bully her into tears.

He sighed, rose up, closed the book.

“Right, Jenny. Let’s got to the concert then if you feel you’d like it.”

She gave a little trill of delight, clapped her hands, kissed him excitedly.

“You are nice, David darling, really you are! Now you wait a minute, I’ll run up and put on my hat. I won’t be long, we’ve plenty of time to catch the train.”

While she was upstairs he went into the kitchen and cut himself a wedge of bread and cheese. He ate this slowly, staring into the fire: Jenny, he reflected with a wry smile, had probably made up her mind to drag him to the concert days ago.

He had just finished eating when a knock came to the back door. Surprised, he opened it.

“Why, Sammy,” he exclaimed delightedly. “You old dog.”

Sammy, with the hardy grin irremovably fixed on his pale healthy face, rolled into the kitchen.

“Me and Annie was just passin’,” he announced, not — despite the grin — without a certain shyness. “I jest thought I’d look ye up.”

“That’s great, Sammy. But, man… where’s Annie?”

Sam jerked his head towards the outer darkness. The etiquette was perfect. Annie was waiting outside. Annie knew her place. Annie was not sure of her welcome. David saw it all: the obscure figure of Annie Macer strolling quietly, contentedly, outside the house waiting until she be judged worthy to enter. He cried instantly:

“Tell her to come in at once, you big idiot. Go on! Fetch her in this minute.”

Sammy’s grin broadened.

Then Jenny, all dressed to go out, walked into the room. Sammy, on his way to the door, hesitated, not quite sure, gazing at Jenny, who advanced on him with her best company manners.

“This is a great pleasure,” Jenny remarked, smiling ever so politely. “And such a stranger too. What a shame you’ve caught David and me just going out.”

“But Sammy’s dropped in to see us, Jenny,” David broke in. “And he’s brought Annie. She’s outside.”

Jenny’s eyebrows went up; she paused for just the appropriate time; smiled sweetly at Sam.

“Isn’t that a pity! Too bad, really it is, that you should have caught us on the way to the concert. We’ve promised to meet some friends in Tynecastle and really we couldn’t disappoint them. You must look in another time.”

Sammy clung tenaciously to his grin.

“Ah, that’s all right. Annie and me never have much to do. We can come any old time.”

“You’re not to go, Sammy,” burst out David. “Fetch Annie in. And both of you stop and have a cup of tea.”

Jenny threw a pained look towards the clock.

“Not at all, lad.” Sammy was already on his way to the door. “Aw wouldna stop you an’ the missus from goin’ out for anything. Annie an’ me’ll just take a stroll up the Avenue. Good night to ye both.”

Right to the end Sammy’s grin persisted; but beneath it, David saw that Sammy was bitterly hurt. Out Sammy would go to Annie and mutter:

“Come on, lass, we’re not good enough for the likes o’ them. Since our Davey’s turned schoolmaster he fancies himself too much, I’m thinking.”

David winced, tom between his desire to run after Sammy and his promise to take Jenny to the concert. But Sammy was already gone.

Jenny and David caught the six-ten for Tynecastle, a slow, crowded train which stopped at every station. They went to the Eldon Hall. The tickets cost two shillings each, the cheaper seats being filled when they reached the hall. They sat through three hours of steamy performance.

Jenny adored it, clapping with the rest for encores, but to David it was ghastly. He tried not to be superior; tried hard to like it; but the entire concert party defeated him. Oh! They’re first rate, Jenny kept breathing enthusiastically. But they were not first rate. They were fourth rate: the leftovers from holiday pierrot troupes, the comedian relying mainly upon his mother-in-law and Colin Loveday upon a fruity vibrato and a hand laid soulfully upon his heart. David thought of Sally’s little performance in the parlour of Scottswood Road, so vastly superior to this; he thought of his books lying unopened; he thought of Sammy and Annie Macer strolling arm in arm down the Avenue.

When the performance was over Jenny nestled up to him as they came out of the hall.

“It’s an hour till the last train, David; we must take that, it’s such a quick one… first stop Sleescale. Let’s run round to the Percy Grill for something. Joe always used to take me there. Only a port or that, we can’t wait at the station.”

At the Percy they each had a port. Jenny was delighted to be back, recognised familiar faces, chaffed the napkin-stuffed waiter whom, recalling a joke of the red-nosed comedian, she called Chawles.

“A scream, wasn’t he?” she added, giggling.

The port made things a little different for David, outlines less incisive, colours rosier, atmosphere a trifle hazy. He smiled across at Jenny.

“You’re a reckless imp,” he said, “and what an influence on a poor man! I see I shall have to take to coaching young Barras after all.”

“That’s the way to look at it, darling.” She approved warmly, instantly. She enticed him with her eyes, pressed her knee against his under the table. And with a gay daring she ordered Chawles to bring her another port.

After that they had to run quickly for the train. Quickly, quickly, they caught it in a whirl, flung themselves into an empty smoker.

“Oh dear! Oh dear!” Jenny giggled, panting. “That was a scream, David darling, wasn’t it now?” She paused, recovered her breath, saw that they were alone, remembered with a queer catch deep down in her that the train did not stop until Sleescale… another half-hour at least. She liked queer places, always had, even with Joe. Suddenly she snuggled up close to him: “You’ve been so good to me, David, I can’t thank you enough. Pull down the blinds, David… it’s cosier that way.”

He looked at her doubtfully, closely, as she lay in his arms; her eyes were shut — under the lids they seemed full; her pale lips were moist and a little apart as if vaguely smiling; her breath held the generous fume of port; her body was soft and very warm.

“Go on,” she murmured. “Pull down the blinds. All the blinds.”

“No, Jenny… wait, Jenny…”

The train jolted a little; shook up and down as it took some point on the track. He rose and pulled down all the blinds.

“That’s wonderful, David.”

Afterwards she lay against him; she fell asleep; she snored gently. He stared straight in front of him, a curious look upon his set face. The carriage reeked of stale pipes, port and engine smoke; someone had thrown orange peel upon the floor. Outside it was black as pitch. The wind howled, battered the heavy rain against the carriage window. The train thundered on.

EIGHTEEN

At the beginning of April, when David had been coaching Arthur Barras at the Law for close on three months, he received a message from his father. Harry Kinch, a small boy from the Terraces, brother of that little Alice who had died of pneumonia nearly seven years before, brought the note to David at New Bethel Street school one morning. Dear David will you come up the Wansbeck — trouting Saturday yours Dad. It was clumsily written in copying-ink pencil on the inside of an old envelope.

David was deeply touched. His father still wished to go fishing with him as in those days when he had taken him, a little boy, up the Wansbeck stream! The thought made him happy. For ten days Robert had been out the pit with a flare-up of tubercular pleurisy — he passed it off lightly as “inflammation”—but he was up now and about. Saturday would be his last free day; he wished David to spend it with him. The invitation came like a peace offering straight from his father’s heart.

Standing at his desk in the humming class-room, David’s thoughts flashed swiftly back over these past months. He had gone to the Law against his own inclination, partly because of Jenny’s importunities, certainly because they needed the extra money. But it had upset his father greatly. And, indeed, he felt it strangely unreal himself, that he should now be on familiar terms with the Barrases, who had always figured in his mind as apart from him and his life. He reflected. Aunt Carrie, for instance, so curious and worried about him at the start, inclined to look at him as she did people who came into the house with muddy boots or at Ramage’s bill when she thought he had overcharged her for the sirloin. Her nearsighted eyes had worn that worried distrustfulness for quite a while.

But the look had faded from Aunt Carrie’s eyes in time. She had “taken” to David in the end and would send up hot milk and biscuits to the old schoolroom about nine-o’clock when Arthur and David were due to finish their work.

Then Hilda, strangely enough, had started to drop in with the hot milk and the biscuits. She had begun by treating him — not like the person who came in with dirty boots — but like the actual dirt upon the boots. He took no notice, he was quick enough to see it as the symptom of Hilda’s conflict. Hilda interested him. She was twenty-four; her forbidding manner and dark unattractiveness ingrained more deeply now. Hilda, he thought, is not like most unattractive women. They will go on deluding themselves, dressing up, making the best of themselves, reflecting before the mirror, this blue does suit me, or my profile is really quite good, or isn’t my hair charming with this middle parting? deluding themselves until they die. But Hilda from the start had resolutely made up her mind that she was ugly, and with that forbidding manner, she resolutely made the worst of her ugliness. Apart from this, he saw that Hilda lived in conflict: perhaps her father’s strength fought against her mother’s weakness within her. Hilda always struck David as the unwilling union of these two elements, as if she had been conceived unwillingly, fought with herself in embryo and came into the world finally in a state of threshing discord. Hilda was not happy. She revealed herself gradually, not knowing that she revealed herself. She was missing Grace, who was now at school in Harrogate, acutely. Though her remarks usually took this form: “They’ll never teach her anything, she’s a perfect little jay!” or, as when reading a letter: “She can’t even spell yet!”—David saw that Hilda adored Grace. She was a queer sort of feminist, she was militant within herself. On March 12th the papers were full of a campaign of destruction organised by suffragists in the West End of London. Windows had been smashed in all the principal streets and many hundreds arrested, including Mrs. Pankhurst. Hilda glowed. She started a magnificent argument that night, quite taken out of herself. She wanted to be part of the movement, she said, to do something, go into the active whirl of life, work madly to relieve the crushing oppressions on her sex. Her eyes flashed as she instanced the Armenian women and the white-slave traffic. She was disdainful, magnificent. Men? Of course she detested men! Hated and detested them. She launched into arguments, she knew her Doll’s House by heart. It was another symptom of her conflict, her ugliness, her psychosis.

Though she never openly revealed the fact, it was evident that Hilda’s aversion to men was rooted in her father. He was MAN, the phallic symbol, her father. His calm suppression of all her wishes inverted her more fiercely, magnified and deepened her repressions. She wanted to get away from the Law and out of Sleescale, she wanted to work for her living — anything and anywhere so long as she was amongst her own sex. She wanted to do something. But all her frantic desires beat themselves out against her father’s calm detachment. He laughed at her, made her feel a fool with one inattentive word. She swore she would get away, that she would fight. Yet she remained, and the fight took place only within herself. Hilda waited… waited for what?

From Hilda, David got one view of Barras. The other, of course, came from Arthur. At the Law David never came in contact with Barras, he remained a remote and unapproachable figure. But Arthur talked a great deal about his father, he was never happier than when talking about him. After the quadratic equations were disposed of Arthur would begin… anything would serve to set him going. But while Hilda’s disclosures wore the taint of hatred, Arthur’s rang out like an ecstasy.

David grew very fond of Arthur — yet through his fondness lingered that same sense of pity which had come to him in the pit yard when he first saw Arthur upon the high seat of the dogcart. Arthur was so earnest, so pathetically earnest. And yet so weak! He would waver even upon the kind of pencil he must use — an H or an HB. A quick decision comforted him like a kindness. He took everything to heart, he was inordinately sensitive. Often David tried gently to move Arthur from his shyness with a joke. It was no use, Arthur had not the faintest sense of humour.

As for Arthur’s mother, David came to know her too. One evening Aunt Carrie brought the hot milk into the schoolroom with an air of conferring a favour even greater than usual.

She said with dignity:

“Mrs. Barras, my sister, would like to see you.”

Lying back upon her pillows, Harriet wanted to know about Arthur, just his “opinion,” of course, about Arthur. He was a great anxiety to her, Arthur, her son, and a great responsibility. Oh, a great responsibility, she said, asking him if he would mind handing her the bottle of Cologne from the little side table. Just there, if he please, by his elbow. Cologne soothed her headaches when Caroline was too busy to brush her hair. Yes, she went on, it would be such a disappointment to Arthur’s father if Arthur did not turn out well. Perhaps he might try, in his own way, since Caroline spoke so highly of him, to influence Arthur’s character for good to prepare him for life. And, without taking breath, she asked him if he believed in thought healing. She had felt lately that she might try thought healing for herself, the difficulty being that in thought healing the bed should, strictly speaking, face to the north and it was awkward in this room from the position of the window and the gas stove. She could not, naturally, dispense with her gas stove. Impossible! Now, she continued, since he knew mathematics did he honestly believe that thought healing would be equally effective if the bed faced north-west which could be managed with a little difficulty by moving the chest of drawers against the other wall.

Jenny was delighted that David had made such a good impression at the Law, delighted that he had become “so friendly with the Barrases.” Jenny’s desire for society was such that it pleased her even to take it by proxy. When he came back at night she would urge David to tell her all that had happened: now did she really say that, and did they hand the biscuits round or just leave the barrel on the tray? That Hilda might have an interest in David did not worry her in the least. She had no jealousy, she was “dead sure” of David, and in any case Hilda was the dowdiest thing.

Jenny’s reactions to the Law amused David, often he invented the most elaborate incidents to tease her. But Jenny was not so easily taken in. Jenny, in her own words, had a head on her shoulders. Jenny was Jenny.

David, all this time, was becoming acquainted with Jenny. It often struck him as strange that he should only now be getting to know his own wife, but it was not so strange when he reflected that he certainly had not known her before her marriage. Then Jenny had been the projection of his love, a flower, a sweetness, the very breath of spring.

Now he began to know the real Jenny, the Jenny who wanted “society,” clothes, amusement, who liked “going about” and was fond of a glass of port, who was passionate yet easily shocked, who smilingly put up with big discomforts and cried over the little ones, who suddenly demanded love and sympathy and “petting,” who had a habit of flat contradiction with no argument to support it, who combined logic and wild unreason in the same sweet breath.

He still loved Jenny, he would never stop loving her, he knew. But they started now to have frequent and violent quarrels. Jenny was stubborn and he was stubborn. And there were certain things in which Jenny must not have her way. He would not have her drinking port. On the night when she had ordered herself a port in the Percy Grill he had felt that Jenny was too fond of port. He would not let her have port in the house. They fought over that port: “You’re a killjoy right enough… you ought to join the Salvation Army… I hate you. I hate you…” Then would come a burst of tears, a big reconciliation and love. “Oh, I do love you, David, I do, I do…”

They fought over David’s examination as well. She wanted him to take his B.A., of course. She was mad that he should take it, she would like to spite that Mrs. Strother and a few of them But she simply would not give him time to study. There was always something for them to do at nights, or if they were alone it was a case, very pathetically, of: “Take me on your knee, David darling, it seems ages since I had the littlest bit of petting.” Or perhaps she had given herself a tiny cut with the potato knife — lost such a lot of blood and when do you think we’ll have a maid, David? — and must have no one but him to bind it up. The B.A. receded at such moments. David had already put it back six months and it looked now, with this extra coaching at the Law, as though another six months would be added to the other. In desperation he took to cycling the fifteen miles to Wallington, the village where Carmichael now lived. In the school house he got peace and judicious advice: what best to go on with and what to leave alone. The disillusioned Carmichael was kind to him, really decent. Often he stayed the whole week-end with Carmichael.

And they fought finally, Jenny and he, about their families. It worried David terribly, the estrangement his marriage had brought about between his own family and himself. There was of course a certain coming and going between Inkerman Terrace and the house in Lamb Lane. But it was not what David wanted. Jenny was stiff, Martha cold, Robert silent, Sammy and Hugh uncomfortable. It was queer that when David saw Jenny, in all her patronising gentility, with his own family he could have beaten her and the moment they went out he felt himself loving her again. His marriage had been a shock, he realised, to Martha and Robert. Martha naturally received the blow with an air of bitter justification: Jenny wasn’t nearly good enough, she had always known harm would come of David’s coming out of the pit, and now this silly early marriage clearly proved her right.

Robert’s attitude was different. He retired into his silence. To Jenny he was always kind he went out of his way to be kind, but though he tried so hard to be encouraging there was a sadness about it all. He had been ambitious for David, he had built so much on all that he would do he had in a sense put his whole life into David’s future. And David at twenty-one had married a silly shop-girl — that, in his secret heart, was how Robert viewed it.

David felt his father’s sadness. It hurt him horribly. He lay awake at nights thinking about it. His father resented his marriage. His father resented his having applied to Barras for a job. His father resented his coaching of Arthur Barras at the Law. Yet his father had written and asked him to go fishing up the Wansbeck.

With a start David came back to himself. Rather guiltily he silenced his noisy class. Quickly, he wrote a short reply to his father’s note for Harry to take back. Then he flung himself into the work of the day.

All that week he looked forward to Saturday. He had always been, in the local phrase, “a great one for the fishing,” though his opportunities to fish had lately been so few. Spring was again in the air; he knew the Wansbeck valley would be lovely now; he suddenly longed to go there with all his soul.

Saturday came, a good fishing day, warm, with blinks of sun amongst the clouds and a soft westerly wind. He rose early, gave Jenny her morning cup of tea, prepared some jam sandwiches; then he had a look at the little greenheart rod his father had given him on his tenth birthday — how well he remembered going to Marriot’s in West Street to buy it. He tried the rod, it was still whippy and useful as ever. He put on his boots, whistling softly. Jenny was still in bed when he left the house.

He climbed the Terraces, along Inkerman — it gave him a queer feeling, this soft spring morning — into his own home. Sammy and Hughie were both working their shift, but his mother stood at the table tying up Robert’s picnic lunch with thin twine and greased paper. Martha saved twine and greased paper as though they were both fine gold. At the sight of him though she nodded her lips drew down ominously, he saw she had not forgiven him yet.

“Ye don’t look well,” she said, penetrating him with her bleak eyes.

“I feel perfectly well, mother.” It was not true; off and on he had been feeling seedy these last few months.

“Ye have a face white as a clout.”

He answered shortly:

“I can’t help my face. I tell you I feel all right.”

“I’m thinkin’ ye felt better when ye stopped in this house and worked decently in the pit.”

He felt his temper rise in him. But he said:

“Where’s my dad?”

“Gone out to get some grubs. He’ll be back presently. Are ye in such a hurry ye can’t sit down for a second and speak a word to your own mother?”

He sat down, watching her as she carefully tied the last tight bow — there were no knots in the string, for Martha wanted it back. She had aged little: her big solid body was still active, her movements sure, her deep-set eyes shrewd and masterful as ever in her gaunt healthy vigorous face. She turned:

“Where’s your lunch?”

“In my pocket.”

“Show me.”

He pretended not to hear.

She held out her hand; repeated:

“Show me.”

“I will not show you, mother. My lunch is in my pocket. It’s my lunch. I’m going to eat it. So that’s an end of it.”

She still kept out her hand, grimly, her expression unrelaxed. She said:

“So ye want to disobey me to my face now… like ye’ve done behind my back.”

“Oh, hang it, mother, I don’t want to disobey you. It’s just…” Angrily he lugged the paper bag out of his pocket.

She received it coldly and as coldly opened it, exposing the three jammy hunks of stale bread he had prepared himself. Her face did not change, she expressed no disdain, she simply laid the bag aside. She said:

“It’ll go in my bread pudding.” And in return she handed him her own solid package, not commending it, remarking simply: “There’s more than enough for the two of you there.”

There was injustice in her attitude but there was justice too. And it was the justice which struck him like a blow. He said hotly:

“Mother, I do wish you’d give Jenny a chance. You’ve always had a down on her. It’s not fair. You don’t try to get things straight between you. You haven’t been to see her half a dozen times in these last three months.”

“Does she want me to come and see her, David?”

“You don’t give her a chance to want you, mother. You ought to be nicer to her. She’s lonely in this place. You ought to cheer her up.”

Grimmer than ever, Martha sneered:

“So she needs to be cheered up, then?” She paused. Cold anger filled her, stifled her. She showed nothing outwardly but from the depth of her anger she fell unconsciously into the broad dialect of her youth. “An’ she’s lonely, is she? What cause hev she to be lonely wi’ her mon and her house te tend te. Aw’m not lonely. Aw niver hev time to be lonely. But she’s aalways gaddin’ aboot the place, meykin’ up te foaks above hersel’. She’ll niver meyk friends that wey, not the reet kind ov friends. An’ if aw were ye aw’d tell her not te order so mony bottles ov port at Murchison’s.”

“Mother!” David jumped up, red flaming into his pale face. “How dare you say a thing like that…”

As they faced each other, he burning… she pale, cold… Robert came in through the open door. He took in the situation at a glance.

“Well,” he said mildly. “I’m all ready, Davey. Come on the now, ye’ll be seein’ your mother when ye come back.”

A long sigh came from the very bottom of David’s breast. He lowered his eyes to cover up the hurt in them.

“All right, dad.”

They went out together.

On the way down Cowpen Street Robert talked more than usual. He made quite a bit of conversation about the fishing; he had got some beautiful grubs out on the bone-works on the Spit, he said, and a few nice brandlings from Middlerig. The wind was in the right quarter too, they ought to do well. And he had arranged for them to get a lift in Teasdale’s van. The ordinary van man was ill and Dan Teasdale, off duty from the pit, was doing the Saturday delivery to help his father out. He would take them as far as Avory’s Farm… a couple of miles from Morpeth. Decent of him it was… a decent chap Dan Teasdale.

David listened, tried to listen, but he saw through Robert’s flow of conversation. He stood a little apart outside Teas dale’s shop while Dan and Robert talked. What hurt was not that his mother should have said these things; it was the tiny germ of truth behind her words which rankled and gnawed at him and would not let him alone.

When the van was ready Dan Teasdale clambered up. Robert followed, putting his foot first upon the brass hub, getting up slowly, with an effort, then David — there was not much room. They drove off.

Immediately they had cleared the outskirts of the town Dan began to talk in his friendly style: he would take them straight to Avory’s, he said, do his deliveries on the way back. He wished he was going with them, he went on cheerily; he was fond of the fishing, but never got much chance. Altogether he was fond of the country, and loved the country life; really he had always wanted to be a farmer, to use his limbs in the open air, not down the mucky old pit. But you know how things went… here Dan laughed, rather ashamed of having revealed himself.

They drove on, striking away from the flat drab land with its grim pit chimneys and head stocks, into a countryside that was like a new world clothed with new green leaves and new green grass. It was as if God had just made that bit of world and dropped it down the night before and men had not yet found and dirtied it. There were the most beautiful fields of yellow dandelions, thousands of dandelions, and without a doubt they did look fine.

Even David cheered up under the influence of these fields and fields of lovely dandelions. He roused himself:

“Fine!” he said to Dan.

Dan nodded and said:

“Fine. They make the milk good.” Silence for a minute, then Dan looked furtively at David. Then he said: “How do you like it, going to the Law?”

David said:

“Not so bad, Dan. Not so bad.”

For no earthly reason that David could determine a sort of shame imposed itself on Dan’s fresh-coloured face. He gave a short laugh, fixing his candid blue eyes on David.

“You know them all, eh? You’re bound to know them all by now. You’ve met Grace, haven’t you?”

When Dan came to Grace’s name something like reverence fell on him; he swallowed as though he were taking a sacrament. David did not notice. He shook his head.

“I haven’t seen Grace. She’s away at present, isn’t she? In Harrogate?”

“Yes,” Dan agreed, contemplating the jogging ears of the horse. “She’s in Harrogate.”

Pause; heavy pause; then Dan Teasdale sighed:

“She’s an awful nice girl is Grace!”

He sighed again, an honest sigh and quite a heavy one too, a sigh which epitomised the longing, the impossible longing which had lain hidden in his heart for nearly eight years.

By this time they were approaching Avory’s Farm, and at the head of the road Dan stopped the van. Robert and David got down. They thanked Dan again, set off across the fields to the Wansbeck.

They reached the stream: there was plenty of water and a good colour. Not looking at his son, Robert said:

“I’ll go beyond the bridge, Davey; you start here… this is the best place. Fish up to me and we’ll have our snap when we meet.” He nodded and strode off along the bank.

David put up his rod, slowly; not caring much, he threaded the line; then he chose his flies: greenwell, march brown and blue spider. As he tried the cast a faint thrill went through him: it was like old times again. Rod in hand, he came over to the water edge, balanced on a hot dry boulder. A trout rose almost silently in mid stream. That faint sucking plop went straight to the marrow of David’s bones. It affected him like the sound of a cork leaving a bottle might affect a toper who has not seen wine for years. He began to fish.

He fished up stream, covering all the water he could, the likely places. The sun came out from behind the clouds, steeped him in a warm brightness. The sound of running water sank into his ears, the soft eternal sound of running water.

He caught five fish, the biggest a pound at least, but when he rejoined his father by the bridge, he found that Robert had beaten him. A dozen trout lay in a row upon the grass and Robert lay on his elbow smoking, beside them. He had given over an hour ago when he had made his dozen.

It was three o’clock, and David was hungry. They ate their snap together: cold bacon sandwiches, hard-boiled eggs, a thick cut of veal pie and one of Martha’s raspberry jam sponges; there was even a bottle of milk which Robert had put to cool in a shallow channel of the stream.

Robert, unlike most people with chronic phthisis, had, as a rule, a poor appetite and to-day, although the food was tempting, he took very little. He was soon back at his pipe.

David noticed. He studied his father a while, concerned, thinking that his figure seemed sparer… a little shrunken. People went to Switzerland and Florida and Arizona with consumption. They went to beautiful expensive sanatoria; got tapped all over by expensive doctors, spat in expensive rubber-capped flasks. Robert went down the pit, got tapped by nobody, and spat in Tit-Bits. All the old feeling came over David. He said:

“You’ve eaten nothing, dad. You don’t half take care of yourself.”

“I’m fine,” Robert said quite sincerely. He had the optimism of his disease. Consumptives usually think they will recover but it was not only that with Robert, he had had the thing so long; the cough, the sweats, the sputum, everything, it was all part of him, he did not regard it with hostility. Indeed he never thought of it except to think that he would get better of it. Now he smiled at David and tapped his chest with the stem of his pipe. “Don’t you fret. This… this’ll never kill me.”

David lit his pipe now. They both lay smoking, looking at the sky and the white clouds that raced each other across the sky. The air smelled of grass and primroses and tobacco smoke and the brandlings still left in Robert’s worm-bag. It was a good smell. Fields and meadows and trees all round about them, not a house in sight. Lambing time was on, they could hear the thin bleating of it everywhere, restful and quiet. Everything seemed quiet, the only moving things were the white clouds and the little white lambs that skipped about and butted under the bellies of their mothers, who stood chewing, waiting, their black hind legs planted wide apart. The little white lambs butted hard, and tugged and butted again but they did not stay long. They were away, skipping again, getting ready to butt harder, harder.

Robert wondered if David were happy… he wondered that very much. Happy on the surface, perhaps, not really happy underneath. But he couldn’t ask David, he couldn’t set his teeth like Martha and tear into the heart of David’s relations with Jenny. He felt the spring in the air and he thought: a primrose, a bird singing and it’s done; the only birds, he thought again, that ought to be allowed to sing in the spring are the cuckoos. If only David had just taken her, she looked the kind for that, he would not be lying here now with that strained look on him. But no, he was too young to know, it all had to be dressed up in a wedding. And now he was hacking away in the elementary school, coaching young Barras for money, the B.A. and all the glorious plans they used to talk about laid aside, perhaps forgotten. He hoped to God that David would pull himself out of it soon, go ahead and make a name for himself, do something real; he had it in him to do something big. Oh, he hoped to God he would. At that Robert left it alone, for he had other things upon his mind.

Suddenly David roused himself.

“You’re very quiet, dad. There’s something bothering you.”

“Oh, I don’t know, Davey. It’s pretty good up here!” He paused. “Better than down the Scupper Flats.”

Understanding broke on David; he said slowly:

“So that’s where you’re cutting now?”

“It is. We’re in the Scupper Flats at last. We started to strip the Dyke three months since.”

“You did.”

“We did.”

“Is it wet?”

“It is!” Robert puffed quietly. “Near up to the ear holes in my stall. It’s that put me badly last week.”

The placidity in his father’s voice made David suddenly sad. He said:

“You fought pretty hard to keep out Scupper Flats, dad.”

“Maybe I did. We got beat though, diddent we? We’d ’a gone back in the Scupper right away if Barras hadn’t lost his contract. Well, he’s gotten another contract now, so here we are again, right where we begun. Life’s just like a wheel, man, round it comes if you wait long enough.”

A short silence came; then Robert went on:

“Mind ye, as I said afore, I don’t mind the wet. All my time I’ve worked in wet places and worse and worse places as my time had gone on. It’s the water in the waste that bothers me. You see, Davey, it’s like this.” He paused and placed his hand edgeways upon the ground. “Here’s the Dyke, the Universal Dyke, that’s the barrier, a down throw fault that runs due north and south. On the one side of the Dyke you’ve got all the old workings, the waste of all the old Neptune sinkings that run down from the Snook. All the low levels of the waste are full of water, they’re bound to be, bung full of water. Well, man, on the other side of the Dyke, the west side, is Scupper Flats where we’re working now. And what are we doing? We’re stripping coal off the Dyke, we’re weakening the barrier.”

He began to smoke again.

David said:

“I’ve always heard that the Dyke would stop anything, it’s a natural barrier in itself.”

“Maybe,” Robert said, “but I just can’t help thinking what would happen if we stripped too near the old waterlogged workings. Their natural barrier might look pretty thin then.”

Robert spoke reasonably, almost musingly; he seemed to have lost his old bitterness completely.

“But, dad, they know what they’re doing, they’re bound to know if they’re near the old workings, they’re bound to have the plans.”

Robert shook his head:

“They have no plans of the Old Neptune workings.”

“They must have plans. You ought to go to the inspector, you ought to go to Jennings.”

“What’s the use?” Robert said quietly. “He can’t do nothing. He can’t enforce a law that doesn’t exist. There’s no law about mines abandoned afore 1872, and these old Neptune workings was abandoned long afore that. They wasn’t made to keep a record of the plans then. So the plans have just got lost. That water might be right on the other side of the Dyke for all they know or it might be half a mile away.” He yawned suddenly as though tired of the subject, then he smiled at David. He added: “I hope it’s the half mile.”

“But, dad…” David paused, worried by his father’s attitude. Robert seemed weary, enveloped by a sort of fatalism.

Robert saw the expression and smiled again. He said:

“No, I’m not makin’ a song about it this time, Davey. They’d none of them believe me, none of the lads, ’twas only the chance of a halfpenny raise what brought them out the last time. I’m not bothering… not bothering my head.” He broke off, looked at the sky. “I think I’ll come here next Sunday. You better come too. It’s the right time of year for the Wansbeck.” He coughed, his soft yet booming cough.

David said quickly:

“You ought to get out oftener with that cough of yours.”

Robert smiled:

“I’m going to retire here one of these days.” He tapped his chest with his pipe. “But that’s nothing, that cough. It and me are old friends now. It’ll never kill me.”

David looked at his father with a silent anxiety. His nerves, all on edge these days, resented the intolerable situation: Robert’s cough, his cheerfulness, his apathy under the hardships of Scupper Flats. And suppose there really was danger in the Flats? David’s heart contracted. With a sudden determination he thought: I must speak to Barras about Scupper Flats. I’ll speak to him this week.

NINETEEN

Meanwhile Joe was having a splendid time; he described it frequently to himself as “a high old time,” or “this is the life.” He liked Shiphead, a friendly sort of town with good pubs, two handy billiard saloons, a dance hall and a regular Saturday night boxing show. He liked the change, his lodgings, his office — a single room across from the Fountain Hotel, complete with telephone, two chairs, a desk for his feet, a safe, a racing calendar and walls pasted with cut-outs of everybody from Jack Johnson to Vesta Victoria. He liked his new light brown suit, his new watch-chain worn between the top pockets of his waistcoat. He liked his finger-nails — cultivated with a pen-knife while his hat sat on the back of his head and his feet rested on the top of his desk — he liked the way he was getting off with the nice little pusher who glittered in the pay box of the new picture palace. And above all he liked his work. The work was a pinch, nothing to do but collect the slips and the money, ’phone the slips through to Dick Jobey in Tynecastle and hold the money till Saturday night when Dick came over himself to collect it. Dick had thought him the right man for the job, the right man to open this new branch in Shiphead, a likely lad, a good mixer, open and hearty, able to get in with the boys, steer clear of the police, run things smart and lively. Dick hadn’t wanted a figgering-machine, no, by gum! not no kind of a clerk to sit mopey in the office till business came. Dick wanted a smart lad, a likely, honest lad with a head on his shoulders…

And had Dick been wrong? Joe smiled genially towards the lady in the tights who seemed in the act of “la savatting” the White-eyed Kaffir on the opposite wall. A smart lad, with a head on his shoulders… Had Joe a head on his shoulders? Joe could have laughed, split himself, it was too easy, too, too easy, it was money for jam. It was all the front you put on; doing the other fellow before he did you. He shifted the toothpick, slid his hand into his inside pocket, pulled out a thin, mottle-covered book. The book pleased Joe. The book said between the red ruled lines two hundred and two pounds ten shillings and sixpence to the credit of Mr. Joe Gowlan, 7 Brown Street, Shiphead. The book proved that Joe was a considerable success.

The ’phone rang, Joe lifted the receiver.

“Hello! Yes, Mr. Carr, yes. Certainly. The two-thirty. Ten shillings Slider, any to come Blackbird in the four o’clock. You’re on, Mr. Carr.”

Carr, the chemist in Bank Street that was, Joe ruminated; funny the people what bet you never think would bet. Carr looked as though he thought of nothing but jalap and titties, went to chapel every Sunday with his wife and had ten bob on regular twice a week. Won, too. Won a packet often. You could pretty well tell the ones what won, they were cautious and up to the game, never showed it when they won. And the losers, you could tell them just the same. Take Tracy, now, that young Tracy who had come to Shiphead last month, there was a born loser for you, if you like. With mug written all over his silly dial. From the minute young Tracy had made up to him in Markey’s Billiard-room over a game of pin-pool and put a quid on Sally Sloper, finished last in a field of fourteen, he had taken young Tracy’s number. Young Tracy was anybody’s meat, thin, sloppy, fade-away chin, woodbine and laugh. And for all the woodbine young Tracy had money to play the horses, a matter of twenty quid straight he’d had on in the month and lost it all, lost every blinking time. Young Tracy had stopped being anybody’s meat, he was Joe’s meat now, and don’t you make no mistake, thought Joe.

’Phone again.

“Hello! Hello!” Whatever Joe’s private simplicities he was magnificent upon the ’phone. He had improved. He was sonorous, breezy, classy — as the occasion demanded. He did not murder King’s English now, except to register extreme affability. He lolled back, grinning, not business this time, just the little lady from the pay box of the Picturedrome giving him a tinkle before her boss came down:

“Hello, Minnie, uh-huh, who did you think it was — Chinglung-soo? Ha! Ha! Oh, you’re barmy, Minnie! What! For the three o’clock… or any race? Hellup, Minnie, what d’ye think I am… Dr. Barnado’s Homes? Expect me to give away state secrets for nowt — I mean nothing. Not on your sweet little Pearl White life, Minnie! I told you before… What!…” His mouth open, gloating suddenly, Joe listened. “Well, that’s different, Minnie, didn’t I always say I would, Minnie? It was you that got up in the air about it. Why, yes, Minnie… if you’ve changed your mind I think I can put you on a cert.” Swelling with elation, Joe kept his tone calm, persuasive, flattering. “You leave it to me, Minnie. Why yes, a cert… I always said you had it in you, Minnie. I’ll do something for you if you do something for me, that’s our motto, eh, Minnie? But listen, if you think you can slip it across me you’re… oh, all right, Minnie. I was only thinking. Eleven o’clock then, outside the Drome, you bet your garters I’ll be there. I’ll bring your winnings!”

Joe rang off exultantly. He’d always said, hadn’t he, that that was the way to do it… like in the school book, make the mountain come to Mahommey. His chest swelled. He wanted to get up and dance, do a cake-walk up and down the office. But no, he was beyond that now, a man of the world, cool, up to a thing or two. He composed himself, rested his toothpick in his waistcoat pocket, expertly lit a cigarette and got down to work.

First he took out all the morning’s slips. He considered each slip expertly, scrutinised and weighed it before he passed it. In the end he had two heaps: one large heap of likely bets and another consisting of three slips, all of which, barring three separate and individual miracles, he knew for certain losers. Tracey, for instance, had three pounds — the biggest plunge he’d ever had — on Hydrangea, an old tubed pacemaker of a horse that wasn’t even trying. Joe smiled slightly for the witless Tracy, as he did a mental calculation — no head for figgers, eh? — tore Tracy’s slip into tiny fragments. Fulbrook and Sweet Orb were on the other slips — he tore these up also. Still smiling he looked at the clock: half-past one, no more coming in. Genially, he picked up the ’phone, chaffed the operator a bit, got through to Tynecastle, a few miles down the wire.

“Hello, that Dick Jobey! This is Joe, Dick. Not a bad day. Ha! Ha! That’s right, Dick. Are you ready, right, Dick, off we go”… Joe began to read out the undestroyed slips. He read them out smartly, clearly, rather sonorously. He finished. “Yes, that’s all, Dick. What? Am I sure? You bet I am, Dick. Ever know me to make a mistake? Yes, that is the lot, Dick. Yes. So-long. See you Saturday.”

Joe smacked down the receiver heartily, rose, winked at the lady in tights, cocked his hat, locked the office and went out. He crossed the bustling street to the Fountain, went through the bar, nodding here, there, everywhere. They all knew him… him… Joe Gowlan… commission agent… Big Joe Gowlan…

He had a beefsteak, a large thick juicy beefsteak, cooked red, the way he liked it with onions, chips and a pint of three X. He enjoyed every bit of the beef, every drop of the bitter. A rare capacity for enjoyment had Joe. Then he had a lump of Stilton and a roll. Good, that Stilton was… by God, it was good… what had he known about Stilton a couple of years ago? …he was going up, up, up in the world… him… Joe Gowlan.

The afternoon was more or less his own. He had a chat with Preston, Jack Preston the landlord of the Fountain… nice fella Jack was. Then he strolled down to Markey’s and played a couple of games of snooker. Tracy was not there, funny Tracy not being there, but never mind, Tracy’s three quid was safe and sound in Joe’s inside pocket.

After the snooker Joe rolled over to Young Curley’s gymnasium. Joe was a regular patron of Young Curley — a fella couldn’t do nothing if he wasn’t fit! Couldn’t enjoy himself neither! Now could he? A little of everything in its right place, thought Joe blandly, remembering eleven o’clock and Minnie.

In the gym Joe stripped his beefy twelve stone, did a turn on the bars, shadow boxed, then sparred three rounds easy with Curley himself. He sweated beautifully, then got into the bath, soaked long and hot. After that a needle shower and a hard rub down. Curley didn’t rub him hard enough.

“Harder, man, harder,” Joe urged, “what d’ye think I pay you for?” He was the boss, wasn’t he? and he had to take it out of Curley somehow. Curley had caught him too loud a wallop on the ear that last third round. Pink and glowing, Joe slid off the table like a big smooth seal. He padded to his cubicle, dressed carefully, threw Curley half a crown and sauntered out.

Five o’clock — just right for the office. On the way back to the Square he bought a late special, inspected the stop-press with a confident untroubled eye. As he had expected, Hydrangea nowhere, Fulbrook fourth in a field of six, Sweet Orb also ran. Joe gave no sign, only the mugs did that, perhaps there was a shade more swagger in his walk as he crossed the street and let himself into the office.

At his desk Joe went through the day’s accounts, picked up the telephone and rang Tynecastle.

“Hello! Dick Jobey there? Hello… what?… Mr. Jobey left early… oh, all right, I’ll ring again in the morning.”

So Dick had left early; well, no wonder, thought Joe pleasantly, Dick couldn’t have had none too good a day. He rose, whistling, straightening his tie. Then the door opened and Dick Jobey walked into the room.

“Why, he-lo, Dick, this is great…. I didn’t expect you here…”

“Shut up, Gowlan. And sit down.” Quiet and unsmiling, Dick Jobey indicated the chair.

Joe’s jaw dropped:

“But, Dick, ole man…” Then Joe went a sickly green. Behind Dick Jobey, young Tracy came in, and behind Tracy an extremely large red-faced man with shoulders like the side of a house and a hard unpleasant eye. The large man shut the door and leant carefully against it. Young Tracy, looking a little less like a mug, put a woodbine in his mouth and gazed without pity upon Joe.

“Gowlan,” Jobey said, “you’re a dirty rotten rigger.”

“What!” Joe gathered himself together, made an agonised effort to carry off a bluff. “Half a chance, Dick. What are you talking about? I’ve just rung you up at Tynecastle a minute ago trying to get you to tell you I’d forgotten to put through Hydrangea. His bet…” He indicated Tracy and went on with growing indignation, “Honest to God, Dick, I did forget and I rang you up the minute I remembered.”

“Shut up, Gowlan. It isn’t only to-day you’ve cribbed me. For a month Tracy has been punting with you. He’s lost thirty-five pounds and I haven’t had a penny of it.”

“What!” roared Joe. “He says that, does he, the dirty liar. Don’t you believe him, Dick. It’s a blasted lie. My word’s as good as his…”

“Shut up, Gowlan,” Jobey said for the third time, almost wearily. “Tracy’s with me. He works a month on all my branches like he’s done with you. What kind of a leg do you take me for? D’you think I don’t check up on everything? Everything, you fool! I know you’ve been cribbing me. You’ve had a good job, and a good chance. But now you’re out, see, out on your neck, you low-down dirty rigger!”

All up, thought Joe. Rage burst over him. He blustered.

“Look out who you’re calling a rigger. I could have you up for that… I…” He choked, for two pins he’d have taken a crack at Jobey, but there were three of them, curse it, three of them. And besides, he didn’t care, he was well in over the business, yes, he was quids in. Then he went absolutely cold. Jobey, turning aside with a gesture of distaste, remarked:

“Go through him, Jim.”

Jim removed himself from the door, came forward hard eye and all as if he meant to go through the wall. Oh, God! thought Joe, he’s going to scrounge my dough. A sudden fury burst over him. I’ll be damned, he flamed, I’ll be damned if I let them. He set himself in a crouch and took a vicious crack at Jim’s jaw. The blow landed but the jaw was cast iron. Jim lowered his bullet head and rushed in.

For three minutes the office rocked under the riot of the scrap. But it was no use. Joe was giving away two stone, at the end of it he took the floor with a terrific bump. He lay prone, Jim sitting on his chest. No use… no use at all… I’m giving him two stone… he had to let Jim go through him: five-pound notes and the mottled bank-book were placed upon the desk.

As Dick Jobey delicately pocketed the notes and lifted the bank-book Joe picked himself off the floor and began to blubber.

“For Gord’s sake, Mr. Jobey, sir. It’s my own money, my own savings…”

Jobey looked at his watch, quickly took up the ’phone, called the manager of the bank. Blubbering, Joe listened dazedly.

“I’m sorry to trouble you after hours but this is most important. Mr. Gowlan wants to cash a cheque most urgently. It’s Jobey of Tynecastle speaking, yes, Mr. Dick Jobey… would you as a special favour to me oblige Mr. Gowlan. Thank you, yes, right away, I’m extremely obliged to you.”

“I won’t go,” shrieked Joe. “I’ll be damned if I go.”

“I give you one minute to make up your mind,” Jobey said sadly. “If you don’t go I’ll call up the police.”

Joe went. The silent procession of four marched to the bank, and as silently marched back to the office.

“Hand it over,” Jobey said.

“For the love of Gord,” Joe howled, “some of it’s my own money.”

“Hand it over,” Jobey said. Jim stood there, ready.

O Christ, thought Joe, he’ll only bounce me again. He handed it over, all of it, in twenties, fives and sovereigns, all of his lovely money, his lovely two hundred pounds, all that he had…

“For Gord’s sake, Mr. Jobey,” he implored abjectly.

On his way to the door Dick Jobey paused. A look of contempt came into his face. He picked a single sovereign from the money in his pocket, flung it at Joe.

“Here,” he said. “Buy yourself a hat.” And with Tracy and Jim he went out.

For ten minutes Joe sat rocking himself in a passion of misery, tears running down his cheeks. Then he rose and picked up the sovereign. A perfect fury possessed him. He kicked at a chair, kicked and kicked at it. He began to wreck the office. He wrecked the office thoroughly, viciously. It was all second-hand cheap furniture and very little of it. What there was he battered to matchwood. He spat upon the floor. He cursed Jobey, cursed and cursed him. He took a blue pencil and wrote big on the wall, Jobey is a dirty bastard. He wrote further fierce, unutterable obscenities. Then he sat down on the window-sill and counted his money. With the pound and some change in his pocket he had exactly thirty shillings. Thirty shillings. Thirty pieces of silver!

He banged out of the ruined office, went straight to the Fountain. He put ten shillings in his waistcoat pocket. With the rest he got drunk. He sat drinking, until half-past ten, all by himself. At half-past ten he was broodingly, rampantly drunk. He rose and swayed over to the Picturedrome.

At eleven Minnie came out, blasé, yellow-haired, narrow-chested, sporting her gold-crowned tooth and all. There was no doubt about it, Minnie was a tart.

Joe took Minnie in, swaying gently, looking her up and down.

“Come on, Minnie,” he said thickly. “I’ve got your winnings here. Ten bob. Nothing to what I’ll get you tomorrow.”

“Oh,” said Minnie in a disillusioned voice. “You all want the same thing.”

“Come on,” said Joe.

Minnie came on. Joe didn’t buy himself a hat that night. But because of that night he bought several later on.

TWENTY

The trees of the Avenue stood silent in the teeming rain, their smoke-grimed branches dripping water, vague dismal shapes, like mourning women, lining the Avenue in the dank twilight, weeping. But David, walking quickly up the wet pathway, paid no attention to the weeping trees. His head was bent, his expression concentrated and fixed. Under the stress of some positive emotion, he entered the grounds of the Law, rang the bell and waited. In a moment the door was opened, not by Ann, the maid, but by Hilda Barras, and at the sight of him she flushed unexpectedly.

“You’re early!” she exclaimed, controlling herself immediately. “Much too early. Arthur’s with father in the study.”

He entered the hall and took off his wet coat.

“I came early because I wanted to see your father.”

“Father?” For all her assumption of irony she observed his face intently. “You sound serious.”

“Do I?”

“Yes, quite painfully serious.”

He felt the sarcasm in her voice but he did not answer. Somehow he liked Hilda, her uncompromising rudeness was at least sincere. A pause followed. Though clearly she was curious to know what was in his mind she did not press him further. Indifferently she remarked:

“They’re in the study then, as I said.”

“May I go up?”

She shrugged her shoulders without answering. He was conscious of her dark eyes upon his, then she spun upon her heel and was gone. He stood for a moment collecting himself before ascending the stairs. Then he knocked and went into the study.

The room was brightly lit and warm; a good fire blazed on the hearth. Barras was seated at the desk, while Arthur stood beside the fireplace, in front of him. As David entered Arthur smiled in his usual friendly manner, but Barras’s welcome was much less cordial. He swung round his padded leather chair and stared at David with a blank inquiry.

“Well?” he said abruptly, “what is it?”

David looked from one to the other. He compressed his lips firmly.

“I wanted to have a word with you,” he said to Barras.

Richard Barras lay back in his chair. He was, actually, in an excellent humour. By the afternoon post he had received a letter from the Lord Mayor of Tynecastle asking him to accept the convenership of the organisation committee in connection with the building of the new wing for the City Royal Hospital. Barras was already on the Bench, three years president of the local education committee, and now this. He was pleased, sniffing the prospect of a knighthood like a well-fed mastiff the chances of a meaty bone. In his own exquisitely precise handwriting — no such machine as a typewriter existed at the Law — he was framing a suitable acceptance. As he sat there he embodied an almost sensual satisfaction that life should be so gratifying an affair.

“What is it you have to say?” he exclaimed; and observing David’s glance towards Arthur he added impatiently: “Go on, man. If it’s about Arthur he’d better hear it.”

David took a quick determined breath. Under the almost judicial force of Barras’s personality what he was going to say suddenly seemed presumptuous and absurd. But he had resolved to speak to Barras; nothing would shake him.

“It’s about the new workings in the Paradise,” he rushed on before Barras could interpose. “I daresay I’ve no right to talk, I’m out of the Neptune now, but my father’s there and my two brothers. You know my father, Mr. Barras, he’s been thirty years in the pit, he’s not an alarmist. But ever since you got the new contract and started stripping off the barrier he’s been worried to death you’ll have an inrush.”

Silence in the room. Barras continued to measure David with a coldly inquiring eye.

“If your father doesn’t like the Paradise he can leave it. He had this same insane notion seven years ago. He’s always been a trouble maker.”

David felt his blood rise; but he made himself speak calmly.

“It isn’t just my father. Quite a number of the men don’t like it. They say you’re travelling too near the old waste, the workings of Old Neptune which must be chock full of water.”

“They know what to do then,” Barras said icily. “They can get out.”

“But they can’t. They’ve got their living to think of. Almost every one of them has a wife and children to support.”

Barras’s features hardened imperceptibly.

“Let them go to that Hebbon fellow then. That’s what he’s there for, isn’t it? They pay him to exploit their grievances. The matter has nothing to do with you.”

A sudden tension gathered in the air and Arthur gazed from David to his father with growing uneasiness. Arthur hated trouble, anything approaching a scene caused him acute distress. David kept his eyes on Barras. He had turned pale but his expression remained determined and controlled.

“All I’m asking is that you should give a fair hearing to what these men have got to say.”

Barras laughed shortly.

“Indeed,” he answered cuttingly. “So you expect me to sit here and let my workmen teach me my business.”

“You’ll do nothing?”

“Emphatically, no!”

David clenched his teeth, restrained the turmoil of indignation within him. In a low voice he said:

“Very well, Mr. Barras. If you will take up my meaning wrongly, I can’t say any more. No doubt it was quite out of place for me to say anything at all.” He stood for a moment as though hoping Barras might speak, then he turned and quietly left the room.

Arthur did not immediately follow. The silence lengthened; then diffidently, with his eyes on the floor, Arthur said:

“I don’t think he meant any harm, father. He’s a good chap, David Fenwick.”

Barras did not answer.

Arthur flushed. Although he had taken a great many cold baths and knew his series of little red books almost by heart he still flushed abominably. But he continued with a sort of desperation:

“You don’t think he has any justification then? It sticks in my mind — what he said. As a matter of fact a queer thing happened in the Paradise to-day, father. The Scupper pump was overcome in the afternoon shift.”

“Well?”

“There was quite an accumulation of water in Swelly.”

“Indeed!” Barras picked up his pen and inspected the nib.

Arthur paused: the information seemed to mean nothing to his father. He still sat enthroned, judicial and half abstracted. Lamely, Arthur went on:

“It appeared to me there was quite a come of water in Scupper Flats. In fact it looked as if a block of undercut coal was forced off the Dyke as if there was pressure behind it. I thought you might like to know, father.”

“Like to know,” Barras repeated almost as though he recollected himself. “Oh yes!” Then his sardonic pleasantry: “I am obliged to you, of course, Arthur. I have no doubt you have anticipated Armstrong by a good sixteen hours, it’s very gratifying.”

Arthur looked downcast and hurt, his eyes travelled over the pattern of the carpet.

“If only we had the plans of the Old Neptune workings, father. We should know then for certain. It’s the most maddening thing to me, father, that they didn’t keep plans in those old days, father.”

The motionless quality of justice had never left Barras’s figure. He could not sneer. His voice held merely a cold rebuke:

“You are a little late with your condemnation, Arthur. If you had been born eighty years ago, I have no doubt you would have completely revolutionised the industry.”

There was another silence. Barras gazed at the half-finished letter on the desk before him. He picked it up and seemed to study it with a certain stem admiration for its phrasing. He thought out a fresh turn to the final sentence, lifted his pen. Then he rediscovered Arthur still standing by the door. He studied Arthur deliberately, as he had studied the letter, and gradually the severity went out of his face. He looked as near amusement as he could ever get. He said:

“Your interest in the Neptune is very satisfactory, Arthur. And I’m glad to see you have ideas on its management. In a few years’ time I have no doubt you will be running the mine — and me!” Had Barras been capable of real laughter he must certainly have laughed now: “In the meantime I suggest you confine yourself to the elementary things and leave the complicated business alone. Go and find that Fenwick fellow and get some trigonometry into your foolish head.”

When Arthur had gone, apologetic and vaguely ashamed, Barras returned to his letter of acceptance. Where had he got to again? What was that phrase again? Oh yes, he remembered. In his precise, resolute handwriting he continued: “For myself…”

TWENTY-ONE

The months passed quickly, summer to autumn, autumn to winter, and David’s recollection of his interview with Barras became less painful. Yet often, when he thought of it, he winced. He had been a fool, a presumptuous fool. Work still proceeded in Scupper Flats, the contract would be completed by the New Year. His visits to the Law had ceased. Arthur had taken his certificate with honours; and at the same time Dan Teasdale had obtained his ticket.

And he had flung himself, with a kind of fury, into his own work. His final B.A. examination came on December 14th and he had made up his mind to take the thing then, to take it if it killed him. Putting off and putting off had sickened him, he shut his ears to Jenny’s wheedlings, got down to the last of his correspondence classes, and spent every second week-end with Carmichael at Wallington. He felt he would be all right, it was just a question of making sure.

Jenny became the poor neglected little wife — Jenny was always little when she required sympathy, she shrank from sheer pathos. She complained that she had no “callers,” no friends, she looked around for companionship, she even cultivated Mrs. Wept, who was of course already a “caller” in so far as she called for the rent. It went well until Mrs. Wept took Jenny to the meeting. Jenny returned from the meeting much amused. David could not get out of her what had happened except that the whole thing had been very unrefined.

As a last resource Jenny turned back upon her own family, imagining that it would, perhaps, be nice to have one of them through to stay. But who? Not ma, this time, ma was getting so fat and heavy she just sat and sat, so much dead weight in the house. Phyllis and Clarry couldn’t come, they were both working in Slattery’s now and couldn’t get away. Dad couldn’t either, and when he could it was always pigeons; turn into a pigeon himself would dad one of these days!

Sally remained. Sally was not at Slattery’s. Sally had begun very brightly by being in the Tynecastle Telephone Exchange and all might still have been right with Sally had Sally stayed on at the telephone exchange. It was clean and classy work being in the Tynecastle Exchange, with all the advantages. Unfortunately dad had never got it out of his silly head that Sally had talent for the stage. Always taking her to music-halls, encouraging her to mimic the variety stars, sending her to tap-dancing, generally playing the fool. And as if this were not enough, he had actually persuaded Sally to enter for a Saturday night go-as-you-please at the Empire. They were low, these go-as-you-please competitions, all the rag-tag went in for them.

It was very sad, but Sally had won this go-as-you-please. Not only had she won the first prize but she had so knocked the low Saturday night gallery crowd that the management had given her an engagement for the whole of the following week. At the end of that week Sally had got the offer of a six-weeks’ tour on the Payne-Gould northern circuit.

Why, oh, why, asked Jenny sadly, had Sally been fool enough to take that offer? For Sally had taken the offer, chucked the classy exchange with all the advantages and done her six weeks’ circuit. That, of course, was the end of Sally, the finish, absolutely.

Sally had been out of a job four months now. No more circuit, no more offers, no more anything. As for the telephone exchange they wouldn’t even look at Sally again. Pity! But then the Exchange was classy and would never have you back if once you did the dirty on it. Yes, sighed Jenny, she’s done it for herself now I’m afraid, poor Sally!

Still it would be nice to have Sally through to stay, nice, and a kindness to the unfortunate girl. Perhaps Jenny had a complacent sense of patronage behind her sisterly benevolence. She always wanted to show people did Jenny.

Sally arrived in Sleescale towards the third week in November and was greeted with rapture by her sister. Jenny was delighted, hugging her dearest Sally, full of “well I nevers” and “isn’t this just like old times,” full of little confidences and ripples of laughter and showings to the newly furnished spare bedroom and running upstairs with hot water and clean towels and gay tryings on of Sally’s hat. Oh, my dear, isn’t it just! David was pleased: he had not seen Jenny so happy or excited for a long time.

But the rapture went out of it comically soon, the running upstairs soon became a bore, the ripples of laughter wore themselves out and all the beautiful novelty of dearest Sally faded and was finished. “She’s changed, David,” Jenny announced sadly towards the end of the first week, “she’s not the same girl at all, mind you I never did think much of…”

David did not find Sally changed except that she might be quieter and improved. Perhaps Jenny’s effusiveness made her subdued. Perhaps the thought that she was finished sobered Sally down. She had lost her pertness. There was a new thoughtfulness behind her eyes. She made herself useful running errands and about the house. She did not ask to be amused and all Jenny’s arrangements and display merely served to shut her up. Once or twice in the kitchen, seated on the plain deal table swinging her legs before the big fire she condescended, as Jenny put it, to come out of herself. Then she chattered away sixteen to the dozen, telling them in a frank and merry way of her experiences on the Payne-Gould tour, of the landladies, the managers, the “moth-eaten” dressing-rooms, of her own greenness and nervousness and mistakes. She had no pretentiousness. She could take off people beautifully but now she took off herself even better. Her best story was terribly against herself, of how she got the bird in Shiphead — Jenny simply loved to hear that story! — but Sally told it joyfully, without a trace of bitterness. She had a carelessness about herself. She never did up, never bothered about the kind of soap she used, always washed her face in cold water, she had very few clothes and, unlike Jenny who was always altering and stitching and pressing, keeping her clothes in the most beautiful condition, she took no care of them whatever. She had one brown tweed costume and wore it nearly all the time; as Jenny remarked, that thing was never off her back. But Sally’s method was to buy a suit, wear it out, then buy another one. She had no good clothes, Sunday hats, or adorable fancy underwear. She wore plain serge knickers and flat shoes. Her figure was short and rather tubby. She was very plain.

David enjoyed Sally quite a lot though Jenny’s increasing petulance began to worry him again. One evening, however, it was the first of December, when he came in from school Jenny met him with a return of her old animation.

“Guess who’s in Sleescale?” she demanded, smiling all over her face.

Sally, setting the table for David’s tea, said sadly:

“Buffalo Bill.”

“Be quiet,” Jenny said. “Just because you don’t happen to like him, Miss Impudence! But really though, David, you never would guess, honestly you’d never. It’s Joe!”

“Joe!” David repeated, “Joe Gowlan?”

“Mm-huh!” Jenny nodded brightly. “And, my, doesn’t he look well. You could have knocked me down with a feather when I met him in Church Street. Of course I wasn’t going to recognise him, not me, I wasn’t too pleased with Joe Gowlan the last time I saw him, but he came up and spoke to me nice as nice. He’s improved wonderful.”

Sally looked at her sister.

“Is it cold meat for David’s tea?” she said.

“No, no,” said Jenny absently, “just a plain tea to-night, we’ll keep the meat for supper. I’ve asked Joe to drop in, I knew you would want to see him, David.”

“Why, yes, of course.”

“Not that I’m all that anxious myself, mind you. But I did think I’d like to let Mr. Joe Gowlan see he’s not the only one that has got on. Believe me, with my blue china and the doyleys and cold meat and heated-up peas I’ll show Mr. Joe a thing or two. Pity it wasn’t the cod we had yesterday, I could have used the new ivorine fish slice. Never mind, though, I’ll borrow Mrs. Wept’s carvers, we’ll have a pretty nice display I can tell you.”

“Why don’t you hire a butler when you’re about it?” Sally said mildly.

Jenny coloured. The pleasantness left her face. She turned on Sally. She said:

“You’re an ungrateful little hussy, you are, to stand there and talk to me like that. I think I’ve done pretty well by you when it comes to the bit. The idea of you standing there criticising me because I ask a gentleman to supper in my own house. The idea! And after all that I’ve done for you. You go home, my lady, if you don’t like it.”

“I’ll go home, if you want to,” Sally said. And she went to get David’s tea.

Joe dropped in about seven o’clock. He wore his light brown suit, his watch-chain, that really impressive derby, and an air of affable simplicity. He was not loud, nor boisterous, nor full of brag, he was nothing that David might have feared. Joe had really been forced to come home and, though Joe could never look that way, Joe was quite a bit under the weather. In plain truth, Joe was still out of a job. He was turning over in his mind the idea of going back to Millington’s; after all hadn’t Stanley Millington promised to give him a lift up, hadn’t he now, the big sod? Yes, he would go to Millington’s all right. But not yet, not just yet. There was something else, something on Joe’s mind that Joe didn’t enjoy. Joe was worried about himself, worried about something. God, what a fool a fella could be, but maybe it wasn’t something, maybe it was nothing after all.

The general effect of this bodily and spiritual uncertainty was to throw an air of subdued virtue about Joe, to establish him as a man who had at last returned to see his aged father and was modestly reticent about his obvious success in life. And he was so pleased to see David, so deeply touched to see his “ole pal” again! It was quite affecting.

Towards Jenny, Joe was very humble, apologetic and subdued. He praised her china, her doyleys, her frock, her food. He ate, for one prosperously acquainted with a richer diet than cold beef and peas, a considerable supper. He was struck, oh, immensely struck by the improvement in Jenny’s social setting.

“By gum,” he kept repeating, “I must say this goes one better than Scottswood Road!” His manners were quite elevated. He no longer foraged with his knife for errant peas. He “helped” the ladies. He was handsomer than ever and his tone was almost reverent.

It was honey to Jenny, her formal “company” manner slowly slid from her, she became pleasantly arch, condescending, chatty in a lady-like way.

Not that Joe talked much to Jenny. No, no! It was clear that Joe had little time for “wimmen” now — his interest in Jenny was merely friendly and polite. As for Sally, he never looked at her at all. Joe was all for David, full of questions, interest, admiration. It was great that David was sitting his BA. in a fortnight, those week-ends of study with Carmichael were certainly a brain wave of the first degree. Always the lad to have brain waves, eh, Davey ole man? Joe and David talked long after supper and Jenny kept slipping in and out, humming pleasantly and graciously inquiring from time to time how they were getting on. Sally was washing the dishes, with a certain restrained vehemence, in the scullery.

“It’s been fine seeing you again,” David said at last as Joe rose to go.

“No more nor seeing you, ole man,” Joe said. “Believe me it’s the whole cheese. I’ll be here a week or two, I expect, we got to see more of each other. Walk down the road with me now. Ah, come on. It’s early yet. By the bye,” Joe paused, twiddling his watch-chain, a candid amusement in his eye. “I almost forgot, Davey, I cleaned myself out over the old dad this afternoon, gave him a packet, a regular packet, everything I’d got, felt sort of generous like seeing him again I suppose. You couldn’t lend us a couple of quid or so — just till I hear from the bank? Just an ole couple of pounds.”

“A couple of pounds… Joe?” David stared at Joe, taken aback.

“Oh, never mind, then.” Joe’s smile departed, he looked hurt, offended; “palship” and decency outraged suffused his shiny face. “Never mind if you don’t want to… it’s nothing to me… I’ll get it easy somewhere else.”

“Well, Joe…” Joe’s wounded expression cut David, he felt mean, horrible. He had about ten pounds tucked away in the chest of drawers in the bedroom, money saved for his examination expenses, and it was money that had taken some saving. He said suddenly: “Of course I’ll lend you it, Joe. Hold on…” He dashed upstairs and took three pounds and came back and offered them to Joe.

“Right, Davey.” Joe’s belief in humanity was mercifully restored. He beamed. “I knew you’d oblige an ole pal. Just till the end of the week, you understand.”

As they went up the street together Joe cocked his hat a trifle. His good night to David rang like a benediction.

David turned down Cowpen Street. He had meant to go up to see his father to-night, but it was getting towards ten o’clock now. Joe had kept him longer than he expected, and Martha had a way of frowning upon him when he slipped in late as if the very lateness of his visit were a slight on her. He walked along Freehold Street, meaning to cut through Bethel Street, when suddenly he saw his brother Hughie coming through the darkness, running swiftly down the crown of the road in his shorts and singlet. David called:

“Hughie! Hughie!” He had to call quickly, Hughie was going so fast.

Hughie stopped and crossed over. Although he had run three miles his breath came easily, he was in perfect condition. When he saw that it was David he gave a whoop and promptly fell upon his neck.

“Davey, you son of a gun!”

David disentangled himself.

“For heaven’s sake, Hughie.”

But Hughie for once was irrepressible.

“It’s happened, Davey. It’s happened at last. Did you know? I had the letter this afternoon. I got it when I came out the pit. They’ve asked me, Davey. Oh, help, isn’t it great!”

“Asked you what, Hughie?” asked David, bewildered. He had never seen Hughie like this, never, why… if he didn’t know Hughie, he’d have sworn Hughie was drunk.

The silent Hughie was drunk, intoxicated with delight.

“Asked me to play for Tynecastle! Could you believe it, man! They were watching the match last Saturday and I never knew a thing about it… and I scored three goals… I did the hat trick, Davey… and now they’ve asked me to play a trial with the reserves at St. James’s Park on Saturday week. Oh, heavens, isn’t it great. If I do all right I’m signed, Davey… signed for the United, Davey, the United!” Hughie’s voice cracked amongst delirious heights.

David understood: it was here at last, Hughie’s hoped for, longed for, impossible dream. Not for nothing had Hughie martyred himself, bound himself to monkish ways, steeled himself against those glamorous glances, that so often sought out his in Lamb Street on Saturday nights. Suddenly David felt glad, a rush of genuine happiness came over him, he held out his hand in congratulation.

“I’m delighted, Hughie.” How comically inadequate words were to express the real joy he felt.

Hughie went on.

“They’ve had their eye on me for months. Did I tell you that before? I can’t think what I’m saying. But you may be sure of one thing. I’ll play the game of my life on Saturday week. Oh, Davey, man, isn’t it wonderful!” That last ecstasy seemed to bring Hughie to himself. He coloured and stole a look at David. He said: “I’m fair sloppy to-night. It’s excitement.” He paused. “You’ll come to the match though, Davey?”

“I’ll be there, Hughie. I’ll come and shout my head off.”

Hughie smiled: his old diffident smile.

“Sammy’s coming too. He says if I don’t score six he’ll wring my neck!” He balanced on his heels for a minute in his familiar style, then he said: “I’d better not catch cold. I’m not taking any chances now, lad. Good night, Davey.”

“Good night, Hughie.”

Hughie went off, running, disappearing into the darkness of the night.

David returned home, with a sense of warmth about his heart. He let himself into the house. Sally was alone, sitting crouched up in a chair by the fire with her legs tucked in and her lips drawn down. She looked very small and silent. After Hughie’s elation it struck David that she was sad.

“Where’s Jenny?” he asked.

“Gone to bed!”

“Oh!” He paused, disappointed. Right away he had wanted to let Jenny know about Hughie. Then, smiling again, he began to tell Sally.

Crouched there, she studied him, watching him steadily with her face masked by the shadow of her hand.

“Isn’t that grand?” he concluded. “You know, not so much what he’s got… but because he was so set on getting it.”

She sighed. She was silent. Then she said:

“Yes, it’s pretty nice getting what you want.”

He looked at her.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

“You don’t look like it was nothing. You look upset.”

“Well,” she said slowly, “I’ve been rather stupid. Just before you came in I had a row with Jenny.”

He looked away quickly.

“I’m sorry about that.”

“Don’t be sorry. It’s not the first and I’m afraid it’s been coming for a long, long time. I shouldn’t have told you. I should have been noble and just smiled myself away tomorrow all polite and self-sacrificing.”

“Are you going to-morrow?”

“Yes, I’m going. It’s time I was getting back to Alfred. He doesn’t get his place in the house and he smells of pigeons but I’m rather struck on old Alfred for all that.”

He said:

“I wish I understood what the trouble was.”

She said:

“I’m glad you don’t.”

He stared at her doubtfully.

“I don’t like you going this way. Please don’t go.”

“I must go,” she said. “I didn’t bring a change of lingerie.” She gave a short laugh and then burst straight into tears.

He simply didn’t know what to make of her.

She stopped crying at once. She said:

“Don’t pay any attention. I’ve been slightly unstuck ever since I came to bits on the prima donna act. I don’t want any sympathy. It’s better to be a has been than a never was. I’m quite cheerful and I think I’ll go to bed.”

“But I am sorry, Sally.”

“Shut up,” she said. “It’s high time you stopped being sorry for other people and started being sorry for yourself.”

“What on earth have I got to be sorry about?”

“Nothing.” She got up. “It’s too late to be soulful. I’ll tell you in the morning.” Abruptly, she said good night and went to bed.

Next morning he did not see her. She had risen early and left by the seven o’clock train.

All that day David worried about Sally: when he returned from school he spoke to Jenny.

Jenny gave her little complacent laugh.

“She’s jealous, my dear, absolutely jealous.”

He drew back disgusted.

“Oh no,” he said, “I’m convinced it isn’t that.”

She nodded indulgently.

“She always had her eye on you, even in the Scottswood Road days. She hated to see you spoony on me. And she hates it even worse now!” She paused, smiling up at him. “You still are spoony on me, aren’t you, David?”

He looked at her queerly, with a queer hardness in his eyes. He said:

“Yes, I do love you, Jenny. I know you’re chock full of faults — just as I am myself. Sometimes you say and do things that I loathe. Sometimes I simply can’t stand you. But I can’t help myself. I love you.”

She did not attempt to understand him but took the general drift of his remarks as complimentary.

“Funny bones,” she said archly. And went back to her novel.

He was not accustomed to analyse his feeling for Jenny. He simply accepted it. But two days later, on the following Friday, an incident occurred which disturbed him strangely.

As a rule he did not leave the school until four o’clock. But on this particular day Strother came along at three o’clock to “take his class.” It was Strother’s habit to take a class once a week, on this day and at this hour, to determine the progress of the class and to make forcible and pointed comment in the presence of the master of that class. Lately, however, Strother had been kinder to David since he had been working so strenuously for the B.A.; he said curtly, yet pleasantly enough, that David might go.

David went. He went first of all to Hans Messuer’s for a hair cut. While Hans, a fat meek smiling man with a moustache turned up like the Kaiser’s, was cutting his hair David talked to Swee who had just come out the Neptune and was shaving himself in the back shop. He had a cheerful and unedifying conversation with Swee. Swee was always cheerful and could be very unedifying. He could shave and talk and be cheerful and unedifying all at the same time without cutting himself. The talk with Swee did David good but it took only half an hour. He reached home at half-past three instead of quarter-past four. Then as he came up the lane behind the Dunes he met Joe Gowlan coming out of his house.

David stopped. He stopped absolutely dead. He had not seen Joe since he loaned him the money; it gave him the most singular sensation to see Joe walking out the house as though actually it were Joe’s house. He felt the sensation like an acute embarrassment especially as Joe seemed acutely embarrassed too.

“I thought I’d left my stick the other night,” Joe explained, looking everywhere but at David.

“You didn’t have a stick, Joe.”

Joe laughed, glancing up and down the lane. Perhaps he thought the stick might be there.

“I did have a stick… a cane… I always carry it, but I’m blowed if I haven’t lost it somewhere.”

Just that; then Joe nodding, smiling, hurrying; hurrying to get away.

David went up the path and into his house thoughtfully.

“Jenny,” he said, “what did Joe want here?”

“Joe!” She darted a look at him; got very red in the face.

“I’ve just met him… coming out of this house.”

She stood in the middle of the floor in that lost, taken aback way, then her temper flared.

“I can’t help it if you did meet him. I’m not his keeper. He only looked in for a minute. What are you staring at me like that for?”

“Nothing,” he said, turning away. Why had Jenny said nothing about the stick?

“Nothing what?” she insisted violently.

He looked out of the window. Why had Joe called at an hour when he was likely to be at the school? Why on earth? Suddenly an explanation struck him; the unusual time of Joe’s call, Joe’s nervousness, his hurry to get away, everything. Joe had borrowed three pounds from him, and Joe was still unable to pay it back!

His face lightened, he swung round to Jenny.

“Joe did call for his stick… didn’t he?”

“Yes,” she cried, quite hysterically, and came right into his arms. “Of course he did. What in the world did you think he came for?”

He soothed her, patting her lovely soft hair.

“I’m sorry, Jenny, darling. It did give me the oddest feeling, though, to see him walking out of my house as if he owned it.”

“Oh, David,” she wept, “how can you say such things?”

What had he said? He smiled, his lips touched her white slender neck. She pleaded:

“You’re not angry with me, David?”

Why under heaven should he be angry with her?

“Heavens, no, my dear.”

Reassured, she lifted her limpid swimming eyes. She kissed him. She was sweet to him all that evening, most terribly sweet. She got up actually next morning, which was Saturday, to give him his morning tea. When she saw him off on his bicycle that same afternoon to spend the week-end working with Carmichael she clung to him and would hardly let him go.

But she did let him go after one last big hug, as she called it. Then she went into the house, humming lightly, pleased that David loved her, pleased with herself, pleased with the nice long free week-end before her.

Of course she wouldn’t let Joe come to supper to-night, she wouldn’t dream of such a thing, the cheek, indeed! of Joe for even suggesting it. To talk about old times he had said, well, could you believe it. She hadn’t even bothered to tell David about Joe’s impertinence, it was not the kind of thing a lady cared to mention.

That afternoon she took a pleasant stroll down the town. Outside Murchison’s she paused, debating, as it were, and deciding well, yes, it was a useful thing to have in the house. She went in and elegantly ordered a bottle of port, invalid port, to be sent down, this afternoon, for sure now, Mr. Murchison. David didn’t like it, she knew, but David had lately been most unreasonable and he was away in any case and would never know. What was the old saying again, what the eye didn’t see the heart didn’t grieve for. Good, wasn’t it? Smiling a little Jenny went home, changed her dress, scented herself behind her ears, like it said in Home Chat, and made herself nice, Jenny did, even if it was only to be nice for herself.

At seven o’clock Joe came to the door. Jenny answered his ring.

“Well, I declare,” she exclaimed, shocked. “After all I said.”

“Ah, come on now, Jenny,” Joe said ingratiatingly, “don’t be hard on a fella.”

“The very idea,” said Jenny. “I’ve a good mind not to let you in.”

But she did let him in. And she did not let him out till it was very late. She was flushed and disarranged and rather sheepish. She giggled. The port, the invalid port was finished.

TWENTY-TWO

On the next day, Sunday the 7th of December, Jack Reedy, eldest of the Reedy brothers, and his marrow, Cha Leeming, worked their shift in the Scupper Flats, an extra shift because they were doubling to complete the P. W. contract. Robert was in the same shift though much further up the Flats at the head of the slant. His heading was bad. The heading of Reedy and Leeming was good, about one mile and a half from the pit-bottom. At five o’clock the shift stopped work and came out of the pit. Reedy and Cha Leeming, before they came out, left a fine jud of unworked coal on the face of their heading. About five or six tubs of coal would be in this jud when it was brought down, good coal and easy to get when they came in next morning.

Well satisfied, Jack Reedy and Cha stopped at the Salutation for a drink on the way home. Jack had a bit of money. For all it was Sunday night they had several drinks and then several more. Jack got merry and Cha was half-seas over. Arm in arm together they rolled up the Terraces, singing. They went to bed. Next morning both slept in. But neither appreciated the point of his sleeping in till later.

At half-past three of the morning of Monday Dinning, the deputy in charge of the district, entered the Paradise section and made his examination of the workings. He did this before admitting the morning shift. Stick in hand, head bent, Dinning plodded diligently through the Mixen and Scupper Flats. Everything seemed satisfactory so Dinning returned to his kist in the Scupper ropeway and wrote out his statutory report.

The shift then came in, one hundred and five persons, made up of eighty-seven men and eighteen boys. Two of the shift, Bob Ogle and Tally Brown, made up to Dinning in the ropeway.

“Jack and Cha slep’ in,” Bob Ogle said.

“To hell!” Dinning said.

“Can Tally and me hev that heading?” Bob said. “It’s a bitch of a one we hev.”

“To hell,” Dinning said. “Take it, then!”

Ogle and Brown went up the ropeway with a bunch of men, amongst whom were Robert, Hughie, Slogger Leeming, Harry Brace, Swee Messer, Tom Reedy, Ned Softly and Jesus Wept. Tom Reedy’s young brother Pat, a boy of fifteen, whose first week it was inbye proper, followed on behind.

Robert was in good spirits. He felt well and hopeful. He had slept soundly, his cough had not been so troublesome; in the last few months, with a strong sense of relief, he had come to the conclusion that his fears of flooding had been unfounded. As he walked up through the blackness of the slant, which was low and narrow, four feet high, six hundred feet below the surface and two miles from the main shaft, he found himself beside little Pat Reedy, youngest of the Reedy tribe.

“Eh, Pat,” he joked, encouraging him. “It’s a fine place ye’ve come for your holidays.” He clapped Pat on the back and went down through the dip known as the Swelly and up to his far heading with Slogger. The heading was drier than it had been for weeks.

Ogle and Brown were already in their heading further back. They found the jud left by Jack and Cha. They started work, drilled two yard shot holes into the face of the jud and another of the same depth to the right of the projection. At quarter to five Dinning, the deputy, came along. He charged and fired the shots. Eight tubs of coal came down.

Dinning saw that the shots had fired well and the line of the coal face straightened.

“To hell, lads,” he said, nodding his satisfaction, “that’s all reet.” He went back up the Scupper ropeway to his kist.

But ten minutes later Tom Reedy, the putter, came after him. Tom said, in a great hurry:

“Ogle says will you come inbye. There’s water comin’ through the shot holes, he says.”

Dinning appeared to reflect.

“To hell, he says.”

Tom Reedy and Dinning went back to the heading. Dinning took a look at the face, a real good look. He found a thin trickle of water coming through the middle of it between the two shots he had fired. There appeared to be no pressure behind it. He smelled the water. The water had a bad smell, a smell of styfe which meant black damp about, he knew it was not virgin coal water. He did not like the look of it at all.

“To hell, lads,” Dinning said, dismayed. “Ye’ve holed. Ye better try and get rid of some o’t.”

Ogle, Brown and Tom Reedy began to tub the water, to try and get rid of it by letting it through the pack walls on the low side of the drawing road At that moment Geordie Dinning, who was Dinning’s son and a hand putter with Tom Reedy in Scupper Flats, came by.

“Here, Geordie, lad,” Dinning cried. Though Dinning said to hell without offence and without knowing he said it, strangely enough he never said it before his son.

Dinning took his son Geordie back to the kist with him. While he was hurrying to his kist he thought about the branch telephone but the telephone was some way off and it was still so early he was afraid Hudspeth might not yet have come to bank. Besides, Dinning was not very good at thinking. At the kist he got out his stub of copying-ink pencil and wrote two notes. He wrote laboriously, wetting the pencil occasionally on his tongue. In the first note this is what Dinning wrote:

In the second note this is what Dinning wrote:

Dinning turned to his son. He was a slow man, a slow thinker and speaker. But now he spoke quicker than usual. He said:

“Run, Geordie, to Frank Logan, the fireman, and gie him this note. Then go outbye and up to the under-viewer’s house with this. Run now, Geordie, man, run.”

Geordie went off with the two notes. He went quickly. When he came to the junction he looked for the onsetter but the onsetter was not there. Then Geordie heard a faint thump and the air commenced to reverse. Geordie knew that meant trouble in the Scupper Flats. He knew he wanted to get outbye but he knew also what his father had told him to do and between the two he lost his head and began to walk up the middle of the Paradise roadway.

As young Geordie Dinning walked up the middle of the Paradise roadway suddenly out of the darkness came a train of four loaded tubs running loose. The tubs had broken amain from further up. Geordie shouted. Geordie jumped half a second too late. The train of tubs smashed down on him, took him twenty yards with a rush, flung him, went over him, and left his mangled body on the roadway. The train of tubs roared on.

After his son had gone Dinning stood for some moments satisfied that he had done what he ought to do. Then he heard a loud bang, it was the thump his son had heard, only being nearer he heard it as a bang. Suddenly petrified, Dinning stood with his mouth open. He had expected trouble but nothing so sudden or terrible as this. He knew it was an inrush. Instinctively he turned into the Flats, but after going ten yards he saw the water rushing towards him. The water came roof high in a great swell of sound. In the water were the bodies of Ogle, Brown and ten other men. The gas in front of the rushing water extinguished his lamp. For two seconds while he stood in the sounding darkness waiting for the water Dinning thought: To hell, I’m awful glad I sent Geordie out of the pit! But Geordie was already dead. Then the water took Dinning too. He fought, struggled, tried to swim. No use. Dinning’s drowned body made fourteen drowned bodies in the flooded Scupper ropeway.

Frank Logan, the Paradise fireman, did not get Dinning’s note. The note lay in the darkness covered with some blood, clenched in the completely severed hand of Geordie Dinning. But Frank heard the slight thump too and in a minute he felt the water coming knee-deep down the incline. He knew now without receiving the note that the water had holed. Fifteen men were working near him. Two of these men he ordered to go quick by the return airway to tell other men in the lower workings of the Paradise. The other thirteen he encouraged to push on to the pit-shaft one mile outbye. He himself remained. He knew that the Scupper workings were the deepest in the Paradise. He knew they would be flooded first. In the face of that he went back and down to warn the eighteen men in these workings. These men were drowned before he set out. And Frank Logan was never again seen alive.

The thirteen men pushing outbye, the men Frank Logan, the fireman, had sent outbye, reached the Atlas Drift. Here they hesitated and held a rapid conference. The Atlas connected the Paradise with the Globe Coal, which was the seam above. They decided the higher seam was less likely to hold water, that it would be safer to reach the pitshaft along Globe Coal. They went up the Drift into Globe Coal. Here they came upon some bricklayers who had been working in the main haulage road and knew nothing at all about the holing until the air reversed. The bricklayers were talking together, talking for a minute then listening for a minute, worried, not knowing whether to go outbye or remain. But now they decided to go outbye; they joined the thirteen men who had come up the Atlas Drift and proceeded all together along the main haulage road of Globe Coal towards the pit-shaft.

Three minutes later the inrush of water came down the main Paradise haulage, swept up the Atlas Drift and along the main road of Globe Coal. The men heard the water and started to run. The road was good with plenty of headroom and a hard-beaten floor and the men, all of whom were young, were able to run very fast. Some had never run faster in their lives.

But the water ran faster still. The speed of the water was terrific, it chased them with animal ferocity, surged upon them with the velocity, the inevitability of a tidal wave. One minute there was no water in Globe Coal and the next it had wiped them out.

The water swept on, reached the pit-shaft and began to spout down the shaft in tremendous volume. The meeting of the waters now took place. The water cascading from Globe Coal joined the water in Paradise pit-bottom. There was a backlash of water which swirled upon all the men who had managed to make pit-bottom and drowned them swiftly. The water then foamed round the stables and inundated the stalls.

The only four ponies still alive were in the stalls — Nigger, Kitty, Warrior and Ginger — all whinnying with terror. Warrior lashed out with heels at the water and went amuck in his stall; he almost broke his neck before he was drowned, but the others just stood whinnying, whinnying until the water rose above them. By this time the water had risen in the two main shafts, sealing both Globe and Paradise and preventing all access to the workings from the surface.

The suddenness of the calamity was unbelievable and deadly. Not more than fifteen minutes had elapsed from the instant of inrush and already eighty-nine were dead from drowning, violence or black damp suffocation.

But Robert and his mates were still alive. They were far inbye at the top of the slant and the inrush went away from them.

Robert heard the thump when it happened and fifty seconds later he felt the reversal of the air. He knew. Into himself he said: My God, that’s it. Beside him in the heading Slogger Leeming got up slowly from his knees.

“Did ye hear that, Robert, mon?” Slogger said, dazedly. Instinctively he turned to Robert for his opinion.

Robert said rapidly:

“Keep everybody here till I come back. Everybody.” He ducked out of the heading and made his way down the slant and into the Scupper ropeway. He ran along the Scupper ropeway, his ears deafened by the sound of water pouring into the ropeway. He splashed on, getting deeper and deeper over his boots, his knees, his waist. He knew he must be near the Swelly, the depression that ran north and south across the Scupper ropeway. Suddenly he lost his footing and went right out of his depth into the Swelly. The water lifted him until his head hit the whinstone roof. He clawed the roof with his hands, kicked out his legs in the water, worked himself out the way he had come. He got into his depth, waded back, stood in the shallow water, shivering with cold. He knew exactly what had happened. The inrush had roofed in the Swelly: for fifty yards a barrier of water blocked the ropeway. All the escape roads were filled to the roof where they crossed the Swelly.

The cold of the water made Robert cough. He stood coughing for a minute, then he swung round and retook his way up the slant, bumping into little Pat Reedy half-way up. Pat was very frightened.

“What’s like the matter, mester?” he asked.

“It’s nowt, Pat, mon,” Robert answered. “You come along wi’ me.”

Robert and Pat reached the top of the slant where they found the remaining men collected round Slogger. There were ten altogether and amongst them were Hughie, Harry Brace, Tom Reedy, Ned Softley, Swee Messer and Jesus Wept. They were all waiting for Robert. Although they could not guess the fact, they were the sole survivors in the Neptune pit.

“How, then, Robert?” Slogger called out as Robert came up. He looked intently at Robert.

“How, again, Slogger?” Robert paused, making everything he said sound ordinary and perfectly all right. He wrung the water out of his jacket. “They’re holed down there and let a drop water in the Swelly. But we’re high enough here not to bother about that. We must find another road outbye.”

Silence. They all knew enough to make them silent. But Tom Reedy asked:

“Can we not get through the Swelly, then?”

Slogger let out at him savagely.

“Shut up yer gob, you silly runt, until yer asked to open it.”

Robert went on as though nothing had happened.

“So what we’ll do is this, lads. We’ll travel the return airways into Globe and win outbye through the Globe.”

Keeping Pat Reedy next and very close to him Robert led the way into the return airways. All the party followed but Tom Reedy. Tom was a splendid swimmer. He knew he was a splendid swimmer both under water and above and he knew that he could swim the Swelly. Once through the Swelly it would be easy to get outbye, then he would bring help and show the Slogger whether he was a silly runt or not. Tom lagged behind till the others had gone. He ran down the slant, slipped off his boots, took a deep breath and slid into the Swelly. He swam the Swelly in one deep breath. But what Tom didn’t bargain for was the mile and a half of water beyond the Swelly. On the other side the main inrush caught him. Tom got outbye right enough. Five minutes later his body swirled gently into the sump at the bottom of the flooded shaft.

Robert crawled on, leading his party through the airway. He knew they must be near the Globe by now. Suddenly his lamp went out as if extinguished by a soft breath and at the same moment Pat Reedy choked and lay quietly down beside him. Not water this time. Black damp.

“Get back,” Robert said. “Get back, everybody.”

The party went back, forty yards back, where they revived Pat Reedy. Robert, watching Pat Reedy come round, thought very hard. There must be men, he thought, in the dead end of the Globe. At length he said:

“Who is coming to try into the Globe with me again?”

Nobody answered; they all knew black damp, and this whiff of it had made them know it better. It was not so easy to think of penetrating Globe in these circumstances. Hughie said:

“Don’t go, dad, there’s styfe in there.”

Jesus Wept had said nothing up till now. But now Jesus Wept said:

“I’ll go.” He understood that Robert wanted to bring out any men in the Globe who might be overcome with black damp and still alive. He was not brave, but it was his religion to go with Robert.

Robert and Wept crawled back along the airway into the Globe. They took off their jackets and wrapped them round their heads, though this was simply a tradition against black damp and did little good. They also went flat on their stomachs. Wept was very frightened, from time to time gave little nervous convulsive jerks, but he kept on, praying into himself.

The black damp or styfe was gas full of carbon monoxide driven from the old waste workings by the water and it seemed to lift and die. It had lifted slightly when Robert and Wept got into the Globe. Although they felt sick and sleepy they were able to go on. But it had been heavy before: they found four men overcome by the gas. The men were sitting in a little group as though gazing at each other, perfectly natural and at ease. They looked extremely well: the gas had given a nice pink colour to their faces and hands which were hardly dirty, since the shift had just come in. They looked healthy. They looked cheerful. They were all dead.

Robert and Wept dragged out the men; that was why they had come into the Globe; they dragged them out, but nothing the party could do revived the four dead men. At the sight of these four dead men Pat Reedy, who had never looked upon death before, burst into tears.

“Oh, help,” he blubbered. “Oh, help. What in the name ov wonder am I doin’ here? And where’s my brother Tom?”

Wept said:

“Don’t cry, lad, the Lord will look after us all.” There was something terribly impressive in the way Jesus Wept said those words.

Silence. Robert stood thinking. His face was worried. If there’s gas in the Globe, he thought, there’s water too. The waste black damp could only have reached that upper seam with a full head of water behind it. The men were trapped by the water first, then overcome by the gas. Yes, he concluded, the Globe is sealed too, there’s no escape that way. Then Robert remembered the telephone in the far end of Scupper Flats.

“We can’t get into the Globe, lads,” he said. “There’s gas and water there both. We’ll win back to the Scupper and telephone the surface.”

At the mention of the telephone every face brightened.

“By Christ, Robert,” said the Slogger admiringly.

The very thought of telephoning took all the sting out of the return journey through the airway, they did not think of it as going back nor remember that they were trapped. They thought of the telephone.

But when Robert came into Scupper Flats again he looked more worried than ever, he looked really worried. He saw that the water level in the Flats was up and rising fast. This meant only one thing: the inrush had washed away the timbering; the unsupported roof beyond the Swelly had fallen, thereby blocking the outlet of the water down the main roadway; and now the water was turning back upon them. With every escape road blocked they had perhaps fifteen minutes in which to get out of the dead end of Scupper Flats.

“Wait here,” Robert said. He went on to the telephone himself, spun the little handle violently, then lifted the receiver. He was very pale. Now… he thought.

“Hello, hello.” His voice, the voice of a man not yet dead rose out of the dark tomb, fled in despairing hope over waterlogged wires to the surface two miles away.

The answer came instantly.

“Hello, hello!”

Robert nearly fainted. It was Barras, from his office, insistently repeating:

“Hello, hello, hello, hello…”

Robert answered, speaking feverishly:

“Fenwick on Scupper Flats telephone. The water has holed beyond the Swelly and roofed. There’s been a fall beyond. A party of nine cut off here beside me. What are we to do?”

The answer came immediately, very hard and clear.

“Travel the airways to Globe Coal.”

“We’ve tried the airways.”

“What!”

“The Globe’s chock full of black damp and water.”

Silence. Thirty seconds of agonised silence which seemed like thirty years. Then Robert heard the slam of a door as though, still sitting at his desk, Barras had kicked the door shut. It really was very odd hearing the slam of that office door from far away up there upon the surface.

“Listen to me, Fenwick!” Barras spoke rapidly now, yet every word struck incisively and hard. “You must make for Old Scupperhole shaft. You can’t come this way, both shafts are water sealed. You must travel the old workings to Old Scupperhole shaft!”

“Old Scupperhole shaft!” What in the name of God was he talking about…

“Go right up the slant,” Barras went on with that same inflexible precision. “Break through the frame dam at the top east side, above the dyke. That takes you into the upper level of the Old Neptune waste. Don’t be afraid of water, that’s all in the bottom levels. Go along the road, it’s all main road, don’t take the branches nor the right dip, keep bearing due east for fifteen hundred yards until you strike the old Scupperhole shaft…”

Christ! thought Robert, he knows these old workings, he knows them, he knows them. The sweat broke upon Robert’s brow. Oh, sweet Christ, he’s known them all along…

“Do you hear me?” asked Barras faintly, distantly. “The rescue party will meet you there. Do you hear me?”

“Yes,” shouted Robert. Then a water blast tore out the wires and left the instrument dead in his hand. He let it fall, it swung dangling… Christ! he thought again, weak with a terrible emotion.

“Quick, dad,” Hughie cried, approaching, frantically. “Quick, quick, dad. The water’s coming up on us.”

Robert turned, splashed over to the others. Christ! he thought again. He shouted:

“We’re going into the waste, lads. We can’t do no more.”

He led the way at the double up the slant, a dead end no one ever thought of trying. Yes, there was the old frame dam, not so much a dam as simple stopping, a row of three-inch planks set on edge eighteen inches apart with clay between. Slogger kicked a way through in two minutes. The party entered the waste of the Old Neptune workings.

The waste was cold and full of a curious smell. It was not styfe, though there was black damp about, but the smell of disuse. The waste had not been worked for eighty years.

Led by Robert they pressed forward with rising hope… it was dry here, they were leaving the water. Oh, thank God, they were leaving all that water. Six of them had lamps still lit, and Harry Brace had three pit candles in his pocket. They could see the way. There was no difficulty. There was only one road, the main road, the road that struck due east.

For about a quarter of a mile they followed the abandoned road. Then they checked. In front of them the roof had fallen.

“Never mind, lads,” shouted Slogger. “It’s nowt but rubble. Us’ll soon be through.” He threw off his jacket and tightened his leather belt. He led the attack on the fall.

They had no tools, all their tools, bait pokes and water-bottles lay submerged half a mile away. They worked with their bare hands, scraping, scraping, tearing out the loose stones. They worked in pairs: and Slogger worked double shift. How long they worked nobody knew, they worked so hard they did not think of time, nor of their bleeding hands, but they worked actually seven hours straight and went through fifteen yards of fallen rubble. Slogger crawled through first:

“Hurrah!” he yelled, pulling Pat Reedy after him. They all came through, all talking at once, laughing, triumphant. Famous it was to be through that fallen rubble. They laughed like children.

But fifty yards further on they stopped laughing. Another fall, and this time no rubble. Stone, hard solid whinstone, impenetrable to anything but a diamond drill. And they had their bare hands. Only one road. And the one road blocked. Solid whinstone, thick and hard as the face of a cliff. Their bare and bleeding hands. A silence. A long, cold silence.

“Well, lads,” Robert said with studied cheerfulness, “here we are and not that far off the Scupperhole either. They’re comin’ in for us now. They’re sure to reach us sooner or later. We’ve nowt to do but crook our houghs and jowl. And keep our spirits up.”

They all sat down. Harry Brace, crouched next the fallen roof, picked up a heavy lump of whinstone and began to jowl, beating out a sort of tattoo on the rock face so that the rescuers might hear. Occasionally he raised his voice and let out a long high call. Deep in the abandoned waste, quarter of a mile inbye from the old Scupperhole shaft, they waited. Jowling and calling, they waited there.

TWENTY-THREE

A little before six that morning Richard Barras was wakened by a light knocking on his door. The knocking had been going on for some time. He called out:

“Who is it?”

Aunt Carrie’s voice, diffident and frightened, came through the door:

“I don’t wish to disturb you, Richard, but the underviewer is here from the pit. He will see you.” Aunt Carrie shrank from the word which Hudspeth had flatly used… let Hudspeth himself say that terrifying word to Richard.

Richard dressed and came downstairs; it was in any case near his usual time for rising.

“Good morning, Hudspeth.” He saw that Hudspeth was only half clothed and extremely agitated; he saw that Hudspeth had been running. And Hudspeth burst out immediately:

“There’s water in both main shafts, Mr. Barras, covering all levels. We can’t drop the cage below Five Quarter Seam.”

There was a terrible pause.

“I see.” It came out just like that, reflex, with automatic composure.

“The whole of the foreshift has gone into Globe Coal and Paradise.” Hudspeth’s usually stolid voice shook. “We can’t get near them, not one of them has come outbye.”

Barras carefully inspected Hudspeth:

“How many in the shift?” he asked, with that mechanical precision.

“A round hundred men and boys, I don’t know, something like that, I’m not five minutes out of my bed, one of the lamp-men fetched me, I sent him running to Mr. Armstrong and came on up here as fast as I could.”

Richard hesitated no longer. Six minutes later they were in the pit yard. Jimmy, the lamp-man, stood with the banksman, the assistant banksman and Cousins, the timekeeper, in a silent, intimidated group. As Barras arrived the banksman said:

“Mr. Armstrong has just come, sir. He went up in the winding room.”

Barras said to Hudspeth:

“Fetch him.”

Hudspeth ran up the steps to the winding room. Meanwhile Barras went into the office where the round clock fixed on to the wall above the fireplace indicated six-fifteen. As Barras entered the empty office the underground telephone rang. He picked up the receiver instantly. In his hard impersonal voice he said:

“Hello, hello, hello…”

Robert Fenwick’s voice answered from Scupper Flats. It was the call from the entombed party, and when the conversation had terminated and the instrument lay dead in his hand Barras blindly replaced the receiver. Then he inflated his chest, took command of himself. A moment later Armstrong and Hudspeth came into the office.

“Now tell me, Mr. Armstrong,” Barras began instantly in a voice of authority, “tell me everything you know.”

Armstrong, labouring under some strain, told him. All the time Armstrong was speaking, which was about two minutes, Armstrong kept thinking, the end of this is the end of my job. The skin under one of his eyes began to twitch, he put up his hand to hide it.

“I see,” Barras said; then, abruptly: “Ring Mr. Jennings.”

Armstrong answered hurriedly:

“I sent Saul Pickings for him, Mr. Barras, that’s the first thing I did; he’ll be here any minute now.”

“That was well done,” said Barras in a pleased manner. His command was perfect, under that beautiful command Armstrong and Hudspeth were recovering themselves. Armstrong especially. Barras continued: “Get on the telephone, Mr. Armstrong. Instantly. Ring the Rigger and Headstock Co., Tynecastle, ring Messrs. T. & R. Henderson of Seaton, ring Amalgamated Collieries, and the Horton Iron Co. — ask especially for Mr. Probert senr. here — give them all my compliments, inform them of our situation, ask for every assistance, every assistance if you please. We shall want headgear, all pumping and electrical equipment they can give us. Ask Tynecastle especially for steam winding gear. Ask Amalgamated Collieries for any rescue men they can spare. At once if you please, Mr. Armstrong.”

Armstrong ran to the telephone in his office. Barras turned to Hudspeth:

“Take ten men and go to the Old Scupper shaft. Make an inspection. As quick and complete as you can. Find out all you can about the condition of the shaft. Then hurry back to me.”

As Hudspeth went out, Mr. Jennings arrived. The mines inspector was a blunt, compact, red-faced man with a cheerfully determined manner. It was well known that Jennings would stand no nonsense, he was unassertive yet strong, rather too hail-fellow-well-met perhaps, yet everybody liked and respected him. Just now he had a large boil on the back of his neck.

“Ouch,” he said as he clumped down in a chair. “This hurts me like hell. What’s up?”

Barras told him.

Jennings forgot about his boil. All of a sudden he looked perfectly aghast.

“No,” he said, in a tone of absolute dismay.

There was a silence. Barras said formally:

“Will you inspect the bank?”

Although he had just sat down Jennings got up. He said:

“Yes, I’ll have a look up top.”

Barras led the way. Jennings and Barras inspected the bank. The pumps were completely overcome, the water had risen another six feet in both shafts. Jennings questioned the winding-engineman. Jennings and Barras returned to the office. Jennings said:

“You’ll need extra pumps on these shafts, Mr. Barras. You’ll need them soon. But there’s that much head of water I question if they’ll do much good…”

Barras listened with determined patience. He let Jennings talk himself out. He made no comment whatsoever. But when Jennings had finished he declared, in his clear, judicial voice, as though Jennings had not spoken at all:

“It will take days to dewater these main shafts. We must go in from Scupperhole in the hope of travelling a roadway. That much is positive. Hudspeth will be back immediately from Old Scupperhole shaft. The instant it is possible we must go in.”

Jennings looked a little put down. He felt the impact of a personality stronger than his own, it subordinated and depressed him. His boil was paining him too. Yet Barras’s definition of the position was crystal clear, his scheme for the rescue the only logical course. A grudging admiration showed in Jennings’ blunt face.

“That’s about it,” he said, and then: “But how’ll you manage without plans?”

“We must manage,” retorted Barras with sudden intensity.

“Well, well,” Jennings conciliated, “we can but try.” He sighed. “But if only we’d had these plans we wouldn’t be in this bloody mess now. God, what idiots they were in those days!” He winced from the pain in his neck. “Oh, damn this carbuncle I’ve got on me. I’m taking yeast for it. But I don’t think it’s doing a hate of good.”

As Jennings fumbled painfully with the dressing on his boil Hudspeth returned. Hudspeth said:

“I’ve had a good look, Mr. Barras, sir. The shaft at Old Scupperhole isn’t that bad. There’s rubbish in the shaft, not that much though. But there’s black damp there too, a bad bit of black damp. We lowered a man on a crab rope and he came out pretty sick. I fancy we could clear the shaft of stowing and black damp in twenty-four hours.”

Barras said:

“Thank you, Mr. Hudspeth. We’ll go over to Scupperhole shaft now.” There was no question: Barras was in charge. There was something sublime in his calm and resolute command, he dominated without effort, he subdued panic, he was absolute.

As the four men came out of the office young Dr. Lewis, who was now Dr. Scott’s partner, came hurrying across the pit yard. He said:

“I’ve just heard… on my way back from a confinement case…. Can I do anything?” He paused expectantly, seeing himself doing dramatic heroism down the mine. He was pink-cheeked and eager, his ideals and enthusiasms simply bubbled within him; in Sleescale he was always referred to as young Dr. Lewis. Jennings looked as if he would like to kick young Dr. Lewis’s young backside. He turned away.

Barras said kindly:

“Thank you very much, Dr. Lewis. We may need you. Go in the office and Saul Pickings will make you a hot cup of cocoa. We may need you later.”

Young Dr. Lewis bustled away happily. Barras, Jennings, Armstrong and Hudspeth went on to Old Scupperhole shaft. It was only now beginning to get light. It was very cold. A few thin snow-flakes began to fall, trembling gently out of the unseen sky. A party of twenty-five men went with them, moving in silence across the troubled ground, until the snow enwrapped and curtained them. This was the first rescue party.

And now the news began to travel through the town. Doors in the Terraces flew open and men and women rushed through the open doors. They ran down Cowpen Street. As they ran, more ran with them. They ran as if they could not help themselves, as if the pit had suddenly become a magnet drawing them, drawing them irrespective of their own volition. They ran because they had to run. They ran in silence.

Martha heard the news from Mrs. Brace. Her first thought was less of anguish than of gratitude: Thank God my Sammy isn’t down. Clutching her breast, she wakened Sammy, then threw on her coat and ran with Sammy to the pit. Old Hans Messuer was running too. Hans had been shaving an early customer when he heard, and running, he still held the lather brush in his left hand. David heard as he cycled into the town. He tore straight to the pit. The Slogger’s wife heard in bed, and Cha, the Slogger’s son, heard at the side-door of the Salutation. Susan Wept heard as she said her morning prayer. Mrs. Reedy, the midwife, heard at her case with young Dr. Lewis. Jack Reedy, her eldest son, heard on his way to pick up a stiffener at the pub. Joining Cha Leeming, Jack ran towards the pit. Ned Softley’s mother heard on her way to the public wash-house. Old Tom Ogle heard in the closet. Buttoning his trousers, Tom Ogle ran.

In no time at all five hundred men and women stood packed on the outskirts of the pit yard and there were more outside. They stood in silence, the women mostly in shawls, the men without overcoats, all very black against the white snow. They stood like some vast chorus, massed in silence under the snow-dark sky. They were not the actors in the drama but they were of it none the less. In silence they stood, in mortal silence, under that immortal snow-dark silent sky.

It was nine o’clock and snowing hard when Barras, Jennings and Armstrong recrossed the Snook and came into the pit yard. Armstrong looked at the crowd. Armstrong said:

“Will I have the yard gates shut?”

“No!” said Barras, inspecting the people with his remote, myopic eyes. “Have a fire lighted in the yard. A large fire. Light it in the middle of the yard. It is cold for them standing there.”

They lit the fire. Charley Gowlan, Jake Wicks and the banksmen brought lots of timbering to feed the fire. Just as the fire was going well the first party of volunteers rolled in from the Seaton collieries. They went immediately to the Scupperhole. Then the riggers came from Tynecastle bringing three truckloads of their gear. Armstrong stood by the telephone. Barras and Jennings went back to the Scupperhole. The black damp made it impossible to descend the shaft but soon they would clear the black damp. Already they had started to fit headgear, winding engine and a fan.

At eleven o’clock Arthur Barras arrived. Arthur had been spending the week-end with the Todds at Tynecastle, he had just arrived by the ten forty-five train. He dashed into the office with nervous haste.

“Father!” he exclaimed, “this is terrible.”

Barras turned slowly.

“It is heart-breaking.”

“What can I do? I’ll do anything. What a thing to happen, father.”

Barras looked at his son with heavy eyes. He made a gesture with his hand. He said:

“It is the will of God, Arthur.”

Arthur stared back at his father with anguish in his face.

“The will of God,” he repeated in a strange voice. “What does that mean?”

At that moment Armstrong rushed in.

“They’re pulling out two pumps at the Amalgamated. They’ll be on their way over presently. A new turbine pump is coming from Horton’s, Mr. Probert says no trouble is too great.”

“Thank you, Mr. Armstrong,” Barras said mechanically.

There was a strained silence until old Saul Pickings limped in with three large cups of hot cocoa. He was over seventy was Saul, and though he had a wooden leg he could get along very fast; he limped about doing surface jobs and was good at cocoa. Arthur and Armstrong each took a cup; Barras refused. But Arthur and Armstrong pressed Barras to drink the cocoa, saying that it would do him good, Armstrong adding that it was impossible to work on an empty stomach. But Barras still refused; he seemed a little exalted.

Saul Pickings said:

“Young Dr. Lewis wants to know if you still want him. If he’s to wait I’ll take him in this cup of cocoa.” Young Dr. Lewis had already had four cups of cocoa, his heroism was slightly diluted now. And he had been obliged to ask, politely, for the lavatory.

Barras looked at Armstrong.

“It would be a good thing if the doctors of the town could manage for one of their number always to be on duty here for the next few days. Let them take turns.”

“That’s a splendid idea, Mr. Barras,” Armstrong exclaimed. He hurried out to use the telephone again.

“Father,” Arthur said in a kind of desperation, “how did this happen? I’ve got to know.”

“Not now,” Barras answered. “Not now.”

Arthur turned away and pressed his brow against the cold, feathered window-pane. For the moment his father’s tone had silenced him.

Then Firemaster Ebenezer Camhow puffed in. He had changed into his uniform, which carried a pleasant amount of bright red braid and eight important brass buttons kept beautifully shined by Mrs. Camhow. The firemaster was short, round and bald-headed, he was like an orb. He was fond of uniforms, had started early with a pill-box cap in the boys’ brigade, was now both firemaster and bandmaster of Sleescale. He played four musical instruments, including the triangle, and won prizes regularly for his sweet peas at the county show. In the last five years he had extinguished one small fire at a disused brewery.

“I’m at your service, Mr. Barras,” he declared. “I’ve got my men outside. Outside in the yard. They’re there in a row. Every one has a first-aid certificate. You’ve only got to command me, sir.”

Barras thanked the firemaster, Saul Pickings gave the firemaster the cup of cocoa that was left over, then the firemaster went out. As he went into the yard the firemaster looked so official and important that two reporters who had just arrived from Tynecastle took his portrait, which appeared next morning in the Tynecastle Argus. The firemaster cut it out.

Offers of assistance kept pouring in, telegrams, telephone calls, Mr. Probert of the Horton Iron Co. came over in person, three further relays of rescue men came in from Amalgamated Collieries.

Before twelve o’clock Barras and Arthur went out to inspect the erection work at Old Scupperhole shaft. The shaft lay in the wretched piece of waste land known as the Snook, all hummocks and subsidences, covered with snow and swept by a bitter wind. Troubled land was what they called it. In spite of the fire in the pit yard nearly everybody had left the yard and stood gathered on the Snook. They stood well back from the riggers who were raising headgear, working fast and hard. As Barras and Arthur approached the crowd parted silently, but one group of men did not give way. It was then that Arthur saw David.

David stood at the head of the group of men which did not give way. Jack Reedy, Cha Leeming and old Tom Ogle were also in the group. David waited until Barras came up to him. His skin seemed drawn upon his cheek-bones with cold and the hidden tension of his mind. His eyes met the eyes of Barras. Under that accusation Barras dropped his gaze. Then David spoke.

“These men want to know something?”

“Well?”

“They want to know that everything will be done to rescue the men underground.”

“It is being done.” A pause. Barras raised his eyes. “Is that all?”

“Yes,” David said slowly. “For the meantime.”

It was here that old Tom Ogle thrust himself violently forward.

“What’s all this talking?” he shouted at Barras. He was a little out his mind. He had already tried spectacularly to jump down the Scupperhole shaft. “Why don’t ye save them? All this rigging does nothing. My son’s down there, my son Bob Ogle. Why don’t you send inbye and fetch him out?”

“We’re doing what we can, my man,” Barras said, very dignified and calm.

“I’m not yer man,” Tom Ogle snarled and raising his fist he hit Barras full in the face.

Arthur shivered. Charley Gowlan and some others pulled Tom Ogle away, struggling, shouting. Barras stood upright. He had not defended himself, he had received the blow in a kind of spiritual exaltation as though, deep down in the centre of his being, the blow satisfied him. He proceeded calmly to the shaft, ordered another fire to be lit, remained supervising the work of erection.

He remained at the pit all that day. He remained until Old Scupperhole shaft had been fitted with headgear, steam winding engine and fan, until the shaft was cleared of black damp. He remained until relays of men were started in to remove the stowing which marked the road into the waste. He remained until both main shafts of No. 17 had been fitted with new pumps, the one sending out two hundred and fifty gallons per minute from the main winding, the other, a turbine, four hundred and fifty gallons per minute in the upcast. Then, alone, he walked back to the Law.

He did not feel tired nor particularly hungry, he swung between the torpor of his body and that curious exaltation of his mind. He was impersonal; what he was doing was illusory. He was like a man sentenced to death who receives the verdict calmly. He did not quite understand. His belief in his own innocence remained unassailable.

Aunt Carrie had seen to it that oxtail soup was ready for him — Aunt Carrie knew that when Richard had a “hard day,” he liked oxtail soup better than anything. He ate the soup, a wing of chicken, and a slice of his favourite blue cheddar cheese. But he ate very sparingly and he drank only water. Of Aunt Carrie, who hung in a fluttering servitude in the background, he took no notice whatever; he did not see Aunt Carrie.

At the table Hilda sat opposite, she kept her eyes fixed upon him with a sort of desperate intensity. At last, as though she could bear it no longer, she said:

“Let me help, father. Let me do something. I beg of you to let me do something.” In the face of this emergency Hilda’s lack of opportunity maddened her.

He raised his heavy eyes to hers, observing her for the first time. He answered:

“What is there to do? Everything is being done. There is nothing for a woman to do.”

He left her then. He climbed the stairs, went in to his wife. To her, as to Arthur, he said:

“It is the will of God.” Then, inscrutable and stem, he lay down fully dressed upon his bed.

But in four hours he was back at the pit and immediately proceeded to Old Scupperhole shaft. He knew that the real chance of penetrating to the Paradise lay through the Scupperhole. He went down the shaft.

They were working in relays down the Scupperhole, working so fast they were clearing the stowing from the main road at the rate of six feet an hour. There was more stowing than they had thought. But the relays launched themselves in waves, they battered into the stowing, there was something frantic and abandoned in their assault. It was more than human this progress through the stowing, one relay slipped in as another staggered out.

“This road runs due west,” Jennings said to Barras. “It ought to take us pretty near the mark.”

“Yes,” said Barras.

“We ought to be near the end of the stowing,” Jennings said.

“Yes,” said Barras.

In twenty-four hours the relays had cleared one hundred and forty-four feet of stowing from the old main road. They broke though into clear road, into an open section of the old waste. A loud cheer rang out, a cheer which ascended the shaft and thrilled into the ears of those who waited on the surface.

But there was no second cheer. Immediately beyond the stowing the main road ran into a dip or trough which was full of water and impassable.

Dirty, covered with coal dust, wearing no collar and tie, an old silk muffler round his swollen neck, Jennings stared at Barras.

“Oh, my good God,” he said hopelessly, “if only we’d had a plan we’d have known this before.”

Barras remained unmoved.

“A plan would not have removed the trough. We expect difficulties. We must blast a new road above the trough.” There was something so sternly inflexible in the words that even Jennings was impressed.

“My God,” he said, exhausted almost to the edge of tears, “that’s the spirit. Come on then and we’ll blast your blasted roof.”

They began to blast the roof, to blast down the iron-hard whinstone into the water so that the trough might be filled and a road established above water level. A compressor was erected to supply the drills; the finest diamond drill bores were used. The work was killing. It proceeded in darkness, dust, sweat and the fume of high explosive. It proceeded in a sort of insane frenzy. Only Barras remained calm. Calm and impenetrable. He was there. He was the motive, the directing force. For a full eighteen further hours’ he did not leave the Scupperhole.

Fresh back from six hours’ rest, Jennings pleaded with him:

“Take some sleep, for God’s sake, Mr. Barras, you’re fair killing yourself.”

Mr. Probert, Armstrong and several of the senior officials from the Department all pleaded with him: he had done so much, it would take at least five days to blast above the trough, let him spare himself until then. Even Arthur pleaded with him:

“Take some sleep… please… father…”

But Barras snatched only an odd half-hour in his office chair; he did not go home again until the evening of the fourth day. Once more he walked home. It was still bitter cold and the snow still lay upon the ground, freshly fallen snow. How white was the snow! He walked thoughtfully up Cowpen Street… yet he did not think. Since the accident he had refused to think, subconsciously his mind had detached itself, developed this powerful attack upon the pit, fixed itself inflexibly upon the work of rescue. His icy detachment persisted and sustained him. Strong currents were working deep beneath the crust of outer coldness. He did not feel these currents. But the currents were working there.

About him the streets were deserted, every door closed, not a single child at play. Many of the shops were shuttered. A still agony lay upon the Terraces, the stillness of despair. From opposite ends of Alma Terrace two women approached. They were friends. They passed each other with averted faces. Not a word. Silence: even their footsteps silenced by the snow. Within the houses the same silence. In the houses of the entombed men the breakfast things were laid out upon the table in preparation for their return. It was the tradition. Even at night the blinds remained undrawn. In No. 23 Inkerman Martha was making a fresh pot pie: Robert and Hughie both liked a fresh pot pie. Sammy and David sat in silence, not watching her. They had both come back from Scupperhole shaft; they had both been helping there; David had not been near the school for four full days. He had forgotten about school, forgotten about his examination, forgotten about Jenny. He sat in silence, his head buried in his hands thinking of his father, thinking his own bitter thoughts.

After the heat and clamour of the Scupperhole this cold seemed to strike at Barras. As he went on, a great sigh broke from his chest. He was not conscious of that sigh. He was conscious of nothing. He entered the Law. An enormous correspondence awaited him, letters of praise, sympathy, condolence, a telegram from Stapleton, the member for Sleescale, another from Lord Kell, owner of the Neptune royalties, another from the Lord Mayor, Tynecastle—Your heroic endeavours on behalf of the entombed men evokes our highest admiration we pray God success attend your further efforts. And yet another, a Royal Message, pregnant with gracious condolence. He studied them carefully. Curious! He studied a letter from the wife of a rubber-tubing manufacturer in Leeds offering to supply free—underlined — five hundred yards or more—underlined — of her husband’s quarter-inch tubing so that hot soup might be conveyed to the buried miners. Curious! He did not smile.

He returned to the pit early next morning. They had lowered the water level in the main shaft sufficient to allow divers to descend. The divers had to contend with a maximum head of eighteen feet of water in the levels. In spite of this they fought their way along Globe and Paradise levels as far as the fall. They made an arduous, exhaustive search. No one knew better than Barras how useless this search would be. All that the divers found was seventy-two drowned bodies.

The divers came back. They reported the absence of any living soul. They reported that at least another month would be required to dewater the levels completely. Then they started to bring out the bodies: the drowned men, roped together, dangling out of the mine into the brightness of the day they did not see.

Everything now concentrated on the approach by Scupperhole: it was fully realised that men unaccounted for might be imprisoned in the waste. Though it was now ten days since the date of the disaster these men might still be alive. In a fresh frenzy of endeavour, efforts above the trough were redoubled. The men spurted, strained every nerve. Six days after blasting was begun the last charge was fired, they broke through and regained the old main roadway beyond the trough. Exhausted but jubilant the rescuers pressed forward. They were met, sixty paces due west, by a complete fall of whinstone roof. They drew up hopelessly.

“Oh, my God,” Jennings moaned. “There might be a half mile of this. We’ll never reach them, never. This is the end at last.” Utterly spent, he leaned against the whinstone rock and buried his face in his arm.

“We must go on,” Barras said with sudden loudness, “we must go on.”

TWENTY-FOUR

Harry Brace was the first to die. Harry’s heart was weak; he was not a young man, and his immersion in the Flats had been severe, he died from sheer exhaustion. No one knew how or when he died until Ned Softley knocked his hand against Harry’s death-cold face and cried out that Harry was gone. Actually that was towards the end of the third night, though, of course, it was always night with them now, for the lamps had burned out and all the pit candles were used except one that Robert had kept and was saving for emergency. The darkness was not so bad, it clothed them, linked them in comradeship, hid them and was kind.

There were nine of them altogether: Robert, Hughie, Slogger, Pat Reedy, Jesus Wept, Swee Messer, Ned Softley, Harry Brace and two other men named Bennett and Seth Calder. The first day they had spent jowling, chiefly in jowling… ta-ta… ta-ta… ta-ta-ta-ta-tap… on and on… ta-ta… ta-ta… ta-ta-ta-ta-tap… like a hard tattoo beat out upon a tribal drum. Jowling was good; it signified their position in this unfathomable darkness; dozens of men had been rescued by jowling their rescuers towards them. Ta-ta… ta-ta… ta-ta-ta-ta-tap… they took turns upon the stone. But towards the second day Slogger shouted suddenly:

“Stop! For Christ’s sake, stop, I can’t stand that bloody hammering any longer.”

Ned Softley, whose turn it was, stopped at once. In fact everybody seemed glad when the jowling stopped. It stopped for about an hour, then they all agreed, and Slogger did too, that the jowling must go on. They must be very near them now, the men coming in through the Scupperhole. Oh, they must be hellofa near now, Swee Messer said. So Ned resumed: …ta-ta… ta-ta… ta-ta-ta-ta-tap.

It was shortly after this that Wept held his first service. Jesus Wept had been upon his knees a great deal, praying by himself, away from the others, praying with a passionate intensity like Jesus Himself in the Garden of Gethsemane. Wept was a silent earnest little man, he did not impose himself upon others except through the silent medium of his tracts and sandwich boards. At Whitley Bay or the Sleescale football matches Wept would be silent amongst the noisy crowds, just standing silent, or walking slow and silent, advertising the tears of Jesus, back and front. He was the quietest publicity man Jesus ever had and not by any means the worst. So it wasn’t Wept’s nature to force others to a service. But oddly enough, Robert, who never went to chapel, suggested they ought to have a service.

Though Wept had not mentioned the service he had wanted the service. He had wanted it badly and he took it gladly, gladly. He began with a prayer. It was a very good prayer with nothing about rending of garments or the scarlet woman in it. It was full of good faith and bad grammar and it ended quietly—”… so get us out of here, dear God, for Jesus’ sake, Amen.” Then Wept gave a short address. He took the text simply: John viii. 12, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.

He simply talked to them, he spoke quite ordinarily.

Then they sang the hymn: Come, Great Deliverer, Come.

An echoing silence fell. None of them seemed to want to break that silence. They all sat very still, Slogger in particular sat gritting his teeth, but Slogger was the one who gave way.

“O God,” Slogger groaned, “oh, my God Christ so help me God.” And Slogger began to cry. A hard case was Slogger, but with streaks of softness in him. He sat now with his head in his hands, shaking with dry sobs, and his racking grief was horrible to hear. They were all a little unstrung by this time, each found it difficult to keep his manhood on an empty belly. They had no food and no water but a tiny puddle that bled down slowly from the roof above. It was strange to have come away from that terrific flood of water and to have so little now, just enough for each, a mouthful of brackish coaly fluid.

Wept went over to Slogger and began to comfort him. A great joy was in Wept that he should have saved the Slogger and for a little while the joy was in Slogger too.

Then some of them felt hungry. Pat Reedy, being the youngest, felt the want of food the most. Robert had three cough sweets in his pocket. He slipped one to Pat and then another. How long was it between each sweet? …five minutes or five days? God alone knew! After the second Pat whispered:

“That was good, that was, mester.”

Robert smiled. He made to give Pat the third sweet, but the curious understanding that it was the last held him back. I’ll keep it for him, he thought.

This same desire to keep something in reserve made Robert withhold the last pit candle, though at first the darkness was not kind but difficult, terribly difficult to bear after the yellow glow of the candle set like a tiny camp fire in their midst.

The darkness made time much harder to compute. Only Robert amongst them had a watch and it had stopped when he went into the water of the Swelly. Hughie especially was worrying about time. Hughie was always a silent one, but now more so than ever; since they had come upon the fall of rock Hughie had hardly said one word. He sat beside his father, his brow knitted, brooding. His whole body was tense with this secret brooding. At last he said in a low voice:

“Dad! How long have we been in?”

Robert said:

“I cannot tell ye, Hughie.”

“But, dad, how long do ye think?”

“Two days, maybe, or maybe three.”

“What day is this, then, dad?”

“I don’t know, man, Hughie… it’s Wednesday likely.”

“Wednesday…” Hughie sighed, settled back stiffly against the wall. If it was only Wednesday that wasn’t quite so bad, that left three whole days to go, three days until the match. He must get out of this pit by Saturday, he must, he must… in a sudden torment of anxiety Hughie picked up the stone and began to jowl… ta-ta… ta-ta… a-ta-ta-ta-tap!

When Hughie stopped jowling there was a long silence. It was then that Ned Softley put his hand out to move himself and touched Harry Brace’s face. At first he thought Harry was asleep; he tried again gingerly and his fingers went right into Harry’s cold, dead, open mouth.

Robert lit the candle. Yes, Harry Brace was gone. Poor Harry, he’d never given his missus the truss for her rupture he’d always promised her. Robert and Slogger lifted Harry. He lifted very heavy. Or were they just weak? They carried him down the roadway about thirty yards. They placed him upon his back. Robert crossed Harry’s hands on his pit singlet and shut Harry’s eyes. Wept was asleep, sleeping for the first time in three days, snoring deeply. Robert did not waken him. He recited the Lord’s Prayer over Harry, then Slogger and he came back.

“We’ll burn another inch of candle, lads,” Robert said. “Just to keep our spirits up.”

Pat Reedy was crying quietly again; he had met with death for the second time and still he did not like it much.

“Hover a bit, man,” Robert said. He put his arm round Pat’s shaking shoulders. “It’s time I was giving you something to do. Will you have a turn jowling?”

Pat shook his head.

“I want to write to my mam,” he said, letting himself go altogether.

“Very well,” Robert said gravely. “You shall write to your mam. I have a pencil. Who has some paper?”

Ned Softley had a notebook for checking tubs. He passed it to Robert. Robert tore out a narrow double sheet, slapped it on the back of the notebook, passed it over with the pencil to Pat.

Pat took the paper and the notebook and the pencil with a gulp of gratitude. He cheered up. He began straightway and wrote in big round letters: My dear mam… Then he stopped, head on one side, reading what he had written. My dear mam… he stopped again. My dear mam… he read it again and stopped. Then he began to cry in earnest. He cried bitterly. He was only fifteen.

When the candle had burned down its inch he was a little easier. Robert took back the notebook and the pencil and the narrow double sheet of paper and slipped them in his pocket. He put out the candle. He placed his left arm round Pat Reedy as though protecting him. In that position Pat Reedy fell asleep.

Robert drowsed off himself. Time passed. He awoke into the silent, the unceasing darkness and had a long bout of coughing, his silent, intimate, familiar cough. His wet clothes had dried on him and that was not good for him. I’ll have another attack for sure when we get out, he thought. Then with a vague coldness about his heart he thought, if we get out. More time passed. Surely they must be near them now, the men coming in, oh, surely they must be near them now!

“Dad,” Hughie again. “What day is it, dad?”

“I cannot say, Hughie, lad.” Robert tried to speak calmly, reasonably.

“But, dad… what day is it?”

“I cannot say, Hughie, lad.” Robert again tried to speak calmly, reasonably, but his voice remained flat and weary.

“But, dad… what day is it? It’s the match, dad… the United, dad… the United… I’ve got to be out by Saturday. I’ve got to… I’ve got to, dad.” Hysteria shrilled into the silent Hughie’s voice. He rocked himself to and fro in the darkness. He must be out by Saturday, he must, he must be out by Saturday! It was then Sunday evening.

Slogger woke up. Everybody seemed to be sleeping a bit now; there must be traces of black damp in the air, or was it simply weakness? Slogger said:

“Oh, my God, what a dream I was having. If my poor old missus only knew. Oh, my God, if only I had a pint of beer. I’m not hungry no more, it’s just the beer I want. O God, what am I sayin’, diddent I promise to give up the drink if Ye got us out of here, O God, get us out of here, God, for God’s sake.” His voice rose to a shout.

Ned Softley shouted too. Several of the others joined in. “Get us out! Get us out!” Even Wept was losing himself now. He called out suddenly in a high voice:

“How long, O Lord, until Thou deliverest us?” It was like the roaring of caged beasts.

Bennett died next and Seth Calder six hours after him. They were marrows who had worked with each other for nearly fourteen years. For fourteen years they had worked, got drunk, played pot-stour bowls together. But it didn’t seem in the least appropriate to them that they should die together. Bennett was the quieter of the two, Seth Calder, when he felt himself sinking, kept moaning:

“I don’t want to die. I’m a young man yet. I’ve got a young wife. I don’t want to die.” But for all that he did die.

Everyone was too weak now to move the bodies of Benbett and Seth Calder, and besides Robert had only two matches left in his pocket with his stump of candle. He gave the last cough sweet to Pat Reedy. Surely to God it wouldn’t be long now before they broke through from the Scupperhole. Surely to God! Oh, let them come in quick, dear God, or it won’t be no use!

They just lay there now, too weak to move themselves. They were too weak even to move up to the place they used. They just lay. Lying there Robert had an idea. He called out each name three times. If no answer came back after the third time he knew it was finished.

Ned Softley stopped answering next. He must have died as quietly as Harry Brace. Ned always had the name for being weak-witted, but he died well. He never said a whimper. Then Swee Messer went, a lewd fellow was Swee, but he’d finished with his funny stories now for good.

It was after Swee died that Wept went mad. Like the rest of them he had been quiet for a long time. But now he got up on his feet. He stood there in the darkness, they could feel his madness as he stood there in the darkness. He said:

“I see them! I see the seven angels which stood before God! I hear their trumpets. It is revealed to me.”

At first they tried to take no notice, but Wept went on:

“I hear them sound their trumpets. The first angel sounds and then follows hail mingled with blood.”

Slogger said:

“Oh, for God’s sake, man, shut up.”

Wept continued louder:

“Then the second angel sounds and as it were a great mountain burning with fire is cast into the sea and the third part of the sea becomes blood. Not water, my brethren, but blood. It is not water that has brought us here, but blood.”

Slogger sat up. He said:

“Wept, for the love of God, I can’t stand no more of that.”

Wept went on in that rapt voice:

“The third angel sounds and the star Wormwood falls. Wormwood and gall, my brethren, is our lot upon earth, we are crushed by the greed of man. And the fourth angel sounds and the fifth and another star falls into the bottomless pit and there arises a smoke out of the pit. We are in the pit, my brethren, and the air is darkened by reason of the smoke in the pit and the seal of God is upon our foreheads, and punishment will come upon those in high places who brought us here. I see it, my brethren. To me is given the gift of prophecy. I am a prophet in the Paradise pit.”

Then Robert knew that Wept was mad. He said:

“Sit down, man, do.” He coaxed Wept. “Sit down, now, do. It cannot be long till they reach us now. Sit down and wait quiet like. It isn’t long now.”

Wept went on:

“And the sixth angel sounds and a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God and the four angels loosed which are prepared to slay the third part of men by smoke and by brimstone and the rest of men which are not killed by these plagues yet repent not of the works of their hands, nor repent they of their murders nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornications, nor of their thefts.”

Wept’s voice rose gradually to a shout that echoed, reverberating, and seemed to rock the very roof.

Slogger groaned:

“I cannot stand no more of this.” He crawled forward to Wept, feeling with his hands.

Wept went on in a terrible voice:

“And now the seventh angel sounds…”

But before the seventh angel sounded, Slogger caught Wept by the ankle and pulled the feet from him. Wept collapsed, moaning.

“But the seventh angel sounds. I see it. I see the millennium brought by the madness and the greed of man. Money, money, money… we are crushed and killed for it. I will prophesy…. From high places they fall… not water, but blood… the blood of the Lamb… come, mother, pass the hymn-books and we’ll sing love is poke my hand, mother, hold me tight for it is no sin come great Deliverer come….”

His voice trailed off, he lay groaning for a few minutes, then he was silent. He had exhausted himself with prophesy. He cried a little. For a minute Jesus Wept wept. Then Jesus Wept died.

Time passed. Robert gave Pat Reedy a drink. Pat was only half conscious, he retched back the coaly water over Robert’s cupped hands.

“O God, let them come quick,” Slogger said in a kind of delirium, “or it won’t be no use them comin’ at all.” He crawled over to the fall and began to jowl. But he was too weak to jowl now, the stone fell from his slack fingers.

Time passed. Slogger put his hand to his throat and croaked:

“God, Robert, mon, I’d give anything for a pint.” Then he fell over on his side and did not move again.

Pat Reedy died next. He lay relaxed in Robert’s arms with his head resting on Robert’s flat chest like an infant upon his mother’s breast. He rambled a little towards the end. At the last he said:

“Come on, mam, an’ make us truly thankful.”

After that Robert called every man in turn. Then he said:

“It’s only you and me, Hughie, lad.”

Hughie said mechanically:

“What day is it, dad?” He said it again, then he said: “I wish I had a drink, dad, but I cannot be bothered.”

Robert crawled over and got Hughie a drink.

Hughie thanked him.

“It’s all over now, dad,” he said. He was still thinking about the match. “They’ll never give me another chance now.”

Robert said:

“No, Hughie.”

Hughie said:

“I would have liked to have played, dad.”

Robert said:

“I know, Hughie.”

Robert had given up hope. He had listened and listened and heard never a sound of the men coming in. They must have met something, water, or a terrible fall of roof. He was beyond hope and beyond bitterness.

Gently he put Pat Reedy’s body down and put his arm round Hughie’s shoulder. He had never devoted himself enough to Hughie, perhaps. Hughie was too like himself, too silent and contained. He had not loved Hughie enough.

He tried to talk to Hughie but it was difficult, the words came out of his mouth all wrong. He coughed and the cough tasted salt and ran out of his mouth like the wrong words.

Time passed. A last faint sigh passed over Hughie’s body. Hughie died thinking about the match he would never play, he died really of a broken heart.

Time passed. Robert kissed Hughie on the brow, tried to fold Hughie’s dead hands like he had done Harry’s hands. He was too weak almost to do it. He was too weak even to cough. He said the Lord’s Prayer silently. The words of the Lord’s Prayer right, though the cough did not come right.

Robert’s thoughts wandered: he felt it strange that he should be the last to die, that he who was consumptive should last out so many healthy men. Well, he had always said his cough would never kill him… it would not kill him now. He lost the sense of time and place, was back on the Wansbeck fishing with David, his little boy David… showing David how to cast… watching David land his first small speckled trout… eh, Davey boy, isn’t it a beauty!

Time passed. Robert stirred, opened his eyes. He lit the last small piece of candle. He thought, a pity not to use it. Since he had the choice he felt he would rather not die in the dark.

The candle cast a yellow glow upon the silent spectral forms of the dead around him. He knew that he too would soon be dead. He had no fear, no anything… but he did think at last that he would like to write to David… he had always loved David.

He fumbled for the notebook and the pencil and the sheet of paper. He set himself to think painfully, then he wrote:

He thought for a moment without knowing that he thought, then he added on the back:

He folded the paper, put it under his singlet next to his emaciated chest. He sat huddled with his back against the fallen roof, as if thinking. Formless swathes of darkness floated into his brain. He coughed, his intimate kindly cough, the cough that was he. Then his body slid down slowly and sprawled out. He lay upon his back with his arms outstretched as though pleading. His dead eyes were open. He lay there amongst his dead comrades. The candle guttered feebly and went out.