BLISSFUL END OF A COLLIER'S COURTSHIP.
William descended to the pump in the back yard, and had a wash in the half-light of 4 o'clock, and Selina got out of bed and took sly peeps at him through her tears. William, his ablutions over, went out for a dreary stroll, past the Hilly piece, and over Stevenson's hills, and down Jacob's ladder, and Dead Man's lane, and on to the brook-side again. There, on June bridge, he stood and watched the eddies circle around the great stones, and found that negative and bewildered comfort which trouble always finds in running water. Meanwhile Selina had gone back to bed and had there renewed her tears, and was finding some comfort in running water also. And at the moment when William stood upon June bridge, Abraham Gough, in a suit of flannels, was making his way to the day-shift in the Strip-and-at-it. Lest you should find yourself too much disturbed by the phrase, let me explain that the Strip-and-at-it was a coal mine, so named, by its inmates, from the cant phrase of some "doggy" or ganger. "Now, lads, strip and at it."
Poor William regretted his holiday and longed for the hour when work should begin again. He beguiled the heavy hours of the day by the composition of woebegone verses, whereof fortune has preserved a fragment, which I here embalm:
The sun that shines so bright above
Knows naught about my wrongful love;
The birds that sing in Wigmore Lane
Bring nothing to my heart but pain.
It is a very dismal thing
That in my ears the birds do sing,
While my Selina has gone off
To walk with Mr. Abraham Gough.
William's muse was in the right. It is a very dismal thing to the wounded heart, grown egotistic through its pain, that nature should seem out of sympathy with it—that the sun should shine and the birds should sing, just as brightly and as merrily as though Selina were still true and gentle.
William took his humble meal of bread and cheese and his pint or so of beer at a little public-house in the aforesaid lane, and then strolled home again, still very miserable, but a trifle soothed by the verse-making process. He was due at the mine at 6 o clock, and an hour before that time he was upstairs exchanging his Sunday costume for the work-day coaly flannels, when he became conscious of a bustle in the street. Looking through the window, he beheld men running hatless and coatless, and unbonneted, unshawled women scurrying along as fast as their feet could take them. Everybody ran in one direction, and in the crowd he caught a moment's glimpse of Selina and her father. The girl's face was white with some strong excitement, and there was a look of the wildest imaginable fear in her eyes. Both hands were pressed to her heart as she ran. A Black country collier's instinct in a case like this is pretty likely to be true. William threw his window open, and cried to the hurrying crowd:
"Where is it?"
"At the Strip-an'-at-it," some familiar voice called out as the straggling crowd swept by.
"What is it?" he cried again.
"Shaft on fire," cried another voice, in answer; and in a second the street was clear.
William Bowker dashed down stairs and hurled himself along the street.
"Anybody down?" he gasped, as he turned the corner and passed the hindmost figure in the hurrying mass. The woman knew him.
"For God's sake, lend me thy hand Willyyum," she gasped in answer. "My Joe's in."
He caught the shrivelled little figure in his great arms as though the old woman had been a baby, and dashed on again. Ay, the tale was true! There belched and volleyed the rolling smoke! There were hundreds upon hundreds of people already crowded on the pit mound and about the shaft, and from every quarter men and women came streaming in, white-faced and breathless. William set his withered burden down, and pushed through to the edge of the shaft. There was water in the up-cast, and the engines were at work full power. Up came the enormous bucket and splashed its 200 or 300 gallons down the burning shaft, and dropped like a stone down the up-cast, and after a long, long pause came trembling and laboring up again, and vomited its freight again and dropped like a stone for more.
"Yo' might just as well stand in a ring an' spit at it," said Bowker, with his face all pale and his eyes on fire. "Get the stinktors up and let a man or two go down."
"Will yo' mak' one, Bill Bowker ?" said a brawny, coal-smeared man beside him.
"Yis, I wull," was the answer, given in a bulldog's growl.
"I'll mak' another," said the man.
"An' me," "An' me," "An' me," cried a dozen more.
"Rig the bowk, somebody," said the love-lorn verse-maker, taking at once and as by right the place he was born for. "Bill—Joe—Abel—Darkey—come wi' me."
The crowd divided and the five made for the offices, and found there in a row a number of barrel-shaped machines of metal, each having a small hose and a pumping apparatus attached to it. They were a new boon from the generous hand of science—a French contrivance, as the name affixed to each set forth—"L'Extineteur." Each of the men seized one of these and bore it to the edge of the shaft, the crowd once more making way. A bucket, technically called "a bowk," some two feet deep and eighteen inches wide, was affixed to the wire rope which swung above the burning shaft. The self-appointed leader asked for flannel clothing. A dozen garments were flung to him at once. He wrapped himself up like a mummy and bound a cotton handkerchief over his face. Then with the machine strapped securely across his shoulder, he stepped one foot in the bucket and laid a hand upon the rope. A man ran forward with a slender chain, which he passed rapidly round the volunteer's waist, and fixed to the rope which supported the bowk. Another thrust an end of rope into his hand and stood by to reeve out the rest as he descended. Then came the word, "Short, steady." The engine panted, the rope tightened, the clumsy figure, with the machine bound about it, swung into the smoke, and in a death-light stillness, with here and there a smothered gasp, the man went down. His comrade at the edge dribbled the rope through his coal-blackened fingers as delicately as though it had been a silken thread. Then came a sudden tug at it, and the word was flashed to the engine-room, and the creak of the wheel ceased and the gliding wire rope was still. Then, for a space of nigh a minute, not a sound was heard, but every eye was on the rope, and every cheek was pallid with suspense, and every heart was with the hero in the fiery depths below.
Then came another warning tug at the rope, and again the word flashed to the engine-room. The wheel spun round, the rope glided, quivered, stopped, the figure swung up through the smoke again, was seized, lowered, landed. When his comrades laid hands upon him, the flannel garments fell from him in huge blackened flakes, so near to the flames had he been. He cast these garments from him, and they fell, half under, at his feet. Then he drew off the handkerchief which bound his face, and, at the godlike, heroic pallor of his countenance, and the set lips and gleaming eyes, women whispered pantingly, "God bless him!" and the breath of those bold fellows was drawn hard. Then he reeled, and a pair of arms like a bear's were round him in a second. In two minutes more he was outside the crowd, and a bottle of whisky, which came from nobody knew where, was at his lips as he lay upon the ground, and two or three women, ran for water. And while all this was doing, another man, as good as he, was swinging downward in the blinding smoke. So fierce a leap the flames made at this hero, that they caught him fairly for a moment in their arms, and when he was brought to the surface he hung limp and senseless, with great patches of smoldering fire upon his garments, and his hands and face cracked and blackened. But the next man was ready, and when he, in turn, came to the light, he had said good-bye to the light for ever in this world. Not this, nor anything that fear could urge, could stay the rest. There were five-and-thirty men and boys below, and they would have them up or die. With that godlike pallor on their lips and cheeks, with those wide eyes that looked death in the face, and knew him, and defied him—down they went! I saw these things, who tell the story. Man after man defied that fiery hell, and faced its lurid, smoky darkness undismayed, until, at last, their valor won the day.
The love-born William had but little room in his heart for superfluous sentiment as he laid his hand upon the wire rope and set his foot in the bowk again. Yet just a hope was there—that Selina should not grieve too greatly if this second venture failed and he should meet his death. He was not, as a rule, devotionally inclined, but he whispered inwardly, "God be good to her." And there at that second he saw her face before him—so set and fixed that in its agony of fear and prayer it looked like marble. The rope grew taut, he passed the handkerchief about his face again, and with the memory of her eyes upon him, dropped out of sight. The man at the side of the shaft paid out the slender line again and old hands watched it closely. Yard after yard ran out. The great coil at his feet snaked itself, ring by ring, through his coaly fingers.. Still no warning message came from below. The engine stopped at last and they knew that the foot of the shaft was reached. Had the explorer fainted by the way? He might, for all they knew above, be roasting down below that minute. Even then his soul, newly released, might be above them.
Through the dead silence of the crowd the word flashed to the engine-room. The wheel went round and the wire rope glided and quivered up again over it. There was not a man or woman there who did not augur the same thing from the tenser quiver of the rope, and when, at last, through the thinner coils of smoke about the top of the shaft, the rescuer's figure swung with the first of the rescued in his arms, there was heard the sound of infinite pathos—a sigh of relief from 20,000 breasts—and dead silence fell again.
"Alive?" asked one, laying a hand on Bowker's arm. Bill nodded and pushed him by, and made his way toward that marble face, nursing his burden still.
"Seliner," he said quietly, "here's your sweetheart."
"No, no, no, Bill," she answered. "There's only one man i' the world for me, Bill, if ever he forgives me an' my wicked ways."
Cheer and cheer of triumph rang in their ears. The women fought for Bill Bowker, and kissed him and cried over him. Men shook hands with him and with each other. Strangers mingled their tears. The steel rope was gliding up and down at a rare rate now, and the half-suffocated prisoners of the fire were being carried up in hatches. Selina and her lover stood side by side and watched the last skipful to the surface.
"That's the lot," yelled one coal-smeared giant as the skip swung up. Out broke the cheers again, peal on peal. William stood silent, with the tears in those brave eyes. The penitent stole a hand in his.
"Oh, Bill," she whispered, "you didn't think I wanted him?"
"What else did you think I fetched him out for?" queried William, a smile of comedy gleaming through the manly moisture of his eyes.
She dropped her head upon his breast, and put both arms around him, and neither she nor he thought of the crowd in that blissful moment when Mr. Bowker's courtship ended, and soul was assured of soul.
