Chapter Ten.
My Patients at the Mine.
My residence in Sheffield made me pretty well acquainted with the Yorkshire character, bluff, rough, frank, and hospitable. The first impressions of Yorkshire are perhaps not pleasant, but you soon find that beneath the rough crust there is a great deal that is very warm-hearted and kind.
Upon more than one occasion some terrible accident at one of the coal pits of the South Yorkshire collieries took me out of the town to supply the extra help needed at such a time, and more than once I have been present at terribly heart-rending sights.
I know nothing more shocking, unless it be a wreck, than one of those coal pit accidents, where a shift of men have gone down in robust health to their work, and then there has been a noise like thunder, the news has run like lightning, and the first cry is whose man or whose boy was down.
It was during one of those journeys when I had been summoned to help, that, strolling towards a neighbouring pit for the sake of change and rest after a couple of days’ very hard toil amongst the injured by fire and the falling of the mine roof, I came upon the manager of the neighbouring mine.
He nodded to me in a familiar way.
“Nice morning,” he said.
“Yes, but cold,” I replied.
“Yes, it is cold. How are you going on yonder?”
“I don’t think there’ll be any more deaths,” I said. “The poor fellows are getting on now.”
“Thank God!” he said with a genuine reverence in his tone of voice, “and keep such an accident far from my pit.”
“Amen to that,” I replied. “Is this your pit, then?”
“I call it mine,” he said laughing, “but it’s a company’s. I’m manager.”
“Indeed,” I said, “then perhaps you can gratify my wish to go down.”
“Go down?” he said laughing, “Yes, if you’ll come and stay with us a night or two.”
I hesitated, but he pressed me.
“I should like you to come, doctor. A word or two from you would go well home to my pit-lads who are terribly careless. You being a doctor and a scientific man would be believed.”
“How did you know I was a doctor?” I asked.
“How did I know thou wast a doctor? Why, didn’t I come over to Stannicliffe pit, and see you at work with the poor lads. Say you’ll come doctor, you’ll do your work better after a change, and I’ll send word over that you are here if you’re wanted.”
“On those conditions I’ll come then,” I said. “Is that your house?”
“Yes, that’s my house under the hillside there, facing the south, where the lights are; you saw it as you came up. Pretty? Well, as pretty as we can make it. Looks like an oasis in a black desert; and hard work it is to keep it decent with so many pits about, each belching out its clouds of villainous smoke black as the coal which makes it; for you see we have not only the fires for the pumping and cage engine, but those at the bottom of the ventilating shafts, and the soot they send floating out into the air is something startling, without counting the sulphurous vapours which ruin vegetation.
“Of course, if you like to go down you can go. I’ll go with you. Oh yes: I’ve often been down. I should think I have! Hundreds of times. Why, I’ve handled the pick myself in the two-foot seam as an ordinary pitman, though I’m manager now. I don’t see any cause to be ashamed of it. And, after all, it’s nothing new here in Yorkshire. I could point out a score of men who have been at work in the factories, now holding great works of their own.
“Accidents? Well, yes; we do have accidents, in spite of all precautions and inspection, but not so bad as at Stannicliffe. I’ll tell you of one by and by. Now you, coming down to see a coal pit, look upon it as a dangerous place. Without being cowardly, you’ll shudder when we go down the great black shaft a couple of hundred yards, and you’ll then walk as if you were going through a powder-magazine. But you know what you used to write in your copy-book at school, ‘Familiarity breeds contempt.’ Truer words were never written, and I see it proved every week. It’s dangerous work going up and down our pit, and yet the men will laugh, and talk, and do things that will almost make your blood run cold. It is like throwing a spark amongst gunpowder to open a lamp in some parts of our mine; but our men, for the sake of a pipe, will ran all risks, even to lighting matches on the walls, and taking naked candles to stick up, that they may see better to work.
“Yes, we’ve had some bad accidents here, but I shall never forget one that happened five-and-twenty years ago. Tell you about it? Good: but it shall be after tea, by the warm fireside, and then if you like to go down the pit in the morning, why, go you shall.
“There, that’s cosy. This is the time I always enjoy—after tea, with the curtains drawn; the wind driving the snow in great pats against the window-panes as it howls down the hillside, and makes the fire roar up the chimney. Not particular over a scuttle of coals here, you see. One of your London friends was down once, and he declared that if he lived here he should amuse himself all day long with poker and shovel.
“And now, about this story of the accident I promised—only to hear this you must learn a little more beside. You needn’t go out of the room, my dear.
“Well, as I told you, it was five-and-twenty years ago, and I was just five-and-twenty years old then—working as regular pitman on the day or night shift. Dirty work, of course, but there was soap in the land even in those days; and when I came up, after a good wash and a change, I could always enjoy a read, such times as I didn’t go to the night-school, where, always having been a sort of reading fellow, I used to help teach the boys, and on Sundays I used to go to the school and help there.
“Of course it was all done in a rough way, for hands that had been busy with a coal-pick all day were not, you will say, much fit for using a pen at night. However, I used to go, and it was there I found out that teaching was a thing that paid you back a hundred per cent, interest, for you could not teach others without teaching yourself.
“But—I may as well own to it—it was the teaching at the Sunday-school I used to look forward to, for it was there I used to see Mary Andrews, the daughter of one of our head pitmen. He was not so very high up, only at the pit village he lived in one of the best houses, and had about double the wages of the ordinary men.
“Consequently, Mary Andrews was a little better dressed and better educated than the general run of girls about there; and there was something about her face that used, in its quiet earnestness, to set me anxiously watching her all the time she was teaching, till I used to wake up of a sudden to the fact that the boys in my class were all at play, when, flushing red all over the face, I used to leave off staring over to the girls’ part of the big school-room, and try to make up for lost time.
“I can’t tell you when it began, but at that time I used somehow to associate Mary Andrews’ pale innocent face with everything I did. Every blow I drove into a coal-seam with my sharp pick used to be industry for Mary’s sake. Of an evening, when I washed off the black and tidied up my hair, it used to be so that she might not be ashamed of me if we met; and even every time I made my head ache with some calculation out of my arithmetic—ten times as difficult because I had no one to help me—I used to strive and try on till I conquered, because it was all for Mary’s sake.
“Not that I dared to have told her so, I thought, but somehow the influence of Mary used to lift me up more and more, till I should no more have thought of going to join the other pitmen in a public-house than of trying to fly.
“It was about this time that I got talking to a young fellow about my age who worked in my shift. John Kelsey his name was, and I used to think it a pity that a fine clever fellow like he was, handsome, stout, and strong, should be so fond of the low habits, dog-fighting and wrestling, so popular amongst our men, who enjoyed nothing better than getting over to Sheffield or Rotherham for what they called a day’s sport, which generally meant unfitness for work during the rest of the week.
“‘Well,’ said John, ‘your ways seem to pay you,’ and he laughed and went away; and I thought no more of it till about a month after, when I found out that I was what people who make use of plain simple language call in love, and I’ll tell you how I found it out.
“I was going along one evening past old Andrews’ house, when the door opened for a moment as if some one was coming out, but, as if I had been seen, it was closed directly. In that short moment, though, I had heard a laugh, and that laugh I was sure was John Kelsey’s.
“I felt on fire for a few moments, as I stood there unable to move, and then as I dragged myself away the feeling that came over me was one of blank misery and despair. I could have leaned my head up against the first wall I came to and cried like a child; but that feeling passed off to be succeeded by one of rage. For, as the blindness dropped from my eyes, I saw clearly that not only did I dearly love Mary Andrews—love her with all a strong man’s first love, such a love as one would feel who had till now made his sole companions of his books—but that I was forestalled, that John Kelsey was evidently a regular visitor there, and, for aught I knew to the contrary, was her acknowledged lover.
“I did not like playing the spy; but, with a faint feeling of hope on me that I might have been mistaken, I walked back past the house, and there was no mistake, John Kelsey’s head was plainly enough to be seen upon the blind, and I went home in despair.
“How I looked forward to the next Sunday, half resolved to boldly tell Mary of my love, and to ask her whether there was any truth in that which I imagined, though I almost felt as if I should not dare.
“Sunday came at last, and somehow I was rather late when I entered the great school-room, one end of which was devoted to the girls, the other to the boys. At the first glance I saw that Mary was in her place; at the second all the blood in my body seemed to rush to my heart, for there, standing talking to the superintendent, was John Kelsey, and the next minute he had a class of the youngest children placed in his charge, and he was hearing them read.
“‘He has done this on account of what I said to him,’ was my first thought, and I felt glad; but directly after I was in misery, for my eyes rested upon Mary Andrews, and that explained all—it was for her sake he had come.
“I don’t know how that afternoon passed, nor anything else, only that as soon as the children were dismissed I saw John Kelsey go up to Mary’s side and walk home with her; and then I walked out up the hillside, wandering here and there amongst the mouths of the old unused pits half full of water, and thinking to myself that I might just as well be down there in one of them, for there was no more hope or pleasure for me in this world.
“Time slipped on, and I could plainly see one thing that troubled me sorely; John was evidently making an outward show of being a hardworking fellow, striving hard for improvement, so as to stand well in old Andrews’ eyes, while I knew for a fact that he was as drunken and dissipated as any young fellow that worked in the pit.
“I could not tell Andrews this, nor I could not tell Mary. If she loved him it would grieve her terribly, and be dishonourable as well, and perhaps he might improve. I can tell him though, I thought, and I made up my mind that I would; and meeting him one night, evidently hot and excited with liquor, I spoke to him about it.
“‘If you truly love that girl, John,’ I said, ‘you’ll give up this sort of thing.’
“He called me a meddling fool, said he had watched me, that he knew I had a hankering after her myself, but she only laughed at me; and one way and another so galled me that we fought. I went home that night braised, sore, and ashamed of my passion; while he went to the Andrews’ and said he had had to thrash me for speaking insultingly about Mary.
“I heard this afterwards, and I don’t know how it was but I wrote to her telling her it was false, and that I loved her too well ever to have acted so.
“When next we met I felt that she must have read my letter and laughed at me. At all events, John Kelsey did, and I had the mortification of seeing that old Andrews evidently favoured his visits.
“John still kept up his attendance at the school, but he was at the far end; and more than once when I looked up it was to find Mary Andrews with her eyes fixed on me. She lowered them though directly, and soon after it seemed to me that she turned them upon John.
“It seems to me that a man never learns till he is well on in life how he should behave towards the woman of; his choice, and how much better it would be if he would go and, in a straightforward, manly fashion, tell her of his feelings. I was like the rest, I could not do it; but allowed six months to pass away over my head.
“I was sitting over my breakfast before starting for work, when I heard a sound, and knew what it meant before there were shrieks in the village, and women running out and making for the pit’s mouth a quarter of a mile away. I tell you I turned sick with horror, for I knew that at least twenty men would be down on the night shift; and though it was close upon their leaving time, they could not have come up yet.
“‘Pit’s fired! pit’s fired!’ I heard people shrieking; not that there was any need, for there wasn’t a soul that didn’t know it, the pit having spoken for itself. And as I hurried out I thought all in a flash like of what a day it would be for some families there, and I seemed to see a long procession of rough coffins going to the churchyard, and to hear the wailings of the widow and the fatherless.
“There was no seeming, though, in the wailings, for the poor frightened women, with their shawls pinned over their heads, were crying and shrieking to one another as they ran on.
“I didn’t lose any time, as you may suppose, in running to the pit’s mouth, but those who lived nearer were there long before me; and by the time I got there I found that the cage had brought up part of the men and three who were insensible, and that it was just going down again.
“It went down directly; and just as it disappeared who should come running up, pale and scared, but Mary Andrews. She ran right up to the knot of men who had come up, and who were talking loudly, in a wild, frightened way, about how the pit had fired—they could not tell how—and she looked from one to the other, and then at the men who were scorched, and then she ran towards the pit’s mouth where I was.
“‘There’s no one belonging to you down, is there?’ I asked her.
“‘Oh yes—yes! my father was down, and John Kelsey.’
“As she said the first words, I felt ready for anything; but as she finished her sentence, a cold chill came over me, and she saw the change, and looked at me in a strange, half-angry way.
“‘Here comes the cage up,’ I said, trying hard to recover myself, and going up to the bank by her side; but when half-a-dozen scorched and blackened men stepped out, and we looked at their disfigured faces, poor Mary gave a low wail of misery, and I head her say, softly, ‘Oh, father! father! father!’
“It went right to my heart to hear her bitter cry, and I caught hold of her hand.
“‘Don’t be down-hearted, Mary,’ I said huskily; ‘there’s hope yet.’
“Her eyes flashed through her tears, as she turned sharply on me; and pressing her hand for a moment, I said, softly, ‘Try and think more kindly of me, Mary.’ And then I turned to the men.
“‘Now, then, who’s going down?’
“‘You can’t go down,’ shouted half-a-dozen voices; ‘the choke got ’most the better of us.’
“‘But there are two men down!’ I cried, savagely. ‘You’re not all cowards, are you?’
“Three men stepped forward, and we got in the cage.
“‘Who knows where Andrews was?’ I cried; and a faint voice from one of the injured men told me. Then I gave the warning, and we were lowered down; it having been understood that at the first signal we made we were to be drawn up sharply.
“The excitement kept me from being frightened; but there was a horrid feeling of oppression in the air as we got lower and lower, and twice over the men with me were for being drawn up.
“‘It steals over you before you know it,’ said one.
“‘It laid me like in a sleep when Rotherby pit fired,’ said another.
“‘Would you leave old Andrews to die?’ I said, and they gave in.
“We reached the bottom, and I found no difficulty in breathing, and, shouting to the men to come on, I ran in the direction where I had been told we should find Andrews; but it was terrible work, for I expected each moment to encounter the deadly gas that had robbed so many men of their lives. But I kept on, shouting to those behind me, till all at once I tripped and fell over some one; and as soon as I could get myself together, I lowered the light I carried, and, to my great delight, I found it was Andrews.
“Whether dead or alive I could not tell then; but we lifted him amongst us, and none too soon, for as I took my first step back I reeled, from a curious giddy feeling which came over me.
“‘Run if you can,’ I said faintly; for my legs seemed to be sinking under me. I managed to keep on, though, and at our next turn we were in purer air; but we knew it was a race for life, for the heavy gas was rolling after us, ready to quench out our lives if we slackened speed for an instant. We pressed on, though, till we reached the cage, rolled into it, more than climbed, and were drawn up, to be received with a burst of cheers, Mary throwing her arms round her father’s neck, and sobbing bitterly.
“‘I’m not much hurt,’ he said feebly, the fresh air reviving him, as he was laid gently down. ‘God bless those brave lads who brought me up! But there’s another man down—John Kelsey.’
“No one spoke, no one moved; for all knew of the peril from which we had just escaped.
“‘I can’t go myself, or I would,’ said Andrews; ‘but you mustn’t let him lie there and burn. I left him close up to the lead. He tried to follow me, but the falling coal struck him down. I believe the pit’s on fire.’
“There was a low murmur amongst the men, and some of the women wailed aloud; but still no one moved except old Andrews, who struggled up on one arm, and looked up at us, his face black, and his whiskers and hair all burnt off.
“‘My lads,’ he said feebly, ‘can’t you do nothing to save your mate?’ and as he looked wildly from one to the other, I felt my heart like in my mouth.
“‘Do you all hear?’ said a loud voice; and I started as I saw Mary Andrews rise from where she had knelt holding her father’s hand; ‘do you all hear?—John Kelsey is left in the pit. Are you not men enough to go?’
“‘Men can’t go,’ said one of the day-shift, gruffly; ‘no one could live there.’
“‘You have not tried,’ again she cried passionately. ‘Richard Oldshaw,’ she said, turning to me with a red glow upon her face, ‘John Kelsey is down there dying, and asking for help. Will not you go?’
“‘And you wish me to go, then?’ I said, bitterly.
“‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Would you have your fellow-creature lie there and die, when God has given you the power and strength, and knowledge to save him?’
“We stood there then, gazing in one another’s eyes.
“‘You love him so that you can’t even help risking my life to save his, Mary. You know how dearly I love you, and that I’m ready to die for your sake; but it seems hard—very hard to be sent like this.’
“That was what I thought, and she stood all the time watching me eagerly, till I took hold of her hand and kissed it; and though she looked away then, it seemed to me as though she pressed it very gently.
“The next minute I stepped up towards the pit’s mouth, where there was a dead silence, for no one would volunteer; and, in a half blustering way, I said, ‘I’ll go down.’
“There was a regular cheer rose up as I said those words; but I hardly heeded it, for I was looking at Mary, and my heart sank as I saw her standing there smiling with joy.
“‘She thinks I shall save him,’ I said to myself, bitterly, ‘Well, I’ll do it, if I die in the attempt; and God forgive her, for she has broken my heart.’
“The next minute I had stepped into the cage, and it began to move, when a voice calls out, ‘Hang it all, Dick Oldshaw shan’t go alone!’ and a young pitman sprang in by my side.
“Then we began to descend, and through an opening I just caught sight of Mary Andrews falling back senseless in the arms of the women. Then all was dark, and I was nerving myself for what I had to do.
“To go the way by which I had helped to save Andrews, was, I knew, impossible; but I had hopes that by going round by one of the old workings we might reach him, and I told my companion what I thought.
“‘That’s right—of course it is,’ he said slapping me on the back. ‘That’s books, that is. I wish I could read.’
“Turning short off as soon as we were at the bottom, I led the way, holding my lamp high, and climbing and stumbling over the broken shale that had fallen from the roof; for this part of the mine had not been worked for years. Now we were in parts where we could breathe freely, and then working along where the dense gas made our lamps sputter and crackle; and the opening of one for an instant would have been a flash, and death for us both. Twice over I thought we had lost our way; but I had a plan of the pit at home, and often and often I had studied it, little thinking it would ever stand me in such good stead as this; and by pressing on I found that we were right, and gradually nearing the point at which the accident had occurred.
“As we got nearer, I became aware of the air setting in a strong draught in the direction in which we were going, and soon after we could make out a dull glow, and then there was a deep roar. The pit was indeed on fire, and blazing furiously, so that as we got nearer, trembling—I’m not ashamed to own it, for it was an awful sight—there was the coal growing of a fierce red heat; but, fortunately, the draught set towards an old shaft fully a quarter of a mile farther on, and so we were able to approach till, with a cry of horror, I leaped over heap after heap of coal, torn from the roof and wall by the explosion, to where, close to the fire lay the body of John Kelsey—so close that his clothes were already smouldering; and the fire scorched my face as I laid hold of him and dragged him away.
“How we ever got him to the foot of the shaft I never could tell; for to have carried him over the fallen coal of the disused galleries would have been impossible. It was either to risk the gas of the regular way, or to lie down and die by his side. I remember standing there for a few moments, and sending a prayer up to Him who could save us; and then with a word to my mate, we had John up between us, and staggered towards the shaft in a strange, helpless, dreamy way. To this day it seems to me little less than a miracle how we could have lived; but the fire must have ventilated the passages sufficiently to allow us to stagger slowly along till we climbed into the cage, and were drawn up.
“I have some faint recollection of hearing a cheer, and of seeing the dim light of the chill December day; but the only thing which made any impression upon me was a voice which seemed to be Mary’s, and a touch that seemed to be that of her hand. I heard a voice saying ‘Terribly burned, but he’s alive. Got a pipe and matches in his hand;’ and I knew they were speaking about John Kelsey, and the thought came upon me once more that I had saved him for her; and with an exceeding bitter cry, I covered my poor fire blinded eyes, and lay there faint and half-insensible.
“And it’s not much more that I can recollect, only of being in a wild, feverish state, wandering through dark passages, with fire burning my head, and coal falling always, and ready to crush me; and I then seemed to wake from a long, deep sleep, and to be thinking in a weak, troubled way about getting up.
“It was a month, though, before I could do that, and then there was a tender arm to help me, and a soft cheek ever ready to be laid to mine; for in those long, weary hours of sickness Mary had been by my side to cheer me back to health, and I had learned that I was loved.”