End of the First Part
Part the Second: FALL
CHAPTER I
Avarice
Five years after George Grice had been gathered to his fathers, by which time Jeckie Farnish had achieved her ambition and become the richest woman in Savilestowe, there walked into the stone-flagged hall of the "Coach-and-Four" one fine spring morning, a gentleman who wore a smart suit of grey tweed, a grey Homburg hat, ornamented by a black band, and swung a handsome gold-mounted walking cane in his elegantly-gloved fingers. There was an air of consequence and distinction about him, though he was apparently still on the right side of thirty; the way in which he looked around as he stepped across the threshold, showed that he was one of those superior beings who are accustomed to give orders and have them obeyed, and Steve Beckitt, the landlord, who chanced to be in the hall at the time, made haste to come forward and throw open the door of the best parlour. The stranger, who was as good-looking as he was well-dressed, smiled genially, showing a set of fine teeth beneath a carefully trimmed dark moustache, and removed his hat as he walked in and glanced approvingly at the old-fashioned furniture. "You the landlord?" he asked pleasantly, and with another smile. "Mr. Beckitt, then?—I had your name given me by the landlady of the 'Red Lion' at Sicaster, where I've been staying for a week or two. I've just walked out from there—and, to begin with, I should like a glass or two of your best bitter ale, Mr. Beckitt. Bring a jug of it—I know you've always good ale in these country inns!—and join me. I want to have a word or two with you."
Beckitt, a worthy and unimaginative soul, full of curiosity, fetched the ale and poured it out; the stranger, producing a handsome silver case, offered him a cigar and lighted one himself. And when he had tasted and praised the ale, he dropped into an easy chair and swinging one leg over the other, looked smilingly at the landlord, whom he had waved to a seat.
"My name's Mortimer," he said, with almost boyish ingenuousness, "Mallerbie Mortimer—I'm from London. I've been having a holiday in the North here, and for the last fortnight I've been staying in Sicaster—at 'the Red Lion.' Now, I've a fancy to stay a bit longer in these parts, Mr. Beckitt, and I have heard in Sicaster that this is a very pretty and interesting neighbourhood. So I walked out this morning to see if you could put me up for a week or two at the 'Coach-and-Four'? How are you fixed?"
Beckitt, who was sure by that time that his visitor was a moneyed gentleman, put his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat—a sure sign that he was thinking.
"Well, sir," he replied, "it isn't oft 'at we're asked for accommodation o' that partik'lar nature, but, of course, twice a year we do entertain t'steward—a lawyer gentleman—when he comes to collect t'rents. He has this room for a parlour, and there's a nice big bedroom upstairs—he's allus expressed his-self as very well satisfied wi' all 'at we do for him. Of course, it's naught but plain cookin' at we can offer—but t'steward, he allus takes to it."
"And so should I," affirmed the caller, who was evidently disposed to like anything and everything. "Good, plain, homely fare and cooking, Mr. Beckitt—that's all I want. And for whatever I have, I'll pay you well—now, supposing you call your good lady, and let me see the bedroom, and have a talk to her about my meals?"
Within ten minutes of his entrance Mr. Mallerbie Mortimer had settled matters with the host and hostess of the "Coach-and-Four." He was evidently a man who was accustomed to arrange affairs in quick time; he told Mrs. Beckitt precisely what he wanted in a very few sentences, and then offered her for board and lodging a certain weekly sum which was about half as much again as she would have asked him. Immediately on her acceptance of it, he pulled a handful of loose gold out of his trousers pocket, paid his first week's bill in advance, and turning to the landlord, asked him to send somebody with a trap to Sicaster to fetch his luggage—three portmanteaux and two suit-cases. Then, arranging for a mutton-chop at half-past one, he went out and strolled down the village street, his Homburg hat at a jaunty angle, and his cane swinging lightly in his gloved hand. The folk whom he met wondered at him, and Jeckie Farnish, who happened to be standing at the door of her shop, wondered most of all. Strangers were rare in Savilestowe, and this one was evidently a man of far-off parts.
But before twenty-four hours had gone by, Mr. Mallerbie Mortimer had made himself known to most people in the village. He was an eminently sociable person, and after his first dinner at the "Coach-and-Four"—a roast chicken, the cooking of which he praised unreservedly—he went into the bar-parlour and fraternised with the select company which assembled there every evening. He was generous in the matter of paying for drinks and cigars; he was also an adept in drawing men out. Within a night or two, he knew all the affairs of the place, and all the principal inhabitants by name; also, he had heard, from more than one informant, the full story of Jeckie Farnish and George Grice. He showed himself possessed of pleasant and ingratiating manners, and might be seen chatting in the blacksmith's forge, or lounging in the carpenter's shop, or exchanging jokes with the miller, or hanging about the churchyard with the sexton; he talked farming with Stubley, and smoked an afternoon pipe with Merritt. And when he was not doing any of these things, he was all over the place—farmers met him crossing fields and going about meadows, and along the side of hedgerows; thus encountered, Mr. Mallerbie Mortimer always showed his white teeth and his engaging smile, and said he hoped he wasn't trespassing, but he had a mania for going wherever his fancy prompted when he was in the country. Nobody, of course, objected to so pleasant a gentleman going wherever he pleased, and by the end of the week he had thoroughly explored the parish. And had anybody been with him on these solitary excursions they would have observed that the stranger took a most curious interest in the various soils over which he walked, and that in certain places he would linger a long time, closely inspecting marl and loam and clay and sandstone and outcropping limestone. But the Savilestowe folk saw nothing of this; all they saw was a very smart young gentleman who wore a different, apparently brand-new, suit every day, put on black clothes and a dinner jacket every evening, received piles of letters and bundles of newspapers each morning, and, in spite of his grandeur and his money—his abundant possession of which was soon made evident—had no snobbishness about him, and was only too willing to be hail-fellow-well-met with everybody from the parson to the ploughman.
Mr. Mortimer informed Mrs. Beckitt, at the end of his first week's stay at Savilestowe, that he was so well satisfied with his quarters that he had decided to remain where he was for a while longer—he might, he further informed her, be having a friend down from London to stay for a week or so in this truly delightful spot. Beckitt and his wife were only too pleased; Mr. Mortimer was not only a very profitable lodger, but free of his money in the bar-parlour, where he made a practice of spending his evenings after his seven o'clock dinner. He was in that parlour every night until nearly the second week of his visit had gone by. Then, one night, instead of crossing the hall from his sitting room to join the company which had grown accustomed to his genial presence, he waited until night had fallen, put a light overcoat over his evening clothes, drew on a soft cap, and taking some papers from a dispatch-box which he kept, locked, in his bedroom, slipped out of the "Coach-and-Four" and strolled down the village street. Five minutes later found him knocking gently at the private door of Jeckie Farnish's house.
Jeckie, by this time, kept a couple of maidservants. But it was growing late, and they had gone to bed, and it was Jeckie herself who opened the door and shone the light of a hand-lamp on the caller. Now up to that time Jeckie was about the only person in Savilestowe to whom Mr. Mallerbie Mortimer had not introduced himself; he had passed her shop scores of times, but had never entered it. She stared wonderingly at him as he removed his cap with one hand and offered her a card with the other.
"May I have a few minutes' conversation with you, Miss Farnish—in private?" he asked, favouring Jeckie with the ingratiating smile. "I came late purposely—so that we might have our talk all to ourselves—you are, I know, a very busy woman in the day-time."
Jeckie looked at the card suspiciously. Mr. Mallerbie Mortimer, M.I.M.E., 281c, Victoria Street, London, S.W. The letters at the end of the name conveyed nothing to her. "You're not a traveller?" she asked abruptly, showing no inclination to ask the caller in. "I only see travellers on Fridays—three to five. I can't break my rule."
"I am certainly not a traveller—of that sort," laughed the visitor. "I am a professional man—staying here for a professional purpose. Don't you see, ma'am, what I am, from my card?—a member of the Institute of Mining Engineers? I want to see you alone, on a most important business matter."
Jeckie motioned him to enter.
"I didn't know what those letters meant," she said, with emphasis on the personal pronoun. "But come in—though upon my word, mister, I don't know what you want to see me about, mister! This way, if you please."
Mortimer laughed as he followed her into a parlour where there was a bright fire in the grate—coal was cheap in that neighbourhood—and a lamp burning on the centre table. He closed the door behind him, and when Jeckie had seated herself, dropped into an easy chair in front of her.
"I'll tell you why I've come to see you, Miss Farnish," he said in low suave tones. "There's nothing like going straight to the point. I came to you because, having now been in Savilestowe, as you're aware, for close on a fortnight, I know that you're the richest person in the place—man or woman! Eh?"
Jeckie had heard this sort of thing before, more than once. It usually prefaced a demand on her purse, and she looked at Mortimer with increased suspicion.
"If it's a subscription you're wanting," she began, and then stopped, seeing the amusement in her visitor's face. "What do you want, then?" she demanded. "You said business."
"And I mean and intend business!" answered Mortimer. "You're a business woman, and I'm a business man, so we shall understand each other if I speak freely and plainly. Look here! Since I came to stay at the 'Coach-and-Four,' nearly a fortnight ago I've heard all about you, Miss Farnish. How you beat that old fellow Grice, drove him out, and all the rest of it. You're a smart woman, you know; you've brains, and go, and initiative, and determination—you're just the person I want!"
"For what?" demanded Jeckie, who was not insensible to flattery. "What's it all about?"
Mortimer edged his chair nearer to hers, and gave her a knowing look. The hard and strenuous life she had lived had robbed Jeckie of some of her beauty, but she was a handsome woman still, and there was recognition of that undoubted fact in the man's bold eyes.
"You're one of the sort that wants to get rich quick!" he said. "Right! so am I. There's a bond between us. Now, as I said, I know for a fact you're the richest person in this place, leaving the squire out of the question. You know that's so! but only yourself knows how well-off you are. Yet, how would you like to be absolutely wealthy?"
"I believe in money," said Jeckie. She saw no use in denying the truth to this persistent and plausible stranger. "I've worked for money, naught else! What do you mean?"
"Supposing I told you of how you could make money in such a fashion that what you're making now would be as nothing to it?" said Mortimer, still watching her keenly. "Would you be inclined to take the chance?"
Jeckie gave her visitor a good, long look before she replied. And Mortimer added another word or two.
"I'm talking sense!" he affirmed. "I mean what I say."
"If I saw the chance o' making money in the way you speak of," answered Jeckie, at last, "it 'ud be a queer thing if I didn't take it. I never missed a chance yet!"
"Don't miss this!" said Mortimer. "Listen! You don't know why I'm here; you don't know what I mean; you don't know what I've come to see you about. I'll tell you in one word if you'll promise to keep this to yourself?"
"If it's aught about business and money you can be certain I shall," asserted Jeckie. "I'm not given to talking about my affairs."
"Very good," continued Mortimer. "Then, do you know what there is under this village of Savilestowe, under its fields and meadows, aye, underneath where you and I are sitting just now. Do you?"
"What?" demanded Jeckie, roused by his evident enthusiasm. "What?"
Mortimer leaned forward, laid a hand on her arm, and spoke one word—twice.
"Coal!" he said. "Coal?"
Jeckie stared at him, silently, for awhile. And Mortimer kept his eyes fixed on hers, as if he were exercising some hypnotic influence on her. She stirred a little at last, and spoke, wonderingly.
"Coal?" she said, in a low voice. "You mean——"
"I mean that there's no end of coal beneath our feet!" said Mortimer. "Listen! You know—for you must have heard—how the coal-mining industry's been increasing and developing in this part of Yorkshire during the last few years. Now, I'm a mining expert; here's a pocketful of references and testimonials about me that I'll leave with you, to look over at your leisure; and I came over to Sicaster three weeks or so ago to have a look round this neighbourhood. From something I saw one day when I was out for a walk in this direction I decided to come here and go carefully over the ground. I've been carefully over it—every yard of this village! I tell you, as an expert, there's no end of coal under here—no end! And whoever works it'll make—a huge fortune!"
Jeckie sat, almost spellbound, listening; such imagination as she possessed was already stirred. And when she spoke it seemed to her that her voice sounded as if it came from a long way off.
"But—it's down there!" she said.
"But—it is there!" exclaimed Mortimer. "All that's wanted is for man to get it out! I know how to do that. All that's wanted is money! capital!"
He got up from his chair, thrust his hands in his pocket, and jingled the loose coins which lay in them, looking down at Jeckie with a significant smile.
"Capital!" he repeated. "Capital! I'm so certain of what I say that I'm willing to find a good lot myself. But not all that's wanted. And what I want to know is—are you coming in, now that I've told you? Look here, for every ten thousand that's put into this business there'll be a hundred thousand within a very short time of getting to work. I'll stake my reputation—not a bad one, as you'll learn from these papers—that this'll be one of the richest mines, in quantity and quality, in England. A regular gold mine! I know!"
"But—the land?" said Jeckie. "You've to buy the land first, haven't you?"
Mortimer laughed, and picked up his cap.
"I know how to do that in this case," he said. "Not another word now: I'll come and see you again to-morrow evening, same time. In the meantime—strict secrecy. But take my word for it, if you come in with me at this I'll make you a richer woman than you've ever dreamed of being. And I think you've had some ambitions that way—what?"
Then, with a brief, almost curt, good-night, he went away, and Jeckie, after letting him out and fastening her door, read through the papers which he had left with her. There was a banker's reference, and a solicitor's reference, and numerous testimonials to the great ability of Mr. Mallerbie Mortimer as a mining expert. Jeckie knew enough of things to estimate these papers at their proper value, especially the banker's reference, and she went off to bed with new ideas forming in her brain. Coal!—there, beneath her feet—black, shining stuff that could be turned into yellow gold. It seemed to her that she hated the green fields and red earth that lay between it and her avaricious fingers.
CHAPTER II
The Bit of Bad Land
Mortimer was at Jeckie Farnish's private door to the minute on the following evening, and Jeckie hastened to admit him and to lead him to her parlour. He went straight to the point at which he had broken off their conversation of the night before.
"You were saying that before ever starting on the project I mentioned it would be necessary to buy the land," he said, as he settled himself in an easy chair. "Now, Miss Farnish, let's be plain and matter-of-fact about one thing. Most of the land in this parish of Savilestowe belongs to the squire. But we're not going to have him in at this business! I don't want him even to know that anything's afoot until matters are settled, and in full working order. For not all the land is his!—which is fortunate. A good deal of it, as you know, is glebe land. Then, Stubley owns a bit, and I understand those two fields by the mill are the freehold property of the miller. And, very fortunately for my scheme and ideas, there's a considerable piece of land here which belongs to a man who, I should say, would be very glad to sell it—I mean the piece down there beyond the old stone quarry, which you villagers call Savilestowe Leys."
"Worst bit o' land in the place!" exclaimed Jeckie. "There's naught grown there but the coarsest sort o' grass and weeds and such-like; it's more like a wilderness than aught!"
Mortimer showed his white teeth and his eyes sparkled.
"All the better for us, my dear lady!" he said. "But it's under there that we shall find the richest bed of coal! I know that! Seams, without doubt, spread away from that bed in several directions, but the real wealth of this place lies under that bad bit of land, half-marsh, half-wilderness, as you say. Now, I understand that that particular property—forty acres in all—belongs to that little farmer at the Sicaster end of the village. You know the man I mean—Benjamin Scholes?"
"Yes," assented Jeckie. "It's been in Ben Scholes's family for many a generation."
Mortimer leaned forward, gave Jeckie a sharp, meaning look, and tapped her wrist.
"The first thing to be done is to buy these forty acres of land from Scholes—privately," he said. "That land's the front door to a store-house of unlimited wealth! And—you must buy it."
Jeckie shook her head.
"I say you must!" asserted Mortimer. "There's nobody but you who can do it. It'll have to be done on the quiet. You're the person!"
"It's not that," said Jeckie. "You're a stranger; you don't know our people. Ben Scholes is a poor man; he'd be glad enough of the money. But that land's been in their family for two or three hundred years; he'll none want to part with it, were it ever so. Poor as it is, the squire wanted to buy it from him some time since; he'd a notion of planting it with fir and pine. But Ben wouldn't sell. And, besides, what excuse could I make for buying it?—poor land like that! He'd be suspicious."
"I've thought of all that," answered Mortimer. "I'm full of resource, as you'll find out. Everybody knows what an enterprising woman you are, so that what I'm going to suggest you should do would surprise nobody if you do it—as you must. Go and see Scholes; tell him you want to start a market garden and a fruit orchard, and that his land will just suit your purposes when it's been thoroughly drained and prepared. Offer to buy it outright; stick to him till you get it. Never you mind about his refusal to the squire; you've got a better tongue in your head than the squire has from what I've seen of him, and you'll get round Scholes. You ought to get the forty acres, such bad land as it is, for two or three hundred pounds. But look here—go up to that. You see, I'm not asking you to find the money."
He drew out a pocket-book, extracted a folded slip of paper from it, unfolded it, and dropped it on the table at Jeckie's elbow. Jeckie looked down and saw a cheque, made payable to herself, for five hundred pounds.
"You'll get it for less than that if you go about it the right way," continued Mortimer. "And, of course, when you buy it, and the conveyancing's done, you'll have all the papers made out in your name. I shan't appear in it at all. You and I can settle matters later—but—there's the money. And if this chap Scholes stands out for more you've nothing to do but ask me. Only—but! At once!"
"And if he will sell?—if I get it?" asked Jeckie. "What then?"
"Then we've got forty acres of worthless stuff on top, and many a thousand tons of coal beneath!" said Mortimer. "It'll take a good time to exhaust what there is beneath the forty acres. And we can get to work. As for the rest of the land in the place—well, as need arises we shall have to come to terms with the other property owners. We should pay them royalties; that's all a matter of arrangement. We might lease their land—mineral rights, you know—from them for a term of years. All that can be settled later. What we want is a definite standing as owners; to begin with—owners! We might have leased Scholes's forty acres for twenty-one, forty-two, or sixty-three years, but it's far best to buy. Then it's ours. Go and see Scholes at once—to-morrow."
Jeckie picked up the cheque, and seemed to be looking at it, but Mortimer saw that she did not see it at all; her thoughts were elsewhere.
"And if I buy this bit o' land?" she said, after a pause. "What then?"
"Then, my dear madam, we'll get the necessary capital together, and proceed to make our mine!" replied Mortimer, with a laugh. "But there'll be things to be done first. First of all, so as to make assurance doubly sure, we should do a bit of prospecting—dig a drift into the seam (if I find an out-crop, as I may) to prove its value, or sink a trial pit, or do some boring. It'll probably be boring; and when that takes place you'll soon know what to expect in the way of results."
"I should want to know a lot about that before I put money into it," affirmed Jeckie. "I'm not the sort to throw money away."
"Neither am I!" laughed Mortimer. He rose in his characteristically abrupt fashion. "Well!" he said. "You'll see Scholes?—at once! Get hold of his forty acres, and then—then we can move. And in five years—ah!"
"What?" demanded Jeckie as she followed him to the door.
"You'll be mistress of a grand country house and a town mansion in Mayfair!" answered Mortimer, showing his teeth. "Wealth! Look beneath your very boots! it's just waiting there to be torn out of the earth."
Jeckie put Mortimer's cheque away in her safe, and went to bed, her avaricious spirit more excited than ever. Like all the folk in that neighbourhood, she knew how the coal-fields of that part of Yorkshire had been developed and extended of late; she had heard too, of the riches which men of humble origin had amassed by their fortunate possession of a bit of land under which lay rich seams of coal. There was Mr. Revis, of Heronshawe Main, three miles the other side of Sicaster, who, originally a market gardener, was now, they said, a millionaire, all because he had happened to find out that coal lay under an unpromising, black-surfaced piece of damp land by the river side, which his father had left him, and had then seemed almost valueless. There was Mr. Graveson, of the Duke of York's Colliery, on the other side of the town—he, they said, had been a small tradesman to begin with, but had a sharp enough nose to smell coal at a particular place, and wit enough to buy the land which covered it—he, too, rolled in money. And, after all, the stranger from London had shown his belief by putting five hundred pounds in her hands—it would cost her nothing if she made the venture. And if there was coal beneath Ben Scholes's forty acres, why not try for the fortune which its successful getting would represent?
After her one o'clock dinner next day, Jeckie, who by that time had a capable manager and three assistants in her shop, assumed her best attire and went out. She turned her face towards the Savilestowe Leys, a desolate stretch of land at the lower end of the village, and from the hedgerow which bordered it, looked long and speculatively across its flat, unpromising surface. She was wondering how men like Mortimer knew that coal lay underneath such land—all that she saw was coarse grass, marsh marigolds, clumps of sedge and bramble, and a couple of starved-looking cows, Scholes's property, trying to find a mouthful of food among the prevalent poverty of the vegetation. That land, for agistment purposes, was not worth sixpence an acre, said Jeckie to herself; it seemed little short of amazing to think that wealth, possibly enormous in quantity, should be beneath it. But she remembered Mortimer's enthusiasm and his testimonials, and his cheque, and she turned and walked through the village to Ben Scholes's farm.
There was a circumstance of which Jeckie was aware that she had not mentioned to Mortimer when they discussed the question of buying Ben Scholes's bit of bad land. Ben Scholes, who was only a little better off than her own father had been in the old days at Applecroft, owed her money. Jeckie, as time went on, had begun to give credit; she found that it was almost necessary to do so. And that year she had let Ben Scholes and his wife get fairly deep into her books, knowing very well that when harvest time came round Ben would have money, and would pay up—he was an honest, if a poor man. What with groceries and horse-corn and hardware—for Jeckie had begun to deal in small goods of that sort, forks, rakes, hoes and the like, since years before—Scholes owed her nearly a hundred pounds. She remembered that, as she walked up the street, and she busied herself in thinking how she could turn this fact to advantage. Yet, she was not going to put the screw on her debtor; in her time she had learnt how to be diplomatic and tactful, how to gain her ends by other means than force. And it was not the face of the stern creditor which she showed when she knocked at the open door of Scholes's little farmstead.
It was then three o'clock, and Scholes and his wife were following the usual Savilestowe custom of having an early cup of tea. They looked up from the table at which they sat by the fire, and the wife rose in surprise and with alacrity.
"Eh, why, if it isn't Miss Farnish!" she exclaimed. "Come your ways in, Miss Farnish, and sit you down. Happen, now you'll be tempted to take a cup o' tea? it's fresh made, within this last five minutes, and good and strong—your own tea, you know, and I couldn't say no more. Now do!"
"Why, thank you," responded Jeckie. "I don't mind if I do, as you're so kind. I just walked up to have a word or two with Ben there."
Scholes, a middle-aged, careworn-looking man, who, in spite of everything, had a somewhat humorous twist of countenance, grinned almost sheepishly as Jeckie took an elbow chair which his wife pulled forward for her.
"I hope you haven't come after no brass, Miss Farnish," he said, with an air intended to be ingratiatingly seductive. "I've nowt o' that sort to spare till t'harvest's in, but there'll be a bit then to throw about. We mun have a settlin' up at that time. Ye know me—I'm all right."
Jeckie took the cup of tea which Mrs. Scholes handed to her, and stirred it thoughtfully.
"I didn't come after any brass, Ben," she answered. "It's all right, that—as you say, I know you. I wasn't going to mention it till harvest comes."
"Why, now, then, that's all right!" said Scholes, facetiously. "Them's comfortable words, them is. Aye, brass is scarce i' this region, but we carry on, you know, we carry on, somehow. We haven't all gotten t'secret o' makin' fortunes, like you have, ye know. Us little 'uns has to be content wi' what they call t'day o' small things."
"Aye, an' varry small an' all!" sighed Mrs. Scholes. "I'm sure! It's all 'at a body can do, nowadays, to keep soul and body together."
"Why, mi lass, why!" said Scholes. "We've managed it so far. All t'same, I could offen find it i' mi heart to wish 'at I'd one o' these here rellytives 'at ye sometimes read about i' t'papers—owd uncles 'at dies i' foreign parts, and leaves fortunes, unexpected, like, to their nevvys and nieces at home. But none o' my uncles niver had nowt to leave 'at I iver heerd on."
"I came up to tell you how you could make a bit o' money if you want to," said Jeckie. The conversation had taken a convenient turn, and she was quick to seize the opportunity. "A nice bit!" she added. "Something substantial."
Scholes pushed his cup and saucer away from him and looked sharply at his visitor.
"Ecod!" he exclaimed. "I should be glad to hear o' that! But—wheer can I make owt, outside o' this farm o' mine? It niver does no more nor keep us. It does that, to be sure, seein' 'at there's nobody but me and t'missis there, but that's all."
"Well, listen," said Jeckie. "There's that piece o' land o' yours, down at t'bottom end o' t'village. I want to buy it."
Scholes' thin face flushed, and he rose slowly from his chair, and for a moment turned away toward the window. When he looked round again he shook his head.
"Nay!" he said. "Nay!—I couldn't sell yon theer! Why, it's been i' our family over three hundred years! Poor enough it is, and weean't feed nowt—but as long as I have it, ye see, I'm a landowner, same as t'squire his-self! Why, as I dare say you've aweer, he wanted to buy that forty acres fro' me a piece back—but I wodn't. No! He were calculating to plant it, and to make it into a game preserve. It were no use. I couldn't find it i' mi heart to let it go. No!"
"Don't be silly!" said Jeckie. "That's all sentiment. What good is it to you? Them two cows 'at you've got in it now can scarce pick up a mouthful!"
"It's right, is that," agreed Scholes. "If them unfortunate animals had to depend on what they get out o' that theer they'd have empty bellies every night! But—(he dropped into his chair again and looked hard at his visitor)—since it's as poor as it is, what might you be wantin' it for? If it's no good to me it's no good to nobody."
"I've got something that you haven't got," answered Jeckie, in her most matter-of-fact tones. "You could never do aught to improve that land, because you haven't got the money to do it with. I have! I'll be plain with you. I'll tell you what I want it for. You know how I've developed my business since I started it—developed it in all sorts of ways. Well, I'm going in for market-gardening and fruit-growing, and that piece o' land'll just suit me, because it's within half a mile o' the shop. Sell it to me, and I'll have it thoroughly drained. That's what it wants; and make real good land of it, you'll see. You can't do that; it 'ud cost you hundreds o' pounds. I don't mind spending hundreds o' pounds on it. And—I want it!"
Scholes was evidently impressed by this line of argument. He looked round at his wife, who was gazing anxiously from him to Jeckie, and from Jeckie to him.
"Ye're right i' one thing," he answered. "It would make all t'difference i' t'world to them forty acres if they were drained. My father allus said so, and I've allus said so. But we never had t'money to lay out on that job."
"I have," said Jeckie. "Let me have it! It 'ud be a shame on your part to deprive anybody of the chance of making bad land into good when you can't do aught at it yourself! It's doing you no good; I can make it do me a lot o' good. And I'll lay you could do with the money."
Mrs. Scholes sighed. And Scholes gave her a sharp look.
"Aye, mi lass!" he said. "I know what ye'd say! Sell! But when all's said and done, a man is sentimental. Three hundred year, over and above, yon theer property's been i' our family. I' time o' owd Queen Elizabeth—that's when we got it. Lawyer Palethorpe, theer i' Sicaster, he has all t'papers. He telled me one day 'at of all t'landowners round here there isn't one, not one, 'at has land 'at's been held i' one family as long as what our family's held that. It 'ud be like selling a piece o' miself!"
"I'll tell you what I'll do," said Jeckie, utterly unmoved by Scholes's reasonings. "I'll give you a full receipt for your bill—close on a hundred pound it is—and a cheque for three hundred. That's giving you nearly four hundred pound. And you know as well as I do that if you put it up to auction you'd scarce get a bid. Don't be a fool, Ben Scholes! Three hundred pound, cash down, 'll be a rare help to you. And you'll have no bill to pay me when harvest comes."
Late that evening Mortimer tapped at the private door, and Jeckie admitted him. He followed her into the parlour.
"Well?" he said, without any word of greeting. "Anything come of it?"
"It's all right," answered Jeckie. "I've got it. Four hundred. I'm going into Sicaster with him to-morrow to settle it at the lawyer's. So that's managed."
CHAPTER III
Coal
Mortimer threw down his cap, and dropped into the easy chair which he had come to look upon as his own special reservation. He rubbed his hands together in sign of high satisfaction.
"Smart woman," he exclaimed admiringly. "Excellent! Excellent! Didn't I tell you that you'd be able to manage it? Good! Good!"
"Yes," said Jeckie, almost indifferently. "I did it. I knew how to do it, you see, when I came to to think it over. And I did it there and then, and paid the price—there's naught to do but the legal business, and that's only a matter of form. The land's mine, now." She moved across the room to her safe, unlocked it, took out an envelope, drew Mortimer's cheque from it, and quietly laid it at his elbow. "I shan't want that, of course," she added.
Mortimer looked up at her in surprise.
"But—I was to find the money!" he said.
"I've found it," answered Jeckie. "I've bought the land—it's mine, and whatever's underneath it is mine, too. So if there's nothing, there's nothing—and you'll lose nothing."
"Oh, well," said Mortimer, "as long as we've got it, it doesn't much matter who's bought it—we'll make that right later."
Jeckie gave him no reply. But in Mortimer's sorry acceptance of her announcement she made a sudden discovery as to his character. Enthusiastic he no doubt was, and eager and full of ideas as to business. But—he was easygoing, apt to let things slide; ready to take matters as settled when they were all unsettled. Jeckie herself, had she been Mortimer, and bearing in mind the conversation of the previous evening, would have insisted on a proper and definite understanding as to the ownership of the forty acres. She smiled grimly as she relocked the door of her safe, and she said to herself when it came to a contest of brains she was one too many for this smart London fellow. The land was hers, and the mineral beneath it—so she said nothing; there was nothing to say.
"The thing is," said Mortimer, again rubbing his hands in high glee, "the thing is, now, to get to work. We must bore!"
"How's that set about?" asked Jeckie, who was now anxious to learn all she could. "What's done, like?"
"Oh, you just get some men and the necessary apparatus," replied Mortimer nonchalantly. "I'll see to all that. And I'll get a friend of mine down from London—I'll take a room for him at the 'Coach-and-Four'—a friend who's one of the cleverest experts of the day; he and I, between us, will jolly soon tell you what lies under that land. Of course, I haven't the slightest doubt about it, but it's better to have the opinion of two experts than one. My friend's name is Farebrother—he's well-known. He shall come down and watch the boring operations with me. I'll get the men and the requisite machinery at once, and we'll go to work as soon as you've got the legal business through—we'd better keep it dark until then."
"All that'll cost money, of course," observed Jeckie.
"Oh, a few hundred'll go a long way in the preliminaries," answered Mortimer. "I'll wait until Farebrother comes along before I decide which method I'll follow—the percussive or the rotatory. But I won't bother you with technical details; what you'll be more interested in will be results."
"This boring that you talk about, now?" said Jeckie. "It shows what there is underneath the surface?"
"To be sure!" assented Mortimer. "It's like this—you select your spot, and you put in (this is the rotary method) a cutting-tool which is a sort of hollow cylinder, with saw-like teeth at its lower edge, or an edge of hard minerals—rough diamonds, sometimes—and it's driven in by steam-power at two or three hundred revolutions a minute. As it's hollow, a solid core is formed in the cylinder—you raise the cylinder from time to time and examine the core, which comes up several feet in length. And you know from the core what there is down there. See?"
"I understand," said Jeckie. "I thought it must be something of that sort. Very well—I'll pay for all that. Get to work on it."
Mortimer again glanced at her in surprise. But she saw that there was no suspicion in his eyes as to her object.
"You seem inclined to launch out!" he said, laughing. "You were disposed the other way when I first mentioned this matter."
"It's my land," reiterated Jeckie. "So, to start with, anyway, I'll pay the expenses. As you said just now, we can make things right later. Mind you, I'm going on what you've said! If you hadn't assured me, you, as a professional man, that there's coal under that land, I shouldn't ha' bought it, and if there isn't—well, I know what I shall say! But I'm willing to pay the cost o' finding out. Only—I shall want to be certain!"
"If there isn't coal under your forty acres, may I never see coal again!" asserted Mortimer. "I tell you there's any amount there!"
"Then it's all right—and when we know that it is there, for certain and sure, it'll be time to consider matters further," said Jeckie calmly. "Go on with your boring and I'll pay. As you said, I say again—we can make things right later."
Mortimer was too elated at the prospect of opening out a new and possibly magnificent enterprise to ask Jeckie what her present ideas were as to how things should be made right in the event of coal being found in sufficient quantity to warrant the making of a mine. He went away and plunged into business, and in a few days brought his friend Farebrother down to Savilestowe—a quiet, reserved man of cautious words, who impressed Jeckie much more than Mortimer had done. But, cautious and reserved as he was, Farebrother, dragged hither and thither by Mortimer over the woods and meadows, uplands and lowlands, gave it as his deliberate opinion that there were vast quantities of coal under Savilestowe, and that Jeckie's forty acres of land probably covered a particularly rich bed.
"Get to work, then!" said Jeckie laconically. "I'll pay for the machinery, and I'll pay what men you want. Bring their wages bill to me, every Friday, and the money'll be there."
No one in Savilestowe, not even Steve Beckitt, nor any of the select company of the bar-parlour of the "Coach-and-Four," knew what was afoot, nor what the machinery which presently arrived in the village, and was housed in a hastily constructed wooden shed in the centre of Jeckie Farnish's forty acres, was intended for. But Ben Scholes, who had made no secret of his sale of the long-owned property, was able to enlighten his curious neighbours.
"Jecholiah Farnish," he said, in solemn conclave at the blacksmith's shop, shared in by several of the village wiseacres, "bowt that theer land fr' me for a purpose. It's her aim, d'ye see, to turn them forty acres into a fruit-orchard and a market-garden. But it's necessary, first of all and before owt else, to drain that theer land. I should ha' done it mysen if I'd iver hed t'brass to do it wi'. I dedn't—shoo has. And this here machinery 'at's arrived on t'scene it'll be for t'purpose o' drainin'—shoo's a very wealthy woman now, is Jecholiah, and shoo's bahn to do t'job reight. Pumpin' and drainin' machinery—that's what it'll be."
The general company, open-mouthed, took this as gospel—save one man, a jack-of-all-trades, who had travelled in his time. He shook his head and betrayed all the marks and signs of scepticism.
"Well, I don't know, Mestur Scholes," he remarked. "But I see'd 'em takkin' some o' that machinery offen t'traction wagons 'at it cam' on, and I'll swear my solemn 'davy 'at it's none intended for no pumpin' and drainin'—nowt o' t'sort!"
"What is it intended for, then?" demanded Scholes. "Happen ye know? Ye allus reckon to know better nor anybody else, ye do!"
"Nah thee nivver mind!" retorted the sceptic. "Ye'll all on yer find out what it's for afore long. But ye mark my words—it's none for drainin'—not it!"
Two or three weeks had gone by before the curiosity of the villagers received any appeasement. Whatever went on in the forty acres was conducted in secrecy in the big wooden shed which the carpenters had hastily run up. There, every day, Mr. Mallerbie Mortimer, his friend Mr. Farebrother, and a gang of workmen—foreigners, in the eyes of the Savilestowe folk—for whom Mortimer had taken lodgings in the village, conducted mysterious rites, unseen of any outsider. Once or twice the unduly inquisitive had endeavoured to enter the field, on one excuse or another, only to find a jealous watchman at hand who barred all approach. But the sceptic of the blacksmith's shop was a human ferret and one morning he leaned over the wall of Ben Scholes's yard and grinned derisively at the late owner of Savilestowe Leys.
"Now, then, Mistur Scholes!" he said triumphantly. "What did I tell yer about yon machinery 'at's been setten up i' that land 'at ye selled to Jecholiah Farnish? Pumpin' and drainin'! I knew better! I seen a bit i' my time, Mistur Scholes, more nor most o' ye Savilestowers, and I knew that wor no pumpin' and drainin' machinery. I would ha' tell'd yer at t'time, when we wor talkin' at t'smithy, what it wor, but I worn't i' t'mind to do so. Ye don't know what they're up to i' yon fields 'at used to be yours!"
"What are they up to, then?" demanded Scholes. "I'll lay ye'll know!"
"I dew know!" answered the other, with arrogance. "An' ye'll know an' all, to yer sorrow, afore long. They're tryin' for coal! I hed it fro' one o' t'workmen last neet; I hed a pint or two, or it might be three, wi' him. An' he says 'at it's varry like 'at theer's hundreds o' thousands o' pounds' worth o' coal under that land. That's what Jeckie Farnish wanted it for. Coal!"
Scholes, who was cleaning out the ginnel in front of his stable, straightened himself, staring intently at his informant. The informant nodded, laughed sneeringly, and went off. And Scholes, casting away his manure fork with a gesture that indicated rising anger and hot indignation, went off, too, in his shirt sleeves, but in the opposite direction. He made straight down the village to Jeckie Farnish's shop.
It was then nearly noon, and the shop was full of customers. Jeckie, who had long since given up counter work, and now did nothing beyond general and vigilant superintendence, was standing near the cashier's desk, talking to the vicar's wife. Scholes's somber eyes and aggressive look told her what was afoot as soon as he crossed the threshold. She continued talking, staring back at him, as if he were no more than one of the posts which supported the ceiling. But Scholes was not to be denied, and he strode up with a pointed finger—a finger pointing straight at Jeckie's hard eyes.
"Now then!" he burst out in loud, angry tones which made the vicar's wife start, draw back and stare at him. "Now then, Jecholiah, I've a crow to pull wi' ye! Ye telled me an' my missis 'at ye wanted yon land o' mind for to mak' a fruit orchard and a market-garden on, and I let ye hev it at a low price for that same reason. Ye're a liar! ye wanted it for nowt o' t'sort! Ye were after what you knew then wor liggin' beneath it—coal! Ye've done me! Ye're a cheat as well as a liar! Ye've done me out o' what 'ud ha' made me a well-to-do man. Damn such-like!"
Jeckie turned, cool and collected, to the vicar's wife.
"I'll see what I can do about it," she said quietly, continuing their conversation. "If I can put it in at a lower price, I will, though I'd already cut it as fine as I could. But, of course if it's for the mothers' meetings, I must do what I can." Then she turned again—this time to the angry man in front of her. "Go away, Scholes!" she said. "I can't have any disturbance here; go away at once!"
"Disturbance!" shouted Scholes. "I'll larn ye to talk about disturbance! Ye're no better nor a thief! Look ye here, all ye folk, high and low!" he went on, waving an arm at the astonished customers. "Do ye know what this here woman did? She finds out 'at there's coal under my land, and, wi'out sayin' a word to me about it, she persuades me to sell her t'land for next to nowt! Is that fair doin's? Do ye think 'at I'd ha' selled if I'd known what I wor sellin'? But she knew; and she's done me and mine. Ye're a thief, Jecholiah Farnish—same as what ye allus hev been—ye're sort 'at 'ud skin a stone if theer wer owt to be made at it! Damn all such-like, I say, and say ageean—and I'll see what t'lawyers hev to say to t'job!"
"You'll hear what my lawyer has to say to you," retorted Jeckie, who, the vicar's wife having hurriedly left the shop, was now not particular about letting her tongue loose. "You get out of my shop this instant, Scholes, or I'll have you taken out in a way you won't like. Here, you, boy, run across the street and tell the policeman to come here! What do you mean, you fool, by coming and talking to me i' that way? Didn't I give you t'brass for your land, cash down? And as to coal, I've no more notion whether there's coal under it than you have; there may be and there mayn't. But I'll tell you this—if there is, it's mine! And you get out o' my shop, sharp, or I'll hand you over to t'law here and now. I'll have none o' your sort tryin' to come it over me. Get out!"
Scholes looked Jeckie squarely in the face—and suddenly turned and obeyed her bidding. But he went up the street muttering, like a man possessed, and the vicar's wife, who had stopped to speak to a group of children, shrank from him as he passed, and went home to tell her husband of what she had heard and seen, and to voice her convictions that the knowledge that he had been cheated had affected Scholes's brain.
"Do you think she could really do such a thing?" she asked half incredulously. "If she did, it certainly looks—mean, at any rate."
"If you want my personal opinion," answered the vicar dryly, "I should say that Jeckie Farnish is capable of any amount of sharp practice. Coal! Dear me! Now I wonder if that's really what she's after, and if there is coal? Because, of course, if there's coal under her land there'll be coal under my glebe, and in that case—really, one's almost afraid to think of such a possibility. Coal! I wonder when we shall get to know?"
The whole village knew within another week; indeed, from the time of Scholes's indignant outburst at the shop, it was hopeless to conceal the operations at the waste land. Throngs of villagers were at the hedgerow sides from morning till night, eager for news; there, too, might be seen the squire and the vicar, and Stubley and Merritt, as inquisitive as the rest. The men engaged in boring forgathered of evenings at the "Coach-and-Four," and, despite Mortimer's warnings and admonitions, talked, more or less freely, over their beer. And one day at noon the rumour ran from one end to the other of the village street that coal had been found, and that there would be a rich and productive yield; before night the rumour had become a certainty—the squire himself had it from Mortimer and his fellow-expert that beneath Jeckie Farnish's forty acres there was what would probably turn out to be one of the best beds of coal in the country, and that it doubtless extended beneath the land of the other property owners.
The one person who showed no excitement, who refused to allow herself to be bustled or flurried, was Jeckie herself. Within twenty-four hours she was visited by the squire, the vicar, and Stubley—each wanted to know what she was going to do, each had a proposal for coming in. The squire wanted to start a limited liability company for founding a colliery to work the district, with himself as the chairman; the vicar was anxious about royalties on the coal which no doubt lay beneath his glebe lands; Stubley came to warn Jeckie to make sure. Jeckie listened to each and said nothing; it was impossible to get a word out of her that gave any indication of what she had in her mind. The only persons with whom she held conversation at that time were Mortimer and his friend Farebrother; with them she was closeted in secret every evening; Farnish, told off to act as watch-dog, had strict orders that no other callers were to be admitted. The result of the conference was that within a fortnight Jeckie had acquired a vast mass of useful information, which she carefully memorised. And, as Mortimer remarked, at the end of one of these talks, there was now nothing to do but to arrange the financial matters for beginning work. Money—capital—that was all that was needed now. To that remark Jeckie made no answer—she already had her own ideas about the matter, and she was resolved to keep them carefully to herself.
CHAPTER IV
Birds of a Feather
Close countenance though Jeckie Farnish kept to all the world, her thoughts had never been so many nor so varied as at this eventful stage of her career. She spent many a sleepless night considering possibilities, probabilities, eventualities. She thought over ways and means; she reckoned up her resources. She tried to look ahead as far as possible; to take everything into account. But, in all her reflections and plans and schemings, there was one dominant note—the desire to make money out of her lucky discovery—money, more money than she had ever dreamed of possessing. She was in no hurry. She made Mortimer and Farebrother continue their boring operations until she became as certain as they were themselves. They had made these boreholes, so as to test the whole of Jeckie's property, and had kept a careful journal of the boring, which was punctiliously entered up—Jeckie made a point of inspecting that journal, and of examining the cores which the boring cylinders brought up and were duly labelled and laid out under cover. But she was not satisfied with this, nor with merely taking the opinions of Mortimer and his friend. At her own instance and expense she called in two acknowledged mining experts and a professor of geology from one of the local universities; to these three she submitted the whole matter, only impressing upon them that she wanted an opinion that could be relied upon. All three agreed with Mortimer and Farebrother—coal was there, under the otherwise unpromising surface of the forty acres, in vast quantity. So, as Mortimer was constantly saying, there was nothing to do but to arrange the financial side of the affair, and to get to work on the construction of the necessary mine.
Jeckie was not going to be hurried about that, either; she had her own ideas. In spite of Mortimer's exhortations and Farebrother's hints, she kept them to herself until she was ready to act. But upon one point she was determined, and had been determined from the very first. Neither squire, nor parson, nor Stubley, nor Merritt, nor any Savilestowe party was going to come in with her—no, nor was Mortimer, of whom, all unknown to him, she was making a convenience. She was going to keep this El Dorado to herself as far as ever she could—to be chief controller of its destinies, to be master. Nevertheless, knowing, after her various consultations with Mortimer and Farebrother, that she did not possess sufficient capital of her own to establish a colliery, she had decided to take in one partner who could contribute what she could not find. She had that partner in her mind's eye—Lucilla Grice.
Lucilla, as Jeckie well knew, had long been top dog in the Grice menage. Albert, from the day of his marriage, had become more and more of a nonentity; as years went by he grew to be of no greater importance than one of his wife's umbrellas; a thing that had its uses now and then, but could at any moment be tossed into a corner and disregarded for the time being. Lucilla managed everything. Lucilla invested the money which he got for his partnership and received the dividends; Lucilla kept the purse; Albert had no more concern with cash than the cob in his stable; all he knew of money was that he was allowed three-and-six a day to spend as he liked. Jeckie Farnish knew all this, and more. She knew that Lucilla's marriage portion of two thousand pounds, and Albert's partnership money of five thousand, both secure and untouched in Lucilla's hands, had been added to of late by legacies from Lucilla's father, the Nottingham draper, and her maternal uncle, a London solicitor, which had materially increased Mrs. Albert Grice's fortune. The Nottingham draper had left his daughter ten thousand pounds—one-third of his estate; the maternal uncle, an old bachelor, regarding her as his favourite niece, had bequeathed to her all he died possessed of, some fourteen or fifteen thousand; Lucilla, therefore (Albert being ruled clean out of all calculations), was worth at the very least thirty thousand pounds. And there were psychological reasons why Jeckie fixed on Lucilla as the proper person to come in with her. From the very first she had recognised in Lucilla, a kindred spirit—a lover of money for money's sake. Jeckie had known it at their first interview; she had seen signs of it in their business dealings; she had been quick to observe that when Lucilla received her important influx of money from her father and uncle, whose deaths had occurred about the same time, she had not launched out into greater expenditure. She and Albert still occupied the same villa residence, just outside Sicaster; still kept the same modest establishment; still stuck to the one cob and the same dog-cart; still pursued the same uneventful course of life. And as she spent no more than she had ever spent, Lucilla, according to Jeckie Farnish's reckoning, must, since her receipt of the family legacies, have added considerably to her capital. But—and here was another and more important psychological reason—Jeckie knew, by instinct as much as by observation, that Lucilla, like herself, was one of those persons who, having much, are always feverishly anxious to have still more. There were few details of the life of that neighbourhood with which Jeckie was not thoroughly familiar, and she knew intimately the habits and customs of the Grice household. She was well aware, for instance, that Albert, who had now grown a beard and become a somewhat fat man, more easygoing than ever, went into Sicaster every morning to spend his three-and-six and pass the time of day with his gossips in the bar-parlours of the two principal hotels; he left his door punctually at ten o'clock for this daily performance and returned—even more punctually—at precisely one o'clock. It was, therefore, at half-past ten one morning that Jeckie, armed with an old-fashioned reticule full of papers, presented herself at the villa and asked to see its mistress; Lucilla, she knew, would then be alone.
Lucilla had a certain feeling for Jeckie; a feeling closely akin to that which Jeckie had for Lucilla; it centered, of course, in money. Lucilla knew how Jeckie had made money, and how Jeckie could stick to money, and for money and anything and anybody that had to do with money Lucilla had instincts of respect which almost amounted to veneration. Accordingly, she not only welcomed her visitor with cordiality, but showed her pleasure at receiving her by immediately producing a decanter of port and a sponge cake, and insisting on Jeckie's partaking of both.
"You'll have heard, no doubt, of what's been happening down our way?" said Jeckie, plunging straight into business as soon as she had accepted the proffered hospitality. "About finding coal under my land, I mean. It's generally known."
"I have heard," assented Lucilla. "A sure thing, they say. Well!—if you aren't one of the lucky ones, Miss Farnish! Everything you touch turns to gold. Why—you'll make a fortune out of it! I suppose it's dead certain, eh?"
Jeckie finished her port, shook her head as her hostess pointed to the decanter, and began to pull her papers out of the old silk reticule.
"Aye, it's as dead certain as that I'm sitting here, Mrs. Grice," she said. "That is, unless all them that ought to know is hopelessly wrong. To tell you the truth, and between ourselves, I've come to see you about it, and I'll give you the entire history of the whole affair. You'll ha' seen that smart London chap that's been staying at the 'Coach-and-Four' for some time now—Mortimer, Mr. Mallerbie Mortimer? Aye, well, it was him put me on to it. He's a mining expert—a member of the Institute of Mining Engineers—and he came down to these parts prospecting. He told me, in confidence, that there was coal, no end of it, under Savilestowe, and particularly under forty acres o' poor land that belonged to Ben Scholes. Well, I said naught to nobody, but I bought that bit o' land fro' Ben—I gave him next to naught for it and had it properly conveyed to me. And then I told this here Mortimer to bore, and he got machinery and men, and another expert fro' London—a man called Farebrother. And they sunk these borings, at different spots' i' my land, and the result was splendid. But I worn't going to go on their word—right as it is. I got two independent experts, t'best I could hear of, and a professor o' geology fro' Clothford University, and had them to go thoroughly into the matter. And they all agreed with the other two—they tell me that under my forty acres there's coal of the very best quality, that it'll take many and many a year to exhaust, and that there's a regular big fortune in it. So—there's no possible doubt. But cast your eye over these papers yourself—you'll be quite able to understand 'em."
Lucilla readily understood the typewritten sheets which Jeckie handed to her. They were all technical reports, signed by the five men whom Jeckie had mentioned—differing in phraseology and in detail, all were alike in asserting a conviction, based on the results of the borings, that coal lay under Savilestowe Leys in vast quantity and of the best quality. Lucilla handed them back with obvious envy.
"Well, if ye aren't lucky!" she exclaimed. "It's as I said—all turns to gold that you handle. Then—what's going to happen next! You'll be for a company, I suppose?"
"No!" said Jeckie grimly. "I'll ha' no more fingers in my pie than I can keep an eye on, I'll warrant you, Mrs. Grice! I've had no end o' suggestions o' that sort—the squire, and the parson, and Stubley, and Merritt, they'd all like to come in—the squire wanted to get up a big limited liability company, with him as chairman, and do great things. But I shan't have aught to do wi' that. I know what there is under my land, according to these papers, and as I say, it's a pie that I'm not going to have a lot o' fingers poked into. But, I'll tell you what—and it's why I come here—I don't mind taking in one partner, just one. You!—if you like the notion."
Lucilla blushed as if she had been a coy maiden receiving a first proposal of marriage.
"Me!" she exclaimed. "Lor', Miss Farnish!"
"Listen to me!" said Jeckie, bending forward across the bearskin hearthrug. "You and me knows what's what about money matters—nobody better. I know—for I know most o' what goes on about here—that you're now a well-to-do woman, what with what you had and with them legacies you've had left. Now, so am I, to a certain extent. What I propose is, let's you and me—just ourselves and nobody else—go into partnership to work this coal-mine. Farnish and Grice, Savilestowe Main—that's how it would be. You and me—all to ourselves?"
"Goodness gracious! It 'ud cost an awful lot of money, wouldn't it?" said Lucilla, in an awe-struck whisper. "To make a colliery! Why——"
"Aye, and think what we should get out of it!" interrupted Jeckie. "It'll take many a long year, they say, to exhaust what there is just under my land. And it'll not be so expensive as in some cases, the making of a mine. I've gone into that, too, and had estimates. It's the character of the, what do they call 'em—strata; that's the various stuffs, soils, and stones, yer know, they have to get through. They say this'll be naught like so difficult as some, and that we could be working in less nor two years."
Lucilla, perched on her sofa, was already regarding Jeckie with dilated and avaricious eyes. Her lips were slightly parted, but she said nothing, and Jeckie presently bent still nearer and whispered.
"There's hundreds o' thousands o' pounds worth o' that coal!" she said. "And we've naught to do but to get it out!"
Lucilla found her tongue.
"How much should we have to put in?" she asked faintly.
"Well, I've thought that out," answered Jeckie, readily enough. "Supposing we put in twenty-five thousand each, to make a starting capital o' fifty thousand? Then, as regards profits—as the land's mine, and the coal, too, you wouldn't expect to share equally. One-third of the profits to you, and the other two-thirds to me—that's what I think 'ud be fair, and right, and reasonable. Even then, you'd have a rare return for your outlay. You know I could find a hundred people 'at 'ud just jump at such an offer. The squire 'ud fair leap at it! But I came to you because I know that you understand money, same as I do, and I'd rather have a woman for a partner nor a man. But look here. I'm a rare hand at figures, and I've worked this out. You come to this table, and go into these figures wi' me."
Jeckie had only just left the villa residence, when Albert returned to the midday dinner. His wife said nothing of her visitor, and Albert was too full of his usual bar-parlour gossip to notice that Lucilla was remarkably preoccupied and absent-minded. He remained innocent and unconscious of what was going on, nor was he aware that Jeckie Farnish visited Lucilla during several successive mornings, and that on the last two, both women went into town, and were closeted for some time with, first, solicitors, and, second, bankers. Albert, indeed, never entered into the thoughts of either Lucilla or Jeckie; he was not even a circumstance to be taken into account. There was, however, a man in the neighbourhood who had Miss Jecholiah Farnish very much in his thoughts at this time. This was Farebrother, a more observant man than Mortimer, and Farebrother at last tackled his friend definitely as they sat dining one night in the parlour of the "Coach-and-Four."
"Look here!" he said, suddenly. "It's about time you knew what this Farnish woman's going to do. If you want the plain truth, Mortimer, I don't trust her."
"Oh, she's all right," exclaimed Mortimer. "A keen business woman, no doubt, but not the sort to——"
"My lad!" interrupted Farebrother, "you're always too optimistic, and too ready to believe in people. The woman's just the sort to do anybody out of anything—she did both you and Scholes over the land. It's hers—and so is all that's beneath it, to the centre of the earth. You should have bought it yourself."
"I?—a complete stranger!" protested Mortimer. "Impossible! There would have been suspicion with a vengeance!"
"Then you should have made an arrangement with her before she got it," said Farebrother. "She's got it now—and all that it implies. And my belief is that she's up to something. The last two or three times I've been in the town I've seen her coming out of solicitors' offices—she's at some game or another. She'll do you out of any share that you want to get in this very promising mine unless you're careful, and if you take my advice you'll put it straight and unmistakably to her, and ask her what she's going to do."
Mortimer protested and explained, but when dinner was over he went round to Jeckie's private door, and after a slight interchange of casual remarks, asked her point-blank what she was going to do about starting a company to work the mine. Jeckie pointed to a large, legal-looking envelope which lay on the table.
"It's done," she said calmly. "There'll be no company. Me and a friend of mine have gone into partnership to work it—there's the deed, duly signed to-day. We're going to start operations very soon."
Mortimer felt his cheeks flush—more from the memory of what Farebrother had said than with his very natural indignation.
"But what about me?" he exclaimed. "Why—I gave you the idea! I said from the first that I'd find money towards the company and knew others who would. It was my idea altogether—mine entirely. I only gave you the chance of coming in—I——"
"Whose land is it?" demanded Jeckie, coolly. "Did I buy it? Is it mine? If you wanted it why didn't you buy it? I bought it; it's my land. And—all that's beneath it. Do you think I was going to do that for other folks? We do nowt for nobody hereabouts, unless there's something to be made at it, my lad! But, of course, I'll pay you and your friend for your professional services—you must send your bill in."
Mortimer rose from his chair and looked at the woman in whom, half-an-hour previously, he had expressed his belief.
"So you've done me, too?" he said, simply. "You know well enough what my intentions were about this mine—of which you'd never have known, never have dreamed, if I hadn't told you of it. Do you call that honest—to do what you are doing?"
"Send in your bill—and tell Farebrother to send in his," said Jeckie, in her hardest voice. "You'll both get your cheques as soon as I see that you've charged right."
Mortimer went away, worse than chagrined, and told Farebrother of his dismissal; Farebrother forbore to remind him of what he had prophesied.
"All right!" he said. "I see what it is. She learnt all she can from us—now she's going to be what such a woman only can be—sole master! All right!"
And being a practical man, he sat down to make out, what Jeckie styled, his bill.
CHAPTER V
The Yorkshire Way
During the course of the next morning Jeckie received a large oblong envelope delivered to her by the stable-boy of the "Coach-and-Four." It was handed to her over the counter of the shop, and she opened it there and then, in the presence of her assistants and of several customers, all of whom were surprised to see the usually hard, unmoved face flush as its owner glared hastily at the two enclosures which she drew out. Within an instant Jeckie had hurried them into the envelope again, and had turned angrily on the stable-boy.
"What're you waiting for?" she demanded sharply.
"Mestur Mortimer, he said I wor to wait for an answer," replied the lad. "That's what he telled me."
"Then you can tell him t'answer'll come on," retorted Jeckie. "I can't bother with it now. Off you go!"
The stable-boy stared at the angry face and made a retreat; Jeckie retreated, too, into her private parlour, where she once more drew out the two sheets of excellent, unruled, professional-looking paper whereon the two mining engineers had set down their charges for services rendered.
"Did ever anybody see the like o' that!" she muttered. "They might think a body was made o' money! All that brass for just standin' about while these other fellers did the work, and then tellin' me what their opinions were! It's worse nor lawyers!"
She had no experience, nor knowledge, even by hearsay, of what professional charges of this sort should be, for the two experts and the professor of geology whom she had engaged, in order to get independent opinion, had not yet rendered any account to her. But she remembered that they would certainly come in, and that she would just as certainly have to pay them, whatever they might amount to, for she had definitely engaged the three men, from whom they would come, writing to request their attendance with her own hand.
"And if them three charge as these two has," she growled, looking black at what Mortimer demanded on one sheet of paper, and Farebrother on the other, "it'll come to a nice lot!—a deal more nor ever I expected. And as if they'd ever done aught for it! I'm sure that there Mortimer never did naught but stand about them sheds, wi' his hands in his pockets, smokin' cigars without end—why it's as if he were chargin' me so many guineas for every cigar he smoked! And if these is what minin' engineers' professional charges is, it's going to cost me a pretty penny before even we've got that coal up and make aught out of it!"
No answer, verbal or otherwise, went back from Miss Farnish to the London gentlemen at the "Coach-and-Four" that day. But, early next morning, Jeckie, who had spent much time in thinking hard since the previous noon, got into her pony-tray (an eminently useful if not remarkably stylish equipage) and drove away from the village. Anyone who had observed her closely might have seen that she was in a preoccupied and designing mood. She drove through Sicaster, and away into the mining district beyond, and after journeying for several miles, came to Heronshawe Main, an exceedingly flourishing and prosperous colliery which was the sole property of Mr. Matthew Revis, and was situated on and beneath a piece of land of unusually black and desolate aspect. Revis, a self-made man, bluff, downright, rough of speech, had had business dealings with Jeckie Farnish in the past in respect of some property in which each was interested, and of late she had consulted him once or twice as to the prospects of her new venture; she had also induced him to drive over to Savilestowe during the progress of the experimental boring. She wanted his advice now, and she went straight to his offices at the colliery. She had been there before, and on each occasion had come away building castles in the air as regards her projected development of Savilestowe. For to sit in Revis's handsome, almost luxurious private room, looking out on the evidences of industry and wealth, to see from its windows the hundreds of grimy-faced colliers, going away from their last shift, was an encouragement in itself to go on with her own schemes. Already she saw at Savilestowe what she actually looked on at Heronshawe Main, and herself and Lucilla Grice mistresses of an army of men whose arms would bear treasure out of the earth—for them.
Revis came into his room as she sat staring out on all the unloveliness of the colliery, a big, bearded man, keen-eyed and resolute of mouth, and nodded smilingly at her. He already knew Jeckie for a woman who was of a certain resemblance to himself—a grubber after money. But he had long since made his fortune—an enormous one; she was at a stage at which he had once been, a stage of anxious adventure, and therefore she was interesting.
"Well, my lass!" he said. "How's things getting on? Made a start yet with that little business o' yours? You'll never lift that coal up if you don't get busy with it, you know!"
He dropped into an easy chair beside the hearth, pulled out his cigar-case, and began to smoke, and Jeckie, noting his careless and comfortable attitude, wished that she had got over the initial stages of her adventure, and had seen her colliery in full and prosperous working order for thirty years.
"Mr. Revis," she answered, "I wish I'd got as far as you have! You've got all the worst of it over long since. I've got to begin. Now, you've been very good to me in giving me bits of advice. I came to see if you'd give me some more. What's the best and cheapest way to get this colliery o' mine started?"
Revis laughed, evidently enjoying the directness of her question. He knew well enough that it did not spring from simplicity.
"Why!" he answered. "You've got them two London chaps at Savilestowe yet, haven't you? I saw 'em in Sicaster t'other day. They're mining engineers, both of 'em. Why not go to them—I thought you were going to employ them."
"I don't want to have naught more to do with 'em, Mr. Revis," said Jeckie earnestly. "They're Londoners! I can't abide 'em. They seem to me to do naught but stand about and watch—and then charge you for watching, as if they'd been working like niggers. I don't understand such ways. Aren't there mining engineers in Yorkshire that 'ud see the job through. Our own folk, you know?"
"I see—I see!" said Revis, with a smile. "Want to keep work and money amongst our own people, what? All right, my lass!—I'm a good deal that way myself. Now, then, pull your chair up to my desk there, and get a pen in your hand, and make a few notes—I'll tell you what to do about all that. And," he added, with a laugh that was almost jovial, "I shan't charge you nowt, either!"
An hour later Jeckie went away from Heronshawe Main filled to the brim with practical advice and valuable information. It mattered nothing to Matthew Revis if a hundred new collieries were opened within his own immediate district; he had made his money out of his own already, and to such an extent that no competition could touch him. Therefore, he was willing to help a new beginner, especially seeing that that beginner was a clever and interesting woman, still extremely handsome, who certainly seemed to have a genius for money-making.
"Come to me when you want to know aught more," he said, as he shook hands with his visitor. "Get hold of this firm I've told you about, and make your own arrangements with 'em, and let 'em get on with the sinking. With your capital, and the results o' that boring, you ought to do well—so long as naught happens."
Jeckie started, and gave Revis a sharp, inquiring look.
"What—what could happen?" she asked.
"Well, my lass, there's always the chance of two things," answered Revis, becoming more serious than he had been at any time during the interview. "Water for one; sand for the other. In these north-country coal-fields of ours, water-logged sand has always been a danger. But—you'll have to take your chance: I had to take mine! None of us 'ud ever do aught i' this world if we didn't face a bit o' risk, you know."
But Jeckie lingered, looking at him with some doubt in her keen eyes.
"Did you have any trouble yourself in that way?" she asked.
"Aye!" answered Revis, with a grim smile. "We came to a bed of quicksand—a thinnish one, to be sure, but it was there. Two thousand gallons o' water a minute came out o' that, my lass!"
"What did you have to do?" inquired Jeckie. "All that water!"
"Had to tub it with heavy cast-iron plates," replied Revis. "But you'll not understand all these details. Leave things to this firm I've told you about; you can depend on them."
All the way from Heronshawe Main to Sicaster, Jeckie Farnish revolved Revis's last words. Water!—sand! Supposing all her money—she gave no thought to Lucilla Grice's money—were swept away once for all by water, or swallowed up for ever in sand? That would indeed be a fine end to her ventures! But still, Revis had met with and surmounted these difficulties; no, she meant to go on. And she had saved a lot of money that morning by getting valuable advice and information from Revis for nothing—nothing at all—and she meant to get out of paying something else, too, before night came, and with that interesting design in her mind, she drove up to Palethorpe and Overthwaite's office, and went in, and laid before Palethorpe, whom she found alone, the charges sent in to her the day before by Mortimer and his friend Farebrother. Palethorpe, whose keenness had not grown less as he had grown older, elevated his eyebrows, and pursed his lips, when he glanced at the amounts to which Jeckie pointed.
"Whew!" he said. "These are pretty stiff charges, Miss Farnish!"
"Worse nor what yours are!" said Jeckie, showing a little sarcastic humour. "And they're bad enough sometimes."
"Strictly according to etiquette, ma'am!" replied Palethorpe, with a sly smile. "Strictly regular. But there——"
"Aye, there!" exclaimed Jeckie. "All that brass for just hearing them two talk a bit, and for seeing 'em stand about watching other fellers work! And I want to know how I can get out o' paying it?"
Palethorpe put his fingers together and got into the attitude of consultation.
"Just give me a brief history of your transactions with these gentlemen," he said. "Just the plain facts."
He listened carefully while Jeckie detailed her knowledge and experience of Mr. Mallerbie Mortimer and his friend, and, when she had finished, asked her two or three questions arising out of what she had told him.
"Now, you attend closely to what I say, Miss Farnish," he said, after considering matters for awhile. "First of all, would you like me to see these two, or would you rather see them yourself? You'll see them yourself? Very well; now, then, when you go, just do and say exactly what I'm going to tell you."
There was no apter pupil in all Yorkshire than Jeckie Farnish when it came to learning lessons in the fine art of doing anybody out of anything, and by the time she walked out of Palethorpe and Overthwaite's office she had mastered all the suggestions offered to her. And it was with an air in which cleverly assumed surprise, expostulation, and injured innocence were curiously mingled that she walked into the parlour of the "Coach-and-Four" that evening, just as Mortimer and Farebrother finished dinner, and laid down on an unoccupied corner of the table the two folded sheets of foolscap which they had sent her the previous day.
Farebrother gave Mortimer a secret kick, and spoke before his too easygoing friend could get in a word.
"Good evening, Miss Farnish," he said, politely. "Won't you take a chair, and let me give you a glass of wine; it's very good. I hope you found these accounts correct?"
"Thank you," replied Jeckie. "I'll take a chair, but I won't take no wine. Much obliged to you. And as to these accounts, all I can say 'at I never was so surprised in my life as when I received 'em! It's positively shameful to send such things to me, and I can't think how you could do it, reckoning to be gentlemen!"
Farebrother gave Mortimer another kick and looked steadily at their visitor.
"Oh!" he said, very quietly. "Now—why?"
"Why?" exclaimed Jeckie. "What! amounts like them? You know as well as I do 'at I never employed either of you! You haven't a single letter, nor paper, nor nothing to show 'at I ever told you or engaged you to do aught for me; you know you haven't. It's all the fault o' Mr. Mortimer there if there's been any misunderstanding on your part, Mr. Farebrother, but I'd naught to do with it. I know quite well what part Mr. Mortimer's played!"
Mortimer received a third kick before he could speak, and Farebrother, who was gradually becoming more and more icy in manner, asked another question.
"Perhaps you'll give me an account of Mr. Mortimer's doing?" he suggested. "I shall like to hear what you have to say."
Jeckie favoured both men with an injured and sullen stare.
"Well!" she said. "Mr. Mortimer came to me, unasked, mind you, and said he was having a holiday down here, and who he was, and that he'd a suspicion there might be coal under this village. He talked a lot about it in my parlour, though I'm sure I never invited him to do so. I didn't know him from Adam when he came to my house! It's quite true 'at I bought land from Ben Scholes on the strength of what he said, but he'd naught to do with that. I paid for it with my own money. And then he goes and sends me in a bill like that there?—a bill three or four times as much as yours, though, from what I've seen of both of you, I reckon you're a more dependable man than what he is, and——"
"Mr. Mortimer has been employed by you four times as long as I had," interposed Farebrother. "Therefore——"
"He was never employed by me at all!" exclaimed Jeckie, emphatically. "Where's his papers to show it? I always reckoned that he was just a Londoner down here for a holiday—that's what he told t'landlord and his wife when he came to this house—and that, being interested in coal, he was telling me what he knew or thought he knew. And I never gave him any reason to think that I was employin' his services, nor yours either, for that matter. It's naught but imposition to send me in bills like them!"
"Here, I can't stand this any longer!" said Mortimer, suddenly rising from his chair. He turned on Jeckie and confronted her angrily. "You know as well as I do that you constantly consulted me, and that you told me to get Mr. Farebrother down from London——"
"Have you aught to prove it?" interrupted Jeckie, with a knowing look in which she contrived to include both men. "You know you haven't! No! but I can prove, 'cause you're a great talker and over-ready with your tongue, mister, that you gave it out all over t'village 'at your friend Mr. Farebrother was coming down to have a holiday, too. And he came; and, of course, I'd no objection if you both gave me advice, and I should ha' been a fool if I hadn't taken it, but I never employed neither of you. Didn't I get my own advisers when the time came? I employed them, right enough, but not you. You know quite well, if you're business men, 'at you haven't a scrap of writing nor a shred of evidence to show that I ever gave you any commission to do aught for me. I just thought you were amusing and interesting yourselves, and giving me a bit of advice and information, friendly-like. But, of course, I'm willing to make you a payment, in reason, and if ten pound apiece 'ud be——"
Jeckie got no further. Before Mortimer could speak Farebrother suddenly picked up the obnoxious accounts, tore them in two, flung the fragments into the fire, and, opening the parlour door, made Jeckie a ceremonious bow.
"We'll make you a present of all we've done for you, my good lady," he said. "Now, go!"
Jeckie went, grumbling. She had honestly meant to part with twenty pounds. It vexed her, temperamentally, to think of anybody doing something for nothing. She would have liked to pay these two ten pounds each. And she went home feeling deeply injured that they had scorned her.
CHAPTER VI
Obsession
Before noon the next day the two Londoners, for whom Jeckie Farnish had no further use, had shaken the Savilestowe dirt from off their feet, to the sorrow of Beckitt and his wife and the frequenters of the bar-parlour, and Jeckie told her partner, Lucilla Grice, of how cleverly she had done them. Lucilla applauded her cleverness; what was the use, she said, of paying money if you could get out of paying it?—especially as there was such a lot of spending to be done that she and Jeckie could not by any possible means avoid. The mere pointing out of that undoubted fact made Jeckie sigh deeply.
"Aye!" she said, almost lugubriously. "That's true enough!—we're just starting out on what can't be other than the trying and unpleasant part of the business—laying money out in bucketfuls with no prospect of seeing aught back for some time! However, there's no doubt about seeing it back in cart-loads when it does start coming, and now that I've got this advice and information from Mr. Revis—free, gratis, mind you!—we'd best set to work. Revis, he says that these engineers and contractors that he's recommended'll do the whole job twenty per cent. cheaper than those London chaps would ha' done, so you see I've saved a lot already. And now there's naught for it but to work—and wait."
"We shall have our hands full," remarked Lucilla sententiously. "But—let's start." Savilestowe—its mouth agape and eyes wide open—witnessed the start of the Farnish-Grice enterprise before many weeks had gone by. Until then—save for Jeckie's boring operations, which were, comparatively, hole-and-corner affairs—it had never been roused out of its bucolic life since the Norman Conquest. It had always been a typical farming village, a big and important one, to be sure, but still a purely rural and agricultural settlement. Within the wide boundaries of its parish—one of the largest in England—there were fine old country-houses in their parks and pleasure grounds; roomy and ancient farmsteads in their gardens and orchards; corn-lands, meadow-lands, woods, coppices, streams; industry other than that of spade and plough had never been known there. But now came a transformation, at which the older folk stood aghast. The quiet roads became busy and noisy with the passage of great traction engines drawing trains of wagons filled with all manner of material in steel and iron, wood, stone, and brick; vast and unfamiliar structures began to arise on the forty acres wherein Ben Scholes's half-starved cattle had once tried to add to their always limited rations; smoke and steam rose and passed away in noisome clouds over the cottages which had hitherto known nothing but the scent of homely herbs and flowers. And with all these strange things came strangers—crowds upon crowds of workmen, navvies, masons, mechanics, all wanting accommodation and food and drink. Hideous rows of wooden shanties, hastily run up on the edge of Savilestowe Leys, housed many of these; others, taken in by the labourer's wives, drove away the primitive quietude of cottage life; it was, as the vicar's wife said in her most plaintive manner, an invasion, captained by Jeckie Farnish and Lucilla Grice. The old order of things was gone, and Savilestowe lay at the mercy of a horde of ravagers who meant to tear from it the wealth which its smiling fields had so long kept safely hidden.
And now the Savilestowe folk talked of nothing but the marvellous thing that was going on in their midst. The old subjects of fireside and inn-kitchen conversation—births, deaths, marriages, scandals, big gooseberries, and two-headed lambs—were forgotten. There was not a man, woman, or child in the village who was not certain that wealth was being created, and that its first outpourings were already in evidence. Money was being spent in Savilestowe as it had never been spent within the recollection of the oldest inhabitant, and there was the more glamour about this spending in that the discerning knew whence this profusion came.
"There niver wor such times as these here 'at we're privileged to live in!" said one of the assembly which usually forgathered round the blacksmith's forge and anvil of an afternoon. "Money runs like water i' t'midst on us. I un'erstand at wheer t' 'Coach-and-Four' used to tak' six barril o'ale it now needs eighteen, and t'landlord o' t' 'Brown Cow,' up at t'top end o' t'village, says 'at he mun build a new tap-room for t'workmen to sit in, for his house is filled to t'brim wi' 'em ivery neet. An' they say 'at Farnish's shop hez more nor once been varry near selled clear out o' all 'at there wor in it, and 'at they've hed to send to Sicaster for new supplies. An' it's t'same wi' t'butcher—he's killin' six or eight times as many beasts and sheep as he used to, and t'last Frida' neet he hadn't as much as a mutton chop nor a bit o' liver left i' t'place. Now, there is some brass about, and no mistak'!"
"Why, thou sees, it's what's called t'circulation o' money," observed the blacksmith, leisurely leaning on his hammer. "It goes here and it goes theer, like t'winds o' heaven. Now, ye were sayin' 'at Jecholiah Farnish's shop's varry near been cleaned out more nor once—varry weel, if ye'd nobbut think a bit, that means 'at Jeckie wor gettin' her own back wi' summat added to it—that's what's meant by t'circulation o' money. We all on us know 'at this here army o' fellers, all at their various jobs, is paid bi Jeckie and her partner, Mrs. Albert Grice, all on 'em. Twice a week they're paid—one half on 'em o' Mondays, and t'other half o' Fridays. Varry weel, they get their brass—now then, they hev to lig it out, and it goes i' various ways—and a good deal on it goes back to Jeckie for bread and bacon and cheese and groceries, d'ye see? She pays out wi' one hand and she tak's in wi' t'other; they've niver had such an amount o' trade at her shop as they hev now. Stan's to reason!—ye can't hev three or four hundred stout fellers come workin' in a place wi'out 'em liggin' brass out. They mun ate and drink—same as what t'rest on us does. And so t'money goes back'ard and forrards."
"Aye, but theer's one i' t'place 'at'll tak' good care 'at some on it sticks in' her palm!" said an individual who leaned against the door and watched the proceedings out of a squinting eye. "Theer'll be a nice bit o' profit for Jeckie Farnish out o' all that extry grocery trade—tak' a bit o' notice o' that!"
"Varry like—but when all's said and done," answered the first speaker, "theer's no denyin' t'fact 'at all this here brass 'at's bein' paid out and spent i' t'village hes what they call its origin wi' her and t'other woman. They hef to pay t'contractors, ye know. And a bonny-like sum it mun be an' all, wi' all that machinery, and t'stuff 'at they've browt here i' building material, and t'men's wages—gow, I couldn't ha' thowt 'at her and Albert Grice's wife could ha' had so much brass!"
"Now, how much will they reckon to mak' a year out o' t'job when it's fully established, like?" asked a man who had shown his keen interest by watching each preceding speaker with his mouth wide open and his eyes turning and staring from one to another. "Is there a deal to be made out o' this here coal trade? 'Cause mi mother, 'at lives close to Mestur Revis' colliery, yonder at Heronshawe Main, as they call it, she niver pays no more nor five shillin' a ton for her coal. I reckon ye'd hev to sell a lot o' tons o' coal at that figure before ye'd get enew o' brass to pay for all 'at's bein' laid out here—what?"
"Thy mother lives close to t'scenes o' operations, fathead!" retorted the blacksmith. "She's on t'threshold, as it were—nowt to do but buy it as it comes out o' t'pit. But if thy mother lived i' London town, what dusta think she'd hev to pay for her coal then? I've read pieces i' t'papers about coal bein' as much as three and four pounds a ton i' London—what's ta think o' that?"
"Why, now, that's summat like a price!" assented the questioner. "I shouldn't hev no objection misen to sellin' coal at four pound a ton. But they hev to get it to London town first, hevn't they, afore they can sell?"
Before the blacksmith could give enlightenment on this economic point, the jack-of-all-trades, who, on a previous similar occasion, had warned Ben Scholes of what Jeckie was after in buying his land, put in one of his caustic remarks.
"Aye, and afore Jeckie Farnish gets her coal to London town—which there isn't no such place, 'cause London's a city—she'll hev to get it somewheer else!" he said. "Don't ye forget that!"
"I thowt ye'd ha' summat to say," sneered the blacksmith. "Wheer hes she to get it, like?—ye'll knaw, of course."
"I dew knaw," affirmed the wiseacre. "She'll hev to get it to t'surface! It's i' t'bowels o' t'earth yet, is that coal—it's none on t'top."
"What's to prevent it bein' browt to t'top, clever 'un?" demanded the blacksmith. "Aren't they at work sinkin' t'shafts as fast as they can?"
"Aye—and I've knawn wheer they sunk t'shafts deeper nor wheer ye heerd on!" said the clever one. "And then they niver got no coal! Not 'cause t'coal worn't there—it wor theer, reight enough wor t'coal. But it niver rase to t'top!"
"And for why, pray?" asked an eager listener. "What wor theer to prevent it?"
But the hinter at evil things, having shot his shafts, was turning on his heel, bound for the tap-room at the "Brown Cow."
"Niver ye mind!" he said darkly. "Theer's been no coal led away fro' Jeckie Farnish's pit mouth yit! An' happen ther niver will be!"
If he really had some doubts on the matter the Jack-of-all-trades formed a minority of one on the question of Jeckie Farnish's success. Everybody in the village believed that within a comparatively short time the pit would be in full working order, and coal would be coming up the winding shaft in huge quantities. And there were not wanting those in Savilestowe who were eager to get some share in the fortune which Jeckie and Lucilla had so far managed to monopolise. The squire, and the vicar, and Stubley, and Merritt as principals, and some of the lesser lights of the community as accessories, began putting their heads together in secret and discussing plans and schemes of money-making, all arising out of the fact that work was going ahead rapidly at the Farnish-Grice pit. Now, it was almost impossible for anything to be discussed, or for anything to happen in Savilestowe without the news of it reaching Jeckie—and one day she went to Lucilla with a face full of information and resolve.
"It's always the case!" she began, with a dark hinting look. "Whenever a big affair like ours is started, there's sure to be them that wants to get a bit of picking out of it by some means or other, fair or foul. I'll not say 'at this isn't fair, but it doesn't suit me!"
"What is it?" asked Lucilla anxiously. "Nothing wrong?"
"Not with our concern," replied Jeckie. "That's going all right, as you know very well—we shall be getting coal in another twelve month. No, it's this—it's come to my ears that the squire and Stubley and some more of 'em, knowing very well that there'll have to be a bit of housing accommodation provided, are forming themselves into a society or a company, or something, with the idea of building what they call a model village that'll be well outside Savilestowe but within easy reach. Now, you and me's not going to have that!"
"But—the miners'll have to live somewhere!" said Lucilla.
Jeckie gave her partner a queer look.
"Do you think I don't know that?" she said. "Why, of course! And I've made provision for it, though I thought we'd time enough. But now—before ever this lot can get to work—we'll start. We'll have our men in our own hands—on our own property."
"But how?" inquired Lucilla.
"I never told anybody until now," answered Jeckie, "but I have some land in Savilestowe that I bought years before I got that land of Ben Scholes's. There's about thirty acres of it—I bought it from James Tukeby's widow for next to naught, on the condition that she was to have the rent of it till she died. It was all properly conveyed to me, and, of course, I can do what I like with it. Now then, we'll build three or four rows of cottages on that—of course, as the land's mine, it's value'll have to be reckoned in our partnership account—and we'll let 'em to our own miners, d'you see? I'll have none of our men livin' in model villages under the squire and the parson—it's all finicking nonsense. We'll have our chaps close to their work! Good, substantial, brick cottages—bricks are cheap enough about here—with a good water supply; that's all that's wanted. Model villages!—they'll be wantin' to house workin' fellers i' palaces next!"
"It'll cost a lot of money," observed Lucilla. She had never considered the housing of the small army of miners which would troop into Savilestowe at the opening of the new pit. "And you know what we're already laying out!"
"We shall get it all back in rents," said Jeckie. She pulled some papers out of the old reticule. "See," she continued, "I've worked it out—cost and everything; I got an estimate from Arkstone, the builder, at Sicaster, yesterday. There's no need to employ an architect for places like they'll be—just five roomed cottages. Come here, and I'll show you what it'll cost, and what it'll bring in."
Lucilla was always an easy prey to Jeckie, and being already deeply involved, was only too ready to assent to all the plans and projects which her senior partner proposed. Moreover, Albert, when the two women condescended to call him into counsel, invariably agreed with his one-time sweetheart; he had the conviction that whatever Jeckie took in hand must certainly succeed. He himself was so full of the whole scheme that he had long since given up his daily visit to Sicaster. Ever since the beginning of active sinking work at the pit, he had driven Lucilla over to Savilestowe every morning after breakfast, and there they had remained most of the day, watching operations; in time Albert came to believe that he himself was really a sort of ex-officio manager of the whole thing, and in this belief Jeckie humoured him. And so it was easy to gain Lucilla's consent to the cottage-building scheme (which eventually developed into one that included the construction of houses of the villa type for the more important officials), and once more the two partners paid visits to solicitors and bankers.
The money was rushing away like water out of a broken reservoir. As in most similar cases, the expenditure, when it came to it, was greater than the spenders had reckoned for. More than once Lucilla drew back appalled at the sums which had to be laid out; more than once the bankers upon whom the partners were always drawing heavy cheques, took Jeckie aside and talked seriously to her about the prospects of the venture; Jeckie invariably replied by exhibiting the opinions of the experts and the professor of geology, and by declaring that if she had to mortgage her whole future, she was going on. She would point out, too, that the work had gone on successfully and smoothly; there had been nothing to alarm; nothing to stay the steady progress.
"I'll see it through to success!" she declared. "Cost what it may, I'm going to put all I have into it. I've never failed yet—and I won't!"
The work in her forty acres and in the land where the rows of ugly cottages were being built came to fascinate her. She began to neglect her shop, leaving all its vastly increased business to a manager and several sorely-taxed assistants, and to spend all her time with the engineers and contractors, until she came to know almost as much about their labours as they themselves knew. She would wander from one of the two shafts to the other a dozen times in a day; she kept an eye on the builders of the cottages and on the men who were making the road that would lead from the pit to the main street of the village; she had a good deal to say about the construction of the short stretch of railway which would connect it with the line that ran behind the woods, whereon she hoped to send her coal all over the country. In her imagination she saw it going north and south, east and west, truck upon truck of it—to return in good gold.
But meanwhile the money went. More than once she and Lucilla had to increase their original capital. A time came when still more money was needed, and when Lucilla could do no more. But Jeckie's resources were by no means exhausted, and one day, after a sleepless night during which she thought as she had never thought in her life, she went into Sicaster, determined on doing what she had once vowed she never would do. The shop must go.
CHAPTER VII
The Last Throw
It was a conversation with Farnish that sent Jeckie, grim and resolute, into Sicaster, determined on selling the business which she had built up and developed so successfully. Until the day of that conversation the idea of giving up the shop had never entered her mind; she had more than once foreseen that she might have to raise ready money on the strength of her prosperous establishment, but she had not contemplated relinquishing it altogether, for she knew—no one better—that as the population of Savilestowe increased because of the new industry which she was founding in its midst, so would the trade of the Golden Teapot wax beyond her wildest dreams. But certain information given her by her father brought matters to a crisis, and when Jeckie came to such passages in life she was as quick in action as she was rapid in thought.
Farnish, since the beginning of his daughter's great adventure, had grown greatly in self-importance. Like Albert Grice, he believed himself to be a sharer, even a guiding spirit, in the wonderful enterprise. Long since promoted from his first position as a sort of glorified errand-boy to that of superintendent of transit and collector of small accounts, he now wore his second-best clothes every day, and was seen much about the village and at Sicaster. Jeckie had found out that he was to be trusted if given a reasonable amount of liberty; consequently, she had left him pretty much to his own devices. Of late he had taken to frequenting the bar-parlour of the "Coach-and-Four" every evening after his early supper, and as he never returned home in anything more than a state of quite respectable up-liftedness, Jeckie said nothing. He was getting on in years, she remembered, and some licence must be permitted him; besides, she had for a long time given him an increased amount of pocket-money, and it now mattered nothing to her how or where he laid it out so long as he behaved himself, and did his light work faithfully. They had come to be better friends, and she had allowed him, in some degree, to make evident his parental position, and had condescended now and then to ask his advice in small matters. And in the village, and in Sicaster, he was no longer Farnish, the broken farmer, but Mr. Farnish, father of one of the wealthiest women in the neighbourhood.
The problem of Jeckie's wealth—and how much money she really had was only known to her bankers and guessed at by her solicitors—had long excited interest in Savilestowe and its immediate surroundings. It was well known that she had extended her original business in such surprising fashion that her vans and carts now carried a radius of many miles; she had been so enterprising that she had considerably damaged the business of more than one grocer in Sicaster and Cornchester; the volume of her trade was at least six times as great as that which George Grice had ever known in his best days. Yet the discerning knew very well that Miss Farnish had not made, could not have made, all the money she was reputed to possess out of her shop, big and first-class as it was. And if Jeckie, who never told anybody everything, could have been induced to speak, she would have agreed with the folk who voiced this opinion. The truth was that as she had made money she had begun to speculate, and after some little practice in the game had become remarkably proficient at it; she had found her good luck following her in this risky business as splendidly as it had followed her in selling bacon and butter. But, it was only a very few people—bankers, stockbrokers, solicitors—who knew of this side of her energetic career. What the Savilestowe folk did know was that Jecholiah Farnish had made no end of brass; some of them were not quite sure how; some suspected how. Jeckie said and did nothing to throw any light on the subject. It pleased and suited her that people knew she was wealthy, and her own firm belief—for she was blind enough on certain points—was that she was believed to be a great deal richer than—as she herself knew, in secret—she really was.
It fell to Farnish to disabuse her on this point.
Farnish, returning home one night from the customary symposium at the "Coach-and-Four," found Jeckie peacefully mending linen by the parlour fire. It had come to be an established ceremony, since more friendly relations were set up between them, that father and daughter took a night-cap together before retiring, and exchanged a little pleasant conversation during its consumption; on this occasion Farnish, after the gin-and-water had relapsed into a moody quietude. He was usually only too ready to talk, and Jeckie glanced at him in surprise as he sat staring at the fire, leaving his glass untouched.
"You're very quiet to-night," she said. "Has aught happened?"
Farnish started, stared at her, and leaned forward.
"Aye, mi lass!" he replied. "Summat has happened! I've been hearin' summat; summat 'at's upset me; summat 'at I niver expected to hear." He leaned still nearer, and dropped his voice to a whisper. "Jecholiah, mi lass!" he went on, in almost awe-struck tones. "Folks is—talkin'!"
"Folks! what folks?" exclaimed Jeckie in genuine amazement. "An' talkin'? What about?"
"It's about you, mi lass," answered Farnish. "I heerd it to-night, i' private fro' a friend o' mine as doesn't want his name mentionin', but's a dependable man. He tell'd me on t'quiet, i' a corner at t' 'Coach-and-Four'; he thowt you owt to know, this man did. He say 'at it's bein' talked on, not only i' Savilestowe here, but all round t'neighbourhood. Dear—dear!—it's strange how long a tale tak's to get to t'ears o' t'person 'at's chiefly concerned!"
"Now then—out with it!" commanded Jeckie. "What's it all about?"
Farnish glanced at her a look which was half fearful, half-inquiring. "They're sayin' 'at you and Lucilla Grice hes come to t'end o' your brass, or close on it," he whispered. "Some on 'em 'at reckons to know summat about it's been reckonin' up what you mun ha' laid out, and comparin' it wi' what they knew she hed, and what they think you hed, and they say you mun be about at t'last end. An' they say, 'at it'll be months yet afore t'pit'll be ready for working, and 'at ye'll niver be able to keep up t'expense, and 'at ye'll eyther hev to sell to somebody 'at can afford to go on wi' it, or gi' t'job up altogether, and lose all t'brass—an' it mun be a terrible amount bi' now—'at you've wared on it. That's what's bein' whispered about, mi lass!"
"Aught else?" demanded Jeckie.
"Well, theer is summat," admitted Farnish. "They say 'at ye never paid them two London gentlemen 'at did such a lot at t'beginning o' things; 'at they went away thro' t'place wi'out their brass, an'——"
"That'll do!" interrupted Jeckie. "Is that all?"
"All, mi lass," assented Farnish. "Except 'at it's a common notion 'at ye'll niver be able to carry t'job through! Now, what is t'truth, mi lass? I'm reight fair upset, as you can see."
"Sup your drink and go to bed and sleep sound!" said Jeckie contemptuously. "An' tell any damned fool 'at talks such stuff again to you 'at he'd better wait and watch things a bit. Money! I'll let 'em see whether I haven't money! More nor anybody knows on!"
Farnish went to bed satisfied and confident; but when he had gone Jeckie sat by the fire, motionless, staring at the embers until they died out to a white ash. She was thinking, and reckoning, and scheming, and when at last, she too retired, it was to lie awake more than half the night revolving her plans. She was up again by six o'clock next morning, and at seven was with the manager of the works—a clever, capable, thoroughly-experienced man who had been recommended to her by Revis, of Heronshawe Main, and in whom, accordingly, she had every confidence. He stared in astonishment as Jeckie, who had wrapped head and shoulders in an old Paisley shawl, came stalking into his temporary office. "I want a word with you," said Jeckie, going straight to the point after her usual fashion. She shut the door and motioned him to sit down at his desk. "I want plain answers to a couple of questions. First—how long will it be before we get this pit into working order?"
The manager reflected a moment.
"Barring accidents, ten months," he answered.
"Second," continued Jeckie, "how much money shall we want to see us through? Take your time; reckon it out. Carefully, now; leave a good margin."
The manager nodded, took paper and pencil, and began to figure; Jeckie stood statue-like at his side, watching in silence as he worked. Ten minutes passed, then he drew a thick line beneath his last sum total of figures, and pointed to it.
"That," he said. "Ample!"
Jeckie picked up the sheet of paper, folded it, slipped it under her shawl, and turned to the door.
"That's all right," she said. "I only wanted to know. Get on!"
This it was that sent her, dressed in her best, a fine figure of a woman, just on the right side of middle age, into Sicaster that morning. But before she reached the town she called in at Albert Grice's villa. It was still early, and Albert and Lucilla were seated at their breakfast table. Jeckie walked in on them, closed the door, after making certain that the parlour-maid was not lingering on the mat outside, declined to eat or drink, pulled a chair up to the table, and produced the sheet of paper on which the manager had made his reckoning.
"Look here!" she said. "You know that this—what with that building scheme and one thing and another—is costing us a lot more nor ever we'd reckoned on; things always does. Now then, I've made Robinson work out—carefully—exactly how much more we shall have to lay out yet before that pit's in full working order. Here's the amount. Look at it!"
Albert and Lucilla bent their heads over the sheet of paper. Albert made a sound which expressed nothing; Lucilla screamed.
"Mercy on us!" she exclaimed. "I can't find any more money; it's impossible! Why——"
"Never said you could," interrupted Jeckie. "I'll find it; all t'lot. But ... bear in mind, when I've found that, as I will, at once, my share in our united capital'll be just eight times as much as yours. So, of course, your share in the profits'll be according. D'you see!"
Lucilla made no answer, but Albert immediately assumed the air of a wise and knowing business man.
"Oh, of course, that's right enough, Lucilla!" he said. "That's according to strict principles. Share in profits in relation to amount of capital held by each partner. You'll be able to find this capital?" he continued, turning to Jeckie. "It 'ud never do for things to stop—now!"
"I'll find it—at once," declared Jeckie. "Naught's going to stop. But your wife must sign this memorandum that the sharing's to be as I've just said, and we'll have the deed of partnership altered in accordance. After all, it'll make no difference to you. You'll get your profits on your capital just the same." She produced a typewritten document which she had prepared herself after her interview with the manager, and when Lucilla had signed it, went off in silence to the town. Her first visit was to the bank, where she asked for a certain box which reposed in the strong-room; she opened it in a waiting-room, took from it a bundle of securities, gave the box back to the clerk, and going out, repaired to a stock and share broker's. Within half an hour she was back at the bank, and there, in the usual grim silence in which she usually transacted similar business, paid in to the credit of Farnish & Grice a cheque which represented a very heavy amount of money.
And now came the last desperate move. She had just sold every stock and share she possessed; she had only one thing left to sell, and that was the business in which she had been so successful. She walked twice round the old market place before she finally made up her mind. It was fifteen years since she had caused the golden teapot to be placed over the door of the house which she had rented from Stubley, and she had prospered beyond belief. There was no such business as hers in that neighbourhood. And there were folk who would be only too willing to buy it. She turned at last and walked determinedly into the shop of the leading grocer in Sicaster, a man of means, who was at that time Mayor of the old borough. If anybody was to step into her shoes he was the man.
He was just within the shop, a big, old-fashioned place, when Jeckie walked in, and he stared at her in surprise. Jeckie showed neither surprise nor embarrassment; now that her mind was made up she was as cool and matter-of-fact as ever, and her voice and manner showed none of the agitation which she had felt ten minutes before.
"I want a few minutes' talk with you, Mr. Bradingham," she said. "Can you spare them?"
"Certainly, Miss Farnish!" answered the grocer, an elderly, prosperous-looking man, who only needed his mayoral chain over his smart morning coat to look as if he were just about to step on the bench. "Come this way."
He led her into a private office at the rear of the shop and gave her a chair by his desk; Jeckie began operations before he had seated himself.
"Mr. Bradingham!" she said. "You know what a fine business I have yonder at Savilestowe?"
Bradingham laughed—there was a note of humour in the sound.
"We all know that who are in the same trade, Miss Farnish," he answered. "I should think you've got all the best families, within six miles round, on your books! You're a wonderful woman, you know."
"Mr. Bradingham," said Jeckie, "I want to sell my business as it stands. I want to devote all my time to yon colliery. I've made lots o' money out of the grocery trade, and lots more out o' what I made in that way, but that's naught to what I'm going to make out o' coal. So—I must sell. Will you buy?—as it stands—stock, goodwill, book debts (all sound, you may be sure, else there wouldn't be any!), vans, carts, everything? I'd rather sell to you than to anybody, 'cause you'll carry it on as I did. You can make a branch of this business of yours, or you can keep up the old name—whichever seems best to you."
Bradingham looked silently at his visitor for what seemed to her a long time.
"That's what you really want, then?" he said at last. "To concentrate on your new venture."
"I don't believe in running two businesses," answered Jeckie. "I'm beginning to feel—I do feel!—that it's got to be one or t'other. And—it's going to be coal!"
"You've sunk a lot in that pit, already?" he remarked.
"Aye—and more than a lot!" responded Jeckie. "But it's naught to what I mean to pull out of it!"
Bradingham continued to watch his visitor for a minute or two and she saw that he was thinking and calculating.
"I've no objection to buying your business," he said at last. "Look here—I'll drive out to Savilestowe this afternoon, and you can show me everything, and the books, and so on, and then we'll talk. I'm due at the Mayor's parlour now. Three o'clock then."
As Jeckie drove back to Savilestowe she remembered something. She remembered the day on which she had run down from Applecroft to get old George Grice's help, and how he had come up and found poverty and ruin. Now, another man was coming to see and value what she had created—he would find a splendid trade, a rich and flourishing business—all made by herself. But it must go. The pit was yawning for money—more money—still more money. And as in a vision, she saw sacks of gold, and wagon loads of silver, and bundles of scrip, and handfuls of banknotes all being hastened into the blackness of the shaft and disappearing there. It was as if Mammon, the ever-hungry, ever-demanding, sat at the foot, refusing to be appeased.
CHAPTER VIII
The Commination Service
At five o'clock that afternoon, by mutual agreement, Jeckie Farnish sold to John Bradingham the stock and goodwill of her grocery business, and a few days later she paid in another heavy cheque to the credit of Farnish and Grice, and, at the same date, secured the alteration in the deed of partnership which made matters straight between her and Lucilla. There was something of a grim desperation in Jeckie's face as she walked out of the solicitor's office whereat this transaction had been effected; she was feeling something that she had no desire to speak of. But Lucilla felt it, too, and said it.
"Well!" she remarked in a low tone as the two partners walked away from the town. "I don't know how it is with you, but I've put my last penny into that pit! Me and Albert's got just enough to live comfortably on till we begin to get some returns, but I can't ever find any more capital!"
"No need!" said Jeckie, almost fiercely. "Wait! as I'm doing."
She herself knew well enough that she, too, had thrown in her last penny; there was nothing for it now but to see the additional capital flow out steadily, and to wait in patience until the first yields brought money. In the meantime, she was not going to waste money on herself and her father. Selling most of the furniture which she had gradually accumulated, and leaving the house behind the shop, which had become an eminently comfortable dwelling, she transferred Farnish and herself to a cottage near the pit, told him that there they were going to stop until riches came, and settled down to watch the doings of the little army of workers into whose pockets her money was going at express speed. Wait—yes, there was nothing else to do.
There was not a man amongst all that crowd of toilers, from the experienced managers to the chance-employed navvy, who did not know Jeckie Farnish at that stage of her career. She was at the scene of operations as soon as work began of a morning; she was there until the twilight came to end the day. Here, there, everywhere she was to be met with. Now she was with the masons who were building the cottages on her bit of land outside the Leys; now with the men who were constructing a solid road from the pit-mouth to the highway; now with the navvies who were making the link of railway that would connect Savilestowe Main Colliery with the great trunk line a mile off behind the woods; now, careless of danger and discomfort, she was down one or other of the twin shafts, feverishly eager to see how much farther their sinkers were approaching to the all-important regions beneath. Sometimes she had Lucilla in her wake; sometimes Albert; sometimes Farnish. But none of these three possessed her pertinacity and endurance; a general daily look round satisfied each. Jeckie, when she was not in her bed or snatching a hasty meal, was always on the spot. Her money was at stake, and it behoved her to see that she was getting full value for every pennyworth of it.
She was not the only perpetual haunter of Savilestowe Leys at that time. The men who worked there at one or other of the diverse jobs which the making of a coal-mine necessitates—all of them strangers to the place until the new industry brought them to it—became familiar with a figure which was as odd and strange as that of Jeckie Farnish was grim and determined. Morning, noon, and night a man forever hung around the scene of operations, a man who was not allowed to cross the line of the premises and had more than once been turned out of them, but whom nobody and nothing could prevent from looking over fences and through gaps in the hedgerows and haunting the various means of ingress and egress, a wild, unkempt bright-eyed man, who was always talking to himself, and who, whenever he got the chance, talked hard and fast and vehemently to anyone he was able to lay a mental grappling-iron upon; a man with a grievance, Ben Scholes. He was always in evidence. While Jeckie patrolled her armies within, Scholes kept his watch without; he was as a man who, having had a treasure stolen from him, knows where the thief has bestowed it, and henceforth takes an insane delight in watching thief and treasure.
The first result of Scholes's discovery that Jeckie Farnish had done him over his forty acres of land was that he took to drink. Immediately after leaving the sign of the Golden Teapot he turned in at the "Coach-and-Four," and found such comfort in drinking rum-and-water while he retailed his grievances to the idlers in the inn-kitchen that he went there again next day, and fell into the habit of tippling and gossiping—if that could be called gossiping which resolved itself into telling and retelling the story of his woes to audiences of anything from one to a dozen. Few things interest a Yorkshireman more than to hear how Jack has done Bill and how Jack contrived to accomplish it, and while Scholes never got any sympathy—every member of his congregation secretly admiring Jeckie for her smartness and cleverness—he never failed to attract attention. There were many houses of call in that neighbourhood; Scholes began a regular round of them; he had a tale to tell which was never likely to pall on folk whose one idea was to get money by any means, fair or foul, and the sight of his lean face and starveling beard at the door of parlour or kitchen was enough to arouse an eager, however oft repented, invitation.
"Nah, then, Scholes!—come thi ways in, and tell us how Jeckie Farnish did tha' out o' thi bit o' land—here, gi' t'owd lad a drop o' rum to set his tongue agate! Ecod, shoe's t'varry devil his-self for smartness is that theer Jecholiah! Nah, then, Scholes, get on wi' t'tale!"
Scholes had no objection to telling his tale over and over again, and there was not a pair of ears in all that neighbourhood which had not heard it; if not at first, then at second hand—nor was there a soul which did not feel a certain warmth in recognising Jeckie Farnish's astuteness; Scholes himself recognised it.
"Ye see, shoo hed me afore iver shoo come to t'house!" he would say. "Knew t'coal wor theer afore iver shoo come reck'nin' to want to buy mi fotty acre and mak' an orchard on't! But niver a word to me! Buyin', shoo wor, not fotty acre o' poor land, d'ye see, but what they call t'possibilities 'at ligged beneath it! T'possibilities o' untold wealth! As should ha' been mine. Nowt but a moral thief—that's what shoo is, yon Jecholiah. Clever' 'er may be—I don't say shoo isn't, but a moral thief."
"Tha means an immoral thief," said one of his listeners.
"I mean what I say!" retorted Scholes. "I know t'English language better nor what thou does. A moral thief!—that's what yon woman is. I appeal to t'company. If ye nobbut come to consider, same as judges and juries does at t'sizes, how shoo did me, ye'll see 'at, morally speakin', shoo robbed me o' my lawful rights. Ye see—for happen ye've forgotten some o' t'fine points o' t'matter, it wor i' this way——"
Then he would tell his tale all over again, and would afterwards argue it out, detail by detail, with his audience. In that part of Yorkshire the men are fond of hearing their own tongues, and wherever Scholes went the companies of the inn-kitchens were converted into debating societies.
One night, Scholes, full of rum and of delight in his grievance, went home and found his wife dead. As he had left her quite well when he went out in the morning, the shock sobered him, and certain affecting sentences in the Burial Service at which he was perforce present a few days later turned his thoughts toward religion. The truth was that Scholes, already half mad through his exaggeration of his wrongs, developed religious mania in a very sudden fashion. But no one suspected it, and the vicar, who was something of a simpleton, believed him to have undergone a species of conversion; Scholes, anyhow, forsook the public-house for the house of prayer, and was henceforth to be seen in company of a large prayer-book at all the services, Sunday and week-day. Very close observers might have noticed that he took great pleasure in those of the Psalms which invoke wrath and vengeance on enemies, and, on days when the choir was not present and the service was said, manifested infinite delight in repeating the Psalmist's denunciation in an unnecessarily loud voice. But no one remarked anything, and if the vicar secretly wished that his new sheep would not bleat quite so loudly, he put the excess of vocalisation down to the fact that Scholes was new to his job and anxious to obey the directions of the Rubrics. Moreover, he reflected, the probability was that Scholes would soon tire of attendance on the services, and would settle down to the conventional and respectable churchmanship of most of the folk around him.
Scholes, however, developed his mania. He suddenly got rid of his farm, realised all that he was worth, and went to live, quite alone, in a small cottage near the churchyard. From that time forward he divided his time between the church services and the doings on Savilestowe Leys. Whenever there was a service he was always in church—but so soon as ever any service was over he was off to the end of the village, to haunt the hedgerows and fences, and button-hole anybody who cared to hear his story. This went on for many an eventful month, and at last became a matter of no moment; Ben Scholes, said all the village, was a bit cracked, and if it pleased him to spend ten minutes in church, and all the rest of the day hanging about the outskirts of Jeckie Farnish's pit, why not? But in the last months of the operations at the new pit, the first day of another Lent came round, and the vicar, with Scholes and a couple of old alms-women as a congregation, read the Commination Service. Scholes had never heard this before, and the vicar was somewhat taken aback at the vigour with which he responded to certain fulminations.
"Cursed," read the vicar in unaffected and mellifluous tones, more suited to a benediction, "cursed is he that smiteth his neighbour secretly!"
"Amen!" responded Scholes, suddenly starting, as if a thought struck him. "Amen!"
"Cursed," presently continued the vicar, "is he that putteth his trust in man...."
"Amen, amen!" said Scholes fervently. "Amen!"
"Cursed," continued the vicar, glancing round at his respondent parishioner, and nervously hurrying forward, "are...."
"Covetous persons, extortioners!" exclaimed Scholes, anticipating certain passages to come. "Amen, amen! So they are—amen!"
Then without waiting to hear what it was that the prophet David bore witness for, he clapped his prayer-book together with a loud noise, and hurried from the church; through one of the windows the vicar saw him walking among the tombs outside, gesticulating, and evidently talking to himself. When the service was over, he went out to him. "I fear the service distressed you, Scholes," he began, diffidently. "You are——"
Scholes waved his arms abroad.
"Nowt o' t'sort!" he exclaimed. "I wor delighted wi' it! I could like to hev that theer service read ivery Sunda'! I wor allus wantin' to mak' sure 'at a certain person 'at I could name wor cursed. An', of course, wheer theer's cursin' theer's vengeance—vengeance, vengeance!"
"Don't forget, Scholes, that it has been wisely said, 'Vengeance is Mine: I will repay, saith the Lord,'" answered the vicar, in his mildest tones. "You must remember——"
"Now, then, I forget nowt!" retorted Scholes. "I know all about it. But t'Lord mun use instruments—human instruments! Aw, it's varry comfortin', is what ye and me read together this mornin'—varry comfortin' to me. Cursed! 'Covetous persons'! Aw!—ye needn't go far away to find one!"
The vicar was one of those men who dislike scenes and enthusiasm, and he left Scholes to himself, meditating among the gravestones, and went home to tell his wife that he wished somebody would give the man a quiet hint that loud upliftings of voice were not desirable in public worship. But next Sunday Scholes was not in his accustomed place—the front pew in the south aisle—nor did he come to church again. The clauses in the Commination Service had set his crazy brain off on another tack, and from the day on which he heard them he forgot the temporary anæsthetic which religious observance had brought to him, and sought out his older and more familiar one—drink. He took to frequenting the "Brown Cow," a hostelry of less pretensions than the "Coach-and-Four," and there he would sit for hours, quietly drinking rum and water—as inoffensive, said the landlady, as a pet lamb in a farm-house kitchen.
For Scholes no longer talked about his grievance. He became strangely quiescent; sharper observers than the landlady would have seen that he was moody. He never talked to anybody at this stage, though he muttered a great deal to himself, and occasionally smiled and laughed, as if the thought of something pleased him. But one night, as he sat alone in a corner of the "Brown Cow," there came in a couple of navvies whom he recognised as workers at the hated pit, and a notion came into his mentality, which, crazy as it was rapidly becoming, yet still retained much of its primitive craftiness. He treated these men to liquor; they came to be treated again the following night, and the night after that; they and Scholes henceforth met regularly of an evening in their corner, and drank and whispered for hours at a time.
There came a day whereon these men and Scholes no longer forgathered at the "Brown Cow." Instead, they met at Scholes's cottage. It was a lonely habitation, a tumbled-down sort of place in the lee of the old tithe-barn, and had been empty for years before Scholes took it and furnished it with odds and ends of seating and bedding. It stood well out of the village, and could be reached unobserved from more than one direction. Here the two navvies with whom he had made friends at the "Brown Cow" began to come. Scholes laid in a supply of liquor for their delectation. And here, round a smoky lamp and a spirit bottle, the three were wont to talk in whispers far into the night.
Had Jeckie Farnish or Lucilla Grice known of what it was that these three men talked—one of them already obsessed with the belief that he was the Lord's chosen instrument of vengeance, the other two cunningly anxious to profit by it—neither would have slept in their beds, nor felt one moment's peace until Scholes and his companions were safely laid by the heels. But they knew nothing; nothing, at any rate, that was discomposing or threatening. Ever since the time of putting more capital into the concern the making of the colliery had gone on successfully and even splendidly. The two shafts, up-cast and down-cast, had been sunk to depths of several hundreds of feet without any encountering of more than the ordinary difficulties; the two great dangers, water and running sand, had not presented themselves. On the surface the building of the various sheds and offices had proceeded rapidly; some were already roofed in; in one the winding machinery and engines had been installed. The connection road was made; the link of railway finished; and on the high ground above the Leys three rows of ugly red-brick cottages were steadily approaching completion. The man who made his silent calculations that morning when Jeckie Farnish stood by him in grim silence came to her one day with a sheepish smile on his face.
"I was a bit out in my reckoning, Miss Farnish," he said. "But it was on the right side! At the rate we're going at now we'll be finished, and the pit'll be working from six to eight weeks sooner than I thought. You'd better hurry those builders on with the cottages; you'll be wanting to fill them before so long."
Jeckie needed no admonition to hurry anything. She was speeding up all the work as rapidly as she could, for good reasons which she kept to herself. Once more the outlay was proving greater than had been anticipated, and she knew that if the manager's final reckoning of ten months from the time of her sale of the grocery business had been kept to she would have had to raise more capital. She was secretly overjoyed when Revis, of Heronshawe Main, drove over one day, made a careful inspection of all that had been done, and was then being done, and corroborated Robinson's revised opinion—the pit would be at work six weeks sooner than she had thought.
"And I reckon you'll be rare and glad to see the first tubs o' coal wound, my lass!" he said heartily as he drove off. "I know I was!"
Jeckie nodded and smiled; she was too thankful for his opinion to put her feelings into words. That night she was wakeful—not from anxiety, but from satisfaction and anticipation. Two months more, and the money that had been sunk in that pit would be coming out of its depths again, multiplied, increased....
In the middle of that night a brilliant flash of lurid flame followed by a roar that shook her cottage to its foundations and left it rocking, sent her headlong from her bed. And as she stood sick and trembling, grasping at the lintel of her window, she heard, in the deadly silence that followed, a sudden outburst of the big bell of the church, pealing as if for victory.
CHAPTER IX
The Bell Rings
Jeckie Farnish was a strong woman; physically as well as mentally she was the strongest woman in all those parts. She had scarcely ever known what it was to feel a sudden giving way of strength; the end of a long day's toil usually found her fresh and vigorous, ready for and gladly anticipating the labours of the morrow. Nor had she ever known what it was to experience a mental giving way; the nearest approach to it—only a momentary one—had been on that day, long years before, whereon George Grice had turned his back on her and her father's fallen fortunes. She had felt mentally sick and physically weak then, as though all the strength had been dashed out of her mind and body. But the feeling had quickly passed under the reviving fire of her anger and resentment, and since then she had rarely felt a qualm that affected her in either sense—determination and resolution had always kept her going. There were folks in the parish who were fond of saying that she was moulded of beaten iron with a steel core in the middle—it was their way of expressing a belief that nothing on earth below or in heaven above could move or bend her.
But as the vivid flash of flame and the infernal roar which followed it passed away, Jeckie standing in her night-clothes between her bed and her curtained window, felt herself stricken from head to foot; she was sick, in heart and brain. She suddenly realised that she was shaking throughout her strongly-fashioned frame, that her knees were knocking one against the other, her feet rattling on the floor, her fingers working as from a terrible shock. And in the silence she heard her heart thumping and thumping and thumping—it made her think of the engines at the pit which pumped up the leaking water as the shafts were driven deeper and deeper into the earth. She tried to lift a hand towards her heaving breast; it dropped back, nerveless, to her side.
"Oh God!" she breathed at last. "What is it? What is it?"
The hurrying of folk in the street outside roused her out of her momentary paralysis, and with an effort she stumbled rather than walked to the window-place, drew aside curtain and blind, flung open a casement, and leaned out into the night. And at what she saw, a moan burst from her lips, and she began to tremble as with a violent attack of ague. For the night was one of brilliantly clear moonlight, and from her window she could see all across the Leys and the buildings upon which she had expended such vast sums. And over the newly made pit, so rapidly approaching completion, hung a great umbrella-shaped cloud of dun-coloured smoke, thick and rolling, and from the pit mouth itself issued spurts and flickers of bright flame, which, as she stared, horror-stricken, began to gather at one place into a steady, spreading blaze. Thitherwards men were already beginning to hasten from the open doors of the cottages, calling to each other as they ran. And above their voices, never ceasing, sounded the frantic ringing of the big bell of the church, maddening in its insistence.
She leaned farther out of the window and called to the folk who were hurrying past; called several times before she attracted attention. But at last a white face looked up and a voice hailed her—the voice of one of the principal foremen in the machinery department at the pit.
"Miss Farnish!" he called. "Miss Farnish!—it's an explosion! The down-cast shaft! And look there!—the pit's on fire!"
He pointed a shaking arm across the flat expanse of land before the cottage, and Jeckie saw that the gathering flame about the mouth of the shaft had suddenly leaped into a great mass of lurid light. Its brightness illumined the whole area around it, and she saw then that the surface works which had steadily grown up around the excavations had either been blown away or were left in shapeless bulks of ruinous masonry. Towards these from all directions men were running like ants swarming about a broken down nest.
She turned away from the window, and with no other light than the glare from without, sought for and huddled her shaking limbs into the first garments that came to hand. And as she fastened them about her, scarce knowing how, a hand began to beat upon her door, and Farnish called to her, once, twice, thrice, before she realised that the sounds were human and had any significance.
"Jeckie, mi lass!" Farnish was calling. "Jeckie! Jeckie!"
"What is it?" she asked at last in a dull, strained voice, so strange in its sound that she found herself wondering at it. "What do you want?"
"Yon noise?" cried Farnish, who slept at the back of the cottage. "What's it about, mi lass? What's it mean?"
"The pit's blown up," answered Jeckie, with almost sullen indifference. "It's on fire, too. You can come in and see for yourself."
Farnish pushed the door open and entered; he was half whimpering, half moaning as he crossed the floor towards the window. But Jeckie, now wrapped in a thick ulster coat and tying a shawl round her head and neck, said nothing. Her heart had resumed its normal action by then; she was only conscious that she felt sick and faint. She stared stupidly at her father's figure, darkly outlined against the glow of the fire.
"God ha' mercy on us!" groaned Farnish. "A bad job! a bad job! Howiver can it ha' come about, and what mun be done? It's all of a flame, and——"
"Come out!" commanded Jeckie. "I must see for myself what's——"
She had laid a hand on the half-open door of the bedroom, when it was suddenly wrenched out of her grasp, and she herself thrown backwards across the bed by a second and apparently more violent explosion, which came simultaneously with another vivid burst of orange-coloured flame. Jeckie remembered afterwards what curious and vivid impressions she had in that moment. As she herself was flung over the edge of her thick feather-bed she saw Farnish thrown away from the window, his arms whirling in the air like the sails of a wind-mill; she heard a musical tinkle of falling glass, making a sort of background to his startled outcry. And she saw things. The vividness of the glare lit up a glass-fronted case on the bedroom wall wherein was a stuffed squirrel; it also lit up a framed text of Scripture, set in a floral bordering of hideous design, and a little weather-glass, furnished with two figures, one of which, a man, came out for fine weather, while the other, a woman, emerged for wet; years afterwards she had vivid recollections of how these two quaint puppets were violently agitated at the end of their wires. And then there was gloom again, and silence, and she heard Farnish gathering himself up from the floor, moaning.
"Are you hurt?" she asked, dully and indifferently. "Is aught wrong?"
"T'window were blown right in on mi face," answered Farnish, "I'm bleedin' somewhere. What about yoursen, mi lass?"
Jeckie was seeking for matches and a candle. The candle had been blown out of its tin holder and had rolled into a corner. When she found and lighted it it was to reveal Farnish with a trickle or two of blood on his cheeks and scarce a pane of glass left in the window. She pointed him to a towel, and turned to the door. "That 'ud be the other shaft," she said in a low voice, and in a fashion that made Farnish afraid. "It's been a put-up job. I've enemies! But I'll best 'em yet! I'll not be bet!"
Without another word she went downstairs and out into the street, and Farnish, left alone, looked dolefully at his face as envisaged to him in Jeckie's mirror. Something glittered on one of his projecting cheekbones, and he groaned again as he picked out a sliver of glass. Then he wiped his face with the towel, and, still moaning and bewailing, descended to the living-room. In those days Jeckie no longer locked up the spirits, and he, accordingly, went to the cupboard, got out the gin, and mixed himself a stiff drink. And as he stood sipping it he muttered to himself.
"A bad job!" said Farnish. "A bad, bad job! All that theer brass—gone i' th' twinklin' of an eye, as the sayin' is! An' who can ha' done it?"
He, too, went into the street at last. By that time the whole village was out of bed and abroad, and while the more active of the men folk were flocking towards the scene of the explosion, the older men and the women were hanging in groups about the doors of the houses and cottages, gazing fearfully at the great cupola of smoke that hung over the Leys. Farnish joined one such group, the members of which were already recounting with great zest their own particular private experiences.
"Our Sarah's little lad, Albert James, wor flung fair out o' t'bed and ageean t'wall!" declared one woman. "And his father's heead wor jowled ageean t'chest o' drawers! An' our cottage rocked same as if it wor a earthquake—I made sure 'at all t'place 'ud come tummlin' down about wor ears!"
"Aye, an theer isn't a pane o' glass left whole in our front windows!" said another. "Blown reight into t'kitchen they wor, and I would like to know who's goin' to pay for t'mendin'! This is what comes o' mekkin' coal-pits i' a quiet, peaceable place same as what this wor afore Jeckie Farnish started on at t'game! I allus did say 'at no good 'ud come o' t'job, and 'at we should all on us be blowed up i' wor beds some fine night, and if we hevn't been to-night it nowt but a merciful dispensation o' Providence 'at we hevn't! An' I hope 'at t'job's finished, and 'at we shall hev' no more on't—theer's nowt 'ud suit me better nor to see all t'coal-miners tak theer-sens off and leave us i' peace as we used to be, for I'm sure——"
"Hod this wisht!" broke in one of the few men who had kept back from the Leys. "That's talkin' like a fooil!—doesn't ta see 'at this here'll mean no end o' money lost to them 'at's mekkin' t'pit, and theer's Mestur Farnish stannin' theer? How is it, Mestur Farnish?—d'ye knaw owt about how it happened like?"
"I know no more about it nor what you do," answered Farnish, who was standing at the end of a group of cottages, staring blankly at the flame and smoke which glared and rolled in front. "It's a bad job—a bad job! An' what's yon theer bell ringin' for—is it somebody 'at's gone to ring for t'Sicaster fire brigade, or what?"
"Why, theer wor a young feller started off on his bicycle for that theer purpose, as soon as t'first explosion wor over," answered the man. "Besides, they wodn't hear our bell as far off as Sicaster—t'wind's i' t'wrong quarter, an' all. I been wonderin' what t'bell wor ringin' for, missen. How would it be if we stepped up to t'church, like?"
Farnish, realising the hopelessness of going near the pit, joined the two or three men who turned in the direction of the church. As they hurried up the street, a dog-cart dashed past them; the young man who had hastened to Sicaster for the fire brigade had called at Albert Grice's house on his way, and Albert and Lucilla, panic-stricken, were flying to what might be the grave of their hopes, and more than one man who watched them pass noticed that Lucilla was driving, and flogging the smart cob to the utmost limit of his speed, while Albert, pale and frightened, cowered in the lower seat at her side. Behind them presently came the Sicaster fire engine, its bell ringing clangerously as the steaming horses clattered through the village; in its brazen loudness the frantic ringing of the church bell was lost to hearing, and when Farnish and his companions came to the churchyard and comparative silence, it had ceased altogether.
"Whoever wor ringin' must ha' been ringin' for t'fire engine," muttered one of the men. "Ye see, he's stopped now 'at t'fire brigade's comed. It mun ha' been t'sexton." But just then the sexton, accompanied by the vicar, came hurrying through the little wicket-gate at the farther end of the churchyard. Encountering the other men at the porch, they stopped short.
"Who is in there, ringing that bell?" demanded the vicar. "Who's this?—you, Farnish? Did they send some one up from the pit to ring? If so, they must have broken into the church."
"Notwithstanding," interrupted the sexton, solemnly, "'at everybody in t'parish know 'at t'keys is in my possession, and close by!"
"I know naught about it," answered Farnish. "We come up here to find out who it wor, and what he wor ringin' for, ye see."
High over their heads the big bell once more gave tongue—loudly, clamorously, insistently. It rang out a score of times; then stopped as suddenly as it had begun. And one of the men, stepping back, as the rest, headed by the sexton, made for the porch, and looking up towards the head of the great square tower, let out a sharp exclamation.
"There's a man up there, looking ower t'parapet!" he said. "See yer!—there, wi' t'moon shinin' on his face! Look!"
The other men fell back, and shading their eyes from the bright moonlight, stared in the direction indicated. There, leaning over the battlemented parapet of the tower, immediately above one of the most grotesque of its gargoyles, appeared a weird and sinister figure—a man whose unkempt hair and sparse beard were being blown about his face by the light breeze. One of the younger men there, whose sight was keen, suddenly uttered a sound of recognition.
"Ecod!" he exclaimed. "It's Ben Scholes!"
The vicar uttered a sound too—dismal, and full of foreboding.
"Mad," he muttered. "Mad—undoubtedly! Scholes!" he went on, calling upwards to the figure silhouetted against the sky. "Scholes! What are you doing there? Come down, my good fellow, come down at once!"
But Scholes shook his floating locks, vigorously and emphatically.
"Naught o' t'sort, parson!" he answered, his voice coming with curious force from his airy station. "T'job isn't half done in yet! Ye don't understand—how should yer? Ye see, it wor you 'at put t'idee into mi mind when ye read them comfortable passages t'other week, and I said 'Amen and Amen' to 'em. 'Cursed be covetous persons'—and sich like. I knew then, d'ye see, 'at I wor what they call t'instrument o' vengeance on yon theer Jecholiah. It hed to be, parson it hed to be! I wor doomed, as it weer, to blow her and her devil's wark to perdition, as t'sayin' is. Aye!—listen, all on yer—it wor through me 'at t'pit's been blown up! Three hundred pound o' good money I wared to get it blown into t'air. And I mun ring, I mun ring, all through the night, till t'sun rises on t'scene o' desolation; ring, d'ye understand, to show how t'Lord hes vengeance on bad 'uns like yon theer woman! Three hundred pound!—but I gat it done! Flame and smoke, parson!—I see'd 'em rise out o' t'pit. And then I rang, and rang, and rang—and I mun ring agen till t'sun rises ower yon woods. So may all them 'at cheats poor folk perish!"
"Mad!" repeated the vicar, looking helplessly round him. "What does he mean! And how can we get at him?"
"He means, sir, 'at he's paid some of them miners three hundred pound to blow t'pit up," answered the sexton, who was a sharp-witted man, "and as to gettin' at him, it's none to be done till he chooses to come down. There's naught but a straight ladder, and a man-hole at t'end on it, into yon belfry, and if he stands on t'trap door i' that man-hole he can keep all t'parish out as long as he likes. See you!—he's at it again!"
Scholes had suddenly disappeared from the parapet, and a moment later the big bell began clamouring once more.
"Didn't he say he mun ring till sunrise?" said the sexton. "He will ring!"
Farnish went hurrying home through the crowds in the village street. There was a light in the window of the living-room, and when he walked in, he found Jeckie, white-faced and grim, standing by a newly lighted lamp, staring at nothing. He went up and touched her timidly, and for the first time in her life she started, as if in fear. But Farnish was too full of news to notice that her nerves were gone.
"Jeckie, mi lass!" he said. "It's yon man Ben Scholes's 'at's at t'bottom o' this here! He paid some fellers three hundred pound to blow t'pit up—and he's gone mad wi' t'glory on it—mad!"
CHAPTER X
Black Depths
The cottage to which Jeckie had removed her father and herself, and such household belongings as were absolutely necessary to their simple standard of comfort, faced due east; consequently, when the sun rose above the fringe of woods that morning its beams shone direct into the little living-room. And they fell full on Jeckie, who sat bolt upright at the table, her hands stretched out and tightly clasped on its surface, her eyes staring straight in front of her, her lips white and set. So she had sat for hours—motionless, silent. The tall clock in the corner had ticked away its record of minutes; the darkness had gone; the grey light had stolen in; there had come a glow in the skies and a gradual lighting of the window; finally, the sun had shown a ruddy, round face above the tapering pines and firs on the hilltop behind the Leys, and in the meadows and orchards the blackbirds and thrushes had begun to pipe and trill. But the breaking of a new day had caused no change in Jeckie Farnish's attitude. It was, said Farnish, talking of it after to his cronies, as if she had been turned into stone.
"Theer wor niver a word out on her, poor lass, after I'd telled her what I'd gathered up at t'church porch," said he. "When she heeard 'at yon Ben Scholes had paid fellers three hundred pound to blow up t'pit she collapsed, as they call it, into t'chair and ligged her hand on t'table, and theer she sat, starin' and starin', hour after hour, till I wor fair afraid! I leeted t'lamp, and made t'fire, and brewed a pot a' tea, but I couldn't get her to put her lips to it. Wheer I laid t'cup at her side at four o'clock, theer it wor at seven—untasted. And not one word did she spake, all that time—nobbut sat and stared and stared i' front on her, as if she'd see summat. An happen she did see summat—how can I say?"
But Jeckie moved at last. As Farnish, well-nigh beyond his wits with fear and anxiety, stood by the hearth, watching her, a hurried step sounded on the flagged path outside the cottage, and Robinson, the manager, came hastening in, grimy and dishevelled. She stirred then; but it was only the stirrings of a burning eye and a dry lip.
"Well?" she said, in such a faint whisper that both men started and looked anxiously at her. "Well? Speak!"
Robinson threw out both hands with a gesture of despair. "It's worse than I thought!" he answered, huskily. "No use pretending it isn't; it's far worse. We've made as thorough an examination as we could, and it's terrible to see what damage has been done. Work of all this time—many a long month!—all destroyed, in both shafts. They're blocked with wreckage! Brickwork, ironwork, everything's been blown out in both. The downcast's the worst. And—and that's not all!"
"What is all?" asked Jeckie. "Say it! I want to know."
Robinson glanced at Farnish, and Jeckie was quick to interpret the look. She turned on her father as if he had been a house dog.
"Go out!" she commanded. "Outside!—and shut the door. Now then," she demanded as Farnish hurried into the garden and pulled the door tight after him. "Say it straight out! What is—all?"
Robinson dropped into a chair and for a moment rested his head on his hands; when he raised it again his face was as white as Jeckie's.
"I've been down that down-cast shaft, through the wreckage, as far as I could—Hargreaves and I went down, an hour since," he replied. "You never saw such a sight!—those fellows must have used some explosive that's more powerful than anything we've ever used for ordinary blasting. Those heavy cast-iron plates that we used for that stretch of tubbing, now—twisted and curled as if they'd been sheets of paper—ribs, brackets, flanges—I couldn't have believed that such things could have been, well, just made into ribbons, as if they'd been no more than putty. The timbering and the masonry, of course, are just so much splinters and dust, but the ironwork—well, it beats me how it's happened! Still, in time, all that could be put right—there'd be long delay, to be sure, and awful expense—all would have to be done over again—it's like starting all over again, but——"
He paused, shook his head, shivered a little as if at some recollection, and for a moment seemed as if he had lost the thread of his story.
"Get on to what there is of the rest of it!" commanded Jeckie. "There's more!"
Robinson started; the last word appeared to spur him up.
"More!" he exclaimed, almost emphatically. "More? Yes more!—lots more. The worst of it! My God!"
"Will you get it out?" said Jeckie, in a low voice that betrayed her concentrated anxiety. "Say it, man. I want to know."
Robinson made an effort, and pulled himself together. He gave Jeckie a queer, sidelong glance.
"I went down, through the wreckage, as far as I could," he said. "And—there's been more than the mere blowing up of timber and masonry, and iron fittings. We heard it, down there; heard it unmistakably—me and Hargreaves. I heard it; he heard it. Oh, yes; there's no doubt of it. The explosion must have blown out a tremendous lot of wall surface stuff in the lowest workings they'd got to, where they hadn't started any masonry or tubbing, you understand. Because—we heard! No mistaking it! Once—just once—I've heard it before. Never to be forgotten, that—no!"
"For God's sake, man, speak plainly!" said Jeckie. "Heard—what!"
Robinson glanced fearfully around him as he bent nearer to her. He spoke but one word, in a tense whisper.
"Water!"
Jeckie started back, and her drawn face grew white to the lips. She, too, spoke the word he had spoken, in a lower whisper than his.
"Water!"
Robinson edged his chair near to the table and tapped the edge with a forefinger on which there was both grime and blood.
"I tell you we heard it—me and Hargreaves," he said. "I say—no mistaking it. This explosion, now—it must have blown a pretty considerable hole into the lowest part of the shaft, where they've been at work this last week or two, and it's released—it may be a thin bed of quicksand that we didn't suspect, or water-logged sandstone or sand, or something of that sort, if you follow me, but there's the fact—water! It's running into the shaft at, I should say, the rate of thousands of gallons a minute; we could hear it fairly roaring down there. It's no use; it's there!"
"What'll happen?" asked Jeckie in a curiously hard voice.
"The shafts'll be flooded to the brim in twenty-four hours," answered Robinson. "To the brim!'
"You said shafts!" exclaimed Jeckie.
"It's running into the up-cast, too," said Robinson. "We examined that. There must have been—must be—an extensive bed of quicksand lying between both shafts. Anyhow, it's there. I tell you, they'll be flooded to the brim!"
Jeckie's mind went back to a certain conversation she had once had with Revis, of Heronshawe Main. He too, had met with an obstacle in water, and had surmounted it.
"But it can be pumped out?" she suggested.
"Aye!" assented Robinson. "But how long will it take as things are, and how long after that to get matters put as straight as they were last night, and how much will it cost? It's no use denying it—all that we've done, all that we'd arrived at, is just—ruined!"
Jeckie suddenly got up from the table. She went across to the window, and pulling aside the half-curtain that veiled the lower panes, looked out across the Leys. The surface works of the new pit were either levelled with the ground or showing gaunt and ruinous against the sky-line; crowds of curious sightseers were grouped about them; above everything, a sinister blot on the otherwise sun-filled sky, a cloud of yellow smoke still hung, heavy and significant, as if loath to float away from the scene of destruction. And as suddenly as she had risen from her seat so she turned on Robinson with a quick movement and with a flash of her old spirit. "But the coal's still there!" she exclaimed. "The coal's still there—to be got!"
Robinson looked at her for a moment in silence. Of late she had taken him into her confidence, pretty deeply, and she suddenly saw of what he was thinking. Money!—always money! And she began to think, too, of the money that had gone into the pit, and of how much more would be wanted now to recover what had so gone. It was as if one had lost a sovereign down some grating in the street, and must needs pay another to get it back.
"I say the coal's still there!" she repeated with fierce insistence. "To be got, do you hear? It's got to be got—that water'll have to be pumped out, and everything put in order again, and do you think I'm going to lose all I've laid out?" she went on, suddenly beating her fist on the table. "We must get to work at once!"
Robinson moved his head from side to side; something in the movement suggested difficulty, perhaps hopelessness.
"It's for you to decide," he said, dully. "It'll cost—I don't know what it won't cost. If you'd hear that water pouring in! And as things are, the shafts cumbered up with ruin; we can do nothing to stop it."
Jeckie snatched up her ulster, and began to put it on.
"Come on!" she said, turning to the door. "I'm going there myself."
Robinson sighed heavily as he pulled himself out of his chair and followed her into the sunlight. And he sighed again and shook his head as they set out across the Leys in the direction of the wrecked pit.
"There's naught to be done at present," he said, dejectedly. "It'll be days before we know the full extent of the damage. And we shall have to wait till we find out how high this water's going to rise—we don't know yet what weight there is behind it, down there. We're all in the dark."
"Something's got to be done!" declared Jeckie. Badly shaken though she was, a flash of her old indomitable spirit still woke to life at odd moments. "We can't stand about doing nothing," she went on. "The coal's there, I tell you!"
There were plenty of people standing about, doing nothing, on the edge of the scene of disaster, and among them Albert and Lucilla Grice. Lucilla was in tears, and Albert was in apparently heated argument with some of the officials, who turned to Robinson as he and Jeckie drew near.
"Mr. Grice is blaming us because he says there ought to have been a watch kept over these shafts," said one of them. "I've told him there were watchmen."
"Then how comes it that somebody could get down there and place these explosives where they did," demanded Albert. "Don't tell me! There's been no proper watch kept at all, or this couldn't ha' happened. And all my wife's money invested in this!—and blown to pieces!"
He gave Jeckie a sidelong glance, as if laying the blame on her shoulders. He chanced to be in her way where he stood, and she unceremoniously elbowed him aside.
"Your wife's money!" she snarled as she passed him. "What's her bit o' money compared to what I've put in? Come on, Robinson—I'm going down that shaft as far as I can—to find out how things are."
"It's dangerous," said Robinson. "We risked a lot, me and Hargreaves."
"Where you've been I can go—and I'm going," declared Jeckie. "Come on—we'll go together."
The others, standing round, watched Jeckie's descent into the tangled mass of iron, wood, masonry; she herself, following her manager, cared nothing for danger, and was only intent on listening for the dread sound of which he had spoken. And, at last, when they had made their way a good two hundred feet into the shaft, penetrating through broken and twisted plates and girders, Robinson paused and held up the lantern he was carrying as a sign that they could go no farther.
"Listen!" he said in a whisper. "You'll hear!"
Jeckie steadied herself among the wreckage, looking down the darkness beneath it. And suddenly, in the silence that hung all round them, she heard, far below, in the gloomy depths which her imagination pictured the steady, heavy rush of water. It was unmistakable—and once again she felt sick in heart and brain, and weak of body.
"It's increased in volume since I was down," muttered Robinson as he stood at her side. "It's as I said before—the pit'll be flooded out. There's no help for it. It must be rising fast, that water."
He tore away a loose piece of iron from the wreckage close by, and dropped it through the twisted mass beneath their standing place. The sound of its heavy splash came almost at once.
"You hear!" he exclaimed. "It's within thirty or forty feet of us now! It'll be up here before long; it'll rise to the brim. There's nothing to be done, Miss Farnish—we'd best make our way up again."
When Jeckie climbed out of the last mass of wreckage at the mouth of the shaft, it was to find Revis standing close by, talking to the men who hung about. He came up to her with a face full of grave concern.
"This is a bad job, my lass!" he said in low tones. "I'm as sorry for you as I can be!" He turned from her to Robinson. "Water rising?" he asked.
"Aye, fast as it can!" answered Robinson. "There must have been a tremendous lot released right down where they'd got to. And we were close on to the seam, too!"
"Rising in both shafts?" inquired Revis.
Robinson gave him a significant look.
"Both!" he answered.
Revis drew him aside; the others, watching them, heard the two men talking technicalities; Jeckie caught chance terms and expressions here and there—"water-laden bed"; "dangerous feeder"; "water-logged trias"; "drainage tunnel"; "Poetsch's method"; "Gebhardt and Koenig's method"; "Kind-Chaudron system"; "winding and pumping"—she understood little or nothing of it, and at that moment did not care to inquire; all that she realised was that the work into which she had put so much energy, and whereon she had laid out all her beloved money, was in danger of utter ruin. She let Albert grumble and growl to the men, and Lucilla weep fretfully; she herself stood silent and motionless, watching Revis and the manager.
Revis came to her at last, motioning Albert and Lucilla to join them. He looked graver than before.
"This is a very bad job!" he said in a low voice. "There seems to be no doubt that this explosive, whatever it was—and it must have been of extraordinary force—has tapped an exceptionally heavy lot of water. The mine'll be flooded—that is, these two shafts will. It's a good job you hadn't got the whole thing finished and opened out, for in that case, if this explosion had happened, you'd have had all the workings flooded, and there'd probably have been serious loss of life. As it is——"
Jeckie interrupted him—the question of what might have been had no interest for her.
"Can't the water be pumped out?" she asked. "You had trouble yourself that way?"
"Aye, you can pump!" agreed Revis. "But—you don't know what amount of water there is yet. It looks to me, from what Robinson says, as if there was a sort of subterranean lake down there. Pump, aye!—but ... a long and terrible job. And—now don't be frightened!—the thing is—will it be worth it?"
"The coal's there!" exclaimed Jeckie, dogged and determined.
Revis looked from her to the Grices. Lucilla was grasping a tear-soaked handkerchief and gazing at him in the last throes of despairing anxiety; Albert stood with his lips a little open, expectant of wisdom from the man of experience.
"Yes," said Revis, at last. "But—it's no use shirking difficulties—this may be a quicksand that forms a thick cover all over the measures of whatever extent they may be. The fact is—you don't know what's happened down there, nor where you are."
"The coal's there!" repeated Jeckie. "It's there, I say! We've got to get it."
CHAPTER XI
The Sentence
On the evening of that eventful day—a day of comings and goings about the ruined colliery—Farnish stayed later than usual at the "Coach-and-Four." There had never been so much to talk about in the whole history of Savilestowe as there was that evening, and he, as father of Jeckie Farnish, was a person of consequence in the debate which was carried on in the bar-parlour to the latest hours allowed by the licensing laws. But he went home at last, to find the cottage in darkness; there was not even the gleam of the last ashes of the usual wood fire to welcome him when he opened the door which admitted to the living-room. "I misdoubt yon poor lass o' mine is still hangin' about them shafts!" he muttered, as he began to feel around him in the darkness. "It's nat'ral on her part, an' all, but it'll do no good, no good!" Then he struck a match, drawn from a box which was always handy at the corner of the mantelpiece, and as he turned to where the lamp was kept, saw Jeckie. She sat in an easy chair at the other side of the hearth, but in no lounging attitude, such as is commonly affected by folk who sit in easy chairs. Instead, she was bolt upright and rigid, and for a moment Farnish wondered if she had been stricken with paralysis, or was dead. But a sudden flash of her keen eyes showed him that she was alive enough.
"Why, Jecholiah, mi lass!" he exclaimed, as he lighted the lamp. "What's this here? Sittin' there i' t'darkness?—no light, no fire! Ye mo'nt tek on so, Jecholiah—it's o' no use, and bad for a body."
"Who said aught about takin' on?" answered Jeckie, with a sombre stare at him. "I was thinkin'—can't one think in t'dark as well as in t'light?"
"I dare say they can, mi lass," assented Farnish. "I done it misen, more nor once, and a varry bad thing it is—what ye happen to think i' t'dark's allus magnified, as it weer. Let me get you a drop o' summat, now?—and then go to yer bed and try for a bit o' sleep—ye need it."
"You can get something for yourself," answered Jeckie. "I want naught!" Farnish had no objection to this invitation. He got out the bottle of gin, mixed himself a tumbler to his liking, and sitting down in his own chair, wagged his head over the glass.
"I been tryin' to collect a bit o' information," he said. "Yon theer Ben Scholes—as were at t'bottom o' this unfortunate episode, as t'term is—he's clean disappeared. They laid wait for him to come down out o' t'church tower; watched for him most o' t'day, but he niver come, and as t'afternoon were drawing to an end, some on 'em stormed his citadel. Went up t'ladder to t'chamber i' t'tower wheer they toll t'bells—but t'bird hed flown. An' now they're sayin' 'at Scholes knew some secret way in and out o' t'church, and 'at he's off wi' them fellers 'at he bribed to blow t'pit up. Howsomeiver, Jecholiah, mi lass, t'police is on t'track of all on 'em, and ye'll hev t'satisfaction o' seein' malefactors browt to justice. There is them 'at I've been talkin' wi' 'at says 'at i' their opinion it's a hengin' matter—high treason, or summat o' that sort, but chuse how, it'll mean 'at they'll be clapped i' gaol for t'rest o' their lives, and never come out no more. So ye mun cheer up!"
Jeckie glowered at him in the dim light of the lamp.
"What good'll that do me?" she demanded, contemptuously. "Will it repair t'damage they've done? I don't care whether they catch Ben Scholes or no! Him and them other devils can go where they like, for all I care! I want to hear naught about 'em. They've done their job. It's over!"
"Aye, why, mi lass," expostulated Farnish. "But theer's what t'scholars terms poetic justice. It 'ud be nowt but right if these here chaps were browt to it. Now, it 'ud nobbut be t'proper thing if they could be henged—and happen drawn and quartered, same as yere done i' t'good old times—on t'scene o' their misdeeds. But I doubt whether that theer 'ud be allowed nowadays—we'm all too soft-hearted. Hev a drop o' comfort, Jecholiah, mi lass, and then get to your bed."
"No!" retorted Jeckie. "I haven't done thinking."
Farnish left her thinking, and went to bed himself, and slept soundly. But the habits of a lifetime had made him an early riser, and he was up again and downstairs as the grey dawn broke over the village. And there he found Jeckie still sitting just as he had left her, some hours before, and in the light of his chamber candlestick he saw something that made him start back in amazement.
"The Lord ha' mercy on us, mi lass!" he exclaimed in awe-struck accents. "What's come o' your hair? Look at yoursen!"
The feminine instinct never wholly dies out, and Jeckie lifted herself to her feet, and, taking the candle from her father's hand, looked into the old mirror which hung above the mantelpieces. Then she saw what he meant. Her hair, thick, luxuriant still, and till the day before black and glossy as in her days of young womanhood, was now patched freely with grey strands, and here and there with unmistakable threads of white. She stood, looked, turned away, and set down the candle.
"Aye!" she muttered, as if to herself. "Aye!—and there's a lot o' thinkin', and plannin', and schemin' to do yet!"
None knew that better than she did. Of all the folk who from personal motives or from sheer natural curiosity discussed the present and future situation of the unlucky mine, none were so keenly aware of the real state of things as its principal proprietor. Lucilla might weep and bewail, and Albert indulge in platitudes which he fondly believed to be oracular sayings of the deepest wisdom, but Jeckie, essentially practical and businesslike, knew what the real problem was. There was so much capital left. It would have sufficed amply, if things had gone on as they were going on before the explosions. But now the pit was ruined in its upper and lower workings, and an immense amount of labour in pumping, clearing, and restoring was absolutely necessary before it could be brought back to the state in which it had been when Scholes achieved his revenge. Could she last out?
It was not in her to be idle. She sought the opinion of numerous experts; she went carefully into the all-important question of the money; at last she went to work once more. It was a fell and sinister enemy that had to be encountered first, for the shafts, as Robinson had prophesied, were flooded to the brim. But there the water had paused in its upward progress, and she gave the word to start on its clearance. Henceforth the village saw nothing but the progress of this grim fight. There was now no more clanging of steel and iron about the place; no more work at the rows of cottages which should soon have been filled by miners and their families; there was nothing but the ceaseless clearing of the shafts from the dark flood which had been released from its unsuspected source in the bowels of the earth—and the fear lest, when all this was accomplished, some further eruption might not break out and render all the labour in vain.
And as before, when hope was high and the fruition of her toiling and scheming seemed certain, so now, when all was doubt and anxiety, Jeckie Farnish haunted the scene from early morning till the evening shadows fell. She aged rapidly in those days; the patches of white thickened in the dark hair; the keen eyes grew harassed and hunted; about the firm mouth lines and seams appeared which nothing would ever smooth away again. She grew strangely silent; it seemed to those whose business brought them into touch with her that all she did throughout the day was to watch and watch and watch. She said little to Farnish; she ate and drank mechanically—no more, observed Farnish to his cronies, than kept the health in her body, now growing thin and gaunt; and at night she sat alone in the cottage, always staring at the fire which her father took care to keep going; if it had not been for him, he said, there would have been no fire, for she had no interest in anything but the ceaseless clearance of the dark floods which were being drawn and pumped away. It was useless, too, he said, to sit with her and attempt to cheer her up; she just sat, staring before her. So Farnish continued to attend the nightly symposium at the "Coach-and-Four," and in the living-room of their cottage Jeckie sat motionless, her eyes fixed on the bit of red glow in the grate, thinking.
She was so sitting one night, long after darkness had fallen, and when there was no light in the place beyond a rapidly dying lamp and the dull gleam of the fire, when, behind her chair, she heard the latch of the door lifted, and a footstep which she knew to be a man's. She believed it to be Farnish, who had come in an hour before his time, and she took no heed. But then fell silence, a strange and frightening silence, and at last she turned her head and looked. And there, half in shadow, half in the light, staring at her out of glowing eyes, stood Scholes.
The man whom Jeckie had so cunningly dispossessed of his lawful rights, had always been more or less of an unkempt, carelessly attired individual—the sort of man who neglected hair and beard, and wore his clothes as if they had been thrown on with one of his own pitchforks. But as he stood there now, motionless, staring at her, he reminded Jeckie of pictures which she had seen; pictures of prophets, hermits, anchorites. His head was bare, and his untrimmed, uncombed locks fell about his ears and shoulders; even in that dim light she could see leaves and straw in them, and in the straggling beard which mingled with them. The rest of him, as she saw it, was wrapped in an ancient, weather-stained ulster coat, in rags at all its extremities, and tied about the waist with a piece of old cart rope. He carried a long staff of hazel in one hand; the other clawed meditatively at his beard as he stood fixedly staring at the woman who, in her turn, stared at him over her shoulder. And, suddenly, Jeckie forgot hair, beard, the strange garb, and saw nothing but the man's burning eyes, which never shifted their intense gaze from her face. Before many seconds had elapsed she would have given much to withdraw her own gaze—twice she tried to close her eyelids, in the vain hope that this was a phantom, a bad dream. But Scholes held her; and at last he spoke, in a queer, hollow voice which sent a thrill of fear through her. For Jeckie Farnish, like all country folk of her sort, and in spite of her hard-hearted, practical temperament, was intensely superstitious, and it seemed to her that this was either Scholes's ghost or that if he were really there in the flesh he had become endowed with supernatural powers. And as he spoke she cowered before him, trembling in every limb.
"So ye're sittin' theer, Jecholiah, all bi yersen, doin' nowt but thinkin'!" said the queer voice. "An' to be sure, when all's said and done, that's t'inevitable end of all them 'at compasses evil. Ye've nowt to do now but think, and think, and think! Here's t'end of all your schemin' and contrivin' and sellin' yer soul for brass! Wheer's yer brass, now? Gone!—and ye'll niver see one penny on it agen—niver! Ye're doomed, Jecholiah! Ye've been doomed to destruction ever since that day when yer carried yer bad heart into a poor man's house, wi' full determination to cheat him. Ye reckoned to be buyin' one thing when ye knew well 'at ye wor buyin' another. An' what ye wor doin' then wor this—ye were sellin' yer soul to t'Devil! Ye cheated me to mi face; but ye can't cheat him 'at put it into yer mind to cheat me! An' theer's others powers beside him, and I've been their instrument. I wor nowt but an agent i' bringing you to destruction. For ye're destroyed, Jecholiah! Ye can work and tew, tew and work, labour and better labour, at yon black water, but ye'll never clear it; it's t'flood o' vengeance 'at's come down on yer! If ye'd been content to mak' yer brass honest and straight, nowt would ha' happened to ye; and ye'd ha' had all 'at yer've lost. Lost! lost! lost! Sit theer, and stare and stare at yer bit o' fire till it dies out; yer last hopes'll die wi' that, for niver one penny o' yer brass will ye iver see out o' that land 'at once were mine and 'at ye cheated me out on. Ye ran t'race i' yer own way, Jecholiah, and ye're beaten!"
The burning eyes and strange figure suddenly vanished into the gloom from which they had appeared, and at the same moment the light of the lamp, which had been growing fainter and fainter while the queer voice sounded, gave one leap, showed Jeckie that she was alone in the living-room, and died out. Then came blackness, for at the same time the red ashes in the grate sank into sombre grey, and with the blackness an intense silence. She knew then that what she had seen was Scholes's ghost, and with a lifting of her hands to her head and a sudden catching of her breath, she half rose, and in the action fell forward across the hearth.
Farnish, coming home an hour later, found her lying there unconscious. And, in unconsciousness or semi-consciousness, she lay in her bed for a long time, hovering between life and death. One season had merged into another before Jeckie came to herself. Farnish and his younger daughter were at her bedside when her eyes first opened with full intelligence, and for a moment she believed that the old days at Applecroft were back again, and that they were all together. But in the next she remembered and realised, and after one quick glance at Rushie she turned her face to the wall with a gesture that seemed to implore silence.
It takes much to kill a woman of such a constitution, and Jeckie began to mend. But it was long before she spoke a word to any of those who came about her as to the events that had led up to her illness. It was to Farnish that she spoke at last; he had never failed in constant attendance on her, and sat for hours in her room, watching her, waking or sleeping. And as he sat by her side one grey afternoon she suddenly turned her eyes on him with a flash of their old power.
"How long have I been here?" she demanded.
Farnish, mindful of the doctor's orders, tried to evade a direct answer.
"Ye'd best not to bother about that theer, mi lass," he said, soothingly. "Ye're mendin' varry weel now, and t'doctor says 'at if ye're nobbut kept quiet, and hev nowt to worry yer, ye'll soon be up and doin', so——"
"I shall have plenty to worry about if you don't tell me what I want to know," insisted Jeckie. "How long have I been ill? Out with it!"
"Why, then, a matter o' two or three month, mi lass," replied Farnish. "But ye've been well looked to. Me an' yer sister Rushie, we've been wi' you all t'time—she's been a reight good 'un, has Rushie—never left t'place, and——"
Jeckie made a movement of impatience.
"What's gone on across there?" she demanded, pointing a wasted hand to the window. "What have they done? How are things?"
Farnish, who sat by the bedside twiddling his thumbs in sign of deep perplexity, shook his head.
"Now, Jecholiah, mi lass!" he said, with a poor attempt at firmness. "That's t'varry thing 'at t'doctor said ye worrn't to be allowed to talk about. So——"
"If you don't tell me, I'll get up and see for myself!" she retorted. "You'd better say!"
"Why, then," answered Farnish, "if I mun say, all I can say is, 'at you were took badly Mestur Revis he's hed all t'affairs i' hand. He come forrard and said 'at he'd tak it all on his shoulders, i' your interest. And he's t'only man 'at can rightly say how things is—I can't. I know nowt, mi lass—'ceptin' what I've telled you."
"I must see him," said Jeckie.
"Ye mun ha' t'doctor's consent first, mi lass," replied Farnish.
She lay quiet for some time after that; then she suddenly asked a question which made Farnish stare at her.
"Has naught been heard of Ben Scholes?"
Farnish made a curious exclamation.
"Scholes!" he said. "Aye, for sure! He wor found dead, i' Wake Wood, some time ago; they say he'd evidently been i' hiding theer, and theer he'd died. Queer, worrn't it, mi lass?"
But Jeckie made no answer. She knew now, for certain, that it was Scholes's ghost that had come to her, and that all was lost.
CHAPTER XII
The Second Exodus
Those who ministered to her in her convalescence found it difficult to understand Jeckie Farnish's curious apathy and indifference to the things about her. Once her sister was out of danger, Rushie had gone home to Binks and her children; Binks was by that time a bustling tradesman in Sicaster, and had prospered so well that Rushie wore a real sealskin coat and sported gold chains and diamond rings. It had been Binks's idea that his wife should go to the rescue when Jeckie was taken ill; blood, said Binks, with the air of a Solomon, was thicker than water when all's said and done, and bygones should be bygones, and in no half-measures. So Rushie waited on Jeckie hand and foot, and Jeckie, after she had come to herself, watched her going about the sick room and said nothing. At that time, indeed, she said nothing to anybody, and when Rushie had returned, leaving her sister in charge of Farnish and a neighbour-woman, she said less. Farnish began to wonder if her illness had affected her mind, and voiced his doubts to the doctor; the doctor made him leave Jeckie alone; she would speak, he said, as soon as she wanted to.
There came a time when Farnish was obliged to speak, whether Jeckie wanted to hear or not. He approached her bedside one day in a shamefaced, diffident manner, looking doubtfully at her.
"Jecholiah, mi lass," said Farnish, "theer's a little matter 'at I mun mention to yer, though I'm sure I wouldn't trouble yer wi' it if it could be helped. But ye see, mi lass, when ye were ta'en badly an' could do nowt for yersen, I hed to tak things i' hand, and of course, I hed to lay out money. I knew wheer you kep' a certain supply down theer i' t'owd bewro i' t'kitchen corner, and I hed to force t'lock and lay hands on it. That's three months and more since, and for all I've been varry careful about layin' it out, it's come to an end, as all such commodities, as they term 'em, does. What mun I do, mi lass?"
Jeckie made an effort of memory, and remembered how much money there had been in the old bureau of which her father spoke—something between forty and fifty pounds, as far as she could recollect. She made a rapid calculation and found that Farnish had spent between three and four pounds a week during her illness. There was nothing extravagant in such expenditure at such a time. But she gave him a sharp, searching look.
"You made that do? You have borrowed aught from anybody?" she demanded.
"Surely not, mi lass!" protested Farnish. "No!"
"Not from them Binkses?" questioned Jeckie.
"Nowt from nobody, Jecholiah," said Farnish. "It's panned out very well, ower fourteen weeks. There's happen a pound or so left. But——"
"Go downstairs, and come up again when I knock on t'floor," said Jeckie. "I have a bit in my box."
Farnish went away in his usual obedient fashion, and when he had gone, Jeckie, who hitherto had been unable to get out of bed unaided, made shift to rise, and to wrap a shawl round her shoulders. Weak as she was, her first action was characteristic—to totter to the door and lock it. That cost her trembling limbs an effort; she had to summon all her small reserve of strength and to pause once or twice in order to cross the floor to a heavy, iron-clamped box which stood in one corner of the room, staying again on the way to extract a key from a certain hiding-place beneath the carpet. And when this box was unlocked she found it difficult work to lift out and lay aside the various things that lay within; it took some time before she had got down to the bottom and had there unearthed a smaller box, wherein, months before, when she had been obliged to face possible contingencies, she had placed a personal reserve fund. The key of that box was in an old satchel kept within the larger one; she found it at last and laid bare her secret store.
Weak and trembling as she was, Jeckie could not forbear the satisfaction of counting over this money. She had deposited there a thousand pounds in banknotes, and fifty in gold, and she slowly counted paper and coin. It was all there, all safe, and she took ten pounds in gold, put the rest back, and with many tremblings and restings, locked up the two boxes, unlocked the door, knocked loudly on the floor, and climbed back into bed.
"There's ten pound," she said when Farnish came up in response to her summons. "Make it go as far as you can."
She turned her face away then, as if wanting no talk on the matter, and Farnish took the hint and the money and went quietly away. It astonished him, as Jeckie grew stronger, that she asked no questions about his expenditure; once upon a time, she would have made him account for every penny. But now she seemed indifferent; she was indifferent, indeed, to everything, and there came a time when she showed no interest in the doctor's visits, as if she cared nothing whether he was doing her good or not. But all that time she was steadily improving, and at last the doctor told her, in Farnish's presence, that there was no need for him to come again and that she could get up.
"Ye'll be glad to take a look round, no doubt, mi lass," observed Farnish, when the doctor had gone. "It'll liven you up."
Jeckie made no reply. The neighbour-woman got her up next day, helped her to dress, and bustled about in the hope of making her comfortable at her first rising. When Jeckie was dressed this good Samaritan went downstairs and returned with an easy chair and cushions.
"I'll put this here agen t'winda, Miss Farnish," she said with cheery officiousness. "Ye'll be able to look out theer ower t'pit, and see what they're a-doin' on theer. Nowt so lively as it wor afore t'accident, but theer is things bein' done theer, an' happen ye'll like to get a glimpse on' em, for, of course, ye mun ha' been anxious, an'——"
"Put that chair in that corner!" snapped Jeckie, with a sudden gleam of her old temper. "An' hold yer wisht about t'pit! When I want to talk about t'pit, I'll let you know."
The woman had sufficient sense to see that her charge was irritable, and she made no answer; she had enough wit, too, to place the easy chair in a corner of the room from which it was impossible to see out of the window. And in that corner Jeckie spent the first period of her convalescence, at first doing nothing, afterwards occupying herself in mending her linen.
Farnish came upstairs every now and then, always with some question—was she wanting aught? But Jeckie never wanted anything; she ate and drank whatever was put before her without remark and with apparent indifference, and so the days went by. And during the whole of that time she never asked her father a question save once.
"Where," she asked suddenly, one day, as Farnish hung about the bedroom in his usual aimless, good-intentioned fashion, "where did they bury Scholes?"
"Why, i' t'churchyard, to be sure, mi lass!" answered Farnish, glad to break the silence which he found so trying. "Wheer else? Ligged him i' t'same grave as his missus—ye'll know t'spot; halfway down that new piece o' ground 'at they took in fro' Stubley's ten-acre a few years sin'. Aye, he wor buried all reight theer, wor Ben—same as anybody else. Why, mi lass?"
"Naught!" answered Jeckie, and relapsed into her usual silence.
The same silence continued when she at last went downstairs. And there Farnish noticed that she never went near the window of the living-room; it, like that of her bedroom, overlooked the ill-fated colliery. For awhile she accepted the help and ministrations of the neighbour-woman; then one day she gave her some money and with the curt remark that in future she and her father could fend for themselves, dismissed her. She began to go about the cottage then, and to do the household work, and Farnish, who was somewhat shrewd as regards observation, noticed that one night, when the darkness had fallen, she fitted two muslin blinds to the window of the living-room and the window of her chamber above; the light could come in through them, but no one could see out.
"It's t'same as if our Jeckie niver wanted to set her eyes on yon theer pit an' its surroundings niver no more!" observed Farnish, narrating this curious circumstance to his principal crony. "Shutten 'em clean out, as it weer!"
"An' no wonder, considerin' how things has befallen," remarked the crony. "If things hed turned out wi' onny affair o' mine as that's turned out wi' her, d'ye think I should want to hev' it i' front o' my eyes, allus remindin' me o' what had happened? Nowt o' t'sort!"
"Aye!" said Farnish, reflectively. "But—she knows nowt, as yet."
There came a time when Jeckie had to know. One morning, when she was fully restored to health, though now a gaunt and haggard woman, grey-haired and spiritless, Farnish, who had been out in the village, came in as she was washing up the breakfast things in the scullery and approached her with evident concern.
"Jecholiah, mi lass," he said, in a low voice, "theer's Mestur Revis outside, i' his trap. He's called at t'doctor's as he came through Sicaster, and t'doctor says you're now fit to hev a bit o' business talk. And Mestur Revis is varry anxious to come in and hev it, now. How will it be, mi lass?"
Jeckie finished polishing her china before she answered, and Farnish stood by, silent, anxiously waiting.
"Happen I know as much as Revis or anybody else can tell," she said at last in a queer voice. "And happen I got to know it in a way 'at neither Revis nor you, nor anybody, 'ud understand. But—tell him to come in."
Farnish went out to the colliery proprietor, who sat in his smart dog-cart, meditatively surveying the scene on the other side of the road. There were no signs of activity now about the pit on which Jeckie had set such hopes; the surface buildings stood as ruinous as the explosions had left them; on the hillside the cottages intended for the miners were just as they were when all work had come to an end on them; over the whole surface of the Leys there was ruin and desolation. And Revis had just shaken his head and heaved a deep sigh when Farnish emerged from the cottage.
"She'll see you now, if you'll please go in, Mestur Revis," said Farnish. Then he looked half entreatingly, half wistfully at the big man. "Ye'll break it gentle to her, sir?" he added. "She's in a queer state of mind, to my thinking."
"Leave it to me, my lad," said Revis, as he got out of his dog-cart. "I'll make it as easy as I can for her."
He went up the path to the cottage door, tapped, and walked in. Jeckie sat in her accustomed corner, in the shadows, but Revis saw how she had changed, and it was with a curious mixture of pity and wonder and interest that he went up and held out his hand to her.
"Well, my lass!" he said, with a sympathetic effort to put some cheeriness into his voice. "You've had a bad time of it, to be sure, poor thing! But—you're better?"
"Well enough to hear aught you've to say, Mr. Revis," answered Jeckie. "And—sit down and tell me straight out, if you please. You know me!"
Revis gave her a searching look and pulled a chair in front of her.
"Aye!" he said. "I think I know! Well, it's not cheering news, but you'd better know it. You know already that I've done what I could to look after things for you while you've been ill?"
"Yes, and I'm obliged to you," answered Jeckie. "You were always a good friend."
"It was this way," continued Revis. "When you were taken ill that brother-in-law of yours, Binks, came to me and asked me if I couldn't do something to help. I came over and consulted with him and your partner and her husband. We went right into things. Of course you know that when your illness came you were just at the end of your capital?"
"Who should know better!" exclaimed Jeckie, bitterly.
"Well, that was so," asserted Revis. "So—everything stopped, with those shafts still half-full of water, and——"
"I know how they were, and how all else was," interrupted Jeckie. "You can't tell me anything about that!"
"To be sure!" said Revis, humouring her. "Well, the question was—was it worth while putting more capital—it would have had to be a lot more capital!—to clear the mine, get all going again, and go on? Now, I had some talk with two or three influential men in the district, and we decided to come to your help if we could see that all the money you and Mrs. Albert Grice had put in, and all that we should have to put in would be got back—that, in short, the results would justify the expenditure. In other words, what amount of coal is under this property and close to it? You understand?"
For the first time for many long months a faint flush of colour came to Jeckie Farnish's haggard cheeks, and she spoke with some show of interest.
"You mean to say that there's a doubt?" she asked.
"We'll leave doubts out," answered Revis. "That was the real problem. I put aside all the investigations that you made before you started, and made some of my own, at my own expense. You know what a thorough man I am about such things. Well, I made, at once, more borings, in different parts, not only of your property, but in the land round about. I've known the truth now for a week or two; it's an unpleasant one. There's without doubt a good bed beneath your land, but a small one. What you'd have got out of it would possibly have given you back your capital and a bit over. But there's none elsewhere! And your pit's been so ruined by that explosion, and there's such a body of water that——"
"I understand," said Jeckie, interrupting him with a significant look. "It's useless!"
"If you want plain words, my lass—yes!" answered Revis. "To get that pit cleared and to go on again would cost far more than you'd ever get back. I reckoned everything up, with your partner's assistance—you know she'd power to act for you if you couldn't—and things were just here—what with paying everything up to the time of stoppage and so on, you've just come to the end of your capital, and—there you are! It's a very sad thing, but it's one of these things that have to be faced."
"The workmen and all the rest of them?" asked Jeckie.
"All paid off—gone, weeks since," replied Revis, laconically.
"And the stuffs about those shafts—material—the building material at those cottages, and all that?" she inquired.
"Sold—to settle things up," said Revis. "Your partner had power to do all that, you know, as you couldn't. We all made the biggest effort we could for you and for her. To put things in a nutshell—you owe nothing to the bank or to anybody, and the whole concern is just a ruin which anybody can take up and remake if they like. I would have liked, but it isn't worth it."
Jeckie looked steadily at her visitor for a long time.
"Then," she said at last, in a low voice that was curiously firm, "then—I've nothing?"
Revis shook his head.
"Nothing," he answered. "Nothing! except the forty acres that you bought in the beginning."
He was surprised to hear Jeckie laugh. He was something of a student of human nature, this big, bluff man, but he could not gauge the precise meaning of that laugh, and he looked at the woman before him, in some slight alarm, which she was quick to recognise.
"I'm not going mad, Revis," she said. "I was only thinking that at the end of all that I've got—forty acres! Those forty acres!"
"How much did you give for them?" he asked, inquisitively. "A lot? I'd an idea it was for next to naught that you got them."
Jeckie suddenly got up from her chair, and turned towards the hearth. She stood looking into the fire for some time, and when, at last, she glanced at her visitor there was a look in her eyes which Revis never forgot.
"What did I give for them?" she said in a low, concentrated voice. "Man!—I don't know—yet!—what I gave for them!"
Revis stood staring at her for a moment of wonder. Her answer was beyond him. And as he had no reply to it he turned to go. But Jeckie stopped him.
"Wait a minute," she said. "A question—Lucilla Grice and her husband?"
"They've left the neighbourhood," replied Revis. "They sold their house and furniture and went away. I don't know where they've gone."
Jeckie said no more, and Revis went out, said a few words to Farnish, and drove off. And Farnish went indoors, and found Jeckie already setting about the preparations for their early dinner. He was astonished to find that she began to be talkative that day; still more astonished that, when evening came, she cooked a hot supper, encouraged him to eat, ate heartily herself, and before they went to bed mixed a goodly tumbler of grog for each of them. It was, thought Farnish, like old times, and he went to his chamber in high content.
But as the grey dawn broke a few hours later, Farnish woke to find Jeckie, fully dressed, standing at his bedside. He stared at her in astonishment.
"Get up; get dressed; come down; we're going away," said Jeckie. "Don't talk, but do as I tell you. There'll be some breakfast ready by the time you're down."
Farnish obeyed; he was still as clay in his elder daughter's hands. And an hour later, still obedient though wondering, he followed her out of the cottage, and up the empty street of Savilestowe, past what had once been Grice's, past what had once been the Golden Teapot, past the last house, past the last tree. At the top of the hill, and as the morning broke, he turned and looked back, having some strange intuition that he was being taken away from a place which he had known long and would never see again. He stood looking for some minutes; when he turned, Jeckie, who had never once looked back, was marching stolidly ahead.
CHAPTER XIII
The Lustre Jug
Some eight or nine years after the morning on which Jeckie Farnish and her father had walked out of their native village for the last time, never to be heard of again in those parts, a man, who had just arrived by train at Scarhaven, the time being seven o'clock of a bitterly cold November evening, turned away from the railway station and betook himself, shivering in the north-east wind that swept inland from the sea, towards a part of the town wherein cheap lodgings were to be found. In the light of the street lamps he showed himself to any who chanced to look at him as a not over-well clad, somewhat shabby man, elderly, greyish of hair and beard, who carried an old umbrella in one hand and a much worn hand-bag in the other. Not the sort of man, this, anyone would have said, who had much money to spend—nevertheless, when, after some ten minutes of hard walking, he came to the end of a badly lighted street in a dismal quarter, he turned into the bar-parlour of a corner tavern and ordered hot whisky and a cheap cigar. In the light of the place his shabbiness was more apparent, yet it was shabbiness of the genteel sort. His overcoat was threadbare, but well brushed; his boots, patched in more than one place, were sound of sole and firm of heel and had been well cleaned and polished; his linen was clean and he wore gloves. A keen observer of men and things would have said, after inspecting him, that here was a man who had known better days.
Under the cheering influence of his whisky and his cigar, this man shook off the chill of the streets and the sea wind and began to feel more comfortable in flesh and bone.
He settled himself in a corner of the bar-parlour and picked up a newspaper from an adjoining table, there was a good fire in the grate close by, and he glanced at it approvingly as at the face of an old friend, and occasionally stretched out a hand to it. In this fashion he spent half an hour; at the end of that time he pulled out a watch, and here again a keen observer would have noted something of significance. The watch hung from a cheap steel chain, of the sort that you can buy anywhere for a couple of shillings, but the watch itself was a good, first-class article of solid gold, old, no doubt, but valuable. He replaced it in his pocket with an air of indecision; then, apparently, making up his mind about something, he had his glass replenished, and for another half-hour he sat, gradually growing warmer and more courageous. But soon after eight o'clock had struck from a neighbouring church tower, he rose, buttoned his overcoat about his throat, and, picking up bag and umbrella, made for the door. Ere he had reached it another moment of apparent indecision came over him. It ended in his returning to the bar and asking to be supplied with a bottle of whisky. He counted out its price from a handful of silver which he drew from his hip pocket, and, placing the bottle in the bag, made his exit and went out again into the night.
It was a badly-lighted street down which this man turned—a street of small, mean houses, wherein there were few lights in the windows and the gas lamps were placed far apart. Consequently, he had some difficulty in finding the number he wanted, and was obliged to look closely within the doorways to get an idea of its exact situation. But he got it at last, and knocked—to wait until a slight opening of the door revealed a dimly-lighted, narrow passage, and a girl between the lamp and himself.
"Mrs. Watson in?" he asked, making as if to enter. The girl shook her head.
"Mrs. Watson's dead, sir—died three years ago," she answered. "Name of Marshall here now."
The inquirer appeared to be seriously taken aback.
"Sorry to hear that," he said. "I used to get a night's lodgings with her in years past. Do they let lodgings here now?"
"No, sir," said the girl, "but there's plenty of houses where they do, both sides of the street. You'll see cards in the windows, sir."
The man thanked his informant and went away—to look for the cards of which the girl had spoken. There were plenty of these cards in the windows. He could see them, dismal and ghost-like in the gloom, and very soon he paused, irresolute.
"One's as good as another, I reckon," he muttered at last. "And when you can't afford an hotel——"
Then he knocked at the door by which he was just then standing. There was some delay there, but when the door opened there was a strong light in the passage behind it, and he found himself confronting a tall, gaunt, white-haired woman, gowned in rusty black, over whose shoulders were thrown an old Paisley shawl. He looked uninterestedly at her—one landlady was pretty much as other landladies.
"Can you let me have a room and a bit of supper and breakfast?" he began. "I used to put up at Mrs. Watson's, lower down, but I find she dead, so——"
Then he suddenly stopped, hearing the woman catch her breath and seeing a quick start of surprise in her as she leaned forward to stare at him. And he, too, leaned nearer, and stared.
"Good Lord!" he muttered. "Jeckie! Jeckie Farnish! Well, I never!"
Jeckie held the door wider, motioning the applicant to step inside.
"I knew you, Albert Grice, as soon as you spoke," she said, in a dull, almost sullen voice. "Come in! I can find what you want. Where's your wife?" she went on, as she pointed him to a hat-stand. "Is she here, waiting anywhere, in the town, or is it just for yourself?"
Albert set down his umbrella and bag, and began to take off his coat.
"Lucilla's dead," he replied, shortly. "Five or six years since. I'd no idea of coming across you! I was here, once or twice—business, you know—for a night, some years since, at that Mrs. Watson's——"
"Come this way," said Jeckie. She walked before him down the narrow passage to a living-room at the end, a homely, comfortable place, where there was a bright fire, something cooking on the range, and, in an elbow-chair at the side of the hearth, an old, white-bearded man who smiled and nodded as Albert walked in. "You remember him," continued Jeckie, pointing to Farnish. "He's lost his memory—he wouldn't know you from Adam!—he's forgotten all about Savilestowe, and he thinks he's a retired farmer—wi' lots o' money!" she added, grimly. "Speak to him—but take no notice of what he says—he talks all sorts o' soft stuff."
Albert went up to Farnish and offered his hand.
"Ah, how do you do, sir?" he asked. "Hope I see you well, sir?"
"Ah, how do you do, sir?" responded Farnish, with another infantile smile. "I hope you're well yourself? Friend o' my dowter's, no doubt, sir, and kindly welcome. Jecholiah, mi lass, what'll the gentleman tak' to drink—ye mun get out the sperrits—and there'll be a bit o' tobacco in the jar, somewhere, no doubt."
"Sit you down," said Jeckie, motioning Albert to another elbow-chair. "There's some hot supper in t'oven; plenty of it, and good, too, and we'll have it in a minute, and then he'll go to his bed—he's quiet and harmless enough, but his mind's gone—at least his memory has."
"Does he ever take a glass?" asked Albert, staring curiously at Farnish. "I see he's got his pipe handy."
"Oh, I give him a drop every night before he goes to bed," said Jeckie, already bustling about the hearth. "That does him no harm."
Albert went back into the passage and returned with his bottle of whisky. Seeing a corkscrew hanging on the delf-ledge, he drew the cork, mixed two tumblers of grog, and handed one to Farnish and offered the other to Jeckie.
"Nay, drink it yourself," said Jeckie. "I don't mind one after supper, but not now. You haven't made it over strong for him?"
"It'll not hurt him," replied Albert, pointing to the label on the bottle. "Sound stuff, that. Best respects, sir!"
"And my best respects to you, sir, and many on 'em," answered Farnish. "Allers glad to see a gentleman o' your sort, sir—friends o' my dowter's."
"He thinks all my lodgers are friends 'at come to see us," observed Jeckie. "Poor old feller!—he's been like that this three year."
Albert sat sipping his drink and watching father and daughter. Farnish had become white and doddering; Jeckie's hair was as white as his, and she was as gaunt as a scarecrow, and looked all the more so because of her height and her strong-boned figure, but she was evidently as bustling as ever, and not without some spark of her old fire. And before long she set a smoking-hot Irish stew on the table, and bade Albert to fall to and eat heartily; there was always plenty of good, plain food in her house, she added, dryly, and nobody went with their bread unbuttered. So Albert ate and grew warm and satisfied, and, when, later on, Jeckie was seeing Farnish to his bed, he sat by the fire, and drank more whisky, and wondered, in vague, purposeless fashion, about the vagaries of life.
Jeckie came back to him at last, and dropped into the chair which Farnish had left empty. Albert indicated his bottle.
"Well, I don't mind a drop," she said. "A woman 'at works as hard as I do can do with a glass last thing at night. I've some good stuff o' my own in that cupboard—you must try it when you've finished your glass."
"Good health, then," said Albert. He looked speculatively at her as he lifted his glass. "I was never more surprised in my life," he went on, confidentially, "than when you opened that door! For—it's all a long time ago!"
Jeckie, holding the tumbler which he had given her in both hands, stared meditatively at the fire for some time before replying.
"Aye!" she said at last. "I've had more lives nor one i' my time! You've never been back there?"
"Never!" answered Albert. "Have you?"
Jeckie shook her head.
"There's naught could ever make me do that," she said. "It was over and done with. Once I thought of emigrating and starting afresh, but there was him"—she nodded towards the stairs. "I had to think of him. So I came here, and furnished this bit of a house, and started taking in lodgers—chance folk, like yourself. It's been—well, just a comfortable living. T'old fellow upstairs is satisfied, especially since he lost all his memory. And that's the main thing, anyhow, now. There's naught else."
Albert said nothing, and there was a long pause before Jeckie spoke again. Then she asked a question.
"What might you be doing?"
"Bit o' travelling," replied Albert. "The old line—a patent food. No great thing; but, as you say, it's, well, just a nice living. For a single man, keeps one going; and I can manage a cigar now and then, and a drop o' that," he added, with a knowing sidelong glance at the bottle. "I don't complain."
Jeckie shrugged her shoulders.
"What's the use?" she said.
Albert suddenly rose, went out into the passage, and came back with a packet in his hand, which he presented to her.
"This is the stuff," he said. "Invaluable for children, invalids, and old people. You might try it on your father; it's grand stuff for old 'uns when they've lost their teeth. Lately I've done very nicely with it. What I want is to get a bigger connection with leading firms in some of these towns. I'm going to try a whole day here to-morrow. I've only one of these Scarhaven firms on my list at present. Now, you'll have an idea about where I should go, eh? Happen you can suggest...."
They continued talking for an hour or two, facing each other across the hearth, two broken things, with a past behind them, and a bottle between them, each secretly conscious of mutual knowledge, and neither daring to speak of it. They talked of anything but the past, any trifle of the moment; yet the consciousness of the past was there, spectre-like, and each felt it. And, at last, as the clock struck eleven, Jeckie rose and lighted a candle.
"I'll show you your room," she said. "You can depend on the bed being well-aired; I'm always particular about that; and there's everything you'll want. And I'll have a good breakfast ready at half-past eight."
When she had shown Albert to his room she went downstairs again, and, gathering the Paisley shawl about her, sat in front of the fire, staring at it and thinking, until the red ashes grew grey, and the grey ashes white. It was past midnight then, but she had so sat, and so heard the clocks strike twelve for many a long year.
"As sure as I'm a born woman," she muttered, she rose at last, "it was Ben Scholes's spirit 'at I saw that night! And I were none wrong when I said to Revis 'at I didn't know what I gave for that land! for who knows what I'll have to pay for it yet! But I've kept paying, and paying, and paying, on account; but what about t'balance?"
She went slowly and heavily upstairs and looked in on Farnish. The old man was fast asleep, his hands clasped over his breast.
"He's all right," she muttered as she left his room. "He never had any great love of money."
Albert found a good breakfast of eggs and bacon ready for him when he came down in the morning, and did justice to it. Jeckie stood by the fire and talked to him while he ate, but again there was no reference to the past. And before nine o'clock he had got into his coat and hat, to start out on his round.
"I want to get done by four," he said. "I must go on to Kingsport to-night. So now—what do I owe?"
"Why if you give me three-and-six, it'll do," answered Jeckie. With the coins which he gave her still in her hand, she followed him to the street door and looked out into a grey sea-fog that was rolling slowly up the street. She continued to look when he had said good-bye and gone quickly away ... she watched his disappearing figure until the sea-fog swallowed it up. She went back to the living-room then, and took down from the mantelpiece an old lustre-jug which she had treasured all through her life, since the time of her girlhood at Applecroft, and in which she now kept her small change. And as she dropped the three-and-six in it, the lustre-jug slipped from her fingers, and was broken into fragments on the hearthstone. Presently, she picked up the fragments and went out into the yard behind the house and threw them away on the dustheap; bits of pot, not more shattered than her own self.