Chapter Fifteen.
That Man was Owen.
Tired with my two days’ early rising, I did not get up until late. I had nearly finished dressing, and was standing by my window, when I heard a woman’s voice calling me in muffled tones below.
My room looked to the back of the house, and the woman had come to the inside of a thick fuchsia-hedge, which here divided the cottage, and its tiny surroundings, from the road.
Looking out, I saw the under-viewer’s wife, gazing up with clasped hands and a white face.
“For the love of God, come down to me quietly, Miss Morgan.”
The pain and anguish in the woman’s face communicated part of her intelligence to me. I knew there was great and urgent need for me to go downstairs without anybody hearing. The immediate action which this required, prevented my feeling any pain. I stood by the woman, looked hard into her eyes, and said, “Well?”
“Dear heart, you must know it,” she said, taking my hand. “Come with me.”
She almost pushed me before her through the little gate; when we got on the high road, she began to run. I knew that she was going in the direction of Pride’s Pit. My strangely vivid dream returned to me. Here was a solution of the mystery. I believed in dreams—this dream was not accidental. It had been sent to me as a warning—it was true. Owen had neglected to have the shaft, leading into Pride’s Pit, filled up, and the under-viewer’s child had fallen a victim to this neglect. The child had fallen down the old shaft. He was dead, and the mother was bringing me now to show me face to face what my brother’s carelessness had effected. The life of a little child was sacrificed. I was to see for myself what Owen had done. I felt sure of this. The woman ran very fast, and I kept pace by her side. The distance was over half a mile, and partly up-hill. When we came to the ascent, which was rather steep, we could not go quite so quickly, and I had time to look in the woman’s face. It was hard and set, the lips very white, the eyes very staring. She neither looked at me nor spoke. It came into my heart that she was cruel, even though her child was dead, to hurry me forward without one word of warning: to show me, without any preparation, what my brother had done. I would not be treated so. I would not face this deed without knowing what I was to see. The instant I made this resolution, I stood still.
“Stop!” I said. “I will know all. Is the baby dead?”
The woman stood still also, pressing her hand on her labouring breast. “Dear heart! she knows,” she gasped. “Yes, yes, my dear—the baby’s dead.”
I did not say I was sorry, nor a single word. I simply, after my momentary pause, began to run harder than ever. We had now got in sight of the pit, and I saw a little crowd of people about it. Some men in their miners’ dresses, a boy or two, a larger proportion of women. I half expected the men, women, and children to curse me as I drew near. We ran a little faster, and the woman’s panting breath might have been heard at some distance. Suddenly a boy caught sight of us, and detaching himself from the group, ran to the woman’s side.
“Does she know?” he exclaimed, catching her hand almost frantically. “She must not see without knowing.”
The boy, who spoke in a voice of agony, was Miles Thomas.
“Yes,” replied the woman; “she guessed it herself. She knows that the baby’s dead.”
“Thank God!” said the boy. I looked from one face to the other. I could not help pitying myself, as though it were my sorrow. I thought the boy’s tone the kindest—he should take me to see the murdered child. Suddenly I changed my mind. Why should I need or look for compassion. The mother had come all this way to punish me and mine—the mother’s just revenge should not be foiled. When we got into the group, I took her hand.
“You shall show him to me,” I said. “You shall show me your little dead baby.”
There was a pause on all sides—one or two people turned aside. I saw a woman put her apron to her face, and heard a man groan. Every eye was fixed on me, and, at the same moment, the under-viewer’s wife and Miles went on their knees, and began to sob.
“Oh! my darling; you are wrong—you have made a mistake,” began the woman.
“I felt she did not, could not know,” sobbed Miles.
The crowd opened a little more, and I went forward. Very near the mouth of the old shaft, lying on a soft bed of grass and undergrowth, was a woman—a woman with a face as white as death. I went up close to her, and gazed at her steadily. Her face looked like death, but she was not dead—a moan or two came through white lips. By the side of the woman, stretched also flat, lay a child; his hat was thrown by his side, and one little leg was bare of shoe and stocking. A white frock was also considerably soiled, and even torn. I took in all these minor details first—then my eyes rested on the face. I went down on my knees to examine the face, to note its expression more attentively. On the brow, but partly concealed by the hair, was a dark mark, like a bruise, otherwise the face was quiet, natural, life-like. A faint colour lingered in the cheeks; the lips were parted and smiling.
The woman was groaning in agony. The child was quiet—looking as a child will look when he has met with a new delight. I laid my hand on the little heart—it never stirred. I felt the tiny pulse—it was still. The injured and suffering woman was Gwen. The dead baby was not the under-viewer’s child, but David’s little lad.
I took no further notice of Gwen, but I kept on kneeling by the side of the dead child. I have not the least idea whether I was suffering at this moment; my impression is that I was not. Mind, body, spirit, were all quiet under the influence of a great shock. I knew and realised perfectly that little David was dead; but I took in, as yet, no surrounding circumstances. Finding that I was so still, that I neither sobbed nor groaned—in fact, that I did nothing but gaze steadily at the dead child, the under-viewer’s wife knelt down by my side, and began to pour out her tale. She did this with considerable relief in her tone. When she began to speak, Miles also knelt very close to me, and laid his hand with a caressing movement on my dress. I was pleased with Miles’ affection—glad to receive it—and found that I could follow the tale told by the under-viewer’s wife, without any effort.
I mention all this just to show how very quiet I not only was in body, but in mind.
“No, the shaft was never filled in,” began the woman. “I waited day after day, but it was never done; and little Ellen, and Gwenllynn, and the baby, they seemed just from contrariness to h’always want to go and look over the brink. And what made it more danger, was the brambles and grass, and growth of h’all kinds, which from never being cut away, has got thicker year by year; so that coming from that side,” pointing west with her finger, “you might never see the old shaft at all, but tumble right in, and know nothing till you reach the bottom. Well, I was so frighted with this, and the contrariness of the children, that finding Mr Morgan had forgot again to have the shaft filled in, or closed round, only last night I spoke to my husband, and begged him to cut away some of the rankest of the growth, as it war, what it is, a sin and a shame to have the shaft like a trap, unknown to folks; but my husband, he war dead tired, and he knowed that I’m timmersome, so he only said, ‘Let be, woman—let be.’ And this morning he was away early—down to the mine. Well,” after a long pause, “I had done my bit o’ work. I had dressed the baby—bless him—and given Ellen and Gwenllynn their breakfast, and I was standing by the house door, my eye on the old shaft, and my mind set on the thought that I might put up a fence round it myself, so as to ward off the children, when sudden and sharp—almost nigh to me—I heard a woman scream, and looking, I saw a woman running for her bare life, and screaming and making for my cottage; and she had a child in her arms; and sudden, when I saw her, I knew who she was, and why she was running. I knew she was the nurse of Squire Morgan’s little son, and that she had the child with her. I knew she had been to the eye-well, for the cure of the sight of the baby, and that she was coming by this short cut home. And she never knew that she’d have to pass through the field with Mr Daniels’ bull. Well, I saw her running, and the bull after her, but he was a good way behind; and I thought she’d reach the cottage. And I shouted out to encourage her; when all on a heap, it flashed on me, that she was making straight for the shaft, and that she’d be right down in the pit, if I couldn’t stop her. Just then, two men came up, and turned the bull aside, but she didn’t know it, and kept on running harder and harder. ‘Stop!’ I shouted. ‘Stop! you’ll be down in the mine’; but she neither heeded nor heard me, and she went right through the thicket and the underwood. I heard it cracking under her feet. I saw her fall, and scream more piercing than h’ever.” Another pause from the narrator—then in a breathless kind of way, “I war at the other side o’ the pit in a twinkling. She had not gone down—not quite. Her head was above the ground, and she was holding on for bare life to a bit of underwood. She could only hold with one hand; the other was round the child. In one second she’d have been down, for the weight was too much, when I threw myself on my face and hands, and grasped the baby’s frock. ‘Hold the tree with both hands,’ I said, ‘and I’ll keep the baby.’ Poor soul! she looked up at me so anguish-like; but she did what I bid her, or they’d both have gone down. I was drawing up the baby, when a loose stone came tumbling—it was not much, it but hit him sharp on the temple. He never cried out, but his head dropped all on a sudden. When I got him to the top, he was dead. I laid him on the bank, and just then the men who had turned away the bull, came up, and they lifted the woman out of the shaft—one of her legs was broke!”
The under-viewer’s wife paused to wipe the moisture from her brow. Just then little feet came pattering, and the living child of the under-viewer, about whom I had grieved and dreamt, came up and looked down at the dead child of my brother. The face of the living baby gazed solemnly at the face of the dead baby. Nobody interrupted him, and he sat down and put, half in play, as though expecting an answering touch, his plump hand on the little hand that was still. At this moment there was a commotion in the crowd, then profound stillness, then a giving way on all sides, and a man’s hasty footsteps passed rapidly through our midst. Up straight to where the dead child was lying, the man came. He bent his head a little—he saw no other creature. This man was Owen. For about half a minute he was still. Then from his lips came one sharp cry—the sharpest cry of anguish I ever heard from mortal lips—then he rushed away.