VI
On the day of the explosion in the Candria mine John Barrington sat on the broad piazza of The Maples reading his morning paper. Occasionally he glanced up to admire the charming picture his daughter and her friend made playing tennis on the lawn nearby.
His night’s rest had been good and his morning’s beefsteak tender; moreover, a certain paragraph in the newspaper before him had warmed his heart and, in prospect, his pocketbook. He leaned back in his chair and sighed contentedly.
After a time he spied Hemenway’s tall form at the far end of the winding walk leading to the house. There was a languid curiosity in his mind as to why Hemenway was walking so fast; but when he caught his first glimpse of his general superintendent’s face, his head came upright with a jerk, and he waited in some apprehension for the man to speak.
The girls on the lawn heard an exclamation of dismay from the piazza, then saw the two men pass rapidly down the walk and disappear in the direction of the town. Fifteen minutes later Jennie Somers, the parlor-maid, crossed the lawn and approached Miss Barrington. All her pretty rose color had fled, and her eyes were wide and frightened.
“I beg your pardon—but would you please let me go to town? There has been an explosion in the mine, and my brother—he may be hurt! May I please go?”
“An explosion? How terrible! Yes, yes, child—run right along. Don’t hurry back if you’re needed there,” said Miss Barrington. “I hope you’ll find your brother uninjured,” she added as the girl hurried away. When she turned to speak to Dorothy she found herself alone.
Miss Fenno appeared a few minutes later dressed in a short walking-suit.
“Why, Dorothy!”
“Has Jennie gone? If you don’t mind, dear, I’ll go with her. I might be able to do something,” explained Dorothy hastily.
“Mercy!” shuddered Ethel, “how can you go, dear? They’ll be all maimed and bleeding! There’ll be doctors and—and others to do everything needful. I wouldn’t go—really, dear.”
“I know—but there’ll be something else to do. I might help someone—Jennie, for instance, if she found her brother injured. I really want to go—Oh—there she is!” And Miss Fenno hurried after Jennie’s swiftly moving figure.
Ethel was restless when her friend had gone. She wandered aimlessly around the grounds, then went indoors and began to play a waltz on the piano. The piece was scarcely half through, however, before her fingers moved more and more slowly, finally straying into a minor wail that ended abruptly in a discordant crash as the player rose from the piano-stool.
Miss Barrington’s next move was to take the field-glass from the library and go upstairs to the tower. From there she could see the village and catch occasional glimpses of hurrying forms. She could see the Silver Creek entrance to the mine, too, and she shuddered at the crowds her glasses showed her there. Twice she turned her eyes away and started down the winding stairs, but each time she returned to her old position and gazed in a fascination quite unaccountable to herself at the moving figures in the distance.
By and bye she saw the head-gardener coming rapidly up the road from the town. As he entered the driveway she hurried down the stairs and out into the kitchen.
“Were there many injured, Peter?” she asked anxiously as the man came into the room.
“They don’t know yet, ma’am; they can’t get into the mine. They’re goin’ to try the Beachmont openin’ now.”
“Perhaps they won’t find things so bad as they think,” she suggested.
“Mebbe not; but them that has come out, ma’am, tell sorry tales of creepin’ over dead men’s bodies—there ain’t much hope for the poor fellers inside now, I’m ’fraid.”
“Is—is there anything one can do?”
Peter shook his head.
“Not much, ma’am. They can’t get in to get ’em out. The young lady from the house here has got her hands full with the women and children. They are takin’ on awful, of course, but she kinder calms ’em down—she and that feller they call Hustler Joe.”
Miss Barrington turned away. As she opened the door she stopped abruptly and looked back into the kitchen.
“If they need anything, Peter—anything at all—come to me at once,” she said hurriedly, and closed the door behind her.
It was at dinner the next night that Mr. Barrington said to his general superintendent:
“What was the matter with Rotalick today? I heard you laying down the law pretty sharp to him this noon.”
“Oh, he wanted a prima donna, that’s all.”
“A what?”
Hemenway laughed.
“Yes, I thought so, too. It was simply this. There isn’t anyone to sing at the funerals Thursday. The choir that usually sings at funerals hereabouts is incapacitated through injuries to the bass and loss of a husband to the soprano. Rotalick wanted a day off to go hunting for singers over in Westmont.”
“Humph!” commented Mr. Barrington.
“I rather think our departed friends will excuse the lack of music,” laughed the general superintendent coarsely; but the laugh ceased at a flash from Miss Barrington’s eyes.
“Will you be so kind, Mr. Hemenway, as to tell the man that I will sing Thursday?” Once more the electric shock ran around that table, and once more Mrs. Barrington murmured faintly, “Why, my daughter!”
This time Mark Hemenway rose promptly to the occasion.
“How very kind!” he said suavely. “Indeed, Miss Barrington, one could almost afford to die for so great an honor. I will tell Rotalick. The miners will be overjoyed—they have bitterly bemoaned the probable lack of music tomorrow. Funny they should care so much!”
“Oh, I don’t know—they are human beings, I suppose,” Miss Barrington suggested.
“Yes—of course—certainly—but then——”
“You seem troubled to find a solution,” she remarked, with slightly uplifted eyebrows; “suppose you give it up?”
“Suppose I do,” he acquiesced with ready grace, glad of the way of escape she had opened.