VIII
The days that followed were busy ones for Ethel. Company made The Maples gay with fun and laughter; but Ethel did not drop her newly awakened interest in the miners. By her earnest persuasion Miss Fenno had agreed to lengthen her visit, the need of these same miners having been held up by the wary Ethel as good and sufficient reason for her remaining.
A maid, laden with the best the house afforded, always accompanied Dorothy on her frequent visits to the town, and sometimes Ethel herself went. It was after her first trip of this sort that she burst unceremoniously into the library.
“Father, do you do anything for them?” she demanded breathlessly.
“My dear, not being aware of the antecedent of that pronoun, I may not be able to give a very satisfactory answer to your question.”
“What? Oh—sure enough!” laughed Ethel. “I mean the miners, of course.”
“Since when—this philanthropic spirit, my dear?”
“Do you, father?” persisted Ethel, ignoring the question.
“Well,” Mr. Barrington began, putting the tips of his forefingers together impressively, “we think we do considerable. We are not overbearing; we force no ‘company store’ on them, but allow that curious little Pedler Jim full sway. We—However, have you anything to suggest?” he suddenly demanded in mild sarcasm.
Somewhat to his surprise Miss Barrington did have something to suggest, and that something was not particularly to his mind. However, when Miss Barrington set out to have her own way she usually had it, even with her comfort-loving father—perhaps it was because he was a comfort-loving father that he always succumbed in the end.
At all events, the Candria Mining Company, after the explosion in the Bonanza section, organized a system of relief to which they ever after adhered. The family of each miner killed in the disaster, or dying from its effects, received one thousand dollars cash over and above all medical and burial expenses. The maimed were dealt with according to the extent of their injuries.
The mine was a great source of interest to all of Miss Barrington’s friends, and it was accounted a great day among them when a party under careful escort were allowed to “do the mines,” as they enthusiastically termed a glimpse of the mine buildings and a short trip through a few underground passages.
Two weeks after the explosion Ethel, with a merry party of ladies and gentlemen led by Mark Hemenway, and duly chaperoned, started for the Beachmont entrance to the mine. The general superintendent was in his element. He explained and exhibited all through the outer buildings, and was about to take his charges into the mine itself when an unavoidable something intervened and claimed his immediate attention. It was with evident reluctance that he therefore handed his party over to Bill Somers, who, having proved himself careful and attentive, had often before been intrusted with the escort of sightseers over the mines.
To Ethel the change was a relief. A vague unrest had lately assailed her whenever in Hemenway’s presence and she had almost unconsciously begun to avoid him. Her old indifference to his existence had given way to a growing realization that there was such a being, and the realization was bringing with it an intangible something not quite pleasant.
The feminine portion of the party followed Bill Somers through the strange underground chambers with daintily lifted skirts and with many a shudder and half-smothered shriek. And though they laughed and chatted at times, they cast sidelong glances of mingled curiosity and aversion at the stalwart forms of the begrimed miners.
“Is—is this anywhere near the—accident?” asked Miss Barrington, looking behind her fearfully.
“No, ma’am—oh, no!” reassured Bill Somers quickly. “The Bonanza is a long ways off. We don’t go nowheres near there today, ma’am.”
“Oh, was there an accident?” chimed in a pretty girl with rose-pink cheeks.
“Sure; this was the mine, wasn’t it?” interposed a fussy little man with eyeglasses through which he was peering right and left with his small, near-sighted eyes.
“Tell us about it, please,” begged three or four voices at once; and Bill needed no second bidding.
When they passed Hustler Joe, Somers pointed him out, and as they walked on into the next gallery he told with unconscious power the story of the heroic rescue of the imprisoned men. The shifting shadows and twinkling lights made the telling more impressive, and the dusky forms flitting in and out of the mysterious openings on either side, added a realistic touch to the tale that sobered the gay crowd not a little. Their interest in the earth’s interior waned perceptibly.
“Are—are we on the way out, now?” asked the pretty girl, her cheeks showing white in the gloom.
“No, ma’am; we’re goin’ in deeper. Wa’n’t that what ye wanted?” returned Bill.
“Yes, of course,” murmured the girl, without enthusiasm.
The man with glasses coughed.
“Really, Miss Barrington, this is beastly air. It might be well enough to go back before long.”
Bill Somers took the hint. He knew the type to which the fussy little man belonged. The party turned about, and the pretty girl’s eyes flashed with a grateful glance—a glance which the near-sighted-glassed saw and promptly appropriated.
As they repassed Hustler Joe, Ethel Barrington dropped behind the others and came close to the miner’s side.
“I want to thank you myself,” she said, the crimson staining her cheeks as she impulsively held out a slim, ungloved hand. “I want to tell you how much I appreciate your courage and bravery at the explosion.”
The man flushed painfully. As he reluctantly touched her finger-tips, she added:
“You must be so happy to have saved so many lives. I knew you were a good man the minute I saw your face!”
Hustler Joe grew white to the lips, dropped her hand rudely and turned away without a word.
Hemenway met the party at the entrance of the mine. He was profuse in apologies for his enforced absence and in offerings of further service, but Miss Barrington dismissed him with a cool “Thank you; nothing more,” and led the way to The Maples.
Miss Barrington was vexed—worse than that, she was vexed because she was vexed. Her pulse quickened and her nostrils dilated as she thought of Hustler Joe and of the way he had met her impulsive greeting.
“The—the rude—boor!” she said to herself, at loss for words to express fittingly that to which she was so little accustomed. A lingering touch or a gentle pressure was the usual fare of Miss Barrington’s graciously extended hand—never this wordless touching of her finger-tips and hasty, rude release. “Not that I care,” she thought, with a disdainful tilt of her head. “But he might have been decently civil!” she added, with a scornful smile as she thought of how differently a score of pampered youths of her acquaintance would have received so signal a mark of favor as she had that afternoon bestowed on an all too unappreciative miner.
When Hustler Joe had left Miss Barrington so abruptly he had attacked his work with a fierceness that even the miners had never seen him show. “A good man—a good man—‘I knew you were a good man’!” he muttered between his teeth. “A ‘good’ man indeed—bah!” he snarled aloud, wielding his pick with long, sweeping strokes. Then he suddenly stood upright. “Great God—am I not a good man? Have fifty lives not a feather’s weight?”
The pick dropped from his relaxed fingers, and his hands went up to his head.
“Ah, no,” he moaned; “father—father—fifty, a hundred—a thousand times a hundred could not tip the scale with your dear, dead self on the other side!”