In the main, Nordenholt’s forecast of the attitude which the miners would adopt proved to be correct. A certain number of workers, braver or less imaginative than the rest, returned to work in the “safe” pits in the course of a day or two; but the main bulk of the labour remained sullenly aloof. Nothing would induce them to set foot in the galleries. Work above-ground they would do, wherever it was necessary to preserve the pits from deterioration; but they had no intention of descending into the subterranean world again. Better to starve in the light of day than run the risk of hungering in some prison in the bowels of the earth. Neither threats nor cajolings served to move them from this decision.
Nordenholt, as a last resource, sent exploring parties into the South to examine the deserted coal-fields of England in the hope that some of them might be workable; but the various missions returned with reports that nothing could be done. During the period since the mining population had died out, the pits had become unsafe, some by the infiltration of water, others by the destruction of the machinery and yet more by the disrepair of the galleries. Here and there a mine was discovered which could still be operated; and parties were drafted South to work it; but in most cases so much labour was required to put the shafts and galleries in repair that we were unable to look forward to anything like the previous coal-supply even at the best.
Meanwhile Nordenholt, day by day, grew more and more grim. While there was any hope of utilising the mining population, he clung to it tenaciously; but as time passed it became clearer that the Area had received its death-blow. He began to draft his ex-miners into other branches of industry bit by bit; but with the fall in the coal-supply there was little use for them there, since very soon all the activities of the Area would have to cease.
I watched him closely during that period; and I could see the effect which the strain was producing upon him. The disaster had struck us just when we seemed to have reached the turning-point in the Area’s history, at the very time when all seemed to be sure in front of us. It was a blow which would have prostrated a weaker man; but Nordenholt had a tenacity far above the ordinary. He meant, I know, to carry out his decision to decimate the Area if necessary; but he held his hand until it was absolutely certain that all was lost. I think he must have had at the back of his mind a hope that everything would come right in the end; though I doubt if his grounds for that belief were any but the most slender.
For my own part, I went through that period like an automaton. The suddenness of the catastrophe seemed, in some way, to have deadened my imagination; and I carried on my work mechanically without thinking of where it was all leading us. With this new holocaust looming over the Area, Elsa seemed further away than ever. If she had revolted at the story of the South, it seemed to me that this fresh sacrifice of lives in the Area itself would deepen her hatred for the men who planned it.
It seemed the very irony of Fate that Nordenholt should choose this juncture to tell me his views on her feelings.
“Elsa seems to be coming round a little at last, Jack,” he said to me one day, “I think her emotional side has worked itself out in the contemplation of the Famine; and her reason’s getting a chance again.”
“What makes you think that?” I asked. “I haven’t seen anything to make me hopeful about it.”
“You wouldn’t notice anything. You don’t know her well enough—Oh, don’t get vexed. Even if you are in love with her, you’ve only known her for a very short time, whereas I’ve studied her since she was a child. I know the symptoms. She’s coming round a little.”