Meanwhile, in the outside world, the people of Ffynon talked of a good time coming, of freedom from danger, of improvements about to be effected, which would enable the mothers to send down their boys into the mine without fear, and would insure the return of the fathers to the children, of the husbands to their wives. Higher wages, too, and more constant employment would follow the new, safe, and profitable system, which not only would save lives, but bring a much greater proportion of coal to the surface. Thus all parties were bright and happy—all parties happy from their own point of view; but while the miners talked of safety, mother and Owen talked of money.
Chapter Twelve.
You are Changed to me.
The events in this story followed each other quickly, I must not delay in writing of them. Hitherto I have but skirted the drama, I have scarcely ventured to lift the folds of the dark curtain, but now I hesitate no longer.
Here! I push back the veil, let those who will step with me beyond its kind screen. I am going into a battle-field, and the place is gloomy. Heavy with clouds is the sky, red with blood the ground, and cold with death lie the conquered, ay, and the conquerors too. But enough! my story must tell itself, the shadows must come up one by one as they will.
We were five months at Ffynon, and the dreary winter had nearly passed, a few snowdrops and crocuses were in the little garden, and all spring flowers that money could buy and care cultivate, adorned the pretty cottage within. I had been on a long rambling expedition, and had taken Nan with me, and Nan had entertained me as I liked best to be entertained, with accounts of mining life and mining danger. Strange, how when we are young, we do like stories of danger. I came back a good deal excited, for Nan had been giving me particulars, learned from her mother’s lips, of the fearful accident caused in our very mine in 1856 by fire-damp, when one hundred and fourteen lives were swept in a moment into eternity. “That was a dark day for Ffynon,” said Nan, “not a house without a widow in it, not a home without a dead husband or father. Mother lost her father and brother, and our Stephie was born that very night. Mother warn’t twenty then, but she got old in a minute and never grew young again. Eh! dear,” added the small thing, with her heavy old world sigh, “ain’t it a weary world, Miss Morgan?”
“Well, I don’t know,” I said, “you are inclined to take a dark view of life, but things will brighten, Nan. Owen is making things so delightfully safe down in the mine, that soon you’ll have no cause to be anxious, and then you’ll grow young, as young as me, and enjoy your life.”