A picture flashed into his mind, an etching that he had seen in Paris in a shop window—had seen and pondered over. "Entombed" was written underneath it, and it showed a solitary miner, on whom the awful trap has fallen, lifting his arms to his face in a last cry against the universe that has brought him into being, that has given him nerve and brain—for this!
Wherever he turned his eyes in the blackness he saw it—the lifted arms, the bare torso of the man, writhing under the agony of realisation—the tools, symbols of a life's toil, lying as they had dropped for ever from the hands that should work no more. It had sent a shudder through him, even amid the gaiety of a Paris street.
Then this first image was swept away by a second. It seemed to him that he was on the pit bank again. It was night, but the crowd was still there, and big fires lighted for warmth threw a glow upon the faces. There were stars, and a pale light of snow upon the hills. He looked into the engine-house. There she was—his poor Letty! O God! He tried to get through to her, to speak to her. Impossible!
A sound disturbed his dream.
His ear and brain struggled with it—trying to give it a name. A man's long, painful breaths—half sobs. Burrows, no doubt—thinking of the woman he loved—of the poor emaciated soul George had seen him tending in the cottage garden on that April day.
He put out his hand and touched his companion.
"Don't despair," he whispered; "you will see her again. How strange—we two—we enemies—but this is the end. Tell me about her."
"I took her from a ruffian who had nearly murdered her and the child," said the hoarse voice after a pause. "She was happy—in spite of the drink, in spite of everything—she would have been happy, till she died. To think of her alone is too cruel. If people turned their backs on her, I made up."
"You will see her again," George repeated, but hardly knowing what the words were he said.
When he next spoke it was with an added strength that astonished his companion.