The New Rector

by Stanley John Weyman

To undeceive him, and to explain to the others that he was not the expected surgeon, was a bitter task with which to begin his ministrations; but he was greatly cheered to find that, even in their disappointment, they took his coming as a kindly thing, and eyed him with surprised gratitude. He told them the latest news from the bank—that a cage would be rigged up in a few hours at farthest—and then, conquering his physical shrinking, he knelt down by the least injured man and tried to turn his surgical knowledge to account. It was not much he could do, but it certainly eased the poor man’s present sufferings. A bandage was laid more smoothly here, a little cotton-wool readjusted there, a change of posture managed, a few hopeful words uttered which helped the patient to fight against the shock—so that presently he sank into a troubled sleep. Lindo tried to do his best for the other also, terrible as was the task; but the man’s excitement and unceasing restlessness, as well as his more serious injuries, made help here of little avail.

When he rose, he found one of the watchers holding a cup of brandy ready for him; and, sitting down upon the bench behind, he discovered a coat laid there to make the seat more comfortable, though no one seemed to have done it, or to be conscious of his surprise. They talked low to him, and to one another, in a disjointed taciturn fashion, with immense gaps and long intervals of silence. He learned that there were twenty-seven men yet missing, but it was thought that the afterdamp had killed them all. Those already found alive had been in the main heading, where the current of air gave them a better chance.

One or other of the workers was continually going out to listen for the return of the party who were exploring the workings near the foot of the other shaft; and once or twice a member of this party, exhausted or ill, looked in for a dose of tea or brandy, and then stumbled out again to get himself conveyed to the upper air. These looked curiously at the stranger, but, on some information being muttered in their ears, made a point on going out of giving him a nod which was full of tacit acknowledgment.

In a quiet interval he looked at his watch and wound it up, finding the time to be half-past two. The familiar action carried his mind back to his neat, spotless bedroom at the rectory and the cares and anxieties of everyday life, which had been forgotten for the last five hours. Could it be so short a time, he asked himself, since he was troubled by them? It seemed years ago. It seemed as if a gulf, deep as the shaft down which he had come, divided him from them. And yet the moment his thoughts returned to them the gulf became less, and presently, although his eyes were still fixed upon the poor collier’s unquiet head and the murky cabin with its smoky lamp, he was really back in Claversham, busied with those thoughts again, and pondering on the time when he should be above ground. The things that had been important before rose into importance again, but their relative values among themselves were altered, in his eyes at any rate. With what he had seen and heard in the last few hours fresh in his mind, with the injured men lying still in his sight—one of them never to see the sun again—he could not but take a different, a wider, a less selfish view of life and its aims. His ideal of existence grew higher and purer, his notion of success more noble. In the light of his own self-forgetting energy and of others’ pain he saw things as they affected his neighbor rather than himself and so presently—not in haste, but slowly in the watches of the night—he formed a resolution which shall be told presently. The determinations to which men come at such times are, in nine cases out of ten, as transitory as the emotions on which they are based. But this time, and with this man, it was not to be so. Kate Bonamy’s words, bringing before his mind the responsibility which rested upon him, had in a degree prepared him to examine his position gravely and from a lofty standpoint; so that the considerations which now assailed him could scarcely fail to have due and lasting weight with him, and to leave impressions both deep and permanent.

He was presently roused from his reverie by a sound which caused his companions to rise to their feet with the first signs of excitement they had betrayed in their manner. It was the murmur of voices in the heading, which, beginning far away, rapidly approached and gathered strength. Going to the door of the cabin, he saw lights in the gallery becoming each instant more clear. Then the forms of men coming on by twos and threes rose out of the darkness. And so the procession wound in, and Lindo found himself suddenly surrounded—where a moment before no sounds but painful ones had been heard—by the hum and bustle, the quick question and answers, of a crowd. For the men brought good news. The missing were found; and though many of them were burned or scorched, and others were suffering from the effects of the afterdamp, the explorers brought back with them no still, ominous burden, nor even any case of hopeless injury, such as that of the poor fellow in delirium over whom his mates bent with the strange impassive patience which seems to be a quality peculiar to those who get their living underground.

Not that Lindo at the time had leisure to consider their behavior. The injured were brought to him as a matter of course, and he did what he could with simple bandages and liniment to keep the air from their wounds, and to enable the men to reach the surface with as little pain as possible. For more than an hour, as he passed from one to the other, his hands were never empty; he could think only of his work. The deputy-manager, who had been leading the rescue party, was thoroughly prostrated. The rest never doubted that the stranger was a surgeon, and it was curious to see their surprise when the general taciturnity allowed the news to spread that he was only a parson. They were like savants with a specimen which, known to belong to a particular species, has none of the class attributes, and sets at defiance all preconceived ideas upon the subject. He, too, when he was at length free to look about him, found matter for astonishment in his own sensations. The cabin and the roadway outside, where the men sat patiently waiting their turns to ascend, had become almost homelike in his eyes. The lounging figures here thrown into relief by a score of lamps, there lost in the gloom of the background, had grown familiar. He knew that this was here and that was there, and had his receptacles and conveniences, his special attendants and helpers. In a word, he had made the place his own, yet without forgetting old habits—for more than once he caught himself looking at his watch, and wondering when it would be day.

Toward seven o’clock a message directed to him by name came down. A cage would be rigged up within the hour. Before that period elapsed, however, he was summoned to see the poor fellow die who had been delirious ever since he was found and who now passed away in the same state. It was a trying scene coming just when the clergyman’s wrought-up nerves were beginning to feel a reaction—the more trying as all looked to him to do anything that could be done. But that was nothing; and he felt gravely thankful when the poor man’s sufferings were over and the throng of swarthy faces melted from the open doorway.

He sat apart a little after that until a commotion outside the cabin and a cheery voice asking for Mr. Lindo summoned him to the door, where he found the same manager who had sent him down the night before, and who now greeted him warmly. “It is not for me to thank you,” Mr. Peat said—“I have nothing to do with this pit—the owner, to whom what has happened will be reported, will do that; but personally I am obliged to you, Mr. Lindo, and I am sure the men are.”

“I wanted only to be of help,” the clergyman answered simply. “There was not much I could do.”

“Well, that is a matter of opinion,” the manager replied. “I have mine, and I know that the men who have come up have theirs. However, here is the cage; perhaps you will not mind going up with poor Edwards?”