第87章 THE SILENCE(4)

I wouldn't care to take his risks.Just let them have a strike, or something that shuts them down for a spell--and mark my words, sir--it'll be all up with them.But," he concluded confidentially, "Iwish I had his hold on the men; it's a great thing in this country.

Not like home, where you can go round a corner and get another gang.

You have to make the best you can out of the lot you have; you won't, get another man for love or money without you ship him a few hundred miles." And with a frown he waved his arm over the forests to indicate the barrenness of the land.

Scorrier finished his inspection and went on a shooting trip into the forest.His host met him on his return."Just look at this!" he said, holding out a telegram."Awful, isn't it?" His face expressed a profound commiseration, almost ludicrously mixed with the ashamed contentment that men experience at the misfortunes of an enemy.

The telegram, dated the day before, ran thus "Frightful explosion New Colliery this morning, great loss of life feared."Scorrier had the bewildered thought: 'Pippin will want me now.'

He took leave of his host, who called after him: "You'd better wait for a steamer! It's a beastly drive!"Scorrier shook his head.All night, jolting along a rough track cut through the forest, he thought of Pippin.The other miseries of this calamity at present left him cold; he barely thought of the smothered men; but Pippin's struggle, his lonely struggle with this hydra-headed monster, touched him very nearly.He fell asleep and dreamed of watching Pippin slowly strangled by a snake; the agonised, kindly, ironic face peeping out between two gleaming coils was so horribly real, that he awoke.It was the moment before dawn: pitch-black branches barred the sky; with every jolt of the wheels the gleams from the lamps danced, fantastic and intrusive, round ferns and tree-stems, into the cold heart of the forest.For an hour or more Scorrier tried to feign sleep, and hide from the stillness, and overmastering gloom of these great woods.Then softly a whisper of noises stole forth, a stir of light, and the whole slow radiance of the morning glory.But it brought no warmth; and Scorrier wrapped himself closer in his cloak, feeling as though old age had touched him.

Close on noon he reached the township.Glamour seemed still to hover over it.He drove on to the mine.The winding-engine was turning, the pulley at the top of the head-gear whizzing round; nothing looked unusual.'Some mistake!' he thought.He drove to the mine buildings, alighted, and climbed to the shaft head.Instead of the usual rumbling of the trolleys, the rattle of coal discharged over the screens, there was silence.Close by, Pippin himself was standing, smirched with dirt.The cage, coming swift and silent from below, shot open its doors with a sharp rattle.Scorrier bent forward to look.There lay a dead man, with a smile on his face.

"How many?" he whispered.

Pippin answered: "Eighty-four brought up--forty-seven still below,"and entered the man's name in a pocket-book.

An older man was taken out next; he too was smiling--there had been vouchsafed to him, it seemed, a taste of more than earthly joy.The sight of those strange smiles affected Scorrier more than all the anguish or despair he had seen scored on the faces of other dead men.

He asked an old miner how long Pippin had been at work.

"Thirty hours.Yesterday he wer' below; we had to nigh carry mun up at last.He's for goin' down again, but the chaps won't lower mun;"the old man gave a sigh."I'm waiting for my boy to come up, I am."Scorrier waited too--there was fascination about those dead, smiling faces.The rescuing of these men who would never again breathe went on and on.Scorrier grew sleepy in the sun.The old miner woke him, saying: "Rummy stuff this here chokedamp; see, they all dies drunk!"The very next to be brought up was the chief engineer.Scorrier had known him quite well, one of those Scotsmen who are born at the age of forty and remain so all their lives.His face--the only one that wore no smile--seemed grieving that duty had deprived it of that last luxury.With wide eyes and drawn lips he had died protesting.

Late in the afternoon the old miner touched Scorrier's arm, and said:

"There he is--there's my boy!" And he departed slowly, wheeling the body on a trolley.

As the sun set, the gang below came up.No further search was possible till the fumes had cleared.Scorrier heard one man say:

"There's some we'll never get; they've had sure burial"Another answered him: "'Tis a gude enough bag for me!" They passed him, the whites of their eyes gleaming out of faces black as ink.

Pippin drove him home at a furious pace, not uttering a single word.

As they turned into the main street, a young woman starting out before the horses obliged Pippin to pull up.The glance he bent on Scorrier was ludicrously prescient of suffering.The woman asked for her husband.Several times they were stopped thus by women asking for their husbands or sons."This is what I have to go through,"Pippin whispered.

When they had eaten, he said to Scorrier: "It was kind of you to come and stand by me! They take me for a god, poor creature that I am.

But shall I ever get the men down again? Their nerve's shaken.Iwish I were one of those poor lads, to die with a smile like that!"Scorrier felt the futility of his presence.On Pippin alone must be the heat and burden.Would he stand under it, or would the whole thing come crashing to the ground? He urged him again and again to rest, but Pippin only gave him one of his queer smiles."You don't know how strong I am!" he said.

IV

He himself slept heavily; and, waking at dawn, went down.Pippin was still at his desk; his pen had dropped; he was asleep.The ink was wet; Scorrier's eye caught the opening words: