Kitabı oku: «Villa Rubein, and Other Stories», sayfa 20

II

It was eight years before the wheels of life carried Scorrier back to that disenchanted spot, and this time not on the business of the New Colliery Company. He went for another company with a mine some thirty miles away. Before starting, however, he visited Hemmings. The secretary was surrounded by pigeon-holes and finer than ever; Scorrier blinked in the full radiance of his courtesy. A little man with eyebrows full of questions, and a grizzled beard, was seated in an arm-chair by the fire.

“You know Mr. Booker,” said Hemmings – “one of my directors. This is Mr. Scorrier, sir – who went out for us.”

These sentences were murmured in a way suggestive of their uncommon value. The director uncrossed his legs, and bowed. Scorrier also bowed, and Hemmings, leaning back, slowly developed the full resources of his waistcoat.

“So you are going out again, Scorrier, for the other side? I tell Mr. Scorrier, sir, that he is going out for the enemy. Don’t find them a mine as good as you found us, there’s a good man.”

The little director asked explosively: “See our last dividend? Twenty per cent; eh, what?”

Hemmings moved a finger, as if reproving his director. “I will not disguise from you,” he murmured, “that there is friction between us and – the enemy; you know our position too well – just a little too well, eh? ‘A nod’s as good as a wink.’”

His diplomatic eyes flattered Scorrier, who passed a hand over his brow – and said: “Of course.”

“Pippin doesn’t hit it off with them. Between ourselves, he’s a leetle too big for his boots. You know what it is when a man in his position gets a sudden rise!”

Scorrier caught himself searching on the floor for a sight of Hemmings’ boots; he raised his eyes guiltily. The secretary continued: “We don’t hear from him quite as often as we should like, in fact.”

To his own surprise Scorrier murmured: “It’s a silent place!”

The secretary smiled. “Very good! Mr. Scorrier says, sir, it’s a silent place; ha-ha! I call that very good!” But suddenly a secret irritation seemed to bubble in him; he burst forth almost violently: “He’s no business to let it affect him; now, has he? I put it to you, Mr. Scorrier, I put it to you, sir!”

But Scorrier made no reply, and soon after took his leave: he had been asked to convey a friendly hint to Pippin that more frequent letters would be welcomed. Standing in the shadow of the Royal Exchange, waiting to thread his way across, he thought: ‘So you must have noise, must you – you’ve got some here, and to spare…’

On his arrival in the new world he wired to Pippin asking if he might stay with him on the way up country, and received the answer: “Be sure and come.”

A week later he arrived (there was now a railway) and found Pippin waiting for him in a phaeton. Scorrier would not have known the place again; there was a glitter over everything, as if some one had touched it with a wand. The tracks had given place to roads, running firm, straight, and black between the trees under brilliant sunshine; the wooden houses were all painted; out in the gleaming harbour amongst the green of islands lay three steamers, each with a fleet of busy boats; and here and there a tiny yacht floated, like a sea-bird on the water. Pippin drove his long-tailed horses furiously; his eyes brimmed with subtle kindness, as if according Scorrier a continual welcome. During the two days of his stay Scorrier never lost that sense of glamour. He had every opportunity for observing the grip Pippin had over everything. The wooden doors and walls of his bungalow kept out no sounds. He listened to interviews between his host and all kinds and conditions of men. The voices of the visitors would rise at first – angry, discontented, matter-of-fact, with nasal twang, or guttural drawl; then would come the soft patter of the superintendent’s feet crossing and recrossing the room. Then a pause, the sound of hard breathing, and quick questions – the visitor’s voice again, again the patter, and Pippin’s ingratiating but decisive murmurs. Presently out would come the visitor with an expression on his face which Scorrier soon began to know by heart, a kind of pleased, puzzled, helpless look, which seemed to say, “I’ve been done, I know – I’ll give it to myself when I’m round the corner.”

Pippin was full of wistful questions about “home.” He wanted to talk of music, pictures, plays, of how London looked, what new streets there were, and, above all, whether Scorrier had been lately in the West Country. He talked of getting leave next winter, asked whether Scorrier thought they would “put up with him at home”; then, with the agitation which had alarmed Scorrier before, he added: “Ah! but I’m not fit for home now. One gets spoiled; it’s big and silent here. What should I go back to? I don’t seem to realise.”

Scorrier thought of Hemmings. “‘Tis a bit cramped there, certainly,” he muttered.

Pippin went on as if divining his thoughts. “I suppose our friend Hemmings would call me foolish; he’s above the little weaknesses of imagination, eh? Yes; it’s silent here. Sometimes in the evening I would give my head for somebody to talk to – Hemmings would never give his head for anything, I think. But all the same, I couldn’t face them at home. Spoiled!” And slyly he murmured: “What would the Board say if they could hear that?”

Scorrier blurted out: “To tell you the truth, they complain a little of not hearing from you.”

Pippin put out a hand, as if to push something away. “Let them try the life here!” he broke out; “it’s like sitting on a live volcano – what with our friends, ‘the enemy,’ over there; the men; the American competition. I keep it going, Scorrier, but at what a cost – at what a cost!”

“But surely – letters?”

Pippin only answered: “I try – I try!”

Scorrier felt with remorse and wonder that he had spoken the truth. The following day he left for his inspection, and while in the camp of “the enemy” much was the talk he heard of Pippin.

“Why!” said his host, the superintendent, a little man with a face somewhat like an owl’s, “d’you know the name they’ve given him down in the capital – ’the King’ – good, eh? He’s made them ‘sit up’ all along this coast. I like him well enough – good-hearted man, shocking nervous; but my people down there can’t stand him at any price. Sir, he runs this colony. You’d think butter wouldn’t melt in that mouth of his; but he always gets his way; that’s what riles ‘em so; that and the success he’s making of his mine. It puzzles me; you’d think he’d only be too glad of a quiet life, a man with his nerves. But no, he’s never happy unless he’s fighting, something where he’s got a chance to score a victory. I won’t say he likes it, but, by Jove, it seems he’s got to do it. Now that’s funny! I’ll tell you one thing, though shouldn’t be a bit surprised if he broke down some day; and I’ll tell you another,” he added darkly, “he’s sailing very near the wind, with those large contracts that he makes. 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, “I wish 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.

III

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. I wish 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:

“GENTLEMEN, – Since this happened I have not slept…”

He stole away again with a sense of indignation that no one could be dragged in to share that fight. The London Board-room rose before his mind. He imagined the portentous gravity of Hemmings; his face and voice and manner conveying the impression that he alone could save the situation; the six directors, all men of commonsense and certainly humane, seated behind large turret-shaped inkpots; the concern and irritation in their voices, asking how it could have happened; their comments: “An awful thing!” “I suppose Pippin is doing the best he can!” “Wire him on no account to leave the mine idle!” “Poor devils!” “A fund? Of course, what ought we to give?” He had a strong conviction that nothing of all this would disturb the commonsense with which they would go home and eat their mutton. A good thing too; the less it was taken to heart the better! But Scorrier felt angry. The fight was so unfair! A fellow all nerves – with not a soul to help him! Well, it was his own lookout! He had chosen to centre it all in himself, to make himself its very soul. If he gave way now, the ship must go down! By a thin thread, Scorrier’s hero-worship still held. ‘Man against nature,’ he thought, ‘I back the man.’ The struggle in which he was so powerless to give aid, became intensely personal to him, as if he had engaged his own good faith therein.

The next day they went down again to the pit-head; and Scorrier himself descended. The fumes had almost cleared, but there were some places which would never be reached. At the end of the day all but four bodies had been recovered. “In the day o’ judgment,” a miner said, “they four’ll come out of here.” Those unclaimed bodies haunted Scorrier. He came on sentences of writing, where men waiting to be suffocated had written down their feelings. In one place, the hour, the word “Sleepy,” and a signature. In another, “A. F. – done for.” When he came up at last Pippin was still waiting, pocket-book in hand; they again departed at a furious pace.

Two days later Scorrier, visiting the shaft, found its neighbourhood deserted – not a living thing of any sort was there except one Chinaman poking his stick into the rubbish. Pippin was away down the coast engaging an engineer; and on his return, Scorrier had not the heart to tell him of the desertion. He was spared the effort, for Pippin said: “Don’t be afraid – you’ve got bad news? The men have gone on strike.”

Scorrier sighed. “Lock, stock, and barrel”

“I thought so – see what I have here!” He put before Scorrier a telegram:

“At all costs keep working – fatal to stop – manage this somehow. – HEMMINGS.”

Breathing quickly, he added: “As if I didn’t know! ‘Manage this somehow’ – a little hard!”

“What’s to be done?” asked Scorrier.

“You see I am commanded!” Pippin answered bitterly. “And they’re quite right; we must keep working – our contracts! Now I’m down – not a soul will spare me!”

The miners’ meeting was held the following day on the outskirts of the town. Pippin had cleared the place to make a public recreation-ground – a sort of feather in the company’s cap; it was now to be the spot whereon should be decided the question of the company’s life or death.

The sky to the west was crossed by a single line of cloud like a bar of beaten gold; tree shadows crept towards the groups of men; the evening savour, that strong fragrance of the forest, sweetened the air. The miners stood all round amongst the burnt tree-stumps, cowed and sullen. They looked incapable of movement or expression. It was this dumb paralysis that frightened Scorrier. He watched Pippin speaking from his phaeton, the butt of all those sullen, restless eyes. Would he last out? Would the wires hold? It was like the finish of a race. He caught a baffled look on Pippin’s face, as if he despaired of piercing that terrible paralysis. The men’s eyes had begun to wander. ‘He’s lost his hold,’ thought Scorrier; ‘it’s all up!’

A miner close beside him muttered: “Look out!”

Pippin was leaning forward, his voice had risen, the words fell like a whiplash on the faces of the crowd: “You shan’t throw me over; do you think I’ll give up all I’ve done for you? I’ll make you the first power in the colony! Are you turning tail at the first shot? You’re a set of cowards, my lads!”

Each man round Scorrier was listening with a different motion of the hands – one rubbed them, one clenched them, another moved his closed fist, as if stabbing some one in the back. A grisly-bearded, beetle-browed, twinkling-eyed old Cornishman muttered: “A’hm not troublin’ about that.” It seemed almost as if Pippin’s object was to get the men to kill him; they had gathered closer, crouching for a rush. Suddenly Pippin’s voice dropped to a whisper: “I’m disgraced Men, are you going back on me?”

The old miner next Scorrier called out suddenly: “Anny that’s Cornishmen here to stand by the superintendent?” A group drew together, and with murmurs and gesticulation the meeting broke up.

In the evening a deputation came to visit Pippin; and all night long their voices and the superintendent’s footsteps could be heard. In the morning, Pippin went early to the mine. Before supper the deputation came again; and again Scorrier had to listen hour after hour to the sound of voices and footsteps till he fell asleep. Just before dawn he was awakened by a light. Pippin stood at his bedside. “The men go down to-morrow,” he said: “What did I tell you? Carry me home on my shield, eh?”

In a week the mine was in full work.

V

Two years later, Scorrier heard once more of Pippin. A note from Hemmings reached him asking if he could make it convenient to attend their Board meeting the following Thursday. He arrived rather before the appointed time. The secretary received him, and, in answer to inquiry, said: “Thank you, we are doing well – between ourselves, we are doing very well.”

“And Pippin?”

The secretary frowned. “Ah, Pippin! We asked you to come on his account. Pippin is giving us a lot of trouble. We have not had a single line from him for just two years!” He spoke with such a sense of personal grievance that Scorrier felt quite sorry for him. “Not a single line,” said Hemmings, “since that explosion – you were there at the time, I remember! It makes it very awkward; I call it personal to me.”

“But how – ” Scorrier began.

“We get – telegrams. He writes to no one, not even to his family. And why? Just tell me why? We hear of him; he’s a great nob out there. Nothing’s done in the colony without his finger being in the pie. He turned out the last Government because they wouldn’t grant us an extension for our railway – shows he can’t be a fool. Besides, look at our balance-sheet!”

It turned out that the question on which Scorrier’s opinion was desired was, whether Hemmings should be sent out to see what was the matter with the superintendent. During the discussion which ensued, he was an unwilling listener to strictures on Pippin’s silence. “The explosion,” he muttered at last, “a very trying time!”

Mr. Booker pounced on him. “A very trying time! So it was – to all of us. But what excuse is that – now, Mr. Scorrier, what excuse is that?”

Scorrier was obliged to admit that it was none.

“Business is business – eh, what?”

Scorrier, gazing round that neat Board-room, nodded. A deaf director, who had not spoken for some months, said with sudden fierceness: “It’s disgraceful!” He was obviously letting off the fume of long-unuttered disapprovals. One perfectly neat, benevolent old fellow, however, who had kept his hat on, and had a single vice – that of coming to the Board-room with a brown paper parcel tied up with string – murmured: “We must make all allowances,” and started an anecdote about his youth. He was gently called to order by his secretary. Scorrier was asked for his opinion. He looked at Hemmings. “My importance is concerned,” was written all over the secretary’s face. Moved by an impulse of loyalty to Pippin, Scorrier answered, as if it were all settled: “Well, let me know when you are starting, Hemmings – I should like the trip myself.”

As he was going out, the chairman, old Jolyon Forsyte, with a grave, twinkling look at Hemmings, took him aside. “Glad to hear you say that about going too, Mr. Scorrier; we must be careful – Pippin’s such a good fellow, and so sensitive; and our friend there – a bit heavy in the hand, um?”

Scorrier did in fact go out with Hemmings. The secretary was sea-sick, and his prostration, dignified but noisy, remained a memory for ever; it was sonorous and fine – the prostration of superiority; and the way in which he spoke of it, taking casual acquaintances into the caves of his experience, was truly interesting.

Pippin came down to the capital to escort them, provided for their comforts as if they had been royalty, and had a special train to take them to the mines.

He was a little stouter, brighter of colour, greyer of beard, more nervous perhaps in voice and breathing. His manner to Hemmings was full of flattering courtesy; but his sly, ironical glances played on the secretary’s armour like a fountain on a hippopotamus. To Scorrier, however, he could not show enough affection:

The first evening, when Hemmings had gone to his room, he jumped up like a boy out of school. “So I’m going to get a wigging,” he said; “I suppose I deserve it; but if you knew – if you only knew…! Out here they’ve nicknamed me ‘the King’ – they say I rule the colony. It’s myself that I can’t rule”; and with a sudden burst of passion such as Scorrier had never seen in him: “Why did they send this man here? What can he know about the things that I’ve been through?” In a moment he calmed down again. “There! this is very stupid; worrying you like this!” and with a long, kind look into Scorrier’s face, he hustled him off to bed.

Pippin did not break out again, though fire seemed to smoulder behind the bars of his courteous irony. Intuition of danger had evidently smitten Hemmings, for he made no allusion to the object of his visit. There were moments when Scorrier’s common-sense sided with Hemmings – these were moments when the secretary was not present.

‘After all,’ he told himself, ‘it’s a little thing to ask – one letter a month. I never heard of such a case.’ It was wonderful indeed how they stood it! It showed how much they valued Pippin! What was the matter with him? What was the nature of his trouble? One glimpse Scorrier had when even Hemmings, as he phrased it, received “quite a turn.” It was during a drive back from the most outlying of the company’s trial mines, eight miles through the forest. The track led through a belt of trees blackened by a forest fire. Pippin was driving. The secretary seated beside him wore an expression of faint alarm, such as Pippin’s driving was warranted to evoke from almost any face. The sky had darkened strangely, but pale streaks of light, coming from one knew not where, filtered through the trees. No breath was stirring; the wheels and horses’ hoofs made no sound on the deep fern mould. All around, the burnt tree-trunks, leafless and jagged, rose like withered giants, the passages between them were black, the sky black, and black the silence. No one spoke, and literally the only sound was Pippin’s breathing. What was it that was so terrifying? Scorrier had a feeling of entombment; that nobody could help him; the feeling of being face to face with Nature; a sensation as if all the comfort and security of words and rules had dropped away from him. And-nothing happened. They reached home and dined.

During dinner he had again that old remembrance of a little man chopping at a castle with his sword. It came at a moment when Pippin had raised his hand with the carving-knife grasped in it to answer some remark of Hemmings’ about the future of the company. The optimism in his uplifted chin, the strenuous energy in his whispering voice, gave Scorrier a more vivid glimpse of Pippin’s nature than he had perhaps ever had before. This new country, where nothing but himself could help a man – that was the castle! No wonder Pippin was impatient of control, no wonder he was out of hand, no wonder he was silent – chopping away at that! And suddenly he thought: ‘Yes, and all the time one knows, Nature must beat him in the end!’

That very evening Hemmings delivered himself of his reproof. He had sat unusually silent; Scorrier, indeed, had thought him a little drunk, so portentous was his gravity; suddenly, however he rose. It was hard on a man, he said, in his position, with a Board (he spoke as of a family of small children), to be kept so short of information. He was actually compelled to use his imagination to answer the shareholders’ questions. This was painful and humiliating; he had never heard of any secretary having to use his imagination! He went further – it was insulting! He had grown grey in the service of the company. Mr. Scorrier would bear him out when he said he had a position to maintain – his name in the City was a high one; and, by George! he was going to keep it a high one; he would allow nobody to drag it in the dust – that ought clearly to be understood. His directors felt they were being treated like children; however that might be, it was absurd to suppose that he (Hemmings) could be treated like a child…! The secretary paused; his eyes seemed to bully the room.

“If there were no London office,” murmured Pippin, “the shareholders would get the same dividends.”

Hemmings gasped. “Come!” he said, “this is monstrous!”

“What help did I get from London when I first came here? What help have I ever had?”

Hemmings swayed, recovered, and with a forced smile replied that, if this were true, he had been standing on his head for years; he did not believe the attitude possible for such a length of time; personally he would have thought that he too had had a little something to say to the company’s position, but no matter…! His irony was crushing… It was possible that Mr. Pippin hoped to reverse the existing laws of the universe with regard to limited companies; he would merely say that he must not begin with a company of which he (Hemmings) happened to be secretary. Mr. Scorrier had hinted at excuses; for his part, with the best intentions in the world, he had great difficulty in seeing them. He would go further – he did not see them! The explosion…! Pippin shrank so visibly that Hemmings seemed troubled by a suspicion that he had gone too far.

“We know,” he said, “that it was trying for you…”

“Trying!” “burst out Pippin.

“No one can say,” Hemmings resumed soothingly, “that we have not dealt liberally.” Pippin made a motion of the head. “We think we have a good superintendent; I go further, an excellent superintendent. What I say is: Let’s be pleasant! I am not making an unreasonable request!” He ended on a fitting note of jocularity; and, as if by consent, all three withdrew, each to his own room, without another word.

In the course of the next day Pippin said to Scorrier: “It seems I have been very wicked. I must try to do better”; and with a touch of bitter humour, “They are kind enough to think me a good superintendent, you see! After that I must try hard.”

Scorrier broke in: “No man could have done so much for them;” and, carried away by an impulse to put things absolutely straight, went on “But, after all, a letter now and then – what does it amount to?”

Pippin besieged him with a subtle glance. “You too?” he said – “I must indeed have been a wicked man!” and turned away.

Scorrier felt as if he had been guilty of brutality; sorry for Pippin, angry with himself; angry with Pippin, sorry for himself. He earnestly desired to see the back of Hemmings. The secretary gratified the wish a few days later, departing by steamer with ponderous expressions of regard and the assurance of his goodwill.

Pippin gave vent to no outburst of relief, maintaining a courteous silence, making only one allusion to his late guest, in answer to a remark of Scorrier:

“Ah! don’t tempt me! mustn’t speak behind his back.”