The sports were over, and there remained still an hour to be filled in before dinner. It was an hour full of danger to Craig’s hopes of victory, for the men were wild with excitement, and ready for the most reckless means of ‘slinging their dust.’ I could not but admire the skill with which Mr. Craig caught their attention.
‘Gentlemen,’ he called out, ‘we’ve forgotten the judge of the great race. Three cheers for Mr. Connor!’
Two of the shantymen picked me up and hoisted me on their shoulders while the cheers were given.
‘Announce the Punch and Judy,’ he entreated me, in a low voice. I did so in a little speech, and was forthwith borne aloft, through the street to the booth, followed by the whole crowd, cheering like mad.
The excitement of the crowd caught me, and for an hour I squeaked and worked the wires of the immortal and unhappy family in a manner hitherto unapproached by me at least. I was glad enough when Graeme came to tell me to send the men in to dinner. This Mr. Punch did in the most gracious manner, and again with cheers for Punch’s master they trooped tumultuously into the tent.
We had only well begun when Baptiste came in quietly but hurriedly and whispered to me—
‘M’sieu Craig, he’s gone to Slavin’s, and would lak you and M’sieu Graeme would follow queek. Sandy he’s take one leel drink up at de stable, and he’s go mad lak one diable.’
I sent him for Graeme, who was presiding at dinner, and set off for Slavin’s at a run. There I found Mr. Craig and Nelson holding Sandy, more than half drunk, back from Slavin, who, stripped to the shirt, was coolly waiting with a taunting smile.
‘Let me go, Mr. Craig,’ Sandy was saying, ‘I am a good Presbyterian. He is a Papist thief; and he has my money; and I will have it out of the soul of him.’
‘Let him go, preacher,’ sneered Slavin, ‘I’ll cool him off for yez. But ye’d better hold him if yez wants his mug left on to him.’
‘Let him go!’ Keefe was shouting.
‘Hands off!’ Blaney was echoing.
I pushed my way in. ‘What’s up?’ I cried.
‘Mr. Connor,’ said Sandy solemnly, ‘it is a gentleman you are, though your name is against you, and I am a good Presbyterian, and I can give you the Commandments and Reasons annexed to them; but yon’s a thief, a Papist thief, and I am justified in getting my money out of his soul.’
‘But,’ I remonstrated, ‘you won’t get it in this way.’
‘He has my money,’ reiterated Sandy.
‘He is a blank liar, and he’s afraid to take it up,’ said Slavin, in a low, cool tone.
With a roar Sandy broke away and rushed at him; but, without moving from his tracks, Slavin met him with a straight left-hander and laid him flat.
‘Hooray,’ yelled Blaney, ‘Ireland for ever!’ and, seizing the iron poker, swung it around his head, crying, ‘Back, or, by the holy Moses, I’ll kill the first man that interferes wid the game.’
‘Give it to him!’ Keefe said savagely.
Sandy rose slowly, gazing round stupidly.
‘He don’t know what hit him,’ laughed Keefe.
This roused the Highlander, and saying, ‘I’ll settle you afterwards, Mister Keefe,’ he rushed in again at Slavin. Again Slavin met him again with his left, staggered him, and, before he fell, took a step forward and delivered a terrific right-hand blow on his jaw. Poor Sandy went down in a heap amid the yells of Blaney, Keefe, and some others of the gang. I was in despair when in came Baptiste and Graeme.
One look at Sandy, and Baptiste tore off his coat and cap, slammed them on the floor, danced on them, and with a long-drawn ‘sap-r-r-r-rie,’ rushed at Slavin. But Graeme caught him by the back of the neck, saying, ‘Hold on, little man,’ and turning to Slavin, pointed to Sandy, who was reviving under Nelson’s care, and said, ‘What’s this for?’
‘Ask him,’ said Slavin insolently. ‘He knows.’
‘What is it, Nelson?’
Nelson explained that Sandy, after drinking some at the stable and a glass at the Black Rock Hotel, had come down here with Keefe and the others, had lost his money, and was accusing Slavin of robbing him.
‘Did you furnish him with liquor?’ said Graeme sternly.
‘It is none of your business,’ replied Slavin, with an oath.
‘I shall make it my business. It is not the first time my men have lost money in this saloon.’
‘You lie,’ said Slavin, with deliberate emphasis.
‘Slavin,’ said Graeme quietly, ‘it’s a pity you said that, because, unless you apologise in one minute, I shall make you sorry.’
‘Apologise?’ roared Slavin, ‘apologise to you?’ calling him a vile name.
Graeme grew white, and said even more slowly, ‘Now you’ll have to take it; no apology will do.’
He slowly stripped off coat and vest. Mr. Craig interposed, begging Graeme to let the matter pass. ‘Surely he is not worth it.’
‘Mr. Craig,’ said Graeme, with an easy smile, ‘you don’t understand. No man can call me that name and walk around afterwards feeling well.’
Then, turning to Slavin, he said, ‘Now, if you want a minute’s rest, I can wait.’
Slavin, with a curse, bade him come.
‘Blaney,’ said Graeme sharply, ‘you get back.’ Blaney promptly stepped back to Keefe’s side. ‘Nelson, you and Baptiste can see that they stay there.’ The old man nodded and looked at Craig, who simply said, ‘Do the best you can.’
It was a good fight. Slavin had plenty of pluck, and for a time forced the fighting, Graeme guarding easily and tapping him aggravatingly about the nose and eyes, drawing blood, but not disabling him. Gradually there came a look of fear into Slavin’s eyes, and the beads stood upon his face. He had met his master.
‘Now, Slavin, you’re beginning to be sorry; and now I am going to show you what you are made of.’ Graeme made one or two lightning passes, struck Slavin one, two, three terrific blows, and laid him quite flat and senseless. Keefe and Blaney both sprang forward, but there was a savage kind of growl.
‘Hold, there!’ It was old man Nelson looking along a pistol barrel. ‘You know me, Keefe,’ he said. ‘You won’t do any murder this time.’
Keefe turned green and yellow, and staggered back, while Slavin slowly rose to his feet.
‘Will you take some more?’ said Graeme. ‘You haven’t got much; but mind I have stopped playing with you. Put up your gun, Nelson. No one will interfere now.’
Slavin hesitated, then rushed, but Graeme stepped to meet him, and we saw Slavin’s heels in the air as he fell back upon his neck and shoulders and lay still, with his toes quivering.
‘Bon!’ yelled Baptiste. ‘Bully boy! Dat’s de bon stuff. Dat’s larn him one good lesson.’ But immediately he shrieked, Gar-r-r-r-e a vous!’
He was too late, for there was a crash of breaking glass, and Graeme fell to the floor with a long deep cut on the side of his head. Keefe had hurled a bottle with all too sure an aim, and had fled. I thought he was dead; but we carried him out, and in a few minutes he groaned, opened his eyes, and sank again into insensibility.
‘Where can we take him?’ I cried.
‘To my shack,’ said Mr. Craig.
‘Is there no place nearer?’
‘Yes; Mrs. Mavor’s. I shall run on to tell her.’
She met us at the door. I had in mind to say some words of apology, but when I looked upon her face I forgot my words, forgot my business at her door, and stood simply looking.
‘Come in! Bring him in! Please do not wait,’ she said, and her voice was sweet and soft and firm.
We laid him in a large room at the back of the shop over which Mrs. Mavor lived. Together we dressed the wound, her firm white fingers, skilful as if with long training. Before the dressing was finished I sent Craig off, for the time had come for the Magic Lantern in the church, and I knew how critical the moment was in our fight. ‘Go,’ I said; ‘he is coming to, and we do not need you.’
In a few moments more Graeme revived, and, gazing about, asked, ‘What’s, all this about?’ and then, recollecting, ‘Ah! that brute Keefe’; then seeing my anxious face he said carelessly, ‘Awful bore, ain’t it? Sorry to trouble you, old fellow.’
‘You be hanged!’ I said shortly; for his old sweet smile was playing about his lips, and was almost too much for me. ‘Mrs. Mavor and I are in command, and you must keep perfectly still.’
‘Mrs. Mavor?’ he said, in surprise. She came forward, with a slight flush on her face.
‘I think you know me, Mr. Graeme.’
‘I have often seen you, and wished to know you. I am sorry to bring you this trouble.’
‘You must not say so,’ she replied, ‘but let me do all for you that I can. And now the doctor says you are to lie still.’
‘The doctor? Oh! you mean Connor. He is hardly there yet. You don’t know each other. Permit me to present Mr. Connor, Mrs. Mavor.’
As she bowed slightly, her eyes looked into mine with serious gaze, not inquiring, yet searching my soul. As I looked into her eyes I forgot everything about me, and when I recalled myself it seemed as if I had been away in some far place. It was not their colour or their brightness; I do not yet know their colour, and I have often looked into them; and they were not bright; but they were clear, and one could look far down into them, and in their depths see a glowing, steady light. As I went to get some drugs from the Black Rock doctor, I found myself wondering about that far-down light; and about her voice, how it could get that sound from far away.
I found the doctor quite drunk, as indeed Mr. Craig had warned; but his drugs were good, and I got what I wanted and quickly returned.
While Graeme slept Mrs. Mavor made me tea. As the evening wore on I told her the events of the day, dwelling admiringly upon Craig’s generalship. She smiled at this.
‘He got me too,’ she said. ‘Nixon was sent to me just before the sports; and I don’t think he will break down to-day, and I am so thankful.’ And her eyes glowed.
‘I am quite sure he won’t,’ I thought to myself, but I said no word.
After a long pause, she went on, ‘I have promised Mr. Craig to sing to-night, if I am needed!’ and then, after a moment’s hesitation, ‘It is two years since I have been able to sing—two years,’ she repeated, ‘since’—and then her brave voice trembled—‘my husband was killed.’
‘I quite understand,’ I said, having no other word on my tongue
‘And,’ she went on quietly, ‘I fear I have been selfish. It is hard to sing the same songs. We were very happy. But the miners like to hear me sing, and I think perhaps it helps them to feel less lonely, and keeps them from evil. I shall try to-night, if I am needed. Mr. Craig will not ask me unless he must.’
I would have seen every miner and lumberman in the place hideously drunk before I would have asked her to sing one song while her heart ached. I wondered at Craig, and said, rather angrily—
‘He thinks only of those wretched miners and shantymen of his.’
She looked at me with wonder in her eyes, and said gently, ‘And are they not Christ’s too?’
And I found no word to reply.
It was nearing ten o’clock, and I was wondering how the fight was going, and hoping that Mrs. Mavor would not be needed, when the door opened, and old man Nelson and Sandy, the latter much battered and ashamed, came in with the word for Mrs. Mavor.
‘I will come,’ she said simply. She saw me preparing to accompany her, and asked, ‘Do you think you can leave him?’
‘He will do quite well in Nelson’s care.’
‘Then I am glad; for I must take my little one with me. I did not put her to bed in case I should need to go, and I may not leave her.’
We entered the church by the back door, and saw at once that even yet the battle might easily be lost.
Some miners had just come from Slavin’s, evidently bent on breaking up the meeting, in revenge for the collapse of the dance, which Slavin was unable to enjoy, much less direct. Craig was gallantly holding his ground, finding it hard work to keep his men in good humour, and so prevent a fight, for there were cries of ‘Put him out! Put the beast out!’ at a miner half drunk and wholly outrageous.
The look of relief that came over his face when Craig caught sight of us told how anxious he had been, and reconciled me to Mrs. Mavor’s singing. ‘Thank the good God,’ he said, with what came near being a sob, ‘I was about to despair.’
He immediately walked to the front and called out—
‘Gentlemen, if you wish it, Mrs. Mavor will sing.’
There was a dead silence. Some one began to applaud, but a miner said savagely, ‘Stop that, you fool!’
There was a few moments’ delay, when from the crowd a voice called out, ‘Does Mrs. Mavor wish to sing?’ followed by cries of ‘Ay, that’s it.’ Then Shaw, the foreman at the mines, stood up in the audience and said—
‘Mr. Craig and gentlemen, you know that three years ago I was known as “Old Ricketts,” and that I owe all I am to-night, under God, to Mrs. Mavor, and’—with a little quiver in his voice—‘her baby. And we all know that for two years she has not sung; and we all know why. And what I say is, that if she does not feel like singing to-night, she is not going to sing to keep any drunken brute of Slavin’s crowd quiet.’
There were deep growls of approval all over the church. I could have hugged Shaw then and there. Mr. Craig went to Mrs. Mavor, and after a word with her came back and said—
‘Mrs. Mavor, wishes me to thank her dear friend Mr. Shaw, but says she would like to sing.’
The response was perfect stillness. Mr. Craig sat down to the organ and played the opening bars of the touching melody, ‘Oft in the Stilly Night.’ Mrs. Mavor came to the front, and, with a smile of exquisite sweetness upon her sad face, and looking straight at us with her glorious eyes, began to sing.
Her voice, a rich soprano, even and true, rose and fell, now soft, now strong, but always filling the building, pouring around us floods of music. I had heard Patti’s ‘Home, sweet Home,’ and of all singing that alone affected me as did this.
At the end of the first verse the few women in the church and some men were weeping quietly; but when she began the words—
‘When I remember allThe friends once linked together,’
sobs came on every side from these tender-hearted fellows, and Shaw quite lost his grip. But she sang steadily on, the tone clearer and sweeter and fuller at every note, and when the sound of her voice died away, she stood looking at the men as if in wonder that they should weep. No one moved. Mr. Craig played softly on, and, wandering through many variations, arrived at last at
‘Jesus, lover of my soul.’
As she sang the appealing words, her face was lifted up, and she saw none of us; but she must have seen some one, for the cry in her voice could only come from one who could see and feel help close at hand. On and on went the glorious voice, searching my soul’s depths; but when she came to the words—
‘Thou, O Christ, art all I want,’
she stretched up her arms—she had quite forgotten us, her voice had borne her to other worlds—and sang with such a passion of ‘abandon’ that my soul was ready to surrender anything, everything.
Again Mr. Craig wandered on through his changing chords till again he came to familiar ground, and the voice began, in low, thrilling tones, Bernard’s great song of home—
‘Jerusalem the golden.’
Every word, with all its weight of meaning, came winging to our souls, till we found ourselves gazing afar into those stately halls of Zion, with their daylight serene and their jubilant throngs. When the singer came to the last verse there was a pause. Again Mr. Craig softly played the interlude, but still there was no voice. I looked up. She was very white, and her eyes were glowing with their deep light. Mr. Craig looked quickly about, saw her, stopped, and half rose, as if to go to her, when, in a voice that seemed to come from a far-off land, she went on—
‘O sweet and blessed country!’
The longing, the yearning, in the second ‘O’ were indescribable. Again and again, as she held that word, and then dropped down with the cadence in the music, my heart ached for I knew not what.
The audience were sitting as in a trance. The grimy faces of the miners, for they never get quite white, were furrowed with the tear-courses. Shaw, by this time, had his face too lifted high, his eyes gazing far above the singer’s head, and I knew by the rapture in his face that he was seeing, as she saw, the thronging stately halls and the white-robed conquerors. He had felt, and was still feeling, all the stress of the fight, and to him the vision of the conquerors in their glory was soul-drawing and soul-stirring. And Nixon, too—he had his vision; but what he saw was the face of the singer, with the shining eyes, and, by the look of him, that was vision enough.
Immediately after her last note Mrs. Mavor stretched out her hands to her little girl, who was sitting on my knee, caught her up, and, holding her close to her breast, walked quickly behind the curtain. Not a sound followed the singing: no one moved till she had disappeared; and then Mr. Craig came to the front, and, motioning to me to follow Mrs. Mavor, began in a low, distinct voice—
‘Gentlemen, it was not easy for Mrs. Mavor to sing for us, and you know she sang because she is a miner’s wife, and her heart is with the miners. But she sang, too, because her heart is His who came to earth this day so many years ago to save us all; and she would make you love Him too. For in loving Him you are saved from all base loves, and you know what I mean.
‘And before we say good-night, men, I want to know if the time is not come when all of you who mean to be better than you are should join in putting from us this thing that has brought sorrow and shame to us and to those we love? You know what I mean. Some of you are strong; will you stand by and see weaker men robbed of the money they save for those far away, and robbed of the manhood that no money can buy or restore?
‘Will the strong men help? Shall we all join hands in this? What do you say? In this town we have often seen hell, and just a moment ago we were all looking into heaven, “the sweet and blessed country.” O men!’ and his voice rang in an agony through the building—‘O men! which shall be ours? For Heaven’s dear sake, let us help one another! Who will?’
I was looking out through a slit in the curtain. The men, already wrought to intense feeling by the music, were listening with set faces and gleaming eyes, and as at the appeal ‘Who will?’ Craig raised high his hand, Shaw, Nixon, and a hundred men sprang to their feet and held high their hands.
I have witnessed some thrilling scenes in my life, but never anything to equal that: the one man on the platform standing at full height, with his hand thrown up to heaven, and the hundred men below standing straight, with arms up at full length, silent, and almost motionless.
For a moment Craig held them so; and again his voice rang out, louder, sterner than before—
‘All who mean it, say, “By God’s help I will.”’ And back from a hundred throats came deep and strong the words, ‘By God’s help, I will.’
At this point Mrs. Mavor, whom I had quite forgotten, put her hand on my arm. ‘Go and tell him,’ she panted, ‘I want them to come on Thursday night, as they used to in the other days—go—quick,’ and she almost pushed me out. I gave Craig her message. He held up his hand for silence.
‘Mrs. Mavor wishes me to say that she will be glad to see you all, as in the old days, on Thursday evening; and I can think of no better place to give formal expression to our pledge of this night’
There was a shout of acceptance; and then, at some one’s call, the long pent-up feelings of the crowd found vent in three mighty cheers for Mrs. Mavor.
‘Now for our old hymn,’ called out Mr. Craig, ‘and Mrs. Mavor will lead us.’
He sat down at the organ, played a few bars of ‘The Sweet By and By,’ and then Mrs. Mavor began. But not a soul joined till the refrain was reached, and then they sang as only men with their hearts on fire can sing. But after the last refrain Mr. Craig made a sign to Mrs. Mavor, and she sang alone, slowly and softly, and with eyes looking far away—
‘In the sweet by and by,We shall meet on that beautiful shore.’
There was no benediction—there seemed no need; and the men went quietly out. But over and over again the voice kept singing in my ears and in my heart, ‘We shall meet on that beautiful shore.’ And after the sleigh-loads of men had gone and left the street empty, as I stood with Craig in the radiant moonlight that made the great mountains about come near us, from Sandy’s sleigh we heard in the distance Baptiste’s French-English song; but the song that floated down with the sound of the bells from the miners’ sleigh was—
‘We shall meet on that beautiful shore.’
‘Poor old Shaw!’ said Craig softly.
When the last sound had died away I turned to him and said—
‘You have won your fight.’
‘We have won our fight; I was beaten,’ he replied quickly, offering me his hand. Then, taking off his cap, and looking up beyond the mountain-tops and the silent stars, he added softly, ‘Our fight, but His victory.’
And, thinking it all over, I could not say but perhaps he was right.
The days that followed the Black Rock Christmas were anxious days and weary, but not for the brightest of my life would I change them now; for, as after the burning heat or rocking storm the dying day lies beautiful in the tender glow of the evening, so these days have lost their weariness and lie bathed in a misty glory. The years that bring us many ills, and that pass so stormfully over us, bear away with them the ugliness, the weariness, the pain that are theirs, but the beauty, the sweetness, the rest they leave untouched, for these are eternal. As the mountains, that near at hand stand jagged and scarred, in the far distance repose in their soft robes of purple haze, so the rough present fades into the past, soft and sweet and beautiful.
I have set myself to recall the pain and anxiety of those days and nights when we waited in fear for the turn of the fever, but I can only think of the patience and gentleness and courage of her who stood beside me, bearing more than half my burden. And while I can see the face of Leslie Graeme, ghastly or flushed, and hear his low moaning or the broken words of his delirium, I think chiefly of the bright face bending over him, and of the cool, firm, swift-moving hands that soothed and smoothed and rested, and the voice, like the soft song of a bird in the twilight, that never failed to bring peace.
Mrs. Mavor and I were much together during those days. I made my home in Mr. Craig’s shack, but most of my time was spent beside my friend. We did not see much of Craig, for he was heart-deep with the miners, laying plans for the making of the League the following Thursday; and though he shared our anxiety and was ever ready to relieve us, his thought and his talk had mostly to do with the League.
Mrs. Mavor’s evenings were given to the miners, but her afternoons mostly to Graeme and to me, and then it was I saw another side of her character. We would sit in her little dining-room, where the pictures on the walls, the quaint old silver, and bits of curiously cut glass, all spoke of other and different days, and thence we would roam the world of literature and art. Keenly sensitive to all the good and beautiful in these, she had her favourites among the masters, for whom she was ready to do battle; and when her argument, instinct with fancy and vivid imagination, failed, she swept away all opposing opinion with the swift rush of her enthusiasm; so that, though I felt she was beaten, I was left without words to reply. Shakespeare and Tennyson and Burns she loved, but not Shelley, nor Byron, nor even Wordsworth. Browning she knew not, and therefore could not rank him with her noblest three; but when I read to her ‘A Death in the Desert,’ and, came to the noble words at the end of the tale—
‘For all was as I say, and now the manLies as he once lay, breast to breast with God,’
the light shone in her eyes, and she said, ‘Oh, that is good and great; I shall get much out of him; I had always feared he was impossible.’ And ‘Paracelsus,’ too, stirred her; but when I recited the thrilling fragment, ‘Prospice,’ on to that closing rapturous cry—
‘Then a light, then thy breast,O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again,And with God be the rest!’—
the red colour faded from her cheek, her breath came in a sob, and she rose quickly and passed out without a word. Ever after, Browning was among her gods. But when we talked of music, she, adoring Wagner, soared upon the wings of the mighty Tannhauser, far above, into regions unknown, leaving me to walk soberly with Beethoven and Mendelssohn. Yet with all our free, frank talk, there was all the while that in her gentle courtesy which kept me from venturing into any chamber of her life whose door she did not set freely open to me. So I vexed myself about her, and when Mr. Craig returned the next week from the Landing where he had been for some days, my first question was—
‘Who is Mrs. Mavor? And how in the name of all that is wonderful and unlikely does she come to be here? And why does she stay?’
He would not answer then; whether it was that his mind was full of the coming struggle, or whether he shrank from the tale, I know not; but that night, when we sat together beside his fire, he told me the story, while I smoked. He was worn with his long, hard drive, and with the burden of his work, but as he went on with his tale, looking into the fire as he told it, he forgot all his present weariness and lived again the scenes he painted for me. This was his story:—
‘I remember well my first sight of her, as she sprang from the front seat of the stage to the ground, hardly touching her husband’s hand. She looked a mere girl. Let’s see—five years ago—she couldn’t have been a day over twenty three. She looked barely twenty. Her swift glance swept over the group of miners at the hotel door, and then rested on the mountains standing in all their autumn glory.
‘I was proud of our mountains that evening. Turning to her husband, she exclaimed: “O Lewis, are they not grand? and lovely, too?” Every miner lost his heart then and there, but all waited for Abe the driver to give his verdict before venturing an opinion. Abe said nothing until he had taken a preliminary drink, and then, calling all hands to fill up, he lifted his glass high, and said solemnly—
‘“Boys, here’s to her.”
‘Like a flash every glass was emptied, and Abe called out, “Fill her up again, boys! My treat!”
‘He was evidently quite worked up. Then he began, with solemn emphasis—
‘“Boys, you hear me! She’s a No. 1, triple X, the pure quill with a bead on it: she’s a—,” and for the first time in his Black Rock history Abe was stuck for a word. Some one suggested “angel.”
‘“Angel!” repeated Abe, with infinite contempt. “Angel be blowed,” (I paraphrase here); “angels ain’t in the same month with her; I’d like to see any blanked angel swing my team around them curves without a shiver.”
‘“Held the lines herself, Abe?” asked a miner.
‘“That’s what,” said Abe; and then he went off into a fusilade of scientific profanity, expressive of his esteem for the girl who had swung his team round the curves; and the miners nodded to each other, and winked their entire approval of Abe’s performance, for this was his specialty.
‘Very decent fellow, Abe, but his talk wouldn’t print.’
Here Craig paused, as if balancing Abe’s virtues and vices.
‘Well,’ I urged, ‘who is she?’
‘Oh yes,’ he said, recalling himself; ‘she is an Edinburgh young lady—met Lewis Mayor, a young Scotch-English man, in London—wealthy, good family, and all that, but fast, and going to pieces at home. His people, who own large shares in these mines here, as a last resort sent him out here to reform. Curiously innocent ideas those old country people have of the reforming properties of this atmosphere! They send their young bloods here to reform. Here! in this devil’s camp-ground, where a man’s lust is his only law, and when, from sheer monotony, a man must betake himself to the only excitement of the place—that offered by the saloon. Good people in the east hold up holy hands of horror at these godless miners; but I tell you it’s asking these boys a good deal to keep straight and clean in a place like this. I take my excitement in fighting the devil and doing my work generally, and that gives me enough; but these poor chaps—hard worked, homeless, with no break or change—God help them and me!’ and his voice sank low.
‘Well,’ I persisted, ‘did Mavor reform?’
Again he roused himself. ‘Reform? Not exactly. In six-months he had broken through all restraint; and, mind you, not the miners’ fault—not a miner helped him down. It was a sight to make angels weep when Mrs. Mavor would come to the saloon door for her husband. Every miner would vanish; they could not look upon her shame, and they would send Mavor forth in the charge of Billy Breen, a queer little chap, who had belonged to the Mavors in some way in the old country, and between them they would get him home. How she stood it puzzles me to this day; but she never made any sign, and her courage never failed. It was always a bright, brave, proud face she held up to the world—except in church; there it was different. I used to preach my sermons, I believe, mostly for her—but never so that she could suspect—as bravely and as cheerily as I could. And as she listened, and especially as she sang—how she used to sing in those days!—there was no touch of pride in her face, though the courage never died out, but appeal, appeal! I could have cursed aloud the cause of her misery, or wept for the pity of it. Before her baby was born he seemed to pull himself together, for he was quite mad about her, and from the day the baby came—talk about miracles!—from that day he never drank a drop. She gave the baby over to him, and the baby simply absorbed him.
‘He was a new man. He could not drink whisky and kiss his baby. And the miners—it was really absurd if it were not so pathetic. It was the first baby in Black Rock, and they used to crowd Mavor’s shop and peep into the room at the back of it—I forgot to tell you that when he lost his position as manager he opened a hardware shop, for his people chucked him, and he was too proud to write home for money—just for a chance to be asked in to see the baby. I came upon Nixon standing at the back of the shop after he had seen the baby for the first time, sobbing hard, and to my question he replied: “It’s just like my own.” You can’t understand this. But to men who have lived so long in the mountains that they have forgotten what a baby looks like, who have had experience of humanity only in its roughest, foulest form, this little mite, sweet and clean, was like an angel fresh from heaven, the one link in all that black camp that bound them to what was purest and best in their past.
‘And to see the mother and her baby handle the miners!
‘Oh, it was all beautiful beyond words! I shall never forget the shock I got one night when I found “Old Ricketts” nursing the baby. A drunken old beast he was; but there he was sitting, sober enough, making extraordinary faces at the baby, who was grabbing at his nose and whiskers and cooing in blissful delight. Poor “Old Ricketts” looked as if he had been caught stealing, and muttering something about having to go, gazed wildly round for some place in which to lay the baby, when in came the mother, saying in her own sweet, frank way: “O Mr. Ricketts” (she didn’t find out till afterwards his name was Shaw), “would you mind keeping her just a little longer?—I shall be back in a few minutes.” And “Old Ricketts” guessed he could wait.
‘But in six months mother and baby, between them, transformed “Old Ricketts” into Mr. Shaw, fire-boss of the mines. And then in the evenings, when she would be singing her baby to sleep, the little shop would be full of miners, listening in dead silence to the baby-songs, and the English songs, and the Scotch songs she poured forth without stint, for she sang more for them than for her baby. No wonder they adored her. She was so bright, so gay, she brought light with her when she went into the camp, into the pits—for she went down to see the men work—or into a sick miner’s shack; and many a man, lonely and sick for home or wife, or baby or mother, found in that back room cheer and comfort and courage, and to many a poor broken wretch that room became, as one miner put it, “the anteroom to heaven.”’
Mr. Craig paused, and I waited. Then he went on slowly—
‘For a year and a half that was the happiest home in all the world, till one day—’
He put his face in his hands, and shuddered.
‘I don’t think I can ever forget the awful horror of that bright fall afternoon, when “Old Ricketts” came breathless to me and gasped, “Come! for the dear Lord’s sake,” and I rushed after him. At the mouth of the shaft lay three men dead. One was Lewis Mavor. He had gone down to superintend the running of a new drift; the two men, half drunk with Slavin’s whisky, set off a shot prematurely, to their own and Mavor’s destruction. They were badly burned, but his face was untouched. A miner was sponging off the bloody froth oozing from his lips. The others were standing about waiting for me to speak. But I could find no word, for my heart was sick, thinking, as they were, of the young mother and her baby waiting at home. So I stood, looking stupidly from one to the other, trying to find some reason—coward that I was—why another should bear the news rather than I. And while we stood there, looking at one another in fear, there broke upon us the sound of a voice mounting high above the birch tops, singing—
“Will ye no’ come back again?Will ye no’ come back again?Better lo’ed ye canna be,Will ye no’ come back again?”
‘A strange terror seized us. Instinctively the men closed up in front of the body, and stood in silence. Nearer and nearer came the clear, sweet voice, ringing like a silver bell up the steep—
“Sweet the lav’rock’s note and lang,Liltin’ wildly up the glen,But aye tae me he sings ae sang,Will ye no’ come back again?”
‘Before the verse was finished “Old Ricketts” had dropped on his knees, sobbing out brokenly, “O God! O God! have pity, have pity, have pity!”—and every man took off his hat. And still the voice came nearer, singing so brightly the refrain,
‘“Will ye no’ come back again?’
‘It became unbearable. “Old Ricketts” sprang suddenly to his feet, and, gripping me by the arm, said piteously, “Oh, go to her! for Heaven’s sake, go to her!” I next remember standing in her path and seeing her holding out her hands full of red lilies, crying out, “Are they not lovely? Lewis is so fond of them!” With the promise of much finer ones I turned her down a path toward the river, talking I know not what folly, till her great eyes grew grave, then anxious, and my tongue stammered and became silent. Then, laying her hand upon my arm, she said with gentle sweetness, “Tell me your trouble, Mr. Craig,” and I knew my agony had come, and I burst out, “Oh, if it were only mine!” She turned quite white, and with her deep eyes—you’ve noticed her eyes—drawing the truth out of mine, she said, “Is it mine, Mr. Craig, and my baby’s?” I waited, thinking with what words to begin. She put one hand to her heart, and with the other caught a little poplar-tree that shivered under her grasp, and said with white lips, but even more gently, “Tell me.” I wondered at my voice being so steady as I said, “Mrs. Mavor, God will help you and your baby. There has been an accident—and it is all over.”
‘She was a miner’s wife, and there was no need for more. I could see the pattern of the sunlight falling through the trees upon the grass. I could hear the murmur of the river, and the cry of the cat-bird in the bushes, but we seemed to be in a strange and unreal world. Suddenly she stretched out her hands to me, and with a little moan said, “Take me to him.”
‘“Sit down for a moment or two,” I entreated.
‘“No, no! I am quite ready. See,” she added quietly, “I am quite strong.”
‘I set off by a short cut leading to her home, hoping the men would be there before us; but, passing me, she walked swiftly through the trees, and I followed in fear. As we came near the main path I heard the sound of feet, and I tried to stop her, but she, too, had heard and knew. “Oh, let me go!” she said piteously; “you need not fear.” And I had not the heart to stop her. In a little opening among the pines we met the bearers. When the men saw her, they laid their burden gently down upon the carpet of yellow pine-needles, and then, for they had the hearts of true men in them, they went away into the bushes and left her alone with her dead. She went swiftly to his side, making no cry, but kneeling beside him she stroked his face and hands, and touched his curls with her fingers, murmuring all the time soft words of love. “O my darling, my bonnie, bonnie darling, speak to me! Will ye not speak to me just one little word? O my love, my love, my heart’s love! Listen, my darling!” And she put her lips to his ear, whispering, and then the awful stillness. Suddenly she lifted her head and scanned his face, and then, glancing round with a wild surprise in her eyes, she cried, “He will not speak to me! Oh, he will not speak to me!” I signed to the men, and as they came forward I went to her and took her hands.
‘“Oh,” she said with a wail in her voice; “he will not speak to me.” The men were sobbing aloud. She looked at them with wide-open eyes of wonder. “Why are they weeping? Will he never speak to me again? Tell me,” she insisted gently. The words were running through my head—