Annie Chapman never had liked her husband working at the well. She said as little as she could, and she scarcely knew why, but a sort of nameless fear always crept over her when people spoke of the work. Though she took her husband his "'levenses" and his "fourses" every day, she never could be induced to look down into its depths, which naturally grew deeper day by day.
It was a hot walk though a short one, and Annie's head throbbed with the intensity of the heat, and her feet felt as if they were weighted with lead. It was like walking on hot flags, she thought, as she plodded over the common with the last baby in her arms. The men had rigged up a sort of rough tent with four poles and a stack-cover, and placed a couple of benches underneath it, and Annie stopped to rest under its grateful shade. She was a little early, and Tom was still at work ninety feet below her. She shuddered as she thought of it, and Martin's daughter, who had come on the same errand for her father, laughed at her.
"You're never cold, Mrs. Chapman!" she said. "That must be a goose walkin' over your grave."
"Likely as not," said Annie, answering in the same vein; "there are plenty on 'em about."
The girl laughed. She was a nice, bright, curly-haired, freckly girl. She looked kindly at Annie, and held out her arms for the baby.
"I don't believe you half like your husband takin' on with my father," she said.
"How do you know?" asked Annie, rather sharply for her.
"Why, Chapman told fayther so. He said you was rare put about when he told you, and if it weren't that he think that's only duin' what he oughter, he'd ha' chucked the job long ago. But he would not go back on fayther, he say, after he've giv his word; and he's a good man, he is," she added warmly. "Fayther he think a lot o' him. He's a good un to work, he say, and a good mate tew, and fayther don't say that a' ivrybody, I can tell yew."
Annie felt pleased. It is always pleasant to hear nice things, of course, about those we love, and Annie was generally so busy muddling along with her household and children all day that she had very little time for gossiping or exchanging many words with her neighbours; and she scarcely knew how her Tom stood amongst his fellows, for he was quiet and unobtrusive, and was not a man to make many friends.
"He think a lot a' your father too," she answered, giving tit for tat with truth.
"I wish they'd come up," Annie said at last. "If they're not quick I'll have to go back without seein' Tom."
"Why don't you put your head over and call down to him?" said the girl.
Annie shuddered again.
"Oh no, no, I dursn't"
"Well, I will," said her companion. "I know Mr. Hayes'll let me.—Won't you now, Mr. Hayes?"
The big man who sat on the edge of the temporary woodwork that was erected at the mouth of the well turned a good-natured, sunburnt visage towards her.
"All right, my gal! come on, I'll hold ye. They've got on well to-day. They're down a sight deeper than last time you looked."
The man held back the ropes that hung from a windlass over the top, and the girl stooped over the brink. She could see the heads of both men down at what appeared to her an unfathomable depth. She uttered a little cry of dismay. The earth had been getting softer and easier to dig into for the last two days and they had made considerable progress. Martin looked up as the shadow cast by the girl's head and shoulders darkened the pit a little.
"Hullo! That's you, my gal, is it? Well, I'm coming. I want my fourses bad, I can tell you."
"Well, come on up then, father; and tell Mr. Chapman his wife have been waitin' for him ever so long, and she've got to go home directly, to give the children their teas."
"All right, then.—You go up first, Tom." And nothing loath, Tom put his foot into the loop, and gripping the rope with both hands was soon drawn up.
"My eye, it is hot up here," he said, as half blinded by the sun he made his way to the tent. Martin soon followed, and the women unpacked their baskets. Annie had brought Tom a bottle of his favourite fromerty and a large harvest-bun. Martin liked tea, so his daughter had a pot full of it rolled up in an old shawl to keep it hot, for Martin held that hot tea is the most cooling of drinks. "Drinkin' cold things when you're hot only makes you all the hotter!" Well, every one to his taste, and the big man preferred beer. He was a stranger, and the same man who had made such cruel remarks on Geo Lummis's muscles.
He lodged at Martin's house, so "Martin's gal," as Polly was generally called in the village, had brought his "fourses" too. He quaffed off his half-pint of good home-brew, made by Mrs. Martin herself, and with a sigh of enjoyment flung the drops at the bottom of the glass on to the thirsty ground.
"That 'ud be a rum job," he said, as he seated himself on the form, "if that dowser chap ha' happened ar a mistake, and we don't find no water arter all."
"We'll find it all right," said Martin decidedly. "He knowed what he was about. He said that was a long way down, and I believe him."
That Martin should believe him was quite sufficient for himself and Chapman, for Martin was one of those people that carry about them a quiet power of making every one else trust them. He possessed that nameless intangible quality that we know as "character." Martin was not particularly clever, he was not entertaining or amusing in conversation; but he undoubtedly possessed a great deal of character, and in his quiet, deliberate, commonplace way he carried as much weight as any man in the parish. If it had not been for Martin, it is pretty certain the wells would never have been begun, much less finished. It was Martin whose example made Chapman, Lake, and the other two Willowton men at the railway well come forward in the first instance and volunteer their services. It was Martin who gave the other men courage to come forward with with their offer of work. It was Martin who kept Lake and Chapman up to the mark when, seeing the difficulty and hardness of the work, they wavered, and, urged on by "the bridge," were inclined to strike for more wages.
"What, give in," he said, "when we've go so far—sixty feet or more below th' surface? More money yer want? Well, I'm all fur gettin' all we can. I haven't no sort er objection te money myself; but fair play's a jewel, I say, and we've took this risk, and we've jest got te keep it. A few more shillin's won't make our lives na safer, and we've got a good wage—three shillin's a day ter start on, and a shillin' more for every ten feet; and I say that's good pay, and we don't want na better—leastways we didn't ought to. Do you think folks ismadeo' money?" he asked, warming to his subject. "I don't say as Mr Rutland and the doctor are goin' to pay us out o' their own porckets—in coorse they're not; but they're responsible—that's how I take it. And they are payin' us fair and punctual; and I'm not goin' to say that I don't believe but what if they get more money than they want by their subscription boxes, and they offer me a bonus, that I'll refuse it," with a twinkle in his honest gray eye. "No, if they like to remember the well-diggers when the water is come, I won't hev northin' to say agin it, I'm sure; and nor wud yue now. Jest yue put that in your pipes and smoke it!"
He lounged off as he spoke with a "good-night" over his shoulder, and next morning, when, having "smoked it" with much thought overnight, the two men arrived on the scene, they found Martin there before them. He made no remark, and work began as usual. The idea of going back never entered either of their heads again, though the railway-well men had carried out their threat and struck.
When Lake, who lived in Gravel-pit Lane, went down with the fever, it was Martin who suggested to Mr. Rutland to get back the stranger, who had only gone away that morning reluctantly; for he was an experienced digger, and saw little risk in the railway well, and would willingly have gone on with the work if he had not been thrown out by the pusillanimity of his mates. He came at once, and both the Willowton men took to him. He was pleasant to work with, for he was both able and hard-working, and never, "shirked a spadeful," as Martin told the vicar, with just a touch of pride at his own sagacity in suggesting him. Mr. Rutland had been doubtful when it was proposed to him. He did not think it wise to bring him in again, but Martin's good sense overruled him.
"There's nobody in the place durst come and help us," he said, "time them tue others is out a' work; they wouldn't leave 'em alone, not a minute. That's only a stranger we can hev now, as matters are, and he hadn't northin' ter due with the strike."
"Who do you think had then?" asked the vicar, little expecting so prompt a reply.
"Why, that scum Corkam!" asserted Martin stoutly. "He's at th' bottom a' most a' these here messes, he is! He goes a-talkin' ar a lot o' rubbidge about 'Meriky (as I don't believe he ever landed on), and he tell 'em a sight o' stories about the big wages over there, and he don't say northin' about the house rent they have to pay, nor the price o' wittles, nor clothin', which I know ('cos my brother lived out in them parts for years) don't leave them not sa very much over for theirselves to due what they like with arter all. And they've got ter goo and leave the old place and their friends and relations, and work a sight harder fur their money than we due here."
"Just so, that's just it, Martin," said the vicar. "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Corkam has got a little knowledge—a smattering of facts about many countries; but he is like a parrot—he repeats what he has been told, and has never gone into the subject himself,—not had the chance, most likely."
"You're right, sir; that's about the size on it! And them chaps on the bridge of an evenin', they'll swaller anythin' he like tue tell 'em. That there young Lummis—-"
"Oh, George Lummis! Yes, poor fellow, it's heartbreaking to see him idling away his whole life like that. But somehow I fancy George will break loose one of these days. One day Master Corkam will tell him something he can't swallow, or offend his sense of right and wrong, for there's nothing really bad about Geo—at present, at any rate. I still have hopes of Geo, and I hear he is making an excellent nurse to his mother."
In speaking thus the vicar was not talking at random. He had for some time past been unaccountably interested in Geo. To his keen sight—lazy, good-for-nothing as he appeared—Geo was full of possibilities. There came into the young fellow's sleepy, handsome face a look sometimes that made you fancy that under certain circumstances he might rise even to some great height of heroism.
The vicar had been fortunate enough, as long ago as last summer, to catch that expression one day when he came accidentally upon him lying on the bank in the flowery meadow, lazily dropping leaves into the stream and watching them float way. Mr. Rutland was one of those very rare philanthropists who can resist the temptation of improving the occasion. He saw a whole sermon in the picture before him, and could have drawn half a dozen lessons from the vagaries of the leaves—some of which spun round and round and disappeared rapidly into the flowing water, others that caught in weeds and remained prisoners or drifted under the bank—but he did not. Geo had looked up as he caught the sound of his footstep, and there was a look in his face that took the vicar by surprise. It was, he thought (and he almost felt ashamed of being so imaginative) an expression that might have been on the face of a hero of the middle ages—a look, brave, clear, determined, as of a man braced for some great deed, and yet he was idling away his time on the grass, tipping leaves in the stream. A man of less tact and less human sympathy than the vicar would have stopped and made some remark, or at any rate have given him the customary greeting; but Mr. Rutland refrained, and passed on as if he had not noticed him. There was something fermenting in Geo's brain, he saw, and he felt certain it was, whatever it might be, for good.
Nothing, as far as Mr. Rutland knew, ever came of this. Geo worked hard at the "haysel" and the harvest that had followed, it is true, and he took on occasional jobs at various farms in the neighbourhood, but for the most part he idled away his days, as we have already seen. His latent heroism, if he possessed any, remained dormant. But the vicar always remembered the look when people meted out to Geo their not unjust strictures on his useless life.
In the meantime Geo was growing daily in the good graces of Nurse Blunt. No patient of hers, she often told Milly, was more carefully tended than Mrs. Lummis. Geo was a born nurse, and was as gentle and dexterous as a woman, and even old Jimmy's grunts of disapproval failed to convince her that there was "nothin' in him."
On the following day the heat became almost intolerable. People went about their work, and got through it somehow, but everything in nature appeared to be at its last gasp. The farmers had given up any further hope of a hay crop, and had begun to feel anxious about the harvest. When night fell the tiny cool breeze that had sprung up most evenings to refresh the earth a little was absent—a dead weight was over everything. The Chapman children were unusually restless, and Tom, tired with his work, grumbled fretfully as his wife moved about, first consoling one child and then the other, and rocking the restless infant to and fro. On such nights as this sleep is well-nigh impossible; and it was well for Annie that she had the children to attend to, for her heart was heavy with a terrible foreboding. Merry, careless Annie was smitten with an unaccountable miserable feeling of coming calamity. It had been growing and growing ever since Tom had "taken on" at the well, and to-night it seemed to have reached its height, and Annie longed most intensely for morning. Never had a night seemed so long and unbearable.
The vicar, too, was lying sleepless through the long hot hours, puzzling over the unexpected strike of the well-diggers, wondering at their folly, and coming very near the truth when he thought of the changed aspect of many of his parishioners, when he remembered the averted looks, the nervous salutations that had taken the place of the ready smiles, the respectful yet friendly greetings that only a few short weeks ago met him at every turn. He had really been almost too busy to notice it; and even now he thought this notion that he was losing his hold on the affections of the people he lived for and spent his life for was probably a creation of his own troubled brain, born of the heat and the anxiety and overstrain of those same past weeks. The rain could not be far off now, he thought, for all day long the sky had been overcast, and a steaming, stifling blanket seemed to have been thrown over everything. As he tossed and fretted the first heavy drops pattered on his window-sill. It had come—the blessed, blessed rain—and the long, hard drought was over!
He sprang from his bed and stood at the open casement, listening with delight to the growing volume of water that splashed down on to the baked earth and ran off the roofs into the dry, warped water-butts. He stood there, with the welcome spray leaping up and shooting into his face and dropping on to his bare feet, till he felt almost cold; and then with a thankful heart he regained his bed, and for the first time for some nights fell asleep. What mattered anything now? the rain had come—Willowton was saved—"the plague was stayed!"
There were others in the clustering houses in the back streets who, sitting up with their sick and dying, felt the bands that had tightened round their weary heads suddenly loosed, felt the killing physical strain give way as the first drops fell on their roofs.
Milly Greenacre, from behind her white dimity curtains, rubbed her sleepy eyes and turned over again, with the comforting thought that the rain had at last come. The cattle, lying out in their baked pastures, lifted their thirsty heads, lowing with pleasure for the heaven-sent moisture. The birds in the orchard awoke at dawn, and enjoyed a long-anticipated bath. Milly's white pigeons came out of their cot, and lay on the little gravel-path, with wings upturned, enjoying to the full the fall of the great cool drops. The horses in the far-off farm stables neighed joyfully at each other, and every creature alive drank in new life at every pore; even the fever-stricken patients rallied and gained strength. Soon the grass would grow green again, and the springs would begin to work, and all would be well. And yet nothing in the future could undo the past; nothing could give back to the mourners their loved ones. Willowton had indeed paid the penalty of its own disregard of the laws of health; but now, please God, the others would be saved.
All through the day that followed this blessed night the rain fell—not quietly, or even with a break, but heavily, incessantly, and unremittingly. People paddled out in it under cloaks and umbrellas, and rejoiced with each other. The work at the well was necessarily suspended for the time, for the rough wooden shelter over it proved of little protection from the tropical violence of the rain.
"That don't kinder rain at all," old Greenacre said; "that come down whole water."
On the third day the rain abated, and work was resumed at the well. For the first few hours it went steadily on; but before noon an awful catastrophe had occurred, and it became known all over Willowton that the brickwork had fallen in, and that Chapman and Hayes were entombed under thedébris.
---
Mr. Rutland was at the Workhouse Infirmary when the news reached him. The doctor was there too, and the two gentlemen drove off at once to the scene of the disaster, where stood Annie Chapman with a white drawn face, her baby in her arms and three other little ones clinging to her skirts as usual. Martin's girl stood by her. The children were out of school, and they too were there, a hundred or more of them with wide eyes and horror-struck faces. What wasnotthere was any sensible, capable man to take command and keep the crowd back; for it was not yet the dinner-hour, and the labourers were still in the fields, and Martin, on the principle that what is important had better be done by yourself, had rushed off, after sending a boy to fetch Mr. Rutland, to telegraph to Ipswich for scientific help from the firm who had supplied Hayes, and who had given advice as to the mode of proceeding at the outset. Martin returned scarcely a minute later than Mr. Rutland and the doctor, and hurriedly informed them of his action in the matter.
Having made a clear space of some thirty feet or so round the spot where the unfortunate men were perhaps even now lying with the life crushed out of them, the doctor threw himself on the ground and listened anxiously for some sound of life. If they lived, the men would, of course, shout loudly and untiringly for assistance; and then—as it was was just possible that, even if they could not make themselves heard, some sound might reach them—Mr. Rutland leaned over the chasm and shouted words of encouragement and cheer. But he might have shouted to the empty air, for never a sound reached them.
When one o'clock struck from the church tower the vicar sent the children to their homes, and with kindly firmness insisted on Annie Chapman's going back too and getting some refreshment. The children's needs was a good excuse.
"I would not keep you away if you wish to come back," he said. "No one has, alas, a greater right to be here than you. Come when the children are gone into school again. I will have the tarpaulin shelter that was taken down on account of the rain put up again, and you can rest there."
Annie thanked him with a look; she was beyond speaking, and seemed dazed. "Martin's gal" went home with her, helped her with the children's dinner, and came back to watch with her all that long, weary afternoon.
It was two hours before the Ipswich man arrived in a carriage drawn by a strong, fast horse, white with foam, and reeking with the heat of his rapid run. An assistant quickly unpacked the apparatus for lowering the men who had volunteered for the dangerous task of removing the fallen bricks. The accident, the man said, was due to the violence of the rain, which had percolated through the earth so quickly that it had loosened the soil all round the well to a depth of some twenty or thirty feet, and caused the brickwork to bulge inwards and fall. How far down the mischief extended, of course, he was as unable to determine as any one else; but one thing was sufficiently obvious—thattimewas everything. Another downfall would be almost certain destruction, and the unfortunate men, he said, had two dangers, not one, to contend with. At any moment the springs might begin to work, and they might have escaped death from the fall of the well only to be drowned by the rising water. It was a truly awful predicament, and as it always happens when a real calamity overtakes any of their mates, those who had most reviled them for refusing to strike now came forward with offers of help, and even forbore to make unpleasant remarks of any sort.
Corkam, who was, of course, soon on the scene, actually held his tongue too until the work of rescue was fairly set in hand, and each man had been told off to his hours of duty, when he entertained a favoured group with various supercilious remarks, and an assurance that these things were much better done in 'Meriky. No one, however, paid much attention to him. They naturally could think of nothing but the horror and the magnitude of the present catastrophe. Things that had or had not happened years ago in a foreign country mattered very little to any one now in the face of this horrible reality; and Martin told him so pretty plainly, and not a little roughly, with the desirable result that he went off to the bridge to give his friend Farley the latest details. And nobody missed him particularly!
Next morning Milly Greenacre was making bread in her little kitchen at the back of the parlour, when an unaccustomed step sounded on the gravel-path. It was a shy, hesitating sort of step, and yet it was unmistakably a man's. Milly looked through the door, and saw Geo Lummis bending his head to enter the porch. She rubbed some of the flour off her arms and bade him enter.
"Is it my grandfather you want to see?" she asked him, with that modest self-possession that never deserted her. "Won't you sit down?" she added, drawing a chair forward.
"No, miss, thank you," said Geo shyly; "I can't stop. 'Tain't your grandfather that I come after; I wanted to see the nurse if I could."
"I'm afraid she won't be in this forenoon," said Milly. "but will you leave a message with me? I'll be sure to give it to her as soon as she comes back."
"Well, I hardly know as I can leave a message. The truth is," Geo blurted out suddenly, with a rush of colour into his fair-skinned face, "I want to go and help at the well, and I can't leave mother. I was going to ask if she could come now for a couple of hours and let me go. They are wantin' help badly. I don't seem as if Icouldstay quiet while them pore chaps are underground, dead or alive; that seem as if we must get at 'em as soon as we can.'
"When do you want to go?" asked Milly, in a matter-of-fact tone.
"Now, at once, if I could; but nurse haven't been yet, and there's a lot to see to and do for mother, and I don't ever leave her till she is put comfortable for the day. I've jest run over on the chance of finding nurse; but if she isn't here I s'pose I must jest go back and wait till she come."
He made a step towards the door. Milly glanced at the clock: it was a quarter-past ten.
"I'll come," she said quietly, "when I've finished laying my bread. If you go on, I'll be there in twenty minutes, and I'll wait till nurse comes, and settle with her what can be done."
He muttered some incoherent thanks, but they were, except for the sake of his manners, quite unnecessary. The look of gratitude that he cast on Milly was quite a sufficient expression of thanks, as far as she was concerned. As he went out she returned to her bread-making.
A quarter of an hour later the bread was safe in its earthen pan, with a snowy cloth laid over it; and Milly had washed her hands, turned down her sleeves, set a tray on the table in the parlour, with nurse's glass of milk and some bread and cheese on it, and had gone in next door to tell her lame neighbour where she was to be found, and to ask her to explain her absence to her grandfather if he returned while she was at Mrs. Lummis's, and also to ask nurse directly she had had her luncheon to call in and tell her what to do. Milly had heard quite enough of the relations between Geo and his mother from Nurse Blunt to be quite certain of her sympathy in the sudden impulsive step she had taken; and she felt sure grandfather would raise no insuperable objection now that all available hands were required at the well.
So Milly went upstairs and sat down quietly by the bedside of the sick woman, who was now sufficiently convalescent, in spite of some serious heart weakness, to take an interest in her neighbours, and was glad to see the pretty, bright girl she had often seen and admired at a distance but had never spoken to before.
"I promised your son to stop till nurse comes," Milly said pleasantly, "so I hope you will let me do so."
The sick woman smiled her willingness, and Geo, with renewed efforts at expressing his thanks, departed.
In the meantime there was trouble at the well. The work of rescue had been going on all night, and the men were giving out. Martin, toil-stained and weary, was still there, but the work was practically for the time at a standstill. The men were in absolute need of rest. When Geo reached the scene the director from Ipswich had given the order for a break-off in ten minutes for five hours rest. He was surveying, with some anxiety, the relief men who had arrived in answer to an urgent telegram he had sent a few hours ago. They were weedy-looking, dissipated fellows, and to judge by the director's face were evidently not the material he required.
"We must do the best we can with what we can get," he was saying to the doctor, who stood at a little distance holding his impatient horse by the bridle. "These men must be kept from the drink, and then they may do. At any rate, we must take them on this morning; but what I want is a strong, active, light-built young fellow, who won't lose his head in an emergency, and will do as he is told without hesitation."
Geo stepped forward. He had been near enough to hear these last words.
"Will I do, sir?"
Both men faced round at once, and Geo often told Milly afterwards that one of the hardest moments of his life was that when he caught the expression of the doctor's face. It expressed so much contempt, surprise, and distrust that he was cut to the quick, and once more within a few minutes the hot blood surged into his face. But the director's words softened the sting,—-
"Do? Why, you're just the man. Who are you, and what do you know about the work?"
"My name's Lummis," said Geo, looking him straight in the face, but avoiding the doctor's eye, "and I don't know nothin' about the work; but I heard what you said just now, and I'll do what you tell me to."
"All right, then; and as to wages—-"
"Never mind about the wages, sir, thank you," said Geo respectfully; "whatever you give the others will do for me. I'm ready any time."
"Well, off with your coat, then, and come."
Geo had his coat off and hung up in the tent in a trice, and was carefully lowered into the well, seated astride on a board, one hand on the rope and in the other a pail.
"Now, then, Lummis," said the director, when he was sufficiently deep down the reach thedébris, "hook your pail on to the hook on your board, and lean over and pick off carefully anything you can reach. Be careful to bear no weight on anything or the whole thing will collapse."
"I understand, sir," said Geo, his voice sounding strangely hollow to himself from the depths of the well.
Carefully and dexterously Geo detached bricks, and with a small scoop ladled the earth into his pail, and as soon as it was filled he detached it from his board and hooked it on to another hook that dangled from the windlass; and while it was being drawn up, emptied and returned, he raised himself to a sitting posture and stretched his back as best he could, for he had not been long at work before his limbs ached considerably with their unwonted toil. Two hours went by, and still Geo worked on patiently, and often painfully, till the director blew his whistle, and he was hauled up for a welcome rest. Then one of the other men was lowered, and so the work went on, and by nightfall an immense quantity of soil had been removed, but as yet the men below had given no sign.
It was during this long terrible time of suspense that Mr Rutland learned part of the secret of Tom Chapman's love of his apparently feckless, untidy wife. Annie still remained untidy, it is true—she had never been anything else—but she certainly was not feckless.
As soon as it was daylight each morning she appeared, asking only the most absolutely necessary questions, and receiving the dispiriting answers without a murmur. At seven o'clock she would go home, give the children their breakfast, and get them ready for school; but she was back again at her post before long, there to wait and do any little kind acts or odd jobs for the men, and going on any little errands into the village. In spite of her evident suffering she kept up a brave, even cheerful appearance. Punctually as the school broke up she went away again for a couple of hours. The doctor, to his great surprise, found her to be clever with her fingers, quick to learn how to bind up a cut or bathe a bad bruise; for the work of the rescuers was no easy task, and in their determined efforts to let nothing drop they often did themselves little trifling injuries which were all the better for being treated at once. Everybody was very kind to her, and her boy Tom up at the Union was getting through his fever well. There were crumbs of comfort to be gathered on the way, and Annie was not the woman to refuse them.
She too had shared the doctor's surprise when Geo Lummis appeared on the scene as an eager recruit, but unlike the doctor, she showed no sign of it; and when Geo stepped into the tent to hang up his coat, she smiled at him such an entirely approving, grateful, and encouraging smile, that it for the moment wiped out the doctors scorn. Geo knew Tom Chapman, and did not care about him; but for the sake of Tom's wife, he felt now that he would risk anything to restore her husband to her.
There are some natures that seem to require some extraordinary circumstance or moral earthquake to "draw them out." Geo's was evidently one of these. He was being distinctly drawn out now—the real Geo was bursting out of his chrysalis. Corkam and "all his works" receded very far as he felt himself swing down into the well.
At last it was Sunday morning, and the men had now been forty-eight hours in the well. A rumour had got about that they were still alive. The bells rang out for service as usual, and Milly brushed her grandfather's well-worn beaver hat, settled his necktie, and pulled down his coat, just as she had done for the last eight years, and they went off to church together. Somehow it seemed wonderful to Milly that anything should go on as it had done last week, for every one in the village was felling the strain of the anxiety caused by the prolonging of the terrible situation of the entombed men.
Geo Lummis and Martin and two other men had been working all night, and just as the "tolling in" began a relief gang arrived, and the four tired men came trooping through the churchyard, as being the shortest cut to their homes. Milly, with several other people, stood aside to let them pass. They looked worn out and weary, toil-stained and depressed. Nobody spoke, and they none of them lifted their eyes as they passed; they were too dead beat for greeting of any sort. Milly cast a glance at Geo. She was beginning to take a very lively interest in that young man, for Geo, seen through his weak but loving mother's spectacles, was a very different person from Geo seen through her grandfather's somewhat prejudiced glasses. Anyway, he was behaving well now, and there was no need to look back.
The doctor, who accompanied them as far as the gate, now returned, and affirmed the rumour that it had been satisfactorily ascertained thatoneof the unfortunate men, at least, was alive—that shouts and knocking had been distinctly heard, but that as yet no means of communication had been effected. This, however, he hoped would be done in the course of an hour or two, and he expected to have really good news for them when they came out of church.
Nobody ever quite knew how that service was got through. Most people tried their best to follow, but each one was conscious of a divided attention. Every one was listening with at least one ear for the shout that they knew would go up when the expected communication was affected.
It came at last! The vicar had just gone up to the pulpit and given out his text when though the open doors came the distant shout "Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah-h-h!" Many among the congregation started to their feet, some fell to their knees, and others sobbed audibly. The vicar paused with uplifted hand to secure silence till the shouts ceased, and then addressed the people.
"There will be no sermon this morning," he said. "I think your own thankful thoughts will be more appropriate than any words of mine;" and after a short prayer of thanksgiving, he gave the blessing and dismissed the congregation.
"Not, I beg and pray of you," he said, "to rush off to the scene of action, where your presence can be of no service to the unfortunate men, and for the moment will only hinder the efforts of their rescuers. Leave them a little while, is my advice, till the excitement has cooled down, and then take your places quietly beyond the barrier if you will; but I implore you to remember that the men who are working at the relief want cool heads and steady nerves, and they have come fresh to the work, and at present want no encouraging shouts or chaff to keep them going, as our brave fellows did last night when they hardly knew how to go on."
The vicar's advice was good, and, for example's sake, he denied himself the pleasure of hurrying off to the well, and many of his congregation refrained also. It was then twelve o'clock, and by three that afternoon the rescue gang reached the cylinder twenty feet below the surface by tunnelling, only to discover, to their intense dismay, that a mass of woodwork had fallen on to the mouth of it, and that rescue that way was impossible. The foreman, however, managed in a clever way to pull out a small piece of loose wood, and calling down to the men below received the welcome answer, "We are all right, but are in three feet of water. Couldn't you get us a drink?"
The foreman shouted up the message, and in a trice a dozen willing messengers were running to the village, returning speedily with jugs of such various liquors as their personal tastes and means suggested. There were beer, porter, milk, brandy, cocoa, cider; but the doctor, who had been on the scene all morning with his improvised ambulance, insisted on milk and beaten up eggs with brandy. The tidings, of course, soon spread, not only over Willowton, but to all the neighbouring villages, and the half-dozen policemen who were on duty had their work cut out for them in keeping the crowd from coming inside the ropes. As it was, every tree in the vicinity was thick with boys and men, and every fence and bank that offered any point of vantage was a mass of eager lookers-on.
Now it was that the most dangerous work was to begin. It was decided to endeavour to reach the men by making a hole in the top of the cylinder, and three men were lowered with ropes around them, and instructed to remove the soil in pails. This they did with the greatest care, so as to prevent any falling back—a danger that was very likely to occur. At the end of an hour and a half a slight slip occurred, and the entombed men called out that the mould was coming down upon them.
"You're goin' to cover us up and ha' done with us," said Hayes, with a feeble attempt at jocosity; "but give us a drink first."
"Sartinly, sartinly, that we will," said one of the men encouragingly, and a few minutes later a bottle of the "egg-flip," with a covered light attached to it, was lowered through the aperture, and the work began again.
It was nearly half-past seven when the men were again spoken to. They seemed to be losing heart. They had knocked the light out, they said, and they were wet through and wanted to come up.
"So you shall, my boys," shouted the foreman, "as soon as we can get you." And with that they had to be content.
All through the middle of the day, till six o'clock, Geo Lummis slept. At three o'clock Nurse Blunt came over to Mildred and asked her to go to Mrs. Lummis.
"I wouldn't trouble her, Mr. Greenacre," she said, as old Jimmy began to gabble and grumble, "but Imustgo to the opposite side of the of the parish, and Mrs. Lummis is in that stage when she must be attended to. Your granddaughter will have nothing to do but give her he brandy and milk at the proper times. She has done it before, and I can trust her, which is more than I can say for most of the girls I have had to do with. You'll have to let her go."
So grandfather made no further demur, and Milly changed her Sunday gown for a work-a-day one, and went off on her errand of mercy accompanied by the nurse.
"That young Lummis is there dead asleep," nurse said as they went along. "Mind you don't wake him going upstairs; he's in the room opposite his mother's, you know. Not that you need be much afraid of disturbing him," she added—"they mostly sleep for hours when they come off work like that—but when you do hear him moving, you'd better slip down and get him a cup of tea ready and some cold meat and bread. I've seen to that; it's in the cupboard to the right of the stove. He should be at work again by seven."
"Very well," said Milly; "I'll see to it."
So when Geo woke out of his heavy sleep at six o'clock, he, through the open window, could hear the kettle singing on the little stove in the back-house below, and some one moving softly about. There was a comforting sound about it, and he stretched his long limbs luxuriously. Just then the church clock struck the half-hour. He raised himself with a yawn. "Half-past—what was it?" He reached out for the large silver watch that was in the pocket of his coat that hung over the chair. It was half-past six! He flung himself off the bed, dipped his head in a basin of cold water, rubbed it hard with a rough towel, washed his earth-stained hands, and strode across the little passage to his mother's room. She was sleeping peacefully, and he slipped quietly downstairs. Milly stood in the little kitchen, a kettle in her hand, and a tray with a white cloth stood on the table before her. Geo started with astonishment.
"I thought I should have to wake you at last!" she said shyly, as he took the kettle from her; "it was getting so late."
Geo did not answer very relevantly; he was still lost in astonishment.
"Have you done all this?" he said, pointing to the tray.
"No; nurse got it ready before she went. I am only making the tea."
"Well I take it very kind of you, miss," said Geo heartily. "P'raps you'll have a cup yourself?"
Milly was not sorry, and the two sat down in the little kitchen, which, though hot, was the coolest room in the house—the sun was on the other side. They looked out on a little garden to the meadows, in which the grass had begun to grow again. The sound of the running water seemed cool and inviting.
"That looks nice out there, don't it?" Geo said, when he had swallowed his third cup of tea and made havoc of the bread and meat. "I s'pose you can get your can filled nowadays after the rain without any help?"
Milly laughed.
"Oh yes, there's water enough now; I can reach it easily."
Geo actually looked disappointed.
"I meant I'd ha' liked to ha' got it for you," he said simply.
"There goes the quarter-to," said Milly for an answer; "you've not got too much time."
"Time enough to have a look round, if you'll come," he said, getting up and looking down on her shyly from his superior height.
Milly made no objection, but took up her hat, which she had left in the inner room, and the two strolled out into the meadows.
Geo pointed to the chimneys of Milly's home, which could be seen across the stream, perhaps a quarter of a mile away.
"If you'll walk up as far as that with me, I could jump across into your orchard, if you don't object, and I'll be punctual at the well. That's a lot shorter than goin' round by the village."
Milly thought her grandfather would probably object very much, but she risked it, for she thought a little walk along the water-side with that "lazy, idle good-for-nothing" would be rather pleasant. As they went along they talked about the well. The worst and most dangerous work was to come.
"Some one, you see, must go down after them poor chaps," Geo explained. "You see they'll be so cramped and done up they'll never get themselves safe through the opening; for I expect that'll have to be a precious small one from what I see when I left, and you say they've not got at 'em yet."
"No," said Milly; "my grandfather called round an hour ago, and he said the hole wasn't no bigger than what would admit an ordinary man, and that they were binding it round with straw and making it as strong as they could, because that man Hayes is so big they're frightened he should break it down, and father said nobody seemed as if they wanted to try it."
"Not a doubt about that," said Geo, tightening his lips.
Something in his voice made Milly glance up at him. The look on his face was the same one that Mr. Rutland had surprised on it a year ago.
"You're never going to do it yourself?" she exclaimed involuntarily.
"Not unless I have to," Geo answered quietly, and speaking as if to himself. "But it's got to be done, and I'm not a married man. Martin is, and so are the other two."
Milly did not answer. To those who follow dangerous callings in all ranks of life such an argument is unanswerable. Milly understood, and said nothing.
They had reached the gate where Geo had sat and watched Milly vainly endeavouring to reach the water only a very short time ago now. The blossom was off the May, of course, but the half-starved buttercups were enjoying a second season.
"That's were you stood," said Geo, following out his own thoughts as he opened the gate for her to pass through before him. He nodded across to the overhanging thorn.
"You did take me by surprise then," said Milly, smiling as she conjured up the scene.
"And there's the billy-goat. He've got more to eat now than he had then; but, all the same, I was jealous of him then. I'd ha' liked to ha' been in his hide jest for the minute when he was rubbin' his head against you, and you was coaxin' and pettin' of him, that I would!"
Geo was getting on and no mistake!
"Well, he's jealous of you now," said Milly, with some confusion, as the animal, recognizing her voice, strained at his chain and bleated piteously.
What Geo's next move might have been is unknown, as just at that critical moment the tiresome church clock boomed out the hour, and Geo pulled himself together.
"I must go," he said. "I don't like to be late on a job like this," and before Milly could answer he had sprung across. He turned and gave her a nod as he picked up his cap, which had fallen off, and set off running towards the house. Milly waved her good-bye, and returned slowly through the meadows. The neglected goat bleated imploringly after her, but she never heard it.