CHAPTER XXX - The Slip of Paper
A minute after there rushed past Joan, in the darkness, two men,—stumbling and cursing as they went, out of breath, horror-stricken and running at the top of their speed.
“It wur Lowrie hissen, by ———!” she heard one say, as he dashed by.
“Feyther! Feyther, wheer are yo'? Feyther, are yo' nigh me?” she cried, for she heard both the blows and the shriek.
But there came no answer to her ear. The rapid feet beating upon the road, their echo dying in the distance, made the only sound that broke the stillness. There was not even a groan. Yet a few paces from her, lay a battered, bleeding form. There was no starlight now, she could see only the vague outline of the figure, which might be that of either one man or the other. For an instant, the similarity in stature which had deceived his blundering companions, deceived her also; but when she knelt down and touched the shoulder, she knew it was not the master who lay before her.
“It's feyther hissen,” she said, and then she drew away her hand, shuddering. “It's wet wi' blood,” she said. “It's wet wi' blood!”
He did not hear her when she spoke; he was not conscious that she tried to raise him; his head hung forward when she lifted him; he lay heavily, and without motion, upon her arms.
“They ha' killed him!” she said. “How is it, as it is na him?”
There was neither light nor help nearer than “The Crown” itself, and when her brain became clearer, she remembered this. Without light and assistance, she could do nothing; she could not even see what hurt he had sustained. Dead or dying, he must lie here until she had time to get help.
She took off her shawl, and folding it, laid his head gently upon it. Then she put her lips to his ear.
“Feyther,” she said, “I'm goin' to bring help to thee. If tha con hear me, stir thy hond.”
He did not stir it, so she disengaged her arm as gently as possible, and, rising to her feet, went on her way.
There were half a dozen men in the bar-room when she pushed the door inward and stood upon the threshold. They looked up in amazement.
“Those on yo' as want to help a deeing mon,” she said, “come wi' me. My feyther's lyin' in the Knoll Road, done to death.”
All were astir in a moment. Lanterns and other necessaries were provided, and bearing one of these lanterns herself, Joan led the way.
As she stepped out onto the pavement a man was passing, and, attracted by the confusion, turned to the crowd:
“What is the matter?” he asked.
“There's a mon been killed up on th' Knoll Road,” answered one of the colliers. “It's this lass's feyther, Dan Lowrie.”
The man strode into the light and showed an agitated face.
“Killed!” he said, “Dan Lowrie!”
It was Fergus Derrick.
He recognized Joan immediately, and went to her.
“For pity's sake,” he exclaimed, “don't go with them. If what they say is true, this is no place for you. Let me take you home. You ought not——”
“It wur me,” interrupted Joan, in a steady voice, “as found him.”
He could not persuade her to remain behind, so he walked on by her side. He asked her no questions. He knew enough to understand that his enemy had reaped the whirlwind he had himself sown.
It was he who knelt first by the side of the prostrate man, holding the lantern above the almost unrecognizable face. Then he would have raised the lifeless hand, but Joan, who had bent down near him, stopped him with a quick move.
“Dunnot do that,” she faltered, and when he looked up in surprise, he comprehended her meaning, even before she added, in a passionate undertone, the miserable words:
“Ther's blood on it, as might ha' bin yo're own.”
“Theer's a bottle here,” some one cried out suddenly. “A bottle as I just set my foot on. Chaps, theer's been vitriol throwed.”
“Ay,” cried another, “so theer has; chaps, look yo' here. Th' villains has vitriolled him.”
They laid him upon the shutter they had brought, and carried him homeward. Joan and Derrick were nearest to him as they walked.
They were not far from the cottage, and it was not long before the light glimmered through the window upon them. Seeing it, Joan turned to Derrick suddenly.
“I mun hurry on before,” she said. “I mun go and say a word to Liz. Comin' aw at onct th' soight ud fear her.”
Reaching the house, she pushed the door open and went in. Everything was so quiet that she fancied the girl must have gone to bed.
“Liz,” she said aloud. “Liz!”
Her voice fell with an echoing sound upon the silent room. She looked at the bed and saw the child lying there asleep. Liz was not with it. She passed quickly into the room adjoining and glanced around. It was empty. Moved by some impulse she went back to the bed, and in bending over the child, saw a slip of paper pinned upon its breast, and upon this paper Joan read, in the sprawling, uncertain hand she knew so well:
When Derrick entered the door, he found Joan standing alone in the centre of the room, holding the scrap of paper in her hand.
CHAPTER XXXI - The Last Blow
“He won't live,” the doctor said to Derrick. “He's not the man to get over such injuries, powerful as he looks. He has been a reckless, drunken brute, and what with the shock and reaction nothing will save him. The clumsy rascals who attacked him meant to do him harm enough, but they have done him more than they intended, or at least the man's antecedents will help them to a result they may not have aimed at. We may as well tell the girl, I suppose—fine creature, that girl, by the way. She won't have any sentimental regrets. It's a good riddance for her, to judge from what I know of them.”
“I will tell her,” said Derrick.
She listened to him with no greater show of emotion than an increased pallor. She remembered the wounded man only as a bad husband and a bad father. Her life would have been less hard to bear if he had died years ago, but now that death stood near him, a miserable sense of desolateness fell upon her, inconsistent as such a feeling might seem.
The village was full of excitement during this week. Everybody was ready with suggestions and conjectures, everybody wanted to account for the assault. At first there seemed no accounting for it at all, but at length some one recollected that Lowrie had been last seen with Spring and Braddy. They had “getten up a row betwixt theirsens, and t'others had punsed him.”
The greatest mystery was the use of vitriol. It could only be decided that it had not been an ordinary case of neighborly “punsing,” and that there must have been a “grudge” in the matter. Spring and Braddy had disappeared, and all efforts to discover their whereabouts were unavailing.
On the subject of Liz's flight Joan was silent, but it did not remain a secret many hours. A collier's wife had seen her standing, crying, and holding a little bundle on her arm at the corner of a lane, and having been curious enough to watch, had also seen Landsell join her a few minutes later.
“She wur whimperin' afore he coom,” said the woman, “but she cried i' good earnest when he spoke to her, an' talked to him an' hung back as if she could na mak' up her moind whether to go or no. She wur a soft thing, that wench, it wur allus whichivver way th' wind blowed wi' her. I could nivver see what that lass o' Lowrie's wanted wi' her. Now she's getten th' choild on her honds.”
The double shock had numbed Joan. She went about the place and waited upon her father in a dull, mechanical way. She said but little to the curious crowd, who, on pretence of being neighborly, flocked to the house. She had even had very little to say to Anice. Perhaps after all, her affection for poor Liz had been a stronger one than she had thought.
“I think,” Grace said gently to Anice, “that she does not exactly need us yet.”
He made the remark in the Rector's presence and the Reverend Harold did not agree with him.
“I am convinced that you are mistaken, Grace,” he said. “You are a little too—well, too delicately metaphysical for these people. You have sensitive fancies about them, and they are not a sensitive class. What they want is good strong doctrine, and a certain degree of wholesome frankness. They need teaching. That young woman, now—it seems to me that this is the time to rouse her to a sense of her—her moral condition. She ought to be roused, and so ought the man. It is a great pity that he is unconscious.”
Of Joan's strange confession of faith, Anice had told him something, but he had been rather inclined to pronounce it “emotional,” and somehow or other could not quite divest himself of the idea that she needed the special guidance of a well-balanced and experienced mind. The well-balanced and experienced mind in view was his own, though of course he was not aware of the fact that he would not have been satisfied with that of any other individual. He was all the more disinclined to believe in Joan's conversion because his interviews with her continued to be as unsatisfactory as ever. Her manner had altered; she had toned down somewhat, but she still caused him to feel ill at ease. If she did not defy him any longer or set his teachings at naught, her grave eyes, resting on him silently, had sometimes the effect of making his words fail him; which was a novel experience with the Rector.
In a few days Lowrie began to sink visibly. As the doctor predicted, the reaction was powerful, and remedies were of no avail. He lay upon the bed, at times unconscious, at times tossing to and fro in delirium. During her watching at the bedside, Joan learned the truth. Sometimes he fancied himself tramping the Knoll Road homeward through the rain, and then he muttered sullenly of the “day” that was coming to him, and the vengeance he was returning to take; sometimes he went through the scene with Joan herself, and again, he waited behind the hedge for his enemy, one moment exultant, the next striving to struggle to his feet with curses upon his lips and rage in his heart, as he caught the sound of the advancing steps he knew so well. As he went over these scenes again and again, it was plain enough to the listener that his vengeance had fallen upon his own head.
The day after he received his hurts a collier dropped into “The Crown” with a heavy stick in his hand.
“I fun this knob-stick nigh a gap i' th' hedge on th' Knoll Road,” he said. “It wur na fur fro' wheer they fun Lowrie. Happen them chaps laid i' wait fur him an' it belongs to one o' 'em.”
“Let's ha' a look at it,” said a young miner, and on its being handed to him he inspected it closely.
“Why!” he exclaimed. “It's Lowrie's own. I seed him wi' it th' day afore he wur hurt. I know th' shape o' th' knob. How could it ha' coom theer?”
But nobody could guess. It was taken to Joan and she listened to the story without comment. There was no reason why they should be told what she had already discovered.
When Lowrie died, Anice and Grace were in the room with Joan. After the first two days the visitors had dropped off. They had satisfied their curiosity. Lowrie was not a favorite, and Joan had always seemed to stand apart from her fellows, so they were left to themselves.
Joan was standing near the bed when there came to him his first and last gleam of consciousness. The sun was setting, and its farewell glow streaming through the window fell upon his disfigured face and sightless eyes. He roused himself, moving uneasily.
“What's up wi' me?” he muttered. “I conna see—I conna—”
Joan stepped forward.
“Feyther,” she said.
Then memory seemed to return to him. An angry light shot across his face. He flung out his hands and groaned:
“What!” he cried, “tha art theer, art tha?” and helpless and broken as he was, he wore that moment a look Joan had long ago learned to understand.
“Ay, feyther,” she answered.
It appeared as if, during the few moments in which he lay gasping, a full recognition of the fact that he had been baffled and beaten after all—that his plotting had been of no avail—forced itself upon him. He made an effort to speak once or twice and failed, but at last the words came.
“Tha went agen me, did tha?” he panted. “Dom thee!” and with a struggle to summon all his strength, he raised himself, groping, struck at her with his clenched hand, and failing to reach her, fell forward with his face upon the bed.
It was all over when they raised him and laid him back again. Joan stood upright, trembling a little, but otherwise calm.
CHAPTER XXXII - “Turned Methody!”
It had been generally expected that when all was over the cottage upon the Knoll Road would be closed and deserted, but some secret fancy held Joan to the spot. Perhaps the isolation suited her mood; perhaps the mere sense of familiarity gave her comfort.
“I should na be less lonely any wheer else,” she said to Anice Barholm. “Theer's more here as I feel near to than i' any other place. I ha' no friends, yo' know. As to th' choild, I con carry it to Thwaite's wife i' th' mornin' when I go to th' pit, an' she'll look after it till neet, for a trifle. She's getten childern o' her own, and knows their ways.”
So she went backward and forward night and morning with her little burden in her arms. The child was a frail, tiny creature, never strong, and often suffering, and its very frailty drew Joan nearer to it. It was sadly like Liz, pretty and infantine. Many a rough but experienced mother, seeing it, prophesied that its battle with life would be brief. With the pretty face, it had inherited also the helpless, irresolute, appealing look. Joan saw this in the baby's eyes sometimes and was startled at its familiarity; even the low, fretted cry had in it something that was painfully like its girl-mother's voice. More than once a sense of fear had come upon Joan when she heard and recognized it. But her love only seemed to strengthen with her dread.
Day by day those who worked with her felt more strongly the change developing so subtly in the girl. The massive beauty which had almost seemed to scorn itself was beginning to wear a different aspect; the defiant bitterness of look and tone was almost a thing of the past; the rough, contemptuous speech was less scathing and more merciful when at rare intervals it broke forth.
“Summat has coom over her,” they said among themselves. “Happen it wur trouble. She wur different, somehow.”
They were somewhat uneasy under this alteration; but, on the whole, the general feeling was by no means unfriendly. Time had been when they had known Joan Lowrie only as a “lass” who held herself aloof, and yet in a manner overruled them; but in these days more than one stunted, overworked girl or woman found her hard task rendered easier by Joan's strength and swiftness.
It was true that his quiet and unremitted efforts had smoothed Grace's path to some extent. There were ill-used women whom he had helped and comforted; there were neglected children whose lives he had contrived to brighten; there were unbelievers whose scoffing his gentle simplicity and long-suffering had checked a little. He could be regarded no longer with contempt in Riggan; he even had his friends there.
Among those who still mildly jeered at the little Parson stood foremost, far more through vanity than malice, “Owd Sammy Craddock.” A couple of months after Lowrie's death, “Owd Sammy” had sauntered down to the mine one day, and was entertaining a group of admirers when Grace went by.
It chanced that, for some reason best known to himself, Sammy was by no means in a good humor. Something had gone wrong at home or abroad, and his grievance had rankled and rendered him unusually contumacious.
Nearing the group, Grace looked up with a faint but kindly smile.
“Good-morning!” he said; “a pleasant day, friends!”
“Owd Sammy” glanced down at him with condescending tolerance. He had been talking himself, and the greeting had broken in upon his eloquence.
“Which on us,” he asked dryly; “which on us said it wur na?”
A few paces from the group of idlers Joan Lowrie stood at work. Some of the men had noted her presence when they lounged by, but in the enjoyment of their gossip, they had forgotten her again. She had seen Grace too; she had heard his greeting and the almost brutal laugh that followed it; and, added to this, she had caught a passing glimpse of the Curate's face. She dropped her work, and, before the laugh had died out, stood up confronting the loungers.
“If theer is a mon among yo' as he has harmed,” she said; “if theer's one among yo' as he's ivver done a wrong to, let that mon speak up.”
It was “Owd Sammy” who was the first to recover himself. Probably he remembered the power he prided himself upon wielding over the weaker sex. He laid aside his pipe for a moment and tried sarcasm,—an adaptation of the same sarcasm he had tried upon the Curate.
“Which on us said theer wur?” he asked.
Joan turned her face, pale with repressed emotion, toward him.
“There be men here as I would scarce ha' believed could ha' had much agen him. I see one mon here as has a wife as lay nigh death a month or so ago, an' it were the Parson as went to see her day after day, an' tuk her help and comfort. Theer's another mon here as had a little un to dee, an' when it deed, it wur th' Parson as knelt by its bed an' held its hond an' talkt to it when it were feart. Theer's other men here as had help fro' him as they did na know of, an' it wur help from a mon as wur na far fro' a-bein' as poor an' hard worked i' his way as they are i' theirs. Happen th' mon I speak on dunnot know much about th' sick wife, an' deein choild, an' what wur done for 'em, an' if they dunnot, it's th' Parson's fault.”
“Why!” broke in “Owd Sammy.” “Blame me, if tha art na turned Methody! Blame me,” in amazement, “if tha art na!”
“Nay,” her face softening; “it is na Methody so much. Happen I'm turnin' woman, fur I conna abide to see a hurt gi'en to them as has na earned it. That wur why I spoke. I ha' towd yo' th' truth o' th' little chap yo' jeered at an' throw'd his words back to.”
Thus it became among her companions a commonly accepted belief that Joan Lowrie had turned “Methody.” They could find no other solution to her championship of the Parson.
“Is it true as tha's j'ined th' Methodys?” Thwaite's wife asked Joan, somewhat nervously.
She had learned to be fond of the girl, and did not like the idea of believing in her defection.
“No,” she answered, “it is na.”
The woman heaved a sigh of relief.
“I thowt it wur na,” she said. “I towd th' Maxys as I did na believe it when they browt th' tale to me. They're powerful fond o' talebearing that Maxy lot.”
Joan stopped in her play with the child.
“They dunnot understand,” she said, “that's aw. I ha' learned to think different, an' believe i' things as I did na use to believe in. Happen that's what they mean by talkin' o' th' Methodys.”
People learned no more of the matter than this. They felt that in some way Joan had separated herself from their ranks, but they found it troublesome to work their way to any more definite conclusion.
“Hast heard about that lass o' Lowrie's?” they said to one another; “hoo's takken a new turn sin' Lowrie deed; hoo allus wur a queer-loike, high-handed wench.”
After Lowrie's death, Anice Barholm and Joan were oftener together than ever. What had at first been friendship had gradually become affection.
“I think,” Anice said to Grace, “that Joan must go away from here and find a new life.”
“That is the only way,” he answered. “In this old one there has been nothing but misery for her, and bitterness and pain.”
Fergus Derrick was sitting at a table turning over a book of engravings. He looked up sharply.
“Where can you find a new life for her?” he asked. “And how can you help her to it? One dare not offer her even a semblance of assistance.”
They had not spoken to him, but he had heard, as he always heard, everything connected with Joan Lowrie. He was always restless and eager where she was concerned. All intercourse between them seemed to be at an end. Without appearing to make an effort to do so, she kept out of his path. Try as he might, he could not reach her. At last it had come to this: he was no longer dallying upon the brink of a great and dangerous passion,—it had overwhelmed him.
“One cannot even approach her,” he said again.
Anice regarded him with a shade of pity in her face.
“The time is coming when it will not be so,” she said.
The night before Joan Lowrie had spent an hour with her. She had come in on her way from her work, before going to Thwaite's, and had knelt down upon the hearth-rug to warm herself. There had been no light in the room but that of the fire, and its glow, falling upon her face, had revealed to Anice something like haggardness.
“Joan,” she said, “are you ill?”
Joan stirred a little uneasily, but did not look at her as she answered:
“Nay, I am na ill; I nivver wur ill i' my loife.”
“Then,” said Anice, “what—what is it that I see in your face?”
There was a momentary tremor of the finely moulded, obstinate chin.
“I'm tired out,” Joan answered. “That's all,” and her hand fell upon her lap.
Anice turned to the fire.
“What is it?” she asked, almost in a whisper.
Joan looked up at her,—not defiant, not bitter, not dogged,—simply in appeal against her own despair.
“Is na theer a woman's place fur me i' th' world? Is it allus to be this way wi' me? Con I nivver reach no higher, strive as I will, pray as I will,—fur I have prayed? Is na theer a woman's place fur me i' th' world?”
“Yes,” said Anice, “I am sure there is.”
“I've thowt as theer mun be somewheer. Sometimes I've felt sure as theer mun be, an' then agen I've been beset so sore that I ha' almost gi'en it up. If there is such a place fur me I mun find it—I mun!”
“You will find it,” said Anice. “Some day, surely.”
Anice thought of all this again when she glanced at Derrick. Derrick was more than usually disturbed to-day. He had for some time been working his way to an important decision, fraught with some annoyance and anxiety to himself. There was to be a meeting of the owners in a few weeks, and at this meeting he had determined to take a firm stand.
“The longer I remain in my present position, the more fully I am convinced of the danger constantly threatening us,” he said to Anice. “I am convinced that the present system of furnaces is the cause of more explosions than are generally attributed to it. The mine here is a 'fiery' one, as they call it, and yet day after day goes by and no precautions are taken. There are poor fellows working under me whose existence means bread to helpless women and children. I hold their lives in trust, and if I am not allowed to place one frail barrier between them and sudden death, I will lead them into peril no longer,—I will resign my position. At least I can do that.”
The men under him worked with a dull, heavy daring, born of long use and a knowledge of their own helplessness against their fate. There was not one among them who did not know that in going down the shaft to his labor, he might be leaving the light of day behind him forever. But seeing the blue sky vanish from sight thus during six days of fifty-two weeks in the year, engendered a kind of hard indifference. Explosions had occurred, and might occur again; dead men had been carried up to be stretched on the green earth,—men crushed out of all semblance to humanity; some of themselves bore the marks of terrible maiming; but it was an old story, and they had learned to face the same hazard recklessly.
With Fergus Derrick, however, it was a different matter. It was he who must lead these men into new fields of danger.
CHAPTER XXXIII - Fate
The time came, before many days, when the last tie that bound Joan to her present life was broken. The little one, who from the first had clung to existence with a frail hold, at last loosened its weak grasp. It had been ill for several days,—so ill that Joan had remained at home to nurse it,—and one night, sitting with it upon her knee in her accustomed place, she saw a change upon the small face.
It had been moaning continuously, and suddenly the plaintive sound ceased. Joan bent over it. She had been holding the tiny hand as she always did, and at this moment the soft fingers closed upon one of her own quietly. She was quite alone, and for an instant there was a deep silence. After her first glance at the tiny creature, she broke this silence herself.
“Little lass,” she said in a whisper, “what ails thee? Is thy pain o'er?”
As she looked again at the baby face upturned as if in silent answer, the truth broke in upon her.
Folding her arms around the little form, she laid her head upon its breast and wept aloud,—wept as she had never wept before. Then she laid the child upon a pillow and covered its face. Liz's last words returned to her with a double force. It had not lived to forget or blame her. Where was Liz to-night,—at this hour, when her child was so safe?
The next morning, on her way downstairs to the breakfast-room, Anice Barholm was met by a servant.
“The young woman from the mines would like to see you, Miss,” said the girl.
Anice found Joan awaiting her below.
“I ha' come to tell yo',” she said, “that th' little un deed at midneet. Theer wur no one I could ca' in. I sat alone wi' it i' th' room aw th' neet, an' then I left it to come here.”
Anice and Thwaite's wife returned home with her. What little there was to be done, they re-mained to do. But this was scarcely more than to watch with her until the pretty baby face was hidden away from human sight.
When all was over, Joan became restless. The presence of the child had saved her from utter desolation, and now that it was gone, the emptiness of the house chilled her. At the last, when her companions were about to leave her, she broke down.
“I conna bear it,” she said. “I will go wi' yo'.”
Thwaite's wife had proposed before that she should make her home with them; and now, when Mrs. Thwaite returned to Riggan, Joan accompanied her, and the cottage was locked up.
This alteration changed greatly the routine of her life. There were children in the Thwaite household—half a dozen of them—who, having overcome their first awe of her, had learned before the baby died to be fond of Joan. Her handsome face attracted them when they ceased to fear its novelty; and the hard-worked mother said to her neighbors:
“She's getten a way wi' childer, somehow,—that lass o' Lowrie's. Yo'd wonder if yo' could see her wi' 'em. She's mony a bit o' help to me.”
But as time progressed, Anice Barholm noted the constant presence of that worn look upon her face. Instead of diminishing, it grew and deepened. Even Derrick, who met her so rarely, saw it when he passed her in the street.
“She is not ill, is she?” he asked Anice once, abruptly.
Anice shook her head.
“No, she is not ill.”
“Then she has some trouble that nobody knows about,” he said. “What a splendid creature she is!” impetuously—“and how incomprehensible!”
His eyes chanced to meet Anice's, and a dark flush swept over his face. He got up almost immediately after and began to pace the room, as was his habit.
“Next week the crisis will come at the mines,” he said. “I wonder how it will end for me.”
“You are still determined?” said Anice.
“Yes, I am still determined. I wish it were over. Perhaps there will be a Fate in it”—his voice lowering itself as he added this last sentence.
“A Fate?” said Anice.
“I am growing superstitious and full of fancies,” he said. “I do not trust to myself, as I once did. I should like Fate to bear the responsibility of my leaving Riggan or remaining in it.”
“And if you leave it?” asked Anice.
For an instant he paused in his walk, with an uncertain air. But he shook this uncertainty off with a visible effort, the next moment.
“If I leave it, I do not think I shall return, and Fate will have settled a long unsettled question for me.”
“Don't leave it to Fate,” said Anice in a low tone. “Settle it for yourself. It does not—it is not—it looks——”
“It looks cowardly,” he interrupted her. “So it does, and so it is. God knows I never felt myself so great a coward before!”
He had paused again. This time he stood before her. The girl's grave, delicate face turned to meet his glance and seeing it, a thought seemed to strike him.
“Anice,” he said, the dark flush rising afresh. “I promised you that if the time should ever come when I needed help that it was possible you might give, I should not be afraid to ask you for it. I am coming to you for help. Not now—some day not far distant. That is why I remind you of the compact.”
“I did not need reminding,” she said to him.
“I might have known that,” he answered,—“I think I did know it But let us make the compact over again.”
She held out her hand to him, and he took it eagerly.
CHAPTER XXXIV - The Decision
The owners of the Riggan collieries held their meeting. That a person in their employ should differ from them boldly, and condemn their course openly, was an extraordinary event; that a young man in the outset of his career should dare so much was unprecedented. It would be a ruinous thing, they said among themselves, for so young a man to lose so important a position on the very threshold of his professional life, and they were convinced that his knowledge of this would restrain him. But they were astounded to find that it did not.
He brought his plans with him, and laid them before them. They were plans for the abolition of old and dangerous arrangements, for the amelioration of the condition of the men who labored at the hourly risk of their lives, and for rendering this labor easier. Especially, there were plans for a newer system of ventilation—proposing the substitution of fans for the long-used furnace. One or two of the younger men leaned toward their adoption. But the men with the greatest influence were older, and less prone to the encouragement of novelty.
“It's all nonsense,” said one. “Furnaces have been used ever since the mines were opened, and as to the rest—it arises, I suppose, from the complaints of the men. They always will complain—they always did.”
“So far they have had reason for complaint,” remarked Derrick. “As you say, there have been furnaces ever since there have been mines, and there have also been explosions which may in many cases be attributed to them. There was an explosion at Browton a month ago which was to some extent a mystery, but there were old miners who understood it well enough. The return air, loaded with gas, had ignited at the furnace, and the result was that forty dead and wounded men were carried up the shaft, to be recognized, when they were recognizable, by mothers, and wives, and children, who depended upon them for their scant food.”
Derrick argued his cause well and with spirit, keeping a tight rein upon himself; but when, having exhausted his arguments, he found that he had not advanced his cause, and that it was a settled matter that he should not, he took fire.
“Then, gentlemen,” he said, “I have but one resource. I will hold no human life lightly in my hands. I have the honor to tender you my resignation.”
There was a dead silence for a moment or so. They had certainly not expected such a result as this. A well-disposed young man, who sat near to Derrick, spoke to him in a rapid undertone.
“My dear fellow,” he said, “it will be the ruin of you. For my part, I admire your enthusiasm, but do not be rash.”
“A man with a will and a pair of clean hands is not easily ruined,” returned Derrick a trifle hotly. “As to being rash or enthusiastic, I am neither the one nor the other. It is not enthusiasm which moves me, it is a familiarity with stern realities.”
When he left the room his fate had been decided. At the end of the week he would have no further occupation in Riggan. He had only two more days' work before him and he had gained the unenviable reputation of being a fire-and-tow young fellow, who was flighty enough to make a martyr of himself.
Under the first street-lamp he met Grace, who was evidently making his way home.
“I will go with you,” he said, taking his arm.
Once within the walls of the pleasant little room, he found it easy to unbosom himself. He described his interview with his employers, and its termination.
“A few months ago, I flattered myself that my prospects were improving,” he said; “but now it seems that I must begin again, which is not an easy matter, by the way.”
By the time he ended he found his temporary excitement abating somewhat, but still his mood was by no means undisturbed.
It was after they had finished tea and the armchairs had been drawn to the fire that Grace himself made a revelation.
“When you met me to-night, I was returning from a visit I had paid to Joan Lowrie.”
“At Thwaite's?” said Derrick.
“At Thwaite's. She—the fact is I went on business—she has determined to change her plan of life.”
“In what manner?”
“She is to work no more at the mines. I am happy to say that I have been able to find her other employment.”
There was an interval of silence, at length broken by Derrick.
“Grace,” he said, “can you tell me why she decided upon such a course?”
Grace looked at him with questioning surprise.
“I can tell you what she said to me on the subject,” he replied. “She said it was no woman's work, and she was tired of it.”
“She is not the woman to do anything without a motive,” mused Derrick.
“No,” returned the Curate.
A moment later, as if by one impulse, their eyes met. Grace started as if he had been stung. Derrick simply flushed.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I—I do not think I understand,” Grace faltered. “Surely I am blundering.”
“No,” said Derrick, gloomily. “You cannot blunder since you know the truth. You did not fancy that my feeling was so trivial that I could have conquered it so soon? Joan Lowrie——”
“Joan Lowrie!”
Grace's voice had broken in upon him with a startled sound.
The two men regarded each other in bewilderment. Then again Derrick was the first to speak.
“Grace,” he said, “you have misunderstood me.”
Grace answered him with a visible tremor.
“If,” he said, “it was to your love for Joan Lowrie you referred when you spoke to me of your trouble some months ago, I have misunderstood you. If the obstacles you meant were the obstacles you would find in the path of such a love, I have misunderstood you. If you did not mean that your heart had been stirred by a feeling your generous friendship caused you to regard as unjust to me, I have misunderstood you miserably.”
“My dear fellow!” Derrick exclaimed, with some emotion. “My dear fellow, do you mean to tell me that you imagined I referred to Miss Barholm?”
“I was sure of it,” was Grace's agitated reply. “As I said before, I have misunderstood you miserably.”
“And yet you had no word of blame for me?”
“I had no right to blame you. I had not lost what I believed you had won. It had never been mine. It was a mistake,” he added, endeavoring to steady himself. “But don't mind me, Derrick. Let us try to set it right; only I am afraid you will have to begin again.”
Derrick drew a heavy breath. He took up a paper-knife from the table, and began to bend it in his hands.
“Yes,” he said, “we shall have to begin again. And it is told in a few words,” he said, with a deliberateness painful in its suggestion of an intense effort at self-control. “Grace, what would you think of a man who found himself setting reason at defiance, and in spite of all obstacles confronting the possibility of loving and marrying—if she can be won—such a woman as Joan Lowrie?”
“You are putting me in a difficult position,” Paul answered. “If he would dare so much, he would be the man to dare to decide for himself.”
Derrick tossed the paper-knife aside.
“And you know that I am the person in question. I have so defied the world, in spite of myself at first, I must confess. I have confronted the possibility of loving Joan Lowrie until I do love her. So there the case stands.”
Gradually there dawned upon the Curate's mind certain remembrances connected with Joan. Now and then she had puzzled and startled him, but here, possibly, might be a solution of the mystery.
“And Joan Lowrie herself?” he asked, questioningly.
“Joan Lowrie herself,” said Derrick, “is no nearer to me to-day than she was a year ago.”
“Are you,”—hesitatingly,—“are you quite sure of that?”
The words had escaped his lips in spite of himself.
Derrick started and turned toward him with a sudden movement
“Grace!” he said.
“I asked if you were sure of that,” answered Grace, coloring. “I am not.”