Bred in the Bone; Or, Like Father, Like Son Part 13

"Forgive me for interrupting," said Richard; "but I don't understand this matter. Is it supposed that a vessel announces her own destruction beforehand?"

"Sometimes," said Trevethick, gravely. "A ship is as well known here--if she belongs to this part of the coast--as a house is known in the Midlands. Well, if she's doomed, Madge--and it ain't only Madge neither--will see her days before she comes to her end. This _Firefly,_ for example, belonged to Polwheel, and had been away for weeks."

"But still she was expected home?" interrogated Richard.

"Ay, that's it," said Solomon, once more nodding approval. "The old woman had that in her mind."

"Why so?" argued Trevethick. "What was the _Firefly_ to her that she should think she saw her drive into the bay, and break to pieces against the rock out yonder? And why should she tell her vision to Harry?"

"That certainly seems strange, indeed," said Richard, "as showing she attached importance to the affair herself. It was a most curious coincidence, to say the least of it. But what is this Flying Dutchman, of which you also spoke? I did not know he ever came so far out of his proper lat.i.tude as this."

"He's seen before great storms, however," said Trevethick; "you ask the coast-guard men, and hear what _they_ say. There's many a craft has put out to her from Gethin, and come quite close, so that a man might almost reach her with a boat-hook, and then, all of a sudden, there is nothing to be seen but the big waves."

John Trevethick had more to say to the same effect, to which Richard listened with attentive courtesy; while at the same time he held to the same skeptical view entertained by Solomon. Thus he won the good opinion of both men; and of that of the girl he felt already a.s.sured. He scarcely ever addressed himself to Harry, and as much as possible avoided gazing at her. If the idea of his paying any serious attention to her had ever been put into her father's mind, the intelligence that he had been the friend and guest of Carew's had been probably sufficient to dissipate it: the social position which that fact implied seemed to make it out of the question that he should be Harry's suitor. It only remained for him to disabuse Solomon of the same notion. This was at first no easy task; but the stubbornness with which his rival resisted his attempts at conciliation gave way by degrees, and at last vanished.

To have been able to make common cause with him upon this question of local superst.i.tion was a great point gained. Solomon had a hard head, and prided himself upon his freedom from such weaknesses; and he hailed an ally in a battle-field on which he had contended at odds, five nights out of every seven, for years. Harry, as we have seen, shared her father's sentiments in the matter; and it was a great stroke of policy in Richard to have espoused the other side. He would, of course, have much preferred to agree with her--to have embraced any view which had the attraction of her advocacy; but it now gave him genuine pleasure to find his opposition exciting her to petulance. She was not petulant with Solomon, but left her father to tilt with him after his own fashion.

From the superst.i.tions of the coast they fought their way to those of the mines. Old Trevethick believed in "Knockers" and "Buccas," spirits who indicate the position of good lodes by blows with invisible picks; and, as these had more immediate connection with his own affairs than the nautical phenomena, he clung to his creed with even greater tenacity than before. So fierce was their contention that it was with difficulty that Richard could put in an inquiry as to whence these spirits came who thus interested themselves in the success of human ventures.

"I know nothing of that," said Trevethick, frankly, "any more than I know where that wind comes from that is shaking yonder pane; I only know that it is there."

"Nay, father, but _I_ know," said Harry, with a little blush at her own erudition: "the Buccas are the ghosts of the old Jews who crucified our Lord, and were sent as slaves by the Roman emperor to work the Cornish mines."

"Very like," said Trevethick, approvingly, although probably without any clear conception of the historical picture thus presented to him. "It's the least they could do in the spirit, after having done so much mischief in the flesh."

The contradiction involved in this exemplary remark, combined with the absurdity of repentance taking the form of interest in mining speculations, was almost too much for Richard's sense of humor; but he only nodded with gravity, as became a man who was imbibing information, and inquired further, whether, in addition to these favorers of industry, there were any spirits who worked ill to miners.

"Well, I can't say as there are," said the landlord, with the air of a man who can afford to give a point in an argument; "but there's a many things not of this world that happen underground, leastway in _our_ mines, for Sol there is from the north, and it mayn't be the same in those parts."

"It certainly is not," interrupted Solomon, taking his pipe out of his mouth to intensify the positiveness of his position.

"I say," continued Trevethick, reddening, "that down in Cornwall here there is scarce a mine without its spirit o' some sort. At Wheal Vor, for example, a man and his son were once blown to pieces while blasting; and, nothing being left of them but fragments of flesh, the engine-man put 'em into the furnace with his shovel; and now the pit is full of little black dogs. I've seen one of 'em myself."

Solomon laughed aloud.

Richard was expecting an explosion of wrath. The old man turned toward him quietly, and observed with tender gravity: "And in a certain mine, which Sol and I are both acquainted with, a white rabbit always shows itself before any accident which proves fatal to man. It was seen on the day that Sol's father sacrificed his life for mine." Then he told the story which Richard had already heard from Harry's lips, while Solomon smoked in silence, and Harry looked hard at the fire, as though--as Richard thought--to avoid meeting the glance of her father's hereditary benefactor.

"You are right to remember such a n.o.ble deed as long as you live," said Richard, when the old man had done. "My own life," added he, in a lower tone, "was once preserved by one whom I shall love and honor as long as I have breath."

He saw the color glow on the young girl's cheek, and the fire-light shine with a new brilliance in her eyes. Neither Trevethick nor Solomon had caught his observation; at the moment it was made the former was stretching out his great hand to the latter, moved by that memory of twenty years ago, and, perhaps, in token of forgiveness for his recent skepticism.

"Then there's the Dead Hand at Wheal Danes, father," observed Harry, in somewhat hasty resumption of the general subject. "That's as curious as any, and more terrible."

"Wheal Danes!" said Solomon. "Why, how comes that about, when n.o.body can never have been killed there? It's been disused ever since the Roman time, I thought?"

"Yes, yes; so it has," answered Trevethick, impatiently.

"But I thought you told me about it yourself, father?" persisted Harry.

"How you saw the Thing, with a flame at the finger-tops, going up and down where the ladders used to be, and heard voices calling from the pit."

"Not I, wench--not I. That was only what was told me by other folks.--Take another gla.s.s of your own sherry before supper, Sir; and after that we will have a bowl of punch."

The hospitalities of Mr. Trevethick were, in fact, profuse, and his manner toward Richard most conciliatory.

"We'll be glad to see you, Sol and I, in our little parlor, whenever you feel in want of company," were his last words at parting for the night.

And, "Ay, ay, that's so," had been Solomon's indors.e.m.e.nt.

Harry had said nothing; but the tender pressure of his hand, when he wished her good-night, had not gone unreturned, and was an invitation more welcome than words. The events of the day, the conversation of the evening, had given him plenty of matter for reflection; but the touch of those soft fingers was more potent, and the dreams evoked by it swallowed up all soberer thoughts. He sat up for hours that night, picturing to himself a future altogether new to his imagination; and when he went to bed it was not to rest. His excited brain was fed with a nightmare vision. He thought that he was once more with Harry on the castled rock; his lips were pressed to hers; his arm was around her waist, just as they had been; but, instead of his slipping alone over the precipice, they fell together; and as they did so--not without a wild delight mingling with his despair--she was suddenly plucked away from him, and, as he sank headlong down, down, he saw that Solomon Coe had caught her in his arms, and, with her father, was looking down upon him with savage and relentless glee!

CHAPTER XV.

SOLOMON'S REMINISCENCES.

There are wild places yet in the world, and primitive folk. Even in England there are localities of which the phrase, "It is a hundred years behindhand," still holds good; and so it was with Gethin. Its wind-swept moors, its rock-bound coast, had inhabitants altogether differing from the men of fields and farms; to Richard, a man of pleasure from the town, they seemed a foreign race. They were rough in externals, but kindly and genial at heart; given to hospitality, and, though good at a bargain, by no means greedy of gain. Above all there were no beggars.

The poorest Gethin man would open a gate for you, or walk a hundred yards out of his way to show you your road, without asking for, or even expecting, a coin. They were, however, as delighted as surprised to get it; and before the open-handed young artist had been a week in the place he had demoralized it by his largesses. As, however, his smile and his thanks always accompanied these presents, he was served more for love's sake than the money's, and enjoyed a popularity which can not be purchased, and which yet is impossible to be won by one who has nothing to give. He had the reputation among these simple folks, who knew how to be frugal themselves, of having a superfluity of wealth; his air and manner showed he had been always used to be lavish (as indeed he had), and nourished this delusion, which extended, though upon other grounds, to the tenants of the little inn.

John Trevethick and his friend Solomon would not have been much impressed with the expenditure of a few pounds by an improvident youth; but the former was well aware that the guests of Carew of Crompton were almost without exception very wealthy men, and he judged of Richard's social position accordingly. He had no idea that his landscape-painting was any thing else than an amus.e.m.e.nt--as it was practiced by half the young ladies and gentlemen who visited Gethin in the summer months; he took him for an amateur; and if he had seen his sketches, and been a judge of art, he would have been only fortified in his conclusion. He liked the young fellow upon his own account, though not so much as his handsome face and pleasant manners, combined with his desire to please, caused others to do; for Mr. Trevethick was not at all impressionable in such matters. Richard hated him in his heart for the scanty crop of regard he seemed to get out of him, notwithstanding all his pains; he had never made so continued an effort to make himself agreeable and with so small a result; but his self-love would have been more deeply wounded had he known that his own exertions would not have even gained him what they did, had they not been seconded by a hidden ally in the landlord's breast. Richard's desire to conciliate was fully reciprocated by Trevethick, who wished above all things to make friends with the friend of Parson Whymper; only conciliation was so much out of his line. The old man and the young had absolutely nothing in common except their love for Harry.

Upon the other hand, John Trevethick and Solomon Coe were cast almost in the same mould. Notwithstanding the former's superst.i.tion he was intelligent and shrewd enough in practical matters, and had, indeed, quite a genius for mechanics. Deprived of his underground occupation by the catastrophe with which we are acquainted, he had set his wits to work at home on the matters with which he had hitherto but physically concerned himself; and the labor of his head had proved more lucrative than that of his hand. He had invented several improvements in the working machinery of the mine which had so nearly proved his tomb; these had been adopted, with considerable profit to himself, in other places; and the money thus acquired he had not frittered away (as is usual in such cases) in speculative investments. In the interim between his giving up his trade and his reaping the fruits of his inventions he had tasted the bitterness of poverty, and that had made him very cautious.

But he had a small share in Dunloppel, which seemed likely to turn out very profitable; and he had built the inn, the returns from which were more than sufficient to support him--indeed, it was rumored that John Trevethick had been laying by a pretty penny, and could hold his head much higher if he pleased. His pleasures were certainly not expensive, for they consisted in fancy iron-working, the results of which brought him in a considerable sum; and in occasionally getting drunk, which, being a publican, he could accomplish at the most reasonable figure. He was a hard unlovable man, and interesting only as statistics may be said to be as compared with literature--in a hard, practical way. If superst.i.tious, he was by no means religious; and, though honest, he was grasping. He took time to resolve upon a matter; but, when once his resolution was fixed, his will was iron, and his heart was stone. It was certainly curious that one of Trevethick's character should have entertained so long and freshly his sentiment of grat.i.tude even to a man that had saved his life at the expense of his own; but even this may have had its roots in egotism. Had the person saved been his wife or his daughter the feeling would not perhaps have been so enduring; and in carrying it out, as he fully purposed to do, by bestowing Harry's hand upon Solomon, he was certainly not uninfluenced by the fact that the latter was, pecuniarily speaking, an excellent match.

Like himself, his intended son-in-law was the architect of his own fortunes; but he had built them up in a different way. His youth had been spent in the coal-mines of the north; and, though no lucky stroke of the pick can there make one rich, as it can in other underground localities, his strength and skill had met with their full reward. And what he had gained he had not wasted. Pound after pound he had laid by, until enough had been saved for investment; and it was Solomon's boast in after-years that he had never got less than ten per cent. for any of it. It was all ventured on underground speculations, some of them hazardous enough--but all had prospered; and here John Trevethick's judgment, though the old man himself had not the courage to follow it, had been of great advantage to him. Every thing he touched turned, if not to gold, at least to tin or copper; and before the lode ceased to yield Solomon had sold his shares at a good premium, and placed the proceeds in another pit. He had sown, as it were, his money in the earth, and reaped a golden harvest. And now Dunloppel, his last venture, seemed likely to prove his best: and it was another strand in the strong bond between himself and Trevethick that the latter had also a share in that undertaking. There are some men with whom a common pecuniary interest is the most binding tie of sympathy of which their nature is capable; and never had the landlord of the _Gethin Castle_ been more closely attached to his guest and son-in-law elect than at this time, when Richard Yorke proposed to himself to part them; as though a gilded summer skiff should thrust itself between two laden coal-barges, and bid them budge.

It was at least a week before Solomon Coe could be induced to open his lips before Richard, beyond the utterance of a few pithy sentences; not that the smouldering embers of jealousy had been fanned in the mean time--for Richard had been prudence itself in his behavior to Harry--but because the miner could not comprehend the young fellow, and therefore distrusted him. The light and airy manners, which were as natural to Richard as was John Trevethick's ponderous cunning or his own self-satisfied reticence, seemed to Solomon mere affectation, and even his appearance effeminate and dandified; but when he saw that he wore no other air when conversing with the pitmen of Dunloppel--an expedition undertaken with himself at Richard's special invitation--and marked how actively he climbed the tall, steep ladders, and how fearlessly he trusted himself to the rope, he acquitted him of such artful fopperies.

Of Richard's intelligence he had formed a good opinion from the time when the latter had enlisted himself upon his side in the argument concerning superst.i.tion; and it flattered his vanity to find so sensible and accomplished a young fellow deferring to his opinion upon all practical points, and apparently desirous of obtaining his views upon them.

There was one subject, the experience of his early years, upon which Solomon was never averse to descant, could he once be got to talk at all; and it was a certain token--as one, at least, of the company well knew--that his prejudice against Richard was quite surmounted when Solomon began to unfold to him, over their punch in the bar parlor, the annals of his underground career. Often had he done so to Harry--like another Oth.e.l.lo (and almost as swarthy) narrating his adventures to his Desdemona--but never had she been so pleased to listen as now, when she needed but to seem to hear, and, without the penalty of reply, could feed her eyes upon young Richard's listening face. It is hard when, in the race for woman's favor, one has to waste one's breath in making the running for one's rival.

And yet the talk of Solomon Coe was well worth listening to. He told of the great war which is always being waged by man beneath the earth against the powers of Water, and Fire, and Foul Air, and of the daring deeds he had seen wrought against them. He told of coal-pits that had been on fire from time immemorial, above which no snow would lie, by reason of the heat beneath, and where the gra.s.s of the meadows was always green. He told of others which had been suddenly inundated by a neighboring river, or by the waters from old workings, let in by a single unlucky blow, whereby scores and scores of strong men were overwhelmed, whose corpses floated about for months in the dark drowned pit before their fellows above-ground could get at them.

His speech was somewhat sullen and hesitating, and what he said was interrupted by whiffs of smoke and sips of liquor; but the nature of the subject was so absorbing that it needed no gifts of eloquence. It interested Richard in spite of himself; and Solomon was not indifferent to the flattery which the young artist's attention conveyed, and scarcely needed the entreaties of Trevethick to persuade him to throw off his native reticence. What he forgot, and had mentioned in former narrations, the landlord supplemented; and when "Sol" became technical and obscure the other performed the part of chorus or explainer. If the former had been some gifted animal, and the latter its proprietor, he could not have taken a greater pride in the exhibition of its talent than did the landlord in these narrations. Now he would look at Richard, and nod and wink, as though to bespeak his special attention to what was coming; and now he would wave his pipe, like a dumb orchestra playing slow music, to express the tremendous nature of a situation. Perhaps he was genuinely impressed by these thrice-told tales--perhaps he was endeavoring, by a feigned admiration for Sol's experiences and exploits, to justify his choice of a son-in-law not altogether suited to his Harry. To do the _raconteur_ justice, he was by no means so egotistic as his aider and abettor, and Trevethick would express his regrets to Richard that it was so hard to get Sol to dismiss generalities and talk about himself. "It's on account of Harry being here, you see," explained he behind his h.o.r.n.y hand, but in a tone perfectly audible to the other tenants of the bar parlor; "or else he would tell you how the timbering of the pit once fell upon him, so as nothing was free but his head and his left hand; and yet he never lost his wits in all his agony, but told the men where to saw and what to do; but he don't like to boast before the 'gal.'"

Then Richard, taking the hint, inquired of Solomon whether any incident particularly striking had ever happened to himself during his underground experience; and Solomon replied, with affected carelessness; "No, not as I know on; nothing particular."

Then Trevethick broke in with, "What! not when you was shut up in the seam at Dunston?"

"Oh yes, to be sure," said Sol, as though the recollection of the circ.u.mstance had only just occurred to him; "there was _that_, certainly; but it was when I was quite a boy. I was not quite seventeen when Dunston Colliery was drowned. The Gatton poured right in upon it, and they have not got the water out of it in places to this day. It was always said that the pit was being worked too near the river; but that was little thought about by those as was most concerned, and it never disturbed the head of a lad like me, of course. It was in the afternoon of the 12th of December, a date as I am not likely to forget, when the thing happened. Two mates--one old man and a middle-aged one--and myself were at work in a heading together, when suddenly we heard a noise like thunder. 'That's never blasting,' says one. 'The Lord have mercy on us,'

cries the other; 'it's the river come in at last!' For, as I say, the risk was quite well known, though it was considered small, and made a frequent jest of. Nothing that ever I heard was equal to that noise; the waves in Gethin caverns here, during storm, are a whisper to it; the whole pit seemed to be roaring in upon us. We all ran up the gallery, which, fortunately for us, had a great slope, and crouched down at the end of it. We heard the water pouring in and filling all the workings beneath us, and then pouring in and filling ours. It reached our feet, and left us but a very limited s.p.a.ce, in which the air was compressed, when the noise of the inundation ceased. There was a singing in our ears, so that we could scarcely hear one another speak. We knew that the whole mine had become a lake by that time, and that it would take months to drain her, if she was ever drained. We knew that we were buried alive hundreds of feet beneath the earth; and yet we did not quite lose heart.

There was this gleam of hope: supposing that the next gallery, which was on a higher level than our own, was not also flooded, we could be got at through the seam. We did not know the fact that it was more than sixty feet of solid coal, and would have taken under ordinary circ.u.mstances at least four weeks to dig through; we only knew that, if a door of escape was to open any where, it must open there. We kept tapping with the heels of our boots at equal intervals against this wall."

"The miner's signal," explained the landlord, with a wave of his pipe.

"We felt that if we were once heard, and if hard work could do it, that our mates would save us yet; and we encouraged one another as well as we could. But presently the oil in our lamps gave out, and we were left in darkness; and then our hope grew faint indeed. We had knocked for four-and-twenty hours unintermittingly without any reply. We did not cease, however, to discuss the possibilities of escape. We knew that all was being done for us above-ground that could be done; that the surveys of the mine were well executed; and that it was known exactly where we were, if we were alive at all. There were more than a hundred men employed in the lower workings, and it was a certainty that not one of them could have escaped death; the attention, therefore, of the engineers would be concentrated upon those parts of the mine that might possibly be left above water."

"On the second night of our imprisonment we heard a distinct reply to our signal; the old man who was of our company began to weep for joy, though he was doomed, as it turned out, poor soul! never to see the light. 'We shall be saved,' he said; 'do not fear.' We knocked again, and again the reply was heard--they had found us out, and would never relax their efforts to save us. 'G.o.d bless them!' said we all. We laid our ears close to the rock, and presently heard the strokes of the pick, but not very distinctly. When the other said he was afraid the rock was thick, the old man cried out: 'No, it was not that; it was because we were dull of hearing.' The fact was, that the seam was not only thick, but very hard. It was strange, indeed, though sounds are easily transmitted through rocks of considerable thickness, how our feeble taps had been heard at all. Day after day, and each day a black night, went on; every hour was to be the last of our captivity, according to the old man; as for me, I was almost worn out, and heavy with sleep, but he was in constant motion, knocking and listening. Then suddenly we heard a splash in the water beneath us--he had lost his balance, slid down the inclined plane, and been drowned. He never stirred a limb nor uttered a cry. His fate discouraged and alarmed us two survivors exceedingly. If help was coming, we now felt it would never come in time. We dug into the shale with the handles of our lamps and with our fingers, to make our position more secure. We did not venture to speak of our late companion's fate to one another. Horror overwhelmed us, so enfeebled had we become through famine and fatigue. We had devoured our leather belts, and even crumbled the rotten wood of the timber-props in water, and eaten that; but we were now consumed by thirst, which we dared no longer quench. We were afraid to venture down as before for the water in which the old man had sunk to death; and it was that which had kept us alive."