The Underworld Part 10

"Ach, to h.e.l.l wi' it," she cried in exasperation, as she turned up the torn petticoat, displaying a leg all covered with coal grime, which seemed never to have been washed.

"Is that no' awfu'? d.a.m.n my soul, I'll hae to gang hame the nicht in my sark tail," and she laughed loudly at her sally.

"I'll put a pin in it, it'll do till I gang hame," she added, and she started to pin the torn edges together. But all day the bare leg shone through the torn petticoat, and rough jokes were made by the men who worked near by--jokes which she seemed to enjoy, for she would hold up the torn garment and laugh with the others.

The women and boys never seemed to heed the things that filled Robert and Mysie with so much amazement. The two children bent over the swinging tables as the coal pa.s.sed before them. They eagerly grabbed at the stones, flinging them to the side with a zeal that greatly amused the older hands.

"Ye'll no' keep up that pace lang," said one woman. "Ye'll soon tire, so ye'd better take it easy."

"Let them alone," broke in the old man, who had a penny a day more for acting as a sort of gaffer. "Get on wi' yer own work, an' never mind them."

"Gang you to h.e.l.l, auld wheezie bellows," replied one woman coa.r.s.ely, adding a rough jest at his breathlessness, whilst the others laughed loudly, adding, each one, another sally to torment the old man.

But after a time Robert felt his back begin to ache, and a strange dizzy feeling came into his head, as a result of his bent position and the swinging and crashing of the tables. He straightened himself and felt as if he were going to break in two. He glanced at Mysie, wondering how she felt, and he thought she looked white and ill.

"Take a wee rest, Mysie," he said. "Are ye no' awfu' dizzy?"

Mysie heard, but "six and sixpence a week" was still ringing in her head. Indeed, the monotonous swing of the tables ground out the refrain in their harsh clamor, as they swung backwards and forwards. "Six and sixpence a week," with every leap forwards; "six and sixpence a week" as they receded. "Six and sixpence" with every shake and roar, and with each pulsing throb of the engine; and "six and sixpence a week" her little hands, already cut and bleeding, kept time with regular beat, as she lifted the stones and flung them aside. She was part of the refrain--a note in the fortissimo of industry. The engines roared and crashed and hissed to it. They beat the air regularly as the pistons rose and fell back and forth, thump, thud, hiss, groan, up and down, out and in: "Six and sixpence a week!"

Mysie tried to straighten herself, as Robert had advised, and immediately a pain shot through her back which seemed to snap it in two.

The whole place seemed to be rushing round in a mad whirl, the roof of the shed coming down, and the floor rushing up, when with a stagger Mysie fell full length upon a "bing" of stones, bruising her cheek, and cutting her little hands worse than ever. This was what usually happened to all beginners at "pickin' sklits."

One of the women raised Mysie up, gave her a drink from a flask containing cold tea, and sat her aside to rest a short time.

"Just sit there a wee, my dochter," she said with rough kindness, "an'

you'll soon be a' richt. They mostly a' feel that way when they first start on the scree."

Mysie was feeling sick, and already the thought was shaping in her mind that she would never be able to continue. She had only worked an hour as yet, but it seemed to her a whole day.

"Six and sixpence a week" sang the tables as they swung; "six and sixpence a week" whirred the engines; "six and sixpence a week" crashed the screes; and her head began to throb with the roar of it all. "Six and sixpence a week" as the coal tumbled down the chutes into the wagons; "six and sixpence" crunched the wheels, until it seemed as if everything about a pit were done to the tune of "six and sixpence a week."

It was thundered about her from one corner, it squealed at her from another, roared at her from behind, groaned at her in front; it wheezed from the roof, and the very shed in which they stood swayed and shivered to its monotonous song. "Six and sixpence a week" was working into every fiber of her being. She had been born to it, was living it, and it seemed that the very wheels of eternity were grinding out her destiny to its roar and its crash, and its terrible regular throb and swing.

She grew still more sick, and vomited; so one of the women took her by the hand and led her down the narrow rickety wooden stair out across the dirt "bing" into the pure air. In a quarter of an hour she brought her back almost well, except for the pain in her head.

"Where the h.e.l.l hae ye been, Mag?" wheezed the old gaffer, addressing the woman with irritated authority.

"Awa' an' boil yer can, auld belly-crawler," was the elegant response, as she bent to her work, taking as little notice of him as if he were a piece of coal.

"Ye're awa' faur owre much," he returned. This was an allusion to clandestine meetings which were sometimes arranged between some of the men in authority--"penny gaffers," as they were called--and some of the girls who took their fancy.

After all, gaffers had certain powers of advancement, and could increase wages to those who found favor in their eyes, to the extent of a penny or twopence per day, and justified it by representing that these girls were value for it, because they were better workers. Again, matters were always easier to these girls of easy virtue, for they got better jobs, and could even flout the authority of lesser gaffers, if their relations with the higher ones were as indicated.

Mag replied with a coa.r.s.e jest, and the others laughed roughly, and Mysie and Robert, not understanding, wondered why the old man got angry.

Thus the day wore on, men and women cursed while familiarities took place which were barely hidden from the children. Talk was coa.r.s.e and obscenely suggestive, and the whole atmosphere was brutalizing. Long, however, before the day was ended, Robert and Mysie were feeling as if every bone in their little bodies would break.

"Just take anither wee rest, Mysie," said Robert. "I'll keep pickin' as hard as I can, an' ye'll no' be sae muckle missed."

"Oh, I'll hae to keep on, too," she replied, almost despairingly, with a hint of tears in her voice. "Ye mind I promised to work hard, an' ye said I was a guid worker, too. If I dinna' keep on I micht only get a shillin' a day."

"But I'll pick as much as the twa o' us can do," pursued Robert, with persuasive voice. "I'll gang harder, until ye can get a wee rest."

So Mysie, in sheer exhaustion, stopped for a little, and the dizzy feeling was soon gone again. Yet the horrible pain in the back troubled them all day, and the dizziness returned frequently, but the others a.s.sured them that they'd soon get used to it. Their hands were cut, bruised and dirty, and poor little Mysie felt often that she would like to cry, but "six and sixpence a week" kept time in her heart to all her troubles, and seemed to drive her onward with relentless force.

With rough kindness the women encouraged the two children, and did much to make their lot easier. But it was a trying day--a hard, heartbreaking day, a day of tears and pains and discouragement, a horrible Gethsemane of sweat and agony, whose memory not even "six and sixpence a week"

would ever eradicate from their minds, though it made the day bearable.

The great wheels groaned and swished like the imprisoned monster of Robert's imaginings, and at last came to a halt at the end of the shift; but in the pattern which they had that day woven into the web of industry, there were two bright threads--threads of great beauty and high worth--threads which the very G.o.ds seemed proud of seeing there, twisted and twined, and lending color of richest hue to the whole design--threads of glorious fiber and rare quality, which sparkled and shone like the neck of a pigeon in the sunshine. These threads in the web of industry, which had shone that day for the first time, were the lives of two little children.

CHAPTER VIII

THE MANTLE OF MANHOOD

Months pa.s.sed, and Robert still worked on the pithead. Much of the novelty had pa.s.sed, and he was accustomed to the noise and clamor, though he never lost the feeling that he was working with, or, indeed, was part of, some giant monster, imprisoned and harnessed, it is true, but capable of t.i.tanic labors and fall of unexpectedness. It was ever-present, implacable and sinister, yet so long as its fetters held, easily controlled.

The warm weather had come, and the lure of the moors called to him at his work. Away out over there--somewhere--there were strange wonders awaiting him. He watched the trains, long, fast, and so inevitable-looking, rushing across the moor about a mile and a half from where he worked, and often, he thought that perhaps some day one of those flying monsters would bear him away from Lowwood across the moors into the Big City. What was a city like? And the sea? How big would it be? It was a staggering thought to imagine a stretch of water that ended on the sky-line--no land to be seen on the other side! What a wonderful world it must be!

But a touch of bitterness was creeping into his character, and for this his mother's teaching was responsible. Nellie was always jealous of the welfare of the working cla.s.s, and was ever vigilant as to its interests.

She did not know how matters could be rectified, but she did know that she and her like suffered unnecessarily.

"There's no reason," she would say, "for decent folk bein' in poverty.

Look at the conditions that puir folk live in!"

"Hoot ay! Nellie, but we canna' help it," a neighbor would reply. "It's no' for us to be better."

"What way is it no'?" she would demand indignantly. "Do you think we couldna' be better folk if we had no poverty?"

"Ay, but the like o' us ken no better, an' it wadna' do if we had mair.

We micht waste it," and the tone of resignation always maddened her to greater wrath.

"There's mair wasted on fancy fal-lals among the gentry than wad keep many a braw family goin'. Look at the hooses we live in; the gentry wadna' keep their dogs in them. The auld Earl has better stables for his horses than the hooses puir folk live in!"

"That's maybe a' richt, Nellie, but you maun mind that we're no' gentry.

We havena' been brocht up to anything else. Somebody has got to work, an' we canna' help it," and the fatalistic resignation but added fuel to her anger.

"Ay, we could help it fine, if we'd only try it. It's no' richt that folk should hae to slave a' their days, an' be always in hardships, while ither folk who work nane hae the best o' everything. I want a decent hoose to live in; I want to see my man hae some leisure, an' my weans hae a chance in life for something better than just work and trouble," and her voice quivering with anger at the wrongs inflicted upon her, she would rattle away on her favorite topic.

"There you go again. You are aye herp, herpin' at the big folk, or aboot the union. I wonder you never turn tired, woman," the reply would come, for sometimes these women were unable to understand her at all.

"I'll never turn tired o' that," she would reply. "If only the men wad keep thegither an' no' be divided, they'd soon let the big folk see wha'

was the maist importance to the country. Do you think onybody ever made a lot o' money by their ain work? My man an' your man hae wrocht hard a'

their days. They've never wasted ony o' their hard-earned money, an' yet they hae naething."

"No, because it takes it a' to keep us," would be the reply, as if that were a conclusive answer, difficult to counter.