SECTION 16.
Hal never knew what Percy said to Cartwright that night; he only knew
that when they arrived at the mine the superintendent was summoned to a
consultation, and half an hour later Percy emerged smiling, with the
announcement that Hal Warner had been mistaken all along; the mine
authorities had been making all possible haste to get the fan ready,
with the intention of opening the mine at the earliest moment. The work
was now completed, and in an hour or two the fan was to be started, and
by morning there would be a chance of rescuers getting in. Percy said
this so innocently that for a moment Hal wondered if Percy himself might
not believe it. Hal's position as guest of course required that he
should graciously pretend to believe it, consenting to appear as a fool
before the rest of the company.
Percy invited Hal and Billy Keating to spend the night in the train; but
this Hal declined. He was too dirty, he said; besides, he wanted to be
up at daylight, to be one of the first to go down the shaft. Percy
answered that the superintendent had vetoed this proposition--he did not
want any one to go down but experienced men, who could take care of
themselves. When there were so many on hand ready and eager to go, there
was no need to imperil the lives of amateurs.
At the risk of seeming ungracious, Hal declared that he would "hang
around" and see them take the cover off the pit-mouth. There were
mourning parties in some of the cabins, where women were gathered
together who could not sleep, and it would be an act of charity to take
them the good news.
Hal and Keating set out; they went first to the Rafferties', and saw
Mrs. Rafferty spring up and stare at them, and then scream aloud to the
Holy Virgin, waking all the little Rafferties to frightened clamour.
When the woman had made sure that they really knew what they were
talking about, she rushed out to spread the news, and so pretty soon the
streets were alive with hurrying figures, and a crowd gathered once more
at the pit-mouth.
Hal and Keating went on to Jerry Minetti's. Out of a sense of loyalty to
Percy, Hal did no more than repeat Percy's own announcement, that it had
been Cartwright's intention all along to have the mine opened. It was
funny to see the effect of this statement--the face with which Jerry
looked at Hal! But they wasted no time in discussion; Jerry slipped into
his clothes and hurried with them to the pit-mouth.
Sure enough, a gang was already tearing off the boards and canvas. Never
since Hal had been in North Valley had he seen men working with such a
will! Soon the great fan began to stir, and then to roar, and then to
sing; and there was a crowd of a hundred people, roaring and singing
also.
It would be some hours before anything more could be done; and suddenly
Hal realised that he was exhausted. He and Billy Keating went back to
the Minetti cabin, and spreading themselves a blanket on the floor, lay
down with sighs of relief. As for Billy, he was soon snoring; but to Hal
there came sudden reaction from all the excitement, and sleep was far
from him.
An ocean of thoughts came flooding into his mind: the world outside,
_his_ world, which he had banished deliberately for several months, and
which he had so suddenly been compelled to remember! It had seemed so
simple, what he had set out to do that summer: to take another name, to
become a member of another class, to live its life and think its
thoughts, and then come back to his own world with a new and fascinating
adventure to tell about! The possibility that his own world, the world
of Hal Warner, might find him out as Joe Smith, the miner's buddy--that
was a possibility which had never come to his mind. He was like a
burglar, working away at a job in darkness, and suddenly finding the
room flooded with light.
He had gone into the adventure, prepared to find things that would shock
him; he had known that somehow, somewhere, he would have to fight the
"system." But he had never expected to find himself in the thick of the
class-war, leading a charge upon the trenches of his own associates. Nor
was this the end, he knew; this war would not be settled by the winning
of a trench! Lying here in the darkness and silence, Hal was realising
what he had got himself in for. To employ another simile, he was a man
who begins a flirtation on the street, and wakes up next morning to find
himself married.
It was not that he had regrets for the course he had taken with Percy.
No other course had been thinkable. But while Hal had known these North
Valley people for ten weeks, he had known the occupants of Percy's car
for as many years. So these latter personalities loomed large in his
consciousness, and here in the darkness their thoughts about him,
whether actively hostile or passively astonished, laid siege to the
defences of his mind.
Particularly he found himself wrestling with Jessie Arthur. Her face
rose up before him, appealing, yearning. She had one of those perfect
faces, which irresistibly compel the soul of a man. Her brown eyes, soft
and shining, full of tenderness; her lips, quick to tremble with
emotion; her skin like apple-blossoms, her hair with star-dust in it!
Hal was cynical enough about coal-operators and mine-guards, but it
never occurred to him that Jessie's soul might be anything but what
these bodily charms implied. He was in love with her; and he was too
young, too inexperienced in love to realise that underneath the
sweetness of girlhood, so genuine and so lovable, might lie deep,
unconscious cruelty, inherited and instinctive--the cruelty of caste,
the hardness of worldly prejudice. A man has to come to middle age, and
to suffer much, before he understands that the charms of women, those
rare and magical perfections of eyes and teeth and hair, that softness
of skin and delicacy of feature, have cost labour and care of many
generations, and imply inevitably that life has been feral, that customs
and conventions have been murderous and inhuman.
Jessie had failed Hal in his desperate emergency. But now he went over
the scene, and told himself that the test had been an unfair one. He had
known her since childhood, and loved her, and never before had he seen
an act or heard a word that was not gracious and kind. But--so he told
himself--she gave her sympathy to those she knew; and what chance had
she ever had to know working-people? He must give her the chance; he
must compel her, even against her will, to broaden her understanding of
life! The process might hurt her, it might mar the unlined softness of
her face, but nevertheless, it would be good for her--it would be a
"growing pain"!
So, lying there in the darkness and silence, Hal found himself absorbed
in long conversation with his sweetheart. He escorted her about the
camp, explaining things to her, introducing her to this one and that. He
took others of his private-car friends and introduced them to his North
Valley friends. There were individuals who had qualities in common, and
would surely hit it off! Bob Creston, for example, who was good at a
"song and dance"--he would surely be interested in "Blinky," the
vaudeville specialist of the camp! Mrs. Curtis, who liked cats, would
find a bond of sisterhood with old Mrs. Nagle, who lived next door to
the Minettis, and kept five! And even Vivie Cass, who hated men who ate
with their knives--she would be driven to murder by the table-manners of
Reminitsky's boarders, but she would take delight in "Dago Charlie," the
tobacco-chewing mule which had once been Hal's pet! Hal could hardly
wait for daylight to come, so that he might begin these efforts at
social amalgamation!
