Helbeck of Bannisdale.

Vol. II.

by Mrs. Humphry Ward.

BOOK III _Continued_

HELBECK OF BANNISDALE

CHAPTER II.

"Look out there! For G.o.d's sake, go to your places!"

The cry of the foreman reached the ears of the clinging women. They fell apart--each peering into the crowd and the tumult.

Mounted on a block of wood about a dozen yards from them--waving his arm and shouting to the stream of panic-stricken workmen--they saw the man who had been their guide through the works. Four white-hot ingots, just uncovered, blazed deserted on their truck close to him, and a mult.i.tude of men and boys were pushing past them, tumbling over each other in their eagerness to reach the neighbourhood of the furnace. The s.p.a.ce between the ingots and some machinery near them was perilously narrow. At any moment, those rushing past might have been pushed against the death-bearing truck. Ah! another cry. A man's coat-sleeve has caught fire. He is pulled back--another coat is flung about him--the line of white faces turns towards him an instant--wavers--then the crowd flows on as before.

Another man in authority comes up also shouting. The man on the block dismounts, and the two hold rapid colloquy. "Have they sent for Mr.

Martin?" "Aye." "Where's Mr. Barlow?" "He's no good!" "Have they stopped the mills?" "Aye--there's not a man'll touch a thing--you'd think they'd gone clean out of their minds. There'll be accidents all over the place if somebody can't quiet 'em."

Suddenly the buzzing groups behind the foreman parted, and a young broad-shouldered workman, grimed from head to foot, his blue eyes rolling in his black face, came staggering through.

"Gie ma a drink," he said, clutching at the old woman; "an let ma sit down!"

He almost fell upon an iron barrow that lay face downwards on the path.

Laura, sitting crouched and sick upon the ground, raised her head to look at him. Another man, evidently a comrade, followed him, took the mug of cold tea from the old woman's shaking hand, lifted his head and helped him drink it.

"Blast yer!--why ain't it spirits?" said the youth, throwing himself back against his companion. His eyes closed on his smeared cheeks; his jaw fell; his whole frame seemed to sink into collapse; those gazing at him saw, as it were, the dislocation and undoing of a man.

"Cheer up, Ned--cheer up," said the older man, kneeling down behind him--"you'll get over it, my boy--it worn't none o' your fault. Stand back there, you fellows, and gie im air."

"Oh, d.a.m.n yer! let ma be," gasped the young fellow, stretching himself against the other's support, like one who feels the whole inner being of him sick to death, and cannot be still for an instant under the anguish.

The woman with the tea began to cry loudly and ask questions. Laura rose to her feet, and touched her.

"Don't cry--can't you get some brandy?" Then in her turn she felt herself caught by the arm.

"Miss Fountain--Miss Laura--I can get you out of this!--there's a way out here by the back."

Mason's white countenance showed over her shoulder as she turned.

"Not yet--can't anyone find some brandy? Ah!"

For their guide came up at the moment with a bottle in his hand. It was Laura who handed him the mug, and it was she who, stooping down, put the spirit to the lips of the fainting workman. Her mind seemed to float in a mist of horror, but her will a.s.serted itself; she recovered her power of action sooner than the men around her. They stared at the young lady for a moment; but no more. The one hideous fact that possessed them robbed all else of meaning.

"Did he see it?" said Laura to the man's friend. Her voice reached no ear but his. For they were surrounded by two uproars--the noise of the crowd of workmen, a couple of thousand men aimlessly surging and shouting to each other, and the distant thunder of the furnace.

"Aye, Miss. He wor drivin the tub, an he saw Overton in front--it wor the wheel of his barrer slipped, an soomthin must ha took him--if he'd ha let goa straight theer ud bin noa harm doon--bit he mut ha tried to draw it back--an the barrer pulled him right in."

"He didn't suffer?" said Laura eagerly, her face close under his.

"Thank the Lord, he can ha known nowt aboot it!--nowt at aw. The gas ud throttle him, Miss, afore he felt the fire."

"Is there a wife?"

"Noa--he coom here a widower three weeks sen--there's a little gell----"

"Aye! they be gone for her an t' pa.s.son boath," said another voice; "what's pa.s.son to do whan he cooms?"

"Salve the masters' consciences!" cried a third in fury. "They'll burn us to h.e.l.l first, and then quieten us with praying."

Many faces turned to the speaker, a thin, wiry man one of the "agitators"

of the town, and a dull groan went round.

"Make way there!" cried an imperious voice, and the crowd between them and the entrance side of the shed began to part. A gentleman came through, leading a clergyman, who walked hurriedly, with eyes downcast, holding his book against his breast.

There was a flutter of caps through the vast shed. Every head stood bared, and bent. On went the parson towards the little platform with the railway. The furnace had sunk somewhat--its roar was less acute---- Laura looking at it thought of the gorged beast that falls to rest.

But another parting of the throng--one sob!--the common sob of hundreds.

Laura looked.

"It's t' little gell, Ned! t' little gell!" said the elder workman to the youth he was supporting.

And there in the midst of the blackened crowd of men was a child, frightened and weeping, led tenderly forward by a grey-haired workman, who looked down upon her, quite unconscious of the tears that furrowed his own cheeks.

"Oh, let me--let me go!" cried Laura. The men about her fell back. They made a way for her to the child. The old woman had disappeared. In an instant Laura, as of right, took the place of her s.e.x. Half an hour before she had been the merest pa.s.sing stranger in that vast company; now she was part of them, organically necessary to the act pa.s.sing in their midst. The men yielded her the child instinctively, at once; she caught the little one in her sheltering arm.

"Ought she to be here?" she asked sharply of the grey-haired man.

"They're goin to read the Burial Service, Miss," he said, as he dashed away the mist from his eyes. "An we thowt that the little un would like soom day to think she'd been here. So I found her--she wor in school."

The child looked round her in terror. The platform in front of the furnace had been hurriedly cleared. It was now crowded with men--masters and managers in black coats mingled with workmen, to the front the parson in his white. He turned to the throng below and opened his book.

"_I am the Resurrection and the Life._"

A great pulsation pa.s.sed through the mob of workmen. On all sides strong men broke down and wept.

The child stared at the platform, then at these faces round her that were turned upon her.

"Daddy--where's Daddy?" she said trembling, her piteous eyes travelling up and down the pretty lady beside her.

Laura sat down on the edge of a truck and drew the little shaking creature to her breast. Such a power of tenderness went out from her, so soft was the breast, so lulling the scent of the roses pinned into the lady's belt, that the child was stilled. Every now and then, as she looked at the men, pressing round her, a pa.s.sion of fear seemed to run through her; she shuddered and struggled in Laura's hold. Otherwise she made not a sound. And the great words swept on.