The Stars Look Down (27 page)

Next morning he did not see her. She had risen early and left by the seven o’clock train.

All that day David worried about Sally: when he returned from school he spoke to Jenny.

Jenny gave her little complacent laugh.

“She’s jealous, my dear, absolutely jealous.”

He drew back disgusted.

“Oh no,” he said, “I’m convinced it isn’t that.”

She nodded indulgently.

“She always had her eye on you, even in the Scottswood Road days. She hated to see you spoony on me. And she hates it even worse now!” She paused, smiling up at him. “You still
are
spoony on me, aren’t you, David?”

He looked at her queerly, with a queer hardness in his eyes. He said:

“Yes, I do love you, Jenny. I know you’re chock full of faults—just as I am myself. Sometimes you say and do things that I loathe. Sometimes I simply can’t stand you. But I can’t help myself. I love you.”

She did not attempt to understand him but took the general drift of his remarks as complimentary.

“Funny bones,” she said archly. And went back to her novel.

He was not accustomed to analyse his feeling for Jenny. He simply accepted it. But two days later, on the following Friday, an incident occurred which disturbed him strangely.

As a rule he did not leave the school until four o’clock. But on this particular day Strother came along at three o’clock to “take his class.” It was Strother’s habit to take a class once a week, on this day and at this hour, to determine the progress of the class and to make forcible and pointed comment in the presence of the master of that class. Lately, however, Strother had been kinder to David since he had been working so strenuously for the B.A.; he said curtly, yet pleasantly enough, that David might go.

David went. He went first of all to Hans Messuer’s for a hair cut. While Hans, a fat meek smiling man with a moustache turned up like the Kaiser’s, was cutting his hair David
talked to Swee who had just come out the Neptune and was shaving himself in the back shop. He had a cheerful and unedifying conversation with Swee. Swee was always cheerful and could be very unedifying. He could shave and talk and be cheerful and unedifying all at the same time without cutting himself. The talk with Swee did David good but it took only half an hour. He reached home at half-past three instead of quarter-past four. Then as he came up the lane behind the Dunes he met Joe Gowlan coming out of his house.

David stopped. He stopped absolutely dead. He had not seen Joe since he loaned him the money; it gave him the most singular sensation to see Joe walking out the house as though actually it were Joe’s house. He felt the sensation like an acute embarrassment especially as Joe seemed acutely embarrassed too.

“I thought I’d left my stick the other night,” Joe explained, looking everywhere but at David.

“You didn’t have a stick, Joe.”

Joe laughed, glancing up and down the lane. Perhaps he thought the stick might be there.

“I did have a stick… a cane… I always carry it, but I’m blowed if I haven’t lost it somewhere.”

Just that; then Joe nodding, smiling, hurrying; hurrying to get away.

David went up the path and into his house thoughtfully.

“Jenny,” he said, “what did Joe want here?”

“Joe!” She darted a look at him; got very red in the face.

“I’ve just met him… coming out of this house.”

She stood in the middle of the floor in that lost, taken aback way, then her temper flared.

“I can’t help it if you did meet him. I’m not his keeper. He only looked in for a minute. What are you staring at me like that for?”

“Nothing,” he said, turning away. Why had Jenny said nothing about the stick?

“Nothing
what
?” she insisted violently.

He looked out of the window. Why had Joe called at an hour when he was likely to be at the school? Why on earth? Suddenly an explanation struck him; the unusual time of Joe’s call, Joe’s nervousness, his hurry to get away, everything. Joe had borrowed three pounds from him, and Joe was still unable to pay it back!

His face lightened, he swung round to Jenny.

“Joe did call for his stick… didn’t he?”

“
Yes
,” she cried, quite hysterically, and came right into his arms. “Of course he did. What in the world did you think he came for?”

He soothed her, patting her lovely soft hair.

“I’m sorry, Jenny, darling. It did give me the oddest feeling, though, to see him walking out of my house as if he owned it.”

“Oh, David,” she wept, “how can you say such things?”

What had he said? He smiled, his lips touched her white slender neck. She pleaded:

“You’re not angry with me, David?”

Why under heaven should he be angry with her?

“Heavens, no, my dear.”

Reassured, she lifted her limpid swimming eyes. She kissed him. She was sweet to him all that evening, most terribly sweet. She got up actually next morning, which was Saturday, to give him his morning tea. When she saw him off on his bicycle that same afternoon to spend the week-end working with Carmichael she clung to him and would hardly let him go.

But she did let him go after one last big hug, as she called it. Then she went into the house, humming lightly, pleased that David loved her, pleased with herself, pleased with the nice long free week-end before her.

Of course she wouldn’t let Joe come to supper to-night, she wouldn’t dream of such a thing, the cheek, indeed! of Joe for even suggesting it. To talk about old times he had said, well, could you believe it. She hadn’t even bothered to tell David about Joe’s impertinence, it was not the kind of thing a lady cared to mention.

That afternoon she took a pleasant stroll down the town. Outside Murchison’s she paused, debating, as it were, and deciding well, yes, it was a useful thing to have in the house. She went in and elegantly ordered a bottle of port, invalid port, to be sent down, this afternoon, for sure now, Mr. Murchison. David didn’t like it, she knew, but David had lately been most unreasonable and he was away in any case and would never know. What was the old saying again, what the eye didn’t see the heart didn’t grieve for. Good, wasn’t it? Smiling a little Jenny went home, changed her dress, scented herself behind her ears, like it said in
Home Chat
, and made herself nice, Jenny did, even if it was only to be nice for herself.

At seven o’clock Joe came to the door. Jenny answered his ring.

“Well, I declare,” she exclaimed, shocked. “After all I said.”

“Ah, come on now, Jenny,” Joe said ingratiatingly, “don’t be hard on a fella.”

“The very idea,” said Jenny. “I’ve a good mind not to let you in.”

But she did let him in. And she did not let him out till it was very late. She was flushed and disarranged and rather sheepish. She giggled. The port, the invalid port was finished.

On the next day, Sunday the 7th of December, Jack Reedy, eldest of the Reedy brothers, and his marrow, Cha Leeming, worked their shift in the Scupper Flats, an extra shift because they were doubling to complete the P. W. contract. Robert was in the same shift though much further up the Flats at the head of the slant. His heading was bad. The heading of Reedy and Leeming was good, about one mile and a half from the pit-bottom. At five o’clock the shift stopped work and came out of the pit. Reedy and Cha Leeming, before they came out, left a fine jud of unworked coal on the face of their heading. About five or six tubs of coal would be in this jud when it was brought down, good coal and easy to get when they came in next morning.

Well satisfied, Jack Reedy and Cha stopped at the Salutation for a drink on the way home. Jack had a bit of money. For all it was Sunday night they had several drinks and then several more. Jack got merry and Cha was half-seas over. Arm in arm together they rolled up the Terraces, singing. They went to bed. Next morning both slept in. But neither appreciated the point of his sleeping in till later.

At half-past three of the morning of Monday Dinning, the deputy in charge of the district, entered the Paradise section and made his examination of the workings. He did this before admitting the morning shift. Stick in hand, head bent, Dinning plodded diligently through the Mixen and Scupper Flats. Everything seemed satisfactory so Dinning returned to
his kist in the Scupper ropeway and wrote out his statutory report.

The shift then came in, one hundred and five persons, made up of eighty-seven men and eighteen boys. Two of the shift, Bob Ogle and Tally Brown, made up to Dinning in the ropeway.

“Jack and Cha slep’ in,” Bob Ogle said.

“To hell!” Dinning said.

“Can Tally and me hev that heading?” Bob said. “It’s a bitch of a one we hev.”

“To hell,” Dinning said. “Take it, then!”

Ogle and Brown went up the ropeway with a bunch of men, amongst whom were Robert, Hughie, Slogger Leeming, Harry Brace, Swee Messer, Tom Reedy, Ned Softly and Jesus Wept. Tom Reedy’s young brother Pat, a boy of fifteen, whose first week it was inbye proper, followed on behind.

Robert was in good spirits. He felt well and hopeful. He had slept soundly, his cough had not been so troublesome; in the last few months, with a strong sense of relief, he had come to the conclusion that his fears of flooding had been unfounded. As he walked up through the blackness of the slant, which was low and narrow, four feet high, six hundred feet below the surface and two miles from the main shaft, he found himself beside little Pat Reedy, youngest of the Reedy tribe.

“Eh, Pat,” he joked, encouraging him. “It’s a fine place ye’ve come for your holidays.” He clapped Pat on the back and went down through the dip known as the Swelly and up to his far heading with Slogger. The heading was drier than it had been for weeks.

Ogle and Brown were already in their heading further back. They found the jud left by Jack and Cha. They started work, drilled two yard shot holes into the face of the jud and another of the same depth to the right of the projection. At quarter to five Dinning, the deputy, came along. He charged and fired the shots. Eight tubs of coal came down.

Dinning saw that the shots had fired well and the line of the coal face straightened.

“To hell, lads,” he said, nodding his satisfaction, “that’s all reet.” He went back up the Scupper ropeway to his kist.

But ten minutes later Tom Reedy, the putter, came after him. Tom said, in a great hurry:

“Ogle says will you come inbye. There’s water comin’ through the shot holes, he says.”

Dinning appeared to reflect.

“To hell, he says.”

Tom Reedy and Dinning went back to the heading. Dinning took a look at the face, a real good look. He found a thin trickle of water coming through the middle of it between the two shots he had fired. There appeared to be no pressure behind it. He smelled the water. The water had a bad smell, a smell of styfe which meant black damp about, he knew it was not virgin coal water. He did not like the look of it at all.

“To hell, lads,” Dinning said, dismayed. “Ye’ve holed. Ye better try and get rid of some o’t.”

Ogle, Brown and Tom Reedy began to tub the water, to try and get rid of it by letting it through the pack walls on the low side of the drawing road At that moment Geordie Dinning, who was Dinning’s son and a hand putter with Tom Reedy in Scupper Flats, came by.

“Here, Geordie, lad,” Dinning cried. Though Dinning said to hell without offence and without knowing he said it, strangely enough he never said it before his son.

Dinning took his son Geordie back to the kist with him. While he was hurrying to his kist he thought about the branch telephone but the telephone was some way off and it was still so early he was afraid Hudspeth might not yet have come to bank. Besides, Dinning was not very good at thinking. At the kist he got out his stub of copying-ink pencil and wrote two notes. He wrote laboriously, wetting the pencil occasionally on his tongue. In the first note this is what Dinning wrote:

  
Mr. Wm. Hudspeth, Under-Viewer, Dear Sir,

  
The water has holed into Scupper No. 6 Branch and is over the boots in the slope and more is coming and there is more going to the haulage than the pumps can manage. You might come inbye and see it and I will be at the kist in Paradise ropeway if not there in Mixen number two Bench. P.S. There is very great danger of flooding out. Yours H. Dinning.

  In the second note this is what Dinning wrote:

  
The water has broken through Scupper No. 6 Branch. Frank will you warn the other men in the Paradise in case. Yrs. H. Dinning.

Dinning turned to his son. He was a slow man, a slow thinker and speaker. But now he spoke quicker than usual. He said:

“Run, Geordie, to Frank Logan, the fireman, and gie him this note. Then go outbye and up to the under-viewer’s house with this. Run now, Geordie, man, run.”

Geordie went off with the two notes. He went quickly. When he came to the junction he looked for the onsetter but the onsetter was not there. Then Geordie heard a faint thump and the air commenced to reverse. Geordie knew that meant trouble in the Scupper Flats. He knew he wanted to get outbye but he knew also what his father had told him to do and between the two he lost his head and began to walk up the middle of the Paradise roadway.

As young Geordie Dinning walked up the middle of the Paradise roadway suddenly out of the darkness came a train of four loaded tubs running loose. The tubs had broken amain from further up. Geordie shouted. Geordie jumped half a second too late. The train of tubs smashed down on him, took him twenty yards with a rush, flung him, went over him, and left his mangled body on the roadway. The train of tubs roared on.

After his son had gone Dinning stood for some moments satisfied that he had done what he ought to do. Then he heard a loud bang, it was the thump his son had heard, only being nearer he heard it as a bang. Suddenly petrified, Dinning stood with his mouth open. He had expected trouble but nothing so sudden or terrible as this. He knew it was an inrush. Instinctively he turned into the Flats, but after going ten yards he saw the water rushing towards him. The water came roof high in a great swell of sound. In the water were the bodies of Ogle, Brown and ten other men. The gas in front of the rushing water extinguished his lamp. For two seconds while he stood in the sounding darkness waiting for the water Dinning thought: To hell, I’m awful glad I sent Geordie out of the pit! But Geordie was already dead. Then the water took Dinning too. He fought, struggled, tried to swim. No use. Dinning’s drowned body made fourteen drowned bodies in the flooded Scupper ropeway.