Читать книгу Judith of the Red Hand - J. Monk Foster - Страница 6

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Saxehurst, the residence of good folk who owned the Hill End Colliery, was a big, plain, unpretentious house of grey stone, which stood on the eastern side of Saxilham; and, as its name denoted, it was near a grove of trees—was, in fact, almost surrounded by old trees—and the front of the house looked down into the green fruitful valley to the river which gave the place its distinctive name.

Here one Sunday afternoon in May the two Blackwoods—father and son, manager and underlooker—were taking tea with the bachelor and his spinster sister, who owned the mine in which old Seth and young Gabriel Blackwood earned their living. This quartette of employers and officials were now partaking of the afternoon meal in company—were enjoying themselves too—and while they sip the cup that cheers, and not inebriates, and munch the solid delicacies set out for their delectation, let us glance at the group.

Gabriel Blackwood the reader has ready met. But between Gabriel in his rough mining garments, and the same young chap with his Sunday suit on, there was a vast difference. Now the young underlooker was at his best. His well-cut suit of grey tweed set off his fine stalwart figure to advantage; there was a clean, healthful glow on his strong face, a sparkle in his dark eyes; and Miss Nancy Haliburton was thinking at that moment, as she sat opposite Gabriel, that it was not to be wondered at after all that this bonnie lad was reckoned the handsomest fellow in all the village and district.

Seth Blackwood was a man of fifty-one or two—big-boned, rough-spoken, honest-hearted, swart-skinned, iron-grey—in almost all things a roughly-hewn copy of his son. Seth had never cultivated any of the softer graces of manhood; all his days he had been a hard-headed, practical worker; and it was enough for him to know that he had the repute of being one of the shrewdest pit-men in England.

Silas Haliburton was about his manager's own age; he was a thin-faced wiry little fellow; had generous impulses at odd times, as will be seen shortly; and that he was not devoid of business aptitude and worldly prudence, his somewhat remarkably successful career will show. His sister Nancy, was some nine or ten years his junior; she was short and plump, apple-cheeked, and not at all bad looking; was more consistently generous and impulsive than her brother, and those sentimental—even romantic—notions sometimes found in old maids were common to her.

The rise of the Haliburtons to their present satisfactory position as owners of the Hill End Colliery may be set forth in a few words. They were the only children of their long dead parents, and the elder Haliburton had been a grocer for many years in Saxilham village. For years the provision dealer in question had contrived to eke out a decent living for himself, his wife, and two children by supplying with food, on the credit system, from one fortnightly pay day to another, the local miners and other workers.

Those were the days of long credits and fat profits; and when the Haliburtons—mother and father—shuffled off this mortal coil, they were enabled to leave to Silas and Nancy, in equal shares, the shop and all interest and goodwill therein, a row of cottages in the village, and the better part of two thousand pounds in the bank at Saxilford.

Silas was thirty-five then, and apparently a confirmed bachelor; Nancy seemed no more desirous of marrying than her brother; and so, for seven or eight years more the twain of them kept the old shop, being more careful even than their parents had been, and each year adding to the nest-egg in Saxilford Bank.

Then a depression in the coal trade and a local strike had closed the Hill End Colliery, and made its owner bankrupt. At the sale which followed, when the mining plant at the little mine was to be broken up and scattered piece-meal to the country's ends, Silas Haliburton, after a momentous consultation with his sister and others, took a decisive, and for him, a great step.

He bought the Hill End Colliery just as it stood; opened it out again a month later with Seth Blackwood as manager, and for ten years now working operations had proceeded with more or less success. That the venture on the whole had been a satisfactory one to all concerned may be gathered from the fact that the Blackwoods were still at the mine, and that the Haliburton's nest-egg of less than a couple of thousand had grown slowly, but steadily, year after year, until it now stood at near six thousand pounds.

For that much-to-be-desired result of their mining venture both Silas and Nancy Haliburton had always felt that Seth Blackwood was greatly to be thanked. In season and out he had stuck to his work at the mine committed to his care; when necessity or urgency demanded the man had even wrought like a common miner in the seam committed to his charge; lately the son had displayed the same painstaking and sterling qualities as his father; and this Sunday afternoon the dual master and mistress of the Hill End Colliery were in the humour to mark their appreciation of the service rendered.

Tea was finished. Silas Haliburton had pushed back his chair, risen, and gone to the low, broad window opening on to the lawn. Outside the sun was shining gloriously, the air was soft and sweet, the muffled and melodious murmur of the bells at Saxilham Church, calling the evening congregation to service, came through the unfastened casement.

"Come outside for a smoke, Seth," Mr. Haliburton said, as he turned to the manager. "I've lot to talk to you about, and it'll be nicer outside. And you, Nancy and Gabriel, had better come too for you are both of you mixed up in it. But first, Nancy, tell one of the servants to bring some chairs and a table outside. And then while me and Seth smoke, we can all sample a drop or two of that elderberry wine of your's, eh?"

"All right, Silas, it shall be done in a minute," and Miss Nancy rose with a pleased alacrity to see that her brother's wishes were carried out.

The mine-owner and ex-grocer pulled back the hinged window, and, with a jerk of his head to the elder Blackwood, Silas stepped on to the green turf. Then both men lit their cigars—the master having unearthed a box of weeds—and for five minutes they passed to and fro, saying little, their eyes on the sun-kissed valley below, the lazy, meandering Saxe a ribbon of glistening metal, while the softly-swelling, green, tree-dotted uplands beyond rose to the skyline.

The sight of young Blackwood and Miss Nancy sitting in the shadow of the house, near a small table containing a bottle and some glasses, drew the smokers to the pair of vacant chairs. Blackwood senior sampled a tumbler of elderberry wine with a wry mouth, mentally observing that a drop of whisky or a glass of beer would have been more to his palate, and then the master of Saxehurst remarked:

"And how long do you say it is, Seth, since you first came to the Hill End Colliery?"

"Just ten 'ears, the fifteenth o' last month," was the stolid answer, as Blackwood sucked at his cigar.

"Ten 'ears; and you don't regret comin'?"

"I don't; if I had I should have been away before this I reckon."

"That's so, Seth, for you're a chap of that sort; but the fact of you stopping on shows, I take it, that you were satisfied with your shop, Blackwood?"

"I was, and I am still."

"That's good; and you, Gabriel?"

"My father's opinion is my own, exactly, sir," was the young miner's immediate and hearty rejoinder. "I liked the Hill End Colliery when I first started in it as a youth, half-a-score of years ago, and I like it better to-day."

"And neither of you never think of leaving the place, eh?" Haliburton next questioned, with a look which embraced in its sweep both of his officials. "I only ask," he added suavely, "because you've both done so well for me and Nancy here that I thought somebody else might be asking you to follow them and do better elsewhere."

"I'm satisfied, master, if you are," was Seth Blackwood's phlegmatic response.

"So am I, sir," Gabriel chimed in.

"Then hear what I have got to tell you both. Nancy and me have both talked it over, and we mean it, too. Now how would you like to become a sort of partners in the firm? You've done well for me, and I want to do well for you two. Besides, I've been considering some other things, Seth. If you both had an interest in the firm I should be able to keep you always here; I've an idea, too, that there's other seams of coal under the Hill End Seam; and if we could all put our heads and money together we might open other mines, take on more men, stir up the village and, likely enough, all make a tidy bit of money over the job."

Seth and Gabriel stared sharply at one another at the instant their employer made that startling suggestion. In a flash each realised the tempting nature of Haliburton's offer. Their faces showed their eagerness now.

"Your plan's a good one, Master Haliburton," Seth remarked slowly, deliberately, "and I'm your man if it can be managed that way. But what about the money, eh? I've got a bit and our Gabriel has a bit too—but not enough, I think, to make us partners with you and Miss Nancy."

"What can you lay hands on within a month, Seth?"

"Happen 12 or 13 hundred pounds—the savings of a lifetime," was the quiet answer. "I've had no wife to keep for 'ears, no chick nor child 'cept Gabriel there, and so I've been able to scrape middlin' together since I begun to wear your livery, Master Haliburton."

"And you, Gabriel?" Silas asked quietly.

"Oh, I've a hundred pounds in an old stocking somewhere," the young man cried, laughingly; "at least I've something like that in the Saxilford Bank."

"That's 13 or 14 hundred," quoth Haliburton with a thought-wrinkled brow. "Well, now, look here and I'll tell you what I'll do. You two shall find fifteen hundred pounds between you, shall put it into the concern, and between you shall have one-third interest in the Hill End Mine. What do you say to that? You agree, Nancy?"

"I agree with pleasure, Silas," responded the smiling spinster, with a swift side look at Gabriel. "All along it was my wish for some arrangement of the kind, you know."

"Here's my fist on your offer, Silas!" cried old Blackwood, jumping up. "I'll find the money—fifteen hundred pounds—and put it in your hands in a month—or less!"

"And you'll sign an agreement—you both—that you will not quit Hill End for ten years?"

"Twenty years if you want!"

"Right. Here's my hand on it. And I'll get my 'torney to draw up the deed of partnership at once."

They all four shook hands; the three men lit fresh cigars. Miss Nancy poured out fresh tumblers of her home-brewed wine; there was an animated general conversation for an hour or so, and then the Blackwoods went homeward.

"That job's a good one, Gabriel," Seth remarked to his son as they went towards the village. "It's better nor five 'ears work done for us both. Lord! but Silas is a brick after all. Only to think I'm going to be a colliery owner at last!"

"Will Haliburton stand to his word, father?"

"Won't he! No doubt o' that. But there's something else you might see, Gabriel, if you'd only one eye wide open."

"What's that?"

"A whole third share instead of half a one. Haven't you gumption enough, lad, to see that it's Miss Nancy's scheme? That you pick up a few thousands for a soft word or two? That there woman hasn't eyes for anything, Gabriel, when thy bonnie brown face is near her!"

"What nonsense!" and Gabriel's dark face flamed redly. "Why, Miss Nancy is nearly old enough to be my mother."

"Rot! She's forty, you're nearly thirty, and she's good-looking, too. She's worth five thousand if she's worth a penny, and there's only you in the runnin'."

"There's another woman to consider, father," Gabriel said coldly.

"What, that lass Judith? That's nothing. I told Miss Nancy there was nothing between you and the pit-brow lass. But think it o'er, Gabriel. Think it o'er, lad. A third share in a payin' colliery won't knock at thy door every day in a week."