Читать книгу The White Gipsy - J. Monk Foster - Страница 13

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Autumn again, but two decades later than the time indicated at the opening of the prologue.

It was morning, between half-past five and six o'clock. The sun was already well up in the skies, and although the hour was so early the village of Marsh Green and the lanes and thoroughfares about the hamlet shewed abundant signs of life.

The bulk of the pit men and pit lads had left their homes some time ago, and were then either down one or other of the mines, or waiting to be "let down"; but a few later colliers, who had perhaps been forgotten by the "knocker-up," were still to be seen trudging, cans in hand, and Davy lamps slung over their backs, towards the Carsland collieries.

But if male villagers were few and far between in the lanes females were numerous enough. Many of the cottage doors stood ajar, and within one could hear the sound of women's voices as they bustled about preparing for the day's toil. Here and there in the green lanes, one could see the white "brats" and polished clogs of the factory girls, as they journeyed in twos and threes towards Earlsford; and now and again a pit-brow lass making her way towards the mines.

At the end of a row of thatched cottages which stood midway in the lane that led from Marsh Green to the Carsland pits, a maid of the mines was standing attired for work, and evidently awaiting the coming of some companion. She was a tall, well-built lass, strong limbed and agile, with a comely face that had been tanned by exposure to all sorts of weather on the pit-top.

Presently, she appeared to grow impatient, and walking to the door of the end cottage she tapped it with her clog, saying a little sharply:

"Wakken up, Salome lass, or we're goin' to be late!" The words were spoken in the rich dialect of the shire, and the girl who uttered them was in many ways typical of Lancashire life as one sees it near coal pits.

"All right, Nell," someone cried out in answer, "I'll be with you in a minute." The voice of the second speaker was low and sweet, and a listener would have expected the girl to be as attractive as her speech.

By-and-bye the cottage door swung back and Salome came out, fresh and sweet as the autumn morning—bright and fair to see as the white roses which grew at the diamond-paned window.

"It wants a quarter to six yet, Nell," she said, as her eyes met those of her friend and work-mate; "and we can walk to the pit in ten minutes."

"Ah thowt it was later than that, Salome," was Nell's reply, as they turned and went along the lane at a swinging pace in the direction of the collieries, which were visible through the trees and over the green fields.

As they swing along side by side in their picturesque attire, let me describe the girl whom her work-mate had addressed as Salome.

She was about nineteen years of age, was a tall, gracefully-moulded girl, with beautifully rounded limbs, fleet of foot as a deer, strong and active as a wild animal, and as natural and easy in all her slightest movements and gestures. As she strove along with that peculiar gliding motion which marked her gait, no one would have passed her by without a glance of admiration.

But splendidly fashioned as was Salome Barringham's figure, her chief beauty lay in her peerless face. The girl's hair and eyebrows were dark and glossy as a crow's back; the former being wavy and abundant enough to veil her to the waist when left unbound; while the latter were clearly defined and arched like thin black crescents. Her eyes were of the deepest shade of brown, but only when the light fell full upon them could the observer see this, and usually they appeared of the same hue as her tresses. They were large and dreamy, shaded by heavy white lids, fringed with jetty lashes, and when the lass was unaroused the fire that ever slumbered in their depths lent them a soft—an adorable warmth.

But when excited, Salome's eyes became great stars, out of which the light seemed to flash as the stars scintillate on a clear frosty night.

With such eyes and hair one would have expected to find a complexion of a pronounced brunette type. But Salome's skin was fair and satiny as the pure unsullied heart of a white rose. Save when her breast was stirred by some passion, her face was colourless as the white petal of a flower, but when agitated the blood flamed in her transparent cheeks, making of her a perfect type of warm Southern beauty such as is seen but seldom in these chilly, sea-girt lands.

If Salome's mouth was just the least trifle large, that fault was seldom remembered against her, because her lips were so vividly painted like a cloven damask rose; and finely carven, while her mouth itself was mobile and expressive. Her nose was perfection in its cleanly chiselled lines; and the contour of her soft cheeks, the sweep of her full chin, made up a face that was as strong as it was charming.

An artist in either stone or colour who had chanced to meet Salome Barringham as she and her friend Nell Crompton trudged along to their work that morning, would have revelled in the delightful picture she presented. Surely, he would have said, this is some maid of high degree masquerading in the guise of a pit-brow girl.

Salome's hybrid garb added to rather than took from her attractiveness. Around her dark bird-like head a bright kerchief of red and yellow was tied which permitted a black tress of her luxuriant hair to shew itself here and there. About her slim white throat a neat patterned scarf was wound and tied in a bow under her chin.

Her garments consisted of a print jacket which fitted her figure closely; a skirt of striped linsey, which was looped up high in front and fell almost to her heels behind; a pair of trousers of cord, which, worn short, disclosed a pair of pretty ankles clad in dark blue hose; and last of all a pair of clogs, polished like ebony, and fastened at the instep by brass clasps.

She appeared pretty, and sweet, and dainty enough for anything as she tripped along the white, dusty roads, chatting with Nell on topics of interest to them both. When she returned from work in the afternoon, she would be less presentable, for then the omnipresent coal dust would have soiled her lovely face and covered her clothes.

Salome Barringham had always been noticed for the spruceness with which she dressed even at work, and this attentiveness to her personal appearance had excited considerable comment of an adverse character on the part of the other pit-brow lasses when she first began to work at Carsland's Collieries.

But the girl had paid no heed to the sharp words and spiteful allusions of her work mates. Despite their laughs and jeering remarks she never permitted herself to become slovenly in her attire. She was young, strong, unafraid of hard work, always ready to fulfil the task allotted to her, and, being of a sweet temper, she soon won her way to the hearts of all about the place.

The slovenly ones ceased to dislike her because of her own smart appearance; the unhandsome lasses ceased to hate her because she was so much more lovely in appearance and refined in act, word, and thought than themselves. In time her influence made itself felt among the rough, untutored girls. The sluts grew less careless of their attire, the rude less offensive in their language.

On first coming to the village, Salome had dropped a hint to the effect that some of her people had been gipsies, long ago before she was born, and the friend to whom she told this had repeated the remark. This had caused Nan Blackledge—the biggest flirt, the sharpest-tongued, and the bonniest pit-brow lass in the village prior to Salome's coming—to nickname the newcomer "The White Gipsy."

The soubriquet had stuck, as many of the names Nan Blackledge threw at people did, and now Salome Barringham was better known to her fellows on the pit bank, to the miners who worked underground, and to the village folk among whom she lived, as the White Gipsy, than by her own lawful designation.

Leaving Spencer's Lane, Salome and Nell went through a stile, passed along a narrow path bordered by a field of wheat and one of turnips, and soon came to the wagon road leading to the Wood Pit. A couple of minutes later they had mounted the flight of steep wooden steps leading to the pit bank, and were not a little surprised by the sight that awaited them.

The Wood Pit owed its name to the fact that Cale Wood lay only a couple of hundreds of yards distant. It was one of the first pits Sir Nicholas Carsland had sunk, and now, being nearly forty years old, its seams were almost exhausted. It was an old-fashioned place and found employment for scarce three score of miners, whereas the new pit, on the other side of the patch of woodland, furnished work for over four hundred miners all told.

When Salome and her friend gained the top of the mine and made their way towards the rude cabin set apart for them and the other females, they saw that the cage was standing empty on a level with the landing plates, and that a score of men and lads were scattered over the brow. Some of the colliers and their drawers were sprawling over the cool iron plates which covered almost the whole of the level space about the mouth of the pit; others were seated on the small wagons used below, and upon the heap of "props" and "bars"; while a few were lounging about the wooden rails which guarded the edge of the brow.

Against the window of the cabin Nan Blackledge was leaning in a graceful attitude. She was a strapping lump of a lass of two or three and twenty, had a comely, florid face very much freckled, and a great quantity of dark red hair. She had a fearful temper, and could fight like a man whenever occasion demanded.

As Salome and Nell walked into the hut and placed their small baskets and cans filled with meat and tea on the shelves, the latter remarked,

"Has anny o' the men gone down the pit yet, Nan?"

"Not yet, Nell," the red-faced and red-haired lass replied, "an' ah dunnot think as anny one on 'em are goin' to go deawn this mornin'."

"How's that?" Salome asked

"Why, there's on'y abeawt twenty o' the men turned up, an' they never work the pit wi' less than thirty, yo' know."

"Ah dersay a lot o' them hasn't gotten o'er Earlsford Fair yet," Nell Crompton remarked, casually. "Ah heerd tell o' Hugh Eastwood, Ned Tarbuck, an' a' that gang being drunk at th' Commercial Hotel at Earlsford, and makin' rare fools o' theirsels."

"Then tha didn't hear th' truth, Nell Crompton!" Nan cried, hotly, "for ah was wi' Hugh i'th' fair after 'leven o'clock, an' he were sober enough then."

"That's six o'clock blowing, girls," Salome broke in at this point, half fearing that the flame tempered Nan wanted to pick a quarrel with Nell. "And there's the under-looker and manager. We shall soon know now whether we have to work or play to-day."

As Salome spoke a dozen steam whistles at Marsh Green, Thorrell Moor, and Earlsford startled the quiet autumn morning air with their blatant and discordant voices, filling all the welkin with a stream of sound that would have driven a musician into hysterics.

The officials named held a hurried conference together, and presently—before the stridulous screams of the "buzzers" had ceased—the under-looker had told the men to go home as they could not afford to work the pit with such a small number of "coalers," the manager had told all the surface hands the same thing, and colliers and drawers, datallers and pony drivers were wending their respective ways homeward.

Five minutes after the departure of the miners the whole of the pit brow girls who worked at the Wood Pit filed slowly down the narrow stairs leading from the brow. The girls numbered half a dozen; they were all youngsters, and when someone suggested that they should all go blackberrying in Cale Wood not a dissentient voice was raised; even Salome warmly welcomed the proposal.

So towards the wood the bevy of pit-brow lasses set foot in the merriest of moods.