Читать книгу A Pit-brow Lassie - John Monk Foster - Страница 4

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A scene more unromantic it would be almost impossible to imagine, and one less lovely equally difficult to discover in all the length and breadth of smoke-polluted, pit-pierced, factory and foundry dotted Lancashire.

It was the brow of a coal mine, situated in the very midst of a town of coal pits, and although it was summer time one might have stood on that pit's bank and glanced vainly toward every point of the compass for a sight of green fields, yellowing corn, and cool umbrageous woods.

Yet there were fields and timber to be seen here and there; but the former were brown and arid, the latter leafless and ugly, affording neither pleasure to the eye, resting-place for the body, nor shelter from the sun's fierce rays.

The only things that appeared to flourish in that neighborhood were cotton factories, iron foundries, and coal mines, and the abundance of these fully justified one in phrasing Ashford—so was the town named—'a perfect hive of industry.'

The monuments of Commerce are more numerous if less impressive and beautiful than those which Art and Science have created. Standing on the brow of the King Pit, Ashford, one could count, on a clear day, over a score of huge chimneys, each with its banner of smoke, and some of them towering heavenward higher than any column ever raised to warrior or king. And the great coal heaps visible here and there appeared to be the foundations of new pyramids which, when completed, would dwarf those the Egyptians raised.

It was between three and four o'clock in the afternoon, and working operations at the King Pit were at their greatest activity just then. The mine was one of the deepest in England, it had been sunk over thirty years, its underground workings were said to be more extensive than any in the same shire, and it still found employment for over five hundred hands—men, lads, women, and girls—above ground and below.

The great pulleys suspended on the top of the 'head-gear,' high over the pit mouth, flew round with great rapidity, and the singular humming sound they made, like the droning of countless multitudes of bees, could be heard in the town a good quarter of a mile away.

Quickly one huge cage descended and the other was borne upward loaded with full 'tubs'—as the small waggons used in the mines are called in Lancashire—and when the full cage arrived at the surface it was emptied in a few seconds by the banksman and his co-worker—a woman—half-a-dozen empty tubs took the place of the full ones, there was a clear ringing stroke of a bell, the signal from below, and again the great pulleys were whirling, the huge iron cages speeding in opposite directions.

The King Pit, Ashford, was noted amongst mining people for the great number of women employed about the mines there, and a visit to the place would have disclosed ample evidence of this.

No work that woman or girl could do would be found in the hands of boy or man. There was a woman helping the banksman at the cages; women and girls were running full and empty tubs in all directions across the pit brow, which, like the sides of a modern warship, was covered with smooth thick plates of iron, over which the small waggons slid easily; women and girls were busy in the shoots and screens freeing the coal from dirt and slack.

At the end of the great coal-stack, where coals were stored when trade was bad, a group of women with only a here and there a man among them, were busy with spades and riddles filling railway waggons, and each woman handled her implement of labor as easily and as deftly as a man. On the other side of the pit brow, where the Leeds and Liverpool Canal ran, another group of women were filling a boat with coal in the colliery basin under the guidance of a man.

The ages of these miner women varied greatly. Some of them were over 50 years old, whilst the youngest were just entering their teens. Some of them were large-limbed and muscular, like their relatives who worked underground, and a few seemed too slenderly built for such rough work as they must necessarily undergo. But all of them seemed active and healthful, with weather-tanned faces; they were frank-eyed and sure-footed, even graceful.

The work was rough and arduous, but most of the women preferred it to being cooped up in the stifling cotton factories; and whilst it was rare to find a woman leaving the pit bank to work in the mills, it was common enough to witness the contrary. The pay was poor—the girls received from one shilling to half-a-crown per day, according to their age and ability—but even in that respect it was not inferior to the wages to be obtained by them elsewhere.

The miner women were all dressed after the same fashion. Each of them wore clogs and breeches, and over the latter garment was a petticoat looped up in front so as not to offer any barrier to rapid movement. The body garment was usually a short jacket of some printed stuff, or perhaps the discarded short coat of some male relative. The headdress was invariably a kerchief of some bright pattern, wound gracefully round the head and tied so as to fall in a neat fold behind.

Very picturesque and spruce those pit-brow lassies appeared each Monday morning in summer, for then they came to work in polished clogs and snowy stockings, which peeped daintily out beneath their short trousers, showing not infrequently a pair of well-formed ankles. Here and there might have been seen a form so splendidly developed by exercise that it would have served as a model for a sculptor, and, much rarer still, a face that deserved to be called handsome.

The cry against female labor about mines had at this time not grown strong enough to deserve notice. It was then only talked of in secret at Miners' Union meetings, and the whole movement against the pit-brow women had its origin in the worst of motives. No feelings of charity actuated the men who took up the cry; they had no chivalrous regard for the weaker sex; it was not because they deemed the labor too arduous or that it had a tendency to demoralise the worker; it was because they regarded pit-brow women as rivals in the labor market and wished to have the whole field to themselves.

It was now 4 o'clock, and batches of miners, who had finished work for the day, were beginning to come up the King pit. Presently there ascended with a cageful of others a miner who is to play a prominent part in this story.

This was Luke Standish, who labored at the mine as a day wage man or "dataller." He was about six-and-twenty years old, of Titanic mould, deep-chested, broad-shouldered, and strong-limbed, like some Greek demi-god of classic story.

His head and face were cast in exact proportion to his form, and their massive build, though striking, did not impress a beholder so much as did the singular aspect his face habitually wore. His features were handsome, in a rugged, rough-hewn fashion, but what struck one most was the great honest heart, the frank mind, and clear soul so plainly revealed in the open countenance and straightforward-looking eyes.

Luke Standish was a prominent figure in the limited circle in which he moved. Common repute said of him that he was a good son, a splendid workman, a true friend, and an honest Christian, although he seldom attended church.

His father had been years in the grave, having been burnt to a black human cinder by an explosion when Luke was only fifteen, leaving a delicate wife to his only child's care.

And well had Luke Standish discharged the filial obligations his father's sudden and lamentable fate had entailed upon him. From his youth up he had worked steadily and lived temperately, never idling when there was work at the pit, and wasting none of the money he earned.

Luckily for himself Luke became possessed early in his teens of a passion for reading, and this proved to him a two-fold gain; for not only did it save him joining in the questionable pastimes of his fellow-miners—pigeon-flying, dog-racing, wrestling, and so forth—but it deepened and widened his mind; stirred into activity faculties that otherwise might have forever remained dormant; roused within him ambitions, hopes, more noble ideas of life, and gave him purpose and intellect to effect them; making of him a better workman, truer citizen, nobler Christian.

This was the man who, coming up the King Pit, Ashford, one June afternoon, walked out of the cage with his fellow pitmen, heart whole, his thoughts and dreams up to that moment untouched by thoughts of love. Five minutes afterwards new prospects had opened out before him, a fair land of promise was suddenly revealed unto him; and all this wonderful change was wrought in Luke by a girl's graceful figure and sweet winsome face.

Walking leisurely across the pit brow, chatting with a workmate, Luke's attention was suddenly arrested by the sight of a new face—the face of a young woman who was just then passing with an empty tub. He could not refrain from coming to a standstill, and glancing after the strange pit-girl he said—

"Who's that, Dick? Dost know her?"

"Ah dunnot, Luke. Ah ony know us hoo sterted this morning. A bonnie un, isn't hoo?"

But Luke made no reply to his companion's question. He turned on his heel without speaking, went with the others to the lamp office, where they left their lamps, and then returned to the pit brow wondering much anent the girl whose face had impressed him so greatly.

Lounging about the pit bank, as if he were waiting for somebody or something, Luke watched the new girl with an intentness that surprised him afterwards, when he came to think of it and to analyse the motive that prompted him to scrutinise her so closely.

The feeling uppermost in his mind was one of deep reverent admiration; and next to that came the conviction that although he felt certain that he had not seen her before, her face was familiar to him. Unable to account for the notion, he seated himself on a heap of pit timber and watched her as she went about her work totally unconscious of the deep feeling she had stirred in the young pitman's heart.

There was much to be said in excuse of Luke Standish's involuntary admiration of the new pit-brow girl. Her face and figure would have attracted attention anywhere. Taller than the ordinary run of women, and splendidly built, her shapely limbs displayed themselves in every movement as she went about her work in a quick gliding way pleasant to witness.

She was dressed no better than the rest of her companions, but the gulf between her and the others was very plainly marked. Perhaps this was owing to her face more than anything else. She was dark-haired, brown-eyed, and her face was oval as a wild bird's egg. Her nose, with its clearly cut tremulous nostrils, had the slightest possible tendency towards the aquiline form, but this was insufficient to mar the sweet grace and tender womanliness of the whole countenance.

In age the girl seemed to be about nineteen or twenty. The work she was doing was light and cleanly, and in consequence her hands and face were scarcely soiled. Noting these things, Luke found himself expressing mentally a wish that the new girl's work might never be harder or dirtier than that of "number shouting."

Here a word of explanation may be offered as to the vocation in which the new girl was engaged. Each miner employed in getting coal has a set of tallies, each set being numbered differently, and he affixes one of these tallies to every tub of coal he fills, and when the full tubs are sent up the shaft they are weighed and the number attached to each tub is cried out by the "number shouter" and set down by the weighman.

Luke watched the new girl for some little time longer. It was a positive pleasure to him to sit there noticing every movement of the shapely form, to hear her clear voice intoning the different numbers, each number falling from her lips clearly articulated and singularly musical.

Then Luke arose half regretfully from the "props" on which he was seated and walked slowly across the brow homeward. On his way across he met a woman he knew intimately, and addressing her he asked—

"Who's that new wench yo'n getten number sheawtin'?"

"They ca' her Kate Leigh, so ah yeard at brekfust-tahme, an' o pratty wench too hoo is, eh, Luke?"

"Prattiest that ever ah seed in breeches, Meg. Wheer does hoo come fro'?"

"Ah cawnt tell tha that, lad, bur ah fancy they're strangers ta this peyrt."

Luke said no more, but went thoughtfully home. Whilst eating his dinner his thoughts still encircled Kate Leigh, and he continued to wonder how it was that her face struck him as familiar. Times innumerable he asked himself during the evening where and when he had seen a face that resembled hers, but in vain he strove to find answers to his questions.

Whilst Luke lay awake in bed that night a flash of memory revealed to him the cause of his thinking that Kate Leigh's face was familiar to him. In a moment he jumped out of bed, lit his candle, and made his way downstairs softly so as not to disturb his mother.

Placing his candle on the table he went to the small bookshelf fixed in one corner near the fireplace, and taking therefrom a bundle of old magazines in yellow paper backs he returned to the light. These old journals were odd unbound copies of Cassell's Family Magazine, which Luke had picked up at a second-hand bookstall in the town.

Placing the magazines on the table he selected one from the heap, and turning to the frontispiece he looked upon a face that might have been Kate Leigh's very self in portraiture.

The engraving was entitled "The Carol Singers," by Haynes Williams, and it represented two young girls singing a Christmas carol. The younger of the two was a school girl just entering her teens; the elder a perfect type of budding woman-hood. In her dark hair were intertwined bright holly berries; her eyes and eyebrows were dark also; the nose was slightly aquiline; every feature the exact counterpart of the girl's he had seen that afternoon.

Impulsively Luke Standish bent his head and pressed his lips to those of the elder maiden of the engraving. He kissed the paper as reverently as if it had been Kate Leigh's own lips he was caressing.

Then he replaced the magazines, returned to bed, and dreamt that he had become a mine manager and won for a wife sweet-faced Kate Leigh.