Hard Times
The wide prospect, so beautiful in its stillness but a few minutes ago,
almost carried despair to her brave heart, as she rose and looked all
round her, seeing no help. ‘Rachael, we must lose not a moment. We must
go in different directions, seeking aid. You shall go by the way we have
come, and I will go forward by the path. Tell any one you see, and every
one what has happened. Think of Stephen, think of Stephen!’
She knew by Rachael’s face that she might trust her now. And after
standing for a moment to see her running, wringing her hands as she ran,
she turned and went upon her own search; she stopped at the hedge to tie
her shawl there as a guide to the place, then threw her bonnet aside, and
ran as she had never run before.
Run, Sissy, run, in Heaven’s name! Don’t stop for breath. Run, run!
Quickening herself by carrying such entreaties in her thoughts, she ran
from field to field, and lane to lane, and place to place, as she had
never run before; until she came to a shed by an engine-house, where two
men lay in the shade, asleep on straw.
First to wake them, and next to tell them, all so wild and breathless as
she was, what had brought her there, were difficulties; but they no
sooner understood her than their spirits were on fire like hers. One of
the men was in a drunken slumber, but on his comrade’s shouting to him
that a man had fallen down the Old Hell Shaft, he started out to a pool
of dirty water, put his head in it, and came back sober.
With these two men she ran to another half-a-mile further, and with that
one to another, while they ran elsewhere. Then a horse was found; and
she got another man to ride for life or death to the railroad, and send a
message to Louisa, which she wrote and gave him. By this time a whole
village was up: and windlasses, ropes, poles, candles, lanterns, all
things necessary, were fast collecting and being brought into one place,
to be carried to the Old Hell Shaft.
It seemed now hours and hours since she had left the lost man lying in
the grave where he had been buried alive. She could not bear to remain
away from it any longer—it was like deserting him—and she hurried swiftly
back, accompanied by half-a-dozen labourers, including the drunken man
whom the news had sobered, and who was the best man of all. When they
came to the Old Hell Shaft, they found it as lonely as she had left it.
The men called and listened as she had done, and examined the edge of the
chasm, and settled how it had happened, and then sat down to wait until
the implements they wanted should come up.
Every sound of insects in the air, every stirring of the leaves, every
whisper among these men, made Sissy tremble, for she thought it was a cry
at the bottom of the pit. But the wind blew idly over it, and no sound
arose to the surface, and they sat upon the grass, waiting and waiting.
After they had waited some time, straggling people who had heard of the
accident began to come up; then the real help of implements began to
arrive. In the midst of this, Rachael returned; and with her party there
was a surgeon, who brought some wine and medicines. But, the expectation
among the people that the man would be found alive was very slight
indeed.
There being now people enough present to impede the work, the sobered man
put himself at the head of the rest, or was put there by the general
consent, and made a large ring round the Old Hell Shaft, and appointed
men to keep it. Besides such volunteers as were accepted to work, only
Sissy and Rachael were at first permitted within this ring; but, later in
the day, when the message brought an express from Coketown, Mr. Gradgrind
and Louisa, and Mr. Bounderby, and the whelp, were also there.
The sun was four hours lower than when Sissy and Rachael had first sat
down upon the grass, before a means of enabling two men to descend
securely was rigged with poles and ropes. Difficulties had arisen in the
construction of this machine, simple as it was; requisites had been found
wanting, and messages had had to go and return. It was five o’clock in
the afternoon of the bright autumnal Sunday, before a candle was sent
down to try the air, while three or four rough faces stood crowded close
together, attentively watching it: the man at the windlass lowering as
they were told. The candle was brought up again, feebly burning, and
then some water was cast in. Then the bucket was hooked on; and the
sobered man and another got in with lights, giving the word ‘Lower away!’
As the rope went out, tight and strained, and the windlass creaked, there
was not a breath among the one or two hundred men and women looking on,
that came as it was wont to come. The signal was given and the windlass
stopped, with abundant rope to spare. Apparently so long an interval
ensued with the men at the windlass standing idle, that some women
shrieked that another accident had happened! But the surgeon who held
the watch, declared five minutes not to have elapsed yet, and sternly
admonished them to keep silence. He had not well done speaking, when the
windlass was reversed and worked again. Practised eyes knew that it did
not go as heavily as it would if both workmen had been coming up, and
that only one was returning.
The rope came in tight and strained; and ring after ring was coiled upon
the barrel of the windlass, and all eyes were fastened on the pit. The
sobered man was brought up and leaped out briskly on the grass. There
was an universal cry of ‘Alive or dead?’ and then a deep, profound hush.
When he said ‘Alive!’ a great shout arose and many eyes had tears in
them.
‘But he’s hurt very bad,’ he added, as soon as he could make himself
heard again. ‘Where’s doctor? He’s hurt so very bad, sir, that we donno
how to get him up.’
They all consulted together, and looked anxiously at the surgeon, as he
asked some questions, and shook his head on receiving the replies. The
sun was setting now; and the red light in the evening sky touched every
face there, and caused it to be distinctly seen in all its rapt suspense.
The consultation ended in the men returning to the windlass, and the
pitman going down again, carrying the wine and some other small matters
with him. Then the other man came up. In the meantime, under the
surgeon’s directions, some men brought a hurdle, on which others made a
thick bed of spare clothes covered with loose straw, while he himself
contrived some bandages and slings from shawls and handkerchiefs. As
these were made, they were hung upon an arm of the pitman who had last
come up, with instructions how to use them: and as he stood, shown by the
light he carried, leaning his powerful loose hand upon one of the poles,
and sometimes glancing down the pit, and sometimes glancing round upon
the people, he was not the least conspicuous figure in the scene. It was
dark now, and torches were kindled.
It appeared from the little this man said to those about him, which was
quickly repeated all over the circle, that the lost man had fallen upon a
mass of crumbled rubbish with which the pit was half choked up, and that
his fall had been further broken by some jagged earth at the side. He
lay upon his back with one arm doubled under him, and according to his
own belief had hardly stirred since he fell, except that he had moved his
free hand to a side pocket, in which he remembered to have some bread and
meat (of which he had swallowed crumbs), and had likewise scooped up a
little water in it now and then. He had come straight away from his
work, on being written to, and had walked the whole journey; and was on
his way to Mr. Bounderby’s country house after dark, when he fell. He
was crossing that dangerous country at such a dangerous time, because he
was innocent of what was laid to his charge, and couldn’t rest from
coming the nearest way to deliver himself up. The Old Hell Shaft, the
pitman said, with a curse upon it, was worthy of its bad name to the
last; for though Stephen could speak now, he believed it would soon be
found to have mangled the life out of him.
When all was ready, this man, still taking his last hurried charges from
his comrades and the surgeon after the windlass had begun to lower him,
disappeared into the pit. The rope went out as before, the signal was
made as before, and the windlass stopped. No man removed his hand from
it now. Every one waited with his grasp set, and his body bent down to
the work, ready to reverse and wind in. At length the signal was given,
and all the ring leaned forward.
For, now, the rope came in, tightened and strained to its utmost as it
appeared, and the men turned heavily, and the windlass complained. It
was scarcely endurable to look at the rope, and think of its giving way.
But, ring after ring was coiled upon the barrel of the windlass safely,
and the connecting chains appeared, and finally the bucket with the two
men holding on at the sides—a sight to make the head swim, and oppress
the heart—and tenderly supporting between them, slung and tied within,
the figure of a poor, crushed, human creature.
A low murmur of pity went round the throng, and the women wept aloud, as
this form, almost without form, was moved very slowly from its iron
deliverance, and laid upon the bed of straw. At first, none but the
surgeon went close to it. He did what he could in its adjustment on the
couch, but the best that he could do was to cover it. That gently done,
he called to him Rachael and Sissy. And at that time the pale, worn,
patient face was seen looking up at the sky, with the broken right hand
lying bare on the outside of the covering garments, as if waiting to be
taken by another hand.
They gave him drink, moistened his face with water, and administered some
drops of cordial and wine. Though he lay quite motionless looking up at
the sky, he smiled and said, ‘Rachael.’ She stooped down on the grass at
his side, and bent over him until her eyes were between his and the sky,
for he could not so much as turn them to look at her.
‘Rachael, my dear.’
She took his hand. He smiled again and said, ‘Don’t let ’t go.’
‘Thou’rt in great pain, my own dear Stephen?’
‘I ha’ been, but not now. I ha’ been—dreadful, and dree, and long, my
dear—but ’tis ower now. Ah, Rachael, aw a muddle! Fro’ first to last, a
muddle!’
The spectre of his old look seemed to pass as he said the word.
‘I ha’ fell into th’ pit, my dear, as have cost wi’in the knowledge o’
old fok now livin, hundreds and hundreds o’ men’s lives—fathers, sons,
brothers, dear to thousands an’ thousands, an’ keeping ’em fro’ want and
hunger. I ha’ fell into a pit that ha’ been wi’ th’ Firedamp crueller
than battle. I ha’ read on ’t in the public petition, as onny one may
read, fro’ the men that works in pits, in which they ha’ pray’n and
pray’n the lawmakers for Christ’s sake not to let their work be murder to
’em, but to spare ’em for th’ wives and children that they loves as well
as gentlefok loves theirs. When it were in work, it killed wi’out need;
when ’tis let alone, it kills wi’out need. See how we die an’ no need,
one way an’ another—in a muddle—every day!’
He faintly said it, without any anger against any one. Merely as the
truth.
‘Thy little sister, Rachael, thou hast not forgot her. Thou’rt not like
to forget her now, and me so nigh her. Thou know’st—poor, patient,
suff’rin, dear—how thou didst work for her, seet’n all day long in her
little chair at thy winder, and how she died, young and misshapen, awlung
o’ sickly air as had’n no need to be, an’ awlung o’ working people’s
miserable homes. A muddle! Aw a muddle!’
Louisa approached him; but he could not see her, lying with his face
turned up to the night sky.