Ainslee's magazine, Volume 16, No. 3, October, 1905. Various
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chose. Hastings turned to his friends.
“Ned,” he said, “I’m mighty sorry. Sorry I interfered at all. I’d give my life to have you and Trevanion safe on the surface.”
“Don’t worry about me,” said the lad, quickly.
Trevanion’s eyes watched him curiously.
“I want to talk with you about Elenore,” Hastings went on, quietly. “I suppose you know that I love Elenore, Ned?”
Trevanion stepped back a few paces, but he listened intently.
“Do you?” said the lad, simply.
“Do I?” said Hastings, impetuously. “The hardest thing I ever did was to leave her without telling her I loved her. But you can’t ask a girl like that to wait indefinitely, you know. Then, when I found out where I was coming, it seemed as though it might have been meant, after all. And I wanted to patch up the trouble between the mines, so that I’d have at least a fair chance.”
“And then?” said young Carrington, softly.
“Then,” said Hastings, recklessly, “I hoped – I was daft enough to dream – that she might not think it a hardship to come back to the little place where she was born – to her father – to me. To me! And when I talked of building a bungalow, I thought what it would mean to bring my wife home to it.”
There was silence. Then Hastings shrugged his shoulders.
“I may not have the chance to tell Elenore,” he said, bruskly, half-ashamed of the emotion he had displayed. “It’s not quite the same thing to tell you, old man. I’m afraid there’s small chance of our ever being brothers-in-law, but you wouldn’t have objected to me as a brother, would you?”
“Whatever Elenore wished, I should have wished,” the lad said, calmly.
Hastings laughed a short, impatient laugh.
“I suppose we’re all egoists,” he said. “But I don’t mind confessing to you that it would be easier to face the music if I knew what Elenore did wish – whether she cared.”
There was silence again. Trevanion’s figure in the background grew tense. Then the lad laughed lightly.
“You hadn’t asked her, you know,” he said, “and Elenore isn’t the kind of a girl to wear her heart on her sleeve. But I know Elenore pretty well, and I think she cared – really.”
Hastings flung his arm in front of his face with a gesture that was almost boyish.
“Elenore!” he whispered to the cold comfort of his coat sleeve. For virile youth loves strongly, humanly.
Young Carrington’s eyes watched him with a wonderful light. Even the flickering candlelight showed Trevanion that.
Then Hastings rammed his hands in his pockets and drew a deep breath.
“Thank Heaven, she’s on the other side of the ocean! It will be easier for her, after all. Harder to realize,” he said, fervently.
Young Carrington drew a quick breath, a breath of relief. “I thought you’d feel that way,” he said, quietly.
Trevanion stepped out into the drift.
“I want to speak with you a bit,” he nodded to young Carrington.
The lad followed him. Hastings, left alone, gave himself up to thoughts of Elenore. The other side of the rock wall, young Carrington faced Trevanion, and knew that he knew. Every detail of their surroundings stood out in the light of that, with sudden distinctness. The great timbers that walled in the drift, the flickering light of the candles in their caps – all seemed but the setting for Trevanion’s eyes. The hand he laid on young Carrington’s arm was almost reverential in its touch.
“I’ve held you in my arms to-day twice,” he said, hurriedly. “I don’t understand why it’s you, but it’s all right.” He looked at young Carrington as one of Jeanne d’Arc’s soldiers might have looked.
Young Carrington faced him very quietly.
“I thought ’twas queer, the way you held the child that time,” Trevanion went on. “And you ride just as you did as a youngster. Will he come back now if – ” he demanded.
Young Carrington nodded gently. “Yes, and he’s a splendid fellow.” If the young voice broke for a second, that was all. “He’ll help dad to bear it. It was best for me to come. Best, above all, if this was to happen.” The voice was steady now. “I’m sorry you know, but it would have been safe with you, anyway.”
It was that same confident charm that had conquered Trevanion at the outset.
“You won’t tell him?” he questioned, jerking his head toward the raise.
Young Carrington’s head shook a slow negative.
“Not unless at the very last I turn weak and womanish;” and there was a whimsical touch in the last word.
Then the young figure straightened up with a quick decision.
“And I really think, Trevanion” – young Carrington’s voice was light now – “that I shall make a nice, plucky, manly finish.”
Trevanion, following back into the raise, would have cut his heart out to save that buoyant young life, but his devotion was the pure fealty of a serf for his sovereign.
They played at bravery after that, each abetting the other.
Young Carrington coaxed Trevanion into telling them mining stories, wheedled Hastings into all kinds of reminiscences of his boyhood, assumed their ultimate escape so confidently that Hastings thought it a genuine hopefulness.
Not so Trevanion. He knew what the spring was that moved young Carrington to play up to a buoyant part. And he helped, with anecdotes of wonderful rescues, of escapes just in the nick of time.
He was in the midst of one of the best of these when a little lapping sound stopped him.
A thin little line of water pulsed gently into the entrance of the raise.
CHAPTER VI
Mr. Wade had shouted his fruitless commands, in the ascending cage, all the way to the surface, raging at Richards and his management, and unconvinced, in spite of a united and profane assurance, of his inability to stop the cage and go back; furious at him for having installed such a defective system, and threatening him with dismissal at the earliest possible moment.
His nephew and his nephew’s friend left to danger, while these brutes were being brought to the surface! He had never suffered such helpless frenzy in all his neatly adjusted life.
At the surface the cage cleared with magical suddenness. Mr. Wade, breathless with rage, was fairly dragged out by Richards, and in so short a time as a signal may be given and obeyed, the cage had again started downward.
Mr. Wade leaned back against the timbers of the shaft house, with the exhaustion of relief.
But it was a relief that Richards did not share. This particular kind of disaster was so frequently recurrent that he knew its possibilities all too well. And he raged that it should have come just now. It was such a routine danger that he had not thought of it as a special menace in taking them down. Casualty, with Mr. Wade involved or witnessing, had been furthest from his thoughts or desires.
“How long before they will be up?”’ Mr. Wade asked, faintly.
Richards, tensely alert, made no answer. The cage had reached the bottom of the shaft now. He waited a minute – two – three. There was no sign from below. He himself gave the signal to hoist.
“Are they coming?” demanded Mr. Wade.
Richards shook his head. “I can’t say, sir,” he said, “but they’ve had plenty of time. Either they got in the cage and forgot to give the signal” – and with Trevanion below this was an unlikely contingency – “or – ” he hesitated.
“Or?” said Mr. Wade, sharply.
“Or