A Short Story

Maoriland Worker, Volume 13, Issue 31, 1 August 1923, Page 10

A Short Story

The Pit Month

By H. M. TOMLINSON.

This story is reprinted by "The [ New Leader" from H. M. Tomlinson's book "Old Junk," by permission of the publisher, Mr. Andrew Melrose. » # «> # There was Great Barr, idle,, still, and quiet. Through the Birmingham suburbs, out into the raw, bleak winter roads between the hedges, quite beyond the big town smoking with its enterprising labours, one approached the village of calamity with some awe and diffidence. You felt you were intruding; that you-were a mere gross interloper, .coming through curiosity, that was not excused by the compunction you felt, to see the appearance of a place that had tragedy in .nearly all its homes. Young men streamed by on bicycles in the same direction; groups were hurrying there on foot. The road rose in a mound to let the railway under, and beyond the far dip '■was the village, an almost amorphous group of mean red dwellings stuck on ragged fields about the dominant ;Colliery buildings. Three high, slim chimneys were leisurely pouring smoke from the grotesque black skeleton structures above the pits. The road ran by the boundary, and was pac&ed with, people, all gazing absorbed and quiet into the grounds of the colliery; they were stacked up the hedge banks, and the walls and trees were load.ud with boys. ; A few empty motorcars .of the colliery directors stood about:' A carriage horse champed its bit, and;the still watchers turned at once to that intrusive sound. Around us, a lucid winter landscape (for it had been raining) ran to the distant encompassing hills which lifted' like low ramparts of cobalt and ameythst to aI, sky of luminous saffron and ice-green, across which leaden clouds were moving. - The country had that hard, coldly radiant appearance which always impresses a sad man as this : world's frank expression of its alien -i disregard; this world not his, on .; which he has happened, and must en- ; dure witn _is trouble for a brief time.

As I went through the "press of people to the colliery gates, the women in shawls turned to mc, first with annoyance that their watching ;/hould be disturbed, and then with some dull interest. My assured claim to admittance probably made them think I was the bearer of new help outside their little knowledge; and they willingly made room for mc to pass. I felt exactly like the interfering fraud I was. What would I not have given then to be made, for a brief hour, a nameless miracle-worker.

In the colliery itself was the same seeming apathy. There was nothing ito show in that yard, black with soddened cinders and ash muck, where the new red-brick engine-houses stood, that somewhere half a mile be--neath our feet were thirty men' 1 , their only exit to"-the outer world barred by a subterranean fire. Nothing tshow[ed of the fire but a Whitish smoke I from a ventilating shaft; and a stranger would not know what that eig[nifled.- But the Worn en dm. Wet with the "rain showers; they had been (standing watching that smoke 'all night, and were watching it still, for jits unceasing pour to diminish. Constant and unrelenting, it streamed •steadily upward, as though ~it*drew Its volume from central fires that":would never cease. - ■ ■■•■~ :

The doors of the office were thrown open, and three figures emerged. They broke into the listlessness >of that dreary place, where nothing seemed to be going oh, with- a sudden purpose, Ifast but unhurried, and moved towards the shaft. Three Yorkshirerescue of them to die later—with the Hamstead manager explaining, the path they should folloff below with eager seriousness. "Figures of fiinl" They had muzzles on their mouths and noses, goggles on their eyes, fantastic helms, .and queer cylinders and bags slung about them. As they went up the slope of wet ash, xjuick and full of purpose, their comir cal=gear-and' 'coarse'-dress became suddenly transfigured; and the silent crowd cheered emotionally that little party of forloraWttope.

They entered the cage, and down they went. Still it was difficult for mc to think that we .were fronting tragedy, for no[ danger showed. An hour and more passed in nervous and dismal waiting. There was a signal. Some men ran to the pithead, carrying hot bricks and blankets. The doctors took off their coats and arranged bottles and tinkling apparatus on chairs stuck In the mud. The air smelt of iodoform. A cloth was laid on the ground from the shaft to the engine-house, and stretchers -were placed handy. The women, some car-1 •rying; Infants, broke rank, JEhai

quickly up-running rope was bringing the "first; _ews. The rope stopped running, and the cage appeared. Only the rescue party came out, one carrying a moribund cat. They knew nothing, and the women, vr ith hardly : repressed hysteria,, took again their places by the enginehouse. So we passed that day, watchi.ing the place from which came nothing but disappointment. Oceasioni ally a child, too young to know it was adding., to its mother's grief, would wail querulously. There .came a time when I and all there knew that ito go down that shaft was to meet'with death. The increasing exhaustion and pouring sweat of the returning rescue parties showed' that. Yet the minera who were not selected to go down were angry; they violently abused the favouritism of the.officials who woulft not let all risk their lives.

I have a new. regard for my fellows since Great Barr. About you and mo there are men like that. There is nothing to distinguish them. They show no signs of greatness. They have common talk. They have coarse ways. They walk with an ugly lurch. Their eyes are not eager. They vie not polite. Their clothes are dirty. They live in cheap houses on cheap food. They call you "sir." They are [the great unwashed, the mutable many, the common people. The common .people!" Greatness is as common as that. There are "not enough honours and decorations to go round. Talk of the soldier! Vale to-Welsby of Normairt-on! He was a common miner. He is dead. His fellows wero in danger, their wives were whitefaced and their children wer._ crying, and he buckled on his harness and went to the 'assault with ho more thought of self than great men have in a great cause —and he is dead. I S„w-„lmgoVto his death.. I wish I could tell you of-Welsby of Normanton.

I left that place where the starshine was showing the grim skeleton of the shaft-work overhead in the night, and where men moved about below in the indeterminate dark like dismal gnomes. There was a'woman iwhose cry, when W«!sby died, was like a challenge.

Next morning, in-Great "Bair, some blinds weie down, the street was empty. Children, who could see no reason about them.why their fathers should not return as usual, were playing football by the tiny church. A group of women v:ere still gazina- at -t_c -gi«te»que . \rxDS.-a__ .leys of. tlie pithead staging as though it were a monster without.ruth.