To Love and to Cherish (29 page)

He bent his head and put a soft kiss on the back of her left hand, then her right. He laid his cheek against her palm. She reached up to stroke his hair, but he sat back before she could touch him and staggered to his feet, stifling another groan.

“Don’t go.”

He turned in the doorway. They looked at each other in astonishment, as if neither could credit what she’d said. Geoffrey put his hand over his heart and made her a short, unsteady bow. “I thank you for that, darling,” he said in a parody of his old voice, the ironic one. “Do you know, that’s going to make it ever so much easier.”

After he was gone, she shut her eyes and listened to the rain. The strange detachment persisted; she floated in it for a time, thankful for the painless, neutral hum in her head. Her body ached, but even that was filtered through some kind of stuffing around her, an extra layer of skin, keeping her at a safe, kindly distance from the too-real.

It didn’t last.
Do you know
, he’d said,
that’s going to make it ever so much easier
, and finally the import of that began to penetrate the friendly fog.
Ever so much easier. That’s going to make it
.

Make it easier
.

Oh, dear Jesus.

She got up too fast; she had to hang on to the window ledge while the vertigo subsided. Holding her head, her fingers found the tender swelling in back, where she’d hit the wall. Not serious, just a bump, but she needed the table’s support to cross the room, and the banister’s to get down the narrow servants’ stairs to the second floor.

He wasn’t in his room. She met Violet on the first floor landing. “Where is he?” she demanded. The maid looked at her stupidly. “My husband, where is he? Have you seen him?”

“I saw ’im go out. Had his guns, ’e were goin’ huntin’”

“Hunting!”

“Now that
is
peculiar, in’t it, this rain an’ all—”

With an oath, Anne pushed past her and took the steps at a run. In the front hall, she called back, “Which way did he go?
Which door
?” and Violet pointed, wide-eyed, to the formal, seldom-used front door at Anne’s back.

The rain had slowed to a drizzle. The river flew past in a torrent under the stone arch of the bridge, the rush of the water drowning out every other sound. Geoffrey was nowhere. She called his name, but only once; the roaring Wyck made her voice useless as a whisper. Snatching up her skirts, she made a run for the stables.

She saw Collie Horrocks through the misty rain, crossing the stable yard toward her, huddled under his mackintosh. When he saw her, his pudgy face registered surprise. He had his hand on the dripping brim of his hat when the boom of a gunshot made him leap into the air. Anne didn’t scream. Collie whirled around, staring at the black, gaping doorway to the stables. She reached him before he could move. “Get William! Go and get him!” she shouted in his face. Too stunned to speak, the groom spun away and bolted toward the house.

A lamp was burning at the far end of the passage that ran the length of the stables. Deep dread made her heart pound, her skin go clammy-cold with fear, but she put one foot before the other and forced herself to walk past all the stalls to the last one—Devil’s. As she neared it, a shadowy form rose from the straw-covered floor. Stark terror froze the scream in her throat.

Geoffrey jolted when he saw her. He threw his rifle down and pulled a pistol from his belt. Behind him, the black stallion lay on its sleek side, not breathing, a bloody hole through its temple.

Shock and relief made her light-headed. “Dear God. Geoffrey, what have you done?” She stumbled toward him, reaching out for the wooden gate that separated them.

“Don’t come any closer.” He lifted the pistol and pointed it in her face.

She gasped. “What—what—”

“Turn around and walk out, Anne.”

“No. Why? What are you going to do?” But she knew. She pulled the gate back, but halted when she heard the deadly click of the hammer.

“If you try to stop me, I’ll have to shoot you too,” he said, and she believed him. His voice sounded calm, but his eyes were black and crazed. “Turn around.”

“Geoffrey, don’t, this isn’t the answer, please, please don’t.”

“It’s the perfect answer. I won’t rot away like a corpse, one bloody piece at a time. This is quick and clean, a soldier’s death.” His hand on the gun wavered; he started to cry. “Turn around.”

“God! Geoffrey! I’m begging you!”

He wiped his cheek with his sleeve. “Tell Christy good-bye for me. He’s a good man. You’ll make each other happy.”

“Listen to me—I won’t leave you, I swear I won’t leave and I’ll take care of you, it’ll be all right—”

“If you don’t get out, you’ll have to watch.”

“Geoffrey!” He turned the barrel of the gun around. She screamed. She saw him open his mouth wide before she squeezed her eyes shut and covered her head with her arms. The sound of the shot deafened her, as if it had gone off in her own head. She was on her knees on the hard floor and someone was brushing by her. Through half-closed eyes and the barrier of her crossed arms, she caught dark, dreadful, unconnected images of bloody flesh and bone, before William Holyoake’s body cut off the grisly view. She bent over, gagging, and pressed her forehead to the ground.

She must have fainted. Rain on her face revived her; she found herself outside, under the sloping roof of the well, half-lying against the cold bricks. The bailiff’s strong arm was around her shoulders. She turned her face into the wet wool of his coat and cried.

“Did he hurt you a’tall, m’lady?” She shook her head but didn’t look up. “I’ve sent the lad for surgeon, but I’m afraid ’is lordship’s dead.” She tightened her grip on his sleeve, burrowed deeper into his coat. As long as she could block the dreadful image of Geoffrey’s face from her mind, she could control the nausea. William gave her his clean, neatly folded handkerchief, and she buried her nose in it; the everyday smell of soap and sunshine helped to steady her a little. He kept patting her back, a soft, consoling pressure. “I’ll go an’ get Reverend Morrell myself, shall I?”

She looked up at that. Something in his voice arrested her. She searched his plain, honest face for a sign that he knew.

“Shall I go for Vicar, m’lady?” he repeated.

“No.” Her head fell back against the damp brick of the well. “There’s nothing for him to do here, William,” she murmured, so tired all of a sudden, it was an effort to move her lips. Later she might feel differently, but for now Geoffrey’s death was a catastrophe, not a liberation.

For the first time, she noticed Collie Horrocks standing behind Holyoake’s shoulder; Susan and Violet stood next to him, huddling in the drizzle, their faces stiff with shock. And here came Mrs. Fruit, with a shawl over her head and her hands in her apron, crying, “What’s happened? What’s happened?”

Despair was swallowing her up a little at a time. The thought of moving, the thought of speaking, of making choices, giving explanations—

She couldn’t. It was too much. When the bailiff started to help her to stand, she reached for his wrist and held onto it. “Oh, William, go and get Christy,” she begged him, defeated. “Tell him to come right away.”

***

In his study, Christy was filling a box with his belongings. He’d closed the door so Mrs. Ludd couldn’t see; he hadn’t told her yet that he was leaving, and he didn’t feel up to dealing with her reaction to the news, which was bound to be dramatic.

The ecclesiastical living included not only the vicarage but most of the furnishings in it as well, so he wouldn’t be taking much with him. He’d decided to leave most of his books for the new incumbent, his sermons as well—for all the good they would do him—and so only
things
were going into the box: pens and paper, a few pictures on the wall, a vase he’d made out of papier-máché for his mother twenty-five years ago. He was finished in no time, and the scantiness of his collected personal possessions dismayed him. The study had always been the heart of the house to him, his favorite room, a place of endless variety, stimulation, enrichment. The fact that everything in it besides his books and papers fit into a small wooden box came as a rude surprise.

Another instance of his thoughtlessness and complacency, he supposed. For years he’d taken for granted that he would live out his life in this comfortable old house, and that the sparse but well-loved belongings he’d inherited from his parents would pass down to his own children. But that was another unconsidered dream, and he was sick to death of self-discovery.

He was keeping a list for his curate, Reverend Woodworth, adding to it as new thoughts occurred to him. One came to him now. He crossed to his desk and wrote,

5. Miss Sophie Deene would welcome sound, unbiased counsel on mgmt., etc., of Guelder mine. Wd. not ask for it (too proud, too convinced of her own competence—which, at twenty yrs. old, she may overestimate), but might accept it. Her uncle tries to bully her. To resist him, she sometimes goes too far in opposite direction. My advice—be open to unspoken requests for help.

He read over what he’d written before that.

1. Be alert for trouble in Pendrys family. Go often, despite unenthusiastic welcome. Martin is in a delicate phase; has agreed to stop drinking, but may backslide w/o constant encouragement.

2. Keep careful eye on Mrs. Lloyd. Taking loss of husband deceptively well, but I fear it’s a mask and she may sink into despondency. Urge to attend penny readings, etc.

3. Miss Weedie appreciates visits esp. now that her mother is such a trial to her.

4. Nineways will pester you mercilessly re. St. Catherine window. Resist tactfully. “Support” in vestry he brags of is nonexistent, consisting solely of Brakey Pitt.

There were twenty, maybe thirty more things he could write down on Woodworth’s list. For an ex-clergyman whose letter of resignation lay on his desk, sealed in an envelope and ready to post, he was doing a rather poor job of making the break. But—should he say something about Anne or Geoffrey or both of them? He picked up the list—and threw it into his desk drawer, slamming it shut with suppressed violence. It was finished. And he was the last man on earth to advise his curate or anyone else on what to do for the Verlaines.

He wandered to the window. The monotonous patter of the filthy rain on the glass echoed his mood. Anne must have received his letter by now. The need to see her was like a sharp ache inside, as real as a wound that wouldn’t heal. Now that he’d resolved not to see her before he went away, his mind was tormented with idiotic daydreams of the future. In one of them, he went to London to try his fortune at being a painter, the only thing he’d ever shown any talent for besides racing horses. He became an artist (of unknown repute; the dream was unspecific on that), and Anne left Geoffrey and followed him to the city. They lived together in a garret, impoverished and wildly happy—or in a Mayfair mansion, wealthy and wildly happy.

It was a childish, embarrassing fantasy, unworthy of him and certainly of her. But, God, how could he just let her go? What would become of them if they lost each other? Yesterday he’d known exactly why betraying the man who had once been his best friend would be a sin, but today the reason eluded him. He told himself it was good that he was leaving soon, before his weakness made him rethink his so-called principles and convinced him that staying would not be the act of monumental dishonesty he knew in his heart it would be.

The clip-clop of a horse’s hooves on the cobbles broke in on his black thoughts. He recognized Dr. Hesselius’ pony gig through the sooty drizzle, and he sighed when he saw it stop directly in front of the house. The doctor jumped down from the seat and, without tying the horse, raced up the front walk to the door. Christy thought of all the times this had happened before, that he and Hesselius had rushed off together to work on some poor parishioner—the doctor on his body, Christy on his soul.

But he wasn’t in that line of work anymore. Souls were no longer safe in his keeping. You’d be a fool to ask a bankrupt for a loan, and you’d be crazy to ask Christy Morrell for spiritual comfort.

Hesselius began to pound at the door. Dragging his feet, Christy unlocked his study door and started down the hall. Mrs. Ludd, coming from the other side of the house, beat him to the door. Hesselius bustled in, dripping rainwater on the rug. “Is he here?” he asked sharply, then spied him in the dim corridor. “Christy, thank God you’re at home!”

“What is it?” he asked, fatalistic, but alarmed in spite of himself by the doctor’s urgency.

“There’s been an accident at Guelder, a cave-in. Miners are trapped. I don’t know how many, and one’s dead already. You can come with me in the buggy or—”

“I’ll ride,” he broke in. “It’ll be faster.”

They spun away from each other and ran, Hesselius for his gig, Christy for the stables and Doncaster.

XXI

G
UELDER MINE LAY NORTH
of Wyckerley and south of Dartmoor, close by the uppermost reaches of the Plym, into which the mine’s mammoth, steam-powered pumps constantly drained water. Darkness was closing in when Christy reined his muddy, sweating horse to a halt beside the only tree on the rubble-strewn hillside, and some of the men gathered in straggly, dejected-looking knots around the mine’s outbuildings had begun to light lanterns. From one such group, a miner detached himself and came toward Christy as he crossed the yard, hurrying around the piles of machinery and planks, attle and rock. He recognized Charles Oldene, one of his parishioners, and stopped to wait for him.

“Bad business, Vicar,” Charles greeted him—snatching off his sodden felt hat. “Not but what it could be worse, but ’tis bad enough.”

“Are men still trapped underground, Charles?”

“No, they come up, and all but one unhurt—Thacker, a man you may not know, for ’e’s Methody. It were thought he were dead, but ’e ain’t, only burnt from the steam. He’s over to the changing shed now wi’ the other parson, waiting for surgeon.”

The “other parson” was Mr. Snodgress, the Wesleyan preacher from Totnes. Christy said, “Dr. Hesselius was right behind me; he should be here any minute. But what’s wrong, Charles? If the men are safe, why does everyone look so stricken?”

“Because there’s one left down, Vicar, and ’e’s lost.”

“Lost? Why?”

Charles hung his head and said haltingly, “He’s in a bad place, the whole blinking mine’s falling down around ’im. He’s alive and can’t be got up. We’ve had to leave ’im.”

“My God. Who is it?”

“One o’yours, Reverend. ’Tis Tranter Fox.”

Behind the main engine room with its tall, smoking chimneys was a smaller building the miners called the countinghouse. Yellow lamplight spilled from its windows, throwing a weak blur on the darkening mist. Inside, the principal room was empty, but the door to a smaller office behind it was ajar, and through it Christy saw Sophie Deene and three other men in earnest conversation. Sophie’s distraught face lightened a little when she saw him; she got up from behind the wide oak desk that had been her father’s and came around it to greet him. “I’m glad you’ve come,” she said in a low voice, holding out her hands.

They were ice cold. “I’ve heard about Tranter,” Christy said quietly. “Is there nothing that can be done, Sophie?”

She shook her head. “Nothing, Jenks says.” Jenks was her mine captain. The other two men in the room were Dickon Penny, the mine agent, and Andrewson, the grass captain. “We’ll send a crew to try to get through from behind the pump wall, but they’ll never be in time.”

Christy turned to Jenks, a stocky, compact miner with a fierce black beard. “Can no one get near him, then?”

“No, Reverend, the risk is too steep. I’d not send any man close to him.”

“And I won’t let Jenks go, either,” Sophie said bleakly. “It’s an unbearable situation—better if Tranter had been killed outright.” She blinked tears out of her eyes, unashamed, while the men around her shifted from foot to foot and stared at the floor.

“Is he injured?”

“No, and that’s the hell of it,” Jenks burst out, then mumbled an apology. “He went into a vogal—that’s a cavity, like—to eat his croust at two o’clock, and when the core changed at three, Martin Burr, his partner, thought it would be a great lark to leave him where he lay—he’d fallen asleep, you see, which he always does after dinnertime, as almost every man knows. The new core went down and began stoping the lode, not knowing Tranter was just beyond the wall a matter of feet from where they were working. What Martin didn’t know was that ’twas time to lay a charge to sink the new costean.”

“Which still would’ve been all right,” Andrewson put in, “except there was a raw new man on the gang, and he laid his powder too close to the pump shaft housing. It blew, and Fox’s wall caved in atop him and the stamping mill. Then the mill’s steam engine exploded, and half the gallery came down on top o’ the men, who lay trapped until they were excavated out just now. The man Fox is beyond them and unreachable.”

“Barely,” Jenks gritted. “You can hear him across the rubble in what’s left of the gallery. There’s not a mark on ’im. Now I’m praying for another cave-in, for he’ll die without water in three or four days, and that’s a far crueler way to go.”

“There’ll be a cave-in,” Andrewson assured him grimly. “We’ll not have to wait long, nor him neither.”

Christy was appalled. “But why can’t you get him? If you got the others out, why not Tranter?”

“The second blast blew away the mill’s pestle, and now it’s jammed against all the rubble blocking his way out. Even if you could get to him, which you can’t, nothing could dislodge that iron rod. And that’s the end of it.”

Sophie had covered her mouth with her hands. Her lovely blue eyes glittered; all the freshness and good humor Christy was used to had gone out of them. She’d never lost a man in her brief tenure as the owner of Guelder, and Tranter’s plight was an unkind baptism. Christy put his hand on her shoulder and said gently, “It’s not your fault. You know it’s not, Sophie. Now, I must go down and try to speak to him.”

Everyone gaped at him. Sophie found her voice first. “But you can’t! It’s too dangerous, Jenks says so. No one can get near him, Christy, not even you.”

“It’s true,” the mine captain agreed, “it’s too close to coming down, everything within thirty yards is collapsing strut by strut—can’t you hear it?”

He’d heard something, a deep, distant rumbling every now and then; he’d thought it was the steam pumps, at work fathoms below the surface. “Nevertheless, I must go to him. You said you could hear his voice across the ruined gallery, which must mean he could hear mine. Is the ladder down to his pitch still intact?”

Jenks nodded reluctantly. He spread his legs in a bullish stance and stuck his chin out. “No one can get near him, I’m telling you. If you shouted, he could barely hear you now. It don’t make sense to go down there, as much as I wish it did.”

Jenks was afraid, and ashamed of his fear—which Christy never doubted was justified. “It may not,” he said levelly. “But if you would guide me down to his level, Mr. Jenks, I would be grateful to you. I wouldn’t ask you or anyone else to go closer.” He spoke the rest to Sophie. “I must go, though. I’ve no thought of saving him—that’s in God’s hands now. But Tranter’s in need, and I hope you won’t refuse to let me go. I would never tell you how to run this mine, Sophie, because that’s your job. In terrible times like this, my job funnels down to one small, narrow thing, and I have to do it. And you mustn’t deny me.”

She shook her head wordlessly. She mouthed, “No, I would not,” then said more clearly, “But God keep you safe, Christy!”

Outside, the waiting men watched as Christy and Jenks trudged across the yard toward the fenced entrance to the main shaft. When they realized the two men intended to go down, the miners hurried over, eager for news. Christy saw that Ronald Fox, Tranter’s father, was with them, and stopped so he could speak to him.

“You’re never going down, are you, Vicar?” Charles Oldene asked in amazement. To Jenks he said, “You’d never take ’im down there, would you, Captain?”

Jenks spat on the ground. “It ain’t my idea, and I ain’t doing it willingly.”

Ignoring them, Christy went nearer to old Fox, who had grown so feeble of late that he needed two canes to stay upright. “Sir, I’m going down to speak to Tranter,” he said in a loud voice, bending down to the little man’s level.

“Eh? Gettin’ ’im out?” All the wrinkles in his wizened face suddenly lifted with hope.

Christy shook his head sadly. “No, sir, I can’t bring him out. I’m going down to
speak
to him.”

“Oh, speak.” The despair returned. “Well, he’m a good lad deep down, an’ ’e main’t go straight to the smoky place if ’e ’ears yer holy words. You d’ tell un ’is da says farewell, an’ll join ’un as soon as may be somewhere in the great ’ereafter.” His face closed up like a bunched fist; he couldn’t say any more.

Christy had never been down in a copper mine before. Most of the miners in Devon were Wesleyan Methodists, but a few, like Tranter, belonged to Christy’s parish, and he knew from them a little of what to expect. Heat and hard going, mainly, and then dirt and damp. Jenks gave him a miner’s hat—padded felt, heavy as a helmet, with a candle stuck in the band with a piece of clay—and led the way down the first long, nearly perpendicular ladder. In a parallel shaft to the left, the huge beam of a steam engine could be seen as it rose and fell, straining at the heavy volume of water it lifted ceaselessly from the sump far below. At the bottom of the third ladder, Jenks stopped on a wooden platform to let Christy catch his breath. “We’re at the twenty-five level, Vicar. Fox is at seventy.”

Not used to thinking in terms of fathoms, Christy had to calculate. They’d come a hundred and fifty feet straight down, with another two hundred and seventy to go before they reached Tranter. Already he could feel the muscles in his calves vibrating. The short, stocky captain wasn’t even breathing hard, and a minute later he swung out onto the next ladder. Christy followed, grasping the clay-caked sides and trying not to think about how endless a two-hundred-and-seventy-foot fall would be in the pitch black.

It wasn’t a straight drop, though; at forty fathoms, they stepped off another ladder and turned into a level side gallery, sixty feet long and barely wide enough for two men to pass abreast. The heat was becoming severe, and Christy felt glad that he’d left his coat at the shaft entrance. He was grateful for his hat, too, when more than once it cushioned him from a stout blow caused by the odd lump of solid rock protruding from the six-foot ceiling.

The going was not only rough, it was dangerous. “Mind here,” Jenks threw over his shoulder repeatedly, alerting him just in time to the presence of a thin, shaky, slippery plank of wood, the only covering over some dismal trap-hole leading to nothing but deep, dark disaster. At length, after ceaseless walking, stooping, creeping, and occasional crawling, they came to another ladder, shorter than the ones that had brought them to this depth, that led down another shaft to another gallery. This happened four or five more times before the long ladders began again. Christy was soaked with perspiration, sucking in gulps of the hot, unhealthy air when Jenks stepped off the last ladder and told him Tranter’s pitch lay at this level, in a wider excavation beyond the next gallery.

“Shall I go on by myself?” Christy asked, noticing that Jenks seemed unwilling to proceed.

“Don’t be daft,” he snapped, then ducked his head. “Beg your pardon, Vicar,” he muttered.

“It’s all right, Mr. Jenks. You know, you’re not at fault for what happened here.” He hadn’t meant to say that; something in Jenks’s manner had prompted it. A moment later, he understood why.

“I am, though,” the captain said stiffly, speaking to the black, dripping wall straight ahead of him. “In a way. I’m the one that told the gang to costean so close to the mill. ’Twasn’t safe, and I knew it. I didn’t tell Dickon or Miss Deene because I knew they’d be against it. But I thought it was worth the risk. And now look what’s happened.”

Christy could barely see his face in the weird shadows cast by the candle in his hat. “Perhaps that was bad judgment,” he conceded quietly. “You couldn’t have prevented the second explosion, though, and Tranter would still be trapped, wouldn’t he?”

The captain sighed. “Aye. But Bob Thacker wouldn’t have got scalded by the steam, and without the sinkholes the flooding’s made between us and Fox, mayhap we could’ve gotten to him earlier. Even gotten him out, for all I know.”

“Maybe, but you—”

“I ain’t looking for any comfort, Vicar. Meaning no disrespect, I know what I done, and I’ve got to live with it.” With that, he pushed past Christy and started down the narrow shaft. “Now I’ll take you to the closest place a man can safely go, and leave you for five minutes to your prayers. After that, we must be away.”

Without answering, Christy followed him.

Seventy feet later, they came to a stop. “Oh, sweet Christ,” Jenks whispered. “‘Tis much worse now.” He took another candle from his buttonhole, lit it from the one in his hat, and held it aloft. By its weak white flicker, Christy saw what he meant.

They were standing at the low, smoky entrance to hell. The smell of hot metal and gunpowder was so strong, he could taste it in the back of his throat, see it floating, cloudlike, in the dirty air. Through the fog, the dark shapes of twisted iron and splintered wood jutted at every angle, like tombstones in an underground cemetery. The red metal wreckage must be the stamping mill, or what was left of it; the scattered timbers were joists and ceiling supports, and the remains of the wooden housing around the water pump. Over half the gallery was simply gone, crushed under the weight of the fallen solid-rock ceiling; the rest was a broad ruin of metal, granite, soft ore, and timber, chest-high in places, underwater in others. Over everything a scalding mist of steam still hissed, spewing out the last of the pressurized water in the broken mill’s boiler.

Numbed, Christy asked, “Where is he?”

Jenks held his candle higher and pointed. “Yonder. You can’t see the place from here in this light, ’tis too far away. He’s walled in and can’t be reached for the hazards in the way. What’s left of this ceiling won’t last much longer, and then he’ll be tombed up proper.” He turned aside, as much to avert his face as to attach his extra candle to the wall with another lump of clay. Then he cupped his mouth and hollered, “Hullo, Tranter Fox! Can you hear me?”

Immediately an appallingly faint voice called back, “Hullo! Hullo, Captain. I can ’ear you!”

“Reverend Morrell’s come down with me! He wants to speak to you!”

Christy winced when nothing but silence greeted this, imagining what Tranter must be thinking right now: that if the vicar was here, he must be doomed indeed. Jenks couldn’t stand the silence, either; backing out of the shattered portal, he mumbled, “You’ll be wantin’ privacy. I’ll come back in a short while, Vicar.” Christy watched his dim form recede into the black.