Part 22 (2/2)

”I am going down, if there's anybody will lead,” Stafford replied. ”I was brought up in a mining country. I know as much as most of you about mines, and I'll make one to follow you, if you'll lead--you've been down, I know.”

Brengyn's face changed. ”Mr. Byng isn't our cla.s.s, he's with capital,”

he said, ”but he's a man. He went down to help save men of my cla.s.s, and to any of us he's worth the risk. But how many of his own cla.s.s is taking it on?”

”I, for one,” said Lord Tynemouth, stepping forward.

”I--I,” answered three other men of the house-party.

Al'mah, who was standing just below Jasmine, had her eyes fixed on Adrian Fellowes, and when Brengyn called for volunteers, her heart almost stood still in suspense. Would Adrian volunteer?

Brengyn's look rested on Adrian for an instant, but Adrian's eyes dropped. Brengyn had said one chance in a thousand, and Adrian said to himself that he had never been lucky--never in all his life. At games of chance he had always lost. Adrian was for the sure thing always.

Al'mah's face flushed with anger and shame at the thing she saw, and a weakness came over her, as though the springs of life had been suddenly emptied.

Brengyn once again fastened the group from Glencader with his eyes.

”There's a gentleman in danger,” he said, grimly, again. ”How many gentlemen volunteer to go down--ay, there's five!” he added, as Stafford and Tynemouth and the others once again responded.

Jasmine saw, but at first did not fully realize what was happening. But presently she understood that there was one near, owing everything to her husband, who had not volunteered to help to save him--on the thousandth chance. She was stunned and stricken.

”Oh, for G.o.d's sake, go!” she said, brokenly, but not looking at Adrian Fellowes, and with a heart torn by misery and shame.

Brengyn turned to the men behind him, the dark, determined toilers who sustained the immortal spirit of courage and humanity on thirty s.h.i.+llings a week and nine hours' work a day. ”Who's for it, mates?” he asked, roughly. ”Who's going wi' me?”

Every man answered hoa.r.s.ely, ”Ay,” and every hand went up. Brengyn's back was on Fellowes, Al'mah, and Jasmine now. There was that which filled the cup of trembling for Al'mah in the way he nodded to the men.

”Right, lads,” he said with a stern joy in his voice. ”But there's only one of you can go, and I'll pick him. Here, Jim,” he added to a small, wiry fellow not more than five feet four in height--”here, Jim Gawley, you're comin' wi' me, an' that's all o' you as can come. No, no,” he added, as there was loud muttering and dissent. ”Jim's got no missis, nor mother, and he's tough as leather and can squeeze in small places, and he's all right, too, in tight corners.” Now he turned to Stafford and Tynemouth and the others. ”You'll come wi' me,” he said to Stafford--”if you want. It's a bad look-out, but we'll have a try.

You'll do what I say?” he sharply asked Stafford, whose face was set.

”You know the place,” Stafford answered. ”I'll do what you say.”

”My word goes?”

”Right. Your word goes. Let's get on.”

Jasmine took a step forward with a smothered cry, but Alice Tynemouth laid a hand on her arm.

”He'll bring Rudyard back, if it can be done,” she whispered.

Stafford did not turn round. He said something in an undertone to Tynemouth, and then, without a glance behind, strode away beside Brengyn and Jim Gawley to the pit's mouth.

Adrian Fellowes stepped up to Tynemouth. ”What do you think the chances are?” he asked in a low tone.

”Go to--bed!” was the gruff reply of the irate peer, to whom cowardice was the worst crime on earth, and who was enraged at being left behind.

Also he was furious because so many working-men had responded to Brengyn's call for volunteers and Adrian Fellowes had shown the white feather. In the obvious appeal to the comparative courage of cla.s.s his own cla.s.s had suffered.

<script>