The White Virgin

Dinah paid no heed to his words in her alarm, but they forced themselves upon her unwilling ears, as she hurried through the solitary place, feeling that every step took her nearer home, and toward the entrance to the mine gap, where this man would leave her.

“I say, you know, aren’t you carrying this on a bit too hard?” he half-whispered. “Isn’t it time you gave way just a little bit? You see how nice and gentle I am with you, dear. Some fellows would be rough and lay hold of you, but I’m not that sort. I like to be tender and kind with a girl. Just because one’s big and strong, one don’t need to be a regular brute. I say, come now, that’s enough. Let’s look at your pretty face. Take off your sun-bonnet. It’s a darned ugly one, and I’ll go over to Derby some night and buy you the prettiest that there is in the shops. I will, ’pon my soul! There’s no humbug about me, my dear. Why, you’ve made this old wilderness look quite cheerful, and if it hadn’t been for knowing that you lived down there by the river, I don’t believe I should have stopped it out. I should have just written off to the governor and said, ‘I’m coming back to London.’ I say, wouldn’t you like to go up to London, my dear? I’ll take you and pay up like a man. – I mean it.”

Dinah’s heart gave a great leap, for not fifty yards farther on there was the narrow natural gateway in the side of the hill, leading right into the deep, zigzag rift which clave the mountain from the top far down into the bowels of the earth, and spread in secondary maze-like chasms farther and farther in here through the limestone, where the dirty grey lead ore was found in company with masses of crystalline growth glittering with galena. Here, too, was the wondrous conglomerate of lily encrinite, once animated flowers of stone, forming the mountain masses of Derbyshire marble, where a calm sea once spread its deep waters in the days when the earth was young. Here were the beds and veins of the transparent violet spar, locally known as the “Blue John,” which glistened here and there in the natural caves, side by side with stalactite and stalagmite, wherever water filtered through the strata, and came out charged with the lime which had gone on cementing spar and shell together into solid blocks.

A weird, strange place to any one save the lovers of the strange, and then only explored in company by the light of chemical and wick. A place generally shunned, and only to be sought or chosen as a sanctuary by one who was pursued. But circumstances alter cases, and matters happen strangely and influence our lives in unexpected ways.

Dinah Gurdon, Major Gurdon’s only child, paying no heed to her follower’s words, kept hurrying on, for she had nearly reached the ragged entrance to the mine gap, feeling that at last she would be free, and then the insolent, self-satisfied ruffian would not dare to pursue her farther, for he had said that this was the place he had in charge. But if he did, another quarter of a mile would take her round the great limestone buttress formed by the mine spoil; and then she would be on the south slope of the Tor, in full view of the narrow valley, up out of which her father would probably be coming, and he would see her, as he came to meet her, a mile away.

She had kept to her steady, quick walk as long as she could; but now the exultation produced by the sight of freedom reassured her, and unable to control herself, she started off running past the natural gateway in the rocky wall on her right.

But Michael Sturgess was too quick for her.

“No, you don’t, my pretty one,” he cried, as he dashed in pursuit, overtook her in a few yards, and caught her by the dress, which tore loudly in his hand. The next moment he had his arm round her waist, but she struck at him wildly as he now held her and blocked her way. There was a momentary struggle, and she was free once more. She turned as if about to leap down the steep slope at her side; but the attempt was too desperate, and she ran back a few yards, with the man close behind, and then turned again and dashed frantically between the two natural buttresses, down the steep path leading to the mazes and gloomy passages of the ancient mine.

Michael Sturgess stopped short for a moment, burst into a coarse laugh, and gave his leg a slap.

“I knowed it,” he cried. “Oh, these girls, these girls!”

The next minute he was in full pursuit, and ten minutes later, faint, wild, and echoing up the walls of the shadowy solitude, there was a piercing cry.

A great bird rose slowly, circling higher about the dismal gap, and then all was still.

Chapter Four.

Jessop’s Weakness

“I don’t care. I will speak, and if master gets to know, so much the better.”

“Will you hold your silly tongue?”

“No, I won’t. I’ve held it too long. It’s disgraceful, that’s what it is, and I’ll tell Mr Clive of your goings-on with his sweetheart.”

“Look here, Lyddy, do you want me to poison you, or take you out somewhere and push you into a river?”

“Yes,” cried the girl addressed, passionately. “I wish you would, and then there’d be an end of the misery and wretchedness. And as for that Miss Janet Praed – ”

“Hold your tongue, you silly, jealous little fool!”

“Oh yes, I know I’m a fool – fool to believe all your wicked lies. And so would you be jealous. I saw it all last time she was here – a slut engaged to be married to your brother, and all the time making eyes at you, while you are carrying on with her shamefully, and before me, too. It’s cruel and disgraceful. I may be only a servant, but I’ve got my feelings the same as other people, and I’d die sooner than behave as she did, and you did, and – and – I wish I was dead, I do – that I do.”

“Will you be quiet, you silly little goose. Do you want everybody in the house to know of our flirtation?”

“Flirtation!” cried the girl, wiping her streaming eyes. “You regularly proposed and asked me to be your wife.”

“Why, of course. Haven’t I promised that I would marry you some day?”

“Yes – some day,” said the girl bitterly; “but some day never comes. Oh, Jessop, dear Jessop! you made me love you so, and you’re breaking my heart, going on as you do with that Miss Praed.”

She threw her arms about his neck, and clung to him till he roughly forced her to quit her hold.

“Are you mad?” he said angrily.

“Yes, very nearly,” cried the girl, with her pretty, fair, weak face lighted up with rage. “You’ve made me so. I’ll tell Mr Clive as soon as he comes back from Derbyshire – see if I don’t!”

“You’d better,” said Jessop grimly. “You dare say a word to a soul, and I’ll never put a ring on your finger, my lady – there!”

“Yes, you will – you shall!” cried the girl passionately. “You promised me, and the law shall make you!”

“Will you be quiet? You’ll have my father hear you directly.”

“And a good job too.”

“Oh, you think so, do you?”

“Yes, I do. Master’s a dear, good gentleman, and always been nice and kind. I’ll tell him – that I will!”

“Not you. There, wipe those pretty little blue eyes, and don’t make your dear little puggy nose red, nor your cheeks neither. I don’t know, though,” whispered Jessop, passing his arm round the girl and drawing her to him; “it makes you look very sweet and attractive. I say, Lyddy, dear, you are really a beautiful girl, you know.”

“Do adone, Jessop,” she whispered, softening directly, and yielding herself to his touch.

“I couldn’t help loving you, darling, and I love you more and more every day, though you will lead me such a life with your jealousy. I never find fault with you when I see you smiling at Clive.”

“But it is not as I do at you, dear. Mr Clive was always quite the gentleman to me, and it hurts me to see you trying so hard to get Miss Janet away from him.”

“There you go again, little silly. Isn’t she going to be my sister-in-law?”

“It didn’t look like it.”

“Pish! What do you know about such things? In society we are obliged to be a bit polite, and so on.”

“Oh, are we? I know; and if I told Mr Clive, he’d think as I do. I won’t have you make love to her before my very eyes – there!”

“Why, what an unreasonable little pet it is!” he cried, disarming the girl’s resentment with a few caresses.

“And the sooner master knows you are engaged to me the better,” she said, with a sob.

“And then you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that my father has quarrelled with me, and altered his will, so that everything goes to my brother. He may marry you then, for I couldn’t. I shouldn’t have a penny to help myself. Oh yes; go and tell. I believe you want to get hold of him now.”

The girl gave him a piteous look, and tried to catch his hand, but he avoided her touch, and laughed sneeringly.

“I don’t want to be hard and bitter,” he said, “but I’m not blind.”

She looked up at him reproachfully.

“You don’t mean what you are saying,” she whispered sadly, “so I shan’t fret about that.”

“You don’t believe me,” he said, in a low voice, as he fixed the girl with his eyes, glorying in the knowledge that he had thoroughly subdued her, and that she was his to mould exactly as he willed, to obey him like a slave. “Then you may believe this, that I have told you before. All that has passed between us is our secret, and if you betray it and ruin my prospects, and make me a beggar, you may go and drown yourself as you threatened, for aught I care, for you will have wilfully cut everything between us asunder. Now we understand each other, and you had better go before any one comes.” The girl stood gazing at him piteously now, with every trace of anger gone out of her eyes, and her tones, when she spoke, were those of appeal.

“But, Jessop, dear.”

“Be quiet, will you,” he said angrily.

“Don’t speak to me like that, dear,” she whispered. “Only tell me you don’t care for Miss Praed.”

“I won’t answer such a baby’s stupid questions. You know I only care for you.”

There was a sob, but at the same moment a look of hope to lighten a good deal of despair.

“You are not angry with me, Jessop, dear?”

“Yes, I am, very.”

“But you will forgive me, love?”

“Anything, if you’ll only be the dear, good, sensible little woman you used to be.”

“I will, dear – always,” she whispered.

“And fight for me, so that I may not lose.”

“Yes, dear, of course.”

“Can I trust you, Lyddy?”

“Yes, dear.”

“Then, whatever happens, you will, for my sake, hold your tongue till I tell you to speak?”

“Yes, if I die for it,” she said earnestly.

“I thought you would be sensible,” he said, nodding at her. “Come, that’s my pretty, wise little woman. Now go about your business, and wait for the bright days to come, when I shall be free to do as I like.”

“Yes, Jessop,” she whispered, and after a sharp glance at the door she bent forward and kissed him quickly. “But there isn’t anything between you and Miss Janet?”

“Of course not,” he cried. “As if there could be while you live.”

She nodded to him smiling, laid her finger on her lips to show that they were sealed, and then hurried out of the room.

“Poor little fool!” said Jessop Reed to himself, as soon as he was alone; “you are getting rather in the way.”

Chapter Five.

The Treasure House

Clive Reed stood up like a statue on a natural pedestal, high on the precipitous slope. It was a great ponderous block of millstone grit, which had become detached just at the spot where, high up, mountain limestone and the above-named formation joined. And as he looked about him, it seemed wonderful to a man fresh from London that he could find so great a solitude in central England. Look where he would, the various jumbled together eminences of the termination of the Pennine range met his eye; there was hardly a tree in sight, but everywhere hill and deeply cut dale, the down-like tops of the calcareous, and the roughly jagged crags of the grit, while, with the exception of a few white dots on a green slope far away, representing a flock of sheep, there was no sign of life, neither house, hut, nor church spire.

“Yes, there is something alive,” said the young man, “for there goes a bee wild-thyme hunting, and whir-r-r-r! Think of that now, as somebody says; who would have expected to see grouse out here in these hills?”

There they were, sure enough, a pair which skimmed by him as he stood at the very edge of the great gash in the mountain-side, at the bottom of which the track ran right into the mine he had come down to inspect for the third time, after walking across from the town twelve miles distant, where he had left the train on the previous evening.

“Wild, grand, solitary, on a day like this,” said Reed to himself; “but what must it be when a western gale is blowing. Come, Master Sturgess, you’re behind your time again.”

He glanced at his watch.

“No; give the devil his due,” he muttered. “I’m half an hour too soon, and, by George, not so solitary as I thought. Behold! two travellers wending their way across the desolate waste, as the novel-writers say. Now what can bring a pair of trousers and a petticoat there?”

The young man shaded his eyes and looked across the gap to where, far away, the two figures he had seen moved so slowly that they seemed to be stationary. Then they separated a little, and the man stooped and then knelt down.

“Can’t be flower-gatherers out here. I know: after mushrooms. But let’s see.”

Clive Reed dragged the strap which supported a tin case slung from his shoulder, forced it aside, and tugged at another strap so as to bring a little binocular into reach; and adjusting this, he followed his natural instinct or some strange law of affinity, and brought the little lenses to bear upon the female in place of the male.

“Not a gentle shepherdess fair, with tously locks and grubby hands and face, though she has a dog by her side,” he said to himself. “Looks like a lady – at a distance. Phyllis and Corydon, eh? No,” he added, after an alteration of the glass; “long white hair and grey beard, and – hullo! old chap’s got a candle-box. Botanist or some other – ist. Hang it, he’s after minerals for a pound, and the lady – in white? Humph, it can’t be the ‘White Virgin’ who gave the name to the mine. Let’s – Hands off, old gentleman, or keep your own side. Hah! there goes the dog: after a rabbit, perhaps.”

Clive Reed was ready to ask himself directly after, why he should stand there taking so much interest in these two figures, so distant that even with the help of the glass he could not distinguish their features. But watch them he did till they disappeared round a shoulder of the hill.

“Tourists – cheap trippers, I suppose,” said the young man, replacing the glass in its sling case. “I wonder where they have come from?” and then with a half laugh, as he took out a cigarette-case and lit up, “I wonder why I take so much interest in them?”

“Answer simple,” he continued, with a half laugh; “because they are the only living creatures in sight. Man is a gregarious beast, and likes to greg. I feel ready to go after them and talk. Hallo! here we are! Master Sturgess and two men with a stout ladder, coils of rope, and – if he hasn’t brought a crowbar and a lanthorn, woe.”

He shaded his eyes again to watch a party of three men toiling up a slope, half a mile away, and began to descend from his coign of vantage to reach the pathway at the entrance to the gap, seeing as he did that he would not arrive there long before the others.

A glance at his watch showed him that it was still only ten o’clock, for he had started on his mountain tramp at daybreak, and as he walked and slid downward, he calculated that he would have time after the mine examination to make for one of the villages in the neighbourhood of Matlock to pass the night, so as to see as much of the country as he could.

“Morning, Sturgess; you got my letter then?”

“Oh, yes, sir, yesterday morning,” said the man, as Reed nodded at his two sturdy followers – rough-looking men of the mining stamp, both of whom acknowledged his salute with a half-sneering smile.

“Brought two different chaps this time. Got enough tackle?”

“Oh, yes, sir; ropes, hammer, spikes, and crowbar.”

“Lanthorn?”

“Oh, yes, sir. Shouldn’t come on a job like this without a light.”

“Then come along.”

He led the way through the narrow entrance, where the rock had once upon a time been picked away to allow room for the passage of horses or rough trucks, but now all covered with lichen and the marks of the eroding tooth of Time; and then up and down and in and out along the side of the chasm, which grew more gloomy at every step, deeper into the mountain-side, while the bottom of the gully grew narrower and closer, till it resembled the dried-up bed of a stream which had become half blocked up with the great masses of stone, which had fallen from above.

Clive Reed’s eyes were everywhere as they went on – now noticing spots where the sloping walls of rock had been worked for ore, others where trials had been made, honeycombing the rock with shallow cells, but always suggesting that this working must have been ages ago, and in a very superficial primitive fashion. This suggested plenty of prospect for the engineer who would attack the ancient mine with the modern appliances and forces which compel Nature to yield up her hidden treasures, buried away since the beginning of the world.

Clive Reed saw pretty well everything on his way to the dark end, and, after making a few short, sharp, business-like remarks, he said suddenly —

“The plans say there is no way out whatever, beside the entrance.”

He turned to Sturgess as he spoke, and a curious look came over the countenance of the guardian of the mine, but before he could speak one of the men behind said —

“Man as didn’t mind breaking his neck might get up yonder,” and he nodded towards the precipitous side.

“Which means that a rough staircase might easily be made if wanted, and – ”

He did not finish speaking, but sprang up on to a block of stone, climbed to another, drew himself on to a third, and extricated something from a niche which had caught his observant eye, and with which he sprang down.

It was a fine cambric handkerchief, which he turned over as Sturgess looked on stolidly and with the same peculiar look in his countenance.

“Here, somebody may make inquiries about this. You had better take it, Sturgess. Visitors to the old mine perhaps, but they have no business here now. You will keep the place quite private for the present.”

The man took the handkerchief, and a keen observer would have thought that he put it out of sight rather hurriedly.

“Blowed in,” said one of the others with a laugh. “Wonderful windy up here sometimes.”

Reed had started again, and plunging farther and farther into the natural cutting in the mountain-side, soon after reached the end of the cul de sac, where, partly obliterated by time, there were abundant traces of the old workings, notably the shafts with their crumbling sides, one going down perpendicularly, and into which the young engineer pushed over a stone. This fell down and down for some time before it struck against a projection with such force that it sent up a hollow reverberating roar, and directly after came the dull, sullen sound of its plunge into the water which had gathered in the huge well-like place.

“She’s pretty deep, sir,” said one of the men, with a laugh.

“Yes,” said Reed, with a nod, and he went on climbing over the blocks of stone fallen from above, and which cumbered the place, to one of the other two shafts, both of which had been made following a lode running raggedly down at an angle of about seventy degrees.

“We’ll try this,” said Reed sharply.

“Want me to go down and chip off a few bits that seem most likely?” said Sturgess roughly.

“No. Now, my lads, drive the crowbar well in here,” said the engineer, indicating a rift close to where they stood, a crevice between two immense blocks of limestone.

“This here one’s handier,” said one of the men, pointing to a crack close to the opening.

“Yes, and when you have loosened it by driving in that bar, more likely to be pulled down into the shaft. In here, please.”

The man inserted the sharp edge of the bar, and his companion made the great chasm echo as he began to drive the iron in with strokes of the heavy hammer he carried, till it was deemed safe.

“Hold a ridgement o’ sojers now, sir,” said the hammerman.

“Yes, that’s safe enough,” said Reed; and after carefully examining the ropes, he knotted two together, and formed a loop at the end of one.

“Shall we two go down, sir?”

“No; I am going,” replied Reed quietly.

“Find it precious dirty and wet, sir. Best let us.”

“No, thank you. Let me down. How far is it to the first level?”

“’Bout two hundred foot, I should say, p’raps more; but I dare say it don’t go down so straight far, but works out’ard like. I d’know, though. I’ve never been down, and nobody as I ever heard of ever did go.”

“No,” said the other with a laugh, “and strikes me as you won’t find nothing worth your while when you do go. The old folks got out all the good stuff from here hundreds o’ years ago.”

“You will be ready to haul up when I signal,” said Reed quietly.

“Oh, yes, sir. You may trust us. We don’t want to make an inquess on you.”

“Light the lanthorn,” said Reed to Sturgess, and taking off the flat tin case he carried slung under his left arm, he took from it a cold chisel and a geologist’s hammer; stripped off his coat, rolled up his sleeves over his white muscular arms, and then secured the lanthorn to his waist with the strap of his binocular.

“You’ll be careful about the loose stones, my men,” he said in quick, decisive tones. “You, Sturgess, will follow me as soon as I have sent up the rope.”

The men nodded as Reed slipped the loop over his head, and then sat in it, and without a moment’s hesitation, after the men had passed the rope round the upright bar, he lowered himself over the rugged side of the shaft, and was rapidly allowed to descend past the rough stones which formed the bottom of the slope, and showed traces still of how it had been ground away for ages by the passage over it of the freshly extracted ore.

It was a primitive way of descending, but in all probability the old manner had been as rough, and there was little to trouble a cool man with plenty of nerve, one accustomed to depend upon mine folk, and make explorations in shaft, tunnel, and boring, deep down in the earth. Besides, Clive Reed’s brain was too busy as he looked around him, noting some fifty feet down that a great vein of lead ore had been extracted from the solid rock, leaving a narrow passage going off at right angles. Another ran in an opposite direction, and soon after he passed another, just as if they were branches of some great root which he was tracing to its end.

About a hundred feet down, where the light shone now clearly, he dislodged a loose stone, which went on before him with a rushing, rumbling sound, ending in a sullen plunge into the water far below.

“All right?” came from above, the words descending the shaft, and sounding like a strange whisper magnified and uttered close to his ear.

“Yes; lower away.”

The rope glided on round the bar; and Reed went on down and down, noting the differences in the formations as well as the crumbling, dripping stone would allow, and mentally planning out fresh drifts here and there, where he expected to find paying ore, till he found himself opposite to a great cavernous opening, black and forbidding-looking enough to repel any one wanting in nerve, while from far below came a gleam of light, apparently reflected from the water.

“Hold hard! Haul up four feet!”

Reed’s words went echoing to the surface, and were promptly attended to.

“Now hold fast!”

The next minute he gave himself a swing, and obtained foothold in the great cave whose bottom was worn hollow by the trickling of a tiny stream which drained into the lower part of the shaft, and after throwing off the rope and shouting to the men to haul up, he stood holding the light above his head, examining the roof and sides, while he waited for the descent of his companion; but here the ore seemed to have been chipped and picked out to the last fragment.

Sturgess joined him at the end of a few minutes, took the lanthorn, opened it so as to get as much light as possible, and then turned to Reed.