No doubt but what some men enjoy it, being born, like worms, to dig, and to live in their own scoopings. Yet even the worms come up sometimes, after a good soft shower of rain, and hold discourse with one another;whereas these men, and the horses let down, come above ground never.
And the changing of the sky is half the change our nature calls for. Earth we have, and all its produce (moving from the first appearance, and the hope with infants' eyes, through the bloom of beauty's promise, to the rich and ripe fulfilment, and the falling back to rest); sea we have (with all its wonder shed on eyes, and ears, and heart; and the thought of something more)--but without the sky to look at, what would earth, and sea, and even our own selves, be to us?
Do we look at earth with hope? Yes, for victuals only.
Do we look at sea with hope? Yes, that we may escape it. At the sky alone (though questioned with the doubts of sunshine, or scattered with uncertain stars), at the sky alone we look with pure hope and with memory.
Hence it always hurt my feelings when I got into that bucket, with my small-clothes turned up over, and a kerchief round my hat. But knowing that my purpose was sound, and my motives pure, I let the sky grow to a little blue hole, and then to nothing over me. At the bottom Master Carfax met me, being captain of the mine, and desirous to know my business. He wore a loose sack round his shoulders, and his beard was two feet long.
'My business is to speak with you,' I answered rather sternly; for this man, who was nothing more than Uncle Reuben's servant, had carried things too far with me, showing no respect whatever; and though I did not care for much, I liked to receive a little, even in my early days.
'Coom into the muck-hole, then,' was his gracious answer; and he led me into a filthy cell, where the miners changed their jackets.
'Simon Carfax, I began, with a manner to discourage him; 'I fear you are a shallow fellow, and not worth my trouble.'
'Then don't take it,' he replied; 'I want no man's trouble.'
'For your sake I would not,' I answered; 'but for your daughter's sake I will; the daughter whom you left to starve so pitifully in the wilderness.'
The man stared at me with his pale gray eyes, whose colour was lost from candle light; and his voice as well as his body shook, while he cried,--'It is a lie, man. No daughter, and no son have I.
Nor was ever child of mine left to starve in the wilderness. You are too big for me to tackle, and that makes you a coward for saying it.' His hands were playing with a pickaxe helve, as if he longed to have me under it.
'Perhaps I have wronged you, Simon,' I answered very softly; for the sweat upon his forehead shone in the smoky torchlight; 'if I have, I crave your pardon. But did you not bring up from Cornwall a little maid named "Gwenny," and supposed to be your daughter?'
'Ay, and she was my daughter, my last and only child of five; and for her I would give this mine, and all the gold will ever come from it.'
'You shall have her, without either mine or gold; if you only prove to me that you did not abandon her.'
'Abandon her! I abandon Gwenny!' He cried with such a rage of scorn, that I at once believed him. 'They told me she was dead, and crushed, and buried in the drift here; and half my heart died with her. The Almighty blast their mining-work, if the scoundrels lied to me!'
'The scoundrels must have lied to you,' I answered, with a spirit fired by his heat of fury: 'the maid is living and with us. Come up; and you shall see her.'
'Rig the bucket,' he shouted out along the echoing gallery; and then he fell against the wall, and through the grimy sack I saw the heaving of his breast, as Ihave seen my opponent's chest, in a long hard bout of wrestling. For my part, I could do no more than hold my tongue and look at him.
Without another word we rose to the level of the moors and mires; neither would Master Carfax speak, as I led him across the barrows. In this he was welcome to his own way, for I do love silence; so little harm can come of it. And though Gwenny was no beauty, her father might be fond of her.
So I put him in the cow-house (not to frighten the little maid), and the folding shutters over him, such as we used at the beestings; and he listened to my voice outside, and held on, and preserved himself. For now he would have scooped the earth, as cattle do at yearning-time, and as meekly and as patiently, to have his child restored to him. Not to make long tale of it--for this thing is beyond me, through want of true experience--I went and fetched his Gwenny forth from the back kitchen, where she was fighting, as usual, with our Betty.
'Come along, you little Vick,' I said, for so we called her; 'I have a message to you, Gwenny, from the Lord in heaven.'
'Don't 'ee talk about He,' she answered; 'Her have long forgatten me.'
'That He has never done, you stupid. Come, and see who is in the cowhouse.'
Gwenny knew; she knew in a moment. Looking into my eyes, she knew; and hanging back from me to sigh, she knew it even better.
She had not much elegance of emotion, being flat and square all over; but none the less for that her heart came quick, and her words came slowly.
'Oh, Jan, you are too good to cheat me. Is it joke you are putting upon me?'
I answered her with a gaze alone; and she tucked up her clothes and followed me because the road was dirty.
Then I opened the door just wide enough for the child to to go her father, and left those two to have it out, as might be most natural. And they took a long time about it.
Meanwhile I needs must go and tell my Lorna all the matter; and her joy was almost as great as if she herself had found a father. And the wonder of the whole was this, that I got all the credit; of which not a thousandth part belonged by right and reason to me.