Igot up, stooping under a roof only three feet high, till I came, nearthe end of the ascent, upon the scene of another battle: for in thisgugg about fifteen of the mine-hands had clubbed to wall themselves in,and had done it, and I saw them lie there all by themselves through thebroken cement, with their bare feet, trousers, naked bodies all black,visage all fierce and wild, the grime still streaked with sweat-furrows,the candle in their rimless hats, and, outside, their own 'getting'mattocks and boring-irons to besiege them. From the bottom of this guggI went along a very undulating twin-way, into which, every thirty yardsor so, opened one of those steep putt-ways which they called topples,the twin-ways having plates of about 2-1/2 ft. gauge for the putts fromthe headings, or workings, above to come down upon, full of coal andshale: and all about here, in twin-way and topples, were ends andcorners, and not one had been left without its walling-in, and only onewas then intact, some, I fancied, having been broken open by their ownbuilders at the spur of suffocation, or hunger; and the one intact Ibroke into with a mattock--it was only a thin cake of plaster, butair-tight--and in a space not seven feet long behind it I found the veryill-smelling corpse of a carting-boy, with guss and tugger at his feet,and the pad which protected his head in pushing the putts, and a greatheap of loaves, sardines, and bottled beer against the walls, and fiveor six mice that suddenly pitched screaming through the opening which Imade, greatly startling me, there being of dead mice an extraordinarynumber in all this mine-region. I went back to the standing, and at onepoint in the ground, where there was a windlass and chain, loweredmyself down a 'cut'--a small pit sunk perpendicularly to a lowercoal-stratum, and here, almost thinking I could hear the perpetualrat-tat of notice once exchanged between the putt-boys below and thewindlass-boys above, I proceeded down a dipple to another place like astanding, for in this mine there were six, or perhaps seven, veins: andthere immediately I came upon the acme of the horrible drama of thisTartarus, for all here was not merely crowded, but, at some points, apacked congestion of flesh, giving out a strong smell of the peach,curiously mixed with the stale coal-odour of the pit, for hereventilation must have been very limited; and a large number of thesemasses had been shot down by only three hands, as I found: for throughthree hermetical holes in a plaster-wall, built across a large gugg,projected a little the muzzles of three rifles, which must have gluttedthemselves with slaughter; and when, after a horror of disgust, havingswum as it were through a dead sea, I got to the wall, I peeped from asmall clear space before it through a hole, and made out a man, twoyouths in their teens, two women, three girls, and piles of cartridgesand provisions; the hole had no doubt been broken from within at thespur of suffocation, when the poison must have entered; and Iconjectured that here must be the mine-owner, director, manager, orsomething of that sort, with his family. In another dipple-region, whenI had re-ascended to a higher level, I nearly fainted before I couldretire from the commencement of a region of after-damp, where there hadbeen an explosion, the bodies lying all hairless, devastated, andgrotesque. But I did not desist from searching every other quarter, nomomentary work, for not till near six did I go up by the pumping-shaftrope-ladder.
* * * * *
One day, standing in that wild region of bare rock and sea, calledCornwall Point, whence one can see the crags and postillion wild rockswhere Land's End dashes out into the sea, and all the wild blue seabetween, and not a house in sight, save the chimney of some littlemill-like place peeping between the rocks inland--on that day I finishedwhat I may call my official search.
In going away from that place, walking northward, I came upon a lonelyhouse by the sea, a very beautiful house, made, it was clear, by anartist, of the bungalow type, with an exquisitely sea-side expression. Iwent to it, and found its special feature a spacious loggia or verandah,sheltered by the overhanging upper story. Up to the first floor, theexterior is of stone in rough-hewn blocks with a distinct batter, whileextra protection from weather is afforded by green slating above. Theroofs, of low pitch, are also covered with green slates, and a feelingof strength and repose is heightened by the very long horizontal lines.At one end of the loggia is a hexagonal turret, opening upon the loggia,containing a study or nook. In front, the garden slopes down to thesea, surrounded by an architectural sea-wall; and in this place I livedthree weeks. It was the house of the poet Machen, whose name, when I sawit, I remembered very well, and he had married a very beautiful younggirl of eighteen, obviously Spanish, who lay on the bed in the largebright bedroom to the right of the loggia, on her left exposed breastbeing a baby with an india-rubber comforter in its mouth, both motherand child wonderfully preserved, she still quite lovely, white browunder low curves of black hair. The poet, strange to say, had not diedwith them, but sat in the sitting-room behind the bedroom in a longloose silky-grey jacket, at his desk--actually writing a poem! writing,I could see, furiously fast, the place all littered with the writtenleaves--at three o'clock in the morning, when, as I knew, the cloudovertook this end of Cornwall, and stopped him, and put his head to reston the desk; and the poor little wife must have got sleepy, waiting forit to come, perhaps sleepless for many long nights before, and gone tobed, he perhaps promising to follow in a minute to die with her, butbent upon finishing that poem, and writing feverishly on, running a racewith the cloud, thinking, no doubt, 'just two couplets more,' till thething came, and put his head to rest on the desk, poor carle: and I donot know that I ever encountered aught so complimentary to my race asthis dead poet Machen, and his race with the cloud: for it is clear nowthat the better kind of those poet men did not write to please the vagueinferior tribes who might read them, but to deliver themselves of thedivine warmth that thronged in their bosom; and if all the readers weredead, still they would have written; and for God to read they wrote. Atany rate, I was so pleased with these poor people, that I stayed withthem three weeks, sleeping under blankets on a couch in thedrawing-room, a place full of lovely pictures and faded flowers, likeall the house: for I would not touch the young mother to remove her. Andfinding on Machen's desk a big note-book with soft covers, dappled redand yellow, not yet written in, I took it, and a pencil, and in thelittle turret-nook wrote day after day for hours this account of whathas happened, nearly as far as it has now gone. And I think that I maycontinue to write it, for I find in it a strange consolation, andcompanionship.
* * * * *
In the Severn Valley, somewhere in the plain between Gloucester andCheltenham, in a rather lonely spot, I at that time travelling on atricycle-motor, I spied a curious erection, and went to it. I found itof considerable size, perhaps fifty feet square, and thirty high, madeof pressed bricks, the perfectly flat roof, too, of brick, and not onewindow, and only one door: this door, which I found open, was rimmed allround its slanting rims with india-rubber, and when closed must havebeen perfectly air-tight. Just inside I came upon fifteen English peopleof the dressed class, except two, who were evidently bricklayers: sixladies, and nine men: and at the further end, two more, men, who hadtheir throats cut; along one wall, from end to end were provisions; andI saw a chest full of mixed potassic chlorate and black oxide ofmanganese, with an apparatus for heating it, and producing oxygen--afoolish thing, for additional oxygen could not alter the quantity ofbreathed carbonic anhydride, which is a direct narcotic poison. Whetherthe two with cut throats had sacrificed themselves for the others whenbreathing difficulties commenced, or been killed by the others, was notclear. When they could bear it no longer, they must have finally openedthe door, hoping that by then, after the passage of many days perhaps,the outer air would be harmless, and so met their death. I believe thatthis erection must have been run up by their own hands under thedirection of the two bricklayers, for they could not, I suppose, havegot workmen, except on the condition of the workmen's admission: onwhich condition they would naturally employ as few as possible.
In general, I remarked that the rich must have been more urgent andearnest in seeking escape than the others: for t
he poor realised onlythe near and visible, lived in to-day, and cherished the always-falsenotion that to-morrow would be just like to-day. In an out-patients'waiting-room, for instance, in the Gloucester infirmary, I chanced tosee an astonishing thing: five bodies of poor old women in shawls, cometo have their ailments seen-to on the day of doom; and these, Iconcluded, had been unable to realise that anything would really happento the daily old earth which they knew, and had walked with assuranceon: for if everybody was to die, they must have thought, who wouldpreach in the Cathedral on Sunday evenings?--so they could not havebelieved. In an adjoining room sat an old doctor at a table, thestethoscope-tips still clinging in his ears: a woman with bared chestbefore him; and I thought to myself: 'Well, this old man, too, dieddoing his work....'
In this same infirmary there was one surgical ward--for in a listlessmood I went over it--where the