George Fenn - The White Virgin

“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.