The Silence

In a car of the Naples express a mining expert was diving into a bag for

papers. The strong sunlight showed the fine wrinkles on his brown face

and the shabbiness of his short, rough beard. A newspaper cutting slipped

from his fingers; he picked it up, thinking: 'How the dickens did that get

in here?' It was from a colonial print of three years back; and he sat

staring, as if in that forlorn slip of yellow paper he had encountered some

ghost from his past.

These were the words he read: "We hope that the setback to civilisation,

the check to commerce and development, in this promising centre of our

colony may be but temporary; and that capital may again come to the

rescue. Where one man was successful, others should surely not fail? We

are convinced that it only needs...." And the last words: "For what can be

sadder than to see the forest spreading its lengthening shadows, like

symbols of defeat, over the untenanted dwellings of men; and where was

once the merry chatter of human voices, to pass by in the silence...."

On an afternoon, thirteen years before, he had been in the city of London,

at one of those emporiums where mining experts perch, before fresh

flights, like sea-gulls on some favourite rock. A clerk said to him: "Mr.

Scorrier, they are asking for you downstairs--Mr. Hemmings of the New

Colliery Company."

Scorrier took up the speaking tube. "Is that you, Mr. Scorrier? I hope you

are very well, sir, I am--Hemmings--I am--coming up."

In two minutes he appeared, Christopher Hemmings, secretary of the

New Colliery Company, known in the City-behind his back--as "Down-bythe-starn" Hemmings. He grasped Scorrier's hand--the gesture was

deferential, yet distinguished. Too handsome, too capable, too important,

his figure, the cut of his iron-grey beard, and his intrusively fine eyes, conveyed a continual courteous invitation to inspect their infallibilities. He

stood, like a City "Atlas," with his legs apart, his coat-tails gathered in his

hands, a whole globe of financial matters deftly balanced on his nose.

"Look at me!" he seemed to say. "It's heavy, but how easily I carry it. Not

the man to let it down, Sir!"

"I hope I see you well, Mr. Scorrier," he began. "I have come round about

our mine. There is a question of a fresh field being opened up--between

ourselves, not before it's wanted. I find it difficult to get my Board to take

a comprehensive view. In short, the question is: Are you prepared to go

out for us, and report on it? The fees will be all right." His left eye closed.

"Things have been very--er--dicky; we are going to change our

superintendent. I have got little Pippin--you know little Pippin?"

Scorrier murmured, with a feeling of vague resentment: "Oh yes. He's not

a mining man!"

Hemmings replied: "We think that he will do." 'Do you?' thought Scorrier;

'that's good of you!'

He had not altogether shaken off a worship he had felt for Pippin--"King"

Pippin he was always called, when they had been boys at the Camborne

Grammar-school. "King" Pippin! the boy with the bright colour, very

bright hair, bright, subtle, elusive eyes, broad shoulders, little stoop in the

neck, and a way of moving it quickly like a bird; the boy who was always

at the top of everything, and held his head as if looking for something

further to be the top of. He remembered how one day "King" Pippin had

said to him in his soft way, "Young Scorrie, I'll do your sums for you"; and

in answer to his dubious, "Is that all right?" had replied, "Of course--I

don't want you to get behind that beast Blake, he's not a Cornishman"

(the beast Blake was an Irishman not yet twelve). He remembered, too,

an occasion when "King" Pippin with two other boys fought six louts and

got a licking, and how Pippin sat for half an hour afterwards, all bloody,

his head in his hands, rocking to and fro, and weeping tears of

mortification; and how the next day he had sneaked off by himself, and,

attacking the same gang, got frightfully mauled a second time.

Thinking of these things he answered curtly: "When shall I start?"