Chapter 16 Chapter Sixteen On the Swinging Ladder

At the time, the mining works at New-Aberfoyle brought huge profits, and it goes without saying that the engineers James Stahl and Simon Ford - the original discoverers of this rich coalfield - shared in large quantities dividend.Harry also got a share of it.But he didn't really want to leave the cottage.He had taken over from his father as foreman and dutifully oversaw the entire class of miners. Jack Ryan was proud and happy that the entire fortune went to his friend.He, too, made a lot of money.The two often meet, either in the cottage or on underground projects.Jack Ryan was not unaware of Harry's feelings for the girl.Harry didn't admit it.But when his friend shook his head in denial, Jack Ryan laughed.

It should be said that one of Jack Ryan's strongest desires is to accompany Nell on his first ground tour of the county.He wanted to see her wonder, that admiration, in the presence of a nature she had never seen.He wished Harry had dragged him along on this tour.However, the latter had not made such a proposal to him until then - which made him a little uneasy. One day, Jack Ryan walked down a ventilation shaft that connected the lower level of the mine to the surface.He had seized one of the swing ladders, which were raised and lowered by successive oscillations so that one could go up and down effortlessly.Twenty vibrations of the machine sent him down about 150 feet, and as he took his position on the narrow landing, he met Harry, who was going up to the groundworks.

"Is that you?" said Jack, looking at his friend who was lit by the electric lights of the mine. "Yes, Jack," Harry replied, "good to see you. I have a suggestion for you..." "I'm not listening to anything until you tell me about Nell!" cried Jack Ryan. "Nell is in good health, Jack, and well, and in a month or a month and a half, I hope she..." "You're going to want her, Harry?" "You don't know what you're talking about, Jack!" "It's possible, Harry, but I know exactly what I'm going to do?"

"What will you do?" "I'll marry her, I, if you, you won't marry her!" retorted Jack, laughing, "Saint Mungo bless me! But she pleases me, sweet Nell! A young and kind man Well, she never left the mines, just what a miner should marry! She's an orphan, as I was an orphan, and, as long as you don't really miss her, and she'll be your friend, Harry! ..." Harry looked at Jack seriously.He let him talk, not even going to answer him. "What I've said doesn't make you jealous, Harry?" Jack Ryan asked in a more or less serious tone.

"No, Jack," Harry replied calmly. "But if you made Nell your wife, you didn't intend her to be an old maid forever?" "I don't have any intentions," Harry replied. At this moment, a vibration of the ladder caused the two friends to part, one descending and the other ascending the mine.However, they are not separated. "Harry," said Jack, "you think I meant what I just told you about Nell?" "No, Jack," Harry replied. "Then, I'm going to do it!" "You, be serious!" "My good Harry," replied Jack, "I can give a friend a piece of advice."

"Go ahead, Jack." "Well, you listen! You're loving Nell with all the love Nell deserves, Harry! Your father, old Simon, and your mother, old Madge, love her too, as if she were them and, besides, you can quite make her their daughter with very little work!—why don't you marry her?" "You've come so far, Jack," Harry replied, "do you know Nell's feelings?" "Nobody knows, not even you, Harry," "And just because it keeps you from being jealous of me, of anyone else—but the ladder is going down. And..." "Wait a minute, Jack," said Harry, keeping his friend's feet off the landing to put on the moving steps.

"Okay, Harry," cried Jack, laughing, "you're going to keep me up and down." "Listen seriously, Jack," Harry replied, "because, for my part, I mean it seriously." "I'm listening... until the next oscillation, but can't wait any longer!" "Jack," continued Harry, "I will make no secret that I love Nell. My strongest desire is to make her my wife..." "That's a good point." "However, if she remains that way, I seem to have a qualm in my conscience to ask her to make a decision that may be irreversible."

"What are you trying to say, Harry?" "I want to say, Jack, that Nell never left the depths of the coal mines, she was born there, no doubt about it. She knows nothing, she knows nothing of the outside world. She has to learn with her eyes. Probably And learn by heart. Who knows what she'll think when new impressions come into her mind? She doesn't know anything about the world, and I think that, after she knows enough, she finally decides to prefer something quite different from coal mines. To do so would be to deceive her before the kind of life she lived—you know what I mean, Jack?"

"Yes... vaguely... I understand better that you're going to make me miss another oscillation!" "Jack," said Harry in a serious voice, "even if these machines never work again, and even if this landing is going to slip under our feet, you'll have to listen to what I have to say to you!" "Brilliant, Harry. I love hearing people talk to me!—are we saying that before you marry Nell, you're going to send her to some boarding school in Old Chimney?" "No, Jack," replied Harry, "I can quite personally give her the education that will make her my future wife."

"And it's only better, Harry!" "However, beforehand," continued Harry, "I hope, as I told you, that Nell will have a real vision of the outside world. There is a comparison, Jack. If you love a blind girl, And if someone comes to you and says, 'In a month, she'll be cured!' won't you wait until she's cured before marrying her?" "Yes, no doubt, yes!" replied Jack Ryan. "So, Jack, Nell is not blind yet, and before I marry her, I want her to fully understand that it is me and my life that she prefers and accepts. I hope her eyes will finally be open Open it in the sun!"

"Yes, Harry, yes, that's great!" cried Jack Ryan, "I understand you now. When will the operation be? . . . " "In a month's time, Jack," replied Harry, "Nell's eyes are getting used to the light of our electric pan. It's a preparation. In a month's time, I hope, she'll see the earth and its wonders , the sky and its splendor! She will know that nature gives man a horizon farther than that of a dark coal mine! She will see that the bounds of the universe are infinite!" But as Harry let his imagination run wild, Jack Ryan left the landing and jumped onto the oscillating rungs of the machine. "Hi, Jack," Harry called, "where are you?" "Below you," replied the merry companion, laughing, "I descend in the abyss as you rise in infinity!" "Goodbye, Jack," Harry replied, holding on to the swing ladder as he went up. "I want you to remember not to tell anyone what I just said to you!" "Won't tell anyone!" cried Jack Ryan, "but on one condition..." "What conditions?" "That's it. Let me accompany you both when Nell goes to visit the surface of the Earth for the first time!" "Okay, Jack, I promise you," Harry replied. A new pulsation of the apparatus again widened the distance between the two friends.Their voices can only be heard very softly from one side to the other. However, Harry could still hear Jack calling: "And when Nell sees the stars, the moon, and the sun, do you know what she'll like more than these?" "I don't know, Jack!" "I like you more, my friend, it's still you, always you!" Jack Ryan's voice finally dies in a final "Urrah." At the time, Harry spent all his spare time educating Nell.He taught her to read and write—the young girl made rapid progress in all kinds of studies.It can be said that she instinctively "learned".Never has a greater intellect been seen to triumph more quickly over an equally utter ignorance.Everyone around her was amazed. Simon and Madge feel increasingly attached to their adopted child, but her past still worries them.They were well aware of the nature of Harry's feelings for Nell, but that by no means displeased them. It is remembered that the old foreman had said to the engineer when he first visited the old cottage: "Why is my son going to marry? Who's up there for a lad who has to live in a deep mine!" Well, didn't God seem to send him a mate who would only be right for his son?Isn't this like a gift from God to him? The old foreman therefore resolved that, if the wedding took place, there would be a day in Coal City that would mark an epochal festival for the miners of New-Aberfoyle. The old foreman didn't expect him to hit the nail on the head! It must be added that another person was equally eagerly anticipating this union of Nell and Harry.That's engineer James Starr.Of course, the happiness of the two young men, he agreed above all else.But some kind of motivation, from a more holistic concern, may have pushed him in that direction too. It is known that James Starr still has certain concerns, although there is no longer any evidence to confirm these fears.However, what has happened can still happen.Nell was apparently the only one who knew about the mystery of the new coal mine.However, if there might be new dangers lurking in the miners of Aberfoyle in the future, how to prevent these possibilities without even knowing their causes? "Nell hates to say it," James Starr has often repeated, "but, having kept silent until now about all the others, could not have long kept silent about her husband! That danger threatens that we too Threats to Harry. Therefore, a marriage that makes the couple happy and their friends safe is a good marriage, or it should never happen on earth!" In this reasoning, engineer James Starr has some logic.He even told old Simon about this reasoning, and he was not indifferent to it.So, it seems there's nothing against Harry being Nell's husband. And who can oppose it?Harry and Nell are in love.Elderly parents do not want their sons to have other partners.Harry's friends envied his happiness and understood that it was entirely his.A young girl belongs only to herself; as long as she consents in her own heart, she needs no other consent. But if no one seems to be able to thwart the marriage, why, when the electric panels go out during the break, when night falls on the workers' quarters, when the Coal City dwellers return to their cottages, why, from New-Arbor In one of the darkest corners of Foyle, a mysterious man has slipped into the darkness?What instinct led the ghost through certain narrow alleys that were thought impossible?Why did this enigmatic being, whose eyes penetrate the deepest darkness, crawl to the shores of Lake Malcolm?Why had he advanced so obstinately towards Simon Ford's house, and so cautiously, evading all surveillance until then?Why had he come to put his ear to the window, trying to catch a fragment of conversation suddenly through the shutters of the cottage? And, when certain words reached him, why did he raise his fist to threaten the peaceful home?Why, these words finally slipped from his mouth contracted with rage: "Her and him. Never!"