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Page 27
"Did I go to church? No, you don't catch me! If I slave all the week,
I'll do what I please on Sunday."
"Hush-sh! There's the boss looking over here!"
"Kathleen Donnavon, be still with your ghost-stories. There's one thing
in the world I never will hear about, and that's dead people."
"Del," said Sene, "I think to-morrow--"
She stopped. Something strange had happened to her frame; it jarred,
buzzed, snapped; the threads untwisted and flew out of place.
"Curious!" she said, and looked up.
Looked up to see her overseer turn wildly, clap his hands to his head,
and fall; to hear a shriek from Del that froze her blood; to see the
solid ceiling gape above her; to see the walls and windows stagger; to
see iron pillars reel, and vast machinery throw up its helpless, giant
arms, and a tangle of human faces blanch and writhe!
She sprang as the floor sunk. As pillar after pillar gave way, she
bounded up an inclined plane, with the gulf yawning after her. It gained
upon her, leaped at her, caught her; beyond were the stairs and an open
door; she threw out her arms, and struggled on with hands and knees,
tripped in the gearing, and saw, as she fell, a square, oaken beam above
her yield and crash; it was of a fresh red color; she dimly wondered
why,--as she felt her hands-slip, her knees slide, support, time,
place, and reason, go utterly out.
"_At ten minutes before five, on Tuesday, the tenth of January, the
Pemberton Mill, all hands being at the time on duty, fell to the
ground_."
So the record flashed over the telegraph wires, sprang into large type
in the newspapers, passed from lip to lip, a nine days' wonder, gave
place to the successful candidate, and the muttering South, and was
forgotten.
Who shall say what it was to the seven hundred and fifty souls who were
buried in the ruins? What to the eighty-eight who died that death of
exquisite agony? What to the wrecks of men and women who endure unto
this day a life that is worse than death? What to that architect and
engineer who, when the fatal pillars were first delivered to them for
inspection, had found one broken under their eyes, yet accepted the
contract, and built with them a mill whose thin walls and wide,
unsupported stretches might have tottered over massive columns and on
flawless ore?
One that we love may go upon battle-ground, and we are ready for the
worst: we have said our good-bys; our hearts wait and pray: it is his
life, not his death, which is the surprise. But that he should go out to
his safe, daily, commonplace occupations, unnoticed and
uncaressed,--scolded a little, perhaps, because he leaves the door open,
and tells us how cross we are this morning; and they bring him up the
steps by and by, a mangled mass of death and horror,--that is hard.
Old Martyn, working at Meg Match's shoes,--she was never to wear those
shoes, poor Meg!--heard, at ten minutes before five, what he thought to
be the rumble of an earthquake under his very feet, and stood with bated
breath, waiting for the crash. As nothing further appeared to happen, he
took his stick and limped out into the street.
A vast crowd surged through it from end to end. Women with white lips
were counting the mills,--Pacific, Atlantic, Washington,--Pemberton?
Where was Pemberton?
Where Pemberton had winked its many eyes last night, and hummed with its
iron lips this noon, a cloud of dust, black, silent, horrible, puffed a
hundred feet into the air.
Asenath opened her eyes after a time. Beautiful green and purple lights
had been dancing about her, but she had had no thoughts. It occurred to
her now that she must have been struck upon the head. The church-clocks
were striking eight. A bonfire which had been built at, a distance, to
light the citizens in the work of rescue, cast a little gleam in through
the _d�bris_ across her two hands, which lay clasped together at her
side. One of her fingers, she saw, was gone; it was the finger which
held Dick's little engagement ring. The red beam lay across her
forehead, and drops dripped from it upon her eyes. Her feet, still
tangled in the gearing which had tripped her, were buried beneath a pile
of bricks.
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