<h2><SPAN name="THE_CONE" id="THE_CONE">THE CONE</SPAN></h2>
<p class="cap"><span class="upper">The</span> night was hot and overcast, the sky red-rimmed
with the lingering sunset of midsummer.
They sat at the open window,
trying to fancy the air was fresher there. The
trees and shrubs of the garden stood stiff and
dark; beyond in the roadway a gas-lamp burnt,
bright orange against the hazy blue of the evening.
Farther were the three lights of the railway signal
against the lowering sky. The man and woman
spoke to one another in low tones.</p>
<p>“He does not suspect?” said the man, a little
nervously.</p>
<p>“Not he,” she said peevishly, as though that too
irritated her. “He thinks of nothing but the works
and the prices of fuel. He has no imagination, no
poetry.”</p>
<p>“None of these men of iron have,” he said sententiously.
“They have no hearts.”</p>
<p>“<em>He</em> has not,” she said. She turned her discontented
face towards the window. The distant
sound of a roaring and rushing drew nearer and
grew in volume; the house quivered; one heard
the metallic rattle of the tender. As the train<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</SPAN></span>
passed, there was a glare of light above the cutting
and a driving tumult of smoke; one, two, three,
four, five, six, seven, eight black oblongs—eight
trucks—passed across the dim grey of the embankment,
and were suddenly extinguished one by one
in the throat of the tunnel, which, with the last,
seemed to swallow down train, smoke, and sound
in one abrupt gulp.</p>
<p>“This country was all fresh and beautiful once,”
he said; “and now—it is Gehenna. Down that
way—nothing but pot-banks and chimneys belching
fire and dust into the face of heaven.... But what
does it matter? An end comes, an end to all this
cruelty.... <em>To-morrow.</em>” He spoke the last word
in a whisper.</p>
<p>“<em>To-morrow</em>,” she said, speaking in a whisper too,
and still staring out of the window.</p>
<p>“Dear!” he said, putting his hand on hers.</p>
<p>She turned with a start, and their eyes searched
one another’s. Hers softened to his gaze. “My
dear one!” she said, and then: “It seems so strange—that
you should have come into my life like this—to
open”— She paused.</p>
<p>“To open?” he said.</p>
<p>“All this wonderful world”—she hesitated, and
spoke still more softly—“this world of <em>love</em> to me.”</p>
<p>Then suddenly the door clicked and closed. They
turned their heads, and he started violently back.
In the shadow of the room stood a great shadowy
figure—silent. They saw the face dimly in the
half-light, with unexpressive dark patches under
the penthouse brows. Every muscle in Raut’s<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</SPAN></span>
body suddenly became tense. When could the
door have opened? What had he heard? Had
he heard all? What had he seen? A tumult of
questions.</p>
<p>The new-comer’s voice came at last, after a pause
that seemed interminable. “Well?” he said.</p>
<p>“I was afraid I had missed you, Horrocks,” said
the man at the window, gripping the window-ledge
with his hand. His voice was unsteady.</p>
<p>The clumsy figure of Horrocks came forward out
of the shadow. He made no answer to Raut’s
remark. For a moment he stood above them.</p>
<p>The woman’s heart was cold within her. “I told
Mr. Raut it was just possible you might come back,”
she said, in a voice that never quivered.</p>
<p>Horrocks, still silent, sat down abruptly in the
chair by her little work-table. His big hands were
clenched; one saw now the fire of his eyes under
the shadow of his brows. He was trying to get his
breath. His eyes went from the woman he had
trusted to the friend he had trusted, and then back
to the woman.</p>
<p>By this time and for the moment all three half
understood one another. Yet none dared say a
word to ease the pent-up things that choked
them.</p>
<p>It was the husband’s voice that broke the silence
at last.</p>
<p>“You wanted to see me?” he said to Raut.</p>
<p>Raut started as he spoke. “I came to see you,”
he said, resolved to lie to the last.</p>
<p>“Yes,” said Horrocks.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>“You promised,” said Raut, “to show me some
fine effects of moonlight and smoke.”</p>
<p>“I promised to show you some fine effects of
moonlight and smoke,” repeated Horrocks in a
colourless voice.</p>
<p>“And I thought I might catch you to-night
before you went down to the works,” proceeded
Raut, “and come with you.”</p>
<p>There was another pause. Did the man mean to
take the thing coolly? Did he after all know?
How long had he been in the room? Yet even at
the moment when they heard the door, their attitudes....
Horrocks glanced at the profile of the
woman, shadowy pallid in the half-light. Then he
glanced at Raut, and seemed to recover himself
suddenly. “Of course,” he said, “I promised to
show you the works under their proper dramatic
conditions. It’s odd how I could have forgotten.”</p>
<p>“If I am troubling you”—began Raut.</p>
<p>Horrocks started again. A new light had suddenly
come into the sultry gloom of his eyes. “Not
in the least,” he said.</p>
<p>“Have you been telling Mr. Raut of all these
contrasts of flame and shadow you think so splendid?”
said the woman, turning now to her husband
for the first time, her confidence creeping back again,
her voice just one half-note too high. “That dreadful
theory of yours that machinery is beautiful, and
everything else in the world ugly. I thought he
would not spare you, Mr. Raut. It’s his great
theory, his one discovery in art.”</p>
<p>“I am slow to make discoveries,” said Horrocks<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</SPAN></span>
grimly, damping her suddenly. “But what I discover....”
He stopped.</p>
<p>“Well?” she said.</p>
<p>“Nothing;” and suddenly he rose to his feet.</p>
<p>“I promised to show you the works,” he said to
Raut, and put his big, clumsy hand on his friend’s
shoulder. “And you are ready to go?”</p>
<p>“Quite,” said Raut, and stood up also.</p>
<p>There was another pause. Each of them peered
through the indistinctness of the dusk at the other
two. Horrock’s hand still rested on Raut’s shoulder.
Raut half fancied still that the incident was trivial
after all. But Mrs. Horrocks knew her husband
better, knew that grim quiet in his voice, and the
confusion in her mind took a vague shape of physical
evil. “Very well,” said Horrocks, and, dropping
his hand, turned towards the door.</p>
<p>“My hat?” Raut looked round in the half-light.</p>
<p>“That’s my work-basket,” said Mrs. Horrocks,
with a gust of hysterical laughter. Their hands
came together on the back of the chair. “Here it
is!” he said. She had an impulse to warn him in
an undertone, but she could not frame a word.
“Don’t go!” and “Beware of him!” struggled in
her mind, and the swift moment passed.</p>
<p>“Got it?” said Horrocks, standing with the door
half open.</p>
<p>Raut stepped towards him. “Better say good-bye
to Mrs. Horrocks,” said the ironmaster, even
more grimly quiet in his tone than before.</p>
<p>Raut started and turned. “Good-evening, Mrs.
Horrocks,” he said, and their hands touched.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>Horrocks held the door open with a ceremonial
politeness unusual in him towards men. Raut went
out, and then, after a wordless look at her, her
husband followed. She stood motionless while
Raut’s light footfall and her husband’s heavy tread,
like bass and treble, passed down the passage
together. The front door slammed heavily. She
went to the window, moving slowly, and stood
watching—leaning forward. The two men appeared
for a moment at the gateway in the road, passed
under the street lamp, and were hidden by the
black masses of the shrubbery. The lamplight fell
for a moment on their faces, showing only unmeaning
pale patches, telling nothing of what she still feared,
and doubted, and craved vainly to know. Then
she sank down into a crouching attitude in the big
arm-chair, her eyes wide open and staring out at
the red lights from the furnaces that flickered in
the sky. An hour after she was still there, her
attitude scarcely changed.</p>
<p>The oppressive stillness of the evening weighed
heavily upon Raut. They went side by side down
the road in silence, and in silence turned into the
cinder-made by-way that presently opened out the
prospect of the valley.</p>
<p>A blue haze, half dust, half mist, touched the
long valley with mystery. Beyond were Hanley
and Etruria, grey and dark masses, outlined thinly
by the rare golden dots of the street lamps, and
here and there a gaslit window, or the yellow glare
of some late-working factory or crowded public-house.
Out of the masses, clear and slender against<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</SPAN></span>
the evening sky, rose a multitude of tall chimneys,
many of them reeking, a few smokeless during a
season of “play.” Here and there a pallid patch
and ghostly stunted beehive shapes showed the
position of a pot-bank, or a wheel, black and sharp
against the hot lower sky, marked some colliery
where they raise the iridescent coal of the place.
Nearer at hand was the broad stretch of railway,
and half invisible trains shunted—a steady puffing
and rumbling, with every run a ringing concussion
and a rhythmic series of impacts, and a passage of
intermittent puffs of white steam across the further
view. And to the left, between the railway and the
dark mass of the low hill beyond, dominating the
whole view, colossal, inky-black, and crowned with
smoke and fitful flames, stood the great cylinders of
the Jeddah Company Blast Furnaces, the central
edifices of the big ironworks of which Horrocks was
the manager. They stood heavy and threatening, full
of an incessant turmoil of flames and seething molten
iron, and about the feet of them rattled the rolling-mills,
and the steam-hammer beat heavily and
splashed the white iron sparks hither and thither.
Even as they looked, a truckful of fuel was shot
into one of the giants, and the red flames gleamed
out, and a confusion of smoke and black dust came
boiling upwards towards the sky.</p>
<p>“Certainly you get some fine effects of colour
with your furnaces,” said Raut, breaking a silence
that had become apprehensive.</p>
<p>Horrocks grunted. He stood with his hands in
his pockets, frowning down at the dim steaming<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</SPAN></span>
railway and the busy ironworks beyond, frowning
as if he were thinking out some knotty problem.</p>
<p>Raut glanced at him and away again. “At
present your moonlight effect is hardly ripe,” he
continued, looking upward; “the moon is still
smothered by the vestiges of daylight.”</p>
<p>Horrocks stared at him with the expression of
a man who has suddenly awakened. “Vestiges of
daylight?... Of course, of course.” He too looked
up at the moon, pale still in the midsummer sky.
“Come along,” he said suddenly, and, gripping Raut’s
arm in his hand, made a move towards the path that
dropped from them to the railway.</p>
<p>Raut hung back. Their eyes met and saw a
thousand things in a moment that their lips came
near to say. Horrocks’s hand tightened and then
relaxed. He let go, and before Raut was aware of it,
they were arm in arm, and walking, one unwillingly
enough, down the path.</p>
<p>“You see the fine effect of the railway signals
towards Burslem,” said Horrocks, suddenly breaking
into loquacity, striding fast and tightening the grip
of his elbow the while. “Little green lights and
red and white lights, all against the haze. You
have an eye for effect, Raut. It’s a fine effect.
And look at those furnaces of mine, how they rise
upon us as we come down the hill. That to the
right is my pet—seventy feet of him. I packed him
myself, and he’s boiled away cheerfully with iron in
his guts for five long years. I’ve a particular fancy
for <em>him</em>. That line of red there—a lovely bit of
warm orange you’d call it, Raut—that’s the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</SPAN></span>
puddlers’ furnaces, and there, in the hot light, three
black figures—did you see the white splash of the
steam-hammer then?—that’s the rolling-mills. Come
along! Clang, clatter, how it goes rattling across
the floor! Sheet tin, Raut,—amazing stuff. Glass
mirrors are not in it when that stuff comes from the
mill. And, squelch!—there goes the hammer again.
Come along!”</p>
<p>He had to stop talking to catch at his breath.
His arm twisted into Raut’s with benumbing tightness.
He had come striding down the black path
towards the railway as though he was possessed.
Raut had not spoken a word, had simply hung
back against Horrocks’s pull with all his strength.</p>
<p>“I say,” he said now, laughing nervously, but
with an undernote of snarl in his voice, “why on
earth are you nipping my arm off, Horrocks, and
dragging me along like this?”</p>
<p>At length Horrocks released him. His manner
changed again. “Nipping your arm off?” he said.
“Sorry. But it’s you taught me the trick of walking
in that friendly way.”</p>
<p>“You haven’t learnt the refinements of it yet
then,” said Raut, laughing artificially again. “By
Jove! I’m black and blue.” Horrocks offered no
apology. They stood now near the bottom of the
hill, close to the fence that bordered the railway.
The ironworks had grown larger and spread out
with their approach. They looked up to the blast
furnaces now instead of down; the further view of
Etruria and Hanley had dropped out of sight with
their descent. Before them, by the stile, rose a<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</SPAN></span>
notice-board, bearing, still dimly visible, the words,
“<span class="smcap">Beware of the trains</span>,” half hidden by splashes
of coaly mud.</p>
<p>“Fine effects,” said Horrocks, waving his arm.
“Here comes a train. The puffs of smoke, the
orange glare, the round eye of light in front of it,
the melodious rattle. Fine effects! But these
furnaces of mine used to be finer, before we shoved
cones in their throats, and saved the gas.”</p>
<p>“How?” said Raut. “Cones?”</p>
<p>“Cones, my man, cones. I’ll show you one
nearer. The flames used to flare out of the open
throats, great—what is it?—pillars of cloud by day,
red and black smoke, and pillars of fire by night.
Now we run it off in pipes, and burn it to heat the
blast, and the top is shut by a cone. You’ll be
interested in that cone.”</p>
<p>“But every now and then,” said Raut, “you get
a burst of fire and smoke up there.”</p>
<p>“The cone’s not fixed, it’s hung by a chain from
a lever, and balanced by an equipoise. You shall
see it nearer. Else, of course, there’d be no way of
getting fuel into the thing. Every now and then
the cone dips, and out comes the flare.”</p>
<p>“I see,” said Raut. He looked over his shoulder.
“The moon gets brighter,” he said.</p>
<p>“Come along,” said Horrocks abruptly, gripping
his shoulder again, and moving him suddenly towards
the railway crossing. And then came one of those
swift incidents, vivid, but so rapid that they leave
one doubtful and reeling. Halfway across, Horrocks’s
hand suddenly clenched upon him like a vice and<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</SPAN></span>
swung him backward and through a half-turn, so that
he looked up the line. And there a chain of lamp-lit
carriage-windows telescoped swiftly as it came
towards them, and the red and yellow lights of an
engine grew larger and larger, rushing down upon
them. As he grasped what this meant, he turned
his face to Horrocks, and pushed with all his strength
against the arm that held him back between the
rails. The struggle did not last a moment. Just
as certain as it was that Horrocks held him there,
so certain was it that he had been violently lugged
out of danger.</p>
<p>“Out of the way,” said Horrocks, with a gasp, as
the train came rattling by, and they stood panting
by the gate into the ironworks.</p>
<p>“I did not see it coming,” said Raut, still, even
in spite of his own apprehensions, trying to keep up
an appearance of ordinary intercourse.</p>
<p>Horrocks answered with a grunt. “The cone,”
he said, and then, as one who recovers himself,
“I thought you did not hear.”</p>
<p>“I didn’t,” said Raut.</p>
<p>“I wouldn’t have had you run over then for
the world,” said Horrocks.</p>
<p>“For a moment I lost my nerve,” said Raut.</p>
<p>Horrocks stood for half a minute, then turned
abruptly towards the ironworks again. “See how
fine these great mounds of mine, these clinker-heaps,
look in the night! That truck yonder, up above
there! Up it goes, and out-tilts the slag. See the
palpitating red stuff go sliding down the slope. As
we get nearer, the heap rises up and cuts the blast<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</SPAN></span>
furnaces. See the quiver up above the big one.
Not that way! This way, between the heaps. That
goes to the puddling furnaces, but I want to show
you the canal first.” He came and took Raut by the
elbow, and so they went along side by side. Raut
answered Horrocks vaguely. What, he asked himself,
had really happened on the line? Was he deluding
himself with his own fancies, or had Horrocks actually
held him back in the way of the train? Had he
just been within an ace of being murdered?</p>
<p>Suppose this slouching, scowling monster <em>did</em>
know anything? For a minute or two then Raut
was really afraid for his life, but the mood passed
as he reasoned with himself. After all, Horrocks
might have heard nothing. At anyrate, he had
pulled him out of the way in time. His odd manner
might be due to the mere vague jealousy he had
shown once before. He was talking now of the
ash-heaps and the canal. “Eigh?” said Horrocks.</p>
<p>“What?” said Raut. “Rather! The haze in
the moonlight. Fine!”</p>
<p>“Our canal,” said Horrocks, stopping suddenly.
“Our canal by moonlight and firelight is an immense
effect. You’ve never seen it? Fancy that!
You’ve spent too many of your evenings philandering
up in Newcastle there. I tell you, for real florid
effects— But you shall see. Boiling water....”</p>
<p>As they came out of the labyrinth of clinker-heaps
and mounds of coal and ore, the noises of the rolling-mill
sprang upon them suddenly, loud, near, and
distinct. Three shadowy workmen went by and
touched their caps to Horrocks. Their faces were<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</SPAN></span>
vague in the darkness. Raut felt a futile impulse
to address them, and before he could frame his words,
they passed into the shadows. Horrocks pointed
to the canal close before them now: a weird-looking
place it seemed, in the blood-red reflections of the
furnaces. The hot water that cooled the tuyères
came into it, some fifty yards up—a tumultuous,
almost boiling affluent, and the steam rose up from
the water in silent white wisps and streaks, wrapping
damply about them, an incessant succession of ghosts
coming up from the black and red eddies, a white
uprising that made the head swim. The shining
black tower of the larger blast-furnace rose overhead
out of the mist, and its tumultuous riot filled their
ears. Raut kept away from the edge of the water,
and watched Horrocks.</p>
<p>“Here it is red,” said Horrocks, “blood-red vapour
as red and hot as sin; but yonder there, where
the moonlight falls on it, and it drives across the
clinker-heaps, it is as white as death.”</p>
<p>Raut turned his head for a moment, and then
came back hastily to his watch on Horrocks.
“Come along to the rolling-mills,” said Horrocks.
The threatening hold was not so evident that time,
and Raut felt a little reassured. But all the same,
what on earth did Horrocks mean about “white as
death” and “red as sin”? Coincidence, perhaps?</p>
<p>They went and stood behind the puddlers for a
little while, and then through the rolling-mills, where
amidst an incessant din the deliberate steam-hammer
beat the juice out of the succulent iron, and black,
half-naked Titans rushed the plastic bars, like hot<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</SPAN></span>
sealing-wax, between the wheels. “Come on,” said
Horrocks in Raut’s ear, and they went and peeped
through the little glass hole behind the tuyères, and
saw the tumbled fire writhing in the pit of the blast-furnace.
It left one eye blinded for a while. Then,
with green and blue patches dancing across the dark,
they went to the lift by which the trucks of ore
and fuel and lime were raised to the top of the
big cylinder.</p>
<p>And out upon the narrow rail that overhung the
furnace, Raut’s doubts came upon him again. Was
it wise to be here? If Horrocks did know—everything!
Do what he would, he could not resist a
violent trembling. Right under foot was a sheer
depth of seventy feet. It was a dangerous place.
They pushed by a truck of fuel to get to the railing
that crowned the place. The reek of the furnace,
a sulphurous vapour streaked with pungent bitterness,
seemed to make the distant hillside of Hanley
quiver. The moon was riding out now from among
a drift of clouds, half-way up the sky above the undulating
wooded outlines of Newcastle. The steaming
canal ran away from below them under an
indistinct bridge, and vanished into the dim haze
of the flat fields towards Burslem.</p>
<p>“That’s the cone I’ve been telling you of,” shouted
Horrocks; “and, below that, sixty feet of fire and
molten metal, with the air of the blast frothing
through it like gas in soda-water.”</p>
<p>Raut gripped the hand-rail tightly, and stared
down at the cone. The heat was intense. The
boiling of the iron and the tumult of the blast made<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</SPAN></span>
a thunderous accompaniment to Horrocks’s voice.
But the thing had to be gone through now. Perhaps,
after all....</p>
<p>“In the middle,” bawled Horrocks, “temperature
near a thousand degrees. If <em>you</em> were dropped into
it ... flash into flame like a pinch of gunpowder
in a candle. Put your hand out and feel the heat
of his breath. Why, even up here I’ve seen the
rain-water boiling off the trucks. And that cone
there. It’s a damned sight too hot for roasting
cakes. The top side of it’s three hundred degrees.”</p>
<p>“Three hundred degrees!” said Raut.</p>
<p>“Three hundred centigrade, mind!” said Horrocks.
“It will boil the blood out of you in no time.”</p>
<p>“Eigh?” said Raut, and turned.</p>
<p>“Boil the blood out of you in.... No, you
don’t!”</p>
<p>“Let me go!” screamed Raut. “Let go my
arm!”</p>
<p>With one hand he clutched at the hand-rail, then
with both. For a moment the two men stood swaying.
Then suddenly, with a violent jerk, Horrocks
had twisted him from his hold. He clutched at
Horrocks and missed, his foot went back into empty
air; in mid-air he twisted himself, and then cheek
and shoulder and knee struck the hot cone together.</p>
<p>He clutched the chain by which the cone hung,
and the thing sank an infinitesimal amount as he
struck it. A circle of glowing red appeared about
him, and a tongue of flame, released from the chaos
within, flickered up towards him. An intense pain
assailed him at the knees, and he could smell the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</SPAN></span>
singeing of his hands. He raised himself to his
feet, and tried to climb up the chain, and then
something struck his head. Black and shining with
the moonlight, the throat of the furnace rose about him.</p>
<p>Horrocks, he saw, stood above him by one of the
trucks of fuel on the rail. The gesticulating figure
was bright and white in the moonlight, and shouting,
“Fizzle, you fool! Fizzle, you hunter of women!
You hot-blooded hound! Boil! boil! boil!”</p>
<p>Suddenly he caught up a handful of coal out of
the truck, and flung it deliberately, lump after lump,
at Raut.</p>
<p>“Horrocks!” cried Raut. “Horrocks!”</p>
<p>He clung crying to the chain, pulling himself up
from the burning of the cone. Each missile Horrocks
flung hit him. His clothes charred and glowed, and
as he struggled the cone dropped, and a rush of hot
suffocating gas whooped out and burned round him
in a swift breath of flame.</p>
<p>His human likeness departed from him. When
the momentary red had passed, Horrocks saw a
charred, blackened figure, its head streaked with
blood, still clutching and fumbling with the chain,
and writhing in agony—a cindery animal, an inhuman,
monstrous creature that began a sobbing
intermittent shriek.</p>
<p>Abruptly, at the sight, the ironmaster’s anger
passed. A deadly sickness came upon him. The
heavy odour of burning flesh came drifting up to his
nostrils. His sanity returned to him.</p>
<p>“God have mercy upon me!” he cried. “O
God! what have I done?”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>He knew the thing below him, save that it still
moved and felt, was already a dead man—that the
blood of the poor wretch must be boiling in his
veins. An intense realisation of that agony came
to his mind, and overcame every other feeling. For
a moment he stood irresolute, and then, turning to
the truck, he hastily tilted its contents upon the
struggling thing that had once been a man. The
mass fell with a thud, and went radiating over the
cone. With the thud the shriek ended, and a
boiling confusion of smoke, dust, and flame came
rushing up towards him. As it passed, he saw the
cone clear again.</p>
<p>Then he staggered back, and stood trembling,
clinging to the rail with both hands. His lips
moved, but no words came to them.</p>
<p>Down below was the sound of voices and running
steps. The clangour of rolling in the shed ceased
abruptly.</p>
<hr class="l1" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</SPAN></span></p>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />