THE ATMOSPHERIC RAILWAY
The engineer Brunel was fond of daring and magnificent schemes, carried
out at other people’s expense. One of these schemes was the construction
of the South Devon Railway, running from Exeter to Plymouth, for some
portion of its way along the coast, breasting the sea, exposed to the
foam of the breaking tide, and worked by atmospheric pressure. Brunel
was an admirer of Prout’s delightful sketches--Prout, the man who taught
the eye of the nineteenth century to observe the picturesque. Brunel,
having other folks’ money to play with, thought himself justified in
providing therewith subjects for sepia and Chinese white studies in the
future. Taking as his model Italian churches, with their campaniles, he
placed engine-houses for the atmospheric pressure at every station,
designed on these models. That they were picturesque no one could deny,
that they were vastly costly the shareholders were well aware.
For a while the atmospheric railway was worked from these Italian
churches, the campaniles of which contained the exhausting pumps. Then
the whole scheme collapsed, when the pumps had completely exhausted the
shareholders’ pockets.
The system was ingenious, but it should have been tried on a small scale
before operations were carried on upon one that was large, and in a
manner that was lavish.
The system was this. A tube was laid between the rails, and the
carriages ran connected with a piston in the tube. The air was pumped
out before the piston, and the pressure of the atmosphere behind was
expected to propel piston and carriages attached to it. The principle
was that upon which we imbibe sherry-cobbler.
But there was a difficulty, and that was insurmountable. Had the
carriages been within the tube they would have swung along readily
enough. But they were without and yet connected with the piston within;
and it was precisely over this connection that the system broke down. A
complex and ingenious scheme was adopted for making the tubes air-tight
in spite of the long slit through which slid the coulter that connected
the carriages with the piston. The train carried with it a sort of hot
flat-iron which it passed over the leather flap bedded in tallow that
closed the slit.
But the device was too intricate and too open to disturbance by accident
to be successful. Trains ran spasmodically. The coulter, raising the
flap, let the air rush into the artificially formed vacuum before it,
and so act as a break on the propelling force of the air behind. The
flap became displaced. The tallow under a hot sun melted away. The
trains when they started were attended on their course by a fizzing
noise as of a rocket about to explode, very trying to the nerves. They
had a habit of sulking and stopping in the midst of tunnels, or of
refusing to start from stations when expected to start. By no means
infrequently they arrived at their destination propelled by panting
passengers, and the only exhaustion of atmosphere of which anything
could be spoken, was that of the lungs of those who had paid for their
tickets to be carried along the line, not to shove along the carriages
with their shoulders.
At the time when our story opens, this unfortunate venture, so ruinous
to many speculators, was in process of demonstrating how unworthy it was
of the Italian churches and campaniles that had been erected for its
use.
After a while steam locomotives were brought to the stations and held in
readiness to fly to the aid of broken-down atmospheric trains. A little
later, and the atmospheric engines and tubes were broken up and sold for
old iron, and the ecclesiastical edifices that had contained the pumps
were let to whoever would rent them, as cider stores or depôts of guano
and dissolved bone.
John Pooke, only son of the wealthiest yeoman in the parish of
Coombe-in-Teignhead, had been put across the estuary that morning so
that he might go by train to Exeter, to be fitted for a suit and
suitably hatted for the approaching marriage of his sister. In two or
three parishes beside the Teign the old yeoman has held his own from
before Tudor days. From century to century the land has passed from
father to son. These yeomen families have never extended their estates,
and have been careful not to diminish them. The younger sons and the
daughters have gone into trade or into service, and have looked with as
much pride to the ancestral farms as can any noble family to its
baronial hall. These yeomen are without pretence, do not affect to be
what they are not, knowing what they are, and content, and more than
content, therewith. There are occasions in which they do make some
display, and these are funerals and weddings.
It was considered at the family gathering of the Pooke clan that, at the
approaching solemnity of the marriage of the daughter of the house, no
village tailor, nay, not even one of the town of Teignmouth, could do
justice to the occasion, and that it would be advisable for the son and
heir to seek the superior skill of an Exeter tradesman to invest his
body in well-fitting and fashionable garments, and an Exeter hatter to
provide him with a hat as worn by the leaders of fashion.
John Pooke had been ferried over in the morning, and had requested that
the boat might be in waiting for him on his return in the evening by the
last train.
Kate had often been sent across on previous occasions. She could handle
an oar. The tide was still flowing, and there was absolutely no danger
to be anticipated. At no time was there risk, though there might be
inconvenience, and the latter only when the tide was ebbing and the
mud-banks were becoming exposed. To be stranded on one of these would
entail a tedious waiting in mid-river till return of tide, and with the
flow the refloating of the ferry-boat.
Kate rowed leisurely across the mouth of the Teign. The evening was
closing in. The sun had set behind the green hills to the west; a cold
wind blew down the river, sometimes whistling, sometimes with a sob in
its breath, and as it swept the tide it crisped it into wavelets.
Now that the sunlight was no longer on or in the water, the latter had
lost its exquisite greenness, and had assumed a sombre tint. The time of
the year was March; no buds had burst on the trees. The larch
plantations were hesitating, putting forth, indeed, their little
blood-purple “strawberry baskets”--their marvellous flower, and ready at
the first warm shower to flush into emerald green. The limes, the elms,
were red at every spray with rising sap. The meadows, however, were of
an intense brilliancy of verdure.
At the mouth of the Teign rose the Ness, a very Bardolph’s nose for
rubicundity, and the inflowing tide was warm in colour in places where
it flowed over a loosely compacted bank of sand or mud. Thus the river
was as a piece of shot silk of two tinctures.
Kate was uncertain whether the train had passed or not. The atmospheric
railway had none of the bluster of the steam locomotive. No puffs of
vapour like white cotton wool rose in the air to forewarn of a coming
train, or, after one had passed, to lie along the course and tell for
five minutes that the train had gone by. It uttered no whistle, its
breaks produced no jar. Its lungs did not pant and roar. It slid along
almost without a sound.
Consequently, Kate, knowing that the ferry-boat had been despatched
late, almost expected to find John Pooke stamping and growling on the
hard. When, however, she ran the boat aground at the landing-place, she
saw that no one was there in expectation.
The girl fastened the little vessel to a ring and went up the river bank
in quest of someone who could inform her about the train.
She speedily encountered a labourer with boots red in dust. He, however,
could say nothing relative to the down train. After leaving
work--“tilling ’taters”--he had been into the public-house at Bishop’s
Teignton for his half-pint of ale, to wash the red dust down the redder
lane; the train might have gone by while he was refreshing himself; but
there was also a probability that it had not. Continuing her inquiries,
Kate met a woman who assured her that the train had passed. She had seen
it, whilst hanging out some clothes; she had been near enough to
distinguish the passengers in the carriages.
Whilst this woman was communicating information, another came up who was
equally positive in her asseverations that the train had not gone by.
She had been looking out for it, so as to set her clock by it. A lively
altercation ensued between the women, which developed into
personalities; their voices rose in pitch and in volume of tone. A third
came up and intervened. A train had indeed passed, but it was an up and
not a down train. Thus the first woman was right--she had seen the train
and observed the passengers; and the second was right--the down train by
which she had set her clock had not gone by. Far from being satisfied at
this solution of the difficulty, both women who had been in controversy
turned in combined attack upon the third woman who would have reconciled
them. What right had she to interfere? who had asked for her opinion?
Everyone knew about her--and then ensued personalities. The third woman,
hard pressed, covered with abuse, sought escape by turning upon Kate and
rating her for having asked impertinent questions. The other two at once
joined in, and Kate was driven to fly the combined torrent of abuse and
take refuge in her boat. There she could sit and wait the arrival of the
fare, and be undisturbed save by her own uneasy thoughts. The wind was
rising. It puffed down the river, then held its breath, filled its
bellows and puffed more fiercely, more ominously. The evening sky was
clouding over, but the clouds were chopped, and threatened a stormy
night.
Kate had brought her shawl, and she now wrapped it about her, as she sat
waiting in the boat. When the glow passed away, caused by her exertion
in rowing and her run from the exasperated women, it left her cold and
shivering.
The tide was beyond the full, and was beginning to ebb. This was
vexatious. Unless John Pooke arrived speedily, there would be difficulty
in traversing the Teign, for the water would warp out rapidly with the
wind driving it seawards.
She must exercise patience and wait a little longer. What should she do
if the young man did not arrive before the lapse of half an hour? this
was a contingency for which she must be prepared. Her aunt Zerah had
bidden her remain till Pooke appeared. But if he did not appear before
the tide was out, then she would be unable to cross that evening. It
would be eminently unsatisfactory to be benighted, and to have to seek
shelter on the Bishop’s Teignton side. She had no friends there, and to
be rambling about with Pooke in quest of some place where both might be
accommodated was what she could not think of. To await the turn of the
tide in her boat was a prospect only slightly less agreeable. The wind
was from the east, it cut like a knife. She was ill provided for
exposure to it in the night. The sun had set and the light was ebbing
out of the sky as fast as the water was draining out of the estuary.
There was no moon. There would be little starlight, for the clouds as
they advanced became compacted into a leaden canopy that obscured the
constellations.
Kate looked across the water to Coombe Cellars. Already a light had been
kindled there, and from the window it formed a glittering line on the
running tide.
She gazed wistfully down the river. All was dark there. She could hear
the murmur of the sea behind the Den, a bar of shingle and sand that
more than half closed the mouth of the river.
Kate leaned over the side of the boat. The water gulped and curled away;
in a quarter of an hour it would be gone. She thrust her boat farther
out, as already it was being left high and dry.
She would allow Pooke five minutes longer, ten minutes at the outside;
yet she had no watch by which to measure the time. She shrank from being
benighted on that side of the river. She shrank from the alternative of
a scolding from her aunt should she come across without Pooke.
What if John Pooke were to arrive at the landing-place one minute after
she had departed? What if she waited for John Pooke one minute over the
moment at which it was possible to cross? Whilst thus tossed in doubt,
the train glided by. There were lights in the carriages, a strong light
in the driving carriage cast forward along the rails. The train did not
travel fast--at a rate not above thirty miles an hour.
Kate heaved a sigh. “At last! Pooke will be here directly. Oh dear! I
hope not too late.”
The atmospheric train slipped away into darkness with very little noise,
and then the only sound Kate heard was that of the lapping of the water
against the sides of the boat, like that produced by a dog drinking.