"In a third-class, behind--there, it is safe, I see."
His friend at once leaped towards the vehicle pointed out, but Edwin did
not follow, he glanced wildly round in search of another carriage.
"You are hurt--Mr Gurwood, if I mistake not,--lean on me," said Mr
Sharp.
"It's nothing--only a scratch. Ha! that's the carriage, follow me,"
cried Edwin, struggling towards a first-class carriage, which appeared
considerably damaged, though it had not left the rails. He wrenched
open the door, and, springing in, found Captain Lee striving in vain to
lift his daughter, who had fainted. Edwin stooped, raised her in his
arms, and, kicking open the door on the opposite side, leaped down,
followed by the captain. They quickly made their way to the station,
where they found most of the passengers, hurt and unhurt, already
assembled, with two doctors, who chanced to be in the train, attending
to them.
Edwin laid his light burden tenderly on a couch and one of the doctors
immediately attended to her. While he was applying restoratives Mr
Blunt touched Edwin on the elbow and requested him to follow him. With
a feeling of sudden anger Gurwood turned round, but before he could
speak his eye fell on Mrs Tipps, who sat on a bench leaning on her
son's breast, and looking deadly pale but quite composed.
"My dear Mrs Tipps," exclaimed the youth, stepping hastily forward, "I
hope--I trust--"
"Oh, Edwin--thank you, my dear fellow," cried Joseph, grasping his hand
and shaking it. "She is not hurt, thank God--not even a scratch--only a
little shaken. Fetch a glass of water, you'll find one in the
booking-office."
Gurwood ran out to fetch it. As he was returning he met Captain Lee
leading his daughter out of the waiting-room.
"I sincerely hope that your daughter is not hurt," he said, in earnest
tones. "Perhaps a little water might--"
"No, thank you," said the captain somewhat stiffly.
"The carriage is waiting, sir," said a servant in livery, coming up at
the moment and touching his hat.
Emma looked at Edwin for a second, and, with a slight but perplexed
smile of acknowledgment, passed on.
Next moment the carriage drove away, and she was gone. Edwin at the
same time became aware of the fact that the pertinacious Blunt was at
his side. Walking quickly into the waiting-room he presented the glass
of water to Mrs Tipps, but to his surprise that eccentric lady rose
hastily and said,--"Thank you, Mr Gurwood, many thanks, but I am
better. Come, Joseph--let us hasten to our darling Netta. Have you
sent for a fly?"
"There is one waiting, mother--take my arm. Many, many thanks for your
kindness in coming with her, Gurwood," said Tipps. "I can't ask you to
come with me just now, I--"
The rest of his speech was lost in consequence of the impatient old lady
dragging her son away, but what had been heard of it was sufficient to
fill Mr Blunt with surprise and perplexity.
"Well, Blunt," said Mr Superintendent Sharp, coming up at that moment,
"what has brought you here?"
The detective related his story privately to his superior, and remarked
that he began to fear there must be some mistake.
"Yes, there is a mistake of some sort," said Sharp, with a laugh, "for
I've met him frequently at Clatterby station, and know him to be a
friend of Mr Tipps; but you have done your duty, Blunt, so you can now
leave the gentleman to me," saying which he went up to Edwin and entered
into an under-toned conversation with him, during which it might have
been observed that Edwin looked a little confused at times, and Mr
Sharp seemed not a little amused.
"Well, it's all right," he said at last, "we have telegraphed for a
special train to take on the passengers who wish to proceed, and you can
go back, if you choose, in the up train, which is about due. It will be
able to get past in the course of half-an-hour. Fortunately the rails
of the up-line are not damaged and the wreck can soon be cleared."
Just then the dandy with the sleepy eyes and long whiskers sauntered up
to the porter on duty, with an unconcerned and lazy air. He had
received no further injury than a shaking, and therefore felt that he
could afford to affect a cool and not-easy-to-be-ruffled demeanour.
"Aw--po-taw," said he, twirling his watch-key, "w'en d'you expect anotha
twain to take us on?"
"Don't know, sir, probably half-an-hour."
"Aw! Dooced awkwad. My fwend has got the bwidge of his nose damaged,
besides some sort of internal injuway, and won't be able to attend to
business to-night, I fear--dooced awkwad."
"D'you hear that?" whispered Sharp to Gurwood, as the "fwend" in
question--he with the checked trousers--sauntered past holding a
handkerchief to his nose. "I know by the way in which that was said
that there will be something more heard some day hence of our fop in
checks. Just come and stand with me in the doorway of the waiting-room,
and listen to what some of the other passengers are saying."
"Very hard," observed a middle-aged man with a sour countenance, who did
not present the appearance of one who had sustained any injury at all,
"very hard this. I shall miss meeting with a friend, and perhaps lose
doin' a good stroke of business to-night."
"Be thankful you haven't lost your life," said Will Garvie, who
supported the head of his injured mate.
"Mayhap I _have_ lost my life, young man," replied the other sharply.
"Internal injuries from accidents often prove fatal, and don't always
show at first. I've had a severe shake."
Here the sour-faced man shook himself slightly, partly to illustrate and
partly to prove his point.
"You're quite right, sur," remarked an Irishman, who had a bandage tied
round his head, but who did not appear to be much, if at all, the worse
of the accident. "It's a disgrace intirely that the railways should be
allowed to trait us in this fashion. If they'd only go to the trouble
an' expense of havin' proper signals on lines, there would be nothing o'
this kind. And if Government would make a law to have an arm-chair
fitted up in front of every locomotive and a director made to travel
with sich train, we'd hear of fewer accidents. But it's meself 'll come
down on 'em for heavy damages for this."
He pointed to his bandaged head, and nodded with a significant glance at
the company.
A gentleman in a blue travelling-cap, who had hitherto said nothing, and
who turned out to have received severer injuries than any other
passenger, here looked up impatiently, and said--
"It appears to me that there is a great deal of unjust and foolish talk
against railway companies, as if they, any more than other companies,
could avoid accidents. The system of signalling on a great part of this
line is the best that has been discovered up to this date, and it is
being applied to the whole line as fast as circumstances will warrant;
but you can't expect to attain perfection in a day. What would you
have? How can you expect to travel at the rate you do, and yet be as
safe as if you were in one of the old mail-coaches?"
"Right, sir; you're right," cried John Marrot energetically, raising
himself a little from the bench on which he lay, "right in sayin' we
shouldn't ought to expect parfection, but wrong in supposin' the old
mail-coaches was safer. W'y, railways is safer. They won't stand no
comparison. Here 'ave I bin drivin' on this 'ere line for the last
eight year an' only to come to grief three times, an' killed no more
than two people. There ain't a old coach goin', or gone, as could say
as much. An' w'en you come to consider that in them eight years I've
bin goin' more than two-thirds o' the time at an average o' forty mile
an hour--off an' on--all night a'most as well as all day, an' run
thousands and thousands o' miles, besides carryin' millions of
passengers, more or less, it do seem most rediklous to go for to say
that coaches was safer than railways--the revarse bein' the truth. Turn
me round a bit, Bill; so, that'll do. It's the bad leg I come down on,
else I shouldn't have bin so hard-up. Yes, sir, as you truly remark,
railway companies ain't fairly dealt with, by no means."
At this point the attention of the passengers was attracted by a
remarkably fat woman, who had hitherto lain quietly on a couch breathing
in a somewhat stertorous manner. One of the medical men had been so
successful in his attention to her as to bring her to a state of
consciousness. Indeed she had been more or less in this condition for
some time past, but feeling rather comfortable than otherwise, and
dreamy, she had lain still and enjoyed herself. Being roused, however,
to a state of activity by means of smelling-salts, and hearing the
doctor remark that, except a shaking, she appeared to have sustained no
injury, this stout woman deemed it prudent to go off into hysterics, and
began by uttering a yell that would have put to shame a Comanchee
Indian, and did more damage, perhaps, to the nerves of her sensitive
hearers than the accident itself. She followed it up by drumming
heavily on the couch with her heels.
Singularly enough her yell was replied to by the whistle of the up
train, that had been due for some time past. She retorted by a renewed
shriek, and became frantic in her assurances that no power yet
discovered--whether mechanical, moral, or otherwise--could or would,
ever persuade her to set foot again in a railway train! It was of no
use to assure her that no one meant to exert such a power, even if he
possessed it; that she was free to go where she pleased, and whenever
she felt inclined. The more that stout woman was implored to compose
herself, the more she discomposed herself, and everybody else; and the
more she was besought to be calm, the more, a great deal, did she fill
the waiting-room with hysterical shrieks and fiendish laughter, until at
last every one was glad to go out of the place and get into the train
that was waiting to take them back to Clatterby. Then the stout woman
became suddenly calm, and declared to a porter--who must have had a
heart of stone, so indifferent was he to her woes--that she would be,
"glad to proceed to the nearest 'otel if 'e would be good enough to
fetch her a fly."
"H'm!" said Mr Sharp, as he and young Gurwood entered a carriage
together, after having seen John Marrot placed on a pile of rugs on the
floor of a first-class carriage; "there's been work brewin' up for me
to-night."
"How? What do you mean?" asked Edwin.
"I mean that, from various indications which I observed this evening, we
are likely to have some little correspondence with the passengers of the
6:30 p.m. train. However, we're used to it; perhaps we'll get not to
mind it in course of time. We do all that we can to accommodate the
public--fit up our carriages and stations in the best style compatible
with giving our shareholders a small dividend--carry them to and fro
over the land at little short of lightning speed, every day and all day
and night too, for extremely moderate fares, and with excessive safety
and exceeding comfort; enable them to live in the country and do
business in the city, as well as afford facilities for visiting the very
ends of the earth in a few days; not to mention other innumerable
blessings to which we run them, or which we run _to_ them, and yet no
sooner does a rare accident occur (as it _will_ occur in every human
institution, though it occurs less on railways than in most other
institutions) than down comes this ungrateful public upon us with
indignant cries of `disgraceful!' and, in many cases, unreasonable
demands for compensation."
"Such is life," said Gurwood with a smile.
"On the rail," added Mr Superintendent Sharp with a sigh, as the
whistle sounded and the train moved slowly out of the station.