Charles Reade was born at Ipsden, England, June 8, 1814, and
died in London, April 11, 1884. After leaving Oxford in 1835
he studied law and was called to the bar in 1843. Soon
afterward he resolved to devote himself to literature. He
published his first novel in 1852. This was "Peg
Woffington," and its success was so unqualified that if the
author had any doubts concerning his wisdom in changing his
profession they were soon dispelled. Among his subsequent
novels were "It Is Never Too Late to Mend," "The Cloister
and the Hearth," "Hard Cash," "Foul Play," "Put Yourself in
His Place," and "A Terrible Temptation."
Most of the novels of Charles Reade had to do with certain
social and legal abuses then existing in England, and they
did much to effect a pronounced improvement in the
conditions attacked.
"The Box Tunnel," which appears herewith, is a short story
written in 1857. It is an excellent specimen of that
peculiar quality of humor for which its gifted author was
famous.
The 10.15 train glided from Paddington, May 7, 1847. In the left
compartment of a certain first-class carriage were four passengers; of
these, two were worth description. The lady had a smooth, white, delicate
brow, strongly marked eyebrows, long lashes, eyes that seemed to change
color, and a good-sized, delicious mouth, with teeth as white as milk. A
man could not see her nose for her eyes and mouth; her own sex could and
would have told us some nonsense about it. She wore an unpretending
grayish dress buttoned to the throat with lozenge-shaped buttons, and a
Scottish shawl that agreeably evaded color. She was like a duck, so tight
her plain feathers fitted her, and there she sat, smooth, snug, and
delicious, with a book in her hand, and the soupcon of her wrist just
visible as she held it. Her opposite neighbor was what I call a good style
of man--the more to his credit, since he belonged to a corporation that
frequently turns out the worst imaginable style of young men. He was a
cavalry officer, aged twenty-five. He had a mustache, but not a very
repulsive one; not one of those subnasal pigtails on which soup is
suspended like dew on a shrub; it was short, thick, and black as a coal.
His teeth had not yet been turned by tobacco-smoke to the color of juice,
his clothes did not stick to nor hang to him, he had an engaging smile,
and, what I liked the dog for, his vanity, which was inordinate, was in
its proper place, his heart, not in his face, jostling mine and other
people's who have none--in a word, he was what one oftener hears of than
meets--a young gentleman.
He was conversing in an animated whisper with a companion, a fellow
officer; they were talking about what it is far better not to--women. Our
friend clearly did not wish to be overheard; for he cast ever and anon a
furtive glance at his fair _vis-a-vis_ and lowered his voice. She seemed
completely absorbed in her book, and that reassured him.
At last the two soldiers came down to a whisper (the truth must be told),
the one who got down at Slough, and was lost to posterity, bet ten pounds
to three, that he who was going down with us to Bath and immortality would
not kiss either of the ladies opposite upon the road. "Done, done!"
Now I am sorry a man I have hitherto praised should have lent himself,
even in a whisper, to such a speculation; "but nobody is wise at all
hours," not even when the clock is striking five and twenty; and you are
to consider his profession, his good looks, and the temptation--ten to
three.
After Slough the party was reduced to three; at Twylford one lady dropped
her handkerchief; Captain Dolignan fell on it like a lamb; two or three
words were interchanged on this occasion.
At Reading the Marlborough of our tale made one of the safe investments of
that day, he bought a _Times_ and _Punch_; the latter full of steel-pen
thrusts and woodcuts. Valor and beauty deigned to laugh at some inflamed
humbug or other punctured by _Punch_. Now laughing together thaws our
human ice; long before Swindon it was a talking match--at Swindon who so
devoted as Captain Dolignan?--he handed them out--he souped them--he
tough-chickened them--he brandied and cochinealed one, and brandied and
burnt-sugared the other; on their return to the carriage, one lady passed
into the inner compartment to inspect a certain gentleman's seat on that
side of the line.
Reader, had it been you or I, the beauty would have been the deserter, the
average one would have stayed with us till all was blue, ourselves
included; not more surely does our slice of bread and butter, when it
escapes from our hand, revolve it ever so often, alight face downward on
the carpet.
But this was a bit of a fop, Adonis, dragoon--so Venus remained
_tete-a-tete_ with him. You have seen a dog meet an unknown female of the
species; how handsome, how impresse, how expressive he becomes; such was
Dolignan after Swindon, and to do the dog justice, he got handsome and
handsomer; and you have seen a cat conscious of approaching cream--such
was Miss Haythorn; she became demurer and demurer; presently our captain
looked out of the window and laughed; this elicited an inquiring look from
Miss Haythorn.
"We are only a mile from the Box Tunnel."
"Do you always laugh a mile from the Box Tunnel?" said the lady.
"Invariably."
"What for?"
"Why, hem! It is a gentleman's joke."
Captain Dolignan then recounted to Miss Haythorn the following:
"A lady and her husband sat together going through the Box Tunnel--there
was one gentleman opposite; it was pitch dark; after the tunnel the lady
said, 'George, how absurd of you to salute me going through the tunnel.'
'I did no such thing.' 'You didn't?' 'No! Why?' 'Because somehow I thought
you did!'"
Here Captain Dolignan laughed and endeavored to lead his companion to
laugh, but it was not to be done. The train entered the tunnel.
Miss Haythorn. Ah!
Dolignan. What is the matter?
Miss Haythorn. I am frightened.
Dolignan (moving to her side). Pray do not be alarmed; I am near you.
Miss Haythorn. You are near me--very near me, indeed, Captain Dolignan.
Dolignan. You know my name?
Miss Haythorn. I heard you mention it. I wish we were out of this dark
place.
Dolignan. I could be content to spend hours here, reassuring you, my dear
lady.
Miss Haythorn. Nonsense!
Dolignan. Pweep! (Grave reader, do not put your lips to the next pretty
creature you meet or you will understand what this means.)
Miss Haythorn. Eh! Eh!
Friend. What is the matter?
Miss Haythorn. Open the door! Open the door!
There was a sound of hurried whispers, the door was shut and the blind
pulled down with hostile sharpness.
If any critic falls on me for putting inarticulate sounds in a dialogue as
above, I answer with all the insolence I can command at present, "Hit boys
as big as yourself"; bigger perhaps, such as Sophocles, Euripides, and
Aristophanes; they began it, and I learned it of them, sore against my
will.
Miss Haythorn's scream lost most of its effect because the engine whistled
forty thousand murders at the same moment; and fictitious grief makes
itself heard when real cannot.
Between the tunnel and Bath our young friend had time to ask himself
whether his conduct had been marked by that delicate reserve which is
supposed to distinguish the perfect gentleman.
With a long face, real or feigned, he held open the door; his late friends
attempted to escape on the other side--impossible! they must pass him. She
whom he had insulted (Latin for kissed) deposited somewhere at his feet a
look of gentle, blushing reproach; the other, whom he had not insulted,
darted red-hot daggers at him from her eyes; and so they parted.
It was perhaps fortunate for Dolignan that he had the grace to be a friend
to Major Hoskyns of his regiment, a veteran laughed at by the youngsters,
for the major was too apt to look coldly upon billiard-balls and cigars;
he had seen cannon-balls and linstocks. He had also, to tell the truth,
swallowed a good bit of the mess-room poker, which made it as impossible
for Major Hoskyns to descend to an ungentlemanlike word or action as to
brush his own trousers below the knee.
Captain Dolignan told this gentleman his story in gleeful accents; but
Major Hoskyns heard him coldly, and as coldly answered that he had known a
man to lose his life for the same thing.
"That is nothing," continued the major, "but unfortunately he deserved to
lose it."
At this blood mounted to the younger man's temples; and his senior added,
"I mean to say he was thirty-five; you, I presume, are twenty-one!"
"Twenty-five."
"That is much the same thing; will you be advised by me?"
"If you will advise me."
"Speak to no one of this, and send White the three pounds, that he may
think you have lost the bet."
"That is hard, when I won it."
"Do it for all that, sir."
Let the disbelievers in human perfectibility know that this dragoon
capable of a blush did this virtuous action, albeit with violent
reluctance; and this was his first damper. A week after these events he
was at a ball. He was in that state of factious discontent which belongs
to us amiable English. He was looking in vain for a lady, equal in
personal attraction to the idea he had formed of George Dolignan as a
man, when suddenly there glided past him a most delightful vision! a lady
whose beauty and symmetry took him by the eyes--another look: "It can't
be! Yes, it is!" Miss Haythorn! (not that he knew her name) but what an
apotheosis!
The duck had become a peahen--radiant, dazzling, she looked twice as
beautiful and almost twice as large as before. He lost sight of her. He
found her again. She was so lovely she made him ill--and he, alone, must
not dance with her, speak to her. If he had been content to begin her
acquaintance the usual way, it might have ended in kissing: it must end in
nothing.
As she danced, sparks of beauty fell from her on all around, but him--she
did not see him; it was clear she never would see him--one gentleman was
particularly assiduous; she smiled on his assiduity; he was ugly, but she
smiled on him. Dolignan was surprised at his success, his ill taste, his
ugliness, his impertinence. Dolignan at last found himself injured; "who
was this man? and what right had he to go on so? He never kissed her, I
suppose," said Dolle. Dolignan could not prove it, but he felt that
somehow the rights of property were invaded.
He went home and dreamed of Miss Haythorn, and hated all the ugly
successful. He spent a fortnight trying to find out who his beauty was--he
never could encounter her again. At last he heard of her in this way: A
lawyer's clerk paid him a little visit and commenced a little action
against him in the name of Miss Haythorn, for insulting her in a railway
train.
The young gentleman was shocked; endeavored to soften the lawyer's clerk;
that machine did not thoroughly comprehend the meaning of the term. The
lady's name, however, was at last revealed by this untoward incident; from
her name to her address was but a short step; and the same day our
crestfallen hero lay in wait at her door, and many a succeeding day,
without effect.
But one fine afternoon she issued forth quite naturally, as if she did it
every day, and walked briskly on the parade. Dolignan did the same, met
and passed her many times on the parade, and searched for pity in her
eyes, but found neither look nor recognition, nor any other sentiment; for
all this she walked and walked, till all the other promenaders were tired
and gone--then her culprit summoned resolution, and taking off his hat,
with a voice for the first time tremulous, besought permission to address
her.
She stopped, blushed, and neither acknowledged nor disowned his
acquaintance. He blushed, stammered out how ashamed he was, how he
deserved to be punished, how he was punished, how little she knew how
unhappy he was, and concluded by begging her not to let all the world know
the disgrace of a man who was already mortified enough by the loss of her
acquaintance.
She asked an explanation; he told her of the action that had been
commenced in her name; she gently shrugged her shoulders and said, "How
stupid they are!" Emboldened by this, he begged to know whether or not a
life of distant, unpretending devotion would, after a lapse of years,
erase the memory of his madness--his crime!
"She did not know!"
"She must now bid him adieu, as she had preparations to make for a ball in
the Crescent, where everybody was to be."
They parted, and Dolignan determined to be at the ball, where everybody
was to be. He was there, and after some time he obtained an introduction
to Miss Haythorn, and he danced with her. Her manner was gracious. With
the wonderful tact of her sex, she seemed to have commenced the
acquaintance that evening.
That night, for the first time, Dolignan was in love. I will spare the
reader all a lover's arts, by which he succeeded in dining where she
dined, in dancing where she danced, in overtaking her by accident when she
rode. His devotion followed her to church, where the dragoon was rewarded
by learning there is a world where they neither polk nor smoke--the two
capital abominations of this one.
He made an acquaintance with her uncle, who liked him, and he saw at last
with joy that her eye loved to dwell upon him, when she thought he did
not observe her. It was three months after the Box Tunnel that Captain
Dolignan called one day upon Captain Haythorn, R.N., whom he had met twice
in his life, and slightly propitiated by violently listening to a
cutting-out expedition; he called, and in the usual way asked permission
to pay his addresses to his daughter.
The worthy captain straightway began doing quarter-deck, when suddenly he
was summoned from the apartment by a mysterious message. On his return he
announced, with a total change of voice, that "It was all right, and his
visitor might run alongside as soon as he chose." My reader has divined
the truth; this nautical commander was in complete and happy subjugation
to his daughter, our heroine.
As he was taking leave, Dolignan saw his divinity glide into the
drawing-room. He followed her, observed a sweet consciousness deepen into
confusion--she tried to laugh and cried instead, and then she smiled
again; when he kissed her hand at the door it was "George" and "Marian"
instead of "Captain" this and "Miss" the other.
A reasonable time after this (for my tale is merciful and skips
formalities and torturing delays), these two were very happy; they were
once more upon the railroad, going to enjoy their honeymoon all by
themselves. Marian Dolignan was dressed just as before--duck-like and
delicious; all bright except her clothes; but George sat beside her this
time instead of opposite; and she drank him in gently from her long
eyelashes.
"Marian," said George, "married people should tell each other all. Will
you ever forgive me if I own to you; no----"
"Yes! Yes!"
"Well, then, you remember the Box Tunnel." (This was the first allusion he
had ventured to it.) "I am ashamed to say I had three pounds to ten with
White I would kiss one of you two ladies," and George, pathetic
externally, chuckled within.
"I know that, George; I overheard you," was the demure reply.
"Oh! You overheard me! Impossible."
"And did you not hear me whisper to my companion? I made a bet with her."
"You made a bet! how singular! What was it?"
"Only a pair of gloves, George."
"Yes, I know; but what about it?"
"That if you did you should be my husband, dearest."
"Oh! but stay; then you could not have been so very angry with me, love.
Why, dearest, then you brought that action against me."
Mrs. Dolignan looked down.
"I was afraid you were forgetting me! George, you will never forgive me?"
"Angel! Why, here is the Box Tunnel!"
Now, reader--fie! No! No such thing! You can't expect to be indulged in
this way every time we come to a dark place. Besides, it is not the thing.
Consider, two sensible married people. No such phenomenon, I assure you,
took place. No scream in hopeless rivalry of the engine--this time!