STOPPED UPON THE WAY.
Mr. Dunbar leant back in the corner of his comfortable seat, with his
eyes closed. But he was not asleep, he was only thinking; and every now
and then he bent forward, and looked out of the window into the
darkness of the night. He could only distinguish the faint outline of
the landscape as the train swept on upon its way, past low meadows,
where the snow lay white and stainless, unsullied by a passing
footfall; and scanty patches of woodland, where the hardy firs looked
black against the glittering whiteness of the ground.
The country was all so much alike under its thick shroud of snow, that
Mr. Dunbar tried in vain to distinguish any landmarks upon the way.
The train by which he travelled stopped at every station; and, though
the journey between Shorncliffe and Rugby was only to last an hour, it
seemed almost interminable to this impatient traveller, who was eager
to stand upon the deck of Messrs. ——'s electric steamers, to feel the
icy spray dashing into his face, and to see the town of Dover, shining
like a flaming crescent against the darkness of the night, and the
Calais lights in the distance rising up behind the black edge of the
sea.
The banker looked at his watch, and made a calculation about the time.
It was now a quarter past five; the train was to reach Rugby at ten
minutes to six; at six the London express left Rugby; at a quarter to
eight it reached London; at half-past eight the Dover mail would leave
London Bridge station; and at half-past seven, or thereabouts, next
morning, Henry Dunbar would be rattling through the streets of Paris.
And then? Was his journey to end in that brilliant city, or was he to
go farther? That was a question whose answer was hidden in the
traveller's own breast. He had not shown himself a communicative man at
the best of times, and to-night he looked like a man whose soul is
weighed down by the burden of a purpose which must be achieved at any
cost of personal sacrifice.
He could not hear the names of the stations. He only heard those
guttural and inarticulate sounds which railway officials roar out upon
the darkness of the night, to the bewilderment of helpless travellers.
His inability to distinguish the names of the stations annoyed him. The
delay attendant upon every fresh stoppage worried him, as if the pause
had been the weary interval of an hour. He sat with his watch in his
hand; for every now and then he was seized with a sudden terror that
the train had fallen out of its regular pace, and was crawling slowly
along the rails.
What if it should not reach Rugby until after the London express had
left the station?
Mr. Dunbar asked one of his fellow-travellers if this train was always
punctual.
"Yes," the gentleman answered, coolly; "I believe it is generally
pretty regular. But I don't know how the snow may affect the engine.
There have been accidents in some parts of the country."
"In consequence of the depth of snow?"
"Yes. I understand so."
It was about ten minutes after this brief conversation, and within a
quarter of an hour of the time at which the train was due at Rugby,
when the carriage, which had rocked a good deal from the first, began
to oscillate very violently. One meagre little elderly traveller turned
rather pale, and looked nervously at his fellow-passengers; but the
young man who had spoken to Henry Dunbar, and a bald-headed
commercial-looking gentleman opposite to him, went on reading their
newspapers as coolly as if the rocking of the carriage had been no more
perilous than the lullaby motion of an infant's cradle, guided by a
mother's gentle foot.
Mr. Dunbar never took his eyes from the dial of his watch. So the
nervous traveller found no response to his look of terror.
He sat quietly for a minute or so, and then lowered the window near
him, and let in a rush of icy wind, whereat the bald-headed commercial
gentleman turned upon him rather fiercely, and asked him what he was
about, and if he wanted to give them all inflammation of the lungs, by
letting in an atmosphere that was two degrees below zero. But the
little elderly gentleman scarcely heard this remonstrance; his head was
out of the window, and he was looking eagerly Rugby-wards along the
line.
"I'm afraid there's something wrong," he said, drawing in his head for
a moment, and looking with a scared white face at his
fellow-passengers; "I'm really afraid there's something wrong. We're
eight minutes behind our time, and I see the danger-signal up yonder,
and the line seems blocked up with snow, and I really fear——"
He looked out again, and then drew in his head very suddenly.
"There's something coming!" he cried; "there's an engine coming——"
He never finished his sentence. There was a horrible smashing, tearing,
grinding noise, that was louder than thunder, and more hideous than the
crashing of cannon against the wooden walls of a brave ship.
That horrible sound was followed by a yell almost as horrible; and then
there was nothing but death, and terror, and darkness, and anguish, and
bewilderment; masses of shattered woodwork and iron heaped in direful
confusion upon the blood-stained snow; human groans, stifled under the
wrecks of shivered carriages: the cries of mothers whose children had
been flung out of their arms into the very jaws of death; the piteous
wail of children, who clung, warm and living, to the breasts of dead
mothers, martyred in that moment of destruction; husbands parted from
their wives; wives shrieking for their husbands; and, amidst all, brave
men, with white faces, hurrying here and there, with lamps in their
hands, half-maimed and wounded some of them, but forgetful of
themselves in their care for the helpless wretches round them.
The express going northwards had run into the train from Shorncliffe,
which had come upon the main line just nine minutes too late.
One by one the dead and wounded were carried away from the great heap of
ruins; one by one the prostrate forms were borne away by quiet bearers,
who did their duty calmly and fearlessly in that hideous scene of havoc
and confusion. The great object to be achieved was the immediate
clearance of the line; and the sound of pickaxes and shovels almost
drowned those other dreadful sounds, the piteous moans of sufferers who
were so little hurt as to be conscious of their sufferings.
The train from Shorncliffe had been completely smashed. The northern
express had suffered much less; but the engine-driver had been killed,
and several of the passengers severely injured.
Henry Dunbar was amongst those who were carried away helpless, and, to
all appearance, lifeless from the ruin of the Shorncliffe train.
One of the banker's legs was broken, and he had received a blow upon
the head, which had rendered him immediately unconscious.
But there were cases much worse than that of the banker; the surgeon
who examined the sufferers said that Mr. Dunbar might recover from his
injuries in two or three months, if he was carefully treated. The
fracture of the leg was very simple; and if the limb was skilfully set,
there would not be the least fear of contraction.
Half-a-dozen surgeons were busy in one of the waiting-rooms at the
Rugby station, whither the sufferers had been conveyed, and one of them
took possession of the banker.
Mr. Dunbar's card-case had been found in the breast-pocket of his
overcoat, and a great many people in the waiting-room knew that the
gentleman with the white lace and grey moustache, lying so quietly upon
one of the broad sofas, was no less a personage than Henry Dunbar, of
Maudesley Abbey and St. Gundolph Lane. The surgeon knew it, and thought
his good angel had sent this particular patient across his pathway.
He made immediate arrangements for bearing off Mr. Dunbar to the
nearest hotel; he sent for his assistant; and in a quarter of an hour's
time the millionaire was restored to consciousness, and opened his eyes
upon the eager faces of two medical gentlemen, and upon a room that was
strange to him.
The banker looked about him with an expression of perplexity, and then
asked where he was. He knew nothing of the accident itself, and he had
quite lost the recollection of all that had occurred immediately before
the accident, or, indeed, from the time of his leaving Maudesley Abbey.
It was only little by little that the memory of the events of that day
returned to him. He had wanted to leave Maudesley; he had wanted to go
abroad—to go upon a journey—that was no new purpose in his mind. Had he
actually set out upon that journey? Yes, surely, he must have started
upon it; but what had happened, then?
He asked the surgeon what had happened, and why it was that he found
himself in that strange place.
Mr. Daphney, the Rugby surgeon, told his patient all about the
accident, in such a bland, pleasant way, that anybody might have
thought the collision of a couple of engines rather an agreeable little
episode in a man's life.
"But we are doing admirably, sir," Mr. Daphney concluded; "nothing
could be more desirable than the way in which we are going on; and when
our leg has been set, and we've taken a cooling draught, we shall be
quite comfortable for the night. I really never saw a cleaner
fracture—never, I can assure you."
But Mr. Dunbar raised himself into a sitting position, in spite of the
remonstrances of his medical attendant, and looked anxiously about him.
"You say this place is Rugby?" he asked, moodily.
"Yes, this is Rugby," answered the surgeon, smiling, and rubbing his
hands, almost as if he would have said, "Now, isn't _that_ delightful?"
"Yes, this is the Queen's Hotel, Rugby; and I'm sure that every
attention which the proprietor, Mr.——"
"I must get away from this place to-night," said Mr. Dunbar,
interrupting the surgeon rather unceremoniously.
"To-night, my dear sir!" cried Mr. Daphney; "impossible—utterly
impossible—suicide on your part, my dear sir, if you attempted it, and
murder upon mine, if I allowed you to carry out such an idea. You will
be a prisoner here for a month or so, sir, I regret to say; but we
shall do all in our power to make your sojourn agreeable."
The surgeon could not help looking cheerful as he made this
announcement; but seeing a very black and ominous expression upon the
face of his patient, he contrived to modify the radiance of his own
countenance.
"Our first proceeding, sir, must be to straighten this poor leg," he
said, soothingly. "We shall place the leg in a cradle, from the thigh
downwards: but I won't trouble you with technical details. I doubt if
we shall be justified in setting the leg to-night; we must reduce the
swelling before we can venture upon any important step. A cooling
lotion, applied with linen cloths, must be kept on all night. I have
made arrangements for a nurse, and my assistant will also remain here
all night to supervise her movements."
The banker groaned aloud.
"I want to get to London," he said. "I must get to London!"
The surgeon and his assistant removed Mr. Dunbar's clothes. His
trousers had to be cut away from his broken leg before anything could
be done. Mr. Daphney removed his patient's coat and waistcoat; but the
linen shirt was left, and the chamois-leather belt worn by the banker
was under this shirt, next to and over a waistcoat of scarlet flannel.
"I wear a leather belt next my flannel waistcoat," Mr. Dunbar said, as
the two men were undressing him; "I don't wish it to be removed."
He fainted away presently, for his leg was very painful; and on
reviving from his fainting fit, he looked very suspiciously at his
attendants, and put his hand to the buckle of his belt, in order to
make himself sure that it had not been tampered with.
All through the long, feverish, restless night he lay pondering over
this miserable interruption of his journey, while the sick-nurse and
the surgeon's assistant alternately slopped cooling lotions about his
wretched broken leg.
"To think that _this_ should happen," he muttered to himself every now
and then. "Amongst all the things I've ever dreaded, I never thought of
this."
His leg was set in the course of the next day, and in the evening he
had a long conversation with the surgeon.
This time Henry Dunbar did not speak so much of his anxiety to get away
upon the second stage of his continental journey. His servant Jeffreys
arrived at Rugby in the course of the day; for the news of the accident
had reached Maudesley Abbey, and it was known that Mr. Dunbar had been
a sufferer.
To-night Henry Dunbar only spoke of the misery of being in a strange
house.
"I want to get back to Maudesley," he said. "If you can manage to take
me there, Mr. Daphney, and look after me until I've got over the
effects of this accident, I shall be very happy to make you any
compensation you please for whatever loss your absence from Rugby might
entail upon you."
This was a very diplomatic speech: Mr. Dunbar knew that the surgeon
would not care to let so rich a patient out of his hands; but he
fancied that Mr. Daphney would have no objection to carrying his
patient in triumph to Maudesley Abbey, to the admiration of the
unprofessional public, and to the aggravation of rival medical men.
He was not mistaken in his estimate of human nature. At the end of the
week he had succeeded in persuading the surgeon to agree to his
removal; and upon the second Monday after the railway accident, Henry
Dunbar was placed in a compartment which was specially prepared for him
in the Shorncliffe train, and was conveyed from Shorncliffe station to
Maudesley Abbey, without undergoing any change of position upon the
road, and very carefully tended throughout the journey by Mr. Daphney
and Jeffreys the valet.
They wheeled Mr. Dunbar's bed into his favourite tapestried chamber,
and laid him there, to drag out long dreary days and nights, waiting
till his broken bones should unite, and he should be free to go whither
he pleased. He was not a very patient sufferer; he bore the pain well
enough, but he chafed perpetually against the delay; and every morning
he asked the surgeon the same question—
"When shall I be strong enough to walk about?"