The party returned to the station by different ways, that chosen by
Slaney and Bunbury involving a good deal of wandering by dark and
intricate paths in the hollow of the wood before the high road again was
reached. The other half of the picnic was not in sight; and when Slaney
and her companion arrived at the station, the engine and brake van, in
which they had come, had disappeared, and in their place was another
engine that had come up the line with a train of trucks. It was a small
and very dirty engine, the driver’s white jumper was as grimy as his
face, and coal-dust and oil had gone hand-in-hand to effect a general
and thorough defilement.
The ganger explained the position respect-fully. Mr. Glasgow had found
that he was obliged to catch the mail train for Dublin, and he and the
lady had started a quarter of an hour before; he had ordered the
ballast-engine to wait for Major Bunbury.
Slaney recovered herself on the verge of looking aghast. Major Bunbury
kept his eyes away from the neighbourhood of hers, and with almost
excessive carelessness made inquiries as to the hour at which the mail
train was due at Letter Kyle. It appeared that there remained forty-five
minutes before it arrived there, and that the usual time required by the
ballast-engine for the distance was an hour and a quarter. Possibilities
spread and soaked coldly through Slaney’s mind, like suddenly spilt
water. Situations in novels that she had read lent their smooth
probability to the raw and disjointed circumstance; she found herself
wondering that it was all so horribly painful, so ugly, so devoid of
subtle psychological interest and large bearing; not realizing that in
actual life feeling is born first, help-less as a blind puppy, and
philosophy is not born at all, but is built, with infinite
self-consciousness.
She was already on the engine--it was moving; she was holding on to an
iron rail as she stood, and was not unaware that it was spoiling her
gloves. Major Bunbury’s conversation with the engine-driver had ended
with an almost imperceptible glide of the latter’s hand into his
trousers pocket, and Major Bunbury himself was standing beside Slaney in
the cramped space available for them, looking preternaturally cheerful
and unaffected. He possessed that gift of trivial observation that is
the parent of tact and is one of the rarest of male attributes. It can
be formidable, it can also be attractive beyond most other things. He
hardly looked at Slaney, who was gazing straight ahead through the
bull’s-eye windows, but he knew that what she saw was not so much the
wide tumbling waste of moor with its skirting mountains, as the
creations of her own unsophisticated sus-picion. The pace of the engine
increased momently, from a tremulous glide to a clattering rush; every
movement of the driver’s hand as he heightened the speed was answered by
a forward start, like a powerful horse touched with the spur--unhampered
by carriage or tender it raced and swung. Slaney held on with both
hands, while the wind from the open sides encircled and buffeted her,
ardent with heat snatched from the engine fire, bitter with the frost
that had turned the bog drain into mirrors for the keen colours of a
winter sunset. There was not as yet a signal worked on the line; they
must trust to eyesight and pluck for the safety of an engine driven at
nearly its best speed; and the strident shriek tore the air incessantly,
and each curve or cutting meant a slackening and an instant of suspense
before the long vista opened clear, and they were away again with that
living bound that thrilled Slaney’s unaccustomed heart as only pace can
thrill. She began to understand that they were racing against time and
luck to intercept--what? Could it be to foil the insane impulse of a
woman who had lost her head in the terrible discovery that she had a
heart?
The miles fleeted past, until the engine and its pent scream burst forth
from the clanging walls of a rock cutting, and skirting a lake, entered
on the great brown plain of Tully bog. A double line of drains, fed by
innumerable cuts, made a herring-bone pattern on either side; the spongy
gravel sprang beneath the strides of the engine; the water in the drains
flapped and washed in sympathy against its peat walls. It seemed a
singular audacity of engineering to force a line of rails across such a
morass. Three miles away the heights of Cahirdreen were dark in the
evening sky; recognizing them, Slaney felt the influence of an evil fate
cross her keen excitement like a cold streak--like a shiver across the
heat of fever. The driver looked at his watch, and, with one hand on the
brake, added the last possible five miles an hour to the pace. The
engine seemed to be swallowing the endless strip of line that flowed
into its clutch; the motion felt like sliding on a wire, without effort
or possibility of stopping. Thundering along an imperceptible curve,
they neared the hill, with its fir-trees ranged in tall and quiet ranks
in the twilight. At a distance of perhaps two hundred yards, the cutting
opened before them as they rounded the bend, and all four uttered a
simultaneous exclamation. The V-shaped cleft held a dark obstruction.
Instantly, with a jar and a jerk, the brakes were on at their full
power, and Slaney was leaning back as if to hold off the shock that was
already sending shoots of anticipation through her feet and fingers.
Shouts, and the whistling of another engine came through the noise, the
brakes bit, and shoved, and clung. Somewhere in the jolting, deafening
seconds an arm came strongly round Slaney’s waist, and drew her towards
the footboard. She understood that if the worst came she was to jump
with Major Bunbury; then another hand caught her skirt, and pulled her
back. She recognized the driver’s filthy white sleeve, and at the same
moment some one shouted that they were safe. Squeaking, and grinding,
and skidding, the engine was fought to a standstill, while yet ten yards
separated it from the buffers of the brake van in which Lady Susan and
Glasgow had started an hour before. Fifty yards further on, the line was
blocked by a great pile of gravel and rock, newly fallen from the side
of the cutting.
Lady Susan and Glasgow were there; her face looked wild and white, and
as she came to Slaney, she seemed to struggle to speak. It was a moment
of extremes and exaggeration in feeling. Slaney felt that two
independent currents of supreme and fore-ordained evil had made their
onslaught, and, in meeting, had neutralized each other.