"She was in it!" said Ralph, in a hoa.r.s.e voice, as the man walked away.
"How late the train is!" said Charles; "quarter of an hour already. I say, Jervis," calling after him, "any particulars about the accident?
Serious?"
"Oh dear no, sir, not to my knowledge. Never heard of anything but that the train had been upset, and had stopped the traffic."
"Not many people travelling in such weather, at any rate. I dare say there was not a creature who went from here by the last train last night?"
"Only two, sir. One of the young gentlemen from the rectory, and a young lady, who was very near late, poor thing, and all wet with snow. Ah, there she is, at last!" as the train came in sight; and he went through the ceremony of ringing the bell, although we were the only travellers on the platform.
It was only an hour"s run to Tarborough, where we were to join the main line.
"What are we to do now?" said Charles, as the chimneys of Tarborough hove in sight, and the train slackened. "Ten to one we shall not be able to get on to London!"
"Nor she either," said Ralph. "I shall see her! I shall see her here!"
There was an air of excitement about the whole station as we drew up before the platform. Groups of railway officials were cl.u.s.tered together, talking eagerly; the bar-maids were all looking out of the refreshment-room door; policemen were stationed here and there; and outside the iron gates of the station a little crowd of people were waiting in the trodden yellow snow, peering through the bars.
We got out, and Charles went up to a respectable-looking man in black, evidently an official of some consequence, and asked what was the matter. The man informed him that a special had been sent down the line with workmen to clear the rails, and that its return, with the pa.s.sengers in the ill-fated express, was expected at any moment.
"You don"t mean to say the wretched pa.s.sengers have been there all night?" exclaimed Charles. From the man"s account it appeared that the travellers had taken refuge in a farm near the scene of the accident, and, the snow-storm continuing very heavily, it had not been thought expedient to send a train down the line to bring them away till after daybreak. "It has been gone an hour," he said, looking at the clock; "and it is hardly nine yet. Considering how late we received notice of the accident--for the news had to travel by night, and on foot for a considerable distance--I don"t think there has been much delay."
"Will all the pa.s.sengers come back by this train?" asked Ralph.
"Yes sir."
"We will wait," said Ralph; and he went and paced up and down the most deserted part of the platform. The man followed him with his eyes.
"Anxious about friends, sir?" he asked Charles.
"Yes," I heard Charles say, as I went off to warm myself by the waiting-room fire, keeping a sharp lookout for the arrival of the train.
When I came out some time later, wondering if it were ever going to arrive at all, I found Charles and the man in black walking up and down together, evidently in earnest conversation. When I joined them they ceased talking (I never can imagine why people generally do when I come up), and the latter said that he would make inquiry at the booking-office, and left us.
"Who is that man?" I asked.
"How should I know?" said Charles, absently. "He says he has been a London detective till just lately, but he is an inspector of police now.
Well?" as the man returned.
"Booking-clerk can"t remember, sir; but the clerk at the telegraph office remembers a young lady leaving a telegram last night, to be sent on first thing this morning."
"Has it been sent yet?"
"Yes, sir; some time."
"Where was it sent to?"
"That is against rules, sir. The clerk has no right to give information.
Anyhow, it is as good as certain, from what you say, that the party was in the train, and at all events you will not be kept in doubt much longer;" and he pointed to the long-expected puff of white smoke in the direction in which all eyes had been so anxiously turned. The train came slowly round a broad curve and crawled into the station. Ralph had come up, and his eyes were fixed intently upon it. The hand he laid on Charles"s arm shook a little as he whispered, in a hoa.r.s.e voice, "I must speak to her alone before anything is said."
"You shall," replied Charles; and he moved forward a little, and waited for the pa.s.sengers to alight. I felt that any chance of escape which lay in eluding those keen light eyes would be small indeed.
Then ensued a scene of confusion, a Babel of tongues, as the pa.s.sengers poured out upon the platform. "What was the meaning of it all?" hotly demanded an infuriated little man before he was well out of the carriage. "Why had a train been allowed to start if it was to be overturned by a snow-drift? What had the company been about not to make itself aware of the state of the line? What did the railway officials mean by--" etc. But he was not going to put up with such scandalous treatment. He should cause an inquiry to be made; he should write to the _Times_, he should--in short, he behaved like a true Englishman in adverse circ.u.mstances, and poured forth abuse like water. Others followed--some angry, some silent, all cold and miserable. A stout woman in black, who had been sent for to a dying child, was weeping aloud; a dazed man with bound-up head and a terrified wife were pounced upon immediately by expectant friends, and borne off with voluble sympathy.
One or two people slightly hurt were helped out after the others. The train was emptied at last. Aurelia was not there. Charles went down the length of the train looking into each carriage, and then came back, answering Ralph"s glance with a shake of the head. The man in black, who seemed to have been watching him, came up.
"Have _all_ come back by this train?" Charles asked.
"All, sir, except,"--and he hesitated--"except a few. The doctor who went has not returned; and the guard says there were some of the pa.s.sengers, badly hurt, that he would not allow to be moved from the farm when the train came for them. The engine-driver and one or two others were--"
Charles made a sign to him to be silent.
"How far is it?" he asked.
"Twenty miles, sir."
"Are the roads practicable?"
"No, sir. At least they would be very uncertain once you got into the lanes."
"We can walk along the line," said Ralph. "That must be clear. Let us start at once."
"Could not the station-master send us down on an engine?" asked Charles.
"We would pay well for it."
The police-inspector shook his head, but Charles went off to inquire, nevertheless, and he followed him. I thought him a very pushing, inquisitive kind of person. I have always had a great dislike to the idle curiosity which is continually prying into the concerns of others.
Ralph and I walked up and down, up and down, the now deserted platform.
I spoke to him once or twice, but he hardly answered; and after a time I gave it up, and we paced in silence.
At last Charles returned. His request for an engine had been refused, but a further relay of workmen was being sent down the line in a couple of hours" time, and he had obtained leave for himself and us to go with them. After two long interminable hours of that everlasting pacing we found ourselves in an open truck, full of workmen, steaming slowly out of the station. At the last moment the man in black jumped in, and accompanied us.
The pace may have been great, but to us it seemed exasperatingly slow, and in the open truck the cold was piercing. The workmen, who laughed and talked among themselves, appeared to take no notice of it; but I saw that Charles was shivering, and presently he made his brother light his pipe, and began to smoke hard himself.
Ralph"s pipe, however, went out unheeded in his fingers. He sat quite still with his back against the side of the truck, his eyes fixed upon the gray horizon. Once he turned suddenly to his brother, and said, as if unable to keep silence on what was in his mind, "What was her object?"
Charles shook his head.
"They were hers already!" he went on. "She would have had them all. If she had had debts, I would have paid them. What could her object have been?" And seemingly, without expecting a reply, he relapsed into silence.
We had left the suburbs now, and were pa.s.sing through a lonely country.
Here and there a village of straggling cottages met the eye, cl.u.s.tering round their little church. In places the hedge-rows alone marked the lie of the hidden lanes; in others men were digging out the roads through drifts of snow, and carts and horses were struggling painfully along. In one place a little walking funeral was laboring across the fields from a lonely cottage, in the direction of the church, high on the hill, the bell of which was tolling through the quiet air. The sound reached us as we pa.s.sed, and seemed to accompany us on our way. I heard the men talking among themselves that there had been no snow-storm like to this for thirty years; and as they spoke some of them began shading their eyes, and trying to look in the direction in which we were going.
We had now reached a low waste of unenclosed land, with sedge and gorse p.r.i.c.king up everywhere through the snow, and with long lines of pollards marking the bed of a frozen stream. Near the line was a deserted brick-kiln, surrounded by long uneven mounds and ridges of ice, with three poplars mounting guard over it. Flights of rooks hung over the barren ground, and wheeled in the air with discordant clamor as we pa.s.sed--the only living moving things in the utter desolation of the scene. As I looked there was an exclamation from one of the workmen, and the engine began to slacken. We were there at last.
CHAPTER XIII.
The engine and trucks stopped, the men shouldered their tools and tumbled out, and we followed them. A few hundred paces in front of us was a railway bridge, over which a road pa.s.sed, and under which the rail went at a sharp curve. The snow had drifted heavily against the bridge, with its high earth embankment, making manifest at a glance the cause of the disaster.