The Iron Horse. Robert Michael Ballantyne
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and, wiping away the blood that flowed from a wound in his forehead, revealed the countenance of Edwin Gurwood to the astonished Tipps.
“What! Edwin!” he exclaimed.
“Ay—don’t stand there, man. Your mother is in the train.”
Poor Tipps could not speak—he could only gasp the word, “Where?”
“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