The Relentless City

This seemed an admirable arrangement, and in a couple of minutes he had set off. The light cast by the lantern was excellent; it shone brightly to guide his path, and gleamed on the rails of the four tracks as they pointed in narrowing perspective up the black cavern that lay before him until they were lost in the darkness. He walked on the right-hand side of the tunnel; immediately on his left, was the main line from Southampton to Liverpool, along which he would soon return at a brisker pace than that which was his now. For some hundreds of yards the gray glimmer from the end of the tunnel where he had entered also cast a diffused light into the darkness, but as he proceeded the light faded and grew dim, and when he was now some third of the way through, the slight continuous bend in the tunnel, which had been necessary in order to avoid a belt of unstable and shifty strata, obscured it altogether, and he walked, but for the light from his lantern, in absolute darkness. His own footsteps echoed queerly from the curved vault, but there was otherwise dead silence save for some occasional drip of water; all outside noises of the world were entirely cut off from him.

He was stepping along thus when he saw, with a sudden start of horror, that there was something dark lying between the second and third pair of rails a little way ahead of him. From the fact that he started, he was conscious that his nerves were not working with their accustomed smoothness and coolness, and he heard his heart hammering in his throat. Then he pulled himself together, crossed the two rails which lay between him and it, turned the lantern on it, and saw next moment, with a spasm of relief, that it was only a coat, left there and forgotten, no doubt, by some workman. With a cheap impulse of kindness, he picked it up, meaning to leave it with his lantern at the signal-box at the far end. But as he picked it up and stepped on again to regain the side path where he had been walking, his foot tripped in it, or on the corner of some sleeper, and he fell forward, the lantern flying from his hand, and smashing itself to atoms on the hard metal of the road, and his head struck full on the temple against the steel of the track. The blow completely stunned him.

About the same time the party left Molesworth to drive to the station, where the Liverpool express would be stopped for them. It was a distance of not more than three miles, but they stopped in the village close to the station in case there was anything at the post-office which had come by the second post, and would thus miss them. There was only one thing – a telegram from Bilton, re-directed from Seaton House, asking that the train might be stopped at Wyfold. So they drove on to the station, and there learned that the express had already passed through Wyfold without stopping, and would reach Molesworth in six or seven minutes. So Mr. Palmer, who never wasted regrets on the inevitable, shrugged his shoulders and inspected the book-stall, while Mrs. Palmer inundated the telegraph-office with despatches, and Bertie and Amelie strolled up and down the platform.

Bilton came to himself with a blank unconsciousness of where he was. It was quite dark, and he first realized that he was not in bed by the feel of his clothes. Then he put his hand to his head, and drew it away with a start of horror, for it was warm and wet. Then he felt with his hand the metal of the roadway, and, following that, encountered one of the rails. At that the broken ends of memory joined themselves, and he knew where he was. Simultaneously he heard the dead silence broken by a distant roar and rumble.

At this he started to his feet, wavered, and nearly fell again. All his senses were suddenly electrified, vivified, by that noise, and he remembered all – how he had started to walk through the tunnel, how he had picked up the coat, how he had fallen, how the engineer had told him that the next train through would be that to Liverpool. But where was he? On which line had he fallen? There were four tracks; he thought he ought to move to the right across the rails – no, to the left. Hell! was it to the right or to the left that that train would pass?

The roar got louder; it echoed with an infernal clangour from the curved sides of the tunnel; it prevented him thinking, and he felt sure that if it would only stop for one second his head would be clear, and he could take two steps to safety. But that noise must stop a moment, and in a frenzy, no longer master of himself, he shouted hoarsely, and impotently waved his hand in the darkness. From which way did it come? From in front of him or behind him? If he could only settle that, he would know what to do.

The roaring grew unbearable: it drove him mad; and, with his fingers in his ears, he began to run he did not know where, and he again tripped on some rail and fell. On the sides of the tunnel there shone a red, gloomy light, but he did not see it; above the roar and rattle of the racing wheels there sounded the hot, quick panting of some monster, but he did not hear it. He knew one moment of awful shock, of the sense of being torn and battered in pieces; then the roar sank down, as the train passed on, and diminished into silence as it emerged from the darkness of the tunnel into the pure and glorious sunlight of that September morning. And to him who had been pitiless and relentless in life had come death as swift and relentless as himself.

Amelie and Bertie were at the fore-end of the platform when the express drew up, and they turned back. Just as they got opposite the engine, Bertie gave one short gasp of horror, and grasped his wife's arm.

'Bertie, what is it?' she said.

'Go on, Amelie,' he said quickly. 'Don't look to right or left, but walk straight on.'

She obeyed him, and he went to the engine-driver.

'There is something on your engine,' he said.

EPILOGUE

It was a March day of glorious windy brightness, and all down the glades of Molesworth, where Bertie and Amelie had sat one hot morning in June last year, innumerable companies of daffodils danced and flickered in the sun. The great trees were yet for the most part bare of leaves, but round the birches a green mist hovered, and the red buds on the limes were ready to burst. Boisterous, but warm and fruitful, and teeming with the promise of the opening year, the wind shouted through the branches, and bowled, as a child bowls a hoop, great fleecy clouds across the blue of the sky. Movement, light, fruitfulness of the warm earth, were all triumphant; the strength of all that lived was renewed; spring was there.

To-day Amelie was pacing alone up and down the glade near the fallen tree-trunk where she had sketched before. She walked briskly, for it was not yet a day to loiter in; and as she came to the end of her beat within sight of the house, she looked eagerly towards it as if expecting someone. But the brilliance of her face and of the smile that every now and then hovered round her lips was in no way diminished when she turned again without seeing him whom she waited for. It seemed she was content to wait, and, though eager, did not fear disappointment.

The grass where she walked was all bright with the springing shoots of young growth, and the daffodils nodded and tossed their heads all round her. Not yet was the full note of woodland summer sounding, but the great orchestra of nature, as it were, was tuning up for the concert. Somehow the fragmentary broken sounds and scraps of summer melody strangely pleased her; often she stopped in her walk, and looked with her brilliant smile to right and left. Once she threw her arms wide, so that her red cloak stood away from her bosom, as if to take the world to it.

At last he came, and her heart embraced him ere yet he reached her. He was hatless, and the yellow gold of his hair was tossed by the wind. At the sight of him her whole being leaped towards him with stronger ecstasy than she had known yet, for the love between them seemed perfect; and she, woman-like, and loving her task, knew that a little word of comfort and sympathy was demanded of her.

'Dear one,' she said, and 'Dear one' again. 'Poor Bertie! you look tired. You should have waited the night in London, and come down this evening.'

'Should I, when you were waiting?' he asked. 'Oh, what a morning from God! And you, Amelie, among the daffodils.'

She put her arm into his.

'Tell me,' she said, 'did you get there in time? Did your father know you?'

Bertie shook his head.

'No; he knew no one from the time of his seizure. But I am glad I went. He will be buried here on Friday.'

She pressed his arm; that sympathy of touch was more eloquent to him than words.

'And the baby?' he asked.

'Oh, Bertie, so wonderful! Nurse says he will speak in no time at all if he goes on like this. She says she never saw such a clever baby.'

Bertie laughed.

'That is a remark I never heard before,' he said.

'Then you will hear it lots of times in future,' said Amelie with some dignity; 'nurse says it nearly every day.'

They had passed out of the shade of the trees on to the lawn near the house. Just in front of them was an ugly patch of black-looking earth, on which, however, the new growth of grass was beginning to show. Amelie stopped when they came to it.

'Ah, Bertie, those weeks!' she said – 'those weeks when we were strangers! This black patch, where the bore-hole was begun, makes them more vivid to me than my memory of them. It is like them – a black patch.'

'Yet the grass springs again,' said he.

She took both his hands in hers.

'Yes, Bertie,' she said, 'the grass springs again, for the winter is past; I read it this morning only. It says beautiful things. "The flowers appear on the earth, and the time of the singing of birds is come." That is now, is it not? Then, further on, "My beloved is mine, and I am his."'

'And that is the best of all,' said he.

THE END