Robert Michael Ballantyne
The Iron Horse
“The fastest mail-coaches in my young days,” said Mrs Tipps, “used to go at the rate of ten miles an hour, I believe.”
“Pretty much so,” said John. “They did manage a mile or two more, I’m told, but that was their average of crawlin’ with full steam on.”
“And you sometimes drive at sixty or seventy miles an hour?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“With people in the carriages?”
“Cer’nly, ma’am.”
“How I wish that I had lived a hundred years ago!” sighed poor Mrs Tipps.
“You’d have bin a pretty old girl by this time if you had,” thought the engine-driver, but he was too polite to give utterance to the thought.
“And what was my son doing when you passed him at that frightful speed—you could see him, I suppose?”
“Oh yes, ma’am, I could see him well enough. He was talkin’ an’ laughin’, as far as I could make out, with an uncommon pretty girl.”
“Indeed!” exclaimed Mrs Tipps, flushing slightly—for she was extremely sensitive,—and evidently much relieved by this information. “Well, my good man, what do you wish me to do for you? anything that is in my power to—”
“Thankee, ma’am, but I don’t want you to do nothin’ for me.”
“Then what have you to say to me?” added the old lady with a little smile that was clearly indicative of a kind little heart.
“I’ve come to take the liberty, ma’am, of askin’ you to do one of my mates a favour.”
“Most willingly,” said Mrs Tipps with animation. “I shall never forget that you saved my dear Joseph’s life by pulling him off the line when one of your dreadful engines was going straight over him. Anything that I am capable of doing for you or your friends will be but a poor return for what you have done for me. I have often asked you to allow me to make me some such return, Mr Marrot, and have been grieved at your constant refusal. I am delighted that you come to me now.”
“You’re very good to say so, ma’am. The fact is that one o’ my friends, a porter on the line, named Sam Natly, has a young wife who is, I fear, far gone wi’ consumption; she’s worse to-night an’ poor Sam’s obliged to go on night dooty, so he can’t look arter her, an’ the old ’ooman they’ve got ain’t worth nothin’. So I thought I’d make bold, ma’am, to ask you to send yer servant to git a proper nurse to take charge of her to-night, it would be—”
“I’ll go myself!” exclaimed Mrs Tipps, interrupting, and starting up with a degree of alacrity that astonished the engine-driver. “Here, write down the address on that piece of paper—you can write, I suppose?”
“Yes, ma’am,” replied John, modestly, as he bent down and wrote the address in a bold flowing hand, “I raither think I can write. I write notes, on a paper I’ve got to fill up daily, on the engine; an’ w’en a man’s trained to do that, ma’am, it’s my opinion he’s fit to write in any circumstances whatsomedever. Why, you’d hardly believe it, ma’am, but I do assure you, that I wrote my fust an’ last love-letter to my missus on the engine. I was drivin’ the Lightenin’ at the time—that’s the name o’ my engine, ma’am, an’ they calls me Jack Blazes in consikence—well, I’d bin courtin’ Molly, off-an’-on, for about three months. She b’longed to Pinchley station, you must know, where we used to stop to give her a drink—”
“What! to give Molly a drink?”
“No, ma’am,” replied John, with a slight smile, “to give the ingine a drink. Well, she met me nigh every day ’xcept Sundays at that station, and as we’d a pretty long time there—about five minutes—we used to spend it beside the pump, an’ made the most of it. But somehow I took it into my head that Molly was playin’ fast an’ loose with me, an’ I was raither cool on her for a time. Hows’ever, her father bein’ a pointsman, she wos shifted along with him to Langrye station—that’s where your son is, ma’am—an’ as we don’t stop there we was obleeged to confine our courtship to a nod an’ a wave of a handkerchief. Leastwise she shook out a white handkerchief an’ I flourished a lump o’ cotton-waste. Well, one day as we was close upon Langrye station—about two miles—I suddenly takes it into my head that I’d bring the thing to a pint, so I sings out to my mate—that was my fireman, ma’am—says I, ‘look out Jim,’ an’ I draws out my pencil an’ bends my legs—you must always bend your legs a little, ma’am, w’en you writes on a locomotive, it makes springs of ’em, so to speak—an’ I writes on the back of a blank time-bill, ‘Molly, my dear, no more shilly-shallyin’ with me. Time’s up. If you’ll be tender, I’ll be locomotive. Only say the word and we’re coupled for life in three weeks. A white handkerchief means yes, a red ’un, no. If red, you’ll see a noo driver on the 10:15 a.m. express day after to-morrow. John Marrot.’ I was just in time to pitch the paper crumpled up right into her bosom,” continued the driver, wiping his forehead as if the deep anxiety of that eventful period still affected him, “an’ let me tell you, ma’am, it requires a deal o’ nice calculation to pitch a piece o’ crumpled paper true off a locomotive goin’ between fifty and sixty miles an hour; but it went all straight—I could see that before we was gone.”
“And what was the result?” asked the little old lady as earnestly as if that result were still pending.
“W’y, the result wos as it should be! My letter was a short ’un, but it turned out to be a powerful brake. Brought her up sharp—an’ we was coupled in less than six weeks.”
“Amazing phase of human life!” observed Mrs Tipps, gazing in admiration at the stalwart giant who stood deferentially before her.
“Well, it was a raither coorious kind o’ proposal,” said Marrot with a smile, “but it worked uncommon well. I’ve never wanted to uncouple since then.”
“Pardon me, Mr Marrot,” said Mrs Tipps, with little hysterical laugh—knowing that she was about to perpetrate a joke—“may I ask if there are any—any little tenders?”
“Oh, lots of ’em,” replied John, “quite a train of ’em; four livin’ an’ three gone dead. The last was coupled on only a short time ago. You’ll excuse me now, ma’am,” he added, pulling out and consulting the ponderous chronometer with which the company supplied him, “I must go now, havin’ to take charge o’ the 6:30 p.m. train,—it ain’t my usual train, but I’m obleeged to take it to-night owin’ to one of our drivers havin’ come by an accident. Evenin’, ma’am.”
John bowed, and retired so promptly that poor Mrs Tipps had no time to make further inquiry into the accident referred to—at the very mention of which her former alarm came back in full force. However, she wisely got the better of her own anxieties by throwing herself into those of others. Putting on her bonnet she sallied forth on her errand of mercy.
Meanwhile John Marrot proceeded to the engine-shed to prepare his iron horse for action. Here he found that his fireman, Will Garvie, and his cleaner, had been attending faithfully to their duty. The huge locomotive, which looked all the more gigantic for being under cover, was already quivering with that tremendous energy—that artificial life—which rendered it at once so useful and so powerful a servant of man. Its brasses shone with golden lustre, its iron rods and bars, cranks and pistons glittered with silvery sheen, and its heavier parts and body were gay with a new coat of green paint. Every nut and screw and lever and joint had been screwed up, and oiled, examined, tested, and otherwise attended to, while the oblong pit over which it stood when in the shed—and into which its ashes were periodically emptied—glowed with the light of its intense furnace. Ever and anon a little puff issued from its safety-valve, proving to John Marrot that there was life within his fiery steed sufficient to have blown the shed to wreck with all its brother engines, of which there were at the time two or three dozen standing—some disgorging their fire and water after a journey, and preparing to rest for the night; some letting off steam with a fiendish yell unbearably prolonged; others undergoing trifling repairs preparatory to starting next day, and a few, like that of our engine-driver, ready for instant action and snorting with impatience like war-horses “scenting the battle from afar.” The begrimed warriors, whose destiny it was to ride these iron chargers, were also variously circumstanced. Some in their shirt sleeves busy with hammer and file at benches hard by; others raking out fire-boxes, or oiling machinery; all busy as bees, save the few, who, having completed their preparations, were buttoning up their jackets and awaiting the signal to charge.
At last that signal came to John Marrot—not in a loud shout of command or a trumpet-blast, but by the silent hand of Time, as indicated on his chronometer.
“But how,” it may be asked, “does John Marrot know precisely the hour at which he has to start, the stations he has to stop at, the various little acts of coupling on and dropping off carriages and trucks, and returning with trains or with ‘empties’ within fixed periods so punctually, that he shall not interfere with, run into, or delay, the operations of the hundreds of drivers whose duties are as complex, nice, important, and swift as his own.”
Reader, we reply that John knows it all in consequence of the perfection of system attained in railway management. Without this, our trains and rails all over the kingdom would long ago have been smashed up into what Irishmen expressively name smithereens.
The duty of arranging the details of the system devolves on the superintendents of departments on the line, namely, the passenger, goods, and locomotive superintendents, each of whom reigns independently and supreme in his own department, but of course, like the members of a well-ordered family, they have to consult together in order that their trains may be properly horsed, and the time of running so arranged that there shall be no clashing in their distinct though united interests. When the number of trains and time of running have been fixed, and finally published by the passenger superintendent—who is also sometimes the “Out-door superintendent,” and who has duties to perform that demand very considerable powers of generalship,—it is the duty of the locomotive superintendent to supply the requisite engines. This officer, besides caring for all the “plant” or rolling-stock, new and old, draws out periodically a schedule, in which is detailed to a nicety every minute act that has to be done by drivers—the hour at which each engine is to leave the shed on each day of the week, the number of each engine, its driver and fireman, and the duties to be performed; and this sheet contains complete daily (nay, almost hourly) directions for passenger, goods, and pilot-engines.
In order to secure attention to these regulations, each engineman is fined one shilling for every minute he is behind time in leaving the shed. The difficulty of making these runnings of trains dovetail into each other on lines where the traffic is great and constant, may well be understood to be considerable, particularly when it is remembered that ordinary regular traffic is interfered with constantly by numerous excursion, special, and other irregular trains, in the midst of which, also, time must be provided for the repair and renewal of the line itself, the turning of old rails, laying down of new ones, raising depressed sleepers, renewing broken chairs, etcetera,—all which is constantly going on, and that, too, at parts of the line over which hundreds of trains pass in the course of the twenty-four hours.
Besides the arrangements for the regular traffic, which are made monthly, a printed sheet detailing the special traffic, repairs of lines, new and altered signals, working arrangements, etcetera, is issued weekly to every member of the staff; particularly to engine-drivers and guards. We chance to possess one of these private sheets, issued by one of our principal railways. Let us peep behind the scenes for a moment and observe how such matters are managed.
The vacation has come to an end, and the boys of Rapscallion College will, on a certain day, pour down on the railway in shoals with money in hand and a confident demand for accommodation. This invading army must be prepared for. Ordinary trains are not sufficient for it. Delay is dangerous on railways; it must not be permitted; therefore the watchful superintendent writes an order which we find recorded as follows:—
“Wednesday, 26th April,—Accommodation must be provided on this day in the 3:10 and 6:25 p.m. Up, and 2:25 and 6:10 p.m. Down Trains, for the Cadets returning to Rapscallion College. By the Trains named, Rapscallion College tickets will be collected at Whitewater on the Down journey, and at Smokingham on the Up journey. Oldershot to send a man to Whitewater to assist in the collection of these tickets.”
Again—a “Relief Train” has to be utilised. It won’t “pay” to run empty trains on the line unnecessarily, therefore the superintendent has his eye on it, and writes:—
“April 23rd.—An Empty Train will leave Whiteheath for Woolhitch at about 8:10 p.m., to work up from Woolhitch at 9:05 p.m., calling at Woolhitch Dockyard and Curlton, and forming the 9:15 p.m. Up Ordinary Train from Whiteheath. Greatgun Street to provide Engines and Guards for this service.”
This is but a slight specimen of the providing, dovetailing, timing, and guarding that has to be done on all the lines in the kingdom. In the same sheet from which the above is quoted, we find notes, cautions, and intimations as to such various matters as the holding of the levers of facing points when trains are passing through junctions; the attention required of drivers to new signals; the improper use of telegraph bells; the making search for lost “passes;” the more careful loading of goods waggons; the changes in regard to particular trains; the necessity of watchfulness on the part of station-masters, robberies having been committed on the line; the intimation of dates when and places where ballast trains are to be working on the line; the times and, places when and where repairs to line are to take place during the brief intervals between trains of the ordinary traffic; and many other matters, which naturally lead one to the belief that superintendents of railways must possess the eyes of Argus, the generalship of Wellington, and the patience of Job.
Being carefully hedged in, as we have shown, with strict rules and regulations, backed by fines in case of the slightest inattention, and the certainty of prompt dismissal in case of gross neglect or disobedience, with the possibility of criminal prosecution besides looming in the far distance, our friend, John Marrot, knowing his duties well, and feeling perfect confidence in himself and his superiors, consulted his chronometer for the last time, said, “Now, then, Bill!” and mounted his noble steed.
Will Garvie, who was putting a finishing drop of oil into some part of the machinery, took his station beside his mate and eased off the brake. John let off two sharp whistles (an imperative duty on the part of every driver before starting an engine) and let on the steam. The first was a very soft pulsation—a mere puff—but it was enough to move the ponderous engine as if it had been a cork, though its actual weight with tender was fifty-three tons. Another puff, and slowly the iron horse moved out of its stable. There was a gentle, oily, gliding, effect connected with its first movements that might have won the confidence even of timid Mrs Captain Tipps. Another puff of greater strength shot the engine forward with a sudden grandeur of action that would certainly have sent that lady’s heart into her throat. In a few seconds it reached and passed the place where the siding was connected with the main line, and where a pointsman stood ready to shift the points. Here the obedient spirit of the powerful steed was finely displayed. Will Garvie reversed the action of the engines by a process which, though beautifully simple and easily done, cannot be easily described. John let on a puff of steam, and the engine glided backwards as readily as it had run forward. A few seconds afterwards it moved slowly under the magnificent arch of Clatterby station, and its buffers met those of the train it was destined to draw as if with a gentle touch of friendly greeting.
At the station all was bustle and noise; but here we must venture to do what no human being could accomplish in reality, compel the 6:30 p.m. train to wait there until it shall be our pleasure to give it the signal to start! Meanwhile we shall put back the clock an hour or so, ask the reader to return to Mrs Tipps’ residence and observe what transpired there while John Marrot was in the shed getting his iron steed ready for action.
Chapter Three.
In which the Widow holds Converse with a Captain, makes the Acquaintance of a Young Man, and receives a Telegraphic Shock, which ends in a Railway Journey
Mrs Captain Tipps was, as we have said, a thin old lady of an excessively timid temperament. She was also, as we have shown, impulsively kind in disposition. Moreover, she was bird-like in aspect and action. We would not have it supposed, however, that her features were sharp. On the contrary, they were neat and rounded and well formed, telling of great beauty in youth, but her little face and mouth were of such a form that one was led irresistibly to expect to hear her chirp; she fluttered rather than walked and twittered rather than talked. Altogether she was a charming little old lady, with a pair of bead-like eyes as black as sloes. Happy that captain—a sea-captain, by the way, long since dead—round whom she had fluttered in days gone bye, and happy that son Joseph round whom, when at home, she fluttered now.
But Joseph was not often at home at the time we write of. He was an honest soul—a gentle, affectionate man with a handsome face, neat dapper little frame, something like his mother in many ways, yet not unmanly. He was too earnest, simple, unassuming, and unaffected to be that. He was a railway clerk, and had recently been appointed to Langrye station, about fifty miles from Clatterby, which necessitated his leaving his mother’s roof; but Mrs Tipps consoled herself with the intention of giving up her little villa and going to live at Langrye.
Poverty, after the captain’s death, had seized upon the widow, and held her tightly down during the whole of that period when Joseph and his only sister Netta were being educated. But Mrs Tipps did her duty bravely by them. She was a practically religious woman, and tried most earnestly to rule her life in accordance with the blessed Word of God. She trained up her children “in the way that they should go,” in thorough reliance on the promise that “they would not depart from it when they were old.” She accepted the command, “owe no man anything but to love one another,” as given to herself as well as to the world at large—hence she kept out of debt, and was noted for deeds of kindness wherever she went.
But she was pinched during this period—terribly pinched—no one knew how severely save her daughter Netta, to whom she had been in the habit of confiding all her joys and sorrows from the time that the child could form any conception of what joy or sorrow meant. But Mrs Tipps did not weep over her sorrows, neither did she become boisterous over her joys. She was an equable, well-balanced woman in everything except the little matter of her nervous system. Netta was a counterpart of her mother. As time went on expenses increased, and living on small means became more difficult, so that Mrs Tipps was compelled to contemplate leaving the villa, poor and small though it was, and taking a cheaper residence. At this juncture a certain Captain Lee, an old friend of her late husband—also a sea-captain, and an extremely gruff one—called upon the widow, found out her straitened circumstances, and instantly offered her five hundred pounds, which she politely but firmly refused.
“But madam,” said the excitable captain on that memorable occasion, “I must insist on your taking it. Excuse me, I have my own reasons,—and they are extremely good ones,—for saying that it is my duty to give you this sum and yours to take it. I owe it to your late husband, who more than once laid me under obligations to him.”
Mrs Tipps shook her little head and smiled.
“You are very kind, Captain Lee, to put it in that way, and I have no doubt that my dear husband did, as you say, lay you under many obligations because he was always kind to every one, but I cannot I assure you—”
“Very well,” interrupted the captain, wiping his bald head with his pocket-handkerchief angrily, “then the money shall go to some charity—some—some ridiculous asylum or hospital for teaching logarithms to the Hottentots of the Cape, or something of that sort. I tell you, madam,” he added with increased vehemence, seeing that Mrs Tipps still shook her head, “I tell you that I robbed your husband of five hundred pounds!”
“Robbed him!” exclaimed Mrs Tipps, somewhat shocked. “Oh, Captain Lee, impossible!”
“Yes I did,” replied the captain, crossing his arms and nodding his head firmly, “robbed him. I laid a bet with him to that extent and won it.”
“That is not usually considered robbery, Captain Lee,” said Mrs Tipps with a smile.
“But that ought to be considered robbery,” replied the captain, with a frown. “Betting is a mean, shabby, contemptible way of obtaining money for nothing on false pretences. The man who bets says in his heart, ‘I want my friend’s money without the trouble of working for it, therefore I’ll offer to bet with him. In so doing I’ll risk an equal sum of my own money. That’s fair and honourable!’ Is that logic?” demanded the captain, vehemently, “It is not! In the first place it is mean to want, not to speak of accepting, another man’s money without working for it, and it is a false pretence to say that you risk your own money because it is not your own, it is your wife’s and your children’s money, who are brought to poverty, mayhap, because of your betting tendencies, and it is your baker’s and butcher’s money, whose bread and meat you devour (as long as they’ll let you) without paying for it, because of your betting tendencies, and a proportion of it belongs to your church, which you rob, and to the poor, whom you defraud, because of your betting tendencies; and if you say that when you win the case is altered, I reply, yes, it is altered for the worse, because, instead of bringing all this evil down on your own head you hurl it, not angrily, not desperately, but, worse, with fiendish indifference on the head of your friend and his innocent family. Yes, madam, although many men do not think it so, betting is a dishonourable thing, and I’m ashamed of having done it. I repent, Mrs Tipps, the money burns my fingers, and I must return it.”
“Dear me!” exclaimed the old lady, quite unable to reply at once to such a gush. “But Captain Lee, did you not say that it is mean to accept money without working for it, and yet you want me to accept five hundred pounds without working for it?”
“Oh! monstrous sophistry,” cried the perplexed man, grasping desperately the few hairs that remained on his polished head, “is there no difference then between presenting or accepting a gift and betting? Are there not circumstances also in which poverty is unavoidable and the relief of it honourable as well as delightful? not to mention the courtesies of life, wherein giving and receiving in the right spirit and within reasonable limits, are expressive of good-will and conducive to general harmony. Besides, I do not offer a gift. I want to repay a debt; by rights I ought to add compound interest to it for twenty years, which would make it a thousand pounds. Now, do accept it, Mrs Tipps,” cried the captain, earnestly.
But Mrs Tipps remained obdurate, and the captain left her, vowing that he would forthwith devote it as the nucleus of a fund to build a collegiate institute in Cochin-China for the purpose of teaching Icelandic to the Japanese.
Captain Lee thought better of it, however, and directed the fund to the purchase of frequent and valuable gifts to little Joseph and his sister Netta, who had no scruples whatever in accepting them. Afterwards, when Joseph became a stripling, the captain, being a director in the Grand National Trunk Railway, procured for his protégé a situation on the line.
To return to our story after this long digression:—
We left Mrs Tipps in the last chapter putting on her bonnet and shawl, on philanthropic missions intent. She had just opened the door, when a handsome, gentlemanly youth, apparently about one or two and twenty, with a very slight swagger in his gait stepped up to it and, lifting his hat said—
“Mrs Tipps, I presume? I bring you a letter from Clatterby station. Another messenger should have brought it, but I undertook the duty partly for the purpose of introducing myself as your son’s friend. I—my name is Gurwood.”
“What!—Edwin Gurwood, about whom Joseph speaks so frequently, and for whom he has been trying to obtain a situation on the railway through our friend Captain Lee?” exclaimed Mrs Tipps.
“Yes,” replied the youth, somewhat confused by the earnestness of the old lady’s gaze, “but pray read the letter—the telegram—I fear—”
He stopped, for Mrs Tipps had torn open the envelope, and stood gazing at it with terrible anxiety depicted on her face.
“There is no cause for immediate fear, I believe,” began Edwin, but Mrs Tipps interrupted him by slowly reading the telegram.
“From Joseph Tipps, Langrye station, to Mrs Tipps, Eden Villa, Clatterby. Dear Mother, Netta is not very well—nothing serious, I hope—don’t be alarmed—but you’d better come and nurse her. She is comfortably put up in my lodgings.”
Mrs Tipps grew deadly pale. Young Gurwood, knowing what the message was, having seen it taken down while lounging at the station, had judiciously placed himself pretty close to the widow. Observing her shudder, he placed his strong arm behind her, and adroitly sinking down on one knee received her on the other, very much after the manner in which, while at school, he had been wont to act the part of second to pugilistic companions.
Mrs Tipps recovered almost immediately, sprang up, and hurried into the house, followed by Gurwood.
“You’ll have time to catch the 6.30 train,” he said, as Mrs Tipps fluttered to a cupboard and brought out a black bottle.
“Thank you. Yes, I’ll go by that. You shall escort me to it. Please ring the bell.”
The stout elderly female—Netta’s nurse—answered.
“Come here, Durby,” said the widow quickly; “I want you to take this bottle of wine to a poor sick woman. I had intended to have gone myself, but am called away suddenly and shan’t be back to-night. You shall hear from me to-morrow. Lock up the house and stay with the woman to look after her, if need be—and now, Mr Gurwood.”
They were gone beyond recall before Mrs Durby could recover herself.
“I never did see nothink like my poor missus,” she muttered, “there must be somethink wrong in the ’ead. But she’s a good soul.”
With this comforting reflection Mrs Durby proceeded to obey her “missus’s” commands.
On reaching the station Mrs Tipps found that she had five minutes to wait, so she thanked Gurwood for escorting her, bade him good-bye, and was about to step into a third-class carriage when she observed Captain Lee close beside her, with his daughter Emma, who, we may remark in passing, was a tall, dark, beautiful girl, and the bosom friend of Netta Tipps.
“Oh, there is Captain Lee. How fortunate,” exclaimed Mrs Tipps, “he will take care of me. Come, Mr Gurwood, I will introduce you to him and his daughter.”
She turned to Gurwood, but that youth did not hear her remark, having been forced from her side by a noiseless luggage truck on India-rubber wheels. Turning, then, towards the captain she found that he and his daughter had hastily run to recapture a small valise which was being borne off to the luggage van instead of going into the carriage along with them. At the same moment the guard intervened, and the captain and his daughter were lost in the crowd.
But Edwin Gurwood, although he did not hear who they were, had obtained a glance of the couple before they disappeared, and that glance, brief though it was, had taken deadly effect! He had been shot straight to the heart. Love at first sight and at railway speed, is but a feeble way of expressing what had occurred. Poor Edwin Gurwood, up to this momentous day woman-proof, felt, on beholding Emma, as if the combined powers of locomotive force and electric telegraphy had smitten him to the heart’s core, and for one moment he stood rooted to the earth, or—to speak more appropriately—nailed to the platform. Recovering in a moment he made a dash into the crowd and spent the three remaining minutes in a wild search for the lost one!
It was a market-day, and the platform of Clatterby station was densely crowded. Sam Natly the porter and his colleagues in office were besieged by all sorts of persons with all sorts of questions, and it said much for the tempers of these harassed men, that, in the midst of their laborious duties, they consented to be stopped with heavy weights on their shoulders, and, while perspiration streamed down their faces, answered with perfect civility questions of the most ridiculous and unanswerable description.
“Where’s my wife?” frantically cried an elderly gentleman, seizing Sam by the jacket.
“I don’t know, sir,” replied Sam with a benignant smile.
“There she is,” shouted the elderly gentleman, rushing past and nearly overturning Sam.
“What a bo-ar it must be to the poatas to b’ wearied so by stoopid people,” observed a tall, stout, superlative fop with sleepy eyes and long whiskers to another fop in large-check trousers.
“Ya-as,” assented the checked trousers.
“Take your seats, gentlemen,” said a magnificent guard, over six feet high, with a bushy beard.
“O-ah!” said the dandies, getting into their compartment.
Meanwhile, Edwin Gurwood had discovered Emma. He saw her enter a first-class carriage. He saw her smile ineffably to her father. He heard the guard cry, “Take your seats; take your seats,” and knew that she was about to be torn from him perhaps for ever. He felt that it was a last look, because, how could he hope in a populous city to meet with her again? Perhaps she did not even belong to that part of the country at all, and was only passing through. He did not even know her name! What was he to do? He resolved to travel with her, but it instantly occurred to him that he had no ticket. He made a stride or two in the direction of the ticket office, but paused, remembering that he knew not her destination, and that therefore he could not demand a ticket for any place in particular.
