THE RAILWAY CHILDREN
PART 3
Chapter III. The old gentleman.
After the
adventure of Peter's Coal-mine, it seemed well to the children to keep away
from the station—but they did not, they could not, keep away from the railway.
They had lived all their lives in a street where cabs and omnibuses rumbled by
at all hours, and the carts of butchers and bakers and candlestick makers (I
never saw a candlestick-maker's cart; did you?) might occur at any moment. Here
in the deep silence of the sleeping country the only things that went by were
the trains. They seemed to be all that was left to link the children to the old
life that had once been theirs. Straight down the hill in front of Three
Chimneys the daily passage of their six feet began to mark a path across the
crisp, short turf. They began to know the hours when certain trains passed, and
they gave names to them. The 9.15 up was called the Green Dragon. The 10.7 down
was the Worm of Wantley. The midnight town express, whose shrieking rush they
sometimes woke from their dreams to hear, was the Fearsome Fly-by-night. Peter
got up once, in chill starshine, and, peeping at it through his curtains, named
it on the spot.
It was by
the Green Dragon that the old gentleman travelled. He was a very nice-looking
old gentleman, and he looked as if he were nice, too, which is not at all the
same thing. He had a fresh-coloured, clean-shaven face and white hair, and he
wore rather odd-shaped collars and a top-hat that wasn't exactly the same kind
as other people's. Of course the children didn't see all this at first. In fact
the first thing they noticed about the old gentleman was his hand.
It was one
morning as they sat on the fence waiting for the Green Dragon, which was three
and a quarter minutes late by Peter's Waterbury watch that he had had given him
on his last birthday.
“The Green
Dragon's going where Father is,” said Phyllis; “if it were a really real
dragon, we could stop it and ask it to take our love to Father.”
“Dragons
don't carry people's love,” said Peter; “they'd be above it.”
“Yes, they
do, if you tame them thoroughly first. They fetch and carry like pet spaniels,”
said Phyllis, “and feed out of your hand. I wonder why Father never writes to
us.”
“Mother
says he's been too busy,” said Bobbie; “but he'll write soon, she says.”
“I say,”
Phyllis suggested, “let's all wave to the Green Dragon as it goes by. If it's a
magic dragon, it'll understand and take our loves to Father. And if it isn't,
three waves aren't much. We shall never miss them.”
So when
the Green Dragon tore shrieking out of the mouth of its dark lair, which was
the tunnel, all three children stood on the railing and waved their
pocket-handkerchiefs without stopping to think whether they were clean
handkerchiefs or the reverse. They were, as a matter of fact, very much the
reverse.
And out of
a first-class carriage a hand waved back. A quite clean hand. It held a
newspaper. It was the old gentleman's hand.
After this
it became the custom for waves to be exchanged between the children and the
9.15.
And the
children, especially the girls, liked to think that perhaps the old gentleman
knew Father, and would meet him 'in business,' wherever that shady retreat
might be, and tell him how his three children stood on a rail far away in the
green country and waved their love to him every morning, wet or fine.
For they
were now able to go out in all sorts of weather such as they would never have
been allowed to go out in when they lived in their villa house. This was Aunt
Emma's doing, and the children felt more and more that they had not been quite
fair to this unattractive aunt, when they found how useful were the long
gaiters and waterproof coats that they had laughed at her for buying for them.
Mother,
all this time, was very busy with her writing. She used to send off a good many
long blue envelopes with stories in them—and large envelopes of different sizes
and colours used to come to her. Sometimes she would sigh when she opened them
and say:—
“Another
story come home to roost. Oh, dear, Oh, dear!” and then the children would be
very sorry.
But
sometimes she would wave the envelope in the air and say:—“Hooray, hooray.
Here's a sensible Editor. He's taken my story and this is the proof of it.”
At first
the children thought 'the Proof' meant the letter the sensible Editor had
written, but they presently got to know that the proof was long slips of paper
with the story printed on them.
Whenever
an Editor was sensible there were buns for tea.
One day
Peter was going down to the village to get buns to celebrate the sensibleness
of the Editor of the Children's Globe, when he met the Station Master.
Peter felt
very uncomfortable, for he had now had time to think over the affair of the
coal-mine. He did not like to say “Good morning” to the Station Master, as you
usually do to anyone you meet on a lonely road, because he had a hot feeling,
which spread even to his ears, that the Station Master might not care to speak
to a person who had stolen coals. 'Stolen' is a nasty word, but Peter felt it
was the right one. So he looked down, and said Nothing.
It was the
Station Master who said “Good morning” as he passed by. And Peter answered,
“Good morning.” Then he thought:—
“Perhaps
he doesn't know who I am by daylight, or he wouldn't be so polite.”
And he did
not like the feeling which thinking this gave him. And then before he knew what
he was going to do he ran after the Station Master, who stopped when he heard
Peter's hasty boots crunching the road, and coming up with him very breathless
and with his ears now quite magenta-coloured, he said:—
“I don't
want you to be polite to me if you don't know me when you see me.”
“Eh?” said
the Station Master.
“I thought
perhaps you didn't know it was me that took the coals,” Peter went on, “when
you said 'Good morning.' But it was, and I'm sorry. There.”
“Why,”
said the Station Master, “I wasn't thinking anything at all about the precious
coals. Let bygones be bygones. And where were you off to in such a hurry?”
“I'm going
to buy buns for tea,” said Peter.
“I thought
you were all so poor,” said the Station Master.
“So we
are,” said Peter, confidentially, “but we always have three pennyworth of
halfpennies for tea whenever Mother sells a story or a poem or anything.”
“Oh,” said
the Station Master, “so your Mother writes stories, does she?”
“The
beautifulest you ever read,” said Peter.
“You ought
to be very proud to have such a clever Mother.”
“Yes,”
said Peter, “but she used to play with us more before she had to be so clever.”
“Well,”
said the Station Master, “I must be getting along. You give us a look in at the
Station whenever you feel so inclined. And as to coals, it's a word
that—well—oh, no, we never mention it, eh?”
“Thank
you,” said Peter. “I'm very glad it's all straightened out between us.” And he
went on across the canal bridge to the village to get the buns, feeling more
comfortable in his mind than he had felt since the hand of the Station Master
had fastened on his collar that night among the coals.
Next day
when they had sent the threefold wave of greeting to Father by the Green
Dragon, and the old gentleman had waved back as usual, Peter proudly led the
way to the station.
“But ought
we?” said Bobbie.
“After the
coals, she means,” Phyllis explained.
“I met the
Station Master yesterday,” said Peter, in an offhand way, and he pretended not
to hear what Phyllis had said; “he expresspecially invited us to go down any
time we liked.”
“After the
coals?” repeated Phyllis. “Stop a minute—my bootlace is undone again.”
“It always
IS undone again,” said Peter, “and the Station Master was more of a gentleman
than you'll ever be, Phil—throwing coal at a chap's head like that.”
Phyllis
did up her bootlace and went on in silence, but her shoulders shook, and
presently a fat tear fell off her nose and splashed on the metal of the railway
line. Bobbie saw it.
“Why,
what's the matter, darling?” she said, stopping short and putting her arm round
the heaving shoulders.
“He called
me un-un-ungentlemanly,” sobbed Phyllis. “I didn't never call him unladylike,
not even when he tied my Clorinda to the firewood bundle and burned her at the
stake for a martyr.”
Peter had
indeed perpetrated this outrage a year or two before.
“Well, you
began, you know,” said Bobbie, honestly, “about coals and all that. Don't you
think you'd better both unsay everything since the wave, and let honour be
satisfied?”
“I will if
Peter will,” said Phyllis, sniffling.
“All
right,” said Peter; “honour is satisfied. Here, use my hankie, Phil, for
goodness' sake, if you've lost yours as usual. I wonder what you do with them.”
“You had
my last one,” said Phyllis, indignantly, “to tie up the rabbit-hutch door with.
But you're very ungrateful. It's quite right what it says in the poetry book
about sharper than a serpent it is to have a toothless child—but it means
ungrateful when it says toothless. Miss Lowe told me so.”
“All
right,” said Peter, impatiently, “I'm sorry. THERE! Now will you come on?”
They
reached the station and spent a joyous two hours with the Porter. He was a
worthy man and seemed never tired of answering the questions that begin with
“Why—” which many people in higher ranks of life often seem weary of.
He told
them many things that they had not known before—as, for instance, that the
things that hook carriages together are called couplings, and that the pipes
like great serpents that hang over the couplings are meant to stop the train
with.
“If you
could get a holt of one o' them when the train is going and pull 'em apart,”
said he, “she'd stop dead off with a jerk.”
“Who's
she?” said Phyllis.
“The
train, of course,” said the Porter. After that the train was never again 'It'
to the children.
“And you
know the thing in the carriages where it says on it, 'Five pounds' fine for
improper use.' If you was to improperly use that, the train 'ud stop.”
“And if
you used it properly?” said Roberta.
“It 'ud
stop just the same, I suppose,” said he, “but it isn't proper use unless you're
being murdered. There was an old lady once—someone kidded her on it was a
refreshment-room bell, and she used it improper, not being in danger of her
life, though hungry, and when the train stopped and the guard came along
expecting to find someone weltering in their last moments, she says, 'Oh,
please, Mister, I'll take a glass of stout and a bath bun,' she says. And the
train was seven minutes behind her time as it was.”
“What did
the guard say to the old lady?”
“I
dunno,” replied the Porter, “but I lay she didn't forget it in a hurry,
whatever it was.”
In such
delightful conversation the time went by all too quickly.
The
Station Master came out once or twice from that sacred inner temple behind the
place where the hole is that they sell you tickets through, and was most jolly
with them all.
“Just as
if coal had never been discovered,” Phyllis whispered to her sister.
He gave
them each an orange, and promised to take them up into the signal-box one of
these days, when he wasn't so busy.
Several
trains went through the station, and Peter noticed for the first time that
engines have numbers on them, like cabs.
“Yes,” said
the Porter, “I knowed a young gent as used to take down the numbers of every
single one he seed; in a green note-book with silver corners it was, owing to
his father being very well-to-do in the wholesale stationery.”
Peter felt
that he could take down numbers, too, even if he was not the son of a wholesale
stationer. As he did not happen to have a green leather note-book with silver
corners, the Porter gave him a yellow envelope and on it he noted:—
379
663
and felt
that this was the beginning of what would be a most interesting collection.
That night
at tea he asked Mother if she had a green leather note-book with silver
corners. She had not; but when she heard what he wanted it for she gave him a
little black one.
“It has a
few pages torn out,” said she; “but it will hold quite a lot of numbers, and
when it's full I'll give you another. I'm so glad you like the railway. Only,
please, you mustn't walk on the line.”
“Not if we
face the way the train's coming?” asked Peter, after a gloomy pause, in which
glances of despair were exchanged.
“No—really
not,” said Mother.
Then
Phyllis said, “Mother, didn't YOU ever walk on the railway lines when you were
little?”
Mother was
an honest and honourable Mother, so she had to say, “Yes.”
“Well,
then,” said Phyllis.
“But,
darlings, you don't know how fond I am of you. What should I do if you got
hurt?”
“Are you
fonder of us than Granny was of you when you were little?” Phyllis asked.
Bobbie made signs to her to stop, but Phyllis never did see signs, no matter
how plain they might be.
Mother did
not answer for a minute. She got up to put more water in the teapot.
“No one,”
she said at last, “ever loved anyone more than my mother loved me.”
Then she
was quiet again, and Bobbie kicked Phyllis hard under the table, because Bobbie
understood a little bit the thoughts that were making Mother so quiet—the thoughts
of the time when Mother was a little girl and was all the world to HER mother.
It seems so easy and natural to run to Mother when one is in trouble. Bobbie
understood a little how people do not leave off running to their mothers when
they are in trouble even when they are grown up, and she thought she knew a
little what it must be to be sad, and have no mother to run to any more.
So she
kicked Phyllis, who said:—
“What are
you kicking me like that for, Bob?”
And then
Mother laughed a little and sighed and said:—
“Very
well, then. Only let me be sure you do know which way the trains come—and don't
walk on the line near the tunnel or near corners.”
“Trains
keep to the left like carriages,” said Peter, “so if we keep to the right,
we're bound to see them coming.”
“Very
well,” said Mother, and I dare say you think that she ought not to have said
it. But she remembered about when she was a little girl herself, and she did
say it—and neither her own children nor you nor any other children in the world
could ever understand exactly what it cost her to do it. Only some few of you,
like Bobbie, may understand a very little bit.
It was the
very next day that Mother had to stay in bed because her head ached so. Her
hands were burning hot, and she would not eat anything, and her throat was very
sore.
“If I was
you, Mum,” said Mrs. Viney, “I should take and send for the doctor. There's a
lot of catchy complaints a-going about just now. My sister's eldest—she took a
chill and it went to her inside, two years ago come Christmas, and she's never
been the same gell since.”
Mother
wouldn't at first, but in the evening she felt so much worse that Peter was
sent to the house in the village that had three laburnum trees by the gate, and
on the gate a brass plate with W. W. Forrest, M.D., on it.
W. W.
Forrest, M.D., came at once. He talked to Peter on the way back. He seemed a
most charming and sensible man, interested in railways, and rabbits, and really
important things.
When he
had seen Mother, he said it was influenza.
“Now, Lady
Grave-airs,” he said in the hall to Bobbie, “I suppose you'll want to be
head-nurse.”
“Of
course,” said she.
“Well,
then, I'll send down some medicine. Keep up a good fire. Have some strong beef
tea made ready to give her as soon as the fever goes down. She can have grapes
now, and beef essence—and soda-water and milk, and you'd better get in a bottle
of brandy. The best brandy. Cheap brandy is worse than poison.”
She asked
him to write it all down, and he did.
When
Bobbie showed Mother the list he had written, Mother laughed. It WAS a laugh,
Bobbie decided, though it was rather odd and feeble.
“Nonsense,”
said Mother, laying in bed with eyes as bright as beads. “I can't afford all
that rubbish. Tell Mrs. Viney to boil two pounds of scrag-end of the neck for
your dinners to-morrow, and I can have some of the broth. Yes, I should like
some more water now, love. And will you get a basin and sponge my hands?”
Roberta
obeyed. When she had done everything she could to make Mother less
uncomfortable, she went down to the others. Her cheeks were very red, her lips
set tight, and her eyes almost as bright as Mother's.
She told
them what the Doctor had said, and what Mother had said.
“And now,”
said she, when she had told all, “there's no one but us to do anything, and
we've got to do it. I've got the shilling for the mutton.”
“We can do
without the beastly mutton,” said Peter; “bread and butter will support life.
People have lived on less on desert islands many a time.”
“Of
course,” said his sister. And Mrs. Viney was sent to the village to get as much
brandy and soda-water and beef tea as she could buy for a shilling.
“But even
if we never have anything to eat at all,” said Phyllis, “you can't get all
those other things with our dinner money.”
“No,” said
Bobbie, frowning, “we must find out some other way. Now THINK, everybody, just
as hard as ever you can.”
They did
think. And presently they talked. And later, when Bobbie had gone up to sit
with Mother in case she wanted anything, the other two were very busy with
scissors and a white sheet, and a paint brush, and the pot of Brunswick black
that Mrs. Viney used for grates and fenders. They did not manage to do what
they wished, exactly, with the first sheet, so they took another out of the
linen cupboard. It did not occur to them that they were spoiling good sheets
which cost good money. They only knew that they were making a good—but what
they were making comes later.
Bobbie's
bed had been moved into Mother's room, and several times in the night she got
up to mend the fire, and to give her mother milk and soda-water. Mother talked
to herself a good deal, but it did not seem to mean anything. And once she woke
up suddenly and called out: “Mamma, mamma!” and Bobbie knew she was calling for
Granny, and that she had forgotten that it was no use calling, because Granny
was dead.
In the
early morning Bobbie heard her name and jumped out of bed and ran to Mother's
bedside.
“Oh—ah,
yes—I think I was asleep,” said Mother. “My poor little duck, how tired you'll
be—I do hate to give you all this trouble.”
“Trouble!”
said Bobbie.
“Ah, don't
cry, sweet,” Mother said; “I shall be all right in a day or two.”
And Bobbie
said, “Yes,” and tried to smile.
When you
are used to ten hours of solid sleep, to get up three or four times in your
sleep-time makes you feel as though you had been up all night. Bobbie felt
quite stupid and her eyes were sore and stiff, but she tidied the room, and
arranged everything neatly before the Doctor came.
This was
at half-past eight.
“Everything
going on all right, little Nurse?” he said at the front door. “Did you get the
brandy?”
“I've got
the brandy,” said Bobbie, “in a little flat bottle.”
“I didn't
see the grapes or the beef tea, though,” said he.
“No,” said
Bobbie, firmly, “but you will to-morrow. And there's some beef stewing in the
oven for beef tea.”
“Who told
you to do that?” he asked.
“I noticed
what Mother did when Phil had mumps.”
“Right,”
said the Doctor. “Now you get your old woman to sit with your mother, and then
you eat a good breakfast, and go straight to bed and sleep till dinner-time. We
can't afford to have the head-nurse ill.”
He was
really quite a nice doctor.
When the
9.15 came out of the tunnel that morning the old gentleman in the first-class
carriage put down his newspaper, and got ready to wave his hand to the three
children on the fence. But this morning there were not three. There was only
one. And that was Peter.
Peter was
not on the railings either, as usual. He was standing in front of them in an
attitude like that of a show-man showing off the animals in a menagerie, or of
the kind clergyman when he points with a wand at the 'Scenes from Palestine,'
when there is a magic-lantern and he is explaining it.
Peter was
pointing, too. And what he was pointing at was a large white sheet nailed
against the fence. On the sheet there were thick black letters more than a foot
long.
Some of
them had run a little, because of Phyllis having put the Brunswick black on too
eagerly, but the words were quite easy to read.
And this
what the old gentleman and several other people in the train read in the large
black letters on the white sheet:—
LOOK OUT AT THE STATION.
A good
many people did look out at the station and were disappointed, for they saw
nothing unusual. The old gentleman looked out, too, and at first he too saw
nothing more unusual than the gravelled platform and the sunshine and the
wallflowers and forget-me-nots in the station borders. It was only just as the
train was beginning to puff and pull itself together to start again that he saw
Phyllis. She was quite out of breath with running.
“Oh,” she
said, “I thought I'd missed you. My bootlaces would keep coming down and I fell
over them twice. Here, take it.”
She thrust
a warm, dampish letter into his hand as the train moved.
He leaned
back in his corner and opened the letter. This is what he read:—
“Dear Mr.
We do not know your name.
Mother is
ill and the doctor says to give her the things at the end of the letter, but
she says she can't aford it, and to get mutton for us and she will have the
broth. We do not know anybody here but you, because Father is away and we do
not know the address. Father will pay you, or if he has lost all his money, or
anything, Peter will pay you when he is a man. We promise it on our honer.
I.O.U. for all the things Mother wants.
“sined Peter.
“Will you
give the parsel to the Station Master, because of us not knowing what train you
come down by? Say it is for Peter that was sorry about the coals and he will
know all right.
“Roberta.
“Phyllis.
“Peter.”
Then came
the list of things the Doctor had ordered.
The old
gentleman read it through once, and his eyebrows went up. He read it twice and
smiled a little. When he had read it thrice, he put it in his pocket and went
on reading The Times.
At about
six that evening there was a knock at the back door. The three children rushed
to open it, and there stood the friendly Porter, who had told them so many
interesting things about railways. He dumped down a big hamper on the kitchen
flags.
“Old
gent,” he said; “he asked me to fetch it up straight away.”
“Thank you
very much,” said Peter, and then, as the Porter lingered, he added:—
“I'm most
awfully sorry I haven't got twopence to give you like Father does, but—”
“You drop
it if you please,” said the Porter, indignantly. “I wasn't thinking about no tuppences.
I only wanted to say I was sorry your Mamma wasn't so well, and to ask how she
finds herself this evening—and I've fetched her along a bit of sweetbrier, very
sweet to smell it is. Twopence indeed,” said he, and produced a bunch of
sweetbrier from his hat, “just like a conjurer,” as Phyllis remarked
afterwards.
“Thank you
very much,” said Peter, “and I beg your pardon about the twopence.”
“No
offence,” said the Porter, untruly but politely, and went.
Then the
children undid the hamper. First there was straw, and then there were fine
shavings, and then came all the things they had asked for, and plenty of them,
and then a good many things they had not asked for; among others peaches and
port wine and two chickens, a cardboard box of big red roses with long stalks,
and a tall thin green bottle of lavender water, and three smaller fatter
bottles of eau-de-Cologne. There was a letter, too.
“Dear
Roberta and Phyllis and Peter,” it said; “here are the things you want. Your
mother will want to know where they came from. Tell her they were sent by a
friend who heard she was ill. When she is well again you must tell her all
about it, of course. And if she says you ought not to have asked for the
things, tell her that I say you were quite right, and that I hope she will
forgive me for taking the liberty of allowing myself a very great pleasure.”
The letter
was signed G. P. something that the children couldn't read.
“I think
we WERE right,” said Phyllis.
“Right? Of
course we were right,” said Bobbie.
“All the
same,” said Peter, with his hands in his pockets, “I don't exactly look forward
to telling Mother the whole truth about it.”
“We're not
to do it till she's well,” said Bobbie, “and when she's well we shall be so
happy we shan't mind a little fuss like that. Oh, just look at the roses! I
must take them up to her.”
“And the
sweetbrier,” said Phyllis, sniffing it loudly; “don't forget the sweetbrier.”
“As if I
should!” said Roberta. “Mother told me the other day there was a thick hedge of
it at her mother's house when she was a little girl.”
To be continued