The Iron Horse. Robert Michael Ballantyne

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.

      Doors began to slam, and John Marrot’s iron horse let off a little impatient steam. Just then the “late passenger” arrived. There is always a late passenger at every train. On this occasion the late passenger was a short-sighted elderly gentleman in a brown top-coat and spectacles. He was accompanied by a friend, who assisted him to push through the crowd of people who had come to see their friends away, or were loitering about for pastime. The late passenger carried a bundle of wraps; the boots of his hotel followed with his portmanteau.

      “All right sir; plenty of time,” observed Sam Natly, coming up and receiving the portmanteau from boots. “Which class, sir?”

      “Eh—oh—third; no, stay, second,” cried the short-sighted gentleman, endeavouring vainly to open his purse to pay boots. “Here, hold my wraps, Fred.”

      His friend Fred chanced at that moment to have been thrust aside by a fat female in frantic haste and Edwin Gurwood, occupying the exact spot he had vacated, had the bundle thrust into his hand. He retained it mechanically, in utter abstraction of mind. The bell rang, and the magnificent guard, whose very whiskers curled with an air of calm serenity, said, “Now then, take your seats; make haste.” Edwin grew desperate. Emma smiled bewitchingly to a doting female friend who had nodded and smiled bewitchingly to Emma for the last five minutes, under the impression that the train was just going to start, and who earnestly wished that it would start, and save her from the necessity of nodding or smiling any longer.

      “Am I to lose sight of her for ever?” muttered Gurwood between his teeth.

      The magnificent guard sounded his whistle and held up his hand. Edwin sprang forward, pulled open the carriage door, leaped in and sat down opposite Emma Lee! The iron horse gave two sharp responsive whistles, and sent forth one mighty puff. The train moved, but not with a jerk; it is only clumsy drivers who jerk trains; sometimes pulling them up too soon, and having to make a needless plunge forward again, or overrunning their stopping points and having to check abruptly, so as to cause in timorous minds the impression that an accident has happened. In fact much more of one’s comfort than is generally known depends upon one’s driver being a good one. John Marrot was known to the regular travellers on the line as a first-rate driver, and some of them even took an interest in ascertaining that he was on the engine when they were about to go on a journey. It may be truly said of John that he never “started” his engine at all. He merely as it were insinuated the idea of motion to his iron steed, and so glided softly away.

      Just as the train moved, the late passenger thrust head and shoulders out of the window, waved his arms, glared abroad, and shouted, or rather spluttered—

      “My b–b–bundle!—wraps!—rug!—lost!”

      A smart burly man, with acute features, stepped on the footboard of the carriage, and, moving with the train, asked what sort of rug it was.

      “Eh! a b–b–blue one, wi–wi—”

      “With,” interrupted the man, “black outside and noo straps?”

      “Ye–ye–yes—yes!”

      “All right, sir, you shall have it at the next station,” said the acute-faced man, stepping on the platform and allowing the train to pass. As the guard’s van came up he leaped after the magnificent guard into his private apartment and shut the door.

      “Hallo! Davy Blunt, somethin’ up?” asked the guard.

      “Yes, Joe Turner, there is somethin’ up,” replied the acute man, leaning against the brake-wheel. “You saw that tall good-lookin’ feller wi’ the eyeglass and light whiskers?”

      “I did. Seemed to me as if his wits had gone on wi’ the last train, an’ he didn’t know how to overtake ’em.”

      “I don’t know about his wits,” said Blunt, “but it seems to me that he’s gone on in this train with somebody else’s luggage.”

      The guard whistled—not professionally, but orally.

      “You don’t say so?”

      The acute man nodded, and, leaning his elbows on the window-sill, gazed at the prospect contemplatively.

      In a few minutes the 6:30 p.m. train was flying across country at the rate of thirty-five or forty miles an hour.

      Chapter Four.

      A Double Dilemma and its Consequences

      Meanwhile, the “tall good-looking fellow with the eyeglass and light whiskers” sat quaking opposite Emma Lee. The extreme absurdity, not to say danger, of his position as a traveller to nowhere without a ticket, flashed upon him when too late, and he would have cheerfully given fifty pounds, had he possessed such a sum, if the boards under his feet would have opened and let him drop between the rails. In fact he felt so confused and guilty that—albeit not naturally a shy youth—he did not dare to look at Emma for some time after starting, but sat with downcast eyes, revolving in his mind how he was to get out of the dilemma; but the more he revolved the matter the more hopeless did his case appear. At length he ventured to look at Emma, and their eyes encountered. Of course Gurwood looked pointedly out at the window and became fascinated by the landscape; and of course Emma, looked out at the other window, and became equally interested in the landscape. Feeling very unhappy; Edwin soon after that took out a newspaper and tried to read, but failed so completely that he gave it up in despair and laid the paper on the seat beside him.

      Just then a happy thought flashed into his mind. He would go on to Langrye station, get out there, and make a confidant of his friend Joseph Tipps, who, of course, could easily get him out of his difficulty. He now felt as if a mighty load were lifted off his heart, and, his natural courage returning, he put up his eyeglass, which had been forgotten during the period of his humiliation, and gazed at the prospect with increasing interest—now through the right window, and then through the left—taking occasion each time to glance with still greater interest at Emma Lee’s beautiful countenance.

      The captain, whose disposition was sociable, and who had chatted a good deal with his daughter while their vis-à-vis was in his agony, soon took occasion to remark that the scenery was very fine. Edwin, gazing at the black walls of a tunnel into which they plunged, and thinking of Emma’s face, replied that it was—extremely. Emerging from the tunnel, and observing the least possible approach to a smile on. Emma’s lips, Edwin remarked to the captain that railway travelling presented rather abrupt changes and contrasts in scenery. The captain laughingly agreed with this, and so, from one thing to another, they went on until the two got into a lively conversation—Captain Lee thinking his travelling companion an extremely agreeable young fellow, and Edwin esteeming the captain one of the jolliest old boys he had ever met! These are the very words he used, long after, in commenting on this meeting to his friend Joseph Tipps.

      During a pause in the conversation, Emma asked her father to whom a certain villa they were passing belonged.

      “I don’t know,” replied the captain; “stay, let me see, I ought to know most of the places hereabouts—no, I can’t remember.”

      “I rather think it belongs to a Colonel Jones,” said Gurwood, for the first time venturing to address Emma directly. “A friend of mine who is connected with this railway knows him, and has often spoken to me about him. The colonel has led an extremely adventurous life, I believe.”

      “Indeed!”

      There was not much apparently in that