The Ghost, Arnold Bennett [book series for 12 year olds TXT] 📗

of the man must be broken. And so I gathered together my courage, and with a preposterous attempt at a friendly smile remarked:

"Beastly weather we're having. One would scarcely expect it so early in September."

It was an inane speech, so commonplace, so entirely foolish. And the man ignored it absolutely. Only the corners of his lips drooped a little to express, perhaps, a profounder degree of hate and scorn.

This made me a little angry.

"Didn't I see you last in the cathedral at Bruges?" I demanded curtly, even rudely.

He laughed. And his laugh really alarmed me.

The train stopped at that moment at a dark and deserted spot, which proved to be Sittingbourne. I hesitated, and then, giving up the struggle, sped out of the compartment, and entered another one lower down. My new compartment was empty. The sensation of relief was infinitely soothing. Placing the jewel-case carefully on my knees, I breathed freely once more, and said to myself that another quarter of an hour of that detestable presence would have driven me mad.

I began to think about Rosetta Rosa. As a solace after the exasperating companionship of that silent person in the other compartment, I invited from the back of my mind certain thoughts about Rosetta Rosa which had been modestly waiting for me there for some little time, and I looked at them fairly, and turned them over, and viewed them from every side, and derived from them a rather thrilling joy. The fact is, I was beginning to be in love with Rosa. Nay, I was actually in love with her. Ever since our first meeting my meditations had been more or less busy with her image. For a long period, largely owing to my preoccupation with Alresca, I had dreamed of her but vaguely. And now, during our interviews at her hotel and in the church of St. Gilles, she had, in the most innocent way in the world, forged fetters on me which I had no desire to shake off.

It was a presumption on my part. I acknowledged frankly that it was a presumption. I was a young doctor, with nothing to distinguish me from the ruck of young doctors. And she was--well, she was one of those rare and radiant beings to whom even monarchs bow, and the whole earth offers the incense of its homage.

Which did not in the least alter the fact that I was in love with her. And, after all, she was just a woman; more, she was a young woman. And she had consulted me! She had allowed me to be of use to her! And, months ago in London, had she not permitted me to talk to her with an extraordinary freedom? Lovely, incomparable, exquisite as she was, she was nevertheless a girl, and I was sure that she had a girl's heart.

However, it was a presumption.

I remembered her legendary engagement to Lord Clarenceux, an engagement which had interested all Europe. I often thought of that matter. Had she loved him--really loved him? Or had his love for her merely flattered her into thinking that she loved him? Would she not be liable to institute comparisons between myself and that renowned, wealthy, and gifted nobleman?

Well, I did not care if she did. Such is the egoism of untried love that I did not care if she did! And I lapsed into a reverie--a reverie in which everything went smoothly, everything was for the best in the best of all possible worlds, and only love and love's requital existed....

Then, in the fraction of a second, as it seemed, there was a grating, a horrible grind of iron, a bump, a check, and my head was buried in the cushions of the opposite side of the carriage, and I felt stunned--not much, but a little.

"What--what?" I heard myself exclaim. "They must have plumped the brakes on pretty sudden."

Then, quite after an interval, it occurred to me that this was a railway accident--one of those things that one reads of in the papers with so much calmness. I wondered if I was hurt, and why I could hear no sound; the silence was absolute--terrifying.

In a vague, aimless way, I sought for my matchbox, and struck a light. I had just time to observe that both windows were smashed, and the floor of the compartment tilted, when the match went out in the wind. I had heard no noise of breaking glass.

I stumbled slowly to the door, and tried to open it, but the thing would not budge. Whereupon I lost my temper.

"Open, you beast, you beast, you beast!" I cried to the door, kicking it hard, and yet not feeling the impact.

Then another thought--a proud one, which served to tranquillize me: "I am a doctor, and they will want me to attend to the wounded."

I remembered my flask, and unscrewing the stopper with difficulty, clutched the mouth with my teeth and drank. After that I was sane and collected. Now I could hear people tramping on the ground outside, and see the flash of lanterns. In another moment a porter, whose silver buttons gleamed in the darkness, was pulling me through the window.

"Hurt?"

"No, not I. But if any one else is, I'm a doctor."

"Here's a doctor, sir," he yelled to a gray-headed man near by. Then he stood still, wondering what he should do next. I perceived in the near distance the lights of a station.

"Is that Dover?"

"No, sir; Dover Priory. Dover's a mile further on. There was a goods wagon got derailed on the siding just beyond the home signal, and it blocked the down line, and the driver of the express ran right into it, although the signal was against him--ran right into it, 'e did."

Other people were crawling out of the carriages now, and suddenly there seemed to be scores of spectators, and much shouting and running about. The engine lay on its side, partly overhanging a wrecked wagon. Immense clouds of steam issued from it, hissing above the roar of the wind. The tender was twisted like a patent hairpin in the middle. The first coach, a luggage-van, stood upright, and seemed scarcely damaged. The second coach, the small, old-fashioned vehicle which happily I had abandoned at Sittingbourne, was smashed out of resemblance to a coach. The third one, from which I had just emerged, looked fairly healthy, and the remaining three had not even left the rails.

All ran to the smashed coach.

"There were two passengers in that coach," said the guard, who, having been at the rear of the train, was unharmed.

"Are you counting me?" I asked. "Because I changed carriages at Sittingbourne."

"Praise God for that, sir!" he answered. "There's only one, then--a tall, severe-looking gent--in the first-class compartment."

Was it joy or sorrow that I felt at the thought of that man buried somewhere in the shapeless mass of wood and iron? It certainly was not unmixed sorrow. On the contrary, I had a distinct feeling of elation at the thought that I was probably rid forever of this haunter of my peace, this menacing and mysterious existence which (if instinctive foreboding was to be trusted) had been about to cross and thwart and blast my own.

The men hammered and heaved and chopped and sawed, and while they were in the midst of the work some one took me by the sleeve and asked me to go and attend to the engine-driver and stoker, who were being carried into a waiting-room at the station. It is symptomatic of the extraordinary confusion which reigns in these affairs that till that moment the question of the fate of the men in charge of the train had not even entered my mind, though I had of course noticed that the engine was overturned. In the waiting-room it was discovered that two local doctors had already arrived. I preferred to leave the engine-driver to them. He was unconscious as he lay on a table. The stoker, by his side, kept murmuring in a sort of delirium:

"Bill, 'e was all dazed like--'e was all dazed like. I told him the signal wasn't off. I shouted to him. But 'e was all dazed like."

I returned to the train full of a horrible desire to see with my own eyes a certain corpse. Bit by bit the breakdown gang had removed the whole of the centre part of the shattered carriage. I thrust myself into the group, and--we all looked at each other. Nobody, alive or dead, was to be found.

"He, too, must have got out at Sittingbourne," I said at length.

"Ay!" said the guard.

My heard swam, dizzy with dark imaginings and unspeakable suspicions. "He has escaped; he is alive!" I muttered savagely, hopelessly. It was as if a doom had closed inevitably over me. But if my thoughts had been legible and I had been asked to explain this attitude of mine towards a person who had never spoken to me, whom I had seen but thrice, and whose identity was utterly unknown, I could not have done so. I had no reasons. It was intuition.

Abruptly I straightened myself, and surveying the men and the background of ruin lighted by the fitful gleams of lanterns and the pale glitter of a moon half-hidden by flying clouds, I shouted out:

"I want a cab. I have to catch the Calais boat. Will somebody please direct me!"

No one appeared even to hear me. The mental phenomena which accompany a railway accident, even a minor one such as this, are of the most singular description. I felt that I was growing angry again. I had a grievance because not a soul there seemed to care whether I caught the Calais boat or not. That, under the unusual circumstances, the steamer would probably wait did not occur to me. Nor did I perceive that there was no real necessity for me to catch the steamer. I might just as well have spent the night at the Lord Warden, and proceeded on my journey in the morning. But no! I must hurry away instantly!

Then I thought of the jewel-box.

"Where's my jewel-box?" I demanded vehemently from the guard, as though he had stolen it.

He turned to me.

"What's that you're carrying?" he replied.

All the time I had been carrying the jewel-box. At the moment of the collision I must have instinctively clutched it, and my grasp had not slackened. I had carried it to the waiting-room and back without knowing that I was doing so!

This sobered me once more. But I would not stay on the scene. I was still obsessed by the desire to catch the steamer. And abruptly I set off walking down the line. I left the crowd and the confusion and the ruin, and hastened away bearing the box.

I think that I must have had no notion of time, and very little notion of space. For I arrived at the harbour without the least recollection of the details of my journey thither. I had no memory of having been accosted by any official of the railway, or even of having encountered any person at all. Fortunately it had ceased to rain, and the wind, though still strong, was falling rapidly.

Except for a gatekeeper, the bleak, exposed pier had the air of being deserted. The lights of the town flickered in the distance, and above them rose dimly the gaunt outlines of the fortified hills. In front was the intemperate and restless