by Grant Allen
Guy Waring, standing there, telegram in hand, looked down at his companion with a somewhat contemptuous smile.
“Oh dear, no,” he answered, with common-sense confidence; for he loved not mysteries. “You don’t believe any nonsense of that sort, do you? There’s nothing in the least mystical in the kind of sympathy that exists between Cyril and myself. It’s all purely physical. We’re very like one another. But that’s all. There’s none of the Corsican Brothers sort of hocus-pocus about us in any way. The whole thing is a simple caste of natural causation.”
“Then you don’t believe in brain-waves?” Nevitt suggested, with a gracefully appropriate undulation of his small white hand.
Guy laughed incredulously. “All rubbish, my dear fellow,” he answered, “all utter rubbish. If any man knows, it’s myself and Cyril. We’re as near one another as any two men on earth could possibly be; but when we want to communicate our ideas, each to each, we have to speak or write, just like the rest of you. Every man is like a clock wound up to strike certain hours. Accidents may happen, events may intervene, the clock may get smashed, and all may be prevented. But, bar accidents, it’ll strike all right, under ordinary circumstances, when the hour arrives for it. Well, Cyril and I, as I always say, are like two clocks wound up at the same time to strike together, and we strike with very unusual regularity. But that’s the whole mystery. If I get smashed by accident, there’s no reason on earth why Cyril shouldn’t run on for years yet as usual; and if Cyril got smashed, there’s no reason on earth why I should ever know anything about it except from the newspapers.”
CHAPTER IV.
INSIDE THE TUNNEL.
And, indeed, if brain-waves had been in question at all, they ought, without a doubt, to have informed Guy Waring that at the very moment when he was going out to send off his telegram, his brother Cyril was sitting disconsolate, with dark blue lips and swollen eyelids, on the footboard of the railway carriage in the Lavington tunnel. Cyril was worn out with digging by this time, for he had done his best once more to clear away the sand towards the front of the train in the vague hope that he might succeed in letting in a little more air to their narrow prison through the chinks and interstices of the fallen sandstone. Besides, a man in an emergency must do something, if only to justify his claim to manliness — especially when a lady is looking on at his efforts.
So Cyril Waring had toiled and moiled in that deadly atmosphere for some hours in vain, and now sat, wearied out and faint from foul vapours, by Elma’s side on the damp, cold footboard. By this time the air had almost failed them. They gasped for breath, their heads swam vaguely. A terrible weight seemed to oppress their bosoms. Even the lamps in the carriages flickered low and burned blue. The atmosphere of the tunnel, loaded from the very beginning with sulphurous smoke, was now all but exhausted. Death stared them in the face without hope of respite — a ghastly, slow death by gradual stifling.
“You MUST take a little water,” Elma murmured, pouring out the last few drops for him into the tin cup — for Cyril had brought a small bottleful that morning for his painting, as well as a packet of sandwiches for lunch. “You’re dreadfully tired. I can see your lips are parched and dry with digging.”
She was deathly pale herself, and her own eyes were livid, for by this time she had fairly given up all hope of rescue; and, besides, the air in the tunnel was so foul and stupefying, she could hardly speak; indeed, her tongue clung to her palate. But she poured out the last few drops into the cup for Cyril and held them up imploringly, with a gesture of supplication. These two were no strangers to one another now. They had begun to know each other well in those twelve long hours of deadly peril shared in common.
Cyril waved the cup aside with a firm air of dissent.
“No, no,” he said, faintly, “you must drink it yourself. Your need is greater far than mine.”
Elma tried to put it away in turn, but Cyril would not allow her. So she moistened her mouth with those scanty last drops, and turned towards him gratefully.
“There’s no hope left now,” she said, in a very resigned voice. “We must make up our minds to die where we stand. But I thank you, oh, I thank you so much, so earnestly.”
Cyril, for his part, could hardly find breath to speak.
“Thank you,” he gasped out, in one last despairing effort. “Things look very black; but while there’s life there’s hope. They may even still, perhaps, come up with us.”
As he spoke, a sound broke unexpectedly on the silence of their prison. A dull thud seemed to make itself faintly heard from beyond the thick wall of sand that cut them off from the daylight. Cyril stared with surprise. It was a noise like a pick-axe. Stooping hastily down, he laid his ear against the rail beside the shattered carriage.
“They’re digging!” he cried earnestly, finding words in his joy.
“They’re digging to reach us! I can hear them! I can hear them!”
Elma glanced up at him with a certain tinge of half-incredulous surprise.
“Yes, they’re digging, of course,” she said quickly. “I knew they’d dig for us, naturally, as soon as they missed us. But how far off are they yet? That’s the real question. Will they reach us in time? Are they near or distant?”
Cyril knelt down on the ground as before, in an agony of suspense, and struck the rail three times distinctly with his walking-stick. Then he put his ear to it and listened, and waited. In less than half a minute three answering knocks rang, dim but unmistakable, along the buried rail. He could even feel the vibration on the iron with his face.
“They hear us! They hear us!” he cried once more, in a tremor of excitement. “I don’t think they’re far off. They’re coming rapidly towards us.”
At the words Elma rose from her seat, still paler than ever, but strangely resolute, and took the stick from his hand with a gesture of despair. She was almost stifled. But she raised it with method. Knocking the rail twice, she bent down her head and listened in turn. Once more two answering knocks rang sharp along the connecting line of metal. Elma shook her head ominously.
“No, no, they’re a very long way off still,” she murmured, in a faltering tone. “I can hear it quite well. They can never reach us!”
She seated herself on a fragment of the broken carriage, and buried her face in her hands once more in silence. Her heart was full. Her head was very heavy. She gasped and struggled. Then a sudden intuition seized her, after her kind. If the rail could carry the sound of a tap, surely it might carry the human voice as well. Inspired with the idea, she rose again and leant forward.
A second time she knocked two quick little taps, ringing sharp on the rail, as if to bespeak attention; then, putting her mouth close to the metals, she shouted aloud along them with all the voice that was left her —
“Hallo, there, do you hear? Come soon, come fast. We’re alive, but choking!”
Quick as lightning an answer rang back as if by magic, along the conducting line of the rail — a strange unexpected answer.
“Break the pipe of the wires,” it said, and then subsided instantly.
Cyril, who was leaning down at her side at the moment with his ear to the rail, couldn’t make out one word of it. But Elma’s sharp senses, now quickened by the crisis, were acute as an Oriental’s and keen as a beagle’s.
“Break the pipe of the wires,” they say, she exclaimed, starting back and pondering. “What on earth can they mean by that? What on earth can they be driving at? ‘Break the pipe of the wires.’ I don’t understand them.”
Hardly had she spoken, when another sharp tap resounded still more clearly along the rail at her feet. She bent down her head once more, and laid her eager ear beside it in terrible suspense. A rough man’s voice — a navvy’s, no doubt, or a fireman’s — came speeding along the metal; and it said in thick accents —
“Do you hear what I say? If you want to breathe freer, break the pipe of the wires, and you’ll get fresh air from outside right through it.”
Cyril this time had caught the words, and jumped up with a sudden air of profound conviction. It was very dark, and the lamps were going out, but he took his fusee-box from his pocket and struck a light hastily. Sure enough, on the left-hand side of the tunnel, half buried in rubbish, an earthenware pipe ran along by the edge near the wall of the archway. Cyril raised his foot and brought his heel down upon it sharply with all the strength and force he had still left in him. The pipe broke short, and Cyril saw within it a number of telegraph wires for the railway service. The tube communicated directly with the air outside. They were saved! They were saved! Air would come through the pipe! He saw it all now! He dimly understood it!
At the self-same moment, another sound of breaking was heard more distinctly at the opposite end, some thirty or forty feet off through the tunnel. Then a voice rang far clearer, as if issuing from the tube, in short, sharp sentences —
“We’ll pump you in air. How many of you are there? Are you all alive? Is any one injured?”
Cyril leant down and shouted back in reply —
“We’re two. Both alive. Not hurt. But sick and half dead with stifling. Send us air as soon as ever you can. And if possible pass us a bottle of water.”
Some minutes elapsed — three long, slow minutes of it — intense anxiety. Elma, now broken down with terror and want of oxygen, fell half fainting forward towards the shattered tube. Cyril held her up in his supporting arms, and watched the pipe eagerly. It seemed an age; but, after a time, he became conscious of a gust of air blowing cold on his face. The keen freshness revived him.
He looked about him and drew a deep breath. Cool air was streaming in through the broken place. Quick as thought, he laid Elma’s mouth as close as he could lay it to the reviving current. Her eyes were closed. After a painful interval, she opened them languidly. Cyril chafed her hands with his, but his chafing seemed to produce very little effect. She lay motionless now with her eyelids half shut, and the whites of her eyes alone showing through them. The close, foul air of that damp and confined spot had worked its worst, and had almost asphyxiated her. Cyril began to fear the slight relief had arrived five minutes too late. And it must still in all probability be some hours at least before they could be actually disentombed from that living vault or restored to the open air of heaven.
As he bent over her and held his breath in speechless suspense, the voice called out again more loudly than ever —
“Look out for the ball in the tube. We’re sending you water!”
Cyril watched the pipe closely and struck another light. In a minute, a big glass marble came rattling through, with a string attached to it.
“Pull the string!” the voice cried; and Cyril pulled with a will. Now and again, the object attached to it struck against some projecting ledge or angle where the pipes overlapped. But at last, with a little humouring, it came through in safety. At the end was a large india-rubber bottle, full of fresh water, and a flask of brandy. The young man seized them both with delight and avidity, and bathed Elma’s temples over and over again with the refreshing spirit. Then he poured a little into the cup, and filling it up with water, held it to her lips with all a woman’s tenderness. Elma gulped the draught down unconsciously, and opened her eyes at once. For a moment she stared about her with a wild stare of surprise.
Then, of a sudden, she recollected where she was, and why, and seizing Cyril’s hand, pressed it long and eagerly.
“If only we can hold out for three hours more,” she cried, with fresh hope returning, “I’m sure they’ll reach us; I’m sure they’ll reach us!”
CHAPTER V.
GRATITUDE.
“There were only two of you, then, in the last carriage?” Guy asked with deep interest, the very next morning, as Cyril, none the worse for his long imprisonment, sat quietly in their joint chambers at Staple Inn, recounting the previous day’s adventures.
“Yes. Only two of us. It was awfully fortunate. And the carriage that was smashed had nobody at all, except in the first compartment, which escaped being buried. So there were no lives lost, by a miracle, you may say. But several of the people in the front part of the train got terribly shaken.”
“And you and the other man were shut up in the tunnel there for fifteen hours at a stretch?” Guy went on reflectively.
“At least fifteen hours,” Cyril echoed, without attempting to correct the slight error of sex, for no man, he thought, is bound to criminate himself, even in a flirtation. “It was two in the morning before they dug us quite out. And my companion by that time was more dead than alive, I can tell you, with watching and terror.”
“Was he, poor fellow?” Guy murmured, with a sympathetic face; for Cyril had always alluded casually to his fellow-traveller in such general terms that Guy was as yet unaware there was a lady in the case. “And is he all right again now, do you know? Have you heard anything more about him?”
But before Cyril could answer there came a knock at the door, and the next moment Mr. Montague Nevitt, without his violin, entered the room in some haste, all agog with excitement. His face was eager and his manner cordial. It was clear he was full of some important tidings.
“Why, Cyril, my dear fellow,” he cried, grasping the painter’s hand with much demonstration of friendly warmth, and wringing it hard two or three times over, “how delighted I am to see you restored to us alive and well once more. This is really too happy. What a marvellous escape! And what a romantic story! All the clubs are buzzing with it. A charming girl! You’ll have to marry her, of course, that’s the necessary climax. You and the young lady are the staple of news, I see, in very big print, in all the evening papers!”
Guy drew back at the words with a little start of surprise. “Young lady!” he cried aghast. “A charming girl, Nevitt! Then the person who was shut up with you for fifteen hours in the tunnel was a girl, Cyril!”
Cyril’s handsome face flushed slightly before his brother’s scrutinizing gaze; but he answered with a certain little ill-concealed embarrassment:
“Oh, I didn’t say so, didn’t I? Well, she WAS a girl then, of course; a certain Miss Clifford. She got in at Chetwood. Her people live somewhere down there near Tilgate. At least, so I gathered from what she told me.”
Nevitt stared hard at the painter’s eyes, which tried, without success, to look unconscious.
“A romance!” he said, slowly, scanning his man with deep interest. “A romance, I can see. Young, rich, and beautiful. My dear Cyril, I only wish I’d had half your luck. What a splendid chance, and what a magnificent introduction! Beauty in distress! A lady in trouble! You console her alone in a tunnel for fifteen hours by yourself at a stretch. Heavens, what a tete-a-tete! Did British propriety ever before allow a man such a glorious opportunity for chivalrous devotion to a lady of family, face, and fortune?”
“Was she pretty?” Guy asked, coming down at once to a more realistic platform.
Cyril hesitated a moment. “Well, yes,” he answered, somewhat curtly, after a short pause. “She’s distinctly good-looking.” And he shut his mouth sharp. But he had said quite enough.
When a man says that of a girl, and nothing more, in an unconcerned voice, as if it didn’t matter twopence to him, you may be perfectly sure in your own mind he’s very deeply and seriously smitten.
“And young?” Guy continued.
“I should say about twenty.”
“And rich beyond the utmost dreams of avarice?” Montague Nevitt put in, with a faintly cynical smile.
“Well, I don’t know about that,” Cyril answered truthfully. “I haven’t the least idea who she is, even. She and I had other things to think about, you may be sure, boxed up there so long in that narrow space, and choking for want of air, than minute investigations into one another’s pedigrees.”
“WE’VE got no pedigree,” Guy interposed, with a bitter smile. “So the less she investigates about that the better.”
“But SHE has, I expect,” Nevitt put in hastily; “and if I were you
, Cyril, I’d hunt her up forthwith, while the iron’s hot, and find out all there is to find out about her. Clifford-Clifford? I wonder whether by any chance she’s one of the Devonshire Cliffords, now? For if so, she might really be worth a man’s serious attention. They’re very good business. They bank at our place; and they’re by no means paupers.” For Nevitt was a clerk in the well-known banking firm of Drummond, Coutts, and Barclay, Limited; and being a man who didn’t mean, as he himself said, “to throw himself away on any girl for nothing,” he kept a sharp look-out on the current account of every wealthy client with an only daughter.
Ten minutes later, as the talk ran on, some further light was unexpectedly thrown upon this interesting topic by the entrance of the porter with a letter for Cyril. The painter tore it open, and glanced over it, as Nevitt observed, with evident eagerness. It was short and curt, but in its own way courteous.
“‘Mr. Reginald Clifford, C.M.G., desires to thank Mr. Cyril Waring for his kindness and consideration to Miss Clifford during her temporary incarceration—’
“Incarceration’s good, isn’t it? How much does he charge a thousand for that sort, I wonder? —
“‘during her temporary incarceration in the Lavington tunnel yesterday. Mrs. and Miss Clifford wish also to express at the same time their deep gratitude to Mr. Waring for his friendly efforts, and trust he has experienced no further ill effects from the unfortunate accident to which he was subjected.
“‘Craighton, Tilgate, Thursday morning.’”
“She MIGHT have written herself,” Cyril murmured half aloud. He was evidently disappointed at this very short measure of correspondence on the subject.
But Montague Nevitt took a more cheerful view. “Oh, Reginald Clifford, of Craighton!” he cried with a smile, his invariable smile. “I know all about HIM. He’s a friend of Colonel Kelmscott’s down at Tilgate Park. C.M.G., indeed! What a ridiculous old peacock. He was administrator of St. Kitts once upon a time, I believe, or was it Nevis or Antigua? I don’t quite recollect, I’m afraid; but anyhow, some comical little speck of a sugary, niggery, West Indian Island; and he was made a Companion of St. Michael and St. George when his term was up, just to keep him quiet, don’t you know, for he wanted a knighthood, and to shelve him from being appointed to a first-class post like Barbados or Trinidad. If it’s Elma Clifford you were shut up with in the tunnel, Cyril, you might do worse, there’s no doubt, and you might do better. She’s an only daughter, and there’s a little money at the back of the family, I expect; but I fancy the Companion of the Fighting Saints lives mainly on his pension, which, of course, is purely personal, and so dies with him.”
