The Railway Children
They all climbed on to the top of the fence, and then suddenly there was
a rumbling sound that made them look along the line to the right, where
the dark mouth of a tunnel opened itself in the face of a rocky cliff;
next moment a train had rushed out of the tunnel with a shriek and
a snort, and had slid noisily past them. They felt the rush of its
passing, and the pebbles on the line jumped and rattled under it as it
went by.
“Oh!” said Roberta, drawing a long breath; “it was like a great dragon
tearing by. Did you feel it fan us with its hot wings?”
“I suppose a dragon's lair might look very like that tunnel from the
outside,” said Phyllis.
But Peter said:--
“I never thought we should ever get as near to a train as this. It's the
most ripping sport!”
“Better than toy-engines, isn't it?” said Roberta.
(I am tired of calling Roberta by her name. I don't see why I should.
No one else did. Everyone else called her Bobbie, and I don't see why I
shouldn't.)
“I don't know; it's different,” said Peter. “It seems so odd to see ALL
of a train. It's awfully tall, isn't it?”
“We've always seen them cut in half by platforms,” said Phyllis.
“I wonder if that train was going to London,” Bobbie said. “London's
where Father is.”
“Let's go down to the station and find out,” said Peter.
So they went.
They walked along the edge of the line, and heard the telegraph wires
humming over their heads. When you are in the train, it seems such a
little way between post and post, and one after another the posts seem
to catch up the wires almost more quickly than you can count them. But
when you have to walk, the posts seem few and far between.
But the children got to the station at last.
Never before had any of them been at a station, except for the purpose
of catching trains--or perhaps waiting for them--and always with
grown-ups in attendance, grown-ups who were not themselves interested in
stations, except as places from which they wished to get away.
Never before had they passed close enough to a signal-box to be able to
notice the wires, and to hear the mysterious 'ping, ping,' followed by
the strong, firm clicking of machinery.
The very sleepers on which the rails lay were a delightful path to
travel by--just far enough apart to serve as the stepping-stones in a
game of foaming torrents hastily organised by Bobbie.
Then to arrive at the station, not through the booking office, but in
a freebooting sort of way by the sloping end of the platform. This in
itself was joy.
Joy, too, it was to peep into the porters' room, where the lamps are,
and the Railway almanac on the wall, and one porter half asleep behind a
paper.
There were a great many crossing lines at the station; some of them just
ran into a yard and stopped short, as though they were tired of business
and meant to retire for good. Trucks stood on the rails here, and on one
side was a great heap of coal--not a loose heap, such as you see in your
coal cellar, but a sort of solid building of coals with large square
blocks of coal outside used just as though they were bricks, and built
up till the heap looked like the picture of the Cities of the Plain in
'Bible Stories for Infants.' There was a line of whitewash near the top
of the coaly wall.
When presently the Porter lounged out of his room at the twice-repeated
tingling thrill of a gong over the station door, Peter said, “How do you
do?” in his best manner, and hastened to ask what the white mark was on
the coal for.
“To mark how much coal there be,” said the Porter, “so as we'll know if
anyone nicks it. So don't you go off with none in your pockets, young
gentleman!”
This seemed, at the time but a merry jest, and Peter felt at once that
the Porter was a friendly sort with no nonsense about him. But later the
words came back to Peter with a new meaning.
Have you ever gone into a farmhouse kitchen on a baking day, and seen
the great crock of dough set by the fire to rise? If you have, and if
you were at that time still young enough to be interested in everything
you saw, you will remember that you found yourself quite unable to
resist the temptation to poke your finger into the soft round of dough
that curved inside the pan like a giant mushroom. And you will remember
that your finger made a dent in the dough, and that slowly, but quite
surely, the dent disappeared, and the dough looked quite the same as it
did before you touched it. Unless, of course, your hand was extra dirty,
in which case, naturally, there would be a little black mark.
Well, it was just like that with the sorrow the children had felt at
Father's going away, and at Mother's being so unhappy. It made a deep
impression, but the impression did not last long.
They soon got used to being without Father, though they did not forget
him; and they got used to not going to school, and to seeing very little
of Mother, who was now almost all day shut up in her upstairs room
writing, writing, writing. She used to come down at tea-time and read
aloud the stories she had written. They were lovely stories.
The rocks and hills and valleys and trees, the canal, and above all, the
railway, were so new and so perfectly pleasing that the remembrance of
the old life in the villa grew to seem almost like a dream.
Mother had told them more than once that they were 'quite poor now,' but
this did not seem to be anything but a way of speaking. Grown-up people,
even Mothers, often make remarks that don't seem to mean anything in
particular, just for the sake of saying something, seemingly. There was
always enough to eat, and they wore the same kind of nice clothes they
had always worn.
But in June came three wet days; the rain came down, straight as lances,
and it was very, very cold. Nobody could go out, and everybody shivered.
They all went up to the door of Mother's room and knocked.
“Well, what is it?” asked Mother from inside.
“Mother,” said Bobbie, “mayn't I light a fire? I do know how.”
And Mother said: “No, my ducky-love. We mustn't have fires in June--coal
is so dear. If you're cold, go and have a good romp in the attic.
That'll warm you.”
“But, Mother, it only takes such a very little coal to make a fire.”
“It's more than we can afford, chickeny-love,” said Mother, cheerfully.
“Now run away, there's darlings--I'm madly busy!”
“Mother's always busy now,” said Phyllis, in a whisper to Peter. Peter
did not answer. He shrugged his shoulders. He was thinking.
Thought, however, could not long keep itself from the suitable
furnishing of a bandit's lair in the attic. Peter was the bandit, of
course. Bobbie was his lieutenant, his band of trusty robbers, and, in
due course, the parent of Phyllis, who was the captured maiden for whom
a magnificent ransom--in horse-beans--was unhesitatingly paid.
They all went down to tea flushed and joyous as any mountain brigands.
But when Phyllis was going to add jam to her bread and butter, Mother
said:--
“Jam OR butter, dear--not jam AND butter. We can't afford that sort of
reckless luxury nowadays.”
Phyllis finished the slice of bread and butter in silence, and followed
it up by bread and jam. Peter mingled thought and weak tea.
After tea they went back to the attic and he said to his sisters:--
“I have an idea.”
“What's that?” they asked politely.
“I shan't tell you,” was Peter's unexpected rejoinder.
“Oh, very well,” said Bobbie; and Phil said, “Don't, then.”
“Girls,” said Peter, “are always so hasty tempered.”
“I should like to know what boys are?” said Bobbie, with fine disdain.
“I don't want to know about your silly ideas.”
“You'll know some day,” said Peter, keeping his own temper by what
looked exactly like a miracle; “if you hadn't been so keen on a row, I
might have told you about it being only noble-heartedness that made me
not tell you my idea. But now I shan't tell you anything at all about
it--so there!”
And it was, indeed, some time before he could be induced to say
anything, and when he did it wasn't much. He said:--
“The only reason why I won't tell you my idea that I'm going to do is
because it MAY be wrong, and I don't want to drag you into it.”
“Don't you do it if it's wrong, Peter,” said Bobbie; “let me do it.” But
Phyllis said:--
“_I_ should like to do wrong if YOU'RE going to!”
“No,” said Peter, rather touched by this devotion; “it's a forlorn hope,
and I'm going to lead it. All I ask is that if Mother asks where I am,
you won't blab.”
“We haven't got anything TO blab,” said Bobbie, indignantly.
“Oh, yes, you have!” said Peter, dropping horse-beans through his
fingers. “I've trusted you to the death. You know I'm going to do a lone
adventure--and some people might think it wrong--I don't. And if Mother
asks where I am, say I'm playing at mines.”
“What sort of mines?”
“You just say mines.”
“You might tell US, Pete.”
“Well, then, COAL-mines. But don't you let the word pass your lips on
pain of torture.”
“You needn't threaten,” said Bobbie, “and I do think you might let us
help.”
“If I find a coal-mine, you shall help cart the coal,” Peter
condescended to promise.
“Keep your secret if you like,” said Phyllis.
“Keep it if you CAN,” said Bobbie.
“I'll keep it, right enough,” said Peter.
Between tea and supper there is an interval even in the most greedily
regulated families. At this time Mother was usually writing, and Mrs.
Viney had gone home.
Two nights after the dawning of Peter's idea he beckoned the girls
mysteriously at the twilight hour.
“Come hither with me,” he said, “and bring the Roman Chariot.”
The Roman Chariot was a very old perambulator that had spent years of
retirement in the loft over the coach-house. The children had oiled its
works till it glided noiseless as a pneumatic bicycle, and answered to
the helm as it had probably done in its best days.
“Follow your dauntless leader,” said Peter, and led the way down the
hill towards the station.
Just above the station many rocks have pushed their heads out through
the turf as though they, like the children, were interested in the
railway.
In a little hollow between three rocks lay a heap of dried brambles and
heather.
Peter halted, turned over the brushwood with a well-scarred boot, and
said:--
“Here's the first coal from the St. Peter's Mine. We'll take it home in
the chariot. Punctuality and despatch. All orders carefully attended to.
Any shaped lump cut to suit regular customers.”
The chariot was packed full of coal. And when it was packed it had to
be unpacked again because it was so heavy that it couldn't be got up the
hill by the three children, not even when Peter harnessed himself to the
handle with his braces, and firmly grasping his waistband in one hand
pulled while the girls pushed behind.
Three journeys had to be made before the coal from Peter's mine was
added to the heap of Mother's coal in the cellar.
Afterwards Peter went out alone, and came back very black and
mysterious.
“I've been to my coal-mine,” he said; “to-morrow evening we'll bring
home the black diamonds in the chariot.”
It was a week later that Mrs. Viney remarked to Mother how well this
last lot of coal was holding out.
The children hugged themselves and each other in complicated wriggles of
silent laughter as they listened on the stairs. They had all forgotten
by now that there had ever been any doubt in Peter's mind as to whether
coal-mining was wrong.
But there came a dreadful night when the Station Master put on a pair
of old sand shoes that he had worn at the seaside in his summer holiday,
and crept out very quietly to the yard where the Sodom and Gomorrah heap
of coal was, with the whitewashed line round it. He crept out there, and