The Railway Children
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