Читать книгу Kitty Alone - Baring-Gould Sabine - Страница 7

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The engineer Brunel was fond of daring and magnificent schemes, carried out at other people’s expense. One of these schemes was the construction of the South Devon Railway, running from Exeter to Plymouth, for some portion of its way along the coast, breasting the sea, exposed to the foam of the breaking tide, and worked by atmospheric pressure. Brunel was an admirer of Prout’s delightful sketches--Prout, the man who taught the eye of the nineteenth century to observe the picturesque. Brunel, having other folks’ money to play with, thought himself justified in providing therewith subjects for sepia and Chinese white studies in the future. Taking as his model Italian churches, with their campaniles, he placed engine-houses for the atmospheric pressure at every station, designed on these models. That they were picturesque no one could deny, that they were vastly costly the shareholders were well aware.

For a while the atmospheric railway was worked from these Italian churches, the campaniles of which contained the exhausting pumps. Then the whole scheme collapsed, when the pumps had completely exhausted the shareholders’ pockets.

The system was ingenious, but it should have been tried on a small scale before operations were carried on upon one that was large, and in a manner that was lavish.

The system was this. A tube was laid between the rails, and the carriages ran connected with a piston in the tube. The air was pumped out before the piston, and the pressure of the atmosphere behind was expected to propel piston and carriages attached to it. The principle was that upon which we imbibe sherry-cobbler.

But there was a difficulty, and that was insurmountable. Had the carriages been within the tube they would have swung along readily enough. But they were without and yet connected with the piston within; and it was precisely over this connection that the system broke down. A complex and ingenious scheme was adopted for making the tubes air-tight in spite of the long slit through which slid the coulter that connected the carriages with the piston. The train carried with it a sort of hot flat-iron which it passed over the leather flap bedded in tallow that closed the slit.

But the device was too intricate and too open to disturbance by accident to be successful. Trains ran spasmodically. The coulter, raising the flap, let the air rush into the artificially formed vacuum before it, and so act as a break on the propelling force of the air behind. The flap became displaced. The tallow under a hot sun melted away. The trains when they started were attended on their course by a fizzing noise as of a rocket about to explode, very trying to the nerves. They had a habit of sulking and stopping in the midst of tunnels, or of refusing to start from stations when expected to start. By no means infrequently they arrived at their destination propelled by panting passengers, and the only exhaustion of atmosphere of which anything could be spoken, was that of the lungs of those who had paid for their tickets to be carried along the line, not to shove along the carriages with their shoulders.

At the time when our story opens, this unfortunate venture, so ruinous to many speculators, was in process of demonstrating how unworthy it was of the Italian churches and campaniles that had been erected for its use.

After a while steam locomotives were brought to the stations and held in readiness to fly to the aid of broken-down atmospheric trains. A little later, and the atmospheric engines and tubes were broken up and sold for old iron, and the ecclesiastical edifices that had contained the pumps were let to whoever would rent them, as cider stores or depôts of guano and dissolved bone.

John Pooke, only son of the wealthiest yeoman in the parish of Coombe-in-Teignhead, had been put across the estuary that morning so that he might go by train to Exeter, to be fitted for a suit and suitably hatted for the approaching marriage of his sister. In two or three parishes beside the Teign the old yeoman has held his own from before Tudor days. From century to century the land has passed from father to son. These yeomen families have never extended their estates, and have been careful not to diminish them. The younger sons and the daughters have gone into trade or into service, and have looked with as much pride to the ancestral farms as can any noble family to its baronial hall. These yeomen are without pretence, do not affect to be what they are not, knowing what they are, and content, and more than content, therewith. There are occasions in which they do make some display, and these are funerals and weddings.

It was considered at the family gathering of the Pooke clan that, at the approaching solemnity of the marriage of the daughter of the house, no village tailor, nay, not even one of the town of Teignmouth, could do justice to the occasion, and that it would be advisable for the son and heir to seek the superior skill of an Exeter tradesman to invest his body in well-fitting and fashionable garments, and an Exeter hatter to provide him with a hat as worn by the leaders of fashion.

John Pooke had been ferried over in the morning, and had requested that the boat might be in waiting for him on his return in the evening by the last train.

Kate had often been sent across on previous occasions. She could handle an oar. The tide was still flowing, and there was absolutely no danger to be anticipated. At no time was there risk, though there might be inconvenience, and the latter only when the tide was ebbing and the mud-banks were becoming exposed. To be stranded on one of these would entail a tedious waiting in mid-river till return of tide, and with the flow the refloating of the ferry-boat.

Kate rowed leisurely across the mouth of the Teign. The evening was closing in. The sun had set behind the green hills to the west; a cold wind blew down the river, sometimes whistling, sometimes with a sob in its breath, and as it swept the tide it crisped it into wavelets.

Now that the sunlight was no longer on or in the water, the latter had lost its exquisite greenness, and had assumed a sombre tint. The time of the year was March; no buds had burst on the trees. The larch plantations were hesitating, putting forth, indeed, their little blood-purple “strawberry baskets”--their marvellous flower, and ready at the first warm shower to flush into emerald green. The limes, the elms, were red at every spray with rising sap. The meadows, however, were of an intense brilliancy of verdure.

At the mouth of the Teign rose the Ness, a very Bardolph’s nose for rubicundity, and the inflowing tide was warm in colour in places where it flowed over a loosely compacted bank of sand or mud. Thus the river was as a piece of shot silk of two tinctures.

Kate was uncertain whether the train had passed or not. The atmospheric railway had none of the bluster of the steam locomotive. No puffs of vapour like white cotton wool rose in the air to forewarn of a coming train, or, after one had passed, to lie along the course and tell for five minutes that the train had gone by. It uttered no whistle, its breaks produced no jar. Its lungs did not pant and roar. It slid along almost without a sound.

Consequently, Kate, knowing that the ferry-boat had been despatched late, almost expected to find John Pooke stamping and growling on the hard. When, however, she ran the boat aground at the landing-place, she saw that no one was there in expectation.

The girl fastened the little vessel to a ring and went up the river bank in quest of someone who could inform her about the train.

She speedily encountered a labourer with boots red in dust. He, however, could say nothing relative to the down train. After leaving work--“tilling ’taters”--he had been into the public-house at Bishop’s Teignton for his half-pint of ale, to wash the red dust down the redder lane; the train might have gone by while he was refreshing himself; but there was also a probability that it had not. Continuing her inquiries, Kate met a woman who assured her that the train had passed. She had seen it, whilst hanging out some clothes; she had been near enough to distinguish the passengers in the carriages.

Whilst this woman was communicating information, another came up who was equally positive in her asseverations that the train had not gone by. She had been looking out for it, so as to set her clock by it. A lively altercation ensued between the women, which developed into personalities; their voices rose in pitch and in volume of tone. A third came up and intervened. A train had indeed passed, but it was an up and not a down train. Thus the first woman was right--she had seen the train and observed the passengers; and the second was right--the down train by which she had set her clock had not gone by. Far from being satisfied at this solution of the difficulty, both women who had been in controversy turned in combined attack upon the third woman who would have reconciled them. What right had she to interfere? who had asked for her opinion? Everyone knew about her--and then ensued personalities. The third woman, hard pressed, covered with abuse, sought escape by turning upon Kate and rating her for having asked impertinent questions. The other two at once joined in, and Kate was driven to fly the combined torrent of abuse and take refuge in her boat. There she could sit and wait the arrival of the fare, and be undisturbed save by her own uneasy thoughts. The wind was rising. It puffed down the river, then held its breath, filled its bellows and puffed more fiercely, more ominously. The evening sky was clouding over, but the clouds were chopped, and threatened a stormy night.

Kate had brought her shawl, and she now wrapped it about her, as she sat waiting in the boat. When the glow passed away, caused by her exertion in rowing and her run from the exasperated women, it left her cold and shivering.

The tide was beyond the full, and was beginning to ebb. This was vexatious. Unless John Pooke arrived speedily, there would be difficulty in traversing the Teign, for the water would warp out rapidly with the wind driving it seawards.

She must exercise patience and wait a little longer. What should she do if the young man did not arrive before the lapse of half an hour? this was a contingency for which she must be prepared. Her aunt Zerah had bidden her remain till Pooke appeared. But if he did not appear before the tide was out, then she would be unable to cross that evening. It would be eminently unsatisfactory to be benighted, and to have to seek shelter on the Bishop’s Teignton side. She had no friends there, and to be rambling about with Pooke in quest of some place where both might be accommodated was what she could not think of. To await the turn of the tide in her boat was a prospect only slightly less agreeable. The wind was from the east, it cut like a knife. She was ill provided for exposure to it in the night. The sun had set and the light was ebbing out of the sky as fast as the water was draining out of the estuary. There was no moon. There would be little starlight, for the clouds as they advanced became compacted into a leaden canopy that obscured the constellations.

Kate looked across the water to Coombe Cellars. Already a light had been kindled there, and from the window it formed a glittering line on the running tide.

She gazed wistfully down the river. All was dark there. She could hear the murmur of the sea behind the Den, a bar of shingle and sand that more than half closed the mouth of the river.

Kate leaned over the side of the boat. The water gulped and curled away; in a quarter of an hour it would be gone. She thrust her boat farther out, as already it was being left high and dry.

She would allow Pooke five minutes longer, ten minutes at the outside; yet she had no watch by which to measure the time. She shrank from being benighted on that side of the river. She shrank from the alternative of a scolding from her aunt should she come across without Pooke.

What if John Pooke were to arrive at the landing-place one minute after she had departed? What if she waited for John Pooke one minute over the moment at which it was possible to cross? Whilst thus tossed in doubt, the train glided by. There were lights in the carriages, a strong light in the driving carriage cast forward along the rails. The train did not travel fast--at a rate not above thirty miles an hour.

Kate heaved a sigh. “At last! Pooke will be here directly. Oh dear! I hope not too late.”

The atmospheric train slipped away into darkness with very little noise, and then the only sound Kate heard was that of the lapping of the water against the sides of the boat, like that produced by a dog drinking.