Merry-Garden and Other StoriesQuiller-Couch, Arthur
General
Merry-Garden and Other Stories
Quiller-Couch, Arthur
Cornwall (England : County) -- Fiction; France -- Fiction; Short stories
The foregoing narrative has been submitted to me by the writer, who was
well acquainted with the late Mr. Molesworth. In my opinion it conveys a
correct impression of that gentleman's temperament and character: and I
can testify that in the details of his psychical adventures on the valley
road leading to St. A--'s Church it adheres strictly to the account given
me by Mr. Molesworth himself shortly after the accident on the M----
viaduct, and repeated by him several times with insistence during the
illness which terminated mortally some four months later. The manner in
which the narrative is presented may be open to criticism: but of this, as
one who has for some years eschewed the reading of fiction, I am not a
fair judge. It adds, at any rate, nothing in the way of 'sensation' to the
story as Mr. Molesworth told it: and of its improbability I should be the
last to complain, who am to add, of my own positive observation, some
evidence which will make it appear yet more startling, if not wholly
incredible.
The accident was actually witnessed by two men, cattle-jobbers, who were
driving down the valley road in a light cart or 'trap,' and were within
two hundred yards of the viaduct when they saw the train crash through the
parapet over the second span (counting from the west), and strike and
plunge down the slope. In their evidence at the inquest, and again at the
Board of Trade inquiry, these men agree that it took them from five to
eight minutes only to alight, run down and across the valley (fording the
stream on their way), and scramble up to the scene of the disaster: and
they further agree that one of the first sad objects on which their eyes
fell was the dead body of Sir John Crang with Mr. Molesworth, alive but
sadly injured and bleeding, stretched across it. Apparently they had
managed to crawl from the wreck of the carriage before Sir John succumbed,
or Mr. Molesworth had managed to drag his companion out--whether dead or
alive cannot be told--before himself fainting from loss of blood.
The toll of the disaster, as is generally known, amounted to twelve killed
and seventeen more or less seriously injured. Help having been summoned
from M---- Station, the injured--or as many of them as could be removed--
were conveyed in an ambulance train to Plymouth. Among them was Mr.
Molesworth, whose apparent injuries were a broken hip, a laceration of the
thigh, and an ugly, jagged scalp-wound. Of all these he made, in time, a
fair recovery: but what brought him under my care was the nervous shock
from which his brain, even while his body healed, never made any promising
attempt to rally. For some time after the surgeon had pronounced him
cured he lingered on, a visibly dying man, and died in the end of utter
nervous collapse.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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