This was the climax for the affrighted crowd, and those who had
relatives in the train seemed to well-nigh lose their senses. A scene
of inextricable confusion ensued. Some were restrained by force from
jumping on the line and setting off to the scene of accident; some
strove to get upon the carriage and engine about to start for it.
Order was restored with great difficulty, and the carriage and engine
rescued from the invaders, who then quitted the station, and set off
to run to the scene, through the same fields that, as the guard said,
passengers were advancing.
Two medical men, who had been hastily obtained, Mr. Oswald Cray, and
sundry officials of the line, took their seats in the carriage to be
conveyed to the spot. The engine had given its first puff, and was
snorting off, when a loud shout arrested it.
"Stop! stop! One single moment! Here's Dr. Davenal!"
His name, for those poor wounded ones, was a tower of strength--worth
all the rest of the surgical skill in Hallingham--and he was pulled
into the carriage, having caught a glimpse of the white face of his
daughter outside the throng. Sara, terrified and bewildered, wondering
what she should do next, was suddenly pounced upon by Miss Davenal.
"You naughty girl! What is it that you are doing here?"
"O Aunt Bettina, there has been an accident to the train! Caroline and
Mr. Cray are sure to be in it."
"Caroline and Mr. Cray are what?" cried out Miss Bettina.
"I fear they are in the train. There has been an accident between here
and Hildon. An engine has just gone down with assistance."
"I don't want to know about engines," returned Miss Davenal, who had
not understood one word in ten. "I ask what you do here alone?
Caroline and Mr. Cray can come home, I suppose, without your waiting
for them in this public manner. What would your papa say if he saw
you?"
"Papa has seen me," replied Sara. "Papa has just come up to the
station and is gone down with the engine."
"Gone down with what engine? What do you mean?"
Sara put her lips close to Miss Davenal's ear. "Papa's gone down the
line with some more gentlemen, to see about the wounded."
"Wounded!" shrieked Miss Bettina. "Has there been an accident? Who's
wounded? Caroline and Mr. Cray?"
"We don't know yet, aunt." And in the best way that she could, Sara
strove to make the case comprehensible to her aunt. Miss Davenal
understood at last, and was somewhat mollified.
"Sara, I am not very angry with you now. I might have stopped myself.
An accident to the train, and the doctors gone down! O those dreadful
railways!"
A little longer of suspense, and then the passengers began to arrive.
After the shock and fright, it had seemed safer to many of them to
walk the three miles of distance than to trust to the rail again and
another engine. The path fields were dry, and it was a pleasant walk
by moonlight. Miss Bettina, whose eyes were as quick as her hearing
was dull, was the first to recognise Mrs. Cray amidst them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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