All she knew for the first few minutes was merely that there had been an accident to the train, and they were standing5 still now in the darkness of the tunnel.
For some seconds she paused, and gasped6 hard for breath, and tried in vain to recall her scattered7 senses. Then slowly she sank back on the seat once more, vaguely8 conscious that something terrible had happened to the train, but that neither she nor her companion were seriously injured.
As she sank back in her place, Cyril Waring bent9 forward towards her with sympathetic kindliness10.
“You’re not hurt, I hope,” he said, holding out one hand to help her rise. “Stand up for a minute, and see if you’re anything worse than severely11 shaken. No? That’s right, then! That’s well, as far as it goes. But I’m afraid the nervous shock must have been very rough on you.”
Elma stood tip, with tears gathering12 fast in her eyes. She’d have given the world to be able to cry now, for the jar had half stunned13 her and shaken her brain; but before the artist’s face she was ashamed to give free play to her feelings. So she only answered, in a careless sort of tone—
“Oh, it’s nothing much, I think. My head feels rather queer; but I’ve no bones broken. A collision, I suppose. Oughtn’t we to get out at once and see what’s happened to the other people?”
Cyril Waring moved hastily to the door, and, letting down the window, tried with a violent effort to turn the handle from the outside. But the door wouldn’t open. As often happens in such accidents, the jar had jammed it. He tried the other side, and with some difficulty at last succeeded in forcing it open. Then he descended14 cautiously on to the six-foot-way, and held out his hand to help Elma from the carriage.
It was no collision, he saw at once, but a far more curious and unusual accident.
Looking ahead through the tunnel, all was black as night. A dense15 wall of earth seemed to block and fill in the whole space in front of them. Part of one broken and shattered carriage lay tossed about in wild confusion on the ground close by. Their own had escaped. All the rest was darkness.
In a moment, Cyril rightly divined what must have happened to the train. The roof of the tunnel had caved in on top of it. At least one carriage—the one immediately in front of them—had been crushed and shattered by the force of its fall. Their own was the last, and it had been saved as if by a miracle. It lay just outside the scene of the subsidence.
One thought rose instinctively16 at once in the young man’s mind. They must first see if any one was injured in the other compartments17, or among the débris of the broken carriage; and then they must make for the open mouth of the tunnel, through which the light of day still gleamed bright behind them.
He peered in hastily at the other three windows. Not a soul in any one of the remaining compartments! It was a very empty train, he had noticed himself, when he had got in at Tilgate; the one solitary19 occupant of the front compartment18 of their carriage, a fat old lady with a big black bag, had bundled out at Chetwood. They were alone in the tunnel—at this end of the train at least; their sole duty now was to make haste and save themselves.
He gazed overhead. The tunnel was bricked in with an arch on top. The way through in front was blocked, of course, by the fallen mass of water-logged sandstone. He glanced back towards the open mouth. A curious circumstance, half-way down to the opening, attracted at once his keen and practised eye.
Strange to say, the roof at one spot was not a true arc of a circle. It bulged21 slightly downwards22, in a flattened23 arch, as if some superincumbent weight were pressing hard upon it. Great heavens, what was this? Another trouble in store! He looked again, still more earnestly, and started with horror.
In the twinkling of an eye, his reason told him, beyond the shadow of a doubt, what was happening at the bulge20. A second fall was just about to take place close by them. Clearly there were TWO weak points m the roof of the tunnel. One had already given way in front; the other was on the very eve of giving way behind them. If it fell, they were imprisoned24 between two impassable walls of sand and earth. Without one instant’s delay, he turned and seized his companion’s hand hastily.
“Quick! quick!” he cried, in a voice of eager warning. “Run, run for your life to the mouth of the tunnel! Here, come! You’ve only just time! It’s going, it’s going!”
But Elma’s feminine instinct worked quicker and truer than even Cyril Waring’s manly25 reason. She didn’t know why; she couldn’t say how; but in that one indivisible moment of time she had taken in and grasped to the full all the varying terrors of the situation. Instead of running, however, she held back her companion with a nervous force she could never before have imagined herself capable of exerting.
“Stop here,” she cried authoritatively26, wrenching27 his arm in her haste. “If you go you’ll be killed. There’s no time to run past. It’ll be down before you’re there. See, see, it’s falling.”
Even before the words were well out of her mouth, another great crash shook the ground behind them. With a deafening28 roar, the tunnel gave way in a second place beyond. Dust and sand filled the air confusedly. For a minute or two all was noise and smoke and darkness. What exactly had happened neither of them could see. But now the mouth of the tunnel was blocked at either end alike, and no daylight was visible. So far as Cyril could judge, they two stood alone, in the dark and gloom, as in a narrow cell, shut in with their carriage between two solid walls of fallen earth and crumbling29 sandstone.
At this fresh misfortune, Elma sat down on the footboard with her face in her hands, and began to sob30 bitterly. The artist leaned over her and let her cry for a while in quiet despair. The poor girl’s nerves, it was clear, were now wholly unstrung. She was brave, as women go, undoubtedly31 brave; but the shock and the terror of such a position as this were more than enough to terrify the bravest. At last Cyril ventured on a single remark.
“How lucky,” he said, in an undertone, “I didn’t get out at Warnworth after all. It would have been dreadful if you’d been left all alone in this position.”
Elma glanced up at him with a sudden rush of gratitude32. By the dim light of the oil lamp that still flickered33 feebly in the carriage overhead, she could see his face; and she knew by the look in those truthful34 eyes that he really meant it. He really meant he was glad he’d come on and exposed himself to this risk, which he might otherwise have avoided, because he would be sorry to think a helpless woman should be left alone by herself in the dark to face it. And, frightened as she was, she was glad of it too. To be alone would be awful. This was pre-eminently one of those many positions in life in which a woman prefers to have a man beside her.
And yet most men, she knew, would have thought to themselves at once, “What a fool I was to come on beyond my proper station, and let myself in for this beastly scrape, just because I’d go a few miles further with a pretty girl I never saw in my life before, and will probably never see in my life again, if I once get well out of this precious predicament.”
But that they would ever get out of it at all seemed to both of them now in the highest degree improbable. Cyril, by reason, Elma, by instinct, argued out the whole situation at once, and correctly. There had been much rain lately. The sandstone was water-logged. It had caved in bodily, before them and behind them. A little isthmus35 of archway still held out in isolation36 just above their heads. At any moment that isthmus might give way too, and, falling on their carriage, might crush them beneath its weight. Their lives depended upon the continued resisting power of some fifteen yards or so of dislocated masonry37.
Appalled38 at the thought, Cyril moved from his place for a minute, and went forward to examine the fallen block in front. Then he paced his way back with groping steps to the equally ruinous mass behind them. Elma’s eyes, growing gradually accustomed to the darkness and the faint glimmer39 of the oil lamps, followed his action with vague and tearful interest.
“If the roof doesn’t give way,” he said calmly at last, when he returned once more to her, “and if we can only let them know we’re alive in the tunnel, they may possibly dig us out before we choke. There’s air enough here for eighteen hours for us.”
He spoke40 very quietly and reassuringly41, as if being shut up in a fallen tunnel between two masses of earth were a matter that needn’t cause one the slightest uneasiness; but his words suggested to Elma’s mind a fresh and hitherto unthought-of danger.
“Eighteen hours,” she cried, horror-struck. “Do you mean to say we may have to stop here, all alone, for eighteen hours together? Oh, how very dreadful! How long! How frightening! And if they don’t dig us out before eighteen hours are over, do you mean to say we shall die of choking?”
Cyril gazed down at her with a very regretful and sympathetic face.
“I didn’t mean to frighten you,” he said; “at least, not more than you’re frightened already; but, of course, there’s only a certain amount of oxygen in the space that’s left us; and as we’re using it up at every breath, it’ll naturally hold out for a limited time only. It can’t be much more than eighteen hours. Still, I don’t doubt they’ll begin digging us out at once; and if they dig through fast, they may yet be in time, even so, to save us.”
Elma bent forward with her face in her hands again, and, rocking herself to and fro in an agony of despair, gave herself vip to a paroxysm of utter misery42. This was too, too terrible. To think of eighteen hours in that gloom and suspense43; and then to die at last, gasping44 hard for breath, in the poisonous air of that pestilential tunnel.
For nearly an hour she sat there, broken down and speechless; while Cyril Waring, taking a seat in silence by her side, tried at first with mute sympathy to comfort and console her. Then he turned to examine the roof, and the block at either end, to see if perchance any hope remained of opening by main force an exit anywhere. He even began by removing a little of the sand at the side of the line with a piece of shattered board from the broken carriage in front; but that was clearly no use. More sand tumbled in as fast as he removed it. He saw there was nothing left for it but patience or despair. And of the two, his own temperament45 dictated46 rather patience.
He returned at last, wearied out, to Elma’s side. Elma, still sitting disconsolate47 on the footboard, rocking herself up and down, and moaning low and piteously, looked up as he came with a mute glance of inquiry48. She was very pretty. That struck him even now. It made his heart bleed to think she should be so cowed and terrified.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” he said, after a pause, half afraid to speak, “but there are four lamps all burning hard in these four compartments, and using up the air we may need by-and-by for our own breathing. If I were to climb to the top of the carriage—which I can easily do—I could put them all out, and economize49 our oxygen. It would leave us in the dark, but it’d give us one more chance of life. Don’t you think I’d better get up and turn them off, or squash them?”
Elma clasped her hands in horror at the bare suggestion.
“Oh dear, no!” she cried hastily. “Please, PLEASE don’t do that. It’s bad enough to choke slowly, like this, in the gloom. But to die in the dark—that would be ten times more terrible. Why, it’s a perfect Black Hole of Calcutta, even now. If you were to turn out the lights I could never stand it.”
Cyril gave a respectful little nod of assent50.
“Very well,” he answered, as calm as ever. “That’s just as you will. I only meant to suggest it to you. My one wish is to do the best I can for you. Perhaps”—and he hesitated—“perhaps I’d better let it go on for an hour or two more, and then, whenever the air begins to get very oppressive—I mean when one begins to feel it’s really failing us—one person, you know, could live on so much longer than two... it would be a pity not to let you stand every chance. Perhaps I might—-”
Elma gazed at him aghast in the utmost horror. She knew what he meant at once. She didn’t even need that he should finish his sentence.
“Never!” she said, firmly clenching51 her small hand hard. “It’s so wrong of you to think of it, even. I could never permit it. It’s your duty to keep yourself alive at all hazards as long as ever you can. You should remember your mother, your sisters, your family.”
“Why, that’s just it,” Cyril answered, a little crestfallen52, and feeling he had done quite a wicked thing in venturing to suggest that his companion should have every chance for her own life. “I’ve got no mother, you see, no sisters, no family. Nobody on earth would ever be one penny the worse if I were to die, except my twin brother; he’s the only relation I ever had in my life; and even HE, I dare say, would very soon get over it. Whereas YOU”—he paused and glanced at her compassionately—“there are probably many to whom the loss would be a very serious one. If I could do anything to save you—-” He broke off suddenly, for Elma looked up at him once more with a little burst of despair.
“If you talk like that,” she cried, with a familiarity that comes of association in a very great danger, “I don’t know what I shall do; I don’t know what I shall say to you. Why, I couldn’t bear to be left alone here to die by myself. If only for MY sake, now we’re boxed up here together, I think you ought to wait and do the best you can for yourself.”
“Very well,” Cyril answered once more, in a most obedient tone. “If you wish me to live to keep you company in the tunnel, I’ll live while I may. You have only to say what you wish. I’m here to wait upon you.”
In any other circumstances, such a phrase would have been a mere4 piece of conversational53 politeness. At that critical moment, Elma knew it for just what it was—a simple expression of his real feeling.
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1
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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extricating
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| v.使摆脱困难，脱身( extricate的现在分词 ) | |
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dilemma
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| n.困境，进退两难的局面 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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gasped
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| v.喘气( gasp的过去式和过去分词 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要 | |
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7
scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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kindliness
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| n.厚道，亲切，友好的行为 | |
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severely
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| adv.严格地；严厉地；非常恶劣地 | |
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gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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stunned
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| adj. 震惊的，惊讶的 动词stun的过去式和过去分词 | |
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descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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dense
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| a.密集的，稠密的，浓密的；密度大的 | |
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instinctively
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| adv.本能地 | |
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compartments
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| n.间隔( compartment的名词复数 )；（列车车厢的）隔间；（家具或设备等的）分隔间；隔层 | |
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compartment
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| n.卧车包房，隔间；分隔的空间 | |
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solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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bulge
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| n.突出，膨胀，激增；vt.突出，膨胀 | |
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bulged
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| 凸出( bulge的过去式和过去分词 )； 充满； 塞满（某物） | |
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downwards
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| adj./adv.向下的（地），下行的（地） | |
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flattened
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| [医]（水）平扁的，弄平的 | |
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imprisoned
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| 下狱，监禁( imprison的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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manly
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| adj.有男子气概的；adv.男子般地，果断地 | |
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authoritatively
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| 命令式地，有权威地，可信地 | |
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wrenching
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| n.修截苗根，苗木铲根（铲根时苗木不起土或部分起土）v.（猛力地）扭( wrench的现在分词 )；扭伤；使感到痛苦；使悲痛 | |
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28
deafening
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| adj. 振耳欲聋的, 极喧闹的 动词deafen的现在分词形式 | |
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29
crumbling
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| adj.摇摇欲坠的 | |
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sob
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| n.空间轨道的轰炸机；呜咽，哭泣 | |
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undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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gratitude
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| adj.感激，感谢 | |
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33
flickered
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| （通常指灯光）闪烁，摇曳( flicker的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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truthful
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| adj.真实的，说实话的，诚实的 | |
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isthmus
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| n.地峡 | |
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isolation
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| n.隔离，孤立，分解，分离 | |
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masonry
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| n.砖土建筑；砖石 | |
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38
appalled
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| v.使惊骇，使充满恐惧( appall的过去式和过去分词)adj.惊骇的；丧胆的 | |
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glimmer
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| v.发出闪烁的微光；n.微光，微弱的闪光 | |
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40
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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41
reassuringly
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| ad.安心，可靠 | |
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42
misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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43
suspense
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| n.（对可能发生的事）紧张感，担心，挂虑 | |
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44
gasping
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| adj. 气喘的, 痉挛的 动词gasp的现在分词 | |
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45
temperament
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| n.气质，性格，性情 | |
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46
dictated
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| v.大声讲或读( dictate的过去式和过去分词 )；口授；支配；摆布 | |
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47
disconsolate
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| adj.忧郁的，不快的 | |
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48
inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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49
economize
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| v.节约，节省 | |
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50
assent
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| v.批准，认可；n.批准，认可 | |
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51
clenching
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| v.紧握，抓紧，咬紧( clench的现在分词 ) | |
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52
crestfallen
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| adj. 挫败的，失望的，沮丧的 | |
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53
conversational
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| adj.对话的，会话的 | |
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