Stories by English Authors: England
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Various >> Stories by English Authors: England
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STORIES BY ENGLISH AUTHORS
ENGLAND
THE BOX TUNNEL BY CHARLES READE
MINIONS OF THE MOON BY F. W. ROBINSON
THE FOUR-FIFTEEN EXPRESS BY AMELIA B. EDWARDS
THE WRONG BLACK BAG BY ANGELO LEWIS
THE THREE STRANGERS BY THOMAS HARDY
MR. LISMORE AND THE WIDOW BY WILKIE COLLINS
THE PHILOSOPHER IN THE APPLE ORCHARD BY ANTHONY HOPE
THE BOX TUNNEL
BY CHARLES READE
The 10:15 train glided from Paddington May 7, 1847. In the left
compartment of a certain first-class carriage were four passengers;
of these two were worth description. The lady had a smooth, white,
delicate brow, strongly marked eyebrows, long lashes, eyes that
seemed to change colour, and a good-sized, delicious mouth, with
teeth as white as milk. A man could not see her nose for her eyes
and mouth; her own sex could, and would have told us some nonsense
about it. She wore an unpretending grayish dress, buttoned to
the throat with lozenge-shaped buttons, and a Scottish shawl that
agreeably evaded colour. She was like a duck, so tight her plain
feathers fitted her, and there she sat, smooth, snug, and delicious,
with a book in her hand and a soupcon of her wrist just visible as
she held it. Her opposite neighbour was what I call a good style
of man, the more to his credit since he belonged to a corporation
that frequently turns out the worst imaginable style of young men.
He was a cavalry officer, aged twenty-five. He had a moustache,
but not a very repulsive one--not one of those subnasal pigtails on
which soup is suspended like dew on a shrub; it was short, thick,
and black as a coal. His teeth had not yet been turned by tobacco
smoke to the colour of juice; his clothes did not stick to nor
hang to him; he had an engaging smile, and, what I liked the dog
for, his vanity, which was inordinate, was in its proper place, his
heart, not in his face, jostling mine and other people's who have
none; in a word, he was what one oftener hears of than meets--a
young gentleman. He was conversing in an animated whisper with
a companion, a fellow-officer; they were talking about what it is
far better not to--women. Our friend clearly did not wish to be
overheard; for he cast ever and anon a furtive glance at his fair
vis-a-vis and lowered his voice. She seemed completely absorbed
in her book, and that reassured him. At last the two soldiers came
down to a whisper (the truth must be told); the one who got down
at Slough, and was lost to posterity, bet ten pounds to three that
he who was going down with us to Bath and immortality would not
kiss either of the ladies opposite upon the road. "Done, done!" Now
I am sorry a man I have hitherto praised should have lent himself,
even in a whisper, to such a speculation; "but nobody is wise at
all hours," not even when the clock is striking five and twenty,
and you are to consider his profession, his good looks, and the
temptation--ten to three.
After Slough the party was reduced to three. At Twylford one lady
dropped her handkerchief; Captain Dolignan fell on it like a lamb;
two or three words were interchanged on this occasion. At Reading
the Marlborough of our tale made one of the safe investments of that
day; he bought a "Times" and "Punch"--the latter full of steel-pen
thrusts and woodcuts. Valour and beauty deigned to laugh at some
inflamed humbug or other punctured by "Punch." Now laughing together
thaws our human ice; long before Swindon it was a talking-match;
at Swindon who so devoted as Captain Dolignan? He handed them out,
he souped them, he tough-chickened them, he brandied and cochinealed
one, and he brandied and burnt-sugared the other; on their return
to the carriage one lady passed into the inner compartment to
inspect a certain gentleman's seat on that side of the line.
Reader, had it been you or I, the beauty would have been the
deserter, the average one would have stayed with us till all was
blue, ourselves included; not more surely does our slice of bread
and butter, when it escapes from our hand, revolve it ever so often,
alight face downward on the carpet. But this was a bit of a fop,
Adonis, dragoon, --so Venus remained in tete-a-tete with him. You
have seen a dog meet an unknown female of his species; how handsome,
how _empresse_, how expressive he becomes: such was Dolignan
after Swindon, and, to do the dog justice, he got handsome and
handsomer. And you have seen a cat conscious of approaching cream:
such was Miss Haythorn; she became demurer and demurer. Presently
our captain looked out of the window and laughed; this elicited an
inquiring look from Miss Haythorn.
"We are only a mile from the Box Tunnel."
"Do you always laugh a mile from the Box Tunnel?" said the lady.
"Invariably."
"What for?"
"Why, hem! it is a gentleman's joke."
Captain Dolignan then recounted to Miss Haythorn the following:
"A lady and her husband sat together going through the Box Tunnel;
there was one gentleman opposite; it was pitch-dark. After the
tunnel the lady said, 'George, how absurd of you to salute me going
through the tunnel!' 'I did no such thing.' 'You didn't?' 'No;
why?' 'Because somehow I thought you did!'"
Here Captain Dolignan laughed and endeavoured to lead his companion
to laugh, but it was not to be done. The train entered the tunnel.
_Miss Haythorn._ Ah!
_Dolignan._ What is the matter?
_Miss Haythorn._ I am frightened.
_Dolignan_ (moving to her side). Pray do not be alarmed; I am
near you.
_Miss Haythorn._ You are near me--very near me indeed, Captain
Dolignan.
_Dolignan._ You know my name?
_Miss Haythorn._ I heard you mention it. I wish we were out
of this dark place.
_Dolignan._ I could be content to spend hours here reassuring
you, my dear lady.
_Miss Haythorn._ Nonsense!
_Dolignan._ Pweep! (Grave reader, do not put our lips to the
next pretty creature you meet, or will understand what this means.)
_Miss Haythorn._ Ee! Ee!
_Friend._ What is the matter?
_Miss Haythorn._ Open the door! Open the door!
There was a sound of hurried whispers; the door was shut and the
blind pulled down with hostile sharpness.
If any critic falls on me for putting inarticulate sounds in a
dialogue as above, I answer, with all the insolence I can command
at present, "Hit boys as big as yourself"--bigger, perhaps, such
as Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes; they began it, and I
learned it of them sore against my will.
Miss Haythorn's scream lost most of its effect because the engine
whistled forty thousand murders at the same moment, and fictitious
grief makes itself heard when real cannot.
Between the tunnel and Bath our young friend had time to ask himself
whether his conduct had been marked by that delicate reserve which
is supposed to distinguish the perfect gentleman.
With a long face, real or feigned, he held open the door; his late
friends attempted to escape on the other side; impossible! they must
pass him. She whom he had insulted (Latin for kissed) deposited
somewhere at his feet a look of gentle, blushing reproach; the
other, whom he had not insulted, darted red-hot daggers at him from
her eyes; and so they parted.
It was perhaps fortunate for Dolignan that he had the grace to be
a friend to Major Hoskyns of his regiment, a veteran laughed at
by the youngsters, for the major was too apt to look coldly upon
billiard-balls and cigars; he had seen cannon-balls and linstocks. He
had also, to tell the truth, swallowed a good bit of the mess-room
poker, which made it as impossible for Major Hoskyns to descend
to an ungentlemanlike word or action as to brush his own trousers
below the knee.
Captain Dolignan told this gentleman his story in gleeful accents;
but Major Hoskyns heard him coldly, and as coldly answered that he
had known a man to lose his life for the same thing.
"That is nothing," continued the major, "but unfortunately he
deserved to lose it."
At this blood mounted to the younger man's temples, and his senior
added, "I mean to say he was thirty-five; you, I presume, are
twenty-one!"
"Twenty-five."
"That is much the same thing; will you be advised by me?"
"If you will advise me."
"Speak to no one of this, and send White the three pounds, that he
may think you have lost the bet."
"That is hard, when I won it."
"Do it, for all that, sir."
Let the disbelievers in human perfectibility know that this dragoon,
capable of a blush, did this virtuous action, albeit with violent
reluctance; and this was his first damper. A week after these events
he was at a ball. He was in that state of factitious discontent
which belongs to us amiable English. He was looking in vain for
a lady equal in personal attraction to the idea he had formed of
George Dolignan as a man, when suddenly there glided past him a
most delightful vision--a lady whose beauty and symmetry took him
by the eyes; another look: "It can't be! Yes, it is!" Miss Haythorn!
(not that he knew her name), but what an apotheosis!
The duck had become a peahen--radiant, dazzling; she looked twice
as beautiful and almost twice as large as before. He lost sight of
her; he found her again. She was so lovely she made him ill, and
he alone must not dance with her, speak to her. If he had been
content to begin her acquaintance the usual way it might have ended
in kissing; it must end in nothing. As she danced sparks of beauty
fell from her on all around but him; she did not see him; it
was clear she never would see him. One gentleman was particularly
assiduous; she smiled on his assiduity; he was ugly, but she smiled
on him. Dolignan was surprised at his success, his ill taste, his
ugliness, his impertinence. Dolignan at last found himself injured;
who was this man? and what right had he to go on so? "He never
kissed her, I suppose," said Dolle. Dolignan could not prove it,
but he felt that somehow the rights of property were invaded. He
went home and dreamed of Miss Haythorn, and hated all the ugly
successful. He spent a fortnight trying to find out who his beauty
was; he never could encounter her again. At last he heard of her
in this way: a lawyer's clerk paid him a little visit and commenced
a little action against him in the name of Miss Haythorn for
insulting her in a railway-train.
The young gentleman was shocked, endeavoured to soften the lawyer's
clerk; that machine did not thoroughly comprehend the meaning of
the term. The lady's name, however, was at last revealed by this
untoward incident; from her name to her address was but a short
step, and the same day our crestfallen hero lay in wait at her door,
and many a succeeding day, without effect. But one fine afternoon
she issued forth quite naturally, as if she did it every day,
and walked briskly on the parade. Dolignan did the same, met and
passed her many times on the parade, and searched for pity in her
eyes, but found neither look nor recognition nor any other sentiment;
for all this she walked and walked till all the other promenaders
were tired and gone; then her culprit summoned resolution, and,
taking off his hat, with a voice for the first time tremulous,
besought permission to address her. She stopped, blushed, and neither
acknowledged nor disowned his acquaintance. He blushed, stammered
out how ashamed he was, how he deserved to be punished, how he
was punished, how little she knew how unhappy he was, and concluded
by begging her not to let all the world know the disgrace of a man
who was already mortified enough by the loss of her acquaintance.
She asked an explanation; he told her of the action that had been
commenced in her name; she gently shrugged her shoulders, and
said, "How stupid they are!" Emboldened by this, he begged to know
whether or not a life of distant unpretending devotion would, after
a lapse of years, erase the memory of his madness--his crime!
She did not know!
She must now bid him adieu, as she had some preparations to make
for a ball in the Crescent, where everybody was to be. They parted,
and Dolignan determined to be at the ball where everybody was to
be. He was there, and after some time he obtained an introduction
to Miss Haythorn and he danced with her. Her manner was gracious.
With the wonderful tact of her sex, she seemed to have commenced the
acquaintance that evening. That night for the first time Dolignan
was in love. I will spare the reader all a lover's arts by which he
succeeded in dining where she dined, in dancing where she danced,
in overtaking her by accident when she rode. His devotion followed
her to church, where the dragoon was rewarded by learning there
is a world where they neither polk nor smoke, the two capital
abominations of this one.
He made an acquaintance with her uncle, who liked him, and he saw
at last with joy that her eye loved to dwell upon him when she
thought he did not observe her. It was three months after the Box
Tunnel that Captain Dolignan called one day upon Captain Haythorn,
R.N., whom he had met twice in his life, and slightly propitiated
by violently listening to a cutting-out expedition; he called,
and in the usual way asked permission to pay his addresses to his
daughter. The worthy captain straightway began doing quarter-deck,
when suddenly he was summoned from the apartment by a mysterious
message. On his return he announced, with a total change of voice,
that it was all right, and his visitor might run alongside as
soon as he chose. My reader has divined the truth; this nautical
commander, terrible to the foe, was in complete and happy subjugation
to his daughter, our heroine.
As he was taking leave, Dolignan saw his divinity glide into
the drawing-room. He followed her, observed a sweet consciousness
deepen into confusion; she tried to laugh, and cried instead, and
then she smiled again; when he kissed her hand at the door it was
"George" and "Marian" instead of "Captain" this and "Miss" the
other.
A reasonable time after this (for my tale is merciful and skips
formalities and torturing delays) these two were very happy; they
were once more upon the railroad, going to enjoy their honeymoon all
by themselves. Marian Dolignan was dressed just as before--duck-like
and delicious, all bright except her clothes; but George sat beside
her this time instead of opposite, and she drank him in gently from
her long eyelashes.
"Marian," said George, "married people should tell each other all.
Will you ever forgive me if I own to you; no--"
"Yes, yes!"
"Well then, you remember the Box Tunnel?" (This was the first
allusion he had ventured to it.) "I am ashamed to say I had three
pounds to ten pounds with White I would kiss one of you two ladies,"
and George, pathetic externally, chuckled within.
"I know that, George; I overheard you," was the demure reply.
"Oh! you overheard me! Impossible."
"And did you not hear me whisper to my companion? I made a bet with
her."
"You made a bet? how singular! What was it?"
"Only a pair of gloves, George."
"Yes, I know; but what about it?"
"That if you did you should be my husband, dearest."
"Oh! but stay; then you could not have been so very angry with me,
love. Why, dearest, then you brought that action against me."
Mrs. Dolignan looked down.
"I was afraid you were forgetting me! George, you will never forgive
me?"
"Sweet angel! why, here is the Box Tunnel!"
Now, reader--fie! no! no such thing! you can't expect to be
indulged in this way every time we come to a dark place. Besides,
it is not the thing. Consider--two sensible married people. No
such phenomenon, I assure you, took place. No scream in hopeless
rivalry of the engine--this time!
MINIONS OF THE MOON
BY F. W. ROBINSON
Our story is of the time when George III was king, and our scene of
action lies only at an old farm-house six miles or so from Finchley
--a quaint, ramshackle, commodious, old-fashioned, thatched farm-house
that we see only in pictures now, and which has long since been
improved off the face of the earth.
It was a farm estate that was flourishing bravely in those dear
disreputable days when the people paid fivepence a pound for bread,
and only dared curse Protection in their hearts; when few throve
and many starved, and younger sons of gentry, without interest at
court or Parliament, either cut the country which served them so
badly, or took to business on the king's highway and served the
country badly in return.
The Maythorpe Farm belonged to the Pemberthys, and had descended
from father to son from days lying too far back to reckon up just
now; and a rare, exclusive, conservative, bad-tempered, long-headed
race the Pemberthys had always borne the reputation of being,
feathering their own nests well, and dying in them fat and prosperous.
There were a good many Pemberthys scattered about the home and
midland counties, but it was generally understood in the family
that the head of the clan, as it were, lived at Maythorpe Farm,
near Finchley, and here the Pemberthys would forgather on any
great occasion, such as a marriage, a funeral, or a christening,
the funeral taking precedence for numbers. There had been a grand
funeral at Maythorpe Farm only a few days before our story opens,
for Reuben Pemberthy had been consigned to his fathers at the early
age of forty-nine. Reuben Pemberthy had left one son behind him,
also named Reuben, a stalwart, heavy-browed, good-looking young
fellow, who, at two and twenty, was quite as well able to manage
the farm and everybody on it as his father had been before him.
He had got rid of all his relatives save two six days after his
father's funeral; and those two were stopping by general consent,
because it was signed, sealed, and delivered by those whom it
most concerned, that the younger woman, his cousin, pretty Sophie
Tarne, was to be married before the year was out to the present
Reuben Pemberthy, who had wooed her and won her consent when he
went down to her mother's house at King's Norton for a few days'
trip last summer. Being a steady, handsome fellow, who made love
in downright earnest, he impressed Sophie's eighteen years, and
was somewhat timidly but graciously accepted as an affianced suitor.
It was thought at King's Norton that Mrs. Tarne had done a better
stroke of business in the first year of her widowhood than her
late husband had done--always an unlucky wretch, Timothy--in the
whole course of his life. And now Sophie Tarne and her mother were
staying for a few days longer at Maythorpe Farm after the funeral.
Mrs. Tarne, having been a real Pemberthy before her unfortunate
marriage with the improvident draper of King's Norton, was quite
one of the family, and seemed more at home at Finchley than was
the new widow, Mrs. Pemberthy, a poor, unlucky lady, a victim to
a chronic state of twittering and jingling and twitching, but one
who, despite her shivers, had made the late Reuben a good wife,
and was a fair housekeeper even now, although superintending
housekeeping in jumps, like a palsy-stricken kangaroo.
So Sophie and her bustling mother were of material assistance
to Mrs. Pemberthy; and the presence of Sophie in that house of
mourning--where the mourning had been speedily got over and business
had begun again with commendable celerity--was a considerable source
of comfort to young Reuben, when he had leisure after business hours
which was not always the case, to resume those tender relations
which had borne to him last autumn such happy fruit of promise.
Though there was not much work to do at the farm in the winter-time,
when the nights were long and the days short, yet Reuben Pemberthy
was generally busy in one way or another; and on the particular
day on which our story opens Reuben was away at High Barnet.
It had been a dull, dark day, followed by a dull, dark night.
The farm servants had gone to their homes, save the few that were
attached to the premises, such as scullery-maids and dairymaids;
and Mrs. Pemberthy, Mrs. Tarne, and her daughter Sophie were waiting
early supper for Reuben, and wondering what kept him so long from
his home and his sweetheart.
Mrs. Tarne, accustomed, mayhap, to the roar and bustle of King's
Norton, found the farm at Finchley a trifle dull and lonely,--not
that in a few days after a funeral she could expect any excessive
display of life or frivolity,--and, oppressed a bit that evening,
was a trifle nervous as to the whereabouts of her future son-in-law,
who had faithfully promised to be home a clear hour and a half
before the present time, and whose word might be always taken to
be as good as his bond. Mrs. Tarne was the most restless of the
three women. Good Mrs. Pemberthy, though physically shaken, was
not likely to be nervous concerning her son, and, indeed, was at
any time only fidgety over her own special complaints--a remarkable
trait of character deserving of passing comment here.
Sophie was not of a nervous temperament; indeed, for her eighteen
years, was apparently a little too cool and methodical; and she
was not flurried that evening over the delay in the arrival home
of Reuben Pemberthy. She was not imaginative like her mother, and
did not associate delay with the dangers of a dark night, though
the nights _were_ full of danger in the good old times of the
third George. She went to the door to look out, after her mother had
tripped there for the seventh or eighth time, not for appearances'
sake, for she was above that, but to keep her mother company, and
to suggest that these frequent excursions to the front door would
end in a bad cold.
"I can't help fearing that something has happened to Reu," said
the mother; "he is always so true to time."
"There are so many things to keep a man late, mother."
"Not to keep Reuben. If he said what hour he'd be back--he 's like
his father, my poor brother--he'd do it to the minute, even if
there weren't any reason for his hurry."
"Which there is," said Sophie, archly.
"Which there is, Sophie. And why you are so quiet over this I don't
know. I am sure when poor Mr. Tarne was out late--and he was often
very, very late, and the Lord knows where he'd been, either!--I
couldn't keep a limb of me still till he came home again. I was
as bad as your aunt indoors there till I was sure he was safe and
sound."
"But he always came home safe and sound, mother."
"Nearly always. I mind the time once, though--bless us and save
us, what a gust!" she cried, as the wind came swooping down the
hill at them, swirling past them into the dark passage and puffing
the lights out in the big pantry beyond, where the maids began to
scream. "I hope he hasn't been blown off his horse."
"Not very likely that," said Sophie, "and Reuben the best horseman
in the county. But come in out of the gale, mother; the sleet cuts
like a knife too, and he will not come home any the sooner for your
letting the wind into the house. And--why, here he comes after
all. Hark!"
There was a rattling of horses' hoofs on the frost-bound road; it was
a long way in the distance, but it was the unmistakable signal of
a well-mounted traveller approaching--of more than one well-mounted
traveller, it became quickly apparent, the clattering was so loud
and incessant and manifold.
"Soldiers!" said Sophie. "What can bring them this way?"
"It's the farmers coming the same way as Reuben for protection's
sake these winter nights, child."
"Protection?"
"Haven't you heard of the highwaymen about, and how a single
traveller is never safe in these parts? Or a double one either--or--"
"Perhaps these are highwaymen."
"Oh, good gracious! Let us get indoors and bar up," cried Mrs.
Tarne, wholly forgetful of Reuben Pemberthy's safety after this
suggestion. "Yes, it's as likely to be highwaymen as soldiers."
It was more likely. It was pretty conclusive that the odds were
in favour of highwaymen when, five minutes afterward, eight mounted
men rode up to the Maythorpe farm-house, dismounted with considerable
noise and bustle, and commenced at the stout oaken door with the
butt-ends of their riding-whips, hammering away incessantly and
shouting out much strong language in their vehemence. This, being
fortunately bawled forth all at once was incomprehensible to the
dwellers within doors, now all scared together and no longer cool
and self-possessed.
"Robbers!" said Mrs. Tarne.
"We've never been molested before, at least not for twenty years
or more," said Mrs. Pemberthy; "and then I mind--"
"Is it likely to be any of Reuben's friends?" asked Sophie, timidly.
"Oh no; Reuben has no bellowing crowd like that for friends. Ask
who is there--somebody."
But nobody would go to the door save Sophie Tarne herself. The
maids were huddled in a heap together in a corner of the dairy,
and refused to budge an inch, and Mrs. Tarne was shaking more than
Mrs. Pemberthy.
Sophie, with the colour gone from her face, went boldly back to the
door, where the hammering on the panels continued and would have
split anything of a less tough fibre than the English oak of which
they were constructed.
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