The Relentless City

by E. F. Benson

He looked at his watch; it was later than he had known, and to walk back a mile to Frampton, where he could get a trap, and then drive over the huge ridge of the tunnel down into Wyfold, might mean missing the train, which would stop for him there, but would assuredly not wait if he was not on the platform. But the engineer had an easy solution. Why not walk through the tunnel, which would take very little longer than going back to Frampton? He would thus find himself within a mile of the Wyfold Station? He could get there in very little over half an hour, going briskly, and would easily be in time to step into the stopped express. No train was due on either line for the next half-hour; in fact, the next train that would pass would be the Southampton to Liverpool express, in which at the moment he would himself be travelling. The engineer would provide him with a lantern, which he could leave at the signal-box at the other end of the tunnel.

This seemed an admirable arrangement, and in a couple of minutes he had set off. The light cast by the lantern was excellent; it shone brightly to guide his path, and gleamed on the rails of the four tracks as they pointed in narrowing perspective up the black cavern that lay before him until they were lost in the darkness. He walked on the right-hand side of the tunnel; immediately on his left, was the main line from Southampton to Liverpool, along which he would soon return at a brisker pace than that which was his now. For some hundreds of yards the gray glimmer from the end of the tunnel where he had entered also cast a diffused light into the darkness, but as he proceeded the light faded and grew dim, and when he was now some third of the way through, the slight continuous bend in the tunnel, which had been necessary in order to avoid a belt of unstable and shifty strata, obscured it altogether, and he walked, but for the light from his lantern, in absolute darkness. His own footsteps echoed queerly from the curved vault, but there was otherwise dead silence save for some occasional drip of water; all outside noises of the world were entirely cut off from him.

He was stepping along thus when he saw, with a sudden start of horror, that there was something dark lying between the second and third pair of rails a little way ahead of him. From the fact that he started, he was conscious that his nerves were not working with their accustomed smoothness and coolness, and he heard his heart hammering in his throat. Then he pulled himself together, crossed the two rails which lay between him and it, turned the lantern on it, and saw next moment, with a spasm of relief, that it was only a coat, left there and forgotten, no doubt, by some workman. With a cheap impulse of kindness, he picked it up, meaning to leave it with his lantern at the signal-box at the far end. But as he picked it up and stepped on again to regain the side path where he had been walking, his foot tripped in it, or on the corner of some sleeper, and he fell forward, the lantern flying from his hand, and smashing itself to atoms on the hard metal of the road, and his head struck full on the temple against the steel of the track. The blow completely stunned him.

About the same time the party left Molesworth to drive to the station, where the Liverpool express would be stopped for them. It was a distance of not more than three miles, but they stopped in the village close to the station in case there was anything at the post-office which had come by the second post, and would thus miss them. There was only one thing—a telegram from Bilton, re-directed from Seaton House, asking that the train might be stopped at Wyfold. So they drove on to the station, and there learned that the express had already passed through Wyfold without stopping, and would reach Molesworth in six or seven minutes. So Mr. Palmer, who never wasted regrets on the inevitable, shrugged his shoulders and inspected the book-stall, while Mrs. Palmer inundated the telegraph-office with despatches, and Bertie and Amelie strolled up and down the platform.

Bilton came to himself with a blank unconsciousness of where he was. It was quite dark, and he first realized that he was not in bed by the feel of his clothes. Then he put his hand to his head, and drew it away with a start of horror, for it was warm and wet. Then he felt with his hand the metal of the roadway, and, following that, encountered one of the rails. At that the broken ends of memory joined themselves, and he knew where he was. Simultaneously he heard the dead silence broken by a distant roar and rumble.

At this he started to his feet, wavered, and nearly fell again. All his senses were suddenly electrified, vivified, by that noise, and he remembered all—how he had started to walk through the tunnel, how he had picked up the coat, how he had fallen, how the engineer had told him that the next train through would be that to Liverpool. But where was he? On which line had he fallen? There were four tracks; he thought he ought to move to the right across the rails—no, to the left. Hell! was it to the right or to the left that that train would pass?

The roar got louder; it echoed with an infernal clangour from the curved sides of the tunnel; it prevented him thinking, and he felt sure that if it would only stop for one second his head would be clear, and he could take two steps to safety. But that noise must stop a moment, and in a frenzy, no longer master of himself, he shouted hoarsely, and impotently waved his hand in the darkness. From which way did it come? From in front of him or behind him? If he could only settle that, he would know what to do.

The roaring grew unbearable: it drove him mad; and, with his fingers in his ears, he began to run he did not know where, and he again tripped on some rail and fell. On the sides of the tunnel there shone a red, gloomy light, but he did not see it; above the roar and rattle of the racing wheels there sounded the hot, quick panting of some monster, but he did not hear it. He knew one moment of awful shock, of the sense of being torn and battered in pieces; then the roar sank down, as the train passed on, and diminished into silence as it emerged from the darkness of the tunnel into the pure and glorious sunlight of that September morning. And to him who had been pitiless and relentless in life had come death as swift and relentless as himself.

Amelie and Bertie were at the fore-end of the platform when the express drew up, and they turned back. Just as they got opposite the engine, Bertie gave one short gasp of horror, and grasped his wife's arm.

'Bertie, what is it?' she said.