“Ah! A man ought to be able to write novels with his left hand in a country like this. Well, well! And so this is about Tess’s country, ain’t it? I feel just as if I were in a book. Say, the conduc—the guard has something on his mind. What’s he getting at?”
The splendid badged and belted guard was striding up the platform at the regulation official pace, and in the regulation official voice was saying at each door:
“Has any gentleman here a bottle of medicine? A gentleman has taken a bottle of poison (laudanum) by mistake.”
Between each five paces he looked at an official telegram in his hand, refreshed his memory, and said his say. The dreamy look on my companion’s face—he had gone far away with Tess—passed with the speed of a snap-shutter. After the manner of his countrymen, he had risen to the situation, jerked his bag down from the overhead rail, opened it, and I heard the click of bottles. “Find out where the man is,” he said briefly. “I’ve got something here that will fix him—if he can swallow still.”
Swiftly I fled up the line of carriages in the wake of the guard. There was clamour in a rear compartment—the voice of one bellowing to be let out, and the feet of one who kicked. With the tail of my eye I saw the New York doctor hastening thither, bearing in his hand a blue and brimming glass from the lavatory compartment. The guard I found scratching his head unofficially, by the engine, and murmuring: “Well, I put a bottle of medicine off at Andover—I’m sure I did.”
“Better say it again, any’ow,” said the driver. “Orders is orders. Say it again.”
Once more the guard paced back, I, anxious to attract his attention, trotting at his heels.
“In a minute—in a minute, sir,” he said, waving an arm capable of starting all the traffic on the London and Southwestern Railway at a wave. “Has any gentleman here got a bottle of medicine? A gentleman has taken a bottle of poison (laudanum) by mistake.”
“Where’s the man?” I gasped.
“Woking. ’Ere’s my orders.” He showed me the telegram, on which were the words to be said. “’E must have left ’is bottle in the train, an’ took another by mistake. ’E’s been wirin’ from Woking awful, an’, now I come to think of, it, I’m nearly sure I put a bottle of medicine off at Andover.”