Mr. Eldridge struggled with obstacles to speech, which he endeavoured, by ostentatious clearing of the throat, to refer to chronic bronchitis. At last he got to "Mind you, Master Titus, it's ten to one there's nothing in it! But I thought it just as well to look in and tell you." Challis waited, with an ugly misgiving growing on him, till two words with a shock in them came, blurted out by the speaker, whom they left perturbed, mopping his brow and polishing his nose with his handkerchief. "Railway Collision!" said Mr. Eldridge. "Bad job! But don't you run away with the idea that...."
"That—that she—Marianne...."
"Ah! Well!—I tell you, Master Titus, I don't believe she was in the train."
"You know nothing about it! Why didn't you stay to find out?" Challis finds natural irritation with this booby's method an easement against the new strain on his powers of bearing anxieties. One good point about which is that Judith and Royd Hall vanish with a clean sweep. Face to face suddenly with a hideous possibility, that Marianne may be killed or maimed for life, he is completely back in his old life again, and knows nothing outside the tension of the moment. In a very few seconds he sees that his informant does know nothing; having evidently, when he witnessed or heard of this accident, become the slave of a singular and not uncommon idea that the sooner ill news is heard the better, and having rushed off with his without waiting for details or confirmation. Challis gives him up as quite useless as an informant. "Your cab's there?" he asks. And receiving an affirmative says with decision: "Wait till I get my boots on!"
Mr. Eldridge throws a bit of good counsel after him as he runs upstairs three steps at a time. "Don't you get in a stoo, Master Titus! Easy does it." He then retires into the parlour, and fidgets, variously. He drums on surfaces that offer themselves, feels about on his razor-farm for interesting incidents, whistles truncated tunes that do not last to identification-point, and frequently repeats, "Nothing to go by—nothing to go by—nothing to go by!" shaking his head and looking profound, till Challis comes quickly downstairs. He calls out to Harmood in some remote background that he is going out, and doesn't know when he'll be back.
The cabman is good for information, and coherent. A petroleum explosion on the train from Haydon's Road. Just coming into the Station, and hadn't slowed down enough. Guard injured—couldn't apply the brake. Train ran beyond platform, and collided with truck, shunting. What did they want to be shunting trucks for, with the train just due? Anyone might have known there might be a petroleum explosion, and the guard not be able to apply the brake. Or anything else, for that matter! Anyone hurt? Oh ah, yes!—people enough hurt, if you came to that. All right! You two gents, if you jumped in, should be at the Station in no time.
Did you ever have the ill-luck to be the seeker after a possible casualty in a railway accident? If you have you will be able to guess what Challis went through in the hour that followed. Fortunately for him, the crucial moment of inspection of the bodies of two women unknown, for identification, was soon over. To a certainty, neither was Marianne. So also the few cases too bad for immediate removal were soon decided about—some without visiting them; these having been able to give their names. And if Marianne had been among those who had started for home, whether injured or scot-free, she would have been met on the road. They would have been sure to see her, or she them.
Moreover, there were not many people in the train, and Mrs. Challis was well known at the Station. She was a constant passenger by this line, going to Tulse Hill via Streatham. The officials at the Station felt sure they would have seen her had she been in the train. No other train would follow for some time that Mrs. Challis could possibly come by. Probably she had missed her train at Tulse Hill. Good job too, for her, said public opinion.
So Mrs. Challis's husband, relieved, but with a swimming head, and very uncharitable feelings in his heart towards the originator of all this needless alarm, drove home beside that really very stupid person; and so far as his own condition of semi-collapse permitted it, gathered the story of his friend's share in the matter, and what he considered a justification of his action.
It appeared that Mr. Eldridge had accompanied his wife to Wimbledon Station, on her way to an evening appointment in London. As she was getting into the carriage, the train on the other line came in from Haydon's Lane. She said to her husband: "That's Marianne's train; she was going to Tulse Hill. You can drive her back in your cab. You'll find Titus at home. He was to be back to-day." Then, as her train left the platform, he saw a sudden blaze of fire from the guard's van of the other one; and the collision, as already described, resulted. A cooler or stronger judgment than John Eldridge's would no doubt have exhausted every source of information rather than jump at the conclusion that his friend's wife was necessarily among the injured because he could not find her among the survivors. His reasoning powers were not strong enough to stand by him through the panic of the scene that ensued, and he could see nothing for it but to convey the news of the supposed disaster to her husband.