Chapter II: The Home-Coming

SUCH a long tedious journey it had been, as the train sped ever wearily onwards, hour after hour, from the further north to the further south of England. But the gray dawn was brightening now, and sleepy passengers were rousing themselves to sit upright, and to mark how nearly they had approached the end. And Mona Clyde, waking suddenly from a quiet night's rest amid noisy surroundings, lifted her bright child-like face—singularly child-like, for her nineteen summers—from the blue-cushioned arm, and cried—

"O mother! Are we almost there?"

"Almost there, Mona," her mother said.

"And you are tired, while I have had such a long lazy sleep," said Mona, kissing her mother's hand, for they had a compartment to themselves. "Are you not mother, dear?"

"A little tired, but I shall soon rest now, Mona."

Was she thinking of the last time she had come this road, with her infant Mona in her arms, and her husband by her side, so many long years before? Mona fancied so, and waited quietly, holding down her own gay delight at the prospect of all that lay before her. Dear kind uncle Chetwynd, whom she knew so well, and uncle Chetwynd's pretty house which lay so far in the background of her memory that she had no recollection of it, and beautiful Alyn which had been her mother's home in childhood, and the glorious blue sea which she had never yet seen, and all the attendant pleasures of a six weeks' happy change.

"O mother, isn't it nice to be almost there?" she said at length. "How soon shall we see Alyn?"

"When we are through the tunnel, Mona. It is pretty here, but this is nothing to the view which bursts upon us there. A sunny mid-day is the time to have it in perfection. I remember so well how, as a child going home from school, I used to love the feeling of getting nearer and nearer, seeing one land-mark after another, passing into the dark tunnel, and then coming out into a blaze of sunshine and beauty, to find myself in one moment 'at home.' For Alyn itself was home, and once out of the tunnel, you are in Alyn."

"Mother, you often told me about that, when I was a little girl."

"As a picture," Mrs. Clyde said, smiling, while Mona's bright face had grown serious. "My favourite thought, darling; it is so like the last Home-going. So often there seems to be darkness at the close of life, with those who love the Master, but I think it is only that the glory coming after may shine the brighter. But for the dark tunnel first, Alyn could never burst upon us with half such a wonderful glow of beauty."

"O mother, I do so long to see it," cried Mona eagerly. "Is that the tunnel coming now?"

How little knew Mona that the shrill whistle which she welcomed so joyfully, was the death-knell of many around her!

One moment's rush of increased noise, and then darkness. And in that moment, it was strange how her mother's face was photographed for ever upon Mona's memory. She did not consciously mark it at the time. Afterwards, it came back to her, in all its calm sweetness. She was thinking of nothing but counting the seconds, and awaiting the view which lay beyond.

One moment more! And then—

Ah, "then!"

It was only a little mistake or accident. Something had been forgotten, or somebody was careless. Only just such a slight mistake as one may make a hundred times a day, letting it pass unmarked, and never dreaming the terrible consequences with which a little matter may be fraught. There had been a break-down of some heavy luggage-vans, and there was just a little too long delay in removing them, or word had been telegraphed just a little too late, or the express had arrived just a little too early. Nothing worse. But then—

Down there in the darkness underground, they could not see the loaded trucks in the way. On and on with undiminished speed rushed the train, so near at last to its journey's end. Only a moment more—and then a crash so fearful that the very earth above and below trembled with the fierce concussion, and the mighty engine was twisted and crushed like a bit of tin in a man's hand, and carriages were heaped up one upon another, or flung to right and left in masses of shattered fragments, as a child might scatter a pile of bricks. And the fierce hiss of the boiling water that rushed from the engine, and the crashing turmoil of the collision, mingling with the wild tumult of groans and shrieks which followed, echoed back and forth from the low vaulted roof, till it seemed as if the din of sound must go on for ever and ever ceaselessly.

But in that moment of direst anguish and fear, there were some who went quietly Home. Quietly, all in an instant, breaking out from the darkness underground to the glory far above. The anguish and fear were not for them, but for those who remained behind. The Master calls sometimes in sunshine and sometimes in storm, to those whom He will have to be with Him where He is; but so long as it "is" the voice of the Master and not of the Judge which calls, what matter how they go? Whether lingeringly in sunshine, or suddenly in storm, it signifies little, so that once they are safely landed.

And some were landed all in a moment that day, who had looked for a longer voyage. Just as the disciples on the lake had a toilsome way before them, till the Master stepped on board, and then,—"suddenly they were at the land whither they went."

Suddenly, all in a moment. Perhaps if the choice had been given them, they might have found it hard to decide whether they would go, or whether they would stay. But once there, they would doubt no more. None ever yet looked upon the unveiled Face of the King in glory, and turned back to wish for the shadows of earth again. So for those of the dead who died in Christ that day, it was a peaceful Home-going—all the brighter and sweeter maybe, from the contrast of the darkness and anguish behind, out of which the Master had gently withdrawn them.

This was the scene upon which Madge Hardwicke and her companion entered. The first mad terror and excitement of the accident had subsided, yet it was a strangely weird picture which lay before them, as they left the early daylight behind, and went deep into the tunnel's blackness. The tumult of shrieks had died gradually away into gentler moans, and in many cases into silence, broken here and there by a pitiful call for help. Some of the dead and dying had been already extricated, and busy hands were still hard at work among the heaped up masses of débris, which concealed yet many a crushed and mangled form. There was little leisure for attendance on those only wounded, and they waited for the most part in patient endurance, lying or sitting upon the damp ground.

Some of the shattered fragments of woodwork had been piled together, and two or three small fires burnt brightly, sending up wreaths of smoke into the darkness, and casting a red glow upon the scene of confusion around. Lanterns were borne backwards and forwards here and there, and long ill-proportioned shadows of men, sometimes hazy and large, sometimes clear and small, went passing along the dark moist walls. And mingling with the busy sound of pick-axe and of crowbar, came the sound of men's voices in sharp direction or subdued consultation, and the groans of the injured, and the frightened sobbing of little children, clinging to their no less terrified mothers and nurses.

Mr. Chetwynd's face turned towards Madge Hardwicke for an instant, but her quiet eyes met his steadfastly, and her lips were only trembling a little with unspoken words of prayer.

"You can stand it?" he said, in a half-questioning tone. "I don't want to have you on my hands, in a screaming and fainting condition, Madge."

For all the man's self-command and would-be carelessness, she knew the deadly fear which lay at his heart.

"Sir, I never did either in my life," she answered.

"Did you ever see a scene like 'this' in your life?" he asked, with a sudden change of manner. "Madge, it is awful."

"I think nothing can be darker to me than that which I have borne already, sir."

And borne on that very morning—only ten years before. But that was past, and this was present, and Mr. Chetwynd had no thought to give to aught save what lay before him.

They went on threading their way over the masses of ruin scattered far and wide. There were other helpers, and two more surgeons already on the scene. But there were not too many for the work, and Mr. Chetwynd was at everybody's beck and call. He refused no one, and gave attention to each in turn who claimed his aid, though all the time his set lips and anxious eyes told Madge Hardwicke the subject of his thoughts. She made many inquiries for him about his expected relatives, but could learn nothing. Those who were busy had no leisure to talk, and those who were not busy seemed, in the majority of cases, to have lost, for the time being, all memory and self-possession.

Throughout Mr. Chetwynd's doings, he kept Madge persistently near his side, when she would have wished to go about and help more actively. She had learnt obedience, whatever else her lessons might have been, and made no protest. And, in truth, there was work enough for her to do on any spot where she might take her stand.

"Sir, they're taking off some of the well folk, and them that's not so badly hurt, to Alyn," Madge remarked at length, speaking unaddressed for the first time. "They've told me to tell you. Will this lady go?"

Mr. Chetwynd looked up from the case in hand, finished what he was doing, and stood erect once more.

"Ay, the sooner the better. Madge—no news of 'them?'"

"I can hear none, sir."

He sighed heavily, and then, with a hasty movement, walked a few paces away.

"Look here, Madge."

A poor mother was sitting, pale and still, upon the ground, with one arm hanging helplessly, and the other clasping a wee white-faced baby. She gazed up in mute appeal at the doctor. But when Mr. Chetwynd would have lifted the little one from her grasp, she held it more tightly, and uttered a sharp cry of anguish.

"No use yet," he said, in a low tone, to Madge. "She will not believe the child is dead. Better so, perhaps, for a while. See there too."

Another scene of the same description: a poor young wife kneeling in silent misery beside a prostrate figure, with an older lady weeping bitterly on the other side.

"Is he dead, too?" Madge asked, from her full heart.

"Not far from it. Ha, there is Mr. Prior."

She did not recognise the name. A man of middle age and slender build came up and paused beside the little group, bearing a lantern in his hand. There were a few low-toned words, and then he knelt quietly down, and sounds of prayer for the departing soul came softly across to where Madge stood. What a scene for an artist that group would have made, in the red flickering light, with the gloomy tunnel-walls lowering overhead, and the calm reverent face of the man of prayer contrasting with the subdued grief of the weeping women, and the ashen features of the dying man.

But Madge saw all with a deeper sense than that of an artist merely watching for "effects," and would fain have knelt down likewise to join in the petitions, but for the companion by her side.

"That's your style, Madge," he said briefly. "Much good may it do the poor fellow."

"Ay, may it, sir, indeed," responded Madge softly.

"Mr. Prior is setting to work early. Well,—'tis his vocation."

"Mr. Prior?" Madge repeated.

"The new Rector. He only arrived on Monday. Stay, there is a man calling me."

He came back with a hasty step.

"It may be nothing—I don't know,—but it sounds like—. Come and see, Madge."

Following, as he hurried away, she came with him to a sheltered corner. And there, behind a broken carriage, hidden away in the darkness,—lying quietly where they had first been flung by the rude shock of the collision,—there they were. Mother and daughter together, not only side by side, but clasped firmly in one another's arms, as if, in the single instant of conscious danger, the instinct of each had been to shelter the other.

Travelling in the same carriage, bound for the same home, flung out by the same rough shock, lying on the same damp spot of earth. But one was there, and one was "not" there. One was living, and one was dead. One was left to wander in earth's shade, and one had reached the everlasting light.