Chapter XXIX: A Great Embarrassment

THE men had seen the two huddled figures high up in the trestling, and were climbing as fast as they could go to reach them. Bertha ceased to shout when she saw them coming. Her voice was strained, and her throat was sore from the efforts she had made to attract attention, ever since she had first heard the engine coming on to the bridge. But the wind roared so loudly, and the engine was noisy too, that it was little wonder she could make no headway against it, and when the engine went slowly back again she had almost given up hope of getting help.

Then she saw the men go scrambling down the bank towards the water, and guessed that they were making for the box car, which just showed sticking up in the bed of the river, and the sight had given her courage to shout her loudest, and so she had made them hear at last. But she was dreadfully spent and almost perished with cold, for the raging wind seemed to blow right through her; moreover it had required every atom of will power that she possessed to prevent poor Mrs. Walford from flinging herself headlong from the trestling into the river down below.

The trouble was that although it would have been quite possible for them to have climbed upward on to the track, after the manner in which Bertha had climbed down from the platform where they were, it was not possible to get lower save by a drop of four or five feet, and that Mrs. Walford could not face. Equally she declared that she could not climb higher—her head would not stand it—so, seeing the dangerous state of excitement under which she laboured, Bertha dared not urge her to move, being afraid that if she were to get any higher she would lose self-control entirely.

She had wrapped the poor woman in a blanket and urged her to shut her eyes, even to sleep, if she could, knowing that sleep, more than anything else, would rest the nerves and quiet down the wild agitation. But sleep was impossible to Mrs. Walford just then, and every time a blast of wind roared down the valley, she shrieked out that they would be blown away.

It was a terrible experience for Bertha. Never, never had she faced a situation calling for more strength of mind and quiet self-control. She was sick and giddy herself with all she had gone through, and from the awful height at which they were perched. She was faint, too, from want of food, and so thoroughly chilled that she could scarcely keep her hold on the timber against which she leaned for shelter. By drawing Mrs. Walford close to one of the uprights on the windward side, she had sheltered her a little from the force of the wind; but it was necessary to hold her there, or the poor woman, in her excitement, might easily have made an incautious move which would have sent her hurtling downwards through the network of crossbeams into the muddy water of the river.

It was that four or five feet of distance from the last crossbars on to the platform where the two were crouching which proved a serious obstacle to the men who were climbing up to the rescue, and for a few minutes it looked almost as if they might have to climb down again, then scramble up the bank, and come down from above. But after a moment spent in silently surveying the situation, Edgar Bradgate solved it for the others by flinging his arms round a bit of the trestling and calling out to Mike Walford to step on to him, and so mount upward to the crossbar immediately above.

“It is to be hoped that you have something extra tough in the way of a backbone, then, for I’m rather more than feather-weight,” said Mike grimly; but he sprang up without a moment’s delay, and, letting down the rope he carried, fastened it so that the others could climb up in that fashion.

When they were all up, there was still another section of the bridge to be mounted in the same fashion, and again Edgar offered himself as a human step-ladder, but this time he was good-humouredly pushed aside by one of the others, who said that it was share and share alike on that venture. Mike was the first up again; but this time, instead of stopping to fix the rope for the next man, he hurried along the open planking, walking with the fearlessness of a cat on a roof ridge to the place where Bertha knelt with her arms round Mrs. Walford.

“The Good Lord be praised that you are safe, wife!” he exclaimed, his voice breaking unsteadily now for the first time since the knowledge of his wife’s danger had come to him.

“Mike! Mike! is it really and truly you?” cried the poor woman, lifting her head and gazing at her husband with a yearning light in her eyes, as if even now she could scarcely believe the good news true, despite the evidence of eyes and ears.

“Yes, yes, I’m here right enough; but how you two got up here is more than I can think. Why, it is nothing short of a miracle. Were you flung out of the car when it fell, or what happened to you?”

“We were not in the car when it toppled over, or it is a widower that you would have been at this moment,” said Mrs. Walford, with a shudder. “I was flung out of the car in trying to shut the door, and I was caught on this platform as I fell; then Miss Doyne crawled out after me, and climbed down to help me up to the track again. But, bless you! I couldn’t do that; my head was not strong enough. Indeed, my senses would have left me altogether, and I should have flung myself down into the river long ago, if she had not stopped me.”

“Poor soul! you have had a bad scare, and no mistake. But the fall saved your life, and Miss Doyne (God bless her!) saved hers when she came to your help,” said Mike, bowing low to Bertha, as if she were a royal princess. Then he went on, and the grim note came back to his tone: “But you’ve got to buck up, wife, for we shall have to haul you up on to the track somehow, and it rests with you whether you will climb up on your own two feet, like a decent Christian woman, or whether we have got to tie you like a calf and swing you out, to be dragged up hand over hand by sheer strength of arm. The rope is fairly strong, I know, but then you are not a light weight. There are only seven of us and the young lady, and it will be a tight job and a risky one to get you up that way.”

“I can’t go up, I can’t! I feel just like a fly walking on a ceiling, and my head gets lighter than a feather,” moaned the poor woman, hiding her head against her husband’s shoulder and sobbing like a baby.

“Funny creatures women are,” said Mike, in a tone of rueful apology, as he looked across at Bertha. “To see my wife going on like this, you might think her an awful coward; but she ain’t, not a bit of it. Why, when we were living at Denver, just after we were married, a hut caught fire, and there was a baby inside. Its own father and mother stood shrieking outside, but my wife, she dashed right in and fetched the poor mite out, though the gown was burnt off her back, and she hadn’t a hair on her head for six months afterwards. Then, five years ago, when I first joined the police, and we was stationed wide of Edmonton, there was a poor fellow down with smallpox; she nursed him through it all, and saved his life, too, though grown men were scared to fits at the thought of going near him.”

“There, do be quiet, Mike. I wonder what you will be saying next?” cried Mrs. Walford, but with a thrill of so much gratification in her tone, that Mike looked across at Bertha, and was actually guilty of something approaching a wink, for which indiscretion he promptly apologized by coughing violently.

“I was only telling the truth. Women are most dreadfully one-sided creatures; ready to go through fire and water one minute, the next afraid of their own shadows, and screaming at the sight of a mouse,” he answered, following up his advantage with a skill that was the result of long practice.

“I’m not to say really afraid of a mouse, though I will admit that I do go queer if I know that there is a rat anywhere about,” said Mrs. Walford, with a flash of her old spirit; and then she said, “I’ll have a try at climbing, if you will tie a rope to me, but I simply can’t do it on my own.”

“We wouldn’t trust you to do it on your own; there isn’t enough ballast in your head for it,” replied her husband, as he slipped a rope round her without a moment’s loss of time, one end of which he fastened to himself and one to another man.

Then he ordered Bertha to be fastened in a similar fashion, and when she was roped to Edgar Bradgate and a fair-haired young Swede, whose mastery of the English tongue was, so far, limited to “T’ank you”, the upward climb was begun.

Oh, the horror of it! As she was pulled, almost without effort of her own, from point to point on the trestling, sometimes swinging right out over space, Bertha wondered more than ever how it was she had managed to get down to where Mrs. Walford had fallen without breaking her neck.

And in all that dreadful upward way Edgar Bradgate never spoke to her, save when she hesitated once just before they had to make the last bit of climb up on to the ties, and, chancing to look down, she turned so giddy that, if she had not been securely roped, she must have fallen, and then he said sternly: “Shut your eyes, and do not open them until I give you permission, or you may drag us both down with you.”

She writhed under the words, and did not even guess that he had spoken like that on purpose to sting her pride into doing her very best. He knew very well that it was as much as they could do to mount the trestling with any chance of safety in such an awful gale, and every possible precaution had been taken. Bertha’s skirt had been roped so tightly round her that she could only move her feet a few inches, and when it came to climbing up the last bit of the way, she had to be lifted from point to point, and only the gasping breath of the two men who helped her betrayed to her how heavy their task must be. Then a fiercer blast of wind took her, and she thought she would have been torn from the grip of the two who held her so firmly. But no; foot by foot she was guided along the stretch of railway track until the shelter of the embankment was reached, where the engine was waiting for them.

Mike Walford and the other men were behind, although they had started first. Mrs. Walford’s nerves had been unequal to the strain of that fearful climb, and she had fainted, having to be borne to the top in a state of limp unconsciousness. Her husband was in a state of acute worry about her; for it is sometimes very dangerous to a person in a fainting condition to be hauled about like a bale of dry goods. But as there was a fearful risk in her remaining where she was, he had to choose between two evils, and so he decided to take the risk and get her to the top as soon as possible.

So she was hauled and swung from point to point, the efforts of five men being necessary to the task, and when at length they reached the shelter of the embankment, where Bertha and the other two men were awaiting them, there was not a man of the five who was not dripping with perspiration.

Bertha, who by this time was unroped and able to move freely once more, at once went to the aid of Mrs. Walford, and, thanks to the knowledge she had gained in taking care of Grace, was soon able to bring the poor woman round again.

“Are we still on that dreadful trestling?” asked Mrs. Walford, with a shudder.

“No, no; we are safely on the track now, and the bridge is behind us. Look down at your feet and see the good honest dirt and stones on which they are resting,” said Bertha, in a cheery tone, forcing herself to make light of what they had gone through, just because the horror of it would have entirely unnerved her if she had let herself dwell upon it.

Mrs. Walford burst into tears of sheer thankfulness, and the men stood round in miserable embarrassment, not liking to disturb her, and yet feeling that something ought to be done.

Then Bertha ventured a remonstrance. “Don’t you think that it is a pity to cry now that all the danger is over? It looks a little ungrateful, too, when these kind people have worked so hard to save us.”

“Of course it is dreadfully silly, and I would not have done it if I had not been all of a twitter with what we have gone through,” said Mrs. Walford, giving herself a shake, and wiping her eyes in token that she was restored to normal. “I am more obliged to everybody than I can say for helping us up from that awful trestling, and no one can guess what we have been through since I fell out of the car.”

“It was falling out of the car that saved your lives, anyhow, so you have reason to be grateful for it,” said her husband; then he hurried them into the tender, the men climbed in after, and the engine started on its way back to Brocken Ridge.

Very little was said on the way there. Neither Mrs. Walford nor Bertha was fit to discuss their adventures; indeed, it took every scrap of endurance that Bertha possessed to sit that dreadful ride out. But there was one thing about which she had to make sure before she allowed herself to be carried off for rest and refreshment at the end of the journey, and that was, she had to know at what time the long train of empty wagons would start back to Rownton, for it would never do for her to be left behind, seeing that it might be two or even three days before another train came through.

“We can’t possibly get off much before midnight, miss, and it may be later than that,” said the brakeman to whom she had put her question. “But we will not forget to call for you, never fear, and you shan’t ride in the last car next time, I will see to that.”

Mike Walford looked at Bertha in surprise, and he wondered more than ever who she was, and why she had come up to Brocken Ridge in a freight car just to return by the same train. It was certainly no pleasure trip under the best of circumstances, and, as things had turned out, it had been an experience of dire peril. But he was so grateful to her for the way in which she had helped his wife, that he felt he must do as much as he possibly could to further whatever business she might have on hand.

“Is there anything that I can do for you, Miss Doyne?” he asked, as he piloted her and his wife across to the hotel.

Bertha turned a grateful face towards him. His uniform was comforting, and then Mrs. Walford had said so much in his praise during the long and weary journey, that she knew he was to be trusted apart from his official position.

“Oh, could you manage that I have a chance to see Mr. Edgar Bradgate alone for ten minutes as soon as possible?” she asked, turning her white, weary face eagerly towards him.

Mike Walford stared at her in blank amazement. “Mr. Bradgate, did you say? Why, it was he who helped you up the trestling. Didn’t you know him then?”

A wave of hot, distressful colour swept over Bertha’s face. Surely no girl was ever forced into a position so strange and horrid as this in which she found herself! But she took the shortest way out, by speaking with direct simplicity.

“Mr. Bradgate does not remember me, and he has no idea that there is any reason why I should come so far to see him on business which could not be settled otherwise than by a personal interview, and although I tried I simply could not get up enough courage to ask him to let me see him alone, and so I thought that I would ask you to manage it for me.”

“I’ll do it; you trust me. If there is no other way, I will arrest him and run him in,” said Mike, with a jolly laugh at his own joke, and then he stalked into the hotel and ordered the very best meal obtainable for his wife and Bertha. But he would not stay to share the meal, for he had promised to get Bertha the interview she wanted, and he guessed that there might be difficulties if he let the matter wait, for the workers at Brocken Ridge had scanty leisure, and the work of rescue had already made serious inroads into the day of toil.

It was nearly an hour before he appeared again, and then he was smiling and victorious, and he did not choose to tell Bertha how near it had come to his being compelled to resort to force to induce Edgar Bradgate to come back to the hotel for an interview with a girl who had come all the way from Rownton, no, thirty miles wide of Rownton, for the sole purpose of interviewing him in private.

“Miss Doyne, did you say? I don’t seem to remember having heard the name before, and if she wanted to see me, why couldn’t she have said so when I was helping her up the framework of the bridge,” he had said, when Mike told him what Bertha had come for. “The private interview could even have taken place then, seeing that Jan has next to no English, and then my time need not have been wasted.”

“Oh, if it is a question of a dollar or so, the time you lose can be put down to me,” said Mike Walford. “I’m too grateful to Miss Doyne for standing by my wife to begrudge that much in her service.”

So Edgar Bradgate had been forced to come, and because he was a gentleman first and a workman second, he even washed his hands and face before appearing at the hotel.

There was some little difficulty about a private room for the interview, but even this was secured, thanks to the good offices of Mike Walford, who took refuge with his wife in the bedroom of the proprietor, so that Bertha might have the room known as the “parlour” free for her interview with Edgar Bradgate, which she waited with a breathless impatience.

She was fumbling with a little calico bag, which she had pulled from the front of her blouse when he entered the room, and it was immediately evident to him that she was most painfully nervous, although when she spoke her voice was quiet and steady.

“I am sorry to have given you so much trouble and to seem so mysterious withal, but it was better for you that no one else should have any knowledge of what I have to give you. Of course you will remember your own property,” she said, as she slipped the little morocco case from the calico bag and laid it in his hand.

She had expected to see his face light up and to hear him exclaim: “Where did you get this from?” but, to her utter surprise and dismay, he only shook his head as he surveyed the case with mild curiosity, saying, in an indifferent tone:

“I think that you must have made a mistake. I don’t smoke, and I have never possessed a cigar case.”

“Look inside and then you will remember!” she cried, in a perfect agony of impatience. “It is not a cigar case—I mean, there are no cigars inside. No, that is not the way to open it. You press the spring like this. There! Now, do you remember it?” she asked, as the case flew open, revealing the stones inside.

“What are they?” he asked, looking at her now with such a genuine bewilderment in his face, that Bertha’s dismay rose almost to the point of actual panic.

“They are diamonds, your diamonds that you lost at Mestlebury in Nova Scotia,” she said, with a little catch coming into her voice.

“Ah, pardon, they are not mine, for I have never possessed a diamond, never even seen one in this state. If you had not told me they were diamonds, I should not have known them from pebbles,” he said, touching them now with a cautious forefinger, as if the thought of their value interested him.

Bertha drew her breath in a gasp of dismay and asked abruptly: “But are you not that Mr. Bradgate who nearly lost his life on the Shark’s Teeth rocks at Mestlebury, and was saved by a girl swimming out to him with a rope?”

“That is my name, and the drowning would have been an accomplished fact if it had not been for the extraordinary pluck of a girl,” he said, with a keen look at her distressed face. “Is it possible that you——”

But Bertha had reached the end of her power of endurance, and, overcome by the disappointment and perplexity of it all, she put down her head and burst into miserable tears.