The Railway Children

‘To mark how much coal there be,’ said the Porter, ‘so we’ll know if anyone nicks it. So don’t you go off with none in your pockets, young gentleman!’

This seemed, at the time, but a merry jest, and Peter felt at once that the Porter was a friendly sort with no nonsense about him. But later the words came back to Peter with a new meaning.

Have you ever gone into a farmhouse kitchen on a baking day, and seen the great crock of dough set by the fire to rise? If you have, and if you were at that time still young enough to be interested in everything you saw, you will remember that you found yourself quite unable to resist the temptation to poke your finger into the soft round dough that curved inside the pan like a giant mushroom. And you will remember that your finger made a dent in the dough, and that slowly, but quite surely, the dent disappeared, and the dough looked quite the same as it did before you touched it. Unless, of course, your hand was extra dirty in which case, naturally, there would be a little black mark.

Well, it was just like that with the sorrow the children had felt at Father’s going away, and at Mother’s being so unhappy. It made a deep impression, but the impression did not last long.

They soon got used to being without Father, though they did not forget him; and they got used to not going to school, and to seeing very little of Mother, who was now almost all day shut up in her upstairs room writing, writing, writing. She used to come down at tea-time and read aloud the stories she had written. They were lovely stories.

The rocks and hills and valleys and trees, the canal, and, above all, the railway, were so new and so perfectly pleasing that the remembrance of the old life in the villa grew to seem almost like a dream.

Mother had told them more than once that they were ‘quite poor now,’ but this did not seem to be anything but a way of speaking. Grown-up people, even Mothers, often make remarks that don’t seem to mean anything in particular, just for the sake of saying something, seemingly. There was always enough to eat, and they wore the same kind of nice clothes they had always worn.

But in June came three wet days; the rain came down, straight as lances, and it was very, very cold. Nobody could go out, and everybody shivered. They all went up to the door of Mother’s room and knocked.

‘Well, what is it?’ asked Mother from inside.

‘Mother,’ said Bobbie, ‘mayn’t I light a fire? I do know how.’

And Mother said: ‘No, my ducky-love. We mustn’t have fires in June – coal is so dear. If you’re cold, go and have a good romp in the attic. That’ll warm you.’

‘But, Mother, it only takes such a very little coal to make a fire.’

‘It’s more than we can afford, chickeny-love,’ said Mother, cheerfully. ‘Now run away, there’s darlings – I’m madly busy!’

‘Mother’s always busy now,’ said Phyllis, in a whisper to Peter. Peter did not answer. He shrugged his shoulders. He was thinking.

Thought, however, could not long keep itself from the suitable furnishing of a bandit’s lair in the attic. Peter was the bandit, of course. Bobbie was his lieutenant, his band of trusty robbers, and, in due course, the parent of Phyllis, who was the captured maiden for whom a magnificent ransom – in horse-beans – was unhesitatingly paid.

They all went down to tea flushed and joyous as any mountain brigands.

But when Phyllis was going to add jam to her bread and butter, Mother said:

‘Jam or butter, dear – not jam and butter. We can’t afford that sort of reckless luxury nowadays.’

Phyllis finished the slice of bread and butter in silence, and followed it up by bread and jam. Peter mingled thought and weak tea.

After tea they went back to the attic and he said to his sisters:

‘I have an idea.’

‘What’s that?’ they asked politely.

‘I shan’t tell you,’ was Peter’s unexpected rejoinder.

‘Oh, very well,’ said Bobbie; and Phil said, ‘Don’t then.’

‘Girls,’ said Peter, ‘are always so hasty tempered.’

‘I should like to know what boys are!’ said Bobbie, with fine disdain. ‘I don’t want to know about your silly ideas.’

‘You’ll know some day,’ said Peter, keeping his own temper by what looked exactly like a miracle; ‘if you hadn’t been so keen on a row, I might have told you about it being only noble-heartedness that made me not tell you my idea. But now I shan’t tell you anything at all about it – so there!’

And it was, indeed, some time before he could be induced to say anything, and when he did it wasn’t much. He said:

‘The only reason why I won’t tell you my idea that I’m going to do is because it may be wrong, and I don’t want to drag you into it.’

‘Don’t you do it if it’s wrong, Peter,’ said Bobbie; ‘let me do it.’ But Phyllis said:

‘I should like to do wrong if you’re going to!’

‘No,’ said Peter, rather touched by this devotion; ‘it’s a forlorn hope, and I’m going to lead it. All I ask is that if Mother asks where I am, you won’t blab.’

‘We haven’t got anything to blab,’ said Bobbie, indignantly.

‘Oh, yes, you have!’ said Peter, dropping horse-beans through his fingers. ‘I’ve trusted you to the death. You know I’m going to do a lone adventure – and some people might think it wrong – I don’t. And if Mother asks where I am, say I’m playing at mines.’

‘What sort of mines?’

‘You just say mines.’

‘You might tell us, Pete.’

‘Well, then, coal-mines. But don’t you let the word pass your lips on pain of torture.’

‘You needn’t threaten,’ said Bobbie, ‘and I do think you might let us help.’

‘If I find a coal-mine, you shall help cart the coal,’ Peter condescended to promise.

‘Keep your secret if you like,’ said Phyllis.

‘Keep it if you can,’ said Bobbie.

‘I’ll keep it right enough,’ said Peter.

Between tea and supper there is an interval even in the most greedily regulated families. At this time Mother was usually writing, and Mrs Viney had gone home.

Two nights after the dawning of Peter’s idea he beckoned the girls mysteriously at the twilight hour.

‘Come hither with me,’ he said, ‘and bring the Roman Chariot.’

The Roman Chariot was a very old perambulator that had spent years of retirement in the loft over the coach-house. The children had oiled its works till it glided noiseless as a pneumatic bicycle, and answered to the helm as it had probably done long ago in its best days.

‘Follow your dauntless leader,’ said Peter, and led the way down the hill towards the station.

Just above the station many rocks had pushed their heads out through the turf as though they, like the children, were interested in the railway.

In a little hollow between three rocks lay a heap of dried brambles and heather.