her hands with his, but his chafing seemed to produce very little effect. She lay motionless now with her eyelids half shut, and the whites of her eyes alone showing through them. The close, foul air of that damp and confined spot had worked its worst, and had almost asphyxiated her. Cyril began to fear the slight relief had arrived five minutes too late. And it must still in all probability be some hours at least before they could be actually disentombed from that living vault or restored to the open air of heaven.
As he bent over her and held his breath in speechless suspense, the voice called out again more loudly than ever—
“Look out for the ball in the tube. We’re sending you water!”
Cyril watched the pipe closely and struck another light. In a minute, a big glass marble came rattling through, with a string attached to it.
“Pull the string!” the voice cried; and Cyril pulled with a will. Now and again, the object attached to it struck against some projecting ledge or angle where the pipes overlapped. But at last, with a little humouring, it came through in safety. At the end was a large india-rubber bottle, full of fresh water, and a flask of brandy. The young man seized them both with delight and avidity, and bathed Elma’s temples over and over again with the refreshing spirit. Then he poured a little into the cup, and filling it up with water, held it to her lips with all a woman’s tenderness. Elma gulped the draught down unconsciously, and opened her eyes at once. For a moment she stared about her with a wild stare of surprise.
Then, of a sudden, she recollected where she was, and why, and seizing Cyril’s hand, pressed it long and eagerly.
“If only we can hold out for three hours more,” she cried, with fresh hope returning, “I’m sure they’ll reach us; I’m sure they’ll reach us!”
CHAPTER V. — GRATITUDE.
“There were only two of you, then, in the last carriage?” Guy asked with deep interest, the very next morning, as Cyril, none the worse for his long imprisonment, sat quietly in their joint chambers at Staple Inn, recounting the previous day’s adventures.
“Yes. Only two of us. It was awfully fortunate. And the carriage that was smashed had nobody at all, except in the first compartment, which escaped being buried. So there were no lives lost, by a miracle, you may say. But several of the people in the front part of the train got terribly shaken.”
“And you and the other man were shut up in the tunnel there for fifteen hours at a stretch?” Guy went on reflectively.
“At least fifteen hours,” Cyril echoed, without attempting to correct the slight error of sex, for no man, he thought, is bound to criminate himself, even in a flirtation. “It was two in the morning before they dug us quite out. And my companion by that time was more dead than alive, I can tell you, with watching and terror.”
“Was he, poor fellow?” Guy murmured, with a sympathetic face; for Cyril had always alluded casually to his fellow-traveller in such general terms that Guy was as yet unaware there was a lady in the case. “And is he all right again now, do you know? Have you heard anything more about him?”
But before Cyril could answer there came a knock at the door, and the next moment Mr. Montague Nevitt, without his violin, entered the room in some haste, all agog with excitement. His face was eager and his manner cordial. It was clear he was full of some important tidings.
“Why, Cyril, my dear fellow,” he cried, grasping the painter’s hand with much demonstration of friendly warmth, and wringing it hard two or three times over, “how delighted I am to see you restored to us alive and well once more. This is really too happy. What a marvellous escape! And what a romantic story! All the clubs are buzzing with it. A charming girl! You’ll have to marry her, of course, that’s the necessary climax. You and the young lady are the staple of news, I see, in very big print, in all the evening papers!”
Guy drew back at the words with a little start of surprise. “Young lady!” he cried aghast. “A charming girl, Nevitt! Then the person who was shut up with you for fifteen hours in the tunnel was a girl, Cyril!”
Cyril’s handsome face flushed slightly before his brother’s scrutinizing gaze; but he answered with a certain little ill-concealed embarrassment:
“Oh, I didn’t say so, didn’t I? Well, she WAS a girl then, of course; a certain Miss Clifford. She got in at Chetwood. Her people live somewhere down there near Tilgate. At least, so I gathered from what she told me.”
Nevitt stared hard at the painter’s eyes, which tried, without success, to look unconscious.
“A romance!” he said, slowly, scanning his man with deep interest. “A romance, I can see. Young, rich, and beautiful. My dear Cyril, I only wish I’d had half your luck. What a splendid chance, and what a magnificent introduction! Beauty in distress! A lady in trouble! You console her alone in a tunnel for fifteen hours by yourself at a stretch. Heavens, what a tete-a-tete! Did British propriety ever before allow a man such a glorious opportunity for chivalrous devotion to a lady of family, face, and fortune?”
“Was she pretty?” Guy asked, coming down at once to a more realistic platform.
Cyril hesitated a moment. “Well, yes,” he answered, somewhat curtly, after a short pause. “She’s distinctly good-looking.” And he shut his mouth sharp. But he had said quite enough.
When a man says that of a girl, and nothing more, in an unconcerned voice, as if it didn’t matter twopence to him, you may be perfectly sure in your own mind he’s very deeply and seriously smitten.
“And young?” Guy continued.
“I should say about twenty.”
“And rich beyond the utmost dreams of avarice?” Montague Nevitt put in, with a faintly cynical smile.
“Well, I don’t know about that,” Cyril answered truthfully. “I haven’t the least idea who she is, even. She and I had other things to think about, you may be sure, boxed up there so long in that narrow space, and choking for want of air, than minute investigations into one another’s pedigrees.”
“WE’VE got no pedigree,” Guy interposed, with a bitter smile. “So the less she investigates about that the better.”
“But SHE has, I expect,” Nevitt put in hastily; “and if I were you, Cyril, I’d hunt her up forthwith, while the iron’s hot, and find out all there is to find out about her. Clifford-Clifford? I wonder whether by any chance she’s one of the Devonshire Cliffords, now? For if so, she might really be worth a man’s serious attention. They’re very good business. They bank at our place; and they’re by no means paupers.” For Nevitt was a clerk in the well-known banking firm of Drummond, Coutts, and Barclay, Limited; and being a man who didn’t mean, as he himself said, “to throw himself away on any girl for nothing,” he kept a sharp look-out on the current account of every wealthy client with an only daughter.
Ten minutes later, as the talk ran on, some further light was unexpectedly thrown upon this interesting topic by the entrance of the porter with a letter for Cyril. The painter tore it open, and glanced over it, as Nevitt observed, with evident eagerness. It was short and curt, but in its own way courteous.
“‘Mr. Reginald Clifford, C.M.G., desires to thank Mr. Cyril Waring for his kindness and consideration to Miss Clifford during her temporary incarceration—-’
“Incarceration’s good, isn’t it? How much does he charge a thousand for that sort, I wonder?—
“‘during her temporary incarceration in the Lavington tunnel yesterday. Mrs. and Miss Clifford wish also to express at the same time their deep gratitude to Mr. Waring for his friendly efforts, and trust he has experienced no further ill effects from the unfortunate