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diff --git a/old/27924-h/27924-h.htm b/old/27924-h/27924-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9e2a953 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/27924-h/27924-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,6185 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>Mugby Junction, by Charles Dickens et al.</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + P.gutsumm { margin-left: 5%;} + P.poetry {margin-left: 3%; } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + table { border-collapse: collapse; } +table {margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;} + td { vertical-align: top; border: 1px solid black;} + td p { margin: 0.2em; } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + color: gray; + } + + div.gapspace { height: 0.8em; } + div.gapline { height: 0.8em; width: 30%; } + div.gapdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 50%; + margin-left: 25%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid;} + .citation {vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: none;} + img.floatleft { float: left; margin-right: 1em; } + img.floatright { float: right; margin-left: 1em; } + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg eBook of Mugby Junction, by Charles Dickens, et al, +Illustrated by Jules A. Goodman + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Mugby Junction + + +Author: Charles Dickens + + + +Release Date: January 28, 2009 [eBook #27924] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MUGBY JUNCTION*** +</pre> +<p>This ebook was transcribed by Les Bowler.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">christmas +stories</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">from “household</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">words” and “all</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">the year round”</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">edited by</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">charles dickens</span></p> +<h1>Mugby Junction</h1> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/fp.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Frontispiece" +title= +"Frontispiece" +src="images/fp.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/tp.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Title page" +title= +"Title page" +src="images/tp.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p style="text-align: center"><!-- page vi--><a +name="pagevi"></a><span class="pagenum">p. vi</span><span +class="smcap">Richard Clay & Sons</span>, <span +class="smcap">Limited</span>,<br /> +<span class="smcap">London & Bungay</span>.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><!-- page vii--><a +name="pagevii"></a><span class="pagenum">p. vii</span><span +class="smcap">mugby junction</span>: <span +class="smcap">by</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">charles dickens</span>, <span +class="smcap">andrew</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">halliday</span>, <span class="smcap">charles +collins</span>,<br /> +<span class="smcap">hesba stretton</span>, <span +class="smcap">and amelia</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">b. edwards</span>: <span class="smcap">being +the extra</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">christmas number of</span> “<span +class="smcap">all</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">the year round</span>,” 1866. +<span class="smcap">with</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">a frontispiece by a. jules</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">goodman</span>. <span +class="smcap">london</span>: <span +class="smcap">chapman</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">and hall</span>, <span +class="smcap">ltd.</span> 1898.</p> +<table> +<tr> +<td colspan="3"><p style="text-align: center"><!-- page ix--><a +name="pageix"></a><span class="pagenum">p. ix</span>INDEX TO<br +/> +MUGBY JUNCTION</p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span +class="smcap">page</span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Barbox Brothers</span>.</p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">By Charles Dickens</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page1">1</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Barbox Brothers & Co.</span></p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">By Charles Dickens</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page43">43</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Main Line</span>: <span +class="smcap">The Boy at Mugby</span>.</p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">By Charles Dickens</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page72">72</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>No. 1 <span class="smcap">Branch Line</span>: <span +class="smcap">The Signalman</span>.</p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">By Charles Dickens</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page89">89</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>No. 2 <span class="smcap">Branch Line</span>: <span +class="smcap">The Engine Driver</span>.</p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">By Andrew Halliday</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page111">111</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>No. 3 <span class="smcap">Branch Line</span>: <span +class="smcap">The Compensation House</span>.</p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">By Charles Collins</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page125">125</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>No. 4 <span class="smcap">Branch Line</span>: <span +class="smcap">The Travelling Post-Office</span>.</p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">By Hesba Stretton</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page154">154</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>No. 5 <span class="smcap">Branch Line</span>: <span +class="smcap">The Engineer</span>.</p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">By Amelia B. Edwards</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page187">187</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +</table> +<h2><!-- page 1--><a name="page1"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +1</span>BARBOX BROTHERS</h2> +<h3>I</h3> +<p>“Guard! What place is this?”</p> +<p>“Mugby Junction, sir.”</p> +<p>“A windy place!”</p> +<p>“Yes, it mostly is, sir.”</p> +<p>“And looks comfortless indeed!”</p> +<p>“Yes, it generally does, sir.”</p> +<p>“Is it a rainy night still?”</p> +<p>“Pours, sir.”</p> +<p>“Open the door. I’ll get out.”</p> +<p>“You’ll have, sir,” said the guard, +glistening with drops of wet, and looking at the tearful face of +his watch by the light of his lantern as the traveller descended, +“three minutes here.”</p> +<p>“More, I think.—For I am not going on.”</p> +<p>“Thought you had a through ticket, sir?”</p> +<p><!-- page 2--><a name="page2"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +2</span>“So I have, but I shall sacrifice the rest of +it. I want my luggage.”</p> +<p>“Please to come to the van and point it out, sir. +Be good enough to look very sharp, sir. Not a moment to +spare.”</p> +<p>The guard hurried to the luggage van, and the traveller +hurried after him. The guard got into it, and the traveller +looked into it.</p> +<p>“Those two large black portmanteaus in the corner where +your light shines. Those are mine.”</p> +<p>“Name upon ’em, sir?”</p> +<p>“Barbox Brothers.”</p> +<p>“Stand clear, sir, if you please. One. +Two. Right!”</p> +<p>Lamp waved. Signal lights ahead already changing. +Shriek from engine. Train gone.</p> +<p>“Mugby Junction!” said the traveller, pulling up +the woollen muffler round his throat with both hands. +“At past three o’clock of a tempestuous +morning! So!”</p> +<p>He spoke to himself. There was no one else to speak +to. Perhaps, though there had been any one else to speak +to, he would have preferred to speak to himself. Speaking +to himself, he spoke to a man within five years of fifty either +way, who had turned grey too soon, like a neglected fire; a man +of pondering habit, brooding carriage of the head, and suppressed +internal voice; a man with many indications on him of having been +much alone.</p> +<p><!-- page 3--><a name="page3"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +3</span>He stood unnoticed on the dreary platform, except by the +rain and by the wind. Those two vigilant assailants made a +rush at him. “Very well,” said he, +yielding. “It signifies nothing to me, to what +quarter I turn my face.”</p> +<p>Thus, at Mugby Junction, at past three o’clock of a +tempestuous morning, the traveller went where the weather drove +him.</p> +<p>Not but what he could make a stand when he was so minded, for, +coming to the end of the roofed shelter (it is of considerable +extent at Mugby Junction) and looking out upon the dark night, +with a yet darker spirit-wing of storm beating its wild way +through it, he faced about, and held his own as ruggedly in the +difficult direction, as he had held it in the easier one. +Thus, with a steady step, the traveller went up and down, up and +down, up and down, seeking nothing, and finding it.</p> +<p>A place replete with shadowy shapes, this Mugby Junction in +the black hours of the four-and-twenty. Mysterious goods +trains, covered with palls and gliding on like vast weird +funerals, conveying themselves guiltily away from the presence of +the few lighted lamps, as if their freight had come to a secret +and unlawful end. Half miles of coal pursuing in a +Detective manner, following when they lead, stopping when they +stop, backing when they back. Red hot embers showering out +<!-- page 4--><a name="page4"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +4</span>upon the ground, down this dark avenue, and down the +other, as if torturing fires were being raked clear; +concurrently, shrieks and groans and grinds invading the ear, as +if the tortured were at the height of their suffering. +Iron-barred cages full of cattle jangling by midway, the drooping +beasts with horns entangled, eyes frozen with terror, and mouths +too: at least they have long icicles (or what seem so) hanging +from their lips. Unknown languages in the air, conspiring +in red, green, and white characters. An earthquake +accompanied with thunder and lightning, going up express to +London.</p> +<p>Now, all quiet, all rusty, wind and rain in possession, lamps +extinguished, Mugby Junction dead and indistinct, with its robe +drawn over its head, like Cæsar. Now, too, as the +belated traveller plodded up and down, a shadowy train went by +him in the gloom which was no other than the train of a +life. From whatsoever intangible deep cutting or dark +tunnel it emerged, here it came, unsummoned and unannounced, +stealing upon him and passing away into obscurity. Here, +mournfully went by, a child who had never had a childhood or +known a parent, inseparable from a youth with a bitter sense of +his namelessness, coupled to a man the enforced business of whose +best years had been distasteful and oppressive, linked to an +ungrateful friend, dragging after him a woman once <!-- page +5--><a name="page5"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +5</span>beloved. Attendant, with many a clank and wrench, +were lumbering cares, dark meditations, huge dim disappointments, +monotonous years, a long jarring line of the discords of a +solitary and unhappy existence.</p> +<p>“—Yours, sir?”</p> +<p>The traveller recalled his eyes from the waste into which they +had been staring, and fell back a step or so under the +abruptness, and perhaps the chance appropriateness, of the +question.</p> +<p>“O! My thoughts were not here for the +moment. Yes. Yes. Those two portmanteaus are +mine. Are you a Porter?”</p> +<p>“On Porter’s wages, sir. But I am +Lamps.”</p> +<p>The traveller looked a little confused.</p> +<p>“Who did you say you are?”</p> +<p>“Lamps, sir,” showing an oily cloth in his hand, +as further explanation.</p> +<p>“Surely, surely. Is there any hotel or tavern +here?”</p> +<p>“Not exactly here, sir. There is a Refreshment +Room here, but—” Lamps, with a mighty serious +look, gave his head a warning roll that plainly +added—“but it’s a blessed circumstance for you +that it’s not open.”</p> +<p>“You couldn’t recommend it, I see, if it was +available?”</p> +<p>“Ask your pardon, sir. If it +was—?”</p> +<p>“Open?”</p> +<p>“It ain’t my place, as a paid servant of the <!-- +page 6--><a name="page6"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +6</span>company to give my opinion on any of the company’s +toepics,” he pronounced it more like toothpicks, +“beyond lamp-ile and cottons,” returned Lamps, in a +confidential tone; “but speaking as a man, I wouldn’t +recommend my father (if he was to come to life again) to go and +try how he’d be treated at the Refreshment Room. Not +speaking as a man, no, I would <i>not</i>.”</p> +<p>The traveller nodded conviction. “I suppose I can +put up in the town? There is a town here?” For +the traveller (though a stay-at-home compared with most +travellers) had been, like many others, carried on the steam +winds and the iron tides through that Junction before, without +having ever, as one might say, gone ashore there.</p> +<p>“O yes, there’s a town, sir. Anyways +there’s town enough to put up in. But,” +following the glance of the other at his luggage, “this is +a very dead time of the night with us, sir. The deadest +time. I might a’most call it our deadest and +buriedest time.”</p> +<p>“No porters about?”</p> +<p>“Well, sir, you see,” returned Lamps, confidential +again, “they in general goes off with the gas. +That’s how it is. And they seem to have overlooked +you, through your walking to the furder end of the +platform. But in about twelve minutes or so, she may be +up.”</p> +<p>“Who may be up?”</p> +<p><!-- page 7--><a name="page7"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +7</span>“The three forty-two, sir. She goes off in a +sidin’ till the Up X passes, and then she,” here an +air of hopeful vagueness pervaded Lamps, “doos all as lays +in her power.”</p> +<p>“I doubt if I comprehend the arrangement.”</p> +<p>“I doubt if anybody do, sir. She’s a +Parliamentary, sir. And, you see, a Parliamentary, or a +Skirmishun—”</p> +<p>“Do you mean an Excursion?”</p> +<p>“That’s it, sir.—A Parliamentary, or a +Skirmishun, she mostly <i>doos</i> go off into a +sidin’. But when she <i>can</i> get a chance, +she’s whistled out of it, and she’s whistled up into +doin’ all as,” Lamps again wore the air of a highly +sanguine man who hoped for the best, “all as lays in her +power.”</p> +<p>He then explained that porters on duty being required to be in +attendance on the Parliamentary matron in question, would +doubtless turn up with the gas. In the meantime, if the +gentleman would not very much object to the smell of lamp-oil, +and would accept the warmth of his little room.—The +gentleman being by this time very cold, instantly closed with the +proposal.</p> +<p>A greasy little cabin it was, suggestive to the sense of +smell, of a cabin in a Whaler. But there was a bright fire +burning in its rusty grate, and on the floor there stood a wooden +stand of newly trimmed and lighted lamps, ready for carriage +service. They made a bright <!-- page 8--><a +name="page8"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 8</span>show, and their +light, and the warmth, accounted for the popularity of the room, +as borne witness to by many impressions of velveteen trousers on +a form by the fire, and many rounded smears and smudges of +stooping velveteen shoulders on the adjacent wall. Various +untidy shelves accommodated a quantity of lamps and oil-cans, and +also a fragrant collection of what looked like the +pocket-handkerchiefs of the whole lamp family.</p> +<p>As Barbox Brothers (so to call the traveller on the warranty +of his luggage) took his seat upon the form, and warmed his now +ungloved hands at the fire, he glanced aside at a little deal +desk, much blotched with ink, which his elbow touched. Upon +it, were some scraps of coarse paper, and a superannuated steel +pen in very reduced and gritty circumstances.</p> +<p>From glancing at the scraps of paper, he turned involuntarily +to his host, and said, with some roughness—</p> +<p>“Why, you are never a poet, man!”</p> +<p>Lamps had certainly not the conventional appearance of one, as +he stood modestly rubbing his squab nose with a handkerchief so +exceedingly oily, that he might have been in the act of mistaking +himself for one of his charges. He was a spare man of about +the Barbox Brothers’ time of life, with his features +whimsically drawn upward as if they were attracted by the roots +of his hair. He had a <!-- page 9--><a +name="page9"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 9</span>peculiarly +shining transparent complexion, probably occasioned by constant +oleaginous application; and his attractive hair, being cut short, +and being grizzled, and standing straight up on end as if it in +its turn were attracted by some invisible magnet above it, the +top of his head was not very unlike a lamp-wick.</p> +<p>“But to be sure it’s no business of mine,” +said Barbox Brothers. “That was an impertinent +observation on my part. Be what you like.”</p> +<p>“Some people, sir,” remarked Lamps, in a tone of +apology, “are sometimes what they don’t +like.”</p> +<p>“Nobody knows that better than I do,” sighed the +other. “I have been what I don’t like, all my +life.”</p> +<p>“When I first took, sir,” resumed Lamps, “to +composing little Comic-Songs-like—”</p> +<p>Barbox Brothers eyed him with great disfavour.</p> +<p>“—To composing little Comic-Songs-like—and +what was more hard—to singing ’em afterwards,” +said Lamps, “it went against the grain at that time, it did +indeed.”</p> +<p>Something that was not all oil here shining in Lamps’s +eye, Barbox Brothers withdrew his own a little disconcerted, +looked at the fire, and put a foot on the top bar. +“Why did you do it, then?” he asked, after a short +pause; abruptly enough but in a softer tone. “If <!-- +page 10--><a name="page10"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +10</span>you didn’t want to do it, why did you do it? +Where did you sing them? Public-house?”</p> +<p>To which Mr. Lamps returned the curious reply: +“Bedside.”</p> +<p>At this moment, while the traveller looked at him for +elucidation, Mugby Junction started suddenly, trembled violently, +and opened its gas eyes. “She’s got up!” +Lamps announced, excited. “What lays in her power is +sometimes more, and sometimes less; but it’s laid in her +power to get up to-night, by George!”</p> +<p>The legend “Barbox Brothers” in large white +letters on two black surfaces, was very soon afterwards trundling +on a truck through a silent street, and, when the owner of the +legend had shivered on the pavement half an hour, what time the +porter’s knocks at the Inn Door knocked up the whole town +first, and the Inn last, he groped his way into the close air of +a shut-up house, and so groped between the sheets of a shut-up +bed that seemed to have been expressly refrigerated for him when +last made.</p> +<h3>II</h3> +<p>“You remember me, Young Jackson?”</p> +<p>“What do I remember if not you? You are my first +remembrance. It was you who told me that was my name. +It was you who told me that on every twentieth of December <!-- +page 11--><a name="page11"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +11</span>my life had a penitential anniversary in it called a +birthday. I suppose the last communication was truer than +the first!”</p> +<p>“What am I like, Young Jackson?”</p> +<p>“You are like a blight all through the year, to +me. You hard-lined, thin-lipped, repressive, changeless +woman with a wax mask on. You are like the Devil to me; +most of all when you teach me religious things, for you make me +abhor them.”</p> +<p>“You remember me, Mr. Young Jackson?” In +another voice from another quarter.</p> +<p>“Most gratefully, sir. You were the ray of hope +and prospering ambition in my life. When I attended your +course, I believed that I should come to be a great healer, and I +felt almost happy—even though I was still the one boarder +in the house with that horrible mask, and ate and drank in +silence and constraint with the mask before me, every day. +As I had done every, every, every day, through my school-time and +from my earliest recollection.”</p> +<p>“What am I like, Mr. Young Jackson?”</p> +<p>“You are like a Superior Being to me. You are like +Nature beginning to reveal herself to me. I hear you again, +as one of the hushed crowd of young men kindling under the power +of your presence and knowledge, and you bring into my eyes the +only exultant tears that ever stood in them.”</p> +<p><!-- page 12--><a name="page12"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +12</span>“You remember Me, Mr. Young Jackson?” +In a grating voice from quite another quarter.</p> +<p>“Too well. You made your ghostly appearance in my +life one day, and announced that its course was to be suddenly +and wholly changed. You showed me which was my wearisome +seat in the Galley of Barbox Brothers. (When <i>they</i> +were, if they ever were, is unknown to me; there was nothing of +them but the name when I bent to the oar.) You told me what +I was to do, and what to be paid; you told me afterwards, at +intervals of years, when I was to sign for the Firm, when I +became a partner, when I became the Firm. I know no more of +it, or of myself.”</p> +<p>“What am I like, Mr. Young Jackson?”</p> +<p>“You are like my father, I sometimes think. You +are hard enough and cold enough so to have brought up an +unacknowledged son. I see your scanty figure, your close +brown suit, and your tight brown wig; but you, too, wear a wax +mask to your death. You never by a chance remove +it—it never by a chance falls off—and I know no more +of you.”</p> +<p>Throughout this dialogue, the traveller spoke to himself at +his window in the morning, as he had spoken to himself at the +Junction over-night. And as he had then looked in the +darkness, a man who had turned grey too soon, like a neglected +fire: so he <!-- page 13--><a name="page13"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 13</span>now looked in the sunlight, an ashier +grey, like a fire which the brightness of the sun put out.</p> +<p>The firm of Barbox Brothers had been some offshoot or +irregular branch of the Public Notary and bill-broking +tree. It had gained for itself a griping reputation before +the days of Young Jackson, and the reputation had stuck to it and +to him. As he had imperceptibly come into possession of the +dim den up in the corner of a court off Lombard-street, on whose +grimy windows the inscription Barbox Brothers had for many long +years daily interposed itself between him and the sky, so he had +insensibly found himself a personage held in chronic distrust, +whom it was essential to screw tight to every transaction in +which he engaged, whose word was never to be taken without his +attested bond, whom all dealers with openly set up guards and +wards against. This character had come upon him through no +act of his own. It was as if the original Barbox had +stretched himself down upon the office-floor, and had thither +caused to be conveyed Young Jackson in his sleep, and had there +effected a metempsychosis and exchange of persons with him. +The discovery—aided in its turn by the deceit of the only +woman he had ever loved, and the deceit of the only friend he had +ever made: who eloped from him to be married together—the +discovery, so <!-- page 14--><a name="page14"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 14</span>followed up, completed what his +earliest rearing had begun. He shrank, abashed, within the +form of Barbox, and lifted up his head and heart no more.</p> +<p>But he did at last effect one great release in his +condition. He broke the oar he had plied so long, and he +scuttled and sank the galley. He prevented the gradual +retirement of an old conventional business from him, by taking +the initiative and retiring from it. With enough to live on +(though after all with not too much), he obliterated the firm of +Barbox Brothers from the pages of the Post-office Directory and +the face of the earth, leaving nothing of it but its name on two +portmanteaus.</p> +<p>“For one must have some name in going about, for people +to pick up,” he explained to Mugby High-street, through the +Inn-window, “and that name at least was real once. +Whereas, Young Jackson!—Not to mention its being a sadly +satirical misnomer for Old Jackson.”</p> +<p>He took up his hat and walked out, just in time to see, +passing along on the opposite side of the way, a velveteen man, +carrying his day’s dinner in a small bundle that might have +been larger without suspicion of gluttony, and pelting away +towards the Junction at a great pace.</p> +<p>“There’s Lamps!” said Barbox Brother. +“And by-the-by—”</p> +<p><!-- page 15--><a name="page15"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +15</span>Ridiculous, surely, that a man so serious, so +self-contained, and not yet three days emancipated from a routine +of drudgery, should stand rubbing his chin in the street, in a +brown study about Comic Songs.</p> +<p>“Bedside?” said Barbox Brothers, testily. +“Sings them at the bedside? Why at the bedside, +unless he goes to bed drunk? Does, I shouldn’t +wonder. But it’s no business of mine. Let me +see. Mugby Junction, Mugby Junction. Where shall I go +next? As it came into my head last night when I woke from +an uneasy sleep in the carriage and found myself here, I can go +anywhere from here. Where shall I go? I’ll go +and look at the Junction by daylight. There’s no +hurry, and I may like the look of one Line better than +another.”</p> +<p>But there were so many Lines. Gazing down upon them from +a bridge at the Junction, it was as if the concentrating +Companies formed a great Industrial Exhibition of the works of +extraordinary ground-spiders that spun iron. And then so +many of the Lines went such wonderful ways, so crossing and +curving among one another, that the eye lost them. And then +some of them appeared to start with the fixed intention of going +five hundred miles, and all of a sudden gave it up at an +insignificant barrier, or turned off into a <!-- page 16--><a +name="page16"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +16</span>workshop. And then others, like intoxicated men, +went a little way very straight, and surprisingly slued round and +came back again. And then others were so chock-full of +trucks of coal, others were so blocked with trucks of casks, +others were so gorged with trucks of ballast, others were so set +apart for wheeled objects like immense iron cotton-reels: while +others were so bright and clear, and others were so delivered +over to rust and ashes and idle wheelbarrows out of work, with +their legs in the air (looking much like their masters on +strike), that there was no beginning, middle, or end, to the +bewilderment.</p> +<p>Barbox Brothers stood puzzled on the bridge, passing his right +hand across the lines on his forehead, which multiplied while he +looked down, as if the railway Lines were getting themselves +photographed on that sensitive plate. Then, was heard a +distant ringing of bells and blowing of whistles. Then, +puppet-looking heads of men popped out of boxes in perspective, +and popped in again. Then, prodigious wooden razors set up +on end, began shaving the atmosphere. Then, several +locomotive engines in several directions began to scream and be +agitated. Then, along one avenue a train came in. +Then, along another two trains appeared that didn’t come +in, but stopped without. Then, bits of trains broke <!-- +page 17--><a name="page17"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +17</span>off. Then, a struggling horse became involved with +them. Then, the locomotives shared the bits of trains, and +ran away with the whole.</p> +<p>“I have not made my next move much clearer by +this. No hurry. No need to make up my mind to-day, or +to-morrow, nor yet the day after. I’ll take a +walk.”</p> +<p>It fell out somehow (perhaps he meant it should) that the walk +tended to the platform at which he had alighted, and to +Lamps’s room. But Lamps was not in his room. A +pair of velveteen shoulders were adapting themselves to one of +the impressions on the wall by Lamps’s fireplace, but +otherwise the room was void. In passing back to get out of +the station again, he learnt the cause of this vacancy, by +catching sight of Lamps on the opposite line of railway, skipping +along the top of a train, from carriage to carriage, and catching +lighted namesakes thrown up to him by a coadjutor.</p> +<p>“He is busy. He has not much time for composing or +singing Comic Songs this morning, I take it.”</p> +<p>The direction he pursued now, was into the country, keeping +very near to the side of one great Line of railway, and within +easy view of others. “I have half a mind,” he +said, glancing around, “to settle the question from this +point, by saying, ‘I’ll take this set <!-- page +18--><a name="page18"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 18</span>of +rails, or that, or t’other, and stick to it.’ +They separate themselves from the confusion, out here, and go +their ways.”</p> +<p>Ascending a gentle hill of some extent, he came to a few +cottages. There, looking about him as a very reserved man +might who had never looked about him in his life before, he saw +some six or eight young children come merrily trooping and +whooping from one of the cottages, and disperse. But not +until they had all turned at the little garden gate, and kissed +their hands to a face at the upper window: a low window enough, +although the upper, for the cottage had but a story of one room +above the ground.</p> +<p>Now, that the children should do this was nothing; but that +they should do this to a face lying on the sill of the open +window, turned towards them in a horizontal position, and +apparently only a face, was something noticeable. He looked +up at the window again. Could only see a very fragile +though a very bright face, lying on one cheek on the +window-sill. The delicate smiling face of a girl or +woman. Framed in long bright brown hair, round which was +tied a light blue band or fillet, passing under the chin.</p> +<p>He walked on, turned back, passed the window again, shyly +glanced up again. No change. He struck off by a +winding branch-road at the top of the hill—which he must +<!-- page 19--><a name="page19"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +19</span>otherwise have descended—kept the cottages in +view, worked his way round at a distance so as to come out once +more into the main road and be obliged to pass the cottages +again. The face still lay on the window-sill, but not so +much inclined towards him. And now there were a pair of +delicate hands too. They had the action of performing on +some musical instrument, and yet it produced no sound that +reached his ears.</p> +<p>“Mugby Junction must be the maddest place in +England,” said Barbox Brothers, pursuing his way down the +hill. “The first thing I find here is a Railway +Porter who composes comic songs to sing at his bedside. The +second thing I find here is a face, and a pair of hands playing a +musical instrument that don’t play!”</p> +<p>The day was a fine bright day in the early beginning of +November, the air was clear and inspiriting, and the landscape +was rich in beautiful colours. The prevailing colours in +the court off Lombard-street, London city, had been few and +sombre. Sometimes, when the weather elsewhere was very +bright indeed, the dwellers in those tents enjoyed a +pepper-and-salt-coloured day or two, but their atmosphere’s +usual wear was slate, or snuff colour.</p> +<p>He relished his walk so well, that he repeated it next +day. He was a little earlier at the cottage than on the day +before, and he <!-- page 20--><a name="page20"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 20</span>could hear the children up-stairs +singing to a regular measure and clapping out the time with their +hands.</p> +<p>“Still, there is no sound of any musical +instrument,” he said, listening at the corner, “and +yet I saw the performing hands again, as I came by. What +are the children singing? Why, good Lord, they can never be +singing the multiplication-table!”</p> +<p>They were though, and with infinite enjoyment. The +mysterious face had a voice attached to it which occasionally led +or set the children right. Its musical cheerfulness was +delightful. The measure at length stopped, and was +succeeded by a murmuring of young voices, and then by a short +song which he made out to be about the current month of the year, +and about what work it yielded to the labourers in the fields and +farm-yards. Then, there was a stir of little feet, and the +children came trooping and whooping out, as on the previous +day. And again, as on the previous day, they all turned at +the garden gate, and kissed their hands—evidently to the +face on the window-sill, though Barbox Brothers from his retired +post of disadvantage at the corner could not see it.</p> +<p>But as the children dispersed, he cut off one small +straggler—a brown faced boy with flaxen hair—and said +to him:</p> +<p>“Come here, little one. Tell me whose house is +that?”</p> +<p><!-- page 21--><a name="page21"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +21</span>The child, with one swarthy arm held up across his eyes, +half in shyness, and half ready for defence, said from behind the +inside of his elbow:</p> +<p>“Phœbe’s.”</p> +<p>“And who,” said Barbox Brothers, quite as much +embarrassed by his part in the dialogue as the child could +possibly be by his, “is Phœbe?”</p> +<p>To which the child made answer: “Why, Phœbe, of +course.”</p> +<p>The small but sharp observer had eyed his questioner closely, +and had taken his moral measure. He lowered his guard, and +rather assumed a tone with him: as having discovered him to be an +unaccustomed person in the art of polite conversation.</p> +<p>“Phœbe,” said the child, “can’t +be anybobby else but Phœbe. Can she?”</p> +<p>“No, I suppose not.”</p> +<p>“Well,” returned the child, “then why did +you ask me?”</p> +<p>Deeming it prudent to shift his ground, Barbox Brothers took +up a new position.</p> +<p>“What do you do there? Up there in that room where +the open window is. What do you do there?”</p> +<p>“Cool,” said the child.</p> +<p>“Eh?”</p> +<p>“Co-o-ol,” the child repeated in a louder voice, +lengthening out the word with a fixed <!-- page 22--><a +name="page22"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 22</span>look and +great emphasis, as much as to say: “What’s the use of +your having grown up, if you’re such a donkey as not to +understand me?”</p> +<p>“Ah! School, school,” said Barbox +Brothers. “Yes, yes, yes. And Phœbe +teaches you?”</p> +<p>The child nodded.</p> +<p>“Good boy.”</p> +<p>“Tound it out, have you?” said the child.</p> +<p>“Yes, I have found it out. What would you do with +twopence, if I gave it you?”</p> +<p>“Pend it.”</p> +<p>The knock-down promptitude of this reply leaving him not a leg +to stand upon, Barbox Brothers produced the twopence with great +lameness, and withdrew in a state of humiliation.</p> +<p>But, seeing the face on the window-sill as he passed the +cottage, he acknowledged its presence there with a gesture, which +was not a nod, not a bow, not a removal of his hat from his head, +but was a diffident compromise between or struggle with all +three. The eyes in the face seemed amused, or cheered, or +both, and the lips modestly said: “Good day to you, +sir.”</p> +<p>“I find I must stick for a time to Mugby +Junction,” said Barbox Brothers, with much gravity, after +once more stopping on his return road to look at the Lines where +they went their several ways so quietly. “I +can’t make up my <!-- page 23--><a name="page23"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 23</span>mind yet, which iron road to +take. In fact, I must get a little accustomed to the +Junction before I can decide.”</p> +<p>So, he announced at the Inn that he was “going to stay +on, for the present,” and improved his acquaintance with +the Junction that night, and again next morning, and again next +night and morning: going down to the station, mingling with the +people there, looking about him down all the avenues of railway, +and beginning to take an interest in the incomings and outgoings +of the trains. At first, he often put his head into +Lamps’s little room, but he never found Lamps there. +A pair or two of velveteen shoulders he usually found there, +stooping over the fire, sometimes in connexion with a clasped +knife and a piece of bread and meat; but the answer to his +inquiry, “Where’s Lamps?” was, either that he +was “t’other side the line,” or, that it was +his off-time, or (in the latter case), his own personal +introduction to another Lamps who was not his Lamps. +However, he was not so desperately set upon seeing Lamps now, but +he bore the disappointment. Nor did he so wholly devote +himself to his severe application to the study of Mugby Junction, +as to neglect exercise. On the contrary, he took a walk +every day, and always the same walk. But the weather turned +cold and wet again, and the window was never open.</p> +<h3><!-- page 24--><a name="page24"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +24</span>III</h3> +<p>At length, after a lapse of some days, there came another +streak of fine bright hardy autumn weather. It was a +Saturday. The window was open, and the children were +gone. Not surprising, this, for he had patiently watched +and waited at the corner, until they <i>were</i> gone.</p> +<p>“Good day,” he said to the face; absolutely +getting his hat clear off his head this time.</p> +<p>“Good day to you, sir.”</p> +<p>“I am glad you have a fine sky again, to look +at.”</p> +<p>“Thank you, sir. It is kind of you.”</p> +<p>“You are an invalid, I fear?”</p> +<p>“No, sir. I have very good health.”</p> +<p>“But are you not always lying down?”</p> +<p>“O yes, I am always lying down, because I cannot sit +up. But I am not an invalid.”</p> +<p>The laughing eyes seemed highly to enjoy his great +mistake.</p> +<p>“Would you mind taking the trouble to come in, +sir? There is a beautiful view from this window. And +you would see that I am not at all ill—being so good as to +care.”</p> +<p>It was said to help him, as he stood irresolute, but evidently +desiring to enter, with his diffident hand on the latch of the +garden gate. It did help him, and he went in.</p> +<p>The room up-stairs was a very clean white <!-- page 25--><a +name="page25"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 25</span>room with a +low roof. Its only inmate lay on a couch that brought her +face on a level with the window. The couch was white too; +and her simple dress or wrapper being light blue, like the band +around her hair, she had an ethereal look, and a fanciful +appearance of lying among clouds. He felt that she +instinctively perceived him to be by habit a downcast taciturn +man; it was another help to him to have established that +understanding so easily, and got it over.</p> +<p>There was an awkward constraint upon him, nevertheless, as he +touched her hand, and took a chair at the side of her couch.</p> +<p>“I see now,” he began, not at all fluently, +“how you occupy your hands. Only seeing you from the +path outside, I thought you were playing upon +something.”</p> +<p>She was engaged in very nimbly and dexterously making +lace. A lace-pillow lay upon her breast; and the quick +movements and changes of her hands upon it as she worked, had +given them the action he had misinterpreted.</p> +<p>“That is curious,” she answered, with a bright +smile. “For I often fancy, myself, that I play tunes +while I am at work.”</p> +<p>“Have you any musical knowledge?”</p> +<p>She shook her head.</p> +<p>“I think I could pick out tunes, if I had any +instrument, which could be made as handy to <!-- page 26--><a +name="page26"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 26</span>me as my +lace-pillow. But I dare say I deceive myself. At all +events, I shall never know.”</p> +<p>“You have a musical voice. Excuse me; I have heard +you sing.”</p> +<p>“With the children?” she answered, slightly +colouring. “O yes. I sing with the dear +children, if it can be called singing.”</p> +<p>Barbox Brothers glanced at the two small forms in the room, +and hazarded the speculation that she was fond of children, and +that she was learned in new systems of teaching them? +“Very fond of them,” she said, shaking her head +again; “but I know nothing of teaching, beyond the interest +I have in it, and the pleasure it gives me when they learn. +Perhaps your overhearing my little scholars sing some of their +lessons, has led you so far astray as to think me a grand +teacher? Ah! I thought so! No, I have only read and +been told about that system. It seemed so pretty and +pleasant, and to treat them so like the merry Robins they are, +that I took up with it in my little way. You don’t +need to be told what a very little way mine is, sir,” she +added, with a glance at the small forms and round the room.</p> +<p>All this time her hands were busy at her lace-pillow. As +they still continued so, and as there was a kind of substitute +for conversation in the click and play of its pegs, Barbox +Brothers took the opportunity of observing her. He guessed +her to be thirty. The charm of <!-- page 27--><a +name="page27"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 27</span>her +transparent face and large bright brown eyes, was, not that they +were passively resigned, but that they were actively and +thoroughly cheerful. Even her busy hands, which of their +own thinness alone might have besought compassion, plied their +task with a gay courage that made mere compassion an +unjustifiable assumption of superiority, and an impertinence.</p> +<p>He saw her eyes in the act of rising towards his, and he +directed his towards the prospect, saying: “Beautiful +indeed!”</p> +<p>“Most beautiful, sir. I have sometimes had a fancy +that I would like to sit up, for once, only to try how it looks +to an erect head. But what a foolish fancy that would be to +encourage! It cannot look more lovely to any one than it +does to me.”</p> +<p>Her eyes were turned to it as she spoke, with most delighted +admiration and enjoyment. There was not a trace in it of +any sense of deprivation.</p> +<p>“And those threads of railway, with their puffs of smoke +and steam changing places so fast, make it so lively for +me,” she went on. “I think of the number of +people who <i>can</i> go where they wish, on their business, or +their pleasure; I remember that the puffs make signs to me that +they are actually going while I look; and that enlivens the +prospect with abundance of company, if I want company. +There is the great Junction, too. I don’t see <!-- +page 28--><a name="page28"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +28</span>it under the foot of the hill, but I can very often hear +it, and I always know it is there. It seems to join me, in +a way, to I don’t know how many places and things that +<i>I</i> shall never see.”</p> +<p>With an abashed kind of idea that it might have already joined +himself to something he had never seen, he said constrainedly: +“Just so.”</p> +<p>“And so you see, sir,” pursued Phœbe, +“I am not the invalid you thought me, and I am very well +off indeed.”</p> +<p>“You have a happy disposition,” said Barbox +Brothers: perhaps with a slight excusatory touch for his own +disposition.</p> +<p>“Ah! But you should know my father,” she +replied. “His is the happy +disposition!—Don’t mind, sir!” For his +reserve took the alarm at a step upon the stairs, and he +distrusted that he would be set down for a troublesome +intruder. “This is my father coming.”</p> +<p>The door opened, and the father paused there.</p> +<p>“Why, Lamps!” exclaimed Barbox Brothers, starting +from his chair. “How do you do, Lamps?”</p> +<p>To which, Lamps responded: “The gentleman for +Nowhere! How do you <span class="smcap">do</span>, +sir?”</p> +<p>And they shook hands, to the greatest admiration and surprise +of Lamps’s daughter.</p> +<p>“I have looked you up, half a dozen times <!-- page +29--><a name="page29"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 29</span>since +that night,” said Barbox Brothers, “but have never +found you.”</p> +<p>“So I’ve heerd on, sir, so I’ve heerd +on,” returned Lamps. “It’s your being +noticed so often down at the Junction, without taking any train, +that has begun to get you the name among us of the gentleman for +Nowhere. No offence in my having called you by it when took +by surprise, I hope, sir?”</p> +<p>“None at all. It’s as good a name for me as +any other you could call me by. But may I ask you a +question in the corner here?”</p> +<p>Lamps suffered himself to be led aside from his +daughter’s couch, by one of the buttons of his velveteen +jacket.</p> +<p>“Is this the bedside where you sing your +songs?”</p> +<p>Lamps nodded.</p> +<p>The gentleman for Nowhere clapped him on the shoulder; and +they faced about again.</p> +<p>“Upon my word, my dear,” said Lamps then to his +daughter, looking from her to her visitor, “it is such an +amaze to me, to find you brought acquainted with this gentleman, +that I must (if this gentleman will excuse me) take a +rounder.”</p> +<p>Mr. Lamps demonstrated in action what this meant, by pulling +out his oily handkerchief rolled up in the form of a ball, and +giving himself an elaborate smear, from behind the <!-- page +30--><a name="page30"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 30</span>right +ear, up the cheek, across the forehead, and down the other cheek +to behind his left ear. After this operation he shone +exceedingly.</p> +<p>“It’s according to my custom when particular +warmed up by any agitation, sir,” he offered by way of +apology. “And really, I am throwed into that state of +amaze by finding you brought acquainted with Phœbe, that +I—that I think I will, if you’ll excuse me, take +another rounder.” Which he did, seeming to be greatly +restored by it.</p> +<p>They were now both standing by the side of her couch, and she +was working at her lace-pillow. “Your daughter tells +me,” said Barbox Brothers, still in a half reluctant +shamefaced way, “that she never sits up.”</p> +<p>“No, sir, nor never has done. You see, her mother +(who died when she was a year and two months old) was subject to +very bad fits, and as she had never mentioned to me that she +<i>was</i> subject to fits, they couldn’t be guarded +against. Consequently, she dropped the baby when took, and +this happened.”</p> +<p>“It was very wrong of her,” said Barbox Brothers, +with a knitted brow, “to marry you, making a secret of her +infirmity.”</p> +<p>“Well, sir,” pleaded Lamps, in behalf of the +long-deceased. “You see, Phœbe and me, we have +talked that over too. And Lord bless us! Such a +number on us has our infirmities, <!-- page 31--><a +name="page31"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 31</span>what with +fits, and what with misfits, of one sort and another, that if we +confessed to ’em all before we got married, most of us +might never get married.”</p> +<p>“Might not that be for the better?”</p> +<p>“Not in this case, sir,” said Phœbe, giving +her hand to her father.</p> +<p>“No, not in this case, sir,” said her father, +patting it between his own.</p> +<p>“You correct me,” returned Barbox Brothers, with a +blush; “and I must look so like a Brute, that at all events +it would be superfluous in me to confess to <i>that</i> +infirmity. I wish you would tell me a little more about +yourselves. I hardly know how to ask it of you, for I am +conscious that I have a bad stiff manner, a dull discouraging way +with me, but I wish you would.”</p> +<p>“With all our hearts, sir,” returned Lamps, gaily, +for both. “And first of all, that you may know my +name—”</p> +<p>“Stay!” interposed the visitor, with a slight +flush. “What signifies your name! Lamps is name +enough for me. I like it. It is bright and +expressive. What do I want more!”</p> +<p>“Why to be sure, sir,” returned Lamps. +“I have in general no other name down at the Junction; but +I thought, on account of your being here as a first-class single, +in a private character, that you might—”</p> +<p><!-- page 32--><a name="page32"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +32</span>The visitor waved the thought away with his hand, and +Lamps acknowledged the mark of confidence by taking another +rounder.</p> +<p>“You are hard-worked, I take for granted?” said +Barbox Brothers, when the subject of the rounder came out of it +much dirtier than he went into it.</p> +<p>Lamps was beginning, “Not particular +so”—when his daughter took him up.</p> +<p>“O yes, sir, he is very hard-worked. Fourteen, +fifteen, eighteen, hours a day. Sometimes twenty-four hours +at a time.”</p> +<p>“And you,” said Barbox Brothers, “what with +your school, Phœbe, and what with your +lace-making—”</p> +<p>“But my school is a pleasure to me,” she +interrupted, opening her brown eyes wider, as if surprised to +find him so obtuse. “I began it when I was but a +child, because it brought me and other children into company, +don’t you see? <i>That</i> was not work. I +carry it on still, because it keeps children about me. +<i>That</i> is not work. I do it as love, not as +work. Then my lace-pillow;” her busy hands had +stopped, as if her argument required all her cheerful +earnestness, but now went on again at the name; “it goes +with my thoughts when I think, and it goes with my tunes when I +hum any, and <i>that’s</i> not work. Why, you +yourself thought it was music, you know, sir. And so it is, +to me.”</p> +<p><!-- page 33--><a name="page33"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +33</span>“Everything is!” cried Lamps, +radiantly. “Everything is music to her, +sir.”</p> +<p>“My father is, at any rate,” said Phœbe, +exultingly pointing her thin forefinger at him. +“There is more music in my father than there is in a brass +band.”</p> +<p>“I say! My dear! It’s very +fillyillially done, you know; but you are flattering your +father,” he protested, sparkling.</p> +<p>“No I am not, sir, I assure you. No I am +not. If you could hear my father sing, you would know I am +not. But you never will hear him sing, because he never +sings to any one but me. However tired he is, he always +sings to me when he comes home. When I lay here long ago, +quite a poor little broken doll, he used to sing to me. +More than that, he used to make songs, bringing in whatever +little jokes we had between us. More than that, he often +does so to this day. O! I’ll tell of you, father, as +the gentleman has asked about you. He is a poet, +sir.”</p> +<p>“I shouldn’t wish the gentleman, my dear,” +observed Lamps, for the moment turning grave, “to carry +away that opinion of your father, because it might look as if I +was given to asking the stars in a molloncolly manner what they +was up to. Which I wouldn’t at once waste the time, +and take the liberty, my dear.”</p> +<p>“My father,” resumed Phœbe, amending her +text, “is always on the bright side, and the <!-- page +34--><a name="page34"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 34</span>good +side. You told me just now, I had a happy +disposition. How can I help it?”</p> +<p>“Well! but my dear,” returned Lamps +argumentatively, “how can <i>I</i> help it? Put it to +yourself, sir. Look at her. Always as you see her +now. Always working—and after all, sir, for but a +very few shillings a week—always contented, always lively, +always interested in others, of all sorts. I said, this +moment, she was always as you see her now. So she is, with +a difference that comes to much the same. For, when +it’s my Sunday off and the morning bells have done ringing, +I hear the prayers and thanks read in the touchingest way, and I +have the hymns sung to me—so soft, sir, that you +couldn’t hear ’em out of this room—in notes +that seem to me, I am sure, to come from Heaven and go back to +it.”</p> +<p>It might have been merely through the association of these +words with their sacredly quiet time, or it might have been +through the larger association of the words with the +Redeemer’s presence beside the bedridden; but here her +dexterous fingers came to a stop on the lace-pillow, and clasped +themselves round his neck as he bent down. There was great +natural sensibility in both father and daughter, the visitor +could easily see; but each made it, for the other’s sake, +retiring, not demonstrative; and perfect cheerfulness, intuitive +or acquired, was either the first or second nature of both. +<!-- page 35--><a name="page35"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +35</span>In a very few moments, Lamps was taking another rounder +with his comical features beaming, while Phœbe’s +laughing eyes (just a glistening speck or so upon their lashes) +were again directed by turns to him, and to her work, and to +Barbox Brothers.</p> +<p>“When my father, sir,” she said brightly, +“tells you about my being interested in other people even +though they know nothing about me—which, by-the-by, I told +you myself—you ought to know how that comes about. +That’s my father’s doing.”</p> +<p>“No, it isn’t!” he protested.</p> +<p>“Don’t you believe him, sir; yes, it is. He +tells me of everything he sees down at his work. You would +be surprised what a quantity he gets together for me every +day. He looks into the carriages, and tells me how the +ladies are drest—so that I know all the fashions! He +looks into the carriages, and tells me what pairs of lovers he +sees, and what new-married couples on their wedding trip—so +that I know all about that! He collects chance newspapers +and books—so that I have plenty to read! He tells me +about the sick people who are travelling to try to get +better—so that I know all about them! In short, as I +began by saying, he tells me everything he sees and makes out, +down at his work, and you can’t think what a quantity he +does see and make out.”</p> +<p><!-- page 36--><a name="page36"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +36</span>“As to collecting newspapers and books, my +dear,” said Lamps, “it’s clear I can have no +merit in that, because they’re not my perquisites. +You see, sir, it’s this way: A Guard, he’ll say to +me, ‘Hallo, here you are, Lamps. I’ve saved +this paper for your daughter. How is she agoing +on?’ A Head-Porter, he’ll say to me, +‘Here! Catch hold, Lamps. Here’s a couple +of wollumes for your daughter. Is she pretty much where she +were?’ And that’s what makes it double welcome, +you see. If she had a thousand pound in’ a box, they +wouldn’t trouble themselves about her; but being what she +is—that is, you understand,” Lamps added, somewhat +hurriedly, “not having a thousand pound in a box—they +take thought for her. And as concerning the young pairs, +married and unmarried, it’s only natural I should bring +home what little I can about <i>them</i>, seeing that +there’s not a Couple of either sort in the neighbourhood +that don’t come of their own accord to confide in +Phœbe.”</p> +<p>She raised her eyes triumphantly to Barbox Brothers, as she +said:</p> +<p>“Indeed, sir, that is true. If I could have got up +and gone to church, I don’t know how often I should have +been a bridesmaid. But if I could have done that, some +girls in love might have been jealous of me, and as it is, no +girl is jealous of me. And my pillow would <!-- page +37--><a name="page37"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 37</span>not +have been half as ready to put the piece of cake under, as I +always find it,” she added, turning her face on it with a +light sigh, and a smile at her father.</p> +<p>The arrival of a little girl, the biggest of the scholars, now +led to an understanding on the part of Barbox Brothers, that she +was the domestic of the cottage, and had come to take active +measures in it, attended by a pail that might have extinguished +her, and a broom three times her height. He therefore rose +to take his leave, and took it; saying that if Phœbe had no +objection, he would come again.</p> +<p>He had muttered that he would come “in the course of his +walks.” The course of his walks must have been highly +favourable to his return, for he returned after an interval of a +single day.</p> +<p>“You thought you would never see me any more, I +suppose?” he said to Phœbe as he touched her hand, +and sat down by her couch.</p> +<p>“Why should I think so!” was her surprised +rejoinder.</p> +<p>“I took it for granted you would mistrust me.”</p> +<p>“For granted, sir? Have you been so much +mistrusted?”</p> +<p>“I think I am justified in answering yes. But I +may have mistrusted too, on my part. <!-- page 38--><a +name="page38"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 38</span>No matter +just now. We were speaking of the Junction last time. +I have passed hours there since the day before +yesterday.”</p> +<p>“Are you now the gentleman for Somewhere?” she +asked with a smile.</p> +<p>“Certainly for Somewhere; but I don’t yet know +Where. You would never guess what I am travelling +from. Shall I tell you? I am travelling from my +birthday.”</p> +<p>Her hands stopped in her work, and she looked at him with +incredulous astonishment.</p> +<p>“Yes,” said Barbox Brothers, not quite easy in his +chair, “from my birthday. I am, to myself, an +unintelligible book with the earlier chapters all torn out, and +thrown away. My childhood had no grace of childhood, my +youth had no charm of youth, and what can be expected from such a +lost beginning?” His eyes meeting hers as they were +addressed intently to him, something seemed to stir within his +breast, whispering: “Was this bed a place for the graces of +childhood and the charms of youth to take to, kindly? O +shame, shame!”</p> +<p>“It is a disease with me,” said Barbox Brothers, +checking himself, and making as though he had a difficulty in +swallowing something, “to go wrong about that. I +don’t know how I came to speak of that. I hope it is +because of an old misplaced confidence in <!-- page 39--><a +name="page39"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 39</span>one of your +sex involving an old bitter treachery. I don’t +know. I am all wrong together.”</p> +<p>Her hands quietly and slowly resumed their work. +Glancing at her, he saw that her eyes were thoughtfully following +them.</p> +<p>“I am travelling from my birthday,” he resumed, +“because it has always been a dreary day to me. My +first free birthday coming round some five or six weeks hence, I +am travelling to put its predecessors far behind me, and to try +to crush the day—or, at all events, put it out of my +sight—by heaping new objects on it.”</p> +<p>As he paused, she looked at him; but only shook her head as +being quite at a loss.</p> +<p>“This is unintelligible to your happy +disposition,” he pursued, abiding by his former phrase as +if there were some lingering virtue of self-defence in it: +“I knew it would be, and am glad it is. However, on +this travel of mine (in which I mean to pass the rest of my days, +having abandoned all thought of a fixed home), I stopped, as you +heard from your father, at the Junction here. The extent of +its ramifications quite confused me as to whither I should go, +<i>from</i> here. I have not yet settled, being still +perplexed among so many roads. What do you think I mean to +do? How many of the branching roads can you see from your +window?”</p> +<p><!-- page 40--><a name="page40"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +40</span>Looking out, full of interest, she answered, +“Seven.”</p> +<p>“Seven,” said Barbox Brothers, watching her with a +grave smile. “Well! I propose to myself, at once to +reduce the gross number to those very seven, and gradually to +fine them down to one—the most promising for me—and +to take that.”</p> +<p>“But how will you know, sir, which is the most +promising?” she asked, with her brightened eyes roving over +the view.</p> +<p>“Ah!” said Barbox Brothers, with another grave +smile, and considerably improving in his ease of speech. +“To be sure. In this way. Where your father can +pick up so much every day for a good purpose, I may once and +again pick up a little for an indifferent purpose. The +gentleman for Nowhere must become still better known at the +Junction. He shall continue to explore it, until he +attaches something that he has seen, heard, or found out, at the +head of each of the seven roads, to the road itself. And so +his choice of a road shall be determined by his choice among his +discoveries.”</p> +<p>Her hands still busy, she again glanced at the prospect, as if +it comprehended something that had not been in it before, and +laughed as if it yielded her new pleasure.</p> +<p>“But I must not forget,” said Barbox Brothers, +“(having got so far) to ask a favour. <!-- page +41--><a name="page41"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 41</span>I +want your help in this expedient of mine. I want to bring +you what I pick up at the heads of the seven roads that you lie +here looking out at, and to compare notes with you about +it. May I? They say two heads are better than +one. I should say myself that probably depends upon the +heads concerned. But I am quite sure, though we are so +newly acquainted, that your head and your father’s have +found out better things, Phœbe, than ever mine of itself +discovered.”</p> +<p>She gave him her sympathetic right hand, in perfect rapture +with his proposal, and eagerly and gratefully thanked him.</p> +<p>“That’s well!” said Barbox Brothers. +“Again I must not forget (having got so far) to ask a +favour. Will you shut your eyes?”</p> +<p>Laughing playfully at the strange nature of the request, she +did so.</p> +<p>“Keep them shut,” said Barbox Brothers, going +softly to the door, and coming back. “You are on your +honour, mind, not to open your eyes until I tell you that you +may?”</p> +<p>“Yes! On my honour.”</p> +<p>“Good. May I take your lace-pillow from you for a +minute?”</p> +<p>Still laughing and wondering, she removed her hands from it, +and he put it aside.</p> +<p>“Tell me. Did you see the puffs of smoke and steam +made by the morning fast-train yesterday on road number seven +from here?”</p> +<p><!-- page 42--><a name="page42"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +42</span>“Behind the elm-trees and the spire?”</p> +<p>“That’s the road,” said Barbox Brothers, +directing his eyes towards it.</p> +<p>“Yes. I watched them melt away.”</p> +<p>“Anything unusual in what they expressed?”</p> +<p>“No!” she answered merrily.</p> +<p>“Not complimentary to me, for I was in that train. +I went—don’t open your eyes—to fetch you this, +from the great ingenious town. It is not half so large as +your lace-pillow, and lies easily and lightly in its place. +These little keys are like the keys of a miniature piano, and you +supply the air required with your left hand. May you pick +out delightful music from it, my dear! For the +present—you can open your eyes +now—good-bye!”</p> +<p>In his embarrassed way, he closed the door upon himself, and +only saw, in doing so, that she ecstatically took the present to +her bosom and caressed it. The glimpse gladdened his heart, +and yet saddened it; for so might she, if her youth had +flourished in its natural course, have taken to her breast that +day the slumbering music of her own child’s voice.</p> +<h2><!-- page 43--><a name="page43"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +43</span>BARBOX BROTHERS AND CO.</h2> +<p>With good will and earnest purpose, the gentleman for Nowhere +began, on the very next day, his researches at the heads of the +seven roads. The results of his researches, as he and +Phœbe afterwards set them down in fair writing, hold their +due places in this veracious chronicle, from its seventeenth +page, onward. But they occupied a much longer time in the +getting together than they ever will in the perusal. And +this is probably the case with most reading matter, except when +it is of that highly beneficial kind (for Posterity) which is +“thrown off in a few moments of leisure” by the +superior poetic geniuses who scorn to take prose pains.</p> +<p>It must be admitted, however, that Barbox by no means hurried +himself. His heart being in his work of good-nature, he +revelled in it. There was the joy, too (it was a true joy +to him), of sometimes sitting by, listening to Phœbe as she +picked out more and more discourse from her musical instrument, +and as <!-- page 44--><a name="page44"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 44</span>her natural taste and ear refined +daily upon her first discoveries. Besides being a pleasure, +this was an occupation, and in the course of weeks it consumed +hours. It resulted that his dreaded birthday was close upon +him before he had troubled himself any more about it.</p> +<p>The matter was made more pressing by the unforeseen +circumstance that the councils held (at which Mr. Lamps, beaming +most brilliantly, on a few rare occasions assisted) respecting +the road to be selected, were, after all, in no wise assisted by +his investigations. For, he had connected this interest +with this road, or that interest with the other, but could deduce +no reason from it for giving any road the preference. +Consequently, when the last council was holden, that part of the +business stood, in the end, exactly where it had stood in the +beginning.</p> +<p>“But, sir,” remarked Phœbe, “we have +only six roads after all. Is the seventh road +dumb?”</p> +<p>“The seventh road? O!” said Barbox Brothers, +rubbing his chin. “That is the road I took, you know, +when I went to get your little present. That is <i>its</i> +story, Phœbe.”</p> +<p>“Would you mind taking that road again, sir?” she +asked with hesitation.</p> +<p>“Not in the least; it is a great high road after +all.”</p> +<p><!-- page 45--><a name="page45"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +45</span>“I should like you to take it,” returned +Phœbe, with a persuasive smile, “for the love of that +little present which must ever be so dear to me. I should +like you to take it, because that road can never be again, like +any other road to me. I should like you to take it, in +remembrance of your having done me so much good: of your having +made me so much happier! If you leave me by the road you +travelled when you went to do me this great kindness,” +sounding a faint chord as she spoke, “I shall feel, lying +here watching at my window, as if it must conduct you to a +prosperous end, and bring you back some day.”</p> +<p>“It shall be done, my dear; it shall be done.”</p> +<p>So at last the gentleman for Nowhere took a ticket for +Somewhere, and his destination was the great ingenious town.</p> +<p>He had loitered so long about the Junction that it was the +eighteenth of December when he left it. “High +time,” he reflected, as he seated himself in the train, +“that I started in earnest! Only one clear day +remains between me and the day I am running away from. +I’ll push onward for the hill-country to-morrow. +I’ll go to Wales.”</p> +<p>It was with some pains that he placed before himself the +undeniable advantages to be gained in the way of novel occupation +for his senses from misty mountains, swollen streams, rain, <!-- +page 46--><a name="page46"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +46</span>cold, a wild seashore, and rugged roads. And yet +he scarcely made them out as distinctly as he could have +wished. Whether the poor girl, in spite of her new +resource, her music, would have any feeling of loneliness upon +her now—just at first—that she had not had before; +whether she saw those very puffs of steam and smoke that he saw, +as he sat in the train thinking of her; whether her face would +have any pensive shadow on it as they died out of the distant +view from her window; whether, in telling him he had done her so +much good, she had not unconsciously corrected his old moody +bemoaning of his station in life, by setting him thinking that a +man might be a great healer, if he would, and yet not be a great +doctor; these and other similar meditations got between him and +his Welsh picture. There was within him, too, that dull +sense of vacuity which follows separation from an object of +interest, and cessation of a pleasant pursuit; and this sense, +being quite new to him, made him restless. Further, in +losing Mugby Junction he had found himself again; and he was not +the more enamoured of himself for having lately passed his time +in better company.</p> +<p>But surely, here not far ahead, must be the great ingenious +town. This crashing and clashing that the train was +undergoing, and this coupling on to it of a multitude of new <!-- +page 47--><a name="page47"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +47</span>echoes, could mean nothing less than approach to the +great station. It did mean nothing less. After some +stormy flashes of town lightning, in the way of swift revelations +of red-brick blocks of houses, high red-brick chimney-shafts, +vistas of red-brick railway arches, tongues of fire, blots of +smoke, valleys of canal, and hills of coal, there came the +thundering in at the journey’s end.</p> +<p>Having seen his portmanteaus safely housed in the hotel he +chose, and having appointed his dinner-hour, Barbox Brothers went +out for a walk in the busy streets. And now it began to be +suspected by him that Mugby Junction was a Junction of many +branches, invisible as well as visible, and had joined him to an +endless number of byways. For, whereas he would, but a +little while ago, have walked these streets blindly brooding, he +now had eyes and thoughts for a new external world. How the +many toiling people lived, and loved, and died; how wonderful it +was to consider the various trainings of eye and hand, the nice +distinctions of sight and touch, that separated them into classes +of workers, and even into classes of workers at subdivisions of +one complete whole which combined their many intelligences and +forces, though of itself but some cheap object of use or ornament +in common life; how good it was to know that such assembling in a +multitude on their part, <!-- page 48--><a +name="page48"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 48</span>and such +contribution of their several dexterities towards a civilising +end, did not deteriorate them as it was the fashion of the +supercilious May-flies of humanity to pretend, but engendered +among them a self-respect and yet a modest desire to be much +wiser than they were (the first evinced in their well-balanced +bearing and manner of speech when he stopped to ask a question; +the second, in the announcements of their popular studies and +amusements on the public walls); these considerations, and a host +of such, made his walk a memorable one. “I too am but +a little part of a great whole,” he began to think; +“and to be serviceable to myself and others, or to be +happy, I must cast my interest into, and draw it out of, the +common stock.”</p> +<p>Although he had arrived at his journey’s end for the day +by noon, he had since insensibly walked about the town so far and +so long that the lamplighters were now at their work in the +streets, and the shops were sparkling up brilliantly. Thus +reminded to turn towards his quarters, he was in the act of doing +so, when a very little hand crept into his, and a very little +voice said:</p> +<p>“O! If you please, I am lost.”</p> +<p>He looked down, and saw a very little fair-haired girl.</p> +<p>“Yes,” she said, confirming her words with a +serious nod. “I am indeed. I am +lost.”</p> +<p><!-- page 49--><a name="page49"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +49</span>Greatly perplexed, he stopped, looked about him for +help, descried none, and said, bending low: “Where do you +live, my child?”</p> +<p>“I don’t know where I live,” she +returned. “I am lost.”</p> +<p>“What is your name?”</p> +<p>“Polly.”</p> +<p>“What is your other name?”</p> +<p>The reply was prompt, but unintelligible.</p> +<p>Imitating the sound, as he caught it, he hazarded the guess, +“Trivits?”</p> +<p>“O no!” said the child, shaking her head. +“Nothing like that.”</p> +<p>“Say it again, little one.”</p> +<p>An unpromising business. For this time it had quite a +different sound.</p> +<p>He made the venture: “Paddens?”</p> +<p>“O no!” said the child. “Nothing like +that.”</p> +<p>“Once more. Let us try it again, dear.”</p> +<p>A most hopeless business. This time it swelled into four +syllables. “It can’t be Tappitarver?” +said Barbox Brothers, rubbing his head with his hat in +discomfiture.</p> +<p>“No! It ain’t,” the child quietly +assented.</p> +<p>On her trying this unfortunate name once more, with +extraordinary efforts at distinctness, it swelled into eight +syllables at least.</p> +<p>“Ah! I think,” said Barbox Brothers, with a +desperate air of resignation, “that we had better give it +up.”</p> +<p><!-- page 50--><a name="page50"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +50</span>“But I am lost,” said the child, nestling +her little hand more closely in his, “and you’ll take +care of me, won’t you?”</p> +<p>If ever a man were disconcerted by division between compassion +on the one hand, and the very imbecility of irresolution on the +other, here the man was. “Lost!” he repeated, +looking down at the child. “I am sure <i>I</i> +am. What is to be done!”</p> +<p>“Where do <i>you</i> live?” asked the child, +looking up at him, wistfully.</p> +<p>“Over there,” he answered, pointing vaguely in the +direction of his hotel.</p> +<p>“Hadn’t we better go there?” said the +child.</p> +<p>“Really,” he replied, “I don’t know +but what we had.”</p> +<p>So they set off, hand in hand. He, through comparison of +himself against his little companion, with a clumsy feeling on +him as if he had just developed into a foolish giant. She, +clearly elevated in her own tiny opinion by having got him so +neatly out of his embarrassment.</p> +<p>“We are going to have dinner when we get there, I +suppose?” said Polly.</p> +<p>“Well,” he rejoined, “I—yes, I suppose +we are.”</p> +<p>“Do you like your dinner?” asked the child.</p> +<p>“Why, on the whole,” said Barbox Brothers, +“yes, I think I do.”</p> +<p><!-- page 51--><a name="page51"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +51</span>“I do mine,” said Polly. “Have +you any brothers and sisters?”</p> +<p>“No. Have you?”</p> +<p>“Mine are dead.”</p> +<p>“Oh!” said Barbox Brothers. With that absurd +sense of unwieldiness of mind and body weighing him down, he +would have not known how to pursue the conversation beyond this +curt rejoinder, but that the child was always ready for him.</p> +<p>“What,” she asked, turning her soft hand coaxingly +in his, “are you going to do to amuse me, after +dinner?”</p> +<p>“Upon my soul, Polly,” exclaimed Barbox Brothers, +very much at a loss, “I have not the slightest +idea!”</p> +<p>“Then I tell you what,” said Polly. +“Have you got any cards at your house?”</p> +<p>“Plenty,” said Barbox Brothers, in a boastful +vein.</p> +<p>“Very well. Then I’ll build houses, and you +shall look at me. You mustn’t blow, you +know.”</p> +<p>“O no!” said Barbox Brothers. “No, no, +no. No blowing. Blowing’s not fair.”</p> +<p>He flattered himself that he had said this pretty well for an +idiotic Monster; but the child, instantly perceiving the +awkwardness of his attempt to adapt himself to her level, utterly +destroyed his hopeful opinion of himself <!-- page 52--><a +name="page52"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 52</span>by saying, +compassionately: “What a funny man you are!”</p> +<p>Feeling, after this melancholy failure, as if he every minute +grew bigger and heavier in person, and weaker in mind, Barbox +gave himself up for a bad job. No giant ever submitted more +meekly to be led in triumph by all-conquering Jack, than he to be +bound in slavery to Polly.</p> +<p>“Do you know any stories?” she asked him.</p> +<p>He was reduced to the humiliating confession: +“No.”</p> +<p>“What a dunce you must be, mustn’t you?” +said Polly.</p> +<p>He was reduced to the humiliating confession: +“Yes.”</p> +<p>“Would you like me to teach you a story? But you +must remember it, you know, and be able to tell it right to +somebody else afterwards.”</p> +<p>He professed that it would afford him the highest mental +gratification to be taught a story, and that he would humbly +endeavour to retain it in his mind. Whereupon Polly, giving +her hand a new little turn in his, expressive of settling down +for enjoyment, commenced a long romance, of which every relishing +clause began with the words: “So this” or “And +so this.” As, “So this boy;” or, +“So this fairy;” or, “And so this pie was four +yards round, and two yards and a quarter deep.” <!-- +page 53--><a name="page53"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +53</span>The interest of the romance was derived from the +intervention of this fairy to punish this boy for having a greedy +appetite. To achieve which purpose, this fairy made this +pie, and this boy ate and ate and ate, and his cheeks swelled and +swelled and swelled. There were many tributary +circumstances, but the forcible interest culminated in the total +consumption of this pie, and the bursting of this boy. +Truly he was a fine sight, Barbox Brothers, with serious +attentive face, and ear bent down, much jostled on the pavements +of the busy town, but afraid of losing a single incident of the +epic, lest he should be examined in it by-and-by and found +deficient.</p> +<p>Thus they arrived at the hotel. And there he had to say +at the bar, and said awkwardly enough: “I have found a +little girl!”</p> +<p>The whole establishment turned out to look at the little +girl. Nobody knew her; nobody could make out her name, as +she set it forth—except one chambermaid, who said it was +Constantinople—which it wasn’t.</p> +<p>“I will dine with my young friend in a private +room,” said Barbox Brothers to the hotel authorities, +“and perhaps you will be so good as let the police know +that the pretty baby is here. I suppose she is sure to be +inquired for, soon, if she has not been already. Come +along, Polly.”</p> +<p>Perfectly at ease and peace, Polly came <!-- page 54--><a +name="page54"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 54</span>along, but, +finding the stairs rather stiff work, was carried up by Barbox +Brothers. The dinner was a most transcendent success, and +the Barbox sheepishness, under Polly’s directions how to +mince her meat for her, and how to diffuse gravy over the plate +with a liberal and equal hand, was another fine sight.</p> +<p>“And now,” said Polly, “while we are at +dinner, you be good, and tell me that story I taught +you.”</p> +<p>With the tremors of a civil service examination on him, and +very uncertain indeed, not only as to the epoch at which the pie +appeared in history, but also as to the measurements of that +indispensable fact, Barbox Brothers made a shaky beginning, but +under encouragement did very fairly. There was a want of +breadth observable in his rendering of the cheeks, as well as the +appetite, of the boy; and there was a certain tameness in his +fairy, referable to an under-current of desire to account for +her. Still, as the first lumbering performance of a +good-humoured monster, it passed muster.</p> +<p>“I told you to be good,” said Polly, “and +you are good, ain’t you?”</p> +<p>“I hope so,” replied Barbox Brothers.</p> +<p>Such was his deference that Polly, elevated on a platform of +sofa-cushions in a chair at his right hand, encouraged him with a +pat or two on the face from the greasy bowl of her spoon, and +even with a gracious kiss. In getting on <!-- page 55--><a +name="page55"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 55</span>her feet upon +her chair, however, to give him this last reward, she toppled +forward among the dishes, and caused him to exclaim as he +effected her rescue: “Gracious Angels! Whew! I +thought we were in the fire, Polly!”</p> +<p>“What a coward you are, ain’t you?” said +Polly, when replaced.</p> +<p>“Yes, I am rather nervous,” he replied. +“Whew! Don’t, Polly! Don’t flourish +your spoon, or you’ll go over sideways. Don’t +tilt up your legs when you laugh, Polly, or you’ll go over +backwards. Whew! Polly, Polly, Polly,” said +Barbox Brothers, nearly succumbing to despair, “we are +environed with dangers!”</p> +<p>Indeed, he could descry no security from the pitfalls that +were yawning for Polly, but in proposing to her, after dinner, to +sit upon a low stool. “I will, if you will,” +said Polly. So, as peace of mind should go before all, he +begged the waiter to wheel aside the table, bring a pack of +cards, a couple of footstools, and a screen, and close in Polly +and himself before the fire, as it were in a snug room within the +room. Then, finest sight of all, was Barbox Brothers on his +footstool, with a pint decanter on the rug, contemplating Polly +as she built successfully, and growing blue in the face with +holding his breath, lest he should blow the house down.</p> +<p>“How you stare, don’t you?” said Polly, in a +houseless pause.</p> +<p><!-- page 56--><a name="page56"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +56</span>Detected in the ignoble fact, he felt obliged to admit, +apologetically: “I am afraid I was looking rather hard at +you, Polly.”</p> +<p>“Why do you stare?” asked Polly.</p> +<p>“I cannot,” he murmured to himself, “recall +why.—I don’t know, Polly.”</p> +<p>“You must be a simpleton to do things and not know why, +mustn’t you?” said Polly.</p> +<p>In spite of which reproof, he looked at the child again, +intently, as she bent her head over her card-structure, her rich +curls shading her face. “It is impossible,” he +thought, “that I can ever have seen this pretty baby +before. Can I have dreamed of her? In some sorrowful +dream?”</p> +<p>He could make nothing of it. So he went into the +building trade as a journeyman under Polly, and they built three +stories high, four stories high: even five.</p> +<p>“I say. Who do you think is coming?” asked +Polly, rubbing her eyes after tea.</p> +<p>He guessed: “The waiter?”</p> +<p>“No,” said Polly, “the dustman. I am +getting sleepy.”</p> +<p>A new embarrassment for Barbox Brothers!</p> +<p>“I don’t think I am going to be fetched +to-night,” said Polly; “what do you think?”</p> +<p>He thought not, either. After another quarter of an +hour, the dustman not merely impending but actually arriving, +recourse was had to the Constantinopolitan chambermaid: <!-- page +57--><a name="page57"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 57</span>who +cheerily undertook that the child should sleep in a comfortable +and wholesome room, which she herself would share.</p> +<p>“And I know you will be careful, won’t you,” +said Barbox Brothers, as a new fear dawned upon him, “that +she don’t fall out of bed.”</p> +<p>Polly found this so highly entertaining that she was under the +necessity of clutching him round the neck with both arms as he +sat on his footstool picking up the cards, and rocking him to and +fro, with her dimpled chin on his shoulder.</p> +<p>“O what a coward you are, ain’t you!” said +Polly. “Do <i>you</i> fall out of bed?”</p> +<p>“N—not generally, Polly.”</p> +<p>“No more do I.”</p> +<p>With that, Polly gave him a reassuring hug or two to keep him +going, and then giving that confiding mite of a hand of hers to +be swallowed up in the hand of the Constantinopolitan +chambermaid, trotted off, chattering, without a vestige of +anxiety.</p> +<p>He looked after her, had the screen removed and the table and +chairs replaced, and still looked after her. He paced the +room for half an hour. “A most engaging little +creature, but it’s not that. A most winning little +voice, but it’s not that. That has much to do with +it, but there is something more. How can it be that I seem +to know this child? What <!-- page 58--><a +name="page58"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 58</span>was it she +imperfectly recalled to me when I felt her touch in the street, +and, looking down at her, saw her looking up at me?”</p> +<p>“Mr. Jackson!”</p> +<p>With a start he turned towards the sound of the subdued voice, +and saw his answer standing at the door.</p> +<p>“O Mr. Jackson, do not be severe with me. Speak a +word of encouragement to me, I beseech you.”</p> +<p>“You are Polly’s mother.”</p> +<p>“Yes.”</p> +<p>Yes. Polly herself might come to this, one day. As +you see what the rose was, in its faded leaves; as you see what +the summer growth of the woods was, in their wintry branches; so +Polly might be traced, one day, in a care-worn woman like this, +with her hair turned grey. Before him, were the ashes of a +dead fire that had once burned bright. This was the woman +he had loved. This was the woman he had lost. Such +had been the constancy of his imagination to her, so had Time +spared her under its withholding, that now, seeing how roughly +the inexorable hand had struck her, his soul was filled with pity +and amazement.</p> +<p>He led her to a chair, and stood leaning on a corner of the +chimney-piece, with his head resting on his hand, and his face +half averted.</p> +<p><!-- page 59--><a name="page59"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +59</span>“Did you see me in the street, and show me to your +child?” he asked.</p> +<p>“Yes.”</p> +<p>“Is the little creature, then, a party to +deceit?”</p> +<p>“I hope there is no deceit. I said to her, +‘We have lost our way, and I must try to find mine by +myself. Go to that gentleman and tell him you are +lost. You shall be fetched by-and-by.’ Perhaps +you have not thought how very young she is?”</p> +<p>“She is very self-reliant.”</p> +<p>“Perhaps because she is so young?”</p> +<p>He asked, after a short pause, “Why did you do +this?”</p> +<p>“O Mr. Jackson, do you ask me? In the hope that +you might see something in my innocent child to soften your heart +towards me. Not only towards me, but towards my +husband.”</p> +<p>He suddenly turned about, and walked to the opposite end of +the room. He came back again with a slower step, and +resumed his former attitude, saying:</p> +<p>“I thought you had emigrated to America?”</p> +<p>“We did. But life went ill with us there, and we +came back.”</p> +<p>“Do you live in this town?”</p> +<p>“Yes. I am a daily teacher of music here. My +husband is a book-keeper.”</p> +<p>“Are you—forgive my asking—poor?”</p> +<p><!-- page 60--><a name="page60"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +60</span>“We earn enough for our wants. That is not +our distress. My husband is very, very ill of a lingering +disorder. He will never recover—”</p> +<p>“You check yourself. If it is for want of the +encouraging word you spoke of, take it from me. I cannot +forget the old time, Beatrice.”</p> +<p>“God bless you!” she replied, with a burst of +tears, and gave him her trembling hand.</p> +<p>“Compose yourself. I cannot be composed if you are +not, for to see you weep distresses me beyond expression. +Speak freely to me. Trust me.”</p> +<p>She shaded her face with her veil, and after a little while +spoke calmly. Her voice had the ring of Polly’s.</p> +<p>“It is not that my husband’s mind is at all +impaired by his bodily suffering, for I assure you that is not +the case. But in his weakness, and in his knowledge that he +is incurably ill, he cannot overcome the ascendancy of one +idea. It preys upon him, embitters every moment of his +painful life, and will shorten it.”</p> +<p>She stopping, he said again: “Speak freely to me. +Trust me.”</p> +<p>“We have had five children before this darling, and they +all lie in their little graves. He believes that they have +withered away under a curse, and that it will blight this child +like the rest.”</p> +<p><!-- page 61--><a name="page61"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +61</span>“Under what curse?”</p> +<p>“Both I and he have it on our conscience that we tried +you very heavily, and I do not know but that, if I were as ill as +he, I might suffer in my mind as he does. This is the +constant burden:—‘I believe, Beatrice, I was the only +friend that Mr. Jackson ever cared to make, though I was so much +his junior. The more influence he acquired in the business, +the higher he advanced me, and I was alone in his private +confidence. I came between him and you, and I took you from +him. We were both secret, and the blow fell when he was +wholly unprepared. The anguish it caused a man so +compressed, must have been terrible; the wrath it awakened, +inappeasable. So, a curse came to be invoked on our poor +pretty little flowers, and they fall.’”</p> +<p>“And you, Beatrice,” he asked, when she had ceased +to speak, and there had been a silence afterwards: “how say +you?”</p> +<p>“Until within these few weeks I was afraid of you, and I +believed that you would never, never, forgive.”</p> +<p>“Until within these few weeks,” he repeated. +“Have you changed your opinion of me within these few +weeks?”</p> +<p>“Yes.”</p> +<p>“For what reason?”</p> +<p>“I was getting some pieces of music in a shop in this +town, when, to my terror, you <!-- page 62--><a +name="page62"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 62</span>came +in. As I veiled my face and stood in the dark end of the +shop, I heard you explain that you wanted a musical instrument +for a bedridden girl. Your voice and manner were so +softened, you showed such interest in its selection, you took it +away yourself with so much tenderness of care and pleasure, that +I knew you were a man with a most gentle heart. O Mr. +Jackson, Mr. Jackson, if you could have felt the refreshing rain +of tears that followed for me!”</p> +<p>Was Phœbe playing at that moment, on her distant +couch? He seemed to hear her.</p> +<p>“I inquired in the shop where you lived, but could get +no information. As I had heard you say that you were going +back by the next train (but you did not say where), I resolved to +visit the station at about that time of day, as often as I could, +between my lessons, on the chance of seeing you again. I +have been there very often, but saw you no more until +to-day. You were meditating as you walked the street, but +the calm expression of your face emboldened me to send my child +to you. And when I saw you bend your head to speak tenderly +to her, I prayed to <span class="smcap">God</span> to forgive me +for having ever brought a sorrow on it. I now pray to you +to forgive me, and to forgive my husband. I was very young, +he was young too, and in the ignorant hardihood of such a time of +life we don’t know what we do to those <!-- page 63--><a +name="page63"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 63</span>who have +undergone more discipline. You generous man! You good +man! So to raise me up and make nothing of my crime against +you!”—for he would not see her on her knees, and +soothed her as a kind father might have soothed an erring +daughter—“thank you, bless you, thank you!”</p> +<p>When he next spoke, it was after having drawn aside the +window-curtain and looked out a while. Then, he only +said:</p> +<p>“Is Polly asleep?”</p> +<p>“Yes. As I came in, I met her going away +up-stairs, and put her to bed myself.”</p> +<p>“Leave her with me for to-morrow, Beatrice, and write me +your address on this leaf of my pocket-book. In the evening +I will bring her home to you—and to her father.”</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * * * *</p> +<p>“Hallo!” cried Polly, putting her saucy sunny face +in at the door next morning when breakfast was ready: “I +thought I was fetched last night?”</p> +<p>“So you were, Polly, but I asked leave to keep you here +for the day, and to take you home in the evening.”</p> +<p>“Upon my word!” said Polly. “You are +very cool, ain’t you?”</p> +<p>However, Polly seemed to think it a good idea, and added, +“I suppose I must give you a kiss, though you <i>are</i> +cool.” The kiss given <!-- page 64--><a +name="page64"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 64</span>and taken, +they sat down to breakfast in a highly conversational tone.</p> +<p>“Of course, you are going to amuse me?” said +Polly.</p> +<p>“Oh, of course,” said Barbox Brothers.</p> +<p>In the pleasurable height of her anticipations, Polly found it +indispensable to put down her piece of toast, cross one of her +little fat knees over the other, and bring her little fat right +hand down into her left hand with a business-like slap. +After this gathering of herself together, Polly, by that time, a +mere heap of dimples, asked in a wheedling manner: “What +are we going to do, you dear old thing?”</p> +<p>“Why, I was thinking,” said Barbox Brothers, +“—but are you fond of horses, Polly?”</p> +<p>“Ponies, I am,” said Polly, “especially when +their tails are long. But horses—n—no—too +big, you know.”</p> +<p>“Well,” pursued Barbox Brothers, in a spirit of +grave mysterious confidence adapted to the importance of the +consultation, “I did see yesterday, Polly, on the walls, +pictures of two long-tailed ponies, speckled all +over—”</p> +<p>“No, no, <span class="smcap">no</span>!” cried +Polly, in an ecstatic desire to linger on the charming +details. “Not speckled all over!”</p> +<p>“Speckled all over. Which ponies jump through +hoops—”</p> +<p><!-- page 65--><a name="page65"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +65</span>“No, no, <span class="smcap">no</span>!” +cried Polly, as before. “They never jump through +hoops!”</p> +<p>“Yes, they do. O I assure you, they do. And +eat pie in pinafores—”</p> +<p>“Ponies eating pie in pinafores!” said +Polly. “What a story-teller you are, ain’t +you?”</p> +<p>“Upon my honour.—And fire off guns.”</p> +<p>(Polly hardly seemed to see the force of the ponies resorting +to fire-arms.)</p> +<p>“And I was thinking,” pursued the exemplary +Barbox, “that if you and I were to go to the Circus where +these ponies are, it would do our constitutions good.”</p> +<p>“Does that mean, amuse us?” inquired Polly. +“What long words you do use, don’t you?”</p> +<p>Apologetic for having wandered out of his depth, he replied: +“That means, amuse us. That is exactly what it +means. There are many other wonders besides the ponies, and +we shall see them all. Ladies and gentlemen in spangled +dresses, and elephants and lions and tigers.”</p> +<p>Polly became observant of the teapot, with a curled-up nose +indicating some uneasiness of mind. “They never get +out, of course,” she remarked as a mere truism.</p> +<p>“The elephants and lions and tigers? O dear +no!”</p> +<p>“O dear no!” said Polly. “And of <!-- +page 66--><a name="page66"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +66</span>course nobody’s afraid of the ponies shooting +anybody.”</p> +<p>“Not the least in the world.”</p> +<p>“No, no, not the least in the world,” said +Polly.</p> +<p>“I was also thinking,” proceeded Barbox, +“that if we were to look in at the toy-shop, to choose a +doll—”</p> +<p>“Not dressed!” cried Polly, with a clap of her +hands. “No, no, <span class="smcap">no</span>, not +dressed!”</p> +<p>“Full dressed. Together with a house, and all +things necessary for housekeeping—”</p> +<p>Polly gave a little scream, and seemed in danger of falling +into a swoon of bliss. “What a darling you +are!” she languidly exclaimed, leaning back in her +chair. “Come and be hugged, or I must come and hug +you!”</p> +<p>This resplendent programme was carried into execution with the +utmost rigour of the law. It being essential to make the +purchase of the doll its first feature—or that lady would +have lost the ponies—the toy-shop expedition took +precedence. Polly in the magic warehouse, with a doll as +large as herself under each arm, and a neat assortment of some +twenty more on view upon the counter, did indeed present a +spectacle of indecision not quite compatible with unalloyed +happiness, but the light cloud passed. The lovely specimen +oftenest chosen, oftenest rejected, and finally abided by, was of +Circassian descent, possessing <!-- page 67--><a +name="page67"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 67</span>as much +boldness of beauty as was reconcilable with extreme feebleness of +mouth, and combining a sky-blue silk pelisse with rose-coloured +satin trousers, and a black velvet hat: which this fair stranger +to our northern shores would seem to have founded on the +portraits of the late Duchess of Kent. The name this +distinguished foreigner brought with her from beneath the glowing +skies of a sunny clime was (on Polly’s authority) Miss +Melluka, and the costly nature of her outfit as a housekeeper, +from the Barbox coffers, may be inferred from the two facts that +her silver teaspoons were as large as her kitchen poker, and that +the proportions of her watch exceeded those of her +frying-pan. Miss Melluka was graciously pleased to express +her entire approbation of the Circus, and so was Polly; for the +ponies <i>were</i> speckled, and brought down nobody when they +fired, and the savagery of the wild beasts appeared to be mere +smoke—which article, in fact, they did produce in large +quantities from their insides. The Barbox absorption in the +general subject throughout the realisation of these delights was +again a sight to see, nor was it less worthy to behold at dinner, +when he drank to Miss Melluka, tied stiff in a chair opposite to +Polly (the fair Circassian possessing an unbendable spine), and +even induced the waiter to assist in carrying out with due +decorum the prevailing glorious idea. To wind up, there +came the <!-- page 68--><a name="page68"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 68</span>agreeable fever of getting Miss +Melluka and all her wardrobe and rich possessions into a fly with +Polly, to be taken home. But by that time Polly had become +unable to look upon such accumulated joys with waking eyes, and +had withdrawn her consciousness into the wonderful Paradise of a +child’s sleep. “Sleep, Polly, sleep,” +said Barbox Brothers, as her head dropped on his shoulder; +“you shall not fall out of this bed, easily, at any +rate!”</p> +<p>What rustling piece of paper he took from his pocket, and +carefully folded into the bosom of Polly’s frock, shall not +be mentioned. He said nothing about it, and nothing shall +be said about it. They drove to a modest suburb of the +great ingenious town, and stopped at the forecourt of a small +house. “Do not wake the child,” said Barbox +Brothers, softly, to the driver, “I will carry her in as +she is.”</p> +<p>Greeting the light at the opened door which was held by +Polly’s mother, Polly’s bearer passed on with mother +and child into a ground-floor room. There, stretched on a +sofa, lay a sick man, sorely wasted, who covered his eyes with +his emaciated hands.</p> +<p>“Tresham,” said Barbox, in a kindly voice, +“I have brought you back your Polly, fast asleep. +Give me your hand, and tell me you are better.”</p> +<p>The sick man reached forth his right hand, and bowed his head +over the hand into which <!-- page 69--><a +name="page69"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 69</span>it was taken +and kissed it. “Thank you, thank you! I may say +that I am well and happy.”</p> +<p>“That’s brave,” said Barbox. +“Tresham, I have a fancy—can you make room for me +beside you here?”</p> +<p>He sat down on the sofa as he said words, cherishing the plump +peachy cheek that lay uppermost on his shoulder.</p> +<p>“I have a fancy, Tresham (I am getting quite an old +fellow now, you know, and old fellows may take fancies into their +heads sometimes), to give up Polly, having found her, to no one +but you. Will you take her from me?”</p> +<p>As the father held out his arms for the child, each of the two +men looked steadily at the other.</p> +<p>“She is very dear to you, Tresham?”</p> +<p>“Unutterably dear.”</p> +<p>“God bless her! It is not much, Polly,” he +continued, turning his eyes upon her peaceful face as he +apostrophised her, “it is not much, Polly, for a blind and +sinful man to invoke a blessing on something so far better than +himself as a little child is; but it would be much—much +upon his cruel head, and much upon his guilty soul—if he +could be so wicked as to invoke a curse. He had better have +a millstone round his neck, and be cast into the deepest +sea. Live and thrive, my pretty baby!” Here he +kissed her. “Live <!-- page 70--><a +name="page70"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 70</span>and prosper, +and become in time the mother of other little children, like the +Angels who behold The Father’s face!”</p> +<p>He kissed her again, gave her up gently to both her parents, +and went out.</p> +<p>But he went not to Wales. No, he never went to +Wales. He went straightway for another stroll about the +town, and he looked in upon the people at their work, and at +their play, here, there, everywhere, and where not. For he +was Barbox Brothers and Co. now, and had taken thousands of +partners into the solitary firm.</p> +<p>He had at length got back to his hotel room, and was standing +before his fire refreshing himself with a glass of hot drink +which he had stood upon the chimney-piece, when he heard the town +clocks striking, and, referring to his watch, found the evening +to have so slipped away, that they were striking twelve. As +he put up his watch again, his eyes met those of his reflection +in the chimney-glass.</p> +<p>“Why it’s your birthday already,” he said, +smiling. “You are looking very well. I wish you +many happy returns of the day.”</p> +<p>He had never before bestowed that wish upon himself. +“By Jupiter!” he discovered, “it alters the +whole case of running away from one’s birthday! +It’s a thing to explain to Phœbe. Besides, here +is quite a long story to tell her, that has sprung out of the +road <!-- page 71--><a name="page71"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +71</span>with no story. I’ll go back, instead of +going on. I’ll go back by my friend Lamps’s Up +X presently.”</p> +<p>He went back to Mugby Junction, and in point of fact he +established himself at Mugby Junction. It was the +convenient place to live in, for brightening Phœbe’s +life. It was the convenient place to live in, for having +her taught music by Beatrice. It was the convenient place +to live in, for occasionally borrowing Polly. It was the +convenient place to live in, for being joined at will to all +sorts of agreeable places and persons. So, he became +settled there, and, his house standing in an elevated situation, +it is noteworthy of him in conclusion, as Polly herself might +(not irreverently) have put it:</p> +<blockquote><p>There was an Old Barbox who lived on a hill,<br /> +And if he ain’t gone, he lives there still.</p> +</blockquote> +<p><!-- page 72--><a name="page72"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +72</span><span class="smcap">Here follows the substance of what +was seen</span>, <span class="smcap">heard</span>, <span +class="smcap">or otherwise picked up</span>, <span +class="smcap">by the Gentleman for Nowhere</span>, <span +class="smcap">in his careful study of the Junction</span>.</p> +<h2>MAIN LINE<br /> +THE BOY AT MUGBY</h2> +<p>I am The Boy at Mugby. That’s about what <i>I</i> +am.</p> +<p>You don’t know what I mean? What a pity! But +I think you do. I think you must. Look here. I +am the Boy at what is called The Refreshment Room at Mugby +Junction, and what’s proudest boast is, that it never yet +refreshed a mortal being.</p> +<p>Up in a corner of the Down Refreshment Room at Mugby Junction, +in the height of twenty-seven cross draughts (I’ve often +counted ’em while they brush the First Class hair +twenty-seven ways), behind the bottles, among the glasses, +bounded on the nor’-west by the <!-- page 73--><a +name="page73"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 73</span>beer, stood +pretty far to the right of a metallic object that’s at +times the tea-urn and at times the soup-tureen, according to the +nature of the last twang imparted to its contents which are the +same groundwork, fended off from the traveller by a barrier of +stale sponge-cakes erected atop of the counter, and lastly +exposed sideways to the glare of our Missis’s eye—you +ask a Boy so sitiwated, next time you stop in a hurry at Mugby, +for anything to drink; you take particular notice that +he’ll try to seem not to hear you, that he’ll appear +in a absent manner to survey the Line through a transparent +medium composed of your head and body, and that he won’t +serve you as long as you can possibly bear it. That’s +Me.</p> +<p>What a lark it is! We are the Model Establishment, we +are, at Mugby. Other Refreshment Rooms send their imperfect +young ladies up to be finished off by our Missis. For some +of the young ladies, when they’re new to the business, come +into it mild! Ah! Our Missis, she soon takes that out +of ’em. Why, I originally come into the business meek +myself. But Our Missis she soon took that out of +<i>me</i>.</p> +<p>What a delightful lark it is! I look upon us +Refreshmenters as ockipying the only proudly independent footing +on the Line. There’s Papers for instance—my +honourable friend if he will allow me to call him so—him as +belongs to Smith’s bookstall. Why he no more <!-- +page 74--><a name="page74"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +74</span>dares to be up to our Refreshmenting games, than he +dares to jump atop of a locomotive with her steam at full +pressure, and cut away upon her alone, driving himself, at +limited-mail speed. Papers, he’d get his head punched +at every compartment, first, second and third, the whole length +of a train, if he was to ventur to imitate my demeanour. +It’s the same with the porters, the same with the guards, +the same with the ticket clerks, the same the whole way up to the +secretary, traffic manager, or very chairman. There +ain’t a one among ’em on the nobly independent +footing we are. Did you ever catch one of <i>them</i>, when +you wanted anything of him, making a system of surveying the Line +through a transparent medium composed of your head and +body? I should hope not.</p> +<p>You should see our Bandolining Room at Mugby Junction. +It’s led to, by the door behind the counter which +you’ll notice usually stands ajar, and it’s the room +where Our Missis and our young ladies Bandolines their +hair. You should see ’em at it, betwixt trains, +Bandolining away, as if they was anointing themselves for the +combat. When you’re telegraphed, you should see their +noses all a going up with scorn, as if it was a part of the +working of the same Cooke and Wheatstone electrical +machinery. You should hear Our Missis give the word +“Here comes the Beast to be Fed!” <!-- page 75--><a +name="page75"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 75</span>and then you +should see ’em indignantly skipping across the Line, from +the Up to the Down, or Wicer Warsaw, and begin to pitch the stale +pastry into the plates, and chuck the sawdust sangwiches under +the glass covers, and get out the—ha ha ha!—the +Sherry—O my eye, my eye!—for your Refreshment.</p> +<p>It’s only in the Isle of the Brave and Land of the Free +(by which of course I mean to say Britannia) that Refreshmenting +is so effective, so ’olesome, so constitutional, a check +upon the public. There was a foreigner, which having +politely, with his hat off, beseeched our young ladies and Our +Missis for “a leetel gloss hoff prarndee,” and having +had the Line surveyed through him by all and no other +acknowledgment, was a proceeding at last to help himself, as +seems to be the custom in his own country, when Our Missis with +her hair almost a coming un-Bandolined with rage, and her eyes +omitting sparks, flew at him, cotched the decanter out of his +hand, and said: “Put it down! I won’t allow +that!” The foreigner turned pale, stepped back with +his arms stretched out in front of him, his hands clasped, and +his shoulders riz, and exclaimed: “Ah! Is it possible +this! That these disdaineous females and this ferocious old +woman are placed here by the administration, not only to empoison +the voyagers, but to affront them! Great Heaven! How +arrives it? The English <!-- page 76--><a +name="page76"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 76</span>people. +Or is he then a slave? Or idiot?” Another time, +a merry wideawake American gent had tried the sawdust and spit it +out, and had tried the Sherry and spit that out, and had tried in +vain to sustain exhausted natur upon Butter-Scotch, and had been +rather extra Bandolined and Line-surveyed through, when, as the +bell was ringing and he paid Our Missis, he says, very loud and +good-tempered: “I tell Yew what ’tis, +ma’arm. I la’af. Theer! I +la’af. I Dew. I oughter ha’ seen most +things, for I hail from the Onlimited side of the Atlantic Ocean, +and I haive travelled right slick over the Limited, head on +through Jee-rusalemm and the East, and likeways France and Italy, +Europe Old World, and am now upon the track to the Chief Europian +Village; but such an Institution as Yew, and Yewer young ladies, +and Yewer fixin’s solid and liquid, afore the glorious +Tarnal I never did see yet! And if I hain’t found the +eighth wonder of monarchical Creation, in finding Yew, and Yewer +young ladies, and Yewer fixin’s solid and liquid, all as +aforesaid, established in a country where the people air not +absolute Loo-naticks, I am Extra Double Darned with a Nip and +Frizzle to the innermostest grit! +Wheerfur—Theer!—I la’af! I Dew, +ma’arm. I la’af!” And so he went, +stamping and shaking his sides, along the platform all the way to +his own compartment.</p> +<p><!-- page 77--><a name="page77"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +77</span>I think it was her standing up agin the Foreigner, as +giv’ Our Missis the idea of going over to France, and +droring a comparison betwixt Refreshmenting as followed among the +frog-eaters, and Refreshmenting as triumphant in the Isle of the +Brave and Land of the Free (by which of course I mean to say +agin, Britannia). Our young ladies, Miss Whiff, Miss Piff, +and Mrs. Sniff, was unanimous opposed to her going; for, as they +says to Our Missis one and all, it is well beknown to the hends +of the herth as no other nation except Britain has a idea of +anythink, but above all of business. Why then should you +tire yourself to prove what is aready proved? Our Missis +however (being a teazer at all pints) stood out grim obstinate, +and got a return pass by South-Eastern Tidal, to go right +through, if such should be her dispositions, to Marseilles.</p> +<p>Sniff is husband to Mrs. Sniff, and is a regular insignificant +cove. He looks arter the sawdust department in a back room, +and is sometimes when we are very hard put to it let in behind +the counter with a corkscrew; but never when it can be helped, +his demeanour towards the public being disgusting servile. +How Mrs. Sniff ever come so far to lower herself as to marry him, +I don’t know; but I suppose <i>he</i> does, and I should +think he wished he didn’t, for he leads a awful life. +Mrs. Sniff couldn’t be much harder with him if he was +public. Similarly, <!-- page 78--><a +name="page78"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 78</span>Miss Whiff +and Miss Piff; taking the tone of Mrs. Sniff, they shoulder Sniff +about when he is let in with a corkscrew, and they whisk things +out of his hands when in his servility he is a going to let the +public have ’em, and they snap him up when in the crawling +baseness of his spirit he is a going to answer a public question, +and they drore more tears into his eyes than ever the mustard +does which he all day long lays on to the sawdust. (But it +ain’t strong.) Once, when Sniff had the repulsiveness +to reach across to get the milk-pot to hand over for a baby, I +see Our Missis in her rage catch him by both his shoulders and +spin him out into the Bandolining Room.</p> +<p>But Mrs. Sniff. How different! She’s the +one! She’s the one as you’ll notice to be +always looking another way from you, when you look at her. +She’s the one with the small waist buckled in tight in +front, and with the lace cuffs at her wrists, which she puts on +the edge of the counter before her, and stands a smoothing while +the public foams. This smoothing the cuffs and looking +another way while the public foams, is the last accomplishment +taught to the young ladies as come to Mugby to be finished by Our +Missis; and it’s always taught by Mrs. Sniff.</p> +<p>When Our Missis went away upon her journey, Mrs. Sniff was +left in charge. She did hold the public in check most +beautiful! <!-- page 79--><a name="page79"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 79</span>In all my time, I never see half so +many cups of tea given without milk to people as wanted it with, +nor half so many cups of tea with milk given to people as wanted +it without. When foaming ensued, Mrs. Sniff would say: +“Then you’d better settle it among yourselves, and +change with one another.” It was a most highly +delicious lark. I enjoyed the Refreshmenting business more +than ever, and was so glad I had took to it when young.</p> +<p>Our Missis returned. It got circulated among the young +ladies, and it as it might be penetrated to me through the +crevices of the Bandolining Room, that she had Orrors to reveal, +if revelations so contemptible could be dignified with the +name. Agitation become awakened. Excitement was up in +the stirrups. Expectation stood a tiptoe. At length +it was put forth that on our slackest evening in the week, and at +our slackest time of that evening betwixt trains, Our Missis +would give her views of foreign Refreshmenting, in the +Bandolining Room.</p> +<p>It was arranged tasteful for the purpose. The +Bandolining table and glass was hid in a corner, a arm-chair was +elevated on a packing-case for Our Missis’s ockypation, a +table and a tumbler of water (no sherry in it, thankee) was +placed beside it. Two of the pupils, the season being +autumn, and hollyhocks and daliahs being <!-- page 80--><a +name="page80"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 80</span>in, +ornamented the wall with three devices in those flowers. On +one might be read, “<span class="smcap">May Albion never +Learn</span>;” on another, “<span class="smcap">Keep +the Public Down</span>;” on another, “<span +class="smcap">Our Refreshmenting Charter</span>.” The +whole had a beautiful appearance, with which the beauty of the +sentiments corresponded.</p> +<p>On Our Missis’s brow was wrote Severity, as she ascended +the fatal platform. (Not that that was anythink new.) +Miss Whiff and Miss Piff sat at her feet. Three chairs from +the Waiting Room might have been perceived by a average eye, in +front of her, on which the pupils was accommodated. Behind +them, a very close observer might have discerned a Boy. +Myself.</p> +<p>“Where,” said Our Missis, glancing gloomily +around, “is Sniff?”</p> +<p>“I thought it better,” answered Mrs. Sniff, +“that he should not be let to come in. He is such an +Ass.”</p> +<p>“No doubt,” assented Our Missis. “But +for that reason is it not desirable to improve his +mind?”</p> +<p>“O! Nothing will ever improve <i>him</i>,” +said Mrs. Sniff.</p> +<p>“However,” pursued Our Missis, “call him in, +Ezekiel.”</p> +<p>I called him in. The appearance of the low-minded cove +was hailed with disapprobation <!-- page 81--><a +name="page81"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 81</span>from all +sides, on account of his having brought his corkscrew with +him. He pleaded “the force of habit.”</p> +<p>“The force!” said Mrs. Sniff. +“Don’t let us have you talking about force, for +Gracious sake. There! Do stand still where you are, +with your back against the wall.”</p> +<p>He is a smiling piece of vacancy, and he smiled in the mean +way in which he will even smile at the public if he gets a chance +(language can say no meaner of him), and he stood upright near +the door with the back of his head agin the wall, as if he was a +waiting for somebody to come and measure his heighth for the +Army.</p> +<p>“I should not enter, ladies,” says Our Missis, +“on the revolting disclosures I am about to make, if it was +not in the hope that they will cause you to be yet more +implacable in the exercise of the power you wield in a +constitutional country, and yet more devoted to the +constitutional motto which I see before me;” it was behind +her, but the words sounded better so; “‘May Albion +never learn!’”</p> +<p>Here the pupils as had made the motto, admired it, and cried, +“Hear! Hear! Hear!” Sniff, showing +an inclination to join in chorus, got himself frowned down by +every brow.</p> +<p>“The baseness of the French,” pursued Our Missis, +“as displayed in the fawning nature of their +Refreshmenting, equals, if not surpasses, <!-- page 82--><a +name="page82"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 82</span>anythink as +was ever heard of the baseness of the celebrated +Buonaparte.”</p> +<p>Miss Whiff, Miss Piff and me, we drored a heavy breath, equal +to saying, “We thought as much!”</p> +<p>Miss Whiff and Miss Piff seeming to object to my droring mine +along with theirs, I drored another, to aggravate ’em.</p> +<p>“Shall I be believed,” says Our Missis, with +flashing eyes, “when I tell you that no sooner had I set my +foot upon that treacherous shore—”</p> +<p>Here Sniff, either busting out mad, or thinking aloud, says, +in a low voice: “Feet. Plural, you know.”</p> +<p>The cowering that come upon him when he was spurned by all +eyes, added to his being beneath contempt, was sufficient +punishment for a cove so grovelling. In the midst of a +silence rendered more impressive by the turned-up female noses +with which it was pervaded, Our Missis went on:</p> +<p>“Shall I be believed when I tell you that no sooner had +I landed,” this word with a killing look at Sniff, +“on that treacherous shore, than I was ushered into a +Refreshment Room where there were, I do not exaggerate, actually +eatable things to eat?”</p> +<p>A groan burst from the ladies. I not only did myself the +honour of jining, but also of lengthening it out.</p> +<p>“Where there were,” Our Missis added, <!-- page +83--><a name="page83"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +83</span>“not only eatable things to eat, but also +drinkable things to drink?”</p> +<p>A murmur, swelling almost into a scream, ariz. Miss +Piff, trembling with indignation, called out: +“Name!”</p> +<p>“I <i>will</i> name,” said Our Missis. +“There was roast fowls, hot and cold; there was smoking +roast veal surrounded with browned potatoes; there was hot soup +with (again I ask shall I be credited?) nothing bitter in it, and +no flour to choke off the consumer; there was a variety of cold +dishes set off with jelly; there was salad; there was—mark +me!—<i>fresh</i> pastry, and that of a light construction; +there was a luscious show of fruit. There was bottles and +decanters of sound small wine, of every size and adapted to every +pocket; the same odious statement will apply to brandy; and these +were set out upon the counter so that all could help +themselves.”</p> +<p>Our Missis’s lips so quivered, that Mrs. Sniff, though +scarcely less convulsed than she were, got up and held the +tumbler to them.</p> +<p>“This,” proceeds Our Missis, “was my first +unconstitutional experience. Well would it have been, if it +had been my last and worst. But no. As I proceeded +further into that enslaved and ignorant land, its aspect became +more hideous. I need not explain to this assembly, the +ingredients and formation of the British Refreshment +sangwich?”</p> +<p><!-- page 84--><a name="page84"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +84</span>Universal laughter—except from Sniff, who, as +sangwich-cutter, shook his head in a state of the utmost +dejection as he stood with it agin the wall.</p> +<p>“Well!” said Our Missis, with dilated +nostrils. “Take a fresh crisp long crusty penny loaf +made of the whitest and best flower. Cut it longwise +through the middle. Insert a fair and nicely fitting slice +of ham. Tie a smart piece of ribbon round the middle of the +whole to bind it together. Add at one end a neat wrapper of +clean white paper by which to hold it. And the universal +French Refreshment sangwich busts on your disgusted +vision.”</p> +<p>A cry of “Shame!” from all—except Sniff, +which rubbed his stomach with a soothing hand.</p> +<p>“I need not,” said Our Missis, “explain to +this assembly, the usual formation and fitting of the British +Refreshment Room?”</p> +<p>No, no, and laughter. Sniff agin shaking his head in low +spirits agin the wall.</p> +<p>“Well,” said Our Missis, “what would you say +to a general decoration of everythink, to hangings (sometimes +elegant), to easy velvet furniture, to abundance of little +tables, to abundance of little seats, to brisk bright waiters, to +great convenience, to a pervading cleanliness and tastefulness +positively addressing the public and making the Beast thinking +itself worth the pains?”</p> +<p><!-- page 85--><a name="page85"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +85</span>Contemptuous fury on the part of all the ladies. +Mrs. Sniff looking as if she wanted somebody to hold her, and +everybody else looking as if they’d rayther not.</p> +<p>“Three times,” said our Missis, working herself +into a truly terrimenjious state, “three times did I see +these shamful things, only between the coast and Paris, and not +counting either: at Hazebroucke, at Arras, at Amiens. But +worse remains. Tell me, what would you call a person who +should propose in England that there should be kept, say at our +own model Mugby Junction, pretty baskets, each holding an +assorted cold lunch and dessert for one, each at a certain fixed +price, and each within a passenger’s power to take away, to +empty in the carriage at perfect leisure, and to return at +another station fifty or a hundred miles further on?”</p> +<p>There was disagreement what such a person should be +called. Whether revolutionist, atheist, Bright (<i>I</i> +said him), or Un-English. Miss Piff screeched her shrill +opinion last, in the words: “A malignant maniac!”</p> +<p>“I adopt,” says Our Missis, “the brand set +upon such a person by the righteous indignation of my friend Miss +Piff. A malignant maniac. Know then, that that +malignant maniac has sprung from the congenial soil of France, +and that his malignant madness was in unchecked action on this +same part of my journey.”</p> +<p><!-- page 86--><a name="page86"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +86</span>I noticed that Sniff was a rubbing his hands, and that +Mrs. Sniff had got her eye upon him. But I did not take +more particular notice, owing to the excited state in which the +young ladies was, and to feeling myself called upon to keep it up +with a howl.</p> +<p>“On my experience south of Paris,” said Our +Missis, in a deep tone, “I will not expatiate. Too +loathsome were the task! But fancy this. Fancy a +guard coming round, with the train at full speed, to inquire how +many for dinner. Fancy his telegraphing forward, the number +of diners. Fancy every one expected, and the table +elegantly laid for the complete party. Fancy a charming +dinner, in a charming room, and the head-cook, concerned for the +honour of every dish, superintending in his clean white jacket +and cap. Fancy the Beast travelling six hundred miles on +end, very fast, and with great punctuality, yet being taught to +expect all this to be done for it!”</p> +<p>A spirited chorus of “The Beast!”</p> +<p>I noticed that Sniff was agin a rubbing his stomach with a +soothing hand, and that he had drored up one leg. But agin +I didn’t take particular notice, looking on myself as +called upon to stimilate public feeling. It being a lark +besides.</p> +<p>“Putting everything together,” said Our Missis, +“French Refreshmenting comes to this, and O it comes to a +nice total! First: <!-- page 87--><a +name="page87"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 87</span>eatable +things to eat, and drinkable things to drink.”</p> +<p>A groan from the young ladies, kep’ up by me.</p> +<p>“Second: convenience, and even elegance.”</p> +<p>Another groan from the young ladies, kep’ up by me.</p> +<p>“Third: moderate charges.”</p> +<p>This time, a groan from me, kep’ up by the young +ladies.</p> +<p>“Fourth:—and here,” says Our Missis, +“I claim your angriest sympathy—attention, common +civility, nay, even politeness!”</p> +<p>Me and the young ladies regularly raging mad all together.</p> +<p>“And I cannot in conclusion,” says Our Missis, +with her spitefullest sneer, “give you a completer pictur +of that despicable nation (after what I have related), than +assuring you that they wouldn’t bear our constitutional +ways and noble independence at Mugby Junction, for a single +month, and that they would turn us to the right-about and put +another system in our places, as soon as look at us; perhaps +sooner, for I do not believe they have the good taste to care to +look at us twice.”</p> +<p>The swelling tumult was arrested in its rise. Sniff, +bore away by his servile disposition, had drored up his leg with +a higher and a higher relish, and was now discovered to be waving +his corkscrew over his head. It was at this <!-- page +88--><a name="page88"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +88</span>moment that Mrs. Sniff, who had kep’ her eye upon +him like the fabled obelisk, descended on her victim. Our +Missis followed them both out, and cries was heard in the sawdust +department.</p> +<p>You come into the Down Refreshment Room, at the Junction, +making believe you don’t know me, and I’ll pint you +out with my right thumb over my shoulder which is Our Missis, and +which is Miss Whiff; and which is Miss Piff; and which is Mrs. +Sniff. But you won’t get a chance to see Sniff, +because he disappeared that night. Whether he perished, +tore to pieces, I cannot say; but his corkscrew alone remains, to +bear witness to the servility of his disposition.</p> +<h2><!-- page 89--><a name="page89"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +89</span><span class="smcap">No.</span> 1 BRANCH LINE<br /> +THE SIGNAL-MAN</h2> +<p>“Halloa! Below there!”</p> +<p>When he heard a voice thus calling to him, he was standing at +the door of his box, with a flag in his hand, furled round its +short pole. One would have thought, considering the nature +of the ground, that he could not have doubted from what quarter +the voice came; but, instead of looking up to where I stood on +the top of the steep cutting nearly over his head, he turned +himself about and looked down the Line. There was something +remarkable in his manner of doing so, though I could not have +said, for my life, what. But, I know it was remarkable +enough to attract my notice, even though his figure was +foreshortened and shadowed, down in the deep trench, and mine was +high above him, so steeped in the glow of an angry sunset that I +had shaded my eyes with my hand before I saw him at all.</p> +<p>“Halloa! Below!”</p> +<p><!-- page 90--><a name="page90"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +90</span>From looking down the Line, he turned himself about +again, and, raising his eyes, saw my figure high above him.</p> +<p>“Is there any path by which I can come down and speak to +you?”</p> +<p>He looked up at me without replying, and I looked down at him +without pressing him too soon with a repetition of my idle +question. Just then, there came a vague vibration in the +earth and air, quickly changing into a violent pulsation, and an +oncoming rush that caused me to start back, as though it had +force to draw me down. When such vapour as rose to my +height from this rapid train, had passed me and was skimming away +over the landscape, I looked down again and saw him re-furling +the flag he had shown while the train went by.</p> +<p>I repeated my inquiry. After a pause, during which he +seemed to regard me with fixed attention, he motioned with his +rolled-up flag towards a point on my level, some two or three +hundred yards distant. I called down to him, “All +right!” and made for that point. There, by dint of +looking closely about me, I found a rough zig-zag descending path +notched out: which I followed.</p> +<p>The cutting was extremely deep, and unusually +precipitate. It was made through a clammy stone that became +oozier and wetter as I went down. For these reasons, I +found the way long enough to give me time to recall <!-- page +91--><a name="page91"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 91</span>a +singular air of reluctance or compulsion with which he had +pointed out the path.</p> +<p>When I came down low enough upon the zig-zag descent, to see +him again, I saw that he was standing between the rails on the +way by which the train had lately passed, in an attitude as if he +were waiting for me to appear. He had his left hand at his +chin, and that left elbow rested on his right hand crossed over +his breast. His attitude was one of such expectation and +watchfulness, that I stopped a moment, wondering at it.</p> +<p>I resumed my downward way, and, stepping out upon the level of +the railroad and drawing nearer to him, saw that he was a dark +sallow man, with a dark beard and rather heavy eyebrows. +His post was in as solitary and dismal a place as ever I +saw. On either side, a dripping-wet wall of jagged stone, +excluding all view but a strip of sky; the perspective one way, +only a crooked prolongation of this great dungeon; the shorter +perspective in the other direction, terminating in a gloomy red +light, and the gloomier entrance to a black tunnel, in whose +massive architecture there was a barbarous, depressing, and +forbidding air. So little sunlight ever found its way to +this spot, that it had an earthy deadly smell; and so much cold +wind rushed through it, that it struck chill to me, as if I had +left the natural world.</p> +<p><!-- page 92--><a name="page92"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +92</span>Before he stirred, I was near enough to him to have +touched him. Not even then removing his eyes from mine, he +stepped back one step, and lifted his hand.</p> +<p>This was a lonesome post to occupy (I said), and it had +riveted my attention when I looked down from up yonder. A +visitor was a rarity, I should suppose; not an unwelcome rarity, +I hoped? In me, he merely saw a man who had been shut up +within narrow limits all his life, and who, being at last set +free, had a newly-awakened interest in these great works. +To such purpose I spoke to him; but I am far from sure of the +terms I used, for, besides that I am not happy in opening any +conversation, there was something in the man that daunted me.</p> +<p>He directed a most curious look towards the red light near the +tunnel’s mouth, and looked all about it, as if something +were missing from it, and then looked at me.</p> +<p>That light was part of his charge? Was it not?</p> +<p>He answered in a low voice: “Don’t you know it +is?”</p> +<p>The monstrous thought came into my mind as I perused the fixed +eyes and the saturnine face, that this was a spirit, not a +man. I have speculated since, whether there may have been +infection in his mind.</p> +<p>In my turn, I stepped back. But in making <!-- page +93--><a name="page93"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 93</span>the +action, I detected in his eyes some latent fear of me. This +put the monstrous thought to flight.</p> +<p>“You look at me,” I said, forcing a smile, +“as if you had a dread of me.”</p> +<p>“I was doubtful,” he returned, “whether I +had seen you before.”</p> +<p>“Where?”</p> +<p>He pointed to the red light he had looked at.</p> +<p>“There?” I said.</p> +<p>Intently watchful of me, he replied (but without sound), +“Yes.”</p> +<p>“My good fellow, what should I do there? However, +be that as it may, I never was there, you may swear.”</p> +<p>“I think I may,” he rejoined. +“Yes. I am sure I may.”</p> +<p>His manner cleared, like my own. He replied to my +remarks with readiness, and in well-chosen words. Had he +much to do there? Yes; that was to say, he had enough +responsibility to bear; but exactness and watchfulness were what +was required of him, and of actual work—manual +labour—he had next to none. To change that signal, to +trim those lights, and to turn this iron handle now and then, was +all he had to do under that head. Regarding those many long +and lonely hours of which I seemed to make so much, he could only +say that the routine of his life had shaped itself into that +form, and he had grown used to it. He had <!-- page 94--><a +name="page94"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 94</span>taught +himself a language down here—if only to know it by sight, +and to have formed his own crude ideas of its pronunciation, +could be called learning it. He had also worked at +fractions and decimals, and tried a little algebra; but he was, +and had been as a boy, a poor hand at figures. Was it +necessary for him when on duty, always to remain in that channel +of damp air, and could he never rise into the sunshine from +between those high stone walls? Why, that depended upon +times and circumstances. Under some conditions there would +be less upon the Line than under others, and the same held good +as to certain hours of the day and night. In bright +weather, he did choose occasions for getting a little above these +lower shadows; but, being at all times liable to be called by his +electric bell, and at such times listening for it with redoubled +anxiety, the relief was less than I would suppose.</p> +<p>He took me into his box, where there was a fire, a desk for an +official book in which he had to make certain entries, a +telegraphic instrument with its dial face and needles, and the +little bell of which he had spoken. On my trusting that he +would excuse the remark that he had been well educated, and (I +hoped I might say without offence), perhaps educated above that +station, he observed that instances of slight incongruity in +such-wise would rarely be found wanting among large bodies of +men; <!-- page 95--><a name="page95"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +95</span>that he had heard it was so in workhouses, in the police +force, even in that last desperate resource, the army; and that +he knew it was so, more or less, in any great railway +staff. He had been, when young (if I could believe it, +sitting in that hut; he scarcely could), a student of natural +philosophy, and had attended lectures; but he had run wild, +misused his opportunities, gone down, and never risen +again. He had no complaint to offer about that. He +had made his bed, and he lay upon it. It was far too late +to make another.</p> +<p>All that I have here condensed, he said in a quiet manner, +with his grave dark regards divided between me and the +fire. He threw in the word “Sir,” from time to +time, and especially when he referred to his youth: as though to +request me to understand that he claimed to be nothing but what I +found him. He was several times interrupted by the little +bell, and had to read off messages, and send replies. Once, +he had to stand without the door, and display a flag as a train +passed, and make some verbal communication to the driver. +In the discharge of his duties I observed him to be remarkably +exact and vigilant, breaking off his discourse at a syllable, and +remaining silent until what he had to do was done.</p> +<p>In a word, I should have set this man down as one of the +safest of men to be employed in that capacity, but for the +circumstance that <!-- page 96--><a name="page96"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 96</span>while he was speaking to me he twice +broke off with a fallen colour, turned his face towards the +little bell when it did <span class="smcap">not</span> ring, +opened the door of the hut (which was kept shut to exclude the +unhealthy damp), and looked out towards the red light near the +mouth of the tunnel. On both of those occasions, he came +back to the fire with the inexplicable air upon him which I had +remarked, without being able to define, when we were so far +asunder.</p> +<p>Said I when I rose to leave him: “You almost make me +think that I have met with a contented man.”</p> +<p>(I am afraid I must acknowledge that I said it to lead him +on).</p> +<p>“I believe I used to be so,” he rejoined, in the +low voice in which he had first spoken; “but I am troubled, +sir, I am troubled.”</p> +<p>He would have recalled the words if he could. He had +said them, however, and I took them up quickly.</p> +<p>“With what? What is your trouble?”</p> +<p>“It is very difficult to impart, sir. It is very, +very, difficult to speak of. If ever you make me another +visit, I will try to tell you.”</p> +<p>“But I expressly intend to make you another visit. +Say, when shall it be?”</p> +<p>“I go off early in the morning, and I shall be on again +at ten to-morrow night, sir.”</p> +<p>“I will come at eleven.”</p> +<p>He thanked me, and went out at the door <!-- page 97--><a +name="page97"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 97</span>with +me. “I’ll show my white light, sir,” he +said, in his peculiar low voice, “till you have found the +way up. When you have found it, don’t call out! +And when you are at the top, don’t call out!”</p> +<p>His manner seemed to make the place strike colder to me, but I +said no more than “Very well.”</p> +<p>“And when you come down to-morrow night, don’t +call out! Let me ask you a parting question. What +made you cry ‘Halloa! Below there!’ +to-night?”</p> +<p>“Heaven knows,” said I. “I cried +something to that effect—”</p> +<p>“Not to that effect, sir. Those were the very +words. I know them well.”</p> +<p>“Admit those were the very words. I said them, no +doubt, because I saw you below.”</p> +<p>“For no other reason?”</p> +<p>“What other reason could I possibly have!”</p> +<p>“You had no feeling that they were conveyed to you in +any supernatural way?”</p> +<p>“No.”</p> +<p>He wished me good night, and held up his light. I walked +by the side of the down Line of rails (with a very disagreeable +sensation of a train coming behind me), until I found the +path. It was easier to mount than to descend, and I got +back to my inn without any adventure.</p> +<p>Punctual to my appointment, I placed my <!-- page 98--><a +name="page98"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 98</span>foot on the +first notch of the zig-zag next night, as the distant clocks were +striking eleven. He was waiting for me at the bottom, with +his white light on. “I have not called out,” I +said, when we came close together; “may I speak +now?” “By all means, sir.” +“Good night then, and here’s my hand.” +“Good night, sir, and here’s mine.” With +that, we walked side by side to his box, entered it, closed the +door, and sat down by the fire.</p> +<p>“I have made up my mind, sir,” he began, bending +forward as soon as we were seated, and speaking in a tone but a +little above a whisper, “that you shall not have to ask me +twice what troubles me. I took you for some one else +yesterday evening. That troubles me.”</p> +<p>“That mistake?”</p> +<p>“No. That some one else.”</p> +<p>“Who is it?”</p> +<p>“I don’t know.”</p> +<p>“Like me?”</p> +<p>“I don’t know. I never saw the face. +The left arm is across the face, and the right arm is +waved. Violently waved. This way.”</p> +<p>I followed his action with my eyes, and it was the action of +an arm gesticulating with the utmost passion and vehemence: +“For God’s sake clear the way!”</p> +<p>“One moonlight night,” said the man, “I was +sitting here, when I heard a voice cry <!-- page 99--><a +name="page99"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +99</span>‘Halloa! Below there!’ I started up, +looked from that door, and saw this Some one else standing by the +red light near the tunnel, waving as I just now showed you. +The voice seemed hoarse with shouting, and it cried, ‘Look +out! Look out!’ And then again ‘Halloa! +Below there! Look out!’ I caught up my lamp, turned +it on red, and ran towards the figure, calling, +‘What’s wrong? What has happened? +Where?’ It stood just outside the blackness of the +tunnel. I advanced so close upon it that I wondered at its +keeping the sleeve across its eyes. I ran right up at it, +and had my hand stretched out to pull the sleeve away, when it +was gone.”</p> +<p>“Into the tunnel,” said I.</p> +<p>“No. I ran on, into the tunnel, five hundred +yards. I stopped and held my lamp above my head, and saw +the figures of the measured distance, and saw the wet stains +stealing down the walls and trickling through the arch. I +ran out again, faster than I had run in (for I had a mortal +abhorrence of the place upon me), and I looked all round the red +light with my own red light, and I went up the iron ladder to the +gallery atop of it, and I came down again, and ran back +here. I telegraphed both ways: ‘An alarm has been +given. Is anything wrong?’ The answer came +back, both ways: ‘All well.’”</p> +<p>Resisting the slow touch of a frozen finger <!-- page 100--><a +name="page100"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 100</span>tracing out +my spine, I showed him how that this figure must be a deception +of his sense of sight, and how that figures, originating in +disease of the delicate nerves that minister to the functions of +the eye, were known to have often troubled patients, some of whom +had become conscious of the nature of their affliction, and had +even proved it by experiments upon themselves. “As to +an imaginary cry,” said I, “do but listen for a +moment to the wind in this unnatural valley while we speak so +low, and to the wild harp it makes of the telegraph +wires!”</p> +<p>That was all very well, he returned, after we had sat +listening for a while, and he ought to know something of the wind +and the wires, he who so often passed long winter nights there, +alone and watching. But he would beg to remark that he had +not finished.</p> +<p>I asked his pardon, and he slowly added these words, touching +my arm:</p> +<p>“Within six hours after the Appearance, the memorable +accident on this Line happened, and within ten hours the dead and +wounded were brought along through the tunnel over the spot where +the figure had stood.”</p> +<p>A disagreeable shudder crept over me, but I did my best +against it. It was not to be denied, I rejoined, that this +was a remarkable coincidence, calculated deeply to impress his +mind. But, it was unquestionable that <!-- page 101--><a +name="page101"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 101</span>remarkable +coincidences did continually occur, and they must be taken into +account in dealing with such a subject. Though to be sure I +must admit, I added (for I thought I saw that he was going to +bring the objection to bear upon me), men of common sense did not +allow much for coincidences in making the ordinary calculations +of life.</p> +<p>He again begged to remark that he had not finished.</p> +<p>I again begged his pardon for being betrayed into +interruptions.</p> +<p>“This,” he said, again laying his hand upon my +arm, and glancing over his shoulder with hollow eyes, “was +just a year ago. Six or seven months passed, and I had +recovered from the surprise and shock, when one morning, as the +day was breaking, I, standing at that door, looked towards the +red light, and saw the spectre again.” He stopped, +with a fixed look at me.</p> +<p>“Did it cry out?”</p> +<p>“No. It was silent.”</p> +<p>“Did it wave its arm?”</p> +<p>“No. It leaned against the shaft of the light, +with both hands before the face. Like this.”</p> +<p>Once more, I followed his action with my eyes. It was an +action of mourning. I have seen such an attitude in stone +figures on tombs.</p> +<p>“Did you go up to it?”</p> +<p><!-- page 102--><a name="page102"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +102</span>“I came in and sat down, partly to collect my +thoughts, partly because it had turned me faint. When I +went to the door again, daylight was above me, and the ghost was +gone.”</p> +<p>“But nothing followed? Nothing came of +this?”</p> +<p>He touched me on the arm with his forefinger twice or thrice, +giving a ghastly nod each time:</p> +<p>“That very day, as a train came out of the tunnel, I +noticed, at a carriage window on my side, what looked like a +confusion of hands and heads, and something waved. I saw +it, just in time to signal the driver, Stop! He shut off, +and put his brake on, but the train drifted past here a hundred +and fifty yards or more. I ran after it, and, as I went +along, heard terrible screams and cries. A beautiful young +lady had died instantaneously in one of the compartments, and was +brought in here, and laid down on this floor between +us.”</p> +<p>Involuntarily, I pushed my chair back, as I looked from the +boards at which he pointed, to himself.</p> +<p>“True, sir. True. Precisely as it happened, +so I tell it you.”</p> +<p>I could think of nothing to say, to any purpose, and my mouth +was very dry. The wind and the wires took up the story with +a long lamenting wail.</p> +<p>He resumed. “Now, sir, mark this, and <!-- page +103--><a name="page103"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +103</span>judge how my mind is troubled. The spectre came +back, a week ago. Ever since, it has been there, now and +again, by fits and starts.”</p> +<p>“At the light?”</p> +<p>“At the Danger-light.”</p> +<p>“What does it seem to do?”</p> +<p>He repeated, if possible with increased passion and vehemence, +that former gesticulation of “For God’s sake clear +the way!”</p> +<p>Then, he went on. “I have no peace or rest for +it. It calls to me, for many minutes together, in an +agonised manner, ‘Below there! Look out! Look +out!’ It stands waving to me. It rings my +little bell—”</p> +<p>I caught at that. “Did it ring your bell yesterday +evening when I was here, and you went to the door?”</p> +<p>“Twice.”</p> +<p>“Why, see,” said I, “how your imagination +misleads you. My eyes were on the bell, and my ears were +open to the bell, and if I am a living man, it did <span +class="smcap">not</span> ring at those times. No, nor at +any other time, except when it was rung in the natural course of +physical things by the station communicating with you.”</p> +<p>He shook his head. “I have never made a mistake as +to that, yet, sir. I have never confused the +spectre’s ring with the man’s. The +ghost’s ring is a strange vibration in the bell that it +derives from nothing else, and I have not asserted that the bell +stirs to the eye. I <!-- page 104--><a +name="page104"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 104</span>don’t +wonder that you failed to hear it. But <i>I</i> heard +it.”</p> +<p>“And did the spectre seem to be there, when you looked +out?”</p> +<p>“It <span class="smcap">was</span> there.”</p> +<p>“Both times?”</p> +<p>He repeated firmly: “Both times.”</p> +<p>“Will you come to the door with me, and look for it +now?”</p> +<p>He bit his under-lip as though he were somewhat unwilling, but +arose. I opened the door, and stood on the step, while he +stood in the doorway. There, was the Danger-light. +There, was the dismal mouth of the tunnel. There, were the +high wet stone walls of the cutting. There, were the stars +above them.</p> +<p>“Do you see it?” I asked him, taking particular +note of his face. His eyes were prominent and strained; but +not very much more so, perhaps, than my own had been when I had +directed them earnestly towards the same spot.</p> +<p>“No,” he answered. “It is not +there.”</p> +<p>“Agreed,” said I.</p> +<p>We went in again, shut the door, and resumed our seats. +I was thinking how best to improve this advantage, if it might be +called one, when he took up the conversation in such a matter of +course way, so assuming that there could be no serious question +of fact between <!-- page 105--><a name="page105"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 105</span>us, that I felt myself placed in the +weakest of positions.</p> +<p>“By this time you will fully understand, sir,” he +said, “that what troubles me so dreadfully, is the +question, What does the spectre mean?”</p> +<p>I was not sure, I told him, that I did fully understand.</p> +<p>“What is its warning against?” he said, +ruminating, with his eyes on the fire, and only by times turning +them on me. “What is the danger? Where is the +danger? There is danger overhanging, somewhere on the +Line. Some dreadful calamity will happen. It is not +to be doubted this third time, after what has gone before. +But surely this is a cruel haunting of <i>me</i>. What can +<i>I</i> do!”</p> +<p>He pulled out his handkerchief, and wiped the drops from his +heated forehead.</p> +<p>“If I telegraph Danger, on either side of me, or on +both, I can give no reason for it,” he went on, wiping the +palms of his hands. “I should get into trouble, and +do no good. They would think I was mad. This is the +way it would work:—Message: ‘Danger! Take +care!’ Answer: ‘What danger? +Where?’ Message: ‘Don’t know. But +for God’s sake take care!’ They would displace +me. What else could they do?”</p> +<p>His pain of mind was most pitiable to see. It was the +mental torture of a conscientious <!-- page 106--><a +name="page106"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 106</span>man, +oppressed beyond endurance by an unintelligible responsibility +involving life.</p> +<p>“When it first stood under the Danger-light,” he +went on, putting his dark hair back from his head, and drawing +his hands outward across and across his temples in an extremity +of feverish distress, “why not tell me where that accident +was to happen—if it must happen? Why not tell me how +it could be averted—if it could have been averted? +When on its second coming it hid its face, why not tell me +instead: ‘She is going to die. Let them keep her at +home’? If it came, on those two occasions, only to +show me that its warnings were true, and so to prepare me for the +third, why not warn me plainly now? And I, Lord help +me! A mere poor signal-man on this solitary station! +Why not go to somebody with credit to be believed, and power to +act!”</p> +<p>When I saw him in this state, I saw that for the poor +man’s sake, as well as for the public safety, what I had to +do for the time was, to compose his mind. Therefore, +setting aside all question of reality or unreality between us, I +represented to him that whoever thoroughly discharged his duty, +must do well, and that at least it was his comfort that he +understood his duty, though he did not understand these +confounding Appearances. In this effort I succeeded far +better than in the attempt to reason him out of his +conviction. <!-- page 107--><a name="page107"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 107</span>He became calm; the occupations +incidental to his post as the night advanced, began to make +larger demands on his attention; and I left him at two in the +morning. I had offered to stay through the night, but he +would not hear of it.</p> +<p>That I more than once looked back at the red light as I +ascended the pathway, that I did not like the red light, and that +I should have slept but poorly if my bed had been under it, I see +no reason to conceal. Nor, did I like the two sequences of +the accident and the dead girl. I see no reason to conceal +that, either.</p> +<p>But, what ran most in my thoughts was the consideration how +ought I to act, having become the recipient of this +disclosure? I had proved the man to be intelligent, +vigilant, painstaking, and exact; but how long might he remain +so, in his state of mind? Though in a subordinate position, +still he held a most important trust, and would I (for instance) +like to stake my own life on the chances of his continuing to +execute it with precision?</p> +<p>Unable to overcome a feeling that there would be something +treacherous in my communicating what he had told me, to his +superiors in the Company, without first being plain with himself +and proposing a middle course to him, I ultimately resolved to +offer to accompany him (otherwise keeping his secret for the +present) to the wisest medical <!-- page 108--><a +name="page108"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +108</span>practitioner we could hear of in those parts, and to +take his opinion. A change in his time of duty would come +round next night, he had apprised me, and he would be off an hour +or two after sunrise, and on again soon after sunset. I had +appointed to return accordingly.</p> +<p>Next evening was a lovely evening, and I walked out early to +enjoy it. The sun was not yet quite down when I traversed +the field-path near the top of the deep cutting. I would +extend my walk for an hour, I said to myself, half an hour on and +half an hour back, and it would then be time to go to my +signal-man’s box.</p> +<p>Before pursuing my stroll, I stepped to the brink, and +mechanically looked down, from the point from which I had first +seen him. I cannot describe the thrill that seized upon me, +when, close at the mouth of the tunnel, I saw the appearance of a +man, with his left sleeve across his eyes, passionately waving +his right arm.</p> +<p>The nameless horror that oppressed me, passed in a moment, for +in a moment I saw that this appearance of a man was a man indeed, +and that there was a little group of other men standing at a +short distance, to whom he seemed to be rehearsing the gesture he +made. The Danger-light was not yet lighted. Against +its shaft, a little low hut, entirely new to me, had been made of +some wooden <!-- page 109--><a name="page109"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 109</span>supports and tarpaulin. It +looked no bigger than a bed.</p> +<p>With an irresistible sense that something was wrong—with +a flashing self-reproachful fear that fatal mischief had come of +my leaving the man there, and causing no one to be sent to +overlook or correct what he did—I descended the notched +path with all the speed I could make.</p> +<p>“What is the matter?” I asked the men.</p> +<p>“Signal-man killed this morning, sir.”</p> +<p>“Not the man belonging to that box?”</p> +<p>“Yes, sir.”</p> +<p>“Not the man I know?”</p> +<p>“You will recognise him, sir, if you knew him,” +said the man who spoke for the others, solemnly uncovering his +own head and raising an end of the tarpaulin, “for his face +is quite composed.”</p> +<p>“O! how did this happen, how did this happen?” I +asked, turning from one to another as the hut closed in +again.</p> +<p>“He was cut down by an engine, sir. No man in +England knew his work better. But somehow he was not clear +of the outer rail. It was just at broad day. He had +struck the light, and had the lamp in his hand. As the +engine came out of the tunnel, his back was towards her, and she +cut him down. That man drove her, and was showing how it +happened. Show the gentleman, Tom.”</p> +<p><!-- page 110--><a name="page110"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +110</span>The man, who wore a rough dark dress, stepped back to +his former place at the mouth of the tunnel:</p> +<p>“Coming round the curve in the tunnel, sir,” he +said, “I saw him at the end, like as if I saw him down a +perspective-glass. There was no time to check speed, and I +knew him to be very careful. As he didn’t seem to +take heed of the whistle, I shut it off when we were running down +upon him, and called to him as loud as I could call.”</p> +<p>“What did you say?”</p> +<p>“I said, Below there! Look out! Look +out! For God’s sake clear the way!”</p> +<p>I started.</p> +<p>“Ah! it was a dreadful time, sir. I never left off +calling to him. I put this arm before my eyes, not to see, +and I waved this arm to the last; but it was no use.”</p> +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p>Without prolonging the narrative to dwell on any one of its +curious circumstances more than on any other, I may, in closing +it, point out the coincidence that the warning of the +Engine-Driver included, not only the words which the unfortunate +Signal-man had repeated to me as haunting him, but also the words +which I myself—not he—had attached, and that only in +my own mind, to the gesticulation he had imitated.</p> +<h2><!-- page 111--><a name="page111"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 111</span><span class="smcap">No.</span> 2 +BRANCH LINE<br /> +THE ENGINE-DRIVER</h2> +<p>“Altogether? Well. Altogether, since 1841, +I’ve killed seven men and boys. It ain’t many +in all those years.”</p> +<p>These startling words he uttered in a serious tone as he +leaned against the Station-wall. He was a thick-set, +ruddy-faced man, with coal-black eyes, the whites of which were +not white, but a brownish-yellow, and apparently scarred and +seamed, as if they had been operated upon. They were eyes +that had worked hard in looking through wind and weather. +He was dressed in a short black pea-jacket and grimy white canvas +trousers, and wore on his head a flat black cap. There was +no sign of levity in his face. His look was serious even to +sadness, and there was an air of responsibility about his whole +bearing which assured me that he spoke in earnest.</p> +<p>“Yes, sir, I have been for five-and-twenty years a +Locomotive Engine-driver; and in all <!-- page 112--><a +name="page112"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 112</span>that time, +I’ve only killed seven men and boys. There’s +not many of my mates as can say as much for themselves. +Steadiness, sir—steadiness and keeping your eyes open, is +what does it. When I say seven men and boys, I mean my +mates—stokers, porters, and so forth. I don’t +count passengers.”</p> +<p>How did he become an engine-driver?</p> +<p>“My father,” he said, “was a wheelwright in +a small way, and lived in a little cottage by the side of the +railway which runs betwixt Leeds and Selby. It was the +second railway laid down in the kingdom, the second after the +Liverpool and Manchester, where Mr. Huskisson was killed, as you +may have heard on, sir. When the trains rushed by, we young +’uns used to run out to look at ’em, and +hooray. I noticed the driver turning handles, and making it +go, and I thought to myself it would be a fine thing to be a +engine-driver, and have the control of a wonderful machine like +that. Before the railway, the driver of the mail-coach was +the biggest man I knew. I thought I should like to be the +driver of a coach. We had a picture in our cottage of +George the Third in a red coat. I always mixed up the +driver of the mail-coach—who had a red coat, too—with +the king, only he had a low-crowned broad-brimmed hat, which the +king hadn’t. In my idea, the king couldn’t be a +greater man than the driver of the mail-coach. <!-- page +113--><a name="page113"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 113</span>I +had always a fancy to be a head man of some kind. When I +went to Leeds once, and saw a man conducting a orchestra, I +thought I should like to be the conductor of a orchestra. +When I went home I made myself a baton, and went about the fields +conducting a orchestra. It wasn’t there, of course, +but I pretended it was. At another time, a man with a whip +and a speaking-trumpet, on the stage outside a show, took my +fancy, and I thought I should like to be him. But when the +train came, the engine-driver put them all in the shade, and I +was resolved to be a engine-driver. It wasn’t long +before I had to do something to earn my own living, though I was +only a young ’un. My father died suddenly—he +was killed by thunder and lightning while standing under a tree +out of the rain—and mother couldn’t keep us +all. The day after my father’s burial I walked down +to the station, and said I wanted to be a engine-driver. +The station-master laughed a bit, said I was for beginning early, +but that I was not quite big enough yet. He gave me a +penny, and told me to go home and grow, and come again in ten +years’ time. I didn’t dream of danger +then. If I couldn’t be a engine-driver, I was +determined to have something to do about a engine; so, as I could +get nothing else, I went on board a Humber steamer, and broke up +coals for the stoker. That was how I <!-- page 114--><a +name="page114"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +114</span>began. From that, I became a stoker, first on +board a boat, and then on a locomotive. Then, after two +years’ service, I became a driver on the very Line which +passed our cottage. My mother and my brothers and sisters +came out to look at me, the first day I drove. I was +watching for them and they was watching for me, and they waved +their hands and hoora’d, and I waved my hand to them. +I had the steam well up, and was going at a rattling pace, and +rare proud I was that minute. Never was so proud in my +life!</p> +<p>“When a man has a liking for a thing it’s as good +as being clever. In a very short time I became one of the +best drivers on the Line. That was allowed. I took a +pride in it, you see, and liked it. No, I didn’t know +much about the engine scientifically, as you call it; but I could +put her to rights if anything went out of gear—that is to +say, if there was nothing broken—but I couldn’t have +explained how the steam worked inside. Starting a engine, +it’s just like drawing a drop of gin. You turn a +handle and off she goes; then you turn the handle the other way, +put on the brakes, and you stop her. There’s not much +more in it, so far. It’s no good being scientific and +knowing the principle of the engine inside; no good at all. +Fitters, who know all the ins and outs of the engine, make the +worst drivers. <!-- page 115--><a name="page115"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 115</span>That’s well known. They +know too much. It’s just as I’ve heard of a man +with regard to <i>his</i> inside: if he knew what a complicated +machine it is, he would never eat, or drink, or dance, or run, or +do anything, for fear of busting something. So it is with +fitters. But us as are not troubled with such thoughts, we +go ahead.</p> +<p>“But starting a engine’s one thing and driving of +her is another. Any one, a child a’most, can turn on +the steam and turn it off again; but it ain’t every one +that can keep a engine well on the road, no more than it +ain’t every one who can ride a horse properly. It is +much the same thing. If you gallop a horse right off for a +mile or two, you take the wind out of him, and for the next mile +or two you must let him trot or walk. So it is with a +engine. If you put on too much steam, to get over the +ground at the start, you exhaust the boiler, and then +you’ll have to crawl along till your fresh water boils +up. The great thing in driving, is, to go steady, never to +let your water get too low, nor your fire too low. +It’s the same with a kettle. If you fill it up when +it’s about half empty, it soon comes to the boil again; but +if you don’t fill it up until the water’s nearly out, +it’s a long time in coming to the boil again. Another +thing; you should never make spurts, unless you are detained and +lose time. You should <!-- page 116--><a +name="page116"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 116</span>go up a +incline and down a incline at the same pace. Sometimes a +driver will waste his steam, and when he comes to a hill he has +scarcely enough to drag him up. When you’re in a +train that goes by fits and starts, you may be sure that there is +a bad driver on the engine. That kind of driving frightens +passengers dreadful. When the train, after rattling along, +suddenly slackens speed when it ain’t near a station, it +may be in the middle of a tunnel, the passengers think there is +danger. But generally it’s because the driver has +exhausted his steam.</p> +<p>“I drove the Brighton express, four or five years before +I come here, and the annuals—that is, the passengers who +had annual tickets—always said they knew when I was on the +engine, because they wasn’t jerked. Gentlemen used to +say as they came on to the platform, ‘Who drives +to-day—Jim Martin?’ And when the guard told +them yes, they said ‘All right,’ and took their seats +quite comfortable. But the driver never gets so much as a +shilling; the guard comes in for all that, and he does nothing +much. Few ever think of the driver. I dare say they +think the train goes along of itself; yet if we didn’t keep +a sharp look-out, know our duty, and do it, they might all go +smash at any moment. I used to make that journey to +Brighton in fifty-two minutes. The papers said forty-nine +minutes, but that <!-- page 117--><a name="page117"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 117</span>was coming it a little too +strong. I had to watch signals all the way, one every two +miles, so that me and my stoker were on the stretch all the time, +doing two things at once—attending to the engine and +looking out. I’ve driven on this Line, eighty-one +miles and three-quarters, in eighty-six minutes. +There’s no danger in speed if you have a good road, a good +engine, and not too many coaches behind. No, we don’t +call them carriages, we call them ‘coaches.’</p> +<p>“Yes; oscillation means danger. If you’re +ever in a coach that oscillates much, tell of it at the first +station and get it coupled up closer. Coaches when +they’re too loose are apt to jump, or swing off the rails; +and it’s quite as dangerous when they’re coupled up +too close. There ought to be just space enough for the +buffers to work easy. Passengers are frightened in tunnels, +but there’s less danger, <i>now</i>, in tunnels than +anywhere else. We never enter a tunnel unless it’s +signalled Clear.</p> +<p>“A train can be stopped wonderful quick, even when +running express, if the guards act with the driver and clap on +all the brakes promptly. Much depends upon the +guards. One brake behind, is as good as two in front. +The engine, you see, loses weight as she burns her coals and +consumes her water, but the coaches behind don’t +alter. We have a good deal of trouble with young +guards. In their <!-- page 118--><a +name="page118"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 118</span>anxiety to +perform their duties, they put on the brakes too soon, so that +sometimes we can scarcely drag the train into the station; when +they grow older at it they are not so anxious, and don’t +put them on soon enough. It’s no use to say, when an +accident happens, that they did not put on the brakes in time; +they swear they did, and you can’t prove that they +didn’t.</p> +<p>“Do I think that the tapping of the wheels with a hammer +is a mere ceremony? Well, I don’t know exactly; I +should not like to say. It’s not often that the chaps +find anything wrong. They may sometimes be half asleep when +a train comes into a station in the middle of the night. +You would be yourself. They ought to tap the axle-box, but +they don’t.</p> +<p>“Many accidents take place that never get into the +papers; many trains, full of passengers, escape being dashed to +pieces by next door to a miracle. Nobody knows anything +about it but the driver and the stoker. I remember once, +when I was driving on the Eastern Counties. Going round a +curve, I suddenly saw a train coming along on the same line of +rails. I clapped on the brake, but it was too late, I +thought. Seeing the engine almost close upon us, I cried to +my stoker to jump. He jumped off the engine, almost before +the words were out of my mouth. I was just taking my hand +off the lever to follow, when the coming train turned off on the +points, and <!-- page 119--><a name="page119"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 119</span>the next instant the hind coach +passed my engine by a shave. It was the nearest touch I +ever saw. My stoker was killed. In another half +second I should have jumped off and been killed too. What +would have become of the train without us is more than I can tell +you.</p> +<p>“There are heaps of people run over, that no one ever +hears about. One dark night in the Black Country, me and my +mate felt something wet and warm splash in our faces. +‘That didn’t come from the engine, Bill,’ I +said. ‘No,’ he said; ‘it’s +something thick, Jim.’ It was blood. +That’s what it was. We heard afterwards that a +collier had been run over. When we kill any of our own +chaps, we say as little about it as possible. It’s +generally—mostly always—their own fault. No, we +never think of danger ourselves. We’re used to it, +you see. But we’re not reckless. I don’t +believe there’s any body of men that takes more pride in +their work than engine-drivers do. We are as proud and as +fond of our engines as if they were living things; as proud of +them as a huntsman or a jockey is of his horse. And a +engine has almost as many ways as a horse; she’s a kicker, +a plunger, a roarer, or what not, in her way. Put a +stranger on to my engine, and he wouldn’t know what to do +with her. Yes; there’s wonderful improvements in +engines since the last great Exhibition. Some of them <!-- +page 120--><a name="page120"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +120</span>take up their water without stopping. +That’s a wonderful invention, and yet as simple as A B +C. There are water-troughs at certain places, lying between +the rails. By moving a lever you let down the mouth of a +scoop into the water, and as you rush along the water is forced +into the tank, at the rate of three thousand gallons a +minute.</p> +<p>“A engine-driver’s chief anxiety is to keep time; +that’s what he thinks most of. When I was driving the +Brighton express, I always felt like as if I was riding a race +against time. I had no fear of the pace; what I feared was +losing way, and not getting in to the minute. We have to +give in an account of our time when we arrive. The company +provides us with watches, and we go by them. Before +starting on a journey, we pass through a room to be +inspected. That’s to see if we are sober. But +they don’t say nothing to us, and a man who was a little +gone might pass easy. I’ve known a stoker that had +passed the inspection, come on to the engine as drunk as a fly, +flop down among the coals, and sleep there like a log for the +whole run. I had to be my own stoker then. If you ask +me if engine-drivers are drinking men, I must answer you that +they are pretty well. It’s trying work; one half of +you cold as ice; t’other half hot as fire; wet one minute, +dry the next. If ever a man had an excuse for drinking, +that man’s <!-- page 121--><a name="page121"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 121</span>a engine-driver. And yet I +don’t know if ever a driver goes upon his engine +drunk. If he was to, the wind would soon sober him.</p> +<p>“I believe engine-drivers, as a body, are the healthiest +fellows alive; but they don’t live long. The cause of +that, I believe to be the cold food, and the shaking. By +the cold food, I mean that a engine-driver never gets his meals +comfortable. He’s never at home to his dinner. +When he starts away the first thing in the morning, he takes a +bit of cold meat and a piece of bread with him for his dinner; +and generally he has to eat it in the shed, for he mustn’t +leave his engine. You can understand how the jolting and +shaking knocks a man up, after a bit. The insurance +companies won’t take us at ordinary rates. +We’re obliged to be Foresters, or Old Friends, or that sort +of thing, where they ain’t so particular. The wages +of a engine-driver average about eight shillings a day, but if +he’s a good schemer with his coals—yes, I mean if he +economises his coals—he’s allowed so much more. +Some will make from five to ten shillings a week that way. +I don’t complain of the wages particular; but it’s +hard lines for such as us, to have to pay income-tax. The +company gives an account of all our wages, and we have to +pay. It’s a shame.</p> +<p>“Our domestic life—our life at home, you +mean? Well, as to that, we don’t see much <!-- page +122--><a name="page122"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 122</span>of +our families. I leave home at half-past seven in the +morning, and don’t get back again until half-past nine, or +maybe later. The children are not up when I leave, and +they’ve gone to bed again before I come home. This is +about my day:—Leave London at 8.45; drive for four hours +and a half; cold snack on the engine step; see to engine; drive +back again; clean engine; report myself; and home. Twelve +hours’ hard and anxious work, and no comfortable +victuals. Yes, our wives are anxious about us; for we never +know when we go out, if we’ll ever come back again. +We ought to go home the minute we leave the station, and report +ourselves to those that are thinking on us and depending on us; +but I’m afraid we don’t always. Perhaps we go +first to the public-house, and perhaps you would, too, if you +were in charge of a engine all day long. But the wives have +a way of their own, of finding out if we’re all +right. They inquire among each other. ‘Have you +seen my Jim?’ one says. ‘No,’ says +another, ‘but Jack see him coming out of the station half +an hour ago.’ Then she knows that her Jim’s all +right, and knows where to find him if she wants him. +It’s a sad thing when any of us have to carry bad news to a +mate’s wife. None of us likes that job. I +remember when Jack Davidge was killed, none of us could face his +poor <!-- page 123--><a name="page123"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 123</span>missus with the news. She had +seven children, poor thing, and two of ’em, the youngest, +was down with the fever. We got old Mrs. Berridge—Tom +Berridge’s mother—to break it to her. But she +knew summat was the matter, the minute the old woman went in, +and, afore she spoke a word, fell down like as if she was +dead. She lay all night like that, and never heard from +mortal lips until next morning that her Jack was killed. +But she knew it in her heart. It’s a pitch and toss +kind of a life ours!</p> +<p>“And yet I never was nervous on a engine but once. +I never think of my own life. You go in for staking that, +when you begin, and you get used to the risk. I never think +of the passengers either. The thoughts of a engine-driver +never go behind his engine. If he keeps his engine all +right, the coaches behind will be all right, as far as the driver +is concerned. But once I <i>did</i> think of the +passengers. My little boy, Bill, was among them that +morning. He was a poor little cripple fellow that we all +loved more nor the others, because he <i>was</i> a cripple, and +so quiet, and wise-like. He was going down to his aunt in +the country, who was to take care of him for a while. We +thought the country air would do him good. I did think +there were lives behind me that morning; at least, I thought hard +of one little life that was in <!-- page 124--><a +name="page124"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 124</span>my +hands. There were twenty coaches on; my little Bill seemed +to me to be in every one of ’em. My hand trembled as +I turned on the steam. I felt my heart thumping as we drew +close to the pointsman’s box; as we neared the Junction, I +was all in a cold sweat. At the end of the first fifty +miles I was nearly eleven minutes behind time. +‘What’s the matter with you this morning?’ my +stoker said. ‘Did you have a drop too much last +night?’ ‘Don’t speak to me, Fred,’ +I said, ‘till we get to Peterborough; and keep a sharp +look-out, there’s a good fellow.’ I never was +so thankful in my life as when I shut off steam to enter the +station at Peterborough. Little Bill’s aunt was +waiting for him, and I saw her lift him out of the +carriage. I called out to her to bring him to me, and I +took him upon the engine and kissed him—ah, twenty times I +should think—making him in such a mess with grease and +coal-dust as you never saw.</p> +<p>“I was all right for the rest of the journey. And +I do believe, sir, the passengers were safer after little Bill +was gone. It would never do, you see, for engine-drivers to +know too much, or to feel too much.”</p> +<h2><!-- page 125--><a name="page125"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 125</span><span class="smcap">No.</span> 3 +BRANCH LINE<br /> +THE COMPENSATION HOUSE</h2> +<p>“There’s not a looking-glass in all the house, +sir. It’s some peculiar fancy of my +master’s. There isn’t one in any single room in +the house.”</p> +<p>It was a dark and gloomy-looking building, and had been +purchased by this Company for an enlargement of their Goods +Station. The value of the house had been referred to what +was popularly called “a compensation jury,” and the +house was called, in consequence, The Compensation House. +It had become the Company’s property; but its tenant still +remained in possession, pending the commencement of active +building operations. My attention was originally drawn to +this house because it stood directly in front of a collection of +huge pieces of timber which lay near this part of the Line, and +on which I sometimes sat for half an hour at a time, when I was +tired by my wanderings about Mugby Junction.</p> +<p><!-- page 126--><a name="page126"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +126</span>It was square, cold, grey-looking, built of rough-hewn +stone, and roofed with thin slabs of the same material. Its +windows were few in number, and very small for the size of the +building. In the great blank, grey broad-side, there were +only four windows. The entrance-door was in the middle of +the house; there was a window on either side of it, and there +were two more in the single story above. The blinds were +all closely drawn, and, when the door was shut, the dreary +building gave no sign of life or occupation.</p> +<p>But the door was not always shut. Sometimes it was +opened from within, with a great jingling of bolts and +door-chains, and then a man would come forward and stand upon the +door-step, snuffing the air as one might do who was ordinarily +kept on rather a small allowance of that element. He was +stout, thick-set, and perhaps fifty or sixty years old—a +man whose hair was cut exceedingly close, who wore a large bushy +beard, and whose eye had a sociable twinkle in it which was +prepossessing. He was dressed, whenever I saw him, in a +greenish-brown frock-coat made of some material which was not +cloth, wore a waistcoat and trousers of light colour, and had a +frill to his shirt—an ornament, by the way, which did not +seem to go at all well with the beard, which was continually in +contact with it. It was the custom of this <!-- page +127--><a name="page127"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +127</span>worthy person, after standing for a short time on the +threshold inhaling the air, to come forward into the road, and, +after glancing at one of the upper windows in a half mechanical +way, to cross over to the logs, and, leaning over the fence which +guarded the railway, to look up and down the Line (it passed +before the house) with the air of a man accomplishing a +self-imposed task of which nothing was expected to come. +This done, he would cross the road again, and turning on the +threshold to take a final sniff of air, disappeared once more +within the house, bolting and chaining the door again as if there +were no probability of its being reopened for at least a +week. Yet half an hour had not passed before he was out in +the road again, sniffing the air and looking up and down the Line +as before.</p> +<p>It was not very long before I managed to scrape acquaintance +with this restless personage. I soon found out that my +friend with the shirt-frill was the confidential servant, butler, +valet, factotum, what you will, of a sick gentleman, a Mr. Oswald +Strange, who had recently come to inhabit the house opposite, and +concerning whose history my new acquaintance, whose name I +ascertained was Masey, seemed disposed to be somewhat +communicative. His master, it appeared, had come down to +this place, partly for the sake of <!-- page 128--><a +name="page128"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 128</span>reducing +his establishment—not, Mr. Masey was swift to inform me, on +economical principles, but because the poor gentleman, for +particular reasons, wished to have few dependents about +him—partly in order that he might be near his old friend, +Dr. Garden, who was established in the neighbourhood, and whose +society and advice were necessary to Mr. Strange’s +life. That life was, it appeared, held by this suffering +gentleman on a precarious tenure. It was ebbing away fast +with each passing hour. The servant already spoke of his +master in the past tense, describing him to me as a young +gentleman not more than five-and-thirty years of age, with a +young face, as far as the features and build of it went, but with +an expression which had nothing of youth about it. This was +the great peculiarity of the man. At a distance he looked +younger than he was by many years, and strangers, at the time +when he had been used to get about, always took him for a man of +seven or eight-and-twenty, but they changed their minds on +getting nearer to him. Old Masey had a way of his own of +summing up the peculiarities of his master, repeating twenty +times over: “Sir, he was Strange by name, and Strange by +nature, and Strange to look at into the bargain.”</p> +<p>It was during my second or third interview with the old fellow +that he uttered the words quoted at the beginning of this plain +narrative.</p> +<p><!-- page 129--><a name="page129"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +129</span>“Not such a thing as a looking-glass in all the +house,” the old man said, standing beside my piece of +timber, and looking across reflectively at the house +opposite. “Not one.”</p> +<p>“In the sitting-rooms, I suppose you mean?”</p> +<p>“No, sir, I mean sitting-rooms and bedrooms both; there +isn’t so much as a shaving-glass as big as the palm of your +hand anywhere.”</p> +<p>“But how is it?” I asked. “Why are +there no looking-glasses in any of the rooms?”</p> +<p>“Ah, sir!” replied Masey, “that’s what +none of us can ever tell. There is the mystery. +It’s just a fancy on the part of my master. He had +some strange fancies, and this was one of them. A pleasant +gentleman he was to live with, as any servant could desire. +A liberal gentleman, and one who gave but little trouble; always +ready with a kind word, and a kind deed, too, for the matter of +that. There was not a house in all the parish of St. +George’s (in which we lived before we came down here) where +the servants had more holidays or a better table kept; but, for +all that, he had his queer ways and his fancies, as I may call +them, and this was one of them. And the point he made of +it, sir,” the old man went on; “the extent to which +that regulation was enforced, whenever a new servant was engaged; +and the changes in the establishment it occasioned. In +hiring a new servant, the very first stipulation made, was that +about the looking-glasses. It <!-- page 130--><a +name="page130"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 130</span>was one of +my duties to explain the thing, as far as it could be explained, +before any servant was taken into the house. +‘You’ll find it an easy place,’ I used to say, +‘with a liberal table, good wages, and a deal of leisure; +but there’s one thing you must make up your mind to; you +must do without looking-glasses while you’re here, for +there isn’t one in the house, and, what’s more, there +never will be.’”</p> +<p>“But how did you know there never would be one?” I +asked.</p> +<p>“Lor’ bless you, sir! If you’d seen +and heard all that I’d seen and heard, you could have no +doubt about it. Why, only to take one instance:—I +remember a particular day when my master had occasion to go into +the housekeeper’s room where the cook lived, to see about +some alterations that were making, and when a pretty scene took +place. The cook—she was a very ugly woman, and awful +vain—had left a little bit of looking-glass, about six +inches square, upon the chimney-piece; she had got it +<i>surreptious</i>, and kept it always locked up; but she’d +left it out, being called away suddenly, while titivating her +hair. I had seen the glass, and was making for the +chimney-piece as fast as I could; but master came in front of it +before I could get there, and it was all over in a moment. +He gave one long piercing look into it, turned deadly pale, and +seizing the glass, dashed it <!-- page 131--><a +name="page131"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 131</span>into a +hundred pieces on the floor, and then stamped upon the fragments +and ground them into powder with his feet. He shut himself +up for the rest of that day in his own room, first ordering me to +discharge the cook, then and there, at a moment’s +notice.”</p> +<p>“What an extraordinary thing!” I said, +pondering.</p> +<p>“Ah, sir,” continued the old man, “it was +astonishing what trouble I had with those women-servants. +It was difficult to get any that would take the place at all +under the circumstances. ‘What not so much as a +mossul to do one’s ’air at?’ they would say, +and they’d go off, in spite of extra wages. Then +those who did consent to come, what lies they would tell, to be +sure! They would protest that they didn’t want to +look in the glass, that they never had been in the habit of +looking in the glass, and all the while that very wench would +have her looking-glass of some kind or another, hid away among +her clothes up-stairs. Sooner or later, she would bring it +out too, and leave it about somewhere or other (just like the +cook), where it was as likely as not that master might see +it. And then—for girls like that have no consciences, +sir—when I had caught one of ’em at it, she’d +turn round as bold as brass, ‘And how am I to know whether +my ’air’s parted straight?’ she’d say, +just as if it hadn’t been considered in her wages that that +was the <!-- page 132--><a name="page132"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 132</span>very thing which she never +<i>was</i> to know while she lived in our house. A vain +lot, sir, and the ugly ones always the vainest. There was +no end to their dodges. They’d have looking-glasses +in the interiors of their workbox-lids, where it was next to +impossible that I could find ’em, or inside the covers of +hymn-books, or cookery-books, or in their caddies. I +recollect one girl, a sly one she was, and marked with the +small-pox terrible, who was always reading her prayer-book at odd +times. Sometimes I used to think what a religious mind +she’d got, and at other times (depending on the mood I was +in) I would conclude that it was the marriage-service she was +studying; but one day, when I got behind her to satisfy my +doubts—lo and behold! it was the old story: a bit of glass, +without a frame, fastened into the kiver with the outside edges +of the sheets of postage-stamps. Dodges! Why +they’d keep their looking-glasses in the scullery or the +coal-cellar, or leave them in charge of the servants next door, +or with the milk-woman round the corner; but have ’em they +would. And I don’t mind confessing, sir,” said +the old man, bringing his long speech to an end, “that it +<i>was</i> an inconveniency not to have so much as a scrap to +shave before. I used to go to the barber’s at first, +but I soon gave that up, and took to wearing my beard as my +master did; likewise to keeping my hair”<!-- page 133--><a +name="page133"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 133</span>—Mr. +Masey touched his head as he spoke—“so short, that it +didn’t require any parting, before or behind.”</p> +<p>I sat for some time lost in amazement, and staring at my +companion. My curiosity was powerfully stimulated, and the +desire to learn more was very strong within me.</p> +<p>“Had your master any personal defect,” I inquired, +“which might have made it distressing to him to see his own +image reflected?”</p> +<p>“By no means, sir,” said the old man. +“He was as handsome a gentleman as you would wish to see: a +little delicate-looking and careworn, perhaps, with a very pale +face; but as free from any deformity as you or I, sir. No, +sir, no; it was nothing of that.”</p> +<p>“Then what was it? What is it?” I asked, +desperately. “Is there no one who is, or has been, in +your master’s confidence?”</p> +<p>“Yes, sir,” said the old fellow, with his eyes +turning to that window opposite. “There is one person +who knows all my master’s secrets, and this secret among +the rest.”</p> +<p>“And who is that?”</p> +<p>The old man turned round and looked at me fixedly. +“The doctor here,” he said. “Dr. +Garden. My master’s very old friend.”</p> +<p>“I should like to speak with this gentleman,” I +said, involuntarily.</p> +<p>“He is with my master now,” answered Masey. +“He will be coming out presently, <!-- page 134--><a +name="page134"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 134</span>and I think +I may say he will answer any question you may like to put to +him.” As the old man spoke, the door of the house +opened, and a middle-aged gentleman, who was tall and thin, but +who lost something of his height by a habit of stooping, appeared +on the step. Old Masey left me in a moment. He +muttered something about taking the doctor’s directions, +and hastened across the road. The tall gentleman spoke to +him for a minute or two very seriously, probably about the +patient up-stairs, and it then seemed to me from their gestures +that I myself was the subject of some further conversation +between them. At all events, when old Masey retired into +the house, the doctor came across to where I was standing, and +addressed me with a very agreeable smile.</p> +<p>“John Masey tells me that you are interested in the case +of my poor friend, sir. I am now going back to my house, +and if you don’t mind the trouble of walking with me, I +shall be happy to enlighten you as far as I am able.”</p> +<p>I hastened to make my apologies and express my +acknowledgments, and we set off together. When we had +reached the doctor’s house and were seated in his study, I +ventured to inquire after the health of this poor gentleman.</p> +<p>“I am afraid there is no amendment, nor any prospect of +amendment,” said the doctor. “Old Masey has +told you something of his strange condition, has he +not?”</p> +<p><!-- page 135--><a name="page135"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +135</span>“Yes, he has told me something,” I +answered, “and he says you know all about it.”</p> +<p>Dr. Garden looked very grave. “I don’t know +all about it. I only know what happens when he comes into +the presence of a looking-glass. But as to the +circumstances which have led to his being haunted in the +strangest fashion that I ever heard of, I know no more of them +than you do.”</p> +<p>“Haunted?” I repeated. “And in the +strangest fashion that you ever heard of?”</p> +<p>Dr. Garden smiled at my eagerness, seemed to be collecting his +thoughts, and presently went on:</p> +<p>“I made the acquaintance of Mr. Oswald Strange in a +curious way. It was on board of an Italian steamer, bound +from Civita Vecchia to Marseilles. We had been travelling +all night. In the morning I was shaving myself in the +cabin, when suddenly this man came behind me, glanced for a +moment into the small mirror before which I was standing, and +then, without a word of warning, tore it from the nail, and +dashed it to pieces at my feet. His face was at first livid +with passion—it seemed to me rather the passion of fear +than of anger—but it changed after a moment, and he seemed +ashamed of what he had done. Well,” continued the +doctor, relapsing for a moment into a smile, “of course I +was in a devil of a rage. I was operating on my under-jaw, +and <!-- page 136--><a name="page136"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 136</span>the start the thing gave me caused +me to cut myself. Besides, altogether it seemed an +outrageous and insolent thing, and I gave it to poor Strange in a +style of language which I am sorry to think of now, but which, I +hope, was excusable at the time. As to the offender +himself, his confusion and regret, now that his passion was at an +end, disarmed me. He sent for the steward, and paid most +liberally for the damage done to the steam-boat property, +explaining to him, and to some other passengers who were present +in the cabin, that what had happened had been accidental. +For me, however, he had another explanation. Perhaps he +felt that I must know it to have been no accident—perhaps +he really wished to confide in some one. At all events, he +owned to me that what he had done was done under the influence of +an uncontrollable impulse—a seizure which took him, he +said, at times—something like a fit. He begged my +pardon, and entreated that I would endeavour to disassociate him +personally from this action, of which he was heartily +ashamed. Then he attempted a sickly joke, poor fellow, +about his wearing a beard, and feeling a little spiteful, in +consequence, when he saw other people taking the trouble to +shave; but he said nothing about any infirmity or delusion, and +shortly after left me.</p> +<p>“In my professional capacity I could not <!-- page +137--><a name="page137"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +137</span>help taking some interest in Mr. Strange. I did +not altogether lose sight of him after our sea-journey to +Marseilles was over. I found him a pleasant companion up to +a certain point; but I always felt that there was a reserve about +him. He was uncommunicative about his past life, and +especially would never allude to anything connected with his +travels or his residence in Italy, which, however, I could make +out had been a long one. He spoke Italian well, and seemed +familiar with the country, but disliked to talk about it.</p> +<p>“During the time we spent together there were seasons +when he was so little himself, that I, with a pretty large +experience, was almost afraid to be with him. His attacks +were violent and sudden in the last degree; and there was one +most extraordinary feature connected with them all:—some +horrible association of ideas took possession of him whenever he +found himself before a looking-glass. And after we had +travelled together for a time, I dreaded the sight of a mirror +hanging harmlessly against a wall, or a toilet-glass standing on +a dressing-table, almost as much as he did.</p> +<p>“Poor Strange was not always affected in the same manner +by a looking-glass. Sometimes it seemed to madden him with +fury; at other times, it appeared to turn him to stone: remaining +motionless and speechless as if <!-- page 138--><a +name="page138"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 138</span>attacked by +catalepsy. One night—the worst things always happen +at night, and oftener than one would think on stormy +nights—we arrived at a small town in the central district +of Auvergne: a place but little known, out of the line of +railways, and to which we had been drawn, partly by the +antiquarian attractions which the place possessed, and partly by +the beauty of the scenery. The weather had been rather +against us. The day had been dull and murky, the heat +stifling, and the sky had threatened mischief since the +morning. At sundown, these threats were fulfilled. +The thunderstorm, which had been all day coming up—as it +seemed to us, against the wind—burst over the place where +we were lodged, with very great violence.</p> +<p>“There are some practical-minded persons with strong +constitutions, who deny roundly that their fellow-creatures are, +or can be, affected, in mind or body, by atmospheric +influences. I am not a disciple of that school, simply +because I cannot believe that those changes of weather, which +have so much effect upon animals, and even on inanimate objects, +can fail to have some influence on a piece of machinery so +sensitive and intricate as the human frame. I think, then, +that it was in part owing to the disturbed state of the +atmosphere that, on this particular evening I felt nervous and +depressed. When my new <!-- page 139--><a +name="page139"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 139</span>friend +Strange and I parted for the night, I felt as little disposed to +go to rest as I ever did in my life. The thunder was still +lingering among the mountains in the midst of which our inn was +placed. Sometimes it seemed nearer, and at other times +further off; but it never left off altogether, except for a few +minutes at a time. I was quite unable to shake off a +succession of painful ideas which persistently besieged my +mind.</p> +<p>“It is hardly necessary to add that I thought from time +to time of my travelling-companion in the next room. His +image was almost continually before me. He had been dull +and depressed all the evening, and when we parted for the night +there was a look in his eyes which I could not get out of my +memory.</p> +<p>“There was a door between our rooms, and the partition +dividing them was not very solid; and yet I had heard no sound +since I parted from him which could indicate that he was there at +all, much less that he was awake and stirring. I was in a +mood, sir, which made this silence terrible to me, and so many +foolish fancies—as that he was lying there dead, or in a +fit, or what not—took possession of me, that at last I +could bear it no longer. I went to the door, and, after +listening, very attentively but quite in vain, for any sound, I +at last knocked pretty sharply. There was no <!-- page +140--><a name="page140"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +140</span>answer. Feeling that longer suspense would be +unendurable, I, without more ceremony, turned the handle and went +in.</p> +<p>“It was a great bare room, and so imperfectly lighted by +a single candle that it was almost impossible—except when +the lightning flashed—to see into its great dark +corners. A small rickety bedstead stood against one of the +walls, shrouded by yellow cotton curtains, passed through a great +iron ring in the ceiling. There was, for all other +furniture, an old chest of drawers which served also as a +washing-stand, having a small basin and ewer and a single towel +arranged on the top of it. There were, moreover, two +ancient chairs and a dressing-table. On this last, stood a +large old-fashioned looking-glass with a carved frame.</p> +<p>“I must have seen all these things, because I remember +them so well now, but I do not know how I could have seen them, +for it seems to me that, from the moment of my entering that +room, the action of my senses and of the faculties of my mind was +held fast by the ghastly figure which stood motionless before the +looking-glass in the middle of the empty room.</p> +<p>“How terrible it was! The weak light of one candle +standing on the table shone upon Strange’s face, lighting +it from below, and throwing (as I now remember) his shadow, <!-- +page 141--><a name="page141"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +141</span>vast and black, upon the wall behind him and upon the +ceiling overhead. He was leaning rather forward, with his +hands upon the table supporting him, and gazing into the glass +which stood before him with a horrible fixity. The sweat +was on his white face; his rigid features and his pale lips +showed in that feeble light were horrible, more than words can +tell, to look at. He was so completely stupefied and lost, +that the noise I had made in knocking and in entering the room +was unobserved by him. Not even when I called him loudly by +name did he move or did his face change.</p> +<p>“What a vision of horror that was, in the great dark +empty room, in a silence that was something more than negative, +that ghastly figure frozen into stone by some unexplained +terror! And the silence and the stillness! The very +thunder had ceased now. My heart stood still with +fear. Then, moved by some instinctive feeling, under whose +influence I acted mechanically, I crept with slow steps nearer +and nearer to the table, and at last, half expecting to see some +spectre even more horrible than this which I saw already, I +looked over his shoulder into the looking-glass. I happened +to touch his arm, though only in the lightest manner. In +that one moment the spell which had held him—who knows how +long?—enchained, seemed broken, and he <!-- page 142--><a +name="page142"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 142</span>lived in +this world again. He turned round upon me, as suddenly as a +tiger makes its spring, and seized me by the arm.</p> +<p>“I have told you that even before I entered my +friend’s room I had felt, all that night, depressed and +nervous. The necessity for action at this time was, +however, so obvious, and this man’s agony made all that I +had felt, appear so trifling, that much of my own discomfort +seemed to leave me. I felt that I <i>must</i> be +strong.</p> +<p>“The face before me almost unmanned me. The eyes +which looked into mine were so scared with terror, the +lips—if I may say so—looked so speechless. The +wretched man gazed long into my face, and then, still holding me +by the arm, slowly, very slowly, turned his head. I had +gently tried to move him away from the looking-glass, but he +would not stir, and now he was looking into it as fixedly as +ever. I could bear this no longer, and, using such force as +was necessary, I drew him gradually away, and got him to one of +the chairs at the foot of the bed. ‘Come!’ I +said—after the long silence my voice, even to myself, +sounded strange and hollow—’come! You are +over-tired, and you feel the weather. Don’t you think +you ought to be in bed? Suppose you lie down. Let me +try my medical skill in mixing you a composing +draught.’</p> +<p><!-- page 143--><a name="page143"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +143</span>“He held my hand, and looked eagerly into my +eyes. ‘I am better now,’ he said, speaking at +last very faintly. Still he looked at me in that wistful +way. It seemed as if there were something that he wanted to +do or say, but had not sufficient resolution. At length he +got up from the chair to which I had led him, and beckoning me to +follow him, went across the room to the dressing-table, and stood +again before the glass. A violent shudder passed through +his frame as he looked into it; but apparently forcing himself to +go through with what he had now begun, he remained where he was, +and, without looking away, moved to me with his hand to come and +stand beside him. I complied.</p> +<p>“‘Look in there!’ he said, in an almost +inaudible tone. He was supported, as before, by his hands +resting on the table, and could only bow with his head towards +the glass to intimate what he meant. ‘Look in +there!’ he repeated.</p> +<p>“I did as he asked me.</p> +<p>“‘What do you see?’ he asked next.</p> +<p>“‘See?’ I repeated, trying to speak as +cheerfully as I could, and describing the reflexion of his own +face as nearly as I could. ‘I see a very, very pale +face with sunken cheeks—’</p> +<p>“‘What?’ he cried, with an alarm in his +voice which I could not understand.</p> +<p><!-- page 144--><a name="page144"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +144</span>“‘With sunken cheeks,’ I went on, +‘and two hollow eyes with large pupils.’</p> +<p>“I saw the reflexion of my friend’s face change, +and felt his hand clutch my arm even more tightly than he had +done before. I stopped abruptly and looked round at +him. He did not turn his head towards me, but, gazing still +into the looking-glass, seemed to labour for utterance.</p> +<p>“‘What,’ he stammered at last. +‘Do you—see it—too?’</p> +<p>“‘See what?’ I asked, quickly.</p> +<p>“‘That face!’ he cried, in accents of +horror. ‘That face—which is not mine—and +which—<span class="smcap">I see instead of +mine</span>—always!’</p> +<p>“I was struck speechless by the words. In a moment +this mystery was explained—but what an explanation! +Worse, a hundred times worse, than anything I had imagined. +What! Had this man lost the power of seeing his own image +as it was reflected there before him? and, in its place, was +there the image of another? Had he changed reflexions with +some other man? The frightfulness of the thought struck me +speechless for a time—then I saw how false an impression my +silence was conveying.</p> +<p>“‘No, no, no!’ I cried, as soon as I could +speak—‘a hundred times, no! I see you, of +course, and only you. It was your face I attempted to +describe, and no other.’</p> +<p><!-- page 145--><a name="page145"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +145</span>“He seemed not to hear me. ‘Why, look +there!’ he said, in a low, indistinct voice, pointing to +his own image in the glass. ‘Whose face do you see +there?’</p> +<p>“‘Why yours, of course.’ And then, +after a moment, I added, ‘Whose do you see?’</p> +<p>“He answered, like one in a trance, +‘<i>His</i>—only his—always his!’ +He stood still a moment, and then, with a loud and terrific +scream, repeated those words, ‘<span class="smcap">Always +his</span>, <span class="smcap">always his</span>,’ and +fell down in a fit before me.</p> +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p>“I knew what to do now. Here was a thing which, at +any rate, I could understand. I had with me my usual small +stock of medicines and surgical instruments, and I did what was +necessary: first to restore my unhappy patient, and next to +procure for him the rest he needed so much. He was very +ill—at death’s door for some days—and I could +not leave him, though there was urgent need that I should be back +in London. When he began to mend, I sent over to England +for my servant—John Masey—whom I knew I could +trust. Acquainting him with the outlines of the case, I +left him in charge of my patient, with orders that he should be +brought over to this country as soon as he was fit to travel.</p> +<p>“That awful scene was always before me. I saw this +devoted man day after day, with the eyes of my imagination, +sometimes destroying in <!-- page 146--><a +name="page146"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 146</span>his rage +the harmless looking-glass, which was the immediate cause of his +suffering, sometimes transfixed before the horrid image that +turned him to stone. I recollect coming upon him once when +we were stopping at a roadside inn, and seeing him stand so by +broad daylight. His back was turned towards me, and I +waited and watched him for nearly half an hour as he stood there +motionless and speechless, and appearing not to breathe. I +am not sure but that this apparition seen so by daylight was more +ghastly than that apparition seen in the middle of the night, +with the thunder rumbling among the hills.</p> +<p>“Back in London in his own house, where he could command +in some sort the objects which should surround him, poor Strange +was better than he would have been elsewhere. He seldom +went out except at night, but once or twice I have walked with +him by daylight, and have seen him terribly agitated when we have +had to pass a shop in which looking-glasses were exposed for +sale.</p> +<p>“It is nearly a year now since my poor friend followed +me down to this place, to which I have retired. For some +months he has been daily getting weaker and weaker, and a disease +of the lungs has become developed in him, which has brought him +to his death-bed. I should add, by-the-by, that John Masey +has been his constant companion ever since I brought them <!-- +page 147--><a name="page147"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +147</span>together, and I have had, consequently, to look after a +new servant.</p> +<p>“And now tell me,” the doctor added, bringing his +tale to an end, “did you ever hear a more miserable +history, or was ever man haunted in a more ghastly manner than +this man?”</p> +<p>I was about to reply when I heard a sound of footsteps +outside, and before I could speak old Masey entered the room, in +haste and disorder.</p> +<p>“I was just telling this gentleman,” the doctor +said: not at the moment observing old Masey’s changed +manner: “how you deserted me to go over to your present +master.”</p> +<p>“Ah! sir,” the man answered, in a troubled voice, +“I’m afraid he won’t be my master +long.”</p> +<p>The doctor was on his legs in a moment. +“What! Is he worse?”</p> +<p>“I think, sir, he is dying,” said the old man.</p> +<p>“Come with me, sir; you may be of use if you can keep +quiet.” The doctor caught up his hat as he addressed +me in those words, and in a few minutes we had reached The +Compensation House. A few seconds more, and we were +standing in a darkened room on the first floor, and I saw lying +on a bed before me—pale, emaciated, and, as it seemed, +dying—the man whose story I had just heard.</p> +<p>He was lying with closed eyes when we came into the room, and +I had leisure to examine his <!-- page 148--><a +name="page148"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +148</span>features. What a tale of misery they told! +They were regular and symmetrical in their arrangement, and not +without beauty—the beauty of exceeding refinement and +delicacy. Force there was none, and perhaps it was to the +want of this that the faults—perhaps the crime—which +had made the man’s life so miserable were to be +attributed. Perhaps the crime? Yes, it was not likely +that an affliction, lifelong and terrible, such as this he had +endured, would come upon him unless some misdeed had provoked the +punishment. What misdeed we were soon to know.</p> +<p>It sometimes—I think generally—happens that the +presence of any one who stands and watches beside a sleeping man +will wake him, unless his slumbers are unusually heavy. It +was so now. While we looked at him, the sleeper awoke very +suddenly, and fixed his eyes upon us. He put out his hand +and took the doctor’s in its feeble grasp. “Who +is that?” he asked next, pointing towards me.</p> +<p>“Do you wish him to go? The gentleman knows +something of your sufferings, and is powerfully interested in +your case; but he will leave us, if you wish it,” the +doctor said.</p> +<p>“No. Let him stay.”</p> +<p>Seating myself out of sight, but where I could both see and +hear what passed, I waited for what should follow. Dr. +Garden and John <!-- page 149--><a name="page149"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 149</span>Masey stood beside the bed. +There was a moment’s pause.</p> +<p>“I want a looking-glass,” said Strange, without a +word of preface.</p> +<p>We all started to hear him say those words. “I am +dying,” said Strange; “will you not grant me my +request?”</p> +<p>Doctor Garden whispered to old Masey; and the latter left the +room. He was not absent long, having gone no further than +the next house. He held an oval-framed mirror in his hand +when he returned. A shudder passed through the body of the +sick man as he saw it.</p> +<p>“Put it down,” he said, +faintly—“anywhere—for the present.”</p> +<p>No one of us spoke. I do not think, in that moment of +suspense, that we could, any of us, have spoken if we had +tried.</p> +<p>The sick man tried to raise himself a little. +“Prop me up,” he said. “I speak with +difficulty—I have something to say.”</p> +<p>They put pillows behind him, so as to raise his head and +body.</p> +<p>“I have presently a use for it,” he said, +indicating the mirror. “I want to +see—” He stopped, and seemed to change his +mind. He was sparing of his words. “I want to +tell you—all about it.” Again he was +silent. Then he seemed to make a great effort and spoke +once more, beginning very abruptly.</p> +<p><!-- page 150--><a name="page150"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +150</span>“I loved my wife fondly. I loved +her—her name was Lucy. She was English; but, after we +were married, we lived long abroad—in Italy. She +liked the country, and I liked what she liked. She liked to +draw, too, and I got her a master. He was an Italian. +I will not give his name. We always called him ‘the +Master.’ A treacherous insidious man this was, and, +under cover of his profession, took advantage of his +opportunities, and taught my wife to love him—to love +him.</p> +<p>“I am short of breath. I need not enter into +details as to how I found them out; but I did find them +out. We were away on a sketching expedition when I made my +discovery. My rage maddened me, and there was one at hand +who fomented my madness. My wife had a maid, who, it +seemed, had also loved this man—the Master—and had +been ill treated and deserted by him. She told me +all. She had played the part of go-between—had +carried letters. When she told me these things, it was +night, in a solitary Italian town, among the mountains. +‘He is in his room now,’ she said, ‘writing to +her.’</p> +<p>“A frenzy took possession of me as I listened to those +words. I am naturally vindictive—remember +that—and now my longing for revenge was like a +thirst. Travelling in those lonely regions, I was armed, +and when the woman said, ‘He is writing to your +wife,’ <!-- page 151--><a name="page151"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 151</span>I laid hold of my pistols, as by an +instinct. It has been some comfort to me since, that I took +them both. Perhaps, at that moment, I may have meant fairly +by him—meant that we should fight. I don’t know +what I meant, quite. The woman’s words, ‘He is +in his own room now, writing to her,’ rung in my +ears.”</p> +<p>The sick man stopped to take breath. It seemed an hour, +though it was probably not more than two minutes, before he spoke +again.</p> +<p>“I managed to get into his room unobserved. +Indeed, he was altogether absorbed in what he was doing. He +was sitting at the only table in the room, writing at a +travelling-desk, by the light of a single candle. It was a +rude dressing-table, and—and before him—exactly +before him—there was—there was a looking-glass.</p> +<p>“I stole up behind him as he sat and wrote by the light +of the candle. I looked over his shoulder at the letter, +and I read, ‘Dearest Lucy, my love, my +darling.’ As I read the words, I pulled the trigger +of the pistol I held in my right hand, and killed +him—killed him—but, before he died, he looked up +once—not at me, but at my image before him in the glass, +and his face—such a face—has been there—ever +since, and mine—my face—is gone!”</p> +<p>He fell back exhausted, and we all pressed forward thinking +that he must be dead, he lay so still.</p> +<p><!-- page 152--><a name="page152"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +152</span>But he had not yet passed away. He revived under +the influence of stimulants. He tried to speak, and +muttered indistinctly from time to time words of which we could +sometimes make no sense. We understood, however, that he +had been tried by an Italian tribunal, and had been found guilty; +but with such extenuating circumstances that his sentence was +commuted to imprisonment, during, we thought we made out, two +years. But we could not understand what he said about his +wife, though we gathered that she was still alive, from something +he whispered to the doctor of there being provision made for her +in his will.</p> +<p>He lay in a doze for something more than an hour after he had +told his tale, and then he woke up quite suddenly, as he had done +when we had first entered the room. He looked round +uneasily in all directions, until his eye fell on the +looking-glass.</p> +<p>“I want it,” he said, hastily; but I noticed that +he did not shudder now, as it was brought near. When old +Masey approached, holding it in his hand, and crying like a +child, Dr. Garden came forward and stood between him and his +master, taking the hand of poor Strange in his.</p> +<p>“Is this wise?” he asked. “Is it good, +do you think, to revive this misery of your life now, when it is +so near its close? The chastisement of your crime,” +he added, solemnly, “has <!-- page 153--><a +name="page153"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 153</span>been a +terrible one. Let us hope in God’s mercy that your +punishment is over.”</p> +<p>The dying man raised himself with a last great effort, and +looked up at the doctor with such an expression on his face as +none of us had seen on any face, before.</p> +<p>“I do hope so,” he said, faintly, “but you +must let me have my way in this—for if, now, when I look, I +see aright—once more—I shall then hope yet more +strongly—for I shall take it as a sign.”</p> +<p>The doctor stood aside without another word, when he heard the +dying man speak thus, and the old servant drew near, and, +stooping over softly, held the looking-glass before his +master. Presently afterwards, we, who stood around looking +breathlessly at him, saw such a rapture upon his face, as left no +doubt upon our minds that the face which had haunted him so long, +had, in his last hour, disappeared.</p> +<h2><!-- page 154--><a name="page154"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 154</span><span class="smcap">No.</span> 4 +BRANCH LINE<br /> +THE TRAVELLING POST-OFFICE</h2> +<p>Many years ago, and before this Line was so much as projected, +I was engaged as a clerk in a Travelling Post-office running +along the Line of railway from London to a town in the Midland +Counties, which we will call Fazeley. My duties were to +accompany the mail-train which left Fazeley at 8.15 <span +class="smcap">p.m.</span>, and arrived in London about midnight, +and to return by the day mail leaving London at 10.30 the +following morning, after which I had an unbroken night at +Fazeley, while another clerk discharged the same round of work; +and in this way each alternative evening I was on duty in the +railway post-office van. At first I suffered a little from +a hurry and tremor of nerve in pursuing my occupation while the +train was crashing along under bridges and through tunnels at a +speed which was then thought marvellous and perilous; but it was +not long before my hands and eyes <!-- page 155--><a +name="page155"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 155</span>became +accustomed to the motion of the carriage, and I could go through +my business with the same despatch and ease as in the post-office +of the country town where I had learned it, and from which I had +been promoted by the influence of the surveyor of the district, +Mr. Huntingdon. In fact, the work soon fell into a +monotonous routine, which, night after night, was pursued in an +unbroken course by myself and the junior clerk, who was my only +assistant: the railway post-office work not having then attained +the importance and magnitude it now possesses.</p> +<p>Our route lay through an agricultural district containing many +small towns, which made up two or three bags only; one for +London; another perhaps for the county town; a third for the +railway post-office, to be opened by us, and the enclosures to be +distributed according to their various addresses. The +clerks in many of these small offices were women, as is very +generally the case still, being the daughters and female +relatives of the nominal postmaster, who transact most of the +business of the office, and whose names are most frequently +signed upon the bills accompanying the bags. I was a young +man, and somewhat more curious in feminine handwriting than I am +now. There was one family in particular, whom I had never +seen, but with whose signatures I was perfectly +familiar—clear, <!-- page 156--><a name="page156"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 156</span>delicate, and educated, very unlike +the miserable scrawl upon other letter-bills. One New +Year’s-eve, in a moment of sentiment, I tied a slip of +paper among a bundle of letters for their office, upon which I +had written, “A happy New Year to you all.” The +next evening brought me a return of my good wishes, signed, as I +guessed, by three sisters of the name of Clifton. From that +day, every now and then, a sentence or two as brief as the one +above passed between us, and the feeling of acquaintance and +friendship grew upon me, though I had never yet had an +opportunity of seeing my fair unknown friends.</p> +<p>It was towards the close of the following October that it came +under my notice that the then Premier of the ministry was paying +an autumn visit to a nobleman, whose country seat was situated +near a small village on our line of rail. The +Premier’s despatch-box, containing, of course, all the +despatches which it was necessary to send down to him, passed +between him and the Secretary of State, and was, as usual, +entrusted to the care of the post-office. The Continent was +just then in a more than ordinarily critical state; we were +thought to be upon the verge of an European war; and there were +murmurs floating about, at the dispersion of the ministry up and +down the country. These circumstances made the <!-- page +157--><a name="page157"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +157</span>charge of the despatch-box the more interesting to +me. It was very similar in size and shape to the +old-fashioned workboxes used by ladies before boxes of polished +and ornamental wood came into vogue, and, like them, it was +covered with red morocco leather, and it fastened with a lock and +key. The first time it came into my hands I took such +special notice of it as might be expected. Upon one corner +of the lid I detected a peculiar device scratched slightly upon +it, most probably with the sharp point of a steel pen, in such a +moment of preoccupation of mind as causes most of us to draw odd +lines and caricatured faces upon any piece of paper which may lie +under our hand. It was the old revolutionary device of a +heart with a dagger piercing it; and I wondered whether it could +be the Premier, or one of his secretaries, who had traced it upon +the morocco.</p> +<p>This box had been travelling up and down for about ten days, +and, as the village did not make up a bag for London, there being +very few letters excepting those from the great house, the +letter-bag from the house, and the despatch-box, were handed +direct into our travelling post-office. But in compliment +to the presence of the Premier in the neighbourhood, the train, +instead of slackening speed only, stopped altogether, in order +that the Premier’s trusty and confidential messenger <!-- +page 158--><a name="page158"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +158</span>might deliver the important box into my own hands, that +its perfect safety might be ensured. I had an undefined +suspicion that some person was also employed to accompany the +train up to London, for three or four times I had met with a +foreign-looking gentleman at Euston-square, standing at the door +of the carriage nearest the post-office van, and eyeing the heavy +bags as they were transferred from my care to the custody of the +officials from the General Post-office. But though I felt +amused and somewhat nettled at this needless precaution, I took +no further notice of the man, except to observe that he had the +swarthy aspect of a foreigner, and that he kept his face well +away from the light of the lamps. Except for these things, +and after the first time or two, the Premier’s despatch-box +interested me no more than any other part of my charge. My +work had been doubly monotonous for some time past, and I began +to think it time to get up some little entertainment with my +unknown friends, the Cliftons. I was just thinking of it as +the train stopped at the station about a mile from the town where +they lived, and their postman, a gruff matter-of-fact +fellow—you could see it in every line of his face—put +in the letter-bags, and with them a letter addressed to me. +It was in an official envelope, “On Her Majesty’s +Service,” and the seal was an official seal. On <!-- +page 159--><a name="page159"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +159</span>the folded paper inside it (folded officially also) I +read the following order: “Mr. Wilcox is requested to +permit the bearer, the daughter of the postmaster at Eaton, to +see the working of the railway post-office during the +up-journey.” The writing I knew well as being that of +one of the surveyor’s clerks, and the signature was Mr. +Huntingdon’s. The bearer of the order presented +herself at the door, the snorting of the engine gave notice of +the instant departure of the train, I held out my hand, the young +lady sprang lightly and deftly into the van, and we were off +again on our midnight journey.</p> +<p>She was a small slight creature, one of those slender little +girls one never thinks of as being a woman, dressed neatly and +plainly in a dark dress, with a veil hanging a little over her +face and tied under her chin: the most noticeable thing about her +appearance being a great mass of light hair, almost yellow, which +had got loose in some way, and fell down her neck in thick wavy +tresses. She had a free pleasant way about her, not in the +least bold or forward, which in a minute or two made her presence +seem the most natural thing in the world. As she stood +beside me before the row of boxes into which I was sorting my +letters, she asked questions and I answered as if it were quite +an every-day occurrence for us to be travelling up together in +the night mail <!-- page 160--><a name="page160"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 160</span>to Euston-square station. I +blamed myself for an idiot that I had not sooner made an +opportunity for visiting my unknown friends at Eaton.</p> +<p>“Then,” I said, putting down the letter-bill from +their own office before her, “may I ask which of the +signatures I know so well, is yours? Is it A. Clifton, or +M. Clifton, or S. Clifton?” She hesitated a little, +and blushed, and lifted up her frank childlike eyes to mine.</p> +<p>“I am A. Clifton,” she answered.</p> +<p>“And your name?” I said.</p> +<p>“Anne;” then, as if anxious to give some +explanation to me of her present position, she added, “I +was going up to London on a visit, and I thought it would be so +nice to travel in the post-office to see how the work was done, +and Mr. Huntingdon came to survey our office, and he said he +would send me an order.”</p> +<p>I felt somewhat surprised, for a stricter martinet than Mr. +Huntingdon did not breathe; but I glanced down at the small +innocent face at my side, and cordially approved of his departure +from ordinary rules.</p> +<p>“Did you know you would travel with me?” I asked, +in a lower voice; for Tom Morville, my junior, was at my other +elbow.</p> +<p>“I knew I should travel with Mr. Wilcox,” <!-- +page 161--><a name="page161"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +161</span>she answered, with a smile that made all my nerves +tingle.</p> +<p>“You have not written me a word for ages,” said I, +reproachfully.</p> +<p>“You had better not talk, or you’ll be making +mistakes,” she replied, in an arch tone. It was quite +true; for, a sudden confusion coming over me, I was sorting the +letters at random.</p> +<p>We were just then approaching the small station where the +letter-bag from the great house was taken up. The engine +was slackening speed. Miss Clifton manifested some natural +and becoming diffidence.</p> +<p>“It would look so odd,” she said, “to any +one on the platform, to see a girl in the post-office van! +And they couldn’t know I was a postmaster’s daughter, +and had an order from Mr. Huntingdon. Is there no dark +corner to shelter me?”</p> +<p>I must explain to you in a word or two the construction of the +van, which was much less efficiently fitted up than the +travelling post-offices of the present day. It was a +reversible van, with a door at each right-hand corner. At +each door the letter-boxes were so arranged as to form a kind of +screen about two feet in width, which prevented people from +seeing all over the carriage at once. Thus the door at the +far end of the van, the one not in use at the time, was thrown +into deep shadow, and <!-- page 162--><a name="page162"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 162</span>the screen before it turned it into +a small niche, where a slight little person like Miss Clifton was +very well concealed from curious eyes. Before the train +came within the light from the lamps on the platform, she +ensconced herself in this shelter. No one but I could see +her laughing face, as she stood there leaning cautiously forward +with her finger pressed upon her rosy lips, peeping at the +messenger who delivered into my own hands the Premier’s +despatch-box, while Tom Morville received the letter-bag of the +great house.</p> +<p>“See,” I said, when we were again in motion, and +she had emerged from her concealment, “this is the +Premier’s despatch-box, going back to the Secretary of +State. There are some state secrets for you, and ladies are +fond of secrets.”</p> +<p>“Oh! I know nothing about politics,” she answered, +indifferently, “and we have had that box through our office +a time or two.”</p> +<p>“Did you ever notice this mark upon it,” I +asked—“a heart with a dagger through it?” and +bending down my face to hers, I added a certain spooney remark, +which I do not care to repeat. Miss Clifton tossed her +little head, and pouted her lips; but she took the box out of my +hands, and carried it to the lamp nearest the further end of the +van, after which she put it down upon the counter close beside +the screen, and I thought no more about it. The <!-- page +163--><a name="page163"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +163</span>midnight ride was entertaining in the extreme, for the +girl was full of young life and sauciness and merry humour. +I can safely aver that I have never been to an evening’s +so-called entertainment which, to me, was half so +enjoyable. It added also to the zest and keen edge of the +enjoyment to see her hasten to hide herself whenever I told her +we were going to stop to take up the mails.</p> +<p>“We had passed Watford, the last station at which we +stopped, before I became alive to the recollection that our work +was terribly behindhand. Miss Clifton also became grave, +and sat at the end of the counter very quiet and subdued, as if +her frolic were over, and it was possible she might find +something to repent of in it. I had told her we should stop +no more until we reached Euston-square station, but to my +surprise I felt our speed decreasing, and our train coming to a +standstill. I looked out and called to the guard in the van +behind, who told me he supposed there was something on the line +before us, and that we should go on in a minute or two. I +turned my head, and gave this information to my fellow-clerk and +Miss Clifton.</p> +<p>“Do you know where we are?” she asked, in a +frightened tone.</p> +<p>“At Camden-town,” I replied. She sprang +hastily from her seat, and came towards me.</p> +<p>“I am close to my friend’s house here,” she +<!-- page 164--><a name="page164"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +164</span>said, “so it is a lucky thing for me. It is +not five minutes’ walk from the station. I will say +good-bye to you now, Mr. Wilcox, and I thank you a thousand times +for your kindness.”</p> +<p>She seemed flurried, and she held out both her little hands to +me in an appealing kind of way, as if she were afraid of my +detaining her against her will. I took them both into mine, +pressing them with rather more ardour than was quite +necessary.</p> +<p>“I do not like you to go alone at this hour,” I +said, “but there is no help for it. It has been a +delightful time to me. Will you allow me to call upon you +to-morrow morning early, for I leave London at 10.30; or on +Wednesday, when I shall be in town again?”</p> +<p>“O,” she answered, hanging her head, “I +don’t know. I’ll write and tell mamma how kind +you have been, and, and—but I must go, Mr. +Wilcox.”</p> +<p>“I don’t like your going alone,” I +repeated.</p> +<p>“O! I know the way perfectly,” she said, in the +same flurried manner, “perfectly, thank you. And it +is close at hand. Goodbye.”</p> +<p>She jumped lightly out of the carriage, and the train started +on again at the same instant. We were busy enough, as you +may suppose. In five minutes more we should be in +Euston-square, and there was nearly fifteen minutes <!-- page +165--><a name="page165"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +165</span>work still to be done. Spite of the enjoyment he +had afforded me, I mentally anathematised Mr. Huntingdon and his +departure from ordinary rules, and, thrusting Miss Clifton +forcibly out of my thoughts, I set to work with a will, gathered +up the registered letters for London, tied them into a bundle +with the paper bill, and then turned to the corner of the counter +for the despatch-box.</p> +<p>You have guessed already my cursed misfortune. The +Premier’s despatch-box was not there. For the first +minute or so I was in nowise alarmed, and merely looked round, +upon the floor, under the bags, into the boxes, into any place +into which it could have fallen or been deposited. We +reached Euston-square while I was still searching, and losing +more and more of my composure every instant. Tom Morville +joined me in my quest, and felt every bag which had been made up +and sealed. The box was no small article which could go +into little compass; it was certainly twelve inches long, and +more than that in girth. But it turned up nowhere. I +never felt nearer fainting than at that moment.</p> +<p>“Could Miss Clifton have carried it off?” +suggested Tom Morville.</p> +<p>“No,” I said, indignantly but thoughtfully, +“she couldn’t have carried off such a bulky thing as +that, without our seeing it. It would not go into one of +our pockets, Tom, and she <!-- page 166--><a +name="page166"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 166</span>wore a +tight-fitting jacket that would not conceal anything.”</p> +<p>“No, she can’t have it,” assented Tom; +“then it must be somewhere about.” We searched +again and again, turning over everything in the van, but without +success. The Premier’s despatch-box was gone; and all +we could do at first was to stand and stare at one another. +Our trance of blank dismay was of short duration, for the van was +assailed by the postmen from St. Martin’s-le-Grand, who +were waiting for our charge. In a stupor of bewilderment we +completed our work, and delivered up the mails; then, once more +we confronted one another with pale faces, frightened out of our +seven senses. All the scrapes we had ever been in (and we +had had our usual share of errors and blunders) faded into utter +insignificance compared with this. My eye fell upon Mr. +Huntingdon’s order lying among some scraps of waste paper +on the floor, and I picked it up, and put it carefully, with its +official envelope, into my pocket.</p> +<p>“We can’t stay here,” said Tom. The +porters were looking in inquisitively; we were seldom so long in +quitting oar empty van.</p> +<p>“No,” I replied, a sudden gleam of sense darting +across the blank bewilderment of my brain; “no, we must go +to head-quarters at <!-- page 167--><a name="page167"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 167</span>once, and make a clean breast of +it. This is no private business, Tom.”</p> +<p>We made one more ineffectual search, and then we hailed a cab +and drove as hard as we could to the General Post-office. +The secretary of the Post-office was not there, of course, but we +obtained the address of his residence in one of the suburbs, four +or five miles from the City, and we told no one of our +misfortune, my idea being that the fewer who were made acquainted +with the loss the better. My judgment was in the right +there.</p> +<p>We had to knock up the household of the secretary—a +formidable personage with whom I had never been brought into +contact before—and in a short time we were holding a +strictly private and confidential interview with him, by the +glimmer of a solitary candle, just serving to light up his severe +face, which changed its expression several times as I narrated +the calamity. It was too stupendous for rebuke, and I +fancied his eyes softened with something like commiseration as he +gazed upon us. After a short interval of deliberation, he +announced his intention of accompanying us to the residence of +the Secretary of State; and in a few minutes we were driving back +again to the opposite extremity of London. It was not far +off the hour for the morning delivery of letters when we reached +our destination; but the atmosphere was yellow with <!-- page +168--><a name="page168"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +168</span>fog, and we could see nothing as we passed along in +almost utter silence, for neither of us ventured to speak, and +the secretary only made a brief remark now and then. We +drove up to some dwelling enveloped in fog, and we were left in +the cab for nearly half an hour, while our secretary went +in. At the end of that time we were summoned to an +apartment where there was seated at a large desk a small spare +man, with a great head, and eyes deeply sunk under the +brows. There was no form of introduction, of course, and we +could only guess who he might be; but we were requested to repeat +our statement, and a few shrewd questions were put to us by the +stranger. We were eager to put him in possession of +everything we knew, but that was little beyond the fact that the +despatch-box was lost.</p> +<p>“That young person must have taken it,” he +said.</p> +<p>“She could not, sir,” I answered, positively, but +deferentially. “She wore the tightest-fitting pelisse +I ever saw, and she gave me both her hands when she said +good-bye. She could not possibly have it concealed about +her. It would not go into my pocket.”</p> +<p>“How did she come to travel up with you in the van, +sir?” he asked severely.</p> +<p>I gave him for answer the order signed by Mr. +Huntingdon. He and our secretary scanned it closely.</p> +<p><!-- page 169--><a name="page169"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +169</span>“It is Huntingdon’s signature without +doubt,” said the latter; “I could swear to it +anywhere. This is an extraordinary circumstance!”</p> +<p>It was an extraordinary circumstance. The two retired +into an adjoining room, where they stayed for another half-hour, +and when they returned to us their faces still bore an aspect of +grave perplexity.</p> +<p>“Mr. Wilcox and Mr. Morville,” said our secretary, +“it is expedient that this affair should be kept inviolably +secret. You must even be careful not to hint that you hold +any secret. You did well not to announce your loss at the +Post-office, and I shall cause it to be understood that you had +instructions to take the despatch-box direct to its +destination. Your business now is to find the young woman, +and return with her not later than six o’clock this +afternoon to my office at the General Post-office. What +other steps we think it requisite to take, you need know nothing +about; the less you know, the better for yourselves.”</p> +<p>Another gleam of commiseration in his official eye made our +hearts sink within us. We departed promptly, and, with that +instinct of wisdom which at times dictates infallibly what course +we should pursue, we decided our line of action. Tom +Morville was to go down to Camden-town, and inquire at every +house for Miss Clifton, while I—there would <!-- page +170--><a name="page170"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 170</span>be +just time for it—was to run down to Eaton by train and +obtain her exact address from her parents. We agreed to +meet at the General Post-office at half-past five, if I could +possibly reach it by that time; but in any case Tom was to report +himself to the secretary and account for my absence.</p> +<p>When I arrived at the station at Eaton, I found that I had +only forty-five minutes before the up train went by. The +town was nearly a mile away, but I made all the haste I could to +reach it. I was not surprised to find the post-office in +connexion with a bookseller’s shop, and I saw a pleasant +elderly lady seated behind the counter, while a tall dark-haired +girl was sitting at some work a little out of sight. I +introduced myself at once.</p> +<p>“I am Frank Wilcox, of the railway post-office, and I +have just run down to Eaton to obtain some information from +you.”</p> +<p>“Certainly. We know you well by name,” was +the reply, given in a cordial manner, which was particularly +pleasant to me.</p> +<p>“Will you be so good as give me the address of Miss Anne +Clifton in Camden-town?” I said.</p> +<p>“Miss Anne Clifton?” ejaculated the lady.</p> +<p>“Yes. Your daughter, I presume. Who went up +to London last night.”</p> +<p>“I have no daughter Anne,” she said; “I am +Anne Clifton, and my daughters are named <!-- page 171--><a +name="page171"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 171</span>Mary and +Susan. This is my daughter Mary.”</p> +<p>The tall dark-haired girl had left her seat, and now stood +beside her mother. Certainly she was very unlike the small +golden-haired coquette who had travelled up to London with me as +Anne Clifton.</p> +<p>“Madam,” I said, scarcely able to speak, “is +your other daughter a slender little creature, exactly the +reverse of this young lady?”</p> +<p>“No,” she answered, laughing; “Susan is both +taller and darker than Mary. Call Susan, my +dear.”</p> +<p>In a few seconds Miss Susan made her appearance, and I had the +three before me—A. Clifton, S. Clifton, and M. +Clifton. There was no other girl in the family; and when I +described the young lady who had travelled under their name, they +could not think of any one in the town—it was a small +one—who answered my description, or who had gone on a visit +to London. I had no time to spare, and I hurried back to +the station, just catching the train as it left the +platform. At the appointed hour I met Morville at the +General Post-office, and threading the long passages of the +secretary’s offices, we at length found ourselves anxiously +waiting in an ante-room, until we were called into his +presence. Morville had discovered nothing, except that the +porters and policemen at Camden-town station had <!-- page +172--><a name="page172"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +172</span>seen a young lady pass out last night, attended by a +swarthy man who looked like a foreigner, and carried a small +black portmanteau.</p> +<p>I scarcely know how long we waited; it might have been years, +for I was conscious of an ever-increasing difficulty in +commanding my thoughts, or fixing them upon the subject which had +engrossed them all day. I had not tasted food for +twenty-four hours, nor closed my eyes for thirty-six, while, +during the whole of the time, my nervous system had been on full +strain.</p> +<p>Presently, the summons came, and I was ushered, first, into +the inner apartment. There sat five gentlemen round a +table, which was strewed with a number of documents. There +were the Secretary of State, whom we had seen in the morning, our +secretary, and Mr. Huntingdon; the fourth was a fine-looking man, +whom I afterwards knew to be the Premier; the fifth I recognised +as our great chief, the Postmaster-General. It was an +august assemblage to me, and I bowed low; but my head was dizzy, +and my throat parched.</p> +<p>“Mr. Wilcox,” said our secretary, “you will +tell these gentlemen again, the circumstances of the loss you +reported to me this morning.”</p> +<p>I laid my hand upon the back of a chair to steady myself, and +went through the narration for the third time, passing over +sundry remarks made by myself to the young lady. That <!-- +page 173--><a name="page173"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +173</span>done, I added the account of my expedition to Eaton, +and the certainty at which I had arrived that my fellow-traveller +was not the person she represented herself to be. After +which, I inquired with indescribable anxiety if Mr. +Huntingdon’s order were a forgery?</p> +<p>“I cannot tell, Mr. Wilcox,” said that gentleman, +taking the order into his hands, and regarding it with an air of +extreme perplexity. “I could have sworn it was mine, +had it been attached to any other document. I think +Forbes’s handwriting is not so well imitated. But it +is the very ink I use, and mine is a peculiar +signature.”</p> +<p>It was a very peculiar and old-fashioned signature, with a +flourish underneath it not unlike a whip-handle, with the lash +caught round it in the middle; but that did not make it the more +difficult to forge, as I humbly suggested. Mr. Huntingdon +wrote his name upon a paper, and two or three of the gentlemen +tried to imitate the flourish, but vainly. They gave it up +with a smile upon their grave faces.</p> +<p>“You have been careful not to let a hint of this matter +drop from you, Mr. Wilcox?” said the +Postmaster-General.</p> +<p>“Not a syllable, my lord,” I answered.</p> +<p>“It is imperatively necessary that the secret should be +kept. You would be removed from the temptation of telling +it, if you had an <!-- page 174--><a name="page174"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 174</span>appointment in some office +abroad. The packet-agency at Alexandria is vacant, and I +will have you appointed to it at once.”</p> +<p>It would be a good advance from my present situation, and +would doubtless prove a stepping-stone to other and better +appointments; but I had a mother living at Fazeley, bedridden and +paralytic, who had no pleasure in existence except having me to +dwell under the same roof with her. My head was growing +more and more dizzy, and a strange vagueness was creeping over +me.</p> +<p>“Gentlemen,” I muttered, “I have a bedridden +mother whom I cannot leave. I was not to blame, +gentlemen.” I fancied there was a stir and movement +at the table, but my eyes were dim, and in another second I had +lost consciousness.</p> +<p>When I came to myself, in two or three minutes, I found that +Mr. Huntingdon was kneeling on the floor beside me, supporting my +head, while our secretary held a glass of wine to my lips. +I rallied as quickly as possible, and staggered to my feet; but +the two gentlemen placed me in the chair against which I had been +leaning, and insisted upon my finishing the wine before I tried +to speak.</p> +<p>“I have not tasted food all day,” I said, +faintly.</p> +<p>“Then, my good fellow, you shall go home +immediately,” said the Postmaster-General; <!-- page +175--><a name="page175"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +175</span>“but be on your guard! Not a word of this +must escape you. Are you a married man?”</p> +<p>“No, my lord,” I answered.</p> +<p>“So much the better,” he added, smiling. +“You can keep a secret from your mother, I dare say. +We rely upon your honour.”</p> +<p>The secretary then rang a bell, and I was committed to the +charge of the messenger who answered it; and in a few minutes I +was being conveyed in a cab to my London lodgings. A week +afterwards, Tom Morville was sent out to a post-office in Canada, +where he settled down, married, and is still living, perfectly +satisfied with his position, as he occasionally informs me by +letter. For myself, I remained as I desired, in my old post +as travelling-clerk until the death of my mother, which occurred +some ten or twelve months afterwards. I was then promoted +to an appointment as a clerk in charge, upon the first +vacancy.</p> +<p>The business of the clerks in charge is to take possession of +any post-office in the kingdom, upon the death or resignation of +the postmaster, or when circumstances of suspicion cause his +suspension from office. My new duties carried me three or +four times into Mr. Huntingdon’s district. Though +that gentleman and I never exchanged a word with regard to the +mysterious loss in which we had both had an innocent share, he +distinguished <!-- page 176--><a name="page176"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 176</span>me with peculiar favour, and more +than once invited me to visit him at his own house. He +lived alone, having but one daughter, who had married, somewhat +against his will, one of his clerks: the Mr. Forbes whose +handwriting had been so successfully imitated in the official +order presented to me by the self-styled Miss Anne Clifton. +(By the way, I may here mention, though it has nothing to do with +my story, that my acquaintance with the Cliftons had ripened into +an intimacy, which resulted in my engagement and marriage to +Mary.)</p> +<p>It would be beside my purpose to specify the precise number of +years which elapsed before I was once again summoned to the +secretary’s private apartment, where I found him closeted +with Mr. Huntingdon. Mr. Huntingdon shook hands with +unofficial cordiality; and then the secretary proceeded to state +the business on hand.</p> +<p>“Mr. Wilcox, you remember our offer to place you in +office in Alexandria?” he said.</p> +<p>“Certainly, sir,” I answered.</p> +<p>“It has been a troublesome office,” he continued, +almost pettishly. “We sent out Mr. Forbes only six +months ago, on account of his health, which required a warmer +climate, and now his medical man reports that his life is not +worth three weeks’ purchase.”</p> +<p>Upon Mr. Huntingdon’s face there rested <!-- page +177--><a name="page177"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 177</span>an +expression of profound anxiety; and as the secretary paused he +addressed himself to me.</p> +<p>“Mr. Wilcox,” he said, “I have been +soliciting, as a personal favour, that you should be sent out to +take charge of the packet-agency, in order that my daughter may +have some one at hand to befriend her, and manage her business +affairs for her. You are not personally acquainted with +her, but I know I can trust her with you.”</p> +<p>“You may, Mr. Huntingdon,” I said, warmly. +“I will do anything I can to aid Mrs. Forbes. When do +you wish me to start?”</p> +<p>“How soon can you be ready?” was the +rejoinder.</p> +<p>“To-morrow morning.”</p> +<p>I was not married then, and I anticipated no delay in setting +off. Nor was there any. I travelled with the overland +mail through France to Marseilles, embarked in a vessel for +Alexandria, and in a few days from the time I first heard of my +destination set foot in the office there. All the postal +arrangements had fallen into considerable irregularity and +confusion; for, as I was informed immediately on my arrival, Mr. +Forbes had been in a dying condition for the last week, and of +course the absence of a master had borne the usual results. +I took formal possession of the office, and then, conducted by +one of the clerks, I <!-- page 178--><a name="page178"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 178</span>proceeded to the dwelling of the +unfortunate postmaster and his no less unfortunate wife. It +would be out of place in this narrative to indulge in any +traveller’s tales about the strange place where I was so +unexpectedly located. Suffice it to say, that the darkened +sultry room into which I was shown, on inquiring for Mrs. Forbes, +was bare of furniture, and destitute of all those little tokens +of refinement and taste which make our English parlours so +pleasant to the eye. There was, however, a piano in one of +the dark corners of the room, open, and with a sheet of music on +it. While I waited for Mrs. Forbes’s appearance, I +strolled idly up to the piano to see what music it might +be. The next moment my eye fell upon an antique red morocco +workbox standing on the top of the piano—a workbox +evidently, for the lid was not closely shut, and a few threads of +silk and cotton were hanging out of it. In a kind of +dream—for it was difficult to believe that the occurrence +was a fact—I carried the box to the darkened window, and +there, plain in my sight, was the device scratched upon the +leather: the revolutionary symbol of a heart with a dagger +through it. I had found the Premier’s despatch-box in +the parlour of the packet-agent of Alexandria!</p> +<p>I stood for some minutes with that dream-like feeling upon me, +gazing at the box in the <!-- page 179--><a +name="page179"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 179</span>dim obscure +light. It could <i>not</i> be real! My fancy must be +playing a trick upon me! But the sound of a light +step—for, light as it was, I heard it distinctly as it +approached the room—broke my trance, and I hastened to +replace the box on the piano, and to stoop down as if examining +the music before the door opened. I had not sent in my name +to Mrs. Forbes, for I did not suppose that she was acquainted +with it, nor could she see me distinctly, as I stood in the +gloom. But I could see her. She had the slight +slender figure, the childlike face, and the fair hair of Miss +Anne Clifton. She came quickly across the room, holding out +both her hands in a childish appealing manner.</p> +<p>“O!” she wailed, in a tone that went straight to +my heart, “he is dead! He has just died!”</p> +<p>It was no time then to speak about the red morocco +workbox. This little childish creature, who did not look a +day older than when I had last seen her in my travelling +post-office, was a widow in a strange land, far away from any +friend save myself. I had brought her a letter from her +father. The first duties that devolved upon me were those +of her husband’s interment, which had to take place +immediately. Three or four weeks elapsed before I could, +with any humanity, enter upon the investigation of her mysterious +complicity in the <!-- page 180--><a name="page180"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 180</span>daring theft practised on the +government and the post-office.</p> +<p>I did not see the despatch-box again. In the midst of +her new and vehement grief, Mrs. Forbes had the precaution to +remove it before I was ushered again into the room where I had +discovered it. I was at some trouble to hit upon any plan +by which to gain a second sight of it; but I was resolved that +Mrs. Forbes should not leave Alexandria without giving me a full +explanation. We were waiting for remittances and +instructions from England, and in the meantime the violence of +her grief abated, and she recovered a good share of her old +buoyancy and loveliness, which had so delighted me on my first +acquaintance with her. As her demands upon my sympathy +weakened, my curiosity grew stronger, and at last mastered +me. I carried with me a netted purse which required +mending, and I asked her to catch up the broken meshes while I +waited for it.</p> +<p>“I will tell your maid to bring your workbox,” I +said, going to the door and calling the servant. +“Your mistress has a red morocco workbox,” I said to +her, as she answered my summons.</p> +<p>“Yes, sir,” she replied.</p> +<p>“Where is it?”</p> +<p>“In her bedroom,” she said.</p> +<p>“Mrs. Forbes wishes it brought here.” I <!-- +page 181--><a name="page181"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +181</span>turned back into the room. Mrs. Forbes had gone +deadly pale, but her eyes looked sullen, and her teeth were +clenched under her lips with an expression of stubbornness. +The maid brought the workbox. I walked, with it in my +hands, up to the sofa where she was seated.</p> +<p>“You remember this mark?” I asked; “I think +neither of us can ever forget it.”</p> +<p>She did not answer by word, but there was a very intelligent +gleam in her blue eyes.</p> +<p>“Now,” I continued, softly, “I promised your +father to befriend you, and I am not a man to forget a +promise. But you must tell me the whole simple +truth.”</p> +<p>I was compelled to reason with her, and to urge her for some +time. I confess I went so far as to remind her that there +was an English consul at Alexandria, to whom I could +resort. At last she opened her stubborn lips, and the whole +story came out, mingled with sobs and showers of tears.</p> +<p>She had been in love with Alfred, she said, and they were too +poor to marry, and papa would not hear of such a thing. She +was always in want of money, she was kept so short; and they +promised to give her such a great sum—a vast sum—five +hundred pounds.</p> +<p>“But who bribed you?” I inquired.</p> +<p>A foreign gentleman whom she had met in London, called +Monsieur Bonnard. It was a <!-- page 182--><a +name="page182"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 182</span>French +name, but she was not sure that he was a Frenchman. He +talked to her about her father being a surveyor in the +post-office, and asked her a great number of questions. A +few weeks after, she met him in their own town by accident, she +and Mr. Forbes; and Alfred had a long private talk with him, and +they came to her, and told her she could help them very +much. They asked her if she could be brave enough to carry +off a little red box out of the travelling post-office, +containing nothing but papers. After a while she +consented. When she had confessed so much under compulsion, +Mrs. Forbes seemed to take a pleasure in the narrative, and went +on fluently.</p> +<p>“We required papa’s signature to the order, and we +did not know how to get it. Luckily he had a fit of the +gout, and was very peevish; and I had to read over a lot of +official papers to him, and then he signed them. One of the +papers I read twice, and slipped the order into its place after +the second reading. I thought I should have died with +fright; but just then he was in great pain, and glad to get his +work over. I made an excuse that I was going to visit my +aunt at Beckby, but instead of going there direct, we contrived +to be at the station at Eaton a minute or two before the mail +train came up. I kept outside the station door till we +heard the whistle, and just then <!-- page 183--><a +name="page183"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 183</span>the postman +came running down the road, and I followed him straight through +the booking-office, and asked him to give you the order, which I +put into his hand. He scarcely saw me. I just caught +a glimpse of Monsieur Bonnard’s face through the window of +the compartment next the van, when Alfred had gone. They +had promised me that the train should stop at Camden-town, if I +could only keep your attention engaged until then. You know +how I succeeded.”</p> +<p>“But how did you dispose of the box?” I +asked. “You could not have concealed it about you; +that I am sure of.”</p> +<p>“Ah!” she said, “nothing was easier. +Monsieur Bonnard had described the van to me, and you remember I +put the box down at the end of the counter, close to the corner +where I hid myself at every station. There was a door with +a window in it, and I asked if I might have the window open, as +the van was too warm for me. I believe Monsieur Bonnard +could have taken it from me by only leaning through his window, +but he preferred stepping out, and taking it from my hand, just +as the train was leaving Watford—on the far side of the +carriages, you understand. It was the last station, and the +train came to a stand at Camden-town. After all, the box +was not out of your sight more than twenty minutes before you +missed it. Monsieur Bonnard and <!-- page 184--><a +name="page184"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 184</span>I hurried +out of the station, and Alfred followed us. The box was +forced open—the lock has never been mended, for it was a +peculiar one—and Monsieur Bonnard took possession of the +papers. He left the box with me, after putting inside it a +roll of notes. Alfred and I were married next morning, and +I went back to my aunt’s; but we did not tell papa of our +marriage for three or four months. That is the story of my +red morocco workbox.”</p> +<p>She smiled with the provoking mirthfulness of a mischievous +child. There was one point still, on which my curiosity was +unsatisfied.</p> +<p>“Did you know what the despatches were about?” I +asked.</p> +<p>“O no!” she answered; “I never understood +politics in the least. I knew nothing about them. +Monsieur did not say a word; he did not even look at the papers +while we were by. I would never, never, have taken a +registered letter, or anything with money in it, you know. +But all those papers could be written again quite easily. +You must not think me a thief, Mr. Wilcox; there was nothing +worth money among the papers.”</p> +<p>“They were worth five hundred pounds to you,” I +said. “Did you ever see Bonnard again?”</p> +<p>“Never again,” she replied. “He said +he <!-- page 185--><a name="page185"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +185</span>was going to return to his native country. I +don’t think Bonnard was his real name.”</p> +<p>Most likely not, I thought; but I said no more to Mrs. +Forbes. Once again I was involved in a great perplexity +about this affair. It was clearly my duty to report the +discovery at head-quarters, but I shrank from doing so. One +of the chief culprits was already gone to another judgment than +that of man; several years had obliterated all traces of Monsieur +Bonnard; and the only victim of justice would be this poor little +dupe of the two greater criminals. At last I came to the +conclusion to send the whole of the particulars to Mr. Huntingdon +himself; and I wrote them to him, without remark or comment.</p> +<p>The answer that came to Mrs. Forbes and me in Alexandria was +the announcement of Mr. Huntingdon’s sudden death of some +disease of the heart, on the day which I calculated would put him +in possession of my communication. Mrs. Forbes was again +overwhelmed with apparently heartrending sorrow and +remorse. The income left to her was something less than one +hundred pounds a year. The secretary of the post-office, +who had been a personal friend of the deceased gentleman, was his +sole executor; and I received a letter from him, containing one +for Mrs. Forbes, which recommended her, in terms not to be +misunderstood, to fix upon <!-- page 186--><a +name="page186"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 186</span>some +residence abroad, and not to return to England. She fancied +she would like the seclusion and quiet of a convent; and I made +arrangements for her to enter one in Malta, where she would still +be under British protection. I left Alexandria myself on +the arrival of another packet-agent; and on my return to London I +had a private interview with the secretary. I found that +there was no need to inform him of the circumstances I have +related to you, as he had taken possession of all Mr. +Huntingdon’s papers. In consideration of his ancient +friendship, and of the escape of those who most merited +punishment, he had come to the conclusion that it was quite as +well to let bygones be bygones.</p> +<p>At the conclusion of the interview I delivered a message which +Mrs. Forbes had emphatically entrusted to me.</p> +<p>“Mrs. Forbes wished me to impress upon your mind,” +I said, “that neither she nor Mr. Forbes would have been +guilty of this misdemeanour if they had not been very much in +love with one another, and very much in want of money.”</p> +<p>“Ah!” replied the secretary, with a smile, +“if Cleopatra’s nose had been shorter, the fate of +the world would have been different!”</p> +<h2><!-- page 187--><a name="page187"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 187</span><span class="smcap">No.</span> 5 +BRANCH LINE<br /> +THE ENGINEER</h2> +<p>His name, sir, was Matthew Price; mine is Benjamin +Hardy. We were born within a few days of each other; bred +up in the same village; taught at the same school. I cannot +remember the time when we were not close friends. Even as +boys, we never knew what it was to quarrel. We had not a +thought, we had not a possession, that was not in common. +We would have stood by each other, fearlessly, to the +death. It was such a friendship as one reads about +sometimes in books: fast and firm as the great Tors upon our +native moorlands, true as the sun in the heavens.</p> +<p>The name of our village was Chadleigh. Lifted high above +the pasture flats which stretched away at our feet like a +measureless green lake and melted into mist on the furthest +horizon, it nestled, a tiny stone-built hamlet, in a sheltered +hollow about midway between the plain and the plateau. +Above us, rising ridge beyond ridge, slope beyond slope, <!-- +page 188--><a name="page188"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +188</span>spread the mountainous moor-country, bare and bleak for +the most part, with here and there a patch of cultivated field or +hardy plantation, and crowned highest of all with masses of huge +grey crag, abrupt, isolated, hoary, and older than the +deluge. These were the Tors—Druids’ Tor, +King’s Tor, Castle Tor, and the like; sacred places, as I +have heard, in the ancient time, where crownings, burnings, human +sacrifices, and all kinds of bloody heathen rites were +performed. Bones, too, had been found there, and +arrow-heads, and ornaments of gold and glass. I had a vague +awe of the Tors in those boyish days, and would not have gone +near them after dark for the heaviest bribe.</p> +<p>I have said that we were born in the same village. He +was the son of a small farmer, named William Price, and the +eldest of a family of seven; I was the only child of Ephraim +Hardy, the Chadleigh blacksmith—a well-known man in those +parts, whose memory is not forgotten to this day. Just so +far as a farmer is supposed to be a bigger man than a blacksmith, +Mat’s father might be said to have a better standing than +mine; but William Price, with his small holding and his seven +boys, was, in fact, as poor as many a day-labourer; whilst the +blacksmith, well-to-do, bustling, popular, and open-handed, was a +person of some importance in the place. All <!-- page +189--><a name="page189"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +189</span>this, however, had nothing to do with Mat and +myself. It never occurred to either of us that his jacket +was out at elbows, or that our mutual funds came altogether from +my pocket. It was enough for us that we sat on the same +school-bench, conned our tasks from the same primer, fought each +other’s battles, screened each other’s faults, +fished, nutted, played truant, robbed orchards and birds’ +nests together, and spent every half-hour, authorised or stolen, +in each other’s society. It was a happy time; but it +could not go on for ever. My father, being prosperous, +resolved to put me forward in the world. I must know more, +and do better, than himself. The forge was not good enough, +the little world of Chadleigh not wide enough, for me. Thus +it happened that I was still swinging the satchel when Mat was +whistling at the plough, and that at last, when my future course +was shaped out, we were separated, as it then seemed to us, for +life. For, blacksmith’s son as I was, furnace and +forge, in some form or other, pleased me best, and I chose to be +a working engineer. So my father by-and-by apprenticed me +to a Birmingham iron-master; and, having bidden farewell to Mat, +and Chadleigh, and the grey old Tors in the shadow of which I had +spent all the days of my life, I turned my face northward, and +went over into “the Black Country.”</p> +<p><!-- page 190--><a name="page190"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +190</span>I am not going to dwell on this part of my story. +How I worked out the term of my apprenticeship; how, when I had +served my full time and become a skilled workman, I took Mat from +the plough and brought him over to the Black Country, sharing +with him lodging, wages, experience—all, in short, that I +had to give; how he, naturally quick to learn and brimful of +quiet energy, worked his way up a step at a time, and came +by-and-by to be a “first hand” in his own department; +how, during all these years of change, and trial, and effort, the +old boyish affection never wavered or weakened, but went on, +growing with our growth and strengthening with our +strength—are facts which I need do no more than outline in +this place.</p> +<p>About this time—it will be remembered that I speak of +the days when Mat and I were on the bright side of +thirty—it happened that our firm contracted to supply six +first-class locomotives to run on the new line, then in process +of construction, between Turin and Genoa. It was the first +Italian order we had taken. We had had dealings with +France, Holland, Belgium, Germany; but never with Italy. +The connexion, therefore, was new and valuable—all the more +valuable because our Transalpine neighbours had but lately begun +to lay down the iron roads, and would be safe to need more of our +good English <!-- page 191--><a name="page191"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 191</span>work as they went on. So the +Birmingham firm set themselves to the contract with a will, +lengthened our working hours, increased our wages, took on fresh +hands, and determined, if energy and promptitude could do it, to +place themselves at the head of the Italian labour-market, and +stay there. They deserved and achieved success. The +six locomotives were not only turned out to time, but were +shipped, despatched, and delivered with a promptitude that fairly +amazed our Piedmontese consignee. I was not a little proud, +you may be sure, when I found myself appointed to superintend the +transport of the engines. Being allowed a couple of +assistants, I contrived that Mat should be one of them; and thus +we enjoyed together the first great holiday of our lives.</p> +<p>It was a wonderful change for two Birmingham operatives fresh +from the Black Country. The fairy city, with its crescent +background of Alps; the port crowded with strange shipping; the +marvellous blue sky and bluer sea; the painted houses on the +quays; the quaint cathedral, faced with black and white marble; +the street of jewellers, like an Arabian Nights’ bazaar; +the street of palaces, with its Moorish court-yards, its +fountains and orange-trees; the women veiled like brides; the +galley-slaves chained two and two; the processions of priests and +friars; the everlasting clangour of bells; the babble of a +strange tongue; the <!-- page 192--><a name="page192"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 192</span>singular lightness and brightness of +the climate—made, altogether, such a combination of wonders +that we wandered about, the first day, in a kind of bewildered +dream, like children at a fair. Before that week was ended, +being tempted by the beauty of the place and the liberality of +the pay, we had agreed to take service with the Turin and Genoa +Railway Company, and to turn our backs upon Birmingham for +ever.</p> +<p>Then began a new life—a life so active and healthy, so +steeped in fresh air and sunshine, that we sometimes marvelled +how we could have endured the gloom of the Black Country. +We were constantly up and down the line: now at Genoa, now at +Turin, taking trial trips with the locomotives, and placing our +old experiences at the service of our new employers.</p> +<p>In the meanwhile we made Genoa our headquarters, and hired a +couple of rooms over a small shop in a by-street sloping down to +the quays. Such a busy little street—so steep and +winding that no vehicles could pass through it, and so narrow +that the sky looked like a mere strip of deep-blue ribbon +overhead! Every house in it, however, was a shop, where the +goods encroached on the footway, or were piled about the door, or +hung like tapestry from the balconies; and all day long, from +dawn to dusk, an incessant stream of passers-by <!-- page +193--><a name="page193"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +193</span>poured up and down between the port and the upper +quarter of the city.</p> +<p>Our landlady was the widow of a silver-worker, and lived by +the sale of filigree ornaments, cheap jewellery, combs, fans, and +toys in ivory and jet. She had an only daughter named +Gianetta, who served in the shop, and was simply the most +beautiful woman I ever beheld. Looking back across this +weary chasm of years, and bringing her image before me (as I can +and do) with all the vividness of life, I am unable, even now, to +detect a flaw in her beauty. I do not attempt to describe +her. I do not believe there is a poet living who could find +the words to do it; but I once saw a picture that was somewhat +like her (not half so lovely, but still like her), and, for aught +I know, that picture is still hanging where I last looked at +it—upon the walls of the Louvre. It represented a +woman with brown eyes and golden hair, looking over her shoulder +into a circular mirror held by a bearded man in the +background. In this man, as I then understood, the artist +had painted his own portrait; in her, the portrait of the woman +he loved. No picture that I ever saw was half so beautiful, +and yet it was not worthy to be named in the same breath with +Gianetta Coneglia.</p> +<p>You may be certain the widow’s shop did not want for +customers. All Genoa knew how fair a face was to be seen +behind that dingy little <!-- page 194--><a +name="page194"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 194</span>counter; +and Gianetta, flirt as she was, had more lovers than she cared to +remember, even by name. Gentle and simple, rich and poor, +from the red-capped sailor buying his earrings or his amulet, to +the nobleman carelessly purchasing half the filigrees in the +window, she treated them all alike—encouraged them, laughed +at them, led them on and turned them off at her pleasure. +She had no more heart than a marble statue; as Mat and I +discovered by-and-by, to our bitter cost.</p> +<p>I cannot tell to this day how it came about, or what first led +me to suspect how things were going with us both; but long before +the waning of that autumn a coldness had sprung up between my +friend and myself. It was nothing that could have been put +into words. It was nothing that either of us could have +explained or justified, to save his life. We lodged +together, ate together, worked together, exactly as before; we +even took our long evening’s walk together, when the +day’s labour was ended; and except, perhaps, that we were +more silent than of old, no mere looker-on could have detected a +shadow of change. Yet there it was, silent and subtle, +widening the gulf between us every day.</p> +<p>It was not his fault. He was too true and gentle-hearted +to have willingly brought about such a state of things between +us. Neither do I believe—fiery as my nature +is—that it was <!-- page 195--><a name="page195"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 195</span>mine. It was all +hers—hers from first to last—the sin, and the shame, +and the sorrow.</p> +<p>If she had shown a fair and open preference for either of us, +no real harm could have come of it. I would have put any +constraint upon myself, and, Heaven knows! have borne any +suffering, to see Mat really happy. I know that he would +have done the same, and more if he could, for me. But +Gianetta cared not one sou for either. She never meant to +choose between us. It gratified her vanity to divide us; it +amused her to play with us. It would pass my power to tell +how, by a thousand imperceptible shades of coquetry—by the +lingering of a glance, the substitution of a word, the flitting +of a smile—she contrived to turn our heads, and torture our +hearts, and lead us on to love her. She deceived us +both. She buoyed us both up with hope; she maddened us with +jealousy; she crushed us with despair. For my part, when I +seemed to wake to a sudden sense of the ruin that was about our +path and I saw how the truest friendship that ever bound two +lives together was drifting on to wreck and ruin, I asked myself +whether any woman in the world was worth what Mat had been to me +and I to him. But this was not often. I was readier +to shut my eyes upon the truth than to face it; and so lived on, +wilfully, in a dream.</p> +<p>Thus the autumn passed away, and winter <!-- page 196--><a +name="page196"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +196</span>came—the strange, treacherous, Genoese winter, +green with olive and ilex, brilliant with sunshine, and bitter +with storm. Still, rivals at heart and friends on the +surface, Mat and I lingered on in our lodging in the Vicolo +Balba. Still Gianetta held us with her fatal wiles and her +still more fatal beauty. At length there came a day when I +felt I could bear the horrible misery and suspense of it no +longer. The sun, I vowed, should not go down before I knew +my sentence. She must choose between us. She must +either take me or let me go. I was reckless. I was +desperate. I was determined to know the worst, or the +best. If the worst, I would at once turn my back upon +Genoa, upon her, upon all the pursuits and purposes of my past +life, and begin the world anew. This I told her, +passionately and sternly, standing before her in the little +parlour at the back of the shop, one bleak December morning.</p> +<p>“If it’s Mat whom you care for most,” I +said, “tell me so in one word, and I will never trouble you +again. He is better worth your love. I am jealous and +exacting; he is as trusting and unselfish as a woman. +Speak, Gianetta; am I to bid you good-bye for ever and ever, or +am I to write home to my mother in England, bidding her pray to +God to bless the woman who has promised to be my wife?”</p> +<p>“You plead your friend’s cause well,” she +<!-- page 197--><a name="page197"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +197</span>replied, haughtily. “Matteo ought to be +grateful. This is more than he ever did for you.”</p> +<p>“Give me my answer, for pity’s sake,” I +exclaimed, “and let me go!”</p> +<p>“You are free to go or stay, Signor Inglese,” she +replied. “I am not your jailor.”</p> +<p>“Do you bid me leave you?”</p> +<p>“Beata Madre! not I.”</p> +<p>“Will you marry me, if I stay?”</p> +<p>She laughed aloud—such a merry, mocking, musical laugh, +like a chime of silver bells!</p> +<p>“You ask too much,” she said.</p> +<p>“Only what you have led me to hope these five or six +months past!”</p> +<p>“That is just what Matteo says. How tiresome you +both are!”</p> +<p>“O, Gianetta,” I said, passionately, “be +serious for one moment! I am a rough fellow, it is +true—not half good enough or clever enough for you; but I +love you with my whole heart, and an Emperor could do no +more.”</p> +<p>“I am glad of it,” she replied; “I do not +want you to love me less.”</p> +<p>“Then you cannot wish to make me wretched! Will +you promise me?”</p> +<p>“I promise nothing,” said she, with another burst +of laughter; “except that I will not marry +Matteo!”</p> +<p>Except that she would not marry Matteo! <!-- page +198--><a name="page198"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +198</span>Only that. Not a word of hope for myself. +Nothing but my friend’s condemnation. I might get +comfort, and selfish triumph, and some sort of base assurance out +of that, if I could. And so, to my shame, I did. I +grasped at the vain encouragement, and, fool that I was! let her +put me off again unanswered. From that day, I gave up all +effort at self-control, and let myself drift blindly on—to +destruction.</p> +<p>At length things became so bad between Mat and myself that it +seemed as if an open rupture must be at hand. We avoided +each other, scarcely exchanged a dozen sentences in a day, and +fell away from all our old familiar habits. At this +time—I shudder to remember it!—there were moments +when I felt that I hated him.</p> +<p>Thus, with the trouble deepening and widening between us day +by day, another month or five weeks went by; and February came; +and, with February, the Carnival. They said in Genoa that +it was a particularly dull carnival; and so it must have been; +for, save a flag or two hung out in some of the principal +streets, and a sort of festa look about the women, there were no +special indications of the season. It was, I think, the +second day when, having been on the line all the morning, I +returned to Genoa at dusk, and, to my surprise, found Mat Price +on the platform. <!-- page 199--><a +name="page199"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 199</span>He came up +to me, and laid his hand on my arm.</p> +<p>“You are in late,” he said. “I have +been waiting for you three-quarters of an hour. Shall we +dine together to-day?”</p> +<p>Impulsive as I am, this evidence of returning good will at +once called up my better feelings.</p> +<p>“With all my heart, Mat,” I replied; “shall +we go to Gozzoli’s?”</p> +<p>“No, no,” he said, hurriedly. “Some +quieter place—some place where we can talk. I have +something to say to you.”</p> +<p>I noticed now that he looked pale and agitated, and an uneasy +sense of apprehension stole upon me. We decided on the +“Pescatore,” a little out-of-the-way trattoria, down +near the Molo Vecchio. There, in a dingy salon, frequented +chiefly by seamen, and redolent of tobacco, we ordered our simple +dinner. Mat scarcely swallowed a morsel; but, calling +presently for a bottle of Sicilian wine, drank eagerly.</p> +<p>“Well, Mat,” I said, as the last dish was placed +on the table, “what news have you?”</p> +<p>“Bad.”</p> +<p>“I guessed that from your face.”</p> +<p>“Bad for you—bad for me. +Gianetta.”</p> +<p>“What of Gianetta?”</p> +<p>He passed his hand nervously across his lips.</p> +<p>“Gianetta is false—worse than false,” he +said, in a hoarse voice. “She values an honest <!-- +page 200--><a name="page200"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +200</span>man’s heart just as she values a flower for her +hair—wears it for a day, then throws it aside for +ever. She has cruelly wronged us both.”</p> +<p>“In what way? Good Heavens, speak out!”</p> +<p>“In the worst way that a woman can wrong those who love +her. She has sold herself to the Marchese +Loredano.”</p> +<p>The blood rushed to my head and face in a burning +torrent. I could scarcely see, and dared not trust myself +to speak.</p> +<p>“I saw her going towards the cathedral,” he went +on, hurriedly. “It was about three hours ago. I +thought she might be going to confession, so I hung back and +followed her at a distance. When she got inside, however, +she went straight to the back of the pulpit, where this man was +waiting for her. You remember him—an old man who used +to haunt the shop a month or two back. Well, seeing how +deep in conversation they were, and how they stood close under +the pulpit with their backs towards the church, I fell into a +passion of anger and went straight up the aisle, intending to say +or do something: I scarcely knew what; but, at all events, to +draw her arm through mine, and take her home. When I came +within a few feet, however, and found only a big pillar between +myself and them, I paused. They could not see me, nor I +them; <!-- page 201--><a name="page201"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 201</span>but I could hear their voices +distinctly, and—and I listened.”</p> +<p>“Well, and you heard—”</p> +<p>“The terms of a shameful bargain—beauty on the one +side, gold on the other; so many thousand francs a year; a villa +near Naples—Pah! it makes me sick to repeat it.”</p> +<p>And, with a shudder, he poured out another glass of wine and +drank it at a draught.</p> +<p>“After that,” he said, presently, “I made no +effort to bring her away. The whole thing was so +cold-blooded, so deliberate, so shameful, that I felt I had only +to wipe her out of my memory, and leave her to her fate. I +stole out of the cathedral, and walked about here by the sea for +ever so long, trying to get my thoughts straight. Then I +remembered you, Ben; and the recollection of how this wanton had +come between us and broken up our lives drove me wild. So I +went up to the station and waited for you. I felt you ought +to know it all; and—and I thought, perhaps, that we might +go back to England together.”</p> +<p>“The Marchese Loredano!”</p> +<p>It was all that I could say; all that I could think. As +Mat had just said of himself, I felt “like one +stunned.”</p> +<p>“There is one other thing I may as well tell you,” +he added, reluctantly, “if only to show you how false a +woman can be. We—we were to have been married next +month.”</p> +<p><!-- page 202--><a name="page202"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +202</span>“<i>We</i>? Who? What do you +mean?”</p> +<p>“I mean that we were to have been married—Gianetta +and I.”</p> +<p>A sudden storm of rage, of scorn, of incredulity, swept over +me at this, and seemed to carry my senses away.</p> +<p>“<i>You</i>!” I cried. “Gianetta marry +you! I don’t believe it.”</p> +<p>“I wish I had not believed it,” he replied, +looking up as if puzzled by my vehemence. “But she +promised me; and I thought, when she promised it, she meant +it.”</p> +<p>“She told me, weeks ago, that she would never be your +wife!”</p> +<p>His colour rose, his brow darkened; when his answer came, it +was as calm as the last.</p> +<p>“Indeed!” he said. “Then it is only +one baseness more. She told me that she had refused you; +and that was why we kept our engagement secret.”</p> +<p>“Tell the truth, Mat Price,” I said, well-nigh +beside myself with suspicion. “Confess that every +word of this is false! Confess that Gianetta will not +listen to you, and that you are afraid I may succeed where you +have failed. As perhaps I shall—as perhaps I shall, +after all!”</p> +<p>“Are you mad?” he exclaimed. “What do +you mean?”</p> +<p>“That I believe it’s just a trick to get me <!-- +page 203--><a name="page203"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +203</span>away to England—that I don’t credit a +syllable of your story. You’re a liar, and I hate +you!”</p> +<p>He rose, and, laying one hand on the back of his chair, looked +me sternly in the face.</p> +<p>“If you were not Benjamin Hardy,” he said, +deliberately, “I would thrash you within an inch of your +life.”</p> +<p>The words had no sooner passed his lips than I sprang at +him. I have never been able distinctly to remember what +followed. A curse—a blow—a struggle—a +moment of blind fury—a cry—a confusion of +tongues—a circle of strange faces. Then I see Mat +lying back in the arms of a bystander; myself trembling and +bewildered—the knife dropping from my grasp; blood upon the +floor; blood upon my hands; blood upon his shirt. And then +I hear those dreadful words:</p> +<p>“O, Ben, you have murdered me!”</p> +<p>He did not die—at least, not there and then. He +was carried to the nearest hospital, and lay for some weeks +between life and death. His case, they said, was difficult +and dangerous. The knife had gone in just below the +collarbone, and pierced down into the lungs. He was not +allowed to speak or turn—scarcely to breathe with +freedom. He might not even lift his head to drink. I +sat by him day and night all through that sorrowful time. I +gave up my situation on the railway; I quitted my lodging in the +Vicolo Balba; I tried to forget <!-- page 204--><a +name="page204"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 204</span>that such a +woman as Gianetta Coneglia had ever drawn breath. I lived +only for Mat; and he tried to live more, I believe, for my sake +than his own. Thus, in the bitter silent hours of pain and +penitence, when no hand but mine approached his lips or smoothed +his pillow, the old friendship came back with even more than its +old trust and faithfulness. He forgave me, fully and +freely; and I would thankfully have given my life for him.</p> +<p>At length there came one bright spring morning, when, +dismissed as convalescent, he tottered out through the hospital +gates, leaning on my arm, and feeble as an infant. He was +not cured; neither, as I then learned to my horror and anguish, +was it possible that he ever could be cured. He might live, +with care, for some years; but the lungs were injured beyond hope +of remedy, and a strong or healthy man he could never be +again. These, spoken aside to me, were the parting words of +the chief physician, who advised me to take him further south +without delay.</p> +<p>I took him to a little coast-town called Rocca, some thirty +miles beyond Genoa—a sheltered lonely place along the +Riviera, where the sea was even bluer than the sky, and the +cliffs were green with strange tropical plants, cacti, and aloes, +and Egyptian palms. Here we lodged in the house of a small +tradesman; and Mat, to use his own words, “set to work <!-- +page 205--><a name="page205"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +205</span>at getting well in good earnest.” But, +alas! it was a work which no earnestness could forward. Day +after day he went down to the beach, and sat for hours drinking +the sea air and watching the sails that came and went in the +offing. By-and-by he could go no further than the garden of +the house in which we lived. A little later, and he spent +his days on a couch beside the open window, waiting patiently for +the end. Ay, for the end! It had come to that. +He was fading fast, waning with the waning summer, and conscious +that the Reaper was at hand. His whole aim now was to +soften the agony of my remorse, and prepare me for what must +shortly come.</p> +<p>“I would not live longer, if I could,” he said, +lying on his couch one summer evening, and looking up to the +stars. “If I had my choice at this moment, I would +ask to go. I should like Gianetta to know that I forgave +her.”</p> +<p>“She shall know it,” I said, trembling suddenly +from head to foot.</p> +<p>He pressed my hand.</p> +<p>“And you’ll write to father?”</p> +<p>“I will.”</p> +<p>I had drawn a little back, that he might not see the tears +raining down my cheeks; but he raised himself on his elbow, and +looked round.</p> +<p>“Don’t fret, Ben,” he whispered; laid his +<!-- page 206--><a name="page206"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +206</span>head back wearily upon the pillow—and so +died.</p> +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p>And this was the end of it. This was the end of all that +made life life to me. I buried him there, in hearing of the +wash of a strange sea on a strange shore. I stayed by the +grave till the priest and the bystanders were gone. I saw +the earth filled in to the last sod, and the gravedigger stamp it +down with his feet. Then, and not till then, I felt that I +had lost him for ever—the friend I had loved, and hated, +and slain. Then, and not till then, I knew that all rest, +and joy, and hope were over for me. From that moment my +heart hardened within me, and my life was filled with +loathing. Day and night, land and sea, labour and rest, +food and sleep, were alike hateful to me. It was the curse +of Cain, and that my brother had pardoned me made it lie none the +lighter. Peace on earth was for me no more, and goodwill +towards men was dead in my heart for ever. Remorse softens +some natures; but it poisoned mine. I hated all mankind; +but above all mankind I hated the woman who had come between us +two, and ruined both our lives.</p> +<p>He had bidden me seek her out, and be the messenger of his +forgiveness. I had sooner have gone down to the port of +Genoa and taken upon me the serge cap and shotted chain <!-- page +207--><a name="page207"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 207</span>of +any galley-slave at his toil in the public works; but for all +that I did my best to obey him. I went back, alone and on +foot. I went back, intending to say to her, “Gianetta +Coneglia, he forgave you; but God never will.” But +she was gone. The little shop was let to a fresh occupant; +and the neighbours only knew that mother and daughter had left +the place quite suddenly, and that Gianetta was supposed to be +under the “protection” of the Marchese +Loredano. How I made inquiries here and there—how I +heard that they had gone to Naples—and how, being restless +and reckless of my time, I worked my passage in a French steamer, +and followed her—how, having found the sumptuous villa that +was now hers, I learned that she had left there some ten days and +gone to Paris, where the Marchese was ambassador for the Two +Sicilies—how, working my passage back again to Marseilles, +and thence, in part by the river and in part by the rail, I made +my way to Paris—how, day after day, I paced the streets and +the parks, watched at the ambassador’s gates, followed his +carriage, and at last, after weeks of waiting, discovered her +address—how, having written to request an interview, her +servants spurned me from her door and flung my letter in my +face—how, looking up at her windows, I then, instead of +forgiving, solemnly cursed her with the bitterest curses <!-- +page 208--><a name="page208"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +208</span>my tongue could devise—and how, this done, I +shook the dust of Paris from my feet, and became a wanderer upon +the face of the earth, are facts which I have now no space to +tell.</p> +<p>The next six or eight years of my life were shifting and +unsettled enough. A morose and restless man, I took +employment here and there, as opportunity offered, turning my +hand to many things, and caring little what I earned, so long as +the work was hard and the change incessant. First of all I +engaged myself as chief engineer in one of the French steamers +plying between Marseilles and Constantinople. At +Constantinople I changed to one of the Austrian Lloyd’s +boats, and worked for some time to and from Alexandria, Jaffa, +and those parts. After that, I fell in with a party of Mr. +Layard’s men at Cairo, and so went up the Nile and took a +turn at the excavations of the mound of Nimroud. Then I +became a working engineer on the new desert line between +Alexandria and Suez; and by-and-by I worked my passage out to +Bombay, and took service as an engine fitter on one of the great +Indian railways. I stayed a long time in India; that is to +say, I stayed nearly two years, which was a long time for me; and +I might not even have left so soon, but for the war that was +declared just then with Russia. That tempted me. For +I loved danger and hardship as other men love safety and ease; +<!-- page 209--><a name="page209"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +209</span>and as for my life, I had sooner have parted from it +than kept it, any day. So I came straight back to England; +betook myself to Portsmouth, where my testimonials at once +procured me the sort of berth I wanted. I went out to the +Crimea in the engine-room of one of her Majesty’s war +steamers.</p> +<p>I served with the fleet, of course, while the war lasted; and +when it was over, went wandering off again, rejoicing in my +liberty. This time I went to Canada, and after working on a +railway then in progress near the American frontier, I presently +passed over into the States; journeyed from north to south; +crossed the Rocky Mountains; tried a month or two of life in the +gold country; and then, being seized with a sudden, aching, +unaccountable longing to revisit that solitary grave so far away +on the Italian coast, I turned my face once more towards +Europe.</p> +<p>Poor little grave! I found it rank with weeds, the cross +half shattered, the inscription half effaced. It was as if +no one had loved him, or remembered him. I went back to the +house in which we had lodged together. The same people were +still living there, and made me kindly welcome. I stayed +with them for some weeks. I weeded, and planted, and +trimmed the grave with my own hands, and set up a fresh cross in +pure white marble. It was the first season of rest that I +had known <!-- page 210--><a name="page210"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 210</span>since I laid him there; and when at +last I shouldered my knapsack and set forth again to battle with +the world, I promised myself that, God willing, I would creep +back to Rocca, when my days drew near to ending, and be buried by +his side.</p> +<p>From hence, being, perhaps, a little less inclined than +formerly for very distant parts, and willing to keep within reach +of that grave, I went no further than Mantua, where I engaged +myself as an engine-driver on the line, then not long completed, +between that city and Venice. Somehow, although I had been +trained to the working engineering, I preferred in these days to +earn my bread by driving. I liked the excitement of it, the +sense of power, the rush of the air, the roar of the fire, the +flitting of the landscape. Above all, I enjoyed to drive a +night express. The worse the weather, the better it suited +with my sullen temper. For I was as hard, and harder than +ever. The years had done nothing to soften me. They +had only confirmed all that was blackest and bitterest in my +heart.</p> +<p>I continued pretty faithful to the Mantua line, and had been +working on it steadily for more than seven months when that which +I am now about to relate took place.</p> +<p>It was in the month of March. The weather had been +unsettled for some days past, and the nights stormy; and at one +point along the <!-- page 211--><a name="page211"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 211</span>line, near Ponte di Brenta, the +waters had risen and swept away some seventy yards of +embankment. Since this accident, the trains had all been +obliged to stop at a certain spot between Padua and Ponte di +Brenta, and the passengers, with their luggage, had thence to be +transported in all kinds of vehicles, by a circuitous country +road, to the nearest station on the other side of the gap, where +another train and engine awaited them. This, of course, +caused great confusion and annoyance, put all our time-tables +wrong, and subjected the public to a large amount of +inconvenience. In the meanwhile an army of navvies was +drafted to the spot, and worked day and night to repair the +damage. At this time I was driving two through trains each +day; namely, one from Mantua to Venice in the early morning, and +a return train from Venice to Mantua in the afternoon—a +tolerably full day’s work, covering about one hundred and +ninety miles of ground, and occupying between ten and eleven +hours. I was therefore not best pleased when, on the third +or fourth day after the accident, I was informed that, in +addition to my regular allowance of work, I should that evening +be required to drive a special train to Venice. This +special train, consisting of an engine, a single carriage, and a +break-van, was to leave the Mantua platform at eleven; at Padua +the passengers were to alight and find post-chaises waiting to +convey them to Ponte <!-- page 212--><a name="page212"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 212</span>di Brenta; at Ponte di Brenta +another engine, carriage, and break-van were to be in +readiness. I was charged to accompany them throughout.</p> +<p>“Corpo di Bacco,” said the clerk who gave me my +orders, “you need not look so black, man. You are +certain of a handsome gratuity. Do you know who goes with +you?”</p> +<p>“Not I.”</p> +<p>“Not you, indeed! Why, it’s the Duca +Loredano, the Neapolitan ambassador.”</p> +<p>“Loredano!” I stammered. “What +Loredano? There was a Marchese—”</p> +<p>“Certo. He was the Marchese Loredano some years +ago; but he has come into his dukedom since then.”</p> +<p>“He must be a very old man by this time.”</p> +<p>“Yes, he is old; but what of that? He is as hale, +and bright, and stately as ever. You have seen him +before?”</p> +<p>“Yes,” I said, turning away; “I have seen +him—years ago.”</p> +<p>“You have heard of his marriage?”</p> +<p>I shook my head.</p> +<p>The clerk chuckled, rubbed his hands, and shrugged his +shoulders.</p> +<p>“An extraordinary affair,” he said. +“Made a tremendous esclandre at the time. He married +his mistress—quite a common, vulgar girl—a +Genoese—very handsome; but not received, of course. +Nobody visits her.”</p> +<p><!-- page 213--><a name="page213"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +213</span>“Married her!” I exclaimed. +“Impossible.”</p> +<p>“True, I assure you.”</p> +<p>I put my hand to my head. I felt as if I had had a fall +or a blow.</p> +<p>“Does she—does she go to-night?” I +faltered.</p> +<p>“O dear, yes—goes everywhere with him—never +lets him out of her sight. You’ll see her—la +bella Duchessa!”</p> +<p>With this my informant laughed, and rubbed his hands again, +and went back to his office.</p> +<p>The day went by, I scarcely know how, except that my whole +soul was in a tumult of rage and bitterness. I returned +from my afternoon’s work about 7.25, and at 10.30 I was +once again at the station. I had examined the engine; given +instructions to the Fochista, or stoker, about the fire; seen to +the supply of oil; and got all in readiness, when, just as I was +about to compare my watch with the clock in the ticket-office, a +hand was laid upon my arm, and a voice in my ear said:</p> +<p>“Are you the engine-driver who is going on with this +special train?”</p> +<p>I had never seen the speaker before. He was a small, +dark man, muffled up about the throat, with blue glasses, a large +black beard, and his hat drawn low upon his eyes.</p> +<p>“You are a poor man, I suppose,” he said, in a +quick, eager whisper, “and, like other poor men, would not +object to be better off. <!-- page 214--><a +name="page214"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 214</span>Would you +like to earn a couple of thousand florins?”</p> +<p>“In what way?”</p> +<p>“Hush! You are to stop at Padua, are you not, and +to go on again at Ponte di Brenta?”</p> +<p>I nodded.</p> +<p>“Suppose you did nothing of the kind. Suppose, +instead of turning off the steam, you jump off the engine, and +let the train run on?”</p> +<p>“Impossible. There are seventy yards of embankment +gone, and—”</p> +<p>“Basta! I know that. Save yourself, and let +the train run on. It would be nothing but an +accident.”</p> +<p>I turned hot and cold; I trembled; my heart beat fast, and my +breath failed.</p> +<p>“Why do you tempt me?” I faltered.</p> +<p>“For Italy’s sake,” he whispered; “for +liberty’s sake. I know you are no Italian; but, for +all that, you may be a friend. This Loredano is one of his +country’s bitterest enemies. Stay, here are the two +thousand florins.”</p> +<p>I thrust his hand back fiercely.</p> +<p>“No—no,” I said. “No +blood-money. If I do it, I do it neither for Italy nor for +money; but for vengeance.”</p> +<p>“For vengeance!” he repeated.</p> +<p>At this moment the signal was given for backing up to the +platform. I sprang to my place upon the engine without +another word. <!-- page 215--><a name="page215"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 215</span>When I again looked towards the spot +where he had been standing, the stranger was gone.</p> +<p>I saw them take their places—Duke and Duchess, secretary +and priest, valet and maid. I saw the station-master bow +them into the carriage, and stand, bareheaded, beside the +door. I could not distinguish their faces; the platform was +too dusk, and the glare from the engine fire too strong; but I +recognised her stately figure, and the poise of her head. +Had I not been told who she was, I should have known her by those +traits alone. Then the guard’s whistle shrilled out, +and the station-master made his last bow; I turned the steam on; +and we started.</p> +<p>My blood was on fire. I no longer trembled or +hesitated. I felt as if every nerve was iron, and every +pulse instinct with deadly purpose. She was in my power, +and I would be revenged. She should die—she, for whom +I had stained my soul with my friend’s blood! She +should die, in the plenitude of her wealth and her beauty, and no +power upon earth should save her!</p> +<p>The stations flew past. I put on more steam; I bade the +fireman heap in the coke, and stir the blazing mass. I +would have outstripped the wind, had it been possible. +Faster and faster—hedges and trees, bridges and stations, +flashing past—villages no sooner seen than +gone—telegraph wires twisting, and <!-- page 216--><a +name="page216"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 216</span>dipping, +and twining themselves in one, with the awful swiftness of our +pace! Faster and faster, till the fireman at my side looks +white and scared, and refuses to add more fuel to the +furnace. Faster and faster, till the wind rushes in our +faces and drives the breath back upon our lips.</p> +<p>I would have scorned to save myself. I meant to die with +the rest. Mad as I was—and I believe from my very +soul that I was utterly mad for the time—I felt a passing +pang of pity for the old man and his suite. I would have +spared the poor fellow at my side, too, if I could; but the pace +at which we were going made escape impossible.</p> +<p>Vicenza was passed—a mere confused vision of +lights. Pojana flew by. At Padua, but nine miles +distant, our passengers were to alight. I saw the +fireman’s face turned upon me in remonstrance; I saw his +lips move, though I could not hear a word; I saw his expression +change suddenly from remonstrance to a deadly terror, and +then—merciful Heaven! then, for the first time, I saw that +he and I were no longer alone upon the engine.</p> +<p>There was a third man—a third man standing on my right +hand, as the fireman was standing on my left—a tall, +stalwart man, with short curling hair, and a flat Scotch cap upon +his head. As I fell back in the first shock of surprise, he +stepped nearer; took my place at <!-- page 217--><a +name="page217"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 217</span>the engine, +and turned the steam off. I opened my lips to speak to him; +he turned his head slowly, and looked me in the face.</p> +<p>Matthew Price!</p> +<p>I uttered one long wild cry, flung my arms wildly up above my +head, and fell as if I had been smitten with an axe.</p> +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p>I am prepared for the objections that may be made to my +story. I expect, as a matter of course, to be told that +this was an optical illusion, or that I was suffering from +pressure on the brain, or even that I laboured under an attack of +temporary insanity. I have heard all these arguments +before, and, if I may be forgiven for saying so, I have no desire +to hear them again. My own mind has been made up upon this +subject for many a year. All that I can say—all that +I <i>know</i> is—that Matthew Price came back from the dead +to save my soul and the lives of those whom I, in my guilty rage, +would have hurried to destruction. I believe this as I +believe in the mercy of Heaven and the forgiveness of repentant +sinners.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">the +end</span></p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MUGBY JUNCTION***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 27924-h.htm or 27924-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/7/9/2/27924 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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