Cradock Nowell: A Tale of the New Forest. Volume 2 of 3

“No! What a capital joke. Hell–fire–Jack (I can swear it was him), preserved in a glass case, from the results of his own imprudence! I shall be up with you in five minutes, James. Be quite ready to begin.”

“Now,” said Mr. Killquick, drawing out his cigar–case, “I have little more to say to you, young man, except that you can begin at eight oʼclock to–morrow morning. We will dispense with the references, for I have the utmost confidence in you, and you will be searched very carefully every time you come out of the gate – which you never will be allowed to do, except when your spell is over, and your mate is in. You will go at once to our outfitters, and, upon presenting this ticket, they will fit you up, as tightly as possible, with your regimentals. And see that you donʼt take boots, but the very best shoes for jumping in. What they call ‘Oxford shoes’ are best, when tied tight over the instep, and not too thick in the sole. No nails, mind, for fear of slipping upon the flange. Good–bye, my boy; be very careful. By–the–by, you say you donʼt value your life?”

“Very little indeed,” said Cradock, “except just for one reason.”

“Then now you must add another reason; you must value it for our sake. The Company canʼt have another inquest for at least six months. I mean, of course, by the same coroner. Confound that fellow; he will not take a right view of things. At eight oʼclock to–morrow morning, you will be at the gate of the Cramjam goods station. The clerk there will have his orders about you. He will supply you with a book, and map out for you your duties. Also Morshead, your mate, an invaluable man, will show you the practical part of it. Now, good–bye, my lad. Remember, you never wear any except your official dress. We allow you two suits in the twelvemonth. Your duties will be of a refined character, and the exercise exhilarating. I trust to receive a good report of you; and I hope, my boy, that you are at peace, both with God and man.”

Even Mr. Killquick had been touched a little by Cradockʼs air of uncomplaining sorrow, and the stamp of high mind and good breeding.

“Very foolish of me,” he muttered, as he lit his cigar, and went up to telegraph to the Slayham station–master – ʼCommit yourself to nothing; observe the strictest economy; and no bonfires of the splinter–wood, as they had last weekʼ – “very foolish of me,” he said on the stairs, “but it goes to my heart to kill that young fellow. How I should like to know his history! That face does not mean nothing.”

Cradock, caring very little what his duties might be, and feeling the night–wind go through his heart, hastened to the outfittersʼ, and there he was received with a grin by an experienced shopman, on the production of his note.

“Capital customers, sir,” he said; “famous customers of ours, that Grand Junction Wasting and Screwing Line, and the best of all for the gentlemen in your way of business, sir. Must have new clothes every new hand, and they changes pretty often, sir. Pervides all the comforts of a home for you, and a gentlemanly competence, before youʼve been half a year with them.”

The man grinned still more at his own grim wit, while Cradock stared at him in wonderment.

“Donʼt you see, sir, they canʼt pass the clothes on, after the man has been killed, even if thereʼs a bit of them left; for they must fit you like your skin, sir. The leastest little wrinkle, sir, or the ruffle of a hinch, or so much as the fray of a hem, and there you are, sir; and they have to look for another hactive young man, sir. And hactive young men are getting shy, sir, uncommon shy of it now, except they come from the country. Hope you insured your life, sir, before taking the situation. Thereʼs no company will accept your life now, sir. What a nice young man the last were, – what a nice young man, to be sure! outrageous fond of filberts; till they cracked him, and found a shell for him.”

“Well,” said Cradock, whom the busy tailor had been measuring all this while, “from all that you tell me, there would be less imprudence in ordering my coffin than to–morrowʼs dinner. What is there so very dangerous in it?”

“Well, youʼll see, sir, youʼll see. I would not frighten you for the world, because itʼs all up in a moment, if you lose your presence of mind. Thank you, sir; all right now, except the legs of the tights, and thatʼs the most particular part of it all. May I trouble you to turn your trousers up? It will never do to measure over them. We shall put six hands on at once at the job. The whole will be ready at eleven this evening. You must kindly call and try everything. We are ordered to insist upon that.”

The next morning, Crad, in a suit of peculiar, tough, and yet most elastic cord, which fitted him as if he had been dipped in it, walked in at the open gates of the front yard, leading to the Cramjam general goods terminus. This was the only way in or out (except along “the metals”), and, as it was got up with heaps of stucco, all the porters were very proud of it, and called it a “slap–up harchway.”

“Stop, stop,” cried a sharp little fellow, gurgling up, like a fountain, from among the sham pilasters; “whatʼs your business here, my man, on the premises of the Grand Junction Wasting and Screwing Company? Ah, I see by your togs. Just come this way, if you please, then.”

Here let me call a little halt, for time enough to explain that the more fashionable of the railway companies have lately agreed that a station–yard is a sort of royal park, which cannot be kept too private, which no doors may rashly open upon, a pleasant rural solitude and weed–nursery for the neighbourhood, and wherein the senior porter has his private mushroom–bed. They are wise in this seclusion, and wholesome is their privacy, so long as they discard all principle – so long as they are allowed to garotte us, while they jabber about “public interests.” Perhaps, ere very long, we shall have a modern Dædalus; and then the boards of directors, so ready to do collectively things which, done individually, no gentleman would own to, may abate a few jots of their arrogance, and have faint recollections of honour.

Cradock, not very deeply impressed by the “compo” arch (about half the size of the stone one at Nowelhurst Hallʼs chief entrance), presented himself to the sharp little fellow, and told him what he was come for.

“Glad to hear it,” said the gateman, “uncommonly glad to hear it. Morshead is a wonderful fellow; there is not another man in England could have stuck to that work as he has done. He ought to have five pounds a week, that he ought, instead of a single sovereign. Screwing Co.” (this was their common name) “will be sorry when they have lost him. Now your duty is to enter, in this here book, the number of every truck, jerry, trod, or blinkem, tarpaulin, or covering of any sort; also the destination chalked on it, and the nature of the goods in the truck, so far as you can ascertain them; coals, iron, chalk, packing–cases, boxes, crates, what not, so fast as they comes into the higher end, or so fast as they goes out of it. You return this book to the check office every time you come off duty. You begin work at eight in the morning, and you leave at eight in the evening. You donʼt pass here meanwhile, and you canʼt pass up the line. Hope you have brought some grub. Youʼll have five minutes in the afternoon, long enough to get a snack in, after the up goods for Millstone is off. Oh, you ought to have brought some grub; if you faint, you will never come to again. But perhaps Morshead can spare you a bit. Heʼll be glad to see you, thatʼs certain, for he ainʼt slept a wink for a week. And such a considerate chap. I enter you in and out. ‘Number–taker 26.’ Thatʼs all right from your cap, my lad. No room for it on your sleeve. Might stick out, you know, and you must pack tighter than any of the goods is. ‘Undertakers,’ we call you always. Good–bye, sir; Morshead will tell you the rest, and I hope to see you all right at eight P.M. The first day is always the worst. Go in at that door by the Pickford, and ask the first porter you see for Morshead, and take care how you get at him.”

Morshead was resting for a moment upon a narrow piece of planking, amid a regular Seven Dials of sidings, points, and turn–tables. Cradock could scarcely see him, for trucks and vans and boxes on wheels were gliding past in every direction, thick as the carts on London Bridge, creaking, groaning, ricketing, lurching; thumping up against one another, and then recoiling with a heavy kick, straining upon coupling–chains, butting against bulkheads, staggering and jerking into grooves and out of them, crushing flints into a shower of sparks, doing anything and everything except standing still for a moment. And among them rushed about, like dragons – ramping, and routing, and swearing fearfully, gargling their throats with a boiling riot, and then goring the ground with tusks of steam, whisking and flicking their tails, and themselves, in and out at the countless cross–webs, screaming, and leaping, and rattling, and booming – the great ponderous giant goods–engines. Every man was out–swearing his neighbour, every truck browbeating its fellow, every engine out–yelling its rival. There is nothing on earth to compare with this scene, unless it be the jostling and churning of ice–packs in Davisʼs Straits, when the tide runs hard, and a gale of wind is blowing, and the floes have broken up suddenly. And even that comparison fails, because, though the monsters grind and crash, and labour and leap with agony, they do not roar, and vomit steam, and swear at one another.

At the risk of his life, for as yet he knew nothing of the laws that governed their movements – a very imperfect code, by–the–by – Cradock made his way to the narrow staging where Morshead was taking a breathing–time. His fellow “number–taker” of course descried him coming; for he had acquired the art of seeing all round, as a spider is falsely supposed to do. He knew, in a moment, by Cradockʼs dress, what business he was meant for; and he said to himself, “Thank God!” in one breath, for the sake of his wife and family; and “Oh, poor fellow!” in the next, as he saw how green our Cradock was. Then he held up his hands for Cradock to stop and waved them for him to run; and so piloted him to the narrow knife–board, “where a manʼs life was his own aʼmost.”

The highest and noblest of physical courage is that which, fully perceiving the danger, looking into the black pit of death, and seeing the night of horrors there (undivested of horror by true religion), encounters them all, treads the narrow cord daily, not for the sake of honour or fortune; not because of the dash in it, and the excitement to a brave soul; not even to win the heartʼs maiden, that pearl of romance and mystery: but simply to supply the home, to keep in flow the springs of love – whence the geyser heat is gone – to sustain and comfort (without being comforted by them) the wife, whose beauty is passed away, and who may have taken to scold, and the children, whose chief idea of daddy is that he has got a halfpenny.

This glorious inglorious courage, grander than any that ever won medal or cross for destroying, had a little home – though he knew it not, and never thought about it – in the broad, well–rounded bosom of simple Stephen Morshead. None but himself knew his narrow escapes; an inch the wrong way and he was a dead man, fifty times a day. And worst of all in the night – oh, in the horrible night, and yet more in the first gleam of morning, when the body was worn out, and dreams came over the eyes, but were death if they passed to the brain, and the trucks went by like nightmares – that very morning he had felt, after taking duty night and day for more than a week, since they killed his partner, he had felt that his Sally must be a widow, and his seven children orphans, if another night went over him without some relief of sleep. That every word of this is true, many a poor man would avouch (if he only had time and the money to read it, and were not afraid); but few rich men will care to swallow facts so indigestible.

Stephen Morshead was astonished at seeing that his mate was come. None of the men in the goods station would have anything to do with it. It was very well to be up in the trucks, or upon the engines, or even to act as switchman, for you had a corner inviolable, and could only do mischief to others. But to run in and out, and through and through, in that perpetual motion, to be bound to jot down every truck, the cover, and contents of it, entering or departing from that crammed and crowded terminus, to have nobody to help you therein, and nobody to cry “dead man” if you died, and the certainty that if you stood a hairʼs–breadth out of the perpendicular, or a single wheel had a bunion, you with the note–book in your hand must flood the narrow ‘tween–ways, and find your way out underneath to heaven; all this, and the risk of the fearful jumps from one sliding train to another, sliding oppositely, and jerking, perhaps, as you jumped; and yet if you funked the jump you must be crushed, like a frog beneath a turf–beater: these considerations, after many pipes were smoked over them, had induced all the porters and stokers to dwell on the virtues of the many men killed, and to yield to their wives’ entreaties, acquiesce in their sixteen shillings, nor aspire to the four shillings Charon–fare.

“Now,” said Morshead, “shake hands with me,” as Cradock, breathless with running wonder, leaped upon the nine–inch gangway. “I see you belongs to a different horder of society; obliged to keep my eyes open, mate; but, as long as you and I works together, I ask it as a favour of you, to shake hands night and morning.”

“With the greatest pleasure,” said Cradock, “if you think thereʼs room for our funny–bones.”

“Ha, ha!” laughed Morshead, “you are the right sort for it. Not a bit afeard, I see. Now I mustnʼt stop to talk; just follow me, and do as I do. I can put you up to it in six hours; and then if you can spare me for the other six, ‘twill be the saving of the little ones. But tell the truth if youʼre tired. I should scorn myself if harm came to you.”

“You are the bravest man I ever met,” said Cradock, with his heart rising; “you cannot expect me to be like you. But you shall not find me a coward.”

“I can see it by your eyes, lad. No sparkle, but a glowing like. I can always tell by the eyes of a man how long he will last at this work. Now come along o’ me, and Iʼll show you the nine worst crushing places.”

Cradock followed him through the threads – threads of Clotho and Atropos – feeling the way with his legs, like a gnat who “overs the posts” of a spiderʼs web. In and out, with a jump here and there, when two side–boards threatened to shear them, they got to the gorge at the entrance, where the main turmoil of all was. The Symplegades were a joke to it. And all because the Screwing Company would not buy land enough to get elbow room. There are several lines of railway which do a much larger business; there is no other which attempts to do so much upon less than four times the acreage.

“Iʼve tottled all them as are going out,” Mr. Morshead informed Cradock; “now youʼll see how we enters them as they enters.”

Laughing at his own very miserable joke, he leaped on the chains of the passing waggons, and held up his hand for Cradock not to attempt to do the same.

“Takes a deal of practice that,” he cried, after he had crossed the train; “it ainʼt like a passenger–train, you know; and you must larn when they are standing. I need not to have done it now, but sometimes I be forced. Bide where you are; no danger unless they comes with the flaps down.”

Then he jotted down, with surprising quickness, all the necessary particulars of the train that was coming in. It happened to be an easy one; for there were no tarpaulins at all, and it was not travelling faster than about four miles an hour.

“Some drivers there is,” said Morshead, as he rejoined Cradock round the tail of the train, “who really seem to want to kill a fellow, they come by at such a pace, without having any call for it. I believe they think, the low fools, that we are put as spies upon them, and they would rather kill us than not. – Hold your tongue,” to a man in a truck, who was interrupting his lecture; “donʼt you know better than to offer me that stuff? Never touch what they offers you, sir. They means no harm, but you had safer take poison when you be on duty. There is not much real danger just here, if a fellow is careful, because the rails run parallo; there is nothing round the curve now, I see, and only two coming out, and both of they be scored; itʼs a rare chance to show you the figures of eight, and slide–points where the chief danger is. Show you where poor Charley was killed last week, and how he did it.”

“Poor fellow! Did he leave any family?”

“Twelve in all. No man comes here, unless he be tired of his life, or be druv to it by the little ones.”

“And what did the Company do for them?”

“Oh, behaved most ‘andsome for them. Allowed ‘em two bob a week for a twelvemonth to come – twopence apiece all round. But they only did it to encourage me, for fear I should funk off. I have seen out three mates now. Please God, I shanʼt see you out too, my lad.”

“If you do, it shanʼt be from funk, Morshead. I rather like the danger.”

“Thatʼs the worst thing of all,” replied Stephen; “I beg of you not to say that, sir.”

A thoroughly brave man almost always has respect for order. The bold man – which means a coward with jumps in him – generally has none. It was strange to see how Stephen Morshead, in all that crush, and crash, and rattle, that swinging and creaking as of the Hellespontic boat–bridge, mixed deference with his pity for Cradock. He saw, from his face, and air, and manner, that he was bred a gentleman. Shall we ever come – or rather the twentieth generation come – to the time when every man of England (but for his own fault) shall be bred and trained a gentleman in the true and glorious sense of it?

Cradock saw the fatal places, where the sleepers still were purple, where danger ran in converging lines, where a man must stand sideways, like a duellist, and with his arms in like a drill–sergeantʼs, and not shrink an inch from the driving–wheels; where his size was measured as for his coffin, and if he stirred he would want nothing more. Then, if a single truck–flap were down, if an engine rollicked upon the rail, if a broad north–country truck, overreaching, happened to be in either train, when you were caught between the two, your only chance was to cry, “Good God!” and lie upon your side, and straighten all your toes out.

And yet these were the very places where, most of all, the “number–taker” was bound to have his stand – where alone he could contrive to check two trains at once. “Could they help starting two trains at once?” poor Crad asked himself – for he had found no time to ask it before – when, weary to the last fibre with the work of the day, he fell upon his little bed, and could hardly notice Wena. Perhaps they could not; it was more than he knew; only he knew that, if they could, they were but wanton man–slaughterers.

After a deep sleep, all in his clothes, he awoke the next morning quite up for his work, and Morshead, who had been on duty all night, and whose eyes seemed cut out of card–board, only stayed for an hour with him, and then, feeling that Crad was quite up to the day–work, ran home and snored for ten hours, as loud as Phlegethon or Enceladus.

The most fearful thing, for a new hand, was, of course, the night–work; and Stephen Morshead, delighted to have such a mate at last, had begged to leave Cradock the day–spell, at least for the first three weeks; for to Stephen the moon was as good as the sun, and sweet sleep fell like wool when plucked at, and hushed the tramping steeds of the day–god. Only, for the sake of Stephenʼs eyes, on whose accuracy hung the life–poise, it was absolutely necessary not to dilate the pupils incessantly.

But Cradock never took night–work there; and the change came about on this wise. Wena felt that she was wronged by his going away from her every day so early in the morning, and not coming home to her again till ever so late at night, and then too tired to say a word, or perhaps he didnʼt care to do it. Like all females of any value – unless they are really grand ones, and, if such there be, please to keep them away – Wena grew jealous desperately. She might as well be anybody elseʼs dog; and the bakerʼs dog was with his master all day; and the butcherʼs lady dog, a nasty ill–bred thing – the idea of calling her a lady! – why, even she was allowed, though the selfish thing didnʼt care for it, unless there was suet on his apron, to jump up at him and taste him, all the time he was going for orders. And then look even at the Ducksacre dog, a despicable creature – his father might have been a bull–terrier, or he might have been a Pomeranian, or a quarter–bred Skye, or the Lord knows who, very likely a turnspit, and his mother, oh! the less we say of her the better; – why, that wretched, lop–eared, split–tailed thing, without an eye fit to look out of, had airs of his own; and what did it mean, she would like to know, and she who had formed some nice acquaintances, dogs that had been presented at Court, and got Eau–de–Cologne every morning, and not a blessed [run away] upon them? Why, it meant simply this: that Spot, filthy plague–spot, was allowed to go out with the baskets, and made a deal of by his owners, and might cock his tail with the best of them, while she, black Wena, who had been brought up so differently —

Here her feelings were too much for her, and she put down her soft flossy ear upon the drugget–scrap, and looked at the door despairingly, and howled until Mrs. Ducksacre was obliged to come up and comfort her. Even then she wouldnʼt eat the dripping.

From that day she made her mind up. She would watch her opportunity. What was the good of being endowed with such a nose as she had, unless she could smell her master out, even through the streets of London? What did he wear such outlandish clothes for? Very likely, on purpose to cheat her. Very likely he was even keeping some other dog. At any rate, she would know that, if it cost her her life to do it. What good was her life now to her, or anybody else? Heigho!

On the following Saturday, when Cradock was gone to his fifth dayʼs work, what does Wena do, when Mrs. Ducksacre came up on purpose to coax and make much of her, but most ungratefully give her the slip, with a skill worthy of a better purpose, then scuttle down the stairs, all four legs at once, in that sort of a bone–slide which domestic dogs acquire. Miss Ducksacre ran out of the shop at the noise – for this process is not a silent one; but she could only cry, “Oh, Lord!” as Wena, with the full impact of her weight multiplied into her velocity; or, if that is wrong, with the cube of her impetus multiplied into the forty–two stairs – bang she came anyhow, back–foremost, against the young ladyʼs – nay, you there, I said, “lower limbs” – and deposited her in a bushel of carrots, just come from Covent Garden.

“Stop her, Joe, for Godʼs sake, stop her!” Miss Ducksacre cried to the shop–boy, as well as she could, for the tail of a carrot which had gotten between her teeth.

“Blowed if I can, miss,” the boy responded, as Wena nipped his fingers for him; the next moment she was free as the wind, and round the corner in no time.