THE Cumberland Doctor’s mention of Doncaster Races, inspired Mr. Francis
Goodchild with the idea of going down to Doncaster to see the races.
Doncaster being a good way off, and quite out of the way of the Idle
Apprentices (if anything could be out of their way, who had no way), it
necessarily followed that Francis perceived Doncaster in the race-week to
be, of all possible idleness, the particular idleness that would
completely satisfy him.
Thomas, with an enforced idleness grafted on the natural and voluntary
power of his disposition, was not of this mind; objecting that a man
compelled to lie on his back on a floor, a sofa, a table, a line of
chairs, or anything he could get to lie upon, was not in racing
condition, and that he desired nothing better than to lie where he was,
enjoying himself in looking at the flies on the ceiling. But, Francis
Goodchild, who had been walking round his companion in a circuit of
twelve miles for two days, and had begun to doubt whether it was reserved
for him ever to be idle in his life, not only overpowered this objection,
but even converted Thomas Idle to a scheme he formed (another idle
inspiration), of conveying the said Thomas to the sea-coast, and putting
his injured leg under a stream of salt-water.
Plunging into this happy conception headforemost, Mr. Goodchild
immediately referred to the county-map, and ardently discovered that the
most delicious piece of sea-coast to be found within the limits of
England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the Isle of Man, and the Channel
Islands, all summed up together, was Allonby on the coast of Cumberland.
There was the coast of Scotland opposite to Allonby, said Mr. Goodchild
with enthusiasm; there was a fine Scottish mountain on that Scottish
coast; there were Scottish lights to be seen shining across the glorious
Channel, and at Allonby itself there was every idle luxury (no doubt)
that a watering-place could offer to the heart of idle man. Moreover,
said Mr. Goodchild, with his finger on the map, this exquisite retreat
was approached by a coach-road, from a railway-station called Aspatria—a
name, in a manner, suggestive of the departed glories of Greece,
associated with one of the most engaging and most famous of Greek women.
On this point, Mr. Goodchild continued at intervals to breathe a vein of
classic fancy and eloquence exceedingly irksome to Mr. Idle, until it
appeared that the honest English pronunciation of that Cumberland country
shortened Aspatria into ‘Spatter.’ After this supplementary discovery,
Mr. Goodchild said no more about it.
By way of Spatter, the crippled Idle was carried, hoisted, pushed, poked,
and packed, into and out of carriages, into and out of beds, into and out
of tavern resting-places, until he was brought at length within sniff of
the sea. And now, behold the apprentices gallantly riding into Allonby
in a one-horse fly, bent upon staying in that peaceful marine valley
until the turbulent Doncaster time shall come round upon the wheel, in
its turn among what are in sporting registers called the ‘Fixtures’ for
the month.
‘Do you see Allonby!’ asked Thomas Idle.
‘I don’t see it yet,’ said Francis, looking out of window.
‘It must be there,’ said Thomas Idle.
‘I don’t see it,’ returned Francis.
‘It must be there,’ repeated Thomas Idle, fretfully.
‘Lord bless me!’ exclaimed Francis, drawing in his head, ‘I suppose this
is it!’
‘A watering-place,’ retorted Thomas Idle, with the pardonable sharpness
of an invalid, ‘can’t be five gentlemen in straw hats, on a form on one
side of a door, and four ladies in hats and falls, on a form on another
side of a door, and three geese in a dirty little brook before them, and
a boy’s legs hanging over a bridge (with a boy’s body I suppose on the
other side of the parapet), and a donkey running away. What are you
talking about?’
‘Allonby, gentlemen,’ said the most comfortable of landladies as she
opened one door of the carriage; ‘Allonby, gentlemen,’ said the most
attentive of landlords, as he opened the other.
Thomas Idle yielded his arm to the ready Goodchild, and descended from
the vehicle. Thomas, now just able to grope his way along, in a
doubled-up condition, with the aid of two thick sticks, was no bad
embodiment of Commodore Trunnion, or of one of those many gallant
Admirals of the stage, who have all ample fortunes, gout, thick sticks,
tempers, wards, and nephews. With this distinguished naval appearance
upon him, Thomas made a crab-like progress up a clean little bulk-headed
staircase, into a clean little bulk-headed room, where he slowly
deposited himself on a sofa, with a stick on either hand of him, looking
exceedingly grim.
‘Francis,’ said Thomas Idle, ‘what do you think of this place?’
‘I think,’ returned Mr. Goodchild, in a glowing way, ‘it is everything we
expected.’
‘Hah!’ said Thomas Idle.
‘There is the sea,’ cried Mr. Goodchild, pointing out of window; ‘and
here,’ pointing to the lunch on the table, ‘are shrimps. Let us—’ here
Mr. Goodchild looked out of window, as if in search of something, and
looked in again,—‘let us eat ’em.’
The shrimps eaten and the dinner ordered, Mr. Goodchild went out to
survey the watering-place. As Chorus of the Drama, without whom Thomas
could make nothing of the scenery, he by-and-by returned, to have the
following report screwed out of him.
In brief, it was the most delightful place ever seen.
‘But,’ Thomas Idle asked, ‘where is it?’
‘It’s what you may call generally up and down the beach, here and there,’
said Mr. Goodchild, with a twist of his hand.
‘Proceed,’ said Thomas Idle.
It was, Mr. Goodchild went on to say, in cross-examination, what you
might call a primitive place. Large? No, it was not large. Who ever
expected it would be large? Shape? What a question to ask! No shape.
What sort of a street? Why, no street. Shops? Yes, of course (quite
indignant). How many? Who ever went into a place to count the shops?
Ever so many. Six? Perhaps. A library? Why, of course (indignant
again). Good collection of books? Most likely—couldn’t say—had seen
nothing in it but a pair of scales. Any reading-room? Of course, there
was a reading-room. Where? Where! why, over there. Where was over
there? Why, _there_! Let Mr. Idle carry his eye to that bit of waste
ground above high-water mark, where the rank grass and loose stones were
most in a litter; and he would see a sort of long, ruinous brick loft,
next door to a ruinous brick out-house, which loft had a ladder outside,
to get up by. That was the reading-room, and if Mr. Idle didn’t like the
idea of a weaver’s shuttle throbbing under a reading-room, that was his
look out. _He_ was not to dictate, Mr. Goodchild supposed (indignant
again), to the company.
‘By-the-by,’ Thomas Idle observed; ‘the company?’
Well! (Mr. Goodchild went on to report) very nice company. Where were
they? Why, there they were. Mr. Idle could see the tops of their hats,
he supposed. What? Those nine straw hats again, five gentlemen’s and
four ladies’? Yes, to be sure. Mr. Goodchild hoped the company were not
to be expected to wear helmets, to please Mr. Idle.
Beginning to recover his temper at about this point, Mr. Goodchild
voluntarily reported that if you wanted to be primitive, you could be
primitive here, and that if you wanted to be idle, you could be idle
here. In the course of some days, he added, that there were three
fishing-boats, but no rigging, and that there were plenty of fishermen
who never fished. That they got their living entirely by looking at the
ocean. What nourishment they looked out of it to support their strength,
he couldn’t say; but, he supposed it was some sort of Iodine. The place
was full of their children, who were always upside down on the public
buildings (two small bridges over the brook), and always hurting
themselves or one another, so that their wailings made more continual
noise in the air than could have been got in a busy place. The houses
people lodged in, were nowhere in particular, and were in capital
accordance with the beach; being all more or less cracked and damaged as
its shells were, and all empty—as its shells were. Among them, was an
edifice of destitute appearance, with a number of wall-eyed windows in
it, looking desperately out to Scotland as if for help, which said it was
a Bazaar (and it ought to know), and where you might buy anything you
wanted—supposing what you wanted, was a little camp-stool or a child’s
wheelbarrow. The brook crawled or stopped between the houses and the
sea, and the donkey was always running away, and when he got into the
brook he was pelted out with stones, which never hit him, and which
always hit some of the children who were upside down on the public
buildings, and made their lamentations louder. This donkey was the
public excitement of Allonby, and was probably supported at the public
expense.
The foregoing descriptions, delivered in separate items, on separate days
of adventurous discovery, Mr. Goodchild severally wound up, by looking
out of window, looking in again, and saying, ‘But there is the sea, and
here are the shrimps—let us eat ’em.’
There were fine sunsets at Allonby when the low flat beach, with its
pools of water and its dry patches, changed into long bars of silver and
gold in various states of burnishing, and there were fine views—on fine
days—of the Scottish coast. But, when it rained at Allonby, Allonby
thrown back upon its ragged self, became a kind of place which the donkey
seemed to have found out, and to have his highly sagacious reasons for
wishing to bolt from. Thomas Idle observed, too, that Mr. Goodchild,
with a noble show of disinterestedness, became every day more ready to
walk to Maryport and back, for letters; and suspicions began to harbour
in the mind of Thomas, that his friend deceived him, and that Maryport
was a preferable place.
Therefore, Thomas said to Francis on a day when they had looked at the
sea and eaten the shrimps, ‘My mind misgives me, Goodchild, that you go
to Maryport, like the boy in the story-book, to ask _it_ to be idle with
you.’
‘Judge, then,’ returned Francis, adopting the style of the story-book,
‘with what success. I go to a region which is a bit of water-side
Bristol, with a slice of Wapping, a seasoning of Wolverhampton, and a
garnish of Portsmouth, and I say, “Will _you_ come and be idle with me?”
And it answers, “No; for I am a great deal too vaporous, and a great deal
too rusty, and a great deal too muddy, and a great deal too dirty
altogether; and I have ships to load, and pitch and tar to boil, and iron
to hammer, and steam to get up, and smoke to make, and stone to quarry,
and fifty other disagreeable things to do, and I can’t be idle with you.”
Then I go into jagged up-hill and down-hill streets, where I am in the
pastrycook’s shop at one moment, and next moment in savage fastnesses of
moor and morass, beyond the confines of civilisation, and I say to those
murky and black-dusty streets, “Will _you_ come and be idle with me?” To
which they reply, “No, we can’t, indeed, for we haven’t the spirits, and
we are startled by the echo of your feet on the sharp pavement, and we
have so many goods in our shop-windows which nobody wants, and we have so
much to do for a limited public which never comes to us to be done for,
that we are altogether out of sorts and can’t enjoy ourselves with any
one.” So I go to the Post-office, and knock at the shutter, and I say to
the Post-master, “Will _you_ come and be idle with me?” To which he
rejoins, “No, I really can’t, for I live, as you may see, in such a very
little Post-office, and pass my life behind such a very little shutter,
that my hand, when I put it out, is as the hand of a giant crammed
through the window of a dwarf’s house at a fair, and I am a mere
Post-office anchorite in a cell much too small for him, and I can’t get
out, and I can’t get in, and I have no space to be idle in, even if I
would.” So, the boy,’ said Mr. Goodchild, concluding the tale, ‘comes
back with the letters after all, and lives happy never afterwards.’
But it may, not unreasonably, be asked—while Francis Goodchild was
wandering hither and thither, storing his mind with perpetual observation
of men and things, and sincerely believing himself to be the laziest
creature in existence all the time—how did Thomas Idle, crippled and
confined to the house, contrive to get through the hours of the day?
Prone on the sofa, Thomas made no attempt to get through the hours, but
passively allowed the hours to get through _him_. Where other men in his
situation would have read books and improved their minds, Thomas slept
and rested his body. Where other men would have pondered anxiously over
their future prospects, Thomas dreamed lazily of his past life. The one
solitary thing he did, which most other people would have done in his
place, was to resolve on making certain alterations and improvements in
his mode of existence, as soon as the effects of the misfortune that had
overtaken him had all passed away. Remembering that the current of his
life had hitherto oozed along in one smooth stream of laziness,
occasionally troubled on the surface by a slight passing ripple of
industry, his present ideas on the subject of self-reform, inclined
him—not as the reader may be disposed to imagine, to project schemes for
a new existence of enterprise and exertion—but, on the contrary, to
resolve that he would never, if he could possibly help it, be active or
industrious again, throughout the whole of his future career.
It is due to Mr. Idle to relate that his mind sauntered towards this
peculiar conclusion on distinct and logically-producible grounds. After
reviewing, quite at his ease, and with many needful intervals of repose,
the generally-placid spectacle of his past existence, he arrived at the
discovery that all the great disasters which had tried his patience and
equanimity in early life, had been caused by his having allowed himself
to be deluded into imitating some pernicious example of activity and
industry that had been set him by others. The trials to which he here
alludes were three in number, and may be thus reckoned up: First, the
disaster of being an unpopular and a thrashed boy at school; secondly,
the disaster of falling seriously ill; thirdly, the disaster of becoming
acquainted with a great bore.
The first disaster occurred after Thomas had been an idle and a popular
boy at school, for some happy years. One Christmas-time, he was
stimulated by the evil example of a companion, whom he had always trusted
and liked, to be untrue to himself, and to try for a prize at the ensuing
half-yearly examination. He did try, and he got a prize—how, he did not
distinctly know at the moment, and cannot remember now. No sooner,
however, had the book—Moral Hints to the Young on the Value of Time—been
placed in his hands, than the first troubles of his life began. The idle
boys deserted him, as a traitor to their cause. The industrious boys
avoided him, as a dangerous interloper; one of their number, who had
always won the prize on previous occasions, expressing just resentment at
the invasion of his privileges by calling Thomas into the play-ground,
and then and there administering to him the first sound and genuine
thrashing that he had ever received in his life. Unpopular from that
moment, as a beaten boy, who belonged to no side and was rejected by all
parties, young Idle soon lost caste with his masters, as he had
previously lost caste with his schoolfellows. He had forfeited the
comfortable reputation of being the one lazy member of the youthful
community whom it was quite hopeless to punish. Never again did he hear
the headmaster say reproachfully to an industrious boy who had committed
a fault, ‘I might have expected this in Thomas Idle, but it is
inexcusable, sir, in you, who know better.’ Never more, after winning
that fatal prize, did he escape the retributive imposition, or the
avenging birch. From that time, the masters made him work, and the boys
would not let him play. From that time his social position steadily
declined, and his life at school became a perpetual burden to him.
So, again, with the second disaster. While Thomas was lazy, he was a
model of health. His first attempt at active exertion and his first
suffering from severe illness are connected together by the intimate
relations of cause and effect. Shortly after leaving school, he
accompanied a party of friends to a cricket-field, in his natural and
appropriate character of spectator only. On the ground it was discovered
that the players fell short of the required number, and facile Thomas was
persuaded to assist in making up the complement. At a certain appointed
time, he was roused from peaceful slumber in a dry ditch, and placed
before three wickets with a bat in his hand. Opposite to him, behind
three more wickets, stood one of his bosom friends, filling the situation
(as he was informed) of bowler. No words can describe Mr. Idle’s horror
and amazement, when he saw this young man—on ordinary occasions, the
meekest and mildest of human beings—suddenly contract his eye-brows,
compress his lips, assume the aspect of an infuriated savage, run back a
few steps, then run forward, and, without the slightest previous
provocation, hurl a detestably hard ball with all his might straight at
Thomas’s legs. Stimulated to preternatural activity of body and
sharpness of eye by the instinct of self-preservation, Mr. Idle
contrived, by jumping deftly aside at the right moment, and by using his
bat (ridiculously narrow as it was for the purpose) as a shield, to
preserve his life and limbs from the dastardly attack that had been made
on both, to leave the full force of the deadly missile to strike his
wicket instead of his leg; and to end the innings, so far as his side was
concerned, by being immediately bowled out. Grateful for his escape, he
was about to return to the dry ditch, when he was peremptorily stopped,
and told that the other side was ‘going in,’ and that he was expected to
‘field.’ His conception of the whole art and mystery of ‘fielding,’ may
be summed up in the three words of serious advice which he privately
administered to himself on that trying occasion—avoid the ball.
Fortified by this sound and salutary principle, he took his own course,
impervious alike to ridicule and abuse. Whenever the ball came near him,
he thought of his shins, and got out of the way immediately. ‘Catch it!’
‘Stop it!’ ‘Pitch it up!’ were cries that passed by him like the idle
wind that he regarded not. He ducked under it, he jumped over it, he
whisked himself away from it on either side. Never once, through the
whole innings did he and the ball come together on anything approaching
to intimate terms. The unnatural activity of body which was necessarily
called forth for the accomplishment of this result threw Thomas Idle, for
the first time in his life, into a perspiration. The perspiration, in
consequence of his want of practice in the management of that particular
result of bodily activity, was suddenly checked; the inevitable chill
succeeded; and that, in its turn, was followed by a fever. For the first
time since his birth, Mr. Idle found himself confined to his bed for many
weeks together, wasted and worn by a long illness, of which his own
disastrous muscular exertion had been the sole first cause.
The third occasion on which Thomas found reason to reproach himself
bitterly for the mistake of having attempted to be industrious, was
connected with his choice of a calling in life. Having no interest in
the Church, he appropriately selected the next best profession for a lazy
man in England—the Bar. Although the Benchers of the Inns of Court have
lately abandoned their good old principles, and oblige their students to
make some show of studying, in Mr. Idle’s time no such innovation as this
existed. Young men who aspired to the honourable title of barrister
were, very properly, not asked to learn anything of the law, but were
merely required to eat a certain number of dinners at the table of their
Hall, and to pay a certain sum of money; and were called to the Bar as
soon as they could prove that they had sufficiently complied with these
extremely sensible regulations. Never did Thomas move more harmoniously
in concert with his elders and betters than when he was qualifying
himself for admission among the barristers of his native country. Never
did he feel more deeply what real laziness was in all the serene majesty
of its nature, than on the memorable day when he was called to the Bar,
after having carefully abstained from opening his law-books during his
period of probation, except to fall asleep over them. How he could ever
again have become industrious, even for the shortest period, after that
great reward conferred upon his idleness, quite passes his comprehension.
The kind Benchers did everything they could to show him the folly of
exerting himself. They wrote out his probationary exercise for him, and
never expected him even to take the trouble of reading it through when it
was written. They invited him, with seven other choice spirits as lazy
as himself, to come and be called to the Bar, while they were sitting
over their wine and fruit after dinner. They put his oaths of
allegiance, and his dreadful official denunciations of the Pope and the
Pretender, so gently into his mouth, that he hardly knew how the words
got there. They wheeled all their chairs softly round from the table,
and sat surveying the young barristers with their backs to their bottles,
rather than stand up, or adjourn to hear the exercises read. And when
Mr. Idle and the seven unlabouring neophytes, ranged in order, as a
class, with their backs considerately placed against a screen, had begun,
in rotation, to read the exercises which they had not written, even then,
each Bencher, true to the great lazy principle of the whole proceeding,
stopped each neophyte before he had stammered through his first line, and
bowed to him, and told him politely that he was a barrister from that
moment. This was all the ceremony. It was followed by a social supper,
and by the presentation, in accordance with ancient custom, of a pound of
sweetmeats and a bottle of Madeira, offered in the way of needful
refreshment, by each grateful neophyte to each beneficent Bencher. It
may seem inconceivable that Thomas should ever have forgotten the great
do-nothing principle instilled by such a ceremony as this; but it is,
nevertheless, true, that certain designing students of industrious habits
found him out, took advantage of his easy humour, persuaded him that it
was discreditable to be a barrister and to know nothing whatever about
the law, and lured him, by the force of their own evil example, into a
conveyancer’s chambers, to make up for lost time, and to qualify himself
for practice at the Bar. After a fortnight of self-delusion, the curtain
fell from his eyes; he resumed his natural character, and shut up his
books. But the retribution which had hitherto always followed his little
casual errors of industry followed them still. He could get away from
the conveyancer’s chambers, but he could not get away from one of the
pupils, who had taken a fancy to him,—a tall, serious, raw-boned,
hard-working, disputatious pupil, with ideas of his own about reforming
the Law of Real Property, who has been the scourge of Mr. Idle’s
existence ever since the fatal day when he fell into the mistake of
attempting to study the law. Before that time his friends were all
sociable idlers like himself. Since that time the burden of bearing with
a hard-working young man has become part of his lot in life. Go where he
will now, he can never feel certain that the raw-boned pupil is not
affectionately waiting for him round a corner, to tell him a little more
about the Law of Real Property. Suffer as he may under the infliction,
he can never complain, for he must always remember, with unavailing
regret, that he has his own thoughtless industry to thank for first
exposing him to the great social calamity of knowing a bore.
These events of his past life, with the significant results that they
brought about, pass drowsily through Thomas Idle’s memory, while he lies
alone on the sofa at Allonby and elsewhere, dreaming away the time which
his fellow-apprentice gets through so actively out of doors. Remembering
the lesson of laziness which his past disasters teach, and bearing in
mind also the fact that he is crippled in one leg because he exerted
himself to go up a mountain, when he ought to have known that his proper
course of conduct was to stop at the bottom of it, he holds now, and will
for the future firmly continue to hold, by his new resolution never to be
industrious again, on any pretence whatever, for the rest of his life.
The physical results of his accident have been related in a previous
chapter. The moral results now stand on record; and, with the
enumeration of these, that part of the present narrative which is
occupied by the Episode of The Sprained Ankle may now perhaps be
considered, in all its aspects, as finished and complete.
‘How do you propose that we get through this present afternoon and
evening?’ demanded Thomas Idle, after two or three hours of the foregoing
reflections at Allonby.
Mr. Goodchild faltered, looked out of window, looked in again, and said,
as he had so often said before, ‘There is the sea, and here are the
shrimps;—let us eat ’em’!’
But, the wise donkey was at that moment in the act of bolting: not with
the irresolution of his previous efforts which had been wanting in
sustained force of character, but with real vigour of purpose: shaking
the dust off his mane and hind-feet at Allonby, and tearing away from it,
as if he had nobly made up his mind that he never would be taken alive.
At sight of this inspiring spectacle, which was visible from his sofa,
Thomas Idle stretched his neck and dwelt upon it rapturously.
‘Francis Goodchild,’ he then said, turning to his companion with a solemn
air, ‘this is a delightful little Inn, excellently kept by the most
comfortable of landladies and the most attentive of landlords, but—the
donkey’s right!’
The words, ‘There is the sea, and here are the—’ again trembled on the
lips of Goodchild, unaccompanied however by any sound.
‘Let us instantly pack the portmanteaus,’ said Thomas Idle, ‘pay the
bill, and order a fly out, with instructions to the driver to follow the
donkey!’
Mr. Goodchild, who had only wanted encouragement to disclose the real
state of his feelings, and who had been pining beneath his weary secret,
now burst into tears, and confessed that he thought another day in the
place would be the death of him.
So, the two idle apprentices followed the donkey until the night was far
advanced. Whether he was recaptured by the town-council, or is bolting
at this hour through the United Kingdom, they know not. They hope he may
be still bolting; if so, their best wishes are with him.
It entered Mr. Idle’s head, on the borders of Cumberland, that there
could be no idler place to stay at, except by snatches of a few minutes
each, than a railway station. ‘An intermediate station on a line—a
junction—anything of that sort,’ Thomas suggested. Mr. Goodchild
approved of the idea as eccentric, and they journeyed on and on, until
they came to such a station where there was an Inn.
‘Here,’ said Thomas, ‘we may be luxuriously lazy; other people will
travel for us, as it were, and we shall laugh at their folly.’
It was a Junction-Station, where the wooden razors before mentioned
shaved the air very often, and where the sharp electric-telegraph bell
was in a very restless condition. All manner of cross-lines of rails
came zig-zagging into it, like a Congress of iron vipers; and, a little
way out of it, a pointsman in an elevated signal-box was constantly going
through the motions of drawing immense quantities of beer at a
public-house bar. In one direction, confused perspectives of embankments
and arches were to be seen from the platform; in the other, the rails
soon disentangled themselves into two tracks and shot away under a
bridge, and curved round a corner. Sidings were there, in which empty
luggage-vans and cattle-boxes often butted against each other as if they
couldn’t agree; and warehouses were there, in which great quantities of
goods seemed to have taken the veil (of the consistency of tarpaulin),
and to have retired from the world without any hope of getting back to
it. Refreshment-rooms were there; one, for the hungry and thirsty Iron
Locomotives where their coke and water were ready, and of good quality,
for they were dangerous to play tricks with; the other, for the hungry
and thirsty human Locomotives, who might take what they could get, and
whose chief consolation was provided in the form of three terrific urns
or vases of white metal, containing nothing, each forming a breastwork
for a defiant and apparently much-injured woman.
Established at this Station, Mr. Thomas Idle and Mr. Francis Goodchild
resolved to enjoy it. But, its contrasts were very violent, and there
was also an infection in it.
First, as to its contrasts. They were only two, but they were Lethargy
and Madness. The Station was either totally unconscious, or wildly
raving. By day, in its unconscious state, it looked as if no life could
come to it,—as if it were all rust, dust, and ashes—as if the last train
for ever, had gone without issuing any Return-Tickets—as if the last
Engine had uttered its last shriek and burst. One awkward shave of the
air from the wooden razor, and everything changed. Tight office-doors
flew open, panels yielded, books, newspapers, travelling-caps and
wrappers broke out of brick walls, money chinked, conveyances oppressed
by nightmares of luggage came careering into the yard, porters started up
from secret places, ditto the much-injured women, the shining bell, who
lived in a little tray on stilts by himself, flew into a man’s hand and
clamoured violently. The pointsman aloft in the signal-box made the
motions of drawing, with some difficulty, hogsheads of beer. Down Train!
More bear! Up Train! More beer. Cross junction Train! More beer!
Cattle Train! More beer. Goods Train! Simmering, whistling, trembling,
rumbling, thundering. Trains on the whole confusion of intersecting
rails, crossing one another, bumping one another, hissing one another,
backing to go forward, tearing into distance to come close. People
frantic. Exiles seeking restoration to their native carriages, and
banished to remoter climes. More beer and more bell. Then, in a minute,
the Station relapsed into stupor as the stoker of the Cattle Train, the
last to depart, went gliding out of it, wiping the long nose of his
oil-can with a dirty pocket-handkerchief.
By night, in its unconscious state, the Station was not so much as
visible. Something in the air, like an enterprising chemist’s
established in business on one of the boughs of Jack’s beanstalk, was all
that could be discerned of it under the stars. In a moment it would
break out, a constellation of gas. In another moment, twenty rival
chemists, on twenty rival beanstalks, came into existence. Then, the
Furies would be seen, waving their lurid torches up and down the confused
perspectives of embankments and arches—would be heard, too, wailing and
shrieking. Then, the Station would be full of palpitating trains, as in
the day; with the heightening difference that they were not so clearly
seen as in the day, whereas the Station walls, starting forward under the
gas, like a hippopotamus’s eyes, dazzled the human locomotives with the
sauce-bottle, the cheap music, the bedstead, the distorted range of
buildings where the patent safes are made, the gentleman in the rain with
the registered umbrella, the lady returning from the ball with the
registered respirator, and all their other embellishments. And now, the
human locomotives, creased as to their countenances and purblind as to
their eyes, would swarm forth in a heap, addressing themselves to the
mysterious urns and the much-injured women; while the iron locomotives,
dripping fire and water, shed their steam about plentifully, making the
dull oxen in their cages, with heads depressed, and foam hanging from
their mouths as their red looks glanced fearfully at the surrounding
terrors, seem as though they had been drinking at half-frozen waters and
were hung with icicles. Through the same steam would be caught glimpses
of their fellow-travellers, the sheep, getting their white kid faces
together, away from the bars, and stuffing the interstices with trembling
wool. Also, down among the wheels, of the man with the sledge-hammer,
ringing the axles of the fast night-train; against whom the oxen have a
misgiving that he is the man with the pole-axe who is to come by-and-by,
and so the nearest of them try to get back, and get a purchase for a
thrust at him through the bars. Suddenly, the bell would ring, the steam
would stop with one hiss and a yell, the chemists on the beanstalks would
be busy, the avenging Furies would bestir themselves, the fast
night-train would melt from eye and ear, the other trains going their
ways more slowly would be heard faintly rattling in the distance like
old-fashioned watches running down, the sauce-bottle and cheap music
retired from view, even the bedstead went to bed, and there was no such
visible thing as the Station to vex the cool wind in its blowing, or
perhaps the autumn lightning, as it found out the iron rails.
The infection of the Station was this:—When it was in its raving state,
the Apprentices found it impossible to be there, without labouring under
the delusion that they were in a hurry. To Mr. Goodchild, whose ideas of
idleness were so imperfect, this was no unpleasant hallucination, and
accordingly that gentleman went through great exertions in yielding to
it, and running up and down the platform, jostling everybody, under the
impression that he had a highly important mission somewhere, and had not
a moment to lose. But, to Thomas Idle, this contagion was so very
unacceptable an incident of the situation, that he struck on the fourth
day, and requested to be moved.
‘This place fills me with a dreadful sensation,’ said Thomas, ‘of having
something to do. Remove me, Francis.’
‘Where would you like to go next?’ was the question of the ever-engaging
Goodchild.
‘I have heard there is a good old Inn at Lancaster, established in a fine
old house: an Inn where they give you Bride-cake every day after dinner,’
said Thomas Idle. ‘Let us eat Bride-cake without the trouble of being
married, or of knowing anybody in that ridiculous dilemma.’
Mr. Goodchild, with a lover’s sigh, assented. They departed from the
Station in a violent hurry (for which, it is unnecessary to observe,
there was not the least occasion), and were delivered at the fine old
house at Lancaster, on the same night.
It is Mr. Goodchild’s opinion, that if a visitor on his arrival at
Lancaster could be accommodated with a pole which would push the opposite
side of the street some yards farther off, it would be better for all
parties. Protesting against being required to live in a trench, and
obliged to speculate all day upon what the people can possibly be doing
within a mysterious opposite window, which is a shop-window to look at,
but not a shop-window in respect of its offering nothing for sale and
declining to give any account whatever of itself, Mr. Goodchild concedes
Lancaster to be a pleasant place. A place dropped in the midst of a
charming landscape, a place with a fine ancient fragment of castle, a
place of lovely walks, a place possessing staid old houses richly fitted
with old Honduras mahogany, which has grown so dark with time that it
seems to have got something of a retrospective mirror-quality into
itself, and to show the visitor, in the depth of its grain, through all
its polish, the hue of the wretched slaves who groaned long ago under old
Lancaster merchants. And Mr. Goodchild adds that the stones of Lancaster
do sometimes whisper, even yet, of rich men passed away—upon whose great
prosperity some of these old doorways frowned sullen in the brightest
weather—that their slave-gain turned to curses, as the Arabian Wizard’s
money turned to leaves, and that no good ever came of it, even unto the
third and fourth generations, until it was wasted and gone.
It was a gallant sight to behold, the Sunday procession of the Lancaster
elders to Church—all in black, and looking fearfully like a funeral
without the Body—under the escort of Three Beadles.
‘Think,’ said Francis, as he stood at the Inn window, admiring, ‘of being
taken to the sacred edifice by three Beadles! I have, in my early time,
been taken out of it by one Beadle; but, to be taken into it by three, O
Thomas, is a distinction I shall never enjoy!’