II

“You remember me, Young Jackson?”

“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 my life had a penitential anniversary in it called

a birthday. I suppose the last communication was truer than the first!”

“What am I like, Young Jackson?”

“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.”

“You remember me, Mr. Young Jackson?” In another voice from another

quarter.

“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.”

“What am I like, Mr. Young Jackson?”

“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.”

“You remember Me, Mr. Young Jackson?” In a grating voice from quite

another quarter.

“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 _they_ 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.”

“What am I like, Mr. Young Jackson?”

“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.”

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 now looked in the sunlight, an ashier

grey, like a fire which the brightness of the sun put out.

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 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.

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.

“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.”

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.

“There’s Lamps!” said Barbox Brother. “And by-the-by—”

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.

“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.”

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 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.

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 off.

Then, a struggling horse became involved with them. Then, the

locomotives shared the bits of trains, and ran away with the whole.

“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.”

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.

“He is busy. He has not much time for composing or singing Comic Songs

this morning, I take it.”

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 of rails, or that, or

t’other, and stick to it.’ They separate themselves from the confusion,

out here, and go their ways.”

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.

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.

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 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.

“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!”

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.

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 could hear

the children up-stairs singing to a regular measure and clapping out the

time with their hands.

“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!”

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.

But as the children dispersed, he cut off one small straggler—a brown

faced boy with flaxen hair—and said to him:

“Come here, little one. Tell me whose house is that?”

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:

“Phœbe’s.”

“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?”

To which the child made answer: “Why, Phœbe, of course.”

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.

“Phœbe,” said the child, “can’t be anybobby else but Phœbe. Can she?”

“No, I suppose not.”

“Well,” returned the child, “then why did you ask me?”

Deeming it prudent to shift his ground, Barbox Brothers took up a new

position.

“What do you do there? Up there in that room where the open window is.

What do you do there?”

“Cool,” said the child.

“Eh?”

“Co-o-ol,” the child repeated in a louder voice, lengthening out the word

with a fixed 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?”

“Ah! School, school,” said Barbox Brothers. “Yes, yes, yes. And Phœbe

teaches you?”

The child nodded.

“Good boy.”

“Tound it out, have you?” said the child.

“Yes, I have found it out. What would you do with twopence, if I gave it

you?”

“Pend it.”

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.

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.”

“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 mind yet, which iron road to take. In fact, I must get a little

accustomed to the Junction before I can decide.”

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.