“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.”
* * * * *
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.
NO. 2 BRANCH LINE
THE ENGINE-DRIVER
“Altogether? Well. Altogether, since 1841, I’ve killed seven men and
boys. It ain’t many in all those years.”
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.
“Yes, sir, I have been for five-and-twenty years a Locomotive
Engine-driver; and in all 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.”
How did he become an engine-driver?
“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. 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 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!
“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. That’s well known. They know too much. It’s
just as I’ve heard of a man with regard to _his_ 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.
“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 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.
“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 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.’
“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, _now_, in
tunnels than anywhere else. We never enter a tunnel unless it’s
signalled Clear.
“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 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.
“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.
“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 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.
“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 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.
“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 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.
“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.
“Our domestic life—our life at home, you mean? Well, as to that, we
don’t see much 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 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!
“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 _did_ 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 _was_ 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 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.
“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.”
NO. 3 BRANCH LINE
THE COMPENSATION HOUSE
“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.”
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.
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.
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 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.
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 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.”
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.
“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.”
“In the sitting-rooms, I suppose you mean?”
“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.”
“But how is it?” I asked. “Why are there no looking-glasses in any of
the rooms?”
“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 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.’”
“But how did you know there never would be one?” I asked.
“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 _surreptious_, 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 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.”
“What an extraordinary thing!” I said, pondering.
“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 very thing which she never
_was_ 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
_was_ 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”—Mr. Masey
touched his head as he spoke—“so short, that it didn’t require any
parting, before or behind.”
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.
“Had your master any personal defect,” I inquired, “which might have made
it distressing to him to see his own image reflected?”
“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.”
“Then what was it? What is it?” I asked, desperately. “Is there no one
who is, or has been, in your master’s confidence?”
“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.”
“And who is that?”
The old man turned round and looked at me fixedly. “The doctor here,” he
said. “Dr. Garden. My master’s very old friend.”
“I should like to speak with this gentleman,” I said, involuntarily.
“He is with my master now,” answered Masey. “He will be coming out
presently, 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.
“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.”
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.
“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?”
“Yes, he has told me something,” I answered, “and he says you know all
about it.”
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.”
“Haunted?” I repeated. “And in the strangest fashion that you ever heard
of?”
Dr. Garden smiled at my eagerness, seemed to be collecting his thoughts,
and presently went on:
“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 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.
“In my professional capacity I could not 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.
“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.
“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 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.
“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 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.
“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.
“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 answer. Feeling that longer suspense would be
unendurable, I, without more ceremony, turned the handle and went in.
“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.
“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.
“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, 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.
“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 lived in this world again. He
turned round upon me, as suddenly as a tiger makes its spring, and seized
me by the arm.
“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 _must_ be strong.
“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.’
“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.
“‘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.
“I did as he asked me.
“‘What do you see?’ he asked next.
“‘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—’
“‘What?’ he cried, with an alarm in his voice which I could not
understand.
“‘With sunken cheeks,’ I went on, ‘and two hollow eyes with large
pupils.’
“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.
“‘What,’ he stammered at last. ‘Do you—see it—too?’
“‘See what?’ I asked, quickly.
“‘That face!’ he cried, in accents of horror. ‘That face—which is not
mine—and which—I SEE INSTEAD OF MINE—always!’
“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.
“‘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.’
“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?’
“‘Why yours, of course.’ And then, after a moment, I added, ‘Whose do
you see?’
“He answered, like one in a trance, ‘_His_—only his—always his!’ He
stood still a moment, and then, with a loud and terrific scream, repeated
those words, ‘ALWAYS HIS, ALWAYS HIS,’ and fell down in a fit before me.
* * * * *
“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.
“That awful scene was always before me. I saw this devoted man day after
day, with the eyes of my imagination, sometimes destroying in 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.
“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.
“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 together, and I have had, consequently, to look after a new
servant.
“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?”
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.
“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.”
“Ah! sir,” the man answered, in a troubled voice, “I’m afraid he won’t be
my master long.”
The doctor was on his legs in a moment. “What! Is he worse?”
“I think, sir, he is dying,” said the old man.
“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.
He was lying with closed eyes when we came into the room, and I had
leisure to examine his 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.
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.
“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.
“No. Let him stay.”
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 Masey stood
beside the bed. There was a moment’s pause.
“I want a looking-glass,” said Strange, without a word of preface.
We all started to hear him say those words. “I am dying,” said Strange;
“will you not grant me my request?”
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.
“Put it down,” he said, faintly—“anywhere—for the present.”
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.
The sick man tried to raise himself a little. “Prop me up,” he said. “I
speak with difficulty—I have something to say.”
They put pillows behind him, so as to raise his head and body.
“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.
“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.
“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.’
“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,’ 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.”
The sick man stopped to take breath. It seemed an hour, though it was
probably not more than two minutes, before he spoke again.
“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.
“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!”
He fell back exhausted, and we all pressed forward thinking that he must
be dead, he lay so still.
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.
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.
“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.
“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 been a terrible one. Let us
hope in God’s mercy that your punishment is over.”
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.
“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.”
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.
NO. 4 BRANCH LINE
THE TRAVELLING POST-OFFICE
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 P.M., 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 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.
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, 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.
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
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.
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 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 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.
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 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.
“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.
“I am A. Clifton,” she answered.
“And your name?” I said.
“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.”
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.
“Did you know you would travel with me?” I asked, in a lower voice; for
Tom Morville, my junior, was at my other elbow.
“I knew I should travel with Mr. Wilcox,” she answered, with a smile that
made all my nerves tingle.
“You have not written me a word for ages,” said I, reproachfully.
“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.
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.
“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?”
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 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.
“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.”
“Oh! I know nothing about politics,” she answered, indifferently, “and we
have had that box through our office a time or two.”
“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 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.