I heard this story in a rail-trolly on the Pind-Dadur line, so I
always think of it with a running accompaniment; a rhythmic whir of
wheels in which, despite its steadiness, you feel the propelling
impulse of the unseen coolies behind, then the swift skimming as they
set their feet on the trolly for the brief rest which merges at the
first hint of lessened speed into the old racing measure. Whir and
slide, racing and resting!--while the wheels spin like bobbins and the
brick rubble in the permanent way slips under your feet giddily, until
you could almost fancy yourself sitting on a stationary engine,
engaged in winding up an endless red ribbon. A ribbon edged, as if
with tinsel, by steel rails stretching away in ever narrowing lines to
the level horizon. Stretching straight as a die across a sandy desert,
rippled and waved by wrinkled sand hills into the semblance of a sandy
sea.
And that, from its size, must be a seventh wave. I was just thinking
this when the buzz of the brake jarred me through to the marrow of my
bones.
"What's up? A train?" I asked of my companion who was giving me a lift
across his section of the desert.
"No!" he replied laconically. "Now, then! hurry up, men."
Nothing in the wide world comes to pieces in the hand like a trolly.
It was dismembered and off the line in a moment; only however, much to
my surprise, to be replaced upon the rails some half a dozen yards
further along them. I was opening my lips for one question when
something I saw at my feet among the brick rubble made me change it
for another.
"Hullo! what the dickens is that?"
To the carnal eye it was two small squares of smooth stucco, the one
with an oval black stone set in it perpendicularly, the other with a
round purplish one--curiously ringed with darker circles--set in it
horizontally. On the stucco of one were a few dried _tulsi_[3] leaves
and grains of rice; on the other suspicious-looking splashes of dark
red.
---------------------
[Footnote 3: Marjoram.]
---------------------
"What's what?" echoed my friend, climbing up to his seat again.
"Why, man, that thing!--that thing in the permanent way!" I replied,
nettled at his manner.
He gave an odd little laugh, just audible above the first whir of the
wheels as we started again.
"That's about it. In the permanent way--considerably." He paused, and
I thought he was going to relapse into the silence for which he was
famous; but he suddenly seemed to change his mind.
"Look here," he said, "it's a fifteen mile run to the first curve, and
no trains due, so if you like I'll tell you why we left the track."
And he did.
* * * * *
When they were aligning this section I was put on to it--preliminary
survey work under an R.E. man who wore boiled shirts in the
wilderness, and was great on "Departmental Discipline." He is in Simla
now, of course. Well, we were driving a straight line through the
whole solar system and planting it out with little red flags, when one
afternoon, just behind that big wave of a sand hill, we came upon
something in the way. It was a man. For further description I should
say it was a thin man. There is nothing more to be said. He may have
been old, he may have been young, he may have been tall, he may have
been short, he may have been halt and maimed, he may have been blind,
deaf, or dumb, or any or all of these. The only thing I know for
_certain_ is that he was thin. The _kalassies_[4] said he was some
kind of a Hindu saint, and they fell at his feet promptly. I shall
never forget the R.E.'s face as he stood trying to classify the
creature according to Wilson's _Hindu Sects_, or his indignation at
the _kalassies'_ ignorant worship of a man who, for all they knew,
might be a follower of Shiva, while they were bound to Vishnu, or
_vice versa_. He was very learned over the _Vaishnavas_ and the
_Saivas_; and all the time that bronze image with its hands on its
knees squatted in the sand staring into space perfectly unmoved.
Perhaps the man saw us, perhaps he didn't. I don't know; as I said
before, he was thin.
---------------------
[Footnote 4: Tent pitchers, men employed in measuring land.]
---------------------
So after a time we stuck a little red flag in the ground close to the
small of his back, and went on our way rejoicing until we came to our
camp, a mile further on. It doesn't look like it, but there is a
brackish well and a sort of a village away there to the right, and of
course we always took advantage of water when we could.
It must have been a week later, just as we came to the edge of the
sand hills, and could see a landmark or two, that I noticed the R.E.
come up from his prismatic compass looking rather pale. Then he fussed
over to me at the plane table.
"We're out," he said, "there is a want of Departmental Discipline in
this party, and we are out." I forget how many fractions he said, but
some infinitesimal curve would have been required to bring us plumb on
the next station, and as that would have ruined the R.E.'s
professional reputation we harked back to rectify the error. We found
the bronze image still sitting on the sand with its hands on its
knees; but apparently it had shifted its position some three feet or
so to the right, for the flag was fully that distance to the left of
it. That night the R.E. came to my tent with his hands full of maps
and his mind of suspicions.
"It seems incredible," he said, "but I am almost convinced that
_byragi_ or _jogi_, or _gosain_ or _sunyasi_, whichever he may be, has
had the unparalleled effrontery to move my flag. I can't be sure, but
if I were, I would have him arrested on the spot."
I suggested he was that already; but it is sometimes difficult to make
an R.E. see a Cooper's Hill joke, especially when he is your superior
officer. So we did that bit over again. As it happened, my chief was
laid up with sun fever when we came to the bronze image, and I had
charge of the party. I don't know why, exactly, but it seemed to me
rough on the thin man to stick a red flag at the small of his back, as
a threat that we meant to annex the only atom of things earthly to
which he still clung; time enough for that when the line was actually
under construction. So I told the _kalassies_ to let him do duty as a
survey mark; for, from what I had heard, I knew that once a man of
that sort fixes on a place in which to gain immortality by penance, he
sticks to it till the mortality, at any rate, comes to an end. And
this one, I found out from the villagers, had been there for ten
years. Of course they said he never ate, or drank, or moved, but that,
equally of course, was absurd.
A year after this I came along again in charge of a construction
party, with an overseer called Craddock, a big yellow-headed Saxon who
couldn't keep off the drink, and who had in consequence been going
down steadily in one department or another for years. As good a fellow
as ever stepped when he was sober. Well, we came right on the thin one
again, plump in the very middle of the permanent way. We dug round him
and levelled up to him for some time, and then one day Craddock gave a
nod at me and walked over to where that image squatted staring into
space. I can see the two now, Craddock in his navvy's dress, his blue
eyes keen yet kind in the red face shaded by the dirty pith hat, and
the thin man without a rag of any sort to hide his bronze anatomy.
"Look here, sonny," said Craddock, stooping over the other, "you're in
the way--in the permanent way."
Then he just lifted him right up, gently, as if he had been a child,
and set him down about four feet to the left. It was to be a metre
gauge, so that was enough for safety. There he sat after we had
propped him up again with his _byraga_ or cleft stick under the left
arm, as if he were quite satisfied with the change. But next day he
was in the old place. It was no use arguing with him. The only thing
to be done was to move him out of the way when we wanted it. Of course
when the earthwork was finished there was the plate-laying and
ballasting and what not to be done, so it came to be part of the big
Saxon's regular business to say in his Oxfordshire drawl:
"Sonny, yo're in the waiy--in the permanent waiy."
Craddock, it must be mentioned, was in a peculiarly sober, virtuous
mood, owing, no doubt, to the desolation of the desert; in which, by
the way, I found him quite a godsend as a companion, for when he was
on the talk the quaintness of his ideas was infinitely amusing, and
his knowledge of the natives, picked up as a loafer in many a bazaar
and _serai_, was surprisingly wide, if appallingly inaccurate.
"There is something, savin' yo'r presence, sir, blamed wrong in the
whole blamed business," he said to me, with a mild remonstrance in his
blue eyes, one evening after he had removed the obstruction to
progress. "That pore fellar, sir, 'e's a meditatin' on the word
_Hom-Hommipuddenhome_[5] it is, sir, I've bin told--an' doin' 'is
little level to make the spiritooal man subdoo 'is fleshly
hinstinckts. And I, Nathaniel James Craddock, so called in Holy
Baptism, I do assure you, a-eatin' and a-drinkin' 'earty, catches 'im
right up like a babby, and sets 'im on one side, as if I was born to
it. And so I will--an' willin', too--so as to keep 'im from 'arm's
way; for 'eathin or Christian, sir, 'e's an eggsample to the
spiritooal part of me which, savin' your presence, sir, is most ways
drink."
---------------------
[Footnote 5: _Om mi pudmi houm_. The Buddhist invocation.]
---------------------
Poor Craddock! He went on the spree hopelessly the day after we
returned to civilisation, and it was with the greatest difficulty that
I succeeded in getting him a trial as driver to the material train
which commenced running up and down the section. The first time I went
with it on business I had an inspection carriage tacked on behind the
truck loads of coolies and ballast, so that I could not make out why
on earth we let loose a danger whistle and slowed down to full stop in
the very middle of the desert until I jumped down and ran forward.
Even then I was only in time to see Craddock coming back to his engine
with a redder face than ever.
"It's only old Meditations, sir," he said apologetically, as I climbed
in beside him. "It don't take a minute; no longer nor a cow, and
them's in the reg'lations. You see, sir, I wouldn't 'ave 'arm come to
the pore soul afore 'is spiritooal nater 'ad the straight tip hoaem.
Neither would none of us, sir, coolie nor driver, sir, on the section.
We all likes old _Hommipuddenhome_, 'e sticks to it so stiddy, that's
where it is."
"Do you mean to say that you always have to get out and lift him off
the line?" I asked, wondering rather at the patience required for the
task.
"That's so, sir," he replied slowly, in the same apologetic tones. "It
don't take no time you see, sir, that's where it is. P'r'aps you may
'ave thought, like as I did first time, that 'e'd save 'is bacon when
the engine come along. Lordy! the cold sweat broke out on me that
time. I brought 'er up, sir, with the buffers at the back of 'is 'ed
like them things the photographers jiminy you straight with. But 'e
ain't that sort, ain't Meditations." Here Craddock asked leave to
light his pipe, and in the interval I looked ahead along the narrowing
red ribbon with its tinsel edge, thinking how odd it must have been to
see it barred by that bronze image.
"No! that ain't his sort," continued Craddock meditatively, "though
wot 'is sort may be, sir, is not my part to say. I've ar'st, and
ar'st, and ar'st them pundits, but there ain't one of them can really
tell, sir, 'cos he ain't got any marks about him. You see, sir, it's
by their marks, like cattle, as you tell 'em. Some says he worships
bloody _Shivers_[6]--'im 'oos wife you know, sir, they calls _Martha
Davy_[7]--a Christian sort o' name, ain't it, sir, for a 'eathin
idol?--and some says 'e worships _Wishnyou Lucksmi_[8] an' that lot,
an' _Holy_[9] too, though, savin' your presence, sir, it ain't much
holiness I see at them times, but mostly drink. It makes me feel quite
'omesick, I do assure you, sir, more as if they was humans like me,
likewise."
---------------------
[Footnote 6: _Shiva_.]
[Footnote 7: _Mata devi_.]
[Footnote 8: _Vishnu Lukshmi_.]
[Footnote 9: _Holi_, the Indian Saturnalia.]
---------------------
"And which belief do you incline to?" I asked, for the sake of
prolonging the conversation.
He drew his rough hand over his corn-coloured beard, and quite a grave
look came to the blue eyes. "I inclines to _Shiver_," he said
decisively, "and I'll tell you why, sir. Shiver's bloody; but 'e's
dead on death. They calls 'im the Destroyer. 'E don't care a damn for
the body; 'e's all for the spiritooal nater, like old Meditations
there. Now _Wishnyou Lucksmi_ an' that lot is the Preservers. They
eats an' drinks 'earty, like me. So it stands to reason, sir, don't
it? that 'e's a _Shiver_, and I'm a _Wishnyou Lucksmi_." He stood up
under pretence of giving a wipe round a valve with the oily rag he
held, and looked out to the horizon where the sun was setting, like a
huge red signal right on the narrowing line. "So," he went on after a
pause, "that's why I wouldn't 'ave 'arm come to old Meditations. 'E's
a _Shiver_, I'm a _Wishnyou Lucksmi_. That's what _I_ am."
His meaning was quite clear, and I am not ashamed to say that it
touched me.
"Look here," I said, "take care you don't run over that old chap some
day when you are drunk, that's all."
He bent over another valve, burnishing it. "I hope to God I don't," he
said in a low voice. "That'd about finish me altogether, I expect."
We returned the next morning before daybreak; but I went on the
engine, being determined to see how that bronze image looked on the
permanent way when you were steaming up to it.
"You ketch sight of 'im clear this side," said Craddock, "a good two
mile or more; ef you had a telescope ten for that matter. It ain't so
easy t'other side with the sun a-shining bang inter the eyes. And
there ain't no big wave as a signal over there. But Lordy! there ain't
no fear of my missin' old Meditations."
Certainly, none that morning. He showed clear, first against the rosy
flush of dawn, afterwards like a dark stain on the red ribbon.
"I'll run up close to him to-day, sir," said Craddock, "so as you
shall see wot 'e's made of."
The whistle rang shrill over the desert of sand, which lay empty of
all save that streak of red with the dark stain upon it; but the stain
never moved, never stirred, though the snorting demon from the west
came racing up to it full speed.
"Have a care, man! Have a care!" I shouted; but my words were almost
lost in the jar of the brake put on to the utmost. Even then I could
only crane round the cab with my eyes fixed on that bronze image
straight ahead of us. Could we stop in time--would it move? Yes! no!
yes! Slower and slower--how many turns of the flywheel to so many
yards?--I felt as if I were working the sum frantically in my head,
when, with a little backward shiver, the great circle of steel stopped
dead, and Craddock's voice came in cheerful triumph.
"There! didn't I tell you, sir? Ain't 'e stiddy? Ain't 'e a-subdooin'
of mortality beautiful?" The next instant he was out, and as he
stooped to his task he flung me back a look.
"Now, sonny, you'll 'ave to move. You're in the way--the permanent
way, my dear."
That was the last I saw of him for some time, for I fell sick and went
home. When I returned to work I found, much to my surprise, that
Craddock was in the same appointment; in fact, he had been promoted to
drive the solitary passenger train which now ran daily across the
desert. He had not been on the spree once, I was told; indeed, the
R.E., who was of the Methodist division of that gallant regiment, took
great pride in a reformation which, he informed me, was largely due to
his religious teaching combined with Departmental Discipline.
"And how is Meditations?" I asked, when the great rough hand had
shaken mine vehemently.
Craddock's face seemed to me to grow redder than ever. "'E's very
well, sir, thanking you kindly. There's a native driver on the Goods
now. 'E's a _Shiver-Martha Davy_ lot, so I pays 'im five rupee a month
to nip out sharp with the stoker an' shovel 'is old saint to one side.
I'm gettin' good pay now, you know, sir."
I told him there was no reason to apologise for the fact, and that I
hoped it might long continue; whereat he gave a sheepish kind of
laugh, and said he hoped so too.
Christmas came and went uneventfully without an outbreak, and I could
not refrain from congratulating Craddock on one temptation safely
over.
He smiled broadly.
"Lor' bless you, sir," he said, "you didn't never think, did you, that
Nathaniel James Craddock, which his name was given to 'im in Holy
Baptism, I do assure you, was going to knuckle down that way to old
_Hommipuddenhome?_ 'Twouldn't be fair on Christmas noways, sir, and
though I don't set the store 'e does on 'is spiritooal nater, I was
born and bred in a Christyan country, I do assure you."
I congratulated him warmly on his sentiments, and hoped again that
they would last; to which he replied as before that he hoped so too.
And then _Holi_ time came round, and, as luck would have it, the place
was full of riff-raff low whites going on to look for work in a
further section. I had to drive through the bazaar on my way to the
railway station and it beat anything I had ever seen in various vice.
East and West were outbidding each other in iniquity, and to make
matters worse an electrical dust-storm was blowing hard. You never saw
such a scene; it was pandemonium, background and all. I thought I
caught a glimpse of a corn-coloured beard and a pair of blue eyes in a
wooden balcony among tinkling _sutaras_ and jasmine chaplets, but I
wasn't sure. However, as I was stepping into the inspection carriage
which, as usual, was the last in the train, I saw Craddock crossing
the platform to his engine. His white coat was all splashed with the
red dye they had been throwing at each other, _Holi_ fashion, in the
bazaar; his walk, to my eyes, had a lilt in it, and finally, the neck
of a black bottle showed from one pocket.
Obedient to one of those sudden impulses which come, heaven knows why,
I took my foot off the step and followed him to the engine.
"Comin' aboard, sir," he said quite collectedly. "You'd be better
be'ind to-night, for it's blowin' grit fit to make me a walkin'
sandpaper inside and out." And before I could stop him the black
bottle was at his mouth. This decided me. Perhaps my face showed my
thoughts, for as I climbed into the cab he gave an uneasy laugh.
"Don't be afraid, sir: it's black as pitch, but I knows where old
Meditation comes by instinck, I do assure you. One hour an' seventeen
minutes from the distance signal with pressure as it oughter be.
Hillo! there's the whistle and the baboo a-waving. Off we goes!"
As we flashed past a red light I looked at my watch.
"Don't you be afraid, sir," he said, again looking at his. "It's ten
to ten now, and in one hour an' seventeen minutes on goes the brake.
That's the ticket for _Shivers_ and _Martha Davy_; though I am a
_Wishnyou Lucksmi_." He paused a moment, and as he stood put his hand
on a stanchion to steady himself.
"Very much of a _Wishnyou Lucksmi_," he went on with a shake of the
head. "I've 'ad a drop too much and I know it; but it ain't fair on a
fellar like me, 'aving so many names to them, when they're all the
same--a eatin' an' drinkin' lot like me. There's Christen[10]--you'd
'ave thought he'd 'ave been a decent chap by 'is name, but 'e went on
orful with them _Gopis_--that's Hindu for milkmaids, sir. And
Harry[11]--well, he wasn't no better than some other Harrys I've heard
on. And Canyer,[12] I expect he could just about. To say nothin' of
_Gopi-naughty_;[13] and naughty he were, as no doubt you've heard
tell, sir. There's too many on them for a pore fellar who don't set
store by 'is spiritooal nater; especially when they mixes themselves
up with _Angcore_[14] whisky, an' ginger ale."
---------------------
[Footnote 10: _Kristna_.]
[Footnote 11: _Hari_.]
[Footnote 12: _Kaniya_.]
[Footnote 13: _Gopi-nath_. These are all names of Vishnu in his
various Avatars.]
[Footnote 14: _Encore_.]
---------------------
His blue eyes had a far-away look in them, and his words were fast
losing independence, but I understood what he meant perfectly. In that
brief glimpse of the big bazaar I had seen the rows of Western bottles
standing cheek by jowl with the bowls of _dolee_ dye, the sour curds
and sweetmeats of _Holi_-tide.
"You had better sit down, Craddock," I said severely, for I saw that
the fresh air was having its usual effect. "Perhaps if you sleep a bit
you'll be more fit for work. I'll look out and wake you when you're
wanted."
He gave a silly laugh, let go the stanchion, and drew out his watch.
"Don't you be afraid, sir! One hour and seventeen minutes from the
distance signal. I'll keep 'im out o' 'arm's way, an' willing to the
end of the chapter."
He gave a lurch forward to the seat, stumbled, and the watch dropped
from his hand. For a moment I thought he might go overboard, and I
clutched at him frantically; but with another lurch and an indistinct
admonition to me not to be afraid, he sank into the corner of the
bench and was asleep in a second. Then I stooped to pick up the watch,
and, rather to my surprise, found it uninjured and still going.
Craddock's words, "ten minutes to ten," recurred to me. Then it would
be twenty-seven minutes past eleven before he was wanted. I sat down
to wait, bidding the native stoker keep up the fire as usual. The wind
was simply shrieking round us, and the sand drifted thick on
Craddock's still, upturned face. More than once I wiped it off,
feeling he might suffocate. It was the noisiest, and at the same time
the most silent, journey I ever undertook. Pandemonium, with seventy
times seven of its devils let loose outside the cab; inside Craddock
asleep, or dead--he might have been the latter from his stillness. It
became oppressive after a time, as I remembered that other still
figure, miles down the track, which was so strangely bound to this one
beside me. The minutes seemed hours, and I felt a distinct relief when
the watch, which I had held in my hand most of the time, told me it
was seventeen minutes past eleven. Only ten minutes before the brake
should be put on; and Craddock would require all that time to get his
senses about him.
I might as well have tried to awaken a corpse, and it was three
minutes to the twenty-seven when I gave up the idea as hopeless. Not
that it mattered, since I could drive an engine as well as he; still
the sense of responsibility weighed heavily upon me. My hand on the
brake valve trembled visibly as I stood watching the minute hand of
the watch. Thirty seconds before the time I put the brake on hard,
determining to be on the safe side. And then when I had taken this
precaution a perfectly unreasoning anxiety seized on me. I stepped on
to the footboard and craned forward into the darkness which, even
without the wind and the driving dust, was blinding. The lights in
front shot slantways, showing an angle of red ballast, barred by
gleaming steel; beyond that a formless void of sand. But the centre of
the permanent way, where that figure would be sitting, was dark as
death itself. What a fool I was, when the great circle of the
fly-wheel was slackening, slackening, every second! And yet the fear
grew lest I should have been too late, lest I should have made some
mistake. To appease my own folly I drew out my watch in confirmation
of the time. Great God! a difference of two minutes!--two whole
minutes!--yet the watches had been the same at the distance
signal?--the fall, of course! the fall!!
I seemed unable to do anything but watch that slackening wheel, even
though I became conscious of a hand on my shoulder, of some one
standing beside me on the footboard. No! not standing, swaying,
lurching----
"Don't!" I cried. "Don't! it's madness!" But that some one was out in
the darkness. Then I saw a big white figure dash across the angle of
light with outspread arms.
"Now then, sonny! yo're in the way--the permanent way."
* * * * *
The inspector paused, and I seemed to come back to the sliding whir of
the trolly wheels. In the distance a semaphore was dropping its red
arm and a pointsman, like a speck on the ribbon, was at work shunting
us into a siding.
"Well?" I asked.
"There isn't anything more. When a whole train goes over two men who
are locked in each other's arms it is hard--hard to tell--well, which
is _Shivers Martha Davy_, and which is _Wishnyou Lucksmi_. It was
right out in the desert in the hot weather, no parsons or people to
object; so I buried them there in the permanent way."
"And those are tombstones, I suppose?"
He laughed. "No; altars. The native _employes_ put them up to their
saint. The oval black upright stone is Shiva, the Destroyer's
_lingam_; those splashes are blood. The flat one, decorated with
flowers, is the _salagrama_[15] sacred to Vishnu the Preserver. You
see nobody really knew whether old Meditations was a _Saiva_ or a
_Vaishnava_; so I suggested this arrangement as the men were making a
sectarian quarrel out of the question." He paused again and added:
---------------------
[Footnote 15: A fossil ammonite.]
---------------------
"You see it does for both of them."
The jar of the points prevented me from replying.