My acquaintance with the engine-driver led on to one with a very broad
porter. He was about the stoutest and tightest looking man I ever saw
to be active, and active he really was, bobbing about like a fat cork
float, and doing a great deal of work with very little effort, smiling
pleasantly the while.
Dick Masson was quite a philosopher in his way, but his philosophy did
not let him bear his fat with patience. Like Hamlet, he used to say,
metaphorically of course, "Oh, that this too solid flesh would melt,"
for he several times came to me to see if I could not give him something
to make him thin.
"Really I can only recommend change of diet, Masson," I said.
"Why I should have thought, sir," he said, staring round the surgery,
"that you'd got doctor's stuff in some of them bottles as would have put
me right in no time."
I had to mix him a bottle of medicine to satisfy him: but it was the
change in his diet and an increase of work that recalled him somewhat.
I used to know Dick at a little station on the Far Eastern line when I
was staying in the neighbourhood, and on leaving there I lost sight of
him for five years, when one day in London I happened upon a cab driven
by an exceedingly stout man, and to my utter astonishment I found that
it was my old friend Dick.
"Why Masson," I exclaimed, "is that you?"
"Yes, doctor," he said with an unctuous chuckle, "half as much again of
me now as there used to be. I were obliged to put up portering and take
to something easier. This life suits me exactly. It's hard on the
horse, certainly, but I was obliged to take to something lighter."
"Better have kept to a porter's life, Masson," I said; "You were much
lighter then."
"So I was doctor, so I was," he said, "but I were awful heavy then, and
when you've got to carry somebody's trunk or portemanty, and your
precious heavy self too, it's more than a man can stand."
"Yes, sir," said Dick to me one day in conversation, for he begged for
my address, and came and asked for a prescription just to ease off a
little of the taut, as he called it; "yes sir," he said, "I'm a working
man though I do drive a cab. One o' them strange individuals that
everybody's been going into fits about lately as to what they should do
with us and for us, and a deal--a great deal more, how to legislate us
and represent us. We don't want legislating an' representing. I tell
you what we want, sir--we want letting alone. Some people runs away
with the idea that your working man's a sort of native furrin wild
animal that wants keepers and bars an' all sorts to keep him in order--
that he's something different to your swell that holds up a 'sumtive
umbrelly at me when he wants a keb, and tells me, `Aw--to--aw, dwive to
the Gweat Westawn or Chawing Cwoss.' Well, and p'r'aps they're right to
some extent; for your working man, air, is a different sort of thing.
Supposing we take your human being, sir, as a precious stone; well, set
down your working man as the rough pebble, whilst your swell's the thing
cut and polished.
"Fine thing that cutting and polishing, makes the stone shine and
twinkle and glitter like anything; but I have heard say that it takes a
little off the vally of the original stone; while, if it's badly cut,
it's old gooseberry. Now, you know, sir, I have seen cases where I've
said to myself, `That stone's badly cut, Dick;' and at other times I've
set down a fare at a club or private house, or what not, and I've been
ready to ask myself what he was ever made for. Ornament, p'r'aps.
Well, it might be for that; but, same time, it seems hardly likely that
Natur' had time to make things without their having any use. You may
say flowers are only ornamental, but I don't quite see that sir; for it
always seemed to me as the smallest thing that grew had its purpose,
beginning with the little things, and then going on right up to the big
things, till you get to horses, whose proper use is, of course, to draw
kebs.
"I've been most everything in my day, sir, before I took to kebs, but of
all lines of life there isn't one where you get so much knowledge of
life, or see so much, as you do on a box; while of all places in the
world, there's no place like London. I've never been out of it lately,
not farther than 'Ampton Court, or Ascot, or Epsom--stop; yes, I did
once have eight hours at the sea-side with the missis, and enough too.
What's the good of going all they miles when you can smell the sea air
any morning early on London Bridge, if the tide's coming in; or, easier
still, at any stall where they sell mussels or oysters?
"Talk about furrin abroad, give me London. Why, where else d'yer see
such dirt--friendly dirt? Sticks to you, and won't leave go. Where
else is there such a breed of boys as ours, though they do always want
cutting down behind? Where such pleecemen, though they are so precious
fond of interfering, and can't let a man stand five minutes without
moving him on? No, sir, London's the place for me, even if it does pour
down rain, and plash up mud, till you tie a red cotton soaker round the
brims of your hat to keep the rain water from trickling through and down
your neck, for you see, it's soft enough for anything.
"London's the place, sir, for me; better than being a porter at
Gravelwick though you mightn't think it.
"Gentleman in uniform in those days. Short corduroy jacket, trousis,
and weskit; red patch on the collar with F.E.R., in white letters, on
it, and a cap with the same letters in brass on the front. Sort of
combination of the useful and ornamental, I were, in those days.
"Nice life, porter's, down at a small station with a level crossing.
Lively, too, opening gates, and shotting on 'em; trimming lamps,
lightin' 'em, and then going up a hiron ladder to the top of a pole to
stick 'em up for signals, with blue and red spectacles to put before
their bulls' eyes, so that they could see the trains a-coming, and tell
the driver in the distance whether it was all right.
"Day-time I used to help do that, too, by standing up like a himage
holding a flag till the train fizzed by; for it wasn't often as one
stopped there. Sitting on a cab's lonely on a wet day; but talk about a
lonely life--porter's at a little station's 'nough to give you the
horrors. I should have tried to commit sooicide myself, as others did,
if it hadn't been for my taters.
"Yes--my taters. I had leave to garden a bit of the slope of the
cutting, and it used to be my aim to grow bigger taters than Jem
Tattley, at Slowcombe, twenty mile down the line; and we used to send
the fruit backwards and forrards by one of the guards to compare 'em. I
beat him reg'lar, though, every year, 'cause I watered mine more in the
dry times; and proud I was of it. Ah, it's a werry elewating kind o'
pursuit, is growing taters; and kep' up my spirits often when I used to
get low in the dark, soft, autumn times, and get afraid of being cut up
by one of the fast trains.
"Terribly dangerous they are to a man at a little station, for he gets
so used to the noise that he don't notice them coming, and then--There,
it would be nasty to tell you what comes to a pore porter who is not on
the look-out.
"I had a fair lot to do, but not enough; and my brightest days used to
be when, after sitting drowsing there on a barrow, some gent would come
by a stopping train--fishing p'r'aps, and want his traps carried to the
inn, two miles off; or down to the river, when our young station-master
would let me off, and I stopped with the gent fishing.
"Sometimes I give out the tickets--when they were wanted; but a deal of
my time was take up watching the big daisies growing on the gravelly
bank, along with the yaller ragwort; or counting how many poppies there
was, or watching the birds chirping in the furze-bushes. I got to be
wonderful good friends with the birds.
"We had a siding there for goods; but, save a little corn now and then,
and one truck of coals belonging to an agent, there was nothing much
there. There was no call for anything, for there would have been no
station there only that, when the line was made, the big gent as owned
the land all about wouldn't give way about the line going through his
property unless the company agreed to make a station, and arrange that
he could stop fast trains by signal whenever he wanted to go up to
London, or come down, or to have his friends; for, of course, he
wouldn't go by the penny-a-miler parliamentary that used to crawl down
and stop at Gravelwick.
"We had a very cheerful time of it in the early days there afore you
know'd the place, me and the station-masters--young fellows they used to
be--half-fledged, and I saw out six of them; for they used only to be
down there for a short time before they got a change. I used to long to
be promoted, and tried two or three times; but they wouldn't hear of it;
and the smooth travelling inspector who used to come down would humbug
me by telling me that I was too vallerble a servant to the company to be
changed, for I acted as a sort of ballast to the young station-masters.
"This being the case, I got thinking I ought to get better pay, and I
told him so; and he said I was right, and promised to report the case;
but whether he did so or didn't, and, if he did, whether he made a load
enough report, I don't know; 'tall events, I never got no rise, but had
eighteen shillings a week when I went on the line, and eighteen
shillings a week when I came off, five years after.
"Me and the station-master used to chum it, the station being so
lonesome. When the young chaps need first to come down, they used to
come the big bug, and keep me at a distance, and expect me to say `sir.'
But, lor' bless you, that soon went off, and they used to get me to
come and sit with them, to keep off the horrors--for we used to get 'em
bad down there--and then we'd play dominoes, or draughts, or cribbage,
when we didn't smoke.
"It was a awful lonesome place, and somehow people got to know it, and
they'd come from miles away to Gravelwick.
"`What for?' says you.
"There, you'd never guess, so I'll tell you--to commit suicide.
"It was too bad on 'em, because it made the place horrible. I wasn't
afraid of ghosts; but after having one or two fellows come and put
themselves before the fast trains, and having inquests on 'em, for the
life of you you couldn't help fancying all sorts of horrors on the dark
nights.
"Why, that made several of our young station-masters go. One of 'em
applied to be removed, and because they didn't move him he ran off--
threw up his place, he did--but I had to stay.
"Things got so bad at last that the station-master and me used to look
at every passenger as alighted at our station suspicious like if he was
a stranger; and we found out several this way, bless you; and if we
couldn't persuade 'em to go away to some other station to do what they
wanted, or contrive to bring 'em to a better turn of mind, we used to
lock 'em up in the lamp-room and telegraph to Tenderby for a policeman
to fetch 'em away.
"Oh, it was fine games, I can tell you, only it used to give you the
creeps; for some of these parties used to be wild and mad, though others
was only melancholy and stupid.
"Some on 'em was humbugs--chaps in love, and that sorter way--as never
meant to do it, only to make a fuss and be saved, so as their young
ladies could hear as they meant to die for their sake, and so on; but
others was in real earnest; for the fact of one doing it there seemed
like a 'traction to 'em, and they'd come for miles and miles right away
from London.
"It was a lively time being at a sooicidal station; and though the
station-masters and I kept the strictest of lookouts, we got done more'n
once; for a fellow would get out right smart, go off, and then,
artful-like, dodge back to the line a mile or so away, and the fust we'd
hear of it would be from an engine-driver who had gone over him.
"Well, it happens one day that I was alone at the station, when a quiet,
gentlemanly sort of a fellow gets out, smiles, asks me some questions
about the place, and chats pleasantly for a bit, says he means to have a
'tanical ramble--as he calls it--and finishes off by giving me
arf-crown.
"Now, if I'd been as wide-awake as I should have been, I might have
known as there was a screw loose. What should a strange gent give me
arf a crown for if there wasn't? But, bless you, clever and cunning as
I thought myself, I was that innercent that I pockets the coin, grins to
myself, and took no farther notice till, about arf an hour after, I
happens to look along the up line, when I turns sick as could be; for I
sees my gentleman walking between the rails, and the up express just
within a few minutes of being due.
"Even then he'd so thrown me off my guard that I never thought no Wrong,
only that he was looking on the railway banks for rhodum siduses, and
plants of that kind.
"So I shouts to him--
"`Get off that 'ere!' and waves my hands.
"But he takes no notice; and then, all at once, just as the wind brought
the sound of the coming express, if he didn't go down flat, and lay his
neck right on the off up-rail, ready for the engine-wheels to cut it
off.
"It was like pouring cold water down my back, but I was man enough to
act; and, running as hard as I could, I got up to where he lay--about
three hundred yards from the station.
"I makes no more ado, but seizes his legs, and tries to drag him away;
but he'd got tight hold of the rail with both hands--for it was where
the ballast was dear away from it, to let the rain run off--and I
couldn't move him; 'sides which, he began to kick at me fierce, roaring
at me to get away.
"Finding as I couldn't move him, and the train coming nearer, and being
afraid that I should get in danger myself if I got struggling with him,
I thought I'd try persuasion.
"`What are you going to do?' I says.
"`Tired of life--tired of life--tired of life,' he kept on saying, in a
curious, despairing way.
"`Get up--get up.'
"For the train was coming on. I could hear it roaring in the distance;
and I knew it would spin round the curve into sight, and then dash along
the straight to where we were.
"`Go away,' he cried, hoarsely; `tired of life.'
"`There was another fellow cut all to pieces there,' I says, to frighten
him.
"`I know--I know,' he said; `three hundred yards north of the station.'
"He must have read that in a noosepaper, and saved it up, you know.
"What to do I couldn't tell. I wasn't able to move him, for he clung to
the rails as if he grew there, and the train was coming.
"All I could see to do was to run on and try to stop it; but that
wouldn't have done, for the engine would have been over the poor wretch
before the breaks would have acted; and at last, with the roar coming on
I stood there in the six foot, and I says, savage like--
"`It's too bad; see what a mess you'll make.'
"`What?' he says, lifting up his head, and staring at me a horribly
stiff, hard look, as of one half-dead.
"`See what a mess you'll make,' I says, `and I shall have to clean it
up.'
"`Mess?' he says, raising himself, and kneeling there in the six-foot on
the ballast.
"`Yes, mess,' I says,--`tatters, rags of clothes, and something so
horrid all over the line, that it's enough to make a strong man sick.'
"`I never thought of that,' he says, putting his hands to his head.
"And as he did so there was a shriek, a rush, a great wind, which sent
the dust and sticks flying, and the express thundered by, with that poor
chap staring hard.
"As it passed, he looked at it with a sort of shudder.
"`You don't know what a mess it makes,' I said, as he got slowly up.
"`No,' he says, in a curious way--`no, I never thought of that.' And he
began to brush the dirt and dust off his clothes. `But I thought it
would not hurt.'
"`Not you, perhaps,' I said, trying to keep his attention; `but how
about me?'
"`Yes, yes,' he muttered, `I never thought of that.'
"He stooped down, touched the rail with his finger, looked at it,
shuddered, and then looked up the line.
"`I tell you it's horrid,' I said; `and it's cowardly of a fellow to
come here for that. Now, then, you'd best come on to the station.'
"`Yes,' he said again, `I never thought of that.' And he let me brush
him down, and followed me like a lamb to the station, where, unbeknown
to him, I telegraphed to the town, and a constable came and took him by
the next train, with all the spirit regularly took out of him by my
words.
"I'd about forgotten that poor chap till about six months after, when he
came down by the stopping train, and shook hands with me, and gave me a
five pound note.
"I was afraid he was going to try it on again, but no, bless you. He
thanked me with tears in his eyes, for saving his life, telling me he
was half-mad at the time, and determined--something polling him like--to
end his life. He had felt no fear, and was glad the train was coming,
when my words sounded so queer and strange to him that they seemed, as
he said, to take all the romance out of the thing, and show it to him
in, to use his words, `its filthy, contemptible, cowardly shape. If men
could see,' he said, `they would never commit such an act.'
"I saw him off again in the train, and was very glad when he was gone.
"That affair about settled me. I was sick of it; and as soon as I
could--close upon a year arter, though--I came up to London and took to
cabbing, for I'd had quite enough of our old station."