"What is its warning against?" he said, ruminating, with his eyes on
the fire, and only by times turning them on me. "What is the danger?
Where is the danger? There is danger overhanging somewhere on the
Line. Some dreadful calamity will happen. It is not to be doubted
this third time, after what has gone before. But surely this is a
cruel haunting of _me_. What can I do?"
He pulled out his handkerchief, and wiped the drops from his heated
forehead.
"If I telegraph Danger, on either side of me, or on both, I can give
no reason for it," he went on, wiping the palms of his hands. "I
should get into trouble, and do no good. They would think I was mad.
This is the way it would work--Message: 'Danger! Take care!'
Answer: 'What Danger? Where?' Message: 'Don't know. But, for God's
sake, take care!' They would displace me. What else could they do?"
His pain of mind was most pitiable to see. It was the mental torture
of a conscientious man, oppressed beyond endurance by an
unintelligible responsibility involving life.
"When it first stood under the Danger-light," he went on, putting his
dark hair back from his head, and drawing his hands outward across
and across his temples in an extremity of feverish distress, "why not
tell me where that accident was to happen--if it must happen? Why
not tell me how it could be averted--if it could have been averted?
When on its second coming it hid its face, why not tell me, instead,
'She is going to die. Let them keep her at home'? If it came, on
those two occasions, only to show me that its warnings were true, and
so to prepare me for the third, why not warn me plainly now? And I,
Lord help me! a mere poor signal-man on this solitary station! Why
not go to somebody with credit to be believed, and power to act?"
When I saw him in this state, I saw that for the poor man's sake, as
well as for the public safety, what I had to do for the time was to
compose his mind. Therefore, setting aside all question of reality
or unreality between us, I represented to him that whoever thoroughly
discharged his duty must do well, and that at least it was his
comfort that he understood his duty, though he did not understand
these confounding Appearances. In this effort I succeeded far better
than in the attempt to reason him out of his conviction. He became
calm; the occupations incidental to his post as the night advanced
began to make larger demands on his attention: and I left him at two
in the morning. I had offered to stay through the night, but he
would not hear of it.
That I more than once looked back at the red light as I ascended the
pathway, that I did not like the red light, and that I should have
slept but poorly if my bed had been under it, I see no reason to
conceal. Nor did I like the two sequences of the accident and the
dead girl. I see no reason to conceal that either.
But what ran most in my thoughts was the consideration how ought I to
act, having become the recipient of this disclosure? I had proved
the man to be intelligent, vigilant, painstaking, and exact; but how
long might he remain so, in his state of mind? Though in a
subordinate position, still he held a most important trust, and would
I (for instance) like to stake my own life on the chances of his
continuing to execute it with precision?
Unable to overcome a feeling that there would be something
treacherous in my communicating what he had told me to his superiors
in the Company, without first being plain with himself and proposing
a middle course to him, I ultimately resolved to offer to accompany
him (otherwise keeping his secret for the present) to the wisest
medical practitioner we could hear of in those parts, and to take his
opinion. A change in his time of duty would come round next night,
he had apprised me, and he would be off an hour or two after sunrise,
and on again soon after sunset. I had appointed to return
accordingly.
Next evening was a lovely evening, and I walked out early to enjoy
it. The sun was not yet quite down when I traversed the field-path
near the top of the deep cutting. I would extend my walk for an
hour, I said to myself, half an hour on and half an hour back, and it
would then be time to go to my signal-man's box.
Before pursuing my stroll, I stepped to the brink, and mechanically
looked down, from the point from which I had first seen him. I can
not describe the thrill that seized upon me, when, close at the mouth
of the tunnel, I saw the appearance of a man, with his left sleeve
across his eyes, passionately waving his right arm.
The nameless horror that oppressed me passed in a moment, for in a
moment I saw that this appearance of a man was a man indeed, and that
there was a little group of other men, standing at a short distance,
to whom he seemed to be rehearsing the gesture he made. The
Danger-light was not yet lighted. Against its shaft, a little low
hut, entirely new to me, had been made of some wooden supports and
tarpaulin. It looked no bigger than a bed.
With an irresistible sense that something was wrong--with a flashing
self-reproachful fear that fatal mischief had come of my leaving the
man there, and causing no one to be sent to overlook or correct what
he did--I descended the notched path with all the speed I could make.
"What is the matter?" I asked the men.
"Signal-man killed this morning, sir."
"Not the man belonging to that box?"
"Yes, sir."
"Not the man I know?"
"You will recognize him, sir, if you knew him," said the man who
spoke for the others, solemnly uncovering his own head, and raising
an end of the tarpaulin, "for his face is quite composed."
"Oh, how did this happen, how did this happen?" I asked, turning from
one to another as the hut closed in again.
"He was cut down by an engine, sir. No man in England knew his work
better. But somehow he was not clear of the outer rail. It was just
at broad day. He had struck the light, and had the lamp in his hand.
As the engine came out of the tunnel, his back was toward her, and
she cut him down. That man drove her, and was showing how it
happened. Show the gentleman, Tom."
The man, who wore a rough dark dress, stepped back to his former
place at the mouth of the tunnel.
"Coming round the curve in the tunnel, sir," he said, "I saw him at
the end, like as if I saw him down a perspective-glass. There was no
time to check speed, and I knew him to be very careful. As he didn't
seem to take heed of the whistle, I shut it off when we were running
down upon him, and called to him as loud as I could call."
"What did you say?"
"I said, 'Below there! Look out! Look out! For God's sake, clear
the way!'"