Adventures of Working Men. From the Notebook of a Working Surgeon

“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.”

Chapter Sixteen.

My Patient the Carpenter

“Bring him in,” I said; and four stout fellows carried the insensible figure of a well built young man into the surgery and laid him on the couch.

“How was this?” I exclaimed. “There, shut the door, we don’t want a crowd in here.”

“It was Harry Linney got teasing him, sir, and betting him he couldn’t climb up the outside of the church tower.”

“And he climbed up and fell, eh?” I said, going on with my examination.

“Yes; that’s it,” said one of the men, staring.

“How stupid!” I exclaimed. “Men like you to be always like a pack of boys.”

“Is he killed, doctor?” said another in awestruck tones.

“Killed? no;” I replied, “but he has broken his left arm, and yes – no – yes – his collar-bone as well.”

“Poor old chap,” said a chorus of sympathising voices, and after bandaging and splinting the injuries I sent the man home.

He was too healthy and active a man to be ill long, and he rapidly improved, and in the course of my attendance I used to smile to myself and wonder whether Darwin was not right about our descent from the monkeys; for certainly the climbing propensity was very strong in Fred Fincher, who used to laugh when I talked to him about the folly of men to climb.

“Well, I dunno, sir,” he said, “climbing’s very useful sometimes. I’m a carpenter, and I have to climb a good deal about housetops in my trade, and nobody says it’s foolish then.”

“That’s a necessity,” I replied. “Yours was only a bit of foolish bravado.”

“Well, suppose it was, doctor,” he said smiling. “Anyhow I was not killed. It was nothing like getting up to oil the weathercock after all.”

“Oil what weathercock?” I said.

“Our weathercock, sir.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean at the old place, sir. You see this is how it was: —

“We’d got a weathercock a-top of our church spire at High Beechy; and it was a cock in real earnest, just like the great Dorking in Farmer Granger’s yard; only the one on the spire was gilt, and shone in the sun quite beautiful.

“There was another difference, though. Farmer Granger’s Dorking used to crow in the morn, and sometimes on a moonlight night; but the gilt one a-top of the steeple, after going on swinging round and round, to show quietly which way the wind blew, took it into its head to stick fast in calm weather, while in a rough wind – oh, lor’ a’ mercy! the way it would screech and groan was enough to alarm the neighbourhood, and alarm the neighbourhood it did.

“I wouldn’t believe as it was the weathercock at first, but quite took to old Mother Bonnett’s notion as it was signs of the times, and a kind of warning to High Beechy of something terrible to come to pass.

“But there, when you stood and saw it turning slowly round in the broad daylight, and heard it squeal, why, you couldn’t help yourself, but were bound to believe.

“Just about that time a chap as called himself Steeple Jack – not the real Steeple Jack, you know, but an impostor sort of fellow, who, we heard afterwards, had been going about and getting sovereigns to climb the spires, and oil the weathercocks, and do a bit of repairs, and then going off without doing anything at all – well, this fellow came to High Beechy, saw the Rector, and offered to go up, clean and scrape the weathercock, oil it and all, without scaffolding, for a five pound note.

“Parson said it was too much, and consulted churchwarden Round, who said ‘ditto;’ and so Steeple Jack did not get the job even when he came down to three pound, and then to a sovereign; for, bless you, we were too sharp for him at High Beechy, and suspected that all he wanted was the money, when, you know, we couldn’t have made him go up, it being a risky job.

“The weathercock went on squeaking then awfully, till one afternoon, when we were out on the green with the cricketing tackle for practice, the Rector being with me, for we were going to play Ramboro’ Town next week, and the Rector was our best bowler.

“He was a thorough gentleman was our Rector, and he used to say he loved a game at cricket as much as ever, and as to making one of our eleven, he used to do that, he said, because he was then sure that no one would swear, or take more than was good for him.

“Speaking for our lot, I’m sure it made us all respect him the more; and I tell you one thing it did besides, it seemed to make him our friend to go to in all kind of trouble, and what’s more, it fetched all our lot in the cricket club to church when I’m afraid if it hadn’t been out of respect to the parson we should have stopped away.

“Why, I’ve known him on a hot evening at practice between the overs suddenly cry ‘Hold hard!’ with the ball in his hands, and say —

“‘Tell you what, my lads, I think a glass of Tompkins’s home-brewed wouldn’t be amiss just now. Smith, my man, will you step across and tell them to send me a gallon?’

“Then when it was brought all cool and foaming from out of the cellar, and he took the first glass as a matter of course, he’d got a knack of saying something sensible to a man in a way as did more good than the preaching in a month of Sundays.

“‘That!’ he’d say, with a smack of the lips when he’d finished the cool draught, ‘That’s good, refreshing, invigorating, and hearty. What a pity it is some men will be such fools as to take more than is good for them. Come, my lads, another glass round, and then to work.’

“Why, you may laugh at me, but we all of us loved our parson, and he could turn us all this way or that way with his little finger.

“Well, we were out on the green, as I said, and the talk turned about oiling the weathercock, and about how we’d heard as Steeple Jack, as he called himself, had undertaken to do Upperthorpe steeple, as is thirty feet lower than ours, and had got the money and gone off.

“‘I thought he was a rogue,’ said Billy Johnson. ‘He looked like it; drinking sort of fellow. Tell you what, I’m game to do it any time you like.’

“‘Not you,’ says Joey Rance. ‘It ain’t in you.’

“‘Ain’t it,’ says Billy, tightening his belt, and then —

“‘My good man,’ says the Rector, ‘I couldn’t think of allowing it.’

“You see, ours was a splendid spire, standing altogether a hundred and seventy feet six inches high; and as it says in the old history, was a landmark and a beacon to the country for miles round. There was a square tower seventy feet high, and out of this sprang the spire, tapering up a hundred feet, and certainly one of the finest in the county.

“‘Oh, I’d let him go, sir,’ says Joey: ‘he can climb like a squirrel.’

“‘Or a tom-cat,’ says another.

“‘More like a monkey,’ says Sam Rowley, our wicket-keeper.

“‘Never mind what I can climb like,’ says Billy. ‘I’m game to do it; so here goes.’

“‘But if you do get up,’ said the Rector, ‘you will want tools to take off and oil the weathercock, and you can’t carry them.’

“Just then a message came from the house that the Rector was wanted, and he went away in a hurry: and no sooner had he gone than there was no end of chaff about Billy, which ended in his pulling up his belt another hole, and saying —

“‘I’m going.’

“‘And what are you going to do when you get up there?’

“‘Nothing,’ he says, ‘but tie the rope up to the top of the spire, and leave it for some of you clever chaps to do the work.’

“‘What rope shall you use?’ I said.

“‘The new well rope,’ says Billy. ‘It’s over two hundred feet long.’

“Cricketing was set aside for that day, for Joey Rance went off and got the rope, coming back with it coiled over his arm, and throwing it down before Billy in a defiant sort of way, as much as to say —

“‘There, now let’s see you do it.’

“Without a word, Billy picked up the coil of rope and went in at the belfry door, to come out soon after on the top of the tower, and then, with one end of the rope made into a loop and thrown over his shoulders, he went to one edge of the eight-sided spire and began to climb up from crocket to crocket, which were about a yard apart, and looking like so many ornamental knobs sticking out from the sides.

“We gave him a cheer as he began to go up, and then sat on the grass wondering like to see how active and clever the fellow was as he went up yard after yard climbing rapidly, and seeming as if he’d soon be at the top.

“The whole of the village turned out in a state of excitement, and we had hard work to keep two brave fellows from going up to try at other corners of the spire.

“‘He’ll do it – he’ll do it!’ was the cry over and over again.

“And it seemed as if he would, for he went on rapidly till he was within some thirty feet of the top; when all of a sudden he seemed to lose his hold, and came sliding rapidly down between two rows of crockets, faster and faster, till he disappeared behind the parapet of the tower.

“We held our breath, one and all, as we saw him fall, and a cold chill of horror came upon us. It was not until he had reached the top of the tower that we roused ourselves to run to the belfry door, and began to go up the newel staircase to get to the poor fellow, whom we expected to find half-dead.

“‘Hallo!’ cried Billy’s voice, as we got half-way up the corkscrew, ‘I’m coming down.’

“‘Aint you hurt, then?’ cried Joey Rance.

“‘No, not much,’ said Billy, as we reached him by one of the loopholes in the stone wall. ‘Got some skin off, and a bit bruised.’

“‘Why, we thought you were half killed,’ we said.

“‘Not I,’ he replied, gruffly; ‘the rope caught over one of the crockets, and that broke my fall a bit.’

“‘Going to try again?’ said Joey, with a sneer.

“‘No, I aint going to try again, neither,’ said Billy gruffly. ‘I left the rope up at the top there, thinking you were so clever you’d like to go.’

“‘Oh, I could do it if I liked,’ said Joey.

“‘Only you daren’t,’ said Bill, rubbing his elbows, and putting his lips to his bleeding knuckles.

“‘Daren’t I?’ said Joey.

“Without another word he pushed by Billy, and went on steadily up towards the top of the tower.

“‘I hope he’ll like it,’ said Billy, chuckling. ‘It aint so easy as he thinks. Let’s go down. I’m a good bit shook, and want a drop of brandy.’

“Poor fellow, he looked rather white when we got down; and to our surprise on looking up, on hearing a cheer, there was Joey hard at work, with the rope over his shoulder, climbing away, the lads cheering him again and again as he climbed higher and higher, till he at last reached the great copper support of the weathercock, and then, drawing himself up a bit higher, he clung there motionless for a few minutes, and we began to think that he had lost his nerve and was afraid to move.

“But that wasn’t it – he was only gathering breath; and we gave him a cheer, in which Billy Johnson heartily joined, as, up there looking as small as a crow the plucky fellow gave the weathercock a spin round, afterwards holding on by his legs, clasped round the copper support, while he took the rope from his shoulders, undid the loop, and then tied it securely to the great, strong copper rod.

“All this time he had had his straw hat on; and now, taking it off, he gave it a skim away from him; and away it went right out into space, to fall at last far from the foot of the tower.

“Joey now began to descend very slowly and carefully, as if the coming down was worse than the going up, and more than once he slipped; but he had tight hold of the rope with one hand, and that saved him, so that he only rested, and then continued his task.