Adventures of Working Men Part 15

"The man spoken to came back in a few minutes with a wheelbarrow, by which time the bailiff seemed in a state of hopeless collapse, and remained so when he was lifted into the barrow.

"'Don't laugh,' whispered one man, as the other held his sides, and stamped about with mirth to see his companion's efforts to get the man in position; for he could not sit down, nor lie down, nor be placed side-wise, nor cross-wise. Once he was in a sitting posture and, seizing the handles, the man started the barrow; but the bailiff slowly slid down till his head rested upon the barrow wheel, and ground against it.

"'P'raps you'll wheel him yourself next time,' he grumbled to his laughing companion, who stepped up, seized the collapsed bailiff round the waist and carried him in his arms as easily as a girl would a baby, till he reached the village public-house, where he deposited his burden beneath a cart-shed, while the peace of that end of the village was disturbed no more until morning.

"The next day there was an application to the magistrates respecting the nets that had been stolen from Pengelly's store--nets of the value of over one handled pounds having been removed no one knew whither Nicholas Harris was taken to task as having been seen with the bailiff drinking; but he swore truthfully that he had gone home directly he quitted him, and had lain in bed all the next day with a fearful headache. His nets were amongst those taken. Pengelly proved that the other nets taken were Trecarn's and Pollard's, but upon their places being searched only some old nets were found, while the men themselves had put off for sea early that morning. However upon the magistrate learning from Pengelly that every article belonging to him was safe upon his premises, he turned round and whispered for some little time to his clerk, and it was arranged that the case should be adjourned.

"That case was adjourned, and, as the sequel proved _sine die_, for no further notice was taken. Daniel Pengelly got into difficulties, and his goods were sold--Tom Trecarn purchasing some of his nets; whilst it was observable on all sides that both Tom and his friends were in excellent spirits, though that might have been owing to the large take of mackerel they brought in. As to the proceedings of that night, the morality is very questionable; but still, by way of excuse, it does seem hard that under the present state of the law, even though a man can substantially prove that goods upon a defaulter's premises are his own, he must still lose them, as many a poor fellow has found to his cost.

However, the above narrative is a fact, and one's sympathies cannot fail of tending towards the annexation of the nets."

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

MY PATIENT THE PORTER.

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.

d.i.c.k Ma.s.son 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, Ma.s.son," 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 d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k.

"Why Ma.s.son," 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, Ma.s.son," 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 d.i.c.k 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, d.i.c.k;' 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 bra.s.s 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; tr.i.m.m.i.n.g 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 pa.s.senger 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.