Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 9/The station-master at Longley
THE STATION-MASTER AT LONGLEY.
I am not an old man, you say? Well, you are right there: one is not usually considered old at the age of forty-five. Why am I so bald, then? Ah, friend, you may well ask. Men do not usually lose their hair so early in life; and my scalp was polished, in this shining fashion, some fifteen years ago. It took only one grim night’s work to do it all.
A story? Yes, comrade, there is a story anent this same poor bald pate of mine; and, if you wish to hear it, I will tell it you. It is an old story now, and over familiar to our friends about here, for I fear I have gabbled it somewhat too often when the bottle has been going round; but, as you never heard it before, you will find it as good as new. The up-train is not due for a full hour yet; and perhaps my story may help as well as anything else to kill time. Fill your glass, then, and draw nearer to the fire; for that drifting snow outside does not make this winter night too warm.
You say you knew at once, when first you saw me, that I had served. Well, no doubt the soldier who has been in active service always bears the stamp of his profession about him. I have smelt powder on more than one field. I was nine years in the —th Fusiliers. I served in Canada; and, after reaching the grade of sergeant, I was dangerously wounded in a rencontre with the Kaffirs at the Cape, and was sent home with a pension. The restoration of health brought back my constitutional antipathy to idleness; and, after knocking about in sore discontent for some time, I at last succeeded in procuring occupation as ticket-clerk at the Longley station on this line.
You don’t know the country about Longley? No. You lose nothing thereby; for a more miserable district of bleak hills and wild barren moor is not to be found from this to John o’ Groats; and the population, rude and churlish, are as little attractive as the country they dwell in.
Amongst the few acquaintances I made during the one year I spent there, was a young fellow named Carston, the son of a wealthy sheep-farmer, who lived some six miles from the station. A clever fellow he was—the real manager of the farm—and on market-days, and such like, he was a frequent traveller on our line. Young Carston and I had come to be great friends, and more than one pleasant holiday I spent with him (for even we railway officials have holidays now and again) up amongst the hills, bleak and barren as they were. I dwell upon all this (rather tediously, perhaps) because it is to Frank Carston I owe this bald crown.
It was a cold, cheerless winter evening, as I stood upon the platform waiting for the mail train from the north, which was a little behind its time. There was no passenger from Longley: the train would not wait two minutes, and my work would be over when it had passed on. I was pleasantly anticipating a quiet night by my own fire-side, with a hot cup of tea and the London morning paper, when the train came dashing in and pulled up with a shriek, and a head was thrust out from one of the carriages, whilst the familiar voice of my friend Carston hailed me.
“Ned, old follow,” he said, as I hurried up to him, “I want you to do me a great favour. You see this bag: it contains two hundred sovereigns. To-morrow is rent-day, and I got this cash for the old man this morning. You know the craze he has for paying in gold. I am going through to London on urgent business, and what I want you to do for me is to take charge of the money and this letter, and carry them out to our place. Get any sort of conveyance and drive out: don’t mind the expense—I’ll settle all that. I know that, as a friend, you’ll do this carefully for me. Tell father I’ll be home to-morrow night, if possible.”
Off went the train, and, before I could utter a word} I was left alone on the platform with the heavy bag of gold in my hand. The commission with which I had been so unexpectedly entrusted was a very disagreeable one that bleak winter night; but it would be churlish to disappoint a friend. I went to my lodgings, got some tea, loaded a small double-barrelled pistol (an unusual precaution suggested by the thought of the gold), put it in my pocket, and wrapped my great-coat round me. It was no easy thing to get carriage, fly, or gig, in a little place like Longley at that hour; and what was a walk of four miles to me, when I was sure of a stiff glass of something warm and a good bed, that night, and a pleasant canter on a sure-footed nag back to the station in the morning?
The night, though cold, was dry, and the moon was up. To be sure, some ominous clouds were gathering round her, and she was, not rising, but steadily sinking, and would soon be hidden behind the hills. No matter: I should be far on my way before her light was gone, and those clouds, I thought, were not likely to change into what they promised—a snow-shower—till I was safely ensconced by old Carston’s hospitable fire-side. All went well enough for the first half-hour; and as the brisk walk made the blood course warmly through my veins, I thought how much pleasanter this was than to be jolted and bruised in some such crazy lumbering old vehicle as the Longley Inn was capable of supplying, over that rough, wild, mountain road. But my anticipation of the weather proved sorely deceptive. Before the half-hour had well gone by, the snow-storm came down fierce and fast, and the moon was no longer visible. There was no help now, however, but all the more need to get to my journey’s end as soon as possible; so I clutched my stick with a firmer grasp, and quickened my pace. But the thick, steady fall of snow so darkened the air that I could not see twice my arm’s length before me; and I had not been walking many minutes when the apprehension stole upon me that I was fast losing my way. It was a dangerous locality I was in just then, in the midst of that snow-storm; for the road wound over hill and moor, without wall or fence; and, where the snow was rapidly covering heath and path alike, to trace my route with accuracy became impossible. Human life had been sacrificed more than once, amid the snow-drift, on that wild moor-land, and sheep innumerable had been lost. To make my danger greater, the place was full of pits and hollows, where mining speculators had tried to sink shafts in former years. Should I wander off the beaten track, the chances were I might meet a broken neck in one of those confounded holes.
I stumbled on at random. I had lost my bearings utterly; and in a few minutes I knew as little where I was as if I had been suddenly set down bound and blind-folded in the middle of the moor. I was making way, surely, as best I could, through the snow-drift; but, for all I knew, I might be going in any direction but the right one. Was I on the beaten road, or was I on the heath? Another moment cruelly settled my doubts. One step more—my foot found no rest; and I fell headlong into a broad, deep pit. Stunned by the fall, I lay there I know not how long. Bruised and giddy, I tried at last to regain my feet, when a pang of exquisite pain shot through my left arm: the bone was broken. As with my right hand I now tried to steady myself and grope my way out of the hole, the agony I suffered was indescribable; yet my first thought was to feel for the bag of gold, which was still safely suspended from my neck. I crawled out of the pit, and pushed forward on chance: more slowly this time, though, and cautiously, for the terror of those vile holes was strong upon me now. But I grew weaker every moment, and a vague and sickly alarm seized me. Suppose I should swoon upon that moor—my head was giddy and my limbs unsteady already: what but a dreadful death under the fast-falling snow awaited me? At this horrible thought, a cold sweat suffused my whole body, and my parched tongue clove to my palate: to my last hour I shall not forget the horror of that picture of death which rose before my mind’s eye that night. The pain of my arm grew more excessive every moment; it hung by my side like a leaden weight. But, strange to say, even with the grim terror of death before me, a wild desire began to creep over me to lie down upon the snow and rest. Had I done so, no doubt, my last sleep would have followed. But luckily just then a faint glimmer of light caught my eye, and with the eagerness of awakened hope I hurried towards it. In a few minutes I found myself at the open door of a wretched cabin, on the hearth of which a wood fire was burning.
“Hallo!” was the greeting I received from a rough voice, “who the are you, and what d’ye want here such a night as this?”
The wood which burned on the hearth was fresh and damp, and filled the cabin with smoke as well as with a pungent odour. It took some little time to discover in the far corner from which the voice proceeded, the figure of a man, large, gaunt, and broad-shouldered, raggedly clad, with dark scowling face, and bullet-head covered with coarse, black, matted hair. I hurriedly explained to this person my misadventure. He rose and pushed towards me the stool on which he had been seated.
“Sit you down, man,” he said, somewhat less roughly, “you look weak, and a broken arm is no trifle. Though what we can do for you, hang me if I know. But what errand took you out upon the moor such a night as this?”
“I was going from Longley, on important business, to Farmer Carston’s.”
“From Longley to old Carston’s!” he exclaimed. “Whew! Why, man, you chose a very round-about way to get to your journey’s end.”
“Round-about? What do you mean?” I asked.
“I mean that Carston’s is nearly in the opposite direction,” was his answer. “And you have been steadily walking away from it for the last half-hour at least.”
“And how far am I from it now?”
“Some four good miles at least.”
Here was a discovery; but what was to be done? I asked the man to guide me to Carston’s, and offered to pay him well.
“Not for all the money they say old Carston has in the bank,” he answered, “would I attempt to go over the moor to-night. Why, man, the snow is falling so thick you couldn’t see a yard before you. It would be as much as our lives are worth. Men have met their doom upon that moor outside, before now, on such a night as this.”
All this time the pain of my arm was growing intolerable, and help of any kind was impossible there. What was I to do? Stay in this wretched place till morning, and endure my agony till daylight should bring the chance of aid? There was no alternative.
“All you can do,” said the man, “is to keep where you are to-night; and be thankful that you have the shelter of even these miserable walls on such a night as this is. It will be well even, if this infernal snow-storm does not bury the cabin itself before morning. If you want anything to eat, you can have a crust of bread—that’s all we have—and in that room inside you may lie down on the straw till morning comes. But you do look horribly beaten up; here, Sally, up with you, lass, and get us the black one.”
I turned to the other corner, beside the fire, to which these words were addressed, and now beheld, for the first time, a young woman sitting beside a child that lay asleep upon the ground. I turned and found her eyes fixed upon me with a strange eager glare. She was miserably clad, and looked sickly and thin, yet her face showed the traces of much personal beauty. She was delicately fair: every feature was beautifully moulded; and her long dishevelled hair, of a golden tinge, actually glistened in the blaze of the fire. But what struck me most about her was the hungry, wolfish glare of her eyes, so unnaturally large: fastened as it was upon me, that wild, eager look made my heart sick with a vague feeling of dread and dislike. The woman did not speak; but she went to a large chest at the other end of the room (almost the only article of furniture in the place, except a rickety deal table and a couple of stools), and took from it a large black bottle and a broken cup.
“Come,” said the man, taking the cup and the bottle, and pouring some of the contents of the one into the other, “you did not expect, perhaps, to see anything like this in a shepherd’s hut on the moor. No matter; it came to us some way. Try it; the brandy is good, and you could not take better physic to-night.”
Most gratefully did I seize the cup and drink off its contents; and never was cordial more welcome. The blood came coursing warmly through my shivering frame again, and for awhile I even forgot the excessive pain of my broken arm. Declining the bread which the man offered me, I drew nearer to the fire. I took the pistol from my breast-pocket and laid it on the ground beside me; and as I stooped to do this, the bag of gold struck against the stool with a musical clink of the coins within. The next moment, when I raised my head, I found the terrible eyes of the woman fastened upon me with a glare more hungry and wolfish than before. I was startled and (almost mechanically) thrust the bag into my breast. She turned away, muttering something about my bed, and went into the other room of the cabin. In the meantime, the man sat down at the other side of the fire, where the child was sleeping, and (he had taken some of the brandy and was less rough and more communicative now) began to talk about the snow-storm, the probable loss of sheep it would cause, and the similar visitations of former years. In about a quarter of an hour, the woman came to the door of the other room and called him to her. He went; and, for several minutes after, I heard them conversing in low, eager tones. Their words I could not catch; but the woman seemed to be vehemently urging something upon her companion, whilst his answers were brief and hesitating. Gradually, the voices grew confused—a drowsy feeling crept over me—and I remembered no more. Whether one minute or an hour had passed I knew not, when a heavy hand was laid on my shoulder, and a hoarse voice sounded in my ear:
“Come, friend, you’re tired, I see; you had better throw yourself on the bed inside, and sleep till morning.”
I started up, and was soon recalled to perfect consciousness by the sharp pain of my broken arm. The man was standing beside me.
“My wife has shaken out the straw,” he said, “as softly as possible; and I mistake if, after to-night’s tramp, you don’t find it as pleasant as a bed of down. But take this by way of a night-cap before you go.”
I drank the brandy, and, muttering a few words of thanks, was turning away, when he stopped me.
“See,” he said, “you are forgetting your pistol. You had better take it with you.”
I did so, and, bidding them good night, went into the other room. My bed was a heap of straw covered with a piece of coarse sacking; but, had it been of choicest feathers, it could not have been more welcome then. I stretched myself upon it, and was soon fast asleep. But sleep brought with it confused and distressing dreams, with which the glare of those wild, hungry eyes was strangely mingled: I awoke with a sense of pain intolerable, and found that I had turned over on my left side, pressing my wounded arm under me. How long I had been sleeping, of course, I could not tell; but the first sound that fell upon my ear was the confused murmur of voices from the other room. Immediately the voices grew more distinct, and some words reached me that speedily brought me to a terrible consciousness of my position. One of those words was “gold”; and, at the sound, my hand searched for the bag: it was there safe. With a grim terror at my heart, I rose and crept toward the door. Through a chink between the shrunken boards I could see the man and woman seated at the fire. The latter, whose face was almost completely turned towards me, sat with her elbows on her knees—and her chin resting on her palms. Those eyes of hers were fixed upon the man, and they glowed with a hellish fire. I sickened at the look of that face, so handsome, so delicate, so fiend-like. The man was speaking at the moment; and as the sound of his voice drew my eyes towards him, I beheld beside him an object that made my blood run cold—a large, shining hatchet or cleaver.
“I can’t help it, lass,” he was saying; “I don’t like the job; and I wish the thing could be done some other way. About taking the gold I’m not particular to a hair, and in a downright tussle I shouldn’t much mind knocking a fellow on the head. But to murder a man in his sleep—dang me, but it goes against my kidney.”
“But those beautiful golden coins, Bill dear,” the tempting fiend rejoined; “the lovely gold that would take us out of this hell at once. What is one miserable life compared to that? And who will know about it? The snow-storm is most lucky. We can put him deep down beneath the piled-up snow in one of those holes outside, and we shall be many a hundred miles from this,—ay, across the Atlantic itself—before any trace of him is found.”
How my blood curdled and my hair grew stiff with horror, as I listened to the words of this female devil, and watched the gorgon-like glance of her eye, and the hideous smile that curled her lips. I have been in deadly peril of life and limb in more than one fierce fight, as these medals show. I remember once when the knife of a gigantic Kaffir was at my throat, and I thought all was over with me, till a comrade’s rifle brought that savage down. But never, in deadliest hour of danger, did I feel anything like the sickly terror and loathing which crept round my heart as I listened that night to the murderous words that woman uttered.
“It’s all the same,” replied her companion—“’tisn’t the danger of discovery I’m afraid of. ’Tis the job itself I don’t like: the murder of a sleeping man in cold blood—iph!”
With fury flashing from her eyes she sprang to her feet and seized the hatchet.
“Coward and fool!” she hissed, “do you call yourself a man? You see your wife and child starving before your eyes, and you have not the manhood to do the deed which will save them from the death of dogs. I will do it, myself.”
“Easy, lass,” he said, catching her by the wrist, and drawing her back to her seat again. “You’re a plucky girl, Sal, but d’ye think I’d let a woman do what I had not the courage to attempt myself? I told you I did not like the job: I had rather get at the money any other way; but I didn’t tell you that I wouldn’t do it. Sit you down, and let’s talk it over. The chap is fast asleep now—the fatigue and the brandy have done for him, and you can hear him moaning as he sleeps. This ugly bit of steel may be useless, after all. A cloth upon his mouth and my hand upon his windpipe may be enough. There will be no signs of blood; and when they do find him after the snow melts, they will say he perished in the storm.”
“Now, Bill,” said the woman, with a horrid show of admiration, “you talk like a man, and a wise one. I begin to know you again.”
“Well, lass,” he said, “consider the thing as done. Just give me the bottle.”
He took it, raised it to his lips, and drank a deep draught. With trembling hand I felt up the door for bolt or lock. There was a wooden bolt only. Gently and silently I pushed it home, then crept back to my bed and searched for my pistol, resolved to sell my life dearly. I got the pistol, drew back the hammers—and felt the nipples: the caps were gone! I tried the barrels: they were drenched with water. I saw it all: the pistol had been dealt with whilst I slept at the fire; and I was now utterly at the mercy of those fiends. But I had little time to waste in thought, for the next moment the door was shaken by a heavy hand. I lay back and moaned and snored like one in a troubled sleep.
“The door is bolted on the inside,” I heard the man whispering; “the fellow fastened it before he went to sleep.”
“Then burst it open,” said the woman.
“No,” was the rejoinder, “that would waken him up, and he might show fight. We must adopt some quieter course.”
“There’s the window,” she said;” can you not get in through that?”
“Quite right, lass: I had forgotten.”
I looked to the window: it was an aperture some two feet square or more, with a crazy sash of four panes, every one of which was broken. I crawled towards it and felt the sash: the hand of a child might have pulled it out. What was I to do? What chance of a struggle had I now? Faint and weary, with that broken arm, what resistance could I offer to this man of gigantic strength? Crushed by the prospect of my inevitable doom, I staggered back from the window and fell against a projection of the gable-wall. I thrust out my right hand to save me from sinking to the ground: it did not touch the projection, but stretched far into some hollow space. A pang of hope shot through my heart: here was a large open chimney like that at the other end of the cabin; and I felt the snow, which had fallen down through it, crackling under my feet. Could I escape through this? Was there still a chance of life? I stooped under and thrust up my head. The aperture was wide and deep, and the large stones of the rude masonry projected on every side. These were steps by which it was easy enough to climb. To think of all this, and to act upon my thought, occupied less time than I have taken to tell it. In spite of the helplessness of my left arm, and the excruciating pain I felt from it, I was up through the chimney and out on the roof before I heard the frail sash below forced in. To slide to the ground was easy enough; and, blessing God for my deliverance, I crawled round to the other end of the cabin, and from this starting-point I hurried away across the moor as fast as my feeble limbs could bear me. Looking back, I saw the glare of light from the open door of the cabin, and heard the shout of a fierce, angry voice. The snow-drift had almost ceased to fall, and the whitened ground gave out some faint light through the winter darkness. What I longed for now was some pit or hollow to creep into and burrow there till immediate danger was over. I was not long in finding one. I slid down into it, and with my right hand gathered the snow around me. Not ten minutes had I lain there when I heard a heavy footstep crunching the snow above. It was my pursuer, the intending assassin; and I could hear his muttered curses as he passed on. In a few moments more I heard him coming back again, and then all was silent and still as death. At length I crept out from my hiding-place, with cramped and aching limbs. I knew no more in what direction to turn now than I had known before I had entered that accursed cabin; but I struck right ahead, knowing that there must be a human habitation somewhere before me, should I only have strength enough to reach it.
I was fearfully exhausted, and I dragged my feeble limbs along as if they were weighted with lead. For a time the consciousness of danger, and the excitement of the fearful scene I had gone through, sustained me; but, by-and-by, strength and reason alike seemed to desert me, and I staggered along like one in the delirium of fever. How long this continued I cannot tell, for I made no count of time that terrible night; but I remember how, at last, in utter exhaustion, I fell prostrate on the snow.
As I lay there, unable to rise, and unable to move a limb, a long piercing shriek, the horrible import of which I know too well, rang in my ears. I looked up: that eye of fire was right before me. How can I tell you the horror of my situation?—a life’s agony compressed into the compass of one awful minute. The goods train, which always passes Longley about three o’clock in the morning, was coming, and I was lying helpless on the rails! With a cry of agony I tried to rise, but I fell back in utter exhaustion. Even the terror of approaching death did not give me energy enough to crawl from where I lay. But my mind was active enough for the one thought: to stretch myself out with my head towards the engine,—my only chance of safety. Commending my soul to God, I lay prostrate and closed my eyes. The next instant the shriek of the engine, loud and terrific, blended with the rattle of the carriages and the grinding sound of the wheels upon the snow that covered the rails, and then—and then I looked up to heaven, with a feeble laugh of speechless gratitude; and all danger was over. The train had passed along the other line of rails, not over those between which I lay: the snow had prevented me from distinguishing the one from the other; but had I had strength enough to crawl in the direction I had intended, the engine and carriages would have inevitably passed ever me, and left me there a mangled corpse. It was my utter weakness which saved my life. The joy of my delivery from a horrible death was followed by a natural reaction. I sank back in a swoon; and, when consciousness came back to me again, I found myself, weak and wasted, in my own bed-room, and in my own bed, where (they told me) I had lain for eleven days in raging fever. It seems that, in the morning, one of the railway porters found me lying insensible in the snow; and thus I was, a third time within a dozen hours, saved from death. But this bald pate was the price I paid.
“But the bag of gold?”—
Was found suspended from my neck, and, with the letter found in my pocket, was delivered in the proper quarter.
“And the intending assassins?”
I know nothing of them. They did not belong to that part of the country. They had disappeared from the cabin on the moor several days before I recovered from my fever, and, therefore, before suspicion could have fallen upon them; and they were never heard of after.
“The Carstons, I hope, were grateful?”
Do you see where that light is burning faintly, in that window across the line there? Frank Carston’s sister is sleeping (peacefully, I should hope), in that room. She is mother of three of the finest young Britons in this big shire, and I am their father. But here comes the mail train, and it makes no long stay here: you had better look after your luggage.
H.