On my way to the station, he passed me with great strides, his head high among the low-flying bats, his feet firm on the packed road-metal, his fists clinched, and his breath coming sharply. There was a beautiful smell in the air-the smell of white dust, bruised nettles, and smoke, that brings tears to the throat of a man who sees his country but seldom-a smell like the echoes of the lost talk of lovers; the infinitely suggestive odour of an immemorial civilisation. It was a perfect walk; and, lingering on every step, I came to the station just as the one porter lighted the last of a truck-load of lamps, and set them back in the lamp-room, while he dealt tickets to four or five of the population who, not contented with their own peace, thought fit to travel. It was no ticket that the navvy seemed to need. He was sitting on a bench, wrathfully grinding a tumbler into fragments with his heel. I abode in obscurity at the end of the platform, interested as ever, thank Heaven, in my surroundings. There was a jar of wheels on the road. The navvy rose as they approached, strode through the wicket, and laid a hand upon a horse's bridle that brought the beast up on his hireling hind legs. It was the providential fly coming back, and for a moment I wondered whether the doctor had been mad enough to revisit his practice. "Get away; you're drunk," said the driver. "I'm not," said the navvy. "I've been waitin' 'eré hours and hours. Come out, you beggar inside there!" "Go on, driver," said a voice I did not know -a crisp, clear, English voice. "All right," said the navvy. "You wouldn't 'ear me when I was polite. Now will you come?" There was a chasm in the side of the fly, for he had wrenched the door bodily off its hinges, and was feeling within purposefully. A well-booted leg rewarded him, and there came out, not with delight, hopping on one foot, a round and greyhaired Englishman, from whose armpits dropped hymn-books, but from his mouth an altogether different service of song. "Come on, you bloomin' body-snatcher! You thought I was dead, did you?" roared the navvy. And the respectable gentleman came accordingly, inarticulate with rage. "'Ere's a man murderin' the Squire," the driver shouted, and fell from his box upon the navvy's neck. To do them justice, the people of Framlynghame Admiral, so many as were on the platform, rallied to the call in the best spirit of feudalism. It was the one porter who beat the navvy on the nose with a ticket-punch, but it was the three third-class tickets who attached themselves to his legs and freed the captive. "Send for a constable! lock him up!" said that man, adjusting his collar; and unitedly they cast him into the lamp-room, and turned the key, while the driver mourned over the wrecked fly. Till then the navvy, whose only desire was justice, had kept his temper nobly. Then he went Berserk before our amazed eyes. The door of the lamp-room was generously constructed, and would not give an inch, but the window he tore from its fastenings and hurled outwards. The one porter counted the damage in a loud voice, and the others, arming themselves with agricultural implements from the station garden, kept up a ceaseless winnowing before the window, themselves backed close to the wall, and bade the prisoner think of the jail. He answered little to the point, so far as they could understand; but seeing that his exit was impeded, he took a lamp and hurled it through the wrecked sash. It fell on the metals and went out. With inconceivable velocity, the others, fifteen in all, followed, looking like rockets in the gloom, and with the last (he could have had no plan) the Berserk rage left him as the doctor's deadly brewage waked up, under the stimulus of violent exercise and a very full meal, to one last cataclysmal exhibition, and we heard the whistle of the seven forty-five down. They were all acutely interested in as much of the wreck as they could see, for the station smelt to Heaven of oil, and the engine skittered over broken glass like a terrier in a cucumber-frame. The guard had to hear of it, and the Squire had his version of the brutal assault, and heads were out all along the carriages as I found me a seat. "What is the row?" said a young man, as I entered. "'Man drunk?" "Well, the symptoms, so far as my observation has gone, more resemble those of Asiatic cholera than anything else," I answered, slowly and judicially, that every word might carry weight in the appointed scheme of things. Up till then, you will observe, I had taken no part in that war. He was an Englishman, but he collected his belongings as swiftly as had the American, ages before, and leaped upon the platform, crying: "Can I be of any service? I'm a doctor." From the lamp-room I heard a wearied voice wailing: "Another bloomin' doctor!" And the seven forty-five carried me on, a step nearer to Eternity, by the road that is worn and seamed and channelled with the passions, and weaknesses, and warring interests of man who is immortal and master of his fate. |