Adventures of Working Men Part 16

"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, hoa.r.s.ely; '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 pa.s.sed, 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 n.o.body says it's foolish then."

"That's a necessity," I replied. "Yours was only a bit of foolish bravado."