In The Permanent Way Part 4

A year after this I came along again in charge of a construction party, with an overseer called Craddock, a big yellow-headed Saxon who couldn't keep off the drink, and who had in consequence been going down steadily in one department or another for years. As good a fellow as ever stepped when he was sober. Well, we came right on the thin one again, plump in the very middle of the permanent way. We dug round him and levelled up to him for some time, and then one day Craddock gave a nod at me and walked over to where that image squatted staring into s.p.a.ce. I can see the two now, Craddock in his navvy's dress, his blue eyes keen yet kind in the red face shaded by the dirty pith hat, and the thin man without a rag of any sort to hide his bronze anatomy.

"Look here, sonny," said Craddock, stooping over the other, "you're in the way--in the permanent way."

Then he just lifted him right up, gently, as if he had been a child, and set him down about four feet to the left. It was to be a metre gauge, so that was enough for safety. There he sat after we had propped him up again with his _byraga_ or cleft stick under the left arm, as if he were quite satisfied with the change. But next day he was in the old place. It was no use arguing with him. The only thing to be done was to move him out of the way when we wanted it. Of course when the earthwork was finished there was the plate-laying and ballasting and what not to be done, so it came to be part of the big Saxon's regular business to say in his Oxfords.h.i.+re drawl:

"Sonny, yo're in the waiy--in the permanent waiy."

Craddock, it must be mentioned, was in a peculiarly sober, virtuous mood, owing, no doubt, to the desolation of the desert; in which, by the way, I found him quite a G.o.dsend as a companion, for when he was on the talk the quaintness of his ideas was infinitely amusing, and his knowledge of the natives, picked up as a loafer in many a bazaar and _serai_, was surprisingly wide, if appallingly inaccurate.

"There is something, savin' yo'r presence, sir, blamed wrong in the whole blamed business," he said to me, with a mild remonstrance in his blue eyes, one evening after he had removed the obstruction to progress. "That pore fellar, sir, 'e's a meditatin' on the word _Hom-Hommipuddenhome_[5] it is, sir, I've bin told--an' doin' 'is little level to make the spiritooal man subdoo 'is fleshly hinstinckts. And I, Nathaniel James Craddock, so called in Holy Baptism, I do a.s.sure you, a-eatin' and a-drinkin' 'earty, catches 'im right up like a babby, and sets 'im on one side, as if I was born to it. And so I will--an' willin', too--so as to keep 'im from 'arm's way; for 'eathin or Christian, sir, 'e's an eggsample to the spiritooal part of me which, savin' your presence, sir, is most ways drink."

[Footnote 5: _Om mi pudmi houm_. The Buddhist invocation.]

Poor Craddock! He went on the spree hopelessly the day after we returned to civilisation, and it was with the greatest difficulty that I succeeded in getting him a trial as driver to the material train which commenced running up and down the section. The first time I went with it on business I had an inspection carriage tacked on behind the truck loads of coolies and ballast, so that I could not make out why on earth we let loose a danger whistle and slowed down to full stop in the very middle of the desert until I jumped down and ran forward.

Even then I was only in time to see Craddock coming back to his engine with a redder face than ever.

"It's only old Meditations, sir," he said apologetically, as I climbed in beside him. "It don't take a minute; no longer nor a cow, and them's in the reg'lations. You see, sir, I wouldn't 'ave 'arm come to the pore soul afore 'is spiritooal nater 'ad the straight tip hoam.

Neither would none of us, sir, coolie nor driver, sir, on the section.

We all likes old _Hommipuddenhome_, 'e sticks to it so stiddy, that's where it is."

"Do you mean to say that you always have to get out and lift him off the line?" I asked, wondering rather at the patience required for the task.

"That's so, sir," he replied slowly, in the same apologetic tones. "It don't take no time you see, sir, that's where it is. P'r'aps you may 'ave thought, like as I did first time, that 'e'd save 'is bacon when the engine come along. Lordy! the cold sweat broke out on me that time. I brought 'er up, sir, with the buffers at the back of 'is 'ed like them things the photographers jiminy you straight with. But 'e ain't that sort, ain't Meditations." Here Craddock asked leave to light his pipe, and in the interval I looked ahead along the narrowing red ribbon with its tinsel edge, thinking how odd it must have been to see it barred by that bronze image.

"No! that ain't his sort," continued Craddock meditatively, "though wot 'is sort may be, sir, is not my part to say. I've ar'st, and ar'st, and ar'st them pundits, but there ain't one of them can really tell, sir, 'cos he ain't got any marks about him. You see, sir, it's by their marks, like cattle, as you tell 'em. Some says he wors.h.i.+ps b.l.o.o.d.y _s.h.i.+vers_[6]--'im 'oos wife you know, sir, they calls _Martha Davy_[7]--a Christian sort o' name, ain't it, sir, for a 'eathin idol?--and some says 'e wors.h.i.+ps _Wishnyou Lucksmi_[8] an' that lot, an' _Holy_[9] too, though, savin' your presence, sir, it ain't much holiness I see at them times, but mostly drink. It makes me feel quite 'omesick, I do a.s.sure you, sir, more as if they was humans like me, likewise."

[Footnote 6: _s.h.i.+va_.]

[Footnote 7: _Mata devi_.]

[Footnote 8: _Vishnu Lukshmi_.]

[Footnote 9: _Holi_, the Indian Saturnalia.]

"And which belief do you incline to?" I asked, for the sake of prolonging the conversation.

He drew his rough hand over his corn-coloured beard, and quite a grave look came to the blue eyes. "I inclines to _s.h.i.+ver_," he said decisively, "and I'll tell you why, sir. s.h.i.+ver's b.l.o.o.d.y; but 'e's dead on death. They calls 'im the Destroyer. 'E don't care a d.a.m.n for the body; 'e's all for the spiritooal nater, like old Meditations there. Now _Wishnyou Lucksmi_ an' that lot is the Preservers. They eats an' drinks 'earty, like me. So it stands to reason, sir, don't it? that 'e's a _s.h.i.+ver_, and I'm a _Wishnyou Lucksmi_." He stood up under pretence of giving a wipe round a valve with the oily rag he held, and looked out to the horizon where the sun was setting, like a huge red signal right on the narrowing line. "So," he went on after a pause, "that's why I wouldn't 'ave 'arm come to old Meditations. 'E's a _s.h.i.+ver_, I'm a _Wishnyou Lucksmi_. That's what _I_ am."

His meaning was quite clear, and I am not ashamed to say that it touched me.

"Look here," I said, "take care you don't run over that old chap some day when you are drunk, that's all."

He bent over another valve, burnis.h.i.+ng it. "I hope to G.o.d I don't," he said in a low voice. "That'd about finish me altogether, I expect."

We returned the next morning before daybreak; but I went on the engine, being determined to see how that bronze image looked on the permanent way when you were steaming up to it.

"You ketch sight of 'im clear this side," said Craddock, "a good two mile or more; ef you had a telescope ten for that matter. It ain't so easy t'other side with the sun a-s.h.i.+ning bang inter the eyes. And there ain't no big wave as a signal over there. But Lordy! there ain't no fear of my missin' old Meditations."

Certainly, none that morning. He showed clear, first against the rosy flush of dawn, afterwards like a dark stain on the red ribbon.

"I'll run up close to him to-day, sir," said Craddock, "so as you shall see wot 'e's made of."

The whistle rang shrill over the desert of sand, which lay empty of all save that streak of red with the dark stain upon it; but the stain never moved, never stirred, though the snorting demon from the west came racing up to it full speed.

"Have a care, man! Have a care!" I shouted; but my words were almost lost in the jar of the brake put on to the utmost. Even then I could only crane round the cab with my eyes fixed on that bronze image straight ahead of us. Could we stop in time--would it move? Yes! no!

yes! Slower and slower--how many turns of the flywheel to so many yards?--I felt as if I were working the sum frantically in my head, when, with a little backward s.h.i.+ver, the great circle of steel stopped dead, and Craddock's voice came in cheerful triumph.

"There! didn't I tell you, sir? Ain't 'e stiddy? Ain't 'e a-subdooin'

of mortality beautiful?" The next instant he was out, and as he stooped to his task he flung me back a look.

"Now, sonny, you'll 'ave to move. You're in the way--the permanent way, my dear."

That was the last I saw of him for some time, for I fell sick and went home. When I returned to work I found, much to my surprise, that Craddock was in the same appointment; in fact, he had been promoted to drive the solitary pa.s.senger train which now ran daily across the desert. He had not been on the spree once, I was told; indeed, the R.E., who was of the Methodist division of that gallant regiment, took great pride in a reformation which, he informed me, was largely due to his religious teaching combined with Departmental Discipline.

"And how is Meditations?" I asked, when the great rough hand had shaken mine vehemently.

Craddock's face seemed to me to grow redder than ever. "'E's very well, sir, thanking you kindly. There's a native driver on the Goods now. 'E's a _s.h.i.+ver-Martha Davy_ lot, so I pays 'im five rupee a month to nip out sharp with the stoker an' shovel 'is old saint to one side.

I'm gettin' good pay now, you know, sir."

I told him there was no reason to apologise for the fact, and that I hoped it might long continue; whereat he gave a sheepish kind of laugh, and said he hoped so too.

Christmas came and went uneventfully without an outbreak, and I could not refrain from congratulating Craddock on one temptation safely over.

He smiled broadly.

"Lor' bless you, sir," he said, "you didn't never think, did you, that Nathaniel James Craddock, which his name was given to 'im in Holy Baptism, I do a.s.sure you, was going to knuckle down that way to old _Hommipuddenhome?_ 'Twouldn't be fair on Christmas noways, sir, and though I don't set the store 'e does on 'is spiritooal nater, I was born and bred in a Christyan country, I do a.s.sure you."

I congratulated him warmly on his sentiments, and hoped again that they would last; to which he replied as before that he hoped so too.

And then _Holi_ time came round, and, as luck would have it, the place was full of riff-raff low whites going on to look for work in a further section. I had to drive through the bazaar on my way to the railway station and it beat anything I had ever seen in various vice.

East and West were outbidding each other in iniquity, and to make matters worse an electrical dust-storm was blowing hard. You never saw such a scene; it was pandemonium, background and all. I thought I caught a glimpse of a corn-coloured beard and a pair of blue eyes in a wooden balcony among tinkling _sutaras_ and jasmine chaplets, but I wasn't sure. However, as I was stepping into the inspection carriage which, as usual, was the last in the train, I saw Craddock crossing the platform to his engine. His white coat was all splashed with the red dye they had been throwing at each other, _Holi_ fas.h.i.+on, in the bazaar; his walk, to my eyes, had a lilt in it, and finally, the neck of a black bottle showed from one pocket.

Obedient to one of those sudden impulses which come, heaven knows why, I took my foot off the step and followed him to the engine.

"Comin' aboard, sir," he said quite collectedly. "You'd be better be'ind to-night, for it's blowin' grit fit to make me a walkin'

sandpaper inside and out." And before I could stop him the black bottle was at his mouth. This decided me. Perhaps my face showed my thoughts, for as I climbed into the cab he gave an uneasy laugh.