Drood (113 page)

“And did the spectre seem to be there, when you looked out?”

“It was there.”’

“Both times?”

He repeated firmly: “Both times.”

“Will you come to the door with me, and look for it now?”

He bit his under lip as though he were somewhat unwilling, but arose. I opened the door, and stood on the step, while he stood
in the doorway. There was the Danger-light. There was the dismal mouth of the tunnel. There were the high, wet stone walls
of the cutting. There were the stars above them.

“Do you see it?” I asked him, taking particular note of his face. His eyes were prominent and strained, but not very much
more so, perhaps, than my own had been when I had directed them earnestly towards the same spot.

“No,” he answered. “It is not there.”

“Agreed,” said I.

We went in again, shut the door, and resumed our seats. I was thinking how best to improve this advantage, if it might be
called one, when he took up the conversation in such a matter-of-course way, so assuming that there could be no serious question
of fact between us, that I felt myself placed in the weakest of positions.

“By this time you will fully understand, sir,” he said, “that what troubles me so dreadfully is the question, What does the
spectre mean?”

I was not sure, I told him, that I did fully understand.

“What is its warning against?” he said, ruminating, with his eyes on the fire, and only by times turning them on me. “What
is the danger? Where is the danger? There is danger overhanging somewhere on the Line. Some dreadful calamity will happen.
It is not to be doubted this third time, after what has gone before. But surely this is a cruel haunting of me. What can I
do?”

He pulled out his handkerchief, and wiped the drops from his heated forehead.

“If I telegraph Danger, on either side of me, or on both, I can give no reason for it,” he went on, wiping the palms of his
hands. “I should get into trouble, and do no good. They would think I was mad. This is the way it would work,- Message: ‘Danger!
Take care!’ Answer: ‘What Danger? Where?’ Message: ‘Don’t know. But, for God’s sake, take care!’ They would displace me. What
else could they do?”

His pain of mind was most pitiable to see. It was the mental torture of a conscientious man, oppressed beyond endurance by
an unintelligible responsibility involving life.

“When it first stood under the Danger-light,” he went on, putting his dark hair back from his head, and drawing his hands
outward across and across his temples in an extremity of feverish distress, “why not tell me where that accident was to happen,-if
it must happen? Why not tell me how it could be averted,-if it could have been averted? When on its second coming it hid its
face, why not tell me, instead, ‘She is going to die. Let them keep her at home’? If it came, on those two occasions, only
to show me that its warnings were true, and so to prepare me for the third, why not warn me plainly now? And I, Lord help
me! A mere poor signal-man on this solitary station! Why not go to somebody with credit to be believed, and power to act?”

When I saw him in this state, I saw that for the poor man’s sake, as well as for the public safety, what I had to do for the
time was to compose his mind. Therefore, setting aside all question of reality or unreality between us, I represented to him
that whoever thoroughly discharged his duty must do well, and that at least it was his comfort that he understood his duty,
though he did not understand these confounding Appearances. In this effort I succeeded far better than in the attempt to reason
him out of his conviction. He became calm; the occupations incidental to his post as the night advanced began to make larger
demands on his attention: and I left him at two in the morning. I had offered to stay through the night, but he would not
hear of it.

That I more than once looked back at the red light as I ascended the pathway, that I did not like the red light, and that
I should have slept but poorly if my bed had been under it, I see no reason to conceal. Nor did I like the two sequences of
the accident and the dead girl. I see no reason to conceal that either.

But what ran most in my thoughts was the consideration how ought I to act, having become the recipient of this disclosure?
I had proved the man to be intelligent, vigilant, painstaking, and exact; but how long might he remain so, in his state of
mind? Though in a subordinate position, still he held a most important trust, and would I (for instance) like to stake my
own life on the chances of his continuing to execute it with precision?

Unable to overcome a feeling that there would be something treacherous in my communicating what he had told me to his superiors
in the Company, without first being plain with himself and proposing a middle course to him, I ultimately resolved to offer
to accompany him (otherwise keeping his secret for the present) to the wisest medical practitioner we could hear of in those
parts, and to take his opinion. A change in his time of duty would come round next night, he had apprised me, and he would
be off an hour or two after sunrise, and on again soon after sunset. I had appointed to return accordingly.

Next evening was a lovely evening, and I walked out early to enjoy it. The sun was not yet quite down when I traversed the
field-path near the top of the deep cutting. I would extend my walk for an hour, I said to myself, half an hour on and half
an hour back, and it would then be time to go to my signal-man’s box.

Before pursuing my stroll, I stepped to the brink, and mechanically looked down, from the point from which I had first seen
him. I cannot describe the thrill that seized upon me, when, close at the mouth of the tunnel, I saw the appearance of a man,
with his left sleeve across his eyes, passionately waving his right arm.

The nameless horror that oppressed me passed in a moment, for in a moment I saw that this appearance of a man was a man indeed,
and that there was a little group of other men, standing at a short distance, to whom he seemed to be rehearsing the gesture
he made. The Danger-light was not yet lighted. Against its shaft, a little low hut, entirely new to me, had been made of some
wooden supports and tarpaulin. It looked no bigger than a bed.

With an irresistible sense that something was wrong,-with a flashing self-reproachful fear that fatal mischief had come of
my leaving the man there, and causing no one to be sent to overlook or correct what he did,-I descended the notched path with
all the speed I could make.

“What is the matter?” I asked the men.

“Signal-man killed this morning, sir.”

“Not the man belonging to that box?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Not the man I know?”

“You will recognise him, sir, if you knew him,” said the man who spoke for the others, solemnly uncovering his own head, and
raising an end of the tarpaulin, “for his face is quite composed.”

“O, how did this happen, how did this happen?” I asked, turning from one to another as the hut closed in again.

“He was cut down by an engine, sir. No man in England knew his work better. But somehow he was not clear of the outer rail.
It was just at broad day. He had struck the light, and had the lamp in his hand. As the engine came out of the tunnel, his
back was towards her, and she cut him down. That man drove her, and was showing how it happened. Show the gentleman, Tom.”

The man, who wore a rough dark dress, stepped back to his former place at the mouth of the tunnel.

“Coming round the curve in the tunnel, sir,” he said, “I saw him at the end, like as if I saw him down a perspective-glass.
There was no time to check speed, and I knew him to be very careful. As he didn’t seem to take heed of the whistle, I shut
it off when we were running down upon him, and called to him as loud as I could call.”

“What did you say?”

“I said, ‘Below there! Look out! Look out! For God’s sake, clear the way!’”

I started.

“Ah! it was a dreadful time, sir. I never left off calling to him. I put this arm before my eyes not to see, and I waved this
arm to the last; but it was no use.”

Without prolonging the narrative to dwell on any one of its curious circumstances more than on any other, I may, in closing
it, point out the coincidence that the warning of the Engine-Driver included, not only the words which the unfortunate Signal-man
had repeated to me as haunting him, but also the words which I myself-not he-had attached, and that only in my own mind, to
the gesticulation he had imitated.