By night,in its unconscious state,the Station was not so much as visible.Something in the air,like an enterprising chemist's established in business on one of the boughs of Jack's beanstalk,was all that could be discerned of it under the stars.In a moment it would break out,a constellation of gas.In another moment,twenty rival chemists,on twenty rival beanstalks,came into existence.Then,the Furies would be seen,waving their lurid torches up and down the confused perspectives of embankments and arches -would be heard,too,wailing and shrieking.Then,the Station would be full of palpitating trains,as in the day;with the heightening difference that they were not so clearly seen as in the day,whereas the Station walls,starting forward under the gas,like a hippopotamus's eyes,dazzled the human locomotives with the sauce-bottle,the cheap music,the bedstead,the distorted range of buildings where the patent safes are made,the gentleman in the rain with the registered umbrella,the lady returning from the ball with the registered respirator,and all their other embellishments.
And now,the human locomotives,creased as to their countenances and purblind as to their eyes,would swarm forth in a heap,addressing themselves to the mysterious urns and the much-injured women;while the iron locomotives,dripping fire and water,shed their steam about plentifully,making the dull oxen in their cages,with heads depressed,and foam hanging from their mouths as their red looks glanced fearfully at the surrounding terrors,seem as though they had been drinking at half-frozen waters and were hung with icicles.Through the same steam would be caught glimpses of their fellow-travellers,the sheep,getting their white kid faces together,away from the bars,and stuffing the interstices with trembling wool.Also,down among the wheels,of the man with the sledge-hammer,ringing the axles of the fast night-train;against whom the oxen have a misgiving that he is the man with the pole-axe who is to come by-and-by,and so the nearest of them try to get back,and get a purchase for a thrust at him through the bars.
Suddenly,the bell would ring,the steam would stop with one hiss and a yell,the chemists on the beanstalks would be busy,the avenging Furies would bestir themselves,the fast night-train would melt from eye and ear,the other trains going their ways more slowly would be heard faintly rattling in the distance like old-fashioned watches running down,the sauce-bottle and cheap music retired from view,even the bedstead went to bed,and there was no such visible thing as the Station to vex the cool wind in its blowing,or perhaps the autumn lightning,as it found out the iron rails.
The infection of the Station was this:-When it was in its raving state,the Apprentices found it impossible to be there,without labouring under the delusion that they were in a hurry.To Mr.
Goodchild,whose ideas of idleness were so imperfect,this was no unpleasant hallucination,and accordingly that gentleman went through great exertions in yielding to it,and running up and down the platform,jostling everybody,under the impression that he had a highly important mission somewhere,and had not a moment to lose.
But,to Thomas Idle,this contagion was so very unacceptable an incident of the situation,that he struck on the fourth day,and requested to be moved.
'This place fills me with a dreadful sensation,'said Thomas,'of having something to do.Remove me,Francis.'
'Where would you like to go next?'was the question of the ever-engaging Goodchild.
'I have heard there is a good old Inn at Lancaster,established in a fine old house:an Inn where they give you Bride-cake every day after dinner,'said Thomas Idle.'Let us eat Bride-cake without the trouble of being married,or of knowing anybody in that ridiculous dilemma.'
Mr.Goodchild,with a lover's sigh,assented.They departed from the Station in a violent hurry (for which,it is unnecessary to observe,there was not the least occasion),and were delivered at the fine old house at Lancaster,on the same night.
It is Mr.Goodchild's opinion,that if a visitor on his arrival at Lancaster could be accommodated with a pole which would push the opposite side of the street some yards farther off,it would be better for all parties.Protesting against being required to live in a trench,and obliged to speculate all day upon what the people can possibly be doing within a mysterious opposite window,which is a shop-window to look at,but not a shop-window in respect of its offering nothing for sale and declining to give any account whatever of itself,Mr.Goodchild concedes Lancaster to be a pleasant place.A place dropped in the midst of a charming landscape,a place with a fine ancient fragment of castle,a place of lovely walks,a place possessing staid old houses richly fitted with old Honduras mahogany,which has grown so dark with time that it seems to have got something of a retrospective mirror-quality into itself,and to show the visitor,in the depth of its grain,through all its polish,the hue of the wretched slaves who groaned long ago under old Lancaster merchants.And Mr.Goodchild adds that the stones of Lancaster do sometimes whisper,even yet,of rich men passed away -upon whose great prosperity some of these old doorways frowned sullen in the brightest weather -that their slave-gain turned to curses,as the Arabian Wizard's money turned to leaves,and that no good ever came of it,even unto the third and fourth generations,until it was wasted and gone.
It was a gallant sight to behold,the Sunday procession of the Lancaster elders to Church -all in black,and looking fearfully like a funeral without the Body -under the escort of Three Beadles.
'Think,'said Francis,as he stood at the Inn window,admiring,'of being taken to the sacred edifice by three Beadles!I have,in my early time,been taken out of it by one Beadle;but,to be taken into it by three,O Thomas,is a distinction I shall never enjoy!'
