The Signal-Man Page #4

"The Signal-Man" is a chilling short story by Charles Dickens that explores themes of foreboding, isolation, and the supernatural. Set in a lonely railway cutting, the narrative follows an unnamed narrator who encounters a troubled signal-man. The signal-man confesses to being haunted by a ghostly figure that foretells disaster on the tracks. As the story unfolds, the interplay between reality and the supernatural leads to a tragic climax, delving into the anxieties of the industrial age while raising questions about fate and human agency. Dickens masterfully builds tension and atmosphere, making this tale a classic of Gothic literature.

• Fiction
• Short story

								

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.
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