“Me and the station-master used to chum it, the station being so lonesome. When the young chaps need first to come down, they used to come the big bug, and keep me at a distance, and expect me to say ‘sir.’ But, lor’ bless you, that soon went off, and they used to get me to come and sit with them, to keep off the horrors—for we used to get ’em bad down there—and then we’d play dominoes, or draughts, or cribbage, when we didn’t smoke.
“It was a awful lonesome place, and somehow people got to know it, and they’d come from miles away to Gravelwick.
“‘What for?’ says you.
“There, you’d never guess, so I’ll tell you—to commit suicide.
“It was too bad on ’em, because it made the place horrible. I wasn’t afraid of ghosts; but after having one or two fellows come and put themselves before the fast trains, and having inquests on ’em, for the life of you you couldn’t help fancying all sorts of horrors on the dark nights.
“Why, that made several of our young station-masters go. One of ’em applied to be removed, and because they didn’t move him he ran off—threw up his place, he did—but I had to stay.
“Things got so bad at last that the station-master and me used to look at every passenger as alighted at our station suspicious like if he was a stranger; and we found out several this way, bless you; and if we couldn’t persuade ’em to go away to some other station to do what they wanted, or contrive to bring ’em to a better turn of mind, we used to lock ’em up in the lamp-room and telegraph to Tenderby for a policeman to fetch ’em away.
“Oh, it was fine games, I can tell you, only it used to give you the creeps; for some of these parties used to be wild and mad, though others was only melancholy and stupid.
“Some on ’em was humbugs—chaps in love, and that sorter way—as never meant to do it, only to make a fuss and be saved, so as their young ladies could hear as they meant to die for their sake, and so on; but others was in real earnest; for the fact of one doing it there seemed like a ’traction to ’em, and they’d come for miles and miles right away from London.
“It was a lively time being at a sooicidal station; and though the station-masters and I kept the strictest of lookouts, we got done more’n once; for a fellow would get out right smart, go off, and then, artful-like, dodge back to the line a mile or so away, and the fust we’d hear of it would be from an engine-driver who had gone over him.