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Title: The Water-Finders
Author: Unknown
Release Date: September 8, 2017 [EBook #55506]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WATER-FINDERS ***
Produced by Jeff Hunt
[Transcriber's Note: The author is not named and has
not been located elsewhere. Dialect spelling is copied
faithfully.]
THE WATER-FINDERS
[Frontispiece: Three men hung over the bridge.]
THE WATER-FINDERS BY THE AUTHOR OF "TWO OF A TRADE"
LONDON, EDINBURGH, AND NEW YORK THOMAS NELSON AND SONS
CONTENTS.
---
I. Willowton in Trouble
II. The Chapman Family
III. The Dowser
IV. The Search for Water
V. Old Jimmy's Scruples
VI. Public Opinion on the Bridge
VII. Tom Chapman "Takes on" at the Well
VIII. A Neighbourly Action
IX Nurse Blunt Arrives
X. Another Fever Victim
XI. The Strike at the Well
XII. Back to the Work
XIII. Rain at Last
XIV. The Collapse
XV. Friends in Need
XVI An Anxious Sunday
XVII Geo to the Fore Again
XVIII The Rescue
XIX Geo again Surprises Himself and his Friends
XX Conclusion
THE WATER-FINDERS
----
CHAPTER I.
WILLOWTON IS IN TROUBLE
Willowton is a village of some seventeen thousand population,
large enough for the inhabitants to talk of "going up the town"
when they mean the broad main street which stands on a gentle
slope leading from the railway station to the church. This
street, which is paved at the sides with nice old-world,
ankle-twisting cobbles, boasts of two drapers', a chemist's, a
saddler's, grocer's, and bootmaker's shops. Away in the less
aristocratic parts of the village are the butchers and bakers,
and the miscellaneous stores so dear to the country housewives.
About the middle of the town, in the very widest part, is the
bridge, and close to the bridge itself is the Wild Swan
public-house, or rather _hotel_, as it calls itself. The little
stream that runs under the bridge comes along through miles of
cool meadows, now golden with buttercups, for it is May. It comes
through many gardens and orchards, now white with apple blossom;
and when it leaves the bridge it burrows underground for some
little distance, and reappears at the foot of the cottage
gardens, to lose itself in pleasant meandering through more
flowery meadows, till it passes out of the ken of Heigham folks,
and out of our story's picture.
It was noon, and the sun was hot and the stream was low. There
had been no rain for several weeks. The March winds had blown the
seeds about; the wheat even drooped in the fields; April had
refused her usual showers, and there was a dry, parched look
everywhere while yet it was only May. Three men hung over the
bridge, lazily resting their elbows on the parapet, and looking
down into the water below at a large trout that was lying under a
stone, waiting his opportunity to make his way further upstream
to a deeper pool under the garden bank. Of these three "loafers,"
as the neighbours called them, one was a strong, well-built young
man of one or two-and-twenty. His flushed face betrayed the fact
that he had already visited the Wild Swan over the way; his great
strong limbs were loosely knit; his big hands showed little signs
of work; his lazy blue eyes looked as if they had never done
anything more harmful or more useful than watch for trout.
His companions were of a different type. One was a discontented,
surly-looking man of perhaps sixty years of age. He was reported
to have been a great traveller. He certainly had been to
America, to Australia, and to various ports in Europe, in his
position as stoker on a merchant vessel; and he had seen a good
deal of the seamy side of life, but not so much as he wished his
listeners to believe, and was as bad a companion for a young
fellow like George Lummis as could well be. The third man was a
cripple. He came out daily on his crutches, and took up his
position in the angle of the stone support, which stood out from
the bridge a foot of so on to the road. He had a mild, weak face,
in which a life's physical suffering was plainly to be read. He
had never been of any use to anybody so far, and as far as his
acquaintances knew, he had never had any desire to be so. The
strongest feeling he possessed was an intense affection and
admiration for the great, hulking, lazy six feet of humanity
beside him.
The three men were in their own way discussing the general
prosperity of the village, and abusing the district council, the
parson, the doctor, the farmers, and, indeed, everybody who was
at all better off or of more consequence than themselves. They
were not speaking with any particular virulence, nor were they
arguing their points with any warmth; they were only repeating a
sort of formula they went through periodically whenever the
occasion cropped up. They each knew exactly what the other would
say. They had all three heard it so very many times before, and
they had their answers all cut and dried, and ready for immediate
use. The only variety was that sometimes they began with the
parson and ended with the doctor, and sometimes they began with
the doctor and ended with the parson. It was all chance, just
whichever happened to go over the bridge first.
"There he goo!" they would ejaculate, often loud enough for the
object of their remarks to hear, "a-drivin' in 'is carriage with
a 'orse and liv'ry sarvent, all paid for out o' our club money,
that's how that is. And what does he do for it, I should like yew
jest te tell me?" etc., etc., etc., _ad lib_.
This, of course, if the passer-by happened to be the doctor; if,
on the other hand, it was he vicar, it would be,---
"There goo th' parson, pore, hard-workin' chap! Two hundred and
fifty pound a year for preachin' t' us of a Sunday--an' a lot o'
good that dew us! I'd just like to have him aboard our ship for a
fortnight. I'd teach him t' interfere, with his imperence."
It was the "traveller" who generally originated these remarks.
The cripple always made a point of assenting; he wished to be
agreeable, for the traveller was open-handed as well as
long-tongued, and a quid of tobacco often found its way into the
cripple's pocket after a prolonged debate, in which he took so
prominent and important a part.
On these occasions George Lummis seldom did more than laugh a
short laugh, when he thought it incumbent on him to do so, or
even lift a faint protest when his sense of justice smote him
(for he _had_ some sense of justice); and it was not so very many
years ago that he was a schoolboy, and if he chose to exert his
memory he could have told of many kindnesses he had received fro
the late vicar and his family, and from that very doctor whom he
allowed to be abused so roundly, who had pulled him through a bad
attack of typhoid fever when he was a boy of sixteen. "And to
very little purpose," the doctor would say to himself sometimes
as he drove over the bridge and saw him loafing away the best
years of his life with his good-for-nothing companions. "For his
own sake I had almost better have let him die."
On this particular morning it was the vicar who passed first. He
walked slowly and heavily, for he was carrying a weight. The
perspiration stood in beads on his forehead, and his straw hat
had got pushed back from his brow, so that the full blaze of the
sun beat down on his forehead, from which the hair was beginning
to recede--"slipping back" he would explain laughingly, "not
falling off, forsooth!" His burden, which was in reality a big
well-grown boy of fourteen, in the first stage of fever, was
wrapped in a big, not overclean-looking blanket, and in his
weakness he was unable to assist his bearer to carry him, and,
indeed, with the best of intentions, was almost as dead a weight
as if he had been in a faint.
As the vicar passed over the bridge he kept his eyes fixed
straight in front of him. Neither by look nor by gesture did he
ask the loungers there to help him, and no one offered to lend a
hand. His strength, great as it was, was almost spent when he
reached the hospital and gave over his patient to the doctor's
charge, and he sat down with a sigh of relief on the wooden
settle in the hall. It was cool and fresh in here, almost cold
coming out of the dust and the sun. He wiped his brow with his
handkerchief; the portress brought him a glass of water.
"Too hot yet, Mrs. Smith," he said. "I'll wait till I've cooled
down; but I'm as thirsty as a fish!"
"And no wonder!" said the matron tartly, but not without a note
of admiration in her tones; "I never heard such nonsense. Why
couldn't the boy be brought in the ambulance like anybody else, I
should like to know, without you having to carry him as if he was
a baby! I haven't any patience with those Chapmans, that I
haven't!"
"Well, nor have I--much," said the vicar reflectively. "That
woman is the dirtiest of the whole row. It would be hard to beat
her in the parish; but there is something about her--I don't know
what it is. She never tells me lies or makes excuses; she never
begs, and never complains of other people's good fortune, and is
always good-tempered--bother her! She would be so much easier to
influence if she had a spice of temper, wouldn't she--eh, Mrs.
Smith?" with a twinkle in his big brown eyes; for Mrs. Smith had
the defects of her qualities, and possessed the hasty temper that
goes so often with a warm heart. "But I must be off. Let Tommy
know that I'll call in and see him some time in the afternoon,
and hope I shall find him in clover. No, I won't wait for the
doctor; I know pretty well what he'll say. I'll be off," and the
vicar tossed off his glass of water, put on his hat, this time
well tilted over his eyes, and strode down the hill for the
second time that morning.
His return road lay through the buttercup meadows and over the
stream by a little foot-bridge into the village. He passed a long
row of well-to-do, prosperous-looking cottages, with bright
little gardens in front of them, and the running stream behind
them. At the gate of one of these a young girl was standing
shading her eyes from the sun. She made a pretty picture in her
big shady hat and print blouse, short skirt, blue linen apron,
her sleeves rolled up, showing a pair of nice plump arms; for
Milly was washing to-day, and was not ashamed to be seen at it.
She had a paper in her hand, and was watching for the vicar.
Overhead the lilacs and laburnums were fading in the drought, and
the few flowers that had come to maturity were dying off before
their time. So intent was the vicar on his own thoughts that he
was striding past without seeing her.
"A letter, sir!" she cried out, holding it out to him over the
palings.
"Oh!" Mr. Rutland took it and broke the seal.
It was a summons to attend a committee meeting of the sanitary
board, now sitting at the Union--an informal meeting hastily
convened owing to the pressing state of affairs, and to the
somewhat unexpected reappearance of the sanitary inspector.
"Where's your grandfather?" he asked, folding the paper and
putting it in his pocket.
"He's gone to toll again. Young Flower is dead."
The vicar made a gesture of dismay.
"You don't say so! I was with him most of the night. I hoped he
was going to pull through. Ah, well!" But turning to Milly again,
"Tell Jimmy when he comes in to let my housekeeper know I shan't
be back," taking out his watch, "much before two o'clock, and
I'll get some bread and cheese at the Union. She needn't think
about me. Good-morning," and he went on with a nod.
"Good-morning, sir," said Milly demurely, and with a pretty
little inclination of her head. Milly was too old to curtsy now,
though the school children at Willowton, as indeed all the
villages in East Anglia, still keep up the pretty custom of the
old-world curtsey. Milly was nearly seventeen, and kept house for
her old grandfather, who was parish sexton, clerk, or verger, or
all three, just as it pleased him to call himself.
CHAPTER II.
THE CHAPMAN FAMILY.
The Chapmans were a large family, and every year a new little
Chapman appeared upon the scene; consequently every year there
was a new mouth to feed, and wages, of course, remained much the
same. Tom Chapman had married his wife (a girl working in a jam
factory in a neighbouring town) when he was nineteen and she was
only seventeen. They had muddled along ever since. Tom was as
hard-working as most of his acquaintances, which is perhaps not
saying much, for they had a rooted objection to what they called
a "wet jacket," and seldom worked hard enough to get
uncomfortably hot; but still he was an honest, well-meaning man,
and if he had a strong feelings on the subject of working over
hours on special occasions, and saw no particular reason why he
should put himself out to benefit his masters, why, as I said
before, he was not in that respect different from his friends.
Poor Annie, his wife, was a patient, hard-working, ignorant
woman. She had once been pretty, but many children and growing
poverty had made her at the age of seven-and-twenty look like
most women of forty. She was worn and thin, and was untidy; she
was unrefined in her ways and uncouth in her speech; she was
badly educated, having been idle at school, and forgotten what
little her teachers managed to knock into her unwilling head; but
for all this she managed to retain her husband's affection, and
to keep him from the public-house. The vicar, who was a bachelor
himself, often wondered why Tom Chapman was one of the steadiest
young men in the parish, and why he always spent his evenings at
home with "such a wife" as he had, and in such a pigsty of a
house; for I grieve to say cleanliness in her household was far
from being a virtue of Mrs. Chapman's. The house stood at the
bottom of Gravel-pit Lane, and was the first of a row of cottages
that crept up the steep little hill that led away from the
vicarage into the buttercup meadows. The stream did not come
anywhere near Gravel-pit Lane, and the water supply was never
very good--one well having to serve eight or ten cottages with
water; and this year, owing to the unprecedented dryness of the
spring, the well was nearly empty. Small wonder, then, that the
little Chapmans were even less well washed than usual, and that
their dirty pinafores were an ever-increasing source of annoyance
to the schoolmistress.
It was from this house that the vicar had carried off the patient
for the little fever hospital on the side hill above the village.
This fever hospital was a pet scheme of his and the doctor's. All
through the dry spring they had been prophesying trouble, and had
made themselves unpopular in consequence. Now, popularity is a
very pleasant thing, and a very useful thing; but there are
things better than popularity. Popularity is a fickle, faithless
jade. She comes often unbidden and unsought, and sits down by a
man's side, and while she is there he may do what he likes. He
may scold people for not giving enough in church, he may forget
to answer invitations, he may even lose his temper, and say all
sorts of things he doesn't mean; but once Madam Popularity has
left him, or even shown any signs of approaching departure, this
same man may no longer ask your assistance in his charities. He
may never offer you advice, or criticise your actions; he may
scarcely even presume to wish you good-morning, and when he comes
to see you, you imagine he comes to pry into your private
affairs. If he gives your boy a penny for opening a gate for him,
you are certain he is "up to suffin'," and the luckless penny is
nothing but bribery and corruption; in short, all that was right
and commendable before is wrong and reprehensible now.
It was this that had happened to the vicar of Willowton, and
strangely enough, everybody knew it but the vicar! He was far too
busy attending to his duties and succouring his people, body and
soul, to feel any changes of temperature; and if he had, I will
not exactly say that he would not have cared (for, of course, he
would; he would not have been human if he had not), but it would
have made no difference; he would have persevered in his course
just the same. He was, he would have said, "about his Master's
work," and it would never have occurred to him to alter his ways
once he had made up his mind he was right.
The reason of his unpopularity was not difficult to determine--he
had been preaching a crusade against dirt and unthriftiness. He
had foretold in forcible language, from the pulpit as well as
elsewhere, the coming epidemic, which the sanitary commissioner
had declared inevitable, with the village in such a shocking
state of insanitariness. The inspector called the houses
"unsanitary," the vicar called them "dirty"--that was the
difference. There was a very great difference between the sound
of these two swords, and the vicar made the fatal mistake of
using the wrong one. It was a pity, but the vicar was very
outspoken, very impetuous, very straightforward. He had said so
many times before, and nobody had ever even dreamt of taking
offence. They knew it was true, and they were so used to it that
they never thought of objecting to hearing the truth blurted out
in his good-humoured, friendly manner--never till Corkam came
back after his thirty-five years of "foreign travel."
"How you do truckle to that chap!" he would say to the men who
touched their hats respectfully to him as he passed. "You think,
he was cap'en on a wessel at least, and bos'un tight and
midshipmite inter ther bargain. Blessed if I are goin' ter knock
under to the parson, or a whole cargo o' parsons! that I won't;
so there!" and Corkam would lean his elbows on the parapet of the
bridge behind him, and stand with an impudent sneer on his
coarse, flabby lips at the unsuspecting vicar as he passed.
Corkam had "no manners," he thought; "but one mustn't judge too
much by appearances, and probably," he would tell himself, if
Corkham's rudeness was more than usually aggressive, "he was much
better than he looked." For the vicar's creed was of the
thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians order--of the kind that
believeth all things, and hopeth all things; and after all there
is nothing like hope in the world. It is so perennial, if you are
disappointed in your hopes about one thing, you can always go on
hoping about another. And the vicar was very happy in his hopes,
though they were often doomed to disappointment. He had good
health, good spirits, and a good conscience, and he scarcely knew
what it was to have a headache or endure a sleepless night. Truly
"a man to be envied," his friend the doctor said, "and there are
not many like him!"
The vicarage was a small house--a great many gables and very
small rooms, all except the hall, which was a large, low-roofed,
roomy apartment, with black oak beams supporting the uneven
white-washed ceiling. A great gilt-faced grandfather's clock
stood in one corner on the right-hand side of the fireplace,
which was one of those delightful Queen Anne, urn-shaped grates,
with high hobs on either side, on which the vicar's housekeeper
kept her master's coffee, or soup, or cocoa, as the case might
be, warm when he failed to come in for his meals, which was no
uncommon occurrence, especially since the outbreak of the fever,
when, as the long-suffering woman constantly complained, "he
don't never show his face till the meat is cooked to a cinder, or
the water for his tea has boiled itself flat."
The vicarage garden ran down to the churchyard on one side, and
was bordered on the other by the ubiquitous little stream that
wound itself in and out through the village like a shining
ribbon. The flowers in the vicar's garden were mostly quaint,
old-fashioned things. He knew nothing about flowers himself, but
his housekeeper did, and he had the advantage of succeeding a man
who had a passion for gardening, and who had stocked the place
with bulbs, innumerable tulips, daffodils, crocuses, snowdrops,
and aconites, and little old-world hepatica and grape hyacinths.
While against the high brick wall, now mellowed with time, were
old single pink peonies, great yellow tiger lilies, and mulleins,
just coming out over the porch the blue wisteria did her best to
flower, but perished in the attempt; while the tropeolum, and
other creeping things that Mrs. Crowe had grown so successfully
every year against the trellis, died off before they began to
climb. It was as if the fever had touched them too, poor things;
though Mrs. Crowe did surreptitiously fill her watering-pot at
the stream and water them ever evening when the vicar was out of
the way; for that gentleman was a very dragon over the water, and
the stream, as I said before, was getting daily lower and lower,
and water scarcer and scarcer.
CHAPTER III.
THE DOWSER.
The meeting at the Union, mentioned in the first chapter, was
stormy, but it resulted in victory. The sudden summoning of the
principal people in the parish was occasioned by the appearance
of a "water-finder." This the chairman, a gentleman farmer of
some local importance, well known in the hunting field, proceeded
to explain in a disjointed, halting, and somewhat unconvincing
manner. It was evident that he was half ashamed of yielding to
what he knew most of his hearers would term foolish superstition,
and others would fear as savouring of witchcraft and other
forbidden things.
The meeting was an open one, concerning as it did, all the
parish; and among others our three "loafers" of the bridge had
strolled in, and sitting down on a back seat prepared to hear
what was going to be said. They had come in from very different
motives, and kept together from force of habit. The cripple had
come because he wisely never omitted to attend anything that
would afford him entertainment and change from the dull monotony
of his days; the ex-seaman came, as usual, in the spirit of
opposition, with the full determination of opposing whatever
decision the authorities should come to; and George accompanied
them merely because they asked him.
Mr. Rutland, who was late, as we know, slipped in quietly, and
took a seat on a bench which was placed along the side of the
room. The water-finder had just stepped on to the platform, and
with a little nervous cough was beginning to explain his mission.
He was a slight, spare man, of perhaps thirty years of age, with
an extraordinarily sensitive face--the sort of look one sees
sometimes in a great musician or dreamer--his hair fairish,
inclined to red, and his complexion that which goes with such
hair. There was nothing else remarkable about him but his hands,
which were delicately formed, yet strong and nervous. His voice
was low and pleasant, but he spoke with some hesitation, and had
not the air of confidence that accompanies the necromancer or
conjurer.
The vicar's keen eye took in all this at a glance, and he
involuntarily turned to the audience to see how they took him.
His eye fell on the three men on the bench at right angles with
him. He saw Corkam arrange his face in the supercilious sneer he
knew so well. He saw Farley dart a look at him to get his "cue,"
and then twist his own poor, pinched features into the best
imitation of his "friend's" that he could accomplish. The effect
was so completely artificial that the vicar could not restrain a
smile of amusement. George's fair, good-natured face expressed
absolutely nothing.
The water-finder's words were very simple. He protested nothing,
and promised nothing. He had discovered a few years ago, he said,
that he had the gift of finding water in unexpected places. His
powers were not infallible, he explained, but were dependent on
many things, the nature of which he was unable to determine.
Possibly it was the condition of the atmosphere, possibly the
state of his own health, possibly the influence of want of faith
in the people who accompanied him on his quest--he was unable to
account for it--but certainly there were times when he had
failed.
At this point his audience shuffled impatiently with their feet,
and sundry little grunts and groans were heard, and the short
artificial laugh of Farley was plainly distinguishable. The
water-finder ran his mild, dreamy eyes along the benches, passed
without interest over Farley and Corkam, and rested for a moment
on Geo.
He had heard, he said, of the dreadful pass that Heigham was
likely to come to for want of water, and being in the
neighbourhood on a visit to some relations, had called on Mr.
Barlow and offered his services. It was for this meeting, he
understood, to reject or accept them. He had nothing more to say.
Mr. Barlow then rose and proposed a show of hands. This was the
signal for a general uproar, and perhaps a dozen or so hands were
lifted. The water-finder looked disappointed, the chairman angry,
and rough words were shouted from the audience.
"We don't want no palaverin', conjurin' chaps here," shouted
some. "Down with the sin of witchcraft!" shouted another. "Duck
'im in a 'orse pond, same as they did time agone," shouted the
village wag. "My, I'll make 'im swim!"
At this juncture the vicar walked up the room, and by a sign from
the chairman stepped on to the platform.
"We don't want no parsons neither," shouted a ne'er-do-well, who
had had a drop on his way; but the parson, if he had lost his
popularity, had not lost his power of engaging attention. The
chairman rang his bell to secure silence, and a voice from the
back of the room shouted "Hear, hear!"
"It seems to me," said the vicar, "that all we want is water. It
is with the hope of finding a solution to our terrible difficulty
that we are met here to-day. Everything, as you all know, that
ordinary science and knowledge can show us has been exhausted,
and with no result. We are in desperate case. We 'must have
water, or we die.' It is true that our stream still runs, and
some of our wells yield water; but it is polluted, and breeds
fever in those who drink it. But all this is well known; it is
idle to recapitulate it. I take it that all we have to decide is
whether we accept Mr. Wilman's offer or not. I think there can
be no doubt about it. 'The drowning man catches at a straw.' (Mr.
Wilman will forgive the allusion.) I trust he is no straw; but,
humanly speaking, we are undoubtedly 'drowning men.' It seems to
me there is no 'conjuring' or 'witchcraft' about his thing. God
has given us all certain powers--'divers gifts' as the Bible has
it--and just because we do not understand or cannot explain this
reputed gift of water-finding, why reject the possibility of it
in our hour of need? Let us give Mr. Wilman a fair trial; let
him do his best, and if he fails, well, we are in no worse plight
that we were before."
The vicar stepped down amid dead silence; his words had not had
time to sink in. The chairman rose.
"Gentlemen," he said, "my mind is made up. Mr Wilman has free
leave to come over my land and find us water where he can. I
can't let ignorance or blind prejudice stand in his way. I
completely endorse all the vicar's words."
"And I too," and a burly Nonconformist tradesman stepped up; "and
I'll give you twenty pounds towards the expenses of sinking the
well."
Ten minutes after this sixty pounds had been subscribed by the
influential people present. The meeting was broken up, and the
water-finder was casting his eye once more over the audience to
select his companions in the quest.
"Mr. Barlow will come with me, and I should be glad if you would
too, sir," he said to the vicar, who was making his way out.
"I only wish I could," he replied heartily--"it would give me the
greatest pleasure; but I have got to take two funerals this
afternoon, and I must run home and get something to eat first.
Many thanks, all the same, and I need scarcely say how anxiously
I shall look for the result of your trial."
He hurried off as he spoke, and Mr. Barlow and the water-finder
walked slowly up the street behind him, and disappeared into the
former's house.
An hour later they emerged and walked up the street.
CHAPTER IV.
THE SEARCH FOR WATER
It will readily be imagined that the "dowser," as he called
himself, was not allowed to go on his quest accompanied only by
Mr. Barlow. He was followed, as was only natural, at a fairly
respectable distance, by by a selection of all the idle boys and
girls in Willowton, and for once Geo Lummis had deserted his
friends on the bridge, and followed the little crowd leisurely in
the rear, with his hands in his pockets, and his hat tilted at
the back of his head.
The water-finder carried in his hand a freshly-cut hazel rod,
which he had brought from Mr. Barlow's garden. It was about two
feet long, and forked at one end. He held it, point downwards,
straight in front of him, with a "prong" in each hand, and he
walked at a fair pace, his eyes fixed on the rod, and preserving
a dead silence.
As he went the little procession followed him up the main street
over the bridge nearly as far as Gravel-pit Lane. Here the
lookers-on noticed the hazel twig jerk outwards unmistakably. Mr.
Barlow, who was walking abreast of him, sent an inquiring glance
at him.
"Only drain water," said the dowser laconically, without
slackening his pace.
A few more steps brought him to the bottom of Gravel-pit Lane,
and Annie Chapman, with a tribe of dirty, bright-eyed children
clinging to her bedraggled skirts, came out to see the fun. The
sun had gone in, and a sort of thick heat-mist pervaded
everything. It was the sort of afternoon that during any other
summer than that of 1901 would have ended in a thunderstorm; but
it seemed as if the clouds had forgotten how to rain, and the
parched ground looked thirstier than ever, while an unsavoury
drainy smell rose from the cluster of infected houses.
In the garden of the Chapman's house was a condemned well, now,
fortunately perhaps, dry. A wooden cover was over the brickwork,
and it was safely padlocked. Annie and her brood rested against
this as they watched the dowser advancing.
He made straight for her gate. At a sign from her one of the
children opened it, and he and Mr. Barlow passed through; the
crowd remained outside. The door into the untidy sitting-room was
open, and without a "with your leave" or "by your leave" the
water-finder passed in, the twig jerking violently all the time.
Annie coloured, and sprang towards the house. Mr. Barlow, who was
following mechanically, stopped. "An Englishman's house is his
castle." He waited for permission. Annie was always hospitable in
spite of what to her was a sudden inexplicable feeling of shame
that the gentlemen should see what a pigsty the house was. She
smiled, however, as she held open the door, and drew her fairly
clean apron as far over her dress as she could.
"Go you in, sir," she said; "though God a'mighty knows what he's
after there, I don't."
Before Mr. Barlow could take advantage of her invitation,
however, the dowser had passed out through the little kitchen
into the yard behind, where, stumbling along over Annie's pots
and pans and other utensils, which were everywhere but where they
ought to be, he stopped short at a high privet fence, neatly
clipped; for with the backyard Annie's dominion ended and Tom's
began, so the fences and the gate and the palings were in good
order. There was no getting over this fence; it ran all the
length of the row of houses. The dowser retraced his steps, and
led by Mr. Barlow soon reappeared by a circuitous route at the
opposite side of the fence. Annie and her children made a big
hole in the dusty green of it and peered through.
Behind this hedge was a small piece of waste land, or common,
where the boys played desultory games of cricket in the hot
evenings; and when there was any feed at all on it, the few
people who owned donkeys in Willowton turned them out to graze.
Just now it was as hard brickbats and guiltless of any signs of
green. All the way across this piece the rod jerked and twisted.
"There is water here," the dowser said, stopping and wiping his
brow. He looked exhausted, and sat down on the bank that ran
along the top of the rather shallow gravel-pit that gave the name
to the place. "The spring is a deep one, too," he continued
thoughtfully--"perhaps eighty or a hundred feet below the
surface; but it is a bad place for sinking a well--too dangerous
by far with all this gravel. We will try somewhere else."
At Mr. Barlow's request, however, he marked the spot with a large
stone, for it was impossible to put a stick in the hard ground.
"How do you know what depth it is down, may I ask?" said the
farmer politely; and the crowd of boys and girls listened eagerly
for the answer, and none more eagerly than Geo, who stood a
little aloof with an unusual alertness in his bearing.
"I know in this way," said the dowser, taking up his twig which
he had laid down for a moment and standing over the place
indicated. "I judge by the distance from it at which the rod is
influenced. Deep-lying water affects a smaller area than that
which is nearer the surface. My rod, as I daresay you observed,
began to jerk before we reached yonder cottage," pointing back at
the Chapman's house. "That must be a couple of hundred yards or
more away. No," he added in answer to further questions, "I don't
go by any exact scale of measurement. Other people may do so, but
I don't. Experience enables me to be pretty certain about it,
and I trust to that."
Geo was so intensely interested at this conversation that he
could not help advancing nearer than manners permitted. The
dowser noticed him.
"I think I saw you at the meeting," he said, looking kindly at
him. "Have you ever seen water found like this before?"
Geo touched his hat respectfully.
"No, sir," he said, "that I hain't. That's the most wonderful
thing I ever see in my life."
The dowser smiled.
"It does not seem so wonderful to me," he said. "I come of a
family of dowsers. My father was one before me, and my
grandfather, and I have a sister with the same gift, though I
have but lately discovered my own power. There are a good many
of us in the south-west of England--Wiltshire, Dorset, Cornwall;
I am a Wilts man myself."
"Oh, indeed, sir," said Geo because he had nothing else to say.
"You do it professionally, I conclude, then?" said Mr. Barlow,
inwardly quaking lest Mr. Wilman should demand an exorbitant fee.
"Dear me, no--not at all. I do it quite in an amateur way, just
for the love of it. A man must sometimes help his
fellow-creatures. I am not a rich man. I can't do much in the way
of money, but having this gift, I occasionally make use of it. I
was taking a holiday just now. I am on a motor car with a friend,
and we are stopping a few days in your neighbourhood. I heard of
your difficulties, as I think I mentioned at your meeting, and
saw my opportunity for indulging in my hobby. When I am at home I
am a very busy man, Mr. Barlow. I am sub-agent to Lord
Atherthy."
"Indeed, sir, indeed," said Mr. Barlow, with considerable relief
and a palpable increase of respect. "And I'm sure it is very
kind of you. We are as a parish immensely indebted to you; at
least, ahem, we shall be when---"
"When I find the water, eh? Well, I am not content with this
place. I am rested now; I think we'll go on.--You, young man,"
addressing Geo, "can come alongside if you like, but not too
near. Keep, like Mr. Barlow, a few paces behind me."
So once more the procession moved on, and the dowser, after
walking perhaps some hundred yards away from the place where he
professed to have discovered a spring, took up his rod in his
accustomed way and strode on.
CHAPTER V.
OLD JIMMY'S SCRUPLES
In the meantime the vicar had eaten a hurried luncheon of bread
and cheese in the master's room, and leaving the Union walked
quickly down to the church. He had barely time to put on his
surplus and stole when the mournful procession came in sight; and
with a sad heart he went to meet it, reading, of course, as he
went the opening sentences of our beautiful burial service for
two more victims of the epidemic--a young girl and a child from
Gravel-pit Lane.
After the service, when he once more emerged from the vestry, he
was followed by the old man in whose person were embodied the
three offices of verger, sexton, and clerk--"Jimmy the clerk," as
the parish dubbed him.
If anybody had asked me to point out a few of the "characters"
which are to be found in every village as well as in Willowton, I
think, without hesitation, I should have begun with Jimmy
Greenacre. I do not know if I shall be able to show you dear old
Jimmy just as I saw him, because his quaintness was a great deal
made up of a whimsical twist of his funny old face, a touch of
humour in the turn of his sentences, and an absurd habit of
gabbling his information like an eager child who has been given a
few minutes only to say his say--a habit partly the result of
having only three or four teeth left in his head, and partly from
a laudable desire to use the best and most appropriate words in
conversation with those he was pleased to look upon as his
betters.
In person he was rather inclined to be tall, spare, and sinewy;
his hair was thick, and still dark in spite of his seventy-three
years; and being an economical gentleman, he was not as
intimately acquainted with the barber as the vicar would have
liked, but his rugged-lined old face was clean shaven, and tanned
to a deep mahogany. He walked with the slow, rather shuffling
gait of the agricultural labourer, and stooped a little from the
shoulders with the stoop that comes of hard work in early youth.
Jimmy had been born and bred in Willowton, and he was destined to
die there. In his humble way he was a perfect walking De Brett:
he knew the family history of every man, woman, and child in the
place, and that of their forebears for the last two generations
or more--some people said his memory was far too good! But if
they had only known it, they themselves had benefited oftentimes
by that same memory. To the vicar he was invaluable. The late
incumbent had died very suddenly, and his wife had followed him
within a few days. They had no children, and but for old Jimmy,
Mr. Rutland would have had to find out everything for himself.
But Jimmy knew the ropes, and taught the new vicar to put his
hands on them. "Jimmy is as good as a curate to me any day!" the
vicar would say with a kindly hand on the old man's shoulder when
he introduced him to any of his friends; and old Jimmy would slip
away with a pleased chuckle and a modest, "No, no, master; but I
does my best, and a carn't due no more--so I carn't." Nor could
he.
It was due to this passion for genealogies on the part of the old
man that he took such a lively interest in Geo Lummis, the
"laziest booy," as he termed him in his own mind, in Willowton.
"That there chap harn't got a chance, that he harn't," he would
tell the vicar. "His fayther was jist sich another, and his
grandfa' afore him--poochin', good-fur-noethin's booth on 'em!
messin' about all day a' the bridge, and creepin' out a' nights
after the trout--ticklin' of 'em, yer mind, and layin' abed the
best o' ther mornin' afterwards. This here booy--why, Mr. Morse,
he took a likin' tew 'um, and had 'um up here teachin' of 'um all
manner a' things. He set 'im tew a trade along av a carpenter in
Walden; but he was sune back agen, an' dun no good at all! And
here he be, herdin' along a' that scum Corkam, and talkin' all
manner a' rubbidge along a' him. His mother's ter blame, I say.
She knew well enow how it was with her husband, and here's she
a-lettin' a' the booy go th' same way. But there, what can yew
expect a' her when yew cum to recollect that her mother, Mary
Anne, was--" But when Jimmy went into the next generation the
vicar was apt to interrupt him, for he was an impetuous, hasty
young man, and not so good a listener as the old man would have
wished him to be.
But on this occasion Jimmy's words commanded attention.
"Look yew there sir!" he exclaimed in a hollow tone, grasping the
vicar's arm, and pointing with a gnarled old finger that shook
partly from age and partly from excitement--"look you there, sir!
There go Mosus to strike th' rock. 'Must we find you water?' he
say; and yer know what happened tew 'um, yer know, and so dew
he--well!" and Jimmy threw out both hands with a gesture that
implied that he, at least, would have no traffic with such evil
doings.
Mr. Wilman and his following had just come over the common, and
were bearing down again on the village, and the vicar was all
eagerness to join them. It was tiresome of Jimmy to detain him
just now, and Jimmy was as difficult to shake off as a terrier
with a rat.
"You'll be thankful enough to drink the clear water when we get
it, I'll be bound. And as for the means, it isn't for you or me
either to criticise Mr. Wilman. God has given him apparently an
unusual gift, and he is going to use it for our good. Be off with
you and cut the grass, you old goose."
"Cut the grass! He, he!" This was a little joke between the vicar
and the clerk, and Jimmy never failed to laugh at the sarcasm (it
had been so long since there had been a blade of grass to cut).
"Well, well, let his punishment fall on his own hid!" said Jimmy
piously.
"Jimmy," said the vicar, quite seriously this time, "if I wasn't
a parson, I should tell you you're a regular old fool. There's a
proverb somewhere (you won't find it in the Bible, so don't think
you've caught me tripping) that says, 'God helps those who help
themselves;' and do you honestly tell me that if we kneel down
every Sunday and pray for rain, and don't accept every chance of
getting good water that God puts in our way, that He will pay any
heed to us? Must we have it in our own special way, or not at
all? Jimmy, Jimmy, your argument won't hold water; you'd better
come with me and see how it's done."
But Jimmy scorned the suggestion, and went off mumbling about
judgements to come, and doers of iniquities, and witches, and
soothsayers, till he had grumbled himself out of the churchyard
and up the lane till he reached his own door.
He found the house empty. Milly had been smitten with the quest,
and had gone out to the dowser. Jimmy could hardly believe his
ears when the next door neighbour--a lame woman who "would have
gone on her own account if she could," as she stoutly protested
when Jimmy lifted up his voice in a gabble of invective--informed
him that Milly had asked her to see to the kettle, and the cake
in the oven, while she went off to see the water found. "And
small blame, too! Who wouldn't see a miracle when they could in
these days when nothing happened that---"
"There's no miracle at all about it," grumbled Jimmy, turning
round and arguing the other way when he found himself worsted.
"Well, then, I don't see that you have no call to make such a
to-due about it. If that be so as you say jest ordinary tappin',
there can't be no witchcraft nor Satan's work about it. Bless me,
if I'd a got your legs I'd have been there long ago."
And so it happened that before many minutes were over Jimmy's
curiosity had overcome his scruples, and he became one of the
fast-increasing crowd.
CHAPTER VI.
PUBLIC OPINION ON THE BRIDGE
The sun was setting, and the long shadows were slanting into the
tired faces of the crowd, before the dowser considered he had
satisfactorily accomplished his self-imposed task. He had made
his circuit of the village, and come back again to the common. He
had found and marked three springs: two were, he said, at a
considerable depth, some hundred or more feet below the surface;
and one, the most conveniently-placed for those who were to
benefit by it, was on the edge of the common, perhaps three or
four hundred yards from the church. When he and his following
returned after their long and successful quest, they found motor
car standing at the Wild Swan, puffing and snorting in the
impatient way that motors do. The driver, who was most
unmistakably out of patience, called out to him to hurry, or
"they would not get to Ipswich that night;" and after a brief
adieu to Mr. Barlow, and a comprehensive word to the assemblage,
he climbed into the car and disappeared in a cloud of dust.
Willowton metaphorically rubbed its eyes. It was like a dream.
This morning they were to die for want of water; this evening it
appeared there was "water, water everywhere, but not a drop to
drink."
When the last sound of the departing motor's horn had died away
Geo Lummis joined his cronies on the bridge.
"Well," said Corkam, in his rancorous voice, "of all the
tomfoolery I ever seed in my life, I never seed anything to ekal
this! Do yew mean ter tell me as that old bloke with a piece a'
stick can find out where the water is, a hundred feet under the
earth? Well, if yew think I'm goin' ter believe _that_, why
you're greater fules nor I took yer for."
"He, he, he!" laughed the cripple admiringly. "He knaw a thing or
tew, due Mr. Corkham."
"Well," said Corkam, swelling with importance, "if I di'n't I
ought ter, for I've been twice ter 'Meriky, and that's moor nor
the rest of yer hev."
This argument was unanswerable, for nobody else certainly had
crossed the Atlantic, or had, for the matter of that, ever
experienced the slightest desire to do so; but still, to have
been a traveller gives one importance in one's native village,
and Corkam never let the American experience be forgotten. There
was a tradition that an impudent boy, with an inquiring mind, had
once asked him how long he had been there; and there _were_
people in the upper walks of life in Willowton who had expressed
an opinion that he had gone over as a stoker in one of the
"Cunarders," but had never done more than set his foot on the
soil of the other hemisphere. But the fate of the indiscreet boy,
whose ears had tingled for some time after his awkward question,
had successfully deterred others from indulging in any undue
thirst for information on that point, and Corkam was popularly
supposed to be a mine of knowledge. It was, therefore, distinctly
disappointing to find that the afternoon's excitement was to go
for nothing, and that they were, so to speak, "no forrader" than
they were before.
There was soon quite a little crowd round the "traveller," who
was airing his opinions freely, and consequently enjoying himself
exceedingly.
"And if he hev found water," he was saying--"s'posin', as we'll
say, s'posin' there _is_ water where he say--why, he didn't find
that for nothin'. Bah! _I_ knaw better'n that. He knaw wot he's
about, does that gen'lm; he'll be round here in a month or two,
I'll lay a soverin', arstin' for yer wotes for the next election!
I knaw 'em; they're all alike--doctors, parsons, jowsers--they
don't do anythin' for nothin'. Mark my words, he'll git suffin'
out on yer before long. I knaw 'em, an' I ought'er, I'm shore,
for ha'int I've bin te 'Meriky?"
How long this harangue might have continued one cannot tell, but
an interruption was cased by the arrival on the scene of the
doctor in his high dog-cart. He pulled up on the bridge and
addressed the crowd.
"This seems to be a good opportunity of speaking to you, my men,
on the subject which will be discussed in the schoolroom
to-morrow at dinner-time. Three springs of water are said to have
been discovered, and it has been decided to sink wells, if
possible, in all three places; and also to clear out those wells
which already exist, with a hope that when the rain _does_ come,
and the springs begin to work again, the water may be purer and
more fit to drink. The wells must be dug at once, the funds must
be raised somehow or other; we can't stop to consider how at this
moment, for it is a matter, as you all know, of life and death.
What we propose to ask of you is to come forward with offers of
help. The farmers have kindly consented to spare those of their
men who know anything about well-sinking. I am about to send
telegrams to several well-known men to come to our assistance,
and I now ask you to think the matter over this evening, and
those men who are willing to offer their services will, I hope,
come in person to the meeting at one o'clock to-morrow, when a
selection will be made by a committee, which will be formed this
evening. I should like to add that the question of wages will be
also settled, and that the vicar and I will be responsible for
their prompt payment. All we ask of you is your hearty
co-operation in what is for the good of the whole parish."
"Hear, hear!" shouted a few voices in the crowd, who, for the
most part, received the intimation with sullen silence and
imperturbability of countenance. Corkam's words had done their
work, and Willowton had veered round again and become
incredulous. The doctor drove off, first to call at a
fever-smitten house at the extreme end of the village, and then
to beat up a committee of influential men for the meeting next
day.
"Responsible fur the wages, indeed!" sneered Corkam. "I'd like
ter know where they're agoin' ter git th'money from! They'll
borrer it, I s'pose, and make a good thing out of it. Never fear,
yer don't blind _me;_ _I_ know 'em!"
"Well," said a man who had hitherto preserved a stony silence,
"th' wells have got to be dug somehow, and I don't see what call
anybody hev ter bother about where th' money come from so that's
good money, and that they come by it honest. I know sumthin'
about well-diggin', and I shall go if they'll hev me."
"And so'll I, Martin, if yue due," said Tom Chapman, who stood
beside him. "I don't know nothin' about it; but I know that's
dangerous work, and is well paid, and I can work under yur and
due my best."
"That you can, booy," said the other man, clapping him on the
back, "an' a better mate I don't never want te see."
After a little more desultory talk the crowd separated, and they
all went home to their evening meal, and to talk the matter over
with their wives.
CHAPTER VII.
TOM CHAPMAN "TAKES ON" AT THE WELL
When Tom Chapman opened his door a sight met him that was not a
grateful one to a tired man, and would have put most men into a
rage, but Tom didn't seem to mind much. He picked his way
cheerfully along over all manner of things, picking up a crowing
infant as he went that was rolled up in a shawl under the table.
"The only safe place in the room!" his wife said. A cry of joy
greeted daddy's entrance, and half a dozen grubby little arms
encircled his corduroy legs. His wife, with her hair all over her
face, looked up from the couch where she was sitting, with the
half-dressed youngster jumping about on her knees.
"What a mess!" was all Tom said.
"So it is Tom dear," said his wife cheerily; "but that'll be all
clear in no time.--Off with you, childer." And in a trice all the
elder ones were scampering upstairs, laughing with glee, and
carrying the greater part of their garments, of which they had
already divested themselves, with them. "Go you, Polly," she said
to a girl of perhaps eleven years old, "and tuck 'em all
up--there's a dear."
Polly vanished after the rest. Her mother floundered about
collecting oddments for a few minutes, talking volubly all the
time, and giving her husband an amusing and graphic description
of the dowser's appearance in Gravel-pit Lane. Tom dangled the
baby as he listened, and swallowed his impatience as best he
could, for there were no signs of supper. Annie was incorrigible,
he knew, and he often felt he ought to make a stand against so
much untidiness and unpunctuality; but Annie always disarmed him.
Worn and weary, tired or ill, she always had a smile for him, and
then she had one great and very rare virtue--she _never made_
excuses. She never either denied her faults or tried to explain
them away. Tom, like the vicar, sometimes wished she did, for it
would have given _him_ an excuse for scolding her; but she never
did, and so he learned to put up with it all. And she had also
another rare and excellent gift--she could control the children.
She never "smacked" or scolded them, and she never nagged at
them; but when she told them to do anything, somehow or other,
sooner or later--sometimes, certainly, a little "later"--they
always obeyed, and that without coercion.
In a few minutes there was quiet overhead, for the children were
saying their prayers, and Tom sat down to the table, and ate
heartily of some very good boiled bacon and a mess of cold beans,
washed down with a couple of glasses of fromerty, a drink he had
enjoyed a few years before in the hayfield and having asked and
learned how it was made, had passed his knowledge on to Annie,
who was always quick at anything in the way of cooking, and eager
to add to her store of knowledge in that line, to her husband's
lasting joy and her own comfort.
"Annie," he said, when he had finished and she had rocked the
baby to sleep, "I've took on as a well hand--leastways I've said
I will work with Martin, and I shall go and offer myself
to-morrow at the meetin'."
Annie's face fell.
"O Tom, I wish you wouldn't. That's such terrible dangerous work,
and what ever shall I do if yew get hurt?"
"No more dangerous than many other things. That's good pay, and
some one must do it. There'll be a rare job to find the men for
three wells, to be dug at once the doctor say."
"Three wells at once! well, that is a job! Which'll yew be at, I
wonder? P'raps they'll set yew on the one atop a th' lane. That
'ud be nice and handy, and yew could run in for yer dinner. And
what'll they giv yew a day due yew think, Tom?
"I'm sure I don't know. Not less than three bob, I'm thinking,
and p'raps more when we git down deep."
"Three shillin's a day; why, that's eighteen shillin's a week,
and us only gettin' twelve! Why, we'll sune grow rich like that,
Tom!"
Chapman laughed. There is not much wealth even on eighteen
shillings for a family of ten! But the more the merrier, he said,
when his friends commiserated him for having so many mouths to
fee.
"Have you seen th' booy Tommy since th' mornin'?" asked Annie.
"No," he said; "I've bin after that dowser since I giv up work.
He's all right up there. I allus said that was th' right place
for 'm, though you was so set on keepin' him here."
"'Twasn't so much that as he wouldn't go, poor booy. He did beg
me that hard not to send him away, I hadn't the heart to; and
he'd 'a bin here now if Mr. Rutland hadn't come and carried him
away in his own arms. And I'm thankful enough now that I let him
go, for they let me go up and see him this tea-time, and he was
a-lyin' there so comfortable, with plenty a' coolin' drink by his
side, and Mrs. Davies lookin' after him a lot better than I
could," said Annie with a sigh; but somehow she was learning to
recognize her own shortcomings, and realizing how unsuitable a
place her cottage was for illness.
"And he say to me, 'Mother,' he say, 'I do very well here; don't
you take on about me'--for I couldn't help feelin' a bit bad
a-leavin' of him there, in spite of all I see of the comfort
round him. O Tom, the booards was that clean and the room that
sweet!"
"Yis, I know," said Tom sympathetically; "and let's hope, now
he's away, poor boy, the others will escape the fever. Anyways,
the first thing to do is to git pure water, and I've set my mind
on that, Annie gal; so don't yew try to put me off th' job."
"No--o, I won't," said Annie, as cheerfully as she could; but she
didn't really like it, all the same, though the eighteen
shillings a week dazzled her eyes.
The next morning Chapman and his mate and some half-dozen other
men presented themselves at the meeting, and were taken on at the
wells. Four of them were sent to the one by the railway station
nearest the village, three were employed to empty one of the
infected wells, and our two friends, Chapman and Martin, were
sent with a couple of men, who had come out from Ipswich, to
start the one over the spring the dowser had marked on the edge
of the common, between the churchyard and Gravel-pit Lane, just
as Annie had hoped.
The well-sinking committee, composed of the vicar, the doctor,
the squire's agent Mr. Jones, Mr. Barlow, and three of the
principal tradesmen in Willowton, lost no time in setting to work
that afternoon. Boxer, the largest carpenter in the place, got an
order for two cylinders or zones, to be made of the strongest oak
planks, and well clamped, in the fashion of a barrel. These
cylinders, which were, of course, circular, were about three feet
in height, and measured about seven feet in diameter. They were
made with an overhanging edge to hold and retain in their places
the bricks that were to weight them as they sank into the soil;
and a supply of sharp new spades and picks was sent to each
well-side by the village ironmonger. Apparently every one was
going to reap some benefit from this new scheme, and the prospect
of good water, even to the most sceptical, could not fail to be
popular.
Before the evening was out collecting boxes "For the New Wells"
had been put in conspicuous places on the counters of each of the
shops, and a large one was fastened on to the church door. There
was one placed in a prominent position at the post-office, and
old Jimmy tramped off to the station with the doctor's
compliments to the stationmaster, and "would he put one in the
waiting-room?" Of course the stationmaster was agreeable to this,
and Jimmy had the satisfaction of seeing the box he brought hung
on a nail near the ticket-collector's window, and of hearing the
chink of the station-master's own contribution, and the promise
from each of the two porters of all the money they would get in
tips for the next three days.
"Not that that'll count for much," one of them remarked, with a
wink at the old man that caused him to chuckle audibly, "'cos you
know, master, we be'an't allowed to take no money."
Willowton was not a crowded junction, but only a little ordinary
station on the line; yet somehow or other, between them those
porters put nearly two shillings into the box.
For the next few days, whenever the vicar or the doctor showed
himself in the village, he was sure to be stopped and asked for a
collecting-card, and before the end of the week there were
thirty-six cards at work in Willowton. Some wag suggested that
there should be one on the bridge, and that Corkam or Farley
should hang it round his neck with a suitable inscription,
because they were certain to be always on the spot! But Corkam
scowled so at the proposition that what might have really been a
most excellent plan was never carried out: for the bridge, as I
said before, was the central point of the little town, and few
people but passed over it some time in the day; consequently
quite good sum might have been collected if anybody had taken
charge of a box. Corkam apparently did all the good works he ever
meant to accomplish in America, and Farley dared not undertake to
collect without his approval.
CHAPTER VIII.
A NEIGHBOURLY ACTION
It was a week after the finding of the water, and Mildred
Greenacre was in the little orchard at the back of the cottage.
There was a sickly smell in the air of dying May flowers; the
parched blossoms fell fast on her head as she stooped over the
nearly dried-up stream to fill her water-can. A half-starved
looking billy-goat rubbed its horned head coaxingly against her
and bleated piteously. It was trying its best to tell her that
there was no nourishment in the burned-up grass, which was all it
had to live on. Milly was paying very little attention to the
poor animal's complaint, for she was kneeling on the bank,
holding on to a thorn bush with one hand, while she vainly strove
to reach the sunken water with the other. She made a pretty
picture in the broad sunlight, and it was not lost upon the
"laziest chap in th' place," as he sat idly balancing himself on
a gate opening into the field on the other side of the water.
For some time, unseen himself, he watched the girl's fruitless
endeavours, and then he suddenly lifted up his voice and shouted,
so that she started and almost dropped her can.
"Hold hard, and I'll help yer!"
Milly rose from her stooping position, and looked round to see
where the voice came from. Geo came slowly towards her. He came
slowly, because it never occurred to him to hurry! If ever he had
experienced an impulse to hasten his steps, it was at this
moment.
"I'll fill yer can," he said laconically, and without raising his
eyes to the pretty, flushed face across the stream.
"But you can't," said Milly; "you're the wrong side, you see."
"I on't be there long, then," replied Geo, measuring the distance
with his eye. "Yew git out a' the way, and I'll soon be alongside
a' yew."
"You're never going to jump?" began Milly, with round eyes of
surprise. As she moved aside, but before the sentence was
finished, Geo had sprung across.
It was not much of a jump--nine feet or so--but Geo had not
attempted anything so athletic for many a long day, and it was
not surprising that he landed somewhat ungracefully on all fours,
and was rather breathless when he picked himself up, only to sit
down again very promptly and wipe his brow with a blue-and-white
handkerchief.
Milly stood looking at him with surprise.
"Have you hurt yourself?" she ventured, after a minute.
"No, no, thank ye, only a bit shook; the ground is hard."
"That it is," said Milly--"like iron. If only the rain would
come, what a good job that would be!"
"That would indeed! But we've got water to drink at
last--leastways we shall have when the wells are dug."
"How are they getting on with them?" asked Milly, forgetful of
her morning's work for the moment.
"Well, the one on the common is gettin' on fairly well. They've
got down about fifty feet; but that's 'mazin' hard work, as you
can see."
[Illustration: "Nurse cast a satisfied glance round"]
"And the other, the one by the railway? I haven't been round
there these three days, and my grandfather, he won't have nothin'
to say to it." Milly smiled as she said this, and an answering
smile showed itself on Geo's broad face.
"No, so I heard say. He's an old-fashioned old gentleman, he is.
He don't go with th' times no-how, do 'ee?"
"That he don't," said Milly. "You should hear him goin' on about
it!"
"Well," said Geo, rising slowly from his recumbent position and
taking the can from the girl's hand, "that's a rum job
altogether. Them at the bridge can't make nothin' of it, and no
more---"
"Why do you go with them at the bridge at all?" broke in Milly
impatiently. "Who cares what they say or what they don't say, I
should like to know?" very haughtily. "Give me my can, please; I
can get it myself!"
Geo stared at her, at a loss to account for the sudden change in
he look and manner. A minute ago she was evidently inclined to be
friendly, but now she was equally evidently inclined to be
extremely annoyed with him. Geo gave vent to his feelings in a
low, long whistle. Milly blushed crimson.
"I beg your pardon," she said; "I oughtn't to have said it.
That's no business of mine whether you loaf all day on the bridge
not. But I have my work to do, and I mustn't loiter here no more,
or I shall have grandfather after me."
Geo stood quietly by while she made this rather long speech, and
was surprised to feel that he did not quite like it. He was
inclined to think he liked it better when she flashed out her
contempt for his idleness. But being a man of few words, and not
much felicity of expression, he merely muttered something
unintelligible, and leaning over the bank filled her can.
"I'll car' it for you if you're agreeable," he said shamefacedly,
and the two moved together towards the cottage.
"Thank you kindly," Milly said gently when they reached the door;
but she did not ask him to step in, and he turned away awkwardly
enough, wishing he had the courage to tell the girl he had not
spoken to three time in his life since they were at school
together that he was tired of his companions on the bridge, and
would gladly change his habits if only she would be friends with
him.
With a gruff "You're welcome, I'm sure," he slouched off towards
the village.
As he turned out of the lane by the bridge, Corkam caught sight
of him, and called after him,---
"Geo, come here, buoy! What are you arter, slinking away like
that? Why, that nigh on time for a pint!"
But Geo, for once in his life, turned the other way, and
sauntered up the road to the new well by the railway. The men had
given up work for a spell, and were sitting in the shadiest spot
they could find eating their "'levenses." Geo lay down under the
fence with them.
"If I'd ha' known what a job this 'oud ha' bin," said one man,
"blow me if I'd ha' took it on."
"Hard work, is it?" said Geo pleasantly.
"Ay, hard work indeed--harder work nor you iver did a' your born
days, I'll lay a sovr'in'."
For the first time since Geo didn't know when, he felt a twinge
of shame at these rough words, and his eyes fell on his own
hands, fine, strong, well-shaped, capable hands, tanned with sun
and wind, but not hardened with toil like the other men's. A big,
good-natured looking man, who had just swallowed a good draught
of home-made "small beer," spoke suddenly, as if he had divined
the other's thoughts.
"They look as if they cold do a day's work as well as mine," he
said, holding out a pair of rough, strong limbs, with sinews like
those of Longfellow's village blacksmith, and muscles standing
out, hard and healthy, as a working man's should be. "Let me feel
your muscles, buoy." He gripped Geo's arm as he spoke. "Pulp!"
he ejaculated, not ill-naturedly, however--"pulp! How come they
like that? Have you had th' fever, buoy!"
"Mighty little fever about him," said the man who had spoken
first. "That's want a' work wot's the matter a' him! _He_ never
had a wet jacket a' his life! He's too much a' th' gentleman, is
Mr. George Lummis, and so was his father before 'im--like father,
like son. He was a precious sight too grand to keep his own wife
when he was alive, and niver did na more nor trap a rabbit when
there worn't nothin' to eat in th' house."
"You lie!" said George, with sudden anger leaping up in his face,
and standing with blazing eyes staring at the sneering workman.
"Say what you like about me, but you leave my father alone, or
I'll know what for."
"Hullo, hullo!" said the good-natured man, who was a stranger,
and had no idea of raising such a storm when he remarked on Geo's
very apparent strength of frame. "Hullo! stow that; that a sight
too hot for quarrelling. We'll ha' to go to work again in twenty
minutes, and tha would be a good lot more pleasant to have a
whiff a' bacca than commin' to fisticuffs a' this heat. Sit down,
young man, and don't be a fule."
But Geo was much to irate to follow this obviously good advice.
Without appearing to notice the stranger's words, he strolled off
with as unconcerned an air as he could to the bridge. His
possible good resolutions had all faded away, swallowed up in the
blow his vanity had received, and a few minutes later he had
joined his friends Farley and Corkam in their far less harmless
"'levenses" at the inn. Here he regaled them with an account of
his passage of arms with the stranger, and received their
sympathy and strongly-expressed advice to do as he pleased, "and
be hanged to them!" There might be a late "haysel," and he might
get taken on for the time, and put a few pounds in his pocket to
tide him over till harvest. So when Milly passed over the bridge
at about one o'clock with her grandfather's dinner, which she was
taking to him where he was at work to save him the hot walk home
and back, she saw Geo with a flushed face and bravado air leaning
against the bridge, with his familiar pals on either side. Milly
saw, but she took no notice, and passed with her head in the air
and an angry spot on either cheek. The girl was furious with
herself for having taken an interest, even a momentary one, in
such a worthless, good-for-nothing as Geo, and still more annoyed
to think that she had let him see it.
"That's a tidy maid," said the cripple, with the air of a critic,
as she passed, and both men were surprised at Geo's answer.
"What's that to you?" said Geo, in a sullen tone; and he crossed
over, and became apparently completely engrossed in watching for
a trout under a stone.
CHAPTER IX.
NURSE BLUNT ARRIVES
The last days of May were over, and June was here, but since the
visit of the dowser there had fallen no drop of rain. The fever
was in no-ways abated. There had been several more deaths and
several new cases; another young Chapman was down with it; the
isolation hospital was full, and a fierce battle was going on
among the guardians as to the expediency of admitting sick people
into the Union Infirmary.
In the meantime, by a subscription raised by the well-to-do in
the parish, the services of a trained nurse had been secured, and
old Jimmy had been asked to give her a lodging. Everybody knew
how clean and neat Milly kept everything, and it was unanimously
agreed at the meeting, which had been hastily summoned, that the
nurse would be as comfortable there as anywhere else in the
village.
Old Jimmy at first demurred, on account his granddaughter; but
Milly herself soon argued him out of his objections.
"The fever is in the air, grandfather," she said. "I take all
ordinary precautions against it. I boil and filter every drop of
water we drink, and I never let anything dirty lie about
anywhere, and am as particular as can be about every morsel of
food we eat, and I don't see as I can do no more. If I'm to catch
it I shall, but not from the nurse, I know, unless she takes it
herself; for this typhoid is not like scarlet fever or
smallpox--you can't carry it about in your clothes, but only take
it immediate one from another. I'm not afraid of the nurse if
you're not."
So Jimmy gave in, and one hot evening the nurse arrived. Mrs.
Crowe, the vicar's housekeeper, met her at the station, and
brought her to her new quarters. The white dust lay thick on the
road, and the hedges all along were choked with it. A porter from
the station followed with her box on a barrow. A most formidable
box it was. It quite frightened Milly when she saw it. She
thought she must be having a very grand lady to stay with her.
But the nurse soon explained that it was simply filled with
linen.
"I've brought enough to last me a month or two," she said, "and
my aprons weigh so heavy; but if we can't get it up your stairs,
why, we can just unpack it in the parlour and carry the things up
in our arms. You need not worry about that."
Milly had set out a cosy tea in the little front room that opened
into the garden--some nice home-made bread (for Milly always did
her own baking), some butter and blackberry jam, and a boiled egg
and some toast--in case the traveller was hungry after her hot
journey. The tea was in a brown earthenware pot--which, as
everybody is not fortunate enough to know, makes the very best
tea in the world--and the cloth was spotless, and the knives and
spoons well polished. Nurse cast a satisfied glance round before
she followed Milly to the little bedroom upstairs. She had had
plenty of experience, and she knew the signs of good housekeeping
almost at a glance. There was no carpet in the room, but the
flooring was exquisitely clean; some white curtains of a material
that Milly's grandmother, who had made them and hung up forty
years ago, had called "dimity;" the little wooden bedstead stood
a little out from the wall, and the sheets and pillow-cases were
as white as careful washing could make them. A rush-bottomed
chair and a little table, with the necessary washing apparatus,
completed the furniture. A jug of hot water stood in the basin,
and a pair of clean towels and a fresh piece of brown Windsor
soap looked inviting.
Nurse sat down and removed her bonnet, opened her little black
hand-bag, and took out a sponge and a brush and comb; and Milly,
with a pleasant "hope she found all to her liking," slipped away
to make the tea. She had asked Mrs. Crowe to stay and have a cup
with them, for she was, not unnaturally, a little shy of her new
lodger. It was her first experience of having any one but her
grandfather to look after, and she felt a little anxious.
As soon as tea was over Milly put a note into the nurse's hands.
It had been left there, she said, by the doctor, who would be
much obliged, did not nurse feel too tired, if she would come to
him in the cool of the evening, and he would explain her duties
to her.
The conversation naturally turned on the prevailing topic of the
typhoid epidemic. Nurse, who had been a couple of years in a
London hospital, had had a good deal of experience of this fever,
and she told her listeners many interesting things which were
useful for them to know just then. She was a pleasant-faced,
kind-looking woman of about forty years of age, with a slightly
dictatorial manner, which was perhaps the result of her training;
for she had worked for several years as parish nurse in poor
districts, and often, as she told them, met with terrible
ignorance, and that obstinacy which so often accompanies it.
People _would_ not believe in infection, she said; they would not
take the most ordinary, the most simple precautions; and what was
worse, when they had learned by the bitter experience of the loss
of, perhaps, their nearest and their dearest, they still
persisted in the utter disregard of cleanliness and health.
"And that, no doubt, is the secret of this outbreak at Willowton.
I have not been told so, but I take that for granted," said the
nurse.
"Well, nurse, I should hardly like to go so far as that," said
the vicar's housekeeper, standing up as far as her conscience
allowed for her native place; "but there is a great deal of that
too. But our chief trouble is the water. Nearly all the wells in
the place are condemned by the sanitary inspectors, and we really
don't know where to get water fit to drink."
"Dear me, that is bad!" said nurse. "What are your landlords
about? Why isn't something done?"
"Oh, dear me, it's no fault of the landlords," said Mrs. Crowe,
rather warmly. "It is one gentleman owns the whole place, but he
has been out at the war the last two years, and his agent has
been doing his best, but up to within the last fortnight there
had been no possibility of finding any water. And most of the
springs have gone dry."
"You say 'up to the last fortnight,' Mrs. Crowe. Do I understand
that you have had some water found since then?"
"Well, yes; at least so we hope and trust there will be when the
wells are dug."
And then she proceeded to give nurse a full and highly-coloured
description of the "miracle," as some of the people persisted in
calling it.
"Oh yes, I have heard of dowsers," said nurse. "It's a wonderful
thing, and a good many people don't believe in it. But seeing is
believing, and from what you say I hope we shall soon see a proof
of the power. But we are lingering too long over our tea and
chat. I must go up to the doctor's house, for he evidently wants
to see me this evening, and I won't waste any more time. Perhaps
one of you will show me the way!"
"I will," said Mrs. Crowe. "Indeed, it is time I was home too;
the vicar will be in and wanting his supper."
So the two women went off together, and Milly was left to clear
up the tea-things and get a meal ready, for her grandfather would
not be in, he told her, till eight o'clock.
CHAPTER X.
ANOTHER FEVER VICTIM
The account the doctor gave Nurse Blunt of the deplorable state
of the sickness in Willowton would have made a weaker woman
quail, but Nurse Blunt was strong in body and mind.
"I mayn't sit up night, sir, as you know," she said, "but I'll do
my best all day; and I'll begin at six o'clock to-morrow morning
if you'll give me list of the most urgent cases."
The doctor took out his pocket-book.
"Four cases in Gravel-pit Lane," he read, "two in the main
street, three in the back alley. None of these are particularly
dangerous ones, but they all require great care, as you know, and
the difficulty is to prevent their relations feeding them with
forbidden things."
"I know that well, sir," said the nurse sorrowfully; "I've had a
great many sad experiences of that. Many a poor thing has died
through being given solid food at a time when nothing but milk
should have been allowed."
"Yes," assented the doctor, "of course, it is as you say; and it
has been the cause of death to several of our people. I cannot
make them see the necessity for following my orders implicitly;
they think it does not matter, or I won't find out. Well, perhaps
I don't, but nature does, and we soon see the result."
"Where shall I go first?" asked nurse.
"Well, there is a new case declared only this afternoon--a Mrs.
Lummis, a nice woman, a widow. She has no one really to look
after her but a lazy ne'er-do-weel of a son. Perhaps you had
better go there first. She will not keep you long. Everything
will be neat; and though very poor, I fancy she knows what ought
to be. If wanted, I'll give you an order for milk. Major Bailey
has telegraphed from South Africa that his dairy (and he keeps a
lot of cows) is at our disposal. You'd better tell her son he
must go for it every morning." He wrote out an order as he spoke.
"The others have all got them," he continued.
And after receiving a few more important directions, the nurse
took her leave and strolled back through the village to her
lodgings.
Milly and her grandfather were still up when she got back, though
they usually "turned in" earlier. Milly, of course, waited to
hear whether her lodger wanted anything before she retired for
the night.
"Nothing, thank you," she said in answer to her inquiries; "but
if you'll let me have breakfast at eight o'clock I should be
glad. And perhaps you can tell me which of these places comes
first. I like to take my patients as they come; it saves time and
trouble, and they get to know when to expect me."
She handed Milly the doctor's paper, and Milly explained. Nurse
took out a pencil and made some notes on the margin.
"Oh! and then there's Mrs. Lummis," she said.
"I am to go there first. Where does she live?"
"Mrs. Lummis!" echoed Milly with surprise. "Is she ill?"
"So the doctor says. And it appears she has no one to look after
her but a good-for-nothing son. Poor woman! I'm sorry for her,
for I shan't be able to give her much of my time with a list like
this!"
Milly would have liked to say something in defence of George
Lummis, for she had, or fancied she had, seen something of
another side of his character when he had jumped across the
stream and stood beside her so meekly while she spoke to him
about his wasting his time on the bridge. She had fancied there
was something rather fine about him, he had looked so strong and
honest and capable for the moment; but then a little later how
different had been his appearance! The remembrance of that kept
her quiet; she had nothing to say.
Old Jimmy woke up just in time to hear nurse's remark. "Yes," he
said, "a good-fur-northin', idlin' young fule." And if Milly had
not stopped him with a timely reminder that it was nearly
half-past nine, he would have plunged into the history of all
poor Geo's antecedents for several generations. As it was, nurse
was not particularly interested, and backed up Milly's suggestion
that it was high time all good people went to bed.
In the meantime, in the little house on the hill that lazy, idle
good-for-nothing was making ready for the night.
He pulled down the little blind over the open window, and set a
jug of milk and water with a glass by his mother's bedside, and
smoothed the sheet over her hot and tossing limbs.
"You just sing out, mother, if you want anything," he said,
speaking in a comfortable, low-toned voice that did not jar on
her aching nerves. "Or if you can't sleep. I'll come and set by
you. I'd like to do that now if you'd let me."
"No, no, Geo my boy, that I won't; I'm quite comfortable as far
as that goes. If it wasn't for the heat, maybe I'd get some sleep
myself. You go to bed now, and when you wake come in and see
after me. I'll call you sure enough if I want you."
So Geo came away, and throwing himself on his bed was soon sound
asleep.
In the house next door a girl was ill. Mrs. Lummis had been
helping to nurse her. If only she could be left, her mother would
come and see after her, she well knew; for the poor are always at
their best in times of illness, and the way they help each other
is a pattern to those above them. But the girl was very bad
indeed, not likely to recover, and Mrs. Lummis could not look for
help from the nearly worn-out mother. It was a comfort that Geo
seemed to be so handy. She was lucky, she thought, to have such a
son; but she felt anxious, knowing that her illness was likely to
be a long one. She knew not of the likelihood of the nurse
coming to her. Like everybody else in the village, she knew of
her advent, but nobody had told her she had really come. If she
had she would have passed a less miserable night, perhaps; for,
of course, nothing was farther away from her than sleep.
After all she had heard, nurse was rather surprised, when she
knocked at the door about seven o'clock next morning, to find it
opened to her by a pleasant, bright-faced young man, who looked
as if he had just dipped his head into a tub of cold water, so
fresh was his colour.
"_You_ haven't been up all night, I'll be bound," she inwardly
ejaculated; "but you look different from what I expected."
"I am the new nurse," she said in answer to the astonishment that
shot out of his blue eyes, "and the doctor has sent me to see
after your mother. What sort of night has she had?"
"Pretty bad," said Geo. "I was just gettin' th' kettle to boil,
and thought I'd make her some tea."
"Milk is better for her," said the nurse.
"That's too early for milk yet," said Geo; "you can't get milk at
the shop before eight o'clock."
"Oh, well, I've got a ticket for you," and the nurse produced it
out of her little black bag.
"Why, that's for the Hall!" said Geo with surprise.
"Yes, that's all right; the doctor sent it. You'd better take a
can and go and fetch it at once. I'll see after your mother if
you'll just take me to her."
"But I think I'd better first let her know," said Geo, thinking
this newcomer was taking rather too much on herself.
Nurse read his thoughts and flushed a little. She was so full of
the importance of her mission, so anxious to do her work
thoroughly, that she sometimes forgot the little courtesies due
to everybody, sick or well.
"Certainly," she said, rather curtly. "I'll wait till you come
down."
George disappeared up the steep little staircase that led out of
the sitting-room to the bedroom overhead. He was gone a few
minutes, and when he came back he said his mother would be glad
to see nurse if the doctor had sent her, and he showed her up.
The sick woman, who looked thin and flushed with fever, looked
half frightened at the nurse for a moment, and then began to cry.
"Leave her to me," said nurse to Geo, who did not understand.
"She'll be all right in a minute or two."
So Geo went off in his usual leisurely way for the milk, and the
nurse talked soothingly to the sick woman, took her temperature,
which was very high, and gave her some fever medicine.
"Are you going to do for her?" asked the nurse bluntly when Geo
returned.
"I s'pose so," answered Geo in the same way.
"Well, I'll call in some time again this afternoon. You need not
stop with her all day, but you must come in and out; and give her
nothing but milk, but plenty of it. But can you be spared from
your work? Oh," as Geo hesitated, "I forgot."
Geo saw she had already heard about him. It was unnecessary to
explain.
"I'll due wot yue say," he said simply, opening the door and
letting her out; and then he went back to his mother, who spoke
gratefully of the nurse and seemed glad of her help.
CHAPTER XI.
THE STRIKE AT THE WELL
One would have thought that so excellent a work as the digging of
the wells would be allowed to go on quietly, but unfortunately
the fact that the scheme happened to have been originated by the
vicar and the doctor was enough to make some people condemn it;
and we all know, when once the thin end of the wedge of
discontent and distrust has forced its way into anything, how
difficult--nay, how often impossible--it is to dislodge it. And
so it was that the men at the railway well, when they had dug to
the depth of nearly fifty feet and had found no water, began to
get impatient and disheartened. Most of the wells in Willowton
were not more than thirty or forty feet deep, and were fed, of
course, chiefly by surface drainage; hence their deadly poison.
These new wells were on the higher ground above the village, and
naturally water was to be found there only at a deeper level; but
these men either would not or could not take this in. Two of them
had had very little experience whatever in the work, and like all
novices, they looked for immediate results; and when these were
not forthcoming, they grumbled at the dowser, their employers,
and everything else. Their evil counsellors advised a strike for
higher wages than the unprecedented amount they were already
receiving, and so it happened that one hot morning, when the
vicar went up to see how they were progressing, he found the well
deserted, and no signs of the men anywhere. He walked up to it
and looked in. It was partially covered with planks in the usual
way, apparently just as they had left it the night before. He was
puzzled. The men had apparently struck. But why? he asked
himself. And nothing he could recall threw any light upon the
matter.
"That is the worst," he thought "of employing irregular workmen."
But it had been impossible at such short notice to procure all
professional well-sinkers, and he had thought himself very
fortunate to have secured two, one for each well; while all the
men, except Chapman, had seen the work going on at various farms
in the neighbourhood, if they had not actually assisted. They
were perfectly well aware of the nature of the work; they had
volunteered for it, and gone at it cheerfully enough. The strike
was altogether inexplicable.
The vicar paid his visit to the Union, and an hour later came on
to the bridge, where he saw all four men seated on the parapet,
smoking, and talking loudly and ostentatiously, as if they wished
to engage the attention of the passers-by. They were a
rough-looking gang, however, and nobody seemed inclined to stop.
Curiously enough, neither Corkam nor Farley was present.
"Good-morning, my men," he said pleasantly when he got within
speaking distance. "How is it you are not at work?"
A sort of sullen silence had come over them at his approach. No
one attempted to break it, but each looked covertly at the other
for guidance--all except the stranger, who turned his back and
became apparently deeply interested in the ducks on the water.
"You're all here, aren't you? No accident, I hope?" said the
vicar.
"No accident as I know on," answered the foreman at last.
He was a man who had been in the choir, but had left for some
stupid reason or fancied slight, known only to himself. Mr.
Rutland had been extremely kind to him always, and had helped him
more than once with money when an accident during harvest had
kept him out of work.
"Well," said the vicar, turning very red with an evident effort
to keep his temper, "since none of you have anything to say, I
will wish you good-morning."
"Well, but we have something to say," said another man roughly.
This man had had three children down with the fever, and the
doctor had given them every attention, even sitting up half the
night on occasion when two of them had been in a very critical
state. He had behaved very differently then from what he was
doing now. He thrust his hands into his trousers pockets, and
tried to look as callous as he could.
The vicar looked at him for the eighth part of a second with
disgust.
"Well, then, Cadger, stand up and say it properly," he said
authoritatively.
The man slipped off the parapet, and stood looking very
uncomfortable, for all his swagger, under the vicar's scrutiny.
"Now, then," said the vicar sharply, "what is it? what is your
complaint?"
"We've struck," said two or three voices at once.
The vicar never once glanced at the graceless creatures still
dangling their legs, though less aggressively; he addressed
himself to Cadger.
"Oh, have you?" he said as calmly as he could. "What have you
struck for?"
"More wages," said Cadger, glancing at his comrades for
directions.
"Which you won't have," said the vicar quietly. He was quite calm
now and very white. "You agreed for what was considered by
yourselves, and by everybody else, a very generous wage. You have
no right to ask more. I, for one, will certainly not advocate it.
There is reason in all things, and money is not so plentiful in
Willowton as you seem to think. I am disappointed in you, Cadger,
particularly; I had thought better things of you. I fancied you,
at least, were anxious to take your share in lessening the
terrible trouble that has been put upon us; but I see now you
only thought of your own interest. With my consent, I tell you
honestly, you will not get a penny more."
"He! he!" laughed one or two of the men; but the vicar never
looked round.
"But," he added, "I am only one. You can bring your complaint in
proper form before the committee, and, of course, if the majority
agree, what I say will not stand; so you have your remedy."
He walked away as he finished speaking, and Cadger sat down
again. He did not say anything, for somehow or other, though he
felt very valiant at first, he began now to feel rather small.
There was an uncomfortable silence for a few minutes, and then
the stranger, whose name was Hayes, knocked the ashes out of his
pipe against the root of a tree and spoke.
"He don't look such a bad sort," he said reflectively.
"I don't mind him so much," said Cadger patronizingly, "when he
mind 'is own business."
"Oh, indeed!" said the stranger with a twinkle. "Well, now,
whatever is 'is business?"
"Well, I s'pose that's te preach in th' church, and give the
money tue th' poor, and wisit th' sick."
"Yis. Well, go on; northin' more'n that?"
"Well yis," went on the man, never seeing that Hayes was "pulling
his leg:" "he've got ter due th' christenin', and th' marryin',
and th' buryin'."
"Well, that last ought ter give 'im plenty o' work in this hole,"
said Hayes rather brutally. "Well, go on. Anythin' more?"
"Well, he've got ter see after the schule, an' the clothin' club,
an' the parish room, an' sech like things."
"And don't he take no trouble about the choir? Don't he have no
Bible classes, nor confirmation classes, nor nothin'?"
"Oh yis, hev them," Cadger allowed.
"Well, then, there's them concerts, and trips to the seaside, and
school treats you was tellin' me about the other day. Don't he
have nothin' to do with them?"
"Oh yis; he manages them, in coorse."
"Oh, 'ndeed! Well, now, how about the cricket clubs and the
football clubs?"
"Oh, he's treasurer for them tue."
"Well, then--I don't hold much with parsons myself, but I should
like to know wat's _not_ his business!"
"That's not 'is business to come interferin' wi' us," said the
man who had laughed derisively. It was he who had insulted the
memory of Geo's father.
"Oh, ain't it? Well--- Don't be angry," as the man fired up; "I
only ask for information. Who had the startin' o' these here
wells?"
Nobody seemed anxious to answer this question, and Hayes did it
himself.
"Why, the parson hisself, didn't he? And aren't he and the doctor
answerable for the money? If any one has a right to say anything,
I should think the parson has. But you're on the strike, and
right or wrong you're in for it; but I don't mind tellin' of yer
I ain't--I'm only one to four, and that's no good holdin' out.
But I ain't one a' yer sneakin' sort; I ain't afeared ter speak
out, no more'n th' parson, and I tell yer honest I hain't struck.
I can't goo on by myself; but I've been a well-sinker all my
days, and I know I niver had sech good pay offered to me before,
and I'm content. If they don't give in, why, the well, I s'pose
will have to be closed. But that don't matter to me; I can get
plenty a' jobs at Ipswitch, an' I can go back where I come from,
quite agreeable."
He put his pipe back into his mouth when he had finished his
harangue, and puffed away for some moments in silence; and then
the storm broke. The other men were furious at his words. They
called him by every opprobrious name they could think of.
"All right," he said at last, leisurely pulling off his jacket;
"let's fight it out."
He stood up boldly in the middle of the road, with his head
thrown back and his fists clenched; but nobody seemed inclined to
accept his invitation.
A butcher's cart that was passing pulled up to see the fun, and
in a minute or less there was quite a crowd of small boys
standing round the angry group. Encouraged by the "gallery,"
Hayes, who had hitherto been perfectly good-humoured, was
beginning to be really angry, and in another minute would
probably have let fly at one or other of his late mates; but the
policeman, who happened to be at hand, stepped up in the nick of
time and placed a heavy hand on his shoulder.
Hayes was sobered in a minute.
"All right, master, I don't want to fight. There ain't one a'
them but wot I could pound into mincemeat if I liked, but I'll
let 'em off since you've come."
He pulled down his shirt sleeves as he spoke, and Cadger and his
mates took the opportunity of slipping off, and in five minutes
the bridge was clear. Indeed, the whole scene had not lasted
quarter of an hour; and when Farley and Corkam emerged from the
back parlour of the Swan, their mortification and disgust at
having missed it knew no bounds. But there had been one silent
spectator who concerns our story--it was Geo Lummis. He had heard
it all, every word, as he hung over the bridge watching the
stream. It was no business of his, so he did not interfere; and
knowing that he would be questioned and cross-questioned a
hundred times over by both of them if they knew he had been
there, he turned off abruptly and went home.
CHAPTER XII.
BACK TO THE WORK
Annie Chapman never had liked her husband working at the well.
She said as little as she could, and she scarcely knew why, but a
sort of nameless fear always crept over her when people spoke of
the work. Though she took her husband his "'levenses" and his
"fourses" every day, she never could be induced to look down into
its depths, which naturally grew deeper day by day.
It was a hot walk though a short one, and Annie's head throbbed
with the intensity of the heat, and her feet felt as if they were
weighted with lead. It was like walking on hot flags, she
thought, as she plodded over the common with the last baby in her
arms. The men had rigged up a sort of rough tent with four poles
and a stack-cover, and placed a couple of benches underneath it,
and Annie stopped to rest under its grateful shade. She was a
little early, and Tom was still at work ninety feet below her.
She shuddered as she thought of it, and Martin's daughter, who
had come on the same errand for her father, laughed at her.
"You're never cold, Mrs. Chapman!" she said. "That must be a
goose walkin' over your grave."
"Likely as not," said Annie, answering in the same vein; "there
are plenty on 'em about."
The girl laughed. She was a nice, bright, curly-haired, freckly
girl. She looked kindly at Annie, and held out her arms for the
baby.
"I don't believe you half like your husband takin' on with my
father," she said.
"How do you know?" asked Annie, rather sharply for her.
"Why, Chapman told fayther so. He said you was rare put about
when he told you, and if it weren't that he think that's only
duin' what he oughter, he'd ha' chucked the job long ago. But he
would not go back on fayther, he say, after he've giv his word;
and he's a good man, he is," she added warmly. "Fayther he think
a lot o' him. He's a good un to work, he say, and a good mate
tew, and fayther don't say that a' ivrybody, I can tell yew."
Annie felt pleased. It is always pleasant to hear nice things, of
course, about those we love, and Annie was generally so busy
muddling along with her household and children all day that she
had very little time for gossiping or exchanging many words with
her neighbours; and she scarcely knew how her Tom stood amongst
his fellows, for he was quiet and unobtrusive, and was not a man
to make many friends.
"He think a lot a' your father too," she answered, giving tit for
tat with truth.
"I wish they'd come up," Annie said at last. "If they're not
quick I'll have to go back without seein' Tom."
"Why don't you put your head over and call down to him?" said the
girl.
Annie shuddered again.
"Oh no, no, I dursn't"
"Well, I will," said her companion. "I know Mr. Hayes'll let
me.--Won't you now, Mr. Hayes?"
The big man who sat on the edge of the temporary woodwork that
was erected at the mouth of the well turned a good-natured,
sunburnt visage towards her.
"All right, my gal! come on, I'll hold ye. They've got on well
to-day. They're down a sight deeper than last time you looked."
The man held back the ropes that hung from a windlass over the
top, and the girl stooped over the brink. She could see the heads
of both men down at what appeared to her an unfathomable depth.
She uttered a little cry of dismay. The earth had been getting
softer and easier to dig into for the last two days and they had
made considerable progress. Martin looked up as the shadow cast
by the girl's head and shoulders darkened the pit a little.
"Hullo! That's you, my gal, is it? Well, I'm coming. I want my
fourses bad, I can tell you."
"Well, come on up then, father; and tell Mr. Chapman his wife
have been waitin' for him ever so long, and she've got to go home
directly, to give the children their teas."
"All right, then.--You go up first, Tom." And nothing loath, Tom
put his foot into the loop, and gripping the rope with both hands
was soon drawn up.
"My eye, it is hot up here," he said, as half blinded by the sun
he made his way to the tent. Martin soon followed, and the women
unpacked their baskets. Annie had brought Tom a bottle of his
favourite fromerty and a large harvest-bun. Martin liked tea, so
his daughter had a pot full of it rolled up in an old shawl to
keep it hot, for Martin held that hot tea is the most cooling of
drinks. "Drinkin' cold things when you're hot only makes you all
the hotter!" Well, every one to his taste, and the big man
preferred beer. He was a stranger, and the same man who had made
such cruel remarks on Geo Lummis's muscles.
He lodged at Martin's house, so "Martin's gal," as Polly was
generally called in the village, had brought his "fourses" too.
He quaffed off his half-pint of good home-brew, made by Mrs.
Martin herself, and with a sigh of enjoyment flung the drops at
the bottom of the glass on to the thirsty ground.
"That 'ud be a rum job," he said, as he seated himself on the
form, "if that dowser chap ha' happened ar a mistake, and we
don't find no water arter all."
"We'll find it all right," said Martin decidedly. "He knowed what
he was about. He said that was a long way down, and I believe
him."
That Martin should believe him was quite sufficient for himself
and Chapman, for Martin was one of those people that carry about
them a quiet power of making every one else trust them. He
possessed that nameless intangible quality that we know as
"character." Martin was not particularly clever, he was not
entertaining or amusing in conversation; but he undoubtedly
possessed a great deal of character, and in his quiet,
deliberate, commonplace way he carried as much weight as any man
in the parish. If it had not been for Martin, it is pretty
certain the wells would never have been begun, much less
finished. It was Martin whose example made Chapman, Lake, and the
other two Willowton men at the railway well come forward in the
first instance and volunteer their services. It was Martin who
gave the other men courage to come forward with with their offer
of work. It was Martin who kept Lake and Chapman up to the mark
when, seeing the difficulty and hardness of the work, they
wavered, and, urged on by "the bridge," were inclined to strike
for more wages.
"What, give in," he said, "when we've go so far--sixty feet or
more below th' surface? More money yer want? Well, I'm all fur
gettin' all we can. I haven't no sort er objection te money
myself; but fair play's a jewel, I say, and we've took this risk,
and we've jest got te keep it. A few more shillin's won't make
our lives na safer, and we've got a good wage--three shillin's a
day ter start on, and a shillin' more for every ten feet; and I
say that's good pay, and we don't want na better--leastways we
didn't ought to. Do you think folks is _made_ o' money?" he
asked, warming to his subject. "I don't say as Mr Rutland and the
doctor are goin' to pay us out o' their own porckets--in coorse
they're not; but they're responsible--that's how I take it. And
they are payin' us fair and punctual; and I'm not goin' to say
that I don't believe but what if they get more money than they
want by their subscription boxes, and they offer me a bonus, that
I'll refuse it," with a twinkle in his honest gray eye. "No, if
they like to remember the well-diggers when the water is come, I
won't hev northin' to say agin it, I'm sure; and nor wud yue now.
Jest yue put that in your pipes and smoke it!"
He lounged off as he spoke with a "good-night" over his shoulder,
and next morning, when, having "smoked it" with much thought
overnight, the two men arrived on the scene, they found Martin
there before them. He made no remark, and work began as usual.
The idea of going back never entered either of their heads again,
though the railway-well men had carried out their threat and
struck.
When Lake, who lived in Gravel-pit Lane, went down with the
fever, it was Martin who suggested to Mr. Rutland to get back the
stranger, who had only gone away that morning reluctantly; for he
was an experienced digger, and saw little risk in the railway
well, and would willingly have gone on with the work if he had
not been thrown out by the pusillanimity of his mates. He came at
once, and both the Willowton men took to him. He was pleasant to
work with, for he was both able and hard-working, and never,
"shirked a spadeful," as Martin told the vicar, with just a touch
of pride at his own sagacity in suggesting him. Mr. Rutland had
been doubtful when it was proposed to him. He did not think it
wise to bring him in again, but Martin's good sense overruled
him.
"There's nobody in the place durst come and help us," he said,
"time them tue others is out a' work; they wouldn't leave 'em
alone, not a minute. That's only a stranger we can hev now, as
matters are, and he hadn't northin' ter due with the strike."
"Who do you think had then?" asked the vicar, little expecting so
prompt a reply.
"Why, that scum Corkam!" asserted Martin stoutly. "He's at th'
bottom a' most a' these here messes, he is! He goes a-talkin' ar
a lot o' rubbidge about 'Meriky (as I don't believe he ever
landed on), and he tell 'em a sight o' stories about the big
wages over there, and he don't say northin' about the house rent
they have to pay, nor the price o' wittles, nor clothin', which I
know ('cos my brother lived out in them parts for years) don't
leave them not sa very much over for theirselves to due what they
like with arter all. And they've got ter goo and leave the old
place and their friends and relations, and work a sight harder
fur their money than we due here."
"Just so, that's just it, Martin," said the vicar. "A little
knowledge is a dangerous thing. Corkam has got a little
knowledge--a smattering of facts about many countries; but he is
like a parrot--he repeats what he has been told, and has never
gone into the subject himself,--not had the chance, most likely."
"You're right, sir; that's about the size on it! And them chaps
on the bridge of an evenin', they'll swaller anythin' he like tue
tell 'em. That there young Lummis---"
"Oh, George Lummis! Yes, poor fellow, it's heartbreaking to see
him idling away his whole life like that. But somehow I fancy
George will break loose one of these days. One day Master Corkam
will tell him something he can't swallow, or offend his sense of
right and wrong, for there's nothing really bad about Geo--at
present, at any rate. I still have hopes of Geo, and I hear he is
making an excellent nurse to his mother."
In speaking thus the vicar was not talking at random. He had for
some time past been unaccountably interested in Geo. To his keen
sight--lazy, good-for-nothing as he appeared--Geo was full of
possibilities. There came into the young fellow's sleepy,
handsome face a look sometimes that made you fancy that under
certain circumstances he might rise even to some great height of
heroism.
The vicar had been fortunate enough, as long ago as last summer,
to catch that expression one day when he came accidentally upon
him lying on the bank in the flowery meadow, lazily dropping
leaves into the stream and watching them float way. Mr. Rutland
was one of those very rare philanthropists who can resist the
temptation of improving the occasion. He saw a whole sermon in
the picture before him, and could have drawn half a dozen lessons
from the vagaries of the leaves--some of which spun round and
round and disappeared rapidly into the flowing water, others that
caught in weeds and remained prisoners or drifted under the
bank--but he did not. Geo had looked up as he caught the sound of
his footstep, and there was a look in his face that took the
vicar by surprise. It was, he thought (and he almost felt ashamed
of being so imaginative) an expression that might have been on
the face of a hero of the middle ages--a look, brave, clear,
determined, as of a man braced for some great deed, and yet he
was idling away his time on the grass, tipping leaves in the
stream. A man of less tact and less human sympathy than the vicar
would have stopped and made some remark, or at any rate have
given him the customary greeting; but Mr. Rutland refrained, and
passed on as if he had not noticed him. There was something
fermenting in Geo's brain, he saw, and he felt certain it was,
whatever it might be, for good.
Nothing, as far as Mr. Rutland knew, ever came of this. Geo
worked hard at the "haysel" and the harvest that had followed, it
is true, and he took on occasional jobs at various farms in the
neighbourhood, but for the most part he idled away his days, as
we have already seen. His latent heroism, if he possessed any,
remained dormant. But the vicar always remembered the look when
people meted out to Geo their not unjust strictures on his
useless life.
In the meantime Geo was growing daily in the good graces of Nurse
Blunt. No patient of hers, she often told Milly, was more
carefully tended than Mrs. Lummis. Geo was a born nurse, and was
as gentle and dexterous as a woman, and even old Jimmy's grunts
of disapproval failed to convince her that there was "nothin' in
him."
CHAPTER XIII.
RAIN AT LAST
On the following day the heat became almost intolerable. People
went about their work, and got through it somehow, but everything
in nature appeared to be at its last gasp. The farmers had given
up any further hope of a hay crop, and had begun to feel anxious
about the harvest. When night fell the tiny cool breeze that had
sprung up most evenings to refresh the earth a little was
absent--a dead weight was over everything. The Chapman children
were unusually restless, and Tom, tired with his work, grumbled
fretfully as his wife moved about, first consoling one child and
then the other, and rocking the restless infant to and fro. On
such nights as this sleep is well-nigh impossible; and it was
well for Annie that she had the children to attend to, for her
heart was heavy with a terrible foreboding. Merry, careless Annie
was smitten with an unaccountable miserable feeling of coming
calamity. It had been growing and growing ever since Tom had
"taken on" at the well, and to-night it seemed to have reached
its height, and Annie longed most intensely for morning. Never
had a night seemed so long and unbearable.
The vicar, too, was lying sleepless through the long hot hours,
puzzling over the unexpected strike of the well-diggers,
wondering at their folly, and coming very near the truth when he
thought of the changed aspect of many of his parishioners, when
he remembered the averted looks, the nervous salutations that had
taken the place of the ready smiles, the respectful yet friendly
greetings that only a few short weeks ago met him at every turn.
He had really been almost too busy to notice it; and even now he
thought this notion that he was losing his hold on the affections
of the people he lived for and spent his life for was probably a
creation of his own troubled brain, born of the heat and the
anxiety and overstrain of those same past weeks. The rain could
not be far off now, he thought, for all day long the sky had been
overcast, and a steaming, stifling blanket seemed to have been
thrown over everything. As he tossed and fretted the first heavy
drops pattered on his window-sill. It had come--the blessed,
blessed rain--and the long, hard drought was over!
He sprang from his bed and stood at the open casement, listening
with delight to the growing volume of water that splashed down on
to the baked earth and ran off the roofs into the dry, warped
water-butts. He stood there, with the welcome spray leaping up
and shooting into his face and dropping on to his bare feet, till
he felt almost cold; and then with a thankful heart he regained
his bed, and for the first time for some nights fell asleep. What
mattered anything now? the rain had come--Willowton was
saved--"the plague was stayed!"
There were others in the clustering houses in the back streets
who, sitting up with their sick and dying, felt the bands that
had tightened round their weary heads suddenly loosed, felt the
killing physical strain give way as the first drops fell on their
roofs.
Milly Greenacre, from behind her white dimity curtains, rubbed
her sleepy eyes and turned over again, with the comforting
thought that the rain had at last come. The cattle, lying out in
their baked pastures, lifted their thirsty heads, lowing with
pleasure for the heaven-sent moisture. The birds in the orchard
awoke at dawn, and enjoyed a long-anticipated bath. Milly's white
pigeons came out of their cot, and lay on the little gravel-path,
with wings upturned, enjoying to the full the fall of the great
cool drops. The horses in the far-off farm stables neighed
joyfully at each other, and every creature alive drank in new
life at every pore; even the fever-stricken patients rallied and
gained strength. Soon the grass would grow green again, and the
springs would begin to work, and all would be well. And yet
nothing in the future could undo the past; nothing could give
back to the mourners their loved ones. Willowton had indeed paid
the penalty of its own disregard of the laws of health; but now,
please God, the others would be saved.
All through the day that followed this blessed night the rain
fell--not quietly, or even with a break, but heavily,
incessantly, and unremittingly. People paddled out in it under
cloaks and umbrellas, and rejoiced with each other. The work at
the well was necessarily suspended for the time, for the rough
wooden shelter over it proved of little protection from the
tropical violence of the rain.
"That don't kinder rain at all," old Greenacre said; "that come
down whole water."
CHAPTER XIV.
THE COLLAPSE
On the third day the rain abated, and work was resumed at the
well. For the first few hours it went steadily on; but before
noon an awful catastrophe had occurred, and it became known all
over Willowton that the brickwork had fallen in, and that Chapman
and Hayes were entombed under the _débris._
---
Mr. Rutland was at the Workhouse Infirmary when the news reached
him. The doctor was there too, and the two gentlemen drove off at
once to the scene of the disaster, where stood Annie Chapman with
a white drawn face, her baby in her arms and three other little
ones clinging to her skirts as usual. Martin's girl stood by her.
The children were out of school, and they too were there, a
hundred or more of them with wide eyes and horror-struck faces.
What was _not_ there was any sensible, capable man to take
command and keep the crowd back; for it was not yet the
dinner-hour, and the labourers were still in the fields, and
Martin, on the principle that what is important had better be
done by yourself, had rushed off, after sending a boy to fetch
Mr. Rutland, to telegraph to Ipswich for scientific help from the
firm who had supplied Hayes, and who had given advice as to the
mode of proceeding at the outset. Martin returned scarcely a
minute later than Mr. Rutland and the doctor, and hurriedly
informed them of his action in the matter.
Having made a clear space of some thirty feet or so round the
spot where the unfortunate men were perhaps even now lying with
the life crushed out of them, the doctor threw himself on the
ground and listened anxiously for some sound of life. If they
lived, the men would, of course, shout loudly and untiringly for
assistance; and then--as it was was just possible that, even if
they could not make themselves heard, some sound might reach
them--Mr. Rutland leaned over the chasm and shouted words of
encouragement and cheer. But he might have shouted to the empty
air, for never a sound reached them.
When one o'clock struck from the church tower the vicar sent the
children to their homes, and with kindly firmness insisted on
Annie Chapman's going back too and getting some refreshment. The
children's needs was a good excuse.
"I would not keep you away if you wish to come back," he said.
"No one has, alas, a greater right to be here than you. Come when
the children are gone into school again. I will have the
tarpaulin shelter that was taken down on account of the rain put
up again, and you can rest there."
Annie thanked him with a look; she was beyond speaking, and
seemed dazed. "Martin's gal" went home with her, helped her with
the children's dinner, and came back to watch with her all that
long, weary afternoon.
It was two hours before the Ipswich man arrived in a carriage
drawn by a strong, fast horse, white with foam, and reeking with
the heat of his rapid run. An assistant quickly unpacked the
apparatus for lowering the men who had volunteered for the
dangerous task of removing the fallen bricks. The accident, the
man said, was due to the violence of the rain, which had
percolated through the earth so quickly that it had loosened the
soil all round the well to a depth of some twenty or thirty feet,
and caused the brickwork to bulge inwards and fall. How far down
the mischief extended, of course, he was as unable to determine
as any one else; but one thing was sufficiently obvious--that
_time_ was everything. Another downfall would be almost certain
destruction, and the unfortunate men, he said, had two dangers,
not one, to contend with. At any moment the springs might begin
to work, and they might have escaped death from the fall of the
well only to be drowned by the rising water. It was a truly awful
predicament, and as it always happens when a real calamity
overtakes any of their mates, those who had most reviled them for
refusing to strike now came forward with offers of help, and even
forbore to make unpleasant remarks of any sort.
Corkam, who was, of course, soon on the scene, actually held his
tongue too until the work of rescue was fairly set in hand, and
each man had been told off to his hours of duty, when he
entertained a favoured group with various supercilious remarks,
and an assurance that these things were much better done in
'Meriky. No one, however, paid much attention to him. They
naturally could think of nothing but the horror and the magnitude
of the present catastrophe. Things that had or had not happened
years ago in a foreign country mattered very little to any one
now in the face of this horrible reality; and Martin told him so
pretty plainly, and not a little roughly, with the desirable
result that he went off to the bridge to give his friend Farley
the latest details. And nobody missed him particularly!
CHAPTER XV.
FRIENDS IN NEED.
Next morning Milly Greenacre was making bread in her little
kitchen at the back of the parlour, when an unaccustomed step
sounded on the gravel-path. It was a shy, hesitating sort of
step, and yet it was unmistakably a man's. Milly looked through
the door, and saw Geo Lummis bending his head to enter the porch.
She rubbed some of the flour off her arms and bade him enter.
"Is it my grandfather you want to see?" she asked him, with that
modest self-possession that never deserted her. "Won't you sit
down?" she added, drawing a chair forward.
"No, miss, thank you," said Geo shyly; "I can't stop. 'Tain't
your grandfather that I come after; I wanted to see the nurse if
I could."
"I'm afraid she won't be in this forenoon," said Milly. "but
will you leave a message with me? I'll be sure to give it to her
as soon as she comes back."
"Well, I hardly know as I can leave a message. The truth is," Geo
blurted out suddenly, with a rush of colour into his fair-skinned
face, "I want to go and help at the well, and I can't leave
mother. I was going to ask if she could come now for a couple of
hours and let me go. They are wantin' help badly. I don't seem as
if I _could_ stay quiet while them pore chaps are underground,
dead or alive; that seem as if we must get at 'em as soon as we
can.'
"When do you want to go?" asked Milly, in a matter-of-fact tone.
"Now, at once, if I could; but nurse haven't been yet, and
there's a lot to see to and do for mother, and I don't ever leave
her till she is put comfortable for the day. I've jest run over
on the chance of finding nurse; but if she isn't here I s'pose I
must jest go back and wait till she come."
He made a step towards the door. Milly glanced at the clock: it
was a quarter-past ten.
"I'll come," she said quietly, "when I've finished laying my
bread. If you go on, I'll be there in twenty minutes, and I'll
wait till nurse comes, and settle with her what can be done."
He muttered some incoherent thanks, but they were, except for the
sake of his manners, quite unnecessary. The look of gratitude
that he cast on Milly was quite a sufficient expression of
thanks, as far as she was concerned. As he went out she returned
to her bread-making.
A quarter of an hour later the bread was safe in its earthen pan,
with a snowy cloth laid over it; and Milly had washed her hands,
turned down her sleeves, set a tray on the table in the parlour,
with nurse's glass of milk and some bread and cheese on it, and
had gone in next door to tell her lame neighbour where she was to
be found, and to ask her to explain her absence to her
grandfather if he returned while she was at Mrs. Lummis's, and
also to ask nurse directly she had had her luncheon to call in
and tell her what to do. Milly had heard quite enough of the
relations between Geo and his mother from Nurse Blunt to be quite
certain of her sympathy in the sudden impulsive step she had
taken; and she felt sure grandfather would raise no insuperable
objection now that all available hands were required at the well.
So Milly went upstairs and sat down quietly by the bedside of the
sick woman, who was now sufficiently convalescent, in spite of
some serious heart weakness, to take an interest in her
neighbours, and was glad to see the pretty, bright girl she had
often seen and admired at a distance but had never spoken to
before.
"I promised your son to stop till nurse comes," Milly said
pleasantly, "so I hope you will let me do so."
The sick woman smiled her willingness, and Geo, with renewed
efforts at expressing his thanks, departed.
In the meantime there was trouble at the well. The work of rescue
had been going on all night, and the men were giving out. Martin,
toil-stained and weary, was still there, but the work was
practically for the time at a standstill. The men were in
absolute need of rest. When Geo reached the scene the director
from Ipswich had given the order for a break-off in ten minutes
for five hours rest. He was surveying, with some anxiety, the
relief men who had arrived in answer to an urgent telegram he had
sent a few hours ago. They were weedy-looking, dissipated
fellows, and to judge by the director's face were evidently not
the material he required.
"We must do the best we can with what we can get," he was saying
to the doctor, who stood at a little distance holding his
impatient horse by the bridle. "These men must be kept from the
drink, and then they may do. At any rate, we must take them on
this morning; but what I want is a strong, active, light-built
young fellow, who won't lose his head in an emergency, and will
do as he is told without hesitation."
Geo stepped forward. He had been near enough to hear these last
words.
"Will I do, sir?"
Both men faced round at once, and Geo often told Milly afterwards
that one of the hardest moments of his life was that when he
caught the expression of the doctor's face. It expressed so much
contempt, surprise, and distrust that he was cut to the quick,
and once more within a few minutes the hot blood surged into his
face. But the director's words softened the sting,---
"Do? Why, you're just the man. Who are you, and what do you know
about the work?"
"My name's Lummis," said Geo, looking him straight in the face,
but avoiding the doctor's eye, "and I don't know nothin' about
the work; but I heard what you said just now, and I'll do what
you tell me to."
"All right, then; and as to wages---"
"Never mind about the wages, sir, thank you," said Geo
respectfully; "whatever you give the others will do for me. I'm
ready any time."
"Well, off with your coat, then, and come."
Geo had his coat off and hung up in the tent in a trice, and was
carefully lowered into the well, seated astride on a board, one
hand on the rope and in the other a pail.
"Now, then, Lummis," said the director, when he was sufficiently
deep down the reach the _débris_, "hook your pail on to the hook
on your board, and lean over and pick off carefully anything you
can reach. Be careful to bear no weight on anything or the whole
thing will collapse."
"I understand, sir," said Geo, his voice sounding strangely
hollow to himself from the depths of the well.
Carefully and dexterously Geo detached bricks, and with a small
scoop ladled the earth into his pail, and as soon as it was
filled he detached it from his board and hooked it on to another
hook that dangled from the windlass; and while it was being drawn
up, emptied and returned, he raised himself to a sitting posture
and stretched his back as best he could, for he had not been long
at work before his limbs ached considerably with their unwonted
toil. Two hours went by, and still Geo worked on patiently, and
often painfully, till the director blew his whistle, and he was
hauled up for a welcome rest. Then one of the other men was
lowered, and so the work went on, and by nightfall an immense
quantity of soil had been removed, but as yet the men below had
given no sign.
It was during this long terrible time of suspense that Mr Rutland
learned part of the secret of Tom Chapman's love of his
apparently feckless, untidy wife. Annie still remained untidy, it
is true--she had never been anything else--but she certainly was
not feckless.
As soon as it was daylight each morning she appeared, asking only
the most absolutely necessary questions, and receiving the
dispiriting answers without a murmur. At seven o'clock she would
go home, give the children their breakfast, and get them ready
for school; but she was back again at her post before long, there
to wait and do any little kind acts or odd jobs for the men, and
going on any little errands into the village. In spite of her
evident suffering she kept up a brave, even cheerful appearance.
Punctually as the school broke up she went away again for a
couple of hours. The doctor, to his great surprise, found her to
be clever with her fingers, quick to learn how to bind up a cut
or bathe a bad bruise; for the work of the rescuers was no easy
task, and in their determined efforts to let nothing drop they
often did themselves little trifling injuries which were all the
better for being treated at once. Everybody was very kind to her,
and her boy Tom up at the Union was getting through his fever
well. There were crumbs of comfort to be gathered on the way,
and Annie was not the woman to refuse them.
She too had shared the doctor's surprise when Geo Lummis appeared
on the scene as an eager recruit, but unlike the doctor, she
showed no sign of it; and when Geo stepped into the tent to hang
up his coat, she smiled at him such an entirely approving,
grateful, and encouraging smile, that it for the moment wiped out
the doctors scorn. Geo knew Tom Chapman, and did not care about
him; but for the sake of Tom's wife, he felt now that he would
risk anything to restore her husband to her.
There are some natures that seem to require some extraordinary
circumstance or moral earthquake to "draw them out." Geo's was
evidently one of these. He was being distinctly drawn out
now--the real Geo was bursting out of his chrysalis. Corkam and
"all his works" receded very far as he felt himself swing down
into the well.
CHAPTER XVI.
AN ANXIOUS SUNDAY.
At last it was Sunday morning, and the men had now been
forty-eight hours in the well. A rumour had got about that they
were still alive. The bells rang out for service as usual, and
Milly brushed her grandfather's well-worn beaver hat, settled his
necktie, and pulled down his coat, just as she had done for the
last eight years, and they went off to church together. Somehow
it seemed wonderful to Milly that anything should go on as it had
done last week, for every one in the village was felling the
strain of the anxiety caused by the prolonging of the terrible
situation of the entombed men.
Geo Lummis and Martin and two other men had been working all
night, and just as the "tolling in" began a relief gang arrived,
and the four tired men came trooping through the churchyard, as
being the shortest cut to their homes. Milly, with several other
people, stood aside to let them pass. They looked worn out and
weary, toil-stained and depressed. Nobody spoke, and they none of
them lifted their eyes as they passed; they were too dead beat
for greeting of any sort. Milly cast a glance at Geo. She was
beginning to take a very lively interest in that young man, for
Geo, seen through his weak but loving mother's spectacles, was a
very different person from Geo seen through her grandfather's
somewhat prejudiced glasses. Anyway, he was behaving well now,
and there was no need to look back.
The doctor, who accompanied them as far as the gate, now
returned, and affirmed the rumour that it had been satisfactorily
ascertained that _one_ of the unfortunate men, at least, was
alive--that shouts and knocking had been distinctly heard, but
that as yet no means of communication had been effected. This,
however, he hoped would be done in the course of an hour or two,
and he expected to have really good news for them when they came
out of church.
Nobody ever quite knew how that service was got through. Most
people tried their best to follow, but each one was conscious of
a divided attention. Every one was listening with at least one
ear for the shout that they knew would go up when the expected
communication was affected.
It came at last! The vicar had just gone up to the pulpit and
given out his text when though the open doors came the distant
shout "Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah-h-h!" Many among the congregation
started to their feet, some fell to their knees, and others
sobbed audibly. The vicar paused with uplifted hand to secure
silence till the shouts ceased, and then addressed the people.
"There will be no sermon this morning," he said. "I think your
own thankful thoughts will be more appropriate than any words of
mine;" and after a short prayer of thanksgiving, he gave the
blessing and dismissed the congregation.
"Not, I beg and pray of you," he said, "to rush off to the scene
of action, where your presence can be of no service to the
unfortunate men, and for the moment will only hinder the efforts
of their rescuers. Leave them a little while, is my advice, till
the excitement has cooled down, and then take your places quietly
beyond the barrier if you will; but I implore you to remember
that the men who are working at the relief want cool heads and
steady nerves, and they have come fresh to the work, and at
present want no encouraging shouts or chaff to keep them going,
as our brave fellows did last night when they hardly knew how to
go on."
The vicar's advice was good, and, for example's sake, he denied
himself the pleasure of hurrying off to the well, and many of his
congregation refrained also. It was then twelve o'clock, and by
three that afternoon the rescue gang reached the cylinder twenty
feet below the surface by tunnelling, only to discover, to their
intense dismay, that a mass of woodwork had fallen on to the
mouth of it, and that rescue that way was impossible. The
foreman, however, managed in a clever way to pull out a small
piece of loose wood, and calling down to the men below received
the welcome answer, "We are all right, but are in three feet of
water. Couldn't you get us a drink?"
The foreman shouted up the message, and in a trice a dozen
willing messengers were running to the village, returning
speedily with jugs of such various liquors as their personal
tastes and means suggested. There were beer, porter, milk,
brandy, cocoa, cider; but the doctor, who had been on the scene
all morning with his improvised ambulance, insisted on milk and
beaten up eggs with brandy. The tidings, of course, soon spread,
not only over Willowton, but to all the neighbouring villages,
and the half-dozen policemen who were on duty had their work cut
out for them in keeping the crowd from coming inside the ropes.
As it was, every tree in the vicinity was thick with boys and
men, and every fence and bank that offered any point of vantage
was a mass of eager lookers-on.
Now it was that the most dangerous work was to begin. It was
decided to endeavour to reach the men by making a hole in the top
of the cylinder, and three men were lowered with ropes around
them, and instructed to remove the soil in pails. This they did
with the greatest care, so as to prevent any falling back--a
danger that was very likely to occur. At the end of an hour and a
half a slight slip occurred, and the entombed men called out that
the mould was coming down upon them.
"You're goin' to cover us up and ha' done with us," said Hayes,
with a feeble attempt at jocosity; "but give us a drink first."
"Sartinly, sartinly, that we will," said one of the men
encouragingly, and a few minutes later a bottle of the
"egg-flip," with a covered light attached to it, was lowered
through the aperture, and the work began again.
It was nearly half-past seven when the men were again spoken to.
They seemed to be losing heart. They had knocked the light out,
they said, and they were wet through and wanted to come up.
"So you shall, my boys," shouted the foreman, "as soon as we can
get you." And with that they had to be content.
CHAPTER XVII.
GEO TO THE FORE AGAIN.
All through the middle of the day, till six o'clock, Geo Lummis
slept. At three o'clock Nurse Blunt came over to Mildred and
asked her to go to Mrs. Lummis.
"I wouldn't trouble her, Mr. Greenacre," she said, as old Jimmy
began to gabble and grumble, "but I _must_ go to the opposite
side of the of the parish, and Mrs. Lummis is in that stage when
she must be attended to. Your granddaughter will have nothing to
do but give her he brandy and milk at the proper times. She has
done it before, and I can trust her, which is more than I can say
for most of the girls I have had to do with. You'll have to let
her go."
So grandfather made no further demur, and Milly changed her
Sunday gown for a work-a-day one, and went off on her errand of
mercy accompanied by the nurse.
"That young Lummis is there dead asleep," nurse said as they went
along. "Mind you don't wake him going upstairs; he's in the room
opposite his mother's, you know. Not that you need be much afraid
of disturbing him," she added--"they mostly sleep for hours when
they come off work like that--but when you do hear him moving,
you'd better slip down and get him a cup of tea ready and some
cold meat and bread. I've seen to that; it's in the cupboard to
the right of the stove. He should be at work again by seven."
"Very well," said Milly; "I'll see to it."
So when Geo woke out of his heavy sleep at six o'clock, he,
through the open window, could hear the kettle singing on the
little stove in the back-house below, and some one moving softly
about. There was a comforting sound about it, and he stretched
his long limbs luxuriously. Just then the church clock struck the
half-hour. He raised himself with a yawn. "Half-past--what was
it?" He reached out for the large silver watch that was in the
pocket of his coat that hung over the chair. It was half-past
six! He flung himself off the bed, dipped his head in a basin of
cold water, rubbed it hard with a rough towel, washed his
earth-stained hands, and strode across the little passage to his
mother's room. She was sleeping peacefully, and he slipped
quietly downstairs. Milly stood in the little kitchen, a kettle
in her hand, and a tray with a white cloth stood on the table
before her. Geo started with astonishment.
"I thought I should have to wake you at last!" she said shyly, as
he took the kettle from her; "it was getting so late."
Geo did not answer very relevantly; he was still lost in
astonishment.
"Have you done all this?" he said, pointing to the tray.
"No; nurse got it ready before she went. I am only making the
tea."
"Well I take it very kind of you, miss," said Geo heartily.
"P'raps you'll have a cup yourself?"
Milly was not sorry, and the two sat down in the little kitchen,
which, though hot, was the coolest room in the house--the sun was
on the other side. They looked out on a little garden to the
meadows, in which the grass had begun to grow again. The sound of
the running water seemed cool and inviting.
"That looks nice out there, don't it?" Geo said, when he had
swallowed his third cup of tea and made havoc of the bread and
meat. "I s'pose you can get your can filled nowadays after the
rain without any help?"
Milly laughed.
"Oh yes, there's water enough now; I can reach it easily."
Geo actually looked disappointed.
"I meant I'd ha' liked to ha' got it for you," he said simply.
"There goes the quarter-to," said Milly for an answer; "you've
not got too much time."
"Time enough to have a look round, if you'll come," he said,
getting up and looking down on her shyly from his superior
height.
Milly made no objection, but took up her hat, which she had left
in the inner room, and the two strolled out into the meadows.
Geo pointed to the chimneys of Milly's home, which could be seen
across the stream, perhaps a quarter of a mile away.
"If you'll walk up as far as that with me, I could jump across
into your orchard, if you don't object, and I'll be punctual at
the well. That's a lot shorter than goin' round by the village."
Milly thought her grandfather would probably object very much,
but she risked it, for she thought a little walk along the
water-side with that "lazy, idle good-for-nothing" would be
rather pleasant. As they went along they talked about the well.
The worst and most dangerous work was to come.
"Some one, you see, must go down after them poor chaps," Geo
explained. "You see they'll be so cramped and done up they'll
never get themselves safe through the opening; for I expect
that'll have to be a precious small one from what I see when I
left, and you say they've not got at 'em yet."
"No," said Milly; "my grandfather called round an hour ago, and
he said the hole wasn't no bigger than what would admit an
ordinary man, and that they were binding it round with straw and
making it as strong as they could, because that man Hayes is so
big they're frightened he should break it down, and father said
nobody seemed as if they wanted to try it."
"Not a doubt about that," said Geo, tightening his lips.
Something in his voice made Milly glance up at him. The look on
his face was the same one that Mr. Rutland had surprised on it a
year ago.
"You're never going to do it yourself?" she exclaimed
involuntarily.
"Not unless I have to," Geo answered quietly, and speaking as if
to himself. "But it's got to be done, and I'm not a married man.
Martin is, and so are the other two."
Milly did not answer. To those who follow dangerous callings in
all ranks of life such an argument is unanswerable. Milly
understood, and said nothing.
They had reached the gate where Geo had sat and watched Milly
vainly endeavouring to reach the water only a very short time ago
now. The blossom was off the May, of course, but the half-starved
buttercups were enjoying a second season.
"That's were you stood," said Geo, following out his own thoughts
as he opened the gate for her to pass through before him. He
nodded across to the overhanging thorn.
"You did take me by surprise then," said Milly, smiling as she
conjured up the scene.
"And there's the billy-goat. He've got more to eat now than he
had then; but, all the same, I was jealous of him then. I'd ha'
liked to ha' been in his hide jest for the minute when he was
rubbin' his head against you, and you was coaxin' and pettin' of
him, that I would!"
Geo was getting on and no mistake!
"Well, he's jealous of you now," said Milly, with some confusion,
as the animal, recognizing her voice, strained at his chain and
bleated piteously.
What Geo's next move might have been is unknown, as just at that
critical moment the tiresome church clock boomed out the hour,
and Geo pulled himself together.
"I must go," he said. "I don't like to be late on a job like
this," and before Milly could answer he had sprung across. He
turned and gave her a nod as he picked up his cap, which had
fallen off, and set off running towards the house. Milly waved
her good-bye, and returned slowly through the meadows. The
neglected goat bleated imploringly after her, but she never heard
it.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE RESCUE
It was eight o'clock, and the crowd that had come and gone during
the afternoon had now gathered again in force. It was known all
round that the critical moment had arrived. Everything was ready;
the supreme act of bringing the men to the surface alone remained
to be accomplished. The rope was carefully lowered, and the
watchers held their breath.
For some minutes the rope dangled, now and then becoming taut for
a moment, and then hanging limp again. It was evident that
something was wrong.
"What is it?" the foreman shouted anxiously.
"We can't do it," came a voice from the bottom.
"We're too stiff; we can't get hold."
There was a silence for what seemed an interminable space after
these words.
"Some one must go down to them," said the foreman slowly, his own
face growing very white. He knew that whoever went down might be
passing to instant death; for though everything that could be
done had been done to render the passage safe, yet he had hoped
against hope that the necessity of a passage _down_ would be
avoided. He was a great stout fellow himself, and not so active
as Hayes, who he had trusted, would squeeze himself through.
During that pause the workmen looked questioningly at each other,
and no one read in his mate's face any desire to try the
dangerous experiment. The crowd listened again breathlessly. The
foreman cast an imploring look around.
"Won't anybody volunteer?" he asked.
"I will."
It was Geo Lummis who spoke, and a burst of approbation broke
from the bystanders.
It was as well the men below were in ignorance of the immediate
and extreme danger they were suddenly exposed to by the lowering
of a third person into the abyss; for their position was
this:--The woodwork which had fallen over the mouth of the
cylinder had held up the fallen earth when the wall caved in.
This mould was now removed, and by the extraordinary skill and
care of those engaged in the difficult task the woodwork had not
shifted; but it remained to be seen whether the bad passage of a
man working his way down with practically no light go guide him,
and with the chance of dislodging odd pieces that had stuck fast
in their fall, would not bring the whole thing upon their heads
and his own, and, as Hayes put it, "finish the job and have done
with them."
Geo was fully alive to the danger as he adjusted the rope round
his body, put his foot into the loop, and gave the command to
"lower away." At first he went down very slowly, and then came
the order to "lower faster," and the crowd grasped the welcome
fact that there was no insuperable obstruction in the cylinder.
For a short space of time there was an ominous silence, and then
a closed lamp was let down, and the foreman's face cleared. One
part of the difficulty had been surmounted; he began to feel more
confident of success.
---
In the meantime Geo had reached the bottom, and found the men
supporting each other as best they could, but stiff and chilled
with their long immersion in three feet of water.
Hayes tried to raise a feeble cheer, but Chapman was past any
attempt at cheerfulness. He had sunk into a sort of sullen
apathy. Neither of them was capable of helping himself. At first
both men wanted to come up at once, and Geo found himself
suddenly confronted with an unforeseen difficulty. Chapman was
obviously delirious, and Hayes was showing signs of losing his
temper.
_"One at a time,"_said Geo decidedly. "Can't you see there's no
room for two?"
"Well," said Hayes at last, "you can send up him; he's pretty
nigh done for, and he've got a missus and little 'uns. Only hurry
up and due it."
Geo lost no time in securing Chapman as best he could, and with a
stern command to him (for he seemed to have completely lost his
nerve) to hold on tight and keep his body straight, he chucked at
the rope to show all was right, and with a beating heart watched
him being drawn higher and higher, till he had passed safely
through the aperture. Then he turned to Hayes. This was no time
for sentiment, and neither of the men indulged in it.
Hayes had his pipe between his teeth. It had long ago been
guiltless of tobacco, but it was comforting, all the same. He did
not remove it, and he said nothing to Geo, but signified his
gratitude by a nod, and what under happier circumstances might
have been a wink.
When the rope reappeared he seized it, with Geo's assistance,
made himself fast, and gave the signal for going up.
Geo saw the soles of Hayes's big boots rise over his own head
with eyes that dilated with something like fear, and a heart that
thumped audibly against his ribs, as for a few moments his own
fate hung in the balance. Hayes's broad shoulders, even with the
greatest care, might refuse to pass through the aperture without
dislodging some of the fallen timber; such a little would send it
down on his head. It would be a horrible death, for he would see
it coming--coming--coming before it fell, and Geo didn't want to
die. The possible nearness of death flashed into his mind, and he
scarcely dared look when Hayes reached the hole, and a few broken
straws, loosened by his passage through it, floated down on to
his upturned face. The ominous words, "You'll cover us up and ha'
done with us," occurred to him again with terrible persistence.
Minute after minute passed, and the rope did not reappear.
Impossible but horrible thought, were they so much taken up with
Chapman and Hayes that they had forgotten him?
Geo had stepped on to one of the turned-over pails on which the
other men had been standing, and the water had reached up to his
knees when he had given Hayes his parting shove. He now noticed
with surprise that it had suddenly reached considerably over
them. He glanced apprehensively to the sides of the well. It was
perfectly evident that the water had risen. Higher, higher it
crept, till it nearly reached his waist, and then the awful truth
flashed on him. _The springs had begun to work!_
CHAPTER XIX
GEO AGAIN SURPRISES HIMSELF AND HIS FRIENDS.
It was perhaps just as well that Geo was an inexperienced
well-sinker, and that he did not know the horrible danger he was
in, or with what fearful rapidity a long-dry spring sometimes
rises when once it has begun to move; but he shuddered with
apprehension as the cold water crept up to his arm-pits, and as
it touched his shoulders flesh and blood could stand no more, and
he lifted up his voice and shouted with a shout that shook the
frail supports above him till he trembled once more for their
endurance.
It is said that a drowning man sees all his life pass in review
before his mental vision, and a wave of remorse for lost
opportunities and wasted days swept over him as he stood on the
brink, as it were, of eternity. And all the time those ominous
words of Hayes were ringing--ringing--ringing in his ears--those
ears that soon would be covered with the creeping icy flood. At
last! at last! After an eternity of agony the aperture was once
more was once more darkened; something was coming down--quick,
quicker, the rope was running out from the windlass. Thank God,
it had a bucket on the end of it. Splash it went in the water,
and filling, sank immediately. Geo shouted as he grasped the rope
with his strong hands, twisted his legs round it below, and as
they drew him up slid his half-numbed feet into the bucket.
---
I don't think that any one who was present will ever forget the
moments when Geo's white face appeared above the brickwork, and
his dripping garments told the tale of his terrible predicament;
for Geo for the moment was past speech, and there went up from
the crowd such a roar of admiration and delight as Willowton had
never heard before. And there was such a rush of the foremost
bystanders to shake their hero by the hand that the policemen had
their work cut out for them with a vengeance, for the enthusiasm
had passed all bounds.
The foreman had said, "Don't make a fuss when they come up," when
the other men had been drawn to the surface; for he had seen
similar accidents before, and he knew that the men's nerves would
not be in a state to stand much excitement. The crowd had behaved
in an exemplary manner, and except for the summarily-squashed
cheering of a few thoughtless boys, they had been allowed to pass
quietly to the conveyances that awaited them, assisted by the
parish doctor and a couple more medical men from Ipswich. But it
was not to be expected or desired that they would treat Geo in
the same way. Martin and Cadger managed the rope, and as he
reached the surface Mr. Barlow and the vicar were there to greet
him.
"You're a brave fellow, Geo," said the vicar, grasping his hand,
while the farmer patted him kindly on the back.--"Now, then," he
shouted, waving his hat to the crowd, "three cheers for the
gallant rescuer. Hip, hip, hip, hur-rah-h!" and once more the
ringing cheers rang out.
Geo began to feel shy and looked about for a chance of escape,
but there was none. He found himself standing with a little group
in a clear space into which the vigilant police allowed no one to
intrude. Just then a diversion occurred. Over the cheers came the
strident discordant sound of a motor horn, and across the common
flashed a car, which pulled up sharply, and a gentleman sprang
out. The police recognized him, the crowd made way, and he
hurried up to the group round the well. It was the dowser. His
arrival was well-timed, and among the crowd there were some who
knew him before, and without much difficulty he pushed his way
through to the enclosure, and in obedience to a signal from Mr
Rutland the policeman allowed him to pass under the rope. He
looked pale and anxious.
"Is it all right?" he shouted when the car stopped.
A welcome "Yis, yis, master," allayed his fears.
He had followed the movements of the rescuers eagerly since his
daily paper had given him news of the catastrophe; but being a
busy man, it was not till this morning that he had been able to
get away from his work, and had left his home in Gloucestershire
almost at break of dawn. Motors are not infallible, and his car
had broken down at Swindon; and it being Sunday, there had been
great difficulties and consequent delay in getting it repaired.
Mr Wilman's eye fell naturally on the central figure of the
group, Geo Lummis.
"Ah!" he exclaimed, "I was right: there _is_ water in your well!"
for Geo was dripping, and the water was running off his clothes
and trickling slowly away on the dry soil.
"Indeed there is sir, and more'n I cared about!" said Geo
dubiously.
"I recognize you," said the dowser, smiling. "You are the young
man who followed me with Mr. Barlow on the search."
"Yes, sir," said Geo quietly, and shivering as he spoke.
"You're cold, boy," said Martin. "Hev some a' th' doctor's
stuff," and he handed a glass of the egg-flip to him. Geo drank
it off, and wrung out his trousers.
"Can't we disperse the crowd now?" said Mr. Rutland to the
constables; "I should like to get him away."
"Not yet awhile, sir," said the constable, with a knowing look.
"They're taking round the hat for him, and he deserve it, that he
do," he added emphatically. "Best leave 'em a few minutes, if
you've no objection sir."
Mr. Rutland had no objection, but Geo himself _had_.
As a rule, Geo was, as we know, easy-going to a fault, and fell
in too readily with anything and everything that his friends
liked to suggest; but to his own surprise as much as that of any
of the bystanders at these words, which he could not help
overhearing, all his pride rose in revolt. His face flushed with
sudden red, and his voice rang out with a loud and peremptory
_"Stop that!"_
The men who were collecting turned and stared. They were not
accustomed to refusals on occasions of this kind, and Geo's
sudden bursting into notice astounded them.
"I take it very kind of you all," roared Geo, as if he had been
accustomed to address a constituency, "but I'd rather you didn't
give me nothin'. What I've done any on you would ha' done if I
hain't a-been by, and I've liked myself wonderful all this last
week, and I find I'm gettin' 'mazin' partial to work." (Cheers
and laughter.) "Yes, you may laugh; there do 'pear a bit funny,
I'll own, but that's the truth, and nothin' but the truth, and
I--I--I mean to _work like a good 'un!_"
He ended rather lamely, but the crowd took up the cheers again,
and, police or no police, half a dozen strong young fellows broke
through the barrier, hoisted Geo on their shoulders, and carried
him right away up the village to the tramp of many feet and the
tune of "For he's a jolly good fellow," and nobody raised a
protest even in the sacred cause of order.
Milly Greenacre stood at her garden gate as the stream went by;
old Jimmy looked out of his bedroom window in his cotton
night-cap, and cheered in his cracked old voice.
All his life long Geo will remember the dim outline of Milly's
figure, white against the background of the lilac bushes, and the
quaint, whimsical face of the old man peering into the darkness,
and looking at him, for the first time of his life, with
approval. It was only an instantaneous snapshot from the lanterns
carried by some of the party that revealed the picture to him,
but it was photographed for ever on his brain, and it was not one
of the least among the pleasurable things Geo looked back to when
all the excitement was over, and he had settled down to steady
work as he said he would.
CHAPTER XX.
CONCLUSION.
It is often said that no great work can be accomplished without
some correspondingly great sacrifice, and the fever was not
stamped out and the water supply made pure without the suffering
of an innocent victim in the good cause. And scarcely had the
excitement over the accident at the well abated, when Willowton
learned that one of the chief directors of the movement--their
vicar--was dangerously ill. The long strain, physical and mental,
of his resolute fight for the right, the senseless opposition his
flock had met him with all through those weary months of work and
disappointment, had told on him at last, and when the moment of
victory came he succumbed, and three days later he was raging in
the delirium of fever. And then, but only then, the wiseacres of
the village remarked to each other that they had "minded he
looked wonderful quare the last few Sundays--kind a' dazed like;"
and the old women had noticed his thin cheeks and restless eye.
Yet none of them had ever thought of saying a kind word to him
when he called at their cottages, and all had greeted him with
the sullen manner they had adopted, as if by common consent,
since he had begun his crusade against dirt and insanitariness.
On the evening of that day the doctor's dogcart stopped at Mrs.
Lummis's door. He had been such a frequent visitor there during
her illness that nobody attached any importance to his visit;
though Mrs. Lummis was up and about again, but not yet able to do
entirely for herself. But the neighbours did stare when, a
quarter of an hour later, Geo came out with a bundle and climbed
into the cart alongside him, and drove away up the village with
him. And they would have stared harder if they had known whither
Geo was bound.
Geo and his mother were sitting at their evening meal when the
doctor had knocked at their door. And they were not alone; Milly
Greenacre was with them. The three were laughing merrily over the
old lady's reminiscences of her "courting" days, and there was a
pleasant sense of comfort and happiness in the air.
"I am sorry to interrupt you, Mrs. Lummis," said the doctor,
putting his kindly face in at the door, "but I have come to ask
you for your nurse."
"Come in, sir, come in," said Mrs. Lummis, rising; and the doctor
complied, Geo closing the door behind him.
"But nurse have been gone these two days, sir," she said
wonderingly.
"Ah yes. It's not Nurse Blunt I want; it is this good fellow
here," looking at Geo, who got very red and looked extremely
uncomfortable. "The truth is," went on the doctor, "it is not a
woman I want, but a _man_, for the vicar; he is desperately ill,
you know."
"Yes, sir, we've heard," said Mrs. Lummis sympathetically.
"That's a bad job, poor gentleman, I'm sure; but---"
"Now, look here," said the doctor, cutting short any possible
objections, "this is a matter of life or death; there is no time
to lose.--Will you or will you not come?" turning to Geo.
"Me, sir! I am sure I don't know. I don't know nothin' about
nursing. I---"
"You know quite enough. Nurse Blunt will be there when she can,
and Mrs. Crowe will do her best. But the truth is, the poor man
is violent. It is a strong man I want, with a steady nerve and a
good temper. You, I think can answer to this description, and I
think, after the pluck and ability you showed during the past
week, that I can trust you."
Geo's eyes gleamed for a moment under their downcast lids, and he
looked at his mother and Milly for inspiration; and the doctor's
keen eye noticed with amusement that he sought Milly's counsel
first.
"Oh, you must go," said Milly warmly, answering the look. "That
would be a shame not to go to him. If only I was a man---"
"Which you need not wish at all, Milly," said the doctor,
laughing, for he had known Milly all her life. "You had better
come and help Mrs. Lummis a bit every day, and let her son
go.--Come along, Geo; put your night things together and let us
be off." And so, as Mrs. Lummis expressed it afterwards, "the
doctor was so terrible masterful he took him off before my own
eyes as if he'd a-been no more'n a child!"
But Geo proved no child, and, indeed, it was no child's work he
had to perform. For several nights he and Mrs. Crowe sat up with
the sick man, who, until the fever had spent itself, was so
strong that Geo had to put forth all his strength at times to
hold him when the fits of delirium came on. Then came the
inevitable weakness that follows fever, and so for a fortnight
the vicar of Willowton lay between life and death.
"Quiet, nothing but absolute quiet, can save him," the doctor
said. And so the bells were not rung for service; the carts and
other vehicles that generally came rattling past the vicarage
gate were now turned back at the top of the street, for a
faithful guard was always set there to stop all traffic that way.
It was old Greenacre's idea. "That there rattlin' is 'mazin' bad
for the 'hid,'" he said--"I mind that whin I was ill threugh
bein' thrown off a wagon when I was a booy--and they didn't ought
ter pass this way." So he established himself on a chair under
the shadow of the garden wall, and sat patiently watching the
egress through many a long hour, keeping the street. "Jest like a
beggar with a tin mug and a paper pinned on his chist," said
Corkam, who couldn't resist a sneer. But old Jimmy was not there
all day, for there were grateful convalescents in the persons of
Tom Chapman and his friends, who took their turn as sentry.
So the sick man, so carefully tended within and so guarded
without, still hung on between life and death. And as he lay
there powerless and speechless, that fickle jade Popularity stole
back to his side. Shyly, shamefacedly, almost fearfully, people
began to speak well of the man who was in all probability going
to give his life for their well-being. He had had the grace to
"ketch th' faver" just like one of themselves, and it was going
as hard with him as it had gone with many of their own flesh and
blood.
"He warn't so bad after all," they allowed. "'Twarn't so much his
fault that there well fell in." They even remembered how he had
watched and prayed by the sick-beds. They went so far as to hope
he "wouldn't be took." And the doctor, who read them like a book,
smiled to himself as he watched the poison of prejudice gradually
dying in their hearts, and common sense and a small measure of
justice stealing back into their perverted minds.
At last came a day when the good man came gaily down the
staircase and opened the door with the welcome words, "A decided
change for the better. Please God, we'll pull him through now."
And a subdued murmur of joy arose from the little crowd of women
and children that gathered every morning round the house to see
the doctor go away and hear the latest news.
Foremost among these was Annie Chapman--hard working, untidy,
cheery Annie. She has improved very little in any respect except
in her household arrangements; but though no power on earth could
ever succeed in making her tidy, cleanliness has become her
ruling passion. She scrubs, and rubs, and washes everything she
can lay her hands on, and no future outbreak of fever or any
other disease shall ever, she declares, be laid to her door. So
out of evil will come good, and the Willowton of the future
promises to be a very different place from the fever haunt it has
been for the past half-century, if the doctor and the vicar and
Annie Chapman can make it so.
And now there only remains for us to see how things fared with
Geo Lummis, who so suddenly found himself acting so important a
part in the annals of the village. Dr. Davies was anxious to keep
him under his eye as a professional man-nurse; but Geo struck at
that. He was very glad, he said, to have been of use to the
gentlemen, both of them, but sick-nursing was no work for him. He
pined for the fresh air and the open fields, and, if the truth
must be known, for the ripple of the water under the bridge. Not
that he meant to return either to his old ways or his old
companions, for he has done with Corkam for ever; and Milly
Greenacre and he have made their minds to be married as soon as
the vicar is well enough to marry them. And as if wonders would
never cease, Milly's scruples about leaving her old grandfather
alone have all been removed in the most unexpected manner. While
Geo has been nursing the vicar all the past month, old Jimmy had
been spending all his odd moments with Mrs. Lummis, with the
result that he and Geo are going to play at "puss in the corner,"
and there are going to be two weddings instead of one! Geo is
coming to live in the Greenacres' pretty cottage, and old Jimmy
is going to hang up his hat on Geo's old peg in his mother's
house. A more satisfactory arrangement of all parties could not
be imagined: for Jimmy has saved quite a little hoard of money,
enough to keep him comfortable, he hopes, for the rest of his
life; and Geo has been taken on as a farm labourer by Mr. Barlow,
with the promise of an extra teamster's place, and he is looking
forward to getting his seven pounds for the harvest which is now
about to begin, after which he and Milly are to be made man and
wife.
THE END
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