GOW.—Had it been your Prince instead of a groom caught in this noose
there’s not an astrologer of the city——
PRINCE.—Sacked! Sacked! We were a city yesterday.
GOW.—So be it, but I was not governor. Not an astrologer, but would ha’
sworn he’d foreseen it at the last versary of Venus, when Vulcan caught
her with Mars in the house of stinking Capricorn. But since ’tis Jack
of the Straw that hangs, the forgetful stars had it not on their
tablets.
PRINCE.—Another life! Were there any left to die? How did the poor fool
come by it?
GOW.—_Simpliciter_ thus. She that damned him to death knew not that she
did it, or would have died ere she had done it. For she loved him. He
that hangs him does so in obedience to the Duke, and asks no more than
“Where is the rope?” The Duke, very exactly he hath told us, works
God’s will, in which holy employ he’s not to be questioned. We have
then left upon this finger, only Jack whose soul now plucks the left
sleeve of Destiny in Hell to overtake why she clapped him up like a fly
on a sunny wall. Whuff! Soh!
PRINCE.—Your cloak, Ferdinand. I’ll sleep now.
FERDINAND.—Sleep, then… He too, loved his life?
GOW.—He was born of woman … but at the end threw life from him, like
your Prince, for a little sleep … “Have I any look of a King?” said he,
clanking his chain—“to be so baited on all sides by Fortune, that I
must e’en die now to live with myself one day longer?” I left him
railing at Fortune and woman’s love.
FERDINAND.—Ah, woman’s love!
_(Aside)_ Who knows not Fortune, glutted on easy thrones, Stealing from
feasts as rare to coneycatch, Privily in the hedgerows for a clown With
that same cruel-lustful hand and eye, Those nails and wedges, that one
hammer and lead, And the very gerb of long-stored lightnings loosed
Yesterday ’gainst some King.
MRS. BATHURST
The day that I chose to visit H.M.S. _Peridot_ in Simon’s Bay was the
day that the Admiral had chosen to send her up the coast. She was just
steaming out to sea as my train came in, and since the rest of the
Fleet were either coaling or busy at the rifle-ranges a thousand feet
up the hill, I found myself stranded, lunchless, on the sea-front with
no hope of return to Cape Town before five P.M. At this crisis I had
the luck to come across my friend Inspector Hooper, Cape Government
Railways, in command of an engine and a brake-van chalked for repair.
“If you get something to eat,” he said, “I’ll run you down to
Glengariff siding till the goods comes along. It’s cooler there than
here, you see.”
I got food and drink from the Greeks who sell all things at a price,
and the engine trotted us a couple of miles up the line to a bay of
drifted sand and a plank-platform half buried in sand not a hundred
yards from the edge of the surf. Moulded dunes, whiter than any snow,
rolled far inland up a brown and purple valley of splintered rocks and
dry scrub. A crowd of Malays hauled at a net beside two blue and green
boats on the beach; a picnic party danced and shouted barefoot where a
tiny river trickled across the flat, and a circle of dry hills, whose
feet were set in sands of silver, locked us in against a seven-coloured
sea. At either horn of the bay the railway line, cut just above high
water-mark, ran round a shoulder of piled rocks, and disappeared.
“You see there’s always a breeze here,” said Hooper, opening the door
as the engine left us in the siding on the sand, and the strong
south-easter buffeting under Elsie’s Peak dusted sand into our tickey
beer. Presently he sat down to a file full of spiked documents. He had
returned from a long trip up-country, where he had been reporting on
damaged rolling-stock, as far away as Rhodesia. The weight of the bland
wind on my eyelids; the song of it under the car roof, and high up
among the rocks; the drift of fine grains chasing each other musically
ashore; the tramp of the surf; the voices of the picnickers; the rustle
of Hooper’s file, and the presence of the assured sun, joined with the
beer to cast me into magical slumber. The hills of False Bay were just
dissolving into those of fairyland when I heard footsteps on the sand
outside, and the clink of our couplings.
“Stop that!” snapped Hooper, without raising his head from his work.
“It’s those dirty little Malay boys, you see: they’re always playing
with the trucks….”
“Don’t be hard on ’em. The railway’s a general refuge in Africa,” I
replied.
“’Tis—up-country at any rate. That reminds me,” he felt in his
waistcoat-pocket, “I’ve got a curiosity for you from Wankies—beyond
Buluwayo. It’s more of a souvenir perhaps than——”
“The old hotel’s inhabited,” cried a voice. “White men from the
language. Marines to the front! Come on, Pritch. Here’s your Belmont.
Wha—i—i!”
The last word dragged like a rope as Mr. Pyecroft ran round to the open
door, and stood looking up into my face. Behind him an enormous
Sergeant of Marines trailed a stalk of dried seaweed, and dusted the
sand nervously from his fingers.
“What are you doing here?” I asked. “I thought the _Hierophant_ was
down the coast?”
“We came in last Tuesday—from Tristan D’Acunha—for overhaul, and we
shall be in dockyard ’ands for two months, with boiler-seatings.”
“Come and sit down,” Hooper put away the file.
“This is Mr. Hooper of the Railway,” I exclaimed, as Pyecroft turned to
haul up the black-moustached sergeant.
“This is Sergeant Pritchard, of the _Agaric_, an old shipmate,” said
he. “We were strollin’ on the beach.” The monster blushed and nodded.
He filled up one side of the van when he sat down.
“And this is my friend, Mr. Pyecroft,” I added to Hooper, already busy
with the extra beer which my prophetic soul had bought from the Greeks.
“_Moi aussi_” quoth Pyecroft, and drew out beneath his coat a labelled
quart bottle.
“Why, it’s Bass,” cried Hooper.
“It was Pritchard,” said Pyecroft. “They can’t resist him.”
“That’s not so,” said Pritchard, mildly.
“Not _verbatim_ per’aps, but the look in the eye came to the same
thing.”
“Where was it?” I demanded.
“Just on beyond here—at Kalk Bay. She was slappin’ a rug in a back
verandah. Pritch hadn’t more than brought his batteries to bear, before
she stepped indoors an’ sent it flyin’ over the wall.”
Pyecroft patted the warm bottle.
“It was all a mistake,” said Pritchard. “I shouldn’t wonder if she
mistook me for Maclean. We’re about of a size.”
I had heard householders of Muizenburg, St. James’s, and Kalk Bay
complain of the difficulty of keeping beer or good servants at the
seaside, and I began to see the reason. None the less, it was excellent
Bass, and I too drank to the health of that large-minded maid.
“It’s the uniform that fetches ’em, an’ they fetch it,” said Pyecroft.
“My simple navy blue is respectable, but not fascinatin’. Now Pritch in
’is Number One rig is always ‘purr Mary, on the terrace’—_ex officio_
as you might say.”
“She took me for Maclean, I tell you,” Pritchard insisted. “Why—why—to
listen to him you wouldn’t think that only yesterday——”
“Pritch,” said Pyecroft, “be warned in time. If we begin tellin’ what
we know about each other we’ll be turned out of the pub. Not to mention
aggravated desertion on several occasions——”
“Never anything more than absence without leaf—I defy you to prove it,”
said the Sergeant hotly. “An’ if it comes to that how about Vancouver
in ’87?”
“How about it? Who pulled bow in the gig going ashore? Who told Boy
Niven…?”
“Surely you were court martialled for that?” I said. The story of Boy
Niven who lured seven or eight able-bodied seamen and marines into the
woods of British Columbia used to be a legend of the Fleet.
“Yes, we were court-martialled to rights,” said Pritchard, “but we
should have been tried for murder if Boy Niven ’adn’t been unusually
tough. He told us he had an uncle ’oo’d give us land to farm. ’E said
he was born at the back o’ Vancouver Island, and _all_ the time the
beggar was a balmy Barnado Orphan!”
“_But_ we believed him,” said Pyecroft. “I did—you did—Paterson did—an’
’oo was the Marine that married the cocoanut-woman afterwards—him with
the mouth?”
“Oh, Jones, Spit-Kid Jones. I ’aven’t thought of ’im in years,” said
Pritchard. “Yes, Spit-Kid believed it, an’ George Anstey and Moon. We
were very young an’ very curious.”
“_But_ lovin’ an’ trustful to a degree,” said Pyecroft.
“Remember when ’e told us to walk in single file for fear o’ bears?
‘Remember, Pye, when ’e ’opped about in that bog full o’ ferns an’
sniffed an’ said ’e could smell the smoke of ’is uncle’s farm? An’
_all_ the time it was a dirty little out-lyin’ uninhabited island. We
walked round it in a day, an’ come back to our boat lyin’ on the beach.
A whole day Boy Niven kept us walkin’ in circles lookin’ for ’is
uncle’s farm! He said his uncle was compelled by the law of the land to
give us a farm!”
“Don’t get hot, Pritch. We believed,” said Pyecroft.
“He’d been readin’ books. He only did it to get a run ashore an’ have
himself talked of. A day an’ a night—eight of us—followin’ Boy Niven
round an uninhabited island in the Vancouver archipelago! Then the
picket came for us an’ a nice pack o’ idiots we looked!”
“What did you get for it?” Hooper asked.
“Heavy thunder with continuous lightning for two hours. Thereafter
sleet-squalls, a confused sea, and cold, unfriendly weather till
conclusion o’ cruise,” said Pyecroft. “It was only what we expected,
but what we felt, an’ I assure you, Mr. Hooper, even a sailor-man has a
heart to break, was bein’ told that we able seamen an’ promisin’
marines ’ad misled Boy Niven. Yes, we poor back-to-the-landers was
supposed to ’ave misled him! He rounded on us, o’ course, an’ got off
easy.”
“Excep’ for what we gave him in the steerin’-flat when we came out o’
cells. ’Eard anything of ’im lately, Pye?”
“Signal Boatswain in the Channel Fleet, I believe—Mr. L.L. Niven is.”
“An’ Anstey died o’ fever in Benin,” Pritchard mused. “What come to
Moon? Spit-Kid we know about.”
“Moon—Moon! Now where did I last…? Oh yes, when I was in the
_Palladium_! I met Quigley at Buncrana Station. He told me Moon ’ad run
when the _Astrild_ sloop was cruising among the South Seas three years
back. He always showed signs o’ bein’ a Mormonastic beggar. Yes, he
slipped off quietly an’ they ’adn’t time to chase ’im round the islands
even if the navigatin’ officer ’ad been equal to the job.”
“Wasn’t he?” said Hooper.
“Not so. Accordin’ to Quigley the _Astrild_ spent half her commission
rompin’ up the beach like a she-turtle, an’ the other half hatching
turtles’ eggs on the top o’ numerous reefs. When she was docked at
Sydney her copper looked like Aunt Maria’s washing on the line—an’ her
’midship frames was sprung. The commander swore the dockyard ’ad done
it haulin’ the pore thing on to the slips. They _do_ do strange things
at sea, Mr. Hooper.”
“Ah! I’m not a tax-payer,” said Hooper, and opened a fresh bottle. The
Sergeant seemed to be one who had a difficulty in dropping subjects.
“How it all comes back, don’t it?” he said. “Why Moon must ’ave ’ad
sixteen years’ service before he ran.”
“It takes ’em at all ages. Look at—you know,” said Pyecroft.
“Who?” I asked.
“A service man within eighteen months of his pension, is the party
you’re thinkin’ of,” said Pritchard. “A warrant ’oose name begins with
a V., isn’t it?”
“But, in a way o’ puttin’ it, we can’t say that he actually did
desert,” Pyecroft suggested.
“Oh, no,” said Pritchard. “It was only permanent absence up country
without leaf. That was all.”
“Up country?” said Hooper. “Did they circulate his description?”
“What for?” said Pritchard, most impolitely.
“Because deserters are like columns in the war. They don’t move away
from the line, you see. I’ve known a chap caught at Salisbury that way
tryin’ to get to Nyassa. They tell me, but o’ course I don’t know, that
they don’t ask questions on the Nyassa Lake Flotilla up there. I’ve
heard of a P. and O. quartermaster in full command of an armed launch
there.”
“Do you think Click ’ud ha’ gone up that way?” Pritchard asked.
“There’s no saying. He was sent up to Bloemfontein to take over some
Navy ammunition left in the fort. We know he took it over and saw it
into the trucks. Then there was no more Click—then or thereafter. Four
months ago it transpired, and thus the _casus belli_ stands at
present,” said Pyecroft.
“What were his marks?” said Hooper again.
“Does the Railway get a reward for returnin’ ’em, then?” said
Pritchard.
“If I did d’you suppose I’d talk about it?” Hooper retorted angrily.
“You seemed so very interested,” said Pritchard with equal crispness.
“Why was he called Click?” I asked to tide over an uneasy little break
in the conversation. The two men were staring at each other very
fixedly.
“Because of an ammunition hoist carryin’ away,” said Pyecroft. “And it
carried away four of ’is teeth—on the lower port side, wasn’t it,
Pritch? The substitutes which he bought weren’t screwed home in a
manner o’ sayin’. When he talked fast they used to lift a little on the
bed plate. ’Ence, ‘Click.’ They called ’im a superior man which is what
we’d call a long, black-’aired, genteely speakin’, ’alf-bred beggar on
the lower deck.”
“Four false teeth on the lower left jaw,” said Hooper, his hand in his
waistcoat pocket. “What tattoo marks?”
“Look here,” began Pritchard, half rising. “I’m sure we’re very
grateful to you as a gentleman for your ’orspitality, but per’aps we
may ’ave made an error in—”
I looked at Pyecroft for aid, Hooper was crimsoning rapidly.
“If the fat marine now occupying the foc’sle will kindly bring ’is
_status quo_ to an anchor yet once more, we may be able to talk like
gentlemen—not to say friends,” said Pyecroft. “He regards you, Mr.
Hooper, as a emissary of the Law.”
“I only wish to observe that when a gentleman exhibits such a peculiar,
or I should rather say, such a _bloomin’_ curiosity in identification
marks as our friend here——”
“Mr. Pritchard,” I interposed, “I’ll take all the responsibility for
Mr. Hooper.”
“An’ _you_’ll apologise all round,” said Pyecroft. “You’re a rude
little man, Pritch.”
“But how was I——” he began, wavering.
“I don’t know an’ I don’t care. Apologise!”
The giant looked round bewildered and took our little hands into his
vast grip, one by one. “I was wrong,” he said meekly as a sheep. “My
suspicions was unfounded. Mr. Hooper, I apologise.”
“You did quite right to look out for your own end o’ the line,” said
Hooper. “I’d ha’ done the same with a gentleman I didn’t know, you see.
If you don’t mind I’d like to hear a little more o’ your Mr. Vickery.
It’s safe with me, you see.”
“Why did Vickery run,” I began, but Pyecroft’s smile made me turn my
question to “Who was she?”
“She kep’ a little hotel at Hauraki—near Auckland,” said Pyecroft.
“By Gawd!” roared Pritchard, slapping his hand on his leg. “Not Mrs.
Bathurst!”
Pyecroft nodded slowly, and the Sergeant called all the powers of
darkness to witness his bewilderment.
“So far as I could get at it Mrs. B. was the lady in question.”
“But Click was married,” cried Pritchard.
“An’ ’ad a fifteen year old daughter. ’E’s shown me her photograph.
Settin’ that aside, so to say, ’ave you ever found these little things
make much difference? Because I haven’t.”
“Good Lord Alive an’ Watchin’!… Mrs. Bathurst….” Then with another
roar: “You can say what you please, Pye, but you don’t make me believe
it was any of ’er fault. She wasn’t _that!_”
“If I was going to say what I please, I’d begin by callin’ you a silly
ox an’ work up to the higher pressures at leisure. I’m trying to say
solely what transpired. M’rover, for once you’re right. It wasn’t her
fault.”
“You couldn’t ’aven’t made me believe it if it ’ad been,” was the
answer.
Such faith in a Sergeant of Marines interested me greatly. “Never mind
about that,” I cried. “Tell me what she was like.”
“She was a widow,” said Pyecroft. “Left so very young and never
re-spliced. She kep’ a little hotel for warrants and non-coms close to
Auckland, an’ she always wore black silk, and ’er neck—”
“You ask what she was like,” Pritchard broke in. “Let me give you an
instance. I was at Auckland first in ’97, at the end o’ the
_Marroquin’s_ commission, an’ as I’d been promoted I went up with the
others. She used to look after us all, an’ she never lost by it—not a
penny! ‘Pay me now,’ she’d say, ‘or settle later. I know you won’t let
me suffer. Send the money from home if you like,’ Why, gentlemen all, I
tell you I’ve seen that lady take her own gold watch an’ chain off her
neck in the bar an’ pass it to a bosun ’oo’d come ashore without ’is
ticker an’ ’ad to catch the last boat. ‘I don’t know your name,’ she
said, ‘but when you’ve done with it, you’ll find plenty that know me on
the front. Send it back by one o’ them.’ And it was worth thirty pounds
if it was worth ’arf a crown. The little gold watch, Pye, with the blue
monogram at the back. But, as I was sayin’, in those days she kep’ a
beer that agreed with me—Slits it was called. One way an’ another I
must ’ave punished a good few bottles of it while we was in the
bay—comin’ ashore every night or so. Chaffin across the bar like, once
when we were alone, ‘Mrs. B.,’ I said, ‘when next I call I want you to
remember that this is my particular—just as you’re my particular?’
(She’d let you go _that_ far!) ‘Just as you’re my particular,’ I said.
‘Oh, thank you, Sergeant Pritchard,’ she says, an’ put ’er hand up to
the curl be’ind ’er ear. Remember that way she had, Pye?”
“I think so,” said the sailor.
“Yes, ‘Thank you, Sergeant Pritchard,’ she says. ‘The least I can do is
to mark it for you in case you change your mind. There’s no great
demand for it in the Fleet,’ she says, ‘but to make sure I’ll put it at
the back o’ the shelf,’ an’ she snipped off a piece of her hair ribbon
with that old dolphin cigar cutter on the bar—remember it, Pye?—an’ she
tied a bow round what was left—just four bottles. That was ’97—no, ’96.
In ’98 I was in the _Resiliant_—China station—full commission. In
Nineteen One, mark you, I was in the _Carthusian_, back in Auckland Bay
again. Of course I went up to Mrs. B.’s with the rest of us to see how
things were goin’. They were the same as ever. (Remember the big tree
on the pavement by the side-bar, Pye?) I never said anythin’ in special
(there was too many of us talkin’ to her), but she saw me at once.”
“That wasn’t difficult?” I ventured.
“Ah, but wait. I was comin’ up to the bar, when, ‘Ada,’ she says to her
niece, ‘get me Sergeant Pritchard’s particular,’ and, gentlemen all, I
tell you before I could shake ’ands with the lady, there were those
four bottles o’ Slits, with ’er ’air ribbon in a bow round each o’
their necks, set down in front o’ me, an’ as she drew the cork she
looked at me under her eyebrows in that blindish way she had o’
lookin’, an’, ‘Sergeant Pritchard,’ she says, ‘I do ’ope you ’aven’t
changed your mind about your particulars.’ That’s the kind o’ woman she
was—after five years!”
“I don’t _see_ her yet somehow,” said Hooper, but with sympathy.
“She—she never scrupled to feed a lame duck or set ’er foot on a
scorpion at any time of ’er life,” Pritchard added valiantly.
“That don’t help me either. My mother’s like that for one.”
The giant heaved inside his uniform and rolled his eyes at the
car-roof. Said Pyecroft suddenly:—
“How many women have you been intimate with all over the world,
Pritch?”
Pritchard blushed plum colour to the short hairs of his seventeen-inch
neck.
“’Undreds,” said Pyecroft. “So’ve I. How many of ’em can you remember
in your own mind, settin’ aside the first—an’ per’aps the last—_and one
more_?”
“Few, wonderful few, now I tax myself,” said Sergeant Pritchard,
relievedly.
“An’ how many times might you ’ave been at Aukland?”
“One—two,” he began. “Why, I can’t make it more than three times in ten
years. But I can remember every time that I ever saw Mrs. B.”
“So can I—an’ I’ve only been to Auckland twice—how she stood an’ what
she was sayin’ an’ what she looked like. That’s the secret. ’Tisn’t
beauty, so to speak, nor good talk necessarily. It’s just It. Some
women’ll stay in a man’s memory if they once walked down a street, but
most of ’em you can live with a month on end, an’ next commission you’d
be put to it to certify whether they talked in their sleep or not, as
one might say.”
“Ah,” said Hooper. “That’s more the idea. I’ve known just two women of
that nature.”
“An’ it was no fault o’ theirs?” asked Pritchard.
“None whatever. I know that!”
“An’ if a man gets struck with that kind o’ woman, Mr. Hooper?”
Pritchard went on.
“He goes crazy—or just saves himself,” was the slow answer.
“You’ve hit it,” said the Sergeant. “You’ve seen an’ known somethin’ in
the course o’ your life, Mr. Hooper. I’m lookin’ at you!” He set down
his bottle.
“And how often had Vickery seen her?” I asked.
“That’s the dark an’ bloody mystery,” Pyecroft answered. “I’d never
come across him till I come out in the _Hierophant_ just now, an’ there
wasn’t any one in the ship who knew much about him. You see, he was
what you call a superior man. ’E spoke to me once or twice about
Auckland and Mrs. B. on the voyage out. I called that to mind
subsequently. There must ’ave been a good deal between ’em, to my way
o’ thinkin’. Mind you I’m only giving you my _sum_ of it all, because
all I know is second-hand so to speak, or rather I should say more than
second-’and.”
“How?” said Hooper peremptorily. “You must have seen it or heard it.”
“Yes,” said Pyecroft. “I used to think seein’ and hearin’ was the only
regulation aids to ascertainin’ facts, but as we get older we get more
accommodatin’. The cylinders work easier, I suppose…. Were you in Cape
Town last December when Phyllis’s Circus came?”
“No—up country,” said Hooper, a little nettled at the change of venue.
“I ask because they had a new turn of a scientific nature called ‘Home
and Friends for a Tickey.’”
“Oh, you mean the cinematograph—the pictures of prize-fights and
steamers. I’ve seen ’em up country.”
“Biograph or cinematograph was what I was alludin’ to. London Bridge
with the omnibuses—a troopship goin’ to the war—marines on parade at
Portsmouth an’ the Plymouth Express arrivin’ at Paddin’ton.”
“Seen ’em all. Seen ’em all,” said Hooper impatiently.
“We _Hierophants_ came in just before Christmas week an’ leaf was
easy.”
“I think a man gets fed up with Cape Town quicker than anywhere else on
the station. Why, even Durban’s more like Nature. We was there for
Christmas,” Pritchard put in.
“Not bein’ a devotee of Indian _peeris_, as our Doctor said to the
Pusser, I can’t exactly say. Phyllis’s was good enough after musketry
practice at Mozambique. I couldn’t get off the first two or three
nights on account of what you might call an imbroglio with our Torpedo
Lieutenant in the submerged flat, where some pride of the West country
had sugared up a gyroscope; but I remember Vickery went ashore with our
Carpenter Rigdon—old Crocus we called him. As a general rule Crocus
never left ’is ship unless an’ until he was ’oisted out with a winch,
but _when_ ’e went ’e would return noddin’ like a lily gemmed with dew.
We smothered him down below that night, but the things ’e said about
Vickery as a fittin’ playmate for a Warrant Officer of ’is cubic
capacity, before we got him quiet, was what I should call pointed.”
“I’ve been with Crocus—in the _Redoubtable_,” said the Sergeant. “He’s
a character if there is one.”
“Next night I went into Cape Town with Dawson and Pratt; but just at
the door of the Circus I came across Vickery. ‘Oh!’ he says, ‘you’re
the man I’m looking for. Come and sit next me. This way to the shillin’
places!’ I went astern at once, protestin’ because tickey seats better
suited my so-called finances. ‘Come on,’ says Vickery, ‘I’m payin’.’
Naturally I abandoned Pratt and Dawson in anticipation o’ drinks to
match the seats. ‘No,’ he says, when this was ’inted—‘not now. Not now.
As many as you please afterwards, but I want you sober for the
occasion.’ I caught ’is face under a lamp just then, an’ the appearance
of it quite cured me of my thirsts. Don’t mistake. It didn’t frighten
me. It made me anxious. I can’t tell you what it was like, but that was
the effect which it ’ad on me. If you want to know, it reminded me of
those things in bottles in those herbalistic shops at
Plymouth—preserved in spirits of wine. White an’ crumply
things—previous to birth as you might say.”
“You ’ave a beastial mind, Pye,” said the Sergeant, relighting his
pipe.
“Perhaps. We were in the front row, an’ ‘Home an’ Friends’ came on
early. Vickery touched me on the knee when the number went up. ‘If you
see anything that strikes you,’ he says, ‘drop me a hint’; then he went
on clicking. We saw London Bridge an’ so forth an’ so on, an’ it was
most interestin’. I’d never seen it before. You ’eard a little dynamo
like buzzin’, but the pictures were the real thing—alive an’ movin’.”
“I’ve seen ’em,” said Hooper. “Of course they are taken from the very
thing itself—you see.”
“Then the Western Mail came in to Paddin’ton on the big magic lantern
sheet. First we saw the platform empty an’ the porters standin’ by.
Then the engine come in, head on, an’ the women in the front row
jumped: she headed so straight. Then the doors opened and the
passengers came out and the porters got the luggage—just like life.
Only—only when any one came down too far towards us that was watchin’,
they walked right out o’ the picture, so to speak. I was ’ighly
interested, I can tell you. So were all of us. I watched an old man
with a rug ’oo’d dropped a book an’ was tryin’ to pick it up, when
quite slowly, from be’ind two porters—carryin’ a little reticule an’
lookin’ from side to side—comes out Mrs. Bathurst. There was no
mistakin’ the walk in a hundred thousand. She come forward—right
forward—she looked out straight at us with that blindish look which
Pritch alluded to. She walked on and on till she melted out of the
picture—like—like a shadow jumpin’ over a candle, an’ as she went I
’eard Dawson in the ticky seats be’ind sing out: ‘Christ! There’s Mrs.
B.!’”
Hooper swallowed his spittle and leaned forward intently.
“Vickery touched me on the knee again. He was clickin’ his four false
teeth with his jaw down like an enteric at the last kick. ‘Are you
sure?’ says he. ‘Sure,’ I says, ‘didn’t you ’ear Dawson give tongue?
Why, it’s the woman herself.’ ‘I was sure before,’ he says, ‘but I
brought you to make sure. Will you come again with me to-morrow?’
“‘Willingly,’ I says, ‘it’s like meetin’ old friends.’
“‘Yes,’ he says, openin’ his watch, ‘very like. It will be
four-and-twenty hours less four minutes before I see her again. Come
and have a drink,’ he says. ‘It may amuse you, but it’s no sort of
earthly use to me.’ He went out shaking his head an’ stumblin’ over
people’s feet as if he was drunk already. I anticipated a swift drink
an’ a speedy return, because I wanted to see the performin’ elephants.
Instead o’ which Vickery began to navigate the town at the rate o’
knots, lookin’ in at a bar every three minutes approximate Greenwich
time. I’m not a drinkin’ man, though there are those present”—he cocked
his unforgetable eye at me—“who may have seen me more or less imbued
with the fragrant spirit. None the less, when I drink I like to do it
at anchor an’ not at an average speed of eighteen knots on the measured
mile. There’s a tank as you might say at the back o’ that big hotel up
the hill—what do they call it?”
“The Molteno Reservoir,” I suggested, and Hooper nodded.
“That was his limit o’ drift. We walked there an’ we come down through
the Gardens—there was a South-Easter blowin’—an’ we finished up by the
Docks. Then we bore up the road to Salt River, and wherever there was a
pub Vickery put in sweatin’. He didn’t look at what he drunk—he didn’t
look at the change. He walked an’ he drunk an’ he perspired in rivers.
I understood why old Crocus ’ad come back in the condition ’e did,
because Vickery an’ I ’ad two an’ a half hours o’ this gipsy manœuvre
an’ when we got back to the station there wasn’t a dry atom on or in
me.”
“Did he say anything?” Pritchard asked.
“The sum total of ’is conversation from 7.45 P.M. till 11.15 P.M. was
‘Let’s have another.’ Thus the mornin’ an’ the evenin’ were the first
day, as Scripture says…. To abbreviate a lengthy narrative, I went into
Cape Town for five consecutive nights with Master Vickery, and in that
time I must ’ave logged about fifty knots over the ground an’ taken in
two gallon o’ all the worst spirits south the Equator. The evolution
never varied. Two shilling seats for us two; five minutes o’ the
pictures, an’ perhaps forty-five seconds o’ Mrs. B. walking down
towards us with that blindish look in her eyes an’ the reticule in her
hand. Then out walk—and drink till train time.”
“What did you think?” said Hooper, his hand fingering his waistcoat
pocket.
“Several things,” said Pyecroft. “To tell you the truth, I aren’t quite
done thinkin’ about it yet. Mad? The man was a dumb lunatic—must ’ave
been for months—years p’raps. I know somethin’ o’ maniacs, as every man
in the Service must. I’ve been shipmates with a mad skipper—an’ a
lunatic Number One, but never both together I thank ’Eaven. I could
give you the names o’ three captains now ’oo ought to be in an asylum,
but you don’t find me interferin’ with the mentally afflicted till they
begin to lay about ’em with rammers an’ winch-handles. Only once I
crept up a little into the wind towards Master Vickery. ‘I wonder what
she’s doin’ in England,’ I says. ‘Don’t it seem to you she’s lookin’
for somebody?’ That was in the Gardens again, with the South-Easter
blowin’ as we were makin’ our desperate round. ‘She’s lookin’ for me,’
he says, stoppin’ dead under a lamp an’ clickin’. When he wasn’t
drinkin’, in which case all ’is teeth clicked on the glass, ’e was
clickin’ ’is four false teeth like a Marconi ticker. ‘Yes! lookin’ for
me,’ he said, an’ he went on very softly an’ as you might say
affectionately. ‘_But_, he went on, ‘in future, Mr. Pyecroft, I should
take it kindly of you if you’d confine your remarks to the drinks set
before you. Otherwise,’ he says, ‘with the best will in the world
towards you, I may find myself guilty of murder! Do you understand?’ he
says. ‘Perfectly,’ I says, ‘but would it at all soothe you to know that
in such a case the chances o’ your being killed are precisely
equivalent to the chances o’ me being outed.’ ‘Why, no,’ he says, ‘I’m
almost afraid that ’ud be a temptation,’
“Then I said—we was right under the lamp by that arch at the end o’ the
Gardens where the trams came round—‘Assumin’ murder was done—or
attempted murder—I put it to you that you would still be left so badly
crippled, as one might say, that your subsequent capture by the
police—to ’oom you would ’ave to explain—would be largely inevitable.’
‘That’s better,’ ’e says, passin’ ’is hands over his forehead. ‘That’s
much better, because,’ he says, ‘do you know, as I am now, Pye, I’m not
so sure if I could explain anything much.’ Those were the only
particular words I had with ’im in our walks as I remember.”
“What walks!” said Hooper. “Oh my soul, what walks!”
“They were chronic,” said Pyecroft gravely, “but I didn’t anticipate
any danger till the Circus left. Then I anticipated that, bein’
deprived of ’is stimulant, he might react on me, so to say, with a
hatchet. Consequently, after the final performance an’ the ensuin’ wet
walk, I kep’ myself aloof from my superior officer on board in the
execution of ’is duty as you might put it. Consequently, I was
interested when the sentry informs me while I was passin’ on my lawful
occasions that Click had asked to see the captain. As a general rule
warrant officers don’t dissipate much of the owner’s time, but Click
put in an hour and more be’ind that door. My duties kep’ me within
eyeshot of it. Vickery came out first, an’ ’e actually nodded at me an’
smiled. This knocked me out o’ the boat, because, havin’ seen ’is face
for five consecutive nights, I didn’t anticipate any change there more
than a condenser in hell, so to speak. The owner emerged later. His
face didn’t read off at all, so I fell back on his cox, ’oo’d been
eight years with him and knew him better than boat signals. Lamson—that
was the cox’s name—crossed ’is bows once or twice at low speeds an’
dropped down to me visibly concerned. ‘He’s shipped ’is court-martial
face,’ says Lamson. ‘Some one’s goin’ to be ’ung. I’ve never seen that
look but once before when they chucked the gun-sights overboard in the
_Fantastic_.’ Throwin’ gun-sights overboard, Mr. Hooper, is the
equivalent for mutiny in these degenerate days. It’s done to attract
the notice of the authorities an’ the _Western Mornin’ News_—generally
by a stoker. Naturally, word went round the lower deck an’ we had a
private over’aul of our little consciences. But, barrin’ a shirt which
a second-class stoker said ’ad walked into ’is bag from the marines
flat by itself, nothin’ vital transpired. The owner went about flyin’
the signal for ‘attend public execution,’ so to say, but there was no
corpse at the yardarm. ’E lunched on the beach an’ ’e returned with ’is
regulation harbour-routine face about 3 P.M. Thus Lamson lost prestige
for raising false alarms. The only person ’oo might ’ave connected the
epicycloidal gears correctly was one Pyecroft, when he was told that
Mr. Vickery would go up country that same evening to take over certain
naval ammunition left after the war in Bloemfontein Fort. No details
was ordered to accompany Master Vickery. He was told off first person
singular—as a unit—-by himself.”
The marine whistled penetratingly.
“That’s what I thought,” said Pyecroft. “I went ashore with him in the
cutter an’ ’e asked me to walk through the station. He was clickin’
audibly, but otherwise seemed happy-ish.
“‘You might like to know,’ he says, stoppin’ just opposite the
Admiral’s front gate, ‘that Phyllis’s Circus will be performin’ at
Worcester to-morrow night. So I shall see ’er yet once again. You’ve
been very patient with me,’ he says.
“‘Look here, Vickery,’ I said, ‘this thing’s come to be just as much as
I can stand. Consume your own smoke. I don’t want to know any more.’
“‘You!’ he said. ‘What have you got to complain of?—you’ve only ’ad to
watch. I’m _it_,’ he says, ‘but that’s neither here nor there,’ he
says. ‘I’ve one thing to say before shakin’ ’ands. Remember,’ ’e
says—we were just by the Admiral’s garden-gate then—‘remember, that I
am _not_ a murderer, because my lawful wife died in childbed six weeks
after I came out. That much at least I am clear of,’ ’e says.
“‘Then what have you done that signifies?’ I said. ‘What’s the rest of
it?’
“‘The rest,’ ’e says, ‘is silence,’ an’ he shook ’ands and went
clickin’ into Simons Town station.”
“Did he stop to see Mrs. Bathurst at Worcester?” I asked.
“It’s not known. He reported at Bloemfontein, saw the ammunition into
the trucks, and then ’e disappeared. Went out—deserted, if you care to
put it so—within eighteen months of his pension, an’ if what ’e said
about ’is wife was true he was a free man as ’e then stood. How do you
read it off?”
“Poor devil!” said Hooper. “To see her that way every night! I wonder
what it was.”
“I’ve made my ’ead ache in that direction many a long night.”
“But I’ll swear Mrs. B. ’ad no ’and in it,” said the Sergeant unshaken.
“No. Whatever the wrong or deceit was, he did it, I’m sure o’ that. I
’ad to look at ’is face for five consecutive nights. I’m not so fond o’
navigatin’ about Cape Town with a South-Easter blowin’ these days. I
can hear those teeth click, so to say.”
“Ah, those teeth,” said Hooper, and his hand went to his waistcoat
pocket once more. “Permanent things false teeth are. You read about ’em
in all the murder trials.”
“What d’you suppose the captain knew—or did?” I asked.
“I never turned my searchlight that way,” Pyecroft answered
unblushingly.
We all reflected together, and drummed on empty beer bottles as the
picnic-party, sunburned, wet, and sandy, passed our door singing “The
Honeysuckle and the Bee.”
“Pretty girl under that kapje,” said Pyecroft.
“They never circulated his description?” said Pritchard.
“I was askin’ you before these gentlemen came,” said Hooper to me,
“whether you knew Wankies—on the way to the Zambesi—beyond Buluwayo?”
“Would he pass there—tryin’ to get to that Lake what’s ’is name?” said
Pritchard.
Hooper shook his head and went on: “There’s a curious bit o’ line
there, you see. It runs through solid teak forest—a sort o’ mahogany
really—seventy-two miles without a curve. I’ve had a train derailed
there twenty-three times in forty miles. I was up there a month ago
relievin’ a sick inspector, you see. He told me to look out for a
couple of tramps in the teak.”
“Two?” Pyecroft said. “I don’t envy that other man if——”
“We get heaps of tramps up there since the war. The inspector told me
I’d find ’em at M’Bindwe siding waiting to go North. He’d given ’em
some grub and quinine, you see. I went up on a construction train. I
looked out for ’em. I saw them miles ahead along the straight, waiting
in the teak. One of ’em was standin’ up by the dead-end of the siding
an’ the other was squattin’ down lookin’ up at ’im, you see.”
“What did you do for ’em?” said Pritchard.
“There wasn’t much I could do, except bury ’em. There’d been a bit of a
thunderstorm in the teak, you see, and they were both stone dead and as
black as charcoal. That’s what they really were, you see—charcoal. They
fell to bits when we tried to shift ’em. The man who was standin’ up
had the false teeth. I saw ’em shinin’ against the black. Fell to bits
he did too, like his mate squatting down an’ watchin’ him, both of ’em
all wet in the rain. Both burned to charcoal, you see. And—that’s what
made me ask about marks just now—the false-toother was tattooed on the
arms and chest—a crown and foul anchor with M.V. above.”
“I’ve seen that,” said Pyecroft quickly. “It was so.”
“But if he was all charcoal-like?” said Pritchard, shuddering.
“You know how writing shows up white on a burned letter? Well, it was
like that, you see. We buried ’em in the teak and I kept… But he was a
friend of you two gentlemen, you see.”
Mr. Hooper brought his hand away from his waistcoat-pocket—empty.
Pritchard covered his face with his hands for a moment, like a child
shutting out an ugliness.
“And to think of her at Hauraki!” he murmured—“with ’er ’air-ribbon on
my beer. ‘Ada,’ she said to her niece… Oh, my Gawd!”…
“On a summer afternoon, when the honeysuckle blooms,
And all Nature seems at rest,
Underneath the bower, ’mid the perfume of the flower,
Sat a maiden with the one she loves the best——”
sang the picnic-party waiting for their train at Glengariff.
“Well, I don’t know how you feel about it,” said Pyecroft, “but ’avin’
seen ’is face for five consecutive nights on end, I’m inclined to
finish what’s left of the beer an’ thank Gawd he’s dead!”
BELOW THE MILL DAM
“OUR FATHERS ALSO”
By—they are by with mirth and tears,
Wit or the works of Desire—
Cushioned about on the kindly years
Between the wall and the fire.
The grapes are pressed, the corn is shocked—
Standeth no more to glean;
For the Gates of Love and Learning locked
When they went out between.
All lore our Lady Venus bares
Signalled it was or told
By the dear lips long given to theirs
And longer to the mould.
All Profit, all Device, all Truth
Written it was or said
By the mighty men of their mighty youth.
Which is mighty being dead.
The film that floats before their eyes
The Temple’s Veil they call;
And the dust that on the Shewbread lies
Is holy over all.
Warn them of seas that slip our yoke
Of slow conspiring stars—
The ancient Front of Things unbroke
But heavy with new wars?
By—they are by with mirth and tears.
Wit or the waste of Desire—
Cushioned about on the kindly years
Between the wall and the fire.
BELOW THE MILL DAM
“Book—Book—Domesday Book!” They were letting in the water for the
evening stint at Robert’s Mill, and the wooden Wheel where lived the
Spirit of the Mill settled to its nine hundred year old song: “Here
Azor, a freeman, held one rod, but it never paid geld. _Nun-nun-nunquam
geldavit_. Here Reinbert has one villein and four cottars with one
plough—and wood for six hogs and two fisheries of sixpence and a mill
of ten shillings—_unum molinum_—one mill. Reinbert’s mill—Robert’s
Mill. Then and afterwards and now—_tunc et post et modo_—Robert’s Mill.
Book—Book—Domesday Book!”
“I confess,” said the Black Rat on the crossbeam, luxuriously trimming
his whiskers—“I confess I am not above appreciating my position and all
it means.” He was a genuine old English black rat, a breed which,
report says, is rapidly diminishing before the incursions of the brown
variety.
“Appreciation is the surest sign of inadequacy,” said the Grey Cat,
coiled up on a piece of sacking.
“But I know what you mean,” she added. “To sit by right at the heart of
things—eh?”
“Yes,” said the Black Rat, as the old mill shook and the heavy stones
thuttered on the grist. “To possess—er—all this environment as an
integral part of one’s daily life must insensibly of course … You see?”
“I feel,” said the Grey Cat. “Indeed, if _we_ are not saturated with
the spirit of the Mill, who should be?”
“Book—Book—Domesday Book!” the Wheel, set to his work, was running off
the tenure of the whole rape, for he knew Domesday Book backwards and
forwards: “_In Ferle tenuit Abbatia de Wiltuna unam hidam et unam
virgam et dimidiam. Nunquam geldavit_. And Agemond, a freeman, has half
a hide and one rod. I remember Agemond well. Charmin’ fellow—friend of
mine. He married a Norman girl in the days when we rather looked down
on the Normans as upstarts. An’ Agemond’s dead? So he is. Eh, dearie
me! dearie me! I remember the wolves howling outside his door in the
big frost of Ten Fifty-Nine…. _Essewelde hundredum nunquam geldum
reddidit_. Book! Book! Domesday Book!”
“After all,” the Grey Cat continued, “atmospere is life. It is the
influences under which we live that count in the long run. Now,
outside”—she cocked one ear towards the half-opened door—“there is an
absurd convention that rats and cats are, I won’t go so far as to say
natural enemies, but opposed forces. Some such ruling may be crudely
effective—I don’t for a minute presume to set up my standards as
final—among the ditches; but from the larger point of view that one
gains by living at the heart of things, it seems for a rule of life a
little overstrained. Why, because some of your associates have, shall I
say, liberal views on the ultimate destination of a sack
of—er—middlings don’t they call them——”
“Something of that sort,” said the Black Rat, a most sharp and
sweet-toothed judge of everything ground in the mill for the last three
years.
“Thanks—middlings be it. _Why_, as I was saying, must I disarrange my
fur and my digestion to chase you round the dusty arena whenever we
happen to meet?”
“As little reason,” said the Black Rat, “as there is for me, who, I
trust, am a person of ordinarily decent instincts, to wait till you
have gone on a round of calls, and then to assassinate your very
charming children.”
“Exactly! It has its humorous side though.” The Grey Cat yawned. “The
miller seems afflicted by it. He shouted large and vague threats to my
address, last night at tea, that he wasn’t going to keep cats who
‘caught no mice.’ Those were his words. I remember the grammar sticking
in my throat like a herring-bone.”
“And what did you do?”
“What does one do when a barbarian utters? One ceases to utter and
removes. I removed—towards his pantry. It was a _riposte_ he might
appreciate.”
“Really those people grow absolutely insufferable,” said the Black Rat.
“There is a local ruffian who answers to the name of Mangles—a
builder—who has taken possession of the outhouses on the far side of
the Wheel for the last fortnight. He has constructed cubical horrors in
red brick where those deliciously picturesque pigstyes used to stand.
Have you noticed?”
“There has been much misdirected activity of late among the humans.
They jabber inordinately. I haven’t yet been able to arrive at their
reason for existence.” The Cat yawned.
“A couple of them came in here last week with wires, and fixed them all
about the walls. Wires protected by some abominable composition, ending
in iron brackets with glass bulbs. Utterly useless for any purpose and
artistically absolutely hideous. What do they mean?”
“Aaah! I have known _four_-and-twenty leaders of revolt in Faenza,”
said the Cat, who kept good company with the boarders spending a summer
at the Mill Farm. “It means nothing except that humans occasionally
bring their dogs with them. I object to dogs in all forms.”
“Shouldn’t object to dogs,” said the Wheel sleepily…. “The Abbot of
Wilton kept the best pack in the county. He enclosed all the Harryngton
Woods to Sturt Common. Aluric, a freeman, was dispossessed of his
holding. They tried the case at Lewes, but he got no change out of
William de Warrenne on the bench. William de Warrenne fined Aluric
eight and fourpence for treason, and the Abbot of Wilton excommunicated
him for blasphemy. Aluric was no sportsman. Then the Abbot’s brother
married … I’ve forgotten her name, but she was a charmin’ little woman.
The Lady Philippa was her daughter. That was after the barony was
conferred. She rode devilish straight to hounds. They were a bit
throatier than we breed now, but a good pack: one of the best. The
Abbot kept ’em in splendid shape. Now, who was the woman the Abbot
kept? Book—Book! I shall have to go right back to Domesday and work up
the centuries: _Modo per omnia reddit burgum tunc—tunc—tunc_! Was it
_burgum_ or _hundredum_? I shall remember in a minute. There’s no
hurry.” He paused as he turned over silvered with showering drops.
“This won’t do,” said the Waters in the sluice. “Keep moving.”
The Wheel swung forward; the Waters roared on the buckets and dropped
down to the darkness below.
“Noisier than usual,” said the Black Rat. “It must have been raining up
the valley.”
“Floods maybe,” said the Wheel dreamily. “It isn’t the proper season,
but they can come without warning. I shall never forget the big
one—when the Miller went to sleep and forgot to open the hatches. More
than two hundred years ago it was, but I recall it distinctly. Most
unsettling.”
“We lifted that wheel off his bearings,” cried the Waters. “We said,
‘Take away that bauble!’ And in the morning he was five mile down the
valley—hung up in a tree.”
“Vulgar!” said the Cat. “But I am sure he never lost his dignity.”
“We don’t know. He looked like the Ace of Diamonds when we had finished
with him…. Move on there! Keep on moving. Over! Get over!”
“And why on this day more than any other,” said the Wheel statelily. “I
am not aware that my department requires the stimulus of external
pressure to keep it up to its duties. I trust I have the elementary
instincts of a gentleman.”
“Maybe,” the Waters answered together, leaping down on the buckets. “We
only know that you are very stiff on your bearings. Over, get over!”
The Wheel creaked and groaned. There was certainly greater pressure
upon him than he had ever felt, and his revolutions had increased from
six and three-quarters to eight and a third per minute. But the uproar
between the narrow, weed-hung walls annoyed the Grey Cat.
“Isn’t it almost time,” she said plaintively, “that the person who is
paid to understand these things shuts off those vehement drippings with
that screw-thing on the top of that box-thing.”
“They’ll be shut off at eight o’clock as usual,” said Rat; “then we can
go to dinner.”
“But we shan’t be shut off till ever so late,” said the Waters gaily.
“We shall keep it up all night.”
“The ineradicable offensiveness of youth is partially compensated for
by its eternal hopefulness,” said the Cat. “Our dam is not, I am glad
to say, designed to furnish water for more than four hours at a time.
Reserve is Life.”
“Thank goodness!” said the Black Rat. “Then they can return to their
native ditches.”
“Ditches!” cried the Waters; “Raven’s Gill Brook is no ditch. It is
almost navigable, and _we_ come from there away.” They slid over solid
and compact till the Wheel thudded under their weight.
“Raven’s Gill Brook,” said the Rat. “_I_ never heard of Raven’s Gill.”
“We are the waters of Harpenden Brook—down from under Callton Rise.
Phew! how the race stinks compared with the heather country.” Another
five foot of water flung itself against the Wheel, broke, roared,
gurgled, and was gone.
“Indeed,” said the Grey Cat, “I am sorry to tell you that Raven’s Gill
Brook is cut off from this valley by an absolutely impassable range of
mountains, and Callton Rise is more than nine miles away. It belongs to
another system entirely.”
“Ah yes,” said the Rat, grinning, “but we forget that, for the young,
water always runs uphill.”
“Oh, hopeless! hopeless! hopeless!” cried the Waters, descending
open-palmed upon the Wheel “There is nothing between here and Raven’s
Gill Brook that a hundred yards of channelling and a few square feet of
concrete could not remove; and hasn’t removed!”
“And Harpenden Brook is north of Raven’s Gill and runs into Raven’s
Gill at the foot of Callton Rise, where ilex trees are, and _we_ come
from there!” These were the glassy, clear waters of the high chalk.
“And Batten’s Ponds, that are fed by springs, have been led through
Trott’s Wood, taking the spare water from the old Witches’ Spring under
Churt Haw, and we—we—_we_ are their combined waters!” Those were the
Waters from the upland bogs and moors—a porter-coloured, dusky, and
foam-flecked flood.
“It’s all very interesting,” purred the Cat to the sliding waters, “and
I have no doubt that Trott’s Woods and Bott’s Woods are tremendously
important places; but if you could manage to do your work—whose value I
don’t in the least dispute—a little more soberly, I, for one, should be
grateful.”
“Book—book—book—book—book—Domesday Book!” The urged Wheel was fairly
clattering now: “In Burgelstaltone a monk holds of Earl Godwin one hide
and a half with eight villeins. There is a church—and a monk…. I
remember that monk. Blessed if he could rattle his rosary off any
quicker than I am doing now … and wood for seven hogs. I must be
running twelve to the minute … almost as fast as Steam. Damnable
invention, Steam! … Surely it’s time we went to dinner or prayers—or
something. Can’t keep up this pressure, day in and day out, and not
feel it. I don’t mind for myself, of course. _Noblesse oblige_, you
know. I’m only thinking of the Upper and the Nether Millstones. They
came out of the common rock. They can’t be expected to——”
“Don’t worry on our account, please,” said the Millstones huskily. “So
long as you supply the power we’ll supply the weight and the bite.”
“Isn’t it a trifle blasphemous, though, to work you in this way?”
grunted the Wheel. “I seem to remember something about the Mills of God
grinding ‘slowly.’ _Slowly_ was the word!”
“But we are not the Mills of God. We’re only the Upper and the Nether
Millstones. We have received no instructions to be anything else. We
are actuated by power transmitted through you.”
“Ah, but let us be merciful as we are strong. Think of all the
beautiful little plants that grow on my woodwork. There are five
varieties of rare moss within less than one square yard—and all these
delicate jewels of nature are being grievously knocked about by this
excessive rush of the water.”
“Umph!” growled the Millstones. “What with your religious scruples and
your taste for botany we’d hardly know you for the Wheel that put the
carter’s son under last autumn. You never worried about _him_!”
“He ought to have known better.”
“So ought your jewels of nature. Tell ’em to grow where it’s safe.”
“How a purely mercantile life debases and brutalises!” said the Cat to
the Rat.
“They were such beautiful little plants too,” said the Rat tenderly.
“Maiden’s-tongue and hart’s-hair fern trellising all over the wall just
as they do on the sides of churches in the Downs. Think what a joy the
sight of them must be to our sturdy peasants pulling hay!”
“Golly!” said the Millstones. “There’s nothing like coming to the heart
of things for information”; and they returned to the song that all
English water-mills have sung from time beyond telling:
There was a jovial miller once
Lived on the River Dee,
And this the burden of his song
For ever used to be.
Then, as fresh grist poured in and dulled the note:
I care for nobody—no not I,
And nobody cares for me.
“Even these stones have absorbed something of our atmosphere,” said the
Grey Cat. “Nine-tenths of the trouble in this world comes from lack of
detachment.”
“One of your people died from forgetting that, didn’t she?” said the
Rat.
“One only. The example has sufficed us for generations.”
“Ah! but what happened to Don’t Care?” the Waters demanded.
“Brutal riding to death of the casual analogy is another mark of
provincialism!” The Grey Cat raised her tufted chin. “I am going to
sleep. With my social obligations I must snatch rest when I can; but,
as our old friend here says, _Noblesse oblige_…. Pity me! Three
functions to-night in the village, and a barn dance across the valley!”
“There’s no chance, I suppose, of your looking in on the loft about
two. Some of our young people are going to amuse themselves with a new
sacque-dance—best white flour only,” said the Black Rat.
“I believe I am officially supposed not to countenance that sort of
thing, but youth is youth.… By the way, the humans set my milk-bowl in
the loft these days; I hope your youngsters respect it.”
“My dear lady,” said the Black Rat, bowing, “you grieve me. You hurt me
inexpressibly. After all these years, too!”
“A general crush is so mixed—highways and hedges—all that sort of
thing—and no one can answer for one’s best friends. _I_ never try. So
long as mine are amusin’ and in full voice, and can hold their own at a
tile-party, I’m as catholic as these mixed waters in the dam here!”
“We aren’t mixed. We _have_ mixed. We are one now,” said the Waters
sulkily.
“Still uttering?” said the Cat. “Never mind, here’s the Miller coming
to shut you off. Ye-es, I have known—_four_—or five is it?—and twenty
leaders of revolt in Faenza…. A little more babble in the dam, a little
more noise in the sluice, a little extra splashing on the wheel, and
then——”
“They will find that nothing has occurred,” said the Black Rat. “The
old things persist and survive and are recognised—our old friend here
first of all. By the way,” he turned toward the Wheel, “I believe we
have to congratulate you on your latest honour.”
“Profoundly well deserved—even if he had never—as he has—-laboured
strenuously through a long life for the amelioration of millkind,” said
the Cat, who belonged to many tile and outhouse committees. “Doubly
deserved, I may say, for the silent and dignified rebuke his existence
offers to the clattering, fidgety-footed demands of—er—some people.
What form did the honour take?”
“It was,” said the Wheel bashfully, “a machine-moulded pinion.”
“Pinions! Oh, how heavenly!” the Black Rat sighed. “I never see a bat
without wishing for wings.”
“Not exactly that sort of pinion,” said the Wheel, “but a really ornate
circle of toothed iron wheels. Absurd, of course, but gratifying. Mr.
Mangles and an associate herald invested me with it personally—on my
left rim—the side that you can’t see from the mill. I hadn’t meant to
say anything about it—or the new steel straps round my axles—bright
red, you know—to be worn on all occasions—but, without false modesty, I
assure you that the recognition cheered me not a little.”
“How intensely gratifying!” said the Black Rat. “I must really steal an
hour between lights some day and see what they are doing on your left
side.”
“By the way, have you any light on this recent activity of Mr.
Mangles?” the Grey Cat asked. “He seems to be building small houses on
the far side of the tail-race. Believe me, I don’t ask from any vulgar
curiosity.”
“It affects our Order,” said the Black Rat simply but firmly.
“Thank you,” said the Wheel. “Let me see if I can tabulate it properly.
Nothing like system in accounts of all kinds. Book! Book! Book! On the
side of the Wheel towards the hundred of Burgelstaltone, where till now
was a stye of three hogs, Mangles, a freeman, with four villeins, and
two carts of two thousand bricks, has a new small house of five yards
and a half, and one roof of iron and a floor of cement. Then, now, and
afterwards beer in large tankards. And Felden, a stranger, with three
villeins and one very great cart, deposits on it one engine of iron and
brass and a small iron mill of four feet, and a broad strap of leather.
And Mangles, the builder, with two villeins, constructs the floor for
the same, and a floor of new brick with wires for the small mill. There
are there also chalices filled with iron and water, in number
fifty-seven. The whole is valued at one hundred and seventy-four
pounds…. I’m sorry I can’t make myself clearer, but you can see for
yourself.”
“Amazingly lucid,” said the Cat. She was the more to be admired because
the language of Domesday Book is not, perhaps, the clearest medium
wherein to describe a small but complete electric-light installation,
deriving its power from a water-wheel by means of cogs and gearing.
“See for yourself—by all means, see for yourself,” said the Waters,
spluttering and choking with mirth.
“Upon my word,” said the Black Rat furiously, “I may be at fault, but I
wholly fail to perceive where these offensive eavesdroppers—er—come in.
We were discussing a matter that solely affected our Order.”
Suddenly they heard, as they had heard many times before, the Miller
shutting off the water. To the rattle and rumble of the labouring
stones succeeded thick silence, punctuated with little drops from the
stayed wheel. Then some water-bird in the dam fluttered her wings as
she slid to her nest, and the plop of a water-rat sounded like the fall
of a log in the water.
“It is all over—it always is all over at just this time. Listen, the
Miller is going to bed—as usual. Nothing has occurred,” said the Cat.
Something creaked in the house where the pig-styes had stood, as metal
engaged on metal with a clink and a burr.
“Shall I turn her on?” cried the Miller.
“Ay,” said the voice from the dynamo-house.
“A human in Mangles’ new house!” the Rat squeaked.
“What of it?” said the Grey Cat. “Even supposing Mr. Mangles’
cats’-meat-coloured hovel ululated with humans, can’t you see for
yourself—that—?”
There was a solid crash of released waters leaping upon the wheel more
furiously than ever, a grinding of cogs, a hum like the hum of a
hornet, and then the unvisited darkness of the old mill was scattered
by intolerable white light. It threw up every cobweb, every burl and
knot in the beams and the floor; till the shadows behind the flakes of
rough plaster on the wall lay clear-cut as shadows of mountains on the
photographed moon.
“See! See! See!” hissed the Waters in full flood. “Yes, see for
yourselves. Nothing has occurred. Can’t you see?”
The Rat, amazed, had fallen from his foothold and lay half-stunned on
the floor. The Cat, following her instinct, leaped nigh to the ceiling,
and with flattened ears and bared teeth backed in a corner ready to
fight whatever terror might be loosed on her. But nothing happened.
Through the long aching minutes nothing whatever happened, and her
wire-brush tail returned slowly to its proper shape.
“Whatever it is,” she said at last, “it’s overdone. They can never keep
it up, you know.”
“Much you know,” said the Waters. “Over you go, old man. You can take
the full head of us now. Those new steel axle-straps of yours can stand
anything. Come along, Raven’s Gill, Harpenden, Callton Rise, Batten’s
Ponds, Witches’ Spring, all together! Let’s show these gentlemen how to
work!”
“But—but—I thought it was a decoration. Why—why—why—it only means more
work for _me_!”
“Exactly. You’re to supply about sixty eight-candle lights when
required. But they won’t be all in use at once——”
“Ah! I thought as much,” said the Cat. “The reaction is bound to come.”
“_And_,” said the Waters, “you will do the ordinary work of the mill as
well.”
“Impossible!” the old Wheel quivered as it drove. “Aluric never did
it—nor Azor, nor Reinbert. Not even William de Warrenne or the Papal
Legate. There’s no precedent for it. I tell you there’s no precedent
for working a wheel like this.”
“Wait a while! We’re making one as fast as we can. Aluric and Co. are
dead. So’s the Papal Legate. You’ve no notion how dead they are, but
we’re here—the Waters of Five Separate Systems. We’re just as
interesting as Domesday Book. Would you like to hear about the
land-tenure in Trott’s Wood? It’s squat-right, chiefly.” The mocking
Waters leaped one over the other, chuckling and chattering profanely.
“In that hundred Jenkins, a tinker, with one dog—_unis canis_—holds, by
the Grace of God and a habit he has of working hard, _unam hidam_—a
large potato patch. Charmin’ fellow, Jenkins. Friend of ours. Now, who
the dooce did Jenkins keep? … In the hundred of Callton is one
charcoal-burner _irreligiosissimus homo_—a bit of a rip—but a thorough
sportsman. _Ibi est ecclesia. Non multum_. Not much of a church, _quia_
because, _episcopus_ the Vicar irritated the Nonconformists _tunc et
post et modo_—then and afterwards and now—until they built a cut-stone
Congregational chapel with red brick facings that did not return
itself—_defendebat se_—at four thousand pounds.”
“Charcoal-burners, vicars, schismatics, and red brick facings,” groaned
the Wheel. “But this is sheer blasphemy. What waters have they let in
upon me?”
“Floods from the gutters. Faugh, this light is positively sickening!”
said the Cat, rearranging her fur.
“We come down from the clouds or up from the springs, exactly like all
other waters everywhere. Is that what’s surprising you?” sang the
Waters.
“Of course not. I know my work if you don’t. What I complain of is your
lack of reverence and repose. You’ve no instinct of deference towards
your betters—your heartless parody of the Sacred volume (the Wheel
meant Domesday Book)—proves it.”
“Our betters?” said the Waters most solemnly. “What is there in all
this dammed race that hasn’t come down from the clouds, or——”
“Spare me that talk, please,” the Wheel persisted. “You’d _never_
understand. It’s the tone—your tone that we object to.”
“Yes. It’s your tone,” said the Black Rat, picking himself up limb by
limb.
“If you thought a trifle more about the work you’re supposed to do, and
a trifle less about your precious feelings, you’d render a little more
duty in return for the power vested in you—we mean wasted on you,” the
Waters replied.
“I have been some hundreds of years laboriously acquiring the knowledge
which you see fit to challenge so light-heartedly,” the Wheel jarred.
“Challenge him! Challenge him!” clamoured the little waves riddling
down through the tail-race. “As well now as later. Take him up!”
The main mass of the Waters plunging on the Wheel shocked that
well-bolted structure almost into box-lids by saying: “Very good. Tell
us what you suppose yourself to be doing at the present moment.”
“Waiving the offensive form of your question, I answer, purely as a
matter of courtesy, that I am engaged in the trituration of farinaceous
substances whose ultimate destination it would be a breach of the trust
reposed in me to reveal.”
“Fiddle!” said the Waters. “We knew it all along! The first direct
question shows his ignorance of his own job. Listen, old thing. Thanks
to us, you are now actuating a machine of whose construction you know
nothing, that that machine may, over wires of whose ramifications you
are, by your very position, profoundly ignorant, deliver a power which
you can never realise, to localities beyond the extreme limits of your
mental horizon, with the object of producing phenomena which in your
wildest dreams (if you ever dream) you could never comprehend. Is that
clear, or would you like it all in words of four syllables?”
“Your assumptions are deliciously sweeping, but may I point out that a
decent and—the dear old Abbot of Wilton would have put it in his
resonant monkish Latin much better than I can—a scholarly reserve, does
not necessarily connote blank vacuity of mind on all subjects.”
“Ah, the dear old Abbot of Wilton,” said the Rat sympathetically, as
one nursed in that bosom. “Charmin’ fellow—thorough scholar and
gentleman. Such a pity!”
“Oh, Sacred Fountains!” the Waters were fairly boiling. “He goes out of
his way to expose his ignorance by triple bucketfuls. He creaks to high
Heaven that he is hopelessly behind the common order of things! He
invites the streams of Five Watersheds to witness his su-su-su-pernal
incompetence, and then he talks as though there were untold reserves of
knowledge behind him that he is too modest to bring forward. For a
bland, circular, absolutely sincere impostor, you’re a miracle, O
Wheel!”
“I do not pretend to be anything more than an integral portion of an
accepted and not altogether mushroom institution.”
“Quite so,” said the Waters. “Then go round—hard——”
“To what end?” asked the Wheel.
“Till a big box of tanks in your house begins to fizz and fume—gassing
is the proper word.”
“It would be,” said the Cat, sniffing.
“That will show that your accumulators are full. When the accumulators
are exhausted, and the lights burn badly, you will find us whacking you
round and round again.”
“The end of life as decreed by Mangles and his creatures is to go
whacking round and round for ever,” said the Cat.
“In order,” the Rat said, “that you may throw raw and unnecessary
illumination upon all the unloveliness in the world. Unloveliness which
we shall—er—have always with us. At the same time you will riotously
neglect the so-called little but vital graces that make up Life.”
“Yes, Life,” said the Cat, “with its dim delicious half-tones and
veiled indeterminate distances. Its surprisals, escapes, encounters,
and dizzying leaps—its full-throated choruses in honour of the morning
star, and its melting reveries beneath the sun-warmed wall.”
“Oh, you can go on the tiles, Pussalina, just the same as usual,” said
the laughing Waters. “_We_ sha’n’t interfere with you.”
“On the tiles, forsooth!” hissed the Cat.
“Well, that’s what it amounts to,” persisted the Waters. “We see a good
deal of the minor graces of life on our way down to our job.”
“And—but I fear I speak to deaf ears—do they never impress you?” said
the Wheel.
“Enormously,” said the Waters. “We have already learned six refined
synonyms for loafing.”
“But (here again I feel as though preaching in the wilderness) it never
occurs to you that there may exist some small difference between the
wholly animal—ah—rumination of bovine minds and the discerning,
well-apportioned leisure of the finer type of intellect?”
“Oh, yes. The bovine mind goes to sleep under a hedge and makes no
bones about it when it’s shouted at. We’ve seen _that_—in
haying-time—all along the meadows. The finer type is wide awake enough
to fudge up excuses for shirking, and mean enough to get stuffy when
its excuses aren’t accepted. Turn over!”
“But, my good people, no gentleman gets stuffy as you call it. A
certain proper pride, to put it no higher, forbids—-”
“Nothing that he wants to do if he really wants to do it. Get along!
What are you giving us? D’you suppose we’ve scoured half heaven in the
clouds, and half earth in the mists, to be taken in at this time of the
day by a bone-idle, old hand-quern of your type?”
“It is not for me to bandy personalities with you. I can only say that
I simply decline to accept the situation.”
“Decline away. It doesn’t make any odds. They’ll probably put in a
turbine if you decline too much.”
“What’s a turbine?” said the Wheel, quickly.
“A little thing you don’t see, that performs surprising revolutions.
But you won’t decline. You’ll hang on to your two nice red-strapped
axles and your new machine-moulded pinions like—a—like a leech on a
lily stem! There’s centuries of work in your old bones if you’d only
apply yourself to it; and, mechanically, an overshot wheel with this
head of water is about as efficient as a turbine.”
“So in future I am to be considered mechanically? I have been painted
by at least five Royal Academicians.”
“Oh, you can be painted by five hundred when you aren’t at work, of
course. But while you are at work you’ll work. You won’t half-stop and
think and talk about rare plants and dicky-birds and farinaceous
fiduciary interests. You’ll continue to revolve, and this new head of
water will see that you do so continue.”
“It is a matter on which it would be exceedingly ill-advised to form a
hasty or a premature conclusion. I will give it my most careful
consideration,” said the Wheel.
“Please do,” said the Waters gravely. “Hullo! Here’s the Miller again.”
The Cat coiled herself in a picturesque attitude on the softest corner
of a sack, and the Rat without haste, yet certainly without rest,
slipped behind the sacking as though an appointment had just occurred
to him.
In the doorway, with the young Engineer, stood the Miller grinning
amazedly.
“Well—well—well! ’tis true-ly won’erful. An’ what a power o’ dirt! It
come over me now looking at these lights, that I’ve never rightly seen
my own mill before. She needs a lot bein’ done to her.”
“Ah! I suppose one must make oneself moderately agreeable to the baser
sort. They have their uses. This thing controls the dairy.” The Cat,
pincing on her toes, came forward and rubbed her head against the
Miller’s knee.
“Ay, you pretty puss,” he said, stooping. “You’re as big a cheat as the
rest of ’em that catch no mice about me. A won’erful smooth-skinned,
rough-tongued cheat you be. I’ve more than half a mind——”
“She does her work well,” said the Engineer, pointing to where the
Rat’s beady eyes showed behind the sacking. “Cats and Rats livin’
together—see?”
“Too much they do—too long they’ve done. I’m sick and tired of it. Go
and take a swim and larn to find your own vittles honest when you come
out, Pussy.”
“My word!” said the Waters, as a sprawling Cat landed all unannounced
in the centre of the tail-race. “Is that you, Mewsalina? You seem to
have been quarrelling with your best friend. Get over to the left. It’s
shallowest there. Up on that alder-root with all four paws.
Good-night!”
“You’ll never get any they rats,” said the Miller, as the young
Engineer struck wrathfully with his stick at the sacking. “They’re not
the common sort. They’re the old black English sort.”
“Are they, by Jove? I must catch one to stuff, some day.”
Six months later, in the chill of a January afternoon, they were
letting in the Waters as usual.
“Come along! It’s both gears this evening,” said the Wheel, kicking
joyously in the first rush of the icy stream. “There’s a heavy load of
grist just in from Lamber’s Wood. Eleven miles it came in an hour and a
half in our new motor-lorry, and the Miller’s rigged five new
five-candle lights in his cow-stables. I’m feeding ’em to-night.
There’s a cow due to calve. Oh, while I think of it, what’s the news
from Callton Rise?”
“The waters are finding their level as usual—but why do you ask?” said
the deep outpouring Waters.
“Because Mangles and Felden and the Miller are talking of increasing
the plant here and running a saw-mill by electricity. I was wondering
whether we——”
“I beg your pardon,” said the Waters chuckling. “_What_ did you say?”
“Whether _we_, of course, had power enough for the job. It will be a
biggish contract. There’s all Harpenden Brook to be considered and
Batten’s Ponds as well, and Witches’ Fountain, and the Churt’s Hawd
system.
“We’ve power enough for anything in the world,” said the Waters. “The
only question is whether you could stand the strain if we came down on
you full head.”
“Of course I can,” said the Wheel. “Mangles is going to turn me into a
set of turbines—beauties.”
“Oh—er—I suppose it’s the frost that has made us a little thick-headed,
but to whom are we talking?” asked the amazed Waters.
“To me—the Spirit of the Mill, of course.”
“Not to the old Wheel, then?”
“I happen to be living in the old Wheel just at present. When the
turbines are installed I shall go and live in them. What earthly
difference does it make?”
“Absolutely none,” said the Waters, “in the earth or in the waters
under the earth. But we thought turbines didn’t appeal to you.”
“Not like turbines? Me? My dear fellows, turbines are good for fifteen
hundred revolutions a minute—and with our power we can drive ’em at
full speed. Why, there’s nothing we couldn’t grind or saw or illuminate
or heat with a set of turbines! That’s to say if all the Five
Watersheds are agreeable.”
“Oh, we’ve been agreeable for ever so long.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me?”
“Don’t know. Suppose it slipped our memory.”
The Waters were holding themselves in for fear of bursting with mirth.
“How careless of you! You should keep abreast of the age, my dear
fellows. We might have settled it long ago, if you’d only spoken. Yes,
four good turbines and a neat brick penstock—eh? This old Wheel’s
absurdly out of date.”
“Well,” said the Cat, who after a little proud seclusion had returned
to her place impenitent as ever. “Praised be Pasht and the Old Gods,
that whatever may have happened _I_, at least, have preserved the
Spirit of the Mill!”
She looked round as expecting her faithful ally, the Black Rat; but
that very week the Engineer had caught and stuffed him, and had put him
in a glass case; he being a genuine old English black rat. That breed,
the report says, is rapidly diminishing before the incursions of the
brown variety.