GOING TO THE BOTTOM
It is not needful to explain every thing, any more than it was for me to
tell the miller about my golden eagle, and how I had managed to lose it
in the Moon--a trick of which now I was heartily ashamed, in the face
of honest kindness. So I need not tell how Master Withypool managed to
settle with his men, and to keep the boys unwitting of what was about
to come to pass. Enough that I got a note from him to tell me that the
little river would be run out, just when all Shoxford was intent upon
its dinner, on the second day after I had seen him. And he could not say
for certain, but thought it pretty safe, that nobody would come near me,
if I managed to be there at a quarter before one, when the stream would
begin to run dry, and I could watch it. I sent back a line by the pretty
little girl, a sister of poor Polly, to say how much I thanked him,
and how much I hoped that he himself would meet me there, if his time
allowed. For he had been too delicate to say a word of that; but I felt
that he had a good right to be there, and, knowing him now, I was not
afraid.
Nearly every thing came about as well as could be wished almost. Master
Withypool took the precaution, early in the morning, to set his great
fierce bull at large, who always stopped the foot-path. This bull knew
well the powers of a valley in conducting sound; and he loved to stand,
as if at the mouth of a funnel, and roar down it to another bull a mile
below him, belonging to his master's brother-in-law. And when he did
this, there was scarcely a boy, much less a man or woman, with
any desire to assert against him the public right of thoroughfare.
Throughout that forenoon, then, this bull bellowed nobly, still finding
many very wicked flies about, so that two mitching boys, who meant to
fish for minnows with a pin, were obliged to run away again.
However, I was in the dark about him, and as much afraid of him as any
body, when he broke into sight of me round a corner, without any tokens
of amity. I had seen a great many great bulls before, including Uncle
Sam's good black one, who might not have meant any mischief at all, and
atoned for it--if he did--by being washed away so.
And therefore my courage soon returned, when it became quite clear that
this animal now had been fastened with a rope, and could come no nearer.
For some little time, then, I waited all alone, as near that bridge as I
could bring myself to stand, for Mrs. Busk, my landlady, could not leave
the house yet, on account of the mid-day letters. Moreover, she thought
that she had better stay away, as our object was to do things as quietly
as could be.
Much as I had watched this bridge from a distance, or from my
sheltering-place, I had never been able to bring myself to make any kind
of sketch of it, or even to insert it in a landscape, although it
was very well suited and expressive, from its crooked and antique
simplicity. The overhanging, also, of the hawthorn-tree (not ruddy yet,
but russety with its coloring crop of coral), and the shaggy freaks of
ivy above the twisted trunk, and the curve of the meadows and bold elbow
of the brook, were such as an artist would have pitched his tent for,
and tantalized poor London people with a dream of cool repose.
As yet the little river showed no signs of doing what the rustic--or
surely it should have been the cockney--was supposed to stand still and
wait for. There was no great rush of headlong water, for that is not
the manner of the stream in the very worst of weather; but there was the
usual style of coming on, with lips and steps at the sides, and cords of
running toward the middle. Quite enough, at any rate, to make the trout
jump, without any omen of impending drought, and to keep all the play
and the sway of movement going on serenely.
I began to be afraid that the miller must have failed in his stratagem
against the water-god, and that, as I had read in Pope's Homer, the
liquid deity would beat the hero, when all of a sudden there were signs
that man was the master of this little rustic. Broadswords of flag and
rapiers of water-grass, which had been quivering merrily, began to hang
down and to dip themselves in loops, and the stones of the brink showed
dark green stripes on their sides as they stood naked. Then fine little
cakes of conglomerated stuff, which only a great man of nature could
describe, came floating about, and curdling into corners, and holding
on to one another in long-tailed strings. But they might do what they
liked, and make their very best of it, as they fell away to nothing upon
stones and mud. For now more important things began to open, the like
of which never had been yielded up before--plots of slimy gravel, varied
with long streaks of yellow mud, dotted with large double shells, and
parted into little oozy runs by wriggling water-weeds. And here was
great commotion and sad panic of the fish, large fellows splashing and
quite jumping out of water, as their favorite hovers and shelves ran
dry, and darting away, with their poor backs in the air, to the deepest
hole they could think of. Hundreds must have come to flour, lard, and
butter if boys had been there to take advantage. But luckily things had
been done so well that boys were now in their least injurious moment,
destroying nothing worse than their own dinners.
A very little way below the old wooden bridge the little river ran into
a deepish pool, as generally happens at or near a corner, especially
where there is a confluence sometimes. And seeing nothing, as I began to
search intently, stirring with a long-handled spud which I had brought,
I concluded that even my golden eagle had been carried into that deep
place. However, water or no water, I resolved to have it out with that
dark pool as soon as the rest of the channel should be drained, which
took a tormenting time to do; and having thick boots on, I pinned up my
skirts, and jumping down into the shoals, began to paddle in a fashion
which reminded me of childish days passed pleasantly in the Blue River.
Too busy thus to give a thought to any other thing, I did not even see
the miller, until he said,
“Good-day, miss,” lifting his hat, with a nice kind smile. “Very busy,
miss, I see, and right you are to be so. The water will be upon us again
in less than half an hour. Now let me clear away they black weeds for
you. I brought this little shivel a-purpose. If I may make so bold,
miss, what do 'e look to find here?”
“I have not the very smallest notion,” I could only answer; “but if
there is any thing, it must be in that hole. I have searched all the
shallow part so closely that I doubt whether even a sixpence could
escape me, unless it were buried in the mud or pebbles. Oh, how can I
manage to search that hole? There must be a yard of water there.”
“One thing I ought to have told 'e for to do,” Master Withypool
whispered, as he went on shoveling--“to do what the boys do when they
lose a farden--to send another after un. If so be now, afore the water
was run out, you had stood on that there bridge, and dropped a bright
coin into it, a new half crown or a two-shilling piece, why, the chances
would be that the run of the current would 'a taken it nigh to the
likeliest spot for holding any other little matter as might 'a dropped,
permiskous, you might say, into this same water.”
“I have done so,” I answered; “I have done that very thing, though not
at all with that object. The day before yesterday a beautiful coin, a
golden eagle of America, fell from my pocket on that upper plank, and
rolled into the water. I would not lose it for a great deal, because it
was given to me by my dearest friend, the greatest of all millers.”
“And ha'n't you found it yet, miss? Well, that is queer. Perhaps we
shall find it now, with something to the back of it. I thought yon hole
was too far below the bridge. But there your gold must be, and something
else, most likely. Plaise to wait a little bit, and us 'll have the wet
out of un. I never should 'a thought of that but for your gold guinea,
though.”
With these words Master Withypool pulled his coat off and rolled up his
shirt sleeves, displaying arms fit to hold their own even with Uncle
Sam's almost; and then he fell to with his shovel and dug, while I ran
with my little spud to help.
“Plaise keep out of way, miss; I be afeard of knocking you. Not but what
you works very brave indeed, miss.”
Knowing what men are concerning “female efforts,” I got out of the
strong man's way, although there was plenty of room for me. What he
wanted to do was plain enough--to dig a trench down the empty bed of the
Moon River, deep enough to drain that pit before the stream came down
again.
“Never thought to run a race against my own old dam,” he said, as he
stopped for a moment to recover breath. “Us never knows what us may have
to do. Old dam must be a'most busting now. But her's sound enough, till
her beginneth to run over.”
I did not say a word, because it might have done some mischief, but I
could not help looking rather anxiously up stream, for fear of the water
coming down with a rush, as it very soon must do. Master Withypool had
been working, not as I myself would have done, from the lips of the dark
pit downward, but from a steep run some twenty yards below, where there
was almost a little cascade when the river was full flowing; from this
he had made his channel upward, cutting deeper as he came along, till
now, at the brink of the obstinate pool, his trench was two feet deep
almost. I had no idea that any man could work so with a shovel, which
seems such a clumsy tool compared with a spade: but a gentleman who
knows the country and the people told me that, with their native weapon,
Moonites will do as much digging in an hour as other folk get through in
an hour and a half with a spade. But this may be only, perhaps, because
they are working harder.
“Now,” said Master Withypool at last, standing up, with a very red face,
and desiring to keep all that unheeded--“now, miss, to you it belongeth
to tap this here little cornder, if desirable. Plaise to excoose of me
going up of bank to tell 'e when the wet cometh down again.”
“Please to do nothing of the sort,” I answered, knowing that he offered
to stand out of sight from a delicate dread of intrusion. “Please to tap
the pool yourself, and stay here, as a witness of what we find in it.”
“As you plaise, miss, as you plaise. Not a moment for to lose in
arguing. Harken now, the water is atopping of our dam. Her will be here
in five minutes.”
With three or four rapid turns of his shovel, which he spun almost
as fast as a house-maid spins a mop, he fetched out the plug of earth
severing his channel from the deep, reluctant hole. And then I saw the
wisdom of his way of working: for if he had dug downward from the pool
itself, the water would have followed him all the way, and even drowned
his tool out of its own strokes; whereas now, with a swirl and a curl of
ropy mud, away rushed the thick, sluggish, obstinate fluid, and in less
than two minutes the hole was almost dry.
The first thing I saw was my golden eagle, lodged about half-way down
the slope on a crust of black sludge, from which I caught it up and
presented it to Master Withypool, as a small token and record of his
kindness; and to this day he carries it upon his Sunday watch chain.
“I always am lucky in finding things,” I exclaimed, while he watched
me, and the up stream too, whence a babble of water was approaching. “As
sure as I live I have found it!”
“No doubt about your living, miss. And the Captain were always lively.
But what have your bright eyes hit upon? I see nort for the life of me.”
“Look there,” I cried, “at the very bottom of it--almost under the
water. Here, where I put my spud--a bright blue line! Oh, can I go down,
or is it quicksand?”
“No quicksand in our little river, miss. But your father's daughter
shannot go into the muck, while John Withypool stands by. I see un now,
sure enough; now I see un! But her needeth care, or her may all goo away
in mullock. Well, I thought my eyes was sharp enough; but I'm blest if I
should have spied that, though. A bit of flint, mebbe, or of blue glass
bottle. Anyhow, us will see the bottom of un.”
He was wasting no time while he spoke, but working steadfastly for his
purpose, fixing the blade of his shovel below the little blue line I
was peering at, so that no slip of the soft yellow slush should bury
it down, and plunge over it. If that had once happened, good-by to all
chance of ever beholding this thing again, for the river was coming,
with fury and foam, to assert its ancient right of way.
With a short laugh the miller jumped down into the pit. “Me to be served
so, by my own mill-stream! Lor', if I don't pay you out for this!”
His righteous wrath failed to stop the water from pouring into the pit
behind him; and, strong as he was, he nearly lost his footing, having
only mud to stand upon. It seemed to me that he was going to be drowned,
and I offered him the handle of my spud to help him; but he stopped
where he was, and was not going to be hurried.
“I got un now,” he said; “now I don't mind coming out. You see if I
don't pay you out for this! Why, I always took you for a reasonable
hanimal.”
He shook his fist strongly at the river, which had him well up to the
middle by this time; and then he disdainfully waded out, with wrath in
all his countenance.
“I've a great mind to stop there, and see what her would do,” he said to
me, forgetting altogether what he went for. “And I would, if I had had
my dinner. A scat of a thing as I can manage with my thumb! Ah, you have
made a bad day of it.”
“But what have you found, Mr. Withypool?” I asked, for I could not enter
into his wrath against the water, wet as he was to the shoulders. “You
have something in your hand. May I see it, if you please? And then do
please to go home and change your clothes.”
“A thing I never did in my life, miss, and should be ashamed to begin at
this age. Clothes gets wet, and clothes dries on us, same as un did on
the sheep afore us; else they gets stiff and creasy. What this little
thing is ne'er a body may tell, in my line of life--but look'th
aristocratic.”
The “mullock,” as he called it, from his hands, and from the bed where
it had lain so long, so crusted the little thing which he gave me, that
I dipped it again in the swelling stream, and rubbed it with both hands,
to make out what it was. And then I thought how long it had lain there;
and suddenly to my memory it came, that in all likelihood the time of
that was nineteen years this very day.
“Will another year pass,” I cried, “before I make out all about it? What
are you, and who, now looking at me with such sad, sad eyes?”
For I held in my hand a most handsome locket, of blue enamel and
diamonds, with a back of chased gold, and in front the miniature of a
beautiful young woman, done as they never seem to do them now. The
work was so good, and the fitting so close, that no drop of water had
entered, and the face shone through the crystal glass as fresh as the
day it was painted. A very lovely face it was, yet touched with a shade
of sadness, as the loveliest faces generally are; and the first thought
of any beholder would be, “That woman was born for sorrow.”
The miller said as much when I showed it to him.
“Lord bless my heart! I hope the poor craitur' hathn't lasted half so
long as her pictur' hath.”