[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.