"Haul away, Sam. This is the real thing" came from the depths of the
well. Sam Cleghorn stumbled in the gloom towards the windlass, avoiding
on the way a rude handpump and two heaps of dirt and broken pottery that
sloped threateningly upon the low curb, where balanced a perforated disc
of marble, the great bottom-stone of the well. All these properties
caught a little light from a beam that came through a slit in the wall,
casting most of its uncertain bloom up into a low groined vault, the
heavy round arches of which were separated from squat piers by clumsy
brackets. Outside at the level of the reticulated stone floor one could
hear the rushing of a river. As Cleghorn leaned over the well-mouth
before seizing the crank, a glimmer of yellow light flooded his face and
again came up the hollow impatient cry, "Haul away, Sam. This lot's a
good one, and it's mine." Replying "All right, Dick," Cleghorn bent to
the crank. With much creaking the coils crept along the spindle and the
light burden began to rise jerkily.
* * * * *
Although neither the well nor the vaulted cellar chamber belonged to Sam
Cleghorn or to Dick Webb, their presence and actions there were not
surreptitious. Stanton Mayhew, who ignorantly owned the well, had given
them plenary permission to pump and dig, mildly pitying their apparent
lunacy. The palace above was his in virtue of his sensible preference for
living twice as well on the Arno for half the cost on the Hudson. This
rule of two, like so many foreign residents of Florence, he
unquestioningly obeyed, and it constituted practically the whole of his
philosophy and maxims. Hence he was not the man to prize a Tuscan well
dug in the fourteenth century, cleaned perhaps never, and gradually
filled to the brim with what the forwardlooking past benightedly took for
rubbish. So when Cleghorn and Webb made him an overture for the right to
clean the well, he had genially replied, "Why, go ahead, boys, and enjoy
yourselves. It's you who ought to be paid, but for your healths' sake you
really ought to wait till I've punched some decent windows through that
damp cellar wall and let the air in."
If neither Sam nor Dick waited even a day, it was because each was a bit
afraid that the other would begin alone. College mates, collectors both,
they were fast friends in a way and rivals beyond dispute. Their common
taste for antiquity and adequacy of means had made their graduate course
chiefly one of travel. And when travel wore out its novelty they
naturally settled in the easiest, as the least exacting, European city,
occupying two halves of one floor in the same palace. Their apartments
started full, and quickly overflowed with objects of curiosity and
art--all old, for their knowledge was considerable; some fine, for
neither was without taste. But taste neither had in any austere sense,
for they collected art much as a dredge collects marine specimens.
Nothing came amiss to them. Wood, ivory, silver, bronze, marble,
plaster--they repudiated no material or period. Stuffs, glass, pictures,
porcelains, potteries--it was all one to them so the object were old and
rare. Inevitably, then, they had come to primitive pots, and
simultaneously, for they not only watched each other closely, but almost
read each other's minds. And when they came to primitive pots it was
certain that they would beg, borrow, or steal a well, since in old wells,
and cisterns, besides less mentionable places, primitive pots abide. Many
pots were there, as we shall see, from the first, and the maids and
children of the centuries, by way of concealing breakages, have usually
made notable secondary contributions. So when amiable Stanton Mayhew
freely conceded a most ancient well to Cleghorn and Webb, it was like
receiving Pandora's box, with the difference that the well might safely
be opened.
Here had ensued a most delicate negotiation concerning the division of
the spoil. A mathematical partition of the fragmentary material that an
old Italian well contains is extremely difficult if at all possible.
After much debate it was agreed that after they struck pay dirt, each
should dig in turn, each to have the bucketful that came under his trowel
or fingers. Scattered fragments of the same pot and other complications
were to be adjudicated by Mayhew, whose ignorance and disinterestedness
were safe to assume. But the well gave up quantities of noncontentious
matter before Mayhew's services were required. The first five feet had
revealed nothing but fragments of kitchen pottery of our time and a
fairly perfect hoopskirt of Garibaldian date. A little lower had emerged
the skeleton of a cat. Similar tragedies were in evidence, on an average,
at every quarter century of depth. Between the second and third cat, lay
Ginori imitations of Sevres and Wedgewood, scraps too of gilded
glass--the earnest of better things below. Five cats down, some
eighteenth-century apothecary pots, damaged but amenable to repair, had
inaugurated the alternation of buckets under the agreement. It were
tedious to follow the ascending scale of excellence as the digging went
deeper. Enough to say that below the mixed ingredients and the nethermost
cat they found a homogeneous layer of beautiful fourteenth-century
shards, affording many buckets full, and promising delicate adjudication
to the referee.
Before the lustred pots themselves shed a baleful gleam over this
narrative, something should obviously be said about Italian wells and why
they contain pots. Beyond those casually acquired from careless or
secretive servants, there is, if the well be old and of good make, a
certain number of intact pieces put in to serve as a filter. Often a
group of pitchers or similar crocks is imprisoned between the two
bottom-stones. Sometimes there are two such layers. After this filter had
been made there was frequently scattered a bushel or more of small shards
above. From these by careful sorting complete or nearly complete pieces
may be recovered. Through all this mass of whole or broken pottery the
water had to find its way up, for the cement sides of an Italian well are
watertight. Thus, barring the indiscretions of housemaids and cats, the
early Italians drank pure water.
Naturally Cleghorn and Webb were conversant with these refinements of
mediaeval hydraulics. In fact when Webb, the sturdier of the two, hauled
up the bottom-stone all dripping, Cleghorn promptly declared that in the
sense of the contract it was a bucketful; hence his first go at the now
uncovered pots. So heated grew the debate, that finally the grimy
excavators climbed to the upper air and appealed to Mayhew, who promptly
denied the quibble, deciding that stones and pots were not
interchangeable. The diversion drew attention from the great perforated
disc itself, and as the sullen Cleghorn let the exultant Webb down upon
the ancient pots, it lay badly bestowed near the curb on the crumbling
slope of a rubbish heap. And now Cleghorn with bitterness of heart was
reeling up Webb's find. As the coils broadened on the windlass a small
iron bucket rose above the parapet, brimming with something that glinted
metallically under the dirt. Beside the bucket flapped the rude swing in
which the entrances and exits of the partners were made. As Cleghorn
grasped the bail and swung the precious cargo clear of the well, came up
once more the voice of Webb: "Hustle, Old Man, I'm keen to see them, they
feel good."
Good they were indeed. Cleghorn, who for fifteen years had haunted shops
and museums had never seen the like in equal compass. As he took them
cautiously one by one and held them high in the uncertain light, each
revealed a desirable point. Here was a coat of arms, a date, the initial
of an owner. There were grotesque birds and beasts. Differing in form and
colour, the entire lot agreed in possessing that dull early Italian
lustre, which perhaps accidental and less distinguished than that of
Spain, is even dearer in a collector's eyes. They hinted of all enamelled
things that come out of the East--of the peacock reflections of the tiles
of Damascus and Cordova, of the franker polychromy of Rhodian kilns, of
the subtler bloom of the dishes of Moorish Spain, of the brassier glazes
of Minorca and Sicily--all these things lay enticingly in epitome in
these lustred Italian pots, as they glimmered with a furtive splendour.
Yes, they were a good lot, thought Cleghorn as he placed them reverently
on the flagging. It was the find of a lifetime. A man with nothing else
in his cupboard must be mentioned respectfully among collectors from Dan
to Beersheba.
Again the impatient voice of Webb below: "Hurry up, I say. It's getting
cold: the water is gaining."
"All right," called Cleghorn, giving a few strokes of the pump, but never
taking his eyes from the lustred pots. Then as if by a sudden inspiration
he asked, "Any more in that lot, Dick?"
"Not a one," cried Webb jubilantly, "there was just a bucketful and a
squeeze at that. But there may be others beneath. There's another
bottom-stone, and it's your next turn. But why don't you hurry up?"
A scowl passed over Cleghorn's thin face set unswervingly towards the
pots. They glimmered in the shadow with an unholy phosphorescence--green,
blue, carmine, strange purplish browns. So the glittering coils of the
serpent may have bewildered our first Mother. There were other pots
below, reflected Cleghorn, yes, but there never could be again such a
batch as these. And then his dazed eye for a second left the fascinating
pots, and mechanically searched the vaulted chamber. To his excited gaze
the rubbish heaps centring about the curb seemed already in movement. The
massive bottom-stone overhung the parapet, resting only on loose dirt and
shards. With horror he noted that a breath might send it down. If it
slipped, whose were the lustred pots? Against his will the phrase said
itself over and over again throbbingly behind his eyes, and again he
forgot everything in the vision of the lustred pots.
"Damn it, hurry up," came thunderously from below. Cleghorn stumbled with
a curious hesitation between the crank and the poised bottom-stone. The
clumsy movement loosened a handful of shards which went clattering down;
the great stone slid, caught on the parapet, and hung once more in
uncertain oscillation. Profanity unrestrained transpired from the mouth
of the well.
It was a tremulous Cleghorn that sent down the bucket and reeled up an
irate and vociferous Webb. Words abounded without explanations, and blows
seemed possible, when Cleghorn, as it were apologetically raised a
pitcher and a bowl into the shaft of light that came through the
oubliette. "They're all like that, Dick," he protested. "It's your lucky
day. I congratulate you." It was a silenced and mollified Webb that
clutched at the pots, and noted wisely that every one had been brushed by
the peacock's tail. With a kind of pity at last he turned to the
deprecating Cleghorn and said, "That was an awkward business of yours
about the shards, and the bottom-stone there is a pretty sight for a man
who left it so and went down to work under it, but one couldn't wait for
such pots as these. On my soul, Old Man, if you had dumped it all down on
me I could hardly have blamed you."
Welcomed with a loud laugh by its maker, the joke jarred on Cleghorn, who
merely answered, "It's very good of you, Dick, to say so."
"But there may be quite as good ones below," pursued Webb genially.
"We'll rest up a bit and then you have your go and finish the job."
"If you don't mind, Dick, I'd rather not," was the embarrassed answer.
"The fact is I'm too nervous and absentminded for this work." He looked
down into the blackness with a shudder and said. "No, I don't want to go
down there again. One can't tell what might happen there."
"Then you've dropped your nerve. Sorry for it," came from a baffled and
disgusted partner, but as he spoke a smile drew across the broad, amiable
face, and he added insinuatingly, "Then the rest are mine, Old Man?"
"Yes they're yours fast enough."
"It's mighty good of you, Sam. I won't forget it. I'll share sometime on
a good thing like this. I'm all ready to go down again when you've had a
smoke. Only we'll set that stone right and you'll be more careful about
the shards."
"If you'll excuse me, Dick, I'd rather not." Cleghorn looked at his
watch. "You see I ought to be out of these duds already. I have a very
particular tea outside. Didn't I tell you about it? I'll send Mayhew
down to help."
"All right, just as you please," was the indifferent reply. But as
Cleghorn turned up the narrow steps, Webb muttered perplexedly, "To funk
at this point and for a tea! The man is touched or in love."
* * * * *
Webb with Mayhew's dispassionate aid made a considerable haul below the
second stone, though in truth there was nothing there to compare with the
first lot. The batch of lustred pots is the pride of his eye, and when it
is suggested that he values them highly he answers, "Well rather, they're
pretty good, you know, and then they nearly cost me a broken head. I was
so keen for them that I set a big stone where it might easily have
tumbled on me." Then the rest of the anecdote, which Cleghorn, in whose
presence it frequently is told, never hears with complete equanimity. The
causes of his uneasiness I do not engage to analyse, for, unlike Webb,
Cleghorn is imaginative and difficult.