The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe Water-Finders

The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe Water-FindersThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: The Water-FindersAuthor: Judith VandeleurRelease date: September 8, 2017 [eBook #55506]Most recently updated: October 23, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Jeff Hunt*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WATER-FINDERS ***

This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: The Water-FindersAuthor: Judith VandeleurRelease date: September 8, 2017 [eBook #55506]Most recently updated: October 23, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Jeff Hunt

Title: The Water-Finders

Author: Judith Vandeleur

Release date: September 8, 2017 [eBook #55506]Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Jeff Hunt

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WATER-FINDERS ***

[Transcriber's Note: The author is not named and has not been located elsewhere. Dialect spelling is copied faithfully.]

Frontispiece: Three men hung over the bridge.

---------

CONTENTS.---I. Willowton in TroubleII. The Chapman FamilyIII. The DowserIV. The Search for WaterV. Old Jimmy's ScruplesVI. Public Opinion on the BridgeVII. Tom Chapman "Takes on" at the WellVIII. A Neighbourly ActionIX Nurse Blunt ArrivesX. Another Fever VictimXI. The Strike at the WellXII. Back to the WorkXIII. Rain at LastXIV. The CollapseXV. Friends in NeedXVI An Anxious SundayXVII Geo to the Fore AgainXVIII The RescueXIX Geo again Surprises Himself and his FriendsXX Conclusion

----

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 ratherhotel, 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 hehadsome 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.

The Chapmans were a large family, and every year a new little Chapman appeared upon the scene; consequently every year there was a new mouth to feed, and wages, of course, remained much the same. Tom Chapman had married his wife (a girl working in a jam factory in a neighbouring town) when he was nineteen and she was only seventeen. They had muddled along ever since. Tom was as hard-working as most of his acquaintances, which is perhaps not saying much, for they had a rooted objection to what they called a "wet jacket," and seldom worked hard enough to get uncomfortably hot; but still he was an honest, well-meaning man, and if he had a strong feelings on the subject of working over hours on special occasions, and saw no particular reason why he should put himself out to benefit his masters, why, as I said before, he was not in that respect different from his friends.

Poor Annie, his wife, was a patient, hard-working, ignorant woman. She had once been pretty, but many children and growing poverty had made her at the age of seven-and-twenty look like most women of forty. She was worn and thin, and was untidy; she was unrefined in her ways and uncouth in her speech; she was badly educated, having been idle at school, and forgotten what little her teachers managed to knock into her unwilling head; but for all this she managed to retain her husband's affection, and to keep him from the public-house. The vicar, who was a bachelor himself, often wondered why Tom Chapman was one of the steadiest young men in the parish, and why he always spent his evenings at home with "such a wife" as he had, and in such a pigsty of a house; for I grieve to say cleanliness in her household was far from being a virtue of Mrs. Chapman's. The house stood at the bottom of Gravel-pit Lane, and was the first of a row of cottages that crept up the steep little hill that led away from the vicarage into the buttercup meadows. The stream did not come anywhere near Gravel-pit Lane, and the water supply was never very good—one well having to serve eight or ten cottages with water; and this year, owing to the unprecedented dryness of the spring, the well was nearly empty. Small wonder, then, that the little Chapmans were even less well washed than usual, and that their dirty pinafores were an ever-increasing source of annoyance to the schoolmistress.

It was from this house that the vicar had carried off the patient for the little fever hospital on the side hill above the village. This fever hospital was a pet scheme of his and the doctor's. All through the dry spring they had been prophesying trouble, and had made themselves unpopular in consequence. Now, popularity is a very pleasant thing, and a very useful thing; but there are things better than popularity. Popularity is a fickle, faithless jade. She comes often unbidden and unsought, and sits down by a man's side, and while she is there he may do what he likes. He may scold people for not giving enough in church, he may forget to answer invitations, he may even lose his temper, and say all sorts of things he doesn't mean; but once Madam Popularity has left him, or even shown any signs of approaching departure, this same man may no longer ask your assistance in his charities. He may never offer you advice, or criticise your actions; he may scarcely even presume to wish you good-morning, and when he comes to see you, you imagine he comes to pry into your private affairs. If he gives your boy a penny for opening a gate for him, you are certain he is "up to suffin'," and the luckless penny is nothing but bribery and corruption; in short, all that was right and commendable before is wrong and reprehensible now.

It was this that had happened to the vicar of Willowton, and strangely enough, everybody knew it but the vicar! He was far too busy attending to his duties and succouring his people, body and soul, to feel any changes of temperature; and if he had, I will not exactly say that he would not have cared (for, of course, he would; he would not have been human if he had not), but it would have made no difference; he would have persevered in his course just the same. He was, he would have said, "about his Master's work," and it would never have occurred to him to alter his ways once he had made up his mind he was right.

The reason of his unpopularity was not difficult to determine—he had been preaching a crusade against dirt and unthriftiness. He had foretold in forcible language, from the pulpit as well as elsewhere, the coming epidemic, which the sanitary commissioner had declared inevitable, with the village in such a shocking state of insanitariness. The inspector called the houses "unsanitary," the vicar called them "dirty"—that was the difference. There was a very great difference between the sound of these two swords, and the vicar made the fatal mistake of using the wrong one. It was a pity, but the vicar was very outspoken, very impetuous, very straightforward. He had said so many times before, and nobody had ever even dreamt of taking offence. They knew it was true, and they were so used to it that they never thought of objecting to hearing the truth blurted out in his good-humoured, friendly manner—never till Corkam came back after his thirty-five years of "foreign travel."

"How you do truckle to that chap!" he would say to the men who touched their hats respectfully to him as he passed. "You think, he was cap'en on a wessel at least, and bos'un tight and midshipmite inter ther bargain. Blessed if I are goin' ter knock under to the parson, or a whole cargo o' parsons! that I won't; so there!" and Corkam would lean his elbows on the parapet of the bridge behind him, and stand with an impudent sneer on his coarse, flabby lips at the unsuspecting vicar as he passed.

Corkam had "no manners," he thought; "but one mustn't judge too much by appearances, and probably," he would tell himself, if Corkham's rudeness was more than usually aggressive, "he was much better than he looked." For the vicar's creed was of the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians order—of the kind that believeth all things, and hopeth all things; and after all there is nothing like hope in the world. It is so perennial, if you are disappointed in your hopes about one thing, you can always go on hoping about another. And the vicar was very happy in his hopes, though they were often doomed to disappointment. He had good health, good spirits, and a good conscience, and he scarcely knew what it was to have a headache or endure a sleepless night. Truly "a man to be envied," his friend the doctor said, "and there are not many like him!"

The vicarage was a small house—a great many gables and very small rooms, all except the hall, which was a large, low-roofed, roomy apartment, with black oak beams supporting the uneven white-washed ceiling. A great gilt-faced grandfather's clock stood in one corner on the right-hand side of the fireplace, which was one of those delightful Queen Anne, urn-shaped grates, with high hobs on either side, on which the vicar's housekeeper kept her master's coffee, or soup, or cocoa, as the case might be, warm when he failed to come in for his meals, which was no uncommon occurrence, especially since the outbreak of the fever, when, as the long-suffering woman constantly complained, "he don't never show his face till the meat is cooked to a cinder, or the water for his tea has boiled itself flat."

The vicarage garden ran down to the churchyard on one side, and was bordered on the other by the ubiquitous little stream that wound itself in and out through the village like a shining ribbon. The flowers in the vicar's garden were mostly quaint, old-fashioned things. He knew nothing about flowers himself, but his housekeeper did, and he had the advantage of succeeding a man who had a passion for gardening, and who had stocked the place with bulbs, innumerable tulips, daffodils, crocuses, snowdrops, and aconites, and little old-world hepatica and grape hyacinths. While against the high brick wall, now mellowed with time, were old single pink peonies, great yellow tiger lilies, and mulleins, just coming out over the porch the blue wisteria did her best to flower, but perished in the attempt; while the tropeolum, and other creeping things that Mrs. Crowe had grown so successfully every year against the trellis, died off before they began to climb. It was as if the fever had touched them too, poor things; though Mrs. Crowe did surreptitiously fill her watering-pot at the stream and water them ever evening when the vicar was out of the way; for that gentleman was a very dragon over the water, and the stream, as I said before, was getting daily lower and lower, and water scarcer and scarcer.

The meeting at the Union, mentioned in the first chapter, was stormy, but it resulted in victory. The sudden summoning of the principal people in the parish was occasioned by the appearance of a "water-finder." This the chairman, a gentleman farmer of some local importance, well known in the hunting field, proceeded to explain in a disjointed, halting, and somewhat unconvincing manner. It was evident that he was half ashamed of yielding to what he knew most of his hearers would term foolish superstition, and others would fear as savouring of witchcraft and other forbidden things.

The meeting was an open one, concerning as it did, all the parish; and among others our three "loafers" of the bridge had strolled in, and sitting down on a back seat prepared to hear what was going to be said. They had come in from very different motives, and kept together from force of habit. The cripple had come because he wisely never omitted to attend anything that would afford him entertainment and change from the dull monotony of his days; the ex-seaman came, as usual, in the spirit of opposition, with the full determination of opposing whatever decision the authorities should come to; and George accompanied them merely because they asked him.

Mr. Rutland, who was late, as we know, slipped in quietly, and took a seat on a bench which was placed along the side of the room. The water-finder had just stepped on to the platform, and with a little nervous cough was beginning to explain his mission. He was a slight, spare man, of perhaps thirty years of age, with an extraordinarily sensitive face—the sort of look one sees sometimes in a great musician or dreamer—his hair fairish, inclined to red, and his complexion that which goes with such hair. There was nothing else remarkable about him but his hands, which were delicately formed, yet strong and nervous. His voice was low and pleasant, but he spoke with some hesitation, and had not the air of confidence that accompanies the necromancer or conjurer.

The vicar's keen eye took in all this at a glance, and he involuntarily turned to the audience to see how they took him. His eye fell on the three men on the bench at right angles with him. He saw Corkam arrange his face in the supercilious sneer he knew so well. He saw Farley dart a look at him to get his "cue," and then twist his own poor, pinched features into the best imitation of his "friend's" that he could accomplish. The effect was so completely artificial that the vicar could not restrain a smile of amusement. George's fair, good-natured face expressed absolutely nothing.

The water-finder's words were very simple. He protested nothing, and promised nothing. He had discovered a few years ago, he said, that he had the gift of finding water in unexpected places. His powers were not infallible, he explained, but were dependent on many things, the nature of which he was unable to determine. Possibly it was the condition of the atmosphere, possibly the state of his own health, possibly the influence of want of faith in the people who accompanied him on his quest—he was unable to account for it—but certainly there were times when he had failed.

At this point his audience shuffled impatiently with their feet, and sundry little grunts and groans were heard, and the short artificial laugh of Farley was plainly distinguishable. The water-finder ran his mild, dreamy eyes along the benches, passed without interest over Farley and Corkam, and rested for a moment on Geo.

He had heard, he said, of the dreadful pass that Heigham was likely to come to for want of water, and being in the neighbourhood on a visit to some relations, had called on Mr. Barlow and offered his services. It was for this meeting, he understood, to reject or accept them. He had nothing more to say.

Mr. Barlow then rose and proposed a show of hands. This was the signal for a general uproar, and perhaps a dozen or so hands were lifted. The water-finder looked disappointed, the chairman angry, and rough words were shouted from the audience.

"We don't want no palaverin', conjurin' chaps here," shouted some. "Down with the sin of witchcraft!" shouted another. "Duck 'im in a 'orse pond, same as they did time agone," shouted the village wag. "My, I'll make 'im swim!"

At this juncture the vicar walked up the room, and by a sign from the chairman stepped on to the platform.

"We don't want no parsons neither," shouted a ne'er-do-well, who had had a drop on his way; but the parson, if he had lost his popularity, had not lost his power of engaging attention. The chairman rang his bell to secure silence, and a voice from the back of the room shouted "Hear, hear!"

"It seems to me," said the vicar, "that all we want is water. It is with the hope of finding a solution to our terrible difficulty that we are met here to-day. Everything, as you all know, that ordinary science and knowledge can show us has been exhausted, and with no result. We are in desperate case. We 'must have water, or we die.' It is true that our stream still runs, and some of our wells yield water; but it is polluted, and breeds fever in those who drink it. But all this is well known; it is idle to recapitulate it. I take it that all we have to decide is whether we accept Mr. Wilman's offer or not. I think there can be no doubt about it. 'The drowning man catches at a straw.' (Mr. Wilman will forgive the allusion.) I trust he is no straw; but, humanly speaking, we are undoubtedly 'drowning men.' It seems to me there is no 'conjuring' or 'witchcraft' about his thing. God has given us all certain powers—'divers gifts' as the Bible has it—and just because we do not understand or cannot explain this reputed gift of water-finding, why reject the possibility of it in our hour of need? Let us give Mr. Wilman a fair trial; let him do his best, and if he fails, well, we are in no worse plight that we were before."

The vicar stepped down amid dead silence; his words had not had time to sink in. The chairman rose.

"Gentlemen," he said, "my mind is made up. Mr Wilman has free leave to come over my land and find us water where he can. I can't let ignorance or blind prejudice stand in his way. I completely endorse all the vicar's words."

"And I too," and a burly Nonconformist tradesman stepped up; "and I'll give you twenty pounds towards the expenses of sinking the well."

Ten minutes after this sixty pounds had been subscribed by the influential people present. The meeting was broken up, and the water-finder was casting his eye once more over the audience to select his companions in the quest.

"Mr. Barlow will come with me, and I should be glad if you would too, sir," he said to the vicar, who was making his way out.

"I only wish I could," he replied heartily—"it would give me the greatest pleasure; but I have got to take two funerals this afternoon, and I must run home and get something to eat first. Many thanks, all the same, and I need scarcely say how anxiously I shall look for the result of your trial."

He hurried off as he spoke, and Mr. Barlow and the water-finder walked slowly up the street behind him, and disappeared into the former's house.

An hour later they emerged and walked up the street.

It will readily be imagined that the "dowser," as he called himself, was not allowed to go on his quest accompanied only by Mr. Barlow. He was followed, as was only natural, at a fairly respectable distance, by by a selection of all the idle boys and girls in Willowton, and for once Geo Lummis had deserted his friends on the bridge, and followed the little crowd leisurely in the rear, with his hands in his pockets, and his hat tilted at the back of his head.

The water-finder carried in his hand a freshly-cut hazel rod, which he had brought from Mr. Barlow's garden. It was about two feet long, and forked at one end. He held it, point downwards, straight in front of him, with a "prong" in each hand, and he walked at a fair pace, his eyes fixed on the rod, and preserving a dead silence.

As he went the little procession followed him up the main street over the bridge nearly as far as Gravel-pit Lane. Here the lookers-on noticed the hazel twig jerk outwards unmistakably. Mr. Barlow, who was walking abreast of him, sent an inquiring glance at him.

"Only drain water," said the dowser laconically, without slackening his pace.

A few more steps brought him to the bottom of Gravel-pit Lane, and Annie Chapman, with a tribe of dirty, bright-eyed children clinging to her bedraggled skirts, came out to see the fun. The sun had gone in, and a sort of thick heat-mist pervaded everything. It was the sort of afternoon that during any other summer than that of 1901 would have ended in a thunderstorm; but it seemed as if the clouds had forgotten how to rain, and the parched ground looked thirstier than ever, while an unsavoury drainy smell rose from the cluster of infected houses.

In the garden of the Chapman's house was a condemned well, now, fortunately perhaps, dry. A wooden cover was over the brickwork, and it was safely padlocked. Annie and her brood rested against this as they watched the dowser advancing.

He made straight for her gate. At a sign from her one of the children opened it, and he and Mr. Barlow passed through; the crowd remained outside. The door into the untidy sitting-room was open, and without a "with your leave" or "by your leave" the water-finder passed in, the twig jerking violently all the time. Annie coloured, and sprang towards the house. Mr. Barlow, who was following mechanically, stopped. "An Englishman's house is his castle." He waited for permission. Annie was always hospitable in spite of what to her was a sudden inexplicable feeling of shame that the gentlemen should see what a pigsty the house was. She smiled, however, as she held open the door, and drew her fairly clean apron as far over her dress as she could.

"Go you in, sir," she said; "though God a'mighty knows what he's after there, I don't."

Before Mr. Barlow could take advantage of her invitation, however, the dowser had passed out through the little kitchen into the yard behind, where, stumbling along over Annie's pots and pans and other utensils, which were everywhere but where they ought to be, he stopped short at a high privet fence, neatly clipped; for with the backyard Annie's dominion ended and Tom's began, so the fences and the gate and the palings were in good order. There was no getting over this fence; it ran all the length of the row of houses. The dowser retraced his steps, and led by Mr. Barlow soon reappeared by a circuitous route at the opposite side of the fence. Annie and her children made a big hole in the dusty green of it and peered through.

Behind this hedge was a small piece of waste land, or common, where the boys played desultory games of cricket in the hot evenings; and when there was any feed at all on it, the few people who owned donkeys in Willowton turned them out to graze. Just now it was as hard brickbats and guiltless of any signs of green. All the way across this piece the rod jerked and twisted.

"There is water here," the dowser said, stopping and wiping his brow. He looked exhausted, and sat down on the bank that ran along the top of the rather shallow gravel-pit that gave the name to the place. "The spring is a deep one, too," he continued thoughtfully—"perhaps eighty or a hundred feet below the surface; but it is a bad place for sinking a well—too dangerous by far with all this gravel. We will try somewhere else."

At Mr. Barlow's request, however, he marked the spot with a large stone, for it was impossible to put a stick in the hard ground.

"How do you know what depth it is down, may I ask?" said the farmer politely; and the crowd of boys and girls listened eagerly for the answer, and none more eagerly than Geo, who stood a little aloof with an unusual alertness in his bearing.

"I know in this way," said the dowser, taking up his twig which he had laid down for a moment and standing over the place indicated. "I judge by the distance from it at which the rod is influenced. Deep-lying water affects a smaller area than that which is nearer the surface. My rod, as I daresay you observed, began to jerk before we reached yonder cottage," pointing back at the Chapman's house. "That must be a couple of hundred yards or more away. No," he added in answer to further questions, "I don't go by any exact scale of measurement. Other people may do so, but I don't. Experience enables me to be pretty certain about it, and I trust to that."

Geo was so intensely interested at this conversation that he could not help advancing nearer than manners permitted. The dowser noticed him.

"I think I saw you at the meeting," he said, looking kindly at him. "Have you ever seen water found like this before?"

Geo touched his hat respectfully.

"No, sir," he said, "that I hain't. That's the most wonderful thing I ever see in my life."

The dowser smiled.

"It does not seem so wonderful to me," he said. "I come of a family of dowsers. My father was one before me, and my grandfather, and I have a sister with the same gift, though I have but lately discovered my own power. There are a good many of us in the south-west of England—Wiltshire, Dorset, Cornwall; I am a Wilts man myself."

"Oh, indeed, sir," said Geo because he had nothing else to say.

"You do it professionally, I conclude, then?" said Mr. Barlow, inwardly quaking lest Mr. Wilman should demand an exorbitant fee.

"Dear me, no—not at all. I do it quite in an amateur way, just for the love of it. A man must sometimes help his fellow-creatures. I am not a rich man. I can't do much in the way of money, but having this gift, I occasionally make use of it. I was taking a holiday just now. I am on a motor car with a friend, and we are stopping a few days in your neighbourhood. I heard of your difficulties, as I think I mentioned at your meeting, and saw my opportunity for indulging in my hobby. When I am at home I am a very busy man, Mr. Barlow. I am sub-agent to Lord Atherthy."

"Indeed, sir, indeed," said Mr. Barlow, with considerable relief and a palpable increase of respect. "And I'm sure it is very kind of you. We are as a parish immensely indebted to you; at least, ahem, we shall be when—-"

"When I find the water, eh? Well, I am not content with this place. I am rested now; I think we'll go on.—You, young man," addressing Geo, "can come alongside if you like, but not too near. Keep, like Mr. Barlow, a few paces behind me."

So once more the procession moved on, and the dowser, after walking perhaps some hundred yards away from the place where he professed to have discovered a spring, took up his rod in his accustomed way and strode on.

In the meantime the vicar had eaten a hurried luncheon of bread and cheese in the master's room, and leaving the Union walked quickly down to the church. He had barely time to put on his surplus and stole when the mournful procession came in sight; and with a sad heart he went to meet it, reading, of course, as he went the opening sentences of our beautiful burial service for two more victims of the epidemic—a young girl and a child from Gravel-pit Lane.

After the service, when he once more emerged from the vestry, he was followed by the old man in whose person were embodied the three offices of verger, sexton, and clerk—"Jimmy the clerk," as the parish dubbed him.

If anybody had asked me to point out a few of the "characters" which are to be found in every village as well as in Willowton, I think, without hesitation, I should have begun with Jimmy Greenacre. I do not know if I shall be able to show you dear old Jimmy just as I saw him, because his quaintness was a great deal made up of a whimsical twist of his funny old face, a touch of humour in the turn of his sentences, and an absurd habit of gabbling his information like an eager child who has been given a few minutes only to say his say—a habit partly the result of having only three or four teeth left in his head, and partly from a laudable desire to use the best and most appropriate words in conversation with those he was pleased to look upon as his betters.

In person he was rather inclined to be tall, spare, and sinewy; his hair was thick, and still dark in spite of his seventy-three years; and being an economical gentleman, he was not as intimately acquainted with the barber as the vicar would have liked, but his rugged-lined old face was clean shaven, and tanned to a deep mahogany. He walked with the slow, rather shuffling gait of the agricultural labourer, and stooped a little from the shoulders with the stoop that comes of hard work in early youth. Jimmy had been born and bred in Willowton, and he was destined to die there. In his humble way he was a perfect walking De Brett: he knew the family history of every man, woman, and child in the place, and that of their forebears for the last two generations or more—some people said his memory was far too good! But if they had only known it, they themselves had benefited oftentimes by that same memory. To the vicar he was invaluable. The late incumbent had died very suddenly, and his wife had followed him within a few days. They had no children, and but for old Jimmy, Mr. Rutland would have had to find out everything for himself. But Jimmy knew the ropes, and taught the new vicar to put his hands on them. "Jimmy is as good as a curate to me any day!" the vicar would say with a kindly hand on the old man's shoulder when he introduced him to any of his friends; and old Jimmy would slip away with a pleased chuckle and a modest, "No, no, master; but I does my best, and a carn't due no more—so I carn't." Nor could he.

It was due to this passion for genealogies on the part of the old man that he took such a lively interest in Geo Lummis, the "laziest booy," as he termed him in his own mind, in Willowton.

"That there chap harn't got a chance, that he harn't," he would tell the vicar. "His fayther was jist sich another, and his grandfa' afore him—poochin', good-fur-noethin's booth on 'em! messin' about all day a' the bridge, and creepin' out a' nights after the trout—ticklin' of 'em, yer mind, and layin' abed the best o' ther mornin' afterwards. This here booy—why, Mr. Morse, he took a likin' tew 'um, and had 'um up here teachin' of 'um all manner a' things. He set 'im tew a trade along av a carpenter in Walden; but he was sune back agen, an' dun no good at all! And here he be, herdin' along a' that scum Corkam, and talkin' all manner a' rubbidge along a' him. His mother's ter blame, I say. She knew well enow how it was with her husband, and here's she a-lettin' a' the booy go th' same way. But there, what can yew expect a' her when yew cum to recollect that her mother, Mary Anne, was—" But when Jimmy went into the next generation the vicar was apt to interrupt him, for he was an impetuous, hasty young man, and not so good a listener as the old man would have wished him to be.

But on this occasion Jimmy's words commanded attention.

"Look yew there sir!" he exclaimed in a hollow tone, grasping the vicar's arm, and pointing with a gnarled old finger that shook partly from age and partly from excitement—"look you there, sir! There go Mosus to strike th' rock. 'Must we find you water?' he say; and yer know what happened tew 'um, yer know, and so dew he—well!" and Jimmy threw out both hands with a gesture that implied that he, at least, would have no traffic with such evil doings.

Mr. Wilman and his following had just come over the common, and were bearing down again on the village, and the vicar was all eagerness to join them. It was tiresome of Jimmy to detain him just now, and Jimmy was as difficult to shake off as a terrier with a rat.

"You'll be thankful enough to drink the clear water when we get it, I'll be bound. And as for the means, it isn't for you or me either to criticise Mr. Wilman. God has given him apparently an unusual gift, and he is going to use it for our good. Be off with you and cut the grass, you old goose."

"Cut the grass! He, he!" This was a little joke between the vicar and the clerk, and Jimmy never failed to laugh at the sarcasm (it had been so long since there had been a blade of grass to cut). "Well, well, let his punishment fall on his own hid!" said Jimmy piously.

"Jimmy," said the vicar, quite seriously this time, "if I wasn't a parson, I should tell you you're a regular old fool. There's a proverb somewhere (you won't find it in the Bible, so don't think you've caught me tripping) that says, 'God helps those who help themselves;' and do you honestly tell me that if we kneel down every Sunday and pray for rain, and don't accept every chance of getting good water that God puts in our way, that He will pay any heed to us? Must we have it in our own special way, or not at all? Jimmy, Jimmy, your argument won't hold water; you'd better come with me and see how it's done."

But Jimmy scorned the suggestion, and went off mumbling about judgements to come, and doers of iniquities, and witches, and soothsayers, till he had grumbled himself out of the churchyard and up the lane till he reached his own door.

He found the house empty. Milly had been smitten with the quest, and had gone out to the dowser. Jimmy could hardly believe his ears when the next door neighbour—a lame woman who "would have gone on her own account if she could," as she stoutly protested when Jimmy lifted up his voice in a gabble of invective—informed him that Milly had asked her to see to the kettle, and the cake in the oven, while she went off to see the water found. "And small blame, too! Who wouldn't see a miracle when they could in these days when nothing happened that—-"

"There's no miracle at all about it," grumbled Jimmy, turning round and arguing the other way when he found himself worsted.

"Well, then, I don't see that you have no call to make such a to-due about it. If that be so as you say jest ordinary tappin', there can't be no witchcraft nor Satan's work about it. Bless me, if I'd a got your legs I'd have been there long ago."

And so it happened that before many minutes were over Jimmy's curiosity had overcome his scruples, and he became one of the fast-increasing crowd.

Back to Index Next