Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (895 page)

“Thank you, gentlemen,” said Steve, while I added, “For your readiness the river shall run again in two or three minutes’ time.”

“Oh — ah, yes,” said Steve, adding heartily in undertones, “I had forgotten that!”

Almost as soon as the words were spoken we perceived a little increase in the mere dribble of water which now flowed, whereupon he waved his wand and murmured more words.  The liquid thread swelled and rose; and in a few minutes was the same as before.  Our triumph was complete; and the suspension had been so temporary that probably nobody in the village had noticed it but ourselves and the boys.

CHAPTER III

How We Were Caught in Our Own Trap.

At this acme of our glory who should come past but a hedger whom Steve recognized as an inhabitant of West Poley; unluckily for our greatness the hedger also recognized Steve.

“Well, Maister Stevey, what be you doing over in these parts then? And yer little cousin, too, upon my word!  And beards — why ye’ve made yerselves ornamental! haw, haw!”

In great trepidation Steve moved on with the man, endeavouring thus to get him out of hearing of the boys.

“Look here,” said Steve to me on leaving that outspoken rustic; “I think this is enough for one day.  We’d better go further before they guess all.”

“With all my heart,” said I. And we walked on.

“But what’s going on here?” said Steve, when, turning a corner of the hedge, we perceived an altercation in progress hard by.  The parties proved to be a poor widow and a corn-factor, who had been planning a water-wheel lower down the stream.  The latter had dammed the water for his purpose to such an extent as to submerge the poor woman’s garden, turning it into a lake.

“Indeed, sir, you need not ruin my premises so!” she said with tears in her eyes.  “The mill-pond can be kept from overflowing my garden, by a little banking and digging; it will be just as well for your purpose to keep it lower down, as to let it spread out into a great pool here. The house and garden are yours by law, sir; that’s true. But my father built the house, and, oh, sir, I was born here, and I should like to end my days under its roof!”

“Can’t help it, mis’ess,” said the corn-factor. “Your garden is a mill-pond already made, and to get a hollow further down I should have to dig at great expense. There is a very nice cottage up the hill, where you can live as well as here. When your father died the house came into my hands; and I can do what I like with my own.”

The woman went sadly away indoors. As for Steve and myself, we were deeply moved as we looked at the pitiable sight of the poor woman’s garden, the tops of the gooseberry bushes forming small islands in the water, and her few apple trees standing immersed half-way up their stems.

“The man is a rascal,” said Steve. “I perceive that it is next to impossible, in this world, to do good to one set of folks without doing harm to another.”

“Since we have not done all good to these people of East Poley,” said I, “there is a reason for restoring the river to its old course through West Poley.”

“But then,” said Steve, “if we turn back the stream, we shall be starting Miller Griffin’s mill; and then, by the terms of his ‘prenticeship, poor Job will have to go back to him and be beaten again! It takes good brains no less than a good heart to do what’s right towards all.”

Quite unable to solve the problem into which we had drifted, were traced our steps, till, at a stile, within half a mile of West Poley, we beheld Job awaiting us.

“Well, how did it act?” he asked with great eagerness. “Just as the hands of your watch got to a quarter past eleven, I began to shovel away, and turned the water in no time. But I didn’t turn it where you expected — not I — ’t would have started the mill for a few minutes, and I wasn’t going to do that.”

“Then where did you turn it?” cried Steve.

“I found another hole,” said Job.

“A third one?”

“Ay, hee, hee! a third one! So I pulled the stones aside from this new hole, and shovelled the clay, and down the water went with a gush.  When it had run down there a few minutes, I turned it back to the East Poley hole, as you ordered me to do.  But as to getting it back to the old West Poley hole, that I’d never do.”

Steve then explained that we no more wished the East village to have the river than the West village, on account of our discovery that equal persecution was going on in the one place as in the other.  Job’s news of a third channel solved our difficulty.  “So we’ll go at once and send it down this third channel,” concluded he.

We walked back to the village, and, as it was getting late, and we were tired, we decided to do nothing that night, but told Job to meet us in the cave on the following evening, to complete our work there.

All next day my cousin was away from home, at market for his mother, and he had arranged with me that if he did not return soon enough to join me before going to Nick’s Pocket, I should proceed thither, where he would meet me on his way back from the market-town.  The day passed anxiously enough with me, for I had some doubts of a very grave kind as to our right to deprive two parishes of water on our own judgment, even though that should be, as it was, honestly based on our aversion to tyranny. However, dusk came on at last, and Steve not appearing from market, I concluded that I was to meet him at the cave’s mouth.

To this end I strolled out in that direction, and there being as yet no hurry, I allowed myself to be tempted out of my path by a young rabbit, which, however, I failed to capture.  This divergence had brought me inside a field, behind a hedge, and before I could resume my walk along the main road, I heard some persons passing along the other side.  The words of their conversation arrested me in a moment.

“ ‘Tis a strange story if it’s true,” came through the hedge in the tones of Miller Griffin.  “We know that East Poley folk will say queer things; but the boys wouldn’t say that it was the work of magicians if they hadn’t some ground for it.”

“And how do they explain it?” asked the shoemaker.

“They say that these two young fellows passed down their lane about twelve o’clock, dressed like magicians, and offered to show their power by stopping the river.  The East Poley boys challenged ‘em; when, by George, they did stop the river!  They said a few words, and it dried up like magic. Now mark my words, my suspicion is this: these two gamesters have somehow got at the river head, and been tampering with it in some way. The water that runs down East Poley bottom is the water that ought, by rights, to be running through my mill.”

“A very pretty piece of mischief, if that’s the case!” said the shoemaker.  “I’ve never liked them lads, particularly that Steve — for not a boot or shoe hev he had o’ me since he’s been old enough to choose for himself — not a pair, or even a mending.  But I don’t see how they could do all this, even if they had got at the river head.  ‘Tis a spring out of the hill, isn’t it?  And how could they stop the spring?”

It seemed that the miller could offer no explanation, for no answer was returned.  My course was clear: to join Job and Steve at Nick’s Pocket immediately; tell them that we were suspected, and to get them to give over further proceedings, till we had stated our difficulties to some person of experience — say the Man who had Failed.

I accordingly ran like a hare over the clover inside the hedge, and soon was far away from the interlocutors. Drawing near the cave, was relieved to see Steve’s head against the sky. I joined him at once, and recounted to him, in haste, what had passed.

He meditated. “They don’t even now suspect that the secret lies in the cavern,” said he.

“But they will soon,” said I.

“Well, perhaps they may,” he answered. “But there will be time for us to finish our undertaking, and turn the stream down the third hole. When we’ve done that we can consider which of the villages is most worthy to have the river, and act accordingly.”

“Do let us take a good wise man into our confidence,” I said.

After a little demurring, he agreed that as soon as we had completed the scheme we would state the case to a competent adviser, and let it be settled fairly. “And now,” he said, “where’s Job; inside the cave, no doubt, as it is past the time I promised to be here.”

Stepping inside the cave’s mouth, we found that the candles and other things which had been deposited there were removed. The probability being that Job had arrived and taken them in with him, we groped our way along in the dark, helped by an occasional match which Steve struck from a box he carried. Descending the gallery at the further end of the outer cavern, we discerned a glimmer at the remote extremity, and soon beheld Job working with all his might by the light of one of the candles.

“I’ve almost got it into the hole that leads to neither of the Poleys, but I wouldn’t actually turn it till you came,” he said, wiping his face.

We told him that the neighbours were on our track, and might soon guess that we performed our tricks in Nick’s Pocket, and come there, and find that the stream flowed through the cave before rising in the spring at the top of the village; and asked him to turn the water at once, and be off with us.

“Ah!” said Job, mournfully, “then ‘tis over with me! They will be here to-morrow, and will turn back the stream, and the mill will go again, and I shall have to finish my time as ‘prentice to the man who did this!” He pulled up his shirt sleeve, and showed us on his arm several stripes and bruises — black and blue and green — the tell-tale relics of old blows from the miller.

Steve reddened with indignation. “I would give anything to stop up the channels to the two Poleys so close that they couldn’t be found again!” he said. “Couldn’t we do it with stones and clay? Then if they came here ‘twould make no difference, and the water would flow down the third hole forever, and we should save Job and the widow after all.”

“We can but try it,” said Job, willing to fall in with anything that would hinder his recall to the mill. “Let’s set to work.”

Steve took the spade, and Job the pickaxes. First they finished what Job had begun — the turning of the stream into the third tunnel or crevice, which led to neither of the Poleys.  This done, they set to work jamming stones into the other two openings, treading earth and clay around them, and smoothing over the whole in such a manner that nobody should notice they had ever existed.  So intent were we on completing it that — to our utter disaster — we did not notice what was going on behind us.

I was the first to look round, and I well remember why: my ears had been attracted by a slight change of tone in the purl of the water down the new crevice discovered by Job, and I was curious to learn the reason of it. The sight that met my gaze might well have appalled a stouter and older heart than mine.  Instead of pouring down out of sight, as it had been doing when we last looked, the stream was choked by a rising pool into which it boiled, showing at a glance that what we had innocently believed to be another outlet for the stream was only a blind passage or cul de sac, which the water, when first turned that way by Job, had not been left long enough to fill before it was turned back again.

“Oh, Steve — Job!” I cried, and could say no more.

They gazed round at once, and saw the situation. Nick’s Pocket had become a cauldron. The surface of the rising pool stood, already, far above the mouth of the gallery by which we had entered, and which was our only way out — stood far above the old exit of the stream to West Poley, now scaled up; far above the second outlet to East Poley, discovered by Steve, and also sealed up by our fatal ingenuity. We had been spending the evening in making a closed bottle of the cave, in which the water was now rising to drown us.

“There is one chance for us — only one,” said Steve in a dry voice.

“What one?” we asked in a breath.

“To open the old channel leading to the mill,” said Steve.

“I would almost as soon be drowned as do that,” murmured Job gloomily. “But there’s more lives than my own, so I’ll work with a will. Yet how be we to open any channel at all?”

The question was, indeed, of awful aptness. It was extremely improbable that we should have power to reopen either conduit now.  Both those exits had been funnel-shaped cavities, narrowing down to mere fissures at the bottom; and the stones and earth we had hurled into these cavities had wedged themselves together by their own weight. Moreover — and here was the rub — had it been possible to pull the stones out while they remained unsubmerged, the whole mass was now under water, which enlarged the task of reopening the channel to Herculean dimensions.

But we did not know my cousin Steve as yet. “You will help me here,” he said authoritatively to Job, pointing to the West Poley conduit. “Lenny, my poor cousin,” he went on, turning to me, “we’re in a bad way. All you can do is to stand in the niche, and make the most of the candles by keeping them from the draught with your hat, and burning only one at a time. How many have we, Job?”

“Ten ends, some long, some short,” said Job.

“They will burn many hours,” said Steve. “And now we must dive, and begin to get out the stones.”

They had soon stripped off all but their drawers, and, laying their clothes on the dry floor of the niche behind me, stepped down into the middle of the cave. The water here was already above their waists, and at the original gulley-hole leading to West Poley spring was proportionately deeper. Into this part, nevertheless, Steve dived. I have recalled his appearance a hundred — aye, a thousand — times since that day, as he came up his crown bobbing into the dim candle-light like a floating apple.  He stood upright, bearing in his arms a stone as big as his head.

“That’s one of ‘em!” he said as soon as he could speak.  “But there are many, many more!”

He threw the stone behind; while Job, wasting no time, had already dived in at the same point. Job was not such a good diver as Steve, in the sense of getting easily at the bottom; but he could hold his breath longer, and it was an extraordinary length of time before his head emerged above the surface, though his feet were kicking in the air more than once. Clutched to his chest, when he rose, was a second large stone, and a couple of small ones with it.  He threw the whole to a distance; and Steve, having now recovered breath, plunged again into the hole.