Part 51 (1/2)

”But--but--I thought it was a decoration. Why--why--why--it only means more work for _me_!”

”Exactly. You're to supply about sixty eight-candle lights when required.

But they won't be all in use at once----”

”Ah! I thought as much,” said the Cat. ”The reaction is bound to come.”

”_And_” said the Waters, ”you will do the ordinary work of the mill as well.”

”Impossible!” the old Wheel quivered as it drove. ”Aluric never did it-- nor Azor, nor Reinbert. Not even William de Warrenne or the Papal Legate.

There's no precedent for it. I tell you there's no precedent for working a wheel like this.”

”Wait a while! We're making one as fast as we can. Aluric and Co. are dead. So's the Papal Legate. You've no notion how dead they are, but we're here--the Waters of Five Separate Systems. We're just as interesting as Domesday Book. Would you like to hear about the land-tenure in Trott's Wood? It's squat-right, chiefly.” The mocking Waters leaped one over the other, chuckling and chattering profanely.

”In that hundred Jenkins, a tinker, with one dog--_unis canis_--holds, by the Grace of G.o.d and a habit he has of working hard, _unam hidam_--a large potato patch. Charmin' fellow, Jenkins. Friend of ours. Now, who the dooce did Jenkins keep? ... In the hundred of Callton is one charcoal-burner _irreligiosissimus h.o.m.o_--a bit of a rip--but a thorough sportsman. _Ibi est ecclesia. Non multum_. Not much of a church, _quia_ because, _episcopus_ the Vicar irritated the Nonconformists _tunc et post et modo_ --then and afterwards and now--until they built a cut-stone Congregational chapel with red brick facings that did not return itself--_defendebat se_ --at four thousand pounds.”

”Charcoal-burners, vicars, schismatics, and red brick facings,” groaned the Wheel. ”But this is sheer blasphemy. What waters have they let in upon me?”

”Floods from the gutters. Faugh, this light is positively sickening!” said the Cat, rearranging her fur.

”We come down from the clouds or up from the springs, exactly like all other waters everywhere. Is that what's surprising you?” sang the Waters.

”Of course not. I know my work if you don't. What I complain of is your lack of reverence and repose. You've no instinct of deference towards your betters--your heartless parody of the Sacred volume (the Wheel meant Domesday Book)--proves it.”

”Our betters?” said the Waters most solemnly. ”What is there in all this dammed race that hasn't come down from the clouds, or----”

”Spare me that talk, please,” the Wheel persisted. ”You'd _never_ understand. It's the tone--your tone that we object to.”

”Yes. It's your tone,” said the Black Rat, picking himself up limb by limb.

”If you thought a trifle more about the work you're supposed to do, and a trifle less about your precious feelings, you'd render a little more duty in return for the power vested in you--we mean wasted on you,” the Waters replied.

”I have been some hundreds of years laboriously acquiring the knowledge which you see fit to challenge so light-heartedly,” the Wheel jarred.

”Challenge him! Challenge him!” clamoured the little waves riddling down through the tail-race. ”As well now as later. Take him up!”

The main ma.s.s of the Waters plunging on the Wheel shocked that well-bolted structure almost into box-lids by saying: ”Very good. Tell us what you suppose yourself to be doing at the present moment.”

”Waiving the offensive form of your question, I answer, purely as a matter of courtesy, that I am engaged in the trituration of farinaceous substances whose ultimate destination it would be a breach of the trust reposed in me to reveal.”

”Fiddle!” said the Waters. ”We knew it all along! The first direct question shows his ignorance of his own job. Listen, old thing. Thanks to us, you are now actuating a machine of whose construction you know nothing, that that machine may, over wires of whose ramifications you are, by your very position, profoundly ignorant, deliver a power which you can never realise, to localities beyond the extreme limits of your mental horizon, with the object of producing phenomena which in your wildest dreams (if you ever dream) you could never comprehend. Is that clear, or would you like it all in words of four syllables?”

”Your a.s.sumptions are deliciously sweeping, but may I point out that a decent and--the dear old Abbot of Wilton would have put it in his resonant monkish Latin much better than I can--a scholarly reserve, does not necessarily connote blank vacuity of mind on all subjects.”

”Ah, the dear old Abbot of Wilton,” said the Rat sympathetically, as one nursed in that bosom. ”Charmin' fellow--thorough scholar and gentleman.

Such a pity!”

”Oh, Sacred Fountains!” the Waters were fairly boiling. ”He goes out of his way to expose his ignorance by triple bucketfuls. He creaks to high Heaven that he is hopelessly behind the common order of things! He invites the streams of Five Watersheds to witness his su-su-su-pernal incompetence, and then he talks as though there were untold reserves of knowledge behind him that he is too modest to bring forward. For a bland, circular, absolutely sincere impostor, you're a miracle, O Wheel!”

”I do not pretend to be anything more than an integral portion of an accepted and not altogether mushroom inst.i.tution.”