Part 70 (1/2)

When he was gone, Grotait represented that public opinion would go with Little on this question; and the outrages he had sustained would be all ripped up by the Hillsborough Liberal, and the two topics combined in an ugly way; and all for what?--to thwart a good-hearted young fellow in a philanthropical crotchet, which, after all, did him honor, and would never be imitated by any other master in Hillsborough. And so, for once, this Machiavel sided with Henry, not from the purest motives, yet, mind you, not without a certain mixture of right feeling and humanity.

On the Sunday Henry dined with him and his party, at ”Savage's Hotel,”

and the said dinner rather surprised Henry; the meats were simple, but of good quality, and the wines, which were all brought out by Grotait, were excellent. That Old Saw, who retailed ale and spirits to his customers, would serve nothing less to his guests than champagne and burgundy. And, if the cheer was generous, the host was admirable; he showed, at the head of his genial board, those qualities which, coupled with his fanaticism, had made him the Doge of the Hillsborough trades.

He was primed on every subject that could interest his guests, and knew something about nearly everything else. He kept the ball always going, but did not monologuize, except when he was appealed to as a judge, and then did it with a mellow grace that no man can learn without Nature's aid. There is no society, however distinguished, in which Grotait would not have been accepted as a polished and admirable converser.

Add to this that he had an art, which was never quite common, but is now becoming rare, of making his guests feel his friends--for the time, at all events.

Young Little sat amazed, and drank in his words with delight, and could not realize that this genial philosopher was the person who had launched a band of ruffians at him. Yet, in his secret heart, he could not doubt it: and so he looked and listened with a marvelous mixture of feelings, on which one could easily write pages of a.n.a.lysis, very curious, and equally tedious.

They dined at three; and, at five, they got up, as agreed beforehand, and went to inspect the reservoir in course of construction. A more compendious work of art was never projected: the contractors had taken for their basis a mountain gorge, with a stream flowing through it down toward Hillsborough; all they had to do was to throw an embankment across the lower end of the gorge, and turn it to a mighty basin open to receive the stream, and the drainage from four thousand acres of hill.

From this lake a sixty-foot wear was to deal out the water-supply to the mill-owners below, and the surplus to the people of Hillsborough, distant about eight miles on an easy decline.

Now, as the reservoir must be full at starting, and would then be eighty feet deep in the center, and a mile long, and a quarter of a mile broad, on the average, an embankment of uncommon strength was required to restrain so great a ma.s.s of water; and this was what the Hillsborough worthies were curious about. They strolled out to the works, and then tea was to come out after them, the weather being warm and soft. Close to the works they found a foreman of engineers smoking his pipe, and interrogated him. He showed them a rising wall, five hundred feet wide at the base, and told them it was to be ninety feet high, narrowing, gradually, to a summit twelve feet broad. As the whole embankment was to be twelve hundred feet long at the top, this gave some idea of the bulk of the materials to be used: those materials were clay, shale, mill-stone, and sandstone of looser texture. The engineer knew Grotait, and brought him a drawing of the mighty cone to be erected. ”Why, it will be a mountain!” said Little.

”Not far from that, sir: and yet you'll never see half the work. Why, we had an army of navvies on it last autumn, and laid a foundation sixty feet deep and these first courses are all bonded in to the foundation, and bonded together, as you see. We are down to solid rock, and no water can get to undermine us. The puddle wall is sixteen feet wide at starting, and diminishes to four feet at the top: so no water can creep in through our jacket.”

”But what are these apertures?” inquired Grotait.

”Oh, those are the waste-pipes. They pa.s.s through the embankment obliquely, to the wear-dam: they can be opened, or shut, by valves, and run off ten thousand cubic feet of water a minute.”

”But won't that prove a hole in your armor? Why, these pipes must be in twenty joints, at least.”

”Say fifty-five; you'll be nearer the mark.”

”And suppose one or two of these fifty-five joints should leak? You'll have an everlasting solvent in the heart of your pile, and you can't get at them, you know, to mend them.”

”Of course not; but they are double as thick as ever were used before; and have been severely tested before laying 'em down: besides, don't you see each of them has got his great-coat on? eighteen inches of puddle all the way.”

”Ah,” said Grotait, ”all the better. But it is astonis.h.i.+ng what big embankments will sometimes burst if a leaky pipe runs through them. I don't think it is the water, altogether; the water seems to make air inside them, and that proves as bad for them as wind in a man's stomach.”

”Governor,” said the engineer, ”don't you let bees swarm in your bonnet.

Ousely reservoir will last as long as them hills there.”

”No, doubt, lad, since thou's had a hand in making it.”

The laugh this dry rejoinder caused was interrupted by the waitress bringing out tea; and these Hillsborough worthies felt bound to chaff her; but she, being Yorks.h.i.+re too, gave them as good as they brought, and a trifle to spare.

Tea was followed by brandy-and-water and pipes: and these came out in such rapid succession, that when Grotait drove Little and two others home, his utterance was thick, and his speech sententious.

Little found Bayne waiting for him, with the news that he had left Mr.

Cheetham.

”How was that?”

”Oh, fell between two stools. Tried to smooth matters between Cheetham and the hands: but Cheetham, he wants a manager to side with him through thick and thin; and the men want one to side with them. He has sacked me, and the men are glad I'm going: and this comes of loving peace, when the world hates it.”

”And I am glad of it, for now you are my foreman. I know what you are worth, if those fools don't.”