PAGE 6
Below The Mill Dam
by
“Much you know,” said the Waters. “Over you go, old man. You can take the full head of us now. Those new steel axle-straps of yours can stand anything. Come along, Raven’s Gill, Harpenden, Callton Rise, Batten’s Ponds, Witches’ Spring, all together! Let’s show these gentlemen how to work!”
“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 God 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 homo–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 mass 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?”