Chapter Seventeen.
Mephitic Fumes.
I don’t believe that old well of ours would ever have been cleaned out if it had not been for the magpie, which, by the way, in its tame state is most decidedly as ill-conditioned, dishonest a bird as was ever fledged. Now of course a magpie does not seem to have much to do with a well; but as great oaks grow from little acorns, so do large matters grow out of very small causes.
Our magpie was kept under the impression that he would some day talk; but he never got any further than the monosyllable “Chark,” which with him meant as much as the Italian’s “Altro.” He could say the word plainly when he was six months old; and he could say no more when he was five years, and had achieved to a perpetual moult about the poll, which had the effect of making him look ten times more weird and artful than ever. He would say “chark” for everything, merely varying the key higher or lower according to the exigencies of the case. Goblin came into my possession in exchange for that piece of current money of the merchant called sixpence, which was given to a little, consequential, undersized, under-gardener at a neighbouring seat. This personage, who was known in the place as “my lord,” had early one morning scaled an elm-tree to take a magpie’s nest, but he was so unsuccessful as to secure only one bird—the Goblin in question.
He was a beauty was Goblin; if I believed in the doctrine of metempsychosis, I should say that his little body had been the receptacle of the immortal part of Jack Sheppard—Harrison Ainsworth’s Jack Sheppard; for a more mischievous, thieving scamp never held head on one side, leaped out of reach, after any amount of threatening, stared at you with a keen black eye, and cried “chark.” He was a bird that was always in a state of voracity, or pretended to be so, and dearly loved to hide scraps of meat in all sorts of out-of-the-way places, where he would punch them in, and then forget them; although they smelt loud enough to cause no end of complaints. He was a cleanly bird, too, in his habits, and always took advantage of Newfoundland Nero’s trough being filled with clean water to have a wash, sully the fount, and then hop shivering off to dry the plumage which stuck down to his sides.
So much for the magpie. The well was beneath the walnut-tree, and so close to it that from time to time large pieces of chalk had been pushed in by the roots that forced their way through the sides as if in search of moisture. It was an old, old well, sunk no one knew how many centuries before; but probably dug down out of the chalk, when the monks held the old priory which we tenanted in its modernised form. The old well was always an object of dread to me in childhood; and often have I stealthily crept up to the old green wood cover, dropped a pebble through the rope hole, and listened shudderingly to the hollow, echoing, vibrating sound that came quivering up after the plash. Even in maturer years the old well was one that would obtrude itself into dreams and offer suggestions of the horrors to be found within its depths, and the consequences of a fall to the bottom.
We only used the water for the garden, and hard work it used to be to turn the moss-covered windlass, and drag up the heavy bucket at the end of a hundred feet of rope, when up it came full of greeny-looking water, with some times a frog for passenger. To look down and listen to the hollow drip of the water was enough to make any one shudder, so profound seemed the depth to where a ring of light could be seen, and in spite of its depth, carved as it was right out of the solid chalk, there was never more than some seven or eight feet of water at the bottom, and that none of the cleanest.
Uncle Tom said it would be better filled up; a remark which found a most enthusiastic backer in the old gardener; but water even if green and discoloured was costly in those parts, and therefore the well was not filled up. While as to my uncle’s suggestion, to have it cleaned out, although most excellent, I was too deeply imbued with the Toryish ideas of letting things be as heretofore; and, therefore, the old gardener ground and ground at the old windlass, and the water still came up green; while, contrary to direct orders, the lid of the dangerous place was often left off.