Erema; Or, My Father's Sin

by R. D. Blackmore

“Her ought to 'a been on the plank,” he said, with trouble in getting his words out. “But there! what good? Her never will stand on that plank no more. No, nor any other plank.”

I told him that I would put her on the plank, if he had any portrait of her showing her dress and her attitude. Without saying what he had, he led me to the house, and stood behind me, while I went inside. And then he could not keep his voice as I went from one picture of his darling to another, not thinking (as I should have done) of what his feelings might be, but trying, as no two were at all alike, to extract a general idea of her.

“Nobody knows what her were to me,” the old man said, with a quiet little noise and a sniff behind my shoulder. “And with one day's illness her died—her died.”

“But you have others left. She was not the only one. Please, Mr. Withypool, to try to think of that. And your dear wife still alive to share your trouble. Just think for a moment of what happened to my father. His wife and six children all swept off in a month—and I just born, to be brought up with a bottle!”

I never meant, of course, to have said a word of this, but was carried away by that common old idea of consoling great sorrow with a greater one. And the sense of my imprudence broke vexatiously upon me when the old man came and stood between me and his daughter's portraits.

“Well, I never!” he exclaimed, with his bright eyes steadfast with amazement. “I know you now, miss. Now I knows you. To think what a set of blind newts us must be! And you the very moral of your poor father, in a female kind of way! To be sure, how well I knew the Captain! A nicer man never walked the earth, neither a more unlucky one.”

“I beg you—let me beg you,” I began to say; “since you have found me out like this—”

“Hush, miss, hush! Not my own wife shall know, unless your own tongue telleth her. A proud man I shall be, Miss Raumur,” he continued, with emphasis on my local name, “if aught can be found in my power to serve you. Why, Lord bless you, miss,” he whispered, looking round, “your father and I has spent hours together! He were that pleasant in his ways and words, he would drop in from his fishing, when the water was too low, and sit on that very same bench where you sat, and smoke his pipe with me, and tell me about battles, and ask me about bread. And many a time I have slipped up the gate, to give him more water for his flies to play, and the fish not to see him so plainly. Ah, we have had many pleasant spells together; and his eldest boy and girl, Master George and Miss Henrietta, used to come and fetch our eggs. My Polly there was in love with him, we said; she sat upon his lap so, when she were two years old, and played with his beautiful hair, and blubbered—oh, she did blubber, when the Captain went away!”

This invested Polly with new interest for me, and made me determine to spare no pains in putting her pretty figure well upon the plank. Then I said to the miller, “How kind of you to draw up your sluice-gates to oblige my father! Now will you put them down and keep them down, to do a great service both to him and me?”

Without a moment's hesitation, he promised that any thing he could do should be done, if I would only tell him what I wanted. But perhaps it would be better to have our talk outside. Taking this hint, I followed him back to the bench in the open garden, and there explained what I wished to have done, and no longer concealed the true reason. The good miller answered that with all his heart he would do that much to oblige me, and a hundred times more than that; but some little thought and care were needful. With the river so low as it was now, he could easily stop the back-water, and receive the whole of the current in his dam, and keep it from flowing down his wheel trough, and thus dry the lower channel for perhaps half an hour, which would be ample for my purpose. Engineering difficulties there were none; but two or three other things must be heeded. Miller Sims, a mile or so down river, must be settled with, to fill his dam well, and begin to discharge, when the upper water failed, so as not to dry the Moon all down the valley, which would have caused a commotion. Miller Sims being own brother-in-law to Master Withypool, that could be arranged easily enough, after one day's notice. But a harder thing to manage would be to do the business without rousing curiosity, and setting abroad a rumor which would be sure to reach my enemy. And the hardest thing of all, said Master Withypool, smiling as he thought of what himself had once been, would be to keep those blessed boys away, who find out every thing, and go every where. Not a boy of Shoxford but would be in the river, or dancing upon its empty bed, screeching and scolloping up into his cap any poor bewildered trout chased into the puddles, if it were allowed to leak out, however feebly, that the Moon water was to stop running. And then how was I to seek for any thing?