The Vast Abyss

“Strikes me, Master Tom,” he said, “as I could put my hand on him as stole that there old iron.”

“Who do you think it was, David?”

“Not going to name no names, sir,” said David, screwing up his lips, and tightening a roll of blue serge apron about his waist. “Don’t do to slander your neighbours; but if you was to say it was old Mother Warboys’ hulking grandson, I wouldn’t be so rude as to contradick you; not as I say it is, mind you, but I’ve knowed that chap ever since he was a dirty little gipsy whelp of a thing, and I never yet knowed him take anything as was out of his reach.”

Tom laughed.

“But I just give him fair warning, Master Tom, that if he comes after my ribstons and Maria Louisas this year – ”

“Did he come last year?” said Tom eagerly.

“Never you mind that, Master Tom. I don’t say as he did, and I don’t say as he didn’t; but I will say this, and swear to it: them Maria Louisas on the wall has got eyes in their heads, and stalks as does for tails, but I never see one yet as had legs.”

“Nor I neither, David,” said Tom, laughing.

“No, sir; but all the same they walked over the wall and out into the lane somehow. So did lots of the ribstons and my king pippins. But tchah! it’s no use to say nought to your uncle. If somebody was to come and steal his legs I don’t b’lieve he’d holler ‘Stop thief!’ but when it comes to my fruit, as I’m that proud on it grieves me to see it picked, walking over the wall night after night, I feel sometimes as it’s no good to prune and train, and manoor things.”

“Ah, it must be vexatious, David!”

“Waxashus is nothing to it, sir. I tell you what it is, sir: it’s made me wicked, that it has. There’s them times when I’ve been going to church o’ Sundays, and seen that there Pete Warboys and two or three other boys a-hanging about a corner waiting till everybody’s inside to go and get into some mischief. I’ve gone to my seat along with the singers, sir, and you may believe me when I tell you, I’ve never heered a single word o’ the sarmon, but sat there seeing that chap after my pears and apples all the time.”

“Then you do give Pete Warboys the credit of it, David?”

“No, I don’t, sir. I won’t ’cuse nobody; but what I do say is this, that if ever I’m down the garden with a rake or hoe-handle in my hand, and Pete Warboys comes over the wall, I’ll hit him as hard as I can, and ask master afterwards whether I’ve done right.”

“David,” said Tom eagerly, “how soon will the pears be ripe?”

“Oh, not for long enough yet, sir; and the worst of it is, if you’re afraid of your pears and apples being stole, and picks ’em soon, they s’rivels up and has no taste in ’em.”

“Then we must lie in wait for whoever it is, when the fruit is ripe, and catch them.”

David shut both of his eyes tight, wrinkled his face up, and shook himself all over, then opened his eyes again, nodded, and whispered solemnly —

“Master Tom, we just will.”

Then he went off to the loading of the iron, saw the last load carted out, and was back ready, after shutting the gate, to take his master’s orders about turning the mill-yard into a shrubbery and garden.

A week with plenty of help from the labourers completely transformed the place. Then plenty of big shrubs and conifers were taken up from the garden, with what David called good balls to their roots, and planted here and there, loads of gravel were brought in, the roller was brought into action, and a wide broad walk led with a curve to the mill-door; there was a broad border round the tower itself, and a walk outside that; and Tom and Uncle Richard stood looking at the work one evening in a very satisfied frame of mind.

“There, Tom, now for tying up my money-bag. That’s all I mean to spend. Now you and I will have to do the rest.”

The next day was devoted to furnishing the interior with the odds and ends of scientific apparatus. The small telescope was mounted in the top-floor, the new apparatus, boxes, bottles, and jars were placed on tables and shelves in the middle floor, and the two great glass discs were carefully carried into the stone-floored basement, where a cask was stood up on end, a hole made in the head, and barrowful after barrowful of the fine silver sand plentiful in amongst the pine-trees was wheeled up and poured in, like so much water, with a big funnel, till the cask was full.

“What’s that for?” said Uncle Richard, in response to an inquiry from his nephew. “That, Tom, is for a work-bench, meant to be so solid that it will not move. Try if you can stir it.”

Tom gave it a thrust, and shook his head.

“I don’t think three men could push it over, uncle,” he said.

“Two couldn’t, Tom. There, that will do. We mustn’t have any accident with our speculum. Now then, to begin. Ready? Tuck up your sleeves.”

Tom obeyed, and helped his uncle to lift one of the glass discs on to the top of the cask, where it was easily fixed by screwing three little brick-shaped pieces of wood on to the head close against the sides of the glass.

Uncle Richard paused after tightening the last screw, and stood looking at his nephew.

“What a queer boy you are, Tom,” he said.

“Am I, uncle?” said the lad, colouring.

“To be sure you are. Most boys would be full of questions, and ask why that’s done.”

“Oh,” cried Tom, who smiled as he felt relieved, “I’m just the same, uncle – as full of questions as any boy.”

“But you don’t speak.”

“No, uncle; it’s because I don’t want you to think I’m a trouble, but I do want to know horribly all the same.”

“I’m glad of it, boy, because I don’t want what the Germans call a dummkopf to help me. I see; I must volunteer my information. To begin with then, that disc of glass is – ”

“For the speculum,” said Tom eagerly; “and you’re going to polish it.”

“Wrong. That’s only for the tool. The other is for the speculum, and we are going to grind it upon the tool.”

He turned to the other flat disc of ground-glass, where it lay upon a piece of folded blanket upon a bench under the window, and laid his head upon it.

“Doesn’t look much, does it, Tom?” he said.

“No, uncle.”

“And I’m afraid that all we have to go through may seem rather uninteresting to you.”

“Oh no, uncle; it will be very interesting to make a telescope.”

“I hope you will feel it so, boy, for you do not stand where I do, so you must set your young imagination to work. For my part, do you know what I can see in that dull flat piece of glass?”

Tom shook his head.

“Some of the greatest wonders of creation, boy. I can look forward and see it finished, and bringing to our eyes the sun with its majestic spots and ruddy corona, fierce with blazing heat so great that it is beyond our comprehension; the cold, pale, dead, silver moon, with its hundreds of old ring-plains and craters, scored and seamed, and looking to be only a few hundred miles away instead of two hundred and forty thousand; Jupiter with its four moons – perhaps we shall see the fifth – its belts and great red spot as it whirls round in space; brilliant Venus, with her changes like our moon; bright little Mercury; Saturn, with his disc-like ring, his belts and satellites; leaden-looking Neptune; ruddy Mars; the stars that look to us of a night bright points of light, opened out by that optic glass, and shown to be double, triple, and quadruple. Then too the different misty nebulas; the comets and the different-coloured stars – white, blue, and green. In short, endless wonders, my boy, such as excite, awe, and teach us how grand, how vast is the universe in which our tiny world goes spinning round. Come, boy, do you think you can feel interested in all this, or will you find it dry?”

“Dry, uncle! Oh!” panted Tom, with his eyes flashing with eagerness, “it sounds glorious.”

“It is glorious, my boy; and you who have read your Arabian Nights, and stories of magicians and their doings, will have to own that our piece of dull glass will grow into a power that shall transcend infinitely anything the imagination of any storyteller ever invented. Now, what do you say? for I must not preach any more.”

“Say, uncle!” cried Tom. “Let’s begin at once!”

“I beg pardon, sir,” said a pleasant voice; “but would you mind having a bell made to ring right in here?”

“No, Mrs Fidler,” said Uncle Richard; “we will lay down iron pipes underground to make a speaking-tube, so that you can call when you want me. What is it – lunch?”