“You seem astonished,” she said, just after we had passed a mill2 which spanned all the stream save the waterway for traffic, but which was as beautiful in its way as a Gothic cathedral—“You seem astonished at this being so pleasant to look at.”
“Yes,” I said, “in a way I am; though I don’t see why it should not be.”
“Ah!” she said, looking at me admiringly, yet with a lurking smile in her face, “you know all about the history of the past. Were they not always careful about this little stream which now adds so much pleasantness to the country side? It would always be easy to manage this little river. Ah! I forgot, though,” she said, as her eye caught mine, “in the days we are thinking of pleasure was wholly neglected in such matters. But how did they manage the river in the days that you—” Lived in she was going to say; but correcting herself, said—“in the days of which you have record?”
“They mismanaged it,” quoth I. “Up to the first half of the nineteenth century, when it was still more or less of a highway for the country people, some care was taken of the river and its banks; and though I don’t suppose anyone troubled himself about its aspect, yet it was trim and beautiful. But when the railways—of which no doubt you have heard—came into power, they would not allow the people of the country to use either the natural or artificial waterways, of which latter there were a great many. I suppose when we get higher up we shall see one of these; a very important one, which one of these railways entirely closed to the public, so that they might force people to send their goods by their private road, and so tax them as heavily as they could.”
Ellen laughed heartily. “Well,” she said, “that is not stated clearly enough in our history-books, and it is worth knowing. But certainly the people of those days must have been a curiously lazy set. We are not either fidgety or quarrelsome now, but if anyone tried such a piece of folly on us, we should use the said waterways, whoever gainsaid us; surely that would be simple enough. However, I remember other cases of this stupidity. When I was on the Rhine two years ago, I remember they showed us ruins of old castles, which, according to what we heard, must have been made for pretty much the same purpose as the railways were. But I am interrupting your history of the river; pray go on.”
“It is both short and stupid enough,” said I. “The river having lost its practical or commercial value—that is, being of no use to make money of—”
She nodded. “I understand what that queer phrase means,” said she. “Go on!”
“Well, it was utterly neglected, till at last it became a nuisance—”
“Yes,” quoth Ellen, “I understand—like the railways and the robber knights. Yes?”
“So then they turned the makeshift business on to it, and handed it over to a body up in London, who from time to time, in order to show that they had something to do, did some damage here and there—cut down trees, destroying the banks thereby; dredged the river (where it was not needed always), and threw the dredgings on the fields so as to spoil them; and so forth. But for the most part they practised ‘masterly inactivity,’ as it was then called—that is, they drew their salaries, and let things alone.”
“Drew their salaries,” she said. “I know that means that they were allowed to take an extra lot of other people’s goods for doing nothing. And if that had been all, it really might have been worth while to let them do so, if you couldn’t find any other way of keeping them quiet; but it seems to me that being so paid, they could not help doing something, and that something was bound to be mischief—because,” said she, kindling with sudden anger, “the whole business was founded on lies and false pretensions. I don’t mean only these river-guardians, but all these master-people I have read of.”
“Yes,” said I, “how happy you are to have got out of the parsimony of oppression!”
“Why do you sigh?” she said, kindly and somewhat anxiously. “You seem to think that it will not last?”
“It will last for you,” quoth I.
“But why not for you?” said she. “Surely it is for all the world; and if your country is somewhat backward, it will come into line before long. Or,” she said quickly, “are you thinking that you must soon go back again? I will make my proposal which I told you of at once, and so perhaps put an end to your anxiety. I was going to propose that you should live with us where we are going. I feel quite old friends with you, and should be sorry to lose you.” Then she smiled on me, and said: “Do you know, I begin to suspect you of wanting to nurse a sham sorrow, like the ridiculous characters in some of those queer old novels that I have come across now and then.”
I really had almost begun to suspect it myself, but I refused to admit so much; so I sighed no more, but fell to giving my delightful companion what little pieces of history I knew about the river and its borderlands; and the time passed pleasantly enough; and between the two of us (she was a better sculler than I was, and seemed quite tireless) we kept up fairly well with Dick, hot as the afternoon was, and swallowed up the way at a great rate. At last we passed under another ancient bridge; and through meadows
