World’s End

Book I

Facts

I

It is not generally known that the mighty city of Stirmingham owes its existence to a water-rat. Stirmingham has a population of half a million, and is the workshop of the earth. It is a proud city, and its pressmen have traced its origin back into the dim vista of the past, far before Alfred the Great’s time, somewhere in the days of those monarchs who came from Troy, and whose deeds Holinshed so minutely chronicles.

But this is all trash and nonsense, and is a cunning device of the able editors aforesaid, who confound—for their own purposes—the city proper with the tiny hamlet of Wolf’s Glow. This little village or cluster of houses, which now forms a part, and the dirtiest part, of the city, can indeed be traced through Hundred Rolls, Domesday Book, and Saxon Charters, almost down to the time of the Romans. But Stirmingham, the prosperous and proud Stirmingham, which thinks that the world could not exist without its watches and guns, its plated goods, its monster factories and mills, which sends cargoes to Timbuktu, and supplies Java and Malabar with idols—this vast place, whose nickname is a byword for cheating, for fair outward show and no real solidity, owes its existence to a water-rat. This is a fact. And it happened in this way.

Once upon a time there was a wide expanse of utterly useless land, flat as this sheet of paper, without a trace of subsoil or any kind of earth in which so much as a blade of grass could grow. It was utterly dry and sterile—not a tree nor a shrub to shelter a cow or a horse, and all men avoided it as a waste and desolate place. It was the very abomination of desolation, and no one would have been surprised to have seen satyrs and other strange creatures diverting themselves thereon. Around one edge of this plain there flowed a brook, so small that one could hardly call it by that name. A dainty lady from Belgravia could have easily stepped across it without soiling the sole of her boot.

At one spot beside this brook there grew a willow tree. This tree was a picture in itself, and would have made the fortune of any artist who would have condescended to make a loving study of it. The trunk had been of very large size, but now resembled a canoe standing upon end, for nearly one half had decayed, and the crumbling wood had disappeared, leaving a hollow stem. The stem was itself dead and decaying, except one thin streak of green, up which the golden sap of life still ran, and invigorated the ancient head of the tree to send forth yellow buds and pointed leaves. Up one side of the hollow trunk an ivy creeper had climbed to the top, and was fast hanging festoons from bough to bough.

In the vast mass of decaying wood at the top or head of the tree a briar had taken root—its seed no doubt dropped by some thrush—and its prickly shoots hung over and drooped to the ground in luxuriance of growth. The hardy fern had also found a lodging here, and its dull green leaves, which they say grow most by moonlight, formed a species of crown to the dying tree.

This willow was the paradise of such birds as live upon insects, for they abounded in the decaying wood; and at the top a wild pigeon had built its nest. As years went by, the willow bent more and more over the brook. The water washing the soil out from between its roots formed a hollow space, where a slight eddy scooped out a deeper hole, in which the vermillion-throated stickleback or minnow disported and watched the mouth of its nest. This eddy also weakened the tree by undermining it at its foundation. The ivy grew thicker till it formed a perfect bush upon the top, and this in the winter afforded a hold for the wind to shake the tree by. The wind would have passed harmlessly through the slender branches, but the ivy, even in winter, the season of storms, left something against which it could rage with effect. Finally came the water-rat.

If Stirmingham objects to owe its origin to a water-rat, it may at least congratulate itself upon the fact that it was a good old English rat—none of your modern parvenu, grey Hanoverian rascals. It was, in fact, before the Norwegian rat, which had been imported in the holds of vessels, had obtained undisputed sway over the country. It had, however, already driven the darker aboriginal inhabitants away from the cultivated places to take refuge in the woods and streams. It is odd that in the animal kingdom also, even in the rat economy, the darker hued race should give way to the lighter. However, as in Stirmingham the smoke is so great that the ladies when they walk abroad carry parasols up to keep the blacks from falling on and disfiguring their complexion, there can after all be no disgrace in the water-rat ancestry.

This dark coloured water-rat, finding his position less and less secure at the adjacent barn on account of the attacks of the grey invaders, one fine day migrated, with Mrs. Rat and all the Master and Missy rats, down to the stream. Peeping and sniffing about for a pleasant retreat, he chose the neighbourhood of the willow tree. I cannot stay here to discuss whether or no he was led to the tree by some mystic beckoning hand—some supernatural presentiment; but to the tree he went, and Stirmingham was founded. Two or three burrows—small round holes—sufficed to house Mr. Rat and his family, but these ran right under the willow, and of course still further weakened it.

In course of time the family flourished exceedingly, and Mr. Rat became a great-great-great-grandpapa to ever so many minor Frisky Tails. These Frisky Tails finding the ancient quarter too much straightened for comfort, began to scratch further tunnels, and succeeded pretty well in opening additional honeycombs, till presently progress was stayed by a root of the tree. Now they had gnawed through and scratched away half a dozen other roots, and never paused to sniff more particularly at this than the others. But it so happened that this root was the one which supplied the green streak up the trunk of the tree with the golden sap of life drawn by mysterious chemical processes from the earth. Frisky Tails gnawed this root asunder, and cut off the supply of sap. The green streak up the trunk withered and died, and the last stay of the willow was gone. It only remained for the first savage southwester of winter to finish the mischief.

The southwester came, and over went the trunk, crash across the brook. At first this was very awkward for the rats, as thereby most of their subterranean dwellings became torn up and exposed. But very soon a geological change occurred.

The tree had fallen obliquely across the stream, and its ponderous head, or top, choked up the bed, or very nearly. The sand and small sticks, leaves, and so on, brought down by the current, filled up the crevices left by the tree, and a perfect dam was formed.

Now, as stated before, the ground thereabout was nearly level, and so worthless in character that no man ever troubled his head about it. No one came to see the dam or remove it. The result was the brook overflowed, and then finding this level plateau, instead of eating out a new channel, it spread abroad, and formed first a good-sized puddle, then a pond, then something like a flood, and, as time went by, a marsh. This marsh extended over a space of ground fully a mile long, and altogether covered some nine hundred acres.

The rats, sagacious creatures, instead of deserting their colony, showed that they possessed that species of wisdom which the Greek sage said was superior to all other knowledge—namely, the knowledge how to turn an evil to a good. Exploring this shallow lake which their carelessness had caused, they found several places still unsubmerged—islands, in fact. To one of these they swam, dug out new catacombs, and being now quite safe from interruption, and protected upon all sides, the Malthusian laws of population had full play, and soon proved its force, for the whole place swarmed with them. The axiom, however, that at the very point when empires are apparently most prosperous, their destruction is near at hand, to some extent applied even to the dominion of the water-rat. They were no longer to be the sole undisturbed possessors.

Arguing a priori, one would have concluded that if this waste land was worthless before, now it was a marsh, and miasmatic vapours arose from it, it would be still more avoided. But the facts were exactly opposite. So soon as ever the water had spread over the level plain, and had well soaked into the sterile soil, there began to spring up tough aquatic grasses, commonly called bull-polls, from a supposed resemblance between their tangled appearance and the rough hair that hangs over the poll of a bull.

These grasses are gregarious—that is to say, they prefer to grow in huge bunches. Each bunch increasing year after year, forms in time a small hillock or tuft, and, the roots spreading and spreading, these hillocks of grass almost covered the lake, leaving only narrow channels of water between. Upon these innumerable frogs and toads crawled up out of the water, and they were the chosen resorts of newts.

In summer time the blue dragonfly wheeled in mazes over them, or, while settled on the stiff blades of grass, looked like a species of blossom. The current of the brook brought down seeds, and soon the tall reed began to rear its slender stem, and rustle its feathery head in the breeze. The sedges came also, and fringed the marsh with a border of green.

Meantime, the root which the rats had gnawed asunder beneath the ancient willow tree, felt the power of spring, and made one more effort. Freed from the incubus of the dead trunk, it threw out a shoot of its own. From this shoot there proceeded other shoots; and, in short, after a while the islands in the marsh became covered with willow trees and osier-beds. The reeds grew apace, and by the time the islands were clothed with willow, the rest of the marsh was occupied by them, saving only the fringe of sedge, and the almost immortal bull-polls, which were as tough as leather, and which nothing could kill.

Now, also, animal life began to people the once-deserted waste. With the sedges came the sedge-warblers; with the willows came the brook-sparrows; and above all, came the wildfowl. The heron stalked to and fro between the bull-polls; the ducks swam in and out; the moorhens took up their residence; and in winter the widgeons and snipes visited the place in myriads.

It was now time for man. And man came. He came first in the person of here and there a cotter, who cut himself a huge bundle of reeds for fuel, to mend his thatch, or litter his pig; then in the person of the poacher—if it could be called poaching to hunt where no one preserved—who, with long-barrelled gun, brass-fitted and flint-locked, brought down half a dozen ducks at once, and then waded in after them.

One day a travelling gypsy tribe came by, and encamped for the night close to the marsh. In this tribe there was a man who, in his way, possessed the genius of Alexander the Great. Alexander chancing to pass a landlocked harbour utterly neglected, saw at a glance its capabilities, and built a city which is renowned to this day.

This gypsy fellow, who was only a gypsy by marriage, saw this unoccupied marsh, with its wildfowl, its fish, and, above all, its willows, and at once fixed upon it as a promising spot.

He was a basket-maker by trade.

He waded in to one of the islets, carrying his infant in his arms, and followed by his wife, who carried his tools. He set up his tent-pole, and in time superseded it with a cottage of sod, roofed with reeds. All day he made baskets of willow and flags, in the evening he shot ducks and widgeon. The baskets he sold in the towns, the ducks he ate. One or two others followed his example.

The gypsy tribe made it a rule to come that way twice a year to purchase the baskets and retail them all over the country. The original settlers had sons, and the sons took possession of other islets, built sod cottages, of wattle-and-daub, and married wives, till there were ten or twelve settlements upon the islands; and these ten or twelve, all in a rude sort of way, gave the chieftainship to the original basket-maker, whose name happened to be Baskette.

These people, in the heart of a midland county, lived almost exactly the life that was led at the same period by the dwellers in the fen countries to the eastward. It was a rude existence, but it was free and independent, and not without a charm to those who had been born and bred in it. Even this unenviable life was, however, to be disturbed. Two mighty giants were preparing, like the ogres in the fairy tales, to eat up the defenceless population. The lid of a certain teakettle had puffed up and down, and Steam had been born. The other ogre was called Legal Rights, and began to bite first.

II

So long as this waste land was tenanted only by the “owl and the bittern,” Legal Rights slumbered. The moment man put his foot upon it the ogre woke up, for it is not permitted to that miserable two-legged creature to rest in peace anywhere in this realm.

The village of Wolf’s Glow was distant about a mile and a quarter from the old willow tree whose fall had dammed up the brook and caused the marsh. The brook, in fact, ran past the village, and supplied more than one farmhouse with water. These farms were of the poorest class—mere stretches of pastureland, and such pasture which a well-fed donkey would despise!

The poorest farm, in appearance at all events, was Wick—a large but tumbledown place, roofed with grey slates, which stood apart from the village. It was the largest house in the place, and yet seemed the most poverty-stricken. The grey slates were falling off. The rooftree had cracked and bent, the lattice windows were broken, and the holes stuffed up with bundles of hay and straw. The garden was choked with weeds, and the very apple trees in the orchard were withering away.

Old Sibbold, the owner and occupier, was detested by the entire village, and by no one more than his two sons. He was a miser, and yet nothing seemed to prosper with him; and pare and save as much as he would he could make no accumulation. His sons were the only labourers he employed, though his farm was the largest thereabouts, and he paid them only in lodging and food, and not much of the latter.

The eldest, Arthur, chafed bitterly under this treatment, for he appears, from the scanty records that remain of him, to have been a lad of spirit and energy.

The second son, James, was of a grosser nature, and his mind was chiefly occupied with eating and drinking. He had an implicit faith in the wealth of his father, and submitted patiently to all these hardships and rough treatment in the hope of ingratiating himself with the old man, and perhaps supplanting Arthur in his will—that is, so far as his money was concerned, for the land, as the villagers said, “went by heirship”—i.e. was entailed—but who would care for such land?