The huge water-wheel in the mill by Warren House went slowly round and
round, grinding the corn. The ancient walls of the mill trembled under
the ponderous motion, trembled but stood firm, as they had for
centuries; so well did the monks see that their workmen mixed their
mortar and dressed their stone in the days of the old world. A dull
rumbling sound came from the chinks in the boarding that sheltered the
wheel from the weather; a sound that could only be caused by an enormous
mass in movement. Looking through into the semi-darkness, a heaving
monster, black and direful, rolled continually past, threatening, as it
seemed, to crush the life out of those who ventured within reach, as the
stones within crushed form and shape out of the yellow wheat--the
individual grain ground into the general powder. Yet the helpless corn
by degrees wore away the solid adamant of its oppressor. Under the
bowed apple-tree, clothed with moss, hard by, stood a millstone, grey
and discoloured by the weather, thus rendered useless by the very corn
it had so relentlessly annihilated.
Old Andrew Fisher sat at the mullioned western window of the house that
stood higher up above the mill-pond, listening drowsily to the distant
clack of the hopper. The mill, the manor-house, and many hundred fair
acres of meadow and ploughed land and sheep-walk on the Down behind were
his, and had been his forefathers' down from the days of the last Harry.
More than one fair fortune had the mill ground out for them in the
generations past; money--accumulated coin by coin, like the grains that
together fill the bushel--accumulated by one and dissipated by the next.
If report spoke truly, still another fortune had slowly piled itself up
in Andrew's withered hand--weak in its grasp on his staff, but firm in
its grasp on gold. Rich as he was known to be, he lived in the rude old
way, spoke in the old rude tongue, and seemingly thought the old rude
thought. His beehive chair was drawn up close to the open window, so
that the light air of the hot summer afternoon might wander in and
refresh him.
High up in the cloudless azure, the swift, extending his wings like a
black crescent, slid to and fro; the swallows, mere white specks in the
dizzy blue, wheeled in ceaseless circles.
For ninety seasons, as man and boy--for three generations of thirty
years each--had Andrew looked from that window. There he played in his
childhood; there he rested from his labours in the time of manhood;
there he sat in his old age. The deep gashes he had made with his first
boy's clasp-knife still showed in the edge of the oaken window-seat.
They were cut when the First Napoleon was winning his earlier victories.
There on the seat he had drummed with his knuckles--one heavy knock
with the left hand, then two with the right in quick succession, and an
inch apart on the board to change the sound, imitating the noise of the
mill. Thence he had noted the changing seasons and the cycle of the
years.
Ninety times the snowdrop had hung her white flower under the sheltering
wall. For ninety springs the corncrake's monotonous cry had resounded
in the mowing-grass. The cuckoo came and went; the swallows sailed for
the golden sands of the south; the leaves, brown and orange and crimson,
dropped and died; the plover whistled over the uplands; the rain beat
with pitiless fury against the pane, and swept before the howling blast
along the fallow, ninety times.
Hard as his own nether millstone was the heart of Andrew Fisher. The
green buds of spring, the flowers of summer, the fruits of autumn, the
dead leaves of winter--all the beauty and the glory of nigh on a century
touched him not. Unchanged at heart still, like the everlasting hills
around him. But even they bear flowers--ling, loved by the bees, and
thyme.
As flower and bird and leaf came and went, so the strong men with whom
he had battled in his rude youth flitted away one by one to the meads of
asphodel, but did not return in the spring. The carter whom he had
partly blinded by a blow from his whip-handle, which injured an eyeball;
the plough-boy he rode over and lamed; the fogger whose leg he broke
with a kick in the old, old days, when brute force ruled irresponsibly
on the wild hills--they slept peacefully under the greensward and the
daisy. No more their weary bones would ache in the rain and snow; no
more their teeth would grind the hard crust of toil. So, too, the old
boon companions dropped away. Squire Thorpe--not the present, but the
ancient one of evil days, wild and headstrong--was still enough at last
in the vault under the chancel. He could swear and drink no more, nor
fight a main of cocks every Sunday afternoon on his dining-room table.
With his horny stiffened fingers Andrew could count up the houses in the
hamlet at the Warren; there was not one that the hearse had not emptied.
The hamlet of his youth had passed away. It is the aged that should
see ghosts; there should be a spectre in every chair. The big black
horse that carried him in the mad steeplechase at Millbourne--still
talked of by the country-side--and in many a run with the Hunt in the
vale, lay eight feet deep in the garden, and a damson-tree had grown
over him.
Ninety times; and the scythe was busy in the grass, and the corn would
soon turn colour yet once more.
Peggy was dead too--nut-brown Peggy, with her sloe-black eyes,
_retroussee_ nose, and mischievous mouth, who had reaped and gleaned and
garnered her master's evil passion among convolvulus and poppy. Sweet
Peggy, cast aside like the threshed-out straw, crushed, and broken, the
light gone out in her eye, had forgotten her misery now the yew dropped
its red berries on her resting-place. Fifty guineas, a heavy bribe in
those days, the bailiff took to marry her. What a ghastly farce was
celebrated that morn before God's holy altar! But the vicar's bulbous
lips, that uttered those solemn words and jested, shall dip no more in
the rosy wine they loved. He broke his neck when his horse fell at the
double mound; but Andrew lives still. Peggy's boy, chained to the
plough like a born serf, but full of his real father's fiery spirit,
poached and stole, and worse, and at last laid his bones in the
Australian gold rush.
Ninety times; and yet once more the wheat came on apace.
And Annica, Andrew's wife, cursed and beaten and bruised; and Andrew the
younger, his lawful son, and Alice _his_ wife, who were treated as dogs,
and wore out their lives up at the farmstead farther in the hills: in
Millbourne churchyard the moss has grown over their names graven on the
sides of the great square tomb. May, their child, alone lived, a blithe
and gentle creature, dreading her grim grandfather, only breathing
freely when she could get away down to Greene Ferne, yet trying and
schooling herself to love him; but hating Jane, the old snuff-taking
housekeeper, as intensely as so affectionate a nature could hate
anything.
Yet once more the swallows were wheeling in the summer air.
On the keystone of the porch was chiselled Anno 15--; the other figures
effaced, but cut some time in the century that saw the Armada. A vast,
rambling, many-gabled, red-tiled building, with vines and cherries
trained against the grey walls, and honeysuckle creeping about the
porch. The steep Downs rose behind, barely a gunshot distant; from
Andrew's window there was an open view of the vale. The pool almost
surrounded the garden--part moat, part fishpond, part mill-pool--and was
crossed by a wooden bridge. There the moorhens swam and threw up their
white-marked tails as they thrust their beaks under water; the timid
dab-chick, which no familiarity with man can reassure, dived at the
faintest footstep; the pike basked in the sunshine warming his cold
blood, and the sturdy perch with tremulous tail faced the slow stream.
By the stones of the sluice dark-green ferns flourished exceedingly.
The sheep crept along the steep coombe-side cropping the short sweet
grass; the shepherd sat on the edge and cut his own and his sweetheart's
name in the turf. Time was when Andrew could run up the hill there
light as a hare. Now his slow walk, hard bearing on blackthorn staff,
in summer went no farther than the green before the porch, where the
sundial stood with the motto on its brazen face, bidding men to number
none but the happy hours, and to forget the dark and shadowy--a bitter
mockery at fourscore and ten. In winter he crept twice or thrice a day
across the courtyard to the barn, where, despite steam, he kept three
old men at work on the threshing-floor--not for charity, but because he
liked to listen to the knock-knock of the flails.
Ever round and round, without haste and without rest, went the massive
wheel in the mill--ceaseless as the revolving firmament--to the clack of
the noisy hopper and creak of the iron gudgeons, and the flousing splash
of the mill-race. Hard as his own nether millstone was the heart of
Andrew Fisher: does time soften the gnarled stem of the oak?
So he sat by the open window in his beehive chair that summer afternoon
drowsily listening to the mill. In the window was the escutcheon of his
family in coloured glass, and the name "Fischere" in old-fashioned
letters. Fishere of the Warren was fined one hundred pounds as a noted
malignant in the days of fear and trembling that followed Worcester
fight.
The shadow stole forward on the dial, and there came the dull hollow
sound of horse's hoofs passing over the wooden bridge. Presently Jane
the housekeeper, who, by virtue of her necessity to him in his
infirmities, used no ceremony nor courtesy of speech, came in.
"There be a paason wants to see thee," said she.
No answer.
"Dost hear?"
A grunt.
"Wake up!"--shaking him.
He struck at her with his blackthorn that ever lay between his knees.
"Thee nistn't hoopy at I--I can hyar as well as thee," he growled.
"A paason wants to see thee."
"Axe un in."
"Come in, you!" shouted the old hag, without going to the door. "Shall
I put thee jug away?" This to Andrew, and meaning the jug of weak
gin-and-water which he kept constantly by him to sip.
"Let un bide."
Felix St Bees came into the room. He had ridden up to ask for the hand
of May, his darling. It was not a reception to encourage a lover.
"Good afternoon, sir," said Felix.
"Arternoon to ee." To Jane, "Who be it?"
"Dunno."
"What's your wull wi' I?"
"I want a little private conversation with you, sir."
"Get out, you!" to the ancient hag, who reluctantly walked from the
room, but left the door ajar.
"Wull ee shut the door?"
Felix went and closed it. "This is a fine old house," he began, trying
to get _en rapport_ before opening his mission.
"Aw, eez."
"And a beautiful view."
"Mebbe."
"You have had great experience of life, sir."
"Likely zo."
Andrew had had a good education in his youth, but lapsed two generations
ago into broad provincialism. Now it had got about (as such things
will) that Andrew was backing Val Browne's dark horse heavily, and May
was anxious about her grandfather's intercourse with the trainer, who,
except in his employer's eyes, was far from perfect. She dreaded lest
he should be cheated and lose the money--not so much for the sake of the
amount, but because at his age and with his terrible temper it was
impossible to say what effect it might have upon his health. So Felix,
as a clergyman, wished to warn the aged man; but a little nervous (as
might be pardoned under the circumstances) he did not, perhaps, go about
it the right way.
"And you have seen, sir, how uncertain everything is--even the crops."
"Wheat be vine to year."
"Well, even your mill-wheel stops sometimes from accidents, I suppose."
"Aw, a' reckon ull last my time. Wull ee drenk?"
"No, thank you. The fact is I'm anxious to warn you about betting on
Mr Browne's horse. _He_ is upright--but--"
"Hum!"
In the depths of his beehive chair the glitter of the old man's grey eye
was not observed by Felix.
"As you cannot get about and see for yourself, it seemed my duty to say
something--for Miss Fisher's sake."
"Aw!" ominously low and deep.
"I say for Miss Fisher's sake, because I am in hopes, with your
permission, to visit her as her--her future husband, and as I am sure
her happiness and--"
Crash!
The blackthorn whizzed by St Bees' head and smashed the jug on the
table.
"Jim! Bill! Jane! Jack!" shouted the old man, starting out of his
chair, purple in the face. "Drow this veller out! Douse un in th'
hog-vault! Thee nimity-pimity odd-me-dod! [Little contemptible
scarecrow] I warn thee'd like my money! Drot thee and thee wench!"
Poor Felix could do nothing but beat a retreat with half a dozen
grinning chawbacons watching him over the bridge. On hearing their
master's angry voice in the porch, they ran together from the rick-yard
in the rear. For some distance Felix could hear the old man howling and
telling the men to "zet th' dogs at un." When he got fairly out of
sight of the mill his indignation disappeared in his sense of the
ludicrous, and he burst into a hearty fit of laughter, and then sobered
down again. "For," thought he, "it is a wholesome doctrine--reverence
for old age; and yet how little there is to revere! Ask this aged man's
advice--you would suppose he would tell you of the vanity of the world,
and instruct you to turn your mind to higher things. Not at all; he
would say, `Get money; dismiss all generous feelings: get money.' In
the last decade of a century of life his avarice prompts him to risk
heavy sums on this horse. But I must write and explain that _I_ do not
want his hoards."
Calling at Greene Ferne on the way home to see May, he found everyone
discussing the attitude of the labourers on the farm, who seemed
inclined to neglect the haymaking, or even to leave it altogether. As
the weather was fine and a large quantity of grass had been cut, it was
a serious matter. Next morning Geoffrey Newton called on Felix at his
cottage in Kingsbury to tell him that the men had actually struck work,
and that Mrs Estcourt was anxious for his advice. For Felix, besides
being a friend, was known to possess great influence among the working
classes. Kingsbury town, though situate in the midst of a purely
agricultural country, and not more than four or five miles distant from
the oaks at Greene Ferne, was the seat of a certain manufacturing
industry, which had immensely increased its population. It was the high
wages paid in the factories and workshops there that made the
agricultural labourers discontented; many walked miles daily to and fro
to receive them. There was unfortunately a reverse side to the medal,
for the overcrowded town had become notorious for disease, drunkenness,
and misery. Now this was why Felix, with many opportunities of
preferment, chose to remain a simple curate, in order that he might work
among that grimy and boisterous people. Rude and brutal as they were,
the little figure in black penetrated everywhere without risk, and was
treated with the utmost respect.
It chanced to be his morning for visiting certain purlieus, so Geoffrey
went with him. They were to go over to Greene Ferne in the evening.
Down in the back streets they found that Melting-Pot, the pewter
tankard, in full operation. Men and women were busy keeping it full,
while their children, with naked feet, played in the gutter among the
refuse of the dust heap, decayed cabbage, mangy curs, and filth. The
ancient alchemists travailed to transmute the baser metals into gold; in
these days whole townships are at work transmuting gold and silver into
pewter. All the iron foundries, patent blasts, and Bessemer processes
in the world cannot equal the melting power of the pewter tankard. When
honest labour takes its well-earned draught it is one thing, or when
friendship shares the glass; but the drinking for drinking's sake is
another. Side by side with the Melting-Pot the furniture marts did a
roaring business--marts where everything is sold, from a towel-horse to
a piano or a cockatoo--sold beyond recall, all in the way of trade, and
therefore quite legitimately. Is it not strange that while the law
imposes fine and penalty on the pawnbroker, and strict supervision, the
furniture mart, where the wretched drunkard's goods are sold for ever,
seems to flourish without let or hindrance? "Money advanced on goods
for absolute sale," is the notice prominently displayed, which to the
poor artisan, being interpreted, reads, "`Walk into my parlour,' says
the spider to the fly." Geoffrey, who had been to Australia, found he
was mistaken in thinking that he had seen the world. There were things
here, close to the sweet fields of lovely England, not to be surpassed
in the darkest corners of the earth. At the end of a new street hastily
"run up cheap" and "scamped," they found a large black pool, once a pond
in the meadow, now a slough of all imaginable filth, at whose
precipitous edge the roadway stopped abruptly, without rail, fence, or
wall. Little children playing hare and hounds, heedless of their steps,
fell in, and came out gasping, almost choked with foul mud. Drunken men
staggered in occasionally, and came out stiff, ghastly, with slime in
the greedy mouths that had gorged at the Melting-Pot. Yet this horrible
slough was on the very verge of beauty; it was the edge and outpost of
the town. Across this dark pit were green meadows, hawthorn hedges, and
trees. The sweet breeze played against the dead red brick; odours of
clover were blown against the windows; rooks came over now and then with
their noisy caw-cawing. Shamefully "scamped" was the row of six-roomed
houses--doors that warped and would not shut, and so on. Upstairs, in
one of these, they found a tall young fellow lying on his bed in the
middle of the summer day. The sickly fetid smell of the close room told
of long confinement. Poor fellow, he had been sore beset; unmarried,
untended; no woman to potter about him, nursed anyhow, only the strength
of his constitution carried him through; and now he lay there, weak and
helpless, in spirit all but dead, as strong men are after tedious
illness. A mass of iron had fallen on his leg in one of the factories
some time before, as it was supposed through the carelessness of a
fellow-workman not recovered from his weekly orgie of drink. The sturdy
limb, though it had long ago united, was still feeble in the extreme.
His dull eye lit up when he saw them.
"You bean't from Millbourne, be you?" he said.
"We know many there," said Felix.
"I thaut perhaps uncle Jabez had found me out and sent ee. Do you knaw
uncle Jabez, as works at Greene Ferne?"
"I recollect the shepherd," said Geoffrey.
"I wur under-shepherd thur till I took to factory work. Look at them
lambs thur!"
They looked out of the window. Beneath, the green fields came right up
to the dead brick wall. Away, some fifty yards distant, stood an
enormous pollard oak, its vast gnarled root coiled round just above the
earth, forming a broad ledge about the trunk. Half a dozen lambs were
chasing each other, frisking round and round the rim, glad in the summer
sunshine.
"Look at um," said the whilom shepherd, "an' I be choked for aair."
"Why not open the window?"
"He wunt open."
They examined it; the sashes were shams, _not made to open_. Neither
was there a fireplace; the man was poisoned with the exhalations from
his own weak frame.
"This is dreadful," said Geoffrey. "Is there no law--"
"Law enough," said Felix, bitterly; "but who troubles to enforce it for
the sake of--a navvy? Why are crowded places sinks of misery and crime?
For want of a Master, like the colonel of a regiment. It makes me sigh
for a despot."
"I'd a' smashed un fast enough," said the shepherd, "if I'd a-dared; but
thaay ud 'a turned me out into the street, an' I couldn't abear the
workuss. Is ould Fisher dead yet, zur?"
St Bees was busy with his penknife cutting away the putty, and did not
for the moment answer. The pane came out speedily, and the breeze came
in with a rush, and with it a bee that buzzed round and went forth
again, and a scent of new-made hay, and the "Baa--maa" of the lambs, and
behind it all the low roar of the railway and the factories.
"What did you say about Fisher?" asked Felix, turning.
"Be a' dead yet, th' cussed old varmint?"
"Hush, hush! whom do you mean?"
"I means ould Fisher of Warren Mill. He be my grandfeyther. Mebbe you
minds Peggy Moulding, what married th' bailie? Hur wur my granny. My
feyther died in Australia. Th' cussed ould varmint--a' let us all
starve; he got sacks a' gold. I wants to hear as th' devil have got
un."
"You must not bear malice," said Felix; but being a man as well as a
clergyman, he halted there. The contrast was too great. He thought of
the brutal miser on the hills.
"I wants to get back to Greene Ferne," said the invalid. "Do you knaw
Mrs Estcourt? Hur be a nice ooman; a' wunder ef hur ud have me agen.
Wull ee axe hur?"
"I'll ask her," said Geoffrey. "I'm sure she will, though the men are
on strike there now."
"Be um? Lord, what vools! I wants to get back to shepherding. Axe
uncle Jabez ef I med come to his place and bide wi' he a bit. I thenks
I should get better among the trees. I could a'most drag a rake, bless
'ee, now ef I had some vittels."
"You shall have food," said Felix, "and we will get you back to the
hamlet." This poor fellow, rude as he was--so pathetically ignorant as
to suppose, as ignorant people do, that strangers understood his private
affairs--was in a sense distantly related to his darling May, and thus
had a more than common claim upon him.
In the afternoon they went over to Greene Ferne, and Mrs Estcourt at
once sent a trap for the injured man. His uncle Jabez, the shepherd,
was greatly concerned, and ready to receive him. Yet, with the curious
apathy of the poor, he had made no inquiries about him previously.