Year after year went away into nothing, with great explosions and
outcries in the cities on the plain; red revolt springing up and being
suppressed in blood, battle swaying hither and thither, patient
astronomers in observatory towers picking out and christening new stars,
plays being performed in lighted theatres, people being carried into
hospitals on stretchers, and all the usual turmoil and agitation of
men's lives in crowded centres. Up in Will's valley only the winds and
seasons made an epoch; the fish hung in the swift stream, the birds
circled overhead, the pine-tops rustled underneath the stars, the tall
hills stood over all; and Will went to and fro, minding his wayside inn,
until the snow began to thicken on his head. His heart was young and
vigorous; and if his pulses kept a sober time, they still beat strong
and steady in his wrists. He carried a ruddy stain on either cheek, like
a ripe apple; he stooped a little, but his step was still firm; and his
sinewy hands were reached out to all men with a friendly pressure. His
face was covered with those wrinkles which are got in open air, and
which, rightly looked at, are no more than a sort of permanent
sunburning; such wrinkles heighten the stupidity of stupid faces; but to
a person like Will, with his clear eyes and smiling mouth, only give
another charm by testifying to a simple and easy life. His talk was full
of wise sayings. He had a taste for other people; and other people had a
taste for him. When the valley was full of tourists in the season, there
were merry nights in Will's arbour; and his views, which seemed
whimsical to his neighbours, were often enough admired by learned people
out of towns and colleges. Indeed, he had a very noble old age, and grew
daily better known; so that his fame was heard of in the cities of the
plain; and young men who had been summer travellers spoke together in
_cafés_ of Will o' the Mill and his rough philosophy. Many and many an
invitation, you may be sure, he had; but nothing could tempt him from
his upland valley. He would shake his head and smile over his
tobacco-pipe with a deal of meaning. "You come too late," he would
answer. "I am a dead man now: I have lived and died already. Fifty years
ago you would have brought my heart into my mouth; and now you do not
even tempt me. But that is the object of long living, that man should
cease to care about life." And again: "There is only one difference
between a long life and a good dinner: that, in the dinner, the sweets
come last." Or once more: "When I was a boy, I was a bit puzzled, and
hardly knew whether it was myself or the world that was curious and
worth looking into. Now, I know it is myself, and stick to that."
He never showed any symptoms of frailty, but kept stalwart and firm to
the last; but they say he grew less talkative towards the end, and would
listen to other people by the hour in an amused and sympathetic silence.
Only, when he did speak, it was more to the point and more charged with
old experience. He drank a bottle of wine gladly; above all, at sunset
on the hilltop or quite late at night under the stars in the arbour. The
sight of something attractive and unattainable seasoned his enjoyment,
he would say; and he professed he had lived long enough to admire a
candle all the more when he could compare it with a planet.
One night, in his seventy-second year, he awoke in bed, in such
uneasiness of body and mind that he arose and dressed himself and went
out to meditate in the arbour. It was pitch dark, without a star; the
river was swollen, and the wet woods and meadows loaded the air with
perfume. It had thundered during the day, and it promised more thunder
for the morrow. A murky, stifling night for a man of seventy-two!
Whether it was the weather or the wakefulness, or some little touch of
fever in his old limbs, Will's mind was besieged by tumultuous and
crying memories. His boyhood, the night with the fat young man, the
death of his adopted parents, the summer days with Marjory, and many of
those small circumstances, which seem nothing to another, and are yet
the very gist of a man's own life to himself--things seen, words heard,
looks misconstrued--arose from their forgotten corners and usurped his
attention. The dead themselves were with him, not merely taking part in
this thin show of memory that defiled before his brain, but revisiting
his bodily senses as they do in profound and vivid dreams. The fat young
man leaned his elbows on the table opposite; Marjory came and went with
an apronful of flowers between the garden and the arbour; he could hear
the old parson knocking out his pipe or blowing his resonant nose. The
tide of his consciousness ebbed and flowed: he was sometimes half-asleep
and drowned in his recollections of the past; and sometimes he was broad
awake, wondering at himself. But about the middle of the night he was
startled by the voice of the dead miller calling to him out of the house
as he used to do on the arrival of custom. The hallucination was so
perfect that Will sprang from his seat and stood listening for the
summons to be repeated; and as he listened he became conscious of
another noise besides the brawling of the river and the ringing in his
feverish ears. It was like the stir of the horses and the creaking of
harness, as though a carriage with an impatient team had been brought up
upon the road before the courtyard gate. At such an hour, upon this
rough and dangerous pass, the supposition was no better than absurd; and
Will dismissed it from his mind, and resumed his seat upon the arbour
chair; and sleep closed over him again like running water. He was once
again awakened by the dead miller's call, thinner and more spectral than
before; and once again he heard the noise of an equipage upon the road.
And so thrice and four times, the same dream, or the same fancy,
presented itself to his senses: until at length, smiling to himself as
when one humours a nervous child, he proceeded towards the gate to set
his uncertainty at rest.
From the arbour to the gate was no great distance, and yet it took Will
some time; it seemed as if the dead thickened around him in the court,
and crossed his path at every step. For, first, he was suddenly
surprised by an overpowering sweetness of heliotropes; it was as if his
garden had been planted with this flower from end to end, and the hot,
damp night had drawn forth all their perfumes in a breath. Now the
heliotrope had been Marjory's favourite flower, and since her death not
one of them had ever been planted in Will's ground.
"I must be going crazy," he thought. "Poor Marjory and her heliotropes!"
And with that he raised his eyes towards the window that had once been
hers. If he had been bewildered before, he was now almost terrified; for
there was a light in the room; the window was an orange oblong as of
yore; and the corner of the blind was lifted and let fall as on the
night when he stood and shouted to the stars in his perplexity. The
illusion only endured an instant; but it left him somewhat unmanned,
rubbing his eyes and staring at the outline of the house and the black
night behind it. While he thus stood, and it seemed as if he must have
stood there quite a long time, there came a renewal of the noises on the
road; and he turned in time to meet a stranger, who was advancing to
meet him across the court. There was something like the outline of a
great carriage discernible on the road behind the stranger, and, above
that, a few black pine-tops, like so many plumes.
"Master Will?" asked the new-comer, in brief military fashion.
"That same, sir," answered Will. "Can I do anything to serve you?"
"I have heard you much spoken of, Master Will," returned the other;
"much spoken of, and well. And though I have both hands full of
business, I wish to drink a bottle of wine with you in your arbour.
Before I go, I shall introduce myself."
Will led the way to the trellis, and got a lamp lighted and a bottle
uncorked. He was not altogether unused to such complimentary interviews,
and hoped little enough from this one, being schooled by many
disappointments. A sort of cloud had settled on his wits and prevented
him from remembering the strangeness of the hour. He moved like a
person in his sleep; and it seemed as if the lamp caught fire and the
bottle came uncorked with the facility of thought. Still, he had some
curiosity about the appearance of his visitor, and tried in vain to turn
the light into his face; either he handled the lamp clumsily, or there
was a dimness over his eyes, but he could make out little more than a
shadow at table with him. He stared and stared at this shadow, as he
wiped out the glasses, and began to feel cold and strange about the
heart. The silence weighed upon him, for he could hear nothing now, not
even the river, but the drumming of his own arteries in his ears.
"Here's to you," said the stranger roughly.
"Here is my service, sir," replied Will, sipping his wine, which somehow
tasted oddly.
"I understand you are a very positive fellow," pursued the stranger.
Will made answer with a smile of some satisfaction and a little nod.
"So am I," continued the other; "and it is the delight of my heart to
tramp on people's corns. I will have nobody positive but myself; not
one. I have crossed the whims, in my time, of kings and generals and
great artists. And what would you say," he went on, "if I had come up
here on purpose to cross yours?"
Will had it on his tongue to make a sharp rejoinder; but the politeness
of an old innkeeper prevailed; and he held his peace and made answer
with a civil gesture of the hand.
"I have," said the stranger. "And if I did not hold you in a particular
esteem I should make no words about the matter. It appears you pride
yourself on staying where you are. You mean to stick by your inn. Now I
mean you shall come for a turn with me in my barouche; and before this
bottle's empty, so you shall."
"That would be an odd thing, to be sure," replied Will, with a chuckle.
"Why, sir, I have grown here like an old oak-tree; the Devil himself
could hardly root me up: and for all I perceive you are a very
entertaining old gentleman, I would wager you another bottle you lose
your pains with me."
The dimness of Will's eyesight had been increasing all this while; but
he was somehow conscious of a sharp and chilling scrutiny which
irritated and yet overmastered him.
"You need not think," he broke out suddenly, in an explosive, febrile
manner that startled and alarmed himself, "that I am a stay-at-home,
because I fear anything under God. God knows I am tired enough of it
all; and when the times comes for a longer journey than ever you dream
of, I reckon I shall find myself prepared."
The stranger emptied his glass and pushed it away from him. He looked
down for a little, and then, leaning over the table, tapped Will three
times upon the forearm with a single finger. "The time has come!" he
said solemnly.
An ugly thrill spread from the spot he touched. The tones of his voice
were dull and startling, and echoed strangely in Will's heart.
"I beg your pardon," he said, with some discomposure. "What do you
mean?"
"Look at me, and you will find your eyesight swim. Raise your hand; it
is dead-heavy. This is your last bottle of wine, Master Will, and your
last night upon the earth."
"You are a doctor?" quavered Will.
"The best that ever was," replied the other; "for I cure both mind and
body with the same prescription. I take away all pain and I forgive all
sins; and where my patients have gone wrong in life, I smooth out all
complications and set them free again upon their feet."
"I have no need of you," said Will.
"A time comes for all men, Master Will," replied the doctor, "when the
helm is taken out of their hands. For you, because you were prudent and
quiet, it has been long of coming, and you have had long to discipline
yourself for its reception. You have seen what is to be seen about your
mill; you have sat close all your days like a hare in its form; but now
that is at an end; and," added the doctor, getting on his feet, "you
must arise and come with me."
"You are a strange physician," said Will, looking steadfastly upon his
guest.
"I am a natural law," he replied, "and people call me Death."
"Why did you not tell me so at first?" cried Will. "I have been waiting
for you these many years. Give me your hand, and welcome."
"Lean upon my arm," said the stranger, "for already your strength
abates. Lean on me heavily as you need; for though I am old, I am very
strong. It is but three steps to my carriage, and there all your trouble
ends. Why, Will," he added, "I have been yearning for you as if you were
my own son; and of all the men that ever I came for in my long days, I
have come for you most gladly. I am caustic, and sometimes offend people
at first sight; but I am a good friend at heart to such as you."
"Since Marjory was taken," returned Will, "I declare before God you were
the only friend I had to look for."
So the pair went arm-in-arm across the courtyard.
One of the servants awoke about this time and heard the noise of horses
pawing before he dropped asleep again; all down the valley that night
there was a rushing as of a smooth and steady wind descending towards
the plain; and when the world rose next morning, sure enough Will o' the
Mill had gone at last upon his travels.