Every manor had its mill, and consequently there is hardly a village
without one. The lord of the manor had certain rights over the mill and
over his tenants, who were required to go to his mill and to no other.
The mill is usually a very picturesque adjunct to the scenery. It is
frequently an old building; it has ancient trees standing round it;
there is the mill-pool, the sluice, the wheel, and the foaming waters
discharged over it.
The miller himself is a genial figure, dusted with flour, his face
lighted up with the consciousness that though all the rest of the
parish may starve, that will not he.
And the miller's cottage is almost always scrupulously clean and
well-kept. I have known many mills, but I never knew a slattern among
miller's wives, never saw a hug-a-mug condition of affairs in the
miller's home.
The miller anciently did not stand over-well with the rest of the
villagers. He ground the corn of the farmer and the gleanings of the
poor, and took his toll from each sack, his fist full and more than his
due, so it was said. The millers thumb was a big thumb, and his fist
had a large grip.
But it was not only that the miller was supposed to take more than his
due of grain, he was suspected of taking what was not his from the lips
of the girls and wives who came with their sacks of corn to the mill to
have it ground. The element of jealousy of the miller breaks out in a
great many country songs. The good nature, the joviality, the cleanness
of the miller, no doubt made him a _persona grata_ to the fair sex in a
village, and those who could not rival him revenged themselves in lame
poems and halting song.
But for all that he was regarded with suspicion, there was a sense of
something picturesque, romantic about the miller. He was a type of the
genial, self-reliant Englishman; and the writer of the well-known song
of the Miller of Dee hit him off to a nicety:--
"There was a jolly miller once lived by the River Dee;
He worked and sang from morn till night; no lark more blithe than he;
And this the burden of his song for ever used to be,
I care for nobody, no, not I, if nobody cares for me."
That the miller is esteemed to be a shrewd man appears from such songs
and plays as the "Miller of Mansfield."
So also the miller's daughter forms a topic for many a story, play and
song, never with a sneer, always spoken of with admiration, not only
because she is goodly, but a type of neatness, and "cleanliness comes
next to goodliness." The new machinery and steam are fast displacing
the old mills that were turned by water, and the old dusty miller is
giving place to the trim gentleman who does most of the work in the
office, without whitening his coat.
I know an aged miller and his wife who had been for years occupying
a quaint old-fashioned mill of the simplest construction, and which
answered all purposes required in the village. But a few years ago
a new venture was started--a great mill worked by steam, and with
electric lighting through it, and now no corn is sent to the ancient
mill that is crumbling and rotting away, and the old people are
decaying within it.
"Thomas," said I one evening over the fire to this miller, "how long
have you been married?"
"Fifty years next Michaelmas."
"And when did you court your wife? When did you find the right one?"
"Lor bless y', sir, I can't mind the time when we weren't courting each
other. I b'lieve us began as babbies. Us knowed each other as long as
us knowed anything at all. Us went to school together--us larned our
letters together, us was vaccinated together, her was took from my arm;
and us growed up together."
"And when did you first think of making her yours?"
"Bless y', sir, I never first thought on it at all; I never thought
other from the time I began to think but that it must be--it wor
ordained so."
"Have you children?"
"Yes; they be all out in the world and doing well. We haven't to blush
for any of them--men and maids all alike--respectable."
"Then you ought to be very happy."
"I reckon us ought, and us should be but for that new mill."
"It is spoiling your custom?"
"It is killin' of us old folks out. It isn't so much that us gets no
grinding I mind, but it leaves me and my Anne with no means in our old
age, and us don't like to go on to the childer, and us don't like to go
into the work'us. There it is. Us did reckon on being able honestly to
get our bread for ourselves and ax nobody for nothing. But now this ere
new mill wi' the steam ingens and the electric light--someone must pay
for all that, and who is that but the customers? I've no electric light
here, water costs nothing. Coals costs twenty-one shillings a ton, and
it takes a deal o' coals to make the ingen march. Who pays for the
coals? Who pays for the electric light? The customers get the flour
at the same price as I send it out with none of them jangangles. How
do they manage it? I reckon the corn is tampered with--there's white
china-clay or something put wi' the flour. It can't be done otherwise.
But I reckon folk like to say, 'Our flour comed from that there mill
worked wi' steam and lighted by electric light,' and if they have those
things, then, I say they can't have pure flour. So it must be, I think,
but folk say that I am an old stoopid and don't understand nothing. All
I can say is I can turn out wholesome flour, and niver put nothing in
but corn grains, and niver turned out nothing but corn flour, wheat and
oat and barley."
On the day of the golden wedding of the old couple I visited them. I
made a point of this, and brought them some little comfort.
I found them very happy. A son and a daughter had taken a holiday to
see their parents and congratulate them. The parson's wife had sent in
a plum pudding, the squire a bottle of old port. Several friends had
remembered them--even the miller in the new style, who had electric
light and steam power, had contributed a cake. There were nuts and
oranges--but perhaps the present which gave most gratification was a
doll, a miller with a floured face, sent by a grandchild with a rough
scrawl. I supply the stops to make it intelligible.
"Dear Grandada and Granny,--At skool, teacher said old pipple go
into a sekond childood. So has you be so tremenjous old you must be
orful babies. I think you will want a doll, so i sends you wun, with
mutch love, and i drest the doll myself as a miller. Hever yors, dear
grandada and granny.--ROSIE."
Though the village mill usually--almost always--presents a pleasant
picture in one's memory, a picture of cheerfulness and content, of good
nature and neatness, it is not always so. I remember one mill which
carries with it a sadness whenever I recall it. Not that the mill was
gloomy in itself, but that the story connected with it was such as to
make one sad.
The miller, whom we will call Pike, was unhappily somewhat inclined
to drink. He was not an intemperate man at home, far from it; and
in his mill, at his work, he was always sober. But when he went to
market, when he got among boon companions, he was unable to resist
the temptation of taking more than was good for his head. He did a
very respectable business, and turned over a good deal of money, and
was altogether a "warm" man. One day he went to market and gathered
in there several debts that were owing him, and put all his money,
amounting to twenty-five pounds seventeen and sixpence, in a pouch
of leather, tied a bit of string round the neck, put it in his
pocket--that of his overcoat as it happened, and not in his trousers or
his breast pocket--and, mounting his tax cart, drove home.
The evening had closed in, and part of his way was through a wood,
where the shadows lay thick and inky. Whether it were that he had drunk
too much or that the road was too dark to see his way well, I cannot
say, but it is certain that the miller was upset and flung into the
hedge.
Just then up came a workman, a man named Richard Crooke, who caught
the horse, righted the cart, and helped Pike, the miller, into his seat
again. Pike was shaken but not hurt. He was confused in his mind, not,
however, so much so as to fail to know who had assisted him, and to
thank him for it.
[Illustration: OLD MILL IN CORNWALL]
On reaching home he at once put up his horse, and entering his house,
and going upstairs, took off his overcoat, found it was torn and in a
shocking condition of dirt, wherefore he threw it aside and went to bed.
He slept till late next morning, and when he woke he remembered but
uncertainly the events of the previous evening. However, after he had
had a cup of strong tea made for him by his mother--he was a widower
without children, and his mother kept house for him--he began to recall
events more distinctly, and then, with a start, he remembered his money
bag. He hastily ran upstairs to the torn and soiled overcoat and felt
in all the pockets. The bag of gold and silver was gone.
In a panic Pike rushed out of the house and ran to the scene of his
accident. He searched there wherever there were tokens of the upset,
and they were plain in the mud and the bruised twigs of the bushes. Not
a trace of the bag that contained so much money could he find, not one
ha'penny out of the twenty-five pounds seventeen shillings and sixpence
did he recover.
He went to Crooke's cottage to question him. The man was out. He was
horseman to one of the farmers, so Pike pursued him to the farm and
found him ploughing. He asked him if he had seen--picked up anything.
No--Crooke had not observed anything. Indeed, as he remarked, the night
was too dark, and the blackness under the trees was too complete for
him to have seen anything that had been dropped. Crooke seemed somewhat
nettled at being questioned. Of course, had he noticed anything
belonging to the miller fallen out of his trap, or out of his pockets,
he would have handed it to the owner.
Pike was not satisfied. He was convinced that no one had been over the
by-road that morning before he examined it, as it led only to the mill
and to the farm where Crooke worked.
What had become of the money? Had anyone retained it?
Not long afterwards, to the astonishment of the miller and some of
the farmers, Crooke bought a little property, a cottage and a couple
of fields. There was no doubt that he had borrowed some of the money
requisite; he said he had saved the rest. Was that possible? From that
moment a strong and ineradicable conviction formed in Pike's mind that
he had been robbed by Richard Crooke.
With envy and rage he watched the husbandman move into his little
tenement, and begin to till his field. Pike considered that this
tenement was his own by rights. Crooke had bought it with the miller's
money taken from him on the night when he was upset. Crooke had taken
advantage of his being a little fresh, and a little confused by the
fall, to purloin the bag containing twenty-five pounds seventeen
shillings and sixpence.
From this time all joy, all cheeriness was gone from the life of the
miller; his heart turned bitter as gall, and all his bitterness was
directed against Richard Crooke. He brooded over his wrong. He did not
venture openly to accuse the man he suspected, but he dropped hints
which prejudiced opinion against Crooke. But everyone knew that this
Richard had been a careful man, saving his money.
Pike watched the corn grow on Crooke's field; he wished a blight might
fall upon it. But it throve, the ears were heavy, it was harvested in
splendid condition, and stacked in the corner of the field.
Then, one night the corn rick was on fire. This was the work of an
incendiary. It must have been done wilfully, and by someone who bore
Crooke a grudge. Richard had not insured, and the loss to him was a
very serious matter. It might have been ruin had not a "brief" been got
up and some pounds subscribed to relieve him.
No one could say who had done the deed. Yet nobody doubted who the
incendiary had been. Nothing could be proved against anyone.
A twelvemonth passed. A malevolent pleasure had filled the heart of
the miller when he had heard that Crooke's stack was consumed, and he
somewhat ostentatiously gave half a sovereign to the brief. He was
angry and offended when the half-sovereign was returned him. Richard
Crooke declined to receive his contribution.
During the year Pike's character deteriorated; he went more frequently
to the public-house, he neglected his work, and what he did was done
badly.
Then one morning--on opening his eyes in bed, they fell on a little
recess in the wall, high up beyond most people's reach, a place where
he had been wont to put away things he valued and did not desire should
be meddled with. A sudden thought, a suspicion, flashed across his
mind. He started from bed, put his hand into the recess, and drew forth
his money bag, opened it and counted out twenty-five pounds seventeen
shillings and sixpence.
On returning home, the night of his accident, he had taken the
bag out of his torn and sullied overcoat pocket, had put it in
this hiding-place, and forgotten all about it. He hastily dressed
himself--he would eat no breakfast, but drank brandy, several glasses
full--went out, and when next seen was a corpse, dragged out of his
mill-pond, hugging his money bag.
Not till then were mouths unlocked, and men said that Pike, angered at
his loss, believing that Crooke had robbed him, had fired the stack;
and that when he found out his mistake, in shame and remorse, and
uncertain how he could remedy the wrong done--he had destroyed himself.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: THE FARMHOUSE]