THE MILLER.
Mr. Fenwick reached Brattle's mill about two o'clock in the day.
During the whole morning, while saying comfortable words to old
women, and gently rebuking young maidens, he had been thinking of Sam
Brattle and his offences. He had not been in the parish very long,
not over five or six years, but he had been there long enough to see
Sam grow out of boyhood into manhood; and at his first coming to
the parish, for the first two or three years, the lad had been a
favourite with him. Young Brattle could run well, leap well, fish
well, and do a good turn of work about his father's mill. And he
could also read and write, and cast accounts, and was a clever
fellow. The parson, though he had tried his hand with energy at
making the man, had, perhaps, done something towards marring him; and
it may be that some feeling of this was on Mr. Fenwick's conscience.
A gentleman's favourite in a country village, when of Sam Brattle's
age, is very apt to be spoiled by the kindness that is shown to him.
Sam had spent many a long afternoon fishing with the parson, but
those fishing days were now more than two years gone by. It had been
understood that Sam was to assist his father at the mill; and much
good advice as to his trade the lad had received from Mr. Fenwick.
There ought to be no more fishing for the young miller, except
on special holiday occasions,--no more fishing, at least, during
the hours required for milling purposes. So Mr. Fenwick had said
frequently. Nevertheless the old miller attributed his son's idleness
in great part to the parson's conduct, and he had so told the
parson more than once. Of late Sam Brattle had certainly not been
a good son, had neglected his work, disobeyed his father, and
brought trouble on a household which had much suffering to endure
independently of that which he might bring upon it.
Jacob Brattle was a man at this time over sixty-five years of age,
and every year of the time had been spent in that mill. He had never
known another occupation or another home, and had very rarely slept
under another roof. He had married the daughter of a neighbouring
farmer, and had had some twelve or fourteen children. There were at
this time six still living. He himself had ever been a hardworking,
sober, honest man. But he was cross-grained, litigious, moody, and
tyrannical. He held his mill and about a hundred acres of adjoining
meadow land at a rent in which no account was taken either of the
building or of the mill privileges attached to it. He paid simply for
the land at a rate per acre, which, as both he and his landlord well
knew, would make it acceptable on the same terms to any farmer in the
parish; and neither for his mill, nor for his land, had he any lease,
nor had his father or his grandfather had leases before him. Though
he was a clever man in his way, he hardly knew what a lease was.
He doubted whether his landlord could dispossess him as long as he
paid his rent, but he was not sure. But of this he thought he was
sure,--that were Mr. Gilmore to attempt to do such a thing, all
Wiltshire would cry out against the deed, and probably the heavens
would fall and crush the doer. He was a man with an unlimited love
of justice; but the justice which he loved best was justice to
himself. He brooded over injuries done to him,--injuries real or
fancied,--till he taught himself to wish that all who hurt him might
be crucified for the hurt they did to him. He never forgot, and never
wished to forgive. If any prayer came from him, it was a prayer that
his own heart might be so hardened that when vengeance came in his
way he might take it without stint against the trespasser of the
moment. And yet he was not a cruel man. He would almost despise
himself, because when the moment for vengeance did come, he would
abstain from vengeance. He would dismiss a disobedient servant with
curses which would make one's hair stand on end, and would hope
within his heart of hearts that before the end of the next week the
man with his wife and children might be in the poorhouse. When the
end of the next week came, he would send the wife meat, and would
give the children bread, and would despise himself for doing so.
In matters of religion he was an old Pagan, going to no place of
worship, saying no prayer, believing in no creed,--with some vague
idea that a supreme power would bring him right at last, if he worked
hard, robbed no one, fed his wife and children, and paid his way. To
pay his way was the pride of his heart; to be paid on his way was its
joy.
In that matter of his quarrel with his landlord he was very bitter.
The Squire's father some fifteen years since had given to the miller
a verbal promise that the house and mill should be repaired. The old
Squire had not been a good man of business, and had gone on with his
tenants very much as he had found them, without looking much into the
position of each. But he had, no doubt, said something that amounted
to a promise on his own account as to these repairs. He had died soon
after, and the repairs had not been effected. A year after his death
an application,--almost a demand,--was made upon our Squire by the
miller, and the miller had been wrathful even when the Squire said
that he would look into it. The Squire did look into it, and came to
the conclusion that as he received no rent at all for the house and
mill, and as his own property would be improved if the house and
mill were made to vanish, and as he had no evidence whatever of any
undertaking on his father's part, as any such promise on his father's
part must simply have been a promise of a gift of money out of his
own pocket, and further as the miller was impudent, he would not
repair the mill. Ultimately he offered £20 towards the repairs, which
the miller indignantly refused. Readers will be able to imagine how
pretty a quarrel there would thus be between the landlord and his
tenant. When all this was commencing,--at the time, that is, of the
old Squire's death,--Brattle had the name of being a substantial
person; but misfortune had come upon him; doctors' bills had been
very heavy, his children had drained his resources from him, and it
was now known that it set him very hard to pay his way. In regard to
the house and the mill, some absolutely essential repairs had been
done at his own costs; but the £20 had never been taken.
In some respects the man's fortune in life had been good. His wife
was one of those loving, patient, self-denying, almost heavenly human
beings, one or two of whom may come across one's path, and who, when
found, are generally found in that sphere of life to which this woman
belonged. Among the rich there is that difficulty of the needle's
eye; among the poor there is the difficulty of the hardness of their
lives. And the miller loved this woman with a perfect love. He hardly
knew that he loved her as he did. He could be harsh to her and
tyrannical. He could say cutting words to her. But at any time in his
life he would have struck over the head, with his staff, another man
who should have said a word to hurt her. They had lost many children;
but of the six who remained, there were four of whom they might be
proud. The eldest was a farmer, married and away, doing well in a far
part of the county, beyond Salisbury, on the borders of Hampshire.
The father in his emergencies had almost been tempted to ask his son
for money; but hitherto he had refrained. A daughter was married to
a tradesman at Warminster, and was also doing well. A second son who
had once been sickly and weak, was a scholar in his way, and was now
a schoolmaster, also at Warminster, and in great repute with the
parson of the parish there. There was a second daughter, Fanny, at
home, a girl as good as gold, the glory and joy and mainstay of her
mother, whom even the miller could not scold,--whom all Bullhampton
loved. But she was a plain girl, brown, and somewhat hard-visaged;--a
morsel of fruit as sweet as any in the garden, but one that the eye
would not select for its outside grace, colour, and roundness. Then
there were the two younger. Of Sam, the youngest of all, who was now
twenty-one, something has already been said. Between him and Fanny
there was,--perhaps it will be better to say there had been,--another
daughter. Of all the flock Carry had been her father's darling. She
had not been brown or hard-visaged. She was such a morsel of fruit
as men do choose, when allowed to range and pick through the whole
length of the garden wall. Fair she had been, with laughing eyes,
and floating curls; strong in health, generous in temper, though now
and again with something of her father's humour. To her mother's eye
she had never been as sweet as Fanny; but to her father she had been
as bright and beautiful as the harvest moon. Now she was a thing,
somewhere, never to be mentioned! Any man who would have named her
to her father's ears, would have encountered instantly the force of
his wrath. This was so well known in Bullhampton that there was not
one who would dare to suggest to him even that she might be saved.
But her mother prayed for her daily, and her father thought of her
always. It was a great lump upon him, which he must bear to his
grave; and for which there could be no release. He did not know
whether it was his mind, his heart, or his body that suffered. He
only knew that it was there,--a load that could never be lightened.
What comfort was it to him now, that he had beaten a miscreant to
death's door--that he, with his old hands, had nearly torn the wretch
limb from limb--that he had left him all but lifeless, and had walked
off scatheless, nobody daring to put a finger on him? The man had
been pieced up by some doctor, and was away in Asia, in Africa, in
America--soldiering somewhere. He had been a lieutenant in those
days, and was probably a lieutenant still. It was nothing to old
Brattle where he was. Had he been able to drink the fellow's blood to
the last drop, it would not have lightened his load an ounce. He knew
that it was so now. Nothing could lighten it;--not though an angel
could come and tell him that his girl was a second Magdalen. The
Brattles had ever held up their heads. The women, at least, had
always been decent.
Jacob Brattle, himself, was a low, thickset man, with an appearance
of great strength, which was now submitting itself, very slowly, to
the hand of time. He had sharp green eyes, and shaggy eyebrows, with
thin lips, and a square chin, a nose which, though its shape was
aquiline, protruded but little from his face. His forehead was low
and broad, and he was seldom seen without a flat hat upon his head.
His hair and very scanty whiskers were gray; but, then too, he was
gray from head to foot. The colour of his trade had so clung to him,
that no one could say whether that grayish whiteness of his face came
chiefly from meal or from sorrow. He was a silent, sad, meditative
man, thinking always of the evil things that had been done to him.