Woot, or wootn't? Will you, or won't you?"

Tu-whit--tu-what! Steadily the scythe was swung, and the swathe fell in rows behind it.

CHAPTER THREE.

THE NETHER MILLSTONE.

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 c.h.i.n.ks in the boarding that sheltered the wheel from the weather; a sound that could only be caused by an enormous ma.s.s 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--acc.u.mulated coin by coin, like the grains that together fill the bushel--acc.u.mulated 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-gra.s.s. 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 c.o.c.ks every Sunday afternoon on his dining-room table.

With his h.o.r.n.y stiffened fingers Andrew could count up the houses in the hamlet at the Warren; there was not one that the hea.r.s.e had not emptied.

The hamlet of his youth had pa.s.sed 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 gra.s.s, 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 pa.s.sion 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 G.o.d'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 rea.s.sure, dived at the faintest footstep; the pike basked in the sunshine warming his cold blood, and the st.u.r.dy 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 gra.s.s; 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 ma.s.sive 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 gla.s.s, 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 pa.s.sing 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 circ.u.mstances) he did not, perhaps, go about it the right way.