THE MILL OF DREAMS

There was once, dear maidens, a girl who lived in a mill on the Sidlesham marshes. But in those days the marshlands were meadowlands, with streams running in from the coast, so that their water was brackish and salt. And sometimes the girl dipped her finger in the water and sucked it and tasted the sea. And the taste made storms rise in her heart. Her name was Helen.

The mill-house was a gaunt and gloomy building of stone, as gray as sleep, weatherstained with dreams. It had fine proportions, and looked like a n.o.ble prison. And in fact, if a prison is the lockhouse of secrets, it was one. The great millstones ground day and night, and what the world sent in as corn it got back as flour. And as to the secrets of the grinding it asked no questions, because to the world results are everything. It understands death better than sorrow, marriage better than love, and birth better than creation. And the millstones of joy and pain, grinding dreams into bread, it seldom hears. But Helen heard them, and they were all the knowledge she had of life; for if the mill was a prison of dreams it was her prison too.

Her father the miller was a harsh man and dark; he was dark within and without. Her mother was dead; she did not remember her. As she grew up she did little by little the work of the big place. She was her father's servant, and he kept her as close to her work as he kept his millstones to theirs. He was morose, and welcomed no company. Gayety he hated. Helen knew no songs, for she had heard none. From morning till night she worked for her father. When she had done all her other work she spun flax into linen for shirts and gowns, and wool for stockings and vests. If she went outside the mill-house, it was only for a few steps for a few moments. She wasn't two miles from the sea, but she had never seen it. But she tasted the salt water and smelt the salt wind.

Like all things that grow up away from the light, she was pale. Her oval face was like ivory, and her lips, instead of being scarlet, had the tender red of apple-blossom, after the unfolding of the bright bud.

Her hair was black and smooth and heavy, and lay on either side of her face like a starling's wings. Her eyes too were as black as midnight, and sometimes like midnight they were deep and sightless. But when she was neither working nor spinning she would steal away to the millstones, and stand there watching and listening. And then there were two stars in the midnight. She came away from those stolen times powdered with flour. Her black hair and her brows and lashes, her old blue gown, her rough hands and fair neck, and her white face--all that was dark and pale in her was merged in a mist, and seen only through the clinging dust of the millstones. She would try to wipe off all the evidences of her secret occasions, but her father generally knew. Had he known by nothing else, he need only have looked at her eyes before they lost their starlight.

One day when she was seventeen years old there was a knock at the mill-house door. n.o.body ever knocked. Her father was the only man who came in and went out. The mill stood solitary in those days. The face of the country has since been changed by man and G.o.d, but at that time there were no habitations in sight. At regular times the peasants brought their grain and fetched their meal; but the miller kept his daughter away from his custom. He never said why. Doubtless at the back of his mind was the thought of losing what was useful to him. Most parents have their ways of trying to keep their children; in some it is this way, in others that; not many learn to keep them by letting them go.

So when the knock came at the door, it was the strangest thing that had ever happened in Helen's life. She ran to the door and stood with her hand on the heavy wooden bar that fell across it into a great socket.

Her heart beat fast. Before we know a thing it is a thousand things.

Only one thing would be there when she lifted the bar. But as she stood with her hand upon it, a host of presences hovered on the other side. A knight in armor, a king in his gold crown, a G.o.d in the guise of a beggar, an angel with a sword; a dragon even; a woman to be her friend; her mother...a child...

"Would it be better not to open?" thought Helen. For then she would never know. Yes, then she could run to her millstones and fling them her thoughts in the husk, and listen, listen while they ground them into dreams. What knowledge would be better than that? What would she lose by opening the door?

But she had to open the door.

Outside on the stones stood a common lad. He might have been three years older than she. He had a cap with a hole in it in his hand, and a shabby jersey that left his brown neck bare. He was whistling when she lifted the bar, but he stopped as the door fell back, and gave Helen a quick and careless look.

"Can I have a bit of bread?" he asked.

Helen stared at him without answering. She was so unused to people that her mind had to be summoned from a world of ghosts before she could hear and utter real words. The boy waited for her to speak, but, as she did not, shrugged his shoulders and turned away whistling his tune.

Then she understood that he was going, and she ran after him quickly and touched his sleeve. He turned again, expecting her to speak; but she was still dumb.

"Thought better of it?" he said.

Helen said slowly, "Why did you ask me for bread?"

"Why?" He looked her up and down. "To mend my boots with, of course."

She looked at his boots.

"You silly thing," grinned the boy.

A faint color came under her skin. "I'm sorry for being stupid. I suppose you're hungry."

"As a hunter. But there's no call to trouble you. I'll be where I can get bread, and meat too, in forty minutes. Good-by, child."

"No," said Helen. "Please don't go. I'd like to give you some bread."

"Oh, all right," said the boy. "What frightened you? Did you think I was a scamp?"

"I wasn't frightened," said Helen.

"Don't tell me," mocked the boy. "You couldn't get a word out."

"I wasn't frightened."

"You thought I was a bad lot. You don't know I'm not one now."

Helen's eyes filled with tears. She turned away quickly. "I'll get you your bread," she said.

"You are a silly, aren't you?" said the boy as she disappeared.

Before long she came back with half a loaf in one hand, and something in the other which she kept behind her back.

"Thanks," said the boy, taking the bit of loaf. "What else have you got there?"

"It's something better than bread," said Helen slowly.

"Well, let's have a look at it."

She took her hand from behind her, and offered him seven ears of wheat.

They were heavy with grain, and bowed on their ripe stems.

"Is this what you call better than bread?" he asked.

"It is better."

"Oh, all right. I sha'n't eat it though--not all at once."

"No," said Helen, "keep it till you're hungry. The grains go quite a long way when you're hungry."

"I'll eat one a year," said the boy, "and then they'll go so far they'll outlast me my lifetime."

"Yes," said Helen, "but the bread will be gone in forty minutes. And then you'll be where you can get meat."

"You funny thing," said the boy, puzzled because she never smiled.

"Where can you get meat?" she asked.

"In a boat, fishing for rabbits."

But she took no notice of the rabbits. She said eagerly, "A boat? are you going in a boat?"

"Yes."

"Are you a sailor?"

"You've hit it."

"You've seen the sea! you've been on the sea!--sailors do that..."