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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
In "The Mill of Silence," Bernard Capes weaves a haunting narrative that explores the intricate dynamics of human emotion amidst the backdrop of a desolate mill, serving as a potent metaphor for isolation and despair. Capes employs a meticulous literary style, rich with atmospheric descriptions and an undercurrent of tension, merging elements of Gothic fiction with psychological depth. The novel, published during the early 20th century, reflects the era's fascination with the darker aspects of the human psyche, drawing parallels with contemporary societal anxieties and existential ponderings. Bernard Capes, an English author admired for his short stories and novels, often delved into themes of the supernatural and the macabre. His own experiences, including a career as an artist and his exposure to the complexities of human nature, notably influenced his storytelling. Capes' literary journey, marked by encounters with both beauty and tragedy, allowed him to authentically explore themes of isolation and the haunting silence of unexpressed thoughts and feelings in this striking work. Readers who appreciate a rich tapestry of Gothic elements interwoven with psychological insight will find "The Mill of Silence" an engrossing read. This novel invites introspection and encourages readers to reflect on the intricacies of despair and the unspoken burdens that accompany the human experience.
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The mill of silence
Table of Contents
CHAPTER I.THE INMATES OF THE MILL.
My story begins like a fairy tale. Once upon a time there was a miller who had three sons. Here, however, the resemblance ceases. At this late date I, the last stricken inmate of the Mill of Silence, set it down for a warning and a menace; not entirely in despair, perhaps, but with a fitful flickering of hope that at the last moment my soul may be rent from me into a light it has never yet foreseen.
We were three brothers, sons of a gray, old man, whose father, and his father before him, had owned and run a flour mill in the ancient city of Winton in Hampshire. This mill stood a little back from the north side of the east and more deserted end of the High street, and faced a little bridge—wooden in those days, but stone now—through which raced the first of the mill fall that came thundering out from under the old timber building, as though it had burst at a push some ancient dam and were hurrying off to make up for lost ages of restraint. The house, a broad single red-tiled gable, as seen from the bridge, stood crushed in between other buildings, and in all my memory of it was a crazy affair in appearance and ever in two minds about slipping into the boisterous water below and so flushing all that quarter of the town with an overflow, as it were, of its own ancient dropsy. It was built right across the stream, with the mill wheel buried in its heart; and I can recall a certain childish speculation as to the results which would follow a possible relaxing of the house pressure on either side; in which case I hopefully assumed the wheel would slip out of its socket, and, carrying the frail bridge before it, roll cheerfully down stream on its own axle to the huge delight of all adventurous spirits.
Our reputation in Winton was not, I am sorry to say, good. There was a whispered legend of uncanniness about the mill itself, which might mean little or nothing, and a notoriety with regard to its inmates which did mean a good deal. The truth is, not to mince matters, that my father was a terrible drunkard, and that his three sons—not the eldest of whom retained more than a shadowy remembrance of a long-departed mother’s influence—were from early years fostered in an atmosphere that reeked with that one form of moral depravity. A quite youthful recollection of mine is the sight of my father, thin, bent, gray bearded, and with a fierce, not uncomely face, jerking himself to sudden stoppages at points in the High street to apostrophize with menacing fury the devils born of his disease.
To the world about us my father was nothing but a worthless inebriate, who had early abandoned himself to profligate courses, content to live upon the little fortune left him by his predecessors and to leave his children to run to seed as they listed in the stagnant atmosphere of vice. What the world did not know was the secret side of my father’s character—the wild, fierce imagination of the man; the creative spirit of his healthier moods and the passionate reverence of beauty which was as habitual to him as the craze for strong waters.
He exercised a despotic influence over us, and we subscribed admiringly to his rule with the snarling submissiveness of young tiger cubs. I think the fragmentary divinity that nests in odd, neglected corners of each and every frame of life, took some recognition of a higher type from which it had inherited. Mentally, at his best, my father was as much above us as, by some cantrip of fate, he was superior to the sullen, plodding stock of which he was born.
Three days out of the week he was drunk; vision-haunted, almost unapproachable; and this had been so from time that was immemorial to us. The period of compulsory education had not yet agitated the community at large, and our intellects he permitted to run to grass with our bodies. On our pursuits, pastoral, urban, and always mischievous if occasion offered, he put no restraint whatever, yet encouraged a sort of half-savage clannishness among us that held the mill for fortress and the world for besiegers.
Perhaps it was not until I was rising 18 that any speculation as to the raison d’être of our manner of life began to stir in my brain. My eldest brother, Jason, was then a tall, handsome fellow of 19, with a crisp devil in his corn-colored hair and a silent one in his eyes, that were shot with changing blue. Modred, the youngest, some eighteen months my junior, was a contrast to Jason in every way. He was a heavy, pasty boy, with an aggravating droop in his lids and a large unspeculative face. He was entirely self-contained, armored against satire and unmoved of the spirit of tears. A sounding smack on the cheek, delivered in the one-sided heat of argument, brought his face, like a stolid phantasm, projected toward the striker’s in a wooden impassivity that was infinitely more maddening than abuse. It showed no more resentment than a battered Aunt Sally’s, but rather assumed a mockery of curiosity as to the bullying methods of the strong against the weak. Speaking of him, I have no object but to present a portrait, unprejudiced alike of regard or disfavor. This, I entreat, may be borne in mind.
One afternoon, in late April weather, Jason and I were loitering and idling about some meadows within rifle shot of the old city outskirts. We lay upon our faces in the long grass beside a clear, shallow burn, intent upon sport less lawful than exciting. The country about Winton is laced with innumerable streams and freshets and therein without exception are trout in great quantity, though mostly shy to come at from the little depth and extreme transparency of the water. That the fishing is everywhere “preserved” goes without saying, and it follows in order that poaching is pretty general.
We were poaching, in truth, and extremely enjoying it as usual. Jason held in his hand a willow wand, fitted with a line, which was baited with a brandling fat from the manure heap. This it was essential to swing gently, ourselves crouching hidden as far as possible, into the liveliest streaks of the current where it ran cleanly over pebbles, and to let it swim naturally downstream the length of the rod’s tether. Occasionally, if not so often as one could wish, the plump bait would lure some youngling, imperfect in guile, from security of the stones and a sudden jerking of the tough willow would communicate a galvanic thrill of excitement to our every fiber. The experience did not stale by a too-frequent repetition, and was scarcely marred in our eyes by the ever-present necessity of keeping a vigilant lookout for baleful intruders on our privacy. Our worst foe, in this respect, was a great bosom of chalk and turf, known as St. Catherine’s hill, which rose directly in front of us some short distance on the further side of the stream, and from which it was easy for any casual enemy to detect our every movement. However, as fortune would have it, the hill was but comparatively little favored of the townsfolk.
“Ware!” said I, suddenly.
Jason drew his line swiftly and horizontally from the water and dropped it and the rod deftly under the fringe of the bank.
We turned on our backs, lazily blinking at the sky.
A figure was sauntering along by the side of the little river toward us. It was that of an ill-dressed man of 45 or so, ball-jointed and cadaverous, with a wet, wandering blue eye and light brick-colored hair brushed back into rat-tails. His mouth was one pencil mark twitched up at the corners, and his ears, large and shapeless, stood up prominently like a bat’s. He carried his hands behind his back and rolled his head from side to side as he walked. He espied us a long way off and stopped presently, looking down upon us.
“Sinews of whipcord,” he said, in a voice thin as his lips, “and hearts of cats! What tomfoolery now?”
My brother raised his head, yawning lazily.
“Tom Fool hisself,” said he.
“I am not,” said the newcomer, “near such a fool as I look. I can tell the likeliest place for tickling trouts, now, anywhere.”
Jason grunted.
“And that’s the Itchen,” went on the other with an enjoying chuckle.
We vouchsafed him a patronizing laughter.
“Too good,” he said; “too good for lob worms and sand-hoppers. Where’s the best place to find trouts, now—the little speckled trouts?”
“Where?” said I.
“Caught!” he cried, and pounced upon Jason.
There was a short, bitter struggle between them, and the man, leaving the boy sitting panting on the grass, leaped apart with a speckled trophy held aloft in his hand.
“Give it back!” cried my brother, rising, white and furious, “or I’ll brain you!” He seized up a great lump of chalk as he spoke and balanced it in his hand.
“Softly,” said the other, very coolly slipping the trout into the wide pocket of his coat. Jason watched him with glittering eyes.
“Give it back to him, Dr. Crackenthorpe,” I cried, “or he’ll do you a hurt!”
In one moment the doctor dropped on his knees at the instant that the missile spun over him and splashed among the marigolds far in the meadow beyond; in the next Jason was down on his back again, with the tall man’s knuckles at his throat and his bony knee planted on his chest.
“Puppy of Satan!” he hissed in grim fury. “D’ye dare to pursue me with murderous hate!”
Tooth and nail I fell upon the victor like a wild cat and tore at him. His strength was marvelous. Holding my brother down with his left hand, he swung his right behind his back, clutched me over, and rolled us both together in a struggling heap.
“Now,” said he, jumping to his feet and daring us, “move a muscle to rise and I’ll hold your mouths under water for the frogs to dive in.”
It was the only sort of argument that appealed to us—the argument of resourceful strength that could strike and baffle at once.
When he had recovered his breath sufficiently to laugh, Jason tittered. From the first the fateful charm of my brother was the pleasant music of his voice and the pliant adaptability of his moods.
“Keep the fish, doctor,” he said; “we give in.” He always answered for both of us.
“Well,” said Dr. Crackenthorpe, “that’s wise.” He stepped back as he spoke to signify that we might get on our feet, which we did.
“I keep the trout,” he said, grandly, “in evidence, and shall cast over in my mind the pros and cons of my duty to the authorities in the matter.”
At this, despite our discomfiture, we laughed like young hyenas. The trout, we knew, was destined for the doctor’s own table. He was a notorious skinflint, to whom sixpence saved from the cooking pot was a coin redoubled of its face value.
He made as if to continue his way, but paused again, and shot a question at Jason.
“Dad had any more finds?”
“No,” said Jason, “and if he had you wouldn’t get ’em.”
Dr. Crackenthorpe looked at the boy a minute, shrugged his shoulders and moved off.
And here, at this point, his question calls for some explanation.
One day, some twelve months or so earlier than the incident just described, we of the mill being all collected together for dinner and my father just coming out of one of his drunken fits, a coin tinkled on the floor and rolled into the empty fireplace, where it lay shining yellow. My father, who had somehow jerked it out of his pocket from the trembling of his hand, walked unsteadily across the room and stood looking down upon it vacantly. There he remained for a minute or two, we watching him, and from time to time shot a stealthy glance round at one or other of us. Twice or thrice he made as if to pick it up, but his heart apparently failed him, for he desisted. Suddenly, however, he had it in his hand and stood fingering it, still watchful of us.
“Well,” he said at last, “there it is for all the world to see,” and placed it on the mantelpiece. Then he turned round to us expectant.
“That coin,” he said, slowly, “was given me by a man who dug it up in his garden hereabouts when he was forking potatoes. It’s ancient and a curiosity. There it remains for ornament.”
Now whether this was only some caprice of the moment or that he dreaded that had he then and there pouched it some boyish spirit of curiosity might tempt one or other of us to turn out his pockets in search of the treasure when he was in one of his liquorish trances, and so make further discoveries, we could never know. Anyhow, on the mantelpiece the coin lay for some weeks; a contemptible little disk to view, with an odd figure of an ill-formed mannikin stamped on one side of it, and no one of us offered to touch it, until one day Dr. Crackenthorpe paid us a visit.
This worthy had only recently come to Winton, tempted hither, I think, more by lure of antiquities than by any set determination to establish a practice in the town. Indeed, in the result, as I have heard, his fees for any given year would never have quarter filled a wineglass unless paid in pence. He had a small private income and two weaknesses—one a craze for coin collecting, the other a feverish palate, which brought him acquainted with my father, in this wise—that he encountered the old man one night when the latter was complacently swerving into the Itchen at a point known as “The Weirs,” where the water is deep, and conducted him graciously home. The next day he called, and, it becoming apparent that fees were not his object, a rough, queer acquaintance was struck up between the two men, which brought the doctor occasionally to our mill at night for a pipe and a glass. He was the only outsider ever admitted to our slightest intimacy, with the single exception of a baneful old woman, known as Peg Rottengoose, who came in every day to do the cooking and housework and to steal what scraps she could.
Now, on one of these visits, the doctor’s eye was casually caught by the glint of the coin on the mantelpiece. He clawed it at once, and as he examined it the man’s long, gaunt face lighted from inward with enthusiasm.
“Where did you get this?” he cried, his hands shaking with excitement.
“A neighbor dug it up in his garden and gave it me. Let it be, can’t you?” said my father, roughly.
“Pooh, man! Such things are not given without reason. What was the reason? Stay—tell me the name of the man.”
I thought my father paled a little and shifted uneasily in his chair.
“I tell you,” he said, hoarsely, “he gave it me.”
“And I don’t believe it,” cried the other. “You found it yourself, and where this came from more may be.”
My father sprung to his feet.
“Get out of my house!” he shouted, “and take your ‘may be’s’ to the foul fiend!”
Dr. Crackenthorpe placed his pipe and the coin very gently on the table and walked stiffly to the door. He had almost reached it when my father’s voice, quite changed and soft, stopped him.
“Don’t take offense, man. Come and talk it over.”
Dr. Crackenthorpe retraced his steps, resumed his chair, and sat staring stonily at my father.
“It’s true,” said the latter, dropping his eyes, “every word. It’s true, sir, I tell you.”
The doctor never spoke, and my father stole an anxious glance up at him.
“Well,” he said, with an effort; “anyhow, it’s a small matter to separate cronies. I don’t know the value of these gimcracks, but as you take pleasure in collecting ’em, I’ll—I’ll—come now, I’ll make you a present of it.”
The doctor became human once more, and for a second time clutched the coin radiantly. My father heaved a profound sigh, but he never moved.
“Well,” he said, “now you’ve got it, perhaps you’ll state the particular value of that old piece of metal.”
“It’s a gold Doric!” cried the doctor; “as rare a——” he checked himself suddenly and went on with a ludicrous affectation of indifference—“rare enough just to make it interesting. No intrinsic value—none whatever.”
A little wicked smile twitched up my father’s bearded cheeks. Each man sat forward for some minutes pulling at his pipe; but it was evident the effort of social commonplace was too much for Dr. Crackenthorpe. Presently he rose and said he must be going. He was obviously on thorns until he could secure his treasure in a safe place. For a quarter of an hour after the door had closed behind him, my father sat on gloomily smoking and muttering to himself. Then suddenly he woke to consciousness of our presence and ordered us, savagely, almost madly, off to bed.
This explains the doctor’s question of Jason and is a necessary digression. Now to the meadows once more and a little experience that befell there after the intruder’s departure.
CHAPTER II.A NIXIE.
My brother tired of his fishing for the nonce, and for an hour we lay on our backs in the grass chatting desultorily.
“Jason,” said I, suddenly, “what do we live on?”
“What we can get,” said my brother, sleepily.
“But I mean—where does it come from; who provides it?”
“Oh, don’t bother, Renny. We have enough to eat and drink and do as we like. What more do you want?”
“I don’t know. I want to know, that’s all. I can’t tell why. Where does the money come from?”
“Tom Tiddler. He was our grandfather.”
“Don’t be a fool. Dad never worked the mill that we remember.”
“But Tom Tiddler did before him.”
“Not to the tune that would keep four loafers in idleness for sixteen years.”
“Well, I don’t care. Perhaps dad’s a highwayman.”
I kicked at the grass impatiently.
“It must end some day, you know.”
Jason tilted his cap from his eyes and blinked at me.
“What d’ye mean, piggy?”
“Suppose dad died or went mad?”
“We’d sell the mill and have a rare time of it.”
“Oh, you great clown! Sell it for what? Driftwood? And how long would the rare time last?”
“You’re mighty particular to-day. I hate answering questions. Let me alone.”
“I won’t,” I said, viciously. “I want your opinion.”
“Well, it’s that you’re a precious fool!”
“What for?”
“To bother your head with what you can’t answer, when the sun’s shining.”
“I can’t help bothering my head,” I said. “I’ve been bothering it, I think, ever since dad gave old Crackenthorpe that medal last year.”
Jason sat up.
“So you noticed it, too,” he said. “Renny, there’s depths in the old man that we sha’n’t plumb.”
“Well, I’ve taken to thinking of things a bit,” said I.
Jason—so named, at any period (I never saw a register of the christening of any one of us) because of his golden fleece, shook it and set to whistling softly.
His name—Modred’s, too—mine was Renalt, and more local—were evidence of my father’s superior culture as compared with most of his class. They were odd, if you like, but having a little knowledge and fancifulness to back them, gave proof of a certain sum of desultory reading on his part; the spirit of which was transmitted to his children.
I was throwing myself back with a dissatisfied grunt, when of a sudden a shrill screech came toward us from a point apparently on the river path fifty yards lower down. We jumped to our feet and raced headlong in the direction of the sound. Nothing was to be seen. It was not until the cry was repeated, almost from under our very feet, that we realized the reason of it.
All about Winton the banks of the main streams are pierced at intervals to admit runlets of clear water into the meadows below. Such a boring there was of a goodish caliber at the point where we stopped; and here the water, breaking through in a little fall, tumbled into a stone basin, some three feet square and five deep, that was sunk to its rim in a rough trench of the meadow soil. Into this brimming trough a young girl had slipped and would drown in time, for, though she clung on to the edge with frantic hands, her efforts to escape had evidently exhausted her to such an extent that she could now do no more than look up to us, as we stood on the bank above, with wild, beseeching eyes.
I was going to jump to her help, when Jason stayed me with his hand.
“Hist, Renny!” he whispered. “I’ve never seen a body drown.”
“Nor shall,” said I, hoping he jested.
“Let me shove her hands off,” he said, in the same wondering tone. One moment, with a shock, I saw the horrible meaning in his face; the next, with a quick movement I had flung him down and jumped. He rose at once with a slight cut on his lips, but before he could recover himself I had the girl out by the hands and had stretched her limp and prostrate on the grass. Then I paused, embarrassed, and he stood above looking down upon us.
“You’ll have to pay for that, Renny,” he said, “sooner or later”—and, of course, I knew I should.
“Turn the creature on her face, you dolt!” he continued, “and let the water run out of her pipes.”
I endeavored to comply, but the girl, always keeping her eyes shut, resisted feebly. I dropped upon my knees and smoothed away the sodden tresses from her face. Thus revealed it seemed an oddly pretty one; the skin half transparent, like rice paper; the forehead rounding from the nose like a kitten’s. But she never opened her eyes, so that I could not see what was their color, though the lashes were black.
Presently a horror seized me that she was dead, and I shook her pretty roughly by the shoulder.
“Oh,” she cried, with a whimper, “don’t!”
I was so rejoiced at this evidence of life that I gave a whoop. Then I bent over her.
“It’s all right, girl,” I said; “you’re safe; I saved you.”
Her lips were moving again and I stopped to listen. “What did he want to drown me for?” she whispered.
She was thinking of my brother, not of me. For a flash her eyes opened, violet, like lightning, and glanced up at him standing above; then they closed again.
“Come,” I said, roughly; “if you can talk, you can get up.”
The girl struggled into a sitting posture and then rose to her feet. She was tall, almost as tall as I was, and about my age, I should think. Her dress, so far as one could judge, it being sopped with water, was a poor patched affair, and rough country shoes were on her feet.
“Take me somewhere, where I can dry,” she said, imperiously. “Don’t let him come—he needn’t follow.”
“He’s my brother,” I said.
“I don’t care. He wanted to drown me; he didn’t know I can’t die by water.”
“Can’t you?” I said.
“Of course not. I’m a changeling!”
She said it with a childish seriousness that confounded me.
“What made you one?” I asked.
“The fairies,” she said, “and that’s why I’m here.”
I was too bewildered to pursue the subject further.
“How did you fall in there?” I asked.
“I saw some little fish, like klinkents of rainbow, and wanted to catch them; then I slipped and soused.”
“Well,” I said, “where are you going now?”
“With you,” she answered.
I offered no resistance. I gave no thought to results, or to what my father would say when this grotesque young figure should break into his presence. Mechanically I started for home and she walked by my side, chatting. Jason strode in our rear, whistling.
“What a brute he must be!” she said once, jerking her head backward.
“Leave him alone,” I said, “or we shall quarrel. What’s a girl like you to him?”
I think she hardly heard me, for the whistle had dropped to a very mellow note. To my surprise I noticed that she was crying.
“I thought changelings couldn’t cry?” I said.
“I tell you water does not affect me,” she answered, sharply. “What a mean spy you are—for a boy.”
I was very angry at that and strode on with black looks, whereupon she edged up to me and said, softly: “Don’t be sore with me, don’t.”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“Let’s kiss and be friends,” she whispered.
For the first time in my life I blushed furiously.
“You beast,” I said, “to think that men would kiss!”
She gave me a sounding smack on the shoulder and I turned on her furiously.
“Oh, yes!” she cried, “hit out at me, do! It’s like you.”
“I won’t touch you!” I said. “But I won’t have anything more to do with you,” and I strode on, fuming. She followed after me and presently I heard her crying again. At this my anger evaporated and I turned round once more.
“Come on,” I said, “if you want to, and keep a civil tongue in your head.”
Presently we were walking together again.
“What’s your home, Renny?” she asked, by and by.
“A mill,” I answered, “but nothing is ground there now.”
She stopped and so did I, and she looked at me curiously, with her red lips parted, so that her teeth twinkled.
“What’s the matter?” said I.
“Nothing,” she said, “only I remember an old, old saying that the woman told me.”
“What woman?” I asked, in wonder, but she took no notice of my question, only repeated some queer doggerel that ran somewhat as follows:
“Where the mill race is
Come and go faces.
Once deeds of violence;
Now dust and silence.
Thither thy destiny
Answer what speaks to thee.”
CHAPTER III.THE MILL AND THE CHANGELING.
The outer appearance of the old mill in which we lived and grew up I have touched upon; and now I take up my pen to paint in black and white the old, moldering interior of the shell.
The building stood upon a triple arch of red brick that spanned the stream, and extended from shore to shore, where, on each side, a house of later date stood cheek to jowl with it. It looked but an indifferent affair as viewed from the little bridge aforesaid, which was dedicated to St. Swithun of watery memory, but in reality extended further backward than one might have suspected. Moreover, to the east side a longish wing, with a ridged roof of tiles, ran off at right angles and added considerably to the general dimensions. To the west stood a covered yard, where once the mill wagons were packed or unloaded; but this, in all my memory of it, yawned only a dusty spave, given over to the echoes and a couple of ancient cart wheels whose rusty tires and worm-pierced hubs were mute evidence of an inglorious decay.
These were for all to see—but behind the walls!
Was the old mill uncanny from the first, or is it only the ghosts with which our generation of passions has peopled it that have made it so? This I can say: That I never remember a time when Jason or I, or even Zyp, dared to be in the room of silence alone—and in company never for more than a few minutes. Modred had not the same awe of it, but Modred’s imagination was a swaddled infant. For my father I will not speak. Maybe he was too accustomed to specters to dread them.
This room was one on the floor above the water, and the fact that it harbored the mill wheel, whose booming, when in motion, shook the stagnant air with discordant sounds, may have served as some explanation of its eeriness. It stood against the east wing and away from the yard, and was a dismal, dull place, like a loft, with black beams above going off into darkness. Its only light came from a square little window in front that was bleared with dust and stopped outside with a lacework of wire. Against its western wall was reared a huge box or cage of wood, which was made to contain the upper half of the wheel, with its ratchet and shaft that went up to the great stones on the floor above; for the mill race thundered below, and when the great paddles were revolving the water slapped and rent at the woodwork.
Now it behooves me to mention a strange fancy of my father’s—which was this, that though no grain or husk in our day ever crumbled between the stones, the wheel was forever kept in motion, as if our fortunes lay in grinding against impalpable time. The custom was in itself ghostly, and its regularity was interrupted only at odd moments, and those generally in the night, when, lying abed upstairs, we boys would become conscious of a temporary cessation of the humming, vibrating noise that was so habitual to the place. To this fancy was added a strange solicitude on the part of my father for the well-being of the wheel itself. He would disappear into the room of silence twice or thrice a day to oil and examine it, and if rarely any tinkering was called for we knew it by the sound of the closing of the sluice and of the water rush swerving round by another channel.
Now, for the time I have said enough, and with a sigh return to that May afternoon and little Zyp, the changeling.
She followed me into the mill so quietly that I hardly heard her step behind me. When I looked back her eyes were full of a strange speculation and her hands crossed on her breast, as if she prayed. She motioned me forward and I obeyed, marveling at my own submission. I had no slightest idea what I was to say to my father or what propose. We found him seated by the table in the living room upstairs, a bottle and glass before him. The weekly demon was beginning to work, but had not yet obtained the mastery. He stared at us as we entered, but said nothing.
Then, to my wonder, Zyp walked straight up to the old man, pulled his arms down, sat upon his knee and kissed his rutted cheek. I gave a gasp that was echoed by Jason, who had followed and was leaning against the lintel of the open door. Still my father said nothing and I trembled at the ominous silence. At last in desperation I stammered, and all the time Zyp was caressing the passive face.
“Dad, the girl fell into the water and I pulled her out, and here she is.”
Then at length my father said in a harsh, deep voice:
“You pulled her out? What was Jason there doing?”
“Waiting for her to drown,” my brother answered for himself, defiantly forestalling conviction.
My father put the girl from him, strode furiously across the room, seized Jason by one arm and gave him several cruel, heavy blows across his shoulders and the back of his head. The boy was half stunned, but uttered no cry, and at every stroke Zyp laughed and clapped her hands. Then, flinging his victim to the floor, from which he immediately rose again and resumed his former posture by the door, pale but unsubdued, my father returned to his seat and held the girl at arm’s length before him.
“Who are you?” he said.
She answered, “A changeling,” in a voice soft as flowers.
“What’s your name?”
“Zyp.”
“Your other name?”
“Never mind; Zyp’s enough.”
“Is it? Where do you come from? What brings you here?”
“Renny brought me here because I love him.”
“Love him? Have you ever met before?”
“No; but he pulled me out of the water.”
“Come—this won’t do. I must know more about you.”
She laughed and put out her hand coaxingly.
“Shall I tell you? A little, perhaps. I am from a big forest out west there, where wheels drone like hornets among the trees and black men rise out of the ground. I have no father or mother, for I come of the fairies. Those who stood for them married late and had a baby and they delayed to christen it. One day the baby was gone and I was there. They knew me for a changeling from the first and didn’t love me. But I lived with them for all that and they got to hate me more and more. Not a cow died or a gammer was wryed wi’ the rheumatics but I had done it. Bit by bit the old man lost all his trade and loved me none the more, I can tell you. He was a Beast Leech, and where was the use of the forest folk sending for him to mend their sick kine when he kept a changeling to undo it all? At last they could stand no more of it and the woman brought me away and lost me.”
“Lost you?” echoed my father.
“Oh,” said Zyp, with a little cluck, “I knew all along how the tramp was to end. There was an old one, a woman, lived in the forest, and she told me a deal of things. She knew me better than them all, and I loved her because she was evil, so they said. She told me some rhymes and plenty of other things.”
“Well?” said my father.
“We walked east by the sun for days and days. Then we came to the top of a big, soft hill, where little beetles were hopping among the grass, and below us was a great town like stones in a green old quarry, and the woman said: ‘Run down and ask the name of it while I rest here.’ And I ran with the wind in my face and was joyful, for I knew that she would escape when I was gone, and I should never see her again.”
“And then you tumbled into the water?” said my father.
Zyp nodded.
“And now,” she said, “I belong to nobody, and will you have me?”
My father shook his head, and in a moment sobs most piteous were shaking the girl’s throat. So forlorn and pretty a sight I have never seen before or since.
“Well,” he said, “if nobody comes to claim you, you may stop.”
And stop Zyp did. Surely was never an odder coming, yet from that day she was one of us.
What was truthful and what imaginative in her story I have never known, for from first to last this was the most we heard of it.
One thing was certain. Zyp was by nature a child of the open air and the sun. Flowers that were wild she loved—not those that were cultivated, however beautiful, of which she was indifferent—and she had an unspeakable imagination in reading their fanciful histories and a strange faculty for fondling them, as it were, into sentient beings. I can hardly claim belief when I say that I have seen a rough nettle fade when she scolded it for stinging her finger, or a little yellow rock rose turn from the sun to her when she talked to it.
Zyp never plucked a flower, or allowed us to do so if she could prevent it. I well remember the first walk I took with her after her establishment in the mill, when I was attracted by a rare little blossom, the water chickweed, which sprouted from a grassy trench, and pulled it for her behoof. She beat me savagely with her soft hands, then fell to kissing and weeping over the torn little weed, which actually appeared to revive a moment under her caresses. I had to promise with humility never to gather another wild flower so long as I lived, and I have been faithful to my trust.
The afternoon of her coming old Peg rigged her up some description of sleeping accommodation in a little room in the attic, and this became her sanctuary whenever she wished to escape us and be alone. To my father she was uniformly sweet and coaxing, and he for his part took a strange fancy to her, and abated somewhat of his demoniacal moodiness from the date of her arrival.
Yet it must not be imagined, from this description of her softer side, that Zyp was all tender pliability. On the contrary, in her general relations with us and others as impure human beings, she was the veritable soul of impishness, and played a thousand pranks to prove her title to her parentage.
At first she made a feint of distributing her smiles willfully, by turn, between Modred and me, so that neither of us might claim precedence. But Jason was admitted to no pretense of rivalry; though, to do him justice, he at once took the upper hand by meeting scorn with indifference. In my heart, however, I claimed her as my especial property; a demand justified, I felt no doubt, by her manner toward me, which was marked by a peculiar rebellious tenderness she showed to no other.
The day after her arrival she asked me to take her over the mill and show her everything. I complied when the place was empty of all save us. We explored room by room, with a single exception, the ancient building.
Of course Zyp said: “There’s a room you haven’t shown me, Renny.”
“Yes,” said I; “the room of silence.”
“Why didn’t we go there?”
“Never mind. There’s something wicked in it.”
“What? Do tell me! Oh, I should love to see!”
“There’s nothing to see. Let it alone, can’t you?”
“You’re a coward. I’ll get the sleepy boy to show me.”
“Come along then,” I said, and, seizing her hand, dragged her roughly indoors.
We crossed a dark passage, and, pushing back a heavy door of ancient timber, stood on the threshold of the room of silence. It was not in nature’s meaning that the name was bestowed, for, entering, the full voice of the wheel broke upon one with a grinding fury that shook the moldering boards of the floor.
“Well,” I whispered, “have you seen enough?”
“I see nothing,” she cried, with a shrill, defiant laugh; “I am going in”—and before I could stop her, she had run into the middle of the room and was standing still in the bar of sunlight, with her arms outspread like wings, and her face, the lips apart, lifted with an expression on it of eager inquiry.
What happened? I can find an image only in the poison bottle of the entomologist. As some shining, flower-stained butterfly, slipped into this glass coffin, quivers, droops its wings and fades, as it were, in a moment before its capturer’s eyes, so Zyp faded before mine. Her arms dropped to her sides, her figure seemed as if its whole buoyancy were gone at a touch, her face fell to a waxen color and “Oh, take me away!” she wailed in a thin, strangled voice.
I conquered my terror, rushed to her, and, dragging her stumbling and tripping from the room, banged to the door behind us and made for the little platform once more and the open air.
She revived in a wonderfully short space of time, and, lifting up her head, looked into my eyes with her own wide with dismay.
“It was hideous,” she whispered; “why didn’t you stop me?”
Zyp, it will be seen, was not all elf. She had something in common with her sex.
“I warned you,” I said, “and I know what you felt.”
“It was as if a question was being asked of me,” she said, in a low voice. “And yet no one spoke and there was no question. I don’t know what it wanted or what were the words, for there were none; but I feel as if I shall have to go on thinking of the answer and struggling to find it forever and ever.”
“Yes,” I whispered, in the same tone; “that is what everybody says.”
She begged me not to follow her, and crept away quite humbled and subdued, and we none of us saw more of her that day. But just as she left me she turned and whispered in awe-stricken tone, “Answer what speaks to thee,” and I could not remember when and where I had heard these words before.
CHAPTER IV.ZYP BEWITCHES.
In the evening Dr. Crackenthorpe paid us a visit. He found my father out, but elected to sit with us and smoke his pipe expectant of the other’s return.
He always treated us boys as if we were so much dirt, and we respected his strength just sufficiently to try no pranks on him in the absence of the ruling power. But nevertheless we resented his presumption of authority, and whenever he sat with us alone made an exaggerated affectation of being thick in whispered confidences among ourselves.
Zyp was still upstairs and the doctor had not as yet seen her, but he was conscious, I think, in some telepathic way, of an alien presence in the house, for he kept shifting his position uneasily and looking toward the door. A screech from his lips suddenly startled us, and we turned round to see the long man standing bolt upright, with his face gone the color of a meal sack, and his bold eyes staring prominent.
“What’s the matter?” said Jason.
Gradually the doctor’s face assumed a dark look of rage.
“Which of you was it?” he cried in a broken voice; “tell me, or I’ll crack all your fingers up like fire sticks!”
“What’s the matter?” said Jason, again; “you see for yourself we’ve been sitting by the table all the time you’ve been there.”
“Something spoke—somebody, I tell you, as I sat here in the chimney corner!” He was beside himself with fury and had great ado to crush his emotion under. But he succeeded, and sat down again trembling all over.
“A curse is on the house!” he muttered; then aloud: “I’ve had enough of your games, you black vermin! I won’t stand it, d’ye hear? Let there be an end!”
We stared, dropped into our seats and were beginning our confidences once more, when the doctor started up a second time with a loud oath, and leaped into the middle of the room.
“Great thunder!” he shouted; “d’ye dare!”
This time we had all heard it—a wailing whisper that seemed to come from the neighborhood of the chimney and to utter the words: “Beware the demon that sits in the bottle,” and of the whole company only I was not confounded.
As to the doctor, he suddenly turned very white again, and muttered shakingly: “Can it be? I don’t exceed as others do. I swear I have taken less this month than ever before.”
With the terror in his soul he stumbled toward the door and was moving out his hand to reach it, when it opened from the other side and Zyp, as meek and pure looking as a young saint, met him on the threshold.
Now, I had that morning, in the course of conversation with the changeling, touched upon Dr. Crackenthorpe and his weaknesses, and that ghostly mention of the bottle convinced me on the moment that only she could be responsible for the mystery—a revelation of impishness which, I need not say, delighted me. The method of her prank I may as well describe here. The embrasure for a fireplace in her room had never been fitted with a grate, and the hearthstone itself was cracked and dislocated in a dozen places. By removing some of these fragments she had actually discovered a broken way into the chimney of the sitting room below, down which it was easy to slip a hollow rail of iron which with other lumber lay in the attic. This she had done, listened for her opportunity, and thereupon spoken the ominous words.
I think her appearance was the consummation of the doctor’s terror, for a shuddering “Oh!” shook from his lips, and he seemed about to drop. And indeed she was somewhat like a spirit, with her wild white face looking from a tangle of pheasant-brown hair and her solemn eyes like water glints in little wells of shadow.
She walked past the stricken man all stately, and then Modred and I jumped up and greeted her. At this the doctor’s jaw dropped, but his trembling ceased and he watched us with injected eyes. Holding my two hands, Zyp looked coyly round, leaning backward.
“I love a tall man,” she whispered; “he has more in him than a short one.”
The doctor pulled himself together and came straggling across to the table.
“Who the pestilence is this?” he said, in a voice not yet quite under his command.
Zyp let go my hands and curtsied like a wild flower.
“Zyp, the orphan, good gentleman,” she said; “shall I fill your pipe for you?”
It had fallen on the floor by the chimney, and she picked it up and went to him with a winning expression.
“Where is your tobacco, please?”
Mechanically he brought a round tin box from his pocket and handed it to her. Then it was a study in elfin coquetry to see the way in which she daintily coaxed the weed into the bowl and afterward sucking at the pipe stem with her determined little red lips to see if it drew properly. This done, she presented the mouthpiece to the doctor’s consideration, as if it were a baby’s “comforter.”
“Now,” she said, “sit down and I’ll bring you your glass.”
But at this the four of us, including Dr. Crackenthorpe, drew back. My father was no man to allow his pleasures to be encroached upon unbidden, and we three, at least, knew it as much as our skins were worth to offer practical hospitality in his absence.
Zyp looked at our faces and stamped her foot lively, with a toss of disdain.
“Where is the strong drink?” she said.
Modred tittered. “In that cupboard over the mantel shelf, if you must know,” he said.
Zyp had the bottle out in a twinkling and a glass with it. She poured out a stiff rummer, added water from a stone bottle on a corner shelf, and presented the grateful offering to the visitor, who had reseated himself by the table.
His scruples of conscience and discretion grew faint in the near neighborhood of the happy cordial. He seized the glass and impulsively took half the grog at a breath. Zyp clapped her hands joyfully, whereupon he clumped down the glass on the table with a dismayed look.
“Well,” he said, “you’re an odd little witch, upon my word. What Robin Goodfellow fathered you, I should like to know?”
“He’s no father,” said Zyp. “He’s too full of tricks for a family man. I could tell you things of him.”
“Tell us some then,” said the doctor.
What Zyp would have answered I don’t know, for at that moment my father walked into the room. If he had had what is vulgarly called a skinful, he was not drunk, for he moved steadily up to the little group at the table with a scowl contracting his forehead. The half-emptied tumbler had caught his eye immediately and he pointed to it. I was conscious that the doctor quaked a little.
“Pray make yourself at home,” said my father, and caught up the glass and flung its contents in the other’s face. In a moment the two men were locked in a savage, furious embrace, till, crashing over a chair, they were flung sprawling on the floor and apart. Before they could come together again Zyp alone of us had placed herself between them, fearless and beautiful, and had broken into a quaint little song:
“Smooth down her fur,
Rub sleep over her eyes,
Sweet, never stir.
Kiss down the coat of her
There, where she lies
On the bluebells.”
She sung, and whether it was the music or the strangeness of the interruption, I shall never know; only the wonderful fact remains that, with the sound of her voice, the great passion seemed to die out of the two foes and to give place to a pleasant conceit, comical in its way, that they had only been rollicking together.
“Well,” said my father, without closer allusion to his brutality, “the liquor was choice Schiedam, and it’s gone.”
He sat down, called for another glass, helped himself to a noggin and pushed the bottle roughly across to Dr. Crackenthorpe, who had already reseated himself opposite.
“Sing again, girl,” said my father, but Zyp shook her head.
“I never do anything to order,” she said, “but the fairies move me to dance.”
She blew out the lamp as she spoke and glided to a patch of light that fell from the high May moon through the window on to the rough boards of the room. Into this light she dipped her hands and then passed them over her hair and face as though she were washing herself in the mystic fountain of the night; and all the time her murmuring voice accompanied the action in little trills of laughter and words not understandable. Presently she fell to dancing, slowly at first and dividing her presence between glow and gloom; but gradually the supple motion of her body increased, step by step, until she was footing it as wildly as a young hamadryad to her own leaping shadow on the floor.
Suddenly she sprung from the moonlit square, danced over to Dr. Crackenthorpe and, whispering awfully in his ear, “Beware the demon that sits in the bottle,” ran from the room.
My father burst into a fit of laughter, but I think from that day the doctor fully hated her.
CHAPTER V.A TERRIBLE INTERVIEW.
Zyp had been with us a month, and surely never did changeling happen into a more congenial household.
Jason she still held at arm’s length, which, despite my admiration of my brother, I secretly congratulated my heart on, for—let me get over it at the outset—from first to last, I have never wavered in my passion of love for this wild, beautiful creature. The unexpectedness of her coming alone was a romance, the delight of which has never palled upon me with the deadening years. Therefore it was that I early made acquaintance with the demon of jealousy, than whom none, in truth, is more irresistible in his unclean strength and hideousness.
Zyp and I were one day wandering under the shadow of the mighty old cathedral of Winton.
“I don’t like it, Renny,” she said, pressing up close to me. “It’s awful and it’s grand, but there are always faces at the windows when I look up at them.”
“Whose?” I said, with a laugh.
“I don’t know,” she said; “but think of the thousands of old monks and things whose home it was once and whose ghosts are shut up among the stones. There!” she cried, pointing.
I looked at the old leaded window she indicated, but could see nothing.
“His face is like stone and he’s beckoning,” she whispered. “Oh, come along, Renny”—and she dragged me out of the grassy yard and never stopped hurrying me on till we reached the meadows. Here her gayety returned to her, and she felt at home among the flowers at once.
Presently we wandered into a grassy covert against a hedge on the further side of which a road ran, and threw ourselves among the “sauce alone” and wild parsley that grew there. Zyp was in one of her softest moods and my young heart fluttered within me. She leaned over me as I sat and talked to me in a low voice, with her fair young brow gone into wrinkles of thoughtfulness.
“Renny, what’s love that they talk about?”
I laughed and no doubt blushed.
“I mean,” she said, “is it blue eyes and golden hair or brown eyes and brown hair? Don’t be silly, little boy, till you know what I mean.”
“Well, what do you mean, Zyp?”
“I want to know, that’s all. Renny, do you remember my asking to kiss and be friends that day we first met, and your refusing?”
“Yes, Zyp,” I stammered.
“You may kiss me now, if you like,” and she let herself drop into my arms, as I sat there, and turned up her pretty cheek to my mouth.
My blood surged in my ears. I was half-frightened, but all with a delicious guilt upon me. I bent hastily and touched the soft pink curve with my trembling lips.
She lay quite still a moment, then sat up and gently drew away from me.
“No,” she said, “that isn’t it. Shall I ever know, I wonder?”
“Know what, Zyp?”
“Never mind, for I shan’t tell you. There, I didn’t mean to be rude,” and she stroked the sleeve of my jacket caressingly.
By and by she said: “I wonder if you will suffer, Renny, poor boy? I would save you all if I could, for you’re the best of them, I believe.”
Her very words were so inexplicable to me that I could only sit and stare at her. I have construed them since, with a knife through my heart for every letter.
As we were sitting silent a little space, steps sounded down the road and voices with them. They were of two men, who stopped suddenly, as they came over against us, hidden behind the hedge, as if to clinch some argument, but we had already recognized the contrary tones of my father and Dr. Crackenthorpe.
“Now, harkee!” the doctor was saying; “that’s well and good, but I’m not to be baffled forever and a day, Mr. Ralph Trender. What does it all amount to? You’ve got something hidden up your sleeve and I want to know what it is.”
“Is that all?” My father spoke in a set, deep manner.
“That’s all, and enough.”
“Then, look up my sleeve, Dr. Crackenthorpe—if you can.”
“I don’t propose to look. I suggest that you just shake it, when no doubt the you-know-whats will come tumbling out.”
“And if I refuse?”
“There are laws, my friend, laws—iniquitous, if you like; but, for what they are, they don’t recognize the purse on the highway as the property of him that picks it up.”
“And how are you going to set these laws in motion?”
“We’ll insert the end of the wedge first—say in some public print, now. How would this look? We have it on good authority that Mr. Trender, our esteemed fellow-townsman, is the lucky discoverer of——”
“Be silent, you!” My father spoke fiercely; then added in a low tone: “D’ye wish all the world to know?”
“Not by any means,” said the other, quietly, “and they shan’t if you fall in with my mood.”
“If I only once had your head in the mill wheel,” groaned my father, with a curse. “Now, harken! I don’t put much value on your threat; but this I’ll allow that I court no interference with my manner of life. Take the concession for what it is worth. Come to me by and by and you shall have another.”
“A couple,” said the doctor.
“Very well—no more, though I rot for it—and take my blessing with them.”
“When shall I come?” said the doctor, ignoring the very equivocal benediction.
“Come to-night—no, to-morrow,” said my father, and turning on his heel strode heavily off toward the town.
I heard the doctor chuckling softly with a malignant triumph in his note.
I clenched my teeth and fists and would have risen had not Zyp noiselessly prevented me. It was wormwood to me; the revelation that, for some secret cause, my father, the strong, irresistible and independent, was under the thumb of an alien. But the doctor walked off and I fell silent.
On our homeward way we came across Jason lying on his back under a tree, but he took no notice of us nor answered my call, and Zyp stamped her foot when I offered to delay and speak to him. Nevertheless I noticed that more than once she looked back, as long as he was in view, to see if he was moved to any curiosity as to our movements, which he never appeared to be in the least.
Great clouds had been gathering all the afternoon, and now the first swollen drops of an advancing thunderstorm spattered in the dust outside the yard. Inside it was as dark as pitch, and I had almost to grope my way along the familiar passages. Zyp ran away to her own den.
Suddenly, with a leap of the blood, I saw that some faintly pallid object stood against the door of the room of silence as I neared it. It was only with an effort I could proceed, and then the thing detached itself and was resolved into the white face of my brother Modred.
“Is that you, Renny?” he said, in a loud, tremulous voice.
“Yes,” I answered, very shakily myself. “What in the name of mystery are you doing there?”
“I feel queer,” he said. “Let’s get to the light somewhere.”
We made our way to the back, opened the door leading on to the little platform and stood looking at the stringed rain. Modred’s face was ghastly and his eyes were awakened to an expression that I had never thought them capable of.
“You’ve been in there?” I said.
“Yes,” he whispered.
“More fool you. If you like to tempt the devil you should have the brass to outface him. Why, you’ve got it!” I cried, for he suddenly let fall from his trembling hand a little round glittering object, whose nature I could not determine in the stormy twilight.
He had it in his clutch again in a moment, though I pounced for it, and then he backed through the open doorway.
“It’s naught that concerns you,” he said; “keep off, you beast!”
“What is it?” I cried.
“Water-parings,” said he, and clapped to the door in my face as I rushed at him, and I heard him scuttle upstairs. The latch caught me in the chest and knocked my breath out for a bit, so that I was unable to follow, and probably he ran and bolted himself into his bedroom. In any case, I had no mind for pursuit, my heart being busy with other affairs; and there I remained and thought them out. Presently, being well braced to the ordeal, I went indoors and upstairs to the living room, where I was persuaded I should find my father. And there he sat, pretty hot with drink and with a comfortless, glowering devil in his eyes.
“Well!” he thundered, “what do you want?”
I managed to get out, with some firmness, “A word with you, dad,” though his eyes disquieted me.
“Make it one, then, and a quick one!”
“Zyp and I were sitting behind a hedge this afternoon when you and Dr. Crackenthorpe were at words on the other side.”
His eyes shriveled me, but the motion of his lips seemed to signify to me that I was to go on.
“Dad, if he has any hold over you, let me share the bother and help if I can.”
He had sat with his right hand on the neck of the bottle from which he had been drinking, and he now flung the latter at me, with a snarl like that of a mad dog. Fortunately for me, in the very act some flash of impulse unnerved him, so that the bottle spun up to the ceiling and crashed down again to the floor, from which the scattered liquor sent up a pungent, sickening odor. Then he leaped to his feet and yelled at me. I could make nothing of his words, save that they clashed into one another in a torrent of furious invective. But in the midst his voice stopped, with a vibrating snap; he put his hand to his forehead, which, I saw with horror, was suddenly streaked with purple, and down he sunk to the floor in a heap.
I was terribly frightened, and, running to him, endeavored in a frantic manner to pull him into a sitting posture. I had half succeeded, when, lying propped up against the leg of the table, he gave a groan and bade me in a weak voice to let him be; and presently to my joy I saw the natural color come back to his face by slow degrees. By and by he was able to slide into the chair he had left, where he lay panting and exhausted, but recovering.
“Renalt, my lad,” he said, in a dragging voice, “what was that you said just now? Let’s have it again.”
I hesitated, but he smiled at me and bade me not to fear. Thus encouraged, I repeated my statement.
“Ah,” he said; “and the girl—did she hear?”
