The mill of silence

BY B. E. J. CAPES, Author of “The Uttermost Farthing,” “The Haunted Tower,” etc.

(This story--out of 816 competing--was awarded the second prize in The Chicago Record’s “$30,000 to Authors” competition.)

Copyright, 1896, by B. E. J. Capes.

CONTENTS.

I. THE INMATES OF THE MILL. II. A NIXIE. III. THE MILL AND THE CHANGELING. IV. ZYP BEWITCHES. V. A TERRIBLE INTERVIEW. VI. THE NIGHT BEFORE. VII. THE POOL OF DEATH. VIII. THE WAKING. IX. THE FACE ON THE PILLOW. X. JASON SPEAKS. XI. CONVICT, BUT NOT SENTENCED. XII. THE DENUNCIATION. XIII. MY FRIEND THE CRIPPLE. XIV. I OBTAIN EMPLOYMENT. XV. SWEET, POOR DOLLY. XVI. A FATEFUL ACCIDENT. XVII. A TOUCHING REVELATION. XVIII. A VOICE FROM THE CROWD. XIX. A MENACE. XX. DUKE SPEAKS. XXI. THE CALM BEFORE. XXII. THE SHADOW OF THE STORM. XXIII. A LETTER AND AN ANSWER. XXIV. LOST. XXV. A LAST MESSAGE. XXVI. FROM THE DEPTHS. XXVII. AN UNEXPECTED MEETING. XXVIII. THE TABLES TURNED. XXIX. A SUDDEN DETERMINATION. XXX. I GO HOME. XXXI. ONE MYSTERY EXPLAINED. XXXII. OLD PEGGY. XXXIII. FACE TO FACE. XXXIV. I VISIT A GRAVE. XXXV. ONE SAD VISITOR. XXXVI. I GO TO LONDON. XXXVII. A FACE. XXXVIII. A NIGHT PURSUIT. XXXIX. A STRANGE VIGIL. XL. A STORY AND ITS SEQUEL. XLI. ACROSS THE WATER. XLII. JASON’S SECOND VISIT. XLIII. ANOTHER RESPITE. XLIV. THE SECRET OF THE WHEEL. XLV. I MAKE A DESCENT. XLVI. CAUGHT. XLVII. SOME ONE COMES AND GOES. XLVIII. A FRUITLESS SEARCH. XLIX. A QUIET WARNING. L. STRICKEN DOWN. LI. A MEETING ON THE BRIDGE. LII. A WRITTEN WORD. LIII. AN ATTEMPT AND A FAILURE. LIV. A LAST CONFESSION. LV. A SHADOW FROM THE PAST. LVI. ALONE. LVII. A PROMISE. LVIII. THE “SPECTER HOUND.” LIX. INTO THE DEPTHS. LX. WHO KILLED MODRED?

THE MILL OF SILENCE.

Yesterday came a knock at the door--a faint, tentative knock as from childish knuckles--and I went to see who it was. A queer little figure stood outside in the twilight--a dainty compendium of skirt and cape and frothy white frills--and a small elfish face looked up into mine through shimmering of hair, like love in a mist.

“If you please,” she said, “Zyp’s dead and will you take care of poor Zyp’s child?”

Then at that moment the hard agony of my life broke its walls in a blessed convulsion of weeping, and I caught the little wanderer to my heart and carried her within doors.

“And so poor Zyp is dead?” said I.

“Yes,” answered the elfin; “and, please, will you give me back to her some day?”

“Before God’s throne,” I whispered, “I will deliver up my trust; and that in such wise that from His mercy some little of the light of love may, perhaps, shine upon me also.”

That night I put my signature to the last page of the narrative here unfolded.

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.