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.
