The Laughing Mill and Other Stories Part 3

"That may do for him," muttered David, "but it won't do for me. He can talk with her and I can't; so if he won't teach her English I will.

Devil take me if she isn't a sweet little fairy; and she's quite enchanted the Scholar already. He's a changed man since yesterday. But he shan't have all the fun to himself."

"She looks thirteen, don't you think?" said Jael. "She won't be a child much longer, David. Why, come three years or so, she'll be old enough to be married."

"Ay, old woman; but I shall be too old to marry her," he answered, with a keen look and a laugh.

"I tell you, son, she's a lady, and good enough to mate with any man."

"That's your notion, and likely enough it's true. But good blood isn't all I want--I've got that already, thanks to your good looks; what I want and haven't got is money. And Miss Swanhilda, pretty as she is, has less money even than I."

"But she has relations--rich relations; her own father and mother may be alive for all we know. If she was saved off a ship where all the rest were lost, of course there'll be no telling for some time to come. But it's worth waiting for."

"Did no papers come ash.o.r.e--nothing to help identify her?"

"I asked Poyntz that," said Jael, "and so far as I can make out, I think there hasn't been anything."

"Well, I'll make sure of that next time I go over. We might advertise in the foreign papers after awhile. A right pretty little thing she is, and no mistake. But I'm not a-going to run any risks, old woman. Supposing I was to get tied down to her for life, and then find out that she'd got nothing, what would I do then?"

"There's no need of supposing any such thing, David. As if you couldn't make the girl fond of you so as she wouldn't marry any but you; then you'd have her safe, and if all turned out well, 'twould be time enough to put the ring on her finger."

"Ay, that's about the idea, I suppose. Well, the Scholar's got the start of us now; and 'twon't do to let him see what we're up to; luckily he never did see what's going on under his nose. By-the-way, that's a quaint bit of a necklace the child wears; mayhaps that'll help us to find out something----"

He broke off suddenly, with an oath, and he and his mother stood listening, pale-faced. His eyes were angry, but terror lurked in those of the woman.

A strange jarring sound filled the air; it seemed to come from every side, and screamed harshly into the listeners' ears. If a fiend had burst into a long fit of malignant laughter close at hand the effect could not have been more hateful and discordant.

"The laugh again!" David muttered between his teeth. "It would be just our luck if it scared our best customer away. Devil take me if I don't begin to believe it is the soul of that cursed husband of yours, that you treated so affectionately. I'll swear there's not a spot of rust on the machinery as big as a pin's head."

"Oh, son, don't look that way at me," said the woman, in a shaken voice.

"I would prevent it if I could; what can I do?"

"You might jump in and follow your husband; that's what he wants, I suppose," returned the son, angrily. "It's you that wronged him, not I; and as long as you're here we'll have no luck. That's the long and short of it!"

The laugh had died away, and Jael, pressing her hand above her heart, turned aside and pa.s.sed out. She loved her son, and would have shed her blood for him; but this was not the first time he had spoken thus.

After she was gone, David stood at the window, biting his lips and muttering to himself. Suddenly he heard Gloam's step behind him, and looked round in surprise.

"What was that noise?" Gloam asked.

"Why, nothing new, sir. The same old story. Something wrong with the wheel again, I suppose."

"I remember no such sound before," said Gloam, excitedly. "It is hideous, like the shriek of an evil spirit. Let it never come again; it frightens Swanhilda, and comes between us like a prophecy of woe. Let it never come again!"

"You have taken to hearing through her ears and feeling through her senses--that's all the matter," answered David, smiling. "It sounds bad to you because it makes her head ache. As to stopping it, I'd do so, and gladly, if I but knew how. It loses us half our custom, for folks say the devil's at the bottom of it, sure enough."

"It is a wicked sound!" exclaimed Gloam again, "full of mockery and bitterness. Swanhilda was born to hear divine harmonies, and she will leave us if we greet her with such hideous discord."

"She was born to take her chance with the rest of the world, Mr. Gloam,"

replied the younger man, in a harder tone. Then he smiled again and added, in his muttering way, as he left the room, "She'll get used to it fast enough, never fear."

But a long time pa.s.sed without the recurrence of the hateful sound, and meanwhile Swanhilda was recovering from her first melancholy and home-sickness. Gloam had told her that she would see her father and mother again some day, and by degrees her anxiety calmed down to a quiet and not uncheerful expectation. She seemed to know little of the history of her family, or else was averse from discussing it; for amidst all her winning sweetness and pure sincerity she retained a maidenly reserve and dignity not lightly to be overcome. But the guileless fascination which she unconsciously exercised upon all she met was impossible to resist.

She gladdened all eyes and hearts, and the mill became a storehouse of beauty and gladness as well as of grain and meal. People came from all the surrounding neighbourhood to see Scholar Gloam's water-nymph; and at last, when the Laughing Mill was mentioned, they thought of Swanhilda's airy merriment--not of the ill-omened sound that had first given it that name, but was already being fast forgotten. So the prosperity of handsome David increased, and was greater than it had ever been before; he had as many customers as the mill could supply, and bade fair, in the course of years, to become a wealthy man. He and Jael treated the little water-nymph with every kindness, as well they might; and what Gloam had said seemed likely to come true--that she would be the means of their regeneration.

And Gloam himself was as a man transfigured. He lived no longer amidst his books, but made himself free to all; and the neighbours wondered to find him so genial and gladsome. He and Swanhilda were constantly together; they played and laughed like children; they went on long rambles hand-in-hand; in winter they pelted each other with snow-b.a.l.l.s; in summer and autumn they gathered flowers and berries and nuts. He treated her with the most reverent and entire affection; he was ready to sacrifice anything for her sake, to give her anything--unless it were, perhaps, the freedom to be to another all that she was to him. But apparently she was well content. Gloam was the only one who spoke her language, and the only one, therefore, with whom she could converse unrestrainedly. He would not teach her English, and if others attempted to do so it was without his knowledge or consent. He believed, it may be, that no one but himself could appreciate her full worth, and thought it would be a kind of desecration to let another approach her too nearly. Certainly they were happy together. That part of his nature to which she appealed was not less youthful than she was herself; and in her society he felt himself immortally young. He forgot that there were lines upon his brow, and that his figure was bent, and that his hair had begun to be prematurely white. And he doubted not that as he felt so he seemed to her.

Was his confidence justified? Had this child who was just beginning to be a young woman, penetration to see the fresh soul within the imperfect body? A more experienced man would have had misgivings, knowing that young women are apt to judge by appearances, and to be more swayed by downright power and pa.s.sion than by abstract right and beauty. But Gloam's experience had not taught him this. He did not dream that she could ever learn to deceive him, or to give him less than the first place in her heart. But he dreamed that some day, distant perhaps, at least indefinite--they would be married. By all rights they belonged to each other, and when they had played their childish games to the end, and had wearied of them, then would they enter upon that new phase of life. Meanwhile he would not speak to her of the deeper love, lest she should be startled, and the frankness of their present intercourse be impaired. But women have been lost ere now through fear of startling them.

So more than two years slipped away, and the child Swanhilda had grown to be a tall and graceful maiden; which seemed half a miracle, so quickly had the time pa.s.sed. Her blue eyes had waxed larger and deeper, and in moments of excitement they became almost black. Her hair was yellow as an evening cloud; her face and bearing full of life and warmth. Her nature was strengthening and expanding; she was beginning to measure herself against her a.s.sociates. Though so gentle, she was all untamed; no one had ever mastered or controlled her. She knew neither her own strength nor weakness, but the time approached when she would seek to know them. Every woman is both weaker and stronger than she believes, and it is well for her, when the trial comes, if her strength be not the betrayer of her weakness.

VIII.

At this point in the story the voice of the narrator grew fainter and then made a pause. I still kept my reclining position, with my hands clasped above my closed eyes. In fact, it would have required a greater effort than I at the moment cared to make to have sat up and looked about me. The sun, I knew, had already sunk below the crest of the slope; the gorge lay in shadow, and beneath the oak it was almost dark.

As I lay waiting for the tale to recommence, the sombre influence of the wheel a.s.serted itself more strongly than ever. There it loomed, in my imagination, black, grim, and portentous. Its huge spokes stretched out like rigid arms, and the long gra.s.s which streamed along the gurgling water resembled the hair of a drowned woman's head.... But now the voice began again.

One summer afternoon Gloam and Swanhilda were sitting on the wooden bench beside the mill, watching the heavy revolutions of the great wheel. They were alone. David was in the mill-room finishing the day's work, and Jael was preparing supper in the kitchen. For several minutes neither of them had spoken.

"Do you remember," said Swanhilda at last, using her native tongue, "the first day I came here, how there came a terrible sound that made me miserably frightened? I have never heard it since then. What was it?"

"Only a rusty axle; at least, so I suppose. That careless David had forgotten to oil it properly. But I gave him such a scolding that there has been no more trouble."

"David is not careless--he works very hard, and I love him," retorted Swanhilda, tossing back her yellow hair. "Besides, such a noise could not be made by an axle."

"You may like David, but you mustn't love him; you are a little princess, and he is only the housekeeper's son."

"What is the difference between loving and liking?" inquired Swanhilda, folding her hands in her lap, and turning round on her companion.

He took her hand and answered, "I shall teach you that when you are older."

"I am not so young as you think. I am old enough to be taught now."

"No, no, no!" said Gloam, shaking his head and laughing; "you are nothing but a child yet. There is plenty of time, little water-nymph."

"If you will not teach me, I'll find someone else who will teach me. I will ask David; he has taught me some things already."

"He? What have you learnt from him?" cried Gloam.

Swanhilda hesitated. "I should not have said that--but it's nothing, only that I am learning to speak English. He didn't want you to know until I was quite perfect, so as to make it a surprise to you."

"He had no right to do it. Why should you learn to speak with anyone but me?" exclaimed Gloam pa.s.sionately.

"Do you think I belong to you?" demanded Swanhilda, lifting her head in half-earnest, half-laughing defiance. "No; I am my own, and there are other places besides this in the world, and other people. I will go back to my own country."

"Oh, Swanhilda," said Gloam, his voice husky with dismay, "you will never leave us? I cannot live without you."

"I will, if you are unkind to me.... Well, then, you must not be angry because David taught me English; and you must let him teach me the difference between liking and loving; I'm sure he knows what it is!"

"Do not ask him--do not ask him! That is my right; no one can take it from me! I saved you, Swanhilda; I brought you back to life, and that new life belongs to me!" The hand that held hers had turned cold, and he was pale and trembling. "I have kept you for myself; I have given up my own life--the life that I used to live--for you. But I cannot return to it, if you leave me."