The Laughing Mill, and Other Stories. Julian Hawthorne

tell. Was it all true? would he ever finish it? and what would be its upshot? But now the pearl-shell necklace ruled my thoughts. Was it possibly the same as that which my great-grandmother had lost? and if so, would Agatha be likely to know anything about it? The next moment a vision of Scholar Gloam had risen before me. How had he come to die, and be buried beneath the Black Oak? and why was the old mill considered haunted? David—the handsome housekeeper’s son—what had become of him? and, above all, what had been the fate of the little sea-nymph? Then the necklace once more—how came Agatha to attach such talismanic virtues to it? and was not her doing so evidence that she must know its ancient history? Again, was Agatha Poyntz’s own daughter? and if so, who and what had been her mother? for she must be the child of a union prior to that which had resulted in Peter. The speculation gave place in turn to the idea of the mill-wheel possessed by the devil, or by the soul of the murdered miller—Poyntz had seemed uncertain which. Had its “laugh” really been so terrible? or had not an originally harmless, if disagreeable noise, acquired a supernatural horror only because listened to across a gap of twenty years? Ah well, what matter to me were all these idle, unanswerable queries? Behind all things—before all things, I seemed to meet the sweet fascination of Agatha’s dark eyes, and to catch the gleam of her yellow hair. Yes, ever and ever, as the pendulum swings outwards and returns, does my thought come back to Agatha!

      Immersed in such disjointed musings, I had journeyed on I know not how long, when all at once I became conscious, so to speak, of the outward world, and looked up and on all sides of me. Where was I? In no place certainly that I had ever visited before. The sea was nowhere visible; the surface of the ground was rocky and irregular, and in nearly every direction the view was shut in by thick growths of pine, birch, and oak. From beyond a clump of the latter, southward from where I stood, I thought I detected the noise of falling water; and glancing eastwards, I could trace the course of a stream which was itself unseen, by the hedge of stunted timber that fringed its banks. The aspect of the neighbourhood was wild and remote; it seemed to lie apart from men’s ways; and certainly he would have been an unsocial spirit who should have chosen such a spot to live in. On the other hand, anyone in search of a good place to do a murder in, or hold a witch meeting, need not have looked farther. A corpse might lie amongst these rocks and bushes for twenty years without a chance of being discovered; and ghost and witches might scream their eeriest unheard by mortal ear.

      Meanwhile I walked on to the other side of the clump of oak trees, when I suddenly found myself gazing on a scene that involuntarily brought me to a standstill.

V.

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      I was now standing on the bank of a stream which, coming from the west, took its course past my feet eastwards. For some distance its approach was between gradually rising walls of rock, which were highest just where I stood. Thence was a precipitous descent into a small gorge about one hundred paces in length, whose steep sides opened out towards the east, their meeting-point being my present station. Through the natural gateway which it had cut for itself in the face of the precipice, the stream fell cataract-wise into a deep pool below, whence overflowing it rushed down a rugged incline, and, having leapt another fall, raced along the middle of the little glen, and so hurried with foam and noise onward to the sea.

      There were vestiges of a rude bridge, long since broken down, across the natural gateway just mentioned; and I even fancied that I could detect traces of an ancient footpath which had its beginning somewhere in the west, and, crossing the stream at this point, had then clambered down the slope to the bottom of the gorge. The bridge had not been entirely of stone; but a stout plank had probably spanned the flood, secured at either end by rough masonry. It must have been a ticklish passage without a handrail, for a false step, followed by a plunge over the cataract, would have been almost certain death. If Master Peter had tumbled in here instead of at the other pool miles lower down, not Poyntz, nor Agatha, nor I, nor all the luck in the world could have got him out alive.

      The hollow of the gorge was much overgrown with bushes and brambles, and along the margin of the noisy stream the grass was high and rank. At the opening of the little valley farthest from where I stood rose an immense oak-tree—the only tree of anything like its size to be seen within a mile—whose wide-spreading branches cast a deep shadow on the earth beneath. So thickly clustered the leaves on the stalwart boughs, and so dark was their tint of green, the whole great tree seemed to have been steeped in night. The gorge, though full of sunlight and verdure, and vocal with the splash of the cataracts, wrought on me even at the first glance an impression of loneliness and desolation. The blue sky seemed farther away from this than from other parts of the earth’s surface, and methought the sun shone upon it rather in mockery than in love.

      Nearly midway down the hollow, and just under the second cataract, hung a huge water-wheel. It hung there motionless, and plainly many a year had passed since it had revolved upon its ponderous axle. It was built of wood, on a clumsy and old-fashioned model, and had become so blackened by age and weather that one might have fancied it charred by fire. Its parts were fastened together with great nails and clamps of iron, the strength of which, however, was now but a deceptive appearance, for the metal was eaten away by red rust, so that a hearty shake would probably have caused the whole structure to tumble into ruin. The rain and snow of unrecorded seasons had spread the rust in streaks and blotches over the swarthy rottenness of the woodwork until I could almost have believed it dabbled with unsightly stains of blood.

      Side by side with these ominous discolorations, however, were growing patches of tender green moss; and thick tufts of grass bent gracefully over the heavy rim of the wheel, where it impended above the rushing water. A delicate vine of convolvulus had become rooted somewhere above, and had wreathed itself in and out among the rigid spokes. It seemed as though Nature were striving, with but partial success, to win back to her own fresh bosom this gaunt relic of man’s handiwork. With but partial success; for all the magic of her beautiful adornments could not annul the odd feeling of repulsion—or was it perverted fascination?—with which this sullen wheel began to affect me. I know not how to interpret, even to my own mind, the nature of this impression. Solitary as I stood there, I yet could not rid myself of the notion that I was not (in the ordinary sense of the word) alone. That wheel—there was something about it more than belongs to mere negative brute matter. It seemed not devoid of a low and evil form of consciousness—almost of personality. I recognised the morbid extravagance of the idea at the same time that I was powerless to do away with it. Everyone, probably, has had some similar experience; and the fact that reason cannot account for the sensation does not lessen its impressiveness.

      The wheel had caught my eye from the first, and, as it were, commanded my main attention. But after a few minutes I looked away from it, not without a conscious effort of will, and gave a closer examination to other objects in the glen. The mill to which the wheel appertained stood on the right bank of the stream, but was now little more than a heap of ruins. The wooden part was wholly decayed, and the stone foundations were displaced and shattered, and covered with weeds and rubbish. A few paces farther back, huddled against the southern acclivity of the gorge, was the carcase of a dismantled and deserted house. The roof had fallen in, the window frames and sashes were gone, and the lifeless rooms stood open to the air. The stone walls had formerly been overlaid with plaster, but this had mostly fallen away, and what patches remained here and there were stained with greenish mould. A tall clump of barberry bushes was growing just within the threshold of the doorway, as if to dispute the entrance of any chance intruder; and a vigorous plantation of some species of yellow flowers was waving above the remains of the chimney. The spectacle was in every respect forlorn and depressing; no barren desert, that had never been trodden by the foot of man, could have so repelled and saddened the observer. Man feels no sympathy for what has never known life; but that which once has lived and now is dead, yet retains in death some semblance of its extinct vitality—that it is which brings the true feeling of desolation home to us.

      After a time I climbed cautiously down from my coign of vantage, and making my way between loose stones and tangled shrubbery, I passed the black wheel and arrived at length beneath the shadow of the great oak. And here, for the first time, I began