Traffics and Discoveries Part 50

"But we are not the Mills of G.o.d. We're only the Upper and the Nether Millstones. We have received no instructions to be anything else. We are actuated by power transmitted through you."

"Ah, but let us be merciful as we are strong. Think of all the beautiful little plants that grow on my woodwork. There are five varieties of rare moss within less than one square yard--and all these delicate jewels of nature are being grievously knocked about by this excessive rush of the water."

"Umph!" growled the Millstones. "What with your religious scruples and your taste for botany we'd hardly know you for the Wheel that put the carter's son under last autumn. You never worried about _him_!"

"He ought to have known better."

"So ought your jewels of nature. Tell 'em to grow where it's safe."

"How a purely mercantile life debases and brutalises!" said the Cat to the Rat.

"They were such beautiful little plants too," said the Rat tenderly.

"Maiden's-tongue and hart's-hair fern trellising all over the wall just as they do on the sides of churches in the Downs. Think what a joy the sight of them must be to our st.u.r.dy peasants pulling hay!"

"Golly!" said the Millstones. "There's nothing like coming to the heart of things for information"; and they returned to the song that all English water-mills have sung from time beyond telling:

There was a jovial miller once Lived on the River Dee, And this the burden of his song For ever used to be.

Then, as fresh grist poured in and dulled the note:

I care for n.o.body--no not I, And n.o.body cares for me.

"Even these stones have absorbed something of our atmosphere," said the Grey Cat. "Nine-tenths of the trouble in this world comes from lack of detachment."

"One of your people died from forgetting that, didn't she?" said the Rat.

"One only. The example has sufficed us for generations."

"Ah! but what happened to Don't Care?" the Waters demanded.

"Brutal riding to death of the casual a.n.a.logy is another mark of provincialism!" The Grey Cat raised her tufted chin. "I am going to sleep.

With my social obligations I must s.n.a.t.c.h rest when I can; but, as our old friend here says, _n.o.blesse oblige_.... Pity me! Three functions to-night in the village, and a barn dance across the valley!"

"There's no chance, I suppose, of your looking in on the loft about two.

Some of our young people are going to amuse themselves with a new sacque- dance--best white flour only," said the Black Rat.

"I believe I am officially supposed not to countenance that sort of thing, but youth is youth. ... By the way, the humans set my milk-bowl in the loft these days; I hope your youngsters respect it."

"My dear lady," said the Black Rat, bowing, "you grieve me. You hurt me inexpressibly. After all these years, too!"

"A general crush is so mixed--highways and hedges--all that sort of thing --and no one can answer for one's best friends. _I_ never try. So long as mine are amusin' and in full voice, and can hold their own at a tile- party, I'm as catholic as these mixed waters in the dam here!"

"We aren't mixed. We _have_ mixed. We are one now," said the Waters sulkily.

"Still uttering?" said the Cat. "Never mind, here's the Miller coming to shut you off. Ye-es, I have known--_four_--or five is it?--and twenty leaders of revolt in Faenza.... A little more babble in the dam, a little more noise in the sluice, a little extra splas.h.i.+ng on the wheel, and then----"

"They will find that nothing has occurred," said the Black Rat. "The old things persist and survive and are recognised--our old friend here first of all. By the way," he turned toward the Wheel, "I believe we have to congratulate you on your latest honour."

"Profoundly well deserved--even if he had never--as he has---laboured strenuously through a long life for the amelioration of millkind," said the Cat, who belonged to many tile and outhouse committees. "Doubly deserved, I may say, for the silent and dignified rebuke his existence offers to the clattering, fidgety-footed demands of--er--some people. What form did the honour take?"

"It was," said the Wheel bashfully, "a machine-moulded pinion."

"Pinions! Oh, how heavenly!" the Black Rat sighed. "I never see a bat without wis.h.i.+ng for wings."

"Not exactly that sort of pinion," said the Wheel, "but a really ornate circle of toothed iron wheels. Absurd, of course, but gratifying. Mr.

Mangles and an a.s.sociate herald invested me with it personally--on my left rim--the side that you can't see from the mill. I hadn't meant to say anything about it--or the new steel straps round my axles--bright red, you know--to be worn on all occasions--but, without false modesty, I a.s.sure you that the recognition cheered me not a little."

"How intensely gratifying!" said the Black Rat. "I must really steal an hour between lights some day and see what they are doing on your left side."

"By the way, have you any light on this recent activity of Mr. Mangles?"

the Grey Cat asked. "He seems to be building small houses on the far side of the tail-race. Believe me, I don't ask from any vulgar curiosity."

"It affects our Order," said the Black Rat simply but firmly.

"Thank you," said the Wheel. "Let me see if I can tabulate it properly.

Nothing like system in accounts of all kinds. Book! Book! Book! On the side of the Wheel towards the hundred of Burgelstaltone, where till now was a stye of three hogs, Mangles, a freeman, with four villeins, and two carts of two thousand bricks, has a new small house of five yards and a half, and one roof of iron and a floor of cement. Then, now, and afterwards beer in large tankards. And Felden, a stranger, with three villeins and one very great cart, deposits on it one engine of iron and bra.s.s and a small iron mill of four feet, and a broad strap of leather.

And Mangles, the builder, with two villeins, constructs the floor for the same, and a floor of new brick with wires for the small mill. There are there also chalices filled with iron and water, in number fifty-seven. The whole is valued at one hundred and seventy-four pounds.... I'm sorry I can't make myself clearer, but you can see for yourself."

"Amazingly lucid," said the Cat. She was the more to be admired because the language of Domesday Book is not, perhaps, the clearest medium wherein to describe a small but complete electric-light installation, deriving its power from a water-wheel by means of cogs and gearing.

"See for yourself--by all means, see for yourself," said the Waters, spluttering and choking with mirth.

"Upon my word," said the Black Rat furiously, "I may be at fault, but I wholly fail to perceive where these offensive eavesdroppers--er--come in.

We were discussing a matter that solely affected our Order."

Suddenly they heard, as they had heard many times before, the Miller shutting off the water. To the rattle and rumble of the labouring stones succeeded thick silence, punctuated with little drops from the stayed wheel. Then some water-bird in the dam fluttered her wings as she slid to her nest, and the plop of a water-rat sounded like the fall of a log in the water.

"It is all over--it always is all over at just this time. Listen, the Miller is going to bed--as usual. Nothing has occurred," said the Cat.

Something creaked in the house where the pig-styes had stood, as metal engaged on metal with a clink and a burr.

"Shall I turn her on?" cried the Miller.

"Ay," said the voice from the dynamo-house.

"A human in Mangles' new house!" the Rat squeaked.

"What of it?" said the Grey Cat. "Even supposing Mr. Mangles' cats'-meat- coloured hovel ululated with humans, can't you see for yourself--that--?"

There was a solid crash of released waters leaping upon the wheel more furiously than ever, a grinding of cogs, a hum like the hum of a hornet, and then the unvisited darkness of the old mill was scattered by intolerable white light. It threw up every cobweb, every burl and knot in the beams and the floor; till the shadows behind the flakes of rough plaster on the wall lay clear-cut as shadows of mountains on the photographed moon.

"See! See! See!" hissed the Waters in full flood. "Yes, see for yourselves. Nothing has occurred. Can't you see?"

The Rat, amazed, had fallen from his foothold and lay half-stunned on the floor. The Cat, following her instinct, leaped nigh to the ceiling, and with flattened ears and bared teeth backed in a corner ready to fight whatever terror might be loosed on her. But nothing happened. Through the long aching minutes nothing whatever happened, and her wire-brush tail returned slowly to its proper shape.

"Whatever it is," she said at last, "it's overdone. They can never keep it up, you know."

"Much you know," said the Waters. "Over you go, old man. You can take the full head of us now. Those new steel axle-straps of yours can stand anything. Come along, Raven's Gill, Harpenden, Callton Rise, Batten's Ponds, Witches' Spring, all together! Let's show these gentlemen how to work!"