Part 4

My eccentric companion made no rejoinder, though I fancied he gave a sigh. Presently he began to speak in the same evenly-pitched, far-away voice that he had used throughout. The effect was rather as of a weary reader reading from a book than as of one who talks spontaneously, there was no hesitation, no rise and fall, no fire, no faltering. Yet the recital moved me more deeply than if it had been delivered with impassioned eloquence. Through the sad colourless medium I seemed to behold the direct movement of events, and almost to take part in them. Moreover, as the narrator proceeded, the notion more than once possessed me that his words reached my ears from some inward source--that I was merely thinking the things I seemed to hear. His tone was so attuned to the desolateness of the surroundings, as to appear like the mystic interpretation of their significance, such as might result from intense brooding over them. Indeed, taking into consideration all that I had seen, heard, and fancied that day, I almost believe I could have fallen asleep and dreamed just such a story as he told me. Certainly no dream could have been stranger than the things he told.

VII.

They brought the yellow-haired little maiden to the mill (ran the story), and Gloam called her Swanhilda. Jael, the old housekeeper, looked at her sharply, and asked what good such a little creature could be among poor people? the girl was of no use herself, and would only hinder those who had to work.

Gloam answered, "Heaven has sent her to us. She shall be our inspiration, and the symbol of our good. Treat her with reverence, and tenderly, as you would treat the best and purest aspiration of your heart. If we wrong her, it will be our deadliest sin. If we cherish her, the sins we have committed may be forgiven us."

"She is a gentleman's daughter, at all events," said Jael. "Look at the shape of her hands and feet! No, she never worked, nor did her mother before her. Well, maybe her family will come after her some day, and pay us well for taking care of her. Or who knows but she may turn out heiress to some great estate, when she grows up? If that were so.... David, son, come hither. See--she's a pretty little thing."

Handsome David stooped down and took the child's small soft hand. "And so she is--a little beauty!" he exclaimed, looking into her blue eyes. "Can't speak English, eh? That's a pity; but live and learn. Right glad am I that you brought her here, sir," he added to Gloam. "Where did you pick her up?"

"She's the rainbow after the storm," Gloam answered, smiling. "But I shall not teach her English. Let her speak only the language which she has brought with her." And he led the child away.

"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 ashore--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 passed 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 passed 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-balls; 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 passion 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 passed. 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 associates. 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 asserted 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 grass 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 passionately.

"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."

"I did not ask you to give it up," she returned, waywardly. Then she relented, and said, "Well, you may teach me about loving, if you want to. Only, afterwards, you must let me love anyone I please!"

Gloam looked upon her for several moments, his black eyes lingering over every line of her face and figure. "You belong to me," he repeated at last. "If you left me for another, I should wish that your pearl-shells had drawn you down----"

Before he could finish uttering the thought that was in his heart, the words were drowned in a throbbing yell as of demoniac laughter. The evil spirit of the wheel, after biding its time so long in silence, had seemingly leapt exultingly into life at the first premonition of meditated wrong. Swanhilda shuddered, and hid her face in her hands. David thrust his head out of the mill-room window, and saw Gloam make a gesture of rage and defiance.

"Aha!" he muttered to himself, "so the children's games are over, are they? Can it be the devil's game that my beloved brother thinks of beginning now?"

* * * * *

Another year passed, and again a man and a woman were sitting together on the bench beside the mill. It was night, and a few stars twinkled between the rifts of cloud overhead. The gorge was so dark that the mill-stream gurgled past invisibly, save where occasionally a rising eddy caught the dim starlight. The tall wheel, motionless now, and only discernible as a blacker imprint on the darkness, lurked like a secret enemy in ambush. The man's arm was clasped round the woman's waist; her head rested on his shoulder, and her soft fingers were playing with the pearl-shell necklace that encircled her neck. They spoke together in whispers, as though fearful of being overheard.

"You silly little goose!" the man said; "a few months ago nothing would make you happy but learning what love was; and now you have found out you must ever be whimpering and paling. Why, what are you afraid of?"

"You know I am happy in loving you, David," was the tremulous answer; "but must lovers always hide their love, and pretend before others that they do not feel it? When I first dreamed of love, it seemed to me like the blue sky and the sunshine, and the songs of birds; but our love is secret and silent, like the night."

"Pooh! nonsense, and so much the better! Our love is nobody's business but our own, my lass. You wouldn't have Gloam find it out, would you, and part us? What! have you forgotten the fit he was in at my teaching you English a year ago? He wants you all to himself, the old miser! You weren't happier with him than you have been with me, were you?"

"Oh, David," whispered the girl, clinging to him, "that was so different! I was happy, then, like a wave on the beach in summer. I had no deep thoughts, and my heart never beat as you make it beat, and my breath never came in long sighs as it does often now. Gloam used to say that he had brought me back from death to life; but it was not so. I lived first when I loved you. And the old happiness was not real happiness, for there was no sadness in it; it never made me cry, as this does."

He drew her to him with a little laugh. "When you've lived a little more and got used to it, you'll stop sighing and crying, and be as bright and saucy as you were with Gloam. But you won't want to tell him ... eh?"

She hid her face on his shoulder. "Oh no, no, no; I could not; I should feel ashamed. But why do I feel ashamed, David? Is not loving right?"

"Right? to be sure it is. Nothing more so! And the pleasantest kind of right, too, to my thinking. Eh, little one?"

"David, I have heard--are not people who love each other married--at least sometimes? and after that they are not afraid, or sad, or ashamed?"

A smile hovered on David's handsome lips. "Married, yes, stupid people get married. Timid folks, who are afraid to manage their own affairs, and can't be easy till they've called in the parson to help them out. They're the folks that don't love each other right down hard, as you and I do. They're suspicious, and afraid of being left in the lurch; so they stand up in a church and tie themselves together by a troublesome knot they call marriage. No, no; we've nothing to do with that; we're much better off as it is."

"But my father and mother were married, and they were not suspicious," ventured Swanhilda again, after a pause.

"Oh, ay, they were married," assented David; adding, half to himself, "and if they were alive, too, and anxious to fill a son-in-law's pockets, I'd open mine, and gladly. But my father and mother were not married," he resumed to Swanhilda, with another smile, "so you see we've a good example either way."

She made no reply, but lifted her head from his shoulder and sat twisting the necklace between her restless fingers, her eyes fixed absently on the darkness. The clasps of the necklace came unawares apart, and it slipped from her bosom to the ground. She uttered a little cry, and stood up with her hands clasped, all of a tremble.

"I have lost it!" she said. "David, some harm is coming to me!"

"Nonsense! here it is, as good as ever." He picked it up as he spoke, and drawing her down beside him, fastened it again round her neck, and then kissed her face and lips. "There, there, you're all right. Did you think it was dropped in the mill-race?"

"Some harm is coming," she repeated. "It has never fallen from me since my mother put it on my shoulders, and said it would keep me from being hurt or drowned, but that I must never part from it. But I trust you, oh, my love! I trust you. Something seems wrong somehow; I have given you all myself...."

"Lean close up to me, little one; rest that soft little cheek of yours against mine, and have done with crying now, or I'll think you mean to melt all away and leave me; and what would I do then?"

She turned and clasped her arms around him with a kind of fierceness. "I leave you, David? Oh--ha, ha, ha! Oh, but you must never leave me, my love--love--love! Oh, what should I do if you were to leave me?"

"Hush, girl; hush! you'll rouse the house, laughing and crying in the same minute! Don't you know I won't leave you? There--hush! You'll wake Gloam else."

"He loved me, too; he wouldn't leave me; but he thought I wasn't old enough--not old enough, ha, ha!... David, does God know about us?"

"Not enough to trouble Him much, I expect," said the young man, with a short laugh. "If anything knows about us, it's the old wheel there, waiting like a black devil to carry us off. Come, we must creep back to the house."

They rose, Swanhilda stood before him, her sweet sad face glimmering shadowy pale through the darkness. "Say, 'I love you, Swanhilda, and I will never leave you!'" she whispered.

He hesitated, laughed, stroked her hair, and stooping, gazed deep into her eyes, as on the day when they first met. Did his heart falter for a moment, realising how utterly she was his own? "You trusted me just now," said he; "are you getting suspicious again?"

"No; but I am afraid--always afraid now. When you are not with me, I am afraid of everyone I meet; I think they will see our secret in my eyes. When I lie alone at night I am afraid to pray to God, as I used to do. What is it? Why do I feel so? It must be that we have done some wrong. My poor love! have I made you do any wrong? I would rather be dead."

"Little darling--no! You couldn't do wrong if you tried. There is no wrong--I swear there isn't. Listen, now in your ear: I love you, Swanhilda, and I will never leave you! Satisfied now?"

Low as the words were whispered, they were heard beyond the stars, and stamped themselves upon the eternal records. But their only palpable witness was the mill wheel. A log of wood, carried over the fall, came forcibly in contact with the low-impending rim. It swung the heavy structure partly round upon its axle. And straightway, upon the hollow night, echoed a faint yet appalling sound as of jeering laughter. Slowly it died away, and silence closed in once more, like darkness after a midnight lightning flash. But it vibrated still in the startled hearts of the man and the woman, who crept so stealthily back to the house, and vanished in the blackness of the doorway, and it revisited their unquiet dreams.

IX.