BELOW THE MILL DAM

"Book--Book--Domesday Book!" They were letting in the water for the evening stint at Robert's Mill, and the wooden Wheel where lived the Spirit of the Mill settled to its nine hundred year old song: "Here Azor, a freeman, held one rod, but it never paid geld. _Nun-nun-nunquam geldavit_. Here Reinbert has one villein and four cottars with one plough--and wood for six hogs and two fisheries of sixpence and a mill of ten shillings--_unum molinum_--one mill. Reinbert's mill--Robert's Mill. Then and afterwards and now--_tunc et post et modo_--Robert's Mill. Book--Book--Domesday Book!"

"I confess," said the Black Rat on the crossbeam, luxuriously tr.i.m.m.i.n.g his whiskers--"I confess I am not above appreciating my position and all it means." He was a genuine old English black rat, a breed which, report says, is rapidly diminishing before the incursions of the brown variety.

"Appreciation is the surest sign of inadequacy," said the Grey Cat, coiled up on a piece of sacking.

"But I know what you mean," she added. "To sit by right at the heart of things--eh?"

"Yes," said the Black Rat, as the old mill shook and the heavy stones thuttered on the grist. "To possess--er--all this environment as an integral part of one's daily life must insensibly of course ... You see?"

"I feel," said the Grey Cat. "Indeed, if _we_ are not saturated with the spirit of the Mill, who should be?"

"Book--Book--Domesday Book!" the Wheel, set to his work, was running off the tenure of the whole rape, for he knew Domesday Book backwards and forwards: "_In Ferle tenuit Abbatia de Wiltuna unam hidam et unam virgam et dimidiam. Nunquam geldavit_. And Agemond, a freeman, has half a hide and one rod. I remember Agemond well. Charmin' fellow--friend of mine. He married a Norman girl in the days when we rather looked down on the Normans as upstarts. An' Agemond's dead? So he is. Eh, dearie me! dearie me! I remember the wolves howling outside his door in the big frost of Ten Fifty-Nine.... _Essewelde hundredum nunquam geldum reddidit_. Book! Book!

Domesday Book!"

"After all," the Grey Cat continued, "atmospere is life. It is the influences under which we live that count in the long run. Now, outside"-- she c.o.c.ked one ear towards the half-opened door--"there is an absurd convention that rats and cats are, I won't go so far as to say natural enemies, but opposed forces. Some such ruling may be crudely effective--I don't for a minute presume to set up my standards as final--among the ditches; but from the larger point of view that one gains by living at the heart of things, it seems for a rule of life a little overstrained. Why, because some of your a.s.sociates have, shall I say, liberal views on the ultimate destination of a sack of--er--middlings don't they call them----"

"Something of that sort," said the Black Rat, a most sharp and sweet- toothed judge of everything ground in the mill for the last three years.

"Thanks--middlings be it. _Why_, as I was saying, must I disarrange my fur and my digestion to chase you round the dusty arena whenever we happen to meet?"

"As little reason," said the Black Rat, "as there is for me, who, I trust, am a person of ordinarily decent instincts, to wait till you have gone on a round of calls, and then to a.s.sa.s.sinate your very charming children."

"Exactly! It has its humorous side though." The Grey Cat yawned. "The miller seems afflicted by it. He shouted large and vague threats to my address, last night at tea, that he wasn't going to keep cats who 'caught no mice.' Those were his words. I remember the grammar sticking in my throat like a herring-bone."

"And what did you do?"

"What does one do when a barbarian utters? One ceases to utter and removes. I removed--towards his pantry. It was a _riposte_ he might appreciate."

"Really those people grow absolutely insufferable," said the Black Rat.

"There is a local ruffian who answers to the name of Mangles--a builder-- who has taken possession of the outhouses on the far side of the Wheel for the last fortnight. He has constructed cubical horrors in red brick where those deliciously picturesque pigstyes used to stand. Have you noticed?"

"There has been much misdirected activity of late among the humans. They jabber inordinately. I haven't yet been able to arrive at their reason for existence." The Cat yawned.

"A couple of them came in here last week with wires, and fixed them all about the walls. Wires protected by some abominable composition, ending in iron brackets with gla.s.s bulbs. Utterly useless for any purpose and artistically absolutely hideous. What do they mean?"

"Aaah! I have known _four_-and-twenty leaders of revolt in Faenza," said the Cat, who kept good company with the boarders spending a summer at the Mill Farm. "It means nothing except that humans occasionally bring their dogs with them. I object to dogs in all forms."

"Shouldn't object to dogs," said the Wheel sleepily.... "The Abbot of Wilton kept the best pack in the county. He enclosed all the Harryngton Woods to Sturt Common. Aluric, a freeman, was dispossessed of his holding.

They tried the case at Lewes, but he got no change out of William de Warrenne on the bench. William de Warrenne fined Aluric eight and fourpence for treason, and the Abbot of Wilton excommunicated him for blasphemy. Aluric was no sportsman. Then the Abbot's brother married ...

I've forgotten her name, but she was a charmin' little woman. The Lady Philippa was her daughter. That was after the barony was conferred. She rode devilish straight to hounds. They were a bit throatier than we breed now, but a good pack: one of the best. The Abbot kept 'em in splendid shape. Now, who was the woman the Abbot kept? Book--Book! I shall have to go right back to Domesday and work up the centuries: _Modo per omnia reddit burgum tunc--tunc--tunc_! Was it _burgum_ or _hundredum_? I shall remember in a minute. There's no hurry." He paused as he turned over silvered with showering drops.

"This won't do," said the Waters in the sluice. "Keep moving."

The Wheel swung forward; the Waters roared on the buckets and dropped down to the darkness below.

"Noisier than usual," said the Black Rat. "It must have been raining up the valley."

"Floods maybe," said the Wheel dreamily. "It isn't the proper season, but they can come without warning. I shall never forget the big one--when the Miller went to sleep and forgot to open the hatches. More than two hundred years ago it was, but I recall it distinctly. Most unsettling."

"We lifted that wheel off his bearings," cried the Waters. "We said, 'Take away that bauble!' And in the morning he was five mile down the valley-- hung up in a tree."

"Vulgar!" said the Cat. "But I am sure he never lost his dignity."

"We don't know. He looked like the Ace of Diamonds when we had finished with him.... Move on there! Keep on moving. Over! Get over!"

"And why on this day more than any other," said the Wheel statelily. "I am not aware that my department requires the stimulus of external pressure to keep it up to its duties. I trust I have the elementary instincts of a gentleman."

"Maybe," the Waters answered together, leaping down on the buckets. "We only know that you are very stiff on your bearings. Over, get over!"

The Wheel creaked and groaned. There was certainly greater pressure upon him that he had ever felt, and his revolutions had increased from six and three-quarters to eight and a third per minute. But the uproar between the narrow, weed-hung walls annoyed the Grey Cat.

"Isn't it almost time," she said plaintively, "that the person who is paid to understand these things shuts off those vehement drippings with that screw-thing on the top of that box-thing."

"They'll be shut off at eight o'clock as usual," said Rat; "then we can go to dinner."

"But we shan't be shut off till ever so late," said the Waters gaily. "We shall keep it up all night."

"The ineradicable offensiveness of youth is partially compensated for by its eternal hopefulness," said the Cat. "Our dam is not, I am glad to say, designed to furnish water for more than four hours at a time. Reserve is Life."

"Thank goodness!" said the Black Rat. "Then they can return to their native ditches."

"Ditches!" cried the Waters; "Raven's Gill Brook is no ditch. It is almost navigable, and _we_ come from there away." They slid over solid and compact till the Wheel thudded under their weight.

"Raven's Gill Brook," said the Rat. "_I_ never heard of Raven's Gill."

"We are the waters of Harpenden Brook--down from under Callton Rise. Phew!

how the race stinks compared with the heather country." Another five foot of water flung itself against the Wheel, broke, roared, gurgled, and was gone.

"Indeed," said the Grey Cat, "I am sorry to tell you that Raven's Gill Brook is cut off from this valley by an absolutely impa.s.sable range of mountains, and Callton Rise is more than nine miles away. It belongs to another system entirely."

"Ah yes," said the Rat, grinning, "but we forget that, for the young, water always runs uphill."

"Oh, hopeless! hopeless! hopeless!" cried the Waters, descending open- palmed upon the Wheel "There is nothing between here and Raven's Gill Brook that a hundred yards of channelling and a few square feet of concrete could not remove; and hasn't removed!"

"And Harpenden Brook is north of Raven's Gill and runs into Raven's Gill at the foot of Callton Rise, where ilex trees are, and _we_ come from there!" These were the gla.s.sy, clear waters of the high chalk.

"And Batten's Ponds, that are fed by springs, have been led through Trott's Wood, taking the spare water from the old Witches' Spring under Churt Haw, and we--we--_we_ are their combined waters!" Those were the Waters from the upland bogs and moors--a porter-coloured, dusky, and foam- flecked flood.

"It's all very interesting," purred the Cat to the sliding waters, "and I have no doubt that Trott's Woods and Bott's Woods are tremendously important places; but if you could manage to do your work--whose value I don't in the least dispute--a little more soberly, I, for one, should be grateful."

"Book--book--book--book--book--Domesday Book!" The urged Wheel was fairly clattering now: "In Burgelstaltone a monk holds of Earl G.o.dwin one hide and a half with eight villeins. There is a church--and a monk.... I remember that monk. Blessed if he could rattle his rosary off any quicker than I am doing now ... and wood for seven hogs. I must be running twelve to the minute ... almost as fast as Steam. d.a.m.nable invention, Steam! ...

Surely it's time we went to dinner or prayers--or something. Can't keep up this pressure, day in and day out, and not feel it. I don't mind for myself, of course. _n.o.blesse oblige_, you know. I'm only thinking of the Upper and the Nether Millstones. They came out of the common rock. They can't be expected to----"

"Don't worry on our account, please," said the Millstones huskily. "So long as you supply the power we'll supply the weight and the bite."

"Isn't it a trifle blasphemous, though, to work you in this way?" grunted the Wheel. "I seem to remember something about the Mills of G.o.d grinding 'slowly.' _Slowly_ was the word!"