Part 49 (1/2)
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 s.h.i.+llings--_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 diminis.h.i.+ng 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.”