Part 12

A little starving boy was lying on a pile of straw in the corner. His poor face was thin and blue with cold, and he had crept into the hut because it was the only refuge he could find. He had walked all day, begging from door to door, for he had neither home nor friends nor food, and was worn out with fatigue and hunger. He lay, scarcely knowing where he was, for his wits were beginning to go, and when the Princess came in he was very near death. Strange dreams were in his brain. The moon struck brilliantly on a little window in the wall and the bitter cold had covered it with wonderful frost-flowers. It was the last thing he had seen before he closed his eyes, and he seemed to himself to be looking deep into a white forest that had grown up from the panes. Oh, how freezing it was! The forest was all made of frozen ferns and seaweed and feathers, like the white images on the glass. It stretched far, far away in alleys of fantastic sparkling fronds and glittering branches. How thick the strange, beautiful things grew! He had been once told that, if he was a good boy, when he died a white angel would come and take him to a place where he would never be sad or hungry any more. He was not sure that he did not see someone coming to him between the stems of the frozen forest. Perhaps it was the white angel.

He tried to sit up, but he was too weak. Poor little man, he had just enough life left in him to see that what he had taken for an angel was a woman in a black cloak.

The Princess went to him and bent over him. Then she took him up under the warm folds, bound him to her breast with her girdle, and hurried out of the hut. She spread out her arms, and, sailing with him into the wintry sky, flew over land and sea till she arrived at the witch’s castle.

The witch was overjoyed to see her come back, for she had been away half a year. They took the little boy and put him in a warm bed, in which he lay for many long days. But he was fed with the best of food, and such care was taken of him that when he got well he was able to run about and play in the valley and be happy from morning till night. They were so good to him that he soon forgot he had ever had any troubles at all.

The witch and the Princess got on so well together that they determined not to part, and they had plenty to do, looking after their charge and teaching him all the things he should know—how to read and write and say his prayers, and how to answer nicely when he was spoken to. When the Princess went, as she did every year, to find new flowers in foreign lands, he went with her, and helped her to carry back roots and seeds, which they planted in the valley; for the cloak was so large that, even when he grew bigger, there was room in it for them both. She taught him all her own knowledge, and as time went by and he grew up to be a man, he became even more learned than herself. He was very clever and so hardy and strong that nobody would have believed him to be the little wretched child who had lain starving in the hovel.

At last the time came when he was ready to go out into the world to seek his fortune. The parting gift that the Princess gave him was the black cloak. He was to have it on condition that he would come back once every year to go to some foreign land with her, and to visit the witch. He was given a small sum of money to start life with; and, as he was anxious to see the country of his birth and the hut in which he had been found, he wrapped himself in the cloak and came down, as the Princess had done, at midnight into the town across the marsh.

He was a fine, sensible fellow. Though he had lived in a castle, and perhaps because he had been brought up by a real Princess, he had no silly notions and was ready for any work he could find. He hired a modest lodging, and, going to the director of a large public garden that had been made in the town, he asked to be employed as a gardener. There was only one place vacant, and that was the very lowest, but he took it eagerly. His work was to wheel barrows, and sweep leaves, and cut grass, but he did it as carefully and put as much heart into it as if he was raising priceless flowers; for the Princess had brought him up strictly, and made him understand that honest work can only be made mean by the meanness of the person who does it.

Every year, when he had a few weeks’ holiday, he returned to the witch’s castle. No one saw him go, and no one saw him come back, and nobody knew how he managed to get the marvellous plants that he brought back with him. Very soon he was no longer an under-gardener, but the head of all, and by the time he was turning grey he had become the greatest botanist and teacher in the country. Learned men came from all parts of the kingdom to talk with him in his house with the carved gable-ends in the High Street of yonder town.

Time went by, and his fame spread all over the world. He grew old and his hair turned white, but still he went about wrapped in the black cloak, from which he never parted. His white beard flowed over his breast as he sat and wrote the books which helped to make him famous, or walked over the country, comparing plants and teaching his pupils out of his stores of wisdom. But at last he grew too infirm to walk long distances, and strangers coming to the town would look with awe upon his venerable figure as he passed through the streets. Everyone loved him, rich and poor alike.

And so it came to be that a great banquet was given in his honour, and the learned from all countries met together.

It was the middle of summer, and the hall in which it took place was decorated with flowers. A laurel-wreath hung over the chair in which he was to sit, costly fruits were brought from far-away lands, and the hall was filled with the glory of blossoming plants, many of which he had carried home with him as tiny seeds from his journeys. Wise men were there and beautiful ladies, students and great personages. All had come to see him and to hear him speak. The town was thronged—you would think there was no room in it for so much as one additional person.

When the feast was over he rose and began his speech, and silence fell upon everyone. Though he was frail and old, his voice was clear as he told them of the countries he had wandered in—the distant islands, the tropics, the golden East. No one imagined he had been so far afield, and his listeners wondered how he had contrived to make such voyages, for they knew that he was not rich and lived very simply in the old house at the end of the street. But everybody was enthralled; his life of work, his modesty, his great age and wisdom adorned him, in the eyes of his pupils and the assembled guests, like the jewels of a crown.

When the long speech was over he sat down, leaning back in his chair under the laurel-wreath, for the effort he had made was great. The guests remained respectfully in their places; they saw that he was weary and would need rest before he could listen to their congratulations. For a moment he closed his eyes, and when he opened them, a wonderful change seemed to have come over the scene before him.

The green boughs that filled the hall and the vases of flowers on the long tables were changing before his failing sight. Instead of the tall sheaves of roses a white forest was rising up, deep and pure, a forest that he had seen before. On either side the frost-flowers hung sparkling, their snow-crystals thick in the maze of white feathers and seaweed and ferns. The sprays and branches crowded on him in their dazzling myriads, dense and high, and far down the white vista into which he looked a figure was coming—a white figure. It was the angel.

He rose and grasped an outstretched hand.

“He is gone,” said the guests. “The exertion has been too much for him.” And his pupils and friends came round him, the tears standing in their eyes.

At that moment a gust of wind ran through the open doors of the hall, and the black cloak, which its owner had laid on a window-sill before he sat down at the table, was blown from it and flew out into the air. No one saw it go, but it rose on the sudden wind and sailed upwards, above the town, above the steeple, and disappeared like a dark cloud into the distant spaces of sky.

* * * * *

“Some day,” said the miller to little Peter, “I’ll take you to the town in my cart and show you the statue of that man in the wall of the old house.”

“And you’ll let me hold the end of the reins and the whip, and drive too, won’t you?” shouted the little boy.

“Well, perhaps I will,” laughed the miller, “only Janet must come too, to keep you in order.”

CONCLUSION

It was not long after this that the miller kept his promise. The horse was harnessed and away they drove to the town. He and Janet sat together, with Peter between them; the little boy held the end of the reins in one hand and the whip in the other, shouting and flourishing the lash about and thinking that coachmen were even better people than millers. Janet was happy too. She sat smiling and holding the tail of his coat, for fear he should overbalance himself and fall out into the road.

They left the cart at an inn, and went to see the house with its statue in the niche of the wall and carved gable-ends turned towards the street. It was now inhabited by poor families, whose washing flapped from the upper story like a row of banners over the head of the stone image. They stood on the pavement of the High Street and looked up to the giddy point of the steeple, where the weathercock twirled, more than a hundred feet in the air; they wondered at the quaint houses, with their outside staircases and their little wooden triangles of drying haddocks nailed against the wall. Then they strolled to the docks and stood at the place from which the lovely Nix had dived into the salt water. The tide lapped and gurgled against the quays, and the wind sang in the rigging of the ships alongside, and the fair-haired sailors talked in a foreign tongue, shouting to the fishwives who passed in their blue petticoats and amber necklaces along the cobbled roadway. The lighthouse stood on the promontory and the North Sea rolled and heaved outside the bar. It was a delightful holiday.

When they were tired of that they went out towards the seashore. The gulls were wheeling over the bents and sea-grass, and the sands lay smooth and fine to the edge of the waves. Little Peter rushed off to play, leaping about and throwing stones and gathering shells, while his companions sat upon the sand-dunes watching him.

“Janet,” said the miller, “I hear that your grandmother is going to leave the cottage by the pond and go away to some other place. Is that true, do you think?”

“I’m afraid so,” replied she.

“And you will go too?”

“Oh yes,” said Janet; “we have no other home.”

“But little Peter will miss his stories.”

Janet sighed. “Indeed he will,” she answered, sadly. “There is not much else we have in the way of pleasure.”

“But I can’t let you go,” the miller went on, “and what’s more, I won’t. Janet, if you’ll marry me and come and live with me at the mill-house, I’ll see that you are happy for the rest of your life. Do you think you could like me enough for that?”

“But I can’t leave Peter,” she exclaimed; “I could never be happy to think of him all alone, and perhaps being cruelly used.”

“But suppose he came too?—there’s plenty of room for him. Will you say yes, Janet, or shall we ask him to settle it for us?” said the miller. “Will you promise to marry me if he says yes?”

“I will,” said she.

And so they drove home together when the sun was getting low.

“Peter,” said the miller, “don’t you think it would be a good plan if I married Janet, and you were to come and live with me and learn to be a miller too? You should have cake for tea every other day, and a pair of fine blue trousers, and a whipping-top of your own, and a kite, and I’d tell you a new story every Sunday afternoon.”

Peter’s eyes grew round.

“And should I be all white with flour like your man?”

“From head to foot,” said the miller.

“Hooray! hooray! hooray!” shrieked little Peter, jumping about in the cart.

“Take care, take care,” cried Janet, “or you will make the horse run away.”

“That settles it,” observed the miller. “We’ll be married next week.”

And so they were.

BILLING AND SONS, LIMITED, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD

TRANSCRIBER NOTES

Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been employed.

Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors occur.

Illustrations have been relocated due to using a non-page layout.

[The end of _Stories Told by the Miller_ by Violet Jacob]