Millstone Grit

“ And Grit had listened, drooping in his chair, wrists crossed and palms turned upward. Finally, when Nell had finished, he had repeated, "Don't go again." He had not argued, for Grit never argued; he was always too weary. But this had been one of his longest speeches. He had ended: "The Devil himself owns that place. I ought to know, my junkyard's right back of it." And he had closed his eyes and taken a long, deep breath. "When I say a thing, Nell, I'm a stone wall. You can't go there again—now or never." And that had settled it, for Great Taylor had been afraid of Grit. But now Grit was dead ”

“ Ah, the impetuosity of youth!"
"Well—this is no time to discuss that," replied Minot. "We've got to act, and act quickly!"
"Yes?" Mr. Wall drawled. "What would you suggest? Shall we drown him? I've come to like George mighty well, but if you say the word—"
"My plan is this," said Minot, annoyed by Wall's pleasantries. "Turn George over to us. We'll bundle him into our launch and run off out of sight behind Tarragona Island. Then, let Trimmer search to his heart's content. When he gets tired and quits, signal us by hanging a red lantern in the bow." ”

“ A little clock ticked loudly and hurriedly, and, as if with its quick monotonous beat, Millington’s brain too began to work. He tried to tell himself that it was not much, the shape that a man could fashion out of clay, the line he could draw with a pencil, the word that issued from his mouth; and he knew that he lied. In themselves these were nothing; but they were all a man had to show for his years of experience and agony and sweat. These truly were the man—brains, blood, and soul. Perry’s Bambinos and Sorrows were Perry, his own foolish bust was himself ”

“ Ay, but the general opinion is, that if we get the Millstone from about our necks, a few lives taken on their side, and a few boys hanged on ours, won't make much difference one way or other, and then everything will end well. ”

“ At this, as was most natural, Miss Millington's ice melted in a sudden and uncontrollable blaze of indignation.
"Are you trying to tell me that this atrocious friend of yours has taken me, a total [Pg 18] stranger, to complete his cast of characters in this wretched burlesque?" she flashed out.
"I don't wish to believe it," he protested. "It doesn't seem possible for any human being to do such a thing. But I know Grider so well——"
"It is the smallest possible credit to you, Mr. Prime," she snapped. "You ought to be ashamed to have such a man for a friend!" ”

“ But Grit had no intentions of wasting time on Simon when his revenge was not complete. He dropped the large piece of cloth he had torn from Simon's trousers and kept on after the two other fleeing individuals.
The ragged youth was the faster runner, and the man, lagging behind, turned as if to beat off the dog. But Grit was fearless. Right at the man he sprang, and the fellow gave a yell of agony as he saw the brute launched at his throat. But Grit was not blood-thirsty. He caught the man by the lapel of his ragged coat, and, in an instant, had pulled him to the ground. ”

“ It would only be a second before, twisting on the ice to face him, my right hand would be lowered to steady myself. I could not rise, for rising would mean that my good hand would be thrown out to steady myself, and Minot’s chance would come.
But every moment of delay, every second, in this gathering snow-storm, meant that Ruth Gilman would have so much more time in which to escape. I knew, from the mutterings that fell from Minot’s lips, the snarls of anger, that he knew the same thing, and that he feared me too much to let me gain my feet, for he knew that I would follow. ”

“ At Scotland Yard, Milton’s only son, John, was born, and here his protracted labours in his vehement controversy with Salmasius brought on the blackness of great darkness which, at the age of forty-three, for ever shut his world from view. For the next twenty years and more it is the blind poet whose life we follow, during the period when his fiery spirit was chastened not only by his own afflictions, but by the nation’s also.
In 1652 Milton moved to Petty France, now York Street, near the Bird Cage Walk, which was so named from the king’s aviary there. ”

“ Mildred said, putting kind arms round her.
And when Mrs. Groates could again look up, her face, though blistered with tears, had lost its strained and unnatural expression.
"Now I am going to make you lie down for a time on the sofa, and you must not talk," said Mildred. "Never mind about the children. I will see to them. And Jack shall come to you,—yes, I promise that he shall. I want you to keep quiet. Try not even to think a great deal. Try to feel that you are in the hands of One Who loves you."
"I'll try. My head don't seem as if it could think," Mrs. Groates murmured. ”

“ The day grew hot, and the lichens in the courtyard became parched and shrivelled. Perry came in, announced that he intended to spend the afternoon on the river, and went out again. The old women and crippled children of the Hospital came out, and then retired as the heat became intense. From far over the meadows came the whirring of a reaper and the faint regular clash of a machine-rake; and at last Millington drew the blinds of the studio, swathed the bust in wet clouts, and dozed in his chair. ”

“ To Speed, sitting in the Masters' pew, and giving vent to his ever-ready imagination, Millstead seemed a personification of all that was youthful and clear-spirited and unwilling to pay any more than merely respectful attention to the exhortations of elders. ”

“ Mildred said nothing.
'You have suffered no shock—nothing has alarmed you?' She shook her head.
'You cannot eat or sleep; when you speak you change colour with every word; you are wasted, getting thinner every day, and yet there is no disease. This must mean something, Miss Lambert—excuse me; but I am your friend as well as your doctor. I cannot work in the dark.'
Mildred's lips quivered. 'I want change—rest. I have had anxieties—no one can be free in this world. I am getting too weak for my work.' What a confession from Mildred! ”

“ When sure that she was gone, Oliver placed a hand on each side of the face bending over him, and said:
“Don’t thank me, Mildred; I don’t deserve it, for my first wicked thought was to let him drown, but when I remembered how much you loved him, I said I’ll save him for Milly, even though I die. It is far better that the poor cripple should be drowned than the handsome Lawrence. Do you love me more for saving him, Milly?”
“Yes, yes,” answered Mildred; “and so does Lilian, or she will when I tell her, for you know you saved him for her, not for me.” ”

“ If they brought a stepmother upon themselves, the blame was theirs. Something must certainly be done to keep Milton's library from the rag-women; and in February, 1663, by the advice of his excellent physician Dr. Paget, he married Elizabeth Minshull, daughter of a yeoman of Wistaston in Cheshire, a distant relation of Dr. Paget's own, and exactly thirty years younger than Milton. "A genteel person, 144a peaceful and agreeable woman," says Aubrey, who knew her, and refutes by anticipation Richardson's anonymous informant, perhaps Deborah Clarke, who libelled her as "a termagant." ”

“ And yet surrounding it all, this strange atmosphere which for want of a better designation must be called simply Millstead, was no less apparent; it pervaded all those autumn days with a subtle essence which made Speed feel that this life that he was living would be impossible to forget, no matter what the world held in store for him. He could never forget the clammy, earthy smell of the rugger pitch after a match in rain; the steam rising from the heavy scrum; the grey clouds rolling over the sky; the patter of rain-drops on the corrugated-iron roof of the pavilion stand. ”

“ He decided that night that he would write a story about Millstead; that he would do for Millstead what other people had already done for Eton and Harrow and Rugby. He would put down all the magic that he had seen and felt; he would transfer to paper the subtle enchantment of the golden summer days, the moonlit nights, the steamy warmth of the bathrooms, the shouting in the dormitories, the buzz of movement and conversation in the dining hall, the cool gloom of the chapel—everything that came effortlessly into his mind whenever he thought of Millstead. ”

“ Mr. Grig urged her, ruthlessly ignoring the symptoms which had startled Lilian. "And mind how you do it, there's a good creature. I'll get downstairs first." And he stepped out of the room.
The door opening showed tall, thin Millicent returning to her own work. Mr. Grig pushed past her on tiptoe. As soon as Gertie had disappeared on her mission into the principals' room, Lilian told Millicent, not without an air of superiority, as of an Under-secretary of State to a common member of Parliament, what was occurring. Millicent, who loved "incidents," bit her lips in a kind of cruel pleasure. ”

“ In the spring of 1637, the last year that the poet spent at Horton, just before another outbreak of the plague, his mother died. We may think of brother Christopher, a young student of laws of the Inner Temple, and the widowed sister Anne and her two boys coming post-haste from London, and standing beside the desolate father and the poet-brother in the chancel, when the tabernacle of clay was lowered to its resting-place. A plain blue stone now bears the record: “Heare lyeth the Body of Sarah Milton, the wife of John Milton, who died the 3rd of April, 1637.” ”

“ He had had a very kind letter from Mr. Speed's father, Sir Charles Speed— (pause) —regretting his inability, owing to a previously contracted engagement, to be present at the Speech Day celebrations, and he (the Head) was particularly sorry he could not come because it would have done him good, he felt sure, to see how universally popular at Millstead was his enthusiastic son. (Cheers and laughter.) He hoped Millstead would have the benefit of Mr. Speed's gifts and personality for many, many years to come. ”

“ In the first Milton, still angry, clenches his fist in the face of his generation, as a generation of mere hogs and dogs, unable to appreciate any real form of the liberty for which they are howling and grunting; in the second the spleen is less, and he is content with a rigmarole of rhyme about the queer effects among the illiterate of the Greek title of his last Divorce Pamphlet. And here what is chiefly interesting in the rigmarole is the evidence that Milton had been recently attending to the news from Scotland. ”

“ The woman who repeated this to Mildred wondered at her indifference, for she scarcely seemed to hear, certainly not to care, but the storm within was terrible, and when alone in the privacy of her chamber it burst forth with all its force, and kneeling by her bedside she asked that she might die before another than herself was the bride of Lawrence Thornton. Poor, poor little Milly! ”

“ I used to think maybe he’d fall in love with Milly; but,—Geraldine says she knows too much for a man like him really to care for; and I guess she does, for anybody can see I’m a simpleton,—and he certainly likes me the best,—don’t he, Milly? Why, how red your cheeks are,—and no wonder, it’s so hot in this pent-up room. Let’s go down,” and without waiting for an answer, Lilian tripped down the stairs, followed by Mildred and Oliver,—the latter having forgotten his headache in the pleasure of seeing his former playmate. ”

“ The lambs emulating Satan are a kind of epitome and emblem of those descriptive poets of the eighteenth century who took Milton for their model.
But perhaps the best example of all is Gray, whose work is full of Miltonic reminiscence. He [254] frequently borrows; and, like Pope, almost always spoils in the borrowing. Thus what Milton writes of the nightingale--
She all night long her amorous descant sung,--
is echoed by Gray in the Sonnet on the Death of Richard West:--
The birds in vain their amorous descant join. ”

“ The flame of life had never burned clearer or more steadily in Mildred, and every day she felt a growing confidence in having won so complete a possession of her whole bodily machinery that it would hardly be in the power of Milly to dethrone her. ”

“ Nor was the grandeur of the head diminished in any manner by the unpoetical proportions of the body, for, to the acknowledgment of his most partial biographer, Richardson, the stature of Milton was so much below the ordinary height, and so much beyond the ordinary bulk, that he might almost be described as "short and thick." Yet, notwithstanding these peculiarities of the frame, an august radiance seemed to envelope the brow—a brow, hoary alike from years and from misfortunes—and to invest with a sublime air the figure of that old man huddled in that old gray coat. ”

“ But war was not the sole cause for anxiety. When old Mr. Milton arrived safely in London late in the summer he found his [Pg 93] son John married and already parted from his bride of seventeen, who had lived with him but one short month. Of the brief courting of Mary Powell at her father’s house at Forest Hill, near Oxford, we know little. But one day in May, when King Charles I. had driven her brothers and all other students out of Christ Church, and had taken up temporary residence there himself, the venturesome lover came into the enemy’s country and called on her. ”

“ Millington waived the question; “but I tell you, nephew, ’tis not the part of an honest gentleman to be herding with such drunken libertines and cowardly bullies as those that hold Woodstead.”
“Mayhap ’tis not the company I would keep of my own will,” Hugh admitted, “though they have been kind to me. But ’tis best I lie close just now.”
“If you have done no wrong why need you hide yourself?” Millington retorted, with a flicker of a triumphant smile. ”