Books: Jan of the Windmill
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Juliana Horatia Ewing >> Jan of the Windmill
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"Are your folk religious, Jan?" he added, abruptly. And whilst Jan
stood puzzling the question, he asked with an almost official air of
authority, "Do ye any of ye come to church?"
"My father does on club-days," said Jan.
"And the rest of ye,--do ye attend any place of worship?" Jan shook
his head.
"And I'll dare to say ye didn't know I was the clerk?" said Master
Swift. "There's paganism for ye in a Christian parish! Well, well,
you're coming to me, lad, and, apart from your secular studies,
you'll be instructed in the Word of GOD, and in the Church Catechism
on Fridays."
"Thank you, sir," said Jan. He felt this civility to be due, though
of the schoolmaster's plans for his benefit he had a very confused
notion. He then took leave. Rufus went with him to the gate, and
returned to his master with a look which plainly said, "We could
have done with him very well, if you had kept him."
When Jan had reached a bit of rising ground, from which the house he
had just left was visible, he turned round to look at it again.
Master Swift was standing where he had left him, gazing out into the
distance with painful intensity. The fast-sinking sun lit up his
heavy face and figure with a transforming glow, and hung a golden
mist above the meads, at which he stared like one spellbound. But
when Jan turned to pursue his way to the windmill, the schoolmaster
turned also, and went back into the cottage.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE PARISH CHURCH.--REMBRANDT.--THE SNOW SCENE.--MASTER SWIFT'S
AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
In most respects, Jan's conduct and progress were very satisfactory.
He quickly learned to read, and his copy-books were models.
The good clerk developed another talent in him. Jan learned to
sing, and to sing very well; and he was put into the choir-seats in
the old church, where he sang with enthusiasm hymns which he had
learned by heart from the schoolmaster.
No wild weather that ever blustered over the downs could keep Jan
now from the services. The old church came to have a fascination
for him, from the low, square tower without, round which the rooks
wheeled, to the springing pillars, the solemn gray tints of the
stone, and the round arches that so gratified the eye within. And
did he not sit opposite to the one stained window the soldiers of
the Commonwealth had spared to the parish! It was the only colored
picture Jan knew, and he knew every line, every tint of it, and the
separate expression on each of the wan, quaint faces of the figures.
When the sun shone, they seemed to smile at him, and their ruby
dresses glowed like garments dyed in blood. When the colors fell
upon Abel's white head, Jan wished with all his heart that he could
have gathered them as he gathered leaves, to make pictures with.
Sometimes he day-dreamed that one of the figures came down out of
the window, and brought the colors with him, and that he and Jan
painted pictures in the other windows, filling them with gorgeous
hues, and pale, devout faces. The fancy, empty as it was, pleased
him, and he planned how every window should be done, and told Abel,
to whom the ingenious fancy seemed as marvellous as if the work had
been accomplished.
Abel was in the choir too, not so much because of his voice as of
his great wish for it, and of the example of his good behavior. It
was he who persuaded Mrs. Lake to come to church, and having once
begun she came often. She tried to persuade her husband to go, and
told him how sweetly the boys' voices sounded, led by Master Swift's
fine bass, which he pitched from a key which he knocked upon his
desk. But Master Lake had a proverb to excuse him. "The nearer the
church, the further from GOD." Not that he pretended to maintain
the converse of the proposition.
Jan learned plenty of poetry; hymns, which Abel learned again from
him, some of Herbert's poems, and bits of Keats. But his favorites
were martial poems by Mrs. Hemans, which he found in an old volume
of collected verses, till the day he came upon "Marmion," and gave
himself up to Sir Walter Scott. He spouted poetry to Abel in
imitation of Master Swift, and they enjoyed all, and understood
about half.
And yet Jan's progress was not altogether satisfactory to his
teacher.
To learn long pieces of poetry was easy pastime to him, but he was
dull or inattentive when the schoolmaster gave him some elementary
lessons in mechanics. He wrote beautifully, but was no prodigy in
arithmetic. He drew trees, windmills, and pigs on the desks, and
admirable portraits of the schoolmaster, Rufus, and other local
worthies, on the margins of the tables of weights and measures.
Much of his leisure was spent at Master Swift's cottage, and in
reading his books. The schoolmaster had marked an old biographical
dictionary at pages containing lives of "self-made" men, who had
risen as inventors or improvers in mechanics or as discoverers of
important facts of natural science. Jan had not hitherto studied
their careers with the avidity Master Swift would have liked to see,
but one day he found him reading the fat volume with deep interest.
"And whose life are ye at now, laddie?" he asked, with a smile.
Jan lifted his face, which was glowing. "'Tis Rembrandt the painter
I be reading about. Eh, Master Swift, he lived in a windmill, and
he was a miller's son!"
"Maybe he'd a miller's thumb," Jan added, stretching out his own,
and smiling at the droll idea. "Do 'ee know what ETCHINGS be, then,
Master Swift?"
"A kind of picture that's scratched on a piece of copper with
needles, and costs a lot of money to print," said Master Swift,
dryly; and he turned his broad back and went out.
It was one day in the second winter of Jan's learning under Master
Swift that matters came to a climax. The schoolmaster loved
punctuality, but Jan was not always punctual. He was generally
better in this respect in winter than in summer, as there was less
to distract his attention on the road to school. But one winter's
day he loitered to make a sketch on his slate, and made matters
worse by putting finishing touches to it after he was seated at the
desk.
It was not a day to suggest sketching, but, turning round when he
was about half way to the village, the view seemed to Jan to be
exactly suitable for a slate sketch. The long slopes of the downs
were white with snow; but it was a dull grayish white, for there was
no sunshine, and the gray-white of the slate-pencil did it justice
enough. In the middle distance rose the windmill, and a thatched
cattle shed and some palings made an admirable foreground. On the
top and edges of these lay the snow, outlining them in white, which
again the slate-pencil could imitate effectively. There only wanted
something darker than the slate itself to do those parts of the
foreground and the mill which looked darker than the sky, and for
this Jan trusted to pen and ink when he reached his desk. The
drawing was very successful, and Jan was so absorbed in admiring it
that he did not notice the schoolmaster's approach, but feeling some
one behind him, he fancied it was one of the boys, and held up the
slate triumphantly, whispering, "Look 'ee here!"
It was Master Swift who looked, and snatching the slate he brought
it down on the sharp corner of the desk, and broke it to pieces.
Then he went back to his place, and spoke neither bad nor good to
Jan for the rest of the school-time. Jan would much rather have
been beaten. Once or twice he made essay to go up to Master Swift's
desk, but the old man's stern countenance discouraged him, and he
finally shrank into a corner and sat weeping bitterly. He sat there
till every scholar but himself had gone, and still the schoolmaster
did not speak. Jan slunk out, and when Master Swift turned
homewards Jan followed silently in his footsteps through the snow.
At the door of the cottage, the old man looked round with a
relenting face.
"I suppose Rufus'll insist on your coming in," said he; and Jan
rushing in hid his face in Rufus's curls, and sobbed heavily.
"Tut, tut!" said the schoolmaster. "No more of that, child.
There's bitters enough in life, without being so prodigal of your
tears."
"Come and sit down with ye," he went on. "You're very young, lad,
and maybe I'm foolish to be angry with ye that you're not wise. But
yet ye've more sense than your years in some respects, and I'm
thinking I'll try and make ye see things as I see 'em. I'm going to
tell ye something about myself, if ye'd care to hear it."
"I'd be main pleased, Master Swift," said Jan, earnestly.
"I'd none of your advantages, lad," said the old man. "When I was
your age, I knew more mischief than you need ever know, and uncommon
little else. I'm a self-educated man,--I used to hope I should live
to hear folk say a self-made Great Man. It's a bitter thing to have
the ambition without the genius, to smoulder in the fire that great
men shine by! However, it's something to have just the saving sense
to know that ye've not got it, though it's taken a wasted lifetime
to convince me, and I sometimes think the deceiving serpent is more
scotched than killed yet. However, ye seem to me to be likelier to
lack the ambition than the genius, so we may let that bide. But
there's a snare of mine, Jan, that I mean your feet to be free of,
and that's a mischosen vocation. I'm not a native of these parts,
ye must know. I come from the north, and in those mining and
manufacturing districts I've seen many a man that's got an
education, and could keep himself sober, rise to own his house and
his works, and have men under him, and bring up his children like
the gentry. For mark ye, my lad. In such matters the experiences
of the early part of an artisan's life are all so much to the good
for him, for they're in the working of the trade, and the finest
young gentleman has got it all to learn, if he wants to make money
in that line. I got my education, and I was sober enough, but--
Heaven help me--I must be a poet, and in THAT line a gentleman's son
knows almost from the nursery many a thing that I had to teach
myself with hard labor as a man. It was just a madness. But I read
all the poetry I could lay my hands on, and I wrote as well."
"Did you write poetry, Master Swift?" said Jan.
"Ay, Jan, of a sort. At one time I worshipped Burns. And then I
wrote verses in the dialect of my native place, which, ye must know,
I can speak with any man when I've a mind," said Master Swift,
unconscious that he spoke it always. "And then it was Wordsworth,
for the love of nature is just a passion with me, and it's that that
made the poet Keats a new world to me. Well, well, now I'm telling
you how I came here. It was after my wife. She was lady's-maid to
Squire Ammaby's mother, and the old Squire got me the school. Ah,
those were happy days! I was a godless, rough sort of a fellow when
she married me, but I became a converted man. And let me tell ye,
lad, when a man and wife love GOD and each other, and live in the
country, a bit of ground like this becomes a very garden of Eden."
"Did your wife like your poetry, sir?" said Jan, on whom the idea
that the schoolmaster was a poet made a strong impression.
"Ay, ay, Jan. She was a good scholar. I wrote a bit about that
time called Love and Ambition, in the style of the poet Wordsworth.
It was as much as to say that Love had killed Ambition, ye
understand? But it wasn't dead. It had only shifted to another
object.
"We had a child. I remember the first day his blue eyes looked at
me with what I may call sense in 'em. He was in his cradle, and
there was no one but me with him. I went on like a fool. 'See
thee, my son,' I said, 'thy father's been a bad 'un, but he'll keep
thee as pure as thy mother. Thy father's a poor scholar, but he's
not THAT dull but what he'll make THEE as learned as the parson.
Thy father's a needy man, a man in a small way, but he and thy
mother'll stick here in this dull bit of a village, content, ay, my
lad, right happy, so thou'rt a rich man, and can see the world!' I
give ye my word, Jan, the child looked at me as if he understood it
all. You're wondering, maybe, what made me hope he'd do different
to what I'd done. But, ye see, his mother was just an angel, and I
reckoned he'd be half like her. Then she'd lived with gentlefolks
from a child, and knew manners and such like that I never learned.
And for as little as I'd taught myself, he'd at any rate begin where
his father left off. He was all we had. There seemed no fault in
him. His mother dressed him like a little prince, and his manners
were the same. Ah, we WERE happy! Then" -
"Well, Master Swift?" said Jan, for the schoolmaster had paused.
"Can't ye see the place is empty?" he answered sharply. "Who takes
bite or sup with me but Rufus? SHE DIED.
"I'd have gone mad but for the boy. All my thought was to make up
her loss to him. A child learns a man to be unselfish, Jan. I used
to think, 'GOD may well be the very fount of unselfish charity, when
He has so many children, so helpless without Him!' I think He
taught me how to do for that boy. I dressed him, I darned his
socks: what work I couldn't do I put out, but I had no one in.
When I came in from school, I cleaned myself, and changed my boots,
to give him his meals. Rufus and I eat off the table now, but I
give ye my word when he was alive we'd three clean cloths a week,
and he'd a pinny every day; and there's a silver fork and spoon in
yon drawer I saved up to buy him, and had his name put on. I taught
him too. He loved poetry as well as his father. He could say most
of Milton's 'Lycidas.' It was an unlucky thing to have learned him
too! Eh, Jan! we're poor fools. I lay awake night after night
reconciling my mind to troubles that were never to come, and never
dreaming of what WAS before me. I thought to myself, 'John Swift,
my lad, you're making yourself a bed of thorns. As sure as you make
your son a gentleman, so sure he'll look down on his old father when
he gets up. Can ye bear that, John Swift, and HER dead, and him all
that ye have?' I didn't ask myself twice, Jan. Of course I could
bear it. Would any parent stop his child from being better than
himself because he'd be looked down on? I never heard of one. 'I
want him to think me rough and ignorant,' says I, 'for I want him to
know what's better. And I shan't expect him to think on how I've
slaved for him, till he's children of his own, and their mother a
lady. But when I'm dead,' I says, 'and he stands by my grave, and I
can't shame him no more with my common ways, he'll say, "The old man
did his best for me," for he has his mother's feelings.' I tell ye,
Jan, I cried like a child to think of him standing at my burying in
a good black coat and a silk scarf like a gentleman, and I no more
thought of standing at his than if he was bound to live for ever.
And, mind ye, I did all I could to improve myself. I learned while
I was teaching, and read all I could lay my hands on. Books of
travels made me wild. I was young still, and I'd have given a deal
to see the world. But I was saving every penny for him. 'He'll see
it all,' says I, 'and that's enough,--Italy and Greece, and Egypt,
and the Holy Land. And he'll see the sea (which I never saw but
once, and that was at Cleethorpes), and he'll go to the tropics, and
see flowers that 'ud just turn his old father's head, and he'll
write and tell me of 'em, for he's got his mother's feelings.' . . .
My GOD! He never passed the parish bounds, and he's lain alongside
of her in yon churchyard for five and thirty years!"
Master Swift's head sank upon his breast, and he was silent, as if
in a trance, but Jan dared not speak. The silence was broken by
Rufus, who got up and stuffed his nose into the schoolmaster's hand.
"Poor lad!" said his master, patting him. "Thou'rt a good soul,
too! Well, Jan, I'm here, ye see. It didn't kill me. I was off my
head a bit, I believe, but they kept the school for me, and I got to
work again. I'm rough pottery, lad, and take a deal of breaking.
I've took up with dumb animals, too, a good deal. At least, they've
took up with me. Most of 'em's come, like Rufus, of themselves.
Mangy puppies no one would own, cats with kettles to their tails,
and so on. I've always had a bit of company to my meals, and that's
the main thing. Folks has said to me, 'Master Swift, I don't know
how you can keep on schooling. I reckon you can hardly abide the
sight of boys now you've lost your own.' But they're wrong, Jan:
it seemed to give me a kind of love for every lad I lit upon.
"Are ye thinking ambition was dead in the old man at last? It came
to life again, Jan. After a bit, I says to myself, 'In a dull place
like this there's doubtless many a boy that might rise that never
has the chance that I'd have given to mine. For what says the poet
Gray? -
"But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page,
Rich with the spoils of Time, did ne'er unroll."'
"I think, Jan, sometimes, I'm like Rachel, who'd rather have taken
to her servant's children than have had none. I thought, 'If
there's a genius in obscurity here, I'll come across the boy, being
schoolmaster, and I'll do for him as I'd have done for my own.'
Jan, I've seen nigh on seven generations of lads pass through this
school, but HE'S NEVER COME! Society's quit of that blame. There's
been no 'mute, inglorious Miltons' here since I come to this place.
There's been many a nice-tempered lad I've loved, for I'm fond of
children, but never one that yearned to see places he'd never seen,
or to know things he'd never heard of. There's no fool like an old
one, and I think I've been more disappointed as time went on. I
submitted myself to the Lord's will years ago; but I HAVE prayed
Him, on my knees, since He didn't see fit to raise me and mine, to
let me have that satisfaction to help some other man's son to
knowledge and to fame.
"Jan Lake," said Master Swift, "when I found you in yon wood, I
found what I've looked for in vain for thirty-five years. Have I
been schoolmaster so long, d'ye think, and don't know one boy's face
from another? Lad? is it possible ye don't CARE to be a great man?"
Jan cared very much, but he was afraid of Master Swift; and it was
by an effort that he summoned up courage to say, -
"Couldn't I be a great painter, Master Swift, don't 'ee think?"
The old man frowned impatiently. "What have I been telling ye? The
Fine Arts are not the road to fame for working-men. Jan, Jan, be
guided by me. Learn what I bid ye. And when ye've made name and
fortune the way I show ye, ye can buy paints and paintings at your
will, and paint away to please your leisure hours."
It did not need the gentle Abel's after-counsel to persuade Jan to
submit himself to the schoolmaster's direction.
"I'll do as ye bid me, Master Swift; indeed, I will, sir," said he.
But, when the pleased old man rambled on of fame and fortune, it
must be confessed that Jan but thought of them as the steps to those
hours of wealthy leisure in which he could buy paints and indulge
the irrepressible bent of his genius without blame.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE WHITE HORSE IN CLOVER.--AMABEL AND HER GUARDIANS.--AMABEL IN THE
WOOD.--BOGY.
The white horse lived to see good days. He got safely home, and
spent the winter in a comfortable stable, with no work but being
exercised for the good of his health by the stable-boy. It was
expensive, but expense was not a first consideration with the
Squire, and when he had once decided a matter, he was not apt to
worry himself with regrets. As to Amabel the very narrowness of the
white horse's escape from death exalted him at once to the place of
first favorite in her tender heart, even over the head (and ears) of
the new donkey.
"Miss Amabel's" interest in the cart-horse offended her nurse's
ideas of propriety, and met with no sympathy from her mother or
grandmother. But she was apt to get her own way; and from time to
time she appeared suddenly, like a fairy-imp, in the stable, where
she majestically directed the groom to hold her up whilst she plied
a currycomb on the old horse's back. This over, she would ask with
dignity, "Do you take care of him, Miles?" And Miles, touching his
cap, would reply, "Certainly, miss, the very greatest of care." And
Amabel would add, "Does he get plenty to eat, do you think?"
"Plenties to heat, miss," the groom would reply. And she generally
closed the conversation with, "I'm very glad. You're a good man,
Miles."
In spring the white horse was turned out into the paddock, where
Amabel had begged that he might die comfortably. He lived
comfortably instead; and Amabel visited him constantly, and being
perfectly fearless would kiss his white nose as he drooped it into
her little arms. Her visits to the stable had been discovered and
forbidden, but the scandal was even greater when she was found in
the paddock, standing on an inverted bucket, and grooming the white
horse with Lady Louisa's tortoise-shell dressing-comb.
"They wouldn't let me have the currycomb," said Amabel, who was very
hot, and perfectly self-satisfied. Lady Louisa was in despair, but
the Squire laughed. The ladies of his family had been great
horsewomen for generations.
In the early summer, some light carting being required by the
gardener, he begged leave to employ "Miss Amabel's old horse," who
came at last to trot soberly to the town with a light cart for
parcels, when the landlord of the Crown would point him out in proof
of the Squire's sagacity in horse-flesh.
But it was not by her attachment to the cart-horse alone that Amabel
disturbed the composure of the head-nurse and of Louise the bonne.
She was a very Will-o'-the-wisp for wandering. She grew rapidly,
and the stronger she grew the more of a Tom-boy she became. Beyond
the paddock lay another field, whose farthest wall was the boundary
of a little wood,--the wood where Jan had herded pigs. Into this
wood it had long been Amabel's desire to go. But nurses have a
preference for the high road, and object to climbing walls, and she
had not had her wish. She had often peeped through a hole in the
wall, and had smelt honeysuckle. Once she had climbed half way up,
and had fallen on her back in the ditch. Louise uttered a thousand
and one exclamations when Amabel came home after this catastrophe;
and Nurse, distrusting the success of any real penalties in her
power, fell back upon imaginary ones.
"I'm sure it's a mercy you have got back, Miss Amabel," said she;
"for Bogy lives in that wood; and, if you'd got in, it's ten to one
he'd have carried you off."
"You SAID Bogy lived in the cellar," said Amabel.
Nurse was in a dilemma which deservedly besets people who tell
untruths. She had to invent a second one to help out her first.
"That's at night," said she: "he lives in the wood in the daytime."
"Then I can go into the cellar in the day, and the wood at night,"
retorted Amabel; but in her heart she knew the latter was
impossible.
For some days Nurse's fable availed. Amabel had suffered a good
deal from Bogy; and, though the fear of him did not seem so terrible
by daylight, she had no wish to meet him. But one lovely afternoon,
wandering round the field for cowslips, Amabel came to the wall, and
could not but peep over to see if there were any flowers to be seen.
She was too short to do this without climbing, and it ended in her
struggling successfully to the top. There were violets on the other
side, and Amabel let down one big foot to a convenient hole, whence
she hoped to be able to stoop and catch at the violets without
actually treading in Bogy's domain. But once more she slipped and
rolled over,--this time into the wood. Bogy lingered, and she got
on to her feet; but the wall was deeper on this side than the other,
and she saw with dismay that it was very doubtful if she could get
back.
I think, as a rule, children are very brave. But a light heart goes
a long way towards courage. At first Amabel made desperate and
knee-grazing efforts to reclimb the wall, and, failing, burst into
tears, and danced, and called aloud on all her protectors, from the
Squire to Miles. No one coming, she restrained her tears, and by a
real effort of that "pluck" for which the Ammaby race is famous
began to run along the wall to find a lower point for climbing. In
doing so, she startled a squirrel, and whizz!--away he went up a
lanky tree. What a tail he had! Amabel forgot her terrors. There
was at any rate some living thing in the wood besides Bogy; and she
was now busy trying to coax the squirrel down again by such
encouraging noises as she had found successful in winning the
confidence of kittens and puppies. Amabel was the victim of that
weakness for falling in love with every fussy, intelligent, or
pitiable beast she met with, which besets some otherwise reasonable
beings, leading to an inconvenient accumulation of pets in private
life, though doubtless invaluable in the public services of people
connected with the Zoological Gardens.
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