Books: Jan of the Windmill
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Juliana Horatia Ewing >> Jan of the Windmill
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The squirrel sat under the shadow of his own tail, and winked. He
had not the remotest intention of coming down. Amabel was calmer
now, and she looked about her. The eglantine bushes were shoulder-
high, but she had breasted underwood in the shrubberies, and was not
afraid. Up, up, stretched the trees to where the sky shone blue.
The wood itself sloped downwards; the spotted arums pushed boldly
through last year's leaves, which almost hid the violets; there were
tufts of primroses, which made Amabel cry out, and about them lay
the exquisite mauve dog-violets in unplucked profusion. And hither
and thither darted the little birds; red-breasts and sparrows, and
yellow finches and blue finches, and blackbirds and thrushes, with
their cheerful voices and soft waistcoats, and, indeed, every good
quality but that of knowing how glad one would be to kiss them. In
a few steps, Amabel came upon a path going zig-zag down the steep of
the wood, and, nodding her hooded head determinedly, she said,
"Amabel is going a walk. I don't mind Bogy," and followed her nose.
It is a pity that one's skirt, when held up, does not divide itself
into compartments, like some vegetable dishes. One is so apt to get
flowers first, and then lumps of moss, which spoil the flowers, and
then more moss, which, earth downwards (as bread and butter falls),
does no good to the rest. Amabel had on a nice, new dress, and it
held things beautifully. But it did not hold enough, for at each
step of the zig-zag path the moss grew lovelier. She had got some
extinguisher-moss from the top of the wall, and this now lay under
all the rest, which flattened the extinguishers. About half way
down the dress was full, and some cushion-moss appeared that could
not be passed by. Amabel sat down and reviewed her treasures. She
could part with nothing, and she had just caught sight of some cup-
moss lichen for dolls' wine-glasses. But, by good luck, she was
provided with a white sun-bonnet, as clean and whole as her dress;
and this she took off and filled. It was less fortunate that the
scale-mosses and liverworts, growing nearer to the stream, came
last, and, with the damp earth about them, lay a-top of every thing,
flowers, dolls' wine-glasses, and all. It was a noble collection--
but heavy. Amabel's face flushed, and she was slightly
overbalanced, but she staggered sturdily along the path, which was
now level.
She had quite forgotten Nurse's warning, when she came suddenly upon
a figure crouched in her path, and gazing at her with large, black
eyes. Her fat cheeks turned pale, and with a cry of, "It's Bogy!"
she let down the whole contents of her dress into one of Jan's leaf-
pictures.
"Don't hurt me! Don't take me away! Please, please don't!" she
cried, dancing wildly.
"I won't hurt you, Miss. I be going to help you to pick 'em up,"
said Jan. By the time he had returned her treasures to her skirt,
Amabel had regained confidence, especially as she saw no signs of
the black bag in which naughty children are supposed to be put.
"What are you doing, Bogy?" said she.
"I be making a picture, Miss," said Jan, pointing it out.
"Go on making it, please," said Amabel; and she sat down and watched
him.
"Do you like this wood, Bogy?" she asked, softly, after a time.
"I do, Miss," said Jan.
"Why don't you sleep in it, then? I wouldn't sleep in a cellar, if
I were you."
"I don't sleep in a cellar, Miss."
"Nurse SAYS you do," said Amabel, nodding emphatically.
Jan was at a loss how to express the full inaccuracy of Nurse's
statement in polite language, so he was silent; rapidly adding tint
to tint from his heap of leaves, whilst the birds sang overhead, and
Amabel sat with her two bundles watching him.
"I thought you were an old man!" she said, at length.
"Oh, no, Miss," said Jan, laughing.
"You don't look very bad," Amabel continued.
"I don't think I be very bad," said Jan, modestly.
Amabel's next questions came at short intervals, like dropping
shots.
"Do you say your prayers, Bogy?"
"Yes, Miss."
"Do you go to church, Bogy?"
"Yes, Miss."
"Then where do you sit?"
"In the choir, Miss; the end next to Squire Ammaby's big pew."
"DO YOU?" said Amabel. She had been threatened with Bogy for
misbehavior in church, and it was startling to find that he sat so
near. She changed the subject, under a hasty remembrance of having
once made a face at the parson through a hole in the bombazine
curtains.
"Why don't you paint with paints, Bogy?" said she.
"I haven't got none, Miss," said Jan.
"I've got a paint-box," said Amabel. "And, if you like, I'll give
it to you, Bogy."
The color rushed to Jan's face.
"Oh, thank you, Miss!" he cried.
"You must dip the paints in water, you know, and rub them on a
plate; and don't let them lie in a puddle," said Amabel, who loved
to dictate.
"Thank you, Miss," said Jan.
"And don't put your brush in your mouth," said Amabel.
"Oh, dear, no, Miss," said Jan. It had never struck him that one
could want to put a paint-brush in one's mouth.
At this point Amabel's overwrought energies suddenly failed her, and
she burst out crying. "I don't know how I shall get over the wall,"
said she.
"Don't 'ee cry, Miss. I'll help you," said Jan.
"I can't walk any more," sobbed Amabel, who was, indeed, tired out.
"I'll take 'ee on my back," said Jan. "Don't 'ee cry."
With a good deal of difficulty, Amabel was hoisted up, and planted
her big feet in Jan's hands. It was no light pilgrimage for poor
Jan, as he climbed the winding path. Amabel was peevish with
weariness; her bundles were sadly in the way, and at every step a
cup-moss or marchantia dropped out, and Amabel insisted upon its
being picked up. But they reached the wall at last, and Jan got her
over, and made two or three expeditions after the missing mosses,
before the little lady was finally content.
"Good-by, Bogy," she said, at last, holding up her face to be
kissed. "And thank you very much. I'm not frightened of you,
Bogy."
As Jan kissed her, he said, smiling, "What is your name, love?"
And she said, "Amabel."
To her parents and guardians, Amabel made the following statement:
"I've seen Bogy. I like him. He doesn't sleep in the cellar, so
Nurse told a story. And he didn't take me away, so that's another
story. He says his prayers, and he goes to church, so he can't be
the Bad Man. He makes pictures with leaves. He carried me on his
back, but not in a bag" -
At this point the outraged feelings of Lady Craikshaw exploded, and
she rang the bell, and ordered Miss Amabel to be put to bed with a
dose of rhubarb and magnesia (without sal-volatile), for telling
stories.
"The eau-de-Cologne, mamma dear, please," said Lady Louisa, as the
door closed on the struggling, screaming, and protesting Amabel.
"Isn't it really dreadful? But Esmerelda Ammaby says Henry used to
tell shocking stories when he was a little boy."
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE PAINT-BOX.--MASTER LINSEED'S SHOP.--THE NEW SIGN-BOARD.--MASTER
SWIFT AS WILL SCARLET.
On Sunday morning Jan took his place in church with unusual
feelings. He looked here, there, and everywhere for the little
damsel of the wood, but she was not to be seen. Meanwhile she had
not sent the paint box, and he feared it would never come. He
fancied she must be the Squire's little daughter, but he was not
sure, and she certainly was not in the big pew, where the back of
the Squire's red head and Lady Louisa's aquiline nose were alone
visible. She was a dear little soul, he thought. He wondered why
she called him Bogy. Perhaps it was a way little ladies had of
addressing their inferiors.
Jan did not happen to guess that, Amabel being very young, the
morning services were too long for her. In the afternoon he had
given her up, but she was there.
The old Rector had reached the third division of his sermon, and
Lady Craikshaw was asleep, when Amabel, mounting the seat with her
usual vigor, pushed her Sunday hood through the bombazine curtains,
and said, -
"Bogy!"
Jan looked up, and then started to his feet as Amabel stuffed the
paint-box into his hands. "I pushed it under my frock," she said in
a stage whisper. "It made me so tight? But grandmamma is such" -
Jan heard and saw no more. Amabel's footing was apt to be insecure;
she slipped upon the cushions and disappeared with a crash.
Jan trembled as he clasped the shallow old cedar-wood box. He
wondered if the colors would prove as bright as those in the window.
He fancied the wan, ascetic faces there rejoiced with him. When he
got home, he sat under the shadow of the mill, and drew back the
sliding lid of the box. Brushes, and twelve hard color cakes. They
were Ackermann's, and very good. Cheap paint-boxes were not made
then. He read the names on the back of them: Neutral Tint,
Prussian Blue, Indian Red, Yellow Ochre, Brown Madder, Brown Pink,
Burnt Umber, Vandyke Brown, Indigo, King's Yellow, Rose Madder, and
Ivory Black.
It says much for Jan's uprightness of spirit, and for the sense of
duty in which the schoolmaster was training him, that he did not
neglect school for his new treasure. Happily for him the sun rose
early, and Jan rose with it, and taking his paint-box to the little
wood, on scraps of parcel paper and cap paper, on bits of wood and
smooth white stones, he blotted-in studies of color, which he
finished from memory at odd moments in the windmill.
In the summer holidays, Jan had more time for sketching. But the
many occasions on which he could not take his paints with him led
him to observe closely, and taught him to paint from memory with
wonderful exactness. He was also obliged to reduce his outlines and
condense his effects to a very small scale to economize paper.
About this time he heard that Master Chuter was going to have a new
sign painted for the inn. Master Linseed was to paint it.
Master Linseed's shop had been a place of resort for Jan in some of
his leisure time. At first the painter and decorator had been
churlish enough to him, but, finding that Jan was skilful with a
brush, he employed him again and again to do his work, for which he
received instead of giving thanks. Jan went there less after he got
a paint-box, and could produce effects with good materials of his
own, instead of making imperfect experiments in color on bits of
wood in the painter's shop.
But in this matter of the new sign-board he took the deepest
interest. He had a design of his own for it, which he was most
anxious the painter should adopt. "Look 'ee, Master Linseed," said
he. "It be the Heart of Oak. Now I know a oak-tree with a big
trunk and two arms. They stretches out one on each side, and the
little branches closes in above till 'tis just like a heart.
'Twould be beautiful, Master Linseed, and I could bring 'ee leaves
of the oak so that 'ee could match the yellows and greens. And then
there'd be trees beyond and beyond, smaller and smaller, and all
like a blue mist between them, thee know. That blue in the paper
'ee've got would just do, and with more white to it 'twould be
beautiful for the sky. And" -
"And who's to do all that for a few shillings?" broke in the
painter, testily. "And Master Chuter wants it done and hung up for
the Foresters' dinner."
Since the pressing nature of the commission was Master Linseed's
excuse for not adopting his idea for the sign, it seemed strange to
Jan that he did not set about it in some fashion. But he delayed
and delayed, till Master Chuter was goaded to repeat the old rumor
that real sign-painting was beyond his powers.
It was within a week of the dinner that the little innkeeper burst
indignantly into the painter's shop. Master Linseed was ill in bed,
and the sign-board lay untouched in a corner.
"It be a kind of fever that's on him," said his wife.
"It be a kind of fiddlestick!" said the enraged Master Chuter; and
turning round his eye fell on Jan, who was looking as disconsolate
as himself. Day after day had he come in hopes of seeing Master
Linseed at work, and now it seemed indefinitely postponed. But the
innkeeper's face brightened, and, seizing Jan by the shoulder, he
dragged him from the shop.
"Look 'ee here, Jan Lake," said he. "Do 'ee thenk THEE could paint
the sign? I dunno what I'd give 'ee if 'ee could, if 'twere only to
spite that humbugging old hudmedud yonder."
Jan felt as if his brain were on fire. "If 'ee'll get me the
things, Master Chuter," he gasped, "and'll let me paint it in your
place, I'll do it for 'ee for nothin'."
The innkeeper was not insensible to this consideration, but his
chief wish was to spite Master Linseed. He lost no time in making
ready, and for the rest of the week Jan lived between the tallet (or
hay-loft) of the inn and the wood where he had first studied trees.
Master Chuter provided him with sheets of thick whitey-brown paper,
on which he made water-color studies, from which he painted
afterwards. By his desire no one was admitted to the tallet, though
Master Chuter's delight increased with the progress of the picture
till the secret was agony to him. Towards the end of the week they
were disturbed by a scuffling on the tallet stairs, and Rufus
bounced in, followed at a slower pace by the schoolmaster, crying,
"Unearthed at last!"
"Come in, come in! That's right!" shouted Master Chuter. "Let
Master Swift look, Jan. He be a scholar, and'll tell us all about
un."
But Jan shrank into the shadow. The schoolmaster stood in the light
of the open shutter, towards which the painting was sloped, and
Rufus sat by him on his haunches, and blinked with all the gravity
of a critic; and in the half light between them and the stairs stood
the fat little innkeeper, with his hands on his knees, crying,
"There, Master Swift! Did 'ee ever see any thing to beat that?
Artis' or ammytoor!"
Jan's very blood seemed to stand still. As Master Swift put on his
spectacles, each fault in the painting sprang to the front and
mocked him. It was indeed a wretched daub!
But Jan had been studying the scene under every lovely light of
heaven from dawn to dusk for a week of summer days: Master Swift
carried no such severe test in his brain. As he raised his head,
the tears were in his eyes, and he held out his hand, saying, "My
lad, it's just the spirit of the woods.
"But d'ye not think a figure or so would enliven it?" he continued.
"One of Robin Hood's foresters 'chasing the flying roe'?"
"FORESTERS! To be sure!" said Master Chuter. "What did I say?
Have the schoolmaster in, says I. He be a scholar, and knows what's
what. Put 'em in, Jan, put 'em in! there's plenty of room."
What Jan had already suffered from the innkeeper's suggestions, only
an artist can imagine, and his imagination will need no help!
"I'd be main glad to get a bit of red in there," said Jan, in a low
voice, to Master Swift; "but Robin Hood must be in green, sir,
mustn't he?"
"There's Will Scarlet. Put Will in," said Master Swift, who,
pleased to be appealed to, threw himself warmly into the matter.
"He can have just drawn his bow at a deer out of sight." And with a
charming simplicity the old schoolmaster flung his burly figure into
an appropriate attitude.
"Stand so a minute!" cried Jan, and seizing a lump of charcoal, with
which he had made his outlines, he rapidly sketched Master Swift's
figure on the floor of the tallet. Thinned down to what he declared
to have been his dimensions in youth, it was transferred to Jan's
picture, and the touch of red was the culminating point of the
innkeeper's satisfaction.
On the day of the dinner the new sign swung aloft. "It couldn't dry
better anywhere," said Master Chuter.
Jan "found himself famous." The whole parish assembled to admire.
The windmiller, in his amazement, could not even find a proverb for
the occasion, whilst Abel hung about the door of the Heart of Oak,
as if he had been the most confirmed toper, saying to all incomers,
"Have 'ee seen the new sign, sir? 'Twas our Jan did un."
His fame would probably have spread more widely, but for a more
overwhelming interest which came to distract the neighborhood, and
which destroyed a neat little project of Master Chuter's for running
up a few tables amongst his kidney-beans, as a kind of "tea garden"
for folk from outlying villages, who, coming in on Sunday afternoons
to service, should also want to see the work of the boy sign-
painter.
It is a curious instance of the inaccuracy of popular impressions
that, when Master Linseed died three days after the Foresters'
dinner, it was universally believed that he had been killed by
vexation at Jan's success. Nor was this tradition the less firmly
fixed in the village annals, that the disease to which he had
succumbed spread like flames in a gale. It produced a slight
reaction of sentiment against Jan. And his achievement was
absolutely forgotten in the shadow of the months that followed.
For it was that year long known in the history of the district as
the year of the Black Fever.
CHAPTER XXV.
SANITARY INSPECTORS.--THE PESTILENCE.--THE PARSON.--THE DOCTOR.--THE
SQUIRE AND THE SCHOOLMASTER.--DESOLATION AT THE WINDMILL.--THE
SECOND ADVENT.
I remember a "cholera year" in a certain big village. The activity
of the sanitary authorities (and many and vain had been the efforts
to rouse them to activity BEFORE) was, for them, remarkable. A good
many heads of households died with fearful suddenness and not less
fearful suffering. Several nuisances were "seen to," some tar-
barrels were burnt, and the scourge passed by. Not long ago a
woman, whose home is in a court where some of the most flagrant
nuisances existed, in talking to me, casually alluded to one of
them. It had been ordered to be removed, she said, in the cholera
year when the gentlemen were going round; but the cholera went away,
and it remained among those things which were NOT "seen to," and for
aught I know flourishes still. She was a sensible and affectionate
person. Living away from her home at that time, she became anxious
at once for the welfare of her relatives if they neglected to write
to her. But she had never an anxiety on the subject of that
unremedied abomination which was poisoning every breath they drew.
That "the gentlemen who went round" felt it superfluous to have
their orders carried out when strong men were no longer sickening
and dying within two revolutions of the hands of the church clock
will surprise no one who has had to do with local sanitary officers.
They are like the children of Israel, and will only do their duty
under the pressure of a plague. The people themselves are more like
the Egyptians. Plagues won't convince them. A mother with all her
own and her neighbors' children sickening about her would walk miles
in a burst shoe to fetch the doctor or a big bottle of medicine, but
she won't walk three yards farther than usual to draw her house-
water from the well that the sewer doesn't leak into. That is a
fact, not a fable; and, in the cases I am thinking of, all medical
remonstrance was vain. Uneducated people will take any thing in
from the doctor through their mouths, but little or nothing through
their ears.
When such is the state of matters in busy, stirring districts, among
shrewd artisans, and when our great seat of learning smells as it
does smell under the noses of the professors, it is needless to say
that the "black fever" found every household in the little village
prepared to contribute to its support, and met with hardly an
obstacle on its devastating path.
To comment on Master Salter's qualifications for the post of
sanitary inspector would be to insult the reader's understanding.
Of course he owned several of the picturesque little cottages where
the refuse had to be pitched out at the back, and the slops chucked
out in front, and where the general arrangements for health,
comfort, and decency were such as one must forbear to speak of,
since, on such matters, our ears--Heaven help us!--have all that
delicacy which seems denied to our noses.
If the causes of the calamity were little understood, portents were
plentifully noted. The previous winter had been mild. A
thunderbolt fell in the autumn. There was a blight on the
gooseberries, and Master Salter had a calf with two heads. As to
the painter, a screech-owl had been heard to cry from his chimney-
top, not three weeks before his death.
There was a pause of a day or so after Master Linseed died, and then
victims fell thick and fast. Children playing happily with their
mimic boats on the open drain that ran lazily under the noontide
sun, by the footpath of the main street, were coffined for their
hasty burial before the sun had next reached his meridian. The
tears were hardly dry in their parents' eyes before these also were
closed in their last sleep. The very aged seemed to linger on, but
strong men sickened and died; and at the end of the week more than
one woman was left sitting by an empty hearth, a worn-out creature
whom Death seemed only to have forgotten to take away.
At first there was a reckless disregard of infection among the
neighbors. But, after one or two of these family desolations, this
was succeeded by a panic, and even the noble charity which the poor
commonly show to each other's troubles failed, and no one could be
got to nurse the sick or bury the dead.
Now the Rector was an old man. Most of the parish officers were
aged, and patriarchs in white smock frocks were as plentiful as
creepers at the cottage doors. The healthy breezes and the dull
pace at which life passed in the district seemed to make men slow to
wear out. If the Rector had profited by these features of the
parish in health, it must be confessed that they had also had their
influence on his career. He was a good man, and a learned one. He
stuck close to his living, and he was benevolent. But he was not of
those heroic natures who can resist the influence of the mental
atmosphere around them; and in a dull parish, in a sleepy age, he
had not been an active parson. Some men, however, who cannot make
opportunities for themselves, can do nobly enough if the chance
comes to them; and this chance came to the Rector in his sixty-ninth
year, on the wings of the black fever. To quicken spiritual life in
the soul of a Master Salter he had not the courage even to attempt;
but a panic of physical cowardice had not a temptation for him. And
so it came about that of four men who stayed the panic, by the
example of their own courage, who went from house to house, and from
sick-bed to sick-bed--who drew a cordon round the parish, and
established kitchens and a temporary hospital, and nursed the sick,
and encouraged the living, and buried the dead,--the most active was
the old Rector.
The other three were the parish doctor, Squire Ammaby, and the
schoolmaster.
On the very first rumor of the epidemic, Lady Louisa had carried off
Amabel, and had gone with Lady Craikshaw to Brighton. Both the
ladies were indignant with the Squire's obstinate resolve to remain
amongst his tenants. In her alarm, Lady Louisa implored him to sell
the property and buy one in Ireland, which was Lady Craikshaw's
native country; and the list she contrived to run up of the
drawbacks to the Ammaby estate would have driven a temper less
stolid than her husband's to distraction.
When the fever broke out among the children, the schools were
closed, and Master Swift devoted his whole time to laboring with the
parson, the doctor, and the Squire.
No part of the Rector's devotion won more affectionate gratitude
from his people than a single act of thoughtfulness, by which he
preserved a record of the graves of their dead. He had held firmly
on to a decent and reverent burial, and, foreseeing that the poor
survivors would be quite unable to afford gravestones, he kept a
strict list of the dead, and where they were buried, which was
afterwards transferred to one large monument, which was bought by
subscription. He cut the village off from all communication with
the outer world, to prevent a spread of the disease; but he sent
accounts of the calamity to the public papers, which brought
abundant help in money for the needs of the parish. And in these
matters the schoolmaster was his right-hand man.
The disease was most eccentric in its path. Having scourged one
side only of the main street, it burst out with virulence in
detached houses at a distance. Then it returned to the village, and
after lulls and outbreaks it ceased as suddenly as it began.
It was about midway in its career that it fell with all its wrath
upon Master Lake's windmill.
The mill stood in a healthy position, but the dwelling room was ill-
ventilated, and there were defective sanitary arrangements, which
Master Swift had anxiously pointed out to the miller. The plague
had begun in the village, and the schoolmaster trembled for Jan.
But Master Lake was not to be interfered with, and, when the
schoolmaster spoke of poison, thought himself witty as he replied, -
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