Books: Jan of the Windmill

J >> Juliana Horatia Ewing >> Jan of the Windmill

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"It be a uncommon slow pison then, Master Swift."

It must also be allowed that such epidemics, once started, do havoc
in apparently clean houses and amongst well-fed people.

It was a little foster-sister of Jan's who sickened first. She died
within two days. Her burial was hasty enough, but Mrs. Lake had no
time to fret about that, for a second child was ill. Like many
another householder, the poor windmiller was now ready enough to
look to his drains, and so forth; but it may be doubted if the
general stirring up of dirty places at this moment did not do as
much harm as good. It was hot,--terribly hot. Day after day passed
without a breeze to cool the burning skins of the sick, and yet it
was not sunshiny. People did say that the pestilence hung like a
murky vapor above the district, and hid the sun.

Trades were slack, corn-grinding amongst the rest, and Master Lake
did the housework, helped by Jan and Abel. He was stunned by the
suddenness and the weight of the calamity which had come to him. He
was very kind to Mrs. Lake, but the poor woman was almost past any
feeling but that which, as a sort of instinct or inspiration, guided
a constant watching and waiting on her sick children. She never
slept, and would not have eaten, but that Master Lake used his
authority to force some food upon her. At this time Jan's chief
occupations were cookery and dish-washing. His constant habit of
observation made all the experiences of life an education for him;
he had often watched his foster-mother prepare the family meals, and
he prepared them now, for Abel and the windmiller could not, and she
was with the sick children.

Before the second child died, two more fell ill on the same day.
Only Abel and Jan were still "about." The mother moved like an
automaton, and never spoke. Now and then a deep sigh or a low moan
would escape her, and the miller would move tenderly to her side,
and say, "Bear up, missus; bear up, my lass," and then go back to
his pipe and his cherry-wood chair, where he seemed to grow gray as
he sat.

Master Swift came from time to time to the mill. He was everywhere,
helping, comforting, and exhorting. Some said his face shone with
the light of another world, for which he was "marked." Others
whispered that the strain was telling on him, and that it wore the
look it had had in the brief insanity which followed his child's
death. But all agreed that the very sight of him brought help and
consolation. The windmiller grew to watch for him, and to lean on
him in the helplessness of his despair. And he listened humbly to
the old man's fervid religious counsels. His own little threads of
philosophy were all blowing loose and useless in this storm of
trouble.

The evening that Master Swift came up to arrange about the burial of
the second child, he found the other two just dead. The first two
had suffered much and been delirious, but these two had sunk
painlessly in a few hours, and had fallen asleep for the last time
in each other's arms.

It did not lessen the force of Master Swift's somewhat stern
consolations that in all good faith he conveyed in them an
expectation that the Last Day was at hand. Many people thought so,
and it was, perhaps, not unnatural. In these days, which were long
years of suffering, they were shut off from the rest of humanity,
and the village was the world to them,--a world very near its end.
With Death so busy, it seemed as if Judgment could hardly linger
long.

It is true that this did not form a part of the Rector's religious
exhortations. But some good people were shocked by the tea-party
that he gave to the young people of the place, and the games that
followed it in the Rectory meads, at the very height of the fever;
though the doctor said it was better than a hogshead of medicine.

"To encourage low spirits in this panic is just to promote suicide,
if ye like the responsibeelity of that," said the doctor to Master
Swift, who had confided his doubts as to the seemliness of the
entertainment. "I tell ye there's a lairge proportion of folk dies
just because their neighbors have died before them, for the want of
their attention being directed to something else. Away wi' ye,
schoolmaster, and take your tuning-fork to ask the blessing wi'.
What says the Scripture, man? 'The living, the living, he shall
praise Thee!'"

The doctor was a Scotchman, and Master Swift always listened with
sympathy to a North countryman. He was convinced, too, and took his
tuning-fork to the meals, and led the grace.

Nor could his expectation of the speedy end of all things restrain
his instinctive anxiety and watchfulness for Jan's health. On the
evening of that visit to the mill, he used some little manoeuvring
to accomplish Jan's being sent back with him to the village, to
arrange for the burial of the three children.

A glow of satisfaction suffused his rough face as he got Jan out of
the tainted house into the fresh evening air, though it paled again
before that other look which was now habitual to him, as, waving his
hand towards the ripening corn-fields, he quoted from one of Mr.
Herbert's loftiest hymns, -

"We talk of harvests,--there are no such things,
But when we leave our corn and hay.
There is no fruitful year but that which brings
The last and loved, though dreadful Day.
Oh, show Thyself to me,
Or take me up to Thee!"

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE BEASTS OF THE VILLAGE.--ABEL SICKENS.--THE GOOD SHEPHERD.--RUFUS
PLAYS THE PHILANTHROPIST.--MASTER SWIFT SEES THE SUN RISE.--THE
DEATH OF THE RIGHTEOUS.

Amid the havoc made by the fever amongst men, women, and children,
the immunity of the beasts and birds had a sad strangeness.

There was a small herd of pigs which changed hands three times in
ten days. The last purchaser hesitated, and was only induced by the
cheapness of the bargain to suppress a feeling that they brought
ill-luck. Cats mewed wistfully about desolated hearths. One dog
moaned near the big grave in which his master lay, and others, with
sad sagacious eyes, went to look for new friends and homes.

It was a day or two after the burial of the miller's three children,
that, as Jan sat at dinner with Abel and his two parents, he was
struck by the way in which the mill cats hung about Abel, purring
and rubbing themselves against his legs.

"I do think they misses the others," he whispered to his foster-
brother, and his tears fell thick and fast on to his plate.

Abel made no answer. He did not wish Jan to know that he had given
all his food by bits to the cats, because he could not swallow it
himself. But, later in the day, Jan found him in the round-house,
lying on an empty sack, with his head against a full one.

"Don't 'ee tell mother," he said; "but I do feel bad."

And as Jan sat down, and put his arms about him, on the very spot
where they had so often sat together, learning the alphabet and
educating their thumbs, Abel laid his head on his foster-brother's
shoulder, saying, -

"I do think, Janny dear, that Mary, she wants me, and the others
too. I think I be going after them. But thee'll look to mother,
Janny dear, eh?"

"But _I_ want thee, too, Abel dear," sobbed Jan.

"I be thinking perhaps them that brought thee hither'll fetch thee
away some day, Jan. But thee'll see to mother?" repeated Abel, his
eyes wandering restlessly with a look of pain.

Jan knew now that he was only an adopted child of the windmill,
though he stoutly ignored the fact, being very fond of his foster-
parents.

Abel's illness came with the force of a fresh blow. There had been
a slight pause in the course of the fever at the mill, and it seemed
as if these two boys were to be spared. Abel had been busy helping
his father to burn the infected bedding, etc., that very morning,
and at night he lay raving.

He raved of Jan's picture which swung unheeded above Master Chuter's
door, and confused it with some church-window that he seemed to
fancy Jan had painted; then of his dead brothers and sisters. And
then from time to time he rambled about a great flock of sheep which
he saw covering the vast plains about the windmill, and which he
wearied himself in trying to count. And, as he tossed, he
complained in piteous tones about some man who seemed to be the
shepherd, and who would not do something that Abel wanted.

For the most part, he knew no one but Jan, and then only when Jan
touched him. It seemed to give him pleasure. He understood nothing
that was said to him, except in brief intervals. Once, after a
short sleep, he opened his eyes and recognized the schoolmaster.

"Master Swift," said he, "do 'ee think that be our Lord among them
sheep? With His hair falling on's shoulders, and the light round
His head, and the long frock?"

Master Swift's eyes turned involuntarily in the direction in which
Abel's were gazing. He saw nothing but the dark corners of the
dwelling-room; but he said, -

"Ay, ay, Abel, my lad."

"What be His frock all red for, then? Bright red, like blood. 'Tis
like them figures in--in" -

Here Abel wandered again, and only muttered to himself. But when
Jan crept near to him, and touching him said, "The figures in the
window, Abel dear," he opened his eyes and said, -

"So it be, Janny. With the sun shining through 'em. Thee knows."

And then he wailed fretfully, -

"Why do He keep His back to me all along? I follows Him up and
down, all over, till I be tired. Why don't He turn His face?"

Jan was speechless from tears, but the old schoolmaster took Abel's
hot hand in his, and said, with infinite tenderness, -

"He will, my lad. He'll turn His face to thee very soon. Wait for
Him, Abel."

"Do 'ee think so?" said Abel. And after a while he muttered, "You
be the schoolmaster, and ought to know."

And, seemingly satisfied, he dozed once more.

Master Swift hurried away. He had business in the village, and he
wanted to catch the doctor, and ask his opinion of Abel's case.

"Will be get round, sir?" he asked.

The doctor shook his head, and Master Swift felt a double pang. He
was sorry about Abel, but the real object of his anxiety was Jan.
Once he had hoped the danger was past, but the pestilence seemed
still in full strength at the windmill, and the agonizing conviction
strengthened in his mind that once more his hopes were to be
disappointed, and the desire of his eyes was to be snatched away.
The doctor thought that he was grieving for Abel, and said, -

"I'm just as sorry as yourself. He's a fine lad, with something
angelic about the face, when ye separate it from its surroundings.
But they've no constitution in that family. It's just the want of
strength in him, and not the strength of the fever, this time; for
the virulence of the poison's abating. The cases are recovering
now, except where other causes intervene."

Master Swift felt almost ashamed of the bound in his spirits. But
the very words which shut out all hope of Abel's recovery opened a
possible door of escape for Jan. He was not one of the family, and
it was reasonable to hope that his constitution might be of sterner
stuff. He turned with a lighter heart into his cottage, where he
purposed to get some food and then return to the mill. There might
be a lucid interval before the end, in which the pious Abel might
find comfort from his lips; and if Jan sickened, he would nurse him
night and day.

Rufus welcomed his master not merely with cordiality, but with
fussiness. The partly apologetic character of his greeting was
accounted for when a half starved looking dog emerged from beneath
the table, and, not being immediately kicked, wagged the point of
its tail feebly, keeping at a respectful distance, whilst Rufus
introduced it.

"So ye're for playing the philanthropist, are ye?" said Master
Swift. "Ye've picked up one of these poor houseless, masterless
creatures? I'm not for undervaluing disinterested charity, Rufus,
my man; but I wish ye'd had the luck to light on a better bred beast
while ye were about it."

It is, perhaps, no disadvantage to what we call "dumb animals" if
they understand the general drift of our remarks without minutely
following every word. They have generally the sense, too, to leave
well alone, and, without pressing the question of the new comer's
adoption, the two dogs curled themselves round, put their noses into
their pockets, and went to sleep with an air of its being
unnecessary to pursue the topic farther.

Master Swift shared his meal with them, and left them to keep house
when he returned to the mill.

His quick eye, doubly quickened by experience and by anxiety, saw
that Jan's were full of fever, and his limbs languid. But he would
not quit Abel's side, and Master Swift remained with the afflicted
family.

Abel muttered deliriously all night, with short intervals of
complete stupor. The fever, like a fire, consumed his strength, and
the fancy that he was toiling over the downs seemed to weary him as
if he had really been on foot. Just before sunrise, Master Swift
left him asleep, and went to breathe some out-door air.

The fresh, tender light of early morning was over every thing. The
windmill stood up against the red-barred sky with outlines softened
by the clinging dew. The plains glistened, and across them, through
the pure air, came the voice of Master Salter's chanticleer from the
distant farm.

It was such a contrast to the scene within that Master Swift burst
into tears. But even as he wept the sun leaped to the horizon, and,
reflected from every dewdrop, and from the very tears upon the old
man's cheeks, flooded the world about him with its inimitable glory.

The schoolmaster uncovered his head, and kneeling upon the short
grass prayed passionately for the dying boy. But, as he knelt in
the increasing sunshine, his prayers for the peace of the departing
soul unconsciously passed almost into thanksgiving that so soon, and
so little stained, it should exchange the dingy sick-room--not for
these sweet summer days, which lose their sweetness!--but to taste,
in peace which passeth understanding, what GOD has prepared for them
that love Him.

It was whilst the schoolmaster still knelt outside the windmill that
Abel awoke, and raised his eyes to Jan's with a smile.

"Thee must go out a bit soon, Janny dear," he whispered, "it be such
a lovely day."

Jan was too much pleased to hear him speak to wonder how he knew
what kind of a day it was, and Abel lay with his head in Jan's arms,
breathing painfully and gazing before him. Suddenly he raised
himself, and cried,--so loudly that the old man outside heard the
cry, -

"Janny dear! He've turned his face to me. He be coming right to
me. Oh! He" -

But HE had come.

CHAPTER XXVII.

JAN HAS THE FEVER.--CONVALESCENCE IN MASTER SWIFT'S COTTAGE.--THE
SQUIRE ON DEMORALIZATION.

Jan took the fever. He was very ill, too, partly from grief at
Abel's death. He had also a not unnatural conviction that he would
die, which was unfavorable to his recovery.

The day on which he gave Master Swift his old etching as a last
bequest, he fairly infected him also with this belief, and during a
necessary visit to the village the schoolmaster hung up the little
picture in his cottage with a breaking heart.

But the next time Rufus saw him, he came to prepare for a visitor.
Jan was recovering, and Master Swift had persuaded the windmiller to
let him come to the cottage for a few days, the rather that Mrs.
Lake was going to stay with a relative whilst the windmill was
thoroughly cleansed and disinfected. The weather was delightful
now, and, feeble as he had become, Jan soon grew strong again. If
he had not done so, it would have been from no lack of care on
Master Swift's part. The old schoolmaster was a thrifty man, and
had some money laid by, or he would have been somewhat pinched at
this time. As it was, he drew freely upon his savings for Jan's
benefit, and made many expeditions to the town to buy such
delicacies as he thought might tempt his appetite. Nor was this
all. The morning when Jan came languidly into the kitchen from the
little inner room, where he and the schoolmaster slept, he saw his
precious paint-box on the table, to fetch which Master Swift had
been to the windmill. And by it lay a square book with the word
Sketch-book in ornamental characters on the binding, a couple of
Cumberland lead drawing pencils, and a three-penny chunk of bottle
India-rubber, delicious to smell.

If the schoolmaster had had any twinges of regret as he bought these
things, in defiance of his principles for Jan's education, they
melted utterly away in view of his delight, and the glow that
pleasure brought into his pale cheeks. Master Swift was regarded,
too, by a colored sketch of Rufus sitting at table in his arm-chair,
with his more mongrel friend on the floor beside him. It was the
best sketch that Jan had yet accomplished. But most people are
familiar with the curious fact that one often makes an unaccountable
stride in an art after it has been laid aside for a time.

It must not be supposed that Master Swift had neglected his duties
in the village, or left the Parson, the Squire, and the doctor to
struggle on alone, during the illness of Abel and of Jan. Even now
he was away from the cottage for the greater part of the day, and
Jan was left to keep house with the dogs. His presence gave great
contentment to Rufus, if it scarcely lessened the melancholy dignity
of his countenance; for dogs who live with human beings never like
being left long alone. And Jan, for his own part, could have wished
for nothing better than to sit at the table where he had once hoped
to make leaf-pictures, and paint away with materials that Rembrandt
himself would not have disdained.

The pestilence had passed away. But the labors of the Rector and
his staff rather increased than diminished at this particular point.
To say nothing of those vile wretches who seem to spring out of such
calamities as putrid matter breeds vermin, and who use them as
opportunities for plunder, there were a good many people to be dealt
with of a lighter shade of demoralization,--people who had really
suffered, and whose daily work had been unavoidably stopped, but to
whom idleness was so pleasant, and the fame of their misfortunes so
gratifying, that they preferred to scramble on in dismantled homes,
on the alms extracted by their woes, to setting about such labor as
would place them in comfort. Then that large class--the shiftless--
was now doubly large, and there were widows and orphans in
abundance, and there was hardly a bed or a blanket in the place.

"I have come," said Mr. Ammaby, joining the Rector as he sat at
breakfast, "to beg you, in the interests of the village, to check
the flow of that fount of benevolence which springs eternal in the
clerical pocket. You will ruin us with your shillings and half
crowns."

"Bless my soul, Ammaby," said the Rector, pausing with an eggshell
transfixed upon his spoon, "shillings and half crowns don't go far
in the present condition of our households. There are not ten
families whose beds are not burnt. What do you propose to do?"

"I'll tell you, when I have first confessed that my ideas are not
entirely original. I have been studying political economy under
that hard-headed Sandy, our friend the doctor. In the first place,
from to-morrow, we must cease to GIVE any thing whatever, and both
announce that determination and stick to it."

"And THEN, my dear sir?" said the Rector, smiling; and nursing his
black gaiter.

"And THEN, my dear sir," said Mr. Ammaby, "I shall be able to get
some men to do some work about my place, and those people at a
distance who have widows here will relieve them (at least the widows
will look up their well-to-do relatives), and the Church, in your
person, will not be charged. And some of the widows will consent to
scrub for payment, instead of sitting weeping in your kitchen--also
for payment. They will, furthermore, compel their interesting sons
to mind pigs, or scare birds, instead of hanging about the Heart of
Oak, begging of the visitors who now begin to invade us. Do you
know that the very boys won't settle to work, that the children are
taking to gutter-life and begging, that the women won't even tidy up
their houses, and that the men are retailing the horrors of the
fever in every alehouse in the county, instead of getting in the
crops? I give you my word, I had to go down to the inn yesterday,
and a lad of eleven or twelve, who didn't recognize me in Chuter's
dark kitchen, came up and began to beg with a whine that would have
done credit to a professional mendicant. I stood in the shadow and
let him tell his whole story, of a widowed mother and three brothers
and sisters living, and six dead; and when he'd finished, and two
visitors were fumbling in their pockets, I took him by the collar
and lifted him clean through the kitchen and down the yard into the
street. I nearly knocked Swift over, or rather I nearly fell
myself, from concussion with his burly person, but he was the very
man I wanted. I said, 'Mr. Swift, may I ask you to do me a favor?
This boy--whose father was a respectable man--has been begging--
BEGGING! in a public room. His excuse is that his mother is
starving. Will you kindly take him to the Hall, and put him in
charge of the gardener, with my strict orders that he is to do a
good afternoon's work at weeding in the shrubbery. And that the
gardener is to see that he comes every day at nine o'clock in the
morning, and works there till four in the afternoon, till the day
you reopen school, meal-times and Sundays excepted. I will pay his
mother five shillings a week, and, if he is a good boy, I'll give
him some old clothes. And if ever you see or hear of his disgracing
himself and his friends by begging again, if you don't thrash him
within an inch of his life, I shall.' I promise you, the widow
might starve for the want of that five shillings if the young
gentleman could slip out of his bargain. His face was a study. But
less so than the schoolmaster's. The job exactly suited him, and I
suspect he knew the lad of old."

"From what I've heard Swift say, I fancy he sympathizes with your
theories," said the Rector.

"I fear he sympathizes with my temper as well as my theories!"
laughed the Squire. "As I felt the flush on my own cheek-bone, I
caught the fire in his eye. But now, my dear sir, you will consent
to some strong measures to prevent the village becoming a mere nest
of lazzaroni? Let us try the system at any rate. I propose that we
do not shut up the soup kitchen yet, but charge a small sum for the
soup towards its expenses. And I want to beg you to write another
of those graphic and persuasive letters, in which you have appealed
to the sympathy of the public with our misfortune."

"But, bless me!" said the Rector, "I thought you were a foe to
assisting the people, even out of their own parson's pocket."

"Well, I taunted the doctor myself with inconsistency, but we do not
propose to make a sixpenny dole of the fund. You know there are
certain things they can't do, and some help they seem fairly
entitled to receive. We've made them burn their bedding, in the
interests of the public safety, and it's only fair they should be
helped to replace it. Then there is a lot of sanitary work which
can only be done by a fund for the purpose; and, if we get the
money, we can employ idlers. The women will tidy their houses when
they see new blankets, and the sooner the churchyard is made nice,
and that monument of yours erected, and we all get into orderly,
respectable ways again, the better."

"Enough, enough, my dear Ammaby!" cried the Rector; "I put myself in
your hands, and I will see to the public appeal at once; though I
may mention that the credit of those compositions chiefly belongs to
old Swift. He knows the data minutely, and he delights in the
putting together. I think he regards it as a species of literary
work. I hope you hear good news of Lady Louisa and little Amabel?"

"They are quite well, thank you," said the Squire; "they are in town
just now with Lady Craikshaw, who has gone up to consult her London
doctor."

"Well, farewell, Ammaby, for the present. Tell the doctor I'll give
his plan a trial, and we'll get the place into working order as fast
as we can."

"He will be charmed," said the Squire. "He says, as we are going on
now, we are breeding two worse pests than the fever,--contentment
under remediable discomfort, and a dislike to work."

CHAPTER XXVIII.

MR. FORD'S CLIENT.--THE HISTORY OF JAN'S FATHER--AMABEL AND BOGY THE
SECOND.

Among the many sounds blended into that one which roared for ever
round Mr. Ford's offices in the city was the cry of the newsboys.

"Horful p'ticklers of the plague in a village in --shire!" they
screamed under the windows. Not that Mr. Ford heard them. But in
five minutes the noiseless door opened, and a clerk laid the morning
paper on the table, and withdrew in silence. Mr. Ford cut it
leisurely with a large ivory knife, and skimmed the news. His eye
happened to fall upon the Rector's letter, which, after a short
summary of the history of the fever, pointed out the objects for
which help was immediately required. There was a postscript. To
give some idea of the ravages of the epidemic, and as a proof that
the calamity was not exaggerated, a list of some of the worst cases
was given, with names and particulars. It was gloomy enough. "Mary
Smith, lost her husband (a laborer) and six children between the
second and the ninth of the month. George Harness, a blacksmith,
lost his wife and four children. Master Abel Lake, windmiller of
the Tower Mill, lost all his children, five in number, between the
fifth and the fifteenth of the month. His wife's health is
completely broken up" -

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