Books: Jan of the Windmill

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At this point Mr. Ford dropped the paper, and, unlocking a drawer
beside him, referred to some memoranda, after which he cut out the
Rector's letter with a large pair of office scissors, and enclosed
it in one which he wrote before proceeding to any other business.
He had underlined one name in the doleful list,--ABEL LAKE,
WINDMILLER.

Some hours later the silent clerk ushered in a visitor, one of Mr.
Ford's clients. He was a gentleman of middle height and middle
age,--the younger half of middle age, though his dark hair was
prematurely gray. His eyes were black and restless, and his manner
at once haughty and nervous.

"I am very glad to see you, my dear sir," said Mr. Ford, suavely; "I
had just written you a note, the subject of which I can now speak
about." And, as he spoke, Mr. Ford tore open the letter which lay
beside him, whilst his client was saying, "We are only passing
through town on our way to Scotland. I shall be here two nights."

"You remember instructing me that it was your wish to economize as
much as possible during the minority of your son?" said Mr. Ford.
His client nodded.

"I think," continued the man of business, "there is a quarterly
payment we have been in the habit of making on your account, which
is now at an end." And, as he spoke, he pushed the Rector's letter
across the table, with his fingers upon the name ABEL LAKE,
WINDMILLER. His client always spoke stiffly, which made the effort
with which he now spoke less noticed by the lawyer. "I should like
to be certain," he said. "I mean, that there is no exaggeration or
mistake."

"You have never communicated with the man, or given him any chance
of pestering you," said Mr. Ford. "I should hardly do so now, I
think"

"I certainly kept the power of reopening communication in my own
hands, knowing nothing of the man; but I should be sorry to
discontinue the allowance under a--a mistake of any kind."

Mr. Ford meditated. It may be said here that he by no means knew
all that the reader knows of Jan's history; but he saw that his
client was anxious not to withhold the money if the child were
alive.

"I think I have it, my dear sir," he said suddenly. "Allow me to
write, in my own name, to this worthy clergyman. I must ask you to
subscribe to his fund, in my name, which will form an excuse for the
letter, and I will contrive to ask him if the list of cases has been
printed accurately, and has his sanction. If there has been any
error, we shall hear of it. The object of the subscription is--let
me see--is--a monument to those who have died of the fever and" -

But the dark gentleman had started up abruptly.

"Thank you, thank you, Mr. Ford," he said; "your plan is, as usual,
excellent. Pray oblige me by sending ten guineas in your own name,
and you will let me know if--if there IS any mistake. I will call
in to-morrow about other matters."

And before Mr. Ford could reply his client was gone.

The peculiar solitude to be found in the crowded heart of London was
grateful to his present mood. To have been alone with his thoughts
in the country would have been intolerable. The fields smack of
innocence, and alone with them the past is apt to take the simple
tints of right and wrong in the memory. But in that seething mass,
which represents ten thousand heartaches and anxieties, doubtful
shifts, and open sins, as bad or worse than a man's own, there is a
silent sympathy and no reproach. Mr. Ford's client did not lean
back, the tension of his mind was too great. He sat stiffly, and
gazed vacantly before him, half seeing and half transforming into
other visions whatever lay before the hansom, as it wound its way
through the streets. Now for a moment a four-wheeled cab, loaded
with schoolboy luggage, occupied the field of view, and idle
memories of his own boyhood flitted over it. Then, crawling behind
a dray, some strange associations built up the barrels into an old
weatherstained wooden house in Holland, and for a while an intense
realization of past scenes which love had made happy put present
anxieties to sleep. But they woke again with a horrible pang, as a
grim, hideous funeral car drove slowly past, nodding like a
nightmare.

As the traffic became less dense, and the cab went faster, the man's
thoughts went faster too. He strove to do what he had not often
tried, to review his life. He had unconsciously gained the will to
do it, because a reparation which conscience might hitherto have
pressed on him was now impossible, and because the plague that had
desolated Abel Lake's home had swept the skeleton out of his own
cupboard, and he could repent of the past and do his duty in the
future. His conscience was stronger than his courage. He had long
wished to repent, though he had not found strength to repair.

On one point he did not delude himself as he looked back over his
life. He had no sentimental regrets for the careless happiness of
youth. Is any period of human life so tormented with cares as a
self-indulgent youth? He had been a slave to expensive habits, to
social traditions, to past follies, ever since he could remember.
He had been in debt, in pocket or in conscience, from his schoolboy
days to this hour. His tradesmen were paid long since, and, if
death had cancelled what else he owed, how easy virtue would
henceforth be!

It had not been easy at the date of his first marriage. He was
deeply in debt, and out of favor with his father. It was on both
accounts that he went abroad for some months. In Holland he
married. His wife was Jan's mother, and Jan was their only child.

Her people were of middle rank, leading quiet though cultivated
lives. Her mother was dead, and she was her old father's only
child. It would be doing injustice to the kind of love with which
she inspired her husband to dwell much upon her beauty, though it
was of that high type which takes possession of the memory for ever.
She was very intensely, brilliantly fair, so that in a crowd her
face shone out like a star. Time never dimmed one golden thread in
her hair; and Death, who had done so much for Mr. Ford's client,
could not wash that face from his brain. It blotted the traffic out
of the streets, and in their place Dutch pastures, whose rich green
levels were unbroken by hedge or wall, stretched flatly to the
horizon. It bent over a drawing on his knee as he and she sat
sketching together in an old-world orchard, where the trees bore
more moss than fruit. The din of London was absolutely unheard by
Mr. Ford's client, but he heard her voice, saying, "You must learn
to paint cattle, if you mean to make any thing of Dutch scenery.
And also, where the earth gives so little variety, one must study
the sky. We have no mountains, but we have clouds." It was in the
orchard, under the apple-tree, across the sketch-book, that they had
plighted their troth--ten years ago.

They were married. Had he ever denied himself a single
gratification, because it would add another knot to the tangle of
his career? He had pacified creditors by incurring fresh debts, and
had evaded catastrophes by involving himself in new complications
all his life. His marriage was accomplished at the expense of a
train of falsehoods, but his father-in-law was an unworldly old man,
not difficult to deceive. He spent most of the next ten months in
Holland, and, apart from his anxieties, it was the purest, happiest
time he had ever known. Then his father recalled him peremptorily
to England.

When Mr. Ford's client obeyed his father's summons, the climax of
his difficulties seemed at hand. The old man was anxious for a
reconciliation, but resolved that his son should "settle in life;"
and he had found a wife for him, the daughter of a Scotch nobleman,
young, handsome, and with a good fortune. He gave him a fortnight
for consideration. If he complied, the old man promised to pay his
debts, to make him a liberal allowance, and to be in every way
indulgent. If he thwarted his plans, he threatened to allow him
nothing during his lifetime, and to leave him nothing that he could
avoid bequeathing at his death.

It was at this juncture that Jan's mother followed her husband to
England. Her anxieties were not silenced by excuses which satisfied
her father. The crisis could hardly have been worse. Mr. Ford's
client felt that confession was now inevitable; and that he could
confess more easily by letter when he reached London. But before
the letter was written, his wife died.

Weak men, harassed by personal anxieties, become hard in proportion
to their selfish fears. It is like the cruelty that comes of
terror. He had loved his wife; but he was terribly pressed, and
there came a sense of relief even with the bitterness of the
knowledge that he was free. He took the body to Holland, to be
buried under the shadow of the little wooden church where they were
married; and to the desolate old father he promised to bring his
grandson--Jan. But just after the death of an old nurse, in whose
care he had placed his child, another crisis came to Mr. Ford's
client. On the same day he got letters from his father and from his
father-in-law. From the first, to press his instant return home;
from the second, to say that, if he could not at once bring Jan, the
old man would make the effort of a voyage to England to fetch him.
Jan's father almost hated him. That the child should have lived
when the beloved mother died was in itself an offence. But that
that freedom, and peace, and prosperity, which were so dearly
purchased by her death, should be risked afresh by him, was
irritating to a degree. He was frantic. It was impossible to fail
that very peremptory old gentleman, his father. It was out of the
question to allow his father-in-law to come to England. He could
not throw away all his prospects. And the more he thought of it,
the more certain it seemed that Jan's existence would for ever tie
him to Holland; that for his grandson's sake the old man would
investigate his affairs, and that the truth would come out sooner or
later. The very devil suggested to him that if the child had died
with its mother he would have been quite free, and intercourse with
Holland would have died away naturally. He wished to forget. To a
nature of his type, when even such a love as he had been privileged
to enjoy had become a memory involving pain, it was instinctively
evaded like any other unpleasant thing. He resolved, at last, to
let nothing stand between him and reconciliation with his father.
Once more he must desperately mortgage the future for present
emergencies. He wrote to the old father-in-law to say that the
child was dead. He excused this to himself on the ground of Jan's
welfare. If the truth became fully known, and his father threw him
off, he would be a poor embarrassed man, and could do little for his
child. But with his father's fortune, and, perhaps, the Scotch
lady's fortune, it would be in his power to give Jan a brilliant
future, EVEN IF he never fully acknowledged him. As yet he hardly
recognized such an unnatural possibility. He said to himself, that
when he was free, all would be well, and the Dutch grandfather would
forgive the lie in the joy of discovering that Jan was alive, and
would be so well provided for.

Mr. Ford's client was reconciled to his father. He married Lady
Adelaide, and announced the marriage to his father-in-law. After
which, his intercourse with Holland died out.

It was a curious result of a marriage so made that it was a very
happy one. Still more curious was the likeness, both physical and
mental, between the second wife and the first. Lady Adelaide was
half Scotch and half English, a blonde of the most brilliant type,
and of an intellectual order of beauty. But fair women are common
enough. It was stranger still that the best affections of two women
of so high a moral and intellectual standard should have been
devoted to the same and to such a husband. Not quite in vain.
Indeed, but for that grievous sin towards his eldest son, Mr. Ford's
client would probably have become an utterly different man. But
there is no rising far in the moral atmosphere with a wilful,
unrepented sin as a clog. It was a miserable result of the weakness
of his character that he could not see that the very nobleness of
Lady Adelaide's should have encouraged him to confess to her what he
dared not trust to his father's imperious, petulant affection. But
he was afraid of her. It had been the same with his first wife. He
had dreaded that she should discover his falsehoods far more than he
had feared his father-in-law. And years of happy companionship made
it even less tolerable to him to think of lowering himself in Lady
Adelaide's regard.

But there was a far more overwhelming consideration which had been
gathering strength for eight years between him and the idea of
recognizing Jan as his eldest son, and his heir. He had another
son, Lady Adelaide's only child. If he had hesitated when the boy
was only a baby to tell her that her darling was not his only son,
it was less and less easy to him to think of bringing Jan,--of whom
he knew nothing--from the rough life of the mill to supplant Lady
Adelaide's child, when the boy grew more charming as every year went
by. Clever, sweet-tempered, of aristocratic appearance, idolized by
the relatives of both his parents, he seemed made by Providence to
do credit to the position to which he was believed to have been
born.

Mr. Ford's client had almost made the resolve against which that
fair face that was not Lady Adelaide's for ever rose up in judgment:
he was just deciding to put Jan to school, and to give up all idea
of taking him home, when death seemed once more to have solved his
difficulties. An unwonted ease came into his heart. Surely Heaven,
knowing how sincerely he wished to be good, was making goodness easy
to him,--was permitting him to settle with his conscience on cheaper
terms than those of repentance and restitution. (And indeed, if
amendment, of the weak as well as of the strong, be GOD'S great
purpose for us, who shall say that the ruggedness of the narrow road
is not often smoothed for stumbling feet?) The fever seemed quite
providential, and Mr. Ford's client felt quite pious about it. He
was conscious of no mockery in dwelling to himself on the thought
that Jan was "better off" in Paradise with his mother. And he
himself was safe--for the first time since he could remember,--free
at last to become worthier, with no black shadow at his heels. Very
touching was his resolve that he would be a better father to his son
than his own father had been to him. If be could not train him in
high principles and self-restraint, he would at least be indulgent
to the consequences of his own indulgence, and never drive him to
those fearful straits. "But he'll be a very different young man
from what I was," was his final thought. "Thanks to his good
mother."

His mind was full of Lady Adelaide's goodness as he entered his
house, and she met him in the hall.

"Ah, Edward!" she cried, "I am so glad you've come home. I want you
to see that quaint child I was telling you about."

"I don't remember, my dear," said Mr. Ford's client.

"You're looking very tired," said Lady Adelaide, gently; "but about
the child. It is Lady Louisa Ammaby's little girl. You know I met
her just before we left Brighton. I only saw the child once, but it
is the quaintest, most original little being! So unlike its mother!
She and her mother are in town, and they were going out to luncheon
to-day I found, so I asked the child here to dine with D'Arcy. Her
bonne is taking off her things, and I must go and bring her down."

As Lady Adelaide went out, her son came in, and rushed up to his
father. If Mr. Ford's client had failed in natural affection for
one son, his love for the other had a double intensity. He put his
arm tenderly round him, whilst the boy told some long childish
story, which was not finished when Lady Adelaide returned, leading
Amabel by the hand. Amabel was a good deal taller. Her large feet
were adorned with ornamental thread socks, and leathern shoes
buttoned round the ankle. Her hair was cropped, because Lady
Craikshaw said this made it grow. She wore a big pinafore by the
same authority, in spite of which she carried herself with an
admirable dignity. The same candor, good sense, and resolution
shone from her clear eyes and fat cheeks as of old. Mr. Ford's
client was alarming to children, but Amabel shook hands courageously
with him.

She was accustomed to exercise courage in her behavior. From her
earliest days a standard of manners had been expected of her beyond
her age. It was a consequence of her growth. "You're quite a big
girl now," was a nursery reproach addressed to her at least two
years before the time, and she tried valiantly to live up to her
inches.

But when Amabel saw D'Arcy, she started and stopped short. "Won't
you shake hands with my boy, Amabel?" said Lady Adelaide. "Oh, you
must make friends with him, and he'll give you a ride on the
rocking-horse after dinner. Surely such a big girl can't be shy?"

Goaded by the old reproach, Amabel made an effort, and, advancing by
herself, held out her hand, and said, "How do you do, Bogy?"

D'Arcy's black eyes twinkled with merriment. "How do you do, Mother
Bunch?" said he.

"My DEAR D'Arcy!" said Lady Adelaide, reproachfully.

"Mamma, I am not rude. I am only joking. She calls me Bogy, so I
call her Mother Bunch."

"But I'm NOT Mother Bunch," said Amabel.

"And I'm not Bogy," retorted D'Arcy.

"Yes, you are," said Amabel. "Only you had very old clothes on in
the wood."

Lady Craikshaw had cruelly warned Lady Adelaide that Amabel
sometimes told stories, and, thinking that the child was romancing,
Lady Adelaide tried to change the subject. But D'Arcy cried, "Oh,
do let her talk, mamma. I do so like her. She is such fun!"

"You oughtn't to laugh at me," said poor Amabel, as D'Arcy took her
into the dining-room, "I gave you my paint-box."

The boy's stare of amazement awoke a doubt in Amabel's mind of his
identity with the Bogy of the woods. Between constantly peeping at
him, and her anxiety to conduct herself conformably to her size in
the etiquette of the dinner-table, she did not eat much. When
dinner was over, and D'Arcy led her away to the rocking horse, he
asked, "Do you still think I'm Bogy?"

"N--no," said Amabel, "I think perhaps you're not. But you're very
like him, though you talk differently. Do you make pictures?"

D'Arcy shook his head.

"Not even of leaves?" said Amabel.

When she was going away, D'Arcy asked, "Which do you like best, me
or Bogy?"

Amabel pondered. "I like you very much. You made the rocking-horse
go so fast; but I liked Bogy. He carried me all up the hill, and he
picked up my moss. I wasn't afraid of him. I gave him a kiss."

"Well, give me a kiss," said D'Arcy. But there was a tone of
raillery in his voice which put Amabel on her dignity, and she shook
her head, and began to go down the steps of the house, one leg at a
time.

"If I'm Bogy, you know, you HAVE kissed me ONCE," shouted D'Arcy.
But Amabel's wits were as well developed as her feet.

"Once is enough for bogies," said she, and went sturdily away.

CHAPTER XXIX.

JAN FULFILS ABEL'S CHARGE.--SON OF THE MILL.--THE LARGE-MOUTHED
WOMAN.

By the time Jan went back to the windmill he was quite well.

"Ye'll be fit for the walk by I open school," said Master Swift.

Jan promised himself that he would redouble his pains in class, from
gratitude to the good schoolmaster. But it was not to be.

The day before the school opened, Jan came to the cottage. "Master
Swift," said he, "I be come to tell ye that I be afraid I can't come
to school."

"And how's that?" said Master Swift.

"Well, Master Swift, I do think I be wanted at home. My father's
not got Abel now; but it's my mother that mostly wants me. I be
bothered about mother, somehow," said Jan, with an anxious look.
"She do forget things so, and be so queer. She left the beer-tap
running yesterday, and near two gallons of ale ran out; and this
morning she put the kettle on, and no water in it. And she do cry
terrible," Jan added, breaking down himself. "But Abel says to me
the day he was took ill, 'Janny,' he says, 'look to mother.' And so
I will."

"You're a good lad, Jan," said the schoolmaster. "Sit ye down and
get your tea, and I'll come back with ye to the mill. A bit of
company does folk good that's beside themselves with fretting."

But the windmiller's wife was beyond such simple cure. The
overtasked brain was giving way, and though there were from time to
time such capricious changes in her condition as led Jan to hope she
was better, she became more and more imbecile to the end of her
life.

To say that he was a devoted son is to give a very vague idea of his
life at this time to those for whom filial duty takes the shape of
compliance rather than of action, or to those who have no experience
of domestic attendance on the infirm both of body and of mind.

It was not in moments of tender feeling, or at his prayers, or by
Abel's grave, that Jan recalled his foster-brother's dying charge;
but as he emptied slops, cleaned grates, or fastened Mrs. Lake's
black dress behind. Nor did gratitude flatter his zeal. "Boys do
be so ackered with hooks and eyes," the poor woman grumbled in her
fretfulness, and then she sat down to bemoan herself that she had
not a daughter left. She had got a trick of stopping short half way
through her dressing, and giving herself up to tears, which led to
Jan's assisting at her toilette. He was soon expert enough with
hooks and eyes, the more tedious matter was getting up her courage,
which invariably failed her at the stage of her linsey-woolsey
petticoat. But when Jan had hooked her up, and tied her apron on,
and put a little shawl about her shoulders, and got her close-
fitting cap set straight,--a matter about as easy as putting another
man's spectacles on his nose,--and seated her by the fire, the worst
was over. Mrs. Lake always cheered up after breakfast, and Jan
always to the very end hoped that this was the beginning of her
getting better.

Even after a niece of the windmiller's came to live at the mill, and
to wait on Mrs. Lake, the poor woman was never really content
without Jan. As time went on, she wept less, but her faculties
became more clouded. She had some brighter hours, and the company
of the schoolmaster gave her pleasure, and seemed to do her good.
When the Rector visited her, his very sympathy made him delicate
about dwelling on her bereavement. When the poor woman sobbed, he
changed the subject in haste, and his condolences were of a very
general character. But Master Swift had no such scruples; and as he
sat by her chair, with a kindly hand on hers, he spoke both plainly
and loudly. The latter because Mrs. Lake's hearing had become dull.
Nor did he cease to speak because tears dropped perpetually from the
eyes which were turned to him, and which seemed day by day to lose
color from the pupils, and to grow redder round the lids from
weeping.

"Them that sleep in Jesus shall GOD bring with Him. Ah! Mrs. Lake,
ma'am, they're grand words for you and me. The Lord has dealt
hardly with us, but there are folk that lose their children when
it's worse. There's many a Christian parent has lived to see them
grow up to wickedness, and has lost 'em in their sins, and has had
to carry THAT weight in his heart besides their loss, that the
Lord's counsels for them were dark to him. But for yours and mine,
woman, that have gone home in their innocence, what have we to say
to the Almighty, except to pray of Him to make us fitter to take
them when He brings them back?"

Through the cloud that hung over the poor woman's spirit, Master
Swift's plain consolations made their way. The ruling thought of
his mind became the one idea to which her unhinged intellect clung,-
-the second coming of the Lord. For this she watched--not merely in
the sense of a readiness for judgment, but--out of the upper windows
of the windmill, from which could be seen a vast extent of that
heaven in which the sign of the Son of Man should be, before He
came.

Sky-gazing was an old habit with Jan, and his active imagination was
not slow to follow his foster-mother's fancies. The niece did all
the house-work, for the freakish state of Mrs. Lake's memory made
her help too uncertain to be trusted to. But, with a restlessness
which was perhaps part of her disease, she wandered from story to
story of the windmill, guided by Jan, and the windmiller made no
objection.

The country folk who brought grist to the mill would strain their
ears with a sense of awe to catch Mrs. Lake's mutterings as she
glided hither and thither with that mysterious shadow on her spirit,
and the miller himself paid a respect to her intellect now it was
shattered which he had not paid whilst it was whole. Indeed he was
very kind to her, and every Sunday he led her tenderly to church,
where the music soothed her as it soothed Saul of old. As the brain
failed, she became happier, but her sorrow was like a pain numbed by
narcotics; it awoke again from time to time. She would fancy the
children were with her, and then suddenly arouse to the fact that
they were not, and moan that she had lost all.

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