Books: Jan of the Windmill

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

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"Thee've got one left, mother dear," Jan would cry, and his caresses
comforted her. But at times she was troubled by an imperfect
remembrance of Jan's history, and, with some echo of her old
reluctance to adopt him, she would wail that she "didn't want a
stranger child." It cut Jan to the heart. Ever since he had known
that he was not a miller's son, he had protested against the
knowledge. He loved the windmill and the windmiller's trade. He
loved his foster-parents, and desired no others. He had a miller's
thumb, and he flattened it with double pains now that his right to
it was disputed. He would press Mrs. Lake's thin fingers against it
in proof that he belonged to her, and the simple wile was
successful, for she would smile and say, "Ay, ay, love! Thee's a
miller's boy, for thee've got the miller's thumb."

Two or three causes combined to strengthen Jan's love for his home.
His revolt from the fact that he was no windmiller born gave the
energy of contradiction. Then to fulfil Abel's behests, and to take
his place in the mill, was now Jan's chief ambition. And whence
could be seen such glorious views as from the windows of a windmill?

Master Lake was very glad of his help. The quarterly payment had
now been due for some weeks, but, in telling the schoolmaster, he
only said, "I'd be as well pleased if they forgot un altogether,
now. I don't want him took away, no time. And now I've lost Abel,
Jan'll have the mill after me. He's a good son is Jan."

And, as he echoed Jan's praises, it never dawned on Master Swift
that he was the cause of the allowance having stopped. Jan was
jealous of his title as Master Lake's son, but the schoolmaster
dwelt much in his own mind on the fact that Jan was no real child of
the district; partly in his ambition for him, and partly out of a
dim hope that he would himself be some day allowed to adopt him. In
stating that the windmiller had lost all his children by the fever,
he had stated the bare fact in all good faith; and as neither he nor
the Rector guessed the real drift of Mr. Ford's letter, the mistake
was never corrected.

Jan was useful in the mill. He swept the round-house, coupled the
sacks, received grist from the grist-bringers, and took payment for
the grinding in money or in kind, according to custom. The old
women who toddled in with their bags of gleaned corn looked very
kindly on him, and would say, "Thee be a good bwoy, sartinly, Jan,
and the Lard'll reward thee." If the windmiller came towards one of
these dames, she would say, "Aal right, Master Lake, I be in no
manners of hurry, Jan'll do for me." And, when Jan came, his
business-like method justified her confidence. "Good day, mother,"
he would say. "Will ye pay, or toll it?" "Bless ye, dear love, how
should I pay?" the old woman would reply. "I'll toll it, Jan, and
thank ye kindly." On which Jan would dip the wooden bowl or
tolling-dish into the sack, and the corn it brought up was the
established rate of payment for grinding the rest.

But, though he constantly assured the schoolmaster that he meant to
be a windmiller, Jan did not neglect his special gift. He got up
with many a dawn to paint the sunrise. In still summer afternoons,
when the mill-sails were idle, and Mrs. Lake was dozing from the
heat, he betook himself to the water-meads to sketch. In the mill
itself he made countless studies. Not only of the ever-changing
heavens, and of the monotonous sweeps of the great plains, whose
aspect is more changeable than one might think, but studies on the
various floors of the mill, and in the roundhouse, where old meal-
bins and swollen sacks looked picturesque in the dim light falling
from above, in which also the circular stones, the shaft, and the
very hoppers, became effective subjects for the Cumberland lead-
pencils.

Towards the end of the summer following the fever, Mrs. Lake failed
rapidly. She sat out of doors most of the day, the miller moving
her chair from one side to another of the mill to get the shade.
Master Swift brought her big nosegays from his garden, at which she
would smell for hours, as if the scent soothed her. She spoke very
little, but she watched the sky constantly.

One evening there was a gorgeous sunset. In all its splendor, with
a countless multitude of little clouds about it bright with its
light, the glory of the sun seemed little less than that of the Lord
Himself, coming with ten thousand of His saints, and the poor woman
gazed as if her withered, wistful eyes could see her children among
the radiant host. "I do think the Lord be coming to-night, Master
Swift," she said. "And He'll bring them with Him."

She gazed on after all the glory had faded, and lingered till it
grew dark, and the schoolmaster had gone home. It was not till her
dress was quite wet with dew that Jan insisted upon her going
indoors.

They were coming round the mill in the dusk, when a cry broke from
Mrs. Lake's lips; which was only an echo of a louder one from Jan.
A woman creeping round the mill in the opposite direction had just
craned her neck forward so that Jan and his foster-mother saw her
face for an instant before it disappeared. Why Jan was so
terrified, he would have been puzzled to say, for the woman was not
hideous, though she had an ugly mouth. But he was terrified, and
none the less so from a conviction that she was looking intently and
intentionally at him. When he got his foster-mother indoors, the
miller was disposed to think the affair was a fancy; but, as if the
shock had given a spur to her feeble senses, Mrs. Lake said in a
loud clear voice, "Maester, it be the woman that brought our Jan
hither!"

But when the miller ran out, no one was to be seen.

CHAPTER XXX.

JAN'S PROSPECTS AND MASTER SWIFT'S PLANS.--TEA AND MILTON.--NEW
PARENTS.--PARTING WITH RUFUS.--JAN IS KIDNAPPED.

This shock seemed to give a last jar to the frail state of Mrs.
Lake's health, and the sleep into which she fell that night passed
into a state of insensibility in which her sorely tried spirit was
released without pain.

It was said that the windmiller looked twice his age from trouble.
But his wan appearance may have been partly due to the inroads of a
lung disease, which comes to millers from constantly inhaling the
flour-dust. His cheeks grew hollow, and his wasted hands displayed
the windmiller's coat of arms {2} with painful distinctness. The
schoolmaster spent most of his evenings at the mill; but sometimes
Jan went to tea with him, and by Master Lake's own desire he went to
school once more.

Master Swift thought none the less of Jan's prospects that it was
useless to discuss them with Master Lake. All his plans were
founded on the belief that he himself would live to train the boy to
be a windmiller, whilst Master Swift's had reference to the
conviction that "miller's consumption" would deprive Jan of his
foster-father long before he was old enough to succeed him. And had
the miller made his will? Master Swift made his, and left his few
savings to Jan. He could not help hoping for some turn of Fortune's
wheel which should give the lad to him for his own.

Jan was not likely to lack friends. The Squire had heard with
amazement that Master Chuter's new sign was the work of a child, and
he offered to place him under proper instruction to be trained as an
artist. But, at the time that this offer came, Jan was waiting on
his foster mother, and he refused to betray Abel's trust. The
Rector also wished to provide for him, but he was even more easily
convinced that Jan's present duty lay at home. Master Swift too
urged this in all good faith, but his personal love for Jan, and the
dread of parting with him, had an influence of which he was hardly
conscious.

One evening, a few weeks after Mrs. Lake's death, Jan had tea,
followed by poetry, with the schoolmaster. Master Swift often
recited at the windmill. The miller liked to hear hymns his wife
had liked, and a few patriotic and romantic verses; but he yawned
over Milton, and fell asleep under Keats, so the schoolmaster
reserved his favorites for Jan's ear alone.

When tea was over, Jan sat on the rush-bottomed chair, with his feet
on Rufus, on that side of the hearth which faced the window, and on
the other side sat Master Swift, with the mongrel lying by him, and
he spouted from Milton. Jan, familiar with many a sunrise, listened
with parted lips of pleasure, as the old man trolled forth, -

"Right against the eastern gate,
Where the great sun begins his state,
Robed in flames and amber light,"

and with even more sympathy to the latter part of 'Il Penseroso;'
and, as when this was ended he begged for yet more, the old man
began 'Lycidas.' He knew most of it by heart, and waving his hand,
with his eyes fixed expressively on Jan, he cried, -

"Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of noble minds)
To scorn delights, and live laborious days."

And tears filled his eyes, and made his voice husky, as he went on,
-

"But the fair guerdon when we hope to find,
And think to burst out into sudden blaze,
Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears" -

Master Swift stopped suddenly. Rufus was growling, and Jan was
white and rigid, with his eyes fixed on the window.

As in most North countrymen, there was in the schoolmaster an
ineradicable touch of superstition. He cursed the "unlucky" poem,
and flinging the book from him ran to his favorite. As soon as Jan
could speak, he gasped, "The woman that brought me to the mill!"
But when Master Swift went to search the garden he could find no
one.

Remembering the former alarm, and that no one was to be seen then,
Master Swift came to the conclusion that in each case it was a
delusion.

"Ye're a dear good lad, Jan," said he, "but ye've fagged yourself
out. Take the dog with ye to-morrow for company, and your sketch-
book, and amuse yourself. I'll not expect ye at school. And get
away to your bed now. I told Master Lake I shouldn't let ye away
to-night."

Jan went to bed, and next morning was up with the lark, and with
Rufus at his heels went off to a distant place, where from a mound,
where a smaller road crossed the highway to London, there was a view
which he wished to sketch under an early light. As he drew near, he
saw a small cart, at one side of which the horse was feeding, and at
the foot of the mound sat a woman with a pedler's basket.

When Jan recognized her, it was too late to run away. And whither
could he have run? The four white roads gleamed unsheltered over
the plains; there was no place to hide in, and not a soul in sight.

When the large-mouthed woman seized Jan in her arms, and kissing him
cried aloud, "Here he is at last! My child, my long lost child!"
the despair which sank into the poor boy's heart made him
speechless. Was it possible that this woman was his mother? His
foster-mother's words tolled like a knell in his ears,--"The woman
that brought our Jan hither." At the sound of Sal's voice the
hunchback appeared from behind the cart, and his wife dragged Jan
towards him, crying, "Here's our dear son! our pretty, clever little
son."

"I bean't your son!" cried poor Jan, desperately. "My mother's
dead." For a moment the Cheap Jack's wife seemed staggered; but
unluckily Jan added, "She died last month," and it was evident that
he knew nothing of his real history.

"Oh, them mill people, them false wretches!" screamed the woman.
"Have I been a paying 'em for my precious child, all this time, for
'em to teach him to deny his own mother! The brutes!"

Jan's face and eyes blazed with passion. "How dare you abuse my
good father and mother!" he cried. "YOU be the wretch, and" -

But at this, and the same moment, the Cheap Jack seized Jan
furiously by the throat, and Rufus sprang upon the hunchback. The
hunchback was in the greater danger, from which only his wife's
presence of mind saved him. She shrieked to him to let Jan go, that
he might call off the dog, which the vindictive little Cheap Jack
was loath to do. And when Jan had got Rufus off, and was holding
him by the collar, the hunchback seized a hatchet with which he had
been cutting stakes, and rushed upon the dog. Jan put himself
between them, crying incoherently, "Let him alone! He's not mine--
he won't hurt you--I'll send him home--I'll let un loose if ye
don't;" and Sal held back her husband, and said, "If you'll behave
civil, Jan, my dear, and as you should do to your poor mother, you
may send the dog home. And well for him too, for John's a man
that's not very particular what he does to them that puts him out in
a place like this where there's no one to tell tales. He'd chop him
limb from limb, as soon as not."

Jan shuddered. There was no choice but to save Rufus. He clung
round the curly brown neck in one agonized embrace, and then
steadied his voice for an authoritative, "Home, Rufus!" as he let
him go. Rufus hesitated, and looked dangerously at the hunchback,
who lifted the hatchet. Jan shouted angrily, "Home, Rufus!" and
Rufus obeyed. Twenty times, as his familiar figure, with the plumy
tail curled sideways, lessened along the road, was Jan tempted to
call him back to his destruction; but he did not. Only when the
brown speck was fairly lost to sight, his utter friendlessness
overwhelmed him, and falling on his knees he besought the woman with
tears to let him go,--at least to tell Master Lake all about it.

The hunchback began to reply with angry oaths, but Sal made signs to
him to be silent, and said, "It comes very hard to me, Jan, to be
treated this way by my only son, but, if you'll be a good boy, I'm
willing to oblige you, and we'll drive round by the mill to let you
see your friends, though it's out of the way too."

Jan was profuse of thanks, and by the woman's desire he sat down to
share their breakfast. The hunchback examined his sketch-book, and,
as he laid it down again, he asked, "Did you ever make picters on
stone, eh?"

"Before I could get paper, I did, sir," said Jan.

"But could you now? Could you make 'em on a flat stone, like a
paving-stone?"

"If I'd any thing to draw with, I could," said Jan. "I could draw
on any thing, if I had something in my hand to draw with."

The Cheap Jack's face became brighter, and in a mollified tone he
said to his wife, "He's a prime card for such a young un. It's a
rum thing, too! A man I knowed was grand at screeving, but he said
himself he was nowheres on paper. He made fifteen to eighteen
shillin' a week on a average," the hunchback continued. "I've
knowed him take two pound."

"Did you ever draw fish, my dear?" he inquired.

"No, sir," said Jan. "But I've drawn pigs and dogs, and I be mostly
able to draw any thing I sees, I think."

The Cheap Jack whistled. "Profiles pays well," he murmured; "but
the tip is the Young Prodigy."

"We're so pleased to see what a clever boy you are, Jan," said Sal;
"that's all, my dear. Put the bridle on the horse, John, for we've
got to go round by the mill."

Whilst the Cheap Jack obeyed her, Sal poked in the cart, from which
she returned with three tumblers on a plate. She gave one to her
husband, took one herself, and gave the third to Jan.

"Here's to your health, love," said she; "drink to mine, Jan, and
I'll be a good mother to you." Jan tasted, and put his glass down
again, choking. "It's so strong!" he said.

The Cheap Jack looked furious. "Nice manners they've taught this
brat of yours!" he cried to Sal. "Do ye think I'm going to take my
'oss a mile out of the road to take him to see his friends, when he
won't so much as drink our good healths?"

"Oh! I will, indeed I will, sir," cried Jan. He had taken a good
deal of medicine during his illness, and he had learned the art of
gulping. He emptied the little tumbler into his mouth, and
swallowed the contents at a gulp.

They choked him, but that was nothing. Then he felt as if something
seized him in the inside of every limb. After he lost the power of
moving, he could hear, and he heard the Cheap Jack say, "I'd go in
for the Young Prodigy; genteel from the first; only, if we goes
among the nobs, he may be recognized. He's a rum-looking beggar."

"If you don't go a drinking every penny he earns," said Sal,
pointedly, "we'll soon get enough in a common line to take us to
Ameriky, and he'll be safe enough there." On this Jan thought that
he made a most desperate struggle and remonstrance. But in reality
his lips never moved from their rigidity, and he only rolled his
head upon his shoulder. After which he remembered no more.

CHAPTER XXXI.

SCREEVING.--AN OLD SONG.--MR. FORD'S CLIENT.--THE PENNY GAFF.--JAN
RUNS AWAY.

There was a large crowd, but large crowds gather quickly in London
from small causes. It was in an out-of-the-way spot too, and the
police had not yet tried to disperse it.

The crowd was gathered round a street-artist who was "screeving," or
drawing pictures on the pavement in colored chalks. A good many men
have followed the trade in London with some success, but this artist
was a wan, meagre-looking child. It was Jan. He drew with
extraordinary rapidity; not with the rapidity of slovenliness, but
with the rapidity of a genius in the choice of what Ruskin calls
"fateful lines." At his back stood the hunchback, who "pattered" in
description of the drawings as glibly as he used to "puff" his own
wares as a Cheap Jack.

"Cats on the roof of a 'ouse. Look at 'em, ladies and gentlemen;
and from their harched backs to their tails and whiskers, and the
moon a-shining in the sky, you'll say they're as natteral as life.
Bo-serve the fierceness in the eye of that black Tom. The one
that's a-coming round the chimney-pot is a Sandy; yellow ochre in
the body, and the markings in red. There isn't a harpist living
could do 'em better, though I says it that's the lad's father."

The cats were very popular, and so were the Prize Pig, Playful
Porkers, Sow and her Little Ones, as exhibited by the Cheap Jack.
But the prime favorite was "The Faithful Friend," consisting of
sketches of Rufus in various attitudes, including a last sleep on
the grave of a supposititious master, which Jan drew with a heart
that ached as if it must break.

It was growing dark, but the exhibition had been so successful that
day, and the crowd was still so large, that the hunchback was loath
to desist. At a sign from him, Jan put his colored chalks into a
little pouch in front of him, and drew in powerful chiaroscuro with
soft black chalk and whitening. These sketches were visible for
some time, and the interest of the crowd did not abate.

Suddenly a flush came over Jan's wan cheeks. A baker who had paused
for a moment to look, and then passed on, was singing as he went,
and the song and the man's accent were both familiar to Jan.

"The swallow twitters on the barn,
The rook is cawing on the tree,
And in the wood the ring-dove coos" -

"What's your name, boy?"

The peremptory tone of the question turned Jan's attention from the
song, which died away down the street, and looking up he met a pair
of eyes as black as his own, and Mr. Ford's client repeated his
question. On seeing that a "swell" had paused to look, the Cheap
Jack hurried to Jan's side, and was in time to answer.

"John Smith's his name, sir. He's slow of speech, my lord, though
very quick with his pencil. There's not many artists can beat him,
though I says it that shouldn't, being his father."

"YOU his father?" said the gentleman. "He is not much like you."

"He favours his mother more, my lord," said the Cheap Jack; "and
that's where he gets his talents too."

"No one ever thought he got 'em from you, old hump!" said one of the
spectators, and there was a roar of laughter from the bystanders.

Mr. Ford's client still lingered, though the staring and pushing of
the rude crowd were annoying to him.

"Do you really belong to this man?" he asked of Jan, and Jan
replied, trembling, "Yes, sir."

"Your son doesn't look as if you treated him very well," said the
gentleman, turning to the Cheap Jack. "Take that, and give him a
good supper this evening. He deserves it."

As the Cheap Jack stooped for the half crown thrown to him, Mr.
Ford's client gave Jan some pence, saying, "You can keep these
yourself." Jan's face, with a look of gratitude upon it, seemed to
startle him afresh, but it was getting dark, and the crowd was
closing round him. Jan had just entertained a wild thought of
asking his protection, when he was gone.

What the strange gentleman had said about his unlikeness to the
Cheap Jack, and also the thoughts awakened by hearing the old song,
gave new energy to a resolve to which Jan had previously come. He
had resolved to run away.

Since he awoke from the stupor of the draught which Sal had given
him at the cross-roads, and found himself utterly in the power of
the unscrupulous couple who pretended to be his parents, his life
had been miserable enough. They had never intended to take him back
to the mill, and, since they came to London and he was quite at
their mercy, they had made no pretence of kindness. That they kept
him constantly at work could hardly be counted an evil, for his
working hours were the only ones with happiness in them, except when
he dreamed of home. Not the cold pavement chilling him through his
ragged clothes, not the strange staring and jesting of the rough
crowds, not even the hideous sense of the hunchback's vigilant
oversight of him, could destroy his pleasure in the sense of the
daily increasing powers of his fingers, in which genius seemed to
tremble to create. In the few weeks of his apprenticeship to
screeving, Jan had improved more quickly than he might have done
under such teaching as the Squire had been willing to procure for
the village genius. At the peril of floggings from the Cheap Jack,
too many of which had already scarred his thin shoulders, he
ransacked his brains for telling subjects, and forced from his
memory the lines which told most, and told most quickly, of the
pathetic look on Rufus's face, the anger, pleasure, or playfulness
of the mill cats. Perhaps none of us know what might be forced,
against our natural indolence, from the fallow ground of our
capabilities in many lines. The spirit of a popular subject in the
fewest possible strokes was what Jan had to aim at for his daily
bread, under peril of bodily harm hour after hour, for day after
day, and his hand gained a cunning it might never otherwise have
learned, and could never unlearn now.

In other respects, his learning was altogether of evil. Perhaps
because they wished to reconcile him to his life, perhaps because
his innocent face and uncorrupted character were an annoyance and
reproach to the wicked couple, they encouraged Jan to associate with
the boys of their own and the neighboring courts.

Many people are sorry to believe that there are a great many wicked
and depraved grown-up people in all large towns, whose habits of
vice are so firm, and whose moral natures are so loose, that their
reformation is practically almost hopeless. But much fewer people
realize the fact that thousands of little children are actively,
hideously vicious and degraded. And yet it is better that this
should be remembered than that, since, though it is more painful, it
is more hopeful. It is hard to reform vicious children, but it is
easier than to reform vicious men and women.

Little boys and little girls of eight or nine or ten years old, who
are also drunkards, sweaters, thieves, gamblers, liars, and vicious,
made Jan a laughing-stock, because of his simple childlike ways.
They called him "green;" but, when he made friends with them by
drawing pictures for them, they tried to teach him their own
terrible lore. Once the Cheap Jack gave Jan a penny to go with some
other boys to a penny theatre, or "gaff." The depravity of the
entertainment was a light matter to the depravity of the children by
whom the place was crowded, and who had not so much lost as never
found shame. Jan was standing amongst them, when he caught sight of
a boy with a white head leaning over the gallery, whose face had a
curious accidental likeness to Abel's. The expression was quite
different, for this one was partly imbecile, but there was just
likeness enough to recall the past with an unutterable pang. What
would Abel have said to see him there? Jan could not breathe in the
place. The others were engaged, and he fought his way out.

What he had heard and seen rang in his ears and danced before his
eyes after he crept to bed, as the dawn broke over the streets. But
as if Abel himself had watched by his bedside as he used to do, and
kept evil visions away, it did not trouble his dreams. He dreamed
of the windmill, and of his foster-mother; of the little wood, and
of Master Swift and Rufus.

After that night Jan had resolved that, whether Sal were his mother
or not, he would run away. In the strength of his foster-brother's
pious memory he would escape from this evil life. He would beg his
way back to the village, and to the upright, godly old schoolmaster,
or at least die in the country on the road thither. He had not
associated with the ragamuffins of the court without learning a
little of their cunning; and he had waited impatiently for a chance
of eluding the watchfulness of the Cheap Jack.

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