Books: Jan of the Windmill

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

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19

Master Swift was not accustomed to betray emotion, but his nerves
were less strong than they had been, and self-control was more
difficult; and with his horny hands he hid the cheeks down which
tears of gratified pride would force their way.

He had not found voice to speak, when Rufus appeared at the gate
with one basket, followed by Jan and the little innkeeper with
another. Why Master Chuter had come, and why Jan was looking so
particularly well satisfied, must be explained.

Whilst the painter was still gazing across the water-meadows, Master
Swift, who was the soul of hospitality, had told Jan where to find a
few shillings in a certain drawer, and had commissioned him to lay
these out in the wherewithal for an evening meal. Jan had had some
anxiety in connection with the duty intrusted to him. Firstly, he
well knew that the few shillings were what the schoolmaster must
depend on for that week's living. Secondly, though it was his old
friend's all, it was a sum very inadequate to provide such a meal as
Jan would have liked to set before the painter. At his age,
children are very sensitive on behalf of their grown-up friends, and
like to maintain the credit of home. The provoking point was that
Jan had plenty of pocket-money, with which he could have supplied
deficiencies, had he dared; for the painter, besides buying him an
outfit for the journey, had liberally rewarded him for his work at
the pot boiler. But Jan knew the pride of Master Swift's heart too
well to venture to add a half penny to his money, or to spend a half
penny less than all.

It was whilst he was going with an anxious countenance towards the
village shop that Master Chuter met him with open arms. The little
innkeeper was genuinely delighted to see him; and the news of his
arrival having spread, several old friends (including "Willum"
Smith) were waiting for him, about the yardway of the Heart of Oak.
When the innkeeper discovered Jan's errand, he insisted on packing
up a prime cut of bacon, some new-laid eggs, and a bottle of
"crusty" old port, such as the squires drank at election dinners, to
take to the schoolmaster. Jan was far too glad of this seasonable
addition to the feast to suggest doubts of its acceptance; indeed,
he ventured on a hint about a possible lack of wine-glasses, which
Master Chuter quickly took, and soon filled up his basket with
ancient glasses on bloated legs, a clean table-cloth, and so forth.

"We needn't say any thing about the glasses," suggested Jan, as they
drew near the cottage.

Master Chuter winked the little eye buried in his fat left cheek.

"I knows the schoolmaster, Jan. He be mortal proud; and I wouldn't
offend he, sartinly not, Jan. But Master Swift and me have seen a
deal of each other since you left, and he've tasted this port
before, when he were so bad, and he'll not take it amiss from an old
friend."

Master Chuter was right. The schoolmaster only thanked him
heartily, and pressed him to remain. But the little innkeeper,
bustling round the table with professional solicitude, declined the
invitation.

"I be obliged to 'ee all the same, Master Swift. But I hope I knows
better manners than to intrude on you and Jan just now, let alone a
gentleman on whom I shall have pleasure in waiting at the Heart of
Oak. There be beds, sir, at your service and Jan's, and well aired
they be. And I'll be proud to show you the sign, sir, painted by
that boy when he were an infant, as I may say. But I knowed what
was in un. Master Swift can bear me witness. 'Mark my words,' says
I, 'the boy Jan be 'most as good as a sign-painter yet.' And I do
think a will. But you knows best, sir."

"I feel quite convinced that he will," said the painter, gravely.

Whilst Master Chuter and the artist thus settled Jan's career, he
cooked the eggs and bacon; and when Master Swift had propelled
himself to the table, and the others (including Rufus) had taken
their seats, the innkeeper drew cork, dusted the bottle-mouth, and
filled the fat-legged wine-glasses; then, throwing a parting glance
over the arrangements of the table, he withdrew.

Jan's fears for the credit of his home, his anxieties as to the
effect of the frugal living of his old friends upon the more
luxurious taste of his new patron, were very needless. The artist
was delighted with every thing, and when he said that he had never
tasted food so good as the eggs and bacon, or relished any wine like
that from the cellar of the Heart of Oak, he quite believed what he
said. In truth, none should be so easily pleased as the artistic,
when they wish to be so, since if "we receive but what we give," and
our happiness in any thing is according to the mind we bring to it,
imaginative people must have an advantage in being able to put so
much rose color into their spectacles.

Warmed by the good cheer, Master Swift discoursed as vigorously as
of old. With a graphic power of narration, commoner in his class
than in a higher one, he entertained the artist with stories of
Jan's childhood, and gave a vivid picture of his own first sight of
him in the wood. He did not fail to describe the long blue coat,
the pig-switch, and the slate, nor did he omit to quote the lines
which so well described the scene which the child-genius was
painting in leaves.

"Well have I named him Giotto!" said the artist; "the shepherd boy
drawing on the sand."

"If ye'd seen the swineherd painting with nature's own tints," said
Master Swift, with a pertinacious adherence to his own view of
things, which had always been characteristic of him, "I reckon you'd
have thought he beat the shepherd boy. Not that I could pretend to
be a judge of the painting myself, sir; what took MY mind was the
inventive energy of the child. For maybe fifty men in a hundred do
a thing, if you find them the tools, and show them the way, but not
five can make their own materials and find a way for themselves."

"Necessity's the mother of invention," said the painter, smiling.

"So they say, sir," said the schoolmaster, smartly; "though, from my
own experience of the shiftlessness of necessitous folk, I've been
tempted to doubt the truth of the proverb."

The painter laughed, and thought of the widow, as Master Swift
added, "Necessity may be the MOTHER of invention, sir, but the
father must have had a good head on his shoulders."

The sun had set, the moon had risen, and the dew mixed with kindred
rain-drops on the schoolmaster's flowers, when Jan and the painter
bade him good-by. For half an hour past it had seemed to the
painter that he was exhausted, and spoke languidly.

"Don't get up till I come in the morning, Master Swift," said Jan;
"I'll come early and dress you."

Rufus walked with them to the gate, and waved his tail as Jan kissed
his soft nose and brow, but then he went back to Master Swift and
lay down at his feet. The old man had refused to have the door
shut, and he propelled his chair to the porch again, and lay looking
at the stars. The moon set, and the night grew cold, so that Rufus
tucked his nose deeper into his fur, but Master Swift did not close
the door.

The sun was shining brightly when Jan came back in the morning. It
was very early. The convolvulus bells were open, but Rufus and the
schoolmaster still slept. Jan's footsteps roused Rufus, who
stretched himself and yawned, but Master Swift did not move, nor
answer to Jan's passionate call upon his name. And in the very
peace and beauty of his countenance Jan saw that he was dead.

But at what hour the silent messenger had come--whether at midnight,
or at cock-crow, or in the morning--there was none to tell.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

GEORGE AGAIN.--THE PAINTER'S ADVICE.--"HOME BREWED" AT THE HEART OF
OAK.--JAN CHANGES THE PAINTER'S MIND.

Master Swift's death was a great shock to the windmiller, who was
himself in frail health; and Jan gave as much time as he could to
cheering his foster-father.

He had been spending an afternoon at the windmill, and the painter
had been sketching the old church from the water-meadows, when they
met on the little bridge near Dame Datchett's, and strolled together
to the Heart of Oak. Master Chuter met them at the door.

"There be a letter for you, Jan," said he. "'Twas brought by a
young varment I knows well. He belongs to them that keeps a low
public at the foot of the hill, and he do be for all the world like
a hudmedud, without the usefulness of un." The letter was dirty and
ill-written enough to correspond to the innkeeper's account of its
origin. Misspellings omitted, it ran thus: -

"MASTER JAN FORD,

"Sir,--If so be you wants to know where you come from, and where to
look for them as belongs to you, come to the public at the foot of
the hill this evening, with a few pounds in your pocket to open the
lips of them as knows. But fair play, mind. Gearge bean't such a
vool as a looks, and cart-horses won't draw it out of un, if you
sets on the police. Don't you be took in by that cusnashun old
rascal Cheap John. You may hold your head as high as the Squire
yet, if you makes it worth the while of ONE WHO KNOWS. I always was
fond of you, Jan, my dear. Keep it dark."

The painter decided to accept the invitation; but when George
Sannel's face loomed out of the smoke of the dingy little kitchen,
all the terrors of his childhood seemed to awake again in Jan. The
face looked worn and hungry, and alarmed; but it was the face of the
miller's man. In truth, he had deserted from his regiment, and was
in hiding; but of this Jan and his master knew nothing.

If George's face bore some tokens of change, he seemed otherwise the
same as of old. Cunning and stupidity, distrust and obstinacy,
joined with unscrupulous greed, still marked his loutish attempts to
overreach. Indeed, his surly temper would have brought the
conference to an abrupt end but for the interference of the girl at
the inn. She had written the letter for him, and seemed to take an
interest in his fate which it is hardly likely that he deserved.
She acted as mediator, and the artist was all the more disposed to
credit her assurance that "Gearge did know a deal about the young
gentleman, and should tell it all," because her appearance was so
very picturesque. She did good service, when George began to pursue
his old policy of mixing some lies with the truth he told, by
calling him to account. Nor was she daunted by his threatening
glances. "It be no manners of use thee looking at me like that,
Gearge Sannel," said she, folding her arms in a defiant attitude,
which the painter hastily committed to memory. "Haven't I give my
word to the gentleman that he should hear a straight tale? And it
be all to your advantage to tell it. You wants money, and the
gentleman wants the truth. It be no mortal use to you to make up a
tale, beyond annying the gentleman."

Under pressure, therefore, George told all that he knew himself, and
what he had learned from the Cheap Jack's wife, and part of the
purchase-money of the pot boiler was his reward.

Master Lake confirmed his account of Jan's first coming to the mill.
He took the liveliest interest in his foster-son's fate, but he
thought, with the artist, that there was little "satisfaction" to be
got out of trying to trace Jan's real parentage. It was the
painter's deliberate opinion, and he impressed it upon Jan, as they
sat together in Master Chuter's parlor.

"My dear Giotto, I do hope you are not building much on hopes of a
new home and new relatives. If all we have heard is true, your
mother is dead; and, if your father is not dead too, he has basely
deserted you. You have to make a name, not to seek one; to confer
credit, not to ask for it. And I don't say this, Giotto, to make
you vain, but to recall your responsibilities, and to dispel useless
dreams. Believe me, my boy, your true mother, the tender nurse of
your infancy, sleeps in the sacred shadow of this dear old church.
It is your part to make her name, and the name of your respectable
foster-father, famous as your own; to render your windmill as highly
celebrated as Rembrandt's, and to hang late laurels of fame on the
grave of your grand old schoolmaster. Ah! my child, I know well
that the ductile artistic nature takes shape very early. The
coloring of childhood stains every painter's canvas who paints from
the heart. You can never call any other place home, Giotto, but
this idyllic corner of the world!"

It will be seen that the painter's rose-colored spectacles were
still on his nose. Every thing delighted him. He was never weary
of sketching garrulous patriarchs in snowy smocks under rickety
porches. He said that in an age of criticism it was quite
delightful to hear Daddy Angel say, "Ay, ay," to every thing; and he
waxed eloquent on the luxury of having only one post a day, and that
one uncertain. But his highest flights of approbation were given to
the home-brewed ale. That pure, refreshing beverage, sound and
strong as a heart of oak should be, which quenched the thirst with a
certain stringency which might hint at sourness to the vulgar
palate, had--so he said--destroyed for ever his contentment with any
other malt liquor. He spoke of Bass and Allsopp as "palatable
tonics" and "non-poisonous medicinal compounds." And when, with a
flourish of hyperbole, he told Master Chuter's guests that nothing
to eat or drink was to be got in London, they took his word for it;
and it was without suspicion of satire that Daddy Angel said, "The
gen'leman do look pretty middlin' hearty too--con-sid'rin'."

It was evident that the painter had no intention of going away till
the pot boiler fund was exhausted, and Jan was willing enough to
abide, especially as Master Lake had caught cold at the
schoolmaster's funeral, and was grateful for his foster-son's
company and care. Jan was busy in many ways. He was Master Swift's
heir; but the old man's illness had nearly swallowed up his savings,
and Jan's legacy consisted of the books, the furniture, the
gardening tools, and Rufus, who attached himself to his new master
with a wistful affection which seemed to say, "You belong to the
good old times, and I know you loved him."

Jan moved the schoolmaster's few chattels to the windmill, and
packed the books to take to London. With them he packed the little
old etching that had been bought from the Cheap Jack. "It's a very
good one," said the painter. "It's by an old Dutch artist. You can
see a copy in the British Museum." But it was not in the Museum
that Jan first saw a duplicate of his old favorite.

He was nailing up this box one afternoon, and humming as he did so,
-

"But I alone am left to pine,
And sit beneath the withy tree,
For truth and honesty be gone" -

when the painter came in behind him.

"Stop that doleful strain, Giotto, I beg; you've been painfully
sentimental the last day or two."

"It's an old song they sing about here, sir," said Jan.

"Never mind the song, you've been doleful yourself, Giotto! I
believe you're dissatisfied that we do not push the search for your
father. Is it money you want, child? Believe me, riches enough lie
between your fingers and your miller's thumb. Or do you want a more
fashionable protector than the old artist?"

"No, no, sir!" cried Jan. "I never want to leave you; and it's not
money I want, but" -

"Well, my boy? Don't be afraid."

"It's my mother, sir," said Jan, with flushed cheeks. "My real
mother, I mean. She didn't desert me, sir; she died--when I was
born. I doubt nobody sees to her grave, sir. Perhaps there's
nobody but me who would. I can't do any thing for her now, sir, I
know; but it seems as if I hardly did my duty in not knowing where
she lies."

The painter's hands were already deep in his loose pockets, from
which, jumbled up with chalk, india-rubber, bits of wash-leather,
cakes of color, reed pens, a penknife, and some drawing-pins, he
brought the balance of his loose cash, and became absorbed in
calculations. "Is that box ready?" he asked. "We start to-morrow,
mind. You are right, and I was wrong; but my wish was to spare you
possible pain. I now think it is your duty to risk the possible
pain. If those rascally creatures who stole you are in London, the
police will find them. Be content, Giotto; you shall stand by your
mother's grave!"

CHAPTER XL.

D'ARCY SEES BOGY.--THE ACADEMY.--THE PAINTER'S PICTURE.

The Ammabys were in London. Amabel preferred the country; but she
bore the town as she bore with many other things that were not quite
to her taste, including painfully short petticoats, and
Mademoiselle, the French governess. She was in the garden of the
square one morning, when D'Arcy ran in.

"O Amabel!" he cried, "I'm so glad you're alone! Whom do you think
I've seen? The boy you called Bogy. It must be he; I've looked in
the glass, and oh, he IS like me!"

"Where did you see him?" asked Amabel.

"Well, you know I've told you I get up very early just now?"

"I wish you wouldn't tell me," interrupted Amabel, "when you know
Mademoiselle won't let me get up till half-past eight. Oh, I wish
we were going home this week!"

"I'm very sorry, Amabel, but do listen. I was down by the river,
and there he was sketching; and oh, so beautifully! I shall burn
all my copies; I can never draw like him. Amabel, he is AWFULLY
like me, and he must be very near my age. He's like what people's
twin-brothers are, you know. I wish he were my twin-brother!"

"He couldn't be your twin-brother," said Amabel, gravely; "he's not
a gentleman."

"Well, he's not exactly not a gentleman," said D'Arcy. "However, I
asked him if he sent his pictures to the Academy, and he said no,
but his master does, the artist he lives with. And he told me his
master's name, and the number of his pictures; and I've brought you
a catalogue, and the numbers are 401, 402, and 403. And we are
going to the Academy this afternoon, and I've asked mamma to ask
Lady Louisa to let you come with us. But don't say any thing about
me and the boy, for I don't want it to be known I have been out
early."

At this moment Mademoiselle, who had been looking into the garden
from an upper window, hastened to fetch Amabel indoors.

It was between three and four o'clock in the afternoon, and the
Academy was crowded. The crush was so oppressive that Lady Adelaide
wanted to go away, but D'Arcy had expressed a wish to see No. 401,
and D'Arcy's wishes were law to his father, so he struggled in
search of the picture, and the others followed him. And when a
small crowd that was round it had dispersed, they saw it quite
clearly.

It was the painter's PICTURE. As the other spectators passed, they
spoke of the coloring and the draughtsmanship; of the mellow glow of
sunshine, which, faithful to the richness of southern summers,
carried also a poetical hint of the air of glory in which genius
lives alone. To some the graceful figure of Cimabue was familiar,
but the new group round the picture saw only the shepherd lad. And
if, as the spectators said, his eyes haunted them about the room,
what ghosts must they not have summoned to haunt Mr. Ford's client
as he gazed?

"Mais c'est Monsieur D'Arcy!" screamed the French governess. And
Amabel said, "It's Bogy; but he's got no leaves." Lady Adelaide was
quite composed. The likeness was very striking, but her maternal
eyes saw a thousand points of difference between the Giotto of the
painting and her son. "How very odd!" she said. "I wonder who sat
for the Giotto? If he really were the boy Amabel thinks she saw in
the wood, I think her Bogy and the model must both be the same as a
wonderful child Mr. Ammaby was telling me about, who painted the
sign of the inn in his village; but his father was a windmiller
called Lake, and" -

"Mamma! mamma!" cried D'Arcy, "papa is ill."

The sound of his son's voice recalled Mr. Ford's client to
consciousness; but it was a very partial and confused consciousness.
He heard voices speaking of the heat, the crush, etc., as in a
dream. He was not sure whether he was being carried or led along.
The painting was no longer before him, but it mattered little. The
shepherd boy's eyes were as dark as his own; but that look in their
upward gaze, which stirred every heart, pierced his as it had moved
it years ago from eyes the color of a summer sky. To others their
pathos spoke of yearning genius at war with fortune; but for Mr.
Ford's client they brought back, out of the past, words which rang
more clearly in his ears than the condolences of the crowd, -

"You'll remember your promise, D'Arcy? You will be quite sure to
take me home to bury me? And you will call my child after my
father,--JAN?"

CHAPTER XLI.

THE DETECTIVE.--THE "JOOK."--JAN STANDS BY HIS MOTHER'S GRAVE.--HIS
AFTER HISTORY.

As he had resolved, the painter secured the help of the police in
tracing Jan's pedigree. He did not take the bow-legged boy into his
confidence, but that young gentleman recognized the detective
officer when he opened the door for him; and he laid his finger by
his snub nose, with a wink of intense satisfaction.

On hearing the story, the detective expressed his opinion (founded
on acquaintance with Sal) that George's pocket had been picked by
his companions, and not by chance thieves in the fair; and he
finally proved his sagacity in the guess by bringing the pocket-book
and the letter to the artist.

With his mother's letter (it had been written at Moerdyk, on her way
to England) before them, Jan and the artist were sitting, when Mr.
Ford's client was announced, and Jan stood face to face with his
father.

The gentle reader will willingly leave a veil over that meeting,
which the artist felt a generous shame to witness. With less
delicacy, the bow-legged boy had lingered outside the door, but when
the studio rang with a passionate cry,--"My son! my son!"--he threw
his green baize apron over his head, and crying, "The jook!" plunged
downwards into the basement, and shed tears of sympathy amongst the
boots and bottles.

To say that Lady Adelaide forgave the past, and received her
husband's son with kindness, is to do scant justice to the generous
affection which he received from her. With pity for her husband
mingled painful astonishment that he should have trusted her so
little; but if the blow could never be quite repaired, love rarely
meets with its exact equivalent in faith or tenderness, and she did
not suffer alone. She went with Jan and his father to visit Master
Lake, and her gracious thanks to the windmiller for his care of her
step-son gave additional bitterness to her husband's memories of the
windmill.

It was she who first urged that they should go to Holland. Jan's
grandfather was dead,--Mr. Ford's client could make no reparation
there,--but the cousin to whom the old wooden house now belonged
gave Jan many things which had been his mother's. Amongst these was
a book of sketches by herself, and a collection of etchings by her
great-grandfather, a Dutch artist; and in this collection Jan found
the favorite of his childhood. Did the genius in him really take
its rise in the old artist who etched those willows which he had
once struggled to rival with slate-pencil?

His mother's sketches were far inferior to his own; but with the
loving and faithful study of nature which they showed, perhaps, too,
with the fact that they were chiefly gathered from homely and
homelike scenes, from level horizons and gray skies, Jan felt a
sympathy which stirred him to the heart. His delight in them
touched Lady Adelaide even more than it moved his father. But then
no personal inconvenience in the past, no long habits of suffering
and selfishness, blunted her sense of the grievous wrong that had
been done to her husband's gifted son. Nor to him alone! It was
with her husband's dead wife that Lady Adelaide's sympathies were
keenest,--the mother, like herself, of an only child.

Mr. Ford's client went almost unwillingly to his wife's grave, by
the side of which her old father's bones now rested. But Jan and
Lady Adelaide hastened thither, hand in hand, and the painter's
pledge was redeemed. Since the old man died, it had been little
tended, and weeds grew rank where flowers had once been planted.
Jan threw himself on the neglected grave. "My poor mother!" he
cried, almost bitterly. For a moment the full sense of their common
wrong seemed to overwhelm him, and he shrank even from Lady
Adelaide. But when, kneeling beside him, she bent her face as if
the wind that sighed among the grass stalks could carry her words to
ears long dulled in death,--"My POOR child! _I_ will be a mother to
your son!"--Jan's heart turned back with a gush of gratitude to his
good stepmother.

He had much reason to be grateful: then, and through many
succeeding years, when her training fitted him to take his place
without awkwardness in society, and her tender care atoned (so she
hoped) for the hardships of the past.

The brotherly love between Jan and D'Arcy was a source of great
comfort to her. Once only was it threatened with estrangement. It
was when they had grown up into young men, and each believed that he
was in love with Amabel. Jan had just prepared to sacrifice himself
(and Amabel) with enthusiasm to his brother, when D'Arcy luckily
discovered that he and the playmate of his childhood were not really
suited to each other. It was the case. The conventionalities of
English society in his own rank were part of D'Arcy's very life, but
to Amabel they had been made so distasteful in the hands of Lady
Craikshaw that her energetic, straight-forward spirit was in
continual revolt; and it was not the least of Jan's merits in her
eyes that his life had been what it was, that he was so different
from the rest of the people amongst whom she lived, and that the
interests and pleasures which they had in common were such as the
world of fashion could neither give nor take away.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19