Books: Jan of the Windmill

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

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He stuck the sharp point of his windmiller's candlestick {1} into a
sack that stood near, and drawing up a yellow canvas "sample bag "--
which served him as a purse--from the depths of his pocket, he began
to count the coins by the light of the candle. He counted them over
several times with increasing satisfaction, and made several slow
but sure calculations as to the sum of ten shillings a week by the
month, the quarter, the half, and the whole year. He then began
another set of calculations of a kind less pleasant, especially to
an honest man,--his debts.

"There's a good bit to the doctor for both times," he murmured; "and
there's the coffin, and something at the Heart of Oak for the
bearers, and a couple of bottles red wine there, too, for the
missus, when she were so bad. And both the boys had new shoes to
follow in,--she would have it they should follow"-- And so on, and
so on, the windmiller ran up the list of his petty debts, and saw
his way to paying them. Then he put the money back into the sample
bag, and folded it very neatly, and stowed it away. And then he
drew near the inner door, and peeped into the room.

His poor wife seemed to be in no better case than before. She sat
on the old rocking-chair, swinging backwards and forwards, and
beating her hands upon her knees in silence, and making no movement
to comfort the wailing little creature on the bed.

For the first time there came upon the windmiller a sense of the
fact that it is an uncertain and a rather dangerous game to drive a
desperate woman into a corner. His missus was as soft-hearted a
soul as ever lived, and for her to sit unmoved by the weeping of a
neglected child was a proof that something was very far wrong
indeed. One or two nasty stories of what tender-hearted women had
done when "crazed" by grief haunted him. The gold seemed to grow
hot at the bottom of his pocket. He wished he had got at the
stranger's name and address, in case it should be desirable to annul
the bargain. He wished the missus would cry again, that silence was
worse than any thing. He wished it did not just happen to come into
his head that her grandmother went "melancholy mad" when she was
left a young widow, and that she had had an uncle in business who
died of softening of the brain.

He wished she would move across the room and take up the child, with
an intensity that almost amounted to prayer. And, in the votive
spirit which generally comes with such moments, he mentally resolved
that, if his missus would but "take to" the infant, he would humor
her on all other points just now to the best of his power.

A strange fulfilment often treads on the heels of such vows. At
this moment the wailing of the baby disturbed the miller's eldest
son as he lay in the press-bed. He was only seven years old, but he
had been nurse-boy to his dead sister during the brief period of her
health,--the more exclusively so, that the miller's wife was then
weakly,--and had watched by her sick cradle with a grief scarcely
less than that of the mother. He now crept out and down the
coverlet to the wailing heap of clothes, with a bright, puzzled look
on his chubby face.

"Mother," he said, "mother! Is the little un come back?"

"No, no!" she cried. "That's not our'n. It's--it's another one."

"Have the Lord sent us another?" said the boy, lifting the peak of
the little hood from the baby's eye, into which it was hanging, and
then fairly gathering the tiny creature, by a great effort, into his
arms, with the daring of a child accustomed to playing nurse to one
nearly as heavy as himself. "I do be glad of that, mother. The
Lord sent the other one in the night, too, mother; that night we
slept in the round-house. Do 'ee mind? Whishty, whishty, love!
Eh, mother, what eyes! Whishty, whishty, then! I'M seeing to thee,
I am."

There was something like a sob in the miller's own throat, but his
wife rose, and, running to the bed, fell on her knees, and with such
a burst of weeping as is the thaw of bitter grief gathered her
eldest child and the little outcast together to her bosom.

At this moment another head was poked up from the bedclothes, and
the second child began to say its say, hoping, perhaps, thereby to
get a share of attention and kisses as well as the other.

"I seed a lady and genle'm," it broke forth, "and was feared of un.
They was going out of doors. The genle'm look back at us, but the
lady went right on. I didn' see her face."

Matters were now in a domestic and straightforward condition, and
the windmiller no longer hesitated to come in. But he was less
disposed to a hard and triumphant self-satisfaction than was common
with him when his will ended well. A poor and unsuccessful career
had, indeed, something to do with the hardness of his nature, and in
this flush of prosperity he felt softened, and resolved inwardly to
"let the missus take her time," and come back to her ordinary
condition without interference.

"Shall un have a bit of supper, missus?" was his cheerful greeting
on coming in. "But take your time," he added, seeing her busy with
the baby, "take your time."

By-and-by the nurse-boy took the child, and the woman bustled about
the supper. She was still but half reconciled, and slapped the
plates on to the table with a very uncommon irritability.

The windmiller ate a hearty supper and washed it well down with
home-made ale, under the satisfactory feeling that he could pay for
more when he wanted it. And as he began to plug his pipe with
tobacco, and his wife rocked the new-comer at her breast, he said
thoughtfully, -

"Do 'ee think, missus, that woman 'ud be the mother of un?"

"Mother!" cried his wife, scornfully. "She've never been a mother,
maester; of this nor any other one. To see her handle it was enough
for me. The boy himself could see she never so much as looked back
at un. To bring an infant out a night like this, too, and leave it
with strangers. Mother, indeed, says he!"

"Take your time, missus, take your time!" murmured the miller in his
head. He did not speak aloud, he only puffed his pipe.

"Do you suppose the genle'm be the father, missus?" he suggested, as
he rose to go back to his work.

"Maybe," said his wife, briefly; "I can't speak one way or another
to the feelings of men-folk."

This blow was hit straight out, but the windmiller forbore reply.
He was not altogether ill-pleased by it, for the woman's unwonted
peevishness broke down in new tears over the child, whom she bore
away to bed, pouring forth over it half inarticulate indignation
against its unnatural parents.

"She've a soft heart, have the missus," said the windmiller,
thoughtfully, as he went to the outer door. "I'm in doubts if she
won't take to it more than her own yet. But she shall have her own
time."

The storm had passed. The wolds lay glistening and dreary under a
watery sky, but all was still. The windmiller looked upwards
mechanically. To be weatherwise was part of his trade. But his
thoughts were not in the clouds to-night. He brought the sample
bag, without thinking of it, to the surface of his pocket, and
dropped it slowly back again, murmuring, "Ten shilling a week."

And as he turned again to his night's work he added, with a nod of
complete conviction, "It'll more'n keep HE."

CHAPTER III.

THE WINDMILLER'S WORDS COME TRUE.--THE RED SHAWL.--IN THE CLOUDS.--
NURSING V. PIG-MINDING.--THE ROUND-HOUSE.--THE MILLER'S THUMB.

Strange to say, the windmiller's idea came true in time,--the
foster-child was the favorite.

He was the youngest of the family, for the mother had no more
children. This goes for something.

Then, when she had once got over her repugnance to adopting him, he
did do much to heal the old grief, and to fill the empty place in
her heart as well as in the cradle.

He was a frail, fretful little creature, with a very red face just
fading into yellow, about as much golden down on his little pate as
would furnish a moth with plumage, and eyes like sloe-berries. It
was fortunate rather than otherwise that he was so ailing for some
weeks that the good wife's anxieties came over again, and, in the
triumph of being this time successful, much of the bitterness of the
old loss passed away.

In a month's time he looked healthy, if not absolutely handsome.
The windmiller's wife, indeed, protested that he was lovely, and she
never wearied of marvelling at the unnatural conduct of those who
had found it in their hearts to intrust so sweet a child to the care
of strangers; though it must be confessed that nothing would have
pleased her less than the arrival of two doting and conscientious
parents to reclaim him.

Indeed, pity had much to do with the large measure of love that she
gave to the deserted child. A meaner sentiment, too, was not quite
without its influence in the predominance which he gradually gained
over his foster brothers and sisters. There was little enough to be
proud of in all that could be guessed as to his parentage (the
windmiller knew nothing), but there was scope for any amount of
fancy; and if the child displayed any better manners or talents than
the other children, Mrs. Lake would purse her lips, and say, with a
somewhat shabby pride, -

"Anybody may see 'tis gentry born."

"I've been thinking," said the windmiller, one day, "that if that
there woman weren't the mother, 'tis likely the mother's dead."

"'Tis likely, too," said his wife; and her kindness abounded the
more towards the motherless child. Little Abel was nurse-boy to it,
as he had been to his sister. Not much more than a baby himself, he
would wrap an old shawl round the baby who was quite a baby, stagger
carefully out at the door, and drop dexterously--baby uppermost--on
to the short, dry grass that lay for miles about the mill.

The shawl was a special shawl, though old. It was red, and the
bright color seemed to take the child's fancy; he was never so good
as when playing upon the gay old rag. His black eyes would sparkle,
and his tiny fingers clutch at it, when the mother put it about him
as he swayed in Abel's courageous grasp. And then Abel would spread
it for him, like an eastern prayer carpet, under the shadow of the
old mill.

Little need had he of any medicine, when the fresh strong air that
blew about the downs was filling his little lungs for most of the
day. Little did he want toys, as he lay on his red shawl gazing
upwards hour by hour, with Abel to point out every change in their
vast field of view.

It is a part of a windmiller's trade to study the heavens, and Abel
may have inherited a taste for looking skywards. Then, on these
great open downs there is so much sky to be seen, you can hardly
help seeing it, and there is not much else to look at. Had they
lived in a village street, or even a lane, Abel and his charge might
have taken to other amusements,--to games, to grubbing in hedges, or
amid the endless treasures of ditches. But as it was, they lay hour
after hour and looked at the sky, as at an open picture-book with
ever-changing leaves.

"Look 'ee here!" the nurse-boy would cry. "See to the crows, the
pretty black crows! Eh, there be a lapwing! Lap-py, lap-py, lap-
py, there he go! Janny catch un!"

And the baby would stretch his arms responsive to Abel's expressive
signs, and cry aloud for the vanishing bird.

If no living creature crossed the ether, there were the clouds.
Sometimes a long triangular mass of small white fleecy clouds would
stretch across half the heavens, having its shortest side upon the
horizon, and its point at the zenith, where one white fleece seemed
to be leading a gradually widening flock across the sky.

"See then!" the nurse-boy would cry. "See to the pretty sheep up
yonder! Janny mind un! So! so!"

And if some small gray scud, floating lower, ran past the far-away
cirrus, Abel would add with a quaint seriousness, "'Tis the sheep-
dog. How he runs then! Bow-wow!"

At sunset such a flock wore golden fleeces, and to them, and to the
crimson hues about them, the little Jan stretched his fingers, and
crowed, as if he would have clutched the western sky as he clutched
his own red shawl.

But Abel was better pleased when, in the dusk, the flock became dark
gray.

"They be Master Salter's pigs now," said he. For pigs in Abel's
native place were both plentiful and black; and he had herded Master
Salter's flock (five and twenty black, and three spotted) for a
whole month before his services were required as nurse-boy to his
sister.

But for the coming of the new baby, he would probably have gone back
to the pigs. And he preferred babies. A baby demands attention as
well as a herd of pigs, but you can get it home. It does not run
off in twenty-eight different directions, just when you think you
have safely turned the corner into the village.

Master Salter's swine suffered neglect at the hands of several
successors to the office Abel had held, and Master Salter--whilst
alluding to these in indignant terms as "young varments," "gallus-
birds," and so forth--was pleased to express his regret that the
gentle and trustworthy Abel had given up pig-minding for nursing.

The pigs' loss was the baby's gain. No tenderer or more careful
nurse could the little Jan have had. And he throve apace.

The windmiller took more notice of him than he had been wont to do
of his own children in their babyhood. He had never been a playful
or indulgent father, but he now watched with considerable interest
the child who, all unconsciously, was bringing in so much "grist to
the mill."

When the weather was not fine enough for them to be out of doors,
Abel would play with his charge in the round-house, and the
windmiller never drove him out of the mill, as at one time he would
have done. Now and then, too, he would pat the little Jan's head,
and bestow a word of praise on his careful guardian.

It may be well, by-the-by, to explain what a round-house is. Some
of the brick or tower mills widen gradually and evenly to the base.
Others widen abruptly at the lowest story, which stands out all
round at the bottom of the mill, and has a roof running all round
too. The projection is, in fact, an additional passage, encircling
the bottom story of the windmill. It is the round-house. If you
take a pill-box to represent the basement floor of a tower-mill, and
then put another pill-box two or three sizes larger over it, you
have got the circular passage between the two boxes, and have added
a round-house to the mill. The round-house is commonly used as a
kind of store-room.

Abel Lake's windmill had no separate dwelling-house. His
grandfather had built the windmill, and even his father had left it
to the son to add a dwelling-house, when he should perhaps have
extended his resources by a bit of farming or some other business,
such as windmillers often add to their trade proper. But that
calamity of the broken sails had left Abel Lake no power for further
outlay for many years, and he had to be content to live in the mill.

The dwelling-room was the inner part of the basement floor. Near
the door which led from this into the round-house was the ladder
leading to the next story, and close by that the opening through
which the sacks of grain were drawn up above. The story above the
basement held the millstones and the "smutting" machine, for
cleaning dirty wheat. The next above that held the dressing
machine, in which the bran was separated from the flour. In the
next above that were the corn-bins. To the next above that the
grain was drawn up from the basement in the first instance. The top
story of all held the machinery connected with the turning of the
sails. Ladders led from story to story, and each room had two
windows on opposite sides of the mill.

Use is second nature, and all the sounds which haunt a windmill were
soon as familiar and as pleasant to the little Jan as if he had been
born a windmiller's son. Through many a windy night he slept as
soundly as a sailor in a breeze which might disturb the nerves of a
land-lubber. And when the north wind blew keen and steadily, and
the chains jangled as the sacks of grist went upwards, and the
millstones ground their monotonous music above his head, these
sounds were only as a lullaby to his slumbers, and disturbed him no
more than they troubled his foster-mother, to whom the revolving
stones ground out a homely and welcome measure: "Dai-ly bread, dai-
ly bread, dai-ly bread."

For another sign of his being a true child of the mill, his nurse
Abel anxiously watched.

Though Abel preferred nursing to pig-minding, he had a higher
ambition yet, which was to begin his career as a windmiller. It was
not likely that he could be of use to his father for a year or two,
and the fact that he was of very great use to his mother naturally
tended to delay his promotion to the mill.

Mrs. Lake was never allowed to say no to her husband, and she seemed
to be unable, and was certainly unwilling, to say it to her
children. Happily, her eldest child was of so sweet and docile a
temper that spoiling did him little harm; but even with him her
inability to say no got the mother into difficulties. She was
obliged to invent excuses to "fub off," when she could neither
consent nor refuse.

So, when Abel used to cling about her, crying, "Mother dear, when'll
I be put t'help father in the mill? Do 'ee ask un to let me come in
now! I be able to sweep 's well as Gearge. I sweeps the room for
thee,"--she had not the heart or the courage to say, "I want thee,
and thy father doesn't," but she would take the boy's hand tenderly
in hers, and making believe to examine his thumbs with a purpose,
would reply, "Wait a bit, love. Thee's a sprack boy, and a good un,
but thee's not rightly got the miller's thumb."

And thus it came about that Abel was for ever sifting bits of flour
through his finger and thumb, to obtain the required flatness and
delicacy which marks the latter in a miller born; and playing
lovingly with little Jan on the floor of the round-house, he would
pass some through the baby's fingers also, crying, -

"Sift un, Janny! sift un! Thee's a miller's lad, and thee must have
a miller's thumb."

CHAPTER IV.

BLACK AS SLANS.--VAIR AND VOOLISH.--THE MILLER AND HIS MAN.

It was a great and important time to Abel when Jan learned to walk;
but, as he was neither precocious nor behindhand in this respect,
his biographer may be pardoned for not dwelling on it at any length.

He had a charming demure little face, chiefly differing from the
faces of the other children of the district by an overwhelming
superiority in the matter of forehead.

Mrs. Lake had had great hopes that he would differ in another
respect also.

Most of the children of the neighborhood were fair. Not fair as so
many North-country children are, with locks of differing, but
equally brilliant, shades of gold, auburn, red, and bronze; but
white-headed, and often white-faced, with white-lashed inexpressive
eyes, as if they had been bleaching through several generations.

Now, when the dark bright eyes of the little Jan first came to be of
tender interest with Mrs. Lake, she fully hoped, and constantly
prophesied, that he would be "as black as a rook;" a style of
complexion to which she gave a distinct preference, though the
miller was fair by nature as well as white by trade. Jan's eyes
seemed conclusive.

"Black as slans they be," said his foster-mother. And slans meant
sloe-berries where Mrs. Lake was born.

An old local saying had something perhaps to do with her views: -

"Lang and lazy,
Black and proud;
Vair and voolish,
Little and loud."

"Fair and foolish" youngsters certainly abounded in the neighborhood
to an extent which justified a wish for a change.

As to pride, meek Mrs. Lake was far from regarding it as a failing
in those who had any thing to be proud of, such as black hair and a
possible connection with the gentry. And fate having denied to her
any chance of being proud or aggressive on her own account, she
derived a curious sort of second-hand satisfaction from seeing these
qualities in those who belonged to her. It did to some extent
console her for the miller's roughness to herself, to hear him
rating George. And she got a sort of reflected dignity out of being
able to say, "My maester's a man as will have his way."

But her hopes were not realized. That yellow into which the
beefsteak stage of Jan's infant complexion had faded was not
destined to deepen into gipsy hues. It gave place to the tints of
the China rose, and all the wind and sunshine on the downs could not
tan, though they sometimes burnt, his cheeks. The hair on his
little head became more abundant, but it kept its golden hue. His
eyes remained dark,--a curious mixture; for as to hair and
complexion he was irredeemably fair.

The mill had at least one "vair and voolish" inmate, by common
account, though by his own (given in confidence to intimate friends)
he was "not zuch a vool as he looked."

This was George Sannel, the miller's man.

Master Lake had had a second hand in to help on that stormy night
when Jan made his first appearance at the mill; but as a rule he
only kept one man, whom he hired for a year at a time, at the mop or
hiring fair held yearly in the next town.

George, or Gearge as he was commonly called, had been more than two
years in the windmill, and was looked upon in all respects as "one
of the family." He slept on a truckle-bed in the round-house,
which, though of average size, would not permit him to stretch his
legs too recklessly without exposing his feet to the cold.

For "Gearge" was six feet one and three-quarters in his stockings.

He had a face in some respects like a big baby's. He had a turn-up
nose, large smooth cheeks, a particularly innocent expression, a
forehead hardly worth naming, small dull eyes, with a tendency to
inflammation of the lids which may possibly have hindered the lashes
from growing, and a mouth which was generally open, if he were
neither eating nor sucking a "bennet." When this countenance was
bathed in flour, it might be an open question whether it were
improved or no. It certainly looked both "vairer" and more
"voolish!"

There is some evidence to show that he was "lazy," as well as
"lang," and yet he and Master Lake contrived to pull on together.

Either because his character was as childlike as his face, and
because--if stupid and slothful by nature--he was also of so
submissive, susceptible, and willing a temper that he disarmed the
justest wrath; or because he was, as he said, not such a fool as he
looked, and had in his own lubberly way taken the measure of the
masterful windmiller to a nicety, George's most flagrant acts of
neglect had never yet secured his dismissal.

Indeed, it really is difficult to realize that any one who is lavish
of willingness by word can wilfully and culpably fail in deed.

"I be a uncommon vool, maester, sartinly," blubbered George on one
occasion when the miller was on the point of turning him off, as a
preliminary step on the road to the "gallus," which Master Lake
expressed his belief that he was "sartin sure to come to." And, as
he spoke, George made dismal daubs on his befloured face with his
sleeve, as he rubbed his eyes with his arm from elbow to wrist.

"Sech a governor as you be, too!" he continued. "Poor mother! she
allus said I should come to no good, such a gawney as I be! No more
I shouldn't but for you, Master Lake, a-keeping of me on. Give un
another chance, sir, do 'ee! I be mortal stoopid, sir, but I'd work
my fingers to the bwoan for the likes of you, Master Lake!"

George stayed on, and though the very next time the windmiller was
absent his "voolish" assistant did not get so much as a toll-dish of
corn ground to flour, he was so full of penitence and promises that
he weathered that tempest and many a succeeding one.

On that very eventful night of the storm, and of Jan's arrival,
George's neglect had risked a recurrence of the sail catastrophe.
At least if the second man's report was to be trusted.

This man had complained to the windmiller that, during his absence
with the strangers, George, instead of doubling his vigilance now
that the men were left short-handed, had taken himself off under
pretext of attending to the direction of the wind and the position
of the sails outside, a most important matter, to which he had not,
after all, paid the slightest heed; and what he did with himself,
whilst leaving the mill to its fate and the fury of the storm, his
indignant fellow-servant professed himself "blessed if he knew."

But few people are as grateful as they should be when informed of
misconduct in their own servants. It is a reflection on one's
judgment.

And unpardonable as George's conduct was, if the tale were true, the
words in which he couched his self-defence were so much more
grateful to the ears of the windmiller than the somewhat free and
independent style in which the other man expressed his opinion of
George's conduct and qualities, that the master took his servant's
part, and snubbed the informer for his pains.

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