Books: Jan of the Windmill
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Juliana Horatia Ewing >> Jan of the Windmill
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In justice to George, too, it should be said that he stoutly and
repeatedly denied the whole story, with many oaths and imprecations
of horrible calamities upon himself if he were lying in the smallest
particular. And this with reiteration so steady, and a countenance
so guileless and unmoved, as to contrast favorably with the face of
the other man, whose voice trembled and whose forehead flushed,
either with overwhelming indignation or with a guilty consciousness
that he was bearing false witness.
Master Lake employed him no more, and George stayed on.
But, for that matter, Master Lake's disposition was not one which
permitted him to profit by the best qualities of those connected
with him. He was a bit of a tyrant, and more than one man, six
times as clever, and ten times as hard-working as George, had gone
when George would have stayed, from crossing words with the
windmiller. The safety of the priceless sails, if all were true,
had been risked by the man he kept, and secured by the man he sent
away, but Master Lake was quite satisfied with his own decision.
"I bean't so fond myself of men as is so mortal sprack and fussy in
a strange place," the miller observed to Mrs. Lake in reference to
this matter.
Mrs. Lake had picked up several of her husband's bits of proverbial
wisdom, which she often flattered him by retailing to his face.
"Too hot to hold, mostly," was her reply, in knowing tones.
"Ay, ay, missus, so a be," said the windmiller. And after a while
he added, "Gearge is slow, sartinly, mortal slow; but Gearge is
sure."
CHAPTER V.
THE POCKET-BOOK AND THE FAMILY BIBLE.--FIVE POUNDS' REWARD.
Of the strange gentleman who brought Jan to the windmill, the Lakes
heard no more, but the money was paid regularly through a lawyer in
London.
From this lawyer, indeed, Master Lake had heard immediately after
the arrival of his foster-son.
The man of business wrote to say that the gentleman who had visited
the mill on a certain night had, at that date, lost a pocket-book,
which he thought might have been picked up at the mill. It
contained papers only valuable to the owner, and also a five-pound
note, which was liberally offered to the windmiller if he could find
the book, and forward it at once.
Master Lake began to have a kind of reckless, gambling sort of
feeling about luck. Here would be an easily earned five pounds, if
he could but have the luck to find the missing property! That ten
shillings a week had come pretty easily to him. When all is said,
there ARE people into whose mouths the larks fall ready cooked!
The windmiller looked inside the mill and outside the mill, and
wandered a long way along the chalky road with his eyes downwards,
but he was no nearer to the five-pound note for his pains. Then he
went to his wife, but she had seen nothing of the pocket-book; on
which her husband somewhat unreasonably observed that, "A might a
been zartin THEE couldn't help un!"
He next betook himself to George, who was slowly, and it is to be
hoped surely, sweeping out the round-house.
"Gearge, my boy," said the windmiller, in not too anxious tones,
"have 'ee seen a pocket-book lying about anywheres?"
George leaned upon his broom with one hand, and with the other
scratched his white head.
"What be a pocket-book, then, Master Lake?" said he, grinning, as if
at his own ignorance.
"Thee's eerd of a pocket-book before now, thee vool, sure-ly!" said
the impatient windmiller.
"I'se eerd of a pocket of hops, Master Lake," said George, after an
irritating pause, during which he still smiled, and scratched his
poll as if to stimulate recollection.
"Book--book--book! pocket-BOOK!" shouted the miller. "If thee can't
read, thee knows what a book is, thee gawney!"
"What a vool I be, to be sure!" said George, his simple countenance
lighted up with a broader smile than before. "I knows a book,
sartinly, Master Lake, I knows a book. There's one," George
continued, speaking even slower than before,--"there's one inzide,
sir,--a big un. On the shelf it be. A Vamly Bible they calls un.
And I'm sartin sure it be there," he concluded, "for a hasn't been
moved since the last time you christened, Master Lake."
The miller turned away, biting his lip hard, to repress a useless
outburst of rage, and George, still smiling sweetly, spun the broom
dexterously between his hands, as a man spins the water out of a
stable mop. Just before Master Lake had got beyond earshot, George
lowered the broom, and began to scratch his head once more. "I be a
proper vool, sartinly," said he; and when the miller heard this, he
turned back. "Mother allus said I'd no more sense in my yead than a
dumbledore," George candidly confessed. And by a dumbledore he
meant a humble-bee. "It do take me such a time to mind any thing,
sir."
"Well, never mind, Gearge," said the miller; "if thee's slow, thee's
sure. What do 'ee remember about the book, now, Gearge? A don't
mind giving thee five shilling, if thee finds un, Gearge."
"A had un down at the burying, I 'member quite well now, sir. To
put the little un's name in 'twas. I thowt a hadn't been down zince
christening, I be so stoopid sartinly."
"What are you talking about, ye vool?" roared the miller.
"The book, sir, sartinly," said George, his honest face beaming with
good-humor. "The Vamly Bible, Master Lake."
And as the windmiller went off muttering something which the Family
Bible would by no means have sanctioned, George returned chuckling
to a leisurely use of his broom on the round-house floor.
Master Lake did not find the pocket-book, and after a day or two it
was advertised in a local paper, and a reward of five pounds offered
for it.
George Sannel was seated one evening in the "Heart of Oak" inn,
sipping some excellent home-brewed ale, which had been warmed up for
his consumption in a curious funnel-shaped pipkin, when his long
lop-ears caught a remark made by the inn-keeper, who was reading out
bits from the local paper to a small audience, unable to read it for
themselves.
"Five pound reward!" he read. "Lor massy! There be a sum to be
easily earned by a sharp-eyed chap with good luck on 's side."
"And how then, Master Chuter?" said George, pausing, with the
steaming mug half-way to his lips.
"Haw, haw!" roared the inn-keeper: "you be a sharp-eyed chap, too!
Do 'ee think 'twould suit thee, Gearge? Thee's a sprack chap,
sartinly, Gearge!"
"Haw, haw, haw!" roared the other members of the company, as they
slowly realized Master Chuter's irony at the expense of the
"voolish" Gearge.
George took their rough banter in excellent part. He sipped his
beer, and grinned like a cat at his own expense. But after the
guffaws had subsided, he said, "Thee's not told un about that five
pound yet, Master Chuter."
The curiosity of the company was by this time aroused, and Master
Chuter explained: "'Tis a gentleman by the name of Ford as is
advertising for a pocket-book, a seems to have lost on the downs,
near to Master Lake's windmill. 'Tis thy way, too, Gearge, after
all. Thee must get up yarly, Gearge. 'Tis the yarly bird catches
the worm. And tell Master Lake from me, 'll have all the young
varments in the place a driving their pigs up to his mill, to look
for the pocket-book, while they makes believe to be minding their
pigs."
"Tis likely, too," said George. And the two or three very aged
laborers in smocks, and one other lubberly boy, who composed the
rest of the circle, added, severally and collectively, "'Tis likely,
too."
But, as George beat his way home over the downs in the dusk, he said
aloud, under cover of the roaring wind, and in all the security of
the open country, -
"Vive pound! vive pound! And a offered me vive shilling for un.
Master Lake, you be dog-ged cute; but Gearge bean't quite such a
vool as a looks."
After a short time the advertisement was withdrawn.
CHAPTER VI.
GEORGE GOES COURTING.--GEORGE AS AN ENEMY.--GEORGE AS A FRIEND.--
ABEL PLAYS SCHOOL-MASTER.--THE LOVE-LETTER.--MOERDYK.--THE MILLER-
MOTH.--AN ANCIENT DITTY.
One day George Sannel asked and obtained leave for a holiday.
On the morning in question, he dressed himself in the cleanest of
smocks, greased his boots, stuck a bloody warrior, or dark-colored
wallflower, in his bosom, put a neatly folded, clean cotton
handkerchief into his pocket,--which, even if he did not use it, was
a piece of striking dandyism,--and scrubbed his honest face to such
a point of cleanliness that Mrs. Lake was almost constrained to
remark that she thought he must be going courting.
George did not blush,--he never blushed,--but he looked "voolish"
enough to warrant the suspicion that his errand was a tender one,
and he had no other reason to give for his spruce appearance
It was, perhaps, in his confusion that he managed to convey a
mistaken notion of the place to which he was going to Mrs. Lake.
She was under the impression that he went to the neighboring town,
whereas he went to one in an exactly opposite direction, and some
miles farther away.
He went to the bank, too, which seems an unlikely place for tender
tryst; but George's proceedings were apt to be less direct than the
simplicity of his looks and speech would have led a stranger to
suppose. When he reached home, the windmiller and his family were
going to bed, for the night was still, and the mill idle. George
betook himself at once to where his truckle-bed stood in the round-
house, and proceeded to light his mill-candlestick, which was stuck
into the wall.
From the chink into which it was stuck he then counted seven bricks
downwards, and the seventh yielded to a slight effort and came out.
It was the door, so to speak, of a hole in the wall of the mill,
from which he drew a morocco-bound pocket-book. After an uneasy
glance over his shoulder, to make sure that the long dark shadow
which stretched from his own heels, and shifted with the draught in
which the candle flared, was not the windmiller creeping up behind
him, he took a letter out of the book and held it to the light as if
to read it. But he never turned the page, and at last replaced it
with a sigh. Then he put the pocket-book back into the hole, and
pushed in after it his handkerchief, which was tied round something
which chinked as he pressed it in. Then he replaced the brick, and
went to bed. He said nothing about the bank in the morning nor
about the hole in the mill-wall; and he parried Mrs. Lake's
questions with gawky grins and well-assumed bashfulness.
Abel overheard his mother's jokes on the subject of "Gearge's young
'ooman," and they recurred to him when he and George formed a
curious alliance, which demands explanation.
It was not solely because the windmiller looked favorably upon the
little Jan that he and Abel were now allowed to wander in the
business parts of the windmill, when they could not be out of doors,
to an extent never before permitted to the children. Part of the
change was due to a change in the miller's man.
However childlike in some respects himself, George was not fond of
children, and he had hitherto seemed to have a particular spite
against Abel. He, quite as often as the miller, would drive the boy
from the round-house, and thwart his fancy for climbing the ladders
to see the processes of the different floors.
Abel would have been happy for hours together watching the great
stones grind, or the corn poured by golden showers into the hopper
on its way to the stones below. Many a time had he crept up and
hidden himself behind a sack; but George seemed to have an impish
ingenuity in discovering his hiding-places, and would drive him out
as a dog worries a cat, crying, "Come out, thee little varment!
Master Lake he don't allow thee hereabouts."
The cleverness of the miller's man in discovering poor Abel's
retreats probably arose from the fact that he had so rooted a
dislike for the routine work of his daily duties that he would
rather employ himself about the mill in any way than by attending to
the mill-business, and that his idleness and stupidity over work
were only equalled by his industry and shrewdness in mischief.
Poor Abel had a dread of the great, gawky, mischievous-looking man,
which probably prevented his complaining to his mother of many a sly
pinch and buffet which he endured from him. And George took some
pains to keep up this wholesome awe of himself, by vague and
terrifying speeches, and by a trick of what he called "dropping on"
poor Abel in the dusk, with hideous grimaces and uncouth sounds.
He once came thus upon Abel in an upper floor, and the boy fled from
him so hastily that he caught his foot in the ladder and fell
headlong. Though it must have been quite uncertain for some moments
whether Abel had not broken his neck, the miller's man displayed no
anxiety. He only clapped his hands upon his knees, in a sort of
uncouth ecstasy of spite, saying, "Down a comes vlump, like a twoad
from roost. Haw, haw, haw!"
Happily, Abel fell with little more damage to himself than the mill-
cats experienced in many such a tumble, as they fled before the
tormenting George.
But, after all this, it was with no small surprise that Abel found
himself the object of attentions from the miller's man, which bore
the look of friendliness.
At first, when George made civil speeches, and invited Abel to "see
the stwones a-grinding," he only felt an additional terror, being
convinced that mischief was meant in reality. But, when days and
weeks went by, and he wandered unmolested from floor to floor, with
many a kindly word from George, and not a single cuff or nip, the
sweet-tempered Abel began to feel gratitude, and almost an
affection, for his quondam tormentor.
George, for his part, had hitherto done some violence to his own
feelings by his constant refusal to allow Abel to help him to sweep
the mill or couple the sacks for lifting. He would have been only
too glad to put some of his own work on the shoulders of another,
had it not been for the vexatious thought that he would be giving
pleasure by so doing where he only wanted to annoy. And in his very
unamiable disposition malice was a stronger quality even than
idleness.
But now, when for some reason best known to himself, he wished to
win Abel's regard, it was a slight recompense to him for restraining
his love of tormenting that he got a good deal of work out of Abel
at odd moments when the miller was away. So well did he manage
this, that a marked improvement in the tidiness of the round-house
drew some praise from his master.
"Thee'll be a sprack man yet, Gearge," said the windmiller,
encouragingly. "Thee takes the broom into the corners now."
"So I do," said George, unblushingly, "so I do. But lor, Master
Lake, what a man you be to notice un!" George's kinder demeanor
towards Abel began shortly after the coming of the little Jan, and
George himself accounted for it in the following manner: -
"You do be kind to me now, Gearge," said Abel, gratefully, as he
stood one day, with the baby in his arms, watching the miller's man
emptying a sack of grain into the hopper.
"I likes to see thee with that babby, Abel," said George, pausing in
his work. "Thee's a good boy, Abel, and careful. I likes to do any
thing for thee, Abel."
"I wish I could do any thing for thee, Gearge," said Abel; "but I be
too small to help the likes of you, Gearge."
"If you're small, you're sprack," said the miller's man. "Thee's a
good scholar, too, Abel. I'll be bound thee can read, now? And a
poor gawney like I doesn't know's letters."
"I can read a bit, Gearge," said Abel, with pride; "but I've been at
home a goodish while; but mother says she'll send I to school again
in spring, if the little un gets on well and walks."
"I wish I could read," said George, mournfully; "but time's past for
me to go to school, Abel; and who'd teach a great lummakin vool like
I his letters?"
"I would, Gearge, I would!" cried Abel, his eyes sparkling with
earnestness. "I can teach thee thy letters, and by the time thee's
learned all I know, maybe I'll have been to school again, and
learned some more."
This was the foundation of a curious kind of friendship between Abel
and the miller's man.
On the same shelf with the "Vamly Bible," before alluded to, was a
real old horn-book, which had belonged to the windmiller's
grandmother. It was simply a sheet on which the letters of the
alphabet, and some few words of one syllable, were printed, and it
was protected in its frame by a transparent front of thin horn,
through which the letters could be read, just as one sees the prints
through the ground-glass of "drawing slates."
From this horn-book Abel labored patiently in teaching George his
letters. It was no light task. George had all the cunning and
shrewdness with which he credited himself; but a denser head for any
intellectual effort could hardly have been found for the seeking.
Still they struggled on, and as George went about the mill he might
have been heard muttering, -
"A B C G. No! Cuss me for a vool! A B C _D_. Why didn't they
whop my letters into I when a was a boy? A B C"--and so persevering
with an industry which he commonly kept for works of mischief.
One evening he brought home a newspaper from the Heart of Oak, and
when Mrs. Lake had taken the baby, he persuaded Abel to come into
the round-house and give him a lesson. Abel could read so much of
it that George was quite overwhelmed by his learning.
"Thee be's mortal larned, Abel, sartinly. But I'll never read like
thee," he added, despairingly. "Drattle th' old witch; why didn't
she give I some schooling?" He spoke with spiteful emphasis, and
Abel, too well used to his rough language to notice the uncivil
reference to his mother, said with some compassion, -
"Were you never sent to school then, Gearge?"
"They should ha' kept me there," said George, self-defensively. "I
played moocher," he continued,--by which he meant truant,--"and then
they whopped I, and a went home to mother, and she kept un at home,
the old vool!"
"Well, Gearge, thee must work hard, and I'll teach thee, Gearge,
I'll teach thee!" said little Abel, proudly. "And by-and-by,
Gearge, we'll get a slate, and I'll teach thee to write too, Gearge,
that I will!"
George's small eyes gave a slight squint, as they were apt to do
when he was thinking profoundly.
"Abel," said he, "can thee read writing, my boy?"
"I think I could, Gearge," said Abel, "if 'twas pretty plain."
"Abel, my boy," said George, after a pause, with a broad sweet smile
upon his "voolish" face, "go to the door and see if the wind be
rising at all; us mustn't forget th' old mill, Abel, with us
larning. Sartinly not, Abel, mun."
Proud of the implied partnership in the care of the mill, Abel
hastened to the outer door. As he passed the inner one, leading
into the dwelling-room, he could hear his mother crooning a strange,
drony, old local ditty, as she put the little Jan to sleep. As Abel
went out, she was singing the first verse: -
"The swallow twitters on the barn,
The rook is cawing on the tree,
And in the wood the ringdove coos,
But my false love hath fled from me."
Abel opened the door, and looked out. One of those small white
moths known as "millers" went past him. The night was still,--so
utterly still that no sound of any sort whatever broke upon the ear.
In dead silence and loneliness stood the mill. Even the miller-moth
had gone; and a cat ran in by Abel's legs, as if the loneliness
without were too much for her. The sky was gray.
Abel went back to the round-house, where George was struggling to
fix the candlestick securely in the wall.
"Cuss the thing!" he exclaimed, whilst the skin of his face took a
mottled hue that was the nearest approach he ever made to a blush.
"The tallow've been a dropping, Abel, my boy. I think 'twas the
wind when you opened the door, maybe. And I've been a trying to fix
un more firmly. That's all, Abel; that's all."
"There ain't no signs of wind," said Abel. "It's main quiet and
unked too outside, Gearge. And I do think it be like rain. There
was a miller-moth, Gearge; do that mean any thing?"
"I can't say," said George. "I bean't weatherwise myself, Abel.
But if there be no wind, there be no work, Abel; so us may go back
to our larning. Look here, my boy," he added, as Abel reseated
himself on the grain-sack which did duty as chair of instruction,
and drawing, as he spoke, a letter forth to the light; "come to the
candle, Abel, and see if so be thee can read this, but don't tell
any one I showed it thee, Abel."
"Not me, Gearge," said Abel, warmly; and he added,--"Be it from thy
young 'ooman, Gearge?"
No rustic swain ever simpered more consciously or looked more
foolish than George under this accusation, as he said, "Be quiet,
Abel, do 'ee."
"She be a good scholar, too!" said Abel, looking admiringly at the
closely written sheet.
George could hardly disguise the sudden look of fury in his face,
but he hastily covered up the letter with his hands in such a manner
as only to leave the first word on the page visible. There was a
deeply cunning reason for this clever manoeuvre. George held
himself to be pretty "cute," and he reckoned that, by only showing
one word at a time, he could effectually prevent any attempt on
Abel's part to read the letter himself without giving its contents
to George. Like many other cunning people, George overreached
himself. The first word was beyond Abel's powers, though he might
possibly have satisfied George's curiosity on one essential point,
by deciphering a name or two farther on. But the clever George
concluded that he had boasted beyond his ability, so he put the
letter away. Abel tried hard at the one word which George
exhibited, and gazed silently at it for some time with a puzzled
face. "Spell it, mun, spell it!" cried the miller's man,
impatiently. It was a process which he had seen to succeed, when a
long word had puzzled his teacher in the newspaper, before now.
"M O E R, mower; D Y K, dik," said Abel. But he looked none the
wiser for the effort.
"Mower dik! What be that?" said George, peering at the word.
"Do'ee think it be Mower dik, Abel?"
"I be sure," said Abel.
"Or do 'ee think 'tis 'My dear Dick'?" suggested George, anxiously,
and with a sort of triumph in his tone, as if that were quite what
he expected.
"No, no. 'Tis an O, Gearge, that second letter. Besides, twould be
My dear Gearge to thee, thou knows."
Again the look with which the miller's man favored Abel was far from
pleasant. But he controlled his voice to its ordinary drawl (always
a little slower and more simple sounding, when he specially meant
mischief).
"So 'twould, Abel. So 'twould. What a vool I be, to be sure! But
give it to I now. We'll look at it another time, Abel."
"I be very sorry, Gearge," said Abel, who had a consciousness that
the miller's man was ill-pleased in spite of his civility. "It be
so long since I was at school, and it be such a queer word. Do 'ee
think she can have spelt un wrong, Gearge?"
"'Tis likely she have," said George, regaining his composure.
"Abel! Abel! Abel!" cried the mother from the dwelling-room.
"Come to bed, child!"
"Good-night, Gearge. I'm main sorry to be so stupid, Gearge," said
Abel, and off he ran.
Mrs. Lake was walking up and down, rocking the little Jan in her
arms, who was wailing fretfully.
"I be puzzled to know what ails un," said Mrs. Lake, in answer to
Abel's questions. "He be quite in a way tonight. But get thee to
bed, Abel."
And though Abel begged hard to be allowed to try his powers of
soothing with the little Jan, Mrs. Lake insisted upon keeping the
baby herself; and Abel undressed, and crept into the press-bed. He
fell asleep in spite of a somewhat disturbed mind. That mysterious
word and George's evident displeasure worried him, and he was
troubled also by the unusual fretfulness of the little Jan, and the
sound of sorrow in his baby wail. His last waking thoughts were a
strange mixture, passing into stranger dreams.
The word Moerdyk danced before his eyes, but brought no meaning with
it. Jan's cries troubled him, and with both there blended the
droning of the ancient plaintive ditty, which the foster-mother sang
over and over again as she rocked the child in her arms. That wail
of the baby's must have in some strange manner recalled the first
night of his arrival, when Abel found him wailing on the bed. For
the fierce eyes of the strange gentleman haunted Abel's dreams, but
in the face of the miller's man.
The poor boy dreamed horribly of being "dropped on" by George, with
fierce black eyes added to the terrors of his uncouth grimaces. He
seemed to himself to fly blindly and vainly through the mill from
his tormentor, till George was driven from his thoughts by his
coming suddenly upon the little Jan, wailing as he really did wail,
round whose head a miller-moth was sailing slowly, and singing in a
human voice: -
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