Books: Jan of the Windmill
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Juliana Horatia Ewing >> Jan of the Windmill
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"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.
Like tiny pipe of wheaten straw,
The wren his little note doth swell,
And every living thing that flies,
Of his true love doth fondly tell.
But I alone am left to pine,
And sit beneath the withy tree;
For truth and honesty be gone,
And my false love hath fled from me."
CHAPTER VII.
ABEL GOES TO SCHOOL AGAIN.--DAME DATCHETT.--A COLUMN OF SPELLING.--
ABEL PLAYS MOOCHER.--THE MILLER'S MAN CANNOT MAKE UP HIS MIND.
Abel went to school again in the spring, and, though George would
have been better pleased had he forgotten the whole affair, he
remembered the word in George's young woman's love-letter which had
puzzled him; and never was a spelling-lesson set him among the M's
that he did not hope to come across it and to be able to demand the
meaning of Moerdyk from his Dame.
Without the excuse of its coming in the column of spelling set by
herself, Abel dared not ask her to solve his puzzle; for never did
teacher more warmly resent questions which she was unable to answer
than Dame Datchett.
Abel could not fully make up his mind whether it should be looked up
among two-syllabled or three-syllabled words. He decided for the
former, and one day brought his spelling-book to George in the
round-house.
"I've been a looking for that yere word, Gearge," said he. "There's
lots of Mo's, but it bean't among 'em. Here they be. Words of two
syllables; M, Ma, Me, Mi; here they be, Mo." And Abel began to
rattle off the familiar column at a good rate, George looking
earnestly over his shoulder, and following the boy's finger as it
moved rapidly down the page. "Mocking, Modern, Mohawk, Molar,
Molly, Moment, Money, Moping, Moral, Mortal, Moses, Motive,
Movement."
"Stop a bit, mun," cried George; "what do all they words mean? They
bothers me."
"I knows some of 'em," said Abel, "and I asked Dame Datchett about
the others, but she do be so cross; and I thinks some of 'em
bothered she too. There's mocking. I knows that. 'What's a
modern, Dame?' says I. 'A muddle-headed fellow the likes of you,'
says she. 'What's a mohawk, Dame?' says I. 'It's what you'll come
to before long, ye young hang-gallus,' says she. I was feared on
her, Gearge, I can tell 'ee; but I tried my luck again. 'What's a
molar, Dame?' says I. ''Tis a wus word than t'other,' says she;
'and, if 'ee axes me any more voolish questions, I'll break thee
yead for 'ee.' Do 'ee think 'tis a very bad word, Gearge?" added
Abel, with a rather indefensible curiosity.
"I never heard un," said George. And this was perhaps decisive
against the Dame's statement. "And I don't believe un neither. I
think it bothered she. I believe 'tis a genteel word for a man as
catches oonts. They call oonts MOLES in some parts, so p'r'aps they
calls a man as catches moles a molar, as they calls a man as drives
a mill a miller."
"'Tis likely too, Gearge," said Abel. "Well! Molly we knows. And
moment, and moping, and moral."
"What's moral?" inquired George.
"'Tis what they put at the end of Vables, Gearge. There's Vables at
the end of the spelling-book, and I've read un all. There's the
Wolf and the Lamb, and" -
"I knows now," said George. "'Tis like the last verse of that song
about the Harnet and the Bittle. Go on, Abel."
"Mortal. That's swearing. Moses. That's in the Bible, Gearge.
Motive. I thought I'd try un just once more. 'What's a motive,
Dame?' says I. 'I've got un here,' says she, quite quiet-like. But
I seed her feeling under 's chair, and I know'd 'twas for the strap,
and I ran straight off, spelling-book and all, Gearge."
"So thee've been playing moocher, eh?" said George, with an
unpleasant twinkle in his eyes. "What'll Master Lake say to that?"
"Don't 'ee tell un, Gearge!" Abel implored; "and, O Gearge! let I
tell mother about the word. Maybe she've heard tell of it. Let I
show her the letter, Gearge. She'll read it for 'ee. She's a
scholard, is mother."
There was no mistaking now the wrath in George's face. The fury
that is fed by fear blazes pretty strongly at all times.
"Look 'ee, Abel, my boy," said he, pinching Abel's shoulder till he
turned red and white with pain. "If thee ever speaks of that letter
and that word to any mortal soul, I'll tell Master Lake thee plays
moocher, and I'll half kill thee myself. Thee shall rue the day
ever thee was born!" he added, almost beside himself with rage and
terror. And as, after a few propitiating words, Abel fled from the
mill, George ground his hands together and muttered, "Motive! I
wish the old witch had motived every bone in thee body, or let me do
't!"
Master George Sannel was indeed a little irritable at this stage of
his career. Like the miller, he had had one stroke of good luck,
but capricious fortune would not follow up the blow.
He had made five pounds pretty easily. But how to turn some other
property of which he had become possessed to profit for himself was,
after months of waiting, a puzzle still.
He was well aware that his own want of education was the great
hindrance to his discovering for himself the exact worth of what he
had got. And to his suspicious nature the idea of letting any one
else into his secret, even to gain help, was quite intolerable.
Abel seemed to be no nearer even to the one word that George had
showed him, after weeks of "schooling," and George himself
progressed so slowly in learning to read that he was at times
tempted to give up the effort in despair.
Of his late outburst against Abel he afterwards repented, as
impolitic, and was soon good friends again with his very placable
teacher.
Much of the time when he should have been at work did George spend
in "puzzling" over his position. Sometimes, as from an upper window
of the mill he saw the little Jan in Abel's arms, he would mutter, -
"If a body were to kidnap un, would they advertise he, I wonders?"
and after some consideration would shake his white head doubtfully,
saying, "No, they wants to get rid of un, or they wouldn't have
brought un here."
Happily for poor little Jan, the unscrupulous rustic rejected the
next idea which came to him as too doubtful of success.
"I wonder if they'd come down something handsome to them as could
tell 'em the young varmint was off their hands for good and all.
'Twould save un ten shilling a week. Ten shilling a week! I heard
un with my own ears. I'd a kep' un for five, if they'd asked me. I
wonders now. Little uns like that does get stole by gipsies
sometimes. Varmer Smith's son were, and never heard on again. They
falls into a mill-race too sometimes. They be so venturesome. But
I doubt 'twouldn't do. Them as it belongs to might be glad enough
to get rid of un, and save their credit and their money too by
turning upon I after all."
The miller's man puzzled himself in vain. He could think of no mode
of action at once safe and certain of success. He did not even know
whether what he possessed had any value, or how or where to make use
of it. But a sort of dim hope of seeing his way yet kept him about
the mill, and he persevered in the effort to learn to read, and kept
his big ears open for any thing that might drop from the miller or
his wife to throw light on the history of Jan, with whom his hopes
were bound up.
Meanwhile, with a dogged patience, he bided his time.
CHAPTER VIII.
VISITORS AT THE MILL.--A WINDMILLER OF THE THIRD GENERATION.--CURE
FOR WHOOPING-COUGH.--MISS AMABEL ADELINE AMMABY.--DOCTORS DISAGREE.
One of the earliest of Jan's remembrances--of those remembrances, I
mean, which remained with him when childhood was past--was of little
Miss Amabel, from the Grange, being held in the hopper of the
windmill for whooping cough.
Jan was between three and four years old at this time, the idol of
his foster-mother, and a great favorite with his adopted brothers
and sisters. A quaint little fellow he was, with a broad,
intellectual-looking face, serious to old-fashionedness, very fair,
and with eyes "like slans."
He was standing one morning at Mrs. Lake's apron-string, his arms
clasped lovingly, but somewhat too tightly, round the waist of a
sandy kitten, who submitted with wonderful good-humor to the well-
meant strangulation, his black eyes intently fixed upon the
dumplings which his foster-mother was dexterously rolling together,
when a strange footstep was heard shuffling uncertainly about on the
floor of the round-house just outside the dwelling-room door. Mrs.
Lake did not disturb herself. Country folk were constantly coming
with their bags of grist, and both George and the miller were at
hand, for a nice breeze was blowing, and the mill ground merrily.
After a few seconds, however, came a modest knock on the room-door,
and Mrs. Lake, wiping her hands, proceeded to admit the knocker.
She was a smartly dressed woman, who bore such a mass of laces and
finery, with a white woollen shawl spread over it, apparently with
the purpose of smothering any living thing there might chance to be
beneath, as, in Mrs. Lake's experienced eyes, could be nothing less
than a baby of the most genteel order.
The manners of the nurse were most genteel also, and might have
quite overpowered Mrs. Lake, but that the windmiller's wife had in
her youth been in good service herself, and, though an early
marriage had prevented her from rising beyond the post of nursemaid,
she was fairly familiar with the etiquette of the nursery and of the
servants' hall.
"Good morning, ma'am," said the nurse, who no sooner ceased to walk
than she began a kind of diagonal movement without progression, in
which one heel clacked, and all her petticoats swung, and the baby
who, head downwards, was snorting with gaping mouth under the
woollen coverlet, was supposed to be soothed. "Good morning, ma'am.
You'll excuse my intruding" -
"Not at all, mum," said Mrs. Lake. By which she did not mean to
reject the excuse, but to disclaim the intrusion.
When the nurse was not speaking, she kept time to her own rocking by
a peculiar click of her tongue against the roof of her mouth; and
indeed it sometimes mingled, almost confusingly, with her
conversation. "You're very obliging, ma'am, I'm sure," said she,
and, persuaded by Mrs. Lake, she took a seat. "You'll excuse me for
asking a singular question, ma'am, but WAS YOUR HUSBAND'S FATHER AND
GRANDFATHER BOTH MILLERS?"
"They was, mum," said Mrs. Lake. "My husband's father's father
built this mill where we now stands. It cost him a deal of money,
and he died with a debt upon it. My husband's father paid un off;
and he meant to have built a house, mum, but he never did, worse
luck for us. He allus says, says he,--that's my husband's father,
mum,--'I'll leave that to Abel,'--that's my maester, mum. But nine
year ago come Michaelmas" -
Mrs. Lake's story was here interrupted by a frightful outburst of
coughing from the unfortunate baby, who on the removal of the
woollen shawl presented an appearance which would have been comical
but for the sympathy its condition demanded.
A very red and utterly shapeless little face lay, like a crushed
beet-root, in a mass of dainty laces almost voluminous enough to
have dressed out a bride. As a sort of crowning satire, the face in
particular was surrounded by a broad frill, spotted with bunches of
pink satin ribbon, and farther encased in a white satin hood of
elaborate workmanship and fringes.
The contrast between the natural red of the baby's complexion and
its snowy finery was ludicrously suggestive of an over-dressed
nigger, to begin with; but when, in the paroxysms of its cough, the
tiny creature's face passed by shades of plum-color to a bluish
black, the result was appalling to behold.
Mrs. Lake's experienced ears were not slow to discover that the
child had got whooping-cough, which the nurse confessed was the
case. She also apologized for bringing in the baby among Mrs.
Lake's children, saying that she had "thought of nothing but the
poor little chirrub herself."
"Don't name it, mum," replied the windmiller's wife. "I always say
if children be to have things, they'll have 'em; and if not, why
they won't." A theory which seems to sum up the views of the
majority of people in Mrs. Lake's class of life upon the spread of
disease.
"I'm sure I don't know what's coming to my poor head," the nurse
continued: "I've not so much as told you who I am, ma'am. I'm
nurse at the Grange, ma'am, with Mr. Ammaby and Lady Louisa.
They've been in town, and her ladyship's had the very best advice,
and now we've come to the country for three months, but the dear
child don't seem a bit the better. And we've been trying every
thing, I'm sure. For any thing I heard of I've tried, as well as
what the doctor ordered, and rubbing it with some stuff Lady
Louisa's mamma insisted upon, too,--even to a frog put into the dear
child's mouth, and drawed back by its legs, that's supposed to be a
certain cure, but only frightened it into a fit I thought it never
would have come out of, as well as fetching her ladyship all the way
from her boudoir to know what was the matter--which I no more dared
tell her than fly."
"Dear, dear!" said the miller's wife; "have you tried goose-grease,
mum? 'Tis an excellent thing."
"Goose-grease, ma'am, and an excellent ointment from the bone-
setter's at the toll-bar, which the butler paid for out of his own
pocket, knowing it to have done a world of good to his sister that
had a bad leg, besides being a certain cure for coughs, and cancer,
and consumption as well. And then the doctor's IMPRECATION on its
little chest, night and morning, besides; but nothing don't seem to
do no good," said the poor nurse. "And so, ma'am,--her ladyship
being gone to the town,--thinks I, I'll take the dear child to the
windmill. For they do say,--where I came from, ma'am,--that if a
miller, that's the son of a miller, and the grandson of a miller,
holds a child that's got the whooping-cough in the hopper of the
mill whilst the mill's going, it cures them, however bad they be."
The reason of the nurse's visit being now made known, Mrs. Lake
called her husband, and explained to him what he was asked to do for
"her ladyship's baby." The miller scratched his head.
"I've heard my father say that his brother that drove a mill in
Cheshire had had it to do," said he, "but I never did it myself,
ma'am, nor ever see un done. And a hopper be an ackerd place,
ma'am. We've ground many a cat in this mill, from getting in the
hopper at nights for warmth. However," he added, "I suppose I can
hold the little lady pretty tight." And finally, though with some
unwillingness, the miller consented to try the charm; being chiefly
influenced by the wish not to disoblige the gentlefolk at the
Grange.
The little Jan had watched the proceedings of the visitors with
great attention. During the poor baby's fit of coughing, he was so
absorbed that the sandy kitten slipped through his arms and made
off, with her tail as stiff as a sentry's musket; and now that the
miller took the baby into his arms, Jan became excited, and asked,
"What daddy do with un?"
"The old-fashioned little piece!" exclaimed the nurse, admiringly.
And Mrs. Lake added, "Let un see the little lady, maester."
The miller held out the baby, and the nurse, removing a dainty
handkerchief edged with Valenciennes lace from its face, introduced
it as "Miss Amabel Adeline Ammaby;" and Mrs. Lake murmured, "What a
lovely little thing!" By which, for truth's sake, it is to be hoped
she meant the lace-edged handkerchief.
In the exchange of civilities between the two women, the respective
children in their charge were admonished to kiss each other,--a feat
which was accomplished by Jan's kissing the baby very tenderly, and
with all his usual gravity.
As this partly awoke the baby from a doze, its red face began to
crease, and pucker, and twist into various contortions, at which Jan
gazed with a sort of solemn curiosity in his black eyes.
"Stroke the little lady's cheeks, love," said Mrs. Lake,
irrepressibly proud of the winning ways and quaint grace which
certainly did distinguish her foster-child.
Jan leaned forward once more, and passed his little hand softly down
the baby's face twice or thrice, as he was wont to stroke the sandy
kitten, as it slept with him, saying, "Poor itta pussy!"
"It's not a puss-cat, bless his little heart!" said the matter-of-
fact nurse. "It's little Miss Amabel Adeline Ammaby."
"Say it, love!" said Mrs. Lake, adding, to the nurse, "he can say
any thing, mum."
"Miss AM--ABEL AD--E--LINE AM--MA--BY," prompted the nurse.
"Amabel!" said the little Jan, softly. But, after this feat, he
took a fit of childish reticence, and would say no more; whilst,
deeply resentful of the liberties Jan had taken, Miss Amabel Adeline
Ammaby twisted her features till she looked like a gutta-percha
gargoyle, and squalled as only a fretful baby can squall.
She was calmed at last, however, and the windmiller took her once
more into his arms, and Mrs. Lake carrying Jan, they all climbed up
the narrow ladder to the next floor.
Heavily ground the huge stones with a hundred and twenty revolutions
a minute, making the chamber shake as they went round.
They made the nurse giddy. The simplest machinery has a bewildering
effect upon an unaccustomed person. So has going up a ladder; which
makes you feel much less safe in the place to which it leads you
than if you had got there by a proper flight of stairs. So--very
often--has finding yourself face to face with the accomplishment of
what you have been striving for, if you happen to be weak-minded.
Under the combined influences of all these causes, the nurse
listened nervously to Master Lake, as he did the honors of the mill.
"Those be the mill-stones, ma'am. Pretty fastish they grinds, and
they goes faster when the wind's gusty. Many a good cat they've
ground as flat as a pancake from the poor gawney beasts getting into
the hopper."
"Oh, sir!" cried the nurse, now thoroughly alarmed, "give me the
young lady back again. Deary, deary me! I'd no notion it was so
dangerous. Oh, don't, sir! don't!"
"Tut, tut! I'll hold un safe, ma'am," said the windmiller, who had
all a man's dislike for shirking at the last moment what had once
been decided upon; and, as the nurse afterwards expressed it, before
she had time to scream, he had tucked Miss Amabel Adeline Ammaby's
finery well round her, and had dipped her into the hopper and out
again.
In that moment of suspense both the women had been silent, and the
little Jan had gazed steadily at the operation. As it safely ended,
they both broke simultaneously into words.
"You might have knocked me down with a feather, mum!" gasped Mrs.
Lake. "I couldn't look, mum. I couldn't have looked to save my
life. I turned my back."
"I'd back 'ee allus to do the silliest thing as could be done,
missus," said the miller, who had a pleasant husbandly way of
commenting upon his wife's conversation to her disparagement, when
she talked before him.
"As for me, ma'am," the nurse said, "I couldn't take my eyes off the
dear child's hood. But move,--no thank you, ma'am,--I couldn't have
moved hand or foot for a five-pound note, paid upon the spot."
The baby got well. Whether the mill charm worked the cure, or
whether the fine fresh breezes of that healthy district made a
change for the better in the child's state, could not be proved.
Nor were these the only possible causes of the recovery.
The kind-hearted butler blessed the day when he laid out three and
eightpence in a box of the bone-setter's ointment, to such good
purpose.
Lady Louisa's mamma triumphantly hoped that it would be a lesson to
her dear daughter never again to set a London doctor's advice
(however expensive) above a mother's (she meant a grandmother's)
experience.
The cook said, "Goose-grease and kitchen physic for her!"
And of course the doctor very properly, as well as modestly,
observed that "he had confidently anticipated permanent beneficial
results from a persevering use of the embrocation."
And only to the nurse and the windmiller's family was it known that
Miss Amabel Adeline Ammaby had been dipped in the mill-hopper.
CHAPTER IX.
GENTRY BORN.--LEARNING LOST.--JAN'S BEDFELLOW.--AMABEL.
After the nurse and baby had left the mill, Mrs. Lake showered extra
caresses upon the little Jan. It had given her a strange pleasure
to see him in contact with the Squire's child. She knew enough of
the manners and customs, the looks and the intelligence of the
children of educated parents, to be aware that there were "makings"
in those who were born heirs to developed intellects, and the grace
that comes of discipline, very different from the "makings" to be
found in the "voolish" descendants of ill-nurtured and uneducated
generations. She had no philosophical--hardly any reasonable or
commendable--thoughts about it. But she felt that Jan's countenance
and his "ways" justified her first belief that he was "gentry born."
She was proud of his pretty manners. Indeed, curiously enough, she
had recalled her old memories of nursery etiquette under a first-
rate upper nurse in "her young days," to apply them to the little
Jan's training.
Why she had not done this with her own children is a question that
cannot perhaps be solved till we know why so many soldiers, used
for, it may be, a quarter of a century to personal cleanliness as
scrupulous as a gentleman's, and to enforced neatness of clothes,
rooms, and general habits, take back to dirt and slovenliness with
greediness when they leave the service; and why many a nurse, whose
voice and manners were beyond reproach in her mistress's nursery,
brings up her own children in after life on the village system of
bawling, banging, threatening, cuddling, stuffing, smacking, and
coarse language, just as if she had never experienced the better
discipline attainable by gentle firmness and regular habits.
Mrs. Lake had a small satisfaction in Jan's brief and limited
intercourse with so genteel a baby, and after it was all over she
amused herself with making him repeat the baby's very genteel (and
as she justly said "uncommon") name.
When Abel came back from school, he resumed his charge, and Mrs.
Lake went about other work. She was busy, and the nurse-boy put Jan
to bed himself. The sandy kitten waited till Jan was fairly
established, so as to receive her comfortably, and then she dropped
from the roof of the press-bed, and he cuddled her into his arms,
where she purred like a kettle just beginning to sing.
Outside, the wind was rising, and, passing more or less through the
outer door, it roared in the round-house; but they were well
sheltered in the dwelling-room, and could listen complacently to the
gusts that whirled the sails, and made the heavy stones fly round
till they shook the roof. Just above the press-bed a candle was
stuck in the wall, and the dim light falling through the gloom upon
the children made a scene worthy of the pencil of Rembrandt, that
great son of a windmiller.
When Mrs. Lake found time to come to the corner where the old press-
bed stood, the kitten was asleep, and Jan very nearly so; and by
them sat Abel, watching every breath that his foster-brother drew.
And, as he watched, his trustworthy eyes and most sweet smile
lighting up a face to which his forefathers had bequeathed little
beauty or intellect, he might have been the guardian angel of the
nameless Jan, scarcely veiled under the likeness of a child.
His mother smiled tenderly back upon him. He was very dear to her,
and not the less so for his tenderness to Jan.
Then she stooped to kiss her foster-child, who opened his black eyes
very wide, and caught the sleeping kitten round the head, in the
fear that it might be taken from him.
"Tell Abel the name of pretty young lady you see today, love," said
Mrs. Lake.
But Jan was well aware of his power over the miller's wife, and was
apt to indulge in caprice. So he only shook his head, and cuddled
the kitten more tightly than before.
"Tell un, Janny dear. Tell un, there's a lovey!" said Mrs. Lake.
"Who did daddy put in the hopper?" But still Jan gazed at nothing
in particular with a sly twinkle in his black eyes, and continued to
squeeze poor Sandy to a degree that can have been little less
agonizing than the millstone torture; and obdurate he would probably
have remained, but that Abel, bending over him, said, "Do 'ee tell
poor Abel, Jan."
The child fixed his bright eyes steadily on Abel's well-loved face
for a few seconds, and then said quite clearly, in soft, evenly
accented syllables, -
"Amabel."
And the sandy kitten, having escaped with its life, crept back into
Jan's bosom and purred itself to rest.
CHAPTER X.
ABEL AT HOME.--JAN OBJECTS TO THE MILLER'S MAN.--THE ALPHABET.--THE
CHEAP JACK.--"PITCHERS."
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