Books: Jan of the Windmill

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

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His habit of taking himself off on solitary expeditions neither the
miller's hazel-stick nor Mrs. Lake's treacle-stick could cure by
force or favor.

One November evening, just after tea, Jan disappeared, and the
yellow kitten also. When his bed-time came, Mrs. Lake sought him
high and low, and Abel went carefully, mill-candlestick in hand,
through every floor, from the millstones to the machinery, but in
vain. Neither he nor the kitten was to be found.

It was when the kitten, in chase of her own tail, tumbled in
sideways through the round-house door, that Mrs. Lake remembered
that Jan might possibly have gone out, and she ran out after him.

The air was chill and fresh, but not bitterly cold. The moon rode
high in the dark heavens, and a flock of small white clouds passed
slowly before its face and spread over the sky. The shadows of the
driving sails fell clearly in the moonlight, and flitted over the
grass more quickly than the clouds went by the moon.

Mrs. Lake was not susceptible to effects of scenery, and she was
thinking of Jan. As she ran round the windmill, she struck her foot
against what proved to be his body, and, stooping, saw that he was
lying on his face. But when she snatched him up with a cry of
terror, she found that he was not dead, nor even hurt, but only
weeping pettishly.

In the first revulsion of feeling from her fright, she was rather
disposed to shake her recovered treasure, as a relief to her own
excitement. But Abel, whose first sight of Jan was as the light of
the mill-candle fell on his tear-stained face, said tenderly, "What
be amiss, Janny?"

"Jan can't make un," sobbed his foster-brother.

"What can't Janny make? Tell Abel, then," said the nurse-boy.

Jan stuck his fists into his eyes, which were drying fast, and
replied, "Jan can't make the moon and the clouds, Abel dear!"

And Abel's candle being at that moment blown out by a gust of wind,
he could see Jan's slate and pencil lying at some distance apart
upon the short grass.

On the dark ground of the slate he had made a round, white, full
moon with his soft slate-pencil, and had tried hard to draw each
cloud as it passed. But the rapid changes had baffled him, and the
pencil-marks were gray compared with the whiteness of the clouds and
the brightness of the moon, and the slate, though dark, was a
mockery of the deep, deep depths of the night-sky.

And in his despair he had flung the slate one way and the pencil
another, and there they lay under the moonlight; and the sandy
kitten, who could see more clearly on this occasion than any one
else, was dancing a fandango upon poor Jan's unfinished sketch.

CHAPTER XII.

THE WHITE HORSE.--COMROGUES.--MOERDYK.--GEORGE CONFIDES IN THE CHEAP
JACK--WITH RESERVATION.

When the Cheap Jack's horse came to the brow of the hill, it
stopped, and with drooping neck stood still as before. The Cheap
Jack was busy with George, and it was at no word from him that the
poor beast paused. It knew at what point to wait, and it waited.
There was little temptation to go on. The road down the hill had
just been mended with flints; some of these were the size of an
average turnip, and the hill was steep. So the old horse poked out
his nose, and stood almost dozing, till the sound of the Cheap
Jack's shuffling footsteps caused him to prick his ears, and brace
his muscles for a fresh start.

The miller's man came also, who was sulky, whilst the Cheap Jack was
civil. He gave his horse a cut across the knees, to remind him to
plant his feet carefully among the sharp boulders; and then,
choosing a smooth bit by the side of the road, he and George went
forward together.

"You've took to picters, I see," said George, nodding towards the
cart.

"So I have, my dear," said the Cheap Jack; "any thing for a
livelihood; an HONEST livelihood, you know, George." And he winked
at the miller's man, who relaxed his sulkiness for a guffaw.

"YOU'VE had so little in my way lately, George," the hunchback
continued, looking sharply sideways up at his companion. "Sly
business has been slack, my dear, eh?"

But George made no answer, and the Cheap Jack, after relieving his
feelings by another cut at the horse, changed the subject.

"That's a sharp little brat of the miller's," said he, alluding to
Jan. "And he ain't much like the others. Old-fashioned, too.
Children mostly likes the gay picters, and worrits their mothers for
'em, bless 'em! But he picked out an ancient-looking thing,--came
from a bankrupt pawnshop, my dear, in a lot. I almost think I let
it go too cheap; but that's my failing. And a beggarly place like
this ain't like London. In London there's a place for every thing,
my dear, and shops for old goods as well as new, and customers too;
and the older and dirtier some things is, the more they fetches."

There was a pause, for George did not speak; and the Cheap Jack,
bent upon amiability, repeated his remark,--"A sharp little brat,
too!"

"What be 'ee harping on about him for?" asked George, suspiciously.
"I knows what I knows about un, but that's no business of yours."

"You know about most things, my dear," said the Cheap Jack,
flatteringly. "They'll have to get up very early that catch you
napping. But what about the child, George?"

"Never you mind," said George. "But he ain't none of the miller's,
I'll tell 'ee that; and he ain't the missus's neither."

"What is he to YOU, my dear?" asked the dwarf, curiously, and,
getting no answer, he went on: "He'd be useful in a good many
lines. He'd not do bad in a circus, but he'd draw prime as a young
prodigy."

George looked round, "You be thinking of stealing HE then, as well
as" -

"Hush, my dear," said the dwarf. "No, no, I don't want him. But
there was a good deal of snatching young kids done in my young days;
for sweeps, destitute orphans, juvenile performers, and so on."

"HE wouldn't suit you," grinned George. "A comes of genteel folk,
and a's not hard enough for how you'd treat un."

"You're out there, George," said the dwarf. "Human beings is like
'osses; it's the genteelest as stands the most. 'Specially if
they've been well fed when they was babies."

At this point the Cheap Jack was interrupted by his horse stumbling
over a huge, jagged lump of flint, that, with the rest of the road-
mending, was a disgrace to a highway of a civilized country. A
rate-payer or a horse-keeper might have been excused for losing his
temper with the authorities of the road-mending department; but the
Cheap Jack's wrath fell upon his horse. He beat him over the knees
for stumbling, and across the hind legs for slipping, and over his
face for wincing, and accompanied his blows with a torrent of abuse.

What a moment that must have been for Balaam's ass, in which she
found voice to remonstrate against the unjust blows, which have,
nevertheless, fallen pretty thickly ever since upon her descendants
and their fellow-servants of ungrateful man! From how many patient
eyes that old reproach, of long service ill-requited, yet speaks
almost as plainly as the voice that "rebuked the madness of the
prophet!"

The Cheap Jack's white horse had a point of resemblance to the
"genteel human beings" of whom he had been speaking. It had "come
of a good stock," and had seen better and kinder days; and to it,
also, in its misfortunes, there remained that nobility of spirit
which rises in proportion to the ills it meets with. The poor old
thing was miserably weak, and sore and jaded, and the flints were
torture. But it rallied its forces, gave a desperate struggle, and
got the cart safely to the bottom of the hill. Here the road turned
sharply, and the horse went on. But after a few paces it stopped as
before; this time in front of a small public-house, where trembling,
and bathed in perspiration, it waited for its master.

The public-house was a small dark, dingy-looking hovel, with a
reputation fitted to its appearance.

A dirty, grim-looking man nodded to the Cheap Jack and George as
they entered, and a girl equally dirty, but much handsomer, brought
glasses of spirits, to which the friends applied themselves, at the
Cheap Jack's expense. George grew more sociable, and the Cheap Jack
reproached him with want of confidence in his friends.

"You're so precious sharp, my dear," said the hunchback, who knew
well on what point George liked to be flattered, "that you
overreaches yourself. I don't complain--after all the business
we've done together--that it's turned slack all of a sudden. You
says they're down on you, and that's enough for me. I don't
complain that you've got your own plans and keeps 'em as secret as
the grave, but I says you'll regret it. If you was a good scholar,
George, you could do without friends, you're so precious sharp. But
you're no scholar, my dear, and you'll be let in yet, by a worse
friend than Cheap John."

George so bitterly regretted his want of common learning, and the
stupidity which made him still slow to decipher print, and utterly
puzzled by writing, that the Cheap Jack's remarks told strongly.
These, and the conversation they had had on the hill, recalled to
his mind a matter which was still a mystery to the miller's man.

"Look here, Jack," said he, leaning across the dirty little table;
"if you be such a good scholar, what do M O E R D Y K spell?"

"Say it again, George," said the dwarf. But when, after that, he
still looked puzzled, George laughed long and loudly.

"You be a good scholar!" he cried. "You be a fine friend, too, for
a iggerant man. If a can't tell the first word of a letter, 'tis
likely 'ee could read the whole, too!"

"The first word of a LETTER, eh?" said the dwarf.

"The very first," said George. "'Tis a long way you'd get in it,
and stuck at the start!"

"Up in the corner, at the top, eh?" said the dwarf.

"So it be," said George, and he laughed no longer.

"It's the name of a place, then," said the Cheap Jack; "and it ain't
to be expected I should know the names of all the places in the
world, George, my dear."

It was a great triumph for the Cheap Jack, as George's face
betrayed. If George had trusted him a little more, he might have
known the meaning of the mysterious word years ago. The name of a
place! The place from which the letter was written. The place
where something might be learned about the writer of the letter, and
of the gentleman to whom it was written. For George knew so much.
It was written to a gentleman, and to a gentleman who had money, and
who had secrets; and, therefore, a gentleman from whom money might
be got, by interfering in his secrets.

The miller's man was very ignorant and very stupid, in spite of a
certain low cunning not at all incompatible with gross ignorance.
He had no knowledge of the world. His very knowledge of
malpractices and mischief was confined to the evil doings of one or
two other ill-conditioned country lads like himself, who robbed
their neighbors on dark nights, and disposed of the spoil by the
help of such men as the Cheap Jack and the landlord of the public-
house at the bottom of the hill.

But by loitering about on that stormy night years ago, when he
should have been attending to the mill, he had picked up enough to
show him that the strange gentleman had no mind to have his
proceedings as to the little Jan generally known. This and some
sort of traditional idea that "sharp," though penniless men had at
times wrung a great deal of money from rich people, by threatening
to betray their secrets, was the sole foundation of George's hopes
in connection with the letter. It was his very ignorance which
hindered him from seeing the innumerable chances against his getting
to know any thing important enough, even if he could use his
information, to procure a bribe.

He had long given up the idea as hopeless, though he had kept the
letter, but it revived when the Cheap Jack solved the puzzle which
Abel could not explain, and George finally promised to let his
friend read the whole letter for him. He also allowed that it
concerned Jan, or that he supposed it to do so. He related Jan's
history, and confessed that he had picked up the letter, which was
being blown about near the mill, on the night of Jan's arrival.

In this statement there was some truth, and some falsehood; for in
the opinion of the miller's man, if your own interest obliged you to
confide in a friend, it was at least wise to hedge the confidence by
not telling all the truth, or by qualifying it with lies.

This mental process was, however, at least equally familiar to the
Cheap Jack, and he did not hesitate, in his own mind, to feel sure
that the letter had not been found, but stolen. In which he was
farther from the truth than if he had simply believed George.

But then he was not in the neighborhood five years back, and, as it
happened, he had never heard of the lost pocket-book.

CHAPTER XIII.

GEORGE AS A MONEYED MAN.--SAL.--THE "WHITE HORSE."-- THE WEDDING.--
THE WINDMILLER'S WIFE FORGETS, AND REMEMBERS TOO LATE.

Excitement, the stifling atmosphere of the public-house, and the
spirits he had drunk at his friend's expense, had somewhat confused
the brains of the miller's man by the time that the Cheap Jack rose
to go. George was, as a rule, sober beyond the wont of the rustics
of the district, chiefly from parsimony. When he could drink at
another man's expense, he was not always prudent.

"So you've settled to go, my dear?" said the dwarf, as they stood
together by the cart. "Business being slack, and parties
unpleasantly suspicious, eh?"

"Never you mind," said George, who felt very foolish, and hoped
himself successful in looking very wise; "I be going to set up for
myself; I'm tired of slaving for another man."

"Quite right, too," said the dwarf; "but all businesses takes money,
of which, my dear, I doesn't doubt you've plenty. You always took
care of Number One, when you did business with Cheap John."

At that moment, George felt himself a sort of embodiment of shrewd
wisdom; he had taken another sip from the glass, which was still in
his hand, and the only drawback to the sense of magnified cunning by
which his ideas seemed to be illumined was a less pleasant feeling
that they were perpetually slipping from his grasp. To the familiar
idea of outwitting the Cheap Jack he held fast, however.

"It be nothin' to thee what a have," he said slowly; "but a don't
mind 'ee knowin' so much, Jack, because 'ee can't get at un; haw,
haw! Not unless 'ee robs the savings-bank."

The dwarf's eyes twinkled, and he affected to secure some pictures
that hung low, as he said carelessly, -

"Savings-banks be good places for a poor man to lay by in. They
takes small sums, and a few shillings comes in useful to a honest
man, George, my dear, if they doesn't go far in business."

"Shillings!" cried George, indignantly; "pounds!" And then,
doubtful if he had not said too much, he added, "A don't so much
mind 'ee knowing, Jack, because 'ee can't get at 'em!"

"It's a pity you're such a poor scholar, George," said the Cheap
Jack, turning round, and looking full at his friend; "you're so
sharp, but for that, my dear. You don't think you counts the money
over in your head till you makes it out more than it is, now, eh?"

"A can keep things in my yead," said George, "better than most folks
can keep a book; I knows what I has, and what other folks can't get
at. I knows how I put un in. First, the five-pound bill" -

"They must have stared to see you bring five pound in a lump,
George, my dear!" said the hunchback. "Was it wise, do you think?"

"Gearge bean't such a vool as a looks," replied the miller's man.
"A took good care to change it first, Cheap John, and a put it in by
bits."

"You're a clever customer, George," said his friend. "Well, my
dear? First, the five-pound bill, and then?"

George looked puzzled, and then, suddenly, angry. "What be that to
you?" he asked, and forthwith relapsed into a sulky fit, from which
the Cheap Jack found it impossible to rouse him. All attempts to
renew the subject, or to induce the miller's man to talk at all,
proved fruitless. The Cheap Jack insisted, however, on taking a
friendly leave.

"Good-by, my dear," said he, "till the mop. You knows my place in
the town, and I shall expect you."

The miller's man only replied by a defiant nod, which possibly meant
that he would come, but had some appearance of expressing only a
sarcastic wish that the Cheap Jack might see him on the occasion
alluded to.

In obedience to a yell from its master, the white horse now started
forward, and it is not too much to say that the journey to town was
not made more pleasant for the poor beast by the fact that the Cheap
Jack had a good deal of long-suppressed fury to vent upon somebody.

It was perhaps well for the bones of the white horse that, just as
they entered the town, the Cheap Jack brushed against a woman on the
narrow foot-path, who having turned to remonstrate in no very civil
terms, suddenly checked herself, and said in a low voice, "Juggling
Jack!"

The dwarf started, and looked at the woman with a puzzled air.

She was a middle-aged woman, in the earlier half of middle age; she
was shabbily dressed, and had a face that would not have been ill-
looking, but that the upper lip was long and cleft, and the lower
one unusually large. As the Cheap Jack still stared in silence, she
burst into a noisy laugh, saying, "More know Jack the Fool than Jack
the Fool knows." But, even as she spoke, a gleam of recognition
suddenly spread over the hunchback's face, and, putting out his
hand, he said, "Sal! YOU HERE, my dear?"

"The air of London don't agree with me just now," was the reply;
"and how are you, Jack?"

"The country air's just beginning to disagree with me, my dear,"
said the hunchback; "but I'm glad to see you, Sal. Come in here, my
dear, and let's have a talk, and a little refreshment."

The place of refreshment to which the dwarf alluded was another
public-house, the White Horse by name. There was no need to bid the
Cheap Jack's white horse to pause here; he stopped of himself at
every public-house; nineteen times out of twenty to the great
convenience of his master, for which he got no thanks; the twentieth
time the hunchback did not want to stop, and he was lavish of abuse
of the beast's stupidity in coming to a standstill.

The white horse drooped his soft white nose and weary neck for a
long, long time under the effigy of his namesake swinging overhead,
and when the Cheap Jack did come out, he seemed so preoccupied that
the tired beast got home with fewer blows than usual.

He unloaded his cart mechanically, as if in a dream; but when he
touched the pictures, they seemed to awaken a fresh train of
thought. He stamped one of his little feet spitefully on the
ground, and, with a pretty close imitation of George's dialect, said
bitterly, "Gearge bean't such a vool as a looks!" adding, after a
pause, "I'd do a deal to pay HIM off!"

As he turned into the house, he said thoughtfully, "Sal's precious
sharp; she allus was. And a fine woman, too, is Sal!"

Not long after the incidents just related, it happened that business
called Mrs. Lake to the neighboring town. She seldom went out, but
a well-to-do aunt was sick, and wished to see her; and the miller
gave his consent to her going.

She met the milk-cart at the corner of the road, and so was driven
to the town, and she took Jan with her.

He had begged hard to go, and was intensely amused by all he saw.
The young Lakes were so thoroughly in the habit of taking every
thing, whether commonplace or curious, in the same phlegmatic
fashion, that Jan's pleasure was a new pleasure to his foster-
mother, and they enjoyed themselves greatly.

As they were making their way towards the inn where they were to
pick up a neighbor, in whose cart they were to be driven home, their
progress was hindered by a crowd, which had collected near one of
the churches.

Mrs. Lake was one of those people who lead colorless lives, and are
without mental resources, to whom a calamity is almost delightful,
from the stimulus it gives to the imagination, and the relief it
affords to the monotony of existence.

"Oh, dear! oh, dear!" she cried, peering through the crowd: "I
wonder what it is. 'Tis likely 'tis a man in a fit now, I shouldn't
wonder, or a cart upset, and every soul killed, as it might be
ourselves going home this very evening. Dear, dear! 'tis a
venturesome thing to leave home, too!"

"'Ere they be! 'ere they be!" roared a wave of the crowd, composed
of boys, breaking on Mrs. Lake and Jan at this point.

"'Tis the body, sure as death!" murmured the windmiller's wife; but,
as she spoke, the street boys set up a lusty cheer, and Jan, who had
escaped to explore on his own account, came running back, crying, -

"'Tis the Cheap Jack, mammy! and he's been getting married."

If any thing could have rivalled the interest of a sudden death for
Mrs. Lake, it must have been such a wedding as this. She hurried to
the front, and was just in time to catch sight of the happy couple
as they passed down the street, escorted by a crowd of
congratulating boys.

"Well done, Cheap John!" roared one. "You've chose a beauty, you
have," cried another. "She's 'arf a 'ead taller, anyway," added a
third. "Many happy returns of the day, Jack!" yelled a fourth.

Jan was charmed, and again and again he drew Mrs. Lake's attention
to the fact that it really WAS the Cheap Jack.

But the windmiller's wife was staring at the bride. Not merely
because the bride is commonly considered the central figure of a
wedding-party, but because her face seemed familiar to Mrs. Lake,
and she could not remember where she had seen her. Though she could
remember nothing, the association seemed to be one of pain. In vain
she beat her brains. Memory was an almost uncultivated quality with
her, and, like the rest of her intellectual powers, had a nervous,
skittish way of deserting her in need, as if from timidity.

Mrs. Lake could sometimes remember things when she got into bed, but
on this occasion her pillow did not assist her; and the windmiller
snubbed her for making "such a caddle" about a woman's face she
might have seen anywhere or nowhere, for that matter; so she got no
help from him.

And it was not till after the Cheap Jack and his wife had left the
neighborhood, that one night (she was in bed) it suddenly "came to
her," as she said, that the dwarf's bride was the woman who had
brought Jan to the mill, on the night of the great storm.

CHAPTER XIV.

SUBLUNARY ART.--JAN GOES TO SCHOOL.--DAME DATCHETT AT HOME.--JAN'S
FIRST SCHOOL SCRAPE.--JAN DEFENDS HIMSELF.

Even the hero of a tale cannot always be heroic, nor of romantic or
poetic tastes.

The wonderful beauty of the night sky and the moon had been fully
felt by the artist-nature of the child Jan; but about this time he
took to the study of a totally different subject,--pigs.

It was the force of circumstances which led Jan to "make pigs" on
his slate so constantly, instead of nobler subjects; and it dated
from the time when his foster-mother began to send him with the
other children to school at Dame Datchett's.

Dame Datchett's cottage was the last house on one side of the
village main street. It was low, thatched, creeper-covered, and had
only one floor, and two rooms,--the outer room where the Dame kept
her school, and the inner one where she slept. Dame Datchett's
scholars were very young, and it is to be hoped that the chief
objects of their parents in paying for their schooling were to
insure their being kept safely out of the way for a certain portion
of each day, and the saving of wear and tear to clothes and shoes.
It is to be hoped so, because this much of discipline was to some
extent accomplished. As to learning, Dame Datchett had little
enough herself, and was quite unable to impart even that, except to
a very industrious and intelligent pupil.

Her school appurtenances were few and simple. From one of them
arose Jan's first scrape at school. It was a long, narrow
blackboard, on which the alphabet had once been painted white,
though the letters were now so faded that the Dame could no longer
distinguish them, even in spectacles.

The scrape came about thus.

As he stood at the bottom of the little class which gathered in a
semicircle around the Dame's chair, his young eyes could see the
faded letters quite clearly, though the Dame's could not.

"Say th' alphabet, childern!" cried Dame Datchett; and as the class
shouted the names of the letters after her, she made a show of
pointing to each with a long "sallywithy" wand cut from one of the
willows in the water-meadows below. She ran the sallywithy along
the board at what she esteemed a judicious rate, to keep pace with
the shouted alphabet, but, as she could not see the letters, her
tongue and her wand were not in accord. Little did the wide-
mouthed, white-headed youngsters of the village heed this, but it
troubled Jan's eyes; and when--in consequence of her rubbing her
nose with her disengaged hand--the sallywithy slipped to Q as the
Dame cried F, Jan brought the lore he had gained from Abel to bear
upon her inaccuracy.

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