Books: Jan of the Windmill
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Juliana Horatia Ewing >> Jan of the Windmill
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"'Tis a Q, not a F," he said, boldly and aloud.
A titter ran through the class, and the biggest and stupidest boy
found the joke so overwhelming that he stretched his mouth from ear
to ear, and doubled himself up with laughter, till it looked as if
his corduroy-breeched knee were a turnip, and he about to munch it.
The Dame dropped her sallywithy and began to feel under her chair.
"Which be the young varment as said a F was a Q?" she rather
unfairly inquired.
"A didn't say a F was a Q"-- began Jan; but a chorus of cowardly
little voices drowned him, and curried favor with the Dame by
crying, "Tis Jan Lake, the miller's son, missus."
And the big boy, conscious of his own breach of good manners, atoned
for it by officiously dragging Jan to Dame Datchett's elbow.
"Hold un vor me," said the Dame, settling her spectacles firmly on
her nose.
And with infinite delight the great booby held Jan to receive his
thwacks from the strap which the Dame had of late years substituted
for the birch rod. And as Jan writhed, he chuckled as heartily as
before, it being an amiable feature in the character of such clowns
that, so long as they can enjoy a guffaw at somebody's expense, the
subject of their ridicule is not a matter of much choice or
discrimination.
After the first angry sob, Jan set his teeth and bore his punishment
in a proud silence, quite incomprehensible by the small rustics
about him, who, like the pigs of the district, were in the habit of
crying out in good time before they were hurt as a preventive
measure.
Strangely enough, it gave the biggest boy the impression that Jan
was "poor-spirited," and unable to take his own part,--a temptation
to bully him too strong to be resisted.
So when the school broke up, and the children were scattering over
the road and water-meads, the wide-mouthed boy came up to Jan and
snatched his slate from him.
"Give Jan his slate!" cried Jan, indignantly.
He was five years old, but the other was seven, and he held the
slate above his head.
"And who be JAN, then, thee little gallus-bird?" said he,
tauntingly.
"I be Jan!" answered the little fellow, defiantly. "Jan Lake, the
miller's son. Give I his slate!"
"Thee's not a miller's son," said the other; and the rest of the
children began to gather round.
"I be a miller's son," reiterated Jan. "And I've got a miller's
thumb, too;" and he turned up his little thumb for confirmation of
the fact.
"Thee's not a miller's son," repeated the other, with a grin.
"Thee's nobody's child, thee is. Master Lake's not thy vather, nor
Mrs. Lake bean't thy mother. Thee was brought to the mill in a sack
of grist, thee was."
In saying which, the boy repeated a popular version of Jan's
history.
If any one had been present outside Dame Datchett's cottage at that
moment who had been in the windmill when Jan first came to it, he
would have seen a likeness so vivid between the face of the child
and the face of the man who brought him to the mill as would have
seemed to clear up at least one point of the mystery of his
parentage.
Pride and wrath convulsed every line of the square, quaint face, and
seemed to narrow it to the likeness of the man's, as, with his black
eyes blazing with passion, Jan flew at his enemy.
The boy still held Jan's slate on high, and with a derisive "haw!
haw!" he brought it down heavily above Jan's head. But Jan's eye
was quick, and very true. He dodged the blow, which fell on the
boy's own knees, and then flew at him like a kitten in a tiger fury.
They were both small and easily knocked over, and in an instant they
were sprawling on the road, and cuffing, and pulling, and kicking,
and punching with about equal success, except that the bigger boy
prudently roared and howled all the time, in the hope of securing
some assistance in his favor.
"Dame Datchett! Missus! Murder! Yah! Boohoo! The little varment
be a throttling I."
But Mrs. Datchett was deaf. Also, she not unnaturally considered
that, in looking after "the young varments" in school-hours, she
fully earned their weekly pence, and was by no means bound to
disturb herself because they squabbled in the street.
Meanwhile Jan gradually got the upper hand of his lubberly and far
from courageous opponent, whose smock he had nearly torn off his
back. He had not spent any of his breath in calling for aid, but
now, in reply to the boy's cries for mercy and release, he shouted,
"What be my name, now, thee big gawney? Speak, or I'll drottle
'ee."
"Jan Lake," said his vanquished foe. "Let me go! Yah! yah!"
"Whose son be I?" asked the remorseless Jan.
"Abel Lake's, the miller! Boohoo, boohoo!" sobbed the boy.
"And what be this, then, Willum Smith?" was Jan's final question, as
he brought his thumb close to his enemy's eye.
"It be the miller's thumb thee's got, Jan Lake," was the
satisfactory answer.
CHAPTER XV.
WILLUM GIVES JAN SOME ADVICE.--THE CLOCK FACE.--THE HORNET AND THE
DAME.--JAN DRAWS PIGS.--JAN AND HIS PATRONS.--KITTY CHUTER.--THE
FIGHT.--MASTER CHUTER'S PREDICTION.
Jan went back to school. Though his foster-mother was indignant,
and ready to do battle both with Dame Datchett and with William
Smith's aunt (with whom, in lieu of parents, the boy lived), and
though Abel expressed his anxiety to go down and "teach Willum to
vight one of his own zize," Jan steadily rejected their help, and
said manfully, "Jan bean't feared of un. I whopped un, I did."
So Mrs. Lake doctored his bruises, and sent him off to school again.
She yielded the more readily that she felt certain that the
windmiller would not take the child's part against the Dame.
No further misfortune befell him. William, if loutish and a bit of
a bully on occasion, was not an ill-natured child; and, having a
turn for humor of a broad, unintellectual sort, he and Jan became
rather friendly on the common, but reprehensible ground of playing
pranks, which kept the school in a titter and the Dame in doubt.
And, if detected, they did not think a dose of the strap by any
means too high a price to pay for their fun.
For William's sufferings under that instrument of discipline were
not to be measured by his doleful howlings and roarings, nor even by
his ready tears.
"What be 'ee so voolish for as to say nothin' when her wollops 'ee?"
he asked of Jan, in a very friendly spirit, one day. "Thee should
holler as loud as 'ee can. Them that hollers and cries murder she
soon stops for, does Dame Datchett. She be feared of their mothers
hearing 'em, and comin' after 'em."
Jan could not lower himself to accept such base advice; but his
superior adroitness did much to balance the advantage William had
over him, in a less scrupulous pride.
As to learning, I fear that, after the untoward consequences of his
zeal for the alphabet, Jan made no effort to learn any thing but
cat's-cradle from his neighbors.
On one other occasion, indeed, he was somewhat over-zealous, and
only escaped the strap for his reward by a friendly diversion on the
part of his friend. The Dame had a Dutch clock in the corner of her
kitchen, the figures on the face of which were the common Arabic
ones, and not Roman. And as one of the few things the Dame
professed was to "teach the clock," she would, when the figures had
been recited after the fashion in which her scholars shouted over
the alphabet, set those who had advanced to the use of slates to
copy the figures from the clock-face.
Slowly and sorrowfully did William toil over this lesson. Again and
again did he rub out his ill-proportioned fives, with so greasy a
finger and such a superabundance of moisture as to make a sort of
puddle, into which he dug heavily, and broke two pencils.
"A vive be such an akkerd vigger," he muttered, in reply to Jan, who
had looked up inquiringly as the second pencil snapped. "'Twill
come aal right, though, when a dries."
It did dry, but any thing but right. Jan rubbed out the mass of
thick and blotted strokes, and when the Dame was not looking, he
made William's figures for him. Jan was behindhand in spelling, but
to copy figures was no difficulty to him.
Having helped his friend thus, he pulled his smock, to draw
attention to his own slate. The other children wrote so slowly that
time had hung heavy on his hands; and, instead of copying the
figures in a row, he had made a drawing of the clock-face, with the
figures on it; but instead of the hands, he had put eyes, nose, and
mouth, and below the mouth a round gray blot, which William
instantly recognized for a portrait of the mole on Dame Datchett's
chin. This brilliant caricature so tickled him, that he had a fit
of choking from suppressed laughter; and he and Jan, being detected
"in mischief," were summoned with their slates to the Dame's chair.
William came off triumphant; but when the Dame caught sight of Jan's
slate, without minutely examining his work, she said, "Zo thee's
been scraaling on thee slate, instead of writing thee figures," and
at once began to fumble beneath her chair.
But William had slightly moved the strap with his foot, as he stood
with a perfectly unmoved and vacant countenance beside the Dame,
which made some delay; and as Mrs. Datchett bent lower on the right
side of her chair, William began upon the left a "hum," which, with
a close imitation of the crowing of a cock, the grunting of a pig,
and the braying of a donkey, formed his chief stock of
accomplishments.
"Drat the thing! Where be un?" said the Dame, endangering her
balance in the search.
"B-z-z-z-z!" went William behind the chair; and he added, sotto
voce, to Jan, "She be as dunch as a bittle."
At last the Dame heard, and looked round. "Be that a harnet,
missus, do 'ee think?" said William, with a face as guileless as a
babe's.
Dame Datchett rose in terror. William bent to look beneath her
chair for the hornet, and of course repeated his hum. As the hornet
could neither be found nor got rid of, the alarmed old lady broke up
the school, and went to lay a trap of brown sugar outside the window
for her enemy. And so Jan escaped a beating.
But this and the story of his first fight are digressions. It yet
remains to be told how he took to drawing pigs.
Dame Datchett's cottage was the last on one side of the street; but
it did not face the street, but looked over the water-meadows, and
the little river, and the bridge.
As Jan sat on the end of the form, he could look through the Dame's
open door, the chief view from which was of a place close by the
bridge, and on the river's bank, where the pig-minders of the
village brought their pigs to water. Day after day, when the tedium
of doing nothing under Dame Datchett's superintendence was
insufficiently relieved to Jan's active mind by pinching "Willum"
till he giggled, or playing cat's-cradle with one of his foster-
brothers, did he welcome the sight of a flock of pigs with their
keeper, scuttling past the Dame's door, and rushing snorting to the
stream.
Much he envied the freedom of the happy pig-minder, whilst the
vagaries of the pigs were an unfailing source of amusement.
The degree and variety of expression in a pig's eye can only be
appreciated by those who have studied pigs as Morland must have
studied them. The pertness, the liveliness, the humor, the love of
mischief, the fiendish ingenuity and perversity of which pigs are
capable, can be fully known to the careworn pig-minder alone. When
they are running away,--and when are they not running away?--they
have an action with the hind legs very like a donkey in a state of
revolt. But they have none of the donkey's too numerous grievances.
And if donkeys squealed at every switch, as pigs do, their
undeserved sufferings would have cried loud enough for vengeance
before this.
Jan's opportunities for studying pigs were good. As the smallest
and swiftest of the flock, his tail tightly curled, and
indescribable jauntiness in his whole demeanor, came bounding to the
river's brink, followed by his fellows, driving, pushing, snuffing,
winking, and gobbling, and lastly by a small boy in a large coat,
with a long switch, Jan was witness of the whole scene from Dame
Datchett's door. And, as he sat with his slate and pencil before
him, he naturally took to drawing the quaint comic faces and
expressive eyes of the herd, and their hardly less expressive backs
and tails; and to depicting the scenes which took place when the
pigs had enjoyed their refreshment, and with renewed vigor led their
keeper in twenty different directions, instead of going home. Back,
up the road, where he could hardly drive them at the point of the
switch a few hours before; by sharp turns into Squire Ammaby's
grounds, or the churchyard; and helter-skelter through the water-
meadows.
The fame of Jan's "pitcher-making" had gone before him to Dame
Datchett's school by the mouths of his foster-brothers and sisters,
and he found a dozen little voices ready to dictate subjects for his
pencil.
"Make a 'ouse, Janny Lake." "Make thee vather's mill, Janny Lake."
"Make a man. Make Dame Datchett. Make the parson. Make the Cheap
Jack. Make Daddy Angel. Make Master Chuter. Make a oss--cow--
ship--pig!"
But the popularity obtained by Jan's pigs soon surpassed that of all
his other performances.
"Make pigs for I, Janny Lake!" and "Make pigs for I, too!" was a
sort of whispering chorus that went on perpetually under the Dame's
nose. But when she found that it led to no disturbance, that the
children only huddled round the child Jan and his slate like eager
scholars round a teacher, Dame Datchett was wise enough to be
thankful that Jan possessed a power she had never been able to
acquire,--that he could "keep the young varments quiet."
"He be most's good's a monitor," thought the Dame; and she took a
nap, and Jan's genius held the school together.
The children tried other influences besides persuasion.
"Jan Lake, I've brought thee an apple. Draa out a pig for I on a's
slate."
Jan had a spirit of the most upright and honorable kind. He never
took an unfair advantage, and to the petty cunning which was
"Willum's" only idea of wisdom he seemed by nature incapable of
stooping. But in addition to, and alongside of, his artistic
temperament, there appeared to be in him no small share of the
spirit of a trader. The capricious, artistic spirit made him fitful
in his use even of the beloved slate; but, when he was least
inclined to draw, the offer of something he very much wanted would
spur him to work; and in the spirit of a true trader, he worked
well.
He would himself have made a charming study for a painter, as he sat
surrounded by his patrons, who watched him with gaping mouths of
wonderment, as his black eyes moved rapidly to and fro between the
river's brink and his slate, and his tiny fingers steered the pencil
into cunning lines which "made pigs." "The very moral!" as William
declared, smacking his corduroy breeches with delight.
Sometimes Jan hardly knew that they were there, he was so absorbed
in his work. His eyes glowed with that strong pleasure which comes
in the very learning of any art, perhaps of any craft. Now and
then, indeed, his face would cloud with a different expression, and
in fits of annoyance, like that in which his foster-mother found him
outside the windmill, he would break his pencils, and ruthlessly
destroy sketches with which his patrons would have been quite
satisfied. But at other moments his face would twinkle with a very
sunshine of smiles, as he was conscious of having caught exactly the
curve which expressed obstinacy in this pig's back, or the air of
reckless defiance in that other's tail.
And so he learned little or nothing, and improved in his drawing,
and kept the school quiet, and had always a pocket well filled with
sweet things, nails, string, tops, balls, and such treasures, earned
by his art.
One day as he sat "making pigs" for one after another of the group
of children round him, a pig of especial humor having drawn a murmur
of delight from the circle, this murmur was dismally echoed by a sob
from a little maid on the outside of the group. It was Master
Chuter's little daughter, a pretty child, with an oval, dainty-
featured face, and a prim gentleness about her, like a good little
girl in a good little story. The intervening young rustics began to
nudge each other and look back at her.
"Kitty Chuter be crying!" they whispered.
"What be amiss with 'ee, then, Kitty Chuter?" said Jan, looking up
from his work; and the question was passed on with some impatience,
as her tears prevented her reply. "What be amiss with 'ee?"
"Janny Lake have never made a pig for I," sobbed the little maid,
with her head dolefully inclined to her left shoulder, and her oval
face pulled to a doubly pensive length. "I axed my vather to let me
get him a posy, and a said I might. And I got un some vine Bloody
Warriors, and a heap of Boy's Love off our big bush, that smelled
beautiful. And vather says a can have some water-blobs off our pond
when they blows. But Tommy Green met I as a was coming down to
school, and a snatched my vlowers from me, and I begged un to let me
keep some of un, and a only laughed at me. And I daren't go back,
for I was late; and now I've nothin' to give Janny Lake to make a
draft of a pig for I." And, having held up for the telling of her
tale, the little maid broke down in fresh tears.
Jan finished off the tail of the pig he was drawing with a squeak of
the pencil that might have come from the pig itself and, stuffing
the slate into its owner's hands, he ran up to Kitty Chuter and
kissed her wet cheeks, saying, "Give I thee slate, Kitty Chuter, and
I'll make thee the best pig of all. I don't want nothing from thee
for 't. And when school's done, I'll whop Tommy Green, if I sees
him."
And forthwith, without looking from the door for studies, Jan drew a
fat sow with her little ones about her; the other children
clustering round to peep, and crying, "He've made Kitty Chuter one,
two, three, vour, VIVE pigs!"
"Ah, and there be two more you can't see, because the old un be
lying on 'em," said Jan.
"Six, seven!" William counted; and he assisted the calculation by
sticking up first a thumb and then a forefinger as he spoke.
Some who had not thought half a ball of string, or a dozen nails as
good as new, too much to pay for a single pig drawn on one side of
their slates, and only lasting as long as they could contrive to
keep the other side in use without quite smudging that one, were now
disposed to be dissatisfied with their bargains. But as the school
broke up, and Tom Green was seen loitering on the other side of the
road, every thing was forgotten in the general desire to see Jan
carry out his threat, and "whop" a boy bigger than himself for
bullying a little girl.
Jan showed no disposition to shirk, and William acted as his friend,
and held his slate and book.
Success is not always to the just, however; and poor Jan was
terribly beaten by his big opponent, though not without giving him
some marks of the combat to carry away.
Kitty Chuter wept bitterly for Jan's bloody nose; but he comforted
her, saying, "Never mind, Kitty; if he plagues thee again, 'll fight
un again and again, till I whops he."
But his valor was not put to the proof, for Tommy Green molested her
no more.
Jan washed his face in the water-meadows, and went stout-heartedly
home, where Master Lake beat him afresh, as he ironically said, "to
teach him to vight young varments like himself instead of minding
his book."
But upon Master Chuter, of the Heart of Oak, the incident made quite
a different impression. He was naturally pleased by Jan's
championship of his child, and, added to this, he was much impressed
by the sketch on the slate. It was, he said, the "living likeness"
of his own sow; and, as she had seven young pigs, the portrait was
exact, allowing for the two which Jan had said were out of sight.
He gave Kitty a new slate, and kept the sketch, which he showed to
all in-comers. He displayed it one evening to the company assembled
round the hearth of the little inn, and took occasion to propound
his views on the subject of Jan's future life.
(Master Chuter was fond of propounding his views,--a taste which was
developed by always being sure of an audience.)
"It's nothing to me," said Master Chuter, speaking of Jan, "who the
boy be. It be no fault of his'n if he's a fondling. And one
thing's sure enough. Them that left him with Master Lake left
something besides him. There was that advertisement,--you remember
that about the five-pound bill in the paper, Daddy Angel?"
"Ay, ay, Master Chuter," said Daddy Angel; "after the big storm,
five year ago. Sartinly, Master Chuter."
"Was it ever found, do ye think?" said Master Linseed, the painter
and decorator.
"It must have been found," said the landlord; "but I bean't so sure
about it's having been given up, the notice was in so long. And
whoever did find un must have found un at once. But what I says is,
five-pound notes lost as easy as that comes from where there's more
of the same sort. And, if Master Lake be paid for the boy, he can
'fford to 'prentice him when his time comes. He've boys enough of
his own to take to the mill, and Jan do seem to have such an
uncommon turn for drawing things out, I'd try him with painting and
varnishing, if he was mine. And I believe he'd come to signs, too!
Look at that, now! It be small, and the boy've had no paint to lay
on, but there's the sign of the Jolly Sow for you, as natteral as
life. You know about signs, Master Linseed," continued the
landlord. For there was a tradition that the painter could "do
picture-signs," though he had only been known to renew lettered ones
since he came to the neighborhood. "Master Lake should 'prentice
him with you when he's older," Master Chuter said in conclusion.
But Master Linseed did not respond warmly. He felt it a little
beneath his dignity as a sign-painter to jump at the idea, though
the rest of the company assented in a general murmur.
"Scrawling on a slate," the painter and decorator began--and at this
point he paused, after the leisurely customs of the district, to
light his pipe at the leaden-weighted candlestick which stood near;
and then, as his hearers sat expectant, but not impatient,
proceeded: "Scrawling on a slate is one thing, Master Chuter:
painting and decorating's another. Painting's a trade; and not
rightly to be understood by them that's not larned it, nor to be
picked up by all as can scrawl a line here and a line there, as the
whim takes 'em. Take oak-graining,"--and here Master Linseed paused
again, with a fine sense of effect,--"who'd ever think of taking a
comb to it as didn't know? And for the knots, I've worked 'em--now
with a finger and now a thumb--over a shutter-front till it looked
that beautiful the man it was done for telled me himself,--'I'd
rather,' says he, 'have 'em as you've done 'em than the real thing.'
But young hands is nowhere with the knots. They puts 'em in too
thick."
The company said, "Ay, ay!" in a tone of unbroken assent, for Master
Linseed was understood to have "come from a distance," and to "know
a good deal." But an innkeeper stands above a painter and decorator
anywhere, and especially on his own hearth, and Master Chuter did
not mean to be put down.
"I suppose old hands were young uns once, Master Linseed," said he;
"and if the boy were never much at oak-graining, I'd back him for
sign-painting, if he were taught. Why, the pigs he draas out, look
you. I could cut 'em up, and not a piece missing; not a joint, nor
as much as would make a pound of sausages. And if a draas pigs, why
not osses, why not any other kind?"
"Ay, ay!" said the company.
"I be thinking," continued Master Chuter, "of a gentlemen as draad
out that mare of my father's that ran in the mail. You remember the
coaches, Daddy Angel?"
"Ay, ay, Master Chuter. Between Lonnon and Exeter a ran. Fine days
at the Heart of Oak, then, Master Chuter."
"He weren't a sign-painter, that I knows on. A were somethin' more
in the gentry way," said Master Chuter, not, perhaps, quite without
malice in the distinction. "He were what they calls in genteel talk
a" -
"Artis'," said Master Linseed, removing his pipe, to supply the
missing word with a sense of superiority.
"No, not a artis'," said Master Chuter, "though it do begin with a
A, too. 'Twasn't a artis' he was, 'twas a" -
"Ammytoor," said the travelled sign-painter.
"That be it," said the innkeeper. "A ammytoor. And he was short of
money, I fancy, and so 'twas settled a should paint this mare of my
father's to set against the bill. And a draad and a squinted at un,
and a squinted at un and a draad, and laid the paint on till the
pictur' looked all in a mess, and then he took un away to vinish.
But when a sent it home, I thought my vather would have had the law
of un. I'm blessed if a hadn't given the mare four white feet, and
shoulders that wouldn't have pulled a vegetable cart; and she near-
wheeler of the mail! I'd lay a pound bill Jan Lake would a done her
ever so much better, for as young a hand as a is, if a'd squinted at
her as long."
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