Books: Jan of the Windmill
J >>
Juliana Horatia Ewing >> Jan of the Windmill
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 | 8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19
"Well, well, Master Chuter," said the painter and decorator, rising
to go, "let the boy draw pigs and osses for his living. And I wish
he may find paint as easy as slate-pencil."
Master Linseed's parting words produced upon the company that
somewhat unreasonable depression which such ironical good wishes are
apt to cause; but they only roused the spirit of contradiction in
Master Chuter, and heightened his belief in Jan's talents more than
any praise from the painter could have done.
"Here's a pretty caddle about giving a boy's due!" said the
innkeeper. "But I knows the points of a oss, and the makings of a
pig, if I bean't a sign-painter. And, mark my words, the boy Jan
'ull out-paint Master Linseed yet."
Master Chuter spoke with triumph in his tone, but it was the triumph
of delivering his sentiments to unopposing hearers.
There were moments of greater triumph to come, of which he yet
wotted not, when the sevenfold fulfilment of his prediction should
be past dispute, and attested from his own walls by more lasting
monuments of Jan's skill than the too perishable sketch which now
stood like a text for the innkeeper on the mantelpiece of the Heart
of Oak.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE MOP.--THE SHOP.--WHAT THE CHEAP JACK'S WIFE HAD TO TELL.--WHAT
GEORGE WITHHELD.
A mop is a local name for a hiring-fair, at which young men and
women present themselves to be hired as domestic servants or farm
laborers for a year. It was at a mop that the windmiller had hired
George, and it was at that annual festival that his long service
came to an end. He betook himself to the town, where the fair was
going on, not with any definite intention of seeking another master,
but from a variety of reasons: partly for a holiday, and to "see
the fun;" partly to visit the Cheap Jack, and hear what advice he
had to give, and to learn what was in the letter; partly with the
idea that something might suggest itself in the busy town as a
suitable investment for his savings and his talents. At the worst,
he could but take another place.
The sun shone brightly on the market-place as George passed through
it. The scene was quaint and picturesque. Booths, travelling
shows, penny theatres, quack doctors, tumblers, profile cutters,
exhibitors and salesmen of all sorts, thronged the square, and
overflowed into a space behind, where some houses had been burnt
down and never rebuilt; whilst round the remains of the market cross
in the centre were grouped the lads and lasses "on hire." The girls
were smartly dressed, and the young men in snowy smocks, above which
peeped waistcoats of gay colors, looked in the earlier part of the
day so spruce, that it was as lamentable to see them after the hours
of beer-drinking and shag tobacco-smoking which followed, as it was
to see what might have been a neighborly and cheerful festival
finally swamped in drunkenness and debauchery.
George's smock was white, and George's waistcoat was red, and he had
made himself smart enough, but he did not linger amongst his fellow-
servants at the Cross. He hurried through the crowd, nodding
sheepishly in answer to a shower of chaff and greetings, and made
his way to the by-street where the Cheap Jack had a small dingy shop
for the sale of coarse pottery. Some people were spiteful enough to
hint that the shop-trade was of much less value to him than the
store-room attached, where the goods were believed to be not all of
one kind.
The red bread-pans, pipkins, flower-pots, and so forth, were grouped
about the door with some attempt at effective display, and with
cheap prices marked in chalk upon their sides. The window was
clean, and in it many knick-knacks of other kinds were mixed with
the smaller china ware. And, when George entered the shop, the
hunchback's wife was behind the counter. Like Mrs. Lake, he paused
to think where he could have seen her before; the not uncomely face
marred by an ugly mouth, in which the upper lip was long and cleft,
and the lower lip large and heavy, seemed familiar to him. He was
still beating his brains when the Cheap Jack came in.
George had been puzzled that the woman's countenance did not seem
new to him, and he was puzzled and disturbed also that the
expression on the face of the Cheap Jack was quite new. Whatever
the hunchback had in his head, however, he was not unfriendly in his
manner.
"Good morning, George, my dear!" he cried, cheerfully; "you've seen
my missus before, eh, George?" George was just about to say no,
when he remembered that he had seen the woman, and when and where.
"Dreadful night that was, Mr. Sannel!" said the Cheap Jack's wife,
with a smile on her large mouth. George assented, and by the
hospitable invitation of the newly married couple he followed them
into the dwelling part of the house, trying as he did so to decide
upon a plan for his future conduct.
Here at last was a woman who could probably tell all that he wanted
to know about the mystery on which he had hoped to trade, and--the
Cheap Jack had married her. If any thing could be got out of the
knowledge of Jan's history, the Cheap Jack, and not George, would
get it now. The hasty resolution to which George came was to try to
share what he could not keep entirely to himself. He flattered
himself he could be very civil, and--he had got the letter.
It proved useful. George was resolved not to show it until he had
got at something of what the large-mouthed woman had to tell; and,
as she wanted to see the letter, she made a virtue of necessity, and
seemed anxious to help the miller's man to the utmost of her power.
The history of her connection with Jan's babyhood was soon told, and
she told it truthfully.
Five years before her marriage to the Cheap Jack, she was a
chambermaid in a small hotel in London, and "under notice to leave."
Why--she did not deem it necessary to tell George. In this hotel
Jan was born, and Jan's mother died. She was a foreigner, it was
supposed, and her husband also, for they talked a foreign language
to each other. He was not with her when she first came, but he
joined her afterwards, and was with her at her death. So far the
Cheap Jack's wife spoke upon hearsay. Though employed at the hotel,
which was very full, she was not sleeping in the house; she was not
on good terms with the landlady, nor even with the other servants,
and her first real connection with the matter was when the
gentleman, overhearing some "words" between her and the landlady at
the bar, abruptly asked her if she were in want of employment. He
employed her,--to take the child to the very town where she was now
living as the Cheap Jack's wife. He did not come with her, as he
had to attend his wife's funeral. It was understood at the hotel
that he was going to take the body abroad for interment. So the
porter had said. The person to whom she was directed to bring the
child was a respectable old woman, living in the outskirts of the
town, whose business was sick-nursing. She seemed, however, to be
comfortably off, and had not been out for some time. She had been
nurse to the gentleman in his childhood, so she once told the Cheap
Jack's wife with tears. But she was always shedding tears, either
over the baby, or as she sat over her big Bible, "for ever having to
wipe her spectacles, and tears running over her nose ridic'lus to
behold." She was pious, and read the Bible aloud in the evening.
Then she had fainting fits; she could not go uphill or upstairs
without great difficulty, and she had one of her fits when she first
saw the child. If with these infirmities of body and mind the ex-
nurse had been easily managed, the Cheap Jack's wife professed that
she could have borne it with patience. But the old woman was
painfully shrewd, and there was no hoodwinking her. She never
allowed the Cheap Jack's wife to go out without her, and contrived,
in spite of a hundred plans and excuses, to prevent her from
speaking to any of the townspeople alone. Never, said Sal, never
could she have put up with it, even for the short time before the
gentleman came down to them, but for knowing it would be a paying
job. But his arrival was the signal for another catastrophe, which
ended in Jan's becoming a child of the mill.
If the sight of the baby had nearly overpowered the old nurse, the
sight of the dark-eyed gentleman overwhelmed her yet more. Then
they were closeted together for a long time, and the old woman's
tongue hardly ever stopped. Sal explained that she would not have
been such a fool as to let this conversation escape her, if she
could have helped it. She took her place at the keyhole, and had an
excuse ready for the old woman, if she should come out suddenly.
The old woman came out suddenly; but she did not wait for the
excuse. She sent the Cheap Jack's wife civilly on an errand into
the kitchen, and then followed her, and shut the door and turned the
key upon her without hesitation, leaving her unable to hear any
thing but the tones of the conversation through the parlor wall.
She never opened the door again. As far as the Cheap Jack's wife
could tell, the old woman seemed to be remonstrating and pleading;
the gentleman spoke now and then. Then there was a lull, then a
thud, then a short pause, and then the parlor-door was burst open,
and the gentleman came flying towards the kitchen, and calling for
the Cheap Jack's wife. The fact that the door was locked caused
some delay, and delay was not desirable. The old nurse had had "a
fit." When the doctor came, he gave no hope of her life. She had
had heart disease for many years, he said. In the midst of this
confusion, a letter came for the gentleman, which seemed absolutely
to distract him. He bade Sal get the little Jan ready, and put his
clothes together, and they started that evening for the mill. Sal
believed it was the doctor who recommended Mrs. Lake as a foster-
mother for the baby, having attended her child. The storm came on
after they started. The child had been very sickly ever since they
left London. The gentleman took the Cheap Jack's wife straight back
to the station, paid her handsomely, and sent her up to town again.
She had never seen him since. As to his name, it so happened she
had never heard it at the hotel; but when he was setting her off to
the country with the child, she asked it, and he told her that it
was Ford. The old nurse also spoke of him as Mr. Ford, but--so Sal
fancied--with a sort of effort, which made her suspect that it was
not his real name.
"Yes, it be!" said George, who had followed the narrative with open-
mouthed interest. "It be aal right. I knows. 'Twas a gentleman by
the name of Ford as cried his pocket-book, and the vive-pound bill
in the papers. 'Tis aal right. Ford--Jan Ford be the little
varment's name then, and he be gentry-born, too! Missus Lake she
allus said so, she did, sartinly."
George was so absorbed by the flood of information which had burst
upon him all at once, and by adjusting his clumsy thoughts to the
new view of Jan, that he did not stop to think whether the Cheap
Jack and his wife had known of the lost pocket-book and the reward.
They had not. The dark gentleman had no wish to reopen
communication with the woman he had employed. He thought (and
rightly) that the book had fallen when he stumbled over his cloak in
getting into the carriage, and he had refused to advertise it except
in the local papers. And at that time the Cheap Jack and Sal were
both in London.
But George's incautious speech recalled one or two facts to them,
and whilst George sat slowly endeavoring to realize that new idea,
"Master Jan Ford, full young gentleman, and at least half Frenchman"
(for of any other foreigners George knew nothing), the Cheap Jack
was pondering the words "five-pound bill," and connecting them with
George's account of his savings when they last met; and his quicker
spouse was also putting two and two together, but with a larger sum.
At the same instant the Cheap Jack inquired after George's money,
and his wife asked about the letter. But George had hastily come to
a decision. If the tale told by the woman were true, he had got a
great deal of information for nothing, and he saw no reason for
sharing whatever the letter might contain with those most likely to
profit by it. As to letting the Cheap Jack have any thing whatever
to do with the disposal of his savings, nothing could be further
from his intentions.
"Gearge bean't such a vool as a looks," thought that worthy, and
aloud he vowed, with unnecessary oaths, that the money was still in
the bank, and that he had forgotten to bring the letter, which was
in a bundle that he had left at the mill.
This disappointment did not, however, diminish the civility of the
Cheap Jack's wife. She was very hospitable, and even pressed George
to spend the night at their house, which he declined. He had a
dread of the Cheap Jack, which was almost superstitious.
For her civility, indeed, the Cheap Jack's wife was taken to task by
her husband in a few moments when they were alone together.
"I thought you was sharper than to be took in by him!" said the
hunchback, indignantly. "Do you believe all that gag about the bank
and the bundle? and you, as soft to him, telling him every blessed
thing, and he stowed the cash and the letter somewheres where we
shall never catch a sight of 'em, and got every thing out of you as
easy as shelling a pod of peas." And in language as strong as that
of the miller's man the Cheap Jack swore he could have done better
himself a hundred times over.
"Could you?" said the large-mouthed woman, contemptuously. "I
wouldn't live long in the country, I wouldn't, if it was to make me
such a owl as you've turned into. It ain't much farther than your
nose YOU sees!"
"Never mind me, Sal, my dear," said the hunchback, anxiously. "I
trusts you, my dear. And it seems to me as if you thought he'd got
'em about him. Do you, my dear, and why? And why did you tell him
the truth, straight on end, when a made-up tale would have done as
well, and kept him in the dark?"
"Why did I tell him the truth?" repeated the woman. "'Cos I ain't
such a countrified fool as to think lies is allus the cleverest tip,
'cos the truth went farthest this time. Why do I think he's got 'em
about him? First, 'cos he swore so steady he hadn't. For a ready
lie, and for acting a lie, and over-acting it at times, give me
townspeople; but for a thundering big un, against all reason, and
for sticking to it stupid when they're downright convicted, and with
a face as innercent as a baby's, give me a country lump. And next,
because I can tell with folks a deal sharper than him, even to which
side of 'em the pocket is they've got what they wants to hide in, by
the way they moves their head and their hands."
"Which side is it of him, Sal?" said the hunchback, with ugly
eagerness.
"The left," said Sal; "but it won't be there long."
CHAPTER XVII.
THE MILLER'S MAN AT THE MOP.--A LIVELY COMPANION.--SAL LOSES HER
PURSE.--THE RECRUITING SERGEANT.--THE POCKET-BOOK TWICE STOLEN.--
GEORGE IN THE KING'S ARMS.--GEORGE IN THE KING'S SERVICE.--THE
LETTER CHANGES HANDS, BUT KEEPS ITS SECRET.
For some years the ex-servant of the windmill had been rather
favored by fortune than otherwise. He found the pocket-book, and,
though he could not read the letter, he got the five-pound note.
Since then, his gains, honest and dishonest, had been much beyond
his needs, and his savings were not small. Suspicion was just
beginning to connect his name and that of the Cheap Jack with
certain thefts committed in the neighborhood, when he made up his
mind to go.
His wealth was not generally known. Many a time had he been tempted
to buy pigs (a common speculation in the district, and the first
stone of more than one rustic fortune), but the dread of exciting
suspicion balanced the almost certain profit, and he could never
make up his mind. For Master Lake paid only five pounds a year for
his man's valuable services, which, even in a district where at that
time habits were simple, and boots not made of brown paper, did not
leave much margin for the purchase of pigs. The pig speculation,
though profitable, was not safe. George had made money, however,
and he had escaped detection. On the whole, he had been fortunate.
But that mop saw a turn in the tide of his affairs, and ended
strangely with him.
It began otherwise. George had never felt more convinced of his
power to help himself at the expense of his neighbors than he did
after getting Sal's information, and keeping back his own, before
they started to join in the amusements of the fair. He was on good
terms with himself; none the less so that he had not failed to see
the Cheap Jack's chagrin, as the woman poured forth all she knew for
George's benefit, and got nothing in return.
The vanity of the ignorant knows no check except from without; under
flattery, it is boundless, and the Cheap Jack's wife found no
difficulty in fooling George to the top of his bent.
George was rather proud, too, of his companion. She was not, as has
been said, ill-looking but for her mouth, and beauty was not
abundant enough in the neighborhood to place her at much
disadvantage. Fashionable finery was even less common, and the
Cheap Jack's wife was showily dressed. And George found her a very
pleasant companion; much livelier than the slow-witted damsels of
the country-side. For him she had nothing but flattery; but her
smart speeches at the expense of other people in the crowd caused
the miller's man to double up his long back with laughter.
A large proportion of the country wives and sweethearts tramped up
and down the fair at the heels of their husbands and swains, like
squaws after their Indian spouses. But the Cheap Jack's wife asked
George for his arm,--the left one,--and she clung to it all the day.
"Quite the lady in her manners she be," thought George. She called
him "Mr. Sannel," too. George felt that she admired him. For a
moment his satisfaction was checked, when she called his attention
to the good looks of a handsome recruiting sergeant, who was
strutting about the mop with an air expressing not so much that it
all belonged to him as that he didn't at all belong to it.
"But there, he ain't to hold a candle to you, Mr. Sannel, though his
coat do sit well upon him," said the Cheap Jack's wife.
It gratified George's standing ill-will to the Cheap Jack to have
"cut him out" with this showy lady, and to laugh loudly with her
upon his arm, whilst the hunchback followed, like a discontented
cur, at their heels. If there was a drawback to the merits of his
lively companion, it was her power of charming the money out of
George's pocket.
The money that he disbursed came from the right-hand pocket of his
red waistcoat. In the left-hand pocket (and the pockets, like the
pattern of the waistcoat, were large) was the lost pocket-book. It
was a small one, and just fitted in nicely. In the pocket-book were
George's savings, chiefly in paper. Notes were more portable than
coin, and, as George meant to invest them somewhere where he was not
known, no suspicions need be raised by their value. The letter was
there also.
There were plenty of shows at the mop, and the Cheap Jack's wife saw
them all. The travelling wax-works; the menagerie with a very mangy
lion in an appallingly rickety cage; the fat Scotchman, a monster
made more horrible to view by a dress of royal Stuart tartan; the
penny theatre, and a mermaid in a pickling-tub.
One treat only she declined. The miller's man would have paid for a
shilling portrait of her, but she refused to be taken.
The afternoon was wearing away, when Sal caught sight of some
country bumpkins upon a stage, who were preparing to grin through
horse-collars against each other for the prize of a hat. As she had
never seen or heard of the entertainment, George explained it to
her.
It was a contest in which the ugliest won the prize. Only the
widest-mouthed, most grotesque-looking clowns of the place attempted
to compete; and he won who, besides being the ugliest by nature,
could "grin" and contort his features in the mode which most tickled
the fancy of the beholders. George had once competed himself, and
had only failed to secure the hat because his nearest rival could
squint as well as grin; and he was on the point of boasting of this,
but on second thoughts he kept the fact to himself.
Very willing indeed he was to escort his companion to a show in the
open air for which nothing was charged, and they plunged valiantly
into the crowd. The crowd was huge, but George's height and
strength stood him in good stead, and he pushed on, and dragged Sal
with him. There was some confusion on the stage. A nigger, with a
countenance which of itself moved the populace to roars of laughter,
had applied to be allowed to compete. Opinions were divided as to
whether it would be fair to native talent, whilst there was a strong
desire to see a face that in its natural condition was "as good as a
play," with the additional attractions of a horse-collar and a grin.
The country clowns on the stage fumed, and the nigger grinned and
bowed, and the crowd yelled, and surged, and swayed, and weak people
got trampled, and everybody was tightly squeezed, and the Cheap
Jack's wife was alarmed, and withdrew her hand from George's arm,
and begged him to hold her up, which he gallantly did, she meanwhile
clinging with both hands to his smock.
As to the hunchback, it is hardly necessary to say that he did not
get very far into the crowd, and when his wife and George returned,
laughing gayly, they found him standing outside, with a sulky face.
"Look here, missus," said he; "you're a enjoying of yourself, but
I'm not. You've got the blunt, so just hand over a few coppers, and
I'll get a pint at the King's Arms."
Sal began fumbling to find her pocket, but when she found it, she
gave a shriek, and turned it inside out. It was empty!
If the miller's man had enjoyed himself before, he was not to be
envied now. The Cheap Jack's wife poured forth her woes in a
continuous stream of complaint. She minutely described the purse
which she had lost, the age and quality of her dress, and the
impossibility of there being a hole in her pocket. She took
George's arm once more, and insisted upon revisiting every stall and
show where they had been, to see if her purse had been found. Up
and down George toiled with her, wiping his face and feeling that he
looked like a fool, as at each place in turn they were told that
they might as well "look for a needle in a bottle of hay," and that
pickpockets were as plenty at a mop as blackberries in September.
He was tired of the woman now she was troublesome, and fidgetingly
persevering, as women are apt to be, and he was vexed to feel how
little money was left in his right-hand pocket. He did not think of
feeling in the left one, not merely because the Cheap Jack was
standing in front of him, but because no fear for the safety of its
contents had dawned upon him. It was easy for a woman to lose her
purse out of a pocket flapping loosely in the drapery of her skirts,
but that any thing stowed tightly away in a man's waistcoat under
his smock could be stolen in broad daylight without his knowledge
did not occur to him. As little did he guess that of all the
pickpockets who were supposed to drive a brisk trade at the fair,
the quickest, the cleverest, the most practised professional was the
Cheap Jack's wife.
She had feigned to see "something" on the ground near an oyster
stall, which she said "might be" her purse. As indeed it might as
well as any thing else, seeing that the said purse had no existence.
As she left them, George turned to the Cheap Jack. "Look 'ee here,
Jack," said he; "take thee missus whoam. She do seem to be so put
about, 'tis no manner of use her stopping in the mop. And I be off
for a pint of something to wash my throat out. I be mortal dry with
running up and down after she. Women does make such a caddle about
things."
"You might stand a pint for an old friend, George, my dear," said
the Cheap Jack, following him. But George hurried on, and shook his
head. "No, no," said he; "tak' thee missus whoam, I tell 'ee.
She've not seen much at your expense today, if she have lost her
pus."
With which the miller's man escaped into the King's Arms, and pushed
his way to the farthest end of the room, where a large party of men
were drinking and smoking.
At a table near him sat the recruiting sergeant whom he had noticed
before, and he now examined him more closely.
He was of a not uncommon type of non-commissioned officers in the
English service. Not of a very intellectual--hardly perhaps of an
interesting--kind of good looks, he was yet a strikingly handsome
man. His features were good and clearly cut; his hair and moustache
were dark, thick, short and glossy; his dark eyes were quick and
bright; his figure was well-made, and better developed; his shapely
hands were not only clean, they were fastidiously trimmed about the
nails (a daintiness common below the rank of sergeant, especially
among men acting as clerks); and if the stone in his signet ring was
not a real onyx, it looked quite as well at a distance, and the
absence of a crest was not conspicuous. He spoke with a very good
imitation of the accent of the officers he had served with, and in
his alertness, his well-trained movements, his upright carriage, and
his personal cleanliness, he came so near to looking like a
gentleman that he escaped it only by a certain swagger, which proved
an ill-chosen substitute for well-bred ease.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 | 8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19