Books: Jan of the Windmill
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Juliana Horatia Ewing >> Jan of the Windmill
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To George's eyes this was not visible as a fault. The sergeant was
as much "the swell" as George could imagine any man to be.
George Sannel could never remember with distinctness the ensuing
events of that afternoon. Dim memories remained with him of the
sergeant meeting his long stare with some civilities, to which he
was conscious of having replied less suitably than he might have
wished. At one period, certainly, bets were made upon the height of
himself and the handsome soldier, respectively, and he was sure that
they were put back to back, and that he proved the taller man; and
that it was somehow impressed upon him that he did not look so,
because the other carried himself so much better. It was also
impressed upon him, somehow, that if he would consent to be well-
dressed, well-fed, and well-lodged, at the expense of the country,
his own appearance would quickly rival that of the sergeant, and
that the reigning Sovereign would gladly pay, as well as keep and
clothe, such an ornamental bulwark of the state. At some other
period the sergeant had undoubtedly told him to "give it a name,"
and the name he gave it was sixpenny ale, which he drank at the
sergeant's expense, and which was followed by shandy-gaff, on the
same footing.
At what time and for what reason George put his hand into his left-
hand waistcoat pocket he never could remember. But when he did so,
and found it empty, the cry he raised had such a ring of anguish as
might have awakened pity for him, even where his ill deeds were
fully known.
The position was perplexing, if he had had a sober head to consider
it with. That pickpockets abounded had been well impressed upon his
slow intellect, and that there was no means of tracing property so
lost, in the crowd and confusion of the mop. True, his property was
worth "crying," worth offering a reward for. But the pocket-book
was not his, and the letter was not addressed to him; and it was
doubtful if he even dare run the risk of claiming them.
His first despair was succeeded by a sort of drunken fury, in which
he accused the men sitting with him of robbing him, and then swore
it was the Cheap Jack, and so raved till the landlord of the King's
Arms expelled him as "drunk and disorderly," and most of the company
refused to believe that he had had any such sum of money to lose.
Exactly how or where, after this, the sergeant found him, George
could not remember, but his general impression of the sergeant's
kindness was strong. He could recall that he pumped upon his head
in the yard of the King's Arms, to sober him, by George's own
request; and that it did somewhat clear his brain, his remembrance
of seeing the sergeant wipe his fingers on a cambric handkerchief
seems to prove. They then paced up and down together arm in arm, if
not as accurately in step as might have been agreeable to the
soldier. George remembered hearing of prize money, to which his own
loss was a bagatelle, and gathering on the whole that the army, as a
profession, opened a sort of boundless career of opportunities to a
man of his peculiar talents and appearance. There was something
infectious, too, in the gay easy style in which the soldier seemed
to treat fortune, good or ill; and the miller's man was stimulated
at last to vow that he was not such a fool as he looked, and would
"never say die." To the best of his belief, the sergeant replied in
terms which showed that, had he been "in cash," George's loss would
have been made good by him, out of pure generosity, and on the spot.
As it was, he pressed upon his acceptance the sum of one shilling,
which the miller's man pocketed with tears.
What recruit can afterwards remember which argument of the skilful
sergeant did most to melt his discretion into valor?
The sun had not dried the dew from the wolds, and the sails of the
windmill hung idle in the morning air, when George Sannel made his
first march to the drums and fifes, with ribbons flying from his
hat, a recruit of the 206th (Royal Wiltshire) Regiment of Foot.
As the Cheap Jack and his wife hastened home from the mop, Sal had
some difficulty in restraining her husband's impatience to examine
the pocket-book as they walked along.
Prudence prevailed, however, and it was not opened till they were at
home and alone.
In notes and money, George's savings amounted to more than thirteen
pounds.
"Pretty well, my dear," said the Cheap Jack, grinning hideously.
"And now for the letter. Read it aloud, Sal, my dear; you're a
better scholar than me."
Sal opened the thin, well-worn sheet, and read the word "Moerdyk,"
but then she paused. And, like Abel, she paused so long that the
hunchback pressed impatiently to look over her shoulder.
But the letter was written in a foreign language, and the Cheap Jack
and his wife were no wiser for it than the miller's man.
CHAPTER XVIII.
MIDSUMMER HOLIDAYS.--CHILD FANCIES.--JAN AND THE PIG-MINDER.--MASTER
SALTER AT HOME.--JAN HIRES HIMSELF OUT.
Midsummer came, and the Dame's school broke up for the holidays.
Jan had longed for them intensely. Not that he was oppressed by the
labors of learning, but that he wanted to be out of doors. Many a
little one was equally eager for the freedom of the fields, but the
common child-love for hedges and ditches, and flower-picking, and
the like, was intensified in Jan by a deeper pleasure which country
scenes awoke from the artist nature within him. That it is no empty
sentimentality to speak of an artist nature in a child, let the
child-memories of all artists bear witness! That they inspired the
poet Wordsworth with one of his best poems, and that they have dyed
the canvas of most landscape painters with the indestructible local
coloring of the scenes of each man's childhood, will hardly be
denied.
That this is against the wishes and the theories of many excellent
people has nothing to do with its truth. If all children were the
bluff, hearty, charmingly naughty, enviably happy, utterly simple
and unsentimental beings that some of us wish, and so assert them to
be, it might be better for them, or it might not--who can say? That
the healthy, careless, rough and ready type is the one to encourage,
many will agree, who cannot agree that it is universal, or even much
the most common. It is probably from an imperfect remembrance of
their nursery lives that some people believe that the griefs of
one's childhood are light, its joys uncomplicated, and its tastes
simple. A clearer recollection of the favorite poetry and the most
cherished day-dreams of very early years would probably convince
them that the strongest taste for tragedy comes before one's teens,
and inclines to the melodramatic; that sentimentality (of some kind)
is grateful to the verge of mawkishness; and that simple tastes are
rather a result of culture and experience than natural gifts of
infancy.
But in this rummaging up of the crude tastes, the hot little
opinions, the romance, the countless visions, the many affectations
of nursery days, there will be recalled also a very real love of
nature; varying, of course, in its intensity from a mere love of
fresh air and free romping, and a destructive taste for nosegays, to
a living romance about the daily walks of the imaginative child,--a
world apart, peopled with invisible company, such as fairies, and
those fancy friends which some children devise for themselves, or
with the beasts and flowers, to which love has given a personality.
To the romance child-fancy weaves for itself about the meadows where
the milkmaids stand thick and pale, and those green courts where
lords and ladies live, Jan added that world of pleasure open to
those gifted with a keen sense of form and color. Strange gleams
under a stormy sky, sunshine on some kingfisher's plumage rising
from the river, and all the ever-changing beauties about him,
stirred his heart with emotions that he could not have defined.
There was much to see even from Dame Datchett's open door, but there
was more to be imagined. Jan's envy of the pig-minder had reached a
great height when the last school-day came.
He wanted to be free by the time that the pig-herd brought his pigs
to water, and his wishes were fulfilled. The Dame's flock and the
flock of the swineherd burst at one and the same moment into the
water-meadows, and Jan was soon in conversation with the latter.
"Thee likes pig-minding, I reckon?" said Jan, stripping the leaves
from a sallywithy wand, which he had picked to imitate that of the
swineherd.
"Do I?" said the large-coated urchin, wiping his face with the big
sleeve of his blue coat. "That's aal thee knows about un. I be
going to leave to-morrow, I be. And if so be Master Salter's got
another bwoy, or if so be he's not, I dunno, it ain't nothin' to I."
Jan learned that he had eighteen pence a week for driving the pigs
to a wood at some little distance, where they fed on acorns, beech-
mast, etc.; for giving them water, keeping them together, and
bringing them home at teatime. He allowed that he could drive them
as slowly as he pleased, and that they kept pretty well together in
the wood; but that, as a whole, the perversity of pigs was such
that-- "Well, wait till ee tries it theeself, Jan Lake, that's aal."
Jan had resolved to do so. He did not return with his foster-
brothers to the mill. He slipped off on one of his solitary
expeditions, and made his way to the farm-house of Master Salter.
Master Salter and his wife sat at tea in the kitchen. In the
cheerful clatter of cups, they had failed to hear Jan's knock; but
the sunshine streaming through the open doorway being broken by some
small body, the farmer's wife looked hastily up, thinking that the
new-born calf had got loose, and was on the threshold.
But it was Jan. The outer curls of his hair gleamed in the sunlight
like an aureole about his face. He had doffed his hat, out of
civility, and he held it in one hand, whilst with the other he
fingered the slate that hung at his waist.
"Massey upon us!" said the farmer, looking up at the same instant.
"And who be thee?"
"Jan Lake, the miller's son, maester."
"Come in, come in!" cried Master Salter, hospitably. "So Master
Lake have sent thee with a message, eh?"
"My father didn't send me," said Jan, gravely. "I come myself. Do
'ee want a pig-minder, Master Salter?"
"Ay, I wants a pig-minder. But I reckon thee father can't spare
Abel for that now. A wish he could. Abel was careful with the
pigs, he was, and a sprack boy, too."
"I'll be careful, main careful, Master Salter," said Jan, earnestly.
"I likes pigs." But the farmer was pondering.
"Jan Lake--Jan," said he. "Be thee the boy as draad out the sow and
her pigs for Master Chuter's little gel?" Jan nodded.
"Lor massey!" cried Master Salter. "I' told'ee, missus, about un.
Look here, Jan Lake. If thee'll draa me out some pigs like them,
I'll give 'ee sixpence and a new slate, and I'll try thee for a
week, anyhow."
Jan drew the slate-pencil from his pocket without reply. Mrs.
Salter, who had been watching him with motherly eyes, pushed a small
stool towards him, and he began to draw a scene such as he had been
studying daily for months past,--pigs at the water-side. He had
made dozens of such sketches. But the delight of the farmer knew no
bounds. He slapped his knees, he laughed till the tears ran down
his cheeks, and, as Jan put a very wicked eye into the face of the
hindmost pig, he laughed merrily also. He was not insensible of his
own talents, and the stimulus of the farmer's approbation gave vigor
to his strokes.
"Here, missus," cried Master Salter; "get down our Etherd's new
slate, and give it to un; I'll get another for he. And there's the
sixpence, Jan; and if thee minds pigs as well as 'ee draas 'em, I
don't care how long 'ee minds mine."
The object of his visit being now accomplished, Jan took up his hat
to depart, but an important omission struck him, and he turned to
say, "What'll 'ee give me for minding your pigs, Master Salter?"
Master Salter was economical, and Jan was small, and anxious for the
place.
"A shilling a week," said the farmer.
"And his tea?" the missus gently suggested.
"Well, I don't mind," said Master Salter. "A shilling a week and
thee tea."
Jan paused. His predecessor had had eighteen pence for very
imperfect services. Jan meant to be beyond reproach, and felt
himself worth quite as much.
"I give the other boy one and sixpence," said the farmer, "but
thee's very small."
"I'm sprack," said Jan, confidently. "And I be fond of pigs."
"Massey upon me," said Master Salter, laughing again. "Tis a peart
young toad, sartinly. A might be fifty year old, for the ways of
un. Well, thee shall have a shilling and thee tea, or one and
sixpence without, then." And seeing that Jan glanced involuntarily
at the table, the farmer added, "Give un some now, missus. I'll lay
a pound bill the child be hungry."
Jan was hungry. He had bartered the food from his "nunchin bag" at
dinner-time for another child's new slate-pencil. The cakes were
very good, too, and Mrs. Salter was liberal. He rose greatly in her
esteem by saying grace before meat. He cooled his tea in his saucer
too, and raised it to his lips with his little finger stuck stiffly
out (a mark of gentility imparted by Mrs. Lake), and in all points
conducted himself with the utmost propriety. "For what we have
received the Lord be praised," was his form of giving thanks; to
which Mrs. Salter added, "Amen," and "Bless his heart!" And Jan,
picking up his hat, lifted his dark eyes candidly to the farmer's
face, and said with much gravity and decision, -
"I'll take a shilling a week and me tea, Master Salter, if it be all
the same to you. And thank you kindly, sir, and the missus
likewise."
CHAPTER XIX.
THE BLUE COAT.--PIG-MINDING AND TREE-STUDYING.--LEAF-PAINTINGS.--A
STRANGER.--MASTER SWIFT IS DISAPPOINTED.
When Jan returned to the windmill, and gravely announced that he had
hired himself out as pig-minder to Master Salter, Mrs. Lake was, as
she said, "put about." She considered pig-minding quite beneath the
dignity of her darling, and brought forward every objection she
could think of except the real one. But the windmiller had no
romantic dreams on Jan's behalf, and he decided that "'twas better
he should be arning a shillin' a week than gettin' into mischief at
whoam." Jan's ambition, however, was not satisfied. He wanted a
blue coat, such as is worn by the shepherd-boys on the plains. He
did not mind how old it was, but it must be large; long in the skirt
and sleeves. He had woven such a romance about Master Salter's
swineherd and his life, as he watched him week after week from Dame
Datchett's door with envious eyes, that even his coat, with the
tails almost sweeping the ground, seemed to Jan to have a dignified
air. And there really was something to be said in favor of sleeves
so long that he could turn them back into a huge cuff in summer, and
turn them down, Chinese fashion, over his hands in winter, to keep
them warm.
Such a blue coat Abel had possessed, but it was not suitable for
mill work, and Mrs. Lake was easily persuaded to give it to Jan. He
refused to have it curtailed, or in any way adapted to his figure,
and in it, with a switch of his own cutting, he presented himself at
Master Salter's farm in good time the following morning.
It could not be said that Jan's predecessor had exaggerated the
perversity of the pigs he drove. If the coat of his choice had a
fault in Jan's estimation, it was that it helped to make him very
hot as he ran hither and thither after his flock. But he had not
studied pig-nature in vain. He had a good deal of sympathy with its
vagaries, and he was quite able to outwit the pigs. Indeed, a
curious attachment grew up between the little swineherd and his
flock, some of whom would come at his call, when he rewarded their
affection, as he had gained it, by scratching their backs with a
rough stick.
But there were times when their playful and errant peculiarities
were no small annoyance to him. Jan was growing fast both in mind
and body. Phases of taste and occupation succeed each other very
rapidly when one is young; and there are, perhaps, no more distinct
phases, more sudden strides, than in the art of painting. With Jan
the pig phase was going, and it was followed by landscape-sketching.
Jan was drawing his pigs one day in the little wood, when he fancied
that the gnarled elbow of a branch near him had, in its outline,
some likeness to a pig's face, and he began to sketch it on his
slate. But in studying the tree the grotesque likeness was
forgotten, and there burst upon his mind, as a revelation, the sense
of that world of beauty which lies among stems and branches, twigs
and leaves. Painfully, but with happy pains, he traced the branch
joint by joint, curve by curve, as it spread from the parent stem
and tapered to its last delicate twigs. It was like following a
river from its source to the sea. But to that sea of summer sky, in
which the final ramifications of his branch were lost, Jan did not
reach. He was abruptly stopped by the edge of his slate, which
would hold no more.
To remedy this, when next he drew trees, he began the branches from
the outer tips, and worked inwards to the stem. It was done for
convenience, but to this habit he used afterwards to lay some of the
merit of his admirable touch in tree-painting. And so "pig-making"
became an amusement of the past, and the spell of the woods fell on
Jan.
It was no very wonderful wood either, this one where he first herded
pigs and studied trees. It was composed chiefly of oaks and
beeches, none of them of very grand proportions. But it was little
cut and little trodden. The bramble-bowers were unbroken, the leaf-
mould was deep and rich, and a very tiny stream, which trickled out
of sight, kept mosses ever green about its bed. The whole wood was
fragrant with honeysuckle, which pushed its way everywhere, and gay
with other wild flowers. But the trees were Jan's delight. He
would lie on his back and gaze up into them with unwearying
pleasure. He looked at his old etching with new interest, to see
how the artist had done the branches of the willows by the water-
mill. And then he would get Abel to put a very sharp point to his
own slate-pencil, and would go back to the real oaks and beeches,
which were so difficult and yet so fascinating to him.
He was very happy in the wood, with two drawbacks. The pigs would
stray when he became absorbed in his sketching, and the slate and
slate-pencil, which did very well to draw pigs in outline, were
miserable implements, when more than half the beauty of the subject
to be represented was in its color. For the first evil there was no
remedy but to give chase. Out of the second came an amusement in
favor of which even the beloved slate hung idle.
In watching beautiful bits of coloring in the wood, contrasted
greens of many hues, some jutting branch with yellowish foliage
caught by the sun, and relieved by a distance of blue grays beyond,-
-colors and contrasts which only grew lovelier as the heavy green of
midsummer was broken by the inroad of autumnal tints,--Jan noticed
also that among the fallen leaves at his feet there were some of
nearly every color in the foliage above. At first it was by a sort
of idle trick that he matched one against the other, as a lady sorts
silks for her embroidery; then he arranged bits of the leaves upon
the outline on his slate, and then, the slate being too small, he
amused himself by grouping the leaves upon the path in front of him
into woodland scenes. The idea had been partly suggested to him by
a bottle which stood on Mrs. Salter's mantelpiece, containing
colored sands arranged into landscapes; a work of art sent by Mrs.
Salter's sister from the Isle of Wight.
The slate would have been quite unused, but for the difficulties Jan
got into with his outlines. At last he adopted the plan of making a
sketch upon his slate, which he then laid beside him on the walk,
and copied it in leaves. More perishable even than the pig-
drawings, the evening breeze generally cast these paintings to the
winds, but none the less was Jan happy with them, and sometimes in
quiet weather, or a sheltered nook, they remained undisturbed for
days.
Dame Datchett's school reopened, but Jan would not leave his pigs.
He took the shilling faithfully home each week to his foster-mother.
She found it very useful, and she had no very high ideas about
education. She had some twinges of conscience in the matter, but
she had no strength of purpose, and Jan went his own way.
The tints had grown very warm on trees and leaves, when Jan one day
accomplished, with much labor, the best painting he had yet done.
It was of a scene before his eyes. The trees were admirably
grouped; he put little bits of twigs for the branches, which now
showed more than hitherto, and he added a glimpse of the sky by
neatly dovetailing the petals of some bluebells into a mosaic. He
had turned back the long sleeves of his coat, and had with
difficulty kept the tail of it from doing damage to his foreground,
and had perseveringly kept the pigs at bay, when, as he returned
with a last instalment of bluebells to finish his sky, he saw a man
standing on the path, with his back to him, completely blotting out
the view by his very broad body, and with one heel not half an inch
from Jan's picture.
He was a coarsely built old man, dressed in threadbare black. The
tones of his voice were broad, and quite unlike the local dialect.
He was speaking as Jan came up, but to no companion that Jan could
see, though his hand was outstretched in sympathy with his words.
He was looking upwards, too, as Jan was wont to look himself, into
that azure sky which he was trying to paint in bluebell flowers.
In truth, the stranger was spouting poetry, and poems and
recitations were alike unknown to Jan; but something caught his
fancy in what he heard, and the flowers dropped from his fingers as
the broad but not ungraceful accents broke upon his ear: -
"The clouds were pure and white as flocks new shorn,
And fresh from the clear brook; sweetly they slept
On the blue fields of heaven, and then there crept
A little noiseless noise among the leaves,
Born of the very sigh that silence heaves;
For not the faintest motion could be seen
Of all the shades that slanted o'er the green."
The old man paused for an instant, and, turning round, saw Jan, and
put his heavy foot into the sky of Jan's picture. He drew it back
at Jan's involuntary cry, and, after a long look at the quaint
figure before him, said, "Are ye one of the fairies, little man?"
But Jan knew nothing of fairies. "I be Jan Lake, from the mill,"
said he.
"Are ye so? But that's not a miller's coat ye've on," said the old
man, with a twinkle in his eye.
Jan looked seriously at it, and then explained. "I be Master
Salter's pig-minder just now, but I've got a miller's thumb, I
have."
"That's well, Master Pig-minder; and now would ye tell an old man
what ye screamed out for. Did I scare ye?"
"Oh, no, sir," said Jan, civilly; and he added, "I liked that you
were saying."
"Are ye a bit of a poet as well as a pig-minder, then?" and waving
his hand with a theatrical gesture up the wood, the old man began to
spout afresh: -
"A filbert hedge with wild briar overtwined,
And clumps of woodbine taking the soft wind
Upon their summer thrones; there too should be
The frequent chequer of a youngling tree,
That with a score of light green brethren shoots
From the quaint mossiness of aged roots:
Round which is heard a spring-head of clear waters
Babbling so wildly of its lovely daughters,
The spreading bluebells; it may haply mourn
That such fair clusters should be rudely torn
From their fresh beds, and scattered thoughtlessly
By infant hands, left on the path to die."
Between the strange dialect and the unfamiliar terseness of poetry,
Jan did not follow this very clearly, but he caught the allusion to
bluebells, and the old man brought his hand back to his side with a
gesture so expressive towards the bluebell fragments at his feet,
that it hardly needed the tone of reproach he gave to the last few
words--"left on the path to die"--to make Jan hang his head.
"'Twas the only blue I could find," he said, looking ruefully at the
fading flowers.
"And what for did ye want blue, then, my lad?"
"To make the sky with," said Jan.
"The powers of the air be good to us!" said the stranger, setting
his broad hat back from his face, as if to obtain a clearer view of
the little pig-minder. "Are ye a sky-maker as well as a swineherd?
And while I'm catechising ye, may I ask for what do ye bring a slate
out pig-minding and sky-making?"
"I draws out the trees on it first," said Jan, "and then I does them
in leaves. If you'll come round," he added, shyly, "you'll see it.
But don't tread on un, please, sir."
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