Jan of the Windmill Part 27

"Well, Master Swift, I do think I be wanted at home. My father's not got Abel now; but it's my mother that mostly wants me. I be bothered about mother, somehow," said Jan, with an anxious look.

"She do forget things so, and be so queer. She left the beer-tap running yesterday, and near two gallons of ale ran out; and this morning she put the kettle on, and no water in it. And she do cry terrible," Jan added, breaking down himself. "But Abel says to me the day he was took ill, 'Janny,' he says, 'look to mother.' And so I will."

"You're a good lad, Jan," said the schoolmaster. "Sit ye down and get your tea, and I'll come back with ye to the mill. A bit of company does folk good that's beside themselves with fretting."

But the windmiller's wife was beyond such simple cure. The overtasked brain was giving way, and though there were from time to time such capricious changes in her condition as led Jan to hope she was better, she became more and more imbecile to the end of her life.

To say that he was a devoted son is to give a very vague idea of his life at this time to those for whom filial duty takes the shape of compliance rather than of action, or to those who have no experience of domestic attendance on the infirm both of body and of mind.

It was not in moments of tender feeling, or at his prayers, or by Abel's grave, that Jan recalled his foster-brother's dying charge; but as he emptied slops, cleaned grates, or fastened Mrs. Lake's black dress behind. Nor did grat.i.tude flatter his zeal. "Boys do be so ackered with hooks and eyes," the poor woman grumbled in her fretfulness, and then she sat down to bemoan herself that she had not a daughter left. She had got a trick of stopping short half way through her dressing, and giving herself up to tears, which led to Jan's a.s.sisting at her toilette. He was soon expert enough with hooks and eyes, the more tedious matter was getting up her courage, which invariably failed her at the stage of her linsey-woolsey petticoat. But when Jan had hooked her up, and tied her ap.r.o.n on, and put a little shawl about her shoulders, and got her close- fitting cap set straight,--a matter about as easy as putting another man's spectacles on his nose,--and seated her by the fire, the worst was over. Mrs. Lake always cheered up after breakfast, and Jan always to the very end hoped that this was the beginning of her getting better.

Even after a niece of the windmiller's came to live at the mill, and to wait on Mrs. Lake, the poor woman was never really content without Jan. As time went on, she wept less, but her faculties became more clouded. She had some brighter hours, and the company of the schoolmaster gave her pleasure, and seemed to do her good.

When the Rector visited her, his very sympathy made him delicate about dwelling on her bereavement. When the poor woman sobbed, he changed the subject in haste, and his condolences were of a very general character. But Master Swift had no such scruples; and as he sat by her chair, with a kindly hand on hers, he spoke both plainly and loudly. The latter because Mrs. Lake's hearing had become dull.

Nor did he cease to speak because tears dropped perpetually from the eyes which were turned to him, and which seemed day by day to lose color from the pupils, and to grow redder round the lids from weeping.

"Them that sleep in Jesus shall G.o.d bring with Him. Ah! Mrs. Lake, ma'am, they're grand words for you and me. The Lord has dealt hardly with us, but there are folk that lose their children when it's worse. There's many a Christian parent has lived to see them grow up to wickedness, and has lost 'em in their sins, and has had to carry THAT weight in his heart besides their loss, that the Lord's counsels for them were dark to him. But for yours and mine, woman, that have gone home in their innocence, what have we to say to the Almighty, except to pray of Him to make us fitter to take them when He brings them back?"

Through the cloud that hung over the poor woman's spirit, Master Swift's plain consolations made their way. The ruling thought of his mind became the one idea to which her unhinged intellect clung,- -the second coming of the Lord. For this she watched--not merely in the sense of a readiness for judgment, but--out of the upper windows of the windmill, from which could be seen a vast extent of that heaven in which the sign of the Son of Man should be, before He came.

Sky-gazing was an old habit with Jan, and his active imagination was not slow to follow his foster-mother's fancies. The niece did all the house-work, for the freakish state of Mrs. Lake's memory made her help too uncertain to be trusted to. But, with a restlessness which was perhaps part of her disease, she wandered from story to story of the windmill, guided by Jan, and the windmiller made no objection.

The country folk who brought grist to the mill would strain their ears with a sense of awe to catch Mrs. Lake's mutterings as she glided hither and thither with that mysterious shadow on her spirit, and the miller himself paid a respect to her intellect now it was shattered which he had not paid whilst it was whole. Indeed he was very kind to her, and every Sunday he led her tenderly to church, where the music soothed her as it soothed Saul of old. As the brain failed, she became happier, but her sorrow was like a pain numbed by narcotics; it awoke again from time to time. She would fancy the children were with her, and then suddenly arouse to the fact that they were not, and moan that she had lost all.

"Thee've got one left, mother dear," Jan would cry, and his caresses comforted her. But at times she was troubled by an imperfect remembrance of Jan's history, and, with some echo of her old reluctance to adopt him, she would wail that she "didn't want a stranger child." It cut Jan to the heart. Ever since he had known that he was not a miller's son, he had protested against the knowledge. He loved the windmill and the windmiller's trade. He loved his foster-parents, and desired no others. He had a miller's thumb, and he flattened it with double pains now that his right to it was disputed. He would press Mrs. Lake's thin fingers against it in proof that he belonged to her, and the simple wile was successful, for she would smile and say, "Ay, ay, love! Thee's a miller's boy, for thee've got the miller's thumb."

Two or three causes combined to strengthen Jan's love for his home.

His revolt from the fact that he was no windmiller born gave the energy of contradiction. Then to fulfil Abel's behests, and to take his place in the mill, was now Jan's chief ambition. And whence could be seen such glorious views as from the windows of a windmill?

Master Lake was very glad of his help. The quarterly payment had now been due for some weeks, but, in telling the schoolmaster, he only said, "I'd be as well pleased if they forgot un altogether, now. I don't want him took away, no time. And now I've lost Abel, Jan'll have the mill after me. He's a good son is Jan."

And, as he echoed Jan's praises, it never dawned on Master Swift that he was the cause of the allowance having stopped. Jan was jealous of his t.i.tle as Master Lake's son, but the schoolmaster dwelt much in his own mind on the fact that Jan was no real child of the district; partly in his ambition for him, and partly out of a dim hope that he would himself be some day allowed to adopt him. In stating that the windmiller had lost all his children by the fever, he had stated the bare fact in all good faith; and as neither he nor the Rector guessed the real drift of Mr. Ford's letter, the mistake was never corrected.

Jan was useful in the mill. He swept the round-house, coupled the sacks, received grist from the grist-bringers, and took payment for the grinding in money or in kind, according to custom. The old women who toddled in with their bags of gleaned corn looked very kindly on him, and would say, "Thee be a good bwoy, sartinly, Jan, and the Lard'll reward thee." If the windmiller came towards one of these dames, she would say, "Aal right, Master Lake, I be in no manners of hurry, Jan'll do for me." And, when Jan came, his business-like method justified her confidence. "Good day, mother,"

he would say. "Will ye pay, or toll it?" "Bless ye, dear love, how should I pay?" the old woman would reply. "I'll toll it, Jan, and thank ye kindly." On which Jan would dip the wooden bowl or tolling-dish into the sack, and the corn it brought up was the established rate of payment for grinding the rest.

But, though he constantly a.s.sured the schoolmaster that he meant to be a windmiller, Jan did not neglect his special gift. He got up with many a dawn to paint the sunrise. In still summer afternoons, when the mill-sails were idle, and Mrs. Lake was dozing from the heat, he betook himself to the water-meads to sketch. In the mill itself he made countless studies. Not only of the ever-changing heavens, and of the monotonous sweeps of the great plains, whose aspect is more changeable than one might think, but studies on the various floors of the mill, and in the roundhouse, where old meal- bins and swollen sacks looked picturesque in the dim light falling from above, in which also the circular stones, the shaft, and the very hoppers, became effective subjects for the c.u.mberland lead- pencils.

Towards the end of the summer following the fever, Mrs. Lake failed rapidly. She sat out of doors most of the day, the miller moving her chair from one side to another of the mill to get the shade.

Master Swift brought her big nosegays from his garden, at which she would smell for hours, as if the scent soothed her. She spoke very little, but she watched the sky constantly.

One evening there was a gorgeous sunset. In all its splendor, with a countless mult.i.tude of little clouds about it bright with its light, the glory of the sun seemed little less than that of the Lord Himself, coming with ten thousand of His saints, and the poor woman gazed as if her withered, wistful eyes could see her children among the radiant host. "I do think the Lord be coming to-night, Master Swift," she said. "And He'll bring them with Him."

She gazed on after all the glory had faded, and lingered till it grew dark, and the schoolmaster had gone home. It was not till her dress was quite wet with dew that Jan insisted upon her going indoors.

They were coming round the mill in the dusk, when a cry broke from Mrs. Lake's lips; which was only an echo of a louder one from Jan.

A woman creeping round the mill in the opposite direction had just craned her neck forward so that Jan and his foster-mother saw her face for an instant before it disappeared. Why Jan was so terrified, he would have been puzzled to say, for the woman was not hideous, though she had an ugly mouth. But he was terrified, and none the less so from a conviction that she was looking intently and intentionally at him. When he got his foster-mother indoors, the miller was disposed to think the affair was a fancy; but, as if the shock had given a spur to her feeble senses, Mrs. Lake said in a loud clear voice, "Maester, it be the woman that brought our Jan hither!"

But when the miller ran out, no one was to be seen.

CHAPTER x.x.x.

JAN'S PROSPECTS AND MASTER SWIFT'S PLANS.--TEA AND MILTON.--NEW PARENTS.--PARTING WITH RUFUS.--JAN IS KIDNAPPED.

This shock seemed to give a last jar to the frail state of Mrs.

Lake's health, and the sleep into which she fell that night pa.s.sed into a state of insensibility in which her sorely tried spirit was released without pain.

It was said that the windmiller looked twice his age from trouble.

But his wan appearance may have been partly due to the inroads of a lung disease, which comes to millers from constantly inhaling the flour-dust. His cheeks grew hollow, and his wasted hands displayed the windmiller's coat of arms {2} with painful distinctness. The schoolmaster spent most of his evenings at the mill; but sometimes Jan went to tea with him, and by Master Lake's own desire he went to school once more.

Master Swift thought none the less of Jan's prospects that it was useless to discuss them with Master Lake. All his plans were founded on the belief that he himself would live to train the boy to be a windmiller, whilst Master Swift's had reference to the conviction that "miller's consumption" would deprive Jan of his foster-father long before he was old enough to succeed him. And had the miller made his will? Master Swift made his, and left his few savings to Jan. He could not help hoping for some turn of Fortune's wheel which should give the lad to him for his own.

Jan was not likely to lack friends. The Squire had heard with amazement that Master Chuter's new sign was the work of a child, and he offered to place him under proper instruction to be trained as an artist. But, at the time that this offer came, Jan was waiting on his foster mother, and he refused to betray Abel's trust. The Rector also wished to provide for him, but he was even more easily convinced that Jan's present duty lay at home. Master Swift too urged this in all good faith, but his personal love for Jan, and the dread of parting with him, had an influence of which he was hardly conscious.

One evening, a few weeks after Mrs. Lake's death, Jan had tea, followed by poetry, with the schoolmaster. Master Swift often recited at the windmill. The miller liked to hear hymns his wife had liked, and a few patriotic and romantic verses; but he yawned over Milton, and fell asleep under Keats, so the schoolmaster reserved his favorites for Jan's ear alone.

When tea was over, Jan sat on the rush-bottomed chair, with his feet on Rufus, on that side of the hearth which faced the window, and on the other side sat Master Swift, with the mongrel lying by him, and he spouted from Milton. Jan, familiar with many a sunrise, listened with parted lips of pleasure, as the old man trolled forth, -

"Right against the eastern gate, Where the great sun begins his state, Robed in flames and amber light,"

and with even more sympathy to the latter part of 'Il Penseroso;'

and, as when this was ended he begged for yet more, the old man began 'Lycidas.' He knew most of it by heart, and waving his hand, with his eyes fixed expressively on Jan, he cried, -

"Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise (That last infirmity of n.o.ble minds) To scorn delights, and live laborious days."

And tears filled his eyes, and made his voice husky, as he went on, -

"But the fair guerdon when we hope to find, And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears" -

Master Swift stopped suddenly. Rufus was growling, and Jan was white and rigid, with his eyes fixed on the window.

As in most North countrymen, there was in the schoolmaster an ineradicable touch of superst.i.tion. He cursed the "unlucky" poem, and flinging the book from him ran to his favorite. As soon as Jan could speak, he gasped, "The woman that brought me to the mill!"

But when Master Swift went to search the garden he could find no one.

Remembering the former alarm, and that no one was to be seen then, Master Swift came to the conclusion that in each case it was a delusion.

"Ye're a dear good lad, Jan," said he, "but ye've f.a.gged yourself out. Take the dog with ye to-morrow for company, and your sketch- book, and amuse yourself. I'll not expect ye at school. And get away to your bed now. I told Master Lake I shouldn't let ye away to-night."

Jan went to bed, and next morning was up with the lark, and with Rufus at his heels went off to a distant place, where from a mound, where a smaller road crossed the highway to London, there was a view which he wished to sketch under an early light. As he drew near, he saw a small cart, at one side of which the horse was feeding, and at the foot of the mound sat a woman with a pedler's basket.

When Jan recognized her, it was too late to run away. And whither could he have run? The four white roads gleamed unsheltered over the plains; there was no place to hide in, and not a soul in sight.

When the large-mouthed woman seized Jan in her arms, and kissing him cried aloud, "Here he is at last! My child, my long lost child!"

the despair which sank into the poor boy's heart made him speechless. Was it possible that this woman was his mother? His foster-mother's words tolled like a knell in his ears,--"The woman that brought our Jan hither." At the sound of Sal's voice the hunchback appeared from behind the cart, and his wife dragged Jan towards him, crying, "Here's our dear son! our pretty, clever little son."

"I bean't your son!" cried poor Jan, desperately. "My mother's dead." For a moment the Cheap Jack's wife seemed staggered; but unluckily Jan added, "She died last month," and it was evident that he knew nothing of his real history.

"Oh, them mill people, them false wretches!" screamed the woman.