Jan of the Windmill Part 28

"Have I been a paying 'em for my precious child, all this time, for 'em to teach him to deny his own mother! The brutes!"

Jan's face and eyes blazed with pa.s.sion. "How dare you abuse my good father and mother!" he cried. "YOU be the wretch, and" -

But at this, and the same moment, the Cheap Jack seized Jan furiously by the throat, and Rufus sprang upon the hunchback. The hunchback was in the greater danger, from which only his wife's presence of mind saved him. She shrieked to him to let Jan go, that he might call off the dog, which the vindictive little Cheap Jack was loath to do. And when Jan had got Rufus off, and was holding him by the collar, the hunchback seized a hatchet with which he had been cutting stakes, and rushed upon the dog. Jan put himself between them, crying incoherently, "Let him alone! He's not mine-- he won't hurt you--I'll send him home--I'll let un loose if ye don't;" and Sal held back her husband, and said, "If you'll behave civil, Jan, my dear, and as you should do to your poor mother, you may send the dog home. And well for him too, for John's a man that's not very particular what he does to them that puts him out in a place like this where there's no one to tell tales. He'd chop him limb from limb, as soon as not."

Jan shuddered. There was no choice but to save Rufus. He clung round the curly brown neck in one agonized embrace, and then steadied his voice for an authoritative, "Home, Rufus!" as he let him go. Rufus hesitated, and looked dangerously at the hunchback, who lifted the hatchet. Jan shouted angrily, "Home, Rufus!" and Rufus obeyed. Twenty times, as his familiar figure, with the plumy tail curled sideways, lessened along the road, was Jan tempted to call him back to his destruction; but he did not. Only when the brown speck was fairly lost to sight, his utter friendlessness overwhelmed him, and falling on his knees he besought the woman with tears to let him go,--at least to tell Master Lake all about it.

The hunchback began to reply with angry oaths, but Sal made signs to him to be silent, and said, "It comes very hard to me, Jan, to be treated this way by my only son, but, if you'll be a good boy, I'm willing to oblige you, and we'll drive round by the mill to let you see your friends, though it's out of the way too."

Jan was profuse of thanks, and by the woman's desire he sat down to share their breakfast. The hunchback examined his sketch-book, and, as he laid it down again, he asked, "Did you ever make picters on stone, eh?"

"Before I could get paper, I did, sir," said Jan.

"But could you now? Could you make 'em on a flat stone, like a paving-stone?"

"If I'd any thing to draw with, I could," said Jan. "I could draw on any thing, if I had something in my hand to draw with."

The Cheap Jack's face became brighter, and in a mollified tone he said to his wife, "He's a prime card for such a young un. It's a rum thing, too! A man I knowed was grand at screeving, but he said himself he was nowheres on paper. He made fifteen to eighteen shillin' a week on a average," the hunchback continued. "I've knowed him take two pound."

"Did you ever draw fish, my dear?" he inquired.

"No, sir," said Jan. "But I've drawn pigs and dogs, and I be mostly able to draw any thing I sees, I think."

The Cheap Jack whistled. "Profiles pays well," he murmured; "but the tip is the Young Prodigy."

"We're so pleased to see what a clever boy you are, Jan," said Sal; "that's all, my dear. Put the bridle on the horse, John, for we've got to go round by the mill."

Whilst the Cheap Jack obeyed her, Sal poked in the cart, from which she returned with three tumblers on a plate. She gave one to her husband, took one herself, and gave the third to Jan.

"Here's to your health, love," said she; "drink to mine, Jan, and I'll be a good mother to you." Jan tasted, and put his gla.s.s down again, choking. "It's so strong!" he said.

The Cheap Jack looked furious. "Nice manners they've taught this brat of yours!" he cried to Sal. "Do ye think I'm going to take my 'oss a mile out of the road to take him to see his friends, when he won't so much as drink our good healths?"

"Oh! I will, indeed I will, sir," cried Jan. He had taken a good deal of medicine during his illness, and he had learned the art of gulping. He emptied the little tumbler into his mouth, and swallowed the contents at a gulp.

They choked him, but that was nothing. Then he felt as if something seized him in the inside of every limb. After he lost the power of moving, he could hear, and he heard the Cheap Jack say, "I'd go in for the Young Prodigy; genteel from the first; only, if we goes among the n.o.bs, he may be recognized. He's a rum-looking beggar."

"If you don't go a drinking every penny he earns," said Sal, pointedly, "we'll soon get enough in a common line to take us to Ameriky, and he'll be safe enough there." On this Jan thought that he made a most desperate struggle and remonstrance. But in reality his lips never moved from their rigidity, and he only rolled his head upon his shoulder. After which he remembered no more.

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

SCREEVING.--AN OLD SONG.--MR. FORD'S CLIENT.--THE PENNY GAFF.--JAN RUNS AWAY.

There was a large crowd, but large crowds gather quickly in London from small causes. It was in an out-of-the-way spot too, and the police had not yet tried to disperse it.

The crowd was gathered round a street-artist who was "screeving," or drawing pictures on the pavement in colored chalks. A good many men have followed the trade in London with some success, but this artist was a wan, meagre-looking child. It was Jan. He drew with extraordinary rapidity; not with the rapidity of slovenliness, but with the rapidity of a genius in the choice of what Ruskin calls "fateful lines." At his back stood the hunchback, who "pattered" in description of the drawings as glibly as he used to "puff" his own wares as a Cheap Jack.

"Cats on the roof of a 'ouse. Look at 'em, ladies and gentlemen; and from their harched backs to their tails and whiskers, and the moon a-shining in the sky, you'll say they're as natteral as life.

Bo-serve the fierceness in the eye of that black Tom. The one that's a-coming round the chimney-pot is a Sandy; yellow ochre in the body, and the markings in red. There isn't a harpist living could do 'em better, though I says it that's the lad's father."

The cats were very popular, and so were the Prize Pig, Playful Porkers, Sow and her Little Ones, as exhibited by the Cheap Jack.

But the prime favorite was "The Faithful Friend," consisting of sketches of Rufus in various att.i.tudes, including a last sleep on the grave of a supposit.i.tious master, which Jan drew with a heart that ached as if it must break.

It was growing dark, but the exhibition had been so successful that day, and the crowd was still so large, that the hunchback was loath to desist. At a sign from him, Jan put his colored chalks into a little pouch in front of him, and drew in powerful chiaroscuro with soft black chalk and whitening. These sketches were visible for some time, and the interest of the crowd did not abate.

Suddenly a flush came over Jan's wan cheeks. A baker who had paused for a moment to look, and then pa.s.sed on, was singing as he went, and the song and the man's accent were both familiar to Jan.

"The swallow twitters on the barn, The rook is cawing on the tree, And in the wood the ring-dove coos" -

"What's your name, boy?"

The peremptory tone of the question turned Jan's attention from the song, which died away down the street, and looking up he met a pair of eyes as black as his own, and Mr. Ford's client repeated his question. On seeing that a "swell" had paused to look, the Cheap Jack hurried to Jan's side, and was in time to answer.

"John Smith's his name, sir. He's slow of speech, my lord, though very quick with his pencil. There's not many artists can beat him, though I says it that shouldn't, being his father."

"YOU his father?" said the gentleman. "He is not much like you."

"He favours his mother more, my lord," said the Cheap Jack; "and that's where he gets his talents too."

"No one ever thought he got 'em from you, old hump!" said one of the spectators, and there was a roar of laughter from the bystanders.

Mr. Ford's client still lingered, though the staring and pushing of the rude crowd were annoying to him.

"Do you really belong to this man?" he asked of Jan, and Jan replied, trembling, "Yes, sir."

"Your son doesn't look as if you treated him very well," said the gentleman, turning to the Cheap Jack. "Take that, and give him a good supper this evening. He deserves it."

As the Cheap Jack stooped for the half crown thrown to him, Mr.

Ford's client gave Jan some pence, saying, "You can keep these yourself." Jan's face, with a look of grat.i.tude upon it, seemed to startle him afresh, but it was getting dark, and the crowd was closing round him. Jan had just entertained a wild thought of asking his protection, when he was gone.

What the strange gentleman had said about his unlikeness to the Cheap Jack, and also the thoughts awakened by hearing the old song, gave new energy to a resolve to which Jan had previously come. He had resolved to run away.

Since he awoke from the stupor of the draught which Sal had given him at the cross-roads, and found himself utterly in the power of the unscrupulous couple who pretended to be his parents, his life had been miserable enough. They had never intended to take him back to the mill, and, since they came to London and he was quite at their mercy, they had made no pretence of kindness. That they kept him constantly at work could hardly be counted an evil, for his working hours were the only ones with happiness in them, except when he dreamed of home. Not the cold pavement chilling him through his ragged clothes, not the strange staring and jesting of the rough crowds, not even the hideous sense of the hunchback's vigilant oversight of him, could destroy his pleasure in the sense of the daily increasing powers of his fingers, in which genius seemed to tremble to create. In the few weeks of his apprenticeship to screeving, Jan had improved more quickly than he might have done under such teaching as the Squire had been willing to procure for the village genius. At the peril of floggings from the Cheap Jack, too many of which had already scarred his thin shoulders, he ransacked his brains for telling subjects, and forced from his memory the lines which told most, and told most quickly, of the pathetic look on Rufus's face, the anger, pleasure, or playfulness of the mill cats. Perhaps none of us know what might be forced, against our natural indolence, from the fallow ground of our capabilities in many lines. The spirit of a popular subject in the fewest possible strokes was what Jan had to aim at for his daily bread, under peril of bodily harm hour after hour, for day after day, and his hand gained a cunning it might never otherwise have learned, and could never unlearn now.

In other respects, his learning was altogether of evil. Perhaps because they wished to reconcile him to his life, perhaps because his innocent face and uncorrupted character were an annoyance and reproach to the wicked couple, they encouraged Jan to a.s.sociate with the boys of their own and the neighboring courts.

Many people are sorry to believe that there are a great many wicked and depraved grown-up people in all large towns, whose habits of vice are so firm, and whose moral natures are so loose, that their reformation is practically almost hopeless. But much fewer people realize the fact that thousands of little children are actively, hideously vicious and degraded. And yet it is better that this should be remembered than that, since, though it is more painful, it is more hopeful. It is hard to reform vicious children, but it is easier than to reform vicious men and women.

Little boys and little girls of eight or nine or ten years old, who are also drunkards, sweaters, thieves, gamblers, liars, and vicious, made Jan a laughing-stock, because of his simple childlike ways.

They called him "green;" but, when he made friends with them by drawing pictures for them, they tried to teach him their own terrible lore. Once the Cheap Jack gave Jan a penny to go with some other boys to a penny theatre, or "gaff." The depravity of the entertainment was a light matter to the depravity of the children by whom the place was crowded, and who had not so much lost as never found shame. Jan was standing amongst them, when he caught sight of a boy with a white head leaning over the gallery, whose face had a curious accidental likeness to Abel's. The expression was quite different, for this one was partly imbecile, but there was just likeness enough to recall the past with an unutterable pang. What would Abel have said to see him there? Jan could not breathe in the place. The others were engaged, and he fought his way out.

What he had heard and seen rang in his ears and danced before his eyes after he crept to bed, as the dawn broke over the streets. But as if Abel himself had watched by his bedside as he used to do, and kept evil visions away, it did not trouble his dreams. He dreamed of the windmill, and of his foster-mother; of the little wood, and of Master Swift and Rufus.

After that night Jan had resolved that, whether Sal were his mother or not, he would run away. In the strength of his foster-brother's pious memory he would escape from this evil life. He would beg his way back to the village, and to the upright, G.o.dly old schoolmaster, or at least die in the country on the road thither. He had not a.s.sociated with the ragam.u.f.fins of the court without learning a little of their cunning; and he had waited impatiently for a chance of eluding the watchfulness of the Cheap Jack.

But the sound of that song and the meeting with Mr. Ford's client determined him to wait no longer, but to make a desperate effort for freedom then and there. The Cheap Jack was collecting the pence, and Jan had made a few bold black strokes as a beginning of a new sketch, when he ran up to the Cheap Jack and whispered, "Get me a ha'perth of whitening, father, as fast as you can. There's an oil- shop yonder."