GEORGE GOES COURTING.—GEORGE AS AN ENEMY.—GEORGE AS A FRIEND.—ABEL PLAYS
SCHOOL-MASTER.—THE LOVE-LETTER.—MOERDYK.—THE MILLER-MOTH.—AN ANCIENT
DITTY.
ONE day George Sannel asked and obtained leave for a holiday.
On the morning in question, he dressed himself in the cleanest of smocks,
greased his boots, stuck a bloody warrior, or dark-colored wallflower, in
his bosom, put a neatly folded, clean cotton handkerchief into his
pocket,—which, even if he did not use it, was a piece of striking
dandyism,—and scrubbed his honest face to such a point of cleanliness
that Mrs. Lake was almost constrained to remark that she thought he must
be going courting.
George did not blush,—he never blushed,—but he looked “voolish” enough to
warrant the suspicion that his errand was a tender one, and he had no
other reason to give for his spruce appearance.
It was, perhaps, in his confusion that he managed to convey a mistaken
notion of the place to which he was going to Mrs. Lake. She was under
the impression that he went to the neighboring town, whereas he went to
one in an exactly opposite direction, and some miles farther away.
He went to the bank, too, which seems an unlikely place for tender tryst;
but George’s proceedings were apt to be less direct than the simplicity
of his looks and speech would have led a stranger to suppose. When he
reached home, the windmiller and his family were going to bed, for the
night was still, and the mill idle. George betook himself at once to
where his truckle-bed stood in the round-house, and proceeded to light
his mill-candlestick, which was stuck into the wall.
From the chink into which it was stuck he then counted seven bricks
downwards, and the seventh yielded to a slight effort and came out. It
was the door, so to speak, of a hole in the wall of the mill, from which
he drew a morocco-bound pocket-book. After an uneasy glance over his
shoulder, to make sure that the long dark shadow which stretched from his
own heels, and shifted with the draught in which the candle flared, was
not the windmiller creeping up behind him, he took a letter out of the
book and held it to the light as if to read it. But he never turned the
page, and at last replaced it with a sigh. Then he put the pocket-book
back into the hole, and pushed in after it his handkerchief, which was
tied round something which chinked as he pressed it in. Then he replaced
the brick, and went to bed. He said nothing about the bank in the
morning nor about the hole in the mill-wall; and he parried Mrs. Lake’s
questions with gawky grins and well-assumed bashfulness.
Abel overheard his mother’s jokes on the subject of “Gearge’s young
’ooman,” and they recurred to him when he and George formed a curious
alliance, which demands explanation.
It was not solely because the windmiller looked favorably upon the little
Jan that he and Abel were now allowed to wander in the business parts of
the windmill, when they could not be out of doors, to an extent never
before permitted to the children. Part of the change was due to a change
in the miller’s man.
However childlike in some respects himself, George was not fond of
children, and he had hitherto seemed to have a particular spite against
Abel. He, quite as often as the miller, would drive the boy from the
round-house, and thwart his fancy for climbing the ladders to see the
processes of the different floors.
Abel would have been happy for hours together watching the great stones
grind, or the corn poured by golden showers into the hopper on its way to
the stones below. Many a time had he crept up and hidden himself behind
a sack; but George seemed to have an impish ingenuity in discovering his
hiding-places, and would drive him out as a dog worries a cat, crying,
“Come out, thee little varment! Master Lake he don’t allow thee
hereabouts.”
The cleverness of the miller’s man in discovering poor Abel’s retreats
probably arose from the fact that he had so rooted a dislike for the
routine work of his daily duties that he would rather employ himself
about the mill in any way than by attending to the mill-business, and
that his idleness and stupidity over work were only equalled by his
industry and shrewdness in mischief.
Poor Abel had a dread of the great, gawky, mischievous-looking man, which
probably prevented his complaining to his mother of many a sly pinch and
buffet which he endured from him. And George took some pains to keep up
this wholesome awe of himself, by vague and terrifying speeches, and by a
trick of what he called “dropping on” poor Abel in the dusk, with hideous
grimaces and uncouth sounds.
He once came thus upon Abel in an upper floor, and the boy fled from him
so hastily that he caught his foot in the ladder and fell headlong.
Though it must have been quite uncertain for some moments whether Abel
had not broken his neck, the miller’s man displayed no anxiety. He only
clapped his hands upon his knees, in a sort of uncouth ecstasy of spite,
saying, “Down a comes vlump, like a twoad from roost. Haw, haw, haw!”
Happily, Abel fell with little more damage to himself than the mill-cats
experienced in many such a tumble, as they fled before the tormenting
George.
But, after all this, it was with no small surprise that Abel found
himself the object of attentions from the miller’s man, which bore the
look of friendliness.
At first, when George made civil speeches, and invited Abel to “see the
stwones a-grinding,” he only felt an additional terror, being convinced
that mischief was meant in reality. But, when days and weeks went by,
and he wandered unmolested from floor to floor, with many a kindly word
from George, and not a single cuff or nip, the sweet-tempered Abel began
to feel gratitude, and almost an affection, for his quondam tormentor.
George, for his part, had hitherto done some violence to his own feelings
by his constant refusal to allow Abel to help him to sweep the mill or
couple the sacks for lifting. He would have been only too glad to put
some of his own work on the shoulders of another, had it not been for the
vexatious thought that he would be giving pleasure by so doing where he
only wanted to annoy. And in his very unamiable disposition malice was a
stronger quality even than idleness.
But now, when for some reason best known to himself, he wished to win
Abel’s regard, it was a slight recompense to him for restraining his love
of tormenting that he got a good deal of work out of Abel at odd moments
when the miller was away. So well did he manage this, that a marked
improvement in the tidiness of the round-house drew some praise from his
master.
“Thee’ll be a sprack man yet, Gearge,” said the windmiller,
encouragingly. “Thee takes the broom into the corners now.”
“So I do,” said George, unblushingly, “so I do. But lor, Master Lake,
what a man you be to notice un!” George’s kinder demeanor towards Abel
began shortly after the coming of the little Jan, and George himself
accounted for it in the following manner:—
“You do be kind to me now, Gearge,” said Abel, gratefully, as he stood
one day, with the baby in his arms, watching the miller’s man emptying a
sack of grain into the hopper.
“I likes to see thee with that babby, Abel,” said George, pausing in his
work. “Thee’s a good boy, Abel, and careful. I likes to do any thing
for thee, Abel.”
“I wish I could do any thing for thee, Gearge,” said Abel; “but I be too
small to help the likes of you, Gearge.”
“If you’re small, you’re sprack,” said the miller’s man. “Thee’s a good
scholar, too, Abel. I’ll be bound thee can read, now? And a poor gawney
like I doesn’t know’s letters.”
“I can read a bit, Gearge,” said Abel, with pride; “but I’ve been at home
a goodish while; but mother says she’ll send I to school again in spring,
if the little un gets on well and walks.”
“I wish I could read,” said George, mournfully; “but time’s past for me
to go to school, Abel; and who’d teach a great lummakin vool like I his
letters?”
“I would, Gearge, I would!” cried Abel, his eyes sparkling with
earnestness. “I can teach thee thy letters, and by the time thee’s
learned all I know, maybe I’ll have been to school again, and learned
some more.”
This was the foundation of a curious kind of friendship between Abel and
the miller’s man.
On the same shelf with the “Vamly Bible,” before alluded to, was a real
old horn-book, which had belonged to the windmiller’s grandmother. It
was simply a sheet on which the letters of the alphabet, and some few
words of one syllable, were printed, and it was protected in its frame by
a transparent front of thin horn, through which the letters could be
read, just as one sees the prints through the ground-glass of “drawing
slates.”
From this horn-book Abel labored patiently in teaching George his
letters. It was no light task. George had all the cunning and
shrewdness with which he credited himself; but a denser head for any
intellectual effort could hardly have been found for the seeking. Still
they struggled on, and as George went about the mill he might have been
heard muttering,—
“A B C G. No! Cuss me for a vool! A B C _D_. Why didn’t they whop my
letters into I when a was a boy? A B C”—and so persevering with an
industry which he commonly kept for works of mischief.
One evening he brought home a newspaper from the Heart of Oak, and when
Mrs. Lake had taken the baby, he persuaded Abel to come into the
round-house and give him a lesson. Abel could read so much of it that
George was quite overwhelmed by his learning.
“Thee be’s mortal larned, Abel, sartinly. But I’ll never read like
thee,” he added, despairingly. “Drattle th’ old witch; why didn’t she
give I some schooling?” He spoke with spiteful emphasis, and Abel, too
well used to his rough language to notice the uncivil reference to his
mother, said with some compassion,—
“Were you never sent to school then, Gearge?”
“They should ha’ kept me there,” said George, self-defensively. “I
played moocher,” he continued,—by which he meant truant,—“and then they
whopped I, and a went home to mother, and she kept un at home, the old
vool!”
“Well, Gearge, thee must work hard, and I’ll teach thee, Gearge, I’ll
teach thee!” said little Abel, proudly. “And by-and-by, Gearge, we’ll
get a slate, and I’ll teach thee to write too, Gearge, that I will!”
George’s small eyes gave a slight squint, as they were apt to do when he
was thinking profoundly.
“Abel,” said he, “can thee read writing, my boy?”
“I think I could, Gearge,” said Abel, “if ’twas pretty plain.”
“Abel, my boy,” said George, after a pause, with a broad sweet smile upon
his “voolish” face, “go to the door and see if the wind be rising at all;
us mustn’t forget th’ old mill, Abel, with us larning. Sartinly not,
Abel, mun.”
Proud of the implied partnership in the care of the mill, Abel hastened
to the outer door. As he passed the inner one, leading into the
dwelling-room, he could hear his mother crooning a strange, drony, old
local ditty, as she put the little Jan to sleep. As Abel went out, she
was singing the first verse:—
“The swallow twitters on the barn,
The rook is cawing on the tree,
And in the wood the ringdove coos,
But my false love hath fled from me.”
Abel opened the door, and looked out. One of those small white moths
known as “millers” went past him. The night was still,—so utterly still
that no sound of any sort whatever broke upon the ear. In dead silence
and loneliness stood the mill. Even the miller-moth had gone; and a cat
ran in by Abel’s legs, as if the loneliness without were too much for
her. The sky was gray.
Abel went back to the round-house, where George was struggling to fix the
candlestick securely in the wall.
“Cuss the thing!” he exclaimed, whilst the skin of his face took a
mottled hue that was the nearest approach he ever made to a blush. “The
tallow’ve been a dropping, Abel, my boy. I think ’twas the wind when you
opened the door, maybe. And I’ve been a trying to fix un more firmly.
That’s all, Abel; that’s all.”
“There ain’t no signs of wind,” said Abel. “It’s main quiet and unked
too outside, Gearge. And I do think it be like rain. There was a
miller-moth, Gearge; do that mean any thing?”
“I can’t say,” said George. “I bean’t weatherwise myself, Abel. But if
there be no wind, there be no work, Abel; so us may go back to our
larning. Look here, my boy,” he added, as Abel reseated himself on the
grain-sack which did duty as chair of instruction, and drawing, as he
spoke, a letter forth to the light; “come to the candle, Abel, and see if
so be thee can read this, but don’t tell any one I showed it thee, Abel.”
“Not me, Gearge,” said Abel, warmly; and he added,—“Be it from thy young
’ooman, Gearge?”
No rustic swain ever simpered more consciously or looked more foolish
than George under this accusation, as he said, “Be quiet, Abel, do ’ee.”
“She be a good scholar, too!” said Abel, looking admiringly at the
closely written sheet.
George could hardly disguise the sudden look of fury in his face, but he
hastily covered up the letter with his hands in such a manner as only to
leave the first word on the page visible. There was a deeply cunning
reason for this clever manœuvre. George held himself to be pretty
“cute,” and he reckoned that, by only showing one word at a time, he
could effectually prevent any attempt on Abel’s part to read the letter
himself without giving its contents to George. Like many other cunning
people, George overreached himself. The first word was beyond Abel’s
powers, though he might possibly have satisfied George’s curiosity on one
essential point, by deciphering a name or two farther on. But the clever
George concluded that he had boasted beyond his ability, so he put the
letter away. Abel tried hard at the one word which George exhibited, and
gazed silently at it for some time with a puzzled face. “Spell it, mun,
spell it!” cried the miller’s man, impatiently. It was a process which
he had seen to succeed, when a long word had puzzled his teacher in the
newspaper, before now.
“M O E R, mower; D Y K, dik,” said Abel. But he looked none the wiser
for the effort.
“Mower dik! What be that?” said George, peering at the word. “Do’ee
think it be Mower dik, Abel?”
“I be sure,” said Abel.
“Or do ’ee think ’tis ‘_My dear Dick_’?” suggested George, anxiously, and
with a sort of triumph in his tone, as if that were quite what he
expected.
“No, no. ’Tis an O, Gearge, that second letter. Besides, twould be _My
dear Gearge_ to thee, thou knows.”
Again the look with which the miller’s man favored Abel was far from
pleasant. But he controlled his voice to its ordinary drawl (always a
little slower and more simple sounding, when he specially meant
mischief).
“So ’twould, Abel. So ’twould. What a vool I be, to be sure! But give
it to I now. We’ll look at it another time, Abel.”
“I be very sorry, Gearge,” said Abel, who had a consciousness that the
miller’s man was ill-pleased in spite of his civility. “It be so long
since I was at school, and it be such a queer word. Do ’ee think she can
have spelt un wrong, Gearge?”
“’Tis likely she have,” said George, regaining his composure.
“Abel! Abel! Abel!” cried the mother from the dwelling-room. “Come to
bed, child!”
“Good-night, Gearge. I’m main sorry to be so stupid, Gearge,” said Abel,
and off he ran.
Mrs. Lake was walking up and down, rocking the little Jan in her arms,
who was wailing fretfully.
“I be puzzled to know what ails un,” said Mrs. Lake, in answer to Abel’s
questions. “He be quite in a way to-night. But get thee to bed, Abel.”
And though Abel begged hard to be allowed to try his powers of soothing
with the little Jan, Mrs. Lake insisted upon keeping the baby herself;
and Abel undressed, and crept into the press-bed. He fell asleep in
spite of a somewhat disturbed mind. That mysterious word and George’s
evident displeasure worried him, and he was troubled also by the unusual
fretfulness of the little Jan, and the sound of sorrow in his baby wail.
His last waking thoughts were a strange mixture, passing into stranger
dreams.
The word Moerdyk danced before his eyes, but brought no meaning with it.
Jan’s cries troubled him, and with both there blended the droning of the
ancient plaintive ditty, which the foster-mother sang over and over again
as she rocked the child in her arms. That wail of the baby’s must have
in some strange manner recalled the first night of his arrival, when Abel
found him wailing on the bed. For the fierce eyes of the strange
gentleman haunted Abel’s dreams, but in the face of the miller’s man.
The poor boy dreamed horribly of being “dropped on” by George, with
fierce black eyes added to the terrors of his uncouth grimaces. He
seemed to himself to fly blindly and vainly through the mill from his
tormentor, till George was driven from his thoughts by his coming
suddenly upon the little Jan, wailing as he really did wail, round whose
head a miller-moth was sailing slowly, and singing in a human voice:—
“The swallow twitters on the barn,
The rook is cawing on the tree,
And in the wood the ringdove coos,
But my false love hath fled from me.
Like tiny pipe of wheaten straw,
The wren his little note doth swell,
And every living thing that flies,
Of his true love doth fondly tell.
But I alone am left to pine,
And sit beneath the withy tree;
For truth and honesty be gone,
And my false love hath fled from me.”