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.”
The old man fumbled in his pocket, from which he drew a shagreen
spectacle-case, as substantial looking as himself, and, planting the
spectacles firmly on his heavy nose, he held out his hand to Jan.
“There,” said he, “take me where ye will. To bonnie Elf-land, if that’s
your road, where withered leaves are gold.”
Jan ran round willingly to take the hand of his new friend. He felt a
strange attraction towards him. His speech was puzzling and had a tone
of mockery, but his face was unmistakably kind.
“Now then, lad, which path do we go by?” said he.
“There’s only one,” said Jan, gazing up at the old man, as if by very
staring with his black eyes he could come to understand him. But in an
instant he was spouting again, holding Jan before him with one hand,
whilst he used the other as a sort of _bâton_ to his speech:—
“And know’st thou not yon broad, broad road
That lies across the lily levin?
That is the path of sinfulness,
Though some think it the way to heaven.”
“Go on, please!” Jan cried, as the old man paused. His rugged speech
seemed plainer in the lines it suited so well, and a touch of enthusiasm
in his voice increased the charm.
“And know’st thou not that narrow path
So thick beset with thorns and briars?
It is the path of righteousness,
And after it but few aspires.
“And know’st thou not the little path
That winds about the ferny brae?
That is the road to bonnie Elf-land,
Where thou and I this night maun gae.”
“Where is it?” said Jan, earnestly. “Is’t a town?”
The old man laughed. “I’m thinking it would be well to let that path be,
in your company. We’d hardly get out under a year and a day.”
“I’d go—with you,” said Jan, confidently. Many an expedition had he
undertaken on his own responsibility, and why not this?
“First, show me what ye were going to show me,” said the old man.
“Where’s this sky you’ve been manufacturing?”
“It’s on the ground, sir.”
“On the ground! And are ye for turning earth into heaven among your
other trades?” What this might mean Jan knew not; but he led his friend
round, and pointed out the features of his leaf-picture. He hoped for
praise, but the old man was silent,—long silent, though he seemed to be
looking at what Jan showed him. And when he did speak, his broken words
were addressed to no one.
“Wonderful! wonderful! The poetry of ’t. It’s no child’s play, this.
It’s genius. Ay! we mun see to it!” And then, with clasped hands, he
cried, “Good Lord! Have I found him at last?”
“Have you lost something?” said Jan.
But the old man did not answer. He did not even speak of the
leaf-picture, to Jan’s chagrin. But, stroking the boy’s shoulder almost
tenderly, he asked, “Did ye ever go to school, laddie?”
Jan nodded. “At Dame Datchett’s,” said he.
“Ah! ye were sorry to leave school for pig-minding, weren’t ye?”
Jan shook his head. “I likes pigs,” said he. “I axed Master Salter to
let me mind his. I gets a shilling a week and me tea.”
“But ye like school better? Ye love your books, don’t ye?”
Jan shook his head again. “I don’t like school,” said he, “I likes being
in the wood.”
The old man winced as if some one had struck him in the face, then he
muttered, “The wood! Ay, to be sure! And such a school, too!”
Then he suddenly addressed Jan. “Do ye know me, my lad?”
“No, sir,” said Jan.
“Swift—Master Swift, they call me. You’ve heard tell of Master Swift,
the schoolmaster?”
Jan shrank back. He had heard of Master Swift as a man whose stick was
more to be dreaded than Dame Datchett’s strap, and of his school as a
place where liberty was less than with the Dame.
“See thee!” said the old man, speaking broader and broader in his
earnestness. “If thy father would send thee,—nay, what am I saying?—if I
took thee for naught and gladly, thou’dst sooner come to the old
schoolmaster and his books than stay with pigs, even in a wood? Eh,
laddie? Will ye come to school?”
But the tradition of Master Swift’s severity was strong in Jan’s mind,
and the wood was pleasant to him, and he only shrank back farther, and
said, “No.” Children often give pain to their elders, of the intensity
of which they have no measure; but, had Jan been older and wiser than he
was, he might have been puzzled by the bitterness of the disappointment
written on Master Swift’s countenance.
An involuntary impulse made the old man break the blow by doing
something. With trembling fingers he folded his spectacles, and crammed
them into the shagreen case. But, when that was done, he still found
nothing to say, and he turned his back and went away in silence.
In silence Jan watched him, half regretfully, and strained his ears to
catch something that Master Swift began again to recite:—
“Things sort not to my will,
Even when my will doth study Thy renown:
Thou turn’st the edge of all things on me still,
Taking me up to throw me down.”
Then, lifting a heavy bramble that had fallen across his path, the
schoolmaster stooped under it, and passed from sight.
And a sudden gust of wind coming sharply down the way by which he went
caught the fragments of Jan’s picture, and whirled them broadcast through
the wood.