JAN FULFILS ABEL’S CHARGE.—SON OF THE MILL.—THE LARGE-MOUTHED WOMAN.
BY the time Jan went back to the windmill he was quite well.
“Ye’ll be fit for the walk by I open school,” said Master Swift.
Jan promised himself that he would redouble his pains in class, from
gratitude to the good schoolmaster. But it was not to be.
The day before the school opened, Jan came to the cottage. “Master
Swift,” said he, “I be come to tell ye that I be afraid I can’t come to
school.”
“And how’s that?” said Master Swift.
“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 gratitude 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 assisting 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
apron 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.
[Picture: 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]
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 GOD 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
title 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 assured 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 Cumberland 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 multitude 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.