CONCLUSION.
A SOUTH-WEST wind is blowing over the plains. It drives the “messengers”
over the sky, and the sails of the windmill, and makes the dead leaves
dance upon the graves. It does much to dispel the evil effects of the
foul smells and noxious gases, which are commoner yet in the little
village than one might suppose. (But it is a long time, you see, since
the fever was here.) It shows the silver lining of the willow leaves by
the little river, and bends the flowers which grow in one glowing
mass—like some gorgeous Eastern carpet—on Master Swift’s grave. It rocks
Jan’s sign in mid-air above the Heart of Oak, where Master Chuter is
waiting upon a newly arrived guest.
It is the man of business. Long has he promised to try the breezes of
the plains for what he calls dyspepsia, and the artist calls
“money-grubbing-on-the-brain,” but he never could find leisure, until a
serious attack obliged him to do so. But at that moment the painter
could not leave London, and he is here alone. He has not said that he
knows Jan, for it amuses him to hear the little innkeeper ramble on with
anecdotes of the great painter’s childhood.
“This ale is fine,” says the man of business. “I never can touch beer at
home. The painter is married, you say?”
“He’ve been married these two year,” Master Chuter replies. “And they do
say Miss Amabel have been partial to him from a child. He come down
here, sir, soon after his father took to him, and he draad out Miss
Amabel’s old white horse for her; and the butler have told me, sir, that
it hangs in the library now. It be more fit for an inn sign, sartinly,
it be, but the gentry has their whims, sir, and Miss Amabel was a fine
young lady. The Squire’s moral image she be; affable and free, quite
different to her ladyship. Coffee, sir? No, sir? Dined, sir? It be a
fine evening, sir, if you’d like to see the church. I’d be glad to show
it you, myself, sir. Old Solomon have got the key.”
In the main street of the village even the man of business strolls.
There is no hurrying in this atmosphere. It is a matter of time to find
Old Solomon, and of more time to make him hear when he is found, and of
most time for him to find the key when he hears. But time is not money
to the merchant just now, and he watches the western sky patiently, and
is made sleepy by the breeze. When at last they saunter under the shadow
of the gray church tower, his eye is caught by the mass of color, out of
which springs a high cross of white marble, whose top is just flushed by
the setting sun. It is of fine design and workmanship, and marks the
grave where the great man’s schoolmaster sleeps near his wife and child.
Hard by, Master Chuter shows the “fever monument,” and the names of
Master Lake’s children. And then, as Daddy Solomon has fumbled the door
open, they pass into the church. The east end has been restored, the
innkeeper says, by the Squire, under the advice of his son-in-law.
And then they turn to look at the west window,—the new window, the boast
of the parish,—at which even old Solomon strains his withered eyes with a
sense of pride. The man of business stands where Jan used to sit. The
unchanged faces look down on him from the old window. But it is not the
old window that he looks at, it is the new one. The glory of the setting
sun illumines it, and throws crimson lights from the vesture of the
principal figure—like stains of blood—upon the pavement.
“It be the Good Shepherd,” Master Chuter explains, but his guest is
silent. The pale-faced, white-haired angels in the upper lights seem all
ablaze, and Old Solomon cannot look at them.
“Them sheep be beautiful,” whispers the innkeeper; but the stranger heeds
him not. He is reading the inscription:—
_To the Glory of GOD_,
_And in pious memory of Abel_, _my dear foster-brother_:
_I_, _who designed this window_,
_Dedicate it_.
_HE shall gather the lambs into His arms_.
FOOTNOTES.
{14} Windmiller’s candlesticks are flat candlesticks made of iron, with
a long handle on one side, and a sharp spike on the other, by which they
can be stuck into the wall, or into a sack of grain, or anywhere that may
be convenient. Each man who works in the mill has a candlestick, and one
is always kept alight and stationary on the basement floor.
{238} The blue marks on the hands of a miller who “sets” his own stones
are called in the trade the “miller’s coat of arms.”