Jan of the Windmill Part 12

"'Tis the Cheap Jack, mammy! and he's been getting married."

If any thing could have rivalled the interest of a sudden death for Mrs. Lake, it must have been such a wedding as this. She hurried to the front, and was just in time to catch sight of the happy couple as they pa.s.sed down the street, escorted by a crowd of congratulating boys.

"Well done, Cheap John!" roared one. "You've chose a beauty, you have," cried another. "She's 'arf a 'ead taller, anyway," added a third. "Many happy returns of the day, Jack!" yelled a fourth.

Jan was charmed, and again and again he drew Mrs. Lake's attention to the fact that it really WAS the Cheap Jack.

But the windmiller's wife was staring at the bride. Not merely because the bride is commonly considered the central figure of a wedding-party, but because her face seemed familiar to Mrs. Lake, and she could not remember where she had seen her. Though she could remember nothing, the a.s.sociation seemed to be one of pain. In vain she beat her brains. Memory was an almost uncultivated quality with her, and, like the rest of her intellectual powers, had a nervous, skittish way of deserting her in need, as if from timidity.

Mrs. Lake could sometimes remember things when she got into bed, but on this occasion her pillow did not a.s.sist her; and the windmiller snubbed her for making "such a caddle" about a woman's face she might have seen anywhere or nowhere, for that matter; so she got no help from him.

And it was not till after the Cheap Jack and his wife had left the neighborhood, that one night (she was in bed) it suddenly "came to her," as she said, that the dwarf's bride was the woman who had brought Jan to the mill, on the night of the great storm.

CHAPTER XIV.

SUBLUNARY ART.--JAN GOES TO SCHOOL.--DAME DATCHETT AT HOME.--JAN'S FIRST SCHOOL Sc.r.a.pE.--JAN DEFENDS HIMSELF.

Even the hero of a tale cannot always be heroic, nor of romantic or poetic tastes.

The wonderful beauty of the night sky and the moon had been fully felt by the artist-nature of the child Jan; but about this time he took to the study of a totally different subject,--pigs.

It was the force of circ.u.mstances which led Jan to "make pigs" on his slate so constantly, instead of n.o.bler subjects; and it dated from the time when his foster-mother began to send him with the other children to school at Dame Datchett's.

Dame Datchett's cottage was the last house on one side of the village main street. It was low, thatched, creeper-covered, and had only one floor, and two rooms,--the outer room where the Dame kept her school, and the inner one where she slept. Dame Datchett's scholars were very young, and it is to be hoped that the chief objects of their parents in paying for their schooling were to insure their being kept safely out of the way for a certain portion of each day, and the saving of wear and tear to clothes and shoes.

It is to be hoped so, because this much of discipline was to some extent accomplished. As to learning, Dame Datchett had little enough herself, and was quite unable to impart even that, except to a very industrious and intelligent pupil.

Her school appurtenances were few and simple. From one of them arose Jan's first sc.r.a.pe at school. It was a long, narrow blackboard, on which the alphabet had once been painted white, though the letters were now so faded that the Dame could no longer distinguish them, even in spectacles.

The sc.r.a.pe came about thus.

As he stood at the bottom of the little cla.s.s which gathered in a semicircle around the Dame's chair, his young eyes could see the faded letters quite clearly, though the Dame's could not.

"Say th' alphabet, childern!" cried Dame Datchett; and as the cla.s.s shouted the names of the letters after her, she made a show of pointing to each with a long "sallywithy" wand cut from one of the willows in the water-meadows below. She ran the sallywithy along the board at what she esteemed a judicious rate, to keep pace with the shouted alphabet, but, as she could not see the letters, her tongue and her wand were not in accord. Little did the wide- mouthed, white-headed youngsters of the village heed this, but it troubled Jan's eyes; and when--in consequence of her rubbing her nose with her disengaged hand--the sallywithy slipped to Q as the Dame cried F, Jan brought the lore he had gained from Abel to bear upon her inaccuracy.

"'Tis a Q, not a F," he said, boldly and aloud.

A t.i.tter ran through the cla.s.s, and the biggest and stupidest boy found the joke so overwhelming that he stretched his mouth from ear to ear, and doubled himself up with laughter, till it looked as if his corduroy-breeched knee were a turnip, and he about to munch it.

The Dame dropped her sallywithy and began to feel under her chair.

"Which be the young varment as said a F was a Q?" she rather unfairly inquired.

"A didn't say a F was a Q"-- began Jan; but a chorus of cowardly little voices drowned him, and curried favor with the Dame by crying, "Tis Jan Lake, the miller's son, missus."

And the big boy, conscious of his own breach of good manners, atoned for it by officiously dragging Jan to Dame Datchett's elbow.

"Hold un vor me," said the Dame, settling her spectacles firmly on her nose.

And with infinite delight the great b.o.o.by held Jan to receive his thwacks from the strap which the Dame had of late years subst.i.tuted for the birch rod. And as Jan writhed, he chuckled as heartily as before, it being an amiable feature in the character of such clowns that, so long as they can enjoy a guffaw at somebody's expense, the subject of their ridicule is not a matter of much choice or discrimination.

After the first angry sob, Jan set his teeth and bore his punishment in a proud silence, quite incomprehensible by the small rustics about him, who, like the pigs of the district, were in the habit of crying out in good time before they were hurt as a preventive measure.

Strangely enough, it gave the biggest boy the impression that Jan was "poor-spirited," and unable to take his own part,--a temptation to bully him too strong to be resisted.

So when the school broke up, and the children were scattering over the road and water-meads, the wide-mouthed boy came up to Jan and s.n.a.t.c.hed his slate from him.

"Give Jan his slate!" cried Jan, indignantly.

He was five years old, but the other was seven, and he held the slate above his head.

"And who be JAN, then, thee little gallus-bird?" said he, tauntingly.

"I be Jan!" answered the little fellow, defiantly. "Jan Lake, the miller's son. Give I his slate!"

"Thee's not a miller's son," said the other; and the rest of the children began to gather round.

"I be a miller's son," reiterated Jan. "And I've got a miller's thumb, too;" and he turned up his little thumb for confirmation of the fact.

"Thee's not a miller's son," repeated the other, with a grin.

"Thee's n.o.body's child, thee is. Master Lake's not thy vather, nor Mrs. Lake bean't thy mother. Thee was brought to the mill in a sack of grist, thee was."

In saying which, the boy repeated a popular version of Jan's history.

If any one had been present outside Dame Datchett's cottage at that moment who had been in the windmill when Jan first came to it, he would have seen a likeness so vivid between the face of the child and the face of the man who brought him to the mill as would have seemed to clear up at least one point of the mystery of his parentage.

Pride and wrath convulsed every line of the square, quaint face, and seemed to narrow it to the likeness of the man's, as, with his black eyes blazing with pa.s.sion, Jan flew at his enemy.

The boy still held Jan's slate on high, and with a derisive "haw!

haw!" he brought it down heavily above Jan's head. But Jan's eye was quick, and very true. He dodged the blow, which fell on the boy's own knees, and then flew at him like a kitten in a tiger fury.

They were both small and easily knocked over, and in an instant they were sprawling on the road, and cuffing, and pulling, and kicking, and punching with about equal success, except that the bigger boy prudently roared and howled all the time, in the hope of securing some a.s.sistance in his favor.

"Dame Datchett! Missus! Murder! Yah! Boohoo! The little varment be a throttling I."

But Mrs. Datchett was deaf. Also, she not unnaturally considered that, in looking after "the young varments" in school-hours, she fully earned their weekly pence, and was by no means bound to disturb herself because they squabbled in the street.

Meanwhile Jan gradually got the upper hand of his lubberly and far from courageous opponent, whose smock he had nearly torn off his back. He had not spent any of his breath in calling for aid, but now, in reply to the boy's cries for mercy and release, he shouted, "What be my name, now, thee big gawney? Speak, or I'll drottle 'ee."

"Jan Lake," said his vanquished foe. "Let me go! Yah! yah!"

"Whose son be I?" asked the remorseless Jan.

"Abel Lake's, the miller! Boohoo, boohoo!" sobbed the boy.

"And what be this, then, Willum Smith?" was Jan's final question, as he brought his thumb close to his enemy's eye.