Jan of the Windmill Part 32

But Jan had started to find the boots, and the bow-legged boy, who had overheard the news as he left the house, rushed up the street, with his head down, crying, "It's sold! it's sold!" and, as he ran, he jostled against a man in a white ap.r.o.n, carrying a pot of green paint to some area railings.

"Wot's sold?" said he, testily, as he recovered his balance.

"You a painter, and don't know?" said the rosy-cheeked boy. "Oh, my! Wot's sold? Why, I'm sold, and IT'S sold. That walable picter I wos about to purchase for my mansion in Piccadilly." And, feigning to burst into a torrent of tears, he darted round the corner and into the public-house.

CHAPTER x.x.xVII.

SUNs.h.i.+NE AFTER STORM.

It had been a wet morning. The heavy rain-clouds rolled over the plains, hanging on this side above the horizon as if in an instant they must fall and crush the solid earth, and pa.s.sing away on that side in dark, slanting veils of shower; giving to the vast monotony of the wide field of view that strange interchange of light and shadow, gleam and gloom, which makes the poetry of the plains.

The rain had pa.s.sed. The gray mud of the chalk roads dried up into white dust almost beneath the travellers' feet as they came out again after temporary shelter; and that brightest, tenderest smile, with which, on such days, the sun makes evening atonement for his absence, shone and sparkled, danced and glowed from the windmill to the water-meads. It reopened the flowers, and drew fragrant answer from the meadow-sweet and the bay-leaved willow. It made the birds sing, and the ploughboy whistle, and the old folk toddle into their gardens to smell the herbs. It cherished silent satisfaction on the bronze face of Rufus resting on his paws, and lay over Master Swift's wan brow like the aureole of some austere saint canonized, just on this side the gates of Paradise.

The simile is not inapt, for the coa.r.s.e and vigorous features of the schoolmaster had been refined to that peculiar n.o.bleness which, perhaps, the sharp tool of suffering--used to its highest ends--can alone produce. And the smile of patience, like a victor's wreath, lay now where hot pa.s.sions and imperious temper had once struggled and been overcome.

The schoolmaster was paralyzed in his lower limbs, and he sat in a wheel-chair of his own devising, which he could propel with his own hands. The agonizing anxiety and suspense which followed Jan's disappearance had broken him down, and this was the end. Rufus was still his only housekeeper, but a woman from the village came in to give him necessary help.

"And it be 'most like waiting upon a angel," said she.

This woman had gone for the night, and Master Swift sat in his invalid chair in the little porch, where he could touch the convolvulus bells with his hand, and see what some old pupil of his had done towards "righting up" the garden. It was an instance of that hardly earned grace of patience in him that he did not vex himself to see how sorely the garden suffered by his helplessness.

Not without cause was the evening smile of sunlight reflected on Master Swift's lips. Between the fingers of a hand lying on his lap lay Jan's letter to announce that he and the artist were coming to the cottage, and in intervals of reading and re-reading it the schoolmaster spouted poetry, and Rufus wagged a sedately sympathetic tail.

"How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean Are Thy returns! even as the flowers in spring; To which, besides their own demean, The late past frosts tributes of pleasure bring.

Grief melts away Like snow in May, As if there were no such cold thing."

And, waving his hand after the old manner towards the glowing water- meadows, he went on with increasing emphasis: -

"Who would have thought my shrivelled heart Could have recovered greennesse?"

Perhaps Rufus felt himself bound to answer what had a tone of appeal in it, or perhaps some strange sympathy, not with Master Swift, began already to disturb him. He rose and knocked up the hand in which the letter lay with his long nose, and wandered restlessly about, and then settled down again with his eyes towards the garden- gate.

The old man sat still. The evening breeze stirred his white hair, and he drank in the scents drawn freshly from field and flowers after the rain, and they were like balm to him. As he sat up, his voice seemed to recover its old power, and he clasped his hands together over Jan's letter, and went on: -

"And now in age I bud again, After so many deaths I live and write; I once more smell the dew and rain, And relish versing: O my only Light!

It cannot be That I am he On whom Thy tempests fell all night!"

So far Mr. George Herbert; but the poem was never finished, for Rufus jumped up with a cry, and after standing for a moment with stiffened limbs, and m.u.f.fled whines, as if he could not believe his own glaring yellow eyes, he burst away with tenfold impetus, and dragged, and tore, and pulled, and all but carried Jan to the schoolmaster's feet.

And the painter walked away down the garden, and stood looking long over the water-meadows.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.

A PAINTER'S EDUCATION.--MASTER CHUTER'S PORT.--A FAREWELL FEAST.-- THE SLEEP OF THE JUST.

"I hope, Jan," said Master Swift, "that the gentleman will overlook my want of respect towards himself, in consideration of what it was to me to see your face again."

"Don't distress me by speaking of it, Mr. Swift," said the painter, taking his hand, and sitting down beside him in the porch.

As he returned the artist's friendly grasp, the schoolmaster scanned his face with some of the old sharpness. "Sir," said he, "I beg you to forgive my freedom. I'm a rough man with a rough tongue, which I could never teach to speak the feelings of my heart; but I humbly thank you, sir, for your goodness to this boy."

"It's a very selfish kind of goodness at present, Mr. Swift, and I fancy some day the obligation of the acquaintance will be on my side."

"Jan," said the schoolmaster, "take Rufus wi' ye, and run that errand I telled ye. Rufus'll carry your basket." When they had gone, he turned earnestly to the painter.

"Sir, I'm speaking to ye out of my ignorance and my anxiety. Ye want the lad to be a painter. Will he be a great painter? I'm reminding you of what ye'll know better than me (though not by yourself, for Jan tells me you're a grand artist), that a man may have the ambition and the love, and some talent for an art, and yet be just without that divine spark which the G.o.ds withhold. Sir, G.o.d forbid that I should undervalue the pure pleasure of even that little gift; but it's ill for a lad when he has just that much of an art to keep him from a thrifty trade--and NO MORE."

The painter replied as earnestly as Master Swift had spoken, -

"Jan's estimate of me is weaker than his judgment in art is wont to be. I speak to understanding ears, and you will know that I have some true feeling for my art, when I tell you that I know enough to know that I shall never be a great painter; and it will help you to put confidence in my a.s.surance that, if he lives, JAN WILL."

Deep emotion kept the old man silent. It was a mixed feeling,-- first, intense pride and pleasure, and then a pang of disappointment. Had he not been the first to see genius in the child? Had he not built upon him one more ambition for himself,-- the ambition of training the future great man? And now another had taken his office.

"You look disappointed," said the artist.

"It is the vile selfishness in me, sir. I had hoped the boy's gifts would have been what I could have trained at my own hearth. It is only one more wilful fancy, once more thwarted."

"Selfish I am sure it is not!" said the painter, hotly; "and as to such benevolence being thwarted as a sort of punishment for I don't know what, I believe nothing of the kind."

"You don't know, sir," said the old man, firmly. "Not that I'm speaking of the Lord's general dealings. There are tender, gentle souls, I know well, who seem only to grow the purer and better for having the desire of their eyes granted to them; but there are others whom, for their own good, the Father of all sees needful to chasten to the end."

"My experience lies in another direction," said the painter, impetuously. "With what awe do you suppose indolent men, whose easy years of self-indulgent life have been broken by no real calamity, look upon others on whose heads blow falls after blow, though their existence is an hourly struggle towards perfection? There are some stagnant pools whose peace the Angel never disturbs. Does G.o.d, who takes pleasure in perfecting the saint and pardoning the sinner, forget some of us because we are not worth remembering?"

"He forgets none of us, my dear sir," said the schoolmaster, "and He draws us to Himself at different times, and by different roads. I wanted to be the child's teacher, but He has chosen you, and will bless ye in the work."

The painter drove his hands through his bushy hair, and spoke more vehemently than before.

"_I_ his teacher, and not you? My good friend, I at least am the better judge of what makes a painter's education. Is the man who shows a Giotto how to use this brush, or mix that paint, to be called his teacher? No, not for teaching him, forsooth, what he would have learned of anybody, everybody, n.o.body, somehow, anyhow, or done just as well without. But the man who taught him to work as a matter of principle, and apart from inclination (a lesson which not all geniuses learn); the man who fostered the love of Nature in him, and the spirit of poetry,--qualities without which draughtsmans.h.i.+p and painting had better not be; the man who by example and precept led him to find satisfaction in duty done, and happiness in simple pleasures and domestic affections; the man who so fixed these high and pure lessons in his mind, at its most susceptible age, that the foulest dens of London could not corrupt him; the man whose beloved and reverenced face would rise up in judgment against him if he could ever hereafter degrade his art to be a pander of vice, or a mere trick of the workshop;--this man, Master Swift, has been the painter's schoolmaster!"

Master Swift was not accustomed to betray emotion, but his nerves were less strong than they had been, and self-control was more difficult; and with his h.o.r.n.y hands he hid the cheeks down which tears of gratified pride would force their way.

He had not found voice to speak, when Rufus appeared at the gate with one basket, followed by Jan and the little innkeeper with another. Why Master Chuter had come, and why Jan was looking so particularly well satisfied, must be explained.

Whilst the painter was still gazing across the water-meadows, Master Swift, who was the soul of hospitality, had told Jan where to find a few s.h.i.+llings in a certain drawer, and had commissioned him to lay these out in the wherewithal for an evening meal. Jan had had some anxiety in connection with the duty intrusted to him. Firstly, he well knew that the few s.h.i.+llings were what the schoolmaster must depend on for that week's living. Secondly, though it was his old friend's all, it was a sum very inadequate to provide such a meal as Jan would have liked to set before the painter. At his age, children are very sensitive on behalf of their grown-up friends, and like to maintain the credit of home. The provoking point was that Jan had plenty of pocket-money, with which he could have supplied deficiencies, had he dared; for the painter, besides buying him an outfit for the journey, had liberally rewarded him for his work at the pot boiler. But Jan knew the pride of Master Swift's heart too well to venture to add a half penny to his money, or to spend a half penny less than all.

It was whilst he was going with an anxious countenance towards the village shop that Master Chuter met him with open arms. The little innkeeper was genuinely delighted to see him; and the news of his arrival having spread, several old friends (including "Willum"

Smith) were waiting for him, about the yardway of the Heart of Oak.

When the innkeeper discovered Jan's errand, he insisted on packing up a prime cut of bacon, some new-laid eggs, and a bottle of "crusty" old port, such as the squires drank at election dinners, to take to the schoolmaster. Jan was far too glad of this seasonable addition to the feast to suggest doubts of its acceptance; indeed, he ventured on a hint about a possible lack of wine-gla.s.ses, which Master Chuter quickly took, and soon filled up his basket with ancient gla.s.ses on bloated legs, a clean table-cloth, and so forth.

"We needn't say any thing about the gla.s.ses," suggested Jan, as they drew near the cottage.

Master Chuter winked the little eye buried in his fat left cheek.

"I knows the schoolmaster, Jan. He be mortal proud; and I wouldn't offend he, sartinly not, Jan. But Master Swift and me have seen a deal of each other since you left, and he've tasted this port before, when he were so bad, and he'll not take it amiss from an old friend."