Jan of the Windmill: A Story of the Plains

by Juliana Horatia Ewing

Mr. Ford meditated. It may be said here that he by no means knew all that the reader knows of Jan’s history; but he saw that his client was anxious not to withhold the money if the child were alive.

“I think I have it, my dear sir,” he said suddenly. “Allow me to write, in my own name, to this worthy clergyman. I must ask you to subscribe to his fund, in my name, which will form an excuse for the letter, and I will contrive to ask him if the list of cases has been printed accurately, and has his sanction. If there has been any error, we shall hear of it. The object of the subscription is—let me see—is—a monument to those who have died of the fever and”—

But the dark gentleman had started up abruptly.

“Thank you, thank you, Mr. Ford,” he said; “your plan is, as usual, excellent. Pray oblige me by sending ten guineas in your own name, and you will let me know if—if there is any mistake. I will call in to-morrow about other matters.”

And before Mr. Ford could reply his client was gone.

The peculiar solitude to be found in the crowded heart of London was grateful to his present mood. To have been alone with his thoughts in the country would have been intolerable. The fields smack of innocence, and alone with them the past is apt to take the simple tints of right and wrong in the memory. But in that seething mass, which represents ten thousand heartaches and anxieties, doubtful shifts, and open sins, as bad or worse than a man’s own, there is a silent sympathy and no reproach. Mr. Ford’s client did not lean back, the tension of his mind was too great. He sat stiffly, and gazed vacantly before him, half seeing and half transforming into other visions whatever lay before the hansom, as it wound its way through the streets. Now for a moment a four-wheeled cab, loaded with schoolboy luggage, occupied the field of view, and idle memories of his own boyhood flitted over it. Then, crawling behind a dray, some strange associations built up the barrels into an old weatherstained wooden house in Holland, and for a while an intense realization of past scenes which love had made happy put present anxieties to sleep. But they woke again with a horrible pang, as a grim, hideous funeral car drove slowly past, nodding like a nightmare.

As the traffic became less dense, and the cab went faster, the man’s thoughts went faster too. He strove to do what he had not often tried, to review his life. He had unconsciously gained the will to do it, because a reparation which conscience might hitherto have pressed on him was now impossible, and because the plague that had desolated Abel Lake’s home had swept the skeleton out of his own cupboard, and he could repent of the past and do his duty in the future. His conscience was stronger than his courage. He had long wished to repent, though he had not found strength to repair.

On one point he did not delude himself as he looked back over his life. He had no sentimental regrets for the careless happiness of youth. Is any period of human life so tormented with cares as a self-indulgent youth? He had been a slave to expensive habits, to social traditions, to past follies, ever since he could remember. He had been in debt, in pocket or in conscience, from his schoolboy days to this hour. His tradesmen were paid long since, and, if death had cancelled what else he owed, how easy virtue would henceforth be!

It had not been easy at the date of his first marriage. He was deeply in debt, and out of favor with his father. It was on both accounts that he went abroad for some months. In Holland he married. His wife was Jan’s mother, and Jan was their only child.

Her people were of middle rank, leading quiet though cultivated lives. Her mother was dead, and she was her old father’s only child. It would be doing injustice to the kind of love with which she inspired her husband to dwell much upon her beauty, though it was of that high type which takes possession of the memory for ever. She was very intensely, brilliantly fair, so that in a crowd her face shone out like a star. Time never dimmed one golden thread in her hair; and Death, who had done so much for Mr. Ford’s client, could not wash that face from his brain. It blotted the traffic out of the streets, and in their place Dutch pastures, whose rich green levels were unbroken by hedge or wall, stretched flatly to the horizon. It bent over a drawing on his knee as he and she sat sketching together in an old-world orchard, where the trees bore more moss than fruit. The din of London was absolutely unheard by Mr. Ford’s client, but he heard her voice, saying, “You must learn to paint cattle, if you mean to make any thing of Dutch scenery. And also, where the earth gives so little variety, one must study the sky. We have no mountains, but we have clouds.” It was in the orchard, under the apple-tree, across the sketch-book, that they had plighted their troth—ten years ago.