Jan of the Windmill: A Story of the Plains

by Juliana Horatia Ewing

They were married. Had he ever denied himself a single gratification, because it would add another knot to the tangle of his career? He had pacified creditors by incurring fresh debts, and had evaded catastrophes by involving himself in new complications all his life. His marriage was accomplished at the expense of a train of falsehoods, but his father-in-law was an unworldly old man, not difficult to deceive. He spent most of the next ten months in Holland, and, apart from his anxieties, it was the purest, happiest time he had ever known. Then his father recalled him peremptorily to England.

When Mr. Ford’s client obeyed his father’s summons, the climax of his difficulties seemed at hand. The old man was anxious for a reconciliation, but resolved that his son should “settle in life;” and he had found a wife for him, the daughter of a Scotch nobleman, young, handsome, and with a good fortune. He gave him a fortnight for consideration. If he complied, the old man promised to pay his debts, to make him a liberal allowance, and to be in every way indulgent. If he thwarted his plans, he threatened to allow him nothing during his lifetime, and to leave him nothing that he could avoid bequeathing at his death.

It was at this juncture that Jan’s mother followed her husband to England. Her anxieties were not silenced by excuses which satisfied her father. The crisis could hardly have been worse. Mr. Ford’s client felt that confession was now inevitable; and that he could confess more easily by letter when he reached London. But before the letter was written, his wife died.

Weak men, harassed by personal anxieties, become hard in proportion to their selfish fears. It is like the cruelty that comes of terror. He had loved his wife; but he was terribly pressed, and there came a sense of relief even with the bitterness of the knowledge that he was free. He took the body to Holland, to be buried under the shadow of the little wooden church where they were married; and to the desolate old father he promised to bring his grandson—Jan. But just after the death of an old nurse, in whose care he had placed his child, another crisis came to Mr. Ford’s client. On the same day he got letters from his father and from his father-in-law. From the first, to press his instant return home; from the second, to say that, if he could not at once bring Jan, the old man would make the effort of a voyage to England to fetch him. Jan’s father almost hated him. That the child should have lived when the beloved mother died was in itself an offence. But that that freedom, and peace, and prosperity, which were so dearly purchased by her death, should be risked afresh by him, was irritating to a degree. He was frantic. It was impossible to fail that very peremptory old gentleman, his father. It was out of the question to allow his father-in-law to come to England. He could not throw away all his prospects. And the more he thought of it, the more certain it seemed that Jan’s existence would for ever tie him to Holland; that for his grandson’s sake the old man would investigate his affairs, and that the truth would come out sooner or later. The very devil suggested to him that if the child had died with its mother he would have been quite free, and intercourse with Holland would have died away naturally. He wished to forget. To a nature of his type, when even such a love as he had been privileged to enjoy had become a memory involving pain, it was instinctively evaded like any other unpleasant thing. He resolved, at last, to let nothing stand between him and reconciliation with his father. Once more he must desperately mortgage the future for present emergencies. He wrote to the old father-in-law to say that the child was dead. He excused this to himself on the ground of Jan’s welfare. If the truth became fully known, and his father threw him off, he would be a poor embarrassed man, and could do little for his child. But with his father’s fortune, and, perhaps, the Scotch lady’s fortune, it would be in his power to give Jan a brilliant future, even if he never fully acknowledged him. As yet he hardly recognized such an unnatural possibility. He said to himself, that when he was free, all would be well, and the Dutch grandfather would forgive the lie in the joy of discovering that Jan was alive, and would be so well provided for.

Mr. Ford’s client was reconciled to his father. He married Lady Adelaide, and announced the marriage to his father-in-law. After which, his intercourse with Holland died out.

It was a curious result of a marriage so made that it was a very happy one. Still more curious was the likeness, both physical and mental, between the second wife and the first. Lady Adelaide was half Scotch and half English, a blonde of the most brilliant type, and of an intellectual order of beauty. But fair women are common enough. It was stranger still that the best affections of two women of so high a moral and intellectual standard should have been devoted to the same and to such a husband. Not quite in vain. Indeed, but for that grievous sin towards his eldest son, Mr. Ford’s client would probably have become an utterly different man. But there is no rising far in the moral atmosphere with a wilful, unrepented sin as a clog. It was a miserable result of the weakness of his character that he could not see that the very nobleness of Lady Adelaide’s should have encouraged him to confess to her what he dared not trust to his father’s imperious, petulant affection. But he was afraid of her. It had been the same with his first wife. He had dreaded that she should discover his falsehoods far more than he had feared his father-in-law. And years of happy companionship made it even less tolerable to him to think of lowering himself in Lady Adelaide’s regard.

But there was a far more overwhelming consideration which had been gathering strength for eight years between him and the idea of recognizing Jan as his eldest son, and his heir. He had another son, Lady Adelaide’s only child. If he had hesitated when the boy was only a baby to tell her that her darling was not his only son, it was less and less easy to him to think of bringing Jan,—of whom he knew nothing—from the rough life of the mill to supplant Lady Adelaide’s child, when the boy grew more charming as every year went by. Clever, sweet-tempered, of aristocratic appearance, idolized by the relatives of both his parents, he seemed made by Providence to do credit to the position to which he was believed to have been born.

Mr. Ford’s client had almost made the resolve against which that fair face that was not Lady Adelaide’s for ever rose up in judgment: he was just deciding to put Jan to school, and to give up all idea of taking him home, when death seemed once more to have solved his difficulties. An unwonted ease came into his heart. Surely Heaven, knowing how sincerely he wished to be good, was making goodness easy to him,—was permitting him to settle with his conscience on cheaper terms than those of repentance and restitution. (And indeed, if amendment, of the weak as well as of the strong, be God’s great purpose for us, who shall say that the ruggedness of the narrow road is not often smoothed for stumbling feet?) The fever seemed quite providential, and Mr. Ford’s client felt quite pious about it. He was conscious of no mockery in dwelling to himself on the thought that Jan was “better off” in Paradise with his mother. And he himself was safe—for the first time since he could remember,—free at last to become worthier, with no black shadow at his heels. Very touching was his resolve that he would be a better father to his son than his own father had been to him. If he could not train him in high principles and self-restraint, he would at least be indulgent to the consequences of his own indulgence, and never drive him to those fearful straits. “But he’ll be a very different young man from what I was,” was his final thought. “Thanks to his good mother.”

His mind was full of Lady Adelaide’s goodness as he entered his house, and she met him in the hall.

“Ah, Edward!” she cried, “I am so glad you’ve come home. I want you to see that quaint child I was telling you about.”