Jan of the Windmill: A Story of the Plains

by Juliana Horatia Ewing

“Do you really belong to this man?” he asked of Jan, and Jan replied, trembling, “Yes, sir.”

“Your son doesn’t look as if you treated him very well,” said the gentleman, turning to the Cheap Jack. “Take that, and give him a good supper this evening. He deserves it.”

As the Cheap Jack stooped for the half crown thrown to him, Mr. Ford’s client gave Jan some pence, saying, “You can keep these yourself.” Jan’s face, with a look of gratitude upon it, seemed to startle him afresh, but it was getting dark, and the crowd was closing round him. Jan had just entertained a wild thought of asking his protection, when he was gone.

What the strange gentleman had said about his unlikeness to the Cheap Jack, and also the thoughts awakened by hearing the old song, gave new energy to a resolve to which Jan had previously come. He had resolved to run away.

Since he awoke from the stupor of the draught which Sal had given him at the cross-roads, and found himself utterly in the power of the unscrupulous couple who pretended to be his parents, his life had been miserable enough. They had never intended to take him back to the mill, and, since they came to London and he was quite at their mercy, they had made no pretence of kindness. That they kept him constantly at work could hardly be counted an evil, for his working hours were the only ones with happiness in them, except when he dreamed of home. Not the cold pavement chilling him through his ragged clothes, not the strange staring and jesting of the rough crowds, not even the hideous sense of the hunchback’s vigilant oversight of him, could destroy his pleasure in the sense of the daily increasing powers of his fingers, in which genius seemed to tremble to create. In the few weeks of his apprenticeship to screeving, Jan had improved more quickly than he might have done under such teaching as the Squire had been willing to procure for the village genius. At the peril of floggings from the Cheap Jack, too many of which had already scarred his thin shoulders, he ransacked his brains for telling subjects, and forced from his memory the lines which told most, and told most quickly, of the pathetic look on Rufus’s face, the anger, pleasure, or playfulness of the mill cats. Perhaps none of us know what might be forced, against our natural indolence, from the fallow ground of our capabilities in many lines. The spirit of a popular subject in the fewest possible strokes was what Jan had to aim at for his daily bread, under peril of bodily harm hour after hour, for day after day, and his hand gained a cunning it might never otherwise have learned, and could never unlearn now.

In other respects, his learning was altogether of evil. Perhaps because they wished to reconcile him to his life, perhaps because his innocent face and uncorrupted character were an annoyance and reproach to the wicked couple, they encouraged Jan to associate with the boys of their own and the neighboring courts.

Many people are sorry to believe that there are a great many wicked and depraved grown-up people in all large towns, whose habits of vice are so firm, and whose moral natures are so loose, that their reformation is practically almost hopeless. But much fewer people realize the fact that thousands of little children are actively, hideously vicious and degraded. And yet it is better that this should be remembered than that, since, though it is more painful, it is more hopeful. It is hard to reform vicious children, but it is easier than to reform vicious men and women.

Little boys and little girls of eight or nine or ten years old, who are also drunkards, sweaters, thieves, gamblers, liars, and vicious, made Jan a laughing-stock, because of his simple childlike ways. They called him “green;” but, when he made friends with them by drawing pictures for them, they tried to teach him their own terrible lore. Once the Cheap Jack gave Jan a penny to go with some other boys to a penny theatre, or “gaff.” The depravity of the entertainment was a light matter to the depravity of the children by whom the place was crowded, and who had not so much lost as never found shame. Jan was standing amongst them, when he caught sight of a boy with a white head leaning over the gallery, whose face had a curious accidental likeness to Abel’s. The expression was quite different, for this one was partly imbecile, but there was just likeness enough to recall the past with an unutterable pang. What would Abel have said to see him there? Jan could not breathe in the place. The others were engaged, and he fought his way out.

What he had heard and seen rang in his ears and danced before his eyes after he crept to bed, as the dawn broke over the streets. But as if Abel himself had watched by his bedside as he used to do, and kept evil visions away, it did not trouble his dreams. He dreamed of the windmill, and of his foster-mother; of the little wood, and of Master Swift and Rufus.

After that night Jan had resolved that, whether Sal were his mother or not, he would run away. In the strength of his foster-brother’s pious memory he would escape from this evil life. He would beg his way back to the village, and to the upright, godly old schoolmaster, or at least die in the country on the road thither. He had not associated with the ragamuffins of the court without learning a little of their cunning; and he had waited impatiently for a chance of eluding the watchfulness of the Cheap Jack.