Jan of the Windmill: A Story of the Plains

by Juliana Horatia Ewing

George had been puzzled that the woman’s countenance did not seem new to him, and he was puzzled and disturbed also that the expression on the face of the Cheap Jack was quite new. Whatever the hunchback had in his head, however, he was not unfriendly in his manner.

“Good morning, George, my dear!” he cried, cheerfully; “you’ve seen my missus before, eh, George?” George was just about to say no, when he remembered that he had seen the woman, and when and where.

“Dreadful night that was, Mr. Sannel!” said the Cheap Jack’s wife, with a smile on her large mouth. George assented, and by the hospitable invitation of the newly married couple he followed them into the dwelling part of the house, trying as he did so to decide upon a plan for his future conduct.

Here at last was a woman who could probably tell all that he wanted to know about the mystery on which he had hoped to trade, and—the Cheap Jack had married her. If any thing could be got out of the knowledge of Jan’s history, the Cheap Jack, and not George, would get it now. The hasty resolution to which George came was to try to share what he could not keep entirely to himself. He flattered himself he could be very civil, and—he had got the letter.

It proved useful. George was resolved not to show it until he had got at something of what the large-mouthed woman had to tell; and, as she wanted to see the letter, she made a virtue of necessity, and seemed anxious to help the miller’s man to the utmost of her power.

The history of her connection with Jan’s babyhood was soon told, and she told it truthfully.

Five years before her marriage to the Cheap Jack, she was a chambermaid in a small hotel in London, and “under notice to leave.” Why—she did not deem it necessary to tell George. In this hotel Jan was born, and Jan’s mother died. She was a foreigner, it was supposed, and her husband also, for they talked a foreign language to each other. He was not with her when she first came, but he joined her afterwards, and was with her at her death. So far the Cheap Jack’s wife spoke upon hearsay. Though employed at the hotel, which was very full, she was not sleeping in the house; she was not on good terms with the landlady, nor even with the other servants, and her first real connection with the matter was when the gentleman, overhearing some “words” between her and the landlady at the bar, abruptly asked her if she were in want of employment. He employed her,—to take the child to the very town where she was now living as the Cheap Jack’s wife. He did not come with her, as he had to attend his wife’s funeral. It was understood at the hotel that he was going to take the body abroad for interment. So the porter had said. The person to whom she was directed to bring the child was a respectable old woman, living in the outskirts of the town, whose business was sick-nursing. She seemed, however, to be comfortably off, and had not been out for some time. She had been nurse to the gentleman in his childhood, so she once told the Cheap Jack’s wife with tears. But she was always shedding tears, either over the baby, or as she sat over her big Bible, “for ever having to wipe her spectacles, and tears running over her nose ridic’lus to behold.” She was pious, and read the Bible aloud in the evening. Then she had fainting fits; she could not go uphill or upstairs without great difficulty, and she had one of her fits when she first saw the child. If with these infirmities of body and mind the ex-nurse had been easily managed, the Cheap Jack’s wife professed that she could have borne it with patience. But the old woman was painfully shrewd, and there was no hoodwinking her. She never allowed the Cheap Jack’s wife to go out without her, and contrived, in spite of a hundred plans and excuses, to prevent her from speaking to any of the townspeople alone. Never, said Sal, never could she have put up with it, even for the short time before the gentleman came down to them, but for knowing it would be a paying job. But his arrival was the signal for another catastrophe, which ended in Jan’s becoming a child of the mill.

If the sight of the baby had nearly overpowered the old nurse, the sight of the dark-eyed gentleman overwhelmed her yet more. Then they were closeted together for a long time, and the old woman’s tongue hardly ever stopped. Sal explained that she would not have been such a fool as to let this conversation escape her, if she could have helped it. She took her place at the keyhole, and had an excuse ready for the old woman, if she should come out suddenly. The old woman came out suddenly; but she did not wait for the excuse. She sent the Cheap Jack’s wife civilly on an errand into the kitchen, and then followed her, and shut the door and turned the key upon her without hesitation, leaving her unable to hear any thing but the tones of the conversation through the parlor wall. She never opened the door again. As far as the Cheap Jack’s wife could tell, the old woman seemed to be remonstrating and pleading; the gentleman spoke now and then. Then there was a lull, then a thud, then a short pause, and then the parlor-door was burst open, and the gentleman came flying towards the kitchen, and calling for the Cheap Jack’s wife. The fact that the door was locked caused some delay, and delay was not desirable. The old nurse had had “a fit.” When the doctor came, he gave no hope of her life. She had had heart disease for many years, he said. In the midst of this confusion, a letter came for the gentleman, which seemed absolutely to distract him. He bade Sal get the little Jan ready, and put his clothes together, and they started that evening for the mill. Sal believed it was the doctor who recommended Mrs. Lake as a foster-mother for the baby, having attended her child. The storm came on after they started. The child had been very sickly ever since they left London. The gentleman took the Cheap Jack’s wife straight back to the station, paid her handsomely, and sent her up to town again. She had never seen him since. As to his name, it so happened she had never heard it at the hotel; but when he was setting her off to the country with the child, she asked it, and he told her that it was Ford. The old nurse also spoke of him as Mr. Ford, but—so Sal fancied—with a sort of effort, which made her suspect that it was not his real name.

“Yes, it be!” said George, who had followed the narrative with open-mouthed interest. “It be aal right. I knows. ’Twas a gentleman by the name of Ford as cried his pocket-book, and the vive-pound bill in the papers. ’Tis aal right. Ford—Jan Ford be the little varment’s name then, and he be gentry-born, too! Missus Lake she allus said so, she did, sartinly.”

George was so absorbed by the flood of information which had burst upon him all at once, and by adjusting his clumsy thoughts to the new view of Jan, that he did not stop to think whether the Cheap Jack and his wife had known of the lost pocket-book and the reward. They had not. The dark gentleman had no wish to reopen communication with the woman he had employed. He thought (and rightly) that the book had fallen when he stumbled over his cloak in getting into the carriage, and he had refused to advertise it except in the local papers. And at that time the Cheap Jack and Sal were both in London.