Jan of the Windmill Part 26

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 ma.s.s, which represents ten thousand heartaches and anxieties, doubtful s.h.i.+fts, 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 a.s.sociations 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.

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 n.o.bleman, 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, hara.s.sed 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 embarra.s.sed 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 n.o.bleness 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 companions.h.i.+p 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 rest.i.tution. (And indeed, if amendment, of the weak as well as of the strong, be G.o.d'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 be 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."

"I don't remember, my dear," said Mr. Ford's client.

"You're looking very tired," said Lady Adelaide, gently; "but about the child. It is Lady Louisa Ammaby's little girl. You know I met her just before we left Brighton. I only saw the child once, but it is the quaintest, most original little being! So unlike its mother!

She and her mother are in town, and they were going out to luncheon to-day I found, so I asked the child here to dine with D'Arcy. Her bonne is taking off her things, and I must go and bring her down."

As Lady Adelaide went out, her son came in, and rushed up to his father. If Mr. Ford's client had failed in natural affection for one son, his love for the other had a double intensity. He put his arm tenderly round him, whilst the boy told some long childish story, which was not finished when Lady Adelaide returned, leading Amabel by the hand. Amabel was a good deal taller. Her large feet were adorned with ornamental thread socks, and leathern shoes b.u.t.toned round the ankle. Her hair was cropped, because Lady Craikshaw said this made it grow. She wore a big pinafore by the same authority, in spite of which she carried herself with an admirable dignity. The same candor, good sense, and resolution shone from her clear eyes and fat cheeks as of old. Mr. Ford's client was alarming to children, but Amabel shook hands courageously with him.

She was accustomed to exercise courage in her behavior. From her earliest days a standard of manners had been expected of her beyond her age. It was a consequence of her growth. "You're quite a big girl now," was a nursery reproach addressed to her at least two years before the time, and she tried valiantly to live up to her inches.

But when Amabel saw D'Arcy, she started and stopped short. "Won't you shake hands with my boy, Amabel?" said Lady Adelaide. "Oh, you must make friends with him, and he'll give you a ride on the rocking-horse after dinner. Surely such a big girl can't be shy?"

Goaded by the old reproach, Amabel made an effort, and, advancing by herself, held out her hand, and said, "How do you do, Bogy?"

D'Arcy's black eyes twinkled with merriment. "How do you do, Mother Bunch?" said he.

"My DEAR D'Arcy!" said Lady Adelaide, reproachfully.

"Mamma, I am not rude. I am only joking. She calls me Bogy, so I call her Mother Bunch."

"But I'm NOT Mother Bunch," said Amabel.

"And I'm not Bogy," retorted D'Arcy.

"Yes, you are," said Amabel. "Only you had very old clothes on in the wood."

Lady Craikshaw had cruelly warned Lady Adelaide that Amabel sometimes told stories, and, thinking that the child was romancing, Lady Adelaide tried to change the subject. But D'Arcy cried, "Oh, do let her talk, mamma. I do so like her. She is such fun!"

"You oughtn't to laugh at me," said poor Amabel, as D'Arcy took her into the dining-room, "I gave you my paint-box."

The boy's stare of amazement awoke a doubt in Amabel's mind of his ident.i.ty with the Bogy of the woods. Between constantly peeping at him, and her anxiety to conduct herself conformably to her size in the etiquette of the dinner-table, she did not eat much. When dinner was over, and D'Arcy led her away to the rocking horse, he asked, "Do you still think I'm Bogy?"

"N--no," said Amabel, "I think perhaps you're not. But you're very like him, though you talk differently. Do you make pictures?"

D'Arcy shook his head.

"Not even of leaves?" said Amabel.

When she was going away, D'Arcy asked, "Which do you like best, me or Bogy?"

Amabel pondered. "I like you very much. You made the rocking-horse go so fast; but I liked Bogy. He carried me all up the hill, and he picked up my moss. I wasn't afraid of him. I gave him a kiss."

"Well, give me a kiss," said D'Arcy. But there was a tone of raillery in his voice which put Amabel on her dignity, and she shook her head, and began to go down the steps of the house, one leg at a time.

"If I'm Bogy, you know, you HAVE kissed me ONCE," shouted D'Arcy.

But Amabel's wits were as well developed as her feet.

"Once is enough for bogies," said she, and went st.u.r.dily away.

CHAPTER XXIX.

JAN FULFILS ABEL'S CHARGE.--SON OF THE MILL.--THE LARGE-MOUTHED WOMAN.

By the time Jan went back to the windmill he was quite well.

"Ye'll be fit for the walk by I open school," said Master Swift.

Jan promised himself that he would redouble his pains in cla.s.s, from grat.i.tude to the good schoolmaster. But it was not to be.

The day before the school opened, Jan came to the cottage. "Master Swift," said he, "I be come to tell ye that I be afraid I can't come to school."

"And how's that?" said Master Swift.