Jan of the Windmill Part 31

"Without character?" cried the artist. "Heavens and earth! Did you ever study physiognomy? Do you know any thing of faces?"

"It is part of my duty to know something of them, sir," began the master, who was slightly nettled.

"Then don't talk nonsense, my friend, but send me the boy, as soon as is consistent with your rules and regulations."

The boy was Jan. The man of business gave his consent, but he implored his "impulsive friend," as he termed the artist, not to ruin the lad by indulgence, but to keep him in his proper place, and give him plenty to do. In conformity with this sensible advice, Jan's first duties in his new home were to clean the painter's boots when he could find them, shake his velveteen coat when the pockets were empty, sweep the studio, clean brushes, and go errands. The artist was an old bachelor, infamously cheated by the rheumatic widow he had paid to perform the domestic work of his rooms; and when this afflicted lady gave warning on being asked for hot water at a later hour than usual, Jan persuaded the artist to enforce her departure, and took her place. So heavy is the iron weight of custom--when it takes the form of an elderly and widowed domestic to a single gentleman--that even Jan's growing influence would not have secured her dismissal, had not the artist had a particular reason for wis.h.i.+ng the boy's practical talents to be displayed. He suspected his business friend of distrusting them because of Jan's artistic genius, and he was proud to boast that he had never known the comfort of clean rooms and well-cooked food till "the boy Giotto" became his housekeeper.

The work was play to Jan after his slavery to the hunchback, and on his happiness in living with a painter it is needless to dwell. For a week or two, the artist was busy with his "pot boiler," and did not pay much attention to his new apprentice, and Jan watched without disturbing him; so that when he offered to set the painter's palette, his master regarded his success as an inspiration of genius, rather than as a result of habits of observation.

The painter, though clever and ambitious, and with a very pure and very elegant taste, was no mighty genius himself. The average of public taste in art is low enough, but in refusing his "high art"

pictures, and buying his domestic ones, the public was not far wrong. It must be confessed that he had also a vein of indolence in his nature, and Jan soon painted most of the pot boilers. Another of his duties was to sit as a model for the picture. The painter sketched him again and again, and was never quite satisfied. What the vision of the windmill had lit up in the depth of his black eyes could not be recalled to order in the painter's studio.

"I tell you what it is," said the artist one day; "domestic servitude is taking the poetry out of you. You're getting fat, Giotto! Understand that from henceforth I forbid you to black boots or grates, to brush, dust, wash, cook, or whatever disturbs the peace or hinders the growth of the soul. I must get the widow back!" and the painter heaved a deep sigh.

But Jan was resolute against the widow. He effected a compromise.

The bandy-legged boy from the Home was taken into the painter's service, and Jan made himself responsible for his good conduct. He began by warning his vivacious friend that no freemasonry of common street-boyhood could hinder the duty he owed to his master of protecting his property and insuring his comfort, and that he must sooner tell tales of his friend than have the painter wronged. To this homily the bandy-legged boy listened with his red cheeks artificially distended, and occasional murmurs of "Crikey!" but he took service on these terms, and did Jan no discredit. He was incorruptibly honest, and when from time to time the street fever seized him, and he left his work to play at post-leaping outside, Jan would quietly take his place, and did not betray him. This kindness invariably drew tears of penitence from the soft-hearted young vagrant, his freaks grew rarer and rarer, and he finally became as steady as he was quick-witted.

Jan's duties were now confined to the painting-room, and he soon became familiar with the studios of other artists, where his intelligent admiration of paintings which took his fancy, his modesty, his willing good-nature, and his precocious talent made him a general favorite.

He went regularly with his master to the early service in the sooty little church, in the choir of which he was finally enrolled. And the man of business kept a friendly eye on him, and gave him many a piece of sensible and very practical advice, to balance the evils of an artistic career.

With the Bohemianism of artist-life Jan was soon as familiar as with the Bohemianism of the streets. A certain old-fas.h.i.+oned gravity, which had always been amongst his characteristics, helped him to preserve both his dignity and modesty in a manner which gave the man of business great satisfaction. He might easily have been spoiled, but he was not. He answered respectfully to about a dozen names which the vagrant fancy of the young painters bestowed upon him: Jan-of-all-work--Jan Steen--The Flying Dutchman--Crimson Lake-- Madder Lake--and Miller's Thumb.

But his master called him GIOTTO.

He was very happy, but the old home haunted him, and he longed bitterly for some news of his foster-father and the schoolmaster.

Whilst the terror of the Cheap Jack was still oppressing him, he had feared to open any communication with the past, for fear the wretched couple who were supposed to be his parents should discover and reclaim him. But as his nerves recovered their tone, as the horrors of his life as a screever faded into softer tints, as that boon of poor humanity--forgetfulness--healed his wounds, and he began to go about the streets without thinking of the hunchback at every corner, he felt more and more inclined to risk any thing to know how his old friends fared. There also grew upon him a conviction that the Cheap Jack's story was false. He knew enough of art now, and of the value of his own powers, and of the struggle for livelihoods in London, to see that it had been a very good speculation to kidnap him. He had serious doubts whether the cart had been driven round by the mill, and whether Master Lake had refused to let him be awakened from his sleep, and had said it was, "All right, and he hoped the lad would do his duty to his good parents." He remembered, too, the hunchback's words when he lay speechless from the drugged liquor, and these raised a puzzling question: Why should "the n.o.bs" recognize him? He had learned what n.o.bS are. Spelt without a "k," they are grand people, and what had grand people to do with Sal's son?

One cannot live without sympathy, and Jan confided the complexities of his history to the bow-legged boy, and the interest they awakened in this young gentleman could not but be gratifying to his friend.

He kept one eye closed during the story, as if he saw the whole thing (TOO clearly) at a glance. He broke the thread of Jan's narrative by comments which had no obvious bearing on the facts, and, when it was ended, be gave it as his opinion that certain penny romances which he named were a joke to it.

"Oh, my! what a pity we can't employ a detective!" he said.

"Whoever knowed a young projidy find his n.o.ble relations without a detective? But never mind, Jan. I knows their ways. I'm up to their dodges. Fust of all, you makes up your mind deep down in your inside, and then you says nothing to n.o.body, but follows it up.

Fol-lows it up!"

"I don't know what to follow," said Jan; "and how can I make up my mind, when I know nothing?"

"That's just where it is," said his friend; "if you knowed every thing, wot 'ud be the use of coming the detective tip, and making it up in your inside?"

The bow-legged boy had made it up in his. He had decided that Jan was a n.o.bleman in disguise, and that his father was a duke, or a "jook," as he called him. Jan's active imagination could not quite resist the influence of this romance, and he lay awake at night patching together the hunchback's reference to the n.o.bs, and the incredulous glance of the dark-eyed gentleman who had given him the half pence, and who was certainly a n.o.b himself. And never did he leave the house on an errand for the painter that the bow-legged boy did not burst forth, dish-cloth or dirty boots in hand, from some unexpected quarter, and adjure him to "look out for the jook."

It was a lovely afternoon when, by his friend's advice, Jan betook himself to the Park, that the n.o.bs might have that opportunity of recognizing him which the wide-mouthed woman had feared. He had washed his face very clean, and brushed his old jacket with trembling hands, and the bow-legged boy had tied a spotted scarf, that had been given to himself by a stableman in the mews opposite, round Jan's neck in what he called "a gent's knot," and the poor child went to seek his fate with a beating heart.

There were n.o.bs enough. Round and round they came, in all the monotony of a not very exhilarating amus.e.m.e.nt. The crowd was so great that the carriages crawled rather than drove, and Jan could see the people well. Many a lovely face, set in a soft frame of delicate hue, caught his artistic eye, and he watched for and recognized it again. But only a pa.s.sing glance of languid curiosity met his eager gaze in return. Not a n.o.b recognized him. But a policeman looked at him as if he did, and Jan crept away.

When he got home, he found household matters at a standstill, for the bow-legged boy had been tearfully employed in thinking how Jan would despise his old friends when the "jook" had acknowledged him, and he had become a n.o.b. And as Jan set matters to rights, he resolved that he would not go to the Park again to look for relatives.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI.

THE MILLER'S LETTER.--A NEW POT BOILER SOLD.

Jan was very happy, and the brief dream of the "jook" was over, but his heart clung to his old home. If love and care, if tenderness in sickness and teaching in health, are parental qualities, why should he seek another parent than Master Swift? And had he not a foster- father to whom he was bound by all those filial ties of up-bringing from infancy, and of a common life, a common trade, and common joys and sorrows in the past, such as could bind him to no other father?

He begged a bit of paper from the painter, and wrote a letter to Master Lake, which would have done more credit to the schoolmaster's instructions had it been less blotted with tears. He besought his foster-father not to betray him to the Cheap Jack, and he inquired tenderly after the schoolmaster and Rufus.

The windmiller was no great scholar, as was shown by his reply: -

"MY DEAR JAN,

"Your welcome letter to hand, and I do hope, my dear Jan, It finds you well as it leave me at present. I be mortal bad with a cough, and your friends as searched everywhere, and dragged every place for you, encluding the plains for twenty mile round and down by the watermill. That Cheap John be no more your vather nor mine, an e'd better not show his dirty vace yearabouts after all he stole. but your poor mother, she was allus took in by him, but she said with her own mouth, that woman be no more the child's mother, and never wos a mother, and your mother knowed wots wot, poor zowl! And I'm glad, my dear Jan, you be doing well in a genteel line, though I did hope you'd take to the mill; but work is slack, and I'm not wot I wos, and I do miss Master Swift. He had a stroke after you left, and confined to the house, so I will conclude, my dear Jan, and go down and rejoice his heart to hear you be alive. I'd main like to see you, Jan, my dear, and so for sartin would he and all enquiring friends; and I am till deth your loving vather, or as good, and I shan't grudge you if so be you finds a better.

"ABEL LAKE."

"P.S. I'd main like to see your vace again, Jan, my dear."

Jan sobbed so bitterly in reading the postscript that, after vain attempts to console him by chaff, the bow-legged boy wept from sympathy.

As to the painter, the whole letter so caught his capricious fancy that he was for ever questioning Jan as to the details of his life in that out-of-the-world district where the purest breath of heaven turned the sails of the windmill, and where the miller took payment for his work "in kind."

"It must be a wonderful spot, Giotto," said he; "and, if I were richer, just now we'd go down together, and paint sunsets, and see your friends." And he walked up and down the studio, revolving his new caprice, whilst Jan tried to think if any thing were likely to bring money into his master's pocket before long. Suddenly the artist seized a sketch that was lying near, and, turning it over, began one on the other side, questioning Jan as he drew. "What do old country wives dress in down yonder?--What did you wear in the mill?--Where does the light come from in a round-house," etc.

Presently he flung it to Jan, and, in answer to the boy's cry of admiration, growled, "Ay, ay. You must do what YOU can now, for every after-touch of mine will spoil it. There are hundreds of men, Giotto, whose sketches are good, and their paintings daubs. But it is only the sketches of great men that sell. The public likes canvas and linseed oil for its money, where small reputations are concerned."

The sketch was of a peep into the round-house. Jan, toll-dish in hand, with a quaint business gravity, was met by a dame who was just raising her old back after letting down her sack of gleanings, with garrulous good-humor in her blinking eyes and withered face.

"Chiaroscuro good," dictated the painter; "execution sketchy; coloring quiet, to be in keeping with the place and subject, but pure. You know the scene better than I, so work away, Giotto.

Motto--'Will ye pay or toll it, mother?' Price twenty-five guineas.

Take it to What's-his-name's, and if it sells we'll go to Arcadia, Giotto mio! The very thought of those breezes is as quinine to my languid faculties!"

Jan worked hard at the new "pot boiler." The artist painted the boy's figure himself, and Jan did most of the rest. The bow-legged boy stooped in a petticoat as a model for the old woman, murmuring at intervals, "Oh, my, here IS a game!" and, when the painter had left the room, his grave speculations as to whether the withered face of the dame were a good likeness of his own chubby cheeks made Jan laugh till he could hardly hold his palette. It was done at last, and Jan took it to the picture-dealer's.

The poor boy could hardly keep out of the street where the picture- dealer lived. One afternoon, as he was hanging about the window, the business gentleman came by and asked kindly after his welfare.

Jan was half ashamed of the hope with which he told the tale of the pot boiler.

"And you did some of it?" said the business gentleman, peering in through his spectacles.

"Only the painting, sir, not the design," said Jan.

"And you want very much to go and see your old home?"

"I do, sir," said Jan.

The business gentleman put his gold spectacles into their case, and laid his hand on Jan's shoulder. "I am not much of a judge of genius," said he, "but if you have it, and if you live to make a fortune by it, remember, my boy, that there is no luxury which money puts in a man's power like the luxury of helping others." With which he stepped briskly into the picture-dealer's.

And half an hour afterwards Jan burst into the painter's studio, crying, "It's sold, sir!"

"Sold!" shouted the painter, in boyish glee. "Hooray! Where's that rascal Bob? Oh, I know! I sent him for the beer. Giotto, my dear fellow, I have some shooting-boots somewhere, if you can find them, and a tourist's knapsack, and" -