Jan

“ But Jan felt a wild desire to get away by herself and cry and cry over this sad wraith of the young sister whose serene and happy beauty had been the family pride.
And yet she was so essentially the same Fay, tender and loving and inconsequent, and full of pretty cares for Jan's comfort. ”

“ Jan touched her cheek with his nose, and licked her face. She could not keep still any longer, because she wanted to sneeze and that would spoil the whole game. So she opened her eyes, put up her hand and unfastened the canteen from Jan's collar and swallowed such a big gulp of water that she almost choked. Her arms went about Jan's neck and while she clung, he moved slowly away from the mound, his tail waving rapidly and his big eyes full of pride. Ruth had been saved from a terrible death in the snow-drifts of the Alps! ”

“ Far away rose a huge white mountain, and around it grouped peaks of dazzling snow, the first snow Jan had seen since he was a puppy.
The doctor and the old man were watching him, but Jan did not see them. He was remembering things he had almost forgotten. Slowly the mule climbed, and the twisting trail turned and wound higher and higher. Jan lifted his head and sniffed the air that was growing colder. Then as they turned where the path seemed to end, the dog gave a loud bark and dashed ahead of them where something white lay on the ground. ”

“ Haigh, and in an instant Jan saw him redder than Mulberry himself. It was Haigh with a limp collar and a streaming face. So he had smelt a rat, set a watch, and followed the fly on foot like the old athlete that he was! But how much more like him all the rest! Jan not only came tumbling back into school life, as from that other which was to have been his, but back with a thud into the Middle Remove and all its old miseries and animosities. ”

“ Jan was growing fast both in mind and body. Phases of taste and occupation succeed each other very rapidly when one is young; and there are, perhaps, no more distinct phases, more sudden strides, than in the art of painting. With Jan the pig phase was going, and it was followed by landscape-sketching.
Jan was drawing his pigs one day in the little wood, when he fancied that the gnarled elbow of a branch near him had, in its outline, some likeness to a pig’s face, and he began to sketch it on his slate. ”

“ To the romance child-fancy weaves for itself about the meadows where the milkmaids stand thick and pale, and those green courts where lords and ladies live, Jan added that world of pleasure open to those gifted with a keen sense of form and color. ”

“ Going! going! gone! to Jan Van der Veen!”
It was one of humanity’s inspired moments; when men are raised above the base influences of this earth, and see things as Spirits see them in the light of heaven. Hats, turbans, and handkerchiefs waved, and a cheerful “hurra!” met the ears of the redeemed captives. Jan belonged to himself, and owned all his family! Verily, the blessing of heaven did go with the Englishman’s golden ducat, to a degree far beyond what he dreamed of when he gave it. ”

“ The Fine Arts are not the road to fame for working-men. Jan, Jan, be guided by me. Learn what I bid ye. And when ye’ve made name and fortune the way I show ye, ye can buy paints and paintings at your will, and paint away to please your leisure hours.”
It did not need the gentle Abel’s after-counsel to persuade Jan to submit himself to the schoolmaster’s direction. ”

“ It strongly resembled the smell of a blossoming tree that grew on Ridge Road, Malabar Hill. And in one second Jan was in Bombay, and was standing in the moonlight, looking up into a face that was neither puffy nor stippled nor prim; but young and thin and worn and very kind. ”

“ Jan slunk out, and when Master Swift turned homewards Jan followed silently in his footsteps through the snow. At the door of the cottage, the old man looked round with a relenting face.
“I suppose Rufus’ll insist on your coming in,” said he; and Jan rushing in hid his face in Rufus’s curls, and sobbed heavily.
“Tut, tut!” said the schoolmaster. “No more of that, child. There’s bitters enough in life, without being so prodigal of your tears.”
“Come and sit down with ye,” he went on. “You’re very young, lad, and maybe I’m foolish to be angry with ye that you’re not wise. ”

“ So, the gentle Prince Jan, whose heart had been full of love and trust, and who wanted to help every one, became a savage beast, ready to fight all people and hating even those whom he once had loved and for whom he would have died gladly. ”

“ Shorty moved slowly toward Jan, holding out a hand and saying, "You're all right, old fellow!"
But the dog backed off and his nose twitched warningly. He would fight if these men bothered him. With a final growl of defiance Jan left the stable, but he carried with him a new sense of power. He could make people let him alone if he snarled and showed his teeth.
That night he prowled around until he found the garbage cans. So he learned to hide in the daytime and forage like a wild animal at night. ”

“ With bloody glee in his eyes, and wide-parted drooling jaws, he darted in to take his fourth cut at Jan, eager for the joyous moment in which the repetition of these slashes should have reduced Jan to ripeness for the killing thrust—the throat-hold. But Jan had learned his lesson. At the psychological fraction of a moment he changed his position, and, instead of passing on comfortably through space after his attack, Sourdough's shoulder met another bigger shoulder, braced like a granite buttress to receive the impact, and the husky reached earth on his side. ”

“ This arrangement made him so restless and unhappy, that Jan undertook the responsibility of supplying him with flowers in the cool arbours, and keeping strict watch upon his movements. He often decorated him with a multitude of small bouquets, and twined garlands round his broad palm-leaf hat, till he looked like a dwarf May-pole, and then sent him into the house to show himself to his fond mother, who was always ready to feign ignorance, and inquire what little boy that could be; a manœuvre invariably rewarded by an infantile laugh. ”

“ Jan felt that he expected him to go home. Perhaps at this moment the baker had gone, with the best intentions, to fetch the Cheap Jack, and bring about a family reunion. Terror had become an abiding state of Jan’s mind, and it seized him afresh, like a palsy. He left the penny on the counter, and shook the flour-dust from his fingers, and, stealing with side glances of dread into the street, he sped away once more.
He had no knowledge of localities. He ran “on and on,” as people do in fairy tales. ”

“ If the schoolmaster had had any twinges of regret as he bought these things, in defiance of his principles for Jan’s education, they melted utterly away in view of his delight, and the glow that pleasure brought into his pale cheeks. Master Swift was regarded, too, by a colored sketch of Rufus sitting at table in his arm-chair, with his more mongrel friend on the floor beside him. It was the best sketch that Jan had yet accomplished. But most people are familiar with the curious fact that one often makes an unaccountable stride in an art after it has been laid aside for a time. ”

“ Eh, Jan! we’re poor fools. I lay awake night after night reconciling my mind to troubles that were never to come, and never dreaming of what was before me. I thought to myself, ‘John Swift, my lad, you’re making yourself a bed of thorns. As sure as you make your son a gentleman, so sure he’ll look down on his old father when he gets up. Can ye bear that, John Swift, and her dead, and him all that ye have?’ I didn’t ask myself twice, Jan. Of course I could bear it. Would any parent stop his child from being better than himself because he’d be looked down on? ”

“ The matter had not presented itself in that light to Jan; now that it did, he felt with Heriot on the spot, and did not perceive an unworthy although most human element in the man’s outlook. The house would not be ruined for life. On the other hand, in his determination to put a stiff lip on every phase of his downfall, and beyond all things not to betray himself by ever breaking down, Jan had over-acted like most unskilled histrions, and had already created an impression of coarse bravado on a mind prepared to stretch any possible point in his favour. ”

“ Jan had never forgotten that his master had said the law allowed slaves to buy themselves. His poverty had hitherto prevented his deriving any{266} consolation from that thought. But now a ray of hope darted through his soul. He raised his drooping head suddenly, and a gleam, like the rising sun, passed over his pale, haggard countenance, as he said, eagerly, “I will give a golden ducat.” Then, dropping on his knees, he exclaimed, in imploring tones, which intense emotion rendered thrilling, “Oh, gentlemen, don’t bid over me. It is all I have in the world. ”

“ We have not been brought hither all the way to this God-forsaken and fog-ridden spot in order to stare on a tumble-down molens, or watch a solitary prisoner ere he hang.
Jan knows of course, and Jan is eager and alert, febrile in his movements, there is a glow in his hollow eyes. And Jan always looks like that when fighting is in the air, when he sniffs the scent of blood and hears the resonance of metal against metal. Jan knows of course. He has no thought of sleep, all night he wanders up and down the improvised camp. ”

“ Restlessly, Jan walked round the outer aisles, reading the inscriptions on marble tablets and brasses, many of them dating back to the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Men died young out in India in those days; hardly any seemed to live beyond forty-two, many died in the twenties. ”

“ Jan was also an adept at roasting chestnuts and potatoes on the potting-shed fire, a daring manipulator of molten lead, a comic artist with a piece of putty, and the pioneer of smoking in the loft. Those were the days when Evan was suddenly forbidden the back premises, and Jan set definitely to work in the stables when he was not at the village school. Years elapsed before the cricket stage that drew the children together again as biggish boys; in the interim Jan had imbibed wisdom of more kinds than one. ”

“ The kind, grey eyes looked at Jan, then the man stooped over and patted him gently, and no one but the dog heard the pitying voice that said, "Poor little Prince Jan! Good-bye!"
Brother Antoine lifted Jan's nose and the pup looked into the monk's eyes, but there was something he did not understand. It was all so different from what the other dogs had told him. He felt the rope tug his collar and knew that he must follow this stranger. He heard again a heart-rending howl from his mother, "Good-bye, Jan, good-bye!" ”

“ There is a peculiar quality about Sunday sunshine, a restfulness at once real and imaginary; it was very real to Jan as he took leave of the quiet study windows down the further side, and down this one the empty garden seats shaded by the laburnum with its shrivelled blossoms, the little acacia, and the plane-tree which had been blown down once and ever since held in leash by a chain. ”

“ The tears flowed down Jan’s cheeks. It had been a favorite hymn of his foster-mother, and he had often sung it to her. Master Swift used to “give the note,” and then sink himself into the bass part, and these quaint duets had been common at the mill. How delightful such simple pleasures seem to those who look back on them from the dark places of the earth, full of misery and wickedness! ”

“ The Fairy of Happy Dreams was very busy that Christmas Day, and when she flew over Prince Jan and saw he was so lonesome and homesick, she touched him with her magic wand and fluttered away, smiling.
And Prince Jan dreamed he was at the door of the Hospice. The little wooden keg hung from his collar. ”

“ Jan was a short, square-built, bandy-legged, broad-faced, snub-nosed little fellow, who valued himself upon being an old soldier; a species of men that, with the exception of travellers, are the most given to telling what are called tough stories, of any people in the world. ”

“ It was Father Glory Goldie wanted to say, of course, but said Jan instead because her own father's name is Jan. We can't wonder at the little girl, for I hardly know of another child in the school who has so kind a father as she has. I have seen him stand outside the schoolhouse in rain and bluster, waiting for her, and I've seen him come carrying her to school through blizzards, when the snow was knee-deep in the road. So who can wonder at her saying Jan when she must name the best she knows! ”

“ Then it was so pleasant to peep out into the garden, through the vine-embowered lattice-work of the verandah; to see the blooming roses, and the small fountain’s silvery veil; to inhale the fragrance of the orange blossoms, and listen to the cool trickling of the tiny water drops. All this was in reality his; for he knew not that he was a little slave; and it is the privilege of unconscious childhood to own whatsoever it delights in. In this point of view, it all belonged to little Jan more truly than it did to Mr. Van der Veen. ”

“ It is never a toilsome employment to rear flowers and train vines; and in that sunny, fertile region of the earth, light labour is repaid by a lavish tribute of fragrant blossoms and delicious fruit all the year round. Jan had an instinctive sense, which taught him what colours harmonized, and what forms were graceful. His mistress often praised his bouquets and garlands, and affection for her stimulated him, to attain as much perfection as possible in the flowery decorations of her room, her table, and her dress. ”

“ That evening when Jan, Hippity-Hop, Cheepsie, and the captain were sitting together, the old man looked at the dog and said, "Jan, your ancestors rescued travellers from the snow, but to-day you helped Shorty get a new start in life, and that is a bigger thing than if you had saved him from death in the Alps." ”