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HOME > Children's Novel > Jan of the Windmill A Story of the Plains > CHAPTER XXXVIII.
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CHAPTER XXXVIII.
 A PAINTER’S EDUCATION.—MASTER CHUTER’S PORT.—A FAREWELL FEAST.—THE SLEEP OF THE JUST.  
“I hope, Jan,” said Master Swift, “that the gentleman will overlook my want of respect towards himself, in consideration of what it was to me to see your face again.”
 
“Don’t distress me by speaking of it, Mr. Swift,” said the painter, taking his hand, and sitting down beside him in the porch.
 
As he returned the artist’s friendly grasp, the schoolmaster scanned his face with some of the old sharpness.  “Sir,” said he, “I beg you to forgive my freedom.  I’m a rough man with a rough tongue, which I could never teach to speak the feelings of my heart; but I humbly thank you, sir, for your goodness to this boy.”
 
“It’s a very selfish kind of goodness at present, Mr. Swift, and I fancy some day the obligation of the acquaintance will be on my side.”
 
“Jan,” said the schoolmaster, “take Rufus wi’ ye, and run that errand I telled ye.  Rufus’ll carry your basket.”  When they had gone, he turned earnestly to the painter.
 
“Sir, I’m speaking to ye out of my ignorance and my anxiety.  Ye want the lad to be a painter.  Will he be a great painter?  I’m reminding you of what ye’ll know better than me (though not by yourself, for Jan tells me you’re a grand artist), that a man may have the ambition and the love, and some talent for an art, and yet be just without that divine spark which the gods withhold.  Sir, God forbid that I should undervalue the pure pleasure of even that little gift; but it’s ill for a lad when he has just that much of an art to keep him from a thrifty trade—and no more.”
 
The painter replied as earnestly as Master Swift had spoken,—
 
“Jan’s estimate of me is weaker than his judgment in art is wont to be.  I speak to understanding ears, and you will know that I have some true feeling for my art, when I tell you that I know enough to know that I shall never be a great painter; and it will help you to put confidence in my assurance that, if he lives, Jan will.”
 
Deep emotion kept the old man silent.  It was a mixed feeling,—first, intense pride and pleasure, and then a pang of disappointment.  Had he not been the first to see genius in the child?  Had he not built upon him one more ambition for himself,—the ambition of training the future great man?  And now another had taken his office.
 
“You look disappointed,” said the artist.
 
“It is the vile selfishness in me, sir.  I had hoped the boy’s gifts would have been what I could have trained at my own hearth.  It is only one more wilful fancy, once more thwarted.”
 
“Selfish I am sure it is not!” said the painter, hotly; “and as to such benevolence being thwarted as a sort of punishment for I don’t know what, I believe nothing of the kind.”
 
“You don’t know, sir,” said the old man, firmly.  “Not that I’m speaking of the Lord’s general dealings.  There are tender, gentle souls, I know well, who seem only to grow the purer and better for having the desire of their eyes granted to them; but there are others whom, for their own good, the Father of all sees needful to chasten to the end.”
 
“My experience lies in another direction,” said the painter, impetuously.  “With what awe do you suppose indolent men, whose easy years of self-indulgent life have been broken by no real calamity, look upon others on whose heads blow falls after blow, though their existence is an hourly struggle towards perfection?  There are some stagnant pools whose peace the Angel never disturbs.  Does God, who takes pleasure in perfecting the saint and pardoning the sinner, forget some of us because we are not worth remembering?”
 
“He forgets none of us, my dear sir,” said the schoolmaster, “and He draws us to Himself at different times, and by different roads.  I wanted to be the child’s teacher, but He has chosen you, and will bless ye in the work.”
 
The painter drove his hands through his bushy hair, and spoke more vehemently than before.
 
“I his teacher, and not you?  My good friend, I at least am the better judge of what makes a painter’s education.  Is the man who shows a Giotto how to use this brush, or mix that paint, to be called his teacher?  No, not for teaching him, forsooth, what he would have learned of anybody, everybody, nobody, somehow, anyhow, or done just as well without.  But the man who taught him to work as a matter of principle, and apart from inclination (a lesson which not all geniuses learn); the man who fostered the love of Nature in him, and the spirit of poetry,—qualities without which draughtsmanship and painting had better not be; the man who by example and precept led him to find satisfaction in duty done, and happiness in simple pleasures and domestic affections; the man who so fixed these high and pure lessons in his mind, at its most susceptible age, that the foulest dens of London could not corrupt him; the man whose beloved and reverenced face would rise up in judgment against him if he could ever hereafter degrade his art to be a pander of vice, or a mere trick of the workshop;—this man, Master Swift, has been the painter’s schoolmaster!”
 
Master Swift was not accustomed to betray emotion, but his nerves were less strong than they had been, and self-control was more difficult; and with his horny hands he hid the cheeks down which tears of gratified pride would force their way.
 
He had not found voice to speak, when Rufus appeared at the gate with one basket, followed by Jan and the little innkeeper with another.  Why Master Chuter had come, and why Jan was looking so particularly well satisfied, must be explained.
 
Whilst the painter was still gazing across the water-meadows, Master Swift, who was the soul of hospitality, had told Jan where to find a few shillings in a certain drawer, and had commissioned him to lay these out in the wherewithal for an evening meal.  Jan had had some anxiety in connection with the duty intrusted to him.  Firstly, he well knew that the few shillings were what the schoolmaster must depend on for that week’s living.  Secondly, though it was his old friend’s all, it was a sum very inadequate to provide such a meal as Jan would have liked to set before the painter.  At his age, children are very sensitive on behalf of their grown-up friends, and like to maintain the credit of home.  The provoking point was that Jan had plenty of pocket-money, with which he co............
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