a choice of vocations.—recreation hour.—the bow legged boy.—drawing by heart.—giotto.
jan found favor with his new friends. the master’s sharp eyes noted that the prescribed ablutions seemed both pleasant and familiar to the new boy, and the superintendent of the wood-chopping department expressed his opinion that jan’s intelligence and dexterity were wasted among the fagots, and that his vocation was to be a brushmaker at least, if not a joiner.
of such trades as were open to him in the home jan inclined to cabinet-making. it must be amusing to dab little bunches of bristles so deftly into little holes with hot pitch as to produce a hearth-brush, but as a life-work it does not satisfy ambition. for boot-making he felt no fancy, and the tailor’s shop had a dash of corduroy and closeness in the atmosphere not grateful to nostrils so long refreshed by the breezes of the plains. but, when an elder boy led him into the airy room of the cabinet-maker, jan found a subject of interest. the man was making a piece of furniture to order; the boys had done the rough work, and he was finishing it. it was a combination of shelves and cupboard, and was something like an old oak cabinet which stood in master chuter’s parlor, and which, in jan’s opinion, was both handsomer and more convenient than this. when the joiner, amused by the keen gaze of jan’s black eyes, asked him good-naturedly “how he liked it,” jan expressed his opinion, to illustrate which he involuntarily took up the fat pencil lying on the bench, and made a sketch of master chuter’s cabinet upon a bit of wood.
news spreads with mysterious swiftness in all communities, large and small. before dinner-time, it was known throughout the home that the master joiner had applied for the new boy as a pupil, and that he could draw with a black-lead pencil, and set his betters to rights.
the master had passed through several phases of feeling over jan during that morning. his first impression had been dispelled by jan’s orderly ways, and the absence of any vagrant restlessness about him. the joiner’s report awoke a hope that he would become a star of the institution, but as his acquirements came to the light, and he proved not merely to have a good voice, but to have been in a choir, the master’s generous hopes received a check, and as the day passed on he became more and more convinced that it was a case to be “restored to his friends.”
when two o’clock came, and the boys were all out for “recreation,” jan had to endure some chaff on the subject of his accomplishments. but the banter of london street boys was familiar to him, and he took it in good part. when they found him good-tempered, he was soon popular, and they asked his history with friendly curiosity.
“and vot sort of a mansion did you hang out in ven you wos at home?” inquired a little lad, whose rosy cheeks and dancing eyes would have qualified him to sit as a model for the hero of some little tale of rustic life and simplicity, but who had graduated in the lowest lore of the streets so much before he was properly able to walk that he was bandy-legged in consequence. there must have been some blood in him that was domestic and not vagrant in its currents, for he was as a rule one of the steadiest and best-behaved boys in the establishment. only from time to time he burst out into street slang of the strongest description, apparently as a relief to his feelings. happily for the cause it had at heart, the boys’ home was guided by large-minded counsels, and if the eyes of the master were as the eyes of argus, they could also wink on occasion. “hout with it!” said the bow-legged boy, straddling before jan. “if it wos buckingham palace as you resided in, make a clean breast of it, and hease your mind.”
“thee knows more of palaces than the likes of me. thee manners be so fine,” said jan; and the repartee drew a roar of laughter, in which the bandy-legged boy joined. “but i’ve lived in a windmill,” jan added, “and that be more than thee’ve done, i fancy.”
some of the boys had seen windmills, and some had not; and there was a strong tendency among the boys who had to give exaggerated, not to say totally fictitious, descriptions of those buildings to the boys who had not. there was a quick, prevailing impression, however, that jan’s word could be trusted, and he was appealed to. “take it off in a picter,” said the bandy-legged boy. “we heered as you took off a sweet of furnitur in the master’s face. take off the windmill, if you lived in it.”
there was a bit of chalk in jan’s pocket, and the courtyard was paved. he knelt down, and the boys gathered round him. they were sharp enough to be sympathetic, and when he begged them to be quiet they kept a breathless silence, which was broken only by the distant roar of london outside, and by the master’s voice speaking in an adjoining passage.
“i can hardly say, sir, that i fear, but i think you’ll find most of them look too hearty and comfortable for your purpose.”
about jan the silence was breathless. the bow-legged boy literally laid his hand upon his mouth, and he had better have laid it over his eyes, for they seemed in danger of falling out of their sockets.
jan covered his for a moment, and then looked upwards. back upon his sensitive memory rolled the past, like a returning tide which sweeps every thing before it. much clearer than those roofs and chimney-stacks the windmill stood against the sky, with arms outstretched as if to recall its truant son. if he had needed it to draw from, it was there, plain enough. but how should he need to see it, on whose heart every line of it was written? he could have laid his hand in the dark upon the bricks that were weather-stained into fanciful landscapes upon its walls, and planted his feet on the spot where the grass was most worn down about its base.
he drew with such power and rapidity that only some awe of the look upon his face could have kept silence in the little crowd whom he had forgotten. and when the last scrap of chalk had crumbled, and he dragged his blackened finger over the foreground till it bled, the voice which broke the silence was the voice of a stranger, who stood with the master on the threshold of the court-yard.
never perhaps was more conveyed in one word than in that which he spoke, though its meaning was known to himself alone,—
“giotto!”