though Joan and he were to meet often in the future, "and I should be
obliged to you for telling me about them, because I always delight in such
matters."
She was quicker of mind than he thought, and rose, taking his last remark
as a hint that he wished to be alone.
"Don't go, Joan, unless you must. I'm a very lonely man, and it is a great
pleasure to me to hear you talk. Look here."
She approached him, and he showed her a pencil sketch now perched on the
easel--a drawing considerably larger than that upon which he had been
working when she arrived.
"This is a rough idea of my picture. It is going to be much larger though,
and I have sent all the way to London for a canvas on which to paint it."
'"Twill be a gert big picksher then?"
"So big that I think I must try and get something into it besides the
gorse. I want something or other in the middle, just for a change. What
could I paint there?"
"I dunnaw."
"No more do I. I wonder how that little white pony tethered yonder would
do?"
Joan laughed.
"You'd never get the likes o' him to bide still for 'e."
"No, I'm afraid not; and I doubt if I'm clever enough to paint him either.
You see, I'm only a beginner--not like these clever artists who can draw
anything. Well, I must think: to-morrow is Sunday. I shall begin my big
picture on Monday if the weather keeps kind. I shall paint here, in the
open air. And I will bring your ship, too, if you care to take the trouble
to come for it."
"Yes, an' thank 'e, sir."
"Not at all. I owe you thanks. Just think if I had gone home with that
horrid blackthorn."
He turned to his work as though she were no longer present and the girl
prepared to depart.
"I'll bid you good-arternoon now, sir," she said timidly.
He looked up with surprise.
"Haven't you gone, Joan? I thought you had started. Good-by until Monday.
Remember, if it is cold or rainy I shall not be here."
The girl trotted off; and when she had gone Barren drew her from memory in
the center of his sketch. The golden glories of the gorse were destined to
be no more than a frame for something fairer.
CHAPTER FIVE
COLD COMFORT
John Barron made other preparations for his picture besides those detailed
to Joan Tregenza. He designed a large canvas and proposed to paint it in
the open air according to his custom. His health had improved, and the
sustained splendor of the spring weather flattered hopes that, his model
once won, the work he proposed would grow into an accomplished fact. There
was no cottage where he might house his picture and materials within half a
mile of Gorse Point, but a granite cow-byre rose considerably nearer, at a
corner of an upland field. Wind-worn and lichen-stained it stood, situated
not more than two hundred yards from the spot on which Barron's picture was
to be painted. A pathway to outlying farms cut the fields hard by the byre,
and about it lay implements of husbandry--a chain harrow and a rusty plow.
Black, tar-pitched double doors gave entrance to the shed, and light
entered from a solitary window now roughly nailed up from the outside with
boards. A padlock fastened the door, but, by wrenching down the covering of
the window, Barron got sight of the interior. A smell of vermin and decay
rose from the inner darkness; then, as his eyes focused the gloom, he noted
a dry, spacious chamber likely enough to answer his purpose. Brown litter
of last year's fern filled one corner, and in it was marked a lair as of
some medium-sized beast; elsewhere a few sacks with spades and picks and a
small pile of potatoes appeared: the roots were all sprouting feebly from
white eyes, as though they knew spring held the world, though neither
sunshine warmed them nor soft earth aided their struggle for life. Here the
man might well keep his canvas and other matters. Assuming that temporary
possession of the shed was possible, his property would certainly be safe
enough there; for artists are respected in and about Newlyn, and their
needs considered when possible. A farm, known as Middle Hemyll, showed gray
chimneys above the fields, half a mile distant, and, after finding the
shed, Barron proceeded thither to learn its ownership. The master of Middle
Hemyll speedily enlightened him, and the visitor learned that not only did
he speak to the possessor of the cow-byre, but that Farmer Ford was a keen
supporter of art, and would be happy to rent his outhouse for a moderate
consideration.
"The land ban't under pasture now, an' the plaace ed'n much used just this
minute, so you'm welcome if you mind to. My auld goat did live theer wance,
but er's dead this long time. Maybe you seed the carcass of en, outside?
I'll have the byre cleared come to-morrer; an' if so be you wants winders
in the roof, same as other paintin' gents, you'll have to put 'em theer wi'
your awn money."
Barron explained that he only needed the shed as a storehouse for his
picture and tools.
"Just so, just so. Then you'll find a bwoy wi' the key theer to-morrer, an'
all vitty; an' you can pay in advancement or arter, as you please to. Us'll
say half-a-crown a week, if that'll soot 'e."
The listener produced half-a-sovereign, much to Farmer Ford's
gratification, and asked that a lad or man might be found to return with
him there and then to the shed.
"I am anxious to see the place and have it in order before I go back to
Newlyn," he explained. "I will pay you extra for the necessary labor, and
it should not take above an hour."
"No more 'twill, an' I'll come 'long with 'e myself this minute," answered
the other.
Getting a key to the padlock, and a big birch broom, he returned with
Barron, and soon had the doors of the disused byre thrown open to the air.
"I shut en up when the auld goat went dead. Theer a used to lie in the
corner, but now he'm outside, an' I doubt the piskeys, what they talks
'bout, be mighty savage wi' me for not buryin' the beast, 'cause all
fairies is 'dicted to goats, they do say, an' mighty fond o' the milk of
'em."
Farmer Ford soon cleared the place of potatoes, sacks, and tools. Then,
taking his broom, he made a clean sweep of dust and dirt.
"Theer's a many more rats here than I knawed seemin'ly," he said, as he
examined a sink in the stones of the floor, used for draining the stalls;
"they come up here for sartain, an' runs out 'long the heydge to the
mangel-wurzel mound, I lay."
Without, evidences of the vermin were clear enough. Long hardened tracks,
patted down by many paws, ran this way and that; and the main rat
thoroughfare extended, as the farmer foretold, to a great mound where,
stowed snugly in straw under earth, lay packed the remains of a
mangel-wurzel crop. At one end the store had been opened and drawn upon for
winter use; but a goodly pile of the great tawny globes still remained,
small lemon-colored leaves sprouting from them. Farmer Ford, however,
viewed the treasure without satisfaction.
"Us killed a power o' sheep wi' they blarsted roots last winter," he said.
"You'd never think now as the frost could touch 'em, but it did though,
awin' to the wicked long winter. It got to 'em, sure 'nough, an' theer was
frost in 'em when us gived 'em to the sheep, an' it rotted theer innards,
poor twoads, an' they died, more'n a score."
Barron listened thoughtfully to these details, then pointed to an ugly
sight beyond the wurzel mound.
"I should like that removed," he said.
It was the dead goat, withered to a mummy almost, with horns and hide
intact, and a rat-way bored through the body of the beast under a tunnel of
its ribs.
"Jimmery! to see what them varmints have done to 'en! But I'll bury what's
left right on en; an' I'll stop the sink in the house, then you'll be free
of 'em."
These things the farmer did, and presently departed, promising to revisit
the spot ere long with some dogs and a ferret or two. So Barron was left
master of the place. He found it dry, weather-proof and well suited to his
requirements in every respect. The concerns which he had ordered from
London would be with him by Saturday night if all went well, and he decided
that they should be conveyed to the byre at an early hour on Monday
morning.
The next day was Sunday, and half a dozen men, with Barron and Murdoch
among them, strolled into Brady's great whitewashed studio to see and
criticise his academy picture which was finished. Everybody declared that
the artist had excelled himself in "The End of the Voyage." It represented
a sweep of the rocky coast by the Lizard, a wide gray sand, left naked by
the tide, with the fringe of a heavy sea churning on it, and sea-fowl
strutting here and there. In the foreground, half buried under tangles of
brown weed torn from the rocks by past storms, lay a dead sailor, and a big
herring-gull, with its head on one side and a world of inquiry in its
yellow eyes, was looking at him. Tremendous vigor marked the work, and only
a Brady could have come safely through the difficulties which had been
surmounted in its creation. Everybody sang praises, and Barron nodded warm
approval, but said nothing until challenged.
"Now, find the faults, then tell me what's good," said the gigantic
painter. He stood there, burly, hearty, physically splendid--the man of all
others in that throng who might have been pointed to as the creator of the
solemn gray picture before them.
"Leave fault-finding to Fleet Street," said Barron; "let the press people
tell you where you are wrong. I am no critic and I know what a mountain of
hard work went to this."
"That's all right, old man; never mind the work--or me. Be impartial."
"Why should I? To be impartial, as this world wags, is to be friendless."
"Good Lord! d'you think I mind mauling? There's something wrong or you
wouldn't be so deucedly evasive. Out with it!"
"Well, your sailor's not dead."
Brady roared with laughter.
"Man! the poor devil's been in the water a week!"
"Not he. 'Tis a mistake in nine painted corpses out of ten. If you want to
paint a drowned man, wait till you've seen one close. That sailor in the
seaweed's asleep. Sleep is graceful, remember; death by drowning is
generally ugly--stiff, stark, hideous, eyeless, fish-gnawed a week after
the event. But what does it matter? You've painted a great picture. That
sea, with the circular swirl, as each wave goes back into the belly of the
next, is well done; and those lumps of spume fluttering above
watermark--that was finely noted. Easy to write down in print, but
difficult as the fiend to paint. And the picture is full of wind too. Your
troubles are amply repaid and I congratulate you. A man who could paint
that will go as far as he likes."
The simple Brady forgot the powder in swallowing the jam. Barron had
touched those things in his work which were precious to him. His impulsive
nature took fire, and there was almost a quiver of emotion in his big voice
as he answered:
"Damn it, you're a brick! I'd sooner hear you praise those lumps of
sea-spume, racing over the sand there, than see my picture on the line."
But sentiment was strange to John Barron's impersonal nature, and he froze.
"Another fault exists which probably nobody will tell you but me. Your
seaweed's great, and you knew it by heart before you painted it--that I'll
swear to, but your sleeper there would never lie in the line of it as you
have him. Reflect: the sea must float the light weed after it could move
him no more. He should be stogged in the sand nearer the sea."
Brady, however, contested this criticism, and so the talk wore on until the
men separated. But the Irishman called on Barron after midday dinner and
together they strolled through Newlyn toward the neighboring village.
Chance brought them face to face with two persons more vital to the
narrative than themselves, and, pausing to chronicle the event of the
meeting, we may leave the artists and follow those whom they encountered.
Gray Michael kept ashore on Sundays, and today, having come off the sea at
dawn, was not again putting forth until next morning. He had attended
meeting with his wife, his daughter and his son; he had dined also, and was
now walking over to Mousehole that he might bring some religious comfort to
a sorely stricken Luke Gospeler--a young sheep but lately won to the fold
and who now lay at the point of death. Joan accompanied him, and upon the
way they met John Barron and his companion. The girl blushed hotly and then
chilled with a great disappointment, for Barron's eyes were on the sea; he
was talking as he passed by, and he apparently saw neither her nor her
Sunday gown; which circumstance was a sorrow to Joan. But in reality Barron
missed nothing. He had shivered at her green dress and poor finery long
before she reached him. Her garb ruffled his senses and left him wounded.
"There goes your beauty," laughed Brady; "how would you like to paint her
in that frock with those sinful blue flowers in her hat?"
"Nature must weep to see the bizarre carnival these people enjoy on the
Seventh Day," answered the other. "Their duns and drabs, their russets and
tawny tones of red and orange, are of their environment, the proper skins
for their bodies; but to think of that girl brightening the eyes of a
hundred louts by virtue of those fine feathers! Dream of her in the Stone
Age, clad in a petticoat torn from a wolf, with her straw-colored hair to
her waist and a necklace of shells or wild beasts' teeth between her
breasts! And the man--her father, I suppose--what a picture his cursed
broadcloth and soft black hat make of him--like the head of a patriarch
stuck on a tailor's dummy."
Meanwhile, ignorant of these startling criticisms, Mr. Tregenza and his
daughter pursued their road, and presently stopped before a cottage in one
of the cobble-paved alley-ways of Mousehole. A worn old woman opened the
door and courtesied to Gray Michael. He wished her good-afternoon, then
entered the cottage, first bidding Joan return in an hour. She had friends
near at hand, and hurried off, glad to escape the sight of sickness and the
prayers she knew that her father would presently deliver.
"How be en?" inquired the fisherman, and the widowed mother of the patient
answered:
"Better, I do pray. Er was in the doldrums issterday an' bad by night also,
a dwaling an' moaning gashly, but, the Lard be praised, he'm better in mind
by now, an' I do think 'tis more along of Bible-readin' than all the
doctor's traade [Footnote: _Traade_--Physic.] he've took. I read to en
'bout that theer bwoy, the awnly son o' his mother, an' her a
widder-wumman, an' how as the Lard brought en round arter he'd gone dead."
Gray Michael sniffed and made no comment.
"I'll see en an' put up a prayer or so," he said.
"An' the Lard'll reward it, Mr. Tregenza."
Young Albert Vallack greeted the visitor with even greater reverence than
his mother had done. He and the old woman were Falmouth folks and had
drifted Westerly upon the father's death, until chance anchored them in
Newlyn. Now the lad--a dissolute youth enough, until sudden illness had
frightened him to religion--was dying of consumption, and dying fast,
though as yet he knew it not.
"'Tis handsome in you, a comin' to see the likes o' me," said the patient,
flushing with satisfaction. "You'm like the stickler at a wras'lin' match,
Mister Tregenza, sir; you sees fair play betwixt God an' man."
"So you'm better, Albert, your mother sez."
"Iss, a bit. Theer's more kick an' sprawl [Footnote: _Kick an'
sprawl_--Strength, vitality.] in me than theer 'ave bin; an' I feels
more hopeful like 'bout the future."
Self-righteousness in a new-fledged Luke Gospeler, who had been of the fold
but three months and whose previous record was extremely unsatisfactory,
irritated Gray Michael not a little.
"Bwoy!" he said loudly, "doan't 'e be deceived that way. 'Gird 'e wi'
sackcloth, lament and howl; for the fierce anger o' the Lard is _not_
turned back from us.' Three months o' righteousness is a purty bad set off
'gainst twenty years o' sin, an' it doan't become 'e to feel hopeful, I
'sure ye."
The sick man's color paled, and a certain note as of triumph in his voice
died out of it. His mother had left them, feeling that her presence might
hinder conversation and lessen the comfort which Mr. Tregenza had brought.
"I did ought to be chap-fall'n, I s'pose."
"Iss, you did, my son, nobody more'n you. Maybe you'll live; maybe you'll
die; but keep humble. I doan't wish to deceive 'e. Us ain't had time to
make no certainty 'bout things. You'm in the Lard's hand, an' it becomes 'e
to sing small, an' remember what your life's bin."
The other grew uneasy and his voice faltered while he still fought for a
happy eternity.
"I'd felt like 'twas all right arter what mother read."
"Not so. God's a just God 'fore everything. Theer ed'n no favorin' wi' Him.
I hopes you'll live this many a day, Vallack; an' then, when your hour
comes, you'll have piled up a tidy record an' can go wi' a certainty
faacin' you. Seems you'm better, an' us at chapel's prayed hot an' strong
to the Throne that you might be left to work out your salvation now your
foot's 'pon the right road."
"But if I dies, mister?"
"'The prayer of the righteous man availeth much,'" answered Gray Michael
evasively. "I be come," he added, "to read the Scriptures to 'e."
"You all prayed for me, sir?"
"Iss, every man, but theer was no mincin' matters, Albert. Us was arskin'
for a miserable sinner, a lost sheep awnly just strayed back, an' we put it
plain as that was so."
"'Tweer mighty kind o' the Luke Gosp'lers, sir."
"'Twas their dooty. Now I be gwaine to read the Book."
"I feels that uneasy now," whined the sufferer, in a voice where fear spoke
instead of hope, "but I s'pose 'tis a sign o' graace I should be?"
"Iss, 'tis. I've comed to tell 'e the truth, for 'tis ill as a man should
be blind to facts on what may be his last bed 'bove the airth. Listen to
this, my son, an' if theer's anything you doan't onderstand, arsk me an'
I'll thraw light 'pon it."
He read, with loud, slow voice, the fifty-fifth chapter of Isaiah, and that
glorious clarion of great promise gave Michael the lie and drowned his own
religious opinions as thunder drowns the croaking of marsh frogs; but he
knew it not. The brighter burned his own shining light, the blacker the
shadows it threw upon the future of all sinners.
As Tregenza finished and put down his Bible, the other spoke and quoted
eagerly:
"'Incline your ear an' come unto Me; fear, an' your sawl shall live!' Theer
do seem a hope in that if it ed'n awver-bold me thinkin' so?" he asked.
"That's like them Church o' Englanders, a tearin' wan text away from
t'others an' readin' it accordin' as they pleases. I'll expound it all to
wance, as a God-fearin' man did ought to treat the Scriptures."
Gray Michael's exposition illustrated nothing beyond his own narrow
intellectual limitations. His cold cloud of words obscured the prophet's
sunshine, and the light went out of the dying man's eyes, leaving only
alarm. He trembled on the brink of the horrid truth; he heard it thinly
veiled in the other's stern utterance, saw it looking from his hard blue
eyes. After the sermon, silence followed, broken by Vallack, who coughed
once and again, then raised himself and braced his heart to the tremendous
question that demanded answering.
"I wants your awn feelin' like, mister. I must have it. I caan't sleep no
more wi'out knawin' the best or worst. You be the justest man ever I seed
or heard tell on out the Scriptures. An' I wants 'e to gimme your opinion
like. S'pose you was the Judge an' I comed afore 'e an' the Books was theer
and you'd read 'em an' had to conclude 'pon 'em--?"
The fisherman reflected. Vallack's proposition did not strike him as
particularly grotesque. He felt it was a natural question, and he only
regretted that it had been put, because, though he had driven more than one
young man to righteousness along the path of terror, in this present case
the truth came too late save to add another horror to death. He believed in
all sincerity that as surely as the young man before him presently died, so
surely would he be damned, but he saw no particular object in stating the
fact. Such intelligence might tell upon Vallack's physical condition--a
thing of all others to be avoided, for Gray Michael held that the
sufferer's only chance of a happy eternity was increased and lengthened
opportunity in time.
"It ed'n for me to sit in the Judgment Seat, Albert. 'Vengeance is mine,
sayeth the Lard.' You must allus hold in mind that theer's mighty few saved
alive, best o' times. Many be called, but few chosen. Men go down to the
graave every second o' the day an' night, but if you could see the sawls a
streamin' away, thicker'n a cloud of starlings, you'd find a mass, black as
a storm, went down long, an' awnly just a summer cloud like o' the blessed
riz up. Hell's bigger'n Heaven; an' er's need to be, for Heaven's like to
be a lonely plaace, when all's said. I won't speak no more 'bout that
subjec'. 'Tis good fashion weather for 'e just now, an us'll hope as you
ban't gwaine to die for many a day."
"Say it out, mister, say it out. I knaws what you means. You reckons if I
gaws I'm lost."
"My poor sawl, justice is justice; an' the Lard's all for justice an' no
less. Theer's no favorin' wi' Him, Albert."
"But mightn't He favor the whole bilin' of us--good'n bad--cause He made
us?"
"Surely not. Wheer's the justice o' that? If He done that, how'd the godly
get their fair dues--eh? Be the righteous man to share God's Heaven wi'
publicans an' sinners? That ed'n justice anyhow. Don't fret, lad; tears
won't mend bad years. Bide quiet an' listen to me whiles I pray for 'e."
The man in the bed had grown very white, his eyes burned wildly out of a
shrunken face, and he gripped the sheets and shivered in pure physical
terror.
"I caan't die, I caan't die, not yet," he groaned, "pray to the Lard to
keep me from dyin' yet a while, mister. Arsk en to give me just a lil time,
'cause I'm that sorry for my scarlet sins."
Thereupon Michael knelt, clasped his hands so close that the bent
finger-joints grew white, raised his massive head upward and prayed with
his eyes closed. The intercession for life ended, he rose up, shook Vallack
by the hand, and so departed.
"Allus, when you've got the chance, bear the balm o' Gilead to a sinner's
couch," he said to his daughter as they walked home. "'Tis the duty of man
an' maid to spread the truth an' bring peace to the troubled, an' strength
to the weak-hearted, an' rise up them that fall."
A week later Mr. Tregenza heard how Albert Vallack had burst a blood-vessel
and died, fighting horribly with awful invisible terrors.
"Another sawl gone down into the Pit," he said. "I reckon fewer an' fewer
be chosen every year as the world do grow older an' riper for the last
fires."
CHAPTER SIX
FAIRY STORIES
Joan found her sketch waiting for her the next day when she reached Gorse
Point about eleven o'clock; and she also discovered John Barron with a
large canvas before him. He had constructed his picture and already made
many drawings for it. Now he knew exactly what he wanted, and he designed
to paint Joan standing looking out at a distant sea which would be far
behind the spectator of the picture. When she arrived, on a fine morning
and mild, Barron rose from his camp-stool, lifted up a little canvas which
stood framed at his side and presented it to her. The sketch in oils of the
"Anna" was cleverer than Joan could possibly know, but she took no small
delight in it and in the setting of rough deal brightly gilded.
"Sure 'tis truly good of 'e, sir!"
"You are more than welcome. Only let me say one word, Joan. Keep your
picture hidden away until Joe comes back from sea and marries you. From
what you tell me, your father might not like you to have this trifle, and I
should be very sorry to annoy him."
"I waddun' gwaine to show en," she confessed. "I shall store the picksher
away as you sez."
"You are wise. Now look here, doesn't this promise to be a big affair? The
gorse will be nearly as large as life, and I've been wondering ever so long
what I shall put in the middle; and whatever do you think I've thought of?"
"I dunnaw. That white pony us saw, p'raps?"
"No; something much prettier. How would it do, d'you think, if _you_
stood here in front of the gorse, just to fill up the middle piece of the
picture?"
"Oh, no, no! My faither--"