tens of thousands. Your father sells them too. But what d'you think was the
difference? Why, your father is an honest man; mine wasn't. The fishermen
sold their fish, after they had had the trouble and danger of catching
them, to my father; and then my father sold them again to the public; and
the fishermen got too little and the public paid too much, and so--I'm a
very rich man to-day--the son of a thief."
"Mister Jan!"
"Nobody ever called him a thief but me. He was a great star in this same
polite society I speak of. He fed hundreds of fat people on the money that
ought to have gone into the fishermen's pockets; and he died after eating
too much salmon and cucumber at his own table. Poetic justice, you know.
There are stained glass windows up to his memory in two churches and tons
of good white marble were wasted when they made his grave. But he was a
thief, just as surely as your father is an honest man; so you have the
advantage of me, Joan. I really doubt if I'm respectable enough for you to
know and trust."
"I'd trust 'e with anything, Mister Jan, 'cause you'm plain-spoken an'
true."
"Don't be too sure--the son of a thief may have wrong ideas and lax
principles. Many things not to be bought can easily be stolen."
Again he struck a sinister note, but this time on an ear wholly unable to
appreciate or suspect it. Joan was occupied with Barron's startling scraps
of biography, and, as usual, when he began talking in a way she could not
understand, turned to her own thoughts. This sudden alteration of his
position she took literally. It struck her in a happy light.
"If you'm not a gen'leman then you wouldn' look down 'pon me, would 'e?"
"God forbid! I look up to you, Joan."
She was silent, trying to master this remarkable assertion. The artist
stood no longer upon that lofty pedestal where she had placed him; but the
change of attitude seemed to bring him a little closer, and Joan forgot the
fall in contemplating the nearer approach.
"That's why I asked you not to call me 'Mister Jan,"' Barron added after a
pause. "We are, you see, only different because I'm a man and you're a
woman. Money merely makes a difference to outside things, like houses and
clothes. But you've got possessions which no money can bring to me: a happy
home and a lover coming back to you from the sea. Think what it must be to
have nobody in the world to care whether you live or die. Why, I haven't a
relation near enough to be even interested in all my money--there's
loneliness for you!"
Joan felt full of a great pity, but could not tell how to express it. Even
her dull brains were not slow enough to credit his frank assertion that he
and she were equals; but she accepted the statement in some degree, and
now, with her mind wandering in his lonely existence, wondered if she might
presume to express sympathy for him and proclaim herself his friend. She
hesitated, for such friendship as hers, though it came hot from her little
heart, seemed a ludicrous thing to offer this man. Every day of intercourse
with him filled her more with wonder and with admiration; every day he
occupied a wider place in her thoughts; and at that moment his utterances
and his declaration of a want in life made him more human than ever to her,
more easily to be comprehended, more within the reach of her understanding.
And that was not a circumstance calculated to lessen her regard for him by
any means. Until that day he had appeared a being far apart, whose
interests and main threads of life belonged to another sphere; now he had
deliberately come into her world and declared it his own.
The silence became painful to Joan, but she could not pluck up courage
enough to tell the artist that she at least was a friend. Finally she
spoke, feeling that he waited for her to do so, and her words led to the
point, for she found, in his answer to them, that he took her goodwill for
granted.
"Ain't you got no uncles nor nothin' o' that even, Mister Jan?"
He laughed and shook his head.
"Not one, Joan--not anybody in all the world to think twice about me but
you."
Her heart beat hard and her breath quickened, but she did not speak. Then
Barron, putting down his brushes and beginning to load a pipe, that his
next remark might not seem too serious, proceeded:
"I call you 'friend,' Joan, because I know you are one. And I want you to
think of me sometimes when I am gone, will you?"
He went on filling his pipe, and then, looking suddenly into her eyes, saw
there a light that was strange--a light that he would have given his soul
to put into paint--a light that Joe's name never had kindled and never
could. Joan wiped her hand across her mouth uneasily; then she twisted her
hands behind her back, like a schoolgirl standing in class, and made answer
with her eyes on the ground.
"Iss, I will, then, Mister Jan; an' maybe I couldn't help it if I would."
He lighted his pipe carefully before answering.
"Then I shall be happy, Joan."
But while she grew rose-red at the boldness of her sudden announcement, he
took care neither to look at her nor to let her know that he had realized
the earnestness with which she spoke. And when, ten minutes later, she had
departed, he mused speculatively on the course of their conversation,
asking himself what whim had led him to pretend to so much human feeling
and to lament his loneliness. This condition of his life he loved above all
others. No man, woman or child had the right to interfere with his selfish,
impersonal existence, and he gloried in the fact. But to the scraps of his
life's history, which he had spread before Joan in their absolute truth, he
had added this fiction of friendless loneliness, and it had worked a
wonder. He saw that he was growing to be much to her, and the problem lying
in his path rose again, as it had for a moment when Murdoch warned him in
jest against falling in love with Joan Tregenza. Dim suspicions crossed his
mind with greater frequency, and being now a mere remorseless savage,
hunting to its completion a fine picture, he made no effort to shut their
shadows from his calculation. Everything which bore even indirectly upon
his work received its share of attention; to mood must all sacrifices be
made; and now a new mood began to dawn in him. He knew it, he accepted it.
He had not sought it, but the thing was there, and Nature had sent it to
him. To shun it and fly from it meant a lie to his art; to open his arms to
it promised the destruction of a human unit. Barron was not the man to
hesitate between two such courses. If any action could heighten his
inspiration, add a glimmer of glory to his picture, or get a shadow more
soul into the painted blue eyes of the subject, he held such action
justified. For the present his mind was chaos on the subject, and he left
the future to work itself out as chance might determine.
His painting was all he concerned himself with, and should Nature
ultimately indicate that greater perfection might be achieved through
worship and even sacrifice at her shrine, neither worship nor sacrifice
would be withheld.
CHAPTER NINE
A WEDDING
Joan Tregenza went home in a dream that day. She did not know where to
begin thinking. "Mister Jan" had told her so many astounding things; and
her own heart, too, had made bold utterances--concerning matters which she
had crushed out of sight with some shame and many secret blushes until now.
But, seen in the light of John Barron's revelations, this emotion which she
had thrust so resolutely to the back of her mind could remain there no
more. It arose strong, rampant and ridiculous; only from her point of view
no humor distinguished it. This man, then, was like herself, made of the
same flesh and blood, sprung from the people. That fact, though possessing
absolutely no significance whatever in reality, struck Joan with great
force. Her highly primitive instincts stretched a wide gulf between the
thing called "gentleman" and other men; which was the result of training
from parents of the old-fashioned sort, whose world lay outside and behind
the modern spirit; who had reached the highest development of their
intelligence and formed their opinions before the passing of the Education
Act. Gray Michael naturally held the great ones of the earth as objects of
pity from an eternal standpoint, but birth weighed with him, and, in
temporal concerns, he treated his superiors with all respect and civility
when rare chance brought him into contact with them. He viewed uneasily the
last outcome of progress and the vastly increased facilities for
instruction of the juvenile population. The age was sufficiently godless,
in his judgment; and he had found that a Board School education was the
first nail in the coffin of every young man's faith.
Joan, therefore, allowing nothing for the value of riches, of education, of
intellect, was content to accept Barron's own cynical statement in a spirit
widely different from the speaker's. He had sneered at himself, just as he
had sneered at his own dead father. But Joan missed all the bitterness of
his speech. To her he was simply a wondrously honest man who loved truth
for itself, who could never utter anything not true, who held it no offense
to speak truth even of the dead. Gentle or simple, he seemed infinitely
superior to all men whom she had met with. And yet this beautiful nature
walked through the world quite alone. He had asked her to remember him when
he was gone; he had said that she was his friend. And he cared little for
women--there was perhaps no other woman in the world he had called a
friend. Then the girl's heart fluttered at the presumption of her silly,
soaring thoughts, and she glanced nervously to the right and to the left of
the lonely road, as though fearful that some hidden eavesdropper might peep
into her open mind. The magic spell was upon her. This little, pale, clever
man, so quiet, so strange, so unlike anything else within her seventeen
years of experience, had wrought Nature's vital miracle, and Joan, who,
until then, believed herself in love with her sailor sweetheart, now stood
aghast before the truth, stood bewildered between the tame and bloodless
fantasy of her affection for Joe Noy and this wild, live reality. She
looked far back into a past already dim and remembered that she had told
Joe many times how she loved him with all her heart. But the words were
spoken before she knew that she possessed a heart at all. Yet Joe then
formed no inconsiderable figure in life. She had looked forward to marriage
with him as a comfortable and sufficient background for present existence;
she had viewed Joe as a handsome, solid figure--a man well thought of, one
who would give her a home with bigger rooms and better furniture in it than
most fishermen's daughters might reasonably hope for. But this new blinding
light was more than the memory of Joe could face uninjured. He shriveled
and shrank in it. Like St. Michael's Mount, seen afar, through curtains of
rain, Joe had once bulked large, towering, even grand, but under noonday
sun the great mass dwindles as a whole though every detail becomes more
apparent; and so with poor Joe Noy. Removed to a distance of a thousand
miles though he was, Joan had never known him better, never realized the
height, breadth, depth of him so acutely as now she did. The former
ignorance in such a case had been bliss indeed, for whereunto her present
acquired wisdom might point even she dared not consider. Any other girl
must have remained sufficiently alive to the enormous disparity every way
between herself and the artist; and Joan grasped the difference, but from
the wrong point of view. The man's delicacy of discernment, his wisdom, his
love of the things which she loved, his fine feeling, his humility--all
combined in Joan's judgment to place him far above herself, though she had
not words to name the qualities; but whereas another lowly woman, reaching
this point, must, if she possessed any mother-wit or knowledge of the
world, have awakened to the danger and grown guarded, Joan, claiming little
wit to speak of, and being an empty vessel so far as knowledge of the world
was concerned, saw no danger and allowed her thoughts to run away with her
in a wholly insane direction. This she did for two reasons: because she
felt absolutely safe, and because she suspected that Nature, who was
"Mister Jan's" God, had now come to be her God also. The man was very wise,
and he hated everything which lacked truth: therefore he would always do
what was right, and he would not be less true to her than he was to the
world. Truth was his guiding star, and he had always found Nature true.
Therefore, why should not Joan find it true? Nature was talking to her now
and teaching her rapidly. She must be content to wait and learn. The two
men, Noy and Barren, fairly represented the opposite views of life each
entertained, and Joan felt the new music wake a thousand sleeping echoes in
her heart while the old grew more harsh and unlovely as she considered it.
Joe had so many opinions and so little information; "Mister Jan" knew
everything and asserted nothing save what Nature had taught him. Joe was so
self-righteous and overbearing, so like her father, so convinced that Luke
Gospeldom was the only gate to glory; "Mister Jan" had said there was more
of the Everlasting God in a bluebell than in the whole of the Old
Testament; he had declared that the smell of the gorse and the sunshine on
the deep sea were better things than the incense and banners at St.
Peter's; he had asserted that the purring of kittens was sweeter to the
Father of all than the thunder of a mighty organ played in the noblest
cathedral ever made with hands. All these foolish and inconsequent
comparisons, uttered thoughtlessly by Barron's lips while his mind was on
his picture, seemed very fine to Joan; and the finer because she did not
understand them. Again, Joe rarely listened to her; this man always did,
and he liked to hear her talk: he had declared as much.
Her brains almost hurt Joan on her way back to the white cottage that
morning. They seemed so loaded; they lifted her up high above the
working-day world and made her feel many years older. Such reflections and
ideas came to grown women doubtless, she thought. A great unrest arose from
the shadows of these varied speculations--a great unrest and disquiet--a
feeling of coming change, like the note in the air when the swallows meet
together in autumn, like the whisper of the leaves on the high tops of the
forest before rain. Her heart was very full. She walked more slowly as the
thoughts weighed heavier; she went back to her home round-eyed and solemn,
wondering at many things, at the extension of the horizon of life, at the
mental picture of Joe standing clearly out of the mists, viewed from a
woman's standpoint.
That day much serving awaited her; but, at every turn and pause in the
small affairs of her duty, Joan's mind swooped back like a hawk to the
easel on Gorse Point; and when it did, her cheeks flushed and she turned to
bend over sink or pig's trough to hide the new fire that burned in her
heart and lighted her eyes.
Mrs. Tregenza, who had suffered from neuralgia and profound depression of
spirit upon Tom's departure to the sea, but who comforted herself even in
her darkest hour by reflection that no lugger boy ever joined the fishing
fleet with such an equipment of new clothes as her son, was somewhat better
and more cheerful now that the lad had made his first trip and survived it.
Moreover, Tom would be home again that night in all probability, and, since
Michael was last ashore, the butcher from Paul had called and offered three
shillings and sixpence more for the next pig to be killed than ever a
Tregenza pig had fetched until that day. Life therefore held some
prosperity in it, even for Thomasin.
After their dinner both women, the elder with a shawl muffled about her
face, went down the road to Newlyn to see a sight. They stopped at George
Trevennick's little house. It had a garden in front of it with a short
flagstaff erected thereon, and all looked neat, trim and ship-shape as
became the home of a retired Royal Navy man. A wedding was afoot, and Mr.
Trevennick, who never lost an opportunity to display his rare store of
bunting, had plentifully shaken out bright reds and yellows, blues and
greens. The little flags fluttered in four streamers from the head of the
flagstaff, and their colors looked harsh and crude until associated with
the human interests they marked.
Already many children gazed with awe from the road, while a favored few,
including the Tregenzas, stood in Mr. Trevennick's garden, which was raised
above the causeway. Great good-humor prevailed, together with some
questionable jesting, and Joan heard the merriment with a sense of
discomfort. They would talk like this when Joe came back to marry her; but
the great day of a maid's life had lost its greatness for her now. The
rough, good-natured fun grated on her nerves as it had never grated before;
because, though she only guessed at the sly jokes of her elders, something
told her that "Mister Jan" would have found no pleasure in such merriment.
Mrs. Tregenza talked, Mr. Trevennick smoked, and Sally Trevennick, the old
sailor's daughter, entertained the party and had a word for all. She was
not young, and not well-favored, and unduly plump, but a sweet-hearted
woman nevertheless, with a great love for the little children. This indeed
presently appeared, for while the party waited there happened a tragedy in
the street which brought extreme sorrow to a pair of very small people.
They had a big crabshell full of dirt off the road which they drew after
them by a string, and in which they took no small pride and pleasure; but a
young sailor, coming hastily round a corner, trampled upon the shell,
smashed it, and passed laughing on. The infants, overwhelmed by this sudden
disaster to their most cherished earthly possession, crushed to the earth
by this blotting out of the sunshine of the day, lifted up their voices and
wept before the shattered ruins. One, the biggest, dropped the useless
string and put his face against the wall, that his extreme grief might be
hidden; but the smaller hesitated not to make his sorrows widely known. He
bawled, then took a deep breath and bawled again. As the full extent of his
loss was borne in upon him, he absolutely danced with access of frenzied
grief; and everybody laughed but fat Sally Trevennick. Her black eyes grew
clouded, and she went down into the road to bring comfort to the sufferers.
"Never mind, then; never mind, you bwoys; us'll get 'e another braave
shell, so us will. Theer, theer, give over an' come 'long wi' me an' see
the flags. Theer's many bigger auld crabshells wheer that comed from, I
lay. Your faither'll get 'e another."
She took a hand of each babe and brought them into the garden, from which
they could look down upon their fellows. Such exaltation naturally soothed
their sufferings, and amid many gasps and gurgles they found a return to
peace in the close contemplation of Mr. Trevennick's flagstaff and the
discussion of a big saffron pasty.
Presently the bridegroom and his young brother passed on the way to church.
Both looked the reverse of happy; both wore their Sunday broadcloth, and
both swung along as fast as their legs would carry them. They were red hot
and going five miles an hour; but, though Mousehole men, everybody in
Newlyn knew them, and they were forced to run the gauntlet of much chaff.
"Time was when they did use to thrash a new-married couple to bed," said
Mr. Trevennick. "'Twas an amoosin' carcumstance an' I've 'elped at many,
but them good auld doin's is dyin' out fast."
Mrs. Tregenza was discussing the bridegroom's family.
"He be a poor Billy-be-damned sort o' feller, I've allus heard, an' awnly a
common tinner, though his faither were a grass cap'n at Levant Mine."
"But he's a steady chap," said Sally; "an' them in his awn station sez he's
reg'lar at church-goin' an' well thot 'pon by everybody. 'Tedn' all young
pairs as parson'll ax out, I can tell 'e. He wants to knaw a bit 'fore
'e'll marry bwoys an' gals; but theer weren't no trouble 'bout Mark
Taskes."
"Sure I'm glad to hear it, Sally, 'cause if he caan't do everything,
everything won't be done. They Penns be a pauper lot--him a fish-jouster as
ain't so much as his awn donkey an' cart, an' lame tu. Not that 'twas his
awn fault, I s'pose, but they do say a lame chap's never caught in a good
trick notwithstandin'."
"Here comes the weddeners!" said Joan, "but 'tedn' a very braave shaw," she
added. "They'm all a-foot, I do b'lieve."
"Aw, my dear sawl! look at that now!" cried Mrs. Tregenza. "Walkin',
ackshally walkin'. Well--well!"
The little bride advanced between her father and mother, while relations
and friends marched two and two behind. A vision it was of age and youth,
of bright spring flowers, of spotless cotton and black broadcloth. A matron
or two marched in flaming colors; a few fishermen wore their blue jerseys
under their reefer jackets; the smaller children were led by hand; and the
whole party numbered twelve all told. Mr. Penn looked up at the flags as he
limped along, and a great delight broke out upon his face; the bride's
mother beamed with satisfaction at a compliment not by any means expected,
for the Penns were a humble folk; and the bride blushed and stole a nervous
peep at the display. Mr. Penn touched his hat to the party in the garden,
and Mr. Trevennick, feeling the eye of the multitude upon him, loudly
wished the wedding party well as it passed by.
"Good speed to 'e an' to the maid, Bill Penn. May she live 'appy an' be a
credit to all parties consarned."
"Thank 'e, thank 'e, kindly, Mr. Trevennick. An' us takes it mighty
favorable to see your butivul flags a hangin' out--mighty favorable, I
'sure 'e."
So the party tramped on and ugly Sally looked after them with dim eyes; but
Mrs. Tregenza's thin voice dried them.
"A bad come-along o't for a gal to walk 'pon sich a day. They did ought to
a got her a lift to her weddin', come what might."
"Maybe 'tis all wan to them poor dears. A coach an' four 'orses wouldn'
make that cheel no better pleased. God bless her, did 'e look 'ow she
flickered up when she seed faither's flags a flyin'?"
"Theer's a right way an' a wrong o' doin' weddin's, Sarah, an' 'tedn' a
question whether a gal's better pleased or no. It's all wan to a dead
corpse whether 'tis took to the yard in a black hearse wi' plumes, same as
what us shall be, or whether 'tis borne 'pon wan o' them four 'anded
stretchers used for carryin' fishin' nets, same as poor Albert Vallack was
a while back--but wan way's proper an' t'other 'edn'."
"They'm savin' the money for the feed. Theer's gwaine to be a deal o' clome
liftin' at Perm's cottage bimebye," said another of the party.
"No honeymoon neither, so I hear tell," added Mrs. Tregenza.
"But Taskes have bought flam-new furniture for his parlor, they sez,"
declared the former speaker.
"Of coorse. Still no honeymoon 'tall! Who ever heard tell of sich a thing
nowadays? I wonder they ban't 'shamed."
"Less shame, Mrs. Tregenza, than trapsing off to Truro or somewheers an'
wastin' their time an' spendin' money they'll be wanting back agin 'fore
Christmas," retorted Sally, with some warmth.
But Mrs. Tregenza only shook her head and sighed.
"You speaks as a onmarried wummon, Sarah; but if you comed to be a bride
you'd sing dif-fer'nt. No honeymoon's wrong, an' your faither'll tell the
same."
Mr. Trevennick admitted that no honeymoon was bad. He went further and
declared the omission of such an institution to be unprincipled. He even
said that had he known of this serious defect in the ceremonies he should
certainly have abstained from lending the brightness of his bunting to
them. Then he went to eye the flags from different points of view, while
Sally, in a minority of one, turned to Joan.
"And what do you say?" she asked. "You'm 'mazin' quiet an' tongue-tied for
you. I s'pose you'm thinkin' of the time when Joe Noy comes home. I lay
you'll have a honeymoon anyways."
"Iss, that you may depend 'pon," said Mrs. Tregenza.