red, whereat they all laughed. But she felt secretly superior to every one
of them, for the shrinking process began to extend beyond Joe now. A
fortnight before, she had been much gratified by allusions to the future
and felt herself an important individual enough. Then, she must have shared
her stepmother's pity at the poverty of the pageant which had just passed
by. But now the world had changed. Matrimony with Joe Noy was not a subject
which brought present delight to her, but the little bride who had just
gone to her wedding filled Joan's thoughts. What was in that girl's heart,
she greatly wondered. Did Milly Penn feel for long-legged Mark Taskes what
Joan felt for "Mister Jan"? Was it possible that any other woman had ever
experienced similar mysterious splendors of mind? She could not tell, but
it seemed unlikely to her; it appeared improbable that an ordinary man had
power to inspire another heart with such golden magic as glorified her own.
Presently she departed with her stepmother, whereupon Sally Trevennick
relieved her pent-up feelings.
"Thank the Lard that chitter-faaced wummon edn' gwaine to the weddin' any
ways! Us knaws she's a dear good sawl 'nough; but what wi' her sour voice,
an' her sour way o' talkin', an' her sour 'pinions, she'm enough to set a
rat-trap's teeth on edge."
CHAPTER TEN
MOONLIGHT
That evening Thomasin had another spasm of face-ache and went to bed soon
after drinking tea. Michael was due at home about ten o'clock or earlier,
and Joan--having set out supper, made all ready, and ascertained that her
stepmother had gone to sleep--walked out to the pierhead, there to wait for
Mr. Tregenza and Tom. Under moonlight, the returning luggers crept
homeward, like inky silhouettes on a background of dull silver. Every
moment added to the forest of masts anchored at the moorings outside the
harbor; every minute another rowing-boat shot between the granite piers,
slid silently into the darkness under shore, leaving moonlit rings widening
out behind at each dip of the oars. Joan sat down under the lighthouse and
waited in the stillness for her father's boat. Yellow flashes, like
fireflies, twinkled along through Newlyn, and above them the moon brought
out square patches of silver-bright roof seen through a blue night. Now and
then a bell rang in the harbor, and lights leaped here and there, mingling
red snakes and streamers of fire with the white moonbeams where they lay on
still water. Then Joan knew the fish were being sold by auction, and she
grew anxious for her father's return, fearing prices might have fallen
before he arrived. Great periods of silence lay between the ringings of the
bell, and at such times only faint laughter floated out from shore, or
blocks chipped and rattled as a sail came down or a concertina squeaked
fitfully where it was played on a Norwegian iceboat at the harbor quay. The
tide ran high, and Joan watched the lights reflected in the harbor and
wondered why the gold of them contrasted so ill with the silver from the
moon.
Presently two men came along to the pierhead. They smoked, looked at the
sea, and did not notice her where she sat in shadow. One, the larger, wore
knickerbockers, talked loudly, and looked a giant in the vague light; the
other was muffled up in a big ulster, and Joan would not have recognized
Barron had he not spoken. But he answered his friend, and then the girl's
heart leaped to hear that quiet, unimpassioned voice. He spoke of matters
which she did not understand, of pictures and light and all manner of
puzzles set by Nature for the solution of art; but though for the most part
his remarks conveyed no meaning to her, yet he closed a sentence with words
that made her happy, and warmed her heart and left a precious memory behind
them.
"Moonlight is a problem only less difficult than sunshine," he said to his
friend. "Where are you going to get that?" and he pointed to the sea.
"It's been jolly well done all the same."
"Never. It is not to be done. You can suggest by a trick, but God defend us
from tricks and sleight-of-hand in connection with the solemn business of
painting pictures. Let us be true or nothing."
They walked away together, and Joan pondered over the last words. Truth
seemed an eternal, abiding passion with John Barron, and the contemplation
of this idea gave her considerable pleasure. She did not know that a man
may be at once true to his art and a liar to his fellows.
Presently her father returned with Tom, and the three walked home together.
Gray Michael appeared quietly satisfied that his son was shaping well and
showing courage and nerve. But he silenced the lad quickly enough when Tom
began to talk with some gasconade concerning greet deeds done westward of
the Scilly Islands.
"'Let another man praise thee an' not thine awn mouth,' my bwoy," said Mr.
Tregenza. "It ban't the wave as makes most splash what gaws highest up the
beach, mind. You get Joan to teach 'e how to peel 'taties, 'cause 'tis a
job you made a tidy bawk of, not to mention no other. Keep your weather-eye
liftin' an' your tongue still. Then you'll do. An' mind--the bwoat's clean
as a smelt by five o'clock to-morrow marnin', an' no later."
Tom, dashed by these base details, answered seaman fashion:
"Ay, ay, faither."
Then they all tramped home, and the boy enjoyed the glories of a late
supper, though he was half asleep before he had finished it.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE KISS
By half-past five o'clock, Mr. Tregenza's black lugger was off again in a
gray dawn all tangled with gold on the eastern horizon.
His mother had given Tom an early breakfast at half-past four, and the
youngster, agape and dim-eyed at first, speedily brightened up, for he had
a willing listener, in the candle-light and poured a tale of moving
incidents into Thomasin's proud but uneasy mind.
"Them Pritchards sez as they'll make a busker [Footnote: _Busker_--A
rare good fisherman.] of me, 'cause it blawed a bit issterday marnin', but
'twas all wan to me; an' you abbun no call to fret yourself, nohow, mother,
'cause faither's 'lowed to be the best sailor in the fleet an' theer ban't
a better foul-weather boat sails from Newlyn than ourn."
He chattered on, larding his discourse with new words picked up aboard, and
presently rolled off to get things shipshape just as his father came down
to breakfast.
When the men had gone, little remained to be done that day, and, by
half-past seven, about which hour Mrs. Tregenza went into the village that
she might whine with a widow who had two boys in the fleet, Joan found
herself free until the afternoon. She determined therefore to reach Gorse
Point before the artist should arrive there, and set off accordingly.
Early though she was, she had but a short time to wait, for Barron appeared
with his big canvas by nine o'clock. She thought he showed more pleasure
than usual at the sight of her. Certainly he shook hands and congratulated
her upon such early hours.
"This is an unexpected pleasure, Joan. You must have been up betimes
indeed."
"Iss fay, us took breakfus' by five, an' faither sailed 'fore half-past.
'Tis busy times for fishin' folk when the mackerl begins shoalin'."
"I'm glad I came back to my den in the fields yonder and didn't stop in
Newlyn last night. You must see my little cow-byre some day or other, Joan.
I've made it wonderfully snug. Farmer Ford is good enough to let me take
possession of it for the present; and I've got food and drink stowed away,
and a beautiful bed of sweet, withered bracken. I sleep well there, and the
dawn comes in and wakens me."
"You ban't feared o' piskeys nor nothin' in a lawnsome plaace like thicky
byre?"
"No, no--the rats are rather intrusive, though."
"But they'm piskeys or spriggans so like's not! You see, the lil people
takes all manner o' shaapes, Mister Jan; an' they chaanges 'em tu, but
every time they chaanges they've got to alter into somethin' smaller than
what they was before. An' so, in coorse of time, they do say they comes
down into muryans an' such like insects."
"Piskeys or no piskeys, I've caught several in a trap and killed them."
"They'm gashly things, rats, an' I shouldn't think as no good piskeys would
turn into varmints like them."
"More should I. But something better than rats came to see me last night,
Joan. Guess who it was."
"I dunnaw."
"Why, you came!"
"Me, Mister Jan! You must a bin dreamin'!"
"Yes, of course I was; but such a lovely dream, Joan! You see, men who
paint pictures and love what is beautiful and dream about beautiful things
and beautiful people see all sorts of visions sometimes. I have pictures in
my head a thousand times more splendid than any I shall ever put upon
canvas, because mere paint-brushes cannot do much, even when they are in
the cleverest hands; but a man's brain is not bound down by material,
mechanical matters. My brain made a picture of you last night--a picture
that came and looked at me on my fern bed--a picture so real, so alive that
I could see it move and hear it laugh. You think that wonderful. It isn't
really, because my brain has done nothing but think of you now for nearly
six weeks. My eye studies you and stamps you upon my brain; then, when
night comes, and no man works, and the world is dark and silent, my brain
sets off on its own account and raises up a magic vision just to show me
what you really are--how different to this poor daub here."
"Lard, Mister Jan! I never heard tell of sich a coorious thing as that."
"And the pretty dream-Joan can talk almost as well as you can! Why, last
night, while I was half awake and half asleep, she put her hand upon my
shoulder and said kind things, but I dared not move or kiss her hand at
first for fear she would vanish if I did."
Joan laughed.
"That is a funny story, sure 'nough," she said. "I 'specs 'twas awnly
another fairy body, arter all."
"No, it wasn't. She had your voice and your spirit in her; and that picture
which my brain painted for me was so much better than the thing my hand has
painted that, in the morning, I was almost tempted to destroy this
altogether. But I didn't."
"An' what did this here misty sort o' maid say to 'e?"
"Strange things, strange things. Things I would give a great deal to hear
you say. It seemed that you had come, Joan, it seemed that you had
purposely come from your little cottage on the cliff through the darkness
before dawn. Why? To share my loneliness, to brighten my poor shadowy life.
Dreams are funny things, are they not? What d'you think you said?"
"Sure I dunnaw."
"Why, you said that you were not going to leave me any more; that you
believed in me and that you had come to me because it was bad for a man to
live all alone in the world. You said that you felt alone too--without me.
And it made me feel happy to hear you say that, though I knew, all the
time, that it was not the real beautiful Joan who spoke to me."
Thereupon the girl asked a question which seemed to argue some sharpening
of intelligence within her.
"An' when I spoke that, what did you say, Mister Jan?"
"I didn't say anything at all. I just took that sweet Joan-of-dreams into
my arms and kissed her."
He was looking listlessly out over the sea as he spoke, and Joan felt
thankful his eyes were turned away from her, for this wonderful dream
incident made her grow hot all over. He seemed to divine by her silence
that his answer to her question had not added to her happiness.
"I shouldn't have told you that, Joan, only you asked me. You see, in
dreams, we are real in some senses, though unreal in others. In dreams the
savage part of us comes to the top and Nature can whisper to us. She
chooses night to do so and often speaks to men in visions, because by day
the voice of the world is in their ears and they have no attention for any
other. It was strange, too, that I should fancy such a thing--should
imagine I was kissing you--because I never kissed a woman in my life."
But from her point of view this falsehood was not so alluring as he meant
to make it sound.
"'Twould be wrong to kiss any maiden, I reckon, onless you was tokened to
her or she were your awn sister."
"But, as we look at life, we're all brothers and sisters, Joan--with Nature
for our mother. We agreed about that long ago."
He turned to his easel, and she went and stood where her feet had already
made a brown mark on the grass.
"I seen you last night, but you dedn' see me," she said, changing the
conversation with abruptness.
"Yes, I did," he answered, "sitting under the shadow of the lighthouse,
waiting for Mr. Tregenza, I expect."
"An' you never took no note o' me!"
He flung down his brushes, turned away from the picture before he had
touched it, and went and lay near the edge of the cliff.
"Come here, Joan, and I will tell you why I didn't notice you, though I
longed to do so. Come and sit down by me and I'll explain why I seemed so
rude."
She came slowly and sat down some distance from him, putting her elbows on
her knees and looking away to sea.
"'Tweern't kind," she said, "but when you'm with other folks, I s'pose
you'm ashamed o' me 'spite what you tawld me 'bout yourself."
"You mustn't say that, Joan, or you'll make me unhappy. Ashamed of you! Is
it likely I'm ashamed of the only friend I've got in the world? No, I'm
frightened of losing you; I'm selfish; I couldn't make you known to any
other man because I should be afraid you'd like him better than me, and
then I should have no friend at all. So I wouldn't speak and reveal my
treasure to anybody else. I'm very fond of my friend, and very proud of
her, and as greedy as a miser over his gold."
Joan took a long breath before this tremendous assertion. He had told her
in so many words that he was fond of her; and he had mentioned it most
casually as a point long since decided. Here was the question which she had
asked herself so often answered once for all. Her heart leaped at tidings
of great joy, and as she looked up into his face the man saw infinite
wonder and delight in her own. Mind was adding beauty to flesh, and he,
fast losing the artist's instinct before another, thought she had never
looked so lovely as then.
"Oh, Mister Jan, you'm fond o' me!"
"Why, didn't you know it, Joan? Did it want my words to tell you so? Hadn't
you guessed it?"
He rose slowly and approached his picture.
"Oh, how I wish this was a little more like my dream and like reality! I
need inspiration, Joan; I have reached a point beyond which I cannot go. My
colors are dead; my soul is dead. Something must happen to me or I shall
never finish this."
"Ban't you so well as you was?"
"No, Joan, I'm not. A thing has come between me and my happiness, between
me and my picture. I know not what to call it. Nature has sent it."
"Then 'tis right an' proper, I s'pose?"
"I suppose so, but it stops work. It makes my hand shake and my heart throb
fast and my brains grow hot."
"Can't 'e take no physic for't?"
"Why, yes, but I hesitate."
He turned to her and went close to her.
"Let me look at you, Joan--close--very close--so close that I can feel your
breath. It was so easy to learn the furze; it is so hard to learn you."
"Sure I've comed out butivul in the picksher."
"Not yet, not yet."
He put his hands on her shoulders and looked into her eyes until she grew
nervous and brushed her hand across her cheek. Then, without a second's
warning, he bent down and kissed her on the mouth.
"Mister Jan! How could 'e! 'Tis wrong--wrong of 'e! I'd never a thot--"
She started from him, wild, alarmed, blushing hotly; and he shook his head
at her dismay and answered very calmly, very seriously:
"It was not wrong, Joan, or I should not have done it. You heard me ask to
whom I should pray for inspiration, and Nature told me I must seek it from
you. And I have."
"You shouldn't never a done it. I trusted 'e so!"
"But I had to do it. Nature said 'Kiss her, and you will find what you
want.' Do you understand that? I have touched you and I am awake and alive
again; I have touched you, Joan, and I am not hopeless and sad, but happy.
Nature thought of me, Joan, when she made you and brought you into the
world; and she thought of sweet Joan when she fashioned Jan. Believe
it--you must believe it."
"You did ought to a arsked me."
"Listen. Nature let you live quiet in the country--for me, Joan. She let me
live all lonely in the world--for you. Only for you. Can't you understand?"
"You did ought to a arsked me. Kissing be wrong 'tween us. You knaws it,
Mr. Jan."
"It is right and proper and fair and beautiful," he said quietly. "My heart
sang when I kissed you, Joan, and so did yours. D'you know why? Because we
are two halves of a whole. Because the sunshine of your life would go out
without me; because my life, which never had any sunshine in it until now,
has been full of sunshine since I knew Joan."
"I dunnaw. 'Twadden a proper thing to do, seein' how I trusted 'e."
"We are children of Nature, Joan. I always do what she tells me. I can't
help it. I have obeyed her all my life. She tells me to love you, Joan, and
I do. I'm very sorry. I thought she had told you to love me, but I suppose
I was wrong. Never mind this once. Forgive me, Joan. I'll even fight Nature
rather than make you angry with me. Let me finish my picture and go away.
Come. I've no business to waste your precious time, though you have been so
kind and generous with it. Only I was tired and hopeless and you came like
a drink of wine to me, Joan; and I drank too much, I suppose."
He picked up his brushes, spoke in a sad minor key, and seemed crushed and
weary. The flash died from his face and he looked older again. Joan, the
mistress of the situation, found it wholly bitter. She was bewildered, for
affairs had proceeded with such rapidity. He had declared frankly that he
loved her, and yet had stopped there. To her ideas it was impossible that a
man should say as much as that to a woman and no more. Love invariably
meant ultimate union for life, Joan thought. She could not understand any
other end to it. The man talked about Nature as a little child talks of its
mother. He had deemed himself entirely in the right; yet something--not
Nature, she supposed--had told her that he was wrong. But who was she to
judge him? Who was she to say where his conduct erred? He loved truth. It
was not a lie to kiss a girl. He promised nothing. How could he promise
anything or propose anything? Was she not another man's sweetheart? That
doubtless had been the reason why he had said no more than that he loved
her. To love her could be no sin. Nature had told him to; and God knew how
she loved him now.
But she could not make it up with him. A cold curtain seemed to have fallen
between them. The old reserve which had only melted after many meetings,
was upon him again. He stood, as it seemed, on the former pedestal. A
strange, surging sensation filled her head--a sense of helpless fighting
against a flood of unhappy affairs. All the new glory of life was suddenly
tarnished through her own act, and she felt that things could never be the
same again.
She thought and thought. Then John Barron saw Joan's blue eyes begin to
wink ominously, the corners of her bonny mouth drag down and something
bright twinkle over her cheek. He took no notice, and when he looked up
again, she had moved away and was sitting on the grass crying bitterly with
her hands over her face. The sun was bright, a lark sang overhead; from
adjacent inland fields came the jolt and clank of a plow with a man's voice
calling to his horses at the turns. The artist put down his palette and
walked over to Joan.
"My dear, my dear," he said, "d'you know what's making you so unhappy?"
She sobbed on and did not answer.
"I can tell you, I think. You don't quite know whether to believe me or
not, Joan. That is very natural. Why should you believe me? And yet if you
knew--"
She sat up, swallowed some of her tears, and smudged her face with her
knuckles. He took a clean handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to
her. It was cool and pleasant, and she went on crying a while, but tears
which were comforting and different to the first stinging drops bred from a
sudden, forlorn survey of life. He talked on, and his voice soothed her. He
kept his distance, and presently, as her ruffled spirit grew calmer, his
remarks assumed a brighter note.
"Has my poor little Lady of the Gorse forgiven me at last? She won't punish
me any more, I know, and it is a very terrible punishment to see tears in
her eyes."
Then she found her tongue again and words to answer him, together with
fluttering sighs that told the tears were ended.
"I dunnaw why for I cried, Mr. Jan, but I seemed 'mazed like. I'm a stupid
fule of a maid, I reckon, an' I s'pose 'tis auld-fashioned notions as I've
got 'bout what be right an' wrong. But, coorse, you knaws better'n what I
can; an' you'd do me no hurt 'cause you loves me--you've said it;
an'--an'--I love 'e tu, Mister Jan, I 'sure 'e--better'n anything in all
the world."
"Why, that's good, sweet news, Joan; and Nature told me the truth after
all! We're bound to love one another. She made us for that very reason!"
He knew that her mind was full of the tangles of life and that she wanted
him to solve some of the riddles just then uppermost in her own existence.
He felt that Joe was in her thoughts, and he easily divined her unuttered
question as to why Nature had sent Joe before she had sent him. But, though
answers and explanations of her troubles were not likely to be difficult,
he had no wish to make them or to pursue the subject just then. Indeed, he
bid Joan depart an hour before she need have done so. Her face was spoiled
for that sitting, and matters had progressed up to the threshold of the
barrier. Before that could be broken down, she must be made to feel that
she was necessary to the happiness of his life; as he already felt that she
was necessary to the completion of his picture. She loved him very dearly,
and he, though love was not possible to his nature, could feel the
substitute. He had fairly stepped out of his impersonal shell into reality.
Presently he would return to his shell again. For a moment a model had
grown more to him than a picture; and he told himself that he must obey
Nature in order adequately to serve Art.
He picked up the handkerchief he had lent Joan, looked at the dampness of
the tear-stains, and then spread it in the sun to dry.
CHAPTER TWELVE
JOAN WALKS HOME
While John Barren determined that a space of time extending over some days
should now separate him from Joan, she, for her part, had scarce left Gorse
Point after the conversation just chronicled when there came a great
longing in her heart to return thither. As she walked home she viewed
wearily the hours which lay between her and the following morning when she
might go back to him and see his face again. Time promised to drag for the
next day and night. Already she framed in her mind the things her mouth
should say to-morrow; and that almost before she was beyond sight of the
man's easel. Her fears had vanished with her tears. The future was entirely
in his hand now, for she had accepted his teaching, endeavored to look at
life with his eyes, made his God her own, so far as she had wit to gather
what his God was. She accepted the situation with trust, and felt
responsibility shifted on to "Mister Jan's" shoulders with infinite relief.
He was very wise and knew everything and loved the truth. It is desirable
to harp and harp upon this ever-recurring thought: the artist's grand love
for truth; because all channels of Joan's mind flowed into this lake. His
sincerity begat absolute trust. And, as John Barren and his words and
thoughts filled the foreground of life for her, so, correspondingly, did
the affairs of her home, with all the circumstances of existence in the old
environment, peak and dwindle toward shadowy insignificance. Her father
lost his majestic proportions; the Luke Gospelers became mere objects for
compassion; the petty, temporal interests and concerns of the passing hour
appeared mere worthless affairs for the occupation and waste of time.
"Mister Jan" loved her, and she loved him, and what else mattered? Past
hours of unrest and wakefulness were forgotten; her tears washed the dead
anxieties clean away; and the kiss which had caused them, though it
scorched her lip when it fell there, was now set as a seal and a crowning
glory to her life. He never kissed any other woman. That pledge of this
rare man's affection had been won by the magic of love, and Joan welcomed
Nature gladly and called it God with a warm heart and thankful soul; for
Nature had brought about this miracle. Her former religion worked no
wonders; it had only conveyed terror to her and a comprehensive knowledge
of hell. "Mister Jan" smiled at hell and she could laugh at her old fears.
How was it possible to hesitate between two such creeds? She did not do so,
and, with final acceptation of the new, and secret rejection of the old,
came a great peace to Joan's heart with the whisper of many voices telling
her that she had done rightly.