clouded by a longing to be back with the artist again. He loved her; the
voice of his love was the song of the spring weather, and the thrush echoed
it and the early flowers wrote it on the hedgerows. God was everywhere to
her open eyes. Everything that was beautiful, everything that was good,
seemed to have been created for her delight during that homeward walk. She
was mightily lifted up. Nature seemed so strong, so kind, such a guardian
angel for a maiden. And the birds sang out that "Mister Jan" was Nature's
priest and could do no wrong; and that to obey Nature was the highest good.
From which reflection rose a hazy happiness--dim, beautiful and indefinable
as the twinkling gold upon the sea under the throne of the sun. Joan dwelt
on the memory of the day which was now over for her, and on the thought of
morning hours which to-morrow would bring. But she looked no further; and
backward she did not gaze at all. No thought of Joe Noy dimmed her mental
delight; no shadowy cloud darkened the horizon then. All was bright, all
perfect. Her mind seemed to be breaking its little case, as the butterfly
bursts the chrysalis. Her life till then had been mere grub existence; now
she could fly and had seen the sun drawing the scent from flowers. Great
ideas filled her soul; new emotions awoke; she was like a baby trying to
utter the thing he has no word for; her vocabulary broke down under the
strain, and as she walked she gave thanks to Nature in a mere wordless
song, like the lark, because she could not put her acknowledgment into
language. But the great Mother, to whom Life is all in all, the living
individual nothing, looked on at a world wakening from sleep and viewed the
loves of the flowers and the loves of the birds and beasts and fishes with
concern as keen as the love in the blue eyes of Joan upon her homeward way.
Busy indeed at this vernal season was the mysterious Nurse of God's little
world. Her hands rested not from her labors. She worked strange wonders on
the waste, by magic of a million breaking buds, by burying of the dead, by
wafting of subtle pollen-life from blossom to blossom. And in cliffs above
the green waters the nests of her wild-fowl were already lined with wool
and feather; neither were her samphires forgotten in their dizzy
habitations; and salt spray sprinkled her uncurling sea ferns in caves and
crannies where they grew. She laughed at the porpoises rolling their fat
sides into sunshine; she brought the sea-otter where it should find fish
for its young; she led giant congers to drowned men; she patted the sleek
head of the sad-eyed seal. Elsewhere she showed the father-hawk a leveret
crouching in his form; she took young rabbits to the new spring grass; the
fox to the fowl, the fly to the spider, the blight to the bud. Her weakly
nestlings fell from tree and cliff to die, but she beheld unmoved; her
weasel sucked the gray-bird's egg, yet no hand was raised against the
thief, no voice comforted the screaming agony of the mother. With the van
of her legions she moved, and the suffering stragglers cried in vain, for
her concerns were not with them. She did no right, she worked no evil; she
was not cruel, neither shall we call her kind. The servant of God was she,
then as always, heedful of His utterances, obedient to His laws. Which
laws, when man better divines, he shall learn thy secret too, Nurse of the
world, but not sooner.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
LONELY DAYS
Having already learned from experience that hard work quickens the flight
of time, Joan, returning in happy mood to her home and with no trace of the
past tears upon her cheeks, surprised Mrs. Tregenza by a display of most
unusual energy and activity. She helped the butcher to get the pig into a
low cart built expressly for the conveyance of such unwieldy animals; she
looked mournfully at her departing companion, knowing that the morrow had
nothing for him but a knife, that he had eaten his last meal. And while
Joan listened to the farewell grunts of the fattest pig which had ever
adorned her father's sty, Mrs. Tregenza counted the money and bit a piece
here and there, and wondered if she could get the next young pig from Uncle
Chirgwin for even a lower figure than the last.
The day which had wrought such wonders for Joan's inner life, and brought
to her eyes a sort of tears unshed till then, ended at last, and for her a
sleepless night followed upon it. Not until long past one o'clock in the
morning did she lose consciousness, and then the thoughts of the day broke
loose again in visions, taking upon themselves fantastic shapes and moving
amid dream scenery of strange splendor. Now it was her turn to conjure
brain pictures out of fevered thoughts, and she woke at last with a start
in the dawn, to see a faint light painting the square of her bedroom
window. Looking out, she found the world dimly visible, a darker shadow
through the gloom where the fishing-boats were gathering in the bay, the
lighthouse lamp still shining, stars twinkling overhead, absolute silence
everywhere, and a cold bite about the air. The girl went back to bed again,
but slept no more and anon arose, dressed, set about morning duties, and,
much to Mrs. Tregenza's astonishment, had the fire burning and breakfast
ready by the time her stepmother appeared.
"Aw jimmery!" Thomasin exclaimed, as Joan came in from the outhouse to find
her warming cold hands at the fire, "I couldn't b'lieve my eyes at first
an' thot the piskey men had come to do us a turn spite o' what faither sez.
You've turned over a leaf seemin'ly. Workin' out o' core be a new game for
you."
"I couldn' sleep for thinkin' 'bout--'bout the pig an' wan thing an'
'nother."
"He's pork now, or nearly. You heard butcher promise me some nattlins,
dedn' 'e? You'd best walk up to Paul bimebye an' fetch, 'em. 'Tis easier to
call to mind other folk's promises than our awn. He said the same last
pig-killin' an' it comed to nort."
Joan escaped soon after breakfast and set off eagerly enough. She took a
basket with her and designed to call at Paul on the way home again.
Moreover, she chose a longer route to Gorse Point than that through
Mousehole, for her very regular habits of late had caused some comment in
that village, and more than one acquaintance had asked her, half in jest,
half in earnest, who it was she went to see up Mousehole hill. This had
frightened Joan twice already, and to-day, for the first time, she took the
longer route above Paul Church-town. It brought her over fields near the
cow-byre where Barren spent much of his time and kept his picture; and when
she saw her footpath must pass the door of the little house, a flutter
quickened her pulses and she branched away over the field and proceeded to
the cliffs through a gap in the hedge some distance from the byre.
But as Joan came out upon the sward through the furzes her heart sank in
sight of loneliness. She was not early to-day, but she had come earlier
than "Mister Jan." The gray figure was invisible. There were the marks on
the turf where his easel and camp-stool stood; there was the spot his feet
were wont to press, and her own standing-point against the glimmering
gorse; but that was all. She knew of no reason for his delay. The weather
was splendid, the day was warm, and he had never been so late before within
her recollection. Joan, much wondering, sat down to wait with her eyes upon
the sea, her ears alert for the first footstep, and her mind listening
also. Time passed, and indefinite uneasiness grew into a fear; then that
expanded and multiplied as her mind approached the problem of "Mister
Jan's" non-appearance from a dozen different standpoints. Hope declared
some private concern had kept him and he would not be long in coming; fear
inquired what unforeseen incident was likely to have risen since
yesterday--asked the question and answered it a dozen ways. The girl
waited, walked here and there, scanned the footpath and the road, returned,
sat down in patience, ate a cake she had brought, and so whiled the long
minutes away. The fears grew as hour and half-hour passed--fears for him,
not herself. The crowning despair did not touch her mind till later, and
her first sorrow was a simple terror that harm had fallen upon the man. He
had told her that he valued life but little, that at best no great length
of days awaited him; and now she thought that wandering about the cliffs by
night he might have met the death he did not fear. Then she remembered he
was but a sick man always, with frail breathing parts; and her thoughts
turned to the shed, and she pictured him lying ill there, unable to
communicate with friends, perhaps waiting and praying long hours for her
footfall as she had been waiting and praying for his. Upon this most
plausible possibility striking Joan, her heart beat at her breast and her
cheeks grew white. She rose from her seat upon the cliff, turned her face
to the cow-byre and made a few quick steps in that direction. Then a vague
flutter of sense, as of warning where no danger is visible, slowed her
speed for a moment; but her heart was strung to action, and the strange new
voice did not sound like Nature's, so she put it aside and let it drown
into silence before the clamor of fear for "Mister Jan's" well-being.
Indeed, that dim premonitory whisper excited a moment's anger in the girl
that any distrust could shadow her love for such a one at such a time. She
hated herself, held the thought a sin of her own commission, and sped
onward until she stood upon the northern side of the byre in a shadow cast
from it by the sun. The place was padlocked, and at that sight Joan's
spirits, though they rose in one direction, yet fell in another. One fear
vanished, a second loomed the larger; for the padlock, while it indicated
that the artist had left his lonely habitation for the time, did not
explain his absence now or dispel the possibilities of an accident or
disaster. The tar-pitched double door of the shed was fast and offered no
peep-hole; but Joan went round to the south side, where an aperture
appeared and where a little glass window had taken the place of the wooden
shutters. Sunshine lighted the shed inside; she could see every detail of
the chamber, and she photographed it on her mind with a quick glance. A big
easel with the life-size picture of herself upon it stood in the middle of
the shed, and a smaller easel appeared hard by. The artist's palettes,
brushes and colors littered a bench, and bottles and tumblers were
scattered among them. Two pipes which she had seen in his mouth lay
together upon a box on the floor, and beside them stood a tin of tobacco
wrapped in yellow paper. A white umbrella and some sticks stood in one
corner, and another she saw was filled by some railway rugs spread over
dried bracken. Two coats hung on nails in the wall, and above one was
suspended a Panama hat which Barren often wore when painting. Something
moved suddenly, and, looking upon the stone floor, she saw a rat-trap with
a live rat in it. The beast was running as far as it could this way and
that, poking its nose up and trying the roof of its prison. She noticed its
snout was raw from thrusting between the wire, and she wished she could get
in to kill it. She did not know that it was a mother rat with young ones
outside squeaking faintly in the stack of mangel-wurzels; she did not know,
as it hopped round and round, that its beady eyes were glittering with a
great agony, and that the Mother of all was powerless to break down a mere
wire or two and save it.
Presently, worn and weary, Joan trudged home again, with no very happy
mind. She found food for comfort in one reflection alone: the artist had
made no special appointment for that day, and it might be that business or
an engagement at Newlyn, Penzance or elsewhere was occupying his time. She
felt it must be so, and tried hard to convince herself that he would surely
be at the usual spot upon the morrow.
So she walked home unhappy; and time, which had dragged yesterday, to-day
stood still. Before night she had lived an age; the hours of darkness were
endless, but her father's return furnished excuse for another morning of
early rising; and when Gray Michael and Tom had eaten, donned clean raiment
and returned to the sea, Joan, having seen them to the pierhead, did not go
home, but hastened straight away for Gorse Point, and arrived there earlier
than ever she had done before. There was something soothing to her troubled
mind in being upon the spot sacred to him. Though he was not present, she
seemed closer far to him on Gorse Point than anywhere else. His foot had
marked the turf there; his eye had mirrored the furzes a hundred times; she
knew just where his shadow had fallen as he stood painting, and the spot
upon which he was wont to sit by the cliff-edge when came the time for
rest. Beside this holy place she now seated herself and waited with hope
higher in the splendor of morning; for sorrows, fears and ills are always
blackest when the sun has set, and every man or woman can better face
trouble on opening their eyes in a sunny dawn than after midnight has
struck, a sad day left them weakened, and nothing wakes in the world but
Care and themselves.
The morning wore away, and the old fears returned with greater force to
chill her soul. The sun was burnishing the sea, and she watched Mousehole
luggers putting out and dancing away through the gold. Under the cliffs the
gulls wheeled with sad cries and the long-necked cormorants hastened
backward and forward, now flying fast and low over the water, now fishing
here and there in couples. She saw them rear in the water as they dived,
then go down head first, leaving a rippling circle which widened out and
vanished long before the fishers bobbed up again twenty yards further on.
Time after time she watched them, speculating vaguely after each
disappearance as to how long the bird would remain out of sight. Then she
turned her face to the land, weary of waiting, weary of the bright sea and
sky, and the music of the gulls, and of life. She sat down again presently,
and put her hand over her face and struggled with her thoughts. Manifold
fears compassed her mind about, but one, not felt till then, rose now, a
giant above the rest. Yesterday she had been all alarm for "Mister Jan";
to-day there came terror for herself. Something said "He has gone, he has
left you." Her brain, without any warning, framed the words and spoke them
to her. It was as though a stranger had brought the news, and she rose up
white and stricken at this fatal explanation of the artist's continued
absence. She put the thought from her as she had put another, but it
returned with pertinacity, and each time larger than before, until the fear
filled all her mind and made her wild and desperate, under the conviction
of a sudden, awful life-quake launched against her existence to shatter all
her new joy and dash the brimming cup of love from her lips.
Hours passed, and she grew somewhat faint and hollow every way--in head and
heart and stomach. Her eyes ached, her brains were worn out with thinking;
she felt old, and her body was heavy and energy dead. The world changed,
too. The gorse looked strange as the sun went round, the lark sang no more,
the wind blew coldly, and the sea's gold was darkened by a rack of flying
clouds whose shadows fell purple and gray upon the waters. He had gone; he
had left her; perhaps she would never see him or hear of him again. Then
the place grew hateful to her and terrible as a grave. She dragged herself
away, dizzy, weary, wretched; and not until half way home again did she
find power to steady her mind and control thought. Then the old alarm
returned--that first fear which had pictured him dead, perhaps even now
rolling over and over under the precipices, or hid forever in the cranny of
some dark cavern at the root of the cliffs, where high tides spouted and
thundered and battered the flesh off his bones against granite. She
suffered terribly in mind upon that homeward journey. Her own light and
darkness mattered nothing now, and her personal and selfish fears had
vanished before she reached Newlyn. She was thinking how she should raise
an alarm, how she should tell his friends, who possibly imagined "Mister
Jan" safe and comfortable in his cow-byre. But who were his friends and how
should she approach them without such a step becoming known and getting
talked about? Her misery was stamped on her face when she at last returned
to the white cottage at three o'clock in the afternoon of that day, and
Mrs. Tregenza saw it there.
"God save us! wheer you bin to, an' what you bin 'bout? You'm so pasty an'
round-eyed as if you'd bin piskey-led somewheers. An' me worn to death wi'
work. An' wheer'm the nattlins an' the basket?"
Joan had quite forgotten her commission and left the basket on Gorse Point.
"I'll gaw back bimebye," she said. "I bin walkin' 'long the cliffs in the
sun an' forgot the time. Gimme somethin' t'ate, mother; I be hungry an'
fainty like wi' gwaine tu far. I could hardly fetch home."
"You'm a queer twoad," said Thomasin, "an' I doan't knaw what's come over
'e of late days. 'Pears to me you'm hidin' summat; an' if I thot that, I'd
mighty quick get faither to find out what 'twas, I can tell 'e."
Then she went off, and brought some cold potatoes and dripping, with bread
and salt, and a cup of milk.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
LESSONS LEARNED
The lesson which he had set for Joan Tregenza's learning taught John Barron
something also. Eight-and-forty hours he stayed in Newlyn, and was
astounded to find during that period what grip this girl had got upon his
mind, how she had dragged him out of himself. His first thought was to
escape all physical excitement and emotion by abandoning his picture almost
upon the moment of its completion and abandoning his model too; but various
considerations cried out against such a course. To go was to escape no
difficulty, but to fly from the spoils of victory. The fruit only wanted
plucking, and, through pleasure, he believed that he would proceed to
speedy, easy and triumphant completion of his picture. No lasting
compunction colored the tenor of his thoughts. Once, indeed, upon the day
when he returned to Gorse Point and saw Joan again, some shadow of regret
for her swept through his brain; but that and the issue of it will be
detailed in their place.
Time went heavily for him away from Joan. He roamed listlessly here and
there and watched the weather-glass uneasily; for this abstention from work
was a deliberate challenge to Providence to change sunshine for rain and
high temperature for low. Upon the third day therefore he returned at early
morning to his picture in the shed. The greater part was finished, and the
masses of gorse stood out strong, solid and complete with the slender brown
figure before them. The face of it was very sweet, but to Barron it seemed
as the face of a ghost, with no hot blood in its veins, no live interests
in its eyes.
"'Tis the countenance of a nun," he said sneeringly to himself. "No fire,
no love, no story--a sweet virgin page of life, innocent of history or of
interest as a new-blown lily." The problem was difficult, and he had now
quite convinced himself that solution depended on one course alone. "And
why not?" he asked himself. "Why, when pleasures are offered, shall I
refuse them? God knows Nature is chary enough with her delights. She has
sowed death in me, here in my lungs. I shall bleed away my life some day or
die strangled, unless I anticipate the climax and choose another exit. Why
not take what she throws to me in the meantime?"
He walked down to the Point, set up his easel and waited, feeling that Joan
had certainly made two pilgrimages since his last visit and little doubting
that she would come a third time. Presently indeed she did, scarcely daring
to raise her eyes, but flushing with great waves of joy when she saw him,
and crying "Mister Jan!" in a triumphant ripple of music from a full heart.
Then the artist rose very boldly and put his arms round her and looked into
her face, while she nestled close to him and shut her eyes with a sigh of
sheer content and thankfulness. She had learned her lesson thoroughly
enough; she felt she could not live without him now, and when he kissed her
she did not start from the caress, but opened her eyes and looked into his
face with great yearning love.
"Oh, thank the good God you'm comed back agin to me! To think it be awnly
two lil days! An' the time have seemed a hunderd years. I thot 'e was lost
or dead or killed, an' I seed 'e, when I slept, a tossin' over down in the
zawns [Footnote: _Zawns_--Sea caves.] where the sea roars an' makes the
world shake. Oh, Mister Jan, an' I woke screamin', an' mother comed up, an'
I near spoke your name, but not quite."
"You need not have feared for me, Joan, though I have been very miserable
too, my little sweetheart; I have indeed. I was overworked and worried and
wretched, so I stopped in Newlyn, but being away from you had only taught
me I cannot exist away from you. The time was long and dreary, and it would
have been still worse had I known that you were unhappy."
"'Tweer wisht days for me, Mister Jan. I be such a poor lass in brains, an'
I could awnly think of trouble 'cause I loved 'e so true. 'Tedn' like the
same plaace when you'm away. Then I thot you'd gone right back to Lunnon,
an' I judged my heart 'ud break for 'e, I did."
"Poor little blue-eyed woman! Could you really think I was such a brute?"
"'Twas awnly wan thot among many. I never thot so much afore in my life.
An' I looked 'bout tu; an' I went up to the lil byre, where your things
was, an' peeped in en. But I seed naught of 'e, awnly a gashly auld rat in
a trap. But 'e won't gaw aways like that ag'in, will 'e?"
"No, no. It was too bad."
"Coorse I knawed that if all was well with 'e, you'd a done the right
thing, but it 'peared as if the right thing couldn' be to leave me, Mister
Jan--not now, now you be my world like; 'cause theer edn' nothin' or nobody
else in the world but you for me. 'Tis wicked, but t'others be all faded
away; an' faither's nort, an' Joe's nort, alongside o' you."
He did not answer, and began to paint. Joan's face was far short of looking
its best; there were dark shadows under her eyes and less color than usual
brightened her cheeks. He tried to work, but circumstances and his own
feelings were alike against him. He was restless and lacked patience, nor
could his eye see color aright. In half an hour he had spoiled not a little
of what was already done. Then he took a palette-knife, made a clean sweep
of much previous labor and began again. But the music of her happy voice
was in his blood. The child had come out of the valley of sorrow and she
was boisterously happy and her laughter made him wild. Mists gathered in
his eyes and his breath caught now and again. Passion fairly gripped him by
the throat till even the sound of his own voice was strange to him and he
felt his knees shake. He put down his brushes, turned from the picture, and
went to the cliff-edge, there flinging himself down upon the grass.
"I cannot paint to-day, Joan; I'm too over-joyed at getting you back to me.
My hand is not steady, and my Joan of paint and canvas seems worse and
feebler than ever beside your flesh and blood. You don't know--you cannot
guess how I have missed you."
"Iss fay, but I can, Mister Jan, if you felt same as what I done. 'Tweer
cruel, cruel. But then you've got a many things an' folks to fill up your
time along with; I abbun got nothin' now but you."
"I expect Joe often thinks about you."
"I dunnaw. 'Tis awful wicked, but Joe he gone clean out my mind now. I thot
I loved en, but I was a cheel then an' I didn't 'sackly knaw what love was;
now I do. 'Twadden what I felt for Joe Noy 'tall; 'tis what I feels for
you, Mister Jan."
"Ah, I like to hear you say that. Nature has brought you to me, Joan, my
little jewel; and she has brought Jan to you. You could not understand that
last time I told you; now you can and you do. We belong to each other--you
and I--and to nobody else."
"I'd be well content to belong to 'e, Mister Jan. You'm my good fairy, I
reckon. If I could work for 'e allus an' see 'e an' 'ear 'e every day, I
shouldn' want nothin' better'n that."