and himself was the direct result of this man's recent experiences. He knew
himself for a mean knave in his dealings with an innocent girl and the
thought turned the aspect of all things into gall.
Solitude brought back a measure of peace. The picture was packed and
started to Penzance railway-station, while Barron's tools also went, by
pony-cart, back to his rooms in Newlyn. He was to leave upon the following
morning with Murdoch and others who were taking their work to the
Exhibitions.
Now he looked round the cow-byre before locking it for the last time and
returning the key to Farmer Ford's boy, who waited outside to receive it.
"The chapter is ended," he said to himself. "The chapter which contains the
best thing that ever I did, and, I suppose, the worst, as morals have it.
Yet Art happily rises above those misty abstractions which we call right
and wrong. She resembles Nature herself there. Both demand their
sacrifices. 'The white martyrdom of self-denial, the red martyrdom of
blood--each is a thousand times recorded in the history of painting and
will be a thousand times again."
CHAPTER THREE
THE ACT OF FAITH
So John Barren set forth, well content to believe that he would never again
visit Cornwall, and Joan called at the Penzance post-office on the morning
which followed his departure. Her geographical knowledge was scanty. Truro
and Plymouth, in her belief, lay somewhere upon the edge of the world; and
she scarcely imagined that London could be much more remote.
But no letter awaited her, and life grew to be terribly empty. For a week
she struggled with herself to keep from the post-office, and then, nothing
doubting that her patience would now be well rewarded, Joan marched off
with confidence for the treasure. But only a greater disappointment than
the last resulted; and she went home very sorrowful, building up
explanations of the silence, finding excuses for "Mister Jan." The prefix
to his name, which had dropped during their latter intimacy, returned to
her mind now the man was gone: as "Mister Jan" it was that she thought
about him and prayed for him.
The days passed quickly, and when a fortnight stood between herself and the
last glimpse of her lover, Joan began to grow very anxious. She wept
through long nights now, and her father, finding the girl changed, guessed
she had a secret and told his wife to find it out. But it was some time
before Thomasin made any discovery, for Joan lied stoutly by day and prayed
to God to pardon by night. She strove hard to follow the teaching of the
artist, to find joy in flowers and leaves, in the spring music of birds, in
the color of the sea. But now she dimly guessed that it was love of him
which went so far to make all things beautiful, that it was the magic and
wisdom of his words which had gilded the world with gold and thrown new
light upon the old familiar objects of life. Nature's organ was dumb now
that the hands which played upon it so skillfully had passed far away. But
she was loyal to her teacher; she remembered many things which he had said
and tried hard to feel as he felt, to put her hand in beautiful Mother
Nature's and walk with her and be at peace. Mister Jan would soon return;
the fortnight was already past; each day as she rose she felt he might come
to claim her before the evening.
And, meanwhile, other concerns occupied her thoughts. The voice which spoke
to her after she bid John Barren "good-by," had since then similarly
sounded on the ear of her heart. Alike at high noon and in the silence of
the night watches it addressed her; and the mystery of it, taken with her
other sorrows, began to affect her physically. For the first time in her
life the girl felt ill in body. Her appetite failed, dawn found her sick
and weary; her glass told her of a white, unhappy face, of eyes that were
lighted from within and shone with strange thoughts. She was always
listening now--listening for the new voice, that she might hear the word it
uttered. Her physical illness she hid with some cunning and put a bright
face upon life as far as she could do so before those of her home; but the
task grew daily more difficult. Then, with a period of greatly increased
discomfort, Joan grew alarmed and turned to the kind God of "Mister Jan,"
and made great, tearful praying for a return of strength. Her petition was
apparently granted, for the girl enjoyed some improvement of health and
spirit. Whereupon she became fired with a notable thought, and determined
to seek her patron saint where still she suspected his power held sway: at
the little brook which tinkles along beside the ruins of St. Madron's
chapel in a fair coomb below the Cornish moorlands. The precious water, as
Joan remembered, had brought strength and health to her when a baby; and
now the girl longed to try its virtues again, and a great conviction grew
upon her that the ancient saint never forgot his own little ones.
Opportunity presently offered, and through the first misty gray of a
morning in early April, she set out upon her long tramp from Newlyn through
Madron to the ruined baptistery.
St. Madron, or Padern, lived in the sixth century, somewhat earlier than
Augustine. A Breton by birth, he labored chiefly in Wales, established a
monastery on Brito-Celtic lines in Cardiganshire, and became its bishop
when a see was established in that district. He traveled far, visited
Mount's Bay and established the church of Madron, still sacred to his name,
while doubtless the brook and chapel hard by were associated with him from
the same period. In Scawen's time folk were wont to take their hurts
thither on Corpus Christi evening, drink of the water, deposit an offering,
and repose upon the chapel floor till dawn. Then, drinking again, they
departed whole, if faith sufficiently mighty had supported them. Norden
remarks of the water that "its fame was great for the supposed vertue of
healinge, which St. Maderne had thereunto infused; and maine votaries made
anuale pilgrimages unto it...." In connection with the custom of immersion
here indicated, we find there obtained the equally venerable practice of
hanging votive rags upon the thorn bushes round about the chapel. This
conceit is ancient as Japan, and one not only in usage to this day among
the Shintoists of that land, but likewise common throughout Northern Asia
and, nearer home, in the Orkneys, in Scotland, in Ireland. Older far than
Christianity are these customs; the megalithic monuments of the pagan
witness similar practices in remote corners of the earth; rag-trees,
burdened with the tattered offerings of the devout, yet stud the desert of
Suez, and those who seek shall surely find some holy well or grave hard at
hand in every case. To mark and examine the junction of these venerable
fancies with Christian superstition is no part of our present purpose, but
that ideas, pagan in their birth, have lent themselves with sufficient
readiness to successive creeds and been knit into the dogmas of each in
turn, is certain enough. Thus, through Cornwall, the imaginings of wizard
and wonder-worker in hoary time come, centuries later, to be the glory and
special power of a saint. Such fantastic lore was definitely interdicted in
King Edgar's reign, when "stone worshipings, divinations, well worshipings
and necromances" were proclaimed things heathen, and unhallowed; but with
the advent of the Saint-Bishops from Wales, from Ireland, from Brittany,
primitive superstitions were patched upon the new creed, and, to suit
private purposes, the old giants of the Christian faith sanctified holy
well and holy stone, posing by right divine as sure dispensers of the
hidden virtue in stream and granite. But the roots of these fables burrow
back to paganism. Hundreds of weakly infants were passed through
Mên-an-tol--the stone with a hole or the "crick-stone"--in the names of
saints; and hundreds had already been handed through it centuries before
under like appeal to pagan deities.
Of Madron baptistery, now a picturesque ruin, it seems clear that until the
Reformation regular worship and the service of baptism were therein
celebrated. The place has mercifully escaped all restoration or renovation
and stands at this moment open to the sky in the slow hand of Time. A brook
runs babbling outside, but the holy well or colymbethra is now dry, though
it might easily be filled again. This interesting portion of the chapel
remains intact, and the entrance to it lies upon the level of the floor
according to ancient custom, being so ordered that the adult to undergo
baptism might step down into the water, and that not without dignity.
Hither came Joan. Her patchwork of faith and Nature-worship was a live
thing to her now, and she found no difficulty in reconciling the sweet
saint-stories heard in childhood from her dead mother's lips, with the
beautiful and fair exposition of truth which "Mister Jan" found written
large upon the world by Nature in spring-time.
It was half-past four o'clock when she trudged through Madron to see the
gray church and the little gray houses all sleeping under the gray sky. She
plodded on up the hill past the gaunt workhouse which stands at the top of
it; and what had seemed soft, sweet repose among the cottage homes, felt
like cold death beneath these ashy walls. To Joan, the workhouse was a word
of shame unutterable. Those among whom she lived would hurl the word
against enemies as a prophecy of the utmost degradation. She shivered as
she passed, and was sad, knowing that a whole world of poverty, failure,
sorrow, regret, was hidden away in that cold, still pile. But the hand of
sleep lay softly there; only a sick soul or two stirred, the paupers were
the equal of princes till a hoarse bell brought them back out of blessed
unconsciousness.
Bars of light streaked the east, and Joan, only stopping at the hill crest
to see dawn open silver eyes on the sea, hastened inland through silent,
dewy fields. Presently a fence and wall cut civilization from the wild land
of the coomb, and the girl proceeded where grass-grown cart-ruts wound
among furze and heather and the silver coils of new-born bracken just
beginning to peep up above the dead fern of last year. This hollow ran
between undulations of fallow and meadow; no harrow clinked as yet; only
the cows stood here and there above the dry patches on the dewy fields
where their bodies had lain in sleep. She saw their soft eyes and smelled
the savor of them. Presently the cart-ruts disappeared in fine grass all
bediamonded, knobbed with heather, sprouting rusty-red, and sprinkled with
tussocks of coarser grass, whereon green blades sprang up above the dead
ones, where they struggled, matted and bleached and sere. Rabbits flashed
here and there, the white under-side of their little scuts twinkling
through the gorse; and then the birds woke up; a thrush sang low, sleepy
notes from the heart of a whitethorn; yellowhammers piped their mournful
calls from the furze. On Joan's left hand there now rose a clump of
wind-worn beech-trees, their brown spikes breaking to green, even where
dead red leaves still clung to the parent branches. Beneath them ran a
hedge of earth above a deep pool or two, very clear and fringed with young
rushes, upright and triumphant above the old dead ones. Everywhere Joan saw
Life trampling and leaping, growing and laughing over the ruins of things
that had lived and died. It saddened her a little. Did Nature forget so
soon? Then she told herself that kind Nature had loved them and gloried in
them too; and now she would presently bury all her dead children in
beautiful graves of new green. The mosses and marsh were lovely and the
clear pools full of living creatures. But these things were not
saint-blessed and eternal. No spring fed these silent wells, no holy man of
old had ever smiled upon them.
A stepping-stone by a wall lay before her now; this she crossed, heard the
stream murmuring peace, and hastened, and presently stood beside it. Here
were holy ground and water; here were peace and a place to pray in. Blue
forget-me-nots looked wondering up, seeing eyes as blue as their own, and
she smiled at them and drank of the ripples that ran at their roots. Gray
through the growing haze of green, a ruined wall showed close to the girl.
The blackthorns' blooms were faded around her, the hawthorn was not yet
powdered with white. She cast one look to right and left before entering
the chapel. A distant view of the moorland rose to the sky, and the ragged
edge of the hills was marked by a gaunt engine-stack noting past
enterprise, triumphs long gone by, ruined hopes but recently dead. Snug
fox-covers of rhododendron swept up toward the head of the coomb; and
below, distant half a mile or more, cottages already showed a glimmer of
gold on their thatches where the increasing splendor of day brightened
them, and morning mists were raising jeweled arms. Then Joan passed into
the ruin through that narrow opening which marks the door of it. The
granite walls now stand about the height of a man's shoulder and the
chamber itself is small. Stone seats still run round two sides of it; ivy
and stone-worts and grasses have picked the mortar from the walls and
clothed them, even as emerald moss and gray lichens and black and gold
glorify each piece of granite; a may-bush, tangled about a great shiny
ivy-tod, surmounts the western walls above the dried well; furzes and
heather and tall grasses soften the jagged outlines of the ruin, and above
a stone altar, at the east end of it, rises another white-thorn. At this
season of the year the subsequent floral glories of the little chapel were
only indicated: young briers already thrust their soft points over the
stone of the altar and the first leaves of foxgloves were unfolding, with
dandelions and docks, biting-stone-crop and ferns, ragged-robins and wild
geraniums. These infant things softened no outline yet. The flat paving of
the floor, where it yet remained, was bedded in grass; a little square
incision upon the stone of the altar glimmered full of water and reflected
the light from fleecy clouds which now climbed into heaven, bearing sunrise
fires upward over a pale blue sky.
Here, under the circumambient, sparkling clearness, coolness and silence,
Joan stood with strange medley of thoughts upon her soul. The saints and
the fairies mingled there with visions of Nature, always smiling, with a
vague shadow of one great God above the blue, but dim and very far away;
and a nearer picture which quickened her heart-beat: the picture of "Mister
Jan." Here she felt herself at one with the world spread round her. The
mother eyes of a blackbird, sitting upon her eggs in the ivy-tod, kept
their bright gold on Joan, but showed no fear; the young rabbits frisked at
hand; a mole poked his snout and little paddle-paws out of the grass; all
was peace and happiness, it seemed, with the voice of good St. Madron
murmuring love in his brooklet at hand.
Joan knelt down by the old altar and bowed her head there and prayed to
Nature and to God. At first merely wordless prayers full of passionate
entreaty rose to the Throne; then utterance came in a wild simple throng of
petitions; and all her various knowledge, won from her mother and John
Barren, found a place. Pan and Christ might each have heard and listened,
for she called on the gods of earth and heaven from a heart that was full.
"Kind Mother o' the flowers, doan't 'e forget a poor maiden what loves 'e
so dear. I be sad an' sore-hearted 'cause things is bad wi' me now Mister
Jan's gone; an' I knaws as I've lied an' bin wicked 'bout Joe, but, kind
Mother, I awnly done what Mister Jan, as was wise an' loved me, bid. Oh,
God A'mighty, doan't 'E let en forget me, 'cause I've gived up all--all the
lil I had for en, an' Nature made me as I be. Oh, kind God, make me happy
an' light-hearted an' strong agin, same as the lil birds an' sich like is
happy an' strong; an' forgive me for all my sins an' make me well for
Mister Jan, an' clever for Mister Jan, so's I'll be a fine an' good wife to
en. An' forgive me for lyin', 'cause what I done was Nature, 'cordin' to
Mister Jan; an' Nature's kind to young things, 'cordin' to Mister Jan; an'
I be young yet. An' make me a better lass, for I caan't abear to feel as I
do; an' make me think o' the next world arter this wan. But, oh, dear God,
make me well an' braave agin, for 'tis awful wisht for me wi'out Mister
Jan; an' make Mister Jan strong too. I be all in a miz-maze and doan't knaw
wheer to turn 'cept to Nature, dear Lard. Oh, kind God A'mighty, lemme have
my angel watchin' over me close, same as what mother used to say he did
allus. An' bring Mister Jan back long very quick, 'cause I'm nothin' but
sadness wi'out en. An', dear St. Madern, I ax 'e to bless me same as you
done when--when I was a lil baaby, 'cause I be gwaine to bathe in your
brook, bein' a St. Madern cheel. Oh, dear, good God o' all things, please
to help me an' look to me, 'cause I be very sad, an' I never done no harm
to none, for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen."
Then she said the Lord's Prayer, because her mother had taught her that no
human petition was ever heard unless accompanied by it. And it seemed as
though the lark, winding upward with wide spiral to his song-throne in the
sky and tinkling thin music on the morning wind, was her messenger: which
thought was beautiful to Joan and made her heart glad.
Never had she looked fairer. Her blue eyes were misty, but the magic of
prayer, the glory of speaking straight to the Father of all, call Him what
she might, had nobly fortified her sinking spirit. Peace brooded in her
soul then, and faith warmed her blood. She was sure her prayer would be
answered; she was certain that her health and her loved one would both come
back to her. And she stood by the altar and smiled at the golden morning,
herself the fairest thing the sun shone upon.
Having peeped shyly about her, Joan took off her clothes, placed them on
the altar-stones, shook down her hair, and glided softly to the stream. At
one point its waters caught the sunshine and babbled over white sand
between many budding spikes of wild parsley and young fronds of fern. Naked
and beautiful the girl stood, her bright hair glinting to her waist, all
rippled with the first red gold of the morning, her body very white save
where the sun and western wind had browned both arms and neck; her form
innocent as yet of the mystery hid for her in Time. Joan's fair limbs spoke
of blood not Cornish, of days far past when a race of giants swept up from
behind the North Sea to tread a new earth and take wives of the little dark
women of the land, abating the still prevalent nigrescence of the Celt with
Saxon eyes and hair, adding their stature and their strength to races
unborn. A sweet embodiment of all that was lovely and pure and fresh, she
looked--a human incarnation of youth and springtime.
There was a pool deeper than the general shallowness of the stream which
served for Joan's bath, and she entered there, where soft white sand made
pleasant footing for her toes, where more forget-me-nots twinkled their
turquoise about the margin, where shining gorse towered like a sentinel
above.
She suffered the holy water to flow over every inch of her body, and then,
rubbing her white self red and glowing with the dead brake fern of last
year and squeezing the water out of her hair, Joan quickly dressed again
and prepared to depart. She was about to leave a fragment torn from her
skirt hanging by the chapel, but changed her mind, and getting a splinter
of granite, rough-edged, she began to chip away a tress of her own bright
hair, sawing it off upon the stone table as best she could. Like a fallen
star it presently glimmered in the thorn bush above St. Madron's altar
where she wound the little lock, presently to bring gold to the nests and
joy to the heart of small feathered folk.
Joan walked home with the warm blood racing in her veins, roses on her
cheeks and the glory of hope in her eyes. Already she felt her prayers were
being heard; already she was thanking God for heeding her cry, and St
Madron for the life-giving waters of his holy stream. Thee, where finches
chattered and fluttered forward, breakfasting together in pleasant company,
a shadow and a swift, strong wing flashed across Joan's sight--and a hawk
struck. The little people shrieked, a few gray feathers puffed here and
there, and one spark of life was blown out that other sparks might shine
the brighter. For presently Joan's kind "Mother o' the flowers" watched the
beaks of fledgeling hawks grow red, and the parent bird of prey's cold eyes
brightened with satisfaction; as will every parent eye brighten at the
spectacle of baby things eating wholesome food with hearty appetite.
The death of the small fowl clouded the pilgrim's thoughts, but only for a
moment. Sentiment and emotion had passed; now she was eager with delicious
physical hunger and longing for her breakfast. The girl had not felt so
well or so happy for a considerable time. Half her prayer, she told
herself, was answered already; and the other half, relating to "Mister
Jan," would doubtless meet with similar merciful response ere many hours
had flown.
So joyfully homeward out of dreamland into a world of facts Joan hastened.
CHAPTER FOUR
A THOUSAND POUNDS
A glad heart shortens the longest road, and Joan, whose return journey from
the holy well was for the most part downhill, soon found herself back again
in Penzance. The fire of devotion still actuated her movements, and she
walked fearlessly, doubting nothing, to the post-office. There would be a
letter to-day; she knew it; she felt it in her consciousness, as a
certainty. And when she asked for it and mentioned her name, she put her
hand out and waited until the sleepy-eyed clerk rummaged through a little
pile of letters standing together and tied with a separate string. She
watched him slowly untie them and scan the addresses, grumbling as he did
so. Then he came to the last of all and read out:
"'Miss Joan Tregenza, Post-Office, Penzance. To be left until called for.'"
"Mine, mine, sir! I knawed 'e'd have it! I knawed as the kind, good--"
Then she stopped and grew red, while the clerk looked at her curiously and
then yawned. "What's a draggle-tailed chit like her got to do with such a
thing?" he wondered, and then spoke to Joan:
"Here you are; and you must sign this paper--it's a registered letter."
Joan, her hand shaking with excitement, printed her name where he directed,
thanked the man with a smile that softened him, and then hastened away.
The girl was faint with hunger and happiness before she reached home. She
did not dare to open the letter just then, but took it from her pocket a
dozen times before she reached Newlyn and feasted her eyes on her own name,
very beautifully and legibly printed. He had written it! His precious hand
had held the pen and formed each letter.
Deep, wordless thanks welled up in Joan's heart, for God was not very far
away, after all. He had heard her prayer already, and answered it within an
hour. No doubt it was easy for Him to grant such a little prayer. It could
be nothing much to God that one small creature should enjoy such happiness;
but what seemed wonderful was that He should have any time to listen at
all, that He should have been able to turn from the mighty business of the
great awakening world and give a thought to her.
"Sure 'twas the lil lark as the good Lard heard, an' my asking as went
up-long wi' en," said Joan to herself.
She found her father at home and the family just about to take breakfast.
Gray Michael had returned somewhat unexpectedly, with a fine catch, and did
not intend sailing again before the evening tide. A somewhat ominous
silence greeted the girl, a silence which her father was the first to
break.
"Ayte your food, my lass, an' then come in the garden 'long with me," he
said. "I do want a word with 'e, an' things must be said which I've put off
the sayin' of tu long. So be quick's you can."