human creatures. Your faither will chaange, sure as I'm a livin' man, some
day. God ban't gwaine to let en gaw down to's graave wi' sich a 'mazin'
number o' wrong opinions. Else think o' the wakin' t'other side! Iss, it
caan't be. Why, as 'tis, if he went dead sudden, he'd gaw marchin' into
heaven as bold as brass, an' bang up to the right hand o' the thrawne!
Theer's a situation for a body! An' the awk'ardness o' havin' to step
forrard an' tell en! No, no, the man'll be humbled sure 'fore his journey's
end. Theer's Everlasting eyes 'pon en, think as you may."
"I never think at all about him," declared Joan, "an' I ban't gwaine to. He
won't chaange, an' I never wants en to. I've got you to love me, an' to
love; an' I'm--I'm waitin' for wan as be gawld to faither's dross."
She sighed as she spoke.
"Waitin' for en still?"
"Ay, for Mister Jan. It caan't be no gert length o' time now. I s'pose days
go quicker up Lunnon town than wi' us."
"Joan, my dovey, 'tis idle. Even I sees it now. I did think wi' you fust as
he was a true man. I caan't no more. I wish I could."
A month before Joan would have flashed into anger at such a speech as this,
but now she did not answer. Young love is fertile in imagination. She had
found a thousand glories in John Barren, and, when he left her, had woven a
thousand explanations for his delayed return. Now invention grew dull;
enthusiasm waned; her confidence was shaken, though she denied the fact
even to herself as a sort of treachery. But there is no standing still in
time. The remorseless fact of his non-return extended over weeks and
months.
Mr. Chirgwin saw her silence, noted the little quiver of her mouth as he
declared his own loss of faith, stroked the hand she thrust dumbly into his
and felt her silence hurt his heart.
Presently Joan spoke.
"I've got none to b'lieve in en no more then--not wan now, not even you.
Whiles you stuck up for en I felt braave 'bout his comin'; now--now Mister
Jan have awnly got me to say a word for en. An' you doan't think he'm a
true man no more then, uncle?"
"Lassie, I wish to God as I did. Time's time. Why ban't he here?"
"I doan't dare think this is the end. I'm feared to look forrard now. If
it do wance come 'pon me as he've gone 'twill drive me mad, I knaws."
"No, never, not if you'd awnly turn your faace the right way. Theer's
oceans o' comfort an' love waitin' for 'e, gal. You did belong to a hard
world, as I knaws who have just comed from speech wi' your faither; but
'twas a world o' clean eatin' an' dressin' an' livin'--a God-fearin' world
leadin' up'ards on a narrer, ugly road, but a safe road, I s'pose. An' you
left it. You'll say I be harsh, but my heart do bleed for 'e, Joan. If
you'd awnly drop this talk 'bout Nature, as none of us understands, an'
turn to the livin' Christ, as all can understand. That's wheer rest lies
for 'e, nowheers else. You'm like Eve in the garden. She was kindiddled an'
did eat an' lost eternal life an' had to quit Eden. An' 'tis forbidden
fruit as you've ate, not knawin' 'twas sich. Nature doan't label her
pisins, worse luck."
"Eve? No, I ban't no Eve. She had Adam."
There was a world of sorrow in the words and the hopeless ring in them
startled Uncle Chirgwin, for it denoted greater changes in the girl's mind
than he thought existed. She seemed nearer to the truth. It cut his heart
to see her suffering, but he thanked Heaven that the inevitable knowledge
was coming, and prayed it might be the first step toward peace. He was
silent with his thoughts, and Joan spoke again, repeating her last words.
"Iss, Eve had Adam to put his arm around her an' kiss her wet eyes. He were
more to her than what the garden was, I'll lay, or God either. That's the
bitter black God o' my faither. What for did He let the snake in the garden
'tall if He really loved them fust poor fools? Why dedn' He put they
flamin' angels theer sooner. 'Twas the snake they should have watched an'
kep' out."
Uncle Chirgwin looked at her with round terrified eyes. She had never
echoed Barron's sentiments to such a horrified listener.
"Doan't, for pity's sake, Joan! The wickedness of it! Him as taught you to
think such frightful thoughts tried to ruin your sawl so well as your body.
Oh, if you'd awnly up an' say, 'That man was wrong an' I'll forget en an'
turn to the Saviour.'"
"You caan't understan'. I do put ugly bits o' thot afore 'e, but if you'd
heard him as opened my eyes, you'd knaw 'tedn' ugly taken altogether. I
knaws so much, but caan't speak it out. Us done no sin, an' I ban't shamed
to look the sun in the faace, nor you. An' he will come--he will--if
theer's a kind God in heaven he'll come back to me. If 'e doan't, then I'll
say that faither's God's the right wan."
"Doan't 'e put on a bold front, Joan gal. Theer's things tu deep for the
likes o' us. You ban't prayin' right, I reckon. Theer's a voice hid in you.
Listen to that. Nature's spawk to 'e an' now er's dumb. Listen to t'other,
lassie. Nature do guide beasts an' birds an' the poor herbs o' the field;
but you--you listen to t'other. You'll never be happy no more till you awns
'twas a sad mistake an' do ax in the right plaace for pardon."
"I want no pardon," she said. "I have done no wrong, I tell 'e. Wheer's
justice to? 'Cause the man do bide away, I be wicked; if he comed back
to-morrer an' married me--what then? I be sinless in the matter of it, an'
Nature do knaw it, an' God do knaw it."
But her breast heaved and her eyes were wet with unshed tears. Uncle
Chirgwin, her solitary trust and stand-by, had drifted away too. His hope
was dead and she could not revive it. He had never spoken so strongly
before, but now he was taking up Mary's line of action and had ranged
himself against her. It almost seemed to Joan that he reflected in a meek,
diluted fashion, as the moon turns the sun's golden fire to silver,
something of what he must have heard that afternoon from her father. This
defection acted definitely on the girl's temperament. She fought fear,
hardened her heart against doubt, cast suspicion far away as treason to
"Mister Jan" and gave to hope a new lease of life. She would be patient for
his sake, she would trust in him still.
There was something grand in the loneliness, she told herself. He would
know perhaps one day of her great patient faith and love. And the trial
would make her brain and heart bigger and better fit her for the position
of wife to him. The struggle was fought by her with that courage which lies
beyond man's comprehension. She looked at the world with bright eyes when
there was necessity for facing it; she exhausted her ingenuity in schemes
for communicating with John Barron. If he only knew! She felt that even had
change darkened his affection for her, yet, most surely, the thought of the
baby must tempt him back again. Thus, with sustained bravery and ignorance,
she left her hand in Nature's, and her faith, rising gloriously above the
doubt of the time, trusted that majestic heathen goddess as a little child
trusts its mother.
Fate played another prank upon her not long afterward and thrust into her
hands a possible means of access to John Barron. A favorite resort of
Joan's was the brook which ran down the valley beneath Drift and Sancreed.
The little stream wound through a fair coomb between orchards, meadows,
wastes of fern and heather. At this season of the year the valley was very
lonely, and a certain spot beside the stream often tempted Joan by reason
of its comfort and its peace. From here, sitting on a granite bowlder
clothed in soft green mosses and having a shape into which human limbs
might fit easily, the girl could see much that was fair. The meadows were
all sprinkled with the silver-mauve of cuckoo-flowers--Shakespeare's
"lady's smock"; the hills sloped upward under oaken saplings as yet too
young for the stripping; the valley stretched winding landward beneath
Sancreed. Above and far away stretched the Cornish moors dotted with man's
mining enterprises, chiefly deserted. Ding-Dong raised its gaunt engine
stack and, distant though it was, Joan's sharp eyes could see the rusty arm
of iron stretching forth from the brickwork, motionless, not worth the
removing. Close at hand, where the stream wandered babbling at her feet,
the whole glory of spring shone on blossoms and grasses where the world of
the stream-side sent forth a warm, living smell. The wildness of the upland
moors stretched down into the valley below them. There glimmered blue-green
patches of bracken, speckled with the red and white hides of calves which
fed and scampered dew-lap deep; and the fern was all sheened with light
where the sunshine brightened its polished leaves. The stream wound through
the midst, bedecked and adorned with purple bugle flowers, bridged with
dog-roses and honeysuckles, in festoons, in bunches and in sprays, crowned
with scented gorse, fringed with yellow irises which splashed flaming
reflections where the brook widened and slowed into shallow little
backwaters. Flags and cresses framed the margins; meadowsweets made the air
fragrant above, and granite bowlders fretted the waters silver, their
foundations hidden in dark water-weed. Sunshine danced on every tiny
cascade and threw stars and twinkling flashes of light upward from the
brown pools upon the banks. Everything was upon a miniature scale, even to
the trout which lived in the stream, flashed their dim shadows under its
waters, leaped into the air after the flies, set little clouds of sand
shimmering as they darted up and down or, when surprised, wriggled away
into favorite holes and hiding places beneath the banks and trailing weeds.
Ling and wortleberry too were moorland visitors in the valley, and the bog
heather already budded.
Here was one of the many favorite resting-places of Joan, and hither she
came on a rare morning in mid June at the wish of another person.
Uncle Chirgwin had set his niece a task, and the object of her present
visit was no mere dawdling and thinking while perched upon the granite
throne above the meadowsweets. This fact a basket and a three-pronged fork
indicated. Her uncle deemed himself an authority on simples and possessed
much information, mostly erroneous, concerning the properties of wild herbs
and flowers. A decoction of hemp agrimony he at all times considered a most
valuable bitter tonic; and of this plant the curious flesh-colored flowers
on their long green stems grew pretty freely by the stream-side in the
valley. The time of flowering was not yet come, but Joan knew the dull leaf
of the herb well enough and, that found, she could easily dig up the root,
wherein its virtue dwelt. But before starting on her search, the girl
rested a while where the serrated foliage and creamy blossom of the
meadowsweets laced and fringed the granite of her couch; and, as she sat
there, her eye taking in the happy valley, her brain reading into the
luxuriant life of nature, some strange new thoughts hidden until lately,
she became suddenly conscious of a phenomenon beyond her power to
immediately explain or understand It drove the hemp agrimony quite out of
her head, and, when the mystery came to be explained, filled Joan's mind
with the memory of her own sad affairs. First and repeatedly there
glimmered a gossamer over the stream, falling into the water and as often
rising again; then above the film of light flashed another, rising abruptly
golden into the sunshine. Not for a moment or two did she discover the
flashing thing was a fly-rod, but presently the man who held it appeared
below her at a bend of the streamlet. He was clad much like the artists,
and it made the blood flush hot to her cheek as she thought he might be
one. Young men sometimes fished the brook for the fingerling trout it
contained. They were small but sweet, and the catching them with a fly was
difficult work in a stream so overhung with tangles of vine and brier, so
densely planted in the wider reaches with water hemlock and lesser weeds.
This fisherman, at any rate, found successful sport beyond his power to
achieve. He flogged away, but hung his fly clear of the stream at every
second cast and deceived not the smallest troutlet of them all. The young
man, after the manner of those anglers classified as "chuck and chance it,"
worked his clumsy way toward Joan's chair on the granite bowlder.
Motionless she sat, and her drab attire and faded sun-bonnet harmonized so
well with the tones around it--the gray of the stones, the lights of the
river, the masses of the meadowsweet--that while noting a broad and
sparkling stickle winding away beneath her, the angler missed the girl
herself. This stickle spread, with an oily tremor and white undercurrent
full of air pearls, from a waterfall where the foot of Joan's throne
fretted the stream. Below it the waters slowed and ran smoothly into dark
brown shadows, being here marked by the wrinkled lines of their currents
and splashed with the sky's reflected blue. An ideal spot for a trout it
doubtless was, and the approaching sportsman exercised unusual care in his
approach, crouching along the bank and finally creeping bent double within
casting distance. Then, as he freed his fly, he saw Joan, like a queen of
the pool reigning motionless and silent. She moved and no fish was likely
to rise after within the visual radius of her sudden action. Thereupon the
angler in the man cursed; the artist in him drew a short, sharp breath. He
scrambled to his feet and looked again upon a beautiful picture. The plump,
baby freshness of Joan's face had vanished indeed, and there was that in
the slightly anxious expression and questioning look of her blue eyes that
had told any medical man he stood before a future mother; but, in her
seated position, no tangible suggestion of a hidden life was thrust upon
the spectator's view. He only saw a wondrously pretty woman in a charming
attitude, amid objects which enhanced her beauty by their own. She seemed a
trifle pale for a cottage girl, but her mouth was scarlet and dewy as ripe
wood-strawberries, her eyes were just of that color where the blue sky
above was reflected and changed to a darker shade by the pools of the
brook. She sat with her hands folded in her lap and looked straight at the
sportsman with a frank interest which surprised him. He was a modest lad,
but the sudden presentment of an object so lovely woke his pluck and he
fished ostentatiously to Joan's very feet, suspecting that the absurdity of
the action would not be apparent to her. She watched the morsel of feather
and fur dragged across the water after the fantastic fashion of the "chuck
and chancer," and he, when her eyes were on the water, kept his own fast
upon her face. Both man and woman were profoundly anxious each to hear the
other's voice, but neither felt brave enough to speak first. Then the
artist's ingenuity found a means, and Joan presently saw his fly stick fast
upon the side of the stream where she sat. The thing was caught at the
seed-head of a rush within reach of Joan's hand, and while this incident
appeared absolutely accidental, yet it was not so, for the artist had long
been endeavoring to get fast somewhere hard by Joan. Now, finding his
maneuver accomplished, he made but the feeblest efforts to loosen the fly,
then raised his hat and accosted Joan.
"Might I trouble you to set my line clear? Ashamed to ask such a thing, but
it would be awfully kind. Oh, thank you, thank you. Take care of your
fingers! The hook is very sharp."
Joan got the fly free in a moment, and then, to Harry Murdoch's
gratification, addressed him. The young fellow was Edmund Murdoch's cousin,
and at present dwelt in Newlyn with the elder artist already mentioned as
John Barron's friend.
"May I make so bold as to ax if you do knaw a paintin' gen'leman by name
o'--o' Mister Jan? Leastways, that's wan on's names, but I never can call
home the other, though he tawld me wance. He was here last early
spring-time, an' painted a gert picture of me up 'pon top the hill they
calls Gorse Point."
"Lucky devil," thought the artist; but though he knew something of Barron
and his work and had heard that Barron painted when at Newlyn, he did not
associate these facts with the girl before him.
"He'm in Lunnon, so far's I knaw," she continued.
Harry Murdoch had to look hard at Joan before answering, and he delayed a
while with an expression of deep thought upon his face. At length he spoke.
"No, I cannot say that I have heard of him or the picture. But perhaps some
of the men in Newlyn will know. He was lucky to get you to paint. I wish
you would let me try."
She shook her head impatiently.
"No, no. He done it 'cause--'cause he just wanted a livin' thing to fill up
a bit o' his canvas. 'Tweern't for shaw or for folks to see. He done it for
pleasure. An' I wants to knaw wheer he lives 'cause he might think I be in
Newlyn still, but I ban't. I'm livin' up Drift along wi' Mr. Chirgwin. An'
I wish he could knaw it."
"He was called 'Mister John'? Well, I'll see what I can do to find out
anything about him. And your name?"
"Joan Tregenza. If you'll be so good as to put a question round 'mongst the
painting gen'lemen, I'd thank 'e kindly."
"Then I certainly will. And on Saturday next I'll come here again to tell
you if I have heard anything. Will you come?"
"Iss fay, an' thank you, sir."
So he passed slowly forward, and she sat a full hour after he had left her
building new castles on the old crumbling foundations. It was even in her
mind to pray, to pray with her whole heart and soul; but chaos had settled
like a storm upon her beliefs. She did not know where to pray to now; yet
to-day Hope once more glimmered like a lighthouse lamp through the dreary
darkness. So she turned her eyes to that radiance and waited for next
Saturday to come.
Then she set about grubbing up roots of hemp agrimony where they grew. She
was almost happy and whistled gently to herself as she filled her little
basket.
That night Edmund Murdoch heard his cousin's story and explained that
"Mister Jan" was doubtless John Barron.
"I'm owing the beggar a letter; I'll write tomorrow."
"Was it a good picture?"
"I should say that few better ever came out of Newlyn. Perhaps none so
good. Is the model as pretty as ever?"
Young Harry raved of the vision that Joan had presented among the
meadowsweets.
"Well, I suppose he wouldn't mind her knowing where he lives; but he's such
a queer devil that I'll write and ask him first. We shall hear in a couple
of days; I can tell him her address, at any rate; then he may write direct
to her, if he cares to."
CHAPTER TEN
TWO LETTERS
Four days elapsed, and then Edmund Murdoch received an answer to his
letter. He had written at length upon various affairs and his friend did no
less.
"No. 6 Melbury Gardens, S.W.
"June 8, 189--.
"Dear Murdoch--Your long screed gave me some pleasure and killed an hour.
You relate the even course of your days since my departure from Cornwall,
and I envy the good health and happy contentment of mind which your note
indicates. I gained no slight benefit from my visit to the West Country,
and it had doubtless carried me bravely through this summer but for an
unfortunate event. A sharp cold, which settled on my chest, has laid me low
for some length of time, though I am now as well again as I shall ever be.
So much for facing the night air in evening dress. Nature has no patience
with our idiotic conventions, and hates alike man's shirt-front and woman's
bare bosom when displayed, as is our imbecile custom, at the most dangerous
hours in the twenty-four. My doctors are for sending me away, and I shall
probably follow their advice presently. But the end is not very far off.
"I rejoice that you have sucked in something of my spirit and are trying to
get at the heart of rocks and sea before you paint them. Men waste so much
time poking about in art galleries, like the blind moles they mostly are,
and forget that Nature's art gallery is open every day at sunrise. Dwell
much in the air, glean the secrets of dawns, listen when the white rain
whispers over woodland, translate the tinkle of summer seas where they kiss
your rocky shores; get behind the sunset; think not of what colors you will
mix when you try to paint it, but let the pageant sink into your soul like
a song. Do not drag your art everywhere. Forget it sometimes and develop
your individuality. You have learned to draw tolerably; now learn to think.
Believe me, the painting people do not think enough.
"Truly I am content to die in the face of the folly I read and see around
me. Know you what certain obscure writers are now about in magazines? They
are vindicating the cosmic forces, whitewashing Mother Nature after
Huxley's Romanes lecture! He told the truth, and Nature loved him for it;
but now come hysterical religious ciphers who squeak boldly forth in print
that Nature is the mother of altruism, that self-sacrifice is her first
law! One genius observes that 'tis their cruelty and selfishness have
arrested the progress of the tiger and the ape! Poor Nature! Never a word
of shotguns in all this drivel, of course. Cruelty and selfishness!
Qualities purely and solely human--qualities resulting from conscious
intelligence alone. You and I are selfish, not the ape; you and I are
cruel, not the tiger. He at least learns Nature's lessons and obeys her
dictates; we never do and never shall. A plague upon these fools with their
theologic rubbish heaps. They would prostitute the very fonts of reason and
make Nature's eternal circle fit the little squares of their own faiths.
Man! I tell you that the root of human misery might be pulled out and
destroyed to-morrow like the fang of a decayed tooth if only reason could
kill these weeds of falsehood which choke civilization and strangle
religion. But the world's 'doers' have all got 'faith' (or pretend to it);
the world's thinkers are mere shadows moving about in the background of
active affairs. They only write and talk. Action is the sole way of
chaining a nation's mind.