keeps human reason stunted, impotent, anaemic. Take Liberty--the cursed
ignis fatuus our dear poets have shrieked for, our preachers have prayed
for, our patriots have perished for through all time. In pursuit of this
rainbow-gold more blood and brains have been wasted than would have
sufficed to make a nation. And yet a breath from Reason blows the thing to
tatters, as an uprising wind annihilates a fog. Freedom is an attribute of
the Eternal, and creation cannot share it with him, any more than it can
share his throne with him. 'The liberty of the subject'! A contradiction in
terms. Banish this unutterable folly of freedom, and control the breeding
of human flesh as we control the output of beef and of mutton. Then the
face of the world will alter. Millions of money is annually spent in order
that mindless humanity, congenital lunatics and madmen, may be fed and
housed and kept alive. Their existences are to themselves less pleasurable
than that of the beasts, they are a source of agony to those who have borne
them; but they live to old age and devour tons of good food, while
wholesome intellects starve in the gutters of every big city. Banish this
cant of freedom then, I tell you. The lightning in heaven is not free; the
stars are not free; Nature herself is the created slave of the Great
Will--and _we_ prattle about liberty. Let the State look to it and
practice these lessons Nature has taught and still preaches patiently to
deaf ears. Let it be as penal to bring life into the world without
permission from authority as it is to put life out of the world. Let the
begetting of paupers be a crime; let the health and happiness of the
community rise higher than the satisfaction of individuals; let the
self-denial practiced by the reasonable few be made a legal necessity to
the unreasonable many. Let the blighted, the malformed, the brainless go
back to the earth from which they came. Let the world of humanity be
cleansed and sweetened and purified as Nature cleanses and sweetens and
purifies her own kingdom. She removes her failures; we put ours under glass
and treat them like hothouse flowers. That is called humanity; it is the
mad leading the mad.... But why waste your time? Nature will have the last
word; Reason must win in the end; a genius, at once thinker and doer, will
come along some day and put the world right, at a happy moment when the din
of theologists is out of its ears. We want a new practical religion; for
Christianity, distorted and twisted through the centuries into its present
outworn, effete, ignoble shape, is a mere political force or a money-making
machine, according to the genius of the country which professes it. The
golden key of the founder, which is lost, may be found again, but I think
it never will be."
[Here the man elaborated his opinions. They were like himself: a medley--a
farrago--wherein ascerbity, acuteness, and a mind naturally philosophic
were stranded in the arid deserts of a pessimism bred partly from his own
decaying physical circumstances and partly from recognition of his own
wasted time.]
"I do not suppose that I shall paint any more. I had my Cornish picture
brought from its packing-case and framed, and supported on a great easel at
the foot of my bed while I was stricken down last month. Mistress Joan eyed
me curiously from under her hand, and through the night-watches, while my
man snored in the next chamber and I tossed with great unrest, the girl
seemed to live and move and smile at me under the flicker of the night
lamp. Everybody is pleased to say that 'Joe's Ship' seems good to them. I
have it now in the studio, and contrasted it yesterday with my bathing
negresses from Tobago. I think I like it better. It is difficult to read
the soul in black faces, especially when the models are freezing to death
as mine were. But there is something near to soul in this painted
Joan--more I doubt than the living reality would be found to possess
to-day. She was a good girl all the same, and I am gratified to hear she
did not quite forget me. I have written to her at the address you mention.
They pester me to send the picture somewhere, and to stop their
importunities--especially the women--I have promised to let the thing go to
the Institute in the autumn. I shall doubtless change my mind before the
time comes.
"My life slowly but surely dwindles to that mere battle with Death which
your consumptive wages at the finish. I fancy Biskra will see my bones
later in the year. The R.A. took not less than six months off my waning
days this spring. Thank God they hung Brady as he deserved. Twenty good
works I saw--'the rest is silence.'
"Yours, while I remain,
"JOHN BARRON."
It was true that the artist had written another letter addressed to Joan
Tregenza at Drift. He had written it first--written it hurriedly, wildly,
on the spur of the moment. But, after the completion of his communication
to Murdoch, the mood of the man changed. He had coldly read again the
former epistle, and altered his mind concerning it. Barron wanted Joan back
again sometimes, if life dragged more than usual; but pens and paper
generally modified his desire when he got that far toward calling her to
him. Her memory tickled him pleasantly and whiled away time. He framed the
various sketches he had made of her and suffered thought to occupy itself
with her as with no other woman who had entered his life. But the day on
which he wrote to Murdoch was a good one with him. He felt stronger and
better able to suck pleasure out of living than he had for a month.
"When I whistle she will come," he thought to himself. "Perhaps there would
be some pleasure in taking her to Biskra presently. I will wait, at any
rate, until nearer the last scene. She would be pretty to look at when I'm
dying. Yes, she shall close my eyes some day, if she likes. That's a
pleasant thought--for me."
So the letter to Murdoch was sent forth, but the letter to Joan, containing
some poetic thoughts on Nature, a pathetic description of Barron's
enfeebled state, and an appeal to her to join him that they might part no
more on this side the grave, was torn up. He laughed at the trouble he had
taken to print it all, and pondered pleasantly on the picture which Murdoch
had drawn of Joan ruling the kingdom of the meadowsweets, of her eager
question concerning "Mister Jan."
"Strange," he reflected, "that her mediocre intelligence should have clung
to a man so outwardly mean as myself. If I thought that she had remembered
half I said when I was with her, or had made a single attempt to practice
the gospel I preached so finely--damned if I wouldn't have her back again
to-morrow and be proud of her too. But it can't be. She was such an
absolute fool. No, I much fear she only desires to find out what has become
of the goose who laid the big golden egg. Or if she doesn't, perhaps her
God-fearing father and mother do."
Which opinion is not uninteresting, for it illustrates the usual failure of
materialism to discover or gauge those mental possibilities which lie
hidden within the humblest and worst equipped intelligences. John Barron
was an able man in some respects, but his knowledge of Joan Tregenza had
taught him nothing concerning her character and its latent powers of
development.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
DISENCHANTMENT
With summer, Nature, proceeding on her busy way, approached again the
annual phenomena of seed-time and harvest. To Joan, as spring had brought
with it a world of mothers, so the subsequent season filled Nature with
babies; and, in the light of all this newborn life, the mothers suffered a
change. Now, sorrow-guided, did Joan begin to read under the face of
things, "to get behind the sunset," as Barren had said in his letter to
Murdoch, to realize a little of the mystery hidden in green leaves and
swelling fruits and ripening grain, to observe at least the presence of
mystery though she could not translate more than an occasional
manifestation thereof. She found much matter for wonder and for fear.
Visible Nature had grown to be a smiling curtain behind which raged eternal
struggles for life. Every leaf sheltered a tragedy, every bough was a
battlefield. The awful frailty of all existence began to dawn upon Joan
Tregenza, and the discovery left her helpless, lonely, longing for new
gods. She knew not where to turn. Any brightness from any source had been
welcome then.
Disenchantment came with the second visit of the artist to the stream.
There; young Murdoch had met her and told her that "Mister Jan" was going
to write her a letter. Upon which she had sung glad songs in a sunlit world
and amazed Mary and Uncle Chirgwin alike by the exhibition of a sudden and
profound happiness. But that longed-for letter never came; weeks passed by;
the truth rolled up over her life at last; and, as a world seen in a blaze
of sunshine only dazzles us and conceals its facts under too much light,
but reveals the same clear cut and distinct at dawn or early twilight, so
now Joan's eyes, obscured no more by the blinding promise of great joy,
began to see her world as it was, her future as it would be.
Strange thoughts came to her on an evening when she stood by the door of
the kitchen at Drift, waiting for the cart to return from market. It was a
cool, gray gloaming, wreathed in diaphanous mists born of past ram. These
rendered every outline of tree and building vague and immense. Where Joan
stood, the peace of the time was broken only by a gentle dripping from the
leaves of a great laurel by the gate which led from the farmyard to the
fields. Below it, moist ground was stamped with the trident impress of many
fowls' feet; and, now and then, a feather sidled down from the heart of the
evergreen, where poultry, black and white and spangled, were settling to
roost. A subdued clucking and fluttering marked their hidden perches; then
came showers of rain-drops from the shining leaves as a bird mounted to a
higher branch; after which silence fell again.
And Joan found all hope fairly dead at last. There and then, in the misty
eveningtide, the fact fell on the ear of her heart as though one had spoken
it; and henceforth she dated disenchantment from that hour. The whole
pageant of her romance, with the knightly figure of the painter that filled
its foreground, shriveled to a scroll no bigger than a curled, dead
leaf--sere, wasted, ghostly, and light enough to be washed away on a tear,
borne away upon a sigh.
Then there followed for her prodigious transformations in the panorama of
Nature. Seen from the standpoint of his great, overwhelming lie to her, the
philosophy which this man had professed changed in its appearance, and that
mightily. He had used his cleverness like a net to trap her, and now,
though she could not prove his words untrue save in one particular, yet
that crowning act of faithlessness much tended to vitiate all the beauties
of imagination which had gone before it. They were lilies grown from a
dung-heap. Looking back in the new cold sidelight, her life came out
clearly with all the color gone from it and the remorseless details
distinct. And in this survey Nature dwindled to a minor Deity, a goddess
with moods as many and whims as wild as a woman's. She was unstable, it
seemed to Joan then; the immemorial solidity and splendor of her had
departed; her eyes were not fixed on Heaven any more, nor did peace any
longer rest within them; they were frightened, terrified, and their wild
and furtive glances followed one Shadow, reflected one Shape. It stood
waiting at the end of all her avenues; It peered from the heart of her
forests; it wandered on her heaths and moors; it lay under the stones in
her rivers; it stalked her sea-shores, floated on her waves, rode upon her
lightning, hid in her four winds; and the Shadow's name was Death. Joan
stood face to face with it at last and gazed round-eyed at a revelation.
She was saddened to find her own story told by Nature in many allegories,
painted upon the garden, set forth in waste places, fashioned by humble
weeds, reflected in the small, brief lives of unconsidered creatures. Now
she imagined herself an ill-shaped apple in the orchard which the mother of
all had neglected. It was crumpled up on one side, twisted out of its fair
full beauty, ruined by some wicked influence--a failure. Now she was a fly
caught by the gold spider who set his web shaking to deceive. Now she was a
little bird singing one moment, the next crawling dazed and shaking under
the paw of a cat. Why should Nature make the strong her favorites and be so
cruel to the weak? That seemed an ungodly thing to Joan. She had only
reached this point. She had no inkling of the great cleansing process which
removes the dross, the eternal competition from which only the cleanest and
sweetest and best come forth first. She saw the battle indeed, but did not
understand the meaning of it any more than the rest of the world which, in
the words of the weakling Barren, beneath the emblems of a false humanity,
keeps its weeds under hot-house glasses and, out of mercy to futile
individuals, does terribly wrong its communities. Our cleansing processes
are only valuable so far as they go hand in hand with Nature, and where the
folly of many fools rejects the wisdom of the wise, there Nature has her
certain revenge sooner or later. The sins of the State are visited on the
children of the State, and those who repeal laws which Science, walking
hand in hand with Nature, has proposed, those who refuse laws which
Science, Nature-taught, urges upon Power, do not indeed suffer themselves,
but commit thousands of others to suffering. So their false sentiment in
effect poisons the blood-springs of a nation. Religion leads to these
disasters, and any religion answerable for gigantic human follies is either
false or most falsely comprehended.
Her uncle still tarried, and Joan, weary of waiting, betook herself and her
sorrows to the old garden, there to view a spectacle which she never tired
of. She watched the evening primroses, saw their green bud-cases spring
open and the soft yellow leaves tremble out like butterflies new come from
the chrysalis. She loved these little lemon-colored lamps that twinkled
anew at every sundown in the green twilight of the garden. She knew their
eyes would watch through the night and that their reward would be death.
Many shriveled fragments marked the old blossoms on the long stems, but the
crowns of each still put out new buds, and every dusk saw the wakening of
fresh blossoms heedless of their dead sisters below. "They was killed
'cause they looked at the sun," thought Joan. "I suppose the moon be theer
mistress and they should not chaange their god. Yet it do seem hard like to
be scorched to death for lookin' upward."
What she saw now typified in a dead flower was her own case under a new
symbol; but the girl wasted no anger on the man who had played with her to
make a holiday pleasant, on that mock sun whose light now turned to
darkness. Her mind was occupied entirely with pity for herself. And that
fact probably promised to be a sure first step to peace. The lonely void of
her life must be filled, else Joan was like to go mad; and the filling,
left to Faith, might yet be happily accomplished. For Faith, if no more
than a "worm with diamond eyes" yet has eyes of diamonds, and rainbows are
the arches of her shape. Faith is fair and a very heart-companion to those
who know her and love her courts; and Joan, of all others, was best endowed
by disposition and instinct for the possession of her. Faith had slept in
the girl's heart since her mother died; but, sleeping, had grown, and now
waited in all strength to be called to a great task. The void was at its
deepest just now; the lowest note of Joan's soul had sounded; the facts of
her ruin and desertion were fully accepted at last; and such knowledge
served even to turn the growing mother in her sour for a time. Maternal
instinct stood still just a little while at this point in the girl's inner
life; then, when all things whirled away to chaos; on this night, when
nothing remained sure for her but death; in her hour of ultimate,
unutterable weakness and at the dawn of a blank despair, came one last plea
from Uncle Chirgwin. Mary had given up talking, fairly wearied out and
convinced that to waste more words on Joan would be a culpable disposal of
time; but Mr. Chirgwin blundered doggedly on with the humility of a worm
and the obstinacy of a friendly dog. He hammered at the portals of Joan's
spiritual being with admirable pertinacity; and at length he had his
reward. Faith in something being an absolute and vital essential to the
welfare of every woman, Joan Tregenza was no exception to the rule.
It fell out on the night of her uncle's weekly visit to market, that Joan
had just returned from the garden, when she heard the clatter of the
spring-cart. It drew up at the kitchen door and Mary alighted with Mr.
Chirgwin. The baskets that had started laden with eggs, butter and other
produce came back empty save for a few brown paper parcels. Exceptional
prices had ruled in the market-place that day, so Mr. Chirgwin and his
niece returned home in excellent temper.
They all met at supper, together with those farm-servants who took their
meals at the farmer's table. Then the laborers and the women workers
withdrew; Mary sat down to a little sewing before bedtime; and Mr. Chirgwin
smoked his pipe and looked at Joan. He noticed that the weather reflected
much upon her moods. She was more than usually silent tonight despite the
bright news from market.
Presently Mary put on the kettle and brought out a bottle of rum. Her uncle
had taken his nightcap of spirit and water from her hand for nearly ten
years, and the little duty of preparing it was dear to her. She also made
cups of tea for Joan and herself. Mary often blamed herself for this luxury
and only allowed it on the night that ended those arduous duties proper to
market-day. "While thus employed, both she and Uncle Thomas tried to draw
Joan out of her gloomy silence.
"Theer's to be a braave sight o' singin' down to Penzance come next week,
Joan. Lunnon folks, they tell me, wi' names a foot tall stuck 'pon the
hoardings. Us thot 'twould be a pleasin' kind o' junketin' to go an'
listen. Not but entertainments o' singin' by night be mighty exciting to
the blood. Awnly just for wance, Polly reckoned it might do us all good.
An' Polly knaws what's singin' an' what edn' so well as any lass. The
riders [Footnote: _The riders_--A circus.] be comin' likewise, though
maybe that's tu wild an' savage amoosment for quiet folks."
"You an' Polly go to the singin' then. 'Tedn' for the likes o' me."
Then Joan turned to her cousin, who was pouring tea out of a little pot
which held two cups and no more.
"Let me have the last nine drops, Polly; they'm good for the heartache, an'
mine's more'n common sore to-night."
Mary sighed, opened her mouth to preach a sermon, but shut it without a
word. She drained the teapot into Joan's cup, and then, from a bright mood
for her, relapsed into cold silence. Uncle Chirgwin, however, prattled on
about the concert until his elder niece finished her tea and went to bed.
Then he put down his pipe, took a long pull at his drink, and began to talk
hurriedly to Joan.
"I bin an' got a wonnerful fine notion this day, drivin' home-long, Joan;
an' it's comed back an' back that importuneous that I lay it's truth, an'
sent for me to remember. D'you knaw that since you comed to Drift us have
prospered uncommon? Iss, us have. The winter dedn' give no mighty promise,
nor yet the spring, till you comed. Then the Lard smiled 'pon Drift. Look
at the hay what's gwaine to be cut, God willin', next week. I never seed
nothin' more butivul thick underneath in all my days. A rare aftermath tu,
I'll warrant. 'Tis so all round. The wheat's kernin' somethin' cruel
fine--I awnly wish theer was more of it--an' the sheep an' cattle's in
braave kelter likewise. Then the orchard do promise no worse. I never seed
such a shaw of russets an' of quarantines 'pon they old trees afore."
"'Tis a fine, fair season."
"Why, so I say--a 'mazin' summer thus far--but what's the reason o't?
That's the poser as an answer comed to in the cart a drivin' home. You'm
the reason! You mind when good Saint Levan walked through the fields that
the grass grawed the greener for his tread, an' many days arter, when he'd
gone dead years an' years, the corn allus comed richest 'long the path what
he trod. An' 'tis the same here, 'cause God's eye be on you, Joan Tregenza,
an' His eye caan't be fixed 'pon no spot wi'out brightening all around. You
mind me, that's solemn truth. The Lard's watchin' over you--watchin' double
tides, as the sailors say--and so this bit o' airth's smilin' from the herb
o' the field to the biggest tree as graws. He'm watchin' over Drift for
your sake, my girl, an' the farm prospers along o' the gert goodness o' the
watchin' Lard. Iss fay, He fills all things livin' with plenshousness, an'
fats the root an' swells the corn 'cause He'm breathin' sweet over the
land--'cause He'm wakin' an' watchin' for you, Joan."
"He'm watchin' all of us, I s'pose--just to catch the trippin' footstep,
like what faither sez. He abbun no call to worry no more 'bout me, I
reckon. I be Nature's cheel, I be; an' my mother's turnin' hard too--like a
cat, as purrs to 'e wan moment an' sclows 'e the next. My day's done. I've
chose wrong an' must abide by it. But 'tis along o' bein' sich a lil fool.
Nature pushes the weak to the wall. I've seed that much 'o late days. I was
born to have my heart broke, I s'pose. 'Tedn' nothin' very straange."
"I judge your angel do cry gert tears when you lets on like that, my Joan.
Oh, gal, why won't 'e give ear to me, as have lived fifty an' more winters
in the world than what you have? Why caan't 'e taste an' try what the Lard
is? Drabbit this nonsense 'bout Nature! As if you was a fitcher, or an
'awk, or an owl! Caan't 'e see what a draggle tail, low-minded pass all
this be bringin' 'e to? Yet you'm a thinkin' creature an' abbun done no
worse than scores o' folks who be tanklin' 'pon harps afore the throne o'
God this blessed minute. You chose wrong; you said so, an' I was glad to
hear 'e, for you never 'lowed even that much till this night. What then?
Everybody chooses wrong wan time or another. Some allus goes for it, like
the bud-pickers to the red-currant bushes, some slips here an' theer, an'
do straightway right 'emselves--right 'emselves again an' again. The best
life be just a slippin' up an' rightin' over an' over, till a man dies.
You've slipped young an' maybe theer's half a cent'ry o' years waitin' for
'e to get 'pon the right road; yet you sez you must abide by what you've
done. Think how it stands. You've forgived him as wronged 'e, an' caan't
the Lard forgive as easy as you can? He forgived you 'fore you was born. I
lay the Luke Gosp'lers never told 'e that braave fact, 'cause they doan't
knaw it theerselves. 'Tis like this: your man did take plain Nature for
God, an' he did talk fulishness 'bout finding Him in the scent o' flowers,
the hum o' bees an' sichlike. Mayhap Nature's a gude working God for a
selfish man, but she edn' wan for a maid, as you knaws by now. Then your
faither--his God do sit everlastingly alongside hell-mouth, an' laugh an'
girn to see all the world a walkin' in, same as the beasts walked in the
Ark. Theer's another picksher of a God for 'e; but mark this, gal, they be
lying prophets--lying prophets both! You've tried the wan, an' found it
left your heart hollow like, an' you've tried t'other an' found that left
it no better filled; now try Christ, will 'e--? Just try. Doan't keep Him,
as is allus busy, a waitin' your whims no more. Try Christ, Joan dearie,
an' you'll feel what you've never felt yet. I knaw, as put my 'and in His
when 'twas plump an' young as yourn. An' He holds it yet, now 'tis
shriveled an' crooked wi' rheumatics. He holds it. Iss, He do."
The old man put out his hand to Joan as he spoke and she took it between
her own and kissed it.
"You'm very good," she said, "an' you'm wise 'cause you'm auld an' have
seen many years. I prayed to Saint Madern to hear me not long since, an' I
bathed in his waters, an' went home happy. But awnly the birds an' the
rabbits heard me. An' next day faither turned me out o' his house an'
counted me numbered for hell."
"Saints be very well, but 'tedn' in 'cordance with what we'm tawld nowadays
to pray to any but the Lard direct."
He pleaded long and patiently, humbly praying for the religion which had
lightened his own road. The thought of his vast experience and the
spectacle of his own blameless and simple life, as she reviewed it, made
Joan relent at last. The great loneliness of her heart yearned for
something to fill it. Man had failed her, saints had failed her; Nature had
turned cold; and Uncle Chirgwin held out a great promise.
"Ban't no sort o' use, I'm thinkin'," she said at last, "but if you'm that
set 'pon it I'll do your wish. I owe you that an' more'n that. Iss, I'll
come along wi' you an' Mary to Sancreed church next Sunday. 'Tis lil enough
to do for wan as have done so much for me."
"Thank God!" he said earnestly. "That's good news, to be sure, bless your
purty eyes! An' doan't 'e go a tremblin' an' fearin', you mind, like to
meetin'. 'Tedn' no ways like that. Just love o' the Lard an' moosic an'
holy thots from passon, an' not more hell-fire than keeps a body
healthy-minded an' awake. My ivers! I could a'most sing an' dance myself
now, an' arter my day's work tu, to think as you'll sit alongside o' me in
church come Sunday!"
Joan smiled at his enthusiasm on her behalf, then kissed him and went to
bed; while he, mixing up his prayers, his last pipe, and his final glass of
spirits according to his custom, sat the fire out while he drank deeper and
prayed harder than usual in the light of his triumph.
"Polly couldn' do it, not for all her brains an' godliness," he murmured to
himself, "yet 'twas given to an auld simple sawl like me! An' I have. I've
led her slap-bang into the hand o' the Lard, an' the rest be His business.
No man's done a better day's work inside Cornwall to-day than what I
have--that's sure!"
CHAPTER TWELVE
FROM JOE