another few hundred yards, crossed a disused road, climbed a stony bank,
and then stood in the little croft sacred to Mên Scryfa. At the center,
above a land almost barren save for stunted heath and wind-beaten fern it
rose--a tall stone of rough and irregular shape. The bare black earth, in
which shone quartz crystals, stretched at hand in squares. From these raw
spaces, peat had been cut, to be subsequently burned for manure; and it
stood hard by stacked in a row of beat-burrows or little piles of
overlapping pieces, the cut side out. Near the famous old stone itself,
surmounting a barrow-like tumulus, grew stunted bracken; and here Joan
presently sat down full of happiness in that her pilgrimage had been
achieved. The granite pillar of Mên Scryfa was crested with that fine
yellow-gray lichen which finds life on exposed stones; upon the windward
side clung a few atoms of golden growth; and its rude carved inscription
straggled down the northern face. The monument rose sheer above black
corpses of crooked furze, for fire had swept this region also, adding not a
little to the prevailing sobriety of it, and only the elemental splendor of
weather and the canopy of blue and gold beneath which spread this
desolation rendered it less than mournful. Even under these circumstances
imagination, as though rebelling against the conditions of sunshine and
summer then maintaining, leaped to picture Mên Scryfa under the black
screaming of winter storm or rising darkly upon deep snows; casting a
transitory shadow over a waste ghastly blue under flashes of lightning, or
throbbing to its deep roots when thunder roared over the moor and the levin
brand hissed unseen into quag and fen.
The double crown of Carn Galvas fronted Joan as she presently sat with her
back resting against the stone; and a medley of the old thoughts rose not
unwelcome in her mind. Giant mythology seemed a true thing in sight of
these vast regular piles of granite; and the thought of the kind simple
monsters who had raised that earn led to musings on the "little people."
Her mind brooded over the fairies and their strange ways with young human
mothers. She remembered the stories of changelings, and vowed to herself
that her own babe should never be out of sight. These reflections found no
adverse criticism in faith. The Bible was full of giants; and if no fairies
were mentioned therein, she had read nothing aimed against them. Presently
she prayed for the coming child. Her soul went with the words; and they
were addressed with vagueness as became her vague thoughts, half to Mên
Scryfa, half to God, all in the name of Christ.
Going home again, after noon, Joan found a glen-ader, [Footnote:
_Glen-ader_--The cast skin of an adder. Once accounted a powerful
amulet, and still sometimes secretly preserved by the ignorant, as sailors
treasure a caul.] which circumstance is here mentioned to illustrate the
conflicting nature of those many forces still active in her mind. That they
should have coexisted and not destroyed each other is the point of most
peculiarity. But it seemed for a moment as though the girl had
intellectually passed at least that form of superstition embraced by
coveted possession of a glen-ader; for, upon finding the thing lying
extended like a snake's ghost, she hesitated before picking it up. The old
tradition, however, sucked in from a credulous parent with much similar
folly at a time when the mind accepts impressions most readily, was too
strong for Joan. Qualms she had, and some whisper at the bottom of her mind
was heard with a clearness sufficient to make her uncomfortable, but reason
held a feeble citadel at best in Joan's mind. The whisper died, memory
spoke of the notable value which wise men through long past years had
placed upon this charm, and in the face of the future it seemed wicked to
reject a thing of such proven efficacy. So she picked up the adder's
slough, designing to sew it upon a piece of flannel and henceforth wear it
against her skin until her baby should be born. But she determined to tell
neither Mary nor her uncle, though she did not stop to ask why secrecy thus
commended itself to her.
That evening Mary came primed from church-going with grave admonition, Mr.
Chirgwin was tearful, and hinted at his own sorrow arising from Joan's
backsliding, but Mary did not mince language and spoke what she thought.
"You'm wrong, an' you knaw you'm wrong," she said. "The crosses be very
well, an' coorious, butivul things to see 'pon the land tu, but they'm poor
food to a body's sawl. They caan't shaw wheer you'm out; they caan't lead
'e right."
"Iss they can, then, an' they do," declared Joan. "The more I bide along
wi' 'em the better I feel an' the nearer to God A'mighty, so theer! They'm
allus the same, an' they puts thots in my head that's good to think; an' I
must go my ways, Polly, same as you go yours."
When night came Joan slept within the mystic circumference of the
glen-ader; and that she derived a growing measure of mental satisfaction
from its embrace is unquestionable.
CHAPTER FIVE
"COME TO ME!"
A space of time six weeks in duration may be hastily dismissed as producing
no alteration in Joan's method of thought and life. It swept her swiftly
through shortening days and the last of the summer weather to the climax of
her fortunes. As the season waned she kept nearer home, going not much
further than Tremathick Cross on the St. Just road or to that relic already
mentioned as lying outside Sancreed churchyard. These, in time, she
associated as much with her child as with herself. The baby had now taken
its natural place in her mind, and she prayed every day that it might
presently forgive her for bringing it into the world at all. Misty-eyed,
not unhappy, with her beauty still a startling fact, Joan mused away long
hours at the feet of her granite friends through the waning splendors of
many an autumn noon. Then, within the brief space of two weeks, a period of
weather almost unexampled in the memory of the oldest agriculturists drew
to its close.
That mighty rains must surely come all knew, but none foretold their
tremendous volume or foresaw the havoc, ruin and destruction to follow upon
their outpouring. Meantime, with late September, the leaves began to hustle
early to earth under great winds. Rain fell at times, but not heavily at
first, and a thirsty world drank open-mouthed through deep sun-cracks in
field and moor and dried-up marsh. But bedraggled autumn's robes were soon
washed colorless; the heath turned pallid before it faded to sere brown;
rotten banks of decaying leaves rose high under the hedges. There was no
dry, crisp whirl of gold on the wind, but a sodden condition gradually
overspread the land. The earth grew drunken with the later rains and could
hold no more. October saw the last of the purple and crimson, the tawny
browns and royal yellows. Only beeches, their wet leaves by many shades a
darker auburn than is customary, still retained lower foliage. The trees
put on their winter shapes unduly early. The world was dark and sweated
fungus. Uncouth children of the earth, whose hour is that which sees the
leaf fall, sprang into short-lived being. Black goblins and gray, white
goblins and brown, spread weird life abroad. With fleshy gills, squat and
lean, fat and thin, bursting through the grass in companies and circles,
lurking livid, gigantic and alone on the trunks of forest trees, gemming
the rotten bough with crimson, twinkling like topaz on the crooked stems of
the furze, battening upon death, rising into transitory vigor from the rack
and rot of a festering earth, they flourished. Heavy mists now stretched
their draperies over the high lands; and exhalations from the corpse of the
summer hung bluish under the rain in the valleys. One night a full moon
shone clearly, and through the ambient light ominous sheets and splashes of
silver glimmered in the low fields. Here they had slowly and silently
spread into existence, their birth hidden under the mists, their
significance marked by none but anxious farmers. All men hoped that the
full moon would bring cessation of this rainfall; but another gray dawn
faced them on the morrow and a thousand busy rills murmured and babbled
down the lanes round Drift. Here and there unsuspected springs burst their
hidden chambers and swept by steep courses over the green grass to join
these main waters which now raced through the valley. The light of day was
heavy and pressed upon the sight. It acted like a telescope in the
intervals of no rain and brought distant objects into strange distinctness.
The weather was much too warm even for "Western Cornwall. A few leaves
still hung on the crown of the apple trees, and such scanty peach and
nectarine foliage as yet remained was green. The red currants flaunted a
gold leaf or two and the remaining leaves of the black currant were purple
after his fashion. Joan marveled to see sundry of her favorites thrusting
forth tokens of spring almost before autumn was ended. Lilac buds swelled
to bursting; a peony pushed many pink points upward through the brown ruins
of the past; bulbs were growing rapidly; Nature had forgotten winter for
once, thought Joan. Thus the sodden, sunless, steaming days followed each
on the last until farming folk began to grow grave before a steady increase
of water on the land. Much hay stood in danger and some ricks had been
already ruined. Many theories were rife, Uncle Chirgwin's being, upon the
whole, the most fatuous.
"Tis a thunder-planet," he told his nieces, "an' till us get a rousin'
storm o' crooked forks an' heavy thunder this rain'll go on fallin'. But
not so much as a flap o' the collybran [Footnote: _Collybran_--Sheet
lightning.] do us get for all the heat o' the air. I should knaw, if any,
for I be out turnin' night into day an' markin' the water in the valley
every evenin' long after dark now. I'm fearin' graave for the big stack;
an' theer's three paarts o' last year's hay beside, an' two tidy lil mows
of the aftermath. So sure's the waters do rise another foot and a half,
'tis 'good-by' to the whole boilin'. Not but 'twill be a miracle for the
stream to get much higher. The moor's burstin' wi' rain, but the coffins
[Footnote: _Coffins_--Ancient mining excavations.] do hold it up, I s'pose,
an' keep it aloft. A penn'orth o' frost now would save a pound of
produce from wan end o' Carnwall to t'other."
Joan spent many long days in the house at this time and practiced an
unskillful needle, while her thoughts wandered far and near through the
sullen weather to this old cross and that. Then came a night of rainless
darkness through which past augmentations of water still thundered. Nature
rested for some hours before her final, shattering deluge, but the brief
peace was more tremendous than rain or wind, for a mighty foreboding
permeated it, and all men felt the end was not yet, though none could say
why they feared the silence more than storm.
It happened upon this black night that Joan was alone in the kitchen.
Supper had been but a scrambling meal and her uncle with Amos Bartlett and
all the men on the farm were now somewhere in the valley under the darkness
fighting for the hay with rising water. Where Mary was just then, Joan did
not know. Her thoughts were occupied with her own affairs, and in the
oppressive silence she sat watching some little moving threadlike concerns
which hung in a row through a crack below the mantelpiece above the open
fire. They were the tails of mice which often here congregated nigh the
warmth and sat in a row, themselves invisible. The tails moved, and Joan
noted some shorter tails beside long ones, telling of infant vermin at
their mothers' sides. In the silence she could hear the squeaking of them,
and now and then she talked to them very softly.
"Thank God, you lil mice, as you abbun got no brains in your heads an' no
call to look far in the future. I lay you'm happier than us, wi' nort to
fear 'bout 'cept crumbs an' a lew snug spot to live in."
Thus she stumbled on the lowest note of pessimism: that conscious
intelligence is a supreme mistake. But the significance of her idea she
knew not.
Then Joan rose up, shivered with a sudden sense of chill, stamped her feet,
and caused the row of tails below the mantel to vanish.
"Goose-flaish down the spine do mean as theer's feet walkin' 'pon my
graave, I s'pose," she thought, as a heavy knock at the front door
interrupted her reflections. Hastening to open it, Joan found the
postman--a rare visitor at Drift. He handed her a letter and prepared to
depart immediately.
"I'm grievous afeared o' Buryas Bridge tonight," he said; "when I comed
over, two hour back, the water was above the arches, an', so like's not, I
won't get 'cross 'tall if it's riz higher. An' somethin' cruel's comin',
I'll lay my life, 'fore marnin'. This pitch-black silence be worse than the
noise o' the rain."
He vanished down the hill, and, returning to the kitchen, Joan lighted a
candle and examined the letter. A fit of trembling shook the girl to the
hidden seat of her soul as she did so, for her own name greeted her, in
neat printed letters akin to those on the superscription of another letter
she had received in the past. From John Barron it was that this
communication came, and the reception of it begot a wild chaos of mind
which now carried Joan headlong backward. Images swept through her brain
with the bewildering rapidity and brilliance of lightning flashes; she was
whirled and tossed on a flood of thoughts; a single sad-eyed figure
retained permanency and rose clear and separated itself from the
phantasmagorial procession of personages and events wending through her
mind, dissolving each into the other, stretching the circumstances of eight
short months into an eternity, crowding the solemn aisles of time past with
shadows of those emotions which had reigned over the dead spring time of
the year and were themselves long dead. Thus she stood for a space of vast
apparent duration, but in reality most brief. That trifling standpoint in
time needed for a dream or for the brain-picture of his past which
dominates the mind of the drowning was all that had sped with Joan. Then,
shaking herself clear of thought, she found her candle, which burned dim
when first lighted, was only now melting the wax and rising to its full
flame. A mist of damp had long hung on the inner walls of the kitchen at
Drift, begotten not of faulty building but by the peculiar condition of the
atmosphere; and as the candle flickered up in a chamber dark save for its
light and the subdued glow of a low fire, Joan noticed how the gathering
moisture on the walls had coalesced, run into drops and fallen, streaking
the misty gray with bright bars and networks, silvery' as the slime of
snails.
With shaking hand, she set the candle upon a table, dropped into a chair
beside it and opened her letter. For a moment the page with its large
printed characters danced before her eyes, then they steadied and she was
able to read. Like a message from one long dead came the words; and in
truth, though the writer lived, he wrote upon the threshold of the grave.
John Barren had put into force his project, which was, as may be
remembered, to write to Joan when the end of his journey came in sight. The
words were carefully chosen, for he remembered her sympathy with suffering
and her extensive ignorance. He wrote in simple language, therefore, and
dwelt on his own helpless condition, exaggerating it to some extent.
"No. 6 Melbury Gardens, London.
"My own dear love--What can I say to make you know what has kept me away
from you? There is but one word and that is my poor sick and suffering
body. I wrote to you and tore up what I wrote, for I loved you too much to
ask you to come and share my sad life. It was very, very awful to be away
and know you were waiting and waiting for Jan; yet I could not come,
because Mother Nature was so hard. Then I went far away and hoped you had
forgotten me. Doctors made me go to a place over the sea where tall palm
trees grew up out of a dry yellow desert; but my poor lungs were too sick
to get well again and I came home to die. Yes, sweetheart, you will forgive
me for all when you know poor lonely Jan will soon be gone. He cannot live
much longer, and he is so weak now that he has no more power to fight
against the love of Joan.
"For your own good, dear one, I made myself keep away and hid myself from
you. Now the little life left to me cries out by night and by day for you.
Joan, my own true love, I cannot die until I have seen you again. Come to
me, Joan, love, if you do not hate me. Come to me; come; and close my eyes
and let poor Jan have the one face that he loves quite near him at the end.
Even your picture has gone, for they came when I was away and took it and
put it in a place with many others for people to see. And all men and women
say it is the best picture. I shall be dead before they send it back to me.
So now I have nothing but the thoughts of my Joan. Oh, come to me, my love,
if you can. It will not be for long, and when Jan lies under the ground all
that he has is yours. I have fought so hard to keep from you and from
praying you to come to me, but I can fight no more. My home is named at the
top of this letter. You have but to enter the train for London and stop in
it until it gets to the end of its journey. My servant shall wait each day
for your coming. I can write no more, I can only pray to the God we both
love to bring you to me. And if you come or do not I shall have the same
great true love for you. I will die alone rather than trouble you to come
if you have forgotten me and not forgiven me for keeping silence. God bless
you, my only love. JAN."
This feeble stuff rang like a clarion on the ear of the reader, for he who
had written it knew how best to strike, how best to appeal with
overwhelming force to Joan Tregenza. Her mind plunged straight into the
struggle and the billows of the storm, sweeping aside lesser obstructions,
were soon beating against the new-built ramparts of faith. The rush of
thought which had coursed through her brains before reading the letter now
made the task of deciding upon it easier. Indeed it can hardly be said that
any real doubt from first to last assailed Joan's decision. Faith did not
crumble, but, at a second glance, appeared to her wholly compatible with
obedience to this demand. There was an electric force in every word of the
letter. It proved Mister Jan's wondrous nobility of character, his
unselfishness, his love. He had suffered, too, had longed eternally for
her, had denied himself out of consideration for her future happiness, had
struggled with his love, and only broken down and given way to it in the
shadow of death. Grief shook Joan upon this thought, but joy was uppermost.
The long months of weary suffering faded from her recollection as nocturnal
mists vanish at the touch of the sun's first fire. She had no power to
analyze the position or reflect upon the various courses of action the man
might have taken to spare her so much agony. She accepted his bald
utterance word for word, as he knew she would. Every inclination and desire
swept her toward him now. His cry of suffering, his love, his loneliness,
her duty, as it stood blazoned upon her mind ten minutes after reading his
letter; the child to be born within two months--all these considerations
united to establish Joan's mind at this juncture. "Come to me!" Those were
the words echoing within her heart, and her soul cried upon Christ to
shorten time that she might reach him the sooner. Before the world was next
awake, she would be upon her way; before another night fell, Mister Jan's
arms would be round her. The long, dreary nightmare had ended for her at
last. Then came tears of bitter remorse, for she saw how his love had
never left her, how he had been true as steel, while she, misled by
appearances, had lost faith and lapsed into forgetfulness. A wild,
unreasoning yearning superior to time and space and the service of railways
got hold upon her. "Come to me," "Come to me," sounded in Joan's ears in
the live voice she had loved and lost and found again. An hour's delay, a
minute's, a moment's seemed a crime. Yet delay there must be, but the
tension and terrific excitement of her whole being at this period demanded
some immediate outlet in action. She wanted to talk to Uncle Chirgwin, and
she desired instant information upon the subject of her journey. First she
thought of seeking the farmer in the valley; then it struck her, the hour
being not later than eight o'clock, that by going into Penzance she might
learn at what time the morning train departed to London.
Out of doors it was inky black, very silent, very oppressive. Joan called
Mary twice before departing, but received no answer. Indeed the house was
empty, though she did not know it. Finally, thrusting the letter into her
bosom, taking her hat and cloak from a nail in the kitchen and putting on a
pair of walking shoes, the girl went abroad. Her present medley of thoughts
begot a state of exceeding nervous excitation. For the letter touched the
two poles of extreme happiness and utmost possible sorrow. "Mister Jan" was
calling her to him indeed, but only calling her that she might see him die.
Careless of her steps, soothed unconsciously by rapid motion, she walked
from the farm, her mind full of joy and grief; and the night, silent no
longer for her, was full of a voice crying "Come to me, Joan, love, come!"
CHAPTER SIX
THE FLOOD
In the coomb beneath Drift, flashing as though red-hot from a theater of
Cimmerian blackness, certain figures, flame-lighted, flickered hurriedly
this way and that about a dark and monstrous pile which rose in their
midst. From the adjacent hill, superstitious watchers might have supposed
that they beheld some demoniac throng newly burst oat of the bowels of
earth and to be presently re-engulfed; but seen nearer, the toiling
creatures, fighting with all their hearts and souls to save a haystack from
flood, had merely excited human interest and commiseration. Farmer Chirgwin
and his men were girt as to the legs in old-fashioned hay-bands; some held
torches while others toiled with ropes to anchor the giant rick against the
gathering waters. There was no immediate fear, for the pile still stood a
clear foot above the stream on a gentle undulation distant nearly two yards
from the present boundary of the swollen river. But, on the landward side,
another danger threatened, because in that quarter the meadow sank in a
slight hollow which had now changed to a lake fed by a brisk rivulet from
the main river. The great rick thus stood almost insulated, and much
further uprising of the flood would place it in a position not to be
approached by man without danger. Above the stack, distant about
five-and-twenty yards, stood a couple of stout pollarded willows, and by
these Uncle Chirgwin had decided to moor his hay, trusting that they might
hold the great mass of it secure even though the threatened flood swept
away its foundations. Nine figures worked amain, and to them approached a
tenth, appearing from the darkness, skirting the lake and splashing through
the streamlet which fed it. Mary Chirgwin it was who now arrived--a
grotesque figure with her gown and petticoats fastened high and wearing on
her legs a pair of her uncle's leather gaiters. Mary had been up to the
farm for more rope, but the clothesline was all that she could find, and
this she now returned with. Already three ropes had been passed round the
rick and made fast to the willows, but none among them was of great
stoutness, nor had they been tied at an elevation best calculated to resist
a possible strain. Amos Bartlett took the line from Mary and set to work
with many assistants; while the farmer himself, waving a torch and stumping
hither and thither, now directed Bartlett, now encouraged two men who
worked with all their might at the cutting of a trench from the lake in
order that this dangerous body of water might be drained back to the main
stream. The flame-light danced in many a flash and splash over the smooth
surface of the face of the inland pond. Indeed it reflected like a glass at
present, for no wind fretted it, neither did a drop of rain fall. Intense,
watchful silence held that hour. The squash of men's feet in the mud, the
soft swirl of the water, the cry of voices alone disturbed the night.