canvases and the places where they might be seen. Day by day he worked and
went early to rest, weary and worn by occupation of a nature so foreign to
his experience. Nightly his last act was to delete one or sometimes two of
the exhibitions figured upon his lists. Thus a week passed by and he had
visited ten galleries and seen upward of five thousand pictures. Not one
painting or drawing of them all was missed or hurried over; he compared
each with its number in the catalogue, then studied it carefully to see if
any hint or suggestion of Joan appeared in it. Her Christian name often met
his scrutiny in titles, and those works thus designated he regarded with
greater attention than any others; but the week passed fruitlessly, and
Joe, making a calculation at the termination of it, discovered that, at his
present rate of progression, it would be possible to inspect no more than
half of the galleries set down before his funds were exhausted. The
knowledge quickened his ingenuity and he discovered a means by which future
labors might be vastly modified and much time saved. He already knew that
the man responsible for Joan's destruction was called John; his mind now
quickened with the recollection of this important fact, and henceforth he
did a thing which any man less unintelligent had done from the first: he
scanned his catalogues without troubling about the pictures, and only
concerned himself with those canvases whose painters had "John" for their
Christian names. He thanked God on his knees that the idea should have
entered his mind, for his labors were thereby enormously lightened.
Notwithstanding, through ignorance of his subject, Joe wasted a great deal
of time and money. Thus he visited the National Gallery, the Old Masters at
the Academy and various dealers' exhibitions where collections of the
pictures of foreign men were at that season being displayed.
The brown sailor created some interest viewed in an environment so
peculiar. His picturesque face might well have graced a frame and looked
down upon the artistic throngs who swept among the pictures, but the living
man, full of almost tragic interest in what he saw, laboring along
catalogue in hand, dead to everything but the art around him, seemed wholly
out of place. He looked what he was: the detached thread of some story from
which the spectator only saw this chapter broken away and standing without
its context. Nine persons out of ten dismissed him with a smile; but
occasionally a thoughtful mind would view the man and occupy itself with
the problem of his affairs. Such built up imaginary histories of him and
his actions, which only resembled each other in the quality of remoteness
from truth.
Once it happened that at a small gallery, off Bond Street, the sudden sight
of precious things brought new emotions to Joe Noy--sentiments and
sensations of a sort more human and more natural than those under which he
was at present pursuing his purpose. Before this spectacle, suddenly
presented in the quietness and loneliness of the little exhibition, that
stern spirit of revenge which had actuated him since the knowledge of his
loss, and which, gripping his mind like a frost from the outset, had
congested the gentler emotions of sorrow for poor Joan and for
himself--before this display of a familiar scene, hallowed beyond all
others in memory, the man's relentless mood rose off his mind for a brief
moment like a cloud, and he stood, with aching heartstrings, gazing at a
great canvas. Sweet to him it was as the unexpected face of one dearly
loved to the wanderer; and startling in a measure also, for, remembering
his oath, to see Newlyn no more until his enemy was dead, it seemed as
though the vow was broken by some miracle and that from the heart of the
roaring city he had magically plunged through space to the threshold of the
home of Joan.
Before him loomed a picture like a window opening upon Newlyn. The village
lay there in all the flame and glory of sunset lights. The gray and black
roofs clustered up the great dark hill and the gloaming fell out of a
primrose sky over sea and land. The waters twinkled full of light to the
very foreground of the canvas, and between the piers of the harbor a
fisher-boy was sculling his boat. Between the masts of stone-schooners at
the quay, Joe saw the white cottage of the Tregenzas, and there his survey
stopped, for at this spectacle thought broke loose. No man ever paid a
nobler tribute to a good picture. Very long he gazed motionless, then, with
a great sigh, moved slowly forward, his eyes still turning back.
The day and the experience which it brought him marked a considerable flux
of new impressions in Joe's mind--impressions which, without softening the
rugged aspect of his determination, yet added other lines of reflection.
Sorrow for what was lost fastened upon him, and an indignation burned his
soul that such things could be in a world designed and ordered by the
Almighty. Revenge, however, grew no less desirable in the light of sorrow.
He looked to it more and more eagerly as the only food which could lead to
peace of mind. His road probably embraced the circumstances of an
ignominious death; but none the less peace would follow--a peace beyond the
power of future life on earth to supply. Thus, at least, did his project
then present itself to him. Thought of the meeting with his enemy grew to
be a luxury which he feasted upon in the night watches after fruitless days
and the investigation of endless miles of pictures. Then he would lie awake
and imagine the inevitable climax. He saw himself standing before the man
who had ruined two lives; he felt his hand close over a knife or a pistol,
and wondered which it should be; he heard his own voice, slow and steady,
pronounce sentence of death, and he saw terror light that other man's face
as the blood fled from it. He rehearsed the words he should utter at that
great juncture and speculated as to what manner of answer would come; then
the last scene of all represented his enemy stretched dead at his feet and
himself with his hands linked in iron. There yet remained the end of the
tragedy for him--a spectacle horrible enough in the eyes of those still
left to love him, but for himself empty of terror, innocent of power to
alarm. Clean-living men would pity him, religious men would see in him an
instrument used by God to strike at a sinner. His death would probably
bring some wanderers to the fold; it must of a surety be long remembered as
the greatest sermon lived and preached by a Luke Gospeler. Lulled by the
humming woof and warp of such reflections, his mind nightly passed into the
unconsciousness of sleep; and quickened by subsequent visions, the brain
enacted these imaginings with an added gloom and that tremendous appearance
of reality proper to the domain of dreams.
Thus the days sped and grew shorter as December waned. Then, at the end of
the second week of his work, Noy chanced to read that an Exhibition at the
Institute of Painters in Oils was about to close; and not yet having
visited that collection he set out on the morning of the following day to
do so.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
"JOE'S SHIP"
According to his custom, Noy worked through the exhibition catalogue for
each room before entering it. The hour was an early one, and but few
persons had as yet penetrated to the central part of the gallery. For
these, however, an experience of a singular character was now in store.
Wandering hither and thither in groups and talking in subdued voices after
the manner of persons in such a place, all were suddenly conscious of a
loud inarticulate cry. The sudden volume of sound denoted mixed emotions,
but amazement and grief were throned upon it, and the exclamation came from
a man standing now stiff and spellbound before "Joe's Ship," the famous
masterpiece of John Barron. The beholders viewed an amazed figure which
seemed petrified even to an expression on his face. There are countenances
which display the ordinary emotions of humanity in a fashion unusual and
peculiar to themselves. Thus, while the customary and conventional signs of
sorrow are a down-drawing slant to the corners of mouth and eye, yet it
sometimes happens that the lines more usually associated with gratification
are donned in grief. Of this freakish character was the face of Joe Noy.
His muscles seemed to follow the bones underneath them; and now beholding
him, the surprised spectators saw a man of gigantic proportions
gigantically moved. Yet, while sorrow was discernible in his voice, the
corners of his mouth were dragged up till his lips resembled a half-moon on
its back, and the lids and corners of his eyes were full of laughter
wrinkles, while the eyes themselves were starting and agonized. The man's
catalogue had fallen to the ground; his hands were clinched; now, as others
watched him, he came step by step nearer to the picture.
To estimate the force of the thing upon Noy's hungry heart, to present the
chaos of emotions which now gripped him at the goal of his pilgrimage, is
impossible. Here, restored to him by art, was his dead sweetheart, the sum
and total of all the beauty he had worshiped and which for nearly a year of
absence had been his guiding star. He knew that she was in her grave, yet
she stood before him sweet and fresh, with the moisture of life in her eyes
and on her lips. He recognized everything, to the windy spot where the
gorse flourished on the crown of the cliff. The clean sky told him from
whence the wind blew; the gray gull above was flying with it upon slanting
wings. And Joan stood below in a blaze of sunshine and yellow blossom. A
reflection from the corner of her sunbonnet brightened her face, though it
was shaded from direct sunlight by her hand; her blue eyes mirrored the sea
and the sky; and they met Joe's, like a question. She was looking away to
the edge of the world; and he knew from the name of the picture, which he
had read before he saw it, the object regarded. He glared on, and his
breath came quicker. The brown petticoat with the black patch was familiar
to him; but he had never seen the gleam of her white neck below the collar
where it was hidden from the sun. In the picture an unfastened button
showed this. The rest he knew: her hair, turning at the flapping edge of
the sunbonnet; her slight figure, round waist, and the shoes, whose strings
he had been privileged to tie more than once. Then he remembered her last
promise: to see his ship go down Channel from their old meeting-place upon
Gorse Point; and the memory, thus revived by the actual spectacle of Joan
Tregenza looking her last at his vanishing vessel, brought the wild cry to
Noy's lip with the wringing of his heart. He was absolutely dead to his
environment, and his long days of silence suddenly ended in a futile
outpouring of words addressed to any who might care to listen. Passion
surged to the top of his mind--rage for his loss, indignation that the
unutterably fair thing before them had been blotted out of the world while
he was far away, without power to protect her. For a few moments only was
the man beyond his own self-control, but in that brief time he spoke; and
his listeners enjoyed a sensation of a nature outside their widest
experiences.
"Oh, Christ Jesus! 'tis Joan--my awn lil Joan, as I left her, as I seed her
alive!"
He had reached the rail separating the pictures from the public. Here he
stood and spoke again, now conscious that there were people round about
him.
"She'm dead--dead an' buried--my Joan--killed by the devil as drawed her
theer in that picksher. As large as life; an' yet she'm under ground wi' a
brawken heart. An' me, new-comed off the sea, hears of it fust thing."
"It's 'Joe's Ship' he means," whispered somebody, and Noy heard him.
"Iss fay, so 'tis, an' I be Joe--I talkin' to 'e; an' she'm shadin' her
eyes theer to see my vessel a-sailin' away to furrin paarts! 'Tis a story
that's true, an' the God-blasted limb what drawed this knawed I was gone to
the ends o' the airth outward bound."
A man from the turnstile came up here and inquired what was the matter. His
voice and tone of authority brought the sailor back to the position he
occupied; he restrained himself, therefore, and spoke no more. Already Noy
feared that his passion might have raised suspicions, and now, turning and
picking up his catalogue, he made hasty departure before those present had
opportunity to take much further notice of him. The man hurried off into
the rattle of the busy thoroughfare, and in a moment he and his sorrows and
his deadly purpose had vanished away.
Meantime the curator of the gallery, a man of intelligence, improved the
moment and addressed some apposite reflections to those spectators who
still clustered around John Barron's picture.
"It isn't often we get such a sight as that. Many people have wondered why
this great work was called as it is. The man who has gone explains it, and
you have had a glimpse of the picture's history--the inner history of it.
The painting has made a great sensation ever since it was first exhibited,
but never such a sensation as it made to-day."
"The beggar looked as though he meant mischief," said somebody.
"He knows the model is dead apparently, but there's another mystery there
too, for Mr. Barron himself isn't aware of the fact. He was here only the
day before yesterday--a little pale shadow of a man, like a ghost in a fur
coat. He came to see his picture and stopped ten minutes. Two gentlemen
were with him, and I heard him say, in answer to one of them as he left the
gallery, that he had quite recently endeavored to learn some particulars of
Joan Tregenza, his model, but had failed to do so as yet."
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE FINDING OF THE MAN
The gratification of his desire and the fulfillment of his revenge, though
steadfastly foreseen by Joe Noy from the moment when first he set foot in
London and began his search, now for a moment overwhelmed him at the
prospect of their extreme propinquity. Had anything been needed to
strengthen his determination on the threshold of a meeting with Joan's
destroyer, it was the startling vision of Joan herself from which he had
just departed. No event had brought the magnitude of his loss more cruelly
to the core of his heart than the sudden splendid representation of what he
had left behind him in her innocence and beauty; and, for the same reason,
nothing could have more thoroughly fortified his mind to the deed now lying
in his immediate future.
Noy's first act was to turn again to the gallery with a purpose to inquire
where John Barron might be found; but he recollected that many picture
catalogues contained the private addresses of the exhibitors, and
accordingly consulted the list he had brought with him. There he found the
name and also the house in which the owner of it dwelt--
JOHN BARRON, No. 6 Melbury Gardens, S. W.
Only hours now separated him from his goal, and it seemed strange to Noy
that he should have thus come in sight of it so suddenly. But his wits
cooled and with steady system he followed the path long marked out. He
stood and looked in at a gunsmith's window for ten minutes, then moved
forward to another. At the shop-fronts of cutlers he also dawdled, but
finally returned to the first establishment which had attracted him,
entered, and, for the sum of two pounds, purchased a small, five-chambered
revolver with a box of cartridges. He then went back to his lodging, and
set to work to find the position of Melbury Gardens upon his map. This done
the man marked his road to that region, outlining with a red chalk pencil
the streets through which he would have to walk before reaching it.
Throughout the afternoon he continued his preparations, acting very
methodically, and setting his house in order with the deliberation of one
who knows that he is going to die, but not immediately. Sometimes he rested
from the labor of letter-writing to think and rehearse again the scene
which was to close that day. A thousand times he had already done so; a
thousand times the imaginary interview had been the last thought in his
waking brain; but now the approach of reality swept away those unreal
dialogues, dramatic entrances, exits and events of the great scene as he
had pictured it. The present moment found Noy's brain blank as to
everything but the issue; and he surprised himself by discovering that his
mind now continually recurred to those events which would follow the
climax, while yet the death of John Barron was unaccomplished. His active
thoughts, under conditions of such excitation as the day had brought upon
the top of his discovery, traveled with astounding speed, and it was not
John Barron's end but his own which filled the imagination of the sailor as
he wrote. The shadow of the gallows was on the paper, though the event
which was to bring this consummation still lay some hours deep in
unrecorded time. But, for Noy, John Barron was as good as dead, and himself
as good as under sentence of death.
Grown quite calm, fixed in mind, and immovable as the black sea cliffs of
his mother-land, he wrote steadily on until thought sped whirling forward
to a new aspect of his future: the last. He saw himself in eternity, tossed
to everlasting flames by his Maker, as a man tosses an empty match-box,
after it has done its work, into the fire. He put down his pen and pictured
it. The terrific force of that conviction cannot fairly be set before the
intelligence of average cultured people, because, whatever they profess to
believe in their hearts, the truth is that, even with forty-nine Christians
out of fifty, hell appears a mere vague conceit meaning nothing. They
affirm that they believe in eternal torment; they confess all humanity is
ripe for it; but their pulses are unquickened by the assertion or
admission; they do _not_ believe in it. Nor can educated man so
believe, for that way madness lies, and he who dwells long and closely upon
this unutterable dogma, anon himself feels the first flickering of the
undying flame. It scorches, not his body, but his brain, and a lunatic
asylum presently shuts him from a sane world unless medical aid quickly
brings healthy relief.
But with primitive opinions, narrow beliefs and narrow intelligences, hell
can be a live conceit enough. Among Luke Gospelers and kindred sects there
shall be found such genuine fear and such trembling as the church called
orthodox never knows; and to Noy the tremendous spectacle of his
everlasting punishment now made itself actively felt. A life beyond
death--a life to be spent in one of two places and to endure eternally was
to Joe as certain as the knowledge that he lived; and that his destination
must be determined by the work yet lying between him and death appeared
equally sure. Further, that work must be performed. There was no loophole
of escape from it, and had there been such he would have blocked it against
himself resolutely. Moreover, as the will and desire to do the deed was an
action as definite in the eye of Heaven as the accomplishment of the deed
itself, he reckoned himself already damned. He had long since counted the
whole cost, and now it only seemed more vast and awful than upon past
surveys by reason of its nearer approach. Now he speculated curiously upon
the meetings which must follow upon the world's dissolution; and wondered
if those who kill do ever meet and hold converse in hell-fire with their
victims. Then again he fell to writing, and presently completed letters to
his father, his mother, to Mrs. Tregenza and to Mary Chirgwin. These he
left in his apartment, and presently going out into the air, walked, with
no particular aim, until darkness fell. Hunger now prompted him, and he ate
a big meal at a restaurant and drank with his food a pint of ale.
Physically fortified, he returned to his lodging, left upon the table in
his solitary room the sum he would that night owe for the hire of the
chamber, and, then, taking his letters, went out to return no more. A few
clothes, a brush and comb and a small wooden trunk was all he left behind
him. Joe Noy purchased four stamps for his letters and posted them. They
were written as though the murder of John Barron had been already
accomplished, and he thus completed and dispatched them before the event,
because he imagined that, afterward, the power of communicating with his
parents or friends would be denied him. That they might be spared the
horror of learning the news through a public source he wrote it thus, and
knew, as he did so, that to two of his correspondents the intelligence
would come without the full force of a novelty. Thomasin Tregenza and Mary
Chirgwin alike were familiar with his intention at the time of his
departure, and to them he therefore wrote but briefly; his parents, on the
other hand, for all Joe knew to the contrary, might still be ignorant of
the fact that he had come off his cruise. His letters to them were
accordingly of great length; and he set forth therein with the nervous
lucidity of a meager vocabulary the nature of his wrongs and the action
which he had taken under Heaven's guidance to revenge them. He stated
plainly in all four of his missives to Newlyn, Drift and Mousehole that the
artist, John Barron, was shot dead by his hand and that he himself intended
suffering the consequent punishment as became a brave man and the weapon of
the Lord. These notes then he posted, and so went upon his way that he
might fulfill to the letter his written words.
Following the roads he had studied upon his map and committed to memory,
Noy soon reached Melbury Gardens and presently stood opposite No, 6 and
scanned it. The hour was then ten o'clock and lights were in some of the
windows, but not many. Looking over the area railings, the sailor saw four
servants--two men and two women--eating their supper. He noted, as a
singular circumstance, that there were wineglasses upon the kitchen table
and that they held red liquor and white.
Noy's design was simple enough. He meant to stand face to face with John
Barron, to explain the nature of the events which had occurred, to tell
him, what it was possible he might not know: that Joan was dead; and then
to inform him that his own days were numbered. Upon these words Joe
designed to shoot the other down like a dog, and to make absolutely certain
of his death by firing the entire contents of the revolver. He expected
that a private interview would be vouchsafed to him if he desired it; and
his intention, after his victim should fall, was to blow the man's brains
out at close quarters before even those nearest at hand could prevent it.
At half-past ten Noy felt that his weapon was in the left breast pocket of
his coat ready for the drawing; then ascended the steps which rose to the
front door of John Barron's dwelling and rang the bell.
The man-servant whom he had seen through the area railings in the kitchen
came to the door, and, much to Noy's astonishment, accosted him before he
had time to say that he wished to see the master of the house.
"You've come at last, then," said the man.
Joe regarded him with surprise, then spoke.
"I want to see Mr. John Barron, please."
The other laughed, as if this was an admirable jest.
"I suppose you do, though that's a queer way to put it. You talk as though
you had come to smoke a cigar along with him."
In growing amazement and suspicion, Noy listened to this most curious
statement. Fears suddenly awoke that, by some mysterious circumstance,
Barron had learned of his contemplated action and was prepared for it. He
stopped, therefore, looked about him sharply to avoid any sudden surprise,
and put a question to the footman.
"You spoke as though I was wanted," he said. "What do you mean by that?"
"Blessed if you're not a rum 'un!" answered the man. "Of course you was
wanted, else you wouldn't be here, would you? You're not a party as calls
promiscuous, I should hope. Else it would be rather trying to delicate
nerves. You're the gentleman as everybody requires some time, though nobody
ever sends for himself."
Failing to gather the other's meaning, Noy only realized that John Barron
expected some visitor and felt, therefore, the more determined to hasten
his own actions. He saw the footman was endeavoring to be jocose, and
therefore humored him, pretending at the same time to be the individual who
was expected.
"You're a funny fellow and must often make your master laugh, I should
reckon, Iss, I be the chap what you thought I was. An' I should like to see
him--the guv'nor--at once if he'll see me."
The footman chuckled again.
"He'll see you all right. He's been wantin' of you all day, and he'd have
been that dreadful disapp'inted if you 'adn't come. Always awful particular
about his clothes, you know, so mind you're jolly careful about the
measuring 'cause this overcoat will have to last him a long time."
Taking his cue from these words Noy, still ignorant of the truth, made
answer: "Iss, I'll measure en all right. Wheer is he to?"