Lying Prophets Part 17

I could awnly think of trouble 'cause I loved 'e so true. 'Tedn' like the same plaace when you'm away. Then I thot you'd gone right back to Lunnon, an' I judged my heart 'ud break for 'e, I did."

"Poor little blue-eyed woman! Could you really think I was such a brute?"

"'Twas awnly wan thot among many. I never thot so much afore in my life.

An' I looked 'bout tu; an' I went up to the lil byre, where your things was, an' peeped in en. But I seed naught of 'e, awnly a gashly auld rat in a trap. But 'e won't gaw aways like that ag'in, will 'e?"

"No, no. It was too bad."

"Coorse I knawed that if all was well with 'e, you'd a done the right thing, but it 'peared as if the right thing couldn' be to leave me, Mister Jan--not now, now you be my world like; 'cause theer edn' nothin' or n.o.body else in the world but you for me. 'Tis wicked, but t'others be all faded away; an' faither's nort, an' Joe's nort, alongside o' you."

He did not answer, and began to paint. Joan's face was far short of looking its best; there were dark shadows under her eyes and less color than usual brightened her cheeks. He tried to work, but circ.u.mstances and his own feelings were alike against him. He was restless and lacked patience, nor could his eye see color aright. In half an hour he had spoiled not a little of what was already done. Then he took a palette-knife, made a clean sweep of much previous labor and began again. But the music of her happy voice was in his blood. The child had come out of the valley of sorrow and she was boisterously happy and her laughter made him wild. Mists gathered in his eyes and his breath caught now and again. Pa.s.sion fairly gripped him by the throat till even the sound of his own voice was strange to him and he felt his knees shake. He put down his brushes, turned from the picture, and went to the cliff-edge, there flinging himself down upon the gra.s.s.

"I cannot paint to-day, Joan; I'm too over-joyed at getting you back to me.

My hand is not steady, and my Joan of paint and canvas seems worse and feebler than ever beside your flesh and blood. You don't know--you cannot guess how I have missed you."

"Iss fay, but I can, Mister Jan, if you felt same as what I done. 'Tweer cruel, cruel. But then you've got a many things an' folks to fill up your time along with; I abbun got nothin' now but you."

"I expect Joe often thinks about you."

"I dunnaw. 'Tis awful wicked, but Joe he gone clean out my mind now. I thot I loved en, but I was a cheel then an' I didn't 'sackly knaw what love was; now I do. 'Twadden what I felt for Joe Noy 'tall; 'tis what I feels for you, Mister Jan."

"Ah, I like to hear you say that. Nature has brought you to me, Joan, my little jewel; and she has brought Jan to you. You could not understand that last time I told you; now you can and you do. We belong to each other--you and I--and to n.o.body else."

"I'd be well content to belong to 'e, Mister Jan. You'm my good fairy, I reckon. If I could work for 'e allus an' see 'e an' 'ear 'e every day, I shouldn' want nothin' better'n that."

Then it was that the shade of a compunction and the shadow of a regret touched John Barron; and it cooled his hot blood for a brief moment, and he swore to himself he would try to paint her again as she was. He would fight Nature for once and try if pure intellect was strong enough to get the face he wanted on to the canvas without the gratification of his flesh and blood. In which determination glimmered something almost approaching to self-sacrifice in such a man. He did not answer Joan's last remark, but rose and went to his picture, and she, thinking herself snubbed by his silence after her avowal, grew hot and uncomfortable.

"The weather is going to change, sweetheart," he said, allowing himself the luxury of affectionate words in the moment of his half-hearted struggle; "the weather-gla.s.s creeps back slowly. We must not waste time. Come, Joan; we are the children of Nature, but the slaves of Art. Let me try again."

But she, who had spoken in all innocence and with a child's love, was pained that he should have taken no note of her speech. She was almost angry that he had power to conjure such words to her lips; and yet the anger vanished from her mind quickly enough and her thoughts were all happy as she resumed her pose for him.

The past few days had vastly deepened and widened her mental horizon; and now Barron for the first time saw something of what he wanted in her eyes as she gazed away over the sea and did not look at him as usual. There, sure enough, was the soul that he knew slept somewhere, but had never seen until then. And the sight of it came as a shock and swept away his sophistries and ugly-woven ideas. Inclination had told him that Nature, through one channel only, would bring the mystery of hidden thought to Joan's blue eyes, and he had felt well satisfied to believe it was so; but now even the plea of Art could not excuse the thing which had grown within him of late, for experiences other than those he dreamed of had glorified the frank blue eyes and brought mind into them. Now it only remained for him to paint them if he could. Not wholly untroubled, but never much more beautiful than that morning, Joan gazed out upon the remote sea. Then the thoughtful mood pa.s.sed, and she laughed and babbled again, and the new-born beauty departed from her eyes for a season, and the warm blood raced through her veins, and she was all happiness. Meanwhile nothing came of his painting and he was not sorry when she ended the ordeal.

"The bwoats be comin' back home along, Mister Jan. I doan't mark faither's yet, but when 'tis wance in sight he'll be to Newlyn sooner'n me. So I'd best be gwaine, though it edn' more than noon, I s'pose. An' my heart's a tidy sight lighter now than 'tweer issterday indeed."

"I'm almost afraid to let you go, Joan."

She looked at him curiously, waiting for his bidding, but he seemed moody, and said no more.

"When be you comin' next?"

"To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow, my pearl above price. It is so hard, so very hard," he answered. "Fine or wet I shall be here to-morrow, for I am not going back to Newlyn again till my work is done. Three more sittings, Joan, if you have enough patience--"

"In coorse, Mister Jan."

She did not explain to him what difficulties daily grew in the way of her coming, how rumor was alive, and how her stepmother had threatened more than once to tell Gray Michael that his wayward daughter was growing a gadabout. Joan had explained away her roaming with a variety of more or less ingenious lies, and she always found her brain startlingly fertile where the artist and his picture were concerned. She felt little doubt that three more visits to Gorse Point might be achieved--ay, and thirty more if necessary. But afterward? What would follow the painting of the picture?

She asked herself the question as he kissed her, with a kiss that was almost rough, while he bid her go quickly; and the former reply to every doubt made answer. Her fears fled as usual before the invigorating spectacle of this sterling, truth-loving man. With him all the future remained and with him only. Hers was the pleasant, pa.s.sive task of obedience to one utterly trusted and pa.s.sionately loved. Her fate lay hidden in his heart, as the fate of the clay lies hid in the brain of the potter.

And so home she went, walking in a sunshine of her own thoughts. The clouds were gone; they ma.s.sed gloomily on the horizon of the past; but looking forward, she saw no more of them. All time to come was at the disposition of the wisest man she had ever met. She did not know or guess at the battle which this same wise man had fought and lost under her eyes; she gathered nothing of the truth from his gloom, his silence, his changed voice, his sudden farewell. She did not know pa.s.sion when she saw it; and the ugly visible signs thereof told no tale to her.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

STORM

That night the change came and the wind veered first to the south, then to the southwest. By morning, gray clouds hid the sky and hourly grew darker and lower. As yet no rain fell, but the world had altered, and every light-value, from an artist's standpoint, was modified.

John Barren sat by his stove in the byre, made himself a cup of black coffee, and presently, wrapped in a big mackintosh, walked out to Gorse Point. His picture he left, of course, at the shed, for painting was out of the question.

Nature, who had been smiling so pleasantly in sunshine these many days, now awoke in a grim gray mood. The sea ran high, its white foam-caps and ridges fretting the rolling volume of it; the luggers fought their way out with buried noses and laboring hulls; rain still held off, but it was coming quickly, and the furze and the young gra.s.ses panted for it on Gorse Point.

Below the cliffs a wild spirit inhabited the sea fowl, and they screamed and wheeled in many an aerial circle, now sliding with motionless outstretched wing upon the gathering gale, now beating back against it, now dancing in a fleet and making music far away in the foam. Upon the beach the dry sand whipped round in little whirls and eddies where wind-gusts caught it; the naked rocks poked shining weed-covered heads out of a low tide, and the wet white light of them glimmered raw through the gray tones of the atmosphere. Now and then a little cloud of dust would puff out from the cliff-face where the wind dislodged a dry particle of stone or mould; elsewhere Barren saw the sure-rooted samphire and tufts of sea-pink, innocent of flowers as yet; and sometimes little squeaking dabs of down might also be observed below where infant gulls huddled together in the ledges outside their nests and gazed upon a condition of things as yet beyond their experience.

Joan came presently to find the artist looking out at the sea.

"You ban't gwaine to paint, I s'pose, 'cause o' this ugly fashion weather?"

she said.

"No, sweetheart! All the gold has gone out of the world, and there is nothing left but lead and dross. See how sharp the green is under the gray, and note the clearness of the air. Everything is keen and hard upon the eye to-day; the sky is full of rain and the sea is a wild harmony in gray and silver."

"Iss, the cleeves be callin' this marnin'. 'Tis a sort o' whisper as comes to a body's ear, an' it means that the high hills knaws the rain is nigh.

An' they tell it wan to t'other, and moans it mournful over the valleys 'pon the wind. 'The storm be comin', the storm be comin',' they sez."

The south and west regions of distance blackened as they sat there on the cliff, and upon the sea separate heavy gusts of wind roughened up the hollows of the waves. Which effect seen from afar flickered weirdly like a sort of submarine lightning shivering white through dark water. Presently a cloud broke, showing a bank of paler gray behind, and misty silver arrows fell in broad bands of light upon the sea. They sped round, each upon the last, like the spokes of a gigantic wheel trundling over the world; then the clouds huddled together again and the gleam of brightness died.

"You'm wisht this marnin', Mister Jan. You abbun so much as two words for me. 'Tis 'cause you caan't paint your picksher, I reckon."

He sighed and took her hand in his.

"Don't think that, my Joan. Once I cared nothing for you, everything for my picture; now I care nothing for my picture, everything for you. And the better I love you, the worse I paint you. That's funny, isn't it?"

"Iss, 'tis coorious. But I'm sure you do draw me a mighty sight finer than I be. 'Tis wonnerful clever, an' theer edn' no call to be sad, for no man else could a done better, I lay."

He did not answer, and still held her hand. Then there came a harder breath of wind with a sob of sound in it, while already over the distant sea swept separate gray curtains of rain.

"It's coming, Joan; the storm. It's everywhere, in earth and air and water; and in my blood. I am savage to-day, Joan, savage and thirsty. What will be the end of it?"

He spoke wildly, like the weather. She did not understand, but she felt his hand clinch tightly over hers, and, looking at the white thin fingers crooked round her wrist, they brought to her mind the twisted claws of a dead sea-gull she remembered to have found upon the beach.

"What will be the end of it, Joan? Can't you answer me?"

"Doan't 'e, Mister Jan; you'm hurtin' my hand. I s'pose as a sou'westerly gale be comin'. Us knaws 'em well enough in these paarts. Faither reckoned theer was dirty weather blawin' up 'fore he sailed. He was away by daylight. The gales do bring trouble to somebody most times."

"What will be the end of us, I mean, not of the weather? The rain will come and the clouds will melt, and we know, as sure as G.o.d's in heaven, that we shall see sunshine and blue sky again. But what about our storm, Joan; the storm of love that's burst in my heart for you--what follows that?"

His question frightened her. She had asked herself the same and been well content to leave an answer to him. Here he was faced with a like problem and now invited her to solve it.