Lying Prophets Part 6

It was the dead goat, withered to a mummy almost, with horns and hide intact, and a rat-way bored through the body of the beast under a tunnel of its ribs.

"Jimmery! to see what them varmints have done to 'en! But I'll bury what's left right on en; an' I'll stop the sink in the house, then you'll be free of 'em."

These things the farmer did, and presently departed, promising to revisit the spot ere long with some dogs and a ferret or two. So Barron was left master of the place. He found it dry, weather-proof and well suited to his requirements in every respect. The concerns which he had ordered from London would be with him by Sat.u.r.day night if all went well, and he decided that they should be conveyed to the byre at an early hour on Monday morning.

The next day was Sunday, and half a dozen men, with Barron and Murdoch among them, strolled into Brady's great whitewashed studio to see and criticise his academy picture which was finished. Everybody declared that the artist had excelled himself in "The End of the Voyage." It represented a sweep of the rocky coast by the Lizard, a wide gray sand, left naked by the tide, with the fringe of a heavy sea churning on it, and sea-fowl strutting here and there. In the foreground, half buried under tangles of brown weed torn from the rocks by past storms, lay a dead sailor, and a big herring-gull, with its head on one side and a world of inquiry in its yellow eyes, was looking at him. Tremendous vigor marked the work, and only a Brady could have come safely through the difficulties which had been surmounted in its creation. Everybody sang praises, and Barron nodded warm approval, but said nothing until challenged.

"Now, find the faults, then tell me what's good," said the gigantic painter. He stood there, burly, hearty, physically splendid--the man of all others in that throng who might have been pointed to as the creator of the solemn gray picture before them.

"Leave fault-finding to Fleet Street," said Barron; "let the press people tell you where you are wrong. I am no critic and I know what a mountain of hard work went to this."

"That's all right, old man; never mind the work--or me. Be impartial."

"Why should I? To be impartial, as this world wags, is to be friendless."

"Good Lord! d'you think I mind mauling? There's something wrong or you wouldn't be so deucedly evasive. Out with it!"

"Well, your sailor's not dead."

Brady roared with laughter.

"Man! the poor devil's been in the water a week!"

"Not he. 'Tis a mistake in nine painted corpses out of ten. If you want to paint a drowned man, wait till you've seen one close. That sailor in the seaweed's asleep. Sleep is graceful, remember; death by drowning is generally ugly--stiff, stark, hideous, eyeless, fish-gnawed a week after the event. But what does it matter? You've painted a great picture. That sea, with the circular swirl, as each wave goes back into the belly of the next, is well done; and those lumps of spume fluttering above watermark--that was finely noted. Easy to write down in print, but difficult as the fiend to paint. And the picture is full of wind too. Your troubles are amply repaid and I congratulate you. A man who could paint that will go as far as he likes."

The simple Brady forgot the powder in swallowing the jam. Barron had touched those things in his work which were precious to him. His impulsive nature took fire, and there was almost a quiver of emotion in his big voice as he answered:

"d.a.m.n it, you're a brick! I'd sooner hear you praise those lumps of sea-spume, racing over the sand there, than see my picture on the line."

But sentiment was strange to John Barron's impersonal nature, and he froze.

"Another fault exists which probably n.o.body will tell you but me. Your seaweed's great, and you knew it by heart before you painted it--that I'll swear to, but your sleeper there would never lie in the line of it as you have him. Reflect: the sea must float the light weed after it could move him no more. He should be stogged in the sand nearer the sea."

Brady, however, contested this criticism, and so the talk wore on until the men separated. But the Irishman called on Barron after midday dinner and together they strolled through Newlyn toward the neighboring village.

Chance brought them face to face with two persons more vital to the narrative than themselves, and, pausing to chronicle the event of the meeting, we may leave the artists and follow those whom they encountered.

Gray Michael kept ash.o.r.e on Sundays, and today, having come off the sea at dawn, was not again putting forth until next morning. He had attended meeting with his wife, his daughter and his son; he had dined also, and was now walking over to Mousehole that he might bring some religious comfort to a sorely stricken Luke Gospeler--a young sheep but lately won to the fold and who now lay at the point of death. Joan accompanied him, and upon the way they met John Barron and his companion. The girl blushed hotly and then chilled with a great disappointment, for Barron's eyes were on the sea; he was talking as he pa.s.sed by, and he apparently saw neither her nor her Sunday gown; which circ.u.mstance was a sorrow to Joan. But in reality Barron missed nothing. He had shivered at her green dress and poor finery long before she reached him. Her garb ruffled his senses and left him wounded.

"There goes your beauty," laughed Brady; "how would you like to paint her in that frock with those sinful blue flowers in her hat?"

"Nature must weep to see the bizarre carnival these people enjoy on the Seventh Day," answered the other. "Their duns and drabs, their russets and tawny tones of red and orange, are of their environment, the proper skins for their bodies; but to think of that girl brightening the eyes of a hundred louts by virtue of those fine feathers! Dream of her in the Stone Age, clad in a petticoat torn from a wolf, with her straw-colored hair to her waist and a necklace of sh.e.l.ls or wild beasts' teeth between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s! And the man--her father, I suppose--what a picture his cursed broadcloth and soft black hat make of him--like the head of a patriarch stuck on a tailor's dummy."

Meanwhile, ignorant of these startling criticisms, Mr. Tregenza and his daughter pursued their road, and presently stopped before a cottage in one of the cobble-paved alley-ways of Mousehole. A worn old woman opened the door and courtesied to Gray Michael. He wished her good-afternoon, then entered the cottage, first bidding Joan return in an hour. She had friends near at hand, and hurried off, glad to escape the sight of sickness and the prayers she knew that her father would presently deliver.

"How be en?" inquired the fisherman, and the widowed mother of the patient answered:

"Better, I do pray. Er was in the doldrums issterday an' bad by night also, a dwaling an' moaning gashly, but, the Lard be praised, he'm better in mind by now, an' I do think 'tis more along of Bible-readin' than all the doctor's traade [Footnote: _Traade_--Physic.] he've took. I read to en 'bout that theer bwoy, the awnly son o' his mother, an' her a widder-wumman, an' how as the Lard brought en round arter he'd gone dead."

Gray Michael sniffed and made no comment.

"I'll see en an' put up a prayer or so," he said.

"An' the Lard'll reward it, Mr. Tregenza."

Young Albert Vallack greeted the visitor with even greater reverence than his mother had done. He and the old woman were Falmouth folks and had drifted Westerly upon the father's death, until chance anch.o.r.ed them in Newlyn. Now the lad--a dissolute youth enough, until sudden illness had frightened him to religion--was dying of consumption, and dying fast, though as yet he knew it not.

"'Tis handsome in you, a comin' to see the likes o' me," said the patient, flushing with satisfaction. "You'm like the stickler at a wras'lin' match, Mister Tregenza, sir; you sees fair play betwixt G.o.d an' man."

"So you'm better, Albert, your mother sez."

"Iss, a bit. Theer's more kick an' sprawl [Footnote: _Kick an'

sprawl_--Strength, vitality.] in me than theer 'ave bin; an' I feels more hopeful like 'bout the future."

Self-righteousness in a new-fledged Luke Gospeler, who had been of the fold but three months and whose previous record was extremely unsatisfactory, irritated Gray Michael not a little.

"Bwoy!" he said loudly, "doan't 'e be deceived that way. 'Gird 'e wi'

sackcloth, lament and howl; for the fierce anger o' the Lard is _not_ turned back from us.' Three months o' righteousness is a purty bad set off 'gainst twenty years o' sin, an' it doan't become 'e to feel hopeful, I 'sure ye."

The sick man's color paled, and a certain note as of triumph in his voice died out of it. His mother had left them, feeling that her presence might hinder conversation and lessen the comfort which Mr. Tregenza had brought.

"I did ought to be chap-fall'n, I s'pose."

"Iss, you did, my son, n.o.body more'n you. Maybe you'll live; maybe you'll die; but keep humble. I doan't wish to deceive 'e. Us ain't had time to make no certainty 'bout things. You'm in the Lard's hand, an' it becomes 'e to sing small, an' remember what your life's bin."

The other grew uneasy and his voice faltered while he still fought for a happy eternity.

"I'd felt like 'twas all right arter what mother read."

"Not so. G.o.d's a just G.o.d 'fore everything. Theer ed'n no favorin' wi' Him.

I hopes you'll live this many a day, Vallack; an' then, when your hour comes, you'll have piled up a tidy record an' can go wi' a certainty faacin' you. Seems you'm better, an' us at chapel's prayed hot an' strong to the Throne that you might be left to work out your salvation now your foot's 'pon the right road."

"But if I dies, mister?"

"'The prayer of the righteous man availeth much,'" answered Gray Michael evasively. "I be come," he added, "to read the Scriptures to 'e."

"You all prayed for me, sir?"

"Iss, every man, but theer was no mincin' matters, Albert. Us was arskin'

for a miserable sinner, a lost sheep awnly just strayed back, an' we put it plain as that was so."

"'Tweer mighty kind o' the Luke Gosp'lers, sir."

"'Twas their dooty. Now I be gwaine to read the Book."

"I feels that uneasy now," whined the sufferer, in a voice where fear spoke instead of hope, "but I s'pose 'tis a sign o' graace I should be?"

"Iss, 'tis. I've comed to tell 'e the truth, for 'tis ill as a man should be blind to facts on what may be his last bed 'bove the airth. Listen to this, my son, an' if theer's anything you doan't onderstand, arsk me an'

I'll thraw light 'pon it."