Lying Prophets Part 4

"I promised Joe, faither."

"Why, then you was right to go, though a fulish thing to promise en.

Wheer's Tom to?"

Tom came down a minute later. The swelling of his lips was lessened, but his ear had not returned to a normal size and his eye was black.

"Fighting again?" Michael began, looking up from his saucer and fixing his eyes on his son.

"Please, faither, I--"

"Doan't say naught. You'm so fond of it that I judges you'd best begin fightin' the battle o' life right on end. 'Tain't no use keepin' you to schule no more. 'Tis time you comed aboard."

Tom crowed with satisfaction, and Mrs. Tregenza sighed and stopped eating.

This event had been hanging over her head for many a long day now; but she had put the thing away, and secretly hoped that after all Tregenza would change his mind and apprentice the boy to a sh.o.r.e trade. However, Tom had made his choice, and his father meant him to abide by it. No other life appealed to the boy; heredity marked him for the sea, and he longed for the hard business to begin.

"I'll larn you something besides fisticuffs, my beauty. 'Tis all well-a-fine, this batterin' an' bruisin', but it awnly breeds the savage in 'e, same as raw meat do in a dog. No more fightin' 'cept wi' dirty weather an' high seas an' contrary winds, an' the world, the flaish an' the devil.

I went to sea as a lugger-bwoy when I was eight year old, an' ain't bin off the water more'n a month to wance ever since. This day two week you come along wi' me. That'll give mother full time to see 'bout your kit."

Joan wept, Thomasin Tregenza whined, and Tom danced a break-down and rolled away to see some fisher-boy friends in the harbor before school began. Then Michael, calling his daughter to him, walked with her among his plum-trees, talked of G.o.d with some quotations, and looked at his pigs. Presently he busied himself and made ready for sea in a little outhouse where paint and s.h.i.+p's chandlery were stored; and finally, the hour then being half past seven, he returned to his labors. Joan walked with him to the harbor and listened while he talked of the goodness of G.o.d to the Luke Gospelers at sea; how the mackerel had been delivered to them in thousands, and how the Bible Christians and Primitive Methodists had fared by no means so happily.

The tide was high, and Gray Michael's skiff waited for him at the pierhead beside the lighthouse. He soon climbed down into it, and the little boat, rowed by two strong pairs of hands, danced away to the fleet. Already the luggers were stretching off in a long line across the bay; and among them appeared a number of visitors: Lowestoft yawls come down to the West after the early mackerel. They were big, stout vessels, and many had steam-power aboard. Joan watched her father's lugger start and saw it overhaul not a few smaller s.h.i.+ps before she turned from the busy harbor homeward. That morning she designed to work with a will, for the afternoon was to be spent on Gorse Point if all went well, and she already looked forward somewhat curiously to her next meeting with the singular man who had lent her his field-gla.s.s.

Mrs. Tregenza was in sorry, snappy case all day. The blow had fallen, and within a fort-night Tom would go to sea. This dismal fact depressed her not a little, and she snuffled over her ironing, and her voice grated worse than usual upon the ear.

"He's such a hot-headed twoad of a bwoy. I knaw he'll never get on 'pon the water. I doubt us'll hear he's bin knocked overboard or some sich thing some day; an' them two brothers, they Pritchards, as allus sails 'long wi'

Tregenza, they'm that comical-tempered every one knaws. Oh, my G.o.d, why couldn' he let the bwoy larn a land trade--carpenterin' or sich like?"

"But, you see, faither's a rich man, an' some time Tom'll fill his shoes.

Faither do awn his bwoat an' the nets tu, which is more'n most Newlyn men does."

"Iss, I should think 'twas," said Mrs. Tregenza, forgetting her present sorrow in the memory of such splendid circ.u.mstances. "Theer ban't wan feller as awns all like what faither do. The Lard helps His chosen, not but what Tregenza allus helped hisself an' set the example to Newlyn from his boyhood."

Mrs. Tregenza always licked her lips when she talked about money or religion, and she did so now.

Among Cornish drifters Gray Michael's position was undoubtedly unique, for under the rules of the Cornish fishery he enjoyed exceptional advantages owing to his personal possession both of boat and nets. The owner of a drift-boat takes one-eighth part of the gross proceeds of a catch, and the remaining seven-eighths are divided into two equal parts of which one part is subdivided among the crew of the boat, while the other goes to the owner or owners of the nets used on board. The number of nets to a boat is about fifty as a rule, and a man to possess his own boat and outfit must be unusually well-to-do.

But it was partly for this reason that Mrs. Tregenza refused to be comforted. She grudged every farthing spent on anything, and much disliked the notion of tramping to Penzance to expend the greater part of a five-pound note on Tom's sea outfit. In a better cause she would not have thought it ill to expend money upon him. His position pointed to something higher than a fisherman's life. He might have aspired to a shop in the future together with a measure of worldly prosperity and importance not to be expected for any mere seafarer. But Tom had settled the matter by deciding for himself, and his father had approved the ambition, so there the matter ended, save for grumbling and sighing. Joan, too, felt sore enough at heart when she heard that the long-dreaded event lay but a fortnight in the future. But she knew her father, and felt sure that the certainty of Tom's going to sea at the appointed time would now only be defeated by death or the Judgment Day. So she did not worry or fret.

Nothing served to soothe her stepmother, however, and the girl was glad to slip off after dinner, leaving Thomasin with her troubles.

Joan made brisk way through Mousehole and in less than an hour stood out among the furzes in the little lonely theater above the cliffs. For a moment she saw nothing of John Barron, then she found him sitting on a camp-stool before a light easel which looked all legs with a mere little square patch of a picture perched upon them. Joan walked to within a few yards of the artist and waited for him to speak. But eye, hand, brain were all working together on the sketch before him, and if he saw the visitor at all, which was doubtful, he took no notice of her. Joan came a little closer, and still John Barron ignored her presence. Then she grew uncomfortable, and, feeling she must break the silence, spoke.

"I be come, sir, 'cordin' to what you said."

He added a touch and looked up with no recognition in his eyes. His forehead frowned with doubt apparently, then he seemed to remember. "Ah, the young woman who told me about the luggers." Suddenly he smiled at her, the first time she had seen him do so.

"You never mentioned your name, I think?"

"Joan Tregenza, sir."

"I promised you a little picture of that big s.h.i.+p, didn't I?"

"You was that kind, sir."

"Well, I haven't forgotten it. I finished the picture this morning and I think you may like it, but I had to leave it until to-morrow, because the paints take so long to dry."

"I'm sure I thank you kindly, sir."

"No need. To-morrow it will be quite ready for you, with a frame and all complete. You see I've begun to try and paint the gorse." He invited her by a gesture to view his work. She came closer, and as she bent he glanced up at her with his face for a moment close to hers. Then she drew back quickly, blus.h.i.+ng.

"'Tis butivul--just like them fuzzes."

He had been working for two hours before she came, painting a small patch of the gorse. Old gnarled stems wound upward crookedly, and beneath them lay a dead carpet of gorse needles with a blade or two of gra.s.s shooting through. From the roots and bases of the main stems sprouted many a shoot of young gorse, their p.r.i.c.kles tender as the claws of a new-born kitten, their shape, color, and foliage of thorns quite different to the mature plant above. There, in the main ma.s.ses of the shrub, mossy brown buds in clumps foretold future splendor. But already much gold had burst the sheath and was ablaze, scenting the pure air, murmured over by many bees.

"You could a'most pick thicky theer flowers," declared Joan of the picture.

"Perhaps presently, when they are painted as I hope to paint them. This is only a rough bit of work to occupy my hand and eye while I am learning the gorse. Men who paint seriously have to learn trees and blossoms just as they have to learn faces. And we are never satisfied. When I have painted this gorse, with its thorns and buds, I shall sigh for more truth. I cannot paint the soul of each little yellow flower that opens to the sun; I cannot paint the sunny smell that is sweet in our nostrils now. G.o.d's gorse scents the air; mine will only smell of fat oil. What shall I do?"

"I dunnaw."

"No more does anybody. It can't be helped. But I must try my best and make it real--each spike, as I see it--the dead gray ones on the ground and the live green ones on the tree, and the baby ones and the old gray-pointed ones, which have seen their best days and will presently die and fall--I must paint them all, Joan."

She laughed.

"Don't laugh," he said, very seriously. "Only an artist would laugh at me, not you who love Nature. There lives a great painter, Joan, who paints pictures that n.o.body else in the wide world can paint. He is growing old, but he is not too old to take trouble still. Once, when he was a young man, he drew a lemon-tree far away in Italy. It was only a little lemon-tree, but the artist rose morning after morning and drew it leaf by leaf, twig by twig, until every leaf and bud and lemon and bough had appeared. It was not labored and false; it was grand because it was true: a joy forever; work Old Masters had loved; full of distinction and power and patience almost Oriental. A thing, Joan Tregenza, worth a wilderness of 'harmonies' and 'impressions,' 'nocturnes' and 'notes,' smudges and audacities. But I suppose that is all gibberish to you?"

"Iss, so it be," she admitted.

"Learn to love everything that is beautiful, my good child. But I think you do, unconsciously perhaps."

"I don't take much 'count of things."

"Yes, unconsciously. You have a cowslip there stuck in your frock, though where you got it from I can't imagine. The flower is a month too early."

"Iss, 'tis, I found en in a lew, suns.h.i.+ny plaace. Us have got a frame for growin' things under gla.s.s, an' it had bin put down 'pon top this cowslip an' drawed 'en up."

"Will you give it to me?"

She did so, and he smelled it.

"D'you know that the green of the cowslip is the most beautiful green in all Nature, Joan? Here, I have a flower, too; we will exchange if you like."

He took a sc.r.a.p of blackthorn bloom from his coat and held it out to her, but she shrank backward and he learned something.

"Please not that--truly 'tis the dreadfulest wicked flower. Doan't 'e arsk I to take en."

"Unlucky?"

"Iss fay! Him or her as first brings blackthorn in the house dies afore it blows again. Truth--solemn--us all knaws it down in these paarts. 'Tis a bewitched thing--a wicked plant, an' you can see it grawin' all humpetty-backed an' bent an' crooked. Wance, when a man killed hisself, they did use to bury en wheer roads met an' put a blackthorn stake through en; an' it all us grawed arter; an' that's the worstest sort o' all."

"Dear, dear, I'm glad you told me, Joan; I will not wear it, nor shall you," he said, and flung it down and stamped on it very seriously.