said appealed to the lofty-minded and serious; his dry cynicism, savage dislike of civilization, and frank affection for Nature, attracted others. He hit hard, but he never resented rough knocks in return, and no man had seen him out of temper with anything but mysticism and the art bred therefrom. Upon the whole, however, his materialism annoyed more than his wit amused.
Upon the evening which followed his insult to the Newlyn gulls, Barron, with Edmund Murdoch and some other men, was talking in the studio of one Brady, known to fame as the "Wrecker," from his love for the artistic representation of maritime disaster. Barron liked this man, for he was outspoken and held vigorous views, but the two quarreled freely.
"Fate was a fool when she chucked her presents into the lap of a lazy beggar like you," said Brady, addressing the visitor. "And thrice a fool," he added, "to assort her gifts so ill."
"Fate is a knave, a mad thing playing at cat's cradle with the threads of our wretched little lives," answered John Barron, "she is a coward—a bully. She hits the hungry below the belt; she heaps gold into the lap of the old man, but not till he has already dug his own grave to come at it; she gives health to those who must needs waste all their splendid strength on work; and wealth to worthless beings like myself who are always ailing and who never spend a pound with wisdom. Make no dark cryptic mystery of Fate when you paint her. She looks to me like a mischievous monkey poking sticks into an ant-hill."
"She's a woman," said Murdoch.
"She's three," corrected Brady; "what can you expect from three women rolled into one?"
"Away with her! Waste no incense at her shrine. She'll cut the thread no sooner because you turn your back on her. Fling overboard your mythologies, dead and alive, and kneel to Nature. A budding spike of wild hyacinth is worth all the gods put together. Go hand in hand with Nature, I say. Ask nothing from her; walk humbly; be well content if she lets you but turn the corner of one page none else have read. That's how I live. My life is not a prayer exactly—"
"I should say not," interrupted Brady.
"But a hymn of praise—a purely impersonal existence, lived all alone, like a man at a prison window. This carcass, with its shaky machinery and defective breathing apparatus, is the prison. I look out of the window till the walls crumble away—"
"And then?" asked one Paul Tarrant, a painter who prided himself on being a
Christian as well.
"Then, the spark which I call myself, goes back to Nature, as the cloud gives the raindrop back to the sea from whence the sun drew it."
"A lie, man!" answered the other hotly.
"Perhaps. It matters nothing. God—if there be a God—will not blame me for making a mistake. Meantime I live like the rook and the thrush. They never pray, they praise, they sing 'grace before meat' and after it, as Nature taught them."
"A simple child of Nature—beautiful spectacle," said Brady. "But I'm sorry all the same," he continued, "that you've found nothing in Cornwall to keep you here and make you do some work. You talk an awful deal of rot, but we want to see you paint. Isn't there anything or anybody worthy of you here?"
"As a matter of face, I've found a girl," said Barron.
There was a clamor of excitement at this news, above which Brady's bull voice roared approval.
"Proud girl, proud parents, proud Newlyn!" he bellowed.
"The mood ripens too," continued Barren quietly. "'Sacrifice all the world to mood' is my motto. So I shall stop and paint."
A moment later derisive laughter greeted Barron's decision, for Murdoch, in answer to a hail of questions, announced the subject of his friend's inspiration.
"We strolled round this morning and saw Joan Tregenza in an iron hoop with a pail of water slung at either hand."
"So your picture begins and ends where it is, Barron, my friend; in your imagination. Did it strike you when you first saw that vision of loveliness in dirty drab that she was hardly the girl to have gone unpainted till now?" asked Brady.
"The possibility of previous pictures is hardly likely to weigh with me. Why, I would paint a drowned sailor if the subject attracted me, and that though you have done it," answered the other, nodding toward a big canvas in the corner, where Brady's picture for the year approached completion.
"My dear chap, we all worship Joan—at a distance. She is not to be painted. Tears and prayers are useless. She has a flinty father—a fisherman, who looks upon painting as a snare of the devil and sees every artist already wriggling on the trident in his mind's eye. Joan has also a lover, who would rather behold her dead than on canvas."
"In fact these Methodist folk take us to be what you really are," said Brady bluntly. "Old Tregenza tars us every one with the same brush. We are lost sinners all."
"Well, why trouble him? A fisherman would have his business on the sea.
Candidly, I must paint her. The wish grows upon me."
"Even money you don't get as much as a sketch," said Murdoch.
"Have any of you tried approaching her directly, instead of her relations?"
"She's as shy as a hawk, man."
"That makes me the more hopeful. You fellows, with your Tam o' Shanters and aggressive neckties and knickerbockers and calves, would frighten the devil. I'm shy myself. If she's natural, then we shall possibly understand each other."
"I'll bet you ten to one in pounds you won't have your wish," said Brady.
"No, shan't bet. You're all so certain. Probably I shall find myself beaten like the rest of you. But it's worth trying. She's a pretty thing."
"How will you paint her if you get the chance?"
"Don't know yet. I should like to paint her in a wolf-skin with a thread of wolf's teeth round her neck and a celt-headed spear in her hand."
"Art will be a loser by the pending repulse," declared Brady. "And now, as my whisky-bottle's empty and my lamp going out, you chaps can follow its example whenever you please."
So the men scattered into a starry night, and went, each his way, through the streets of the sleeping village.
CHAPTER TWO
IN A HALO OF GOLD
Edmund Murdoch's studio stood high on Newlyn hill, and Barron had taken comfortable rooms in a little lodging-house close beside it. The men often enjoyed breakfast in each other's company, but on the following morning, when Murdoch strolled over to see his friend, he found that his rooms were empty.
Barron, in fact, was already nearly a mile from Newlyn, and, at the moment when the younger artist sought him, he stood upon a footpath which ran through plowed fields to the village of Paul. In the bottom of his mind ran a current of thought occupied with the problem of Joan Tregenza, but, superficially, he was concerned with the spring world in which he walked.
