Lying Prophets Part 12

"I dunnaw."

"And yet you deserve it, Joan, for I don't think G.o.d ever made anything prettier."

She blushed and looked softly at him, but took no alarm; for though such a compliment had never before been paid her, yet, as Barron spoke the words, slowly, critically, without enthusiasm or any expression of pleasure on his face, they had little power to alarm. He merely stated what he seemed to regard as a fact. There was almost a suggestion of irritation in his utterance, as though his model's rare beauty only increased his own artistic difficulties; and, perhaps fearing from her smile that she found undue pleasure in his statement, he added to it:

"I don't say that to natter you, Joan. I hate compliments and never pay them. I told you, remember, that your wrists were a thought too big."

"You needn't be sayin' it over an' over, Mister Jan," she answered, her smile changing to a pout.

"But you wouldn't like me any more if I stopped telling you the truth. We have agreed to love what is true and to wors.h.i.+p Mother Nature because she always speaks the truth."

The girl made no answer, and he went on working for a few moments, then spoke again.

"I'm selfish, Joan, and think more of my picture than I do of my little model. Put down your arm and take a good rest. I tried holding my hand over my eyes yesterday to see how long I could do so without wearying myself. I found that three minutes was quite enough, but I have often kept you posed for five."

"It hurted my arm 'tween the shoulder an' elbow a lil bit at first, but I've grawed used to it now."

"How ever shall I repay you, kind Joan, for all your trouble and your long walks and pretty stories?"

"I doan't need no pay. If 'twas a matter o' payin', 'twould be a wrong thing to do, I reckon. Theer's auld Bas...o...b.. up Paul--him wi' curls o' long hair an' gawld rings in's ears. Gents pays en to take his likeness; an'

theer's gals make money so, more'n wan; but faither says 'tis a heathenish way of livin' an' not honest. An'--an' I'd never let n.o.body paint me else but you, Mister Jan, 'cause you'm different."

"Well, you make me a proud man, Joan. I'm afraid I must be a poor subst.i.tute for Joe."

He noticed she had never mentioned her sweetheart since their early interviews, and wanted to ascertain of what nature was Joan's affection for the sailor. He did not yet dream how faint a thing poor Joe had shrunk to be in Joan's mind, or how the present episode in her life was dwarfing and dominating all others, present and past.

Nor did the girl's answer to his remark enlighten him.

"In coorse you an' Joe's differ'nt as can be. You knaws everything seemin'ly an' be a gen'le-man; Joe's only a seafarin' man, an' 'e doan't knaw much 'cept what he's larned from faither. But Joe used to say a sight more'n what you do, for all that."

"I like to hear you talk, Joan; perhaps Joe liked to hear himself talk.

Most men do. But, you see, the things you have told me are pleasant to me and they were not to Joe, because he didn't believe in them. Don't look at me, Joan; look right away to the edge of the sea."

"You'm surprised like as I talks to ye, Mister Jan. Doan't ladies talk so free as what I do?"

"Other women talk, but they are very seldom in earnest like you are, Joan.

They don't believe half they say, they pretend and make believe; they've got to do so, poor things, because the world they live in is all built up on ancient foundations of great festering lies. The lies are carefully coated over and disinfected as much as possible and quite hidden out of sight, but everybody knows they are there--everybody knows the quaking foundations they tread upon. Civilization means universal civility, I suppose, Joan; and to be civil to everybody argues a great power of telling lies. People call it tact. But I don't like polite society myself, because my nose is sensitive and I smell the stinking basis through all the pretty paint. You and I, Joan, belong to Nature. She is not always civil, but you can trust her; she is seldom polite, but she never says what is not true."

"You talk as though 'e ded'n much like ladies an' gen'lemen, same as you be."

"I don't, and I'm not what you understand by 'a gentleman,' Joan. Gentlemen and ladies let me go among them and mix with them, because I happen to have a great deal of money--thousands and thousands of pounds. That opens the door to their drawing-rooms, if I wanted to open it, but I don't. I've seen them and gone about among them, and I'm sick of them. If a man wishes to know what polite society is let him go into it as a very wealthy bachelor.

I'm not 'a gentleman,' you know, Joan, fortunately."

"Surely, Mister Jan!"

"No more than you're a lady. But I can try to be gentle and manly, which is better. You and I come from the same cla.s.s, Joan; from the people. The only difference is that my father happened to make a huge fortune in London.

Guess what he sold?"

"I dunnaw."

"Fish--just plaice and flounders and herrings and so forth. He sold them by tens of thousands. Your father sells them too. But what d'you think was the difference? Why, your father is an honest man; mine wasn't. The fishermen sold their fish, after they had had the trouble and danger of catching them, to my father; and then my father sold them again to the public; and the fishermen got too little and the public paid too much, and so--I'm a very rich man to-day--the son of a thief."

"Mister Jan!"

"n.o.body ever called him a thief but me. He was a great star in this same polite society I speak of. He fed hundreds of fat people on the money that ought to have gone into the fishermen's pockets; and he died after eating too much salmon and cuc.u.mber at his own table. Poetic justice, you know.

There are stained gla.s.s windows up to his memory in two churches and tons of good white marble were wasted when they made his grave. But he was a thief, just as surely as your father is an honest man; so you have the advantage of me, Joan. I really doubt if I'm respectable enough for you to know and trust."

"I'd trust 'e with anything, Mister Jan, 'cause you'm plain-spoken an'

true."

"Don't be too sure--the son of a thief may have wrong ideas and lax principles. Many things not to be bought can easily be stolen."

Again he struck a sinister note, but this time on an ear wholly unable to appreciate or suspect it. Joan was occupied with Barron's startling sc.r.a.ps of biography, and, as usual, when he began talking in a way she could not understand, turned to her own thoughts. This sudden alteration of his position she took literally. It struck her in a happy light.

"If you'm not a gen'leman then you wouldn' look down 'pon me, would 'e?"

"G.o.d forbid! I look up to you, Joan."

She was silent, trying to master this remarkable a.s.sertion. The artist stood no longer upon that lofty pedestal where she had placed him; but the change of att.i.tude seemed to bring him a little closer, and Joan forgot the fall in contemplating the nearer approach.

"That's why I asked you not to call me 'Mister Jan,"' Barron added after a pause. "We are, you see, only different because I'm a man and you're a woman. Money merely makes a difference to outside things, like houses and clothes. But you've got possessions which no money can bring to me: a happy home and a lover coming back to you from the sea. Think what it must be to have n.o.body in the world to care whether you live or die. Why, I haven't a relation near enough to be even interested in all my money--there's loneliness for you!"

Joan felt full of a great pity, but could not tell how to express it. Even her dull brains were not slow enough to credit his frank a.s.sertion that he and she were equals; but she accepted the statement in some degree, and now, with her mind wandering in his lonely existence, wondered if she might presume to express sympathy for him and proclaim herself his friend. She hesitated, for such friends.h.i.+p as hers, though it came hot from her little heart, seemed a ludicrous thing to offer this man. Every day of intercourse with him filled her more with wonder and with admiration; every day he occupied a wider place in her thoughts; and at that moment his utterances and his declaration of a want in life made him more human than ever to her, more easily to be comprehended, more within the reach of her understanding.

And that was not a circ.u.mstance calculated to lessen her regard for him by any means. Until that day he had appeared a being far apart, whose interests and main threads of life belonged to another sphere; now he had deliberately come into her world and declared it his own.

The silence became painful to Joan, but she could not pluck up courage enough to tell the artist that she at least was a friend. Finally she spoke, feeling that he waited for her to do so, and her words led to the point, for she found, in his answer to them, that he took her goodwill for granted.

"Ain't you got no uncles nor nothin' o' that even, Mister Jan?"

He laughed and shook his head.

"Not one, Joan--not anybody in all the world to think twice about me but you."

Her heart beat hard and her breath quickened, but she did not speak. Then Barron, putting down his brushes and beginning to load a pipe, that his next remark might not seem too serious, proceeded:

"I call you 'friend,' Joan, because I know you are one. And I want you to think of me sometimes when I am gone, will you?"

He went on filling his pipe, and then, looking suddenly into her eyes, saw there a light that was strange--a light that he would have given his soul to put into paint--a light that Joe's name never had kindled and never could. Joan wiped her hand across her mouth uneasily; then she twisted her hands behind her back, like a schoolgirl standing in cla.s.s, and made answer with her eyes on the ground.

"Iss, I will, then, Mister Jan; an' maybe I couldn't help it if I would."

He lighted his pipe carefully before answering.

"Then I shall be happy, Joan."

But while she grew rose-red at the boldness of her sudden announcement, he took care neither to look at her nor to let her know that he had realized the earnestness with which she spoke. And when, ten minutes later, she had departed, he mused speculatively on the course of their conversation, asking himself what whim had led him to pretend to so much human feeling and to lament his loneliness. This condition of his life he loved above all others. No man, woman or child had the right to interfere with his selfish, impersonal existence, and he gloried in the fact. But to the sc.r.a.ps of his life's history, which he had spread before Joan in their absolute truth, he had added this fiction of friendless loneliness, and it had worked a wonder. He saw that he was growing to be much to her, and the problem lying in his path rose again, as it had for a moment when Murdoch warned him in jest against falling in love with Joan Tregenza. Dim suspicions crossed his mind with greater frequency, and being now a mere remorseless savage, hunting to its completion a fine picture, he made no effort to shut their shadows from his calculation. Everything which bore even indirectly upon his work received its share of attention; to mood must all sacrifices be made; and now a new mood began to dawn in him. He knew it, he accepted it.

He had not sought it, but the thing was there, and Nature had sent it to him. To shun it and fly from it meant a lie to his art; to open his arms to it promised the destruction of a human unit. Barron was not the man to hesitate between two such courses. If any action could heighten his inspiration, add a glimmer of glory to his picture, or get a shadow more soul into the painted blue eyes of the subject, he held such action justified. For the present his mind was chaos on the subject, and he left the future to work itself out as chance might determine.