Lying Prophets Part 35

"My own dear love--What can I say to make you know what has kept me away from you? There is but one word and that is my poor sick and suffering body. I wrote to you and tore up what I wrote, for I loved you too much to ask you to come and share my sad life. It was very, very awful to be away and know you were waiting and waiting for Jan; yet I could not come, because Mother Nature was so hard. Then I went far away and hoped you had forgotten me. Doctors made me go to a place over the sea where tall palm trees grew up out of a dry yellow desert; but my poor lungs were too sick to get well again and I came home to die. Yes, sweetheart, you will forgive me for all when you know poor lonely Jan will soon be gone. He cannot live much longer, and he is so weak now that he has no more power to fight against the love of Joan.

"For your own good, dear one, I made myself keep away and hid myself from you. Now the little life left to me cries out by night and by day for you.

Joan, my own true love, I cannot die until I have seen you again. Come to me, Joan, love, if you do not hate me. Come to me; come; and close my eyes and let poor Jan have the one face that he loves quite near him at the end.

Even your picture has gone, for they came when I was away and took it and put it in a place with many others for people to see. And all men and women say it is the best picture. I shall be dead before they send it back to me.

So now I have nothing but the thoughts of my Joan. Oh, come to me, my love, if you can. It will not be for long, and when Jan lies under the ground all that he has is yours. I have fought so hard to keep from you and from praying you to come to me, but I can fight no more. My home is named at the top of this letter. You have but to enter the train for London and stop in it until it gets to the end of its journey. My servant shall wait each day for your coming. I can write no more, I can only pray to the G.o.d we both love to bring you to me. And if you come or do not I shall have the same great true love for you. I will die alone rather than trouble you to come if you have forgotten me and not forgiven me for keeping silence. G.o.d bless you, my only love. JAN."

This feeble stuff rang like a clarion on the ear of the reader, for he who had written it knew how best to strike, how best to appeal with overwhelming force to Joan Tregenza. Her mind plunged straight into the struggle and the billows of the storm, sweeping aside lesser obstructions, were soon beating against the new-built ramparts of faith. The rush of thought which had coursed through her brains before reading the letter now made the task of deciding upon it easier. Indeed it can hardly be said that any real doubt from first to last a.s.sailed Joan's decision. Faith did not crumble, but, at a second glance, appeared to her wholly compatible with obedience to this demand. There was an electric force in every word of the letter. It proved Mister Jan's wondrous n.o.bility of character, his unselfishness, his love. He had suffered, too, had longed eternally for her, had denied himself out of consideration for her future happiness, had struggled with his love, and only broken down and given way to it in the shadow of death. Grief shook Joan upon this thought, but joy was uppermost.

The long months of weary suffering faded from her recollection as nocturnal mists vanish at the touch of the sun's first fire. She had no power to a.n.a.lyze the position or reflect upon the various courses of action the man might have taken to spare her so much agony. She accepted his bald utterance word for word, as he knew she would. Every inclination and desire swept her toward him now. His cry of suffering, his love, his loneliness, her duty, as it stood blazoned upon her mind ten minutes after reading his letter; the child to be born within two months--all these considerations united to establish Joan's mind at this juncture. "Come to me!" Those were the words echoing within her heart, and her soul cried upon Christ to shorten time that she might reach him the sooner. Before the world was next awake, she would be upon her way; before another night fell, Mister Jan's arms would be round her. The long, dreary nightmare had ended for her at last. Then came tears of bitter remorse, for she saw how his love had never left her, how he had been true as steel, while she, misled by appearances, had lost faith and lapsed into forgetfulness. A wild, unreasoning yearning superior to time and s.p.a.ce and the service of railways got hold upon her. "Come to me," "Come to me," sounded in Joan's ears in the live voice she had loved and lost and found again. An hour's delay, a minute's, a moment's seemed a crime. Yet delay there must be, but the tension and terrific excitement of her whole being at this period demanded some immediate outlet in action. She wanted to talk to Uncle Chirgwin, and she desired instant information upon the subject of her journey. First she thought of seeking the farmer in the valley; then it struck her, the hour being not later than eight o'clock, that by going into Penzance she might learn at what time the morning train departed to London.

Out of doors it was inky black, very silent, very oppressive. Joan called Mary twice before departing, but received no answer. Indeed the house was empty, though she did not know it. Finally, thrusting the letter into her bosom, taking her hat and cloak from a nail in the kitchen and putting on a pair of walking shoes, the girl went abroad. Her present medley of thoughts begot a state of exceeding nervous excitation. For the letter touched the two poles of extreme happiness and utmost possible sorrow. "Mister Jan" was calling her to him indeed, but only calling her that she might see him die.

Careless of her steps, soothed unconsciously by rapid motion, she walked from the farm, her mind full of joy and grief; and the night, silent no longer for her, was full of a voice crying "Come to me, Joan, love, come!"

CHAPTER SIX

THE FLOOD

In the coomb beneath Drift, flas.h.i.+ng as though red-hot from a theater of Cimmerian blackness, certain figures, flame-lighted, flickered hurriedly this way and that about a dark and monstrous pile which rose in their midst. From the adjacent hill, superst.i.tious watchers might have supposed that they beheld some demoniac throng newly burst oat of the bowels of earth and to be presently re-engulfed; but seen nearer, the toiling creatures, fighting with all their hearts and souls to save a haystack from flood, had merely excited human interest and commiseration. Farmer Chirgwin and his men were girt as to the legs in old-fas.h.i.+oned hay-bands; some held torches while others toiled with ropes to anchor the giant rick against the gathering waters. There was no immediate fear, for the pile still stood a clear foot above the stream on a gentle undulation distant nearly two yards from the present boundary of the swollen river. But, on the landward side, another danger threatened, because in that quarter the meadow sank in a slight hollow which had now changed to a lake fed by a brisk rivulet from the main river. The great rick thus stood almost insulated, and much further uprising of the flood would place it in a position not to be approached by man without danger. Above the stack, distant about five-and-twenty yards, stood a couple of stout pollarded willows, and by these Uncle Chirgwin had decided to moor his hay, trusting that they might hold the great ma.s.s of it secure even though the threatened flood swept away its foundations. Nine figures worked amain, and to them approached a tenth, appearing from the darkness, skirting the lake and splas.h.i.+ng through the streamlet which fed it. Mary Chirgwin it was who now arrived--a grotesque figure with her gown and petticoats fastened high and wearing on her legs a pair of her uncle's leather gaiters. Mary had been up to the farm for more rope, but the clothesline was all that she could find, and this she now returned with. Already three ropes had been pa.s.sed round the rick and made fast to the willows, but none among them was of great stoutness, nor had they been tied at an elevation best calculated to resist a possible strain. Amos Bartlett took the line from Mary and set to work with many a.s.sistants; while the farmer himself, waving a torch and stumping hither and thither, now directed Bartlett, now encouraged two men who worked with all their might at the cutting of a trench from the lake in order that this dangerous body of water might be drained back to the main stream. The flame-light danced in many a flash and splash over the smooth surface of the face of the inland pond. Indeed it reflected like a gla.s.s at present, for no wind fretted it, neither did a drop of rain fall. Intense, watchful silence held that hour. The squash of men's feet in the mud, the soft swirl of the water, the cry of voices alone disturbed the night.

"G.o.d be praised! I do think 'tis 'bating," cried the farmer presently. He ran every few minutes to the water and examined a stake hammered into it a foot from the edge. It seemed, as far as might be judged by such fitful light and rough measurement, that the river had sunk an inch or two, but it was running in undulations, and what its muddy ma.s.s had lost in volume was gained in speed. The water chattered and hissed; and Amos Bartlett, who next made a survey, declared that the flood had by no means waned, but rather risen. Then, the last ropes being disposed to the best advantage, all joined the laborers who were digging. Twenty minutes later, however, and before the trench was more than three parts finished, there came a tremendous change. Turning hastily to the river, Bartlett uttered a shout of alarm and called for light. He had approached the telltale stake, and suddenly, before he reached it, found his feet in the water. The river was rising with fierce rapidity at last, and five minutes later began to lick at the edge of the hay-rick, and churn along with a strange hidden force and devil in it. The pace increased with the volume, and told of some prodigious outburst on the moor. The uncanny silence of the swelling water as it slipped downward was a curious feature of it in this phase. Chirgwin and his men huddled together at the side of the rick; then Bartlett held up his hand and spoke.

"Hark 'e all! 'Tis comin' now, by G.o.d!"

They kept silence and listened with straining ears and frightened eyes, fire-rimmed by the flickering torchlight. A sound came from afar--a sound not unmelodious but singular beyond power of language to express--a whisper of sinister significance to him who knew its meaning, of sheer mystery to all others. A murmur filled the air, a murmur of undefined noises still far distant. They might have been human, they might have arisen from the flight and terror of beasts, from the movement of vast bodies, from the reverberations of remote music; Earth or Heaven might have bred them, or the upper chambers of the air midway between. They spoke of terrific energies, of outpourings of force, of elemental chaos come again, of a crown of unimagined horror set upon the night.

All listened fearfully while the solemn cadences crept on their ears, fascinated them like a siren song, wakened wild dread of tribulations and terrors unknown till now. It was indeed a sound but seldom heard and wholly unfamiliar to those beside the stack save one.

"'Tis the callin' o' the cleeves," said Uncle Chirgwin.

"Nay, man, 'tis a live, ragin' storm comed off the sea an' tearin' ower the airth like a legion out o' h.e.l.l! 'Tis the floodgates o' G.o.d opened you'm hearin'! Ay, an' the four winds at each other's throats, an' a outburst o'

all the springs 'pon the hills! 'Tis death and ruin for the whole country-side as be yelling up-long now. An' 'tis comin' faster'n thot."

As Bartlett spoke, the voice of the tempest grew rapidly nearer, all mystery faded out of it and its murmuring changed to a hoa.r.s.e rattle.

Thunder growled a ba.s.s to the shriek of coming winds and a flash of distant lightning bridged the head of the coomb with a crooked snake of fire.

"Us'd best to get 'pon high land out o' this," shouted Bartlett. "All as men can do us have done. The hay's in the hand o' Providence, but I wouldn't be perched on top o' that stack not for diamonds all the same."

A cry cut him short. Mary had turned and found the way to higher ground already cut off. The lake was rising under their eyes, and that in spite of the fact that the waters had already reached the trench cut for them, and now tumbled in a torrent back to the parent stream. Escape in this direction was clearly impossible. It only remained to wade through the head of the lake, and that without a moment's delay. Mary herself, holding a torch, went first through water above her knees and the men hastily followed, Uncle Chirgwin coming last and being nearly carried off his short legs as he turned to view the rick. Once through the water, all were in safety, for the meadow sloped steeply upward. An increasing play of lightning made the torches useless, and they were dropped, while the party pressed close beneath an overhanging hedge which ran along the upper boundary of the meadow. From this vantage-ground they beheld a spectacle unexampled in the memory of any among them.

Screaming like some incarnate and mad manifestation of all the elements ma.s.sed in one, the hurricane launched itself upon that valley. As a wall the wind heralded the water, while forked lightnings, flaming above both, tore the black darkness into jagged rags and lighted a chaos of yellow foaming torrent which battled with livid front straight down the heart of the coomb. The swollen river was lost in the torrent of it; and the hiss of the rain was drowned by its sound.

So Nature's full, hollowed hand ran over lightning-lighted to the organ music of the thunder; but for these horror-stricken watchers the majestic phenomena sweeping before them held no splendor and prompted no admiration.

They only saw ruin tearing at the roots of the land; they only imagined drowned beasts floating before them belly upward, scattered hay hurried to the sea, wasted crops, a million tons of precious soil torn off the fields, orchards desolated, bridges and roads destroyed. For them misery stared out of the lightning and starvation rode upon the flood. The roar of water answering the thunder above it was to their ears Earth groaning against the rod, and right well they knew that the pale torrent was drowning those summer labors which represented money and food for the on-coming of the long winter months. They stared, silent and dumb, under the ram; they knew that the kernel of near a year's toil was riding away upon the livid torrent; that the higher meadows, held absolutely safe, were half under water now; that the flood tumbling under the blue fire most surely held sheep and cattle in its depths; that tons of upland hay swam upon it; that, like enough, dead men also turned and twisted there in a last mad journey to the sea.

A pa.s.sing belief that their labors might save the stack sprung up in the breast of one alone. Uncle Chirgwin trusted Providence and his hempen ropes and clothesline; but it was a childish hope, and, gazing open-mouthed upon that swelling, hurtling cataract of roaring water, none shared it. An almost continuous mist of livid light crossed and recrossed, festooned and cut by its own crinkled sources, revealed the progress of the flood, and, heedless of themselves, Uncle Chirgwin and his men watched the fate of the stack, now rising very pale of hue above the water, seen through s.h.i.+ning curtains of rain. First the torrent tumbled and rose about it, and then a sudden tremor and turning of the ma.s.s told that the rick floated. As it twisted the weak ropes, receiving the strain in turn, snapped one after another; then the great stack moved solemnly forward, stuck fast, moved again, lost its center of gravity and foundered like a s.h.i.+p. Under the lightning they saw it heave upward upon one side, plunge forward against the torrent which had swept its base from beneath it, and vanish. The farmer heaved a bitter groan.

"Dear G.o.d, that sich things can be in a Christian land," he cried. "All gone, this year, an' last, an' the aftermath; an' Lard He knaws what be doin' in the valley bottom. I wish the light may strike me dead wheer I stand, for I be a blot afore Him, else I'd never be made to suffer like this here. Awnly if any man among 'e will up an' tell me what I've done I'll thank en."

"'Tis the land as have sinned, not you," said Mary. "This reaches more'n us o' Drift. Come your ways an' get out o' these clothes, else you'll catch your death. Come to the house, all of 'e," she cried to the rest. "Theer ban't no more for us to do till marnin' light."

"If ever it do come," groaned the man Bartlett. "So like's not the end o'

the world be here; an' I'd be fust to hollo it, awnly theer's more water than fire here when all's said, an' the airth's to be burned, not drowned."

"Let a come when a will now," gasped an aged man as the drenched party moved slowly away upward to the farm; "our ears be tuned to the trump o'

G.o.d, for nort--no, not the screech o' horns blawed by all the angels in heaven--could sound awfuler than the tantarra o' this gert tempest. I, Gaffer Polglaze, be the auldest piece up Drift, but I never heard tell o'

no sich noise, let alone havin' my awn ears flattened wi' it."

They climbed the steep lane to the farm, and the wind began to drown the more distant roar of the water. Rain fell more heavily than before, and the full heart of the storm crashed and flamed over their heads as Drift was reached.

Dawn trembled out upon a tremendous chapter of disasters, still fresh in the memory of many who witnessed it. A gray, sullen morning, with sky-glimpses of blue, hastily shown and greedily hidden, broke over Western Cornwall and uncovered the handiwork of a flood more savage in its fury and far-reaching in its effects than man's memory could parallel--a flood which already shrunk fast backward from its own havoc. To describe a single one of those valleys through which small rivers usually ran to the sea is to describe them all. Thus the torrent which raved down the coomb beneath Drift, and carried Uncle Chirgwin's ma.s.sive hayrick with it like a child's toy-boat, had also uprooted acres of gooseberry bushes and raspberry canes, torn apple trees from the ground, laid waste extensive tracts of ripe produce and carried ripening roots by thousands into the sea. Beneath the orchards, as the flood subsided, there appeared great tracts of nakedness where banks of stone had been torn out of the land and scattered upon it; dead beasts stuck jammed in the low forks of trees; swine, sheep and calves appeared, cast up in fantastic places, strangled by the water; sandy wastes, stripped of every living leaf and blade, ran like banks where no banks formerly existed, and here and there from their midst stuck out naked boughs of upturned trees, fragments of man's contrivances, or the legs of dead beasts. Looking up the coomb, desolation was writ large and the utmost margins of the flood clearly recorded on branch and bough, where rubbish which had floated to the fringe of the flood was caught and hung aloft.

Below, as the waters gained volume and force, Buryas Bridge, an ancient structure of three arches beneath which the trout-stream peacefully babbled under ordinary conditions, was swept headlong away and the houses hard by flooded; while the greatest desolation had fallen on those orchards lying lowest in the valley. Indeed the nearer the flood approached Newlyn the more tremendous had been the ravage wrought by it. The orchards of Talcarne valley were ruined as though artillery had swept them, and of the lesser crops scarce any at all remained. Then, bursting down Street-an-nowan, as that lane is called, the waters running high where their courses narrowed, swamped sundry cottages and leaped like a wolf on the low-lying portion of Newlyn. Here it burst through the alleys and narrow pa.s.sages, drowned the bas.e.m.e.nts of many tenements, isolated cottages, stores and granaries, threatened nearly a hundred lives startled from sleep by its sudden a.s.sault. Then, under the raging weather and in that babel of angry waters, brave deeds were done by the fisher folk, who chanced to be ash.o.r.e. Grave personal risks were hazarded by many a man in that turbid flood, and not a few women and children were rescued with utmost danger to their saviors'

lives. Yet the petty rivalry of split and riven creeds actuated not a few even at that time of peril, and while life was allowed sacred and no man turned a deaf ear to the cry of woman or child, with property the case was altered and sects lifted not a finger each to help the other in the saving of furniture and effects.

Newlyn furnished but one theater of a desolation which covered wide regions. At Penzance, the Laregan River flooded all the lowlands as it swept with prodigious cataracts to the sea; mighty lakes stretched between Penzance and Gulval; the brooklets of Ponsandine and Coombe, swollen to torrents, bore crus.h.i.+ng destruction upon the valleys through which they fell. Bleu Bridge with its ancient inscribed "long stone" was swept into the bed of the Ponsandine, and here, as in other low-lying lands, many tons of hay were torn from their foundations and set adrift. At Churchtown the rainfall precipitated off the slopes of Castle-an-dinas begot vast torrents which, upon their roaring way, tore the very heart out of steep and stony lanes, flooded farmyards, plowed up miles of hillside, leaped the wall of the cemetery below and spread twining yellow fingers among the graves.

Three hundred tons of rain fell to the acre in the immediate tract of that terrific storm, and the world of misery, loss and suffering poured forth on the humble dwellers of the land only came to be estimated in its bitter magnitude during the course of the winter which followed.

Ash.o.r.e it was not immediately known whether any loss of human life had added crowning horror to the catastrophe, but evil news came quickly off the sea. Mourning fell upon Mousehole for the crews of two among its fisher fleet who were lost that night upon the way toward Plymouth waters to join the herring fishery; and Newlyn heard the wail of a robbed mother.

At Drift the farmhouse was found to hold a mystery soon after the day had broken. Joan Tregenza, whose condition rendered it impossible for her to actively a.s.sist at the struggle in the coomb, did not retire early on the previous night, as her family supposed, and Mary, entering her room at breakfast-time, found it empty. There was no sign of the girl and no indication of anything which could explain her absence.

CHAPTER SEVEN

OUT OF THE DEEP

At the dawn of the day which followed upon the great storm, while yet the sea ran high and the gale died hard, many tumbling luggers, some maimed, began to dot the wind-torn waters of Mounts Bay. The tide was out, but within the shelter of the sh.o.r.e which rose between Newlyn and the course of the wind, the returning boats found safety at their accustomed anchorage; and as one by one they made the little roads, as boat after boat came ash.o.r.e from the fleet, tears, hysteric screams and deep-voiced thanks to the Almighty arose from the crowd of men and women ma.s.sed at the extremity of Newlyn pier beneath the lighthouse. Cheers and many a shake of hand greeted every party as, weary-eyed and worn, it landed and climbed the slippery steps. From such moments even those still in the shadow of terrible fear plucked a little courage and brightened hopes. Then each of the returned fishermen, with his own clinging to him, set face homeward--a rejoicing stream of little separate processions, every one heralding a saved life. There crept thus inland wives smiling through the mist of dead tears, old mothers hobbling beside their bearded sons, young mothers pouring blessing on proud sailor boys, sweethearts, withered ancients, daughters, sons, little children. Sad beyond power of thought were the hearts of all as they had hastened to the pierhead at early morning light; now the sorrowful still remained there, but those who came away rejoiced, for none returned without their treasures.

Thomasin stood with many another care-stricken soul, but her fears grew greater as the delay increased; for the Tregenza lugger was big and fast, yet many boats of less fame had already come home. All the fishermen told the same story. Bursting out of an ominous peace the storm had fallen suddenly upon them when westward of the Scilly Islands. One or two were believed to have made neighboring ports in the isles, but the fleet was driven before the gale and had experienced those grave hazards reserved for small vessels in a heavy sea. That all had weathered the night seemed a circ.u.mstance too happy to hope for, but Newlyn hearts rose high as boat after boat came back in safety. Then a dozen men hastened to Mrs. Tregenza with the good news that her husband's vessel was in sight.

"She've lost her mizzen by the looks on it," said a fisherman, "an' that's more'n good reason for her bein' 'mong the last to make home."

But Thomasin's hysterical joy was cut short by the most unexpected appearance of Mary Chirgwin on the pier. She had visited the white cottage to find it locked up and empty; she had then joined the concourse at the pierhead, feeling certain that the Tregenza boat must still be at sea; and she now added her congratulations to the rest, then told Mrs. Tregenza her news.

"I be comed to knaw if you've heard or seen anything o' Joan. 'Tis 'mazin'

straange, but her've gone, like a dream, an' us caan't find a sign of her.

What wi' she an' terrible doin's 'pon the land last night, uncle's 'bout beside hisself. Us left her in the kitchen, an' when we comed back from tryin' to save the hay she was nowheer. Of coorse, us thot she'd gone to her bed. But she weern't, an' this mornin' we doan't see a atom of her, but finds a envelope empty 'pon the kitchen floor. 'Twas addressed to Joan an'

comed from Lunnon."

"Aw jimmery! She've gone to en arter all, then--an' in her state."

"The floods was out, you see. Her might have marched off to Penzance to larn 'bout the manner o' gwaine to Lunnon an' bin stopped in home-comin'; or her might have slept in Penzance to catch a early train away."