Lying Prophets Part 42

The other laughed, as if this was an admirable jest.

"I suppose you do, though that's a queer way to put it. You talk as though you had come to smoke a cigar along with him."

In growing amazement and suspicion, Noy listened to this most curious statement. Fears suddenly awoke that, by some mysterious circ.u.mstance, Barron had learned of his contemplated action and was prepared for it. He stopped, therefore, looked about him sharply to avoid any sudden surprise, and put a question to the footman.

"You spoke as though I was wanted," he said. "What do you mean by that?"

"Blessed if you're not a rum 'un!" answered the man. "Of course you was wanted, else you wouldn't be here, would you? You're not a party as calls promiscuous, I should hope. Else it would be rather trying to delicate nerves. You're the gentleman as everybody requires some time, though n.o.body ever sends for himself."

Failing to gather the other's meaning, Noy only realized that John Barron expected some visitor and felt, therefore, the more determined to hasten his own actions. He saw the footman was endeavoring to be jocose, and therefore humored him, pretending at the same time to be the individual who was expected.

"You're a funny fellow and must often make your master laugh, I should reckon, Iss, I be the chap what you thought I was. An' I should like to see him--the guv'nor--at once if he'll see me."

The footman chuckled again.

"He'll see you all right. He's been wantin' of you all day, and he'd have been that dreadful disapp'inted if you 'adn't come. Always awful particular about his clothes, you know, so mind you're jolly careful about the measuring 'cause this overcoat will have to last him a long time."

Taking his cue from these words Noy, still ignorant of the truth, made answer: "Iss, I'll measure en all right. Wheer is he to?"

"In the studio--there you are, right ahead. Knock at that baize door and then walk straight in, 'cause he'll very likely be too much occupied to answer you. He's quite alone--leastways I believe so. I'll come back in quarter'n hour; and mind you don't talk no secrets or tell him how I laughed at him behind his back, else he'd give me the sack for certain."

The man withdrew, sn.i.g.g.e.ring at his own humor, and Noy, quite unable to see rhyme or reason in his remarks, stood with an expression of bewilderment upon his broad face and watched the servant disappear. Then his countenance changed, and he approached a door covered with red baize at which the pa.s.sage terminated. He knocked, waited, and knocked again, straining his ear to hear the voice he had labored so long to silence. Then he put his revolver into the side pocket of his coat, and, afterward, following the footman's directions, pushed open the swing door, which yielded to his hand. A curtain hung inside it, and, pulling this aside, he entered a s.p.a.cious apartment with a gla.s.s roof. But scanty light illuminated the studio from one oil lamp which hung by a chain from a bracket in the wall, and the rays of which were much dimmed by a red gla.s.s shade. Some easels, mostly empty, stood about the sides of the great chamber; here and there on the white walls were sketches in charcoal and daubs of paint. A German stove appeared in the middle of the room, but it was not burning; skins of beasts scattered the floor; upon one wall hung the "Negresses Bathing at Tobago." For the rest the room appeared empty. Then, growing accustomed to the dim red light, Noy made a closer examination until he caught sight of an object which made him catch his breath violently and hurry forward.

Under the lofty open windows which rose on the northern side of the studio, remote from all other objects, was a couch, and upon it lay a small, straight figure shrouded in white sheets save for its face.

John Barron had been dead twenty-four hours, and he had hastened his own end, by a s.p.a.ce of time impossible to determine, through leaving his sick-room two days previously, that he might visit the picture gallery wherein hung "Joe's s.h.i.+p." It was a step taken in absolute defiance of his medical men. The day of that excursion had chanced to be a very cold one, and during the night which followed it John Barron broke a blood vessel and precipitated his death. Now, in the hands of hirelings, without a friend to put one flower on his breast or close his dim eyes, the man lay waiting for an undertaker; and while Joe Noy glared at him, unconsciously gripping the weapon he had brought, it seemed as though the dead smiled under the red flicker of the lamp--as though he smiled and prepared to come back into life to answer this supreme accuser.

As by an educated mind Joe Noy's estimate and a.s.surance of the eternal tortures of h.e.l.l cannot be adequately grasped in its full force, so now it is hard to set forth with a power sufficiently luminous and terrific the effect of this discovery upon him. He, the weapon of the Almighty, found his work finished and the fruits of his labors s.n.a.t.c.hed from his hand. His enemy had escaped, and the fact that he was dead only made the case harder.

Had Barron hastened from him and avoided his revolver, he could have suffered it, knowing that the end lay in the future at the determination of G.o.d; but now the end appeared before him accomplished; and it had been attained without his a.s.sistance. His labor was lost and his longed-for, prayed-for achievement rendered impossible. He stood and scanned the small, marble-white face, then drew a box of matches from his pocket, lighted one and looked closer. Worn by disease to mere skin and skull, there was nothing left to suggest the dead man's wasted powers; and generation of their own destroyers was the only task now left for his brains. The end of Noy's match fell red-hot on John Barron's face. Then he turned as footsteps sounded; the curtains were moved aside and the footman reappeared, followed by another person.

"Why, you wasn't the undertaker after all!" he explained. "Did you think the man was alive? Good Lord! But you've found him anyway."

"Iss, I thot he was alive. I wanted to see en livin' an' leave en--" he stopped. Common sense for once had a word with him and convinced him of the folly of saying anything now concerning his frustrated projects.

"He died night 'fore last--consumption--and he's left money enough to build a brace of ironclads, they say, and never no will, and not a soul on G.o.d's earth is there with any legal claim upon him. To tell the truth, we none of us never liked him."

"If you'll shaw me the way out into the street, I'll thank 'e," said Noy.

The undertaker was already busy making measurements. Then, a minute later, Joe found himself standing under the sky again; and the darkness was full of laughter and of voices, of gibing, jeering noises in unseen throats, of rapid utterances on invisible tongues. The supernatural things screamed into his ears that he was d.a.m.ned for a wish and for an intention; then they shrieked and yelled their derision, and he understood well enough, for the point of view was not a new one. Given the accomplishment of his desire, he was prepared to suffer eternally; now eternal suffering must follow on a wish barren of fruit, and h.e.l.l for him would be h.e.l.l indeed, with no accomplished revenge in memory to lessen the torment. When the voices at length died and a clock struck one, Noy came to himself, and realized that, in so far as the present affected him, Fate had brought him back to life and liberty by a short cut. Then, seeing his position, he asked himself whether life was long enough to make atonement and even allow of ultimate escape after death. But the fierce disappointment which beat upon his soul like a recurring wave, as thought drifted back and back, told him that he had fairly won h.e.l.l-fire and must abide by it.

So thinking, he returned to his lodging, entered un.o.bserved and prowled the small chamber till dawn. By morning light all his life appeared transfigured and a ghastly anti-climax faced the man. Presently he remembered the letters he had posted overnight, and the recollection of them brought with it sudden resolves and a course of action.

Half an hour later he had reached Paddington Station, and was soon on his way back to Cornwall.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

STARLIGHT AND FROST

Born of the suns.h.i.+ne, on a morning in late December, gray ephemerae danced and dipped and fas.h.i.+oned vanis.h.i.+ng patterns against the green of the great laurel at the corner of Drift farmyard. The mildness of the day had wakened them into brief life, but even as they twinkled their wings of gauze death was abroad. A sky of unusual clearness crowned the Cornish moorland, and Uncle Chirgwin, standing at his kitchen door, already foretold frost, though the morning was still young.

"The air's like milk just now, sure 'nough, an' 'twill bide so till noon; then, when the sun begins to slope, the cold will graw an' graw to frost.

An' no harm done, thank G.o.d."

He spoke to his niece, who was in the room behind him; and as he did so a circ.u.mstance of very unusual nature happened. Two persons reached the front door of the farm simultaneously, and a maid, answering the double knock, returned a moment later with two communications, both for Mary Chirgwin.

"Postman, he brot this here, miss, an' a bwoy from Mouzle brot t'other."

The first letter came from London, the second, directed in a similar hand, reached Mary from the adjacent fis.h.i.+ng hamlet. She knew the big writing well enough, but showed no emotion before the maid. In fact her self command was remarkable, for she put both letters into her pocket and made some show of continuing her labors for another five minutes before departing to her room that she might read the news from Joe Noy.

He, it may be said, had reached Penzance by the same train which conveyed his various missives, all posted too late for the mail upon the previous night. Thus he reached the white cottage on the cliff in time to see Mrs.

Tregenza and bid her destroy unread the letter she would presently receive; and, on returning to his parents, himself took from the letter-carrier his own communications to them and burned both immediately. He had also dispatched a boy to Drift that Mary might be warned as to the letter she would receive by the morning post, but the lad, though ample time was given him to reach Drift before the postman, loitered by the way. Thus the letters had arrived simultaneously, and it was quite an open question which the receiver of them would open first.

Chance decided: Mary's hand, thrust haphazard into her pocket, came forth with Hoy's epistle recently dispatched from Mousehole; and that she read, the accident saving her at least some moments of bitter suffering.

"Dear Mary," wrote Noy, "you will get this by hand afore the coming in of the penny post. When that comes in, there will be another letter for you from me, sent off from London. It is all wrong, so burn it, and don't you read it on no account. Burn it to ashes, for theer's a many reasons why you should. I be coming up-long to see you arter dinner, and if you can walk out in the air with me for a bit I'll thank you so to do. Your friend, J.

Noy. Burn the letter to dust 'fore anything else. Don't let it bide a minute and doan't tell none you had it."

Curiosity was no part of Mary Chirgwin's nature. Now she merely thanked Heaven which had led to the right letter and so enabled her unconsciously to obey Joe's urgent command. Then she returned to the kitchen, placed his earlier communication in the heart of the fire and watched while it blackened, curled, blazed, and finally shuddered down into a red-hot ash.

She determined to see him and walk with him, as he asked, if he returned with clean hands. While the letter which she had read neither proved nor disproved such a supposition, the woman yet felt a secret and sure conviction in her heart that Noy was coming back innocent at least of any desperate action. That he was in Cornwall again and a free man appeared to her proof sufficient that he had not committed violence.

Mary allowed her anxiety to interfere with no duty. By three o'clock she was ready to set out, and, looking from her bedroom window as she tied on her hat, she saw Joe Noy approaching up the hill. A minute later she was at the door, and stood there waiting with her eyes upon him as he came up the path. Then she looked down, and to the man it seemed as though she was gazing at his right hand which held a stick.

"'Tis as it was, Mary Chirgwin--my hands be white," he said. "You needn't fear, though I promised if you ever seed 'em agin as they'd be red. 'Tedn'

so. I was robbed of my hope, Mary. The Lard took Joan fust; then he took my revenge from me. His will be done. The man died four-an'-twenty hours 'fore I found en--just four-an'-twenty lil hours--that was all."

"Thank the Almighty G.o.d for it, Joe, as I shall till the day of my death.

Never was no prayer answered so surely as mine for you."

"Why, maybe I'll graw to thank G.o.d tu when 'tis farther to look back 'pon.

I caan't feel 'tis so yet. I caan't feel as he'm truly dead. An' yet 'twas no lie, for I seed en, an' stood 'longside of en."

"G.o.d's Hand be everywheer in it. Think if I'd read poor Joan's letter an'

tawld 'e wheer the man's plaace of livin' was!"

"Iss, then I'd have slain en. 'Tis such lil things do mark out our paths. A gert pichsher o' Joan he drawed--all done out so large as life; an' I found it, an' it 'peared as if the dead was riz up again an' staring at me. If 'tis all the saame to you, Mary, us'll go an' look 'pon her graave now, for I abbun seen it yet."

They walked in silence for some hundred yards along the lanes to Sancreed.

Then Noy spoke again.

"How be uncle?"

"Betwix' an' between. The trouble an' loss o' Joan aged en cruel, an' the floods has brot things to a close pa.s.s. 'Twas the harder for en 'cause all looked so more'n common healthy an' promisin' right up to the rain. But he's got the faith as moves mountains; he do knaw that sorrer ban't sent for nort."

"An' you? I wonder I'm bowldacious 'nough to look 'e in the faace, but sorrer's not forgot me neither."

"'Tis a thing what awver-pa.s.ses none. I've forgived 'e, Joe Noy, many a long month past, an' I've prayed to G.o.d to lead 'e through this strait, an'

He have."