Lying Prophets by Eden Phillpotts

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LYING PROPHETS

_A NOVEL_

BY EDEN PHILLPOTTS

_Author of "Down Dartmoor Way," "Some Everyday Folks" "The End of a
Life," etc.

"'Tis like this: your man did take plain Nature for God, an' he did talk
fulishness 'bout finding Him in the scent o' flowers, the hum o' bees an'
sichlike. Mayhap Nature's a gude working God for a selfish man but she ed'n
wan for a maid, as you knaws by now. Then your faither--his God do sit
everlastingly alongside hell-mouth, an' do laugh an' girn to see all the
world a walkin' in, same as the beasts walked in the Ark. Theer's another
picksher of a God for 'e; but mark this, gal, they be lying prophets--lying
prophets both!"--Book II., Chapter XI._

BOOK ONE

_ART_

CHAPTER ONE

NEWLYN

Away beyond the village stands a white cottage with the sea lapping at low
cliffs beneath it. Plum and apple orchards slope upward behind this
building, and already, upon the former trees, there trembles a snowy gauze
where blossom buds are breaking. Higher yet, dark plowed fields, with
hedges whereon grow straight elms, cover the undulations of a great hill
even to its windy crest, and below, at the water line, lies Newlyn--a
village of gray stone and blue, with slate roofs now shining silver-bright
under morning sunlight and easterly wind. Smoke softens every outline;
red-brick walls and tanned sails bring warmth and color through the blue
vapor of many chimneys; a sun-flash glitters at this point and that,
denoting here a conservatory, there a studio. Enter this hive and you shall
find a network of narrow stone streets; a flutter of flannel underwear, or
blue stockings, and tawny garments drying upon lines; little windows, some
with rows of oranges and ginger-beer bottles in them; little shops; little
doors, at which cluster little children and many cats, the latter mostly
tortoise-shell and white. Infants watch their elders playing marbles in the
roadway, and the cats stretch lazy bodies on the mats, made of old
fishing-net, which lie at every cottage door. Newlyn stands on slight
elevations above the sea level, and at one point the road bends downward,
breaks and fringes the tide, leading among broken iron, rusty anchors, and
dismantled fishing-boats, past an ancient buoy whose sides now serve the
purposes of advertisement and tell of prayer-meetings, cheap tea, and so
forth. Hard by, the mighty blocks of the old breakwater stand, their fabric
dating from the reign of James I., and taking the place of one still older.
But the old breakwater is no more than a rialto for ancient gossips now;
and far beyond it new piers stretch encircling arms of granite round a new
harbor, southward of which the lighthouse stands and winks his sleepless
golden eye from dusk to dawn. Within this harbor, when the fishing fleet is
at home, lie jungles of stout masts, row upon row, with here and there a
sail, carrying on the color of the plowed fields above the village, and
elsewhere, scraps of flaming bunting flashing like flowers in a reed bed.
Behind the masts, along the barbican, the cottages stand close and thick,
then clamber and straggle up the acclivities behind, decreasing in their
numbers as they ascend. Smoke trails inland on the wind--black as a thin
crepe veil, from the funnel of a coal "tramp" about to leave the harbor,
blue from the dry wood burning on a hundred cottage hearths. A smell of
fish--where great split pollocks hang drying in the sun--of tar and tan and
twine--where nets and cordage lie spread upon low walls and open
spaces--gives to Newlyn an odor all its own; but aloft, above the village
air, spring is dancing, sweet-scented, light-footed in the hedgerows,
through the woods and on the wild moors which stretch inland away. There
the gold of the gorse flames in many a sudden sheet and splash over the
wastes whereon last year's ling-bloom, all sere and gray, makes a
sad-colored world. But the season's change is coming fast. Celandines
twinkle everywhere, and primroses, more tardy and more coy, already open
wondering eyes. The sea lies smooth with a surface just wind-kissed and
strewed with a glory of sun-stars. Away to the east, at a point from which
brown hills, dotted with white dwellings, tend in long undulations to the
cliffs of the Lizard, under fair clouds all banked and sunny white against
the blue, rises St. Michael's Mount, with a man's little castle capping
Nature's gaunt escarpments and rugged walls. Between Marazion and Newlyn
stretches Mount's Bay; while a mile or two of flat sea-front, over which,
like a string of pearls, roll steam clouds, from a train, bring us to
Penzance. Then--noting centers of industry where freezing works rise and
smelting of ore occupies many men (for Newlyn labors at the two extremes of
fire and ice)--we are back in the fishing village again and upon the
winding road which leads therefrom, first to Penlee Point and the
blue-stone quarry, anon to the little hamlet of Mousehole beyond.

Beside this road lay our white cottage, with the sunshine lighting up a
piece of new golden thatch let into the old gray, and the plum-trees behind
it bursting into new-born foam of flowers. Just outside it, above the low
cliff, stood two men looking down into the water, seen dark green below
through a tangle of brier and blackthorn and emerald foliage of budding
elder. The sea served base uses here, for the dust and dirt of many a
cottage was daily cast into the lap of the great scavenger who carried all
away. The low cliffs were indeed spattered with filth, and the coltsfoot,
already opening yellow blossoms below, found itself rudely saluted with
cinders and potato-peelings, fishes' entrails, and suchlike unlovely
matter.

The men were watching a white fleet of bird boats paddling on the sea,
hurrying this way and that, struggling--with many a plunge and flutter and
plaintive cry--for the food a retreating tide was bearing from the shore.

"'White spirits and gray,' I call them," said the younger of the two
spectators. "The gulls fascinate me always. They are beautiful to see and
hear and paint. Swimming there, and wheeling between the seas in rough
weather, or hanging almost motionless in midair with their heads turning
first this way, then that, and their breasts pressed against the wind--
why, they are perfect always, the little winged gods of the sea."

"Gods kissing carrion," sneered the other. "Beautiful enough, no doubt, but
their music holds no charm for me. Nothing is quite beautiful which has for
its cause something ugly. Those echoing cries down there are the expression
of a greedy struggle, no more. I hate your Newlyn gulls. They are ruined,
like a thousand other wild things, by civilization. I see them scouring the
fields and hopping after the plowman like upland crows. A Cornish seabird
should fight its battle with the sea and find its home in the heart of the
dizzy cliffs, sharing them with the samphire. But your 'white spirits and
gray' behave like gutter-fed ducks."

The first speaker laughed and both strolled upon their way. They were
artists, but while Edmund Murdoch dwelt at Newlyn and lived by his
profession, the older man, John Barron, was merely on a visit to the place.
He had come down for change and with no particular intention to work.
Barron was wealthy and wasted rare talents. He did not paint much, and the
few who knew his pictures deplored the fact that no temporal inducement
called upon him to handle his brush oftener. A few excused him on the plea
of his health, which was at all times indifferent, but he never excused
himself. It needed something far from the beaten track to inspire him, and
inspiration was rare. But let a subject once grip him and the artist's life
centered and fastened upon it until his work was done. He sacrificed
everything at such a time; he slaved; labor was to him as a debauch to the
drunkard, and he wearied body and mind and counted his health nothing while
the frenzy held him. Then, his picture finished, at the cost of the man's
whole store of nervous energy and skill, he would probably paint no more
for many months. His subject was always some transcript from nature,
wrought out with almost brutal vigor and disregard of everything but truth.
His looks belied his work curiously. A small, slight man he was, with
sloping shoulders and the consumptive build. But the breadth of his head
above the ears showed brain, and his gray eyes spoke a strength of purpose
upon which a hard, finely-modeled mouth set the seal. Once he had painted
in the West Indies: a picture of two negresses bathing at Tobago. Behind
them hung low tangles of cactus, melo-cactus and white-blossomed orchid;
while on the tawny rocks glimmered snowy cotton splashed with a crimson
turban; but the marvel of the work lay in the figures and the refraction of
their brown limbs seen through crystal-clear water. The picture brought
reputation to a man who cared nothing for it; and Barron's "Bathing
Negresses" are only quoted here because they illustrate his method of work.
He had painted from the sea in a boat moored fore and aft; he had kept the
two women shivering and whining in the water for two hours at a time. They
could not indeed refuse the gold he offered for their services, but one
never lived to enjoy the money, for her prolonged ablutions in the cause of
art killed her a week after her work was done.

John Barren was a lonely sybarite with a real love for Nature and
absolutely primitive instincts with regard to his fellow-creatures. The
Land's End had disappointed him; he had found Nature neither grand nor
terrific there, but sleepy and tame as a cat after a full meal. Nor did he
derive any pleasure from the society of his craft at Newlyn. He hated the
clatter of art jargon, he flouted all schools, and pointed out what nobody
doubts now: that the artists of the Cornish village in reality represented
nothing but a community of fellow-workers, all actuated indeed by love of
art, but each developing his own bent without thought for his neighbor's
theory. Barron indeed made some enemies before he had been in the place a
week, and the greater lights liked him none the better for vehemently
disclaiming the honor when they told him he was one of themselves. "The
shape of a brush does not make men paint alike," he said, "else we were all
equal and should only differ in color. Some of you can no more paint with a
square brush than you can with a knife. Some of you could not paint though
your palettes were set with Nature's own sunset colors. And others of you,
if you had a rabbit's scut at the end of a hop-pole and the gray mud from a
rain puddle, would produce work worth considering. You are a community of
painters--some clever, some hopeless--but you are not a school, and you may
thank God for it."

John Barron was rough tonic, but the fearless little man generally found an
audience at the end of the day in this studio or that. The truth of much
that he 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.
He stood where Nature, like Artemis, appeared as a mother of many breasts.
Brown and solemn in their undulations, they rose about and around him to
the sky-line, where the land cut sharply against a pale blue heaven from
which tinkled the music of larks. He watched a bird wind upward in a spiral
to its song throne; he noted the young wheat brushing the earth with a veil
of green; he dawdled where elms stood, their high tops thick with blossom;
and he delayed for full fifteen minutes to see the felling of one giant
tree. A wedge-shaped cut had been made upon the side where the great elm
was to fall, and, upon the other side, two men were sawing through the
trunk. There was no sound but the steady hiss of steel teeth gnawing inch
by inch to the wine-red heart of the tree. Sunshine glimmered on its leafy
crown, and as yet distant branch and bough knew nothing of the midgets and
Death below.

Barron took pleasure in seeing the great god Change at work, but he mourned
in that a masterpiece, on which Nature had bestowed half a century and more
of love, must now vanish.

"A pity," he said, while the executioners rested a few moments from their
labors, "a pity to cut down such a noble tree."

One woodman laughed, and the other--an old rustic, brown and bent--made
answer:

"I sez 'dang the tree!' Us doan't take no joy in thrawin' en, mister. I be
bedoled wi' pain, an' this 'ere sawin's just food for rheumatiz. My back's
that bad. But Squire must 'ave money, an' theer's five hundred pounds'
value o' ellum comin' down 'fore us done wi' it."

The saw won its way; and between each spell of labor, the ancient man held
his back and grumbled.

"Er's Billy Jago," confided the second laborer to Barron, when his
companion had turned aside to get some steel wedges and a sledge-hammer.
"Er's well-knawn in these paarts--a reg'lar cure. Er used tu work up Drift
wi' Mister Chirgwin."

Billy added two wedges to those already hammered into the saw-cut, then,
with the sledge, he drove them home and finished his task. The sorrowful
strokes rang hollow and mournful over the land, sadder to Barron's ear than
fall of earth-clod on coffin-lid. And, upon the sound, a responsive shiver
and uneasy tremor ran through trunk and bough to topmost twig of the elm--a
sudden sense, as it seemed, of awful evil and ruin undreamed of, but now
imminent. Then the monster staggered and the midget struck his last blow
and removed himself and his rheumatism. Whereupon began that magnificent
descent. Slowly, with infinitely solemn sweep, the elm's vast height swung
away from its place, described a wide aerial arc, and so, with the jolting
crash and rattle of close thunder, roared headlong to the earth, casting up
a cloud of dust, plowing the grass with splintered limbs, then lying very
still. From glorious tree to battered log it sank. No man ever saw more
instant wreck and ruin fall lightning-like on a fair thing. The mass was
crushed flat and shapeless by its own vast weight, and the larger boughs,
which did not touch the earth, were snapped short off by the concussion of
their fall.

Billy Jago held his back and whined while Barron spoke, as much to himself
as the woodman.

"Dear God!" he said, "to think that this glory of the hedge-row--this
kingdom of song birds--should come to the making of pauper coffins and
lodging-house furniture!"

"Squire must have money; an' folks must have coffins," said Billy. "You can
sleep your last sleep so sound in ellum as you can in oak, for that
matter."

Feeling the truth of the assertion, Barron admitted it, then turned his
back on the fallen king and pursued his way with thoughts reverting to the
proposed picture. There was nothing to alarm Joan Tregenza about him; which
seemed well, as he meant to approach the girl herself at the first
opportunity, and not her parents. Barron did not carry "artist" stamped
upon him. He was plainly attired in a thick tweed suit and wore a cap of
the same material. The man appeared insignificantly small. He was
clean-shaved and looked younger than his five-and-thirty years seen a short
distance off, but older when you stood beside him. He strolled now onward
toward the sea, and his cheeks took some color from the fine air. He walked
with a stick and carried a pair of field-glasses in a case slung over his
shoulder. The field-glasses had become a habit with him, but he rarely used
them, for his small slate-colored eyes were keen.

Once and again John Barron turned to look at St. Michael's Mount, seen afar
across the bay. The magic of morning made it beautiful and the great pile
towered grandly through a sunny haze. No detail disturbed the eye under
this effect of light, and the mount stood vast, dim, golden, magnified and
glorified into a fairy palace of romance built by immortal things in a
night. Seen thus, it even challenged the beholder's admiration, of which he
was at all times sparing. Until that hour, he had found nothing but
laughter for this same mount, likening the spectacle of it, with its castle
and cottages, now to a senile monarch with moth-eaten ermine about his toes
and a lop-sided crown on his head, now to a monstrous sea-snail creeping
shoreward.

Barron, having walked down the hill to Mouse-hole, breasted slowly the
steep acclivity which leads therefrom toward the west. Presently he turned,
where a plateau of grass sloped above the cliffs into a little theater of
banks ablaze with gorse. And here his thoughts and the image they were
concerned with perished before reality. Framed in a halo of golden furze,
her hands making a little penthouse above her brow, and in her blue eyes
the mingled hue of sea and sky, stood a girl looking out at the horizon.
The bud of a wondrous fair woman she was, and Barron saw her slim yet
vigorous figure accentuated under its drab-brown draperies by a kindly
breeze. He noted the sweet, childish freshness of her face, her plump arms
filling the sleeves of rusty black, and her feet in shoes too big for them.
Her hair was hidden under a linen sun-bonnet, but one lock had escaped, and
he noted that it was the color of wheat ripe for the reaping. He regretted
it had not been darker, but observed that it chimed well enough with the
flaming flowers behind it. And then he frankly praised Nature in his heart
for sending her servant such a splendid harmony in gold and brown. There
stood his picture in front of him. He gazed a brief second only, and then
his quick mind worked to find what human interest had brought Joan Tregenza
to this place and turned her eyes to the sea. It might be that herein
existed the possibility of the introduction he desired. He felt that
victory probably depended on the events of the next two or three minutes.
He owed a supreme effort of skill and tact to Fate, which had thus
befriended him, and he rose to the occasion.

The girl looked up as he came suddenly upon her, but his eyes were already
away and fixed upon the horizon before she turned. Observing that he was
not regarding her, she put up her hands again and continued to scan the
remote sea-line where a thin trail of dark smoke told of a steamer, itself
apparently invisible. Barron took his glasses from their case, and seeing
that the girl made no movement of departure, acted deliberately, and
presently began to watch a fleet of brown sails and black hulls putting
forth from the little harbor below. Then, without looking at her or taking
his eyes from the glasses, he spoke.

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