Lying Prophets: A Novel

by Eden Phillpotts

There was a world of sorrow in the words and the hopeless ring in them startled Uncle Chirgwin, for it denoted greater changes in the girl's mind than he thought existed. She seemed nearer to the truth. It cut his heart to see her suffering, but he thanked Heaven that the inevitable knowledge was coming, and prayed it might be the first step toward peace. He was silent with his thoughts, and Joan spoke again, repeating her last words.

"Iss, Eve had Adam to put his arm around her an' kiss her wet eyes. He were more to her than what the garden was, I'll lay, or God either. That's the bitter black God o' my faither. What for did He let the snake in the garden 'tall if He really loved them fust poor fools? Why dedn' He put they flamin' angels theer sooner. 'Twas the snake they should have watched an' kep' out."

Uncle Chirgwin looked at her with round terrified eyes. She had never echoed Barron's sentiments to such a horrified listener.

"Doan't, for pity's sake, Joan! The wickedness of it! Him as taught you to think such frightful thoughts tried to ruin your sawl so well as your body. Oh, if you'd awnly up an' say, 'That man was wrong an' I'll forget en an' turn to the Saviour.'"

"You caan't understan'. I do put ugly bits o' thot afore 'e, but if you'd heard him as opened my eyes, you'd knaw 'tedn' ugly taken altogether. I knaws so much, but caan't speak it out. Us done no sin, an' I ban't shamed to look the sun in the faace, nor you. An' he will come—he will—if theer's a kind God in heaven he'll come back to me. If 'e doan't, then I'll say that faither's God's the right wan."

"Doan't 'e put on a bold front, Joan gal. Theer's things tu deep for the likes o' us. You ban't prayin' right, I reckon. Theer's a voice hid in you. Listen to that. Nature's spawk to 'e an' now er's dumb. Listen to t'other, lassie. Nature do guide beasts an' birds an' the poor herbs o' the field; but you—you listen to t'other. You'll never be happy no more till you awns 'twas a sad mistake an' do ax in the right plaace for pardon."

"I want no pardon," she said. "I have done no wrong, I tell 'e. Wheer's justice to? 'Cause the man do bide away, I be wicked; if he comed back to-morrer an' married me—what then? I be sinless in the matter of it, an' Nature do knaw it, an' God do knaw it."

But her breast heaved and her eyes were wet with unshed tears. Uncle Chirgwin, her solitary trust and stand-by, had drifted away too. His hope was dead and she could not revive it. He had never spoken so strongly before, but now he was taking up Mary's line of action and had ranged himself against her. It almost seemed to Joan that he reflected in a meek, diluted fashion, as the moon turns the sun's golden fire to silver, something of what he must have heard that afternoon from her father. This defection acted definitely on the girl's temperament. She fought fear, hardened her heart against doubt, cast suspicion far away as treason to "Mister Jan" and gave to hope a new lease of life. She would be patient for his sake, she would trust in him still.

There was something grand in the loneliness, she told herself. He would know perhaps one day of her great patient faith and love. And the trial would make her brain and heart bigger and better fit her for the position of wife to him. The struggle was fought by her with that courage which lies beyond man's comprehension. She looked at the world with bright eyes when there was necessity for facing it; she exhausted her ingenuity in schemes for communicating with John Barron. If he only knew! She felt that even had change darkened his affection for her, yet, most surely, the thought of the baby must tempt him back again. Thus, with sustained bravery and ignorance, she left her hand in Nature's, and her faith, rising gloriously above the doubt of the time, trusted that majestic heathen goddess as a little child trusts its mother.

Fate played another prank upon her not long afterward and thrust into her hands a possible means of access to John Barron. A favorite resort of Joan's was the brook which ran down the valley beneath Drift and Sancreed. The little stream wound through a fair coomb between orchards, meadows, wastes of fern and heather. At this season of the year the valley was very lonely, and a certain spot beside the stream often tempted Joan by reason of its comfort and its peace. From here, sitting on a granite bowlder clothed in soft green mosses and having a shape into which human limbs might fit easily, the girl could see much that was fair. The meadows were all sprinkled with the silver-mauve of cuckoo-flowers—Shakespeare's "lady's smock"; the hills sloped upward under oaken saplings as yet too young for the stripping; the valley stretched winding landward beneath Sancreed. Above and far away stretched the Cornish moors dotted with man's mining enterprises, chiefly deserted. Ding-Dong raised its gaunt engine stack and, distant though it was, Joan's sharp eyes could see the rusty arm of iron stretching forth from the brickwork, motionless, not worth the removing. Close at hand, where the stream wandered babbling at her feet, the whole glory of spring shone on blossoms and grasses where the world of the stream-side sent forth a warm, living smell. The wildness of the upland moors stretched down into the valley below them. There glimmered blue-green patches of bracken, speckled with the red and white hides of calves which fed and scampered dew-lap deep; and the fern was all sheened with light where the sunshine brightened its polished leaves. The stream wound through the midst, bedecked and adorned with purple bugle flowers, bridged with dog-roses and honeysuckles, in festoons, in bunches and in sprays, crowned with scented gorse, fringed with yellow irises which splashed flaming reflections where the brook widened and slowed into shallow little backwaters. Flags and cresses framed the margins; meadowsweets made the air fragrant above, and granite bowlders fretted the waters silver, their foundations hidden in dark water-weed. Sunshine danced on every tiny cascade and threw stars and twinkling flashes of light upward from the brown pools upon the banks. Everything was upon a miniature scale, even to the trout which lived in the stream, flashed their dim shadows under its waters, leaped into the air after the flies, set little clouds of sand shimmering as they darted up and down or, when surprised, wriggled away into favorite holes and hiding places beneath the banks and trailing weeds. Ling and wortleberry too were moorland visitors in the valley, and the bog heather already budded.