"This is folly, madness. Where is your trust and belief? You don't trust, nor love, nor—"
"Doan't 'e say that! Never say that! It edn' true. You'm all to me, an' you knaws it right well, an' I'll gaw to the world's end with 'e, I will—ay, an' trust 'e wi' my life!"
He moved away and she followed, hastening as he hastened. Unutterable desolation marked the spot. Life had vanished save only where sheep clustered under a bank with their tails to the weather, and long-legged lambs blinked their yellow eyes and bleated as the couple passed. Despite their haste the man and the girl were very wet before reaching the shelter of the byre. Rain-water dribbled off his cap on to his hot face and his feet were soaking. Joan was breathless with haste; her draggled skirts clung to her; and the struggle against the storm made her giddy.
So they reached the place of shelter; and the gale burst over it with a great, crowning yell of wind and hurtle of rain. Then John Barren opened the byre door and Joan Tregenza passed in before him; whereupon he followed and shut the door.
A loose slate clattered upon the roof, and from inside the byre it sounded like a hand tapping high above the artist's bed of brown fern—tapping some message which neither the man nor the girl could read—tapping, tapping, tapping tirelessly upon ears wholly deaf to it.
BOOK TWO
NATURE
CHAPTER ONE
AN INTERVAL
For a week the rain came down and it blew hard from the west. Then the weather moderated, and there were intervals of brightness and mild, damp warmth that brought a green veil trembling over the world like magic. The elms broke into a million buds, the pear trees in sunny corners put forth snowy flowers; the crimson knobs of the apple-blossom prepared to unfold. In the market gardens around and about Newlyn the plums were already setting, the wallflowers, which make a carpet of golden-brown beneath the fruit-trees in many orchards, were velvety with bloom; the raspberry canes, bent hoop-like in long rows, beautifully brightened the dark earth with young green; and verdure likewise twinkled even to the heart of the forests, to the stony nipples of the moor's vast, lonely bosom. So spring came, heralded by the thrush; borne upon the wings of the western wind. And then followed a brief change with more heavy rains and lower temperature.