A Singer from the Sea, Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr [best story books to read TXT] 📗

her sin. Was not Eli punished for his son's transgressions? The duty before him was a terrible one. It made his brown face blanch and his strong, stern mouth quiver with mental anguish.

But he laid the plan on the table and crossed out carefully all the figures which represented John Penelles. Then he wrote a few lines to the superintendent and enclosed his self-degradation. Joan wondered what he would do about the St. Clair appointment, for he had asked no one to take his place, and early in the afternoon he told her to get the lantern ready, as he was going there. She divined what he purposed to do, and she refused to go with him. He did not oppose her decision; perhaps he was glad she felt able to spare herself and him the extra humiliation.

Never had the little chapel been so crowded. All his mates from the neighbouring villages were present; for everyone had some share of that itching curiosity that likes to see how a soul suffers. A few of the leaders spoke to him; a great many appeared to be lost in those divine meditations suitable to the house of worship. John's first action awakened everyone present to a sense of something unusual. He refused to ascend the pulpit. He passed within the rails that enclosed the narrow sacred spot below the pulpit, drew the small table forward, and, without the preface of hymn or prayer, plunged at once into his own confession of unworthiness to minister to them. He read aloud the letter which he had received from his daughter, and averred his belief in its truthfulness. He told, with the minutest veracity, every word of his quarrel with Jacob Trenager. He confessed his shameful and violent temper in his own home; his hatred and his desire and purposes of revenge; and he asked the pardon of Trenager and of every member of the church which had been scandalized by the action of his daughter and by his own sinfulness.

His voice, sad and visibly restrained by a powerful will, throbbed with the burning emotions which made the man quiver from head to feet. It was impossible not to feel something of the anguish that looked out of his large patient eyes and trembled on his lips. Women began to sob hysterically, men bent their heads low or covered their faces with their hands; an irresistible wave of sorrow and sympathy was carrying every soul with it.

But, even while John was speaking, a man rose and walked up the aisle to the table at which John stood. He turned his face to the congregation, and, lifting up his big hand, cried out:

"Be quiet, John Penelles. I be to blame in this matter. I be the villain! There isn't a Cornishman living that be such a Judas as I be. 'Twas under my old boat Denas Penelles found the love-letters that couldn't have come to her own home. Why did I lend my boat and myself for such a cruel bad end? Was it because I liked the young man? No, I hated him. What for, then?" He put his hand in his pocket, took out a piece of gold, and, in the sight of all, dashed it down on the table.

"That's what I did it for. One pound! A wisht beggarly bit of money! Judas asked thirty pieces. I sold Paul Pyn for one piece, and it was too much--too much for such a ghastly, mean old rascal. I be cruel sorry--but there then! where be the good of 'sorry' now? That bit of gold have burnt my soul blacker than a coal! dreadful! aw, dreadful! I wouldn't touch it again to save my mean old life. And if there be a man or a woman in Cornwall that will touch it, they be as uncommon bad as I be! that is sure."

"Paul, I forgive you, and there is my hand upon it. A man can only be 'sorry.' 'Sorry' be all that God asks," said John Penelles in a low voice.

"I be no man, John. I be just a cruel bad fellow. I never had a child to love me or one to love. No woman would be my wife. I be kind of forsaken--no kith or kin to care about me," and, with his brown, rugged face cast down, he began to walk toward the door. Then Ann Bude rose in the sight of all. She went to his side; she took his hand and passed out of the chapel with him. And everyone looked at the other, for Paul had loved Ann for twenty years and twenty times at least Ann had refused to be his wife. But now, in this hour of his shame and sorrow, she had gone to his side, and a sigh and a smile passed from heart to heart and from face to face.

John stood still, with his eyes fixed on the piece of gold. It lay on the table like a guilty thing. All Pyn's sin seemed to have passed into it. Men and women stood up to look at it where it lay--the wretched tool of a bad man. It was a relief when Jacob Trenager gave out a hymn, a greater relief that John Penelles went out while they were singing it. Brothers and sisters all wished to talk about John and John's trouble, but to talk to him in his grief and humiliation was a different thing. Only the old chapel-keeper watched him going along the rocky coast at a dangerous speed, his lantern swinging wildly to his big strides.

But a five-minutes' walk brought John to a place where he was alone with God and the sea. Oh, then, how he cried out for pity! for comfort! for help! for forgiveness! His voice was not the inaudible pleading of a man praying in his chamber; it was like the despairing call of a strong swimmer in the death-billows. It went out over the ocean; it went out beyond time and space; it touched the heart of the Divinity who pitieth the sufferers, "even as a father pitieth his children."

There was a glow of firelight through his cottage window, but no candle. Joan was bending sorrowfully over the red coals. John was glad of the dim light, glad of the quiet, glad of the solitude, for Joan was only his other self--his sweeter and more hopeful self. He told her all that had passed. She stood up beside him, she held his head against her breast and let him sob away there the weight of grief and shame that almost choked him. Then she spoke bravely to the broken-down, weary man:

"John, my old dear, don't you sit on the ash-heap like Job, and bemoan yourself and your birthday, and go on as if the devil had more to do with you than with other Christians. Speak up to your Heavenly Father, and ask Him 'why,' and answer Him like a man; do now! And go to Exeter in the morning, and make yourself sure that Denas be a honest woman. I, her mother, be sure of it; but there then! men do be so bad themselves, they can't trust their own hearts, nor their own ears and eyes. 'I believe' will make a woman happy; but a man, God knows, they must go to the law and the testimony, or they are not satisfied. It's dreadful! dreadful!"

They talked the night away, and early in the morning John went to Exeter. With the proofs of his daughter's marriage in his hand, he felt as if he could face his enemies. Joan was equal to them without it. She knew they would find her out, and they found her singing at her work. Her placid face and cheery words of welcome nonplussed the most spiteful; the majority who came to triumph over her went away without being able to say one of the many evil thoughts in their hearts; and not a few found themselves hoping and wishing good things for the bride.

But it was a great effort, and many times that day Joan went into the inner room, and buried her face in her pillow, and had her cry out. Only she confidently expected John to bring back the proofs of her child's marriage, and in that expectation she bore without weakening the slant eye, and the shrugged shoulder, and the denying looks of her neighbours. And of course John found no minister in Exeter who had married Denas Penelles and Roland Tresham; and it never once struck him that Denas had been married in Plymouth and found no time to write until she reached Exeter. Neither did Joan think of such a possibility; yet when her husband came in without a word and sat down with a black, stubborn face, she knew that he had been disappointed.

That night John held his peace, even from good; and Joan felt that for once she must do the same. So they sat together without candle, without speech, bowed to the earth with shame, feeling with bitter anguish that their old age had been beggared of love, and honour, and hope, and happiness; and, alas! so beggared by the child who had been the joy and the pride of their lives.

At the same hour Denas sat with Roland in one of the fine restaurants to be found in High Holborn. They had eaten of the richest viands, the sparkle of the champagne cup was in both their eyes, and they were going anon to the opera. Denas had a silk robe on and a little pink opera cloak. Her long pale gloves and her bouquet of white roses were by her side. Roland was in full evening dress. Their eyes flashed; their cheeks flamed with pleasant anticipations. They rose from their dinner with smiles and whispered love-words; and Roland ordered with the air of a lord, "A carriage for the opera."

From John and Joan these events were mercifully hidden. It is only God who can bear the awful light of omniscience and of omnipresence. The things we cannot see! The things we never know! Let us be unspeakably grateful for this blessed ignorance! For many a heart would break that lives on if it only knew--if it only saw--how unnecessary was its love to those it loves so fondly!


CHAPTER IX.


A PIECE OF MONEY AND A SONG.

"Tis but a Judas coin, though it be gold;
The price of love forsworn, 'tis full of fears
And griefs for those who dare to hold;
And leaves a stain, only washed clean with tears."

"Behold and listen while the fair
Breaks in sweet sounds the willing air;
She raised her voice so high, and sang so clear,
At every close she made the attending throng
Replied, and bore the burthen of the song;
So just, so small, yet in so sweet a note,
It seemed the music melted in the throat."
--DRYDEN.

The piece of money left by Pyn might have been a curse; no one would touch it. While the women stood in groups talking of poor John Penelles and Denas, the men held an informal meeting around the table on which it lay.

"This be the communion table," said Jacob Trenager;