Lying Prophets | Page 2

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