Читать книгу: «The Making of William Edwards; or, The Story of the Bridge of Beauty», страница 14

CHAPTER XXIV.
PONT-Y-PRIDD

It was a glorious day for the self-taught architect. The hanging woods on either bank of the river held nearly as many spectators as trees, whilst along the narrow roads came a motley multitude on foot or horseback, or in cumbrous, top-heavy leather carriages, drawn by four horses (less for state than necessity), poor as well as rich having assembled from all parts to witness the opening of the new bridge that was to do so much for the county.

'To witness my triumph,' William Edwards phrased it. But then, too much diffidence was not the family failing. And, for a self-taught man, it was a triumph.

There was no room for two carriages to pass abreast, but the few there assembled crossed alternately, the Viscount's prancing horses leading the way. Then there was a rush of people, mounted and on foot; horses, ponies, mules, and asses scampering across pell-mell in such wild confusion and entanglement, amid shouts and untranslatable cries, as certainly tested the stability of the structure. And such congratulations greeted the builder as were calculated to turn more seasoned heads than his.

Davy, full of brotherly pride and affection, had brought his mother on a pillion behind him; and there, surrounded by her children and her grandchildren, the old dame, overcome by her emotion in contrasting the present with the past, and witnessing the great work of her son and his reception by the gentry, fairly sobbed aloud, the big tears rolling down her tanned and wrinkled cheeks.

'Name o' goodness, mother, I don't be knowing what you have got to cry for, whatever. People do be looking at you!' remarked Rhys curtly, on a hint from Cate.

''Deed, I do be crying for joy. I never expected to be seeing a day like this.'

'Do leave mother alone, Rhys,' quickly remonstrated Davy in an undertone. 'Her heart do be full, and it must run over, look you.'

Evan Evans and Ales stood by, dressed in their Sunday best for the great occasion, a newly-breeched boy by the hand.

'I do be wishing Jane Edwards would not be washing the new bridge with her tears, Evan – 'deed, I do,' whispered Ales to him.

'Ah, yes, it do be a bad baptism,' he echoed, shaking his head, which had been crammed with superstition on shipboard. 'And I do be hoping the rain will keep off, for the clouds be gathering over Garth Mountain, look you.'

The rain did keep off for two or three hours, until long after the hand-shaking and speech-making were over, and the great people had dispersed, and all who had not stayed behind to feast were on their way homewards, thankful they would be able in future to cross the river dry-shod and out of danger, whatever the hour or the weather, the 'cleverness' of the Widow Edwards' son being on every tongue.

That son, however, had been surfeited with praise, and was moving amongst the crowds in irritable reaction seeking for some one he failed to find – some one whose approbation would have o'ertopped the highest.

At last, when he was ready to bite his lips with vexation, a boy, who came riding hastily from the Cardiff Road, put a letter in his hand, and lingered as if waiting for an answer.

The writing was Elaine's.

The letter was torn open impatiently.

Only a few blotted words: —

'Dear Friend, – We hear your meritorious work is complete, and send you our heartfelt greetings; but we are in great trouble, for Uncle Rosser had a fit last night, and has not spoken since. Aunt is full of grief. She has sent to Bristol for my cousin, for the apothecary says uncle cannot live. You will pardon our absence to-day; and believe me, your sincere well-wisher,

'Elaine Parry.'

Two hours later he had left the feasters and was in the saddle, muffled in a thick riding-coat, speeding on to Cardiff through driving rain and the darkening shades of evening.

When he drew rein at the baker's door he was too late for all but consolation. The blind man had opened his long-closed eyes on the glorious wonders of eternity.

Never had Elaine felt so much the need of his strong arm and self-reliant individuality as then, in their overwhelming affliction. His unexpected arrival touched a sensitive chord and broke down the barriers between them. She sprang towards him, and clung to him weeping, as she had never done before.

Amazement checked the flow of Mrs. Rosser's tears for the moment; and when he put out his hand to grasp hers, she too felt there was a strong friend to rely on in their extremity.

Then was it first observed that he was wringing wet; and in hospitable cares for the long absent, the first acuteness of pain was something blunted.

After that, as if he had been Mrs. Rosser's own son, he took all miserable details off their feminine hands. It was he, too, who met the daughter – Mrs. Elton – and her Bristolian husband on their arrival, and broke the distressing intelligence to them.

Death involves changes. No sooner was the dead laid in the earth than the desirability of the widow's future residence with her daughter was openly discussed. Consideration for Elaine appeared the only obstacle to the plan.

'I am quite willing to make a home for my mother-in-law,' said Mr. Elton in private to Mr. Edwards, with a show of self-complacent liberality, much as though he patted himself on the back for a praiseworthy sacrifice, ignoring the savings of years likely to bear her company; 'but I cannot consent to burden myself with the young woman. And she cannot really expect it. She is no relation of mine or my wife's. She must look out for a situation. She quite blocks the way to an amicable adjustment of affairs,' he added irritably.

William speedily removed that block out of their way.

'Do not trouble yourself about Elaine, sir,' put in William stiffly. 'There has been a situation waiting for her over two years.'

Mr. Elton opened his eyes. 'Indeed!'

'Yes, sir. Two years back I pressed her to become my honoured wife, but her strong, sense of duty constrained her to repress her own inclinations, and send me away wifeless rather than desert her aunt and uncle in their old age. You can adjust your affairs irrespective of Elaine Parry, I can assure you. A good home and a loving welcome await her.'

Mr. Elton was snubbed, and looked it.

In less than three months there was a very quiet wedding at Cardiff, and Elaine went away with her husband to his farm, midway between his bridge and the ruined Castle of Caerphilly, where his old mother and Davy lived, within easy reach of Jonet and her husband. The few houses have multiplied since then into a village that bears the name of Aber.

At first old Mrs. Edwards felt as if she was to be a second time deposed. And she expected Elaine's town ways would clash with her country ones. But when she found that Elaine deferred to her as she had done to her own aunt, and was desirous to be instructed in all that pertained to her duties on the farm, there was no word too good for her 'clever son William's clever wife.'

Then she could already knit and spin, and had brought her own wheel, as well as a shelf of books, and something in hard cash, so that, as Davy said, she was 'quite an acquisition on the farm.'

William had built the house according to his enlarged ideas of domestic comfort. There were two storeys, and notwithstanding the very heavy tax on glass, it shone in every window, and these were of useful size. He had brought home along with his wife the bureau he had found so useful for his papers, and kept them and his books in a room set apart for himself.

With the completion of the bridge, he abandoned to John Llwyd the cottage he had erected on the river's side, his new furnace work being within sufficiently accessible distance of the farm, so long as he could leave his efficient foreman on the spot, and his workmen also. He was glad then he had erected permanent and commodious houses for the men, instead of temporary huts, since there was still employment for them all. Explorations for iron and coal were going on in the vicinity. These created a fresh demand for labour, and a corresponding demand for roofs to shelter the newcomers.

As he beheld the new colony of labourers and managers rising up, as it were, under his auspices, his heart swelled with pride and self-sufficient inflation.

'Ah, yes,' he would say to his wife, 'this is all my doing. I told Rhys I would be the greater man. Yes, he must own it now, if he would not then. Look at my wonderful bridge. It will stand for ever.'

He was saying something of the kind one morning, when his first-born, a boy he had named David after his brother, was about eighteen months old. He had the child on his knee at the time.

Elaine had a shuddering dread upon her whenever she heard his boastful words.

'Yes, William dear,' she said soberly, 'we know your skill is great, but I wish you would not boast of the stability of your bridge so often. We, as well as the bridge, are in the hands of the Almighty!'

He put the child down hastily and rose to his feet. 'Surely, Elaine, you are not going to join the croakers? Rhys told me the other day, "Not to hold my head so high, for pride was sure to have a fall." Sure, I have a right to be proud if any one has.'

'If?' murmured Elaine under her breath; but he caught the doubtful word, and, snatching at his hat, strode out of the house angrily.

A thick mantle of snow covered hill and valley, against which the whitewashed houses looked grey and dingy.

'It do be thawing fast,' said Davy to him as they met at the gate, he with a spade over his shoulder. 'I do hope the rain will be keeping off till the snow be all gone. But I don't be liking the looks of the clouds in the north-west.'

'Why not?' questioned William sharply.

Davy hesitated. 'Well, if the rain do come upon the melting snow, we shall be having heavy floods.'

'Well, and what then?' snappily.

''Deed, and I do be always thinking of the bridge when the floods come.'

'Pouf! the bridge is safe if a hundred floods come.' And on he went, ruffled, but wrapped in self-opinionated vanity. He had forgotten George Whitfield and his Master then.

Nevertheless, he went to take a look at the bridge and the river, on his way to the new ironworks, where his first furnace was already at work.

'Ah, well,' he thought, 'the water is high; but, pouf! that is no flood.'

Towards afternoon a thin rain began to fall and liquefy the melting snow. As the men were leaving work, Llwyd came up to him with an anxious face and whispered, 'Master, the river do be desperately full, and if' —

William looked as if he could have struck his faithful monitor to the earth.

Yes, the river was rising and racing through the three arches with the swiftness of a torrent, surcharged with hay and straw, brushwood and mould, washed downward in its course, but they swept well under the bold archways and swirled away in eddies beyond.

'There can be no danger. Those piers are firm enough,' he muttered, as if to convince himself as well as Llwyd.

Dusk came down and blotted out the scene. In turning away he came upon Rhys, whose gloomy face it was well he could not see.

Llwyd and Davy too were there, with other watchers who had helped to rear the bridge.

'Tell Elaine I shall stay with Llwyd to-night,' said William to Davy. It was his first note of apprehension. Towards midnight he said, 'If the rain ceases there can be no danger.'

But the rain did not cease. As the night fled and the morning hours advanced, the winds came howling and tearing like demons down the Taff Valley, driving the pelting rain before them in a mad hurricane, fighting for mastery alike with tall green pines and the bare boughs of elms and gnarled oaks.

Gradually, as lapping waters undermined rocks and rugged banks, already loosened by frost and melting snows, along many a swollen mountain stream the surging torrent bore down their tributary reeds and shrubs and earth, along with riven boughs and uptorn trees, that beat like battering-rams against the good stone piers, holding their trust so sturdily. Then, eddying, the mighty current of the mocking Taff swung the tall fir-trees round and barred the still open arches cross-wise, one by one. Here, as in a net, the lamentable wreckage of the moors, of ruined cots and devastated farms, was caught and built up into a dam the turbid water could neither pass nor wash away. And rising, still rising, rising swifter than the rising sun, like a gigantic monster playing with boulder stones for bowls, the resistless river hammered with them against the parapet, and beat it in. Then, with a tumultuous roar as of triumph, and a deafening crash that startled sleepers in their beds more than a mile distant, the bridge that was built for centuries was swept away into irreparable ruin.

A shriek, as of mortal horror, rose as an echo from the crowded banks. The three brothers and their friends looked in each other's whitened faces as the cost of the catastrophe cut keenly into their souls.

Rhys groaned aloud.

'There does never have been such an awful flood since I was born; no masonry whatever could be standing against it,' cried grey-headed Owen Griffith, as he leant upon his staff to bear up against the wind.

He had seen the darkening glances cast on the luckless architect, and interposed to spare him the reproaches of coarse tongues.

'Keep that consolation for those who have run no risk. It will not be saving Cate and the rest from ruin and beggary, through this braggart brother of mine and his bridge,' burst from ungovernable Rhys.

'It may save me and you all from ruin,' retorted William defiantly. 'I have discovered what a flood can do, and what must be guarded against. Before the term of our guarantee expires, I will span this river with a bridge no flood shall wash away. 'Deed I will.'

A crowd had gathered. There were mocking voices heard beside Rhys'. A quarrel and a tumult threatened; for fierce as the war of the elements was the tempest raging in the breasts of men who had been closest friends.

'Come away,' cried placable Davy, linking his arm within William's, and looking round him. 'When the Lord do be speaking men should be silent. Yes, and before the breath of His nostrils the best man's handiwork will go down, look you.' And whispering something to his baited brother of 'home' and 'Elaine,' he drew him peaceably away.

He had no word of reproach, though he had staked the savings of his life, equally with Rhys, and his forbearance silenced others, then and afterwards.

Nor did any reproaches or taunts meet William at his own fireside. Rumour had run fleetfooted before them with the disastrous tidings. The shock had thus been anticipated. Clasping arms and sympathetic words alone awaited him. 'It is the will of God,' said both mother and wife; 'it is useless to rebel.'

Strange to say, William Edwards was apparently the least cast down of any. In a day or two he had recovered much of his elasticity. He showed a brave face to friends and envious foes, and maintained that no man should forfeit his guarantee. He would replace the wrecked bridge with a better.

There were men who sneered; there were more who sympathised, for the rebuilding would be at his own cost, and would sweep away all his former gains. Yet all friends did not desert him. Mr. Morris and the Viscount defended him against malicious attacks on 'unqualified pretenders.' No one could deny the vehement pressure of the terrible flood.

His newer plan, a bridge of a single arch, and of a span unprecedented, was seen and approved.

Workmen were not far to seek. Almost with the subsidence of the waters labourers were at work removing the still upstanding remains of the old piers, the tenacity of the masonry giving the undaunted builder fresh hope.

On fresh foundations another bridge arose, Jonet's husband marvelling at the measurements supplied for the wooden framework.

'Yes,' said William, whose pride and self-assumption rose as he surveyed the magnificent proportions of his bridge, 'I defy any flood to beat that down. Look at its breadth and height! Any volume of water could sweep under that arch! Yes, indeed, if it brought half a forest down with it. The piers were the mistake before, Thomas.'

''Deed, yes!' assented the other.

The keystone of the arch had been laid; time had been given for cement to harden; the wooden framework of the arch was being removed when this was said; only the parapets were wanting, and on those the men were beginning.

Another day the last scrap of timber was gone. Rhys had come down sullenly to the water's edge, weighted by his responsibility, and too doubtful of his brother's skill to give even his perseverance credit. There he found Jonet and Elaine, each with an infant in her arms. A few idlers stood staring and gaping under the trees on the steep banks.

All at once, with no more premonitory shock than a slight tremulous motion under foot that scared the working masons away, the keystone of the arch shot up into the air like a ball; the centre of the arch seemed to rise bodily and press upwards like an inverted V, as if impelled by superhuman force from the sides; there was a report as of a tremendous gunpowder explosion, a blinding shower of dust and flying stones whirling in mid air, a wide gap where a noble structure had been five minutes before.

Draw a curtain over the scene of the collapse. Close the ears to the taunts and mockery, the scorn and derisive epithets, which assail the unfortunate architect wheresoever he goes. Everywhere, save under his own roof, where wife and mother and Davy combined to shield him. But only his wife can enter into his feelings, and alleviate his bitter humiliation. Where he is weak, she is strong, and her very touch is healing.

Let us follow him into his little private room, and find him on his knees acknowledging in all humility his self-sufficient dependence on himself, his proud and confident trust in his own skill, his forgetfulness of the Lord, omnipotent alike to create and to destroy, from whom he derived whatever mental superiority he possessed, who had led him step by step to success, who had spoken to him by the warning voice of George Whitfield, and at last had broken his stubborn heart, and, with the thunders of calamity, brought him to acknowledge that, 'Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it.'

Out of that room he walked that day another manner of man.

He was the first to confess that the haunches or side foundations of his bridge had not sufficient strength to bear the strain of the lofty and expansive arch he had imposed upon them. But he added, 'Please God, I will yet, with His help, fulfil my contract, and build a bridge that shall stand, even if it leave me penniless.'

Fonder was Elaine of her husband in his humility and misfortune than in the pride of his success.

Davy had always stuck by him. 'He set no store by his bit of money whatever. William was welcome to every penny, if it was any good.'

Others, richer than Davy, who had held aloof from the 'self-confident amateur,' as they called him, were moved by his newly-developed modesty, no less than by his indomitable perseverance and resolution (Rhys called it obstinacy) in the face of catastrophes that would have overwhelmed weaker men. And they honoured his integrity. When his fresh plans were ready, funds to 'assist' were ready also.

Over those plans he had pondered and prayed. Like a flash it came to his mind that, as the single arch was a strength in masonry, a double arch – that is, a circle – must have double strength, and on that he formed his plan, to bind the haunches of his bridge with cylinders of decreasing sizes, not to narrow his span of arch.

Once more the river-bed was cleared. But on the Sunday, before a stone of the new bridge was laid, he summoned his workpeople around him in the Druids' circle, and, standing upon the rocking-stone, he preached to them from the text, 'Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it,' telling the story of his sudden conversion, of the failure of his other bridges as providential instruments to save him from overweening arrogance and self-sufficiency; and wound up with an exhortation that they should lay every stone as if they laid it before the Lord, who alone could decide whether this or that man's work was good or bad.

And so, week by week, as the work went on, Sunday by Sunday he preached and prayed amongst his men on that Druidical altar, consecrating it afresh to the living God, and dedicating himself and his life to the service of Christ.

In like manner, when the last coping-stone was in its place, and his workmen had gathered up their tools to depart, he knelt down upon the bridge, and dedicated that with prayer, saying at the last, 'Keep Thy servant from presumptuous sins. And be the glory Thine, O Lord.'

Thus, in 1755, when William Edwards was but thirty-six, he had completed his trinity of bridges over the terrible Taff. And there to this day it stands, fair to see, with the date of its erection upon it, a bridge with a wider span than the Venetian Rialto – a bridge pierced by three hollow cylinders on either side, rising gracefully with the magnificent arch as they decrease in size.¹⁶

Upon the opening day, apart from the peasantry, the magnates of three counties flocked to see this wonder of a bridge, and the indomitable man who had created it, in the face of difficulties that would have daunted weaker men.

As one by one Welshmen of note bent from horse or carriage to shake hands with Mr. Edwards and congratulated him on the unrivalled structure his genius had created, and he was heard to say modestly in reply, 'I trust, with the blessing of God, this bridge will stand,' even Rhys admitted that, ''Deed, after all, Willem was a great man,' and Thomas Williams kept close beside him, as if desirous to share in his employer's glory.

For Mr. Morris, the staunch friend of William Edwards, there with due ceremony, breaking a bottle of wine upon the parapet, had named the bridge 'Pont-y-Pridd' – The Bridge of Beauty.

And when the loud acclaim had subsided, the speaker gave as a reason for the name, not alone the wondrous beauty of the structure, or the new features the self-trained builder had introduced into bridge-building, but that out of his failures he had built up an undoubted success, and out of seeming calamities built up another, if an unseen bridge, to span the turbulent River of Life and bear him securely across from this world to a better, the beautiful bridge of humble reliance on the Almighty Creator and Ruler of the universe.