Читать книгу: «The Making of William Edwards; or, The Story of the Bridge of Beauty», страница 4

CHAPTER VII.
THE YOUNG PLAGUE

Thankful as was Mrs. Edwards, the mother, for the restoration of her missing darling; as a farmer, sorely behind with the autumnal field-work, the loss of half a day's labour to every useful hand upon the farm chafed her no less than it irritated Rhys. But when the child was absolutely ill, and required careful nursing or watching, she was torn with a double anxiety. The life of her child was at stake, and so was her possession of the farm. There was so much to be done before November set in, and so few hands to accomplish all. The outdoor work could not be neglected, or the live stock and the crops would suffer. Yet some one must remain indoors to watch the child, restless with fever. Davy was willing, but Davy was too young, and lacked strength to overcome resistance to nauseous draughts.

She was at her wits' end; could not neglect her child, dared not neglect her farm.

In this emergency, Rhys made a suggestion that Mrs. Griffith might perhaps be willing to spare her daughter Cate, a stout, red-haired, good-looking lass about his own age, who had already shown her active ability to make herself useful.

After some slight hesitation on the part of the girl's mother, it was agreed that Cate should be at the farm early every morning, provided she returned home in the evenings before nightfall. Her temporary services were to be repaid with cheese made from the mixed milk of cows and ewes, or other farm produce, a customary mode of payment for casual service.

Owen had suggested to his wife that the farm would be a good school for their girl. She would see things done there, both by Mrs. Edwards and Ales, that she had no chance of seeing at home, and she could have no better training for future service.

The girl proved quite an acquisition. She was just as willing as Davy, and more efficient. When not wanted beside William, she was ready to relieve Ales at the churn or the scouring of pots and pails. Then she had a fairly good temper and persuasive ways that made her a capital nurse for a sick child with a resolute will.

Jonet took to her amazingly. She brought some pieces of striped flannel, the refuse of her father's loom, and dressed up the little one's wooden doll like a real Welshwoman. And she brought green rushes from the brookside, and wove toy-baskets for her.

Or, while Davy was away in the fields filling baskets with freshly-dug roots, or clearing the ground of stones (which many farmers in those days believed to grow, just as surely as weeds), and Jonet was ready to whimper for a playfellow, she would set down her knitting, or other work, to play at cat's cradle or push-pins; and, finding that Davy had tried to teach the little fingers to knit, she cast on stitches for a doll's belt, and, with a little patience on both sides, the feat was accomplished, and Jonet wonderfully proud of her new acquirement.

By thus amusing the healthy child longing for a romp, she preserved quiet by the bedside of the sick one, whom an apothecary, brought all the way from Caerphilly, pronounced 'in a critical state.'

Mrs. Edwards, anxiously coming and going, saw what a capital nurse she made, and judged she was of better use there than in the fields. Rhys, too, would put his head in through the open window now and then to ask how his brother was getting on, and satisfied himself that he had shown his discernment in suggesting Cate to his mother.

And when William began to recover, which was not until November had well set in, no one was more willing to admit her obligations to the girl than was Jane Edwards. Nay, she went so far as to send Rhys to light Cate home when the shortening of the days caused her to be kept after dark, and Rhys never raised any objection.

She had helped him on her first coming to strip the apple and pear trees of their late fruit, and to separate such as were to be saved for the market from those to be thrown into the mash-tub and crushed for cider. And on the first day that William was allowed to sit at an open door, he watched her and Rhys preparing the winter store of fire-balls, so willing was she to help in any way. Propped up in bed, he had seen Robert Jones once or twice lead a mule and an ass up the steep path with heavily-laden barrels slung across; but though he called faintly to the man through the open window, and was as usual inquisitive, he was little wiser when told they 'brought culm and clay for fire-balls.'

Fire-balls were familiar things. Not so the culm or the clay, and to satisfy his persistent curiosity he was promised if he would keep quiet he should witness their conversion into the hard balls.

A few yards from the house he saw on one side a great heap of black dust (the refuse of hard coal). This, barefooted Cate was riddling through a wire sieve (the very sieve Breint had brought safely home, though he lost the buyer), flinging away into a separate heap all that was too coarse to pass through the sieve. At a distance on the other side was laid a quantity of yellow clay, portions of which Rhys was moistening with water, beating and turning over with a spade, and when of the proper consistence adding, a spadeful at a time, the fine black dust Cate had sieved, to be again mixed and kneaded like dough, and finally worked with the hands into round hard balls, which he set aside to dry for fuel.

The eagerness with which the pale little adventurer watched these grimy processes, his questions and quaint remarks, quite amused the two workers, but his searching interrogations speedily posed both of them; and when he wanted to know what was coal, and what was clay, and why they mixed the two together to make them burn, he was greeted with fresh laughter, and an impatient, 'Oh, don't bother,' or its Welsh equivalent, from Rhys.

But the little inquirer, who sat with his head on one side, resting it on his hand, was not contented with the put-off; and when Robert Jones came with a load of peat that afternoon, he was plied with the same questions.

The man smiled. His own information did not go very far, but he did his best to reach infantile understanding; told him that the clay was a kind of earth dug from the river-side, and that coal grew underground, and was brought up in baskets out of a deep hole by a horse that was always walking round and round to wind them up to the top by a rope that wound round a thick wooden post.¹⁰

This was a puzzler for William. He wanted to be taken there and then to see the horse go round and round.

Ales, coming at that moment to pay the man, hoping to put a check on the child's new notion, exclaimed —

'Name o' goodness, do you want the black man to carry you away down the dark pit-hole, where you would never see us any more whatever?'

'Me don't fink they 'ood. They don't take man down,' replied the child sturdily; and at length the 'man,' ready to go about his business, promised to take him to see the horse go round 'some day.'

''Oo said 'oo 'ood take me to see church, an' 'oo didn't,' then said William in high dudgeon, and lapsed into sullen silence. In all his long illness he had not forgotten the church he had seen but once.

'Never mind, Willem fach; if you are a good boy, perhaps mother will let you ride with her to church on Breint next Sunday,' said Rhys in a consolatory tone.

'Sure?' asked William, his face brightening.

'Not sure, but I will ask her.' And with that the little fellow seemed satisfied.

The three youngsters were in bed when Rhys made his suggestion over the frugal supper-table. It brought on a sharp controversy, in which Ales joined very freely.

Mrs. Edwards was undecided. She 'feared the child would not be strong enough to sit through the service after the long ride.'

''Deed, there's no fear o' that,' put in Ales; 'but it's Jonet's turn to go to church, before a babe that can't make head or tail of a word that's said; and more like take Davy than either. There's no good of humouring children.'

'Well, I don't know what queer fancy he has got into that curious head of his,' argued Rhys; 'but I think it would be best to humour him this time, lest he should be setting off again, and' —

'Humour him, indeed! More like be giving him a good whipping,' interrupted Ales. 'There's no end to his queer fancies. It's master over us all he will be soon, I'm thinking.'

Evan had been silent. He agreed with Rhys. 'It is never too soon to learn the way to church,' said he. 'I will carry him there on my shoulders.'

There was a sigh of relief from Mrs. Edwards. 'Ah, then,' she exclaimed, 'Jonet and Davy can take turns on Breint. If it be fine,' she added. She was disinclined to be severe with William at any time, and after his long illness she felt unwilling to thwart him. Yet she had misgivings about indulging the obstinate self-will, 'so like his poor father's,' she told herself, with another sigh. Evan's proposal was hailed as a compromise that would, at least, content Rhys.

Not altogether. He was not content that Evan should usurp his prerogative. He was the one to carry his brother if he must be carried. He considered his own proposal the fittest; but, perhaps, ashamed of his foolish jealousy, and remembering the boy's weight, kept his opinion to himself.

November though it was, Sunday happened to be fine. Whatever mist there might be on the mountain-tops, there was no thick smoke to blacken it, and down in the valley it was clearing off.

William and Jonet were in high glee. The little girl had not yet been to church, and he had led her to expect something marvellous. After illness children pick up their strength more rapidly than adults. The week had done wonders for the boy, who had been trotting indoors and out for two or three days.

He saw Jonet seated on a pillow in front of his mother on Breint, but was very much too much of a man to accept the proffered shoulders of Evan.

'Me walk well as Davy and Rhys,' maintained he proudly, and trudged on sturdily so long as the road descended and had been clean washed by rain. But little legs cannot keep the pace with long ones, any more than can short purses with long ones, and after a time the weary little limbs were glad of a mount on the big broad shoulders. Yet even then he made the excuse of 'uncomfrable shoes an' 'tockings.'

He did not talk much as they went, but cast his eyes from side to side, evidently taking note of wayside landmarks. Other people in their Sunday best were also on the road, and exchanged greetings in passing. He was apparently on the watch for Robert Jones, whose cottage of rough stone he recognised at a glance. He expected the 'man' and his donkey to be there also, and expressed his disappointment. But it was not until they passed under the shade of the dark firs that lined the roadside boundary of the vicar's glebe lands, when the lych-gate and the church, with its long body and massive square tower, were full in view, that he became demonstrative.

Breint had been left at a small inn at the foot of the hill, and then William was pleased to dismount from his perch, and, with quite an air of patronising superiority, to take his sister by the hand as if to lead her up the hill, and over the stone stile to astonish her sight with all that had astonished him.

The bells were swinging and ringing over their heads, as they had been ringing for nearly half an hour, but they were early, and whilst Mrs. Edwards and Rhys walked together to their new grave, William stood still with his eyes fixed on the great church tower with childish awe and admiration.

Presently he startled Evan with the strange questions: 'How did it get there? Did it grow?'

His pointed finger showed to what it referred.

'Grow, child? No. It was built.'

'What is built?'

'Men brought stones, look you, and put them together.'

'How?'

''Deed, William, you do be asking queer questions. I will, maybe, show you how it was built next week.'

'Will you? Could me build big church if me was big man?'

''Deed, and perhaps you might help.'

'Then me will.'

At that moment, to Evan's relief, Mrs. Edwards caught her little boy by the hand to lead him inside, Davy having taken charge of Jonet.

Church, clergyman, congregation, service – all were strange to the girl. Her head turned this way and that; now with a smile as she recognised some familiar face; but ere long she wearied, and, not being allowed to talk, she fell asleep, and slept, with her head against her mother's cloak, throughout the sermon.

Not so William. The service was no more intelligible or interesting to him, but his unsatisfied, wide-awake eyes were everywhere exploring the sacred interior; his little mind lost in large wonder at the length of the building and the lofty roof overhead, so much larger to a child's imagination than its actuality. And how far his crude speculations went must remain a mystery to the end of time.

The service over, Mrs. Edwards, holding Jonet by the hand, joined the stream of worshippers on their way to the porch, nothing doubting that she was followed by her boys. Once in the wide churchyard, dotted with upright slabs of stone, over which two magnificent yew-trees had stood sentinel for centuries, the congregation broke up into groups and family parties, to greet each other, and discuss alike the affairs of individuals, of the nation, and of the widespread parish – so widespread, indeed, that families whose ancestors lay all around lived too far apart for the meeting of kith and kin, except on the seventh day and on the common God's acre. Young people too – cousins and friends – clasped hands and blushed, or looked shyly at each other when only that was possible. The old vicar, too, when disrobed, would saunter from one group to another, shaking hands and inquiring about asthma, rheumatism, crops, and sweethearts, with genial impartiality. Here he would admonish one, there advise another; now his voice was low in condolence, anon cheery in congratulation; and, unless when there was some dispute over tithes, none ever turned towards him the cold shoulder.

He greeted the widow thus: 'Ah, Mrs. Edwards, I observe you have brought your whole family with you to-day. That is as it should be. "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it."'

'Yes, sir,' she answered respectfully, 'I brought them all – Willem' – she looked round; 'Rhys, where is Willem?'

'Ah, indeed, yes, where is the little fellow? I heard he had been very ill.'

Another assent, another look round, the boy was nowhere within sight. But Evan was seen stalking towards the porch, and in a couple of minutes out he came leading the boy by the hand.

He had found him standing in front of the communion-table, looking with awestruck eyes down the whole length of the church, but he suffered Evan to lead him away without demur.

By that time, however, the vicar had gone, and Rhys, who had been round the church to look for the absentee, came back cross and ill-tempered. He had promised Cate to walk home along with her and her father, and had not been too well pleased to see them pass out over the stile beside the lych-gate, whilst he was still seeking what he could not find.

'Where had you got to, you young plague?' he cried, with a frown on his face, taking the boy by the shoulders and shaking him angrily. 'You are always running off somewhere. But I'll thrash you if you do it again.'

The mother interposed, but the harmony of the hour and the peace of the sacred place were alike disturbed, and Rhys marched off sullenly in advance, hardly caring whether he overtook the weaver and his daughter in his ill-humour.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS

Evan was one of those capable individuals, who, through making good use of eyes and ears, can turn their hands readily to anything. In those days, before the 'division of labour' had been formulated into a creed, the class was more common, and still in remote country places individuals of the type may be found. In addition to his field-work he had helped the shepherd to mend the stone fence of his sheepfold, and had made the ragged roof of the cattle-shed wind and weather proof with the heather Rhys had cut down. He had yet to demonstrate his 'all-round' faculty in the performance of a promise made, in the first place, to Mrs. Edwards, and secondly, to little William.

It was quite a common thing in Wales, as it is in Ireland to this day, for the pigs to wander over the farm, or out in the roads, poking their snouts into the proprietor's kitchen as a matter of course, and making free with root-crops meant for human beings. But as it happened that Mrs. Edwards and Evan had experience of a better state of things, they were agreed as to its adoption.

Consequently, at the beginning of the week, William, who had begun to follow Evan about like a small shadow, was delighted to watch him and Lewis clear away a large space among the outbuildings, and Robert Jones came two or three times with loads of rough stones from a local quarry, which his two patient beasts drew on the singular sleds or sledges that did duty for wheeled carts in those mountain regions.

But it was the process of piling and fitting these loose and shapeless stones on one another, so as to bind together in a firm and compact wall without cement, that kept William dancing with excitement unfelt by either passive Davy or Jonet, to whom a stitch more or less in their knitting appeared of vastly more importance than the raising of a common wall. It might suit William to caper about, or to stagger under a voluntary load of stone, and fancy he was helping, it did not much interest them.

Yet these children were no blinder than the world at large to 'the day of small things.'

But when they noticed the rising walls shaping into two adjoining square enclosures with little doorways, across which he placed long, flat pieces of wood to support the upper courses of stone, and beheld a conical roof rise over each in genuine Welsh form, and learned that the two small houses were for the pigs to live in, Davy himself set up an exclamation of surprise, as Rhys had done before him. And, no doubt, Evan would have been equally surprised had he been told that the beehive form was as ancient as the habitations of those early British ancestors who fled to the Cambrian mountains for refuge from the Roman and Saxon invaders.

Astonishment was exhausted when Williams, the Eglwysilan carpenter, on the Wednesday, brought a couple of stout wooden troughs and gates, for by that time each conical sty had been supplied with a small walled forecourt of its own, and Evan had covered the earthen floors with a thick carpet of dry fern for the pigs to lie upon. And whilst the man was at work fixing up the gates, he made a broom of ling, and began scrubbing the dirty old sow vigorously, to make her fit for her clean abode. The pigs grunted and the children laughed. So did Williams, the carpenter, to whom pig-scrubbing was a novelty. And so did Rhys, who came up the yard at the time, his lip curling with fine scorn.

But Ales, who had lived with her mistress long enough to imbibe her advanced notions of cleanliness, and had, besides, a natural vein of good sense in her composition, called out from the unshuttered dairy window, where she stood drawing a knife through and through the newly-churned butter to remove accidental cow-hairs before making up: 'Them as likes good bacon should be caring for the swine. There's fools as would rather be sticking in the mud than mending the roads.'

Having delivered this oracular rebuke to the scorners, she resumed her butter-making with renewed energy, none the less for the swift glance and smile of approval she had seen on Evan's quickly upturned face.

She and Evan were becoming as good friends as he and William, and he did not affect to despise an additional friend on the hearth where Rhys was silently hostile. Beyond the bounds of the farm he felt he could defend himself, if necessary.

But it would be as easy to defend oneself from a fog as from the whisperings of envy or the shrugs and jeers of ignorance.

Already was the voice of prophecy upraised among the Sunday gossips that Evan Evans would bring ruin on Brookside Farm with his foolish new ways.

The very carpenter who had taken the order for the woodwork of the new sties had tuned saw and plane to laughter, and hammered down his conviction that 'Mrs. Edwards would be finding out the folly too late.' And listening lag-behinds shook their shock-heads and fell back on the old Welsh proverb: 'Ah, a widow's goods will soon be gone.'

When these whisperings reached the widow in the guise of advice from well-meaning cousins in all degrees of affinity, she put them down with a short, decisive answer: 'Look you, I do have my ways, you do be having yours. Keep your own spade for your own farm.'

She wondered how the petty details of new management had reached so many ears, and gave Lewis a sharp hint not to gossip about what did not concern him. But she never suspected Rhys of dropping the word-seeds that rose up around them as ill weeds of speech and thought.

She had seen Rhys kick over wantonly a miniature wall that William was attempting to 'build' across the threshold with Evan's refuse stone chippings, and she had rebuked him sharply when he flung out angrily the small collection the child had brought indoors to 'build' with – just such a heap as a modern boy's box of bricks – not taking his pretence of 'a litter' as an excuse. She had gone so far as to insist on the restoration of the 'poor darling's playthings'; but just as she failed to hear him delegate to Davy the task of picking up the scattered treasures William was crying for, so she failed to suspect her eldest born of any ungenerous feeling towards Evan, or any unworthy comment on private affairs to strangers.

So long as roads were passable, and skies at all propitious, Mrs. Edwards was certain to ride to Caerphilly market, companioned by Rhys, less for protection than for his instruction. When Aquarius was reckless with his water-pot, Evan alone bestrode Breint, and seldom failed to make a good market.

Equally, when Sundays were fine, Mrs. Edwards went to church, and with her Rhys and one of the younger ones; Evan's shoulders being always at the service of William rather than disappoint the boy. Yet, when the broken weather kept the house-mother and children from Sunday service, Ales was prompt and ready to accompany Rhys and Evan, even when the morning mist became a drizzle or a blinding fog. Umbrellas were unknown, and, therefore, unmissed. Cased in her thick, dark-blue cloak, its large hood drawn over her low-crowned, black-felt man's hat, and the white linen cap under that, she seemed to heed the weather as little as her companions in their heavy coats, and generally came back, after her long barefooted walk, as rosy and bright as if the sun had been shining overhead, and the pathway of velvet sward.

If Rhys started with them, he had a trick of deserting them, and joining Owen Griffith and Cate. But he was so far his own master, and, as they made no complaint, Mrs. Edwards had no suspicion of his defection, or of an intimacy so close as to have become confidential.

And, although Owen had been one of the first to follow Mrs. Edwards' lead in the matter of whitewashing and window-glazing, and had been a very good friend and adviser to the widow in her hour of sorest need, and would have been the first to rise in her defence, neither his wife, nor Cate, nor it may be himself, was above the bird-like propensity to pick up stray crumbs of confidence, or to drop them for other well-meaning, bird-like chatterers to pick up. So it came about that little was done on the farm that was not discussed half over the parish.

Yet, notwithstanding proverb or prophecy, the widow's goods were in no danger from unthrift.

Whether rain or fair, whosoever went to church or stayed at home, – and as the winter advanced the roads became impassable, – no sooner was the kitchen cleared after the simple dinner, than the big Welsh Bible was laid reverently upon the table, and either Mrs. Edwards or Rhys read a chapter or two aloud, she venturing to expound the text to immature understandings.

Theologians might have smiled, or shaken their wise heads over her expositions, but she was a clear-headed woman, and seldom dived below her depth.

She never allowed anything to break into this Sunday custom. It was a family bond drawing them all closer together; even the youngest bringing their low wooden stools nearer, and listening with attention not common where books and other objects of interest are many.

In the wet and snowy winter months, when outdoor labour was restricted and the days short, indoor work was at its busiest. Doors would be closed to keep out the cold winds, Evan would bring fresh squares of peat and fire-balls to keep the hearth aglow. He would take the place of Ales at the churn, or would hang up the big porridge-pot, or (if cheese-making was about, though there was little cheese made in the winter) the great whey-pot, with hearty goodwill to help her. Then a candle would be alight, and whilst the cat and dog lay basking in front of the fire, all, down to the youngest, would have some useful or profitable occupation.

It was then Mrs. Edwards' spinning-wheel went round the swiftest, and sang its song of industry the loudest.

In former days her husband had combed the wool, and was teaching Rhys how to fling the tufts of greasy and matted wool over the heated iron combs set in an upright staff, and to draw them out like the long locks of a woman's hair. She had always sorted her own fleeces. We are all familiar with the sign of 'The Golden Fleece.' Well, just so the fleece of a sheep hangs together after it is sheared away, but in every fleece are several different qualities of wool, and the sorting and separating those qualities calls for a discriminating touch. This continued to be her task, though Evan took the wool-combing in hand, Rhys having an occasional turn with the coarser sorts.

Ales, in generous rivalry with her mistress, having no second spinning-wheel, took up her distaff, as did half the women in the Principality, and set her spindle dancing on the floor as she drew out her thread of wool or linen.

Knitting was taken up by any one of them when not otherwise employed.

Thus Rhys plied his knitting-pins with ease and certainty, and the long blue or black woollen stockings grew under his fingers, whilst he proudly exercised his dead father's function, and taught his sister and brothers to read.

It was a tedious occupation; and he might not have taken it up from choice, or accepted the office willingly, but the monotonous drawl of the learners sounded an undertone to the musical hum of his mother's wheel, and set his heart aglow with the feeling that, however and wherever Evan had superseded him, in that at least he represented his dead father, and was, in his own opinion, the head of the house, having authority over the younger ones.

It made him more patient with them than he otherwise might have been. And it kept under his reluctance to teach little William his letters, when the child, with a laudable desire to look big and do what Davy and Jonet did, insisted on an introduction to the painted characters on his sister's battledore.¹¹

'Me tree years old,' Willie had pleaded, when Rhys asserted that he was too young to learn, and when that did not serve, 'Me ask Evan, Evan teach me,' was quite sufficient. Rhys drew his dark brows together, but he put down his knitting and pointed to the letters without another word of objection.

Having thus, as it were, compelled his brother to teach him as a favour, he stuck to his self-imposed task with unflagging determination, as if he had something to master that must be mastered. And, perhaps, not the less persistently because, with all a sharp child's acute perception, he saw he was having his own way in spite of Rhys. Having his own way also in being free to build walls and houses on the great chest under the window with his accumulating bits of stone.

That is, until Ales came at an early hour and swept his building materials into a corner, and swept him and Jonet off to bed with equal promptitude, barely waiting whilst they said their simple prayers.

Work (the knitting, spinning, and wool-combing) did not cease until the general supper-time, about eight o'clock; but conversation lightened it, the distance between mistress and servants being scarcely felt or perceptible, though one directed and the others obeyed.

Sometimes Evan might have occasion to look after a sick beast, or Ales to prepare a warm mash, or the shepherd might come in to report the condition of his flock; but so, with little variation, went on the routine of the farm, until renewing spring brought fresh activities and outdoor occupations.

Spring, too, brought wizened Mr. Pryse, the agent, intrusively prying round the farm, his half-shut eyes scanning homestead and tillage with eager craving to discover signs of the mismanagement over which rumour had been busy.