The Making of William Edwards Part 8

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 wors.h.i.+ppers 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 G.o.d'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 t.i.thes, 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 a.s.sent, 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 pa.s.s 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.

FOOTNOTE:

[10] This was the old method of drawing coal and pitmen to the surface, until superseded by machinery. Wells and mills were similarly worked.

And still horses are so employed to draw up yachts on the sea-sh.o.r.e, the rope pa.s.sing round a block.

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 cla.s.s 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 s.p.a.ce 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 pa.s.sive Davy or Jonet, to whom a st.i.tch 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 b.u.t.ter 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 b.u.t.ter-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 pa.s.sable, 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 whitewas.h.i.+ng 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 impa.s.sable,--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-b.a.l.l.s 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 coa.r.s.er sorts.

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