"Things will mend in the old place soon, my son."
"I trust so," from David.
Then expressions of pity and sympathy from both pairs of lips, for the
injured and killed.
In this sympathy I had freely joined, for I was not hard-hearted; then I
had forgotten the circumstance. The widows and children in the dismal
coal country might be weeping and mourning, but I, Gwladys Morgan, in my
fair home, in this fair land, had no room for them in my selfish heart.
In half an hour I had ceased to remember the paragraph in the _Hereford
Times_, all but its heading. But the heading, as I said, haunted me; it
had another meaning besides going down into the bowels of the earth, and
finding its walls close round one, and feeling oneself shut into a
living tomb. It had another meaning besides the palpable and material
horror of slow starvation and of coming madness. Of these things I
could form no conception, but I could conceive of other things, and feel
them through and through my childish and inexperienced heart. I
imagined another meaning to the words, and this meaning I hunted up and
pondered over, with a deeper and deeper melancholy, adding strength to
my gloom.
Having roused up the skeleton, I clothed it with flesh, I filled its
veins with warm young blood, I made its limbs fair and round, I gave to
its face the healthy hue of youth, I coloured its eyes blue, and its
hair a golden brown, and I called it, when I had given it life and
being, Gwladys Morgan.
I took this fair young person of my creation, and buried her in a living
tomb; true, the fresh air of heaven still blew upon her, the sun shone
over her head, and the flowers blossomed at her feet. She could walk
through lovely gardens, she could watch the coming and going of the
fresh tide, on the fresh ocean, she could repose at night in the softest
of beds, in a spacious oak-lined room. She could receive counsel and
love, from the kind and tender lips of mother and brother. All this she
could have, but still she was in a tomb, and the name of the tomb was
Tynycymmer. Her body was free, as far as the walls of her prison
allowed it, to roam, but her mind, with its noble aspirations, her soul,
which had conceived great and possible commissions of wide and
ever-widening usefulness, these were shut up in a tomb; in short, this
feeling, breathing creature, with her talents and her longings, was
buried alive.
Having consigned Gwladys to this fate, I went on to imagine the result.
She would struggle in vain for freedom, she would beat with her wings--
poor imprisoned bird--against her cage, she would pant and long for a
less confined air, for emancipation from her living grave, she would
suffer in uncomplaining silence, and then gradually, her mind would
recoil upon itself, her aspiring soul would cease to struggle, and
starved out with earth's hard fate, would soar to nobler worlds!--(here
my tears began to drop).
But I had not done yet; I imagined still further, and in all its
minutest details, the body's decay of this suffering creature. How thin
and hollow, how pale and worn the once round and rosy cheeks would
become! what a pathetic and far-away look of sad yearning would enter
the blue eyes! how the curling hair would begin to grow!--I did not like
the idea of the hair growing thin, it was not poetical--had not nurse
Gwen a great bald division in her hair, a division clefting her raven
locks asunder, deep and wide as a potato ridge? No, I substituted thin
locks for grey, and so completed the picture.
Over my completed picture I should assuredly have wept, had not, at this
opportune juncture, the blue eyes, which were certainly anything but dim
as yet, descried, bowling smoothly along the road, and making swift
advances to Tynycymmer, a little pony-carriage, driven by a pair of
hands, very well fitted for their present task, that of keeping two
spirited ponies in order. Into the long, winding avenue the carriage
dashed, down the avenue it sped, and the next instant it had drawn up at
the front entrance, and a large, strongly-made man was helping a
delicate, stately woman to alight. The strong man was my brother, the
woman was my mother.
Quick as lightning, I had left my seat in the nursery window, had
wreathed my face with smiles, had filled my heart with laughter, had,
for the time being, banished every trace of the ugly, bad dream in which
I had been indulging, had descended the stairs almost like an arrow from
its bow, had lifted mother bodily up the steps, and placed her amid my
own and David's laughter, in the old oak arm-chair, the family heirloom,
the undoubted gift of some old Arch-Druid ancestor, which stood in the
wide entrance hall.
"Well! mother, what an age you've been away! Did you catch the first
train this morning? Aren't you dreadfully tired? What was it like, was
it glorious? Were there crowds of people? Did the Bishop preach? Is
the music ringing in your ears? Doesn't your head ache? And oh! _did_
you get a new fashion for my blue silk gown?"
These questions I poured out, toppling them one over the other, down on
my knees the while, removing mother's boots, and encasing her dear,
pretty feet in a pair of warm, fur-lined slippers.
"I saw one or two nicely-dressed girls," began mother slowly, whereupon
I suspended my operations with her feet, and looked up with a face of
absorbed interest.
"And, Gwladys," said David, laying his hand on my shoulder, "you are to
come to-morrow, the Messiah is to be sung, and I will take you over."
"Oh! oh! oh!" I exclaimed, beginning to dance about, but then observing
that mother was gazing at me a little sadly, I stopped short, and
exclaimed with a sudden burst of unselfishness--
"The pony-carriage only holds two; I don't want to take mother's place."
"No, my darling, I am tired, I should not care to go again to-morrow,
and I want you to hear the Messiah."
"We must start even earlier than to-day, Gwladys," continued David, as
he led the way to the supper-room. "We nearly missed the train this
morning, and I have unfortunately failed to get reserved seats, but you
don't mind a crowd?"
"I _love_ a crowd," I answered energetically; looking and feeling, as I
spoke, a totally different creature from the sentimental being who had
gazed with dismal eyes from the nursery window, half an hour before.
"What kind of voice had Madame Edith Wynne, mother, and did you hear
Sims Reeves?"
"Sims Reeves did not sing to-day, but he will to-morrow in the Messiah,"
replied mother.
"And I shall be there to-morrow!" I exclaimed again, then a sudden
thought darted through my brain, and I fell into a reverie.
In my great excitement and delight at the prospect of going to Hereford,
to the festival of the Three Choirs, I had forgotten something which now
returned to my memory with painful consciousness. I had nothing to
wear. My blue silk, my beautiful navy blue, mother's last present, was
still unmade, and my white dress was with the laundress. My white
dress, though simple and childish, was new and tolerably fashionable,
and in no other could I think of appearing before the great and gay
world of Hereford, on this my first visit.
"Mother," I said, jumping from my seat, and upsetting a cup of hot tea
over Gyp the terrier, "I must go this very moment to speak to Nancy at
the lodge; she has got my frock, and she must iron it to-night."
Without waiting for a reply, I ran out of the room, and bonnetless and
hatless sped up the avenue. The light autumn breeze tossed my curls
into wild confusion, my gay voice rose, humming a merry Welsh air. Very
far away now were my gloomy thoughts, very like a child I felt, as I
walked on. My mind was fully occupied with my promised treat, my dreams
were all rainbow tinted, my world all tinged with sunshine and glory.
The only cloud that shadowed the gay expanse of my firmament was the
possibility of my white dress not being ironed in time for me to wear.