I managed to hush little David into a sound sleep, before Gwen returned
from her supper in the old servants' hall. When I had done so, I went
back to my room and undressed quickly, hoping much that I too would soon
sink into slumber, for I was in that semi-frightened and semi-excited
condition, when Gwen's stories about the Green Lady--our Welsh Banshee--
and other ghostly legends, would come popping under my eyelids, and
forcing me to look about the room with undefined uneasiness. I did
sleep soundly, however; and in the morning the brilliant sunshine, the
dancing waves which I could even see from my bed, put all my
uncomfortable fears to rest. To-day I was to visit Hereford, for the
first time to set my foot on English soil. Laid out on a chair close
by, lay my clean white muslin dress. I must get up at once, for we were
to start early, the distance from our part of Glamorganshire to Hereford
being very considerable. I rose and approached the window with a
dancing step; the day was perfection, a few feathery clouds floated here
and there in the clear blue of the sky, the sea quivered in thousands of
jubilant silver waves, the trees crimsoned into all the fulness of their
autumnal beauty. My heart responded to the brightness of the morning;
ages back lay the ugly dreams and discontented thoughts of yesterday. I
was no longer enduring the slow torture of a death-in-life existence. I
was breathing the free air of a world full of love, glory, happiness.
In short, I was a gay girl of sixteen, going out for a holiday. I put
on my white dress. I tied blue ribbon wherever blue ribbon could be
tied. I had never worn a bonnet in my life, so I perched a broad white
hat over my clustering fair curls, made a few grimaces at myself in the
glass, for reflecting back a pink and white and blue-eyed image, instead
of the proper dark splendour of the true Morgans; consoled myself with
the thought that even blue eyes could take in the beauties of Hereford,
and ears protected by a fair skin, could yet communicate to the soul
some musical joys. I danced downstairs, kissed mother and David
rapturously, trod on Gyp's tail, but was too much excited, and too
impatient, to pat him or beg his pardon; found, under existing
circumstances, the eating of a commonplace ordinary breakfast, a feat
wholly impossible; seated myself in the pony-carriage full ten minutes
before it started; jumped out again, at the risk of breaking my neck, to
adorn the ponies' heads with a few of the last summer roses; stuck a
splendid crimson bud into my own belt; hurried David off some minutes
too soon for the train; forgot to kiss mother, and blew a few of those
delightful salutes vigorously at her instead; finally, started with a
full clear hurrah, coming from a pair of very healthy lungs, prompted by
a heart filled, brimming over, leaping up with irrepressible joy. Oh!
that summer morning! Oh! that young and happy heart! Could I have
guessed then, what almost all men have to learn, that not under the
cloudless sky, not by the summer sea, but with the pitiless rain
dropping, and the angry waves leaping high, and threatening to engulf
all that life holds dearest, have most of God's creation to find their
Creator? Could I have guessed that on this summer day the first tiny
cloud was to appear, faint as the speck of a man's hand, which was to
show me, in the awful gloom of sorrow, the face of my God?
From my fancied woes, I was to plunge into the stern reality, and it was
all to begin to-day. When we got into the train, and were whirling away
in the direction of that border county, which was to represent England
to me, my excitement had so far toned down as to allow me to observe
David, and David's face gave to my sensations a feeling scarcely of
uneasiness, but scarcely, either, of added joy. Any one who did not
know him intimately, would have said what a happy, genial-looking man my
brother was. Not a wrinkle showed on his broad forehead, and no shadow
lurked in his kind eyes; but I, who knew him, recognised an expression
which had come into his face once or twice, but was hardly habitual to
it. I could not have told, on that summer morning, what the expression
meant, or what it testified. I could not have read it in my childish
joy; but now, in the sober light of memory, I recall David's face as it
looked on that September day, and in the knowledge born of my sorrow, I
can tell something of its story.
My brother had looked like this twice before--once on his unexpected
return from Oxford; once, more strongly, when Amy died. The look on
David's face to-day, was the look born of a resolution--the resolution
of a strong man to do his duty, at the risk of personal pain. As I
said, I read nothing of this at the time; but his face touched me. I
remembered that I had rather pained him last night. We had the carriage
to ourselves. I bent forward and kissed him; tossed my hat off, and
laid my head against his breast. In this attitude, I raised to him the
happiest of faces, and spoke the happiest of words.
"David, the world is just delicious, and I do love you."
David, a man of few words, responded with a smile, and his invariable
expression--
"That's right, little woman."
After a time, he began to speak of the festival.
He had been at the last celebration of the Three Choirs at Hereford. He
told me a few of his sensations then, and also something of what he felt
yesterday; he had a true Welshman's love of music, and he spoke
enthusiastically.
"Yes, Gwladys, it lifts one up," he said, in conclusion, "I'd like to
listen to those choirs in the old cathedral, or go to the top of the
Brecon--'tis much the same, the sensation, I mean--they both lift one
into finer air. And what a grand thing that is, little woman," he
added, "I mean when anything lifts us right out of ourselves. I mean
when we cease to look down at our feet, and cease to look for ever at
our own poor sorrows, and gaze right straight away from them all into
the face of God."
"Yes," I said, in a puzzled voice, for of course I knew nothing of these
sensations; then, still in my childish manner, "I expect to enjoy it
beyond anything; for you know, David, I have never been in any cathedral
except Llandaff, and I have never heard the `Messiah.'"
"Well, my dear, you will enjoy it to-day; but more the second time, I
doubt not."
"Why? David."
"Because there are depths in it, which life must teach you to
understand."
"But, dear David, I often have had _such_ sad thoughts."
"Poor child!" a touch of his hand on my head, then no more words from
either of us.
Just before we reached Hereford, as I was drawing on my long white
gloves, which I had thrown aside as an unpleasant restraint during the
journey, David said one thing more, "When the service is over, Gwladys,
we will walk round the Close, if you don't mind, for I have got
something I want to tell you."
It darted into my head, at these words, that perhaps I was going to
London after all. The thought remained for only an instant, it was
quickly crowded out, with the host of new sensations which all
compressed themselves into the next few hours.
No, I shall never forget it, when I have grey hairs I shall remember it.
I may marry some day, and have children, and then again grandchildren,
and I shall ever reserve as one of the sweetest, rarest stories, the
kind of story one tells to a little sick child, or whispers on Sunday
evenings, what I felt when I first listened to Handel's "Messiah."
David had said that I should care more for it the second time. This was
possible, for my feelings now were hardly those of pleasure, even to-day
depths were stirred within me, which must respond with a tension akin to
pain. I had been in a light and holiday mood, my gay heart was all in
the sunshine of a butterfly and unawakened existence; and the music,
while it aroused me, brought with it a sense of shadow, of oppression
which mingled with my joy. Heaven ceased to be a myth, an uncertain
possibility, as I listened to the full burst of the choruses, or held my
breath as one single voice floated through the air in quivering notes of
sweetness. What had I thought, hitherto, of Jesus Christ? I had given
to His history an intellectual belief. I had assented to the fact that
He had borne my sins, and "The Lord had laid on Him the iniquity of us
all;" but with the ponderous notes of the heavy music, came the crushing
knowledge that _my_ iniquities had added to His sorrows, and helped to
make Him acquainted with grief. I was in no sense a religious girl; but
when "Come unto Him, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and He will
give you rest," reached my ears, I felt vibrating through my heart
strings, the certainty that some day I should need this rest. "Take His
yoke upon you, and learn of Him."
"His yoke is easy, and His burden is light." I looked at David, the
book had fallen from his hands, his fine face was full of a kind of
radiance, and the burden which had taken from him Amy, and the yoke
which bade him resign his own will and deny himself, seemed to be borne
with a sense of rejoicing which testified to the truth of how lightly
even heavy sorrow can sit on a man, when with it God gives him rest.
The opening words, "Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith your God,"
would bring their own message at a not very distant day; but now they
only spoke to me, something as a mother addresses a too happy, too
wildly-exultant child, when she says in her tenderest tones, "Come and
rest here in my arms for a little while, between your play." Yes, I was
only a child as yet, at play with life; but the music awoke in me the
possible future, the possible working day, the possible time of rain,
the possible storm, the possible need of a shelter from its blast. To
heighten the effect of the music, came the effect of the cathedral
itself. It is not a very beautiful English cathedral, but it was the
first I had seen. Having never revelled in the glories of Westminster,
I could appreciate the old grey walls of Hereford; and what man had done
in the form of column and pillar, of transept and roof, the sun touched
into fulness of life and colouring to-day. The grey walls had many
coloured reflections from the painted windows, the grand old nave lay in
a flood of light, and golden gleams penetrated into dusky corners, and
brought into strong relief the symmetry and beauty of aisle and
transept, triforium and clerestory. I mention all this--I try to touch
it up with the colour with which it filled my own mind--because in the
old cathedral of Hereford I left behind me the golden, unconsciously
happy existence of childhood; because I, Gwladys, when I stepped outside
into the Cathedral Close, and put my white-gloved hand inside David's
arm, and looked up expectantly into David's face, was about to taste my
first cup of life's sorrow. I was never again to be an unconscious
child, fretting over imaginary griefs, and exulting in imaginary
delights.
"Gwladys," said David, looking down at me, and speaking slowly, as
though the words gave him pain, "Owen is coming home."