Owen Jones, who in his leathern apron might have been a _moyen age_
smith, looked up and said something lengthy in Welsh, whereupon the
eager, alert little crowd, which had gathered round on the chance of a
new emotion, echoed something else in Welsh, smiled, nodded, and
looked sage.
"Well," said Ted impatiently.
The smith having no English, the office of translator was taken up by
Morris Pugh, who, with a certain appropriative courtesy, had shown
them all the beauties of the way with pardonable pride, informed them
effusively and charmingly of his past life, his present opinions, told
them of his widowed mother with tears in his eyes, of his clever young
brother whose ambition was Parliament with a thrill of pride in his
voice, and had finally introduced them formally to the smith as an
elder of his chapel.
"In about half-an-hour they will be ready, he says; and, see you, Owen
Jones is an excellent workman, indeed." Here he raised his voice and
looked round for approval. "None better, I am sure."
"No! Indeed," assented Isaac Edwards, who, another elder, had come
from his merchant's shop over the way to help on the general interest,
"there will be none better than Owen Jones from Pembroke to Pwlhelli!"
The largeness of this proposition suited the hearers. It reflected
credit on themselves, their clan, their country; so the quarrymen
off duty from their piles of slaty shale among the oak woods, and
the boys off school this Saturday afternoon, smiled and saluted
_quasi_-military fashion as the two Cruttendens moved off to seek tea
in the little inn, where a Cycle Club sign was nearly hidden in a
massive cotoneaster--all red berries and white blossoms--which covered
the walls from roadway to gable.
Here they bid good-bye to the Reverend Morris Pugh's good offices. He
was due ere long in chapel for choir practice and prayer meeting. As
he said so, the unction came into his voice which was noticeable
whenever he touched on his profession. It was as if some necessity for
shibboleth arose in him, as if some claim--not altogether natural--had
to be considered. Indeed, he had lingered a moment to say that prayer
was needful everywhere--even in the peaceful hamlet of Dinas--prayer
for some outpouring of the Spirit this Whitsuntide week. There had
been no special manifestation at present, but one might come any
moment--the Lord's mercy being nigh to all them that feared Him; let
them remember that. So, having said his word in season, he changed his
manner, wished them good luck heartily, and thus left them to their
own company; for the Scotch doctor, who had also proved a pleasant
acquaintance, had branched off at the bridge, some half a mile up the
hill from the little hollow in which Dinas hid itself modestly among
the trees. But you could see where the bridge lay, because of the
startling red-and-white school beside it, which looked as if it had
sprung, like Diana from Jove's brain, fully armed for education out of
the bare hillside.
Ted, looking through the inn window as they waited for tea, saw it,
and the problem as to why it had been built so far away from the
village, a problem which Morris Pugh had evaded, recurred to him.
"I should say, because the site--belonged to some one," said Ned
coolly. "These things will happen--even to Boards. They are part of
our commercial standard--_caveat emptor!_ And in this case, the
purchaser being the public--well, we don't think of the public
as our neighbour. No! the public is an ill dog in temperance
Wales!--especially amongst the Calvinistic Methodists. The parson,
though, is a good sort--he didn't fancy the subject!"
"Not as he fancied the Welsh motto over the door," laughed Ted. "By
George! how he let out about foreign languages and Wales being a
conquered country. I had to drop reason and the Norman invasion, or
there'd have been a row. He was awfully like Ffluellen--what a genius
Shakespeare was."
"Yes! He understood, and you don't. I tell you, Wales is the most
Rip-van-winkleish place in the world. You can go to sleep in a
fifteenth-century farm and wake up the day after to-morrow in an
Intermediate School. I've been in India, and it reminds me awfully of
the National Congress. But I like it, though it is fatiguing to any
one with a hankering after fact. Still, if there was a little more
water--there is none in summer time, you know--and a little less rain,
a little more right, and a trifle less righteousness it would do very
well."
"Righteousness!" echoed Ted, "there's enough of that, anyhow.
Two, four, six, eight, eight belfries to how many souls in the
village?--four hundred all told?"
"That's only four chapels; the others are Sunday schools, I'll
bet--'the Macleods must have a boat o' their ain.' Then there's the
church--that ruin up yonder--it'll have a school too----"
But Ted's attention was diverted. "I say," he remarked, "that's a
ripping girl!"
She had come out of a cottage a little way from the inn to intercept
Morris Pugh and was engaging him in a lively conversation, despite his
hurry. She was tall, dressed in black that glinted, and the fact that
her hair was in curling pins did not interfere with her very _voyante_
good looks.
"H'm!" remarked Ned, coming over to see, "reminds me of last Monday--I
mean Bank Holiday! Doesn't she?"
The sarcasm was just, but it brought a faintly-annoyed flush to his
companion's face. He knew himself to be a lower bred man, and the
other Edward Cruttenden had a trick of reminding him of this and of
certain other facts which, given fair choice, he would probably have
forgotten.
So the village was left to its own devices till tea was over, when he
took his pipe to the window again.
"Barring the prices, which whip an International Exhibition," he
remarked, "this would be a jolly headquarters spot. That big
hill--'Eye of the World,' the parson called it, didn't he?--is
ripping!"
This time the word lost its inherent triviality before the dignity of
those receding curves of sunshine shown by shadow, which swept up to
the light-smitten crest of the great mountain.
"Personally," remarked Ned drily, "I find the view of the smithy
more--Now, don't!--It isn't the least good fussing--it's the village
tea-time, and not all the king's horses----"
But Ted and his bad words were off hammering at the closed doors, and
finally running the smith to earth, having tea comfortably on an oak
dresser hung with lustre jugs. It was a very small, but highly
decorated cottage, this of the smith, showing uneducated artistic
cravings in many things, in a harmonium, endless cheap photograph
frames, china enormities, a few glazed certificates in Welsh to one
"Myfanwy Jones," and here and there a priceless bit of Staffordshire
ware.
Then ensued a deadlock. For the smith, scenting coercion, flared up
instantly in Welsh, and Ted, conscious of breach of contract, grew
abusive in English, till suddenly from above, came a full, high voice.
"I will come down when I have finished dressing. Pray, sir,
accommodate yourself with a cup of tea."
Then followed shrill Welsh exordiums to the smith, which resulted in a
cheerful smile as he reached down another cup.
Ted took it, also a piece of bread and butter, feeling he could do
nothing else, and as he sat waiting, the feminine voice continued
upstairs a conversation which apparently had been going on when he had
burst into the cottage, though he had been too ill-used to notice it.
"If you do not want the hat, Alicia Edwards, you can oblige by
replacing in the box; but you will be dowdy beside the other girls at
choir holiday, and Mervyn will not look at you twice. No, indeed! And
it is but one-and-twenty shillings. Dirt cheap! Be wise and buy. See,
you shall have it for a pound, and you can pay when you marry Mervyn."
"Mary!" choked a softer, more emotional voice. "Ah! I only want him to
look at me. Ah, Myfanwy I Do you think he could----"
"If you do not care for the height in front you can wear it hindside
before. It is even just so fashionable," went on the first voice,
regardless of sentiment. "Put it on, child, and don't be so foolish.
What is a pound, and you a pupil teacher? There! You look beautiful.
Now, give me my hat pins, I must go to that man downstairs."
A _frou-frou_ of silk petticoats on the ladder stairs which led up
from a corner of the living room made Ted look round.
He saw, first, a pair of many-strapped, beaded black shoes with
superlatively high heels, next, an interval of trim, black openwork
stockings, finally, in a _tourbillon_ of laced silk flouncings, over
which it let down a trailing black satin dress, a vision, in which Ted
at once recognised the girl in curling pins; or rather her apotheosis,
for she was now glorious both within and without.
Her beautiful figure was literally cased in a tight bodice, which
looked as if she must have been melted and run into it ere it could be
so guiltless of wrinkles. The heavy lace yoke with which it was made
showed the whiteness of her skin beneath it; a whiteness which held
its own against the double row of false pearls about her neck. For the
rest she was planned, laid out, developed in exact accordance with a
Paris model in a shop.
In one hand she held a most irresponsible creation, which Ted almost
diagnosed as a hat, though it had neither crown nor brim, and in the
other, a perfect sheaf of long, black-headed pins.
She smiled at him with frank favour and, saying carelessly, "The
smith, my father, will attend to you, sir, when he has had tea,"
passed on to a little mirror on the wall, placed the irresponsible
creation on her tumultuous yet disciplined waves of hair in the very
last position of which any sane creature would have dreamt, and
proceeded, apparently, to stick the long pins through her head.
Seeing, however, in the glass Ted's face of angry consternation, she
flashed round on him tartly yet condescendingly.
"It is no use trying to hurry Dinas. They are country people, not like
London or Blackborough. This is not Williams and Edwards, or such like
place, I can tell you."
The name of the biggest drapery firm in Blackborough gave Ted a clue
to some of his perplexity.
"I see," he said slowly, "that's how you come to be--you are in the
shop, of course, aren't you?"
She was by this time dexterously rolling back her veil preparatory to
tieing it behind, her chin held down to keep it in position. So her
dark eyes had full play as she retorted that she was. Second, in fact,
in the mantle department--because of her figure. She displayed it
lavishly in manipulating her veil, smiling the while at her own
consciousness of perfection.
Ted smiled also. The big, bold, beautiful animal was distinctly
fetching. He said something to that effect which made her giggle.
"You should pass your time coming to choir practice," she said,
challenging him again quite frankly, when, after much shrill Welsh
with her father, the latter stuck to two hours as his shortest
limit for repair. "I sing in chapel when I am on holiday still; my
music-master was the great Taleisin--that is his bard's name, of
course--and Alicia Edwards, here, has won so many times in
competition."
The last sentence introduced a girl who had just come downstairs, with
a display of white lace stockings and thereinafter a blue dress
surmounted by an extremely smart hat, possibly the one over the
purchase of which Myfanwy Jones had spent her eloquence. The girl was
fair and pretty, but there was about her that marked lack of personal
grip on her surroundings, which is so noticeably a result of eleven
years and more of strict Board School life; for Alicia's father had
marked her out as a pupil teacher when she joined the infant class at
three. That had been her ambition till she secured the position at
sixteen. Now, at seventeen? At seventeen she blushed and giggled when
Myfanwy went on:
"She will sing with Mervyn Pugh, our minister's brother. He is a very
good looking young man--just so good looking as you."
To which obvious challenge Ted said something which changed the giggle
to a titter; after which he left them, feeling a trifle uncertain as
to the result of a reference to Ned.
He found him lying flat on his stomach on the bridge which spanned the
stream again a little further down the village, watching, so he said,
for even a shadow of a trout in the deep pool below it, a pool which
after the long spring drought was only connected to the next one by a
mere driblet of water.
"Do?" echoed Ned, looking up at Ted with a twinkle in his eyes.
"Excelsior, of course." He waved his pipe towards the "World's Eye,"
still shrugging high shoulders in the sunshine, and away from Miss
Myfanwy Jones, who was standing with Alicia Edwards at the gate of her
father's neglected cabbage-patch, buttoning her grey suede gloves with
a hook from her silver chatelaine. Her face showed beautiful
unconsciousness, though her eyes were on the alert.
Ted hesitated; then from a larger cottage emerged the Reverend Morris
Pugh, very spick and span, accompanied by a younger man, evidently by
his looks the handsome Mervyn. But the forehead fringe which, after
the fashion of young Wales, he wore, was too much for Ted. It looked
exactly as if it, also, had been in a curling pin, and feeling vaguely
that he would rather not be seen by Ned in its company, he laughed,
said "Excelsior, by all means," and led the way, taking off his hat to
the charmer as he passed.
Five minutes afterwards, pausing for breath, their first spurt upwards
done, the village lay behind them, looking solitary in its close
cohesion of cottages and trees.
But from the church, all ivy-mantled amid its wide graveyard, a bell
was clanging, and across the grassy mounds dotted with stones, a tall
figure in a black cassock and a biretta cap made its way to the vestry
door.
"The voice of one crying in the wilderness," remarked Ned, "but he has
the bell ringer for congregation, and even Miss Myfanwy Jones will
come back to the old churchyard in the end, as her fathers have done,
for a penny funeral." Then he laughed. "I shall never forget my Scotch
groom-----" he paused. Ted eyed him curiously.
"Well?" he said.
"Oh, nothing! only his criticism on a Welsh funeral was scathing.
'There was no a drop o' whisky, an' they asket me tae pit inter the
brod!' Insult on injury!"
So, laughing, they made their way upwards, through black land and
bog, through thickets of unimaginably tall brake, and over sparse
close-bitten knolls, the sheep flying in disorder from them like a
routed army, a stonechat starting from the gorse giving them a
momentary thought of game--a thought, no more. And the sunshine
mounted with them, chased by the shadow, so that it came upon them by
surprise when they reached the summit to see the valley below them
veiled in soft purple, and the sun itself not far from setting behind
an ominous low level of cloud which lay far out to seaward.
"It has taken longer than I thought," said Ned, stretching himself
flat on his stomach, "but there is plenty of time."
"Plenty," echoed Ted, cross-legged like a Turk as he knocked out the
ashes of his pipe on a stone.
"We've done the ginger-beer woman, anyhow," remarked Ned after a
pause. "She comes there," he pointed to a hovel of stones a few
hundred yards further along the plateau, "from the Llangolley side;
seven A.M. till seven P.M. during tourist time, the innkeeper said. I
wonder how she spends her day?" Then, half to himself, he added, "As
if this wasn't meat and drink enough for any one."
It should have been. Far and near, cleft by the purpling shadow from
below, the higher hill-tops dissociated themselves from the lower
ones, shining rosy, resplendent, giving back the sun its parting gift
royally, yet yielding bit by bit to the swift storming uprush of
shadow. Another, and another picket of light stood, broke, fled from
the foe to some higher refuge, until the last steadfast post of the
"World's Eye" remained alone above a world of shadow. Remained alone,
a vantage-ground of clear vision, above the wide cup of amethyst hills
in which the flood-tide of the sea lay prisoned. So still, so serene,
so silvery, lulled to unresisting sleep, as a captive bride might be,
by love for the surpassing beauty of those embracing arms. Beyond,
over the broad belt of darkening ocean, the sun was just dipping into
the bar of cloud, leaving a flame upon the sky.
"We must wait and see the last of it," said he upon the grass
suddenly, and the other nodded.
Up and up breathlessly crept the light. On the patch of bracken in the
hollow, rallying round a spur of rock, flying for a fresh stand across
a shaly slope, so holding its own for an instant against a scarp,
driven over the ledge! Ned's hand went out to touch it, but found it
behind him; so, turning swiftly he saw the last flicker of sunlight
resting, ere final flight, on a yellow placard--
"Ginger beer, 6d."
He started to his feet. "Damn it all!" he cried, "fancy finding that
ultimate sixpence here!"
"Sixpence?" queried Ted, rousing himself from a day dream. "Ah! I
was thinking of the hundred pounds you left over yonder. It really is
d----d rot, you know. What's to hinder my claiming it--well--say
to-morrow morning?"
"You've time now if you wish it," assented Ned, "and if the
thunderstorm----"
As he spoke there came a quiver of light far out over the hidden sea.
It seemed to come from below the threshold of the visible world, like
the sudden gleams from the beyond, which, at times, irradiate the mind
of man with some infinite message.
Ted turned round startled at the greyness that was fast settling down
on hill and sky. "We had better get down as sharp as we can," he cried
hastily, taking his bearings. "I think if we try to the left a little
we shall get down the rocky part before dusk makes going difficult."
Once again, however, the short cut proved the longer way. The path
grew more and more hopeless, until after scrambling down an almost
precipitous corrie they found themselves brought up on a jutting spur,
by a thirty feet drop as the only onward way.
"It's--it's----" muttered Ted, as he satisfied himself they must go
back.
"Worth it," remarked Ned; for the jag of rock on which he stood
overhung a wilderness of grey shadow and grey water; the grey hills
watching the grey water recede from the shores, leaving behind it
still greyer patches of sand that rose roundly from the level reaches
of the ebbing tide.
He stood, long after Ted had started upward, watching also, and
thinking how like these billowy sand-banks were to a drowned woman's
clothes. Some goddess of the earth, surely, lay dead there, her body
compassed by the hills.
"I say! Aren't you coming?" came his companion's shout. "We haven't
time to lose. Look there!"
A vivid flash of lightning shot beyond the deep bank into the rolling
clouds that were coming up swiftly with the rising wind; and, more
quickly than one would have expected, a low mutter of thunder caught
the crags in monotonous echoes.
"Go on! I'll soon catch you up," shouted Ned in return. And he did so;
for there was a lightness, a certain stress of action about his every
movement which differentiated him from his companion's more deliberate
steadiness.
The wind rose at every gust, and in the fast growing dusk, the sheep
sought shelter behind rocks and boulders for the night.
Yet still the downward path could not be found.
"We had best follow the stream yonder," said Ned at last. "It will be
longer, but it will take us down eventually, and I don't want to camp
out with my pipe in that storm."
The first drop or two of rain emphasised his advice; but it was no
easy task to follow it with the mist closing in on all sides. Then
darkness came, bringing a perfect deluge with it. They could scarcely
see the stones at their feet, except when, with the sudden summer
lightning, the whole world of hill and dale and sea was revealed to
them for a second, then shut out again as if in obedience to the
immediate roll-call of the thunder.
But they were young, and it was soft, warm rain; so, with many a slip
and tumble, and many a laugh, they made way somehow, pausing at length
to leeward of a large rock to light a fresh pipe and look at the time.
"Half past ten!" exclaimed Ted, "who'd have thought it!" He spoke
joyously, for his pulses were bounding with the vitality due to the
exercise of mind and body.
"I should," replied Ned; "I'm beastly hungry. However"--here a
brilliant flash gave them the world again, "I believe that's the
bottom down there."
The vision of a stream in flood surging through a low-lying wooded
valley not far beneath them, was certainly the bottom, but it was
nearer twelve o'clock than eleven ere they found level footfall, and
that only on the brink of the stream.
To cross, or not to cross became the question. They referred it to the
next flash of lightning; a long wait in the darkness, for the storm
was passing, the rain had ceased.
When it came, it showed them an oasis of field, a clump of trees, and
something amongst them which might or might not be a human habitation.
The point was settled, however, the next moment by the sudden twinkle
of a wandering light quite close on the other side. It stopped dead at
their view halloo, then retreated, evidently at a run, to reappear,
nevertheless, almost immediately in company with a remonstrant voice,
clear, pleasant, decided.
"Boggles!" it said. "There ain't no sech things as boggles! I've told
'ee so a dozen times, Adam, and I won't 'ave it said. So there!"
"Why, Martha, woman, I'm none fur sayin' 'twas boggles, fur sure, it
might 'a bin a screech howl, but-- Lud 'elp us!--what's that?"
The light was evidently snatched at and held aloft. Then it came
forward a step, and the voice rose in angry scorn.
"Get yer gone, you lazy, good-for-nothin' Welsh libe'tynes. I tell you
she's gone, and right glad was I to get quit o' her. An impident lass,
that friv'lous, her 'ead wouldn't 'old nothing but you young sparks."
"I beg your pardon," called Ned, interrupting the flow of wrath, "but
we have lost our way, and being drenched through, want to know----"
"Well, I never!" came the voice, its owner grasping the situation at
once. "Here, Adam, man, take the light an' show the gentle folk across
the ford, an' I'll just run back and see to things."
Five minutes later, escorted by an apple-cheeked man of about fifty,
they were entering a cottage where the fire had evidently been newly
brushed up, a kettle put on, and a few hurried touches added to
already existing tidiness by an apple-faced woman forty or
thereabouts.
She bobbed them a truly primeval curtsey.
"Dear sakes, gentlemen, you must be through to your vests. Adam, set a
cheer for the gentle folks, man. Adam and me was just after the
hi'fer, sir, she's down calvin', an' they lays like lead on me till
it's over, that they do. An' Adam is such a heavy sleeper, but there!
Two of a sort can't live together, no, they can't."
This calm, philosophic treatment of him, brought a half-conscious
giggle from Adam, and she passed on to treat of other subjects in like
manner. "The village, h'm, not much of a place for _sleepin'_ in, an'
a good mile anyhow, with the bridge locked. Better a hayloft _to
yourself_ than some of them cottages. As for supper, they wouldn't get
nothin' fit for gentle folk to eat. She could see what she'd got, an'
meanwhile Adam'd show them the loft, and bring 'em over pillows an'
blankets; they'd dry easy in the hay, while the clothes hung 'andy on
the rafters, or Adam could bring 'em back to the fire when he tuk over
supper, not but what it _was_ perhaps better to 'ave somethin' to put
on in case o' fire!"
A quarter of an hour afterwards, having made a most excellent meal of
cold beefsteak pie and tea, which, they were assured, was "better to
keep a chill off than beer," they duly put out the lantern, with which
they had been bidden "to be real careful because of the yay," and
listened to the clear, dispassionate voice saying, as its owner passed
the loft--
"You go ter yer bed, Adam, an' sleep while you can. She's passed
midnight, and it wunt come now till dawn; but I ain't the mind to
sleep. They lies too heavy, poor dears."
"That woman," said Ned, from his blanketed bed in the hay, "ought to
have been a Field Marshal or a Prime Minister."
There was absolute conviction in his voice.