THE SASSIWN.
The Sassiwn day dawned bright and clear, and as the time for the first
service drew near, the roads and lanes were thronged with pedestrians
and vehicles of every description.
The doors of the houses in all the surrounding villages were closed for
the day, except in a few cases where illness made it impossible for the
inmates to leave their beds. Everybody--man, woman, and child,
including babies innumerable--turned their faces towards the sloping
field which for the day was the centre of attraction.
Already the grass was getting hidden by the black throng, and still the
crowds arrived, seating themselves row behind row on the wild thyme and
heather. The topmost corner of the field merged into a rocky
wilderness of stunted heath and patches of burnt grass, studded with
harebells, and this unapportioned piece of ground stretched away into
the adjoining corner of the Vicar's long meadow. In the afternoon
Cardo, who had virtuously kept away from the morning meetings,
sauntered down to chat with Dye, who had condescended to absent himself
from the third service, in order to attend to his duties on the farm.
"You sit here, Mr. Cardo," he said, with a confidential wink, "on your
own hedge; the Vicar can't be angry, and you will hear something worth
listening to."
Soon the sloping bank was crowded with its rows of human beings, all
listening with intense interest to a pale, dark man, who stood on the
front of the platform at the bottom of the field, and with sonorous
voice delivered a short opening prayer, followed by an impassioned
address. In the clear, pure air every word was distinctly heard all
over the field, the surging multitude keeping a breathless silence,
broken only by the singing of the birds or the call of the seagulls.
Sometimes a baby would send up a little wail of fatigue; but generally
the slumberous air soothed and quieted them into sleep.
The prayer over, the preacher gave out the words of a well-known hymn,
and with one accord the people stood up, and from those hundreds and
thousands arose the swelling tones of one of those old hymns which lay
hold of every Welshman's heart, its strange reminiscences, its
mysterious influences swaying his whole being, and carrying him away on
the wings of its rising and falling melody. His fathers and
grandfathers sang it in their old thatched cabins--and, farther back,
the warriors and bards of his past ancestry breathed the same
tones--and, farther back still, the wind swept its first suggestions
through the old oaks of the early solitudes.
"Is it this, I wonder, this far-reaching into the past, which gives
such moving power to the tones of an old Welsh hymn?" Thus Cardo
mused, as he sat on the hedge in the spring sunshine, his eyes roaming
over the dense throng now settling down to listen to the sermon, which
the preacher was beginning in low, slow sentences. Every ear was
strained to listen, every eye was fixed on the preacher, but Cardo
could not help wondering where Valmai was. He saw Essec Powell with
clasped fingers and upturned chin listening in rapt attention; he saw
in the rows nearest the platform many of the wives and daughters of its
occupants. Here surely would be the place for the minister's niece;
but no! Valmai was nowhere to be seen. In truth, she had been
completely forgotten by her uncle, who had wandered off with a knot of
preachers after the hospitable dinner, provided for them at his house
by Valmai's exertions and Marged Hughes' help; but he had never thought
of introducing to his guests the real genius of the feast. She had
snatched a hurried meal in the pantry, and, feeling rather lost and
bewildered amongst the crowd of strangers, had retired to rest under
the elder bushes, until called upon by Marged Hughes to help at the
table, which she did at once, overcoming her shyness, and keeping as
much as possible in the background.
The guests had been at first too intent upon their dinners after their
morning's exertions to notice the slim white figure which slipped
backwards and forwards behind them, supplying every want with quick and
delicate intuition, aiding Marged Hughes' clumsy attempts at waiting,
so deftly, that Essec Powell's dinner was a complete success.
Towards the end of the meal a young and susceptible preacher caught
sight of the girl, and without ceremony opened a conversation with her.
Turning to his host he asked:
"And who is this fair damsel?"
"Who? where?" said Essec Powell, looking surprised. "Oh! that's my
niece Valmai; she is living with me since Robert my brother is dead."
"Well, indeed! You will be coming to the meetings, I suppose?"
"Yes," said Valmai, "I have been there all day; the singing was lovely!"
"And what did you think of the preaching?" said a very fat man, in a
startlingly bass voice. He was carving a fowl. "That is the important
point," he said, and the wing came off unexpectedly. "Young people are
apt to think most of the singing," here he re-captured the wing and
landed it safely on his own plate. "Did you hear my sermon?" he asked,
between the mouthfuls of the fast disappearing wing, fixing his eyes
upon poor Valmai, who began to wish herself under the elder bushes
again. "My text was--" but fortunately here the company rose.
After a long grace they dispersed, and turned their faces once more
towards the sloping field.
No one noticed Valmai--no one remembered her in the hurry to return to
the preaching field--no one, she thought, would know or care whether
she was present or not; and as she drew on her gloves and tied on her
broad-brimmed straw hat, there was a little sadness in the curves of
her mouth, a little moisture in the deep blue eyes, as alone she took
her way after the preachers to the hillside. As she went she recalled
the last open-air meeting she had attended, nearly two years ago, in
that far-off land, where her father and mother had walked with her in
loving companionship, when she had been the centre of their joys and
the light of their home, and as she followed the winding path,
hymn-book in hand, her heart went back in longing throbs to the father
and mother and the old home under the foreign sky, where love had
folded her in its warm embrace; but now--she was alone! no one noticed
whether she came or went, and as groups and families passed her,
wending their way to the hillside, she answered their nods and
greetings with pleasant kindliness, but still found herself alone!
"It will always be like this now; I must learn to go alone. What can I
expect when my father and mother are dead? there is no one else to care
for me!"
She reached the crowded field, and ought to have made her way into the
front rows near the platform where she might easily have found a seat,
but Valmai was shy and retiring, and seeing there was no settled place
for her, kept on the outskirts of the crowd, and at last found herself
on the piece of uncultivated ground which bordered the corner of the
Vicar's long meadow. She seated herself on the heather at the top of
the bank, the sea wind blowing round her, and tossing and tumbling the
golden curls which fell so luxuriantly under her hat.
All feeling of loneliness passed away as she sat there among the
harebells and heather, for Valmai was young, and life was all before
her, with its sweet hopes and imaginings. She was soon listening with
deep interest to the eloquent and burning words which fell from the
lips of the preacher; and with the harebells nodding at her, the golden
coltsfoot staring up into the sky, the laughing babies sprawling about,
was it any wonder that sadness fled away, and joy and love sang a paean
of thankfulness in her heart?
It was at this moment that Cardo caught sight of her. Unconsciously,
he had been seeking her in every square yard which his eye could reach,
and here she was close to him all the time. The discovery awoke a
throb of pleasure within him, and with a flush upon his dark face he
rose and made his way towards her. She was absently turning over the
leaves of her little Welsh hymn-book as he approached, and smiling
unconsciously at a toddling child who was making journeys of discovery
around the furze bushes. A quick, short "Oh!" escaped her as she saw
him approach, her face brightened up--yes, certainly she was glad.
Cardo saw it in the mantling blush and the pleased smile as he found a
seat on the grass beside her. She placed her hand in his with a
whispered word of greeting, for it would not do to speak aloud in that
quiet concourse of people.
"Where have you been?" he asked, at last.
"At home," she whispered. "Why?"
"Because I hoped you would be out--"
Valmai shook her head as a farmer's wife looked round at her
reprovingly. Cardo attempted another remark, but she only smiled with
her finger on her lips.
"This is unendurable," he thought; but he was obliged to be satisfied
with the pleasure of sitting beside her until the long sermon was over,
and the crowd rose _en masse_ with ejaculations of delight at the
moving eloquence of the preacher.
"As good as ever he was!" "Splendid!" "Did you hear that remark about
the wrong key?" "Oh! telling!" And amongst the murmer of approval and
enthusiasm Valmai and Cardo rose. For a moment the former looked
undecided, and he read her thoughts.
"No--not home with the crowd, but down over the beach;" and she fell in
with the suggestion, turning her face to the sea breeze and taking the
path to the shore.
Here the Berwen was running with its usual babbling and gurgling
through the stones into the sea, the north-west wind was tossing the
foam into the air, and the waves came bounding and racing up the yellow
sand like children at play; the little sea-crows cawed noisily as they
wheeled round the cliffs, and the sea-gulls called to their fellows as
they floated over the waves or stood about the wet, shining sands.
"There's beautiful, it is," said Valmai, pushing back her hat and
taking long breaths of the sea wind; "only six weeks I have been here
and yet I seem to have known it for ever--I suppose because from a baby
I used to hear my father talking of this place. It was his old home,
and he was always longing to come back."
"Yes," said Cardo, "I can imagine that. I don't think I could ever be
thoroughly happy away from here."
"Nor I too, indeed," said Valmai, "now that I know it."
"I hope you will never leave the place--you seem to belong to it
somehow; and I hope I may never leave it, at least--at all events--"
and he hesitated as he remembered his father's wishes--expressed many
times, though at long intervals--that he should go to Australia and
visit an uncle who had for many years lived there. The prospect of a
voyage to the Antipodes had never been very attractive to Cardo, and
latterly the idea had faded from his mind. In the glamour of that
golden afternoon in spring, in Valmai's sweet companionship, the
thought of parting and leaving his native country was doubly unpleasant
to him. She saw the sudden embarrassment, and the flush that spread
over his face.
"You are going away?" she said, looking up at him.
There was only inquiry in the tone. Cardo wondered if she would be
sorry, and was tempted to make the most of his possible departure.
"I may have to go away," he said, "though I should hate it. I never
liked the idea, but now I perfectly dread it. And you," he added,
"should you miss me? It is not very lively here, so perhaps even I
might be missed a little."
Valmai did not answer; she looked out to the horizon where the blue of
the sky joined the blue of the sea, and the white breakers glinted in
the sunshine.
"Yes," she said presently, "I will be sorry when you go, and where are
you going to? Far away? To England, perhaps?"
"To Australia," replied Cardo.
"Australia! Oh! then you will never come back to Traeth Berwen!"
"Indeed, indeed I will, Miss Powell--you laugh at that--well--may I say
Valmai, then?"
"Yes; why not? Everyone is calling me Valmai, even Shoni our servant."
"I may venture, then; and will you call me Cardo?"
"Yes, indeed; Cardo Wynne. Cardo Wynne, everybody is calling you that,
too--even the little children in the village; I have heard them say,
'Here is Cardo Wynne coming!' See, here is the path to Dinas, I must
say good-bye."
"Can't we have another walk along the beach? Remember, I, too, have no
one to talk to!"
"Oh, anwl, no! I must hurry home and get the tea for the preachers."
"And then back to the meeting on the hillside?"
"No; the meeting is in the chapel to-night."
"But when it is over you will come back along the shore?"
"Indeed, I don't know. Good-bye," she said, as she began her way up
the rugged homeward path.
When Cardo reached home, he found his father sitting at the tea-table.
The old parlour looked gloomy and dark, the bright afternoon sun,
shining through the creepers which obscured the window, threw a green
light over the table and the rigid, pale face of the Vicar.
"You are late Cardo; where have you been?"
"In the long meadow, sir, where I could hear some of the preaching
going on below, and afterwards on the beach; it is a glorious
afternoon. Oh! father, I wish you would come out and breathe the fresh
air; it cannot be good for you to be always in your study poring over
those musty old books."
"My books are not musty, and I like to spend my time according to my
own ideas of what is fit and proper, and I should not think it either
to be craning my neck over a hedge to listen to a parcel of Methodist
preachers--"
"Well, I only heard one, Price Merthyr I think they call him. He was--"
"Cardo!" said his father severely, "when I want any information on the
subject I will ask for it; I want you to set Dye and Ebben on to the
draining of that field to-morrow--"
"Parc y waun?"
"Yes; Parc y waun."
"Right, father," said Cardo good-naturedly. He was devotedly attached
to his father, and credited him with a depth of affection and
tenderness lying hidden behind his stern manner--a sentiment which must
have been revealed to him by intuition, for he had never seen any
outward sign of it. "It's no use," he muttered, as his father rose and
left the room; "it's no use trying to broach the subject to him, poor
fellow! I must be more careful, and keep my thoughts to myself."
Later on in the evening, Valmai sat in the hot, crowded chapel, her
elbows pressed tightly in to her sides by the two fat women between
whom she sat, their broad-brimmed hats much impeding her view of the
preacher, who was pounding the red velvet cushion in the old pulpit,
between two dim mould candles which shed a faint light over his face.
Valmai listened with folded hands as he spoke of the narrow way so
difficult to tread, so wearisome to follow--of the few who walked in it
and the people, listening with upturned faces and bated breath,
answered to his appeal with sighs and groans and "amens." He then
passed on to a still more vivid description of the broad road, so
smooth, so easy, so charming to every sense, so thronged with people
all gaily dancing onwards to destruction, the sudden end of the road,
where it launched its thronging crowds over a precipice into the
foaming, seething sea of everlasting woe and misery.
Valmai looked round her with awe and horror.
"Did these innocent-looking, simple people belong to that thronging
crowd who were hurrying on to their own destruction? was she herself
one of them? Cardo?--her uncle?"
The thought was dreadful, her breath came and went quickly, her eyes
were full of tears, and she felt as if she must rise suddenly and rush
into the open air, but as she looked round the chapel she caught sight
through one of the windows of the dark blue sky of night, bespangled
with stars, and a glow of purer and healthier feeling came over her.
She would not believe it--outside was the fresh night wind, outside was
the silver moonlight, and in the words of the poet of whom she had
never heard she said within herself, "No! God is in Heaven, it's all
right with the world!" Her joyous nature could not brook the saddening
influences of the Methodist creed, and as she passed out into the clear
night air amongst the crowd of listeners, and heard their mournful
sighs and their evident appreciation of the sermon, or rather sermons,
for there had been two, her heart bounded with a sense of relief; joy
and happiness were its natural elements, and she returned to them as an
innocent child rushes to its mother's arms.
Leaving the thronged road, she took the rugged path down the hillside,
alone under the stars, and remembering Cardo's question, "Will you come
home by the shore?" she wondered whether he was anywhere near! As she
reached the bottom of the cliff and trod on the firm, hard sand below,
she saw him standing in the shadow of a rock, and gazing out at the sea
over which the moon made a pathway of silver.
The fishing boats from Ynysoer were out like moths upon the water.
They glided from the darkness across that path of light and away again
into the unknown. On one a light was burning.
"That is the _Butterfly_," thought Valmai, "I am beginning to know them
all; and there is Cardo Wynne!" and with a spirit of mischief gleaming
in her eyes and dimpling her face, she approached him quietly, her
light footstep making no sound on the sand.
She was close behind him and he had not turned round, but still stood
with folded arms looking out over the moonlit scene. Having reached
this point, Valmai's fun suddenly deserted her. What should she do
next? should she touch him? No! Should she speak to him? Yes; but
what should she say? Cardo! No! and a faint blush overspread her
face. A mysterious newborn shyness came over her, and it was quite a
nervous, trembling voice that at last said:
"Mr. Wynne?"
Cardo turned round quickly.
"Valmai! Miss Powell!" he said, "how silently you came upon me! I was
dreaming. Come and stand here. Is not that scene one to make a poet
of the most prosaic man?"
"Yes, indeed," answered the girl, standing beside him with a strangely
beating heart, "it is beautiful! I saw the sky through the chapel
window, and I was thinking it would be very nice down here. There's
bright and clear the moon is!"
They were walking now across the beach, at the edge of the surf.
"It reminds me of something I read out to uncle last night. It was out
of one of his old Welsh poets--Taliesin, or Davydd ap Gwilym, or
somebody. It was about the moon, but indeed I don't know if I can put
it into English."
"Try," said Cardo.
"'She comes from out the fold
And leads her starry flock among the fields of night.'"
"Yes, that is beautiful," said Cardo. "Indeed, I am glad you find
something interesting in those dog-eared old books."
"Dog-eared? But they are indeed," she said, laughing. "But how do you
know? They may be gold and leather, and spic and span from the
bookseller's, for all you know."
"No, I have seen them, and have seen you reading them."
"Seen me reading them? How? Where?"
"Last night I was under the elder bushes, and saw you reading to your
uncle. I watched you for a long time."
Valmai was silent.
"You are not vexed with me for that?"
She was still silent; a tumult of happy thoughts filled her mind. He
had found his way to Dinas! He had thought it worth while to stand
under the night sky and watch her! It was a pleasant idea, and,
thinking of it, she did not speak.
"Tell me, Valmai, have I offended you?"
"Offended me? Oh, no; why should you? But indeed it was very foolish
of you, whatever. If you had come in and listened to the reading it
would be better, perhaps," she said laughingly.
"If I had come in, what would your uncle have said? He would have been
very angry."
"Well, indeed, yes; I was forgetting that. He is very hospitable, and
glad to see anybody who comes in to supper; but I don't think," she
added, with a more serious air, "that he would be glad to see you. He
hates the Church and everything belonging to it."
"Yes. How wearisome all this bigotry is. My father hates the chapels
and all belonging to them."
"Perhaps you and I will begin to hate each other soon," said Valmai, as
they reached the boulders through which the Berwen trickled.
It was absolutely necessary that Cardo should help her over the
slippery stones, and with her hand in his she stepped carefully over
the broad stream, subsiding into quietness as it reached the sea. At
last she was safely over, and as he reluctantly dropped her hand he
returned to the subject of conversation.
"Will we hate each other?"
Again there was no answer, and again Cardo looked down at Valmai as he
pressed his question.
She had taken off her hat, and was walking with her golden head exposed
to the cool night breezes. It drooped a little as she answered his
persistent questioning.
"No, I think," she said, with her quaint Welsh accent.
"No, I think, too," said Cardo; "why should we? Let us leave the
hatred and malice and all uncharitableness to our elders; for you and
me, down here on the sands and by the banks of the Berwen, there need
be nothing but content and--and friendship."
"Yes, indeed, it is nice to have friends. I left all mine behind me in
my old home, and I did not think I should ever have another; but here
we are across the shore, and here is the path to Dinas."
"Oh, but the walk has been too short. You must come back and let us
have it over again."
"What! back again?" said Valmai, laughing so merrily that she woke the
echoes from the cliffs.
"Yes, back across those slippery stones and across the shore, and then
back again to this side. I can help you, you know."
Cardo's voice was very low and tender. It seemed ridiculous, but
somehow he gained his point.