THE FARM.
Da ydyw’r gwaith, rhaid d’we’yd y gwir,
Ar fryniau Sir Meirionydd;
Golwg oer o’r gwaela gawn
Mae hi etto yn llawn llawenydd.
Though Meirion’s rocks, and hills of heath,
Repel the distant sight,
Yet where, than those bleak hills beneath,
Is found more true delight?
AT length the young lady awoke. She was startled at the sudden sight of
the stranger, and somewhat terrified at the first perception of her
position. But she soon recovered her self-possession, and, extending her
hand to the offered hand of Mr. Chainmail, she raised herself up on the
tree, and stepped on the rocky bank.
Mr. Chainmail solicited permission to attend her to her home, which the
young lady graciously conceded. They emerged from the woody dingle,
traversed an open heath, wound along a mountain road by the shore of a
lake, descended to the deep bed of another stream, crossed it by a series
of stepping-stones, ascended to some height on the opposite side, and
followed upwards the line of the stream, till the banks opened into a
spacious amphitheatre, where stood, in its fields and meadows, the
farmhouse of Ap-Llymry.
During this walk, they had kept up a pretty animated conversation. The
lady had lost her hat, and, as she turned towards Mr. Chainmail, in
speaking to him, there was no envious projection of brim to intercept the
beams of those radiant eyes he had been so anxious to see unclosed.
There was in them a mixture of softness and brilliancy, the perfection of
the beauty of female eyes, such as some men have passed through life
without seeing, and such as no man ever saw, in any pair of eyes, but
once; such as can never be seen and forgotten. Young Crotchet had seen
it; he had not forgotten it; but he had trampled on its memory, as the
renegade tramples on the emblems of a faith which his interest only, and
not his heart or his reason, has rejected.
Her hair streamed over her shoulders; the loss of the black feather had
left nothing but the rustic costume, the blue gown, the black stockings,
and the ribbon-tied shoes. Her voice had that full soft volume of melody
which gives to common speech the fascination of music. Mr. Chainmail
could not reconcile the dress of the damsel with her conversation and
manners. He threw out a remote question or two, with the hope of solving
the riddle, but, receiving no reply, he became satisfied that she was not
disposed to be communicative respecting herself, and, fearing to offend
her, fell upon other topics. They talked of the scenes of the mountains,
of the dingle, the ruined castle, the solitary lake. She told him, that
lake lay under the mountains behind her home, and the coracle and the
pass at the extremity, saved a long circuit to the nearest village,
whither she sometimes went to inquire for letters.
Mr. Chainmail felt curious to know from whom these letters might be; and
he again threw out two or three fishing questions, to which, as before,
he obtained no answer.
The only living biped they met in their walk was the unfortunate Harry
Ap-Heather, with whom they fell in by the stepping-stones, who, seeing
the girl of his heart hanging on another man’s arm, and, concluding at
once that they were “keeping company,” fixed on her a mingled look of
surprise, reproach, and tribulation; and, unable to control his feelings
under the sudden shock, burst into a flood of tears, and blubbered till
the rocks re-echoed.
They left him mingling his tears with the stream, and his lamentations
with its murmurs. Mr. Chainmail inquired who that strange creature might
be, and what was the matter with him. The young lady answered, that he
was a very worthy young man, to whom she had been the innocent cause of
much unhappiness.
“I pity him sincerely,” said Mr. Chainmail and, nevertheless, he could
scarcely restrain his laughter at the exceedingly original figure which
the unfortunate rustic lover had presented by the stepping-stones.
The children ran out to meet their dear Miss Susan, jumped all round her,
and asked what was become of her hat. Ap-Llymry came out in great haste,
and invited Mr. Chainmail to walk in and dine: Mr. Chainmail did not wait
to be asked twice. In a few minutes the whole party, Miss Susan and Mr.
Chainmail, Mr. and Mrs. Ap-Llymry, and progeny, were seated over a clean
homespun table cloth, ornamented with fowls and bacon, a pyramid of
potatoes, another of cabbage, which Ap-Llymry said “was poiled with the
pacon, and as coot as marrow,” a bowl of milk for the children, and an
immense brown jug of foaming ale, with which Ap-Llymry seemed to delight
in filling the horn of his new guest.
Shall we describe the spacious apartment, which was at once kitchen,
hall, and dining-room,—the large dark rafters, the pendent bacon and
onions, the strong old oaken furniture, the bright and trimly-arranged
utensils? Shall we describe the cut of Ap-Llymry’s coat, the colour and
tie of his neckcloth, the number of buttons at his knees,—the structure
of Mrs. Ap-Llymry’s cap, having lappets over the ears, which were united
under the chin, setting forth especially whether the bond of union were a
pin or a ribbon? We shall leave this tempting field of interesting
expatiation to those whose brains are high-pressure steam-engines for
spinning prose by the furlong, to be trumpeted in paid-for paragraphs in
the quack’s corner of newspapers: modern literature having attained the
honourable distinction of sharing, with blacking and Macassar oil, the
space which used to be monopolised by razor-strops and the lottery;
whereby that very enlightened community, the reading public, is tricked
into the perusal of much exemplary nonsense; though the few who see
through the trickery have no reason to complain, since as “good wine
needs no bush,” so, _ex vi oppositi_, these bushes of venal panegyric
point out very clearly that the things they celebrate are not worth
reading.
The party dined very comfortably in a corner most remote from the fire:
and Mr. Chainmail very soon found his head swimming with two or three
horns of ale, of a potency to which even he was unaccustomed. After
dinner Ap-Llymry made him finish a bottle of mead, which he willingly
accepted, both as an excuse to remain and as a drink of the dark ages,
which he had no doubt was a genuine brewage from uncorrupted tradition.
In the meantime, as soon as the cloth was removed, the children had
brought out Miss Susannah’s harp. She began, without affectation, to
play and sing to the children, as was her custom of an afternoon, first
in their own language, and their national melodies, then in English; but
she was soon interrupted by a general call of little voices for “Ouf! di
giorno.” She complied with the request, and sang the ballad from Paër’s
_Camilla_: “Un dì carco il mulinaro.” The children were very familiar
with every syllable of this ballad, which had been often fully explained
to them. They danced in a circle with the burden of every verse,
shouting out the chorus with good articulation and joyous energy; and at
the end of the second stanza, where the traveller has his nose pinched by
his grandmother’s ghost, every nose in the party was nipped by a pair of
little fingers. Mr. Chainmail, who was not prepared for the process,
came in for a very energetic tweak from a chubby girl that sprang
suddenly on his knees for the purpose, and made the roof ring with her
laughter.
So passed the time till evening, when Mr. Chainmail moved to depart. But
it turned out on inquiry that he was some miles from his inn, that the
way was intricate, and that he must not make any difficulty about
accepting the farmer’s hospitality till morning. The evening set in with
rain: the fire was found agreeable; they drew around it. The young lady
made tea; and afterwards, from time to time, at Mr. Chainmail’s special
request, delighted his ear with passages of ancient music. Then came a
supper of lake trout, fried on the spot, and thrown, smoking hot, from
the pan to the plate. Then came a brewage, which the farmer called his
nightcap, of which he insisted on Mr. Chainmail’s taking his full share.
After which the gentleman remembered nothing till he awoke, the next
morning, to the pleasant consciousness that he was under the same roof
with one of the most fascinating creatures under the canopy of heaven.