WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN.
Is there any record of a catastrophe so great or appalling that it could
not possibly have been worse?
In the first hours of her sudden bereavement, Mrs. Edwards felt as if an
overwhelming flood of desolation had swept over her, and left her and
her orphans helpless and hopeless. Not that her husband had been the
most active spirit on the farm, but she was in no condition to reason or
to weigh probabilities. She had not been wont to rely on him for advice
or action, but in losing him she felt as if all was lost.
An apparently small matter roused her to the consciousness that there
were depths of misery into which she had not been plunged, and that even
out of her affliction she had cause to thank God for sparing a double
blow.
When the drowned man had been discovered, he had been bruised and beaten
against rocks and stones until his grey frieze coat was torn into shreds
and tatters. But it was afterwards found that the old stocking-foot he
carried as a money bag had been securely buttoned up in his breeches
pocket, and the produce of his sales at the Friday's market was there
intact in hard coin.
In the extremity of her grief for her one great loss she had overlooked
the probability of the smaller. Not till the saturated bag was handed to
her unopened did she realise what might have been.
As she poured the gold and silver out on her lap, she clasped her hands
and fervently thanked God that in His wrath He had remembered mercy.
'I had forgotten that the sheep and goat had been sold to make up the
half-year's rent. Yes, indeed I had. And what would become of the farm
and the poor children if the rent could not be paid? Pryse, the agent,
would turn us out for a better tenant than a poor widow, look you! But
he shall see what a woman can do. The good God has not quite forsaken
us.'
She wept again at the thought, and little William and Jonet having drawn
close to her side questioning her with innocent eyes and tongues, she
clasped them both in a close embrace, and, without trusting herself to
answer, rose from her wooden stool and carried the recovered coin to a
safe hiding-place in the big chest, her sad heart much lightened of its
load.
Barefooted David, who was still petticoated--his nine years bringing no
title to the dignity of week-day shoes or breeches,--ran with all speed
in search of Rhys, to carry the news that a bag of money had been found
in his father's pocket, and that his mother was crying over it.
Rhys was just then feeding the pigs in a stone trough, placed where
they were walled in like sheep in a fold. He almost dropped the pail he
was emptying, he turned round so sharply.
'Crying? What for?'
''Deed, I think it was about being turned out of the farm,' answered
Davy, who had caught the words imperfectly, as he hurried out at the
doorway.
Rhys looked aghast. What became of his heroic resolution to work for his
brothers and sister if they left the farm?
'Turned out of the farm?' he echoed incredulously. Had not his father
and grandfather been born upon it? It would be like tearing up an oak
tree by the roots.
''Deed, and she said it,' replied David, as if injured by the doubt.
Down went the empty pail on the stones, and into the house strode Rhys,
alternately red and white with excitement.
He could scarcely get the words out, they seemed to choke him. 'Davy
says,' he began with a gasp, 'that we are to leave the farm'--he could
not bring himself to say 'be turned out.'
'Nay, Rhys, not now I have all the money for the rent, thank God! If
that had been lost in the river, I cannot tell what might have happened.
There would be no chance of selling cows or pigs, or the oats, or
anything before the rent-day, and Mr. Pryse would not wait an hour. "Out
you go!" would be his word. "There's a man will give ten guineas more
rent for it, and keep the land in better condition." Yes, look you, he
has been saying that these three years, and now it's he will be for
saying a woman will not be able to keep the hundred acres and pay my
lord his forty pounds. It's poor land, so much rock and bog and wood,
and he knows it, so much barren hill-side, scarcely fit to pasture the
few sheep and goats. Yes, 'deed it will take hard work to make the farm
pay now the husbandman is gone. Ah, yes, yes! We have had a terrible
loss, Rhys, _fach_.'[4]
As she spoke the last words the poor widow's tears gushed forth again,
and would not be restrained. The flowers she was strewing over the
sheet-covered form of her dead fell to the floor, and she dropped on her
knees beside the bed, where it was her mournful duty to watch, and hid
her face with her hands as if to conceal the passion of grief she could
no longer control.
Rhys was sobbing too, though he strove against it in his effort to be
manly. His arm went round her heaving shoulders with an unstudied air of
natural protection, and in a broken voice he begged her to be calm. Not
that he was by any means calm himself, but he was feeling early the need
for self-restraint.
'Don't, mother, don't,' he murmured; 'you will be making yourself ill,
and then who will mind the farm or the children? I will be a good steady
boy, and will work as hard almost as a man. You shall not miss father
more than I can help, look you. And sure we have a terrible loss; but,
mother dear, it might be worse if we did lose the farm and all, as Davy
did say. You are a good farmer, so Owen Griffith do say, and you will be
teaching me.'
'Yes, indeed, please God, and you shall be a good farmer too, Rhys,'
sobbed she, drying her eyes on her long check apron, and giving him a
look of profound trust and loving motherhood, whilst he drew himself up
with a renewed sense of importance.
At that moment a figure darkened the bedroom doorway. In stepped a
fresh-looking young woman with bare legs and feet, short petticoats of
striped flannel, a dark blue woollen cloak, and a man's tall hat worn
over a plain linen cap, white as a snowdrop, though the stray locks
beneath it might have been more orderly had looking-glasses been more
common. She had a bundle on her left arm, a stocking she was knitting in
her hand, whilst little Willie held her fast by the other, and Jonet
clung to her cloak.
'Ah, Ales,[5] is that you?' burst from Mrs. Edwards with an evident gasp
of relief. 'You was not expected back so soon. Had you heard of our
loss? Is your poor mother well again?'
'Not quite well, but better, look you. She can sit up, and Mary may
manage to do for her now, perhaps.' There was a dubious tone in the
'perhaps,' but she went on to say, 'Mother would not let me stay when
she heard of your great trouble, after you was so kind as to let me go
away to nurse her. It was not right I should stay at Caerphilly when you
was being left all alone by yourself, with nobody to keep watch with
you or to help at all;' and she passed into the kitchen as she spoke.
'Yes, _I'm_ here, Ales,' thrust in Rhys, as he followed. 'I shall help
mother now; yes, indeed!'
'You?' ejaculated Ales incredulously, whilst divesting herself of
bundle, cloak, etc. 'Help's a little word and soon said, but it's not
much more than the saying we will be getting from you, Rhys. You never
was fond of work, whatever!'
Rhys pulled himself up as if insulted. 'You shall see,' he said loftily,
and quitted the kitchen, where Mrs. Griffith was paring turnips for
dinner, his chin in the air. And not another word did he vouchsafe to
the young woman, his mother's hired servant. He might, by his manner,
have expected her to understand his altered position and good resolution
intuitively, but she only knew him as a lad with more liking for play
than work, and expected no more from the present than from the past.
Nay, perhaps less, now there was no father to drive him to his daily
tasks and thrash him into industry.
It was a time of unusually painful bustle and excitement, yet there was
no cheeriness about the daily tasks. Indoors there was a hush even in
the scrubbing of benches, tables, and platters, almost in the dash of
the churn, for was not the widow still keeping her watch by the
dead--the dead who could not be buried on the third day, but must wait
until coroner and jury could be called together to verify the cause of
Mrs. Edwards' widowhood? Mrs. Griffith was there, alternately to help
Ales with her work, and to relieve the mourner--a kind, motherly sort of
woman, one to rely on in emergency.
Out of doors Rhys kept David well employed, telling him he would have to
learn to be a man, directing him to do this or that with quite an
elder-brotherly air of proprietorship, though not unkindly. Ales
wondered what had come to him, he worked about the farm with so much
more knowledge of the right thing to be done at the right time than she
had given him credit for possessing.
As for poor little Jonet and William, they shrank whispering into
corners out of everybody's way, or slunk out into the bit of ground that
did duty for a garden, or strayed into the orchard, where they made
themselves useful picking up windfall apples for the pony and the pigs,
and did their best to make themselves ill by eating the unripe fruit at
the same time; for although four years old Jonet was imitative in
assuming a protectorate over her two years brother, she had not herself
outlived a childish love for the crude and indigestible. They were,
fortunately, too young to comprehend the mystery of the closed room, yet
the general air of restraint affected even them, as they went about hand
in hand.
The valley of the Taff has long been noted for its fertility. It was
otherwise in the early years of the last century, when husbandry in
Wales was so primitive that the spade did duty for the plough, and crops
had to be wrung from exhausted soil wholly by hand-labour; ignorance,
and old prejudice in favour of doing as their fathers had done before
them, standing in the way of progress, equally with the paucity of good
roads and bridges over which to convey produce.
In places the lowlands near the river were fertile; and where the stream
was bordered by lofty slopes, and not hemmed in by precipitous limestone
crags, they were clothed with dense woods of fir and mountain ash, oak
and beech, with sallows by the water edge, all more esteemed by the
sparse population for their timber than for their wondrously picturesque
beauty. But at the top of the mountain range eastward of the vale, and
on their upper slopes, much of the ground was sour and boggy, and called
for more agricultural knowledge and appliances than had found their way
thither, even when this century was born.
The farm of the Edwardses was so situated on the mountain-side, and
certainly enjoyed a diversity of soil capable of development in capable
hands. In Eglwysilan parish it was regarded as a fairly large farm, and
the house was the envy of the neighbours, though my modern readers may
think there was little to envy. It had not only three rooms besides the
capacious kitchen, but that kitchen could boast two glazed windows, one
on either side the entrance; a very rare distinction, except in good
houses or towns, so rare that not even shutters closed the apertures
through which air and light found their way to the two sleeping rooms or
to the long apartment in the rear, which served a variety of purposes.
These were the housing of general stores, household and farming
implements, a passage being kept clear from the kitchen midway through
to the back door and farmyard. And this was all the isolation considered
necessary for the dairy and dairy utensils, notwithstanding the purpose
to which the other half of its space was devoted.
All these separate rooms were upon the ground floor. Stairs were almost
unknown conveniences in the cots and farms of wild Wales. Even in the
villages few were the inhabitants privileged to look down upon poorer
neighbours from upper windows. Lime, however, was plentiful in
Glamorganshire, and though walls were put together of roughly hewn
stone, they were whitewashed both inside and out with conscientious
frequency.
In no place short of a mansion was much furniture to be found. And to
say that Mrs. Edwards had a well-scrubbed dresser filled with wooden
platters and with mugs of Staffordshire pottery; that she had not only a
large oaken table, but a linen cloth to cover it on occasion, and that
there was a chair near the chimney corner in addition to the high-backed
bench, or settle, and the three-legged stools; that a spinning-wheel
stood between the two bedroom doors opposite to the fireplace, and that
a large oaken chest stood under one window containing the family stock
of clothing, and of flannel the wheel had helped to spin, was to say
that she was for her time and place a thrifty, well-to-do woman,
somewhat in advance of her class.
However, the great feature of the kitchen was the expansive open
fireplace, where the fire was made on a broad hearthstone, slightly
raised, the inside of the chimney, which sloped upwards towards the top
like a narrowing funnel, being set with stone seats for the elders of
the family.
On the Tuesday following the catastrophe which had made Mrs. Edwards a
widow--although all the morning there had been the trampling through of
coroner and jurymen--a fierce fire of peat and fire-balls filled the
whole of the hearth, and two huge iron pots like witches' cauldrons hung
suspended by chains above it, bubbling and steaming. At the same time,
in the large oven built into the wall on the right of the fireplace, she
and her helpers had been baking spiced cake and oaten bread the whole of
the morning, as if providing for a regiment of soldiers.
It was a hot day and hot work, though casements and doors stood open to
let out the vaporous fumes of cookery; and had not neighbourly Mrs.
Griffith come with her young daughter Cate to the assistance of Ales and
her troubled mistress, the former would have been unable to relieve Rhys
of his voluntary but fatiguing duty at the remorseless churn, so great,
if not unusual, were the preparations for the guests expected on the
morrow.
Indeed, as Mrs. Edwards said, she did not know what she could possibly
have done without Owen Griffith and his wife, they had been such zealous
friends to her in her great affliction.
She was not aware how the man's tender conscience stung him for leaving
Edwards to return home alone from Llantrissant. He was feeling himself
in some sort responsible for her bereavement. At any rate, no brother
could have served her in better stead had a brother been at hand.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] _Fach_, equivalent to the English dear.
[5] Ales, pronounced Alis; in English, Alice.