THE YOUNG PLAGUE.
Thankful as was Mrs. Edwards, the mother, for the restoration of her
missing darling; as a farmer, sorely behind with the autumnal
field-work, the loss of half a day's labour to every useful hand upon
the farm chafed her no less than it irritated Rhys. But when the child
was absolutely ill, and required careful nursing or watching, she was
torn with a double anxiety. The life of her child was at stake, and so
was her possession of the farm. There was so much to be done before
November set in, and so few hands to accomplish all. The outdoor work
could not be neglected, or the live stock and the crops would suffer.
Yet _some one must_ remain indoors to watch the child, restless with
fever. Davy was willing, but Davy was too young, and lacked strength to
overcome resistance to nauseous draughts.
She was at her wits' end; could not neglect her child, dared not neglect
her farm.
In this emergency, Rhys made a suggestion that Mrs. Griffith might
perhaps be willing to spare her daughter Cate, a stout, red-haired,
good-looking lass about his own age, who had already shown her active
ability to make herself useful.
After some slight hesitation on the part of the girl's mother, it was
agreed that Cate should be at the farm early every morning, provided she
returned home in the evenings before nightfall. Her temporary services
were to be repaid with cheese made from the mixed milk of cows and ewes,
or other farm produce, a customary mode of payment for casual service.
Owen had suggested to his wife that the farm would be a good school for
their girl. She would see things done there, both by Mrs. Edwards and
Ales, that she had no chance of seeing at home, and she could have no
better training for future service.
The girl proved quite an acquisition. She was just as willing as Davy,
and more efficient. When not wanted beside William, she was ready to
relieve Ales at the churn or the scouring of pots and pails. Then she
had a fairly good temper and persuasive ways that made her a capital
nurse for a sick child with a resolute will.
Jonet took to her amazingly. She brought some pieces of striped flannel,
the refuse of her father's loom, and dressed up the little one's wooden
doll like a real Welshwoman. And she brought green rushes from the
brookside, and wove toy-baskets for her.
Or, while Davy was away in the fields filling baskets with freshly-dug
roots, or clearing the ground of stones (which many farmers in those
days believed to _grow_, just as surely as weeds), and Jonet was ready
to whimper for a playfellow, she would set down her knitting, or other
work, to play at cat's cradle or push-pins; and, finding that Davy had
tried to teach the little fingers to knit, she cast on stitches for a
doll's belt, and, with a little patience on both sides, the feat was
accomplished, and Jonet wonderfully proud of her new acquirement.
By thus amusing the healthy child longing for a romp, she preserved
quiet by the bedside of the sick one, whom an apothecary, brought all
the way from Caerphilly, pronounced 'in a critical state.'
Mrs. Edwards, anxiously coming and going, saw what a capital nurse she
made, and judged she was of better use there than in the fields. Rhys,
too, would put his head in through the open window now and then to ask
how his brother was getting on, and satisfied himself that he had shown
his discernment in suggesting Cate to his mother.
And when William began to recover, which was not until November had well
set in, no one was more willing to admit her obligations to the girl
than was Jane Edwards. Nay, she went so far as to send Rhys to light
Cate home when the shortening of the days caused her to be kept after
dark, and Rhys never raised any objection.
She had helped him on her first coming to strip the apple and pear trees
of their late fruit, and to separate such as were to be saved for the
market from those to be thrown into the mash-tub and crushed for cider.
And on the first day that William was allowed to sit at an open door, he
watched her and Rhys preparing the winter store of fire-balls, so
willing was she to help in any way. Propped up in bed, he had seen
Robert Jones once or twice lead a mule and an ass up the steep path with
heavily-laden barrels slung across; but though he called faintly to the
man through the open window, and was as usual inquisitive, he was little
wiser when told they 'brought culm and clay for fire-balls.'
Fire-balls were familiar things. Not so the culm or the clay, and to
satisfy his persistent curiosity he was promised if he would keep quiet
he should witness their conversion into the hard balls.
A few yards from the house he saw on one side a great heap of black dust
(the refuse of hard coal). This, barefooted Cate was riddling through a
wire sieve (the very sieve Breint had brought safely home, though he
lost the buyer), flinging away into a separate heap all that was too
coarse to pass through the sieve. At a distance on the other side was
laid a quantity of yellow clay, portions of which Rhys was moistening
with water, beating and turning over with a spade, and when of the
proper consistence adding, a spadeful at a time, the fine black dust
Cate had sieved, to be again mixed and kneaded like dough, and finally
worked with the hands into round hard balls, which he set aside to dry
for fuel.
The eagerness with which the pale little adventurer watched these grimy
processes, his questions and quaint remarks, quite amused the two
workers, but his searching interrogations speedily posed both of them;
and when he wanted to know what _was_ coal, and what was clay, and why
they mixed the two together to make them burn, he was greeted with fresh
laughter, and an impatient, 'Oh, don't bother,' or its Welsh equivalent,
from Rhys.
But the little inquirer, who sat with his head on one side, resting it
on his hand, was not contented with the put-off; and when Robert Jones
came with a load of peat that afternoon, he was plied with the same
questions.
The man smiled. His own information did not go very far, but he did his
best to reach infantile understanding; told him that the clay was a kind
of earth dug from the river-side, and that coal grew underground, and
was brought up in baskets out of a deep hole by a horse that was always
walking round and round to wind them up to the top by a rope that wound
round a thick wooden post.[10]
This was a puzzler for William. He wanted to be taken there and then to
see the horse go round and round.
Ales, coming at that moment to pay the man, hoping to put a check on the
child's new notion, exclaimed--
'Name o' goodness, do you want the black man to carry you away down the
dark pit-hole, where you would never see us any more whatever?'
'Me don't fink they 'ood. They don't take man down,' replied the child
sturdily; and at length the 'man,' ready to go about his business,
promised to take him to see the horse go round 'some day.'
''Oo said 'oo 'ood take me to see church, an' 'oo didn't,' then said
William in high dudgeon, and lapsed into sullen silence. In all his long
illness he had not forgotten the church he had seen but once.
'Never mind, Willem _fach_; if you are a good boy, perhaps mother will
let you ride with her to church on Breint next Sunday,' said Rhys in a
consolatory tone.
'Sure?' asked William, his face brightening.
'Not _sure_, but I will ask her.' And with that the little fellow seemed
satisfied.
The three youngsters were in bed when Rhys made his suggestion over the
frugal supper-table. It brought on a sharp controversy, in which Ales
joined very freely.
Mrs. Edwards was undecided. She 'feared the child would not be strong
enough to sit through the service after the long ride.'
''Deed, there's no fear o' that,' put in Ales; 'but it's Jonet's turn to
go to church, before a babe that can't make head or tail of a word
that's said; and more like take Davy than either. There's no good of
humouring children.'
'Well, I don't know what queer fancy he has got into that curious head
of his,' argued Rhys; 'but I think it would be best to humour him this
time, lest he should be setting off again, and'--
'Humour him, indeed! More like be giving him a good whipping,'
interrupted Ales. 'There's no end to his queer fancies. It's master
over us all he will be soon, I'm thinking.'
Evan had been silent. He agreed with Rhys. 'It is never too soon to
learn the way to church,' said he. 'I will carry him there on my
shoulders.'
There was a sigh of relief from Mrs. Edwards. 'Ah, then,' she exclaimed,
'Jonet and Davy can take turns on Breint. If it be fine,' she added. She
was disinclined to be severe with William at any time, and after his
long illness she felt unwilling to thwart him. Yet she had misgivings
about indulging the obstinate self-will, 'so like his poor father's,'
she told herself, with another sigh. Evan's proposal was hailed as a
compromise that would, at least, content Rhys.
Not altogether. He was not content that Evan should usurp his
prerogative. _He_ was the one to carry his brother if he must be
carried. He considered his own proposal the fittest; but, perhaps,
ashamed of his foolish jealousy, and remembering the boy's weight, kept
his opinion to himself.
November though it was, Sunday happened to be fine. Whatever mist there
might be on the mountain-tops, there was no thick smoke to blacken it,
and down in the valley it was clearing off.
William and Jonet were in high glee. The little girl had not yet been to
church, and he had led her to expect something marvellous. After illness
children pick up their strength more rapidly than adults. The week had
done wonders for the boy, who had been trotting indoors and out for two
or three days.
He saw Jonet seated on a pillow in front of his mother on Breint, but
was very much too much of a man to accept the proffered shoulders of
Evan.
'Me walk well as Davy and Rhys,' maintained he proudly, and trudged on
sturdily so long as the road descended and had been clean washed by
rain. But little legs cannot keep the pace with long ones, any more than
can short purses with long ones, and after a time the weary little limbs
were glad of a mount on the big broad shoulders. Yet even then he made
the excuse of 'uncomfrable shoes an' 'tockings.'
He did not talk much as they went, but cast his eyes from side to side,
evidently taking note of wayside landmarks. Other people in their Sunday
best were also on the road, and exchanged greetings in passing. He was
apparently on the watch for Robert Jones, whose cottage of rough stone
he recognised at a glance. He expected the 'man' and his donkey to be
there also, and expressed his disappointment. But it was not until they
passed under the shade of the dark firs that lined the roadside boundary
of the vicar's glebe lands, when the lych-gate and the church, with its
long body and massive square tower, were full in view, that he became
demonstrative.
Breint had been left at a small inn at the foot of the hill, and then
William was pleased to dismount from his perch, and, with quite an air
of patronising superiority, to take his sister by the hand as if to lead
her up the hill, and over the stone stile to astonish her sight with all
that had astonished him.
The bells were swinging and ringing over their heads, as they had been
ringing for nearly half an hour, but they were early, and whilst Mrs.
Edwards and Rhys walked together to their new grave, William stood still
with his eyes fixed on the great church tower with childish awe and
admiration.
Presently he startled Evan with the strange questions: 'How did it get
there? Did it grow?'
His pointed finger showed to what it referred.
'Grow, child? No. It was built.'
'What is built?'
'Men brought stones, look you, and put them together.'
'How?'
''Deed, William, you do be asking queer questions. I will, maybe, show
you how it was built next week.'
'Will you? Could me build big church if me was big man?'
''Deed, and perhaps you might help.'
'Then me _will_.'
At that moment, to Evan's relief, Mrs. Edwards caught her little boy by
the hand to lead him inside, Davy having taken charge of Jonet.
Church, clergyman, congregation, service--all were strange to the girl.
Her head turned this way and that; now with a smile as she recognised
some familiar face; but ere long she wearied, and, not being allowed to
talk, she fell asleep, and slept, with her head against her mother's
cloak, throughout the sermon.
Not so William. The service was no more intelligible or interesting to
him, but his unsatisfied, wide-awake eyes were everywhere exploring the
sacred interior; his little mind lost in large wonder at the length of
the building and the lofty roof overhead, so much larger to a child's
imagination than its actuality. And how far his crude speculations went
must remain a mystery to the end of time.
The service over, Mrs. Edwards, holding Jonet by the hand, joined the
stream of worshippers on their way to the porch, nothing doubting that
she was followed by her boys. Once in the wide churchyard, dotted with
upright slabs of stone, over which two magnificent yew-trees had stood
sentinel for centuries, the congregation broke up into groups and family
parties, to greet each other, and discuss alike the affairs of
individuals, of the nation, and of the widespread parish--so widespread,
indeed, that families whose ancestors lay all around lived too far apart
for the meeting of kith and kin, except on the seventh day and on the
common God's acre. Young people too--cousins and friends--clasped hands
and blushed, or looked shyly at each other when only that was possible.
The old vicar, too, when disrobed, would saunter from one group to
another, shaking hands and inquiring about asthma, rheumatism, crops,
and sweethearts, with genial impartiality. Here he would admonish one,
there advise another; now his voice was low in condolence, anon cheery
in congratulation; and, unless when there was some dispute over tithes,
none ever turned towards him the cold shoulder.
He greeted the widow thus: 'Ah, Mrs. Edwards, I observe you have brought
your whole family with you to-day. That is as it should be. "Train up a
child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart
from it."'
'Yes, sir,' she answered respectfully, 'I brought them all--Willem'--she
looked round; 'Rhys, where is Willem?'
'Ah, indeed, yes, where is the little fellow? I heard he had been very
ill.'
Another assent, another look round, the boy was nowhere within sight.
But Evan was seen stalking towards the porch, and in a couple of minutes
out he came leading the boy by the hand.
He had found him standing in front of the communion-table, looking with
awestruck eyes down the whole length of the church, but he suffered Evan
to lead him away without demur.
By that time, however, the vicar had gone, and Rhys, who had been round
the church to look for the absentee, came back cross and ill-tempered.
He had promised Cate to walk home along with her and her father, and had
not been too well pleased to see them pass out over the stile beside the
lych-gate, whilst he was still seeking what he could not find.
'Where had you got to, you young plague?' he cried, with a frown on his
face, taking the boy by the shoulders and shaking him angrily. 'You are
always running off somewhere. But I'll thrash you if you do it again.'
The mother interposed, but the harmony of the hour and the peace of the
sacred place were alike disturbed, and Rhys marched off sullenly in
advance, hardly caring whether he overtook the weaver and his daughter
in his ill-humour.
FOOTNOTE:
[10] This was the old method of drawing coal and pitmen to the surface,
until superseded by machinery. Wells and mills were similarly worked.
And still horses are so employed to draw up yachts on the sea-shore, the
rope passing round a block.