THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS.
Evan was one of those capable individuals, who, through making good use
of eyes and ears, can turn their hands readily to anything. In those
days, before the 'division of labour' had been formulated into a creed,
the class was more common, and still in remote country places
individuals of the type may be found. In addition to his field-work he
had helped the shepherd to mend the stone fence of his sheepfold, and
had made the ragged roof of the cattle-shed wind and weather proof with
the heather Rhys had cut down. He had yet to demonstrate his 'all-round'
faculty in the performance of a promise made, in the first place, to
Mrs. Edwards, and secondly, to little William.
It was quite a common thing in Wales, as it is in Ireland to this day,
for the pigs to wander over the farm, or out in the roads, poking their
snouts into the proprietor's kitchen as a matter of course, and making
free with root-crops meant for human beings. But as it happened that
Mrs. Edwards and Evan had experience of a better state of things, they
were agreed as to its adoption.
Consequently, at the beginning of the week, William, who had begun to
follow Evan about like a small shadow, was delighted to watch him and
Lewis clear away a large space among the outbuildings, and Robert Jones
came two or three times with loads of rough stones from a local quarry,
which his two patient beasts drew on the singular sleds or sledges that
did duty for wheeled carts in those mountain regions.
But it was the process of piling and fitting these loose and shapeless
stones on one another, so as to bind together in a firm and compact wall
without cement, that kept William dancing with excitement unfelt by
either passive Davy or Jonet, to whom a stitch more or less in their
knitting appeared of vastly more importance than the raising of a common
wall. It might suit William to caper about, or to stagger under a
voluntary load of stone, and fancy he was helping, it did not much
interest them.
Yet these children were no blinder than the world at large to 'the day
of small things.'
But when they noticed the rising walls shaping into two adjoining square
enclosures with little doorways, across which he placed long, flat
pieces of wood to support the upper courses of stone, and beheld a
conical roof rise over each in genuine Welsh form, and learned that the
two small houses were for the pigs to live in, Davy himself set up an
exclamation of surprise, as Rhys had done before him. And, no doubt,
Evan would have been equally surprised had he been told that the beehive
form was as ancient as the habitations of those early British ancestors
who fled to the Cambrian mountains for refuge from the Roman and Saxon
invaders.
Astonishment was exhausted when Williams, the Eglwysilan carpenter, on
the Wednesday, brought a couple of stout wooden troughs and gates, for
by that time each conical sty had been supplied with a small walled
forecourt of its own, and Evan had covered the earthen floors with a
thick carpet of dry fern for the pigs to lie upon. And whilst the man
was at work fixing up the gates, he made a broom of ling, and began
scrubbing the dirty old sow vigorously, to make her fit for her clean
abode. The pigs grunted and the children laughed. So did Williams, the
carpenter, to whom pig-scrubbing was a novelty. And so did Rhys, who
came up the yard at the time, his lip curling with fine scorn.
But Ales, who had lived with her mistress long enough to imbibe her
advanced notions of cleanliness, and had, besides, a natural vein of
good sense in her composition, called out from the unshuttered dairy
window, where she stood drawing a knife through and through the
newly-churned butter to remove accidental cow-hairs before making up:
'Them as likes good bacon should be caring for the swine. There's fools
as would rather be sticking in the mud than mending the roads.'
Having delivered this oracular rebuke to the scorners, she resumed her
butter-making with renewed energy, none the less for the swift glance
and smile of approval she had seen on Evan's quickly upturned face.
She and Evan were becoming as good friends as he and William, and he did
not affect to despise an additional friend on the hearth where Rhys was
silently hostile. Beyond the bounds of the farm he felt he could defend
himself, if necessary.
But it would be as easy to defend oneself from a fog as from the
whisperings of envy or the shrugs and jeers of ignorance.
Already was the voice of prophecy upraised among the Sunday gossips that
Evan Evans would bring ruin on Brookside Farm with his foolish new ways.
The very carpenter who had taken the order for the woodwork of the new
sties had tuned saw and plane to laughter, and hammered down his
conviction that 'Mrs. Edwards would be finding out the folly too late.'
And listening lag-behinds shook their shock-heads and fell back on the
old Welsh proverb: 'Ah, a widow's goods will soon be gone.'
When these whisperings reached the widow in the guise of advice from
well-meaning cousins in all degrees of affinity, she put them down with
a short, decisive answer: 'Look you, I do have my ways, you do be having
yours. Keep your own spade for your own farm.'
She wondered how the petty details of new management had reached so many
ears, and gave Lewis a sharp hint not to gossip about what did not
concern him. But she never suspected Rhys of dropping the word-seeds
that rose up around them as ill weeds of speech and thought.
She had seen Rhys kick over wantonly a miniature wall that William was
attempting to 'build' across the threshold with Evan's refuse stone
chippings, and she had rebuked him sharply when he flung out angrily the
small collection the child had brought indoors to 'build' with--just
such a heap as a modern boy's box of bricks--not taking his pretence of
'a litter' as an excuse. She had gone so far as to insist on the
restoration of the 'poor darling's playthings'; but just as she failed
to hear him delegate to Davy the task of picking up the scattered
treasures William was crying for, so she failed to suspect her eldest
born of any ungenerous feeling towards Evan, or any unworthy comment on
private affairs to strangers.
So long as roads were passable, and skies at all propitious, Mrs.
Edwards was certain to ride to Caerphilly market, companioned by Rhys,
less for protection than for his instruction. When Aquarius was reckless
with his water-pot, Evan alone bestrode Breint, and seldom failed to
make a good market.
Equally, when Sundays were fine, Mrs. Edwards went to church, and with
her Rhys and one of the younger ones; Evan's shoulders being always at
the service of William rather than disappoint the boy. Yet, when the
broken weather kept the house-mother and children from Sunday service,
Ales was prompt and ready to accompany Rhys and Evan, even when the
morning mist became a drizzle or a blinding fog. Umbrellas were unknown,
and, therefore, unmissed. Cased in her thick, dark-blue cloak, its large
hood drawn over her low-crowned, black-felt man's hat, and the white
linen cap under that, she seemed to heed the weather as little as her
companions in their heavy coats, and generally came back, after her long
barefooted walk, as rosy and bright as if the sun had been shining
overhead, and the pathway of velvet sward.
If Rhys started with them, he had a trick of deserting them, and joining
Owen Griffith and Cate. But he was so far his own master, and, as they
made no complaint, Mrs. Edwards had no suspicion of his defection, or of
an intimacy so close as to have become confidential.
And, although Owen had been one of the first to follow Mrs. Edwards'
lead in the matter of whitewashing and window-glazing, and had been a
very good friend and adviser to the widow in her hour of sorest need,
and would have been the first to rise in her defence, neither his wife,
nor Cate, nor it may be himself, was above the bird-like propensity to
pick up stray crumbs of confidence, or to drop them for other
well-meaning, bird-like chatterers to pick up. So it came about that
little was done on the farm that was not discussed half over the parish.
Yet, notwithstanding proverb or prophecy, the widow's goods were in no
danger from unthrift.
Whether rain or fair, whosoever went to church or stayed at home,--and
as the winter advanced the roads became impassable,--no sooner was the
kitchen cleared after the simple dinner, than the big Welsh Bible was
laid reverently upon the table, and either Mrs. Edwards or Rhys read a
chapter or two aloud, she venturing to expound the text to immature
understandings.
Theologians might have smiled, or shaken their wise heads over her
expositions, but she was a clear-headed woman, and seldom dived below
her depth.
She never allowed anything to break into this Sunday custom. It was a
family bond drawing them all closer together; even the youngest bringing
their low wooden stools nearer, and listening with attention not common
where books and other objects of interest are many.
In the wet and snowy winter months, when outdoor labour was restricted
and the days short, indoor work was at its busiest. Doors would be
closed to keep out the cold winds, Evan would bring fresh squares of
peat and fire-balls to keep the hearth aglow. He would take the place of
Ales at the churn, or would hang up the big porridge-pot, or (if
cheese-making was about, though there was little cheese made in the
winter) the great whey-pot, with hearty goodwill to help her. Then a
candle would be alight, and whilst the cat and dog lay basking in front
of the fire, all, down to the youngest, would have some useful or
profitable occupation.
It was then Mrs. Edwards' spinning-wheel went round the swiftest, and
sang its song of industry the loudest.
In former days her husband had combed the wool, and was teaching Rhys
how to fling the tufts of greasy and matted wool over the heated iron
combs set in an upright staff, and to draw them out like the long locks
of a woman's hair. She had always sorted her own fleeces. We are all
familiar with the sign of 'The Golden Fleece.' Well, just so the fleece
of a sheep hangs together after it is sheared away, but in every fleece
are several different qualities of wool, and the sorting and separating
those qualities calls for a discriminating touch. This continued to be
her task, though Evan took the wool-combing in hand, Rhys having an
occasional turn with the coarser sorts.
Ales, in generous rivalry with her mistress, having no second
spinning-wheel, took up her distaff, as did half the women in the
Principality, and set her spindle dancing on the floor as she drew out
her thread of wool or linen.
Knitting was taken up by any one of them when not otherwise employed.
Thus Rhys plied his knitting-pins with ease and certainty, and the long
blue or black woollen stockings grew under his fingers, whilst he
proudly exercised his dead father's function, and taught his sister and
brothers to read.
It was a tedious occupation; and he might not have taken it up from
choice, or accepted the office willingly, but the monotonous drawl of
the learners sounded an undertone to the musical hum of his mother's
wheel, and set his heart aglow with the feeling that, however and
wherever Evan had superseded him, in _that_ at least _he_ represented
his dead father, and was, in his own opinion, the head of the house,
having authority over the younger ones.
It made him more patient with them than he otherwise might have been.
And it kept under his reluctance to teach little William his letters,
when the child, with a laudable desire to look big and do what Davy and
Jonet did, insisted on an introduction to the painted characters on his
sister's battledore.[11]
'Me tree years old,' Willie had pleaded, when Rhys asserted that he was
too young to learn, and when that did not serve, 'Me ask Evan, Evan
teach me,' was quite sufficient. Rhys drew his dark brows together, but
he put down his knitting and pointed to the letters without another word
of objection.
Having thus, as it were, compelled his brother to teach him as a favour,
he stuck to his self-imposed task with unflagging determination, as if
he had something to master that must be mastered. And, perhaps, not the
less persistently because, with all a sharp child's acute perception, he
saw he was having his own way in spite of Rhys. Having his own way also
in being free to build walls and houses on the great chest under the
window with his accumulating bits of stone.
That is, until Ales came at an early hour and swept his building
materials into a corner, and swept him and Jonet off to bed with equal
promptitude, barely waiting whilst they said their simple prayers.
Work (the knitting, spinning, and wool-combing) did not cease until the
general supper-time, about eight o'clock; but conversation lightened it,
the distance between mistress and servants being scarcely felt or
perceptible, though one directed and the others obeyed.
Sometimes Evan might have occasion to look after a sick beast, or Ales
to prepare a warm mash, or the shepherd might come in to report the
condition of his flock; but so, with little variation, went on the
routine of the farm, until renewing spring brought fresh activities and
outdoor occupations.
Spring, too, brought wizened Mr. Pryse, the agent, intrusively prying
round the farm, his half-shut eyes scanning homestead and tillage with
eager craving to discover signs of the mismanagement over which rumour
had been busy.
FOOTNOTE:
[11] An oblong board about ten inches long by eight wide, on which the
alphabets and simple syllables were painted. It was furnished with a
handle. In many cases the letters were printed and covered with a
transparent slice of horn. It was then called a hornbook.