A MEMORABLE ENCOUNTER.
William's rebellion had begun to show itself in sullen disregard of his
brother's orders. He was always active and willing when his mother or
Evan called him--Davy might convey a message, but never had an
independent order to give--he was Jonet's obedient bondslave, but when
Rhys demanded his services or attention he generally turned a deaf ear.
For this, Rhys--who considered his ten years' seniority quite a warranty
for control as his mother's deputy and his dead father's
representative--took him to task imperiously, not with any desire to be
knowingly overbearing, but from a stern sense of his own duty to a lazy
lad.
At length, one bright day in early spring, when William was little more
than nine years of age, he stood lingering after the midday meal close
beside the stone gate-posts of a field where Davy and Jonet were already
busy weeding a freshly springing crop of corn. His arms rested upon the
coping of the wall with his chin upon them, whilst he, looking down into
the fertile vale below--where glimpses of the shining river were
discernible like twinkling stars, through the tender green shoots which
veiled the swaying boughs on its densely-wooded banks--seemed lost in a
dreamy mist of speculative thought. The boy's reverie was rudely broken.
'Now then, lazyback! What do you be doing there?' called out Rhys, who
carried a spade on one shoulder and a wicker basket in his hand, which
he tossed down at his brother's feet. No answer coming, he called out
again, 'What do you be doing there?'
'I do be thinking,' came composedly from William.
'Thinking, indeed! I wish you would be thinking about your work. What
can you have to think about, whatever?'
''Deed, nobody knows my thinks,' replied the boy, without turning round.
'You will very soon know _my thinks_,' retorted Rhys, 'if you do not
pick up your basket, and get to your weeding. You are one of the "late
and lazy who will never be rich." Come, stir you.' And, as if to enforce
obedience, Rhys raised his disengaged hand and struck the other a sharp
blow across the shoulders.
At once William turned round, his cheeks and eyes aflame. Rhys thought
he was about to strike him back again.
Instead, he gave the empty basket a kick that sent it flying over the
ridges, and was out at the narrow gateway in an instant, with a defiant
air that seemed to dare Rhys to lay hands upon him again, or attempt to
draw him back.
That day he was seen no more upon the farm until nightfall, when he was
sent to bed supperless as a punishment.
He was up betimes in the morning, and had the fire alight before any one
else was astir. He was having a wash at the spring when Ales came into
the farmyard.
'Name o' goodness!' exclaimed she, 'what's got you out of bed so soon?
Want your breakfast, I suppose?'
William nodded in assent, on his way to the common towel.
'Do you think you be deserving any?'
'Does Rhys be deserving any?'
Ales had a proverb ready, 'Who does well, deserves well.'
'Is it doing well to call names and be striking his brother?'
Ales had no direct answer to that. 'Rhys says you are idle and should be
made to work. You do be playing with stones when you should be weeding
or knitting. _He_ does always be working hard,' she replied evasively.
Prompt was the retort, 'A big man should work, I will do better work
than Rhys when I am as big. 'Deed I will.'
This conversation had taken place during the hasty ablutions of Ales,
who had latterly grown uncommonly anxious to present 'a shining morning
face' to Evan when he appeared. As she combed out her hair at the
diminutive looking-glass he had bought her, as a hint, and which hung
beside the storehouse door, she began in an insinuating tone--
'And where did you be going yesterday, Willem? Did you be with Robert
Jones?'
'Never be you minding,' said the boy, walking past with a pitcher of
water for the porridge. And no further information could she or any one
else extract from him.
After that, whenever Rhys and he came into collision he disappeared, and
none could say whither he went or with whom. Cate or Owen Griffith might
see him pass the cottage door, and exchange a 'good-day' greeting, but
beyond that his wanderings were unknown.
In a mountainous parish like Eglwysilan, where was no village community,
where farms and cottages were mostly solitary and far apart, there was
little chance of encountering many strollers out of the main highway,
except on market-days.
Wandering aimlessly in his blind passion, on the day when Rhys had
struck him, hardly noting the way he went, he found himself all on a
sudden on what appeared to be a short, grass-grown roadway, bordered on
both sides by upright blocks of stone, more stunted and less shapely
than the slabs in the churchyard, but planted there with so much method
in their irregular intervals, they might indeed have been dwarf guards
to some great giant turned suddenly to stone by the magic art of a still
greater necromancer of the olden time, as he had heard.
Such legends were common on the domestic hearth. So that, although it
was a bright spring afternoon, an eerie feeling crept over the
passionate boy, especially when he found himself within a wide circle of
such stones, surrounding, in double file, a huge angular mass of like
stone, narrowing downwards from a flat top, capped by a second stone,
and delicately poised on the rounded point of a small conical base in a
hollowed depression of the natural rock, and in some sort bearing out
the simile of the petrified giant's throne.
As William looked upon this unshapely mass, some dreamy recollection
floated through his mind of having visited the spot before, when the
stones had seemed alive, and making mouths at him. Without nearing the
central stone, but keeping his eye upon it, he walked slowly round
within the inner circle, and, as he went discovered a second path
(leading north) corresponding with the one by which he had entered from
the south.
Then it dawned upon him this must indeed be the spot where he had lain
down faint and tired, when he was, oh, such a little boy, and had been
so frightened by the grim aspect of the stones, as the dark night had
come on, and he could not rise to get away.
Soon he ventured to touch the large central stone that had terrified him
before by giving way on the pressure of his tiny hand. It swayed and
rocked to and fro, and he drew back instinctively, but it did not fall.
And now he knew it surely for the great rocking-stone, and no longer
feared that it would fall and crush him so long as he was good and true,
for so the legend ran.
But now other doubts and fears oppressed him. These would be the very
Druid-stones Owen Griffith had named, and Robert Jones had warned him
not to seek, lest some great harm should come to him.
Was it true there were once men called Druids, and did they come to life
at midnight and nod to the moon, and to the big nodding-stones? Robert
Jones and Ales both said they did, though they had never ventured there
at midnight to see. They only looked like ill-shaped stones, too little
for men. But had they not made faces at him when he was a bit of a baby
crying there in the dark?
The boy's heart sank. He was not proof against the grim and weird
recollection. He took to his heels and ran out of the memory-haunted
circle by the stone-guarded avenue next to him, nor stopped until he had
left the desolate and barren spot far behind.
But where was he? That was not the way towards home. He stood on a wild
heath, high above the valley of the Taff, with the mountain rising and
stretching far away on his right hand, with here and there labourers
tilling the red-brown upland fields, and children at work beside them,
as he should have been working 'but for Rhys,' he told himself.
He did not know, and could not see it, but the Merthyr Tydvil road, such
as it was, lay sunk between the heath and the receding mountain. He had
only to gain that, and turn completely round, to find his way homeward.
He looked to the wooded declivity on his left, where birds were calling
to their mates under the swelling pinky buds or pale-green opening fans,
and the odour of wood violets came sweetly fresh in every breath he
drew. A rabbit rose and scuttered past him, and made for the underwood,
where the golden crosiers of trooping ferns were uncurling in their
beauty. The river ran far below, ran with an inviting rush. One moment,
and the boy had plunged into the wood. 'He would _not_ hurry home to be
struck by Rhys.'
He could easily find his way back with the river to guide him.
So, now slipping, now catching at the trunk of a tree to maintain a
foothold, he scrambled nearer to the river's brink, where was no more
perceptible path than what had been made by intruders like himself. Once
there he fancied the water was more than commonly disturbed; it was here
and there flecked with foam and swirled in eddies. 'Surely the river
must be in flood,' he said to himself.
A little way off a well-dressed young man was seated on a stone, fishing
with rod and line.
William had no shyness. 'Why does the water make such a noise to-day,
and be so rough?' he asked.
'Don't you know? It is from the falls. The river is always noisy here.
It is louder higher up the stream.'
'Oh,' said William; 'what are the falls?'
'Indeed you had better go on a bit farther and see for yourself, my lad.
But be careful how you go.'
The spirit of adventure was on the boy. He thanked the man and did 'go
on,' until he stood still with amazement, for there the full river came
leaping down, in broken falls, from rock to intercepting rock, some
fifteen feet in all; but they might have been fifty for what the
home-kept boy knew.
Strange is the fascination of living, leaping water. He stood there
gazing spellbound, lost in admiration, listening to the tumultuous
uproar, as the swift waters came rushing and flashing downwards,
striking themselves against the rocks into angry foam that William
mentally compared to suds when Ales was washing, only he never had seen
washing on so large a scale. If there were finer cascades in the world
he had not seen them. He was fascinated by what he did see, and lingered
long.
'I wonder if Rhys or Davy ever saw these falls?' he said to himself;
'they never told _me_. They tell _me_ nothing. But I will find out
things for myself.'
The fisherman was rising from his stone when William again drew near. He
had his rod and basket in hand prepared to go.
'Well, what do you think of the falls?'
'Oh, 'deed, and they was wonderful--and terrible. I was thinking how
soon they would drown a man.'
'Yes, or a boy either. Which way are you going?'
'By the riverside, through the wood as far as the ford.'
'That will not be safe at this hour. You might slip into the stream. You
had best go back the way you came.'
'I--I dare not,' stammered William.
'Dare not? Yet you are not afraid to go through these pathless woods by
the riverside at dusk, though a false step might be fatal. Come along
with me; I'll see you on a safe road.'
William followed through the ascending wood cautiously as before, ready
to brave anything with such a companion.
The sun had not set when they stood upon the heath above, and then the
stranger inquired--
'Well, my boy, of what are you afraid?'
'Of going past the Druids' stones, sir.'
'So you are superstitious? What harm can a few old stones do to a stout
boy like you?' was asked with a broad smile.
William felt half-ashamed of the confession, how he had been lost when
quite little, and had seen the stones make faces at him, adding the
current stories he had heard, and his fright that afternoon.
By this time they were descending a slope from the barren heath to the
Merthyr Tydvil highway, thus avoiding close proximity to the dreaded
circle, although the roadway passed on a lower level. As they went, the
stranger did his best to disabuse the boy's mind of his foolish terrors,
and gave him to understand that long before there were any Christian
churches in the land, or any Christian clergymen, the Druids were the
priests, the priests of Baal, and set up those stones for their temples.
Yet he said nothing of their horrid rites or human sacrifices, lest he
should confirm the boy's dread of the stones.
William listened with wide-open ears, putting in a question here and
there, as was his wont, and, to his delight, receiving intelligent
replies adapted to the capacity of a thinking child. He was very anxious
to know something more about the priests of Baal, but, after a brief
identification of them with the idolatrous worshippers of the sun, the
stranger, having ascertained that he could read, referred him to the
Bible for further information.
They had reached the well-trodden turning to the ford. The sun had by
this time set, and twilight was closing in.
'I presume our ways part here,' observed the tall stranger. 'Good-bye.
Do not forget what I have told you. Brave boys who fear God, and do
their duty to their fellows, do not dread the aspect of a few grey old
stones.'
'I'm not afraid of stones, sir. I've got a heap, and I build with them.
But Rhys kicks them over and says I waste my time.'
'So you build with stones, do you? And, pray, what do you build?' asked
the gentleman, with a comical smile, unseen in the twilight. 'Do you
think you could build a bridge over this treacherous river? You would do
good service if you could,' he added, _sotto voce_.
William felt abashed. He had an uncomfortable suspicion he was being
laughed at.
'I am only a boy, sir. I can only _try_ to build. But when I am a man,
Rhys shall see!'
'And who is Rhys?' put the other, resuming his walk when he found the
boy did not turn towards the cottage by the ford.
'Rhys is my big brother. But, if you please, sir, what do be a
_bridge?_'
Without evincing any surprise at the ignorance of a boy of his class
and age, who could not have travelled far from home, the other answered
promptly, 'A bridge is a roadway built _over_ a river so that people may
walk or ride across without wetting their feet. Bridges are sometimes
built of wood, sometimes of stone or brick. A bridge is sadly wanted
hereabouts, my boy. I narrowly escaped being swept away at the ford this
morning.'
William drew in his breath. 'Oh-h-h! Would a bridge have saved my father
from being drowned?'
'It would preserve any one who had occasion to cross.'
'Then I'll build one when I'm a man, 'deed I will,' came promptly.
The stranger, amused by William's earnestness, put some few questions,
in his turn, respecting his father's death, his name, and occupation,
ascertained whence arose his peculiar fancy for building, and suggested
that if the church had attracted him so much he should contrive to visit
the ruins of Caerphilly Castle, which he would find much more wonderful
as a building; adding that he would have to cross a drawbridge to get
into the castle.
'Why, mother and Rhys go to Caerphilly market every week. They never
told me of the wonderful castle, whatever! But I'll go myself,' cried
William, his imagination fired, and his indignation rising under the
supposition that he had been kept wilfully in the dark. It did not occur
to him that familiarity had taken the wonder out of the ancient pile for
his elders.
They had reached the foot of the steep ascent to the farm, which
William pointed out with some pride as his home, and there the
stranger--who said he was on his way to the vicarage--took leave of him,
saying that his name was Morris, and perhaps they might meet again some
day, for he was interested in stone, but it was ironstone and not for
building. However, before he went, he gave the boy a word or two of
advice.
'Remember,' said he, 'you have a character to build before you think of
building houses and churches, and a _boy_ may begin to build that.'
'How?' was asked, William's grey eyes opening wide.
'By fearing God, and doing his duty. But there are bad characters as
well as good ones, and every act of disobedience, of untruthfulness, of
indolence, goes to build up the evil in place of the good.'
He had left William something to ponder. That was a memorable
encounter.