CAERPHILLY CASTLE.
A country vicar in the last century bore little or no resemblance to a
clergyman of any status in this. He was a much more homely and
patriarchal character, especially among the Welsh mountains.
Whatever his learning or his eloquence, he did not hesitate to till his
own glebe-lands, or to perform offices from which the pastor of to-day
would shrink as derogatory to his cloth. As a rule, his stipend was
small, and necessity compelled him so to labour. He came, however,
nearer to his flock in consequence.
When Mrs. Edwards, the Sunday following William's escapade, besought the
Rev. John Smith to admonish her refractory son, who perversely and
sullenly refused obedience to his eldest brother, idling and playing
with stones when he should be at work on the farm, and wandering no one
knew whither when reproved, she was surprised to hear him say--
'Um, ah, yes, I wanted to have a word with that boy of yours. But which
am I to admonish, the eldest, who should set an example of brotherly
love and consideration, or the youngest, who resents what he regards as
petty persecution and overbearing assumption?'
''Deed, sir, Rhys has only set a good example to the rest. He do work
hard upon the farm all day, and teach them to read at night; and he do
have a right to expect them to look up to him, and do what he tells
them; for you see, sir, he do be grown quite a young man, and a good
farmer too, look you.'
'Um, ah, yes, yes. I see. I understand all about it, Mrs. Edwards,' was
the vicar's running comment; 'I'll admonish the offender,' the twinkle
in his genial blue eyes, as he turned to accost another parishioner,
puzzling her greatly.
However, as there was peace between the brothers for a considerable
time, the widow congratulated herself on bespeaking the good vicar's
interference.
She was not aware, for Rhys did not think proper to say, that, after
asking him confidentially if the gossip he had heard about himself and
William was true, and what were the rights of the case, the vicar, out
of his own mouth, had convicted him of a want of brotherly kindness and
forbearance, and had 'admonished' him to remember what a lazy lad _he_
had been prior to his father's death, and had asked how he would have
liked an elder brother to come hectoring over him in those days? In
short, he read Rhys an informal homily on arrogant assumption, and the
need to exercise a degree of lenity towards a brother so much younger,
who was in all probability no worse than he had been himself. It was
something like a pinprick to an inflated balloon.
Rhys did not hold his head quite so high as usual when he joined Cate
and her father at the churchyard stile; and was so quiet during the walk
homeward that Cate tossed her hat-crowned red head about in offended
pettishness, and Owen looked at him askance, wondering what the good
vicar had said to take all the brightness out of him.
William was no less reticent. But, child though he was, he lived in a
dream-world of his own, and had ceased to reveal his inner self on the
domestic hearth, scared by the loud laughter and mockery that greeted
his curious inquiries and precocious remarks.
In his silence, therefore, there was nothing to surprise his mother, who
had fallen in with the general opinion that he was sullen. She had seen
the vicar lead him aside, and took the reprimand for granted.
The opening words of his conversation with the nine years boy did not
seem much like a reprimand.
'So, William, I hear you are going to be a great builder? And Mr. Morris
tells me you want to know all about the Tower of Babel and Solomon's
Temple, the Druidical temples, and St. Helen's Church here, with bridges
and I do not know what beside. Now which of all these are we to talk
about first?'
He had unlocked the boy's heart as with a magic key. Here was some one
else who did not laugh at him. Their conversation lasted little over a
quarter of an hour, and William was frequently the catechist, but it
broke off like a serial story, 'to be continued.' And though it had been
chiefly about building and builders, the vicar had not let the boy go
away without a few words of gentle advice on his duty to himself and
others--a lesson referred back to the two tablets of stone delivered to
Moses amid the fiery terrors of Sinai.
After that there was generally a Sunday morning chat in the churchyard,
and on one occasion the vicar took the boy home with him to dinner, a
distinction that puzzled Mrs. Edwards exceedingly, and made Rhys no less
jealous.
The vicar, a small man surmounted by a big clerical wig, had simply
shown the boy a few architectural pictures in illustrated books, with a
brief description of his own, the letterpress being English, and the
boy's education stopping short at Welsh.
There was a water-colour drawing upon the parlour wall of a ruined
castle with a tower that had been rent from battlement to base, and
appeared in the act of falling. It was too remarkable to escape
William's observation. He eyed it intently for some minutes. At length
he asked, 'What place is that, sir?'
'That? Oh, that is Caerphilly Castle, the oldest fortress in Cambria. Do
you not know it?'
'No, but I mean to go there when the tailor comes to make me some proper
clothes. The packman let me have the cloth for the stockings I have
knitted, look you.'
'Um, ah. So you are in a hurry to discard the ancient Cymric kilt are
you?'
'They make one look so like a girl,' was William's shamefaced answer.
'Yet there are grown men both in Wales and in Scotland who still cling
to the kilt, and are proud of it. You will be for casting off the old
Saxon smock-frock next.'
''Deed no, sir. Men wear smock-frocks, women don't. Rhys wears one and
Evan too.'
But, ancient or modern, no sooner had William a chance of an exchange
for a short-tailed coat and a pair of knee-breeches than he felt he had
made a step towards manhood, much as Davy had done before him--Davy, who
went plodding along from day to day and from week to week, with scarcely
a thought that did not centre in the farm, and who never troubled
himself about 'whys' or 'wherefores.'
'William is not at church to-day. How is that?' remarked the vicar to
Mrs. Edwards on the Whitsunday, as he took his customary stroll among
his parishioners in all the importance of his wig and three-cornered
hat, noting each newly flower-decked grave as he went, and perhaps
making a kindly remark in passing.
''Deed, sir, I thought he would be here. He was dressed before any of
us. Ales said he was proud as a peony of his new clothes, and had gone
off first to show himself. He do be a strange boy.'
'Did Rhys say anything to him about them?'
'Yes, sure, he told him that now he was being dressed like a man he
hoped he would cease to be playing with stones like a baby.'
'Um, ah, yes, yes. I thought as much. You need not be alarmed if William
is not home until late. I can partly guess where he has gone. He is not
doing any harm, my good friend. He is in much less danger than Rhys, I
can assure you.'
Mrs. Edwards looked up in the vicar's expressive face, and following the
glance of his pleasantly twinkling eye, her own rested on her eldest
son, carefully handing Cate Griffith over the tall stile.
She knew nothing of electricity, but certainly something like an
electric shock passed through her, with its instantaneous enlightenment.
A moment she stood dazed, then turned to address the vicar, but he was
gone, and talking with a grey-haired old couple of a son who had been
lost at sea, who had no grave to be dressed with flowers that
Whitsuntide.
William was forgotten in the newer care. There was no mistaking the
attitude, the tender expression in the face of Rhys, or the coquettish
aspect of the ruddy maiden as she placed her plump brown hand in his.
'Sure,' said the widow to herself, 'Cate could get over a stile without
help. I've seen her climb a tree or get over a wall before now. _That's_
why Mrs. Griffith's been so ready to let Cate come to the farm to help
at harvest-time, or whenever we were pushed. I see it all now, and the
fear lest she should go home by herself after dark, as if the road did
not be straight enough. And him a boy, not twenty yet. What do the woman
be thinking of? Do she be thinking I would let Cate come on the farm as
Rhys' wife, when Ales and Evan get married? Oh, Rhys, Rhys, and me a
widow with three younger ones to rear, look you!'
Jonet and Davy, standing close beside her, during her brief colloquy
with the vicar, had no clue to the significance of his hint or his
glance; but they could read the trouble on their mother's puckering
brow, without suspicion of its cause.
'What be the matter, mother?' asked Jonet anxiously, sidling up to her
and slipping a small palm into the larger one. 'Do you be uneasy about
Willem?'
''Deed, Willem's all right. The vicar said so. You need not fret over
him,' said Davy placidly. 'He will be gone to show Robert Jones his new
clothes.'
'Yes, yes, sure, that will be it,' assented the widow, smoothing her
ruffled countenance with an effort, unwilling to share her discovery
with either Davy or Jonet, although the former was by this time quite as
old as Rhys had been when he felt himself entitled to assume a general
protectorate of the family.
Taking Jonet by the hand, she made her way across the churchyard more
hastily than usual, barely nodding in recognition of an acquaintance who
advanced a step or so in expectation of a chat. Her desire was to keep
Rhys and Cate in sight, and so confirm or dispel her newly-aroused
suspicions.
But there were others before her at the stile, a father and mother, with
three or four young children, to be helped up the steps on one side and
down the other, and by the time her turn came, Rhys and the Griffiths
were well in advance, and lost to sight by a bend in the road.
Davy was always inclined to saunter along, and Jonet, however brisk at
starting, began to drag heavily after the first mile on the return,
encumbered by her Sunday shoes.
For all that neither William nor Rhys were at home when they got there,
and the rare Sunday's dinner of boiled meat and potatoes was on the
table, with buttermilk to wash it down, before the latter came hurrying
in, his cheeks aglow.
The uneasy look on Mrs. Edwards' face had not been set aside with her
hat and cloak--worn in all seasons on account of uncertain skies--nor
had she found it as easy to conceal her displeasure with a smile, as it
was to cover her best linsey-woolsey skirt with a fair linen apron.
'Has not Willem come in?' asked Rhys, glancing round the kitchen.
'No!' said his mother curtly, 'and _you_ have not been hurrying
yourself.'
'Owen Griffith kept me talking about the success of his new crop of
potatoes. He says that his brothers, and Roberts, and Lloyd are all for
trying them next year.'
'Potatoes, indeed!' his mother jerked out, and he looked up at her. But
he set her evident ill-humour down to the absence of William, as did
both Evan and Ales.
And where was William rambling that bright Whitsunday morning, when he
should have been helping his mother to dress his father's grave with
flowers?
Had he gone, as suggested, to parade his manly suit before his friend
Robert Jones?
Not he; that would hardly have accounted for his absence from church,
since the turf-cutter's cottage was on the direct road-side.
No. When the vicar was giving out his text, William Edwards was studying
a 'sermon in stones,' his text being Caerphilly Castle, and he standing
in blank awe and amazement beneath the barbican towers of the only
drawbridge time has spared out of the original thirteen, much as he had
stood in infancy overpowered by the comparative vastness of Eglwysilan's
church when he was first brought face to face with it.
And now it was but a dumpy boy of nine who stood transfixed by that
approach to a stronghold, 'of which the very ruins are stupendous,' a
boy unread in history, who knew nothing of the Romans, or of Beli Gwar,
or of Robert Fitzhamon, or of any of the conjectural first-founders, or
of Edward the First who added so largely to its strength and size. He
could see that it stood encircled by water in a wide plain surrounded by
dark and barren mountains, but had any one informed him that it occupied
an area equal to Windsor Castle he would have been no wiser, never
having seen a castle before, or heard of any Windsor except the lord of
the soil around his home.
With mountains he was familiar. Their grandeur did not oppress him. They
were the work of the infinite God who made the whole world, who set the
sun and the moon and stars high in the heavens to give us light. The
creation of the universe by the Almighty hand was no new idea in the
boy's mind. But that men, only _men_, should have put that vast pile
together, its towers, its massive walls that had outlasted hundreds of
years, was suggestive of possibilities and capabilities that took his
breath away.
He stood there long, not so much because he was tired with his
five-miles' rough walk that hot morning, but to overcome his first
sensations of awe. Then he passed between the two great towers, and
traversed courts and alleys, citadel, hall, chapel, whatever the
pillared areas, the vast walls and arched windows, may suggest to
antiquaries. To the boy they suggested only a marvellous enigma it was
his fixed determination to solve _some_ day.
In his explorations he had to scramble over the fragmentary ruins of a
second drawbridge between flanking towers, over which the friendly ivy
had thrown an evergreen mantle. Here he stood gazing astonished at the
mass of solid masonry which had walled the castle in, and at a great
arched gateway under which he passed. He groped his way down to an
underground chamber where had been a smelting furnace and a mint; and
from that wonder of wonders, a staircase to the turret-top.
But nothing held him so spellbound as the leaning tower, which, with
chambers and passages complete, and outer walls full ten feet thick,
overhung its base nearly four yards, a threatening mass that so had hung
in mid air since the convulsion that had rent the tower in twain
centuries before, yet held aloft as surely as the tower of Bologna or of
Pisa.
Nothing knew William of these, or of battles or sieges, or of the force
of water let in on molten metal; but he could wonder how the stones held
together, and he could argue with himself that what had been done might
be done.
Aladdin's enchanted garden of precious stones was nothing to what
Caerphilly Castle was to the boy William Edwards.