And if even Mr. Tudor Williams himself now appeared a little

absent-minded among his constituents, and hauled himself, as it were,

out of remote fastnesses of thought to grasp them fervently (if

indiscriminately) by the hand, and to inquire after their rheumatics and

wives and other plagues, well, he was a busy, and not at all a wealthy

man. At Llanyglo, as elsewhere, it was not only Welsh and English; it

was also Get or Go Wanting. The early bird....

So (to push on) circular smears of white appeared on the windows of the

second of Raymond Briggs's houses (it was finished by Christmas), and

these gave it the appearance of a sudden new Argus, looking out on every

side for other houses to join it; and the scaffold-poles began to rise

about the new hotel like a larch-plantation. Raymond came and went, and

Mr. Tudor Williams came and went, and short winter day followed short

winter day. Then, with cat's-ice still glazing the ruts and pools but a

feeling of Spring in the air, Porth Neigr, ten miles away, came

bustlingly to life. An emissary of the Lord-Lieutenant of the County

took up his quarters at the Royal Hotel, and there he was one day joined

by the Lord-Lieutenant himself, with Sir Somebody Something, of the

Office of Works. These summoned others, who in turn summoned others, and

maps and plans were sent for and a line of route was chosen. Police were

drafted in, and folk went up into their upper front rooms to see which

bedstead or table-leg would best stand the strain of a rope across the

street. The old station had been repainted to suit with the new

extension, and masts rose at its entrance. To the residents in the

principal streets the Council lent loyal emblems and devices. The sounds

of bands practising could be heard. His Royal Highness the Duke of Snell

was coming to open the line.

Then on the appointed day, the town broke into a flutter of bunting. The

March sun shone merrily on Royal Standard and Red Dragon, on Union Jack

and ensign, on gold-fringed banners with "CROESAW" on one side and

"WELCOME" on the other. On the new metals a Royal Salute of fog-signals

was laid. Warning of the Approach passed along the line, on the

red-druggeted platform officials great and small waited, and John Willie

Garden's friends, whose picks and shovels had made the clay fly, would

no doubt read all about it a few days later in the papers.

So, with detonation of fog-signals, and some cheers, but more wide-eyed

gazing, and bared heads and bowing backs, and an Address, and other

circumstances of loyalty and fraternisation and joy, His Royal Highness

and John Willie Garden between them declared the line open; but only the

Duke rode on the footplate of the garlanded engine with the crossed

flags on its belly. Probably intensely bored, he rode out about a mile

towards Abercelyn, and then returned to luncheon at the Royal Hotel. An

hour later, coming out again, he passed away to Lancashire. All was

over. Folk might now take down their bunting as soon as they pleased.

The trick was virtually done for Llanyglo. A loop at Sarn or a new

junction, and a realisation on the part of those in authority that there

were things that paid better than Abercelyn manganese, and Llanyglo

would be "linked up" with rigid iron to the rest of the world.

Nay, it is already linked up even more straitly. A few poles and a

thread of wire, crossing the sandhills and ending at the Llanyglo

Stores, have some weeks ago put an end to its isolation. It is the nerve

that accompanies the sinew, and Howell Gruffydd now receives and

despatches telegrams. All is over bar the shouting, and it will not be

long before that begins. They are busy now, painting and papering the

new hotel, and decorating and upholstering it. It reeks of new paint and

varnish and furniture-polish and the plumbers' blowpipes. It resounds

with all the doubly loud noises of a half-empty place--with hammering

and tacking, clanking buckets, the "Whoas!" to the horses of the

delivery-vans, the jolting of heavy things moved upstairs, the rasp of

scrubbing-brushes, the squeak of window-cloths. It is spick-and-span,

from the feathery new larches in front to the silvery new dustbins

behind.... Wherefore, seeing that we shall only be in the way, with

never a chair to sit down on yet, and nothing to eat in the place save

what the charwoman and the green-aproned carters and carriers have

brought for themselves, we may as well leave all these things to the

folk whose business it is to attend to them, and take a nap for a month

or two, secure that when we wake up again the scene will be set for

Llanyglo's _lever de rideau_, that starched and polite and not quite

real little piece that preludes the main action of our tale. There is

heather and wild thyme up the Trwyn, very comfortable to doze on;

suppose we have our nap up there?...

_Ah-h-h-h!_--That was the July sun that woke us. It's a warm and

brilliant morning. Stretch yourself first, and then have a look down....

That's a surprise, isn't it? You didn't quite expect that? Really not

much changed, and yet it's entirely changed. Two new houses and an hotel

(in this clean air they'll be new-looking for years yet), and that

little border of deck-chairs and bathing-tents and slowly moving

parasols, not a couple of hundred yards long altogether, and yet the

whole appearance of the place is altered. After a moment you find it

quite difficult to remember it as it was the last time we were up here.

See that little puff of smoke over there? That's a shunting-engine at

Sarn; you'll hear the sound in a moment; there!--Butterflies about us,

like hovering pansies; you can see just one corner of poor old Terry's

Thelema showing; and out there, where the sea changes colour, just where

the gulls are rocking, that's a bank of sand a storm threw up three or

four years ago. And that's the telegraph-wire I spoke of, running

straight across to Howell Gruffydd's shop there. Yes, that links

Llanyglo up....

Where did all these people come from? Well, it's hard to say, but no

doubt Edward Garden's got them here for one reason and another. He may

even have "packed" the place a little carefully; I don't know. At any

rate, he's lent "_Sea View_" there (that's the newer of the two houses)

to Gilbert Smythe. Who's Gilbert Smythe? Well, he's the Medical Officer

for Brannewsome, Lancs., and a very clever and quite an honest man. But

Gilbert's family's grown more quickly than his fortune, live as frugally

as he will he's always in debt, and he isn't going to say "No" to the

free offer of a well-built, roomy house, not three minutes from the

sands where the children can play all day, and furnished from the

potato-masher in the kitchen to the little square looking-glasses in the

servants' attics. And of course Edward Garden asks nothing in return.

But _if_ Gilbert cares to say that the Llanyglo water is abundant and

pure, Edward won't object--it is excellent water. And _if_ Gilbert likes

to praise its air and low rainfall (low for Wales), well, he'll be

telling no more than the truth. And _if_ Gilbert (not bearing ancient

Mrs. Pritchard too much in mind) finds the longevity at Llanyglo

remarkable, what's the harm in that? As a matter of fact, there is a

saying that the oldest inhabitant always dies first at Llanyglo, and the

others follow in order of age, which would be a poor look-out for

anybody setting up in the Insurance business here.... So if by and by

Gilbert signs a statement to this general effect, you can hardly blame

him. He has his way to make, and he is a wise man who allows the

galleons of the Gardens of the world to give his skiff a tow.

The others? Well, Edward Garden's a cleverer man than I, and you can

hardly expect me to explain the workings of his mind to you in detail.

But I think we may assume he knows what he is about. I needn't say

they're all very well-to-do; you can see that even from here; but

there's something else about them, something we saw in Raymond Briggs,

that's a little difficult to describe--perhaps it's merely that they too

intend (_mutatis mutandis_, of course) that their children shall have a

better time than their parents have had--or perhaps we'd better say

their grandparents had, for their parents do themselves very well,

indeed. I don't think you can say more about them than that--it's just

that dash of Raymond Briggs.... Squire Wynne wouldn't understand them in

the least. The Squire's wasted too much time over antiquity. He doesn't

know anything about these people who are coming on. Except in their

clothes, and so on, he'd see very little difference between them and

people Raymond Briggs would look at as if they weren't there. He

wouldn't understand Philip Lacey, for example. (Do you see that

orange-and-black striped blazer--there by the seaweed: he's pointing;

that's Philip Lacey.) Philip is the big Liverpool florist, seedsman, and

landscape-gardener; if he hasn't his "roots in the land" in exactly the

sense the Squire understands, his plants have; and Philip distinctly

does not intend that Euonyma and Wygelia, who are at present at school

at Brighton, shall go into one of his fourteen or fifteen retail shops.

Philip isn't spending all that money for that.... (Understand me, I

think Philip's perfectly right; the only thing I don't quite see is why

he should veneer good sound stuff with something that's an obvious

sham.) Of his wife, frankly, I don't think very much. Her processes show

too plainly. Philip has his business to attend to, but Mrs. Lacey never

leaves her one idea, day or night.... There, Philip's stopped and spoken

to Mr. Morrell. Mr. Morrell has just as many hopes and plans for Hilda

as the Laceys have for Euonyma and Wygelia, but he knows that his "a's"

are past praying for, so he makes rather a display of his native speech.

I needn't tell you what a trial that is to Hilda....

And bear in mind that these are prosperous people, well-travelled people

(though they mostly keep to the beaten tracks where they meet one

another--it's Mrs. Briggs's chief recollection of Florence that she met

some people she knew in Leeds there), people who put up at far better

hotels than you or I do. And if these, who can afford it, can be shown

the way to Llanyglo, the chances are that a crowd of other people, who

certainly can't afford it but as certainly won't be out of it, will come

in their wake.

What do you say to our going down and having a closer look at them? We

might take a stroll as far as Howell Gruffydd's shop--I beg its pardon,

Stores. Sit still a moment though; here's Minetta Garden behind us.

She's been sketching the Dinas, very likely. Minetta very much wants to

be an artist, and you meet her with her sketching things all over the

place. It may or may not be a passing fancy; she certainly has what

Raymond Briggs calls a "Rossetti head"--enormous dark eyes, sharpish

jaw, straight dark hair, and a disconcerting way of staring at people

who are "putting it on" a little more thickly than usual (she stares

pretty frequently at Raymond himself). Ah, she's taking the steep way

down. We'll take the other way....

* * * * *

Now we're on the level; better put your tie straight--or aren't you

overpowered by these things? I confess I am; Raymond Briggs always

chills me when he casts his eye over my front elevation. No thick-booted

undergraduates' holiday-parties nor furry art-students with knickers and

bare throats here. We're spruce at Llanyglo. Even on a week-day it's

like a Church Parade, and on Sundays we go one better still. All the men

have brightly coloured flannel blazers and gaudy cammerbands, and the

women carry many-flounced parasols by a ring at the ferrule end, and

wear toilettes straight out of the "Queen." Some of them will change for

lunch; all of them will for _table d'hote_ at seven. They protest that

they vastly prefer dinner at seven, but what with the servants' dinners

at midday, and husbands who prefer the old-fashioned hour, and one thing

and another, they take their principal meal at one. There's no reason

they shouldn't. There's no reason they should mention it at all. But

they do, every day. If you're introduced to them, they'll all have told

you within twenty-four hours. It's as if they didn't want there to be

any mistake about something or other....

Here's where the donkeys turn. They have red and white housings, and

their names across their foreheads--"_Tiny_," "_Prince_," and so on; the

donkey-rides are a little offshoot of _Porth Neigr Omnibuses_.

Kite-flying's popular here too--that's Mr. Morrell's, the big

star-shaped one. The bathing-tents and deck-chairs are mostly hired from

Howell Gruffydd, but there are no boats yet except Percy Briggs's

twenty-five-pound collapsible one; those who want to go fishing have to

use one of those old Copley Fielding things by the jetty there.... Now

we're coming to the people. Here's Raymond Briggs with Mr. Lacey,

Raymond in his orange-and-black blazer and a white Homburg hat, Philip

in a blue blazer with white braid and a plain straw hat; both with

perfect creamy rippling white trousers and spotless white doeskin boots.

They're talking off-handedly about other holiday-places--Norway, the

Highlands, the Riviera--and they're afraid of showing any enthusiasm or

delight. Of every place they know they say that it has "gone off" since

they first went there. There's a subtle undercurrent of contest about

their conversation. Philip was at Hyeres as recently as last winter,

looking at the violets; but Raymond has been three times to Arles and

Nimes. I suppose honours are easy.

"Roman, I've heard?" Philip remarks. (You can hear him as you pass.)

"Yes, Roman, with a Saracenic tower."

"Ah, that tower's Saracenic, is it?"

"Saracenic."

"Wonderful people!"

"Indeed yes!"

"Curious how it takes you back into ancient times."

"Yes, yes, it shortens history."

"But the hotel accommodation!----"

"Oh, bad in the extreme!"

"What they want is entirely new and up-to-date management----"

"Quite so----"

"Can't say I thought much of their _bouillabaisse_."

"An acquired taste, I suppose----"

And they pass on. They'll talk like that the whole morning. They're not

really interested in their subject. As I say, it makes you think of a

sort of contest. Personally, I always want to applaud when somebody

scores a good point. Perhaps the idea is that they're doing Llanyglo a

favour by coming here--

There, stepping over the tent-ropes, are Mrs. Briggs and Mr. Ashton. Mr.

Ashton is Edward Garden's chief London representative, a man of pleasure

and of the world, and for all I know his function may be to keep these

prosperous northerners up to the metropolitan mark. Mrs. Briggs, for

example, who is very short and stout, and wears a lavender bonnet and

pelisse, and certainly will not walk far on the sand in those heels, is

on her mettle now. She is telling Mr. Ashton some London hotel

experience or other. I like Mrs. Briggs. She's worth ten of Raymond. But

I don't think she quite knows which is the paste and which the jewels in

her speech.

"----and so at the 'Metropole' they couldn't take Ray and I in; not that

I was surprised in the very least, such frights as we looked after the

voyage, and hardly any luggage; it hadn't come on from Paris, you see.

So I says to Ray, 'It's no good making a noration here, for it's plain

they don't want us. _I_'m glad they're doing so well they can afford to

turn money away.' So I turns to the manager, who was staring at my

slippers I'd put on for the railway-journey, and 'Don't if it hurts

you,' I said, and with that we slammed our things together and drove off

to the 'Grand'----"

You can hear Mr. Ashton's sympathetic murmurs ... but that's Mrs. Lacey,

with Mr. Morrell, just turning; she thinks that Euonyma and Wygelia have

been quite long enough in the water. Mr. Morrell is in cool-looking

cream alpaca; Mrs. Lacey, who is hook-nosed and pepper-and-salt haired

and thin as a hop-pole, resembles a many-flounced hollyhock in her

silvery battleship grey.

"They'll tak' no harm, weather like this," Mr. Morrell is saying.

"What's that I was going to ask you, now?... I have it. Is it right 'at

Briggs is to build you a new house ovver yonder?"

A foot or so over Mr. Morrell's head, Mrs. Lacey replies that Mr. Lacey

hasn't decided yet.--"You see, with the girls at Brighton for another

year yet, and then of course they'll have to go to Paris, it's early to

say."

"There's some talk of his making a Floral Valley, isn't there?"

"I've not heard.--But I'm sure those girls----"

"They're as right as rain wi' Mrs. Maynard----"

But that is precisely where Mrs. Lacey thinks Mr. Morrell is mistaken.

She has nothing whatever against Mrs. Maynard, who is a young widow, but

she would like to know a little more about the late Mr. Maynard before

admitting her to unreserved intimacy. Mrs. Maynard has not quite the

figure a "Mrs." ought to have, and does more bathing than swimming (if

you understand me). That's an accomplishment she learned at Ostend (for

if Mr. Ashton, the London agent, is metropolitan, Mrs. Maynard brings

quite a cosmopolitan air to Llanyglo). The misses Euonyma and Wygelia,

on the other hand, learned to swim at Brighton, walking to the

bathing-place in a crocodile. You see the difference. Brighton is not

Ostend, any more than Llanyglo is either, and Mrs. Lacey considers that

you can't be too careful.... That's Mrs. Maynard, with her back to the

oncoming breaker. Her bathing-dress is quite complete, as complete as

Mrs. Garden's, drying outside her tent there; but Mrs. Lacey

disapproves of those twinkling scarlet ribbons. She considers them to be

little points of attraction, that do all that is asked of them, and

more. She prophesied that the red would "run" in the water, but it

didn't, and that makes matters rather worse, for if Mrs. Maynard knows

as well as that which red will run and which won't she is practised----

And those two graceful but rather skinned-rabbit-looking young shapes in

the gleaming navy-blue costumes with the white braid are the girls.

Now we're among the castles. Quite a horde of children, and very pretty

children too, with their spades and buckets and their petticoats bunched

up inside striped knickers (those too you get at Gruffydd's). That's

Gilbert Smythe, the Medical Officer, the tall shaggy man carrying the

bucket of water for the little boy's moat. He'll be giving Llanyglo its

bathing testimonial too. Don't tread on that seaweed; it may be a castle

garden, or a sea-serpent, or anything else in the child's

imagination.... There are the boys trying to launch the collapsible

boat. John Willie hasn't grown much; he won't be a tall man; but he's

filling out. That minx Mrs. Maynard makes quite a lot of him, and says

she likes the feel of his fine-spun hair. Whether John Willie likes her

to feel it or not he does not betray.

Now for Howell Gruffydd's....

* * * * *

There you are. "THE LLANYGLO STORES," in big gold letters right across

the front of the two cottages. What do you think of it?

Yes in one way and another, there must be a largish sum sunk in "stock."

Whether Howell's buying on credit or not I don't know, but he looks

prosperous; he's had his beard trimmed, and he wears a new hat. Green

butterfly-nets and brown and white and grey sandshoes--spades and

buckets and balls and fishing-lines and toy ships--bottles of scent and

the "Llanyglo Sunburn Cure" (made up for him by the chemist at Porth

Neigr)--a new board with "Tricycles for Hire" on it (that's the shed at

the back, and Eesaac Oliver, home for the holidays, books the hirings

and does the repairs)--baskets and spirit-kettles and ironmongery, all

in addition to the groceries.--Yes, Howell has quite a big business now.

Let's go inside and buy something.

"Good morning, Mr. Gruffydd; papers in yet? No? I thought I saw Hugh

coming down the Sarn road half an hour ago. Yes, a lovely day. How's

Eesaac Oliver? Still at Porth Neigr?... No, no, I know he's home for his

holidays; I saw him driving Mr. Pritchard's hay-cart yesterday; I mean

when is he going to Aberystwith?... Next year? Good! He'll make his mark

in the world!--Mr. Garden been in this morning yet?... He's driving in

the mountains? Well, there's always a breeze in the mountains.... No,

serve Mrs. Roberts first. How are you, Mrs. Roberts?"

Howell still sells Mrs. Roberts her pennyworth of bicarbonate of soda,

and with the same smile as ever, but he could do without her custom now.

Look round. Crates of eggs (the Trwyn hens can't keep pace with the

demand now), great Elizabethan gables of tinned fruits and salmon, a

newspaper counter, the Post Office behind the wire grating there,

strings of things hanging from the ceiling, scarcely an inch of Edward

Garden's matchboarding to be seen, and three assistants, all busily

weighing, packing, checking, snipping the string off on the little

knives on the wooden string-boxes, and passing the parcels to the boys

with the hand-carts. But we ought to have been here a couple of hours

ago. Mrs. Briggs and Mrs. Lacey and Mrs. Garden were giving their orders

for the day then. They come every morning, rings on their fingers and

bells on their toes, high heels and flounced parasols and all the lot,

and Howell doesn't have it all his own way then, I can tell you. For

this is where our ladies are really efficient. They may never dream of

travelling otherwise than first-class, but they know the price of

everything to a halfpenny and a farthing. There's no "If 'twill do

'twill do" about them when it comes to the management of a house. And

when Hilda Morrell grows out of the stage of wishing her father would

talk "like other people," the chances are that she'll discover too that

this is her real strength, as it was her mother's. Mrs. Maynard comes in

with them of a morning sometimes, and tells them how tre-_men_-dously

clever she thinks them, to know the differences between things like

that, and vows that _her_ tradesmen rob her right and left because she

hasn't been properly brought up; and then Mrs. Briggs, putting down the

egg she is holding to the light, cries, "Eh, it's nothing, love--I could

learn you in a month!"

But Mrs. Lacey detects a secret sarcasm in the phrase about the

bringing-up.

And the men will be in for their newspapers presently.

Now a stroll to the hotel, and just a peep at them by and by as they

have lunch....

* * * * *

This is the hotel lounge. The varnish is quite dry, though it doesn't

look it. A dozen little round tables, chairs heavily upholstered in

crimson velvet, festoons of heavy gilt cord on the curtains, and that's

the service-hatch in the corner. The waiters are rather melancholy; you

see, it isn't a public-house; everything goes down on the residents'

bills; and that means fewer tips. Tea is served here in the afternoon,

but of course the ladies never dream of tipping. Those excellent

purchasers work out everything at cost price, omit such items as

interest on capital, insurance, depreciation, and so on, and find a

shilling for two pennyworth of bread and butter, a twopenny cake, and a

pinch of two-shilling tea with hot water thrown in, tip enough.

"_Ting! Ting! Ting!_"

It is Val Clayton, ordering another drink for himself and his two

friends. He drinks vermouth, his friends bottles of beer. Val drinks

vermouth because it is foreign (he runs over to Paris frequently, and

travels to Egypt for Clayton Brothers and Clayton), and perhaps he makes

love to Mrs. Maynard (if you can call it making love) because she too is

almost a continental. Since Mrs. Maynard is to be seen in her red

ribbons, you might expect to find Val on the beach instead of drinking

vermouth in the hotel lounge; but that is far from being "in character"

when you know Val. The world's pleasures a little in excess have already

set their mark on Val. He will tell you that he would not miss his

morning drink, "not for the best woman living." Others may fetch and

carry for their hearts' mistresses, but not Val. In the afternoon,

perhaps, if he feels a little less jaded, in a hollow of the sandhills

and with the warm sun to help, Val may bestir himself a little, but in

the meantime he wants another vermouth.

"_Ting! Ting! Ting!_--They want to have French waiters here," Val

grumbles. "I never mind tipping a waiter if I can get what I want when I

want it. _Wai_--oh, you've come, have you? Well, since you are here,

you may as well bring these again, and then see if the papers have come

in yet----"

"And bring me a box of Egyptian cigarettes."

"No--hi!--don't bring those cigarettes.--You don't want to smoke the

rubbish they sell here. Fill your case out of this--I've a thousand

upstairs I brought from Cairo myself----"

"Oh!... Thanks.--Well, as I was saying----"

And the speaker (who might as well be in Manchester for all he sees of

Llanyglo, at any rate in the mornings) resumes some narrative that the

replenishing of the glasses has interrupted.

Now the others are dropping in, those who like one _aperatif_ before

lunch but not half a dozen. Their wives have gone upstairs to tittivate

themselves. The velvet chairs fill; extra waiters appear; and a light

haze ascends from cigars and cigarettes to the roof. Listen to the

restrained hubbub.

"Waiter! _Ting!_ Waiter!----" and then a slight gesture; the waiters are

supposed to know the tastes of the real _habitues_ by this time; (it

counts almost as a "score" if the waiter brings your refection without

your having as much as opened your mouth to ask for it).--"The usual,

sir--yes, sir--coming!" And again they are talking, not on subjects, but

as if the act of talking were itself subject enough. Philip Lacey

discusses with Mr. Ashton the improvement in the Harwich-Hook of Holland

crossing, and Mr. Morrell exchanges views on Local Government with

Raymond Briggs. "_Ting! ting!_ You haven't cassis? Then why haven't you

cassis?"--"Very sorry, sir--coming, sir!"--"What's happened to the

newspapers this morning?"--"Of course, if it goes to

arbitration----"--"Nay, John, don't drown t' miller!" "Ten o'clock,

first stop Willesden----" "Your very good health, Mr. Morrell----"

"Debentures----" "New heating in both greenhouses----"--"Same again,

Val?"--"_Ting!_"----

"BOO-O-O-OOM-M-MMMMM!"

It is the luncheon gong.

* * * * *

Just a glance as they sit at table. Don't you think it's a pleasant

room? Three tall windows looking out on the sea, noiseless carpet,

ornaments on the sideboards rather like wooden broccoli, but the

decorations straight from London. But those two large chandelier

gas-brackets don't work yet; the plant isn't installed; that's why the

red-shaded oil-lamps are placed at intervals down the T of tables. The

older folk gather round the head of the T, and down the stalk stretch

the children. These will rise before their parents, just as they go out

of Church after the Second Lesson; they will break off just below John

Willie Garden and the Misses Euonyma and Wygelia there--who, by the way,

are more usually called June and Wy. The flowers are chosen to "last

well," for Llanyglo is almost as short of flowers as it is of trees; but

the linen and plate and other appointments are all good--these actors in

Llanyglo's little fore-piece are not accustomed to roughing it, even on

a holiday.

As I told you they would, half the women have changed their frocks. Mrs.

Lacey is a pink hollyhock now, of which her daughters seem cuttings, and

her hat is a sort of pink straw _kepi_, trimmed with flowers that

resemble virginia stock. She sits at the end of one arm of the T, with

her back to the window. Near her is Mrs. Briggs, in stamped

electric-blue velvet--her forearms, on which bracelets shiver, are as

uniform in contour from whatever point you look at them as if they had

been turned in a lathe. The Misses June and Wy also wear bracelets, from

which depend bundles of sixpences, a sixpence for each of their

birthdays, sixteen for Wiggie, fourteen for June. John Willie is

lunching with Percy Briggs to-day, who lunched with him yesterday. Next

to his chair is an empty one. It is Mrs. Maynard's, who has not come

down yet. Then comes Val Clayton. Over all, with his napkin tucked into

his collar as if he had prepared, not for a lunch, but for a shave, Mr.

Morrell presides.

For some reason or other, lunch always begins a little stiffly; but they

unbend as they go on. At present Raymond Briggs cannot get away from the

subject of the newspapers and their unaccountable lateness.

"Can't understand it," he says for the fifth or sixth time.

"And they were late last Wednesday--no, Thursday--no, I was right, it

was Wednesday."

"Was it Wednesday?"

"Yes, the day it looked like rain; you remember?"

"Ah, yes; the day it cleared up again."

"All but a drop or two--nothing to hurt----"

A pause.

"Well, I don't suppose there's anything in them."

"Speaking for myself, I don't care a button. I don't want to see the

newspapers. 'No letters, no newspapers,' I always say when I go away."

"A real country holiday, eh?"

"Change and rest--those are the great things."

"You're right. Complete change. No trouble about how you dress nor what

you eat. That's the best of this place."

"Still, if the newspapers are coming we may as well know when they are

coming."

"They ought to have a man, not that young boy."

"Hugh Morgan?"

"Is that his name? There are so many Morgans."

"Common Welsh name."

"Met another boy, I expect."

"Boys are all alike."

"Not a pin to choose among 'em."

"Wish I was behind him with a stick for all that."

"Another glass of wine, Mr. Ashton?" ...

Then there enters with a little commotion, and trips half running to the

empty chair between John Willie Garden and Val Clayton, Mrs. Maynard.

She wears a big black hat swathed in black tulle, and her dress is of

black lace, with close sleeves that reach to the middle knuckles of her

taper fingers. She shakes out the mitre of her napkin and breaks forth

to Val as she settles in her chair.

"My horrid hair!" she pouts; "it always takes me three-quarters of an

hour! Really, I shall have to stop bathing, but I do love it so. It

seems a kind of fate; I always have to give up the things I love!"

Hereupon Val--or perhaps vermouth, since Val seems a little astonished

at his own gallantry--suddenly replies that if he were like that he

would have to give up Mrs. Maynard. If Mrs. Maynard also is a little

surprised she covers it with great readiness.

"Oh, now the dreadful man's beginning again!" she cries. "If you _will_

say those things, Mr. Clayton, I shall have to change places at table!"

Mr. Clayton asks here what is wrong with her hair.--"I think it's

champion," he adds. "Very nice indeed," he adds once more.

"Oh, how _can_ you!" (As a matter of fact, Mrs. Maynard's hair is

rather wonderful, dark, and so long that she can sit on it.) "No fish,

thank you," she says, with a smile to the waiter.

Then Mrs. Lacey's firm voice is heard. "Can anybody tell me whether

there have been many wrecks on this coast?"

The person best qualified to give this information is John Willie

Garden, but Mrs. Maynard has turned to John Willie, and is asking him

whether he does not think she swims rather nicely. Her tendril-like

fingers are again stroking his hair. Mrs. Lacey considers Mrs. Maynard's

tulle-swathed hat the ostentation of modesty and the coquetry of

mourning (if she is in mourning), and, getting no answer to her question

about the wrecks, invents a name for Mrs. Maynard: "Mrs. Maynard--as she

calls herself." Plates are changed, corks pop, and from time to time a

seltzogene gives a spurt and a cough. Raymond Briggs explains that he is

fond of strawberries, but strawberries are not fond of him. The chatter

grows louder.

"I took her as a kitchen-maid, but she turned out quite a good plain

cook----"

"Oh, like a top--as Dr. Smythe says, it's the air."

"Oh, I _prefer_ it rustic; like this!"

"Quite so--the first tripper and I'm off!"

"So I opened her box myself; and there they were, if you please--four

silver spoons!----"

"Now, June, you and Wy talk French--you haven't talked it for days----"

"John's booked the rooms for next year already----"

"Oh, _Mis_-ter Clayton! I never promised any such thing!"

"They can talk it if they like, as fast as a mill----"

"If I were you I should see Tudor Williams about it----"

"You can put on your oldest things and there's nobody to see you----"

"But really I'm almost ashamed to go about the fright I do!----"

"But that's a new dress?----"

"_New!_--Last year--but it's good enough for here----"

"Can't manage those double-l's----"

"Gutturals----"

"Llan--Thlan--Lan----"

"June, your legs are younger than mine--run and get Aunt May's letter

out of my dressing-table drawer----"

"Mrs. Smythe?... The best thing for the baby, of course, but I can't

help thinking that not _quite_ so publicly----"

"Oh, I always let Percy suck, whoever was there!----"

"John will have his dinner in the middle of the day----"

"Smythe? Oh, one of the nicest fellows, but no push, I'm afraid----"

"That's his failing----"

"Where he misses it----"

"Extraordinary----"

"Well, some men are born like that----"

"Wait for things to come to them instead of going to fetch them----"

"Up t' Trwyn? We'll talk about it after I've had my forty winks. I must

have my forty winks after my dinner."

"Lunch, William."

"Lunch, then."

"He _will_ call it his dinner----"

"It _is_ my dinner----"

Then Mr. Morrell makes a signal, the younger ones troop out, breaking

into loud shouts the moment they are clear of the room. They are off to

the beach again. Shall we follow them?...

* * * * *

What do the Welshmen think of it all? It suits Howell Gruffydd's book,

as you see, and Howell has pacified John Pritchard with the promise of

Bazaars; but the others? Dafydd Dafis, say?

Again nothing is going right for Dafydd. He feels that another friend

has changed towards him--Minetta, to whom he used to sing _Serch Hudol_,

and tell his stories of fays and water-beings and knights, and make much

of for her elfin looks and quick and un-Saxon ways. For Minetta is

already displaying the artist's heartlessness, and does not see the

sorrow in Dafydd's eyes, but only what sort of a "head" he has from her

special point of view, and how he will "come" upon a piece of paper. She

tried to draw Dafydd only the other day, and ordered him, half absently,

to turn his head this way and that, and grew petulant when her drawing

went all wrong, and suddenly cried "Don't look at me like that!" when

Dafydd turned his eyes on her with a tear in the corner of each. Poor

Dafydd! He, like the Squire, would be better out of all this swiftly

oncoming change....

But Dafydd, who is of the phrase-making kind, has made out of his

sadness a phrase that more or less represents the attitude of every

Welshman in Llanyglo. He watched all these people coming in ones and

twos and threes out of the hotel one morning and walking down to their

deck-chairs and bathing-tents on the beach. He stood for a while,

looking at the gay parterre of sun-shades and summer clothes, of kites

and spades and buckets, and rings on fingers more carefully tended but

of coarser stuff than his own. And he listened to the accents that even

his alien ear told him were strained and affected and false. And he gave

them a half contemptuous and half pitying look as he turned away.

"_These summer things_," he said....

But Howell Gruffydd has Dafydd Dafis's measure also, and takes it, just

as he took John Pritchard's, in a single word.

"_Eisteddfodau_," he whispered to Dafydd behind his hand....

For they may by and by be advertising Llanyglo by means of an

Eisteddfod, and, as long as he is allowed to play, Dafydd does not

greatly care who he plays to nor whether they understand him or not.

IV

YNYS

There came one day at about that time a Welsh gipsy fortune-teller to

Llanyglo. Her name was Belle Lovell, she was a known character all over

the countryside, and she was some sort of a connection of Dafydd

Dafis's. There was always a packet of tobacco for her in the Squire's

kitchen when she appeared, and her companion on her travels was her

thirteen-years-old daughter Ynys.[1] Belle sold baskets and mended

chairs, and Ynys drew the cart, which was no more than a large deal

packing-case mounted on four perambulator wheels, and with two flat

shafts roughly nailed to its sides. The mother's boots, which you might

have hit with a hammer and not have dinted, resembled grey old wooden

dug-outs; the child went barefooted and barelegged, and it would have

been a stout thorn that could have pierced the calloused pads of her

hardened soles.

[Footnote 1: Pron. "Unnis."]

These two appeared at Llanyglo at midday, ate their frugal meal on the

doorstep of Dafydd's single-roomed cottage behind the Independent

Chapel, and then, leaving the cart behind them, strolled down to have a

look at that splendacious new caravan, Howell Gruffydd's shop. Belle,

her greenish light brown eyes never for a moment still, gossiped with

her old acquaintances; her daughter, whose head was as steadily held as

if she balanced an invisible pitcher on it, stood looking at the green

butterfly-nets and red-painted buckets, admiring, but no more desiring

them than she would have desired anything else impossibly beyond her

reach. Her mother joined a group about Mrs. Roberts's door; the

visitors, who had lunched, began to descend to the beach again; and

there approached down the path that led to the Hafod Unos Ned, the

oldest of the Kerrs.

Now Ned had run across Belle on many alder-expeditions, and, while the

invasion of "summer things" had not driven Ned into naturalisation as a

Welshman, it had, by emphasising the distinction between the well-to-do

and the poor of the world, shown him how to jog along in peace with his

neighbours. He gave Belle an intelligent grin, and jerked his head in

the direction of the bathing-tents.

"Well, mother," he said, "ye've dropped in at just about th' right

time."

"There iss no wrong time for seeing friends," Belle replied, in an

up-and-down and very musical Welsh accent.

"Nay, I wanna thinking-g o' that," Ned replied, strongly doubling the

"g" that terminated the present participle. "I wor thinking-g of a bit

o' fortune-telling. There's a lot ovver yonder wi' more brass nor sense,

and it allus tickles 'em to talk about sweethearts an' sich."

"Indeed Llanyglo has become grea-a-at big place, whatever," the gipsy

replied, and continued her conversation with Mrs. Roberts.

And presently, whether she took the hint or whether she had come

precisely for that purpose, Belle's greenish-brown eyes roved again, she

made a slight gesture to Ynys, who had turned from the butterfly-nets

and was looking out to sea, and the pair of them made off along the

beach in the direction of that bright plot of colour that made as it

were a herbaceous border between the grey-green tussocks and the

glittering sea.

For a hundred yards Belle's dug-outs left behind her a heavy shuffling

track in the sand, parallel with the light kidney-shaped prints of the

child who walked as if she carried an invisible pitcher on her head; and

then, with the cluster of tents and parasols still far ahead, they

stopped. John Willie Garden and Percy Briggs, with Eesaac Oliver

Gruffydd ready to bear a hand if called upon to do so, but otherwise a

little fearful of intruding, were victualling the blue-and-white

collapsible boat for a cruise. But it was not in order to tell the

fortunes of the three boys that Belle stopped. She stopped for the same

reason that the street-seller pulls out his rattle or his conjuring

trick, while his quick-silver eyes dart this way and that in search of

his crowd. The only difference was that Belle was her own

conjuring-trick. The gesture with which she performed it was superbly

negligent. She had a wonderful old mignonette-coloured shawl, which,

when she had talked with the group about Mrs. Roberts's doorstep, had

been drawn up over her head; and suddenly she allowed it to fall to her

shoulders. The effect might well have carried twice the distance it was

intended to carry. Out of the folds of the shawl her neck rose as erect

as the pistil of an arum lily. Against it gleamed her heavy gold

earrings. Her cheekbones and the nodule of her high nose gleamed like

bronze, and about the whorl of the springing of her hair at the back of

her head the sunshine made as it were a sun-dog on the lustrous

blackness. Her silver wedding-ring, an old tweed jacket that might have

belonged to her kinsman Dafydd Dafis, and a patched old indigo

petticoat, completed the legerdemain. Ynys, clad to all appearances in

a single garment only, watched the boys exactly as she had watched the

balls and butterfly-nets and buckets outside Howell Gruffydd's shop.

They too made a shining _coup d'oeil_. There was just swell enough to

set the long breakers hurdling in, and wind enough to take the tops off

them in rattling showers of brilliant spray. Indeed it was so merry a

sea that, not half an hour before, Mrs. Maynard had declared to John

Willie that she had come within an ace of drowning during her bathe that

morning, and had asked him whether, had he seen her in difficulties, he

would have come to her rescue. "Mmmmm, John Willie?" she had asked,

curling his hair with her perfumed fingers; but John Willie, seeing

Percy Briggs approaching, had jerked away his head. This had not been

because he had been afraid of being laughed at by Percy. For that

matter, Percy had confided to John Willie only a week before that he

"liked their Minetta," and so was in no position to jeer at the softer

relations. No; it had merely been that, as Llanyglo's curtain had risen,

suddenly revealing a soft and alluring group of Euonymas and Wygelias

and Hildas, not to speak of Mrs. Maynard herself, all temptingly set out

like fruit upon a stall, the curtain of John Willie Garden's peculiar

privacy had come down with a run. Mrs. Maynard was always trying to peep

behind it, but probably there was nothing behind. Probably that was the

reason it had come so sharply and closely down. No boy wants to show

that he has nothing to show.

Smack!--A bucketful of spray drenched the stores, and the wave ran

hissing and creaming back under the counter of the blue-and-white boat.

John Willie shouted rather crossly to Eesaac Oliver.

"Pull her up a bit, can't you, instead of standing there doing nothing!"

Eesaac Oliver started to life and obeyed. He was rather a fetcher and

carrier for these more happily circumstanced boys, but privately he knew

himself to be in some things their superior. To tell the truth, Eesaac

Oliver knew just a lee-tle too much about what went on within himself,

and communicated it just a lee-tle too readily to others. For he dropped

no curtain; on the contrary, the windows of his soul were flung wide

open. The experience of the world he had acquired at the school at Porth

Neigr had already caused him to declare himself as being thenceforward

powerfully on the side of the angels; and that ingenious educational

exercise which consists of speaking extempore on any subject given only

a moment ago had a lee-tle abnormally developed certain natural powers

of expression which his race rarely lacks. Had Mrs. Maynard attempted to

stroke Eesaac Oliver's hair (which was thick and black, and rose in a

great lump in front, falling thence in a lappet over his pale forehead),

he would either have cried "Apage!" or else, suffering the seduction,

would have undergone torments of remorse afterwards.

Therefore it was with a meek dignity that Eesaac Oliver bore a hand with

the boat, and then fell back and a little enviously watched again.

Then that crafty and stately piece of legerdemain of Belle's had its

reward. In his rippling cream alpaca, there approached along the sands

Mr. Morrell himself, and Belle's neck no longer resembled the pistil of

an arum lily. She bent ingratiatingly forward; as if a key had clicked,

a dazzling smile cut her face into two; and after a jocular word or two

Mr. Morrell bore her off, Ynys following. Let us follow too.

Do look at the contrast--those summer things, and the two wanderers in

whom all the seasons are ingrained; carefully veiled and sunburn-cured

complexions, and these other vagrants, brown as the upturned earth; the

indefatigable maintenance of artificial attitudes even before one

another, and the grave ease of the child, the deliberate gesture with

which the mother looses as it were in the sheath the only weapon she has

against the world.... Frith's "_Derby Day_?" Yes, it is a little like

it; but listen. Mrs. Maynard, with a sparkling glance about her that

says "Mum," has slipped off her wedding-ring, and Belle has taken her

hand. It is slim as a glove that has never been put on, and Mrs. Maynard

intends to trip Belle if she can.

So, when Belle begins to promise Mrs. Maynard a husband who shall be

such-and-such, there are winks and glances and nudges, as much as to say

that now they are going to have some fun, and Mr. Morrell says, "Here,

ho'd on a bit, mother--how do you know she isn't married?"

If Belle shows the knife for a moment, she does it so delicately that

nobody notices it.

"If the prit-ty lady was married, her man he srink a ring upon her

finger, red-hot, as they srink a tyre on a cart-wheel," Belle replies;

and the reading of Mrs. Maynard's palm continues.

Mrs. Lacey, a pale blue hollyhock, looks as if she pooh-poohed the whole

thing; but inwardly she is a-tremble with eagerness to have the fortunes

of her two daughters told. As it happens, no sooner is Mrs. Maynard's

hand dropped than Mr. Morrell, who happens to be standing next to June,

catches her by the arm.

"Come on, June, and be told how to get a husband!" he cries, and he

slips a shilling into Belle's hand.

June will never be prettier than she is now. She is indeed very

pretty--apple-blossom and cream, bright-haired, freshly starched, back

straight and elbows well down, and as glossy from top to toe as the

broad mauve ribbon of her sash. Soon she will be as tall as her mother;

already she is taller than her father, the landscape-gardener; and the

thought of whether she will marry or not, and whether brilliantly or

otherwise, never enters her head. Of course she will marry, and of

course her marriage will be a brilliant one. "Marriage" and "brilliant

marriage" are one and the same thing. In this, as in most other things,

Wygelia is of the same opinion as June. A close understanding, which has

not yet outgrown the form of surreptitious kicks under the table, and

private and abbreviated words, exists between the two sisters. Other

things being equal, they would probably prefer to marry two brothers.

"I tell the prit-ty miss a harder thing than that--I tell her how to

keep her man when she has got him," Belle replied amid laughter; and she

proceeds to describe June's husband. He is to come over the water

(landing at Newhaven, Mrs. Lacey instantly concludes, and taking the

first train to the Boarding School at Brighton), and he shall be devoted

to her, and she shall have such-and-such a number of children. (Mrs.

Lacey straightens her back; this is something like; her grandfather,

whom she remembers quite well, was June's great-grandfather, and will

have been the great-great-grandfather of June's boys and girls, which is

getting on, especially when you remember the younger sons and grandsons

of somebodies, who are estate-bailiffs and engine-drivers and carriers

of milk-cans in the Colonies.) When June's fortune is finished all

applaud her, as if she had performed some feat of skill, and then Mr.

Morrell seizes Wy.

"Come on, Wy--no hanging back--let's see what sort of a fist Wy's going

to make of it----"

And Wy also is haled forward, blushing and conscious and biting her lip,

and is told that for her too somebody is languishing, and that presently

he will drink out of her glass and thenceforward think her thoughts,

which are already complex. And Hilda's palm is read, and little Victoria

Smythe's fat one, and Val Clayton's, and others, and silver rains into

Belle's palm. Chaffingly Mr. Morrell offers her a sovereign for her

takings, uncounted, but is refused. Then Mrs. Briggs "wants the boys

done," and somebody is despatched along the shore for Percy and John

Willie, and as they arrive, bearing their bottles of milk and parcels of

jam-sandwiches (for the blue-and-white boat had been paid off), there

comes up also Minetta, carrying her sketching-kit. She stands peering at

Ynys, more as seeing in her a subject than as at a fellow-being.

So, idly and laughingly, an hour of the summer afternoon passes; and

then an accident mars its harmony. John Willie and Percy, feeling the

pangs of thirst, had drunk their milk and had then set up the bottle as

a mark to throw stones at; and Ynys, walking down to the sea-marge, has

set her foot upon a piece of the broken glass. Unconcernedly she bathes

the cut in the salt water.

But as the laughing group breaks up, and her mother calls her again, the

blood wells out once more, dabbling with a dark stain those light

kidney-shaped prints in the sand. Mrs. Garden and Mrs. Briggs see the

child's plight simultaneously. It is a cruel gash, and the two ladies

utter loud cries.

"Nay, nay, whativver in the world!" cries Mrs. Briggs, all of her that

is not pure mother suddenly becoming pure Hunslet. "Nay, nay! Come here,

doy!----"

She and Mrs. Garden kneel down before the gipsy child, and a dozen

others gather round. Cries of sympathy break out.

"T' poor bairn!----"

"What a mess!"

"How did she do it?"

"John Willie, quick, run and get the kettle from the picnic-basket----"

"Indeed, lady dear, it iss noth-thing----"

"Quick, Ray, give me your handkercher too----"

Ynys' foot is bathed in fresh water from the picnic-kettle, and bound up

with Mrs. Briggs's tiny lace handkerchief, with Raymond's large one over

it to secure it. The blood has already come through before the tying is

finished. And you forget the false accents and the elaborate pretences

of these "summer things" of Llanyglo's little preliminary piece, and

remember only the better things that lie beneath them. They flatter

Ynys, and encourage her with admiring words.

"She's a very brave little girl, anyway!"

"What did you say her name was?"

"Ynys."

"Well done, Ynys! Soon be well----"

"John Willie, I've told you about throwing stones at bottles before--get

you home till I come----"

"And you too, Percy Briggs; and you dare to stir out till I tell you!"

"Don't cry, little girl----"

Ynys has no thought whatever of crying. She makes no more motion than a

pine makes when it bleeds its gouts of resin in the spring. But they

continue to comfort her.

"She'll never be able to walk like that!"

"Better fetch Gilbert Smythe."

"June, you run----"

"Here's half a crown for you, Ynys, for being a brave little girl."

Then Minetta, who has been conferring with Belle, speaks.--"All right,

mother, she's to come home with us; I'm going to paint her."

"There, now, Ynys, you're going to be painted! Won't that be fun!"

"And if she ever comes to Liverpool and asks for me," says Philip Lacey,

"I'll see she's all right. Yes, I will. She shall sell flowers. That'll

be better than going about barefoot and getting her poor little foot

cut, won't it?"

But at that, for the first time, the child seems to see and to hear. Her

eyes, greenish-brown and deep like her mother's, look into Philip

Lacey's small but kindly ones as if she had not seen him before. The

half-crown Philip has given her is still tightly clasped in her hand,

but then half-crowns are things that do sometimes visit people precisely

like that. And she knows that they have some mystic power or virtue by

means of which they can buy things--green butterfly-nets and red-painted

buckets; but Ynys can not quite understand the people who can sell these

wondrous things for mere half-crowns.... Then she realises again that

somebody has just said something about selling flowers....

They are promising her that if she is a brave little girl and lets

Doctor Smythe dress her foot she shall one day sell flowers....

Sometimes, meeting Belle Lovell and her daughter upon the road, the one

with her loops of cane upon her back and the other drawing the cart made

of the deal box mounted upon perambulator wheels, you will give them

good-day and pass on; and then, five minutes or so afterwards perhaps,

you will be conscious of an almost noiseless pattering behind you, and

will turn. It is Ynys, holding out to you a little posy of

hedge-flowers. She may not refuse your penny for them; indeed she will

not; but you are not to suppose that it is for the penny that she has

brought you the nosegay. The poor sticky little thing is unpurchasable.

You would have got it just the same had you been as poor as herself.

PART THREE

I

THE HOLIDAY CAMP

The writer of the _Sixpenny Guide to Llanyglo and Neighbourhood_, in

speaking of the rise of the town, made use of an obvious image which we

will take leave to borrow from him. "Thenceforward," he wrote, "Llanyglo

sprang up as if by magic out of the soil itself."

Indeed it did something like it. Watching it, you would have thought of

one of Philip Lacey's gardens in the short days before Spring had begun

to warm the air. Neat, bare, brown, friable soil, with not yet a crocus

or a snowdrop to be seen; here and there a stick with a tiny linen tab

fluttering (reminding you of Terry Armfield's little "_Keep off the

Grass_" board with "Delyn Avenue" written upon it); frames half open and

inverted bells, dibbing-strings, sprinklings of lime, and a few

whirligigs to keep the birds away; these, and the promise of the scent

and colour to come--it did indeed resemble Llanyglo. Not all at once did

the pea-sticks become builders' scaffold-poles, the lines of string the

plotting-out of streets. As of Philip's gardens, you could not have said

of Llanyglo on any particular day, "This has changed more than it was

changing yesterday, more than it will be again changing to-morrow." But

for all that, nothing remained any longer the same. Philip's men,

working over the blindfold earth with clay and spittle, caused its lids

to open; Edward Garden and his associates, similarly, with money for

manure, labour to let in the air and light, and the gentle airs of

advertisement already fanning an incipient repute, made a garden of

stone and iron, with buds of stucco, flowers of paint and glass and

gilding, and fruit after its kind to ripen by and by.

Humanity was the soil he worked on, and his knowledge of it the force

with which he did so. Its hopes and appetites, its need of noise and

change and laughter, its stretching itself after fetters struck off and

its resolve to have a better, a much better time than it had ever had

before--out of these things came Edward Garden's beds and borders. He

would grow flowers of pleasure for those of the towns to pick. And,

since you do not advance the glory of July by neglecting to make the

most of March, his crops also had their rotation. For this, in a manner

of speaking, was Llanyglo's March, and what though it lasted two, three,

four years? The Laceys and the Raymond Briggses were to be cultivated

while they were yet there. Blooming and falling again, they would make

an excellent preparation, and there was plenty to do in the meantime.

There were other hotels to build, and a wet-weather pavilion for tea and

talk and dancing, and a landing-stage for the twenty new boats, and this

and that and the other--and always, always, the coming full summer to

look forward to, the summer of ten, eleven, twelve years thence, the

summer when, not the Laceys, but the employees of their fourteen or

fifteen shops should talk of Llanyglo; the summer when Mr. Morrell

should come no more, but his operatives should draw their thousands

from the Clubs and rain them upon the town; the summer when all should

be changed but the steadfast Trwyn, and all different save the mountains

behind, and nothing the same save the still and watching sea.

The Sarn-Porth Neigr Loop was constructed in 1886-7, and opened in the

May of the last-named year. One of its earlier trains brought, in a

first-class compartment, Philip and Mrs. Lacey and the Misses June and

Wygelia, fresh from Paris; and in a third-class compartment it brought a

family called Topham. Mr. Topham was head-clerk in a Liverpool

Irish-bacon-importing concern, and Philip Lacey, meeting him once or

twice at Philharmonic Promenade Concerts, had forgotten the golden rule

that it is easier to get into conversation with a man than it is to

shake him off again, and had fallen into the habit of nodding to him. In

fact, a sort of acquaintanceship had been struck up. He had learned

Topham's name, and Topham his. All this had been in Liverpool.

But it was one thing to strike up an acquaintanceship in Liverpool, and

quite another to continue that acquaintanceship elsewhere. Philip Lacey,

seeing Barry Topham get into the train, had not doubted that the

bacon-importer's clerk would be dropping off again after a few stations.

But at Stockport, where Philip had descended to stretch his legs, Topham

had met him on the platform and had informed him that he was going to

Llanyglo.

Now when Philip went away for a few weeks' change he liked that change

to be a change. He didn't come to Llanyglo to meet casuals from

Liverpool.

He began to wonder whether Llanyglo was quite what it had been.

And so did Mr. Morrell, who brought his daughter Hilda from Brighton

that year.

And so did Val Clayton, who also came that year, merely in order to see

what sort of vermouth they sold at the other hotels.

For soon there were three hotels, the original "Cambrian," the

"Cardigan," and the "Montgomery." All these were on what by and by

became the front, and between the "Cambrian" and the "Cardigan" was a

space of perhaps a couple of hundred yards. Thence to the "Montgomery,"

however, was quite a walk for Val of a morning--a quarter of a mile or

more on towards the Trwyn. Of the three hotels the "Montgomery" was the

largest. It had sixty bedrooms. Its stabling (for there was now a

landau-service up into the mountains) blocked up one of Terry's

dream-avenues a hundred yards from where the easy marble steps were to

have descended to the shore. A wide metalled road ran past the three

hotels, but it reminded you of unexplored rivers on an ancient map,

which are traced for a score or a hundred miles, and then dissipate in

interrogative dots. Another road at right angles ran past the Kerrs'

Hafod to the gap opposite Pritchard's farm, and there were yet other

roads, if those widish alleys bounded by stakes and wire could properly

be called roads. When the wind rose the sand still whistled everywhere,

scouring paint, rounding wooden corners, stinging faces; but so far it

had made very little impression on a large, black, tarred notice-board

firmly stayed into the sand midway between the "Cardigan" and

"Montgomery" hotels, a board bigger than the whole front of the Kerrs'

Hafod, which bore a straggling plan upon it in white, and the words:

LEASEHOLD!

For 999 Years!

Lots as Under:

Apply-----------

To tell the truth, Llanyglo was now rather a dreary-looking place. They

had broken its sylvan eggs, but had hardly yet begun the making of its

urban omelette. The above-mentioned announcement was not the only one of

its kind; there was another halfway between the Kerrs' house and

Pritchard's, and a third at Pritchard's corner. These, it was known,

awoke faint and distant echoes in little paragraphs in Manchester and

Liverpool papers. The Company so far was a private one; it hardly knew

yet what powers it might presently expect to possess; but Mr. Tudor

Williams and others were finding out. As a matter of fact, they were

rather anxious about these powers. An Act of Parliament two years before

had seemed to promise them certain things that might prove immensely to

their advantage; but of the two great Local Government Acts (of 1888 and

1894), the first was still in a plastic state, and the second not yet

thought of. Hitherto Porth Neigr had been the centre of administration;

it was now being sought to shift that centre. And, with the cumbrous old

machinery of Boards of Guardians and Poor Law Overseers out of the way,

Howell Gruffydd, it was whispered, might before long become a

Councillor. Indeed, who would make a better one? Edward Garden? Edward

Garden preferred to depute powers of this kind. The Laceys and

Briggses, on a property qualification? These had their own affairs to

attend to, and were summer residents only. John Pritchard? Stern John,

as unchallenged ruler of the Baptist Chapel, was already a Councillor in

a deeper sense than that defined by any mundane Act. William Morgan? Not

substantial enough. John Roberts? Dafydd Dafis? The Squire?--The claims

of all of them paled before that of Howell Gruffydd the grocer....

The leases were being taken up too. The Llanyglo Pavilion, Limited, was

incorporated before a spade was set in the sand. The great blackboard

between the Kerrs' house and Pritchard's Corner bore a significant

diagonal paper strip with four fifteen-inch letters in red upon

it--SOLD. Negotiations were proceeding for the acquisition of the land

at the Corner itself. And Edward Garden had completed that rumoured

purchase of his far up in the mountains. It was a "catchment area" for

water, and if, under the new distribution, the Council should find

itself possessed of large borrowing-powers, it might possibly find the

private ownership of those hundreds of acres far away up Delyn an

awkward matter.

And the excavation was already being made for the row of houses that

later was known as "Ham-and-Egg Terrace"--a hundred and fifty yards of

building that at first awed Llanyglo by its grandeur, but which they

subsequently came to think a poor affair and did their best to conceal.

It was only partly for a holiday that those first visitor-discoverers

came to Llanyglo now. Considerations of business had begun to play a

part in their coming. Mr. Morrell, for example, had sunk quite a lot of

money in the place, and liked to keep an eye on his interests. Philip

Lacey pored over a dozen sketch-drafts of his Floral Valley, a project

for converting a coombe or dean that clove one portion of the Trwyn into

an ornamental arrangement of flower-beds with a bandstand in the centre.

And Raymond Briggs mused on houses and hotels, on hotels and more and

yet more houses. For these Llanyglo was no longer simply a place

"delightfully rural," a place "where you could dress as you liked," a

place for "a real rustic holiday." It was the Tophams who made these

discoveries and bestowed these encomiums now.

Whether or not Barry Topham dressed as he liked, he certainly dressed as

the Briggses and the Laceys disliked. At the Promenade Concerts his

appearance had been just decently unremarkable; alas, it was so no

longer! Now, in the country, he broke out into a loose tweed jacket,

knickers made of a pair of long trousers of striped cashmere cut down,

low shoes, a flannel shirt, no hat, and a tightly knotted red tie, this

last as a voucher for the socialism that, Philip Lacey discovered to his

horror, he talked in and out of season. He was a small, bearded, wiry

man of forty-four or five, who gave you a curious impression of ferocity

and mildness mingled. The mildness was perhaps due to his bolt-upright

shock of frightened-looking sandy hair, the ferocity to the pince-nez

marks on either side of his nose that gave his glance a concentrated

look. His wife did not appear to dress (you cannot call mere concealment

of the person "dressing") until four o'clock in the afternoon, and his

two daughters, aged nineteen and twenty-one, were school-teachers, less

buxom than Miss Nancy Pritchard, but more professionally eager, as if

all the vital force in them had gone, not to the waste of mere pleasant

flesh, but into the severer regions of the mind.

This taking of Llanyglo at its word in the matter of dress was bad

enough, but worse was to come.

Scarcely were the Tophams installed at the "Montgomery" when it became

known that, though they had appeared to come alone, they were merely an

advance party. Two days later the main body arrived, and Llanyglo

experienced its first social slump.

The party called itself a Holiday Camp. It was a union of two

semi-secular, semi-Nonconformist Institutions whose idea of having a

better time than their fathers had had was to botanise, to geologise, to

read, and to discuss these activities afterwards in whirlwinds of

communal talk. Strictly speaking, they did not "camp" at all: they put

up at the "Montgomery"; but they had camped, hoped to camp again, and

called their more convivial gatherings, when studies were cast aside,

Pow-Wows.

They overran the place instantaneously. You met them with their brown

canvas satchels and japanned tin specimen-cases, poking about up the

Trwyn or groping in the boggy patches about Sarn. They were to be met in

the lanes, carrying picnic paraphernalia. They lighted fires of

driftwood on the shore, which coatless young men blew while the young

women combed their hair out in the sun. And wherever they went a little

red rash went with them, the rash of the small red-backed book, Sir

Thomas More's _Utopia_, of which the contagion had raged among them. Not

that they had not books of other hues also. They had Hugh Miller's _Old

Red Sandstone_ in green, and _Selected Sayings_ of Marcus Aurelius in

brown, and others in various colours; but it was the red that struck the

eye at the greater distance. They and the books were inseparable. The

unmarried ones, sharing a book between them, seemed already to be

creating that sage community of intellectual interest that, as all the

world knows, comes in so very handy when the first fires of love have

become less devouringly hot; the married ones, with a book apiece, kept

the calm connubial ideal before the maids' and bachelors' eyes.... And

it was all exceedingly disquieting and difficult to understand. One

hoped that the books were portals into high and fair and spacious

places, but feared that they might be but pathetic posterns of escape

from the world's weary drudgery that has got to be done and that

therefore somebody must do. One had struggles of compunction and

abasement and doubt, and the humiliating feeling that some clean and

heathery and wind-swept place of the mind was being invaded to sadly,

sadly little purpose. One tried, desperately tried, to tell oneself that

if poor lame Harry Stone got one single half-hour's joy out of it all,

nothing else mattered; and then one wondered whether even this was true.

It is hard to be social over an anti-social thing.... So one bore,

humble heart and arrogant heart alike, each his portion of Education's

shame.

The coming of the Montgomeryites acted instantaneously. Within an hour

of their issuing from their sixty-bedroom hotel, the Cambrians and their

deck-chairs and bathing-tents had drawn a little more compactly together

on the sands. Certainly the Cambrians did not see why they should take,

intellectually, a second place to these loftily and botanically thinking

ones, merely because they chose to pay a little attention to appearances

also. Moreover, the fact that the Reading Party had come to Llanyglo

only for a fortnight filled the Briggses and the Laceys with a certain

compassion. This was not compassion that the ecstacies with which a

zoophyte was discovered, or the glad cries with which a bit of sundew

was hailed, must be such transient joys. It was rather compassion that

the Montgomeryites should find the place pristine. Llanyglo

"pristine"--now!... "Ah," they thought, "they wouldn't think that if

they'd known it as _we_ knew it--two houses and a single hotel

only!" ... The thought opened a vista. Perhaps, in time to come, these

Utopians would tell others how, when _they_ first set eyes on Llanyglo,

the place had not begun to be spoiled, but had had three hotels only, a

dozen or so houses, Ham-and-Egg Terrace, and a blackboard here and there

that had emphasised rather than detracted from its virgin charm. And

these others would pass it on to others still, and so it would go on,

and so, in one sense, Llanyglo would never grow. There would always be

somebody who had known it before somebody else, and would say, "Ah, yes,

but you ought to have seen it _then_!" ... Well, thought the Cambrians,

perhaps it was a good thing. To have inferiors is one of the great

solaces of Life, and they supposed that the Tophams also had their

inferiors. Perhaps some day a tripper would look even on Philip Lacey's

Floral Valley with much the same shock of delight with which Eve opened

her eyes on the dew of Eden....

A sorely tried man now was Philip. Sadly he lamented the evening that

had taken him and Barry Topham to the same Philharmonic Concert in

Liverpool. For the starched and hotpressed ones of the "Cambrian,"

though they did not openly say so, held him as in a manner responsible

for this inferior spilling all over their idyllic place. They seemed to

be trying to make out that the Tophams were Philip's chosen friends.

Philip felt this to be unfair. It was an accident that might have

happened to anybody, and Philip's views on culture and the multitude

were every bit as sound as Raymond Briggs's own. And as Philip did not

intend to be sat upon by Raymond Briggs or anybody, he acted well, nay,

even nobly. He had recognised Topham; very well. He had not positively

encouraged the fellow, but say that certain narrow-minded persons wished

to make it appear that he had done so; well again. He would stand by

what he had done. He would ask the Tophams to dinner at his hotel.

He did so, and took the disastrous consequences. For the Tophams came,

and, with the eyes of the whole "Cambrian" upon them, behaved for all

the world as if they had been dining at their own inferior Liberty Hall

of a "Montgomery." So at least it seemed to Philip, and bad enough

surely that would have been; but Mrs. Lacey made it far, far worse. It

was plain as plain could be (she said afterwards) that the Tophams'

sprawls and freedoms were all put on, and that they had been like four

fishes out of water every minute of the time--he ought to be ashamed of

himself, showing them up before everybody's eyes like that!... "Come as

you are," Philip Lacey had said, with the truest delicacy, since it was

very unlikely that the Tophams had brought evening clothes to their

Camps and Pow-Wows; and so nobody dressed. The "Cambrian's" tables were

no longer arranged in the form of a T. With the installation of gas,

numerous smaller tables, with a couple of large oval ones among them,

had taken its place, and at one of the oval tables the four Laceys and

the four Tophams sat. Mr. Lacey was at one end, with Mrs. Topham on his

right, Mrs. Lacey was at the other end with Mr. Topham on her right. At

the sides sat the younger ones, a Topham and a Lacey on either side.

This was not the happiest of arrangements, since young ladies who have

just "finished" in Paris usually think they have seen enough of

school-teachers for some time to come, but it was the best that could be

managed. Nor could Miss June kick Miss Wy under the table.

The discord showed from the very first moment. The Laceys, as urbane

hosts, would have kept to such light and frothy conversational matters

as how the Tophams liked Llanyglo, whether they had been up into the

mountains yet, and similar subjects; but not so the Tophams. Briefly,

they went for the eternal verities like four steam-navvies. Before she

had unfolded her napkin, Mrs. Topham had Philip Lacey helpless in the

toils of More's _Utopia_, and by the time she had asked him half a dozen

searching questions, looking mistrustfully at him as much as to say,

"You _dare_ to lie to me, sir!" the unhappy man had to confess that it

was some time since he had read the book, and that his textual memory

was by no means as good as it had been. A second attack rendered him

abject. The third was not delivered. Seeing him such a rank and pitiable

outsider, Mrs. Topham contemptuously spared him.

"And _this_ is the state of education to-day!" she said scornfully to

her husband afterwards....

Mr. Topham, in the meantime, tackled Mrs. Lacey on certain problems of

the Distribution of Wealth, with no happier results. Quite simply, Mrs.

Lacey was unaware that such problems existed save insofar as they were

included in the specific question of marriage-settlements for daughters.

She scarcely troubled to answer Mr. Topham, but, glancing from June and

Wy to the Misses Amy and Norah Topham, lost herself in the problems of

the Distribution of Proposals instead. So she too, from the point of

view of those who carried Mill and Smith in their pockets and read these

inhuman authors in the shade of the crumbling Dinas, became an outsider.

But worst of all fared the Misses June and Wy; for the Topham sisters

had brought with them from Liverpool a holiday-pamphlet, which consisted

of forty-two questions, three of which, daily for a fortnight, the

holiday-maker was advised to ask himself. So:

"As I came along the beach this afternoon," said Miss Amy to June, with

a chatty note in her voice, but the enthusiasm for knowledge smouldering

in her eyes, "I observed great quantities of seaweed. To what uses are

seaweeds put?"

And said Miss Norah to Wy, slightly puckering her shining and melon-like

forehead:

"One of the boatmen told me yesterday that in the Spring large masses of

the vernal squill are to be found upon the hills near here. Why is

this?"

Then Miss Amy again:

"There are fine examples of contorted strata on the other side of the

Trwyn. Perhaps you or your sister can tell me the reason why these

strata are contorted?"

And again Miss Norah:

"Who was Taliesin? When did he flourish? Tell me anything you know about

him."

Dearly would June and Wy have liked to reply, in the words of Mrs.

Briggs when the hotel-manager had looked at her boots, "Don't if it

hurts you!" Wiggie nicknamed Miss Norah Topham "The Vernal Squill" on

the spot; June, a phanerogam herself, dubbed Miss Amy "The Club Moss."

After that dinner, there was nothing for Philip Lacey to do but to live

his indiscretion down.

But if this was the "Cambrian's" attitude to the "Montgomery," it was

not that of the Welshmen of Llanyglo. These were now more in number, for

half the staffs of the three hotels were Welsh, and others also had

scented prosperity in the air. Within a few hours friendly relations had

been established between the natives and the readers of _Utopia_. A

Welshman's eyes will always sparkle at the sight of a book or other

piece of the apparatus of knowledge, and the Montgomeryites, friendly

souls all and ready chatters with whomsoever they met, began to drop

into Howell's shop of a morning. None too reluctantly, they suffered

themselves to be drawn out by Howell on the subjects of their studies,

and then it was that Howell became a proud man indeed. For he produced

Eesaac Oliver, home once more from Aberystwith College. Without even

having the titles given to him as he came in at the door that divided

the shop from the dwelling-rooms behind, Eesaac Oliver swapped them book

for book. Howell's breast swelled. "Blodwen--Blodwen--come quick!" he

called. Then, with his eyes sparkling like bits of mica in a pebble and

his small teeth gleaming like a double row of barley, he looked fondly

on the assembly and murmured, "Dear me, I did not know till to-day there

wass so-o-a many books written!" One morning Mrs. Briggs and Mrs. Garden

came in in the very middle of one of these galas of the intellect. They

were kept waiting for a minute and more. There were times when the

Llanyglo Stores almost resembled a Debating Room.

It was left to the Misses Euonyma and Wygelia Lacey to restore the

balance that their father's luckless dinner-party had disturbed; and

right well they laboured to that end. They brought all the resources of

Brighton and Paris to bear upon those two amiable but indefatigable

school-teachers, the sisters Topham. They did not avoid them; on the

contrary, they put their heads together and then went out in search of

them. Then, when they had met them, they asked them to tell them whether

it was true that the guillemot laid its blunt-ended egg in order that it

should not roll off ledges, and whether the person who said that

serviceable knife-handles could be made of the stems of the Great Oar

Weed had been correctly informed. And when they failed to come upon

their unsuspecting victims, they cathechised one another.

"As I was ascending the mountains the other day," June would suddenly

break out in the Vernal Squill's raised and staccato voice, "I found

myself walking upon grass. What is grass? State reasons for your

answer."

And Wiggie, assuming the _viva voce_ examination tones of the Club Moss,

would ask her sister what a man was, and whether Eesaac Oliver Gruffydd

could properly be classed as one.

Failing the turning up of those two marriageable brothers, the Misses

June and Wy were likely to be what Mrs. Briggs called "bad to suit."

It was when the _Utopia_-readers had been at the "Montgomery" rather

more than half their time that the first bruit went abroad of the

jollification that presently made memorable the eve of their departure.

Nor was this jollification to be confined to their own set. All (as

afterwards at the Llanyglo P.S.A. Meetings) were to be welcome. The

project was talked over, at first informally at the Llanyglo Stores,

afterwards more seriously at the "Montgomery"; and a few days later the

rumour was confirmed by print. Eesaac Oliver Gruffydd and Hugh Morgan

distributed a number of handbills, thrusting them into folk's hands in

the stake-and-wire-enclosed streets, pushing them under doors, and even

entering that Reservation on the shore where the Cambrians sat stiffly,

reading their novels, toying with their fancy-work, or dozing after

lunch. Then, on the land-agents' blackboards and in the windows of the

Llanyglo Stores, larger bills appeared. Large bills and small alike read

as follows:

_Llanyglo Holiday Camp, July, 1887._

THE AIGBURTH STREET AND CHOW BENT

SQUARE UNITED READING CIRCLES

beg to announce that a

GRAND POW-WOW

will be held in the Dinas, the Trwyn, Llanyglo,

on

Friday Evening, the 22nd, at 8.30 sharp.

BRING YOUR REFRESHMENTS!

BRING YOUR VOICE LOZENGES!

BRING YOUR MUSIC!

BRING YOUR LANTERNS!

BRING YOUR FRIENDS!

Visitors and Residents alike are Welcome!

_Songs!! Recitations!!! Short Speeches!!!!_

LADIES SPECIALLY INVITED!

_Grand Chief:_ _Deputy Grand Chief:_

BARRY TOPHAM, Esqr. HOWELL GRUFFYDD, Esqr.

Committee: ................

................

................

The Proceedings will open with the singing of

"_God Save the People_,"

and will close with "_Hen Wlad fy Nhadau_."

* * * * *

EDWARD JONES, PRINTER, PORTH NEIGR. 0616.

"Boy!" called Raymond Briggs, as Eesaac Oliver, having distributed this

announcement to the occupants of the Reservation, was passing on; and

Eesaac Oliver turned. "Pick those papers up at once!" Raymond ordered,

pointing to a litter of handbills where the wavelets lapped the marge of

seaweed. Then, over his shoulder to Philip Lacey, who reclined almost

horizontally in the next deck-chair: "Making a mess of the beach like

that! Paper wherever you go; they're as bad as a lot of trippers! Can't

make out what you see in that fellow Topham----"

Philip, who was frowning over the handbill, spoke, also over his

shoulder.--"You going to this?"

Raymond gave a short laugh.--"Me?"

It was almost as if he said, "I didn't ask them to dinner, my dear man!

_I'm_ perfectly free to stop away!"

"Good. We'll have a game of chess, then," Philip replied off-handedly.

He could give Raymond pawn and move.

Outside the Reservation, however, little but the Pow-Wow was talked of.

Howell Gruffydd had looked the word up in his little English-Welsh

Dictionary, and, though he had failed to find it, he was none the less

set-up at the thought of being a Deputy Grand Chief. But he became

thoughtful again when there arrived for him a bundle from Barry Topham,

which, on being opened, was found to contain a pair of very much creased

moccasins, a broad-striped blanket, and a head-dress of feathers

similar to the one the Grand Chief himself was to wear. Howell had

remembered Dafydd Dafis. Dafydd might not like him to bedeck himself

thus, and what Dafydd might think always mattered a great deal in

Llanyglo. Dafydd, his old corduroys notwithstanding, stood for the

integrity of Nationalism, and even Howell, willing to be English, must

be careful not to be too English--or, in the present case, too Indian.

But the aliens themselves showed no such reserve. They had bracketed a

Welsh name with an English one on their handbill, had placed _Hen Wlad_

by the side of _God Save the People_, and been otherwise hearty; and

they did not know that even in their hospitality they were a little

bustling, urgent, and compelling. As for differences of race, such

things were presently about to be abolished. So they bade Llanyglo

almost boisterously welcome to its own Trwyn, and Barry Topham, passing

Dafydd Dafis on the afternoon of the day of the celebration, shouted

cheerily over his shoulder, "Don't forget your harp, Davis. I'm not

going to call you 'Dafis'--we'll make an Englishman of you before we've

done with you! Eight-thirty sharp.... Eh?... Stuff and nonsense!

Fiddlededee! What sort o' talk's that, man alive! Of course you're

bringing your harp!"

It was on a dullish summer evening, and none too warm up there, that the

Montgomeryites, in threes and fours and sixes, began the ascent of the

Trwyn. Some of them had already set match to their lanterns, though the

Trwyn beam was not alight yet, and they carried with them more than one

copy of _The Scottish Students' Song Book_. They tried their voices as

they climbed, and called to one another, pointing out false easy ways

and bursting into laughter when the misdirected ones had to return

again; and the Trwyn sheep started up from before their feet and fled,

baa-ing. The refreshments had gone on ahead, as also had the fuel for

the camp-fire, but no Welshmen were to be seen yet. Perhaps, gruff

heartiness notwithstanding, they felt that they were guests who should

have been hosts. Perhaps they felt that here was not the urgency there

had been on the only other occasion when they and the Saxon had rushed

hurriedly and tumultuously together--that wild nightfall when Ned Kerr,

from the roof of the new Hafod Unos, had seen something out in the lair

of grey, and, with a cry of "_Llongddrylliad!_" Celt and new-comer had

flung themselves into an open boat pell mell.

But by and by they also began to move in a body slowly along the shore,

sometimes over the dry, sometimes plodding over their own reflections in

the ebb. There was no pointing out false ascents to them. Eesaac Oliver

Gruffydd, who came first, had fetched eggs too often from the Trwyn

light not to know every cranny of the promontory, and his father

remembered the building of the lighthouse. Howell had seen them, as a

boy, locking and dowelling the great blocks of masonry, shaped each like

an intricate Chinese puzzle; and in thirty odd years the Light seemed to

have become almost as much part of the headland as the ancient Dinas

itself. That seemed to be the way with building. Even Edward Garden's

house seemed a settled thing now. So, in another year or two, would the

"Montgomery," the "Cardigan," Ham-and-Egg Terrace. And Howell reflected

that stones meant grocery-orders. But that was not all. If he must be

English, but not too English for Dafydd Dafis, he must still be careful

to be the right sort of English. He made little out of these _Utopia_

readers. They simply came in under the "Montgomery's" contract. The

Briggses and Laceys still provided the richer yield. Whether was the

better--the "Montgomery," where one visitor would presently be creeping

into a bed that his predecessor had left still warm, or these more

prosperous ones, who, Howell knew, would presently come no more?...

Moreover, he was already feeling the pressure of outside competition.

Ellis, of Porth Neigr, was even now quoting cutting rates for the

"Cardigan's" butter and cheese, and for a long time Llanyglo had had to

depend on outsiders for its milk. The railway, that brought people, also

brought their provender....

Oh, don't think for a moment that Howell was prospering without giving

deep thought to things!

They gained the Dinas, where already the fire was yellow and crackling,

and stood smiling Good evenings, as if they waited to be asked inside.

How long ago it was since the foundations of that Dinas had been

sprinkled with the blood of Merlin--how long ago it was since the Red

and White Dragons had contended about it, now one gaining the advantage,

now the other--how long ago these things had been, not even Miss Amy

Topham would have dared to ask June Lacey. Now it resembled a grey old

heel of cheese, with a little scrabbling in one corner. This scrabbling

was where Bert Stoy, one of the younger and most indefatigable of the

Readers, had hoped he might find a British grave.

"We thought you'd maybe changed your minds about coming," were the words

with which Barry Topham welcomed them. He was an Indian, but a bearded

one, and he bustled here and there, wanting to know where So-and-So

was, and whether this requisite or that had been brought up, and seeing

to this and the other. The goblin shadows of eighteen or twenty of the

Readers danced on the ruined works, and the sky behind their illumined

faces was of a sad and leaden lavender hue. The lanterns made little

patches in the short grass; matches lighted faces momentarily; and then

suddenly there broke out over the shoulder of the headland and continued

thenceforward, the Light. Red, red, white--red, red, white--it was

numbing, intolerable. It dyed the clouds that seemed to sag over the

earth as the ceiling-sheets sagged in the cottages, and its glare was

not lost high overhead now, as it had been on that night when the Kerrs

had rested for their "nooning" in the midst of their building of their

Hafod. The staggering blaze passed not twenty feet above them, seeming

to stumble and trip over the cloud-folds, and driving the revellers to

fresh places with their backs to it. You would have said that those

ancient Red and White Dragons had come to life again and were chasing

one another across the rafters of the night.

Then Barry Topham, placing himself by a jagged tooth of rock, held up

his hand for silence. He had motioned Howell Gruffydd to his side, and

had pointed at somebody's cap. His fingers tweaked a tuning-fork; he set

the vibrating prong against his teeth; he gave them a soft

note--"Doh----" and then:

"_When wilt Thou save the people,

O God of Mercy, when?..._"

Then when it was finished, Barry again stood with uplifted hand. Caps

were put on again by such as wore them.

"Not weft enough," was Barry's brief comment on the singing; the Welsh,

unfamiliar with the air, had not sung. "Never mind; it might ha' been

worse.--Now I'm just going to say a few words, and then we'll make a

start."

And he began.

"Well, we've been here a fortnight now, and I think we've all enjoyed

it. I have for one. Some of us has been up these grand mountains,

finding out how they were made, and some of us has been improving

ourselves among the rocks and on the shore. Some of us has botanised,

and some's collected butterflies, and one and all we've read the books

set down for us in the Syllabus. That's a job done, at all events.

"But I think we shall one and all admit that we've a great deal to learn

about Llanyglo yet. There'd still be something to learn if we were to

come here six, ten, twenty times. That's the grand thing about

knowledge--we need never be afraid we shall come to the end of it. When

we've read fifty books there's always fifty more. Ay, and there'll be

another fifty after that.

"But we've got other things besides knowledge at Llanyglo. We've got

health, health to keep us going for another year. And we've got friends,

new friends. I think we can say," here he laid his hand on Howell's

shoulder, "that we've all done the little bit that in us lies to break

down prejudices and dislikes and racial differences. We've had our

quarrels, us Welsh and English, in the past; no doubt there's been

battles fought on this very spot; but that's all over, and, speaking as

Grand Chief for the year, though unworthy to succeed Comrade Walker, who

occupied this same position last year at our Holiday Camp at Keswick, I

think I may say we've buried the hatchet now. So in the name of one and

all I greet these friends of ours. I think it does us both good to come

together like this. They're a bit--what shall I say?--on the poetical

side, perhaps; more romantic than us; we're just plain, practical folk

that has to tew for our livings; but what I mean is, it's a good thing

for both of us to get to understand one another. We do understand one

another now, and I'm sure we're all very glad to see them here."

(Applause, and cries from the Lancashire men of "Good old Wales!") "You

here that, Gruffydd--Comrade Gruffydd? That's hearty. That's Lancashire.

No flowers o' speech, but we say a thing and mean it. And we mean it

when we say we're very glad to see you indeed, and hope this won't be

our last visit to Llanyglo.--And now I won't take up any more of your

time. We've a long programme before us, and I see that the first item

is----" he consulted a paper in his hand, "----is the old favourite,

_There is a Tavern_. What's the key, Harry? C? (Doh, lah--lah, te,

doh----)."

And with the singing of _There is a Tavern in the Town_ the Pow-Wow

began.

Did they come to understand one another the better for it? Were they who

took part in that Pow-Wow so "poetical and romantic" for the one part,

so blunt and rough and practical for the other? Did a score or so of

Saxons suddenly and miraculously cease that night to belong to the

world's most sentimental race, and were the hearts of as many Celts as

miraculously changed? No doubt it all seemed simple enough to Barry

Topham. Hard-rinded himself, but not without a generous juice within, he

would have found it hard to believe that pulpier fruits existed, with a

stone inside he would but crack his teeth upon. Perhaps--perhaps--it was

not so; and yet--what, after all, can the victor do to the vanquished

more than vanquish him?... Barry saw their smiles only, and for every

smile they received they gave three. The jovial Campers became ever

bluffer and heartier and fonder of them as song followed song. Nor did

the Welshmen refuse to sing. Enlightened Young Wales, in the person of

Eesaac Oliver Gruffydd, was presently to be seen with his back to the

intolerable Trwyn beam while the Dragons of the Light chased one another

behind his head; and his voice was lifted up in _Vale of Llangollen_.

Was the song a success? It was doubly a success. The blunt and genial

aliens applauded him as a breaker of the ice, his compatriots applauded

him as a stepper into the breach from which they themselves had hung

back. Hardly had he sat down before he was beset with requests to hum

the air all over again, in order that they might take it down in the

Tonic Sol-fa notation.... Then, almost immediately, the clapping swelled

again, and there were cries of "Harry! Harry!" Harry Stone, who had the

voice of an angel, was allowed to sing as he sat, because of his

lameness, and he could not be seen in his dim angle of masonry, but only

the unhurrying but unceasing red and white spokes, that strode from afar

over the sea, passed overhead, and were off on their wide circle again.

Hearing his voice and not seeing him, you thought of a pure spring that

gushes suddenly out of the dark and grudging earth.--_Cannibalee_, he

sang----

It was poor enough stuff. Its words were a laborious parody, its

harmonies exactly predicable; it was facetious or nothing, and it marred

an original with a remote and deathly grace of its own; but these things

were forgotten as Harry sang. To-morrow they were leaving Llanyglo.

To-morrow they were filing back through that postern that had given

them this, their fortnight's respite, from tasks too often ignoble, from

cramped circumstances, from savourless lives. And it weighed on them,

tenderly yet heavily. Next year seemed so sadly, sadly far away....

"_Her eyes were as fair as the star of the morn

And her teeth were as sharp as the point of a thorn----

She was very fair to see!_----"

Harry sang; and the hands of young men sought those of young women in

the blackness of the Dinas's shadows, and the married ones drew a little

closer together, and there was no parody at all in the little soft

punctuations of the refrain, in which every voice joined:

"_She was very fair to see----

(So she was!)

She was very fair to see----

(So she was!)_----"

Edward Garden was right----

"_Her eyes were as fair as the star of the morn

And her teeth were as sharp as the point of a thorn----

My beautiful Cannibalee_----"

Edward Garden was right. That tender but heavy weight, so tender, so

heavy that it bore down the stupid expression of the song, lay even on

the Welshmen too. He was admirably shrewd and right. It would not be yet

awhile--it was too early yet--but presently, as an advertisement for

Llanyglo, an Eisteddfod--an Eisteddfod, say, when the holiday season

began in July, and a Brass Band Contest towards its close in

September....

They were still singing when they came down again, at eleven o'clock.

You might have thought, from the way in which Barry Topham clung to

Howell Gruffydd's arm, that he was slightly drunk, but he was not; that

was only brotherliness and exaltation. He still wore the gala-dress of

the Grand Chief, but in that particular Howell thought that he had come

out of his dilemma rather well. The feather head-dress he had tried on

had proved too big for his head, and in trying to shorten the band he

had torn off the button, thus rendering the adornment useless. As for

the striped blanket about his shoulders--well, it was a coolish night,

and there is no sense in taking a chill when there is a blanket to be

had to keep you warm. Even Dafydd would see that. So Howell had worn

it....

And looked at from below again, the Trwyn beam no longer appeared a hunt

of raving red and white monsters, but a little lonely thing, familiar

and disregarded, old, wise, minding its own business, and meanwhile

quietly opening and shutting an eye.

II

THE GIANT'S STRIDE

After that summer they began in earnest the building of Llanyglo. Come

and see them at it.

Whence came these stone-carts and timber-carts, these girders and

castings, a single one only taking up a couple of trucks? Whence came

these wains of floor-boards with their trailing tails bobbing up and

down within an inch or two of the white road, these bastions of metal

and ballast, these crawling and earth-shaking traction-engines with the

little bellies and the monstrous wheels and the dotted line of lorries

and trollies behind them? Whence these sawn planks, these massive frames

with machinery parts on them so heavy that every rut threatens a

standstill, these contractors' vans with absurd little trolley-wheels,

these gatlings of drain-pipes, these wagons of plumbers' material, these

vans of provisions, this army of men? Why do these now choke the roads

that formerly were empty save for the passing of a wain of whispering

hay, or the light market-cart that left a smell of raspberries and a

stain of Welsh song behind, or Ned Kerr with his folding hut and

clogging-knife, or Ynys Lovell with her packing-case cart and her mother

with her loops of cane seeking chairs to mend? Where did they come from,

and what are they doing here?

The stone, of course, comes from the Porth Neigr quarry, where the

blasts shake the rocks and the shooting of waste resounds throughout

the day. And the castings come from Manchester and Middlesborough and

Wigan and Leeds. And the sawn planks come from Russia and the Baltic,

and the larches for scaffolding from the Merionethshire valleys. These

things come from these places--if you look at it that way. But look at

it the other way and they have an origin mystical indeed. They are

conceived of fecund nods and looks, of the germination of writing and

initials and signatures and contract-stamps. They are born of print and

promotion and allotment, and the cord is cut when sums are paid on

application, and more in three months' time. They thrive when Chairmen,

standing up on platforms, say "the adoption of the Accounts has been

moved and seconded----," and become lusty when more clerks have to be

called in, and temporary premises have to be taken, to cope with the

public rush for the splendid thing. You see their real origin on those

blackboards that seem to set Llanyglo its new multiplication sum, and in

those paragraphs in the Manchester and Liverpool and London papers. You

see it again when the new Local Government Bill receives the Royal

Assent. You see it once more when from the machines of printers in

Nottingham and Harrow and Frome and Belfast there are turned out the

posters that already overspread the northern hoardings, bidding

Blackpool look to itself, warning Douglas that it has another

competitor, elbowing Bridlington, shoving Yarmouth aside. There are half

a dozen of these posters out already, and if they are not strictly

speaking representations of Llanyglo, they are something more--they are

prophecies, which you will do well to heed if you want to put your money

on a good thing. There is one in Lime Street Station, Liverpool (you

need not glance at that upper window; you'd have a job to find poor

Terry Armfield's Trwyn Avenue now). It is the "Welsh Giantess" one. She

is dressed in a black steeple hat with a white hood underneath it, red

check shawl, striped petticoat, and has buckles on her shoes. She holds

the town in a three-quarter circle in her arms, with children at play on

the sands and super-Briggses and super-Laceys all spilling out in the

foreground. The mountains are indigo, the hotels pink, the sands chrome

yellow, and the name LLANYGLO sprawls across the sky as if the Trwyn

Light had dropped it there in passing, a letter at a time.... The

poster, of course, is a little grandiose: nobody cries stinking fish.

The Pier, for example, isn't there yet. But it is somewhere, in

somebody's desk-drawer, perhaps, or perhaps it has even got farther than

that. Perhaps the caissons are already on the way; certainly a group of

strangers has been busy on the shore any time this past twelve months.

And the Promenade isn't ex-_act_-ly like that yet. It has railings not

unlike those, but not yet that fine stretch of impregnable sea-wall. And

so with the hotels.... But all in good time. These things will all be

ready quite as soon as those posters have sunk into the perception of

the public. We mustn't have a completely equipped town standing empty

for a number of seasons while folk make up their minds whether they'll

come or not. We have the money, the men, powers under the new Act ample

as our hearts could wish, and the certainty of the coming reward.

Llanyglo itself found it difficult to realise what was happening. It all

came in such strides. Where the stake-and-wire-enclosed roads had been,

a giant hoarding would rise, twenty, forty, fifty yards long. On this

hoarding, by means of the railway posters, Llanyglo would be told all

about itself--its climate, its mild winters, its accessibility from all

parts, and its "unrivalled attractions." It read Gilbert Smythe's

signature there. And among these were other bills curiously opposite,

which told them that if they in their turn needed change, there were

week-end tickets to be had to Liverpool and Belle Vue at specially

reduced rates.--And while Llanyglo knew, as month succeeded month, that

work was going on behind these hoardings, the effect was none the less

magical when, on the day they were knocked to pieces again, the

astounding frontage appeared. They had known nothing like it since that

piece of witchcraft of the Kerrs, and now several times they had seen it

happen. It had happened between the "Cambrian" and "Cardigan" hotels. It

had happened at Pritchard's Corner. And now it was about to happen

again, along a line that ran from a point just below the Kerrs' Hafod to

the piece of land, not built on yet, where for three days one Spring a

circus was set up, its cages and caravans and the guy-ropes of its

tenting all mingled with the timber-stacks and mortar-engines and

breastworks of stone setts and other dumpings of a dozen different

contractors. Later, a temporary wooden shed occupied this space. This

shed was town-hall, concert-hall, general purposes hall, and theatre

thrown into one. That was the time Llanyglo began to discover that if

one of its inhabitants wished to meet another he had better appoint a

time and place to do so. To climb up the nearest sandhill and take a

look round no longer served.

And even these amazing unfoldings were as nothing compared with that

which (it was already known) was to happen next--the construction of the

sea-wall and the Pier.

Philip Lacey's Floral Valley was already finished. Its gravelled walks,

with steps every few yards, straggled up both sides of the ravine in the

side of the Trwyn, and from the topmost of these you could look down on

the octagonal roof of the bandstand that occupied the levelled plot in

the middle. Sticking (as it were) the point of his compasses into the

bandstand, Philip had described successions of eighth and

quarter-circles, with radiating paths and variously shaped smaller

beds in between; and of these he had made a piece of crewel-work

of colour. Golden feather and London pride, lobelia and pinks and

bachelors'-buttons, formed the borders; behind them, in ovals and stars

and crown-shapes and monograms, mignonette and arabis and dwarf pansies

and Virginia stock were set; and so he had brushed-and-combed and curled

and scented the whole place. He had staked his professional reputation,

too, that from the first crocus to the last Michaelmas daisy, the gaudy

Catherine-wheel would never be for a single day out of bloom; and then

he had departed, leaving the responsibility of upkeep to the delighted

town. John Willie Garden, looking at the Valley's logical plan, wished

that the town itself had had as fair, if severe, a start.

For John Willie was Clerk of the Works now in a very different sense

from that in which he had had charge of the coming of Railhead. He was

now nineteen, and had no longer any wish to go into the business in

Manchester. His father, noting his tastes and capacity, had judged it

perfectly safe to depart, leaving John Willie to look after things in

his stead; and as no contractor's foreman wished to quarrel with the son

of the principal maker of the place, he had a fairly large authority. So

John Willie occupied the house by the shore, with Minetta to make him

comfortable. He spent his days in passing from this building to that,

pushing at doors in hoardings marked "No Admittance," threading his way

along the wheeling-planks, mounting ladders, looking down on the

swarming men from the stagings, looking up through the groves of the

scaffold-poles, looking out, not over the sandhills now, but over other

houses built and building. The masts and spars of other scaffold-poles

here and there might almost have made you think that a navigable river

twisted through Llanyglo, and that these were the rigging of the vessels

upon it. From one work to another he passed, approving, questioning,

telephoning, making notes. There is scarce a room of that period of

Llanyglo's up-springing but, even to-day, John Willie Garden can tell

you the lie of its water-pipes, where its main-cocks are, where its

drains, its gas-connections, the depth of its foundations, the

branchings of its chimney-flues. He hasn't been into half of them since,

but the present occupiers can tell him nothing about which cellars are

on the rock and when the girders are due to be repainted. And he could

talk to the men as well as to their bosses. He addressed them

authoritatively, but he knew their football and their drinking, their

jokes and songs, which dog belonged to which and which among them

"subbed" or "liened" before his wage was due. John Willie Garden's

boyhood lay behind him now.

What was John Willie like to look at by this time, and what was his

outlook on the world?

You may meet his kind at six o'clock any morning, the sons of Alderman

This or Sir John That, going to their fathers' engineering-shops in

Leeds, or to Manchester spinning-sheds, or Rochdale factories, or

dye-works, or rolling-mills, or drawing-offices, or electrical works.

They wear greasy blue overalls and carry tin luncheon-cans, and use

cotton-waste for handkerchiefs. They glory in the readiness of their

repartee to their fathers' workmen, to be mistaken for one of whom gives

them the keenest pleasure. Joyously they attack the blackest and

greasiest of the work, honestly forgetting that they could leave this to

others if they wished.--But see them in the evening! They have had tea

and a "clean-up" by this time. Their heads have been soused and their

hands pumiced, they have on their mahogany boots and their white

collars, the hands that wielded crowbars or strained with the grip of

spanners ply thin and expensive canes now, and you can see the radiance

of their approach a quarter of a mile away. They are off to

billiard-rooms and card-parties, theatre-boxes, or courting. They will

be home fairly early, because of the five-o'clock alarum in the morning,

but until then they are so evidently about to enjoy themselves that you

sigh if you are unable to join them. Go one night and watch them when

next the Pantomime comes. Sit in the second row of the stalls (you won't

be able to get into the first row). If the leading lady is pretty, and

John Willie and Percy Briggs are there, you won't consider your evening

wasted. The show is sure to "go."

That, more or less, was John Willie. He had rather a lot of money to

spend, but nowhere much to spend it yet. His hair was a little less

primrose coloured than it had been (pomatum does darken hair a little),

but his eyes had not altered. They were still just as receptive or just

as stupid as he cared to make them, blue as flax, and capable, if you

happened to catch him at something he did not wish to be caught at, of a

rather hard and prolonged stare. He was not tall--long ago it had been

plain he would not be--but, looking at his shoulders, hung as it were

from an apex at the back of his head, you would have wondered at the

lightness of the pit-pat of his feet when he did a step-dance on the

occasion of one of the men's "birthdays" (which have nothing to do with

days of birth, by the way, but frequently much to do with an unfancied

horse and a longish price). In a word, he was a nicish, powerful young

rascal, with an expensive dressing-case and a trace of those Lancashire

final "g's"; and he and his friends (of whom he had a good many down to

Llanyglo) had their own corner in the "Cambrian" lounge, unless the

evening's programme included cards or involved the use of a room with a

piano in it.