Twm’s new master and mistress, with their daughters. His pranks and
buffetings at Cwm du. This humorous-beginning chapter ends tragically.
THE farmer to whom Twm had been assigned, was named Morris Grump, who
possessed a considerable farm, freehold property, consisting of small
fields occupying either side of a deep narrow mountain dingle, the centre
of which was threaded by a large brook, that in winter aped the
boisterousness of a river, and was, near the farm, crossed by a fallen
tree, answering the purpose of a rustic bridge, worn flat by the feet of
passengers. This cultivated defile extended about three miles, and, with
the farm, was called _Cwm du_, {77} signifying the Black vale, or dingle,
from the deep shade which the acclivious sides of the mountains threw
over it, a great part of the day. This lonely ravine was poorly wooded,
but many objects combined to array it with a hue of the romantic.
Instead of thorn, or other coppice, the hedges were of furze, always
green, and in summer with a rich yellow blossom, intermixed, here and
there, with the purple-flowered heath, which in Scotch literature has
been immortalized as the mountain heather. The trees were stunted, of
stubby, dwarfish, yet fantastic growth, with the heads generally snapped
off in the winter storms, and the branches spreading afar. The large
loose stones, that had parted from their parent rocks, and rolled to the
banks, and into the bed of the brook, were covered, or rather patched,
with a grey and yellow lichen, as were the bare hungry-looking ribs of
the mountains, which, unfleshed with soil, shewed, repulsively gaunt;
strongly contrasting with the small corn fields and green meadows below.
The brook, on a continual descent, was broken by many small, and some
large, falls, down its rocky bed, chafing to a white foam against its
various impediments, and roaring with the futile rage of a petty torrent.
At the upper end of _Cwm du_ stood the farm house, so called, of Morris
Grump, with its barn, ricks, and the group of outhouses usually
appertaining to such a place. At the further extremity, the dingle
terminated in a vast flat patch of black mountain marsh, where all the
people of the neighbouring country repaired to cut their turf for firing.
All else, on either side the valley of _Cwm du_, was mountain—a wild
uncultured wilderness; the surface of which was diversified with pretty
lakes or alpine pools, on which floated various aquatic fowl; flocks of
sheep; long-maned untamed horses; furze and heath; quarries; caves;
gulfs; intersecting brooks; and the horizon closed with the distant
mountain peaks, one above another, strangely but most grandly clustered.
In this secluded place, with a wife, six grown-up daughters, and one
man-servant, Morris Grump lived, in the most penurious manner, scarcely
allowing himself or family the common necessaries of live. This was to
Twm a most grievous change, where he was continually compelled to embrace
his antipathies, and disconnect himself from all the felicities most dear
to him. He loved books, rural festivities, rambling, and all those modes
of passing his time which were most allied to idleness; but in this house
not a book was to be seen, nor the sound of mirth, harp, or song ever
heard; nothing but work, hard work, seasoned with the shrill tones of
scolding women, and the deep growls of the farmer. The state of a slave,
in a more agreeable climate, was enviable compared to poor Twm’s.
It has been complained that the improvements in modern cookery have
caused the human race to devour more than twice the quantity of food
requisite or beneficial; Molly Grump, the mistress of this mountain
mansion, had no idea of inflicting such an evil on her kind, and
therefore as an antidote to gluttony and intemperance, took care that her
food and drink should be neither too savory nor gustful. Her habits
were, to bake a large quantity of bread at once, so that it might soon
get hard and mouldy; steep an immense portion of the matter for flummery,
until as sour as verjuice; mix water with the milk, buttermilk, and whey;
and make the cheeses for home consumption hard enough to answer the
purpose of cannon balls, in case the felicities of _Cwm du_ should ever
tempt our foreign enemies to invade it.
Our hero, however, had a bold heart, and if a little better fed, would
have endured all, and with that indifference and vein of whim which were
natural to him, turned Misery herself into a scarecrow of mirth rather
than terror. His wretched scanty meals did much to tame him, and he ate
his breakfast of highly-watered milk porridge, with a hungry, and at the
same time loathing, stomach. His dinner was either of very sour flummery
and skim-milk watered, or for variety, broth, made of rusty bacon, or
equally rusty dried beef or mutton; which being made in large quantities,
was generally warmed and served up three or four succeeding days: and
when Twm and his fellow servant (a half idiot lout,) vainly hoped that
this species of drenching was over, they had the mortification to find a
quantity of water added, to spin it out for another meal. When spared
from out-door work, Twm became a drudge for the women; after the work of
the day was over, and each resting in the chimney corner, there was
always a job for him, of some kind or other. By the time he had been
there six months, it was pitiable to see him, in the depth of winter, in
his wooden clogs without stockings, and his happy laughing face rendered
pale and sorrowful. Yet with all these drawbacks he preserved his turn
for mirth, and in the evening would recite either ghost-stories or
war-tales of old times, which he had heard from Ianto Gwyn or his master
Rhys, that astonished and amused his auditors, at least part of them, for
Molly Grump told him ’twas more fitting he should mind his work than give
his time to telling lies and idling; and her eldest daughter Shân always
echoed and imitated her mother, both in scolding and uttering wise
_saws_.
The employment which they found for him in-doors, sometimes gave him an
opportunity of repairing the deficiency of his stomach and warming his
icy hands. One day, having brought in some turf and furze which he had
chopped for baking plank, or bakestone, bread, while Shân had turned her
back a little, he snatched up the last cake taken from the fire, and
doubling it up, thrust it into his breast, and attempted to make a hasty
retreat to devour it. The great heat against his stomach, however, gave
him infinite pain, which, like the Spartan boy he had determined to
endure rather than be detected; but not having been favored with so
stoical an education, he at length gave way to nature, and roared most
loudly as he ran out and across a field, while Shân and her two younger
sisters followed in full chase, to rescue the bread which the former
immediately missed. Twm soon gained the mountain, when the girls gave up
the pursuit, and he sat down and ate his bread undisturbed, hiding what
remained beneath some stones, for a future meal, determined to abide the
consequence of his theft rather than that of starvation. A severe
thrashing from the farmer, some blows from his wife, much scolding from
both as well from the echo Shân, with deprivation from dinner, were the
attendants of this feat; and instead of being permitted to sit with the
rest, to partake of a meal, he was ordered to give some hay to the cows:
“and mind,” cried Farmer Grump, “that you give more hay to the cow that
yields you most milk, than to the cow that gives but little.” “I will,
be sure of it!” said Twm, pointedly and in a sulky tone; and immediately
carried his two arms full of hay and threw it under the water spout.
“There!” cried he, as the farmer came out and looked with astonishment,
“_that_ is the _cow_ which gives me most milk, for your cursed broth and
porridge is almost wholly made from this never-failing udder.” This cost
him another beating, but it was the last, for the farmer received a hint
that it would not be safe to repeat the experiment, as Twm vowed to his
fellow servant, that if again struck he would fell his assailant to the
ground, like an ox: while his resolute and altered look convinced him
that he meant to keep his word.
In the early part of the next summer, that dreadful malady, the small
pox, made its awful visitation to Morris Grump’s house, and like a
terrific fiend laid its talons alike on young and old, and remorselessly
swept them off to the grave. The two younger daughters were the first
infected; and in a few days after, two more were taken ill, and Morris’s
house presented the appearance of an hospital. Morris’s wife, as well as
himself, from the excessive anxiety natural to parents in such unhappy
circumstances for the preservation of her offspring, took, like thousands
of others, the wrong course, and literally killed them with kindness;
while the humbler inmates of the house, who had no share in her affection
or concern, were as truly saved by absolute neglect. Thus, while without
judgement or advice, except of those who were as ignorant as herself, she
sought every delicacy to indulge and pamper the appetites of her own
afflicted ones, giving them spiced ale sugared, and even wine, in her
terror of losing them, she suffered the poor apprentice Twm, who was also
deep in the small pox, to languish unattended, without enquiring after
him, or sending him the common necessaries of life, utterly indifferent
whether he lived or died.
On the first appearance of this disorder, the farmer’s ploughman left him
and went home, so that except Grump’s own family, there were none in the
house but Twm, who, if preserved from the small pox ran great danger of
starvation. His bed was an old hop-sack half filled with oat-chaff, and
his covering an old tattered blanket and a musty rug, which had filled
similar offices for the horses. His bed-chamber being a portion of the
hay-loft, poor Twm remained hours and days without food, groaning away
his time, and until blinded by his malady, amusing himself by counting
the number, and pondering on the formation, of the cobwebs that hung like
sorrow’s garlands from the mouldy beams and rafters, while the squeaking
of the mice in the rotten thatch, served for music. At other times,
somewhat nerved by the cravings of his stomach, his weak hands would
rustle in some pease-straw that happened to be placed there, and now and
then, to his infinite joy, find an unbroken pea-shell that had escaped
the searching of the flail, which, in spite of the soreness of his hands
and mouth, he would open, and with avidity devour its contents.
As in those days there were none who knew how to treat this disorder, in
general it was looked upon as the certain harbinger of death, when the
terror and confusion which took place on its appearance, was deplorable
in the extreme. Two of the farmer’s children, which had first been taken
ill, now died; and a third in a day after, when Morris himself was
discovered to be infected. Loud cries and lamentations became incessant
day and night; and some of the neighbouring old cottage wives who offered
their services came there to assist—and this to some of them was a
welcome office, as on such occasions as watching the sick, or laying out
the dead; feasting is as prevalent as at weddings.
Among these old hen-wives and grannies, tales of superstition prevailed
in abundance; some spoke of the corpse candles seen by them previous to
the deaths of the young women of the house; others dilated on the
awfulness of a spectral burial, where shadows of the living supported the
bier of the departed towards the churchyard.
One night, between twelve and one, while the three coffins and their
contents presented a woeful sight, lying side by side on the long oak
table, Morris, afflicted as he was, assisted his wife in supporting his
fourth daughter, whose death they also deeply dreaded, as an old cottage
woman, while she basted a loin of mutton roasting before the fire, dwelt
much on the certainty of supernatural appearances, illustrating her
convictions by instances of her own experience. All at once, the current
of her discourse was arrested by a shudder that overcame and struck her
dumb, on hearing a rumbling and irregular noise, as of falling furniture,
which also terrified the group about the fire. The noise increased, and
at last seemed as of somebody stumbling in his way in the dark; groans,
mutterings, and approaching human steps succeeded:—some shrieked, some
rose and ran to remote corners, covering their heads with their aprons,
while others sat breathless, as if nailed to the bench, and dissolved in
streams of perspiration, their eyes starting from their sockets—when a
figure with the air and rush of a maniac darted in, tore the roasting
meat from the string, and disappeared with it, uttering in a dismal
hollow tone “O God, I am famished by these wretches!” The consciences of
the farmer and his wife were dreadfully wrung, as they now recollected
the poor apprentice boy Twm, whom they had left in the depth of the
malady which had deprived them of three of their children, to live or
die, as he might; nor would Morris allow anybody to rescue the meat, but
snatching a loaf from the shelf, he entreated Twm to come in and eat his
fill at the fire: but the youngster had entered his hay-loft, and with
the ravenousness of a starved hound devoured his half raw prey in
darkness. While yet the farmer, with tears of real penitence, was
calling out to him, a loud scream from his wife convinced him that his
fourth child was also dead. With wild agony that seemed to have
humanized his hard heart by the bitter arrows of affliction, Morris fell
on his knees, and with interrupting sobs, exclaimed “I see the hand of
God in this, and a judgement, a heavy judgement has befallen us for our
cruelty to the poor boy; but he will live! he! the lad whom we treated
fouler than the beast! he will outlive this pest, while me and mine will
perish!”
The suffering of the unhappy man was pitiable and heart-rending to
witness; and on the very day of his children’s burial, with loud cries of
remorse and sorrow he expired.
Twm recovered, according to the farmer’s prophecy, which was further
verified, inasmuch that the remainder of his children did not live to see
the end of the year; and his wife, losing her senses, was ever after a
wretched moping idiot.