Death took a hand that winter in Llanyglo's making. They were getting well up with the Town Hall, in what is now Gardd Street; still the flag floated at the polehead, in token that they had got thus far without serious mishap; and then it had to be run down to the half-mast. It was a common scaffold accident. Harry Kerr, on one of the upper stages, stepped back upon empty air; Sam sprang forward to save him; and they picked them both up from among the debris below. A few remembered the launching of that open boat on that wild night seven years before, and said that it seemed out of nature that these comparatively young men should go off before ancient Mrs. Pritchard; and Mrs. Pritchard herself baa-ed, and said that there would be more room now in the Hafod Unos whatever. But most of the residents were new-comers now, who knew more of Tommy Kerr's present delinquencies than of the history of his brothers, and they could hardly be expected to grieve. They buried them both at Sarn, under the shadow of that pepper-caster of a fifteenth-century church tower, and the problem of however the Hafod had held them all became a thing of the past.
The Town Hall was the outward and visible sign that Llanyglo had not only caught up with Porth Neigr, but had outstripped it. It had special conveniences for a centre of administration, which it forthwith became; and at the election that Autumn Howell Gruffydd was made a Councillor. He had two branch shops now, one at Porth Neigr and the other at Sarn, and to his newspaper counter he had added a Library of books bought at Mudies' clearance sales. He charged fourpence a week for the loan of each book, which was twopence more than the old stationer's library at Porth Neigr had charged; but there was the railway-fare to take into account if you considered the charge extortionate. Later, a good deal later, when the picture postcard was invented, Howell did rather well out of that too. He praised your amateur snapshot of the Trwyn or the Promenade of the façade of the Town Hall, and made you what no doubt seemed to him a fair offer; namely to give you a dozen prints in exchange for your film. He then proceeded to fill a revolving stand with other prints, which he sold at seven for sixpence, or, highly glazed, at twopence apiece. With pennies and twopences accumulated in this and similar ways he bought certain house-property behind Ham-and-Egg Terrace, paying a ground-rent to Edward Garden. He had by this time acquired a little personal habit of Mr. Tudor Williams's—the habit of shaking hands with one hand, while the other affectionately kneaded and patted his interlocutor's right arm from the wrist up to the shoulder.
Hitherto the developments of Llanyglo had lain in a few hands only—the hands of Edward Garden and his shareholders, of one or two others who had forgotten they had a holding in Terry Armfield's Thelema, but remember it now with joy and thanksgiving, of Mr. Tudor Williams, and of not very many more. But now a more ponderous machine began to rumble into motion. This was the machine of which the Railway Companies and a couple of Pleasure Packet Services were the visible active parts. Rumours now began to fly about of developments long since planned and now imminent, developments astounding and gigantic. These rumours began with hotels. Hitherto the "Cambrian" had been thought to be rather more than so-so, but of course nobody would have dreamed of comparing it with the "Grands" and "Majesties" which "Lancashire Hotels, Limited" possessed in the great centres of the North. These had half a dozen tennis-courts in front, palm-courts and winter-gardens behind, and five and six and seven hundred bedrooms. But now the rumour ran that, not one of these, but two, owned by opposing Syndicates, were to be set up in Llanyglo. The sites on which they were to be built varied according to the version of the tale. Some said that the "Montgomery" was to be pulled down again, some that the whole row of fishermen's cottages was to be demolished, some that a terrace was to be dug out of the side of the Trwyn itself and a funicular railway constructed. However it might be, it was known that there were prolonged meetings of the Council about it, and that at one point the whole thing, whatever it might be, seemed likely to fall through. And that, as they now knew, would be their death-blow. They would do anything, anything rather than that these immense reservoirs of capital, already partly opened, should be shut up again. They would hold out the town itself as security, a twopenny rate, promises, accommodations, anything. It was said that Sheard, the Porth Neigr solicitor, who had moved to new premises opposite the Llanyglo Town Hall, sat up five nights in the week, making actuarial calculations, estimating yields, measuring margins, and balancing all with the possibility of the town's bankruptcy. Edward Garden was once more at Llanyglo, and closeted frequently with Mr. Tudor Williams and Howell Gruffydd.... Even the two projected hotels were not much more than a detail as matters now stood; the whole town must now be given a tremendous upward heave or collapse with a crash. Even those hotels could go up now only on one condition—namely, that the base of the visiting population, that foundation of which innumerable units are the strength, should at once be immensely broadened. For every individual who could afford to put up at a palace, they must rake in scores, hundreds of people who could not. The real foundation of the hotels must be row on row, acre on acre, of Ham-and-Egg Terraces. For the rest, a place that must live through the year on the takings of three months must be big, as those places of entertainment must be big that are full on Saturdays only and empty during the rest of the week. Nothing smaller would tempt the Railway Companies. (This, by the way, was not altogether good news for Raymond Briggs. Architecture is not needed for that broadened base. Any working master-builder can run up houses that are good enough. The pattern of one is the pattern of all, and Raymond would have small chance in competition with the bigger men of his profession.)
Nor would it suffice merely to house and feed the people who came. Other watering-places were awake to the new menace now, so that the rival announcements on the hoardings resembled a desperate grapple for the possession of those sixpences and shillings and half-crowns that were poured without ceasing into the coffers of the Holiday Clubs. Not one in five hundred of those who contributed those shillings and half-crowns stopped to think that Wales herself has no Holiday Clubs—that Wales does not go abroad with a year's savings in her pocket of which it is black shame to bring as much as a single penny back again. They wanted amusement. The Resort or Spa that could provide the most amusement would get the lion's share. Amusements were a more urgent necessity than chairs and tables and roofs.
So it was that, between this place and that, the people who intended to have a better time than their fathers had had were in some danger of being pampered.
The project for the Llanyglo Big Wheel was set a-going.
The promise that Howell Gruffydd had made behind his hand to John Pritchard had already begun to be redeemed. The Town Hall was not three months old before a Grand Bazaar was held there in aid of the Llanyglo Joint Chapels. On the first of the four days during which the Bazaar lasted the proceedings were opened by Tudor Williams, Esquire, M.P. On the second day they were opened by Edward Garden, Esquire. On the third Mrs. Howell Gruffydd opened them, in heliotrope satin; and on the fourth day Raymond Briggs, Esquire, who scented Chapel-building in the air, performed the ceremony. Raymond guessed that at least three new Chapels were certain presently to go up in the stead of those buildings of tin and boards and sickly blue paint that had so outraged Terry Armfield's Oxford Movement susceptibilities. As a matter of fact, five went up, and have debts on them to this day, in spite of the long series of Bazaars, two a season at least, at which the Saxon veins were opened.... For the money poured in. It rained into the square collecting-sheets that were placed at intervals along all the principal streets. It clattered into the slots of the wooden boxes that were rattled under the nose of the passer-by. It was minted in the Bran Tubs from which, paying your threepence, you drew forth a penny toy. It multiplied with every flower Miss Nancy Pritchard, with twenty other young women in Welsh national costume, sold. It made heavy the pockets of the stall-holders, who had never any change. It made little cylinders of silver and copper, three and four and five inches high, on the tables folk had to pass before they were admitted to the Concerts.... Believe it, the Chapel-goers of Llanyglo, seeing all that money to be had for little more than the asking, opened their eyes, and sat up, and took notice. Ifthiswas the Saxon invasion, why had they not welcomed it long ago? A few bales of hired bunting, a few pounds for evergreens and velvet banners with texts on them, a few paid assistants and a not unreasonable printers' bill, and—thesesplendid results!
As big as John Pritchard himself said, putting on his spectacles to see whether the astonishing total could really be true, "They must be very rit-ss, whatever!"
But the Bazaars had not this golden harvest to themselves. They found competition, which they a little resented. Secular amusements more than held their own. Gigantic castings had begun to arrive for the Big Wheel; under the booth-awnings of Gardd Street (recently christened) penny articles could be had for a penny; and a long row of automatic machines—Wheels of Fortune, little iron men who kicked footballs, Sibyls of Fate and Try-your-Grip machines—had sprung up along the railings of the sea-front. A few stage-gipsies with green parrakeets had made the town their summer home. There was a rifle-range on the farther sandhills—you could hear the "plunk" of the bullets on the iron targets. Near it was a travelling Merry-go-Round. Photographers had their "pitches" on the sands, with humourous canvas flats with oval holes in them, through which you put your face, so that you could have your portrait taken as "He Won't be Happy till He Gets It" or in the act of embracing a two-dimensional young woman, whichever was to your liking. And there were niggers. These danced and sang and played the banjo on a raised platform, dressed in wide turned-down schoolboy collars and pink striped trousers; the concentric rings of green chairs about them resembled the spread of a large symmetrical thistle plant; and outside this ring one or other of the troupe constantly moved, shaking a sort of jellybag under your nose (as the Chapel-goers had shaken the collecting-boxes) and blinking the pink lids in his burnt-cork face. A little farther on was the men's bathing-place. They had wooden machines now, into which youths entered four at a time—no more the trim and private striped tents of the Laceys and the Raymond Briggses. The ladies' bathing-place was farther on still—a boat stood off between the two lest the sexes should not keep their distance. And a hundred yards past that, beyond a great scabrous groyne of loose stone, clay-coloured at the shore end but slimy with green as it ran down to the sea, with red flags and notice-boards along the top and a moveable rope-barrier at its base where two men walked on sentry-go, they were at work upon the Pier.
By this time there was one question which, more than others, was beginning to disturb Llanyglo. This was the question of drink. In the old days, when the old brown horse who had walked as carefully as if he had had a spirit-level inside him had first brought the Gardens and their luggage so softly over the sandhills, there had been no inn nearer than Porth Neigr. Save on market-days, scarce a drop of alcohol passed a Llanyglo man's lips from year's end to year's end. If John Pritchard had preached occasionally against drunkenness, it had been conventionally only, with little more bearing on Llanyglo's own habits than if he had preached against cannibalism. Then Railhead had crawled across the land; Howell Gruffydd had found it necessary to warn the young against contamination; and with the building of the "Cambrian" had come Llanyglo's first licence.
But for long enough after that there had been no public-houses. The travelling army of labourers had had their own canteens, and even when a necessary beer-licence or two had been applied for at Sessions, the applications had been granted as it were behind the hand, and the affair had been got over as quickly as possible. No: Tommy Kerr's unconscious soft carolling ofGlan Meddwdod Mwynas he had crossed the sandhills on that torrid Sunday afternoon had held no real personal reproach for Llanyglo. For Porth Neigr, perhaps yes; for other places, yes; but not for Llanyglo.
But since then things had changed. Things had changed since they had been able to tell themselves that what went on in the "Cambrian" lounge was no concern of theirs. They had begun to change when Llanyglo had been no longer able to shut its eyes to the beer-drinking of the navvies and bricklayers and the brothers Kerr. Then for a time a convenient connection had been established between drunkenness and rough trousers tied about the knees with string. For cases such as these, the little Station at the extreme end of Gardd Street, with "Police" over the door and geraniums in the windows, had ample powers. The half-dozen constables must exercise discretion, that was all.
But it became a not uncommon sight to see a tipsy reveller singing himself unsteadily home on one side of the street, while the officer, watching him from the other side, stood questioning his discretion until the delinquent had passed out of sight. For a time Tommy Kerr, who had been twice run in, had served as a scapegoat, but that was little permanent help. It began to be seen that the real problem was, that if they would get folk with money to spend into the town, they must accept these folk, within reason, as they were, tipplers and teetotalers alike. For some reason or other, convivial drinking also seemed to come under the head of amusements. Blackpool provided liquor; Douglas was in an exceptional position for the provision of liquor; and more and more it appeared that Llanyglo must open the Bazaar doors with one hand and the doors of inns and taverns with the other.
Meanwhile, the "Lancashire Rose," on one side of Gardd Street, and the "Trafford" on the other, were quickly becoming notorious. These were both fully licenced houses, with Tap and Saloon entrances, and it was idle to pretend to think that all the scandal originated in the humbler compartments. Heady young men with full pockets, respectable fathers of families, and others whom they could by no means lock up as they could lock up Tommy Kerr, went into these places in broad daylight, sometimes coming out again obviously affected: and it was almost certain that not all their stomachs were so innocent and unaccustomed that a single glass of the poison had produced this result. Dolefully they wished that a sober Lancashire would come to Llanyglo; but—a Lancashire of some sort theymusthave. Why else were they doing all they could to win its favour? What else was their Big Wheel for, of which four mammoth standards of plate and lattice-girder had already risen thirty feet above the sandhills, where they were stepped and anchored into the oldest rocks of earth? Why else were they toiling day and night at their Pier, and at the building, section by section, of the sea-wall? Why else were they setting up gasometers beyond Pritchard's, and discussing a Sewage Scheme, and—most urgent of all—gnawing their fingers anxiously until some arrangement should be come to with Edward Garden's lawyers about that water far away up Delyn? The supply was becoming terrifyingly insufficient. For want of mere water the growth of the town might come to a stop as plants shrivel and fall again in an arid bed.... And, save to get Lancashire folk there, drunk or sober, why did they solemnly discuss this inanity of an amusement or that—Big Wheels and Switchbacks, Scenic Railways, Toboggan Slides, Panoramas, Fat Women, Dancing Halls, Floral Valleys and Concerts and Town Bands? There was no going back now. They had spent money that they would never, never see again if they persisted in being visionaries in business and irreconcilables on mere minor points of demeanour....
"They spend more when they are ... like that," said Howell Gruffydd one day to the Council assembled. He said it a little shamefacedly, his fingers fiddling with the green cloth of the Council-table.
Nobody spoke.
"I—saw—a—man," Howell continued, "a respectable man, with good clothes on his back and a new hat, all spoiled—it was a pity to see it—I saw him knock over row of bot-tles at John Parry's in Gardd Street, just for amusement, and he laugh, and say 'How mut-ss?' like it wass noth-thing, he was so-a drunk——"
"It is a pit-ty they make such a noise sometimes," somebody said, in a curiously aggrieved voice....
Evan Pugh, the landlord of the "Trafford," was of precisely the same opinion.
They escaped their dilemma by means of a noteworthy bit of government by minority. There was a small section of the Council, easily outvotable at ordinary times, which urged that, after all, things wereasthey were, that you must live and let live in this world, and that even good things could be pushed to extremes when they became no longer good. And, as these began to speak, one stern bazaar-promoter after another began to look at his watch and to mutter "Dear me—I had no idea it wass so late—indeed I not catss him if I not go now——"
They left.
This, or else a tactful absenteeism, became their custom whenever licencing matters came up to be discussed.
But cases of conscience are cases of conscience all the world over.
The sum that Edward Garden proposed as a fair price for that catchment-area up Delyn was two hundred thousand pounds—this for about two thousand acres; and on the day when his lawyers named the figure it was a wonder that the whole Council did not take in a body to their beds. Two hundred thousand pounds! They could not believe their ears. Nor could they believe their eyes either when they got it in writing, words first, and the figures in brackets afterwards. If they had written the single word "Fancy!" across that document and sent it straightway back to the lawyers they would no doubt have followed their first impulse; but somebody, less hard hit in the wind than the rest, managed to gasp out the proposal that they should sleep on it, and sleep on it they did. But the night did not alter it. In the morning it was still two hundred thousand pounds (£200,000).
News of the rapacity of the demand had leaked out almost immediately. Ordinarily, anybody who had stopped Howell Gruffydd in the street and had asked him a Council secret would have been met with the smiling facer he deserved, but this was extraordinary altogether. On the morning after they had slept on it, William Morgan saw Howell on the Promenade, came up to him, and, making no bones about it whatever, asked him whether it was true.
"Who told you, William Morgan?" Howell began ... but he really had not the heart to go on. He took off his hat, wiped the lining of it with his handkerchief, and the bright sunlight showed his brows lined with anxiety and sick fear, crumpled and embossed like one of his own pats of butter. He replaced his hat and blew his nose violently.
"Is it true?" demanded William Morgan again.
Howell became grim.—"It was an e-vil day for this town when that man came here," he said, forgetting how little town there had been when that old brown horse had first brought the Gardens softly jolting across the sandhills.
"Then it is true?" said William Morgan once again.
"It is true that a man sometimes asks one thing, and finiss by getting something very diff-ferent from what he ask," Howell replied, and walked abruptly away.
He crossed the Promenade and turned into Pontnewydd Street. There he stood, irresolutely plucking his lip and gazing into a stationer's window. Dafydd Dafis's voice in his ear caused him to start almost violently.
"H-what is this, Howell Gruffydd?" Dafydd demanded without preface, his eyes burningly and truculently on the Chairman's face. He wore his everyday corduroys, but his air was that of a monarch in banishment. Howell turned.
"Ah, how are you, Dafydd? Indeed you look well! They do say the smell of road-tar is a very healthy smell——"
"H-what is this we hear, Howell Gruffydd?" Dafydd repeated.
Howell tried to smile.—"Indeed, how can I answer a question like that, 'What is this we hear?'——"
"H-what is this about Delyn and the Water?"
There was a dangerous quickness in Dafydd's voice. Involuntarily Howell gave a little hiccough of emotion, which answered Dafydd sufficiently. His eyes were like the windows of a burning house.
"He sell us two thousand acres, of our own land, for how mut-ss?"
"Two—hundred—thou-sand—pounds," sobbed Howell.
"Of our own mountains—Delyn, that belong to us—he sell us Delyn, this Saxon?——"
"Indeed, indeed, Dafydd, do not excite yourself—it will have to go to arbi-tra-tion——"
"It will go to Hell, with his soul!" Dafydd replied fiercely. "He sell us Delyn—he sell us Delyn water—he sell us our own moun-tains!—It iss not for this we make you Chairman of the Council, Howell Gruffydd!"
Howell trembled, but put up a soothing hand.
"Aw-w-w, you wait and see, Dafydd Dafis! A prof-fit is a prof-fit, but this is wick-ed, and preposterous, and out of all reason! You wait and see! We have a meeting this morning, and p'rapss we show Mister Edward Garden he is not so clever as he think he is! He think he put his Saxon pistol to our heads like this? Indeed he make a great mistake! You wait and see, Dafydd. There iss a saying, 'He laughs best who laughs last'—you wait and see!" He patted Dafydd's shoulder and arm reassuringly, and perhaps felt heartened by his own words. "You wait and see!" he said once more, almost cheerily now. "We not pay it—never fear! I see you later——"
And he hurried away, leaving Dafydd standing on the pavement.
But the Council Meeting that morning settled nothing, and neither did the next Meeting nor the next after that. They wrote to Mr. Tudor Williams, but it almost looked as if Mr. Tudor Williams was taking a leaf out of their own book: if they had pressing private affairs when questions of ales and wines and spirits appeared on the agenda, so Mr. Tudor Williams pleaded a multiplicity of urgent engagements now that it was a question of water. The meeting adjourned, reassembled, adjourned again, and met again. Days passed, weeks passed. Legal opinions were taken, but no action. They fetched Mr. Tudor Williams down almost by force, and he proffered his good offices, but deprecated the serving of notices of compulsory arbitration. He advised an amicable settlement if one could possibly be arrived at. Llanyglo's anger died away, and blank despair began to take its place.
Then one day Edward Garden's lawyers hinted that in the event of an arrangement being come to within a given time they were in a position to enter into certain pledges on behalf of the Railway Companies. They hinted also that they were equally in a position to do the other thing. Surely, they said, Llanyglo saw that this was a matter of its life or its death; and surely, they added, it was plain that it would not really betheywho were paying! Nothing of the sort! Lancashire would pay. Yorkshire would pay. The Midlands would help to pay, and perhaps also the West and South. Whoever footed his bill at hotel or boarding-establishment would be contributing—they must see that he did contribute—his portion. What though visitors grumbled and talked about extortion? They forgot all about it the next day. What though residents groaned under the burden of the rates? They must submit to conditions, like everybody else. Llanyglo must pay, and pass it on.
In short, all the people who intended to have a better time than their fathers had had were to be shaven and shorn exactly as their fathers had been.
Llanyglo saw it, sighed, and acquiesced. There was nothing else to do.
And if Parry, of the "Lancashire Rose," or Pugh, of the "Trafford," reaped too rich a harvest by making people drunk, they must be assessed higher and higher still, and still higher, that was all.
This question of assessment had already raised another question, which at first seemed a small one, but swelled afterwards into ominous proportions. When the rumours of those two towering new hotels had first begun to circulate, it had been a gentle and stimulating mental exercise to place, in fancy, these palaces on this spot or that. Among other suggestions, the vacant plot of land adjacent to the Kerrs' Hafod Unos had been mentioned as a fitting site for one of them. Hereupon folk had begun to ask one another: What about the Kerrs' title?
Hitherto they had not thought of this. The four brothers had planted themselves there when all about had been a waste of sand, had since taken firm root, and there two of them still remained. But between such a squatting eight or nine years ago, and a sitting tight now that everything had gone up a hundredfold in value, was an immense difference. To this difference, moreover, was now added the evil repute in which Tommy Kerr lived. Ned, the alder-cutter, they would have accepted; they could live with Ned; but his brother, besides being in his unpleasant person a public nuisance, was beginning to appear a setter-back of the fingers of History's clock, a mongrel in their fine new manger, a thorn in the side of that lusty young Welsh Giantess whose figure was now one of the familiar sights on a thousand hoardings in the North. The invisible odour of stale beer-fumes in which he moved poisoned the air of the Promenade, and, though he certainly did his best to remedy this as far as the staleness was concerned (invariably beginning the day with pints and ending it with quarts), that did not improve matters in the long run.
As long as Tommy Kerr was merely locked up once in a while for drunkenness, he himself paid no heed to the whispers that had begun to gather about him. He could sleep as heavily and happily in a cell as in his own Hafod. Nor were his eyes at once opened even when an inspector appeared at the Hafod and began to ask questions about its sanitation—which, by the way, was of a low order. But his brother Ned began to "study," as he called it, and the result of his studying was that he said one day to Tommy, "They'll be wanting to be shut o' you and me, Tommy."
Tommy was in the act of wiping out a greasy frying-pan with a piece of old newspaper. He stopped suddenly. After a pause, "Eh?" he said.... "D'ye mean purr us out?"
"We're a bit i' t' road to my way o' thinking," Ned replied, sinking back into his arm-chair again and closing his eyes.
He had taken badly to heart the deaths of his brothers Harry and Sam; indeed he had not been the same man since. He frequently walked over to Sarn churchyard, sat on a flat tombstone near his brothers' grave, and smoked and spat; he was "studying" about a stone for them. Intermittently he talked about carving this with his own hands, but he delayed to do so. All the work he now did was to doze in a street-watch-man's hut, with a two-days-old newspaper on his knee and a firebasket in front of him set sideways on the wind. He was no longer the beer-drinker he had been. "Think ye?" said Tommy, after another silence. "But we donnot want to be purred out," he added resuming the wiping of the frying-pan, though more slowly.
And as it seemed to be a condition of their remaining in their Hafod unmolested that they should make a show of satisfying the sanitary inspector's demands, they overhauled their drainage system and gave it the minimum of attention it demanded.
Then one day an offer was made them, which was also an admission. It was an offer of compensation and of another dwelling elsewhere, and the admission apparently was that their title was a good one. Ned was for accepting the offer, and accepted it would probably have been but for a circumstance that Tommy discovered only in a roundabout way. He was congratulated one morning in the "Marine" Tap on having escaped ejectment. This was the first he had heard of ejectment. He asked a few questions, and soon after went out for a walk.
Ejectment! Apparently they had been considering his ejectment, had found it for some reason or other not to be feasible, and had substituted the offer of compensation....
Then, while this offer was still neither accepted nor rejected, something else came to Tommy Kerr's ears. This was that the sites, not of one, but of both the new hotels, were at last decided on. As a matter of fact, this choice was now almost a foregone conclusion. Next to Gardd Street, which ran parallel with the shore, Pontnewydd Street, in which lay the Hafod, was becoming the principal street of the town. It ran from the shore to Pritchard's Corner, was prolonged past that to the new station, and was the main thoroughfare for landaus and wagonettes off to the mountains. The hotels were to be built one on either side of the Hafod, not actually adjoining it, but not more than a couple of strides away.
Already in Tommy Kerr's suspicious mind the mischief was done. Howell Gruffydd, all blandishments to his face, had been making secret inquiries behind his back, had he? He had been talking about compensation and whispering with attorneys and such-like, had he? Very well. That settled it. Tommy would go when he was purred out, and not before. As for that snuffling Howell Gruffydd....
"So that's it, Mister Treacle-Tongue, is it?" he had muttered. "Reight. As long as we know where we are. I'm off out to buy a ha'porth o' thread——"
And with the ha'porth of thread he had sewn a large button on each of his pocket-flaps, and thenceforward meeting Howell Gruffydd in the street, had ostentatiously buttoned every pocket up before answering the prosperous grocer's smiling "Good morning."
They began to dig the foundations of those glittering hotels.
They did so, as it happened, in the early part of that same summer that saw Edward Garden's ingenious advertisements put into execution—the summer of the Eisteddfod and the Brass Band Contest. Llanyglo was packed with people. Two days before the Eisteddfod, there began to troop into the town from all parts bards and singers, poets and harpers and minstrels and the members of a chorus five hundred voices strong. They came in their everyday clothes, moustached like vikings, bearded and maned like lions, and instantly with their coming the Saxon took a back seat. Shopkeepers left their counters, publicans clapped down the half-filled glasses, and ran to their doors as this honoured singer or that famous bard passed their windows. They walked with stately slow walk and stately slow head-turnings, and happy was the Welshman who got a motion of the hand or a benign smile from them. The Gorsedd had been publicly proclaimed; the temporary dancing hall behind Gardd Street, big enough for a regiment to drill in, had been made ready; the insignia in the Town Hall were as jealously watched and guarded as are the Crown Jewels in the Tower of London; and he was a prudent visitor who had realised that for three whole days he was likely to get but negligent attention from those who at other times were his humble servitors. For, fleer as aliens would, this was the Awakening of the Red Dragon. Their reproach that he was but a pasteboard Dragon fell to the ground. The Dragon was what the Dragon was, and if his service was theatrical, theatricalism is ennobled when its boards are the soil itself and each of its actors an Antæus, strong because his foot is upon the ground that bred him. In England, behind his smile, the Welshman is an enigma of reserve; but see him at his Eisteddfod, with money waiting to be taken at his closed shop-doors....
With the ceremony of the Gorsedd on the opening day Dafydd Dafis's spellbound and uplifted hours began. At the sounding of the trumpets his head flew proudly up; at the Drawing of the Sword and the solemn question, "Is there Peace in the land?" his voice joined in the reply, like a thunder-clap, "There is Peace"—for that was before the year when, for three whole days, the blade remained naked and bright, while far over the seas brave Englishmen and brave Welshmen fell and died together. It was the single victory of Dafydd's life. On ordinary days he now drove a road-engine—Howell Gruffydd had got him the job under the Council; but he was a Lord of Song now. He had put his name down for the "penillion" contest; should he prove successful, not he himself only, but Llanyglo also, the place of his birth, would be forever famous. He sat behind the semicircle of white-robed and oak-crowned and druid-like figures that occupied the front part of the platform, looking down on the vast oblong of faces, Saxon and Welsh, that resembled a packed bed of London Pride; he was in the tenor wedge of the chorus; and as the five hundred voices pealed together you thought of the roof and of that singer whose voice had shivered vessels of glass.... Coming out of the hall again at the end of the first day, Dafydd was still in his trance. As he walked along the street past the "Trafford" Tap, Tommy Kerr, who sat within drinking, hailed him and called for a song, while one of his boon companions crying "Nay, we don't ask nobody to sing for nowt!" cast a couple of pennies on the ground; but Dafydd seemed neither to see nor to hear. At the break-up after the last chorus an august hand had been placed on Dafydd's shoulder, and an archangelic voice had spoken to him, saying that he, he the great one, had heard of Dafydd Dafis; and what, after that, did pot-house insults matter? He passed on, his eyes still flashing and his face shining like the Silver Chair itself....
Two days later he was proclaimed the victor in the "penillion" contest, and on the day after that, still drunk with song, he drove his road-engine again. And so passed Llanyglo's first Eisteddfod.
The Brass Band Contest five weeks later was a triumph in a different way. The impression now was one, not of unity, but of the keen spirit of faction. The "Besses o' th' Barn" were at the crest of their fame, but the "Black Dike" ran them close, and not far behind came "Wyke Temperance" and "Meltham Mills"; and had these been, not Bands, but football teams, local rivalry could not have run higher. True, underneath the sporting interest lay the musical. This performer's "lipping" and the "triple-tonguing" of the other were matters of endless debate among the expert; nuances of ensemble and attack were hotly argued in strong Lancashire and Yorkshire accents; and the devotees were ready to fight with their fists over the fame of the conductors of their fancy. But, without unity, the Contest proved, for all save the Brass-band-maniacs, a little wearisome. The ear began to revolt against the reiterated "test-piece," and one pitied the judge hidden away in his carefully guarded cubicle. Fewer Welsh attended the Contest than had English the Eisteddfod, and a day was judged sufficient for it. After a sensational replay with the "Besses," "Black Dike" took pride of place, with "Meltham Mills" third. The strains ofZampaandThe Bronze Horsesounded once more only, when they massed the Bands in the evening in the Floral Valley; and (the Council having sanctioned a charge of sixpence as the fee for entrance) the sum of £115 was taken at the temporary barriers. So passed the Brass Band Contest also.
By the June of that year the understructure of the Pier was finished, and the rest was advancing with the speed of paper-hanging. The contractors were under time-penalties to be ready for the formal opening on the forthcoming August Bank Holiday. All through the night the sounds of the planking could be heard, and pavilion-parts, lettered and numbered and ready gilded and painted, were rushed along in haste. At the same time the Big Wheel began to resemble the largest circle of the Floral Valley set up on end; it was wonderful to stand beneath it and to gaze up through the intricacy of tie and strut and lattice at the sky. Immense hoardings filled a large part of Pontnewydd Street; by and by they would be taken down again, and the façades of those magnificent new hotels would appear; but Llanyglo would scarcely turn its head to look at them. They were getting used to this now. Besides, they had plenty else to do. The town was so full that they were turning away money into its nearest place of overflow—Porth Neigr.
Then, in the beginning of August, a hundred portents were fulfilled. There began to run into the station train after train, with three or four faces at each window. Doors opened almost before the engines had begun to slow down, and (as if the trains had been veins and somebody had suddenly slit them up, spilling out the life within) the platforms were suddenly black and overrun with people. They carried bags, baskets, hampers, parcels, stools, pillows, babies. Inside the carriages they left crumpled newspapers, trodden sandwiches, bottles, nuts, corks, the heads and tails of shrimps. Their tickets had been taken miles back—no collecting-staff could have coped for a moment with the emptying of those wheeled and windowed veins of impoverished blood. Parents carrying babies stood prudently aside from that first mad rush to the entrance. Many of them had been up since half-past four that morning; they had spent seven hours in the train, twelve and thirteen and fourteen in a carriage, standing, sitting on one another's knees, lying on the rows of feet; and now they made straight for air. Certain trains had been told off for week-end travellers; others were labelled "Special" or "Day Excursion Only." Those who had come by these would have seven hours in Llanyglo, and at the end of that time they would squeeze into the trains again for seven, eight, ten hours more—for on the return journey they must attend the convenience of every other wheel on the line, and a stand of an hour or so at two o'clock in the morning would be but an incident. During that short space in which they would breathe the wonderful Llanyglo air they would eat the meals they had brought with them, or else besiege the inns and eating-houses and tea-rooms and confectioners'-shops. They were the first trippers—spinning operatives, weavers, twisters, warp-dressers, mechanics, asbestos-hands, stokers, clerks, shopkeepers, the grey and unnumbered multitude itself. Some would enjoy themselves, some would vow they enjoyed themselves, and some would declare it "a toil of a pleasure," and would drag about on hot and swollen and weary feet, repeating at intervals, "Niver again—niver as long as I live!" And the lagging children's arms would be almost wrenched off at the shoulders, and some would fall asleep with the sticky paint of the penny toys dyeing their hands, and the platforms would begin to fill up again three hours before the time of departure of the train, for the sake of the chances of corner seats, or indeed of seats at all, and also because, on that horrible arduous day, the station itself would seem almost like a home....
Yes, as the Laceys and Briggses had followed Edward Garden, and those who could not (but would) afford it had followed the Briggses and Laceys, and theUtopiareaders these, and the fortnight and ten-days' people these, and all sorts and conditions of people for varying lengths of time these again, so now the unnumbered rest had come.... "The first tripper, and I'm off," the Briggses and the Laceys had said; and which of us is not a Briggs or a Lacey in this? Which of us can say without misgiving that he would have remained in Llanyglo? Could we have endured the sight of our kind in this bulk—or could we have endured to think, either, that if they were not there for that dreadful day they would still be elsewhere? Can we, in the unshared solitude of our hearts, bear to think of this rank and damp and steaming human undergrowth at all? Would the Squire, seeing these, still have thought as much of his books on Church Plate and Brasses, still have defended the integrity of something not for all? Would Minetta Garden have looked on them with a sort of incurious interest as so many "types"? Or would we all, Minetta, the Squire, you, I, have felt meanly and skulkingly relieved when the last tail-light had died away in the night again?
There is neither "Yes" nor "No" to be answered. I may rant of brotherhood and humanity, but you—you may remember that cart jolting without noise over the sandhills, the blue and primrose petals of those butterflies, the amethyst-tufts of wild thyme, the milkwort, the harebells, and then, of a sudden, that V with the sea beyond. I, choosing to shoulder all the responsibility of a world in the making of which I was not consulted, may moisten that human peat with my tears, but you—you, passionate for beauty's sake, may mourn a loveliness deflowered and a simplicity destroyed. It is no virtue in me, no harshness in you. We both are what we are and do what we can. Llanyglo also was what it had become and did what it could. And Llanyglo, after all, had a solace that we lack. It was an inferior one, but better than nothing. Their beach might be littered, their streets made pitiful; their lodging-house keepers might put every loose jug or china dog or ornament away, and replace them again only after these had gone; strange accents might grate upon their ears, different and disliked minds frame the thoughts those accents expressed; yet balm remained. There was not a tripper, no, not the poorest of them, but spent his three, four, or five shillings in the town.
Drub-drub—drub-drub-drub—drub-drub——
It was the sound of heels on the Pier. From one end of it to the other they walked, past the recesses and lamp-standards and the bright kiosks where tobacco and confectionery and walking-sticks and picture-postcards and souvenirs were sold, and then they turned and walked back. After a time the drub-drubbing became curiously hypnotising. At moments it conformed almost to a regular rhythm; then it broke up again into mere confusion, out of which another metrical beat would rise for a second or so and then become lost again. For long spaces the ear would become accustomed and cease to hear it, and would take in instead the lighter registers of tittering, soft laughter, the striking of matches and an occasional scuffle and call; but the groundwork of sound would break through again, like a muffled drum tapped by many performers at once, monotonous, reverberating, dead——
Drub-drub-drub—drub-drub—drub-drub——
It was half-past eight of a July night. Crowded as the Pier was, it would become still more so when the Concert Hall just within the turnstiles, and the Pavilion at the pier-head, turned out their audiences again. There would hardly be space to move them. The Promenade was a sweep of brilliants; Gardd Street lay unseen behind it under a golden haze; behind that again the lighted rosette of the Big Wheel turned slowly high in the sky; and the great hotels of the front were squared and mascled with window-lights. All this dance of gold and silver made an already blue evening intensely blue, and the Pier was so long that, even with quick walking, several minutes passed between your losing the rattle of hand-clapping outside the Concert Hall at one end of it, and your picking up the strains of the Pavilion orchestra at the other.
Drub-drub-drub—drub-drub-drub—drub-drub——
There was hardly a bed to be had in Llanyglo. Visitors who had rashly chosen to take their chance commonly passed their first night in the waiting-rooms of the railway station. Servant-girls lay in their clothes under kitchen tables, while their own garrets were let for half a sovereign a night. Dozens slept on sofas, chairs, hearthrugs, billiard-tables, on the Promenade benches, under the tarpaulins of wagonettes and chars-à-bancs, or curled up in the boats on the shore. They Boxed-and-coxed it as they could, and the police did not trouble to shake the slumberers on whom they turned their bull's-eyes in the nooks and arbours of the Floral Valley.
Drub-drub-drub—drub—drub——
And who were they now, they whose heels wore down the Pier timbers and made the brain drowsy with their ceaseless tramp?
It was a curious and a rather arresting change. To all appearances, Llanyglo had now got a "better class of visitor" than it had had since the Briggses and Laceys had shaken the dust of the place from their feet. Even in this puzzle of gold and silver light and deep mysterious blue, it could be seen that there was not much Holiday Club money there. In another fortnight or so those coffers would burst over the town, drenching it with gold; but in the meantime who were these others, and what were they doing at Llanyglo?
Let us ask the author of theSixpenny Guide.
"When did you arrive? Only last night? And you're stopping at the 'Majestic'? Well, you've somebody there who can tell you more about it than I can—Big Annie the head-chambermaid on the first floor. There are a good many things about Llanyglo now that I've had to keep out of myGuide, you see. But I'll tell you what I can.
"And I don't want to give you any false impression. Don't forget that scores and hundreds of families come here and bathe, and picnic, and dance, and go for drives, and enjoy themselves, and go away again without a notion that everybody here isn't exactly like themselves. And there's no harm in the Wakes people either. The worst you can say of them is that now and then one of them gets violently or torpidly drunk, as the case may be, and that all of them make a most hideous and infernal noise. So don't think I'm talking disproportionately, and that this is the only place of its kind I was ever in.
"But I do mean this: that somehow or other we've now acquired a very peculiar kind of notoriety. You can deny it, disprove it, show that it isn't there at all, and—there it remains all the time. For one thing, you'll see if you look round that the place is very much less northern in character than it was, and as it happens that's very significant. For it might conceivably happen that a northerner—or a southerner, or anybody else—might have his reasons for avoiding a place that was full of other northerners, many of whom might know him (they have an expression in the North for the kind of thing I mean; they call it 'making mucky doorstones'). So you'll find lots and lots of Londoners here now, and midlanders, and easterners and westerners. They come here, where nobody's ever seen them before and will never see them again perhaps, for much the same reason that some Englishmen are said to go to Paris.
"I don't want to make them out more in number than they are. Spread out over the whole country they'd only be a fractional percentage, and you'd never notice them; but when they're brought together here they're quite enough to give the place a character. They aren't the open and reckless kind. Furtiveness—complete disappearance if possible—is the whole point. They're the men who arrange for somebody to post their letters home from the place they're supposed to be really at, and the women who, as the Bible says, eat and wipe their lips and say they haven't eaten. They want to dodge, not only everybody else, but themselves also, something they're perhaps afraid of in themselves, for a fortnight, three weeks, a month. You see, they've persuaded themselves (and Llanyglo's done too well out of them to undeceive them) that things done here somehow 'don't count.' If you want to do something you'd never dare to do in a place where you were known, you come to Llanyglo to do it. If you can imagine the oasis in the desert with exactly the contrary meaning—that's us. We're an asylum for those who've lost their moral memories.
"And it isn't that wedding-rings are juggled off and on, and false names entered in hotel registers, nor anything of that kind. That goes on more or less everywhere, and we haven't become notorious merely for that. And as usual, it's easier to say what it isn't than what it is. It isn't the Trwyn, for example, though that does twitter so with kisses from morning till night that you'd think it was the grasshoppers. And it isn't the almost open displays you see at certain hours wherever you go. It isn't any one fact, not even the worst. It's a faint attar of someabandonment, some bottomlessness, that you can't name. It may be my imagination, but I've fancied I've actually smelt it with my nostrils, coming into it from a mile out of the town. They relinquish even appearances. Most of us have the grace to cover up our sins with a decent and saving hypocrisy, but these know and understand one another so horribly well. They seem to find a comfort that they're all in the same boat. As they say themselves, 'Heaven for climate but Hell for company.' Give them your name on your visiting-card and they'll ask you by and by what yourrealname is. Until then, neither your name nor anything else about you is their business. They haven't any business. For a week, or a fortnight, or a month, they've turned their backs on that tremendous common business that keeps the world going. It's the blind eye, and Llanyglo provides the blinkers....
"But go and talk to Big Annie. She's really a rather remarkable woman. At stated hours she sits on point duty on the landing of her floor of eighty bedrooms, just where everybody's got to pass her, and if you look like making—er—a mistake (and your hotel's quite an easy place to get lost in) she sets you right without a quiver of her face. Yes, she's rather an alarming person. There's a swiftness about her way of summing up people from a single glance at their faces. Oh, you don't take Annie in with a wedding-ring and a 'darling' or so—especially when the lady asks the darling whether he takes sugar in his early morning cup of tea....
"Yes, you go and see Annie."
Drub-drub—drub-drub-drub——
After a time that stupor of the ear became a stupor of the eye also. Even when a match glowed before a face for a moment, the stage-like lighting gave you no physiognomical information. The lamps shone on the crowns of the passing hats, but the faces beneath them were lost; all cats were grey. Any one of them might have been a giggling flapper with her eyes still sealed to Life, or one of those others mentioned by the too-curious author of theGuide, who would be dead to sight and thought for a space that didn't count. Light frocks and darker hues, bare heads and plaits and shawls and hooded dominoes, shop-girl and high-school girl, caps and straws and panamas, pipes and cigarettes, youths thoughtless and youths predatory—you paid your threepence at the turnstiles and watched them pass and repass. Drub-drub-drub.... And if you sat long enough, changes began to be perceptible. The flappers who were evidently high-school girls began to be fewer, and others took their places—for most of the shops of Llanyglo closed at nine or half-past, and the released waitresses and assistants who had been on their feet all day were still not too weary to add to the drub-drubbing. It was difficult to say in what particular these were distinguishable. It was not their dress—the universal attainment of a certain standard of dressing is one of our modern miracles. You would not have had it from their own lips—you would have been tactless in the extreme not to have assumed that they also were visitors (as a matter of fact, they would calmly make appointments for four o'clock of the next day, knowing perfectly well that at that hour they would be giving change in a cash-desk or hurrying hither and thither with piles of bread and butter and trays awash with spilt tea). Perhaps it was the young men they greeted and their way of greeting them. They didn't come out for these last hours of the day to gossip with those to whom they had called "Sign!" all the afternoon, their own foremen, companions, or the tradesmen of the shop opposite.
Drub-drub—drub-drub——
There passed through the Season Ticket turnstile two young men. Both wore dark suits and conventional collars and ties (as if they, at any rate, had no need to don their coloured jackets and flannel trousers while they could), and the attendant at the turnstile had touched his cap as they had passed. One of them, the taller of the two, wore his straw hat halo-wise at the back of his head, filled his pipe as he walked, and looked cheerfully and unobservingly about him; the other's straw was well down, and the eyes beneath its brim sought somebody or something, and would apparently be satisfied with nothing less. The first was Percy Briggs, and everybody in Llanyglo knew Percy Briggs—Percy Briggs, who strolled casually into Hotel Cosies towards midday, nodded to the more favoured ones, said to the barmaid "So and So been in yet?" and, getting a bright "No, Mr. Briggs, not yet" for an answer, lounged out again without having had a drink—a sufficient gage of privilege and familiarity with the place. The other was John Willie Garden, who knew Llanyglo, knew which faces had been there last year and the year before, and was now looking for a face he had seen yesterday evening for one moment only and had then lost again.
The Pier was an old, old story to him now. Between seasons, on winter nights, the drub-drub of a few months before seemed sometimes still faintly to echo in his ears—this when the grey skies came, and in the hotels a few rooms only were kept open for unprofitable commercial travellers, and the Promenade was empty, and the Pleasure Packet Service laid up, and a walk to the end of the Pier and back seemed a long way to feet that had covered the distance twenty times on a summer's evening, and the colourless sea seemed to give to the red and white blink of the Trwyn Light a sudden and nearer significance. He knew every hour of Llanyglo's day—the hours of departure of the pleasure-boats to Rhyl and Llandudno and round Anglesey, the bathing-hours in the morning, the high-school parade at midday, the second bathing relay in the afternoon, the tea-hour, the walk of parents and children to see the boats come in again in the early evening, and then, as the evening wore on, the successive appearances and droppings out of this kind or that, the emptying of the Pavilions, the inflow of the shop-girls and waitresses, the rush for the public-houses half an hour before the Pier lights went out, the thinning numbers who beat the Promenade, the parties of the Alsatians who sat up in one another's hotels long after every public drinking-place had been closed. He had nothing further to learn about it all, and it bored him. Only his search for that girl had brought him on the Pier to-night.
He had been almost certain he knew her, but where he had seen her face before he could not for the life of him remember. Perhaps he did not know her after all; indeed, when he came to think of it, no memory of a voice seemed to go with the face, so that the probability was that if he had seen her before he had never spoken to her. She had been standing, in that blue twilight, clear of the throng, under the single crimson pier-head light, looking out over the water that seemed still to reflect a light that had faded from the sky, and for a moment John Willie had wondered what she was looking at. The next moment he had seen—and so, confound it, had twenty others. A yellow spot, like a riding-light, had risen out of the sea; almost as quickly as the second-hand of a watch moves, it had become a tip; and then the lookers-in at the glass sides of the Pavilion had run to see the rising of the bloated, refraction-magnified, burning yellow horn. In that little running of people he had lost her. Twice, thrice he had walked the whole length of the Pier, but without seeing her again. All of her that he could now remember was the carriage of her head and her plain black dress, and he knew that dress, in this extraordinary raising of the standard of dressing which implies the possession by almost everybody of two dresses at least, was an uncertain guide.
Another rattle of hand-clapping broke out as Percy Briggs and John Willie passed the turnstiles. "Any good looking in there?" Percy asked, nodding towards the Concert Hall, but John Willie made no reply. He was as cross as a bear with a sore head. Twice already he had rounded on Percy, who had proposed drinks at this place or that, and had snapped "You go if you want—I'm not keeping you;" but Percy had replied good-naturedly, "Oh, all right, keep your hair on."
The sounds of two more pairs of heels were added to the drub-drubbing on the planks of the Pier.
It seemed idle to seek, but John Willie stood looking in at the glass sides of the Pavilion at the pier-head, searching the bright and crowded interior. His mind was as obstinately set as that of a mule. It seemed to him idiotic that all those rows and rows of people should clap the inanities of the young man in knee-breeched evening-dress who strutted and made painted eyes over the top of a flattened opera-hat, or encore Miss Sal Volatile, all spidery black silk stockings below and cocksfeather boa and enormous black halfmoon hat above. John Willie turned away to the low-burning crimson pier-light. He stood there for some moments, and then began to stride back the length of the Pier again.
"Chucking it?" said Percy, half sympathetic, half "getting at" John Willie.
"Come on to the Kursaal," John Willie grunted.
The Kursaal lay behind the two frontages of Gardd and Pontnewydd Streets, and it could be reached from either thoroughfare. From Gardd Street, up another short street, the great lighted semicircle of what was then its Main Entrance could be seen; and if the minor entrance from Pontnewydd Street was at that time less resplendent, that was because the Kerrs' Hafod stood in the way of opening it up. With its grounds and theatre and vast dancing-hall, the Kursaal covered getting on for an eighth of a square mile; but a third or more of that was still in progress of being laid out and planted—once more by Philip Lacey.
Crossing the Promenade to the less crowded pavement beyond, John Willie and Percy strode the half-mile to the Kursaal. There was a queue about the turnstiles, but John Willie made a sign to an attendant, who flung up the Exit Only barrier. They passed under trees with many-coloured electric lights among the branches, and the slowly turning Big Wheel, which made a quarter-arch of lights over the tower of the Central Hall, dipped behind it again as they reached the steps that led to the vestibule.
For size alone, apart from any other consideration, the dancing-hall of the Llanyglo Kursaal is one of the wonders of the North. It cost a hundred thousand pounds to build, and since it can dance a thousand couples, to seek anybody there without going up into the balconies is like looking for a needle in a bottle of hay. The band was not playing at the moment when Percy and John Willie entered; but before they had reached the top of an empty half-lighted series of staircases the distant strains of a Barn Dance had broken out. Then, with the pushing at a door, it burst loudly upon them. John Willie strode down the shallow gallery steps, made for a front seat whence he could see the whole length of the vast oblong below, spread out his elbows and set his chin on his wrists, and, once more muttering "You go and get your drink if you want," began to search the hall with gloomy blue eyes, very much as a boy flashes a bit of looking-glass hither and thither in the sun.
Now when the Wakes people come to Llanyglo, and the pleasant family parties yield place a little, and drive in the mountains more frequently, and leave the Pier and Promenade a little earlier, and gather more often at one another's hotels—even then that dancing-hall is so vast that twenty different elements can be accommodated there without mixing or encroachment. But that series of precipitations had not yet taken place. That night all was homogeneous. Perhaps here and there other contacts had sparsely "crossed," as it were, that fresh blooming, as the white hawthorn takes on faintly the hue of the pink in the spring, but that was probably rare. John Willie, had he had eyes for it, looked down upon a wonderful sight. The hall was a creamy gold, with bow after bow along its balcony tiers; without its other innumerable clusters of lights, the eight arc-lamps in its high roof would have lighted it no better than a railway station is lighted; and the mirrors on the walls were hardly more polished than its satiny floor. A fully appointed stage half-way down one of the sides held an orchestra of thirty performers; walking across that wonderfully swung floor you felt something almost alive under your feet; and four thousand feet moved upon it that night.
It was beautiful. The band was playing, slowly, as is the dancing-fashion of the North, that Barn Dance; and almost every girl was in white. The whites were the whites of flowers—the greenish white of guelder-roses, the yellow white of elder or of meadow-sweet, the pinkish white of the faintest dog-rose, the dead white of narcissi, but little that was not white. And because of all that soft whiteness, faces caught by the sun were browner, and hair that the wind had blown through all day glossier, and eyes brighter, and perhaps blushes quicker and more readily seen. And to the whole bright spectacle was added the impressiveness of unfaltering rhythm and simultaneousness of movement. The Colour on the Horse Guards' Parade is not honoured with greater precision of physical movement than these disciplined feet, these turning bodies; the pulsing floor itself answered to the delicate dip of the conductor's stick. For two bars ... but look at them as they pour towards you down the left side of the room. Every face is towards you, forty abreast, and forty following those, and more forties, columns and squadrons of them, coming forward as grain comes down a channel, as graded fruit pours down a shoot. You do not see where they come from—their turn is far away under the pillars there; you do not see where they go to—they pass away out of sight again beneath you. They do not seem the same over and over again, but all the youths and maidens of the world, coming on and on, and new, always new.... Then you look to the right, and instantly your eyes are sensible of a darker ensemble. That is because you see, not faces now, but the backs of heads; not gaily striped shirts and bright ties, but plain shoulders only. And they pass away as they came, all the youths and maidens of the world with their backs to you. Not one turns for a look at you, not one nods you farewell. It is like your own youth leaving you.... And then magically all alters. Two more bars and, as if some strange and all-potent and instantaneously acting element had been dropped into the setting and returning human fluid, of a sudden it all breaks up. It effervesces. Every couple is seen to be waltzing. Two by two they turn, and your youth is no longer coming to you nor departing from you, but stops and plays. It stops and plays—for two bars—and lo, the other again. Once more they troop towards you with their faces seen, once more troop away with faces averted. The illusion becomes a spell. Coming, going, all different, all the same, parallel legions with faces to the future and faces to the grave—it is a little like Llanyglo itself. Suddenly you find yourself drawn a little closer to John Willie Garden. You do not want to look down from a balcony on all the young manhood and young womanhood of the world. One, one only, will suffice you, and with her you will come brightly down, all eyes and rosiness and laughter, and with her go in a soberer livery away again.... But luckier you than John Willie if you find that one. His eyes, practised as they were in scanning the Kursaal throng, did not see her. Thecodacame; the vast oblong well lighted up for a moment as a poplar lights up when the wind blows upon it—it was the slightly wider swing of skirts seen from above as the dance quickened to its finale; and then, as if something else potent and inimical had been dropped into the solution, there was a break for the sides, and the shining floor was seen again.
"Damn!" muttered John Willie Garden.
Percy, relishing the spectacle of John Willie on the hunt, was in no hurry. "The arbours?" he suggested laconically as John Willie rose; but again John Willie did not reply. For one thing, it was a little difficult to see into those dark nooks among Philip Lacey's barrows and planks and new larches and heaps of upturned earth; for another, he had an assurance that she he sought would not be there.
"Come on," he grunted.
"Ah!" said Percy, with an exaggerated shake of himself. "Has the moment at last arrived when we quaff?"
But already John Willie had stridden on ahead.
They took a known short cut through dark and obstructed windings, and presently reached the side-door of the adjoining hotel. It had certain rooms where ladies unaccompanied might get a drink, but into these they barely glanced. Percy grinned. Should John Willie find the object of his search in one of the other rooms, then there was reasonable hope of a row. He had never before seen John Willie so persistently asking for trouble.
The door at which they paused showed a room crowded, bright, and full of a lawn of tobacco-smoke. It was not a large room, but it must have held twenty men and as many women, and you could have seen their like on any summer Sunday at Tagg's Island, or any day in Regent Street, or on Brighton Front. They sat in chairs of saddlebag or leather, and the fingers of the men were poised over the large cigar-boxes the waiters held before them, or else made little circular gestures about the circumference of the little round tables, as much as to say "Same again" or "Mine." Little but champagne, liqueurs, or brandies-and-soda seemed to be to their taste, and John Pritchard might indeed have thought them "very ritss whatever"; gold seemed to come from them at a touch, notes at little more. Just within the door a very brown man sat with a plump little lady about whose short fingers gems seemed to have candied, as sugar candies about a string; and next to them another man admired as much of his companion's shoes as could be seen for the champagne cooler on the floor. There was not much noise. There was a good deal of whispering about horses.
A ring was widened for the new-comers about one of the larger tables—"Arthur!" Percy called as he passed one of the waiters. "Bag o' beer, and Mr. P. Briggs's compliments to Miss Price and will she please come at once." They settled down.
This was Percy's present humour—to drink pints of beer from a silver tankard that resembled a tun among the gem-like liqueur-glasses, and to make love to Miss Price, the fat and creasy and unapproachable hotel-manageress. Perhaps he intended to convey that few other new sensations remained to him at the end of his three-and-twenty hard-lived years. Sometimes John Willie laughed at this posture of his friend's, but to-night he thought it merely stupid and idiotic. He had come here because he had thought he might as well be having a drink as fruitlessly searching; now he thought he might as well be searching as having a drink he didn't want. Percy was ordering the drinks now—"Vermouth, Val? Cissie, your's is avocat, I know. Now, Johannes Guglielmus, what will you imbibe?" Presently John Willie sat glowering at a whiskey-and-soda. The girl on his left, whom Percy had addressed as Cissie, made an arch attempt to talk to him, and then gave up the laborious task and turned her back. Miss Price, the manageress, appeared, and Percy began his stupid and facetious love-making. John Willie wondered whether he had searched the Dancing-Hall thoroughly after all.
The table grew noisy, and there were appreciative grins from other tables; Percy was trying to draw that disgustingly fat manageress on to his knee. And, with the pace thus set by Percy, the whole room woke up. The waiters began to move about more quickly and to call for assistance, and there was applause as somebody opened the lid of the piano....
John Willie sat before his untouched whiskey-and-soda. He was once more wondering whether it would be worth while to return to the Dancing-Hall, or whether she might not by this time be on the Pier. And again, and ever again, he wondered when and where he had seen her before....
Again Percy's silly joyous voice broke in. He was expostulating with Miss Price.
"Look, Cissie's sitting on Val's——"
"Let be, Mr. Briggs—indeed I will not be pulled about like that!—--"
"Then sit on Mr. Garden's—cheer him up—he's looking for Gertie, the Double-Blank from Blackburn, and can't find her——"
"There, now, Mr. Briggs!—Now I shall have to go and get a needle and thread!—--"
Somebody interposed.—"Here, chuck it, Percy; somebody might come in.... Hallo, John Willie, you off?"
For John Willie had pushed back his chair. He reached for his hat. "Leave us a lock of your hair for my mourning-brooch," Percy's muffled voice came after him, but he was off.
Perhaps she would be at the Wheel....
But she was not at that immense tyre slung with upholstered coaches, nor yet to be seen at the side-shows round about. He left the Kursaal, and joined the dense throng that made a double stream under the Promenade lamps. He told himself he was a fool. She might have left Llanyglo within a few hours of his having seen her—might be back in any of the towns of England or Scotland or Wales by this time. But he did not cease to seek. He reached the Pier again. Drub-drub-drub-drub-drub-drub-drub. It was now solid with flesh, and indeed he had not walked half its length when the closing-bell clanged. The glow over the pier-head Pavilion went suddenly out, and so, a few moments later, did a hundred yards of the lamps on either side. He heard the usual cries of mock-terror. It was no good going up there now....
Nor would she be in the Floral Valley. In fact, he had better give it up. He had better clear out of Llanyglo for a bit. He was sick of this dusty dance of pleasure, and the Wakes crowds would be here in a few days.... He would go and fish up Delyn. The Water Scheme hadn't spoiled the lake; they had only built a quite small dam with locks at one end, and the grid of service-reservoirs was lower down. Sharpe had left the hut. He would go there for a few days and have his bread and mutton and cheese sent up from the inn in the valley below. He would tell Minetta to get somebody to stay with her, and would go in the morning....
He was passing the closed fancy-shop at the corner of Gardd Street when he came to this resolution; and suddenly he stopped dead. Minetta!... What was it that the thought of his sister, coming at this moment, reminded him of? It was odd, but it had certainly reminded him of something that had seemed to come near him only to escape him again immediately. Minetta!... He saw Minetta daily. There was nothing new about Minetta. She looked after the house, and if he wasn't going to be in for meals he mentioned the fact, or sometimes didn't, and beyond that, to tell the truth, he didn't very often think of Minetta. He didn't suppose she would ever marry—wasn't that kind. He remembered that years ago that genial idiot Percy Briggs had fancied himself "sweet" on her, but that sketching of hers——
Ah!
John Willie, who had been still standing at the corner, moved slowly forward again. He had got it.
Heknewhe'd been right! It was a little boast of his that he remembered faces rather well, and the thing that had perplexed him for two days was now clear. In a flash he saw in his mind the Llanyglo of the days of the Briggses and Laceys. He saw a bright diminutive picture of deck-chairs and bathing-tents on the shore, and June Lacey and Wiggie having their fortunes told. And he saw a gipsy child, with a head held as if it had borne an invisible pitcher, and then a foot cut by a piece of glass, and himself and Percy packed off home in disgrace, and Percy's mother washing the gashed foot with water from a picnic-basket and tying it up with a handkerchief. Then Minetta had come up, and had said that she was going to make a sketch of the child....
Ah! It wasshewho had stood under the red pier-light, watching that cadmium horn of the moon that lifted itself out of the sea!