A woman named Madlen, who lived in Penlan—the crumbling mud walls of which are in a nook of the narrow lane that rises from the valley of Bern—was concerned about the future state of her son Joseph. Men who judged themselves worthy to counsel her gave her such counsels as these: "Blower bellows for the smith," "Cobblar clox," "Booboo for crows."
Madlen flattered her counselors, though none spoke that which was pleasing unto her.
"Cobblar clox, ach y fy," she cried to herself. "Wan is the lad bach with decline. And unbecoming to his Nuncle Essec that he follows low tasks."
Moreover, people, look you at John Lewis. Study his marble gravestone in the burial ground of Capel Sion: "Hisname is John Newton-Lewis; Paris House, London, his address. From his big shop in Putney, Home they brought him by railway." Genteel are shops for boys who are consumptive. Always dry are their coats and feet, and they have white cuffs on their wrists and chains on their waistcoats. Not blight nor disease nor frost can ruin their sellings. And every minute their fingers grabble in the purses of nobles.
So Madlen thought, and having acted in accordance with her design, she took her son to the other side of Avon Bern, that is to Capel Mount Moriah, over which Essec her husband's brother lorded; and him she addressed decorously, as one does address a ruler of the capel.
"Your help I seek," she said.
"Poor is the reward of the Big Preacher's son in this part," Essec announced. "A lot of atheists they are."
"Not pleading I have not the rent am I," said Madlen. "How if I prenticeJoseph to a shop draper. Has he any odds?"
"Proper that you seek," replied Essec. "Seekers we all are. Sit you. No room there is for Joseph now I am selling Penlan."
"Like that is the plan of your head?" Madlen murmured, concealing her dread.
"Seven of pounds of rent is small. Sell at eighty I must."
"Wait for Joseph to prosper. Buy then he will. Buy for your mam you will, Joseph?"
"Sorry I cannot change my think," Essec declared.
"Hard is my lot; no male have I to ease my burden."
"A weighty responsibility my brother put on me," said Essec. "'Dying with old decline I am,' the brother mouthed. 'Fruitful is the soil. Watch Madlen keeps her fruitful.' But I am generous. Eight shall be the rent. Are you not the wife of my flesh?"
After she had wiped away her tears, "Be kind," said Madlen, "and wisdom it to Joseph."
"The last evening in the seiet I commanded the congregation to give the Big Man's photograph a larger hire," said Essec. "A few of my proverbs I will now spout." He spat his spittle and bundling his beard blew the residue of his nose therein; and he chanted: "Remember Essec Pugh, whose right foot is tied into a club knot. Here's the club to kick sinners as my perished brother tried to kick the Bad Satan from the inside of his female Madlen with his club of his baston. Some preachers search over the Word. Some preachers search in the Word. But search under the Word does preacher Capel Moriah. What's the light I find? A stutterer was Moses. As the middle of a butter cask were the knees of Paul. A splotch like a red cabbage leaf was on the cheek of Solomon. By the signs shall the saints be known. 'Preacher Club Foot,come forward to tell about Moriah,' the Big Man will say. Mean scamps, remember Essec Pugh, for I shall remember you the Day of Rising."
It came to be that on a morning in the last month of his thirteenth year Joseph was bidden to stand at the side of the cow which Madlen was milking and to give an ear to these commandments: "The serpent is in the bottom of the glass. The hand on the tavern window is the hand of Satan. On the Sabbath eve get one penny for two ha'pennies for the plate collection. Put money in the handkerchief corner. Say to persons you are a nephew of Respected Essec Pugh and you will have credit. Pick the white sixpence from the floor and give her to the mishtir; she will have fallen from his pocket trowis."
Then Joseph turned, and carrying his yellow tin box, he climbed into the craggy moorland path which takes you to the tramping road. By the pump of Tavarn Ffos he rested until Shim Carrier camethereby; and while Shim's horse drank of barley water, Joseph stepped into the wagon; and at the end of the passage Shim showed him the business of getting a ticket and that of going into and coming down from a railway carriage.
In that manner did Joseph go to the drapery shop of Rees Jones in Carmarthen; and at the beginning he was instructed in the keeping and the selling of such wares as reels of cotton, needles, pins, bootlaces, mending wool, buttons, and such like—all those things which together are known as haberdashery. He marked how this and that were done, and in what sort to fashion his visage and frame his phrases to this or that woman. His oncoming was rapid. He could measure, cut, and wrap in a parcel twelve yards of brown or white calico quicker than any one in the shop, and he understood by rote the folds of linen tablecloths and bedsheets; and in the town this was said of him:"Shopmen quite ordinary can sell what a customer wants; Pugh Rees Jones can sell what nobody wants."
The first year passed happily, and the second year; and in the third Joseph was stirred to go forward.
"What use to stop here all the life?" he asked himself. "Better to go off."
He put his belongings in his box and went to Swansea.
"Very busy emporium I am in," were the words he sent to Madlen. "And the wage is twenty pounds."
Madlen rejoiced at her labor and sang: "Ten acres of land, and a cow-house with three stalls and a stall for the new calf, and a pigsty, and a house for my bones and a barn for my hay and straw, and a loft for my hens: why should men pray for more?" She ambled to Moriah, diverting passers-by with boastful tales of Joseph, and loosened her imaginings to the Respected.
"Pounds without number he is earning," she cried. "Rich he'll be. Swells are youths shop."
"Gifts from the tip of my tongue fell on him," said Essec. "Religious were my gifts."
"Iss, indeed, the brother of the male husband."
"Now you can afford nine of pounds for the place. Rich he is and richer he will be. Pounds without number he has."
Madlen made a record of Essec's scheme for Joseph; and she said also: "Proud I'll be to shout that my son bach bought Penlan."
"Setting aside money am I," Joseph speedily answered.
Again ambition aroused him. "Footling is he that is content with Zwanssee. Next half-holiday skurshon I'll crib in Cardiff."
Joseph gained his desire, and the chronicle of his doings he sent to hismother. "Twenty-five, living-in, and spiffs on remnants are the wages," he said. "In the flannelette department I am and I have not been fined once. Lot of English I hear, and we call ladies madam that the wedded nor the unwedded are insulted. Boys harmless are the eight that sleep by me. Examine Nuncle of the price of Penlan."
"I will wag my tongue craftily and slowly," Madlen vowed as she crossed her brother-in-law's threshold.
"I Shire Pembroke land is cheap," she said darkly.
"Look you for a farm there," said Essec. "Pelted with offers am I for Penlan. Ninety I shall have. Poverty makes me sell very soon."
"As he says."
"Pretty tight is Joseph not to buy her. No care has he for his mam."
"Stiffish are affairs with him, poor dab."
Madlen reported to Joseph that whichEssec had said, and she added: "Awful to leave the land of your father. And auction the cows. Even the red cow that is a champion for milk. Where shall I go? The House of the Poor. Horrid that your mam must go to the House of the Poor."
Joseph sat on his bed, writing: "Taken ten pounds from the post I have which leaves three shillings. Give Nuncle the ten as earnest of my intention."
Nine years after that day on which he had gone to Carmarthen Joseph said in his heart: "London shops for experience"; and he caused a frock coat to be sewn together, and he bought a silk hat and an umbrella, and at the spring cribbing he walked into a shop in the West End of London, asking: "Can I see the engager, pleaze?" The engager came to him and Joseph spoke out: "I have all-round experience. Flannelettes three years in Niclass, Cardiff, and left on my own accord. Kept the colored dresses in Tomos,Zwanssee. And served through. Apprentized in Reez Jones Carmarthen for three years. Refs egzellent. Good ztok-keeper and appearance."
"Start at nine o'clock Monday morning," the engager replied. "Thirty pounds a year and spiffs; to live in. You'll be in the laces."
"Fashionable this shop is," Joseph wrote to Madlen, "and I have to be smart and wear a coat like the preachers, and mustn't take more than three zwap lines per day or you have the sack. Two white shirts per week; and the dresses of the showroom young ladies are a treat. Five pounds enclosed for Nuncle."
"Believe your mam," Madlen answered: "don't throw gravel at the windows of the old English unless they have the fortunes."
In his zeal for his mother's welfare Joseph was heedless of himself, eating little of the poor food that was served him, clothing his body niggardly, and seldom frequenting public bath-houses; his mindspanned his purpose, choosing the fields he would join to Penlan, counting the number of cattle that would graze on the land, planning the slate-tiled house which he would set up.
"Twenty pounds more must I have," he moaned, "for the blaguard Nuncle."
Every day thereafter he stole a little money from his employers and every night he made peace with God: "Only twenty-five is the wage, and spiffs don't count because of the fines. Don't you let me be found out, Big Man bach. Will you strike mam into her grave? And disgrace Respected Essec Pugh Capel Moriah?"
He did not abate his energies howsoever hard his disease was wasting and destroying him. The men who lodged in his bedroom grew angry with him. "How can we sleep with your dam coughing?" they cried. "Why don't you invest in a second-hand coffin?"
Feared that the women whom he served would complain that the poison of hissickness was tainting them and that he would be sent away, Joseph increased his pilferings; where he had stolen a shilling he now stole two shillings; and when he got five pounds above the sum he needed, he heaved a deep sigh and said: "Thank you for your favor, God bach. I will now go home to heal myself."
Madlen took the money to Essec, coming back heavy with grief.
"Hoo-hoo," she whined, "the ninety has bought only the land. Selling the houses is Essec."
"Wrong there is," said Joseph. "Probe deeply we must."
From their puzzlings Madlen said: "What will you do?"
"Go and charge swindler Moriah."
"Meddle not with him. Strong he is with the Lord."
"Teach him will I to pocket my honest wealth."
Because of his weakness, Joseph did not go to Moriah; to-day he said: "I will to-morrow," and to-morrow he said: "Certain enough I'll go to-morrow."
In the twilight of an afternoon he and Madlen sat down, gazing about, and speaking scantily; and the same thought was with each of them, and this was the thought: "A tearful prayer will remove the Big Man from His judgment, but nothing will remove Essec from his purpose."
"Mam fach," said Joseph, "how will things be with you?"
"Sorrow not, soul nice," Madlen entreated her son. "Couple of weeks very short have I to live."
"As an hour is my space. Who will stand up for you?"
"Hish, now. Hish-hish, my little heart."
Madlen sighed; and at the door she made a great clatter, and the sound of the clatter was less than the sound of her wailing.
"Mam! Mam!" Joseph shouted. "Don't you scream. Hap you will softenNuncle's heart if you say to him that my funeral is close."
Madlen put a mourning gown over her petticoats and a mourning bodice over her shawls, and she tarried in a field as long as it would take her to have traveled to Moriah; and in the heat of the sun she returned, laughing.
"Mistake, mistake," she cried. "The houses are ours. No undertanding was in me. Cross was your Nuncle. 'Terrible if Joseph is bad with me,' he said. Man religious and tidy is Essec." Then she prayed that Joseph would die before her fault was found out.
Joseph did not know what to do for his joy. "Well-well, there's better I am already," he said. He walked over the land and coveted the land of his neighbors. "Dwell here for ever I shall," he cried to Madlen. "A grand house I'll build—almost as grand as the houses of preachers."
In the fifth night he died, and beforeshe began to weep, Madlen lifted her voice: "There's silly, dear people, to covet houses! Only a smallish bit of house we want."
Silas Bowen hated his brother John, but when he heard of John's sickness, he reasoned: "Blackish has been his dealings. And trickish. Sly also. Odd will affairs seem if I don't go to him at once."
At the proper hour he closed the door of his shop. Then he washed his face, and put beeswax on the dwindling points of his mustache, and he came out of Barnes into Thornton East; into High Road, where is his brother's shop.
"That is you," said John to him.
"How was you, man?" Silas asked. "Talk the name of the old malady."
"Say what you have to say in English," John answered in a little voice. "It is easier and classier."
That which was spoken was rendered into English; and John replied: "I ampleazed to see you. Take the bowler off your head and don't put her on the harimonium. The zweat will mark the wood."
"The love of brothers push me here," said Silas. "It is past understanding. As boyss we learn the same pray-yer. And we talked the same temperance dialogue in Capel Zion. I was always the temperance one. And quite a champion reziter. The way is round and about, boy bach, from Zion to the grave."
"Don't speak like that," pleaded John. "I caught a cold going to the City to get ztok. I will be healthy by the beginning of the week."
"Be it so. Yet I am full of your trouble. Sick you are and how's trade?"
"Very brisk. I am opening a shop in Richmond again," John said.
"You're learning me something. Don't you think too much of that shop; Death is near and set your mind on the crossing."
John's lame daughter Ann halted into the room, and stepped up to the bed.
"Stand by the door for one minit, Silas," John cried. "I am having my chat confidential."
From a book Ann recited the business of that day; naming each article that had been sold, and the cost and the profit thereof.
"How's that with last year?" her father commanded.
"Two-fifteen below."
"Fool!" John whispered. "You are a cow, with your gamey leg. You're ruining the place."
Ann closed the book and put her fountain pen in the leather case which was pinned to her blouse, and she spoke this greeting: "How are you, Nuncle Silas. It's long since I've seen you." She thrust out her arched teeth in a smile. "Good-night, now. You must call and see our Richmond establishment."
"Silas," said John, "empty a dose of the medecyne in a cup for me."
"There's little comfort in medecyne," Silas observed. "Not much use is the stuff if the Lord is calling you home. Calling you home. Shall I read you a piece from the Beybile of the Welsh? It is a great pity you have forgot the language of your mother."
"I did not hear you," said John. "Don't you trouble to say it over." He drank the medicine. "Unfortunate was the row about the Mermaid Agency. I was sorry to take it away from you, but if I hadn't some one else would. We kept it in the family, Silas."
"I have prayed a lot," said Silas to his brother, "that me and you are brought together before the day of the death. Nothing can break us from being brothers."
"You are very doleful. I shall shift this little cold."
"Yes-yes, you will. I would be glad to follow your coffin to Wales and lookinto the guard's van at stations where the train stop, but the fare is big and the shop is without a assistant. Weep until I am sore all over I shall in Capel Shirland Road. When did the doctor give you up?"
"He's a donkey. He doesn't know nothing. Here he is once per day and charging for it. And he only brings his repairs to me."
"The largest charge will be to take you to your blessed home," said Silas. "The railway need a lot of money for to carry a corpse. I feel quite sorrowful. In Heaven you'll remember that I was at your deathbed."
John did not answer.
"Well-well," said Silas, whispering loudly, "making his peace with the Big Man he is"; and he went away, moaning a funereal hymn tune.
John thought over his plight and was distressed, and he spoke to God in Welsh: "Not fitting that you leave the daughterfach alone. Short in her leg you made her. There's a set-back. Her mother perished; and did I complain? An orphan will the pitiful wench be. Who will care for the shop? And the repairing workman? Steal the leather he will. A fuss will be about shop Richmond. Paid have I the rent for one year in advance. Serious will the loss be. Be not of two thinks. Send Lisha to breathe breathings into my inside—in the belly where the heart is. Forgive me that I go to the Capel English. Go there I do for the trade. Generous am I in the collections. Ask the preacher. Take some one else to sit in my chair in the Palace. Amen. Amen and amen." In his misery he sobbed, and he would not speak to Ann nor heed her questionings. At the cold of dawn he thought that Death was creeping down to him, and he screamed: "Allow me to live for a year—two years—and a grand communion set will I give to the Welsh capel in Shirland Road. Individual cups. Silver-plated,Sheffield make. Ann shall send quickly for the price-list."
His fear was such that he would not suffer his beard to be combed, nor have his face covered by a bedsheet; and he would not stretch himself or turn his face upwards: in such a manner dead men lie.
Again came Silas to provoke his brother to his death.
"Richmond shops are letting like anything," he said.
"The place is coming on," replied John. "I was lucky to get one in King's Row. She is cheap too."
"What are you talking about? There's a new boot shop in King's Row already. Next door to the jeweler."
"You are mistook. I have taken her."
"Well, then, you are cheated. Get up at once and make a case. Wear an overcoat and ride in the bus."
But John bade Ann go to Richmondand to say this and that to the owner of the house. Ann went and the house was empty.
A third time Silas came out of Barnes, bringing with him gifts. These are the gifts that he offered his brother John: a tin of lobster, a tin of sardines, a tin of salmon, and a tin of herrings; and through each tin, in an unlikely place, he had driven the point of a gimlet.
"Eat these," he said, "and good they will do you."
"Much obliged," replied John. "I'll try a herring with bread and butter and vinegar to supper. Very much obliged. It was not my blame that we quarreled. Others had his eye on the agency."
"Tish, I did not want the old Mermaid. You keep her. I got the sole agency for the Gwendoline."
"How is Gwendolines going?"
"More than I can do to keep ztok of her. Four dozen gents' laces and threedozen ladies' ditto on the twenty-fifth, and soon I order another four dozen ladies' buttons."
John called Ann and to her he said: "How is Mermaid ztok?"
"We are almost out of nine gents and four ladies," answered Ann.
"Write Nuncle Silas the order and he'll drop her in the Zity. Pay your fare one way will I, Silas."
Silas fled the next day into the Mermaid warehouse and sought out the manager. "My brother J. Owen and Co. Thornton East has sold his last pair of Mermaids," he said.
He brought trouble into his eyes and made his voice to quiver as he told how that John was dying and how that the shop was his brother's legacy to him. "Send you the goods for this order to my shop in Barnes," he added. "And all future orders. That will be my headquarters."
He did not go to John's house any more;and although John ate of the lobster, the herrings, and the sardines and was sick, he did not die. A week expired and a sound reached him that Silas was selling Mermaid boots; and he enjoined Ann to test the truth of that sound.
"It's sure enough, dad," Ann said.
John's fury tingled. He put on him his clothes and seized a stick, and by the strength of his passion he moved into Barnes; and he pitched himself at the entering in of the shop, and he saw that Ann's speech was right. He came back; and he did not eat or drink or rest until he had removed all that was in his window and had placed therein no other boots than the Mermaids; and on each pair he put a ticket which was truly marked: "Half cost price." On his door he put this notice: "This FIRM has no Connection with the shop in Barnes"; and this notice could be seen and read whether the door was open or shut.
After a period people returned to him,demanding: "I want a pair of Mermaids, please"; and inasmuch as he had no more to sell, they who had dealt with him went to the shop of his brother.
The Respected Davydd Bern-Davydd spoke in this sort to the people who were assembled at the Meeting for Prayer: "Well-well, know you all the order of the service. Grand prayers pray last. Boys ordinary pray middle, and bad prayers pray first. Boys bach just beginning also come first. Now, then, after I've read a bit from the Book of Speeches and you've sung the hymn I call out, Josi Mali will report."
Bern-Davydd ceased his reading, and while the congregation sang, Josi placed his arms on the sill which is in front of pews and laid his head thereon.
"Josi Mali, man, come to the Big Seat and mouth what you think," said Bern-Davydd.
Josi's mother Mali touched her son, whispering this counsel: "Put to shame the last prayer, indeed now, Josi."
By and by Josi lifted his head and stood on his feet. This is what he said: "Asking was I if I was religious enough to spout in the company of the Respected."
"Out of the necks of young youths we hear pieces that are very sensible," said Bern-Davydd. "Come you, Josi Mali, to the saintly Big Seat."
As Josi moved out of his pew, his thick lips fallen apart and his high cheek bones scarlet, his mother said: "Keep your eyes clapped very close, or hap the prayers will shout that you spoke from a hidden book like an old parson."
So Josi, who in the fields and on his bed had exercised prayer in the manner that one exercises singing, uttered his first petition in Capel Sion. He told the Big Man to pardon the weakness of his words, because the trousers of manhood had not been long upon him; he named those whoentered the Tavern and those who ate bread which had been swollen by barm; he congratulated God that Bern-Davydd ruled over Sion.
At what time he was done, Bern-Davydd cried out: "Amen. Solemn, dear me, amen. Piece quite tidy of prayer"; and the men of the Big Seat cried: "Piece quite tidy of prayer."
The quality of Josi's prayers gave much pleasure in Sion, and it was noised abroad even in Morfa, from whence a man journeyed, saying: "Break your hire with your master and be a servant in my farm. Wanting a prayer very bad do we in Capel Salem." Josi immediately asked leave of God to tell Bern-Davydd that which the man from Morfa had said. God gave him leave, wherefore Bern-Davydd, whose spirit waxed hot, answered: "Boy, boy, why for did you not kick the she cat on the backhead?"
Then Josi said to his mother Mali: "A preacher will I be. Go will I at the finishof my servant term to the school for Grammar in Castellybryn."
"Glad am I to hear you talk," said Mali. "Serious pity that my belongings are so few."
"Small is your knowledge of the Speeches," Josi rebuked his mother. "How go they: 'Sell all that you have?' Iss-iss, all, mam fach."
Now Mali lived in Pencoch, which is in the valley about midway between Shop Rhys and the Schoolhouse, and she rented nearly nine acres of the land which is on the hill above Sion. Beyond the furnishings of her two-roomed house, she owned three cows, a heifer, two pigs, and fowls. She fattened her pigs and sold them, and she sold also her heifer; and Josi went to the School of Grammar. Mali labored hard on the land, and she got therefrom all that there was to be got; and whatever that she earned she hid in a hole in the ground. "Handy is little money," she murmured, "to pay for lodgings andclothes preacher, and the old scamps of boys who teach him." She lived on potatoes and buttermilk, and she dressed her land all the time. People came to remark of her: "There's no difference between Mali Pencoch and the mess in her cow-house."
Days, weeks, and months moved slowly; and years sped. Josi passed from the School of Grammar to College Carmarthen, and Mali gave him all the money that she had, and prayed thus: "Big Man bach, terrible would affairs be if I perished before the boy was all right. Let you me keep my strength that Josi becomes as large as Bern-Davydd. Amen."
Even so. Josi had a name among Students' College, and even among ordained rulers of pulpits; and Mali went about her duties joyful and glad; it was as if the Kingdom of the Palace of White Shirts was within her. While at her labor she mumbled praises to the Big Man for His goodness, until an awful thought came toher: "Insulting am I to the Large One bach. Only preachers are holy enough to stand in their pray. Not stop must I now; go on my knees will I in the dark."
She did not kneel on her knees for the stiffness that was in her limbs.
Her joy was increased exceedingly when Josi was called to minister unto Capel Beulah in Carmarthen, and she boasted: "Bigger than Sion is Moriah and of lofts has not the Temple two?"
"Idle is your babbling," one admonished her. "Does a calf feed his mother?"
Josi heard the call. His name grew; men and women spoke his sayings one to another, and Beulah could not contain all the people who would hear his word; and he wrote a letter to his mother: "God has given me to wed Mary Ann, the daughter of Daniel Shop Guildhall. Kill you a pig and salt him and send to me the meat."
All that Josi asked Mali gave, and more; she did not abate in any of her toil forfive years, when a disease laid hold on Josi and he died. Mali cleaned her face and her hands in the Big Pistil from which you draw drinking water, and she brought forth her black garments and put them on her; and because of her age she could not weep. The day before that her son was to be buried, she went to the house of her neighbor Sara Eye Glass, and to her she said: "Wench nice, perished is Josi and off away am I. Console his widow fach I must. Tell you me that you will milk my cow."
Sara turned her seeing eye upon Mali. "An old woman very mad you are to go two nines of miles."
"Milk you my cow," said Mali. "And milk you her dry. Butter from me the widow fach shall have. And give ladlings of the hogshead to my pigs and scatter food for my hens."
She tore a baston from a tree, trimmed it and blackened it with blacking, and at noon she set forth to the house of herdaughter-in-law; and she carried in a basket butter, two dead fowls, potatoes, carrots, and a white-hearted cabbage, and she came to Josi's house in the darkness which is in the morning, and it was so that she rested on the threshold; and in the bright light Mary Ann opened the door, and was astonished. "Mam-in-law," she said, "there's nasty for you to come like this. Speak what you want. Sitting there is not respectable. You are like an old woman from the country."
"Come am I to sorrow," answered Mali. "Boy all grand was Josi bach. Look at him now will I."
"Talking no sense you are," said Mary Ann. "Why you do not see that the house is full of muster? Will there not be many Respecteds at the funeral?"
"Much preaching shall I say?"
"Indeed, iss. But haste about now and help to prepare food to eat. Slow you are, female."
Presently mourners came to the house,and when each had walked up and gazed upon the features of the dead, and when the singers had sung and the Respecteds had spoken, and while a carpenter turned screws into the coffin, Mary Ann said to Mali: "Clear you the dishes now, and cut bread and spread butter for those who will return after the funeral. After all have been served go you home to Pencoch." She drew a veil over her face and fell to weeping as she followed the six men who carried Josi's coffin to the hearse.
Having finished, Mali took her baston and her empty basket and began her journey. As she passed over Towy Street—the public way which is set with stones—she saw that many people were gathered at the gates of Beulah to witness Mary Ann's loud lamentations at Josi's grave.
Mali stayed a little time; then she went on, for the light was dimming. At the hour she reached Pencoch the mown hay was dry and the people were gathering it together. She cried outside the house ofSara Eye Glass: "Large thanks, Sara fach. Home am I, and like pouring water were the tears. And there's preaching." She milked her cows and fed her pigs and her fowls, and then she stepped up to her bed. The sounds of dawn aroused her. She said to herself: "There's sluggish am I. Dear-dear, rise must I in a haste, for Mary Ann will need butter to feed the baban bach that Josi gave her."
When Winnie Davies was let out of prison, shame pressed heavily on her feelings; and though her mother Martha and her father Tim prayed almost without ceasing, she did not come home. It was so that one night Martha watched for her at a window and Tim prayed for her at the door of the Tabernacle, and a bomb fell upon the ground that was between them, and they were both destroyed.
All the days of their life, Tim and Martha were poor and meek and religious; they were cheaper than the value set on them by their cheapeners. As a reward for their pious humility, they were appointed keepers of the Welsh Tabernacle, which is at Kingsend. At that they took their belongings into the three rooms that are below the chapel; and their spirits werelifted up marvelously that the Reverend Eylwin Jones and the deacons of the Tabernacle had given to them the way of life.
In this fashion did Tim declare his blessedness: "Charitable are Welsh to Welsh. Little Big Man, boys tidy are boys Capel Tabernacle."
"What if we were old atheists?" cried Martha.
"Wife fach, don't you send me in a fright," Tim said.
They two applied themselves to their tasks: the woman washed the linen and cleaned the doorsteps and the houses of her neighbors, the man put posters on hoardings, trimmed gardens, stood at the doors of Welsh gatherings. By night they mustered, sweeping the floor of the chapel, polishing the wood and brass that were therein, and beating the cushions and hassocks which were in the pews of the most honored of the congregation. Sunday mornings Tim put a white india-rubbercollar under the Adam's apple in his throat, and Martha covered her long, thin body in black garments, and drew her few hairs tightly from her forehead.
Though they clad and comported themselves soberly Enoch Harries, who, at this day, was the treasurer and head deacon of the chapel, spoke up against them to Eylwin Jones. This is his complaint: "Careless was Tim in the dispatch department, delivering the parcel always to the wrong customers and for why he was sacked. Good was I to get him the capel. Careless he is now also. By twilight, dark, and thick blackness, light electric burns in Tabernacle. Waste that is. Sound will I my think. Why cannot the work be done in the day I don't know."
"You cannot say less," said Eylwin Jones. "Pay they ought for this, the irreligious couple. As the English proverb—'There's no gratitude in the poor.'"
"Another serious piece of picking haveI," continued Harries. "I saw Tim sticking on hoarding. 'What, dear me,' I mumbled between the teeth—I don't speech to myself, man, as usual. The Apostles did, now. They wrote their minds. Benefit for many if I put down my religious thinks for a second New Testament. What say you, Eylwin Jones? Lots of says very clever I can give you—'is he sticking?' A biggish paper was the black pasting about Walham Green Music Hall. What do you mean for that? And the posters for my between season's sale were waiting to go out."
Rebuked, Tim and Martha left over sinning: and Tim put Enoch Harries' posters in places where they should not have been put, wherefore Enoch smiled upon him.
"Try will I some further," said Tim by and by.
"Don't you crave too much," advised Martha. "The Bad Man craved the pulpit of the Big Man."
"Shut your backhead. Out of school will Winnie be very near now."
"Speak clear."
"Ask Enoch Harries will I to make her his servant."
"Be modest in your manner," Martha warned her husband. "Man grand is Enoch."
"Needing servants hap he does."
"Perhaps, iss; perhaps, no."
"Cute is Winnie," said Tim; "and quick. Sense she has."
Tim addressed Enoch, and Enoch answered: "Blabber you do to me, why for? Send your old female to Mishtress Harries. Order you her to go quite respectable."
Curtsying before Mrs. Harries, Martha said: "I am Tim Dafis' wife."
"Oh, really. The person that is in charge of that funny little Welsh chapel." Mrs. Harries sat at a table. "Give me your girl's name, age, and names of previous employers for references." Havingwritten all that Martha said, she remarked: "We are moving next week to a large establishment in Thornton East. I am going to call it Windsor. Of course the husband and I will go to the English church. I thought I could take your girl with me to Windsor."
"The titcher give her an excellent character."
"I'll find that out for myself. Well, as you are so poor, I'll give her a trial. I'll pay her five pounds a year and her keep. I do hope she is ladylike."
Martha told Tim that which Mrs. Harries had said, and Tim observed: "I will rejoice in a bit of prayer."
"Iss," Martha agreed. "In the parlor of the preacher. They go up quicker."
God was requested by Tim to heap money upon Mrs. Harries, and to give Winnie the wisdom, understanding, and obedience which enable one to serve faithfully those who sit in the first pews in the chapel.
Now Winnie found favor in the sight of her mistress, whose personal maid she was made and whose habits she copied. She painted her cheeks and dyed her hair and eyebrows and eyelashes; and she frequented Thornton Vale English Congregational Chapel, where now worshiped Enoch and his wife. Some of the men who came to Windsor ogled her impudently, but she did not give herself to any man. These ogles Mrs. Harries interpreted truthfully and she whipped up her jealous rage.
"You're too fast," she chided Winnie. "Look at your blouse. You might be undressed. You are a shame to your sex. One would say you are a Piccadilly street-walker and they wouldn't be far wrong. I won't have you making faces at my visitors. Understand that."
Winnie said: "I don't."
"You must change, miss," Mrs. Harries went on. "Or you can pack your box and go on the streets. Must not think becauseyou are Welsh you can do as you like here."
On a sudden Winnie spoke and charged her mistress with a want of virtue.
"Is that the kind of miss you are!" Mrs. Harries shouted. "Where did you get those shoes from?"
"You yourself gave them to me."
"You thief! You know I didn't. They are far too small for your big feet. Come along—let's see what you've got upstairs."
That hour Mrs. Harries summoned a policeman, and in due time Winnie was put in prison.
Tim and Martha did not speak to any one of this that had been done to their daughter.
"Punished must a thief be," said Tim. "Bad is the wench."
"Bad is our little daughter," answered Martha.
Sabbath morning came and she wept.
"Showing your lament you are, old fool," cried Tim.
"For sure, no. But the mother am I."
Tim said: "My inside shivers oddly. Girl fach too young to be in jail."
A fire was set in the preacher's parlor and the doors of the Tabernacle were opened. Tim, the Bible in his hands, stepped up to the pulpit, his eyes closed in prayer, and as he passed up he stumbled.
Eylwin Jones heard the noise of his fall and ran into the chapel.
"What's the matter?" he cried. "Comic you look on your stomach. Great one am I for to see jokes."
"An old rod did catch my toe," Tim explained.
Eylwin changed the cast of his countenance. "Awful you are," he reproved Tim. "Suppose that was me. Examine you the stairs. Now indeed forget a handkerchief have I for to wipe the flow of the nose. Order Winnie to give me one of Enoch Harries. Handkerchiefs white and smelly he has."
"Ill is Winnie fach," said Martha.
"Gone she has for brief weeks to Wales," Tim added.
In the morning Eylwin came to the Tabernacle.
"Not healthy am I," he said. "Shock I had yesterday. Fancy I do a rabbit from Wales for the goiter."
"Tasty are rabbits," Tim uttered.
"Clap up, indeed," said Martha. "Too young they are to eat and are they not breeding?"
"Rabbits very young don't breed," remarked Eylwin.
"They do," Martha avowed. "Sometimes, iss; sometimes, no. Poison they are when they breed."
"Not talking properly you are," said Eylwin. "Why for you palaver about breeding to the preacher? Cross I will be."
"Be you quiet now, Martha," said Tim. "Lock your tongue."
"Send a letter to Winnie for a rabbit; two rabbits if she is small," orderedEylwin. "And not see your faults will I."
Tim and Martha were perplexed and communed with each other; and Tim walked to Wimbledon where he was not known and so have his errand guessed. He bought a rabbit and carried it to the door of the minister's house. "A rabbit from Winnie fach in Wales," he said.
"Eat her I will before I judge her," replied Eylwin; and after he had eaten it he said: "Quite fair was the animal. Serious dirty is the capel. As I flap my hand on the cushion Bible in my eloquence, like chimney smoke is the dust. Clean you at once. For are not the anniversary meetings on the sixth Sabbath? All the rich Welsh will be there, and Enoch Harries and the wife of him."
He came often to view Tim and Martha at their labor.
"Fortunate is your wench to have holiday," he said one day. "Hard have preachers to do in the vineyard."
"Hear we did this morning," Tim began to speak.
"In a hurry am I," Eylwin interrupted. "Fancy I do butter from Wales with one pinch of salt in him. Tell Winnie to send butter that is salted."
Martha bought two pounds of butter.
"Mean is his size," Tim grieved.
"Much is his cost," Martha whined.
"Get you one pound of marsherin and make him one and put him on a wetted cabbage leaf."
The fifth Sunday dawned.
"Next to-morrow," said Martha, "the daughter will be home. Go you to the jail and fetch her, and take you for her a big hat for old jailers cut the hair very short."
"No-no," Tim replied. "Better she returns and speak nothing. With no questions shall we question her."
Monday opened and closed.
"Mistake is in your count," Martha hinted.
"Slow scolar am I," said Tim. "Count will I once more."
"Don't you, boy bach," Martha hastened to say. "Come she will."
At the dusk of Friday Eylwin Jones, his goitered chin shivering, ran furiously and angrily into the Tabernacle. "Ho-ho," he cried. "In jail is Winnie. A scampess is she and a whore. Here's scandal. Mother and father of a thief in the house of the capel bach of Jesus Christ. Robbed Mistress Harries she did. Broke is the health of the woman nice as a consequent. She will not be at the anniversary meetings because the place is contaminated by you pair. And her husband won't. Five shillings each they give to the collection. The capel wants the half soferen. Out you go. Now at once."
Tim and Martha were sorely troubled that Winnie would come to the Chapel House and not finding them, would go away.
"Loiter will I near by," said Tim.
"Say we rent a room and peer for her," said Martha.
Thereon from dusk to day either Tim or Martha sat at the window of their room and watched. The year died and spring and summer declined into autumn, when on a moon-lit night men flew in machines over London and loosened bombs upon the people thereof.
"Feared am I," said Martha, "that our daughter is not in the shelter." She screamed: "Don't stand there like a mule. Pray, Tim man."
Remembering how that he had prayed, Tim answered: "Try a prayer will I near the capel."
So Martha watched at her window and Tim prayed at the door of the Tabernacle.
Here is the tale that is told about Hugh Evans, who was a commercial traveler in drapery wares, going forth on his journeys on Mondays and coming home on Fridays. The tale tells how on a Friday night Hugh sat at the table in the kitchen of his house, which is in Parson's Green. He had before him coins of gold, silver, and copper, and also bills of his debts; and upon each bill he placed certain monies in accordance with the sum marked thereon. Having fixed the residue of his coins and having seen that he held ten pounds, his mind was filled with such bliss that he said within himself: "A nice little amount indeed. Brisk are affairs."
"Millie," he addressed his wife, "look over them and add them together."
"Wait till I'm done," was the answer. "The irons are all hotted up."
Hugh chided her. "You are not interested in my saving. You don't care. It's nothing to you. Forward, as I call."
"If I sit down," Millie offered, "I feel I shall never get up again and the irons are hotted and what I think is a shame to waste gas like this the price it is."
"Why didn't you say so at the first opportunity? Be quick then. I shan't allow the cash to lay here."
Duly Millie observed her husband's order, and what time she proved that which Hugh had done, she was admonished that she had spent too much on this and that.
"I'm doing all I can not to be extravagant," she whimpered. "I don't buy a thing for my back." Her short upper lip curled above her broken teeth and trembled; she wept.
"But whatever," said Hugh softening his spirit, "I got ten soferens in hand. Next quarter less you need and more youhave. Less gass and electric. You don't gobble food so ravishingly in warm weather. The more I save."
Having exchanged the ten pounds for a ten-pound note, remorse seized Hugh. "A son of a mule am I," he said. "Dangerous is paper as he blows. If he blows! Bulky are soferens and shillings. If you lose two, you got the remnants. But they are showy and tempting." He laid the note under his pillow and slept, and he took it with him, secreted on his person, to Kingsend Chapel, where every Sunday morning and evening he sang hymns, bowed under prayer, and entertained his soul with sermons.
Just before departing on Monday he gave the note to Millie. "Keep him securely," he counseled her. "Tell nobody we stock so much cash."
Millie put the note between the folds of a Paisley shawl, which was precious to her inasmuch as it had been her mother's, and she wrapped a blanket over the shawl andplaced it in a cupboard. But on Friday she could not remember where she had hidden the note; "never mind," she consoled herself, "it will occur to me all of a sudden."
As that night Hugh cast off his silk hat and his frock coat, he shouted: "Got the money all tightly?"
"Yes," replied Millie quickly. "As safe as in the Bank of England."
"Can't be safer than that. Keep him close to you and tell no one. Paper money has funny ways." Hugh then prophesied that in a year his wealth in a mass would be fifty pounds.
"With ordinary luck, and I'm sure you desire it because you're always at it, it will," Millie agreed.
"No luck about it. No stop to me. We've nothing to purchase. And you don't. At home you are, with food and clothes and a ceyling above you. Kings don't want many more."
"Yes," said Millie. "No."
Weeks passed and Millie was concerned that she could not find the note, tried she never so hard. At the side of her bed she entreated to be led to it, and in the day she often paused and closing her eyes prayed: "Almighty Father, bring it to me."
The last Friday of the quarter Hugh divided his money in lots, and it was that he had eleven pounds over his debts. "Eleven soferens now," he cried to his wife. "That's grand! Makes twenty-one the first six months of the wedded life."
"It reflects great credit on you," said Millie, concealing her unhappiness.
"Another eighty and I'd have an agency. Start a factory, p'raps. There's John Daniel. He purchases an house. Ten hands he has working gents' shirts for him."
Millie turned away her face and demanded from God strength with which to acquaint her husband of her misfortune. What she asked for was granted unto herat her husband's amorous moment of the Sabbath morning.
Hugh's passion deadened, and in his agony he sweated.
"They're gone! Every soferen," he cried. "They can't all have gone. The whole ten." He opened his eyes widely. "Woe is me. Dear me. Dear me."
Until day dimmed and night grayed did they two search, neither of them eating and neither of them discovering the treasure.
Therefore Hugh had not peace nor quietness. Grief he uttered with his tongue, arms, and feet, and it was in the crease of his garments. He sought sympathy and instruction from those with whom he traded. "All the steam is gone out of me," he wailed. One shopkeeper advised him: "Has it slipped under the lino?" Another said: "Any mice in the house? Money has been found in their holes." The third said: "Sure the wife hasn't spent it on dress. You know what ladies are." These hints and more Hughwrote down on paper, and he mused in this wise: "An old liar is the wench. For why I wedded the English? Right was mam fach; senseless they are. Crying she has lost the yellow gold, the bitch. What blockhead lost one penny? What is in the stomach of my purse this one minute? Three shillings—soferen—five pennies—half a penny—ticket railway. Hie backwards will I on Thursday on the surprise. No comfort is mine before I peep once again."
He pried in every drawer and cupboard, and in the night he arose and inquired into the clothes his wife had left off; and he pushed his fingers into the holes of mice and under the floor coverings, and groped in the fireplaces; and he put subtle questions to Millie.
"If you'd done like this in a shop you'd be sacked without a ref," he said when his search was over. "We must have him back. It's a sin to let him go. Reduce expenses at once."
Millie disrobed herself by the light of a street lamp, and she ate little of such foods as are cheapest, whereat her white cheeks sunk and there was no more luster in her brown hair; and her larder was as though there was a famine in the country. If she said to Hugh: "Your boots are leaking," she was told: "Had I the soferens I would get a pair"; or if she said: "We haven't a towel in the place," the reply was: "Find the soferens and buy one or two."
The more Hugh sorrowed and scrimped, the more he gained; and word of his fellows' hardships struck his broad, loose ears with a pleasant tinkle. While on his journeys he stayed at common lodging-houses, and he did not give back to his employers any of the money which was allowed him to stay at hotels. Some folk despised him, some mocked him, and many nicknamed him "the ten-pound traveler." To the shopkeeper who hesitated to deal with him he whined his loss, making itgreater than it was, and expressing: "The interest alone is very big."
By such methods he came to possess one hundred and twenty pounds in two years. His employers had knowledge of his deeds, and they summoned him to them and said to him that because of the drab shabbiness of his clothes and his dishonest acts they had appointed another in his stead.
"You started this," he admonished Millie. "Bring light upon mattar."
"What can I do?" Millie replied. "Shall I go back to the dressmaking as I was?"
Hugh was not mollified. By means of such women man is brought to a penny. He felt dishonored and wounded. Of the London Welsh he was the least. Look at Enos-Harries and Ben Lloyd and Eynon Davies. There's boys for you. And look at the black John Daniel, who was a prentice with him at Carmarthen. Hark him ordering preacher Kingsend. Watch him on the platform on the Day of David theSaint. And all, dear me, out of J.D.'s Ritfit three-and-sixpence gents' tunic shirts.
He considered a way, of which he spoke darkly to Millie, lest she might cry out his intention.
"No use troubling," he said in a changed manner. "Come West and see the shops."
Westward they two went, pausing at windows behind which were displayed costly blouses.
"That's plenty at two guineas," Hugh said of one.
"It's a Paris model," said Millie.
"Nothing in her. Nothing."
"Not much material, I grant," Millie observed. "The style is fashionable and they charge a lot."
"I like to see you in her," said Hugh. "Take in the points and make her with an odd length of silk."
When the blouse was finished, Hugh took it to a man at whose shop trade the poorest sort of middle-class women, saying: "I can let you have a line like this at thirty-five and six a dozen."
"I'll try three twelves," said the man.
Then Hugh went into the City and fetched up Japanese silk, and lace, and large white buttons; and Millie sewed with her might.
Hugh thrived, and his success was noised among the London Welsh. The preacher of Kingsend Chapel visited him.
"Not been in the Temple you have, Mistar Eevanss, almost since you were spliced," he said. "Don't say the wife makes you go to the capel of the English."
"Busy am I making money."
"News that is to me, Mistar Eevanss. Much welcome there is for you with us."
In four years Hugh had eighteen machines, at each of which a skilled woman sat; and he hired young girls to sew through buttons and hook-and-eyes and to make button-holes. These women and girls were under the hand of Millie, whokept count of their comings and goings and the work they performed, holding from their wages the value of the material they spoilt and of the minutes they were not at their task. Millie labored faithfully, her heart being perfect with her husband's. She and Hugh slept in the kitchen, for all the other rooms were stockrooms or workrooms; and the name by which the concern was called was "The French Model Blouse Co. Manageress—Mme. Zetta, the notorious French Modiste."
Howsoever bitterly people were pressed, Hugh did not cease to prosper. In riches, honor, and respect he passed many of the London Welsh.
For that he could not provide all the blouses that were requested of him, he rented a big house. That hour men were arrived to take thereto his belongings, Millie said: "I'll throw the Paisley shawl over my arm. I wouldn't lose it for anything"; and as she moved away the ten-pound note fell on the ground. "Well, Inever!" she cried in her dismay. "It was there all the time."
Hugh seized the note from her hand.
"You've the head of a sieve," he said. Also he lamented: "All these years we had no interest in him."