Thefamily of the Welsh farmer. Not a bright look-out for our hero.
Morris Greeg, the farmer to whom the parish had consigned our hero, as an apprentice, possessed a small freehold farm, fourteen miles up the mountain; and thither, in the company or custody ofWatt the mole-catcher, Twm was now marched. Dull and joyless was their journey, unenlivened either by incident or the charms of scenery. On their arrival at the destined spot, Twm could scarcely forbear shuddering at the prospect before him. The farm-house was a low long building, under the same roof as the cow-house and stable, and as the whole was covered with a black mass of rotten thatch, composed of varied patches of half-perished straw and fern, the only signs of its being inhabited by humanity were a chimney, with two or three farm implements lying at the hovel door.
The farm, called Cwm y Gwarm Ddu, (Black marsh dingle,) was abbreviated usually to Gwern Ddu; the latter word, be it known to our English readers, is pronouncedThee. The land of which it was composed, had been anciently cribbed from the mountain, according to the Havod un-nôs[72]system. Being too remote from any other settlements to be noticed by any of the parishioners but the shepherds, who were bribed to silence by occasional refreshment as they passed that way, the appropriation remained long unquestioned. And when of later years some of the nearest farmers became troublesome busy-bodies on the occasion, a few days’ labour given gratis in harvest time by Morris Greeg’s grandfather and father, made all quiet again, till latterly, the farm of Gwern Ddu became incontestably a freehold property.
Twm felt no great wonder that its existence, as narrated by Watt, remained so long unknown, and wished an earthquake had been so good as to swallow it before he had been destined to enter its precincts.
“It was in sooth a landscape harsh.On one side rock, and three sides marsh:With naught to please the restless eye,A scene to cause a weary sigh.”
“It was in sooth a landscape harsh.On one side rock, and three sides marsh:With naught to please the restless eye,A scene to cause a weary sigh.”
The farm occupied one side of a dreary dingle, being one field’s breadth only from the rocky mountain above, and divided from a swampy turbary marsh by a roaring torrent-like brook. The house and the farm appertainments, with a view to shelter at the expense of a healthier foundation, were situated on the marsh-side of the brook, the waters of which were crossed by a rustic bridge formed of a fallen tree, that led towards the fields, and by a short lane and a path through the wood, to the mountain above them. Instead of the hawthorn, willow, birch, and the nut-bearing pleasant hazel, that usually form the hedges in more favoured lands, these poor little fields had their boundary ditches surmounted by that rude bantling of barrenness, the prickly gorse, more poetically called the yellow-blossomed furze; intermingled here and there, as in the adjoining mountain, with its brunette sister, the purple-flowering heath, immortalized in Scottish literature as the mountain heather.
Above the rustic bridge, the bright pure water, yet unpolluted by the touch of man, rolled in a small cascade over the smooth black rock, contrasting by its foaming whiteness, with the sable bed from which it sprung. This little water-fall was called—Y Pistyll, or the spout; from which was obtained the water destined for household uses. From its side the farm lasses scooped the gravel wherewith they scoured their milk-pails, hoops and staves, rivalling by their whiteness, the nectarious stream within. Below the bridge, the brook had been widened by human art, so as to form a considerable pool, wherein the aquatic members of the farm-yard, the stately silent geese and the noisy ducks, at times floated gravely, with their young yellow brood, at others, ploughing and gambolling merrily and undisturbed; save when the horses, cows, or oxen were driven across; for theupper part of the pool formed part of the regular road.
Through this wood, ran an oblique path, that after turning the corner of an angular rising whose upper end was bounded by a terrific precipice of no less than ninety feet perpendicular height, and known by the name of Allt y Craig Llwyd, or Acclivious Forest of the Grey Rock, which indicated that trees at some period clothed the scene now defaced by hideous nakedness. On winding round and gaining the summit of the peak above this quarry, an extensive tract of level mountain appeared in one direction; in another, the dreary monotony was broken by the appearance of petty lakes or mountain pools, on which floated at times certain families of migratory aquatic birds, that here made their temporary resting place, in their hasty journeys to more favoured regions. Ravines, and caves, the reputed bed-chambers of evil spirits, long-maned unbroken horses, and numerous flocks of wild-looking small sheep, were the other objects that diversified the scene; and the horizon was closed by the distant mountain peaks, one above another, wildly strange, but most grandly clustered.
On Watt’s presenting Twm to a tall, gaunt, swarthy-faced man, who proved to be Morris Greeg himself, as the apprentice which the parish had sent him, his brows contracted, and his sunken eyes threw out their fires in a flash of indignation.
“Ha!” cried the old man, after eyeing our hero with the contempt which a sordid clown might evince towards a puny insect, as he wondered, in the dulness of his conception, why heaven should trouble itself in creating a thing incapable of hewing wood or carrying burdens—“a pretty help they have sent me truly! Of what service will a weak creature like this be to me?”
“None!” screamed a thin hag of a yellow-faced woman, “but to eat up all the victuals; I warrant, by his thin carcass and long crane neck, that he has the stomach of a hound. This neck looks as if it hadbeen stretched already. But if it hasn’t, it soon will be by the looks of him.”
Four damsels, the daughters of the house, now made their appearance, and scrutinized our hero over each other’s shoulder, as if he had been a reptile of some unquestionable species, whom it was not safe to approach too near. A sturdy ploughman in a white frock sat at the table, silently, but sullenly, descanting on the merits of the food before him, by alternately sneering and masticating what appeared to be more necessary to his stomach than agreeable to his palate. On the left of the ploughman sat a singular-looking thin parrot-nosed boy, the only one that appeared to greet him with a look of welcome; his small black eyes actually laughed with satisfaction.
“Well, Moses, thou hast now a companion to help thee to devour food, and do nothing,” said farmer Greeg, as he motioned to Watt and Twm to sit and eat.
“Yes, thee hast now a companion to help thee to eat and do nothing,” repeated the farmer’s eldest daughter Shaan, whose habit it was to echo all the sayings of her father and mother, so as to publish herself as one of the authorities of the house. Moses said nothing audibly, but a rueful expression of countenance gave it the lie to the insinuation most pointedly, and Twm fancied that he brushed away a tear with his sleeve, as he rose hastily and walked out of the house.
Watt had been busy “taking stock” of the ploughman’s countenance; a compliment apparently by no means appreciated by the object of his regard. The ploughman hastily finished his dinner, and was about to beat a retreat, when Watt enquired, “Is’nt thy name Abel Prosser?”
“No!” cried the man.
“Yes,” cried Shaan, “what does thou deny thy name for?”
“Then, I have a warrant against thee, as the runaway father of Palley Bais Wen’s bantling,” cried Watt; “help to secure him in the king’s name!”
The man made a dart from the house, and Watt after him. The event of the chase remained long unknown as neither were seen again by the present party for many a month.
“The devil take that Watt Gwathotwr!” screamed Sheeny Greeg the farmer’s wife, “for he brings us nothing but trouble. Two years ago he brought us this Moses, the deserted bantling of a rascally Jew, who deceived the silly wench of a hedge-ale-house maid, where he lodged; and now he has brought another of no more strength than a grey-hound puppy; and worse than all, he has scared away Abel Prosser. What are we to do now?”
“Do!” cried Shaan scornfully, “we shall do very well; make these two fellows do Abel’s work, and their own.” With this very comfortable prospect before him, Twm went to rest with the Jew boy in the hay-loft, this first night after his arrival in the alpine region of Cwmny Gwern Ddu.
Moseshas many youthful yearnings. The exploits of the lads in fasting and feasting.
Some say it is a comfort to have a brother in affliction, visited by similar trials, and persecuted rigour. Now Moses and Twm could be sympathetic enough, for they had to endure labour enough and too much, but quite the opposite quantity of eatables; they, therefore, in their misery, became firm and attached companions. Twm at first found much to disgust him with his fellow sufferer, as he seemed disposed to talk of nothing but culinary matters; the roast and boiled, the stewed, the fried, were his darling topics. When Twm dilated on some of the festal doings at Graspacre-hall, the prematurely sunken eyesof this wretched starveling would glisten with a lambent flame that threatened the immediate extinction of his senses, he exclaimed, “O Lord, how I should like to make one of them!—I heard a strange man once talk of an ox being roasted whole—can such a thing be? what a—what a sight! O Lord, how I should like to tear two, three, four, hot ribs out of a roasting ox—I would get into the carcass, and roast with it, so that I might tug, tear, and eat my fill first. If I knew my way to any great town from this awful place, I’ll tell thee Twm, how I should like to get my living—I would eat for wagers—I have heard of such doings, and I know I could die contented, if I had once my stomach full of flesh—ha! ha! ha! I would tear it, and ha! ha! ha! Oh! how I would tear and swallow it!”
Twm felt horror-struck to hear these frantic ravings of this poor famished being, his eyes starting from their sockets, and his thin talon-like hands clutching vacantly at imaginary food. He strove to comfort him with future hopes, but the wretch had now sunk into a fit of weeping despondency, and as the tears ran down his young emaciated face, he exclaimed, in a tone of utter hopelessness, “no, no, I shall sleep on these mountains, and never have my fill of any thing but work and sorrow, work and sorrow till I die!” Suddenly starting from his reclining posture to his feet, and as suddenly changing his querulous tones to those of maniac rapture that was alarming from the startling transition—“Canst thee eat raw eggs, Twm? I have a store of them hid away in the barn—we’ll have a feast of them to-night, boy!”
Previous to this scene, they had been thrashing together till over fatigued they sat themselves down on the straw. The silence of their flails informed the quick ears of old Sheeny of this pause in their labour. Hastening with stealthy steps towards the barn, she unluckily arrived the moment when Moses vaunted of the intended feast of eggs. With the soundless steps and savage purpose of the taloned cat, that marks the moment to dart upon the heedless bird, she reached overthe latch; unlatching it, she burst into the middle of the barn, and seizing the first flail in her way, she vowed with a tremendous oath to break every bone in his body with it unless the eggs were immediately produced. As she had once broke his leg, which Evans the blacksmith had imperfectly set for him, poor Moses made a virtue of necessity, and at once took her to his little hoard. Poor lad; it was like drawing his blood, to take away this prospect of a feed, and his eyes filled with tears as Sheeny gathered them all in her apron and marched off triumphantly. The loss of the eggs, valuable as they were in their hungry circumstances, was trivial to the daily annoyances of the female tongues that trimmed and stung them both within and without doors for many a day after, on this subject.
Old Sheeny was certainly a notable manager, an economist to the back bone. Abstemious moralists, those excellent friends of the human race, have declared, that the new-fangled improvements in modern cookery have inclined mankind to devour twice the quantity of food requisite or beneficial for the health and happiness of our species. Sheeny Greeg, the careful mistress of this mountain mansion, had no idea of inflicting such an evil on those favoured beings confided to her protection. Therefore, in a pure philosophic spirit, as an antidote to gluttony and intemperance, she took care, like an ancient Spartan dame, that the food and drink of her providing should be neither too rich nor too savory. Consequently gout and plethora were never found among the maladies of her inmates. She had an admirable contrivance that did honour to her inventive powers, of substituting durability for the dangerous quality of palatableness, in the food she administered.
For instance, in the article of bread, her custom was to bake an enormous batch at once; so that it soon got hard, musty and mouldy, it must be admitted that the temptation to gluttonize on it and its accompaniments, was diminished. In preparing that standing dish of the Welsh farm, the flummery,she would steep for a considerable time, a large portion of the oaten commodity for that purpose, till thoroughly soured to the acidity of crab-juice. The skim milk, in which this mess was soused, she considered as too gross for their unsophisticated stomachs, till diluted with the pure element from the brook.
The whey and butter-milk underwent the same process; and the cheese kept for home consumption was manufactured of that fang-defying, heart of oak, sort of toughness, which answers the patriotic purpose of cannon-balls, to repel invaders, should their cupidity ever be inflamed by the reported felicities of Cwmny Gwern Ddu: in which alarming supposition it is some satisfaction to reflect, as a point to our moral, that the crime would carry the punishment along with it. Whenever those rare and almost denounced strangers to the table, the beef or bacon made their appearance, the greedy fangs that seized them would suddenly relax their tenacious grip, like the blind dog that mistook a red-hot poker for a bone, in evident alarm, lest a portion of Lot’s wife had accidentally fallen in their way; a cannibal impression that seemed to haunt them long after, till washed away by many a copious draught of the fluid that cost nothing. Morris Greeg himself was a fine example to his household, as a scorner of unnecessary dainties. Doubtless it was very edifying to Twm and Moses, to hear him descant on the enormities of gross feeding, enlivened by anecdotes of people who had eaten themselves to death.
He would tell tales about the dreadful troubles brought upon a man by being over fat—obesity was, to hear him, a state of existence only equalled in horror by the pains and penalties of the lower regions. He narrated a veritable instance of a Daniel Lambert, who got so fat, and so immovable, that he rolled himself into a large trough of water, and voluntarily died the death of a suicide. Moses, the young infidel, would gape incredulously at such an intimation,and evidently doubted the probability of such a death; and if it were possible, impious cormorant as he was, he would have no objection to martyrdom on such a score.
“Plain food, and as little of it as possible,” quoth Morris, “is a fine thing,” grinding as he spoke a mass of black-eyed winter-dried beans with rusty bacon. “And leaven,” cried the sage of the mountains, “is far better in the bread than barn; it warms the stomach with its generous acid, and makes me content with little.”
Our hero, however, had a bold heart; and if a little better fed, would have endured all with that indifference and vein of whim which were natural to him. As it was, with the wild companionship of Moses, he turned misery herself into a scarecrow of mirth rather than of terror. Together those mischievously merry boys dispatched their breakfasts of highly watered milk and porridge, thickened with mouldy bread, with hungry yet loathing stomachs, and indulged in under currents of laughter, as either of them aped some peculiarity of gait or visage in their amiable hostess.
And when the rusty bacon liquor was enlarged for repeated messes of broth, their wry faces gave indications of their inmost feelings, whilst the latter manifested themselves by a waterspout movement generally supposed to indicate disquietude of the stomach. Their patience was severely tried; often when they felt a conviction that this species of drenching was over, they had the unexpected mortification to find a quantity of water added, to spin it out for another meal. This was truly a sad change to Twm, compelled as he was daily to embrace his antipathies, and disconnect himself from all that he had learned to love. He loved ballad lore, rural festivities, rambling, and all those light modes of passing his time that were most allied to idleness.
But in this dreary house, not a book was to be seen nor the sound of mirth, harp, or song, ever heard; still Twm did not despond; his good humour hadthe effect of brightening, by many a shade, the desponding apprehensions of Moses; and more than once he actually won a smile from one or two of the younger daughters of the house, who, however, soon rebuked themselves for descending to be pleased with anything that a parish apprentice boy could advance.
In the long winter evenings, when no one could possibly invent a task or job for them, Twm and Moses would be allowed to sit a little by the turf fire; when the latter would venture to narrate some hungry tale of gastronomic heroism, in which his fancy revelled, Twm would recite ghost stories that terrified the damsels; and war tales of olden times that he had heard from Ianto Gwyn, or his master, Rhys, that astonished and amused his auditors, at least part of them, for Sheeny Greeg and her echo Shaan disdained to be among the number, but cried shame on him for repeating such audacious lies.
Miserly people often overshoot their mark, and it was so in this farm-house. Old Elwes would have called Morris Greeg a worthy disciple, whilst other misers of even greater note would have looked upon the farm-house and its ways as the very acme of human felicity. But “greed” begets greater evils; and when Morris was by chance called away, the girls indulged themselves in the best way they could find. Theft was largely patronized, and as we should charitably think not without very reasonable excuse. One fair, day when Morris and Sheeny had betaken themselves to a distant corn and cattle mart, the girls, as usual, commenced their preparation for a regular junketing. Twm and Moses, whom they kept at the humble distance of lowly menials, were out together, mending some gaps in the hedges, when Moses sniffing the wind that blew from the direction of the house, with the gifted nose of a dog of the chase, called out with ecstacy, “Twm, I smell pan-cake!”
“So do I, Moses,” returned our little hero, expanding his nostrils with jocular comicality, “Ha!” cried Moses, with an envious snarl, “The selfish wenchesof the house are treating their dainty chops with something nice.”
“Aye!” retorted Twm, quoting from some learned Theban, “when the cat’s away the mice will play. But stop thee here, Moses, and see if I don’t bring thee a share of what is going, in five minutes.” Moses grinned and licked his lips in eager anticipation as Twm hurried off. He entered the house with a sudden startling step, and a bundle of firewood under his arm as an excuse for the intrusion. All was panic within an instant. Two of the girls dashed their jug of sweetened small beer into the pail of hog’s wash, as they heard the first rattle of the wooden latch on Twm’s entrance; Shaan turned pale as the unfried pancake before her, so great was their fear that their parents had returned in the midst of their underhand clandestine doings. “It is only that devil Twm Shon Catty,” cried Shaan, who was the first to recover from the general terror; “Never mind, girls, go and sweeten more beer, for father and mother can’t be home before night.”
“Aye, go and sweeten more beer, and let poor Moses and I have a share of your beer and pancakes,” cried Twm, pointedly eyeing a raised heap of them in a wooden platter before the fire;—“letushave a part, and we won’t tell.”
“Get along to thy work, thou saucy cur!” cried Shaan, striking him with all her strength with the hot frying-pan. “Not till I have our share to take with me,” cried our hero, making a grasping snatch at the heaped pancakes, which he bore off in spite of the united efforts of the lasses to re-capture them. His manner of bestowing them was more commendable on the score of security than of delicacy, as the greater portion was thrust into his shirt-breast and breeches pockets; off he ran over the wooden bridge and along the path through the wood.
In this chase the great heat against his breast gave him considerable pain, and almost arrested his steps, half persuaded to throw away the larded delicacy; St.Vitus never danced faster nor more spasmodically under his pains, than did our hero under the effects of his hot pancakes. They gave him shocks equal in intensity to those from the voltaic pile; in fact he may be said to have been a Salamander enduring the scorchings of heat, but with this difference.—Twm Shon Catty could not well bear them, whereas the Salamander was represented as rather enjoying them than otherwise.
But, like the Spartan boy, Twm heroically determined to bear the self-inflicted torture, and endure to the last. However, it must be confessed, to the minoration of his fame, that not having been favoured with so stoical an education as the aforesaid Lacedemonian, he yielded to nature, and ran and roared, and roared and ran, till he outran his pursuers, who returned breathless home, and he as breathless joined young Moses, where, in their secret haunt, they enjoyed the fruit of his dexterity.
The spot they occupied was one of the discoveries of Moses, before Twm’s arrival, the craggy recesses of which became the depositaries of his filching achievements, and which recurring to in after years, he called his larder. It was situated above the torrent, beside the mountain, at the extreme end of the farm—just where the wilderness had refused to yield another patch to add to former accumulation. But these gormandizing youths were at present too busily engaged to remark on either the beauties or the horrors of the scene.
Studiespiscatorial and fleshy, and certain tricks connected therewith. Pork capers—a new dish.
Emboldened by the impunity with which they had foraged for themselves during the last three months that had followed the doings in our last chapter, both Twm and Moses grew somewhat daring in their gastronomical speculations. Moses, among his restless peerings for something to gratify appetite, had peeped into one of the mountain pools, and joyfully detected the existence of a certain sizeable fish there. This was a discovery which made the young Jew’s mouth water, and his eyes distend with visions of future work for the jaws! Here was an El Dorado of good food, and Moses went into proportionate rapture at the prospect. Twm annoyed him not a little, by laughing at his futile attempts to spear a pike with the dull and clumsy prongs of a dungfork.
Our hero was more successful in his warfare on the trout and eels that abounded in a brook which ran through one of the tarns. Without any contrivance that resembled fishing-tackle in the most remote degree, he remarked a sweeping curve, of a horse-shoe shape, in one part of the brook, and determined, with the assistance of Moses, on sporting his engineering skill, in cutting a new channel for the water, so that it might for the future, run a straight course, and leave the horseshoe portion of it dry. This at different intervals, with no small labour, they at last effected; and when the flood ran along the new channel, its deserted curve became a mess of slimy mud. Into this, with naked feet, they soon waded, and groping cautiously about, succeeded in gathering an abundant harvest of trout and eels. Moses was noisy in his raptures at the result, and so anxious to have them immediately cooked, that he could scarcely wait for that tedious progress.
However, they soon kindled a fire by rubbing together some rotten wood, and with the aid of some dry turf, the quarry under the precipice of Allt y Craig became a temporary heath of blazing beauty. Utterly void of any culinary utensils, they resolved on the primitive mode of broiling their fish on hot stones, and Moses, all alacrity, proceeded on the task of preparing them.
But, alas, for the sequel of their adventure! Before they could realize their project, the dark countenance of Morris Greeg paralyzed their efforts, as the serpent’s gaze is said to fascinate its victim. The angry farmer gruffly demanded where they had been, how they had dared to idle away their time, and what was the meaning of that wasteful fire against the rock. The ready lie, or presence of mind as it is favourably called, of Twm and Moses soon supplied answers, such as they were. Twm said, that hearing the good woman of the house complain of a visit from the old enemy the cholic, he determined to catch a dish of fish for her, to drive it away, pointing triumphantly to his piscatory store; thus beating a retreat with all the diplomacy and tact of a good general, who when he finds he cannot obtain a victory, at any rate manages to gain credit for a wise ‘retrograde.’
Moses followed up Twm’s assertion by declaring that the fire was to frighten away the crows and the kites that might take fancy to the young lambs, or the wheat in the neighbouring field; a manifestation of care over his master’s property, which had, at any rate, the claim of originality to back it. Morris was as great an economist of his words as in matters of worldly goods, and therefore, whatever he thought, he did not waste breath with reply; but suddenly ordered Moses to carry the fish into the house, and Twm to give some hay to the cows. “And be sure,” quoth the careful farmer, “that you give most hay to the cow that gives most milk.”
“I will be sure of it!” replied Twm pointedly, and with sulky asperity. The next moment, to the greatastonishment, and greater anger of Morris Greeg, he threw as much hay as his two arms could embrace, under the water-spout. “There,” cried the redoubted son of Catty, “that is the cow which gives me most milk, for that cursed broth and porridge is almost wholly made from this never-failing animal.”
A precipitous retreat of course, followed this explanation, and Morris Greeg was left alone to chew the cud of his resentment. At dinner the next day, the wrath of Morris having evaporated, all grew smooth again. While Twm and Moses bolted their insipid mess of dovery, otherwise called burgoo, the gratification was rather questionable in having as their share merely the smell of the fried fish, on which Sheeny and Shaan with the younger daughters were regaling, and praising the flavour at every mouthful they swallowed. Moses ground his teeth, and would have impaled them in the excess of his rage, for the loss of his expected feast. Twm said nothing, but inwardly resolved on faring better, and that very speedily. Shaan grinned like a hyena as she treated her dainty gums with fish after fish, and spitefully enjoyed their mortification, as she whispered to Twm, “now we are even for the pancakes.”
Just at the finishing of this mid-day meal, the barking of a strange dog drew Twm and Moses out to the yard. There they saw a half-starved cur, belonging to a cottager who was cutting turf in the adjoining turbary. This wretched animal, evidently a cut-throat leveller in principle, was disputing with one of the pigs his right to engross the whole trough to himself, which the bristly conservative at length resented by snapping in two one of the hind legs of his canine enemy.
The dog set up a dismal howl as a requiem for the loss of the fourth part of his understanding, which was soon silenced by Moses striking him on the head with a large stone, which killed him on the spot. The cottager hurried home, frightened by Twm, who told him would be sued for the damages done by his dog. Our hero, with the assistance of Moses, to whom heimparted the scheme he had now in hand, immediately bathed the buttocks of the pig with the dog’s blood; and then pouring some dry sand in his ear, drove him howling down the yard. Annoyed with the freedom thus taken with his auricular organ, the offended gentleman of the sty rushed to and fro, at a rate as violent as some of his celebrated ancestors, when they sought to drown both themselves and the devils within them in the sea. Morris lifted his hands amidst the assembled household, and ruefully exclaimed, “the devil is in the pig!” His gambols were certainly most extraordinary, and far surpassed the evolutions’ of the bull’s frisky wife, commonly called the cow’s courante. He sometimes aimed to stand on his hind legs, to emulate the figure, intimating in pantomime, “I am as good a man as the best of you!”
While in this position, he would toss his head as loftily as an envious beauty that heard her rival praised; and then, as if to evince his unrivalled versatility, he aimed to reverse his position, and stand on his head.
Thus did he enliven the farm-yard, and cut sundry unusual capers, not at all in keeping with the hitherto grave tenor of all his modest life; at which Morris was scandalized, the women astonished, and the two mischievous imps that caused this torture, amused as if a party of mountebanks had exhibited before them. “Such things have been in the days of old,” cried Morris, with a pious whine, “the pig is possessed of a devil.”
“Of a legion of devils!” screamed Sheeny and Shaan, in the utmost alarm; “the pig is mad!” cried Moses; “the dog was mad that bit the pig!” cried Twm. This remark, which assigned a natural cause for the frisky gambols of the tortured grunter, had the effect of sobering every one from their wild supernatural speculations, to the no less alarming fact that poor porker was the victim of hydrophobia. Morris all at once turned pious, and remarked that “this might beone of the signs which were to precede the end of the world.”
“Ah!” whispered Twm to Moses, “it is a sign which certainly precedes the end of the pig.”
Convinced by the reiteration of Twm and Moses, that the pig was really stark staring maliciously and mischievously mad, Morris seemed more grieved at his prospect of worldly loss in so much hog’s flesh, than as if his first suggestion had been verified about the dissolution of the world. He pathetically lamented the loss it would be, to kill him before he was duly fattened. “He must be killed and eaten fresh,” whined Morris, “as he is too lean to be salted and baconed.”
“He shall be killed and buried like a dog!” cried Sheeny, “or we shall all be maddened and biting one another, if we swallow a bit of him, fat or lean—Oh! the pity to lose this precious griskin!” “I won’t eat mad pork!” cried Shaan; “nor I,”—“nor I!” cried the younger lasses, deeply horrified at the idea of being smothered between two feather-beds, which Twm assured them, with a very grave and serious face, was an easy and comfortable death, and such as was always allotted by law to those who got mad by the bite of a mad dog, or by eating what was venomed by his bite. “I will never touch a bit of him,” cried all the girls at once; “but I will!” muttered both Twm and Moses, to themselves, glowing with the thought of future feasting.
Morris in the deepest tribulation pondered on the perversity of his household, and at last decided on waiting till next morning before he would give his ultimatum as to how the pig was to be disposed of, in the meantime locking him up in a stable. It was a night of trial for Morris. To lose an entire porker at one fell swoop, and the household to be so very unaccommodating as not to eat him, was a really serious thing. He mentally prayed for the renewed health on the part of the pig, or else that some kind pig-drover would fall from the clouds and be the saving angel of him. The said Morris Greeg’s consciencedid not see further than his own acts. If the imaginary drover bought the pig, and others were made mad, why it was none of Morris’s concern. So much for his refined morality. Thus he comforted himself by reflecting, that whoever got mad with eating him, that wastheirconcern, nothis; as it would be unbecoming in him to dictate to others what they were to buy or to eat. And as to mentioning his faults, as some unreasonable readers require, he defied any one to provethatto be a fault, which was evidently his misfortune.
Boundless was the mirth of Twm and Moses, as in their season of rest they agitated the question as to what report they were to make in the morning. “Suppose,” said the waggish Jew-boy “that we let the pig out, and say that he escaped into the yard, and bit a goose, (which we can kill and eat;) that the goose got mad and bit the wheel-barrow; that the wheel-barrow dashed itself frantically against the dung-cart; and that both together they rolled and rattled all night about the yard, like the capering of ten thousand devils.” Twm over-ruled this wild suggestion, and gave a report more consonant with probabilities that the animal was more mad than ever, and that he feared his malady would infect the stable, so as to make it unsafe to put the horses there again till the walls were white-washed and every part of it purified.
This was a grave and plausible position in which to place the affair, and quite fell in with Morris’s own way of thinking; and at last he determined on having the maddened monster, as he called him, killed and buried. This was at last carried into effect by our young worthies, with the assistance of Mike the mat-man, who inhabited a wretched hovel in the neighbourhood, and maintained himself, a wife, and one child, by making rush mats, and coarse willow baskets, which he hawked over the country. Mike, of course, was let into the secret, and in the night the worthy trio commenced their avocations of body-snatchers. The much injured porker was disinterred, and more honours were paid him after death, than had ever been conferredupon him in life. But this is the way with human beings, sometimes, as well as with the denizens of the sty; and if we choose to moralize, we have an excellent opportunity given us—but we forbear.
Many and merry were the evenings spent over the remains of the pork, by Twm and Moses, under the humble roof of Mike the mat-man and his wife, who were equal partakers of the feast. These promising youths, on pretending to retire to their nightly rest, made a point of hastening to the place of goodly food and pleasant smells, where they spent the greater part of the night, and thus acquired their earliest taste for dissipation.
Mosesdisplays his inventive power in catching mutton. The storm bursts, and the tricks of Twm and Moses are discovered. Hukin Heer informs, and receives his reward. The house is in an uproar.
As the material of their feasting was waning, like a pleasant moon that declines towards the latter quarter, Moses grew more and more uneasy, as foul food or starvation was staring him in the face, night and day. As he utterly failed to sleep, he employed the silent hours of midnight to hatch a scheme for the procurement of future provender. “Twm,” quoth the young schemer one morning, “you love mutton, and so do I; and as you provided the pancakes and the pigs, as well as the fish, (a quinsey fill the throats that swallowed them!) it is now my turn to be founder of the feast. I will not only find the feast, but I will manage matters so well, that Sheeny Greeg herself shall cook it for us.”
Then he related, as Morris had informed him,how in former years the sheep had repeatedly fallen headlong from the height of Allty Craig, and been killed, and how since those times he had made a thick hedge to keep them from the edge of the precipice. “But we won’t be so particular now,” said Moses, “for I mean to get up an accident for one of the sheep. Then we may eat and be happy again; we’ll have a change this time. It was pork before, and now we’ll have mutton.”
“With all my heart,” said Twm, “only do it all yourself, then we shall see what you can do without my assistance.” Thus challenged, Moses felt it as a point of humour to proceed in the affair alone.
Explanatory of what follows, it is here necessary to quote the observation of one of our best South Wales tourists, on the subject of the Welsh hilly sheep. “I was much struck,” says Malkin, “with the difference between the hilly sheep and those of the vale; the former are not only smaller, but infinitely more elegant and picturesque in figure. They seemed to have all their wits about them, so that one would think the race had acquired its proverbial character for silliness by feeding on rich and artificial pastures, without having inherited it originally in the state of nature. When we got into the lane, we met with a flock of several hundred, which live among the rocks all the year round, only coming down in shearing time. They had us in front, and their shepherd and his dog in the rear.The bounds many of them made in avoiding us,were equally powerful and lofty with those of wild goats.”
Even such was the woolly tribe, from which the insatiate Jew was now preparing to select a victim. Ambitious of the sole credit of the enterprise, he desired Twm to stay below and leave him to follow his own plan. Scarcely thinking of the matter in hand, Twm took his seat on a gate, opposite to the lofty cliff of Allty Craig Llwyd, pondering in his mind about his distant home, the loved scenes which he had left for these, and above all, his mother, fromwhom he had been so long separated. Moses wound up the hill, and attained the top at the back of the cliff.
With the assistance of the farm-dog he soon drove one of the finest of the wethers into the angular nook formed by the hedge of the adjoining wood, and that which screened from the edge of the terrific cliff. The dog, being set on, barked and bit incessantly, while Moses shouted and bellowed with waving arms, till, worried by stupidity at last, the sheep bounded up, and sprang far over the hedge, and downward in the yielding air—ignorant of the yawning gulf behind the hedge, and the snare laid for his life! Moses set up a triumphant yell like that of a wild Indian, as he peered over the precipice and saw the downward movements of the poor sheep. Startled with the shout of Moses, at this moment Twm looked up, and saw the animal describing a rainbow sweep, and turning over and over in its descent through the air, and its ultimate fall into the quarry beneath, where it dropped lifeless.
So little did our hero relish this cruel affair that he would scarcely speak to Moses, when the latter expected high applause for his handywork. But the Jew-boy, nothing daunted, ran to the farmer, whom he found cobbling up an old plough in the yard, to save expense of paying a wheelwright.
“Oh dear! Oh dear!” whined Moses, with the greatest appearance of heart-touched concern, “a terrible accident has happened—one of the sheep—the fattest and finest of the whole flock—has just sprung over the hedge above Allty Craig, and broke its beautiful neck.” Morris threw down the axe he was using, and looked nearly as sorry, angry, and despondent as he felt. “Nothing but misfortunes!” cried he at last, “nothing but misfortunes for me, wretched man that I am!” his thoughts dwelling at that moment on the fine pig that he lately lost. “First a fine pig, and now my finest sheep. Verily, this must be the end of the world, such judgments could not come without reason!”
“Hadn’t we better cut his throat to save his life,” inquired Moses in the most compassionate and tender tone that he could assume, forgetting the slight anomaly which his suggestion presented; “and then, sir, hadn’t we better skin him too?” continued the young slip of Judaism. “If he isn’t bled directly, and nothing said about the accident, the women will vote him to be buried in the same grave with the hog, considering his beautiful mutton as no better than so much carrion. You know the women are so shamefully dainty in such matters.”
This wily speech won the entire approbation of Morris Greeg, and patting Moses’s shoulder, he thanked Providence that he had so faithful a servant; adding in the same breath, “be sure you don’t cut the skin.”
This gave Twm and Moses full employment for the rest of the evening, while Morris entered the house, and delivered the startling intelligence to his household that he had determined to give them all a treat, and that for this purpose he had ordered one of the finest sheep to be slaughtered, that they might have fresh mutton.
It was just as the first dinner from this promised feast was finished, on the day following, that Hukin Heer, that tall lanky cottager, whose dog had been killed by Moses, under the imputation of madness, called on Morris and Sheeny; and in a self-sufficient mysterious manner, informed them that he had a long story to tell them. As he cast a furious look at Moses, that worthy felt an inward conviction that his long story boded him no good; so taking up his hat in a hurried manner, he prepared to depart. Hukin Heer, however, told Morris, that as his tidings concerned the whole household, and that he was a man who scorned to criminate any one behind his back, he particularly wished that Moses and Twm should be present, to hear all that he had to urge against them. Moses treated his insinuations with a bold look of defiance as his insignificant features couldpossibly assume, yet trembling with dread that some important discoveries to his disadvantage were to be made.
Twm’s only amusement at that moment consisted in watching the terrified expression upon the countenance of the young Israelite, and in mentally commenting upon the probable consequences of Heer’s information. Now all the family were seated round; Hukin occupying a chair that commanded the passage, in case the culprits aimed to escape, and Sheeny with her female brood, bursting with curiosity to hear what diableries Hukin had to unfold.
It turned out that this unlucky cottager, on the destruction of whose cur, by the relentless hand of Moses, fled in the utmost alarm at the supposed damages done by him, according to the insinuations of Twm, under the influence of canine madness. This, Hukin knew to be a fabrication, and suspecting the rest to be so, indulged in bitter feelings of resentment against the insignificant Jew whelp, as he called him, who on false pretences had destroyed his poor dog. Brooding over his wrongs, he at times revenged himself, in the early dark winter evenings, by tearing the hedges of Morris Greeg, by which amiable pastime he repaired the deficiency of his own fuel, and gave endless labour to those parish apprentices to repair them.
One eventful evening he caught up the clue which furnished him with the means of revenge. He was returning home, after despoiling the hedges, when he heard the sound of footsteps; at once he concealed himself and his load of faggots, and like a stealthy spy, awaited the results. While in this position, by the imperfect light of a dull moon, he caught a full view of Twm and Moses. Abandoning his load of wood, he dogged their steps till they were housed in the hovel of Mike the mat-man. He then saw the inmates enjoying the lingering remains of the pig, gloating over it, and making sundry comments which might, to say the least, be considered suspicious. Forseveral nights Heer followed them, and saw the same scene enacted; he had at last gathered a full and connected narrative of the whole affair, and it was an intense satisfaction to have these sweet means of revenge in his possession.
On the day previous to the present, in the full glow of triumphant malice, he called on Mike, and informed him that his midnight feastings were discovered. Poor Mike trembled with apprehension of the evil consequences that might accrue to him; and in the hope of propitiating the angry spirit of his revengeful neighbour, confessed all he knew, which was everything, about the matter. It seemed as if the spirit of vengeance had yielded a favourable ear to Hukin’s desires; for on this same evening, as he lurked in the wood adjoining Allty Craig, and only separated from it by the hedge, it was his lot to witness the last enormity of Moses, in driving the sheep, on which they had been feeding, over the dreadful precipice.
All these particulars, with the exception of his own part in despoiling the hedges, he narrated before the present assembled party, with the most enlarged minuteness, while the different members of the family were agitated with various feelings as they listened to his exaggerated account of the affair.
Vain would be the attempt to seek words that could do adequate justice in describing the effects of this discovery on the countenance of the economic Morris, and that amiable provider of short commons, his wife. If one groaned forth her unutterable grief, the other ground his teeth; and in the vehemence of his wrath could not help thinking that the penal statutes required amendment—that it was an infamous interference on the part of the law to call the sacrifice of a parish apprentice or two, in the way of just resentment, by the hideous name of murder; while to his thinking, it was much less criminal than clandestinely killing a pig or a sheep, that would fetch so much more money. Almost delirious with his troubles, he paced the house to and fro, at the frantic rate of five miles to the hour,muttering to himself a complete summary of the evils that had befallen him.
“Pig not mad—tickled by the sand in his ear—all eaten by the boys and the mat-man—curse their stomachs!—sheep driven over the precipice—worth ten shillings—Oh!—villainy unheard of—the world was innocent till now—all former villainy child’s play to this—the latter day is coming fast—signs like these are not given for nothing! The prophets have said”—
“What’s become of all the fine lard, you cut-throat villains?” whined Sheeny, in the most touching accents, thinking of thetesian vroy, or short cake, that was lost to her forever; while the younger lasses looked bewildered at the prophetic passage alluded, and wondering where it was to be found. As nobody answered her interesting inquiry, Sheeny continued to bite her nails and drum the devil’s tattoo with the heel of the wooden shoe; while Hukin Heer grinned like a demon at the mischief which he had made.
Both Morris and Sheeny were at length roused from their stupor by the inquiry of Hukin,—“Well, what be you going to do with them? I have a couple of hairy halters in my pockets here, that I brought for the purpose; we had better tie their hands behind them, and send them at once in a cart to jail, where they will be hanged, drawn, and quarted, as a warning to all rogues who take away the lives of innocent dogs,”—“and pigs!” roared Griffith; “and sheep!” shrieked Sheeny, as a climax to the whole.
Twm and Moses were on the alert, and in less time than it takes us to narrate the fact, Moses threw a three-legged stool at the informer, and that with such force that it fractured the elbow-bone of his right arm. In an instant Hukin recovered himself, and was about to rush on the young Jew. But Twm Shon Catty was ready, his “soul was in arms and eager for the fray.” As Hukin advanced, Twm launched a heavy oaken stool at his head, which laid his lank carcass on the floor, bathed in blood. The scene was almost taking a tragic turn when Sheeny changed its spirit by attackingMoses with a birch broom, while one of the younger was pricking him in the breech with a toasting-fork, till he blared like a beaten calf. In the confusion of the fray, Shaan attacked her father with a dirty flummery ladle, that whitened and disfigured his black beard and whiskers, as if a barber had commenced his operations, while the good man stood open-mouthed marvelling whether these were not additional signs of approaching doom.
Aware that these ladle-bastings were intended for himself, Twm caught Shaan behind, and holding her elbows fast to her sides, gave her a twist round, and inflicting a tremendous kiss on her fat blubbery lips; then pouting with passion, he loosened his hold, and springing over the prostrate carcass of Hukin Heer, retreated through the doorway in good order. Moses followed, but with considerable confusion; dodging his head, and rubbing his seat of honour in his retreat, as the visions of birch-brooms and toasting-forks haunted him long after he was far beyond their reach, whilst seating himself was made a painful operation, and he mentally thought he had undergone the same punishment as he had seen somewhere in an old print, where his satanic majesty was impaling an old witch in that portion of her body,for the convenience of which,chairs were originally invented.
Theflight of the Israelite and Mike. Mirth changed to grief. Killing by kindness, and saving by neglect. A bright vision, and a supernatural seánce. The end of the miserly household.
On Twm’s rushing out of the house, he sought his bed in the hay-loft, and laying himself down, laughed incessantly, at the thought of the scene just passed; at the same time wondering what had become of his luckless fellow in mischief, whom he momentarily expected to follow him. Moses, however, was so confused by his head-drubbings from the broom of Sheeny, and tail-piercing from the fork of little Gwenny, that failing to see Twm in his retreat, he ran straight forward, without knowing whither. But the very legs of Moses without the guidance of his head, seemed to have a predilection for the favourite road which led to the house of feasting; as in this instance they bore him without pause, till housed in the hovel of Mike, the mat-man.
Poor Mike, he found busied in packing up, and loading his pony with a cargo of mats, and preparing for immediate departure, fearing that day-light would send somebody to take cognizance of the share which he had taken in devouring Morris Greeg’s swine-flesh. Moses related all that had passed, and entreated that he might become his companion in his present excursion; assuring him that he had as sweet a voice for crying mats as he could meet with in a month’s march.
Mike assented, and told him to fortify his stomach with what his hut afforded, against the dangers of the midnight air, a hint which was seldom thrown away upon him. The good-natured wife of the mat-man earnestly requested her husband to divide the head of the pig (the only part left!) between himself and Moses. That youth seconded the motion; observingit was dangerous to leave any portion of it behind, as, though dead, it might tell tales, and be claimed by some of the Greeg family; feelingly remarking, “if you have any more pork, rather than you should get into a scrape, I’ll risk it, and take it all myself.—I am not so selfish as to begrudge to carry it.”
Mike winked at his wife, intimating that heknewhis customer. Next morning our hero called at the mat-man’s house, with the laudable desire of putting him on his guard, intending to communicate the adventures and disclosures of the preceding day. But he was doomed to disappointment. Mike had “cleared out” three hours before, escorted by the Israelite, whilst the wife had been left behind to “take care of the things,” and to be the link that should join them to more auspicious times. This breach of good-fellowship on the part of Moses, in leaving him so abruptly, piqued and fretted him not a little. With a commendable spirit that disdained to act the paltry part of a run-away, he entered the house of Morris Greeg at the usual breakfast hour, and took his meal in silence. Sheeny kept her bed this morning, overcome by the tumults of the preceding evening, and Shaan officiated in her place.
The absence of Moses was very slightly commented upon, both father and daughter declaring it would have been well for them if he had taken himself off much sooner; yet, under all this feigned indifference, it was very perceivable to Twm that his loss was much felt by them. Under a couple of old sacks on the settle by the fire lay the damaged body of Hukin Heer, where he had been groaning all night. Without the slightest reference to the past, Twm was told that his first job that morning would be to take Hukin home in a dung-cart, charging him to put plenty of clean straw under him, so that he might ride in style and comfort.
Thus Twm had to perform an office for an enemy, who the day before volunteered to do the same for him,—under different circumstances, that he was tobe pinioned like a felon, bound hand and foot, and escorted to the county jail, a reversion of the scene which Twm liked rather than otherwise. It reminded him of the gallows which the scriptural Jew had made for some one else, but eventually took his position there himself.
On Twm’s return, after depositing Hukin with his wife, whose inquiries he cut short, by urging his haste, he was surprised to find that although it was the dinner hour, no food was prepared, nor was any one member of the family to be seen or heard. This unusual stillness he considered as strangely contrasting with the bustle and agitation of the previous day, nor could he in any way account for it. At length the deep silence was feebly broken by some voices upstairs, in the softened tones of pitying condolement, succeeded by the heavy sobbing of a female, amidst the earnest and agonized prayer of a gruff broken voice, which he at once knew to be that of Morris.
At length he recognized the well-known voice of Sheeny, amidst the loud wailing of her daughters, passionately exclaiming, “It is—O God, it is—that murderous disorder, the white-plague pest!” Such was the expressive name by which that awful visitor since known by the name of small-pox, was announced to be in the house. An indescribable vague feeling of terror thrilled through his whole frame, as the dreadful fact became known to him. As in those days scarcely any one knew how to treat this remorseless enemy of the race of man, its very existence in the neighbourhood was deemed a certain messenger of doom, and even in those rare cases where the life of the infected was spared, the envious demon stamped fearful foulness on the face of beauty, and hideously scarified the smoothest cheek, so that the parent knew not the features of his child.
The first hasty thought that crossed our hero’s mind, was to fly, and escape while yet clear of the contagion; but in an instant his nobler though mistaken feelings abjured the thought, bad as they hadbeen to him, of deserting this afflicted family in the dark day of their heavy visitation. However, his presence was no more noticed than his absence would have been. Day after day, things remained in a similar state; at length the lower part of the house was absolutely deserted, or inhabited by him alone. Even the fire was extinguished, and the house might have been uninhabited for anything to be seen to the contrary. There were no sounds, except the occasional groans of Morris, and the cries of the frightened females. The family assembled together upstairs, almost courting infection by their presence, and Twm was therefore left to provide for his own wants.
Rarely could he meet with any one to enquire, as his feelings prompted, who were the sufferers, and how they fared. The third day since the commencement of the sickness, as he sat lonely and languidly, from the disordered state of his stomach, unable to partake of the dry food before him, a shriek of women announced some fatality to have taken place. Morris came down, with streaming eyes and agitated face, and for the first time in his life grasping his hand in friendly wise, emphatically proved how suffering had subdued his selfishness, and humanized his hard heart. At length, with broken voice, he said, “She is gone—my youngest girl is gone,—and I fear my little Gwen will follow soon.”
Even while commiserating with Morris, Twm complained of a head-ache, and a loathing sickness, with a feverish burning of the whole frame, that was overwhelming him. Morris immediately saw that he was infected, and told him to go and lie down; informing his family of the feeling evinced by him for their suffering, and that he was decidedly in the disorder. Then taking his staff he hurried to the different cottages that were thinly scattered among the lonely mountain cwms or dingles, with the hope that either kindness or considerations of interest would induce an elderly female or two to engage with him as nurses, to watch and attend the sick.
Accordingly, two that had gone through the ordeal of thefrech wen, or the white pest, as the small-pox was called, accompanied him home. They commenced their office by making a regular, roasting fire, and feasting themselves in the best manner the house afforded, attending to number one first, as it behoved all nurses to do, their patients for the time being of course quite a secondary consideration. Feasting to inaugurate their arrival, they averred was an ancient custom, and must be adhered to. He knew not whether it was an ancient one; but that it is aconvenientone, none could deny. Twm soon found himself at the height of the malady. Well for him was it, that the fever and other accompaniments of this fearful disorder removed from him all desire for food—for none was brought to him; none called to offer their kindly offices, nor to inquire how he fared; and he had to feel in the acutest degree the abandoned lot of that “no man’s child,” the sick and suffering parish apprentice. His bed in the hay-loft was an old hop-sack, half filled with the chaff of oats; and his covering an old tattered blanket, and a musty rug that had served several offices for horses.
Thus, with the whistling of the wind through the numerous crevices of the crazy walls, and the rain dripping on him at times, through the imperfect rotten thatch, he remained hours, days, and dreary nights, groaning away his time, impatiently longing for death, or speedy recovery. When daylight dawned, his mind wearied by aches and pains of the body, and by a complete absence of the power of thought, would seek some occupation and amusement in speculation on the formation of the dark heavy folds of the numerous cob-webs that waved to and fro over his head, from the mouldy beams and rafters, like the triumphant flags of squalid penury; while the squeaking of mice, that ran in troops about him, became the miserable music that served to vary the monotony of his heavy hours.
One night, while doubly darkened, both by the deepshades of midnight, and his eyes scaled by the glutinous adhesion of the putrid “pest,” lonely and uncared for, he was cheered and comforted in a manner as mysterious as it was delightful. In after years, when referring to the circumstances about to be detailed, marvellous and incredible as it may appear, he always protested with a solemnity that he deemed the subject called for, that he was neither absorbed in slumber at its occurrence, nor under the influence of the slightest delirium, but wakeful and sensible as ever he was during his healthful mid-day avocations.
Turning upon his humble bed, wearied by the long and continued gloom, weakened by continual aches and pains, a chorus of sweet voices broke upon his ear, ravishing from the beauty of its strains. In an instant afterwards, the wretched gloom was dispersed by a brilliant light which burst into the loft, and made all the old familiar objects radiant with a most unearthly brilliance. Simultaneously with the sight and sound, pleasant sensations sprang within his breast, and every pain had vanished. While striving with the efforts of reason to account for what he had felt and mentally beheld, to his unutterable wonder, a tall female form appeared beside his lowly bed, in full glow of youth and beauty, arrayed in costly attire.
She had nothing about her allied to what he called the supernatural—all seemed perfect reality—and although exceedingly lovely, and benevolent in aspect, she was nothing more nor less than a living “lady of the land,” in widow’s weeds of the costly habiliments of the present time. As he sank abashed from her fixed and smiling gaze, she extended one of the finest hands he had ever beheld, and pointed to two marriage rings, one above the other, on the third finger of the left hand. He gazed steadfastly on the rings, and, as he thought, he saw a third one above the others, of a much paler hue; but on viewing it closer, it appeared simply a white narrow silken ribbon, tied in that peculiar fashion, called a true-lover’s knot. Twicehe looked from the finger to the face, struggling to give utterance to the question that was trembling on his lips, as to the meaning indicated, when a shriek from the house thrilled through his heart; the glorious vision with the heavenly accompaniments of light and music, were in an instant gone.
The lovely picture vanished, leaving poor Twm more chagrined than ever was Tantalus. Like the mirage, it vanished and faded away, leaving the weary gazer disappointed and dispirited. But still the heart of Twm was comforted with high, though baseless hopes, that fortune had some precious gift in store for him, which time would yet bring forth.
The pleasurable sensations excited in the breast of our worthy, by what he ever after called his “glorious vision,” in healing the mind, had the auspicious effect in cicatrizing his body. But as he recovered his sight, and found the fever abandoning him, his appetite increased, and he became at length tremendously hungry, with apparently nothing within his reach to appease his inward cravings; and he was yet too weak to quit his loft in search of any food.
At times, indeed, somewhat nerved, or rather maddened by his rage for food, his weak hands would rustle in the pea-straw that was heaped between his bed and the wall; and occasionally, after a long search, to his great joy, he would discover an unbroken pea-shell that had escaped the searching of the flail, while in the act of thrashing in the barn. He had heard tales of shipwreck and disaster, when lots had been cast between the mariners as to which should be killed to furnish food for the rest. He could believe them all now, whatever doubt he might have had before. If he could now discover a neglected pea-shell, in spite of the soreness of his hands and mouth, he would open it and devour it with the utmost avidity. Just as this wretched resource was failing him, one day, after a vain and heart-aching search for another pea-pod, a sudden rustle in the straw startled him, andin great alarm he drew back his hand, in the dread of coming in contact with a rat.
From this feeling he was agreeably relieved by the clucking of a hen, that in the same moment descended through a hole in the floor of the loft into the stable below. This homely “household fowl” now became his “bird of good omen,” which in after years he adopted as his crest; for after a short search he discovered no less than three of her eggs. This was indeed “manna in the wilderness” to his declining hopes. A spring in the desert to the parched pilgrim; a port and safety to the shipwrecked mariner; wealth unexpected to the victim of poverty. Not one of those electrifying “God-sends” was ever welcome with greater heartfelt thankfulness, than the humble prize presented to our hero. But this assistance, however welcome at the time,—and wildly welcome it most truly was,—proved after all but temporary.
Thus, although recovering fast from the horrors of the small-pox, he was in the perilous jeopardy of becoming a victim to starvation. Yet hope was strong within him, and wild, young, and thoughtless as he was, he was no stranger to the comfort to be derived from a dependence on Providence.
While the cravings of hunger assailed the poor parish apprentice with unrelenting wolfishness, very different was the treatment of the suffering children of the house. The neglect visited upon the poor parish apprentice, was avenged by the attention paid to the children of Morris. Twm’s neglect proved his salvation, while the unremitting kindness (mistaken though it was), shown to the farmer’s offspring, proved their destruction, for Morris literallykilled them with kindness. Without judgment, or advice, except from those self-interested conceited nurses, who were more ignorant than herself; Sheeny Greeg sought every delicacy to coax the waned and pampered appetites of her afflicted ones.
Every breath of pure air studiously excluded fromtheir room, they were almost suffocated by the quantity of clothes in which they were wrapped. She gave them the most delicate cakes that the homely hands of her assistants could contrive, with spiced and sugared ale, and even wine; so thoroughly was the accumulating spirit of avarice swallowed up by the nobler and more powerful passion of affection for their perishing young ones; a feeling after all, more eulogized than it really merits, as it is but another mortification of human selfishness.
Three victims had already succumbed to the ravages of the disease, and their fourth child now lay at the door of death. Lamentations and groans were continual, but no proper means for the recovery of the patients were adopted. A poor hedge carpenter came from the distant village of Mawn Dee, and brought with him the last covering of the victims of disease, placing them, with assistance, in the slight alder coffins; the parents took their heart-rent final look, and sank insensible with excessive grief;—and yet the nurses feasted. They continued to roast and boil, piously hoping their valuable services would be long wanted; and although none of the family could partake of their cookery, yet, the nurses feasted! These good ladies, however, were rather disturbed at this time in their comfortable doings, as some of the Mawn Dee women, like the vulture which smells the warfield and the human gore afar off, followed in the wake of the carpenter, hoping by a little canting condolement with the family, to be engaged; but finding the field occupied, they were guilty, as their opponents said, of the heinous offence of offering their services gratis, to sit up in their turn and watch the sick.
This, it must be said, was ever a welcome office to persons of this description, especially at a substantial house; as on such occasions as watching the sick, and laying out the dead, feasting is as prevalent as at weddings. As the paid nurses who assumed the consequence of regulars, failed to eject the volunteers, who were more numerous, they revenged themselves bygiving them all the work to do except what appertained to swilling and mastication; their own veteran talents bearing the full brunt of that important piece of service, which was not to be trusted to mere mercenary recruits.
Superstition was rampant amongst these old hen-wives. All sorts of intimations concerning future events were made out of very simple occurrences. No one must go under a ladder, if they would enter the matrimonial noose. Salt was a very unfortunate article of diet, whilst candlewicks were made a medium for the discovery of a coming death. Some of these old grannies dilated upon corpse candles seen by them previous to the deaths of the young women of the house; others dilated on the awfulness of a spectral burial, where shadows of the living supported the bier of the departed towards the church-yard.
One night, between twelve and one, while the three coffins and their contents presented a woeful sight, lying side by side on the oak table, Morris, afflicted as he was, assisted his wife in supporting by the fireside his fourth daughter, whose death they also deeply dreaded, as an old cottage woman, while she basted a loin of mutton roasting before the fire, dwelt much on the certainty of supernatural appearances, illustrating her convictions by instances of her own experience. All at once, the current of her discourse was arrested by a shudder that overcame and struck her dumb, on hearing a rumbling and irregular noise, as of falling furniture, which also terrified the group about the fire. The noise increased, and at last seemed as if somebody was stumbling in his way in the dark.
Some shrieked, some rose and ran to remote corners, covering their head with their aprons, while others sat breathless, as if nailed to the bench, and dissolved in streams of perspiration, their eyes starting from their sockets—when a figure with the air and rush of a maniac darted in, tore the roasting meat from the string, and disappeared with it, uttering in a dismal hollow tone,
“O God, I am famished by these wretches!” The consciences of the farmer and his wife were dreadfully wrung, as they recollected the poor apprentice Twm, whom they had left in the depth of the malady which had deprived them of three of their children, to live or to die, as he might; nor would Morris allow anybody to rescue the meat, but snatching a loaf from the shelf, he entreated Twm to come in and eat his fill at the fire. But the youngster having secured the bread, re-entered his hay-loft, and with the ravenousness of a starved hound devoured his precious prey in darkness. That was the sweetest meal ever eaten by our hero.
In narrating this event in after life, he used to say that the theft of this joint saved his life. He was then as ravenous as a wolf, and was only endowed with supernatural strength for the moment, to effect his purpose. While yet the farmer, with tears of real penitence, was calling out to him, a loud scream from his wife convinced him that his fourth child was also dead.
With wild and insupportable agony, Morris fell upon his knees, and with interrupting sobs exclaimed, “I see the hand of Heaven in this, and a heavy judgment has befallen us for our cruelty to the poor boy; but he will live! he! the lad whom we treated fouler than the beast! he will outlive this pest, while I and mine perish.”
The suffering of the unhappy man was pitiable and heart-rending to witness; and on the very day of his children’s burial, with loud cries of remorse and sorrow, he expired.
Twm recovered, according to the farmer’s prediction, which was further verified, inasmuch as the remainder of his children did not live to see the end of the year; and his wife, losing her senses, was ever after a wretched moping idiot.