If the truth must be told, Pedr slept soundly that night, just like the most fortunate of lovers. And the next morning, after he had found fault with his breakfast and scolded Betsan for her late rising, he betook himself, with a far more cheerful heart than he had known in many hours, to Nelw’s. Pedr in the darkened shop had learned a lesson which he would not have exchanged for any pure unmixed joy upon earth. And he knew even now, with the sun upon him and a strange yearning within him, that it mattered very little what Nelw had done or was hiding from him, for despite every dreadful possibility he loved her with a feeling that mastered fear.
When Nelw opened the door for him she shrank away.
“Och, Pedr,” she said, “so early!”
“Well, indeed,soearly,” he replied, with an attempt at gaiety.
“So now I must be tellin’ you,” she whispered, hanging her head, and looking, with her white face, ready to sink to the floor.
“Indeed, dearie, you’ll not be tellin’ me, whatever,” he declared hotly.
“Pedr!” she exclaimed, “but you said Catrin Griffiths—alas, I must tell you!” She lifted her hand as if she were going to point to something and then dropped it.
“I’m not carin’ what I said about Catrin Griffiths or about any one else. Dear little heart, you’re makin’ yourself sick over this an’——”
“Och, but I must tell you!” and again came the futile motion of the hand.
“You shall not!” he commanded.
“Yes, now, now,” she cried, lifting her hand; “Pedr I—I have——”
Pedr seized the uplifted hand.
“No, Nelw, no;” and he put his finger over her mouth and drew her to him.
“Pedr, I must,” she pleaded, struggling to free herself.
“No, not now; I’m not carin’ to know now. Wait until we’re married.”
“Oh no, oh no!” Nelw moaned. “That wouldn’t be fair to you. Och, if you knew——”
But Pedr covered her mouth with his hand and drew her closer.
“Not now, little lamb.”
She sat quite still, her head upon his shoulder. Pedr felt her relaxing and heard her sighing frequently. She seemed so little and so light where she rested upon him, almost a child, anda new sense of contentment stole over Pedr. He patted her face; she made no reply, but he felt her draw nearer to him. At last she lifted her hand and passed it gently over his head.
“Och, Pedr,” she whispered, “I’m growin’ old.”
“Old, nothin’,” replied Pedr.
“Aye, but I’m over thirty.”
“Pooh!” returned Pedr, “that’s nothin’!”
“Yes, it is; an’ as I grew older you would mind even more if——”
“Nelw,” said Pedr warningly, covering her mouth again.
“But, Pedr, how could you love me when I’d grown very old? I wouldn’t have any hair at all,” she faltered, “an’ not any teeth,” she continued, gasping painfully, “an’—an’ wrinkles an’ oh—an’ oh—dear!” she half sobbed.
“Tut,” said Pedr calmly, “what of it? It’s always that way, an’ I’m thinkin’ love could get over a little difficulty like that, whatever. Indeed, I’m thinkin’ what with love an’ time we’d scarcely notice it. I dunno,” he added reflectively, “if we did notice it I’m thinkin’ we’d love each other better.”
At these words Nelw smiled a little as if she were forgetting her trouble. After a while she spoke—
“You are comin’ this afternoon again, Pedr, are you?”
“Yes, dearie,” he answered, “I’m comin’.”
“Och, an’ it must—it must be told,” she ended, forlornly.
It was quiet up and down the winding cobblestone street; no two-wheeled carts jaunted by; there was no clatter of wooden clogs, no merriment of children playing, no noise of dogs barking. And all this quietude was due to the simple fact that people were preparing to take their tea, that within doors kettles were boiling, piles of thin bread and butter being sliced, jam—if the family was a fortunate one—being turned out into dishes, pound-cake cut in delectably thick slices, and, if the occasion happened to need special honouring, light cakes being browned in the frying-pan. Previous to the actual consumption of tea, the men, their legs spread wide apart, were sitting before the fire, enjoying the possession of a good wife or mother who could lay a snowy cloth. And the children, having passed one straddling age and not having come to the next, were busy sticking hungry little noses into every article set upon the cloth, afraid, however, to do more than smell a foretaste of paradise.
So the street, except for a gusty wind that romped around corners, was deserted. When Nelw Parry opened a casement on the secondfloor, she saw not a soul. She looked up and down, up and down,—no, there was not a body stirring. Then her head disappeared, and shortly one hand reappeared and hung something to the sill. True, there was not a soul upon the street, but opposite the Raven Temperance, behind carefully-closed lattice windows, sat a woman who saw everything. Catrin Griffiths had been waiting there some time to discover whether Pedr Evans would come to-day as he did other days at half-past four. But when she beheld Nelw’s hand reappear to hang something at the window, she jumped up, with a curious expression on her face, exclaiming, “A wonder!” and ran swiftly downstairs and out into the street. Once in the street she gazed steadily at the object swinging from the casement of the Raven, and again, “A wonder!” she ejaculated. She began to laugh in a harsh low fashion, then shrilly and more shrilly. “Oh, the lamb!” she exclaimed, “oh, the innocent!” Her hilarity increased, and she slapped herself on the hip, and finally held on to her bodice as if she would burst asunder. At the doors, heads appeared; some disappeared immediately upon descrying Catrin, but others thrust them out further.
“See” she called, seeing Modlan Jones coming towards her, “there’s Nelw Parry’scocyn.”
Modlan canted her head upwards towards the object and chuckled—
“Ow, the idiot!”
“Och, the innocent!” laughed Catrin. “’Ts, ’ts,” she called to Malw Owens, who, munching bread, was approaching from a little alley-way; “Nelw Parry’scocyn’sunfurled at last an’ flappin’ in the breeze.”
One by one a throng gathered under the walls of the Raven Temperance, and the explosions of mirth and the exclamations multiplied, until the whole street rang with the boisterous noise, and one word, “Cocyn! cocyn!“ rebounded from lip to lip and wall to wall. But there were some who, coming all the way out of their quiet houses and seeing the occasion of this mad glee, shook their heads sadly and said, “Poor thing! she’s not wise!” and went in again. And there were others who passed by on the other side of the road, and they, too, muttered, “Druan bach!” pityingly, and if they were old enough to have growing sons, cast glances none too kind at Catrin Griffiths. Evidently the “poor little thing” was not intended for her; but, indeed, they might have spared one for her, for it is possible that she needed it more than the woman who lay indoors in a convulsion of tears. Suddenly, amidst the nudges and thrusts andsniggers and shrieks, Catrin clapped her hands together.
“Listen,” she bade, “now listen! I’ll be fetchin’ Pedr.” And with a snort of amusement from them all, she was off down the street.
What happened to Catrin before she reached Pedr’s door will never be told. By the time she came to the Cambrian Pill Depôt she was screwing her courage desperately. Even the most callous have strange visitations of fear, odd forebodings of failure, and hang as devoutly upon Providence as the most pious. It would be robbing no one to give Catrin a kind word or, indeed, a tear or two. Good words and tears are spent gladly upon a blind man, then why not upon Catrin, whose blindness was an ever-night far deeper? She was but groping for something she thought she needed, for something to make her happier, as every man does. And now, as it often is with the one who hugs his virtue as well as with the sinful, the road slipped suddenly beneath her feet and her thoughts were plunged forward into a dark place of fears. She, who always had had breath and to spare for the expression of any vulgar or trivial idea which came to her, could barely say, as she thrust her head in at the door of Pedr’s shop, “Nelw Parry’ll be needin’ you now.” What she had intendedto say was something quite different; since she did not say it, it need not be repeated here.
It seemed an eternity to Pedr before, without any show of following Catrin too closely, he could leave the shop. The sounds of the jangling voices he was nearing mingled with the gusty wind that whickered around housetops and corners, and brushed roughly by him with a dismal sound. He walked with slow deliberateness, but his thoughts ran courier-like ever forward and before him. To his sight things had a peculiar distinctness, adding in some way to his foreknowledge, prescient with the distress he heard in the wind. He looked up to the casement towards which all eyes were directed. Something attached to the sill whipped out in the wind and then flirted aimlessly to and fro. Pedr scanned it intently. Another gust of wind caught it, and again it spread out and waved about glossily plume-like. Then for a moment, unstirred by the air, it hung limp against the house-side; it was glossy and black and—and—thought Pedr with a rush of comprehension—like a long strand of Nelw’s hair.
There were suppressed titters and sly winks as he came to the group before the Raven.
“Ffi, the poor fellow, I wonder what he’ll do now?” asked one.
“Hush!” said another.
“Well, indeed,” answered a third, tapping her head significantly, “what would one expect when she’s not wise?”
“He’s goin’ in,” said a fourth.
While all eyes were upon Pedr, Catrin Griffiths had slipped away from their midst, slid along the wall, and stolen across the street. The look upon Pedr’s face was like a hot iron among her wretched thoughts, and hiss! hiss! hiss! it was cutting down through all those strings that had held her baggage of body and soul together.
Pedr made his way into the house and to the couch where Nelw lay.
“Nelw,” he said.
Nelw caught her breath between sobs.
“Nelw,” he repeated gently, sitting down by her, “there, little lamb!”
Nelw stopped crying.
“Pedr, did you see?” she asked.
“Did I see? Yes, I saw yourcocynhangin’ to the window.”
Nelw sat up straight.
“Do—do you understand, Pedr? Did you hear them mockin’ me?”
“Aye, an’ I know it’s yourcocyn.” Pedr smiled, “Little lamb, did you think that would make any difference?”
“But, Pedr,” she said insistently, as if she must make him understand, “these curls are all I really—really have.” She drew one out straight.
“Aye, dearie, I’m thinkin’ that is enough.”
If he had been telling her a fairy story Nelw’s eyes could not have grown wider.
Pedr cocked his head critically to one side.
“It’s very pretty, whatever,” he added; “I was always likin’ that part of your hair the best.”
And now there is no more story to tell; for Pedr set to work to get the tea for Nelw. As he went in and out of a door, sometimes they smiled at each other foolishly and sometimes Pedr came near enough to pat her on the head. The room, although it would have been difficult to lay hands on its visitors, had other inmates too, for it was full of Pedr’s comrades. Every minute they increased in number, as is the way of the world when two people, even if they are not very wise,—and of course they never will be wise if they are not by the time they are middle-aged,—are joined together in love. And every one of these little visitors took the heart it held in its wee transparent hands and offered it to Nelw. And Nelw, as Pedr had done almost twenty-four hours ago, gatheredthe dreams into her arms, and there they lay upon her breast like the children they really were. And above this scene the shining silver river ran in and out, in and out among its alleys of green trees singing a gentle song which, once it has been learned, can never be forgotten.
On the chimney-pot of Adam Jones’s cottage sat two rooks. They put their bills together this morning just as they did every day, and one said “Ma! Ma!” and the other answered “Pa! Pa!” in raucous but affectionate tones. And the grey wood-pigeons in the woods said “Coo! Coo! Coo!” all day long; and the geese by the stream made futile rushes at one another and passed harmlessly like clumsy knights atilt. And when the kittens played, as they did sometimes on Twthill, there was no suggestion of frolic about it; the ladies’ chain with their mother’s hind legs was done with such harmoniousensemblethat it was just as quiet as the chapel-going step of old Deacon Aphael Tuck and his wife Olwyn. Even the lusty toad who lived under the holly-bush hopped only half-way home, and then, lifting himself unwillingly, straddledpronunciamentoto the holly stem.
At half-past seven the milkman went by,with a very small can in a very small cart, ringing a very big bell,—a bell big as a dinner-bell, that went “Ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong,” in the sleepiest fashion in all the world. And this bell the milkman had to ring a long, long time, for, either it put the inhabitants to sleep and then they must have leisure to wake up again before they could attend to their business, or they were asleep anyway and must have time to get up. And an hour later the post went by, marked V. R. in large shabby gilt letters, for you may be certain thatEduardus Rexhad not yet got on to any document inside or outside this cart that bowled slowly up Twthill, looking as it disappeared at the top like a lazy beetle crawling into a hole. And down at the bottom of Twthill a little stream purred and purred and purred, like a convention of all the comfortable tabby-cats in the universe, or a caucus of drowsy tea-kettles. In the woods beyond the stream, where the wood-pigeons cooed, a little bird called “Slee-eep! Slee-ep! Slee-p!” Some of the young people on Twthill had been known to maintain that it said “Sweet! Sweet! Sweet!” But later they changed their minds, and it seemed like “Sleep! Sleep! Sleep!” to them, too, and they sharply corrected other young people for thinking nonsense. And every daythere was the sound of Deacon Aphael Tuck puffing up the hill, saying under his breath, “Tut, tut, tut, a hill whatever, tut, now isn’t it!”
At the foot of the hill, in the midst of all this quiet lived a little old woman, Gladys Jones, the wife of Deacon Adam Jones. The Welsh have a saying that the first man Adam was a Welshman and that his name was Adam Jones. However that may be, this Adam Jones seemed assuredly the first man in all the world to Gladys, and, in the course of the story you may consider Adam justified in thinking of Gladys sometimes as his Eve. They were very different in appearance. He was tall, gaunt, with a saintly look about his waxen features, a look made attractively human by two deep lines on either side of his mouth. When Gladys was at her antics, caprioling like a shy, pathetic marmoset, these lines deepened, and he would pull his beard and his eyes would twinkle much as stars twinkle on a frosty night. Adam Jones was a saint, and he had need to be. Gladys was tiny in size, round, merry, alert. Her face was round, too, with cheeks as full-moulded as a baby’s, and a small pointed chin that was as sensitive as it was whimsical, and wide, round blue eyes that were as apt to weep as they were to sparkle.
This Saturday morning Gladys sat by the hearth, her head forward, listening for a step. At her left the table was spread with an abundant breakfast. As she listened, misfortune did not come running, but slowly and with the footfall of an old man. Gladys was waiting for an answer concerning the thing she wished to do more than anything else in the world, more than she had ever wished to do anything; the thing she had never done, the thing she had never had a chance to do: go to the Circus. The Circus was to be held on Monday in Carnarvon, near the Castle where the Eisteddfod was held last year; and Carnarvon, only eight miles away, was her old home. She knew that no one else in Twthill had even thought of such an act as going. But what was there wicked about it? Gladys asked herself; and reasoning thus she forthwith asked the deacon for permission. First he looked astounded, then he said he must consider the matter over-night. Now he was coming in to breakfast, and she would have his answer.
Adam Jones came slowly through the doorway, which was surmounted by a gable guard of slate pigeons and flanked by slate rosettes. Out on the hedge poised a privet-cut pigeon, lacking the evil eye of his slate brethren, butpossessed of an evil green tail now pointed with evil significance at Adam’s entering back.
“Well, dad,” said Gladys, as he took his seat at the table.
“Aye, mam, the mist means fine summer weather, indeed.”
“Have ye been thinkin’, father?”
“I dunno——” he faltered. “Aye, mam; better the evil we know than that we know not.”
“Och, dad, am Inotto go?”
“’Twould be playing with fire, and that’s no play, mam. I’ve been talkin’ with Aphael Tuck, and with Keri Lewis, and Evan Edwards, and they say the only man in Twthill has thought of goin’ is Morris Thomas. Morris Thomas is a dark bird, he’s always had a long spoon to eat with the devil, whatever. His missus is sick cryin’ over his ways.”
“But, father, I long so to go!” sobbed Gladys.
“Mother, ye are too gay, too gay! A weak doctrine, an easy path.” The deacon was inclined to attribute Gladys’s gaiety to her Wesleyanism; he himself was a Calvinist.
At this moment, with tears rolling down her cheeks, Gladys did not look over gay; and it would have been difficult for any one to divinethe reputation for liveliness which she had made for herself. No good was coming to her now because she had lightened the heavy quiet of Twthill in various ways; because she had talked with the slate pigeons and clipped the wicked green tail of the privet pigeon; because she twinkled over the candytuft, bright and beautiful enough for a dozen Joseph’s coats, or rang the Canterbury bells when nobody was looking, or pulled the bees off the honeysuckle, or fed the tiny sparrows and sandpipers and rooks as if they were geese, or tickled the toad under the holly-bush till he swelled with joy. It was no consolation to her now that she had always found something during the quiet dreary hours on Twthill to please her fancy, or that she had turned her attention successfully to her neighbours. Mrs. Thomas the greengrocer was a stupid thing, Betty Harries proud, and Olwyn Tuck the shop, starched with her doctrines. Many a trap of words had she set for them and many a trap had been sprung. There were harmless practical jokes, too, and there were matchmaking and theology. In these heat-producing topics Gladys had gained no mean skill, as the privet pigeon knew.
But the deacon took a serious view of her relation to a possible future. He longed to granteverything she might desire. However, there was her soul to be kept! He gathered himself together.
“Mam, ye cannot go,” was his final word.
Adam got up; he wanted to go out very much, and Gladys sat alone thinking. At last she straightened, and shook her head; then she half laughed, then she half cried, as children sometimes laugh and cry almost in the same breath. After this she said aloud to herself—
“I will do it, now, won’t I?” She nodded, “Aye, I will indeed.”
She arose, looking mischievously wicked, and stole out of the back-door of the cottage. She glanced about, and evidently her eyes alighted on what she wished, for she stood there thinking. It wasn’t fair, och! it was such a silent place, not worth a man’s while to wake up in. And that stream, purr, purr, purr, purr all day long, just as if the cats couldn’t attend to that sort of noise better. And those heavy-looking ugly-coloured foxglove bells that grew on the sunny side of the stone wall, and rustled “Tinkle-tinkle, tinkle-tinkle” in a way that Gladys had sometimes thought like the mysterious swishing of dry leaves or the scampering of tiny feet. What if they did know a deal about the Little Folk, it was of no earthlyuse to her. And the white clover and the red clover had such a warm sleepy smell, and those loppy dandelions that grew tall and drooped over, and those silly pink and white stone-crops that lay as still as lizards on the stone wall! Och, what if she had played with them once? She hated them all now. This stillness weighed down upon her like the rocks upon the hills.
She took something from the clothes-line and went into the house. Then she opened a long, heavy chest and was busy in its depths for several minutes. After that she was restlessly active throughout the day. At last bedtime came, and she went to sleep as innocently as the lamb in the sheepfold. But Adam Jones lay awake. He touched the plump wrinkled cheek gently and looked at Gladys’s frilled nightcap with inexpressible longing. White Love, she was so different from other bodies in Twthill, enough to make a man happy as in the Garden of Eden these long years, but enough to vex him sorely too. Aye, he must manage to keep her soul for her, and the good deacon, his hands folded on his chest, his eyes blinking in an effort to stay awake, passed from prayers for Gladys into sleep.
When they arose, the quiet on Twthill haddeepened to silence, for it was the Sabbath. The milkman made his rounds as usual, but instead of the dinner-bell he had a small boy who tiptoed from door to door, gently rapping up the good wives. There was no sound in all Twthill; only the smoke from the chimney-pots told of the life within. And all day long there would be no sound except the Chapel bell ringing worshippers to service and the tread of obedient Sunday-shod feet.
“Come,” said Adam Jones to Gladys, “’tis time to be dressin’ for Chapel.”
“Nay, I’m not goin’.”
“Not goin’! Dear heart, what’s come over ye?”
“I’m not goin’,” was all Gladys obstinately replied.
This was all the good deacon could get from her. Nor would she stir from her place by the fire.
“Mam, where’s my Sunday socks?” he called from upstairs.
“How should I be knowin’?”
“But I cannot find them,” was the distressed answer, while bureau drawers flew in and out.
“Mam,” he called again, “I can’t find them whatever, an’ my grey socks are not here, either.”
“They’re in the mendin’ basket to be darned.”
“But, mam, then where’s the other pair of greys?”
“They’re not clean, they’re to be washed to-morrow.”
“Tut, tut, tut,” said the deacon, sitting on the edge of the bed; then he pulled his boots on over bare feet and stretched down his trousers as far as he could. After that he went meekly downstairs.
“Where’s my Sunday coat, mam?”
“In the chest where it is always.”
“In the chest?”
“Aye.”
Adam Jones bent over the big box where his Sunday coat lay spread out carefully from Sabbath to Sabbath. He groped around, fished out the coat, put it on unaided by Gladys, and leaned over his wife to say good-bye.
“Ye’re not lovin’ me much to-day, mother, are ye?”
Gladys gulped and pushed him away.
He left the house, his Bible under his arm, to join the people streaming up Twthill to the Chapel. Gladys ran to the door and called once. He turned around, but she bit her lips and said, “No matter.”
As Adam stepped into the upward movingthrong, Mrs. Thomas, the wife of Morris Thomas, whispered—
“Och, Morris, look!”
Morris gave one look, covered his mouth with his fingers, and began to shake; but dark bird that he was and long spoon that he had for supping with the devil, his face took on a pitying expression.
“’Tis too bad,” he said; “what shall I do?”
Meantime the children had begun to giggle, little Dilys, and Haf and Delwyn and Ifor and Kats, and a score more. The suppressed tittering caught all the way down the line like a fuse attended by sundry minor explosions, and every eye was directed at Deacon Jones’s back. But Morris’s question remained unanswered, and no one did anything. The deacon, with his gentle bows to right and left and his long stride, skimmed past couple after couple, and entering the Chapel took his deacon’s seat immediately under the pulpit, his back to the congregation.
Other deacons gathered rapidly about him on the circular seat, and there was much nudging among them, and more stir and craning of necks in the Chapel than had ever been there before. But soon the worshippers were launched upon a discussion of Arminianism, that unfortunate setof questions gentle John Wesley managed to flourish before Calvinism. Now Calvinism, full-tilt, rushed smoking and roaring from the kind mouths of the good people in the Chapel, belching flame and destruction upon the laxity of Wesleyanism. Deacon Adam Jones, with his eyes tight closed and his heart bursting with sorrow, was engaged in something like prayer. No matter that he could not know within himself that he was one of the elect. After all, if he strove to be saved and then wasn’t, he could not grumble. He had tried his best; if he failed it was not his fault. But oh, his beloved Gladys, that her feet might be on the Rock and off this sliding sand of Wesleyanism! Or that already he might be landed on the happy shores of the other side, and know her foreordained to be saved! She might ride the wicked Elephant and not fall; a thousand circuses would not harm her in his sight.
Suddenly there was the tramping of a multitude in their silent Sabbath street, followed by a wild “Yah!” The deacons quivered together like so many leaves on a branch, and looked to the high windows, but the windows were so high that only the hills peered down serenely upon the congregation.
At home Gladys, eyeing disconsolately thebright fire and the rows of brass candlesticks and the big shiny cheese dishes, sat in the same place in which Adam had left her. Ah! it was wicked for her to have done that, for her husband was so gentle to her, no man could be better. And now she was making a laughingstock of the lad among the neighbours. The tears rolled out of her eyes, and, irresponsible little body that she was, with the flow of her tears there came a great desire to be comforted for her wickedness. Adam had always comforted her. Suddenly she sat up, for there was the sound of many feet upon the road. She listened, she looked out, she gasped, she sped to the hedge. A great procession was going by. Her amazed eyes fell upon camels, with gentlemen in baggy trousers on their backs. The camels were walking forward, stealthily spreading out their soft-padded feet. And there were many elephants, uneasily swaying the keepers who sat on their heads; for the elephants, hearing the purring of the stream, thought it sounded like the rustling of long jungle-grass, and wished more than anything else that this tidy little hill were a jungle in which they might lie down. Instead, they must trundle wearily up hill, taking comfort in elephantine ways by holding by their trunks to one another’s tails. And theladies from Egypt, seated high in a great barge, fanned themselves and looked yellow and much as Cleopatra must have looked when Mark Antony wooed her. And the float-full of American Indians seemed tired, and something must have been washed off their faces, for certainly they were not red. And the gentlemen representing the musical talent of the German Empire were mopping their fat necks. And in the huge barge representing Japan, courteous little Japs covered their yawns with fastidiously-kept hands. And the “artist” who sat inside the steam-organ wagon became so sleepy that his hand slipped and struck one of the organ pedals. “Yah!” screeched the organ, and I think it was the loudest sound ever heard on Twthill. The only rosy, tidy being in the whole procession was a little maid in white cap and apron who was hanging up fresh towels in one of the living vans, and peeping out of the window at the curious cottages and unpronounceable names decorating each one that she saw. There was no talking, no laughter. This was part of the day’s work for these men and women and beasts. They were on their way to Carnarvon for Monday’s performance. The men looked tired and sober, and so did the women. Gladys thought they all seemed strangely draggled.Indeed, she had imagined they would be quite different, so bright and beautiful, very creatures of the air like the birds. She believed she did not wish to go to the circus after all, for if they were not happy, she was certain she could never be happy looking at them, poor dears! If only Adam would come home, she could stand the stillness, and she would never do anything wrong again.
In the Chapel the service went forward without interruption; the minister, a man of character, convinced that he had met on Twthill all the forces of the world and the flesh and the devil, was not to be terrified by a multitude of feet, even though those feet were an avenging host sent for the destruction of this wicked village, in which he laboured and struggled in vain. The congregation, ignorant of this unflattering opinion of them, followed their heroic leader to a man.
At the close of the service, Deacon Aphael Tuck leaned forward towards Adam Jones.
“Mr. Jones, your socks—your socks——”
“What is that, Mr. Tuck?”
“Your socks. I’m sorry, but did ye intend——”
“Aye, my socks, Deacon,” said Adam, looking apprehensively towards his boots, “aye,I’ve been lookin’ for them—my Sunday socks.”
“They’re on your back,” said the senior deacon, coughing.
Adam Jones flushed all over his pale face; then he smiled, much as if he enjoyed having his Sunday socks on his back rather than on his feet, and then, recollecting, he began to explain to the deacon.
“Well, ’tis Sunday,”—the deacon knew this,—”and Gladys takes very good care of my clothes whatever, and puts them—lays them out in the chest an’—an’ she’s not well to-day.”
While Aphael Tuck was pulling out the strong stitches with which the socks were tacked on,—strong stitches which he and Mrs. Tuck often discussed later as part of the liveliest day Twthill had ever known,—the Recording Angel, who had been taking down Adam’s prayers much cut in angelic shorthand, spaced out every one of these half-true faltering words carefully, and over them, the Angel wrote, in beautiful bright letters, LOVE, and beneath them, with lax impartiality to Calvinism and Wesleyanism, made this note, “Elect: Adam and wife.”
Mrs. Jenkins looked over at Mr. Jenkins the shop merchant and bard, and there was love and wonderment in her eyes. He was reclining in an arm-chair, his long legs stretched before him, his head at rest against the chair, his hands folded over his stomach, his eyes tight closed, his mouth wide open, his lips moving, and every once in a while his tongue quickly lapping his upper lip. Janny looked away and out of the windows to the meadows that rolled up into the mist like big grey waves; this was the act of composition, she knew, and too sacred even for her, his humbler half, to behold. But the misty uplands suggested overmuch of that unnamable something which, when she looked at her husband, made her wish to shut her eyes; for, might she not, Janny reasoned, see more than she ought to see of the divine spirit that moved behind those hills and behind the lips of Ariel Jenkins. So her thoughts slipped back into the living-room of Ty Mawr, while hereyes avoided the inspired contents of the arm-chair. She had been a bride and the envied mistress of Ty Mawr just two weeks; however, she was forty and matrimony was late for her, and Ariel Jenkins being forty-five, it was none too early for him. Janny felt her responsibilities keenly. Was she living up to them? She was at the mercantile centre of the village, her better half was not only a merchant but also a crowned poet, her house the most important in Glaslyn. And Glaslyn expected changes; Mrs. Parry Wynn the baker said so, Mrs. Gomer Roberts the tinman had prophesied, and Mrs. Jeezer Morris the minister had whispered to Betto Griffiths who had told Janny of these expectations, that she supposed, nay, shehopedAriel Jenkins’s home with a woman in it would soon look like a God-fearing place and receive some improvements. Janny’s glance roved through the sitting-room. She had made a few alterations, but somehow in the half-light of dusk they seemed as nothing. What was the moving or replenishing of a taper holder, a fresh case for Ariel’s harp, a new cover for the table, or the addition of a few pleasant-faced china cats to a regimental mantelpiece,—indeed, she sadly asked herself, what were these changes in comparison with the unappointedsomething she was expected to accomplish as Mrs. Ariel Jenkins the shop? She was a stranger in Glaslyn, an intruder from a great outside world, and now she felt bewildered, lonely. Her eyes flitted to Ariel’s face for company.
“Dearie!”
There was no answer.
“Is it comin’, Ariel dear?”
“Aye,” he snapped.
Janny winced; she had never lived with genius, and, somehow, she thought it would be different. Her deep-blue eyes had a still look in them that suggested not only a long habit of self-repression but also perplexity, and sadness, too; there was appeal in every feature of her face,—an appeal made the more pathetic, perhaps, by the childlike lines of pale-gold curling hair about her forehead and tired eyes, and the delicate hollows beneath her cheek-bones, and the fragile sweetness of her mouth. It was a face in its soft bloom and delicacy, forever young and yet unforgettably weary. She straightened out her kirtle, and again her glance roved the room. There must be a clean hearth-brush, new muslin curtains for the casement; the stairway landing, where it turned by the front windows, even in the twilight looked shabby with the wear and tear of heavily-booted feet andclogs, the light from the oriel window above the landing shining through with bald ugliness upon the stairs. As she looked at the light Janny’s eyes dilated, her face flushed, and she leaned forward, gazing intently at the window. For the minute she had forgotten Ariel, but he, puff, puff, puff, with many sighs and yawns and much stretching of his long legs, was coming out of his inspired coma. His awakening look fell upon Janny there where she sat, her hands clasped in her lap, her shoulders tipped forward, her chin tilted upward, a circle of quiet light about her hair, her eyes intent upon the stairway window.
“Janny dear, what is it? What are ye lookin’ at?”
“Oh! na—aye, lad, I—I——”
“Well, well, Janny!”
“Ariel, I was thinkin’.”
“Aye, an’ ye were plannin’, too.”
He was thoroughly aroused now from his inspiration, and studying that object, woman, which through some twenty-five years he had sung and praised. Ariel’s eyes searched her; stanza, metre, rhyme, theme, were all forgotten, for he saw that Janny possessed a thought she had no intention of parting with to him. He glanced from her to the window upon whichshe had been looking so rapturously when he surprised her gaze. So far as he could see it was like any other stairway light in Glaslyn, except that it was oval instead of rectangular, and perhaps a little deeper than some, but otherwise precisely like scores he had seen. Then he called imagination to his aid, that imagination which had been the means of begetting shillings over the counter of his shop, which had won for him a comfortable income, and commercial success, as well as made him the foremost bard in his county. He peered through the window; what he beheld was a bit of dusky sky with a shadowy star seemingly behind it. He dismissed imagination and returned to the study of his bride. It was a whim probably; perhaps one of those unshaped thoughts, elemental, unspoken, to which women listen in their idle moments; indeed, it might even be some dreaming about him of which Janny in the shyness of their relation, still new, was too sensitive to speak. Gradually Ariel forgot the problem in his renewed consciousness of the charm of Janny, with her deep blue eyes, her childlike pale-gold hair, the delicate lines of her fragile face so different from the Welsh women of their village. Under his scrutiny Janny sat serenely with a more than wonted air of self-possession.
She interrupted him: “Ariel, ye’ve been to sea, dear?”
“Aye, when I was a lad.”
“Was it for long?”
“No, not long, two years sailin’ with cargoes between our coast and Ireland.”
“Did ye learn much of the ways of sailorfolk?”
“Aye, much.”
“Runnin’ up an’ down the ropes?”
“Aye, that, an’ more too.”
“Did ye learn tattooin’, dear?”
“Aye, the marks ye’ve seen on my arms an old salt taught me to do. The sailors were clever with the needle, sketchin’ as well as sewin’.”
“Do ye think ye could sketch a star now, Ariel, or have ye forgotten?”
Ariel laughed, partly with pleasure at this talk by the fire, partly from joy in the companionship.
“Aye, I’m thinkin’ I could, little lamb.”
He drew his chair closer to hers and saw her face brighten; it rested her to have him near her, and her thoughts sped back through all the years of loneliness and hunger for the things she could not have; she had a new consciousness of life and of being useful; it was not merelyAriel, it was the house, too, and what she could do to make it—Well, the word escaped her; anyway it was the house as well as Ariel, and it was lovely to think of what she could do for it while he made poetry and sold things in the shop.
“An’, Ariel, could ye sketch me an anchor an’ a bit of rope?”
“Aye, dearie, I could; ye know I could anyway, for I had drawin’ at the school in Carnarvon while I was an apprentice there.”
“Drawin’?”
“Aye, it was mam’s idea.”
Janny’s eyes grew large.
“Ariel, do ye—do ye—think ye could draw me a—a cat?”
Ariel took one look at Janny and burst into laughter; shop, poetry, everything was forgotten in his amusement at her childlike eagerness. Suddenly he stopped, for Janny’s face was quivering. Aye, he had forgotten, too, that this was no peasant-woman; his laughter seemed brutal.
“Janny, little lamb,” he said softly, drawing her head to him, “I could, dear, I’ll sketch all the cats ye want.”
Janny sighed comfortably, her head still upon his shoulder, the weariness easing away fromher heart. She could do it now; it would make the greatest difference; Betto Griffiths and others should see that she was something more than a bit of porcelain in Ariel’s home, that she could do something more than merely oversee house-cleaning. Besides, it really was something more,—it was having an idea of her own, and that until Ariel rescued her she had never been allowed to have. She reached up and patted his face; even her gestures were incomprehensibly childlike. What she lacked in the passion of a woman she seemed to make up in the perfect trust of a child. Ariel, selfish with the selfishness of a man who has lived by himself and who had lived much in his own mind, thought now with a pang how lonely Janny must have been ever since she came to him; the appeal of her confidence touched the best that was in him, the protection that was his to give her, and some potential sense of fatherhood. Aye, he knew how tired she was after the life that lay behind her, and he gathered her into his arms, holding her there quietly while he talked.
“What shall it be, Janny? A star, an anchor, a bit of rope, an’ a cat, did ye say, dear?”
“Aye, a star, Ariel, please. I don’t think I want the anchor. The bit of rope would be nice, dear. An’ I’d like the cat.”
“An’ what are ye goin’ to do with these drawin’s, Janny? Are ye goin’ to hang them on the wall?”
“No, I’m not goin’ to do that.”
“Well, it’s just as well, dearie, for Betto Griffiths, an’ Mrs. Gomer Roberts the tinman, an’ Mrs. Parry Winn the baker, would be hauntin’ Ty Mawr. But whatareye goin’ to do with them, dearie?”
“Ariel, I couldn’t saynow.” Janny stirred uneasily. “Imightbe hangin’ them in our bedroom, an’—an’—an’ I might be puttin’—puttin’ them in the—Bible to press. They’d be useful.”
“Aye, that’s so. An’ how large shall I draw them?”
Janny thought a minute.
“The cat, dear, I’d like about a foot long, that is from his tail to his whiskers—No, I’m thinkin’ that’s too narrow for the cat; from the tail to the whiskers I’d like him one foot an’ a half, Ariel.”
Janny’s glance took a flight over Ariel’s shoulder.
“An’ the star?”
Janny thought again.
“Six inches from point to point, an’ four stars—no—one star will do—I can cut—och?—Ariel,onestar, please.”
“An’ the rope?”
“It’s the twisted kind I want, an’ it must go all around the—Oh, dear! Ariel, about an inch wide, please.”
“Good! one cat, one star, one inch rope. Anything more, little lamb?”
“No-o-o, could ye do it now?”
“Aye, dearie, fetch me the ruler, the paper, an’ a pencil.”
So Janny watched Ariel’s thin fingers work skilfully, swiftly with the pencil, the ruler measuring off star points and a cat’s length as carefully as if the paper were Welsh flannel worth one-and-six a yard. And the next night, after a day of unusual elation of feeling, Janny, when sleep had come to Ariel, stole noiselessly from the marital side, crept to the whitewashed wall of their bedroom pallid in moonshine, felt for the white paper cat and star and length of rope hanging there indiscernible, caught the edge of the paper with her fingers as she felt about, unpinned the pieces, and tiptoed out of the room and down the stairway. As she moved about the sitting-room in her night-gown, she looked pathetically little, the flush in her cheeks marking her eager helplessness. Much had slipped by her, and she had lost much in that sorry life before Ariel took her and brought herto live among strangers, whose motives and feelings she had no means of penetrating. But the tenderness, the innocence, the expectancy of childhood had remained with her, as if making amends for her loss or awaiting the sunshine of maturing impulses. She set a candle beside the settle, lifted the cover, took out two long rolls of paper, closed the settle, and bore her parcels to the table. Then she untied them with trembling fingers, rolling out several feet of green and crimson paper and a small sheet of yellow. She placed weights on the corners of the lengths, pausing to run her fingers into her hair as she gazed with rapt eyes upon the coloured surfaces, commonplace enough to all appearances. She took the cat, laid it carefully on the crimson, pinned it down and pencilled around the edges. In the same fashion she drew the outlines for four yellow stars and some lengths of yellow rope. Finally, with a pair of shears she cut out all the outlined figures. She lifted the cat, freed now from the matrix of surrounding paper and enlivened with the lifelikeness of a new liberty, and held its foot and a half of length against the candle-light. The light shone through the crimson paper but dimly. Janny nodded, took a small cake of paraffin, melted it, and with a bit of cloth sponged the cat as it lay upon thetable. This she did also to the four yellow stars, to the lengths of rope, and to a large piece of green paper upon which the original cat pattern had been appliquéd. Once more she lifted the crimson animal to the light,—the candle-flame shone through clearly with a beautiful crimson flood of softer light. After this Janny broke a half-dozen eggs, separating the white from the yolk. Her fingers worked feverishly now, and her eyes kept measuring distances; in her nervous haste there were moments when she seemed hardly able to accomplish the next step forward in the task she saw already complete in her mind’s eye. She stopped to listen for sounds and steps as she worked, and again and again she imagined that Ariel was looking down from the head of the staircase. But she finished the work uninterrupted, and with a sigh, half-sob of weariness, half-contentment, and with many a glance of admiration as she went, she tiptoed up the stairway. Ariel was sleeping, and as she crept into bed she put out a hand to touch his thick black hair, and then, curling into the cool white of her pillow, fell asleep as children sleep, one hand resting lightly on his arm.