The Making of William Edwards; or, The Story of the Bridge of Beauty

Robert Jones had turned off towards his own home, with his team and his return load, after a very curious disclaimer of thanks.

Part of that load consisted of a new turf-cutting spade and a small glazed window for his hut. His newly-discovered need for these took him among dealers in hardware and carpenters, until he found what else he went for. He drove hard bargains, and paid in part with winter store of peat; but he carried away more than the dealers supposed. In the one place he observed a full set of implements for husbandry put aside, and roughly labelled, 'Evan Evans, Castella, Paid,' and was told they had so lain, 'lumbering up the place,' for fully three weeks, the buyer not having turned up to claim them, although he had stated he intended to take them up the river by boat when the tide served.

A crusty carpenter, who had two glass windows exposed for sale, was glad to let one of them go as a bargain, seeing that the man for whom they were made in a hurry three weeks before had disappeared mysteriously, and not even gone back to his inn, on St. Mary's Quay, for his horse.

That bit of information about the inn had sent the turf-cutter tramping across the town with his beasts, sure, at least, of much-needed rest and provender, all houses of the kind, in those days of horseback travel and pack-horse conveyance, having ample stable accommodation.

A warm supper, more plentiful than dainty, had been supplied to him in the common room, odorous of tobacco-smoke, rum, cwrw, tar, and salt water.

Presently a voice he knew hailed him from out the smoke-reek.

'Do that be you, Robert Jones? 'Deed, you're the very man to tell the landlord here who owns an old horse left here three weeks ago by a farming-man, who called himself Evan Evans, of Eglwysilan, and went off without paying his score, look you!'

'Ah, how did he go off?'

'Queerly. He said as he was going to hire a boat to carry the horse and some goods of his, as he was be taking to Castella, across the river in the morning, but he never did come back here.'

'No,' chimed in the landlord, 'nor never did mean it, or he would not have been going off in the Osprey's boat, as he surely did.'

''Deed no! not if he did go of his own free will,' came from a feeble voice in a corner; 'but I've heard as' —

'Sure, and didn't Mr. Pryse be saying he was be running off with a lot of money?' again struck in the landlord, drowning the words of the previous speaker.

On this ensued a warm controversy, in which some dark hints were thrown out respecting the Osprey, and Mr. Pryse's connection therewith, all bearing on the strangeness of Evan's disappearance.

Listening Robert Jones had come to the conclusion that the landlord was under Mr. Pryse's finger and thumb, and cautiously made no comment. But he kept his eye on the owner of the feeble voice, and, when he went out, followed.

He had found the man shifty, timid, and unwilling to give an unspoken opinion to a stranger.

So, too, were the tarry loungers upon the quay the next morning.

'Evans might have been kidnapped and carried off against his will, the crew of the Osprey were a queer lot, look you; or he might be running away, as Mr. Pryse did say – they could not tell.'

Mr. Pryse might have frozen free speech, but Robert Jones had noted shrugs and nods more expressive than words. Then the application of two silver pennies to the palm of a timorous lad opened his lips to tell that he had seen a strange man, looking for a big boat, hustled into the boat of the Osprey, and held down whilst the crew rowed out to the schooner in the bay. And, when Ales herself discovered that Evan had bought both a wedding-ring and a brooch for her, the conclusion was obvious.

She had shed her tears in the three weeks gone. She returned to the farm in tearless, but gnawing, uncertainty as to her Evan's fate, yet proud of her ability to clear his honest name.

She was somewhat incoherent in her story, but Robert Jones an hour or so later backed it up with fuller details, and his own convictions.

'Yes, yes, indeed, Evan Evans did go about his business like an honest man. There be still the spades and things he paid for, and I have a glass window he left his God-penny12 on. He would have kept all the money if he intended running away. No, no, he did be paying all the rent, Mrs. Edwards, whatever Mr. Pryse do say.'

''Deed, it do seem like it. But why should he be "pressed" on board?' she queried. 'There be no war now.'

'Why should any wicked deed be done?' put in Ales. 'A bad man do have his reasons ready.'

'Yes, yes, and one evil head moves many evil hands, Mrs. Edwards,' added Jones, 'if, as is hinted by them as daren't speak their minds, Mr. Pryse do have dealings with the gruff captain of the Osprey for something fiery besides his lordship's coal. Then, smuggling a stout-limbed fellow or two on board might be winked at, if it was no part of the bargain. And I do be telling Ales not to think they would kill Evan. They want living men for sailors, not dead ones.'

'Then God may bring him back to me some time, and I will pray day and night for him. Yes, yes, though the day be long it will have an evening. And let not Mr. Pryse be thinking to escape —

"The later that God's vengeance is,The heavier far and sorer 'tis,"'

broke from Ales, her eyes and cheeks kindling as with a spirit of prophecy, as she hurried from the kitchen into the dark storeroom beyond to contend with her own agony in secret.

Then came a reckoning with Jones for Breint's keep at the inn (Ales had cleared Evan's score as a matter of honour), and whilst settling that with Mrs. Edwards, it occurred to him that her sons had pursued their occupations in uncommon silence during this statement of facts and fancies, especially Rhys, who seemed more interested in disentangling the locks of wool he was combing by the fireside (his comb-pot on the hearth) than on disentangling what seemed an unaccountable plot against his mother's tried and faithful servant.

William, knitting a long blue stocking in the opposite corner, had put in an occasional word, but even he did not appear at ease.

Davy's wooden soles had been heard clattering outside along with sounds indicative of more care for recovered Breint than the absent Evan.

He walked in from the farmyard just in time for the supper of hot leek-porridge Jonet poured scalding hot into their bowls, not forgetting one for the turf-cutter, who sat down without apology, for the odour was appetising.

Again he noticed that Rhys and William preserved a sullen silence towards each other, and wondered what fresh quarrel there had been.

When supper was over, and he rose to depart, William followed him.

No sooner were they out of earshot than the boy began to lay bare his grievance in tones of wounded self-esteem.

'Look you,' said he, 'since Evan went, Old Billy has been suffered to butt at the walls, and never a stone had been put back to keep him from the styes, till they did be like to tumble down. So yesterday, while Rhys was at market, I did work till the sweat poured off me, and mended them all, thinking I would let Rhys see what I could do. And since he found out this afternoon what I had been doing, he has never spoken one word to me, whatever. If I had knocked the walls down he could not have looked more surly. It's enough to make one run away, it is! And if it was not for mother and Jonet, I would be running away, 'deed I would.'

'Hush, Willem, don't be saying that; runaway sons make sorrowful mothers. Don't be thinking of doing anything rash, anything you cannot be asking the blessing of Almighty God upon. Perhaps you neglected something Rhys expected done, of more consequence than a dry wall.'

'Sure, Cate Griffith did be digging the potatoes. She could not build up walls. I do believe Rhys is vexed just because mother was so well pleased, and began to put her garden right that Billy and the pigs had spoiled. Rhys would have liked Evan better if mother had found fault with him.'

The boy's bitter attempt at self-justification was checked by his mature friend.

'Faults are thick where love is thin, Willem. You are only a boy and your brother is a man. It is not for you to go your own way and disobey wilfully. But I will look at your handiwork in the morning, when I bring the lime for the land; and, perhaps, be saying a word to bring Rhys to reason. Good-night, Willem. Go to bed peacefully. And don't be building up a wall of stony thoughts against your brother, don't.'

These were his parting words to the chafing lad, as they stood by the gateway, but, as he descended the hill in the full light of the moon, he said to himself, 'Better repair a breach between brothers than build up a wall to repel a fancied enemy.'

It was in this spirit the man addressed himself to Rhys the next morning, whilst helping Lewis to transfer the lime from the panniers to the freshly-dug potato ground, and the unturned stubble of oats and barley. He said he had observed signs of discontent between the brothers the previous night, and on other occasions, and expressed a desire to know if any real cause for discord existed. It was so very serious a thing for brothers in one house to bicker and quarrel; small differences were so liable to grow into great ones, even to enmity and hatred.

Rhys listened uneasily, fidgeted, puckered his brows, and at last jerked out, 'Look you, Robert Jones, that boy Willem is the plague of my life. He will not take orders from me. And who else should give orders if I am to manage the farm? Davy and Jonet obey. But he do think of nothing but picking up stones and building; and that will not make a good farmer or till the land, or pay the rent. He was mending walls on Thursday when he should have been digging potatoes. We may thank Cate Griffith they were all up and safe from last night's frost. She took up the spade he threw down.'

'Ah, well, Rhys, all the world are not farmers. Cate's father is a weaver. I cut turf, and sell lime and culm and aught else, to turn an honest penny. But let me see what sort of a young builder you have on the farm. You know I do be going about the country and use my eyes, so I know good walls from bad ones.'

'Sure, they do be well enough for a boy's work,' half contemptuously admitted Rhys, whilst pointing out the repairs in walls and sties.

Jones gave them more than a cursory examination.

'Yes, yes, Rhys. But they do be "well enough" for a man's work, that they do. The stones are well fitted and firm. You owe the boy thanks, not blame. Don't you be for thwarting Willem, or you may be spoiling a good builder to make a poor farmer. A sound fence is a farmer's friend. Let him keep your fences sound, and he will help to pay the rent, 'deed he will.'

'I don't see how.'

'Your eyes are blinded by prejudice, man. Would not a stray cow, or hog, or pony that found a gap ready, do more damage to crops in a day than you could repair in a month?'

This was not to be gainsaid. But when the turf-cutter urged William's claim to just consideration and recognition of his service, the pride of Rhys was up in alarm for his own authority.

'He is such a boy,' he argued.

'No more a boy than you were, Rhys, when you first tried to fill your dead father's place, and told your mother you were "old enough to do your duty." Have you forgotten that? Or are you younger than you were then?'

Whether he had forgotten, or did not choose to remember, he turned off with a light laugh, and the remark, 'I'm not doing my duty in idling here.'

But conscience is a mill that grinds at all hours, and unsought, and Robert Jones had set the wheels in motion.

'Willem,' said the peat-cutter to the depressed boy, just before he cracked his whip to set his unloaded team in motion downhill, 'if you build up your life as well as you have built up your garden wall, you'll do. It is firm and compact, and the stones are set evenly together. But strife between brothers is a bad foundation to build upon. And it is not for a lad of your age to be unruly, and oppose the brother who has so long been working for all of you. There is time enough before you to build walls or churches, or what you will; but you have none to lose if you would bind the bond of brotherhood around you, or lay the foundation of a Christian life, look you.'

William's eyes brightened, and his chest expanded under his Saturday's sullied smock-frock, as his early friend commended his handiwork, for and hitherto he had not been cloyed with the sweetmeat. But his aspect changed. He did not relish the bitter dose of advice mingled with the honey, for his whole soul was in rebellion.

'Praise is pleasanter than honey,'

Yet, swift and sharp as the man's whip crack, memory brought back those other words to the same purport the stranger, Mr. Morris, had spoken long ago, and every hoof-beat of mule or ass seemed to hammer them into his brain.

Far down the steep hill were beasts and driver before William roused from his reverie, and rushed after them, shouting as he went. The man turned.

'What is it, Willem?'

'Can you teach me to count?'

'Yes, up to a hundred, in tens. That is the way I count my peat.'

'Oh, I can be counting that as I knit.'

'Ah, then, if you do be wanting to reckon properly, and do sums with figures, you had better be asking Owen Griffith; he do be clever at that. I will speak to him for you.'

''Deed, I would be so glad.'

Robert Jones was as good as his word. Owen's cottage was not on his direct road, but he did not mind going out of his way to do a kindness.

The weaver had just taken a finished web of blue flannel out of his loom, and sat smoking a long pipe on the bench outside.

After the first salutation, the turf-cutter began by saying, 'Have you seen the dry wall Willem Edwards have been building up so cleverly?'

'Sure to goodness, no. Yet he did always have a notion that way. I have heard Rhys and Cate be laughing over it many a time.'

''Deed, yes, Owen, but it's not to be laughed at. That boy have a head, look you. I've seen walls built and mended less securely by old hands before now.'

'Sure now! You don't say so? I wish he would come and repair mine. It's been tumbling down, stone by stone, waiting till Morgan the mason did be coming round.'

'Well, you ask Willem. And if you would be offering to teach him to reckon up with figures, he would be proud and pleased to build it up. 'Deed he would. He do just be asking me to teach him. But you go looking at that wall of his. Willem do want encouraging, not laughing at. He will build up more than a broken-down wall some day. – Shall you be wanting peat or lime next week?'

'Ah, yes; and if you think Willem can mend the wall you can bring a sled of stones as well.'

The next day, on the way from church, Owen Griffith got William by his side, and set him counting the trees by the wayside, and the sheep on the hills, as preliminary to lessons in arithmetic, but nothing said he of any broken walls.

He left that for the afternoon, when he and Cate walked up to the farm, ostensibly to learn what news Ales had brought from Cardiff.

Over all that he shook his head, uncertain what to make of it, though he said, 'It do look bad, it do.'

But there was nothing uncertain in his exclamation of surprise at the firmly repaired walls Mrs. Edwards showed so proudly as the work of her youngest son.

It led to the open proposal that William should restore his fences to condition in return for lessons in arithmetic, and to Mrs. Edwards' consent to that use of his time.

Rhys had strolled away with Cate to talk over the deferred prospect of their marriage, and so did not hear of this arrangement until afterwards, when, for reasons of his own, he thought best to keep the peace.

It was the small beginning of greater things.

CHAPTER XVII.

PROPER TOOLS

Ales had resumed her work on the farm, but not with the spirit and vivacity of old. She had been wont to sing over her work, and had a store of old Welsh ballads in her memory. But the song-bird mourned in silence for the mate torn away so ruthlessly, and, as weeks and months and years rolled on in the same drear monotony of hopelessness, her heart grew colder and heavier, and her prayers became as the very wailings of despair.

It cut her to the soul to hear Rhys grumbling, as he did, at the money filched from them to pay, not only the rent Evan should have paid, but the heavy costs of a seizure in addition; and she more than once resolved to quit the farm when the year expired.

Second thoughts, however, suggested that nothing would suit the young man better, and his very grumbling might have that end in view; for, once rid of her, he could seek the necessary consent to bring in a wife with a good grace.

He had not improved in temper, certainly. It had irritated him to hear William lauded for the very proclivities he had held of so small account, nay, turned into ridicule.

It was no satisfaction to have a brother so much younger competent to enlarge and raise the walls of the sheepfold, as he did, before a second winter set in. What though a mason's charges were saved, was not the saving at the greater cost of his own supremacy?

And in the long winter nights when he and Davy sorted fleeces or combed the wool, or tended the dye-pot on the fire; when Ales taught Jonet to twirl the flaxen thread drawn from the distaff, so as to set the spindle dancing on the floor to the tune of the mother's industrious spinning-wheel, how it tried his patience to see William making figures and calculations on a board, with chalk or ruddle by the light of the candle, whilst the knitting-pins, which should have been earning money, lay idle by his side.

There are men ready to perform generous acts, who are flagrantly unjust, but cannot see it. Robert Jones had urged Rhys Edwards to 'be just.' He should have said 'be generous,' and Rhys might have responded to the appeal. He resented the imputation of injustice.

Yet he denied to his brother the meed of praise his service merited; he begrudged him the time to acquire the common rules of simple arithmetic; perhaps because he felt it was a step to something beyond his own attainment. He counted not the money saved in masonry as money earned. He might have been content had William been as passively submissive as Davy and Jonet, but he found in him a spirit boldly daring to cope with his own, and it stung him to find the boy upheld in his resistance.

So years crept on. The third winter passed, the snows melted, the roads were free for traffic, the river sang a pæan to approaching spring, the pink and brown buds were bursting into green, song birds were flitting and fluttering about the eaves and boughs, all was life and activity upon the farm. The Osprey had never again put into port at Cardiff, where Mr. Pryse bit his nails and snarled more cantankerously than ever, and nothing had been heard of Evan. Ales lost heart, she did not sing with the birds; but William, no longer snubbed, worked on the farm with the best, until another barrier rose between himself and Rhys, in the shape of another stone wall.

Hedges have now superseded walls in many parts of Glamorganshire; but at the date of this narrative, the fields and lanes were universally bounded by what are known as 'dry walls,' and still they serve as fences on the uplands.

By 'dry walls' are to be understood walls built without mortar or cement, of irregular, unhewn flagstones, so put together, so wedged in one with another, as to stand firm where a cemented wall might give way exposed to the high winds of those elevated regions, the very crevices allowing the blasts to pass through, and so reduce the pressure on the mass. Such are the walls in Craven and other parts of northern England.

Yet it is no uncommon thing for the coping-stones to be hurled away in a fierce gale, or for large portions of such walls to be blown down, as came to pass on Brookside Farm that gusty spring.

Here was an opportunity for William to turn his talent to account and save his mother's pocket, as be sure he did.

So far, so good. Rhys made no objection, and Mrs. Edwards was well pleased. Davy had begun to feel proud of his brother.

But it so happened that Robert Jones, whose window had long before been fitted in by William, came to seek his services, not merely to repair a breach, but to enclose a portion of ground as a stone yard.

Rhys, then engaged sowing barley on last year's turnip ground, looked as black as two thunder-clouds rolled into one, and without mincing his words gave a decided refusal.

'Willem is not a public stonemason, Robert Jones. He is now dibbling in the potato-sets, and cannot be spared. You asked me to "be just"; do you think you are just in seeking to draw him away from the farm at this busy season?' and with a very strong oath he swore 'Willem should not build walls for him or any one else.'

But the leader of the peat-cutter's team happened to carry a resonant bell, as did the leading beast of all packhorse teams, in order to warn other teamsters, or the drivers of cattle or carriages, that the narrow roadway was blocked, and one or the other must wait in the nearest broadened space provided as a refuge until the advancing team had passed and left the road clear. Such open grassy spots may still be seen in England's narrow by-ways, and there gipsies make their camps. Nay, even in the heart of busy London, old Paternoster Row is so provided with spaces where two carts may pass abreast.

The bell, set ringing through the clear March air with every motion of the mule's head, brought William leaping over runnel, ridge and furrow, and dividing fence to greet his old and true friend.

The voice of Rhys, ever loud and authoritative, now raised and vehement, reached William as he came bounding along.

'Who says I shall not build walls for any one?' he cried. 'I will, and no one here shall stop me. Do you think I mean to dig and delve all my life, and be labourer to you?'

'Labourer to me, you jackanapes? Do you think your intermittent labour pays for your sustenance? But if you quit the farm this day to go wall-building, you may quit it altogether. I am not going to wear my life away to support you in idleness. Cyphering at night, piling up stones by day, rambling off to Caerphilly Castle when you should be at work – what sort of labour do you call that?'

'Head-work; of no account with you. But, look you, I'll go and come as I please, and build walls if I please. And I don't be owning you for master. If we can but find the old lease, it may turn out the youngest son is heir and not the eldest. But let me tell you that for the toss up of a silver penny I'd quit the farm for ever, only I know that's what you do be wanting. You would be glad to get either me or Ales out to make room for Cate. But while we stay, mother do be mistress, and shall be.'

For a moment Rhys seemed dumbfounded. Then he sprang upon his brother, and grappled with him as if he would have borne him to the earth.

The fifteen years lad was thick set and sturdy, and stood his ground well, but he was no match for the man of more toughened frame and indurated muscle.

It would have gone badly with the younger had not the turf-cutter interposed, and, by sheer force, thrust them apart.

'What!' cried he, 'are you two brothers so jealous of each other you would strive like Cain and Abel? Shame on you both! Would you bring death and sorrow on your mother's hearth once more?'

They stood panting, but abashed, as he proceeded —

'Surely, what with one loss after another – the rent money unaccounted for when Evan disappeared, the cruel bill for costs, the raising of the rent, the missing lease – the poor widow do be passing through a sea of trouble, with cares enough to drown her, without you two, who should be her help and comfort, adding to the load. Are you not ashamed?'

'It be Rhys' fault!' 'It be Willem's fault!' they cried simultaneously, alike moved by the reference to their mother, whom they loved with deep affection.

'You are alike to blame. Each one has some reason on his side; but, let me tell you, lads, it is always the one most in the wrong who is the last to give in. Now, shake hands and be friends. I came here thinking to be doing you all a service, for it would pay better for Willem to be building walls than doing common field-work. But I don't be wanting to breed dissension between you, so I will be getting Morgan the stonemason to build my wall.'