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

On that sunny October forenoon, while Rhys and Lewis cut down fern on the borders of the wood, and Evan plied his spade to turn over the stubble in good furrows higher up the hill, Mrs. Edwards midway, like a true Welsh farmer's wife, resolutely dug up the long-rooted, tenacious carrots, sparing not her toil, whilst Davy (again in petticoats) and even four-year-old Jonet freed them from the loosened earth, and cast them into wicker baskets for Ales to carry from the field to the barn, poised on her head. The basket was not light when full, but she stepped along with ease and grace, knitting as she went or came, only tucking the rapidly increasing stocking in her girdling apron-string whilst she emptied her load, or changed an empty basket for a full one.

At first, imitative William insisted on helping, or hindering, Davy and Jonet, and for a while was as busy as the rest. Then he began to trot beside Ales as she went to and fro. After a time the little bare legs grew weary, and when the toilers rested on upturned baskets, to take their noontide meal of oaten cake and buttermilk, he was almost too sleepy to eat or drink, and, resting his sunny head against his mother's knee, fell off into a doze.

Seeing that, Ales promptly lifted him up in her strong arms, and, carrying him to the farm, laid him on his mother's bed and left him there, as she thought, secure from harm.

Once or twice, after emptying her baskets in the barn, she came down to the house and found him sleeping peacefully. So an hour and a half must have slipped by, perhaps more, when turning in to look at her charge, she found the room vacant.

Still, she was beset by no apprehensions of ill. She made up the smouldering fire, and did one or two little household matters before she went back to the field with her empty basket, nothing doubting but she would find the boy with his mother. He knew his way about the farm.

'Is not Willem with you?' she cried out as she neared the group in the field. 'He is not in bed.'

'Not in bed?' echoed his mother, but without alarm. ''Deed then, he will have gone to Evan or to Rhys. That will be it. He will have met Lewis with the pony, and got a ride in one of the empty panniers.'

'Sure, and that's most like.'

But on her next journey to the barn she saw Lewis bringing up the pony laden with the panniers of bracken, but no child. Hastily ridding herself of her load, she waited until he came near. Then she called out —

'Have you seen Willem?'

''Deed, no! Is he lost again?' came back in reply.

'Lost? Name o' goodness, I hope not! Mistress will go distracted if he is. Empty your bracken, and keep a look-out; I'm off up the hill to Evan.'

And away she sped at flying speed, straight as an arrow, over field and fallow. Her heart sank as she came in sight of Evan digging away as if his life depended on his day's labour, companioned only by feathered searchers for the worms he brought to light.

'Evan!' she screamed, affrighted at last, 'have you seen Willem? We cannot find him anywhere, whatever.'

Down went the man's spade, and over the freshly-turned ground he came bounding, in spite of his wooden-soled shoes. 'You don't mean to say the child is lost?' he cried.

But she was already running back to her mistress, who took the alarm as soon as they came in sight, and clasping her hands in sudden terror, shrieked out, 'Oh, what is it? What has happened to my boy? Where is my darling Willem? Oh, if I lose him too, I shall go crazy!'

Her only thought was that the child, in seeking Rhys, had fallen over a rock and been killed.

Her shriek, her unbidden tears, communicated her fright to Jonet and Davy, who clung to her skirts and cried for companionship, Jonet hardly knew why.

There was a general rush to meet Rhys.

'Sure, he will be in the orchard,' said he confidently.

But he was not in the orchard, not anywhere on the farm.

''Deed, and I think he will be for going to the church,' put in Davy. 'He wanted to be going yesterday, look you!'

The idea was instantly caught up. Evan and Rhys were off in search, and Lewis after them. Ales in vain endeavoured to persuade the mother to remain behind, whilst she went up to the moor, to see if he had strayed thither after the sheep. 'Don't fret,' she said, 'they are certain to be bringing him back soon. His little legs would not carry him far.'

'Oh, Ales,' expostulated her mistress, 'how can you ask me to sit still while my darling Willem may be dead or in danger?'

'Mother,' said Davy, with a gulp to swallow a sob, 'I will stay and take care of Jonet if you both go. You will be good with me, won't you, Jonet?'

'Yes, indeed,' replied the little girl, as his arm stole protectingly round her shoulders, and he kissed her tear-stained face, 'I will be very good.'

So, with strong injunctions not to go away, the two children were left alone in the house, with only a grey cat and a rough dog to bear them company.

At first they sat still and waited expectantly, clinging to each other. Then the silence and solitude became oppressive. Presently Jonet began to cry for her missing playfellow, and when brave-hearted Davy failed to console her, his own tears began to fall. A dreadful fear began to creep over him lest William should be lost like his father, and they might never see him again. How long the time did seem to those two children left alone with a new fear!

Ales was the first to return. She found the two seated on the stone stile in front that commanded a view of the steep path, anxiously and with beating hearts watching for some one to come.

She brought them no good news, and was off again with stool and pail, for the cows were lowing to be milked. But her very coming had broken up the dreary silence and monotony. And when she went she left them milk and cake, and the consciousness she was not far away. Then, at her suggestion, Davy began to teach Jonet to knit, and in the occupation time passed less painfully.

Ales came back with her milk-pails, and commended them for being good; made up the fire and set on the pot for supper. And so long as the setting sun shone redly in through door and windows they were passive, and she bustled about her household affairs, hiding her own fears.

But the sun set, and dusk came down, yet never a foot came near the farm to say the boy was found.

Then Evan came up for lanthorns to renew the search. He said he had been to the very church gates, but could find no trace of the child. Owen Griffith had left his loom, and his wife had kept watch to give each returning seeker news of the others. Mrs. Edwards was then at the weaver's in pitiable distress, and Rhys rushing hither and thither almost as wild.

The two children, unwilling to go to bed, had fallen asleep huddled together in the chimney corner, when, between nine and ten o'clock, restless Ales thought she heard a shout, and before she could get to the door in burst Rhys, crying out, 'He is found! he is found!' and close at his heels came Evan with the poor wanderer in his arms, limp and helpless, his hair and his clothes saturated with heavy dew or mist, his little bare feet cut and bleeding, his lips and hands stained with the juice of purple berries.

The woods and every possible nook and corner seemed to have been explored, when Evan chanced to question a young man upon the Merthyr Road. The stupid fellow stared vacantly, then blundered out, ''Deed, an' sure I did hear something about an hour ago up by the Druid Stones, but I took it for a stray lamb bleating for the ewe.'

'Well, sure, and it might be a child crying. I didn't go to see,' he replied stupidly to a second question.

Evan stopped to hear no more. Without seeking a regular path, he made his way through bush and bramble, over rock and hollow, and there in the very midst of the hoary circle of lichen-covered grey stones, which seemed to sentinel him round in upright double file, the light of the lanthorn revealed the child lying in a heap under the overhanging shadow of the great rocking-stone, his head pillowed on the arm that rested against its conical base. Had the child mistaken those grey stones for the upright slabs in the churchyard?

The first rejoicing over, and the boy in bed, Rhys and Ales were both of opinion that he should be 'well whipped in the morning to teach him better than to put people in such frights.' And no doubt Evan was of the same mind, though he made no remark.

But the tender-hearted mother could only thank God for his restoration, and say that he had punished himself quite sufficiently. He was not likely to stray again.

Not for some time, for though all his garments were woollen, as were those of his elders, the damp, the exposure, no less than his childish terror, laid him up with a feverish illness that lasted for weeks.

As well as could be made out from his disjointed confession, Davy's conjecture had been the true one.

He had wakened, found himself alone, and had set off to 'see the big church,' nothing doubting he should find Robert Jones and his donkey to help him on his way. He had gone splashing through the shallow brook, and past Owen Griffith's unseen, but when he came to the bisecting roads his memory failed; he hesitated, turned to the right instead of the left, trudged on manfully northward, then took a by-path up-hill, as he fancied to the church, got bewildered among walls and winding ways, and out on the wild moor, stopping here and there to rest or gather blackberries, for he was growing both weary and hungry. But he never felt the solitude oppressive whilst there was a bird or a stray sheep about. And it was not until the dusk began to gather and he sank utterly exhausted under the great rocking-stone, that his courage forsook him, and he cried piteously in his hungry loneliness and desolation, cried himself into the insensibility of sleep, with only night and the everlasting arms around him.

In losing himself had he lost his childish craving to see once more that wonder of wonders – the big church?

CHAPTER VII.

THE YOUNG PLAGUE

Thankful as was Mrs. Edwards, the mother, for the restoration of her missing darling; as a farmer, sorely behind with the autumnal field-work, the loss of half a day's labour to every useful hand upon the farm chafed her no less than it irritated Rhys. But when the child was absolutely ill, and required careful nursing or watching, she was torn with a double anxiety. The life of her child was at stake, and so was her possession of the farm. There was so much to be done before November set in, and so few hands to accomplish all. The outdoor work could not be neglected, or the live stock and the crops would suffer. Yet some one must remain indoors to watch the child, restless with fever. Davy was willing, but Davy was too young, and lacked strength to overcome resistance to nauseous draughts.

She was at her wits' end; could not neglect her child, dared not neglect her farm.

In this emergency, Rhys made a suggestion that Mrs. Griffith might perhaps be willing to spare her daughter Cate, a stout, red-haired, good-looking lass about his own age, who had already shown her active ability to make herself useful.

After some slight hesitation on the part of the girl's mother, it was agreed that Cate should be at the farm early every morning, provided she returned home in the evenings before nightfall. Her temporary services were to be repaid with cheese made from the mixed milk of cows and ewes, or other farm produce, a customary mode of payment for casual service.

Owen had suggested to his wife that the farm would be a good school for their girl. She would see things done there, both by Mrs. Edwards and Ales, that she had no chance of seeing at home, and she could have no better training for future service.

The girl proved quite an acquisition. She was just as willing as Davy, and more efficient. When not wanted beside William, she was ready to relieve Ales at the churn or the scouring of pots and pails. Then she had a fairly good temper and persuasive ways that made her a capital nurse for a sick child with a resolute will.

Jonet took to her amazingly. She brought some pieces of striped flannel, the refuse of her father's loom, and dressed up the little one's wooden doll like a real Welshwoman. And she brought green rushes from the brookside, and wove toy-baskets for her.

Or, while Davy was away in the fields filling baskets with freshly-dug roots, or clearing the ground of stones (which many farmers in those days believed to grow, just as surely as weeds), and Jonet was ready to whimper for a playfellow, she would set down her knitting, or other work, to play at cat's cradle or push-pins; and, finding that Davy had tried to teach the little fingers to knit, she cast on stitches for a doll's belt, and, with a little patience on both sides, the feat was accomplished, and Jonet wonderfully proud of her new acquirement.

By thus amusing the healthy child longing for a romp, she preserved quiet by the bedside of the sick one, whom an apothecary, brought all the way from Caerphilly, pronounced 'in a critical state.'

Mrs. Edwards, anxiously coming and going, saw what a capital nurse she made, and judged she was of better use there than in the fields. Rhys, too, would put his head in through the open window now and then to ask how his brother was getting on, and satisfied himself that he had shown his discernment in suggesting Cate to his mother.

And when William began to recover, which was not until November had well set in, no one was more willing to admit her obligations to the girl than was Jane Edwards. Nay, she went so far as to send Rhys to light Cate home when the shortening of the days caused her to be kept after dark, and Rhys never raised any objection.

She had helped him on her first coming to strip the apple and pear trees of their late fruit, and to separate such as were to be saved for the market from those to be thrown into the mash-tub and crushed for cider. And on the first day that William was allowed to sit at an open door, he watched her and Rhys preparing the winter store of fire-balls, so willing was she to help in any way. Propped up in bed, he had seen Robert Jones once or twice lead a mule and an ass up the steep path with heavily-laden barrels slung across; but though he called faintly to the man through the open window, and was as usual inquisitive, he was little wiser when told they 'brought culm and clay for fire-balls.'

Fire-balls were familiar things. Not so the culm or the clay, and to satisfy his persistent curiosity he was promised if he would keep quiet he should witness their conversion into the hard balls.

A few yards from the house he saw on one side a great heap of black dust (the refuse of hard coal). This, barefooted Cate was riddling through a wire sieve (the very sieve Breint had brought safely home, though he lost the buyer), flinging away into a separate heap all that was too coarse to pass through the sieve. At a distance on the other side was laid a quantity of yellow clay, portions of which Rhys was moistening with water, beating and turning over with a spade, and when of the proper consistence adding, a spadeful at a time, the fine black dust Cate had sieved, to be again mixed and kneaded like dough, and finally worked with the hands into round hard balls, which he set aside to dry for fuel.

The eagerness with which the pale little adventurer watched these grimy processes, his questions and quaint remarks, quite amused the two workers, but his searching interrogations speedily posed both of them; and when he wanted to know what was coal, and what was clay, and why they mixed the two together to make them burn, he was greeted with fresh laughter, and an impatient, 'Oh, don't bother,' or its Welsh equivalent, from Rhys.

But the little inquirer, who sat with his head on one side, resting it on his hand, was not contented with the put-off; and when Robert Jones came with a load of peat that afternoon, he was plied with the same questions.

The man smiled. His own information did not go very far, but he did his best to reach infantile understanding; told him that the clay was a kind of earth dug from the river-side, and that coal grew underground, and was brought up in baskets out of a deep hole by a horse that was always walking round and round to wind them up to the top by a rope that wound round a thick wooden post.10

This was a puzzler for William. He wanted to be taken there and then to see the horse go round and round.

Ales, coming at that moment to pay the man, hoping to put a check on the child's new notion, exclaimed —

'Name o' goodness, do you want the black man to carry you away down the dark pit-hole, where you would never see us any more whatever?'

'Me don't fink they 'ood. They don't take man down,' replied the child sturdily; and at length the 'man,' ready to go about his business, promised to take him to see the horse go round 'some day.'

''Oo said 'oo 'ood take me to see church, an' 'oo didn't,' then said William in high dudgeon, and lapsed into sullen silence. In all his long illness he had not forgotten the church he had seen but once.

'Never mind, Willem fach; if you are a good boy, perhaps mother will let you ride with her to church on Breint next Sunday,' said Rhys in a consolatory tone.

'Sure?' asked William, his face brightening.

'Not sure, but I will ask her.' And with that the little fellow seemed satisfied.

The three youngsters were in bed when Rhys made his suggestion over the frugal supper-table. It brought on a sharp controversy, in which Ales joined very freely.

Mrs. Edwards was undecided. She 'feared the child would not be strong enough to sit through the service after the long ride.'

''Deed, there's no fear o' that,' put in Ales; 'but it's Jonet's turn to go to church, before a babe that can't make head or tail of a word that's said; and more like take Davy than either. There's no good of humouring children.'

'Well, I don't know what queer fancy he has got into that curious head of his,' argued Rhys; 'but I think it would be best to humour him this time, lest he should be setting off again, and' —

'Humour him, indeed! More like be giving him a good whipping,' interrupted Ales. 'There's no end to his queer fancies. It's master over us all he will be soon, I'm thinking.'

Evan had been silent. He agreed with Rhys. 'It is never too soon to learn the way to church,' said he. 'I will carry him there on my shoulders.'

There was a sigh of relief from Mrs. Edwards. 'Ah, then,' she exclaimed, 'Jonet and Davy can take turns on Breint. If it be fine,' she added. She was disinclined to be severe with William at any time, and after his long illness she felt unwilling to thwart him. Yet she had misgivings about indulging the obstinate self-will, 'so like his poor father's,' she told herself, with another sigh. Evan's proposal was hailed as a compromise that would, at least, content Rhys.

Not altogether. He was not content that Evan should usurp his prerogative. He was the one to carry his brother if he must be carried. He considered his own proposal the fittest; but, perhaps, ashamed of his foolish jealousy, and remembering the boy's weight, kept his opinion to himself.

November though it was, Sunday happened to be fine. Whatever mist there might be on the mountain-tops, there was no thick smoke to blacken it, and down in the valley it was clearing off.

William and Jonet were in high glee. The little girl had not yet been to church, and he had led her to expect something marvellous. After illness children pick up their strength more rapidly than adults. The week had done wonders for the boy, who had been trotting indoors and out for two or three days.

He saw Jonet seated on a pillow in front of his mother on Breint, but was very much too much of a man to accept the proffered shoulders of Evan.

'Me walk well as Davy and Rhys,' maintained he proudly, and trudged on sturdily so long as the road descended and had been clean washed by rain. But little legs cannot keep the pace with long ones, any more than can short purses with long ones, and after a time the weary little limbs were glad of a mount on the big broad shoulders. Yet even then he made the excuse of 'uncomfrable shoes an' 'tockings.'

He did not talk much as they went, but cast his eyes from side to side, evidently taking note of wayside landmarks. Other people in their Sunday best were also on the road, and exchanged greetings in passing. He was apparently on the watch for Robert Jones, whose cottage of rough stone he recognised at a glance. He expected the 'man' and his donkey to be there also, and expressed his disappointment. But it was not until they passed under the shade of the dark firs that lined the roadside boundary of the vicar's glebe lands, when the lych-gate and the church, with its long body and massive square tower, were full in view, that he became demonstrative.

Breint had been left at a small inn at the foot of the hill, and then William was pleased to dismount from his perch, and, with quite an air of patronising superiority, to take his sister by the hand as if to lead her up the hill, and over the stone stile to astonish her sight with all that had astonished him.

The bells were swinging and ringing over their heads, as they had been ringing for nearly half an hour, but they were early, and whilst Mrs. Edwards and Rhys walked together to their new grave, William stood still with his eyes fixed on the great church tower with childish awe and admiration.

Presently he startled Evan with the strange questions: 'How did it get there? Did it grow?'

His pointed finger showed to what it referred.

'Grow, child? No. It was built.'

'What is built?'

'Men brought stones, look you, and put them together.'

'How?'

''Deed, William, you do be asking queer questions. I will, maybe, show you how it was built next week.'

'Will you? Could me build big church if me was big man?'

''Deed, and perhaps you might help.'

'Then me will.'

At that moment, to Evan's relief, Mrs. Edwards caught her little boy by the hand to lead him inside, Davy having taken charge of Jonet.

Church, clergyman, congregation, service – all were strange to the girl. Her head turned this way and that; now with a smile as she recognised some familiar face; but ere long she wearied, and, not being allowed to talk, she fell asleep, and slept, with her head against her mother's cloak, throughout the sermon.

Not so William. The service was no more intelligible or interesting to him, but his unsatisfied, wide-awake eyes were everywhere exploring the sacred interior; his little mind lost in large wonder at the length of the building and the lofty roof overhead, so much larger to a child's imagination than its actuality. And how far his crude speculations went must remain a mystery to the end of time.

The service over, Mrs. Edwards, holding Jonet by the hand, joined the stream of worshippers on their way to the porch, nothing doubting that she was followed by her boys. Once in the wide churchyard, dotted with upright slabs of stone, over which two magnificent yew-trees had stood sentinel for centuries, the congregation broke up into groups and family parties, to greet each other, and discuss alike the affairs of individuals, of the nation, and of the widespread parish – so widespread, indeed, that families whose ancestors lay all around lived too far apart for the meeting of kith and kin, except on the seventh day and on the common God's acre. Young people too – cousins and friends – clasped hands and blushed, or looked shyly at each other when only that was possible. The old vicar, too, when disrobed, would saunter from one group to another, shaking hands and inquiring about asthma, rheumatism, crops, and sweethearts, with genial impartiality. Here he would admonish one, there advise another; now his voice was low in condolence, anon cheery in congratulation; and, unless when there was some dispute over tithes, none ever turned towards him the cold shoulder.

He greeted the widow thus: 'Ah, Mrs. Edwards, I observe you have brought your whole family with you to-day. That is as it should be. "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it."'

'Yes, sir,' she answered respectfully, 'I brought them all – Willem' – she looked round; 'Rhys, where is Willem?'