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

'Ah, indeed, yes, where is the little fellow? I heard he had been very ill.'

Another assent, another look round, the boy was nowhere within sight. But Evan was seen stalking towards the porch, and in a couple of minutes out he came leading the boy by the hand.

He had found him standing in front of the communion-table, looking with awestruck eyes down the whole length of the church, but he suffered Evan to lead him away without demur.

By that time, however, the vicar had gone, and Rhys, who had been round the church to look for the absentee, came back cross and ill-tempered. He had promised Cate to walk home along with her and her father, and had not been too well pleased to see them pass out over the stile beside the lych-gate, whilst he was still seeking what he could not find.

'Where had you got to, you young plague?' he cried, with a frown on his face, taking the boy by the shoulders and shaking him angrily. 'You are always running off somewhere. But I'll thrash you if you do it again.'

The mother interposed, but the harmony of the hour and the peace of the sacred place were alike disturbed, and Rhys marched off sullenly in advance, hardly caring whether he overtook the weaver and his daughter in his ill-humour.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS

Evan was one of those capable individuals, who, through making good use of eyes and ears, can turn their hands readily to anything. In those days, before the 'division of labour' had been formulated into a creed, the class was more common, and still in remote country places individuals of the type may be found. In addition to his field-work he had helped the shepherd to mend the stone fence of his sheepfold, and had made the ragged roof of the cattle-shed wind and weather proof with the heather Rhys had cut down. He had yet to demonstrate his 'all-round' faculty in the performance of a promise made, in the first place, to Mrs. Edwards, and secondly, to little William.

It was quite a common thing in Wales, as it is in Ireland to this day, for the pigs to wander over the farm, or out in the roads, poking their snouts into the proprietor's kitchen as a matter of course, and making free with root-crops meant for human beings. But as it happened that Mrs. Edwards and Evan had experience of a better state of things, they were agreed as to its adoption.

Consequently, at the beginning of the week, William, who had begun to follow Evan about like a small shadow, was delighted to watch him and Lewis clear away a large space among the outbuildings, and Robert Jones came two or three times with loads of rough stones from a local quarry, which his two patient beasts drew on the singular sleds or sledges that did duty for wheeled carts in those mountain regions.

But it was the process of piling and fitting these loose and shapeless stones on one another, so as to bind together in a firm and compact wall without cement, that kept William dancing with excitement unfelt by either passive Davy or Jonet, to whom a stitch more or less in their knitting appeared of vastly more importance than the raising of a common wall. It might suit William to caper about, or to stagger under a voluntary load of stone, and fancy he was helping, it did not much interest them.

Yet these children were no blinder than the world at large to 'the day of small things.'

But when they noticed the rising walls shaping into two adjoining square enclosures with little doorways, across which he placed long, flat pieces of wood to support the upper courses of stone, and beheld a conical roof rise over each in genuine Welsh form, and learned that the two small houses were for the pigs to live in, Davy himself set up an exclamation of surprise, as Rhys had done before him. And, no doubt, Evan would have been equally surprised had he been told that the beehive form was as ancient as the habitations of those early British ancestors who fled to the Cambrian mountains for refuge from the Roman and Saxon invaders.

Astonishment was exhausted when Williams, the Eglwysilan carpenter, on the Wednesday, brought a couple of stout wooden troughs and gates, for by that time each conical sty had been supplied with a small walled forecourt of its own, and Evan had covered the earthen floors with a thick carpet of dry fern for the pigs to lie upon. And whilst the man was at work fixing up the gates, he made a broom of ling, and began scrubbing the dirty old sow vigorously, to make her fit for her clean abode. The pigs grunted and the children laughed. So did Williams, the carpenter, to whom pig-scrubbing was a novelty. And so did Rhys, who came up the yard at the time, his lip curling with fine scorn.

But Ales, who had lived with her mistress long enough to imbibe her advanced notions of cleanliness, and had, besides, a natural vein of good sense in her composition, called out from the unshuttered dairy window, where she stood drawing a knife through and through the newly-churned butter to remove accidental cow-hairs before making up: 'Them as likes good bacon should be caring for the swine. There's fools as would rather be sticking in the mud than mending the roads.'

Having delivered this oracular rebuke to the scorners, she resumed her butter-making with renewed energy, none the less for the swift glance and smile of approval she had seen on Evan's quickly upturned face.

She and Evan were becoming as good friends as he and William, and he did not affect to despise an additional friend on the hearth where Rhys was silently hostile. Beyond the bounds of the farm he felt he could defend himself, if necessary.

But it would be as easy to defend oneself from a fog as from the whisperings of envy or the shrugs and jeers of ignorance.

Already was the voice of prophecy upraised among the Sunday gossips that Evan Evans would bring ruin on Brookside Farm with his foolish new ways.

The very carpenter who had taken the order for the woodwork of the new sties had tuned saw and plane to laughter, and hammered down his conviction that 'Mrs. Edwards would be finding out the folly too late.' And listening lag-behinds shook their shock-heads and fell back on the old Welsh proverb: 'Ah, a widow's goods will soon be gone.'

When these whisperings reached the widow in the guise of advice from well-meaning cousins in all degrees of affinity, she put them down with a short, decisive answer: 'Look you, I do have my ways, you do be having yours. Keep your own spade for your own farm.'

She wondered how the petty details of new management had reached so many ears, and gave Lewis a sharp hint not to gossip about what did not concern him. But she never suspected Rhys of dropping the word-seeds that rose up around them as ill weeds of speech and thought.

She had seen Rhys kick over wantonly a miniature wall that William was attempting to 'build' across the threshold with Evan's refuse stone chippings, and she had rebuked him sharply when he flung out angrily the small collection the child had brought indoors to 'build' with – just such a heap as a modern boy's box of bricks – not taking his pretence of 'a litter' as an excuse. She had gone so far as to insist on the restoration of the 'poor darling's playthings'; but just as she failed to hear him delegate to Davy the task of picking up the scattered treasures William was crying for, so she failed to suspect her eldest born of any ungenerous feeling towards Evan, or any unworthy comment on private affairs to strangers.

So long as roads were passable, and skies at all propitious, Mrs. Edwards was certain to ride to Caerphilly market, companioned by Rhys, less for protection than for his instruction. When Aquarius was reckless with his water-pot, Evan alone bestrode Breint, and seldom failed to make a good market.

Equally, when Sundays were fine, Mrs. Edwards went to church, and with her Rhys and one of the younger ones; Evan's shoulders being always at the service of William rather than disappoint the boy. Yet, when the broken weather kept the house-mother and children from Sunday service, Ales was prompt and ready to accompany Rhys and Evan, even when the morning mist became a drizzle or a blinding fog. Umbrellas were unknown, and, therefore, unmissed. Cased in her thick, dark-blue cloak, its large hood drawn over her low-crowned, black-felt man's hat, and the white linen cap under that, she seemed to heed the weather as little as her companions in their heavy coats, and generally came back, after her long barefooted walk, as rosy and bright as if the sun had been shining overhead, and the pathway of velvet sward.

If Rhys started with them, he had a trick of deserting them, and joining Owen Griffith and Cate. But he was so far his own master, and, as they made no complaint, Mrs. Edwards had no suspicion of his defection, or of an intimacy so close as to have become confidential.

And, although Owen had been one of the first to follow Mrs. Edwards' lead in the matter of whitewashing and window-glazing, and had been a very good friend and adviser to the widow in her hour of sorest need, and would have been the first to rise in her defence, neither his wife, nor Cate, nor it may be himself, was above the bird-like propensity to pick up stray crumbs of confidence, or to drop them for other well-meaning, bird-like chatterers to pick up. So it came about that little was done on the farm that was not discussed half over the parish.

Yet, notwithstanding proverb or prophecy, the widow's goods were in no danger from unthrift.

Whether rain or fair, whosoever went to church or stayed at home, – and as the winter advanced the roads became impassable, – no sooner was the kitchen cleared after the simple dinner, than the big Welsh Bible was laid reverently upon the table, and either Mrs. Edwards or Rhys read a chapter or two aloud, she venturing to expound the text to immature understandings.

Theologians might have smiled, or shaken their wise heads over her expositions, but she was a clear-headed woman, and seldom dived below her depth.

She never allowed anything to break into this Sunday custom. It was a family bond drawing them all closer together; even the youngest bringing their low wooden stools nearer, and listening with attention not common where books and other objects of interest are many.

In the wet and snowy winter months, when outdoor labour was restricted and the days short, indoor work was at its busiest. Doors would be closed to keep out the cold winds, Evan would bring fresh squares of peat and fire-balls to keep the hearth aglow. He would take the place of Ales at the churn, or would hang up the big porridge-pot, or (if cheese-making was about, though there was little cheese made in the winter) the great whey-pot, with hearty goodwill to help her. Then a candle would be alight, and whilst the cat and dog lay basking in front of the fire, all, down to the youngest, would have some useful or profitable occupation.

It was then Mrs. Edwards' spinning-wheel went round the swiftest, and sang its song of industry the loudest.

In former days her husband had combed the wool, and was teaching Rhys how to fling the tufts of greasy and matted wool over the heated iron combs set in an upright staff, and to draw them out like the long locks of a woman's hair. She had always sorted her own fleeces. We are all familiar with the sign of 'The Golden Fleece.' Well, just so the fleece of a sheep hangs together after it is sheared away, but in every fleece are several different qualities of wool, and the sorting and separating those qualities calls for a discriminating touch. This continued to be her task, though Evan took the wool-combing in hand, Rhys having an occasional turn with the coarser sorts.

Ales, in generous rivalry with her mistress, having no second spinning-wheel, took up her distaff, as did half the women in the Principality, and set her spindle dancing on the floor as she drew out her thread of wool or linen.

Knitting was taken up by any one of them when not otherwise employed.

Thus Rhys plied his knitting-pins with ease and certainty, and the long blue or black woollen stockings grew under his fingers, whilst he proudly exercised his dead father's function, and taught his sister and brothers to read.

It was a tedious occupation; and he might not have taken it up from choice, or accepted the office willingly, but the monotonous drawl of the learners sounded an undertone to the musical hum of his mother's wheel, and set his heart aglow with the feeling that, however and wherever Evan had superseded him, in that at least he represented his dead father, and was, in his own opinion, the head of the house, having authority over the younger ones.

It made him more patient with them than he otherwise might have been. And it kept under his reluctance to teach little William his letters, when the child, with a laudable desire to look big and do what Davy and Jonet did, insisted on an introduction to the painted characters on his sister's battledore.11

'Me tree years old,' Willie had pleaded, when Rhys asserted that he was too young to learn, and when that did not serve, 'Me ask Evan, Evan teach me,' was quite sufficient. Rhys drew his dark brows together, but he put down his knitting and pointed to the letters without another word of objection.

Having thus, as it were, compelled his brother to teach him as a favour, he stuck to his self-imposed task with unflagging determination, as if he had something to master that must be mastered. And, perhaps, not the less persistently because, with all a sharp child's acute perception, he saw he was having his own way in spite of Rhys. Having his own way also in being free to build walls and houses on the great chest under the window with his accumulating bits of stone.

That is, until Ales came at an early hour and swept his building materials into a corner, and swept him and Jonet off to bed with equal promptitude, barely waiting whilst they said their simple prayers.

Work (the knitting, spinning, and wool-combing) did not cease until the general supper-time, about eight o'clock; but conversation lightened it, the distance between mistress and servants being scarcely felt or perceptible, though one directed and the others obeyed.

Sometimes Evan might have occasion to look after a sick beast, or Ales to prepare a warm mash, or the shepherd might come in to report the condition of his flock; but so, with little variation, went on the routine of the farm, until renewing spring brought fresh activities and outdoor occupations.

Spring, too, brought wizened Mr. Pryse, the agent, intrusively prying round the farm, his half-shut eyes scanning homestead and tillage with eager craving to discover signs of the mismanagement over which rumour had been busy.

CHAPTER IX.

THE BAFFLED AGENT

Mr. Pryse mounted his horse and trotted away from the farm, biting his long nails as he went in sheer vexation. His survey had not been as satisfactory to himself as he had anticipated. The land was in good cultivation, and every one was at work upon it. In one brown field lime lay in round, white heaps; compost, from the farmyard, showed in dark patches, ready for distribution on the grass land. In one field Evan was sowing oats; in another plot, where the spade had turned over the ground in well-defined furrows, Rhys was dibbling holes for planting, and Davy followed, dropping in something he carried in a small basket, which would have baffled the sharp optics of the observer, had he not come across Ales, besides a heap of seed potatoes, cutting them up into pieces where the eyes were beginning to shoot, and seen Davy bring his empty basket for a fresh supply.

'Mrs. Edwards do be in the house, sir,' said the young woman, as a hint that his inquisitorial observation was unpleasant; and, after a sneer at what he called 'experimental farming,' the hint had been taken.

He had already been on to the moorlands to inspect sheep and goats, and put the shepherd through the fine sieve, and had come back over newly-sown crops, or springing shoots of green ones, heedless where the hoofs of his horse might fall. Had he been lord of the land in full possession, he could scarcely have been more indifferent; had he been tenant, he might have been more careful. As he neared the homestead, and saw barn and outbuildings in good repair, where he had expected dilapidation, he pressed his thin lips close together, but when he came upon the newly-erected sties, the thin lips spread, and made an abortive attempt to curl.

'So that is how you propose to carry on your farm, is it? Aping the gentry!' he said, with a sneer, addressing Mrs. Edwards as he dismounted, the sound of hoof-beats having brought her to the dairy door. 'Do you imagine it will pay you to house your hogs? You will be for putting your goats into limbo next.'

''Deed, and I wish I could,' was her response. 'They do so much damage to the trees and thatch.'

'Ugh! And pray where did you see hogs so accommodated? Not in the Vale of Glamorgan, I know. We don't house pigs as snugly as our labourers.'

'Sure, sir, it was in England, when I was in service there. And at Castella and Llantwit. But, perhaps, sir, you will be coming in and have a glass of cider and a bite of bread and cheese?'

He looked snappish enough to take a bite at her – or her farm – as he answered: 'England, indeed! Surely Welsh ways are best for Welsh people. You will not find English ones prosper here.'

Nevertheless, he followed her into the house, noticing as he went that the dairy had been enclosed and partitioned off close to the jamb of the outer door, and was shut in by its own door on the left, so as to preserve it from the dust of traffic across, and from the open storage on the right.

'Is that another of your English ways?' he asked, as he passed on.

'Yes, sir.'

'Humph! And your wheel, and your glass windows, and your potatoes? You will not find many imitators, Mrs. Edwards.'

''Deed, sir, and I don't be looking for imitators, whatever; unless, perhaps, my children and my servants may be for teaching theirs, as I do be teaching them.'

She had spread a clean, homespun linen cloth on the table under the cheese and the jug of cider, even though she disliked the agent and suspected his errand. Private feeling must not interfere with hospitality.

He, for his part, accepted her attentions as a right, making as free with the cheese and bread and cider as if they had been ordered at an inn, with the relishing consciousness they would not have to be paid for.

'Perhaps,' said he, after a good draught of the cider, 'you learned to make that in England too?' the old ugly smile on his thin lips.

'Partly, sir. In Herefordshire.'

Narrowed as were the slits between his eyelids, nothing escaped his roving eyes.

'What's that?' he ejaculated, pointing with his riding whip, as he rose to depart, to a rudely-constructed tower William was raising on the oak chest with his stone chips. The boy had backed into a corner in front of his sister Jonet, as if he recognised a foe in the stranger. Shyness he had none.

His mother explained. 'Willem's building a Tower of Babil.'

'Humph! If he can do that, he might be set to something useful. There,' said Mr. Pryse, 'that will find him employment,' and, with a stroke of his whip, he swept down the boy's tower, a malicious chuckle shaking his skinny throat as he strode out of the kitchen to mount his horse.

As he rode away he heard a boy's passionate scream behind him, and felt the sharp pelting of a couple of small stones between his shoulders. He turned round in his saddle, and shook his whip-hand at the child, who, with face aflame, cried after him —

'You bad man! bad man, you!'

But he only chuckled, as if the incident amused him.

His satisfaction was but temporary, and before he had well reached the level he began biting his nails with vexation, for he saw only signs of improved husbandry, nothing on which he could pounce as betokening ruin.

After a few days came a more welcome visitor to the farm, in the guise of a travelling packman, with his string of mules, on his rounds to collect the stockings, flannels, blankets, and linseys, knitted and woven in the farms and cottages scattered among the mountains or grouped in villages. For these he was willing to pay in coin, but he preferred to exchange for the English goods with which his beasts were laden, not so much of ribbon and laces, gaily-coloured gown-pieces, or cheap trinkets, as of useful hardware, knives, forks, spoons, crockery, pots and pans, needles, pins, tapes, and buttons; such goods as were in general demand for household use. Very rarely did he display any more gorgeous drapery than a silken neckerchief, or a bright ribbon for a bow. The Welsh still clung to their national costume, and, with few exceptions, were clothed entirely in woollen of native growth and manufacture. Still he carried hats with him, and the flannels or duffle collected in one part he could dispose of elsewhere.

The jingling bells on his leading mule proclaimed his arrival. There was a general rush to surround him and inspect his wares, the children crowding in with the rest, and the clack of tongues was indescribable.

His periodical visits were the great events of the year. The first duty was that of hospitality. Oaten bread and cheese and milk were set before him, and the winter's pile of knitted stockings and mittens brought out whilst he refreshed. These, as the man knew of old, had to be examined, priced, and paid for before Mrs. Edwards would allow one of his packs or panniers to be unloaded. Then ensued the bargaining for bright-coloured mugs and bowls; there was no need of teacups and saucers, for no one drank tea. It was almost an unknown luxury there. Jonet and William were favoured with a mug apiece, adorned with waves of bright blue on a yellow ground. Rhys had a new hat. Davy plucked at his mother's skirts and reminded her that he was to be finally breeched when the packman came round, and he was not disappointed.

Something was wanted and bought for house and everybody.

Ales, who had smartened herself up of late, invested in a bright-coloured cotton kerchief or shawl to be worn crossed over her short jacket, and a stout comb to keep her tangled locks in order; the need for which she learned by surveying her own good looks in a red-framed looking-glass Evan had given to her – a glass not larger than his own right hand, but it was better as a mirror than the broken water under the spring, and might be taken as an earnest of his especial goodwill.

The ensuing rent was paid duly; and, in spite of prophecies and forecasts, it was as duly paid in succeeding years.

But Mr. Pryse grew no more civil; indeed, he seemed ever on the watch for some pretext to turn the widow and her children off the farm she had done so much to improve. He had never forgiven Edwards for saying of him, 'he was too grasping to be altogether honest,' and, when the farmer was drowned, rejoiced as only an evil-minded curmudgeon could do.

It was no satisfaction to him, as years went by, to see one whitewashed cottage after another stand out like a pearl among emerald fields and foliage, and know whose house had been the model. Nor could he hear of Owen Griffith and others venturing on a potato crop without a sneer. And he positively snarled when he heard the prices the widow's piglings and bacon brought in the market. Not that he ascribed the prosperity of Mrs. Edwards to her own good management. No; he set that down to Evan Evans and his previous initiation on the Castella estate. He owed the farm-servant a grudge accordingly. He rejoiced when he heard that Rhys regarded Evans as an interloper, and never missed an opportunity, by subtle sneer or insinuation, to fan the supposed antagonism into an active flame.

As years rolled on, and he saw the down of incipient manhood darken on the lip of Rhys, ever his mother's escort on rent-days, his innuendoes became broader and stronger. There was an air of self-sustained mastership about the sturdy young fellow that suggested ripe soil for his weeds.

'Humph!' said he, when Rhys was about eighteen; 'I should have thought a stout chap like you might have saved your mother the cost of a head man.'

At a later date: 'Well, young man, I never expected your father's son to submit to a servant's rule so long.'

Had there been any submission in the case, Rhys would have taken fire at once. No hints would have been needed to provoke rebellion that would have led to the ousting of Evan. But the latter had never presumed to give orders, and, of late, had deferred to Rhys as his 'young master.'