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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of My Neighbors, by Caradoc Evans
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: My Neighbors
+       Stories of the Welsh People
+
+Author: Caradoc Evans
+
+Release Date: October 8, 2005 [EBook #16823]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY NEIGHBORS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ted Garvin, Melissa Er-Raqabi and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+MY NEIGHBORS
+STORIES OF THE WELSH PEOPLE
+
+BY
+CARADOC EVANS
+
+
+NEW YORK
+HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE
+1920
+
+
+
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY
+HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE, INC.
+
+
+THE QUINN & BODEN COMPANY
+RAHWAY, N.J.
+
+
+
+
+TO
+MY FRIEND
+THOMAS BURKE
+OF "LIMEHOUSE NIGHTS"
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER                                        PAGE
+
+       THE WELSH PEOPLE                           3
+   I.  LOVE AND HATE                             11
+  II.  ACCORDING TO THE PATTERN                  31
+ III.  THE TWO APOSTLES                          59
+  IV.  EARTHBRED                                 81
+   V.  FOR BETTER                                99
+  VI.  TREASURE AND TROUBLE                     117
+ VII.  SAINT DAVID AND THE PROPHETS             131
+VIII.  JOSEPH'S HOUSE                           155
+  IX.  LIKE BROTHERS                            173
+   X.  A WIDOW WOMAN                            187
+  XI.  UNANSWERED PRAYERS                       199
+ XII.  LOST TREASURE                            215
+XIII.  PROFIT AND GLORY                         231
+
+
+
+
+THE WELSH PEOPLE
+
+
+Our God is a big man: a tall man much higher than the highest chapel in
+Wales and broader than the broadest chapel. For the promised day that He
+comes to deliver us a sermon we shall have made a hole in the roof and
+taken down a wall. Our God has a long, white beard, and he is not unlike
+the Father Christmas of picture-books. Often he lies on his stomach on
+Heaven's floor, an eye at one of his myriads of peepholes, watching that
+we keep his laws. Our God wears a frock coat, a starched linen collar
+and black necktie, and a silk hat, and on the Sabbath he preaches to the
+congregation of Heaven.
+
+Heaven is a Welsh chapel; but its pulpit is of gold, and its walls,
+pews, floor, roof, harmonium, and its clock--which marks the days of the
+month as well as the hours of the day--are of glass. The inhabitants are
+clothed in the white shirts in which they were buried and in which they
+arose at the Call; and the language of God and his angels and of the
+Company of Prophets is Welsh, that being the language spoken in the
+Garden of Eden and by Jacob, Moses, Abraham, and Elijah.
+
+Wales is Heaven on earth, and every Welsh chapel is a little Heaven; and
+God has favored us greatly by choosing to rule over us preachers who are
+fashioned in his likeness and who are without spot or blemish.
+
+Every Welsh child knows that the preacher is next to God; "I am the Big
+Man's photograph," the preacher shouts; and the child is brought up in
+the fear of the preacher.
+
+Jealous of his trust, the preacher has made rules for the salvation of
+our bodies and souls. Temptations such as art, drama, dancing, and the
+study of folklore he has removed from our way. Those are vanities, which
+make men puffed up and vainglorious; and they are unsavory in the
+nostrils of the Big Man. And look you, the preacher asks, do they not
+cost money? Are they not time wasters? The capel needs your money, boys
+bach, that the light--the grand, religious light--shall shine in the
+pulpit.
+
+That is the lamp which burns throughout Wales. It keeps our feet from
+Church door and public house, and it guides us to the polling booth
+where we record our votes as the preacher has instructed us. Be the
+season never so hard and be men and women never so hungry, its flame
+does not wane and the oil in its vessel is not low.
+
+White cabbages and new potatoes, eggs and measures of corn, milk and
+butter and money we give to the preacher. We trim our few acres until
+our shoulders are crutched and the soil is in the crevices of our flesh
+that his estate shall be a glory unto God. We make for him a house which
+is as a mansion set amid hovels and for the building thereof the widow
+must set aside portions of her weekly old age pension. These things and
+many more we do, for forgiveness of sin is obtained by sacrifice. Such
+folk as hold back their offerings have their names proclaimed in the
+pulpit.
+
+Said the preacher: "Heavy was the punishment of the Big Man on Twm Cwm,
+persons, because Twm speeched against the capel. Was he not put in the
+coffin in his farm trowsis and jacket? And do you know, the Big Man cast
+a brightness on his buttons for him to be known in the blackness of
+hell."
+
+It is no miracle that we are religious. Our God is just behind the
+preacher, and he is in the semblance of the preacher; and we believe in
+him truly. It is no miracle that we are prayerful. Our God is by us in
+our hagglings and cheatings. Becca Penffos prays that the dealer's eyes
+are closed to the disease of her hen; Shon Porth asks the Big Man to
+destroy his pregnant sister into whose bed Satan enticed him; Ianto
+Tybach says: "Give me a nice bit of haymaking weather, God bach. Strike
+my brother Enoch dead and blind and see I have his fields without any
+old bother. A champion am I in the religion and there's gifts I give the
+preacher. Ask him. That's all. Amen."
+
+Although we know God, we are afraid of to-morrow: one will steal our
+seeds, a horse will perish, our wife will die and a servant woman will
+have to be hired to the time that we find another wife, the Englishman
+whom we defrauded in the market place will come and seek his rights.
+
+We are what we have been made by our preachers and politicians, and thus
+we remain. Among ourselves our repute is ill. Our villages and
+countryside are populated with the children of cousins who have married
+cousins and of women who have played the harlot with their brothers; and
+no one loves his neighbor. Abroad we are distrusted and disdained. This
+is said of us: "A Welshman's bond is as worthless as his word." We
+traffic in prayers and hymns, and in the name of Jesus Christ, and we
+display a spurious heart upon our breast. Our politicians, crafty pupils
+of the preachers and now their masters, weep and moan in the public
+places as if they were women in childbirth; in their souls they are
+lustful and cruel and greedy. They have made themselves the slaves of
+the wicked, and like asses their eyes are lifted no higher than the
+golden carrot which is their reward from the wicked. Not of one of us it
+can be said: "He is a great man," or "He is a good man," or "He is an
+honest man."
+
+Maybe the living God will consider our want of knowledge and act
+mercifully toward us.
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+LOVE AND HATE
+
+
+By living frugally--setting aside a portion of his Civil Service pay and
+holding all that he got from two butchers whose trade books he kept in
+proper order--Adam Powell became possessed of Cartref in which he dwelt
+and which is in Barnes, and two houses in Thornton East; and one of the
+houses in Thornton East he let to his widowed daughter Olwen, who
+carried on a dressmaking business. At the end of his term he retired
+from his office, his needs being fulfilled by a pension, and his evening
+eased by the ministrations of his elder daughter Lisbeth.
+
+Soon an inward malady seized him, and in the belief that he would not be
+rid of it, he called Lisbeth and Olwen, to whom both he pronounced his
+will.
+
+"The Thornton East property I give you," he said. "Number seven for
+Lissi and eight for Olwen as she is. It will be pleasant to be next
+door, and Lissi is not likely to marry at her age which is advanced.
+Share and share alike of the furniture, and what's left sell with the
+house and haff the proceeds. If you don't fall out in the sharing, you
+never will again."
+
+At once Lisbeth and Olwen embraced.
+
+"My sister is my best friend," was the testimony of the elder; "we
+shan't go astray if we follow the example of the dad and mother," was
+that of the younger.
+
+"Take two or three excursion trains to Aberporth for the holidays," said
+Adam, "and get a little gravel for the mother's grave in Beulah. And a
+cheap artificial wreath. They last better than real ones. It was in
+Beulah that me and your mother learnt about Jesus."
+
+Together Olwen and Lisbeth pledged that they would attend their father's
+behests: shunning ill-will and continually petitioning to be translated
+to the Kingdom of God; "but," Lisbeth laughed falsely, "you are not
+going to die. The summer will do wonders for you."
+
+"You are as right as a top really," cried Olwen.
+
+Beholding that his state was the main concern of his children, Adam
+counted himself blessed; knowing of a surety that the designs of God
+stand fast against prayer and physic, he said: "I am shivery all over."
+
+A fire was kindled and coals piled upon it that it was scarce to be
+borne, and three blankets were spread over those which were on his bed,
+and three earthen bottles which held heated water were put in his bed;
+and yet the old man got no warmth.
+
+"I'll manage now alone," said Lisbeth on the Saturday morning. "You'll
+have Jennie and her young gentleman home for Sunday. Should he turn for
+the worse I'll send for you."
+
+Olwen left, and in the afternoon came Jennie and Charlie from the
+drapery shop in which they were engaged; and sighing and sobbing she
+related to them her father's will.
+
+"If I was you, ma," Jennie counseled, "I wouldn't leave him too much
+alone with Aunt Liz. You never can tell. Funny things may happen."
+
+"I'd trust Aunt Liz anywhere," Olwen declared, loath to have her sister
+charged with unfaithfulness.
+
+"What do you think, Charlie?" asked Jennie.
+
+The young man stiffened his slender body and inclined his pale face and
+rubbed his nape, and he proclaimed that there was no discourse of which
+the meaning was hidden from him and no device with which he was not
+familiar; and he answered: "I would stick on the spot."
+
+That night Olwen made her customary address to God, and before she came
+up from her knees or uncovered her eyes, she extolled to God the acts
+of her father Adam. But slumber kept from her because of that which
+Jennie had spoken; and diffiding the humor of her heart, she said to
+herself: "Liz must have a chance of going on with some work." At that
+she slept; and early in the day she was in Cartref.
+
+"Jennie and Charlie insist you rest," she told Lisbeth. "She can manage
+quite nicely, and there's Charlie which is a help. So should any one who
+is twenty-three."
+
+For a week the daughters waited on their father and contrived they never
+so wittily to free him from his disorder--Did they not strip and press
+against him?--they could not deliver him from the wind of dead men's
+feet. They stitched black cloth into garments and while they stitched
+they mumbled the doleful hymns of Sion. Two yellow plates were fixed on
+Adam's coffin--this was in accordance with the man's request--and the
+engraving on one was in the Welsh tongue, and on the other in the
+English tongue, and the reason was this: that the angel who lifts the
+lid--be he of the English or of the Welsh--shall know immediately that
+the dead is of the people chosen to have the first seats in the Mansion.
+
+The sisters removed from Cartref such things as pleased them; Lisbeth
+chose more than Olwen, for her house was bare; and in the choosing each
+gave in to the other, and neither harbored a mean thought.
+
+With her chattels and her sewing machine, Lisbeth entered number seven,
+which is in Park Villas, and separated from the railway by a wood
+paling, and from then on the sisters lived by the rare fruits of their
+joint industry; and never, except on the Sabbath, did they shed their
+thimbles or the narrow bright scissors which hung from their waists.
+Some of the poor middle-class folk near-by brought to them their
+measures of materials, and the more honorable folk who dwelt in the
+avenues beyond Upper Richmond Road crossed the steep railway bridge
+with blouses and skirts to be reformed.
+
+"We might be selling Cartref now," said Olwen presently.
+
+"I leave it to you," Lisbeth remarked.
+
+"And I leave it to you. It's as much yours as mine."
+
+"Suppose we consult Charlie?"
+
+"He's a man, and he'll do the best he can."
+
+"Yes, he's very cute is Charlie."
+
+Charlie gave an ear unto Olwen, and he replied: "You been done in. It's
+disgraceful how's she's took everything that were best."
+
+"She had nothing to go on with," said Olwen. "And it will come back. It
+will be all Jennie's."
+
+"What guarantee have you of that? That's my question. What guarantee?"
+
+Olwen was silent. She was not wishful of disparaging her sister or of
+squabbling with Charlie.
+
+"Well," said Charlie, "I must have an entirely free hand. Give it an
+agent if you prefer. They're a lively lot."
+
+He went about over-praising Cartref. "With the sticks and they're not
+rubbish," he swore, "it's worth five hundred. Three-fifty will buy the
+lot."
+
+A certain man said to him: "I'll give you two-twenty"; and Charlie
+replied: "Nothing doing."
+
+Twelve months he was in selling the house, and for the damage which in
+the meanseason had been done to it by a bomb and by fire and water the
+sum of money that he received was one hundred and fifty pounds.
+
+Lisbeth had her share, and Olwen had her share, and each applauded
+Charlie, Lisbeth assuring him: "You'll never regret it"; and this is how
+Charlie applauded himself: "No one else could have got so much."
+
+"The house and cash will be a nice egg-nest for Jennie," Olwen
+announced.
+
+"And number seven and mine will make it more," added Lisbeth.
+
+"It's a great comfort that she'll never want a roof over her," said
+Olwen.
+
+Mindful of their vows to their father, the sisters lived at peace and
+held their peace in the presence of their prattling neighbors. On
+Sundays, togged in black gowns on which were ornaments of jet, they
+worshiped in the Congregational Chapel; and as they stood up in their
+pew, you saw that Olwen was as the tall trunk of a tree at whose
+shoulders are the stumps of chopped branches, and that Lisbeth's body
+was as a billhook. Once they journeyed to Aberporth and they laid a
+wreath of wax flowers and a thick layer of gravel on their mother's
+grave. They tore a gap in the wall which divided their little gardens,
+and their feet, so often did one visit the other, trod a path from
+backdoor to backdoor.
+
+Nor was their love confused in the joy that each had in Jennie, for
+whom sacrifices were made and treasures hoarded.
+
+But Jennie was discontented, puling for what she could not have,
+mourning her lowly fortune, deploring her spinsterhood.
+
+"Bert and me are getting married Christmas," she said on a day.
+
+"Hadn't you better wait a while," said Olwen. "You're young."
+
+"We talked of that. Charlie is getting on. He's thirty-eight, or will be
+in January. We'll keep on in the shop and have sleep-out vouchers and
+come here week-ends."
+
+As the manner is, the mother wept.
+
+"You've nothing to worry about," Lisbeth assuaged her sister. "He's
+steady and respectable. We must see that she does it in style. You look
+after the other arrangements and I'll see to her clothes."
+
+She walked through wind and rain and sewed by day and night, without
+heed of the numbness which was creeping into her limbs; and on the floor
+of a box she put six jugs which had been owned by the Welshwoman who
+was Adam's grandmother, and over the jugs she arrayed the clothes she
+had made, and over all she put a piece of paper on which she had
+written, "To my darling niece from her Aunt Lisbeth."
+
+Jennie examined her aunt's handiwork and was exceedingly wrathful.
+
+"I shan't wear them," she cried. "She might have spoken to me before she
+started. After all, it's my wedding. Not hers. Pwf! I can buy better
+jugs in the six-pence-apenny bazaar."
+
+"Aunt Liz will alter them," Olwen began.
+
+"I agree with her," said Charlie. "Aunt Liz should be more considerate
+seeing what I have done for her. But for me she wouldn't have any money
+at all."
+
+Charlie and Jennie stirred their rage and gave utterance to the harshest
+sayings they could devise about Lisbeth; "and I don't care if she's
+listening outside the door," said Charlie; "and you can tell her it's
+me speaking," said Jennie.
+
+Throughout Saturday and Sunday Jennie pouted and dealt rudely and
+uncivilly with her mother; and on Monday, at the hour she was preparing
+to depart, Olwen relented and gave her twenty pounds, wherefore on the
+wedding day Lisbeth was astonished.
+
+"Why aren't you wearing my presents?" she asked.
+
+"That's it," Jennie shouted. "Don't you forget to throw cold water, will
+you? It wouldn't be you if you did. I don't want to. See? And if you
+don't like it, lump it."
+
+Olwen calmed her sister, whispering: "She's excited. Don't take notice."
+
+At the quickening of the second dawn after Christmas, Jennie and Bert
+arose, and Jennie having hidden her wedding-ring, they two went about
+their business; and when at noon Olwen proceeded to number seven, she
+found that Lisbeth had been taken sick of the palsy and was fallen upon
+the floor. Lisbeth was never well again, and what time she understood
+all that Olwen had done for her, she melted into tears.
+
+"I should have gone but for you," she averred. "The money's Jennie's,
+which is the same as I had it and under the mattress, and the house is
+Jennie's."
+
+"She's fortunate," returned Olwen. "She'll never want for ten shillings
+a week which it will fetch. You are kind indeed."
+
+"Don't neglect them for me," Lisbeth urged. "I'll be quite happy if you
+drop in occasionally."
+
+"Are you not my sister?" Olwen cried. "I'm having a bed for you in our
+front sitting-room. You won't be lonely."
+
+Winter, spring, and summer passed, and the murmurs of Jennie and Charlie
+against Lisbeth were grown into a horrid clamor.
+
+"Hush, she'll hear you," Olwen always implored. "It won't be for much
+longer. The doctor says she may go any minute."
+
+"Or last ages," said Charlie.
+
+"Jennie will have the house and the money," Olwen pleaded. "And the
+money hasn't been touched. Same as you gave it to her. She showed it to
+me under the mattress. Not every one have two houses."
+
+"By then you will have bought it over and over again," said Charlie.
+"Doesn't give Jennie and me much chance of saving, does it?"
+
+"And she can't eat this and can't eat that," Jennie screamed. "She
+won't, she means."
+
+Weekly was Olwen harassed with new disputes, and she rued that she had
+said: "I'll have a bed for you in our front sitting-room"; and as it
+falls out in family quarrels, she sided with her daughter and her
+daughter's husband.
+
+So the love of the sisters became forced and strained, each speaking and
+answering with an ill-favored mouth; it was no longer entire and
+nothing that was professed united it together.
+
+"I must make my will now," Lisbeth hinted darkly.
+
+"Perhaps Charlie will oblige you," replied Olwen.
+
+"Charlie! You make me smile. Why, he can't keep a wife."
+
+"I thought you had settled all that," Olwen faltered.
+
+"Did you? Anyway, I'll have it in black and white. The minister will do
+it."
+
+After the minister was gone away, Lisbeth said: "I couldn't very well
+approach him. He's worried about money for the new vestry. Why didn't
+you tell me about the new vestry? It was in the magazine."
+
+Olwen mused and from her musings came this: "It'll be a pity to spoil it
+now. For Jennie's sake."
+
+She got very soft pillows and clean bed-clothes for Lisbeth and she
+placed toothsome dishes before Lisbeth; and it was Lisbeth's way to
+probe with a fork all the dishes that Olwen had made and to say "It's
+badly burnt," or "You didn't give much for this," or "Of course you were
+never taught to cook."
+
+For three years Olwen endured her sister's taunts and the storms of her
+daughter and her son-in-law; and then Jennie said: "I'm going to have a
+baby." If she was glad and feared to hear this, how much greater was her
+joy and how much heavier was her anxiety as Jennie's space grew
+narrower? She left over going to the aid of Lisbeth, from whom she took
+away the pillows and for whom she did not provide any more toothsome
+dishes; she did not go to her aid howsoever frantic the beatings on the
+wall or fierce the outcry. Never has a sentry kept a closer look-out
+than Olwen for Jennie. Albeit Jennie died, and as Olwen looked at the
+hair which was faded from the hue of daffodils into that of tow and at
+the face the cream of the skin of which was now like clay, she hated
+Lisbeth with the excess that she had loved her.
+
+"My dear child shall go to Heaven like a Princess," she said; and she
+sat at her work table to fashion a robe of fine cambric and lace for her
+dead.
+
+Disturbed by the noise of the machine, Lisbeth wailed: "You let me
+starve but won't let me sleep. Why doesn't any one help me? I'll get the
+fever. What have I done?"
+
+Olwen moved to the doorway of the room, her body filling the frame
+thereof, her scissors hanging at her side.
+
+"You are wrong, sister, to starve me," Lisbeth said. "To starve me. I
+cannot walk you know. You must not blame me if I change my mind about my
+money. It was wrong of you."
+
+Olwen did not answer.
+
+"Dear me," Lisbeth cried, "supposing our father in Heaven knew how you
+treat me. Indeed the vestry shall have my bit. I might be a pig in a
+pigsty. I'll get the fever. Supposing our father is looking through the
+window of Heaven at your cruelty to me."
+
+Olwen muttered the burden of her care: "'The wife would pull through if
+she had plenty of attention. How could she with her about? The two of
+you killed her. You did. I warned you to give up everything and see to
+her. But you neglected her.' That's what Charlie will say. Hoo-hoo.
+'It's unheard of for a woman to die before childbirth. Serves you right
+if I have an inquest.'..."
+
+"For shame to keep from me now," said Lisbeth in a voice that was higher
+than the continued muttering of Olwen. "Have you no regard for the
+living? The dead is dead. And you made too much of Jennie. You spoiled
+her...."
+
+On a sudden Olwen ceased, and she strode up to the bed and thrust her
+scissors into Lisbeth's breast.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+ACCORDING TO THE PATTERN
+
+
+On the eve of a Communion Sunday Simon Idiot espied Dull Anna washing
+her feet in the spume on the shore; he came out of his hiding-place and
+spoke jestingly to Anna and enticed her into Blind Cave, where he had
+sport with her. In the ninth year of her child, whom she had called
+Abel, Anna stretched out her tongue at the schoolmaster and took her son
+to the man who farmed Deinol.
+
+"Brought have I your scarecrow," she said. "Give you to me the brown
+pennies that you will pay for him."
+
+From dawn to sunset Abel stood on a hedge, waving his arms, shouting,
+and mimicking the sound of gunning. Weary of his work he vowed a vow
+that he would not keep on at it. He walked to Morfa and into his
+mother's cottage; his mother listened to him, then she took a stick and
+beat him until he could not rest nor move with ease.
+
+"Break him in like a frisky colt, little man bach,"[1] said Anna to the
+farmer. "Know you he is the son of Satan. Have I not told how the Bad
+Man came to me in my sound sleep and was naughty with me?"
+
+[Footnote 1: Dear little man. "Bach" is the Welsh masculine for "dear";
+"fach" the Welsh feminine for "dear."]
+
+But the farmer had compassion on Abel and dealt with him kindly, and
+when Abel married he let him live in Tybach--the mud-walled,
+straw-thatched, two-roomed house which is midway on the hill that goes
+down from Synod Inn into Morfa--and he let him farm six acres of land.
+
+The young man and his bride so labored that the people thereabout were
+confounded; they stirred earlier and lay down later than any honest
+folk; and they took more eggs and tubs of butter to market than even
+Deinol, and their pigs fattened wondrously quick.
+
+Twelve years did they live thus wise. For the woman these were years of
+toil and child-bearing; after she had borne seven daughters, her sap
+husked and dried up.
+
+Now the spell of Abel's mourning was one of ill-fortune for Deinol, the
+master of which was grown careless: hay rotted before it was gathered
+and corn before it was reaped; potatoes were smitten by a blight, a
+disease fell upon two cart-horses, and a heifer was drowned in the sea.
+Then the farmer felt embittered, and by day and night he drank himself
+drunk in the inns of Morfa.
+
+Because he wanted Deinol, Abel brightened himself up: he wore whipcord
+leggings over his short legs, and a preacher's coat over his long trunk,
+a white and red patterned celluloid collar about his neck, and a bowler
+hat on the back of his head; and his side-whiskers were trimmed in the
+shape of a spade. He had joy of many widows and spinsters, to each of
+whom he said: "There's a grief-livener you are," and all of whom he gave
+over on hearing of the widow of Drefach. Her he married, and with the
+money he got with her, and the money he borrowed, he bought Deinol. Soon
+he was freed from the hands of his lender. He had eight horses and
+twelve cows, and he had oxen and heifers, and pigs and hens, and he had
+twenty-five sheep grazing on his moorland. As his birth and poverty had
+caused him to be scorned, so now his gains caused him to be respected.
+The preacher of Capel Dissenters in Morfa saluted him on the tramping
+road and in shop, and brought him down from the gallery to the Big Seat.
+Even if Abel had land, money, and honor, his vessel of contentment was
+not filled until his wife went into her deathbed and gave him a son.
+
+"Indeed me," he cried, "Benshamin his name shall be. The Large Maker
+gives and a One He is for taking away."
+
+He composed a prayer of thankfulness and of sorrow; and this prayer he
+recited to the congregation which gathered at the graveside of the woman
+from Drefach.
+
+Benshamin grew up in the way of Capel Dissenters. He slept with his
+father and ate apart from his sisters, for his mien was lofty. At the
+age of seven he knew every question and answer in the book "Mother's
+Gift," with sayings from which he scourged sinners; and at the age of
+eight he delivered from memory the Book of Job at the Seiet; at that age
+also he was put among the elders in the Sabbath School.
+
+He advanced, waxing great in religion. On the nights of the Saying and
+Searching of the Word he was with the cunningest men, disputing with the
+preacher, stressing his arguments with his fingers, and proving his
+learning with phrases from the sermons of the saintly Shones Talysarn.
+
+If one asked him: "What are you going, Ben Abel Deinol?" he always
+answered: "The errander of the White Gospel fach."
+
+His father communed with the preacher, who said: "Pity quite sinful if
+the boy is not in the pulpit."
+
+"Like that do I think as well too," replied Abel. "Eloquent he is. Grand
+he is spouting prayers at his bed. Weep do I."
+
+Neighbors neglected their fields and barnyards to hear the lad's
+shoutings to God. Once Ben opened his eyes and rebuked those who were
+outside his room.
+
+"Shamed you are, not for certain," he said to them. "Come in, boys
+Capel. Right you hear the Gospel fach. Youngish am I but old is my
+courtship of King Jesus who died on the tree for scamps of parsons."
+
+He shut his eyes and sang of blood, wood, white shirts, and thorns; of
+the throng that would arise from the burial-ground, in which there were
+more graves than molehills in the shire. He cried against the heathenism
+of the Church, the wickedness of Church tithes, and against ungodly
+book-prayers and short sermons.
+
+Early Ben entered College Carmarthen, where his piety--which was an
+adage--was above that of any student. Of him this was said: "'White
+Jesus bach is as plain on his lips as the purse of a big bull.'"
+
+Brightness fell upon him. He had a name for the tearfulness and splendor
+of his eloquence. He could conduct himself fancifully: now he was
+Pharaoh wincing under the plagues, now he was the Prodigal Son longing
+to eat at the pigs' trough, now he was the Widow of Nain rejoicing at
+the recovery of her son, now he was a parson in Nineveh squirming under
+the prophecy of Jonah; and his hearers winced or longed, rejoiced or
+squirmed. Congregations sought him to preach in their pulpits, and he
+chose such as offered the highest reward, pledging the richest men for
+his wage and the cost of his entertainment and journey. But Ben would
+rule over no chapel. "I wait for the call from above," he said.
+
+His term at Carmarthen at an end, he came to Deinol. His father met him
+in a doleful manner.
+
+"An old boy very cruel is the Parson," Abel whined. "Has he not strained
+Gwen for his tithes? Auction her he did and bought her himself for three
+pounds and half a pound."
+
+Ben answered: "Go now and say the next Saturday Benshamin Lloyd will
+give mouthings on tithes in Capel Dissenters."
+
+Ben stood in the pulpit, and spoke to the people of Capel Dissenters.
+
+"How many of you have been to his church?" he cried. "Not one male bach
+or one female fach. Go there the next Sabbath, and the black muless will
+not say to you: 'Welcome you are, persons Capel. But there's glad am I
+to see you.' A comic sermon you will hear. A sermon got with
+half-a-crown postal order. Ask Postman. Laugh highly you will and stamp
+on the floor. Funny is the Parson in the white frock. Ach y fy, why for
+he doesn't have a coat preacher like Respecteds? Ask me that. From where
+does his Church come from? She is the inheritance of Satan. The only
+thing he had to leave, and he left her to his friends the parsons.
+Iss-iss, earnest affair is this. Who gives him his food? We. Who pays
+for Vicarage? We. Who feeds his pony? We. His cows? We. Who built his
+church? We. With stones carted from our quarries and mortar messed about
+with the tears of our mothers and the blood of our fathers."
+
+At the gate of the chapel men discussed Ben's words; and two or three of
+them stole away and herded Gwen into the corner of the field; and they
+caught her and cut off her tail, and drove a staple into her udder.
+Sunday morning eleven men from Capel Dissenters, with iron bands to
+their clogs on their feet, and white aprons before their bellies,
+shouted without the church: "We are come to pray from the book." The
+Parson was affrighted, and left over tolling his bell, and he bolted and
+locked the door, against which he set his body as one would set the stub
+of a tree.
+
+Running at the top of their speed the railers came to Ben, telling how
+the Parson had put them to shame.
+
+"Iobs you are," Ben answered. "The boy bach who loses the key of his
+house breaks into his house. Does an old wench bar the dairy to her
+mishtress?"
+
+The men returned each to his abode, and an hour after midday they
+gathered in the church burial-ground, and they drew up a tombstone, and
+with it rammed the door; and they hurled stones at the windows; and in
+the darkness they built a wall of dung in the room of the door.
+
+Repentance sank into the Parson as he saw and remembered that which had
+been done to him. He called to him his servant Lissi Workhouse, and her
+he told to take Gwen to Deinol. The cow lowed woefully as she was
+driven; she was heard even in Morfa, and many hurried to the road to
+witness her.
+
+Abel was at the going in of the close.
+
+"Well-well, Lissi Workhouse," he said, "what's doing then?"
+
+"'Go give the male his beast,' mishtir talked."
+
+"Right for you are," said Abel.
+
+"Right for enough is the rascal. But a creature without blemish he
+pilfered. Hit her and hie her off."
+
+As Lissi was about to go, Ben cried from within the house: "The cow the
+fulbert had was worth two of his cows."
+
+"Sure, iss-iss," said Abel. "Go will I to Vicarage with boys capel.
+Bring the baston, Ben bach."
+
+Ben came out, and his ardor warmed up on beholding Lissi's broad hips,
+scarlet cheeks, white teeth, and full bosoms.
+
+"Not blaming you, girl fach, am I," he said. "My father, journey with
+Gwen. Walk will I with Lissi Workhouse."
+
+That afternoon Abel brought a cow in calf into his close; and that night
+Ben crossed the mown hayfields to the Vicarage, and he threw a little
+gravel at Lissi's window.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The hay was gathered and stacked and thatched, and the corn was cut
+down, and to the women who were gleaning his father's oats, Ben said how
+that Lissi was in the family way.
+
+"Silence your tone, indeed," cried one, laughing. "No sign have I seen."
+
+"If I died," observed a large woman, "boy bach pretty innocent you are,
+Benshamin. Four months have I yet. And not showing much do I."
+
+"No," said another, "the bulk might be only the coil of your apron,
+ho-ho."
+
+"Whisper to us," asked the large woman, "who the foxer is. Keep the
+news will we."
+
+"Who but the scamp of the Parson?" replied Ben. "What a sow of a hen."
+
+By such means Ben shifted his offense. On being charged by the Parson he
+rushed through the roads crying that the enemy of the Big Man had put
+unbecoming words on a harlot's tongue. Capel Dissenters believed him.
+"He could not act wrongly with a sheep," some said.
+
+So Ben tasted the sapidness and relish of power, and his desires
+increased.
+
+"Mortgage Deinol, my father bach," he said to Abel. "Going am I to
+London. Heavy shall I be there. None of the dirty English are like me."
+
+"Already have I borrowed for your college. No more do I want to have.
+How if I sell a horse?"
+
+"Sell you the horse too, my father bach."
+
+"Done much have I for you," Abel said. "Fairish I must be with your
+sisters."
+
+"Why for you cavil like that, father? The money of mam came to Deinol.
+Am I not her son?"
+
+Though his daughters, murmured--"We wake at the caw of the crows," they
+said, "and weary in the young of the day"--Abel obeyed his son, who
+thereupon departed and came to Thornton East to the house of Catherine
+Jenkins, a widow woman, with whom he took the appearance of a burning
+lover.
+
+Though he preached with a view at many English chapels in London, none
+called him. He caused Abel to sell cattle and mortgage Deinol for what
+it was worth and to give him all the money he received therefrom; he
+swore such hot love for Catherine that the woman pawned her furniture
+for his sake.
+
+Intrigued that such scant fruit had come up from his sowings, Ben
+thought of further ways of stablishing himself. He inquired into the
+welfare of shop-assistants from women and girls who worshiped in Welsh
+chapels, and though he spoiled several in his quest, the abominations
+which oppressed these workers were made known to him. Shop-assistants
+carried abroad his fame and called him "Fiery Taffy." Ben showed them
+how to rid themselves of their burden; "a burden," he said, "packed full
+and overflowing by men of my race--the London Welsh drapers."
+
+The Welsh drapers were alarmed, and in a rage with Ben. They took the
+opinion of their big men and performed slyly. Enos-Harries--this is the
+Enos-Harries who has a drapery shop in Kingsend--sent to Ben this
+letter: "Take Dinner with Slf and Wife same, is Late Dinner I am pleased
+to inform. You we don't live in Establishment only as per printed Note
+Heading. And Oblige."
+
+Enos-Harries showed Ben his house, and told him the cost of the
+treasures that were therein.
+
+Also Harries said: "I have learned of you as a promising Welshman, and I
+want to do a good turn for you with a speech by you on St. David's Day
+at Queen's Hall. Now, then."
+
+"I am not important enough for that."
+
+"She'll be a first-class miting in tip-top speeches. All the drapers and
+dairies shall be there in crowds. Three sirs shall come."
+
+"I am choked with engagements," said Ben. "I am preaching very busy now
+just."
+
+"Well-well. Asked I did for you are a clean Cymro bach. As I repeat,
+only leading lines in speakers shall be there. Come now into the
+drawing-room and I'll give you an intro to the Missus Enos-Harries. In
+evening dress she is--chik Paris Model. The invoice price was ten-ten."
+
+"Wait a bit," Ben remarked. "I would be glad if I could speak."
+
+"Perhaps the next time we give you the invite. The Cymrodorion shall be
+in the miting."
+
+"As you plead, try I will."
+
+"Stretching a point am I," Harries said. "This is a favor for you to
+address this glorious miting where the Welsh drapers will attend and the
+Missus Enos-Harries will sing 'Land of my Fathers.'"
+
+Ben withdrew from his fellows for three days, and on the third
+day--which was that of the Saint--he put on him a frock coat, and combed
+down his mustache over the blood-red swelling on his lip; and he cleaned
+his teeth. Here are some of the sayings that he spoke that night:
+
+"Half an hour ago we were privileged to listen to the voice of a lovely
+lady--a voice as clear as a diamond ring. It inspired us one and all
+with a hireath for the dear old homeland--for dear Wales, for the land
+of our fathers and mothers too, for the land that is our heritage not
+by Act of Parliament but by the Act of God....
+
+"Who ownss this land to-day? The squaire and the parshon. By what right?
+By the same right as the thief who steals your silk and your laces, and
+your milk and butter, and your reddy-made blousis. I know a farm of one
+hundred acres, each rod having been tamed from heatherland into a manna
+of abundance. Tamed by human bones and muscles--God's invested capital
+in His chosen children. Six months ago this land--this fertile and rich
+land--was wrestled away from the owners. The bones of the living and the
+dead were wrestled away. I saw it three months ago--a wylderness. The
+clod had been squeesed of its zweat. The land belonged to my father, and
+his father, and his father, back to countless generations....
+
+"I am proud to be among my people to-night. How sorry I am for any one
+who are not Welsh. We have a language as ancient as the hills that
+shelter us, and the rivers that never weery of refreshing us....
+
+"Only recently a few shop-assistants--a handful of
+counter-jumpers--tried to shake the integrity of our commerse. But their
+white cuffs held back their aarms, and the white collars choked their
+aambitions. When I was a small boy my mam used to tell me how the chief
+Satan was caught trying to put his hand over the sun so as to give other
+satans a chance of doing wrong on earth in the dark. That was the object
+of these misguided fools. They had no grievances. I have since
+investigated the questions of living-in and fines. Both are fair and
+necessary. The man who tries to destroy them is like the swimmer who
+plunges among the water lilies to be dragged into destruction....
+
+"Welsh was talked in the Garden of Aden. That is where commerse began.
+Didn't Eve buy the apple?...
+
+"Ladies and gentlemen, Cymrodorion, listen. There is a going in these
+classical old rafterss. It is the coming of God. And the message He
+gives you this night is this: 'Men of Gwalia, march on and keep you
+tails up.'"
+
+From that hour Ben flourished. He broke his league with the
+shop-assistants. Those whom he had troubled lost courage and humbled
+themselves before their employers; but their employers would have none
+of them, man or woman, boy or girl.
+
+Vexation followed his prosperity. His father reproached him, writing:
+"Sad I drop into the Pool as old Abel Tybach, and not as Lloyd Deinol."
+Catherine harassed him to recover her house and chattels. To these
+complainings he was deaf. He married the daughter of a wealthy
+Englishman, who set him up in a large house in the midst of a pleasure
+garden; and of the fatness and redness of his wife he was sickened
+before he was wedded to her.
+
+By studying diligently, the English language became as familiar to him
+as the Welsh language. He bound himself to Welsh politicians and engaged
+himself in public affairs, and soon he was as an idol to a multitude of
+people, who were sensible only to his well-sung words, and who did not
+know that his utterances veiled his own avarice and that of his masters.
+All that he did was for profit, and yet he could not win enough.
+
+Men and women, soothed into false ease and quickened into counterfeit
+wrath, commended him, crying: "Thank God for Ben Lloyd." Such praise
+puffed him up, and howsoever mighty he was in the view of fools, he was
+mightier in his own view.
+
+"At the next election I'll be in Parliament," he boasted in his vanity.
+"The basis of my solidity--strength--is as immovable--is as impregnable
+as Birds' Rock in Morfa."
+
+Though the grandson of Simon Idiot and Dull Anna prophesied great things
+for himself, it was evil that came to him.
+
+He trembled from head to foot to ravish every comely woman on whom his
+ogling eyes dwelt. His greed made him faithless to those whom he
+professed to serve: in his eagerness to lift himself he planned,
+plotted, and trafficked with the foes of his officers. Hearing that an
+account of his misdeeds was spoken abroad, he called the high London
+Welshmen into a room, and he said to them:
+
+"These cruel slanderers have all but broken my spirit. They are the
+wicked inventions of fiends incarnate. It is not my fall that is
+required--if that were so I would gladly make the sacrifise--the zupreme
+sacrifise, if wanted--but it is the fall of the Party that these men are
+after. He who repeats one foul thing is doing his level best to destroy
+the fabric of this magnificent organisation that has been reared by your
+brains. It has no walls of stone and mortar, yet it is a sity builded by
+men. We must have no more bickerings. We have work to do. The seeds are
+springing forth, and a goodly harvest is promised: let us sharpen our
+blades and clear our barn floors. Cymru fydd--Wales for the Welsh--is
+here. At home and at Westminster our kith and kin are occupying
+prominent positions. Disestablishment is at hand. We have closed
+public-houses and erected chapels, each chapel being a factor in the
+education of the masses in ideas of righteous government. You, my
+friends, have secured much of the land, around which you have made
+walls, and in which you have set water fountains, and have planted rare
+plants and flowers. And you have put up your warning signs on
+it--'Trespassers will be prosecuted.'
+
+"There is coming the Registration of Workers Act, by which every worker
+will be held to his locality, to his own enormous advantage. And it will
+end strikes, and trades unionism will deservedly crumble. In future
+these men will be able to settle down, and with God's blessing bring
+children into the world, and their condition will be a delight unto
+themselves and a profit to the community.
+
+"But we must do more. I must do more. And you must help me. We must
+stand together. Slander never creates; it shackles and kills. We must be
+solid. Midway off the Cardigan coast--in beautiful Morfa--there is a
+rock--Birds' Rock. As a boy I used to climb to the top of it, and watch
+the waters swirling and tumbling about it, and around it and against it.
+But I was unafraid. For I knew that the rock was old when man was young,
+and that it had braved all the washings of the sea."
+
+The men congratulated Ben; and Ben came home and he stood at a mirror,
+and shaping his body put out his arms.
+
+"How's this for my maiden speech in the house?" he asked his wife.
+Presently he paused. "You're a fine one to be an M.P.'s lady," he said.
+"You stout, underworked fool."
+
+Ben urged on his imaginings: he advised his monarch, and to him for
+favors merchants brought their gold, and mothers their daughters. Winter
+and spring moved, and then his mind brought his enemies to his door.
+
+"As the root of a tree spreads in the bosom of the earth," he said, "so
+my fame shall spread over the world"; and he built a fence about his
+house.
+
+But his mind would not be stilled. Every midnight his enemies were at
+the fence, and he could not sleep for the dreadful outcry; every
+midnight he arose from his bed and walked aside the fence, testing the
+strength of it with a hand and a shoulder and shooing away his enemies
+as one does a brood of chickens from a cornfield.
+
+His fortieth summer ran out--a season of short days and nights speeding
+on the heels of night. Then peace fell upon him; and at dusk of a day he
+came into his room, and he saw one sitting in a chair. He went up to the
+chair and knelt on a knee, and said: "Your Majesty...."
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE TWO APOSTLES
+
+
+God covered sun, moon, and stars, stilled the growing things of the
+earth and dried up the waters on the face of the earth, and stopped the
+roll of the world; and He fixed upon a measure of time in which to judge
+the peoples, this being the measure which was spoken of as the Day of
+Judgment.
+
+In the meanseason He summoned Satan to the Judgment Hall, which is at
+the side of the river that breaks into four heads, and above which, its
+pulpits stretching beyond the sky, is the Palace of White Shirts, and
+below which, in deep darknesses, are the frightful regions of the Fiery
+Oven. "Give an account of your rule in the face of those whom you
+provoked to mischief," He said to Satan. "My balance hitched to a beam
+will weigh the good and evil of my children, and if good is heavier
+than evil, I shall lighten your countenance and clothe you with the
+robes of angels."
+
+"Awake the dead" He bade the Trumpeter, and "Lift the lids off the
+burying-places" He bade the laborers. In their generations were they
+called; "for," said the Lord, "good and evil are customs of a period and
+when the period is passed and the next is come, good may be evil and
+evil may be good."
+
+Now God did not put His entire trust in Satan, and in the evening of the
+day He set to prove him: "It is over."
+
+"My Lord, so be it," answered Satan.
+
+"How now?" asked God.
+
+"The scale of wickedness sways like a kite in the wind," cried Satan.
+"Give me my robes and I will transgress against you no more."
+
+"In the Book of Heaven and Hell," said God, "there is no writing of the
+last of the Welsh."
+
+Satan spoke up: "My Lord, your pledge concerned those judged on the Day
+of Judgment. Day is outing. The windows of the Mansion are lit; hark the
+angels tuning their golden strings for the cheer of the Resurrection
+Supper. Give me my robes that I may sing your praises."
+
+"Can I not lengthen the day with a wink of my eye?"
+
+"All things you can do, my Lord, but observe your pledge to me. Allow
+these people to rest a while longer. Their number together with the
+number of their sins is fewer than the hairs on Elisha's head."
+
+God laughed in His heart as He replied to Satan: "Tell the Trumpeter to
+take his horn and the laborers their spades and bring to me the Welsh."
+
+The laborers digged, and at the sound of the horn the dead breathed and
+heaved. Those whose wit was sharp hurried into neighboring chapels and
+stole Bibles and hymn-books, with which in their pockets and under
+their arms they joined the host in Heaven's Courtyard, whence they went
+into the Waiting Chamber that is without the Judgment Hall.
+
+"Boy bach, a lot of Books of the Word he has," a woman remarked to the
+Respected Towy-Watkins. "Say him I have one."
+
+"Happy would I be to do like that," was the reply. "But, female, much
+does the Large One regard His speeches. What is the text on the wall?
+'Prepare your deeds for the Lord.' The Beybile is the most religious
+deed. Farewell for now," and he pretended to go away.
+
+Holding the sleeve of his White Shirt, the woman separated her toothless
+gums and fashioned her wrinkled face in grief. "Two tens he has," she
+croaked. "And his shirt is clean. Dirty am I; buried I was as I was
+found, and the shovelers beat the soil through the top of the coffin. Do
+much will I for one Beybile."
+
+"A poor dab you are," said Towy.
+
+"Many deeds you have? But no odds to me."
+
+"Four I have."
+
+"Woe for you, unfortunate."
+
+"Iss-iss, horrid is my plight," the woman whined. "Little I did for
+Him."
+
+"Don't draw tears. For eternity you'll weep. Here is a massive Beybile
+for your four deeds."
+
+"Take him one. Handy will three be in the minute of the questioning."
+
+"Refusing the Beybile bach you are. Also the hymn-book--old and new
+notations--I present for four. Stupid am I as the pigger's prentice who
+bought the litter in the belly."
+
+"Be him soft and sell for one."
+
+"I cannot say less. No relation you are to me. Hope I do that right
+enough are your four. Recite them to me, old woman."
+
+"I ate rats to provide a Beybile to the Respected," the woman trembled.
+"I--"
+
+"You are pathetic," Towy said. "Hie and get your tokens and have that
+poor one will I because of my pity for you."
+
+The woman told her deeds in Heaven's Record Office, and she was given
+four white tablets on which her deeds were inscribed; and the rat tablet
+Towy took from her. "Faith and hope are tidy heifers," he said, "but a
+stallion is charity. Priceless Beybile I give you, sinner."
+
+As he moved away Towy cried in the manner of one selling by auction:
+"This is the beloved Beybile of Jesus. This is the book of hymns--old
+and new notations. Hymns harvest, communion, funerals, Sunday schools,
+and hymns for children bach are here. Treasures bulky for certain."
+
+For some he received three tablets each, for some five tablets each, and
+for some ten tablets each. But the gaudy Bible which was decorated with
+pictures and ornamented with brass clasps and a leather covering he did
+not sell; nor did he sell the gilt-edged hymn-book. Between the leaves
+of his Bible he put his tablets--as a preacher his markers--the writing
+on each tablet confirming a verse in the place it was set. His labor
+over, he chanted: "Pen Calvaria! Pen Calvaria! Very soon will come to
+view." Men and women gazed upon him, envying him; and those who had
+Bibles and hymn-books hastened to do as he had done.
+
+Among the many that came to him was one whose name was Ben Lloyd.
+
+"Dear me," said Towy.
+
+"Dear me," said Ben.
+
+"Fat is my religion after the springing," cried Towy. "Perished was I
+and up again. Amen, Big Man. Amen and amen. And amen.
+
+"I opened my eyes and I saw a hand thrusting aside the firmament and I
+heard One calling me from the beyond, and the One was God."
+
+"Like the roar of heated bulls was the noise, Ben bach."
+
+"Praise Him I did that I was laid to rest at home. Away from the stir
+of Parliament. Tell Him I will how my spirit, though the flesh was dead,
+bathed in the living rivers and walked in the peaceful valleys of the
+glorious land of my fathers--thinking, thinking of Jesus."
+
+"Hold on. Not so fast. From Capel Bryn Salem I journeyed to mouth with
+my heart to the Lord, and your slut of widow paid me only four soferens.
+Eloquent sermon I spouted and four soferens is the price of a supply."
+
+"In your charity forgive her; her sorrow was o'erpowering."
+
+"Sorrow! The mule of an English! She wasn't there."
+
+"You don't say," cried Ben. "If above she is I will have her dragged
+down."
+
+"Not a stone did she put over your head, and the strumpets of your
+sisters did not tend your grave. Why you were not eaten by worms I can't
+know."
+
+On a sudden Towy shouted: "See an old parson do I. Is not this the day
+of rising up? Awful if the Big Man mistakes us for the Church. Not been
+inside a church have I, drop dead and blind, since I was born."
+
+None gave heed to his cry, for the sound of the bargaining was most
+high. "Dissenters," he bellowed, "what right have Church heathens to mix
+with us? The Fiery Oven is their home."
+
+The people were dismayed. Their number being small, the Church folk were
+pressed one upon the other; and after they were thrown in a mass against
+the gate of the Chariot House the Dissenters spread themselves easily as
+far as the door of the Crooked Stairway.
+
+"Now, boys capel," Towy-Watkins said, "we will have a sermon. Fine will
+Welsh be in the nostrils of the Big Preacher. Pray will I at once."
+
+The prayer ended, and one struck his tuning-fork; and while the
+congregation moaned and lamented, a tall man, who wore the habit of a
+preacher and whose yellow beard--the fringe of which was singed--hung
+over his breast like a sheaf of wheat, passed through the way of the
+door of the Stairway, and as he walked towards the Judgment Hall, some
+said: "Fair day, Respected," and some said: "Similar he is to
+Towy-Watkins."
+
+"Shut your throats, colts," Towy rebuked the people. "Say after me: 'Go
+round my backhead, Satan.'"
+
+"Go round my backhead, Satan," the people obeyed.
+
+"Catch him and skin him," Towy screamed. "Teach him we will to snook
+about here."
+
+Fear arming his courage, Satan shouted: "He who hurts me him shall I
+pitch head-long to the flames." The people's hands went to their sides,
+and Satan departed in peace.
+
+"In my heart is my head," Towy said. "Near the Oven we are. Blow your
+noses of the stench. Young youths, herd blockheads Church over here."
+
+Before the stalwarts started on their errand, the Overseer of the
+Waiting Chamber came to the door of the lane that takes you into the
+Judgment Hall, wherefore the Dissenters wept, howled, and whooped.
+
+"Ready am I, God bach," Towy exclaimed, stretching his hairy arms. "Take
+me."
+
+"Patiently I waited for the last Trump and humbly do I now wait for the
+Crown from your fingers," said Ben Lloyd. "My deeds are recorded in the
+archives of the House of Commons and the Cymrodorion Society."
+
+"Clap up," Towy admonished Ben. "My religious actions can't be counted."
+
+Lowering his eyes the Overseer murmured: "I am not the Lord."
+
+"For why did you not say that?" cried Towy. He stepped to the Overseer.
+"Hap you are Apostle Shames. A splendid photo of Shames is in the
+Beybile with pictures. Fond am I of preaching from him. Lovely pieces
+there are. 'Abram believed God.' Who was Abram? Father of Isaac bach.
+Who made Abram? The Big Man. And the Big Man made the capel and the
+respected that is the jewel of the capel. Is not the pulpit the throne?
+Glad am I to see you, indeed, Shames."
+
+The Overseer opened his lips.
+
+"Enter with you will I," said Towy. "Look through my glassy soul you
+can."
+
+"Silence--" the Overseer began.
+
+"Iss, silence for ever and ever, amen," said Towy. "No trial I need. How
+can the Judge judge if there's no judging to be? Go up will I then. Hope
+to see you again, Shames."
+
+The Overseer tightened his girdle. "Thus saith the Lord," he proclaimed:
+"'I will consider each by his deeds or all by the deeds of their two
+apostles.'"
+
+"Ho-ho," said Towy. "Half one moment. Think will we. Dissenters, crowd
+here. Ben Lloyd, make arguments. Tricky is old Shames."
+
+The Dissenters assembled close to Ben and Towy, and the Church people
+crept near them in order to share their counsel; but the Dissenters
+turned upon their enemies and bruised them with fists and Bibles and
+hymn-books, and called them frogs, turks, thieves, atheists, blacks; and
+there never has been heard such a tumult in any house. Alarmed that he
+could not part one side from the other, the Overseer sought Satan, who
+had a name for crafty dealings with disputants.
+
+Satan was distressed. "If it was not for personal reasons," he said, "I
+would let them go to Hell." He sent into the Chamber a carpenter who put
+a barrier from wall to wall, and he appointed Jude in charge of the
+barrier to guard that no one went under it or over it.
+
+Then the wise men of the Dissenters continued to examine the Lord's
+offer; and a thousand men declared they were holy enough to go before
+God, and from the thousand five hundred were cast out, and from the five
+hundred three hundred, and from the two hundred one hundred were cast
+away. Now this hundred were Baptists, Methodists, and
+Congregationalists, and they quarreled so harshly and decried one
+another so spitefully that Ben and Towy made with them a compact to
+speak specially for each of them in the private ear of God. The strife
+quelled and Towy having cried loudly: "Dissenters and Churchers, glad
+you are that me and Ben Lloyd, Hem Pee, are your apostles," he and Ben
+followed the Overseer.
+
+In the Judgment Hall the two apostles crouched to pray, and they were
+stirred by Satan laying his hands on their shoulders.
+
+"Prayers are useless here, my friends," said the Devil. "We must proceed
+with the business. I am just as anxious as you are that everything
+reaches a satisfactory conclusion."
+
+"I object," said Ben. "Solemnly object. I don't know this infidel. I
+don't want to know him."
+
+"Go from here," Towy gruntled. "A sweat is in my whiskers. Inhabitants,
+why isn't his tongue a red-hot poker?... Well, boys Palace, grand this
+is. Say who you are?" he asked one whose face shone like a mirror.
+"Respected Towy-Watkins am I."
+
+He whose face shone like a polished mirror answered that he was Moses
+the Keeper of the Balance. "The Lord is in the Cloud," he said.
+
+Towy addressed the Cloud, which was the breadth of a man's hand, and
+which was brighter than the golden halo of the throne: "Big Man, peep at
+your helper. Was not I a ruler over the capel? Religious were my
+prayers."
+
+"I did not hear any," said God.
+
+"Mistake. Mistake. Towy bach eloquent was I called. Here am I with the
+Speech, and the Speech is God and God is the Speech. Take you as a
+great gift this nice hymn-book."
+
+"What are hymns?" asked God.
+
+"Moses, Moses," cried Towy, "explain affairs to Him."
+
+God spoke: "Satan, render your account of the mischief you made these
+men do."
+
+"This is a travesty of the traditions of the House," said Ben.
+"Traditions that are dear to me, being taught them at my mother's knees.
+I refuse to be drenched in Satan's froth. Against one who was a member
+of the Government you are taking the evidence of the most discredited
+man in the universe--the world's worst sinner."
+
+He ceased, because Satan had begun to read; and Satan read rapidly, with
+shame, and without pantomime, not pausing at what times he was abused
+and charged with lying; and he read correctly, for the Records Clerk
+followed him word by word in the Book of the Watchers; and for every
+sin to which he confessed Moses placed a scarlet tablet in the scale of
+wickedness.
+
+"I will attend to what I have heard," said the Lord when Satan had
+finished. "Put your tablets in the scale and go into the Chamber."
+
+Ben and Towy withdrew, and as they passed out they beheld that the scale
+of scarlet tablets touched the ground.
+
+Then the Cloud vanished and God came out of the Cloud.
+
+"My wrath is fierce," He said. "Bind these Welsh and torment them with
+vipers and with fire in the uttermost parts of Hell. They shall have no
+more remembrance before me."
+
+"Will you destroy the just?" asked Moses.
+
+"They have chosen."
+
+"Shall the godly perish because of the godless?"
+
+"I flooded the world," said God.
+
+"The righteous Noah and his house and his animals you did not destroy.
+And you repented that you smote every living thing. May not my Lord
+repent again?"
+
+"I am not destroying every living thing," God replied. "I am destroying
+the vile."
+
+"Remember Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot's wife and his daughters. They all
+sinned after their deliverance. The doings of Sodom stayed."
+
+Moses also said: "You gave your ear to Jonah from the well of the sea."
+
+"I sacrificed my Son for man."
+
+"And loosed Satan upon him."
+
+"Is scarlet white?" asked God.
+
+"Is justice the fruit of injustice? The two men were not of the Church,
+and the Church may be holy in your sight."
+
+"I have judged."
+
+"And your judgment is past understanding," said Moses, and he sat at the
+Balance.
+
+The servants of the Lord spoke one with another: "I cannot eat of the
+supper," said one; "The songs will be as a wolf's howlings in the
+wilderness," said another; "The honey will be as bittersweet as Adam's
+apple," said a third. But Satan exclaimed: "Come, let us seek in the
+Book of the Watchers for an act that will turn Him from His purpose."
+
+In seeking, some put their fingers on the leaves and advised Moses to
+cry unto the Lord in such and such a manner.
+
+"My voice is dumb," replied Moses.
+
+Satan presently astonished the servants; he took the book to the Lord.
+"My Lord," he said, "which is the more precious--good or evil?"
+
+"Good," said the Lord.
+
+"More precious than the riches of Solomon is a deed done in your name?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Though the sins were as numerous as the teeth of a shoal of fish?"
+
+"So. Unravel your riddle."
+
+"An old woman of the Dissenters," said Satan, "claimed four tablets,
+whereas her deeds were nine."
+
+God looked at the Balance and lo, the scale of white tablets was
+heavier than the scale of scarlet tablets.
+
+"Bid hither the apostles," He commanded the Overseer, "for they shall
+see me, and this day they and their flocks shall be in Paradise."
+
+Satan stood before the face of Moses, glowing as the angels; and he
+brought out scissors to clip off the fringe of his beard. When he had
+cut only a little, the Overseer entered the Judgment Hall, saying: "The
+two apostles tricked Jude and crawled under the barrier, and they shot
+back the bolts of the gate of the Chariot House and called a charioteer
+to take them to Heaven. 'This is God's will,' they said to him."
+
+Satan's scissors fell on the floor.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+EARTHBRED
+
+
+Because he was diseased with a consumption, Evan Roberts in his
+thirtieth year left over being a drapery assistant and had himself hired
+as a milk roundsman.
+
+A few weeks thereafter he said to Mary, the woman whom he had promised
+to wed: "How now if I had a milk-shop?"
+
+Mary encouraged him, and searched for that which he desired; and it came
+to be that on a Thursday afternoon they two met at the mouth of Worship
+Street--the narrow lane that is at the going into Richmond.
+
+"Stand here, Marri," Evan ordered. "Go in will I and have words with the
+owner. Hap I shall uncover his tricks."
+
+"Very well you are," said Mary. "Don't over-waggle your tongue. Address
+him in hidden phrases."
+
+Evan entered the shop, and as there was no one therein he made an
+account of the tea packets and flour bags which were on the shelves.
+Presently a small, fat woman stood beyond the counter. Evan addressed
+her in English: "Are you Welsh?"
+
+"That's what people say," the woman answered.
+
+"Glad am I to hear you," Evan returned in Welsh. "Tell me how you was."
+
+"A Cymro bach I see," the woman cried. "How was you?"
+
+"Peeped did I on your name on the sign. Shall I say you are Mistress
+Jinkins?"
+
+"Iss, indeed, man."
+
+"What about affairs these close days?"
+
+"Busy we are. Why for you ask? Trade you do in milk?"
+
+"Blurt did I for nothing," Evan replied.
+
+"No odds, little man. Ach y fy, jealous other milkmen are of us. There's
+nasty some people are."
+
+"Natty shop you have. Little shop and big traffic, Mistress Jinkins?"
+
+"Quick you are."
+
+"Know you Tom Mathias Tabernacle Street?" Evan inquired.
+
+"Seen him have I in the big meetings at Capel King's Cross."
+
+"Getting on he is, for certain sure. Hundreds of pints he sells. And
+groceries."
+
+"Pwf," Mrs. Jenkins sneered. "Fulbert you are to believe him. A liar
+without shame is Twm. And a cheat. Bad sampler he is of the Welsh."
+
+"Speak I do as I hear. More thriving is your concern."
+
+"No boast is in me. But don't we do thirty gallons?"
+
+Evan summoned up surprise into his face, and joy. "Dear me to goodness,"
+he exclaimed. "Take something must I now. Sell you me an egg."
+
+Evan shook the egg at his ear. "She is good," he remarked.
+
+"Weakish is the male," observed Mrs. Jenkins. "Much trouble he has in
+his inside."
+
+"Poor bach," replied Evan. "Well-well. Fair night for to-day."
+
+"Why for you are in a hurry?"
+
+"Woman fach, for what you do not know that I abide in Wandsworth and the
+clock is late?"
+
+Mrs. Jenkins laughed. "Boy pretty sly you are. Come you to Richmond to
+buy one egg."
+
+Evan coughed and spat upon the ground, and while he cleaned away his
+spittle with a foot he said: "Courting business have I on the Thursdays.
+The wench is in a shop draper."
+
+"How shall I mouth where she is? With Wright?"
+
+"In shop Breach she is." He spoke this in English: "So long."
+
+In that language also did Mrs. Jenkins answer him: "Now we shan't be
+long."
+
+Narrowing his eyes and crooking his knees, Evan stood before Mary.
+"Like to find out more would I," he said. "Guess did the old female that
+I had seen the adfertissment."
+
+"Blockhead you are to bare your mind," Mary admonished him.
+
+"Why for you call me blockhead when there's no blockhead to be?"
+
+"Sorry am I, dear heart. But do you hurry to marry me. You know that
+things are so and so. The month has shown nothing."
+
+"Shut your head, or I'll change my think altogether."
+
+The next week Evan called at the dairy shop again.
+
+"How was the people?" he cried on the threshold.
+
+Mrs. Jenkins opened the window which was at the back of her, and called
+out: "The boy from Wales is here, Dai."
+
+Stooping as he moved through the way of the door, Dai greeted Evan
+civilly: "How was you this day?"
+
+"Quite grand," Evan answered.
+
+"What capel do you go?"
+
+"Walham Green, dear man."
+
+"Good preach there was by the Respected Eynon Daviss the last Sabbath
+morning, shall I ask? Eloquent is Eynon."
+
+"In the night do I go."
+
+"Solemn serious, go you ought in the mornings."
+
+"Proper is your saying," Evan agreed. "Perform I would if I could."
+
+"Biggish is your round, perhaps?" said Dai.
+
+"Iss-iss. No-no." Evan was confused.
+
+"Don't be afraid of your work. Crafty is your manner."
+
+Evan had not anything to say.
+
+"Fortune there is in milk," said Dai. "Study you the size of her. Little
+she is. Heavy will be my loss. The rent is only fifteen bob a week. And
+thirty gallons and more do I do. Broke is my health," and Dai laid the
+palms of his hands on his belly and groaned.
+
+"Here he is to visit his wench," said Mrs. Jenkins.
+
+"You're not married now just?" asked Dai.
+
+"Better in his pockets trousers is a male for a woman," said Mrs.
+Jenkins.
+
+"Comforting in your pockets trousers is a woman," Dai cried.
+
+"Clap your throat," said Mrs. Jenkins. "Redness you bring to my skin."
+
+Evan retired and considered.
+
+"Tempting is the business," he told Mary. "Fancy do I to know more of
+her. Come must I still once yet."
+
+"Be not slothful," Mary pleaded. "Already I feel pains, and quickly the
+months pass."
+
+Then Evan charged her to watch over the shop, and to take a count of the
+people who went into it. So Mary walked in the street. Mrs. Jenkins saw
+her and imagined her purpose, and after she had proved her, she and Dai
+formed a plot whereby many little children and young youths and girls
+came into the shop. Mary numbered every one, but the number that she
+gave Evan was three times higher than the proper number. The man was
+pleased, and he spoke out to Dai. "Tell me the price of the shop," he
+said.
+
+"Improved has the health," replied Dai. "And not selling I don't think
+am I."
+
+"Pity that is. Great offer I have."
+
+"Smother your cry. Taken a shop too have I in Petersham. Rachel will
+look after this."
+
+Mrs. Jenkins spoke to her husband with a low voice: "Witless you are.
+Let him speak figures."
+
+"As you want if you like then," said Dai.
+
+"A puzzle you demand this one minute," Evan murmured. "Thirty pounds
+would--"
+
+"Light is your head," Dai cried.
+
+"More than thirty gallons and a pram. Eighty I want for the shop and
+stock."
+
+"I stop," Evan pronounced. "Thirty-five can I give. No more and no
+less."
+
+"Cute bargainer you are. Generous am I to give back five pounds for luck
+cash on spot. Much besides is my counter trade."
+
+"Bring me papers for my eyes to see," said Evan.
+
+Mrs. Jenkins rebuked Evan: "Hoity-toity! Not Welsh you are. Old English
+boy."
+
+"Tut-tut, Rachel fach," said Dai. "Right you are, and right and wrong is
+Evan Roberts. Books I should have. Trust I give and trust I take. I have
+no guile."
+
+"How answer you to thirty-seven?" asked Evan. "No more we've got, drop
+dead and blind."
+
+He went away and related all to Mary.
+
+"Lose the shop you will," Mary warned him. "And that's remorseful
+you'll be."
+
+"Like this and that is the feeling," said Evan.
+
+"Go to him," Mary counseled, "and say you will pay forty-five."
+
+"No-no, foolish that is."
+
+They two conferred with each other, and Mary gave to Evan all her money,
+which was almost twenty pounds; and Evan said to Dai: "I am not
+doubtful--"
+
+"Speak what is in you," Dai urged quickly.
+
+"Test your shop will I for eight weeks as manager. I give you twenty
+down as earnest and twenty-five at the finish of the weeks if I buy
+her."
+
+Dai and Rachel weighed that which Evan had proposed. The woman said: "A
+lawyer will do this"; the man said: "Splendid is the bargain and costly
+and thievish are old lawyers."
+
+In this sort Dai answered Evan: "Do as you say. But I shall not give
+money for your work. Act you honestly by me. Did not mam carry me next
+my brother, who is a big preacher? Lend you will I a bed, and a dish or
+two and a plate, and a knife to eat food."
+
+At this Mary's joy was abounding. "Put you up the banns," she said.
+
+"Lots of days there is. Wait until I've bought the place."
+
+Mary tightened her inner garments and loosened her outer garments, and
+every evening she came to the shop to prepare food for Evan, to make his
+bed, and to minister to him as a woman.
+
+Now the daily custom at the shop was twelve gallons of milk, and the tea
+packets and flour bags which were on shelves were empty. Evan's anger
+was awful. He upbraided Mary, and he prayed to be shown how to worst
+Dai. His prayer was respected: at the end of the second week he gave Dai
+two pounds more than he had given him the week before.
+
+"Brisk is trade," said Dai.
+
+"I took into stock flour, tea, and four tins of job biscuits," replied
+Evan. "Am I not your servant?"
+
+"Well done, good and faithful servant."
+
+It was so that Evan bought more than he would sell, and each week he
+held a little money by fraud; and matches also and bundles of firewood
+and soap did he buy in Dai's name.
+
+In the middle of the eighth week Dai came down to the shop.
+
+"How goes it?" he asked in English.
+
+"Fine, man. Fine." Changing his language, Evan said: "Keep her will I,
+and give you the money as I pledged. Take you the sum and sign you the
+paper bach."
+
+Having acted accordingly, Dai cast his gaze on the shelves and on the
+floor, and he walked about judging aloud the value of what he saw: "Tea,
+three-pound-ten; biscuits, four-six; flour, four-five; firewood, five
+shillings; matches, one-ten; soap, one pound. Bring you these to
+Petersham. Put you them with the bed and the dishes I kindly lent you."
+
+"For sure me, fulfil my pledge will I," Evan said.
+
+He assembled Dai's belongings and placed them in a cart which he had
+borrowed; and on the back of the cart he hung a Chinese lantern which
+had in it a lighted candle. When he arrived at Dai's house, he cried:
+"Here is your ownings. Unload you them."
+
+Dai examined the inside of the cart. "Mistake there is, Evan. Where's
+the stock?"
+
+"Did I not pay you for your stock and shop? Forgetful you are."
+
+Dai's wrath was such that neither could he blaspheme God nor invoke His
+help. Removing the slabber which was gathered in his beard and at his
+mouth, he shouted: "Put police on you will I."
+
+"Away must I now," said Evan. "Come, take your bed."
+
+"Not touch anything will I. Rachel, witness his roguery. Steal he does
+from the religious."
+
+Evan drove off, and presently he became uneasy of the evil that might
+befall him were Dai and Rachel to lay their hands on him; he led his
+horse into the unfamiliar and hard and steep road which goes up to the
+Star and Garter, and which therefrom falls into Richmond town. At what
+time he was at the top he heard the sound of Dai and Rachel running to
+him, each screaming upon him to stop. Rachel seized the bridle of the
+horse, and Dai tried to climb over the back of the cart. Evan bent
+forward and beat the woman with his whip, and she leaped aside. But Dai
+did not release his clutch, and because the lantern swayed before his
+face he flung it into the cart.
+
+Evan did not hear any more voices, and misdeeming that he had got the
+better of his enemies, he turned, and, lo, the bed was in a yellow
+flame. He strengthened his legs and stretched out his thin upper lip,
+and pulled at the reins, saying: "Wo, now." But the animal thrust up its
+head and on a sudden galloped downwards. At the railing which divides
+two roads it was hindered, and Evan was thrown upon the ground. Men came
+forward to lift him, and he was dead.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+FOR BETTER
+
+
+At the time it was said of him "There's a boy that gets on he is," Enoch
+Harries was given Gwen the daughter of the builder Dan Thomas. On the
+first Sunday after her marriage the people of Kingsend Welsh Tabernacle
+crowded about Gwen, asking her: "How like you the bed, Messes Harries
+fach?" "Enoch has opened a shop butcher then?" "Any signs of a baban
+bach yet?" "Managed to get up quickly you did the day?" Gwen answered in
+the manner the questions were asked, seriously or jestingly. She
+considered these sayings, and the cause of her uneasiness was not a
+puzzle to her; and she got to despise the man whom she had married, and
+whose skin was like parched leather, and to repel his impotent embraces.
+
+Withal she gave Enoch pleasure. She clothed herself with costly
+garments, adorned her person with rings and ornaments, and she modeled
+her hair in the way of a bob-wig. Enoch gave in to her in all things; he
+took her among Welsh master builders, drapers, grocers, dairymen, into
+their homes and such places as they assembled in; and his pride in his
+wife was nearly as great as his pride in the twenty plate-glass windows
+of his shop.
+
+In her vanity Gwen exalted her estate.
+
+"I hate living over the shop," she said. "It's so common. Let's take a
+house away from here."
+
+"Good that I am on the premizes," Enoch replied in Welsh. "Hap go wrong
+will affairs if I leave."
+
+"We can't ask any one decent here. Only commercials," Gwen said. With a
+show of care for her husband's welfare, she added: "Working too hard is
+my boy bach. And very splendid you should be."
+
+Her design was fulfilled, and she and Enoch came to dwell in Thornton
+East, in a house near Richmond Park, and on the gate before the house,
+and on the door of the house, she put the name Windsor. From that hour
+she valued herself high. She had the words Mrs. G. Enos-Harries printed
+on cards, and she did not speak of Enoch's trade in the hearing of
+anybody. She gave over conversing in Welsh, and would give no answer
+when spoken to in that tongue. She devised means continually to lift
+herself in the esteem of her neighbors, acting as she thought they
+acted: she had a man-servant and four maid-servants, and she instructed
+them to address her as the madam and Enoch as the master; she had a gong
+struck before meals and a bell rung during meals; the furniture in her
+rooms was as numerous as that in the windows of a shop; she went to the
+parish church on Sundays; she made feasts. But her life was bitter:
+tradespeople ate at her table and her neighbors disregarded her.
+
+Enoch mollified her moaning with: "Never mind. I could buy the whole
+street up. I'll have you a motor-car. Fine it will be with an advert on
+the front engine."
+
+Still slighted, Gwen smoothed her misery with deeds. She declared she
+was a Liberal, and she frequented Thornton Vale English Congregational
+Chapel. She gave ten guineas to the rebuilding fund, put a carpet on the
+floor of the pastor's parlor, sang at brotherhood gatherings, and
+entertained the pastor and his wife.
+
+Wherefore her charity was discoursed thus: "Now when Peter spoke of a
+light that shines--shines, mark you--he was thinking of such ladies as
+Mrs. G. Enos-Harries. Not forgetting Mr. G. Enos-Harries."
+
+"I'm going to build you a vestry," Gwen said to the pastor. "I'll
+organize a sale of work to begin with."
+
+The vestry was set up, and Gwen bethought of one who should be charged
+with the opening ceremony of it, and to her mind came Ben Lloyd, whose
+repute was great among the London Welsh, and to whose house in
+Twickenham she rode in her car. Ben's wife answered her sharply: "He's
+awfully busy. And I know he won't see visitors."
+
+"But won't you tell him? It will do him such a lot of good. You know
+what a stronghold of Toryism this place is."
+
+A voice from an inner room cried: "Who is to see me?"
+
+"Come this way," said Mrs. Lloyd.
+
+Ben, sitting at a table with writing paper and a Bible before him, rose.
+
+"Messes Enos-Harries," he said, "long since I met you. No odds if I
+mouth Welsh? There's a language, dear me. This will not interest you in
+the least. Put your ambarelo in the cornel, Messes Enos-Harries, and
+your backhead in a chair. Making a lecture am I."
+
+Gwen told him the errand upon which she was bent, and while they two
+drank tea, Ben said: "Sing you a song, Messes Enos-Harries. Not
+forgotten have I your singing in Queen's Hall on the Day of David the
+Saint. Inspire me wonderfully you did with the speech. I've been sad
+too, but you are a wedded female. Sing you now then. Push your cup and
+saucer under the chair."
+
+"No-no, not in tone am I," Gwen feigned.
+
+"How about a Welsh hymn? Come in will I at the repeats."
+
+"Messes Lloyd will sing the piano?"
+
+"Go must she about her duties. She's a handless poor dab."
+
+Gwen played and sang.
+
+"Solemn pretty hymns have we," said Ben. "Are we not large?" He moved
+and stood under a picture which hung on the wall--his knees touching and
+his feet apart--and the picture was that of Cromwell. "My friends say I
+am Cromwell and Milton rolled into one. The Great Father gave me a child
+and He took him back to the Palace. Religious am I. Want I do to live my
+life in the hills and valleys of Wales: listening to the anthem of
+creation, and searching for Him under the bark of the tree. And there I
+shall wait for the sound of the last trumpet."
+
+"A poet you are." Gwen was astonished.
+
+"You are a poetess, for sure me," Ben said. He leaned over her.
+"Sparkling are your eyes. Deep brown are they--brown as the nut in the
+paws of the squirrel. Be you a bard and write about boys Cymru. Tell how
+they succeed in big London."
+
+"I will try," said Gwen.
+
+"Like you are and me. Think you do as I think."
+
+"Know you for long I would," said Gwen.
+
+"For ever," cried Ben. "But wedded you are. Read you a bit of the
+lecture will I." Having ended his reading and having sobbed over and
+praised that which he had read, Ben uttered: "Certain you come again.
+Come you and eat supper when the wife is not at home."
+
+Gwen quaked as she went to her car, and she sought a person who
+professed to tell fortunes, and whom she made to say: "A gentleman is in
+love with you. And he loves you for your brain. He is not your husband.
+He is more to you than your husband. I hear his silver voice holding
+spellbound hundreds of people; I see his majestic forehead and his
+auburn locks and the strands of his silken mustache."
+
+Those words made Gwen very happy, and she deceived herself that they
+were true. She composed verses and gave them to Ben.
+
+"Not right to Nature is this," said Ben. "The mother is wrong. How many
+children you have, Messes Enos-Harries?"
+
+"Not one. The husband is weak and he is older much than I."
+
+"The Father has kept His most beautiful gift from you. Pity that is."
+Tears gushed from Ben's eyes. "If the marriage-maker had brought us
+together, children we would have jeweled with your eyes and crowned with
+your hair."
+
+"And your intellect," said Gwen. "You will be the greatest Welshman."
+
+"Whisper will I now. A drag is the wife. Happy you are with the
+husband."
+
+"Why for you speak like that?"
+
+"And for why we are not married?" Ben took Gwen in his arms and he
+kissed her and drew her body nigh to him; and in a little while he
+opened the door sharply and rebuked his wife that she waited thereat.
+
+Daily did Gwen praise and laud Ben to her husband. "There is no one in
+the world like him," she said. "He will get very far."
+
+"Bring Mistar Lloyd to Windsor for me to know him quite well," said
+Enoch.
+
+"I will ask him," Gwen replied without faltering.
+
+"Benefit myself I will."
+
+Early every Thursday afternoon Ben arrived at Windsor, and at the coming
+home from his shop of Enoch, Ben always said: "Messes Enos-Harries has
+been singing the piano. Like the trilling of God's feathered choir is
+her music."
+
+Though Ben and Gwen were left at peace they could not satisfy nor crush
+their lust.
+
+Before three years were over, Ben had obtained great fame. "He ought to
+be in Parliament and give up preaching entirely," some said; and Enoch
+and Gwen were partakers of his glory.
+
+Then Gwen told him that she had conceived, whereof Ben counseled her to
+go into her husband's bed.
+
+"That I have not the stomach to do," the woman complained.
+
+"As you say, dear heart," said Ben. "Cancer has the wife. Perish soon
+she must. Ease our path and lie with your lout."
+
+Presently Gwen bore a child; and Enoch her husband looked at it and
+said: "Going up is Ben Lloyd. Solid am I as the counter."
+
+Gwen related her fears to Ben, who contrived to make Enoch a member of
+the London County Council. Enoch rejoiced: summoning the congregation of
+Thornton Vale to be witnesses of his gift of a Bible cushion to the
+chapel.
+
+As joy came to him, so grief fell upon his wife. "After all," Ben wrote
+to her, "you belong to him. You have been joined together in the holiest
+and sacredest matrimony. Monumental responsibilities have been thrust on
+me by my people. I did not seek for them, but it is my duty to bear
+them. Pray that I shall use God's hoe with understanding and wisdom.
+There is a talk of putting me up for Parliament. Others will have a
+chanse of electing a real religious man. I must not be tempted by you
+again. Well, good-by, Gwen, may He keep you unspotted from the world.
+Ships that pass in the night."
+
+Enoch was plagued, and he followed Ben to chapel meetings, eisteddfodau,
+Cymrodorion and St. David's Day gatherings, always speaking in this
+fashion: "Cast under is the girl fach you do not visit her. Improved has
+her singing."
+
+Because Ben was careless of his call, his wrath heated and he said to
+him: "Growing is the baban."
+
+"How's trade?" Ben remarked. "Do you estimate for Government contracts?"
+
+"Not thought have I."
+
+"Just hinted. A word I can put in."
+
+"Red is the head of the baban."
+
+"Two black heads make red," observed Ben.
+
+"And his name is Benjamin."
+
+"As you speak. Farewell for to-day. How would you like to put up for a
+Welsh constituency?"
+
+"Not deserving am I of anything. Happy would I and the wife be to see
+you in the House."
+
+But Ben's promise was fruitless; and Enoch bewailed: "A serpent flew
+into my house."
+
+He ordered Gwen to go to Ben.
+
+"Recall to him this and that," he said. "A very good advert an M.P.
+would be for the business. Be you dressed like a lady. Take a fur coat
+on appro from the shop."
+
+Often thereafter he bade his wife to take such a message. But Gwen had
+overcome her distress and she strew abroad her charms; for no man could
+now suffice her. So she always departed to one of her lovers and came
+back with fables on her tongue.
+
+"What can you expect of the Welsh?" cried Enoch in his wrath. "He hasn't
+paid for the goods he got on tick from the shop. County court him will
+I. He ate my food. The unrighteous ate the food of the righteous. And he
+was bad with you. Did I not watch? No good is the assistant that lets
+the customer go away with not a much obliged."
+
+The portion of the Bible that Enoch read that night was this: "I have
+decked my bed with coverings of tapestry, with carved works, with fine
+linen of Egypt.... Come, let us take our fill of love until the morning:
+let us solace ourselves with love. For the goodman is not at home, he is
+gone on a long journey. He hath--"
+
+"That's lovely," said Gwen.
+
+"Tapestry from my shop," Enoch expounded. "And Irish linen. And busy was
+the draper in Kingsend."
+
+Gwen pretended to be asleep.
+
+"He is the father. That will learn him to keep his promise. The wicked
+man!"
+
+Unknown to her husband Gwen stood before Ben; and at the sight of her
+Ben longed to wanton with her. Gwen stretched out her arms to be clear
+of him and to speak to him; her speech was stopped with kisses and her
+breasts swelled out. Again she found pleasure in Ben's strength.
+
+Then she spoke of her husband's hatred.
+
+"Like a Welshman every spit he is," said Ben. "And a black."
+
+But his naughtiness oppressed him for many days and he intrigued; and it
+came to pass that Enoch was asked to contest a Welsh constituency, and
+Enoch immediately let fall his anger for Ben.
+
+"Celebrate this we shall with a reception in the Town Hall," he
+announced. "You, Gwen fach, will wear the chikest Paris model we can
+find. Ben's kindness is more than I expected. Much that I have I owe to
+him."
+
+"Even your son," said Gwen.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+TREASURE AND TROUBLE
+
+
+On a day in a dry summer Sheremiah's wife Catrin drove her cows to drink
+at the pistil which is in the field of a certain man. Hearing of that
+which she had done, the man commanded his son: "Awful is the frog to
+open my gate. Put you the dog and bitch on her. Teach her will I."
+
+It was so; and Sheremiah complained: "Why for is my spring barren? In
+every field should water be."
+
+"Say, little husband, what is in your think?" asked Catrin.
+
+"Stupid is your head," Sheremiah answered, "not to know what I throw
+out. Going am I to search for a wet farm fach."
+
+Sheremiah journeyed several ways, and always he journeyed in secret;
+and he could not find what he wanted. Tailor Club Foot came to sit on
+his table to sew together garments for him and his two sons. The tailor
+said: "Farm very pretty is Rhydwen. Farm splendid is the farm fach."
+
+"And speak like that you do, Club Foot," said Sheremiah.
+
+"Iss-iss," the tailor mumbled.
+
+"Not wanting an old farm do I," Sheremiah cried. "But speak to goodness
+where the place is. Near you are, calf bach, about affairs."
+
+The tailor answered that Rhydwen is in the hollow of the hill which
+arises from Capel Sion to the moor.
+
+In the morning Sheremiah rode forth on his colt, and he said to Shan
+Rhydwen: "Boy of a pigger am I, whatever."
+
+"Dirt-dirt, man," Shan cried; "no fat pigs have I, look you."
+
+"Mournful that is. Mouthings have I heard about grand pigs Tyhen. No
+odds, wench. Farewell for this minute, female Tyhen."
+
+"Pigger from where you are?" Shan asked.
+
+"From Pencader the horse has carried me. Carry a preacher he did the
+last Monday."
+
+"Weary you are, stranger. Give hay to your horse, and rest you and take
+you a little cup of tea."
+
+"Happy am I to do that. Thirsty is the backhead of my neck."
+
+Sheremiah praised the Big Man for tea, bread, butter, and cheese, and
+while he ate and drank he put artful questions to Shan. In the evening
+he said to Catrin: "Quite tidy is Rhydwen. Is she not one hundred acres?
+And if there is not water in every field, is there not in four?"
+
+He hastened to the owner of Rhydwen and made this utterance: "Farmer
+very ordinary is your sister Shan. Shamed was I to examine your land."
+
+"I shouldn't be surprised," answered the owner. "Speak hard must I to
+the trollop."
+
+"Not handy are women," said Sheremiah. "Sell him to me the poor-place.
+Three-fourths of the cost I give in yellow money and one-fourth
+by-and-by in three years."
+
+Having taken over Rhydwen, Sheremiah in due season sold much of his corn
+and hay, some of his cattle, and many such movable things as were in his
+house or employed in tillage; and he and Catrin came to abide in
+Rhydwen; and they arrived with horses in carts, cows, a bull and oxen,
+and their sons, Aben and Dan. As they passed Capel Sion, people who were
+gathered at the roadside to judge them remarked how that Aben was blind
+in his left eye and that Dan's shoulders were as high as his ears.
+
+At the finish of a round of time Sheremiah hired out his sons and all
+that they earned he took away from them; and he and Catrin toiled to
+recover Rhydwen from its slovenry. After he had paid all that he owed
+for the place, and after Catrin had died of dropsy, he called his sons
+home.
+
+Thereon he thrived. He was over all on the floor of Sion, even those in
+the Big Seat. Men in debt and many widow-women sought him to free them,
+and in freeing them he made compacts to his advantage. Thus he came to
+have more cattle than Rhydwen could hold, and he bought Penlan, the farm
+of eighty acres which goes up from Rhydwen to the edge of the moor, and
+beyond.
+
+In quiet seasons he and Aben and Dan dug ditches on the land of Rhydwen;
+"so that," he said, "my creatures shall not perish of thirst."
+
+Of a sudden a sickness struck him, and in the hush which is sometimes
+before death, he summoned to him his sons. "Off away am I to the
+Palace," he said.
+
+"Large will be the shout of joy among the angels," Aben told him.
+
+"And much weeping there will be in Sion," said Dan. "Speak you a little
+verse for a funeral preach."
+
+"Cease you your babblings, now, indeed," Sheremiah demanded. "Born first
+you were, Aben, and you get Rhydwen. And you, Dan, Penlan."
+
+"Father bach," Aben cried, "not right that you leave more to me than
+Dan."
+
+"Crow you do like a cuckoo," Dan admonished his brother. "Wise you are,
+father. Big already is your giving to me."
+
+Aben looked at the window and he beheld a corpse candle moving outward
+through the way of the gate. "Religious you lived, father Sheremiah, and
+religious you put on a White Shirt." Then Aben spoke of the sight he had
+seen.
+
+The old man opened his lips, counseling: "Hish, hish, boys. Break you
+trenches in Penlan, Dan. Poor bad are farms without water. More than
+everything is water." He died, and his sons washed him and clothed him
+in a White Shirt of the dead, and clipped off his long beard, which
+ceasing to grow, shall not entwine his legs and feet and his arms and
+hands on the Day of Rising; and they bowed their heads in Sion for the
+full year.
+
+Dan and Aben lived in harmony. They were not as brothers, but as
+strangers; neighborly and at peace. They married wives, by whom they had
+children, and they sat in the Big Seat in Sion. They mowed their hay and
+reaped their corn at separate periods, so that one could help the other;
+if one needed the loan of anything he would borrow it from his brother;
+if one's heifer strayed into the pasture of the other, the other would
+say: "The Big Man will make the old grass grow." On the Sabbath they and
+their children walked as in procession to Sion.
+
+In accordance with his father's word, Dan dug ditches in Penlan; and
+against the barnyard--which is at the forehead of his house--water
+sprang up, and he caused it to run over his water-wheel into his pond.
+
+Now there fell upon this part of Cardiganshire a season of exceeding
+drought. The face of the earth was as the face of a cancerous man. There
+was no water in any of the ditches of Rhydwen and none in those of
+Penlan. But the spring which Dan had found continued to yield, and from
+it Aben's wife took away water in pitchers and buckets; and to the pond
+Aben brought his animals.
+
+One day Aben spoke to Dan in this wise: "Serious sure, an old bother is
+this."
+
+"Iss-iss," replied Dan. "Good is the Big Man to allow us water bach."
+
+"How speech you if I said: 'Unfasten your pond and let him flow into my
+ditches'?"
+
+"The land will suck him before he goes far," Dan answered.
+
+Aben departed; and he considered: "Did not Penlan belong to Sheremiah?
+Travel under would the water and hap spout up in my close. Nice that
+would be. Nasty is the behavior of Dan and there's sly is the job."
+
+To Dan he said: "Open your pond, man, and let the water come into the
+ditches which father Sheremiah broke."
+
+Dan would not do as Aben desired, wherefore Aben informed against him in
+Sion, crying: "Little Big Man, know you not what a Turk is the fox? One
+eye bach I have, but you have two, and can see all his wickedness. Make
+you him pay the cost." He raised his voice so high that the congregation
+could not discern the meaning thereof, and it shouted as one person:
+"Wo, now, boy Sheremiah! What is the matter, say you?"
+
+The anger which Aben nourished against Dan waxed hot. Rain came, and it
+did not abate, and the man plotted mischief to his brother's damage. In
+heavy darkness he cut the halters which held Dan's cows and horses to
+their stalls and drove the animals into the road. He also poisoned pond
+Penlan, and a sheep died before it could be killed and eaten.
+
+Dan wept very sore. "Take you the old water," he said. "Fat is my
+sorrow."
+
+"Not religious you are," Aben censured him. "All the water is mine."
+
+"Useful he is to me," Dan replied. "Like would I that he turns my wheel
+as he goes to you."
+
+"Clap your mouth," answered Aben.
+
+"Not as much as will go through the leg of a smoking pipe shall you
+have."
+
+In Sion Aben told the Big Man of all the benefits which he had conferred
+upon Dan.
+
+Men and women encouraged his fury; some said this: "An old paddy is Dan
+to rob your water. Ach y fi"; and some said this: "A dirty ass is the
+mule." His fierce wrath was not allayed albeit Dan turned the course of
+the water away from his pond, and on his knees and at his labor asked
+God that peace might come.
+
+"Bury the water," Aben ordered, "and fill in the ditch, Satan."
+
+"That will I do speedily," Dan answered in his timidity. "Do you give me
+an hour fach, for is not the sowing at hand?" Aben would not hearken
+unto his brother. He deliberated with a lawyer, and Dan was made to dig
+a ditch straightway from the spring to the close of Rhydwen, and he put
+pipes in the bottom of the ditch, and these pipes he covered with gravel
+and earth.
+
+So as Dan did not sow, he had nothing to reap; and people mocked him in
+this fashion: "Come we will and gather in your harvest, Dan bach." He
+held his tongue, because he had nothing to say. His affliction pressed
+upon him so heavily that he would not be consoled and he hanged himself
+on a tree; and his body was taken down at the time of the morning stars.
+
+A man ran to Rhydwen and related to Aben the manner of Dan's death. Aben
+went into a field and sat as one astonished until the light of day
+paled. Then he arose, shook himself, and set to number the ears of wheat
+which were in his field.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+SAINT DAVID AND THE PROPHETS
+
+
+God grants prayers gladly. In the moment that Death was aiming at him a
+missile of down, Hughes-Jones prayed: "Bad I've been. Don't let me fall
+into the Fiery Pool. Give me a brief while and a grand one I'll be for
+the religion." A shaft of fire came out of the mouth of the Lord and the
+shaft stood in the way of the missile, consuming it utterly; "so," said
+the Lord, "are his offenses forgotten."
+
+"Is it a light thing," asked Paul, "to defy the Law?"
+
+"God is merciful," said Moses.
+
+"Is the Kingdom for such as pray conveniently?"
+
+"This," Moses reproved Paul, "is written in a book: 'The Lord shall
+judge His people.'"
+
+Yet Paul continued to dispute, the Prophets gathering near him for
+entertainment; and the company did not break up until God, as is the
+custom in Heaven when salvation is wrought, proclaimed a period of
+rejoicing.
+
+Wherefore Heaven's windows, the number of which is more than that of
+blades of grass in the biggest hayfield, were lit as with a flame; and
+Heman and his youths touched their instruments with fingers and hammers
+and the singing angels lifted their voices in song; and angels in the
+likeness of young girls brewed tea in urns and angels in the likeness of
+old women baked pleasant breads in the heavenly ovens. Out of Hell there
+arose two mountains, which established themselves one over the other on
+the floor of Heaven, and the height of the mountains was the depth of
+Hell; and you could not see the sides of the mountains for the vast
+multitude of sinners thereon, and you could not see the sinners for the
+live coals to which they were held, and you could not see the burning
+coals for the radiance of the pulpit which was set on the furthermost
+peak of the mountain, and you could not see the pulpit--from toe to head
+it was of pure gold--for the shining countenance of Isaiah; and as
+Isaiah preached, blood issued out of the ends of his fingers from the
+violence with which he smote his Bible, and his single voice was louder
+than the lamentations of the damned.
+
+As the Lord had enjoined, the inhabitants of Heaven rejoiced: eating and
+drinking, weeping and crying hosanna.
+
+But Paul would not joy over that which the Lord had done, and soon he
+sought Him, and finding Him said: "A certain Roman noble labored his
+horses to their death in a chariot race before Cćsar: was he worthy of
+Cćsar's reward?"
+
+"The noble is on the mountain-side," God answered, "and his horses are
+in my chariots."
+
+"One bears witness to his own iniquity, and you bid us feast and you say
+'He shall have remembrance of me.'"
+
+"Is there room in Heaven for a false witness?" asked God.
+
+Again did Paul seek God. "My Lord," he entreated, "what manner of man is
+this that confesses his faults?"
+
+"You will provoke my wrath," said God. "Go and be merry."
+
+Paul's face being well turned, God moved backward into the Record
+Office, and of the Clerk of the Records He demanded: "Who is he that
+prayed unto me?"
+
+"William Hughes-Jones," replied the Clerk.
+
+"Has the Forgiving Angel blotted out his sins?"
+
+"For that I have fixed a long space of time"; and the Clerk showed God
+eleven heavy books, on the outside of each of which was written:
+"William Hughes-Jones, One and All Drapery Store, Hammersmith. His
+sins"; and God examined the books and was pleased, and He cried:
+"Rejoice fourfold"; and if Isaiah's roar was higher than the wailings of
+the perished it was now more awful than the roar of a hundred bullocks
+in a slaughter-house, and if Isaiah's countenance shone more than
+anything in Heaven, it was now like the eye of the sun.
+
+"Of what nation is he?" the Lord inquired of the Clerk.
+
+"The Welsh; the Welsh Nonconformists."
+
+"Put before me their good deeds."
+
+"There is none. William Hughes-Jones is the first of them that has
+prayed. Are not the builders making a chamber for the accounts of their
+disobedience?"
+
+Immediately God thundered: the earth trembled and the stars shivered and
+fled from their courses and struck against one another; and God stood
+on the brim of the universe and stretched out a hand and a portion of a
+star fell into it, and that is the portion which He hurled into the
+garden of Hughes-Jones's house. On a sudden the revels ceased: the bread
+of the feast was stone and the tea water, and the songs of the angels
+were hushed, and the strings of the harps and viols were withered, and
+the hammers were dough, and the mountains sank into Hell, and behold
+Satan in the pulpit which was an iron cage.
+
+The Prophets hurried into the Judgment Hall with questions, and lo God
+was in a cloud, and He spoke out of the cloud.
+
+"I am angry," He said, "that Welsh Nonconformists have not heard my
+name. Who are the Welsh Nonconformists?" The Prophets were silent, and
+God mourned: "My Word is the earth and I peopled the earth with my
+spittle; and I appointed my Prophets to watch over my people, and the
+watchers slept and my children strayed."
+
+Thus too said the Lord: "That hour I devour my children who have
+forsaken me, that hour I shall devour my Prophets."
+
+"May be there is one righteous among us?" said Moses.
+
+"You have all erred."
+
+"May be there is one righteous among the Nonconformists," said Moses;
+"will the just God destroy him?"
+
+"The one righteous is humbled, and I have warned him to keep my
+commandments."
+
+"The sown seed brought forth a prayer," Moses pleaded; "will not the
+just God wait for the harvest?"
+
+"My Lord is just," Paul announced. "They who gather wickedness shall not
+escape the judgment, nor shall the blind instructor be held blameless."
+
+Moreover Paul said: "The Welsh Nonconformists have been informed of you
+as is proved by the man who confessed his transgressions. It is a good
+thing for me that I am not of the Prophets."
+
+"I'll be your comfort, Paul," the Prophets murmured, "that you have done
+this to our hurt." Abasing themselves, they tore their mantles and
+howled; and God, piteous of their howlings, was constrained to say:
+"Bring me the prayers of these people and I will forget your
+remissness."
+
+The Prophets ran hither and thither, wailing: "Woe. Woe. Woe."
+
+Sore that they behaved with such scant respect, Paul herded them into
+the Council Room. "Is it seemly," he rebuked them, "that the Prophets of
+God act like madmen?"
+
+"Our lot is awful," said they.
+
+"The lot of the backslider is justifiably awful," was Paul's rejoinder.
+"You have prophesied too diligently of your own glory."
+
+"You are learned in the Law, Paul," said Moses. "Make us waywise."
+
+"Send abroad a messenger to preach damnation to sinners," answered Paul.
+"For Heaven," added he, "is the knowledge of Hell."
+
+So it came to pass. From the hem of Heaven's Highway an angel flew into
+Wales; and the angel, having judged by his sight and his hearing,
+returned to the Council Room and testified to the godliness of the Welsh
+Nonconformists. "As difficult for me," he vowed, "to write the feathers
+of my wings as the sum of their daily prayers."
+
+"None has reached the Record Office," said Paul.
+
+"They are always engaged in this bright business," the angel declared,
+"and praising the Lord. And the number of the people is many and Heaven
+will need be enlarged for their coming."
+
+"Of a surety they pray?" asked Paul.
+
+"Of a surety. And as they pray they quake terribly."
+
+"The Romans prayed hardly," said Paul. "But they prayed to other gods."
+
+"Wherever you stand on their land," asserted the angel, "you see a
+temple."
+
+"I exceedingly fear," Paul remarked, "that another Lord has dominion
+over them."
+
+The Prophets were alarmed, and they sent a company of angels over the
+earth and a company under the earth; and the angels came back; one
+company said: "We searched the swampy marges and saw neither a god nor a
+heaven nor any prayer," and the other company said: "We probed the lofty
+emptiness and we did not touch a god or a heaven or any prayer."
+
+Paul was distressed and he reported his misgivings to God, and God
+upbraided the Prophets for their sloth. "Is there no one who can do this
+for me?" He cried. "Are all the cunning men in Hell? Shall I make all
+Heaven drink the dregs of my fury? Burnish your rusted armor. Depart
+into Hell and cry out: 'Is there one here who knows the Welsh
+Nonconformists?' Choose the most crafty and release him and lead him
+here."
+
+Lots were cast and it fell to Moses to descend into Hell; and he stood
+at the well, the water of which is harder than crystal, and he cried
+out; and of the many that professed he chose Saint David, whom he
+brought up to God.
+
+"Visit your people," said God to the Saint, "and bring me their
+prayers."
+
+"Why should I be called?"
+
+"It is my will. My Prophets have failed me, and if it is not done they
+shall be destroyed."
+
+David laughed. "From Hell comes a savior of the Prophets. In the middle
+of my discourse at the Judgment Seat the Prophets stooped upon me. 'To
+Hell with him,' they screamed."
+
+"Perform faithfully," said the Lord, "and you shall remain in
+Paradise."
+
+"My Lord is gracious! I was a Prophet and the living believe that I am
+with the saints. I will retire."
+
+"Perform faithfully and you shall be of my Prophets."
+
+Then God took away David's body and nailed it upon a wall, and He put
+wings on the shoulders of his soul; and David darted through a cloud and
+landed on earth, and having looked at the filthiness of the
+Nonconformists in Wales he withdrew to London. But however actively he
+tried he could not find a man of God nor the destination of the fearful
+prayers of Welsh preachers, grocers, drapers, milkmen, lawyers, and
+politicians.
+
+Loth to go to Hell and put to a nonplus, David built a nest in a tree in
+Richmond Park, and he paused therein to consider which way to proceed.
+One day he was disturbed by the singing and preaching of a Welsh soldier
+who had taken shelter from rain under the tree. David came down from
+his nest, and when the mouth of the man was most open, he plunged into
+the fellow's body. Henceforward in whatsoever place the soldier was
+there also was David; and the soldier carried him to a clothier's shop
+in Putney, the sign of the shop being written in this fashion:
+
+J. PARKER LEWIS.
+The Little (Gents. Mercer) Wonder.
+
+Crossing the threshold, the soldier shouted: "How are you?"
+
+The clothier, whose skin was as hide which had been scorched in a
+tanner's yard, bent over the counter. "Man bach," he exclaimed, "glad am
+I to see you. Pray will I now that you are all Zer Garnett." His
+thanksgiving finished, he said: "Wanting a suit you do."
+
+"Yes, and no," replied the soldier. "Cheap she must be if yes."
+
+"You need one for certain. Shabby you are."
+
+"This is a friendly call. To a low-class shop must a poor tommy go."
+
+"Do you then not be cheated by an English swindler." The clothier raised
+his thin voice: "Kate, here's a strange boy."
+
+A pretty young woman, in spite of her snaggled teeth, frisked into the
+room like a wanton lamb. Her brown hair was drawn carelessly over her
+head, and her flesh was packed but loosely.
+
+"Serious me," she cried, "Llew Eevans! Llew bach, how are you? Very big
+has the army made you and strong."
+
+"Not changed you are."
+
+"No. The last time you came was to see the rabbit."
+
+"Dear me, yes. Have you still got her?"
+
+"She's in the belly long ago," said the clothier.
+
+"I have another in her stead," said Kate. "A splendid one. Would you
+like to fondle her?"
+
+"Why, yez," answered the soldier.
+
+"Drat the old animal," cried the clothier. "Too much care you give her,
+Kate. Seven looks has the deacon from Capel King's Cross had of her and
+he hasn't bought her yet."
+
+As he spoke the clothier heaped garments on the counter.
+
+"Put out your arms," he ordered Kate, "and take the suits to a room for
+Llew to try on."
+
+Kate obeyed, and Llew hymning "Moriah" took her round the waist and
+embraced her, and the woman, hungering for love, gladly gave herself up.
+Soon attired in a black frock coat, a black waistcoat, and black
+trousers, Llew stepped into the shop.
+
+"A champion is the rabbit," he said; "and very tame."
+
+"If meat doesn't come down," said the clothier, "in the belly she'll be
+as well."
+
+"Let me know before you slay her. Perhaps I buy her. I will study her
+again."
+
+The clothier gazed upon Llew. "Tidy fit," he said.
+
+"A bargain you give me."
+
+"Why for you talk like that?" the clothier protested. "No profit can I
+make on a Cymro. As per invoice is the cost. And a latest style bowler
+hat I throw in."
+
+Peering through Llew's body, Saint David saw that the dealer dealt
+treacherously, and that the money which he got for the garments was two
+pounds over that which was proper.
+
+Llew walked away whistling. "A simple fellow is the black," he said to
+himself. "Three soverens was bad."
+
+On the evening of the next day--that day being the Sabbath--the soldier
+worshiped in Capel Kingsend; and betwixt the sermon and the benediction,
+the preacher delivered this speech: "Very happy am I to see so many
+warriors here once more. We sacrificed for them quite a lot, and if they
+have any Christianity left in them they will not forget what Capel
+Kingsend has done and will repay same with interest. Happier still we
+are to welcome Mister Hughes-Jones to the Big Seat. In the valley of the
+shadow has Mister Hughes-Jones been. Earnestly we prayed for our dear
+religious leader. To-morrow at seven we shall hold a prayer meeting for
+his cure. At seven at night. Will everybody remember? On
+Monday--to-morrow--at seven at night a prayer meeting for Mister
+Hughes-Jones will be held in Capel Kingsend. The duty of every one is to
+attend. Will you please say something now, zer?"
+
+Hughes-Jones rose from the arm-chair which is under the pulpit, and
+thrust out his bristled chin and rested his palms on the communion
+table; and he said not one word.
+
+"Mister Hughes-Jones," the preacher urged.
+
+"I am too full of grace," said Hughes-Jones; he spoke quickly, as one
+who is on the verge of tears, and his big nostrils widened and narrowed
+as those of one who is short of breath.
+
+"The congregation, zer, expects--"
+
+"Well-well, I've had a glimpse of the better land and with a clear
+conscience I could go there, only the Great Father has more for me to do
+here. A miracle happened to me. In the thick of my sickness a meetority
+dropped outside the bedroom. The mistress fainted slap bang. 'If this is
+my summons,' I said, 'I am ready.' A narrow squeak that was. I will now
+sit and pray for you one and all."
+
+In the morning Llew went to the One and All and in English--that is the
+tongue of the high Welsh--did he address Hughes-Jones.
+
+"I've come to start, zer," he said.
+
+"Why wassn't you in the chapel yezterday?"
+
+"I wass there, zer."
+
+"Ho-ho. For me there are two people in the chapel--me and Him."
+
+"Yez, indeed. Shall I gommence now?"
+
+"Gommence what?"
+
+"My crib what I leave to join up."
+
+"Things have changed. There has been a war on, mister. They are all
+smart young ladies here now. And it is not right to sack them and shove
+them on the streets."
+
+"But--"
+
+"Don't answer back, or I'll have you chucked from the premizes and
+locked up. Much gratitude you show for all I did for the soders."
+
+"Beg pardon, zer."
+
+"We too did our bits at home. Slaved like horses. Me and the two sons.
+And they had to do work of national importance. Disgraceful I call it in
+a free country."
+
+"I would be much obliged, zer, if you would take me on."
+
+"You left on your own accord, didn't you? I never take back a hand that
+leave on their own. Why don't you be patriotic and rejoin and finish up
+the Huns?"
+
+Bowed down, the soldier made himself drunk, and the drink enlivened his
+dismettled heart; and in the evening he stole into the loft which is
+above the Big Seat of Capel Kingsend, purposing to disturb the praying
+men with loud curses.
+
+But Llew slept, and while he slept the words of the praying men came
+through the ceiling like the pieces of a child's jigsaw puzzle; some
+floated sluggishly and fell upon the wall and the roof, and some because
+of their little strength did not reach above the floor; and none went
+through the roof. Saint David closed his hands on many, and there was no
+soundness in them, and they became as though they were nothing. He
+formed a bag of the soldier's handkerchief, and he filled it with the
+words, but as he drew to the edges they crumbled into less than dust.
+
+He pondered; and he made a sack out of cobwebs, and when the sack could
+not contain any more words, he wove a lid of cobwebs over the mouth of
+it. Jealous that no mishap should befall his treasure, he mounted a low,
+slow-moving cloud, and folding his wings rode up to the Gate of the
+Highway.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+JOSEPH'S HOUSE
+
+
+A woman named Madlen, who lived in Penlan--the crumbling mud walls of
+which are in a nook of the narrow lane that rises from the valley of
+Bern--was concerned about the future state of her son Joseph. Men who
+judged themselves worthy to counsel her gave her such counsels as these:
+"Blower bellows for the smith," "Cobblar clox," "Booboo for crows."
+
+Madlen flattered her counselors, though none spoke that which was
+pleasing unto her.
+
+"Cobblar clox, ach y fy," she cried to herself. "Wan is the lad bach
+with decline. And unbecoming to his Nuncle Essec that he follows low
+tasks."
+
+Moreover, people, look you at John Lewis. Study his marble gravestone in
+the burial ground of Capel Sion: "His name is John Newton-Lewis; Paris
+House, London, his address. From his big shop in Putney, Home they
+brought him by railway." Genteel are shops for boys who are consumptive.
+Always dry are their coats and feet, and they have white cuffs on their
+wrists and chains on their waistcoats. Not blight nor disease nor frost
+can ruin their sellings. And every minute their fingers grabble in the
+purses of nobles.
+
+So Madlen thought, and having acted in accordance with her design, she
+took her son to the other side of Avon Bern, that is to Capel Mount
+Moriah, over which Essec her husband's brother lorded; and him she
+addressed decorously, as one does address a ruler of the capel.
+
+"Your help I seek," she said.
+
+"Poor is the reward of the Big Preacher's son in this part," Essec
+announced. "A lot of atheists they are."
+
+"Not pleading I have not the rent am I," said Madlen. "How if I
+prentice Joseph to a shop draper. Has he any odds?"
+
+"Proper that you seek," replied Essec. "Seekers we all are. Sit you. No
+room there is for Joseph now I am selling Penlan."
+
+"Like that is the plan of your head?" Madlen murmured, concealing her
+dread.
+
+"Seven of pounds of rent is small. Sell at eighty I must."
+
+"Wait for Joseph to prosper. Buy then he will. Buy for your mam you
+will, Joseph?"
+
+"Sorry I cannot change my think," Essec declared.
+
+"Hard is my lot; no male have I to ease my burden."
+
+"A weighty responsibility my brother put on me," said Essec. "'Dying
+with old decline I am,' the brother mouthed. 'Fruitful is the soil.
+Watch Madlen keeps her fruitful.' But I am generous. Eight shall be the
+rent. Are you not the wife of my flesh?"
+
+After she had wiped away her tears, "Be kind," said Madlen, "and wisdom
+it to Joseph."
+
+"The last evening in the seiet I commanded the congregation to give the
+Big Man's photograph a larger hire," said Essec. "A few of my proverbs I
+will now spout." He spat his spittle and bundling his beard blew the
+residue of his nose therein; and he chanted: "Remember Essec Pugh, whose
+right foot is tied into a club knot. Here's the club to kick sinners as
+my perished brother tried to kick the Bad Satan from the inside of his
+female Madlen with his club of his baston. Some preachers search over
+the Word. Some preachers search in the Word. But search under the Word
+does preacher Capel Moriah. What's the light I find? A stutterer was
+Moses. As the middle of a butter cask were the knees of Paul. A splotch
+like a red cabbage leaf was on the cheek of Solomon. By the signs shall
+the saints be known. 'Preacher Club Foot, come forward to tell about
+Moriah,' the Big Man will say. Mean scamps, remember Essec Pugh, for I
+shall remember you the Day of Rising."
+
+It came to be that on a morning in the last month of his thirteenth year
+Joseph was bidden to stand at the side of the cow which Madlen was
+milking and to give an ear to these commandments: "The serpent is in the
+bottom of the glass. The hand on the tavern window is the hand of Satan.
+On the Sabbath eve get one penny for two ha'pennies for the plate
+collection. Put money in the handkerchief corner. Say to persons you are
+a nephew of Respected Essec Pugh and you will have credit. Pick the
+white sixpence from the floor and give her to the mishtir; she will have
+fallen from his pocket trowis."
+
+Then Joseph turned, and carrying his yellow tin box, he climbed into the
+craggy moorland path which takes you to the tramping road. By the pump
+of Tavarn Ffos he rested until Shim Carrier came thereby; and while
+Shim's horse drank of barley water, Joseph stepped into the wagon; and
+at the end of the passage Shim showed him the business of getting a
+ticket and that of going into and coming down from a railway carriage.
+
+In that manner did Joseph go to the drapery shop of Rees Jones in
+Carmarthen; and at the beginning he was instructed in the keeping and
+the selling of such wares as reels of cotton, needles, pins, bootlaces,
+mending wool, buttons, and such like--all those things which together
+are known as haberdashery. He marked how this and that were done, and in
+what sort to fashion his visage and frame his phrases to this or that
+woman. His oncoming was rapid. He could measure, cut, and wrap in a
+parcel twelve yards of brown or white calico quicker than any one in the
+shop, and he understood by rote the folds of linen tablecloths and
+bedsheets; and in the town this was said of him: "Shopmen quite
+ordinary can sell what a customer wants; Pugh Rees Jones can sell what
+nobody wants."
+
+The first year passed happily, and the second year; and in the third
+Joseph was stirred to go forward.
+
+"What use to stop here all the life?" he asked himself. "Better to go
+off."
+
+He put his belongings in his box and went to Swansea.
+
+"Very busy emporium I am in," were the words he sent to Madlen. "And the
+wage is twenty pounds."
+
+Madlen rejoiced at her labor and sang: "Ten acres of land, and a
+cow-house with three stalls and a stall for the new calf, and a pigsty,
+and a house for my bones and a barn for my hay and straw, and a loft for
+my hens: why should men pray for more?" She ambled to Moriah, diverting
+passers-by with boastful tales of Joseph, and loosened her imaginings to
+the Respected.
+
+"Pounds without number he is earning," she cried. "Rich he'll be.
+Swells are youths shop."
+
+"Gifts from the tip of my tongue fell on him," said Essec. "Religious
+were my gifts."
+
+"Iss, indeed, the brother of the male husband."
+
+"Now you can afford nine of pounds for the place. Rich he is and richer
+he will be. Pounds without number he has."
+
+Madlen made a record of Essec's scheme for Joseph; and she said also:
+"Proud I'll be to shout that my son bach bought Penlan."
+
+"Setting aside money am I," Joseph speedily answered.
+
+Again ambition aroused him. "Footling is he that is content with
+Zwanssee. Next half-holiday skurshon I'll crib in Cardiff."
+
+Joseph gained his desire, and the chronicle of his doings he sent to his
+mother. "Twenty-five, living-in, and spiffs on remnants are the wages,"
+he said. "In the flannelette department I am and I have not been fined
+once. Lot of English I hear, and we call ladies madam that the wedded
+nor the unwedded are insulted. Boys harmless are the eight that sleep by
+me. Examine Nuncle of the price of Penlan."
+
+"I will wag my tongue craftily and slowly," Madlen vowed as she crossed
+her brother-in-law's threshold.
+
+"I Shire Pembroke land is cheap," she said darkly.
+
+"Look you for a farm there," said Essec. "Pelted with offers am I for
+Penlan. Ninety I shall have. Poverty makes me sell very soon."
+
+"As he says."
+
+"Pretty tight is Joseph not to buy her. No care has he for his mam."
+
+"Stiffish are affairs with him, poor dab."
+
+Madlen reported to Joseph that which Essec had said, and she added:
+"Awful to leave the land of your father. And auction the cows. Even the
+red cow that is a champion for milk. Where shall I go? The House of the
+Poor. Horrid that your mam must go to the House of the Poor."
+
+Joseph sat on his bed, writing: "Taken ten pounds from the post I have
+which leaves three shillings. Give Nuncle the ten as earnest of my
+intention."
+
+Nine years after that day on which he had gone to Carmarthen Joseph said
+in his heart: "London shops for experience"; and he caused a frock coat
+to be sewn together, and he bought a silk hat and an umbrella, and at
+the spring cribbing he walked into a shop in the West End of London,
+asking: "Can I see the engager, pleaze?" The engager came to him and
+Joseph spoke out: "I have all-round experience. Flannelettes three years
+in Niclass, Cardiff, and left on my own accord. Kept the colored dresses
+in Tomos, Zwanssee. And served through. Apprentized in Reez Jones
+Carmarthen for three years. Refs egzellent. Good ztok-keeper and
+appearance."
+
+"Start at nine o'clock Monday morning," the engager replied. "Thirty
+pounds a year and spiffs; to live in. You'll be in the laces."
+
+"Fashionable this shop is," Joseph wrote to Madlen, "and I have to be
+smart and wear a coat like the preachers, and mustn't take more than
+three zwap lines per day or you have the sack. Two white shirts per
+week; and the dresses of the showroom young ladies are a treat. Five
+pounds enclosed for Nuncle."
+
+"Believe your mam," Madlen answered: "don't throw gravel at the windows
+of the old English unless they have the fortunes."
+
+In his zeal for his mother's welfare Joseph was heedless of himself,
+eating little of the poor food that was served him, clothing his body
+niggardly, and seldom frequenting public bath-houses; his mind spanned
+his purpose, choosing the fields he would join to Penlan, counting the
+number of cattle that would graze on the land, planning the slate-tiled
+house which he would set up.
+
+"Twenty pounds more must I have," he moaned, "for the blaguard Nuncle."
+
+Every day thereafter he stole a little money from his employers and
+every night he made peace with God: "Only twenty-five is the wage, and
+spiffs don't count because of the fines. Don't you let me be found out,
+Big Man bach. Will you strike mam into her grave? And disgrace Respected
+Essec Pugh Capel Moriah?"
+
+He did not abate his energies howsoever hard his disease was wasting and
+destroying him. The men who lodged in his bedroom grew angry with him.
+"How can we sleep with your dam coughing?" they cried. "Why don't you
+invest in a second-hand coffin?"
+
+Feared that the women whom he served would complain that the poison of
+his sickness was tainting them and that he would be sent away, Joseph
+increased his pilferings; where he had stolen a shilling he now stole
+two shillings; and when he got five pounds above the sum he needed, he
+heaved a deep sigh and said: "Thank you for your favor, God bach. I will
+now go home to heal myself."
+
+Madlen took the money to Essec, coming back heavy with grief.
+
+"Hoo-hoo," she whined, "the ninety has bought only the land. Selling the
+houses is Essec."
+
+"Wrong there is," said Joseph. "Probe deeply we must."
+
+From their puzzlings Madlen said: "What will you do?"
+
+"Go and charge swindler Moriah."
+
+"Meddle not with him. Strong he is with the Lord."
+
+"Teach him will I to pocket my honest wealth."
+
+Because of his weakness, Joseph did not go to Moriah; to-day he said: "I
+will to-morrow," and to-morrow he said: "Certain enough I'll go
+to-morrow."
+
+In the twilight of an afternoon he and Madlen sat down, gazing about,
+and speaking scantily; and the same thought was with each of them, and
+this was the thought: "A tearful prayer will remove the Big Man from His
+judgment, but nothing will remove Essec from his purpose."
+
+"Mam fach," said Joseph, "how will things be with you?"
+
+"Sorrow not, soul nice," Madlen entreated her son. "Couple of weeks very
+short have I to live."
+
+"As an hour is my space. Who will stand up for you?"
+
+"Hish, now. Hish-hish, my little heart."
+
+Madlen sighed; and at the door she made a great clatter, and the sound
+of the clatter was less than the sound of her wailing.
+
+"Mam! Mam!" Joseph shouted. "Don't you scream. Hap you will soften
+Nuncle's heart if you say to him that my funeral is close."
+
+Madlen put a mourning gown over her petticoats and a mourning bodice
+over her shawls, and she tarried in a field as long as it would take her
+to have traveled to Moriah; and in the heat of the sun she returned,
+laughing.
+
+"Mistake, mistake," she cried. "The houses are ours. No undertanding was
+in me. Cross was your Nuncle. 'Terrible if Joseph is bad with me,' he
+said. Man religious and tidy is Essec." Then she prayed that Joseph
+would die before her fault was found out.
+
+Joseph did not know what to do for his joy. "Well-well, there's better I
+am already," he said. He walked over the land and coveted the land of
+his neighbors. "Dwell here for ever I shall," he cried to Madlen. "A
+grand house I'll build--almost as grand as the houses of preachers."
+
+In the fifth night he died, and before she began to weep, Madlen lifted
+her voice: "There's silly, dear people, to covet houses! Only a smallish
+bit of house we want."
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+LIKE BROTHERS
+
+
+Silas Bowen hated his brother John, but when he heard of John's
+sickness, he reasoned: "Blackish has been his dealings. And trickish.
+Sly also. Odd will affairs seem if I don't go to him at once."
+
+At the proper hour he closed the door of his shop. Then he washed his
+face, and put beeswax on the dwindling points of his mustache, and he
+came out of Barnes into Thornton East; into High Road, where is his
+brother's shop.
+
+"That is you," said John to him.
+
+"How was you, man?" Silas asked. "Talk the name of the old malady."
+
+"Say what you have to say in English," John answered in a little voice.
+"It is easier and classier."
+
+That which was spoken was rendered into English; and John replied: "I am
+pleazed to see you. Take the bowler off your head and don't put her on
+the harimonium. The zweat will mark the wood."
+
+"The love of brothers push me here," said Silas. "It is past
+understanding. As boyss we learn the same pray-yer. And we talked the
+same temperance dialogue in Capel Zion. I was always the temperance one.
+And quite a champion reziter. The way is round and about, boy bach, from
+Zion to the grave."
+
+"Don't speak like that," pleaded John. "I caught a cold going to the
+City to get ztok. I will be healthy by the beginning of the week."
+
+"Be it so. Yet I am full of your trouble. Sick you are and how's trade?"
+
+"Very brisk. I am opening a shop in Richmond again," John said.
+
+"You're learning me something. Don't you think too much of that shop;
+Death is near and set your mind on the crossing."
+
+John's lame daughter Ann halted into the room, and stepped up to the
+bed.
+
+"Stand by the door for one minit, Silas," John cried. "I am having my
+chat confidential."
+
+From a book Ann recited the business of that day; naming each article
+that had been sold, and the cost and the profit thereof.
+
+"How's that with last year?" her father commanded.
+
+"Two-fifteen below."
+
+"Fool!" John whispered. "You are a cow, with your gamey leg. You're
+ruining the place."
+
+Ann closed the book and put her fountain pen in the leather case which
+was pinned to her blouse, and she spoke this greeting: "How are you,
+Nuncle Silas. It's long since I've seen you." She thrust out her arched
+teeth in a smile. "Good-night, now. You must call and see our Richmond
+establishment."
+
+"Silas," said John, "empty a dose of the medecyne in a cup for me."
+
+"There's little comfort in medecyne," Silas observed. "Not much use is
+the stuff if the Lord is calling you home. Calling you home. Shall I
+read you a piece from the Beybile of the Welsh? It is a great pity you
+have forgot the language of your mother."
+
+"I did not hear you," said John. "Don't you trouble to say it over." He
+drank the medicine. "Unfortunate was the row about the Mermaid Agency. I
+was sorry to take it away from you, but if I hadn't some one else would.
+We kept it in the family, Silas."
+
+"I have prayed a lot," said Silas to his brother, "that me and you are
+brought together before the day of the death. Nothing can break us from
+being brothers."
+
+"You are very doleful. I shall shift this little cold."
+
+"Yes-yes, you will. I would be glad to follow your coffin to Wales and
+look into the guard's van at stations where the train stop, but the
+fare is big and the shop is without a assistant. Weep until I am sore
+all over I shall in Capel Shirland Road. When did the doctor give you
+up?"
+
+"He's a donkey. He doesn't know nothing. Here he is once per day and
+charging for it. And he only brings his repairs to me."
+
+"The largest charge will be to take you to your blessed home," said
+Silas. "The railway need a lot of money for to carry a corpse. I feel
+quite sorrowful. In Heaven you'll remember that I was at your deathbed."
+
+John did not answer.
+
+"Well-well," said Silas, whispering loudly, "making his peace with the
+Big Man he is"; and he went away, moaning a funereal hymn tune.
+
+John thought over his plight and was distressed, and he spoke to God in
+Welsh: "Not fitting that you leave the daughter fach alone. Short in
+her leg you made her. There's a set-back. Her mother perished; and did I
+complain? An orphan will the pitiful wench be. Who will care for the
+shop? And the repairing workman? Steal the leather he will. A fuss will
+be about shop Richmond. Paid have I the rent for one year in advance.
+Serious will the loss be. Be not of two thinks. Send Lisha to breathe
+breathings into my inside--in the belly where the heart is. Forgive me
+that I go to the Capel English. Go there I do for the trade. Generous am
+I in the collections. Ask the preacher. Take some one else to sit in my
+chair in the Palace. Amen. Amen and amen." In his misery he sobbed, and
+he would not speak to Ann nor heed her questionings. At the cold of dawn
+he thought that Death was creeping down to him, and he screamed: "Allow
+me to live for a year--two years--and a grand communion set will I give
+to the Welsh capel in Shirland Road. Individual cups. Silver-plated,
+Sheffield make. Ann shall send quickly for the price-list."
+
+His fear was such that he would not suffer his beard to be combed, nor
+have his face covered by a bedsheet; and he would not stretch himself or
+turn his face upwards: in such a manner dead men lie.
+
+Again came Silas to provoke his brother to his death.
+
+"Richmond shops are letting like anything," he said.
+
+"The place is coming on," replied John. "I was lucky to get one in
+King's Row. She is cheap too."
+
+"What are you talking about? There's a new boot shop in King's Row
+already. Next door to the jeweler."
+
+"You are mistook. I have taken her."
+
+"Well, then, you are cheated. Get up at once and make a case. Wear an
+overcoat and ride in the bus."
+
+But John bade Ann go to Richmond and to say this and that to the owner
+of the house. Ann went and the house was empty.
+
+A third time Silas came out of Barnes, bringing with him gifts. These
+are the gifts that he offered his brother John: a tin of lobster, a tin
+of sardines, a tin of salmon, and a tin of herrings; and through each
+tin, in an unlikely place, he had driven the point of a gimlet.
+
+"Eat these," he said, "and good they will do you."
+
+"Much obliged," replied John. "I'll try a herring with bread and butter
+and vinegar to supper. Very much obliged. It was not my blame that we
+quarreled. Others had his eye on the agency."
+
+"Tish, I did not want the old Mermaid. You keep her. I got the sole
+agency for the Gwendoline."
+
+"How is Gwendolines going?"
+
+"More than I can do to keep ztok of her. Four dozen gents' laces and
+three dozen ladies' ditto on the twenty-fifth, and soon I order another
+four dozen ladies' buttons."
+
+John called Ann and to her he said: "How is Mermaid ztok?"
+
+"We are almost out of nine gents and four ladies," answered Ann.
+
+"Write Nuncle Silas the order and he'll drop her in the Zity. Pay your
+fare one way will I, Silas."
+
+Silas fled the next day into the Mermaid warehouse and sought out the
+manager. "My brother J. Owen and Co. Thornton East has sold his last
+pair of Mermaids," he said.
+
+He brought trouble into his eyes and made his voice to quiver as he told
+how that John was dying and how that the shop was his brother's legacy
+to him. "Send you the goods for this order to my shop in Barnes," he
+added. "And all future orders. That will be my headquarters."
+
+He did not go to John's house any more; and although John ate of the
+lobster, the herrings, and the sardines and was sick, he did not die. A
+week expired and a sound reached him that Silas was selling Mermaid
+boots; and he enjoined Ann to test the truth of that sound.
+
+"It's sure enough, dad," Ann said.
+
+John's fury tingled. He put on him his clothes and seized a stick, and
+by the strength of his passion he moved into Barnes; and he pitched
+himself at the entering in of the shop, and he saw that Ann's speech was
+right. He came back; and he did not eat or drink or rest until he had
+removed all that was in his window and had placed therein no other boots
+than the Mermaids; and on each pair he put a ticket which was truly
+marked: "Half cost price." On his door he put this notice: "This FIRM
+has no Connection with the shop in Barnes"; and this notice could be
+seen and read whether the door was open or shut.
+
+After a period people returned to him, demanding: "I want a pair of
+Mermaids, please"; and inasmuch as he had no more to sell, they who had
+dealt with him went to the shop of his brother.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+A WIDOW WOMAN
+
+
+The Respected Davydd Bern-Davydd spoke in this sort to the people who
+were assembled at the Meeting for Prayer: "Well-well, know you all the
+order of the service. Grand prayers pray last. Boys ordinary pray
+middle, and bad prayers pray first. Boys bach just beginning also come
+first. Now, then, after I've read a bit from the Book of Speeches and
+you've sung the hymn I call out, Josi Mali will report."
+
+Bern-Davydd ceased his reading, and while the congregation sang, Josi
+placed his arms on the sill which is in front of pews and laid his head
+thereon.
+
+"Josi Mali, man, come to the Big Seat and mouth what you think," said
+Bern-Davydd.
+
+Josi's mother Mali touched her son, whispering this counsel: "Put to
+shame the last prayer, indeed now, Josi."
+
+By and by Josi lifted his head and stood on his feet. This is what he
+said: "Asking was I if I was religious enough to spout in the company of
+the Respected."
+
+"Out of the necks of young youths we hear pieces that are very
+sensible," said Bern-Davydd. "Come you, Josi Mali, to the saintly Big
+Seat."
+
+As Josi moved out of his pew, his thick lips fallen apart and his high
+cheek bones scarlet, his mother said: "Keep your eyes clapped very
+close, or hap the prayers will shout that you spoke from a hidden book
+like an old parson."
+
+So Josi, who in the fields and on his bed had exercised prayer in the
+manner that one exercises singing, uttered his first petition in Capel
+Sion. He told the Big Man to pardon the weakness of his words, because
+the trousers of manhood had not been long upon him; he named those who
+entered the Tavern and those who ate bread which had been swollen by
+barm; he congratulated God that Bern-Davydd ruled over Sion.
+
+At what time he was done, Bern-Davydd cried out: "Amen. Solemn, dear me,
+amen. Piece quite tidy of prayer"; and the men of the Big Seat cried:
+"Piece quite tidy of prayer."
+
+The quality of Josi's prayers gave much pleasure in Sion, and it was
+noised abroad even in Morfa, from whence a man journeyed, saying: "Break
+your hire with your master and be a servant in my farm. Wanting a prayer
+very bad do we in Capel Salem." Josi immediately asked leave of God to
+tell Bern-Davydd that which the man from Morfa had said. God gave him
+leave, wherefore Bern-Davydd, whose spirit waxed hot, answered: "Boy,
+boy, why for did you not kick the she cat on the backhead?"
+
+Then Josi said to his mother Mali: "A preacher will I be. Go will I at
+the finish of my servant term to the school for Grammar in
+Castellybryn."
+
+"Glad am I to hear you talk," said Mali. "Serious pity that my
+belongings are so few."
+
+"Small is your knowledge of the Speeches," Josi rebuked his mother. "How
+go they: 'Sell all that you have?' Iss-iss, all, mam fach."
+
+Now Mali lived in Pencoch, which is in the valley about midway between
+Shop Rhys and the Schoolhouse, and she rented nearly nine acres of the
+land which is on the hill above Sion. Beyond the furnishings of her
+two-roomed house, she owned three cows, a heifer, two pigs, and fowls.
+She fattened her pigs and sold them, and she sold also her heifer; and
+Josi went to the School of Grammar. Mali labored hard on the land, and
+she got therefrom all that there was to be got; and whatever that she
+earned she hid in a hole in the ground. "Handy is little money," she
+murmured, "to pay for lodgings and clothes preacher, and the old scamps
+of boys who teach him." She lived on potatoes and buttermilk, and she
+dressed her land all the time. People came to remark of her: "There's no
+difference between Mali Pencoch and the mess in her cow-house."
+
+Days, weeks, and months moved slowly; and years sped. Josi passed from
+the School of Grammar to College Carmarthen, and Mali gave him all the
+money that she had, and prayed thus: "Big Man bach, terrible would
+affairs be if I perished before the boy was all right. Let you me keep
+my strength that Josi becomes as large as Bern-Davydd. Amen."
+
+Even so. Josi had a name among Students' College, and even among
+ordained rulers of pulpits; and Mali went about her duties joyful and
+glad; it was as if the Kingdom of the Palace of White Shirts was within
+her. While at her labor she mumbled praises to the Big Man for His
+goodness, until an awful thought came to her: "Insulting am I to the
+Large One bach. Only preachers are holy enough to stand in their pray.
+Not stop must I now; go on my knees will I in the dark."
+
+She did not kneel on her knees for the stiffness that was in her limbs.
+
+Her joy was increased exceedingly when Josi was called to minister unto
+Capel Beulah in Carmarthen, and she boasted: "Bigger than Sion is Moriah
+and of lofts has not the Temple two?"
+
+"Idle is your babbling," one admonished her. "Does a calf feed his
+mother?"
+
+Josi heard the call. His name grew; men and women spoke his sayings one
+to another, and Beulah could not contain all the people who would hear
+his word; and he wrote a letter to his mother: "God has given me to wed
+Mary Ann, the daughter of Daniel Shop Guildhall. Kill you a pig and salt
+him and send to me the meat."
+
+All that Josi asked Mali gave, and more; she did not abate in any of her
+toil for five years, when a disease laid hold on Josi and he died. Mali
+cleaned her face and her hands in the Big Pistil from which you draw
+drinking water, and she brought forth her black garments and put them on
+her; and because of her age she could not weep. The day before that her
+son was to be buried, she went to the house of her neighbor Sara Eye
+Glass, and to her she said: "Wench nice, perished is Josi and off away
+am I. Console his widow fach I must. Tell you me that you will milk my
+cow."
+
+Sara turned her seeing eye upon Mali. "An old woman very mad you are to
+go two nines of miles."
+
+"Milk you my cow," said Mali. "And milk you her dry. Butter from me the
+widow fach shall have. And give ladlings of the hogshead to my pigs and
+scatter food for my hens."
+
+She tore a baston from a tree, trimmed it and blackened it with
+blacking, and at noon she set forth to the house of her
+daughter-in-law; and she carried in a basket butter, two dead fowls,
+potatoes, carrots, and a white-hearted cabbage, and she came to Josi's
+house in the darkness which is in the morning, and it was so that she
+rested on the threshold; and in the bright light Mary Ann opened the
+door, and was astonished. "Mam-in-law," she said, "there's nasty for you
+to come like this. Speak what you want. Sitting there is not
+respectable. You are like an old woman from the country."
+
+"Come am I to sorrow," answered Mali. "Boy all grand was Josi bach. Look
+at him now will I."
+
+"Talking no sense you are," said Mary Ann. "Why you do not see that the
+house is full of muster? Will there not be many Respecteds at the
+funeral?"
+
+"Much preaching shall I say?"
+
+"Indeed, iss. But haste about now and help to prepare food to eat. Slow
+you are, female."
+
+Presently mourners came to the house, and when each had walked up and
+gazed upon the features of the dead, and when the singers had sung and
+the Respecteds had spoken, and while a carpenter turned screws into the
+coffin, Mary Ann said to Mali: "Clear you the dishes now, and cut bread
+and spread butter for those who will return after the funeral. After all
+have been served go you home to Pencoch." She drew a veil over her face
+and fell to weeping as she followed the six men who carried Josi's
+coffin to the hearse.
+
+Having finished, Mali took her baston and her empty basket and began her
+journey. As she passed over Towy Street--the public way which is set
+with stones--she saw that many people were gathered at the gates of
+Beulah to witness Mary Ann's loud lamentations at Josi's grave.
+
+Mali stayed a little time; then she went on, for the light was dimming.
+At the hour she reached Pencoch the mown hay was dry and the people were
+gathering it together. She cried outside the house of Sara Eye Glass:
+"Large thanks, Sara fach. Home am I, and like pouring water were the
+tears. And there's preaching." She milked her cows and fed her pigs and
+her fowls, and then she stepped up to her bed. The sounds of dawn
+aroused her. She said to herself: "There's sluggish am I. Dear-dear,
+rise must I in a haste, for Mary Ann will need butter to feed the baban
+bach that Josi gave her."
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+UNANSWERED PRAYERS
+
+
+When Winnie Davies was let out of prison, shame pressed heavily on her
+feelings; and though her mother Martha and her father Tim prayed almost
+without ceasing, she did not come home. It was so that one night Martha
+watched for her at a window and Tim prayed for her at the door of the
+Tabernacle, and a bomb fell upon the ground that was between them, and
+they were both destroyed.
+
+All the days of their life, Tim and Martha were poor and meek and
+religious; they were cheaper than the value set on them by their
+cheapeners. As a reward for their pious humility, they were appointed
+keepers of the Welsh Tabernacle, which is at Kingsend. At that they took
+their belongings into the three rooms that are below the chapel; and
+their spirits were lifted up marvelously that the Reverend Eylwin Jones
+and the deacons of the Tabernacle had given to them the way of life.
+
+In this fashion did Tim declare his blessedness: "Charitable are Welsh
+to Welsh. Little Big Man, boys tidy are boys Capel Tabernacle."
+
+"What if we were old atheists?" cried Martha.
+
+"Wife fach, don't you send me in a fright," Tim said.
+
+They two applied themselves to their tasks: the woman washed the linen
+and cleaned the doorsteps and the houses of her neighbors, the man put
+posters on hoardings, trimmed gardens, stood at the doors of Welsh
+gatherings. By night they mustered, sweeping the floor of the chapel,
+polishing the wood and brass that were therein, and beating the cushions
+and hassocks which were in the pews of the most honored of the
+congregation. Sunday mornings Tim put a white india-rubber collar under
+the Adam's apple in his throat, and Martha covered her long, thin body
+in black garments, and drew her few hairs tightly from her forehead.
+
+Though they clad and comported themselves soberly Enoch Harries, who, at
+this day, was the treasurer and head deacon of the chapel, spoke up
+against them to Eylwin Jones. This is his complaint: "Careless was Tim
+in the dispatch department, delivering the parcel always to the wrong
+customers and for why he was sacked. Good was I to get him the capel.
+Careless he is now also. By twilight, dark, and thick blackness, light
+electric burns in Tabernacle. Waste that is. Sound will I my think. Why
+cannot the work be done in the day I don't know."
+
+"You cannot say less," said Eylwin Jones. "Pay they ought for this, the
+irreligious couple. As the English proverb--'There's no gratitude in the
+poor.'"
+
+"Another serious piece of picking have I," continued Harries. "I saw
+Tim sticking on hoarding. 'What, dear me,' I mumbled between the
+teeth--I don't speech to myself, man, as usual. The Apostles did, now.
+They wrote their minds. Benefit for many if I put down my religious
+thinks for a second New Testament. What say you, Eylwin Jones? Lots of
+says very clever I can give you--'is he sticking?' A biggish paper was
+the black pasting about Walham Green Music Hall. What do you mean for
+that? And the posters for my between season's sale were waiting to go
+out."
+
+Rebuked, Tim and Martha left over sinning: and Tim put Enoch Harries'
+posters in places where they should not have been put, wherefore Enoch
+smiled upon him.
+
+"Try will I some further," said Tim by and by.
+
+"Don't you crave too much," advised Martha. "The Bad Man craved the
+pulpit of the Big Man."
+
+"Shut your backhead. Out of school will Winnie be very near now."
+
+"Speak clear."
+
+"Ask Enoch Harries will I to make her his servant."
+
+"Be modest in your manner," Martha warned her husband. "Man grand is
+Enoch."
+
+"Needing servants hap he does."
+
+"Perhaps, iss; perhaps, no."
+
+"Cute is Winnie," said Tim; "and quick. Sense she has."
+
+Tim addressed Enoch, and Enoch answered: "Blabber you do to me, why for?
+Send your old female to Mishtress Harries. Order you her to go quite
+respectable."
+
+Curtsying before Mrs. Harries, Martha said: "I am Tim Dafis' wife."
+
+"Oh, really. The person that is in charge of that funny little Welsh
+chapel." Mrs. Harries sat at a table. "Give me your girl's name, age,
+and names of previous employers for references." Having written all
+that Martha said, she remarked: "We are moving next week to a large
+establishment in Thornton East. I am going to call it Windsor. Of course
+the husband and I will go to the English church. I thought I could take
+your girl with me to Windsor."
+
+"The titcher give her an excellent character."
+
+"I'll find that out for myself. Well, as you are so poor, I'll give her
+a trial. I'll pay her five pounds a year and her keep. I do hope she is
+ladylike."
+
+Martha told Tim that which Mrs. Harries had said, and Tim observed: "I
+will rejoice in a bit of prayer."
+
+"Iss," Martha agreed. "In the parlor of the preacher. They go up
+quicker."
+
+God was requested by Tim to heap money upon Mrs. Harries, and to give
+Winnie the wisdom, understanding, and obedience which enable one to
+serve faithfully those who sit in the first pews in the chapel.
+
+Now Winnie found favor in the sight of her mistress, whose personal
+maid she was made and whose habits she copied. She painted her cheeks
+and dyed her hair and eyebrows and eyelashes; and she frequented
+Thornton Vale English Congregational Chapel, where now worshiped Enoch
+and his wife. Some of the men who came to Windsor ogled her impudently,
+but she did not give herself to any man. These ogles Mrs. Harries
+interpreted truthfully and she whipped up her jealous rage.
+
+"You're too fast," she chided Winnie. "Look at your blouse. You might be
+undressed. You are a shame to your sex. One would say you are a
+Piccadilly street-walker and they wouldn't be far wrong. I won't have
+you making faces at my visitors. Understand that."
+
+Winnie said: "I don't."
+
+"You must change, miss," Mrs. Harries went on. "Or you can pack your box
+and go on the streets. Must not think because you are Welsh you can do
+as you like here."
+
+On a sudden Winnie spoke and charged her mistress with a want of virtue.
+
+"Is that the kind of miss you are!" Mrs. Harries shouted. "Where did you
+get those shoes from?"
+
+"You yourself gave them to me."
+
+"You thief! You know I didn't. They are far too small for your big feet.
+Come along--let's see what you've got upstairs."
+
+That hour Mrs. Harries summoned a policeman, and in due time Winnie was
+put in prison.
+
+Tim and Martha did not speak to any one of this that had been done to
+their daughter.
+
+"Punished must a thief be," said Tim. "Bad is the wench."
+
+"Bad is our little daughter," answered Martha.
+
+Sabbath morning came and she wept.
+
+"Showing your lament you are, old fool," cried Tim.
+
+"For sure, no. But the mother am I."
+
+Tim said: "My inside shivers oddly. Girl fach too young to be in jail."
+
+A fire was set in the preacher's parlor and the doors of the Tabernacle
+were opened. Tim, the Bible in his hands, stepped up to the pulpit, his
+eyes closed in prayer, and as he passed up he stumbled.
+
+Eylwin Jones heard the noise of his fall and ran into the chapel.
+
+"What's the matter?" he cried. "Comic you look on your stomach. Great
+one am I for to see jokes."
+
+"An old rod did catch my toe," Tim explained.
+
+Eylwin changed the cast of his countenance. "Awful you are," he reproved
+Tim. "Suppose that was me. Examine you the stairs. Now indeed forget a
+handkerchief have I for to wipe the flow of the nose. Order Winnie to
+give me one of Enoch Harries. Handkerchiefs white and smelly he has."
+
+"Ill is Winnie fach," said Martha.
+
+"Gone she has for brief weeks to Wales," Tim added.
+
+In the morning Eylwin came to the Tabernacle.
+
+"Not healthy am I," he said. "Shock I had yesterday. Fancy I do a rabbit
+from Wales for the goiter."
+
+"Tasty are rabbits," Tim uttered.
+
+"Clap up, indeed," said Martha. "Too young they are to eat and are they
+not breeding?"
+
+"Rabbits very young don't breed," remarked Eylwin.
+
+"They do," Martha avowed. "Sometimes, iss; sometimes, no. Poison they
+are when they breed."
+
+"Not talking properly you are," said Eylwin. "Why for you palaver about
+breeding to the preacher? Cross I will be."
+
+"Be you quiet now, Martha," said Tim. "Lock your tongue."
+
+"Send a letter to Winnie for a rabbit; two rabbits if she is small,"
+ordered Eylwin. "And not see your faults will I."
+
+Tim and Martha were perplexed and communed with each other; and Tim
+walked to Wimbledon where he was not known and so have his errand
+guessed. He bought a rabbit and carried it to the door of the minister's
+house. "A rabbit from Winnie fach in Wales," he said.
+
+"Eat her I will before I judge her," replied Eylwin; and after he had
+eaten it he said: "Quite fair was the animal. Serious dirty is the
+capel. As I flap my hand on the cushion Bible in my eloquence, like
+chimney smoke is the dust. Clean you at once. For are not the
+anniversary meetings on the sixth Sabbath? All the rich Welsh will be
+there, and Enoch Harries and the wife of him."
+
+He came often to view Tim and Martha at their labor.
+
+"Fortunate is your wench to have holiday," he said one day. "Hard have
+preachers to do in the vineyard."
+
+"Hear we did this morning," Tim began to speak.
+
+"In a hurry am I," Eylwin interrupted. "Fancy I do butter from Wales
+with one pinch of salt in him. Tell Winnie to send butter that is
+salted."
+
+Martha bought two pounds of butter.
+
+"Mean is his size," Tim grieved.
+
+"Much is his cost," Martha whined.
+
+"Get you one pound of marsherin and make him one and put him on a wetted
+cabbage leaf."
+
+The fifth Sunday dawned.
+
+"Next to-morrow," said Martha, "the daughter will be home. Go you to the
+jail and fetch her, and take you for her a big hat for old jailers cut
+the hair very short."
+
+"No-no," Tim replied. "Better she returns and speak nothing. With no
+questions shall we question her."
+
+Monday opened and closed.
+
+"Mistake is in your count," Martha hinted.
+
+"Slow scolar am I," said Tim. "Count will I once more."
+
+"Don't you, boy bach," Martha hastened to say. "Come she will."
+
+At the dusk of Friday Eylwin Jones, his goitered chin shivering, ran
+furiously and angrily into the Tabernacle. "Ho-ho," he cried. "In jail
+is Winnie. A scampess is she and a whore. Here's scandal. Mother and
+father of a thief in the house of the capel bach of Jesus Christ. Robbed
+Mistress Harries she did. Broke is the health of the woman nice as a
+consequent. She will not be at the anniversary meetings because the
+place is contaminated by you pair. And her husband won't. Five shillings
+each they give to the collection. The capel wants the half soferen. Out
+you go. Now at once."
+
+Tim and Martha were sorely troubled that Winnie would come to the Chapel
+House and not finding them, would go away.
+
+"Loiter will I near by," said Tim.
+
+"Say we rent a room and peer for her," said Martha.
+
+Thereon from dusk to day either Tim or Martha sat at the window of their
+room and watched. The year died and spring and summer declined into
+autumn, when on a moon-lit night men flew in machines over London and
+loosened bombs upon the people thereof.
+
+"Feared am I," said Martha, "that our daughter is not in the shelter."
+She screamed: "Don't stand there like a mule. Pray, Tim man."
+
+Remembering how that he had prayed, Tim answered: "Try a prayer will I
+near the capel."
+
+So Martha watched at her window and Tim prayed at the door of the
+Tabernacle.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+LOST TREASURE
+
+
+Here is the tale that is told about Hugh Evans, who was a commercial
+traveler in drapery wares, going forth on his journeys on Mondays and
+coming home on Fridays. The tale tells how on a Friday night Hugh sat at
+the table in the kitchen of his house, which is in Parson's Green. He
+had before him coins of gold, silver, and copper, and also bills of his
+debts; and upon each bill he placed certain monies in accordance with
+the sum marked thereon. Having fixed the residue of his coins and having
+seen that he held ten pounds, his mind was filled with such bliss that
+he said within himself: "A nice little amount indeed. Brisk are
+affairs."
+
+"Millie," he addressed his wife, "look over them and add them together."
+
+"Wait till I'm done," was the answer. "The irons are all hotted up."
+
+Hugh chided her. "You are not interested in my saving. You don't care.
+It's nothing to you. Forward, as I call."
+
+"If I sit down," Millie offered, "I feel I shall never get up again and
+the irons are hotted and what I think is a shame to waste gas like this
+the price it is."
+
+"Why didn't you say so at the first opportunity? Be quick then. I shan't
+allow the cash to lay here."
+
+Duly Millie observed her husband's order, and what time she proved that
+which Hugh had done, she was admonished that she had spent too much on
+this and that.
+
+"I'm doing all I can not to be extravagant," she whimpered. "I don't buy
+a thing for my back." Her short upper lip curled above her broken teeth
+and trembled; she wept.
+
+"But whatever," said Hugh softening his spirit, "I got ten soferens in
+hand. Next quarter less you need and more you have. Less gass and
+electric. You don't gobble food so ravishingly in warm weather. The more
+I save."
+
+Having exchanged the ten pounds for a ten-pound note, remorse seized
+Hugh. "A son of a mule am I," he said. "Dangerous is paper as he blows.
+If he blows! Bulky are soferens and shillings. If you lose two, you got
+the remnants. But they are showy and tempting." He laid the note under
+his pillow and slept, and he took it with him, secreted on his person,
+to Kingsend Chapel, where every Sunday morning and evening he sang
+hymns, bowed under prayer, and entertained his soul with sermons.
+
+Just before departing on Monday he gave the note to Millie. "Keep him
+securely," he counseled her. "Tell nobody we stock so much cash."
+
+Millie put the note between the folds of a Paisley shawl, which was
+precious to her inasmuch as it had been her mother's, and she wrapped a
+blanket over the shawl and placed it in a cupboard. But on Friday she
+could not remember where she had hidden the note; "never mind," she
+consoled herself, "it will occur to me all of a sudden."
+
+As that night Hugh cast off his silk hat and his frock coat, he shouted:
+"Got the money all tightly?"
+
+"Yes," replied Millie quickly. "As safe as in the Bank of England."
+
+"Can't be safer than that. Keep him close to you and tell no one. Paper
+money has funny ways." Hugh then prophesied that in a year his wealth in
+a mass would be fifty pounds.
+
+"With ordinary luck, and I'm sure you desire it because you're always at
+it, it will," Millie agreed.
+
+"No luck about it. No stop to me. We've nothing to purchase. And you
+don't. At home you are, with food and clothes and a ceyling above you.
+Kings don't want many more."
+
+"Yes," said Millie. "No."
+
+Weeks passed and Millie was concerned that she could not find the note,
+tried she never so hard. At the side of her bed she entreated to be led
+to it, and in the day she often paused and closing her eyes prayed:
+"Almighty Father, bring it to me."
+
+The last Friday of the quarter Hugh divided his money in lots, and it
+was that he had eleven pounds over his debts. "Eleven soferens now," he
+cried to his wife. "That's grand! Makes twenty-one the first six months
+of the wedded life."
+
+"It reflects great credit on you," said Millie, concealing her
+unhappiness.
+
+"Another eighty and I'd have an agency. Start a factory, p'raps. There's
+John Daniel. He purchases an house. Ten hands he has working gents'
+shirts for him."
+
+Millie turned away her face and demanded from God strength with which to
+acquaint her husband of her misfortune. What she asked for was granted
+unto her at her husband's amorous moment of the Sabbath morning.
+
+Hugh's passion deadened, and in his agony he sweated.
+
+"They're gone! Every soferen," he cried. "They can't all have gone. The
+whole ten." He opened his eyes widely. "Woe is me. Dear me. Dear me."
+
+Until day dimmed and night grayed did they two search, neither of them
+eating and neither of them discovering the treasure.
+
+Therefore Hugh had not peace nor quietness. Grief he uttered with his
+tongue, arms, and feet, and it was in the crease of his garments. He
+sought sympathy and instruction from those with whom he traded. "All the
+steam is gone out of me," he wailed. One shopkeeper advised him: "Has it
+slipped under the lino?" Another said: "Any mice in the house? Money has
+been found in their holes." The third said: "Sure the wife hasn't spent
+it on dress. You know what ladies are." These hints and more Hugh wrote
+down on paper, and he mused in this wise: "An old liar is the wench. For
+why I wedded the English? Right was mam fach; senseless they are. Crying
+she has lost the yellow gold, the bitch. What blockhead lost one penny?
+What is in the stomach of my purse this one minute? Three
+shillings--soferen--five pennies--half a penny--ticket railway. Hie
+backwards will I on Thursday on the surprise. No comfort is mine before
+I peep once again."
+
+He pried in every drawer and cupboard, and in the night he arose and
+inquired into the clothes his wife had left off; and he pushed his
+fingers into the holes of mice and under the floor coverings, and groped
+in the fireplaces; and he put subtle questions to Millie.
+
+"If you'd done like this in a shop you'd be sacked without a ref," he
+said when his search was over. "We must have him back. It's a sin to let
+him go. Reduce expenses at once."
+
+Millie disrobed herself by the light of a street lamp, and she ate
+little of such foods as are cheapest, whereat her white cheeks sunk and
+there was no more luster in her brown hair; and her larder was as though
+there was a famine in the country. If she said to Hugh: "Your boots are
+leaking," she was told: "Had I the soferens I would get a pair"; or if
+she said: "We haven't a towel in the place," the reply was: "Find the
+soferens and buy one or two."
+
+The more Hugh sorrowed and scrimped, the more he gained; and word of his
+fellows' hardships struck his broad, loose ears with a pleasant tinkle.
+While on his journeys he stayed at common lodging-houses, and he did not
+give back to his employers any of the money which was allowed him to
+stay at hotels. Some folk despised him, some mocked him, and many
+nicknamed him "the ten-pound traveler." To the shopkeeper who hesitated
+to deal with him he whined his loss, making it greater than it was, and
+expressing: "The interest alone is very big."
+
+By such methods he came to possess one hundred and twenty pounds in two
+years. His employers had knowledge of his deeds, and they summoned him
+to them and said to him that because of the drab shabbiness of his
+clothes and his dishonest acts they had appointed another in his stead.
+
+"You started this," he admonished Millie. "Bring light upon mattar."
+
+"What can I do?" Millie replied. "Shall I go back to the dressmaking as
+I was?"
+
+Hugh was not mollified. By means of such women man is brought to a
+penny. He felt dishonored and wounded. Of the London Welsh he was the
+least. Look at Enos-Harries and Ben Lloyd and Eynon Davies. There's boys
+for you. And look at the black John Daniel, who was a prentice with him
+at Carmarthen. Hark him ordering preacher Kingsend. Watch him on the
+platform on the Day of David the Saint. And all, dear me, out of J.D.'s
+Ritfit three-and-sixpence gents' tunic shirts.
+
+He considered a way, of which he spoke darkly to Millie, lest she might
+cry out his intention.
+
+"No use troubling," he said in a changed manner. "Come West and see the
+shops."
+
+Westward they two went, pausing at windows behind which were displayed
+costly blouses.
+
+"That's plenty at two guineas," Hugh said of one.
+
+"It's a Paris model," said Millie.
+
+"Nothing in her. Nothing."
+
+"Not much material, I grant," Millie observed. "The style is fashionable
+and they charge a lot."
+
+"I like to see you in her," said Hugh. "Take in the points and make her
+with an odd length of silk."
+
+When the blouse was finished, Hugh took it to a man at whose shop trade
+the poorest sort of middle-class women, saying: "I can let you have a
+line like this at thirty-five and six a dozen."
+
+"I'll try three twelves," said the man.
+
+Then Hugh went into the City and fetched up Japanese silk, and lace, and
+large white buttons; and Millie sewed with her might.
+
+Hugh thrived, and his success was noised among the London Welsh. The
+preacher of Kingsend Chapel visited him.
+
+"Not been in the Temple you have, Mistar Eevanss, almost since you were
+spliced," he said. "Don't say the wife makes you go to the capel of the
+English."
+
+"Busy am I making money."
+
+"News that is to me, Mistar Eevanss. Much welcome there is for you with
+us."
+
+In four years Hugh had eighteen machines, at each of which a skilled
+woman sat; and he hired young girls to sew through buttons and
+hook-and-eyes and to make button-holes. These women and girls were under
+the hand of Millie, who kept count of their comings and goings and the
+work they performed, holding from their wages the value of the material
+they spoilt and of the minutes they were not at their task. Millie
+labored faithfully, her heart being perfect with her husband's. She and
+Hugh slept in the kitchen, for all the other rooms were stockrooms or
+workrooms; and the name by which the concern was called was "The French
+Model Blouse Co. Manageress--Mme. Zetta, the notorious French Modiste."
+
+Howsoever bitterly people were pressed, Hugh did not cease to prosper.
+In riches, honor, and respect he passed many of the London Welsh.
+
+For that he could not provide all the blouses that were requested of
+him, he rented a big house. That hour men were arrived to take thereto
+his belongings, Millie said: "I'll throw the Paisley shawl over my arm.
+I wouldn't lose it for anything"; and as she moved away the ten-pound
+note fell on the ground. "Well, I never!" she cried in her dismay. "It
+was there all the time."
+
+Hugh seized the note from her hand.
+
+"You've the head of a sieve," he said. Also he lamented: "All these
+years we had no interest in him."
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+PROFIT AND GLORY
+
+
+By serving in shops, by drinking himself drunk, and by shamming good
+fortune, Jacob Griffiths gave testimony to the miseries and joys of
+life, and at the age of fifty-six he fell back in his bed at his
+lodging-house in Clapham, suffered, drew up his crippled knees and died.
+On the morrow his brother Simon hastened to the house; and as he neared
+the place he looked up and beheld his sisters Annie and Jane fach also
+hurrying thither. Presently they three saw one another as with a single
+eye, wherefore they slackened their pace and walked with seemliness to
+the door. Jacob's body was on a narrow, disordered bed, and in the state
+of its deliverance: its eyes were aghast and its hands were clenched in
+deathful pangs.
+
+Then Simon bowed his trunk and lifted his silk hat and his umbrella in
+the manner of a preacher giving a blessing.
+
+"Of us family it can be claimed," he pronounced, "that even the Angel do
+not break us. We must all cross Jordan. Some go with boats and bridges.
+Some swim. Some bridges charge a toll--one penny and two pennies. A toll
+there is to cross Jordan."
+
+"He'll be better when he's washed and laid out proper," remarked the
+woman of the lodging-house.
+
+"Let down your apron from your head," Simon said to her. "We are
+mourning for our brother, the son of the similar father and mother. You
+don't think me insulting if I was alone with the corpse. I shan't be
+long at my religious performance. I am a busy man like you."
+
+The woman having gone, he spoke at Jacob: "Perished you are now, Shacob.
+You have unraveled the tangled skein of eternal life. Pray I do you will
+find rest with the restless of big London. Annie and Jane fach,
+sorrowful you are; wet are your tears. Go you and drink a nice cup of
+tea in the café. Most eloquent I shall be in a minute and there's
+hysterics you'll get. Arrive will I after you. Don't pay for tea; that
+will I do."
+
+"Iss, indeed," said Annie. "Off you, Jane fach. You, Simon, with her,
+for fear she is slayed in the street. Sit here will I and speak to the
+spirit of Shacob."
+
+"The pant of my breath is not back"--Jane fach's voice was shrill. "Did
+I not muster on reading the death letter? Witness the mud sprinkled on
+my gown."
+
+"Why should you muster, little sister?" inquired Simon.
+
+"Right that I reach him in respectable time, was the think inside me,"
+Jane fach answered. "What other design have I? Stay here I will. A boy,
+dear me, for a joke was Shacob with me. Heaps of gifts he made me;
+enough to fill a yellow tin box."
+
+"Generous he was," Simon said. "Hap he parted with all. Full of feeling
+you are. But useless that we loll here. No odds for me; this is my day
+in the City. How will your boss treat you, Annie, for being away without
+a pass? Angry will your buyer be, I would be in a temper with my young
+ladies. Hie to the office, Jane. Don't you borrow borrowings from me if
+you are sacked."
+
+"You are as sly as the cow that steals into clover," Annie cried out.
+She removed her large hat and set upright the osprey feathers thereon,
+puffed out her hair which was fashioned in a high pile, and whitened
+with powder the birth-stain on her cheek. "They daren't discharge me.
+I'd carry the costume trade with me. Each second you hear, 'Miss
+Witton-Griffiths, forward,' and 'Miss Witton-Griffiths, her heinness is
+waiting for you.' In favor am I with the buyer."
+
+"Whisper to me your average takings per week," Simon craved. "Not repeat
+will I."
+
+After exaggerating her report, Annie said: "You are going now, then."
+
+Jane fach took from a chair a cup that had tea in it, a candlestick--the
+candle in which died before Jacob--and a teapot, and she sat in the
+chair. "Oo-oo," she squeaked. "Sorry am I you are flown."
+
+"Stupid wenches you are," Simon admonished his sisters. "And curious.
+Scandalous you are to pry into the leavings of the perished dead."
+
+Jane fach, whose shoulders were crumped and whose nose was as the beak
+of a parrot, put forth her head. "The reins of a flaming chariot can't
+drag me from him. Was he not father to me? Much he handed and more he
+promised."
+
+"Great is your avarice," Simon declared.
+
+"Fonder he was of me than any one," Annie cried. "The birthdays he
+presented me with dresses--until he was sacked. While I was cribbing,
+did he not speak well to my buyer? Fitting I stay with him this day."
+
+"I was his chief friend," said Simon. "We were closer than brothers. So
+grand was he to me that I could howl once more. Iss, I could preach a
+funeral sermon on my brother Shacob."
+
+Jacob's virtues were truly related. Much had the man done for his
+younger brother and sisters; albeit his behavior was vain, ornamenting
+his person garishly and cheaply, and comporting himself foolishly.
+Summer by summer he went to Wales and remained there two weeks; and he
+gave a packet of tea or coffee to every widow who worshiped in the
+capel, and a feast of tea and currant bread and carraway-seed cake to
+the little children of the capel.
+
+Wheedlers flattered him for gain: "The watch of a nobleman you carry"
+and "The ring would buy a field," said those about Sion; "Never seen a
+more exact fact simily of King George in my life than you," cried
+spongers in London public-houses. All grasped whatever gifts they could
+and turned from him laughing: "The watch of the fob is brass"; "No more
+worth than a play marble is the ring"; "Old Griffiths is the bloomin'
+limit." Yet Jacob had delight in the thought that folk passed him rich
+for his apparel and acts.
+
+"Waste of hours very awful is this," Simon uttered by and by. He brought
+out his order book and a blacklead pencil. "Take stock will I now and
+put down."
+
+He searched the pockets of Jacob's garments and the drawers in the
+chest, and knelt on his knees and peered under Jacob's bed; and all that
+he found were trashy clothes and boots. His sisters tore open the seams
+of the garments and spread their fingers in the hollow places, and they
+did not find anything.
+
+"Jewellary he had," exclaimed Annie. "Much was the value of his diamond
+ring. 'This I will to you,' he said to me. Champion she would seem on my
+finger. Half a hundred guineas was her worth."
+
+"Where is the watch and chain?" Jane fach demanded. "Gold they were.
+Link like the fingers of feet the chain had. These I have."
+
+"Lovely were his solitaires," cried Annie. "They are mine."
+
+"Liar of a bitch," said Jane fach. "'All is yours,' mouthed Shacob my
+brother, who hears me in the Palace."
+
+Simon answered neither yea nor no. He stepped down to the woman of the
+house. "I have a little list here of the things my brother left in your
+keeping," he began. "Number wan, gold watch--"
+
+The woman opened her lips and spoke: "Godstruth, he didn't have a bean
+to his name. Gold watch! I had to call him in the mornings. What with
+blacking his whiskers and being tender on his feet, which didn't allow
+of him to run to say the least of it, I was about pretty early. Else
+he'd never get to Ward's at all. And Balham is a long run from here."
+
+"I will come back and see you later," Simon replied, and he returned to
+his sisters. "Hope I do," he said to them. "You discover his affairs.
+All belong to you. Tall was his regard for you two. Now we will prepare
+to bury him. Privilege to bury the dead. Sending the corpse to the
+crystal capel. Not wedded are you like me. Heavy is the keep of three
+children and the wife."
+
+"For why could not the fool have saved for his burying, I don't say?"
+Annie cried. "Let the perished perish. That's equal for all."
+
+"In sense is your speech," Simon agreed. "Shop fach very neat he might
+have if he was like me and you."
+
+"Throwing away money he did," Annie said. "I helped him three years ago
+when he was sacked. Did I not pay for him to sleep one month in
+lodgings?"
+
+"I got his frock coat cleaned at cost price," Jane fach remembered, "and
+sewed silk on her fronts. I lent him lendings. Where are my lendings?"
+
+"A squanderer you were," Simon rebuked the body. "Tidy sums you spent
+in pubs. Booze got you the sack after twenty years in the same shop.
+Disgraced was I to have such a brother as you, Shacob. Where was your
+religion, man? But he has to be buried, little sisters, or babbling
+there'll be. Cheap funeral will suit in Fulham cematary. Reasonable your
+share is more than mine, because the Big Man has trusted me with sons."
+
+"No sense is in you," Annie shouted. "Not one coin did he repay me. The
+coins he owed me are my share."
+
+"As an infidel you are," said Simon. "Ach y fy, cheating the grave of
+custom."
+
+"Leaving am I." Jane fach rose. "Late is the day."
+
+"Woe is me," Simon wailed. "Like the old Welsh of Cardigan is your
+cunning. Come you this night here to listen to funeral estimates. Don't
+you make me bawl this in your department, Annie, and in your office
+laundry, Jane."
+
+From the street door he journeyed by himself to Balham, and habiting his
+face with grief, he related to Mr. Ward how Jacob died.
+
+"He passed in my arms," he said; "very gently--willingly he gave back
+the ghost. A laugh in his face that might be saying: 'I see Thy wonders,
+O Lord.'"
+
+"This is very sad," said Mr. Ward. "If there is anything we can do--"
+
+"You speak as a Christian who goes to chapel, sir. It's hard to discuss
+business now just. But Jacob has told he left a box in your keep."
+
+"I don't think so. Still, I'll make sure." Mr. Ward went away, and
+returning, said: "The only thing he left here is this old coat which he
+wore at squadding in the morning. Of course there is his salary--"
+
+"Yes, yes, I know. I'd give millions of salaries for my brother back."
+
+"You are his only relative?"
+
+"Indeed, sir. No father and mother had he. An orphan. Quite pathetic. I
+will never grin again. Good afternoon, sir. I hope you'll have a
+successful summer sale."
+
+"Hadn't you better take his money?" said Mr. Ward. "We pay quarterly
+here."
+
+"Certainly it will save coming again. But business is business, even in
+the presence of the dead."
+
+"It's eighteen pounds. That's twelve weeks at one-ten."
+
+"Well, if you insist, insist you do. Prefer I would to have my brother
+Jacob back."
+
+Simon put the coat over his arm and counted the money, and after he had
+drunk a little beer and eaten of bread and cheese, he made deals with a
+gravedigger and an undertaker, and the cost for burying Jacob was eight
+pounds.
+
+That night he was with his sisters, saying to them: "Twelve soferens
+will put him in the earth. Four soferens per each."
+
+"None can I afford," Jane fach vowed. "Not paid my pew rent in Capel
+Charing Cross have I."
+
+"Easier for me to fly than bring the cash," said Annie. "Larger is your
+screw than me."
+
+Simon smote the ground with his umbrella and stayed further words. "Give
+the soferens, bullocks of Hell fire."
+
+Annie and Jane fach were distressed. The first said: "The flesh of the
+swine shall smell before I do." The second said: "Hard you are on a
+bent-back wench."
+
+Notwithstanding their murmurs, Simon hurled at them the spite of his
+wrath, reviling them foully and filthily; and the women got afraid that
+out of his anger would come mischief, and each gave as she was
+commanded.
+
+The third day Simon and Annie and Jane fach stood at Jacob's grave; and
+Annie and Jane were put to shame that Simon bragged noisily how that he
+had caused a name-plate to be made for Jacob's coffin and a wreath of
+glass flowers for the mound of Jacob's grave.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of My Neighbors, by Caradoc Evans
+
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