Читать книгу By Berwen Banks - Allen Raine - Страница 9

The Sassiwn day dawned bright and clear, and as the time for the first service drew near, the roads and lanes were thronged with pedestrians and vehicles of every description.

The doors of the houses in all the surrounding villages were closed for the day, except in a few cases where illness made it impossible for the inmates to leave their beds. Everybody—man, woman, and child, including babies innumerable—turned their faces towards the sloping field which for the day was the centre of attraction.

Already the grass was getting hidden by the black throng, and still the crowds arrived, seating themselves row behind row on the wild thyme and heather. The topmost corner of the field merged into a rocky wilderness of stunted heath and patches of burnt grass, studded with harebells, and this unapportioned piece of ground stretched away into the adjoining corner of the Vicar's long meadow. In the afternoon Cardo, who had virtuously kept away from the morning meetings, sauntered down to chat with Dye, who had condescended to absent himself from the third service, in order to attend to his duties on the farm.

"You sit here, Mr. Cardo," he said, with a confidential wink, "on your own hedge; the Vicar can't be angry, and you will hear something worth listening to."

Soon the sloping bank was crowded with its rows of human beings, all listening with intense interest to a pale, dark man, who stood on the front of the platform at the bottom of the field, and with sonorous voice delivered a short opening prayer, followed by an impassioned address. In the clear, pure air every word was distinctly heard all over the field, the surging multitude keeping a breathless silence, broken only by the singing of the birds or the call of the seagulls. Sometimes a baby would send up a little wail of fatigue; but generally the slumberous air soothed and quieted them into sleep.

The prayer over, the preacher gave out the words of a well-known hymn, and with one accord the people stood up, and from those hundreds and thousands arose the swelling tones of one of those old hymns which lay hold of every Welshman's heart, its strange reminiscences, its mysterious influences swaying his whole being, and carrying him away on the wings of its rising and falling melody. His fathers and grandfathers sang it in their old thatched cabins—and, farther back, the warriors and bards of his past ancestry breathed the same tones—and, farther back still, the wind swept its first suggestions through the old oaks of the early solitudes.

"Is it this, I wonder, this far-reaching into the past, which gives such moving power to the tones of an old Welsh hymn?" Thus Cardo mused, as he sat on the hedge in the spring sunshine, his eyes roaming over the dense throng now settling down to listen to the sermon, which the preacher was beginning in low, slow sentences. Every ear was strained to listen, every eye was fixed on the preacher, but Cardo could not help wondering where Valmai was. He saw Essec Powell with clasped fingers and upturned chin listening in rapt attention; he saw in the rows nearest the platform many of the wives and daughters of its occupants. Here surely would be the place for the minister's niece; but no! Valmai was nowhere to be seen. In truth, she had been completely forgotten by her uncle, who had wandered off with a knot of preachers after the hospitable dinner, provided for them at his house by Valmai's exertions and Marged Hughes' help; but he had never thought of introducing to his guests the real genius of the feast. She had snatched a hurried meal in the pantry, and, feeling rather lost and bewildered amongst the crowd of strangers, had retired to rest under the elder bushes, until called upon by Marged Hughes to help at the table, which she did at once, overcoming her shyness, and keeping as much as possible in the background.

The guests had been at first too intent upon their dinners after their morning's exertions to notice the slim white figure which slipped backwards and forwards behind them, supplying every want with quick and delicate intuition, aiding Marged Hughes' clumsy attempts at waiting, so deftly, that Essec Powell's dinner was a complete success.

Towards the end of the meal a young and susceptible preacher caught sight of the girl, and without ceremony opened a conversation with her. Turning to his host he asked:

"And who is this fair damsel?"

"Who? where?" said Essec Powell, looking surprised. "Oh! that's my niece Valmai; she is living with me since Robert my brother is dead."

"Well, indeed! You will be coming to the meetings, I suppose?"

"Yes," said Valmai, "I have been there all day; the singing was lovely!"

"And what did you think of the preaching?" said a very fat man, in a startlingly bass voice. He was carving a fowl. "That is the important point," he said, and the wing came off unexpectedly. "Young people are apt to think most of the singing," here he re-captured the wing and landed it safely on his own plate. "Did you hear my sermon?" he asked, between the mouthfuls of the fast disappearing wing, fixing his eyes upon poor Valmai, who began to wish herself under the elder bushes again. "My text was—" but fortunately here the company rose.

After a long grace they dispersed, and turned their faces once more towards the sloping field.

No one noticed Valmai—no one remembered her in the hurry to return to the preaching field—no one, she thought, would know or care whether she was present or not; and as she drew on her gloves and tied on her broad-brimmed straw hat, there was a little sadness in the curves of her mouth, a little moisture in the deep blue eyes, as alone she took her way after the preachers to the hillside. As she went she recalled the last open-air meeting she had attended, nearly two years ago, in that far-off land, where her father and mother had walked with her in loving companionship, when she had been the centre of their joys and the light of their home, and as she followed the winding path, hymn-book in hand, her heart went back in longing throbs to the father and mother and the old home under the foreign sky, where love had folded her in its warm embrace; but now—she was alone! no one noticed whether she came or went, and as groups and families passed her, wending their way to the hillside, she answered their nods and greetings with pleasant kindliness, but still found herself alone!

"It will always be like this now; I must learn to go alone. What can I expect when my father and mother are dead? there is no one else to care for me!"

She reached the crowded field, and ought to have made her way into the front rows near the platform where she might easily have found a seat, but Valmai was shy and retiring, and seeing there was no settled place for her, kept on the outskirts of the crowd, and at last found herself on the piece of uncultivated ground which bordered the corner of the Vicar's long meadow. She seated herself on the heather at the top of the bank, the sea wind blowing round her, and tossing and tumbling the golden curls which fell so luxuriantly under her hat.

All feeling of loneliness passed away as she sat there among the harebells and heather, for Valmai was young, and life was all before her, with its sweet hopes and imaginings. She was soon listening with deep interest to the eloquent and burning words which fell from the lips of the preacher; and with the harebells nodding at her, the golden coltsfoot staring up into the sky, the laughing babies sprawling about, was it any wonder that sadness fled away, and joy and love sang a paean of thankfulness in her heart?

It was at this moment that Cardo caught sight of her. Unconsciously, he had been seeking her in every square yard which his eye could reach, and here she was close to him all the time. The discovery awoke a throb of pleasure within him, and with a flush upon his dark face he rose and made his way towards her. She was absently turning over the leaves of her little Welsh hymn-book as he approached, and smiling unconsciously at a toddling child who was making journeys of discovery around the furze bushes. A quick, short "Oh!" escaped her as she saw him approach, her face brightened up—yes, certainly she was glad. Cardo saw it in the mantling blush and the pleased smile as he found a seat on the grass beside her. She placed her hand in his with a whispered word of greeting, for it would not do to speak aloud in that quiet concourse of people.

"Where have you been?" he asked, at last.

"At home," she whispered. "Why?"

"Because I hoped you would be out—"

Valmai shook her head as a farmer's wife looked round at her reprovingly. Cardo attempted another remark, but she only smiled with her finger on her lips.

"This is unendurable," he thought; but he was obliged to be satisfied with the pleasure of sitting beside her until the long sermon was over, and the crowd rose en masse with ejaculations of delight at the moving eloquence of the preacher.

"As good as ever he was!" "Splendid!" "Did you hear that remark about the wrong key?" "Oh! telling!" And amongst the murmer of approval and enthusiasm Valmai and Cardo rose. For a moment the former looked undecided, and he read her thoughts.

"No—not home with the crowd, but down over the beach;" and she fell in with the suggestion, turning her face to the sea breeze and taking the path to the shore.

Here the Berwen was running with its usual babbling and gurgling through the stones into the sea, the north-west wind was tossing the foam into the air, and the waves came bounding and racing up the yellow sand like children at play; the little sea-crows cawed noisily as they wheeled round the cliffs, and the sea-gulls called to their fellows as they floated over the waves or stood about the wet, shining sands.

"There's beautiful, it is," said Valmai, pushing back her hat and taking long breaths of the sea wind; "only six weeks I have been here and yet I seem to have known it for ever—I suppose because from a baby I used to hear my father talking of this place. It was his old home, and he was always longing to come back."

"Yes," said Cardo, "I can imagine that. I don't think I could ever be thoroughly happy away from here."

"Nor I too, indeed," said Valmai, "now that I know it."

"I hope you will never leave the place—you seem to belong to it somehow; and I hope I may never leave it, at least—at all events—" and he hesitated as he remembered his father's wishes—expressed many times, though at long intervals—that he should go to Australia and visit an uncle who had for many years lived there. The prospect of a voyage to the Antipodes had never been very attractive to Cardo, and latterly the idea had faded from his mind. In the glamour of that golden afternoon in spring, in Valmai's sweet companionship, the thought of parting and leaving his native country was doubly unpleasant to him. She saw the sudden embarrassment, and the flush that spread over his face.

"You are going away?" she said, looking up at him.

There was only inquiry in the tone. Cardo wondered if she would be sorry, and was tempted to make the most of his possible departure.

"I may have to go away," he said, "though I should hate it. I never liked the idea, but now I perfectly dread it. And you," he added, "should you miss me? It is not very lively here, so perhaps even I might be missed a little."

Valmai did not answer; she looked out to the horizon where the blue of the sky joined the blue of the sea, and the white breakers glinted in the sunshine.

"Yes," she said presently, "I will be sorry when you go, and where are you going to? Far away? To England, perhaps?"

"To Australia," replied Cardo.

"Australia! Oh! then you will never come back to Traeth Berwen!"

"Indeed, indeed I will, Miss Powell—you laugh at that—well—may I say Valmai, then?"

"Yes; why not? Everyone is calling me Valmai, even Shoni our servant."

"I may venture, then; and will you call me Cardo?"

"Yes, indeed; Cardo Wynne. Cardo Wynne, everybody is calling you that, too—even the little children in the village; I have heard them say, 'Here is Cardo Wynne coming!' See, here is the path to Dinas, I must say good-bye."

"Can't we have another walk along the beach? Remember, I, too, have no one to talk to!"

"Oh, anwl, no! I must hurry home and get the tea for the preachers."

"And then back to the meeting on the hillside?"

"No; the meeting is in the chapel to-night."

"But when it is over you will come back along the shore?"

"Indeed, I don't know. Good-bye," she said, as she began her way up the rugged homeward path.

When Cardo reached home, he found his father sitting at the tea-table. The old parlour looked gloomy and dark, the bright afternoon sun, shining through the creepers which obscured the window, threw a green light over the table and the rigid, pale face of the Vicar.

"You are late Cardo; where have you been?"

"In the long meadow, sir, where I could hear some of the preaching going on below, and afterwards on the beach; it is a glorious afternoon. Oh! father, I wish you would come out and breathe the fresh air; it cannot be good for you to be always in your study poring over those musty old books."

"My books are not musty, and I like to spend my time according to my own ideas of what is fit and proper, and I should not think it either to be craning my neck over a hedge to listen to a parcel of Methodist preachers—"

"Well, I only heard one, Price Merthyr I think they call him. He was—"

"Cardo!" said his father severely, "when I want any information on the subject I will ask for it; I want you to set Dye and Ebben on to the draining of that field to-morrow—"

"Parc y waun?"

"Yes; Parc y waun."

"Right, father," said Cardo good-naturedly. He was devotedly attached to his father, and credited him with a depth of affection and tenderness lying hidden behind his stern manner—a sentiment which must have been revealed to him by intuition, for he had never seen any outward sign of it. "It's no use," he muttered, as his father rose and left the room; "it's no use trying to broach the subject to him, poor fellow! I must be more careful, and keep my thoughts to myself."

Later on in the evening, Valmai sat in the hot, crowded chapel, her elbows pressed tightly in to her sides by the two fat women between whom she sat, their broad-brimmed hats much impeding her view of the preacher, who was pounding the red velvet cushion in the old pulpit, between two dim mould candles which shed a faint light over his face. Valmai listened with folded hands as he spoke of the narrow way so difficult to tread, so wearisome to follow—of the few who walked in it and the people, listening with upturned faces and bated breath, answered to his appeal with sighs and groans and "amens." He then passed on to a still more vivid description of the broad road, so smooth, so easy, so charming to every sense, so thronged with people all gaily dancing onwards to destruction, the sudden end of the road, where it launched its thronging crowds over a precipice into the foaming, seething sea of everlasting woe and misery.

Valmai looked round her with awe and horror.

"Did these innocent-looking, simple people belong to that thronging crowd who were hurrying on to their own destruction? was she herself one of them? Cardo?—her uncle?"

The thought was dreadful, her breath came and went quickly, her eyes were full of tears, and she felt as if she must rise suddenly and rush into the open air, but as she looked round the chapel she caught sight through one of the windows of the dark blue sky of night, bespangled with stars, and a glow of purer and healthier feeling came over her. She would not believe it—outside was the fresh night wind, outside was the silver moonlight, and in the words of the poet of whom she had never heard she said within herself, "No! God is in Heaven, it's all right with the world!" Her joyous nature could not brook the saddening influences of the Methodist creed, and as she passed out into the clear night air amongst the crowd of listeners, and heard their mournful sighs and their evident appreciation of the sermon, or rather sermons, for there had been two, her heart bounded with a sense of relief; joy and happiness were its natural elements, and she returned to them as an innocent child rushes to its mother's arms.

Leaving the thronged road, she took the rugged path down the hillside, alone under the stars, and remembering Cardo's question, "Will you come home by the shore?" she wondered whether he was anywhere near! As she reached the bottom of the cliff and trod on the firm, hard sand below, she saw him standing in the shadow of a rock, and gazing out at the sea over which the moon made a pathway of silver.

The fishing boats from Ynysoer were out like moths upon the water. They glided from the darkness across that path of light and away again into the unknown. On one a light was burning.

"That is the Butterfly," thought Valmai, "I am beginning to know them all; and there is Cardo Wynne!" and with a spirit of mischief gleaming in her eyes and dimpling her face, she approached him quietly, her light footstep making no sound on the sand.

She was close behind him and he had not turned round, but still stood with folded arms looking out over the moonlit scene. Having reached this point, Valmai's fun suddenly deserted her. What should she do next? should she touch him? No! Should she speak to him? Yes; but what should she say? Cardo! No! and a faint blush overspread her face. A mysterious newborn shyness came over her, and it was quite a nervous, trembling voice that at last said:

"Mr. Wynne?"

Cardo turned round quickly.

"Valmai! Miss Powell!" he said, "how silently you came upon me! I was dreaming. Come and stand here. Is not that scene one to make a poet of the most prosaic man?"

"Yes, indeed," answered the girl, standing beside him with a strangely beating heart, "it is beautiful! I saw the sky through the chapel window, and I was thinking it would be very nice down here. There's bright and clear the moon is!"

They were walking now across the beach, at the edge of the surf.

"It reminds me of something I read out to uncle last night. It was out of one of his old Welsh poets—Taliesin, or Davydd ap Gwilym, or somebody. It was about the moon, but indeed I don't know if I can put it into English."

"Try," said Cardo.

"'She comes from out the fold

And leads her starry flock among the fields of night.'"

"Yes, that is beautiful," said Cardo. "Indeed, I am glad you find something interesting in those dog-eared old books."

"Dog-eared? But they are indeed," she said, laughing. "But how do you know? They may be gold and leather, and spic and span from the bookseller's, for all you know."

"No, I have seen them, and have seen you reading them."

"Seen me reading them? How? Where?"

"Last night I was under the elder bushes, and saw you reading to your uncle. I watched you for a long time."

Valmai was silent.

"You are not vexed with me for that?"

She was still silent; a tumult of happy thoughts filled her mind. He had found his way to Dinas! He had thought it worth while to stand under the night sky and watch her! It was a pleasant idea, and, thinking of it, she did not speak.

"Tell me, Valmai, have I offended you?"

"Offended me? Oh, no; why should you? But indeed it was very foolish of you, whatever. If you had come in and listened to the reading it would be better, perhaps," she said laughingly.

"If I had come in, what would your uncle have said? He would have been very angry."

"Well, indeed, yes; I was forgetting that. He is very hospitable, and glad to see anybody who comes in to supper; but I don't think," she added, with a more serious air, "that he would be glad to see you. He hates the Church and everything belonging to it."

"Yes. How wearisome all this bigotry is. My father hates the chapels and all belonging to them."

"Perhaps you and I will begin to hate each other soon," said Valmai, as they reached the boulders through which the Berwen trickled.

It was absolutely necessary that Cardo should help her over the slippery stones, and with her hand in his she stepped carefully over the broad stream, subsiding into quietness as it reached the sea. At last she was safely over, and as he reluctantly dropped her hand he returned to the subject of conversation.

"Will we hate each other?"

Again there was no answer, and again Cardo looked down at Valmai as he pressed his question.

She had taken off her hat, and was walking with her golden head exposed to the cool night breezes. It drooped a little as she answered his persistent questioning.

"No, I think," she said, with her quaint Welsh accent.

"No, I think, too," said Cardo; "why should we? Let us leave the hatred and malice and all uncharitableness to our elders; for you and me, down here on the sands and by the banks of the Berwen, there need be nothing but content and—and friendship."

"Yes, indeed, it is nice to have friends. I left all mine behind me in my old home, and I did not think I should ever have another; but here we are across the shore, and here is the path to Dinas."

"Oh, but the walk has been too short. You must come back and let us have it over again."

"What! back again?" said Valmai, laughing so merrily that she woke the echoes from the cliffs.

"Yes, back across those slippery stones and across the shore, and then back again to this side. I can help you, you know."

Cardo's voice was very low and tender. It seemed ridiculous, but somehow he gained his point.