Читать книгу A Sovereign Remedy - Flora Annie Webster Steel - Страница 5

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Owen Jones, who in his leathern apron might have been a moyen age smith, looked up and said something lengthy in Welsh, whereupon the eager, alert little crowd, which had gathered round on the chance of a new emotion, echoed something else in Welsh, smiled, nodded, and looked sage.

"Well," said Ted impatiently.

The smith having no English, the office of translator was taken up by Morris Pugh, who, with a certain appropriative courtesy, had shown them all the beauties of the way with pardonable pride, informed them effusively and charmingly of his past life, his present opinions, told them of his widowed mother with tears in his eyes, of his clever young brother whose ambition was Parliament with a thrill of pride in his voice, and had finally introduced them formally to the smith as an elder of his chapel.

"In about half-an-hour they will be ready, he says; and, see you, Owen Jones is an excellent workman, indeed." Here he raised his voice and looked round for approval. "None better, I am sure."

"No! Indeed," assented Isaac Edwards, who, another elder, had come from his merchant's shop over the way to help on the general interest, "there will be none better than Owen Jones from Pembroke to Pwlhelli!"

The largeness of this proposition suited the hearers. It reflected credit on themselves, their clan, their country; so the quarrymen off duty from their piles of slaty shale among the oak woods, and the boys off school this Saturday afternoon, smiled and saluted quasi-military fashion as the two Cruttendens moved off to seek tea in the little inn, where a Cycle Club sign was nearly hidden in a massive cotoneaster--all red berries and white blossoms--which covered the walls from roadway to gable.

Here they bid good-bye to the Reverend Morris Pugh's good offices. He was due ere long in chapel for choir practice and prayer meeting. As he said so, the unction came into his voice which was noticeable whenever he touched on his profession. It was as if some necessity for shibboleth arose in him, as if some claim--not altogether natural--had to be considered. Indeed, he had lingered a moment to say that prayer was needful everywhere--even in the peaceful hamlet of Dinas--prayer for some outpouring of the Spirit this Whitsuntide week. There had been no special manifestation at present, but one might come any moment--the Lord's mercy being nigh to all them that feared Him; let them remember that. So, having said his word in season, he changed his manner, wished them good luck heartily, and thus left them to their own company; for the Scotch doctor, who had also proved a pleasant acquaintance, had branched off at the bridge, some half a mile up the hill from the little hollow in which Dinas hid itself modestly among the trees. But you could see where the bridge lay, because of the startling red-and-white school beside it, which looked as if it had sprung, like Diana from Jove's brain, fully armed for education out of the bare hillside.

Ted, looking through the inn window as they waited for tea, saw it, and the problem as to why it had been built so far away from the village, a problem which Morris Pugh had evaded, recurred to him.

"I should say, because the site--belonged to some one," said Ned coolly. "These things will happen--even to Boards. They are part of our commercial standard--caveat emptor! And in this case, the purchaser being the public--well, we don't think of the public as our neighbour. No! the public is an ill dog in temperance Wales!--especially amongst the Calvinistic Methodists. The parson, though, is a good sort--he didn't fancy the subject!"

"Not as he fancied the Welsh motto over the door," laughed Ted. "By George! how he let out about foreign languages and Wales being a conquered country. I had to drop reason and the Norman invasion, or there'd have been a row. He was awfully like Ffluellen--what a genius Shakespeare was."

"Yes! He understood, and you don't. I tell you, Wales is the most Rip-van-winkleish place in the world. You can go to sleep in a fifteenth-century farm and wake up the day after to-morrow in an Intermediate School. I've been in India, and it reminds me awfully of the National Congress. But I like it, though it is fatiguing to any one with a hankering after fact. Still, if there was a little more water--there is none in summer time, you know--and a little less rain, a little more right, and a trifle less righteousness it would do very well."

"Righteousness!" echoed Ted, "there's enough of that, anyhow. Two, four, six, eight, eight belfries to how many souls in the village?--four hundred all told?"

"That's only four chapels; the others are Sunday schools, I'll bet--'the Macleods must have a boat o' their ain.' Then there's the church--that ruin up yonder--it'll have a school too----"

But Ted's attention was diverted. "I say," he remarked, "that's a ripping girl!"

She had come out of a cottage a little way from the inn to intercept Morris Pugh and was engaging him in a lively conversation, despite his hurry. She was tall, dressed in black that glinted, and the fact that her hair was in curling pins did not interfere with her very voyante good looks.

"H'm!" remarked Ned, coming over to see, "reminds me of last Monday--I mean Bank Holiday! Doesn't she?"

The sarcasm was just, but it brought a faintly-annoyed flush to his companion's face. He knew himself to be a lower bred man, and the other Edward Cruttenden had a trick of reminding him of this and of certain other facts which, given fair choice, he would probably have forgotten.

So the village was left to its own devices till tea was over, when he took his pipe to the window again.

"Barring the prices, which whip an International Exhibition," he remarked, "this would be a jolly headquarters spot. That big hill--'Eye of the World,' the parson called it, didn't he?--is ripping!"

This time the word lost its inherent triviality before the dignity of those receding curves of sunshine shown by shadow, which swept up to the light-smitten crest of the great mountain.

"Personally," remarked Ned drily, "I find the view of the smithy more--Now, don't!--It isn't the least good fussing--it's the village tea-time, and not all the king's horses----"

But Ted and his bad words were off hammering at the closed doors, and finally running the smith to earth, having tea comfortably on an oak dresser hung with lustre jugs. It was a very small, but highly decorated cottage, this of the smith, showing uneducated artistic cravings in many things, in a harmonium, endless cheap photograph frames, china enormities, a few glazed certificates in Welsh to one "Myfanwy Jones," and here and there a priceless bit of Staffordshire ware.

Then ensued a deadlock. For the smith, scenting coercion, flared up instantly in Welsh, and Ted, conscious of breach of contract, grew abusive in English, till suddenly from above, came a full, high voice. "I will come down when I have finished dressing. Pray, sir, accommodate yourself with a cup of tea."

Then followed shrill Welsh exordiums to the smith, which resulted in a cheerful smile as he reached down another cup.

Ted took it, also a piece of bread and butter, feeling he could do nothing else, and as he sat waiting, the feminine voice continued upstairs a conversation which apparently had been going on when he had burst into the cottage, though he had been too ill-used to notice it.

"If you do not want the hat, Alicia Edwards, you can oblige by replacing in the box; but you will be dowdy beside the other girls at choir holiday, and Mervyn will not look at you twice. No, indeed! And it is but one-and-twenty shillings. Dirt cheap! Be wise and buy. See, you shall have it for a pound, and you can pay when you marry Mervyn."

"Mary!" choked a softer, more emotional voice. "Ah! I only want him to look at me. Ah, Myfanwy I Do you think he could----"

"If you do not care for the height in front you can wear it hindside before. It is even just so fashionable," went on the first voice, regardless of sentiment. "Put it on, child, and don't be so foolish. What is a pound, and you a pupil teacher? There! You look beautiful. Now, give me my hat pins, I must go to that man downstairs."

A frou-frou of silk petticoats on the ladder stairs which led up from a corner of the living room made Ted look round.

He saw, first, a pair of many-strapped, beaded black shoes with superlatively high heels, next, an interval of trim, black openwork stockings, finally, in a tourbillon of laced silk flouncings, over which it let down a trailing black satin dress, a vision, in which Ted at once recognised the girl in curling pins; or rather her apotheosis, for she was now glorious both within and without.

Her beautiful figure was literally cased in a tight bodice, which looked as if she must have been melted and run into it ere it could be so guiltless of wrinkles. The heavy lace yoke with which it was made showed the whiteness of her skin beneath it; a whiteness which held its own against the double row of false pearls about her neck. For the rest she was planned, laid out, developed in exact accordance with a Paris model in a shop.

In one hand she held a most irresponsible creation, which Ted almost diagnosed as a hat, though it had neither crown nor brim, and in the other, a perfect sheaf of long, black-headed pins.

She smiled at him with frank favour and, saying carelessly, "The smith, my father, will attend to you, sir, when he has had tea," passed on to a little mirror on the wall, placed the irresponsible creation on her tumultuous yet disciplined waves of hair in the very last position of which any sane creature would have dreamt, and proceeded, apparently, to stick the long pins through her head.

Seeing, however, in the glass Ted's face of angry consternation, she flashed round on him tartly yet condescendingly.

"It is no use trying to hurry Dinas. They are country people, not like London or Blackborough. This is not Williams and Edwards, or such like place, I can tell you."

The name of the biggest drapery firm in Blackborough gave Ted a clue to some of his perplexity.

"I see," he said slowly, "that's how you come to be--you are in the shop, of course, aren't you?"

She was by this time dexterously rolling back her veil preparatory to tieing it behind, her chin held down to keep it in position. So her dark eyes had full play as she retorted that she was. Second, in fact, in the mantle department--because of her figure. She displayed it lavishly in manipulating her veil, smiling the while at her own consciousness of perfection.

Ted smiled also. The big, bold, beautiful animal was distinctly fetching. He said something to that effect which made her giggle.

"You should pass your time coming to choir practice," she said, challenging him again quite frankly, when, after much shrill Welsh with her father, the latter stuck to two hours as his shortest limit for repair. "I sing in chapel when I am on holiday still; my music-master was the great Taleisin--that is his bard's name, of course--and Alicia Edwards, here, has won so many times in competition."

The last sentence introduced a girl who had just come downstairs, with a display of white lace stockings and thereinafter a blue dress surmounted by an extremely smart hat, possibly the one over the purchase of which Myfanwy Jones had spent her eloquence. The girl was fair and pretty, but there was about her that marked lack of personal grip on her surroundings, which is so noticeably a result of eleven years and more of strict Board School life; for Alicia's father had marked her out as a pupil teacher when she joined the infant class at three. That had been her ambition till she secured the position at sixteen. Now, at seventeen? At seventeen she blushed and giggled when Myfanwy went on:

"She will sing with Mervyn Pugh, our minister's brother. He is a very good looking young man--just so good looking as you."

To which obvious challenge Ted said something which changed the giggle to a titter; after which he left them, feeling a trifle uncertain as to the result of a reference to Ned.

He found him lying flat on his stomach on the bridge which spanned the stream again a little further down the village, watching, so he said, for even a shadow of a trout in the deep pool below it, a pool which after the long spring drought was only connected to the next one by a mere driblet of water.

"Do?" echoed Ned, looking up at Ted with a twinkle in his eyes. "Excelsior, of course." He waved his pipe towards the "World's Eye," still shrugging high shoulders in the sunshine, and away from Miss Myfanwy Jones, who was standing with Alicia Edwards at the gate of her father's neglected cabbage-patch, buttoning her grey suede gloves with a hook from her silver chatelaine. Her face showed beautiful unconsciousness, though her eyes were on the alert.

Ted hesitated; then from a larger cottage emerged the Reverend Morris Pugh, very spick and span, accompanied by a younger man, evidently by his looks the handsome Mervyn. But the forehead fringe which, after the fashion of young Wales, he wore, was too much for Ted. It looked exactly as if it, also, had been in a curling pin, and feeling vaguely that he would rather not be seen by Ned in its company, he laughed, said "Excelsior, by all means," and led the way, taking off his hat to the charmer as he passed.

Five minutes afterwards, pausing for breath, their first spurt upwards done, the village lay behind them, looking solitary in its close cohesion of cottages and trees.

But from the church, all ivy-mantled amid its wide graveyard, a bell was clanging, and across the grassy mounds dotted with stones, a tall figure in a black cassock and a biretta cap made its way to the vestry door.

"The voice of one crying in the wilderness," remarked Ned, "but he has the bell ringer for congregation, and even Miss Myfanwy Jones will come back to the old churchyard in the end, as her fathers have done, for a penny funeral." Then he laughed. "I shall never forget my Scotch groom-----" he paused. Ted eyed him curiously.

"Well?" he said.

"Oh, nothing! only his criticism on a Welsh funeral was scathing. 'There was no a drop o' whisky, an' they asket me tae pit inter the brod!' Insult on injury!"

So, laughing, they made their way upwards, through black land and bog, through thickets of unimaginably tall brake, and over sparse close-bitten knolls, the sheep flying in disorder from them like a routed army, a stonechat starting from the gorse giving them a momentary thought of game--a thought, no more. And the sunshine mounted with them, chased by the shadow, so that it came upon them by surprise when they reached the summit to see the valley below them veiled in soft purple, and the sun itself not far from setting behind an ominous low level of cloud which lay far out to seaward.

"It has taken longer than I thought," said Ned, stretching himself flat on his stomach, "but there is plenty of time."

"Plenty," echoed Ted, cross-legged like a Turk as he knocked out the ashes of his pipe on a stone.

"We've done the ginger-beer woman, anyhow," remarked Ned after a pause. "She comes there," he pointed to a hovel of stones a few hundred yards further along the plateau, "from the Llangolley side; seven A.M. till seven P.M. during tourist time, the innkeeper said. I wonder how she spends her day?" Then, half to himself, he added, "As if this wasn't meat and drink enough for any one."

It should have been. Far and near, cleft by the purpling shadow from below, the higher hill-tops dissociated themselves from the lower ones, shining rosy, resplendent, giving back the sun its parting gift royally, yet yielding bit by bit to the swift storming uprush of shadow. Another, and another picket of light stood, broke, fled from the foe to some higher refuge, until the last steadfast post of the "World's Eye" remained alone above a world of shadow. Remained alone, a vantage-ground of clear vision, above the wide cup of amethyst hills in which the flood-tide of the sea lay prisoned. So still, so serene, so silvery, lulled to unresisting sleep, as a captive bride might be, by love for the surpassing beauty of those embracing arms. Beyond, over the broad belt of darkening ocean, the sun was just dipping into the bar of cloud, leaving a flame upon the sky.

"We must wait and see the last of it," said he upon the grass suddenly, and the other nodded.

Up and up breathlessly crept the light. On the patch of bracken in the hollow, rallying round a spur of rock, flying for a fresh stand across a shaly slope, so holding its own for an instant against a scarp, driven over the ledge! Ned's hand went out to touch it, but found it behind him; so, turning swiftly he saw the last flicker of sunlight resting, ere final flight, on a yellow placard--

"Ginger beer, 6d."

He started to his feet. "Damn it all!" he cried, "fancy finding that ultimate sixpence here!"

"Sixpence?" queried Ted, rousing himself from a day dream. "Ah! I was thinking of the hundred pounds you left over yonder. It really is d----d rot, you know. What's to hinder my claiming it--well--say to-morrow morning?"

"You've time now if you wish it," assented Ned, "and if the thunderstorm----"

As he spoke there came a quiver of light far out over the hidden sea. It seemed to come from below the threshold of the visible world, like the sudden gleams from the beyond, which, at times, irradiate the mind of man with some infinite message.

Ted turned round startled at the greyness that was fast settling down on hill and sky. "We had better get down as sharp as we can," he cried hastily, taking his bearings. "I think if we try to the left a little we shall get down the rocky part before dusk makes going difficult."

Once again, however, the short cut proved the longer way. The path grew more and more hopeless, until after scrambling down an almost precipitous corrie they found themselves brought up on a jutting spur, by a thirty feet drop as the only onward way.

"It's--it's----" muttered Ted, as he satisfied himself they must go back.

"Worth it," remarked Ned; for the jag of rock on which he stood overhung a wilderness of grey shadow and grey water; the grey hills watching the grey water recede from the shores, leaving behind it still greyer patches of sand that rose roundly from the level reaches of the ebbing tide.

He stood, long after Ted had started upward, watching also, and thinking how like these billowy sand-banks were to a drowned woman's clothes. Some goddess of the earth, surely, lay dead there, her body compassed by the hills.

"I say! Aren't you coming?" came his companion's shout. "We haven't time to lose. Look there!"

A vivid flash of lightning shot beyond the deep bank into the rolling clouds that were coming up swiftly with the rising wind; and, more quickly than one would have expected, a low mutter of thunder caught the crags in monotonous echoes.

"Go on! I'll soon catch you up," shouted Ned in return. And he did so; for there was a lightness, a certain stress of action about his every movement which differentiated him from his companion's more deliberate steadiness.

The wind rose at every gust, and in the fast growing dusk, the sheep sought shelter behind rocks and boulders for the night.

Yet still the downward path could not be found.

"We had best follow the stream yonder," said Ned at last. "It will be longer, but it will take us down eventually, and I don't want to camp out with my pipe in that storm."

The first drop or two of rain emphasised his advice; but it was no easy task to follow it with the mist closing in on all sides. Then darkness came, bringing a perfect deluge with it. They could scarcely see the stones at their feet, except when, with the sudden summer lightning, the whole world of hill and dale and sea was revealed to them for a second, then shut out again as if in obedience to the immediate roll-call of the thunder.

But they were young, and it was soft, warm rain; so, with many a slip and tumble, and many a laugh, they made way somehow, pausing at length to leeward of a large rock to light a fresh pipe and look at the time.

"Half past ten!" exclaimed Ted, "who'd have thought it!" He spoke joyously, for his pulses were bounding with the vitality due to the exercise of mind and body.

"I should," replied Ned; "I'm beastly hungry. However"--here a brilliant flash gave them the world again, "I believe that's the bottom down there."

The vision of a stream in flood surging through a low-lying wooded valley not far beneath them, was certainly the bottom, but it was nearer twelve o'clock than eleven ere they found level footfall, and that only on the brink of the stream.

To cross, or not to cross became the question. They referred it to the next flash of lightning; a long wait in the darkness, for the storm was passing, the rain had ceased.

When it came, it showed them an oasis of field, a clump of trees, and something amongst them which might or might not be a human habitation. The point was settled, however, the next moment by the sudden twinkle of a wandering light quite close on the other side. It stopped dead at their view halloo, then retreated, evidently at a run, to reappear, nevertheless, almost immediately in company with a remonstrant voice, clear, pleasant, decided.

"Boggles!" it said. "There ain't no sech things as boggles! I've told 'ee so a dozen times, Adam, and I won't 'ave it said. So there!"

"Why, Martha, woman, I'm none fur sayin' 'twas boggles, fur sure, it might 'a bin a screech howl, but-- Lud 'elp us!--what's that?"

The light was evidently snatched at and held aloft. Then it came forward a step, and the voice rose in angry scorn.

"Get yer gone, you lazy, good-for-nothin' Welsh libe'tynes. I tell you she's gone, and right glad was I to get quit o' her. An impident lass, that friv'lous, her 'ead wouldn't 'old nothing but you young sparks."

"I beg your pardon," called Ned, interrupting the flow of wrath, "but we have lost our way, and being drenched through, want to know----"

"Well, I never!" came the voice, its owner grasping the situation at once. "Here, Adam, man, take the light an' show the gentle folk across the ford, an' I'll just run back and see to things."

Five minutes later, escorted by an apple-cheeked man of about fifty, they were entering a cottage where the fire had evidently been newly brushed up, a kettle put on, and a few hurried touches added to already existing tidiness by an apple-faced woman forty or thereabouts.

She bobbed them a truly primeval curtsey.

"Dear sakes, gentlemen, you must be through to your vests. Adam, set a cheer for the gentle folks, man. Adam and me was just after the hi'fer, sir, she's down calvin', an' they lays like lead on me till it's over, that they do. An' Adam is such a heavy sleeper, but there! Two of a sort can't live together, no, they can't."

This calm, philosophic treatment of him, brought a half-conscious giggle from Adam, and she passed on to treat of other subjects in like manner. "The village, h'm, not much of a place for sleepin' in, an' a good mile anyhow, with the bridge locked. Better a hayloft to yourself than some of them cottages. As for supper, they wouldn't get nothin' fit for gentle folk to eat. She could see what she'd got, an' meanwhile Adam'd show them the loft, and bring 'em over pillows an' blankets; they'd dry easy in the hay, while the clothes hung 'andy on the rafters, or Adam could bring 'em back to the fire when he tuk over supper, not but what it was perhaps better to 'ave somethin' to put on in case o' fire!"

A quarter of an hour afterwards, having made a most excellent meal of cold beefsteak pie and tea, which, they were assured, was "better to keep a chill off than beer," they duly put out the lantern, with which they had been bidden "to be real careful because of the yay," and listened to the clear, dispassionate voice saying, as its owner passed the loft--

"You go ter yer bed, Adam, an' sleep while you can. She's passed midnight, and it wunt come now till dawn; but I ain't the mind to sleep. They lies too heavy, poor dears."

"That woman," said Ned, from his blanketed bed in the hay, "ought to have been a Field Marshal or a Prime Minister."

There was absolute conviction in his voice.