Читать книгу Whistlers' Van - Idwal Jones - Страница 6

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The heavy oaken door slammed with a jar that rocked the house. The pupils dashed whooping into the street, Mr. Elias listened patiently until the uproar was gone, then he motioned Gwilym into a seat.

“It seemed to me you were a long way off during the lesson. Thoughts gone a’ wool-gathering again?”

“My answers were right, sir.”

“By the book, yes. You do your work well enough, and even better. That isn’t the point. You were spoken to twice, and you didn’t hear. Up to some mischief, aren’t you?”

“I think not, sir.”

“But you would like to be!” The schoolmaster was stern. “I know what’s got into you. You know what I’ve been warning my pupils. Not to speak to any Gipsy in the village. They are a lot of reprobates, and Heaven knows how many ducks and baskets of wash will be missing before dawn. Ply your book, learn some home-keeping ways, and avoid those rough people entirely.”

He watched the scowl deepen on Gwilym’s forehead, and resumed in a milder tone.

“I am speaking like a schoolmaster. And, by the same token, like a kind of policeman. Am I not?”

Gwilym thought it politer to keep silent. Then it puzzled him, the schoolmaster’s faint smile as he sat with arms folded on the desk, gazing at him owlishly through thick glasses.

“What do you want to be, eh?” he asked, intently balancing a ruler on his finger.

“I should like to move about—go here and there, and see various strange places.”

“That’s the heavy trouble with you. What I asked was what you wanted to be.”

Gwilym shifted uneasily and toyed with his cap. This was uncomfortable. He wanted to be outside, far down the road with his friends.

“I know well enough what the trouble is, Master Anwyl. I taught your father, and my advice, at this time of year, didn’t do him much good, neither. Well, so it is with the trout and the hare—they will go their own way. And what avail is it to chide them?”

Then Gwilym became aware of those searching, gleaming eyes behind the desk.

“Where is your grandfather?”

“He—he left last night, sir.”

“And were you very much surprised?” asked Mr. Elias dryly, filling his pipe. He lighted it and sent up a leisurely puff of smoke.

“A little. We wish we knew when he was coming back.”

“The less you worry about him, the better. For a long time he’s been a hug-the-hearth, working all last summer with the crops, and this winter cutting peat, and never a look beyond the village. And you could see he had something on his mind. When a man feels the house that irksome, he had best be gone for a while.”

Mr. Elias smiled wisely at his pipe. He and Taid were the thickest of friends, and besides their weekly game of draughts, they joined for walks across the moor, or to the lakes for trout fishing, and it was not probable either had a secret apart from the other.

“He left us with Shan Gof, sir.”

“And why not, pray? A good countrywoman; a little close with the pennies, but no worse than anybody else in the village.”

The schoolmaster said no more, but pondered over his pipe, and Gwilym stood up. As he expected, the remark was:

“Very good, you may go.”

Gwilym left the room, two steps more, and he was out in the road, stalking, with his cloak flat on the wind, towards Dame Olwen’s. His friends were there, in the parlor of her little bake-shop, eating their luncheon. The parrot at the threshold rasped out, with a flap of its wings:

“Olwen! Gwas ar drws—gwas ar drws! A boy at the door!”

The boys within, who were talking and babbling all at once, with great clatter of mugs, turned their heads.

“Gipsies!” shouted Evan Blacksmith to Gwilym. “They went right past here, and you missed them!”

“Which way did they go?”

“Up past the mill. Perhaps they’re going up to the moor.”

“Then I shall see them tonight.”

Gwilym sat down to his luncheon of buttermilk, a roll, and a piece of black honeycomb, which Dame Olwen got from her own bee-hives. The other lads watched him covertly, wondering why he had been detained. The penalty of being kept in for part of luncheon hour was inflicted for only such crimes as stoning cats, breaking windows, or looting the Vicar’s plum trees.

“What did Elias say?”

“He said the best way to harden chestnuts is to boil them.”

“That’s a whopper!”

“Then why did you ask me questions?”

The winter game in the village was “whacks,” which is played by a ring of boys, armed with pierced chestnuts dangling at the end of a cord. Each chestnut got a tremendous whack from all the other chestnuts in turn; or until it flew into powder or got cracked. Gwilym was the champion whacksman. In the autumn he picked the most promising chestnut in three or four bushels, put it to soak in varnish a week, then cured it in the shade. The other lads, not so shrewd in the ways of chestnuts, or not having a wise grandfather to teach them, baked theirs in the oven or in the sun. So his whack lasted the winter out, and even at the end of the season was worth a top and a penny to boot.

“My father says your whack is a ball of painted lead,” said Evan Blacksmith.

“That’s not true!” shouted Gwilym, rising.

“A fight! A fight!” shouted the others.

The hubbub started again. The air was tense with expectation of physical combat. Dame Olwen put her hands to her ears.

“Oh, my infants, you moider me! Drink your good milk and tea like fine little gentlemen. Or the neighbors will tell the good Mr. Elias I can’t keep order, and then where will you get your honey and buns?”

The school bell tinkled down the road. After putting coppers in Dame Olwen’s palm, the boys rushed out. Gwilym followed slowly. He could see Elias Schoolmaster in the entrance of the grimy stone building, and the filing-in of boys with the meek, respectful step of prisoners returning after parole.

The clouds were gone, the sun hung poised in a field of soft blue and warmed the village that looked freshened after the rains. From the hills came a mild breeze scented with heather. What suddenly possessed him, Gwilym did not know, but he turned and walked back, going on towards the bridge. This was an ancient bridge, built of gray blocks, but these could hardly be seen on the outside, because it was hung over with blankets of moss and ivy.

Here were the village loungers, warming their bones in the sunlight and looking into the water where fish swam lazily in the depths. It was always pleasant to look at the fish. They were masters of their element, who came and went as they chose, or just remained poised for hours, with an occasional flick of the tail, or a soft recoil as they bumped their noses against a mossy boulder.

The pool was overhung with alders. Gwilym bent over for a look. An old man next to him, whose beard was spread white and silky over the parapet, made room for him.

“Look you, lad! There you see a salmon, that silver giant down at the bottom, far bigger than any of the trout. And he is the same one that came here last summer when he was a gleisiad, a yearling. What do you suppose he is thinking about? All the cool, green caves he has visited, and the shrimps he has crunched between his teeth.

“Think of the places Master Salmon has visited!”

He murmured delightedly in his beard. “Gliding through worlds of gray-green water, and looking up at bridges, seeing the parts of them that are hidden from us, and heads of people staring down at him and saying, ‘Hello, where do you come from, I wonder, and where else do you go, and how do you know the right time of year to go voyaging to certain places, never a week early nor a week late, as if you had a calendar in your head or a learning bestowed by water schoolmasters?’

“Eh? How do you suppose they come by all this knowledge? Or do they just poke about here and there, blindly, as if they were wound up by clockwork?”

“I really don’t know, sir.”

“Ah, of course not. And you wouldn’t ever dream of asking, neither, gwas bach—my little lad, until you have a beard and it as white as if snow had fallen upon it.”

“I had never thought of asking, sir. But I shall. And I may find out.”

The elder groped in his pocket and pulled out a shagreen case. From this he extracted a pair of spectacles, adjusted it upon his nose, then looked at Gwilym.

“If you do, you must come and tell me. This summer, or perhaps next summer, but do not delay with your knowledge, for time flies like a mountain stream and who asks a question today may not hear the answer tomorrow.”

“And shall I find you here?”

“If there is sunshine, yes. It is a comfort to feel it on one’s back.”

They shook hands, and the old man insisted on accompanying him to the end of the bridge.

“And remember, young sir, that nothing gives a man so much pleasure as the kind of knowledge that his soul needs. You have the mark of the wanderer on your face, though you speak as can only one born to it, the Welsh tongue. In your travels you will see much, and they will be pictures to hang in the gallery of your mind. So, when you come to be my age, you can close your eyes and see them live again, instead of having to peer down from a bridge to see what is reflected in the water.

“Farewell to you, young sir.”

A very strange old gentleman indeed, Gwilym thought, as he went on. Though probably a wise one, else he would have been sitting in the stuffy taproom of the “Cross Keys,” drinking and arguing with commercial travelers instead of lounging on the ivy-covered bridge, indulging his soul and trying to probe the secrets of the water and the things that moved in its cool depths. He turned for another look, and there he was nodding at him.

“Young sir,” he called out, “just this to carry in mind. See that your shoes fit and keep the strings tied.”

“Thank you, sir. I shall.”

“Kushto bak!” shouted the old gentleman.

And that was very strange, too, for this was “Good luck!” in Gipsy words, and Gwilym left pondering how odd it all was, that the old gentleman was smarter than he appeared, and that you can never tell by the mere look of them what people might have in their heads.

The afternoon of his truancy had started off with the profit of a little wisdom. There was no telling how it would wind up. He decided to return home by the road past the woolen mill, for there was less chance of running into village folk who might ask him why he wasn’t at school. Besides, being the longer and more adventurous way, it was the one he preferred.

Along the stream there was much tall hemlock, as thick as his wrist. A length of its hollow stalk, cut directly across the joint, if fitted with a plunger, made an excellent squirt-gun. The stalks of smaller diameter, also pithless, made pipes through which a bit of elastic could snap a rowan berry almost further than a sling-shot. Then, close by, was a tract of bwrli, or Welsh myrtle, a handful of which, placed on a table, would rid a house of flies. He gathered a bunch of it and stowed a length of hemlock in his pocket.

He also hacked off a piece of green willow, full of sap and with a smooth, enamel skin, the best material from which to make a whistle. The path wound through a turfy region thick with brier and furze, greatly disliked by the shepherds, for the flocks, pushing through, left handfuls of their wool on the growth. Many a time he had gleaned the tufts, washed clean by the winter rains, and so white that they glistened like snow, and filling a bag with them had sold it at the mill for a shilling.

The one drawback to this region was that he couldn’t get lost in it; here was not real adventure enough, for he knew it too well, every foot and inch, every rabbit-hole even. He climbed to a slight rise among the bracken, from which he could see a mile to every point of the compass, and drawing the visor of his cap to shade his eyes from the light, peered for a trace of the Gipsies. The line of the cart-wheels was visible, but there was no other sign. Moving on, he came to a diggings with a long mound of earth and pebbles cast up from the excavation. Here was a deposit of reddle, the reddish clay that shepherds used to mark their flocks after the shearing. The shaft was fairly deep, four or five times the height of a man, and it was topped by a straddling gallows-frame, with loose rope hanging from it.

He had visited this place often, once or twice with Elias Schoolmaster, who loved to dangle his legs over the edge and study the strata of the pit, with its bands of sesquioxide of iron. Indeed, the master came here almost every Sunday, when the weather was fine, to smoke his pipe over a book, usually a history of the Roman times.

“It’s a rust pit, Master Anwyl,” he told him. “Only rust, good for nothing except for the farmers to mark their silly sheep with. But it was full of good iron once. Those ancient Romans were not fools. They came a long way for that iron, and they dug up plenty of it. Iron for swords and spears and daggers. And to show you how much they knew about mining, look at that vestige of a tunnel there at the bottom.”

Gwilym lay face down and peered over the side. It was better than going to school to look into the pit, for instead of getting sleepy over a book you could imagine the Romans down there, digging for all they were worth. A dozen brawny fellows in skirts, with their helmets on, no doubt, to protect their skulls from the tumbling rocks. After filling the bucket, they would step back.

“Ola, up there, Trophius!”

“Bestir yourselves on high, O rams’ heads that doze while we sweat below here! Up she goes! Holy Numa, how thy muscles crack! Hast no more strength to thine arms than newborn lambs?”

Then burly Roman laughter under the gray sky of Wales, and over there in the woods, while the Druids intoned their sacred chants under the mistletoe, the Britons, stained blue with woad, hammered out swords at the forge and sharpened their spears for the fight on the morrow. And all that was over a thousand years ago.

With chin resting on his hands, Gwilym dreamed over the ancient wars and life on the heath. Those jolly days were gone forever, and all who dwelt here were simple folk that durst not wander a stone’s throw away from their chimney corner, and would probably get lost if they did. As he thought, his eyes roamed over the ground, picking out the curled fern tendrils, the white flax buds and the tips of yellow on the gorse.

He gave a start. At the horizon was a figure looking his way, a stocky man with a beard, short velvet breeches, and a rifle slung over his back. It was Harris Gamekeeper, who looked after the birds and rabbits for a Duke who owned about all the land one could see from this point. Once a year the Duke, accompanied by a few friends, came to stay at Harris Gamekeeper’s cottage—a small edifice in the center of the field—and after shooting a little, they went away to remain for another year.

It seemed foolish to keep all that land idle for three days’ shooting. And perhaps it was. Taid said so. And so did Elias Schoolmaster once, when four tenants who had lived on the moor had been forced to leave the cottages where they were born, and emigrate to Australia, so the Duke’s rabbits and pheasants could be shot at easier.

“Some of them were soldiers in the War,” Taid said. “Better be tinkers sleeping under a hedge rather than poor farmers harried by a lackey or gamekeeper.”

Because of this, the Duke wasn’t liked at all in the village, but since he was never there, the dislike resounded on the stolid head of Harris Gamekeeper, and the boys were up to all manner of little tricks that made him unhappy. The trouble was that Harris Gamekeeper’s dog was well acquainted with the boys, and never barked when they came round, even in the dead of night.

A week after the eviction of the tenants, two of Elias Schoolmaster’s pupils came to Harris Gamekeeper’s cottage when all was pitch dark and they could hear the inmate snoring. They stuck the small end of a long beer-funnel into the keyhole of his front door, and held the flare end over a fire they kindled on the brick step. It is surprising what a great smoke burning tow and moss will make, when drenched with oil. Half strangled by the fumes, and yelling with fright, Harris Gamekeeper jumped out of bed, and after stumbling over the chairs, attained the front door and wrenched it open, but not before the lads had a good start down the path.

Then, the next time they came up, a month afterward, they captured Harris Gamekeeper’s three cats, sedate and respectable old tabbies. Holding each between their knees, they shod them with large walnut shells, which had been scooped out and filled with pitch. The window was pried open, and the unhappy cats, dropped within, clattered about on unsteady feet, and the noise was tremendous, as if a stableful of horses had been backed into the kitchen. This killed whatever good feeling Harris Gamekeeper ever had for the boys, which wasn’t very much in the first place.

He made formal complaint. The next day Elias Schoolmaster, after ringing the bell for attention after class, cleared his throat and looked at them severely.

“Mr. Harris feels that he has just cause for complaint. Certain young individuals have annoyed him at his premises and caused him loss of sleep. They have injured his throat with smoke. They have deplorably mistreated his cats, for which he has a great solicitude.

“Such conduct is unworthy of those who aspire to be Christians. That will be all, young gentlemen. Class dismissed for luncheon.”

Gwilym, lying in the heather, put fingers in his mouth and blew a shrill, blatting whistle. Harris Gamekeeper started, shaded his eyes, and looked for invaders. In the village were several poachers who made forays in the darkness, accompanied by their dogs. And this was the signal for the lurchers to come to heel, that low, blatting whistle Gwilym sounded time and again.

Harris Gamekeeper trod back and forth, with his gun leveled, his wrath mounting higher every moment. To poach in broad daylight, this was impudence. It was like a thief snapping his fingers under the nose of the law. Gwilym backed to the edge of the bank, then wriggled down. He gave one last whistle, mocking and prolonged, blowing with fingers in his mouth. Then, greatly pleased with himself, he trotted along the river bed until he got back to the road and was out of the preserve.