Chapter 1

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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.