Chapter 6

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."