Chapter 7

"Oh, really. The person that is in charge of that funny little Welsh chapel." Mrs. Harries sat at a table. "Give me your girl's name, age, and names of previous employers for references." Having written all that Martha said, she remarked: "We are moving next week to a large establishment in Thornton East. I am going to call it Windsor. Of course the husband and I will go to the English church. I thought I could take your girl with me to Windsor."

"The titcher give her an excellent character."

"I'll find that out for myself. Well, as you are so poor, I'll give her a trial. I'll pay her five pounds a year and her keep. I do hope she is ladylike."

Martha told Tim that which Mrs. Harries had said, and Tim observed: "I will rejoice in a bit of prayer."

"Iss," Martha agreed. "In the parlor of the preacher. They go up quicker."

God was requested by Tim to heap money upon Mrs. Harries, and to give Winnie the wisdom, understanding, and obedience which enable one to serve faithfully those who sit in the first pews in the chapel.

Now Winnie found favor in the sight of her mistress, whose personal maid she was made and whose habits she copied. She painted her cheeks and dyed her hair and eyebrows and eyelashes; and she frequented Thornton Vale English Congregational Chapel, where now worshiped Enoch and his wife. Some of the men who came to Windsor ogled her impudently, but she did not give herself to any man. These ogles Mrs. Harries interpreted truthfully and she whipped up her jealous rage.

"You're too fast," she chided Winnie. "Look at your blouse. You might be undressed. You are a shame to your sex. One would say you are a Piccadilly street-walker and they wouldn't be far wrong. I won't have you making faces at my visitors. Understand that."

Winnie said: "I don't."

"You must change, miss," Mrs. Harries went on. "Or you can pack your box and go on the streets. Must not think because you are Welsh you can do as you like here."

On a sudden Winnie spoke and charged her mistress with a want of virtue.

"Is that the kind of miss you are!" Mrs. Harries shouted. "Where did you get those shoes from?"

"You yourself gave them to me."

"You thief! You know I didn't. They are far too small for your big feet. Come along--let's see what you've got upstairs."

That hour Mrs. Harries summoned a policeman, and in due time Winnie was put in prison.

Tim and Martha did not speak to any one of this that had been done to their daughter.

"Punished must a thief be," said Tim. "Bad is the wench."

"Bad is our little daughter," answered Martha.

Sabbath morning came and she wept.

"Showing your lament you are, old fool," cried Tim.

"For sure, no. But the mother am I."

Tim said: "My inside shivers oddly. Girl fach too young to be in jail."

A fire was set in the preacher's parlor and the doors of the Tabernacle were opened. Tim, the Bible in his hands, stepped up to the pulpit, his eyes closed in prayer, and as he passed up he stumbled.

Eylwin Jones heard the noise of his fall and ran into the chapel.

"What's the matter?" he cried. "Comic you look on your stomach. Great one am I for to see jokes."

"An old rod did catch my toe," Tim explained.

Eylwin changed the cast of his countenance. "Awful you are," he reproved Tim. "Suppose that was me. Examine you the stairs. Now indeed forget a handkerchief have I for to wipe the flow of the nose. Order Winnie to give me one of Enoch Harries. Handkerchiefs white and smelly he has."

"Ill is Winnie fach," said Martha.

"Gone she has for brief weeks to Wales," Tim added.

In the morning Eylwin came to the Tabernacle.

"Not healthy am I," he said. "Shock I had yesterday. Fancy I do a rabbit from Wales for the goiter."

"Tasty are rabbits," Tim uttered.

"Clap up, indeed," said Martha. "Too young they are to eat and are they not breeding?"

"Rabbits very young don't breed," remarked Eylwin.

"They do," Martha avowed. "Sometimes, iss; sometimes, no. Poison they are when they breed."

"Not talking properly you are," said Eylwin. "Why for you palaver about breeding to the preacher? Cross I will be."

"Be you quiet now, Martha," said Tim. "Lock your tongue."

"Send a letter to Winnie for a rabbit; two rabbits if she is small," ordered Eylwin. "And not see your faults will I."

Tim and Martha were perplexed and communed with each other; and Tim walked to Wimbledon where he was not known and so have his errand guessed. He bought a rabbit and carried it to the door of the minister's house. "A rabbit from Winnie fach in Wales," he said.

"Eat her I will before I judge her," replied Eylwin; and after he had eaten it he said: "Quite fair was the animal. Serious dirty is the capel. As I flap my hand on the cushion Bible in my eloquence, like chimney smoke is the dust. Clean you at once. For are not the anniversary meetings on the sixth Sabbath? All the rich Welsh will be there, and Enoch Harries and the wife of him."

He came often to view Tim and Martha at their labor.

"Fortunate is your wench to have holiday," he said one day. "Hard have preachers to do in the vineyard."

"Hear we did this morning," Tim began to speak.

"In a hurry am I," Eylwin interrupted. "Fancy I do butter from Wales with one pinch of salt in him. Tell Winnie to send butter that is salted."

Martha bought two pounds of butter.

"Mean is his size," Tim grieved.

"Much is his cost," Martha whined.

"Get you one pound of marsherin and make him one and put him on a wetted cabbage leaf."

The fifth Sunday dawned.

"Next to-morrow," said Martha, "the daughter will be home. Go you to the jail and fetch her, and take you for her a big hat for old jailers cut the hair very short."

"No-no," Tim replied. "Better she returns and speak nothing. With no questions shall we question her."

Monday opened and closed.

"Mistake is in your count," Martha hinted.

"Slow scolar am I," said Tim. "Count will I once more."

"Don't you, boy bach," Martha hastened to say. "Come she will."

At the dusk of Friday Eylwin Jones, his goitered chin shivering, ran furiously and angrily into the Tabernacle. "Ho-ho," he cried. "In jail is Winnie. A scampess is she and a whore. Here's scandal. Mother and father of a thief in the house of the capel bach of Jesus Christ. Robbed Mistress Harries she did. Broke is the health of the woman nice as a consequent. She will not be at the anniversary meetings because the place is contaminated by you pair. And her husband won't. Five shillings each they give to the collection. The capel wants the half soferen. Out you go. Now at once."

Tim and Martha were sorely troubled that Winnie would come to the Chapel House and not finding them, would go away.

"Loiter will I near by," said Tim.

"Say we rent a room and peer for her," said Martha.

Thereon from dusk to day either Tim or Martha sat at the window of their room and watched. The year died and spring and summer declined into autumn, when on a moon-lit night men flew in machines over London and loosened bombs upon the people thereof.

"Feared am I," said Martha, "that our daughter is not in the shelter." She screamed: "Don't stand there like a mule. Pray, Tim man."

Remembering how that he had prayed, Tim answered: "Try a prayer will I near the capel."

So Martha watched at her window and Tim prayed at the door of the Tabernacle.

XII

LOST TREASURE

Here is the tale that is told about Hugh Evans, who was a commercial traveler in drapery wares, going forth on his journeys on Mondays and coming home on Fridays. The tale tells how on a Friday night Hugh sat at the table in the kitchen of his house, which is in Parson's Green. He had before him coins of gold, silver, and copper, and also bills of his debts; and upon each bill he placed certain monies in accordance with the sum marked thereon. Having fixed the residue of his coins and having seen that he held ten pounds, his mind was filled with such bliss that he said within himself: "A nice little amount indeed. Brisk are affairs."

"Millie," he addressed his wife, "look over them and add them together."

"Wait till I'm done," was the answer. "The irons are all hotted up."

Hugh chided her. "You are not interested in my saving. You don't care. It's nothing to you. Forward, as I call."

"If I sit down," Millie offered, "I feel I shall never get up again and the irons are hotted and what I think is a shame to waste gas like this the price it is."

"Why didn't you say so at the first opportunity? Be quick then. I shan't allow the cash to lay here."

Duly Millie observed her husband's order, and what time she proved that which Hugh had done, she was admonished that she had spent too much on this and that.

"I'm doing all I can not to be extravagant," she whimpered. "I don't buy a thing for my back." Her short upper lip curled above her broken teeth and trembled; she wept.

"But whatever," said Hugh softening his spirit, "I got ten soferens in hand. Next quarter less you need and more you have. Less gass and electric. You don't gobble food so ravishingly in warm weather. The more I save."

Having exchanged the ten pounds for a ten-pound note, remorse seized Hugh. "A son of a mule am I," he said. "Dangerous is paper as he blows. If he blows! Bulky are soferens and shillings. If you lose two, you got the remnants. But they are showy and tempting." He laid the note under his pillow and slept, and he took it with him, secreted on his person, to Kingsend Chapel, where every Sunday morning and evening he sang hymns, bowed under prayer, and entertained his soul with sermons.

Just before departing on Monday he gave the note to Millie. "Keep him securely," he counseled her. "Tell nobody we stock so much cash."

Millie put the note between the folds of a Paisley shawl, which was precious to her inasmuch as it had been her mother's, and she wrapped a blanket over the shawl and placed it in a cupboard. But on Friday she could not remember where she had hidden the note; "never mind," she consoled herself, "it will occur to me all of a sudden."

As that night Hugh cast off his silk hat and his frock coat, he shouted: "Got the money all tightly?"

"Yes," replied Millie quickly. "As safe as in the Bank of England."

"Can't be safer than that. Keep him close to you and tell no one. Paper money has funny ways." Hugh then prophesied that in a year his wealth in a mass would be fifty pounds.

"With ordinary luck, and I'm sure you desire it because you're always at it, it will," Millie agreed.

"No luck about it. No stop to me. We've nothing to purchase. And you don't. At home you are, with food and clothes and a ceyling above you. Kings don't want many more."

"Yes," said Millie. "No."

Weeks passed and Millie was concerned that she could not find the note, tried she never so hard. At the side of her bed she entreated to be led to it, and in the day she often paused and closing her eyes prayed: "Almighty Father, bring it to me."

The last Friday of the quarter Hugh divided his money in lots, and it was that he had eleven pounds over his debts. "Eleven soferens now," he cried to his wife. "That's grand! Makes twenty-one the first six months of the wedded life."

"It reflects great credit on you," said Millie, concealing her unhappiness.

"Another eighty and I'd have an agency. Start a factory, p'raps. There's John Daniel. He purchases an house. Ten hands he has working gents' shirts for him."

Millie turned away her face and demanded from God strength with which to acquaint her husband of her misfortune. What she asked for was granted unto her at her husband's amorous moment of the Sabbath morning.

Hugh's passion deadened, and in his agony he sweated.

"They're gone! Every soferen," he cried. "They can't all have gone. The whole ten." He opened his eyes widely. "Woe is me. Dear me. Dear me."

Until day dimmed and night grayed did they two search, neither of them eating and neither of them discovering the treasure.

Therefore Hugh had not peace nor quietness. Grief he uttered with his tongue, arms, and feet, and it was in the crease of his garments. He sought sympathy and instruction from those with whom he traded. "All the steam is gone out of me," he wailed. One shopkeeper advised him: "Has it slipped under the lino?" Another said: "Any mice in the house? Money has been found in their holes." The third said: "Sure the wife hasn't spent it on dress. You know what ladies are." These hints and more Hugh wrote down on paper, and he mused in this wise: "An old liar is the wench. For why I wedded the English? Right was mam fach; senseless they are. Crying she has lost the yellow gold, the bitch. What blockhead lost one penny? What is in the stomach of my purse this one minute? Three shillings--soferen--five pennies--half a penny--ticket railway. Hie backwards will I on Thursday on the surprise. No comfort is mine before I peep once again."

He pried in every drawer and cupboard, and in the night he arose and inquired into the clothes his wife had left off; and he pushed his fingers into the holes of mice and under the floor coverings, and groped in the fireplaces; and he put subtle questions to Millie.

"If you'd done like this in a shop you'd be sacked without a ref," he said when his search was over. "We must have him back. It's a sin to let him go. Reduce expenses at once."

Millie disrobed herself by the light of a street lamp, and she ate little of such foods as are cheapest, whereat her white cheeks sunk and there was no more luster in her brown hair; and her larder was as though there was a famine in the country. If she said to Hugh: "Your boots are leaking," she was told: "Had I the soferens I would get a pair"; or if she said: "We haven't a towel in the place," the reply was: "Find the soferens and buy one or two."

The more Hugh sorrowed and scrimped, the more he gained; and word of his fellows' hardships struck his broad, loose ears with a pleasant tinkle. While on his journeys he stayed at common lodging-houses, and he did not give back to his employers any of the money which was allowed him to stay at hotels. Some folk despised him, some mocked him, and many nicknamed him "the ten-pound traveler." To the shopkeeper who hesitated to deal with him he whined his loss, making it greater than it was, and expressing: "The interest alone is very big."

By such methods he came to possess one hundred and twenty pounds in two years. His employers had knowledge of his deeds, and they summoned him to them and said to him that because of the drab shabbiness of his clothes and his dishonest acts they had appointed another in his stead.

"You started this," he admonished Millie. "Bring light upon mattar."

"What can I do?" Millie replied. "Shall I go back to the dressmaking as I was?"

Hugh was not mollified. By means of such women man is brought to a penny. He felt dishonored and wounded. Of the London Welsh he was the least. Look at Enos-Harries and Ben Lloyd and Eynon Davies. There's boys for you. And look at the black John Daniel, who was a prentice with him at Carmarthen. Hark him ordering preacher Kingsend. Watch him on the platform on the Day of David the Saint. And all, dear me, out of J.D.'s Ritfit three-and-sixpence gents' tunic shirts.

He considered a way, of which he spoke darkly to Millie, lest she might cry out his intention.

"No use troubling," he said in a changed manner. "Come West and see the shops."

Westward they two went, pausing at windows behind which were displayed costly blouses.

"That's plenty at two guineas," Hugh said of one.

"It's a Paris model," said Millie.

"Nothing in her. Nothing."

"Not much material, I grant," Millie observed. "The style is fashionable and they charge a lot."

"I like to see you in her," said Hugh. "Take in the points and make her with an odd length of silk."

When the blouse was finished, Hugh took it to a man at whose shop trade the poorest sort of middle-class women, saying: "I can let you have a line like this at thirty-five and six a dozen."

"I'll try three twelves," said the man.

Then Hugh went into the City and fetched up Japanese silk, and lace, and large white buttons; and Millie sewed with her might.

Hugh thrived, and his success was noised among the London Welsh. The preacher of Kingsend Chapel visited him.

"Not been in the Temple you have, Mistar Eevanss, almost since you were spliced," he said. "Don't say the wife makes you go to the capel of the English."

"Busy am I making money."

"News that is to me, Mistar Eevanss. Much welcome there is for you with us."

In four years Hugh had eighteen machines, at each of which a skilled woman sat; and he hired young girls to sew through buttons and hook-and-eyes and to make button-holes. These women and girls were under the hand of Millie, who kept count of their comings and goings and the work they performed, holding from their wages the value of the material they spoilt and of the minutes they were not at their task. Millie labored faithfully, her heart being perfect with her husband's. She and Hugh slept in the kitchen, for all the other rooms were stockrooms or workrooms; and the name by which the concern was called was "The French Model Blouse Co. Manageress--Mme. Zetta, the notorious French Modiste."

Howsoever bitterly people were pressed, Hugh did not cease to prosper. In riches, honor, and respect he passed many of the London Welsh.

For that he could not provide all the blouses that were requested of him, he rented a big house. That hour men were arrived to take thereto his belongings, Millie said: "I'll throw the Paisley shawl over my arm. I wouldn't lose it for anything"; and as she moved away the ten-pound note fell on the ground. "Well, I never!" she cried in her dismay. "It was there all the time."

Hugh seized the note from her hand.

"You've the head of a sieve," he said. Also he lamented: "All these years we had no interest in him."

XIII

PROFIT AND GLORY

By serving in shops, by drinking himself drunk, and by shamming good fortune, Jacob Griffiths gave testimony to the miseries and joys of life, and at the age of fifty-six he fell back in his bed at his lodging-house in Clapham, suffered, drew up his crippled knees and died. On the morrow his brother Simon hastened to the house; and as he neared the place he looked up and beheld his sisters Annie and Jane fach also hurrying thither. Presently they three saw one another as with a single eye, wherefore they slackened their pace and walked with seemliness to the door. Jacob's body was on a narrow, disordered bed, and in the state of its deliverance: its eyes were aghast and its hands were clenched in deathful pangs.

Then Simon bowed his trunk and lifted his silk hat and his umbrella in the manner of a preacher giving a blessing.

"Of us family it can be claimed," he pronounced, "that even the Angel do not break us. We must all cross Jordan. Some go with boats and bridges. Some swim. Some bridges charge a toll--one penny and two pennies. A toll there is to cross Jordan."

"He'll be better when he's washed and laid out proper," remarked the woman of the lodging-house.

"Let down your apron from your head," Simon said to her. "We are mourning for our brother, the son of the similar father and mother. You don't think me insulting if I was alone with the corpse. I shan't be long at my religious performance. I am a busy man like you."

The woman having gone, he spoke at Jacob: "Perished you are now, Shacob. You have unraveled the tangled skein of eternal life. Pray I do you will find rest with the restless of big London. Annie and Jane fach, sorrowful you are; wet are your tears. Go you and drink a nice cup of tea in the café. Most eloquent I shall be in a minute and there's hysterics you'll get. Arrive will I after you. Don't pay for tea; that will I do."

"Iss, indeed," said Annie. "Off you, Jane fach. You, Simon, with her, for fear she is slayed in the street. Sit here will I and speak to the spirit of Shacob."

"The pant of my breath is not back"--Jane fach's voice was shrill. "Did I not muster on reading the death letter? Witness the mud sprinkled on my gown."

"Why should you muster, little sister?" inquired Simon.

"Right that I reach him in respectable time, was the think inside me," Jane fach answered. "What other design have I? Stay here I will. A boy, dear me, for a joke was Shacob with me. Heaps of gifts he made me; enough to fill a yellow tin box."

"Generous he was," Simon said. "Hap he parted with all. Full of feeling you are. But useless that we loll here. No odds for me; this is my day in the City. How will your boss treat you, Annie, for being away without a pass? Angry will your buyer be, I would be in a temper with my young ladies. Hie to the office, Jane. Don't you borrow borrowings from me if you are sacked."

"You are as sly as the cow that steals into clover," Annie cried out. She removed her large hat and set upright the osprey feathers thereon, puffed out her hair which was fashioned in a high pile, and whitened with powder the birth-stain on her cheek. "They daren't discharge me. I'd carry the costume trade with me. Each second you hear, 'Miss Witton-Griffiths, forward,' and 'Miss Witton-Griffiths, her heinness is waiting for you.' In favor am I with the buyer."

"Whisper to me your average takings per week," Simon craved. "Not repeat will I."

After exaggerating her report, Annie said: "You are going now, then."

Jane fach took from a chair a cup that had tea in it, a candlestick--the candle in which died before Jacob--and a teapot, and she sat in the chair. "Oo-oo," she squeaked. "Sorry am I you are flown."

"Stupid wenches you are," Simon admonished his sisters. "And curious. Scandalous you are to pry into the leavings of the perished dead."

Jane fach, whose shoulders were crumped and whose nose was as the beak of a parrot, put forth her head. "The reins of a flaming chariot can't drag me from him. Was he not father to me? Much he handed and more he promised."

"Great is your avarice," Simon declared.

"Fonder he was of me than any one," Annie cried. "The birthdays he presented me with dresses--until he was sacked. While I was cribbing, did he not speak well to my buyer? Fitting I stay with him this day."

"I was his chief friend," said Simon. "We were closer than brothers. So grand was he to me that I could howl once more. Iss, I could preach a funeral sermon on my brother Shacob."

Jacob's virtues were truly related. Much had the man done for his younger brother and sisters; albeit his behavior was vain, ornamenting his person garishly and cheaply, and comporting himself foolishly. Summer by summer he went to Wales and remained there two weeks; and he gave a packet of tea or coffee to every widow who worshiped in the capel, and a feast of tea and currant bread and carraway-seed cake to the little children of the capel.

Wheedlers flattered him for gain: "The watch of a nobleman you carry" and "The ring would buy a field," said those about Sion; "Never seen a more exact fact simily of King George in my life than you," cried spongers in London public-houses. All grasped whatever gifts they could and turned from him laughing: "The watch of the fob is brass"; "No more worth than a play marble is the ring"; "Old Griffiths is the bloomin' limit." Yet Jacob had delight in the thought that folk passed him rich for his apparel and acts.

"Waste of hours very awful is this," Simon uttered by and by. He brought out his order book and a blacklead pencil. "Take stock will I now and put down."

He searched the pockets of Jacob's garments and the drawers in the chest, and knelt on his knees and peered under Jacob's bed; and all that he found were trashy clothes and boots. His sisters tore open the seams of the garments and spread their fingers in the hollow places, and they did not find anything.

"Jewellary he had," exclaimed Annie. "Much was the value of his diamond ring. 'This I will to you,' he said to me. Champion she would seem on my finger. Half a hundred guineas was her worth."