Part 4

"'Twould be playing with fire, and that's no play, mam. I've been talkin' with Aphael Tuck, and with Keri Lewis, and Evan Edwards, and they say the only man in Twthill has thought of goin' is Morris Thomas. Morris Thomas is a dark bird, he's always had a long spoon to eat with the devil, whatever. His missus is sick cryin' over his ways."

"But, father, I long so to go!" sobbed Gladys.

"Mother, ye are too gay, too gay! A weak doctrine, an easy path." The deacon was inclined to attribute Gladys's gaiety to her Wesleyanism; he himself was a Calvinist.

At this moment, with tears rolling down her cheeks, Gladys did not look over gay; and it would have been difficult for any one to divine the reputation for liveliness which she had made for herself. No good was coming to her now because she had lightened the heavy quiet of Twthill in various ways; because she had talked with the slate pigeons and clipped the wicked green tail of the privet pigeon; because she twinkled over the candytuft, bright and beautiful enough for a dozen Joseph's coats, or rang the Canterbury bells when nobody was looking, or pulled the bees off the honeysuckle, or fed the tiny sparrows and sandpipers and rooks as if they were geese, or tickled the toad under the holly-bush till he swelled with joy. It was no consolation to her now that she had always found something during the quiet dreary hours on Twthill to please her fancy, or that she had turned her attention successfully to her neighbours. Mrs. Thomas the greengrocer was a stupid thing, Betty Harries proud, and Olwyn Tuck the shop, starched with her doctrines. Many a trap of words had she set for them and many a trap had been sprung. There were harmless practical jokes, too, and there were matchmaking and theology. In these heat-producing topics Gladys had gained no mean skill, as the privet pigeon knew.

But the deacon took a serious view of her relation to a possible future. He longed to grant everything she might desire. However, there was her soul to be kept! He gathered himself together.

"Mam, ye cannot go," was his final word.

Adam got up; he wanted to go out very much, and Gladys sat alone thinking. At last she straightened, and shook her head; then she half laughed, then she half cried, as children sometimes laugh and cry almost in the same breath. After this she said aloud to herself--

"I will do it, now, won't I?" She nodded, "Aye, I will indeed."

She arose, looking mischievously wicked, and stole out of the back-door of the cottage. She glanced about, and evidently her eyes alighted on what she wished, for she stood there thinking. It wasn't fair, och! it was such a silent place, not worth a man's while to wake up in. And that stream, purr, purr, purr, purr all day long, just as if the cats couldn't attend to that sort of noise better. And those heavy-looking ugly-coloured foxglove bells that grew on the sunny side of the stone wall, and rustled "Tinkle-tinkle, tinkle-tinkle" in a way that Gladys had sometimes thought like the mysterious swishing of dry leaves or the scampering of tiny feet. What if they did know a deal about the Little Folk, it was of no earthly use to her. And the white clover and the red clover had such a warm sleepy smell, and those loppy dandelions that grew tall and drooped over, and those silly pink and white stone-crops that lay as still as lizards on the stone wall! Och, what if she had played with them once? She hated them all now. This stillness weighed down upon her like the rocks upon the hills.

She took something from the clothes-line and went into the house. Then she opened a long, heavy chest and was busy in its depths for several minutes. After that she was restlessly active throughout the day. At last bedtime came, and she went to sleep as innocently as the lamb in the sheepfold. But Adam Jones lay awake. He touched the plump wrinkled cheek gently and looked at Gladys's frilled nightcap with inexpressible longing. White Love, she was so different from other bodies in Twthill, enough to make a man happy as in the Garden of Eden these long years, but enough to vex him sorely too. Aye, he must manage to keep her soul for her, and the good deacon, his hands folded on his chest, his eyes blinking in an effort to stay awake, passed from prayers for Gladys into sleep.

When they arose, the quiet on Twthill had deepened to silence, for it was the Sabbath. The milkman made his rounds as usual, but instead of the dinner-bell he had a small boy who tiptoed from door to door, gently rapping up the good wives. There was no sound in all Twthill; only the smoke from the chimney-pots told of the life within. And all day long there would be no sound except the Chapel bell ringing worshippers to service and the tread of obedient Sunday-shod feet.

"Come," said Adam Jones to Gladys, "'tis time to be dressin' for Chapel."

"Nay, I'm not goin'."

"Not goin'! Dear heart, what's come over ye?"

"I'm not goin'," was all Gladys obstinately replied.

This was all the good deacon could get from her. Nor would she stir from her place by the fire.

"Mam, where's my Sunday socks?" he called from upstairs.

"How should I be knowin'?"

"But I cannot find them," was the distressed answer, while bureau drawers flew in and out.

"Mam," he called again, "I can't find them whatever, an' my grey socks are not here, either."

"They're in the mendin' basket to be darned."

"But, mam, then where's the other pair of greys?"

"They're not clean, they're to be washed to-morrow."

"Tut, tut, tut," said the deacon, sitting on the edge of the bed; then he pulled his boots on over bare feet and stretched down his trousers as far as he could. After that he went meekly downstairs.

"Where's my Sunday coat, mam?"

"In the chest where it is always."

"In the chest?"

"Aye."

Adam Jones bent over the big box where his Sunday coat lay spread out carefully from Sabbath to Sabbath. He groped around, fished out the coat, put it on unaided by Gladys, and leaned over his wife to say good-bye.

"Ye're not lovin' me much to-day, mother, are ye?"

Gladys gulped and pushed him away.

He left the house, his Bible under his arm, to join the people streaming up Twthill to the Chapel. Gladys ran to the door and called once. He turned around, but she bit her lips and said, "No matter."

As Adam stepped into the upward moving throng, Mrs. Thomas, the wife of Morris Thomas, whispered--

"Och, Morris, look!"

Morris gave one look, covered his mouth with his fingers, and began to shake; but dark bird that he was and long spoon that he had for supping with the devil, his face took on a pitying expression.

"'Tis too bad," he said; "what shall I do?"

Meantime the children had begun to giggle, little Dilys, and Haf and Delwyn and Ifor and Kats, and a score more. The suppressed tittering caught all the way down the line like a fuse attended by sundry minor explosions, and every eye was directed at Deacon Jones's back. But Morris's question remained unanswered, and no one did anything. The deacon, with his gentle bows to right and left and his long stride, skimmed past couple after couple, and entering the Chapel took his deacon's seat immediately under the pulpit, his back to the congregation.

Other deacons gathered rapidly about him on the circular seat, and there was much nudging among them, and more stir and craning of necks in the Chapel than had ever been there before. But soon the worshippers were launched upon a discussion of Arminianism, that unfortunate set of questions gentle John Wesley managed to flourish before Calvinism. Now Calvinism, full-tilt, rushed smoking and roaring from the kind mouths of the good people in the Chapel, belching flame and destruction upon the laxity of Wesleyanism. Deacon Adam Jones, with his eyes tight closed and his heart bursting with sorrow, was engaged in something like prayer. No matter that he could not know within himself that he was one of the elect. After all, if he strove to be saved and then wasn't, he could not grumble. He had tried his best; if he failed it was not his fault. But oh, his beloved Gladys, that her feet might be on the Rock and off this sliding sand of Wesleyanism! Or that already he might be landed on the happy shores of the other side, and know her foreordained to be saved! She might ride the wicked Elephant and not fall; a thousand circuses would not harm her in his sight.

Suddenly there was the tramping of a multitude in their silent Sabbath street, followed by a wild "Yah!" The deacons quivered together like so many leaves on a branch, and looked to the high windows, but the windows were so high that only the hills peered down serenely upon the congregation.

At home Gladys, eyeing disconsolately the bright fire and the rows of brass candlesticks and the big shiny cheese dishes, sat in the same place in which Adam had left her. Ah! it was wicked for her to have done that, for her husband was so gentle to her, no man could be better. And now she was making a laughingstock of the lad among the neighbours. The tears rolled out of her eyes, and, irresponsible little body that she was, with the flow of her tears there came a great desire to be comforted for her wickedness. Adam had always comforted her. Suddenly she sat up, for there was the sound of many feet upon the road. She listened, she looked out, she gasped, she sped to the hedge. A great procession was going by. Her amazed eyes fell upon camels, with gentlemen in baggy trousers on their backs. The camels were walking forward, stealthily spreading out their soft-padded feet. And there were many elephants, uneasily swaying the keepers who sat on their heads; for the elephants, hearing the purring of the stream, thought it sounded like the rustling of long jungle-grass, and wished more than anything else that this tidy little hill were a jungle in which they might lie down. Instead, they must trundle wearily up hill, taking comfort in elephantine ways by holding by their trunks to one another's tails. And the ladies from Egypt, seated high in a great barge, fanned themselves and looked yellow and much as Cleopatra must have looked when Mark Antony wooed her. And the float-full of American Indians seemed tired, and something must have been washed off their faces, for certainly they were not red. And the gentlemen representing the musical talent of the German Empire were mopping their fat necks. And in the huge barge representing Japan, courteous little Japs covered their yawns with fastidiously-kept hands. And the "artist" who sat inside the steam-organ wagon became so sleepy that his hand slipped and struck one of the organ pedals. "Yah!" screeched the organ, and I think it was the loudest sound ever heard on Twthill. The only rosy, tidy being in the whole procession was a little maid in white cap and apron who was hanging up fresh towels in one of the living vans, and peeping out of the window at the curious cottages and unpronounceable names decorating each one that she saw. There was no talking, no laughter. This was part of the day's work for these men and women and beasts. They were on their way to Carnarvon for Monday's performance. The men looked tired and sober, and so did the women. Gladys thought they all seemed strangely draggled. Indeed, she had imagined they would be quite different, so bright and beautiful, very creatures of the air like the birds. She believed she did not wish to go to the circus after all, for if they were not happy, she was certain she could never be happy looking at them, poor dears! If only Adam would come home, she could stand the stillness, and she would never do anything wrong again.

In the Chapel the service went forward without interruption; the minister, a man of character, convinced that he had met on Twthill all the forces of the world and the flesh and the devil, was not to be terrified by a multitude of feet, even though those feet were an avenging host sent for the destruction of this wicked village, in which he laboured and struggled in vain. The congregation, ignorant of this unflattering opinion of them, followed their heroic leader to a man.

At the close of the service, Deacon Aphael Tuck leaned forward towards Adam Jones.

"Mr. Jones, your socks--your socks----"

"What is that, Mr. Tuck?"

"Your socks. I'm sorry, but did ye intend----"

"Aye, my socks, Deacon," said Adam, looking apprehensively towards his boots, "aye, I've been lookin' for them--my Sunday socks."

"They're on your back," said the senior deacon, coughing.

Adam Jones flushed all over his pale face; then he smiled, much as if he enjoyed having his Sunday socks on his back rather than on his feet, and then, recollecting, he began to explain to the deacon.

"Well, 'tis Sunday,"--the deacon knew this,--"and Gladys takes very good care of my clothes whatever, and puts them--lays them out in the chest an'--an' she's not well to-day."

While Aphael Tuck was pulling out the strong stitches with which the socks were tacked on,--strong stitches which he and Mrs. Tuck often discussed later as part of the liveliest day Twthill had ever known,--the Recording Angel, who had been taking down Adam's prayers much cut in angelic shorthand, spaced out every one of these half-true faltering words carefully, and over them, the Angel wrote, in beautiful bright letters, LOVE, and beneath them, with lax impartiality to Calvinism and Wesleyanism, made this note, "Elect: Adam and wife."

_An Oriel in Eden_

Mrs. Jenkins looked over at Mr. Jenkins the shop merchant and bard, and there was love and wonderment in her eyes. He was reclining in an arm-chair, his long legs stretched before him, his head at rest against the chair, his hands folded over his stomach, his eyes tight closed, his mouth wide open, his lips moving, and every once in a while his tongue quickly lapping his upper lip. Janny looked away and out of the windows to the meadows that rolled up into the mist like big grey waves; this was the act of composition, she knew, and too sacred even for her, his humbler half, to behold. But the misty uplands suggested overmuch of that unnamable something which, when she looked at her husband, made her wish to shut her eyes; for, might she not, Janny reasoned, see more than she ought to see of the divine spirit that moved behind those hills and behind the lips of Ariel Jenkins. So her thoughts slipped back into the living-room of Ty Mawr, while her eyes avoided the inspired contents of the arm-chair. She had been a bride and the envied mistress of Ty Mawr just two weeks; however, she was forty and matrimony was late for her, and Ariel Jenkins being forty-five, it was none too early for him. Janny felt her responsibilities keenly. Was she living up to them? She was at the mercantile centre of the village, her better half was not only a merchant but also a crowned poet, her house the most important in Glaslyn. And Glaslyn expected changes; Mrs. Parry Wynn the baker said so, Mrs. Gomer Roberts the tinman had prophesied, and Mrs. Jeezer Morris the minister had whispered to Betto Griffiths who had told Janny of these expectations, that she supposed, nay, she _hoped_ Ariel Jenkins's home with a woman in it would soon look like a God-fearing place and receive some improvements. Janny's glance roved through the sitting-room. She had made a few alterations, but somehow in the half-light of dusk they seemed as nothing. What was the moving or replenishing of a taper holder, a fresh case for Ariel's harp, a new cover for the table, or the addition of a few pleasant-faced china cats to a regimental mantelpiece,--indeed, she sadly asked herself, what were these changes in comparison with the unappointed something she was expected to accomplish as Mrs. Ariel Jenkins the shop? She was a stranger in Glaslyn, an intruder from a great outside world, and now she felt bewildered, lonely. Her eyes flitted to Ariel's face for company.

"Dearie!"

There was no answer.

"Is it comin', Ariel dear?"

"Aye," he snapped.

Janny winced; she had never lived with genius, and, somehow, she thought it would be different. Her deep-blue eyes had a still look in them that suggested not only a long habit of self-repression but also perplexity, and sadness, too; there was appeal in every feature of her face,--an appeal made the more pathetic, perhaps, by the childlike lines of pale-gold curling hair about her forehead and tired eyes, and the delicate hollows beneath her cheek-bones, and the fragile sweetness of her mouth. It was a face in its soft bloom and delicacy, forever young and yet unforgettably weary. She straightened out her kirtle, and again her glance roved the room. There must be a clean hearth-brush, new muslin curtains for the casement; the stairway landing, where it turned by the front windows, even in the twilight looked shabby with the wear and tear of heavily-booted feet and clogs, the light from the oriel window above the landing shining through with bald ugliness upon the stairs. As she looked at the light Janny's eyes dilated, her face flushed, and she leaned forward, gazing intently at the window. For the minute she had forgotten Ariel, but he, puff, puff, puff, with many sighs and yawns and much stretching of his long legs, was coming out of his inspired coma. His awakening look fell upon Janny there where she sat, her hands clasped in her lap, her shoulders tipped forward, her chin tilted upward, a circle of quiet light about her hair, her eyes intent upon the stairway window.

"Janny dear, what is it? What are ye lookin' at?"

"Oh! na--aye, lad, I--I----"

"Well, well, Janny!"

"Ariel, I was thinkin'."

"Aye, an' ye were plannin', too."

He was thoroughly aroused now from his inspiration, and studying that object, woman, which through some twenty-five years he had sung and praised. Ariel's eyes searched her; stanza, metre, rhyme, theme, were all forgotten, for he saw that Janny possessed a thought she had no intention of parting with to him. He glanced from her to the window upon which she had been looking so rapturously when he surprised her gaze. So far as he could see it was like any other stairway light in Glaslyn, except that it was oval instead of rectangular, and perhaps a little deeper than some, but otherwise precisely like scores he had seen. Then he called imagination to his aid, that imagination which had been the means of begetting shillings over the counter of his shop, which had won for him a comfortable income, and commercial success, as well as made him the foremost bard in his county. He peered through the window; what he beheld was a bit of dusky sky with a shadowy star seemingly behind it. He dismissed imagination and returned to the study of his bride. It was a whim probably; perhaps one of those unshaped thoughts, elemental, unspoken, to which women listen in their idle moments; indeed, it might even be some dreaming about him of which Janny in the shyness of their relation, still new, was too sensitive to speak. Gradually Ariel forgot the problem in his renewed consciousness of the charm of Janny, with her deep blue eyes, her childlike pale-gold hair, the delicate lines of her fragile face so different from the Welsh women of their village. Under his scrutiny Janny sat serenely with a more than wonted air of self-possession.

She interrupted him: "Ariel, ye've been to sea, dear?"

"Aye, when I was a lad."

"Was it for long?"

"No, not long, two years sailin' with cargoes between our coast and Ireland."

"Did ye learn much of the ways of sailorfolk?"

"Aye, much."

"Runnin' up an' down the ropes?"

"Aye, that, an' more too."

"Did ye learn tattooin', dear?"

"Aye, the marks ye've seen on my arms an old salt taught me to do. The sailors were clever with the needle, sketchin' as well as sewin'."

"Do ye think ye could sketch a star now, Ariel, or have ye forgotten?"

Ariel laughed, partly with pleasure at this talk by the fire, partly from joy in the companionship.

"Aye, I'm thinkin' I could, little lamb."

He drew his chair closer to hers and saw her face brighten; it rested her to have him near her, and her thoughts sped back through all the years of loneliness and hunger for the things she could not have; she had a new consciousness of life and of being useful; it was not merely Ariel, it was the house, too, and what she could do to make it--Well, the word escaped her; anyway it was the house as well as Ariel, and it was lovely to think of what she could do for it while he made poetry and sold things in the shop.

"An', Ariel, could ye sketch me an anchor an' a bit of rope?"

"Aye, dearie, I could; ye know I could anyway, for I had drawin' at the school in Carnarvon while I was an apprentice there."

"Drawin'?"

"Aye, it was mam's idea."

Janny's eyes grew large.

"Ariel, do ye--do ye--think ye could draw me a--a cat?"

Ariel took one look at Janny and burst into laughter; shop, poetry, everything was forgotten in his amusement at her childlike eagerness. Suddenly he stopped, for Janny's face was quivering. Aye, he had forgotten, too, that this was no peasant-woman; his laughter seemed brutal.

"Janny, little lamb," he said softly, drawing her head to him, "I could, dear, I'll sketch all the cats ye want."

Janny sighed comfortably, her head still upon his shoulder, the weariness easing away from her heart. She could do it now; it would make the greatest difference; Betto Griffiths and others should see that she was something more than a bit of porcelain in Ariel's home, that she could do something more than merely oversee house-cleaning. Besides, it really was something more,--it was having an idea of her own, and that until Ariel rescued her she had never been allowed to have. She reached up and patted his face; even her gestures were incomprehensibly childlike. What she lacked in the passion of a woman she seemed to make up in the perfect trust of a child. Ariel, selfish with the selfishness of a man who has lived by himself and who had lived much in his own mind, thought now with a pang how lonely Janny must have been ever since she came to him; the appeal of her confidence touched the best that was in him, the protection that was his to give her, and some potential sense of fatherhood. Aye, he knew how tired she was after the life that lay behind her, and he gathered her into his arms, holding her there quietly while he talked.

"What shall it be, Janny? A star, an anchor, a bit of rope, an' a cat, did ye say, dear?"

"Aye, a star, Ariel, please. I don't think I want the anchor. The bit of rope would be nice, dear. An' I'd like the cat."

"An' what are ye goin' to do with these drawin's, Janny? Are ye goin' to hang them on the wall?"

"No, I'm not goin' to do that."

"Well, it's just as well, dearie, for Betto Griffiths, an' Mrs. Gomer Roberts the tinman, an' Mrs. Parry Winn the baker, would be hauntin' Ty Mawr. But what _are_ ye goin' to do with them, dearie?"

"Ariel, I couldn't say _now_." Janny stirred uneasily. "I _might_ be hangin' them in our bedroom, an'--an'--an' I might be puttin'--puttin' them in the--Bible to press. They'd be useful."

"Aye, that's so. An' how large shall I draw them?"

Janny thought a minute.

"The cat, dear, I'd like about a foot long, that is from his tail to his whiskers--No, I'm thinkin' that's too narrow for the cat; from the tail to the whiskers I'd like him one foot an' a half, Ariel."

Janny's glance took a flight over Ariel's shoulder.

"An' the star?"

Janny thought again.

"Six inches from point to point, an' four stars--no--one star will do--I can cut--och?--Ariel, _one_ star, please."

"An' the rope?"

"It's the twisted kind I want, an' it must go all around the--Oh, dear! Ariel, about an inch wide, please."

"Good! one cat, one star, one inch rope. Anything more, little lamb?"

"No-o-o, could ye do it now?"

"Aye, dearie, fetch me the ruler, the paper, an' a pencil."