Part 5

So Janny watched Ariel's thin fingers work skilfully, swiftly with the pencil, the ruler measuring off star points and a cat's length as carefully as if the paper were Welsh flannel worth one-and-six a yard. And the next night, after a day of unusual elation of feeling, Janny, when sleep had come to Ariel, stole noiselessly from the marital side, crept to the whitewashed wall of their bedroom pallid in moonshine, felt for the white paper cat and star and length of rope hanging there indiscernible, caught the edge of the paper with her fingers as she felt about, unpinned the pieces, and tiptoed out of the room and down the stairway. As she moved about the sitting-room in her night-gown, she looked pathetically little, the flush in her cheeks marking her eager helplessness. Much had slipped by her, and she had lost much in that sorry life before Ariel took her and brought her to live among strangers, whose motives and feelings she had no means of penetrating. But the tenderness, the innocence, the expectancy of childhood had remained with her, as if making amends for her loss or awaiting the sunshine of maturing impulses. She set a candle beside the settle, lifted the cover, took out two long rolls of paper, closed the settle, and bore her parcels to the table. Then she untied them with trembling fingers, rolling out several feet of green and crimson paper and a small sheet of yellow. She placed weights on the corners of the lengths, pausing to run her fingers into her hair as she gazed with rapt eyes upon the coloured surfaces, commonplace enough to all appearances. She took the cat, laid it carefully on the crimson, pinned it down and pencilled around the edges. In the same fashion she drew the outlines for four yellow stars and some lengths of yellow rope. Finally, with a pair of shears she cut out all the outlined figures. She lifted the cat, freed now from the matrix of surrounding paper and enlivened with the lifelikeness of a new liberty, and held its foot and a half of length against the candle-light. The light shone through the crimson paper but dimly. Janny nodded, took a small cake of paraffin, melted it, and with a bit of cloth sponged the cat as it lay upon the table. This she did also to the four yellow stars, to the lengths of rope, and to a large piece of green paper upon which the original cat pattern had been appliquéd. Once more she lifted the crimson animal to the light,--the candle-flame shone through clearly with a beautiful crimson flood of softer light. After this Janny broke a half-dozen eggs, separating the white from the yolk. Her fingers worked feverishly now, and her eyes kept measuring distances; in her nervous haste there were moments when she seemed hardly able to accomplish the next step forward in the task she saw already complete in her mind's eye. She stopped to listen for sounds and steps as she worked, and again and again she imagined that Ariel was looking down from the head of the staircase. But she finished the work uninterrupted, and with a sigh, half-sob of weariness, half-contentment, and with many a glance of admiration as she went, she tiptoed up the stairway. Ariel was sleeping, and as she crept into bed she put out a hand to touch his thick black hair, and then, curling into the cool white of her pillow, fell asleep as children sleep, one hand resting lightly on his arm.

Ariel Jenkins awoke at the waking-time of all Glaslyn--the dawn; Janny lay beside him, still sleeping, her face heavily shadowed in her abundant hair. She seemed so wistfully childlike and her closed eyes so unforgettably weary. Perhaps it was merely the shadows of the early dawn and her hair, but the eyelids had a kind of veined transparency and her skin a transparent pallor, and the mouth drooped. Ariel's selfishness smote him consciously; he thought with a pang of Janny, and he made resolutions. With this awakening he transferred a little of his poetry from the bard to the man. Aye, he acknowledged to himself, this might well be called the Education of Ariel Jenkins, bard and merchant. And for the first time a thought that gripped his heart brought him no desire to turn it into rhyme. He recalled compassionately all her efforts to make improvements in the house, her evident inability to understand and cope with the shrewd Welsh women of their village; and he remembered with fear the prying curiosity and overt enmity these women had shown toward Janny. Then he wondered in a desultory way what she was planning to do with the stars and the cat and the bits of rope. And after she awakened and they were talking at breakfast, he reflected how easily his resolution won success, for Janny since he brought her to Glaslyn had not been as buoyant, almost animated, as she was this morning. Ariel thought, too, that he had not noticed before the way Janny had of looking at him, as if she expected him to discover some extraordinary joy; maybe she was merely looking to him for happiness, but certainly there was an air of anticipation about her to-day.

Upon finishing breakfast Ariel passed with a sense of secure well-being into his shop; so many problems were solving themselves, and on the whole the man made him happier than the bard. Even the flag sidewalk outside the shop seemed more than ordinarily lively and merry to-day. He saw neighbours passing and heard them chatting, and once in a while there was a loud shout of laughter. Across the street, looking towards his shop he beheld a little knot of men,--Ivor Jones and Wil Penmorfa and Parry Wynn,--men who did not usually have time for mirth so early in the morning. They were talking and laughing, and Ariel saw one of them point towards Ty Mawr. Just then Mrs. Gomer Roberts the tinman came in. She wanted some flannel for a blouse like the material she was wearing, and Mrs. Roberts threw back her long cloak to display the neat striped flannel. How was Mrs. Jenkins? Ariel thanked her: Janny was well.

"I'm comin' soon to have a good long visit with her," said Mrs. Roberts.

"Aye, ye'll be welcome."

"Ye're makin' improvements, I see."

"Aye, a few," replied Ariel, using his yardstick deftly and wondering what improvements Mrs. Gomer Roberts could have had any opportunity to see.

"Glaslyn's no seen anything like it," continued Mrs. Roberts, straightening her beaver hat over the crisp white of her cap.

"No, I'm thinkin' not," answered Ariel vaguely, rolling up the bundle of flannel with precise neatness.

He was still wondering why women talked in riddles when in came Mrs. Jeezer Morris the minister. She had torn her blue kirtle and wanted a new breadth. Ariel took down the cloth. Then were showered upon him in a compacter form, and one of greater authority, practically the same remarks as those made by Mrs. Gomer Roberts: How was Mrs. Jenkins, she was coming to visit her, there were improvements she saw, the like of which Glaslyn had not seen before. Mrs. Morris the minister had scarcely finished her purchase when in came Mrs. Parry Wynn the baker; they had apparently met that morning and their greetings were purely conventional,--a smile, a look of inquiry, a nod of negation. Mrs. Parry Wynn wanted some new cotton cloth, but apparently she also wished to make the same remarks as those made by Mrs. Gomer Roberts and Mrs. Jeezer Morris.

Then Ariel Jenkins's thoughts began the converging process, began to gather in towards some definite centre, to fix themselves upon some one thing which all these estimable women must have in mind. And when Mrs. Parry Wynn left the shop, Ariel went to the door. Betto Griffiths walked by briskly, joining the women who had just made purchases and who were gathered in a little group opposite Ty Mawr. They were looking eagerly at the house and gesticulating. Betto Griffiths laughed harshly as she pointed at Ty Mawr, and shrugged her shoulders in the direction of the shop. Ariel's heart sank. What had Janny done to make the house such an object of attraction? He stepped out to the little group of customers and looked up.

Except for the quick flexing of the muscles in his forehead and the dilation of his eyes Ariel betrayed no emotion. The oriel window jutting over the street had been transformed; he saw no longer the clear glass of the stairway-light common to Ty Mawr and the other houses of Glaslyn, but a crimson cat, fore-feet in air, blazoned on a green background, each quarter of the oriel brilliant with a yellow star and the whole device bound together with a chaplet of rope.

"It _does_ make a pretty light!" he exclaimed thoughtfully; "prettier," he added with pride, "than I had any idea it would."

The women stared at him.

"Aye, an' it's prettier within," he continued; "it sheds such a bright colour on dark days."

"No, is it so!" ejaculated Mrs. Parry Wynn.

"Aye, it is so," replied Ariel. "Out of Glaslyn ye see many coloured windows like this in private houses--smart houses of course."

"Just fancy!" responded Mrs. Jeezer Morris, "we've seen them in churches, the Nonconformists as well as the Established, but we've never heard of coloured windows before in a village house, especially not with such a cat----"

"Aye, the cat!" interrupted Ariel, in a caressing voice, the far-away, much-reverenced look of the poet in his eyes, "that cat is a copy from a--medal taken from--the sar-coph-a-gus of Tiglath Pileser II. Aye," he added dreamily, "the cat, the sacred symbol of Egypt, holy to the Muses, beloved of----"

"Mr. Jenkins, ye don't say so!" they all exclaimed, looking with curious glances at the oriel window.

"I will say," nodded Mrs. Gomer Roberts, "that it has an uncommonly intelligent look."

"Aye, so it has," agreed Mrs. Parry Wynn, "intelligent an'--an'--lively."

Betto Griffiths glanced about the little group shrewdly.

"An' the stars, Mr. Jenkins?" she said.

"Tut, the _star_! Betto Griffiths, ye don't say ye don't know the meanin' of the five-pointed star, sacred to history, to sacred history, guide in the----"

"Oh, aye!" interrupted Betto, "if _that's_ the star ye mean, I certainly do."

The little gathering took a fresh look at the window; their eyes lingered reverently now on the emblazoned group of cat and stars leashed together with yellow rope.

"Aye, it's a wonderful idea!" asserted Mrs. Jeezer Morris, from her superior position and knowledge.

"Aye, wonderful!" solemnly affirmed the rest.

"I'm thinkin'," said Betto Griffiths, an undisciplined look in her eyes, "Mrs. Jenkins made it?"

"Mrs. Jenkins! Oh, no!" exclaimed Ariel, thrusting his hands into his trousers pockets, "I did it."

"Ye did!" they all exclaimed, admiringly.

"Mr. Jenkins," continued Mrs. Parry Wynn, whose husband, the baker, had been standing across the street not more than a half-hour ago laughing over the crimson cat _rampant_, blazoned on the green field, "Mr. Jenkins, if Mr. Wynn thinks he could afford something like it, would ye be willin'----"

"Aye, gladly," returned Ariel, "but it's expensive, Mrs. Wynn."

"Oh!" chorused the women, in deferential voices.

"But I'm thinkin'," continued Ariel, "through my connection as a merchant I might be able to obtain the material at less expense an'----"

"If ye could!" clamoured the little group.

"Mr. Jenkins, if Mr. Roberts----" broke in Mrs. Roberts.

"Mr. Jenkins, if Mr. Morris----" interrupted Mrs. Morris.

"Won't ye come in?" asked Ariel, placidly interrupting them all. "I'm certain ye will like the light even better from the inside where it falls in such pleasin' colours on the landin'. When I was workin' on it last night by moonlight the colours were like fairyland."

"Aye, it's only a poet could have conceived this," said Mrs. Morris, with assurance, "only a poet!"

"Only a poet!" echoed the rest.

"But won't ye come in? Mrs. Jenkins will be glad to see ye."

"Aye, thank ye, 'twould be a pleasure!" And flock-like they followed Ariel into the house.

Mrs. Jenkins's eyes were red, and there was the furtive aspect of a trapped animal about her; but when she saw their eager faces and heard their enthusiastic and admiring exclamations as they crowded into the stairway landing, there was a look of surprise first, and then of delight upon her face.

"Mr. Jenkins tells me ye didn't make it yourself," said Betto Griffiths, suspicion still on her sharp features.

"Well, it came," replied Janny, glancing appealingly at Ariel, "it--came from Liverpool."

"Janny _dear_," corrected Ariel, with a look straight into her eyes, "ye mean the _material_ did."

"Aye, Ariel," answered Janny, with a mixture of childlike obedience and confusion, "aye, just the material."

Ariel talked a great deal; the window was admired, commented upon, there were demands for future assistance, envious exclamations of delight to Mrs. Jenkins, who was given no chance to say a word, and the little group departed.

"Well, Janny!" exclaimed Ariel.

"Ariel _dear_, I--I saw them--them laughin' an'--then--ye," the flood-gates burst and Janny threw herself sobbing into Ariel's arms.

"There, there, _dear_, little lamb!" he comforted, his own eyes wet with tears.

"I thought--thought it would--be so--pretty--an' people's been--expectin' me--to--to make changes--an'--an'--Betto Griffiths said improvements, an' Ariel--I--I----" Janny's voice caught and she sobbed afresh.

"Tut, tut, little lamb, dearie, don't. Janny, Janny, don't cry."

"Ariel, I saw--the--men--laughin' an'--an' slappin' their knees--an'--an' pointin' at the window--an' even--little Silvan runnin' by--laughed, an' then when Betto Griffiths----" Janny faltered, gulping.

"Pooh, little lamb, Betto Griffiths!" exclaimed Ariel derisively, "Betto Griffiths is an ignorant woman. An', dearie, didn't ye hear them all askin' me to help them to get windows like this?"

"But, Ariel, didn't ye laugh at all?"

"I laugh, Janny! Why, dear," answered Ariel slowly, "I think--the--window--is beautiful!"

"Oh, Ariel!" said Janny happily.

"Aye, I do; only if ye should have another idea, just tell me about it, dearie, beforehand, for it might--perhaps it wouldn't," he added gently, "make it awkward."

"But, Ariel, I saw----"

"Well, dear, that's enough--ye don't understand these people quite yet. The window is beautiful; aye," he continued, "I like it, so we'll be sendin' it to Liverpool to get a real stained-glass window something the same--aye, dearie, I can well afford it."

_The Child_

The irons of the fireplace glowed in the light of the steady peat-fire. The odour from the peat was delicious with the aroma of age-old forests. With this was mingled the odour of the supper Jane Morris was clearing away. As she moved nimbly about the table, Jane's shadow advanced and withdrew across the blackened rafters of the roof.

"Whoo-o!" said Tom, comfortably, at the sound of the wind booming down the rocky mountain-side. "'Tis a bad night for strangers to be abroad, bad to be wandering along Bryn Bannog."

"Aye, 'tis dark," answered Owen, removing his pipe, and rubbing the head of a pet lamb that lay beside him. "One minute it cries like a child, and another it wails like a demon. But 'tis snug within, lad, an' we'll never know want."

The bachelor brothers regarded each other and their sister with contentment. Outside the wind shouted and cried by turns, and then died away clamorously in the deep valley.

"Snug within, lad," reaffirmed Owen, drawing his harp to him.

Tom lifted his finger.

"Hush! Some one comes."

All listened while the wind beat upon the house and sobbed piteously in the chimney. Jane hastened to the door.

"God's blessin'--rest--on this house!" gasped a man, stumbling in.

"Take the stranger's cloak off," commanded Owen, before the visitor was in, "an' here's my clogs dry an' warm."

"Tut, tut," objected Jane, "'tis food he needs, whatever. I'll fetch him bread an' fill the big pint. Now, friend, this chair by the table."

The Stranger sat down; his deep-set eyes looked out wistfully on the awakened bustle, and on the warmth and the cheer of the cottage room. But they heard him whisper drearily, "My little child, my little child!"

Tom tried to lift the silence that was settling over them all with a question here and a question there. The Stranger ate absent-mindedly and ravenously, drinking his ale in greedy draughts. Owen knocked the ashes from his pipe and stared into the fire.

"'Tis late," he said.

The Stranger lifted his eyes, looked at the two brothers, and long at Jane.

"I shall not rest----" he began.

"Well, Stranger, that you will not with a burden on your mind. That's so, lad?" Tom asked, turning to Owen.

"I shall not rest till I have told my dream," he resumed. "All day and every day my little one lies on her back--the crooked back that is killin' her."

"Dear _anwyl_!" exclaimed Owen to Jane and Tom, "'tis very like his little one."

"Aye, lad," answered Jane, while the wind drew gently over the house-roof.

"The dream came many times an' I did not heed it."

"He who follows dreams follows fools," interrupted Tom.

"I am a poor man, with naught richer than dreams to follow, an' no mother for my child. If the dream prove true, gold would make my little one well. But the days are goin' fast an' she is weaker every day."

"Och!" sighed Jane.

"Tut, a dream come true!" scoffed Tom, laughing. "But what _was_ your dream?" he asked, leaning forward.

"It was of a pitcherful of gold hid beneath a ruin of rocks piled one upon another, an' it was near a great fortress built in a fashion unknown to me. The fortress was on the crown of a rugged hill, an' it seemed away from the sea. So I have travelled eastward."

"Pen y Gaer!" exclaimed Owen and Tom and Jane, looking at one another.

"An' in this dream I saw many strange things, garments unlike aught men wear now."

"Aye," agreed Jane, "but it was all a dream."

"Nay, nay," replied the Stranger, "can you not tell me of it?"

"That we can," said Owen.

"Tut," interrupted Tom, "there is a round tower, aye, two round towers, the one by Pen y Gaer, south-west over Bryn Bannog, down the bridle-path by Llyn Cwm-y-stradlyn."

"Aye, but, lad," objected Owen, "the other----"

"The other's further away, more like a sheep-pen once than a tower for any fortress."

Owen's face was perplexed, but Tom's calm, and his eyes keen with light.

"Rest here, Stranger," he said. "On the morrow you shall start out for your treasure, up over Bryn Bannog."

"Nay, Tom," interrupted Owen, but Tom silenced him.

The next morning Tom stood outside the hedge that enclosed their grey-stone mountain cottage, pointing with his finger.

"Well, more to the west, so."

"Aye," replied the Stranger, scanning Bryn Bannog, its steep meadows, its rocks tufted with golden gorse, its craggy spine from which the mist was lifting; "yes, the path is plain."

The Stranger set his eyes southward up the mountain. After a while he turned to look back at the cottage cradled in the fields below; beyond the valley, Moelwyn, massive and green; eastward, Cynicht, sharp and grey; and still farther east, a vast wilderness of crag tumbled hither and thither down to the very edge of the glimmering sea. "Hope goes with me, little one," he said, and turned to climb higher. At the summit he looked westward; there lay a lake blue as a meadow-flower, and half-way down, by the little brook Tom had described, there was a large circle of loose stones.

The Stranger hurried forward. He glanced at the sun, and began by the edge of the circle near the brook, turning up the soggy earth in large clods. He dug feverishly, working hour after hour. He lay down and pulled the earth away in rolls, the wet drenching him, still hoping against hope. He took the clods of earth and dashed them against the rocks where they broke noiselessly. He looked about as if praying that some power might come to him from the blue distance or the sky above or the golden sun; then he sank on the stones and wept. The little green snake that crept by in the grass, the snail that trailed over the sod, heard him weep, and the cry that came from him, "My little one, my little one, was it for this?"

The afternoon swung its shadows eastward, and the roof of the cottage lay in a pointed figure on the grass beyond the hedge. Two men bearing something toiled up the path to the hedge gate. As the sun set behind Bryn Bannog the pointed roof-shadow drew in, and the shadow from the hedge lay on the grass in a dark ribbon, growing narrower and fainter. From the distant summit a single figure dropped slowly downhill, the autumn dusk closing around it. In the windows candle-light flickered; a woman came to the west door and looked uphill. She seemed troubled and she had been crying.

"Brothers, he is comin'," called Jane, "he is close by the house. Och, be kind to him for the child's sake! It is not too late even now."

"Well, Stranger," said Tom, appearing at the door, "did you find aught?"

"Nay," replied the Stranger, in a level voice. "Is there another ruin where the dream might lie?"

"Dreams!" exclaimed Tom cheerily, "dreams, dreams! 'Tis no place for dreams. You will find nothin' but sheep bones buried on Bryn Bannog. Do you know of any other place, Owen?"

Owen took his pipe from his mouth, looked hard at his brother, hard at the Stranger, started to speak, changed his mind, and put the pipe in his mouth again.

"Will you come in an' rest?" asked Tom. "'Tis growin' dark."

"My way is long, westward over the hills, an' the child is waitin'."

"Here," said Tom, holding out a coin, "here is a crown for the little Flower."

"Nay," replied the Stranger gently, "it would avail nothin'. She hath need of many crowns. Good-night."

As the Stranger took the path downhill, the brothers turned indoors. Jane confronted them, her eyes indignant, her lips tense.

"You--you will go after him. Och, that I should live to see this day! The Lord will find you out."

Tom laughed.

"Set the candle on the table," he said; "'tis an odd box. Is the door fast, Owen?"

"Aye, fast."

"To think it's lain in our pastures these hundreds of years."

Tom undid the hasps. He lifted out one chalice of silver after another, and several silver plates, all marked with early dates. Tom looked disappointed; Owen's face had grown pallid. Jane was speaking to them both:--

"'Tis the lost church silver, the altar-service, aye, the holy altar-service; now what will you do?" she cried.

* * * * *

At the breakfast table the porridge was eaten in silence. Jane's eyes were red. Tom looked uneasy, and Owen stared into his dish. In vain Gwennie thrust her little white nose against Owen's leg. "Baa-a!" Still no attention.

"I'm glad the wind is quiet," said Jane.

There was no response.

"Did you sleep, Tom?" she asked.

"Sleep! With that shriekin' of the wind!"

"Nay," said Owen softly, "the cryin' of a little child, indeed."

"There _was_ no gold, I say," Tom asserted.

"True," Owen complied.

"Well, 'twas altar silver, whatever."

"Aye," assented Jane, "an' it must go back to the church."

"Yes, an' we're no richer," ended Tom. "We've nothin' to spare to a stranger an' his child."

Owen turned the leaves of the big Bible on the table. Tom was staring defiantly from Jane to Owen.

"'It were better a millstone'--" Owen began to read to himself.

"The devil!" shouted Tom, rushing from the table and slamming the door behind him.