By Berwen Banks Part 5

Here the Berwen was running with its usual babbling and gurgling through the stones into the sea, the north-west wind was tossing the foam into the air, and the waves came bounding and racing up the yellow sand like children at play; the little sea-crows cawed noisily as they wheeled round the cliffs, and the sea-gulls called to their fellows as they floated over the waves or stood about the wet, shining sands.

"There's beautiful, it is," said Valmai, pushing back her hat and taking long breaths of the sea wind; "only six weeks I have been here and yet I seem to have known it for ever--I suppose because from a baby I used to hear my father talking of this place. It was his old home, and he was always longing to come back."

"Yes," said Cardo, "I can imagine that. I don't think I could ever be thoroughly happy away from here."

"Nor I too, indeed," said Valmai, "now that I know it."

"I hope you will never leave the place--you seem to belong to it somehow; and I hope I may never leave it, at least--at all events--"

and he hesitated as he remembered his father's wishes--expressed many times, though at long intervals--that he should go to Australia and visit an uncle who had for many years lived there. The prospect of a voyage to the Antipodes had never been very attractive to Cardo, and latterly the idea had faded from his mind. In the glamour of that golden afternoon in spring, in Valmai's sweet companionship, the thought of parting and leaving his native country was doubly unpleasant to him. She saw the sudden embarra.s.sment, and the flush that spread over his face.

"You are going away?" she said, looking up at him.

There was only inquiry in the tone. Cardo wondered if she would be sorry, and was tempted to make the most of his possible departure.

"I may have to go away," he said, "though I should hate it. I never liked the idea, but now I perfectly dread it. And you," he added, "should you miss me? It is not very lively here, so perhaps even I might be missed a little."

Valmai did not answer; she looked out to the horizon where the blue of the sky joined the blue of the sea, and the white breakers glinted in the sunshine.

"Yes," she said presently, "I will be sorry when you go, and where are you going to? Far away? To England, perhaps?"

"To Australia," replied Cardo.

"Australia! Oh! then you will never come back to Traeth Berwen!"

"Indeed, indeed I will, Miss Powell--you laugh at that--well--may I say Valmai, then?"

"Yes; why not? Everyone is calling me Valmai, even Shoni our servant."

"I may venture, then; and will you call me Cardo?"

"Yes, indeed; Cardo Wynne. Cardo Wynne, everybody is calling you that, too--even the little children in the village; I have heard them say, 'Here is Cardo Wynne coming!' See, here is the path to Dinas, I must say good-bye."

"Can't we have another walk along the beach? Remember, I, too, have no one to talk to!"

"Oh, anwl, no! I must hurry home and get the tea for the preachers."

"And then back to the meeting on the hillside?"

"No; the meeting is in the chapel to-night."

"But when it is over you will come back along the sh.o.r.e?"

"Indeed, I don't know. Good-bye," she said, as she began her way up the rugged homeward path.

When Cardo reached home, he found his father sitting at the tea-table.

The old parlour looked gloomy and dark, the bright afternoon sun, shining through the creepers which obscured the window, threw a green light over the table and the rigid, pale face of the Vicar.

"You are late Cardo; where have you been?"

"In the long meadow, sir, where I could hear some of the preaching going on below, and afterwards on the beach; it is a glorious afternoon. Oh! father, I wish you would come out and breathe the fresh air; it cannot be good for you to be always in your study poring over those musty old books."

"My books are not musty, and I like to spend my time according to my own ideas of what is fit and proper, and I should not think it either to be craning my neck over a hedge to listen to a parcel of Methodist preachers--"

"Well, I only heard one, Price Merthyr I think they call him. He was--"

"Cardo!" said his father severely, "when I want any information on the subject I will ask for it; I want you to set Dye and Ebben on to the draining of that field to-morrow--"

"Parc y waun?"

"Yes; Parc y waun."

"Right, father," said Cardo good-naturedly. He was devotedly attached to his father, and credited him with a depth of affection and tenderness lying hidden behind his stern manner--a sentiment which must have been revealed to him by intuition, for he had never seen any outward sign of it. "It's no use," he muttered, as his father rose and left the room; "it's no use trying to broach the subject to him, poor fellow! I must be more careful, and keep my thoughts to myself."

Later on in the evening, Valmai sat in the hot, crowded chapel, her elbows pressed tightly in to her sides by the two fat women between whom she sat, their broad-brimmed hats much impeding her view of the preacher, who was pounding the red velvet cushion in the old pulpit, between two dim mould candles which shed a faint light over his face.

Valmai listened with folded hands as he spoke of the narrow way so difficult to tread, so wearisome to follow--of the few who walked in it and the people, listening with upturned faces and bated breath, answered to his appeal with sighs and groans and "amens." He then pa.s.sed on to a still more vivid description of the broad road, so smooth, so easy, so charming to every sense, so thronged with people all gaily dancing onwards to destruction, the sudden end of the road, where it launched its thronging crowds over a precipice into the foaming, seething sea of everlasting woe and misery.

Valmai looked round her with awe and horror.

"Did these innocent-looking, simple people belong to that thronging crowd who were hurrying on to their own destruction? was she herself one of them? Cardo?--her uncle?"

The thought was dreadful, her breath came and went quickly, her eyes were full of tears, and she felt as if she must rise suddenly and rush into the open air, but as she looked round the chapel she caught sight through one of the windows of the dark blue sky of night, bespangled with stars, and a glow of purer and healthier feeling came over her.

She would not believe it--outside was the fresh night wind, outside was the silver moonlight, and in the words of the poet of whom she had never heard she said within herself, "No! G.o.d is in Heaven, it's all right with the world!" Her joyous nature could not brook the saddening influences of the Methodist creed, and as she pa.s.sed out into the clear night air amongst the crowd of listeners, and heard their mournful sighs and their evident appreciation of the sermon, or rather sermons, for there had been two, her heart bounded with a sense of relief; joy and happiness were its natural elements, and she returned to them as an innocent child rushes to its mother's arms.

Leaving the thronged road, she took the rugged path down the hillside, alone under the stars, and remembering Cardo's question, "Will you come home by the sh.o.r.e?" she wondered whether he was anywhere near! As she reached the bottom of the cliff and trod on the firm, hard sand below, she saw him standing in the shadow of a rock, and gazing out at the sea over which the moon made a pathway of silver.

The fishing boats from Ynysoer were out like moths upon the water.

They glided from the darkness across that path of light and away again into the unknown. On one a light was burning.

"That is the _b.u.t.terfly_," thought Valmai, "I am beginning to know them all; and there is Cardo Wynne!" and with a spirit of mischief gleaming in her eyes and dimpling her face, she approached him quietly, her light footstep making no sound on the sand.

She was close behind him and he had not turned round, but still stood with folded arms looking out over the moonlit scene. Having reached this point, Valmai's fun suddenly deserted her. What should she do next? should she touch him? No! Should she speak to him? Yes; but what should she say? Cardo! No! and a faint blush overspread her face. A mysterious newborn shyness came over her, and it was quite a nervous, trembling voice that at last said:

"Mr. Wynne?"

Cardo turned round quickly.

"Valmai! Miss Powell!" he said, "how silently you came upon me! I was dreaming. Come and stand here. Is not that scene one to make a poet of the most prosaic man?"

"Yes, indeed," answered the girl, standing beside him with a strangely beating heart, "it is beautiful! I saw the sky through the chapel window, and I was thinking it would be very nice down here. There's bright and clear the moon is!"

They were walking now across the beach, at the edge of the surf.

"It reminds me of something I read out to uncle last night. It was out of one of his old Welsh poets--Taliesin, or Davydd ap Gwilym, or somebody. It was about the moon, but indeed I don't know if I can put it into English."

"Try," said Cardo.

"'She comes from out the fold And leads her starry flock among the fields of night.'"