Garthowen Part 19

We only see with our bodily eyes, but your spirit sees. Mother, I know it--but he is gone! What is the meaning of that; he is gone like the mist of the morning--like a dream of the night, and he will never return, and if he did return it could never be anything to me!"

And leaning on the table as she had done once before, her face buried on her arms, she sobbed unrestrainedly, Sara sitting by her and crying in sympathy.

All day they discussed the unhappy event.

"Who did it, mother? and why did Gethin go away?"

"I don't know," said the old woman. "I shall never know perhaps who did it, but I know it was not Gethin."

"Why did I see him, mother? I awoke suddenly and went into the pa.s.sage, and there he was. I wish I had slept sounder, for that sight will always be on my mind. When we came down to breakfast he was gone, and every one will think he stole the money. Forty sovereigns, mother!

Will he ever come back and clear it up?"

"Some day it will be plain, but now we must be satisfied to know it was not Gethin."

"No one else will believe us, mother."

"Oh! I am used to that," said the old woman, with a patient smile; "that makes no difference in G.o.d's plans. Thou must pluck up thy heart, and have courage, child, for there is a long life before thee.

A dark cloud is shading thy path now, but 'twill pa.s.s away, and thou wilt be happy again."

"Never! unless Gethin comes back to clear his name. Oh! 'tis a cold grey world. Only here with you, mother, is the comfort of love. When I draw near the cottage I look out for your red mantle, and if I see it, it sends a warm glow through me."

And so they talked until, as the twilight gathered round them, Morva said:

"I must go; the cows must be milked. Poor Garthowen is a sad house to-day! I wish I could comfort them a little, but 'tis all dark."

And as she crossed the moor to the Cribserth, she looked round her, but found no shred of comfort. The sea, all rough and torn by the high wind, looked cold and cruel; the brow of the hill, which Gethin's whistle had so often enlivened, looked bare and uninteresting; the moor had lost its gorgeous tints; a rock pigeon, endeavouring to reach its nest, was driven by the wind against a thorn bush.

"Tis p.r.i.c.ked and beaten like me," thought the girl, and struggling with the high wind, she helped the bird with tender fingers to extricate himself.

When she entered the farmyard Daisy stood waiting, and Morva, knowing that without her song there would be no milk, began the old refrain, but her voice broke, and while she sang with trembling lips the tears ran down her cheeks.

The news of Gethin's absence was soon bruited abroad, and many were the conjectures as to its cause.

"He seemed so jolly at the cynos," said the farm servants; "who'd have thought his heart was away with the shipping and the foreign ports?"

"Well, well," said the farmers, "Garthowen will have to do without Gethin Owens, that's plain; the roving spirit is in him still, and Ebben Owens will have to look alive, with only Ann and Gwilym Morris to help him."

"Well, he needn't be so proud, then! Will a clergyman indeed! 'tis at home at the plough I'd keep him!"

But n.o.body knew anything of the robbery, which added so much poignancy to the sorrow at Garthowen. Ebben Owens seemed to take his son's disappearance much to heart, and to feel his absence more in sorrow than in anger.

Will grew more and more irritable, so that it was almost a relief when one day in the following week he took his departure for Llaniago, his father accompanying him in the car, and returning next day with glowing accounts of his son's introduction to the world of learning and collegiate life.

"If you were to see him in his cap and gown!" he said, "oh, there's a gentleman he looks; in my deed there wasn't one in the whole college so handsome as our Will! so straight and so tall, and everybody noticing him."

And so Will was launched on the voyage of clerical life with full sails and colours flying, while Gethin was allowed to sink into oblivion; his name was never mentioned, his place knew him no more, and the tide of life flowed on at Garthowen with the outward monotonous peace and regularity common to all farm life. Ebben Owens leant more on Gwilym and Ann, and Twm took his own way more, but further than this there was no difference in the daily routine of work.

The grey house at Brynseion was nearing completion, but Ann put off her marriage again and again, and even hinted at the desirability of breaking off her engagement entirely, unless it could be arranged for her and her husband to live on at Garthowen, and let the grey house to somebody else.

"Well!" said Gwilym, "'tis for you and your father to settle that. I will be happy with you anywhere, Ann, and I see it is impossible for you to leave the old man while both his sons are away; so do as you wish, 'merch i, only don't keep me waiting any longer."

And so it was settled, and Ann sat down to indite a letter to Will in the fine pointed handwriting which she had learnt during her year of boarding-school at Caer-Madoc, fine and pointed and square, like a row of gates, with many capitals and no stops. The letter informed her brother with much formality, "that having known Gwilym Morris for many years, he and she had now decided to enter upon the matrimonal state.

Our father and mother," she continued, "having been married in Capel Mair at Castell On, I have a strong wish to be married in the same place, and Gwilym consents to my wish. We will fix our wedding for some day after your return from Llaniago at Christmas, as we would like you to be present as well as my father. Elinor Jones of Betheyron will be my bridesmaid, and Morva and Gryffy Jones will be the only others at the wedding."

By return of post Will's answer came, requesting them not to count upon him, as he might accept the invitation of a friend to spend part of his vacation with him. "In any case," he added, "it would scarcely look well for a candidate for Holy Orders in the Church of England to attend a service in a dissenting chapel."

Gwilym Morris folded the letter slowly, and returned it to Ann without a word.

"Well, well!" said Ebben Owens, "'tis disappointing, but Will knows best; no doubt he's right, and thee must find someone else, Ann. I wish Gethin was here," the old man said, with a sigh.

It was strange, Ann thought, how tenderly and wistfully he longed for Gethin, once so little cared for; and as the memory of the sinister event which she believed caused his absence crossed her mind she coloured with shame.

"Oh, father," she said, clasping her hands. "Poor Gethin! how could I have him at my wedding? I never thought one of our family could be dishonest."

"Nor I--nor I, indeed!" said Ebben Owens, shaking his head sorrowfully.

"It is too plain, isn't it?" said Ann, "going away like that--oh! to think our Gethin was a thief!" and throwing her ap.r.o.n over her face she burst into a fit of sobbing, a thing so unusual with the placid Ann that her father and Gwilym both watched her in surprise.

Gwilym took her hand in silence, and the old man, leaning his elbow on the table and shading his eyes with his hand dropped some bitter tears.

He had looked forward to Will's return with intense longing, had counted the days that must elapse before that happy hour should arrive when, great-coated and gloved, he should drive his son over the frosty roads, and usher him like a conquering hero into the old home. Through her own tears Ann observed the old man's sorrowful att.i.tude, and instantly she dried her eyes and ran towards him.

"Father, anwl," she said, in an abandon of love, kneeling down beside him, and throwing her strong white arm around him, "is it tears I see dropping down on the table? Well, indeed, there's a foolish daughter you've got, to cry and mourn, and make her old father cry. Stop those tears at once, then, naughty boy," she said cheerily, patting the old man's back; "or I'll cry again, and Gwilym will be afraid to enter such a showery family."

Her father tried to laugh through his tears, and Ann, casting her sorrow to the winds, laid herself out with "merry quips and cranks" to restore him to cheerfulness.

"Now see," she cried, with a.s.sumed childish glee, "what a dinner I have for you! what you've often called 'a dinner for a king' and so it is, and that king is Ebben Owens of Garthowen!" and she placed before him a plate of boiled rabbit, adding a slice of the pink, home-cured bacon, which Gwilym was cutting with a smile of amus.e.m.e.nt at her playful ruse.

"Now, potatoes and onion sauce, salt, cabbages, knife and fork, and now the dear old king is going to eat a good dinner."

Ebben Owens laughingly took his knife and fork, and in spite of the previous tears, the meal was a cheerful one, even Tudor stood up with his paws on the table with a joyous bark.

Will's letters were the grand excitement of the farm, coming at first pretty regularly once a week--read aloud by Ann in the best kitchen, examined carefully by her father lest a word should have escaped the reader, carried out to farm kitchen or stable or field, and read to the servants, who listened with gaping admiration.

"There's a scholar he is! Caton pawb! Indeed, Mishteer, there's proud you must be of him!" And all this was incense to Ebben Owens's heart.

CHAPTER XIII

THE BIRD FLUTTERS

In the first term of his college life Will fully realised his pleasantest antic.i.p.ations, and now, if never before, he acknowledged to himself his deep indebtedness to Gwilym Morris; his own abilities he had never doubted. The ease, too, with which he had matriculated much elated him, and he began his studies with a light heart and a happy consciousness of talent, which, coupled with a dogged perseverance and a determination to overcome every obstacle in his path, ensured success in the long run. He had one fixed and constant aim, namely, advancement in the career upon which he had entered, and in furtherance of this object, he was determined to let no hankering after the past stand in his way. In his own opinion there were but two hindrances to his progress, two shadows from the past to darken his path, and these were his obscure birth and his love for Morva, for this he had not yet succeeded in crushing. Before he left home his constant intercourse with her and the ease with which they met had prevented the usual anxieties which are said to beset the path of love. With innate selfishness, he had taken to himself all the pleasure derivable from their close companionship, without troubling himself much as to the state of the girl's feelings. That she was true to him, he had never had reason to doubt. Since he left home things had taken a different aspect; true, the thought of Morva was interwoven with all he did or read or studied, but there was an accompanying feeling of disquietude, a shrinking from the memory of her simple rustic ways, which he began to realise were incompatible with his new hopes and aspirations. It was becoming very evident to him, therefore, that his love for her must be banished, with all the old foolish ties and habits which bound him to the past. A vision of the clear blue eyes, the winsome smile, the lissom figure _would_ rise persistently before him, and alas! the threadbare woollen gown, the wooden shoes, the pink cotton neckerchief, were also photographed upon his brain.

He heard from Ann of her approaching marriage, no longer deferred in expectation of his presence, and he was much relieved by this arrangement; but still, when the morning dawned clear and frosty, he was cross and irritable, for he could not banish from his mind the thought of the old ivy-covered homestead, with the few gnarled trees overshadowing its gables, its bare sea front turned bravely to the north-west, the elder tree over the back door, the farm servants, all with white favours pinned on their b.r.e.a.s.t.s; the gentle bride, the handsome thoughtful bridegroom, the dear old father excited and merry, and above all, Morva decked out in wedding finery! How lovely she would look! Why was it that this sweet picture of home filled Will's heart only with discontent and an abiding unrest? The answer is plain, because he had determined, come what would, to sever himself from that homely, simple life, to cast the thought of it into the background, to live only for the future, and that future one of success and self-aggrandis.e.m.e.nt. Morva alone held him back; how could he hope to rise in his career, while his heart was fettered by the memory of a milkmaid, a cowherd, a shepherdess? No, it was very evident that from her he must break away. "But not now," he said to himself, as he paced round the quadrangle, "not yet." She was so sweet--he loved her so much; not yet must the severance come. "It will be time enough," so his reverie ended, "when my future is more defined and certain, then it will be easy to break away from poor Morva."

The invitation of which he had spoken had not been renewed, and though he was far too proud to show his annoyance, the omission galled and fretted his haughty nature, for the lowliness of his birth and circ.u.mstances chafed him continually, and engendered a sensitiveness to small annoyances which would not have troubled a n.o.bler nature. In spite of all this, he found himself, as the term drew near its close, looking forward with pleasure to the old home ways, and the old home friends, and when he climbed into the jingling car beside his father, in the yard of the hotel, not even the rough country shabbiness of the equipage could altogether spoil the pleasant antic.i.p.ations of a first vacation at home, although, it must be confessed, that as he drove out of the town, he earnestly hoped he would escape the observation of his fellow collegians.

Ebben Owens's happiness should now have been complete, for he had his much-loved son at home at his own hearth; but a shadow seemed to have fallen on the old man's life, a haunting sadness which nothing seemed to dispel. Ann rallied him upon it playfully, and he would laughingly promise to reform.