Mrs. Warren's Daughter Part 4

PONTYSTRAD

On a morning in mid-July, 1901, Mr. D.V. Williams bicycled to Paddington Station from New Square, Lincoln's Inn. The brown canvas case fitted to the frame of his male bicycle contained a change of clothes, a suit of paijamas, a safety razor, tooth-brush, hair-brush and comb. He himself was wearing a well-cut dark grey suit--Norfolk jacket, knickerbockers and thick stockings.

Having had his bicycle labelled "Swansea," he entered a first-cla.s.s compartment of the South Wales express. Though not lavish on his expenditure he was travelling first because he still felt a little uneasy in the presence of men--mostly men of the rougher type.

Perhaps there was a second cla.s.s in those days; there may be still.

But I have a distinct impression that Mr. Vavasour Williams, law student, travelled "first" on this occasion: for this was how he met a person of whom his friend, Honoria Fraser, had often spoken--Michael Rossiter.

He did not of course--till after they had pa.s.sed Swindon--know the name of his travelling companion. Five minutes before the train left Paddington there entered his compartment of the corridor carriage a tall man with a short, curly black beard and nice eyes--eyes like agates in colour. There was a touch of grey about the temples, otherwise the head hair, when he changed from a hard felt hat to a soft travelling cap, showed as dark as the beard and moustache. His frame was strong, muscular and loosely built, and he had clever, nervous hands with fingers somewhat spatulate. His clothes did not much suggest the tourist--they seemed more like a too well-worn town morning suit of dark blue serge; as though he had left home in an absent-minded mood intent on some hurriedly conceived plan. He cast one or two quick glances at David; once, indeed, as they got out into full daylight, away from tunnels and high walls, letting his glance lengthen into a searching look. Then he busied himself with a number of scientific periodicals he had brought to read in the train.

Impelled, he knew not why, to provoke conversation, David asked (quite needlessly), "This _is_ the South Wales express, I mean the Swansea train, is it not?"

Blackbeard was struck with the unusualness of the voice--a very pleasant one to come from the lips of a man--and replied: "It is; at least I got in under that impression as I am intending to go to Swansea; but in any case the ticket inspector is sure to come along the corridor presently and we'll make sure then. We stop at Swindon, I think, so if we've made a mistake we can rectify it there."

Then after a pause he resumed: "I think you said you were going to Swansea? Might I ask if you are bound on the same errand as I am? I mean, are you one of Boyd Dawkins's party to examine the new cave on the Gower coast?"

_D.V.W._: "Oh no--I--I am going inland from Swansea to--to have a bicycling tour. I'm going to a place on the river--I don't know how to p.r.o.nounce it--at least I've forgotten. The river's name is spelt Llwchwr."

_Blackbeard_: "You should change your mind and turn south--come and see these extraordinary caves. Are you interested in palaeontology?"

(David hesitates) "What careless people call 'prehistoric animals'

or 'prehistoric man.' They have been ridiculously misled by comic artists in _Punch_ who imagine a few thousand years of Prehistory would take us back to the Cretaceous period; really four or five million years before Man came into existence, when this country and most other lands swarmed with preposterous reptiles that had become extinct long before the age of mammals. However, I don't suppose this interests you. I only spoke because I thought you might be one of Boyd Dawkins's pupils ... or one of mine."

_David_: "On the contrary, I am very, very much interested in the subject, but I am afraid it has lain rather outside my line of studies so far--p'raps I will turn south when I have seen something of the part of Glamorgan I am going to. I'm really Welsh in origin, but I know Wales imperfectly because I left it when I was quite young" ("This'll be good practice," Vivie's brain voice was saying to herself) ... "I've returned recently from South Africa."

_Blackbeard_: "What were you doing there?"

_David_: "I--I--was in the army ... at least in a police force ... I got wounded, had to go into hospital--necrosis of the jaw ... I came home when I got well..."

_Blackbeard_: _"Necrosis of the jaw!_ That was a bad thing. But you seem to have got over it very well. I can't see any scar from where I am..."

_David_: "Oh no. It was only a _slight_ touch and I dare say I exaggerate ... I've left the Army however and now I'm reading Law..."

Blackbeard thinks at this point that he has gone far enough in cross-examination and returns to his periodicals and pamphlets. But there's something he likes--a wistfulness--in the young man's face, and he can't quite detach his mind to the presence of palaeolithic man in South Wales. At Swindon they both get out--there was still lingering the practice of taking lunch there--have a hasty lunch together and more talk, and share a bottle of claret.

On returning to their compartment, Rossiter offers David a cigar but the young man prefers smoking a cigarette. By this time they have exchanged names. D.V.W. however is reticent about the South African War--says it was all too horrible for words, and should never have taken place and he can't bear to think about it and was knocked out quite early in the day. Now all he asks is peace and quiet and the opportunity of studying law in London so that he may become some day a barrister. Rossiter says--after more talk, "Pity you're going in for the Bar--we've too many lawyers already. You should take up Science"--and as far as the Severn Tunnel discourses illuminatingly on biology, mineralogy, astronomy, chemistry as David-Vivien had never heard them treated previously. In the Severn Tunnel the noise of the train silences both professor and listener, who willingly takes up the position of pupil. Between Newport and Neath, David thinks he has never met any one so interesting. It has been his first real induction into the greatest of all books: the Book of the Earth itself. Rossiter on his part feels indefinably attracted by this young expatriated Welshman. David does not say much, but what he does contribute to the conversation shows him a quick thinker and a person of trained intelligence. Yet somehow the professor of Biology in the University of London--and many other things beside--F.R.S., F.Z.S., F.L.S., Gold Medallist of this and that Academy and University abroad--does not "see" him as a soldier or a non-commissioned officer in the British Army: law-student is a more likely qualification. However as they near Swansea, Michael Rossiter gives Mr. D.V. Williams his card (D.V.W. regrets he cannot reciprocate but says he has hardly settled down yet to any address) and--though as a rule he is taciturn in trains and cautious about making acquaintances--expresses the hope he will call at 1, Park Crescent some afternoon--"My wife and I are generally at home on Thursdays"--when all are back in town for the autumn. They separate at Swansea station.

David spends the night at Swansea, employing some of his time there by enquiring at the Terminus Hotel as to the roads that lead up the valley of the Llwchwr, what sort of a place is Pontystrad ("the bridge by the meadow"), whether any one knows the clergyman of that parish, Mr.... er ... Howel Vaughan Williams. The "boots" or one of the "bootses," it appears, comes from the neighbourhood of Pontystrad and knows the reverend gentleman by sight--a nice old gentleman--has heard that he's aged much of late years since his son ran away and disappeared out in Africa. His sight was getting bad, Boots understood, and he could not see to do all the reading and writing he was once so great at.

After a rather wakeful night, during which D.V. Williams is more disturbed by his thoughts and schemes than by the continual noises of the trains pa.s.sing into and out of Swansea, he rises early and drafts a telegram:--

Revd. Howel Williams, Vicarage, Pontystrad, Glamorgan. Hope return home this evening. All is well.

DAVID.

Then pays his bill and tries to mount his bicycle the wrong way to the great amus.e.m.e.nt of the Boots; then remembers the right way and rides off, with the confidence of one long accustomed to bicycling, through the crowded traffic of Swansea in the direction of Llwchwr.

It was a very hot ride through a very lovely country, now largely spoilt by mining and metallurgy, along a road that was constantly climbing up steeply to descend abruptly. David of course could have travelled by rail to the Pontyffynon station and thence have ridden back three miles to Pontystrad. But he wished purposely to bicycle the whole way from Swansea and take in with the eye the land of his fathers. He was postponing as long as possible the test of meeting his father, the father of the young n'eer-do-weel who had been lying for months in a South African field hospital the year before. He halted for a cup of tea at Llandeilotalybont ... Wales has many place names like this ... and being there not many miles from Pontystrad was able to glean more recent and more circ.u.mstantial information about the man he proposed to greet as "father."

At half-past six that evening, having perspired and dried, perspired and dried, strained a tendon and acquired a headache, he halted before the gate of the Vicarage garden at Pontystrad, having been followed thither to his secret annoyance by quite a troop of village boys of whom he had imprudently asked the way. As they talked Welsh he could not tell what they were saying, but conjectured that his telegram had arrived and that he was expected.

Standing under the porch of the house was an old man with a long white beard like a Druid in spectacles shading his eyes and expectant...

A bicycle might prove an inc.u.mbrance in the ensuing interview, so David hastily propped his against a fuchsia hedge and hurried forward to meet the old man, who extended hands to envelop him, not trusting to his eyes. An old, rosy-cheeked woman in a sunbonnet came up behind the old man, shrieked out "Master David!" and only waited with twitching fingers for her own onslaught till the father had first embraced his prodigal son. This was done at least three times, accompanied with tears, blessings, prayers, the uplifting of poor filmy eyes to a cloudless Heaven--"Diolch i Dduw!"--e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns as to the wonder of it--"Rhyfeddol yw yn eiholl ffyrdd"--G.o.d's Providence--His ways are past finding out! "Ni ellir olrain ei Ragluniaeth!"--"My own dear boy! Fy machgen annwyli!"

Then the old woman took her turn: "Master David! Eh, but you're changed, mun!"--then a lot of Welsh exclamations, which until the Welsh can agree to spell their tongue phonetically I shall not insert--"Five years since you left us! Eh, and I never thought to see you no more. Some said you wa.s.s dead, others that you wa.s.s taken prisoner by the Wild Boars. But here you are, and welcome--indeed--"

Then Master David between the embraces was scanned, a little more critically than by the purblind father, but with distinct approval.

At last David stood apart in the stone-flagged hall of the Vicarage.

His abundant hair was rumpled, his face was stained by other people's tears, his collar, tie, dress disordered, and his heart touched. It was a rare experience in his twenty-four years of life--he guessed that should be his age--to find himself really taken on trust, really desired and loved. Honoria's friendship was a pure and precious thing, but in its very purity carefully restrained. Praddy's kindness, and the office boy's worship had both been gratifying to Vivie's self-esteem, but both had to be kept at bay. Somehow the love of a father and of an old nurse were of a different category to these other contacts.

All these thoughts pa.s.sed through David's brain in thirty seconds.

He shook himself, straightened himself, smiled adequately, and tried to live up to the situation.

"Dear father! And dear ... Nannie! (A bold but successful deduction). How sweet of you both--greeting me like this. I've come home a very different David to the one that left you--what was it?

Five--six years ago?--to go to Mr. Praed's studio. I've learnt a lot in the interval. But I'm so sick of the past, I don't want to talk about it more than I can help, and I've been in very queer health since I got ill--and--wounded--in--South Africa. My memory has gone for many things--I'm afraid I've forgotten all my Welsh, Nannie, but it'll soon come back, that is, if I may stay here a bit."

(Exclamations from father and nurse: "This is your _home_, Davy-bach!") "I'm not going to stay too long this time because I've got my living to earn in London....

"Did you never hear anything about me from ... South Africa ... or the War Office--or--your old college chum, Mr. Gardner?"

"I heard--my own dear boy--" said the Revd. Howel, again taking him in his arms in a renewed spasm of affection. "I heard you were wounded and very ill in the camp hospital at Colesberg. It was a nursing sister, I think, who sent me the information. I wrote several times to the War Office, my letters were acknowledged, that was all. Then Sam Gardner wrote to me from Margate and said his son had been in the same hospital with you. Later on I saw in a Bristol paper that this hospital--Colesberg--had fallen into the hands of the Boers and the Cape insurgents. Then I said to myself 'My poor boy's been taken prisoner' and as time went on, 'My poor boy's dead, or he would have written to me.'"

Here the Revd. Howel stopped to wipe his eyes and blow his nose.

David touched through his armour of cynicism, said--Nannie retiring to prepare the evening meal--"Father dear, though I don't want to refer too often to the past, I behaved disgracefully some time ago and the Colonies seemed my only chance of setting myself right. I did manage to get away from the Boers, but I had not the courage to present myself before you till I had done something to regain your good opinion. I have got now good employment in London and I'm even reading up Law. We will talk of that by and bye but I tell you now--from my heart--I am a different David to the one you knew, and you shall never regret taking me back."

Both father and son were crying now, for emotion especially in Wales is catching. But the father laughed through his tears; and incoherently thanked G.o.d for the return of the prodigal--a fine upstanding lad--whole and sound. "No taint about _you_, Davy, _I'll_ be bound. Why your voice alone shows you've been a clean liver. It's music in my ears, and if I could see as well as I can hear I'd wager you're a handsome lad and have lost much of your foolishness. Davy, lad" (lowering his voice) "you've no cause to be anxious about Jenny. She--she--had a boy, but we got her married to a miner--I made it right with him. She has another child now, but they're being brought up together. We won't refer to it again. She lives twenty miles from here, at Gower--and ... and ... there's an end of it....

"Now you won't run away back to London till you're obliged? Where's your luggage? At Pontyffynon?"

"No," said David, a little non-plussed at evidences of his dissolute past and this unexpected fatherhood a.s.sumed on his account. "I haven't more luggage than what is contained in my bicycle bag. But don't let that concern you. I'll go over to Swansea one day or some nearer town and buy what may be necessary, and I'll stay with you all my holidays, tell you all my plans, and even after I go back to London I'll always come down here when I can get away. For the present I'm going simply to enjoy myself for the first time in my life. The last four years we'll look on as a horrid dream. What a paradise you live in." His eye ranged over the two-storeyed, soundly-built stone house facing south, with mountains behind and the western sun throwing shafts of warm yellow green over the lawn and the flower beds; over clumps of elms in the middle, southern distance, that might have been planted by the Romans (who loved this part of Wales). Bees, b.u.t.terflies and swallows were in the air; the distant lowing of kine, the scent of the roses, the clatter in the kitchen where Nannie aided by another female servant was preparing supper, even the barking of a watch dog; aware that something unusual was going on, completed the impression of the blissful countryside. "What a paradise you live in! How _could_ I have left it?"

"Ay, dear lad; I doubt not it looks strange and new to you since you've been in South Africa and London. But it'll soon seem homelike enough. And now you'll like to see your room, and have a wash before supper. Tom, the gardener, shall take in your bicycle and give it a rub over. I've still got the old one here in the coach-house which you left behind. Tom's new, since you left. He's not so clever with the bees as your old friend Evan was, but he's a steadier lad. I fear me Evan led you into some of your sc.r.a.pes. The fault was partly mine. I shouldn't have let you run wild so much, but I was so wrapped up in my studies--Well, well!"

David was careful to play his part sufficiently to say when shown into his old bedroom, "Just the same, father; scarcely a bit altered--but isn't the bed moved--to another place?"

"You're right, my boy--Ah! your memory can't be as bad as you pretend. Yes, we moved it there, Bridget and I, because the Archdeacon came once to stay and complained of the draught from the window."

"The deuce he did!" said David. "Well, _I_ shan't complain of anything."

His father left him and he then proceeded to lay out the small store of things he had brought in his bicycle bag, giving special prominence to the shaving tackle. He had just finished a summary toilet when there was a tap on the door, and, suppressing an exclamation of impatience--for he dearly wanted time and solitude for collected thought--he admitted Bridget.

"Well, Nannie," he said, "come for a gossip?"

"Yess. I can hardly bear to take my eyes off you, for you've changed, you _have_ changed. And yet, I don't know? You don't look much older than you wa.s.s when you went off to London to be an architect. Your cheek--" (lifting her hand and stroking it, while David tried hard not to wince) "Your cheek's as soft and smooth as it was then, as any young girl's. Wherever you've been, the world has not treated you very bad. No one would have dreamt you'd been all the way to South Africa to them Wild Boars. But some men wear wonderful well. I suppose your father giv' you a bit of a shock?

He's much older looking; and he wa.s.sn't suffering, to speak of, from his sight when you went away. And now he can hardly see to read even with his new spectol. Old Doctor Murgatroyd can't do nothing for him--Advises him to go to see some Bristol or London eye-doctor. But after you seemed to disappear in Africa he had no heart for trying to get his sight back. He'd sit for hours doing nothing but think and talk, all about old Welsh times, or Bible times. Of course he knows hiss services by heart; hiss only job wa.s.s with the Lessons.... But you see, he'd often only have me and the girl and Tom in church. There's a new preacher up at Little Bethel that's drawn all the village folk to hear him. But your father'll be a different man now--you see, he'll be like a boy again. And if you could stay long enough, you might take him to Bristol--or Clifton I think it wa.s.s--to see if they could do anything about his eyes....

"The past's the past and we aren't going to say no more about it, and now you've turned over a new leaf--somehow I _can't_ feel you're the same person--don't go worrying yourself about that s.l.u.t Jenny.

_She's_ all right. After your baby was born at her mother's, she went into service at Llanelly and there she met a miner who's at work on the new coal mine in Gower. He wasn't a bad sort of chap and when he'd heard her story he said for a matter of twenty pound he'd marry her and take over her baby. So your father paid the twenty pounds, and if she'll only keep straight she'll be none the worse for what's happened. I always said it wa.s.s my fault. It wa.s.s the year I had to go away to my sister, and your father had to go to St.